Stop Expecting Different Results From the Same Mistakes

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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 actual, amazing relationships.

I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman, number one best-selling author, Ramsey personality, and host of the runaway hit show Front Row Seat on the Ramsey Networks.

He's my co-host today.

Brianna is with us in Washington, D.C.

Hi, Brianna.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

So I'm a single mom living in D.C., and I've just been in survival mode over the past few years, just trying to get things done.

But I'm in a space where I'm trying to clean up my debt.

I want to buy buy a house in the next two years, but I know I have a lot of debt that I need to clean up and learning and figuring out like how to save

and just move forward so I can give my children better opportunities in the future.

Good for you.

That's good motivation.

Cool.

So, what's your income?

So, I make 80 for my day, for my job, yes, 80,000.

Your day job, were you saying?

Does that mean you have another one?

Well, lately, I've been doing some training, consulting work on the side, but it's very sporadic.

How much have you made doing that?

Last month, I did a six-day workshop for organization.

I received $3,000.

Cool.

I like it.

All right.

How old are your kiddos?

I have a five- and a seven-year-old.

How much are you getting child support?

Zero.

Why?

I filed for child support, but due to his job at the time he was serving,

there was no proof of like income in a sense.

And so they technically said that I owe him

a job.

I'm sorry.

The job he was serving.

What do you mean?

A serving job at like a restaurant.

Oh, oh, okay.

As opposed to serving time.

Okay.

Okay.

Or in the military, you could serve there.

Okay.

All right.

How much debt you got, kiddo?

So in credit cards and like my car, I have about 30,000,

but that's not including my student loans.

That's $100,000.

Yay!

What is your degree in?

I know, right?

Unfortunately, it's in psychology and community psychology.

The undergrad that I went to was a private institute, and I didn't do too great in high school, and so it was kind of very few choices.

And so,

yeah, I ended up with a whole bunch of debt.

So I have two degrees, but $100,000.

Well, I mean, there's nothing easy about the math you're giving me, but it's not like it's not doable.

But you're not buying a house house in two years unless something changes dramatically because you're not going to be out of debt in two years.

You're not going to, I mean, $120,000, $130,000 in debt, that'd be $60,000 a year.

You make $80,000 and got two kids.

I don't think we're going to put $60,000 a year on debt, do you?

No.

Unless you get a whole bunch more of these workshops on the side, which I love that idea, but I don't think we're going to get that many more.

So, I mean, let's pretend that it takes

that we put

$30,000 a year on it.

Okay.

It takes four years.

If we put $40,000 a year on it, it takes three years.

Okay.

But that's $40,000 making $80,000 in D.C.

with two kids is beans and rice.

You're going to be doing nothing for three years except getting out of debt.

How much is your car debt?

You broke it.

Do you put it with the credit card?

This is my last payment.

This car is my last payment.

So I paid

one

payment.

You have one payment left.

Yeah.

Oh, so it's almost gone.

Yeah.

Good.

Okay.

So you have 30,000 in credit cards, basically.

Yeah.

Okay.

And that's because you're not budgeting, not paying attention, you're raising two kids without child support.

And

hey, did Doofus ever, did he ever go get a job?

He did, but it's very inconsistent.

So every time I go file,

he doesn't have anything.

Yeah.

And so we had an agreement that he will give a little here and there.

And I guess I'm in a space where I'm trying to still give my children like swimming lessons and things like that.

And so I'm realizing that I have to do that.

Well, you got $100,000 in student loan debt.

And you got $30,000 in credit card debt because you've been doing swimming lessons and not getting child support.

So something's going to shift here, kiddo.

You can't keep doing everything and get a house.

You can't keep doing everything.

This debt's going to follow you around for 10 years.

If you keep doing exactly what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting.

Agreed?

Yes.

So I'm a rip the band date off guy.

I don't peel them off slow.

And so I would,

if it's me, I'm going to work like a maniac.

I'm going to get some help with family on the kids, pick up as many of those side gigs.

Those things were promising.

I like the sound of that.

And, you know, I'm going to sell everything in sight.

We're not going out to eat.

If we do outside activities, they're going to be very, very few and very limited.

But you can't live like you're making $180 with no debt because you're not.

You can't keep living like this okay so the kids by the way will live without every stinking kind of activity out there okay

lots of kids grow up not having done a lot of that stuff and do it without counseling yeah i'm curious what are you doing for a living right now what's your professional role

I'm a program manager, so I create a post-secondary program for a small DC chartered school district.

Yeah, I'm going to really challenge you.

Dave gave you everything you need to hear on cutting, but you've got to make some more money.

And you've clearly proven, listen, someone pay you $3,000

over six days.

You've got some real value.

And I think you're going to have to set your sights on, I got these two degrees in psychology.

You've done some stuff here.

I just think you need to start to look at where can I,

with some hustle, connecting with people, can I raise my income by $30,000 to $50,000 in the next six months?

Then you get out of debt in two years.

That's the game.

You got to get more income.

I think you're worth, I think you've got the opportunity to make more than 80, and you've shown some gumption, and I applaud you for that.

But I do want you to set your sights higher.

You're in a small charter school situation.

There's just not a room for growth there.

So I'd like to see you, if nothing else, replace the 80,000 in a place where there's room to grow.

That's the goal for you, especially as a single mama.

Yeah.

Okay.

So here's the way to remember all this stuff, okay?

If we took the math that you're on right now and we don't change a single thing, then you're stuck.

The good news is life's not a snapshot.

It's a film strip.

And the next frame, there's going to be a change.

In the next frame, there's going to be a change.

In the next frame, there's going to be a change.

That's a film strip, right?

And so the change can be good or bad.

But there's always going to be a change.

There's going to be a change in the next frame.

So what we're saying is let's plan that on the expense side.

Let's plan that on the income side.

And every time this thing clicks again and there's another frame, it gets a little better, a little better, a little better to where five months from now, you're telling a completely different story with your math, with the arithmetic than you are with right now because of your spending and because of your searching out career.

I mean, you've never even looked probably, but you might land something making 130.

I don't know.

I have no idea.

But I do know the math you're giving me right now is tough.

It can be done, but it's not going to be done two years.

And you can get there, but it's going to be a crawl and then a walk and then a jog

and then a run.

Let's give her Kelly find the work you're wired to do.

It comes with a get clear career assessment.

I think it's going to show you a much better future.

So hang on, we'll take care of that for you.

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Valerie's in Minneapolis.

Hi, Valerie.

How are you?

Hi, I'm good.

Thanks.

How are you guys?

Better than we deserve.

What's up?

Great.

Well, I'll try and keep it quick.

I had a question.

My husband and I were talking about an annuity that I purchased after the sale of a property a few years ago.

My advisor recommended that we buy this $25,000 annuity.

This was before we were married.

And I was wondering in baby step two, would you treat that kind of like, you know, in the same category as insurance or something like that, where we just get rid of it to help us knock down that debt in baby step two?

Well, I would certainly learn more about it to make the decision.

How long have you had it?

I bought it in 2021, and it was supposed to mature when I turn,

I think, 65.

I believe it's a variable rate annuity, and it was supposed to be like a guaranteed payout or something like that starting at retirement.

Yeah.

So a variable annuity is mutual funds inside of an annuity, which gives you a guarantee on the principal.

You'll never lose principal and you'll have a minimum return on it,

which you would have gotten both of those things anyway had you stayed in until 65 because you're not that old.

The trick with this is they also have a surrender charge.

And what I'm trying to figure out,

probably still, usually they're gone by seven years, maybe five years, and you're only four in.

So you may have a huge surrender charge if you cash out early.

I don't know, but you may have.

And if that's the case, we're probably not going to cash it out now.

But I am questioning.

How old are you?

I'm 38.

Yeah, okay.

Your advisor is not a financial advisor.

Your advisor is an insurance agent.

So you need to change

because they don't sell it.

I'm definitely open to that.

Yeah.

No one sells this stuff to a 34-year-old

except insurance agents.

Sometimes a financial advisor will sell a variable annuity, but never to a 34-year-old.

It would be very, very unusual.

Usually the reason is that insurance agents can't sell mutual funds.

They don't have a securities license.

So this is how they get around it.

They got you into mutual funds inside of a variable annuity because this is the only product they could sell that was a real investment.

And it's actually not a horrible investment, but except for the fact that you're trapped in it now,

and probably with a surrender charge.

So I want you to get all the information together and get with, go to one of our Smart Investor Pros and sit down with them, and let's learn about what the surrender charge is.

The surrender charge will tell you whether to tap the brakes or cash it.

If the surrender charge is minor,

take it and cash it out and use it on your baby step two, right?

But if the surrender charge is half of what you put in or 25% of what you put in and you can wait three years and it goes away, meanwhile it is is going up in value, then we're not, there's no reason to take that huge hit.

Got it.

So just kind of analyze it that way and look at the risk return on it, and that'll help you move in that direction.

So just go to Ramseysolutions.com.

We're not in the investment business.

We don't sell investments.

We teach.

We're teachers.

And

stir up trouble.

That's what we do.

But we do have folks in the insurance world that we recommend, Xander Insurance and property and casualty folks in the Ramsey Trusted side.

We do have people in the investment world to help you sit down.

Ken uses one.

I use one.

We call them Smart Vestor Pros.

And they're people that we have vetted and that we are comfortable with and that have the heart of a teacher that are actual financial advisors.

They actually can sell mutual funds for your Roth IRA, do your 401k rollover, help you set stuff up and get it going.

And sit down with you and look at your overall situation.

It's a very good point.

I just would caution our large audience in a situation like this: before you sign on to a financial product, make sure that you are getting the pros and cons, okay, from multiple sources.

The internet's going to give you pros and cons, but talk to real professionals.

So, if you sit down with somebody like this is in insurance, go sit with somebody who doesn't sell that product and learn enough to Dave's point that you actually understand what you're doing.

This is what happens: people just get sold and they go with the first thing that they get pitched.

Well, the problem is that

investing falls in the heading of something I don't understand for most people.

And so I'm intimidated.

And

then to add to that, sometimes people in the investment world

unscrupulously use that to their advantage and just go and basically adopt a,

I don't know, an intimidation sales technique

and go, well,

I know you don't understand, but I do this for a living.

And it's real, the arrogant type of a thing, right?

