If You Don’t Stand for Something, Your Money Will Fall for Anything

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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.

Jade Washall, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today.

The phone number here is 888-825-5225.

Gareg is with us in Canada.

Hi Ri, how are you?

Hey, good morning.

I'm doing well.

Thanks.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

I appreciate you taking my call.

First time caller.

I'm honored to talk to you.

So

my question is more of a like a principal's question rather than financial.

So I'll give you some context after.

But my question is, should I accept my girlfriend's extremely generous offer of paying off my debt for me?

No.

Okay.

I thought you might say that.

I'm very hesitant.

She made the offer

about a week ago, and I've been sitting on it.

You don't pay off dating relationships debt.

You do you do that when you're wa when you're married.

When you're getting married.

Well, that's the thing.

So we're we're both divorced and we um s since the first time since my divorce, I have actually considered getting married again.

I thought I never would get married again.

And the thing is, we're in a long-distance relationship.

I'm in Canada.

She's in Switzerland.

And part of the reason to pay off the debts is so that I can afford to save up for trips to see each other back and forth.

Why can't?

Why can't you save up?

What's your job like?

Well, because I'm...

I'm trying to pay off these debts, right?

But I'm currently on track to try and clear these before next summer.

So before the beginning of next summer.

That's my goal.

How much is it?

It's about $35,000.

What do you make, sir?

Okay.

What do I make?

Approximately $85,000 gross.

And so what's it take to fly to Switzerland?

How much money does it take to buy an airline ticket from where you are to Switzerland?

$1,600, approximately.

Okay.

So tell her to buy an airline ticket and come to Canada and visit.

Yeah, she's done that a couple of times.

Okay.

And

already.

So we want to.

You want to increase the frequency of the trips

by her paying off your debt.

No, thank you.

Yeah,

it doesn't match up.

What she's saying is I'd rather pay $35,000

than $1,600 to go to Canada.

That doesn't make sense mathematically or logically.

Fair enough.

Okay.

So that I can also go there back and forth and just be a little more fair about it.

Consider.

Well, you don't really have the money to do that.

I think if you set up the conversation and say, okay, we both agree that it's important for this debt to be gone.

However, how we do it is where we differ.

I think it's my responsibility to pay off my debt.

We're not married.

I don't want to put you in that situation.

So what I need from you is to support me in the best way possible, which your support for me would be if you could come visit me while I'm busy paying off this debt and putting my income towards that, that would be the best way to support me during this time.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That's kind of what I was originally thinking, and I just didn't know if I should.

Yeah, you're going to change the tone of the relationship.

You're going to change the whole thing if she pays you off your debt.

Yeah, I can't do that.

You know the old joke?

You know the old joke, if you loan your brother-in-law $100 and he never speaks to you again, is it worth the money?

Right.

Yeah.

Because what happens when you loan people money is it changes the relationship.

Now she's looking at you as like,

and you're going, I feel like I didn't own a, you know, all this other stuff now enters into the equation rather than I'm a dude over here doing my thing, girl over there doing her thing.

Yep.

We'd be talking.

That's way different than you got into my wallet.

You already have distance working against you.

You definitely don't need borrowed money working against you.

Yeah.

Or, you know, just any kind of feigned obligation.

I mean, mean, what happens if she pays that off and then this relationship goes sideways?

Oh, now what are we gonna do?

Then she calls us on the air and goes, I was so dumb, I paid off this guy's debt over in Canada, and we're like, Yeah, you were.

Yeah,

that'll be the call right here.

That is like, I don't, I know that we're talking to Gary Egg, but I'm like, I want to talk to the girlfriend because I need to make her understand this is a bad move, yeah, to even offer.

Yeah, do so, folks, do not pay debts for people you're not married to.

Do not

buy houses and cars

for or with people you're not married to.

Crap happens and you're going to get sideways and you're going to have a problem.

The worst one I can ever remember was a guy bought a house with his girlfriend.

We're going to shack up

and he gets killed in a car wreck.

And now she owns the house.

There's no will.

She now owns the house with her future mother-in-law.

She's now a partner.

Oh, my God.

She's not his heir.

They're not married.

Yeah, that's right.

So

his half of that house goes to his mother.

Oh, my God.

Who she didn't like, of course.

Of course.

And now, this is great.

Now I have a partnership.

This is the crap you don't think of when you think, oh, we're just going to play house and really be instead of really being like grown-ups and get married.

Yeah.

Yeah, it changes the whole deal, man.

I remember a guy called in.

Yeah, he had a girlfriend.

He co-signed on the car with her, $17,000, $18,000.

They broke up.

And she got the car.

Well, she stopped paying it and he called in he said hey i've got a mountain of debt she's not paying the loan how do i get out of it i said is she gonna refinance it over and put it in her name he said no i said well you better add it to your debt snowball then you better get better get rid of that car oh my gosh yeah she wouldn't sell it oh

yep that's the problem so that's the kind of stuff we run into these days and um it's the um unintended consequences not thinking things all the way through the old there's an old book out a hundred years ago by Dr.

Stephen Covey called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Yeah, yeah.

And one of the habits is begin with the end in mind.

Smart.

Yeah.

So begin with everything possibly falling apart that could fall apart in mind, and you'll go, oh, I would never do that.

Well, yeah, that's the opposite of what you want to do because when you're excited about something, you like to visualize all the ways that it works out.

And, you know,

there's only one way it works if it's all work.

Yeah.

And it never works that way.

That's right.

Nothing ever works the way it's supposed to.

Ever.

Exactly.

The timeline, something changes, and then there you are

caught.

But

that's not being a Debbie Downer, and it's not being

a pessimistic.

That's just being

obvious.

We're not dream killers.

We're nightmare killers.

Because your little dream is going to be a nightmare, and we're going to kill it before we can let it grow.

Kill it now.

Stomp that thing.

Yeah.

Nip it in the bud.

That's right.

So I'm happy to kill your nightmare.

You just don't see it as a nightmare.

You see it as a dream.

But I'll help you with that.

And so, because we love you and we want you to win.

We want you to prosper.

We're thinking about the good version of you 10 years from now that has survived all of life's bumps and bruises and prospered anyway.

And that's how successful people actually do it.

They fail forward.

That's right.

They don't make a set of assumptions that things are always going to work out the way they are.

So there's about 90 ways this could go wrong and only one way it goes right.

So we don't do it.

Most, I'm going to go out on a limb and say most success is a result of something that was learned, not a bright idea that was executed the right way the first time.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the number of times we've launched a product at Ramsey that the prototype ever sees the light of day is precisely zero.

What we think is going to work doesn't make it through beta.

Right.

It doesn't make it through alpha.

It doesn't make it through any of those Greek letters because it is a delta.

And so there you go.

Yeah, you look that one up.

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Steve is in Pennsylvania.

Hi, Steve.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

How are you doing, Dave?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

So, my wife is pregnant with baby number two.

Yay!

Yes, we are shocked and very excited.

We have about thirty thousand dollars in debt.

We're moving for a job in the coming spring.

How should I handle debt payoff and preparing for baby?

When's baby due?

End of April, beginning of May.

Yeah.

You're moving before a baby comes in the ninth month of a pregnancy?

It's a little less than ideal, yes.

Sounds like suicide, my man.

Why are you moving at that date?

What's driving the date to be crazy?

That's when we agreed with my employer about making the move, would be in the spring before that we found out we were pregnant.

Okay.

So you're being transferred with the same company?

Correct.

Okay.

Have you said anything to them about possibly coming a month later or two months earlier?

We haven't.

I've spoke with my wife about that, and she said that she would prefer to be moved before the baby comes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Then two months earlier.

I don't want to move in the ninth month.

Okay.

That's just

a lot of stress.

I mean,

my wife Sharon's had three children, and I can't imagine asking her to move our home in the ninth month of a pregnancy.

It's tough enough to do it.

It's tough enough to do it two months after a child's born.

I did that.

That's tough.

Yeah.

And so that's just a bad, it's just a bad plan.

But anyway, we're going to move in the spring sometime.

So your question still stands now that I got into your business.

But

you called and asked, so there you go.

But anyway, but

so and what's your household income again?

I make

around $100,000.

I work about 45 hours a week and

I have unlimited overtime available.

Okay.

Do you have any money saved?

I know you said you have 30K in debt, but I'm just asking.

Yeah, we have baby step one done, and we've been working on paying off the debt.

I guess one thing that would be important to make of note is the debt is solar panels.

So it's kind of tied to the house that we would sell.

That's your only debt.

Correct.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Well, number one, in general terms, what we tell folks to do when you know you're in a storm, and I got a baby on the ways of being in a storm, is to push pause on your baby steps and just stack cash.

So even if we weren't talking about moving, even if we weren't talking about all the other things, we would just generally say, let's see how high a stack of cash we can build as much as we would have put on the debt yeah which is a lot the same intensity we're going to stack cash with and then if health insurance covers what it's supposed to which is most everything

and if

You know, and if everything goes well, baby and mama come home, everything's okay.

The day they come home, we push play again, which means we would empty out this account that we haven't used, but was there just in case.

We emptied it out down to $1,000.

And so you really don't lose any any

traction mathematically that way.

In your case, what you're going to have is a stack of cash.

You sell your house.

Solar panels are cleared.

You have no debt.

You make the move.

Your stack of cash becomes your emergency fund.

You go to the new place and rent, and you start saving towards the down payment.

Okay.

That's what we were thinking.

So that.

How much equity have you got in your house?

I think when we sell the home, so we bought a fixer-upper and we've pretty much completely redone everything.

I think we stand to make about 50K minimum in equity.

Above the solar panels.

No, that would be not including the solar panels.

If we take the solar panels out, I think it'd be about 25K.

That's on the low end.

Okay.

And if you stack 25K,

then you say, let's call that your emergency fund.

Whatever you stack, if you call that your emergency fund because you don't end up having to use it after the move,

then

you've got 25K to put as a down payment on the other side

if that works.

And I'm going a step deeper.

I don't know when you plan on putting your house on the market, but just having that cash there also, I'm thinking two things.

Moving in general is so expensive.

So you're moving from Pennsylvania to where?

South Carolina.

Yeah.

