December 10, 2025 • 49 mins
In Greek mythology, Atlas holds the heavens on his shoulders as a punishment from Zeus. And every time you see an image of Atlas, remember the hundreds of millions of Americans who are perpetually burdened by debt. To many of those consumers, the weight of credit cards, personal loans, and car loans feels like an eternal struggle… the new normal with no end in sight. But like our guest today, you can reject that fate and rewrite your story. Jade Warshaw paid off almost half a million dollars in consumer debt over the better half of a decade. Now she uses her hard-earned knowledge to teach others how to do the same. She’s a Ramsey personality and is the author of the new book ‘What No One Tells You About Money’ which explores the emotional side of personal finances. We dive into that and also cover:
- Facing deep emotional struggles when dealing with debt
- Financial discussions should include emotional health
- Debt can strain personal relationships significantly
- Understanding money involves more than just numbers
- Feeling isolated in financial struggles
- Role of debt in growing a family
- Good debt vs bad debt
- Jade’s final piece of advice
- And much more!
Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
- Jade’s new book, out January 6th: What No One Tells You About Money
- Knowing your ‘money gear’ is a crucial part of your personal finance journey. Start here.
- Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
- Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
- Massively reduce your cell phone bill each month by switching to a discount provider like Mint Mobile.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and today I'm
talking with Jade Warshaw on escaping the debt trap and
rewriting your story. Okay, So, in Greek mythology, Atlas holds
(00:30):
the world on his shoulders as a punishment from Zeus.
Every time I see an image of Atlas, it makes
me think about the modern reality of debt to people
struggling under its weight. It can feel like a perpetual burden,
and it's not like a you know, you're going rucking
a little jaunt where you can take off that pack
if you want. And Jade Warshaw she knows that burden
of debt well. She paid off almost half a million
(00:53):
dollars in consumer debt over the better half of a decade,
and now she uses her harder knowledge to teach others
how to do the same. She's a Ramsey personality. She
is the author of the new book What No One
Tells You About Money. Jade, I'm really excited to talk
to you. Thank you for joining me today on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Oh, thank you so much, Joel. I loved that visual
you started out with. By the way, so good Atlas.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
It's true. I mean, think of like the way of
the world on your shoulders. It can feel like that,
especially when you had as much debt as you had,
which is going to be my second question to you,
But the first one I have to ask you is
what do you like to splurge on? Kraft beer is
my thing, but what is your craft beer equivalent? What
are you splurging on while you're still doing smart stuff
with your money in the meantime?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Plants, Plants, anything green that can live inside of my
house is the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
What was the last plant you got? And I know
Fiddley figs. We have a Fiddley fig that we've been
able to keep alive. Those are notoriously difficult to keep alive, right.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Uh huh, Yeah they do. And I have a big
one that I actually just moved so I could put
my Christmas tree up. I just moved it into my kitchen.
Fiddley fig The last thing I bought was probably I
bought a Kiwi plant. It's like a dressina, It's it's
really really pretty. It's really tropical. I like tropical plants.
I bought yet another monsterra I have lots of those.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
They're so cool. I love this. I get mine from
Costco when they sell them.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Oh, really, be careful.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I have one of the front horses is huge, which okay.
Next question to you, what do you do with those
plants if you have them outside and it's wintertime, like
you got to bring them inside and then your house
gets a little crowded.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, here's the thing. I have mastered the indoor house plant.
I can keep them alive. Most of my plants I've
had for like four years or more. It's outdoor plants
that I struggle with, So I only buy indoor house plants. Drool.
I don't even mess with the outdoor stuff. I have
a big pair of elephant years. You know what I'm
talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Oh yeah, Oh, and.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I have those inside and they stay inside all year
because we have winter here anyway, so we can't take
them outside.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
To me, the elephantors are so cool, especially like outside,
they just get so big. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
My house is a jungle.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I love it, though, I love it. I'm all for
I'm all for the inside plants, the real inside plants.
The fake ones, no way, but the real ones. Yeah,
they do. They just like brighten the space for su
they do.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I read something that said you're supposed to do a
mix of faue and real like that's how you get
the optimal. But I just can't do the faux plant thing.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I'm with you, Yeah, no, not worth it. I see
every time I see them, I'm like, that's a decent
like stand in for a real plant. But sorry, I
can tell, and if I can tell, it's going to
bother me always.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So the question is, do you name your plants? That's
when you know you're getting into some some deep territories.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
It sounds like you do. Yes, I've not gone to
that step yet, but maybe some day. Right out tell
me about let us talk about debt. You paid off
four hundred and sixty thousand dollars in non mortgage debt.
How did you know that you had that much debt
and how did you get into that level of debt
in the first place. Yeah, it sounds like a lot.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Great question. When you have that much debt, you know it.
You don't really have to start tabulating it. You start
to feel it before you ever see the math on paper.
You feel the cracks in your finances when you go
to the grocery store and you're just buying odds and ends,
like toilet paper and soap and your card declines. Right,
(04:15):
you go, oh, wait a minute, something's wrong. I can't
even get the things that I need without a problem.
You feel it when something small happens and you know
your spouse makes a purchase without telling you about it,
and somehow something very small like going through the drive
through turns into an argument. Right, those are the things
that you start to feel. Or you want to take
(04:36):
a trip and you go to buy the flights and
you're trying to find the cheapest flights that you can
find on Spirit Airline, and you're looking for the places
that you can eat at that are less than eight
dollars a person because you can't afford to go on
the vacation. Right. So those were the things that were
starting to happen with Samini. More so we were taking
we were moving from Tennessee at the time down to
(04:58):
South Florida. You know, when you move, you're just packing
everything up. It's so expensive to move, whether it's tape boxes,
and that was a strain. Just to be able to
move was hard. And so those were the cracks that
I started seeing in our finances, the overdrafts, the arguments,
difficulty doing the simple things, and that's kind of what
led us to say, what's going on here? And to
(05:20):
be honest with you, it wasn't this big meeting that
we said we're going to lay out all of our debts.
It was a simple question, Hey, how much student loans
do you have? And that one question kind of led
to the unraveling of all of it because that was
a simple question but hard to answer. And that's when
we knew, hey, there's more going on here. When I
(05:41):
said to my husband Sam, how much student loans do
you have? And it was kind of like, I think
it's like maybe one eighty or maybe it's light right, that.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Was kind of a park specificity.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yes, that was the unraveling of it all, and then
from there it all kind of came out.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So did you realize we have to get species, we
have to write, we have to know exactly what we
owe and you added it all up and that's how
you came up with the headline number. And did you
suspect that it was anywhere near that much?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well, what happened was, you know, when you graduate, you
have kind of like a six month grace period where
nothing's due. And so, like I said, we were already
feeling the strain, already feeling those cracks, and I knew
that that grace period was about to be over, and
so on my head, I'm thinking, gosh, it's already very,
very difficult to handle money. What are these payments going
to be when his student loans hit and when my
(06:29):
student loans hit. And so that's what led to the
question of, hey, we're already on the edge when these
bills come due. We're going to be over the edge
if we don't come up with a plan. So that's
how the conversation started. And yeah, like I said, it
was a lot of I think maybe possibly, and then
that led to well can you log in and see
and then that led to oh, wait, my mom is
on these student loans co signers, like all of this unraveling,
(06:53):
and yeah, once we got the number, we did realize,
first off, we can't afford our life with student loan payments.
And that's how we started saying, Okay, we need a plan.
And I told my husband I remembered a guy that
I heard on the radio, and it was Dave Ramsey.
So years back, i'd been in the car with my
brother and Dave Ramsey came on the radio, and it
was the first time I ever heard it, and he's talking,
(07:15):
of course, to people about how to get out of debt,
the Baby Steps, if you're familiar with those, and I
remembered it and I said to my husband, I think
there's a guy that can help us. He's got this
plan for money. Maybe we ought to check it out.
And so that's how we started the seven Baby Steps
to try to get out of debt.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
One of the things I appreciated about your story is
how resourceful you were, and then it sounds like you're
still that kind of person. But talk to me about
how you thought about increasing income you went. It sounds
like you tried every side hustle in the book, or
at least most of them, and how that impacted the
rest of your life. Kind of going that hard in
(07:52):
an attempt to get rid of this debt in short order,
because that's a lot of money, and a lot of
people would just like crawl up in a hole and
just pretend it doesn't exist. Sure their ears la la
la la la. But no, you were like, I'm going
to do everything in my power to get rid of
this as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Well, you know, we had big dreams. So you know,
most of us come out of college and we're just
like ready to take a bite out of the world.
And my husband and I were the same way. We
wanted to be musicians. He wanted to be, you know,
an instrumentalist. I wanted to be a vocalist. And we
already knew that things were stacked against us choosing that profession.
Most people think of a starving artist. It's like, if
you're not Beyonce or Britney Spears, who even are you? Right,
(08:28):
So we already knew that we had our work cut
out as far as making a living, and we did
not want to fall into that stereo type of you're
just you know, starving artists living you know, feast to famine.
And so we knew, okay, the same way that everybody else.
If you want to be a doctor, you have to
work hard for all of these years in order to
just get a residency, right, same thing with music. So
(08:50):
we knew that we wanted to beat that drum and
really go hard on that. But the truth was, this
debt was here, and if we wanted to realize this dream,
we had to clean up that debt. And so I
think the same resourcefulness that makes you go out and
network and get gigs and all of that is the
same personality trait that we brought into paying off debt,
which is you do whatever you have to do. You
(09:12):
work hard, you knock on doors, you turn door handles,
and you grind it out like that's what you have
to do. And I tell people that all the time.
On the Ramsey Show, they're looking for Joel kind of
like an easy button, and I'm like, there's no easy button.
You're going to have to do things that make you uncomfortable.
You're going to have to do things that make people
ask questions. You're going to have to do things that
make you feel like you almost have to get to
(09:34):
the point of questioning what you're doing. Am I going
too hard? Am I taking too much time from my spouse?
Am I taking too much time for my family? That
is the line that you need to get up to,
because that's when you know that you're going hard in
the paint.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, I'm curious about that. So I want to hear
one how uncomfortable did you get? Like what did you do?
I know you were a cruise ship singer, Like, how
uncomfortable did you allow yourself to get what did that
look like? And then is it possible for someon want
to take an approach that's two knows to the grindstone
that they blow up other parts of their live life
in an attempt to get rid of the debt too quickly.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, good question. So let's frame it up first. So yeah,
here I am twenty three years old, four hundred and
sixty thousand dollars of debt at the time, making thirty thousand.
