When You Feel Overwhelmed, Control the Controllables

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Normal is broke, and common sense is weird.

So, we're here to help you transform your life from the Ramsey Network in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio.

This is the Ramsey Show.

I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Rachel Cruz, number one best-selling author, Ramsey personality, host of the Rachel Cruz Show, my daughter.

She's my co-host today.

Open phones here at 888-825-5225.

Before we go to the phones, we're just going to take a second and

get off format a little bit, off format, because some of you will hear all of this in another day or so.

Some of you that listen on podcasts and things, you might hear it two weeks from now.

But acknowledging that, we do do this show live from 1 to 4 Central Time every day on the glass in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions and people, nice people are out there right now watching us do it, which means they really need to get a hobby.

But there they are.

We love y'all.

We love you.

We love you.

I mean, come on, really.

And so, but anyway, you're here, and thank you for hanging out with us.

We got free coffee and free cookies, so

that makes it all worthwhile.

So, anyway, because of that, and the show is on 680 talk radio stations.

Many of those are live.

And so just to let you guys that are listening two weeks from now understand what's going on.

So at the moment we're recording this, it is September 11th.

And so,

which I noticed the other day, I noticed a minute ago, it's called Patriots Day.

I missed that somehow that it had been named.

But the acknowledgement of the terror attacks on the towers, bringing the towers down.

And the Pentagon.

And the Pentagon.

And

3,000 plus, almost 4,000 people people losing their lives, including first responders, in a very short period of time.

The largest death toll on American soil since Pearl Harbor.

And I was actually on the air then when that occurred.

This show's been on the air for 30 plus years.

We were obviously in a different location with a microphone that was not this nice.

But because we were

later that day because they were at 9.30 a.m.

We were in the office in staff meeting and the 8.30 a.m.

our time.

That's right, right, that's right.

And 8.35 is when we sat and watched the second one live on television and going to the towers.

And then we've got to decide with a show like this, what are we going to do in the middle of something like that?

Because we're basically useless.

We're not a news organization.

And so

we got in touch with our friends at ABC

because

they're in charge of the satellite that we run this thing on for talk radio.

And we got their permission to just put their newsfeed on our network.

And we did that for two days and just shut our show down because

me commenting on that would have been taken about five minutes, and then I wouldn't have anything intelligent to say because I didn't know anything.

Nobody knew anything.

I was just a regular dude on a microphone in Nashville, Tennessee.

And so I didn't need to try to play into that.

So we stepped aside and let them cover it for a couple of days.

And then I got back on on Friday.

The stock market reopened on Tuesday following.

Well, it was Tuesday was the day it happened.

happened, so I bet.

It was a week later.

Yeah.

A week later.

I got back on the air by Thursday, I guess, Thursday or Friday, and

said, hey, the stock market's going to open next week.

You guys chill.

So then I had something in the middle.

I think I realized that it closed for almost a full week.

Yeah, it was all, well, for two reasons.

One was the fear.

So it didn't want the markets to go bananas.

And two, Wall Street is literally, the dust

had not settled on it.

It's under the shadow of the Twin Towers, or was under the shadow of the Twin Towers.

And so

it didn't actually get physically damaged, but it was within a few blocks or so there.

That's what we were dealing with.

So anyway, all of that.

And here we sit in the middle of this, and this is the day after the assassination of our friend Charlie Kirk.

And so all of that is just a moment to be reflective and go, evil is real.

I was on a panel after 911.

And I was reminded of it yesterday when Charlie was assassinated.

And it was like talk radio ABC guy.

I won't name them.

They were people that you would know their names.

And Wolf Blitzer from CNN was conducting the panel.

We were at a talk radio convention, which a talk radio convention, guys, is somewhat like going to a Star Wars bar.

So

kind of some weird characters there.

So anyway, we're lined up on this thing, and

they're all doing politics and talking about this or that or whatever.

And Wolf said, well, Dave, you haven't had much to say.

And one of the other hosts was a uh

like a deloney type character doing relationship stuff and she said well i think we now have to consider that evil is real and i said well ma'am i'm from tennessee we already knew it was

and um we were just reminded again yesterday

uh we're at 911 we remember evil is real

um there is a conspiracy and it's called satan evil is real

and then you're reminded when you witness things like that at a distance and like we witnessed yesterday with Charlie's assassination.

Evil is real.

Don't know

who evil got to do its work for sure yet, but we do know evil's real.

And so, and that is, that's a worldview, period.

And in today's moment with everyone so

fired up, to say the least, one way or the other,

That, just me saying that's going to be

controversial.

And like, I really care what you think about that, but it's okay.

I'll deal with it.

But so

it's very real.

It's a real thing.

And

there are things outside of our control.

The weird thing is, we spend all of the things, all our time on this show teaching you to control the things you can control.

Yeah.

You can't control that.

I can't control that.

But I can control how I react.

I can control how I treat other people in the meantime.

I can control how I treat my family.

I can control

much of what happens in my destiny is up to me.

And so we try to keep people back on that rather than you're not a victim of circumstances and you're not a victim of a systemic evil that is loose in the land and is very real.

Regardless of who the players are, who the individual players in the flesh are, there's definitely a systemic thing going on.

And so we can step back and look at that and go, Jesus come quickly.

Yeah.

You know, it's just Lord, have mercy.

Have mercy on us, Lord, and

protect your children.

So, but wow, wow, what a crazy thing.

So you do have choices, and we're going to go back to reminding you of that in just a few minutes because we spend our entire lives reminding of that.

You have choices.

And you have made some bad ones, some of you, like I have made bad ones.

I made so many bad ones that it gave me a Ph.D.

in DUMB and qualifies me uniquely to be the cause of this show to happen every day.

And so I'm not telling you,

anything you've done, I've done dumber with more zeros on the end.

So I know exactly what stupid looks like.

I'm uniquely qualified to call it out.

So we'll get back to doing that in just a few minutes here.

But we want to take a second and pause and just remember 911 and the families that were affected affected there decades later.

Decades now.

Wow, it's crazy, isn't it?

Also, remember where I was sitting

when I heard that the SEAL team had gotten Osama bin Laden.

Know exactly where I was sitting.

Yep.

And

that was kind of a joyful moment.

One less evil thing moving around out there.

Yeah.

Good thing.

Good thing.

Heavy day.

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

One day someone's healthy, they're working, providing for their family, and then a curveball hits.

You know, we hear it all the time: a car accident, a cancer diagnosis, a heart attack, and suddenly everything changes.

Yeah, and that's why you've always said that having term life insurance from Xander is essential because it protects your family if the worst happens.

Yeah, that's right.

You need 10 to 12 times your income in coverage.

No gimmicks, no whole life junk, just straightforward term-life protection.

But there's another piece that people often overlook, and that's long-term disability insurance.

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

Life insurance steps in when you die.

Disability insurance steps in while you're alive, but can't work.

So it replaces a large part of your income so the bills still get paid while you get back on your feet.

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60.

66.

All right, guys.

So we're going to continue to walk down memory lane, and then we're going to get to your calls.

But

25 years ago, joining the Ramsey team was a guy named Bob Borquez.

He's sitting in the booth right now because he's multi-talented.

He can do almost anything.

His main job in the old days was to call and get new radio stations to carry what was then called the money game, later called the Dave Ramsey Show, and now called the Ramsey Show.

He has put well over 700 radio stations on the air with us.

We currently have 680.

You can't keep them.

They go away sometimes.

And so over that 25 years, so the Ramsey show success, the network and talk radio land

was on the shoulders of a guy named Bob Borquez.

He's 25 years with us, 66 years old, and he's retiring this month.

So you guys are...

That's so sad, Bob.

Yeah, Bob, it's not even going to be, I don't know how we're going to operate without you.

I mean, it's like, we don't know what to do.

But yeah, so he's

just the best.

He's an absolute Ramsey star of the show around here for all these years.

And you don't build something of this scale, of this magnitude, without having a whole bunch of thoroughbreds around you.

And Bob's a full-blown, one the Kentucky Derby level thoroughbred for sure.

Wonderful husband, wonderful dad.

Yes, he is.

He's a strong believer, loves Jesus.

He's just incredible.

Bob, we're going to miss you.

Yeah, good man.

And it's been an honor to work with you all these years.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dave.

Thank you for hiring me and giving me a chance.

I've loved working with you under your leadership and being with this Ramsey family.

It's been such a blessing.

Now, you're a good man.

Mark is in Memphis.

Mark, how are you?

I'm doing great, Mr.

David.

How are you doing, sir?

Better than I deserve, sir.

How can we help?

Man, I got a quick question for you.

I got a pretty good financial plan, at least I believe it's a good financial plan set up, but I want to run it by you.

I trust your judgment better than mine.

Currently, I make $80,000 of guaranteed, I would say guaranteed income.

I can explain that in a second.

Total debt I have, $137,000.

That is $111,000 of a mortgage, $16,000 of a home equity line of credit, and $9,500 on a car payment.

I have no credit cards,

no other debt besides those three items.

My current plan is to pay off the home equity line first, just because that's where most of my money has been going being more interest.

The second attack was the car payment, and the last was the mortgage.

And the current plan I have set up, everything should be paid off

by the time I'm, I think it's 37 or currently 28 years old.

And going back to the income, say the $80,000 of current income, of a guaranteed income, I also bring home

another $20,000 or so in bonuses.

So you're making $100K and you've got $25,000 in debt plus your mortgage.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, I would flip the HELOC mark and the car.

I would pay the car off first.

And if I were you, I mean, I would be aggressive.

I would do this.

I would look at the consumer debt first and not the mortgage.

So I would separate it out.

I would look at that $9,000 and see how fast we can get that car paid off.

And the HELOC would be next.

And then from there, there's probably some other financial goals you may want to hit before even, you know, getting to that mortgage.

But that's what I would do.

And I think you could do that.

I think you'll do it faster than nine years, personally, Mark.

I think you'll be able to attack this stuff quick.

But especially the car, I would go ahead and get that out because how much is your payment per month on the car?

The car payment is

$4.65 a month.

See, what you should, at a minimum,

you ought to be done in a year.

That's $2,000 a month, not counting the house.

Correct.

$2,000 a month, you're done.

And so that tells us with $460 plus $2,000 a month on the car, that's

$2,500 on $9,000.

That tells us in three months and some change, the car's gone.

And then we knock

the other out in the next nine months.

