Motivation to make budget when you make enough money

Dear Dave: My wife and I are in our 20s. We have no debt and $50,000 in the bank. Our income is $90,000 a year, and we’re cautious to live on less than we make. Still, we can’t seem to get motivated to make a budget. How can we get inspired to do this? —Isaac


Dear Isaac: Two of the biggest motivators we have are pain and pleasure. Financially, you guys don’t have any pain. You’re killing it! So, we’re going to have to figure out something associated with pleasure.

I think you need to look for something bigger than money to push you. You guys need to ask yourselves, “What are we saving for?” On a bigger scale, ask yourselves, “What can we do with this money?”

It sounds to me like you both realize money can’t be the goal. And that’s a good thing. You guys are obviously smart, gifted people. I’m sure you have ideas and goals, dreams and desires. Talk about them and write them down. By doing this, you’ll be taking the first steps toward making these things reality. When you have something specific that you want money to do, it gives you a reason to make it behave.

God calls us to manage well the resources He gives us, so that we’re able to do good things for His kingdom and His people. Broke people can’t give, so my advice would be to use your talents and resources for the good of others. —Dave

Dont follow the Jones and Joneses

The Joneses are broke. They have a lot of bills, ridiculous car payments and tricked-up mortgages. But at least they look good! Have you seen Mrs. Jones’ hair? Wow! That’s fancy! But despite the good hair, stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. You don’t need her hair, and you don’t want their debt following you 

Cosigning a car loan with family can be bad idea

Reader: My wife co-signed a loan on a 2007 car for her sister. Now, it’s being repossessed, and $23,000 is still owed on it at 20 percent. What can we do in this situation?


Dave: Tell the bank or dealer where the car is, and tell them to come pick it up. There’s no way to get out of the rest, my friend. You and your wife are going to be liable for whatever the car doesn’t bring in afterward. Let’s say it sells for $4,000. That would be subtracted from what is owed, and it will still be up to you guys to pay the rest. You could always try to negotiate to settle it for pennies on the dollar. Based on what you’ve told me, that’s a best-case scenario.

The other thing I would do is demand a full audit on the account because a 20 percent interest rate doesn’t explain why a car didn’t pay off — especially a $23,000 car. If this was a $5,000 car from a tote-the-note car lot, and they were ripping her off charging only interest — and that’s all anyone was paying, and she gave up and punted — that’s fine. You’re just looking for a little understanding of the situation. But $23,000 cars don’t generally have 20 percent interest. That’s a pretty freaky deal, and I’d want to know where the money went.

From a bank’s perspective, I don’t see how anyone would think something like this would work out. The car was going down in value the entire time, so it just doesn’t make sense to me. Of course, if you have the cash lying around and it wouldn’t damage your finances, you could just take care of things and call it Stupid Tax.

Co-signing on a loan, especially with family, is never a good idea.

Dave Ramsey on frequent job changes

Reader: I’ve been in my current job for five years. I’ve also had a second job for three of those years, but now I’d like to make a change. Do you have any advice on how to convince a potential employer that I’m a good hire, even though I had a couple of jobs in the past that I quit after a month or two?


Dave: Quitting a job after a month or so isn’t normally some kind of sin that automatically disqualifies you from being hired. It might be with some corporate goober who’s looking at things through some silly, one-size-fits-all hiring paradigm, but that alone wouldn’t be the kiss of death around my office.

Now, would we look at something like that and want to know what happened and what your explanation was? Absolutely. But if it made sense, there wouldn’t be a problem. However, if it made you sound flighty or disgruntled with things in general, we’d probably pass.

My guess is that the fields you’re interested in are like most — there’s a lot of importance put on who you know. And I don’t mean this in a negative way. Work and try to develop good relationships with people in your field and those associated with it. If that’s in place, they can honestly give out positive references.

Knowing someone within the field or at the company, or being connected to someone with a positive reputation, can help you avoid the resume slush pile. It can help cut through the mess and achieve clarity.

Keep emergency Funds and Loans in separate banks

 Dear Dave: My wife and I are debt-free except for our home, and we’re currently putting money aside for our fully loaded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Currently, we have our emergency fund account in the same bank as our checking and savings accounts. Do you think we should move it to a different bank?

Steve



Dear Steve: I wouldn’t worry too much about that if I were you. The only exception to that might be if you had loans that you owed to that same bank. Then, I would probably move my emergency fund out of there just in case something went wrong with the loans.

Some commercial loan documents now give the bank the right to take money out of your account to pay the loan — without your permission. If you had a car loan, for instance, with that particular bank, I wouldn’t keep a bunch of money in that bank. They normally don’t do that unless you’re way behind on the bill — and then it gets pretty adversarial.

Sometimes there can be things like a simple clerical error, and there’s no chance of that happening if the money’s in another bank. But in your situation, I don’t see any harm in you being there.

Dave