One Year of Sacrifice Can Totally Change Your Life

Speaker 1 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. Dr.
John Deloney, Ph.D.

Speaker 1 in counseling, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of the Dr. John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Networks.
A lot of titles there. He's my co-host.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Speaker 1 The call is free and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Wayne starts this day in Chicago.
Hi, Wayne. How are you?

Speaker 2 Hello, I'm doing great. Thank you.
How about you and Dr. John?

Speaker 1 We are better than we deserve, brother. How can we help?

Speaker 2 thank you yeah honored to talk to y'all we're longtime listeners i have my wife with me so she can hear me so

Speaker 2 we are we are filling out for our paperwork for our inheritance for our children we're going through all that process right now we have three kids uh two baby boys under two and one daughter from my previous marriage and she's uh 24

Speaker 2 and we like how you push stipulations and we've heard you say before in your will will that you have,

Speaker 2 they have to live a certain way and be a certain way. We're God-fearing Christians.
So we want to make sure, like, my wife thinks one way, I think the other.

Speaker 2 So we need a tiebreaker or we need some wisdom on this. So we want to make sure she's living according to the Bible and doing the things that we expect her to.

Speaker 2 And my wife says if she's not there doing that yet, when we should pass, should we still give her the, or we shouldn't give her the inheritance?

Speaker 2 And I'm like, well, maybe we should give her a chance to get to there and then she could get have part of the inheritance or and that would go for even our boys so we're just like torn on how we should handle that yeah

Speaker 1 okay

Speaker 1 we

Speaker 1 you have the information correct you have the spirit wrong behind what we did okay okay what we did was not a punishment thing It was not a carrot or a stick thing.

Speaker 1 It was simply we back up and we told our kids from the time they were adults on that for Sharon and I, as for me and my house, we serve the Lord. And so we view our assets as God's.
They're not ours.

Speaker 1 Our job is to manage his stuff

Speaker 1 his way for him.

Speaker 1 So the kids have no rights.

Speaker 1 And what we explained to them was if they inherit something, all they're inheriting is the right to manage it. They don't become the owner any more than I'm the owner.

Speaker 1 And so this is, you know, and so you wouldn't hire someone to manage a Burger King who has proven to not follow the Burger King manual.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 Because the man that owns the Burger King would be pissed

Speaker 1 because you end up with

Speaker 1 a McDonald's burger over there or something, right? And so

Speaker 1 and it's his money and him that I'm concerned about. And

Speaker 1 they don't have any legal or spiritual or moral rights to or entitlement to our wealth at all. And when they do inherit it, all they inherit is the weight of it

Speaker 1 and not the privilege of it.

Speaker 1 You actually get the privilege, but if you view it properly, it's a responsibility rather than I hit the lotto. You follow me?

Speaker 1 And so it's not like if you don't behave, I'm going to take it away from you.

Speaker 1 It's not got any of that in it at all. But it's got to be, okay.

Speaker 1 The other thing that I'll add to that is this, and it's hard for me because at times, especially with people I love, I'm extremely loyal, is that if someone's misbehaving and you give them money, you magnify their misbehavior.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. An extreme situation is if you've got a kid doing heroin and you leave them a million dollars, you're going to kill them because they'll overdose.

Speaker 1 Because they've got unlimited resources to buy weed and heroin, right? Oh, yes. And so you magnify their problem.
You don't help it by throwing money on it, whatever the problem is.

Speaker 1 So I don't know what she, what her behavior is that you're so concerned about or your wife's so concerned about, but let's back up and just view this from a manager or a stewardship perspective.

Speaker 1 And that's the way I would talk to her about it. I would say, honey, I love you.
And, you know, you and I can have a discussion about your behavior between father and daughter, but I can also

Speaker 1 need to tell you, I can't, in good conscience, leave you managing God's stuff when you're not following God.

Speaker 1 I have to report back to him.

Speaker 1 And so I can't do that as a moral act on my part. And that's different than I'm going to hit you with a stick until you get in line.
You're out of the will.

Speaker 1 You're out of the will until you quit doing that stuff.

Speaker 1 You know, that's a different spirit. You follow me?

Speaker 2 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 That's correct. And if you want, this is Deloney.

Speaker 3 if you want to

Speaker 3 make sure there is never any complete reconciliation between you and your daughter, who sounds like she went through some sort of divorce growing up, something like that.

Speaker 2 Yes, a pretty rough divorce, and my ex kept her away from me for six years, so still kind of estranged.

Speaker 2 She's taken steps to following God. So she calls me with advice.
I guide her.

Speaker 2 She got saved maybe a year ago. So I just want to make sure we do this correctly and we don't want to stunt her anymore.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 here's what I want you to be careful about. I'm telling stepmother not to use this as a carrot in the stairs.
There you go.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 3 man, I know y'all are both on the phone here, so I'm going to say this directly as I can.

Speaker 3 It's very common that when somebody gets remarried, that other kid from that other woman, that other kid from that other man, they're not getting my stuff.

Speaker 3 And so the red flag for me in this call was not living by the Bible. I want you guys to be real clear.
You can go to 500 different churches and get 500 different interpretations.

Speaker 3 What does that actually mean when you sit down across the table from your daughter and say, I'm worried about you? I love you. Here's how we can best love you.

Speaker 3 If you keep, because you're going to be proud.

Speaker 1 I'm proud of the steps you've made. That's right.
In your spiritual walk, you've still got a couple steps to take to get back just to get this side of the ditch. That's right.

Speaker 1 You're out of the of the ditch, but we want to get you over here up in the road again, and I'm going to walk with you and love you. And

Speaker 1 if you want to draw your will up one way or another, but I hesitate to, and here's the other thing. When someone says living by the Bible, when we say that at Ramsey's, it's

Speaker 1 a very broad thing. It's not every nuanced little, oh, you ate a shrimp

Speaker 1 because it says in Leviticus not to eat shelled animals, right? But, oh, we don't have to follow the Old Testament. Now we've got to get into orthodoxy.

Speaker 1 And, oh, did Christ cancel out that or did he fulfill it? And oh my goodness, Chris, we're in a doctrinal argument here.

Speaker 1 Odd infinite item. I'm talking about the big stuff.

Speaker 3 Right. And you've got some.

Speaker 1 If you're doing cocaine on the back of a yacht, you're probably not following the Bible. Okay.
So you're out. Okay.

Speaker 1 But if you went to a different church that has musical instruments and John's church doesn't,

Speaker 1 then it's probably okay.

Speaker 3 That's exactly right. And here's the thing.

Speaker 3 If you want to drive a wedge between you and your adult children, try to control their adult behavior with the threat threat of, well, then I'll just take you out of the wheel.

Speaker 1 It won't work.

Speaker 3 You will lose your children. Don't do that.

Speaker 1 It won't work.

Speaker 1 I will say,

Speaker 1 even though ours would be moved out, it's actually an element of a trust. There is steps for the brother and sister that are remaining after Sharon and I are gone to walk that person back in.

Speaker 1 That's right. As they straighten up their lives.
So this is not a constant. It's not a stick.
It's not a stick.

Speaker 1 We're constantly hitting somebody with our wealth trying to get them to behave and they're 37 years old and actually have a brain no that's not what we're doing in her case she's 24 but yeah it's not what we're doing so that that's but you have to balance that juxtapose that if you will with this idea that it's not mine to start with and i'm managing it for him this is the ramsey show

Speaker 1 Several years ago on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles, I stopped by and did a, there was a guy that was new in talk radio that was blowing up and everybody was saying how smart he is.

Speaker 1 And I stopped by at his studio and did his weekend show.

Speaker 1 And, gosh, that's been 10 plus, maybe 15 years ago now, something like that. And he's blown up and has become a huge deal.
And he is very smart.

Speaker 1 It's unbelievably bright. And has blown up talk radio too on the political side.
Ben Shapiro,

Speaker 1 Ben's company, Daily Wire, since moved to Nashville to get out of California, and

Speaker 1 they've opened up a shop here. We've become friends with a whole bunch of their guys, their leadership team, and they're behind-the-scenes people.

Speaker 1 And some of our folks have gone over there to work, and so all that kind of stuff. It's a good, good and neat relationship.

Speaker 1 Ben moved to Boca, Rattan, but he's in Nashville often because the company is here. So he stopped by the other day, and we got to do a long-form interview with him.
Hadn't done that before.