So anytime someone in the investment world, in the money world, drops their glasses on the end of their nose and drops that kind of, professor, I'm going to talk down to you posture, fire their butt

right then.

Just look at them, go, oh, we're done.

We're done.

We're so done.

We're not even going to have a clean breakup.

You're just getting out of my house right now.

Okay?

Because their job is not to talk down to you.

Their job is not to do it for you.

Their job is to teach you.

And by the way, most of you have more money than they have.

So you're sitting there with a half million dollars and this guy's using driving a hundred dollar Toyota.

Okay.

So,

you know, most of the time that's what's going on.

So you just don't need to take crap off of these people.

Their job is to put these investing things into a lingo where you can understand it.

And if they sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, even if they're trying,

doesn't matter.

You got to get rid of them.

They have to be able to explain this in a way where you,

to your point, Ken, understand what you are doing with your

freaking money that you got with the sweat of your brow.

And don't you dare act like you're going to like give me attitude.

I'll smack you sideways into Sunday.

I mean, no possible way you're going to pull that crap.

Insurance people do it.

Sometimes real estate people do it.

They're not the, they're not the worst, though.

Uh, investment people, and they just,

you know, and so what happens is, is that,

you know, then they can sell them whatever they want to sell them.

Now, again, this product that she bought is not horrible.

Right.

It's just inappropriate for a 34-year-old.

Exactly.

So the variable annuity is a mutual fund inside of an annuity.

The annuity

protects it from taxes.

It grows like a 401k, a traditional, or a traditional IRA.

It grows without paying taxes until you take your money out.

The only downside is when you take your money out, out, it's taxed at ordinary income, not at capital gains,

which is triple what most of you are going to pay in taxes.

So the taxes on the growth are very, very high.

Also, you're charged not only a mutual fund fee, but you're charged the annuity fee.

And this is where their commissions come from, right?

And so nothing wrong with that, but you got doubled up on the fees.

It's not the end of the world because they're not super high,

but they're not great.

And also that you could get these features.

There are three or four primary features for a variable annuity, a mutual fund inside of an annuity.

Primary feature number one, they will give you a guarantee of your principal if you leave it alone five or seven years.

Okay.

Well, 97% of the five-year periods in stock market's history are up.

So that's not much of a guarantee.

Whoopty-dupty.

But it made you feel good if you're a scaredy cat.

If you're, I'm scared about the market.

I'm just so scared.

If you go in telling people that, they're going to go, oh, well, we could put you in a variable annuity and protect your principal.

But you're getting the same thing, but just by hanging out for five to seven years, okay?

The second thing is they'll guarantee you a 5% or a 6% rate of return.

Well, the stock market has averaged 11% for 75%, 80%, 90 years, okay, since its inception, the S ⁇ P has.

So

if it's averaged 11%, to guarantee you 5% or 6 is whoopty-dupty.

You can get no guarantee, but you've got to guarantee.

I know I'm at least going to get this, and I'm at least got my principal protected.

But what it does is if you're scared and you don't learn enough about how the market moves before you buy, then the variable annuity gives you some comfort.

The third thing it does that is actually more legitimate than the other two is you can name a beneficiary.

And it passes outside probate.

So there's no probate tax on it in your state.

And it does not avoid federal estate taxes, but that's not a problem for most people anyway now.

With the current Trump limits, most people, you get $25 million without taxes on federal, okay?

But if you're under $25 million, you're not got federal.

But on the state, you can avoid it with

this because it goes it has

a beneficiary element to it because it's technically an insurance product, so it works like insurance, it goes directly to the person outside of the estate.

So, that's actually a nice little touch if you care.

By the way, I'm 64, the number of variable annuities I own is precisely zero.

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Nick is in Boston.

Hey, Nick, how are you?

Hey, how are you doing today?

Better than I deserve.

How can we help?

Awesome.

So I just had a quick question.

I love the show, by the way.

I just started listening to you guys.

So my wife and I, just a little context, we're 33 years old and we're on baby step like four, five, and six, somewhere in between there.

We had a question.

Thank you.

We have $150,000 in stocks from her old job that she's not in anymore.

And we were wondering if it was worthwhile to put that on the principle of our home.

Yes.

Okay, yeah.

I figured.

I'm in a little debate with my family right now.

I don't know why your family gets a vote.

Yeah.

Sure money.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

So here's the thing.

Here's the way.

Here's the way.

Here's a couple things on this to help you know that my suggestion is right.

Here's why I'm telling you this.

There's two reasons.

One is if you reverse engineer some of these decisions, and the Harvard Investment Newsletter calls this sunk cost analysis.

Okay.

So reverse engineer it and say, if I had the opportunity to borrow,

given my state of mind today, I'm working baby steps four, five, and six, which means you're putting 15% of your income into retirement, you're doing something on kids' college, and you're paying anything you can find reasonably on the house as baby step six to pay off the house early.

That's the stated goals of four, five, and six.

You know that, don't you?

Yes.

Okay.

So if that's where your head is,

and you had the opportunity to borrow $150,000 on your home to buy stock in your wife's old company.

You would never do that.

No.

No, we wouldn't.

So keeping it is the exact same thing, only in reverse.

It's as if you, by not cashing it and paying it on the house, it's as if you borrowed on the house to buy it, mathematically.

Does that make sense?

Right, yeah.

So that's the only thing.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Oh, sorry.

I was just going to say the only thing is we, right now we have an 18-month-old and another child on the way.

So our budget is very tight right now.

We were kind of like losing about $500 a month.

So I didn't know if they, people were saying it's just like a backup in case anything were to happen that we would have that money.

Do you have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses?

Correct.

So we have $30,000 in an emergency fund and we have $100,000 in like a high-yield

money market account.

How much backup do you need, the great Walinda?

mean are you doing some kind of high-wise high wire trapeze act you got two hundred and eighty thousand dollars in backup this is insanity

yeah yeah i i agree i would like to pay the principal down and okay so how much do you owe on your home

uh so we owe 329 and our interest rates 2.875.

okay so here's what i would do if i woke up in your shoes okay

now

I currently own about $650 million in real estate.

That's my point of perspective.

And I started from being broke.

Okay.

After having lost everything.

If I woke up in your shoes, I would put $250,000 down on that house and have a $30,000 emergency fund by the end of the day

because

I know that the data tells me, not only in my own life, but the 10,167 millionaires that we studied, that the millionaires that became millionaires starting from nothing, which is 89% of them, that's 9 out of 10, in America, became millionaires starting from nothing.

Here's what they did.

They paid off their house early

and used the increased cash flow to build wealth.

And they

systematically and steadily invested year after year after year after year in their 401ks and their Roth IRAs and good mutual funds.

So when we run into a millionaire that's 47

and they've got 1.7 million in net worth, it's typically $700,000, $800,000 paid for house, $700,000, $800,000 in their 401k.

And that's not your broke relatives with an opinion.

Those are millionaires.

Yeah.

So we're only doing 5% around 401k because my wife's a stay-at-home mom and I only make, well, like $85,000 a year.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I made a mistake.

I thought you said you were doing baby steps 4, 5, and 6, and you're not.

So you're going to have to do that before we have a discussion.

And if you want to beef up your emergency fund to $40,000 or $50,000 even just to be crazy, that's okay.

But $280,000 is moronic.

That's just ridiculous.

Okay.

And you guys need to get your budget tightened up.

If you have zero debt, which I'm now questioning if you do or not, except your home,

and you're putting 15% of your income away for retirement, you ought to have room in your budget, regardless of the daycare issue.

So, something else is wrong.

So, dude, you're going to have to dial in and do the stuff we're talking about in order for us to say you're doing the stuff you're talking about.

And you're not.

So,

we got to figure that part out.

But the reason is, you guys have been piling up cash over on the left.

So, that tells me you're making money and you're good savers.

You're just crummy at selecting where

because you're taking advice from broke relatives.

So,

okay.

Guys, if broke people are making fun of your financial plan, it's like fat people making fun of your diet, okay?

Come on, you've got to think through this.

It's just silliness.

If you walk in and you hire a personal trainer and they're 450 pounds, you made a mistake, okay?

It's a problem.

And so you've got to go, you know, it's like these people that say, I'm a life coach and they've never had a life.

So that's a problem.

Okay.

So, you know, it's,

you should actually have some background, some experience, some track record, some what we call social proof to move forward.

Yeah, something's off.

I'd love to see their budget because for them to be able to stack away that much cash and still say he's $500 in the red every month, just a couple of things are off.

And I think it's got to be some fundamentals.

I don't think it's crazy living.

No, obviously not crazy living because they couldn't save that kind of money.

Yeah.

But something's going, they're probably chunking money in there instead of doing their baby step four properly, which is 15% of your household income, not counting the match, going into retirement.

That's baby step four.

Which, by the way, if you start that at 33 years old and you have an average household income, when you get to 67, you're going to have on average somewhere around $9 million just in that one account.

If you just save 15% of your income for 25 or 30 years, if that's all you do, okay?

And that's if you never get a a raise, which if you don't get a raise for 30 years, you're like a loser.

Okay.

So, I mean, seriously, this is

you can, you can, this is a wealth-building process that bar none, but you've got to actually do it.

It's not a theory.

All right.

AJ's in bowling green.

AJ, what's up?

Hey, how's it going today?

Great.

How can we help?

Okay, so I'm 70.

I just retired.

I have two adult children, and I'm trying to figure out.

I have, up to this point, I have not got a will.

And after going to about 10 funerals in the last six months, I figure it's about time to

actually do something.

But I can't figure out if I need a will or a trust.

A will.

I have one guy tell me I didn't.

A will?

Yeah, you need a will.

Kentucky doesn't have an inheritance tax, dude.

Okay.

You got zero inheritance tax.

There's nothing to dodge there.

There's no probate tax.

So are you going to leave the money to your kids, right?

I am.

Yeah, you don't need a trust.

You need a will.

And so you can do a really simple, quick, easy will at mama bearlegalforms.com, and you can have it done before you lay your head on the pillow tonight, which, AJ, you've got to get this done.

I know.

I know.

Those funerals are God's way of winking at you.

You know, I'm the same way.

I'm 64.

I go to a lot of funerals.

Yeah.

So it's like, yeah.

So, yeah, you got to get your stuff done, man.

Because if you don't, it's all going to be screwed up.

Now, what's your net worth?

