Wealth Magnifies Who You Already Are

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Start budgeting for free today. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show.
We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr.
John Deloney, Ramsey personality, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show and number one best-selling author.
He's my co-host today. Open phones here at 888-825-5225.
Heather's in Fairfax, Virginia. Hi, Heather.
How are you? Hi. Good, thank you.
How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I'm just wondering if there is any way or hope to get an 18-year-old to budget when they are surrounded by wealth and not limited by regular constraints.
They have no debt. They're not paying for college.
They're not paying for cars. Who's 18-year-old? My 18-year-old.
So you put some givens in there of which you control all of them i don't oh okay so her family her uh the in-laws will give her money whenever she asks the um she knows this um so she and she's also we homeschooled her and she was taught very good values about money and morals. But then in high school, we allowed her to go into a high school, a brick and mortar where people will drive a different car to school every day just to show off their wealth.
And that's what she's been surrounded by for four years. And so she does not she thinks everybody should get their own car.
She thinks everybody no 18 18-year-old needs to budget. And she's off to college next year, and we're trying to help her.
Who pays for college? Well, her father will pay for it. Her father married to you? Yes.
Okay. So we will pay for her college.
Yes. Okay.
And, yeah, so we can't really say if you don't do this, then we won't pay for college because she knows that she knows he will pay for the college. Oh, how are you? You don't have a daughter problem.
You have a husband problem. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I'm, um, uh, yeah.
Yeah. But let me put it this way.
She's acting like an 18 year old and I don't and I wouldn't begrudge her a second because she's acting exactly developmentally appropriate. Dave just nailed it.
You have a husband problem. And it's his parents that are the twerps, right? Yeah.
Yeah. So he needs to tell his mom and dad, stop it.
You're screwing up my kid, and he needs to stop screwing up his kid. Yeah, I think so.
No, you don't. Why are you hesitant? I do.
Well, because I've been against it for many years, asking to limit the money and to allow me to know what money is going to her so that we can at least put it in account and we know what money is flowing to her so we know what money is coming out and how she's spending it. We can discuss with her decisions.
And your husband will not participate with you in parenting? No, he thinks that, oh, you know, she's old enough. You have to give her, you know, she's 18.
She's an adult. You have to let her make her mistakes.
Not with my money, I don't. Right.
Let me just say this. After working with 18-year-olds.
She's doing heroin. Let's make sure we fund that.

Yeah. Let me tell you.
After working with 18-year-olds for two decades plus, a never-ending checking account is a recipe for a disaster. I'm just telling you right now, prep yourself.
Be prepared to wake up at 2 a.m. with a phone call from a dean of students at some college because it's coming.
Well, and that's how I was raised. I did not have an I was poor.
OK, so I'm not from this. And and I tell that to my husband, he says, well, I had never ending checking account until I got, you know, out of law school.
And then I started paying for my own stuff and I turned out just fine. So I would question that conclusion.
Exactly. Yes.
And maybe, and I don't think being poor is the answer either. I think that educational message, the only thing I can tell you to do in this situation, obviously your husband doesn't care what you think.
And so you've got a marriage challenge. And the only thing I can possibly see here is you take your daughter out and start right now and start a weekly.
We're going to breakfast just mom and daughter until she graduates and leaves your house. And it's not going to be a you have to you have to.
It's you transitioning to. I'm going to tell you some things about when I was 18 year old that your dad was an 18 year old woman like I was.
I'm going to tell you about stuff. I'm going to tell you about boys.
I'm going to tell you about dating. I'm going to tell you about how hard it is.
I'm going to tell you the scary moments. And all you're doing is planting seeds so that when she gets over her head at 19, she will remember, I can trust my mom.
That's your best case here. I cannot stress to you enough what a tough situation this young woman is about to enter into.

Yeah.

And I don't want to gender it, but I would even suggest that she will have a tougher time than he did.

Oh, I know she will, 100%.

Yeah.

Well, and here's the thing.

In that regard.

This gets me fired up, Dave.

It makes me so mad, man.

Here's the problem, okay? Who who's gonna want to marry this girl I'm not signing up for this well nobody with nobody with common sense is going to look at princess girl and say she's never known a single boundary and anytime she smiles she's supposed to get be be handed money um this is a this is a disaster of a wife yeah but she'll she'll she'll be married and she'll end up getting divorced when they find out who she really is and she's a very good little actress good god almighty wow wow you feel so powerless yeah just watching. You feel like you're fatalistic, like you're just watching this car wreck happen and have nothing to do to stop it.
I got to tell you, if I'm you, I'm in marriage counselor's office real soon because your husband is a twerp. And what he's doing to you is unconscionable.
And what he's doing, allowing it to happen to her while you stand by and watch and go, well, she'll just go through a divorce. Well, she'll just now instead you go to the breakfasts John's talking about, you insert yourself into her life and you insert yourself into this marriage crisis that you have very proactively.
Um, or you stand back and be fatalistic about that too. And well, it's just the way it is.
His parents did that and I can't do anything with him. Well, then we can't help you.
Yeah. Because the answer to your question that you called about is proactivity.
And it's going down kicking and screaming. Yeah.
That's it. Proactivity.
You're not taking my daughter from me. I'm throwing a duck fit.
Sheesh. Dave, man, I can't tell you the number of students that just I sat with that they didn't understand a consequence.
They don't have dignity.

But they don't know that they don't.

People that don't have a boundary and personal self-discipline.

No, they've been stolen from them.

They don't have dignity.

They don't understand self-respect because no one's ever given them, allowed them to have it.

That's right.

It's a sponge with no brains.

There is no consequence. Well, I'll just go to another college.
I'll just get a new car. I'll just get another apartment.
I'll get another house. Yeah.
And it's just not how the world works. No.
I hate it, man. I hate this for you.
It's awful. Horrible.
But here's the thing. You can't fix her.
You can only put some things in place that make her struggle. I'll say this, Dave.

I heard this about six months ago, and it rang true with me.

It was a guy on a stage, and it was just a clip, but he said,

I don't want to hear another conversation about, quote, unquote, these kids these days.

Kids have never changed.

It's the adults that have.

The adults are the ones that are letting these kids just run amok

and saying it's for their good.

And it's just simply not.

That kid's acting 18.

He's acting 18.

Yeah, Rachel said when we started on this student loan stuff many years ago when we were doing that documentary, Borrowed Future.

We don't have a student loan crisis.

We have a parenting crisis.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Stand around watching your kid completely bury themselves in student loans to get a degree in left-handed puppetry. That's a parenting problem.
That's not a student loan problem. Oh, man.
I would go down kicking and screaming on this one, Heather. That's my baby girl, man.
Or just screaming and kicking. Yes.
Wow.

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John Deloney, Ramsey Personality personality is my co-host today all right i want to settle a couple of scores here okay uh-oh number one uh a lot of the time when i'm doing a vip thing with our customers that have become baby steps millionaires like when on the Ramsey Cruise, this happened a lot, and we're doing a Q&A, it often comes up, okay, I've built wealth and I'm concerned I'm going to ruin my children. And let me assure you that you building wealth will not ruin your children.
It will expose the fact that you already ruined them.

