Jade Warshaw - Debt Elimination Expert | The Hidden Force Behind Your Finances

I think people get so focused on the numbers when that really is one third of the equation. If you really want to make progress with your money, you have to consider the numbers in the math. You have to consider your behavior and your emotions and a lot of folks forget about that one. She once carried nearly half a million dollars in debt. Credit cards, student loans, the whole trap. But Jade Warshaw didn't let those numbers define her future. She and her husband clawed their way out through side hustles, grit, and unwavering belief. Early on, when I became a young adult, that's when we're starting to make choices for ourselves financially. The first poor choice I made was student loans. So for me, everything was I want to present. I have to present the best way I possibly can and I don't care. I will go into debt to get it. I started seeing the effects of childhood. On my personal life, we have to be aware of that. Why do I care about that particular thing? Today, she's a debt elimination expert, co-host of the Ramsey Show, and the best-selling author guiding thousands to financial peace. She shows how money isn't the enemy. The mindset is, and when you change that, everything changes. When somebody feels shame, the problem is no longer the problem. They become the problem. Change requires change. For most of us, we want to stay in our comfort zone. Most of what you're looking for is outside of your comfort zone. You are going to feel discomfort. You are going to feel emotions, but just don't let them stop you from getting to the thing that you've said you want to accomplish. Jade, most people think money is a math problem. And you're saying that's exactly why they stayed broke. Can you explain? Yeah, I think people get so focused on the numbers. When that really is one third of the equation, if you really want to make progress with your money, you have to consider the numbers in the math. You have to consider your behavior, which we all know. But the one that everybody leaves out is now you also have to factor in your emotions. And a lot of folks forget about that one, Scott. Why do people, I mean, I guess money is inherently emotional. But we get so emotional about money. Why do we forget how important it is to understand our emotions when it comes to getting out of debt, saving money, making money, because we know it's emotional. We get emotional about it. We get emotional about financial decisions, about what job to take, about where to spend. But then we almost, like, it will fully ignore the emotions when it comes to the plan to save money to get out of debt to pay off the credit card. Why are we ignorant there? Well, I think a lot of it is how we're receiving information. If you read a book about money, it's going to be numbers and math and tools and step-by-step plans, keep your investments over here and keep your savings in a high yield. And you should be saving 15%. It's all numbers and it's very pragmatic. And then you will hear people say, well, here's some behaviors that you should be doing. And so they'll say things like automation is the king or you should be paying off all your consumer debt before you start investing, right? All these different behaviors that you're given. But truly, no one is talking about it. And here's what you should do if you feel fear. Who has heard that? And here's what you should do if when you get ready to invest your money, you feel guilt rise up. No one is talking about that, Scott. Let's be honest. And so because no one's talking about it, because it's not mainstream, I think we do, we don't even really notice that our emotions are affecting us and they're kind of just this program that's running in the background. I mean, how often do you just flip your computer open and the screen that you were working on last is just sitting there, right, like on your desktop? And so you just work. You just get to work. Forget all the other windows that are open in the background that are affecting you. And then it's the same way with our emotions. Those screens are open in the background and they are affecting us. We do feel them. It is adding to our stress load. It's adding to our mental load. It's affecting how we're doing everything. And what you just need to do sometimes is just close the main money screen and look at all the other screens that are open. So okay, why is it that whenever my spouse brings up our savings, I start getting like feeling like this. My armpit starts sweating. Why is it that when I heard that guy on the radio tell me I should consider selling my car like every fear I've ever had activates and anxiety goes to level 10, right? Why is it that the idea of saving up for a house? If I hear somebody like you or me on a podcast, somebody says, talks about saving a house and how it's still possible, I get so mad. Like I get just so angry that I could just cuss that person out. And maybe I do. Maybe I go and leave a negative comment on social media. So all those things, I think they're going on and we're just thinking, oh, this is normal. I'm just being a human being. But the truth is it's affecting the choices that we make every day with our money. When did you, like looking back with your story, I know that your parents were very hard workers. So again, this is something you've probably heard before, but hard work doesn't always equate to an excessive amount of money in wealth. Like your parents were hard workers, but they were paycheck to paycheck. And money felt like a strain when you were growing up. This is correct, right? Absolutely. You had to build a healthier relationship with money, but this is sort of fast forward. You've done that. When in your story, did you realize that you had a healthier, unhealthy emotional attachment to money that was causing you to maybe do the wrong things or take the wrong actions? Or even like what I just described, did you have a moment like that in your life? Well, you know, early on when I became a young adult, you know, college is when most of us kind of strike out. And that's when we're starting to make choices for ourselves financially. Obviously the first poor choice I made was student loans. Even though I had full-ride scholarship, Scott, I let a financial aid officer talk me into taking out student loans strictly for lifestyle. Like literally she said, hey, you're gonna, you're gonna go to the football games, right? You're gonna want to go out to eat after, you know, the games and you're gonna want new outfits and you're gonna need groceries and gas in the car. Like you should take these loans and I did. So that was probably like the first bad decision financially that I felt myself making. Because I