Money Stress Isn’t Always About Money

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I am Rachel Cruz hosting this hour with my good friend and bestselling author, Dr.
John Deloney. And we are answering your questions about life, money, relationships, career, anything and everything.
So give us a call at 888-825-5225. All right, we're going to go to the phones.
And is it Torrin from Boston? Hey, welcome to the show. Hey guys, thank you guys for taking my call.
Absolutely. Is it Torin? Did I get that right? Yep, that's perfect.
Awesome. What's up? So I'm an 18 year old and I'm a senior in high school this year and I wanted pretty much advice on what to tell my parents about college.
I've been watching you guys for a while now, and I know the biggest thing was don't go into debt, don't take out loans if you can, try and cash flow it. So I figured I would want to go to a cheaper school.
I was in Massachusetts, so community college is free. So I figured I would go there, and I could transfer to a state school where it's a 100% acceptance rate out of the community college I wanted to go to.
And my parents were very against this idea. They wanted me to go play a sport in college and go to a private university.
They told me that debt doesn't matter. And, yeah, I just wanted to make sure I was making the right decision because they don't agree with it.
Are they paying for it? No, they're not paying for it. Yeah, they don't get a vote then.

I brought that up, but they said they're going to be kicking me out,

so I'll pay for housing.

They also, like, take the car and my phone away.

I mean, if they want to throw a grown-up temper tantrum,

that's, like, the most babyish thing I've ever... Wait, yeah, I want to know more why.

That's so...

That feels very extreme.

Like, it's one thing if your parents kind of, like,

turn their nose up at community college because they're very educated. I totally get that.
It's like, oh, my gosh, can't believe you're going to go to community college. But to kick you out and take your car and your phone, I mean, that's a.
Or if they said. Is there a religious element to this? Like, to go to a Catholic school? No.
Or, like, any level of, like, a religion conviction there? No, I don't really understand why. They just said it would look bad on resumes, and I think I'm making the wrong decision.
They said I was being pretty rude about it. I think that's why.
Well, I have no problem with the parents saying, hey, as for me in my house, you're going to this school and we're paying for it. And if you want to go somewhere else, you're on your own.
I have no problem with that at all. That happens all the time.
And if they say, Hey, in this house, we go to Harvard. And so we've created this fund and

you're going to Harvard. If you get in, I have no problem with that.
If they tell you, you will

not go to that school that you can afford, which is free. You will go take out loans and put

yourself behind for the next 15 years of your life or 20 years of your life, depending on what

private school you go to. And if you don't do that, we're going to take your cell phone.
We're going to take our ball and we're going to go home. We're not playing with you anymore.
That just sounds like real childish, immature behavior. Because what they're doing is they're asking you to have all the skin in the game and they're just going to sit on the sidelines and holler at you.
I thought the same thing.

I don't, I don't really know what their, their plan was for it.

Yeah.

Is this out of character for them?

Like, were you shocked by this or is this like, yeah, yeah, I can see mom and dad doing

this.

I already knew that they didn't want me living there after I was 18.

They said they would help me out a little bit before it was definitely out of character

for them to just like to, once they kind of like said, like my mom said I keep the car.

My dad was very against keeping the car after that.

Thank you. helped me out a little bit before.
It was definitely out of character for them to just like, once they kind of like said like,

my mom said I could keep the car.

My dad was very against keeping the car after that.

Were you being a jerk, dude?

Were you being an 18-year-old just like a turd?

Or were you being kind and thoughtful?

I will admit, for like the first like 30 minutes to talk about this,

I was very kind and peaceful.

And then I started to, I was not as nice as I should have been to them.

All right. I spent my whole career working with 18-year not as nice as I should have been to them.
All right.

I spent my whole career working with 18-year-olds.

Go tell your parents you're sorry.

All right.

Go be a respectful 18-year-old son and say, hey, I got fired up and I acted like a kid and I'm sorry.

I do not want to go into debt for college.

And I respect you want your kids.

You want to be able to tell your friends that your kid graduated from his college.

And I get that you don't like this. Don't say that.
That's disrespectful,. That's disrespectful.
I know that was me just having a little bit of a mommy dig, but like, um, like she wants to be able to go to bridge club and tell like, well, my kid is Rachel. We used to call it, we used to call it the, uh, we used to call it the soccer mom scholarship.
I worked at one university. We would lose students.
Um, we would give somebody a half scholarship or I'm sorry. Our, the tuition was, I'm i'm making up a number 20 grand yeah and they would go to another school that cost 50 grand but they got a one thousand dollar jv soccer scholarship and we would lose them which is a right it's a it's a thirty thousand dollar a year move or 120 thousand dollar move to play jv soccer so that so that parents could, oh, my kid's playing on a soccer scholarship.
Right? It costs them money. Like six figures, right? It's a $1,000 scholarship.
But I would tell your parents you're sorry, and then you have to make an 18-year-old decision. Yeah, and Torin, let me say this too.
Okay. And John's the education nerd.
He loves education, so he can maybe back me up on this uh just just for perspective so you're in boston

and i we have friends that came from that area and the way even the the northeast i would say

even specifically the way they view education there is a there is a high premium high regard

like it is it is everything when we come to the south it's important say it right it's important

but it's not life like like there's a belief of, you can scratch and claw and start a business and be as successful as the guy that has the college degree that, you know, I mean, whether you go to college or not, there's kind of a micro, like just kind of get in there and you figure it out and you can still be successful, but it doesn't have this air about it, which I'm not saying all new Englands have that, but I, but I do think as an 18 year old, that's growing up in that environment. I mean, you're in Boston.
Like it's, so just know there's a world outside of that. Not that we have it right necessarily.
I'm not saying that, but, but you can be successful. You can meet people and network outside of a college.
Like there are ways to live life. That is not one path of just, it has to be this prestigious education.
If you don't get this, it's going to look bad on resumes. You're never going to get a job.
You're going to be homeless and you're going to die. Like, that's not the route.
That's not right. So just know there is more to life outside of possibly the bubble in which education is talked about in your family.
And for whatever it's worth. But John loves it.
it but i've got a i've got a i think one

of the most mission-minded institutions the united states is can be found inside of community colleges and for whatever it's worth my mom dr deloney the first dr deloney was my mother who graduated in her 50s with her phd started at a community college as a tenured full professor right so so So here's what you can do with a community college education, anything you want to. Yep.
Period. Maybe you have to work harder to get job number one.
Fine. But by the way, you're going to transfer out, right? You'll go to a state school or to a private school, wherever you end up, on a transfer out, right? Yeah, there's a program called Mass Transfer, and it guarantees acceptance as well as some other scholarships as long as you maintain a certain grade point average in a community college.
Man, you're right on, bro. And for fun, too, Torn, just run some numbers on the ROI of the private college that you'd go into debt for, average interest rate on a student loan, how long that would probably take you to pay off if you got out of school with an average, maybe an above average salary, let's say.
Run those numbers out, having to repay that starting in a financial hole, significantly, six figures probably for this school, versus getting through it debt-free, doing the free community college, working, saving up, graduating from a state school, starting off and starting to invest the moment you get your first paycheck

because you're going to have money and not be in a hole.

Financially, from the math perspective,

who comes out ahead?

Oh, yeah.

So it's just interesting.

Especially getting started.

All right.

Yeah.

Good for you, Torin.

I'm proud of you for think outside the box,

but be nice to your parents.

Yeah, be respectful.

Treat your parents with dignity.

And for everybody, I love private schools.

