High Income, High Debt: You Have More Options

Hey, you’re back with the Get Out of Debt Guy. I’m Steve Rhode, the old aged bald, authentic, wise, I guess, maybe, Get Out of Debt Guy. And with me as always is the young, invigorated, less fragile, new Get Out of Debt Guy, Damon Day. Say hello, Damon. Why are you always so hard on yourself, Steve? I don’t know. We’re self-deprecating around here. The bottom line is, I really don’t give a shit what people think about me. Word of the day, deprecating. Well, it’s better than defecating. I was going to say, not to be confused with… Self-defecating. That’s how you make yourself feel really shitty. That’s why we’re not doing a video podcast. This podcast is rated PG, whatever. Self-defecating. When you make yourself feel really shitty. I like that. Smells like affordability. Yeah, it zings right by me. Self-defecating. That self-defecating humor you got. It actually does make sense. Think about it. I liked it. Yeah, okay. Self-defecating. Make yourself feel crap. Yeah. I’m going to have to write that down with smells taste like affordability. Oh, God. All right. So, Damon. Yeah. What are we talking about today, Steve? Well, we’ve kind of teased this in past podcasts. This is why you should be subscribed. Damn it. Because a thread of ideas and topics that we’re going through. We teased last time that we’re going to be talking about why your salary is actually your biggest asset. Because your income is the reason some people feel like a fraud. Because they say to themselves, how can I make this much money and still be this damn far in debt? But here’s what you need to understand. Your income isn’t the reason you’re stuck. Your income is the reason you’re going to get out. And starting today, Damon and I are going to show you exactly why earning 10 or 15 or $20,000 a month makes you better positioned for debt resolution than someone earning half of that. This is the episode that flips everything you believe about your situation. Before we get into that, Damon, I would like to cover some of the news that is going out on the new Get Out of Debt Guy daily newsletter. So I’m back to covering the breaking stuff in the debt world. And it’s information that’s relatively important for both consumers and regulators and people in the financial world. If you want to subscribe, go to getoutofdebt.org/subscribe. It’s free and you’ll be in the know. But I thought this statistic that came out today was interesting that 73% of credit card debt is not from overspending. It’s from the essentials. Right? You see that too, don’t you? Yeah, that’s what we’ve been talking about in every episode for the last year or two. Which is your money is losing value every day and it feels like everything is just so expensive, which is why we talked, I think we were talking last week about 250,000 is the new pour. Yeah, that’s right. It’s the new, I need to get on the snap program. Yeah, too bad you’re not eligible, but only 27% of credit card debt people say is discretionary spending. And today that most of the credit card debt is based on credit repairs, medical bills, home repairs, just routine getting through the week. Credit repairs? Did you mean to say car repairs? I meant to say credit card debt. Did I say credit repair? You said credit repairs. I’m like, that’s an expensive program. Oh, sorry. No. Credit repairs. Credit card debt. There you go. I had the next story on my mind. So right now, here’s the average. Gen X averages $9,600 in credit card debt. And the overall average is about $5,600. And the average number of cards per adult is about seven. So here’s, this is why this story really hit me hard. 35% of people with balances expect to carry them indefinitely. They’re just going to stay stuck in debt. 9,500 strikes me as low. I know it’s an average. Yeah. And I know how averages work, but I would not have guessed that. You would have thought it was higher based on what you said. Yeah. So it must be other generations carrying the rest of the debt. 9,500 for Gen X seems awfully low, which is good. That’s a good thing, I think. Yeah. But the credit card debt is at an all-time high right now. So which generation is pushing that up? Well, every generation. I mean, even my Boomer generation is struggling in retirement and average daily expenses are landing on cards. Yeah. I mean, it’s very common now. You go to the grocery store, it goes on a credit card. Yeah. And a lot of us, we like to go out and say, okay, well, yeah, I’m going to put it on a credit card. This is how we trick ourselves. We go, oh, I’m going to pay the credit card off. I’m just going to use the credit card for the points and things like that. But things are so expensive these days that for most people, that idea of I’m going to use the card and then pay it at the end of the month, it never gets fully paid. Yeah. And I like the idea that you can shop