Don’t Quit When the Journey Gets Hard

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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 and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show.

Dr.

John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of The Runaway Hit on Ramsey Network, the Dr.

John Deloney Show.

He is my co-host today.

Cody is in Nebraska.

Hi, Cody.

How are you?

You know, Dave, I am better than I deserve.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

Well, guys, I'm going to start off a little bit of a doozy here, so I do apologize.

But my wife and I have just recently found out that her parents are asking my wife's sisters that are under 18 for money for basic bills.

We don't really know.

You know, I've heard in the past you guys say, like, don't say anything unless they come to you and ask for help or guidance.

We're just kind of stuck because,

you know, my sister-in-laws are 10, 12, and then 17.

So I'm just kind of, we're kind of confused on what to do.

How much money do they have?

Well,

so

my

so the younger sister-in-laws, they were working over the summer.

So, basically, what happened was, is

my sister, my 10-year-old sister-in-law told us that, well, mom and dad kept saying that we don't have enough money for groceries this month and blah, blah, blah.

So, I offered them my $400 that I got from Dog Sitting, and they took it for groceries.

And then

my 17-year-old sister-in-law came over two weeks ago and said that they had quote-unquote borrowed a thousand dollars from her for for bills for last month to cover is this true

are they struggling that bad

i i i would i would say so yes it's been talked about you know a couple months ago my wife overheard that they're like ten thousand dollars short a month he my father-in-law owns his own business and it's been i know it's been struggling for quite a while.

So

I want to put things in order.

You hear us say all the time, you can't help family unless they come ask you.

But before that, I'm always going to protect kids.

Of course.

And if you got a 10-year-old that's coming to you saying, dad is saying I don't have enough money for groceries.

I need your dog sitting money, then I would personally, I would insert myself into that situation.

Okay.

Okay.

And that's what we were thinking because, you know, it's it's really hard for me to have respect for people like that.

That, you know, they are in a situation where they rely on everybody else to get them out of their problems.

They blame everybody else except for themselves.

A lot of this is self-cause just based off their career choices that they've had.

So it's hard for me to have respect.

It's hard for my wife to have respect as well.

So

how long have you been worried?

It'll be two years in February.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm going to take back what I said.

I'd have your wife call, not you.

But

yeah.

Yeah.

And

I think she, yeah,

because here's the thing: if the two of you go over there at two years into this and insert yourself in this situation, you are changing the trajectory of the next 40 years.

Of course.

Yep.

It's not simply the situation.

Yes, what you're describing is 100% disgusting.

I'm not questioning that at all.

And if they were abusing the children physically, we would just turn them over to children's services.

Right, yeah, that's not happening.

It'd be that simple because we're just not going to allow that to happen.

They're just abusing them financially.

And

so I think,

but I don't think your wife, your wife's, what, 20-something years old?

Yeah,

she's 23.

Yeah.

If she sits down with her mom and dad and says, y'all need to stop this, y'all need to become responsible adults, my guess is there's about a 0% chance that that's going to have any impact.

110%.

And if you show up saying, I don't respect you guys, they're going to take it out of their house.

That's not going to help either.

That's a 40-year-long discussion.

I'm trying to think, in other words, what will work is more what I'm thinking about.

Dave, tell me if I'm wrong.

So my thought is when I say insert myself into that, it would be your wife calling calling mom and dad and saying, can we talk?

And she's got to be careful because the backlash could come down on a 10-year-old, right?

Yeah.

But we just heard.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

And my idea at first was like, you know, my wife, I told her, I was like, what if you like take your mom out to coffee and be like, you know, mom, we've heard some of this stuff from.

you know, my sisters, like, how bad is it?

Is it really, is that really happening?

Is that angry y'all really that bad?

Yeah.

And

is there ways we can help or is there ways we can support you or is there education?

They may say absolutely not.

And then it's about giving your niece or your sister-in-law, if you will, a safe place that she always knows she's loved somewhere else.

But that's just going to, she's going to have eight years of mom and dad borrowing money.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And, you know, that's our fear because, you know, they're setting the kids up for just a lifelong.

Yeah, but

dude, you're 25.

You're 24.

I would stay out of that for right now.

Yeah, that's not.

true.

That's actually not true either.

It's a bad on-ramp to life, but it's not an on-ramp that can't be corrected.

A lot of us have bad on-ramps.

And then we get the opportunity to meet Jesus and change our life.

Okay, so then those kids have got the same thing.

They're not being physically abused.

Yeah, so let me refer.

When I say insert myself, I don't mean you flex and put on a sleeveless shirt and go bang on the door.

I think your wife taking mom out for coffee, taking dad out out and saying, hey, we just happened to hear this.

I'm worried about y'all.

I'm worried about my sisters.

Yeah.

How bad is it?

Definitely.

And then y'all two have a hard conversation about could you help, will you help, and all that?

Because the next question is going to be: well, can we have $500?

And y'all already had that predetermined discussion before she heads into that.

No, go ahead and I'll give you the answer to that.

No.

You're right.

Because they're saying they're $10,000 short a month.

So I'm not throwing good money after bad.

So

we only give, Ramsey's only give into situations where we create a sustainable story.

We don't throw money at something, $5 at something that's a $100 problem.

You're not creating a sustainable story then.

You've got to fix the problem.

You've got to get down under it.

And so that's going to involve maybe what I would pay is for them to get with a Ramsey coach.

And the Ramsey coach boxes their ears and says, you have to sell the three cars.

Guys, you cannot afford these stupid cars.

You can't afford to live in that house.

Oh, maybe you need to get a job because your life, your business is not a business.

It loses money.

It's called a hobby.

And so, no, we're going to have to, you know, these types of things are going on under the scene because if they're $10,000 short, the $1,000 from the 17-year-old or the $400 from the 10-year-old doesn't fix it, nor does $500 from you fix it.

So don't do that.

But do say, I'll...

cheer you on.

I'll help you do a budget.

I'll connect you with some people and pay for it for you to get some coaching to get yourself out of this.

You've struggled with this your whole life.

I've watched you.

I'm your daughter.

And, you know, I'd love for you to be free from these demons.

And you and I have talked about this before on the air, but parents don't like hearing money advice.

So if she sits down and says, y'all need to start, that's not going to go well.

But that idea of sitting down and saying, hey, I'm worried about you.

How bad is it?

Are y'all okay?

And then tell them your story.

That's a different avenue.

Yeah, we are on a budget and it's giving us great peace.

We have sold some stuff to be able to get

our income in line with our outgo and it's given us great peace.

And if I could ever help you get with our coach, we'll show you how to do that.

That kind of thing.

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Michelle is in Utah.

Hi, Michelle.

How are you?

Hi.

Days before my wedding, I was laid off as the breadwinner, and a month later, my husband quit his job without asking me.

He didn't have a savings or financial plan.

To get us through, I made a tight budget with my personal savings and gifts we received from our wedding that he agreed to, but it's been so bad we had to go on welfare.

It's been months, and I recently discovered he secretly transferred money from our joint account to his personal account, spending $3,500 in about a month and a half, leaving us with almost nothing left.

When confronted, he refused to share bank statements or make a plan to draw

behavior.

I got laid off.

I know, like months ago.

Yeah.

And I'm still not working.

It's been tough.

And you're still not working.

Why?

Yeah.

It's been really really tough.

I've been applying for a lot of different positions over, I'd say, at this point, 250.

I'm happy with the amount of interviews I've been getting.

So hopefully I'll find something soon.

But you've been not working for six months.

No, not six months.

I'm sorry.

Three months.

Three months.

You've been married three whole months.

Yeah.

And all three months have been hell.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's been bad.

Did this surprise you, or did you notice about him coming in?

He's a medical resident, so he spent essentially his entire life in school.

So I did flag these things while we were dating

as

what I saw as problematic behavior, just poor spending habits.

He's a medical resident?

Does he not get paid for that?

He does.

But

a month, like I said, a month after we got married, he decided he wants to go into a different specialty.

And

quit his job.

Medical residency and you don't have your MD?

He does have an MD, but he wants to go into a different field within surgery.

So he wants to start a different residency.

But it will take time for him to find that position.

Here's the thing.

Your marriage challenges are deeper than spending and deeper than him quitting.

It is, you don't respect this guy at all.

And when

life three months in or a couple months into your marriage threw you guys a pretty big curveball,

your biggest fears about him were exposed.

And you've reached that place.

The Gottmans call it the worst of the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse.

You're at contempt.