So just keeping in mind, like start pricing that out now because when we moved from South Florida here to Tennessee, the boxes alone, the boxes, the u-haul truck are you going to get one of the pods are you going to all that stuff if your uh stipend doesn't cover it like that's if you're even getting a stipend i don't know but just price that out because there's a lot going on there that has the potential to creep up on you yeah it can turn into a serious chunk of money 100

babe i was shook when i saw the cost to have someone drive your stuff midway across the country boxes $20,000 worth throwing away.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a big deal.

Yeah.

It's It's pretty serious.

So, yeah, that's be ready for all of that.

Plan that out.

Plan the move out.

And try to plan to where you're not moving with a three-month or a three-day-old child

or a child that's getting ready to come in the next three days.

Those are, that's just the worst possible.

scenario from a family standpoint.

It really is.

It really is.

The further back you can dial it one way or the other,

outside the ninth month, either after the baby is born or before.

She said she wants to move before.

So let's talk about, you know, talk about February.

Yeah.

Can't hurt to ask.

Yeah.

Can't hurt to ask.

It probably doesn't make that much difference to them anyway.

So yeah, I'm going to ask for sure.

Good question.

Denise is in New Jersey.

Hi, Denise.

How are you?

I'm good.

Thank you.

How can I help?

Yes.

So I just received a personal injury settlement of $200,000.

And I know you don't like municipal bonds, but I'm hoping you tell me in my case, it's okay

to do.

I already have CDs, $450,000 in CDs.

I have mutual funds, $230,000.

I have savings and checking.

I have no debt.

So I don't need to shelter the $200,000 because it will be tax-free on a personal injury.

But I really don't want any more interest.

I don't understand.

You don't want the money to grow?

You don't want compound interest?

Well, it's going to put me in another tax bracket.

So what?

There's not a hundred percent tax bracket.

So I, you know, Dave, I want to make two thousand dollars instead of forty thousand dollars

because of the tax bracket.

That's not logical, Denise.

No.

Okay, so you think annuities then would be...

No.

How old are you?

78.

Okay.

All right.

So you've got all kinds of people in your ear, don't you?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

So I don't know what to do with the money.

I mean, Morton Ds,

I don't think I I can add it to my IRA.

No, you can't.

All right.

So you are someone that risk terrifies you, doesn't it?

Well, not so much at my age.

No, I mean,

really, I think I have enough for, you know, to take care of myself.

Yeah.

Without.

Well, I mean, if I put, okay, I'm 65, so I'm a little bit younger than you, but not much.

And if I put $250,000 in a high-yield savings account or CDs and I make 3% on it, and instead I could have put it in a mutual fund and made 13%,

that means I missed out on $25,000 a year worth of income,

which is what you've done with the CDs and what you're getting ready to do with these bonds.

So you need to decide if you are willing to put more money in mutual funds or not.

And I would sit down with a smart restorative pro at ramseysolutions.com and start to learn about the market and how the market's performing and what's going on and get comfortable with it.

I personally,

you know, would take the $250,000 that's in CDs and I would put it in mutual funds and I'd put this $200,000 in mutual funds.

But I want you to get comfortable with it before you go do that.

But no, I'm not dumbing it down to municipal bonds.

And no, I'm not going to tell you I would do that because I wouldn't do that.

That would be a lie.

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Tam is in North Carolina.

Hi, Tam.

How are you?

Hello.

Thank you very much for taking my call.

Sure.

How can I help?

I'm getting ready to go back to work, and I would like to know, how do I save money when I go back when my husband does not want to save?

So quick backstory, we've done today, Ramsey.

We came out of debt and in 2021, he says he no longer wants to do that, and he wants to live for the day.

And since then, we are in this cycle of constantly being credit card debt of $20,000 to $30,000.

I'm currently stay-at-home,

but I'm going to go back to work.

And I told my husband, well, when I go back to work, I want us to save for our future.

So I just want to know how do I do that

you go get marriage counseling

yeah what sparked it what sparked him to about face

something caused that

that I don't know

because we

before we got married he was a hundred thousand dollars in debt we dated I told him I can't be in debt I introduced him to Diggs Ranby we we got out of debt then he put us back into debt for a car, and then we got out of debt for that.

Yeah, I can't help you, honey.

There's nothing we can tell you that's going to work.

Nothing will work until you guys fix your marriage.

You can't make enough at your new job to offset his stupidity and immaturity.

You're going to retire.

You're going to retire broke.

Get ready to enjoy dog food.

Alpo is your choice for dinner.

That's what I was thinking when I went back to work.

You can't out-earn his craziness.

Gotcha.

You can't make enough to do it.

So you don't have a savings vehicle issue.

You have a broken marriage issue.

Gotcha.

Yeah, you guys have got to work on that.

And

if you ignore that and you think, I'll just go get a job to save my money, he's going to go in debt further than any amount you can possibly save because there's no off-button for this guy, the way he's operating right now.

Yeah.

And you guys were never, it sounds like you were never aligned.

When you paid off the first hundred thousand, it sounds like his motivation was, I got this girl.

I'm going to impress her.

We've just gotten married, right?

Even though your why may have been something different and it may have seemed as though you were aligned, but clearly you were not.

So that's one of the things that you can talk about in counseling is what...

What do you guys align on as your vision for the future?

And it can't be about today.

It has to be about where you see yourselves in X amount of years.

Yeah, and honestly, I mean, I'm not being mean or anything, but his behavior pattern is one of someone who's going to be broke.

Uh-huh.

When people say, Thank God it's Friday, oh God, it's Monday, and that's their whole planning vision is make it to front, make it to the weekend, like they're freaking Huey Lewis or something, or whatever, whoever's singing that song working for the weekend?

Yeah.

Is that Mike in the middle of the voice?

I don't know.

Okay.

I've done this before, hadn't I?

Yeah.

I always get criticized for my lack of music knowledge.

I knew what you were talking about.

Yeah, I mean, anyway, you're going to be broke.

If your whole planning horizon is trying to get to the weekend so I can smoke and drink, and I just, that's all I want to do.

I just want to live in the moment.

That means you're four years old emotionally.

Yeah.

And you're not going to ever build wealth and you're not going to build a quality, successful anything because no one does anything of high quality in five days.

So you have to have a longer planning window for that, a bigger vision for your life,

for your money, for your health, for, I mean, that's the same thing that leads to extreme obesity.

Because there's, why not?

Why wouldn't I eat everything in sight?

Because I'm living for the moment.

And in the moment, that donut tastes good.

And in the moment, I'm going to have six desserts and four bottles of wine.

I mean, and then wonder why I'm 600 pounds.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing.

I mean, there's just no off-button when you're that impulsive and immature.

And all the data points tell us it's a very sad person.

There's a lot of anxiety.

There's a lot of depression around that because there's no vision.

And, you know, the Bible talks about it.

It says where there is no vision, the people perish.

Now, think about that.

Perish.

What's that mean?

Roadkill, baby.

Perish, die.

Don't win.

That's what that means.

And so, you know, in any area of your life for your marriage, your kids, I mean, think about if you talk to your kids that way.

I'm going to do do the easy thing with the kids.

Well, what you raise is animals

that will drive you bananas because they have no discipline, because they have no discipline.

Yeah.

And so, but, but that's all thinking in the moment that what's easy right now.

I want the easy button.

I want the easy button.

I want the easy button.

I want to think about what you're planting because whatever you plant later on, that's what you're going to reap the harvest of.

It's so sad.

It's an awful way to live.

And it's such a it's such an indication of a lack of maturity, lack of hope.

And so that's the stuff you got to work on, Tam.

It's not,

it's, you know, there's no amount of, I mean, if you go make $200,000 a year and you save all of it, he'll spend $300,000

because he knows his wife's over there stacking cash.

So he's going to be really, he's going to be, hey, I need two boats.

You know, I mean, really.

So this, this is.

Austin is in Oregon.

If I push the right button anyway, Austin, there you are, is in Oregon.

Hey, Austin, how are you?

I'm doing wonderful, Dave.

How are you guys doing today?

Better than we deserve.

How can we help?

So, my wife and I, we're uh three months married right now.

Congratulations.

And one, thank you.

Yes, and uh, one of the things that we decided to do when we first got married was to do uh your guys's baby step program.

So we just finished step one.

We got a thousand dollars set aside right now, and we're about to just attack baby step two.

Uh, we have about ten thousand dollars in debt, and annually we we bring in household income of around $95,000.

Oh, great.

So we want to get this, we want to get that debt-free as fast as possible.

Agreed.

So

I'm thinking of picking up a second job doing a few hours

after my normal job every day just to get that extra income just to throw out all that debt.

My wife, she's 100% bored on this and everything.

She's thinking about picking up some shifts at her local fire department.

We both volunteer down there.

And

one of the things that she brought up, and I didn't necessarily have an answer for, but I 100% agree with her, is

she wants to make sure that we still have time for us during this entire

step.

She'll budget it.

Yeah, but it's 10,000.

It's not going to last long enough to matter.

You ought to be done in a couple of months.

yeah that's my hot take

if you had said uh we have 70 000 yeah then i would say okay yeah this is months and months uh ahead of you of yeah burning the candle at both ends but for 10 000 you're gonna be done in two months three months

right with doing all the things you said yeah

yeah you're gonna hold your breath for two months yeah

I mean, really, it's not like we're doing two years here or something.

So, but the other thing is this.

The other thing is this.

Anytime you're doing anything, you're out of balance.

Okay.

If you have a brand new baby in the house later, you're going to be out of balance because this kid is a demanding little piece of flesh when they're brand new.

Okay.

They want your attention all the time.

They are peeing or pooping or crying because they're hungry all the time.

And so you're out of balance.

You're probably not doing some other stuff like you should because you're taking care of this baby.

Right now, you're getting out of debt.

You're out of balance for a short period of time.

Jay just ran a half marathon.

You're out of balance for a short period of time because you're training in the mornings rather than doing something else.

So you're always out of balance.

So just choose you're out of balance.

And then when you do have time together, turn off the stupid television and put down the screens and look at human beings in the eyes.

That's right.

And then all of a sudden, oh, well, we did spend time together.

Who knew?

That's right.

Netflix is not time together.

Okay.

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Mike's in Dallas.

Hey, Mike, how are you?

I'm doing well, well, Dave.

Blessed.

How about yourself?

Better than I deserve.

How can we help?

Hey, just had a couple quick questions for you.