And so when you do it that quickly, Mark, the interest rate on either one of these things doesn't matter because you're not going to have it very long.

Yes, sir.

So we always tell you to pay what Rachel's doing the smallest off first.

If you're 100% debt-free other than your house in one year, you've not done anything dumb either way, but I think you'll have better results.

And we've proven it by paying off the smallest first.

And we teach a thing called the baby steps.

And in baby step two, you pay off your debts, smallest to largest, paying minimum payments on everything but the little one and attack the little one with a vengeance and then move on up.

And then, yeah, I think your house will be paid off that quick because you've got a very modest mortgage, been very wise in that regard, and you make really good money.

So congratulations.

Hey, I'm going to send you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover.

It gives you all the details on the baby steps, exactly why, when, and how to work them.

And, dude, work them in exactly that order.

It's proven to build millionaires.

It absolutely works.

Melissa's in North Carolina.

Hi, Melissa.

How are you?

Thank you.

I'm all right.

How about you?

Better than I deserve.

How can I help?

I guess my main question is: can you ever graduate from baby step number four?

And to go into that, my spouse is military.

And

so we have never bought a house because we didn't want to trap ourselves into having a mortgage and also a thread or a second mortgage.

So

we

were mainly just really aggressive with retirement.

And then also we had a child about two years ago and we were aggressive with a 529 plan.

So we feel pretty good about where that's at.

And so when that's when my spouse retires next year,

should we really scale down on the, you know, the retirement savings?

So right now we've got about 225K in all the different retirement accounts, mainly TSP.

Way to go, Melissa.

Oh, well.

Way to go.

It feels pretty good, doesn't it?

Start it early.

And tell your husband thanks for his service.

So I would just use a different phrasing than graduate.

So you may have heard us talk about when you finish baby step three, you've got three to six months of expenses saved and you

are out of debt except your home.

If you don't have a home, that's the point that people will start saving for a down payment on a home typically.

You're not in that situation.

And we call that baby step 3B.

And when they're doing the save for the down payment thing in 3B, some people put money into their baby step four and some don't, okay, while they're saving for a down payment and so what's happened is you didn't buy a house as a strategic move yet and that was a wise move.

I agree with your strategy now when he gets out of the military You are gonna buy a house and so really what that's gonna do is it's gonna put you back to baby step 3b

and you might temporarily put retirement and kids college on hold But not because you graduated, but because you're you're kind of going

stopping to get your down payments did you say he's retiring Melissa, next year?

Yes.

So he'll have a pension.

So that's another reason why when I do the calculations up in the numbers of the way 225 will, you know, increase, you know, in theory over the next 30 years because we're 36.

So,

yeah, so that's why I wondered.

No, you don't you never stop saving permanently.

Okay.

So, no, I disagree with, well, we got a good military pension and 225 is enough.

No, I would always be doing three things with money once I'm out of debt.

I would always be having fun with it, investing it, and being generous.

You never graduate from those three things.

Okay, got it.

So you're saving.

We can scale back.

Oh, we can scale back the $15.

Or stop it.

Or stop it while you save a down payment.

Yep.

Okay.

And if you, and hey, you're two years out, you could stop it now.

Oh,

okay.

And save, you know, save like crazy right now for a down payment.

Has he got his new career picked out?

Not yet.

He also has

education benefits.

I know, but he needs to get it picked out.

Two years is going to be here in about 20 seconds.

Oh, absolutely.

But career-wise, yes, he wants to work with computers

and like network security.

Oh, that's great.

That's great.

Yeah, phenomenal.

Okay, yeah.

So move on from the military.

And that's an exciting step.

When you you do retire from that, you guys get to be settled in at a city.

You get to buy a home.

You get to plant roots.

I mean, yeah, it's a fun next season for you guys, the next chapter.

And you've earned it serving your country for 20 years.

Thank you.

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Mary is with us in Virginia.

Hi, Mary.

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

How can we help?

Thanks for taking my call.

Yes, I'm calling trying to get your advice on what we should do, my husband and I, with a large sum of money that we're going to be getting over the next five years or so.

Dave's Bahama Fund.

That goes down nice.

Dave's Virgin Island Fund.

Yeah.

So, Aaron,

what's a large sum?

How much?

We should be getting after taxes about half a million.

You're selling a business.

Correct.

Way to go.

That's awesome.

Thank you.

How fun.

How long have you run the business?

Well, so actually it's a family business that I just have share in and we've decided to move on as a family

so that's my share how many generations how many generations

three

and what what kind of business just curious

it's a hospitality well it's actually like a restaurant and a gift shop um but it's still going to be with my family it's just being sold is kind of complicated

one family member is buying out the rest

Pretty much, more or less.

Okay.

Wow.

Well, that's cool.

I'm sorry.

I just, I love family business stories and I study it and I've coach a lot of family businesses.

Our team does through

leadership.

So I was just curious about the details.

Well, wonderful.

Half million bucks and you want to know what to do with it.

Right.

We have a little bit of a not so straightforward future.

The next five years, my husband is actually leaving the military and he's going back to school.

He wants to be a doctor.

He's wanted that for a long time.

I'm a physical therapist and I'm also working part-time and also taking care of our kids.

So we're just trying to figure out the wisest way to spend this money without as much financial security.

He wants to be an MD for the next five years.

Correct.

And how much is the military going to pay for that?

How much of that are they going to pay?

It's close-free.

We will pay nothing.

All the way through med school.

All the way through.

Wow.

That's amazing.

Well, thank you for your service.

That's awesome.

Okay, so you don't need that, but you may need money to eat with while he's not working and going through that.

Right.

And we have, so our monthly expenses are about $6,000.

And based on like his different payouts from the military, we have about $4,000 coming in every month, whether I work or not.

So we have about $2,000 deficit a month.

And then on top of that, we have $125,000 in cash, like high-yield savings, and then $180,000 in liquid investments like the stock market, and then $350,000 in retirement.

Do you have any debt?

Good job.

No debt, no.

And even on the house?

No, we do owe, sorry, we do owe about $230 on our mortgage.

Okay.

It's worth about $450.

We may or may not be moving depending on

he's actually applying to med schools now, so we're not sure exactly where we'll be.

We're hoping to stay in the area.

Okay.

Do you want to continue working, Mary, part-time?

Is that something that you enjoy, or would you step back from that even?

No, I do enjoy it, and I want to keep my skills up.

I'm a physical therapist by trade, so I...

I don't know that I want to be responsible for the whole load of, yeah, I want to have a backstop should I not want to work or we would like to have more kids and sure.

Sure, absolutely.

Okay, so you have a mortgage balance of what again?

230.

230.

Okay, and you have 300 in liquid and in high yield, and you're getting another 500, so you got 800 to work with, right?

Right.

Okay.

Yeah, well, it's just the only thing is with the payouts,

it depends on how they decide to pay them out.

It's going to be over the next five years.

We just don't know if it's going to be one large lump sum up front or slow leaks over.

Yeah, it could be $100 each year or something.

Correct.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's going to be more than $2,000 a month, though.

Right, for sure.

So,

all right.

So, well, as soon as you know if you're staying in the area, if you are, pay off the house that day, whether you've got this money or not, because you've got enough money in the bank now to do that, and you should have already done that.

Yeah, and we thought about it.

We just,

our future is so uncertain.

Well,

as soon as you know where he's going to med school, then you know if you're going to stay in that house right that's going to be in what the next year right

right okay then pay off the house if you're staying okay okay now

your expenses just went down hello right yeah yeah okay and then we're going to take the rest of it uh from the sale of the restaurant and the portion that we also didn't use because you have 300 you only need 230 to pay off the house and by the time you get to it you probably only need 210 to pay off the house so um we're going to put the rest of it with get with a smart vestor pro someone

that we endorse.

We don't do investments, but if I were in your shoes, I would put this in good growth stock mutual funds.

I would look for some low turnover funds, which that means they don't sell the stocks inside them very often.

They're fairly conservative funds.

They're not very exciting, but you also don't have a lot of taxes on them.

And,

you know, if they earned 10%

and you had $600,000 to work with, that'd be $60,000 a year.

That'd be $5,000 a month.

You're not going to have all of that initially, but eventually that's where you'll get to.

And so you would recommend the stock market, even if we're not playing, like if we do need to take some of that out.

Why would you need to take some of it out?

Well,

just for monthly expenses, if I'm not working.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We just covered monthly expenses.

I want you to begin taking out the income off of it.

If you invest $600,000 and it makes $60,000 a year, they'll send you a check for $5,000 a month out of that.

Right.

Now I understand.

Thank you.

Okay.

And we're not going to touch it.

But we're going to leave the goose that's laying the golden eggs alone.

Yeah, the initial investment.

That's the portion that goes in there.

And so, yeah, the day you know where if you're going to stay in town or not, you pay off the house.

If you move, buy a house of equal dollar amount as you have now or less and do the same plan.

Okay.

Don't use moving as an excuse to move up in-house while he's in med school.

Yeah, no.

You can move again after he gets out of med school.

Right.

And you might very well move again after he gets out of med school anyway.

And more depending upon his income versus this.

Yeah, well, based on his income, but you also might move cities after you leave med school.

Oh, yeah.

You might get a great offer with a great hospital and a city you'd rather live in than where the med school is.

How long will that take, Mary?

Do you know the program that he wants to do and everything?

Is it five, six years?

It really depends.

No, so med school is like the, yeah, next

one more, five more years, essentially.

And then he's got three years at least after that of residency.

So the pay there is less than six figures typically.

Yeah.

But again, you're going to have to do that.

So you're earning enough for us to live on

with the other incomes that we have.

Sure.

You've done such a wonderful job.

If you use this nest egg that you called about plus your normal operating procedure, which you guys are very careful and you're very good planners, you've done an excellent job.

If you do all of that, this is very, very doable with no debt at all and living completely debt-free the entire time.

And your wealth will continue to grow.

And then when he comes out of residency, it's going to go Zoom, Zoom.

Okay.

And Dave, you just said a Mazda, Zoom, Zoom.

I know you're a car guy.

If I do need a new car with growing family, would you support using some of this money to buy?

Yeah, we just want to be real careful because if we take the leg off the goose and then we take another leg off the goose,

pretty soon your goose is is cooked.

Yeah.

So don't be messing.

Don't be messing with that principal, okay?

But yes.

Bad thing.

But get a car.

Yeah, get a car.

You need to update.

I mean, you're making, listen, you told me you need $2,000 a month.

