Building Wealth Is Hard but Being Broke Is Harder

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, Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today.
You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. We'll talk about you right in front of you.
The phone number is 888-825-5225. The call is free, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.
Tommy starts off this hour in Reno, Nevada. Hi, Tommy.
Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Good morning, and thank you for taking the call.
Sure. What's up in your world? Well, I'm a 75 year old senior with a 68 year old wife.
And I found a month and a half ago that I was $53,000 in debt on credit cards. I thought I was debt free for quite a while now.
And I come to find out that there was money being put against the credit cards from casinos mostly for the last five years. Anyway, right now I'm lined up to borrow $80,000 at a credit union at 6.625%, 30-year amortization, but it's a balloon payment and the reason I went with that is because I I can pay different amounts at different times because I make 30 to 50 thousand dollars extra approximately every year over my our retirement our retirement income is 5757.35 a month.

Who racked up the credit card bills? Your wife?

Yes, ma'am.

And you didn't know about it?

I wasn't smart enough to keep my nose in the books, and I trusted her 100%.

How long have you guys been married?

13 years. It's my second marriage.

And so approximately half the time you've been married, she's been lying to you? Yes. Because she has a gambling problem? Yes.
Okay. Well, you described to me how you're going to try to fix and get out of this.
What about stopping the problem? What are we about our gambling problem well she she left me because she knew i'd be really upset and she went to her mother so uh she says she's getting getting counseling every week but i'm not sure it's for the gambling problem what do you think it's for um she's going to a christian, and I'm not sure she's admitting that she has a gambling problem yet. Well, it's good that she's in counseling.
I'm sure if it's a great counselor, they can get to the core of what's going on. Right.
But she has not had contact with you? No, we have contact every day now. Okay.
And we plan to get together again. She's just been kind of dragging her feet as to when.
Well, the good news is she's looking for help, and then it's up to you and her to decide together what the boundaries are going forward and what the marriage needs to look like going forward. Right.
Now, these cards, I assume they're in both of your names yes they are okay and you guys have you know you don't have any money saved in retirement one card is just in her name that was kind of hidden and the others are in both our names yeah do you have any money saved in your Um, not very much. I have a $10,000 IRA and I have a 5,000 in checking right now.
And my wife has a little IRA and she, she won't tell me how much is in it, but I don't think it's more than 50, 50,000, 50,000. Yes.
Didn't you say that was how much is on the credit cards? Yes, about 53.

Okay. I think I see a plan evolving here.
You may have been drawing out of that without telling me to. I mean, there's some dishonesty here.
Yeah, well, yeah, obviously a lot. Okay.
Yeah, and I I don't have access to hera yeah um which i should the the 5,735 you're getting every month is that social security what is that it's uh our two social securities and i'm a retired teacher okay why would you borrow 30,000 more than you need you said you're gonna I finished, we've been full-time RVers for quite a while, but I finished a one-bedroom house last summer, and we finally moved into it, and I'm trying to finish it off completely, and I need about another 30,000 to put the final touches on it. I would not borrow this money.
Essentially what you're doing is you're trying to borrow money to get out of debt, and that's impossible. You have to pay in order to get out of debt.
You have to use your money and pay off the bill. Okay, so what I'm going to do in this situation is how do you eat an elephant a bite at a time? Priority number one is establishing what's going to happen with your relationship.
And for your relationship to be brought back together, trust has to be reestablished because there's been a lot of deception. And so there's a path forward with you and the counselors where everybody comes clean she comes clean as being a gambling addict which she obviously is and gets help for that and a part of a normal restoration plan in this situation would be that she does not control money again for the next three or four years, um, that you control all of it.
And, uh, if you're together, okay. Now, obviously if you divorce, then that's a whole nother thing.
Uh, if you divorce as a part, uh, if you come back together, we're going to find out what's in this IRA. We're going to use it, her $50,000 IRA or whatever's left in it is going to go towards this $50,000.
And then we're going to cash flow through the credit card debt, like Jade said, whatever that doesn't cover. And then we're going to pay out of pocket to finish up the repairs on the house because you've almost got the house done.
Right. And you weren't planning to borrow money before all this blew up.
You just said, oh, I'll just add that while I'm cleaning up this other mess. And now you've got a massive debt, $80,000 that you don't need that around your neck.
That's 75 years old. So, yeah, so the first thing is establish if we can reestablish trust and what the boundaries are going to be in our relationship.
If it goes the other way and you end up divorcing, then you're still going to go the same route, and that is I'm going to find out how much is in this IRA, and we're going to use all of her assets to clean up her mess. Whatever's left, you'll have to negotiate on the balance of the credit card debt.
But anything she owns in this divorce settlement negotiation, if I'm in your seat, she's going to use to clean up the deception and the lies and the gambling addiction. I'm not using my money, and I'm not borrowing money to pay off your stuff.
You're paying off every bit of this, especially the cards that have my name on them. And that's your divorce negotiation.
But you got to decide first which direction you're going to go. And obviously she's got a say in that.
And so getting with the counselor and establishing some boundaries, but addicts don't get to handle money for the next three to five years.

Someone's coming off of alcohol, off of cocaine, off of sports betting, off of a, off of a casino gambling, uh, off of pornography.

When they're coming off of this stuff, they are not, you know, addicts all are manipulative.

They all lie.