remember sitting in the office going, this doesn't seem like a great idea, but at the same point, like it can offer me a convenience. And I think that's what we all struggle with. Like I know this is kind of bad, but the convenience is there and it feels like an easy way to get the thing that I need. And so I remember kind of wrestling with that feeling initially. And then several years later getting married, I got married one week after graduation. And I kind of started feeling the effect of, okay, it's not just my dead anymore. Now it's my student loans and my credit cards and my car payment plus my husbands. And so starting to feel that and I started understanding that my lifestyle choices were playing into this. And I actually made a social post about this the other day. You know, for me, kind of like what you mentioned, Scott growing up, yeah, my parents did fine, but we never had the best outfits or the new shoes. You know, I wore the same dress to church every Sunday, that kind of thing. And you know, if I was going to get made fun of something, it was my appearance. It was, oh, well, she wears the same jeans or she wears the same sweater. She wears the same dress to church every single Sunday, right? And so when I got older, for me, it was a no-brainer. It was like, I never want to be judged like that again. I never want to be made fun of like that again. And so for me, everything was, I want to present. I have to present the best way I possibly can and I don't care. I will go into debt to get it. I will put it on my express credit card. And you know, max that thing out to make sure that I'm always showing up and I'm the best dressed person in the room and I'm the best looking, you know, my nails are done, my hair is done, my makeup is on. Like all of that, that was something that when I got into college, I started seeing the effects of childhood on my personal life as a young adult. And so we have to be aware of that. We have to look back and go, why do I spend like this? Why do I care about that particular thing? You take on this debt. You get married pretty quickly. So life comes out you fast. What is sort of the situation that you're in right away, like sort of post-college? You're in I think $460,000 worth of debt pretty quickly, right? After your loans and I'm assuming your husband's? Yeah, you know, a lot of that was accumulated over time with interest. So, you know, as we all know, you kind of have that six month grace period where your loans aren't due initially. And then when they hit, it's like, oh god, like I'm not ready. And most of us do what we hit the deferment button, right? We hit the forbearance button. And a lot of times we don't realize that while that's going on, interest is accruing in the background. And so we had, we essentially used up every bit of forbearance and every bit of deferment that you could use up. And because of that, the amount of interest that ensued was ridiculous. And so looking back, it's like, oh man, we probably could have saved ourselves $60,000 of debt just by figuring out a way to make the payments right away. But we didn't, we didn't know any better. And most people don't. If you have an option to not pay, I mean, think about what happened on the pandemic. People were given 0% interest, but because there was an option to not pay, most people did not take advantage of like, what they were given in that moment, right? And so yeah, again, that's just a financial literacy thing that we just didn't know. But I do want to go back to what you're talking about, Scott, about just what we see on social media in the comparison that's there. And just like this feeling of, okay, should I be having that life? Because I know for me, looking up and being in $460,000 of debt in my early 20s, right? That's the time that everybody is getting into their career. You know, 20s going into 30s is a time everybody's getting married, they're having babies, they're buying houses, like their life is popping off. And if you're a person who feels stunted by debt, then yeah, you're looking around thinking, I'm way behind, like I should be here by now, whatever here is. And I do, that I think that's one of the emotions that people fear, feel is they feel angry because they're left behind or they feel pity because they feel like they should have been someplace else by now. And yeah, that does affect how we spend because there's a point that goes, well, I'm working hard too. I'm waking up and I'm going to my job every day too. I deserve exactly what they have, right? We look at our neighbors and we see that they're moving into a new house. We look at, you know, ballbat work and he pulls up in a new bronco and we feel like we should have that too. And it's frustrating looking and wondering how were they able to make that down payment in today's world and I'm not able to make it. And again, that's the comparison and that's that underlying envy, which again is an emotion, that underlying anger that we feel. And it's so easy to just pass that off as, oh, you know, it's just something that happened, it's just something I'm feeling and not realize that it's affecting the way that you're spending because you could eat, I mean, let's go back to the pandemic. Remember that thing that popped off the revenge spending? It was like everybody had been in their house, cooped up in a mask, sheltering in place. And then finally, we were like, enough of this business. I don't care what it costs. I'm putting a pool in the backyard, right? It's like, I've been through enough. And so I do think that that does affect us and we have to, here's the takeaway. Like if there's a learning from that, if I could make people understand Scott, that life is not a race. It's not a competition. Because if you think about it, if you are in a real competition, there are measures and rules in place to make it a level playing field, right? Everybody starts at the same starting line. Everybody has access to what they need to run the race. Like nobody can take enhancements or supplements, you know, things that can make them perform better. And then everybody goes off at the same gun and everybody can run to the same finish line. That's not life. That is not life. Life is not fair. The playing field is not even. The track is not the same. Some people have to run up very steep mountains while other people get to kind of coast on flat land. Like that is the truth. So if you're a person who has to run up a very steep mountain and you're comparing yourself to somebody who gets to run on a flat surface and really, really cushy, nice shoes, yeah, you're gonna feel like you're falling short every single time. So you just have to remember your race is your race. It is your gun, your finish line, nobody else's. How