We just gave you $5,000 a month.

So save up and buy a car.

I mean, you got plenty of money coming in off of this.

But no, I would not support using the goose.

Leave the principal alone.

You wouldn't use any of the half a million dollars to get a car?

You don't need to.

You got the money.

Crap.

Right now they got the money.

Yeah, that's true.

If they have 300K in the bank in these two accounts and they pay off $230, they got $90.

What kind of car does this woman need?

Yes.

Okay, so maybe a $90 suburban.

We don't know.

Well, maybe not.

Maybe not.

Your husband's in med school.

Maybe not.

Maybe we're driving a cheaper suburban.

I know.

An organ or a minivan.

There we go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's important.

That's great.

But yeah, yeah.

Don't be.

No, I hear you.

It's good.

Develop a game plan and then work the system.

And then don't get all antsy and jump the system.

That's the whole issue here.

You guys have been doing a really good job of that.

I'll say it again.

So I don't think you're going to mess this up.

But just, I know I've got about 35 other million people listening who might mess it up.

So we just kind of want to make sure that

while we're talking to Mary, we know there's people eavesdropping.

There we go.

Hold on, folks.

Don't panic.

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Jim is in Texas.

Hey, Jim, how are you?

Good.

Thank you for taking my call.

Sure.

What's up?

I need some advice on how I can break it to my wife that we are broke and that we are $500,000 in debt.

Wow.

Why does she not know this?

I take care of all of our finances.

She has a credit card that she swipes and doesn't have to worry about anything.

Yes, she should.

It's just something that I've taken advantage of and, you know, gotten us even deeper with not including her in this uh spending ordeal

how long y'all been married

we've been together since we were 16 and we're i'm 26 and she is 25.

you got married when you were 16

10 years no we've been dating since 16 and we got married in 2022.

she'd been married three years

Yes.

You ran up a half a million dollars in debt in three years?

Yes.

What the crap did you buy?

Well, I went from an income of $25,000 in 2022 to an income of

$150,000 in 23.

And then year to date for 25, I'm at $195,000 just myself.

Yeah, that doesn't explain how you went a half million dollars in debt.

Your income is a bad thing.

Is it your house too, Jim?

Does that include your house?

It does.

How much do you owe on your home?

$330,000.

Okay, she knows that.

Yes.

Okay, and what is the other $170,000 in debt?

We have two vehicle loans, and the majority of the other debt is credit cards.

Okay, so the two vehicle loans amount to what?

My vehicle is $50,000, and hers is $35,000.

Okay.

And she's aware of those.

She is.

Okay.

And so.

Which those are just recurring payments that...

I know.

I know.

But she's not.

It's not like she, the way you describe this, it's like there's a half million dollars in debt my wife doesn't know about.

Yes, she does.

It's about 80,000 of credit card debt that she may not understand is floating out there.

But she's been running her credit card around like she's in Congress, so she probably has a clue about that, too.

She may not think it's 80, she may think 15 to 20.

Okay, so you guys are, you guys are, you said 26 years old.

Yes.

Okay.

So let's re let's reframe this a little bit then.

Okay.

What you're really asking is how do I get my wife to get on a plan because our current plan sucks?

Correct.

Okay.

Not how do I tell her about a half million dollars in debt she doesn't know?

Because that's not true.

She does know about it.

Yeah.

All right.

So what I would do is say this, say, hon, I gave this a shot.

I'm a new husband.

I didn't know what I was doing.

But I am getting very afraid with our current trajectory that even though we make a lot of money, that we're going to be broke.

And we are really broke right now making $190,000 a year.

We have car payments.

We have house payments.

We have credit cards that are out of control.

And you and I are going to have to work together to get on a different system than the one we've been using.

Because the one we've been using, which is me just letting you do anything you want to do and me not telling anybody anything, those are two really bad ideas.

And we're going to stop doing that.

Yeah, I'm waving the white flag.

And I'm not doing this anymore.

I can't.

And I'm sorry I haven't told you about the credit card.

Like, this is everything.

I don't think you were deceiving someone.

I think you're concerned that you've never told her no, and now you get the opportunity for her to be an adult and tell herself no.

Correct.

Yes.

How do you think that's going to go?

She's easygoing.

I think it'll go okay.

It's just handing the ball over to someone else.

No, we're not handing the ball over to somebody else.

The two of you are going to sit down together like two grown-ups instead of daddy and daughter.

Okay.

You're like a daddy spoiling his only daughter.

Instead, you're going to say, honey, we're going to sit down like two adults now, and here's how much money's coming in, and here's what we owe on the house, and here's what we have to pay on these stupid cars.

And we make $190,000 a year, and we're broke because we're out of control.

We don't have a system,

and we buy everything in sight.

So we together need to figure out how we, as two grown-ups, are going to exist on freaking 200 grand a year at 26 years old.

Whah.

Well, that's just my income.

What does she make?

What does she make?

$55,000 a year.

Well, then let's try it again.

$245,000 a year.

We make a quarter of a million dollars a year and we are broke.

So because our system sucks so bad.

Start on Xing out some of this debt.

I recommend that the two of you sit down and have a come to Jesus meeting tonight and say, here's what our total income is per month.

Here's what we have to spend on the house.

Here's what we have to spend on these cars.

We have this much in credit card debt, and we have to buy some food and lights.

Let's figure this out.

And all of a sudden, you guys are going to go, holy crap, we're out of control.

Both of you are going to have that moment.

You've already had the moment.

You're just trying to figure out how to navigate the fact that you're not doing it by yourself anymore.

Dude, that was a bad idea to start with.

And we're stopping that right now because you get two benefits.

One is you get another brain involved to help you.

The other thing, the benefit you get is you don't have to carry all the stress by yourself.

And the other benefit is she suddenly, as a grown-up, is going to buy into a future plan, a plan that takes us to a solid future

versus I just do whatever I want to do.

Yeah, and the good thing is, Jim, you guys are going to see as you start mapping this out how much a month.

Yeah, it's going to be fast.

I mean, like after taxes.

Okay.

After taxes, and you guys say you lived on 90 000 you know that frees up it's like oh my gosh i mean you debt free in a year yeah 110 000 put towards this debt well you could be completely filed for 2024

what what'd you say okay put that on the list filed my tax okay

what do you owe there what do you what what do you owe there what will the tax bill be

I just spoke with a tax lady today.

I paid $25,000 in 2023.

So I'm reckoning $20,000.

You've not set any money aside for your taxes.

Are you $1099 or something?

I am $10.99.

Okay, and you've not done any quarterly estimates?

I have not.

Your tax lady sucks.

How in the world are you making that kind of money and not doing quarterly estimates?

What?

She did, and I moved on to another tax lady.

Oh, she wanted to do quarterly estimates?

No, she didn't give me any advice, nowhere to go.

Just kind of send me what your income is, and I'll tell you what you owe okay yeah go to ramseysolutions.com and you can find one of the endorsed local providers for taxes the ramsey trusted people to help you need to be doing quarterly estimates but now you got another twenty five thousand or forty thousand or whatever it is it's on this list of things you've got to address but dude you got to start at least you seven yeah yeah you guys can start knocking this out jim so what i would do is sit down tonight you guys need to list out all of your debt i would include the irs bill in that and that'll be first then list out every credit card and what you guys owe on it cut them up Both car loans, cut them up, be done with it.

And you start working your way the smallest debt first.

Well, the IRS is going to be paid, so get that paid.

But this is not you telling your wife what to do.

No.

This is you saying, honey, join me in being a grown-up

and living on less than we make.

And that you're not going to do this by yourself anymore, Jim.

And tell her that.

Every month we're going to sit down and re-look at this plan.

I need some help.

I need you to help.

We need to do this together.

This is our future together.

And we don't have one one right now because the way we've been doing this is straight up stupid.

And it's got to stop.

And that's okay.

Just wave the white flag, like Rachel said.

And you guys are young.

Surrender.

You can't do that.

You make a lot of money.

You guys could be multi-millionaires.

You're going to be able to start this.

Yes.

If you get in control of this.

And just, you know, quit kicking the can down the road.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, and my daughter is my co-host today.

Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Cheryl is with us in Atlanta.

Hey, Cheryl, how are you?

I'm doing okay.

Good.

How can I help?

Okay.

I have cleaning service in Atlanta.

I make about

$13,000 a month.

I started the Dave Ramsey plan and paid off over half my debt in the past six months.

However, the first two years when I started my business, I thought I had won the lottery with all the extra money and then I got in some bad behaviors with spending so I incurred about like $50 $45,000 in debt but I've I'm down to 20,000 I've been crushing it this year I've every I've got the every dollar and I've been budgeting we don't eat out we eat cheap I've cut spending

way to go

things

but so i have not been saving for my taxes so that this year instead of writing off so many expenses i want to claim more because I would like a house one day, but I have not saved up for maybe $16,000 in taxes.

So how can I save this up and still pay my operating costs as well as my own bills?

I want to catch this before April.

Good.

You're getting ahead of it a little bit.

Okay, so your taxes for last year are paid, but not for 24.

Yeah, I've been writing off.

I only I wrote the income was like $156,000 and the tax person got it down to like maybe I'd make on paper $14,000.

So I tried to get a lot of house and they said no.

Stop, stop.

You are under the illusion that there are mysterious ghost columns that are not actual expenses that can be written off.

Those don't exist.

If you only made $14,000 for tax purposes, that means you only made $14,000.

Yeah, like writing off.

No, honey, that means you won't make a freaking profit.

Your business is barely open.

Okay.

Those are actual expenses that you write off.

There's no other thing except depreciation schedules, and you don't have any of those in a business your size.

So you're really not making any money.

You've gotten confused.

Okay, let's stop a second.

Let's just have a basic business primer here for a second.

All right.

Business works like this.

Gross revenues are the total intake that you bring in from the customer, your total revenue.

Correct.

That is apparently about $13,000 a month.

Does that sound right?

Yes.

Okay.

Then you have the business expenses that it takes to actually operate the business in order to make the $13,000 come in the door.

Those expenses are called expenses.

They're subtracted from the $13,000.

What is left is called profit.

That is taxable.

Yeah.

Period.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

I was just going off of like the last year.

This year I've been doing my own P ⁇ Ls and I'm much more, I was having other people do it because wait a minute.

If you're doing your own P ⁇ Ls, you shouldn't be getting a different answer.

Yeah.

All right.