So I just want to set up that this is
an extreme situation. Most people's situation is probably not this extreme.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
That's a tough math problem right there.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's a tough math problem. So we did have to
go to extremes for us. Yeah, we sold the furniture
in our house. I remember moving into a townhouse that
my mother in law owned that she was renting to
us at cost. No furniture in there. And ah, we
had some buddies that were like, hey, we used to
go to our friend's house, you know, on a Friday
night order a pizza. And one day our friends were like, hey,
(10:45):
why don't we have dinner at your house? And we said, well,
that'd be fine, but we don't have furniture, and they
didn't believe us, and they came over and they looked
around and they were like, oh crap, you really don't
have furniture. And we were like, yeah, we just sit
on the steps and eat like that's how we okay.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
So when you're saying no furniture, like no chairs, no
dining room table, no actual bed, no cat like any that, we.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Had an air mattress. So we sold when we sold
our townhouse to try to because it was two thousand
and eight, the Great Recession, and we, like I said,
we were moving from Tennessee to South Florida. We were
able to sell our house at costs, so we didn't
make anything or earn anything. It was one hundred and
twenty thousand dollars, so that was some debt cleared. And
the deal was that the person who bought our house
(11:29):
and cash bought the furniture with it, which was great
because half of it was on payment, so it cleared
those payments. And so when we got down to South Florida,
we bought an air mattress. We had eight hundred dollars
in our pocket. We bought an air mattress. We bought
a little two seater couch from Ikia. We bought one
or two like breakfast stools to sit on, and that
(11:50):
was it. And so that's what we had in our apartment,
and then that's what we had in our townhouse that
we lived later on rented with roommates. And that's how
it was.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
In your opinion, there's nothing too extreme you can do
in order to eradicate that quickly, or is it?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I think if you have a spouse and you're on
the same page, and you have a very clear timeline
of Hey, this is what we're going to do, then
that's up to you. Guys. Now, I am a big
proponent of rewards and milestones, and I talk about that
in my book. If you have if you have a
journey in front of you, there has to be rewards,
there have to be milestones. I liken it to a marathon.
(12:28):
Right when I was training for a marathon last year,
I knew it was going to be a long journey.
I knew that it was going to be months and
months of training, very difficult, lots of pain, lots of sacrifice.
But I also had the rewards set up, so I knew, hey,
on the days that I do the long run. Afterwards,
I'm having nachos and a margarita. You know you have
to have those in there because that's what gives you
(12:50):
the dopamine hit to go, oh, that was a good job.
I want to keep going. And so that's.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Whatst part's about running lots, by the way, is that
you can expand your diet to eat stuff you normally
wouldn't be able to do. I just ran mine first,
not long ago as well, so we can geek ount
on a marathon.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
We can't.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Listeners don't care.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
They don't.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I think it's a great analogy. And you are. You
were on this mission with your husband. So what it
looked like to get on the same page, and how
would you say that this debt payoff process changed your marriage.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
What you're asking is exactly what is in the book
and exactly right why I wrote this last book. What
no one tells you about money, because if you go
back to the beginning of the story, I'm thinking, oh,
all we need is a plan. If we can just
have a plan, we can do this. And so I'm
telling Sam about Dave Ramsey and there's seven baby steps
and all we have to do is this is this
He's like, great, that sounds good. That sounds good. But
(13:41):
doing something like this with a partner, all it means
is there's double the emotion because money is already a
very emotional process as it is, which no one is
really talking about. They're talking about how much to put
in savings and what percent of yours you know, what
percentage you need in your retirement and all these numbers.
And my thing is, why isn't anybody talking about the
(14:04):
time that you stand in front of the mirror with
tears in your eyes and you're asking yourself, why is
this my life? And did I ruin everything? And you're
looking at your spouse wondering if your marriage is gonna
last because there's this mountain of debt between you. No
one is talking about that, And that's what this book
is about. That was the hardest part Joel is dealing
with the guilt of my husband bringing two hundred and
(14:27):
thirty thousand dollars into a brand new, squeaky clean marriage. Right.
Nobody's talking about that. No one is talking about the
anger you feel when you feel like, oh my gosh,
I did what culture told me to do. They told
me to go to college and get an education. I
did that. They also told me to take a loan
for it, you know, they told me that when I graduated,
I could buy a brand new car because that's the
way to celebrate, and I could take a loan for it.
(14:49):
So there is there's so much anger, there's so much guilt.
No one talks about the pity of that you feel
when you finally do start to get your big boy
job and your big girl job and your bring home
a paycheck, but all of that money is going out
the door in debt, and you just feel sorry for yourself.
Especially in a world like today, where there's social media,
you can just open up your phone and look at
(15:10):
everybody else's seemingly perfect life, and all you're seeing is
how behind you are, how you should have been here
by now, how everybody else has passed you by. They're
buying houses, having cars. That is what is the hard
part about getting your money on track. And that's why
I wrote about it.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Well, how you're talking about that, like your husband bringing
that much debt into the marriage. It just makes me think,
and I'm curious, what how would you talk to people
single people who are in a relationship, they're dating someone
like I really like this person. They're starting to talk
about money, and that person's like, yeah, I have a
quarter million dollars in student loan debt. Is that this
sort of massive red flag that they should be like, whoa, whoa, whoa?
(15:47):
Because the truth is marriage is an economic reality as
much as it is a joining of two people in relationship, right,
And so how do you want people to think about
maybe what it looks like on the front end before
marriage as you're thinking through some of these money and
most people won't have maybe quite that of extreme of circumstances.
(16:10):
But actually in today's day and age, it's not terribly
extreme on the student loan front anymore.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You're exactly right, And I wouldn't say that somebody having
debt in and of itself is a red flag. It's
more about their philosophy on it, right, and figuring out
if you're aligned values wise. So, if I'm dating somebody,
I want to know first of all, I have to
be aware of my own values, right, That's number one.
(16:36):
What do I think about money? What do I think
about debt? Is money a good or a bad thing?
Or is it a moral? What do I think about debt?
Is their good debt is their bad. Debt is debt
completely just leverage. Right, First, you have to understand what
you think about money. Then you can bring up the
conversation to the person you're dating or maybe even your
spouse for the first time. And I think the first conversation, Joel,
(16:57):
is something that is just I'm just trying to get
the lay of I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything.
I'm just trying to learn what you think. I'm not
influencing you. Tell me what do you think about money,
what do you think about debt? And just listen, right,
especially if you're dating, Please just listen, because if you
strike up with what you think, you know, love goggles
will make you do crazy things. Love goggles will make
(17:19):
you go, oh well, if that's what they think, then
this is what I think too, right, So the number
one thing you can do is let the other person
talk first, so that they can get all of their
ideas out without you influencing them and them kind of
like going over to your side because they like you
so much. Yeah, So let them talk. And then when
you start to hear things like, well, you know, debt
doesn't really bother me, you know, I plan on getting
(17:40):
a new car next year. Yeah, I don't mind the payments,
don't bother me. Then if that bothers you, yes, Now
we can start having a conversation and say things like, well,
what would it look like if this, you know, relationship
was to go further? What would it look like? Can
you imagine a world where we don't use debt? Right?
Just ask questions and find out what that is. Because
I will say this, if you can't get aligned, you
(18:03):
will have problems later. That is probably seventy percent of
the calls that I get are two spouses that are
not aligned on how to handle money.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I'm curious what your reaction of friends and family were
so like even inviting your friends over and they're like,
you don't have any furniture. That's super weird and in
your debt payoff, like your myopic focus of we're going
to get rid of this as quickly as possible and
we're going to do whatever it takes, the side hustles,
the no furniture or whatever, to the extreme path you took.
(18:38):
What were other people's reactions around you? Was that demoralizing
at any point in time?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well, to be honest with you, at first, We didn't
really televise it. It wasn't until like people started noticing,
what are you doing? And even then it was kind
of like, oh, we're trying to pay off debt. We
didn't make a big deal about it. Part of that
was we were still young. We were still in our twenties.
I think when you're in your early ties you can
get away with more extreme behavior without as many questions.
(19:05):
Having roommates as grown married people at twenty three doesn't
hit the same as doing that at forty, right, So
there were I would say there were probably less questions
than one might think, But I will say the hardest
part was when we had to say no to people. So,
you know, your buddies, they want to go out, Hey,
do you guys want to you know, go to Vegas?
You guys want to go out to dinner? And do
(19:25):
you want to do this? When we were like, no,
we can't go, or it's not in the budget, or
maybe we did go, but we just you know, ordered
a side salad, that's when the questions came, and it
was more so a thing of you know, your friends
want to have fun with you, like that's what they want.
So when they feel like the situation maybe can't be
as much fun. Then they say, well, can't you just
(19:45):
forget about the budget for him in it? Like, can't
you just But then the longer we did it, and
the more people started to see our life transform, I
saw those questions changed, Joel. It started as a what
what your budget? What? Okay, okay, whatever, And then it
became kind of like, well, Jade and Sam they don't
know they have to check their budget. Like it came
(20:06):
that kind of thing, and then it became a feeling
of hey, you know, I have some friends that are
wondering about their money. Do you think you could help
them with their budget? Right? And so we saw it.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Became the people who are good with money in the group.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
You know, that's right, that's right, and so that's okay,
that's par for the course. I tell people all the time,
if you have a journey in front of you, even
if it's you're paying off thirty thousand dollars and you
make one hundred thousand dollars, right, there's still gonna be
things that show. If you decide to sell a car
some you know, Bob at work is gonna say, hey, man,
what happened to your Accura, you know, and that's okay.
(20:39):
You can tell them as much or little information as
you want to. The point is that you know why
you're doing what you're doing, and you're connected to a
y at the end of it, and at the end
of the day, it doesn't matter what other people think.
Like that's a superpower to not care what other people think.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
How long did it take you to pay off that
insane amount of debt? Was it seven years? And then
what did you do once you got the point where
you finally paid off the last little bit of it?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So from the time we got intense about it, it
was seven and a half years to pay it all off.
And the funny part was it was such it was
anti climactic in the way that we had to send
in a money order because it was a large amount
we had. It was a student loan for ninety one
thousand dollars, and we had been piling up this money
because we were making a deal to pay it off
(21:24):
for a little bit less. I think we ended up
paying off for seventy one and so we'd been piling
up the money. But you can't just transfer that money.
You have to do a money order, and so it
was like, we didn't have that moment where you hit
the button and then you see the balance go to
zero and it's like, you know, confetti falls from the sky.
It was like, all right, let's go to Publics, which
is a grocery store over here. Let's go to Publics
and drop off the money order. And then we came
(21:46):
home and we were just we couldn't believe the fact
that for seven and a half years this had been
like the main focus of everything and it was just gone. Yeah,
it was gone. And that's the part that I want
people to understand. This thing that feels like it is
owning you, that feels like it is just driving every
(22:08):
decision you make, that is making you loose sleep at night,
that is making you cry real tears, that is causing
you to scream at the top of your lungs, and arguments.
If you do the work, there will come a point
where it's just gone. It evaporates and it's never to
be seen again. It's the best feeling in the world.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I want to dig deeper because into the emotional side
of money, because your book covers that so well. So
I've got a bunch of questions, specifically on that I
want to get to you with you, Jade in just
a sec. We'll get to that right after the break.