How much is your net worth?

Okay, it's between three, here's my breakdown, and it's real simple.

I got a rental house that's paid off that's worth about $220, a condo I live in.

I've always lived below my means.

It's $120,000.

I got $50,000 in savings and $30,000 in paid off cars and no debt other than a small payment on this condo.

Well, you're in good shape.

You're going to be fine.

You're going to be able to eat.

That's a good thing.

But you need to make your little list called a will, your last will and testament, dude.

If I were you, I'd jump on Mama Bear Legal Forms with your estate size.

It's not a problem to use that.

It's going to lead you right through it.

You'll be done in a couple of hours, and you never have to think about it again.

Switching banks can be a hassle, and I totally get that.

But when Wince and I opened up our Fairwinds account, we were shocked by how quick and easy it was.

It just took a few minutes online.

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If you're tired of living paycheck to paycheck, feeling like you can't get ahead, join one of our free every dollar trainings.

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D is in British Columbia.

Hi, D.

How are you?

Hey, guys.

I'm hoping you can help me with a business-related problem or challenge.

I'm just about to start

life transition,

and I want to know what I should prioritize and how I should go about starting my business when it comes time.

What kind of business are we talking about?

So I'm a journeyman carpenter.

I've been working in timber framing, production, and installation, as well as mass timber for the last three and a half, four years.

And I want to start my own timber frame installation and mass timber installation company.

How expensive is that to get off the ground?

So, the way I see it, it scales almost all the way down and almost all the way up.

I have a lot of tools myself, and because I would be doing the installation side and not the production side, I can imagine getting started for less than $5,000 doing smaller residential projects and sort of scaling up from there.

And what are you making now in your current job?

In my current job, my base is $38 an hour, which is roughly $90,000 or sorry, roughly $80,000

regular time, but I do work overtime.

So I'm guessing it's roughly around $100,000.

And my wife also makes about $38,000.

So we're grossing somewhere around $120,000 to $130,000 a year.

Okay, do you have any debt?

No debt.

We're in baby step 3B, so we are trying to, well, we haven't yet started saving up for a down payment, but we're done, the emergency fund.

We have about seventeen thousand dollars for that.

And yeah, and the transition is that we have been living apart for the last few years, and so we're moving in together as well.

So

I want to prioritize having time in that relationship.

It's been really hard to consistently budget and do all these things together.

We've been having weekly meetings, but obviously when you only talk

about these things once a week, it can get challenging.

So I do want to prioritize

really coming together and being cohesive and not putting too much on my plate all at once.

Just being in the same town will give you time to do that.

You don't have to not work three days a week to do that.

No, not at all.

But you're talking about you want to prioritize that, not launching the new business, correct?

Well, I feel like I just have

a lot of goals.

Like we want to buy a house soon.

I'm also almost done building a cabin where i'm moving from so well you can't do it all so here's the deal bottom line is is the current job is not just sustaining you uh but it's also a different city from his wife yeah oh you're moving to her i miss that detail yes yes yes i'm moving

okay well i don't think it's wise to start a business from scratch while doing all this.

If I could work for somebody else and then start that business on the side, because it's a pretty big risk.

And here's what I can think of: here you are moving to actually be in the same house with your wife.

So now we're learning how to live together.

And then this added pressure of supporting yourself with this fledgling new business.

If it were me, I would attempt to take the current skill and trade that I have and I would move to a new location and get something making same or more if I could, and then slowly start the business on the side.

Dave, what's the cabin going to sell for?

That's a hard question, but I wasn't planning to sell it.

You're not living there.

You're moving to another city.

Yeah, so the way it is right now,

the land that it's on, there's already property management going on there.

And so I was planning to have

the people who are already managing the other properties do Airbnb and keeping it as a vacation home.

And I've been cash flowing this for.

You have never met an idea you didn't like.

You are so freaking ADD, man, you're going to fail in business.

Okay?

You've got to decide.

Ken's right.

You're going to have to decide to do one thing.

It's your only possible way to be in business.

Airbnb in a cabin that you built with your own hands on the other side of British Columbia while you move to the other side and you try to start a business from the ground up and you're trying to be newly married and we're trying to save up and buy a house.

Oh, my God.

Let me tell you how many of these things are not going to work.

All of them are not going to work because you're not going to be good at any of them.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

No focus whatsoever.

The people that win focus.

So decide which one comes first and until the next thing.

So if I'm you, okay,

it's going to be hard to talk you into this because you're, what, 24?

How old are you?

I'm 32, Dave.

32.

Okay.

It's going to be hard to talk you into this.

But if I woke up in your shoes, your wife is your number one priority.

You did say that, and I agree with that.

By the way, that also will lead you to success.

Hello.

Because marriage is grand, divorce is 50 grand.

So there you go.

So

if I'm you, I'm selling the B.

I'm not going to run an Airbnb halfway across the moon.

No way.

That's a nightmare looking for a place to happen.

I'm going to sell the crap out of that and go.

I'm going to put that money in my pocket, and I'm going to go home and spend some time with my wife.

We are not going to talk about buying a house for two years.

We're going to rent something cheap and we're going to launch this business and we're going to be married.

Now, that's under one, that's if this other question comes through and you tell me this, D.

The area that you're moving to,

what's the economy like?

Is it booming, dead,

or middle?

I don't have a firm idea, but I think that it's probably on the upper side of, it's not probably not booming, booming.

What's the city?

It's Edmonton, Alberta.

Okay, when you drive through Edmonton, Alberta, how many cranes are in the air?

Quite a few.

There's lots of construction going on.

Okay, that's what I'm looking for.

All right, there's stuff moving there.

It's not dead.

It's a good city.

It is a good city, by the way.

I agree.

It's a good city.

So I think you can go there and you can make...

$50,000 to $100,000 your first year if you bust your hump and you don't worry about an Airbnb across the thing and you don't worry about buying a house.

You and your wife lock arms and get up and go swing the freaking hammer every morning in a town that's doing construction left and right.

And you can go make your money back.

I think you can get started for little or nothing.

But if you try to do six things at once, you're going to do none of them.

So you would start, you would prioritize the business even over

a home.

Yes.

Over the cabin, but you have to hit the house.

Yeah, because you have to have an income when you move.

And I think you can make as much or more on your own because I think you're that guy.

I really think you've got the energy level, the entrepreneurship to go do it.

And part of being an entrepreneur is being a wee bit ADD, okay?

I mean, I've struggled with watching squirrels my whole life, right?

Squirrel.

And so, yeah.

So you can do this, but you're going to have to commit to focus.

I'm going to send you a book I wrote, a little 37-page book called The Momentum Theorem.

Focused intensity over time multiplied by God equals unstoppable momentum.

The opposite of that is no momentum, which is no good life.

And it comes from focused intensity

over time multiplied by the blessings of God equals unstoppable momentum.

Hang on, I'm going to send you a copy of that.

You need to read it.

Because I recognize you.

I've seen you in the mirror.

Oh, yeah.

The 33-year-old version of Dave scares the pants off of me.

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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 actual amazing relationships.

Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of the show Front Row Seat on the Ramsey Networks.

Be sure and check it out.

Check out this week's version.

It dropped, I guess, last

few days back

with Jimmy John that started the sandwich shop.

Multi-billionaire multi-billionaire guy.

It is a long-form interview, especially if you've ever wanted to be inspired.

The guy is inspiring.

And I've listened to it all the way through.

It's pretty incredible.

Thank you.

He's such a gem, and he is the American dream, and it's alive and well.

Yeah.

I mean, overcoming some crap, right?

And then win.

And

not bashful either.

And you said he's one of the nicest people you've ever met.

Yeah, he really.

Don't you think?

Oh, I think so.

I mean, you've got a personal story there, but just couldn't it be a kinder guy supports so many people that have meant something to him.

And, you know, you hear nothing but negative stuff about billionaires.

Give that conversation a listen.

It might change your mind about billionaires.

Yeah.

I have met, I think,

somewhere north of 75 billionaires now and spent substantial time, not just a passing conversation.

And

truthfully, only one of them was an absolute scumball.

I mean, you want to go take a shower after you got done, right?

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Just giving.

And, you know, doesn't ever come to your home for dinner without, you know, some kind of something, right?

And,

you know, they came to our house for dinner.

He said, the world's best box of chocolates I think I've ever eaten in my life.

They're incredible.

Two weeks later, they come, and Sharon's like, I like this guy.

And he showed up for the interview, just, I mean, looked like he just walked off the boat, you know, nice t-shirts and shorts.

He did.

Couldn't be more unassuming.

He loves to fish.

He probably never know.

Probably just landed.

That's exactly right.

Good stuff.

Hey, check it out, guys.

You'll enjoy it.

It's

worth the listen.

Cole is with us in Tampa, florida hey cole welcome to the ramsey show

good afternoon gentlemen how are y'all doing better than we deserve how can we help

yeah so um i just had a question um so my girlfriend and i are planning on or i'm planning on proposing in october yay

within the next couple months yep so i'm very very excited for that and uh we're actually gonna we're planning on getting married in january so it's gonna be a pretty quick turnaround

um

but so her parents are actually gonna be gifting us

$50,000 for the wedding and then you know to cover those expenses and then the honeymoon and then anything else after that we can save.

Cool.

Well you know a lot about this considering you hadn't even proposed.

No, very confident.

I know I know.

Well we we've talked it we've talked about a lot.

So we're we got it.

We got it all down tap.

Okay.

But yeah, so we're we're planning on we want to keep the wedding, you know, we don't want to go crazy, maybe like between 10 and 15.

And honestly, weddings are super expensive right now.

We

kind of subscribed with some sticker shock recently.

But yeah, so we want to be about between 10 and 15 for the wedding, and then probably, I would say, up to 10 for the honeymoon.

So that remaining 25 to 30, we're kind of,

you know, we're just kind of wondering what we should be doing with that and where that should be at.

Okay.

Do you guys, either one of you, have debt?

Yes.

So I have about $25,000 excluding my mortgage.

Okay.

What about her?

And

she has no debt.

Okay.

That doesn't surprise me.

Okay.

And your $25,000 is on what?

So it's split up between my car and then two personal loans.

And then I owe my parents some money because my AC went out.

And what do you make?

So my base salary is $45,000, but I make

this year I'm on track to make $75,000.

Okay.