P ⁇ L is a P ⁇ L.

This year it's been, yeah, this year has been more.

I started painting as well as cleaning, so the price point has gone up.

Okay, so you've had more revenue come in.

Yeah.

Okay.

Correct.

And even a few more expenses, but the net is more profit, maybe.

Okay.

So

that's lesson number one.

Now, when you have a separate checking account for your business, the only money that goes into that checking account is money you earn from your services, the revenue from the business.

The only thing you write out of that account is expenses to run the business.

Nothing else.

You don't buy groceries out of that account.

You don't go out to eat out of that account.

You don't go buy a car out of that account.

Because you can't write that crap off.

That's bull.

Okay, you only put actual business expenses:

rent,

payroll, if you're paying somebody else, cleaning supplies, cleaning supplies.

Apparently, you're in the cleaning business, paint, if you're buying paint, whatever those actual expenses are.

Then, what's left, income minus expenses, that is the PL.

It also happens to be your checkbook register.

And what's left in there is called cash basis accounting, and that is your actual profit.

When you take some of that profit home out of that account, you should set aside a fourth of it

for taxes.

Every single time you pull money out of the business, you should set aside a fourth of it over into a separate savings account for taxes because you're supposed to pay quarterly estimates on your profits.

And if you do not, they hit you with a large butt penalty, which you're getting hammered right now the way you're doing this.

That's why I'm so leaning on you, okay?

Because you're getting killed

by this tiny lack of sophistication okay so you've got to separate the business and then from business expenses and business income what's left is profit how much when i bring profit home

that is what will help me buy a house and you can't make that number up in order to buy better quick more quickly buy a house because there's no made-up expenses that you're not taking.

You have to take all your expenses.

There's no reason to pay a bunch of taxes and not claim your proper expenses to hide from the government that you're not profitable.

So you pay more taxes so you get a mortgage you can't afford.

Yeah, I don't.

Yeah,

I've changed so many behaviors.

I've been on it this past six months.

I realize that that's what's going to be happening.

I'm sorry, Cheryl.

I don't want to be mean or anything.

But you ain't on it.

Okay.

What you've described to me is chaotic.

You might have been paying some on your taxes, but you're what what I what I just described to you is the way to do it.

Is that how you do it, Cheryl, the way he just talked about it, though?

Do you have everything separated out?

Yes, I do now.

I wasn't before.

Yeah, I wasn't before.

But you are now a person just kind of singing.

Yes, I am now.

So, how much are you taking out of your business account?

How much are you paying yourself per month?

Profit.

It's around $4,000 or $5,000 after all of the cost, labor, and everything.

That's great.

That's what you qualify for a house with.

Yes.

There's no way to hide and pretend like you make more money than you actually make.

Yeah, yeah.

Not responsibly.

Okay.

And make sure you're paying your quarterlies.

Now, we got $4,000 a month.

That's $48,000 a year.

We need $16,000 by April 15th.

Yeah.

$48,000 a year.

We only got a half a year left.

So that's $24,000, and you need $16,000.

Have you got any other income your family eats on?

No.

No, I am sole provider.

It's me and my son.

Well,

there's a whole other story about my little business.

This income is all you have to eat on.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Because you're not going to make a $24,000 if you stay at $4,000 a month between now and April 15th, right?

That's why we're painting.

How much are you making per month off that?

I have them together right now, but the price point for a space that I would get cleaned is like $120,000.

Do I need to start a separate painting business?

No.

No,

it can all go in there as long as all the expenses for it come out of there.

And so you're right.

The answer to the equation is you need to make more money between now and April or you're not going to have $16,000 and to eat.

Yeah.

With the numbers you're giving.

Like when they gave you that bill, do you have to pay it like right then?

Yeah.

No, honey, you were already supposed to have paid it.

You're already late.

Because you're talking about it.

No, that's $16,000.

It's a quarterly estimate that she hadn't paid.

She should have been paying for it.

I was thinking it was an I don't think she was doing quarterly estimates.

I think she was doing annual.

She has to.

No, I know she has to.

But she's not.

I know.

So she's already late.

The quarterly estimates aren't paid.

It's unpaid quarterly estimates.

So you're already late.

So you're already going to get penalized.

So I'd start doing my get with your CPA and start doing quarterly estimates now.

That's a good start.

Well, that's just for 25.

Geez, you got 24 still.

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Dalton is with us in South Carolina.

Hi, Dalton.

How are you?

I'm doing good, Dave.

How about yourself?

Better than I deserve.

How can we help?

Okay, so my question is: I'm wondering if I'm crazy for thinking about doing a career change right after completing Baby Step Two.

Okay.

So,

a little bit of background.

I'm 25 years old

and I work at my local Ford dealership here in my town.

And I'm at the

highest

salary that this company will allow me to get.

And I don't know whether it's the job or the place, but I'm just, I am very irritated with this company.

And so well, it's the place.

You just said it.

Right.

But my question is, I just paid off, finished paying off my last $4,700 from

Baby Step 2 doesn't have anything to do with it.

What do you make?

I make

$87,000 a year before taxes.

How old are you?

I'm 25.

What do you do?

Sell cars?

No, I'm a service technician.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, I mean, is there...

Have you investigated working for someone else?

Will they pay more?

I have.

I've gone to a couple of other places, but the issue with that is all of the other dealerships are 45 minutes plus from my house.

Do you own your house?

well, the only piece, that's the only amount of debt that I have is my mortgage.

Oh, so you own the house?

Okay, you have a mortgage.

Are you married?

I am not.

Okay.

And so, what would you make at the other place that you investigated?

It depends on which dealership I go to.

I've gotten the same amount or $2,000 or $3,000 more over where I'm at now.

Per month or year?

Year.

Okay.

How bad do you want to be away from these people?

Sell Sell your house and move?

I guess I'm just I guess I let myself get too comfortable.

And that's

I said how bad do you want to be away from these people?

I just asked you.

I mean, do you want to be a bad what do you want to be bad enough away from them to drive 45 minutes or sell your house and move closer to the 45 minute change and make a tiny bit more money, do the same thing you already love doing, but for people that you like.

And is that the career change you're talking about, Dalton, is moving companies or are you wanting to switch careers completely?

I'm wanting to switch careers completely.

What do you want to do?

What do you want to do?

I'm looking to go from automotive to aviation.

Mechanic.

Yes.

Okay.

So what?

Or

a pilot, depending on which ways I'm leaning more.

I'm leaning more towards technicians.

Okay.

So what do you have to have?

Is anything required of you to change?

Is there schooling?

Is there classes?

What do you have to do?

I would have to go back to school to get an airframe and power plant certification.

Okay, so how much does that cost?

When I looked at the tuition, I would have to move up to Greenville to do it.

So that was going to be, I think, between $20,000 and $25,000.

And I have the ability to cash flow it.

Okay.

And what does an aircraft mechanic make?

Down here in Columbia, the...

Are you going to move back after you get it?

It depends on where I can get a job at down here in Columbia it's right around 65 to right where I'm at now to about 90 but if I go to say Charlotte or go to Atlanta it can get up into 150 160 range great so it's all depending on where I can go okay no no no where you choose to go

right where I choose to go yeah okay

no I would not go spend $25,000 in two years of my life to make $25,000 a year less

that's dumber than a rock of course you wouldn't do that.

Okay.

Come on, man.

I mean, that doesn't make sense.

But would I go spend that and go move into a different career and change cities and make $150,000, make $50,000, $60,000 more than I have now, and sky's the limit, and you learn a whole new craft, and now you're certified in two different types of service, which is not only vehicles and cars, but it's also aircraft.

Absolutely, I'd go do that.

And

that's what my plan is.

Yeah, life is a grand adventure.

Put your house on the market, move to Greenville.

Let's go, man.

Get your certification, then move your butt to Charlotte or Atlanta or whatever it is you need to do and go make some bucks.

But no, I'm not going to retreat.

And that's why I say it's not a baby step two thing.

In baby step anything, if you can go make more money tomorrow and you want to do it, go do it.

Go do it.

You don't have to wait to go make more money.

But usually when somebody asks us questions, because they want to make less money.

And no, I'm not going to endorse that.

Not because I'm all about money, but because you can usually make more money doing something you're good at and you love than you can doing something you hate with people that are toxic.

So generally speaking, this idea that in order to be happy, I have to make less money.

That's a pass backwards.

No, in order to be happy, I need to make more money.

Hello.

That's just crazy, y'all.

So it's like, I need to work for a non-profit because it's holy.

No, it's not.

It's not any more holy than a prophet.

That's just silliness.

A prophet.

A for-profit.

Oh, I thought you meant like the prophet.

I don't know.

Whichever prophet, but any kind of prophet, some kind of prophet.

God help me with prophet.

All right, there we go.

That's what I'm doing, Dalton.

Yeah.

I would go live your dream, but dude, make your dream a dream, not a nightmare.

Lay it out where it's, you know, up and to the right.

Yes.

Up and to the right, baby.

Up and to the right.

Go be somebody.

Do it, man.

I like it.

And the cool thing is, you got this house you can sell.

Probably going to get some money out of that.

And that's what's going to help him catch you.

Well, and you're only 24.

So I'm like, you go do this for a few years.

Maybe when you're 30, we just met someone that's gonna be a pilot.

She's gonna, she wants to fly for Delta.

We just met her in the lobby, yep, young girl, you know, and you get to maybe make a decision of 10 years to go do that, right?

So just keep on dreaming, but yes,

don't be uh don't make the math go backwards to pay money to make the math go backwards.

Yeah, I think I might feel really good about a pilot flying the plane that knew how to work on it.

Oh, now that gives me a lot of peace.

It does, actually.

I mean, it's like, yeah, something happens, you can run out there on the wing and fix it, right?

That would be ideal.

Don't know if that's reality, but

it's good.

Oh, well.

Darren's with us.

Hi, Darren in Madison, Wisconsin.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

How can we help?

So, me and my husband are in baby step two.

So far, we have

paid off about $215,000

in the last job.

Yeah, in the last 22 months.

Way to go.

Yeah, and we are

going to be able to pay off the remaining of my husband's student loans by the end of this year, which is about $92,000 left.

Amazing.

And me and my husband sat down and we're like, okay, what's next?

And we currently own a home, but we're not living in it because my husband's company

has moved us to a new location and they pay for all of our housing expenses.

So we have a lot of extra money to throw around and we're like...

By new location, do you mean different city?

Different states about every six months.