Me and my fiancé, we're getting married here,

and we've combined finances.

We've got about $177,000 in debt, and we net before taxes about $200,000 a year.

Good for you.

What do y'all do for a living?

So I work in construction, and she's a program manager for

a wireless company.

Excellent.

So what's the 177 in debt?

We've got student loans, about

$75,000 on her end, $20,000 on my end.

We've got about $9,000 in credit card

debt, and then the rest is two-car payments that we've got.

Obviously, the credit card debt is kind of of the biggest.

You got two $30,000 cars?

Yes, sir.

Jeez.

Wow.

All right.

And

so when are you getting married?

Friday.

Oh, wow.

Hey, wow.

Okay, here it comes.

This must really be weighing on you for you to call two days before a wedding.

Wow.

So how can we help?

I'm just kind of wanted to see what y'all think

would be best to kind of put put our money towards paying down first.

We've got about $5,000 in savings.

We've got 401ks and stock options as well.

So

I think we kind of want to hold on to just the stock option side of things.

401ks.

We don't.

Stock options.

And the stocks, about $100,000.

Wow.

Okay.

Is that in a retirement plan?

It's not, is it?

No, sir.

It's not in a retirement plan.

It's not restricted at all.

No, sir.

Listen.

If you cash that out, you got $100K.

Yes, sir.

Whose is that?

You would have to pay taxes on the back end.

About $20K if it's mine and $80K is hers.

Yeah.

So we would, the way we teach is through a series of baby steps.

Are you familiar with it at all?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

So then you know the first part of this is you go down to $1,000

and anything above that goes towards the debt.

That's not retirement.

That's not retirement.

And in your case...

That's $100,000.

Yeah, that's a lot.

I'm using that to clear this debt up.

I mean, because otherwise you effectively are borrowing on student loans to buy stock options.

Exactly.

Right.

And I'm not doing that.

Now, I asked about the money because we didn't go into how aligned you guys are on this.

Obviously, you've started combining finances, but this whole idea of the baby steps and really what it takes to walk this plan to be successful with it, when you go back to your fiancé who will be your wife, you know, come Monday and say, here's what I want to do.

How is she going to react to that?

And do we need to talk about that?

No,

she supports,

you know,

we try to follow the Bible as best we can.

And she knows that

I'm wrapping my head around this, trying to get us on a right path towards starting a family and buying a home.

Cool.

And so she's

what I figured out many, many years ago and is the basis for our teaching is the shortest distance between where you are now and wealth is to be completely debt-free because your most powerful wealth building tool is your income.

And so doing anything that I can use to clear that up, I'm going to use to clear that up because then I got $200,000 to work with, to build wealth with.

So temporarily, we're going to put 401ks on hold.

We're going to liquidate anything that's not retirement, including those stock options, including the five, four of the five grand.

Now, this is after you get back from the honeymoon, okay?

We're not doing it between now and Friday, okay?

But when you get back from the honeymoon, and so basically, I've got 100,000.

Now I've got 77,000 in debt.

I'd be looking at these two cars.

And I'm going to be listing the debts, smallest to largest, and that's the first $105,000 I'm going to pay off, is the first $105,000 to smallest debts.

So credit cards,

the student loans are probably broken up into several loans, are they not?

Yes, sir.

Yeah, so I'm going to get them out as individual loans, and I'm going to list every debt, smallest to largest, balance regardless of interest rate.

And I'm going to take that $104,000 and go as fast through there as I can.

And then wherever that lands me, I'm going to cut up the credit cards.

And then we're going to, probably the cars are going to be the last two things you pay, actually.

It's probably where you're going to end up.

And then you're going to just attack those.

You only got $77,000 in debt.

You got $200,000 to work on.

If you're both completely focused on that, you could be debt-free in a year.

And then you don't have any payments.

And now we

build the emergency fund up to where it should be, three to six months of expenses.

That's baby step three.

And then we restart the 401ks.

And now we start building wealth.

And you're going to be in a really strong position to do that.

But what happens is that people keep this stuff, they keep tinkering around.

They keep trying to hack, find kind of some kind of shortcut or some kind of hack.

Like, I'm going to keep the stock options because I like those.

I heard you say it.

And I'm just going to work on it over here.

No, that's a hack.

You're trying to find a shortcut.

And listen, the stock options are not as valuable as you being free, mathematically.

In no way does the math work on that because people look over here and they say, in his case, $100,000, I've got $100,000.

I'm like, you don't have $100,000.

If you owe someone $177,000, you're still seventy seven thousand in debt that's what math says yeah the math ain't math anyway

there you go that's what you say so yeah that's exactly right so that's how i'm gonna do it and what we're gonna do is give you guys a wedding gift financial peace university and every dollar the full every dollar experience the paid version and if you guys come back from the honeymoon start going through all that together you got to start talking this through learning the details of what we're showing you and you're going to see how that in 10 years you're going to be multimillionaires if you follow this.

If you screw around with this stuff, you're going to be 10 years and you're going to look about like you look now.

And that's what most people do.

All the money comes in, all the money goes out, and they're just a rat in a wheel.

They just run, run, run, run with no traction because they don't execute on a detailed, proven process.

And that's what we're going to beg you to do.

So you hang on and we'll have Kelly pick up and we'll give you our wedding gift.

Congratulations on your wedding, Friday.

That's pretty cool.

I'm with you.

Who calls two days before, three days before?

Not me.

He's feeling the weight.

He's not thinking about anything like this.

No.

He's feeling the weight.

Well, he's just a planner, extraordinaire.

I mean, that may be what he may be the super nerd, and that's going to work to his benefit, too.

Well, he has to promise us not to mention this at all.

Until you get back from the honeymoon.

Yes, please.

Do not bring any of this up.

And really, don't even reveal that you were thinking about this two days before the wedding.

Don't tell that until maybe 10 years later.

Don't reveal that.

That's not going to go well for you.

Yeah.

The names have been changed in this conversation to protect the innocent.

Yeah, his name's not really Mike.

His name is really Joe, and he's not really in Dallas.

He's really in Minneapolis.

So, anyway, but okay.

So, I hope

you never know around here.

There is something unbelievable, folks, about the power of focus.

When you can choose extreme focus,

meaning you're not doing anything else, you're only doing one thing,

when you choose that in a culture that has the attention span of a gnat,

that is so distracted, everybody's looking at their phone 2,600 times a day.

They're thinking about 47,000 things at one time, and they're not good at any of them.

When you choose a singular focus, you set yourself apart from the general population.

And we call those people successful people.

That's right.

That's right.

Listen, even Michael Jordan could only do basketball.

We saw what happened when he tried to do baseball.

It was kind of ugly.

Yeah.

One of the greatest athletes to ever walk the planet.

He really wasn't that bad, but it didn't transfer.

No.

It didn't transfer.

Yeah, it was.

Gotta focus in one area.

The only thing he did is try.

You gotta give him that.

But yeah.

Focus.

There's a power to focus.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show.

Jade Washaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today, number one best-selling author.

Sean is with us in Tennessee.

Hey, Sean, how are you?

Better than I deserve, Dave.

How are y'all?

Just the same, sir.

How can we help?

Well, recently just graduated from college, bought a house and started running the race like everyone else.

And figured out that's not quite going too well.

I've racked up about a $125,000 in debt.

That's between student loans, a car loan, and consumer debt.

And that's

not feeling great, but it feels manageable.

The only problem is now

my wife is going through school as well.

So when she gets out, she'll have student loans.

So you're actively taking them.

You're actively taking the student loans out now today.

Well, yes, she took out her first one just this month.

And how much further does she have to go?

She'll have the

four more years.

Okay, so.

So

she went to school.

You were in debt.

You can't breathe.

And so your plan is, honey, you need to go back to school, and let's go further in debt to make sure we fail.

Why is this a plan?

Well, it wasn't a plan until just recently.

It's not a plan.

It sucks.

She should not be in school.

You don't have any money.

You got to stop it.

I'm currently the only one with the income, and this was before I found y'all.

And the whole thing.

No, I mean, you don't have to find us to go, I can't breathe.

Let's go deeper in debt.

That was kind of what y'all's plan was.

It doesn't even make sense, man.

Yeah, what's she going to school for?

What's she trying to become?

So she's going to school to become a pharmacist.

Uh, I just recently graduated from pharmacy school, uh, currently, right now, at a pretty good job.

It's $125,000 a year, which is pretty typical.

That's good.

So, here's my suggestion: hear me out because this is a big turn from what you're doing.

My suggestion would be: you guys are together, you're married,

you've both just finished school, you realize that your student loans were a mistake.

Couldn't you work for a while?

Could she delay just a little bit while you guys start to clean this up?

Is there something else she can do that's adjacent while you guys clean up this mess and start saving for her to go little by little?

Because we don't want to repeat the same mistake twice.

Right?

Right.

Right.

I don't have a plan that helps you if she continues in school and is racking up debt.

There's not a plan that helps that.

So it just doesn't, it's not logical to me.

I don't mind her being in school.

I don't mind her her being having the goal of being a pharmacist.

That's all fine, but let's just pay for it.

And right now you can't pay for it because you're so far in debt you can't breathe because you bought a bunch of crap you can't afford.

And now you're buying even more crap you can't afford called her education.

So you guys really got to talk about this and change this direction.

I don't think you're going to, but you're going to crash.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're going to crash.

You're going to hit the wall, man.

And it's going to be bad.

Because you just keep buying stuff.

Well,

it really is insanity.

You did a thing.

it caused you to feel crazy, and you're doing it again thinking.

Let's do more of it.

Let's do more.

It didn't work, so let's double down on it.

It didn't work.

Yeah.

It's not, no, no, no, no, no, Sean.

And so not for your sake, man.

I want you guys to be free, and I want you to be able to live your dreams.

And all you're doing is creating a nightmare that you may never get out of.

I don't know how long it's going to take you guys to clean this up.

Yeah.

So, no, I would not do that.

I would stop school.

If I'm her, I'm going to get a job, making as much as I can make.

You take on as much as you can make.

You guys live on beans and rice, rice and beans.

Sell the stupid car.

And let's tear into this debt and get it cleared up in a couple of years.

And let's try to knock this out.

And then start saving for her to go to school and pay cash for it.

And then your income will go way on up and you will have no debt and you're in a position to build wealth.