Or not. Correct.
Yeah. So the wealth doesn't do that.
Wealth is not the problem. The problem is the parenting.
And so because I meet lots of wealthy families who have extremely functional, high achievingachieving, high relational IQ children that do very, very well as adults.

The money did not ruin their children because their children were not ruined.

And so what the money does is it puts extra pressure on you as a parent

to make sure you're doing your job of growing character, self-discipline, kindness, compassion, contentment, gratitude, not entitlement, hard work, not I was born on third base and thought I hit a triple. No, the opposite of that.
And so the Ramsey kids, they had it tough growing up up not because we didn't have any money but because we had money because old dave is not gonna let this crap happen and so you know you be working you be a ramsey kid i mean we're sending you the freaking salt mines i mean it's ridiculous we they'll tell you story after story after story of crap we made them do for money because we wanted them to associate hard work and calluses and sweat on your brow with money and then when they get to college I have an unlimited budget they don't so one of my kids when we got a new car one time we got an upgrade car and it's the first time we got in a decent car in a long time because we were kind of coming up through the stuff right and he leaned daniel leans back in the back seat and says we're doing pretty good so we aren't doing anything you're broke i'm doing pretty good you get to ride my car that's how this works buddy and so we don't get to have and and you don't get to, I'm not buying you a car

when you turn 16 either. I will match it.
We had 401 Dave and we matched it. Whatever you save, I'll put with it.
So if you save nothing, I hope you enjoy your bicycle because you get nothing, honey, nothing. And we did this all the way up through their growing up years.
So when they go to to college they had a set budget per month of cash that i put into their account if they wanted more than that you know where they got it working right none of them died and none of them are in counseling for that to my knowledge they're in counseling for other things but not that not that Well, hey, let's just double click on the exposure. This happened in my house.
Hank, my oldest, he's 15. He grew up in the tale of two cities.
And to this day, he will still pull me aside in a restaurant and say, hey, dad. And he's very respectful about it.
Hey, I'm still hungry. Can I get another taco? And I'll be like, buddy.
Yes, of course, man. And my wife backed into our car several months ago and just getting out of the driveway because I'm a terrible Parker.
It was my fault. Yeah, right.
And Josephine, my nine-year-old, said, well, looks like we've got to go get a new one. And I looked at her and said, that's not how that works, right?

But what I realized is my son cleans horse stalls and my daughter's growing up in a different world than my son did.

And so my wife and I, it was a good moment.

We got to be extra intentional now.

Yeah.

Right.

It just, the tide went out and it reveals it.

You create teachable moments that create grit.

That's it.

That create contentment, that create gratitude.

And then the money is just a sidebar issue, but this unlimited is not good for any human at any age. And just ask Congress.
I mean, there's no off spigot, right? I mean, I had a pug dog that did not have an off button for food. And so if kept the food out and it free ranged the dog would get it would be like a complete sphere it would be so fat that it rolled instead of walked and we were killing our dog right so we had to take up the food and we're like no it just goes down to lake house chasing jet skis and you run your fat off in the summer doesn't mean that you get to get fat every winter.
So no, we're going to cut the food off because we're killing you, the animal that we love, with an unlimited supply. Hello, there we go.
And so this is, but never fear, parents, that you are ruining your children by becoming financially successful yourself. You can have $500 million and not ruin your children.
You can have $5 and ruin your children because it hasn't got anything to do with the money. The money's not the variable.
Right. And it's just a reflection of all the other crap that's going on, the dysfunction that's going on or isn't going on in the family.
And so wealth just magnifies. That's all it does.
It makes you more of what you are. And so if you're a grouch, you become super grouchy.
If you're kind, you become super kind. If you have a temper, you become a rageaholic and it's, don't you know who I am? That kind of junk, right? And anybody that gets in your way, you know, that's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous. And so that's what wealth does to people, all of us.
And so if you're a giver, it turns you into a philanthropist. Wealth magnifies whatever's going on, good or bad, in the family dysfunction or function and in the individual.
And so please enjoy your financial success with no fear of the money having ruined your child. It's just about communicating this, how blessed we are.
And this blessing comes at a cost. This is how hard we have to work.
And this is what reality looks like. And by the way, you can tell your kids how hard we're working that you have, they have to experience that.
They've got to experience hard work. Even if you can afford to have a professional do it, even if it's a pain in the butt and you don't want to go up and down the stairs and check their room seven times, that's part of parenting.
Whether, whether you have no money or a ton of money, there's just some basic things that kids need to experience. And calling out that last caller, Dave, being poor isn't the solution either, right? I wouldn't wish that on anybody.
You can look at any health and relationship metrics. That's not the solution either.
The solution is to continue to focus on those lessons, like you just mentioned, whether you have little, whether you got a lot, man, and you cannot, don't steal from your kids.

You said to the last caller, if you just give an unlimited amount of money to a teenager, you're robbing them of their own dignity, of their own ability to stand up on their own two feet.

It's criminal.

And often it is parents propping themselves up, look what I can do for my kid, instead of let me teach my kid to stand up tall. And it's just, I don't say it's abusive, but it's really close, man.
So our kids attend a school like hers. That kid attended a high school in this area.
Well, Williamson County, the county that we're in, is the wealthiest county in Tennessee. It's the 11th wealthiest county in the United States.
It's full of country music people, tech people, hospital executives,

healthcare boom in Nashville, and there's some extreme wealth in this county.

And there's lots of these kids that people give a 15-year-old a brand-new BMW,

which is the definition of stupid, by the way,

because they're going to hit it like 30 minutes after you give it to them

against a tree or their friend's car.

So you might as well not tear up a good car while you're learning to drive. Okay.
So anyway, this is the environment that our kids are in and our net worth and income is likely higher than most of those people that are doing that. And our kids are driving cars way substandard to that because they could only buy a car with the money they had saved plus what we doubled.
And so it wasn't the fanciest car. But can I say, Hank, my son's 15.
He's heading into that season. The temptation is on me.
Oh, yeah. Because I want to just go get him a really cool, nice thing.
And we look at trucks now when we're driving. We come to stoplights.
We're like, man, look at that.

And I want to be able to just go write a check for it and get it for him.

And I have to know I'm stealing from him if I do that. Because he's got, you know, most, especially guys are the worst.

We get great pride out of our first car story.

Yes.

88 Tercel EZ Hatchback.

My buddies called it the roller skate.

I look like Fred Flintstone.

74 Monte Carlo Land Yacht.

Dude, I could start mine with a rope, Dave.

Paid cash for it, or paid for it with a loan and a down payment I got from cutting grass and painting houses.

Mine went, me, me, me, me.