(22:47):
All right, we're back still talking with Jade. Warshaw loved
digging into her story, and let's take into your book
a little bit more, Jared as well, the new book
What No One tells You About Money? What is the
thing no one is telling us about money?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Uh, it's emotional. It is an emotional journey. It takes
a lot out of you. That's the part that everybody
forgets about, Joel. Everybody focuses on the math. How to
pay off the debt, how much to save, when to
start retiring. Is it smart to pay off your house
or not. Don't get me wrong, there is a place
for all that. But in taking that information, if you
(23:24):
don't know how to filter it through your emotions, your
emotions will stop you every time. I always say that
it's like a car. Right. If it's a car, you
know the car is your behavior and your beliefs are
in the driver's seat, right, and then your emotions are
what steer the wheel. So if you have a behavior
you want to do, I want to get out of debt,
(23:44):
like that's the car it's like, Okay, I'm gonna get
in the car of paying off debt. But then your
beliefs are sitting right there in the driver's seat. Do
I believe I can actually do this? Do I believe
if you believe you'll do it? You can smash on
the gas, right, you can start driving. But then the
moment it starts feeling unc comfortable. Wait, what did you
tell me I have to do? You're telling me to
take the money out of savings and pay off, you know,
(24:05):
to pay off my debt or right. That feels bad.
That makes us feel unsafe. It makes us feel like
things are out of control. Right. So it's so important
to understand the emotions, because the emotions will make us
hit a tree. The emotions will make us turn the
car around and go in the opposite direction. Right. And
so that's what I realized with Sam, is that you've
got to first understand how this is making me feel.
(24:29):
What's causing me to retreat, what's causing me to not
pull the trigger on that decision, what's causing me to
avoid the conversation every single time? Right? And I found
that it kind of boils down to really five main
ones that we talk about in the book. The first
one is frustration, Right. Frustration happens when we know what
(24:53):
to do. We know all the practical money advice that
the experts gave us, but it's like we're trying to
do it and it's just not working right. It feels
like all the effort we're doing is not matching our results.
And that's frustrating.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Why would you like drops in the bucket? Right, like
y'all making the progress is not I'm not getting the
progress for what the effort I feels like I'm putting in.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Right. Why would you keep doing a workout plan if
you're not losing any weight or building any muscle?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I wouldn't. And so that frustration a lot of times
boils down to are you actually doing it the right way?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
You know? And so I talk about that in the
book how to kind of get around that? And because
you won't do something long if you're frustrated, it drains
your energy. Have you ever had a jol like a
zipper that's stuck for sure, and you're just like trying
with all your might to fix the zipper And finally,
what do you do? You just pull the jacket off
and just throw it and put on something else.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, money is the same way, And so I'm trying
to get people, Hey, let's get the cloth out of
the zipper so you can zip it up, wear the
shirt you want to wear.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
For most people, what does it look like to uncover
the emotional barrier that's maybe preventing them from reaching the
success or hitting those financial goals that they want. Because
I think you're spot on. It's so true. Like when
you first start to think about money, it does seem
like it's a simple math thing, but really there's so
much inner personal stuff going on behind the scenes that
(26:14):
is preventing our ability to hit those goals that want
to hit, or to pay off the debt we want
to pay off, and to keep going in pursuit of
those goals. How do we identify what it is it's
holding us back.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, And that's what the book is. I'm helping you
decipher what certain behaviors mean. So, for example, if you're
a person who you're noticing, or maybe your spouse is noticing,
or maybe your friends have called it out that you
have a hard time celebrating other people when they're winning financially.
Maybe you're that person who your best friend. If your
(26:49):
best friend gets a promotion or your best friend buys
a new car, you kind of get a little irritated
with it. It's hard for you to go, oh my gosh,
great job, that's amazing and really feel sincere. You're a
person who kind of makes even though you don't like
that you do it. You kind of make these passive
aggressive comments, Oh well, I mean if my husband made
(27:09):
that much money, I do that too. Or it must
be nice to be able to go on vacations like that, right,
you start making these passive aggressive comments. Or maybe you're
a person you're constantly comparing. I mean, I mean they
just started that job and she's already making seventy thousand.
I mean, I've been in this job and I haven't
gotten a single Right, you're always comparing to somebody else,
(27:30):
but you're never focusing on your own blessings or good things.
You're just calling out why it's unfair that they have
that and you don't. Those are behavior patterns, and they
point to a person who's very angry. Right, And when
we're in that state, it's very hard to make progress
because when you're angry at everything out here. You have
(27:52):
to remember, anger wants justice. That's what it wants right
At its core, it's I've been done wrong and it
has to be made right. And the world today, when
there's so much out there that is affecting us inside,
real estate prices are high, we just have a complete
cost of living crisis, right with inflation and wages not
(28:13):
keeping up. That's all out there, but it's affecting us,
and it's making us mad that we can't buy a house.
It's making us mad that we're actually contemplating if we're
going to have two kids instead of one because of
the price of living right, And it comes out in
these comments, and it comes out in these actions. And
if we don't stop and go what is that, we're
going to be so mad thinking everybody else owes us
(28:35):
something and that that's the solution. The problem is out there.
Therefore they need to make it right. The government needs
to fix my student loans. My boss needs to give
me a raise so that I can get right instead
of going you know, I'm really mad. I can see
this anger brewing. I need justice. They're not gonna do it.
Maybe there's something I can do and now I can
(28:56):
start putting some motivation behind that anger, and I can
start pointing it and directing it at certain things that
I want. I want to get out of debt, screw
the government, I want a better marriage, screw my boss.
Right now, we can actually take that anger and use
it as fuel to get the thing we want instead
of just using it as excuses to cust somebody out
(29:17):
or make a snide comment, or you know, just shake
our hand at the government or at the air. Right.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, and it might might feel justifiable, but that doesn't
mean it's valuable or helpful. Right, And so you have
to understand what's going on beneath the surface, so you
can say, why is it that I'm feeling that way?
And you can underdress the address the underlying emotion so
that then you can redirect it in a more positive,
more positive way. You write in the book, you write
about dodging the truth. How crucial is it to get
(29:43):
an accurate assessment of where things stand? Because that's another
thing that people deal with is like, yeah, I'm just
going to you know, the truth is heading at me.
I'm going to sidestep it so that I don't have
to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Head on. Yeah. I mean this is where the practical
and the emotion completely overlap, right, because yeah, you need
to there's a part of this. You need to know
the numbers. You need to understand how much debt you're in,
you need to understand what your assets are so you
can start the work of solutioning it. Right. But if
you kind of have a feeling about it, A lot
of times, that fear is what keeps us in the dark,
(30:17):
that fear of not wanting to open up the closet,
right because there's a monster in the closet and we
don't know exactly what it looks like. That's really what
that is. And so the longer we keep things in
the dark, we really don't know what's going on. I mean, Joel,
I know you help folks with their money all the time.
I do too, and I'm always shocked when I ask
somebody a simple question like well, how much do you
(30:39):
make and it's kind of like, well, I mean I
think it's like somewhere around right, and I'm thinking, why
don't you know how much you make? Why aren't you
looking at your pay stuff? Or if I say, you know,
for a month, how much money does it just take
to make your house run, like I know you probably
have a little extra or but how much does it take?
And they're like, well, what do you mean? And I'm like,
(31:00):
you know, just like if you just look at your budget.
And so those are those moments where I go, there's
something that's making you not look at this is it
because you know deep down inside that you're I don't
know that your mortgage is fifty percent of your take
home and that's that's been bugging you and you know it,
but you just don't want to. It's like you don't
want to put it out in the open. Do you
(31:21):
know deep down that you spend way too much on
door dash? That's why you don't want to say when
I ask, hey, how much do you spen on groceries
every month? I don't know. It's somewhere around, you know,
it's different every month. No, we have to look at
these numbers and it is emotional. We're gonna feel a
little bit of guilt that we go to target and
spend way too much. We're gonna feel a little bit
of anger that our student loans and our car payment
(31:43):
and our credit card is eating up you know, twenty
five percent of our income. That's going to make us
feel a little bit guilty. It's gonna make us feel
angry that we signed up for the debt. Right, we
have to let ourselves feel that we do, and we
have to acknowledge it so that we can get to
a point of kind of accepting these are the choices
that I made. That's okay, Like life is about making mistakes.
(32:04):
It's research. That's fine, But let me acknowledge this so
that I can now move forward and get to a
point of accept and go, Okay, I made that choice,
that's fine, But what are the choices I'm going to
make next. I can accept the situation for what it is,
and I can accept the process for what it is
to change it.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
You mentioned fear as being one of the common emotions
right the people experience, which is totally understandable, especially when
we talk about people's lack of personal finance literacy. And
so it's like, I feel like I have to learn
a new language just to navigate these problems that I've
brought on myself through bringing on debt. And you had fear,
(32:43):
like when you were going through this process, you even
it wasn't just that your debt would be with you forever.
But you mentioned the book you had this fear that
it would cost your husband is life, which I thought
was like, really interesting. Can you delve into that a
little bit what that fear was that was hitting you
in that time?
Speaker 2 (32:59):
So so glad you brought that up, because, to be
honest with you, that for me is one of the
most important parts of this book. But it's a heavy
topic and so a lot of times people skate around it,
and I'm so glad you asked directly. Yeah, when you
have half a million dollars of debt and you're bringing
in probably by that time that we really were understanding
(33:21):
the numbers, maybe we were bringing in sixty seventy thousand
dollars a year, you do look at yourself in the
mirror and you go, am I worth more dead than alive?
Would it be better for my family? Because right now
the situation that I'm putting them in is horrible. And
when I tell you, Joel that, the guilt of that
is crushing in the shame of that is just it's sad.
(33:45):
I remember getting ready for bed at night and my
husband he was standing in front of the mirror and
he was brushing his teeth and he didn't see me,
but I I could see his reflection in the mirror
as he was brushing his teeth, and he was gone,
like he was gone. And I just remember in my
(34:05):
heart going God, please, please, we got to get out
of this. We've got to get out of this. Because
people don't talk about that, the fact that you can
feel like such a failure. You're not. You're not a failure,
made a bad choice, you got bad advice, but people
wear that as an identity and that's when the shame
(34:26):
sets in and it's so dangerous. And my biggest want
and my biggest prayer was that I could help him
see you're not the problem, because he would say things like, man,
I just ruined everything, like I'm the reason that we're
not getting ahead. I'm holding you back, I'm holding you down.
And I would be like, no, the debt is the problem, Like,
let's tackle that. And so when people get to that point,
(34:50):
it is you have to start to understand here's where
I'm at and here's where I'm saying, I've got to
forgive myself. I've got to let it go, and you've
got to lean into the people who would love you
and are telling you the opposite because they see it.
They can see that you're not the mistake. They can
see that, hey, it was a bad business plan. It
wasn't it's not you.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Let's be honest. Though in some relationships you that's that's
not the response you're getting from your spouse. That's true,
and so you do that. That might be where marriage
therapy comes in handy, right, to help you navigate some
of those waters, because if you have a kind of
compassionate and understanding spouse and you guys are on the
same page, that's wonderful. Yeah, not every marriage is in
(35:30):
that place, and it's like, no, you did bring this
on me, Like why did you bring this into the marriage?
