Paying Back Debt as Self-Punishment (and Findom)

to the other guy podcasts, I’m Steve Rhode, the Get Out of Debt guy. And with me as always is Damon Day, the new Get Out of Debt guy. But I have come to learn and accept that my role in all of this is for people to call Damon or reach them at damonday.com. D a M O N D a Y.com and call me the other guy.

Yeah. That’s kind of the running joke. At least a couple of times a week, somebody will call and be like, yeah, I found you. I don’t, he was on a podcast with that other guy and I always laughed cause I was like, you know, it’s actually his show, but he’s, he’s just the other guy, I’ve accepted my role in life.

That is, that’s my role. I am 100% famous in my own mind. That’s right. I’m very happy being the other guy, just because, you know, I spend every day writing and researching and, and, you know, going deep on these things.

This week, I actually started a new series. If somebody has not subscribed to the daily weekday newsletter, it’s free at, uh, get out of debt.org. Um, I started a new series. I should have called it what’s this bullshit, but it’s actually, they said, what every day I’m just, uh, debunking another myth that you hear out there.

So every day is like a crisis guide. If this has happened to you, here’s what you need to do right now. Uh, you know, bust the bullshit guide. They said what, and then the most important financial news stories of the day that affect your wallet.

So I’m actually doing something over there as the other guy. Yeah. The other, you should have just got the other guy.com. It’s probably taken.

Yeah, but Hey, hopefully anybody listening has a long commute because we’ve got quite a doozy of a show. And today is a doozy. And I have something I haven’t told you yet, Damon. Oh, I always love surprises when we’re doing the podcast and it’s not an STD.

Oh, perfect. Um, Robinhood, the online trading platform where you can trade stocks and options and all that other stuff. Yeah. They let everybody jump into SpaceX.

Yeah. Well, um, I’m actually going to open an AI agentic trading account. Ooh, go on. I’m going to put a thousand dollars in it to start and I’m going to see how I can make that money grow.

And I’ll report back as we go, you know, each month I’ll report. That’d be fun. See how it goes. I, when, um, you know, crypto trading came out, I did the same sort of thing.

I put money in, I think it was a couple of grand or something and tried my hand at crypto trading and that was an utter failure, so we’ll see what this turns out to be. Well, back years and years ago, you used to do like, you did something similar with lending club as well. You put some money in and talk about, you know, when, when they used to let people invest in the notes, that was always fun, those were really good returns. Yeah.

And then it’s like, like anything else that’s good, you know, like a good show on Netflix that you’re into canceled, right? Just like, Oh, you guys like this? Oh, you’re earning good money now canceled. You can’t invest in notes, you know?

Well, that’s how it started. It was peer lending. And then somebody gave him a taste of, you know, private venture money and they kicked all us peer lenders to the curb. Yeah.

Yeah. It, yeah, it was well, cause the money was too good. Right. It was like, then, then big money came in and was like, screw you little guys.

We want to take over all of this. My favorite. So, well now I have, I don’t have any qualms about settling lending club debts. Let’s just say that now I’m like, yeah, whatever we can stop paying them and settle it.

My favorite lending debt story was I contacted them again. This was years ago and said, Hey, I’d like to do a story on lending club, the peer to peer lending network. And do you have anybody in the Raleigh, North Carolina area that I might be able to talk to? And they came back, they said, Steve, we’ve got the perfect person.

He’s taken a couple of loans from us. He’s a chef in the area. He’s really enthusiastic about it. And, you know, here, here’s how you can connect with him.

They gave, he gave his permission to them to let me know. Uh, and so I contacted him and I met and we sat down and I recorded an interview with him. And after about 30 minutes, he goes, can you turn the recorder off? He goes, can I ask you something off the record?

I went, yeah. He goes, Steve, I’m so screwed. I don’t know what to do. At the end of the conversation, I had talked him into filing bankruptcy and discharging his lending club notes.

Yeah. Well, you know, what’s funny is back in the day, I mean, it’s, it’s been a while since they let us peons invest in those lending club notes, but I used to always get so conflicted when clients would come to me and say, Hey, I don’t know what to do. And I’d get so conflicted when clients would come to me and they’d have notes. And again, you know, my, my first obligation is to my client, not some unknown investor, but still it would be on my, like, I had no problems.

Oh, he chased bank? Yeah, it’s diamond, whatever. Screw that guy, you know? But now it’s like, ah, this is, you know, maybe somebody’s, you know, extra money or it’s their investment.

And that’s like the individual guy. And then I was like, well, and then I would be like, well, they’re, they don’t have all of their money in one note. But I did have, you know, it was harder for me to be like, justifying it in my own mind, like, Hey, we got to negotiate this, even if the clients are going bankrupt or whatever, but like anything else, it’s, it’s an investment, you invest it, you know, you know, there’s risks, there’s going to be some defaults. But the good thing about those notes is the defaults, at least when I invested in them back in the day, you still got great rates of return.

You just kind of knew that, well, you know, four or five, six, 7% of them were going to, you know, stop performing at some point. And you, you know, you have a little bit of money in a whole bunch of different loans, so you spread the risk around. Oh yeah. I think the best rate of return over the entire loan portfolio graded from A to F, you know, A being the best credit score, lowest risk, uh, was the DEF notes.

