And Then Life Pulled Me Back In

0:00 Today I thought I would talk a little bit about debt because all my life I've been trying to get out of it. And well, live from the basement, it's building a better Dave. Check us out@betterdave.com email us@dave betterdave.com or call in your comments 888-563-3228. Now here's your host, Dave Jackson. When I was growing up, I remember my dad doing his taxes probably on a Saturday and probably Sunday, and my mom pulling me aside being, you know, the annoying 78 year old boy that's just spastic and stupid and just kind of saying, please don't poke the bear, just please leave your dad alone. And he'd be, he had all these papers all over the kitchen table and shoeboxes of receipts and all sorts of stuff. And if you've ever watched hbo, there's a show called Game of Thrones. And it's all these different families and they're all fighting for the kingdom, you know. But one of them is the Lannisters. The Lannisters. And one of their sayings is a Lannister always pays his debts. And that was kind of my dad. He was always, you know, I remember my

1:31 Grandpa lent me $300 to buy my first car. And I had a paper route at the time and we did paperwork and I will do this many payments and yada yada yada, and you will pay back your debts. There are no free lunches. In fact, even growing up, I remember I wanted the song Pinball wizard by Elton John. And the only way you could get that, this is way before Spotify kids, was to buy the double album. No, there was no 45 single or cassette. You had to buy the double album of the movie soundtrack from the who. And it was a lot of money.

2:12 And so I had to wash a lot of cars and sweep a lot of floors. And I did not. It was never. Was it like, how much is it? Oh, 18 bucks. Here you go. That just didn't happen in the Jackson household. We weren't rich. We weren't like, we never went without food. But I had a lot of hand me downs growing up from my brother. And my mom was the queen of coupons. And so I understood the value of money, which is why when I got married, I knew my wife had one ovary. So I knew having a kid was a long shot. But we figured, ah, you only need one ovary.

3:00 And who doesn't love trying to have a kid? Well, it turns out that's A big pain in the butt after a while, especially if your wife also has endometriosis, which is basically speed bumps for kids or for sperm. And we ended up charging up, I think four, at least three credit cards with fertility treatment. And I remember her saying, well, because we were literally living paycheck to paycheck. And I remember saying we should file for bankruptcy. And I was kind of like, how dare you? Atlantis pays his debts. And the only reason I ended up filing for divorce, well, that happened later too, but for bankruptcy was 911 hit and her hours got cut by about 20%.

3:52 And that's all it took when you're living paycheck to paycheck. Yeah, I could only juggle so much. And so I've always hated debt. I was deeply ashamed of that. I had to file for bankruptcy. And so if we fast forward, you know, I'm out of debt, doing great, always. You know, my, my credit is amazing. And then I find someone who has horrible credit and I marry them. And that was also the case with now ex wife number two. And we went through many years of marriage counseling.

4:33 Luckily we weren't charging it, but we might as well have, because when we finally decided to get divorced, one of the stipulations was I had to take her credit card debt, even though it wasn't stuff that I bought. It was like, hey, if you want out of this, you got to take this. And that's how bad I wanted out of that marriage, because I did not want to go back in debt. But I took five figures of credit card debt, and it took me many years because I tried to get a consolidation loan to get a better rate. And they're like, no, no, your income to debt ratio is too high. We can't give you a loan.

5:15 And I'm like, of course, it makes no sense to give someone a loan when they actually need one. But I finally got a, an okay loan that was pretty awful. And then I got another one that was a little better and a little better. And I finally was about three years out from getting debt free. And my boss and I had a meeting about the school of podcasting. And he said, hey, like, why isn't the school of podcasting bigger? He's like, everybody loves you. You're a great teacher, you're well respected. Why isn't like this place the place to learn how to podcast? And I said, because it's a part time job and it pays part time money. I go, but I'm having a blast. And he was like, okay. And the next day he came back and he said, do you think it would be bigger if you had more time? And I go, yeah, absolutely. And he said, well, what if I bought it, meaning the school of podcasting, and then you could do that as part of your day job. And I was like, that's interesting. How much money are we talking? And he offered enough money for me to go, ooh, that would get me out of debt. And again, that's really, really important to me. And so I thought about it. I really like my boss. In fact, we have half the conversations were about how do we not mess up our relationship? Because he really likes that. I work for

6:48 PodPage. I really like working for PodPage. We have a thing in our agreement that after a year, if we want to unravel it, we can. But I ended up selling the school of podcasting. And I was out of debt back in December of 2025. So I went into 2026 with no debt. And I was loving it because again, when I'm in debt, I really don't like it. I don't like it at all. And so I was spending thousands of dollars to get the debt away. And so now that thousands of dollars a month was going into my bank account, which was cool.