for groceries online or have it delivered by Instacart or whatever. And now they offer buy now, pay later plans. Yeah. And as we talked about last week, now they’re starting to add these buy now, pay later plans on the credit reports. Yeah. Yeah. And the more you have, the more it dings you. So that doesn’t help. So another story- It’s becoming the new normal. Like it’s normal. Like, oh, you got your groceries, 400 bucks. Well, you can break that up into four easy no-waste payments if you click here. Why not? I can’t afford it otherwise. But- Yeah, the lettuce will go bad before you’re done paying for it. I don’t know if this next story is going to surprise you or not. And just this week, both you and I were communicating back and forth with Josh Cohen. He’s a federal student loan attorney that deals with all the federal student loan problems. And apparently, you know, the current administration had announced at the start of the year that they were going to go start garnishing student loan holders. They’re going to start garnishing their wages for their back-to payments. But apparently, one of the problems is there’s 8.8 million federal student loan holders that are in default. Of course. So, I mean, you could see that would be kind of a political nightmare. We’ve been saying this for years. You had a situation where people didn’t pay federal student loans for years, like years, right? When the pandemic hit, it wasn’t like a six-month sabbatical. It was years to the point where people just kind of forgot about them, right? People weren’t saving up money, and I know those are going to hit. It was out of sight, out of mind, not in the budget. And then we roll around three, four, five years later, and all of a sudden it’s like, oh, now you got to start paying. Now we’re changing all these programs around. Now you’re going to have to be paying more because we’re getting rid of some of these other ones that were lower payments. And now after four or five years of not thinking about your student loans or not having to actually budget for them, oh, congratulations, you have to start paying $1,000 a month. Yeah, and you got to get caught up. Yeah. And we’re in a situation where everything costs more than it did five years ago as well, right? So you have people that are already getting pinched. They’re already in debt. And you have credit card debts at an all-time high. And then the federal government comes in and is like, oh, by the way, you know, it’s Johnny. And you got like a thousand bucks a month. Oh, no problem. Let me clear some space in my schedule for you. It ain’t going to happen. Yeah. What percentage of people actually took that student loan payment holiday off and set that money aside every month? It got reallocated. One percent? Yeah. Maybe? Maybe. I’m shocked. Eight million people are in default. Yeah, 20 percent. Didn’t even see it coming. 20 percent of borrowers are in default. So here’s what the administration did. Beginning of the year, we’re getting tough. This is ridiculous. People owe this money. We’re going to start garnishing wages. Well, apparently they just came out with an announcement that said, never mind, it’ll start July 1st. So somebody found the can to kick down the road yet again. Oh, they’re going to push it again because they’re going to have to wait till after the midterms. Yeah, absolutely. They’re going to be like, July, not a good time to garnish eight million people. Let’s push that to January 2027. So those are two big stories that went out in the newsletter. Actually, if our listeners are hearing this on Thursday, they got in early, they subscribed to the podcast, then they’re ahead of the game because these are two stories that are going out in Friday’s morning email. Yeah. Well, the reason to subscribe is because we take boring, stressful subjects like debt and we actually lighten it up a little bit, give you a little laugh on the way to work or whatever. That’s kind of unique, I think, right? Well, plus people can listen, they can read the newsletter on their phone when they’re taking their bathroom break because they’re truly self-defecating at that point. I knew you were circling back, Steve. It was too good to use once, I had to use it twice. That joke’s good for a number two. He’ll be here all night, folks. I’m sorry. Hey, once you get me going, I can’t stop. Oh, God. Well, it’s that $12.99 all-you-can-eat sushi you had last night. So if you’re in the Raleigh, North Carolina area, there’s this place, it used to be Rock and Roll Sushi and they changed the name probably because they went bankrupt. Yeah, I was going to say probably because all the lawsuits from either the self-defecating that was happening after the all-you-can-eat sushi. No, but- You’re right, they went bankrupt because I can’t wrap my head around the numbers. Tell them the numbers, Steve, this place. The place is now called