It just proved that how much money lenders are making off subprime notes. Yeah. The, the highest risk still returned the highest amount, even though the default was the highest. Yeah.

It was all factored in. Yeah. And it, and it smoked the, the, the grade A credit rating rates. It was like safe, you know, so unless you had a catastrophic issue and like 50% of the people just stopped paying it.

And you know, you know why? Because I, you know, when you, when you, when you talk to people and they’re paying 28%, you know, on a lending club note or whatever, and you know, there’s just so focused on the emotion of not defaulting, I gotta pay it. I can’t go bankrupt. I can’t do that.

And so even if you get into these quote unquote risky notes, most people aren’t going to default. They’re still going to pay 30% interest for five years and they’ll drain their savings and retirement to do it. And, and that’s actually going to tie into, I know, you know, did I set you up perfectly or what? You did.

That’s going to tie into our Duesenberg of a topic. I actually, Steve, how long have I been helping people? How many years have I been doing it? 20, 25 years or something like that. I don’t know.

I, and, and this happened yesterday and I, I, I racked my brain to try to figure out if this has ever happened to me before I don’t think it has, I mean, maybe years and years ago, but I had somebody call, I, you know, I, I think she, you know, heard our podcast and hopefully she’s, I doubt she’ll ever tune in again, but hopefully she’s definitely not listening today. Yeah. Well, hopefully she’ll, she will maybe in a few years when she realized I was probably, you know, right. She might tune back in, but, um, she actually hung up on me.

I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen. No, this is, she’s not a client. She just called in or, you know, requested a free call, I think from the show. And, you know, it, it will go into what happened, but it, she, the gist of it was just the questions I was asking made her so uncomfortable.

Yeah. Not, she couldn’t. Because you were asking inappropriate questions. Oh no, we’ll get into what the questions I was asking, why it made her uncomfortable.

Yeah, you were just making her face reality. And I wasn’t even making her face reality. I was just merely bringing up some things that we should discuss. Right.

Well, they’re pertinent and relevant. I, I know about this conversation because after it happened, Damon called me and goes, you will fucking not believe what just happened. I was in the parking lot of Costco waiting to go. So it worked out for me because I was finishing up the call.

I had to go in and get some pizzas. My daughter had some friends over, um, to do a swim party. And Kathy’s like, Hey, run to Costco and get some pizzas. Uh, pro saving tip for you.

If you don’t have a Costco membership or Sam’s club or Sam’s club, I, I’ve been Costco for, for years and years, but dude, you could get whole pizzas. And they’re actually, I, my wife doesn’t like them, but my kids like them, which is the main thing. They’re perfectly fine. I like them $9.99 for a whole large pizza.

You go in there and you get two large pizzas to feed the kids that are coming over. So 20 bucks, well, 20, like $2 and change. Cause I always get the hot dog and soda for a dollar 50 to feed my fat butt on the way out. But yeah, Costco’s 20 minute drive, but Hey, I’ll do the extra 20 minute drive because when we got pizza this weekend, it was 80 effing dollars at some place up by my house, but yeah, if you don’t have a Costco membership is.

I think, I don’t even know what the memberships are. I think they’re like 65 bucks or something like that for the year. Sam’s club, Costco, the money you can save is ridiculous. Even the restaurant, have you ever gone in there and got the restaurant gift cards they have?

They’re usually 20, 25% off. Yeah, the way Costco does it is you buy like a hundred dollar gift card or whatever, and it’s, you know, 75 bucks or 79.99 and so you go in there and you look and it’s like, if there’s a place that you are going to eat at anyway, or, you know, there’s movie ticket discounts, they all have different stuff. You’re getting like a built-in 20, 25% discount just by planning ahead and grabbing that stuff. So I was at Sam’s club this morning and for their pizza deal, it’s the same price.

Right. Um, we’re very close to it, but they, they had a sign up there that said, uh, you can come in and get it. We’ll deliver it to you at the curb or we’ll deliver it to you at home. So I wonder if the delivery fee costs more than the pizza.

I don’t know. Well, I don’t cause is it, is it, you got, now you got to investigate, is this Costco delivery or are they outsourcing this to DoorDash or whatever? But if they’re outsourcing this to DoorDash, it’s the delivery fee is going to be more than the pizza. I wouldn’t be, get it yourself.

If Sam’s club didn’t use Walmart spark drivers. Well, it’s still going to be more than, yeah. Well, I, Steve, you know, you have an assignment in addition to setting up a Robinhood account. You need to order a pizza from Costco and tell us what it costs to get delivered.

I don’t have a tomato, tomato, tomato, tomato. It doesn’t matter. Sam’s club, Costco, same thing. Pick your poison, whatever.

But anyway, it’s a great investment. There’s my investment advice for today. Get a Sam’s club or a Costco. You can’t beat the hot dog or slice of pizza lunch special.

I saved the entire annual membership on getting those two pizzas at Costco versus the local place by me. The entire membership just paid for itself. Cause I bought two damn pizzas and a hot dog. Well, you know who didn’t buy two damn pizzas and a hot dog?