I don't like you, and I think that I would be handling this different than you in a better way

and unless you address the your marriage at that level y'all are just going to keep playing whack-a-mole with symptoms you're going to create your own checking account your own savings plan your own your own he'll do his own his own

and

you you already are roommates y'all will have a divorce inside your own house

And so it's sitting down and saying,

I don't respect you.

Here's how you've chosen to handle this.

You quit your job.

You quit this.

You're not participating.

You've got your own stuff.

You don't want to be a part of this thing that we're building.

We have to build a new marriage three months in already, and you got to call that.

And then you also

sending out applications.

I mean, it sounds like you're hustling, but there's also something about you regaining your own dignity by just going and working at Burger King on the breakfast shift, just so you can feel like you're getting underneath yourself too.

Because it's easy to start throwing rocks back and forth at each other, right?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I do respect him.

It's just.

You wrote a letter that you read over the air that said, I don't respect him.

Yeah.

You just read it to us.

No, I didn't say that.

No.

No, all the words that the words say that.

All the words that you wrote in that letter say that.

Is that in a really tough moment, he quit his job and took off without you.

And he stole our money that we agreed to while I'm trying to be the one that is the adult and make everything behave.

And this guy's misbehaving here, here, here, and here.

I don't blame you for not respecting him.

That's not respectable behavior.

But I think you like owning that.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Yeah.

So

what's your question for us beneath these other questions?

Like, how can we help you?

So in trying to move forward, like you said, I realize that the issue is much bigger than, let's say, just money, right?

But in trying to address behaviors in both of us that maybe led to this happening,

I asked him to share his think statements with me and so that we can address some of these behaviors together.

But he's not being cooperative and hasn't done so.

So I guess what I'm wondering now is what boundaries and improvements do I need to see and should we see in request to go forward?

Because honestly,

I don't blame

different people for having different financial knowledge, but I think we should work together to make that, to make each of us stronger in that regard.

And honestly, I'm just concerned that even when he is a full-blown surgeon, making that salary in several years,

we still won't be financially stable because the spending would be an issue.

It doesn't start with the spending.

It's the spending anchored into the fact that y'all have a marriage where he has his bank statements and you've got yours.

Y'all should have bank statements that anyone can pull up at any time that y'all talk about together regularly.

Yeah, sure.

You're 100% right.

And that's why

he has joint savings and checking.

If he actually does complete residency, which would surprise me, but let's say he does,

your fears are 100% grounded.

He's going to make half a million dollars and he's going to say, this is my money.

Right.

Yes, you're right.

I would be terrified of that if I were you two.

So what do we, what's the next step for her?

The next step is you being honest about sitting down and saying, do you want to be married with me?

This should have been a conversation y'all had before you got married.

I'm not going to marry somebody.

I'm not going to connect life with somebody that won't engage with a joint, a dreaming about a joint future together where we put our money in the same account because that funds our dreams and our commitment to each other.

But you already hear

we have transparency and we have a joint

tactical things that we are doing with every dollar, we are deciding together before we do them.

Right, and that's part of my concern.

Separation and deception, separation and deception can't go forward.

I see.

We did make a joint budget going into this and did make a joint savings with our money and a joint checkings, But in order to hide the spending habits, he transferred from our joint savings to his personal account.

And that's why I can't see the transaction.

And we call that financial infidelity.

He's cheating on you.

He's deceiving you.

Do you have any idea what he spent it on?

Yeah.

Unfortunately,

just generally speaking, he wouldn't show me the statements, but it seems to be personal grooming, haircuts, buying stuff for his hair, fast food, and paying off his personal credit cards.

Although going into this, given the severity of the situation, we had agreed to not making payments on our credit cards at this time temporarily.

Okay, so he's got a really good haircut, and he's dead-free.

It sounds like he's leaving.

Okay.

It sounds like he's setting up another move.

Yeah.

Either that or he absolutely 100%

is not interested in building a life with you.

He's interested in continuing his life next to you.

And that's a very different proposition.

That's not marriage.

That's roommates with benefits.

Can you imagine if I told Sharon I spent money on a haircut?

I can imagine the eulogy I would read at your service.

I can imagine that.

Wow.

I'm not saying the guy's bald.

I'm just saying.

Yeah, there's something scary about, here's something scary about sitting with a spouse three months in or three years in, 30 years in, creating a plan, shaking hands, we're going to do this together.

And then you find out they went off on the side and did whatever they wanted to do.

Do whatever they wanted to do.

They completely lied.

Yeah, they lied to you.

So this is an integrity and trust breakdown, and you can't go forward with deception and integrity and trust issues.

So you guys have got to sit down and go.

What the teenagers used to call a define the relationship.

TTR.

DTR.

DTR.

That's right.

TTR.

Yeah, DTR.

Define the relationship.

And so is we or isn't we?

All right, there we go.

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Ethan is with us in Florida.

Hi, Ethan.

How are you?

Hey, Damon and Dr.

John Deloney.

I'm awesome.

I'm just happy to talk to you guys.

I'm sorry, I'm nervous.

No problem.

You're good.

How can we help, sir?

Okay, so I'm a young veteran, and I joined the military right out of high school.

I did my four years, got my degree.

And two years ago, at the age of 22, I moved my wife and kid to Florida to start a military-sponsored internship program at one of their approved companies.

At the end of that internship, the owner of the company promised me $180,000 salary if I bought his house.

That promise was put into an offer letter and an employment contract.

And that offer letter solely qualified me for a no money down VA jumbo loan.

So I proceeded to buy his house for $830,000 with an $845,000 mortgage at a 6.75% interest rate and a nearly $7,000 month payment.

Immediately after I closed, he cut my pay, making that offer letter fraudulent.

And over the course of the past two years, my pay has progressively been cut as he ran the the company into the ground.

And as of two weeks ago, I'm completely unemployed.

I'm owed over $150,000 in wages.

I've since vacated the house, got a rental house for my wife and kids.

I start a new job tomorrow, but I'm being forced into a short sale and will be about $200,000 underwater.

So my question is, what would you do if you were me?

And what are my options to minimize the damage to my credit and my future home buying privileges?

So at what point in this process

and how many times in this process did your heart try to tell your head how stupid this was?

I could tell you a long story of how I was

convinced it was a very legit company.

I mean, I interviewed today.

I mean, you never stopped and looked at this and said, this is a bad idea.

Oh, no.

I mean, the company had like 50% i mean you're talking about the company

the company the company doesn't matter the whole story you told me if the company is completely yeah on the up and up if they're really financially strong and if they followed through on everything they said this is still unbelievably stupid

yeah i agree now looking back i mean at the time i was 22 years old and the guy seemed like he was made of money i thought i was doing him a favor uh because he found out he's having twins and he want his wife he said his wife wanted a bigger house um

but yeah i agreed looking back now i was i was completely scammed i never should have uh got in this situation you ever heard the phrase if something sounds too good to be true it is

yeah that's this is it yeah this is it you're like the walking definition yeah oh my gosh honey i'm so sorry yeah what hell you have been through thank you for your service to the country and you deserve to be treated better i'm so sorry

he's a veteran too so he he's taken advantage of veterans and yeah that's not unusual as you know.

There's veterans outside the gate of every single base for the next two miles, just as soon as you leave the gate on each side of the road for the next two miles, is stupid.

Like every stupid human trick is right outside the gate of every military base, and most of them are run by veterans screwing over current active duty people.

So it's not unusual at all.

I wish I could say it was different, but we know too much about your world.

All right.

So

why did you move out?

um because so the the mortgage is going to go overdue starting october 1st yeah so um and i know my credit's going to get ruined so i won't be able to why did you move out

so i could start the short sale process or whatever as soon as possible you can start short sale process process while you're living in it

yeah that's true i don't know i just wanted to get it over with and just move on with my life as soon as possible, I guess.

Okay.

That's interesting.

All right.

So a short sale is where the house brings less than the mortgage.

And if it is a short sale, remember this phrase because you're going to have trouble getting it with your veterans administration.

And it's the only way you want to do it.

Don't do it if you don't get this phrase.

And I doubt you're going to get it, but you need to get this phrase without recourse.

Okay.

So a short sale is the lender looks at the situation and says, my borrower is a 22-year-old that doesn't make enough money to pay this bill, and it'll never happen in this century that we're going to get our money.

The only money we're going to get is out of this house, and so we're going to accept a $600,000, $800,000 offer, $700,000 offer on this house, and whatever of the mortgage doesn't get paid, we are going to forgive it without resource.