And so they can't be allowed to handle the family money. And she's that.
This is The Ramsey Show. All right, Dave, you have some strong opinions.
Possibly, yeah. I think so.
Okay, because you really prefer credit unions over big banks. So why is that? Well, credit unions, for one thing, are non-profit, which means that the members, the customers own the credit union.
So any profits that the credit union makes goes back into customer pricing. So you get better interest rate on savings, cheaper checking, and so on, that kind of thing.
But what's more important than that, though, is the fact that the customer is the owner changes the spirit on the credit union. So I find very few credit unions that aren't very customer-centric.
Yes. Well, and I think we have found one that is incredible, and that's Fairwinds.
They are an incredible credit union that is really out with the heart to help the customer. You know, that's why we're partnering with them, because they've got a scope to be able to handle the Ramsey audience, and they're the right kind of people with the right kind of values.
And they've done a really, really good job with customer service, and the deals that they're offering, the Ramsey tribe is incredible. Yeah, absolutely.
And you're right, their customer service is unbelievable. Winston and I just signed up and we got an account.
And I'm not kidding. It took less than five minutes.
It was so user-friendly. The step-by-step approach was unbelievable.
And then the next day, my phone rings and it says fair wins on my phone. So I answered it and talked to someone there and they said, yeah, they give calls to every new customer.
And so, again, they just really care about your experience. And I so, so appreciate that.
So, again, you guys, I know it can be a pain to switch banks or to open up new accounts, but Fairwinds, again, they make it so easy. Plus, anything that you can do at a traditional branch, you can do with them at fairwinds.org or on their app.
And you'll have free access to over 33,000 ATMs. Hey, you guys know how much I hate banks in general.
And so for me to do this is a big deal. Talk to our friends at Fairwinds and check out the combined checking and savings bundle that they created just for the Ramsey tribe.
You guys, it's incredible. Yeah, you guys, it's so easy to join Fairwinds no matter where you live.
So go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey to learn more. That's F-A-I-R-W-I-N-D-S dot org slash Ramsey.
Jade Walshaw, Ramsey Personality, my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.
I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. So it is normal, Jade, in most marriages for one of the people to be more, we call them the nerd laughingly around here, to be more detail-oriented, money-oriented.
The one that likes spreadsheets, right? The sicko, that's me, right? And it's normal for the other one to, we call them the free spirit, to, you know, just whatever you want to do, honey. And that's a normal process.
However, I will tell you that when the person that is handling the money, quote, unquote, does not have a good, clear stream of communication where everybody, where in my case, Sharon knows exactly what's going on because I'm the one doing the budget. Which one do you do it? Sam, or you? I do it.
You do it. I set it up.
Tell him about it. He's like, it looks good.
Rachel doesn't touch it. I mean, it's Winston.
I mean, Winston lays it out. And so either way, it doesn't matter who it is, that the other person is involved enough in the budget to, A, have input on where our money's going, and, B, have agreement that this is where our money's going.
And so if you have agreement before the month begins of where every dollar is going, one of you is the nerd and you did all the details, and the other one looked at it and changed a few things and then agreed to it, there is no room in that because we've agreed to where every dollar is going. That's why we call the budgeting app EveryDollar.
We've agreed where every dollar is going. Now, again, if you're the free spirit, the I don't care whatever you want to do, honey, I'm not asking you to become a nerd, but I am demanding that you do be an adult and not ask the other person to be the only adult in the family.
Well, my husband don't give me any money. My wife won't give me any money.
Well, what are you, a child? I mean, you don't get a vote in the house. Yeah, it's your responsibility to check in.
It's your responsibility to have a vote. You go, no, I mean, we decided what we were going to do with our money.
The nerd will execute the plan. The nerd will probably develop 90% of the plan, right? Yeah.
But you're in agreement. The neat thing about that is it creates a real clear combining unified marriage where we're unified.
We're agreeing on our dreams. We're agreeing on our fears because these are two grownups both speaking into where the money that we work so hard for goes.
Where does it go? Two grownups. When you do that, I don't get the call that says my wife was hiding credit card debt.
It's almost impossible to do. That's right.
Then. Because you know where the money's going.
That's right. Even if you're the free spirit and not the nerd, right? It's almost impossible to do.
So you alleviate that. Or my husband went and bought a bass boat without my permission.
All that kind of stuff doesn't happen. Yeah.
So this is perfect, Dave. This weekend we had the Money in Marriage event.
And I was talking about creating transparency in your marriage. And I was saying there's a couple of things that you can do, just practical things that will make it, like you said, nearly impossible to hide money.
And one of those things is sharing passwords. Right.
Everybody should have access to the bank account. Everybody can log in.
Everybody can see what's going on. Turn on the spending notification.
Like those are practical things that you can do. And there's it alleviates any illusion of you're hiding something.
I told him, I said, in our house, you would have to work very, very hard to hide something from me or vice versa. Because it's all out in the open.
Nobody has anything to hide. I know every one of Sharon's passwords to everything.
She knows every one of my passwords to everything. There's no chance i'm doing porn on my computer because

she can open it up anytime she wants and look and get in there and it's not to say that you're simple spy it's not even anything about spy on your spouse or creeping on your spouse if you're doing crap you have you don't that you're ashamed of you try to hide it then you hide it if you're not doing things you don't that you're ashamed of then you don't have anything to That's right.

So it's a pretty simple thing, right?

And so, you know, it's a little difficult. I ran into a guy the other day.
He's $300,000 in debt on credit cards. His wife just found out, and it's all sports betting, which is probably the fastest growing addictive problem that we're running into in the money world right now.
That's right. Out of control sports betting.
So the secret of fan duel right the dirty little secret of all these ads you know why they're buying ads on the super bowl because they can afford to they're making so much money off of you guys because you can buy you can bet on you know uh whether they're going to dance backwards or forwards after a touchdown you can bet on anything right and they are betting on everything and it's out of control. Some of you are losing your entire futures to betting on watching someone else earn a living, and it's stupid.
But that doesn't happen if husband and wife are both on the same page. You don't have an ability to pay the bill on that without it showing up.
And so it's like, you know, it just doesn't work. So and here's the thing.
There's this huge, not only is it a preventive medicine for things like misbehavior in a marriage, but more importantly, it combines you guys. And when the preacher said and now you are one when you are when you are unified and having a greed future that we are both pulling towards the probability of you hitting it goes up like like 10x yeah that's right you're probably going to be wealthy and the number the inverse of that is the number of times we talked to millionaires, we studied 10,000 of them, and said, how many of you did this in spite of your spouse being an idiot, in spite of your spouse being out of control, in spite of your spouse, my husband's an out-of-control spender, my wife's a princess.
How many of you did that in spite of the fact that you had a child attached to your hip? You know, almost none. They almost all said in the 80 percentile, which is statistically mind-blowing, said one of the reasons we're here is we're both adults and we both agreed that we wanted to be here.
And that's how you become a millionaire. The chances of you marrying some moron and then becoming a millionaire are almost zero so be careful yeah i saw a guy people dating oh lord be careful i saw a guy on the internet talking about the most important decisions and i agreed with him on this the most one of the most important decisions you'll make is who you marry yep if not the most one with char There's one with Charlie Munger on that.
Is that the guy? Yeah. Yeah.
And it's so true. And so, again, if you're looking for those ways to be proactive, sharing passwords, passcodes, I'm talking about banks, investment, savings, your will, your spouse should know where the will is, even your electronics.
They should be able to have the passcode to your phone, your computer. They should be able to log into your social media and slide in your DMs so they can see who else has been sliding in your DMs.
Like, this is the transparency you want. Combining bank accounts.
We have every dollar spousal accounts now so that you guys can all have the profile, all see what's going on. And finally, Dave, this one's controversial, but the little location app that's on your phone where you can turn on your location.
I didn't know you could do that. But my best friend called me up.
She said, Jade, share your location with me. And I said,

what are you talking about? She said, there's a little button you can add me and I can see where

you're at. And at first I was like, why would you want to do that? She goes, you know, you go for

runs, you know, early in the morning. I just want to know, make sure you're all right.
And I thought

that's great. And so she showed me how to do it.
And I said, Sam, show me your location. He was happy to do it.
And it's not like I'm on my phone looking, where's Sam going? But if you're a person who's not hiding anything and you want the best thing for your marriage, transparency, that's the key. That shows, hey, I have nothing to hide.
If we did that, I might not be able to find Sharon, but I could find her phone. LOL.
Which I am tasked with looking for pretty regularly so that's funny it's true that's old people problems right there i can't find my phone oh man but dave you know the people we say what's the passcode and and they're like i'll i'll type it in for you yeah and they want to type it in for you they don't want to give that that's a red flag right there i'm telling you yeah that's your if that's your husband or your wife it's a problem that's a problem so here's the thing all the data that we have from 40 years of doing what we do says not only can you avoid people's misbehavior in a marriage addiction being one of them affairs being another little difficult to have a budget line item says honey You know, that doesn't work, right? That doesn't work. Side, side, honey.
That doesn't work, right? So you can't have a budget line item that has that. That one won't pass.
That won't fly. So, you know, not only do you avoid all that, but you also are almost guaranteeing your ability to build wealth because you're working together and you're aiming and you're agreeing on our fears.
We're agreeing on what we're going to do. And it gets rid of I told you so too, which is a neat thing to get out of a marriage.
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Thank you for joining us, America. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey, Personality is my co-host today.
Arabella is with us in