And all along the way, have had a lot more peace.

Yeah.

And by the way, now is not the time to buy a house and all those other things that people people do when they

enter the world, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You jumped, you jumped in the middle of a rat race and acted like a rat.

And that's not, man, it's going, it's a problem.

So may even need to sell the house.

I don't know.

You guys got to go.

Are you there to get one?

Yeah, he said he already bought it.

Oh, shoot.

Bought a house, bought a car, and

I already did all that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jen is in Mississippi.

Hi, Jen.

How are you?

Hi, Dave.

I'm great.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

How can I help?

Great.

Thank you for taking my call.

I'm married.

I'm 60.

We're in our forever home.

It's a two-bedroom.

And

started the debt snowball in January

with $243,000, $243,000 in debt.

Oh, my God.

It was a lot of credit cards and

different

loans and

a car and a boat.

Is any of that the house?

No.

I have it down now to.

What do you owe on your boat?

The boat I owe

$68,000.

$6,000.

Yes.

Sell it.

Okay.

Well, I have a there's been like a curveball in our life since we started all this.

Um I have the debt down to $150,000 right now

in January.

But you owe $68,000 on a boat.

Right.

Sell it.

Okay.

So.

You live in a two-bedroom house and you have a $70,000 boat.

Well, it's not a small two-bedroom.

But anyway,

we recently, last year, got

temporary custody of our three grandchildren, and

it's turning into permanent, and we really need to build onto this house to get them three bed to get some bedrooms and I don't know how

to manage paying off the debt and getting this

what is your home worth on

250.

Okay.

I owe $100 on it.

Okay.

I would not build on to it.

I would sell it and buy a home that has bedrooms.

Okay.

It's not a good plan in your situation.

You have so many balls in the air, you're going to drop one.

Wow.

What in the world happened, kid, that you end up with these babies?

Well,

there was a death.

The dad died in a motorcycle wreck, and then they became homeless and living with four different people in a year.

And they had no bed.

They had no structure.

The oldest one was

eight.

She was

failed second grade and was going to fail it again.

So we took them,

got temporary custody, and it's turning into be full-time.

I'm sorry.

You just gave your life away for those kiddos, and you should, because you love them and you want to take care of them.

Well, they didn't ask for any of this.

I know.

You're a neat lady.

I appreciate you.

Sell the boat and sell the house and go get a house that holds these kids.

We're going to focus on the kids, not on your dreams that you used to have.

We have a new dream now.

It's raising these kids.

And everything revolves around that.

You took that on and that's

and so I'm going to,

I would not do an extensive remodel and wait on that for them to have a bedroom.

I'd simply put a sign in the yard, put a sign on the boat and then let's go get a house that holds, that's got four bedrooms.

Maybe a different neighborhood, maybe further out of town, I don't know.

But looking for a deal.

And let's try to get, you know, let's focus in on them, on those babies.

Let's see if we can get them,

get them back on track.

Bless their hearts.

Thank you for doing that.

Dave, we got a lot of calls on this show where life happens.

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You know, we hear it all the time.

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Yeah, it's important to understand the difference between them.

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Kyle's in Wisconsin.

Hey, Kyle, how are you?

I'm doing great.

How are you guys?

Better than we deserve.

What's up?

So my question is

currently on baby step 4, 5, and 6.

Married, no kids yet, but that is coming up hopefully soon.

My wife and I are currently doing 15% investing.

We're debating on getting your thoughts, I guess, on reducing that investing to the company match, which would free up more in our monthly budget to do on the mortgage because I currently drive 40 minutes each way to work.

And my thought is if I didn't have the mortgage, I could afford to take a lesser paying job that's closer to home.

Why don't you take a greater paying job that's closer to home now?

I've looked in the area, but we currently live in a smaller farm town, and I currently work in a slightly bigger city.

I just haven't seen any

better income.

Wife and I combine for $200.

So what do you make?

You're the one making the drive.

Oh, sure.

I currently make about $120,000, $130,000 a year.

So can I ask, I'm going to try to come at this another way.

So you're saying the difference between the match and you going full 15%, how much is that monthly for you?

What's the number amount?

Roughly $1,500 would be the less amount of investing and the extra to put on mortgage.

I know my voice is shaking.

I'm pretty nervous.

And

how much time, because that's what's in question, how much time does that $1,500 save you in paying off your mortgage?

It's $18,000 a year.

What's the balance on the mortgage?

We currently owe $460,000.

Okay.

So So this is a long, this is a long-term play.

Yeah.

So my question

would not be about backing down your 15% because that's so important in the grand scheme of things.

That's a lot of time that you'd be losing out on compound interest.

What I'd be solving for is what can my wife and I do combined that will find us $1,500 a month?

Is it a side hustle?

Is it something she can do?

Is it something that we change about our lifestyle?

Are there cuts in the do you see what I'm saying?

Is there a way that we can get a lot closer to that $1,500 without sacrificing something that's very, very important?

Because I wouldn't want you to sacrifice something so important.

Do you see what I'm saying?

I do.

I do.

I have one other bit of info, and I don't want it to come off as I'm not trying to brag or anything like that, but we do currently have about $150,000 invested total.

And we're both in our 20s.

In the 401k.

Correct, yes.

Okay.

All right.

So my thought is we live pretty crudely

based on calculating different things.

Even if I did nothing, that's still going to grow to obviously a very nice nest egg.

Obviously, more.

You're in your 20s and you commute 40 minutes.

Correct.

That would be called normal.

I was going to say.

Sure.

Most people do.

Lots of people commute an hour plus

to go to their job.

Sure.

I'm not sure we're solving for the right thing.

No, I would not stop putting 15% away.

And

do you not like your job?

No, no, I do.

It's just the the drive can just I get it's not super long.

It's just winter time.

It's everything.

It's just it can be long hours,

just different things.

So I just want to see anything I can do to knock the mortgage out, but then also.

Yeah, but no, I mean, you're solving for in your 20s, you want to drive 10 minutes.

And so you're willing to take a $60,000 pay cut to do that once you get the house paid off.

Even if the house was paid off, I don't think this is a wise thing to solve for.

Okay.

The trade-off is not worth it.

Now, what I might do, I mean, if that is that great a concern to you, move closer to your work.

And let's solve the thing a different way.

But this idea that I'm going to plan my life so that in my 20s I can make half what I used to make

so that I don't have to have a commute, that's a bad trade, man.

That's a bad trade.

You need to trade something else.

Yeah.

There's something else that needs to move in these variables.

There's a handful of variables here.

Let's turn a different knob.

That's what I'm saying.

The last knob to turn is your future, which is your retirement.

Yeah, I'm going to put 15% away.

I may move or I may get peace with the 40-minute commute.

But I'm not going to take a job under any circumstances in my 20s, half of what I used to make, unless I can't find a job because I, and there's like integrity problems at the other place, or I hate the place, or ethics issues, or something like that.

But none of that is up here.

This is just, I don't like driving 40 minutes.

I'd just be trying to whittle down that 1,500.

Can I get it to 700?

Can I find 700 somewhere?

I'd be looking at that number.

Yeah, but even then, the purpose of it is so he can quit his job.

Yeah, you're right.

And we're solving, that's what we're solving.

That's the solutioning for all the way through.

And I just don't want to participate in that part of it either.

I hear you.

So

I think I'm going to solve this a different way.

And I'm going to keep putting 15% away, to your point.

But even if you made more on these side hustles and you got the house paid off, then you quit your job over a 40-minute commute.

I still can't get there.

I can't go there with you.

Austin is in Missouri.

Hey, Austin, what's up?

Hey, guys.

I appreciate you speaking into my situation.

Sure.

I have a question about

a blessing I've got in my life.

I'm a pastor, and

excuse me, my church just updated its PTO policy.

So they bought us out of our PTO,

and we can choose to take that in a taxed check

or take it and have it put directly into our annuity.

And we don't have any debt.

I'm sorry, you are in debt?

We are not in debt.

Not in debt.

Okay.

No, sir.

Other than our home.

We own a home.

We owe about $40,000 on it.

I think we could sell it between $2,000 and $2.50,000.

We would like to buy another home.

We don't have one that we're actively working on buying, but we would like to.

How big is the check?

And i'm just want

eighty six hundred dollars okay

let's pay the house down

you only have forty thousand to go wow yeah that now you only got thirty thousand to go that's awesome yeah okay i didn't ask do you have three to six months of expenses

yeah yeah we've we've got about twenty five thousand dollars in savings okay

yeah sorry i should have said that no that's okay i just wanted to ask the yes ma'am even with the tax that might come on that, you'd say just put it toward the house.

Oh, yeah.

Currently, yeah.

Okay.

Definitely.

That's where you are in the baby steps.

All lump sums, unless you need it for something around the house.

That's the other thing.

We're in baby steps four, five, and six, so we're being intentional, not intense.

And intentional might mean you need to upgrade a car.

There might be a couch with a spring sticking through it.

You need a new couch.

I don't know.

You may need it for some of that, too.

But if you've got it as free and clear and you don't have other needs for it, before I would put it into the annuity, into your retirement, I'd put it on the house.

Yeah, yeah, and let's get that house knocked out.

You're heading in the right way.

Way to go, man.

That is so awesome.

That's very, very good.

So, Jade,

I think it's good occasionally to recap on a couple of these things.

When we laid out the baby steps and came up with that process and started teaching people to follow that,

we ran, that was 25 plus years ago,

and we ran a whole bunch of scenarios down and said, okay, what are the numbers that allow people to get their home paid off, to invest for their kids' college, and still be putting something away for retirement?

Right.

And we ran the scenario, you know, at the time, it was a long time ago, like a single mom making $23,000.

or a doctor making $230,000.

Now the numbers would be different than that.

But you still run the numbers

The expenses are different than they were then, too.

But you want it to work for anyone.

Exactly.

And

oddly enough, it wasn't a biblical exercise.

It was just a math exercise.

But oddly enough, that 15% in Baby Step 4 has turned out to be the right number.

It turned out, because we ran like 12, we ran 17, we ran 10, we ran 20.

And then the house didn't get reduced if too much was going in.

Sure.

Or if 10%, it wasn't enough.

It wasn't building up fast enough and so guys these numbers work

so you're not going to catch us adjusting them very often because they've proven out over decades and they have to work for everyone all kinds of different scenarios

Hey guys, Rachel Cruz here.