Without recourse.

That's a short sale.

The Veterans Administration seldom does a short sale without recourse.

But if they have recourse, they're going to sue you for the difference, and it's no better than a foreclosure.

Who will sue me for the difference?

The veterans, yeah.

The VA.

And believe me, they will sue you.

Because what the realtors have told me is that the VA, they just eat the difference on the short sale.

If you do it without recourse, they eat the difference.

But let me tell you, I got to tell you, nine out of 10 times, they don't.

Now, the FHA will eat the difference.

If you talk Fannie Mae, a conventional loan, into

doing a short sale, it's typically without recourse.

But the VA, oddly enough, ironically enough, which is designed to help veterans, is going to screw you.

They're going to hammer you.

So I'm afraid for you right now.

But

it's the only route you've got.

So take the realtor at their word, but do not sign this unless it says without recourse.

I do not want them chasing you for the difference.

If they're going to chase you for the difference, make them foreclose.

Okay.

Do not do a deal with them, and then they'll screw you.

You've been screwed enough by people you've done deals with.

That's true.

Yeah.

So,

whatever the buyer offers, the VA takes that amount and forgives the rest, say it with me, without recourse.

You got that phrase?

Without recourse.

Yeah.

I do not want them coming after you for the difference.

And the paperwork needs to say that, and you need to freaking read the paperwork.

Yeah.

Because the VA

is supposed to be there for veterans, and quite honestly, they're not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Otherwise, they would have never made this loan.

Yeah, I mean, I reached out to them.

They did an audit into the origination of the loan, and they said it's legit that the company who's named after the owner has the same last name that I bought his house with an offer letter that he signed to work at his company.

That didn't raise any red flags, apparently.

Yeah, but the point is, if you have a 22-year-old who's never made any money in his life and he suddenly is offered $180,000 for a job that is not worth $180,000, somebody ought to look at this and go, it violates common sense.

Because, son, you were not going to get a $180,000 job anywhere else, were you?

No, that's why I took it.

No,

that's why we knew it was a scam.

Yeah, yeah.

And you shouldn't have taken it.

And I would recommend a 22-year-old buying his first house, not buying an $860,000 home

based on a bogus salary

amount that you can't get anywhere else in the marketplace.

The whole thing was a scam from day one.

It was never going to happen from day one.

I could elaborate to Dr.

John about how this guy is like the textbook definition of a narcissist.

Sure.

You know, he had a whole company of a bunch of people convinced until now that everything was.

Is he

legit?

It was all a lie.

You know, Ethan, what I want to do, though, if I'm in your shoes, is not define him.

I want to ask myself what was I being that allowed me to step into the bear trap

yeah yeah he we get obviously this guy's a scumball okay but you obviously walked right past several warning flags and you need to learn from those so you never walk past them again because I did the same thing when I was your age and I went broke And that's what I'm trying to keep you from doing.

I don't want you to get there.

So if you're going to do something stupid, at least learn from it.

And this whole thing was stupid.

The whole thing is a nightmarish mess.

I'm so sorry, honey.

Yeah, without recourse, that's your phrase for the day, my man.

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Kirk is in Colorado.

Hey, Kirk, what's up?

Hey, so I got a real estate question for you.

Hey, we have a property that, well, there's an open property next to us that came up for sale, and I'm trying to figure out if it's a good idea, maybe a good investment to buy it you have the cash so

we do okay how much is it

uh so they're asking forty thousand for what for what what is it

uh so it's an empty lot it's 1.3 acres we live in a rural area so everyone's got about 1.2 acres that everyone lives on We enjoy having open lots on either side of us.

So buying this would, A, prevent someone from moving in and building next to us.

And B, I had the idea of incorporating it into

my lot.

So at that point, if we ever sell in like 10 years and move, we would be selling 2.5 acres versus 1.2 acres.

Okay.

All right.

And you're out of debt, except your home?

No, we are 100% out of debt.

We own our home.

Okay, and you have the cash.

All right.

I would buy it.

I have done that quite often.

I bought 22 acres next door to this building that I'm sitting in, commercial property.

I bought vacant lots adjacent to every property or several properties that I own when they come available for buffers, as you said, privacy, the enjoyment of a little extra space, and sometimes just to keep contiguous things going.

What I would not do is combine the properties.

You can combine them when you sell them simply by selling them both.

Okay.

Would it be cheaper as property taxes is one versus having two different lots?

Might be a tiny bit, but $40,000 worth of property taxes is not much in South Dakota.

We're talking about a biscuit.

So I sold a big, I built this big, huge house on a hill back in the early 2000s, and I sold it in 21.

I had purchased two five-acre tracks that were contiguous to it that were big lots in the area.

So I and had a little green space around it too.

So I was basically sitting on about 20 acres.

All right.

But I did not combine the lots.

When I sold it, the buyer of the big house didn't want the other lots, didn't want to spend that much.

And so what ended up happening was I sold the house itself at a premium, and then I ended up selling both the lots at a premium.

They built next door to him

and his choice, because he didn't want them.

But I ended up with more money that way.

Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, so but if he wanted them all, I offered him everything in one package, and he didn't want it, right?

The buyer, which is fine.

It's okay.

It's his place.

He didn't have to do it.

He was not as concerned about buffer as I was, right?

So I liked having 20 acres around me a lot.

So,

and I kind of miss that.

But yeah, but yeah, that's where we are.

So

yeah,

but keep it separate.

But yes, I would buy it.

And I don't know that the investment will work out to be a big deal for you.

If the 40 turns into 80 over a decade, you did good.

I'd be shocked if it did that.

But more than anything, it's peace of mind and control of the environment around you.

And you've deserved that.

You've done a good enough job with your money to buy that.

I bought that yesterday.

Yeah.

No question about that.

And God bless any place in the country where you can get an acre and $1.2 for $40,000.

I would buy that on principle, I think.

Yeah, there's people.

Yeah.

Jeez.

Wow.

Scott's with us in Ohio.

Hey, Scott, how are you?

Doing good.

How about yourself?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

So I am working through a little bit of a financial situation where I'm trying to understand if I should continue to be laser focused on my debt payoff or start planning for my future at 42 years old.

So I am a single income earner household with no kids.

I make about $150,000 a year.

And at the end of last year, I started to realize that just my numbers weren't adding up for my income.

I was constantly behind the ball, trying to move money around to pay all my bills, and just came to the realization that I was both stubborn and financially illiterate.

Dude.

Wow, that's that's brutal.

Welcome to the meeting.

I'm John, and this is Dave.

We've been there too, brother.

Yeah, so I built a really strict budget.

Since January 1st, I've paid off 37,000 in debt.

Wow.

I'm down to one credit card, which was, I had 27,000 in credit cards in January.

I'm down to about $9,200 on a credit card that is now at 0% interest and paying about $1,200 a month on it.

Okay.

Then I have a home loan for my roof, a car,

student loans, and finally my mortgage.

Not counting the mortgage, what's the rest of it?

Let's see here, about $53,000.

And you've already paid off $37,000 since January.

Yeah, so I should have that paid off in about 16 months, and then I'm left with about $196,000 for the mortgage.

Amazing.

Well done, sir.

Outstanding, dude.

Thank you.

And then I have about $71,000 in my 401k, nothing in Roth, nothing in HSA yet.

And you're not adding anything to the 401k currently.

No, I am because of where I work.

I get 6% of the bank.

Oh, you didn't understand the program.

The program is you stop the 401k.

Okay.

Oh, now we're going to get out of debt in 12 months.

This is so cool.

I have about 12K in reserves.

I have a century of.

Oh, man.

Wait a minute.

Now we're going to pay down that credit card today.

Today.

You're going to be gone today.

Look at this.

Now we're out of debt in 10 months.

This is so cool.

Okay, look, listen, you've created a either save myself now and not help myself later

or help myself later and take longer on this.

And what I want to tell you is every dollar you pay off right now is helping future you.

Yes.

Your shortest distance between where you are and financial security and wealth is not screwing around with your match and it's not hoarding that $12,000.

It's leaning in with everything the way we taught you and you're not doing it, but you need to go do it.

The shortest distance between where you are right now and that is 100% debt freedom because when you don't have a stinking payment in the world, you rebuild that emergency fund very quickly.

Then you start putting 15% of your income away and you're young and you make $150,000.

Later, you're going to make $250,000 10 years from now and you're still putting 15% away.

You're going to have $10 million if you do what I tell you to do instead of doing it your way.