What are you doing to me? And so there can
be that dynamic at play. Fortunately you guys didn't have
that going on.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yeah, and I talk about that in the book. I'm
really taught that's part of the anger section, when when
your spouse is not of help, when they're kind of
making it tough, when they're not as sympathetic or maybe
they're the maybe they are the problem. Like that does
happen when it's like we've said we were going to
get out of debt, but you're still going and spending
money and you're still not caring about the budget. Yeah,
(36:01):
that'll make you angry. I talk about that in the book,
but I also talk about I want to go back
what you said about therapy and having some help mentally,
because that's part of the tools. Like if you're going
to go on this journey. We talked about rewards and
milestones earlier, but another part of this, like mental check ins,
You got to have that, and you got to make
sure you have the help of somebody that you trust,
(36:22):
whether it's a professional therapist or counselor or because some
of us need that next layer. Sometimes you can just
go to a friend and vent and get it out,
but a lot of us we are carrying real issues
that need help, and I never want to minimize that.
Whether it's something you did or something you experienced in
childhood or in a previous relationship that you're bringing into
(36:43):
your current situation, you are playing yourself. If you're not
thinking that that is influencing how you handle your money,
because it one hundred percent is.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
And let's be honest, there are things that are happening
when you have the debt. It's not just the headline
number that's overwhelming. You write about being frustrated when debt
collectors are lowing up your phone. That's adding to the
emotional stress, and so it's really hard. I mean, the
fact that you saw your husband in that moment is
a beautiful thing because you're also feeling overwhelmed and you're
getting those those voicemails left on your phone and you're
(37:12):
just like, what in the world, Like, we're trying our
best here. How did you deal with that confluence of
emotion trying to pay off the debt while also having
a healthy relationship with your husband, Like that just feels
like you're fighting battles on every front.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
We were, you know, it's funny. A lot of what
I write about in this book, it's kind of like
kindsight is twenty twenty, right, you can see now, oh,
this is what we did. In the moment. It wasn't
called anything, it was just survival. But now I can
look back and go, oh, here's what we did and
here's why it worked. So those moments were you know,
I felt I've always been the type of person that
(37:50):
I'm kind of like, deal with the emotions later, just
do the things now, right, that's I've always been that way.
But what happens that starts stacking up and immediately, you know,
eventually you crack. And that's what happened to me. I
talk about it in the book Debt Collectors, calling my
phone moment after moment, every five minutes, and finally I
just was like enough, like no more, we need to
(38:12):
do something right. And I was so desperate, Joel. I
had rent money in my hand and I was ready
to give it to Capital One just to get them
to just leave me the heck alone, leave me alone.
And my husband, who's pretty level headed, I mean, he's
if I'm the extra one, he's the calm one. He
was like, Jade, we can't do that, Like we need
(38:32):
to come up with a better solution than that, and so.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Keep your head so you know, eventually pay off the
credit card debt.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
But those are those moments where were able to balance
each other out, which is why I say you need
people in your life. You need if you're single, you
need people in your life that can hold you accountable
because you will have a moment where you're ready to
do something dumb in the name of desperation, and that
person needs to be able to go hey, hey, hey, don't
do that. Let's talk about a better way. And then
(39:00):
that ended up us going through and saying, hey, what
are we missing. Here's the problem. Now we can fix it,
and now we can create, you know, relieve some of
that frustration.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
All right, so much good stuff. I have a few
more questions I want to get to with you, specifically,
I'm going to ask you a few questions about debt.
Curious to hear your take. Just a few more questions
with Jade Warshaw. We'll get it right back to that
after this. All right, we're back still talking about Jade
(39:30):
Warshaw and just such a great new book that's well
worth well worth checking out. It's called What No One
Tells You About Money, And yeah, the emotional side of
money is so powerful and it might be like ninety ten.
I don't know if we're waiting it out the math
versus the emotion. It feels like emotion is certainly the
predominant thing that maybe it's an unexpected thing and you're like, wow,
(39:52):
I have so much when it goes back to childhood too, right,
how are you raised with money? And what are those
scripts that are hanging out inside of you because you
haven't really explored them. Jade, I've got a few more
questions I want to get to. I want to like,
I'm curious should should people be willing to put off
bigger life and family decisions while trying to pay off debt.
Let's say you're like, we're ready to start a family,
(40:13):
and you're like, well, no, it's not going to be cheap.
Do you push forward get started anyway? When you got
debt hanging out that you want to pay off.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
I mean, I definitely think this is a deeply personal decision.
I'm all for family planning because the truth is it's
as much economical as it is emotional. Now, if somebody
calls in and wants my advice, I'm never gonna say
don't have a family right that. I will never tell
you that. I will never say you need to pause
(40:43):
having children in order to pay off debt. I'm not
going to tell you that. But what I am going
to tell you is family planning can be very helpful
if you embrace it. It can help you create the
life that you want. It can help you create the
values and that you want to see in your household.
They can one hundred percent that being said again so
(41:05):
deeply personal. You know, my husband and I for us
where we were, the way I grew up, the way
he grew up, we knew when we have children, we
just want them to be in a financially peaceful household.
That's all we want. And so for us, worth the
sacrifice I had children. I didn't start having children until
age thirty six. Totally worth. It wouldn't change it for
the world. Somebody else might go, Jade, I would never
(41:27):
do that. You know, I want to make sure that
I'm you know, starting my family now, Hey, more power
to you. Just understand, and I say, I mean, yesterday
I was hosting The Ramsey Show. A family called in
pastor five kids and now he's fifty eight and looking
up realizing, hey, hasn't put aside any money for retirement,
and we had to remind him, no shame. But just
(41:51):
remember you're everything you do, you're making a choice. You
make a choice of the number of children you want.
In most cases, you're making a choice to remain in
a profession. You're making a choice to not invest in
instead pay for kids to college. You're making all of
these choices, and that's okay. Just understand that when they
pile up and create a result, you got to be
okay with the result.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah. Sometimes I think having kids can be a surprise.
It can be a motivator actually to get your stuff together.
As you're building your family, you're like, oh, man, I've
got I got to be an adult here on many levels,
including my finances. And I think for some people it
is that kick in the pants. Just had my first kid,
and now I got to figure out what a roth
ira is. No, no, I've got three kids, all right.
(42:33):
Now what I'm saying, if you hit that point where
you just had your first kid, right, it can feel like, oh, now,
this is the impetus for me to actually get the
ball rolling on some of this stuff, all right, Maybe
a couple of rapid fire questions. Investing while paying off debt?
Yes or no?
Speaker 2 (42:47):
No?
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Can any debt be good? A home home okay? Okay,
anything else I'm okay.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
I'm okay with somebody going into debt for a home,
but let's eventually get it paid.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Student loan debt, can it be good?
Speaker 2 (42:59):
No?
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Okay? So you got to go to school debt free
or don't go?
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Okay, low rate mortgage debt is not bad or is bad.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
If you plan to keep it around forever. It's bad
if you plan to pay it off in the term
fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, good, fine, Okay. What's one piece of money advice
you used to believe but you don't believe it any longer.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
A piece of money advice I used to believe, Oh,
that debt is a tool to help you win.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Okay, So you used to think that debt could be
something that accelerated your progress, and now you believe it's
only a weight holding you back. Yes, okay, yeah, final
words you have for the how to money audience.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Final words would be the time is going to pass anyway.
And what I mean by that is it's twenty twenty
five and at some point it's going to be twenty
thirty five. Okay, So ten years is going to pass,
and you can be in one of three places. You
can look up ten years from now and things can
(43:58):
be exactly the same. You're still, you know, robing Peter
to pay Paul, barely making ends me, arguing about money,
moving this debt with a lower interest rate over here
to a no interest rate, thinking about doing a he
lock right. Ten years can pass. Things can be a
lot worse because you didn't do anything. You can be
looking up and thinking, oh my gosh, the student loan
(44:20):
payment has ballooned with interest. Am I a person who's
eligible for bankruptcy? I didn't see myself losing this job,
and I didn't know that four oh one K loan
could become due in this way, right, things can be
worse or today you can take this opportunity and go.
What they're saying is really resonating with me, and I
have to make changes, and I'm going to make changes.
(44:42):
And then because of that, you can look up in
ten years and your life be so radically different that
you don't even recognize who you are in twenty twenty five.
And that's the place that I'm sitting. I don't even
recognize some of the things in the person I was
ten fifteen years ago. I want that for you. That's
why I wrote the book What No One Tells You
About Money?
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Love It? Where can how do money listeners find that
book and find out more about you?
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Jade? Absolutely so find the book at ramseysolutions dot com
slash store. It's right there. I mean, obviously you can
find it places like Barnes Andnobleamazon, Target dot Com, all
of that. But you know, Ramseysolutions dot Com is a
great place to purchase it because there's other things that
go along with your debt payoff journey, so you can
bundle it with other really really helpful tools. And yeah,
find me on social media. I'm on Instagram at Jade Warshaw.
(45:29):
I'd love to hang out with you and talk to you.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Love it, Jade, Thank you so much for taking the
time today. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Woo. All right, that was good stuff. So thankful that
Jade joined me today. And I think, I think what
makes this conversation so powerful really is Jade's story. And
I think we as humans respond to stories. Why some
of our favorite books are fiction, Like the worlds that
can be built and the people that we can construct
(45:58):
can be so complex and interesting, fascinating, and it just
that story, the narrative, it like sticks with us or
it's why a song can be catchier and we can't
get get it out of our head, right, And I
think that Jade's story is such is one that a
lot of people can relate to, and it's seven and
(46:19):
a half years to pay off almost half a million
dollars in debt. That was a slog and I think
in some ways she took us down to the depths
of that. But even in the book you see a
lot more of the emotional difficulty of all the incredible
side hustles that she got into in order to try
to pull out every stop in order to get rid
of that debt in short order as quickly as possible.
(46:42):
She treated it like she wanted to be done with it,
and yeah, when you're making thirty K and you've got,
you know, debt up to that to that degree, you
got to find some creative ways to go about tackling it.
The fact that she was able to get rid of
it in seven years and be completely debt free is admirable.
I think my big takeaway was when she said, your
(47:07):
emotions will stop you every time, and I think it's
so true. It really is, like emotions are much more
a part of the process of being smart with money,
of handling money well, of building wealth, of paying off debt.
Then I would have given it credit for when I
first kind of started thinking about personal finance, because it
was to me initially a math equation, how am I
(47:28):
going to find I think back in the day, it
was like five grand was the cap on what you
could put into roth Ira. How am I going to
find five grand a year to put into the wroth
But really, once you start digging a little bit beneath
the surface, you're rubbing up against emotions. You're rubbing up
against your history. You're rubbing up against family history, things
(47:48):
are your parents taught you, and those can be tough
things to deal with. And she said, also double the
emotion if you're doing it with someone else. So if
you're in a relationship and you're trying to attack the
these goals together, whether it's debt payoff, whether it's wealth building,
like you're when you double the emotion, you almost like
compound the problem. Dealing with your own emotion is one thing.
(48:12):
That's what my wife is a marriage counselor, and she says,
doing the counseling with couples is so much harder. It's
almost like playing zone defense first man to man, and
so it gets more complex. And the truth is the
same if you're in a relationship and so being cognizant
of the emotions that each of you is bringing to
the relationship, finding outside help if you need it in
order to get on the same page. Getting dealing with
(48:35):
those emotions in a positive way is what's going to
help you make the progress, and it's going to hold
you back if you don't, if you let those emotions
linger and fester. And what Jade said right there at
the very end, ten years from now, where are you
going to be if you haven't dealt with those emotions?