That woman that you talked to yesterday. So yeah, I was, I, I called her on the way to Costco and we had a great conversation until the very end. And, um, you know, the situation was, and you know, I, I, I don’t, I didn’t feel bad, I was more surprised when, you know, she abruptly ended the call because she’s not a client of mine. She’s not paying me.

I don’t even have a horse in the race on this. I’m just literally offering her a free advice. She’s 71 years old. Okay.

Let me just paint the picture. She’s 71 years old. She is on social security, no assets. I think no retirement, social security alone right now.

Right. Right. As of right now, all she has is social security, 40 grand in debt on credit cards, but basically, you know, trying to survive because she’s only getting social security. And again, I mentioned she was 71 years old, so we’re not talking about a 30 year old that’s out there.

Now she’s been trying to get a job. She got 40 grand in credit card debt and 40 grand in IRS debt, $80,000 in debt that she cannot afford on social security. Okay. She says she has a potential job lined up.

That’s supposed to start next week. That’s a remote job, which is great. Pays $40 an hour. I don’t know the details of the job other than the, when she was describing the job to me.

I was like 50, 50, is this a legit job or is this kind of one of those things where it’s like, Hey, you know, work from home, 40 bucks an hour, you know, that kind of stuff. And it doesn’t pan out. Yeah. It sounds like a lot of the scams that I’ve written about, but the bottom, the bottom line is she didn’t even have it yet.

Right. It was like, she was supposed to start it in the next week or two. And so we were talking, I was like, well, obviously if, you know, and she said it was gonna be full time. And so I was saying, well, you know, your situation today is very different than your situation is going to be if that pans out where, you know, you’re making social security only versus, you know, more than doubling your income for this job.

And so we’re, we’re going through all that stuff and it’s like, okay, well, you know, regardless of whether you get that job, you’re 71. You’ve got no savings. And I kept, you know, just for those that don’t know me, I don’t have, my job is not to tell you what you have to do. I’m not the Dave Ramsey type where I’m like, you have to go bankrupt.

You have to do this. My focus is on looking at all the options and helping the client work through the emotional side of it. So they can have a clear understanding of what those options are and, and have somebody that you can talk it through with, like, let’s talk about bankruptcy, let’s talk about debt settlement, let’s talk about credit counseling, let’s talk about, you know, paying this debt off in full. How would these things work?

How would it look? How would these things affect my credit? Like we get, you know, I’m somebody that you can talk to about all this stuff. That’s not going to be judging you.

You know, you can’t go talk to your friend about these kinds of things. Hey, your friend doesn’t know anything. Yeah. And you can’t talk to a debt relief company cause they’re just going to sell you whatever their widget is.

Yeah. So, you know, the more I’m, you know, learning about this conversation, the more I’m like, and I usually start with bankruptcy, not because I think everybody needs to file bankruptcy. It’s just, that’s the one thing I like to start on the, I call it the right hand side, you know, if you think of a linear scale, Dave Ramsey’s on the left. I look, here’s an easy way to remember it.

If you think of a line, you draw a line on a paper, left to right on the left, you’ve got Dave Ramsey. And that is you go down on the right. You’ve got bankruptcy. This is just the way I think about it in my mind.

And in the middle, you’ve got debt management and debt settlement and consolidation loan strategies and all the different strategies in the middle between Dave Ramsey on the left and bankruptcy on the right. And here’s the easy way to think about it. Dave Ramsey on the left is it’s a way to get out of debt and it works for some people, but it’s the most expensive, takes the longest and is the least likely to work. And I know a lot of people are going to be like, nah, trust me.

I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m 100% right. Yeah. It is the most expensive option.

It, and I’m not saying it’s not a good option for something. I’m not saying it’s just a fact, that’s all. I’m just spitting facts, man. Just the facts, man.

Right. Call me dragnet, whatever. Most expensive, takes the longest, least likely to work. You only hear the people that it works for on the radio.

You don’t hear the people that tried it and it didn’t work because it’s five years of sacrifice. Yeah. But you know who does hear about them? You and I.

Yeah, I hear about them all the time. That’s why I’m in business. I wouldn’t have any clients if Dave Ramsey’s strategy worked as good as he said it. Nobody would ever call me because, oh, no, I did Dave Ramsey.

So then as you go show the call screener, somebody calls in, the program didn’t work for me. Uh, click. Yeah. I listened to Dave, lost my house and then ended up going bankrupt.

He’s not making that show. No, but anyway, so you got that strategy. And then as you go down the line, you’ve got the debt management. It’s a little bit cheaper because you’re lowering your, your, your, your, your interest rate, but it still takes a long time.

Not as quiet as Dave Ramsey and you’re saving a little bit of money. Yeah. And then you go down and you hit the debt settlement. It’s, it’s, it’s faster than, you know, the Dave Ramsey, you save more money.

Um, and it’s, it’s, I don’t know what the track record is. If you’re hiring a debt settlement company, pretty bad. No, I’m not saying it’s, it’s, I can tell you what it was last reported at was 23% success rate. Yeah.

Yeah. Because if you hire a debt settlement company, it puts you in there when you shouldn’t be there. So I’m not saying this is a scale of on the left is the thing you don’t do. And on the far right is the thing you always do.