All right.

And you're saving for a ring?

Yes, sir.

Yep.

That's why we're trying to get to October.

Okay.

And,

all right.

So if you really

turn on the heat and light up the coals or whatever we want to call it and go crazy, and you don't do nothing except ring in debt, ring in debt, ring in debt until the wedding, how much of this can you clear?

So we did,

I mean, so, okay, so we talked about this the other night, and I have a goal of clearing out 6,000 of it before December.

And I feel like that's kind of conservative.

I think I could

horrible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, I think if I went on beans and rice and rice and beans, I could definitely clear all of them.

I want you to clear all of it before you get married.

Okay.

So that means no beans, just rice.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think you got to get on it.

I think you're going to have to get your every dollar budget out and really crank it down to nothing.

And then I want you working like a maniac so you bring little to no debt into this marriage.

How much do you owe your parents?

Like $3,500.

Okay.

Yeah, you definitely got to clear that.

If you use the wedding money from her family to pay your parents, that's weird.

Yeah.

I felt the same thing.

That was gross.

Yeah, that's gross.

I can't do that.

What's your car situation?

What's it worth versus what you owe?

Yeah, so my car, I would say it's worth, I looked at the Kelly Blue Book not too long ago.

It's about between $10,000 and $12,000, and I owe like

just over $6,000 on it.

Yeah, if you're making $75,000, you clear your parents, you clear the car.

And what was the other one?

So it's a $3,000 or $3,100 personal loan, and then the other one is like a $12,000 personal loan.

Okay.

All right.

So if the $12,000 personal loan is the largest one, it sounds like, so it's at the bottom of your debt snowball.

You're in attack.

Everything's gone, but that, and most of it should be gone.

Okay.

You got six months, ready, set, go.

Crank it, baby.

Get it.

$75,000.

I need $25,000 to be done in a year.

And I need...

So I need $1,400,015,016,000, $18,000 or whatever to be done.

Yeah, you can't quite make it, but you might get so close.

Then you're not using much of this money, this leftover money, to pay off your debt, which is what I'm trying to avoid.

Yes, sir.

I also left out buying a ring, so that's also going to be even harder.

But yeah, but if you get everything done but that $12,000 loan,

I'm probably...

You got stuff in that house you can sell?

Not much.

It's a bachelor pattern.

Me and my brother up here.

Sell your beanbag.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So, yeah.

all right.

So, number one, you're going to work on the debt as hard as you can.

How expensive a ring are we talking about?

So, she's actually going to be listening to this.

Oh, well, don't say, don't say then.

That's good.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Okay, I didn't think of that.

Yeah.

All right.

So, I want you to budget the ring and the debt and the wedding and be very, very careful.

And then, when you guys clear that, clear and come home from the honeymoon, then you can decide what you're going to do with this money.

If you're going to pay off the rest of your debt, which is probably what you're going to do, but not parents.

You need to clear the parents before you get there.

That's icky.

Also, on the wedding, be sure and put a number down, do a full budget like it's a project.

The dress is going to be this much, the videographer is going to be this much, the catering is going to be this much, every dollar, and make sure that total fits.

And then you have to manage the people into that,

otherwise, you'll bust that wedding budget wide open.

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Jesse's in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Hi, Jesse.

How are you?

Oh, you know.

I've been better.

Okay.

What's up?

I just recently, so on the first of this month, I received a call from my ex-husband's neighbor, and the cops were there to do a welfare check.

Um, I gave him access to the house, and they found him passed away.

Oh, wow.

Um,

yeah.

Well, I mean, he had diabetes and didn't take care of it very well.

Um, how old was he?

So, uh, he would have been 50 next month.

How long have y'all been divorced?

Um,

since March.

Oh, just the other day.

Okay.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so that's how you had access to the house?

I mean,

yeah, I mean, we remained friends.

We were unequally yoked.

I'm a Christian and he was an atheist.

And the further my faith grew, the further

the friction in our home grew.

And we just both decided that we'd rather

be able to remain friends than get to the point where we hated each other.

So, I mean, you you know, I talk to him like every couple weeks and that kind of thing.

Well, where does this leave you now?

Well,

he didn't listen very well.

And when we got divorced,

I recommended that he name a new beneficiary for his life insurance and IRA and all that stuff.

He did not.

I also told him to create a will, and he did not.

So I'm still listed as the beneficiary.

The house that he had, um,

that's going to go through probate.

He only has one blood heir, and that would be his brother.

His brother lives in the Philippines.

So he's giving me power of attorney to like kind of handle things stateside for him.

Um, so I'm going to be the estate admin for the probate situation.

So sell the house and the proceeds from the house will go to his brother.

And you're the beneficiary on his life insurance in his 401k.

And his IRA.

IRA.

Okay.

So between the life insurance, the IRA, and the estate administrative fees that I guess the estate's required to pay the estate administrator in Virginia,

I'm looking to get $235,100.

My

current husband and I just got married.

My current husband and I, together, we have about $44,000 in debt.

During the divorce settlement, I took that money and I paid off my student loans and I created a

emergency fund, and it's got about $12,000 in it.

So baby steps

one and three are done.

Well, except that that's not the order.

It's one, two, three.

But yeah.

Yeah, well, I didn't really pay much attention to you until I was going through

his stuff.

Like my ex-husband, he used to talk about you guys all the time.

And when we split up, there was $30,000 worth of debt that he took.

And when I went through all of his stuff, he only owed $2,300 in a credit card.

Good.

And that was it.

And

he had $1,000 in the emergency fund.

So like looking at his statements, it screamed Dave Ramsey.

Okay.

So how can I help you today, Han?

So

there is,

after I pay off debt, there's going to be about $191,000

left.

And I just want to make a good,

make good choices with it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that will put you into, you need to finish up your emergency fund, you and your new husband.

It's $12,000 enough.

So we're going to use some of it and have a fully funded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses.

Okay.

And then do you know what I'm going to tell you to do next?

After you do baby step three?

Baby step four.

Do you know what that is?

Is that the one that's paying off the house?

No, that's 15% of your income going into retirement.

So we're going to fill up retirement 15%.

Okay.

You and your new husband, combined finances, combined assets, combined liabilities.

Does the new husband have any debt?

He's got, so the $44,000, that's mine and his.

Oh, we're one, right?

Good.

So,

box-checked.

Box-checked.

Good.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm equally yoked this time, and he is very fruitful.

Yeah, there's a lot of people who talk about that, but don't do it.

Okay, good.

Oh, no.

His actions match his words.

Okay, so

what we're going to do is 15% of your income going into retirement.

If you've got kids for college, that's baby step five and six is pay off the house.

So I'm assuming you guys have a mortgage or you will use this money to buy your first home, one of the two.

And you're just going to walk right up the baby steps, kiddo.

Very strange and almost eerie way to get money, but

it is what it is, and there's nothing immoral or unethical about it, and it's just unusual, you know.

Which is,

yeah.

So,

yeah, but don't commingle the money that you got as a beneficiary with the estate.

That has nothing to do with the estate.

That's passing outside the estate and goes directly to you.

The estate itself, you're managing as a favor to his brother, getting a small fee, not a huge one,

to manage the sale of the house, and then the equity will be sent to him after his credit card debt is paid or whatever little bit of debt he had.

But you don't use the money you got to do anything at all.

You're under no moral or legal obligation.

As a matter of fact, it'd be downright foolish for you to use that money for anything in this estate.

Very unusual.

Very weird.

Okay.

Hey, thanks for the call.

Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Fina is in Los Angeles.

Hi, Fina.

How are you?

Hi, David Kim.

Thanks so much for taking my call.

Sure.

I have a call.

I have a question about rent to own

homeownership.

So my spouse and I are debt-free, and we are currently saving for a down payment on a home.

So we've come across some of these rent-to-own offers, and while they really sound like a shortcut to homeownership,

they're a little skeptical.

Yeah, they're not.

Okay.

So is it legit or is it just a...

Well, they're legit, but the math doesn't work in your favor.

And the legal position doesn't work in your favor.

You can pay on it for years and years and years and years and years and still not ever end up with a house if the company you're dealing with goes bankrupt.

Okay.

And if we do a direct, you know, kind of like a kind of sale on it.

No, just do a regular purchase.

No, just don't do a rent to own at all.

Rent on has got the math is set up to where

we used to do leases with an option or rent to own all the time when I owned a bunch of real estate in my first life.

And the number of people that actually followed all the way through and closed on the deal was zero.

Okay.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

So just save up.

Take a little bit more time.

Do it the slow way.

Save up and put your good solid down payment, 15-year fixed-rate mortgage, where the payment's no more than a fourth of your take-home pay.

And that will get you there.

Dave, what's the marketing hook?

What's the emotional pull?

And you've got to rent to buy.

Quick and easy.

Okay.

Real estate is difficult and slow.

Right.

Buying your first home, particularly because it's complicated.

It's something you've never done.

It's intimidating.

It's a big number.

Yeah.

It's all of those things.

So it's slow and it's complicated.

So they flip this one out.

And so you just go, oh, you just slide right in here, just start paying.

Just you're a renter now.

Just keep being a renter, and then you get to own.

But then when you add it up, you've paid for the stinking thing three times before you get into it.

And

the way to think about it is this: okay,

if you need a washer and dryer,

if you're broke, save up and and buy one on Facebook Marketplace that's slightly used from some old lady in the rich end of town who just wanted to upgrade and bought the brand new one.

And this one's four years old or three years old.

And you can buy that for, you know, a washer and dryer is $2,500.

You know, a front load would be $2,500 a piece, that kind of thing, right?

Or, and you can buy that for five, $600.

Okay.

Or you can go to the wrong end of town where people get ripped off and do literally rent to own.

It says it on the front on the washer and dryer.

And when you add up how long you've rented that before you own it, you will have paid $8,000

for a $4,000 or $5,000 set.

And

you will have paid...

$8,000 and you could have bought it, fused, for $500

and owned it.

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You just avoid that because basically they're making a bank on you.

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John is in Nashville.

Hey, John, how are you?

I'm doing good.

How are you guys doing?

Better than we deserve.

How can we help?

Yeah, so I'll try to make it quick.

So currently, I have 120K in debt with my wife.

30 of it is a HELOC, and 90 is credit card debt.

And my take-home is $3,600 a month, but the minimum payments on the carts are $2,600.