I've worked at multiple private schools. I would love for my kids.
Like, I love private schools. I just don't like parents lobbing grenades at their kids and saying, hey, to prop us up, you go do this thing that's going to cost you 10, 20 years of your life for making us feel good.
I don't like that. I have high standards.
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Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. We're going to Chris in Dallas, Texas.
Hey, Chris. Welcome to the show.
Hey, how are you guys? We're doing great. How can we help? So my girlfriend of just over a year now moved in about five months ago from her grandmother's who has supported her.
For context, I'm 26 and she's about to be 25. I do have a career at the moment and currently pay all the bills.
And it's kind of become a weight on me that she isn't really contributing. Because she doesn't have a job? Well, she works part-time.
And back in February, she started a certification course to be a farm tech. Okay.
And since then, she discovered that the certification alone doesn't get her very much in the job market. So she's working on the test, but it's, you know, kind of slow going.
So what did she say when you sat down and talked to her about this? She just, she just isn't motivated. I mean, it's not something that she feels that she needs to do or has to do.
And I'm having trouble with that. That's fair.
There's another adult in the relationship that's not right. Both of you are correct right now.
She doesn't have to do anything because she gets to play house with you and you pay all the bills. She gets to live an imaginary life together.
You know, we jumped the gun on that. I do agree, but the situation did also call for it.
Her grandmother had to downsize and she was on Social Security. Well, I mean, it is what it is.
I'm not trying to take that upon myself. No, I mean, I'm just saying, I'm not trying to be judgy.
I'm just saying she's got a cush situation. And so she's right to say, I don't have to because she doesn't.
You're still, you're not going to kick her out. I lived with my mother a couple of years ago, but I decided I wanted more for myself.
That's right. So Chris, does this change from a relationship standpoint? That's the problem.
Yeah. And this is, I mean, call me old school.
This is where the complication happens when you act like you're married and you're not right and and you're moving in together right and all of it like it this is what ends up happening that it's not as easy as like oh i found this kind of thing about my girlfriend and this may be a deal breaker but i need to figure it out on a couple more hangouts and now now i'm going to call it quits now it's much harder to call it quits when she's when she's living there right so um right this is part of that complication so so does it does it give you um as the as the kids would call it a beige flag or a red flag uh when it comes to like her work ethic and who she is like are you starting to see other parts of her that concern you for a long-term relationship? Well, the thing is, I see myself in her from a few years ago. So I was, you know, in the same situation with my mom.
But I had that realization. Unfortunately, I don't know how to come, how to help her come to that point.
So as two old married people will tell you, you can't. And that was thousands of dollars of dollars of therapy.
We just give that to you for free. The earlier and quicker you can realize you can't make somebody that you love and care about come to any sort of realization.
And you can't think, oh, if I can just have the right phrase, the light bulb will come on. If I could just have that right, that right sit down, she'll see it.

If I just say it the right way.

Or I want something,

I wanted something more for my life.

And now look at me.

That's not how most of the world works.

Most people want to take the easiest path possible.

And she has that with you.

Right.

But my guess is that beyond the money part,

like going back to what Rachel's saying,

this is an integrity issue. This is a character issue.
This is like, oh my gosh, this is going to show up with kids. This is going to show up with when my mom needs to move in with us.
It's always going to be a thing that she didn't want to do it. She's just not going to.
And we're seeing that in real time. She doesn't want more for her life.
And that's hard to stomach. And again, Chris, we're not talking about that.
We're saying, oh my gosh, she to like go be this like boss babe and go make you know six figures no no no she just needs to like pay bills well even even deeper than that y'all had an agreement that like forget the working part like y'all made an agreement yeah that's true yeah here's who we're gonna we're gonna move in together and here's who we're gonna to be. And five or six months in, she's like, yeah, I'm not doing that.
Were the expectations, Chris, pretty clear moving in? Or if she was on the phone, would she say, no, that's not what we talked about? What would she say? I mean, I had explained that I would take care of her until she got her stuff together. But so the, you know, the agreement was that she would.
But now at this point, you know, she's, she moved in at her friends temporarily and she thinks that that's the better option, but I don't see that as the case. You said she moved in with her friends? We need to figure out how, how to, I'm sorry? She moved in with her friends? Right.
And her friend has all her bills paid by her parents. So she's moved out.
Oh, y'all aren't living together anymore. As of a few days ago.
Oh, wow, Chris. Did y'all break up? Did you kick her out? What happened? No, just I confronted her about it again.
And she got mad and left. Okay.
Oh, wow. Chris, you've made a lot of more moves than I was thinking.
Good for you. Well, now I'm wondering if I can get my losses, which that's not up to y'all, but.
Yeah. Here's the thing.
I want you to have a little bit of time just with Chris. Right.
And I want you to actually sit down and be honest with yourself. And it's going to be tough because you're emotional.
You feel pain. You love this person.
You care about this person. You had, here's the hardest part.
You had plans with this person, right? You started creating pictures for tomorrow and this person was in those pictures. And then it was revealed.
This person doesn't want that same life that you want and then this person just bailed on you when you said hey i want to sit down have this conversation and so just because something hurts doesn't mean it's not the right move but i want you to be honest with yourself and by the way me and my wife broke up three or four i don't five times when we were dating so that doesn't mean it's over either. Yeah, and she has popped out before.
You know, she gets scared.

Okay. And by the way, me and my wife broke up three or four, I don't know, five times when we were dating.
So that doesn't mean it's over either.

Yeah, and she has popped out before.

She gets scared of her emotions, I think.

I think the deeper question is, what's this life we're building together?

What's it going to look like?

And is she the kind of person you want to build a life with?

And I think you having the courage to be honest and say, so far, no.

Because when the going gets hard, you kind of just don't want to do anything.

It's a very interesting thing. kind of person you want to build a life with and i think you having the courage to be honest and say so far no because when the going gets hard you kind of just don't want to do anything and she might say i want someone that's just going to take care of me and do whatever i want whenever i want it and i want to be a princess and you can say amazing it's not going to be my i don't want to ride or die like that and you get to choose you both get to choose that right and that that may mean that both of you end up heartbroken for a season yeah sounds like that's it but i hate it for you well that's okay can i tell you it's um most people wouldn't have the courage to do what you did to sit down and say hey here's what we what we agreed on.
Here's what I want. Are you still in? And she said, no, uh, most people go ahead and go and get married and they figure this out and you're five or six or seven with two kids when they're just, I've had enough.
Yeah. But that doesn't make your pain today feel any better.
I'm sorry, man. I hate it for you.
That's all right. I hate it for you.
I hate it for you. Can can i give you a can i give you one homework assignment sure how old are you again 26 you say 26 right i want you tonight by yourself um no alcohol nothing i want you to write a letter to 30 year old chris okay okay and i want you to tell him the things that you started to do today so that he could have the life he had when he's 30 and if she's in that picture then go call her tomorrow but i want you to be clear about what you want your house to feel like the partnership you have with a romantic partner i want you like financially what is this thing going to look like when you're 30 and what must be true today you can begin taking those steps.
You're just going to reverse engineer it, but I want you to write a letter to yourself. Okay.
Put it in a drawer somewhere and open it when you're 30. But this, it's a way to get your head out of this, this immediate pain and this immediate motion and get your head back up on the horizon and say, okay, what needs to be true for tomorrow? Okay.
Okay. I'll give that a try.

All right. Appreciate you, man.
Thanks, Chris. Best of luck to you.