Speaker 1 So George and I sat down, and that interview will be dropping on tomorrow, on Tuesday.

Speaker 1 So make sure you check it out. And it'll be on the Ramsey Network app on Tuesday, October 15th.
And then it'll show up on the YouTube and on the podcast stuff

Speaker 1 on October 16th, on Wednesday, day after tomorrow, depending on where you're and when you're listening to this. But that's how it's working out.
So be sure and check it out. He's an interesting dude.

Speaker 1 And we talked about a lot of stuff, a little bit about politics, but I was more interested in his story.

Speaker 1 Graduated from college at 17.

Speaker 1 Graduated from Harvard Law had already published three books before he got out of law school. He was very like a savant-type character.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I know many a law student that doesn't have time to go to the bathroom during law school, not write three books. Good greed.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's a lot of fun. And I've known him a long time.
He's a great guy. And

Speaker 1 he's Orthodox Jewish, if you didn't know, and we've got friends in common in that community. And

Speaker 1 we've got to talk about some of that. So it's a fun interview.
And even if you're, you know, not a right-winger or something,

Speaker 1 his politics are all right, of course.

Speaker 1 But yeah, check it out. I think you'll enjoy it.
Again, it drops on the Ramsey Network app on Tuesday, October 15th, free. The Ramsey Network app is free.
We don't charge you for it.

Speaker 1 And on Wednesday, October 16th, on the YouTube channel and on the podcast channels. So be sure you're checking it out.
Chloe is in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Chloe.
Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 2 Hi, Dave. Hi, John.
How are you today?

Speaker 1 Better than we deserve. What's up?

Speaker 2 So, my question is, is it okay for me to set financial boundaries within my marriage? And if so, how should I do that?

Speaker 1 What does that mean?

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 okay, backstory.

Speaker 2 Several years ago, my husband, unfortunately, lost all of his finances due to someone else handling, slash, mishandling for them, him, mishandling his finances for him.

Speaker 2 So, he initially had to start from square one. All his finances were seized

Speaker 2 fast forward to now. He's been trucking from trucking job to trucking job.

Speaker 2 And there's always been some type of issue with the lack of mileage, the lack of pay, the hours, truck breaking down, all types of issues.

Speaker 2 So due to him being a high income earner in the past, I think what he's doing is being extremely selective and picky with what jobs he'll take.

Speaker 2 So I'm basically trying to see how I can help him commit to just doing something like sock room, back room, easy entry, like something like that, until he's able to do the thing that he wants to do, which is trucking, just because it's been three years since he's had a secure and steady job, and it just put a lot of financial stress on me.

Speaker 1 So he's not making any money because he's not working much.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Why is he not working much?

Speaker 2 He's gone for a job, like he'll go.

Speaker 1 That wasn't what I said. I said, why?

Speaker 1 What's broken? Why didn't he want to work? He used to work.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Nothing's broken. His pride, maybe?

Speaker 1 His confidence, maybe?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Have you sat down with him and said,

Speaker 3 I need you to help provide for this family?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Did you say it like that, or did you talk about the jobs? I need you to take different jobs.

Speaker 2 No, no, I've said it. We've had several conversations about this, and then he'll try to go back into tracking because he's like, oh, this will make a lot of money.
This will be more money.

Speaker 2 But I'm like, okay,

Speaker 2 it hasn't been working. So even if you've had a job that's only $15 an hour, like that's better than just sitting and waiting and hoping for something else to do.

Speaker 3 What is he doing during the day? Is he just sitting at home?

Speaker 2 No, he does side hustles. Like he does car audio or he's bake sometimes.

Speaker 2 He has some family friends that he does like side work for, but it's nothing like substantial to help cover all of our expenses.

Speaker 1 Neither's $15,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 You don't like who he's running with?

Speaker 2 I don't like who he's running with, yeah.

Speaker 1 When he goes over there and works with the guy on the stereo thing, you don't like it, do you?

Speaker 2 No, I'm fine with it. It'd be different if it was actual, consistent, full-time income.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't think this is about financial boundaries. I think this is about the fact that you don't respect your husband, and he's doing nothing to earn that respect.

Speaker 3 And that's different than love, and that's different than honor, and all those other words.

Speaker 1 The financial boundaries you're talking about setting are what you do right before you file divorce because you gave up on him. That's right.

Speaker 3 Because you're talking about splitting the bills because you're tired of carrying the whole weight of this household.

Speaker 1 As if you running the whole thing by yourself is going going to fix it.

Speaker 1 I don't.

Speaker 3 Are you done?

Speaker 3 You sound done. No.

Speaker 2 No, I'm just frustrated. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's hard when you sit down and tell somebody that you love, I need some help.

Speaker 3 I need you to be a full participant in this marriage. And he looks at you and goes, nah.

Speaker 1 That's heartbreaking, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 you deserve better than that.

Speaker 3 Forever that's worth. I'm so sick of guys who are scheming and always have a plan and always have a thing and always have a thing and their wives are just drowning.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 It sounds like that. You need to sit with a counselor and/or your pastor, both,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 bring him if he'll go. And he needs to hear loud and clear that your marriage is going down the drain.
It's not gone down the drain yet, but the water's running out of the sink.

Speaker 1 Because if he doesn't, and if he doesn't go get full-time employment as a sign that he loves his family, then

Speaker 1 it's, you know, this is going to be, this is going to continue to get worse. It's not going to get better.
And there's no boundary that you can set.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm not going to give you anything but lunch money. Like he's four freaking years old or something He's not your son.
He's your husband and so cutting him off from you know whatever

Speaker 1 That's not that's not gonna that doesn't fix this what fixes this is his heart changes and he goes oh I got to get up off the couch

Speaker 1 and Fixing two stereos a week is not gonna cut it and so I'm gonna have to go leave the cave kill something and drag it home and

Speaker 1 Yeah, that that's I mean you're gonna have to set a

Speaker 1 not a financial boundary, but a marriage boundary at some point. Yeah.
And that's you do that not with two talk radio guys, okay, or podcast guys or YouTube goobs.

Speaker 1 You do that with a counselor that gets into your all's life and they go through your underwear drawer and they know what's really going on and not a three-minute discussion with me or John. And

Speaker 1 we would never tell you unless you're being abused to end something on the radio or on a podcast. But we will tell you that you're heading that way.
Maybe more than you realize, Chloe.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that's the thing. And I feel like

Speaker 3 you're in the dark and Dave and I are looking at the flashing red lights.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 3 your marriage is in a lot of trouble. And I think it's about going to see somebody ASAP.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I hate that for you.

Speaker 3 Dave,

Speaker 3 it seems to have cropped up over the last two years. And

Speaker 3 I'll say it's just flat out ignorance on my part. Just the men I run with, even the goofballs I run with, right?

Speaker 3 None of them would look at their wives and say, I ain't doing that. I just don't know those men, but it seems to have cropped up more and more and more and more.

Speaker 1 I think they're males.

Speaker 1 Oh, I like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't think they're men. I think there's a responsibility you got, man.

Speaker 3 When you take somebody's hand and you say, I do, till death do his part.

Speaker 3 You have opted in. You don't have the obligation to wait for the cool new deal.
You got to go get it done for your family.

Speaker 1 Period. Inner story.
And you can self-actualize later.

Speaker 3 That's a later problem, right?

Speaker 1 This is The Ramsey Show.

Speaker 1 Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage.
Jason and Marissa are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? We're doing great.

Speaker 1 We're doing great. How are you?

Speaker 1 Good to have you all. Welcome.
Where do you live? Cheyenne, Wyoming. Love it.
Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you two paid off? $233,585.
Love it. Way to go.

Speaker 1 And how long did that take you? Six years, one month. Good for you.
And your range of income during that time? $59,000 to $114,000. Wow.

Speaker 1 I'm going to guess and say some of that $234 was your mortgage. All of it was the mortgage.
All of it was the mortgage. And this is why you have the We Are Weird People t-shirt on.

Speaker 1 Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Way to go, man.

Speaker 1 Congratulations. So, what's what's this house worth?

Speaker 1 About

Speaker 1 $320,000. Very cool.
And it's 100% yours. Correct.
And how old are you two? I am 43, and she's 33. Excellent.
Wow.