Okay, and you kept one of the homes back in the other place and by default have become a landlord, not by strategy.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd sell that.

Okay.

Okay.

Long-distance landlording is not really a good plan.

I mean, if you're sitting in Madison, Wisconsin, and said, where's this house located?

Just over the border in the Twin Cities, so it's not a long drive, and we have family there.

But I mean, if you were sitting here in Madison, Wisconsin with the situation you've got and said, we're going to buy a rental house, you probably wouldn't have bought it over there.

Okay.

You got it by default.

That's what I mean.

You backed into this instead of walked into it.

And so it generally ends up being a bad decision.

So I'm generally going to sell it.

I own a bunch of rental property.

I love rental property.

Don't have any long-distance rental property.

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Trey is in Florida.

Hi, Trey.

How are you?

I'm great.

How are you doing?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

Not too much.

Hey, so I got a question for you.

I probably back in,

let's say, January, I bought a motorcycle for $15,000.

And in May, I got in a motorcycle wreck and broke my wrist and ankle.

And I recovered and doing well.

Good.

I'm glad.

How far have you been through that?

No, no, no problem.

I mean, it's what you get into when you hop on a bike, I guess.

Yeah.

But I'm kind of now realizing it wasn't a very smart decision.

And I'm kind of in the hole with it.

So originally it was $15,754, and I've made six payments or possibly more, but I'm right at $15,000 payoff.

The bike's worth about $11,000.

They tear up the bike?

So the bike, all that happened was the quick shifter and the body panels needed to be replaced, so all that has been done, and it's back to normal condition.

So the bike's in excellent condition.

Now it's back to excellent condition, and

it's lost a third of its value in six months.

Correct.

So I'm trying to figure out what the best best route is.

I'm

besides.

What kind of bike is this?

It's a crotch route.

It says the ZX6R 2023.

That's horrible.

Correct.

Man, are you sure that's what, who said that's what the bike's worth?

Just when you get it from a dealer, that's about the price average of what you look online and find it at.

From a dealership, though, if you did an individual sale, you could probably get $2,000 more for it.

Because dealerships are going to buy it at cost.

So

it could go up a little bit.

Okay, so you're $2,000 to $4,000 in the hole, depending on how we calculate this, right?

Correct.

Who do you owe the money to?

It's going to be Roadrunner Financial, Sale Loan Company.

The motorcycle finance company where you bought it.

Correct.

Yeah, okay.

And how old are you?

23.

I assume you have no money.

No, I mean, I do have an emergency fund.

How much?

$4,000.

Oh, sell a bike.

Correct.

What's the question?

I guess I'm just like,

is it okay to just drain the entire savings in a day?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

You don't know what's draining your savings?

That's a stupid bike.

Sitting in the garage going down in value like a rocket.

Absolutely.

No pun intended.

Absolutely.

I agree.

Yeah.

I mean, the sooner we cut bait, the sooner this fish is gone, man.

Taint forward.

Yeah, right.

A check be done.

I mean, like by Friday, man.

You have a new goal.

And then go replenish your savings because you don't have a stupid motorcycle payment and a stupid motorcycle going down in value like a rocket.

Right?

I guess that'll be the plan.

Yeah, I mean, you've got two things, two reasons motivating you to drain your savings because you put your savings right back because this thing's doing more damage to you than being down to broke.

And then, you know, be planning on working like all the OT and all the side hustles and everything else you can the next three weeks, put your money back really super fast, which will keep you from having another mistake, which is having some kind of an event.

And it's going to be another 4,000.

Yeah.

So

be done.

And then, Trey, what I would do is this.

One of the things when something costs me money, and I've done a lot of stupid things, a lot of dumber things than this, okay?

This is not super dumb.

It's just dumb.

But, I mean, I've done super dumb.

So anytime I do that and I have to learn a painful lesson, so you got like three painful lessons here at once.

I want to write them down.

I want to know what they are so I don't have to do them again.

If I do something dumb again, it needs to be something, a new dumb thing that I've never done before.

I don't want to do the same dumb things over.

So I try to figure out from an autopsy standpoint what happened here.

Okay, and I'll walk you through it.

Here's the way I would do this if I were in your shoes.

I would say, okay, mistake number one.

I was impulsive

and bought this thing

while I had motorcycle fever.

I should have calmed down, taken a cold shower.

and waited overnight or waited two weeks and not bought this bike at all.

And if I was thinking with more wisdom and less passion

and less immaturity, I wouldn't have bought the bike.

And that's what I would say to myself if I looked up because I've done that very similar thing.

I bought a truck one time.

It was a similar situation.

I just drove up on the lot.

I liked the truck and I just bought it.

And about three months later, I hated that stupid truck and I lost like two grand on it.

I mean, it's just the same thing, right?

But it's impulsive as hell.

I'm just ridiculous.

All right.

So then,

second thing is

I need to understand that things that have motors and wheels go down in value, and I can't finance them

because they go down in value, and you get stuck in them.

Okay.

And

there was a third one, but I don't remember what it is now.

What in the world?

Anyway, just figure out what your lessons are from this so you don't do them again.

The biggest thing you did was you were just impulsive.

And

you didn't give any more thought to this than buying a bag of Fritos.

I mean, you just said, oh, yeah, hot Cheetos.

Let's get something right.

I mean, you just, this thing's a crotch rocket.

Here we go.

Boom.

This is cool.

I'm going to be a cool guy if I had this cool bike and I bought a cool bike.

Well, he did get in a wreck and got hurt.

And then you laid it down.

Let's be.

Let's find some safer hobbies.

I don't know.

I'm not a fan.

That was mother nurse.

Rachel mother.

Find a safer hobby.

Every nurse will tell you.

Stay away from them.

Yeah, it's that's that's the motherly comment for you, Trey.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

But anyway,

figure out what in the world is going on.

And I think it's always good for us to look back and go, okay, if I'm writing a check for stupid tax, because I'm paying some tax for being stupid,

what do I do so I never have to write that check again?

And you can really go back and go, man, I learned a valuable lesson when I was 23 years old.

And you can be telling your 23-year-old this.

I'm assuming it was brand new.

I mean, I don't know how much they cost

for the fact that it went down.

Well,

that's the third thing.

Don't buy brand new.

you bought a bike without realizing that it was an absolutely crummy bike

in terms of how fast it's going to go down in value i mean ridiculous i i mean there's a lot of horrible car deals you can do but when you lose 30 of the value of something

in six months that's in the sucks column like the super sucks column I mean, it's over there, right?

This is nutto.

And so you go, okay, you look that kind of thing up before you buy it.

And you go, okay,

I think that might change my mind.

I'll buy a six-month-old bike for $11,000 and let someone else take the one-year-old bike for this rate for $5,000.

That's right.

Oh, my gosh.

Let someone else take the hit.

Yeah, and pay cash for it.

And then if you lay it down and you're upside down, at least it's in the garage and

you can deal with it, right?

It's a different situation.

So all of those things are there.

But hey, learn, in other words, learn your lesson.

That's not picking on you, Trey.

I'm just kind of setting up that decision-making framework and that wisdom-building thing.

Because the old saying is: the reporter went up to the old guy on the porch who was known for being wise and he was in his 90s.

He said, Uncle Zed, how did you become so wise?

He said, I got experience.

He said, Where'd you get experience from not being wise?

And that's what I, you know, I always want to learn every time so that by the time I get older, I do fewer and fewer and fewer dumb things.

And so it accelerates my wealth building.

There you go.

Mia is in Georgia.

Hi, Mia.

How are you?

Hey, Dave, I'm good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

How can we help?

Yes, so my husband and I have been married for 13 years,

and I got a hold of your book, Total money makeover and the part about joint you know having a joint account we have never had a joint account since we've been married and I finally was able to sit down with my husband and you know tell him the reasons for it because even at that time our marriage was getting it was pretty difficult pretty challenging and we just weren't in unity you know with our finances but when I when I sat down with him he said

that's fine we can have a joint account but we should still keep our separate accounts He's afraid that if we put it all into one account,

something

fraudulent or scammer could happen.

Bull crap.

Bull crap.

Then something would happen to us.

Absolute bull crap.

That's ridiculous.

He doesn't really believe that.

I hope not, but I know it's a trust issue.

Yeah, that's what it is.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I I know I haven't been always responsible with my money, but I don't think I've done anything that's like

completely irresponsible that's gotten both of us in trouble.

But,

you know,

for me, I told him, I was like, it would give us at least a vision, you know, for what we want to do, set some goals, perhaps.

I could see the total picture.

I honestly didn't even know where money was going because we never, I could never see it.

You know, it was never in one place.

So I don't know how I could convince him that

we need to do this, to be in unity, to, you you know

i think i think you're very articulate and you're voicing this fabulously personally mia what would be the concerns he has about you you said i haven't been perfect at it but nothing like crazy but what would be the things that he may not trust you with is it that you spend more than him that you're more of a free spirit like what are the what are the the things that he would feel like maybe you're not as quote-unquote responsible as he has i'm not saying that's true but i am wondering right what he would say well i mean these are his words.

He said to me, I don't want to intermingle my money with you

because of my spending.

And mostly my spending comes from like eating out.

You know, I tend to do that more than he does.

He cooks at home, you know.

But I don't go on shopping sprees.

I don't, right?

You know, I might spend a little bit of time.

Let's stop a second, Jen.

Then there's an easy fix for that.

Okay.

So the way that we teach, and you can tell him this, that solves that is we together put together a budget every month where every one of the dollars that are coming into this house from both of us have a name and are allocated to something going back out.

That would include Mia going out to eat, and that would include hitting our goals, and that would include achieving some things that we want to do together.

It would include some of the things he is now doing with money that he, frankly, probably doesn't want to report to you on, and he needs to.

He's not bringing that up, but that's there.

He's doing a few little things here or there while he's shaming you that he doesn't want everybody to know about.

Nothing illegal and nothing crazy, but just little stuff, okay?

Like he's spending more at the Coke machine than he wants to tell everybody he does.

as an example, or something like that.

I don't know.

He's buying some little thing at a little part for his gun or something.

I don't know, whatever it is, right?

But aside from that, now every dollar has a name and we have full transparency, full disclosure.

Oh, and honey, nothing's going to happen with any of this money that you didn't pre-approve.

And by the way, nothing's going to happen with any of this money that I didn't pre-approve because it's all going to be written down, and then we're going to do what was written down.