7:34 I have more money in the bank than I've had ever. And I was like, well, great. And I was starting to think about the things I could do. I might build a garage on the house. I could. I got great nieces and nephews that are eventually going to be headed to college. Maybe I could help with that. All the different things I could do. And it was, it made me feel normal because again, I had this weird. I always felt like I was four years behind everybody else in life because when I graduated from high school, they went to college. I did not. I thought I had a great job. It was a union job, working in a grocery store. And when you're making almost 10 bucks an hour in 1984, you know, 83, that was not bad money. I was living with my brother, life was great. And then the store got sold and I lost my job. And that's when I went back to school the first time. But everybody else had a four year start. So I've always felt like I was behind. And now I felt like, all right, I finally caught up to everybody else that was my age and I was kind of, oh, I was proud of myself just because I dug myself out. And it was great until May. What is this? April of this year? We got, you know, April Showers bring May flowers and we got a lot of April showers. And

9:04 I go down to the basement, which is an absolute just. It's just a big giant storage shed with crap everywhere. I grew up in the basement, but I only go there now to do laundry. And so I go down to do laundry and it's raining cats and dogs outside. And all of a sudden I notice that there is some invisible person peeing in my basement. I can hear it and I'm like, wait, where's that sound coming from? And so I kind of walk over and like, sounds like it's coming from behind those boxes. So I move all these boxes out of the way and a. The first thing I see is mold on the wall. Now, I worked for a company that used to maintain houses that had been foreclosed on. And I know what happens if you get water in the house. It's one of the worst things that can happen. And so I see mold, and out of the wall is, I don't know, a little quarter inch stream of water shooting about an inch and a half out of the wall and it's hitting the floor, hence making the peeing sound. And I was like, well, that looks expensive. And it's one of those things that, yeah, I could stick some goo in it and hope that the, the drain just mysteriously doesn't show up in another part of the house.

10:25 But like I say, I know what happens when you get water in your house. And so I did a bunch of quotations from people and had people come in and look and it's like, well, I had money in the bank and if I wanted to, I could almost pay for it in cash. But as much as I hate being in debt, I want to have that Dave Ramsey nest ready in case things. I'm always thinking something's going to go horrible. And so I financed, I will be financing and I'll be back in debt. And I was like, ugh. But some things you got to do even if you don't want to do them. I would much rather finance a garage or finance rebuilding the basement and making it bring back the pool table and the ping pong table and a kick butt stereo.

11:22 Maybe move my podcasting studio down there. Everything except, I don't know, have them dig to China to fix my draining problems. So I spent my whole life crawling my way out of debt. It seems like at least in my 20s since then. And I got out and life pulled me back in. Then I guess the advantage I have is I did make it. I. I saw what it's like to live debt free. And I know how to cut corners. I'll go back to only having one streaming service. I'll go back to no fast food. I'll go back to all the things that I've done my whole life to save money and to get out of debt. I just thought I was done exercising that skill. And life has said, no, not yet. And then I go, well, wait a minute. If it takes me 5, 10 years to pay this off, like, I'm going to be pushing 70 at that point.

12:31 It's a little late to put up the ping pong table. Maybe at that point. I don't know. We'll see. But I hate being in debt. And it is what it is. And you got to do what you got to do. The only thing you have control over is how you react to it. And so I have to go around and get everything off the walls. And I'm in what we used to just call the workshop. And it has this huge all along the wall, this super bench that my dad had made. And I see where it's not connected to the wall, but it's really heavy.

13:13 And we were talking about we might just cut it up because a, I've never used it. It's not like I'm building anything and bring it out. And I was like, you know, and then there are parts of it. We're just going to have to demolish part of the basement to fix it. And I was like, well, they demolished my elementary school. They demolished my junior high school and my high school. Why not? You know, I've joked how, you know, all the wooden paneling is gone from the room that used to have the pool table because of a flood. That was one flood back before I was here.

13:54 And I was like, well, sometimes you got to tear things down. And, yep, they're not going to be like they were, but they might actually be better. And I was thinking of all the different ways I could configure the basement and maybe put my podcasting stuff down there. It's cool, it's quiet, and it'll give me a reason to go up and down the steps. And that worked for my grandma. She lived to be well into her 90s, and she slept upstairs. So every day, you know, she would go up and down the stairs, and I'm like, well, that's maybe what I need to do. What are the benefits of this particular situation?

14:38 And I guess we're gonna find out, because there's no way around it. And I wrote the check to get things started. And now it's just a matter of, like, well, as I always say, it's gonna get better. There's a link in the description of this show. If you find it entertaining, if you find it thought provoking, if you get some sort of value out of this and you want to give some value back, you can go to betterdave.com and there's a button there that says, buy me a coffee. And if you buy me a couple thousand, it'll help me pay off the basement. Yay. There you go. That's all.

15:20 So I hope life on your side of the computer glass is amazing, and I'll see you again soon with another episode of Building a Better Day.