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in the lobby of Ramsey solutions on the debt free stage jonathan and charlie are with us hey guys how are you hey doing well how about you better than i deserve welcome where are you guys from knoxville tennessee all right well welcome to nashville and how much debt you two paid off? $122,186.52. Excellent.
How long did that take? 18 months. Good for you.
And your range of income during that year and a half? Started around $130,000 to $215,000. Whoa, nice jump in a year and a half.
What do y'all do for a living? I work in tech. Stay-at-, homeschool mom.
I like it. Good for y'all.
Well, the tech world's treating you well, brother. Yep.
Working hard. I bet you are.
Good for you, man. This is good stuff.
What kind of debt was the 122? It was a lot of everything. So credit cards, personal loan, HELOC, IRS debt, family loan.
Yeah. Car loan.
Y'all were normal yeah student loans really normal like more normal than anybody would ever want to be oh gross so what happened 18 months ago what was the wake-up call a class at church so as he says anything that the church is doing i end up wanting to do it he was a little hesitant but decided to jump in and go ahead and do it. Financial Peace University.
Yes. Oh, good.
Okay. Excellent.
So you went into the class and it's like, whoa, mind blown. I mean, because this is a dramatic change right here.
Yeah. You went from borrowing on everything to paying off everything.
Yes. So what happened in the class? That's interesting.
Well, it's kind of how we wanted to live life it was just kind of the fire that we needed to get going the push that we needed yeah i guess i always thought i would never be able to retire and i don't even think i went to the first class maybe do a scheduling conflict um but at the second class went home calculated, calculated some numbers, and said, hmm, maybe I can retire.

Maybe we can do this.

Yep.

Maybe it'll work.

It's called hope, right?

Yep.

Yeah.

Good for y'all.

Very cool.

What's your church called?

Central Church of Christ.

Oh, excellent.

Okay.

Good.

Good.

Well, man, that's incredible.

I'm so proud of y'all.

Wow.

Okay, so I have a question that's going to sound like a backhanded dig, and it's not. Okay, same team? Good? Yes.
Okay, you make a quarter million dollars as a tech person. What that tells me is your problem-solving ability far exceeds mine, and you're able to think logically, right? The guys who are building apps here.
I drive them crazy because they're like, that's not logical, John, right? What is it about that thinking that doesn't translate to borrowing, taking another loan, the tax debt? Let's just put the house. There's a gap there, right? And I think it's easy when you're listening to a story like this to be like, well, duh, but you were in the middle of it.
As soon as he took that thinking and applied it, it went boom, it's gone. But what was that gap between just, this is just the way things are.
Yet when I go to work, I'm able to put on such a logical process driven hat and do really well at it? I think for me, so I've worked, I've actually thought that before. I've worked as product manager and delight driving products to market.
And I can manage those budgets. But when it came to my own personal finance, it was just like scared deer in the headlights.
I don't want to look at it. It'd be better just not to look at it.
So it was intimidating. Yep.
Interesting.

That means there's personal stories or childhood stuff attached to that budget.

Maybe.

I mean, I actually grew up in a Dave Ramsey household.

My parents both were listening to you every day.

Okay.

But I didn't really want to hear it too much.

I got you.

That's fair.

That's fair.

That can happen.

And then you end up going to church That's fair. That can happen.

And then you end up going to church class or financial peace university at church and your parents are like, yes.

I love it.

What's the hardest thing you sold?

Your trailer maybe?

I mean, nothing too much.

It was just all stuff.

We still have stuff we're still trying to get rid of.

But I think the hardest thing to get rid of was her Sam's Club credit card. And for me, it was my Lowe's credit card.
Oh. I'm with you on that one, dude.
There we go. That one hurts.
Yeah. But the good news is both those places take cash.
Yep. Yeah.
Good news. You can buy whatever you want now that you've got some money because you don't need debt.
How's it feel? How long y'all been married? A little over six years. Okay.
And have you ever been debt free in the six years? No. Until, well, now.
Until now. But I mean, prior to that, this is your first taste of freedom.
Yep. Yeah.
How's it feel? It's great. How sacrificial, how sacrificial.
You got a house full of kids. kids i mean how much did y'all have to cut

how tough was this we cut a lot um they the kids play a song about how dave ramsey stole christmas so we've heard that a few times but the kids all fully on board if we ever did go do something like aren't we supposed to be getting out of debt right now.

Well played.

Whoa. I love it.

Okay. kids all fully on board if we ever did go do something like aren't we supposed to be getting out of debt right now whoa played whoa i love it okay so it was a it was a deep enough cut that everybody in the family saw it felt it got involved and now enjoys the freedom yep very good proud of you guys thank you way to go so cool so cool all right now you're here and there's a a couple just like you guys that's normal that's listening or watching right now on youtube out there and um they could be where you are in 18 months what do you tell them the secret is what was the thing that changed everything being on the same team um and even if you make mistakes not just completely jumping ship um staying consistent working together and definitely having that budget yeah for sure yeah i think it's when you wrote it down and saw it could happen yep we actually made a where there is no vision the people perish and you got a vision we had a grafana dashboard that showed you know like what we've been doing i don't even know what that means the the predicted amount of when we get out of dead and that really i think inspired charlie yeah i was like just pull up the dashboard i want to see where we are on the graph now um and just watching the little cursor move down the graph.
And now it's moving towards paying off our house and when we become baby step millionaires. I like this.
Congratulations, guys. I like this.
So how far out to pay off the house? Three years. Wow.
Very good. And how far out to be baby step millionaires? Five years or five or six years.
Okay. From today.

So that's going to be under 10 years from the time you started.

Yep.

Wow.

Powerful.

They're good.

Yeah, it's amazing, guys.

Congratulations.

You guys are powerful.

Very good.

So you brought the tribe with you?

Yep.

And I'm sure they've been practicing.

So if they do a Dave Ramsey screwed up Christmas, they got to have a debt-free scream.

They better. Okay.
They better have that right. Okay.
so get them up here and let's hear their names and ages come on up guys get in the thing get in the picture here so we can see you what are their names and ages we have bella 14 amelia 14 natalie 14 we have caleb 11 tristan 12 and georgie nine months all right and we also have one more at home that's working and at public school right now so very good good job wow good family well done you guys well you kiddos your mom and dad are heroes they've changed your whole family tree they've changed your life with their sacrifice and forcing you to sacrifice and this year you get christmas back y'all it's coming christmas is back good news is christmas is going to come back in 2025 all right jonathan and charlie and tribe 122 000 paid off in 18 months making 130 to 215 count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one i love it well done man see you you can't hit what you're not aiming at.

And they have exactly figured out when the house is going to be paid off

and when they're going to cross a million-dollar net worth

and be Baby Steps Millionaires.

They're going to hit it.

And I'll give you another predictor.

100% chance they do it sooner.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

100% chance they do it sooner.

