My wife and I paid off her student loan last night. Feels so good to not owe money to anyone. Praise The Lord 🙌🏼

Im a "beneficiary" of the student loan pause... but I've paid off 1/2 of my loans while at the 0% rate.

My husband and I paid off just under $65,000 in student loans during the repayment pause. It took about a year and a half, but we are commercial debt free. It can be done!! By the grace of God, we have only our mortgage left to pay off and then we will be completely debt free. We are very blessed ❤ For those who are still in the thick of it...don't give up!! Stick to the small wins and it will keep you motivated to finish the race. Good luck and God bless!

Obviously I’m the outlier, but I have taken full advantage of the pause. My wife and I cleared up all of our debt outside of the student loans, and we’re 18 months away from finishing those! Amped! 🦉🥃

I will never understand how people didn't take advantage of the pause and pay off their loans. I was already intentionally paying off my student loans, but when the pause happened I became hyper-intentional on paying it off.

The 0% interest was 👌🏼. Made extra payments on a monthly basis. Paid off $30k in student loans. Don’t feel bad for a single person who didn’t use the loan pause to their advantage.

Proves that when people are told they don't have to pay.... they won't. Same with the Eviction Moretorium

Poverty isn't usually a money problem. It's almost always a discipline problem.

Listen, if you owe money pay it off!

I paid my federal off during the pause. But i was committed at paying them off. I tried to convince my parents to keep paying on theirs, and my dad finally admitted that i was right after making no payments.

My daughter was pissed off when she found out her loans were paused. She went online, turned off the pause, and paid it off. She was smart, not stupid.

I paid off my loans during the pause!! It was life-changing!

This was me in 2020. Then I did my personal budget review at the end of the year and I saw the exact same thing where I didn’t pay down anything. So beginning in 2021, I started paying everything as much as I could. I got my roughly $30k debt down to now it’s about $5500 and I’ll be paying it off by the end of the month. I wish I could have that 7-8 months back from 2020 to have a savings now. Live and learn

In October of last year, I was down to the last 20,000 of my 62,304 in student loan debts. I started in April of 2021 to take the debt free journey and I had calculated it would take me until June 2023 to completely pay it off. I briefly thought of waiting to see if student loan forgiveness would happen. Fortunately I decided not to wait and paid the last of the debts off early on April 14th. 🎉 I am completely debt free and have 3 months of my 6 months emergency fund completed. It feels unreal sometimes that I have gotten this far but I am looking forward to my next steps. Thanks to the Ramsey team for giving me inspiration and hope.

Pain deferred is pain amplified!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥 I love Dr. John so much!!! So blessed he’s on the Ramsey team.

Debt isn't a money problem it's a behavioral problem.

If you take out a loan, REPAY your debt! Not the American Taxpayers responsibility!

It comes down to being RESPONSIBLE with repaying your debt!

My husband and I kept on making payments during the whole pause. We are almost done paying off the student loans.

Some people would be broke in less than a yr if you gave them 1ml

My wife is a teacher and we paid off her 25k in student loans during the pause. She had a co-worker saying he was waiting on the forgiveness and that it’s a waste of money to pay the loans off at the moment. We’ve been debt free for 6 months and I’m sure he’s in the same spot as before if not worse as this clip points out. It’s a mentality followed by action that allows these changes and progress to happen!

It helped my girlfriend. She paid off all her student loan debt with the child tax Care money

I saved up $29K during the pause to fully pay off the student loan. I put it in a separate bank account and forgot about it. If the forgiveness happens...Great! If it doesn't...I pay it off before interest kicks in and I'm not impacted.

I love Dave Ramsey and Dr John they are the best at giving advice on financial issues.

I heard today they are accusing him of taking money from Exit Timeshare in the tune of 30 Million. And not disclosing it as a paid advertisement. Not sure how they got the information for the suit but then again anyone can sue anyone with no proof

Stupid is as stupid does. A lack of discipline ALWAYS results in more debt. Every single time. The root cause of continuing debt is lack of disciple, not lack of income.

As I went through COVID and kept my job, nothing changed in my lifestyle. I got raises and bonuses from my job and nothing changed. I didn’t go buy a new car. I didn’t get myself into any sort of debt and I’m happy living frugal. As life was intended to be. Just my family and my daily bread (physical and spiritual).