Springfield, Missouri. Hi, Arabella.
How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve.
What's up? So I have, my husband and I have a crypto portfolio that is at about 60,000 right now and we are about to close on a house um and we have no credit card debt but we have 14,000 student loans and 37 in an auto loan um and we don't know if we should sell our crypto right now and just pay off all of our debt and um you know, start this process with a home with a mortgage debt free or try to wait out the bull run that is projected to happen with crypto in about April and sell, you know, at whatever price it'll be around then. I wouldn't try to time the market with it.
I mean, you guys are in debt today and you're closing on the house really quickly. And so I would liquidate this crypto and I would pay off this debt.
I would do that instantly. Okay, but do you have any advice on like, what if it were to go to the projected amounts that the coins we hold are going to go to? You know what the other projected amount is, right? The other projected amount is zero that they go to.
Do you have a recent memory about crypto? So we are not invested in meme coins, which is, I mean, you are invested in crypto. Do you have a recent memory, like in the last 36 months of what that has, that category of investing has done? It's one of the most volatile, high risk investments on the planet.
And it's not technically an investment. It's actually called speculation.
We we were up thirty thousand dollars more than we are right now just um right before the tariffs so interesting and so what happens when trump burps again you're screwed okay okay so okay listen stop a second you're acting like this is some kind of steady predictable investment because it has a long track record the only track record that crypto has is extreme volatility that's the facts so we've been writing it out for five years but you are not listening. Arabella, do you know what you sound like?

You sound like...

Somebody's in denial.

Someone who's in denial and somebody who's like...

I don't drink much.

I do very little cocaine.

Someone's at the craps table.

Who's at the craps table?

I'm just going to let it ride.

If I let it ride, I'm hot.

I'm hot right now.

That's what you sound like.

Because it's basically a form of gambling.

Because you don't know what's going to happen.

And just because you had a great week two weeks ago, you don't know. It's not an investment.
It's basically a form of gambling because you don't know what's going to happen. And just because you had a great week two weeks ago, you don't know.

It's speculation.

It's the roll of the dice.

You're in Vegas and your car payment's on the line.

So the answer to your question is what Jade said.

Cash it out today and pay it off.

But another way to help you analyze this from a decision-making paradigm is to do a sunk cost analysis. Pretend in your mind before you called us and asked this question.
Pretend in your mind if you said, okay, I have no credit card debt and no car debt. Should I go borrow on my car and on a credit card to buy $60,000 worth of crypto? Absolutely not.
Well, it's the same thing. Okay.
If you don't sell it today, you borrowed it again tomorrow. It's the same thing.
It says if you borrowed it. You understand that? I have one more question then.
So the reason we invest in crypto in the first place is obviously we are christian and we do not gamble and don't think gambling is okay but we felt like god showed us um these three specific coins that were invested like a crystal ball and we have just been waiting for the right time for him to show us when to sell which is why we've been holding for five years through two bull runs arabella i'm upset with this i'm upset that you're that you're telling us this really bad theology barabella really bad okay um because there are um there are no instances in the bible zero where speculation which is what this is it's not gambling but's speculation. The difference in investing and in speculation is speculation is you're buying something you hope is going to go up that has no track record.
That's speculation. You're looking for a short-term gain.
Investing is a long-term gain. Investing over a long period of time is scriptural.
Playing short-term games with money that you don't have because you're broke, you have a car payment, you're broke people, and you're borrowed on your car and on your credit card effectively to play a short-term game, please don't blame that on the Holy Spirit. It might have been a spirit, but it wasn't the Holy One.
That's nuts, okay? So, sorry, now I've insulted you completely, but oh well. Just that's for the rest of the audience's edification.
That's all I can say, because I don't think I'm going to help you at all. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, okay. Clear the air.
Okay,'s go and matthew gets to follow that in chicago hey matthew how are you hey mr randy what's up not much um in the parking lot um i'm a barber i'm way there going to work after this but uh i called you today called you today. Um, cause, uh, last June, um, I was looking for a car, a vehicle.
Um, I couldn't get approved for a car for credit. Um, I'm 23 years old.
I've been through debt like twice, like $10,000 worth. And I've your book, the snowball method.
I got out of like a

10,000 debt twice. And then I saved my money a little bit for a down payment for a vehicle.

I have a son, I have a fiance. I live with my fiance's mom at her house.
Um, what's your

question? My, my question is I got a loan from my grandpa for like $35,000 for a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Um, he was supposed to co-sign for me, but he didn't want it.
He didn't want the title in his name. So he just paid it off.
So I made an arrangement with him to pay him and he wanted 5% interest. Okay.
Sounds good. Whatever.
I pay $687 a month, um, to him with the interest, uh, without the principles like 602. And it turns out, it turns out this is not all it was cracked up to be.
You're not having fun. Are you buddy? Pardon me? This is not fun.
Is it? Um, it's, it's, um, no, I no i could why'd you call us because i'm throwing i feel like i'm throwing money i realize okay this is not an asset it's a liability i make a decent amount of money where it's like i'm good at saving but then i i save more i want to get own house, my own property with my wife. Good for you.
Get rid of the $35,000 car then. I know.
You already knew that before you called, didn't you? I did. You just wanted somebody else to say it instead of your own brain.
Yeah. And my family is against me because I said, like, okay, I go to carmax sell it all right i'll take eight thousand dollar loss that's fine i will i will pay my grandpa back in a few months then i'm out of that debt right yep and then whatever i'll carpool my wife or i'll buy a beater why are they against you why do you feel that your family, and by family, is it just fiancé is against you?

No, no, no.

My father.

Is he paying the payments?

No.

And he doesn't get a vote.

Right, right.

You're like a grown man and stuff.

I know.

You get to decide this.

Does your family want you to move out, or are they convincing you to move in?

He's in his fiancé's matters.

No, no, sir. And I agree with your brain.
I think you to learn to trust your own brain. Your brain is telling you before you call that this is a stupid situation and to get out of it.

Yes, sir.

And I agree with your brain.

I think you've got a good brain.

You can trust it.

Not your dad's.

Yours.

Your dad's not a bad guy.

He just doesn't have any money.

And you should never take financial advice from broke people.

Man.

It's like taking diet advice from fat people.

It's a dumb idea. is the ramsey show statistics show that half of americans don't have enough life insurance or they don't have any at all i don't understand this john why don't people want to take care of their family they think they're not going to die or something well i used to be one those guys.
I didn't even think about it. And one of my buddies said, hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids.
And I immediately went and got term life insurance. That's a gut punch.
For decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse. They've lost somebody important to them.
Me too. They don't know what to do next.
You're going to have a crisis here. You know, you got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow.
She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly right.
These are the two options. It's saying I love you to your family.
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Sal is in Philadelphia. Hi, Sal.
How are you? Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call.
Appreciate it. Sure.
What's up? So I'm 21 years old. I have a baby on the way.
Congratulations. When's it due? July 14th.
Awesome, man. Good for you.
Thank you. I

have my own business in pet care. I'm a dog trainer and I am $300,000 in debt.
From what?