So basically, I'm kind of struggling on where to go next and if I should file bankruptcy or

if I should try to extend my HELOC to cover the debt.

What is your home worth?

I believe Redfin pulled it out at $350 and I owe $193 on it.

Including the HELOC?

With the HELOC, it would be $220.

Gotcha.

Okay.

All right.

How did you do that on $3,600?

What's your wife make?

She's a stay-at-home mom now, but she used to be a teacher.

Did you used to make a lot more money?

No.

We kind of just used credit cards and paid them off, and then

how did you get

a mortgage this size on $3,600 income?

Oh, your wife was working.

You had to double the income when you did the deal.

Yeah, and it was in 2019.

What are you doing for a living?

I'm a financial analyst, which is kind of ironic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, they don't teach you this stuff.

They teach you academic teachers you stuff about the corporate world, and so it's a different skill set.

It is ironic, but it is, yeah.

In your defense, that's the case.

So how old are you?

I'm 30.

And how many kids have y'all got?

One now, and then one on the way.

Okay.

Okay, there's two types of bankruptcy that apply to this situation: a chapter 13, which is a payment plan.

And in order to enter a chapter 13,

you will have to pay payments to everyone, pennies on the dollar,

but in your case, it will be more than that.

And

78% of the chapter 13s don't make it.

They fail.

So it's a five-year plan, and you pay payments on the credit cards for five years.

The HELOC would be paid 100%.

The mortgage would be paid 100%, or you don't get to keep the house.

And I'm not sure you have the money to do that, do you?

Right now, I'm not behind on anything.

If you didn't have any credit card debt, do you have the money to pay those house payments?

You really don't, do you?

No.

Yeah.

So why don't we just sell the house and pay off the credit cards?

We were thinking about it.

The issue is we do have it at 2%.

Yeah, but you don't have a choice.

You can't keep the house.

You're going to lose the house in bankruptcy.

The other type of bankruptcy is a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

And in Tennessee, you have a $7,500 homestead exemption, which means that you get to keep $7,500 of your equity.

So the Chapter 7 trustee is going to make you sell the house to pay the credit cards.

In Chapter 7, if you want to wipe out the credit cards completely, the only way you get to do that is they're going to take your house and use it to pay the credit cards, which you should have just done that and not filed bankruptcy.

Chapter 13 is payments,

and you can't pay the payments.

You can't afford to stay there.

So now that your wife is a full-time mom,

you can no longer afford this house.

Thus the problem.

That's how you got the credit card debt, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

So unless you see a situation reasonably where your income is going to double in the next five to seven months,

you're selling the house, dude.

You don't really have a choice.

You file bankruptcy, they're going to take it.

You go into chapter 13, the 13 is going to fail because you can't pay the payments and you can't use any credit cards after that because they'll throw you out of the bankruptcy and

it'd be a little bit hard to get one not really probably could get one while you're under 13 but anyway because they're that stupid but anyway the

man I don't see a way out so the two types of bankruptcy don't help you one puts you in payments that you can't afford already

because they have to be paid 100% on secured loans okay

You don't get away from that on chapter 13.

Chapter 7, the equity you're allowed to keep is only $7,500.

You have way more equity than that, So the trustee is going to force the sale of the asset to pay your bills.

And then the other way is you just sell the asset and pay your bills.

I guess the fourth option is you know something I don't know in this conversation, which is your income's getting rated double.

Is that the case?

No, I wish.

What are you doing for a living?

Working for just an adaptive company in Nashville.

Okay.

Oh, you told me that.

Financial income.

What's your house worth?

He's worth $350 and he owes $193.

You pay off the credit cards.

No, I get it.

But the reason I ask that is because your response to Dave was when he said, why not pay off the house?

You said, well, I'm at 2%, which means you think you're going to be owning a house and you're just not going to be a position to buy a house coming out of this.

You've got to set your mind for we're renting for a while as we rebuild.

Yeah, you're 100% debt-free.

You make 3,600.

You've got a couple of kids.

You're 30 years old.

And from there, you decide what your career track is going to look like.

And that leads you back into home ownership again someday, but not immediately.

But let me tell you what else is going to happen is

when you wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and it feels like a car is sitting on your chest right now,

that's going to be gone.

That's going to be gone.

You're going to be able to breathe again.

You're going to be a better daddy, a better husband, better employee, because you can breathe again.

Because, man, I've been where you are, but I had extra zeros on it, and it sucks.

Your life is not good right now.

Your stomach is in your throat.

your chest is tight, your traps are tight, your shoulders are all bunched up around your ears, and it just is no fun.

The stress is manifesting itself in your relationships.

100%, you know, the number one cause of divorce is money fights and money problems.

The stress around it is ridiculous.

You're looking at her going, man, if we hadn't brought you home, we might have been able to keep all this stuff.

But wait a minute, we did want to bring you home because of the kids, and now I got a 2%.

All these things are just swimming.

I'd clear the deck and start my life fresh with a breath of cool mountain air where I could breathe again.

Please, for your sake.

Because here's the thing.

You're going to choose to be proactive in this situation or the math is going to make a choice for you.

You don't have a choice.

Okay.

You're going to lose this house.

Unless you double your income.

Because you simply can't pay it.

And

if you go into bankruptcy, they're going to take it because you've got enough equity to pay the bill.

Because that's what bankruptcy is.

You don't have anything to sell and you can't pay your bills.

You got something to sell.

And so that's the way the law is written that way.

The creditors expect you to pay your bills with what you have, income or assets.

And that's the way the law is written.

So I'm sorry, man.

Sorry you're facing all this.

But yeah, you guys backed into this and then you tried to hold on with credit cards and the credit cards sunk you.

But even if the credit cards weren't there, you still can't afford this house on $3,600 with two kids in Nashville, Tennessee.

Don't work.

Doesn't work.

So something's got to give.

Something's got to give.

So you're going to be renting a while until you get your career in gear and get moving.

And I'm sorry you're facing this.

But I will encourage you.

It's hard to visualize for you right now because there's shame involved and condemnation and everything else.

But I'm telling you, dude, that Volkswagen that's sitting on your chest at 2 a.m., it's going to be gone.

And

you're going to sleep a whole night.

I remember this.

I remember the feeling of the weight of the world hanging around your neck and you can't breathe.

And I remember knowing that it was my fault that I did it.

And it just...

So it pissed me off like double, right?

You know what I'm saying?

Like

this is a huge mess and i did it there's a that's a two-hit that's right that's punched in the face twice and the shame that goes with that and the self-forgiveness and so forth but you were trying to do a good thing you're trying to let her be home with the babies you're trying to work a good job trying to be a homeowner and they the things all got mixed up and it went sideways with ninety thousand dollars worth of credit card debt i'm so sorry Hang on, we're going to put you into Financial Peace University so you can recover from the sale of this house quicker.

And it includes the every dollar advanced version which will guide you through these baby steps of rebuilding for your life and you can do this you're smart you just did some dumb things I'm smart but I did more dumb things than you did

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Might not be in all states.

Today's question comes from Diana in Oklahoma.

For late-in-life marriages, is it better to have a marriage certificate signed but not filed with our state if we want to protect a 401k from being drained to pay for long-term care for the other spouse?

I've had to work hard to make retirement possible for myself, and I'm very concerned that filing the paperwork might jeopardize all of that.

I would prefer to do things legally, but not at the expense of my future.

Well, when it comes to potentially shading illegal financial moves, that freaks me out.

And I actually don't know the answer to that, but I think you do.

Well, there are two kinds of nursing homes.

There's nursing homes that you pay for, that are private, and there's nursing homes that accept welfare, which is Medicaid.

And so what you're saying is you want to plan to be on welfare.

Well, if you've ever done anything on welfare, you will find that the quality of life is not usually that good.

It's not like prosperity or something like that, right?

So it's the DMV of nursing homes, right?

So,

you know,

I'd suggest before you get all haughty-totty about this, you go visit a Medicaid nursing home and see if you want anybody you love there, if you have the money to do otherwise.

If it's all you can do, it's all you can do.

But it is designed for people who are in poverty.

That's what Medicaid is.

It's welfare.

And so if you're not in poverty and you're trying to pretend to be in poverty to protect your money, that's called fraud.

And the government will take your money anyway.

Now, if you want to put your new spouse in a Medicaid nursing home, instead of a regular nursing home,

instead of using your

there are provisions in the law that allow your personal residence to be protected.

So, the wife in this case stays in the home, husband goes to the nursing home, the nurse, Medicaid picks up everything.

You go on welfare, and you don't have to lose your home to do that.

And most of the situations also have some protections for your retirement funds, your 401k funds.

So, you're probably okay anyway,

but you need a better

decision-making framework than how can I put my spouse in welfare.

How can I put my spouse on welfare?

That's a crummy way of looking at the world, kiddo.

And so Yin, yin, yin, yin, I worked hard all my life and so I'm gonna put everybody on welfare.

That's just dumb.

Okay, that's what I mean.

Let me try to be a little bit more clear and less sophisticated in my lingo.

That's dumb.

Don't don't pl don't let welfare be your best plan.

And I'm gonna figure out some way to shade around and not file with my marriage certificate certificate and all this other bull crap so that I can stick my new spouse into a welfare nursing home.

Dumb.

Okay.

Now, what can you do?

Well, number one, you can continue to build wealth.

Number two, you guys can talk about and shop around looking at

nursing home care.

You can figure out if in-home care is less expensive because sometimes it can be.

You literally can hire someone with an elevated bed,

buy an elevated bed, and hire someone to work in your home 24-7.

Cheaper than some nursing homes.

And so you can self-insure through that issue.

You can look into long-term care insurance, which if you're over 60 and you're worried about these kinds of things because you don't have enough money to pay for them, which is apparently your case.

then you can get long-term care insurance.

Long-term care insurance will cover about three years of nursing home care, and you can buy that and three years covers about 90 something percent of the nursing home stays the the average nursing home stay is about 2.8 years

okay because they die so

you just don't people don't live there for 22 years you know it's not that's not something they do

so typically

you know that that's what we find so if you can buy long-term care insurance you can continue to build wealth you can investigate self-insurance and staying at home.

But you don't commit welfare fraud and you don't use a decision-making paradigm of, you know what, I don't really want to buy a house, so I'm just going to go and get Section 8.