Issue isn't so much the government as it is the behaviour of the borrowers. For those that took advantage of the pause to pay their loans off without accruing interest it was hugely beneficial. For people made the choice to not pay on them during the pause, that's their problem, it wasn't the government's fault. Government gave them the opportunity to take advantage of it and too many people chose not to.. that's the borrowers fault

The government didn't screw things up, the greed and the short term gratification screwed things up.

If anyone can explain me why student loan should not be forgiven but PPP loans is 100% quality I would really appreciate.

Bad habits will get ya every time.

I continued to pay my student loans each month. In March 2023, I received Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)!

I paid my student loan off, the interest pause really helped me out a ton as interests on student loans start accumulating even while u are in school, so after school I was only paying interests for years. So for me the pause was huge help

Don’t agree with the final conclusion. Loans will resume when I am done with school and I have the money to pay it off. I will be able to pay it off in 6 months while generating minimal interest. I’m very grateful for the pause. Now if you weren’t responsible with the pause, that’s another issue.

We need people like Dave in our government to save our country .

I took advantage of the pause and paid mine off completely. $17,000 with only like $20 of interest earned on it.

When you guys talk about papers can you please link them in the description of the KZfaq video?

Very well done, guys!

I loved the pause. My student loan was paused, my husband's loan was not. We have a larger savings. We paid some money against my loans with no growing interest. Also, we paid off both cars and several small personal loans.

When your government shows up and says, I’m here to help, run as fast as possible in the opposite direction!

This was a great discussion

“Payment deferred is payment amplified.”

My neighbors bought a new truck because he had enough for a down payment when loans were paused ! 😢

Darn I thought Dave was saying he was wrong. Oh well. LOL

They always say if the money system was to reset, those that are rich will be rich again and those who were poor will be poor again. It's about choices. I figured most people took that $400 student loan payment and bought a new vehicle. I don't have student loans anymore, and my two bro's snowballed their student loans so when they are due they only "have to" pay half as much as their original bill. Be smart with money.

I can whole heartedly say it worked wonders for myself and my family.

We got ours paused but we keep paying it

We are living in the NL, my family got 0€ in any govt reliefs. My company gave me 250$ to buy chair/desk whatever I need to work from home. And that was all. We 1/2 a month eating out. My wife cooks really good. We have nice coffee machine (gift from parents In law), but even before we were making coffee mostly at home. Never CC debt otlr personal loans. Mortgage almost payed off. 2 kids. Easy life. No worries

My wife paid of the remaining 85K of her student loans during the paused. She is loan free now. The key is taking advantage of opportunities when they arise.

My favorite Ronald Reagan quote: "The nine most feared words in the world are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.' ".

I benefited by paying off my student loans during the pause. Now that’s money back in my pocket. I knew this wouldn’t make a difference for most students in deep debt, and I was correct.

I'm hispanic. 1st generation MexAmer. Grew up poor in a broken home. I paid off my grad and undergrad degree loan in 2013 in my late 20s. I'm victorious, I'm debt free

You should link the paper in the description for us other nerds to check out

Agree. So many people I know took the pause money to justify a new car payment and more debt. Madness

Most interesting is that taking the student loans out of it entirely. The average American also got into more debt? So basically this has absolutely nothing to do with student loans. Inflation and the cost of living is what changed, granted shutting peoples job down didn't help. There is no correlation when statistically everyone is paying more now than we were before the pandemic, which makes people have more debt.

I was able to pay off a lot of my debt during the pause, and it allowed me to relocate to a more affordable area and as a result I make three times more and I'm able to pay my student loans down 4 times faster.

I personally paid off my $70k of loans during the pause but I’m surprised no one mentioned that “life is more expensive and the wages haven’t grown so we were forced to use credit!