My question is, do I focus on expanding the business, hiring and trying to be able to make

the business self-running so I could be as present of a dad as possible or focus on paying off

Thank you. Do I focus on expanding the business, hiring, and trying to be able to make the business self-running so I could be as present of a dad as possible, or focus on paying off debts? Is the debt business debt? Is it from you building this business? Is that where it came from? Yes.
Yes, that's where it came from, most of it. Explain.
Why does it take $300,000 to train a dog? Yeah. So we started mobile.
So I started the the business when I was 19 doing it mobile, kept costs low, did it out of my truck. Um, and then as we expanded, we decided that we needed a facility.
Um, so we rented and then, uh, like kind of renovated a 4,000 square foot facility. Um, that was in April of last year.
year. So I took a home equity line of credit loan from my dad, which I know now from listening to you guys is a no-no.
Just give me a quick synopsis. If I bring my dog to you and say, I'm dropping my dog off, train him.
What does it cost me? What do you cost for a service? I'm just curious. Our curious our lowest package is 33 75 and our most expensive package is 8 000 okay and these are house pets they're not um service animals or anything some some are service dogs some are protection dogs uh we work with a large range you're doing protection dogs for.
That's low. Okay.
All right. So you spent money renovating someone else's building that you rent? Yeah.
So we did, like, walking kennels. We had to put in some, like, small walls.
But you don't own the building? No, it's a rental. Okay.
So you spent $300,000 on someone else's building. So the home equity line of credit, the total of it was 20, I'm sorry, uh, was, uh, 225,000.
Um, and then we use some of that to do employee salaries. And we first moved in, we'd some, a lot of that for renovations.
Um, and then also into marketing. Then we have, uh, $30,000 for thirty thousand dollars for a van that we use are you profitable yes so last year we did three hundred thousand dollars in sales forty thousand of that was profit for our first year wow what's all the overhead coming well So our total overhead per month is $17,000.

Okay.

And so what's your question, hon?

So do I focus on expanding the business?

No.

Hiring, trying?

No.

Okay.

You need to make some money with all this money you've spent.

Mm-hmm.

Like you need to double your revenues with your existing facilities and your stupid $30,000 van that you did not need okay you you you you have never seen anything you wanted that you didn't go buy it stop it you're going to run yourself out of business so fast it's unbelievable you need to learn to organically grow the business Ramsey Invest Ramseyments, Ramsey Solutions has grown from a card table in my living room

to a $300 million business, and we've never borrowed a dime.

100% of our growth has been funded by profits.

A little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit.

And so now you've invested leasehold improvements in someone else's building

how what's the length of the lease you have five years at the end of five years all that money's gone if that guy wants you out you've got to amateurize all of that cost in five years on 40k profit you can't even come close did you know that did you realize that or you just didn't care? I'm just curious.

Realize which part?

The part that you're leasing and that you don't own the building. So when your lease is up, there's no guarantee that you get to stay there with all the renovations you've made.
So what I figured while going through the process of it, I believe that the total cost of renovations alone that we did was between, like, $15,000 and $65,000. But the goal was to then extend our lease once that five years was up.
That's a goal. That's a wish.
That's a hope. It's not how you run a business.
Okay. So what you, as a young entrepreneur, what I would have you to do is i want you to concentrate on getting revenues up without spending any more money stop quote expanding no work how many employees do you have it's just me i work completely by myself i thought you said you spent some of this on salaries.
Where the heck did the $200,000 go? All I got is $30,000 in improvements or $40,000 in improvements and a $30,000 van. Where did the rest of it go? You paid yourself out of the loan? No, no, no.
I didn't pay myself out of the loan. We had employees.
We had up to three at one point. But then in October, we got pretty slow, i let everyone go went down to just uh me working uh and then you have a forty thousand dollar a year job that you own so your job is to make it an eighty thousand dollar a year job that you own and then a hundred thousand dollar a year job that you own you need to find out the most profitable areas of your business and grow those areas, and yes, you need to do it.
As far as you being at home with a baby, fathers, since time has begun, have gotten up and gone to work, and babies have survived. And you're going to work, my son.
You have $300,000 in debt. You've made a mess, and you need a shovel.
And you is the shovel. How much is the lease every month? Lease is $4,200.
Yeah, that's why you brought in $300,000, and you're only making 12% margin on a service-oriented business because you've used it all up. Your margins ought to be double, triple what they are in a service business.
You don't have any cost to get sold except dog food, for God's sakes. He needs your book, Dave.
And so so um yeah uh i'm gonna send you a copy of the entree leadership book but um and um jump in on the entree leadership podcast and start listening to it that i do on small business and so forth because we've coached people exactly like you for for 20 years and i love small business people um but the the disease that you have is the idea that if I spend more, I'm always going to make more. And that is a disease that doesn't work in business.
Spending does not equal income. And so you've, you've bought everything fresh and shiny and new, and now you need to go make some money.
Um, and you probably ought to dump the $30,000 van and get rid of it and get some of the money back towards your dad anything you can get rid of and still operate the business and get money back towards your dad I want you to concentrate on making money not spending money and quit telling yourself you just need one more marketing plan or you need one more purchased for this to get breakthrough in business if you are not the secret sauce, you're screwed. The other stuff around the dog training is window dressing.
Your ability to look at an animal and teach it to behave is the secret sauce, and your ability to teach other people to do that that work for you is the secret sauce. It is not whether you have a van, and it's not whether you have a rental property with a kennel in it.
It's your ability to do your job. And so if you'll go do that and make a bunch of money, you're going to be a great dad financially and you're going to be fine.
But you've got a lot of work to do and it's not unusual for a young dad to be working. It's not a bad thing.
This is the Ramsey Show. Rachel, do you ever get these sketchy text messages that are like, hey, you need to update your address and verify so we can get you the package you didn't order? Yes, I have.
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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships.
I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Jade Walshaw. Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author is my co-host today.
Thank you for joining us and for hanging out. It's a free call at 888-825-5225.
That's 888-825-5225. Mark is in Portland, Oregon.
Hey, Mark, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Something's not working, guys.
Let me try again. Put everything on hold.
And three. There we go.
Mark, are you there? Yes, sir. I'm here.
Good. How can I help? Well, in 2012, my dad passed away suddenly from cancer.
I'm sorry. And he didn't have a very concise will put together.
Um, he had, you know, directives. Um, when he died, he was taking care of his mother, um, who was suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's six months after he died, she died.
And that left everything that was supposed to go to kids and grandkids and cousins kind of up in the air. And then eventually everything was in my aunt's name.
How? So, yeah. How? How did it end up in her name? Probate? She was the...
Deciding that? No, no probate. No probate.
Somehow we skated by probate. Nobody was arguing about anything.
My aunt happened to be the last surviving child. And it just, it just went everything into my aunt's name because my dad's will was not in good shape.
But my, my grandmother's was, but she died after my dad. So nothing went to him.
So I, um, am in a position now to where like, I'm the only person who has a steady job out of my siblings. Um, and I'm trying to get my siblings and my cousins together.
Cause my, my aunt's husband is also dead. So it's just my aunt and she's kind of going into a little bit of a mental decline my siblings are are okay everybody knows who's supposed to get what from the end my cousins yeah from from the aunt because she's okay with everybody getting what they were supposed to get in the beginning oh the cousins nobody's arguing about anything that they're supposed to get.
But she's not put it down in a will. And there's no judge involved.
Correct. Okay.
So what we've got, this is the biggest struggle, is my aunt's two children, the only bicker is over her own personal effects that she had and her husband had about the properties, nothing that anything my grandmother had. They're fighting over those things and it's making it difficult for any of the rest of us to get a regular will set up.
Okay. Well, what's the value of all of this if you had to guess okay so I'm going to be I'm collecting rent on two homes there's no mortgages everything's paid for there's no mortgages I'm collecting rent on two together they're about $3.75 and those are to become yours? Yeah.
Okay. All right.
If I'm wearing your shoes, have you sat down in person and talked to your aunt and asked her to do a will? Yes, I have. And what did she say? She is reluctant to go along with it unless her two kids agree on what is supposed to be divided.