So whether you're out there and you can build an app

that can show you when you're going to pay off this,

or if you do it like I did with construction paper and a pen,

get yourself a vision and then go chase it down. Thank you.
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 interest 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 Fairwinds 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.
Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality is my co-host today.
New York City, Nick is calling. Hi, Nick.
How are you? Hi, Gabe. Thanks for taking the call.
Sure. What's up? So I just recently purchased an engagement ring for my long-term girlfriend.
Hey! Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Yeah, very. And just looking forward to this next chapter.
So, um, yeah, so basically what, how I did it was, um, I had an introductory credit card offer from the good people of bank of America and, uh, exactly. Yeah.
There's some good people, I guess. But anyway, I received a promotional offer from Bank of America where qualifying purchase through this new credit card would warrant a 0% interest on any debt that's paid within the first 60 days of purchasing and opening the credit card.
I have no intentions of putting anything else on the credit card. And essentially, it's been purchased through the card.
And it's just a cash outflow question as far as managing my monthly payment. I originally intended to...
How much is on the card? So I currently owe $11,000 for the the ring how much money do you have in savings

so i have about 25 000 in a high yield savings account write a check today and pay off the card and place scissors across it and cut it up ta-da that's it you shouldn't have done this it was dumb You did a sweet, good thing, a dumb, bad way.

Dude, no one in the millionaire study that we said got rich by using zero-interest credit cards and leaving their money in a high-yield savings account on $11,000 freaking dollars. Do you know how much money you made in 60 days on this? Enough to buy a biscuit.
You make any money you did all these mental gymnastics and burn all these calories thinking you were beating bank of america believe me you don't beat bank of america the only way you beat bank of america stay away from them okay why does it make you nervous you You have $25,000 in the bank.

You'll have $14,000 in cash left.

Yeah.

I think the point I was thinking about it was if you get below the $25,000 deposit,

it goes down to I'm making about 4% yield on that savings account.

It goes down to less than 1%.

Hey, let me ask you something.

Yeah.

What's 4% of $10 ten thousand dollars do you know that would be what four hundred dollars yeah okay divided by 12 yeah it'd be less than 40 bucks times two you can't buy a pizza yeah not new york you're actually you're acting like this math matters. It doesn't matter.
There's no math here that matters.

There's not enough money and time involved for these interest rates to be relevant.

Yeah, how much do you make an hour right now on your job?

Well, I'm salaried, but I make probably about $3,500 a paycheck.

Yeah, okay.

So this wasn't worth your hourly wage.

The hours you have spent screwing with this in your mind, you made $1.16 on it per hour. Screwing with this.
It's paid off, dude. Dude, do not play with these snakes.
They will bite you. This is a big, ugly snake called Bank of America.
Big, ugly snake. It will not only bite you, it will eat you.
And your future young. No, no, no, no, no, no.
The good news is you've got the money to pay this off. And still have a whole bunch left in the bank.
The bad news is I'm not sure I convinced you, and you're still kind of like, I don't know if I'm going to do this or not. You need to do this, Nick, because you don't want to be putting that ring on her finger and be going, thank you, Bank of America.
Gross. That makes me, I got a little throw up in my mouth right now.
Well, here's what's going to happen. She's going to say, well, hey, I want to do pony rides at the wedding, but they need a cash deposit.
Or I want, and I don't know what people do at weddings. I don't know.
George rolled in on a camel. I don't know what these youngsters.
Well, he is a camel. I know, but these young weddings are out of control.
But he's going to have $25,000 in the bank, and his sweet new fiancé is going to say, hey, we need a cash deposit. He's going to give it to her, and he's going to say, okay, I'm just going to float this for one month, and that's going to float for one more month.
This is what Bank of America counts on. That's exactly right.
This is what they're counting on. Once they've got your head in the noose, they pull the rope.
Yeah, that's how it works. All right.
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All right. Today's question comes from Erica in Delaware.
Erica writes, how can I respect my partner when we have significantly different views on money? He believes living paycheck to paycheck is justified because you get experiences before you die. Because, I know, dude, I'm just, Dave, we're going to have work forever.
Forever. We're always going to have a job.
I guess we're geniuses. We are the smartest men who've ever lived.
Do you know what we do for a living? We convince people to live on less than they make. Go ahead, finish.
How big is this building? Is it 650,000 per feet? Just finish. Finish the email.
Golly. Please.
Because I've been following your principles for a year, and I'm on baby step four, which is investing for the future. I totally disagree with him.
Help. Here's the deal.
You already don't respect him. Because this isn't about different views on money.
This is about living in reality or not living in reality. And so let's don't blame money.
This is about being a grown-up or being a child. That's right.
This partner of yours is a child. That's exactly right.
I want experiences. That's right.
And by the way, we just went on a boat with a bunch of millionaires. 3,000 of them.
For what, eight days? 3,000 of them. And it was an insane experience.
It was quite an experience. But they had the money.
They had the money. That's right.
So the idea that having a budget and following principles keeps you from experiences is nonsense. It just magnifies how rad your experiences can be for a long time.
It's just, it's just, it's, it's not living in reality. Yeah.
It's YOLO. It's what I expect my nine-year-old daughter to, to, to how she should view the world.
Your problem, Erica, is you're dating a little boy, not a man. That's right.
That's the problem. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.
So, I mean, adults devise a plan and follow it. Children do what feels good.
And that's what we have here. One adult and one child.
Yeah. And so, um, it's not a matter of what you can do to respect him.
It's a matter of if you ever will, you won't because you're who you are. You're wise and you're old, an older soul, regardless of your actual chronological age.
And you've got wisdom and you know, you're looking at a guy who he might be cute. He might be fun.
He probably is fun, but, um, but he's not a good man to spend your life with, and you already know that.

And by the way, I guarantee you this is not just money. This has to do with everything.
How much we're going to drink, raising kids, where we're going to live, what are we going to do for vacation. This impacts everything.
And Dave, I'm hearing this more and more. People want to dump this on the baby steps or dump their the global marriage challenge they have inside their house or their dating relationship on a plan.

The plan just exposes what's already there.

Yeah, there's not. So what we're saying, what John's saying earlier is right, Erica.

I think you don't respect him. And until he becomes a person of maturity, one definition of maturity is the ability to delay pleasure.
Live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else. So that you can have experiences like you said, John.
If you've got $10 million, your experience options are a lot different than when you're a broke person saying, I like experiences. It's a lot different.
I mean, one throws a Frisbee. The other one goes on a worldwide cruise.
Yeah, exactly. One gets a bunch of banquet beers, and the other jumps out of a plane with his buddy Dave because Dave's great at peer pressure.
It just changes. It didn't cause that.
You think I can control your decisions? No, honestly. Honestly, here's what happened.
You said, hey, who wants to jump out of a plane? And Ken Coleman said, absolutely not. George Campbell said, no way.
And I was like, I have to now. That was peer pressure.
You didn't cause that. That was my own insecurity.
Oh, okay. What a great experience.
It was. It was fun.
It's better than throwing a Frisbee. I'm going to drive home today and see some guy in the park throwing a Frisbee.
I'm going to be like, I should have got on our budget.

I'm going to judge his frisbee throwing activity.

I mean, you could do competition frisbee, I guess.

No, no, no, no, no.

Because then you have to wear socks and Crocs or whatever.

Really?

It comes with a whole outfit.

It does?

It's got a uniform?

Yeah, no.

That's something James does.