Well, that's what my goal was, this six to ten million for being realistic in today's climate with inflation and everything i feel anybody in their 40s is going to need five to ten million to have a comfortable life yeah

60s even better but you know it's okay it's you know you're gonna be okay you'll be okay with a million but you'd be better off with six and you'd be better off with 60.

so but the point is yeah quit trying to screw around with this system that works dude you you really have made good progress remarkably without doing what we taught you to do here here's the deal you're running a marathon and and you're at mile 14.

You just passed the halfway mark.

I mean, not dollar-wise, but you're running and you're kind of getting tired of running.

And when you get tired of running, you start giving yourself reasons why you can go ahead and just quit.

You've already done the training.

You've proven it to yourself.

What if we just went and got a burger?

Hear me and Dave say, finish this race, man.

You're tired.

You don't like sending $1,200 every penny away.

We get it.

Dude, you are cooking on this thing.

What do you owe on the car?

Um, $16,000.

Okay, not much.

All right, good.

And then my house is worth about, I think it was $345,000.

Oh, man.

That's going to be paid off in like seven years, the way you're going.

So you're doing so good.

Yeah, seriously, if you will take 10 months of doing it my way and have almost nothing in savings down to $1,000, baby step one, and stop your 401k for a lousy 10 months,

the ground you'll make up as a result of that, because of this increased focused intensity, is going to get you out of that so fast, mathematically and psychologically and spiritually, because the feedback loops are going to kick in and you're going to go, I love this.

I'm paying off more and more and more,

more and more.

And you're going to get out of it.

That's what happens in the brain.

And so that's kind of how it sounds.

My brain isn't quite so old witchcraft, but I get it.

That's like a, oh, yeah.

Like a wizard or whatever.

You're the bad guy.

Spectrum.

You have an evil laugh, right?

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

It's like,

There we go.

You can do this, man, but quit screwing around with it.

Get it done.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studios.

Dr.

John Deloney, number one best-selling author, host of the Dr.

John Deloney Show, massive hit on Ramsey Network.

He's my co-host today.

Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Lynn is in New York.

Hi, Lynn.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

I wanted to see if I should take out a $10,000 loan to help my mom fix her kitchen.

There's some emotional reasons why I would and why I wouldn't.

And ultimately, I'm trying to see if

the financials make sense to help me make the decision.

So you don't have $10,000 to give your mom?

I don't, no.

Okay.

And your mom's broke?

She, yeah, she has a pension.

She has Social Security.

She's retired.

So she's on a fixed income.

How old is your mom?

She's almost 80.

And how's her health?

She's actually quite spry for her age.

Good.

Okay.

And what's wrong with her kitchen?

She tends to hire, do a lot of DIY and like hire handy men who aren't quite handy and so over the last few years

to to renovate the home in general oh I see so okay yeah and so

you know she's half funded projects over the years and it's left the kitchen you know with only a subfloor no cabinets no countertops it's just kind of in a state of disrepair and She is older, even though her health is pretty great, I worry about, you know, her age and food safety, physical safety in that space.

Wow.

Really bad decisions.

Yes.

Okay.

Man, I just appreciate how much you love your mom.

That's sweet of you.

And that you want to take care of her, and you don't want her living in a house that probably wouldn't pass codes right now.

So that's nice of you.

You do know you called the show where we'd never tell anybody to borrow money, right?

You know you called that show.

I did, and I'm, you know, I'm trying to, the other part is, you know, I've worked really hard over the last few years to get out of debt.

And I'm not going to tell you to spend $10,000 on an 80-year-old's kitchen.

The math doesn't work.

I mean, if you had a million dollars laying in your account and you want to spend $10,000 on an 80-year-old's kitchen, that's fine, but I wouldn't do that.

Okay.

And I certainly wouldn't borrow the money to do it under any circumstances.

But I do applaud your heart.

Now, let's try to fix the problem, though.

Okay.

A different way.

So, is your mom

in a good church?

I would say she does go to a church.

Good.

But the church is the place where she has been recommended.

These people who have fixed her home, but all of a sudden.

That's even better.

So here's what I want you to do.

I want you to take some pictures of the mess that is her kitchen.

And I want you to go have a lunch meeting with her pastor

and say, some of the jacklegs that go to your church have done this.

And so I'm going to ask, since we have an elderly widow over here, that you organize a work group of some young men who actually know how to swing a hammer and come over and put her some cabinets in and put a floor down.

I want you to take care of an elderly widow because she's an elderly widow and she's a member of your church.

And I really want you to do it because some of the jacklegs that go to your church are the ones that cause the problem in the first place.

And I got a feeling you can shame this pastor into getting some work done.

Okay.

Nothing feels better than shaming a pastor.

I'm messing with you.

I'm being harsh.

But you see what I'm saying?

Can I tell you, this is some of the best advice I've heard you give, Dave.

I love this idea because you know why?

It is, it's the bluff call.

Are y'all going to be who you're supposed to be?

You're going to take care of widows and orphans.

Here you go.

You got quiet on us, Lynn.

Why don't you like that plan?

I mean, the handbook says that's real religion.

Widows and orphans.

Yeah.

That's what the handbook says.

My mom,

she doesn't like accepting help.

She's not always the most.

But she was going to take a $10,000 loan from you to do a kitchen.

That's called help.

She didn't ask me necessarily for the loan.

I know, but you had a plan where she was going to do that.

So let's have a plan where her church supports her because her church's jacklegs are the ones that mess this up.

And by the way, this is going to be good practice because over the next 10 years, she's going to need more and more support and care from you and others.

And others.

And you're going to have to get out of the habit of debt fixes anything

because it makes it worse.

Yeah.

Because I don't want to give you a negative scenario, but I really don't want you paying a loan off

after your mom passes away and you're paying payments on a kitchen that she no longer uses.

That would be really, really negative.

Can you imagine writing that check every month?

Yeah, and

it wouldn't be an investment in that sense that I'm not going to be able to do that.

Nope, nope, nope, it wouldn't.

So it's not.

Yeah.

No, it's not.

It's just consumption.

And

it was just your sweetheart wanting to help your sweet mom.

And I think both of you are sweet ladies, and I don't want her to get messed over anymore.

And I don't want you to mess yourself over trying to be sweet.

And so let's not do this.

Let's not step up in this trap.

I'm real serious.

If it was you, if I was you, I'd go have a and I've got the money to write the check, but in this case, I think this church has an opportunity to serve.

And that's the other side of it: they have an opportunity to live out a mission with the congregants of that place.

This is one of those rare win-win-win-win-wins where everybody wins, and

an elderly widow gets her kitchen put back together and the church gets an opportunity to go help somebody out.

That's awesome.

And I don't know how we got here, but seriously, if a recommendation came from inside of her congregation and they left an elderly widow in this situation, the pastor really has an opportunity to work with that person on their character.

Right.

Absolutely.

Because you just don't want to be on this list of it.

You don't want to be on the list of people who messes with kids, widows, and orphans.

There's several things in the scriptures that are really you don't want to be on that list.

You want to be on the list of the people that help those people.

That's the list you want to be.

It's the naughty list and the good list.

I mean, this is it.

It's not Santa Claus, but it's God.

And so, you know, it's

serious stuff.

You know what?

That's a great idea.

I hope that happens more and more.

Well, you have so many opportunities to do things that way.

And honestly, I work with so many churches.

I mean, we work with, had 50,000 churches have taught 10 million financial peace congregants over the last 25 years.

And I know a bazillion churches that have the funds

and have the systems to take care of the single mom, the widow, the orphan, and they don't always know a way to connect to one.

And so just giving them the opportunity, letting them, hey, here's one.

And And they go, thank you.

Yeah.

And they're ready to go do it.

It's pretty incredible that they're just standing there ready to go.

They're willing, ready, and able.

They just don't have the connection.

And because no one wants to raise their hand and say, help me.

And I know a number of young men who are asking, hey, there's no places to serve.

Like, I can go to a local soup kitchen or something, but I got to get in line.

And there's all the, man, if you could go to that.

There's a 25-year-old Bible study group of men at that church.

Show up on a weekend.

This was their weekend project.

They can put that whole kitchen back together.

It'd be amazing.

And then they'd all walk a little bit.

Everybody wins, boys and girls.

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Not in all states.

Today's question comes from Ava in Ohio.

Ava writes, My significant other and I have been together for 15 years, and we have two kids together.

We're both 30 years old.