Neo Sushi and I heard about it from some friends and I couldn’t believe it. So Pam and I went yesterday and tried it. They also have, I think, the all-you-can-eat lunch and this is one of those conveyor sushi places where the sushi comes around and you just pick what you want. The senior, because I got the senior rate was- Of course you did. Yeah, it was $12.99 and I didn’t get a soda, I just got water, so maybe soda is extra, I don’t know. But it was $12.99 all-you-can-eat. We had a lot more than- Sushi. Yeah, sushi. And they also have an iPad there on the table where you can order some things from the kitchen, like a bento box or dumplings or stuff like that. And there’s no additional charge for it. They just make it up fresh and bring it to you. I don’t know, man, it is the deal of the century. The food was delicious. They can’t turn a profit on that. If you go to this grocery store and you just get one of those prepackaged ones where you got the sushi chef and the grocery store making it up that day, those are like $13 just for one of those little things. Yeah, well they did say- So how are you running an entire restaurant? They did say, I think it’s for non-seniors, I think it’s $16.99. Oh, still. Yeah, I know. And for dinner, I think they said it’s $24.99, but they have some additional items on the dinner menu. Still, even $24.99 for all you can eat. Yeah, Steve sent me a picture. He had all the plates stacked up and literally he stacked up the plates in front of him and it went, as you sit in the booth, the plates were stacked up all the way up to his chin. That’s how many plates of food they had for $12.99 each. I was like, well, I guess I know where I’m eating when I come out to visit. Yeah. Well, when you come out, you can take me there. Sure. Hey, lunch is on me. I got you. Ball out. Yeah. Longtime listeners will remember that one. Yeah. All right. Better get some good karma today. I don’t feel good. I feel broke. Where that Taco Bell, bitch? My meal was $2.00. Yeah, so you gotta go look that up on YouTube. I don’t remember what the title of it is. Taco Bell Karma. Yeah, it’s like drive-through. What do you call those drive-through pay it forward? Pay it forward. Taco Bell pay it forward. Pay it forward scheme. Yeah, Taco Bell pay it forward scheme. Oh, it’s funny as hell. All right. So let’s talk about why high income and high debt is actually a solvable equation. This is something that, it just bugs the hell out of me sometimes. It’s probably my own pet peeve. I understand why, and we were talking about that this week. I understand why people feel like they have no options if they’re making good money. But you have options. You just have options that you don’t want to choose because if you have low income and high debt, it’s extremely difficult. You got few options and really, really tough choices. If you have high income and high debt, the problem is solvable. You got more options and faster timelines. But I think you’ll agree with me, Damon, that when I see people with high income and high debt, they don’t feel the same pressure as the low income high debt folks. And so they just drag their feet and not take action. Yeah, we talked about a little bit last week too, where the affordability of the payments where they’re making the payments and it almost kind of absolves them of the need to have to make a decision, at least in the short term. Whereas if you are a little bit lower income and you just cannot make the payment, you’re choosing between the mortgage and the credit card, it almost makes that decision to let the payments go and file for bankruptcy or settle your debt or something like that. It makes that decision easier because you’re faced with that choice. You have no other alternative other than to miss that credit card payment or you’re missing the mortgage. But when you’re higher income, you still can say, well, I’ll float along another month and I’m going to get that bonus or I’m going to turn the corner on the income here. I’m going to do that side hustle. And you can tell yourself that for six months, a year, two years. And then all of a sudden you become like that client I shared about last week or the week before that carried a couple hundred thousand in debt for 10 years before she was finally like, I got to get off this treadmill. But, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s ironic. Well, people will say, no, I don’t need to. Nothing’s on fire. I don’t need to do something about it right now. And I’ll deal with it next month. And Damon, so many times in my 30 plus years, I have watched people kick the can down the road only to get to that next month where they can’t afford it. They’re going to miss it anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s our, it’s our favorite word here on the podcast. Yeah. Hyperbolic discounting. Hyperbolic discounting. Look that up. Google that. Gpt