Speaker 1 You have a paid-for-320,000 house in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is a nice house, by the way.

Speaker 1 That's a big place in Cheyenne. You can get a lot for $320,000 there compared to other places, you know? Excellent.
Very cool. So,

Speaker 1 wow, way to go, you guys. How much in your nest eggs, in your 401ks of stuff? 600,000.
So you're bumping up on Baby Step Millionaire already? Yeah. Correct.
Wow. Look at you guys.
So proud of you.

Speaker 1 Way to go, you guys. Well, tell us your story.
How did you get started on all this and how did you meet the Ramsey thing? Sure. So I actually started,

Speaker 1 well, years before even buying a house.

Speaker 1 I had just bought in a car in 2016, and I kind of sat down and did the numbers, and I'm like, and at that point, I didn't have Michelle

Speaker 1 with me and I wanted to pay for her college.

Speaker 1 I didn't have a house and after doing all the numbers I'm like this doesn't work, you know. So

Speaker 1 I went in instead of googling how to get out of debt because most of the time the um the results were how to lower your interest rate and I knew the interest rate wasn't the issue, it was the principal.

Speaker 1 Um and so instead I looked for podcasts. You were the second podcast, and that's how I got into listening to you.
Very cool. Very cool.

Speaker 1 Michelle, that you're referring to, is your daughter sitting off the side. We'll bring her up in a minute.
And when did you marry Marissa?

Speaker 1 June 2021. 2021.
Okay. July 2021.

Speaker 1 Yeah, get that right, dude. My birthday is in June.

Speaker 1 The whole summer's yours. We got it.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Good for you. Hey, way to go, guys.
So you, when you're getting married, you join in on this, we're getting out of debt thing. You have to.
Is that the rule? Well, no.

Speaker 4 So I came from a family where we were debt-free. My mom was a huge saver.
I'm a huge saver. I'm right now.
I'm having to teach myself how to spend money. So I came from that kind of family.

Speaker 4 So when he talks about Dave Ramsey,

Speaker 4 I've heard of you.

Speaker 4 I knew a little bit, but not a ton. So it was more coming in and listening and hearing all the details.
But oh, yeah, I was like, no problem, we can do this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, knock it out. Knock it out.
We can be millionaires by the time I'm 33. Oh, yeah.
No problem.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Way to go.
Way to go, you guys.

Speaker 3 What was your

Speaker 3 biggest fight about money in your first couple of years of getting married?

Speaker 1 Did we have one?

Speaker 4 I was going to say, like, money was never an issue.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because, like I said, I'm a huge spender. I am.

Speaker 1 You're a huge saver.

Speaker 4 I'm a saver. Yeah, I'm sorry, a huge saver.
And I guess I'm a little bit of a free spirit, spirit, but I kind of keep that really in rain because I end up saving so much.

Speaker 4 And Jason's just always been about the budget and the numbers guy. So he always kept himself in rain because he did all the numbers.
He could see what he could spend and what he couldn't.

Speaker 3 So you're one of those extra weird people that listened to a few episodes of the Ramsey Show and you just kept saying, well, duh.

Speaker 1 Well, duh.

Speaker 1 Well, duh.

Speaker 3 This guy's a show telling people what my grandma told me. Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's amazing.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 The only thing that my parents didn't do is they didn't necessarily pay off their house.

Speaker 4 So I will say that even coming from my side of the family, like, absolutely, this is the first time for the family is getting a house paid off early.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I do have to add that we only met because of you, Dave.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I'm known for matching my dad Dave. What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 Sure. The Dave Love Connection After Dark.
That's a great podcast.

Speaker 1 That's a new podcast we've got coming out next month.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 3 the year that you did the

Speaker 1 book every month. Oh, yeah.
Book club.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I had. You were one of the 14 people that did it.
Correct, yes. Okay.

Speaker 3 Two of the 14.

Speaker 1 She didn't do it.

Speaker 4 Sorry, no, I didn't do it.

Speaker 1 The very first book was Boundaries. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Dr. Henry Cloud, yeah.
Correct. And your stuff was based off of biblical principles.
His book was based off of biblical principles. And so because of that, I started following Jesus.

Speaker 1 And that's where I met her.

Speaker 4 We met in Bible study.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 No more making fun of this. This is great.
Thank you. This is awesome.

Speaker 1 I stand corrected. I'm honored to be part of that story.
Thank you. Very cool.
Very cool. Good job, you guys.
What do you tell people? What's the first big thing you're going to do?

Speaker 1 You're almost millionaires in your debt-free house and everything. What are you you going to do? Celebrate.
Come on, you two.

Speaker 3 I just saw you side-eye her. What are you holding back on?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I want to be holding back. So, actually, okay, so here's the thing.

Speaker 4 We just did my first time of flying. I've never flown before.
Oh, wow. And so coming out here, we didn't want to take like a ton of vacation time.
So I flew for the first time.

Speaker 4 So that was a big deal for me.

Speaker 1 How'd you do?

Speaker 4 It actually was fine. Were your arms tired?

Speaker 4 It wasn't that bad. The first flight had a little bit more bumpiness than the second one, but it was good.

Speaker 1 After 5,000 of them, you'll get used to it, I promise. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow. So where are you going now? Now that you can fly and you know you can.
Yes, right, exactly. You could go anywhere.
Where do you want to go? I want to cruise. I want to cruise.

Speaker 4 Yes. I've been on one before.
We went on one during that honeymoon time frame.

Speaker 4 And I just, I love it.

Speaker 4 We were getting off the ship and I was like, now we have to go forge for our food.

Speaker 4 Because that's what it feels like.

Speaker 1 After having food in front of you 24-7, yeah.

Speaker 1 Way to go. I love it.
Well, very cool. All right.
Next question.

Speaker 1 What do you tell people the key to not only being debt-free house and everything, but now almost being millionaires in your 30s and early 40s? What's the key to it?

Speaker 1 What are the things they need to do?

Speaker 1 For me, it was about behavior.

Speaker 1 I knew quite a bit of stuff, even in my teens. I knew about IRAs and 401ks,

Speaker 1 but I didn't follow it so you know it wasn't until I started listening to you and was like okay yeah I need to follow this

Speaker 4 yeah that things changed absolutely and because sometimes we just have to tell ourselves actually more than sometimes we have to tell ourselves no

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 so being content yeah absolutely very cool well good for y'all I'm proud of you very well done all right let's bring Michelle up how old is Michelle now she's 16 16 and dad's planning for college.

Speaker 1 She's happy about this, I guess.

Speaker 1 He's planning for it, pay for it anyway. I hope you guys pretty good, yeah.
Very cool.

Speaker 1 All right, it's Jason, Marissa, Michelle, Cheyenne, Wyoming, $234,000 paid off, almost on the house worth, $320,000. House and everything that it in six years and one month, making $59,000 to $114.

Speaker 1 Baby Steps Millionaires are almost right at that. Count it down.
Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Speaker 1 Three, two, one.

Speaker 1 We're debt-free!

Speaker 1 Yeah!

Speaker 1 Woo-hoo-hoo!

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you're tuning into this show for the first time and you don't know what you've joined, that's called a debt-free scream.

Speaker 1 That's what it sounds like from the bottom of your toes when you have no payments anywhere of any kind.

Speaker 1 No student loan that's been around so long you think it's a pet. No master card.
No American distress. No mortgage, which is French for death pledge.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 1 That's crazy. These people are free.
That's what it sounds like. You ought to try it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you.

Speaker 1 This is the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 1 Guys, John and I just signed up to do something we're really freaking excited about. This is going to be so fun.
We just launched a brand new tour. Dave Ramsey, Dr.
John Deloney.

Speaker 1 We're hitting the road, coming to a city near you, the Money and Relationships Tour. We're putting a new twist on these live events where you shape the conversation each night.

Speaker 1 It's going to be a little different than me just getting on stage and yakking at you. John and I are going to be on stage the whole time talking and talking at each other and even talking with you.

Speaker 1 It's going to be pretty cool. You select the topics that matter most to you, wherever it is, in the money piece or in the relationships piece or wherever.

Speaker 1 Achieving your financial goals, your voice is going to drive the night.

Speaker 1 Louisville, April 21, Durham, April 23, Atlanta, April 25, Phoenix, May 5th, Fort Worth, May 7th, and Kansas City will wrap us up on May 9th.