Yeah. And always remember when you're setting a very reasonable boundary or expectation for

someone, you're not being cruel. Like this is, this is the world and we have to pay bills.
We

have to do things, right? So you're not asking this like insane requests, right? I mean, this is, this is pretty basic stuff, Chris. So I don't want you to feel like the bad guy in it.
I mean, seriously, it's, I don't know, it's pretty basic. But I'm proud of you and like really encouraged that you had the courage to set that boundary in hopefully a very kind way, which I think you did.
You seem like a great guy. So sorry, Chris, but glad you called in.
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Hey, listen, if you are concerned about the economy and you just see your neighbor pulling into their, your, your nice middle-class neighborhood in a car that you like, how, how, how are you affording that? Why would you, why? And you just wish people around you had the wisdom of this show for no money. You't have to you don't have to send any money you know all you have to do is like or subscribe the show it puts the show up into the algorithms and it kicks it into the feeds of your neighbors into their podcast feeds into their youtube feeds it just sends the show everywhere and the more people who subscribe and like and i know it's a pain in the butt and I know sometimes you have to log in it's worth it for everybody it puts the show in front of more people and so for everybody it just doesn't cost anything to help out your neighbor and share the podcast though too I mean i get my crime podcasts that i listen to

from friends even here at the office and we'll send each other podcasts that we love so if you love it or if there's an episode you think oh my mom needs to hear this send it to her right or a buddy that this marriage sounds like yours send it to him be careful make sure to tell him that be careful with that but yeah that's right hey let's go out to honolulu and talk to the max what's up max up, Max? Hey, how are you doing? Thank you for taking my call. You bet.
How's Hawaii, Max? It's nice. It's nice.
It sounds wonderful. You're not Max Holloway, are you? One of my heroes? No.
All right. What's up? All right.
I was calling because something happened where my brother kind of holds a lot of anger towards me because he got fired from his job and I had to take it over. And I'm getting ready to move out now and I'm worried it's going to cause more family disconnect.
So I'm just trying to get some help navigating the situation. Is it a family business? It's like a financial and family thing.
I mean, the business? No, it's somebody we know that he worked for. What is it? What kind of business is it? It's a pool cleaning job.
I take home like about like 50 years, so it's pretty good. 50 a year.
And why did he get fired? He had gone on a trip for an extended leave and I was was covering it for him. And the boss at the end of it decided to fire him and offered me the job.
Oh, man. So you did a better job? I don't know.
It was just like he didn't break a rule. You just out cleaned the pools, and the boss was like, I kind of want you instead.
There were some issues with him, that's was a part of it i'm not sure if my brother would even be um let back after anyways but uh okay okay so what what is his beef with you that that you weren't ride or die like yeah forget these guys um is that the is that the beef i think um what happened was he's just feeling like he laughed out on a good opportunity. He did.
He wasn't a good worker. He wants somebody to blame for it, and it's me.
He wants to blame me for it instead of himself. I'm okay with that.
The main issue is the money from the job helps financially support my family. I come from a single mom household, and I'm 19.
I'm trying to move out and be on my own, which would mean that I wouldn't have the same amount of money for my mom anymore and I'm worried that's going to create even more of a family disconnect. So I don't really know what to do.
What's your mom do? She's a cleaner. She works like two jobs cleaning.
Okay. How much does she make? I'm not sure exactly i think i think i went over it with her one time okay how much does she how much difference does she need does she like how much are you covering the bills in the house i'm contributing about it was about fifteen hundred dollars that i was paying off some debt on the water bill and then now it's like to about thirteen hundred i some of rent i buy all of our food and i i cover the the water is she does she have other struggles max um no i mean i think like with addiction or with mental health challenges do um no i i don't sorry what was that i'm asking does she have no not not with addiction or mental health.
Okay, so... She just...
Yeah. Why have you become the caretaker of your mom? I think it's really expensive here, and it's hard to afford to live out here if you aren't making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year exactly and i have two the main thing is that i my mom i think she'd be fine her own but i have two younger sisters and that's where i feel weird leaving i feel like i'm abandoning them how old are they they're 11 they turned 11 yesterday is it at a point where you need to sit down with your mom and have a hard conversation about the financial realities? So I have about six months ago and I've been keeping up.
I told her six months ago, I plan on moving out in March. Okay.
And she hasn't really done any much action towards like figuring out another situation. so I don't know like if I should just stay and keep helping so that we can stay, they can stay in their house or if I should just go on and, you know, put my oxygen mask on before there, you know.
Man. Well, I just feel like Max, that, I mean, you've put yourself in a caretaker's role at 19.
You know what I mean? Yeah. For, and it's heroic, right, in one sense.
I mean, you've really stepped up and helped your mom. But this will be your whole life unless something else changes.
And I feel like that's unfair to you in your life, in your future family, to feel like you have to be the one to carry this burden. And I understand obviously why that is.
But long term, I just don't think it's fair for you to play this role. Yeah, I think I've come to a similar conclusion.
I just feel like I'm like... Sure.
Yeah, what do you do? Does your mom lose the house with your two little sisters, right? Yeah. And then it's like, where do they go? We have family here and I'm sure they could move in with my grandparents or something.
But hold on, hold on. Your mom also plays an integral part of this.
If you told me, hey, my mom really struggles with addiction and my mom struggles with some mental or emotional health disorders, then I would tell you, man, life handed you a mess. and it might be a season, right? It may be that you're going to stay at home for a few years and see these, these young girls until they get older, right? That's not the case.
Your mom's making some choices on a daily basis as to where she's going to work and how much money she's going to make and what she's going to ask of her 19 year old son. And so you're making decisions for an adult, and that's not your job.
Your job is, unfortunately, you've been cast in the role to make sure your 11-year-old little sisters have food and water, which is never your job, but here we are, right? And so, man, you're a man of noble character. But I want you to hear what Rachel's saying.

Five years from now, what would be better?

For you to have started pool cleaning and also gone to get a couple of community college classes on the side,

and five years from now you've got an associate's degree, and now you've got four employees of your own,

and you're making $200,000?

Or you're still making $50,000. This guy had to lay you off because business got slow, and now you're making $200,000 or you're still making $50,000.
This guy had to lay you off because business got slow and now you're making $35,000 and you're in the same bedroom in the same house except you're 24 years old. Like if you think on a longer time horizon, what's the best thing you can do for your family? It might be to go spread your wings at Fly.
I think so, too. I think I just needed some, like, I didn't even not feel like I was crazy or leaving a family.
No, you're not crazy. You're going to feel guilty.
Because it sounds unkind, right? Yeah, it sounds unkind. You're going to feel guilty.
Yeah, like it sounds like, oh my gosh, I'm abandoning my family. But what I want to relieve you of is that was never supposed to be your role.

And like John said, if there was like a dire situation of something,

that's another conversation.

But yeah, I mean, it's a grown-up problem that your mom,

who has two daughters at home, should be the one calling the show and saying,

I can't pay my bills.

What can I do?

And looking at her budget and all of that. And I think you can help guide that, Max, but you can't even change the way she handles money either because you don't have that ability.
We don't have the ability to change people. Here's where I think you can get some peace in this transaction, okay? Number one, you're going to feel guilty.
Just know that's coming, okay? You may have heard me say this on the show. Choose guilt over resentment every time.
If you just stay there and with her, you're going to resent your mom, and that's not fair to her. So choose guilt.
The second thing is, come up with a number and sit down and tell your mom, for six months, I'm going to send $1,000 home. I'm going to send $750 home.
And make sure that everybody's clear on when this money's coming and give her a ramp. You'll sleep a little better at night, I think, and it's going to be not just a cutoff, but it will be a peaceful departure.
I'm sorry, my brother. Let us know if we can help.
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All right, today's question comes from Justin in Virginia. Justin writes, how can I stop being jealous of how much my siblings and in-laws earn? My wife and I have no debt and a really good household income.
We're happy in our careers. We're not missing out on anything due to how much we earn.
I just can't figure out how to not be so triggered and frustrated by other people's income. Wow.
That's a very self-aware question. Very interesting.
Yes. What do you think, Rachel?