do you not let that $460,000 overwhelm you to the point where you do take smart financial decisions and you're not just like, well, the debt's already there. Of course, I want to pay it off, but like, you know what? I can't even, I can't even imagine. I can't even like fathom having to work for the next 10 years just to pay off debt. I think you paid it off in like seven and a half if I'm not mistaken. But what's like the healing of that relationship with money that lets you move forward and take smart action, even when you were in like a really, really, you know, half a million dollars is not an easy place to come out of? Yeah, well, I would say that the healing, it's not, it's not like, let me go get healed and then I'll go do this thing. It's more so as I'm taking responsibility for my life and as I'm cleaning up my mess and as I'm being an autonomous human being and not waiting for someone to come save it me or do it for me during that process is when I'm becoming a holer person, a person who forgives myself and it's not so much of saying, hey, don't be emotional, take the emotions out, get rid of those. It's more about being able to act in the midst of them because so much of it is a recognition of being able to say, oh, I know why, I know why that made me angry or I know why I spent that money or I know, just knowing why like awareness is half of the battle to be able to say, okay, here, the truth about me, like I can say now, the truth about me is I was a person who struggled with guilt, I was a person who struggled heavily with fear, I was a person and fear of others judgment. Like I can say that, I know that, but for some of us, we don't even know what it is. We're just like, oh, I don't wanna do that. I don't like that, that makes me feel uncomfortable. It's more just a comfort thing and we just boiled it down to I'm either comfortable with this or I'm uncomfortable with this versus saying, why am I uncomfortable? What is the emotion? What is the connection? What is the tie? Because if I know that, then I can say, it's kind of like if you know I live in a house with stairs and my kids notoriously leave things on the stairs and I could literally fall down the stairs and break my neck. And so a lot of times after I've tucked them in for the night, I'm taking a mental note of, hey, I know that these books are on the stairs, I know that these micro machine cars are on the stairs and because of that, I can walk around them and navigate to where I need to go in spite of that, right? As opposed to acting like I don't know what's on the stairs, I step on one of the little micro machine cars that my son has and I fall down the stairs and I'm wondering what happened, right? That is the same thing with our emotions around money. When we don't know they're there, we trip up over them, we fall over things and we don't know why. We're like, oh my gosh, and everything is a surprise. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I overspent. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I spent $3,000 on that vacation. Oh my gosh, I can't believe that salesman talked me into buying solar panels, right? Everything is a, oh my gosh, I'm shocked. I can't believe this happened. Versus, oh, I know that I self-medicate by spending. Oh, I know that the reason that when the holidays come, I go crazy because when I was a kid, we never got Christmas gifts and I got made fun of in second grade, right? Knowing that is so, so, so, so important because then we can't anticipate and say, okay, the holidays are coming. This is the time of year that notoriously I do XYZ this year's going to be different because I can audit that, right? So that is it. No, I was gonna say so it is a little bit of like subconscious self-sabotage. When you don't pay attention to the emotions that you have and you aren't aware of them, you don't do like a little bit of not, not, against your point, you're not doing inner work to heal and then tackle the problem. Like you're in this constant state of self-awareness and inner work and always healing and awareness. And when you operate from that perspective, which is just I think a good way to go through life to be quite honest with everything. But when you operate from that perspective and you are aware of the things that you believe about money and the emotions that you tie to money, then you just default to a smarter decision. More often than not. More often than not, that's right. And I think that's part of the work and the other part just to answer your question more clearly, when you do have, and I realized that $460,000 of debt is not the norm. For some people it is, but there's plenty of people listening who have $20,000 of debt or $100,000 of debt. And at the end of the day, the same idea has to be in your mind, which is this idea that's got that the time is going to pass anyway. God willing, you're going to wake up five years from now and have a life where you'll wake up 10 years from now and you'll still be in this life. And you have to decide, right? There is that point where you say, okay, I'm going to start to do a behavior. Whether it's losing weight, whether it's starting to lift weights, whether it's, I don't eat sugar anymore. Whatever it is, in this case, we're talking about maybe paying off debt. You have to say, like in five years from now, there's three choices and there are only three choices. You're only going to be, you could be the same. Like, I'm exactly where I am today, five years later, which is unlikely, you usually would be worse or better. And those are the other two options. You could be worse, right? The person who has $100,000 in debt and makes $120 could say, you know what? I'm not really going to do anything. Things feel pretty comfortable. And you don't know what the future holds. You could step off the curb and break your leg and now you're on, you know, disability for a while. Disability is only paying out 40% of what you used to make. And so now you're leaning on credit cards to fill the gap. And before you know it, that $100,000 of debt turns into 150, turns into 200. And now you're thinking about bankruptcy, right? A lot can happen in five years if you don't make this choice. And then of course, the third option is today, you listen to this conversation and you go, you know what, I could start making some changes and you do. And now because of that five, 10 years later, you're in the best position you've ever been in. You hardly even recognize that previous you that used to be so emotional, that used to make bad choices that didn't trust themselves, all of that. So understanding that the time will pass and we have real choices to make today. And just to be clear, not choosing is also a choice. Quick question, what's your go to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout? For me, it just used to be whatever I could grab, which usually meant skipping meals entirely or just grabbing something that left me crashing an hour later because it was just full of garbage. That's why I'm partnering with Hule. This black edition ready to drink is a complete meal. So it has 35 grams of protein, six grams of fiber, 35 essential vitamins and minerals. It is no sugar added, gluten free, under five bucks. I always keep a few of these in my fridge. 