Speaker 1 You can join us live in person on the stage that night. You'll laugh, you'll learn, you'll get your questions, and you'll change your life.
You can get your tickets at ramseysolutions.com slash tour.

Speaker 1 And if you're tuning in on YouTube or podcast, click the link in the show notes. John, that's going to be fun.
Yeah, I can't wait. It's going to be a blast.

Speaker 1 I'm just, we've been talking about the content and pieces that we can put out for you guys to select from.

Speaker 1 And so, I mean, visualize like we're going to do seven or eight bits, and you've got like 30-something to vote on before the show starts that night. And we'll figure out which ones we're going to do.

Speaker 1 And that's pretty cool. Almost like doing the show here, because we actually never know what you guys are going to call and ask us on the show.
We just sit down. The show prep here is not any.

Speaker 1 We just sit down and start answering the phone, and we have no freaking idea what you people are going to call about.

Speaker 1 So that's kind of a little bit that way on this thing, except that we're going to narrow it down to about 30-something possibilities so that it stays in the, you know, between the lines and all that stuff.

Speaker 3 Well, and there's nothing worse than going to see a band play, and they don't play all the songs they want to play. And you go home, you're like, man, I was hoping they'd play these five songs.

Speaker 3 And so we're coming out, and you get to decide what songs are.

Speaker 1 Here's the catalog. That's right.
You pick. I can't wait.
That's a good way of looking at it. Chris is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Hi, Chris. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 2 Hi, Dave. Hi, John.

Speaker 1 How can we help you?

Speaker 2 So we lost my father-in-law about April of last year.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I didn't think I was going to get emotional about it, but

Speaker 2 it's been a long, kind of just struggling year with my mother-in-law trying to get her together and it's just and keep my wife together. She's an only child.

Speaker 2 So it just kind of fell onto us or me. And

Speaker 2 I'm just my father-in-law left her set up pretty good.

Speaker 2 You know, a couple million dollars in assets and

Speaker 2 in

Speaker 2 investments and then, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars in assets.

Speaker 1 And I'm sorry, a couple million in assets or a few hundred thousand in assets. I got lost.

Speaker 2 A couple million in like

Speaker 2 in like investments and stuff in IRAs and 401ks.

Speaker 1 How old is she?

Speaker 2 And then she's 65.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
I got you.

Speaker 2 So, and he, they were already collecting Social Security and they were in a pretty good spot before he passed away. And I don't know.
I just,

Speaker 2 he was trying to keep this stuff growing.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 at this point, I just,

Speaker 2 it hasn't stopped. I'm still checking in on it for from time to time.
And it's going through one of the big investment companies.

Speaker 1 What are you worried about, brother? How can we help?

Speaker 2 Well, it's not even, I just don't know how to reassure her that she is fine and taken care of and

Speaker 2 how to

Speaker 2 keep her from just driving it off the cliff, really.

Speaker 3 I mean, how long were they married?

Speaker 2 44 years. It would have been 44 years.
They were married to her.

Speaker 1 What do you think? She's going to drive it off the cliff.

Speaker 2 Dad kind of

Speaker 2 did everything.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 not bad habits or bad character, just lack of knowledge.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right, good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that's really what it is.
Dad did everything.

Speaker 1 Dad made sure. Okay, I don't want you to take the place of dad.

Speaker 1 This woman is 65 years old. It's time for her to grow up.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's harsh, but she should have grown up before he died.

Speaker 1 Right. My wife knows what my stuff is, our stuff is, and she knows exactly what to do.
And she's not some clueless babe in the woods.

Speaker 1 And when I die, she's going to have a clue. That's part of our estate plan is her knowing what to do when I die.

Speaker 1 And so now what we've got to do is play catch-up in that area. He did a great job providing the nest egg.
He did a lousy job involving her and letting her have a level of competence and confidence.

Speaker 1 So we've got a little catching up to do. Now,

Speaker 1 does the big firm that it's with have an advisor that you all are talking to? Or is this some internet crap?

Speaker 2 No, no, no. It was, yeah,

Speaker 2 we have an advisor.

Speaker 1 Does the advisor have the heart of a teacher?

Speaker 1 Or is he or she a snot?

Speaker 2 No, actually, she's been, she's dealt with her with, I think, kind of kid gloves.

Speaker 1 Okay, I want her to teach her.

Speaker 1 I want her to sit down and show her what these investments are, how they work, and why with $2 million she's more than okay.

Speaker 1 Right. I want the advisor to teach her that.
If she can't or won't get a new advisor.

Speaker 1 Okay. Because the advisor's job is not to handle this for her.
Your job is not to handle this for her.

Speaker 1 Your job, her job is to make sure that this lady gets peace at night when she lays her head on the pillow because she understands that she's okay, because she understands her investments, not because her son-in-law said so.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 There's no peace in Dave Ramsey said so. There's no peace in Chris said so.
Peace is, I know what the flip's going on. I get this.
I got $2 million. That should generate $200,000 a year in income.

Speaker 1 I'm okay.

Speaker 2 Right. Well, and like this year, I looked at it.
Her projected forecast is like 60,000, and she's sitting on probably close to 200, just sitting liquid in the bank.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she's fine.

Speaker 1 She's fine. She's okay.

Speaker 1 Nothing to worry about here. But she does need to get the advisor's job is not kid gloves.
It's to be kind, compassionate. She lost her husband in April of 44 years.
I'm not driving past that.

Speaker 1 I'm not being harsh, but I am saying the advisor's job is not to continue

Speaker 1 this person's inability, your mother-in-law's inability to know what's going on. She needs to know what's going on for her sake.
She'll feel better when she knows what's going on.

Speaker 1 It's like someone gave her the keys to the car and put her behind the seat and said, drive, and she doesn't know what she's doing. It scares you to death.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I mean, it kind of scares us to death, too, because, like I said, we're up here in Pennsylvania and she's down in Texas.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Is she willing to relocate or is that just where is that home? Is that where her friends and family and rest of her family is?

Speaker 2 It's home. I mean, she says yes, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 You got kids?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I have a daughter.

Speaker 1 Okay. That's a draw card.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 And here's something.

Speaker 3 So a lot of times people get stuck and it's hard to metabolize a loss. Like, right? She lost a lung.
She lost a part of her heart. She lost an arm and a leg.
Like, she lost a part of herself, right?

Speaker 3 Right. That's half a century.

Speaker 3 A cool gift you can give her, and this is going to sound weird, but next time y'all are together over the holidays or having a cup of coffee or even a phone call, I would love for you to say, I would love for you, mother-in-law, if we could have a couple of conversations.

Speaker 3 The way your husband left you is inspirational to me, and I want to take care of

Speaker 3 your daughter, my wife, the way you were taken care of. Will you tell me some of the things he did? Will you tell me about him? Some stories I don't know.

Speaker 3 And here's what you're going to give her and you. Y'all are both going to get the gift of metabolizing this loss by telling stories.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And in those stories are the lessons. And as she talks about it, it will slowly move to past tense.
And it will slowly move to exhale.

Speaker 3 I'm okay. Right.
I got to learn how to play.

Speaker 2 Some of this I can see is fear.

Speaker 1 Of course it is. Because he did.

Speaker 2 He did so much for her.

Speaker 3 That's right. And every day she wakes up.

Speaker 2 A lot of it is she blames on the way she was raised well she's got to move past that

Speaker 1 when you're 65 that one doesn't work yeah yeah we're past that works when you're 25 that's right yeah call her and say hey i want to learn i want to learn about him because i want to take care of of your daughter the same way he took care of you when you tell me some stories yeah and stay with that advisor if they've got the heart of a teacher if they don't move it

Speaker 1 And to get somebody that says, honey, this is how it works. You're fine.
Now tell me back how it works. This is how it works.
You're fine. Now tell me back how it works.

Speaker 1 Sometimes you have to explain it like five times when you're a teacher. Like I've been doing that for 30 years here on the radio over and over.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's how it works when you're teaching. This is the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 1 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. Dr.

Speaker 1 John Deloney, PhD in counseling, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Networks.
He's my co-host. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Speaker 1 That's 888-825-5225.

Speaker 1 All right. Dylan is with us in Seattle.
Hi, Dylan. How are you?

Speaker 2 I'm doing good.