I paid off all of my $15,000 in student loans in 6 months after graduating in the spring of 2020. I only had government loans to pay off since I had worked as much as I could in school to take out as little or no loans as possible. I saw a unique opportunity that not only had most of my loans not accrued interest while I was in school, but I could attack them and not pay interest on them even after graduating. Most of my friends made zero repayments and IF they did anything, they invested that money in stocks. BUT, any gains they made went towards and increased lifestyle, NOT repayments. I'm an engineer, so I love getting out the Excel sheet and doing mathematics. I *could've* made more money investing my money early on, but I would be willing to bet that I am money ahead right now having just paid off the money I borrowed in as short of time as possible. It set me up to leave a crummy job after only 2 years because I was more financially secure than most people at 24.

I just kept paying and pretended nothing changed. Glad I kept paying, still a ways to go though :D

I dont have a problem with student loans themselves. I have a problem with how the repayment terms are applied. The lenders front load the payments so that you are only paying interest for years before you make a dent in the principle. Its like indentured servitude.

I heard there were some Timeshare weasels that were suing Dave Ramsey … I’d love to hear ur take on it.

They said Biden sent out the $1300 but wasn’t that Trump?

I'd be curious if there's a bit of bimodal distribution on the paused loans side between those who used the pause to actually pay things down versus those that did not, because the effect may have been somewhat larger than 5% on the group that did not pay down and less or negative on the others.

During covid the company i worked for paused insurance payments. People were buying cars and not paying their insurance.

Study after study shows that just giving people money does not help yet we have a vast amount of politicians who would love to do basic guaranteed income, repercussions and forgive even more college debt. This is vote buying and nothing more.

I personally know several people who made good use of the pause. These people took that loan money and paid off other debt (credit cards). This helped some people tremendously. Some used this opportunity appropriately.

"We're from the government and we're here to help"

Tbh I didn’t know there was a pause haha I had about 40k in student loans when COVID started. I was living by myself and super bored so decided to actually move in with my best friend and drastically reduced my fixed costs, I used that to pay loans in full. Now I have student loans paid off, car paid off, down payment for house + 6 months emergency. Just had to sacrifice for about 24-36 months now I feel great from a financial stress perspective!

I used the pause to pay my student loans down to the limit at which the Public Service forgiveness would cover it. It didn't make a huge difference, but it helped. Unfortunately my other bills have raised to eat up the difference of not having those student loan payments since despite everything I've done to cut. Just house insurance alone has chewed most of that difference.

Exactly. You give someone $1 they will spend $2. Can't wait for them to have to start paying back the bills they expected me to pay

My son had continued to pay his loans and he paid his student loans off 5 years early and no interest since they freezed the payments. Only way to go

I also knew It would ONLY hurt people , cause humans we are not that smart 🤣🤣🤷‍♂️👍

I think Dave, working with his lawyers, need to address the $150 M lawsuit regarding the timeshare exit firm he promoted a few years back. To go over one month and ignore it, and continuing to pretend nothing happened, goes against the Christian beliefs he professes.

Dave knows his stuff!

Because of the stimulus money, my husband and I were able to pay off our mortgage and redo our kitchen so we could get a dishwasher (I couldn't keep up with dishes being pregnant with my 4th). It for sure changed our lives. During that time, we were saving tons of money during the pause to collect interest to later give loans a huge lump sum when the pause ended. Then my family went on a Wednesday afternoon walk and got caught right next to a vehicle that got shot at. Thankfully none of us got hurt, but we decided to get out of our neighborhood and use that money to move. To get a comparable house in a safer neighborhood costed us $30,500 difference in house selling price (so over $50K after fees and such, nealry $60 when you factor in the flooring we ended up replacing and other defered maintenance we tended to). While we are definitely a family that went into more debt during the pause, we almost certainly would have done it without the pause (it just would have been harder to do).

Please include a link for the NBER white paper. Thank you.

My coworker was holding out for the 10000 payme t 'gift' and instead bought a 30000 new subaru. Still lives at home and argues with dad about moving out. Once hes actually paying rent, the message will probably sink on more.

I thought it would be a great time to pay off a loan without having to pay interest on it. I don’t remember hearing about people starving….I did hear about all of the job openings.

I had a paid off car and got a way nicer one in 2021. Yet, I was planning on this since 2019 and was just looking for a good deal at the lower rate. Don’t know if I would have if not for COVID but it helped knowing I now work from home and put 8k miles a year versus 14k. But looking back being out of all debt would have been nice too

We only carry mortgage debt now. And weve paid extra and with escrow it is less than rent! Peace of mind! Havent had a car payment since 2005. And we bought a car with 2,550 miles for $18.2 cash!

