"You Guys Make Good Money But Can't Say No"

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I am just wondering if we are in baby step two, wondering if we should be paying or selling off our paid vehicles to help pay down this debt. Okay, tell us more. How much debt do you guys have total? $193,000. All right, that's all consumer debt. That's not any mortgages? No, the mortgages aren't included. All right, and what's your household income? $380,000. Fantastic. All right, what are the cars worth? The truck is worth $40,000. The car I'm going to say is worth $30,000. And then we have two Harley-Davidson's and they're each about $15,000. Okay, and those are all paid for? Yes, they are. Wow. So what makes up the $193,000 in debt? Well, we have $35,000 in credit card. We have loans. Just personal loans? Yeah, well, just loans like we have a solar loan, and we have a line of credit, and we have a couple loans just for, we had had some dental work done and stuff like that, so medical. And then the big one in there is the boat. Oh, a boat. What's left on the boat? Yeah, $100,000. And what's this boat worth? About $130,000. Hey. God Almighty, Joanna, sell the boat. Sell the boat before the cars you need. You need cars. You don't need a boat. Why aren't you guys willing to sell the boat? You didn't even mention the boat. Well, because it's at our cottage, and that's what we love to do when we're at the cottage. Oh, so you have multiple properties? To be honest, yes, we have two properties. Joanna, you sound like somebody who makes a bunch of money. You and your partner make a lot of money, and y'all don't like saying no to each other. You're very improv. Yes, and. I was just thinking while you were talking, George told somebody to sell their horse one time, and he still hasn't, like, still hasn't lived that down. That thing has a soul. The boat just has a motor. So I'm hesitant to tell Harley people to sell their two paid-for Harleys. I'm actually more scared to tell someone to sell a Harley. But I don't know a lot of Harley lifestyle boaters with a $150,000 boat. Like, you gotta pick a sub-genre, Joanna, and go with it. Yeah, and this is the thing, though. See, we don't ride the Harleys very much anymore because our lifestyle has changed. Then sell them today. Okay, so here's the thing. If you sold the boat and sold the Harleys, that's $130,000 plus $30,000. It's $160,000 of your $193,000 paid off. And you make $380,000, so by Christmas you'll be debt-free with three easy steps. That's true. So that's option one. Or you sell the cars, and you only have the Harleys to get around in, which is probably not ideal in Canada. And now you still need to go buy new cars, which I'm guessing for your lifestyle is going to be a hard pill to swallow to go buy a $5,000 car. Yeah, you can't drive an 86 used Camry up to your cottage to get in your $150,000 boat. The flip of this is, y'all make $380,000 if you sold this boat, which you love. Dude, I love being out on the water. I totally get it. And you sold these motorcycles, and then y'all buckle down for four or five months with this great salary y'all make, and you're completely debt-free. Then you get to decide, do we want to stay boat people? And if you do, awesome. Y'all make $380,000 within one calendar year. You'll have saved up enough cash. If that's where you want to direct your spending power- We're not saying never own a boat again. Yeah, Dave has a couple of boats, and they're more expensive than my house. They're awesome. And he does these, I don't know, he's almost killed me and George on them multiple times. I love being out on the water, but it comes in an order, right? You just have to decide if we want to be free people, or we want to be boat people more. True. How much do you guys have in savings? We have just our $1,000 emergency fund, and then we have $10,000. You got 10 grand, okay. So here's my question, where is the $380,000 going if we're still taking on lines of credit and payments? Where's that money going? Well, so those debts have been for a while. They've been a long time there, and that's why we weren't getting anywhere, so we got on your program, which we've actually, since January, paid off $46,000, which- Way to go. I think pretty good. So take your monthly bills plus your minimum payments. How much is that per month, if you guys buckle down? We actually owe about $16,000 a month. $16,000 a month is your burn right now. So it's because we have two homes. Got it. And how much are you actually taking home every month? $35,000? No, we're taking home, what he brings home, about $20,000. $20,000. Okay, because $380,000, that's $31,000 gross, and you're saying you bring home $20,000. Are you guys doing any investing right now? No, we paused that because of the program. Okay. I got firm retirement. But you only bring home $20,000, and you- Well, I guess Canada takes 60% of what you make. But let's do the math here, right? You bring home $20,000, your bills are $16,000. That leaves you with $4,000 if you're lucky to attack your smallest debt, right? So we're going to do $193,000 divided by $4,000. It's going to take you four years at this rate if you just use the margin you have, making $380,000. That is soul-crushing. Or you can do it in four months. So you decide. If you're willing to sacrifice for four years to just stay on this plan and knock it out, you can. I personally wouldn't. Making $380,000, you should be done with this thing so much faster, and the boat is the thing standing in your way of freedom. Yeah. So I'm on board to do this. This is my idea, but my husband is a little bit hesitant. And why is he hesitant? Does he not feel the weight of this like you do? He does, but I kind of drive it more. So he's in agreement, and we're doing the steps. But I think to sell the boat is going to be a hard sell. I think- Although, if I put it in perspective the way you just did, that might be different. Where I find couples are successful is if one of them is honest about the thing beneath the thing. Because the boat will turn into a weird proxy war. Oh, we're just going to go to the cottage and sit on the bank and stare at each other. Like, what about this? What about our grandkids? It becomes this whole other thing if you sit down and say, I want us to be a free household. I want us to be free. I don't want the government to own us. I don't want the- They already take 60% of our paycheck. I don't want creditors to own us. I want us to be in charge of our destiny. The nerd word of it, the psychology word is agency. I want us to be agents of our future. And we can get a boat within a year. I also think y'all can contract your burn rate quite a bit too. $16,000 a month, over two properties. Y'all are living pretty large at both places, right? Yeah, probably, I'd say. So for six months, for a year, y'all could contract those expenses quite a bit and say, instead of saying, here's what everything we want to do adds up to, which is $16,000, what if y'all had an exercise? And this could be super fun. It could be full of laughter and poking at each other and making jokes, cracking jokes with each other. But say, let's pretend all we had was $9,000 a month. Can we figure that out across two properties? I bet y'all could. And then suddenly, material, like $6,000 just comes out of the ether, or $7,000 just appears, right? So think about it this way, the actual mathematics. If you sold the boat, sold the Harleys, that gives you $160,000 in cash to throw with the $193,000. Now we're down to $33,000. So now for four months, let's say by Christmas, we're going to throw $8,000 a month at these remaining debts until they're gone. Can you imagine how different Christmas is going to feel? That's the picture to paint with him. And you know the old quote, the two best days of owning a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. And I think he's not realizing how free he's going to feel when he sells that boat. And you're not going to a summer cottage in Canada in the Christmas anyway, right? You can't drive a boat across- Well, we do. Yeah, but you're not- Well, we can't drive the boat, no. I was going to say, you can't drive a boat across eight feet thick of ice, right? Can you rent a boat for three months? Yeah, can you rent a boat? Um, probably. I've never thought of that idea, actually. There's a program here in Nashville where you basically pay a monthly fee. Every week you can go over and pick the boat you want. You want a speed boat that weekend? You want a pontoon boat that weekend? A couple hundred bucks a month. You want a fishing boat? Yeah, and they service the boat. They fill it up with gas. They take all the headaches of boat ownership away from you. And there's probably somebody who lives right near you who's also broke with a boat, who had rented for you for a couple hundred bucks. And y'all would have the time of your life and have no maintenance. It'd be amazing. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.