He's currently scraping by, being self-employed, making roughly $65,000 annually, but pays taxes of about $6,000, and his reimbursed expenses are included in that $65K, making his true income about $26,000 a year.

We do not have joint finances.

I pay for everything for us, from the house, utilities, groceries, and even his health insurance.

I make $163,000 annually.

He does have some great skills to get a decent job, but chooses not to.

How do I motivate him to get a better job and ask him to start paying for part of our family expenses?

I don't think you can.

In 15 years, you hadn't motivated him to get married.

I don't know how you're going to motivate him to get a job.

And by the way, 30 years old, we've been together 15 years.

This started when you were 15.

High school, man.

Yeah.

It's Dawson's Creek.

I don't want to wait.

This is good, man.

I like teenage romances,

but he's got a pretty good setup here.

His wife is rich.

He can kind of do what he wants.

You have three kids.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Just one of them is humongous and old.

I think the path here is to sit down and be honest about you spent half your life together and to sit down and say,

we've been co-managing our lives.

We've been running in parallel.

And

I want to start making a marriage.

I want to make a life together.

Not where I have my money, you've got your money, I pay all the bills, you

just kind of do what you want when you want to do it.

But what what do we want our life to look like?

How do we want to feel when we come home every day?

What dreams do we have?

And here's what it's going to take for all of us to get where we want to go.

And he's probably going to say, I'm good, and then pop the top on a cold Budweizard and go on about his day.

But that's where that conversation starts.

And

David.

But I also

okay.

This is how the

problem is not just that we're here, it's how we got here.

Okay.

There was never any request for this man to grow up.

This is an adolescent.

Exactly.

And so he didn't have to get married to have kids and to start a life with this woman.

He can just run.

He doesn't have to develop a career.

He can go over here and do something.

I'm going to follow my passion.

Oh, brother, you're killing me here.

And

we're broke, but I'm real passionate about it.

No, it doesn't work.

So the problem is you've got to undo

at least 10 years worth of

mixed messages that you've been sending with your behaviors.

With what you've allowed.

And this is not about...

You get what you tolerate.

Exactly.

But this is not about we can't make ends meet.

This is about we've got money.

She makes $163K and he makes

so they're making $100,000.

They make $200,000 a year.

Right.

They're fine.

The deal is, I don't respect this guy that I've been with for half my life.

Yeah.

And you got to have that conversation.

Are we going to do life together or not?

And here's what that looks like.

And let me ask you this.

It occurs to me, I'm stepping over into your field of expertise, your world, but it feels like to me, not only does she not respect him, she knows she allowed all this.

Exactly.

And so she's starting to be mad at herself.

Almost all of this starts with, I'm angry at myself and I'm going to put it out into the world.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, if she wants to sit, and that's why it's so important when you sit down and have these conversations to use I statements.

I've allowed this.

I have gone out and created a world where

we have two kids.

You don't have to do anything.

You don't have to work.

So I'm saying I want

to be connected and build something together.

And that's where this is a scary thing.

You kind of got to do one or the other in this situation.

Ava has to have an or what statement.

Here's what I want to have in my life,

or I'm going to go ahead and

move,

like solidify the separateness that is our world already, or I'm not leaving this guy.

He's a part of my life.

I'm going to make peace with it and I'm going to go on about my life.

Most people get stuck in between the or I don't want to make a declarative or what statement, but I just want to complain about it and be frustrated about it all the time.

So either make peace with it, you make a great salary, we're moving on, you got a third kid,

maybe he's fun and whatever, Or I'm going to draw a line in the sand and say, as for me and my house,

I want more than this.

I deserve more than this.

I want to build something together.

I don't want to be a single mom anymore.

That's right.

You got to grow up.

I need a man in my house, not a third kid.

And more importantly, here's what that looks like.

Here's the path for that.

So tactical steps, if you're in that situation, I'm going to say, if you want to go forward, it's it's going to look like this.

You're going to get a career development plan and execute on it.

We're going to get married.

And in order to work our way through all that, we're going to sit down and see a counselor.

Absolutely.

And

if you don't want to do those three things, you are electing for us not to be together anymore because I don't want to be a single mom and pretend like I'm not anymore.

Since behavior is a language, you're telling me very clearly, I don't want to be a part of your life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And here's the problem: okay,

the data now tells us, and and John and I have talked about this, we talked about it on our tour quite a bit, it came up a lot.

There's tons of actual research, multiple different research projects that are airtight research, looking at actual

Labor Department data, Census Bureau data, that says a single man

35 years old,

it has one seventh of the net worth of a married man that's 35 years old.

A single woman that's 35 years old has one tenth of the net worth of a married woman that is 35 years old.

Married men live seven to ten years longer and have a 20% higher probability of surviving cancer than single men.

Wow.

So your net worth and your incomes,

all the data tells us your net worth, your incomes, your health,

your relational satisfaction is in multiples of 10

greater for married couples than couples that shack up.

And yet more than half the couples listening to this right now are shacked up instead of married.

And you think you haven't done any damage, but you have.

You've lost

what the data calls a marriage advantage.

Versus the shack up advantage.

There is no data, zero data that says you outperform physically, relationally, and financially by shacking up

the married couple.

Zero times do you outperform.

Zero.

And yet everybody does it.

But I think what's important is the financial metrics, the health metrics, those are lights on the dashboard of a

person who has a life where they exhale, where they can anchor in and go work hard.

You can work harder harder when you know

you've got a ride or die next to you.

When you're in the hospital, you've got a reason to get up and get out.

Like when you're, you've got all like those things, I would never tell somebody to go get married so you have more money.

I would say, hey, go build an amazing life with somebody.

It's going to be hard.

It's going to be a challenge.

Go do that.

And the fruit on that tree is going to be more than you can imagine.

And

I would tell you that the dashboard is right.

I think you're exactly right.

The financial problems are never the problem.

They're the symptom.

So financial limitations are never the problem.

They're the symptom.

Financial success is never the real success.

This is the symptom.

It's the symptom.

And so what we're telling you is that it turns out that the best way, and like for instance, when we interviewed the 10,167 millionaires, we asked them, you know, what percentage of you,

did you or what's your relationship with your spouse have to do with your wealth?

89%

said a willing, able, and enthusiastic partner is what my spouse was.

When you interview the general public that's broke, you ask what percentage is your spouse for what you know, what percentage of you is your spouse a willing, able, and enthusiastic partner?

40%,

not 89.

So there's a causal effect here, cause and effect here.

You know, it's a causal statistical analysis.

That's what caused a teammate.

It's the dashboard light.

That's exactly what it is.

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Katrina is in Canada.

Hi, Katrina.

How are you?

I'm great, thanks.

How are you doing?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

So I currently live on a three-acre parcel near a small town.

I'm single, no kids, never married, and I work in law enforcement right now and I make a pretty decent wage.

But

I have basically I work like half a month.

And so I'm looking to increase my wealth.

And I want to do something that I really love.

Like my job right now is, it's fun.

There's things about it that I really like.

But I'm looking at possibly like starting a mini CalCAF operation.

And my question is,

am I, I just want to see like if I'm how I'm doing financially and would you advise if this is a live station?

A miniature cow calf operation.

Yeah.

You mean the operation is miniature or the cows are?

Just the operation because my land is just three acres.

So I was thinking if I get three cows

and rent my friend's bowl once a year,

the expenses would be approximately $3,500 to $4,000

a year.

And then it would bring in around $7,000 to $8,000 a year.

Okay, and your three acres is fertile enough to feed three cows?

I'd say about 75% is grazing land.

And it's fertile enough to serve, because there's parts of the United States it takes 20 acres to do that.

There's parts of the United States one acre will do that.

So I don't know what you've got.

Will the three acres feed the cows?

It'll feed them for the summer, and then um the winter would be you're buying you're buying feed in the winter yes yes you are in canada okay that makes sense all right um

and the feed costs what for the winter

uh the feed um i just did the uh the feed and medical expenses will be for three cows around thirty five hundred to five oh that's the thirty five hundred okay plus the purchase of the cows

that does not include the purchase of the cows right plus

yeah so are you out of debt?

So right, no, I'm not out of debt.

Okay.

So you don't have $3,500 plus the purchase of the cows?

No.

Okay.

The plan is to hopefully do it in the next year or two.

Oh, after you're out of debt?

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, then I'm not an agribusiness expert, but business is pretty simple.

You want to bring in more than you have go out, and the difference is called profit, right?

Right.

And so what's the cow's cost?