No competition frisbee.

James does that?

Of course.

He plays a fender.

Oh.

There it is. This is the Ramsey Show.
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live 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 actual amazing relationships i'm dave ramsey your host host, Dr. John Deloney, PhD in counseling,

Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author and host of the Dr. John Deloney show on the Ramsey Networks.
He's my co-host today. You jump in.
We'll talk about your life and

your money. 888-825-5225.
John's in Springfield, Michigan. Hey, John, how are you?

Hey, I'm doing good. How are you guys? Better than I deserve.
What's up? So me and my wife took your FPU class maybe about a year and a half, two years ago. And I thought we'd been doing good, but she keeps overdrafting her bank account.
And it started off 50, maybe 100 bucks here and there. but in the past month she overdrafted it 700 twice and i'm not sure what to do anymore when you call her out on it what does she say uh well i asked her about it and everything she told me she don't know what she spent the money on and she told me that it shouldn't matter what she spent it on either.
So you guys flunked Financial Peace University. You flunked the class.
You have to go back and take it again. Because in the class, in the class, we taught you to combine all of your income and combine all of your assets and operate out of one checking account and do a budget every month that you both agree to and stick to.
Does that sound familiar at all? Yeah, it does. Okay.
You, I say this, like, I don't like saying this. This isn't fun for me.
You've got serious marriage issues. If she responds to an agreed upon set of values that y'all agreed on, when you say, hey, what's going on here? You're $1,500 overdrawn.
And she says, stay away, get out of my business. Like your marriage is in trouble is what I'm telling you.
Okay. Do you have access to these purchases? or does she have her own checking account?

No. It's her own checking account.

We can see each other's checking accounts and bank accounts and all that.

So you can look at it, you know exactly what she spent it on.

And what'd she get?

I have no idea, because she pulled the money out in cash when she did it.

Dude, I can't, every alarm I have is going off right now.

Whether it's for a hotel room, whether it's for alcohol, whether it's for drugs, I think y'all got a mess on your hands. Okay.
I've just done this for long enough now, and Dave's done it for way longer than me. When people start pulling cash out, and the first thing when their partner says, when their husband or wife says, hey, we agreed on this thing, what about this money? And the first question, the first response is you back off.
It shouldn't even apply to you. You don't have any say in this? Ooh, buddy.
That screams guilt. That's right.
And let me give you another picture. I have gone before a hunting trip to a place in town to buy camouflage gear.
It's obnoxious.

My wife calls it my outfits.

And I've told her I'm going to go spend a ton of money in here.

And it was in the budget.

And on the way home, I said, hey, please don't look.

It's not good.

It's embarrassing how much I just spent on clothes.

Right?

That's the one thing.

And we sit down and she goes, oh, my gosh. And she laughs and I laugh.

And she pokes fun at me for a couple of months. It was the budget a couple years but we we had agreed upon it and they talked about it and it was completely transparent that's a completely different scenario and it's not an overdraft no you hear the difference yeah and i had the money that's the other difference yeah i hear that difference so what what has she ever been addicted to anything that you know of i mean she's been addicted to alcohol but she got over that uh so as long as i know nothing maybe about year year and a half ago she got over that okay you i'm just telling you right now this is that moment to turn all the lights on, turn the music off, all the little games y'all play, all the avoiding of the hard conversations.
I'm worried about her health right now. Okay.
That's the behavior of somebody who's struggling. Where else is she doing this? This is not just isolated to money.
Where else is she hiding from you? I'm honestly not sure. I know we have a budget.
No, I mean, is she late from work? Yeah. Does she flip her phone over every time you come in? She changed her passcodes on social media? Like, you get what I'm saying? Where else is this showing up? Yeah, yeah.
She did change her passcode on her phone. I noticed okay and yeah last night i had mentioned i needed

to look at some pictures so i can put some money in the budget and she grabbed her phone real quick and said give me a minute yeah so you hey listen you know right you know yeah and i'm i'll just tell you right now i'm heartbroken with you man i hate this so sad yeah it breaks my heart for you This is not an overdraft problem, dude.

You got real serious stuff she's gotten into. Yeah.
And I'm afraid of what you're going to find. Yeah.
For a minute, I thought it was alcohol, but I just changed my mind. Yeah.
Wow. Dave, I mean, you're the one who taught me this, but, man, when people start hiding money um it's always a symptom it's always a symptom it's not the problem right right right money problems are the problem they're not the symptom whatever they are but hiding it is a whole different thing and there's a whole series of uh hope pieces of research and data that indicates that you know what's going on there.
And so it is one of

the beauties of the cleanliness and the high level of communication, connectivity, and alignment of

value systems and so forth that doing a budget together that is completely transparent where

every dollar for the entire household is spent in the every dollar budget app, and both of you have

a vote on where it

goes, equal votes. We can argue about it.
We can whatever, but when we put it down there, then it becomes a contract, and we stick to it. It increases communication because Jesus said, where your treasure is, your heart is also.
It also, therefore, is aligning your values. You're agreeing on your fears.
That's right. You're agreeing on your dreams.

You're agreeing on your fears. That's right.
You're agreeing on your dreams. Right.
You're agreeing on family dysfunction. Where are we going for Easter? You know, you're agreeing, because it all shows up right there in the EveryDollar app, and we have to agree on it.
That's right. There's a cleanliness to that.
Sure, or understand it even. My wife doesn't know why I buy camouflage gear, buy camouflage gear that it costs that much.
It doesn't, but the point is we sat down and talk about it and we don't hide from each other. Right.
And obviously camouflage is just me making something up. But yeah, this, this one.
Yeah. This one ends in a pretty tough situation.
It's, um, we had one guy in a financial piece university many years ago. He goes, you know, it's really pretty impossible to have an affair when you're doing a budget and every dollar spent because you can't really put a category in.

It says, honey.

This is the problem.

Yeah.

This is the problem.

And let's say we talk about, hey, you can share a checking account.

Yep.

If one of you has to make a passcode on your phone that your husband or wife can't see, that's a problem.

That's a problem.

It's a problem. That's a problem.
If you reach over to grab your spouse's phone and they

freak out and grab it from you, that's a problem. And it, it, it serves the same dysfunction as

not sharing checking accounts, not being aligned on how you spend your money, because it's this

idea that I've got my own life and you can't see a photo, you can't see the message. And that means

Thank you. as not sharing checking accounts, not being aligned on how you spend your money, because it's this idea that I've got my own life and you can't see a photo.
You can't see the message. And that means, hey, what is what it just it shines a light on.
Who is this person that shares a bed with me? Like, why? Why can't I see your photos? Why can't I see this stuff? If you have to hide from your partner, then your marriage relationship's in a big mess. Jade said the other day, she said, if Sam won't put his iPhone locator, if I can't know where he is, he can't share my bed.
That was Jade. It's pretty hardcore.
Only Jade. This is the Ramsey show.
I've been helping people get out of debt and change their lives for over 30 years. So I know change isn't always easy, but it's worth it.
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Hey, guys.