Gosh.

And I'm curious how he,

I wonder if he knows the actual number of the income or if he is making up a story in his head

that they're making a ton

because of how they're living.

Gotcha.

Because lifestyle and income

are obviously two different things.

So I'd be curious on that.

What's causing you to think that they're earning more?

Is it because of how they live their life? And kind of the sucky part is when you live your life responsibly for a season, it's not going to look flashy. Eventually you'll start to build wealth and you can enjoy it.
But there is kind of that season of, of grounding, which is where you guys are. Um, but if you know the number and you're like, oh no, they make half a million or whatever crazy a year.
I mean, I have learned, John, when moments like that come up for me, and it's not income necessarily, it could be, but I don't hear people's income a lot. But a situation that they're experiencing something that I want to experience, as much as I can muster up just celebrating them, it's amazing how that fades quickly where the eyes

are off of me. My eyes are off of me.
And you can just be excited for somebody, right? Genuinely. And it doesn't always come easy, I don't think, but when you can just be happy for them and hopefully maybe they're in a great career that's helping other people or something.
I don't know that you can find like the silver lining and what they're doing and being excited. But the fact that are being triggered constantly.

I'm wondering, you know,

your level of contentment is obviously not fully baked, right? Yeah, I have found that I always want to pull the string that's attached to that story. And somewhere in Justin's heart and mind, the dollar amount that you earn every year is attached to value, how much you're worth.
Yep, yep. And somebody told you that somewhere, and I found it helpful to get to the, like, where did that story come from? Oh.
Mm-hmm. Dad used to tell older brother how great he was because he made $6 an hour.
I only made $5. Like, whatever that story is.
Yep. But the other thing is, I think you're right i think justin would be pretty cool to out of the blue write your siblings a letter and just say i see you know i'm so proud of you i see how hard you're working and i see what an amazing and instead of when you feel that jealousy our tendency is to pull away instead of go towards that person to celebrate them and our bodies bodies have a way of adjusting for that proximity.
We're in support and it just over time realizes, we're not in competition and I don't have to fight you. I have a great life.
One other quick thing, often when you are creating a life, I'll say it like this, that is less alive. When you are we go to work we make this much money we have this couch we have this house we have this car we were supposed to be happy here it's easy to put your eyes up and start looking for what other people have that you don't and it often over the course of my life when i found myself jealous in certain places it has often brought me and my wife back to the table to say, what life are we creating for ourselves? And where do we find excitement and aliveness and adventure and joy in our home? Cause it's not, I'm starting to look for other places.
Right. Yeah.
And it almost always comes back to, we've become co-managers of our house. Such a great, that's a good point.
And so the stagnant, like being stagnant in life. And I think we've gone through season of that.
You look up and you're like, oh my gosh, we've just been doing the same thing. And there's not as much laughter or joy or levity.
It's a lack of attentionality. That's right.
That's right. But when you say, no, we're putting the phones away.
We're doing family game night and we're going to do this stupid game. That's so silly.
But everyone ends up laughing. Right you just do these things um and they don't have to be expensive i mean gosh it was last break before the summer though i think it was spring and we took all the kids we went to a local high school like um parking lot randomly with bikes and they still talk about it like do you remember we were bikes in a parking lot and i was like you ride bikes all the time but it was like this like i don't like, it was so small and insignificant, but to them, right, it brought this like other magic of like this new place or whatever it was for them.
But it's those things. And again, it doesn't have to cost money.
You don't have to go travel to Europe to do that. Like find, find it in your home.
Cause gosh, we need it. All of us, right.
Especially this time of year, election season and everything. We're just like, oh my gosh, give me some levity and enjoyment with with the people that you love but it's recognizing levity and joy for 99 of us is a choice yeah there are people in abusive situations yes there are people who are deep poverty yes there are people who are abjectly on the margins yes but for most of us we go home and we look at our spouse and we choose what happens next.
We choose how we respond. We choose our frustration.
We choose to not pick up the trash, not put our clothes away. We choose to just watch TV, just sit there on our phones.
All of those are choices. And that means we can choose something different.
Yep. And so, Justin, I challenge you to sit down with your wife and y'all reimagine your life.
And you might end up in the exact same space, but the exercise of reimagining it, what adventures do we want to create inside of our own home? Even for no money. What does that look like? Totally.
It can rearrange everything. And write your siblings a letter, a handwritten letter.
It's a good exercise. Tell them how freaking proud of them you are.
It's so cool. It's going to swallow some pride to do that, right? When you're in a state of...
Or it opens your heart up and you realize... It does, but that takes a...
Okay, I'm going to celebrate something that is not always fun for me, right? But you start to learn it. So good.
All right, up next we have Dan in Eugene, Oregon. Hey, Dan.
Welcome to the show. Hi, Rachel.
Hi, John. How are you? We're doing great.
How are you? I'm, I'm, uh, Oh, not great. Number of years, I guess.
Um, my, my question, my question for you is how do I calculate when I can feasibly retire and, or when I can start to plan a second career. And the, the rough years is, um, I'm about three years into being a widow, widower.
I'm sorry. Um, thank you.
Um, I have three kids, two of them will go to college. I owe $380 on my house.
And I sort of, as I was sort of looking at, as I don't know, I guess getting our lives back in order over the last number of years, one of the Ramsey quotes of why don't they teach this stuff in school is of like, you know, how do you even calculate what is the right trajectory? And now that I'm doing it for alone, one and two, is for myself, it's a alone, I guess I should say, or as a single person. Yep.
How old are you, Dan? I'm 48. 48.
Okay. Hey, Dan, before Rachel's going to walk you through the numbers of it, can I challenge you on something? Yeah.
And this might be a harder exercise than the math problem. Sure.
But I would love for you to spend some time. And unfortunately, I don't know that you can do this with anybody other than just taking Dan out on a retreat.
But I would love for you to figure out or ask yourself, what do you want it to feel like when you walk in your front door at the age of 55? Yeah, that's because I want you to ask yourself, what kind of life do you want to have at 55? Because that's going to determine the math problem. Yeah, because I think when you get to the numbers really quick, Dan, we only have about 40 seconds, so I'm sorry for the short call.
It's going to be looking at what do you have in retirement now and then averaging out average returns 10% to 12%, whatever that looks like, and knowing your lifestyle, to John's point, how much is it going to take to run your household at retirement and what is it going to look like to be able to, you know, you have to calculate inflation and all of that.

Now, if you have not sat down with a SmartVestor Pro,

I would do that.

You can go to RamseySolutions.com

and find one in your area

because I want to be able to see all of your numbers,

everything that you have in retirement,

including this house,

and what's going to be the best bet to get you in a place.

But again, it's lifestyle.

It's return on the market and inflation

that goes up every year is kind of determining factors. So thanks for the call.
Thanks to everyone in the booth, John. Thanks for a great hour.
This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, guys, I'm Jade Warshaw, and I want to talk to you for a second about student loan refinancing.
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That's laurelroad.com slash Ramsey. Live from Nashville, Tennessee, this is the Ramsey Show where we talk about your money, your loves, your relationships, and your life.
I'm John Deloney, joined by number one best-selling author Rachel Cruz.