My guess is you won't have made nearly as much progress,
and you won't feel the positive impact of making that
(48:58):
progress because those emotions left untended. So i'd encourage you
to check out our book to think more about the
role of emotions when it comes to your finances. And
thank you as always for listening to this podcast. I
really appreciate it. You find more info about Jade about
(49:20):
her new book up on the website at howtomoney dot com.
Until next time, best Friend Out.
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and today I'm
talking with Jade Warshaw on escaping the debt trap and
rewriting your story. Okay, So, in Greek mythology, Atlas holds
(00:30):
the world on his shoulders as a punishment from Zeus.
Every time I see an image of Atlas, it makes
me think about the modern reality of debt to people
struggling under its weight. It can feel like a perpetual burden,
and it's not like a you know, you're going rucking
a little jaunt where you can take off that pack
if you want. And Jade Warshaw she knows that burden
of debt well. She paid off almost half a million
(00:53):
dollars in consumer debt over the better half of a decade,
and now she uses her harder knowledge to teach others
how to do the same. She's a Ramsey personality. She
is the author of the new book What No One
Tells You About Money. Jade, I'm really excited to talk
to you. Thank you for joining me today on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Oh, thank you so much, Joel. I loved that visual
you started out with. By the way, so good Atlas.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
It's true. I mean, think of like the way of
the world on your shoulders. It can feel like that,
especially when you had as much debt as you had,
which is going to be my second question to you,
But the first one I have to ask you is
what do you like to splurge on? Kraft beer is
my thing, but what is your craft beer equivalent? What
are you splurging on while you're still doing smart stuff
with your money in the meantime?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Plants, Plants, anything green that can live inside of my
house is the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
What was the last plant you got? And I know
Fiddley figs. We have a Fiddley fig that we've been
able to keep alive. Those are notoriously difficult to keep alive, right.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Uh huh, Yeah they do. And I have a big
one that I actually just moved so I could put
my Christmas tree up. I just moved it into my kitchen.
Fiddley fig The last thing I bought was probably I
bought a Kiwi plant. It's like a dressina, It's it's
really really pretty. It's really tropical. I like tropical plants.
I bought yet another monsterra I have lots of those.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
They're so cool. I love this. I get mine from
Costco when they sell them.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Oh, really, be careful.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I have one of the front horses is huge, which okay.
Next question to you, what do you do with those
plants if you have them outside and it's wintertime, like
you got to bring them inside and then your house
gets a little crowded.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, here's the thing. I have mastered the indoor house plant.
I can keep them alive. Most of my plants I've
had for like four years or more. It's outdoor plants
that I struggle with, So I only buy indoor house plants. Drool.
I don't even mess with the outdoor stuff. I have
a big pair of elephant years. You know what I'm
talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Oh yeah, Oh, and.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I have those inside and they stay inside all year
because we have winter here anyway, so we can't take
them outside.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
To me, the elephantors are so cool, especially like outside,
they just get so big. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
My house is a jungle.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I love it, though, I love it. I'm all for
I'm all for the inside plants, the real inside plants.
The fake ones, no way, but the real ones. Yeah,
they do. They just like brighten the space for su
they do.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I read something that said you're supposed to do a
mix of faue and real like that's how you get
the optimal. But I just can't do the faux plant thing.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I'm with you, Yeah, no, not worth it. I see
every time I see them, I'm like, that's a decent
like stand in for a real plant. But sorry, I
can tell, and if I can tell, it's going to
bother me always.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So the question is, do you name your plants? That's
when you know you're getting into some some deep territories.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
It sounds like you do. Yes, I've not gone to
that step yet, but maybe some day. Right out tell
me about let us talk about debt. You paid off
four hundred and sixty thousand dollars in non mortgage debt.
How did you know that you had that much debt
and how did you get into that level of debt
in the first place. Yeah, it sounds like a lot.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Great question. When you have that much debt, you know it.
You don't really have to start tabulating it. You start
to feel it before you ever see the math on paper.
You feel the cracks in your finances when you go
to the grocery store and you're just buying odds and ends,
like toilet paper and soap and your card declines. Right,
(04:15):
you go, oh, wait a minute, something's wrong. I can't
even get the things that I need without a problem.
You feel it when something small happens and you know
your spouse makes a purchase without telling you about it,
and somehow something very small like going through the drive
through turns into an argument. Right, those are the things
that you start to feel. Or you want to take
(04:36):
a trip and you go to buy the flights and
you're trying to find the cheapest flights that you can
find on Spirit Airline, and you're looking for the places
that you can eat at that are less than eight
dollars a person because you can't afford to go on
the vacation. Right. So those were the things that were
starting to happen with Samini. More so we were taking
we were moving from Tennessee at the time down to
(04:58):
South Florida. You know, when you move, you're just packing
everything up. It's so expensive to move, whether it's tape boxes,
and that was a strain. Just to be able to
move was hard. And so those were the cracks that
I started seeing in our finances, the overdrafts, the arguments,
difficulty doing the simple things, and that's kind of what
led us to say, what's going on here? And to
(05:20):
be honest with you, it wasn't this big meeting that
we said we're going to lay out all of our debts.
It was a simple question, Hey, how much student loans
do you have? And that one question kind of led
to the unraveling of all of it because that was
a simple question but hard to answer. And that's when
we knew, hey, there's more going on here. When I
(05:41):
said to my husband Sam, how much student loans do
you have? And it was kind of like, I think
it's like maybe one eighty or maybe it's light right, that.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Was kind of a park specificity.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yes, that was the unraveling of it all, and then
from there it all kind of came out.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So did you realize we have to get species, we
have to write, we have to know exactly what we
owe and you added it all up and that's how
you came up with the headline number. And did you
suspect that it was anywhere near that much?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well, what happened was, you know, when you graduate, you
have kind of like a six month grace period where
nothing's due. And so, like I said, we were already
feeling the strain, already feeling those cracks, and I knew
that that grace period was about to be over, and
so on my head, I'm thinking, gosh, it's already very,
very difficult to handle money. What are these payments going
to be when his student loans hit and when my
(06:29):
student loans hit. And so that's what led to the
question of, hey, we're already on the edge when these
bills come due. We're going to be over the edge
if we don't come up with a plan. So that's
how the conversation started. And yeah, like I said, it
was a lot of I think maybe possibly, and then
that led to well can you log in and see
and then that led to oh, wait, my mom is
on these student loans co signers, like all of this unraveling,
(06:53):
and yeah, once we got the number, we did realize,
first off, we can't afford our life with student loan payments.
And that's how we started saying, Okay, we need a plan.
And I told my husband I remembered a guy that
I heard on the radio, and it was Dave Ramsey.
So years back, i'd been in the car with my
brother and Dave Ramsey came on the radio, and it
was the first time I ever heard it, and he's talking,
(07:15):
of course, to people about how to get out of debt,
the Baby Steps, if you're familiar with those, and I
remembered it and I said to my husband, I think
there's a guy that can help us. He's got this
plan for money. Maybe we ought to check it out.
And so that's how we started the seven Baby Steps
to try to get out of debt.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
One of the things I appreciated about your story is
how resourceful you were, and then it sounds like you're
still that kind of person. But talk to me about
how you thought about increasing income you went. It sounds
like you tried every side hustle in the book, or
at least most of them, and how that impacted the
rest of your life. Kind of going that hard in
(07:52):
an attempt to get rid of this debt in short order,
because that's a lot of money, and a lot of
people would just like crawl up in a hole and
just pretend it doesn't exist. Sure their ears la la
la la la. But no, you were like, I'm going
to do everything in my power to get rid of
this as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Well, you know, we had big dreams. So you know,
most of us come out of college and we're just
like ready to take a bite out of the world.
And my husband and I were the same way. We
wanted to be musicians. He wanted to be, you know,
an instrumentalist. I wanted to be a vocalist. And we
already knew that things were stacked against us choosing that profession.
Most people think of a starving artist. It's like, if
you're not Beyonce or Britney Spears, who even are you? Right,
(08:28):
So we already knew that we had our work cut
out as far as making a living, and we did
not want to fall into that stereo type of you're
just you know, starving artists living you know, feast to famine.
And so we knew, okay, the same way that everybody else.
If you want to be a doctor, you have to
work hard for all of these years in order to
just get a residency, right, same thing with music. So
(08:50):
we knew that we wanted to beat that drum and
really go hard on that. But the truth was, this
debt was here, and if we wanted to realize this dream,
we had to clean up that debt. And so I
think the same resourcefulness that makes you go out and
network and get gigs and all of that is the
same personality trait that we brought into paying off debt,
which is you do whatever you have to do. You
(09:12):
work hard, you knock on doors, you turn door handles,
and you grind it out like that's what you have
to do. And I tell people that all the time.
On the Ramsey Show, they're looking for Joel kind of
like an easy button, and I'm like, there's no easy button.
You're going to have to do things that make you uncomfortable.
You're going to have to do things that make people
ask questions. You're going to have to do things that
make you feel like you almost have to get to
(09:34):
the point of questioning what you're doing. Am I going
too hard? Am I taking too much time from my spouse?
Am I taking too much time for my family? That
is the line that you need to get up to,
because that's when you know that you're going hard in
the paint.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, I'm curious about that. So I want to hear
one how uncomfortable did you get? Like what did you do?
I know you were a cruise ship singer, Like, how
uncomfortable did you allow yourself to get what did that
look like? And then is it possible for someon want
to take an approach that's two knows to the grindstone
that they blow up other parts of their live life
in an attempt to get rid of the debt too quickly.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, good question. So let's frame it up first. So yeah,
here I am twenty three years old, four hundred and
sixty thousand dollars of debt at the time, making thirty thousand.
So I just want to set up that this is
an extreme situation. Most people's situation is probably not this extreme.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
That's a tough math problem right there.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's a tough math problem. So we did have to
go to extremes for us. Yeah, we sold the furniture
in our house. I remember moving into a townhouse that
my mother in law owned that she was renting to
us at cost. No furniture in there. And ah, we
had some buddies that were like, hey, we used to
go to our friend's house, you know, on a Friday
night order a pizza. And one day our friends were like, hey,
(10:45):
why don't we have dinner at your house? And we said, well,
that'd be fine, but we don't have furniture, and they
didn't believe us, and they came over and they looked
around and they were like, oh crap, you really don't
have furniture. And we were like, yeah, we just sit
on the steps and eat like that's how we okay.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
So when you're saying no furniture, like no chairs, no
dining room table, no actual bed, no cat like any that, we.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Had an air mattress. So we sold when we sold
our townhouse to try to because it was two thousand
and eight, the Great Recession, and we, like I said,
we were moving from Tennessee to South Florida. We were
able to sell our house at costs, so we didn't
make anything or earn anything. It was one hundred and
twenty thousand dollars, so that was some debt cleared. And
the deal was that the person who bought our house
(11:29):
and cash bought the furniture with it, which was great
because half of it was on payment, so it cleared
those payments. And so when we got down to South Florida,
we bought an air mattress. We had eight hundred dollars
in our pocket. We bought an air mattress. We bought
a little two seater couch from Ikia. We bought one
or two like breakfast stools to sit on, and that
(11:50):
was it. And so that's what we had in our apartment,
and then that's what we had in our townhouse that
we lived later on rented with roommates. And that's how
it was.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
In your opinion, there's nothing too extreme you can do
in order to eradicate that quickly, or is it?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I think if you have a spouse and you're on
the same page, and you have a very clear timeline
of Hey, this is what we're going to do, then
that's up to you. Guys. Now, I am a big
proponent of rewards and milestones, and I talk about that
in my book. If you have if you have a
journey in front of you, there has to be rewards,
there have to be milestones. I liken it to a marathon.