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So we sort of touched on it obviously, the emotional side of money, but let's go into it. So what does baby steps really not, really not, I don't know, not do a good job is unfair, but what does baby steps really not highlight that you really thought was a big, important piece of this sort of money story? I mean, it really, you just have to remember, it's a plan written on paper, you know, and you and I were kind of talking about this offline before we started, but everybody is not in the same situation. And so one person can hear advice and go, yeah, great, I'll do it. And another person can hear advice and go, you've got to be kidding. You are so freaking out of touch. What is, you know, did you get dropped on your head as a baby, right? And so that's how the baby steps are. So, you know, respectfully, it's a wonderful plan. It's helped millions of people, including myself, but let's take, let's take baby step number one for instance. So baby step number one is you save a thousand dollars as quickly as possible. And that's how it's written on paper, baby step one, save a thousand dollars as a quick emergency fund. Well, there's a lot of nuance behind that. Number one, it's like, wait a minute. Somebody could say, well, I already have $30,000 saved Jade. And I'm like, okay, but what you don't know is the next step is coming where you put all of that on your debt except a thousand dollars. So that person is going, you are psychotic. It took me years to save this money. I grew up in a home where there was never money saved. Do you know what it feels like to come home and the electricity has turned off? You're taking away my comfort. I vowed that that would never happen to me again. Right, all those things are working into it. Then you've got the person on the other end of the spectrum who goes, Jade, a thousand dollars, do you understand that I make $15 an hour? Do you understand that I'm a single mom with three kids at home? I've never even had $200 saved. And you're telling me to save a thousand dollars. I don't know anyone who has that much money in the bank. This feels impossible to me, right? So there's two ends of the spectrum of people dealing with this on an emotional level, on a behavioral level. But the words just say save, save a thousand dollars, right? And so that's the part that I'm talking about is addressing that area, that gray area where people live. That's the part where people live, right? No, I know. So if somebody wants to sort of go on this journey, there has to be a soft skill that they have to learn, right? There has to be some sort of, there has to be some sort of soft skill or tool, an emotional tool, a mindset tool, a mental model tool, they have to adopt. There's probably several. But if you look at, I mean, think about the things that you've learned. What would be the most useful mindset tool, whatever that is when it comes to, when it comes to like getting out of debt successfully? Because I know that Ramsey speaks a lot about willpower and discipline. Good to a degree, but to your point, that's not, that's, that's speaking to one very specific kind of person that fits this cookie cutter formula very, very well. Yeah, yeah. Unlimited amount of edge cases that don't fit that. So perfectly. So what is this mental model that you really have to learn and adopt and internalize so that you can actually go on this journey? Is there one? Is there one for someone that only makes $15 an hour and is it different than somebody who has $30,000 saved? Like what's, or is there one universal mindset shift? So I think it depends on the, the underlying emotion that's at play. And so that's why I go over so many of them in the book. I find, I find that probably the biggest thing for most people is some sort of fear. It's a fear blocker. And so on the book, I go through the different types of fear, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of judgment, all the different ones. And I'll give you kind of a internal framework that's helpful. And then I'll give you an external one to try to something that's a little bit more practical. Because some people like to live up here in woo-woo land and other of us are like, no, tell me something I can do with my hands today, right? So I'll give you both when it comes to fear. For me, one of the biggest things is if I'm feeling something, first understanding, hey, this is the root of this is some kind of fear. Then if I can say, okay, fear can be rational or it can be irrational. Like, that's true. So let me figure out is this a rational fear or is this an irrational fear? That's thing number one. For instance, people say all the time, I'll tell them, I'll say, hey, you need to pay off all your consumer debt before you start, no, I'll say, hey, if you want to pay off your consumer debt, you need to start side hustling, right? Let's say that's the advice to which they might respond with, well, I'm afraid if I side hustle, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna ruin everything with my kids. Well, what does that mean? I'm gonna ruin everything with my kids. Okay, clearly that's a fear. But it's so vague that part of me, usually the irrational fears are the vague ones. The ones that go, well, if I do that, everything's gonna, you know, I'm gonna mess up my job where it's gonna cause problems with my spouse or it's a very vague thing. Well, what do you mean cause problems? What do you mean mess it up with your kids, right? Whereas the things that are more rational tend to be very clear. They tend to be things like, well, Jade, I'm afraid that if I start side hustling, the time that I have to side hustle is Friday nights, but Friday nights are my daughter's basketball games and I really don't wanna miss my daughter's basketball games because, you know, my husband and I are going through a divorce and he's not able to make it anyway, right? Now there's detail, now I'm understanding, so now we can actually solve the problem and say, well, instead of side hustling on Friday night, do you think, you know, maybe Sunday afternoon could work, right? We can find solutions. So that would be thing one is if you can just start to do that and then in the