That was my aunt's and her husband's.

Do either of her kids have, you said she's got mental decline.

Do either of them have like power of attorney or is that on track to start at any point?

Are the two houses that you have, are they in your name or your aunt's name?

Everything's in the aunt's name.

You're going to lose those okay if your aunt does not leave them to you or deed them to you prior to your death you're going to lose them because you do not have any standing in this family anymore she has confiscated all the assets into her name her assets there is no will, will go to her children. You're going to lose these houses.
And that's my struggle. No, you are.
I mean, it's not a question if you don't get this done. This is a $400,000 problem for you and your brother and your sister.
So if I'm you and your brother and your sister, I'm going to grab my cousins and put them in a headlock and go, go all right you twerps uh we need to get this straightened out because i'm not letting you take these houses y'all need to get over there with your mama and get this written down that that's what we're struggling to do do you have like any suggestions and like how to speak to them in such a manner because headlock won't work. They're a bunch of hillbillies.

Yeah.

We all are actually, but, you know, I mean, I just sit down with them and go,

okay, do you think it's fair that I lose these properties

because you won't sit down with your mom and get this other stuff worked out?

I don't think that's fair.

Okay.

And the other thing you could do is you could go to your aunt and ask her to quit claim deed the properties to you. Okay.
So if that was to occur, would there be, like, some sort of, like, net gain tax? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
She'll have a gift tax on them. Well, she could actually, but she could avoid it by doing a unified estate tax planning document, but that's, it's easier to just do a will.
But I can, you know, there's a thing, write this down, unified estate tax, okay? If the estate tax is still in place, and Trump, the GOP is currently looking and doing away with it on the federal level. But if that's still in place, you can use up some of her estate tax exemptions against her gift tax.
So she would not have gift tax if she files that document. But I've got a feeling this bunch of people doesn't file documents.
They just kind of make up whatever they want to do and think it works. And that's how it's been.
Yeah, that's their problem, though. They have the gift tax, not you.
So I'm going to go over there and say, Auntie, here's two quick claim deeds. I need you to sign these so the properties are in my name.
Okay. That's the easiest, cleanest thing you can do here.
And your brothers and sisters do the same thing. Because I'm afraid, because otherwise this is going to go to your kids, and that's not fair.
I need you to sign them right now.

I'm not getting up from this table until you sign these.

Because they were supposed to go to my dad, and they're supposed to go to me, and you know that.

And I need you to sign these and put these properties in my name.

That's a one-page document, a quit-claim deed.

Go see an attorney, have that drawn up for each property, and then have a notary notarize them,

and then you file them at the courthouse, and the property is then in your name.

It's over.

Now, she technically would be due gift tax on that, and she can avoid that within 12 months of her signing that over to you if she files under the Unified Estate Tax Credit Program. But I've got a feeling this lady's not doing any of that.
She doesn't.

This is a lady who's never even had a job.

Yeah, I know.

I can tell.

I mean, she's raised kids.

I mean, that's work, too.

No, I don't mean that.

She's not got any level of financial sophistication.

Not at all.

Yeah.

And so.

I'm like.

Yeah.

And so you got to roll over there, and're otherwise you're going to lose four hundred thousand dollars that's the problem here folks in america everybody needs a will hello everybody needs a will if you need if you got a simple estate go to mama bear legal forms.com it's very inexpensive you can have it done by morning if you you've got a complicated estate, sit down with an estate planning attorney. But everybody needs a will.
It's not fair to the people. Look at what his dad and his grandmother have done to him by screwing around and not writing this stuff down.
That's wrong, y'all. You need to take care of your family better than that.
Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade Warshaw. And look, if there's anybody who knows student loan debt is a problem, it's me.
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Jade Walshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. when we start talking about it the word investing most people's eyes roll back in their head going and now i don't understand now you've gotten complicated this is weird i don't like math i don't want to talk about investing you bunch of nerd people and i don't have a master's degree in finance and i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't.
If you're unsure where to start or you're afraid to make a mistake, our Investing Essentials virtual event is going to teach you everything you need to know about how to get started and how to maximize your investments. It's happening March 4th and 5th, two nights, two hours each night.
It's George Camel and Dave Ramsey, me, March 4th and 5th. 5th tickets are $199 that's what they start at plus we're going to go into detail nerdville for those of you super nerds that want to go into the detail i'm going to open up my playbook i've only done it one other time and that was about this time last year i did one of these events where i go into all of the real estate i own several several hundred million dollars worth of real estate.
I love real estate and all of the proper analysis and the nerd analysis that we do when we're doing a real estate deal and how to properly unlock all of that and look at it. And it's two hours each night.
One night will be almost all real estate. It's live too, correct? It's live.
Me and George live, Investing Essentials, March 4th and 5th. You can get your tickets at ramsaysolutions.com slash events or click the link in the show notes and get signed up.
There's usually a couple hundred thousand people on something like this watching us. And by the way, we're going to take questions live by email at the same time.
So we stop in the middle of it. It's not just a straight teaching.
George and I will have conversations. We're going to answer your questions live, some of them.
Obviously, we can't answer 100,000 of them. But we're going to weave in what is a regularly occurring question and make sure it shows up in there.
And we really dig into this stuff. So it's not only going to have the basics, which we've been teaching for years, but it's going to have stuff you've never seen me teach before.
And George is really, really good at the nerd stuff. So we're going to dig deep into this stuff.
Our question of the day is brought to you by Y-Refi. If you're struggling with defaulted private student loans, Y-Refi offers a great solution to get you back on track.
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Might not be in all states. All right.
Today's question comes from Bobby in California. He says, should I purchase a home? I'm 48 years old and I have the cash to buy one outright, but my concern is I would be paying HOA fees, property taxes, and insurance, which equal what I'm paying in rent now.
I'm happy with my current apartment. Should I just keep my money in a high yield savings and have less worries that way? Or should I bite the bullet and buy a home as an investment for my future? I love this question.
So first off, I mean, no matter what, no matter what you do, if you buy a home, whether it's on payments or you pay it off or you buy outright in cash, you're always going to be on the hook if you have an HOA for the fees and the property taxes and the insurance. Like that's that's just part of the deal.
As far as should you buy the house or should you just remain where you are? I mean, you're 48 years old, you've got the money, there's no time like the present. And for me, I kind of break down home ownership into two areas.
Number one, it's like we say all the time, it's the biggest line item on most people's budget, right? And so we want to create stability there. When you're renting, it's fluctuating, it's going up and down, you have to deal with lease agreements, all of that stuff.
But when you purchase a house, it's yours. You can lock in, especially when you're buying it outright in cash.
And then the second purpose is it does help us build wealth. And so those are really, for me, the two primary purposes.
And I think that you should do that. Otherwise, when you're renting in perpetuity, you really are at that point starting to throw money down the drain because there's no end to the process.
You're not doing it as a means to buy time so that you can buy. So that's my answer.
So Bobby, if you're 48, think back to when you were 28 in 2005. What was that house worth then? What did it sell for then? Don't you wish you owned that now? That's the same thing you're going to have when you're 68 from 48.
It's the same 20-year period of time. And so houses go up in value over time.
Unless you buy in an area that is a neighborhood in decline of some kind, in general, good, reasonably purchased, reasonable neighborhood, single-family homes over a 20-year period of time are a gold mine. They go up in value, period.
The other thing we can be 100% sure of, during the next 20 years, your rent is going to go up every year or almost every year. 100% of the time, your rent is going to go up.
It does not go up when you own the house. The only thing that does go up is HOA fees and insurance and taxes, but that's not going to keep up with rent escalation.
I think he more so has an issue. You know, you see that big nest egg in your account, and he likes the way it looks in his account as opposed to.
Yeah, but that's got to be invested at 10% to 12% to even keep up with what that house is going to grow to, and it's probably not. No.'m i'm i'm going to go buy that house 100 of the time in this situation because 20 years from today not because two years from today but because 20 years from today it's going to go way up in value and 20 years from today your rent is going to have gone up in value and as jade says you're stabilizing the largest line item in your budget she's exactly right brenda is in Greenville, South Carolina.
Hi, Brenda. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Hey, how are you doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? I do have a question.
I'm 55, and I'm still running. I raised my four grandkids.
I have for the past 21 years, And I just feel like I'm just too old to get out of debt. Oh, you're ancient.
What? I can't believe old people like you ask questions. How'd you even dial the phone as old as you are? I don't know.
If you're old, I'm 64. Who do you think you're calling? That's what I said.
If you're old, there's no hope for Dave. Well, I guess I just feel like I'm just, you know, I think about paying, you know, until I start listening to you guys, I think about paying a house.
And, you know, usually it takes 30 years. No, it doesn't.
By then. No, no.
And listening to you, you know, I've learned a lot, I feel like. So what is it? Have you got debt now? I do.
How much? I do. I guess about, well, okay, so I did something stupid.
You even have a, what is it, YouTube or whatever video of it that my son showed me or my grandson that says, you pay $800 a month for a car.