it. Actually two words. Technically. We use it so often it has become one. Yeah. We just say it is one word. Hyperbolic discounting. It’s just, it’s the longest word in the English language. There you go. So the, you know, the other thing with higher income earners, when they do finally get to a point where they’re like, I got to get out of this debt. One of the challenges they often face is they make too much money to just file a chapter seven. And so that option oftentimes is just off the table. So they are having to look at different strategies, especially, you know, settlement, things like that, where you’re having to make those hard choices of, you know, should I let the payment go? What’s going to happen when I do? And I think I can remember high income earners that I’ve helped over the years that have said things like, we can’t take any action that’ll hurt our credit or get rid of our debt right now because we need to keep living in this school district. My kids need to keep going to that school. The private school will not let us pay any less and we can’t get rid of the horses. Yeah. And you know, and I understand that. And you know, as you know, because we talk often, I see stuff like this a lot. And I’m no Dave Ramsey, right? So, you know, in some aspects, I wish I was Dave Ramsey, but I’m not. And what I mean by that is I’m not an absolutist where I’m like, well, you know, you got to pull yourself up by your big boy pants and get rid of the horses and get rid of the private school and all that kind of stuff. That’s not my job. My job is to analyze the situation for the client and then prioritize. Let’s prioritize everything. And if that private school is a priority, and that’s actually quite common where we do to maintain that lifestyle for the next year or two years or three years until your son graduates or whatever it is. And if it’s possible, we’ll try to put together a plan that allows them to do that. Because the way I look at it is you only got one life, right? We got one shot at this and everybody’s in different stages. And I’m kind of in the stage right now too, where my kids are on the older side. My oldest is now in college. My middle son is a junior. In fact, when we were talking about student loans and I made that joke about January 2027, we’re going to kick the can down the road. I just had this moment where, holy crap, my middle son graduates in 2027. I’m about to have two kids out of high school and my daughter’s right behind him in junior high right now. And my point of all that is there’s decisions I would make financially that are different than how I would decide on if they were really, really young or if they were already grown and out of the house. There’s things that I’d be willing to sacrifice if they were grown and out of the house that I’m not willing to sacrifice why they’re here to have this short time with them. Yeah. And you shouldn’t be judged for that. Yeah. And the Dave Ramsey type strategy doesn’t account for that. And I think that’s bullshit. Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, when my daughter was in her last year of high school, I realized how hard I had worked and how much I had missed. And so I basically just took off that last year so I could spend more time with her and be engaged and involved. And that was priceless. Yeah. Because I mean, I don’t think a lot of people are going to be 70 years old in their house, maybe by themselves, kids off different state and sit back and go, you know, I’m so glad I spent the last couple of years I had with my kids just working three jobs and paying that debt off so that when they finally moved out, I was debt free. You know, it’s great to be debt free. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive to be debt free, but maybe there’s other ways that we can be debt free and still be there with our family. I agree with you. And wait, let me rephrase, not maybe there are other ways you can be debt free and still be there for your family. Yeah. It all comes down to decisions. So, you know, let’s talk about why you don’t have to, if you’re making good money, it’s just about redirecting where that money is going and using it effectively. And one of the ways that you can do it is you could pull that money together to think about that. If you’re not eligible for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which is the sweetest deal ever to give people a fresh start. Nobody can argue that, the math on the Chapter 7 bankruptcy. You just can’t argue it. No tax liability eliminates all legal action. You get a fresh start and start over in like three months and it costs you a couple grand. I mean, it’s an amazing deal. As long as you don’t pay attention to the signs along the freeway, bankruptcy, $6.99. Don’t do those. Don’t do that. Don’t. You get what you pay for. But yet from a society point of view, people always