book I can walk you through the rest of that, that is so eye opening for so many people because you don't realize it's again, it's just playing in the background, it's just the way you do life. You've never stopped to dial it out like that. Well, I guess yeah, so the thing is with most fears until you get super specific, you probably see this a lot when people call in. They probably just have like the worst case scenario that they can't even articulate. They just have this like, oh my goodness, like to your side hustle point like, oh my god, I'm going to start a side hustle and then I'm not going to spend time with my kids and then my kids are going to hate me and then my family's going to break apart and then I'm going to divorce and like, they just think of this like ridiculous end result that's like never going to happen. But, but they don't really, they don't really map it out step by step so then it's just like an overwhelming fear. That stops them from really taking any kind of action at all. That's right. When really you can look at something because one of the biggest fears I get is the folks who have savings and I'm saying, hey, take the majority of that savings and pay off your debt. Well, they're thinking, well, what if, what if the worst happens? What if I lose my job? What if I do this? And that's fine. Like you should be thinking like that. You should never just take someone's advice and go, okay, and just do it, right? And but then I run it out for them. I go, well, let's play this out. Here's the amount of debt you had. Here's the amount of savings you had. Let's pretend you just keep the savings like you want to do. And the same, the same scenario happens. You lose your job. XYZ happens. You'll actually end up with less money faster because you have so many debt payments. It's going to take way more money to operate your house. And once I can run it out with them, then they go, oh, okay. And then if they're still afraid, then it's like, okay, now we can take it a level deeper. So we've figured out like the mathematical side, what's the other part of your fear, right? And now that freezes up to go even deeper to really get to the root of it. When people call in, obviously, there's a lot of fear. Probably a lot of fear that is not even justified this irrational fear. What else, what else, what are the other emotions that people tie to money? Or what are the other main things that like almost sabotage the success that they could have? You know, there's a lot of anger out there because there's so many external forces that are affecting us, that we have nothing to do with. My colleague, Dr. John Deloney, he says, he has a phrase, he says, not by my hand, but in my lap. And that is the most frustratingly angry thing that can happen. When you're like, hey, I was over here doing my thing and I feel like I was doing the best I can. And then some external thing happens. And it is just really wrecking my plan here, right? Like, you're going along, you're working, you're saving, you're avoiding debt for the most part. And then, you know, the real estate market just doubles itself overnight seemingly. And I mean, I saw, I mean, my very own sister, I saw this happen. She'd been saving, saving, saving. She was so excited. And then COVID happened. And you know, everybody kind of like took a step back for a moment. And then it was like the down payment that would have once got her a beautiful $400, $450,000 house was suddenly not enough to get her that at all. And that is, I mean, you want to, you want to take a Louisville slugger, right? To just both headlights. Like, you want to go crazy on that. And that's the part that I get when people call in. It's just this, they're just so disenchanted with what's happened with our economy and with the cost of living. And we're in an affordability crisis. And I recognize that. And I understand that inflation. And it's so expensive to get groceries, to get health care, all of these things. And the average American is like, Hey, I didn't do this. I, this was not my fault. And it's not your fault. But you're here dealing with it. It's in your lap. And so a lot of what I, the calls I get now are the underlying emotion is just kind of an anger. It's an impatience. It's a frustration with the world today that has been, it's something that's been done to us, right? And so the hard part is getting folks to realize, okay, how do we readjust our expectations? How do we not fall into this eye-deserved mentality? Because anger at the core, anger wants justice, right? Think about anything you've ever been mad about. Whether it's something you were mad at your spouse, you were mad at the person for cutting you off in traffic. You want justice. You were done wrong. And somebody needs to make it right. That's anger. And so I try to refuel that into, instead of you just being mad and cussing out, you know, the person on the other end of the capital one call, instead of you being angry and giving the finger to the person who cuts you off, you know, in line, instead of you making a really, really passive aggressive comment on social media, how can you get the justice that you want for your anger? How can we get it? And so if we can put that motivation behind it and a meaningful motivation, not just you shaking your fist at somebody, that's how you get on the other side of anger is you finding that justice. So is it you paying off the credit card? Is it you paying off the student loan? Even if it takes 10 years, is it you figuring out a way to save for that down payment? That's you getting justice. Because the government is not going to get it for you, right? They're not going to come. They might send a few stimulus checks here and there, but at the end of the day, they're not going to go, oh my gosh, we're so sorry that you didn't get your house. They're not saying that. They're going, you know, shoot, they were just shut down here for the longest. So they don't care. They don't care. And math doesn't care about your emotions. Math doesn't care that it's going to take you 10 years to save up. And you can be mad at the numbers all day, but math doesn't care. So what are you going to do to get your justice to call that anger inside of you? That's what I'm talking about in the book. And I'll show you how to do that. That's, I fully agree. I think that's one of the hardest mindset shifts that people have to go through. Like the world doesn't care, math doesn't care. It sucks. It's life figured out. Now what, yeah, now what, right? And I think that I think that that is one of the most, again, whether or not it's saving 10 grand, saving 100 grand, starting a business, paying off your debt, it's the mindset shift of, okay, the world is fair. It dealt me a shitty hand. Life is tough. I'm going to figure it out anyways. And it's, it's that switch. And if you adopt the figure it out anyways, or take the action anyways, mindset, again, it could be 10 years, it could be 15 years. It took you seven and a half, which is not a lot. That's a significant amount of time for most people. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not like that's the other thing. It feels like a long time in the moment. It took my husband and I, 10 years to save up and be able to buy a house, which is why I can, I feel like I can talk about this from that perspective. And in the moment, yeah, 10 years feels like, oh, like the worst, terrible. But now, you know, I'm in my 40s and that was such a long time ago, not that long ago, but it was long enough ago that I go, oh, yeah, in the grand scheme of things, 10 years is nothing. I'm so glad I started when I started because the time's going to pass anyway. If I'm not mistaken, money, not in fidelity, not, I mean, anything else, it's like money is one of the causes, the main causes of divorce and of arguments and of fights and relationships. So I need to know how you survived with Sam because you got married one week after graduation. And you were in a massive amount of debt. And I think that that amount of debt and just being young and the stress of life coming at you, I'm sure it was difficult, but you're still together and you figured it out and you navigated through it. And I think that like everybody could learn a thing or two because I don't think that many relations, relationships would survive something like that. So you're married young, you have $4,000 to $2,000 in debt. How do you not let that come between you? Like what's the strategy to, I don't know, navigate that together, not let, you know, the anger and the stress impact how you communicate with the person because obviously when you're in that kind of debt and things don't go right, the chance of you like, you know, like popping off on that person are pretty damn high. How do you, how do you, how do you get through this? Well, first of all, you do, you do pop off from time to time. I will never sit here and tell you that that was an easy process and that there were not like arguments for the record books. Okay, like my husband and I, we, it was not easy. Like I, it was not easy. There's no part around that, um, counseling. You need it. I like your shirt too. Oh, yes, yeah, because there's underlying things, you know, I'm talking about from an individual perspective, but my husband had his underlying things. So he needed to go, I need to go and then we needed to go together. A, that's the thing number one. Thing number two, this is a controversial topic here, but I'm a proponent of combining finances with your spouse. I think that being one on that helps you go further faster, right? Having a teammate that you can depend on, which a lot of you, and as soon as I said it, I could hear the comments, well, I can't depend on my teammate. Well, my husband, it must, it must be nice to have a teammate that you can depend on, right? I can hear all the comments. Again, that's where counseling comes into play to make sure that you, you are showing up for your spouse and your spouse can show up for you the way they need to. Again, not saying that this is perfect, but having that full transparency of we have one account, we have one checking account. Both of our checks go in there. We make a budget together of what we're going to spend and what's going to go towards the debt. We're including each other. Everybody is zoned in. Both people are zoned in on the goal, right? That is very, very important. And for my husband and I, I think that was the catalyst to actually being able to do this. We were both aligned on, we need to pay this off. And here's the method that we need to work in order to pay it off. Now, of course, that's when the personalities show up, which is I'm more of a spender. He's more of a saver. I'm far more emotional. He's way more like even keel. Those were, we were navigating that more so than we were navigating. Do we want to pay off the debt or not? That wasn't the question. So those two things, combining money, making sure everybody's getting the mental help and support that they need. And then, beyond that, I would just say that making sure, and this again, is kind of part of the therapy thing, but forgiving, being so quick to forgive and have goodwill to each other is so. I mean, this is, this is not in the book. This is just me, a person who's been married 15 years, 16 years. Goodwill. And I understand this may not be the case for every couple. And we can talk about couples who are having other levels of dysfunction later if you want. But if you can look at your spouse and go, you know, I love them. I think that their intentions are good, even though they don't always show it the best of ways. Remembering that this person, their intention is not to jack you. Like, their intention is not bad. It's just, we're all human and we're all fighting the best way we know how with what's inside of us. And that comes out in different ways. Just remembering goodwill. Like, this person has goodwill towards me goes such a long way. Indeed is a success story partner. Now, if you're hiring, indeed is all you need. Let me give you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to indeed and be super specific. 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So you mentioned there's other kinds of dysfunction in relationships. And I would ask like that, that is a beautiful idea. That's not how all relationships work out. Sometimes people don't have the best intentions. And I'm sure that you hear a lot about a couple or a partner or a spouse. It doesn't have the best intentions with money or whatnot. And maybe we can talk a little bit about how to recognize that. Because I think that's also very important. Because I do believe that if you're going to build wealth, get out of debt, just be a highly ambitious person or even not even be a highly ambitious person from like an entrepreneur perspective. But just like want to do well in your career and want to show up every single day in the best capacity. Like you have to have a partner. If you have a partner who is on the same way of length as you. Because I've interviewed a lot of different experts on this show. And some of them are sort of more child psychologist or at least like psychologists to speak about the trauma that you receive as a child. And one of them in particular was going into how the home is so so important for children. Because if the child does not have like a peaceful home, first of all that that trauma subconsciously implants into your brain and then that carries forward in your life. But