Speaker 1 Good. How can we help?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I'm having an issue with like relationship-wise and also my financial stresses.

Speaker 2 My girlfriend has an overspender, and we're also having some relationship issues, and just trying to figure out exactly the best way to go about it.

Speaker 1 Go about what?

Speaker 2 Just go about like

Speaker 2 whether or not like exactly how to,

Speaker 2 trying to think of the name.

Speaker 2 Sorry, trying to figure it out.

Speaker 2 How to go about talking to her about the financial stuff and whether or not she'll go with it.

Speaker 1 What kind of relationship issue?

Speaker 2 What do you mean?

Speaker 1 You said we're having relationship issues.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so she she's gone about like cheating and stuff like that. And I've sticked with her for a little bit of a time still.
And I have a da I have a daughter with her and a stepson.

Speaker 2 However, I'm not really a,

Speaker 2 I don't want to leave her, if that is the right way to say it, because I don't want the financial stresses on her and for that poor son of hers.

Speaker 3 Man, you got yourself all twisted up here, brother.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 She's making choices about her life and her son that she had with another father.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 Right now, you are, you are.

Speaker 1 You drove by, she's cheating on me like you went through the drive-through at Burger King.

Speaker 1 She's cheating on me as a full stop, dude. That's like,

Speaker 1 stop.

Speaker 1 Overspending, and I want to work it out, and I'm worried about her kid eating.

Speaker 1 Those are way down the road of thinking things I'm worried about once we got past the other thing.

Speaker 1 Got it. Did I miss something? I mean, are you just having, is you just nervous on the radio? But I mean.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, I'm a little nervous on the radio, too. It's my first time being on the radio.

Speaker 1 That's okay.

Speaker 1 We're not going to kill you. I just went.
Okay, there's a whole bunch of different stuff here. So her feeding her son.
Now, your daughter is a different issue. That's your job.
Okay.

Speaker 1 You took that on when you made the baby. Ding, ding.
That's how that works. Okay.

Speaker 1 You didn't take on cheating girlfriend for life because you didn't marry her.

Speaker 1 And you certainly didn't take on her kid for life because you didn't marry her. You can care about them, but that's different than you having a moral, ethical responsibility for

Speaker 1 their well-being.

Speaker 1 The well-being and moral and ethical responsibility you have in this whole conversation is one daughter. That's it.

Speaker 1 Am I missing something, John?

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 I'm still a little bit speechless on how you rattled this thing out.

Speaker 3 Like, what am I missing here, brother?

Speaker 2 So, I

Speaker 2 I left her for the first

Speaker 2 once already to go to Texas. I live in Washington.

Speaker 2 That way I can pursue a diving career.

Speaker 3 Did you leave your daughter in Washington?

Speaker 2 I did. Don't do that.

Speaker 1 I understand. And I...

Speaker 2 I resented it, and she followed me over to Texas.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And we lived over in my mom's house for a little bit. I was paying off my debts.
And she,

Speaker 2 what was it called?

Speaker 2 I went up for four months

Speaker 2 on a diving boat to repair type stuff and saved about $10,000.

Speaker 2 And I was paying off a lot of debts and stuff. And then

Speaker 2 having a bunch of issues with my family-in-law.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 1 And you don't have a family-in-law. Yeah.
You're not married. My family.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 as I was diving, I had a horrible accident, come back, and I found out she was cheating.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 You made 10 grand over four months?

Speaker 2 No, it was that's whipped pain off all my if I had a wait a minute.

Speaker 1 I'm a diver. What was the nature of your horrible accident?

Speaker 2 Commercial diving.

Speaker 1 I know. What did you, what, what did you hurt? Did you get the bins?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I got the bins. It was

Speaker 2 type one illness.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Um

Speaker 1 have you ma did it mess up brain function?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 It was just really my ears um at this current moment. Okay.
Having some massive ear issues.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You're probably done with that sport, huh?

Speaker 3 Done with that career. Are you back to work? Are you working somewhere else now?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm working back with my um company that I used to work for uh in Washington where I would do Christmas lights and um soft washing on roots and stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're not going down more in an atmosphere again, probably. Okay.

Speaker 1 How old are you?

Speaker 2 I'm 24.

Speaker 1 How old is she?

Speaker 1 Almost 30. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. And where's your family, hon?

Speaker 2 My family is in Texas, so I don't have anyone over here in Washington.

Speaker 3 Is she back in Washington in your area, too?

Speaker 2 Yes, we're both back in Washington.

Speaker 2 When I had all that stuff saved,

Speaker 2 and my family actually kicked everyone out of the house because she did not like the way my girlfriend was saving up money, and she was just not spending, or she was just spending everything and not saving money.

Speaker 1 All right, so here's what I want you to do.

Speaker 3 I want you to get your priorities in the right order.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 Priority number one is you and your daughter need to have a safe place to live.

Speaker 3 And what I mean by safe is a secure place with food, with shelter, with utilities.

Speaker 1 Okay?

Speaker 1 Yes, I have all that right.

Speaker 3 I want you to have stable work. Yeah.
Then I want you to go down and be very clear about next steps on your romantic relationship.

Speaker 3 This woman's 30.

Speaker 3 Got two kids, two different dads. She's running around on you again.
Hopefully she stopped that nonsense when y'all are back together in Washington. But I want y'all to start being adults.

Speaker 3 You're not dating. I mean, you're not high schoolers dating.
Y'all are adults having adult conversations. I mean, adult relationships.
You made a kid.

Speaker 3 You're going to mess around and make another kid.

Speaker 3 And you're putting everybody at risk. And then, as a part of dealing with what our relationship is going to look like, here's my boundaries.

Speaker 3 Here's what must be true for me to remain in a relationship with you. And that's going to require you standing up on two feet and saying, I'm the father of this young daughter.

Speaker 3 And as for me and my house, this is what this is going to look like if you want to be a part of our house. You're not going to cheat anymore.
We're going to go to premarital counseling.

Speaker 3 Here's what it's going to look like to spend money. You see what I'm saying? I want you to get very clear.
You're trying to just kind of lukewarm everything.

Speaker 3 And it's all just feeling like old wet oatmeal. Do you get what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's almost like

Speaker 1 this is just blowing in the wind. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you're going to have to stand up and go, okay. Enough.
I don't do this. Correct.

Speaker 1 This I don't do. If you do this, you don't get to be here.
Yeah. Period.

Speaker 1 Ever again.

Speaker 1 Or if you want to just say, you did this, so you don't get to be here. That'd be okay too, which is kind of where I would be.
But you do whatever you want to do. I'm kind of pretty cold on that stuff.

Speaker 1 This is the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 1 Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co-host today.
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Speaker 1 And you've got a whole fresh start on this thing if you got a defaulted private student loan. Go to yrefi.com slash Ramsey.
That's the letter Y R E F Y.com slash Ramsey. Might not be in all states.

Speaker 3 All right, today's question comes from Meredith in Virginia. Meredith writes, My husband and I started following your baby steps this year.

Speaker 3 Now that we are budgeting, it's clear that a lot of our money is going towards my husband's alcohol purchases. He enjoys collecting bourbon and spends $75 a week on his hobby.

Speaker 3 Okay, you're not following the baby steps. We really need that money to get out of debt.
I'm embarrassed and frustrated that he is spending our hard-earned money on this unnecessarily.

Speaker 3 He's defensive and says he doesn't spend money on anything else, so I shouldn't complain. I don't know how to get through to him.

Speaker 1 Whew.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 when you are working your get out of debt plan,

Speaker 1 you put your hobbies on hold.

Speaker 1 That might include your $75 a week for nails and facials

Speaker 1 and hair care

Speaker 1 and eating out

Speaker 1 and him buying a bottle of bourbon. But I have a bourbon collection.

Speaker 1 I can afford it, though, and I'm not in debt.

Speaker 3 Do you have a collection or do you have a museum?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 yeah. And the,

Speaker 1 this is not about me, John. But the

Speaker 1 deal is this. So I'm not against the idea.
I do read in this language, Meredith, that you have a problem with this that's beyond money. Absolutely.
The language you're using. Yes.

Speaker 3 And it's a very generous we.

Speaker 3 We are following your baby's steps. We are budget.

Speaker 1 We're not.

Speaker 3 We are not. And I think you want this

Speaker 3 relationship to be something that your husband does not care it to be. And that's underneath all this mess, and y'all need to sit down and have that conversation.

