It's Wednesday, and this is the Ramsey Call of the Day, part of the Ramsey Network. Joining me today is Ramsey personality, Ken Bowman. Hey, Tamron, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Thank you so much for having me.
How are you doing today? Better than I deserve. How can we help? I'm calling.
I recently had a question that relates to college and when it is okay or sensible to derail the plan and borrow for college. My husband and I, we actually didn't even discover your system until during the pandemic, and we've paid down a lot of debt. We've sold a rental property, set up our emergency fund. Wonderful.
You made a lot of progress in one year. Well, selling a rental property gave us a large sum, and we're blessed to have terrific careers. But my oldest son is a senior in high school this year, and last year he expressed an interest that his dream school was a prestigious private university that's around here. I graduated law school from there myself, so it comes at my heart, and I was supportive of him that if he did everything that was necessary and got the grades and kept everything up, as long as he could get scholarships and aid and out-of-pocket expenses for us with less than $25,000 a year, that we could afford to pay cash through the school's payment plan and that he could go there.
My sophomore, however, he had some trouble when he started high school last year, and he was getting into trouble and he was making poor decisions, and then when they closed the schools down, he kind of continued to go down a scary path from our perspective, and he asked us if he could go away to a boarding school, to a military school. That's not too far from where we live, and seeing that that was best for him, we immediately in December agreed and enrolled him and sent him, but I'm now paying $2,500 a month for him to go to school, and our budget only has, after all of the fields and essentials, like food and clothing, a lot of haircuts, like really the full budget, only has about $4,000 to spare in it. I don't know. Right now, we're at about $240,000, and I will be wrapping up my clerkship, my football clerkship, so I would expect that next year it'll be closer to $300,000, if not over $300,000.
Which will give you the money to send the other one. Mm-hmm, yeah, and that's why I was... There's not a plan where I put you into student loans. To answer your earlier question, there's not a plan where I put you into student loans.
There's two options here. One is we figure this out, a junior picks a different school. Okay. And his future is not ruined based on that.
And pause, listen, pause doesn't mean never, doesn't mean stop. He could do his first year somewhere else in three years, three through four, or two through four, at the Dream Prestige School, again, if he lines up all the scholarships in his $25,000 out of pocket with no student loans. He can also work towards this, you know, I mean, he understands what's going on in the family, and assuming you guys are, there's some harmony there, and he's as healthy as an 18, 17-year-old can be about his brother's situation, he can work and kind of help out, you know, with this process as well. Say, hey, here's where, I think this is a family meeting, I think he's sitting down, he knows what's going on, and just say, hey, here's where we are.
This is reality. Student loans are not an option. We're not going to do that. That's what Dad and I have been doing.
You've seen us getting out of debt. Bring him into the bigger picture and say, hey, life happens sometimes. It's not fair. It's sad, and you didn't do anything wrong, and yet it's affecting you.
But still, it is affecting you, and so here's what we're going to do. Let's pretend that you lost your job, and you couldn't send him to that school. You'd have the same conversation, and it wouldn't be his fault. You would have lost your job, and he would have to deal with that.
Kids can deal with this. So, hold on, we're going to send you a copy of Anthony's book, that free degree. I want you all to read that as a family, and I want you to commit to working some kind of a cash flow game plan to some school that you pay cash for. Thanks for tuning in to the Ramsey Call of the Day.
Check out all of our podcasts. Just search Ramsey Network on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.