And so unless you approve me being irresponsible with money, there won't be any irresponsibility with money.

Right?

You see how that works mechanically?

Yes.

The second thing then is to pan back and say, why does this matter ultimately?

Okay.

Because when we surveyed, the actual data tells us that when we surveyed 10,167 millionaires and did detailed research on them, we found that 89%

of them, that's 9 out of 10,

all of them just about, said that one of the reasons they were able to become millionaires is because of working together,

very detailed together, with a cooperative spouse.

When we survey the general public, we find that less than 40% of them work together

and they have no money.

So the data says that it's a wealth building tool and you increase your probability of wealth building substantially, like over double chance.

That's like one of the pros of getting married in a dual income household is you guys have more in the pots to say say we have more money to do things with like invest and give and spend and all of it and mia the other thing is um that we find and and i'm sure it's said in the book total money makeover but even for you guys like you said at one point like our marriage wasn't in a great spot you know this

this activity, if you will.

Exercise.

Yes, exercise is something that's very unifying because it's very vulnerable.

And I will give it to him that for 13 years of doing something and changing it, it may not just be a one-time talk, and then he's like, Absolutely, right?

Like, this may kind of be an ongoing discussion for a bit.

Um, and there is a level of deep vulnerability and trust there, right?

You're kind of like exposing this part of yourself that you know that you haven't, and that's how a lot of married couples live.

It's like they have this autonomy of themselves, you know, it's separate, but yet we have chosen to be married, which means we have chosen to do life with someone.

And I want to do life with you in a deeper way because our money exposes our values and it exposes what we are scared about.

It exposes you know triggers that happen with something and then you get to have a conversation with your spouse about that so that you actually get to talk and get to know them.

Like there's a, you know, there's a deep unraveling that happens and

money is a, is a filter at which that occurs.

And so for you guys to be in the same lane and to work together, not only financially, do you guys get ahead, but also relationally.

And I would say that to him too, Mia, and say, I just long.

It'll help you heal a marriage.

Yeah, I long to do this marriage in a deeper, more beautiful, unified way.

And this is a symbol of that, right?

Because you're taking the thing that you want to hold the tightest and you're opening your hand to your spouse and saying, okay, we're going to do this together.

And

I don't know.

And there will also be conflict, you know, I mean, there's still things that come up and that's fine, but it actually gives you the opportunity to solve it.

Our friend Les Parrott always says that conflict is the road to intimacy.

And so there is something about understanding understanding that that grows a marriage too.

So I would, if that's your desire, I would communicate that part of your heart as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'll go along with you, Rachel.

We've had almost 10 million families now go through Financial Peace University since I started doing it 30 years ago.

And the number of times is amazing to me that people come up to me over the years and have said, hey,

your financial class saved our marriage.

I mean, it's, and then I actually, when I started hearing that enough, I was kind of confused because I'm like, you went the wrong class, the sex class is down the hall.

I mean, what the, I mean, that's just weird.

And they're like, no, no, really, you forced us to work, to talk about life because we had to to do the stupid budget you were making us do.

And

when we talked about life, it did more good than the marriage counselor we were going to because it forced us to align our dreams and our values.

It forced us to have conflict.

It forced us to do those things and work through those things just to get to this goal of being debt-free.

And in the process, lots of little wrinkles were ironed out of our marriage or we were on the rocks and about to walk off and this saved us.

And it wasn't that I saved them.

I didn't.

No.

It really wasn't even that the budget saved them.

It was the fact that they sat down together and for the first time aligned their futures.

Yes.

And paid and what price we're going to have to pay to get to that future.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, it's interesting.

It is the most hate.

One of the subjects that we get the most hate on is this, or at least I do.

Like, on Zombies.

You get hate on a lot of things.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But

it is something that is so, it is fascinating because, and people will message me or comment about this.

Like, well, we just kept fighting, so we just decided to do separate accounts, and now we just don't fight anymore.

And I'm like, those are the, that's the exact fight in marriage you need to be having.

Well, I mean, you know, you sweep everything under the rug.

You have to bury all of that because that has a high rate of resurrection.

Yes.

Yeah, we're going to call that zombie feelings when they they come back up.

Oh, yeah, I mean, they will come.

They will come.

Yeah, it's just going to blow up someday.

You're not going to know what happened.

It's like a geyser.

I know.

Push through the heart.

That's a complete emotional moron.

We're just going to ignore this and pretend like it's not there and like it's never going to come back.

You've got to be kidding me.

A lot of people.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, and my daughter is my co-host today.

Donovan is in San Jose, California.

Hey, Donovan, what's up?

Hey, guys.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

Sure.

How can we help?

So my wife and I currently invest about 43% of our income, and she wants to take a trip to Europe next year.

So I was wondering if that is something that we should look at doing, reducing our investment rate in order to take that trip.

Okay.

Are you guys out of debt?

We are out of debt.

We are debt-free.

Good.

And what's your household income, sir?

So, this year we should net about $175,000.

And what's your net worth?

It's around $89,000.

$89,000?

Yes.

With $175,000 income and a 40% investment rate?

Yes.

So my wife and I,

we basically finished our education as of last year, and we paid our way all through school.

Oh,

okay.

Yeah, so this is like our first year of actually making a real income.

So you're both now making good money for the first time ever, and you get to live your dream of investing, and she gets to live her dream of traveling, and that's in conflict.

Now it makes sense.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

And what do you guys do for a living?

So I identify as a janitor, and my wife is a ABA therapist.

Okay, you just finished your education.

And I'm sorry, did I misunderstand you?

I identify as a janitor?

Is that what you said?

So basically, I have profit sharing with a company directly under the owners.

So my official title would be COO, but

honestly, I have to do a lot of different things.

Well, welcome to being the COO.

But I mean,

what do you make a year, Mr.

Janitor?

So I make about $80,000 a year.

Okay.

All right.

That's funny.

Okay.

I identify.

Oh, my Lord.

All right.

That's cute.

All right.

What's the trip to Europe cost?

So we actually went to Europe for our honeymoon, which was generously gifted to us by the business owners.

But when they paid for it, it was around $25,000.

And how much we budget towards this trip would probably look around $18,000 to $20,000 from what I've been looking at.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay.

Do you guys have any money saved?

Yeah, you've got $89,000 net worth anymore.

Well, net worth, but I don't even know what that means.

Is that in retirement?

Like, is that cash?

What is that?

Yeah, so

about $16,000 is in a Roth IRA.

About $6,000 is in my wife's 401k.

I have $35,000 in a cash brokerage account.

And then we have about $25,000 in a high-yield savings account.

Okay.

And how old are you guys?

So I'm 31, and my wife is 28.

Okay, cool.

Well, Donovan, I love this.

This is a great approach to the question.

Thank you.

And it just took us a minute to find out where you guys really are because there's so many assumptions I could make when I see on my screen my wife wants to go to Europe and I want to save 40%.

I was getting ready to call you Scrooge McDuck or something,

but I don't think you are.

I think you're just getting started and you're a serious guy who wants to hit some numbers and your wife is serious about enjoying some of this hard work.

And so those are fair.

Both of them are fair things to do with money, both arguments are.

And so I don't think I would slap my fist on the table and declare either one of these answers to be stupid.

The thing that throws it off a little is it's 40% of your income is going into retirement.

So we do tell people systematically throughout the scope of your life, whether this year or next year, I would go to Europe.

Because systematically throughout the scope of your life, you need to constantly with a rhythm be enjoying your money, investing your money, and being generous with your money.

If you consistently, with a rhythm, do all three of those things,

all the data that we have and all the experience we have of decades of doing this tells us that you're going to not only become wealthy, but also be very relationally healthy and have a high likelihood of physical health, too, by the way, weirdly enough.

And so, all of those things go together when you're doing all three of those things.

So, to say, no, always save money and live in a cave, collect lent, and only come out on triple coupe on Thursday.

No, we don't believe that.

We think you live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else.

It feels like to me, you guys have paid a

price

of sacrifice to get the education under your belt and to get to this point to get started.

Your reward on the price is saving and investing because that gives you a high.

Her reward is the travel and the fun.

And both are legitimate.

And you can do both, Donovan.

That's the great thing because of your income, because where you guys are,

yeah, you guys would be able to save cash flow trip to Europe and be saving

all together.

But, you know, I'm probably going to negotiate, you know, as we're discussing this, some trade-offs here.

Okay.

If we do Europe this year, we really, to be responsible, only need to spend X.

If we were to wait 18 months, we could spend Y.

Yes.

And I have just a slight, you know, not painting a broad stroke with this, but the fact that you guys just went to Europe.

Anyway.

Anyway, and she wants to go back.

Like, I bet she does.

I bet it's wonderful.

That's great.

But also, we can't be in a habit or a pattern of doing this all the time.

We do Europe every two years.

Because it's just going to continue to, you know, if you have the money for it, you can, but I just, I want to make sure the pattern is set and the contentment and all of that is being talked about too.

Um, that it's not just this assumption

that this is what we're going to do all the time.

The sad thing is we're not giving you a really good answer because both answers are okay,

but probably some hybrid of the two, a little rhythm, a little on and a little off, is a better thing.

And say, okay, if we do this, then we're not going to do another big trip for three years.

And we're going to pile up and get this net worth going and get some results so that we can do trips forever.

Because I mean, if you keep doing the net worth thing, the trips are infinite later.

Yeah, for sure.

But if you don't, if you don't, if you constantly are eating up the money constantly.

So again, it needs to not be a pattern, like Rachel says, and there needs to be a trade-off and go, okay, we spend X now or Y 18 months from now, but in either case, we're probably not going to do...

you know, once every five years until we hit a million dollar net worth, we're probably not going to do a bunch of big, huge trips.

That's a big trip.

That's an expensive trip.

Well, and I'll say there's a group of girls that went to Europe that we work with, and they just got back, and they did not, they spent half of that, and they were able to do a great fun trip.

You know what I mean?

So there's different degrees at which you can do a trip too.

So I'm throwing that out there, too.

Wouldn't argue that.

Wouldn't argue that.

Yeah.

So

yes and yes.

Yeah.

Sorry.

I wish I could be more precise.

Usually I'm

devilishly precise, but on this one, I'm going to be philosophical a little bit and let you kind of learn the rhythm idea between these three things of generosity and fun

and investing.

Generosity and fun and investing.

And then ratios of those things that allow them all to occur reasonably.

Hey, what's up?

Dr.