Speaker 1 And I kind of think she doesn't want him to have the bourbon, too. I think there's something going on there.
And that's okay, too. That's a fair discussion to have.

Speaker 1 If, you know, like your dad was an alcoholic and I don't want bourbon in my house, that's something that's a, that's nothing unfair to have that discussion.

Speaker 1 But we don't have to use the baby steps as a weapon to have that discussion. That's a different discussion.

Speaker 1 So discussion number one is, you know, I got a problem with bourbon or I I got a problem with you collecting bourbon, or I've got a problem with that much alcohol in our house. I don't get it.

Speaker 1 I don't understand. That's fine.
That's discussion number one. Discussion number two is putting your hobby, whatever it is, on pause, which we're 100% down with.
And some of the most manly

Speaker 1 things I've seen men do in the early days of teaching Financial Peace University, I had one old guy, serious country boy, and he had a huge, fabulous, oh, God, my mouth waters thinking about it, collection he had these custom knives from all over the world I mean this this was a knife collection he took his knife collection and I can still see he was a great big old guy and his little wife was like five foot one tiny little thing and I can see her

Speaker 1 crying in

Speaker 1 how

Speaker 1 happy tears of what her husband had sold this knife collection for $23,000. Whoa.
It was a lot. I mean, it was a very nice.

Speaker 1 And this is like this kid got selling one of his kids, as far as he was concerned.

Speaker 1 But he put, what that said was to her, is I put you and our future and the future of our kids ahead of me, my wants, my hobby.

Speaker 1 I've seen guys do that with their gun collection. And let me tell you, Redneck sells our guns.
It's a big deal. Okay.
That's like, that's a big deal. And that's what this is for this guy.
Right.

Speaker 1 Here, probably.

Speaker 1 Because guys that get, and I'm buy and sell and fool around in that world a little bit and guys that get into this it's not because they're an alcoholic it's just that they enjoy the process of collecting and tasting and whatever with bourbon there's nothing evil about that in my mind anyway

Speaker 1 but what you don't want to do is put this in front of the good of your family and that's how she's couching this I'm suspicious with the wording she's using and the spaces between the words.

Speaker 1 I'm seeing things there. But either way, he should stop

Speaker 1 until we get on the same page on this. And so my wife has a fairly generous

Speaker 1 purse collection that is somewhat one-for-one with my gun collection. Is it retribution?

Speaker 1 It's like a one-off. You know, you get one, I get one.
But I don't care. It's fine.
We got the money. That's not, it's a non-issue.
It's something we do for fun.

Speaker 1 These people are trying to get out of debt, trying to get their head above water. You don't do this stuff when you're in that.
So he needs to stop this, to her point.

Speaker 1 But I also think she needs to figure out what's really bothering her here.

Speaker 3 And Dave,

Speaker 3 it's a thing that sets me off a little bit.

Speaker 3 When somebody, when either spouse sits down and says, hey,

Speaker 3 this thing is a big deal to me, and they are shut down by the other spouse with, hey, you shouldn't complain.

Speaker 3 I don't like that language, Dave. It just, it pisses me off.

Speaker 3 If you feel in your heart that, hey, my spouse is complaining about something they shouldn't complain about, y'all need to go see a counselor.

Speaker 3 But either you have a whiny, complainy, bratty spouse, and y'all need to go talk to a professional about that, or you're acting like a baby. And your response is to say, you shouldn't complain.

Speaker 3 It's like, I'm going to take my ball and go home. Your marriage is on thin ice if you start running around like that.
So go talk to somebody who can help mediate that because you guys got a mess.

Speaker 3 But you're right, Dave. There's something underneath here.
Either he's struggling with alcohol. She doesn't want this nonsense in her house.

Speaker 3 Or this hobby, if you will, is a proxy for she is trying to drag this marriage, kicking the screen into something that he could care less.

Speaker 3 He's going to sit on the couch, play his video games, and collect his thing, and she don't need to complain about it because he earns the money around here. And I just hate that attitude.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing, though, folks, in general, okay? $75 a week for

Speaker 1 anything, give it a name, that's not necessary for the operation of the family, that's only $300 a month. Does that really keep you from getting out of debt and becoming successful?

Speaker 1 No, it does not, mathematically. What it does is it signals everyone everyone in your universe, your wife, your kids, your boss, that you're not serious.

Speaker 1 But when you say everything stops,

Speaker 1 all the altars I am worshiping at, all the things that I claim are important are not as important as the future of our family. We are getting out of debt.
We're going to build some wealth.

Speaker 1 We're going to have an emergency fund cushion. Come hell or high water.

Speaker 1 You know, you can't do,

Speaker 1 you know, I get my massage every week. You can't, my chiropractor visit.
Okay, shut up.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 You know, we've had people cut their own hair, which is not an issue for me.

Speaker 3 You were so serious, yours just fell out.

Speaker 1 There you go. That's how serious you got about it now.
Yeah, I just took care of it. That's right.
You held your nose real hard and blew and it fell out.

Speaker 1 That's gross. That was pretty gross.

Speaker 3 That's bad. You do something about paychecks.

Speaker 1 I apologize.

Speaker 1 So, but I mean, yeah, you you do you put you do whatever it takes man these little because they're they're representative of where your heart is yeah where your heart is your treasure is also and it can be flipped right so someone can sit across the table and say dude this is 300 bucks relax and somebody across the table says oh our family's not even worth 300 right yeah it can just it it's it's a yin yang it just keeps going in a circle just it's a signal it's a signal flare that says i'm not in i'm not in i'm not i'm not gonna go all in i'm not gonna leave it all on the field.

Speaker 1 And you don't send that signal into heaven and you don't send that signal into your relationships and into your career and get anything positive back.

Speaker 1 You don't hire people who, like, hey, when you send a signal that says I'm all in, and you know, nothing's going to stop me, you know what? Nothing stops you. That's right.
And it's not the 300 bucks.

Speaker 1 It's the signal. That's the problem.
And so, and this is raising up something else. That's going on here too.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I wish you the best, Meredith.

Speaker 3 But I think it's time to sit down like Dave was saying and have the true real conversation that needs to be had here and um if it can't be had then it's time to go get a marriage counselor yeah definitely definitely because the alarm bells are ringing on this one that's why we're doing the relationship and money tour together because they go together all the time all these questions are intermingled this is the ramsey show

Speaker 1 Guys, you are well aware that I have no love for Bank of America and Fifth Third and the other big national banks, Chase and all that.

Speaker 1 You're just a number there and you're going to get screwed if you're the customer. And I tell you not to go there.
I've told you that for 20 years.

Speaker 1 They don't give a crap. They really don't.
So I've told you for years, do business with a great small local bank, regional bank, or a good credit union. I've told you this for a long, long time.

Speaker 1 I love it. Love credit unions.
And we've started endorsing Fairwinds credit union. This is the first national endorsement we've offered to a credit union and we're really, really excited about that.

Speaker 1 If you don't know, credit unions are not for profit so any profit that is made is returned in the form of cheaper cost to the customer because the members are the customers.

Speaker 1 The owners are the customers. And so a lower cost checking account, a higher interest rate on your savings, that's where the profits go instead of into some stockholders pocket somewhere.

Speaker 1 And they've created a combined checking and savings account bundle just for Ramsey fans. You can join fairwinds.org slash Ramsey.
F-A-I-R-W-I-N-D-S dot org slash Ramsey. All right.

Speaker 1 We're talking with Nevin and Maisie. Hi, guys.
How are you? Good. Good.
On the debt-free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. Where do you live?

Speaker 5 Iowa City, Iowa.

Speaker 1 Love it. Welcome to Nashville.
And how much debt have you two paid off?

Speaker 5 $62,000.

Speaker 1 Good for you. And how long did that take?

Speaker 5 11 months.

Speaker 1 Good for you. And your range of income during that time?

Speaker 5 $90,000 to $140,000.

Speaker 1 Cool. What do y'all do for a living?

Speaker 5 I work in research administration.

Speaker 1 And I do heating and air. Very cool.
Good for you guys.

Speaker 5 And then we also press wedding flowers. We have a side hustle.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's fun. Doing prepaid restoration.

Speaker 3 I don't even know what that means. What does that mean?