They range from $2,000 to $2,500 per head.

Okay.

All right.

And so you're going to have $10,000 invested.

And

if you produce at least three calves a year out of that,

then you're going to make $7,500 on your $10,000 investment.

Yes.

Okay.

Give or take.

Right.

Plus or minus.

Plus a lot of trouble.

And

are you making a dollar an hour when this is done?

Because you're going to be out there, you're going to be one out there with your sleeves rolled up

in the cold.

Growing hay.

Well, that's fine.

I don't mind hard work, but like right now, because you're not going to be able to do it.

I do if it's a dollar an hour.

I really mind it if it's a dollar an hour.

It pisses me off.

So I want to make $100 an hour, right?

Yeah.

Especially if it's cold.

Hello.

So

that's the way you run the numbers out on the business is you say, you know, your time is not worth less because you could use your time and go do something else and make money.

So it's called opportunity cost on your time.

So you need to make better than a wage for running a business and taking all this risk because these stinking cows might die.

Okay.

And this is, there's risk involved in all this.

You run the business.

And so you've got to make really, really good money, like $100 an hour for the time you put into it.

Otherwise, it's an ugly hobby with it.

It requires a lot of work because you like cows.

That's not a business, though.

If you want to do that, that's fine.

But just call it an ugly hobby because I like cows.

And that's what I want to do.

But if it's a business, you're taking the risk of the loss of the animals and

all those kinds of things.

And so,

you know, you say, all right, I'm going to put 10,000 bucks into this.

I'm going to get 7,500 out of a year.

And I'm going to put X number of hours into this.

And X number of hours equals $7,500.

So if I put 7,500 hours into it, I made $100 an hour.

And I think you're going to have more than 75 hours in this.

If you had 7,500 hours in it, you made $1 an hour.

Yeah, most of their time they're just out there eating anyway.

Yeah, but I mean, you got to make sure the

medical procedures are taken care of.

that the bull doesn't bust down the fence and tear up the neighbor's yard and you know all this stuff.

know you there's a lot going on here kiddo and I want you to run out the number of hours that you can if I put 10 hours a week in this 52 weeks that's 5200 hours I made not even a dollar an hour

that's not cool so we got to figure out something else to do with this that that scratches your farmer Jane itch but that is actually profitable enough to screw with

because I think you're going to have more than 10 hours a week in this.

And I want, to Dave's point, sit down with somebody who runs cows that will talk to you about birthing challenges and vet bills and all that other stuff that nobody thinks about.

Because it does.

It's easy to drive by a pasture and to say, man, I could put some cows on my place and I could just sell those cows.

But, man, my buddies that actually run cattle in Texas and Oklahoma.

It's a whole lot more stuff going on.

And be honest about when you're doing your law enforcement work half the year, who's going to take care of the cows then, too.

Well, it sounds like she's working half-time, not half a year.

Oh, I thought it was half a year.

Half a week.

Oh, okay.

If I understood right.

Okay.

It's more like a 72-on-72 off thing or something.

But yeah,

anyway,

that's how you analyze it.

Then you've got to decide and say, is it worth it?

The problem is when I start crunching the numbers on this, it takes all the romance out of it.

It takes all the, ooh, we get to play with cows.

No, that's no longer fun.

I don't know.

That's a whole thing now, Dave.

It's to go sit in a field and hug a cow.

And

it's like a whole therapy thing people are trying to do.

Okay, if we can get some.

James is super into it.

We need to get $7,500 an hour for that.

Exactly.

There you go.

Somehow let's get this stinking thing profitable.

That's all I want.

I mean, cow hugging, cow birthing, you can go wherever you want to go with it.

I don't care what the product line is, but it needs to be profitable when we're done for the trouble that I put into it.

Or maybe we can do both.

Have a, you know, birth the cow and then hug the cow.

I don't know.

Hence, James.

Whoa.

How did James get thrown on the bus?

He's not into cows.

Golly.

That's

James.

We can do nothing with him except turn off his microphone.

That's all we can do with him.

He can turn off ours.

That's the problem.

That's what I meant.

Yours.

Oh, mine.

No, it's a whole thing, man.

I know equine therapy is one of the most amazing things in the world with a proven track record.

And now people pay money to go sit in a field and hug a cow.

And they're calling it, they're not from the therapist.

I don't know therapists doing it, but it's an experience, kind of like yoga or goat yoga.

It's just like a weird, like, it's, it's people with a lot of live, laugh, love signs in their house, I think, that have some extra resources.

And they're just like,

the 70s were good to their parents?

I think it's probably real, real good to their parents.

And they're like, you know what would make me feel better?

I'm going to go, I'm going to go cook a cow and I'll post about it.

I don't know.

I like Katrina's idea better.

I love it.

But I would like to,

I'm more akin to actually, you know, doing a business here.

You love burgers and ribeyes.

Yeah.

Well, but I mean, you know, let's make some cows and calves.

And yeah,

I just am afraid that when all the smoke clears on this, that the investment is not, the juice isn't going to be worth the squeeze.

And that's what you got to be careful of.

And you do have to factor in that in business, there are three rules.

It's going to take twice as long as you think.

It's going to cost twice as much as you think.

And you're not the exception.

Those are the three rules.

Caitlin's in Missouri.

Hi, Caitlin.

How are you?

Hi, Dave and John.

I'm calling to find out if my husband and I can financially afford for me to stay home with my baby.

Can you live on his income?

I think so.

My husband's take-home is about $6,000.

My take-home is about $4,000.

We have no debt, no mortgage.

Our house is worth $500,000.

We have about $250,000 in four mutual funds that you recommend.

How much is your house payment?

No mortgage.

Oh, wow.

House is worth $500,000.

Well, you ought to be able to live on $6,000, can't you?

Yeah,

I think our overage would be about $2,000.

My husband's currently only putting $5,000 toward retirement, so he needs to up that to 15%.

But I think it's hard.

I like my job, but I want to stay home with my baby, but it's a little hard.

It's a little scary to quit.

Well, how much?

Are you working now?

You're working now?

Yes.

You're back to work after the last baby?

This is my first baby, and I'm back to work after the 12 weeks of leave.

Okay.

And yeah,

that's a real hard thing.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, well, why don't you live on your husband's income and bank your income for a couple months?

Okay.

Just to prove to yourselves you can do it.

So that's a good idea.

I think you can.

The numbers you gave me sound right.

Yeah.

It's going to require a life change, though.

And the life change is

we're not going to be able to be as willy-nilly as we were because you have no payments.

You've got no mortgage.

You're bringing up $10,000 a month.

You can kind of do whatever you want.

Yeah.

And by reducing your income 40%, you're going to have to make some changes.

Like, we're going to have to eat a home and we can't take that vacation.

And that's just going to be the trade-off to being a stay-at-home mom.

I'm 29, he's 27.

I who knows how many years I'd be off, maybe three to five, and then go back.

It's just scary, I think, to quit your job and take the leap of faith.

And

you have to be ready for a couple of things.

Thing number one, you are now a part of the woman industrial guilt complex or the mother industrial guilt complex.

People will be after you for staying at home.

People will be after you for not going back to work.

People are going to want to do stuff and you're going to have to say no.

Your husband's going to want a new thing and he's going to have to say no because there's just going to be this always this sense sense that I'm not enough or I'm doing the wrong thing.

Knowing that on the front end,

you can prepare for it.

Might not even be a sense.

It might be a direct message from some loser on the outside.

Right.

And so you just got to go, eh, your opinion doesn't count.

You don't really get a vote.

We're living on six grand, and I'm here with the baby, and I'm really, really happy with that idea.

I also understand I'm no longer a professional woman, and that does bother me a little bit, but I made a choice between that.

Put that on the scale.

I put a baby on the other side of the scale the baby won

but that doesn't make you go you suddenly not want to have a career

or not be intellectually stimulated by hitting and setting goals right

yeah and so putting some things in place like I'm gonna have two or three women that I get together with every week and we're gonna have a book study we're gonna talk about politics or deep stuff or projects or

I'm gonna backfill some of those intellectual needs the stimulation needs the adult conversation needs I'm gonna make sure that's still a part of my life because it's meaningful to me and it makes me who I am

yeah

I think I get scared that I won't be able to find a job when I try to back enter back

oh yeah no troubles at all okay what's your what's your field

I work in marketing okay and I have an MBA okay but I've only been

the stuff you learned in the NBA was generic and strategic it was not tactical marketing skills you use today

True.