But anyway, that's me.

Oh, the car payment.

So how much do you owe on your car?

$31,000.

The same car sells straight down the street for $20,000.

Gotcha.

What do you make?

I make $43,000 a year.

Okay.

All right.

And how much other debt have you got, hon? I have rent $2,000 a year. Okay.
All right. And how much other debt have you got, hon? I have rent, $2,100 a month.
Okay. I have a boyfriend.
That's not debt. You rent a house, right? Right.
That's your monthly. Okay.
It's not debt. Do you have any other debt? Credit cards? Just a few credit cards.
Okay. I have two personal loans.
Okay. So the big issue is you just bought a car that's way more than you can afford, right? Exactly.
It's not fun. You're not having fun, honey.
No. Sell a stupid car.
Yes, you want it. Sell it.
Do you have any cash? Well, who's going to buy it? Somebody will buy it if you price it right. Do you have any money to cover that it's upside down? Because it's upside down $9,000, right? Well, you can get, yeah, exactly about that.
Do you have any cash stored away anywhere? Any non-retirement money? Well, no. The only thing I have through my employee admin is a 401k, and you can't get that out unless you're.
You can't. So's the car loan who's got the car loan i have it through santander through what oh santander yeah oh it's a subprime oh god it's even worse okay it is do you have a credit union i do and i tried to go through them and um they asked me to pay on it another six months to a year because i was so upside down in it.
Yeah. What I want you to do is I want you to go down there, and I want you to get them to loan you the money for the hole we were in.
Loan you $8,000. Okay.
And then you sell the car and get you a $1,000 car. Okay.
And then you got no car payment. And then you plow through that $8,000.
Then you got no credit card debt, no car payment. Now we can start talking about saving up and buying a house.
Okay. I'm working now, and I work at DoorDash on the weekends and sometimes at night.
You're not afraid of work. You just bought something you couldn't afford.
That's all. Exactly.
You're okay. We're going to show you how to do all that.
I'm going to put you into Financial Peace University and show you how to handle money because you're not too old, honey. Definitely.
Surely not. If you're still sucking wind, you got a shot, folks.
So, yeah, we'll put you into Financial Peace University and every dollar. We'll pay for all of it, honey, because I've been where you are, where I'm scared and don't know what to do and people help me.
So we're going to help you. on this is the ramsey show what does the future hold for business ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers economic growth or a recession business taxes will go up or down ai will help us work or it will replace us all but there's no such thing as a crystal.
That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite, and you should too.
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And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com. It's free at NetSuiteuite.com slash Ramsey.
I talk to people every day who want to know how to do better in two areas, money and relationships. That's why I'm pumped to bring the money and relationships tour to a city near you.
Join me and Dr. John Deloney for a night that will challenge the way you think about this stuff and possibly change how you live forever.
Starting April 21st, we'll be in Louisville, then on to Durham, Atlanta, Phoenix, Fort Worth, and Kansas City. Grab your tickets at RamseySolutions.com slash tour before they're gone.
Jade Walshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. If you don't know, we do this show three hours a day, Monday through Friday, on the glass in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions.
And you're welcome to come by anytime. Homemade chocolate chip cookies and coffee are on us.
And sometimes there's two people out watching the show live, and sometimes there's 200. So just come by.

If you're making plans south of Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee, beautiful little town,

that's where we are right off the interstate.

Very easy to come by.