And we're taking your calls on just about everything.

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We are glad you are here.

Let's go out to Detroit Rock City and talk to Ken.

What's up, Ken?

Hey, how are you guys doing? Dude, we're rocking on to the break of dawn brother what's up all right i guess uh my question would be that um here in detroit we have a pretty good income one income household family uh three kids married and it just seems like living paycheck to paycheck can't seem to get ahead. And just kind of almost feel like we're struggling here.
When you say pretty good income, I found on the show, some people think that means a million bucks and some people may think that means 40,000. What's a pretty good income? We're, we're at about 27 $300,000 a year with my income.

Okay.

In Detroit, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We classify that as pretty good.

Or in the global sense, the top of the top of the top teeny tiny percent of one.

Yeah.

So you're crushing.

That's great.

So Ken, so you're saying that you feel like you guys are still living paycheck to paycheck even with this um have you guys dug into any numbers you do you know why that this is happening yeah i'm pretty i i try to stay up on the numbers and i and we got a lot of debt we got a lot of student debt um i went back to school for anesthesia so i'm a nurse Oh, yeah. Okay.
So I'm'm sitting on probably I'm at right about 181,000 in student loan debt still. Okay.
What other debt is there? So we got that. We owe 200,000 on the house, 203,000 on the house.
Um, we at one point took out a 401k loan, which we still owe 45,000 on. Okay.
I have a HELOC loan, which another 17,000 on that. Okay.
And about 20,000 in credit cards. Okay.
What about cars? Cars, we have two leases. They were both three-year leases.
One we still owe $13,000 on, and the other one we owe $10,000. How much a month are you guys paying those leases? How much are the payments? One of the payments is $415,000 a month, and the other one's about $460,000.
About $1,000. Yeah.
All right. Rachel's going to walk you through this, can I tell you something? I've spent a lot of my career sitting behind closed doors with medical professionals and can I tell you you're not crazy? Is that cool? You're not nuts.
I mean, that helps. Here's what you've done.
You've done exactly what they told you to do. Yeah.
Okay. Um, they gave you some, um, some, some quippy things like cars are depreciating assets.
You never want to own them. So just lease them.
You're going to buy new ones anyway. Um, you got to buy a house that looks like this because they can't take it away from you.
If you ever, you know, get in super trouble and Hey, if you can make this money, but you got to go back to school, of course you do. And, uh, and it just keeps going and going and you look up and you make, you know, a little over a quarter million dollars a year and you can't breathe and it doesn't make any sense.
So hear me say you're not nuts. Also hear me say you can get out of like the path out of this is not difficult.
It'll suck, but it's not hard. Okay.

But it's going to take two years of you deciding to live a radically different life for just 24 months or so, maybe 36 months.

But I think 24 months, given you can work extra shifts, I think you can clean this up and set an entirely new trajectory for your home.

Because what your home doesn't have right now, you've got everything in your house.

You don't have any peace.

Yeah. Is that fair? Yeah.
No, that's, that's, that's correct. Okay.
If you, if you and your wife can settle on that being the goal, not the cars, not the house, if you settle on, I want to walk in from work and I want everyone to be happy that I'm here. I want to walk in from work with a smile on my face, not with my head slumped over.
It's going to take about 24 rough months and you can get there. Yeah.
Okay. I just know too many people who are too many people in the medical profession who are dropping their kids off for college and they still have their own student loans.
That's just madness. Right.
It's madness. Those are my friends, by the way, bro.
Like it's just, it just is. So you're not crazy.
All right. all right yeah and ken and i think y'all's situation too it is the perfect picture of just like this lifestyle creep right i'm like you're just you just a little bit here a little bit there out of car go on vacation go out to like we're just making good money because you're bringing home probably what 28 000 a month or so yeah i mean and it depends too because i think i mean that That's with a little bit of overtime but yeah but it's consistent right sure yeah yeah but you look at that just your monthly take home and you're like man it you know what i mean like there's there's a lot you can do with it but also like john's saying the normalization of like yeah but we could spend that i mean you know it's it's the classic idea that your income is not the issue for most people.
It is your money habits and the way that you handle your money. And so that magnification is exactly what you guys are experiencing.
So it's like, yeah, we'll get two nice cars. We'll do this.
We'll get a little bit more debt. And it's just payment, payment, payment, payment, payment, payment.
So a lot of this income is going to these payments. So clearing all of it up, I think is key.
And I think you and your wife sitting down just as an experiment and just say, what if we made a hundred grand, which again is above the average household income that is 80 grand. Nobody's starving.
So even a fun, you know, even more of a fun exercise, just put 80 grand and say, okay, if we brought in 80 grand a year, what it comes out to per month, how, how can we live on that? Like live on that. And then extra from that of what you actually bring in is going to be thrown at the debt or whatever it looks like.
But just, you know, I think it's always a fun experiment for married couples to sit down and do this, like play the income game and just see how much can we actually, if we had to do this, what would our life look like if we had to live on 60 grand a year, on 50 grand a year, on 70 grand a year? And then the great thing about you, Ken, is that's not what you guys are making. So the margin is there.
It's just the choice of lifestyle. And so getting your lifestyle wrapped and under control is going to be number one.
And it is going to feel like a shock because it's not going to be going out to eat. It's going to be shopping at Aldi, not Whole Foods.
It's going to be, I mean, you're going to be living, right? Like you're making 70 to 80 and that's how you're going to clean it up. You're not going to clean it up by just kind of here and there.
And we'll just, we'll kind of do it, but we're still going to go. We're going to still go on vacation.
We're still going to go out to the nice, you know, date nights that we want and drop 200 bucks. Like you can't do that.
Like if you're going to do this, you have to radically do it. And so you and your wife sitting down and saying, okay, here's our budget for the next two years and mapping that out and mapping out your lifestyle.
And then from there, starting to pay off these debts, smallest to largest. And what's wild again about that income coming in, I'm like, you know, you guys could clean up the HELOC in two to three months.
You could clean up all the credit card debt in two to three months. I mean, like you can make a lot of really big progress, Ken, if you guys decide to do it.
And then the hope on the other end, we always talk about you live like no one else. It's not gonna be fun, but you guys can do this.
Even the big mountain of the $180,000 student loan, you know, you can get it cleaned up. And if you live like no one else, later you're bringing in 30, you know, 30 grand a month.
You can do whatever you want. Yeah, you can do whatever you want.
Now you get to do whatever you want. But I would see, you know, talk to the car company and look at your leases.
Leases are always a little bit more confusing of the buyout and everything. But if you can get out of those, I mean, just do what you can to dwindle down this debt, like as fast as possible, Ken.
And you guys will see the progress. It's just going to be up to you all if you want to really do this.
But the math is there. It's going to work.
Math is easy. And you're going to take every shift.
You're going to miss Little League games. You're going to do whatever it takes for 24 months.
And make a crap ton of money and pay this off. And y'all are free forever.
This is The Ramsey Show. Hey guys, Rachel Cruz here.
All right. I'm about to say what everyone already knows, but budgeting is a good thing to do.
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Again, go download EveryDollar today. All right, Dave, you have some strong opinions.
Possibly, yeah. I think so.
Okay, because you really prefer credit unions over big banks. Well, credit unions, for one thing, are non-profit, which means that the members, the customers, own the credit union.
So, any profits that the credit union makes goes back into customer pricing. So, you get better rate on savings, cheaper checking, and so on, that kind of thing.
But what's more important than that, though, is the fact that the customer is the owner changes the spirit on the credit union. So I find very few credit unions that aren't very customer-centric.
Well, and I think we have found one that is incredible, and that's Fairwinds. They are an incredible credit union that is really out with the heart to help the customer.
They're the right kind of people with the right kind of values. And they've done a really, really good job with customer service.
And the deals that they're offering, the Ramsey Tribe, is incredible. Yeah, absolutely.
And I love it. The things that we teach, they so line up with.
And you're right, their customer service is unbelievable. Winston and I just signed up and we got an account.
And I'm not kidding. It took less than five minutes.
It was so user-friendly. Like the step-by-step approach was unbelievable.
And then the next day my phone rings and it says fair wins on my phone. So I answered it and talked to someone there and they said, yeah, they give calls to every new customer.
And so again, they just really care about your experience. And I so, so appreciate that.
Plus anything that you can do at a traditional branch, you can do with them at fairwinds.org or on their app. And you'll have free access to over 33,000 ATMs.
Hey, you guys know how much I hate banks in general. And so for me to do this is a big deal.
Talk to our friends at Fairwinds and check out the combined checking and savings bundle that they created just for the Ramsey tribe. You guys, it's incredible.
Yeah, you guys, it's so easy to join Fairwinds no matter where you live. So go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey.
Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. Home ownership is something that we believe should be part of your financial plan, but it's really hard these days.
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All right. Up next, we have Scott in Pittsburgh.
Hey, Scott, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for taking my call.
Absolutely. How can we help? Yeah, I've loaned $80,000 to my cousin for his house flipping business through multiple notarized promissory notes over the last four years.