Thank you so much for the number of you that have embraced the new book, Build a Business You Love.

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Thank you. Hey guys, thank you so much for the number of you that have embraced the new book, Build a Business You Love.
It's officially here. It came out this week and the number of pre-sales and the number of sales this week are off the charts.
We appreciate you very, very much. This is not just another business book.
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Thank you. Thank you so much.
Carlos is with us in Los Angeles. Hey, Carlos, what's up? Hey, thank you.
Thank you for taking my call. Sure.
So I'm on baby steps four, five, and six. And I recently met with a financial advisor about opening up a 529 plan for my daughter.
And she went over all the fees and the stuff. And then I started wondering if it's better for me to just open a plan directly, like to Vanguard or something like that, instead of me seeing the advisor to stay on fees and all that.
I don't know what's your opinion on that. I would use your advisor.
The fees shouldn't be substantial. They should be very small, little to nothing.
And here's the thing. The 529 plans are so – some of them suck beyond belief, and you could stumble into one of those if you're not careful and if you don't have somebody coaching you along the way on this and teaching you about it.
Because the only 529 plan we would recommend is one where you control them and select the mutual funds and they don't automatically change. They're not automatically selected for you based on the age of the kid.
And there's just a handful of those out there that are done that way. And that's the type you want to get involved in.
And I would always keep an advisor in my corner. I do.
I use an advisor. And I'm the guy that tells everybody what to do with their money.
And the fees on that stuff are not, it's not much. I mean, they're very small.
And it's not like they're taking half your money or something in commissions. It's not.
And it's worth every bit of it to have all of your stuff in one place with one advisor. So they're keeping a watch on your whole, at least your entire mutual fund portfolio.
Mine does. Mine's all in one place, by the way.
All the mutual funds. Not real estate separate, obviously, but that's the thing to do there.
Mason's in Sacramento. Hi, Mason.
Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Sure. How can we help? So my partner and I just, we're about to close on a house in early May, our first house.
And we want to know, like, about how much we should expect to be putting into renovations. We plan on selling in about five years.
How much work needs to be done? So not a lot. It's in pretty good condition.
There's a couple things. The roof needs to get done, but the seller is doing a credit for that.
The other thing that is pretty imperative is just the, there's a little bit of pest eradication to do, and I don't expect that to be super expensive. So what renovation are you talking about doing? Neither one of those are even renovations.
Those are just repairs. Yeah, you've got to do those.
Yeah, those are just fixing it up. up yeah so we wanted to make it um the kitchen is pretty small we want to maybe make the kitchen more appealing at least appear bigger so we want to like lighten it up and then we were thinking of doing the bathroom as well like retiling and maybe the floor um we don't uh we don't have a lot of experience with this kind of thing.
So, okay. So, um, the homes in a five block radius of that, do their kitchens look like you want the kitchen to look or do they look like the kitchen you're buying? Um, I think they're a little, they're a little bigger there.
Uh, the houses are not super nice right there. So they're not, uh're not uh you know they're not super big it was a $315,000 house it's our first house it's a three bedroom and it's not it's not very big but um I'm really glad you're buying this house yeah good for you man this is a good this is a good a good modest purchase to get you started I really like that Mason um here's the thing what you're looking for on repairs is if you're doing repairs for you to enjoy but they don't increase the value of the home that's not a repair or a renovation you're going to do if you're only holding the home five years but the reason the reason i asked about the kitchen or the bathrooms in the area is if most of the homes in the area have gone through a renovation and have a nice kitchen and have a nice bath, then you probably will get your money out by doing your kitchen and your bath.
If most of the homes in the area have a bath and a kitchen the way yours looks today, and you go make yours nicer than the rest of the area, you will not even get your money back on that renovation cost. It will not increase the value of your home equivalent to what you spend.
And can I tell you something just to put in your back pocket? Five years ago, I was the chief student affairs officer at a university. Five years before that, I was two cities away in another state.
Why do I tell you that? Me being a YouTuber was not on my radar. And so I always hesitate when people say, we want to do a thing, but we're going to sell in three years.
We're going to sell in five years. Because, dude, none of us know what's coming in three years or in five years.
And so if you've, if, yeah, Dave, let me ask you this. If you have an outstanding mortgage and let's say, you know, Mason bought it in the right way financially and you've got cash, does it matter? Do you have a ratio for that? Or do you want to pay down the house a certain amount or you want to get the house paid off before you start renovating stuff? No, I think if you're in baby steps four, five, and six, and you want to fix up your house, that's fine.
Okay. But anytime you're doing an improvement to the property, you've got to ask yourself, does it increase the value of the home equal to what I'm spending? Okay.
And so I feel like if I'm going to redo my bathroom and it's not... Bathrooms and kitchens are the most expensive things to do in a house.
But, I mean, I want it paid off.

If it's going to outsize the market and it's just something.

You don't want to outsize the market.

That's what I was just saying.

Yeah, but if I want it just, it's my house, me and my wife live in,

and we just want to make a cool bathroom.

I need to have the house paid off and just have some extra money to burn in the living room, right?

Yeah, if you're doing it and it's not increasing the value of the home

equal to what you're spending, you should have it paid off first. Right.
Okay. Yeah.
Whatever the renovation is. So I want to add 6,000 square foot of garage because I want to collect.
No, you're not, you're not going to, you're not going to get your money back. Right.
And that's a, that's a luxury purchase. And you're going to, you know, I want to put the only pool in a six block radius behind my house.
That pool is not going to add a dime in value to that house because pools are not normative in your neighborhood. And so you're about to drop, you know, literally bury 50 grand in your backyard.
Yeah, at least at a minimum. And and you're not going to get it out.
But if you're not going to increase the value of. Yeah, but if you have a paid-off house, and that's where your kids live,

that's where your schools are, and you guys want a pool?

Fine.

And you're going to pay cash for it.

I like that.

But don't do it and call it a return on investment because you're not.

It's a consumption item.

Do you have a gut feeling on how many people call the show and say,

I'm going to do X in three to five years, and they don't?

No, because I never hear back from them. You never hear hear back from them i don't know what they're doing open phones here at 888-825-5225 i'm with you though on that idea because the average uh home turns every 5.6 years in america five and a half years that's how long all right All right.
So Mason's probably right. That's the average.

Okay.

Okay.

But this first time home purchase for them, they're buying something modest.

They're probably not going to stay five.

That's fair.

They're probably going to move up. People that do a move up generally do it faster than that.

And we are talking California real estate here.

Yeah.

So 315 is a small house in California.

Oh, it's a tiny, modest home. Yes.
It's a wonderful entry purchase. In other places, it might be a big house, but it's certainly not in Sacramento.
So, wow. The median house price in America this week is $412,000 for those of you that don't know.
You can check out all this stuff.

The stats on real estate

at RamseySolutions.com.

Check out the

housing, the home

website that we've got within our site.

I don't even know what you call the stupid thing.

It's there. All kinds of stuff.
I'm looking at the stats

on it right now. It's pretty impressive.