you just like you can't if the home is not peaceful, then basically that kid's going to be stressed and anxious and act out. And every part of their life is going to start to fall apart to a degree if like the parents are or I was fighting and always arguing. But I would say that the home is just as important for an adult. Even though they think that they can leave the home at home and then go do their thing or go go go work or go adopt a certain investing principle or go pay off their debt or go allocate their money. Accordingly, if your home is not peaceful and not even peaceful in the sense of like you're not throwing dishes at each other's head. Like I mean like peaceful in the sense as if from the from the perspective of you are aligned in what you want to accomplish. If you're always arguing and fighting even if it's not anger, but it's just misalignment, I feel like that's like a quick way to sabotage anything you're trying to do. Because you just like it just feels like there's always friction, right? It just feels like you're not like moving in the same direction. You don't have the shared goals. Sorry, I'm sure you have a comment on that. But I just I'm curious. What do you do if somebody's not on the same page as you? That's so important. Yeah, friction is going to cause you to go slower. It's going to cause things to take a lot longer which means frustration is going to set in. And once you're frustrated, that's tough, right? Yeah, so there's a couple of things there. Number one, I hear you know, our show reaches 18 million folks a week, right? The Ramsey Show and People Calling with all sorts of different relational issues. The one one of the big ones is really being able to identify if you are in a relationship with somebody who is really committing forms of domestic abuse with money, right? We hear that sadly a lot where one spouse has really cut off the other spouse. Their name is not on the mortgage. They have no access to the accounts. It's like one spouse is like, yeah, I know we have retirement, but you know, and I'm not saying this to be against men or women, I'm just saying typically it's a woman who doesn't have the past codes. And typically it's the woman who knows it's there but doesn't know the exact amounts. Or it's a, I'm given an allowance and that's it. That's all I'm really allowed to spend. Like those are such red flags. Then there's the calls where it's just, you know, one spouse has been spending money secretively and there's that financial infidelity, whether it's a gambling, whether it's another form of addiction, whether it's just a hobby that's gotten out of control and somebody is just overly spending hiding the purchases, hiding the debt. That's a red flag as well. So there's a lot of ways that we want to identify that. And I mean, I'm not really an acronym person but it's helpful. I always tell people to keep their money safe. It's S-A-F-E. And I just say, hey, you need to seek counsel. The S is for seek counsel. You need to seek counsel if you're experiencing any form of addiction. Like I talked about that could be gambling, that could be overspending, that could be drugs, that could be alcohol. And the other A is for any sort of addiction or any sort of abuse, right? If you're in a situation where someone is abusing you and it's not always like somebody's, you know, hitting you or something like that. It's, yeah, they're showing domestic abuse in that they are controlling me. They're controlling the money. They are controlling how much I work, how much I don't work. The check comes, I don't see it. I don't know what the accounts are. My husband or my spouse or my wife gets very huffy if I ask them for access, right? Those are problems, those are red flags. And so that's the A. And the F is of course financial infidelity. Financial infidelity is any form of spending that's being hidden. Even if it's not, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars, it's just this idea that I'm going to go over here to the side because there's a lack of trust there. If you're spending, if you're going to target, I don't care if it's target and you're spending and you're keeping it from your spouse for some reason or your spouse is keeping it from you, that is a red flag. You need to seek some counsel on that and find out what's behind that. And then, you know, finally, the E is now, now it's time, now that we've identified that, let's evaluate, let's evaluate our options. Is this somebody that you need to separate from temporarily, like your space? Is this a person that you have to separate your bank account from temporarily? And what are the measures that must be seen in order to come back together eventually? Because of course you want reconciliation at the end if possible. So that's how that works. And I hate those calls and I hate those scenarios for people because they're extremely difficult and extremely emotional. But that's the reality. And it is important to point out that there's a difference between somebody who maybe isn't on the same page because you haven't been a good communicator versus somebody who is actually taking advantage or abusing or financial infidelity. So I think it is important to understand that spectrum. But I don't want to just, I feel like, this is just my intuition. I don't know because I thank God I've never been part of a relationship like this. But I feel like, I mean, you want to know, you want to know, it's funny. We share a bank account in credit card and every time I spend on my credit card. So Gina, my better half, she has notifications on her phone and she sees the amics pop up on her phone every time I spend and she's like, and so we're super transparent with our finances and our money and it's just easier because there's no friction. There's just no friction in anything we do. But I feel like it's difficult for people who are in situations like this to understand, are we just, are we just not on the same page or is there actual financial infidelity or financial abuse because these are not as easy for the average person to pinpoint. Like if somebody, if I'm married and I sleep with someone else, I've cheated, right? It's very easy. It's like I, I get what that is. If I'm married and God forbid someone, or even not married dating doesn't really matter. If I'm with somebody and somebody hits me or screams at me or like I see it, I feel it, I hear it. Like there's something physical, there's something that, you know, I can say that was abuse or that was, that was an affair. With financial, it's not as angry and loud and aggressive. It's just, it's almost like a little bit like narcissists, manipulative, like is it, is it abuse? Is it not, you know, husband says, we should have separate accounts and I don't