I received that $80,000 back, but none of the $45,000 in interest.

My cousin recently informed me that his business is in trouble.

He lives four hours away, has four kids, a rocky marriage and other debt.

So he's not rich to say the least. He now won't return any of my calls or texts.
And I sought some legal counsel. And all of the notes have a confession of judgment clause.
So legally, we're good even to knock out a court to get a judgment. So that's in my favor.
That side of the family has a lot of crazy in it to the extent that one individual is a little crazy, a little dangerous to be around. Personally, my wife and I are in baby step seven.
We have four kids, two high-stress jobs, and extremely active social life in our church. So part of me says just let this go and go focus on your life.
But another part of me says, you'll get the money that you've earned in interest,

especially since he won't call you back.

I feel like I've let my wife down on this decision,

even though we haven't really lost any money.

So I'm just wondering what path should I go down

and how do I emotionally accept that path?

One time, well, I won't tell that story.

That's a personal story.

Scott, walk away. Walk away.
And I think the making peace is making peace with yourself because you knew this was a real possibility before you did this. And you tried to cover yourself with a bunch of legal paperwork.
and you had a family member that you probably kind of deep down knew was going to do this,

looked at you and said, hey, I'm not doing that. And I don't think you let anybody down.
I think it's a story you're telling yourself to kind of cover over the fact that you kind of feel like you got what you knew was probably going to happen. And so I'd make peace with it.
Don't ever loan family members money again. And let's go on about our life.
All right. Thank you.
I mean, does that, does that feel right? It does. It, it's kind of where I thought I was, but the whole, like, just not calling and texting back after like a four year relationship where we had a great back and forth and, you know, money was exchanged both ways and, um, things felt very comfortable.
And then, you know, all of a sudden it was just like okay it's it's gone and but that means you're going to try to go get your interest because you're mad don't do that yeah don't do that yeah and it's it's one of those things um not to say told you so but we always tell people even if you got it and even if you're close don't borrow money because it changes the there's, there's something wedged between you and it's shame. And that's really hard to overcome.
And so even if you send him a handwritten letter that just say your debt's forgiven, I wish you the best and go on about your life. Yeah.
And the story I'm playing in my head, Scott, I could be wrong is he's probably panicking, right? I mean, he, he has four kids. His life is falling apart.
Yeah, I mean, he's fearful. I mean, his fear, you know, radar is up all the way, and he probably can't even emotionally, in the fact, you know, go there, the fact that you're family, too, that adds a whole other dynamic.
Or the one guy he went to for help, he can't even do that anymore because there's 45,000 bucks between the two of you. Yeah i and i know there's probably some justice in you scott even the way you laid out the question you're mad yeah i can tell that you're yeah you're pissed you're like man this is this isn't fair right fair would be i'm owed this money and why am i not getting it right but but i think john right.
I think there is a kind of a humble pill

to swallow to say, okay, I'm going to, I want to move along with my life because you can, right?

Financially speaking, you guys are on baby step seven. You are, you're fine.
Is this the quote

unquote, like justice play? It's not. The justice play would be to take him to court and continue

to wring out, you know, the money that he doesn't have and take his family through. I mean, you know,

and you could, but you would definitely for sure, you know, lose that relationship. And in the end, I don't know if that's worth $45,000 of your time and your energy and your mental capacity.
Yeah, agreed. I would say we didn't have a whole lot of relationship even, you know, even before that, considering like we were just four hours away, not, you know, a strong relationship.
But it's it's just a strange situation because of how how great things were going for four years and even talking together about projects he was working on. And and then it's just like all gone.
Do you know what happened to his business? I'm just curious if he just did bad deals or what? Same story that Dave always talks to, right? He had a partner, the partner skipped town. The whole business was on him and he couldn't keep the whole business afloat.
So, you know, went from being very profitable over four years to, you know, taking a step back over the last like 18 months or so. Yeah.
Yeah. Send him a, send him a letter that just says, Hey brother, you're freed.
I'm tearing up the promissory notes and I wish you the best. All right.
And I think, I think you'll feel a weight off your shoulders. And by the way, next time you'll, you'll feel, you'll feel that sense of injustice and it's right.
Um, so you're not crazy. There's nothing wrong with you, whatever.
Like you'll get that little angry moments every now and then, but you got your money back, count your blessings. And yeah, let's walk away.
So sorry. All right, John, I'm going to take a question from the Ramsey Network app.
Those of you that are listening. And this question is one, again, when you do this, you don't have to call in.
You just click the link in the show notes and download the app for free, which you guys have done because you're listening there. But this question is, I determined my why statement is to help people heal so that they can be free.
And this has become a motivation for a career change to become a mental health counselor. would mean adding forty thousand dollars to my

current undergrad debt of forty thousand dollars so the original was a hundred and ten thousand what is your recommendation for funding a master's and mental health counseling our mental health professional sitting to my right yeah i i guess they'll teach you in counseling one of the core tenets is you can't give what you don't have.

So if you're... Yeah.
I guess they'll teach you in counseling. One of the core tenets is you can't give what you don't have.