I’m not rating them that way because it’s different for everybody. For some people, Dave Ramsey is the best option for some people, bankruptcy is the best option. I’m just talking about facts in terms of cost. The most takes the longest, least likely to work.

And then you get to the right, you get to chapter seven bankruptcy. If you can qualify for a chapter seven, again, I’m not saying if you can qualify, you have to do it, there’s considerations, which is why you want to talk to somebody like me. But if you’re just looking at. You know, how much does it cost?

How long does it take? What is the success rate? Yeah. What am I?

There’s no, there’s no argument that a chapter seven bankruptcy, if you qualify and it makes sense, you’re not losing your assets or whatever. Is the fastest option. It costs the least amount of money out of all of them. It gives you the most likely to work if you qualify.

Right. Right. There’s, there’s, those are just facts. So anyway, so let’s go back to this conversation.

Now I’m not saying, Hey, look, you need to file bankruptcy, but here’s what I look at. Right. My job, again, is to help the client get the emotions kind of out of the way, because I’m not emotionally invested in this. So I’m looking at somebody who’s 71 years old that has absolutely no retirement that is not even earning enough money right now to cover everything.

Right. And that’s where the credit card debt came from making ends meet. Yeah. So now she’s very optimistic about this new job and that’s great.

Um, and I hope it pans out, but I’ve been doing this a long time. Yeah, but here’s what set off my scam radar on that alleged job, the backup job that she was thinking about was going to be medical coding at home. That’s like scam ville number one. Yeah, but I took it from the standpoint of, I didn’t know anything about the job and I wasn’t going to like, you know, second guess it right now.

I was looking at it as job or not. My advice to her is not going to change. And I was trying to explain why when things started to get uncomfortable for her. And so now she’d already told me she’d filed bankruptcy, you know, 15 years ago.

So she knew about bankruptcy, knew how it worked. And so when I started talking to her about it, I always preface it with, I’m not saying you go file bankruptcy. This is how it worked. Let’s just talk about, let’s talk it through.

And she was just bankruptcy is a red line, not, not even going to do it. And I was like, okay, that’s fine. Again, I’m not saying you have to, I’m just saying, let’s talk it through. And, and she’s like, no, I’m getting this job.

I can pay off this debt. And I was like, well, that’s great. And I said, so let me just throw a couple things at you. And again, I’m just for the sake of discussion, because it’s important for me to understand where you are coming from, to give you the best advice.

I have to kind of understand your line of thinking and kind of put myself in your shoes so I can, you know, empathize with that and kind of see where you’re coming from, that’s just what I need to do, right? If you want good advice, I have to kind of know what’s important to you. So, so we were going through and I was explaining to her, I was like, well, I get it, but let’s say best case scenario that you’ve got this, you get this job and it’s totally legit and everything’s good and you’re making this 40 bucks an hour and, and you, and you, Dave Ramsey your way, which is what she wanted to do. She wanted to pay all the debt in full.

And again, I’m not saying that’s wrong, but I’m just saying to make a major decision like that, that’s going to affect your entire life, okay. Not to be like overly dramatic about it, but it will affect the rest of her life. This is an important decision. Worth having a conversation, even if it’s a little bit uncomfortable because it forces you to address some beliefs that you might have, right?

This is why facts matter in this case. So my point to her was, so let’s say what’s the best case scenario. This job is legit and you take all that extra money that you’re making and you get on a five-year plan, a DMP or whatever, you pay this debt off in five years. So best case scenario, you’re now 76, maybe working, maybe not working back on social security with no cushion at all, back to square one, right?

And then what’s going to happen if you lose that job at some point between now and the next five years, everything goes right back on those cards. You never get ahead. So I said, even if you get this job and it works out, if you went back and we looked at everything, it would have been a simple chapter seven. I was like, if you would file the bankruptcy, it’s not going to, we looked at the IRS debt, it’s not going to wipe out the IRS debt.

So she’s on the hook for that 40 grand, no matter what. We looked at how old the debt was and that was not going to get rid of that. But what the bankruptcy would do is get rid of the other half that was at 20, 25, 30% interest and allow her then to get on some kind of a payment plan with the IRS. Now, if she’s on social security only, there’s a chance she could be deemed uncollectible on that and maybe not have to pay it.

But if that job is legit, she’s going to be on a payment plan with the IRS. So now we’re talking, not only is she having to pay back the IRS 40 grand, if she doesn’t wipe it out and wipe out the credit card debt in a bankruptcy, she’s going to have to use the other half of her check from her new job, if it’s real, to pay back this other debt. So five years from now, she’s still going to be totally broke with nothing but social security and you can’t work forever. Sometimes it’s not a choice.

Was she getting in social security? It wasn’t that much. It was like 2,600 after Medicare was taken out and all that stuff. It was about 20.

So it wasn’t like a thousand, but 2,600, raise your hand if you want to live on $2,600 a month and you think that’s going to work, raise your hand. If you think $2,600 a month is going to be good in five years or 10 years, raise your hand. If you think the cost of living is going to increase, the cost of living adjustments from social security is going to keep up with inflation. Yeah.

Nobody has their hand up. And here’s the other thing that she didn’t mention is that, oh, it wasn’t her, it was somebody else we talked about. Nevermind. Yeah.