have this negative attitude about bankruptcy. Again, I am not telling everyone that they should go bankrupt. I’m just saying you need the facts in order to make good decisions. One of the ways that you can get out of debt is you could actually settle your debt. I mean, high income earners can accumulate settlement funds faster and can actually settle debt. You want to talk about that, Damon? Yeah. I mean, obviously on this podcast, we’re talking about an alternative, which is settlement. We’re not saying everybody rush out and don’t pay your bills. Whatever we say, always preface it with this. You could possibly do this if you have a plan, you research it, you understand what you’re doing. And again, you have a plan. Two guys on this podcast said don’t pay my bills. So that’s what I did. Right. Here’s another analogy that I love is you can’t fix your car by picking the tool first. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if you are a high income earner, you find that a Chapter 7 bankruptcy is either for you or just not possible because you make too much money. We do have other options. And when we talk about other options, yeah, we’ll talk about, you know, Dave Ramsey’s strategy and more of a traditional payoff and consolidation and credit counseling. But you know, if you think about these things on like a line, right, where you’ve got Dave Ramsey’s strategy on your left and you’ve got a bankruptcy on your right, I’m not saying that’s how you lay it out. If you want to think of it like that, if you can’t do a bankruptcy, a settlement strategy would be the next thing in line if your priority is cheapest, fastest way out. Yeah. Right. We’re not talking about the downsides of that right now, but we’re just saying, okay, a settlement would be cheaper and faster than credit counseling and, you know, paying this off in full, obviously. So what Steve’s talking about is if you make good income and you’re paying $3,000 a month just to service your debt and you plot that out and you, if you listen to what we talked about last time and you know your numbers and you’ve got it plotted out and you went to a financial calculator and you figured out how long it was going to take you and how much money per month you were going to have to shell out. And you said, well, wait a minute, that’s going to strap me every single month. It’s not likely to work. What if I took that same money and I redirected it into my savings account for a settlement fund? I withheld the funds from the creditors. And then when the time was right, I used those funds to offer settlements and just get rid of the debt. So rather than paying $10,000 at 20% interest, I take that $300 a month that I’m paying as a minimum payment on that card. I start saving it. And then at some point I go in and I offer, you know, 3000 bucks, 4000 bucks to just settle that card out and be done with it. It works for some people. It’s like you said, for some people. Yeah. It’s not a magic wand that works for everyone because I have seen people who are just barely scraping by saying, I’m going to tell my creditors to shove it and they can accept 10 cents on the dollar and like it or not. Oh, I love Reddit. Oh, I know. Well, you try. By that, I mean, don’t get your financial advice from somebody on Reddit, please. Because I hear all this stuff like, well, that’s a great way to see the inside of a Yeah. That’s fine. Go ahead. Yeah. You go to the creditor all righteous like holier than thou and you tell them what they have to do. See how that works out for you. You know, you go to a creditor and you say, please help me. I can’t pay. What are they going to say? Oh, well, in that case, don’t worry about it. Yeah. Well, this is why people should contact you for a free consultation. day at damonday.com and just talk through your options for free with Damon and start to develop a plan that’s based on truth and fact and logic instead of Reddit. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s it’s dragnet over here. Just the facts, ma’am. I used to love that show. Just the facts, ma’am. Yeah. So so and the other thing, too, when we’re talking about settlement, it doesn’t always have to be a lump sum. Right. And so everybody’s situation is different. But the key to success in settlement, it’s not about a monthly payment. There’s no monthly payments. That’s why these settlement companies always annoy the crap out of me because they’re trying to sell. There’s no idea of this lower monthly payment. And that’s not how it works. Right. It’s about where we’re going to come up with the money. And everybody’s got different circumstances where they’re they’re saving that money every month. They’ve got a family member that can loan it to them. They’ve got funds in the house, sometimes 401k. There’s other places that that you can get funds from. But the key to success is figuring out, OK, if we’re going