So if your heart is to help people heal so that they may be free, and in order to do that, you chain yourself to a student loan company for another five or 10 or 15 years, you're going to end up robbing Peter to pay Paul. And so I'm going to tell you, you can help people heal in your job as a school teacher.
You can help people heal in your job as a, I'll tell you this. I got to my hotel last night.
I was in Pittsburgh. I got to got to my hotel really really late and the woman checking us in was a saint just one of those people that you're around and your heart rate just goes down and she was so kind and I was a she was a gift she was a cup of cold water in the desert it's after just a long long day yeah and so you can help people heal on the job site when y'all are pouring concrete.
So this idea that you have to be a licensed mental health professional and you have to go into $40,000 of student loan debt on top of the 40 you already have out there, that's just unwise. And I had a graduate advisor that says, if you are sitting in a clinical chair and you don't know how you're going to pay your bills, you cannot sit across from somebody and say, I can help you because you're not whole.
So what does that mean? That means get this 40 grand paid off as soon as possible. See if you can find some side work working in or around counseling offices or social work offices or in children's homes or in boys ranches or things like that where you can work with people.
Make sure this is what you want to do and then get a job at a local university as a housing director or something and they will pay for your graduate degree. But don't add, don't double your debt load in order to do this one particular job when you can help people heal in a number of different capacities.
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I'm John Deloney joined by Rachel Cruz. Let's go out to Albany, New York and talk to Jessica.
Hey, Jessica, what's going on? Hi. How's it going? So I'm calling because I have a whole life insurance policy that I've been holding on to since 2012.
And now I'm thinking, hearing Dave, and you guys are hearing that the whole is garbage and that I should switch the term. But I'm not sure about the tax implications and stuff like that.
I just don't really know what to do with the life insurance policy from here on out. Okay, looked into what the payout will be when you if you dissolve it um so it says the cash value is eight grand okay and of your money back to you that drives me crazy yeah um and have you looked into term at all to make sure that you you i mean you're are you healthy jessica like yeah you could probably get another insure okay i'm gonna be 39 i'm 39 now i'm gonna be 40 next year so i'm kind of like do i hold on to it i have two little ones um my husband's the primary beneficiary but my oldest daughter is the conting And I'm like, do I hold on to this? I already called the company and asked them if I should, you know, if I could switch it from hold a term.
And of course they said, no, you could cash it out and then get a term insurance policy with us. And I'm like, I don't know what the tax implications are or anything, or if it'd be worth worth it to do that or if i should just hold on to because it looks like it is it's gotten like fifteen hundred dollars in the last year yeah but it's your money according to the statements that right so the way yeah they take your money you overpay them they invest that money they take a piece of the investment return and then they they call you, and they're like, look what you have.
And it's a crappy return anyways. So, yeah.
So, no, I would cancel it regardless of whatever the fees and tax implication is. I don't know what taxes are when you cash it out.
It may be income. It may be like a capital gain.
It's $8,000. It's not very much money.
Yeah. So, I would pay the taxes on it.
$55 a month, so I've been ignoring it for all this time. How much are you paying? I'm listening to you guys.
I'm like,000 bucks. It's not very much money.
So I would pay the taxes on it. Yeah, it's only $55 a month, so I've been ignoring it for all this time.
How much are you paying? Wait, I'm listening to you guys. I'm like, all right, I need to do something about this.
Yeah, how much are you paying a month for it? 55. 55? Yeah.
I'm a state worker. I make around 50 a year, so I wasn't really missing it, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, 55 bucks. Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
Okay, yeah. So what I would do.
Butcha okay yeah so what i would do one of you robbed slowly by the yeah and that's what either totally and that's what it ends up being when you're pairing an investment and insurance together you're always going to get a crappy product usually on both sides but for sure on the investment side so um so yeah i would cancel it for sure today but before well before you cancel it i should say make sure you have term in place because I do want you to have life insurance. You guys have two little kids.
So I would still have life insurance. And so you do work.
Is that what you said outside the home? Yeah. Okay, so I would get a policy 10 to 12 times your annual income.
And that's around the policy that you would need. And I would go to Xander.
You can go to Xander.com or give them a call Xander insurance. And they're great.
Cause there are more, they're, they're a insurance broker. So they're going to shop all different companies to get you the best deal versus like this one you call, I don't know, state farm and it's just state farm or whatever, you know, like you'll be able to get, um, all different kinds of, of quotes.
And that, so that's what I would do. And then I would go ahead and apply and get that coverage going first and the day that goes into place the pop the term policy then i would call whole life cancel it get your eight grand to move on gotcha all right and then um okay so you said 10 to 12 month um months for my 10 to 12 times 10 to 12 times time your annual income.
If you make 50 grand. Yeah.
I would get a policy at a minimum of 500 grand, which should not cost you very much money a year. Okay.
It won't be, it won't be a huge cost. And by the way, um, this isn't just us pitching a product when I was 40, maybe 40 or 41.
I did the exact thing you're doing. I called Xander and got my insurance moved over to them with term.
And it's, it's fantastic. Gotcha.
Okay. Awesome.
Yeah. I just want to say also, God bless you guys.
And thank you for the work that you do. Oh, thank you so much.
You are, you're super kind. And yeah, like Rachel, I hear that a lot on like, what's the taxes going to be to be it's eight grand let's pay the taxes and move on with your life for whatever it is yeah because you have eight million dollars well let's start worrying about the tax implications totally yeah yeah when you start looking at you know 55 a month and it may feel like oh that's you know no big deal but over time what it adds up and then what you end up paying for terms a fraction of that anyways um and always again the rule of thumb is your insurance and your investments should never be mixed right um because you're not going to get the rate of return that you could if you put it you know even in an in an index fund or vanguard or the or the market right um yeah in any other place you're going to get a better rate of return and a lot of these too i'm like they just um it's that slow leak that they just continue just to, like, take and take.

And if it goes up, it just goes up.

And you know what I mean?

It doesn't feel clean whole life.

There's some entanglements there that are not great.

There's mixed priorities there, right.

Let's go out to Spokane, Washington, and talk to Elizabeth.

Hey, Elizabeth, what's happening?

Hi, guys.

How are you? Awesome. We're running a scam called a YouTube show and a podcast.
What are you up to? I love it. I watch you guys all the time.
Very cool. What's up? Not much.
I was just hoping to get your guys' advice. We are pretty good, but we're not as good as we could be.
I feel like we're still struggling month to month, kind of like paycheck to paycheck. And how do we get ahead? How do we start, like, invest saving? Like, we have three kids.
I homeschool. We're a one-income household.
And the economy is kind of killing us. Yeah.
So here's, here's the hard, the hard truth. You and me and your spouse and my wife and Rachel and Winston, all of us go home as a family and we make choices.
And that's not how it was set up for us. We all grew up and they're like, like dude if you just go to college or just do this and you can do this and this and this and this and this and sometimes like the dream of we want we want mom to stay at home awesome we want to not get into the schools we want to homeschool kids cool but we can't eat or we're just floating month to month to month and it's you guys as a family having to back out of that situation and say okay the price of milk is bananas right now the price of bananas is bananas right now right and so it is um my two youngest are not school age so if i went back to work we'd have to pay for daycare well yeah i mean i don't think you say i don't think you're saying go back to work.
I'm not saying you go back to work. I'm saying everybody makes choices.

So, Elizabeth, I want to know,

financially, where are you guys at?

Do you guys have consumer debt?

No, we have credit cards.

We don't use them.

They are zero balance.

We own our cars and all our vehicles.

How much does your husband make a year?

About 65.

Okay.