Speaker 5 We press wedding flowers in frames for people who get married.

Speaker 1 After you get married,

Speaker 1 you take your bouquet and keep it forever because it's pressed, right? Right. Yep.
That's amazing. Yeah.
It's very cool.

Speaker 3 So we do that together.

Speaker 1 It's amazing that I knew that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, that may be the most impressive thing about you today, Dave. That was kind of cool.

Speaker 1 It's a great, great side hustle, you guys. What kind of debt was the $62,000?

Speaker 5 A HELOC and a car loan.

Speaker 1 All right. How long have you two been married?

Speaker 5 Three years. Three years, yeah.

Speaker 1 A little over three years. Okay, so two years into the marriage, you look up a year ago and said, this sucks.
I don't like Helox and car loans. I want out.

Speaker 1 Tell me what happened and how you got in touch with us.

Speaker 5 We found out we were expecting, and we still had our finances mostly separate.

Speaker 1 And I,

Speaker 5 you know, dealt with most of the finances. And I was like, I don't know how we're going to do this, not having our money combined.
So it started with us combining our finances, starting a budget.

Speaker 5 And once I started a budget, you know how social media gives you an algorithm that pumps out all of these.

Speaker 1 Your phone is literally the show.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 5 So we found some clips from the Dave Ramsey show, and I kind of got hooked. We both kind of got hooked.

Speaker 5 And from there,

Speaker 5 the first month, I think we were ish, and then we figured out how much we could do. And then we really just went gazelle intense.

Speaker 1 And once you start to believe, you can turn it on, right? Right. I mean, it could, head come, we can do this.
Boom.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and once I learned more about a HELOC, I was like, well, how, what did we just do? We just put our house on the line for what?

Speaker 1 We actually bought a boat with it.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 yeah. I had to have my fishing boat.

Speaker 1 What happened? Did you keep the boat and pay off the HELOC or sold the boat?

Speaker 5 We paid off the HELOC. Spring came around and we sold the boat.
Both.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Yep.
Okay. Tough decision.
That's what we were just talking about earlier.

Speaker 3 Like, what a signal you sent to her and to that little one. Like, I'm all in.
I'm selling the boat. Yep.

Speaker 1 Good for you, man. That's exactly the thing I'm talking about.
That's a hard decision because I'm sure it was a sweet boat. It was a sweet boat.

Speaker 5 He drove all the way down to Georgia to get it.

Speaker 1 What kind of boat was it? It was a Crestliner 1650 Fish Hawk. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Walkthrough. God.
It was a

Speaker 1 beast.

Speaker 3 Maisie, if you ever wondered, does he love me? He loves

Speaker 1 you. You have no idea how much this man loves you.
Wow. I mean, like, walkthrough when she'll loves you.
I mean, that's real love. Wow.
Wow. Very cool.
I'm proud of you guys. Congratulations.

Speaker 1 Thank you. And so you got a new baby.
Life is ahead of you. Everything's paid off but the house.
Here we go, game on. Now we can do anything.
Right. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 So when you were started listening to this and you started putting it down, you remember what happened, like what it was that made you believe you could do it?

Speaker 1 Like you had that moment, like, we can do this.

Speaker 1 This is not just a theory.

Speaker 1 We're going to do it.

Speaker 5 I think I just saw,

Speaker 5 you know, when our money was finally like lumped together and what was actually coming in every month,

Speaker 5 I saw that extra room.

Speaker 1 We're not a budget. Yeah, where's it all going?

Speaker 5 And we started actually looking at where it was going. And we started like cutting like TV.
We cut YouTube TV and we cut all these other things.

Speaker 5 And finally, like in three months, we paid off like $15,000. And we were like, how, we can do so much more than this.

Speaker 1 So yeah, we just started living more frugal. Yep.
You know, didn't go out to eat. You know, just but our life is so abundant even though we don't have a lot of people.

Speaker 3 I'm interested in that because it's hard on when you're on one side of this fence. Like we go out to eat, we do all these things, we have these monthly whatevers.

Speaker 3 It's hard to believe that you will smile and still like each other and have a good marriage. On the other side of this, y'all are both smiling.
Like, tell me about that.

Speaker 1 We just love spending quality time together and with our son. And we have two dogs, Daisy and Ginger.
And it just seems like time flies by so fast.

Speaker 5 We just started realizing how much fun we could have doing things that didn't cost money um yeah like taking him to parks and yeah he jumped into my floral pressing business and it kind of he became something that we do for fun and i don't know it puts a price tag on our free time but it's also enjoyable yeah we sit at the kitchen table and drink tea and coffee and and chit chat and press flowers and it's just beautiful thing yeah you tell your buddies that you're a plumbing department that you're like guys this weekend i was pressing flowers just having tea

Speaker 1 chit-chatting

Speaker 1 I'm like your biggest fan because she's the artist and I'm like the laborer.

Speaker 1 So like I tell people all the time, like, hey, look at what my wife does, and she's very talented, and I'm just proud to be a part of that.

Speaker 3 Maisie, listen to me. I work with unmarriable men.
That's what I do.

Speaker 1 And this guy is amazing. He's amazing.
You got a price.

Speaker 3 He is. Amazing.
Well done, dude. Hey, you're setting the bar for all of us, for real.
Like, you go out there and you work a hard job

Speaker 3 you work really hard and you get dirty and you help families and then you come home and you look in the eyes of this wonderful woman and you have coffee and you

Speaker 1 can put it on a whole nother level.

Speaker 5 Like when we had Sawyer, he made the ultimate sacrifice to go on nights so that we didn't have to pay for daycare through it all.

Speaker 5 So he was also working night shift as well as taking care of Sawyer during the day.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.
Way to go, you guys. I'm proud of y'all.
You can do this kind of stuff. You can do anything, right? Absolutely.
You feel like you're invincible, don't you? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Little Superman cape tucked down back there.

Speaker 1 I'm so proud of you.

Speaker 1 You really can, because once you set your mind to it, and the biggest problem that people have hitting a goal is not what they're willing to do to hit the goal, it's what they're willing to give up to hit the goal.

Speaker 1 That's the hardest part.

Speaker 3 But you look like you gave up stuff and you gained everything.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, I guess if you just don't know what's on the other side of the fence, you know, and the creativity side of it,

Speaker 1 you never know unless you give it a try. It's amazing.
What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 5 the nuts and bolts, combining your finances and sticking to the budget and just working hard.

Speaker 1 We both have a really good work ethic. Y'all using every dollar? Yes, we are.
Yep, good, good.

Speaker 5 And then just finding hope,

Speaker 5 just finding joy in the little things.

Speaker 5 We just have such an abundant life.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's going to be. It's going to be so abundant.
It's going to blow your freaking mind 10 years from now. Because you guys will set the table for a beautiful thing.
Very well done. All right.

Speaker 1 Sawyer is your son's name? Yep. The oldest Sawyer? Sawyer's almost nine months.
All right, and he gets to be in the debt-free screen. He doesn't even know what's going on.

Speaker 1 He didn't know how big a hero his parents are. Nevin and Maisie, couple of heroes for Sawyer, Iowa City.
Man, $62,000 in 11 months, making 90 to 140. Sold the freaking boat.
Count it down.

Speaker 1 Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Speaker 1 Three,

Speaker 1 two, one. We're debt-free.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hey, America. We're going to be okay.
There's people like them out there. This is the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 1 Dr. John Deloney Ramsey Personality is my co-host today.

Speaker 1 If you didn't know, Dr. John and our products team developed a whole series of questions for humans cards.
Parents and kids

Speaker 1 edition, couples edition, friends edition.

Speaker 1 And now, uh-oh.

Speaker 3 It's time, Dave, for three years.

Speaker 1 Uh-oh. For three years.
How did this get past my approval?

Speaker 3 You went out on vacation for a few weeks, and we got it through.

Speaker 1 That's how it happened.

Speaker 3 We got it through. So, hey, we got the new friends, couples, and parents

Speaker 3 version three. So they're all brand new questions.
But the one I'm most excited about, Questions for Humans, Intimacy Deck. All those questions, spouses all over the country.

Speaker 3 We got got people clapping out there.

Speaker 1 They wanted the sex deck.

Speaker 3 Yes, they've been wanting to talk about sex and intimacy, and nobody knows how to do it, and they Google it, and you get some crazy things.