Yeah, tactical marketing skills were acquired by being in the marketplace and moving around.

You will lose those because the way we do marketing today is vastly different than it was 18 months ago and way different than it was 10 years ago.

And so if you stay out of the market five years, you know,

what does AI do to the marketing process?

It's going to change it.

And you're going to be behind on that.

But does that mean you can't get a job?

No, you still have the basic marketing skill set and then you'll have to just learn some of the tactical things to stay up to date.

The other thing you could do is

after the baby is a year old or so,

you could start doing some freelance stuff on the side just to keep your skills sharp, just for fun.

Not because you have to,

but because it keeps your

toe in the water and we know what the temperature is.

That might be fun because there's a lot of small businesses could use somebody with an MBA with marketing skills to help them move some of their marketing along and

they don't have the financial bandwidth to put somebody on full-time like that.

That's what I would do.

That's a good idea.

Which is easy for me to say on this side, having never had to make that trade, right?

But finding one or two people who have a small business and you can help or you can take a little bit of money, but

you're doing it less for the money, but more for the skills.

But here's the thing.

You guys make good money, you and your husband, and he makes good money, and you've already done a great job.

You got a paid-for house, you got money saved, you're going to be in great financial condition.

And so what happened with Sharon Ramsey was she never went back.

She transferred from full-time mom to full-time grandmom to full-time Bible study leader and book club leader and

generally

all these things.

I mean, she's got her thing, and none of it is earning an income, quote unquote,

other than allowing me to which earns her a great income but uh you know all that stuff so you know that that it doesn't have to be that you do this in order to be a real person

so just whatever you want to do that's the point and whatever keep whatever whatever floats your boat right whatever whatever makes you happy and takes you there so i i would do all of those things but yeah i think coming home after if you see you'll worry about the financial thing less if you just take two months and say we're going to bank my check and live on yours practice make our every dollar budget with your check your take-home pay.

And by the way, he does have to get that back up to 15%.

You've got to be putting 15% of your income away, at least.

And you don't have a payment in the world.

There's no reason you can't do that, except that you want to spend it on other stuff.

So you really do need to be doing that.

But 15% of $6,000 is not that bad.

It's not, it's $900 a month.

It's very doable.

Very doable.

And that's going to take you to a lot of wonderful places that you're going to want to go to.

And for everybody listening, I think this is an important moment.

This couple has put in the work up until now, and now they can honestly sit across the table and do whatever they want.

And it's not a matter of, I have this deep sense that I want to stay at home, but I can't because I've got all this past, all this old things that I've already bought, but I haven't yet paid for dragging behind me.

And so they put the work in, and here they are, and now they can do whatever they want.

It doesn't mean it's going to come without a sacrifice, without frustrations, but they can do whatever they want because they put the time in.

So,

and I love that they're in this, they have this opportunity.

Yeah, I do think that

I'm potting, I don't think, I'm sure, that ladies in our society today

get a lot of messages from a lot of people that don't have a right to put a vote in on whether they should work or not.

And so if you're working and, well, you're a bad mom.

If you're a full-time mom, stay-at-home mom, well,

you've you've abandoned your you've not become your best version of you.

You didn't go be a professional woman and do all this stuff.

And they get these guilt messages from both sides.

And

like you said, it's the industrial female guilt machine.

Right.

And what I hear a lot on my show is

people make the sacrifice, women make the sacrifice, they stay at home, and suddenly they find themselves in a place that they've never experienced, which is a deep loneliness, as they've got no other adults in their life.

And they either turn to scrolling as a way to connect with the outside world.

And that's where these messages get dumped in there.

Oh, God.

Or their spouse, their husband, comes home and becomes like the trash can.

He dumps all the bad stuff that happened in his day.

She dumps all the bad stuff.

And that's a way to split your marriage.

And so knowing, hey, I'm going to be all by myself.

And so I'm going to not just go home and lock myself in a box for the next three to five years, but I'm going to create community intentionally that I might have got just at the water cooler at the office.

I'm going to be intentional about it.

And man, then there's going to have a whole bunch of people speaking into your life that are real people that actually care about you.

Yeah.

And here's the trick.

Decide what you're going to do.

And you and your husband, you're the only ones who really get a vote.

Whateverbody else thinks, doesn't really matter.

You're going to get a vote.

And you're going to have to turn it off because the crap is out there and people don't mind shoveling it today.

Hey, what's up?

Dr.

John Deloney here.

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

Dr.

John Deloney, number one person, number one best-selling author, I'm the Ramsey personality.

You're the number one person.

That's it.

I'll take it.

Yeah, you're all of that.

And number one show on the Ramsey Networks, not really, but a big show on the Ramsey Networks.

He's number one everywhere in his mind.

So check it all out.

He's here to help me this hour since my mouth is apparently not working.

Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Thomas is in South Dakota.

Help us, Thomas.

What's up?

Hey, Dave.

Hey, John, what's going on?

I'm calling today because I'm 18 years active duty military.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, thank you.

Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, life happened and I ended up getting divorced.

With that, before we got divorced, my ex-wife and I, we were completely debt-free, and I was able to contribute 60% of my income towards investments.

Holy.

40% was going to my TSP, and another 20% was going to my kids' college funds.

Wow.

But now that I'm divorced, I've been divorced now for two years.

I have found myself accumulating a little bit of debt.

I'm back at $57,000 worth of debt.

What in the world?

What did you buy in two years?

So I bought a vehicle

on your baby steps.

What kind of truck is it?

It's a Ford Raptor.

Well, I think we found the problem, Thomas.

That's definitely part of it.

No, it's the whole thing.

It's all of it.

Taylor Swift wrote a song about your divorce Raptor truck.

We know what it is.

It's called I'm the Problem.

It's me.

So

I'm calling because I can pay this debt off pretty quickly.

What do you make?

$78,000 a year.

You make $78,000 a year.

And you owe what on the Raptor?

I owe $57,000.

Well, I I owe $37 on the Raptor and $18,000 in credit card debt that I used to purchase furniture and stuff for the house that I got divorced.

Okay.

All right.

I still contribute the 60% of my income towards my TSP.

You can't afford to do that.

So I was thinking, so

my philosophy here and what I was looking for is some guidance.

I was thinking about cutting off my TSP.

However, in the divorce, my ex-wife decided to go ahead and your whole military pension is yours.

I just want half the TSP.

I've still been contributing because, in my head, I was like, I'd rather make a little bit more money on the back end versus stop contributing altogether and, out of spite, just not contribute because I don't want her to get it.

When does she get half now?

67.

What?

No, wait a minute.

That's not possible.

Is this divorce isn't final, is it?

It is.

Yes, sir.

So when we went to court,

I had several different options that I could do.

And you agreed to give her half of your TSP at age 67.

Yes.

Not what half of it becomes by then,

but whatever's in there it has.

That's not right.

Something's wrong.

That's based off of what the lawyers were saying and stuff, they said that was the better of the deal.

Apparently, these lawyers didn't take math class.

That's a horrible deal.

All right, so you need to get clarification because I don't think you understand what really happened, or you got the worst deal in the history of divorces.

I've never heard of this deal.

This is what you got.

It is normal for you to transfer half of your TSP to her now.

That is a normal process in a divorce, and she can roll that into an IRA and have no taxes.

It is very strange for her to get anything at age 67.

Like, I've never heard of this in 35 years of doing what I do.

That's strange.

What they wanted to do was she would get half of my military pension on top of half of the TSP.

Yeah, that would be normal.

But half the TSP today, not at 67.

Well, now with the deal that they had worked worked out was she doesn't get any of the military pension.

She only gets the TSP.

Okay.

Now or at 67?

At 67 when it matures.

Okay.

Then it should be half what?

Like you're half of your TSP.

How much is in your TSP today?

166.

Okay, so half would be

83,000, okay?

Right?

Yes.

Today.

So whatever whatever 83,000 grows to

at age 67, she should get.

But she shouldn't get half of everything you put in between now and then, because otherwise you would put in nothing between now and then.

Right.

So that was going to be my next question, is if I just stop contributing altogether.

You have to contribute.

Listen, if you did the worst deal in divorce history and she gets half of your TSP regardless of whether you put money in or not, that's the worst deal I've ever heard of in my life.

I've never even heard of you get half at 67.

That's just very weird, dude.

Like,

like these lawyers are completely freaking incompetent, weird.

Okay?

But if you did do that, you need to go back and clarify, is it what half of it today becomes

what 83,000 becomes at 67, or is it just half of whatever's in there?