And the government can pay for my housing.

And

I'm going to hide all of my income and I'm going to hide all of my assets so that the government provides me free housing in Section 8.

It's the same thing.

Have you ever been to Section 8 housing?

I've owned some.

They're not horrible, by and large.

Some of them are.

are, but

it's not like prosperity.

It's not like, this is my golden years.

This will be your copper years.

Okay.

I mean, this is not, no, you don't want to live like that.

And besides that, you don't want to commit fraud to get government help.

And you probably shouldn't get married that late in life if this is how you're going to look at your money versus their money.

You could hear in this that's.

You're going to look at your money versus their life.

Yeah.

It's pretty.

You like your money more than you do them.

I think so.

Yeah.

I don't want to be on that.

It's like, you know,

we went, I mean, we were talking about so-and-so that passed away the other day, and Sharon said, well, they were old.

And that's like her comment.

Okay.

She says this all the time.

She comes from the country, you know, so

animals come and go and people die.

You're old.

You're old, high probability of you.

If you're old,

that's why they die.

They were old.

And so I told my friend, since our whole estate plan is predicated on me dying first, if Sharon starts telling people I'm old, y'all got to watch my back.

That is a good comment.

You got to watch my back.

Because right before you go go to the funeral home, Sharon says you're old.

So there you go.

We need cameras in every room.

That person's old.

That person's old.

So

on the other hand, she has a great life, and she's never going to get old.

So there you go.

That's it.

But kudos to Sharon.

She's very health conscious.

I don't know anybody that's more health conscious than she is.

A wee bit obsessed, yes.

So the deal is you don't get out of paying for the nursing home.

And here's an interesting thing.

It says, I've just kind of been up on my soapbox anyway.

Let's just stay there for a second.

It's interesting to me that this same lady would never in a million years go to a restaurant and figure out a way to eat their food and not pay them.

And yet she's willing to do that with the government.

Yeah.

And then willing to do that with substandard care

for someone she loves.

There's something about the nursing, the nursing home's going to get all our money.

There's something about that vibe that people, I worked all my life and then the nursing home got it all.

No, you bought services.

It's like you don't say, I worked all my life and the guy that put the transmission in my car got it all.

No, you don't say that.

You know, you bought a transmission and a guy that put the transmission in your car.

You know, why do we attack nursing homes?

Because we're mad at them.

They're expensive, I guess, is one thing.

And it's end of life.

Maybe that's another thing.

So it's emotional.

But nursing homes, by and large, are not a bunch of crooks.

They just provide a service and you can choose whether to buy it or not.

It's pretty simple.

You know, you can go over to the restaurant and buy food or not.

You can go to the car dealer, buy a car or not.

You can go to a Ramsey event and pay the ticket or not.

You can go to a concert and pay the ticket or not.

You can choose to do this.

But you never say, you know, oh, they took all my money.

No, you gave it to them.

And in return, they gave you services that they promised.

And so it's a fair trade.

And if you don't want to make the trade, it's a free country.

You don't have to enter in the trade.

But that does not then qualify you for welfare.

Welfare is for poor people.

They're for people in poverty that don't have the money otherwise to care.

And they're going to, you know, otherwise this

85-year-old will be on the street in a cardboard box somewhere.

But our society has chosen to pay for this person who is indigent, who is broke in poverty, and we pay for them.

The government, we taxpayers, pay for that in the welfare program.

But we don't pay for it for people from Oklahoma that have a half million dollars in their 401k and think it's inconvenient.

That's not what we pay for that for.

Nor do we want you to get food stamps, lady.

You know, you ought to go to the grocery store and buy your own dad gum food.

You've got the money.

Food stamps are for people that wouldn't have food otherwise.

That's what it's for.

So this gaming the system thing is really interesting around the whole nursing home.

It activates a vibe in people's brain that other stuff doesn't activate.

It's a service, boys and girls.

You pay for it or you don't.

It's up to you.

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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 actual amazing relationships.

Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of the show Front Row Seat, a brand new hit on the Ramsey networks, is my co-host today.

The phone number here is 888-825-5225.

Joel is in Orange County, California.

Hey, Joel, what's up?

Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Sure.

How can I help?

I am trying.

I fall in the baby steps.

And I'm cutting a lot of expenses, but I am having a really hard time with my wife psychologically.

Just

she is not in a place where she sees the debt as ours because I brought this debt into the marriage and now we have a kid and it's about $47,000 worth of debt.

And

what do you call it?

She's not willing to like even, I hear you all the time saying, live on rice and beans and beans and rice and don't go into restaurants anymore.

And I'm trying to actually implement that, but my wife is putting up a barrier of we just have a really busy, busy lifestyle, and we don't get home sometimes because we serve at church and stuff until like 9.30 at night.

And so she's like, we still have to go out to eat.

And I'm like,

it's not, I don't want to.

And I kind of.

Man, you're a classic guy.

How long have you been married?

Four years.

Yeah, okay.

Because I used to this crap, too.

So here's the problem.

Guys do this more than women.

Sometimes women do it, but mostly guys.

You started talking about what

instead of talking about why.

We got to cut expenses because we got to get out of debt and that's the way we're going to do this and da da da da da.

And there was no, but but you had the why in your head, but you never talked about the why and she has never agreed to the why.

If the why is we want to build wealth so we can do anything we want to do for this child that we just had,

oh, that lady's on board.

But if the why is my husband wants to cut out eating when I'm tired, going out to eat, when I'm tired, because he started listening to some stupid podcast,

that's not a good why.

She didn't buy in that.

And that's what you found out.

So basically, you owe her an apology.

You did not include her in this decision.

Okay.

That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

So, honey, I'm sorry.

I goofed this whole thing up.

We need to do full stop and start again.

Here's what I am learning, and I would like for us to look at how our future is going to be.

I really

believe that we have the ability to become prosperous,

and that we could travel, and that we could do things for this child.

We could change our whole family tree.

One of the barriers to that is this debt.

And so, once I saw that if I got out of debt, if we got out of debt, that we would have the money to do other things And we combine our finances and we combine our lives.

And we have a high probability of building wealth when we do those things.

And the wealth is for generosity to help others.

The wealth is to change our family tree.

A godly man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.

God loves a cheerful giver.

All of these things are biblical.

You said you're spending time at church.

Yes, and that's kind of,

yeah, I'm saying we're spending so much time at church and then we're not making food at home.

Yeah.

Like cut out.

Yeah,

it's kind of gotten the tail wagging the dog.

But either way, my point is that if you look at this through a spiritual lens, God

in his Bible, in his love letter to us, is very clear.

Go change your family tree.

Take care of your own household first.

You're worse than an unbeliever.

The borrower is slave to the lender.

When we get out of debt and we can start building some wealth to be generous to others and to change our family tree, that's biblical.

Yeah.

And that's how I'm looking at this, honey.

And I think that we can do that, but I'm seeing the barrier is this.

And so the way we clear the debt is we temporarily go deep on the sacrifice to clear the debt so that we have a great long-term prognosis.

That's what I'm looking at.

Tell me what's wrong with that other than you just want to go out to eat.

Yes.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

Go back to the why.

Why, why, why, why.

See, you got the why real quick when you were listening to this stuff.

Yeah.

And you translated it to the tactical.

And then you just presented her with the tactical.

Yeah.

And not the strategic.

So

strategy does not, tactics don't work without strategy.

Strategy doesn't work without tactics.

You've got to have both.

Yeah, and I would just add one other thing, and this is for all the dudes out there, and I've learned this the hard way.

You know, when discussing something like this or anything that's major in your marriage and you're trying to get on the same page, it's great to ask questions, not make statements.

And it's the guy, we guys, we try to solve and you make a lot of statements and that's a, it comes across as a very concrete, immovable boom and they can't do anything with it.

But if you can learn to ask questions around the bigger topic that you're discussing and it includes the feedback and you're actually listening, they feel seen and heard.

This is a human thing, not a woman thing.

But you got to do it that way.

Ask good questions to emit answers that now we start to say the same things.

Stop making statements about what we've got to do.

Yeah.

Because I doubt very seriously that your wife is so short-sighted that she would sacrifice her child's future to get to go out to eat.

That's probably not who she is.

But the way you presented this, that's the dichotomy that you gave her.

Well, that's exactly a great point, Dave, because that's actually a trivial response to a trivial statement.

We're going to cut out all these meals.

And she's going, what are you talking about?

That doesn't even make any sense because we're coming home at nine o'clock at night.

I don't want to make a sandwich.

It got so trivial because the way it was presented to her.

Yeah, it's tactical before strategy.

That's exactly right.

I love how you put that.

Yeah, it's just, you got to have both.

You got to have a why.

And, you know, Simon Sinek's book, Start With Why.

Yeah, great.

Start with why.

If you've got a big enough why, sometimes we have people, Joel, they come in to do their debt-free scream, and their little kids, the little four-year-old kid will be wearing a t-shirt that says, I'm the why.

I'm why my parents did this.

In other words,

they worked an extra job.

They sacrificed.

They sold their car.

He sold his gun collection.

He did whatever.

I'm the why because they wanted stuff for me more than they wanted stuff today.

They wanted me to have a good life.

So changing my family tree is a huge why.

And so you got to, and if you give your name a why and both of you can get around that why,

then the what starts to become obvious because the what is the short-term short-term pain to get the long-term gain.

It's the live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else.

And if you want to go back to a biblical paradigm, it's no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness.

Hebrews.

Okay.

So,

you know,

there's 100% of the people that win big at something pay a price.

And becoming financially successful and successful in your marriage in America today is so freaking unusual

that it's called winning big.

I'm talking about successful.

Talking about, yes, you become millionaires.

Yes, you

stay married for 53 years and like each other while you become millionaires, while you work together towards common goals.

And

through thick and thin, as they say, for richer, for poorer.

Unto thee, all my worldly goods I pledge, the old Book of Common Prayer,

wedding vows said.

So all of that starts to come together then when you pan back far enough that you get the why.

This is the Ramsey Show.

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Amanda is in Tampa.

Hi, Amanda.

Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Trying.

Hi, what's up?

I was wondering, how do I fix financial infidelity when it was the only thing my husband asked me not to do when we first got together?

We've been together about 16 years.

We have two kids together.

I never lied to him about money.

And we had taken all of our money and we opened a restaurant together.