to do this, how long is it realistically going to take? The longer you have to drag it out, the less likely you’re going to enjoy the process. But there are scenarios where you don’t necessarily have to have a lump sum. Right. You can do negotiated settlements and do a settlement with payments. Or even if you’re in a situation where you don’t have any money at all. Sometimes you’re not even going to do a settlement. You’re going to negotiate a no interest payment plan with the creditors, which, you know, a no interest payment plan over four or five years is still a hell of a lot better than the current payment plan you’re on with minimum payments at 25 or 30 percent over the next 25 or 30 years. And this is why it’s also important to have a plan is because let’s say you have 10 creditors and three of them are absolutely hard asses and won’t do anything or will only offer a plan that makes no sense. Well, you can’t have a successful plan if you settle one or two creditors. You need to have a plan that is going to resolve the entire situation. And so one difficult creditor. Yeah, maybe we can get past that. But depends on who you owe. Yeah, every credit is different for sure. Again, why I say don’t just stop paying your bills and I’m going to call them a negotiate. You got to have a plan going into it. Know who you owe what money to and know what they’re likely to do. Yeah, because some of these creditors sue. And I have noticed that they seem to be on average more sue happy post pandemic than they used to be. I’m seeing and this stuff changes all the time. But I’m seeing more and more creditors getting more aggressive now than they used to be. And I think a lot of that is just because they’re making up for lost time and lost money when they got so lax during the pandemic. During the pandemic, it was like, oh, you can’t pay. OK. Oh, wait. It was pretty much like just let them know you couldn’t pay. And they’re like, all right, call us back next month. So since we’re now post pandemic and they’re not as lax, does that make them ex lax? That’s very self-deficating. It’s a theme for this show and it’s just really shitty. Yeah. So now, just because they’re more aggressive, it doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means you have to understand that going into it and where the money is going to come from and how long it takes you to raise that money is even more important because no creditors going to sue you right away. It’s not like you miss a payment and then, boop, lawsuit. Hello. It doesn’t work that way. It’s on a timeline. Sometimes you have six, eight months, six months, six months, six months, six months, six, eight months. Sometimes you have two years. Sometimes they never sue. So it’s just a matter of understanding who you owe what money to, coming up with a strategy, coming up with a plan, looking at the pros and the cons, and then deciding if that’s an option that is comfortable for you because it’s your money. You know, you’re the one that has to decide if it’s something that you’re, if the juice is worth the squeeze, as we say. Well, we talked about Sachs, Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, all part of the same corporate family that filed bankruptcy this week for protection from their creditors. And they’re applauded for that decision. So they took action and did something about their situation. And anybody listening to us right now should not feel judged, should not feel stupid or shameful or anything else. You just need a plan and then let’s move past it. I think it’s funny now, you know, when I filed bankruptcy in 1990, there was no information out there to help me better understand my situation. And I felt, you know, lost, alone, afraid, confused, ashamed. I felt all those things because I was just suffering in silence. And now you flash forward all these decades based on everything I’ve seen and what I know and what I’ve written and everything else. Now I’m like, eh. Yeah. Nah, it was very, it was very similar for me. You know, I filed bankruptcy in 2011. It was finished in 2012. And, you know, my feelings on it were the same. Luckily, I had Steve at that time to kind of help kind of walk me through it. But, you know, my, this was after the crash in 08, right. And everything just went to shit. And, and I put the bankruptcy off for a number of years. And, and, you know, there was some strategy behind that with some of the debts that I had and the longer I drug it out, the better it was going to be. But I was still apprehensive about filing because my thought process was, I’m a financial consultant. How the hell can I file bankruptcy? How is that going to look? And the crazy thing about it is it really changed the way I saw everything and the way once, once I went through it myself and realized, wait, that was actually fairly decent. An old George Carlin joke just popped into my head