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This is the best deal you'll get on the planner for a limited time.

These planners go really, really fast.

We only do, they're very expensive to produce, and we only do about 10 or 20,000 of them and they always sell out very, very quickly.

So don't wait, grab it, buy Labor Day for just $35.95.

So the way this thing is laid out, we turn our creatives loose and they have just a lot of fun in their own little sandbox there.

It's a beautiful, beautiful piece of work.

And Jade has written, Rachel has written, and John Deloney have written

the entrance, a little devotional to start each month with.

Basically, yes.

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And then when you turn the next page, you've got a week.

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Click the link in the description.

Get it before the first of the month because after Labor Day, it's going to be $35.97 right now.

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Daniel's in Ohio.

Hi, Daniel.

How are you?

I'm doing good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

How can we help

so last month it kind of kicked for me and uh i just got really sick and tired being sick and tired cool um i've been like this before and uh that kind of makes my wife question if i'm serious or not but last time i had a uh financial advisor that uh he actually idolized you and uh just everything that you did and he was very close to being a multi-millionaire before he eventually passed away right after he was helping us with our budget so um I got real disheartened and stopped budgeting.

I just stopped everything and just why did that not inspire you instead of disheartening you?

I know.

I know.

And that's that's kind of what I'm feeling now.

I'm feeling more inspired to do this.

And

I mean, how ashamed he would have been just,

it just scares me.

And

so I'm starting my baby steps.

I know I need to save my thousand.

And I don't think I'll have an issue with that.

My issue is I went to one of those stupid buy here, pay here car lots where they they are the bank, so they finance you through themselves.

And I ended up paying close to $34,000 for a Dodge Caravan.

It was $19.99, but after interest, it was close to $34,000.

Oh, boy.

I have been paying $175 a week for this van for the past two and a half years.

And

yeah, I've had nothing but issues with it.

So next month, I'm getting a check from a job for $2,500.

And I was going to use that to buy a family vehicle with no payments and give the van back on a voluntary repossession.

No.

I just listened to an episode today that said you would never do that.

Nope.

I would not.

So I thought I would call.

Okay.

So the $34,000 is not the balance.

No.

The $34,000 is the total of payments,

including all interest through the end of the loan.

And so

that's not your payoff balance.

So what you need to get from them is what the actual payoff is if you walked in there with a check today.

It would be right around $14,000.

Oh, good.

Oh, that's way better.

And what's the van worth?

It's probably worth about $2,000.

Who said?

The transmission is going out.

You said.

Okay.

Yeah, I said.

Okay.

So the transmission is struggling, and the vans...

But you paid originally $20,000, and now you think it's worth two

years later.

That's a bit of drama.

I don't believe you.

It wasn't in the best condition when I got it.

I know, but you didn't pay $20,000.

You're not that dumb for a van that was worth $8,000.

And you didn't.

And so this van's not worth two now.

It's probably worth $7,000 or $8,000.

Okay.

You need to figure out what the van's really worth and get the drama out.

Because if you turn this into them, they're going to sell it for two.

And they're going to come after you for $12,000

plus repo fees.

You lose control of the sale price of the van when you do a voluntary or a regular repo.

And they're going to sell it at below wholesale because it's what they do at those lots.

This is the scam they run.

So they want you to do this.

So now I'm going to find out what the van's really worth, and I'm going to get it sold.

And I'm going to cover the difference with a loan at the credit union or wherever.

Even on a credit card, if you borrow $4,000 or $5,000 and you get out of a $14,000 loan and a crappy van and you take $2,500 and go get your little car.

I'm with you on your general direction that this thing's got to go.

But a volunteer repo is not a good plan.

Okay.

You're going to end up owing $6,000 or $8,000 more by doing this.

That's why it's not a good plan.

You understand?

They're going to sell it for way cheaper than you would sell it for.

So the hole that you're in is going to be a lot larger.

And then they're going to come after you for that amount of money.

Yes.

You're going to get sued for that amount of money if you don't pay it to them.

And they will.

This group will.

They'll come after you.

It's what they do.

It's their modus operandi.

What's your hesitation?

I worry, like,

even if I sold the van, I worry about

not being able to get a loan to cover it.

My credit is at like a 574.

Yeah.

That may be difficult.

And,

you know, you might go back down and talk to them and say, is there a situation where you guys would buy this back

and let me sign a note with you for the difference and just pay them?

I'd rather you owe them $5,000 or $6,000

than

have it voluntarily repoed.

Right?

Okay.

So you talk to them.

I'd talk to your credit union.

I'd take out a credit card, any of that, because any of that's you're all we're, at the end of the day, what we're doing is reducing your debt.

So any of that's, we're just changing the structure of the debt and reducing it.

And that's what you've got to do, man.

And you can't just, you can't sign up for something this horrible, stick your foot in a bear trap, and then go, oh, the best way to get out of the bear trap is chew my foot off.

No, you can't do that.

You've got to open the thing, heal, you got to fix it.

You know, you got to, you're going to have to go through some more pain to fix the bad decision that you made when you impulsively did this.

And you knew better when you were doing it the whole time.

The whole time.

Yeah.

So this is the price you pay for that.

And that's okay.

We've all done stupid stuff, but just don't compound it and make it worse now.

Fix it the right way, the least damage to your foot after you stuck it in a bear trap.

That's right.

That's a tough.

So guys,

when you have a car loan of any kind, It doesn't matter whether it's pay now, pay here, buy here, whatever.

Total note.

Tote the note people, or whether it's freaking Lexus Motor Credit and Ford Motor Credit and Chrysler Credit and anybody like that.

It doesn't matter.

This is not a Hertz rent-a-car that you can just drop the thing off.

Right.

And say, I don't want it anymore.

They're going to assess that.

They're going to run it through a repo auction.

And I've bought cars at repo auctions and they sell below wholesale.

And sometimes they run them through, Mannheim, they run them through the big auctions, the auto auctions.

And they, you know, they say, this is a repo.

And they, you know, and so you're expecting some dings, you're expecting some problems with it.

If you're the buyer, and I'm going to discount it below wholesale so that I'm getting a deal if I'm the buyer.

And so it's going to bring the least possible price in that scenario.

And then they're going to sue you for the difference.

And you've got a repo on your credit.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, you could have sold it.

And, you know, doubled or tripled

and cut the problem down.

So you guys, I don't like my car anymore, so I'm going to just drop it off at the dealer.

Y'all can't do that, okay?

You're killing yourself.

It's not a hurt to rent a car.

Today's Ramsey Show question is brought to you by Why ReFi.

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Today's question comes from Savannah in Alabama.

She says, my partner and I are engaged in living together.

I have about 200,000 in student loan debt and he has 125,000 left on his mortgage.

We have separate finances and he's supportive of me getting out of debt.

The problem is that I have a hard time watching him splurge on hobbies and travel, which he can easily afford, while I can't.

I agree that when we get married, all this changes, and we've already talked about being frugal together.

Is it fair to ask him to save now for when we get married?

And if not, how do I manage this disconnect?

He should want to save, yeah, because he's going to have to face the Piper later.

Yeah.

And it's going to cause him to kick the can down the road on the marriage date.

Well, that's my thing.

It doesn't sound like there's much of a date.

She doesn't mention a date.

And so I wonder about that.

So we're already acting like we're married in every sense of the word.

We're living together.

Uh-huh.

Go get married.

Like this weekend.

Yeah.

That solves it,

which is what you should have done in the first place, actually.

Yeah, the whole thing is weird.

They're living together.

It's his mortgage.

It's her debt.

Yeah, there's a lot of problems here.

You're trying to do everything in the wrong order and in the wrong way.

So it solves it all.

Just go get married this weekend.

And then both of you attack.

You know, that shuts down the whole discussion.

If you were living separately and he was making a lot of money and had no debt except his mortgage and the same question came up, I would expect him to want to, if he called and asked us what to do, we would tell him to save money like crazy so that as soon as he he comes home with the honeymoon, he makes a big old lump some hit on that thing, right?

Yeah.

And that would be the more normal way to, I don't know, normal is the right word, but it would be the more,

if everything was in the proper order, that's the way it would go.

Yeah.

Okay.

Instead, we've gotten things out of order here.

He doesn't think that you guys are getting married anytime soon.

And nor does he have an incentive to.

No, he doesn't.

So, of course, he's supportive of you paying off your debt.

That doesn't, that's no skin off his back.

Yeah.

And there's no reason to to get married.

He's got everything he needs.

There you have it.

Hello.

All right.

I'm just saying.

All right.

Maya is in Colorado Springs.

Hey, Maya, what's up?

Hey, how are y'all?

Better than we deserve.

How can we help?

Hey, so I've got a debt snowball question.

So I'm getting ready to start baby step two, and I've got all my debts boosted out, smallest to largest.

But I was evicted in January, and I still owe that apartment complex about $14,000.

Why were you available?

I lost my job due to a medical complication.

I'm re-employed now and was able to get another rental place with a larger deposit.

Great.

What do you make?

Yeah.

I make about $42,000 a year.

All right, good.

All right.

So you got a huge debt there, huh?

Oh, that's just a portion of it.

I'm about 53 in total.

But my

question is,

my ex-boyfriend, my boyfriend at the time, was a co-applicant on that apartment with me.

He lives in another state.

He never lived in that apartment.

He was just helping me out because my credit is so bad.

So I'm wondering if I should get that one paid off first so that he's not screwed when his lease is over, or if I should still just follow the snowball and go smallest to largest.

Well, he's already screwed because he's got a judgment against him.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, I mean, when his lease is over, that's going to show up on his credit bureau.

Right.

So, I mean, it'll either show it'll either show he's got a judgment had a judgment against him that's been paid off, or he's just got a judgment because the lease he signed got evicted.

So, that's going to yeah, he's got a pretty heavy damage to him already.

He most of the damage has already been done, is my point.

Right.

So, whether it's paid off or not is not it is not really going to keep him from getting something over in another city.

So, you got

54,000, you said.

What's the other debts?

$53,000.

Let's see.

Let me pull up my notes real quick.

I've got

some credit card debt.

How much?

Some other small personal loans.

How much credit card?

About $16,000.

All right.

That's 30 of the 53.

What's the rest of it?

Personal loans?