And very quickly, it ended up not working out.

And I told him everything was fine when it wasn't.

And then we ended up losing our apartment.

And that's when I kind of, you know, was forced to come clean about it.

I was just, you know, very scared for

the repercussions of it.

And now

he thinks it's best that we separate because he doesn't think I'm trustworthy anymore.

I'm sorry.

So the restaurant,

you said very quickly went sideways, but you lost an apartment.

That doesn't happen quickly.

Yeah, so we opened in October and then,

you know, we had a little bit of money coming in and looked like it was doing good, but we really we'd never run a restaurant before.

We had no idea what we were doing.

So I was able to like pay the rent at our apartment and then I stopped paying credit cards so I could pay the rent.

And

does he not involved in the budgeting at all?

No, I'm always taking care of it.

Oh, so he handed it all to you and then doesn't like what you did?

Well, he asked he asked for the the bank information and i didn't give it to him because i was i was scared that you know we failed

you opened a restaurant in october

and um

so what does he make

um well we both had to start going back to work we ended up no i mean so he quit work and worked at the restaurant when you opened it

uh yeah we had both quit our jobs and were doing this full-time.

Lord Jesus.

Okay.

Yeah.

So he literally works there and still is clueless.

Yeah, I think he saw how much we were making, which we were making money, but he wasn't aware of how much we were actually spending to keep it open as well.

And you weren't either because you weren't doing any books.

I can tell.

Yeah, I didn't know Monday.

Like, I've never owned a business.

Like, we've flipped houses, but that's different.

Not really.

Both of them, you have to do a set of books, and you had never seen a set of books.

Right.

You're right.

So, what were, how were you, you were just had money coming in, gross receipts for the week, and then you would pay some vendors and pay some rent, and when the money ran out, you just let it ride.

Yeah, I mean, I we didn't even know if you were making a profit, really.

Correct.

Yeah.

No, I definitely didn't.

I

just,

I don't know.

I grew up like thinking, and I've always thought this: like, as long as I can pay my bills this month, I'm good.

And I think he had a different expectation of how the bill should go, that we should be looking like months in advance.

And I didn't grow up in a household like that or think like that.

Yeah, and I don't really remember like how I got control of the money.

Okay, I'm not sure I understand

where it was I mean I guess the time you lied to him was you knew that things were tight and that bills some bills weren't getting paid and you just lied to him about that is that what you're telling me correct yes and now that was for two months

yeah and it ended up like being we couldn't catch back up so now we're kind of facing bankruptcy which is when we first got together he his ex-wife kind of took everything from him.

And he's like, I don't ever want you to do this for me.

Just promise you'll never like lie to me like this.

And

I don't consider it the same thing, but I guess it is in his eyes.

And I can understand that, you know, I lied to him about money and now we're in a really bad spot.

Okay.

Well,

I've got a different opinion about this.

Yeah, obviously I'm not okay with you lying, lying, but he's freaking an irresponsible child in that he was no more involved in the management of the household than he was, and stood over the side and then he's throwing grenades back because he doesn't like the way you did it.

Listen, dude, step up and actually sit down with your wife and figure out how to run a freaking restaurant before both of you quit your jobs.

He's as irresponsible as you are.

This ain't no angel sitting over on the side that somehow got taken to the cleaners by some girl buying coach purses.

That isn't what happened here.

This is a guy showing up at a restaurant every day and is so freaking irresponsible, he's not even involved in how the restaurant is being run.

What's he doing?

Cooking?

And that's it?

See, the line cook doesn't get to bitch if the place closes because the line cook isn't running it.

Yeah.

I mean, he did ask me for it like twice or three times.

And I was like, oh my God.

And I would get upset.

I'm like, I can handle it because I was just like very scared to tell him because I didn't want this to happen.

I didn't want him to believe me because I didn't know what I was doing.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, you didn't.

That's for sure.

And you could have fixed the whole thing just by saying the truth and going, I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm scared.

We can't pay our bills.

Help me.

And that would have solved the whole thing.

So I do agree with that.

So your question to me was, how do you rebuild trust?

How do you get through this?

I don't know if you do,

but if you do, it's with a marriage counselor.

You guys desperately need to sit down with one.

And part of the equation is you are doing a beautiful job of owning your screw-ups here,

but he hadn't owned any of his, and I'm pretty frustrated with him.

He's awfully self-righteous for an uninvolved, irresponsible guy standing around or watching a restaurant fall down around his ears, and he's too stupid to realize it's happening.

I'm serious.

That's just, that's not okay.

So he needs to own his part of that too.

And he also needs to own that a a lot of this reaction is because his ex-wife burned him.

So that's, I'm not giving him a pass.

No.

But I am saying.

I'm not giving you a pass online either.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah.

But he's got to own the fact that this probably feels way worse than it actually is.

No, it's bad.

They're about to file bankruptcy.

They lost all the businesses.

I know.

But as far as her

body, y'all both have been just, this whole thing was

crazy.

The restaurant is the number one category of businesses that fail.

Almost all of them fail.

That's how bad it is.

Okay.

You guys did that, and you both quit your job.

And neither one of you know how to do a set of books or run a business or a restaurant.

What were you guys thinking?

I don't know.

We've closed it now.

I'm actually like in the process of moving it.

We both had to get jobs again.

And then we were working on the weekends here, but once we were, like, I was like, we're.

No, this was doomed.

This was doomed from the start.

Yeah.

You didn't have a chance because you guys didn't have a skill set to run it.

Right.

No, I agree.

And so that

and you don't both quit your jobs.

See, he was in on that decision.

And this set you guys up for failure.

So I'm so sorry, honey.

Now, the way you rebuild trust is that you guys get in a good marriage counselor together.

You work through.

You both own your parts.

You put in place systems and processes going forward where he's involved in everything in the money.

You're involved in everything in the money.

We make all the decisions together in the money, and there's no surprises and no way that he has to trust you because all he has to do is trust himself because you're both involved top to bottom.

That's how Sharon became trusting of me after I lost everything doing stupid stuff.

I didn't lie to her about it, but she had to trust my competence again, not my integrity.

And it took a while.

Hey, what's up?

Dr.

John Deloney here.

The new dates have dropped for the Money and Marriage getaway over Valentine's Day weekend in 2026.

This is your chance to hit pause on everything in your life and reconnect with your spouse over a long weekend in Nashville, Tennessee.

Me and my friend Rachel Cruz will be digging into topics like sex, money, communication, and more.

This weekend is happening on February 12th through the 14th, and early bird prices start at $749 per couple, but the prices will be going up soon.

Get your tickets today at ramseysolutions.com slash events.

Buying or selling a home is a big deal, especially in a weird market like we're in right now.

The clickbait headlines, all the crap on TikTok, all the stuff out there telling you what you're supposed to do and none of it's real.

Hey, we're going to take the latest trends and make them easy to understand with actual facts.

Facts are your friends.

Facts are good.

Drama, not good, when making a financial decision like a home.

Come on.

Hey.

Hey, we're here to make them easy to understand.

The median home prices stayed steady last month at $441,000.

That's the median home price in America right now.

Average 15-year fixed also stayed steady, just under 6%, 5.95 last month.

There's currently 1,082,520 homes on the market in the United States.

That's a fact.

That's the highest number since 2019, the best inventory we've had.

Yet prices are not going down because demand has stayed steady.

So this demand is higher than supply, which if you know anything about basic seventh grade economics, that means the prices are going to go up, not down.

And these median home prices have gone up a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit month over month every month for the last four months.

To learn more about the housing market trends and get some free tools, go to ramseysolutions.com slash market.

Click the link in the show notes if you're listening on a podcast or on YouTube.

Casey's in Syracuse.

Hi, Casey.

Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Sure.

What's up?

So I currently live, I currently own my own home, and I live in an area that's, I would say, just progressively getting worse.

So I'm looking to move, and I'm just not sure the best way to go about my financial situation.

I don't,

I'm pretty much living paycheck to paycheck.

Me and my significant other, we make good money, but we're not very good at saving money.

And so I was thinking about taking as much money out of my 401k as I could to put as a down payment on a new home, but I still own the home that I live in.

So I wasn't sure if I would be better off trying to take out either using the money in my 401k to fix up my current home to then sell the home and use the money that I have from that sold home as a down payment.

Today as it is

I would say probably in the neighborhood of like $100,000 to $120,000.

What's wrong with it?

It's just old.

It was built in the 1930s.

Nothing particularly wrong with it.

The roof is leaking in a spot, so I would have to fix the roof.

The porch is pulling away from the house a little bit, so I would just redo the whole porch.

And

the upper half of the house is sided with like a cedar shake, which is

just really worn and corroding.

So I would probably redo the house.

What do you owe on the house?

$35,000.

Okay.

Just sell it as is.

Sell it as is.

Okay.

A $100,000 house with a porch repair, a little bit of, that's old, a little bit of stain on the side of the cedar shake, and a small roof leak is not a big deal.

Yeah, so I reached out to a couple contractors, and they're coming in with like...

You don't need a contractor.

You don't have any money.

Yeah, it would be a loan I'd have to take out to get you.

If you go do that, you're not going to get your money back because the house value is not going to increase with the things you're talking about doing.

Okay.

So whatever money you put into it, you're throwing down the toilet.

Okay.

Sell it as is.

Okay.

Get a good real estate agent.

Go to ramseysolutions.com.

Get one of the Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agents.

Come over and talk to you.

And let's figure out what the thing will bring.

Put it on the market as is.

Okay.

As is where it is.

I'm not doing repairs.

That's the pricing.

And if that means you price it at $95,000 instead of $105, whoopty-doopty, sell it.

You're not keeping this thing anyway.

It's a piece of crap.

You're moving.

Right.

Okay.

And when you move, you're going to put $40,000 or so in your pocket, right?

Yeah, I do have some other debt.

How much other debt do you have?

I have about $3,500 in a car loan and about $9,000 in a personal loan.

Okay.

And clear that.

And so then you're going to put more like, you know, $25,000 in your pocket.

And what do you make?

I make $95,000 a year.

Way too much to be this broke.

I know.

I have my significant other, when we live in the same household, he makes $110,000 a year.

So, yeah, we make plenty of money, and it is unfortunate we're as broke as we are.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, yeah, sell the house and go rent something and pay off your debts and start fresh and let's get control of your money.