This is cool. Real change in your money and relationships is possible.
You can break the cycles that have kept you from moving forward. You can build a better future for

yourself, and it starts here. Hang out with Dr.
John Deloney and I live in a city near you for the Money and Relationships Tour. Starting next week, we'll be in Louisville, Durham, Atlanta, Phoenix, Fort Worth, and Kansas City.
Time is running out, so grab your tickets while you can at RamseySolutions.com slash tour.

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This morning, John and I were on stage in an empty Ramsey event center with our live events team walking through what we're going to be doing on the money and relationships tour. So if you're signed up for one of these, here's what you're going to get.
And here's what if you haven't signed up, you need to get signed up. We're going to put about 20 topics that either are John or Dave or John and Dave on an app when you walk in, and you're going to vote, and based on your votes that night, that's what we're going to talk about.
We're going to run, we're going to let you do the set list, In other words, you get to put, you get to do your, uh,

choose the songs you want sung.

Uh,

although there will be no singing,

John,

there will be no singing,

bro.

Neither of us need,

neither of us need to be saying,

particularly me,

but it's already a chaotic time in America.

They don't need that.

We're going to talk radio for a reason.

Talk radio.

Yeah.

Anyway.

So there's all kinds of stuff on there. Like we're going to talk, you know, marriage and we're going to talk radio for a reason.
Talk radio, yeah. Anyway, so there's all kinds of stuff on there.
Like we're going to talk, you know, marriage, and we're going to talk about, of course, we're going to talk about kids. We're going to talk about wealth building.
We'll talk about debt. We could talk about whatever you want to talk about.
We're going to put up a whole bunch of stuff. We tried to guess what you might want to talk about, and then we thought we'd just let you pick it.
So that's what we're doing. Starts this coming Monday in Louisville, Kentucky.
There are some seats left this coming Monday, April the 21st, Durham, North Carolina, April the 23rd, Wednesday, Atlanta, Georgia, April the 25th. As I sit here at this moment, that's a week from tomorrow.
And so that's the first three cities of our six-city tour. And you can get your tickets at RamseySolutions.com slash tour.
And, of course, then we're going to go out in May 5th. We'll be Phoenix on a Monday, Fort Worth on May 7, and Kansas City on May 9.
Oddly enough, Fort Worth and Kansas City are the two that are almost sold out, the the last two so um if you guys want to get in the on those you better go ahead and get your tickets you're going to miss that one okay they're about to reach sell out and the others are not you can get your tickets but go ahead and get them uh we would appreciate that and we'd love to see y'all it's gonna be a lot of fun be a lot of interaction and uh we just come on out so ramseyolutions.com slash tour, or if you're tuning in on YouTube or podcast, click the link in the show notes, please. Karen's in Huntsville.
Hi, Karen. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Hi. Thank you guys for taking my call.
Sure. What's up? So I have a question, kind of more of a moral question.
My stepmom, she passed away in February.

I'm sorry.

Thank you. I was her life insurance beneficiary.
So we had had a conversation in November about it. So I was expecting to be a beneficiary, but the problem now is that now my stepdad, technically he was my stepdad married to my mom for a couple years.
My stepmom is technically his ex-wife, but I just, you know, she came into my life at the same time, and he was expecting to get this money.

From his divorced wife's death?

I'm sorry, what?

His divorced wife?

Yes.

That's weird.

It's the funny part about it. And they had been married for 20-plus years.

She basically took care of everything for him.

He never paid a bill.

But they weren't married anymore. No.
How long have they been divorced? Oh, I don't even think they were legally married. But she had helped raise his kids.
How long have they been split up, kid? Probably 2012, 2013. Okay, so 15 years they've been apart, give or take.
How old are you? I'm 27. Okay, and this goob calls you up and says he has rights to this morally? So the problem is now is that his health had been declining the last about five years.
And so he was living with her.

He moved back in with her.

And she was essentially taking care of everything for him, food, doctor's appointments, all that.

Recently?

Yes.

Yeah.

So when she died, he lived in her house?

He was living with her.

When she died, he lived in her house?

Yes.

Yep.

What a mess.

And she was married?

Thank you. When she died, he lived in her house? Yes.
Yep. What a mess.
And she was married? She had never been married. Okay.
How much did she leave you? She left me with $419,000. And she did actually end up having him be the beneficiary of her 401K, which turned out to be about $135,000.
Okay, so this guy's, what, 50 or 65, 60 years old? He is, my stepdad is 61, 62. Okay, how is he your stepdad? She was your stepmom.
So that's dad? I call her affectionately my stepmom, but she really was just always in his life, even when he married my mom for a couple years. So he really was my stepdad and still is, but I more affectionately call her my stepmom.
God, this is so confusing. All right, stop a second.
I've got to get this figured out because it's intriguing. All right, so the lady that died, did she raise you? I lived with her when I went to college.
Why? And we were very, very close. So your mom, is she technically your stepmother or you just called her that? I just called her that.
Okay, so she was not. So your mom and dad don't have anything to do with these people? Nope.
My mom and my technical stepdad, they have been separated now for a good couple years. So this is just a woman that you met while you were in college, you lived with her, y'all got close, and she left you just south of half a million dollars when she died? Correct.
And then some guy who she kept, and he's not your stepdad either, who has no relationship to you, who he was, he's been freeloading for the last 20 years on this woman, and it's not like he was just freeloading.

She was also carrying him around in the wheelbarrow.

He called and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, I want that money too.

Well, he was my stepdad.

He was married to my mom for a couple of years, but they've been divorced for a while, and he essentially—

So was he married to your mom before or after this, between this lady, I bet? What year was he married? What year did he divorce your mom? Oh, that was probably 2013, I'd say. It's been a while.
I thought the lady that died was with him in 2013. Um, no, just my, uh, my stepdad and my mom, their marriage was only a couple of years, pretty short.
Um, but he was, my stepdad was with his ex-wife who I call my stepmom. I do wild family situations for a living and this makes me want to drink yeah no it's on air on air yeah i'm trying to see if there's a flask under the desk here quickly somebody get john a bourbon okay um all right so the answer to your question then is now that we've gotten through all of that have we it's we've gotten through it i'm'm through it as far as I'm going to get.
There we go. Tangled web we weave, okay? And the problem is that you are caught up amongst all these spiders.
And these spiders all have sticky stuff, and they all interact and intersect, but none of it is your fault, nor is any of it your obligation. And so when you had a conversation with her before she died, she said, I'm going to make you the beneficiary on my life insurance.
Is that correct? Correct. Okay.
And then that was her wish. The lady that died left life insurance to the person she wanted it to go to.
End of story. And by the way, Bubba the parasite gets nothing.
But no, she picked some money for him too. So she was very thoughtful in how she did it.
I know, but he doesn't get any of this 419. No.
Zero. That's what I'm struggling with.
You don't need to struggle. Struggle's over.
That's why you called us. Are you living in the house with this guy? No, no.
Good. Me and my husband are in our own place.
Oh, good. You have a life.
You have a life, and you're going to try to be normal people now. Yeah, pay your house off with this money.
Congratulations. Yeah.
No, you do not owe this guy a dime. Not morally, ethically.
As a matter of fact, quite the contrary. It would be immoral and unethical to give him any of it because the lady that died left it to you intentionally.
If

she wanted him to have it, she had an opportunity to do that in December when she was making these

decisions before she died. No, it would be wrong to give him the money.
Don't struggle with this.