Yeah.

How much is that?

I've got about $14,000 on a car that was wrecked that I didn't have insurance on, and then

a little over $12,000 to the apartment complex, and then just some other small things like old Wi-Fi that I haven't paid.

Okay.

Insurance I had been dead on, stuff like that.

Okay.

You are paying double and triple for a lot of things because you're paying it poorly.

There's a lot of things on this list that are out-of-control things.

A car that I wrecked, I didn't have insurance on.

Other stuff I haven't gotten around to, and it's piled up back there.

So there's a lot of different crises represented in those things that you created by not taking care of business.

Yes.

Like keeping car insurance in place.

That's like a priority because otherwise you end up with this mess on a car and you don't even have the car anymore, right?

Correct.

What kind of work do you do?

I'm a dog groomer.

A dog groomer.

Okay.

And I'm just trying to understand how this all originated, how this kind of started spiraling out, like Dave was saying,

where that instability came from.

Is it coming from dog grooming as a profession or is it coming from something else?

No.

So in November,

I was diagnosed with

a disease that prevents me from driving, and I'm a mobile dog groomer.

Now it's managed and medicated, and I'm back to work, but that's kind of when all of that happened.

I wasn't able to pay the rent and the car insurance and everything just quickly piled up.

The credit card debt is just for me being irresponsible.

And you've cut them up since.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So, okay.

Yeah.

No, I'm going to work the debt snowball straight up.

List your debts, smallest to largest, pay minimum payments on everything but the little ones and attack the little ones with a vengeance and work your way straight through as fast as you can.

Are you on a salary at 42?

No, I make around $800 a week, depending on, you know, tips and all that sort of stuff.

Right.

Okay.

Are you able to work more than you're working?

Um so the branch in Colorado Springs just opened.

About two weeks ago I was able to pick up a third day and as it grows I'll be able to pick up more work.

I'm still

a day?

Yeah, I currently work three days a week.

And what are you doing with the other four days?

D

I DoorDash, take care of my kid and my home.

And

didn't sound like it.

It didn't sound like it to me.

It sounded like you're doing nothing.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

Listen, you're broke.

You've got to be working, girl.

Yeah.

All the time.

Okay.

How old is your baby?

She's three.

And who takes care of them when you're working?

My fiancé.

Okay.

Okay.

When are you getting married?

Uh that is to be determined depending on how long it takes us to not be broke.

That's how no, that that's how fiancé works.

We have a date.

Otherwise, we have a promise that has not got a date.

Okay.

And so, yeah, that's an issue.

How long have y'all been engaged?

Um

November.

Being debt-free is not required to get married in the state of Colorado.

This is true.

Okay.

So what does he make?

Right now he's not working because he was in a motorcycle wreck.

Okay.

Y'all are a hot mess.

How is he taking care of a baby?

I mean, a three-year-old.

Yeah, I mean, he can manage.

I think he can work.

I think you both need to work more.

A lot more.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's why I asked the question before.

Less partying, more working.

Lots more working.

Money comes from work.

You need money.

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show.

Jade Washaw, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today.

Andreas is with us in Austin, Texas.

Hey, Andreas, how are you?

Hey, Jade.

Thanks for taking my call.

Sure.

How can we help?

Well, I need your help trying to figure out how to retire my wife.

We have, we had a baby a few months ago, and it has now, it's now time for her to go back into the office.

And every time she leaves for the office, I can see it in her eyes.

It's killing her to go to the office.

And

I would love nothing more than to work, you know, and just take, I mean, sorry, I am working, but you know, take care of all the bills and do all that.

The problem is she makes more money than I do and not by a small margin.

She's in software.

I'm in construction.

And so

I'm trying to figure out, you know,

I'd make $5,000 take home

a month.

$7,200 a month.

Okay.

Can you live on $5,000 a month?

We'd have to figure it out.

We got a mortgage, but no other payment.

How much is your mortgage?

Mortgage by

$3,441.

You can't live in that house if she's at home.

That's the big picture to this.

That's the big key to this:

you'd have to sell the house, you'd have to downsize, and it'd have to be something to where the mortgage is no more than 25% of $5,000 take-home pay.

$1,250.

So $1,250.

Half the house.

We do have various investments.

We have about $415,000

across.

We have about some of it is retirement, about $60,000 for each of us in 401ks.

Then the rest of it is in brokerage accounts and some company stocks.

Which totals what?

The non-retirement totals, how much?

So the $412,000 minus about $120,000.

So let's call it $300 grand.

Okay.

So what's what's your loan balance on the mortgage?

We have, we owe $269,000.

We have about $200,000 in equity.

So if you paid off the mortgage

with your brokerage account,

you'd have no mortgage.

Now you've got $5,000.

That's better than selling it.

That's extra information we didn't have early in the conversation.

That's a big piece of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think you should probably do that anyway.

You should do that anyway.

The money.

So is that yeah what now?

That's what makes sense.

So I mean having the money in the you know invested is not that doesn't make more than because I think our interest rate on the house is 6% but the average return on the investment should be like seven or something for the year, right?

Sure, but you said you opened the call with saying you are looking for a way to, to use your words, retire your wife, but she wants to be a stay-at-home mom.

And you were looking at how can I do that?

And we were saying, here's the solution to what you're saying.

Now, to Dave's point, we would have told you to do that regardless because it's non-retirement funds, it's stock, and you still have the debt of your home laying around.

So, we probably would have suggested that to you regardless of the fact.

No one has ever, no millionaire that we've ever interviewed, Andreas, has said the way I got rich was I borrowed money on my house and invested it in a brokerage account.

Zero.

Zero millionaires say that.

So

that's mythology from TikTok.

Okay, it just doesn't work.

Because in the real world, we have this thing called risk and babies.

So if we paid off your house, how much other debt do you have?

Nothing.

We own our cars.

We don't have anything else.

So without a house payment, sit down and do a budget with your wife tonight on the Every Dollar app

and commit to living on your income and not a dime more.

And just to drive this solution home, I just wanted to ask, did you have any suggestions of how you could do it?

Well, I mean, so here's another factor.

Because she's in software, her next,

she should be getting

her trajectory, she should be making

$400,000 like pretty soon.

Okay.

So I'm just wondering if we can't

move the assets that we currently have around.

And of course, I'm going to do my best to get my money up too, but just if we can do something here just with what we have to get to that point where she can step away from that job, you know, in the next

five years or so.

So you're saying, can we put it?

I'm so confused.

You are so screwed up on your goals.

You need to decide what it is you want, honey.

You called up and said, my wife's eyes, when she leaves the brand new baby she just has, I want to retire my wife we just told you how to do that now you got her work in five more years I'm confused well that's the biggest question is is this her saying to you I want to stay at home or is this something you've put in your brain that you want to like surprise her with

she has she has expressed uh you know not demanded but expressed it would be nice to have that option sorry I may have been clear y'all got to sit down tonight and figure out what you want to do does she want to work and make 400k or does she want to be at home yeah clear you need to pay off the house either way.

And

figure out if you can live on five grand, dude.

And then you work your career and get your career up.

And someday she goes back to work.

By then, her software skills will be completely irrelevant

and she gets to start completely over.

So

if she steps out, you don't get to step out of that world for five minutes, much less five years.

And so that world's cutting edge, bleeding edge changes every 10 minutes.

And so

the number of things that the people in this building that do software engineering are doing today that they did five years ago is zero.

That's okay.

Nothing is the same.

And so

about the time I start understanding a little bit of what they're doing, it's over.

And I have to have to start again.

So

yeah, that's, but that's okay.

It's, but it's not a skill set that you can put on the shelf and take back off the shelf later.

You know, it's not like I'm a nurse.

You know, anatomy is not going to change when you come back five years later.

Okay.

But the, and, you know, there may be a few medical procedures that are different or something like that, but nursing will still be nursing five years later.

You can put that one on the shelf, keep your certs active, go back to work when the kid goes to kindergarten.

That's not an unusual thing.

People do that stuff all the time.

This one, you're just saying, I'd rather be home than make 400K.

And that's perfectly okay.

But you don't want to enter that on assumptions, is all I'm saying.

No, you don't want to go, you don't want to go, we're going to do this and hope it works works out.

You need to lay down, this is what the budget looks like on $5,000, and this is what we are both willing to do.

Yeah.

And if you're not willing to do that, then don't quit.

Yeah.

And weigh out all the opportunity costs on that because $400,000 is a big income.

And I'm not saying money is everything.

But to Dave's point, there's a lot to be weighed and considered there.

Kind of like what you said in the first segment about you have to make a decision with the end in mind.

I'm pretty sure

98%,

I'll make that number up, of 99.9% of the ladies who have their first child, and when they go back to work, it's very difficult.

Yes.

Now, I have a lady working here that just had her third child, and she couldn't wait to go back to work.

Listen,

you did not lie, Dave.

There is no lie.

So it's, you know, finding reasons to get out of the house.

It's a normal thing to have this, you know, have this angst.

And if you're a career lady, that's a normal thing.

And so you just got to work through what's real here.

Many of you listen to the Ramsey Show because you're sick and tired of getting nowhere with your money.

You work too hard to live paycheck to paycheck with no money in the bank.

But here's the deal: just listening to the show won't change that.

If you want different results, you have to do something different.

We've helped millions of people save money, ditch debt, and build wealth.

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Nicole is in Utah.

Hi, Nicole.

How are you?

I'm so good.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

How can we help?

Good.

Good.

I'm so excited, but I can't.

I'm a little nervous.

nervous okay so i have a question i my husband and i are on baby step number two um we've gone through a lot of uh we've got a lot of medical and credit card debt um i've had a really bad health problems the last three to four years um so now we are just struggling to pay all our credit cards and our medical bills

I was listening to you earlier and somebody called in and you told them to stop

contributing to the 401k in those kind of cases.

Is that right?

Yes.

Okay.

My question is, would it be smart or really stupid to take that 401k money out to help with the debts and the monthly payments?

I would not take the money out of the 401k that you have stocked up thus far, but I would stop contributing to it.

How much are you currently contributing?

We stopped contributing about a month ago, so we're not contributing anymore.

How much debt have you gotten in credit cards and medical bills?

In credit cards, we've got close to $20,000 in medical debt.

It's probably $4,000.

$4,000.

And how much do you owe on your cars?