So, so anyway, my, my whole point was, and, and, and this is where I could tell there was starting to be some tension and it was, it was still a cordial call at this point because I’m not saying you have to file bankruptcy. I’m saying, look, we can, we can talk about other options, but she just kept saying, it’s a red line. I’m not doing it. And I, and I asked her, and this is how I preface it.

I said, okay, I’m not saying you should, I don’t know enough about your situation to say you should, but we’re just talking it through. But just so I can have a better understanding, why don’t you want to file bankruptcy, not saying you should, but why? And she’s, and that is silence, right? And she was just like, I just don’t want to do it.

I’ve worked so hard to get to where I’m at. And I was like, okay, I stored that in the mental Rolodex. Yeah. When you told me that, I just went, huh?

So, so that was like a non-answer, right? And so we talked about some other things and, you know, cause I could tell it was stressing her out, right? The emotion, it was an emotional, I just don’t want to do it, but I didn’t, you know, I didn’t know why. So again, I’m trying to help, right?

I’m trying to help her work through this in her own mind because I’m not going to, I’m not the one that’s going to be 76 and broke off my ass. It’s not me. This doesn’t affect me. Like you called me for help.

So we’re going through this stuff. And I was like, well, you know, my concern is that this job doesn’t last for five years. What, what if you get this job and it’s great. And a year later, the company goes under, or they let you go, or it’s not working out.

And now you’re back to just social security. You spent the last year paying all this extra money on this debt. Yeah. And now you’re right back to where you were before with, but now still no savings and you still owe all this money.

So it’s not a solution. And I said, it’s, you’re going to end up being a burden to your kids. And she didn’t like that. It’s a fact you will be a burden to your kids.

If you have no money and you can’t afford rent, your kids aren’t going to want to let you out on the street, unless you were an asshole to them growing up or something. Right. But so I just kept going back to, um, you know, like trying to unravel what, what the reason was, right. I just want, I want her to know a reason because this is a major decision.

And I finally just got to a point where I was like, well, you know, what are you hoping to learn from me? What do you want me to tell you? Because she got to the point where she’s like, well, you know, I called you because you said you had options to help me get out of debt. And I said, I, I, I do.

That’s what we’re talking about. But in her mind, she’s like, no, I just like, I’m going to pay it all back. I want to know what options are to pay it all back. And I was like, okay, we can talk about that.

But before we talk about that, I think you’re making a big mistake. And I think you should at least look at some of these other strategies. And, you know, we talk about this, uh, uh, all the time, Steve, or we’re talking about hyperbolic discount, right? You’re making a decision about right now and what you need to do right now because it’s scary right now.

And I owe all this money and I owe the IRS. But you’re not allowing your mind to think about what your life’s going to be like at 75 or 76. Like your 75 year old self is going to hate your 71 year old self because you didn’t listen to Damon in this conversation. And again, I wasn’t pushing you have to file, but I, in good conscious, I mean, this is what I do.

I couldn’t just, could I, I’m not a bankruptcy attorney. I don’t freaking get paid if she files bankruptcy. Like I don’t have a horse in that race. Like it’s, so this is why it’s baffling to me that she got so upset.

So we’re talking, but, and, and again, let’s keep in mind, let’s keep in mind the most critical thing that you’ve said so far, yeah, I know you’re going to get back to it, but when she said, I’ve worked so hard to get where I am today. Yeah. Well, the call, but at this point I was in the parking lot and I know they need, the kids needed the pizza at 12 and I’ve been doing this long enough to read the room, right? And I, I knew basically what she wanted for me was for me to just agree with her.

That’s what she wanted. And that’s, and I could have easily just said, you know, you know what? Let’s, let’s do a plan. Okay.

You’re going to be making this extra five grand a month from this job. Here’s what you should do. Here’s how you stair-step this thing. Here’s how you pay off this debt.

But that was not going to help her. That was the chances of that working out for her. Yeah. Zero.

Zero. So it’s like, I got to the point where I was like, and I, you know, I had this one in the chamber, right? And I was like, all right, well, this is going to be it. I mean, she’s going to hate me when I, when I say this, but she just kept saying, I’ve worked so hard to get to where I’m at and so then I’m thinking, well, she’s got to be really worried about her credit score because that’s what everybody’s worried about, which the credit score is the single biggest thing that’s been responsible for the most horrible financial decisions that has ever existed.

It’s been the greatest tool the bankers ever invented. It’s the least brainwash people. Yeah. It’s been, it’s the greatest tool the bank has to keep you on the money tray, the greatest tool because people get brainwashed with this credit score thing.

So I’m thinking, okay, what she means by I’ve worked so hard. It’s got to be a credit score. And I said, so let’s talk about why is your credit score feel so valuable to you right now? Why are you willing to spend a hundred plus thousand dollars that you don’t have to protect this credit score?

What are you gonna be doing with it? And she goes, well, it’s not really my credit score. My credit score is not even that great right now. And so I was like, well, if it’s not your credit score, what, you know, what are we talking about here?

What is it? And she goes, I just worked so hard to get to where I’m at and I had this chamber and so I finally, and I did it in a nice way, but I knew this was going to hit like a fucking brick. Right. Yeah.