If someone called in and blamed government for their debt/financial woes you'd tell them it wasn't government, it was their own decisions. You'd tell them to own their situation and stop blaming others. Why now is it ok to blame government for peoples bad decisions. What wasn't discussed is how many people made good decisions and used the money to pay down debt or to get through without taking on more dept just to survive.

That's crazy! My husband and I used that extra money to pay off my car a year early and pay down more of our debt snowball. We're still in baby step 2, but those payments helped.

This reminds me of the assertion that “social systems are inherently insensitive to most policy changes that people choose in an effort to alter the behavior of systems.” Source: Forrester, J. W., 1971, “Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems,” MIT Technology Review, Vol. 73 No. 3 (January), pp. 52-68.

🤷 Pausing the payments with 0% had me say, well, I guess I'll focus on that for the most bang for my buck then the other debt I was paying off. I got rid of my student loans first because they did that, but my goal was always to get rid of my debt. Guess I was the statistically insignificant. 🤣

Kept paying mine and can see the tiny glimmer of light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Should have it paid off next year by staying on schedule

I guess i am the exception to the rule. That money help me when i needed it and i am now debt free and have my 3 month emergency fund. 🎉😊

0:48 AND a white paper is NOT peer reviewed. So three guys get together and throw $h!t at a computer screen and hit print without anyone else reading it to call them on their BS. 👍

My wife and I paid off numerous federal loans during the pause (and we're almost all done with my wife's debt) though we did actually add more house debt for our expanding family, however, the affordability of that includes the student loan payment in that because that money has always been going out the door to pay debt!

Made a huge difference for me.

Not me. I paid of the remaining balance of my SUV. I paid of one student loan of $14,000 am projected to pay off another $6000 student loan next Friday. So it worked for me. This is a blanket statement but does not include ALL people.

Dave’s employees always feel compelled to agree with him, as one of them expressly admits here.

I agree. Except that it makes more sense to pay towards your own mortgage as opposed to renting (ie. paying someone else's mortgage). Most people will not be able to save 100% for their homes, so it makes more sense to stop paying rent and actually own a home. Once you own the home you can pay down your own mortgage by paying more on your own loan and you are able to avoid ever-increasing rent.

Yes, ppl took on more debt, but it was a choice. I read an article about couples who were finally able to save for a down payment for a home. Some folks were able to do a round of ivf. They were deeply grateful and were unable to do these things while paying their loans. So, it ultimately depends on your world view regarding debt. Some ppl took advantage of it by paying down more of their loan and decrrasing thier debt in general, some ppl were just unconscious about the choices they were making (the majority of folks), and some ppl chose more debt that, in their opinion, upgraded their lives. If you want to call it a mixed bag due to increased debt, that's fair - but certainly not evil. It's not so black and white (Ie, completely rigid). The world is infinite shades of gray.

I paid off my credit cards, and vehicles, built up an e-fund, and got some money in retirement. Would have done that either way but was definitely quicker with the pause.

Well, it was also the FED doing QE Infinity and 0% interest rates that caused more debt.

Unfortunately the actual paper you mention is behind a pay wall so I can't read it myself. My immediate critique is that there is no mention of behavioral changes by income level. Maybe in aggregate personal debt rose, but it may not have been equal across the board. And inflation combined with return-to-office mandates may have brought on additional costs that offset the retained income from the moratorium. Anecdotally, I used the moratorium to pay off my private education loans through my FCU. $36k total in loans originally that I would've had a much harder time tackling while sending the government $320 a month for the other loans. Not all of us were irresponsible

A bunch of people took that extra money for down payments for cars. Hence why purchases of sneakers, high end fashion and cars went up in resell price.

I'm glad he clarified that John is NOT a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Paid off my student loans by 2014, and by August of 2015 had 20k in the bank. Was kind of nice to not have student loans when COVID hit.

I graduated from pharmacy school in 2021 and became a pharmacist 2 months later during the payment pause. Most around me were against paying anything during the pause; and were shocked to see me throwing money at it voluntarily. $148,000 -> $99,000 so far. No regrets.