(12:28):
Right when I was training for a marathon last year,
I knew it was going to be a long journey.
I knew that it was going to be months and
months of training, very difficult, lots of pain, lots of sacrifice.
But I also had the rewards set up, so I knew, hey,
on the days that I do the long run. Afterwards,
I'm having nachos and a margarita. You know you have
to have those in there because that's what gives you
(12:50):
the dopamine hit to go, oh, that was a good job.
I want to keep going. And so that's.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Whatst part's about running lots, by the way, is that
you can expand your diet to eat stuff you normally
wouldn't be able to do. I just ran mine first,
not long ago as well, so we can geek ount
on a marathon.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
We can't.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Listeners don't care.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
They don't.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I think it's a great analogy. And you are. You
were on this mission with your husband. So what it
looked like to get on the same page, and how
would you say that this debt payoff process changed your marriage.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
What you're asking is exactly what is in the book
and exactly right why I wrote this last book. What
no one tells you about money, because if you go
back to the beginning of the story, I'm thinking, oh,
all we need is a plan. If we can just
have a plan, we can do this. And so I'm
telling Sam about Dave Ramsey and there's seven baby steps
and all we have to do is this is this
He's like, great, that sounds good. That sounds good. But
(13:41):
doing something like this with a partner, all it means
is there's double the emotion because money is already a
very emotional process as it is, which no one is
really talking about. They're talking about how much to put
in savings and what percent of yours you know, what
percentage you need in your retirement and all these numbers.
And my thing is, why isn't anybody talking about the
(14:04):
time that you stand in front of the mirror with
tears in your eyes and you're asking yourself, why is
this my life? And did I ruin everything? And you're
looking at your spouse wondering if your marriage is gonna
last because there's this mountain of debt between you. No
one is talking about that, And that's what this book
is about. That was the hardest part Joel is dealing
with the guilt of my husband bringing two hundred and
(14:27):
thirty thousand dollars into a brand new, squeaky clean marriage. Right.
Nobody's talking about that. No one is talking about the
anger you feel when you feel like, oh my gosh,
I did what culture told me to do. They told
me to go to college and get an education. I
did that. They also told me to take a loan
for it, you know, they told me that when I graduated,
I could buy a brand new car because that's the
way to celebrate, and I could take a loan for it.
(14:49):
So there is there's so much anger, there's so much guilt.
No one talks about the pity of that you feel
when you finally do start to get your big boy
job and your big girl job and your bring home
a paycheck, but all of that money is going out
the door in debt, and you just feel sorry for yourself.
Especially in a world like today, where there's social media,
you can just open up your phone and look at
(15:10):
everybody else's seemingly perfect life, and all you're seeing is
how behind you are, how you should have been here
by now, how everybody else has passed you by. They're
buying houses, having cars. That is what is the hard
part about getting your money on track. And that's why
I wrote about it.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Well, how you're talking about that, like your husband bringing
that much debt into the marriage. It just makes me think,
and I'm curious, what how would you talk to people
single people who are in a relationship, they're dating someone
like I really like this person. They're starting to talk
about money, and that person's like, yeah, I have a
quarter million dollars in student loan debt. Is that this
sort of massive red flag that they should be like, whoa, whoa, whoa?
(15:47):
Because the truth is marriage is an economic reality as
much as it is a joining of two people in relationship, right,
And so how do you want people to think about
maybe what it looks like on the front end before
marriage as you're thinking through some of these money and
most people won't have maybe quite that of extreme of circumstances.
(16:10):
But actually in today's day and age, it's not terribly
extreme on the student loan front anymore.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
You're exactly right, And I wouldn't say that somebody having
debt in and of itself is a red flag. It's
more about their philosophy on it, right, and figuring out
if you're aligned values wise. So, if I'm dating somebody,
I want to know first of all, I have to
be aware of my own values, right, That's number one.
(16:36):
What do I think about money? What do I think
about debt? Is money a good or a bad thing?
Or is it a moral? What do I think about debt?
Is their good debt is their bad. Debt is debt
completely just leverage. Right, First, you have to understand what
you think about money. Then you can bring up the
conversation to the person you're dating or maybe even your
spouse for the first time. And I think the first conversation, Joel,
(16:57):
is something that is just I'm just trying to get
the lay of I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything.
I'm just trying to learn what you think. I'm not
influencing you. Tell me what do you think about money,
what do you think about debt? And just listen, right,
especially if you're dating, Please just listen, because if you
strike up with what you think, you know, love goggles
will make you do crazy things. Love goggles will make
(17:19):
you go, oh well, if that's what they think, then
this is what I think too, right, So the number
one thing you can do is let the other person
talk first, so that they can get all of their
ideas out without you influencing them and them kind of
like going over to your side because they like you
so much. Yeah, So let them talk. And then when
you start to hear things like, well, you know, debt
doesn't really bother me, you know, I plan on getting
(17:40):
a new car next year. Yeah, I don't mind the payments,
don't bother me. Then if that bothers you, yes, Now
we can start having a conversation and say things like, well,
what would it look like if this, you know, relationship
was to go further? What would it look like? Can
you imagine a world where we don't use debt? Right?
Just ask questions and find out what that is. Because
I will say this, if you can't get aligned, you
(18:03):
will have problems later. That is probably seventy percent of
the calls that I get are two spouses that are
not aligned on how to handle money.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I'm curious what your reaction of friends and family were
so like even inviting your friends over and they're like,
you don't have any furniture. That's super weird and in
your debt payoff, like your myopic focus of we're going
to get rid of this as quickly as possible and
we're going to do whatever it takes, the side hustles,
the no furniture or whatever, to the extreme path you took.
(18:38):
What were other people's reactions around you? Was that demoralizing
at any point in time?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well, to be honest with you, at first, We didn't
really televise it. It wasn't until like people started noticing,
what are you doing? And even then it was kind
of like, oh, we're trying to pay off debt. We
didn't make a big deal about it. Part of that
was we were still young. We were still in our twenties.
I think when you're in your early ties you can
get away with more extreme behavior without as many questions.
(19:05):
Having roommates as grown married people at twenty three doesn't
hit the same as doing that at forty, right, So
there were I would say there were probably less questions
than one might think, But I will say the hardest
part was when we had to say no to people. So,
you know, your buddies, they want to go out, Hey,
do you guys want to you know, go to Vegas?
You guys want to go out to dinner? And do
(19:25):
you want to do this? When we were like, no,
we can't go, or it's not in the budget, or
maybe we did go, but we just you know, ordered
a side salad, that's when the questions came, and it
was more so a thing of you know, your friends
want to have fun with you, like that's what they want.
So when they feel like the situation maybe can't be
as much fun. Then they say, well, can't you just
(19:45):
forget about the budget for him in it? Like, can't
you just But then the longer we did it, and
the more people started to see our life transform, I
saw those questions changed, Joel. It started as a what
what your budget? What? Okay, okay, whatever, And then it
became kind of like, well, Jade and Sam they don't
know they have to check their budget. Like it came
(20:06):
that kind of thing, and then it became a feeling
of hey, you know, I have some friends that are
wondering about their money. Do you think you could help
them with their budget? Right? And so we saw it.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Became the people who are good with money in the group.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
You know, that's right, that's right, and so that's okay,
that's par for the course. I tell people all the time,
if you have a journey in front of you, even
if it's you're paying off thirty thousand dollars and you
make one hundred thousand dollars, right, there's still gonna be
things that show. If you decide to sell a car
some you know, Bob at work is gonna say, hey, man,
what happened to your Accura, you know, and that's okay.
(20:39):
You can tell them as much or little information as
you want to. The point is that you know why
you're doing what you're doing, and you're connected to a
y at the end of it, and at the end
of the day, it doesn't matter what other people think.
Like that's a superpower to not care what other people think.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
How long did it take you to pay off that
insane amount of debt? Was it seven years? And then
what did you do once you got the point where
you finally paid off the last little bit of it?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So from the time we got intense about it, it
was seven and a half years to pay it all off.
And the funny part was it was such it was
anti climactic in the way that we had to send
in a money order because it was a large amount
we had. It was a student loan for ninety one
thousand dollars, and we had been piling up this money
because we were making a deal to pay it off
(21:24):
for a little bit less. I think we ended up
paying off for seventy one and so we'd been piling
up the money. But you can't just transfer that money.
You have to do a money order, and so it
was like, we didn't have that moment where you hit
the button and then you see the balance go to
zero and it's like, you know, confetti falls from the sky.
It was like, all right, let's go to Publics, which
is a grocery store over here. Let's go to Publics
and drop off the money order. And then we came
(21:46):
home and we were just we couldn't believe the fact
that for seven and a half years this had been
like the main focus of everything and it was just gone. Yeah,
it was gone. And that's the part that I want
people to understand. This thing that feels like it is
owning you, that feels like it is just driving every
(22:08):
decision you make, that is making you loose sleep at night,
that is making you cry real tears, that is causing
you to scream at the top of your lungs, and arguments.
If you do the work, there will come a point
where it's just gone. It evaporates and it's never to
be seen again. It's the best feeling in the world.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I want to dig deeper because into the emotional side
of money, because your book covers that so well. So
I've got a bunch of questions, specifically on that I
want to get to you with you, Jade in just
a sec. We'll get to that right after the break.
(22:47):
All right, we're back still talking with Jade. Warshaw loved
digging into her story, and let's take into your book
a little bit more, Jared as well, the new book
What No One tells You About Money? What is the
thing no one is telling us about money?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Uh, it's emotional. It is an emotional journey. It takes
a lot out of you. That's the part that everybody
forgets about, Joel. Everybody focuses on the math. How to
pay off the debt, how much to save, when to
start retiring. Is it smart to pay off your house
or not. Don't get me wrong, there is a place
for all that. But in taking that information, if you
(23:24):
don't know how to filter it through your emotions, your
emotions will stop you every time. I always say that
it's like a car. Right. If it's a car, you
know the car is your behavior and your beliefs are
in the driver's seat, right, and then your emotions are
what steer the wheel. So if you have a behavior
you want to do, I want to get out of debt,
(23:44):
like that's the car it's like, Okay, I'm gonna get
in the car of paying off debt. But then your
beliefs are sitting right there in the driver's seat. Do
I believe I can actually do this? Do I believe
if you believe you'll do it? You can smash on
the gas, right, you can start driving. But then the
moment it starts feeling unc comfortable. Wait, what did you
tell me I have to do? You're telling me to
take the money out of savings and pay off, you know,
(24:05):
to pay off my debt or right. That feels bad.