And are you guys on a written plan, like a very detailed budget every single month that you know exactly here's the amount we have to spend? Okay. No.
Okay, so I think the budget is probably... I know I need to do that.
Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's fine. I mean, I think that's going to help a lot.
And if you stay on the line after this call, Christian will pick up and we'll give you every dollar premium for a year. Because I think the budget, it's one of those places, Elizabeth, that once you do it and you actually have boundaries around certain categories in your life and you force yourself to live within them, then suddenly you're like, oh, there's our margin.
There's our margin. It's not getting eaten up by that extra, you know, fast food run that we're going to go do or out to eat or whatever.
Like it's, it is amazing when you do plan out and stick to that plan, it's going to take about three months for you guys to get it to work. So remember that 90 days, give yourself a lot of grace between now and Christmas.
But I want that to be your homework to say, okay, we're going to, we're going to sit down and do this. And then out of that and finding some margin and, and you'll look back on your accounts and your checking account last month and be like, oh my gosh, we're paying for two subscriptions we never use.
You know, like when you actually start getting in the weeds of it, it is amazing what comes to the surface. And even if it's 30, 40 bucks here or there, that adds up.
I mean, that will get you some margin. And so do you guys have an emergency fund? Oh, I just, hold on one second.
There you go. Oh, that's fine.
Okay. So Elizabeth, I would, yeah, whatever.
I messed up the phone too. There you go.
There you go. There you go.
Do you guys have an emergency fund, Elizabeth? Do you have any savings? We do not have a specific emergency fund. We've got a decent amount in our checking account.
Okay. So what I would do is open up a high yield savings and I would move three to six months of expenses out of your checking out to that.
And then that's not touched. So that's your emergency fund.
If you have to have a few months to add to that savings to get that three to six months, do it. And then from there, I would start investing 15% of your income into retirement and start that going.
That can be through his 401k or Roth IRA. You guys can open up.
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Let's go out to Kimberly in Seattle, Washington. Hey, Kimberly, what's up? Hey, are you still there? We're here.
How's it going? How can how can we help good um well not good but um maybe you can help help me out some suggestions uh my husband just uh like about a week ago was uh he went to the hospital and was diagnosed with um uh basically uh liver his liver is shot he it's beyond repair uh they gave him maybe a year year and a half to live oh my gosh i'm so sorry yeah he's yeah and he struggled with alcohol you know addiction off and on over the years. And he, you know, he said, I knew that this was probably going to happen.
But, you know, when you're addicted, you're addicted and it's hard to stop something. So anyway, our situation right now is he.
He's working or trying to work because he doesn't feel well.

And I've been doing the best I can to do Ramsey stuff without him not being on board, which means not very much.

Anyway, I have questions here as to what we should do because this freight train is moving um moving forward do you guys have kids we own our own house we have adult kids who are doing really well okay off on their own we're they're amazing how old are you guys um uh i just turned i just turned 60 he's a few years younger than me, three years younger than me. Okay.
Anyway, and in fact, I just worked out. I had a hospital bill.
I took a grinding job to pay the balance off because of insufficient insurance and just got it done. So here we are with another hurdle.
So I'm looking at, we do own our own house, but because I haven't been had access, you know, I haven't had access to the funding I wanted to do to keep up on it. It needs exterior repairs that are fairly expensive, as in roof gutters, some siding, and then paint after that.
It's an amazing house. It's in really good condition, but that would have to be done if we were to possibly sell and downsize, if that would be one of the options we should consider.
I don't know. We have a lot of stuff sitting around that my other half cannot get rid of anything ever.
So getting those options for getting those things sold and how to approach him on that, we'd have to have some kind of come and remove things. Kimberly, let me hop in here.
Yes, please. You've gone directly, and quite honestly, if you've been married to somebody who's struggling with alcohol for a long time, you have been responding to crisis after crisis and thing after thing forever, right? Amen.
And then, so

the way you said this, I want to challenge you on it. Well, now we got another hurdle.

This is not just another hurdle. No, it's big.
This is the stop, stop. Right.
Yes. And so you

have been working with somebody for a long time everything in this conversation

has changed now and the conversation changed to changes to now we have a an hourglass we have a

clock that's ticking and the doctors clicked it on for us and so we're not talking about how you feel

if you really like this collection of bottle caps you've been keeping for like that that ship is over that ship has sailed out to harbor we are now creating a life that i'm gonna have to inhabit because you're gonna be gone yeah and that looks like making sure i got a home with four walls on it and I can pay bills.

Right.

And some of it you're going to, I remember sitting with somebody that I care about deeply

and I was helping them and their house was full of stuff.

And I was trying to help them throw it away.

This is several years ago.

And I just finally stopped and looked at him and said, I need you to hear me say this.

When you die, I'm going to throw all of this away. I can do it now or I can do it when you're gone.
And there was a long, long pause and they said, you're going to have to do it when I'm gone. And I said, okay, I'm moving on with my day.
I'm not going to spend another second here. I've already made that choice, but I'm not going to fight that in this moment.
See what I'm saying?

So I want you to— Right, because he was not even used to that idea yet.

It hadn't even been introduced, right?

Right.

So here's what we're doing.

We're reverse engineering this thing for the four walls.

I hate to live like this, but this is the clock you've been given.

I want to go 18 months and start working backwards.

What does life look like? And you don't have to do a roof and siding and gutter. You don't have to do all that at the same time.
We're going to price each one of those things out. These things that we have to do so that we can keep our house, these things that we have to do so we have transportation.
You're going to have to have a job if you don't have any retirement. Yeah.
What's the financial status, Kimberly? You said you own your home outright, so there's no mortgage or anything on it, correct? Yeah. Well, in the earlier days, I was working to pay a little extra here and there because I'm the one that doesn't want to be in horrendous debt of any kind, actually.
And he used to work a very good job, and part of it was an investment account that was like retirement, right? And he got to a point where he wanted to start his own business he'd always wanted to do this because his family had done it and they had done it poorly and they fought and they divorced but it still is a dream of his and so did he cash out the investments so over time yes he cashed out almost everything so what's left he threw into a business without knowing how to run a business. Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
Kimberly, you're going to have to set that aside because you've got an emergency in front of you. So what debt? No, no, you're fine, you're fine.
What debt do you guys have? Any at all? Any consumer debt, credit cards, car loan? No. Okay.
We have no debt. No debt.
And how much money are you? Property taxes and things like that. Okay.
Are you working, Kimberly? Do you work? I was in order to pay off my hospital debt. Okay.
Yeah. Horrendously huge.
And I finally got that paid off in it, but it was very hard. It was just a job.
Okay. Okay.
Okay. So not in a great position to work.
Okay. What was he making a year? No.
What's he making now? Yes. To keep you guys.
Crap. I should know this.
No, it's fine. 30,000, 70,000.
Do you have any rounds? Yeah, 30 something. 30 something.
30 something. Okay.
Let's call it 30 something's call it $35,000. And any investments? Sorry, I know you said he cashed out his to start the business.
Do you have any retirement? No, cashed all out. Okay, so there's no investments, no retirement.
And does he have life insurance? Nope. Nope, okay.
Okay, so what I want you to do, Kimberly, is the silver lining from a financial standpoint, all of this, is you guys have no debt. I mean, you don't even have a mortgage.
So that in and of itself is like, that's a relief. So what John was saying, the four walls, I want you to go and do a budget, Kimberly, and I want you to stay on the line.
And we're going to give you Financial Peace University and every dollar premium because I want you to start budgeting. And I want you to know to the penny.
No, I do have every dollar already.

Oh, you do?

Okay.

So to know what you... Thank God for that.

That has been like saving my emotional...

I'm so glad because I think if you have those numbers in front of you of the things you have to do,

you have to keep the lights on, the cell phone bill, your insurance, food, gas in the car.

You have all of that. And that's what you're going to have to look at Kimberly and say okay I have to at least make this right when the time comes I have to I have to at least make this and then I would not encourage you to sell the house or even to put in a ton of repairs right now I think you're fine what I would do is yeah and I and I wouldn't and I wouldn't unless your roof is linking or something but like

for now and then Kimberly when the time comes I want you to grieve I want you to go through that

process and don't make a big financial decision until about six months to a year and if in two

years three years you decide to sell the home and downgrade take some of the equity you can do that

but don't feel like you have to make these big decisions today today I just want your four walls

covered between now and 18 months I'm so sorry though I'm so sorry