A 29-year-old earning $50,000 a year took on a $14,000 car loan while carrying $77,000 in debt.<\/p>\n
Megan from Indianapolis called <\/a>“The Ramsey Show,” saying she felt “scared and stressed” after laying out a debt load totaling about $77,000 on a $50,000 income.<\/p>\n She said she owes about $15,000 in credit cards, $32,000 in student loans, nearly $9,000 in personal debt, roughly $6,000 in back taxes, a medical bill of about $1,000, and $14,000 on a vehicle.<\/p>\n Don’t Miss:<\/p>\n “I’m just paying the minimum and nothing’s really going down,” she said. That the payments consume most of her income even though the accounts are current.<\/p>\n Megan said she is single and works full time running her family’s wedding<\/a> venue, where she is a part owner. She said she is considered self-employed and was told she could not be on payroll. As a result, she did not set aside enough money for taxes, which resulted in the $6,000 balance.<\/p>\n At that point, personal finance expert Dave Ramsey rejected that guidance outright. “Bull crap,” he said, adding that owners can be on payroll and that he has paid himself that way for decades.<\/p>\n Trending: Americans With a Financial Plan Can 4X Their Wealth \u2014 Get Your Personalized Plan from a CFP Pro<\/a><\/p>\n Megan said her previous car was totaled shortly after Christmas. She added that the vehicle was fully paid off and that insurance issued a $6,000 check. Instead of replacing it with another inexpensive car, she used that money toward a $20,000 vehicle and financed the remaining $14,000.<\/p>\n She considered buying another $6,000 car but worried it could have repair issues and that she would not have money to fix it. “That’s a dumb thing to think,” Ramsey said. “You were driving a $6,000 car before.”<\/p>\n Co-host George Kamel then focused on the numbers, telling her the decision could be reversed quickly. “You could clear 20% of your total debt<\/a> just by selling this car,” he added.<\/p>\n See Also: Invest in a Gaming Marketplace Backed by Early Zynga and PayPal Investors\u2014 From $300.<\/a><\/p>\n From there, Ramsey told Megan that continuing to make minimum payments would keep her in the same position. Instead, he advised her to sell the car, buy a lower-cost replacement with cash, stop using credit cards, and increase<\/a> her income through additional work or a side hustle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 29-year-old earning $50,000 a year took on a $14,000 car loan while carrying $77,000 in debt. Megan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,133901,21045,155,726,147,530,724],"class_list":{"0":"post-402193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-car-loan","10":"tag-credit-cards","11":"tag-dave-ramsey","12":"tag-passive-income","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance","15":"tag-warren-buffett"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}