That makes us feel unsafe. It makes us feel like
things are out of control. Right. So it's so important
to understand the emotions, because the emotions will make us
hit a tree. The emotions will make us turn the
car around and go in the opposite direction. Right. And
so that's what I realized with Sam, is that you've
got to first understand how this is making me feel.
(24:29):
What's causing me to retreat, what's causing me to not
pull the trigger on that decision, what's causing me to
avoid the conversation every single time? Right? And I found
that it kind of boils down to really five main
ones that we talk about in the book. The first
one is frustration, Right. Frustration happens when we know what
(24:53):
to do. We know all the practical money advice that
the experts gave us, but it's like we're trying to
do it and it's just not working right. It feels
like all the effort we're doing is not matching our results.
And that's frustrating.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Why would you like drops in the bucket? Right, like
y'all making the progress is not I'm not getting the
progress for what the effort I feels like I'm putting in.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Right. Why would you keep doing a workout plan if
you're not losing any weight or building any muscle?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I wouldn't. And so that frustration a lot of times
boils down to are you actually doing it the right way?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
You know? And so I talk about that in the
book how to kind of get around that? And because
you won't do something long if you're frustrated, it drains
your energy. Have you ever had a jol like a
zipper that's stuck for sure, and you're just like trying
with all your might to fix the zipper And finally,
what do you do? You just pull the jacket off
and just throw it and put on something else.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, money is the same way, And so I'm trying
to get people, Hey, let's get the cloth out of
the zipper so you can zip it up, wear the
shirt you want to wear.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
For most people, what does it look like to uncover
the emotional barrier that's maybe preventing them from reaching the
success or hitting those financial goals that they want. Because
I think you're spot on. It's so true. Like when
you first start to think about money, it does seem
like it's a simple math thing, but really there's so
much inner personal stuff going on behind the scenes that
(26:14):
is preventing our ability to hit those goals that want
to hit, or to pay off the debt we want
to pay off, and to keep going in pursuit of
those goals. How do we identify what it is it's
holding us back.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, And that's what the book is. I'm helping you
decipher what certain behaviors mean. So, for example, if you're
a person who you're noticing, or maybe your spouse is noticing,
or maybe your friends have called it out that you
have a hard time celebrating other people when they're winning financially.
Maybe you're that person who your best friend. If your
(26:49):
best friend gets a promotion or your best friend buys
a new car, you kind of get a little irritated
with it. It's hard for you to go, oh my gosh,
great job, that's amazing and really feel sincere. You're a
person who kind of makes even though you don't like
that you do it. You kind of make these passive
aggressive comments, Oh well, I mean if my husband made
(27:09):
that much money, I do that too. Or it must
be nice to be able to go on vacations like that, right,
you start making these passive aggressive comments. Or maybe you're
a person you're constantly comparing. I mean, I mean they
just started that job and she's already making seventy thousand.
I mean, I've been in this job and I haven't
gotten a single Right, you're always comparing to somebody else,
(27:30):
but you're never focusing on your own blessings or good things.
You're just calling out why it's unfair that they have
that and you don't. Those are behavior patterns, and they
point to a person who's very angry. Right, And when
we're in that state, it's very hard to make progress
because when you're angry at everything out here. You have
(27:52):
to remember, anger wants justice. That's what it wants right
At its core, it's I've been done wrong and it
has to be made right. And the world today, when
there's so much out there that is affecting us inside,
real estate prices are high, we just have a complete
cost of living crisis, right with inflation and wages not
(28:13):
keeping up. That's all out there, but it's affecting us,
and it's making us mad that we can't buy a house.
It's making us mad that we're actually contemplating if we're
going to have two kids instead of one because of
the price of living right, And it comes out in
these comments, and it comes out in these actions. And
if we don't stop and go what is that, we're
going to be so mad thinking everybody else owes us
(28:35):
something and that that's the solution. The problem is out there.
Therefore they need to make it right. The government needs
to fix my student loans. My boss needs to give
me a raise so that I can get right instead
of going you know, I'm really mad. I can see
this anger brewing. I need justice. They're not gonna do it.
Maybe there's something I can do and now I can
(28:56):
start putting some motivation behind that anger, and I can
start pointing it and directing it at certain things that
I want. I want to get out of debt, screw
the government, I want a better marriage, screw my boss.
Right now, we can actually take that anger and use
it as fuel to get the thing we want instead
of just using it as excuses to cust somebody out
(29:17):
or make a snide comment, or you know, just shake
our hand at the government or at the air. Right.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, and it might might feel justifiable, but that doesn't
mean it's valuable or helpful. Right, And so you have
to understand what's going on beneath the surface, so you
can say, why is it that I'm feeling that way?
And you can underdress the address the underlying emotion so
that then you can redirect it in a more positive,
more positive way. You write in the book, you write
about dodging the truth. How crucial is it to get
(29:43):
an accurate assessment of where things stand? Because that's another
thing that people deal with is like, yeah, I'm just
going to you know, the truth is heading at me.
I'm going to sidestep it so that I don't have
to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Head on. Yeah. I mean this is where the practical
and the emotion completely overlap, right, because yeah, you need
to there's a part of this. You need to know
the numbers. You need to understand how much debt you're in,
you need to understand what your assets are so you
can start the work of solutioning it. Right. But if
you kind of have a feeling about it, A lot
of times, that fear is what keeps us in the dark,
(30:17):
that fear of not wanting to open up the closet,
right because there's a monster in the closet and we
don't know exactly what it looks like. That's really what
that is. And so the longer we keep things in
the dark, we really don't know what's going on. I mean, Joel,
I know you help folks with their money all the time.
I do too, and I'm always shocked when I ask
somebody a simple question like well, how much do you
(30:39):
make and it's kind of like, well, I mean I
think it's like somewhere around right, and I'm thinking, why
don't you know how much you make? Why aren't you
looking at your pay stuff? Or if I say, you know,
for a month, how much money does it just take
to make your house run, like I know you probably
have a little extra or but how much does it take?
And they're like, well, what do you mean? And I'm like,
(31:00):
you know, just like if you just look at your budget.
And so those are those moments where I go, there's
something that's making you not look at this is it
because you know deep down inside that you're I don't
know that your mortgage is fifty percent of your take
home and that's that's been bugging you and you know it,
but you just don't want to. It's like you don't
want to put it out in the open. Do you
(31:21):
know deep down that you spend way too much on
door dash? That's why you don't want to say when
I ask, hey, how much do you spen on groceries
every month? I don't know. It's somewhere around, you know,
it's different every month. No, we have to look at
these numbers and it is emotional. We're gonna feel a
little bit of guilt that we go to target and
spend way too much. We're gonna feel a little bit
of anger that our student loans and our car payment
(31:43):
and our credit card is eating up you know, twenty
five percent of our income. That's going to make us
feel a little bit guilty. It's gonna make us feel
angry that we signed up for the debt. Right, we
have to let ourselves feel that we do, and we
have to acknowledge it so that we can get to
a point of kind of accepting these are the choices
that I made. That's okay, Like life is about making mistakes.
(32:04):
It's research. That's fine, But let me acknowledge this so
that I can now move forward and get to a
point of accept and go, Okay, I made that choice,
that's fine, But what are the choices I'm going to
make next. I can accept the situation for what it is,
and I can accept the process for what it is
to change it.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
You mentioned fear as being one of the common emotions
right the people experience, which is totally understandable, especially when
we talk about people's lack of personal finance literacy. And
so it's like, I feel like I have to learn
a new language just to navigate these problems that I've
brought on myself through bringing on debt. And you had fear,
(32:43):
like when you were going through this process, you even
it wasn't just that your debt would be with you forever.
But you mentioned the book you had this fear that
it would cost your husband is life, which I thought
was like, really interesting. Can you delve into that a
little bit what that fear was that was hitting you
in that time?
Speaker 2 (32:59):
So so glad you brought that up, because, to be
honest with you, that for me is one of the
most important parts of this book. But it's a heavy
topic and so a lot of times people skate around it,
and I'm so glad you asked directly. Yeah, when you
have half a million dollars of debt and you're bringing
in probably by that time that we really were understanding
(33:21):
the numbers, maybe we were bringing in sixty seventy thousand
dollars a year, you do look at yourself in the
mirror and you go, am I worth more dead than alive?
Would it be better for my family? Because right now
the situation that I'm putting them in is horrible. And
when I tell you, Joel that, the guilt of that
is crushing in the shame of that is just it's sad.
(33:45):
I remember getting ready for bed at night and my
husband he was standing in front of the mirror and
he was brushing his teeth and he didn't see me,
but I I could see his reflection in the mirror
as he was brushing his teeth, and he was gone,
like he was gone. And I just remember in my
(34:05):
heart going God, please, please, we got to get out
of this. We've got to get out of this. Because
people don't talk about that, the fact that you can
feel like such a failure. You're not. You're not a failure,
made a bad choice, you got bad advice, but people
wear that as an identity and that's when the shame
(34:26):
sets in and it's so dangerous. And my biggest want
and my biggest prayer was that I could help him
see you're not the problem, because he would say things like, man,
I just ruined everything, like I'm the reason that we're
not getting ahead. I'm holding you back, I'm holding you down.
And I would be like, no, the debt is the problem, Like,
let's tackle that. And so when people get to that point,
(34:50):
it is you have to start to understand here's where
I'm at and here's where I'm saying, I've got to
forgive myself. I've got to let it go, and you've
got to lean into the people who would love you
and are telling you the opposite because they see it.
They can see that you're not the mistake. They can
see that, hey, it was a bad business plan. It
wasn't it's not you.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Let's be honest. Though in some relationships you that's that's
not the response you're getting from your spouse. That's true,
and so you do that. That might be where marriage
therapy comes in handy, right, to help you navigate some
of those waters, because if you have a kind of
compassionate and understanding spouse and you guys are on the
same page, that's wonderful. Yeah, not every marriage is in
(35:30):
that place, and it's like, no, you did bring this
on me, Like why did you bring this into the marriage?
What are you doing to me? And so there can
be that dynamic at play. Fortunately you guys didn't have
that going on.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yeah, and I talk about that in the book. I'm
really taught that's part of the anger section, when when
your spouse is not of help, when they're kind of
making it tough, when they're not as sympathetic or maybe
they're the maybe they are the problem. Like that does
happen when it's like we've said we were going to
get out of debt, but you're still going and spending
money and you're still not caring about the budget. Yeah,
(36:01):
that'll make you angry. I talk about that in the book,
but I also talk about I want to go back
what you said about therapy and having some help mentally,
because that's part of the tools. Like if you're going
to go on this journey. We talked about rewards and
milestones earlier, but another part of this, like mental check ins,
You got to have that, and you got to make
sure you have the help of somebody that you trust,
(36:22):
whether it's a professional therapist or counselor or because some
of us need that next layer. Sometimes you can just
go to a friend and vent and get it out,
but a lot of us we are carrying real issues
that need help, and I never want to minimize that.