And I just said, you know, I’m, I’m confused. You’re on social security, no retirement, 80 grand in debt, half of which, you know, the IRS, what you work so hard to get, where are you happy where you’re at and that’s when it shifted and it was just, and I says like, you know, maybe your decisions aren’t, you know, working right. Maybe the things that you’re doing, maybe it’s time that we looked at it from a different perspective. And she’s like, like, okay, it’s, it’s clear.

I’m not talking about this anymore. I appreciate your time. Click. I hung up on me.

Yeah. And I just sat there for a second and I went, da fuck? Okay. Uh, good luck.

I mean, and I felt bad, but it’s just, it, and this happens, it’s, it’s everybody. I have my own emotional hangups on things too. Everybody has them. And all that came down to was she was so emotionally not wanting to look at other options.

She had in her mind what she wanted to do, that she didn’t even open up the possibility of let’s discuss this because it was challenging what she felt she wanted to do and she logically, she knew she didn’t have a good reason and she, that was, that’s what made the conversation uncomfortable. And I understand that. But at the end of the day, and I knew it was going to happen when I phrased it that way. But what I hope is a month from now, two months from now, six months from now, that conversation maybe pissed her off so much that she revisits that conversation.

Now she’ll never call me back. I know that I, I understand human nature enough to know she would never call me back, but that’s not my goal. My goal was, I don’t want her to be 76 years old and still in debt and just, just hating what’s going on. I would rather figure that out now while she has a chance to fix it.

Because I kept saying, you know, if you wipe out this debt and you get this job, now you can spend the next five years taking this extra money and investing it and putting it away because I, this is, I was actually, this was a good line because I, I said, how much money do you need saved up to really retire? And she goes, and she goes, well, I don’t know. And I said, exactly. We don’t know how much you’re going to need, but we know how much you have.

And what you have is zero. So we know we need more. It’s kind of like that Ron White sketch where he’s drunk in public, where they threw him out of the bar. You sit that one and it is like, you know, I was drunk in the bar.

They threw me in public, arrest them. And then he goes on to say, you know, I, I didn’t know how many of those bouncers it was going to take to kick my ass, but I knew how many they were going to use, it’s the same thing. We don’t know how much money you’re going to need to live the rest of your life, but we know how much you have right now and what you have right now is not enough, so we need more. And there was, there was just no logic to the idea that, that, that we should just sacrifice everything at 71 years old to pay back unsecured debt that could easily get wiped out in a BK and allow you to save that money because we don’t know if this job is even legitimate and if it is, how long it’s going to last.

Because keep in mind, you don’t always get to choose when you can’t work anymore. Well, sometimes nobody chooses you, you’re too old. They don’t want you, you can’t get hired, you know, it’s not your choice. I mean, there are two things there that are true.

Number one, uh, she was really feeling it emotionally. Uh, and so that was a truth. But number two, the math was true too. So, but, and it just comes down to, you know, when clients hire me or even just call me and even if they don’t hire me, like I’m here to help you, even if it’s a free call, it’s like, you know, I, I’m not trying to gain anything by telling her to meet with a bankruptcy attorney.

I’m just looking at the facts. I don’t get a referral fee from a bankruptcy attorney. I don’t make anything. So you got to sit there and if you’d be objective about it, why would Damon be so adamant about, I at least talked to a bankruptcy attorney.

I gain nothing if you talk to a bankruptcy attorney, but she gains a life, you know? I mean, I’m not the one with something to risk. So when she hung up on me, I was just like, what? Like, okay, I’m going to go in and get some, uh, $10 pizzas right now.

I’m fine. Right. So, you know, the whole thing is just, you gotta let the emotion, the things that you hold onto, some of the beliefs that you have about certain things are wrong and they’re causing you to make bad decisions. And when you have somebody that you can talk these things through with, as long as you can try to compartmentalize the emotional part and just look at the facts, and I know it’s easier said than done, because again, everybody has.

Steve, um, I have an issue. Here’s my own mental hangups, right? It seems like which mental issue we’re talking about here. Let’s, let’s see where we’re going with this, but real quick, real quick.

I have a hard time getting rid of things. Steve would call me a hoarder, a hoarder, but one of my favorite shows is hoarders because I can watch that show and go, I ain’t that bad, I’m fine right now. And I, I’m not, I mean, you can, you know, walk in my house and I’m not that bad, but don’t go in my garage, but I do have, and I’m acknowledging this, right? The, the logical side of my brain understands that I have a problem throwing things away.

I think for me, it’s more of a value play. It’s, it’s the, the sunk cost fallacy. Now I know it, I can tell myself all day long, right? I have, I have a, a saw in my garage.

It’s a circular saw. It’s a nice saw. Buy it on Home Depot. It’s like $500.

Sounds like it needs to go. It’s got to stand. Steve, shut up. This is my story.

It’s got to stand, right? I bought this in 20, uh, 2004 when we were building our house, right. And I was going to do the baseboard and I needed this good saw and it has, you know, you just have it on the angles and dah, dah, dah, and I did the baseboard in the house, yeah, 2004. And I still have the saw in my garage and I think I have used it twice since 2004.

