Speaker 1: Lina starts us off this hour in New York City. Hi, Lina. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi.

Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you for taking my call. Sure.

Speaker 1: What's up in your world?

Speaker 2: Well, currently, Dave, right now, I have a lot of student loans and I have some credit card debt that I'm trying to pay off, but just the amount of income that I have that comes in for months it's not really able to like you know even touch or pay off the student loans but I'm able to pay off the credit cards but it'll just take a few months for that to happen so yeah so I'm a single mom I have I have a six-year-old son and most of the student loans they came came from when I was in pharmacy school. Did you complete pharmacy school? I'm sorry? Did you complete pharmacy school? I didn't computer because like in this happened last year I had gotten I had gotten dismissed from the program because I had a serious family emergency that kind of jeopardized my seating and I had to withdraw my application and be kicked

Speaker 1: out of the program so I have a lot of how long were you in pharmacy school for five four years you were in for four years four years yeah how much did you

Speaker 2: like graduating? How much did you like graduating? I only had three courses left in completing the on-campus coursework and then I had to do one year of rotations and then after one year you graduate and you have to take your

Speaker 1: boards and become a pharmacist. Yeah, and what level of family emergency would

Speaker 2: keep you from going across that finish line? Well, I have a parent that has like uncontrolled high blood pressure and diabetes and they suffered a stroke you know very close to a stroke and that kind of had to take on some serious care and you know in terms of helping them and that kind of like you don't mess with the time that I had to study for my studies. It was rough. And who's taking care of the parent now? Well, so far, like, you know, the parent is, they're still with me, and I'm still helping them out, and, you know, not being in pharmacy anymore, I'm doing courses online, and I, I'm doing, I'm doing health care management now online, and I'm going to be graduating from there next year, next year spring semester, so it's just that, like, since I have all Is that just trying to figure out like what should be my so all the all the student loan debts on hold right now?

Speaker 1: Because you're back in school Yeah, how much student loan debt do you have?

Speaker 2: Almost 180,000 That's including credit cards as well

Speaker 1: And how much of that's credit cards?

Speaker 2: In credit cards itself. I didn't add it up About 7,000. You're almost done with that you said. What is your income? Income is a thousand per month.

Speaker 1: You're living on $12,000 a year?

Speaker 2: Yes. In New York City? In New York City, yes. No, you're not.

Speaker 1: Well, have you got your parents income too or something?

Speaker 2: Yeah, since my my mom, you know, like it's that that's the parent I'm with um, she's retired so she's um, you know, like she has her pension Social Security that's being like all of the The mortgage and everything else all the bills and then I'm just I'm I'm there with my son. I pay for my son's My son's tuition for school and then like I I try to take care of like, you know Buying groceries and paying off credit cards and everything mm-hmm okay so like but my what my plan was to do was just to try and see with with trying to get back into pharmacy school again and I even tried to sign up for like a real estate licensing you know just as just for that to be like a side hustle but it's like I even thought of like trying to invest but then like you know hearing from your shows and yeah you don't need to invest you need

Speaker 1: finish you need to finish one of these degrees and get your income up are you even are you working full-time part-time okay why because you're caring you're

Speaker 2: caring for your mother well you know like in terms of like you know juggling

Speaker 1: my son and mom it's kind of tough yeah I can imagine but yeah imagine okay I'm sorry honey you got it you got your plate full here's the thing here's the thing you've got to figure in order to have a career long-term in either one of these things health care management or pharmacy you're going to have to be able

Speaker 2: to work full-time aren't you yes how are you going to do that well I haven't really thought of it like you know future wise but like you know I'm kind of focusing on just trying to finish there's no reason to listen the reason

Speaker 1: to finish the degrees is to get your income up right yeah we're not collecting degrees you're not a thermometer okay we only need degrees to be able to make our in to make more money and you can't make more money unless you're able or you put your life in a situation where you can work full-time and that means that you're going to have to arrange for other care for your mother aren't you yeah long-term not today but as you graduate from either one of these degree fields in order to take advantage of having that degree you're gonna have to be able to work am I wrong about that yeah you know so I don't want you going into debt any further I don't want you collecting degrees just to collect degrees just to say you did I'm heartbroken that you got this close to the finish line on that pharmacy degree and have basically paid for it but weren't able to finish it. I wish you could get back in line on that at some point because that's a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand dollar a year job and your life changes dramatically and you've got the money then to actually hire someone to care for your mother but actually the money that she has coming in from retirement would pay for a caregiver you know in her situation and you may have to go that route you may not have another way around it. So you just have to look at that and think about long-term. Okay, five years from today, where am I going? And step by step, how am I going to get there? The $180,000 doesn't scare me if you're making $150,000 a year. I want you to pay it off really fast. It's really bad, but it doesn't scare me. It does scare me if you think you're going to make $12,000 a year for the next 10 years and stay in your mother's home and care for her. That's not a plan. You're going have to do something else. You boxed yourself in the corner here. Short term, you took care of your mom. That's a wonderful thing you did. Long term, you're going to have to take care of your son, which involves arranging other care for your mother, I think, unless I'm missing something. I'm not trying to be mean to your mom or something. I'm just trying to think about how you're going to take care of your kid and your $180,000 mess. Wow. You Call me back if I can help. I'll help you any way I can, kiddo. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.