And if you guys are going to act like you're married, try being married.

Okay.

If you're not going to be married, then don't be

trying to figure out how we're going to not be married and be prosperous because all the data points that we have, all the research is showing that doesn't work.

The people who build wealth are married people.

Yeah, that's kind of another thing on my list.

I'd like to get done is get married, but financially, we don't.

You don't need any financially.

You go down and get married.

That's right.

Courthouse is open every day.

Except for

call the preacher, sit down in his office.

Okay.

And by the way,

and I want to close the loop on the very first option you threw at us.

You never use your 401k like a bank.

You're going to get taxed big time on that.

It's never an option.

Don't do that to yourself.

You don't need it, first of all.

But secondly, it's a bad financial decision.

This house sucks.

Get rid of the house.

Get yourself.

Your organization sucks.

Get rid of that.

Let's get organized.

organized, get on every dollar budget, get started, and then make a decision if we're going to be married or if we're going to play like it.

Because if you're going to play like it, the data says you're not going to win financially or relationally.

Okay.

I mean, these are actual statistics, okay, kid?

I'm not just making this stuff up.

That's what's happening out there.

I'll give you an example.

When we studied 10,167 millionaires, 82% of them said my spouse and I were on board with our long-term goals working together to hit them not trying to figure out who was going to buy the mustard

is the mustard your job this week or do I buy mustard who pays the light bill like you're you know with your roommate that stuff doesn't work financially your careers don't accelerate your health does not accelerate all of these things go with all this research is called the marriage advantage research you can look it up it's not just google marriage advantage it'll start showing up.

Men who are married, folks,

different subject from her.

Men who are married live on average seven to nine years longer than unmarried men, which would include men shacking up.

Interesting.

Women live an average of four to five years longer when they're married.

I don't know why men get much more advantage.

As Jeloni says, he thinks women keep them from doing stupid stuff.

That's 100% what I was going to say.

They keep us from just, you know,

doing guy stuff.

Yeah, I don't know.

Hang gliding.

No, you know, whatever it is.

I don't know whatever it is.

Whatever it is.

But yeah,

you live longer.

And there's a lot of possible hypothetical

physiological and spiritual reasons that you could lay out for that.

But money also works.

The net worth of married couples at 40 years old versus shacked up couples is like six times higher.

And it's just because, you know,

we're not trying to, you know, you got to decide, am I going to paint or am I going to get off the ladder?

You know, you got one foot in the boat, one on the dock, boat's always leaving.

And we're just not sure when.

When are we going to get wet?

When's our butt going to be in the lake?

You know, and you're just always looking over your shoulder, always looking over your shoulder.

That can happen in marriage, too.

But

there's a process legally and financially by which you get to keep half the stuff called divorce.

And so the protections are there, but you folks say, I'm going to pay to renovate my boyfriend's house.

Oh, you're about to lose your money.

I'm going to co-sign so she can get a car because her parents want.

You're an idiot.

No,

you buy only,

the only ladies you buy cars for are your wife.

That's it.

The only guys you renovate their house is called a husband.

Jeez.

You're going to lose all your money doing this stuff, people.

It's just, it's crazy.

And people just act like this stuff doesn't matter.

But you just, all you got to do is just

do the trajectory on it out there.

Fast telescope it out there about, I don't know, 15, 20, 25 years, and you see the disastrous results.

So, end of soapbox.

Our scripture of the day is Psalm 37, 23 and 24.

The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him.

Though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.

Theodore Roosevelt said, The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.

Yeah, that's the truth.

Yeah.

And dogs don't chase parked cars.

So you're never gonna get criticized if you don't do anything you can be rest assured And as soon as you do anything you can be rest assured some moron won't like it.

All right.

Here we go.

Rob is in Lexington, Kentucky.

Hey Rob, how can we help?

Hey, Mr.

Ramsey, thank you for having me today.

Sure.

How can we help?

Well, long story short,

it's been probably about eight years since I've lived by myself.

Ever since then, I've kind of took a little bit of a tailspin into depth a little bit.

Living paycheck to paycheck, just looking for some good advice.

You're the right one and the perfect person.

So, you mean you've been single for eight years?

Well,

undisclosed family situation, I was living with my child's mother.

So

we're just living separately on good terms, just living separately, though.

You weren't on good terms with what?

We're living separately on good terms.

Oh, okay, for eight years.

Oh,

I was living by myself, and now I'm after eight years, now I'm living by myself.

I'm sorry, I should explain that a little bit more.

Oh, so you were with her eight years and the baby, and now you guys are broken up, and you're by yourself.

Well, we're I'm sorry, we're with each other, but w I'm living by myself, though.

How are you with each other by yourself?

I do not understand.

uh that's just that's a whole nother situation on that one no i mean it's not logical you're not making sense dude that's what i'm saying you can either be by yourself or you can be with someone which are you

yes sir that's a good point um i i guess we're just together and living separately

so you're you're you're dating or you uh have a relationship but you don't live in the same house Yes, sir.

Oh, okay.

That makes sense.

I got it.

Okay.

Took me a minute.

I'm sorry.

I just didn't understand what you were saying.

So now you, so you got your own place, and you got a kid over on the other side of town with your girlfriend.

Okay.

And

you're trying.

And what do you make, sir?

I have one full-time job and one part-time job, and together it's about $53,000.

Okay.

How old are you?

39.

Okay, cool.

You said that earlier.

I apologize.

Okay.

What is the full-time job that you're spending time on?

That one's $44,000 a year.

That's

the main job, the main focus.

What is it?

What do you do?

What do you do for a living?

Four cliff driving.

Something special.

And what's the part-time job?

I work in retail, and

they're not really offering much money, though.

That's my downfall right there.

Yeah, so retail, you're just standing on a floor of shops trying to sell something?

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

Well, just I want want to bring this up really quick.

You know, you have a skill in driving that forklift, and my guess is there's better opportunity operating heavy machinery like that, much better pay per hour than doing a retail job.

So I admire the fact that you're trying to make extra money, but you don't have as many hours, and you need to get as much work as you possibly can to start to bring in more income.

And we're going to help you use that income to dig out of this mess.

There's a probably bigger mess in that too there's loans and cards too oh I figured I figured there was a lot of debt break that down yeah

sir I have those all added up and it's it's not crazy yet but it's getting crazy what's the amount

the loans is about

5500 and the cards is about 42

hundred

yes sir so nine thousand bucks ten thousand bucks gets you out of debt

yes sir okay that's good Yep.

That's good news.

All right.

And so if you were to take a lot of overtime at your Fourcliffe job or work for Cliff for someone else

on the hours you were spending at retail, what Ken is saying is you'd make twice as much as you're making at retail.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

Because that is a skill.

And whether it's forclift, skid steer, whatever it is, I mean, you can push the buttons and move that machinery around.

And so

I think that qualifies you right now, and you're willing to work.

Those two things qualify you for a lot of positions in an area that there is a shortage of help,

which is the trades in general.

Okay.

There's a serious shortage of people who are willing to work and actually know how to do the work.

That's pretty impressive.

So that puts you in a better position then.

You start making a little bit more money.

And now we're going to, with your newfound independence,

you know, separate all of your finances very clearly.

The only thing you owe is you need to make sure the baby's got food.

Your job is to do the equivalent of child support over there.

But above that,

you're not paying for her stuff.

You don't live there.

The girlfriend stuff.

Okay?

Okay.

Yeah, you're not, but yeah, just work all-time.

but you're not paying for the girlfriend stuff.

You're going to take care of the child,

but we're not buying her car.

We're not paying her rent.

Oh, her air conditioner.

I'm sorry.

That's her problem.

Okay.

But your job is to make sure the child is cared for as the dad.

And then you knock out this $10,000 worth of debt.

And then you, but you're just going to get really, really organized and really systematized where I think I hear.

Now you tell me if I'm wrong, but I think I hear you saying in between these sentences that for the last eight or nine years you've kind of been coasting.

Yes, sir.

That's a great, great word and definition for that one, yes.

Okay.

So all we're saying is you're ready to put it in gear and we're encouraging you to do that.

So drop it down into gear and punch it, baby.

Let's get detailed on the on the stuff.

We'll put you into every dollar.

We'll pay for it and show you how to run the app and jump into one of those free webinars we're doing on how to run the app and how to run your budget.

And it'll walk you through step-by-step what to do.

And you take every dollar that's coming in.

You make every dollar behave.

And every, and we need 10 grand, and we're going to clear up the debt.

Meanwhile, we're taking care of a baby.

Meanwhile,

we're going to start building our life.

And so coasting is over.

We're going out of neutral down into drive and kick it.

Kick it.

Squeal the tires, baby.

Let's go.

I'm going to make a suggestion that may seem out of left field, Rob, but I think you are very lonely.

And I'm not just talking about this relationship, which is kind of in limbo, but I think you need to spend what little bit of time you have not with that child.

You need to get around some guys and maybe need some new friends, guys that are driven.

They've got a vision for their life.

They see 10, 20 years down the road.

There's really good churches in Lexington, Kentucky you could plug into.

Yeah, get around some dudes that have a vision for their life.

I think you would do well.

And that's not an insult to you.

That's an encouragement to say, I sense that you're really, really lonely.

And the status of this relationship is just kind of slowly beats you down so i think that'd be a good move yeah i think yeah get plugged in with some you become who you hang around with so ken you're exactly right the day the data is out there on that and so um be very selective and pick some men out that are who you want to become because that's what's going to happen that's what's going to happen and you can do the a good place to find those kinds of guys is around a church and go sit down with the pastor of that church and go listen i'm beginning to turn my life around here's what's going on can you help line me up with some guys that can mentor me, disciple me, and help me walk in some of these ways?

Ken, I think that's a great observation.

I think you nailed that.

And so, yeah,

that's, again, very, very important.

If you're going to lay out four or five things that cause people to be successful, who they run around with is one of the four or five things.

And many times those people...

they can pull you out of this gravitational hold.

He's just kind of roving around

this girlfriend.

He already busted loose from the orbit.

I know, but he's out there now.

So

that's a big move.

It's a huge.

But yeah,

let's take that trajectory to the moon now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Get the orbit of some people that are really doing something with their life, real intentional.

Very good.

Very good suggestion.

That puts us hour of the Ramsey Show in the books.

We'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.