In that lobby is a little stage we built called the Debt-Free Scream Stage, and that's what

happens there almost all the time that someone's on it, and that includes Davin and Terry,

who are here with us. Hey, guys, how are you? We're how are you where do you guys live uh kansas city missouri all right very cool sorry about your chiefs we're sorry too oh man too soon too soon yeah oh my gosh wow well congratulations you're debt free how much have you paid off 125 000 very cool how long did that $70.
Wow. Well, congratulations.
You're debt free. How much have you paid off? $125,000.
Very cool. How long did that take? $60.77.
Okay. Say all of it.
Say it again. $125,000, $60.77.
There we go. Exactly.
All right. And how long did this take? 28 months.
Good for you. And your range of income during that two years and four months.
So we started at 000 and we went down to 52 000 for a little bit and then we ended at 107 wow what do y'all do for a living i work in a factory um i'm in social work field okay wow good for you guys so what kind of debt was the 125 it's a little bit of everything credit cards student loans a car well two cars actually y'all were normal yeah we were yeah yeah normal sucks yeah A lot of everything. Credit cards, student loans, a car.
Well, two cars, actually. Y'all were normal.
Yeah, we were. Yeah, normal sucks.
A lot of medical bills and collections. And now you're weird.
Good for you, man. What got your attention? What caused you to go on this journey a little more than two years ago? Well, we decided to get married.
And once we decided to get married, I think for me just as a husband, I was like, oh, okay, I guess I need to start paying attention to this and so we sat down to start paying and she had seven thousand dollars in savings and she put it on the debt and then that was enough for me to see and I was I was locked in and we we were running from there it was all your debt no no okay I was in a lot of student loan debt okay all. A lot of student loan debt.
Your degree for social work. Yeah.
Yes. I mean, you guys were living on nothing.
How did you... Tell us more about how you did this, because on 89, at some point you went to 50.
How did this happen? It was a lot of work, a lot of overtime. Yeah, that was really what it was, about 55 to 70 hour weeks.
So she didn't see you. No.
There was weeks that I was nights and she was days and we'd pass each other

on the way out the apartment.

Wow.

Yeah.

We're like,

we're on the phone

and we're driving down the highway

and we're like,

hey, I see you.

I love you.

See you on Thursday.

Man.

So two years of that.

Yeah, two of that.

That's hard.

It was tough.

Was it worth it?

So worth it.

Definitely worth it.

You got the rest of your life

with no debt, right? Yes. No debt.
Because you're not going back, right? Oh, never. Never.
No. Yeah.
Lots of sacrifices for sure. The number one question folks ask me is how do you stay motivated? And so I want to ask you the same questions.
How do you stay motivated? Almost two and a half years. What does that look like? I mean, you're burning the candle, man.
You're getting it. I think it was a lot of talks about our future.
Just whenever we have kids, the legacy that we want to leave and just having reasons that were bigger than, you know, to keep going and reasons to quit. So I think that was it.
For me, I think it was just a lot of prayer. There was times that we were, I mean, we're so tired of doing this.
When are we going to be debt free? When are we going to be out? And then just dreaming. We dreaming we're running around and looking at houses and oh one day we're going to get there so different things to just try to keep us motivated but for sure what was the dream um as far as like getting our own house is what i meant by that like we were wanting to have our own house and we want to um just set up financial freedom for the bloodline really yeah good for you change your family tree for sure that's a big why yes sir if you have a big enough why you can plow through some hard stuff because it's not forever it's for two years two years sounds like a long time but when you look back you're like oh no i mean we're done yeah mic drop we're out of here oh yeah good for you good for you guys well done what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is go to work a lot a lot of work uh and then just be willing to sacrifice we missed out on family events and things like that but i mean at the end of the day it's all worth it because we don't owe anybody anymore so we can question your sanity oh my goodness yes people thought we were crazy we're oh that's good for you, but I'm not going to do that.
People saying we need credit cards. We didn't agree on credit cards for like the first, I would say, year and a half.
Yeah, about a year of our marriage. I wanted credit cards for the points, and I tell people now that wasn't a good enough reason.
I cut all my credit cards up about a year and a half. Wow.
And we hit the ground rolling so so has it happened yet that moment

where the same folks who are saying why are you doing this why are you doing this asking how are

how did you do this how did you do oh yeah I think recently more so now yeah I actually went live on

Facebook not too long ago because I posted our journey and then people are like how did you do

it so I was like I'll just go live and answer you guys's questions but yeah everyone's wondering how

we did that yeah that's good good for you well a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a

and we'll see you next time. So I was like, I'll just go live and answer you guys' questions.
But yeah, everyone's wondering how we did that. That's good.
Good for you. Well, a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion.
Right. So that's where you are.
Congratulations. Very good stuff.
Thank you. Nobody can argue with your success because it's your success.
Right. That's where you are.
And if you want to go over there and live that way, you can go over there and live that way. But as for me and my house, that's what we're doing.
doing now how did you run into the ramsey stuff like about the same time you get married so for me in 2016 the church i was attending at the time they had like this um financial class and they were telling us about the baby steps and the snowball method and so i actually started paying off debt then um slowly i wasn't attacking it like we did um and then so i had paid like two student loans off i believe believe, before we got married. And so that's how I got started.
And my dad, he told me about the show. So I was in the car with him and he was playing the show and he talked about the Ramsey show.
And obviously I didn't listen at the time. And so then my mom gave me the Total Money Makeover book.
And yeah, it didn't really click to me until we decided that we were getting married. And I was oh i guess i need to take this series time to man up now yeah life events do that oh yeah good for y'all well done i'm so proud of y'all thank you thank you i bet you got i bet you had to have some cheerleaders who was your best cheerleaders uh friends family parents grandparents siblings yeah they're all i would definitely say our parents yeah both of our parents yeah i mean your dad's the one told you listen to the radio yeah Yeah, definitely.
Our, they're all going to be watching. I would definitely say our parents.
Yeah. Both of our parents.
Yeah.

I mean, your dad's the one told you to listen to the radio.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Our family and friends, for sure.

Yeah.

We had a good support system.

Yeah, we did.

Well, that's necessary.

Because you're going to have the haters, too.

So you've got to have the angels and the devils both right there.

Yes.

Good stuff.

Well, congratulations, you guys.

Thank you so much.

We're very, very proud of you.

Thank you.

Very, very well done.

Thanks for making the trip from Kansas City. I hope you enjoy your time here in Nashville.
Oh, we did. Thank you.
We. We're very, very proud of you.
Thank you. Very, very well done.
Thanks for making the trip from Kansas City.

I hope you enjoy your time here in Nashville.

Oh, we did.

We don't owe anybody, so it was worth it.

We can do it.

We don't owe anyone.

All right, Davin and Terry, Kansas City, Missouri, $125,000 paid off in 28 months,

making $89 to $52 to $107.

Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one. hear a debt-free scream three two one we're debt free they did it they did it right well done you two jade you know what occurs to me watching those two that um I mean, they're young.
I didn't ask them how old they are, but they're young. And really, you probably even fall into the same category.
My daughter does for sure. Y'all have all grown up with a magic wand in your hand.
Uh-huh. And if you want something, you push a button.
It's at the doorstep. And you get it.
There's an app for it. There's something that, an easy button.
It's a magic wand. Everything's easy.
And it's not all easy, but I mean, it's ridiculous how quickly we can access information or things or, you know, even solutions to problems. That's right.
that are valid in a digital world.

That's all good.

The problem is none of that does what those people just did.

You know what they got?

Grit.

And grit is not a digital thing.

There's nothing easy about what they just did.

I mean, they passed each other on the highway and sent a text, I love you, I'll see you Thursday.

Did you hear what they said?

I heard it.

Newlyweds.

You know, well, what about life balance?

Well, they didn't give a crap.

They wanted out of debt.

That was their life balance.

The life balance is they wanted to be out of balance, so they're in balance the rest of their life.

That's right.

You know what they can do now?