about. About his, everybody likes the smell of their own farts and see a flashback of him and going, Hmm, that one’s fairly decent. I think I’ll stay home today and do some reading in the closet. I don’t know why that popped into my head, but, but my point is I went through it and I went, wow, I got rid of a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt. It, you know, it only took a couple of months. I had a brand new credit card in the mail, like the same day my debt was discharged. All of this stuff that I bought into that you’re told about bankruptcy, because I was the same way in the very beginning, right? All bankruptcy is bad. It’s the, it’s the option of last resort. You should never consider it unless, and that’s how we all are taught and we all think. And then when I went through it myself, I was like, Hmm, that one’s fairly decent. Right. That’s right. So, you know, it really did change and helped a lot of my clients because it, it modified how I looked at things and went, wait a minute, rather than saying, okay, bankruptcy, we’ll look at that. If nothing else works, it became, let’s just look at everything at the same time. Let’s not assume bankruptcy is bad. Let’s look at all of it. And if we don’t want to file bankruptcy, that’s fine, but let’s make sure we understand what is it about the bankruptcy? How would that affect your specific situation that we don’t like? And we’re saying no to, and oftentimes a client will come to me and they don’t want to file bankruptcy, which is normal. And then we go through it and they’re like waiting for that other shoe to drop about the bad part. Right. And it’s like, no, here’s how, here’s what your life would look like if you filed the bankruptcy. And then they turn it into George Carlin. No, that’s fairly decent. George Carlin, speaking of him, the, you know how he, uh, how he rated farts. He had the fizz. No, he had the fizz, the fazz, the fizz fazz, the rip, the rip shit, the tear ass and a number two. Yeah. Carlin was very self-defecating. Yeah. He was a leader in self-defecating humor. Yeah. So, so the point of all of that was when Steve says, you know, there’s no judgment here, there’s not. How do you think we learn most of the stuff that we know? It’s cause we’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt and had to match. Yeah. And the funny thing is that when we both went through it at different stages of, of history, uh, it turns out that our biggest perceived failure by some is actually our greatest strength to help others. Yeah. So, all right. So why you should feel empowered and not ashamed because shame says, I make good money, I shouldn’t be here, but reality says I make good money. So talking to Damon, this can actually get fixed. If you have money coming in, you have leverage that most people don’t have. And that’s not shameful. That’s useful. So get this shame narrative out of your damn head and let’s start talking about options and reality. And today is the day that we retire that shame. We’re in problem solving mode now and your income isn’t your enemy. It’s your weapon. So last week we talked about why just pay more than the minimum debt just doesn’t work at high debt levels. The math is against you and the math is math. This week we talked about how to make the math work for you and some decisions that you can make. And, uh, we talked earlier in the month about the January audit, how you calculated your total debt. And now you know why that number isn’t as scary as it seemed. Your income can move that number faster than you thought. So next week, it’s our final episode in the January series. And what actually happens in the first 30 days of taking action. And we’re going to walk you through exactly what to expect, what calls you’ll get, what to say, what to do. No mysteries, no fear, just a clear picture of the process. It’s the episode that takes you from understanding to action. So January has been the foundation, knowing your numbers, understanding why old approaches don’t work, seeing your income as an asset, because it is. Now February, we start building on that foundation. Stay subscribed. I know this has been great, but the best is coming. So this week’s exercise, it’s very simple. Calculate how much you’re currently spending on minimum payments each month. I know a lot of you don’t want to know that, but just sit there and figure out exactly how much money every month you have going out the door. It will probably make you a little bit sick. So make sure you get all of them. That number represents your monthly leverage. That’s the money that you could be using to fund your escape. Just know that number for now. We’ll use it soon. You’re not a high income earner who’s bad with money. You’re a high income earner with a solvable problem in the resources to solve it. That’s, that’s the truth. So hold onto it and I will see you next time. Peace.