see what he's spending, but then he says like, if I worry too much, he says I'm being overbearing and is he gaslighting me or does, or is that just his relationship with money? So it's harder for a lot of people to identify. Yeah, they can be. Yeah. I think you're right. I think it is harder. I think the first step is saying, could this be and then also saying, hey, just because you have, and I talk about this in a book in the book all the time, a good reason should not become a bad excuse, right? You could have good, you could have good reason for a behavior, but if you can continue to do it at your own detriment, it then becomes a bad excuse. And that's, that's just a truth. You could have a good reason for, well, it was the way I was raised because of my job or blah, blah, blah, blah. But once you know that and you continue, then it becomes a bad excuse. My Angelou said, once we know better, we should do better. And so that's really the core of that for me. Even if you're dealing with a spouse, maybe they are doing those things, maybe they are locking you out, maybe they are trying to control you. You can say all day, why don't think he means it or I don't think she means it, you know, the way she was raised, but the behavior is still the behavior. And if you've brought it to their attention and you've said, hey, when you do this, I feel shut out. Or this really, this is really making me feel unsafe. Or this is really freaking me out. I feel like we're married and I should be part of this and they don't care. It's not enough for them. There's disregard for your feelings in this, at the very least. You need to go to therapy. I know, I, that's another really good point. So when if you were with somebody who's a good partner, who you love, if something means enough to you, it should mean something to them as well. Yes, absolutely. That's really what it is at the end of the day. Absolutely. Going through, going through getting out of debt with Sam, you've given over a lot of sort of lessons as to how to survive that kind of, you know, that kind of stress on a relationship. If you were going to give a couple that's going through this together right now and there's none of this, there's none of this abuse, none of this bad stuff. It's just a healthy money relationship. You're all aligned on your goals. But you find yourself like outside of going to therapy, you find yourself snapping at each other all the time just because there's so much stress in the household. And if I'm not mistaken, you were sleeping on an air mattress with your husband and you had roommates at the time. So you were like in this like pressure cooker environment, like there couldn't have been more stress on a like a early marriage, a young marriage than what you were going through. What would be your, like sort of last words of wisdom to somebody who's going through this? Just remembering that it's kind of like shame, right? When somebody feels shame, they are no longer, the problem is no longer the problem. They become the problem. They wear the problem as a hat or as a garment. Instead of saying, oh, that business plan was a bad idea. They go, oh my gosh, I'm so bad with money. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm the reason, right? They become the identity of the problem. And it's the same thing in marriage. You have to be so clear on remembering what the problem is over here. And we're ganging up against the problem. It's not my spouse who's the problem, right? And that is the main thing to remember. The debt is the problem. The student loan is the issue. The car payment is what's tripping us up. The down payment is what we're trying to solve for. It's so easy to forget and get mad at your spouse like they're the problem. And that's the number one thing if you can remember, hey, we're on the same team. We're both ganging up against whatever this issue is. And yes, your spouse may have done something that annoys you or bugs you. It's like, hey, why are you stopped? Why are you continuing to stop at the gas station for mountain doing in corn nuts? We said that we're trying to take the extra money and pay off the debt. Why are you still making this stuff, right? In those conversations, just remembering, how can I approach this in a way that the problem is not my spouse. The problem is what we're ganging up against. So if that were the case, then I could say, hey, I remember you and I were aligned on paying off the debt. I just want to see if you're still in it. And if they're like, yeah, why not? Oh, I just, I noticed that you spent some money that I thought that we were going to put on debt. I just wanted to make sure that you and I are still aligned on like, we're knocking out this debt. So I just wanted to remind both of us, let's just tighten up our spending a little bit, right? That's a whole different conversation. Then I can't believe you would go and spend $5. I mean, you're so irresponsible. I can't depend on you right now. You're making them the problem. Just always remember the problem is the problem's the debt. The problem is, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to tackle. So that would be my piece of advice. Tell the audience also where they can connect with you. So where they can go for, you know, social, where they can sort of listen to you on the Ramsey show. So drop some socials. And then also, if people could just take one lesson or one idea away from this book, the most important lesson, what would you want them to take away from it? Yeah. So if you're interested in what no one tells you about money, of course, you can find it wherever you buy books. Amazon's great RamseySolutions.com is great. Barnes and Noble will have it. So if you're interested in the book, or if you just want to connect on social, I'm on all the platforms, Jade Warsha, but Instagram is really the one where I'm interacting and talking the most. So find me on Instagram, I would love that. And I would say for the book, the number one thing is just remember, awareness is half the battle. Awareness is half the battle. If you can be aware of your emotions, if you can take a moment and just go, why, what am I feeling right now? That is going to help so much in you identifying. And then just remember, we talked about it earlier, but just remember, whenever you're setting out to make change, change requires change. And just remember, for most of us, we want to stay in our comfort zone. And most of what you're looking for is outside of your comfort zone. So you are going to feel discomfort. You are going to feel emotions that is totally normal, but just don't let them stop you from getting to the thing that you've said you want to accomplish. Awareness is everything. That's what I would leave you with.