Speaker 1 You don't want to do that.

Speaker 3 So this is a way for

Speaker 3 spouses to sit in the same house and reconnect, man. And, dude, I have not been this.

Speaker 1 I'm kidding aside, it's not all sex.

Speaker 3 It's not all sex. And if you know anything about being married, sex doesn't start, it doesn't start in the bedroom.
It starts all over the house. And so, well, that sounded weird.
I made that weird.

Speaker 3 I made that real, real weird. Sorry, America.

Speaker 1 I don't think that's what you meant.

Speaker 3 That's not what I meant.

Speaker 3 But listen, questions for humans, intimacy.

Speaker 1 It starts with drying the dishes. Let's try that.

Speaker 3 That's right. So it will be the best $15 you spend this calendar year, I promise you.

Speaker 3 Go check them out. And again, all these other new, the friends, the couples, and the parents and kids are all edition three.
So they're all brand new questions. Go pick them up.

Speaker 1 So are you actually going to air the commercial with the saxophone in it on this one? Yeah.

Speaker 3 You can go to, you can, I think it's going to launch here in a second on all the social media channels.

Speaker 3 But the guys here in the building, Wes Freitas and the team created maybe the greatest commercial I've ever been a part of for the intimacy deck. It's fantastic.

Speaker 1 It's really funny.

Speaker 3 That's the hardest I've seen Dave laugh in a long time.

Speaker 1 Two or three people are like, dave's not going to let that air. And I'm like, oh, no, that's definitely going on the air.
That's hilarious.

Speaker 3 The person I'm most worried about is my 14-year-old.

Speaker 3 He's going to have to answer for that with his high school buddies, but that's fine.

Speaker 1 Yeah. This is what happens when your dad does stuff.

Speaker 3 I just told him just if you get to go to college one day, just know that the intimacy decks.

Speaker 1 That could be the Questions for Humans intimacy deck, paying the dad down.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's exactly tuition.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying. All right.

Speaker 1 All of a sudden, he'll have respect.

Speaker 3 Oh, where do you go to Questions for Humans? Go to RamseySolutions.com/slash store.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Definitely get all that in the store.
The three new editions of

Speaker 1 the other ones are out, plus this new

Speaker 1 red box. The red box.

Speaker 3 Hey, I want it to be black with an X on it, and I got vetoed.

Speaker 1 So there you go.

Speaker 1 Jesse's in San Antonio. Hi, Jesse.
Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 2 Hey, fellas. Happy Monday.

Speaker 1 Happy Monday. What's up in your world?

Speaker 2 Well, I'm trying to figure out what my next step is.

Speaker 2 My wife and I are 39, and Lord willing, if all goes according to plan, then this time next month, we'll be bringing our new baby girl.

Speaker 1 Yay!

Speaker 2 Thank you. And so

Speaker 2 we've been talking for a while, planning on my wife staying home after our daughter is born. And so we'll be living off of my income.

Speaker 2 We're debt-free. I'm a pastor of a church, and

Speaker 2 we are have got our emergency fund in order. And so now

Speaker 2 I'm considering myself on step baby step 3B or 4. I'm set up to have 15% of my income in retirement,

Speaker 2 but I'm also thinking about possibly having to own a home one day. Right now we live in a church-owned house, and so I don't need to buy a home.

Speaker 2 And so I'm trying to figure out balancing, saving for a down payment on a house, preferably 100%, right? But then also making sure I have retirement dollars.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've worked with pastors for 30 years in these situations.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's almost as if the ending of the parsonage surprises them

Speaker 1 at some point oh i didn't see that coming well yeah you did for 30 years you saw it coming and um but it there's something about the process that lulls you to sleep so don't do that um if i'm in your shoes i'm gonna start paying myself a house payment at a minimum into a mutual fund

Speaker 1 separate from all the baby step stuff. If you don't want to actually start saving for a down payment aggressively, that's fine.
But just you don't have a house payment, so pay one.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 I guess.

Speaker 1 Why do you seem sad about that, Jesse?

Speaker 2 Well, I think it comes down to

Speaker 2 how much can I actually put aside for,

Speaker 2 I guess, paying myself a house payment.

Speaker 1 And so. Well, I mean, you don't necessarily have to pay yourself a $4,000 a month house payment.

Speaker 1 What's your household income going to be with her staying home?

Speaker 2 $4,000.

Speaker 1 About $4,000 take-home?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, if it's $500 or $1,000, that'd be fine with me.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.
And so I guess what you're saying is go ahead and put that aside and continue investing in retirement.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you slow down your retirement a little bit in baby step four because you're saving for a house, That would not be an unusual baby step 3B.

Speaker 1 The only difference here is we don't have an immediate need for a house.

Speaker 2 Right. And so I was like, I don't feel like I need to be as aggressive since I don't need to actually move.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's why I'm saying only $500 because $500 is only, you know, that's $6,000 a year. $1,000 is only $12,000 a year.
That's not, you're not going to get a house anytime soon doing that.

Speaker 1 So paying yourself a house payment is slowing down. That's what I was talking about.

Speaker 1 If you were aggressively going to buy a house

Speaker 1 by this time next year, you'd have to do more than that, right?

Speaker 2 Say that again. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 I said, if you were going to buy a home this time next year, you'd have to be saving more than $1,000 a month.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Well, I don't need to buy a home as well.

Speaker 1 I know. I know that, but I'm saying

Speaker 1 your baby step 3B is different.

Speaker 1 So we're going to lighten it up and say, all right, we might do 10% into retirement and a

Speaker 1 $500 to $1,000 house payment into a mutual fund because

Speaker 1 these things

Speaker 1 there's a bunch of times it's interesting pastor I just I don't flash through my head so I'm gonna say it I I actually remember in a Bible study one time a Bible teacher I had 20 years ago walk through and we went through and studied all the times in the Bible it says suddenly

Speaker 1 and suddenly occurs never but it always says suddenly It's like you could see it coming, see it coming, see it coming, and then suddenly, boom.

Speaker 1 You know, and this is, that's what's going to happen here. You're going to have suddenly, but it's not really suddenly.
Does that make any sense? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And my whole career has been showing up when a real suddenly happens, right? So you have the planned plane landing,

Speaker 3 and the number of pastors I've sat with personally who have said, I didn't see it coming.

Speaker 3 One of the elders or one of the board members didn't like this sermon. And they, man, it's,

Speaker 3 I want to know that.

Speaker 1 You're looking for a job and you're a renter.

Speaker 3 And you've got to find a house and a job in the same weekend.

Speaker 1 Man,

Speaker 3 dude, yeah, that makes me just uncomfortable and nervous and nervous and uncomfortable, Dave.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'm not going to plan. It's an okay thing for today.
It's a nice benefit for today. It's not a bad thing.
There's nothing evil about a parsonage.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 of course, a lot of churches do a housing allowance that is tax-deductible now for pastors, if you didn't know that. And so.

Speaker 3 Or think of it this way.

Speaker 3 If you don't save a house payment and you put all your money into a retirement and you make it all the way through and then you retire, you're going to immediately be pulling out of that saved retirement to buy a house.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 1 You're going to be doing it anyway. Yep.

Speaker 3 So you might as well plan for if you get offloaded on a weekend that you don't see coming.

Speaker 1 That's exactly where we are. That's perfect.
That's a good way of looking at it, a good way of saying it. So anyway, yeah, let's back it and do 10% or so.

Speaker 1 If that helps you, figure out the actual numbers of what you were planning to do.

Speaker 1 10%

Speaker 1 into retirement would be $400 a month. 15% would be $600 a month.
And so if you

Speaker 1 back it off to $400 and you say, I'm going to pay myself a $500 house payment, I think that's acceptable for today.

Speaker 1 At least then you're not going to be caught completely flat-footed if suddenly is suddenly.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that's the thing I'm looking for there is just to try to keep some plans. The mind of man knows his ways, but the Lord directs his paths.
That's what we're looking for here.

Speaker 1 And so it's wisdom into the future. We're looking into the future, trying to see what's there.
And it's not, we're fortune tellers or something like that. It's just wisdom.
So good question, sir.

Speaker 1 We appreciate you. Congratulations on the new baby.
Appreciate you serving that congregation there in San Antonio. I'm sure they're blessed.
This is the Ramsey Show.