We don't owe any on our cars.

We drive beaters or $2,004.

What's your household income?

It's about $115,000

for my husband, and I make like like 12.

I just do part-time work.

Okay.

Are you still ill?

No, I'm feeling better, and I'm able to work now full-time, so I'm slowly increasing that, which is helping a little.

Good.

Okay.

If you're all better now, why are you slowly increasing it?

Just to get my momentum up back to where I'm 100% functioning.

I had a knee replacement, three knee surgeries, and carpal tunnel.

So it's like kind of fresh, and I still have to recover from it a little bit.

When did you have your knee replaced?

A year ago.

You should be back functioning.

Yeah.

It does not take a year to do a knee replacement.

Well, it also depends on what kind of work you're trying to do.

Yeah, I actually work as a lunch lady at this school, and I also, on the side, do DoorDash deliveries just to try and make some money.

So this for you is a lot of standing, a lot of lifting.

I still agree with Dave.

I feel like you should be ready if you've done the physical therapy.

Yeah.

What's the doctor say?

The doctors

don't say much at all.

Well,

they'll let you know when they are clear to work.

Yeah, I mean.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm clear to work for sure.

Yeah, and so you need,

we don't need to be DoorDashing and Lunch Lady.

We need a real job and start getting some money coming in.

And you guys aren't managing the 115 very well either.

This should not be 24,000 should not be killing you if you make $115,000 plus your income.

I agree.

I think you're not on a budget.

Am I right?

I know you're not on a budget.

Okay.

So we're going to.

We have a written down one, but we don't.

It's not the same.

Yeah, it's not the same.

We're going to hook you up with Every Dollar, the all-new Every Dollar.

It's the best budgeting app out there.

But not only that, it's going to help you walk through what we're teaching you here okay so at the end of this call as long as you open every dollar it's going to pick up where we left off and keep you on track okay but you have to promise that you're going to log in and onboard yeah no more eating out no more vacations and you need a full-time job

yeah now okay now a year after a knee replacement you need a full-time job

and uh your your family needs the income and you guys need to clean this mess up so um yeah it sounds like talking to you that your body has recovered more than your emotions from the medical problems.

You hit the nail on the head there.

Yeah.

Okay.

I don't blame you.

I'm a wuss when it comes to pain.

So my wife is like a Navy SEAL, and I get a hangnail and I'm an ICU.

So

I get that, but

I think it's going to be really good for your emotions.

And everything to your energy level will go up when you've got something to, a harness to lean into, to to pull.

And so go do that.

Go do something now.

And the more activity you have, the more endorphins are released, the more some of the cloud, the fog starts to lift and you go on.

And so hard work actually solves a lot of stuff in this situation.

But yeah, you guys need to get that 115 barking and then you add another 50 to it.

And you guys are not only going to pay off this debt, you're going to build an emergency fund, you're going to start building wealth.

And that's where we're headed with this.

So let's go somewhere with this rather than simply survival and trying to find some hack so we don't have to deal with our disorganization like borrowing on your 401k or cashing out your 401k.

Not going to do that.

That doesn't make sense.

You have enough money to get this paid off very, very quickly.

You should be debt-free in under a year.

Amen.

Maybe around six months, depending on what you make at your new job.

Full-time job, big girl job.

Like get up 8 o'clock in the morning, go to work, come home 5 o'clock.

You'll feel better.

Yeah, real job.

And it's not lunchroom job go do something i don't care what you're doing customer service i don't care what you're doing you don't have to do something that's necessarily physically exerting but you've got to go get engaged for 40 freaking hours a week and door dash is a cop out and go get it go get her done girl it's going to be good for you

cynthia is in panama city florida hi cynthia how are you

Hi Dave, doing better than I deserve.

How are you?

Just the same.

How can I help?

Great, great.

Well, I wanted to say, first of all, I'm kind of nervous.

I hope that I can word this so that it's understood.

And I wanted to say thank you for teaching me how to become a millionaire.

I believe in the Bible.

I believe your advice.

And I believe I will become a millionaire.

So thank you for teaching me how to handle money now and when I become millionaire status.

Perfect.

And so my situation, I did complete financial youth university recently, and I'm doing the every dollar budget, but I'm falled out on baby step six

because I'm in a situation now where I'm a caregiver for my parents, my elderly parents.

They're 88 and 93.

We went through the hurricane in 2018.

It destroyed my house, their house.

My husband helped us put everything back together, but he's passed away and now my plate is very full with being a caregiver and I never want to go through.

having to rebuild another house by myself.

My question is, should I sell the house, rent until I can make my next move and just bank the proceeds from the sale until I can get out of this state?

Are you living with your elderly parents that you're giving care to?

Partially.

I'm there during the week, and then I come here tomorrow.

So you have a home,

you have a home separate, and that's the home we're talking about.

Yes.

Okay.

And so what's your current home worth?

370-ish.

And the reason you're selling it is because you don't want to rebuild it if there's another hurricane?

I'm afraid that another hurricane will come, and not only will I have damage to my house, but my parents' house, evacuating them, finding a place for all of us, going through the hell that we went through in 2018 alone.

You're going to do it again if you live in Florida.

Yeah.

Most likely, I mean, it's a.

Even if you rent, you're not going to escape escape it.

How long have you lived in Florida?

Your whole life?

Your whole life?

I moved in 2013 from Texas.

And so in 2013, this hurricane that came through last, was that your first big one?

Yes and no.

You know, I had lived in Florida previously, but it was far away from the coast.

That was Opal.

Opal was just a lot of wind and stuff.

Unless you plan on moving your elderly parents out of Florida and everybody sells and moves north, there's no avoiding this.

Yeah, I mean, moving into a rental doesn't avoid it.

It just means that somebody else has to rebuild the house.

You still have to evacuate.

You still have to go to the house.

You still have to go through all the issue.

So,

no, I don't think that's a logical fear that I would deal with.

I know it's been hell, and I know you've been wounded by this, and I'm hearing the pain in your voice.

I'm sorry for that.

But no, I would not liquidate a home unless I'm moving away from Florida.

Yeah.

We've all done dumb things with money.

I've done them with zeros on the end.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with money is not having a plan for it.

You got to have a plan.

You got to be intentional and you need to get a budget.

You have to tell your money where to go so you're not wondering where it went.

Our budgeting app, Every Dollar, helps you do just that.

It's the easiest and fastest way to make a monthly plan for every dollar you've got coming in and going out.

Now's the best time to get started before the ridiculous holiday spending season gets here and sucks you in because you didn't have a plan.

Don't let that happen.

You're done making that mistake.

Go download Every Dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play today.

Buying or selling a home in this weird, wild world requires facts, not drama.

And there's a lot of drama and falsehoods floating around, particularly stuff like TikTok and so forth regarding real estate and what's really happening out there.

You need real facts.

We'll help you with that.

We have a website called U.S.

Housing Market Trends that gives you simple facts so you'll know what's really going on.

Check it out at ramseysolutions.com slash market or

click in the show notes if you're on a podcast or YouTube and it'll put you right in there.

Jessica is in Massachusetts.

Hi, Jessica.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

How can I help?

I just have

a question.

It's kind of more of like advice on how to

proceed from here.

So just a little background.

My husband and I

followed your steps.

We paid off all of our debt.

And thank you for the leadership in that.

way to get us through to where we are now.

Congratulations.

I'm proud of you.

Thank you.

So we're having a little bit of an issue with interpersonal relationships now that we are in a spot where we're kind of living like nobody else, like you have stated.

And a lot of our friends and family members are kind of

making remarks towards us when we do do something because we have the means to do it.

Like we bought, you know, my husband bought his truck outright, and, you know, people are like, oh, it must be nice.

Who are people?

It's mostly

people like my husband's friends.

He needs new friends.

That's called hater aid.

That's haterade.

Listen, real friends are exposed when two things happen:

crisis and success.

That's when you find out who your real friends are.

So your husband has found out that he has acquaintances.

Yeah.

They're not friends.

So true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Friends know how to celebrate you.

Yeah.

I mean,

I've got a friend that hit a, you know, made an amazing amount of money selling his business the other day.

And the only thing I can think of to say is, way to go.

I'm proud of you.

Right.

Because he's like my friend.

Right.

Yeah.

I didn't roll my eyes and go, all billionaires should be taxed.

You know, I mean, really.

Yeah.

That's just dumb.

Yeah.

So is that what they're saying?

Must be nice.

That's what they're saying to him?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And kind of like making like snide remarks like that when, you know, when we talk about it.

And I mean, it's not like we didn't try like before when we first started to do your programming.

Number one, we don't need to talk about it so much.

We just need to do whatever we're going to do.

Doesn't need to be a lot of discussion.

But number two, if somebody does that, they get about two of those and third strike, they're out.

Yeah.

I mean, he could, if it really, if you really think it's a friend, which the behavior doesn't suggest that, but if it is something that you're like, man, I really want to see, then just ask him about it.

That's what I would do.

If I had a friend that I'd been friends with for years and they started with this business, I would

believe in the friendship enough to say, hey, when you say that, what do you mean?

Because

if the tables were reversed, I'd be happy for you.

And I would just ask him.

And then you're going to learn a lot by their response, or he will.

And then you can take it from there.

But I think what you've got is you're not real friends, is what I think.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, I think you're just going to find out.

I mean, you know,

we found out during COVID, we had a whole bunch of negative press and we found out who our friends were.

And we found out when we're very successful and we get in the Hall of Fame and we have another number one best-selling book, we find out who our friends are.

But the number of times I'm going to tolerate someone calling up and going, well, look at you.

You know, I'm going to be going, well, look at you,

moron.

I mean, seriously.

I mean,

I want to give a little bit of grace for sometimes people have moments where they do not show up as their best self.

I mean, I'm just going to say that.

Yeah, but I'm saying

you're saying call them out.

You're going to be a little more gentle in calling them out than I am.

I don't know about gentle, but I am going to call them out.

Yeah, I'm going to definitely, I'm going to be going, hey, you know, that, that, what you're doing right there is dumb.

Yeah.

Don't do that.

And we're not, we're not going to be doing this anymore.

So, not if you want to hang around here.

So, you know, and if it's family, then you just limit the amount of time you're around them.

Just go, I can't hang out here.

It's

too much negativity.

Yeah.