Anything you, by God, want when you don't have any payments,

you're set up to do whatever you want to do now. Don't talk to me about balance.
Those people got grit, man. They were getting it.
I mean, those people are heroes right there. Yeah.
And if you want to teach someone something that you love, your kids, your grandkids, teach them grit. Teach them the ability to roll up their sleeves and do what those two got.
I don't know where they got that, grandparents, parents, but those two are studs right there, man. They're amazing.
Absolutely incredible. This is The Ramsey Show.
Listen, guys, I've heard just about every excuse for why folks think they can't get ahead with money. So let's go ahead and settle this right now.
You get the final say on what happens with your money. That's why you have to start telling your money where to go so you can stop wondering where it went.
So if you're going to start winning with money, you have to get on a budget. The easiest way to get started and stick to it is with the EveryDollar budget app.
It'll help you make a plan for every single dollar coming in and every single dollar going out every single month. And guess what? It's free, so no excuses.
Download EveryDollar in the App Store or Google Play today. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today.
This is the last segment for all of you, unless you're on the Ramsey Network app. And then you can get the rest of the show on the Ramsey Network app.
You can get the whole show on the Ramsey Network app, and it's completely free, video or audio, however you choose to view it. And a lot of other features, including you can email us from the app.
you get all kinds of searchable tools it's it's a great app for managing this show and it's completely free and there's not a paywall and there's not going to be a paywall so go check it out ramsey network app download it and start using it and you'll get the entire show every day and be able to watch it there randy's in dallas texas hi r. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Sure. What's up? My question is that my aunt, well, my sister-in-law had my aunt picked up, and she's about 90 years old.
Had her what? Had her picked up. Not picked up by police.
Had her picked up and sent into a nursing home who picked her up uh well that's what we tried to find out the police said that they didn't do it so they convinced her they put her in a car who's there well the facility the nursing home picked her up correct they brought the little van over loaded her up told her they're to the bank, they signed some paperwork. They signed some paperwork, which is transferring her account or adding their names to her account so they have access.
The nursing home. Yes.
And then the bus went one way and my sister-in-law went the other way. Your sister-in-law was in the van? No, she drove behind him said it you're saying she set it up she set it up okay how is she can then i'm a little bit confused sister-in-law her aunt your aunt correct so this is your brother's wife right correct your brother's wife put his aunt against her will or against the family's will into a nursing home.
Why? Well, she has property. So they figured that once they gain access to her, you know, her accounts and what she has, they figured they could cash her out and she'd be gone.
They're banking on the fact that she may pass away. Well, she will pass away.
Everybody does. But the, so what is all this property worth? Oh, maybe half a mil.
So when you call your brother and say, you're a crook, what are you doing? What does your brother say? He acts all confused, says, I don't know what you're talking about. She needed to go.
She's mentally disturbed. She doesn't know where she's at.
Did she need to go aside from the property? Was it time for her to go? No, actually, she's pretty independent. For 90 years old, she still drives.
She still pays her bills. Not anymore.
No. I can't get her out.
Do what? I can't get her out. We're barred access from seeing her.
By the nursing home? Correct. Have you hired an attorney yet? Yes, we have, and it's very costly.
And they told me to sit down because they wanted to let me know what this would cost and how long this would take okay and what they said we we go to court this is not his specialty he's uh so why don't you get someone whose specialty it is is it like a old is it some sort of a restraining order order what has to happen for you no he has to go to the court and the court has to appoint a guardian at litem for this lady and take all the power away from the thieves that is his brother and sister-in-law there you go the judge can do the judge will do that in 30 seconds once he understands what's going on you just got to get in front of the judge we get in front of the judge and lo and behold, the lady or the attorney who's overseeing her in the nursing home, who's appointed her attorney, the attorney that's working what we thought was working for her best interest, they're both working together. So they go in front of the judge.
The one you hired is working with the other attorney? No, no. No, so she has an attorney.
So apparently they appointed her an attorney, not allowing me to sit here and say, I've got an attorney. So you can bring your attorney if you'd like to.
Here's the hearing. No, that's not how it works, dude.
You can file suit on behalf of your and as a guardian at lightem and have a judge review this situation because you think a scam is going on and a judge will look at it we you need a new attorney i think your attorney's an idiot now we asked to have guardianship and she said we'll take a look at that. So we have presented the information for that.
And they went first, brought all these people in, brought a lady in that said, well, she's, she has Alzheimer's. This is what's going on.
So when we questioned her, she's been doing this less than a year. And she said, well, it's really not my specialty.
So when we ask the judge, it's not even her specialty. She doesn't even know whether she can assess the lady mental state.
No, like he goes, I'll take that into account, but let's continue on. Wait a minute.
Let's just stop. You've been at this story for a while, and I'm not sure we know how to help you everything i've told you to do

it sounds like you already are doing so you're in court you got a judge looking at it that's where i was taking you immediately you were already there before i got to you so how how can we help you well the the problem is is every time we turn a corner it seems like we run into a dead end. And the thing is that the judge, the person that we thought we hired, not my attorney, but the person we thought we hired to help is basically building a case against us.
Why did you hire them? Well, we didn't hire them. Well, we hired them to help.
And then basically they weren't really helping so you need a new attorney like what dave said the guy whoever you're working you need to start fresh that's the advice i mean i you know i don't know how we're supposed to help you this is a convoluted mess and um but you know what you've got to do is you've got to get good counsel on your side and start making a solid case before the judge that what has occurred is that your brother and your sister-in-law have stolen a half million dollars from a 90-year-old lady and put her in a nursing home against her will. And that the judge needs to see that.
And then you've got to present evidence that that's what exactly occurred. And he will undo all that if he believes that or she, the judge, whatever it is.
And if the lady is lucid like he said she is, bring her up. Put her on the stand.
Let's make an assessment right in front of everybody. But anyway, we're not experts in any of this.
The only thing we're experts in is stirring up trouble. And it sounds like you're already doing that.
So that's the thing to do how far do you want to take this how much do you want to invest in this and um you know and then relationally how are you going to treat the crooks that are in your family from this point forward wow because that's the devastating part is that you've lost a brother in this process because you can't have any dealings with someone that acts that way and he's not confused i don't care how he acts he's not confused as dr john delaney says behavior is a language and he has spoken very loudly and you can try to blame it on his wife if you want but he's a wuss so it's his fault if his wife's running over him so you know that's just ridiculous so um and they put everything in their names now possibly a 90 year old lady does need some care right that's possible but um you know and no one else was looking after her it's almost like the question is is the issue that auntie went into the nursing home or is the issue the property because if the issue is the property then he maybe needs to focus on that as opposed to getting her out of the nursing home because that might be the right spot for her yeah i don't know who her heirs are but they whoever they are if he if he's one of the heirs should be upset about the theft that has occurred so there's that part of it but it is also possible that in a situation like that that someone is uh in declining mental state and someone did care enough to get them some care when no one else did and then you go well my sister-in-law threw my aunt in a nursing home well i mean no maybe she needed the care that's true i don't know i don't know that about this case i can't tell one way or the other i other. The only thing I've got to go on is what Randy's saying,

which is that's not what's going on here.

But you do have that separate piece you're saying,

which is the theft of a half million dollars.

Yeah.

And so that's not caring for someone.

Right.

That's not taking care of them.

That's sad.

Yeah, it's a sad mess.

It's horrible.

Some people's children.

Wow.

That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. Thank you.
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