Whether it's something you did or something you experienced in
childhood or in a previous relationship that you're bringing into
(36:43):
your current situation, you are playing yourself. If you're not
thinking that that is influencing how you handle your money,
because it one hundred percent is.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
And let's be honest, there are things that are happening
when you have the debt. It's not just the headline
number that's overwhelming. You write about being frustrated when debt
collectors are lowing up your phone. That's adding to the
emotional stress, and so it's really hard. I mean, the
fact that you saw your husband in that moment is
a beautiful thing because you're also feeling overwhelmed and you're
getting those those voicemails left on your phone and you're
(37:12):
just like, what in the world, Like, we're trying our
best here. How did you deal with that confluence of
emotion trying to pay off the debt while also having
a healthy relationship with your husband, Like that just feels
like you're fighting battles on every front.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
We were, you know, it's funny. A lot of what
I write about in this book, it's kind of like
kindsight is twenty twenty, right, you can see now, oh,
this is what we did. In the moment. It wasn't
called anything, it was just survival. But now I can
look back and go, oh, here's what we did and
here's why it worked. So those moments were you know,
I felt I've always been the type of person that
(37:50):
I'm kind of like, deal with the emotions later, just
do the things now, right, that's I've always been that way.
But what happens that starts stacking up and immediately, you know,
eventually you crack. And that's what happened to me. I
talk about it in the book Debt Collectors, calling my
phone moment after moment, every five minutes, and finally I
just was like enough, like no more, we need to
(38:12):
do something right. And I was so desperate, Joel. I
had rent money in my hand and I was ready
to give it to Capital One just to get them
to just leave me the heck alone, leave me alone.
And my husband, who's pretty level headed, I mean, he's
if I'm the extra one, he's the calm one. He
was like, Jade, we can't do that, Like we need
(38:32):
to come up with a better solution than that, and so.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Keep your head so you know, eventually pay off the
credit card debt.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
But those are those moments where were able to balance
each other out, which is why I say you need
people in your life. You need if you're single, you
need people in your life that can hold you accountable
because you will have a moment where you're ready to
do something dumb in the name of desperation, and that
person needs to be able to go hey, hey, hey, don't
do that. Let's talk about a better way. And then
(39:00):
that ended up us going through and saying, hey, what
are we missing. Here's the problem. Now we can fix it,
and now we can create, you know, relieve some of
that frustration.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
All right, so much good stuff. I have a few
more questions I want to get to with you, specifically,
I'm going to ask you a few questions about debt.
Curious to hear your take. Just a few more questions
with Jade Warshaw. We'll get it right back to that
after this. All right, we're back still talking about Jade
(39:30):
Warshaw and just such a great new book that's well
worth well worth checking out. It's called What No One
Tells You About Money, And yeah, the emotional side of
money is so powerful and it might be like ninety ten.
I don't know if we're waiting it out the math
versus the emotion. It feels like emotion is certainly the
predominant thing that maybe it's an unexpected thing and you're like, wow,
(39:52):
I have so much when it goes back to childhood too, right,
how are you raised with money? And what are those
scripts that are hanging out inside of you because you
haven't really explored them. Jade, I've got a few more
questions I want to get to. I want to like,
I'm curious should should people be willing to put off
bigger life and family decisions while trying to pay off debt.
Let's say you're like, we're ready to start a family,
(40:13):
and you're like, well, no, it's not going to be cheap.
Do you push forward get started anyway? When you got
debt hanging out that you want to pay off.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
I mean, I definitely think this is a deeply personal decision.
I'm all for family planning because the truth is it's
as much economical as it is emotional. Now, if somebody
calls in and wants my advice, I'm never gonna say
don't have a family right that. I will never tell
you that. I will never say you need to pause
(40:43):
having children in order to pay off debt. I'm not
going to tell you that. But what I am going
to tell you is family planning can be very helpful
if you embrace it. It can help you create the
life that you want. It can help you create the
values and that you want to see in your household.
They can one hundred percent that being said again so
(41:05):
deeply personal. You know, my husband and I for us
where we were, the way I grew up, the way
he grew up, we knew when we have children, we
just want them to be in a financially peaceful household.
That's all we want. And so for us, worth the
sacrifice I had children. I didn't start having children until
age thirty six. Totally worth. It wouldn't change it for
the world. Somebody else might go, Jade, I would never
(41:27):
do that. You know, I want to make sure that
I'm you know, starting my family now, Hey, more power
to you. Just understand, and I say, I mean, yesterday
I was hosting The Ramsey Show. A family called in
pastor five kids and now he's fifty eight and looking
up realizing, hey, hasn't put aside any money for retirement,
and we had to remind him, no shame. But just
(41:51):
remember you're everything you do, you're making a choice. You
make a choice of the number of children you want.
In most cases, you're making a choice to remain in
a profession. You're making a choice to not invest in
instead pay for kids to college. You're making all of
these choices, and that's okay. Just understand that when they
pile up and create a result, you got to be
okay with the result.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah. Sometimes I think having kids can be a surprise.
It can be a motivator actually to get your stuff together.
As you're building your family, you're like, oh, man, I've
got I got to be an adult here on many levels,
including my finances. And I think for some people it
is that kick in the pants. Just had my first kid,
and now I got to figure out what a roth
ira is. No, no, I've got three kids, all right.
(42:33):
Now what I'm saying, if you hit that point where
you just had your first kid, right, it can feel like, oh, now,
this is the impetus for me to actually get the
ball rolling on some of this stuff, all right, Maybe
a couple of rapid fire questions. Investing while paying off debt?
Yes or no?
Speaker 2 (42:47):
No?
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Can any debt be good? A home home okay? Okay,
anything else I'm okay.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
I'm okay with somebody going into debt for a home,
but let's eventually get it paid.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Student loan debt, can it be good?
Speaker 2 (42:59):
No?
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Okay? So you got to go to school debt free
or don't go?
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Okay, low rate mortgage debt is not bad or is bad.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
If you plan to keep it around forever. It's bad
if you plan to pay it off in the term
fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, good, fine, Okay. What's one piece of money advice
you used to believe but you don't believe it any longer.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
A piece of money advice I used to believe, Oh,
that debt is a tool to help you win.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Okay, So you used to think that debt could be
something that accelerated your progress, and now you believe it's
only a weight holding you back. Yes, okay, yeah, final
words you have for the how to money audience.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Final words would be the time is going to pass anyway.
And what I mean by that is it's twenty twenty
five and at some point it's going to be twenty
thirty five. Okay, So ten years is going to pass,
and you can be in one of three places. You
can look up ten years from now and things can
(43:58):
be exactly the same. You're still, you know, robing Peter
to pay Paul, barely making ends me, arguing about money,
moving this debt with a lower interest rate over here
to a no interest rate, thinking about doing a he
lock right. Ten years can pass. Things can be a
lot worse because you didn't do anything. You can be
looking up and thinking, oh my gosh, the student loan
(44:20):
payment has ballooned with interest. Am I a person who's
eligible for bankruptcy? I didn't see myself losing this job,
and I didn't know that four oh one K loan
could become due in this way, right, things can be
worse or today you can take this opportunity and go.
What they're saying is really resonating with me, and I
have to make changes, and I'm going to make changes.
(44:42):
And then because of that, you can look up in
ten years and your life be so radically different that
you don't even recognize who you are in twenty twenty five.
And that's the place that I'm sitting. I don't even
recognize some of the things in the person I was
ten fifteen years ago. I want that for you. That's
why I wrote the book What No One Tells You
About Money?
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Love It? Where can how do money listeners find that
book and find out more about you?
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Jade? Absolutely so find the book at ramseysolutions dot com
slash store. It's right there. I mean, obviously you can
find it places like Barnes Andnobleamazon, Target dot Com, all
of that. But you know, Ramseysolutions dot Com is a
great place to purchase it because there's other things that
go along with your debt payoff journey, so you can
bundle it with other really really helpful tools. And yeah,
find me on social media. I'm on Instagram at Jade Warshaw.
(45:29):
I'd love to hang out with you and talk to you.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Love it, Jade, Thank you so much for taking the
time today. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Woo. All right, that was good stuff. So thankful that
Jade joined me today. And I think, I think what
makes this conversation so powerful really is Jade's story. And
I think we as humans respond to stories. Why some
of our favorite books are fiction, Like the worlds that
can be built and the people that we can construct
(45:58):
can be so complex and interesting, fascinating, and it just
that story, the narrative, it like sticks with us or
it's why a song can be catchier and we can't
get get it out of our head, right, And I
think that Jade's story is such is one that a
lot of people can relate to, and it's seven and
(46:19):
a half years to pay off almost half a million
dollars in debt. That was a slog and I think
in some ways she took us down to the depths
of that. But even in the book you see a
lot more of the emotional difficulty of all the incredible
side hustles that she got into in order to try
to pull out every stop in order to get rid
of that debt in short order as quickly as possible.
(46:42):
She treated it like she wanted to be done with it,
and yeah, when you're making thirty K and you've got,
you know, debt up to that to that degree, you
got to find some creative ways to go about tackling it.
The fact that she was able to get rid of
it in seven years and be completely debt free is admirable.
I think my big takeaway was when she said, your
(47:07):
emotions will stop you every time, and I think it's
so true. It really is, like emotions are much more
a part of the process of being smart with money,
of handling money well, of building wealth, of paying off debt.
Then I would have given it credit for when I
first kind of started thinking about personal finance, because it
was to me initially a math equation, how am I
(47:28):
going to find I think back in the day, it
was like five grand was the cap on what you
could put into roth Ira. How am I going to
find five grand a year to put into the wroth
But really, once you start digging a little bit beneath
the surface, you're rubbing up against emotions. You're rubbing up
against your history. You're rubbing up against family history, things
(47:48):
are your parents taught you, and those can be tough
things to deal with. And she said, also double the
emotion if you're doing it with someone else. So if
you're in a relationship and you're trying to attack the
these goals together, whether it's debt payoff, whether it's wealth building,
like you're when you double the emotion, you almost like
compound the problem. Dealing with your own emotion is one thing.
(48:12):
That's what my wife is a marriage counselor, and she says,
doing the counseling with couples is so much harder. It's
almost like playing zone defense first man to man, and
so it gets more complex. And the truth is the
same if you're in a relationship and so being cognizant
of the emotions that each of you is bringing to
the relationship, finding outside help if you need it in
order to get on the same page. Getting dealing with
(48:35):
those emotions in a positive way is what's going to
help you make the progress, and it's going to hold
you back if you don't, if you let those emotions
linger and fester. And what Jade said right there at
the very end, ten years from now, where are you
going to be if you haven't dealt with those emotions?
My guess is you won't have made nearly as much progress,
and you won't feel the positive impact of making that
(48:58):
progress because those emotions left untended. So i'd encourage you
to check out our book to think more about the
role of emotions when it comes to your finances. And
thank you as always for listening to this podcast. I
really appreciate it. You find more info about Jade about
(49:20):
her new book up on the website at howtomoney dot com.
Until next time, best Friend Out.
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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