I’m not the handy dandy dad. I mean, I can do projects, but that’s not what I’m into. I don’t do that. But did I ever get rid of it?

No. Now I’ve moved that saw. And when I say across the country, I’m not shitting you across the country. I’ve moved probably six times in the last, and that saw comes every, every time it goes into the storage, into the truck, into the, but every time I look at that thing, it’s taken up all this room in my garage and I haven’t even turned it, and then twice that I used it, I could have used a regular circular saw.

By the way, I have two of those. I have, I have two regular circular saws. Don’t ask me why. But I could have used those, but I used the big saw just because it made me feel better, like I got to use this.

I didn’t need it. I was just chopping up some two by fours or something. But the bottom line is every time I move, I get the saw and I go, I should sell this. My logical side of my brain goes, you haven’t used this in forever.

You should give it away or you should sell it. But then it’s like, ah, I paid $500 for it. I might need it one day. Right.

And, and I have that constant battle and that effing saw is still there. I finally just recently got to the point was two years ago, Steve, I finally, for the first time in my adult life, did not have a storage unit that I’d be paying money for every month. And you’ve been getting rid of stuff. But my point is when somebody talks to me, now Steve and I will have conversations and he’ll say, just get rid of it.

And I’ll feel that in my stomach. Like, I don’t want to get rid of it, but logically I’m like, he’s 100% right. But it’s an uncomfortable conversation. Now, I’m not mad at him for saying that, but I understand how this person was feeling when I kept bringing up, let’s just talk about the bankruptcy.

Emotionally, it was an uncomfortable, whatever she went through in 2010. I don’t know what it was because you didn’t want to share that and it’s fine, but it was emotionally uncomfortable, but it was completely irrational not to discuss it, irrational to her detriment, irrational to the point where that saw as just one story, my whole garage is full of those stories and I’ve been getting better at that, I’ve gotten rid of enough stuff to get rid of the storage unit, but I completely understand the emotional attachments to it. For me, it’s just things, for some people it’s money, for some people it’s credit or debt or status or whatever, but we all have these things and that’s why it’s important to be able to work through it. But when I talk to Steve about certain things, he’s very like, well, logical, right, we’ll get rid of it.

You don’t need it. And I go, I know he’s right, but man, I like it. I want to keep it. Right.

And I don’t want to have that conversation anymore because it’s going to make me feel dumb. It’ll make me feel stupid. Like I know I should get rid of that saw, but I keep it. And if I mentioned it to Steve again, that he still have it, he might think I’m stupid.

He might think I’m dumb. I never want you to feel dumb. I know, but that’s, so I understand that, but that it just, she got to the point where she just, she didn’t want to feel that feeling and just shut down. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore and just got off the phone.

And, and I, it sucks. I feel bad. And I was really delicate with it throughout the whole conversation until it got to the point where it’s like, well, I need to shake her a little bit. And if she hates me for it, I’m willing to shoulder that.

I, you know, she might hate me forever, but I’m hoping it’s something might trigger for her. Like, maybe, maybe, maybe if she listens to this, like I had nothing to gain by bringing that up. I promise you it’s, it’s going to better your life and your situation. Well, it’s a great question.

Job or no job. You worked so hard to get here where you’re in trouble. Yeah. And, and regardless of what that was, what’s stopping you from now making it better?

Do you, do you want to stay here or do you want to make it better? You worked so hard to get where you’re at. And I understand that. And I know she didn’t mean I worked so hard to get in debt, right.

Which is why I thought she was talking about her credit, but when she said it’s not really a credit, then I’m going, then what is it, what’s stopping you from just, you know, if I call it the fresh start program, new federal law, fresh start program, not called bankruptcy, does the same thing, but it’s the fresh start program. And she, she’d say, tell me more, tell me more about this fresh start program. Oh, it’s a great program. The federal government, because the economy sucks and blah, blah, blah, blah, and you wipe out all your unsecured debt and you just get a fresh start.

That’s fresh start program. Oh, cool. Yeah. That’s what I need.

I can wipe out this 40 grand. I don’t have to keep paying this thousand dollars, $1,200 a month anymore. No, you don’t. And now if you get this job, you can start saving, put the $1,200 a month in your Acorns account and have a savings for the first time in how many years.

Because you don’t know how long you’re going to be able to work. You don’t know, right? We don’t know how much you need to retire, but we know how much you have. Well, we got about five minutes left.

So let me talk about my story. I told you we should have talked about your story first, because I’m long-winded, bro. Well, you went off on a, what is it? A diatribe?

A diatribe? It’s a diatribe. Diatribe. No, mine is, people can go and read this one on the getoutdebt.org site.

This week I posted two stories. I had somebody that came into the Ask Steve chat, which is anonymous. You can come in and ask me anything. And this person came in and reminded me of a financial situation that I wrote about 14 years ago.

And this guy was in the world of financial domination, FinDom. This guy was what is called either a pay slave, a money slave, or a pay pig. And that is a guy who gives money to a, I’m going to say mistress, but it, this is, doesn’t have anything to do with sex, has to do with power. The thing that’s closest to this is like BDSM or some other type of control.