John Deloney here.

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Not in all states.

states today's question comes from kathy in arizona i've been a health care worker for many years and became close to a patient while she was in the hospital that was 23 years ago and we've stayed friends since she's now 92 years old and a widow she has a son and a daughter who don't live by currently or don't live nearby she has been estranged from her daughter estranged from her daughter for almost 15 years her son calls periodically to check in on her she recently revised her will to remove her daughter and put me second in line if something were to happen to her son first.

Should I be worried that her daughter could come after me legally?

She has not told either of her children about the will details.

I want to help her, but I feel like I'm getting in the middle of family drama.

What are your thoughts?

You feel like you're getting in the middle of family drama because you are in the middle of family drama.

That's why it feels that.

Yes.

So, no, legally, no, she can't come after you.

If there's a will in place.

You haven't done anything wrong.

Yeah, she can't.

You haven't done anything wrong.

But I would encourage her to talk to her kids about this.

Yeah,

I would go further than that.

Would you say no to it?

I would say I don't want this unless you have told both of your children.

Which would involve her talking to her daughter that she hadn't talked to in 15 years, so she's not going to do it.

But I just because, let me just tell you, I would tell you there's a hundred percent chance that you're going to be involved in drama.

Did you do anything legally or ethically or morally wrong?

No, none of those things.

But that doesn't mean you're not going to end up defending yourself.

Or the daughter's going to come in and file suit and say, you know, mom wasn't competent and this nurse took advantage of her and try to call you out on medical ethics or something like that.

And none of that is true based on what you've told us, Kathy.

And it doesn't, I mean, also, it's been 23 years.

so that, you know, but

you know, this is it's a sweet gesture by a lady who doesn't do conflict.

This lady's a sweet lady, she doesn't want to deal with her daughter, but she doesn't want to leave her daughter anything.

So she wants to take one last poke at her from the grave, you know, and it's just like, nah, I really don't want to be in that.

I'm sorry.

If you, you know, 100% chance there's going to be drama.

The only question is how much?

Yeah.

I mean, just.

Okay, here's a really shallow question.

Does it matter the amounts to you?

Is there an amount that's worth the drama?

I guess that's an individual choice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, if there's $20 million, you know,

let me tell you, I would tell you this.

Here's an interesting answer to that.

I'm just making this up because it's a fun question.

I appreciate it.

The more money there is, the more drama there's going to be.

That's probably true.

Sure.

Yeah, if she's leaving her $62 and her snow globes,

the daughter's going to go, good luck with that, mom.

You know, crispy, extra crispy where you're going.

If it's 20 million, she's going to be coming.

If it's 20 million, the daughter's going to be going medical ethics and dreaming up anything else she can dream up.

And this nurse has hypnotized her 23 years ago and stolen my mother away.

And, you know, I mean,

you're going to hear all that.

But

the more money, the more drama.

Yeah, for sure.

I think that's true.

Drama's already here.

Drama has announced itself.

It's got an engraved invitation to the party.

The only question is how much it's going to show out.

And I would say in ratio to the amount of money.

So

I think that's right.

But now, how much did I want to get involved?

How shallow am I in that regard?

That's a good question because, I mean,

you know, honestly, I don't want a lot of drama in ratio to the money.

So

and so if it's $67 and four snow globes, I don't want to be involved at all.

Yeah, for sure.

And so it's not worth it at all.

And, but, you know, if the only time you would think about it is if there was more money.

Right.

I don't guess that's shallow.

I guess it's practical.

Well, I just think that's.

I'm going to have to put up with some crap.

Is it worth it?

Right, right.

That's a crazy thing.

And again, we don't know it all, but I mean,

there could be a story that she's, I mean, who knows?

Some multi-millionaire, sweet, kind woman and this nurse has befriended her, been kind to her, has kids of her own,

and that's how this 92-year-old wants to leave her legacy.

I don't think it's a problem.

I don't think you've done anything morally or ethically or legally wrong, but that doesn't mean you won't have to defend it.

Yeah, you're going to be in some drama if you take it.

Yeah, but I would encourage her to talk to the family about it.

In America, you can sue anyone for anything.

You can just make it up.

Yep.

If even it's not true, you can just say a bunch of stuff and put it in the pleading and file a lawsuit.

Happens all the time, boys and girls.

Good luck, Kathy.

Let us know.

Oh, wow.

What a mess.

Emma's in Washington.

Hi, Emma.

What's up?

Hi there.

We just found out that I'm pregnant about a week ago with our fourth child.

Yay!

Congratulations.

We currently have a 2003 Honda Odyssey and my husband has a commuter car.

So the Odyssey will obviously fit us, but it's pretty old.

And it started to have some transmission issues a few months ago.

And we are looking at buying a house.

We don't own a house yet.

We're really saving hard so we can buy a house.

My question is, should we try to replace the minivan with a more reliable minivan, a newer one, or just go hard at saving for a house and kind of deal with the minivan breaking after the fact?

I mean, it's what a 22-year-old

van.

I would probably replace the van if I'm, if I'm you.

If I have, I mean, I have three kids and if I was expecting another one, there's a level of stability if you can cash flow it.

And I mean, I wouldn't go get a brand new one, but you could go find, you know, a 2015 for, you know, $14,000 or something.

I would probably do that, especially if you guys have ongoing issues.

I just wouldn't want car maintenance issues all the time with four little kids.

Yeah.

If you have the ability to have a challenge, though,

because my husband, he's a private school teacher,

he makes about $63,000 a year.

So $14,000 for a car is way out.

Well, haven't y'all been saving for a house?

Yes.

So how much do you have in that account?

We have $11,000 right now.

Okay.

Okay.

So we're still about 18 months out before we can really even look.

For a house, yes.

And that's if you don't take any of this cash to replace the van.

If you got it fixed,

how much longer do you think it could hold?

Hold on to.

I know.

Just 23 years old.

Yeah, I'm 28, so it's almost as old as me.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think we probably have a year and a half, two years left.

We don't go on super long drives or anything like that.

And I homeschool.

We stay home most of the time.

But it's just iffy.

If you bought the house and kept the van, you have to keep a fully funded emergency fund for when the van breaks.

Is that three months or six months?

I'm probably going with six.

Okay.

Because you're going to have to, you said the transmission's slipping and

that's going to be an expensive repair at some point.

It's probably cheaper than buying another van, but it's still going to be an expensive repair.

So you cannot get down to the nub and use up all your cash to buy the house and have no money and then the van breaks three weeks later.

That's for sure.

We're not doing that.

Yeah.

Emma, is the $11,000 the only money y'all have saved or do you have a separate account for emergencies?

For an emergency?

No, that's our emergency fund.

Oh, it is.

Oh, so you don't have any down payment fund?

Not yet.

No, that's the struggle.

Oh, well, there's no struggle.

There's no struggle.

We're having a hypothetical it's not going to occur.

You're not buying either one.

Okay.

You don't clean out your emergency fund and upgrade the car, and you don't clean out your emergency fund and buy a house.

Okay.

You don't have $11,000.

That changes the story.

Yeah.

Sorry.

No, I mean,

I want the family protected by the emergency fund first.

Then we talk about moving up in car and cash.

Yeah.

Or we talk about down payments.

$3,000 income.

You know,

it will be a few years for you guys to purchase that, and that's okay.

I wouldn't rush it.

Yeah.

We've all done dumb things with money.

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Jimmy is with us.

Jimmy is in Arizona.

Hi, Jimmy.

How are you?

I'm good.

I would ask how you're doing, but I assume it's better than you deserve.

Some things are natural.

What's up, man?

So my question is that my girlfriend and I are doing married people stuff, but we aren't married.

And we do want to get married, committed to each other, but we are on baby step two.

Now, my question is, how do I afford things like a ring or a wedding and things like that if all my money money is supposed to be going towards my debt

well how much debt have you got

well we've got eighty seven thousand currently down for I'm sorry let's let's stop the we thing a minute um how much debt do you have personally I am in sixty one thousand dollars of debt okay and so she has about twenty something

yeah okay twenty

six yeah okay twenty six yep yeah and your sixty one is what

is personal loan to who

To my parents.

Your parents.

Yeah.

Okay.

They're fairly affluent, so they offer to help me out, and I'm paying them back with some interest.

Okay.

Help you out with what?

What were you doing?

With like paying off my debt and moving on to the next stage in my life and trying to pay off of all this.

So they paid your debt and now you owe them?

Yeah.

Yeah, so you didn't really pay off your debt.

You just moved it to your parents.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Okay.

All right.

And so what was your debt on?

It was originally just a bunch of crap, like things that I didn't need, tents around my house, which maybe I needed, but

other things.

Okay, do you own a home?

Yes, I do.

Okay.

Is your girlfriend's name on the deed?

No, not yet.

What is your home worth?

It's about $400,000.

Very cool.

How old are you?

I am 30.

Oh, okay.

All right.

And what do you owe on your home?

I owe $230,000.

Okay.

Oh, that's nice.

Okay.

And what do you make, sir?

I make $130,000 a year.

Okay.

And

so she makes what?

She makes $70,000 a year.

Okay, cool.

All right.

And she's around the same age?

Yes, she's 28.

So when you're married, you have a $200,000 household income, a $400,000 house, and $87,000 worth of debt.

If you got married tomorrow, that would be the together picture.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

All right.

And you're living together, is what you indicated, right?

Okay.

How long?

It's been almost a year now.

Okay.

All right.

What is the dream for the wedding?

Well,

she's okay with going to the courthouse tonight, and I've got like over 20 aunts and uncles, and like over 30 cousins, and I would like as many of them as I can afford to be there.

But

I'm not sure how to afford that.

Okay, and what is your personal take-home pay a month?

My personal take-home pay after taxes is $8,300.

Okay, good, good.

You're doing really well, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

You don't have any, do you have any cash or any money that's not in retirement?

No, just my emergency fund.

How much is in your emergency fund?

Oh, sorry.

Well, it's $1,000 that you suggested.

Okay.

All right.

It was the starter emergency fund.

Okay.

Yes.

So you have $1,000, and that's your entire money you have available.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

All right.

I'm asking a lot of questions because once I get the whole picture, I can say clearly what I would do, knowing what I know now, if I woke up in your shoes.

Okay.

Right.

For sure,

I'm going to call the preacher and go get married at the courthouse or in his office tomorrow

for sure or in a month, okay?