You know, all you're doing is trashing everything I've been working hard for.

It's like, you know, the one I love is

you're so lucky.

Oh.

That one pisses me off.

That's your, that's your.

It's like a hot button.

I'm on.

Lucky's got, lucky's got work overall zones.

What lucky's got.

Lucky's got calluses.

Lucky's got hours spent while you were sitting on your butt drinking beer watching Netflix.

That's what lucky's got.

I got your lucky.

Okay.

That gets me

lucky's butt.

You know,

man, that gets me going right there.

You're so lucky.

Luck didn't have squat to do with this, darling.

It was not luck at all.

God's blessings, I'll go with, okay?

And my hard work.

There is some corn in the field because we freaking planted some corn.

Luck had nothing to do with it, okay?

Hello.

I can tell this really bothers you.

Yeah, this one bothers me.

I can't stand it.

It's like, and it's even, it's even people out there just in the comments and stuff.

I don't read the comments and junk, but that I used to get, like when I used to interface with people on twitter when it was new and you could argue with people back then it was kind of fun and i would just go at them you know because it's so fun and then but then but yeah you know what i hate it's too it's a it's a combination of two when people say oh are you still doing your little budget or whatever oh yeah it's little or whatever yeah demeaning yeah

are you still doing that little business

yeah i'm still it's got you know i got a little million dollars from it

and so so,

matter of fact, I got two little million dollars.

Yeah.

There's two of those little million dollars over there from that.

And might be three soon of those little million dollars.

Yeah, but we're still working on that little.

Yeah, you're right.

I hate that.

That's so demeaning.

I hate that.

Pat you on the head.

Aren't you cute?

Aren't you cute?

You're still working on that little thing.

You're still doing that little Dave Ramsey cult thing.

Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah, that one, that's just, that's hilarious.

It's funny.

So here's the deal.

The Catholics have a wonderful saying.

They say that envy is one of the seven deadly sins.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so jealousy is, I want what you have.

Envy is, I don't think I can have what you have, so I don't want you to have it.

That's diabolical.

It's diabolical.

It's evil at its core.

That is.

And so that's the kind of stuff you run into, Jessica, as you start to win.

But it does.

It separates the sheep from the goats.

It separates the wheat from the tares.

And it's pretty obvious.

I mean, I got

poison over here, and I got fruit over here.

And so I'm going to hang out with the fruit, and the poison is going to have to go away.

Yeah.

Because they can't cheer you on.

You are opting out of my life by being a butt.

I'm serious.

I mean, it's just how this works.

We'll talk about it depending on how long the friendship, quote unquote, has been going on.

It'll be how gentle we are or how much we talk about it.

But if it's a casual thing, I'll just casually not be available anymore.

That's right.

I'm casually not going to show up at your next deal.

I'm saying that because I don't want to hang out with a bunch of goats.

That's so good.

Not the deal.

It is disappointing, though, when that isn't.

It does aggravate you, but

and I'm still capable, obviously, of getting aggravated about it.

But yeah, you're so lucky.

You're so

lucky.

You must be nice.

Yeah, man.

Just line up behind that luck and think about the number of hours, the number of airline miles.

Oh, my God, the amount of time I spent in a jet flying and going through freaking TSA.

And oh man, the stuff we've done, the stuff, the hard, the work, the hotel rooms, gross,

grotesque, gross.

Instead of sleeping in your own bed, you know, you're so lucky.

I don't think so.

Our scripture of the day, Luke 6:37, do not judge and you will not be judged.

Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Benjamin Franklin said, creditors have better memories than debtors.

This is true.

Marsha's in Spokane, Washington.

Hi, Marsha.

How are you?

Hey, I'm just Groovy.

Cool.

How can we help?

Hey, yeah, my husband passed away this last winter or spring.

I'm sorry.

And I'm, yeah, it was kind of a bummer.

But

trying to get things put together financially.

You know, fortunately,

I don't have a problem in that we have money, which is nice.

But trying to figure out how to be wisest with what I've got.

And I've been listening to you and,

you know, hearing about, I think it has turned the IRAs into

Ross and wondering if that would be a good choice for me.

What, I don't know if it helps you to know what I've got going.

How old are you?

I am 60.

I'll be 67 in a week.

67.

All right.

And how much were you left in IRAs?

Well, I got 1.2 in SEP,

300 in an IRA,

and then I've got right now 420 sitting in a high

3.75.

And

debts are about $50,000 on our house, and that's at about $3.75 also.

And then we have a rental in Huntington Beach that we use for our kids who are missionaries down there and other missionaries to live in.

And that one we owe about $725 on.

And it does not create an income because you furnish it to missionaries.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just

kind of on its own.

I have income,

fortunately, your last conversation was because we had had

years tell us, oh, yeah, you got nice.

You're cutting out a little bit, Marsha.

I didn't hear all that.

You have an income that's what?

I have an income of Social Security of $3,700 from my husband,

and then about $30,000 a month from our network marketing business.

Okay.

All right, good.

Okay.

So you got plenty to live on, obviously.

I got plenty to live on, yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

And if you got how to be the wisest

with the other stuff.

Well, the no-brainer is take some of the high-yield savings to pay off your mortgage.

The $50,000

tonight.

Yeah.

Okay, that's a no-brainer.

The other two areas I do want to work on long-term, but none of them are a panic, is I want to start get with your Smart Vestor Pro or whoever's helping you with your investments and start talking about moving the IRAs and the SEPs gradually into Roth.

Because whatever's not there when you hit 72.5, you're going to have required minimum distributions.

And you make enough money from the network marketing stuff to

pay the taxes that are created if you move some money over systematically every year for the next several years.

Because if it's all in Roth, it's growing from that point forward tax-free.

And it passes to your kiddos, if you've got them, or your heirs, tax-free, and no required distributions on any of it.

If it's in a traditional, it's going to have required distributions over 10 years on inherited and required minimum distributions if you're alive and it's

required to pay out to you.

So they're going to get their tax money.

It's just a matter of when and what it looks like.

Here's another thing I didn't throw in there on that 300 in the IRA.

That's actually from an old IRA that he had with

Shriners through whatever.

So I have three years to decide what I want to do with that.

If I want to continue it where it is, move it into something else.

I don't really understand that.

I don't know what it's in, why you would have anything that's three years.

Well, within the three years, it's in Trans-American, I think, is what

does it.

But I got a letter, and within three years, I need to decide what my final place I want it to land.

Okay.

Yeah, again.

Do you have someone that's advising you on your investments?

Not really.

Okay.

So jump on ramseysolutions.com and find a couple of the Smart Vestor pros and interview them in the area.

We're not in the investment business, but these are people that we have vetted that give advice that sounds like we did it, like we said it, okay?

And that's why we're willing to put our name beside them.

And they have the heart of a teacher, which is most important because I want you to understand everything you're doing or don't do it.

Okay.

But basically, I see two things, three things I want to do.

One, I want to pay off your house today.

Two is I want to begin a systematic move of the IRA and the SEP into good gross stock mutual funds and Roth IRAs.

And I think you can pay the taxes out of your huge income because you're making $360,000 a year, and I got a feeling you don't spend anywhere near that.

You're right.

You're right.

Yeah.

And so, you know,

if you spend $100,000 a year on taxes out of that and you're able to move all this stuff into Roth, it's really a good good move.

And I'm going to begin to do that.

It doesn't have to happen immediately, but put a system on that.

And the third thing is I got to deal with that $725,000 mortgage.

A mortgage has got to go away at some point.

And I don't know what you're going to do to make that go away, whether you're going to use some of your investments and some of your income to make it go away, or whether you're going to look at selling it.

Yeah.

How long, I mean, what did you think?

When's that going to play out till, having other people stay there?

Well, as long as the Lord calls our ministry to be there, they head up a ministry called Circuit Riders from Youth with a Mission

down there.

And that's something we've been committed to.

And

what's that property worth?

About $2 million.

Okay.

Well, I mean,

another option is find a million and a quarter property

that you pay cash for.

Right.

And move them into that.

Sell that and move them into that.

That might be another option.

That's a great idea.

You know, something like because that's not a bad, that's not exactly slumming it.

So, um, yeah, no, no, it's not.

They have, they live downstairs, and then upstairs is a mother-in-law, and they have four staff members live upstairs

and pay rent also up there.

Okay, which I don't know, I mean, kind of playing around with that.

I don't care how you do it, but some whether you move to a million and a quarter, million and a half, and you pay cash for that.

But I don't want you sitting there at 75 years old with a $700,000 mortgage for a missionary property.

I want you to pay it off.

Okay.

Somehow or another.

Because I want that stability and peace for you because you're being so generous.

And I appreciate what you're doing.

And I'm familiar with youth with a mission, very familiar.

And so I know exactly what's going on there.

And

I think what you're doing is awesome.

So keep it up, but let's figure out a way to do it where it doesn't leave you quite so vulnerable.

And it could be that we, okay, we got 420 in a high-yield savings.

We take 50 out, that's 370.

Towards seven and a quarter, that's only 300,000.

You may just pay it off out of your income,

reduce it by that high yield savings, and then pay it off out of your income.

But I'm not going to be sitting there with a high yield savings account and a bunch of mortgages.

That money needs to be used to start clearing stuff or some other strategy.

But those are the three areas, if I were in your shoes, that I would be working on.

I'm sorry for your loss.

But it sounds like you guys have done an absolutely wonderful job creating income and taking good care of it.

So congratulations.

And

obviously you and he together have left you in a really good spot.

Yeah.

And that's good.

So yeah, three things.

Let's clean up those separas and move them into Roths.

Let's pay off your house tonight.

And then let's start trying to figure out how we're going to pay off the property in Huntington or how how we're going to shift it to a different property to where we end up net, net, net, debt-free.

And so, I mean, I don't care if you just pay it off and keep it.

It's not a bad idea.

I think that's kind of what I'd probably do.

I'd throw 370 of that high-yield savings at it.

And then,

you know, $30,000 a month coming in.

I'm going to just chunk that puppy and be done with it in about a year and a half, two years.

I don't want you hitting 70 years old with a mortgage.

That's what I don't want.

Even if you've got a million bucks laying over there, I still don't want you having a mortgage.

So we've got to work towards that.

That's the direction.

Good question.

Good question, Marcia.

Thank you for calling.

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

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

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