So this guy felt like he got his, not even a sexual satisfaction, but a psychological relief, or a validation that somebody else could help control his life by giving over tithes or gifts to his FinDom, his goddess, his cash master. And real quick, if you’re listening and you’re so lost right now, I also had no idea about any of this stuff until Steve wrote that article 14 years ago. And I was like, huh, but apparently it’s, it’s a big kind of thing. It’s more prevalent than you would think.

It’s kind of crazy. Actually. It’s growing. I mean, it’s, it’s growing because of the internet and, um, only fans is one place where FinDoms exist.

But I remember back way back in the day when I first started helping people in 1994, um, I had a client way back then who was a pay pig, but he did it by mail and by telephone, that was the old days. Now, now you can do it online. And this guy, uh, his FinDom, um, he gave her control, remote control to his computer and access to his bank accounts. So, so she could log in and take money whenever she wanted.

And in the chat, I talked to him about, you know, are you able to talk to anybody about this? You know, and he was, this is AI, AI, Steve, AI talking. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, based on my 30 plus years of experience, but, uh, cause this is exactly what I would have said to him in person and he pushed back just like your lady pushed back, um, no, I, I can’t, he could not emotionally conceive that he could do anything to break this relationship with his financial dominatrix. And, you know, there are, it’s a very complicated subject because on one hand it’s an addiction. Um, but you know, there are people who go play the slot machines who swear they don’t have any addiction at all. They can stop at any time and they’re spending their own money to go do what they want to do.

I don’t, I don’t think that’s, you know, victim scammer thing. If you’re an adult and you’re making that decision, this is what you can afford and that’s what you want to do. That’s fine. I mean, I guess that’s fine, but I’ve seen this easily spiral in the posts that I wrote in 2012.

I actually included screenshots of Findoms, financial dominatrixes, Findoms who actually posted pictures of their paypigs and their bank accounts to humiliate them because that’s the satisfaction that that person wanted. Hey, this goes with the topics we’ve been talking about. I don’t have to emotionally understand any of this. I’m just saying this actually happens.

And so when I asked him in the chat, are you able to talk to anybody about this? No. Are you able to talk, do you have a therapist? No.

Are you able to talk to your doctor about this? No. Um, it made me think about ways that people could phrase that and, you know, try to get some help. But the emotional pull of the satisfaction that he gets from being a paypig is going to overwhelm the logic and math of what he’s doing.

And, and, you know, it’s not about money problems are not about the debt because debt is just math wrapped in emotion. So, go ahead. No, I’m, I’m hoping that you and I have both had clients that have, you know, come back 10 years later and have now been ready to hear it. Unfortunately, your lady is going to be 81.

Well, and you know, I, I figured early on in the conversation, this wasn’t going to be a, a math problem, right? And that’s why I was trying to kind of dig into what are the reasons behind this is a red line. Right. And, and I don’t want to do that and I don’t want to do that.

And that’s fine. As long as, as long as my client understands the logic behind their decisions, there’s no, and I kept telling her there’s no wrong answer here. I’m not saying paying off the debt is wrong. I just want you to understand it.

Yeah. If you look at everything and you’re like, here’s this and here’s this, and here’s this. And, and again, I doubt right now she probably is so annoyed with me or upset with me or whatever. I mean that she probably won’t listen to this, but my hope is that she does listen to this and again, I get it and I’m 100% open if she hears this and she wants to circle back with me next week, next year, next month, whatever, again, I get it.

I understand the, the emotion behind this and I can really, really help you work through that. And I would love to be able to help you work through that. So you send me a text when you’re 76 and be like, Hey, you know, here’s what my life is like, you know, I do have some money, I I’m glad I listened to you or whatever, you know, I would love to be able to get that, I, I, I hate the idea that, you know, maybe I did something wrong or said something wrong, or if I said something in a different way, I could have got her to open up a little bit more and kind of work through that emotional block. Um, you know, so I, I, I kind of feel like it was where potential failure on my part and I hate that, but I, I got to the point of the end of the call when I dropped that last one, when I knew that was going to kind of set her off, that was what I was going for.

It was like, she’s not coming around on any of this stuff. Maybe this will kind of hit her like, so just direct, like, let me just be super direct with it. And she’s not going to be able to deal with it in a moment, but a month from now, maybe, you know, she’s still seething about it, right? Like this guy, this fucking dick or whatever.

And, but it might finally, it’s like, yeah, you know, maybe he, you know, he’s right, you know, I work so hard and I’m just in this debt, so why do I feel like I have to keep punishing myself? Just because you worked hard doesn’t mean you have to like, you know, punish it because that’s what she’s doing. She’s punishing herself. Ironically, this is a great ending segue.

Ironically, she is her own financial dominatrix because she’s like, I deserve this punishment. Right. Right. And emotionally it feeds her.

Yeah. You don’t deserve the punishment. There are better ways, but the big takeaway, I’m not going to force you to do anything. I’m just going to get you to think about it.

And that might be a little bit uncomfortable, but I’d rather you be a little bit uncomfortable now than broke when you’re retired. Yeah. And you’ll thank, you’ll thank Damon for that. And you know who else you’ll thank?

That other guy. The other guy. That’s right. I know where you’re going, Steve.

I’ve known you a while. On that note, Damon, I will see ya. Peace.