Somewhere in the next month,

and then have a big party later,

okay, after we clean up some of his debt, because you've got a great income to clean up some of the debt, and you can have a big reception, you know, even if it's 12 months from now, okay, easily.

And have the uncles and aunts and that kind of stuff because, you know, that's,

yeah, that's what I would do for sure.

Then the only question I've got is how much to spend on a ring, and do I stop everything for

a paycheck or two and get a three or four thousand dollar ring?

And I probably would.

And I would do that this month, and I'd get married, you know, the end of the month or the end of next month or whatever, something like that.

And because then that allows you to combine all of your efforts

safely

and correctly, and you'll be able to clear the debt faster.

And as you said, you're already playing house, so and you love her, you're going to get married to her, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, so just go do it.

There was nothing in any of your sentence structure there was any hesitancy in.

That's what I was going on.

Yeah.

No, sir.

Yeah, we're not doing this so that we can combine money.

We're doing it because you love each other.

You know, you're going to get married.

So go ahead and do it.

Yeah.

Just got some stuff out of order.

And so let's get back to it.

Like you said, you know, a different color a while ago, but I saw, you know, there's more buy-in when we are married, too, right?

She doesn't got to worry about me going anywhere.

I don't got to worry about her going anywhere.

And I want her to have that stability, you know what I mean?

Like as soon as I possibly can.

So I'm with you guys on that one.

How's her relationship with your affluent mom and dad?

It's great.

They love her.

Okay.

Are mom and daddy going to be pissed that you guys go to the courthouse and not have a big wedding?

Well, I did float the idea to my mom, and she was a little like, oh, why would you do that?

Yeah.

But I'm not too concerned.

But your mom wants to have the party, too.

But, mom, we are going to have the party.

Well, then pay for the affluent mom, pay for the party.

That's where I was going.

Why don't they pay for the wedding?

They're all

the wedding reception and do it, you know, even if you did it at Christmas and it was a few months after the actual quote-unquote marriage.

But, I mean, we know several young couples that are like in their 19, 20-year-old types, okay, that go literally to the courthouse, go sit with a preacher and get married, and then they walk down the aisle with the white dress and the whole thing four months later.

I've seen that happen a bunch of times, and because that's how the schedule worked out for the stupid venue, but they are

legally, morally married and all that

a long time before we all went to the wedding, you know, and a couple of us that are close enough friends actually knew that.

But

my concern with that is that, you know, I've asked my parents for so much help and they've helped me out so much.

I'm not asking them to help you.

I'm saying, hey, if y'all want to throw a party, we'll do it now.

If you want me to throw the party, we're going to do it in a year.

But they didn't really help you, Jimmy.

I mean, in a sense, you're paying interest to your parents.

So it's not like they went and paid your debt off.

If they did that, I would be like, yeah, yeah, that's really generous.

They just became your bank.

They're not helping you.

You're paying them interest.

They're making money off you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kind of weird.

I do know people that their parents have paid off their debt so that they don't have to pay interest and it's a better deal for the kid.

But yeah, I don't know.

Yeah.

So I,

I, I, I,

I, you know your parents better than me, but I'm kind of thinking when you make this announcement that we're going to get married and we're going to have the party over here, if you all want want to have the party earlier and you want to finance it, we'll do it earlier for the uncles and aunts and we'll do that big party in December because we're getting married in a month.

And I'm going to go, dad, I'm going to go get a ring.

Mom, take her over there.

Y'all announce it to them.

Tell them what your plans are.

And then watch and see how generous they become towards the $61,000 and towards the party.

I'm not begging for that.

I'm just laying it out.

And I'm not even going to ask.

Yeah, not even asking for that.

That's why I asked what they thought of her because that's going to affect their participation, participation,

their voluntary transportation without you even asking.

Yeah,

your mama might reach across the table and tap her on the hand and go, honey, we got this.

You never know.

You never know.

So, um,

and I hope that for you.

Sure, yeah, that'd be great.

We'll have a great party.

That'd be great.

Have it.

It's a cool question, Jimmy.

Thanks for

it's obvious you've been listening to us the way you use some of the words to back at us.

So, thank you for that.

Our scripture of the day, Matthew 5:14 and 15: you are the light of the world.

A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Instead, they put it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

Oh,

guys, come on.

They give me Charlie Kirk quote.

Oh, man.

If you believe in something, you need to have the courage to fight for those ideas, not run away from them or try and silence them.

Wow.

Oh,

makes me cry.

All right.

Heather's in Illinois.

Hey, Heather, what's up?

Yes, Dave.

I need to know your thoughts on a couple things.

I'm an 82-year-old widow, and

I have approximately,

well, first of all, I do own my own home and my car.

I have about $236,000

that earns about 4.4%.

I also have about $10,000 in an emergency fund, but I have no debts except $16,000 on some windows that I bought.

And

my payment is not due for 16 months, and there's no interest on them.

And I need to know, shall I just wait until the time is up and pay that amount or do I should I start paying on it now because my other concern is if I should have to go into a nursing home and I don't know what your thoughts are on that

as far as how much money I need to have set aside okay what are you living on per month

about 3500.

So pretty much your Social Security is covering you?

Social Security and pension, yes.

Okay.

What is your pension total?

What's the total of those two things?

Is that $35?

Well,

the total of both of them together is $35.26 a month.

Okay, so you're able to live on that without touching the $232.

Yes, I am.

Or even the interest on the $232.

Yes.

You're letting it grow.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

The deal with the

interest-free windows is if you do not get it paid off exactly on time, they're going to backcharge you through the entire contract a huge interest rate.

And so as a matter of safety, because those things are a bear trap,

they put those together with the intent that you don't pay it on time.

They're a bear trap.

And so

I want you to go ahead and clear it for no other reason except that I don't want the bear trap to get you.

Okay.

And that way

it doesn't give you any, you know, there's no dispute because it's so far away.

And you get very clear, complete

documentation from them that says paid in full, nothing else due.

So they don't come back later and say, you still owed $10, so we're going to charge you interest on the whole thing all the way back through.

Because that's the kind of thing these shysters do.

Okay.

So I want to make sure that doesn't happen and let's get very clear documentation paid in full and go ahead and pay it.

You don't have to do it

sometime in the next month or two.

Okay.

Yeah.

Where is the 232 sitting, Heather?

Is it just in a high yield, high yield savings?

Well, I've got about $206,000 in money market

and $30,000 in large cap stocks.

Yeah.

So you can just put it, you can just write a check out of that money market and pay the bill.

So call them

or have them send you an email or something that gives you an exact payoff by an exact date.

Send that in and then hound them until they give you some kind of documentation states paid in full because I don't want the bear trap anywhere near you.

Okay, so that's a minor thing.

That's done.

Now we've got $216,000 because we just spent $16,000.

All right.

And now, what do we do with nursing home?

So, what is your home worth?

Oh, about $160,000, probably.

Okay.

All right.

And so

there's two options really that you could go with.

And I'm going to recommend you go ahead and spend some of your time getting prepared for one or both of them.

All right.

Option number one is your best option that I like in terms of quality is I'm going to start investigating full-time care in your your home.

Okay.

It's a better

quality of life for you.

You're going to stay in the house

and you got one-on-one care.

It's almost like you're, it's hard for someone like you, but it's almost emotionally because you're, but you're basically hiring a butler

with a nursing degree.

Sure.

Okay.

And

I want them to just move in there and take care of Heather.

And if you have to have two of them and do two shifts because things get bad, because you need someone night and day, that's still going to be cheaper than a nursing home.

Okay.

And it's going to be nicer for you than a nursing home.

Now, if you need more care, you need to have investigated some of the nursing homes in the area.

Get in the car and go look at them.

Shop.

Let's go shopping.

Because on average, what would it cost?

Have them price it out in your area.

There's probably three or four within a 20 or 25 mile radius of you there.

And let's go, that one's the, this one's the expensive one, but look at what the stuff they've got.

This is the medium, and this is the other medium, and this is the one I don't want to go to.

And you're going to find all three there,

and the expensive, the medium, and the one you don't want to go to.

And,

you know, go ahead and get that figured out, and then that'll tell you what you've got because your 200,000 is making you

only about $8,000 a year.

And so if you're going to start, if you start burning through that money, we've got to figure out how long it's going to last.

Yes.

And so the nursing home is going to be,

okay, let's just make up numbers.

If you did the in-house care and it was $10,000 a month for people working in your home and that took over everything, well, I mean, we know what that is.

It's 20 months.

Sure.

Sure.

Okay.

I will tell you the interesting stat.

It's a little bit depressing because of the way we're talking about it, but the average nursing home stay is only 2.3 years.

Okay.

And I guess that's because by the time you get there, you don't live long.

Not because they kill people, but you know what I'm saying?

So, I mean, we're just at the end times, right?

So because I'm looking at that stuff, too.

I'm 65.

And so I'm talking, my wife and I are talking about this stuff, too.

What are we going to do in this case or that case if something happens to one of us?

And is the other one going to just take care of him in the home?

Yeah, that's what we're going to do.

We're just going to hire help in the home instead of going to a nursing home.

Your children will help too.

Well, I know.

But you're not moving in.

You have a life and stuff.

I know.

But I'll just hire, you know, I'll hire Sharon a butler.

I mean, you know, I'll do it.

I mean, I'm happy to do that.

And so

all that.

So anyway, you just kind of got to, you develop a plan and you look at what it costs and then you see what your burn rate on the money is.

And then that tells you that you got 200,000 plus the value of this house to get through that.

And if you outlive all of that in a nursing home, you're going to end up in a Medicaid nursing home, which is a welfare nursing home.

And it's a different level than the other stuff we're talking about.

So, you know, that's going to be your last resort, not your first choice.

And so, but I'm an advocate for building out a system if it's possible for medically possible and financially possible to stay in the home if you can write the checks to cause that to happen.

If you can do it, yep.

Yeah, and some of you that have built large net worths that are listening, that's your best shot, really.

It's your best option.

Especially if the home's paid for everything.

There's not automatic expenses.

But for people like Sharon and me, or Heather, or people that have worked our whole lives, the idea of having

Downton Abbey in the house,

have the help in in the house, so to speak, is weird for us.

We don't think, you know, we're not butler-type people, so we've kind of got to get our emotions around that if we're going to do it.

I mean, they are medically trained.

No, but I'm just saying, you know, we're going to ring a little bell here.

I mean,

it's just a little strange for people like me.

That puts the Sauer 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.