He's a, he's a guilt. He's a travel agent for guilt trips.
Get away from him.

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Erica is with us in Los Angeles. Hi, Erica.
How are you? Hi, Dave. I am super thankful and inspired by you and thankful for you for inspiring myself, my friends, and for giving my son a good foundation for his financials at the ripe old age of 15.
So thank you, thank you, thank you. Wow.
You get the high five because you're out there doing it and making it work. Way to go kiddo.
Proud of you. Good.
How can we help? So, um, I'm, I, I'm in a good situation. I have a lot of retirement about 700,000.
I only owe two 75 on my house. That's a value of 900,000, But I put my three to six months of savings I had into an account for my son for college.
So I'm starting all over and it's been really tight. And I was wondering, in your opinion, what is the best order to do things? Do I pause on putting into retirement and build my three to six months? Yes.
Do I? Yes. Okay.
That's it. Yeah.
Here's why. If you don't and you have an emergency, you'll use some of your retirement, which you don't want to cash out for an emergency.
So I don't want you to get into that. I don't want you to cause a problem with that or, or worse than that.
Sometimes people will go put it on a card if they don't have any money. Or worse than that, they'll borrow against their home if they don't have any money.
And we don't want to do any of that. Because if you have a car engine blow up or heat and air go out on the house or some kind of other thing happen and you don't have any money, you're asking for trouble.
So let's stop and let's get that buffer in, I call the emergency fund Murphy repellent because it keeps Murphy, you know, if it can go wrong, it will, it keeps him away. You ever notice that folks, when you're broke, that your life looks like a country song, like everything can go wrong.
Will like the dog got hit in the street and everything else. I mean, everything happens, right? Always when you're broke is, but when you've got a buffer, when you've got $10,000 or $15,000, $20,000 or whatever your three to six months is, it just turns an emergency into an inconvenience, and that's the deal.
So that's the route I would go. Yes, definitely.
Rob is in Tampa. Hey, Rob, how are you? Good, Dave.
Thanks for having me on. Absolutely.
How can I help?

Well, instead of asking how can I get out of my debt problems and whatnot, I have kind of the opposite. We're both retired and have a nice nest egg saved up.
Quite comfortable, actually. How much? How much in the nest egg? oh we got 500k in a 403b um um got 25,000 in the schwab account got 30,000 in a checking and savings account and we take in probably 9100 a month net wow good for you well done how old are? 64.
Good job. Good play.
Good job. Proud of you.
Houses paid for? Both houses are paid for. Man, so you're a millionaire.
I never thought I'd get to this point in my life, actually. Yeah, but you are.
So, I'm sorry, then what is your question? You've done a great job. Well, we had my wife and I, we have a great team together and we had plans on traveling and doing things like that of that nature.
And the past year and a half or so, she's come down with some cognitive issues. And yep.
And she's she's changed. She doesn't doesn't do her regular things anymore that she liked to do.
She needs familiarity. She does not like to be anywhere where she's unfamiliar with.
And, and so I guess my question is, in future, for the future, I know the care of healthcare is, the cost of healthcare is is just astronomical. And I want to take care of her.
And I just do I save all this money in case for future care?

I guess that's my question. How do you about do I navigate this this disease, if you will?

I'm so sorry. How long y'all been married?

Thank you. How about do I navigate this disease, if you will? I'm so sorry.
How long have y'all been married? 32 years. Wow.
Okay. Have you went and run the battery of tests and gotten a clinical diagnosis yet, or is this just you guys experiencing this in real time? We did see a doctor about six months ago, and I was we were, I was not happy with, it was just a routine office visit type thing.
So, uh, but we're going to, um, we've got plans in the mid May to, uh, with a different doctor to determine what road we should take or any, uh, any medicine should be taken. Truthfully, depending on what the cause is, there's some medication that slows this dramatically.
Am I right, John? Yeah, and sometimes there's medication that actually causes some sort of just the cognitive fog. And so, yeah, going and doing the battery of tests, it's worth the money and it's worth the – you'll be – it's nerve-wracking, but it's worth it because you'll get some clearer answers here.
Yeah. If she's on medication that could be causing it, that could be one thing is what he's saying.

And then the other is sometimes there's some things that can depending on what you know, how this is diagnosed. We're not neither one medical doctors, but we both are around the edges of this stuff all the time because of what we do.

So, yeah, take the time and go deep on this.

Don't just accept it as generally this is where it is because you might be able to do either some slowing or even some reversal. It's possible.
That's the good news. Okay, now then back to your original question.
I'll tell you what I'm thinking about these days and what we've told each other now because we've got the money and you've got the money. Sharon and I have figured out that we can hire full-time staff in our home that ends up being net-net 24-7, that ends up being net-net-net cheaper than nursing home.
Okay. I just hire a full-time freaking nurse just to live with you.
If it gets to where you can't do do the care that's an option versus nursing home or memory care units or whatever um again it just depends because like you just said familiarity uh keeps her calm and helps her to have enjoyment and so the opposite of that is um a memory care unit somewhere uh and so maybe a stair step that you can get by with six to eight hours of care for the next two to three years. Well, maybe you don't need it at all for a while.
Right. But, you know, you've got $130,000, $140,000 a year coming in there already in income.
And you've got $500K. And no debt and two paid-off houses.
Yeah. And so it doesn't take you much to live.
And so if your household budget was 4K and you staffed budget and you staffed the thing for 5K a month later on, not today, but if that's where you end up five years from now, that might take you a long way through this and a high quality of life for you and her. That sounds like a good idea.
I mean, our monthly leases are under $1,500 a month. I thought you could live on 4K.
Yeah. Yeah, so I never thought of it that way.
Yeah. And, Rob, does she have good days? Yes, there's good days.

It's just the repeating constantly.

She doesn't want to drive anymore.

She doesn't read anymore.

But she's a happy person.

It's just I see what's coming down the road,

and I'm just trying to prepare myself for all this.

I was going to recommend, if you haven't already,

and it's possible for you two in every situation is different, plan something fun. Okay.
That you have some photographs, that you've got some memories, even if it's a, I don't want to say it's a last ride, because it's certainly not there yet, but plan something fun. My inclination would be to pucker up and to just watch every penny.
You're okay financially, but plan something fun.

Yeah, spend some money on some fun right now while you can.

And then start mapping out and budgeting out what in-home care looks like.

And then, you know, worst case scenario, you can always go the other direction,

the more standard directions later, and you've got the money to do all of it.

You're going to be fine. Wow.
No matter what you want to do with it. show notes to make it easy for you.
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Don't make it weird. Okay.
I got nowhere to go. So you need to go.