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A father of 4-year-old triplets told “The Ramsey Show” that repeated overdrafts left his $3,600 monthly take-home pay stretched too thin to cover basic needs.
Travis, calling from Toledo, Ohio, said his bank account goes negative almost every week. He supports a family of five on one income while attending trade school at night, and said grocery spending is what most often pushes his balance into overdraft.
When the discussion turned to which bills should be paid first when money is limited, personal finance expert Dave Ramsey placed credit cards at the bottom of the list. “Screw MasterCard,” Ramsey said.
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Early in the call, Travis said overdrafts happen frequently. “I’m overdrawn actually almost on a weekly basis,” he said.
He said that he recently signed up for a budgeting app but had not yet completed a full monthly budget. Co-host Jade Warshaw addressed that directly. “I want you to not try to do the budget — I want you to actually do it,” she said, telling Travis and his wife to sit down and enter the numbers.
Ramsey then went through the figures Travis shared. He brings home about $3,600 a month. His mortgage payment is $560, and his car payment is $441. His wife is unable to work because of a hereditary degenerative medical condition that is worsening over time.
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Travis said he carries about $26,000 in consumer debt outside of the mortgage and car loan. He estimated grocery spending at roughly $180 to $220 a week. He also said he occasionally eats out when balancing work, parenting, and night trade school three evenings a week.
Using those figures, Ramsey set aside roughly $700 to $800 a month for food and placed it at the top of the budget.
“I don’t care if you pay anybody else till you feed your family,” Ramsey said, referring to food, shelter, utilities, and transportation as the “four walls” and adding that unsecured debts, including credit cards, come after those essentials are covered.
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Travis said he worries about missing credit card payments, and Ramsey responded that necessities should be paid first when funds are limited.