Because if it's half of whatever's in there, you don't put another dime in it.

You're done with that.

You got to go put money in Roth IRA and you got to put money in other stuff.

But the TSP is off limits to you because she's going to take half of everything you put in there for the next, you know,

how old are you?

I'm 36.

Yeah.

Good God.

For 30 years, you're going to contribute to her.

No, thank you.

You did the worst deal ever.

So, no, we're not doing that.

That's dumb.

That's dumber than a rock man i'm telling you that i'm so pissed at your lawyer right now i can't see i want to smack him this is horrible

but you did the deal i guess it's final so you need to go back and get clarity if she gets what half what 83 000 becomes or if she gets half of whatever's in there it's going to be whatever's in there otherwise they would have just transferred the 83 out they should have just transferred the 83 out that's what they should have done that would be normal instead of this dumb butt thing they did so yeah john is correct it is whatever's in there later because I tried to fight and get the half now, but then there were like okay, then here's what here's what it is: she gets what that half becomes because it's not going to become anything else because you're not going to add anything else to it.

You're stupid if you do.

Okay, but you are the one that signed this divorce decree also.

So, oh my god, this is a horrible man.

It's just horrible.

She has 30-year claim on future earnings for you.

Jeez, man.

Y'all have kids?

We have two of them.

I've a few claims.

This is, I want to get away from this woman really bad.

This is what this is.

I've heard, and rightfully so, a future claim on future earnings if you've got kids through the age of 18, right?

So if you were making 25 grand and suddenly you're making 150 grand.

That's child support.

That's not this.

That's child support.

That's normal.

That's what I'm saying.

I've heard of that.

That's normal.

But half the 401k is normal.

Half the TSP is normal.

But you transfer it now and it rolls out into an IRA and then she does whatever she does with it.

Okay.

Your answer is you have a truck you can't afford that you bought while you're grieving your broken heart.

And your heart was broken by your wife and your idiot attorney.

So, you have two reasons for a broken heart.

So, you've got to sell this truck, honey.

And I love Raptors.

I drove one over here today.

I like them, but this truck is brain damage.

So, it's killing you.

You cannot afford to drive this truck.

It's more truck than you can afford with the money you make.

Sell your truck, get your budget back balanced, and move into the future.

And please don't put anything else in this TSP.

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Wendy is in Washington.

Hi, Wendy.

How are you?

Hi,

thanks for having me on.

Sure.

How can we help?

So

there's no easy way to say this.

So I'm just going to jump right into it.

Can ball, let's do it.

Okay.

So

my sister stole everything from my parents in their senior years.

And my mother died of neglect under her care, and my dad ended up in the hospital days later, during which she wiped out their bank accounts, maxed out their credit cards and

she contributed on some level if not all of their reverse mortgage being maxed out to the tune of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars

my father has later stages of dementia now I know from going through what I've been with him the last two years that my mom

also,

I'm positive, had dementia at the time.

And so my sister had been living with them, slowly took over.

She moved in right before COVID, slowly took over their home, slowly took over their finances, and just abused them because they weren't mentally and physically able to do anything about it.

What a lovely girl.

It's really hard.

It's really hard.

So my dad is safe.

He's in a secured memory care facility now, and he's being cared for.

It took me seven months of fighting on so many levels.

I can't even name them.

It would take 20 pages of writing but finally got his social security safe which is all he has left the home that they owned for almost 40 years was auctioned off and we lost it and I did not expect to get any funds from it because of the condition she left in it basically looked like a meth house that squatters got into

But it did.

It auctioned off for an amount that left funds to the tune of about $130,000 left.

And as soon as those funds came into my control, I was forced to go through conservatorship and guardianship to help my dad because their will, unfortunately, their will wasn't notarized.

And every banking institution and everyone we dealt with said that it was invalid.

And so it took me a lot of hard work to try to prove that there were any funds stolen when I didn't have access or and I wasn't a POA to request copies of financial statements and those things.

So it took me seven months to get his money safe, his account safe, and he ended up homeless and living with my husband and I and we cared for him for seven months until his health got to a point where he needed to be in a secured memory care facility.

I got you.

Okay, so where are we today?

So where we are is the house actually auctioned off.

We have the $130,000.

He immediately lost Medicaids because he had that money, so we're on private pay, and I don't expect those funds to last through the mid-next year.

Okay, and then he'll be back on Medicaid.

Then he'll be back on Medicaid, correct?

And so

here's my question.

If

my dad passes, he's, you know, I mean, the reality of it is it could be at any time.

If my dad passes, the will states

the intent of the will and what my parents wanted was to the funds to be divided between their living children, which would be my brother and my sister and I.

My soul cannot do that based on everything she's done.

And I'm, I guess.

You mean the 130,000 if he died today?

Yes.

Because that's the only thing that's left, right?

There's nothing else.

It's all that's left.

And honestly, there are a few bills like between attorneys' fees and things.

I just don't see anything being left over.

But I also didn't expect the house to sell.

Yeah,

when you went through all the stuff for the last seven months, did you have expenditures out of your pocket?

Oh, yeah.

My husband and I finally

supported him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I did a little bit.

No, reimburse yourself.

All of it.

Okay.

Out of the 130.

Okay.

That moves it out of his name into your name.

As a conservator, I had a very strict budget that I had to stick to, so I could bring it up next time I go to court.

Yeah, go to court and say, I need all my legal fees reimbursed for protecting him.

Yeah, those are covered.

Those got reimbursed.

Yeah, and I need to pay all the legal bills.

I need to pay out of this.

I want to deplete this money down to where there's nothing there, and then you don't have a moral conundrum.

Yeah.

I just was curious if, you know, if the intent of the will still stands.

The will's not valid.

Everybody told you that.

Okay.

The will doesn't, it's not even a will because it's not notarized, and your state requires it to be notarized.

Right.

He's dying without a will.

He's dying without a will.

Okay.

Because he's not competent to execute a will.

I'm sorry.

He's not competent to execute a will under your state's terms right now.

Correct.

And he doesn't have a will under your state's terms right now.

Am I understanding that right?

That's what everybody told you, right?

Correct.

That's why the conservatorship was put in place because the will was deemed invalid.

Okay.

So the will doesn't matter.

It's irrelevant.

That's what I'm looking forward.

Yeah, but guess what?

The state is going to say,

most states say

the three children are the three heirs and they'll be split three ways if there's no will.

That would be normal.

So you're back to the same problem, but there's going to be no money left if I'm you because I will have spent this down like the next time I'm in front of the judge.

Okay.

I'm going to go buy him an $80,000 bed and put in there.

Yeah.

I'm serious.

There's not going to be any money left.

Yeah, no, I don't expect there to be.

I think my biggest fear, and it's not like a thing of of trying to win or trying to stick it to someone.

Oh, wait a minute.

I got a better idea.

Go before the conservatorship, and what I want to do is prepay the next year of his care, and I want to reimburse you for all of your legal expenses.

And I think the money's gone.

Yeah, it will be.

Okay, good.

All right, Wendy, you were about to go there.

I'll go there for you.

You don't, there's no revenge.

Let your sister go.

Oh, I have.

I totally, I 100% have.

I think I had a really hard time with the fact that she's never been held accountable for anything.

I've got a hard time with it.

I'm kind of pissed her out now.

I let it hold it.

You haven't let it go, though, because you're projecting future what-ifs, and you're trying to solve them and be heartbroken and angry in the present.

That's true.

It's true.

You caught me.

Stop.

You have enough challenges for today.

Yeah.

You and your husband have proven to each other that we can come together when life throws us chaos.

Y'all have done an amazing job.

You have a great marriage.

I'm so proud of you.

And guess what?

Parasites don't eat as well as carnivores.

They just don't.

So at the end of the day, she's still a miserable hack.

She didn't get what she was after.

She was looking for something she couldn't get there.

No.

And so it's like, you know, just being a thief is never, it's never a rewarding profession.

Especially from your aging parents.

She's got to live with that the rest of her life.

Talk about a burden.

Yeah.

Let her carry that, not you.

She disappeared for the last two and a half years, but during the guardianship,

yeah, and during the conservatorship process,

she had to be served, and she found out that there was equity in the home and immediately showed up.

Of course, she did.

Of course, she did.

I know the Adrian is a single person.

You're saying that like you're surprised.

You're doing all this again.

You're saying that like you're surprised.

Of course, she did.

She stole from your parents.

Of course, he's going to show up.

She wanted to finish the theft.

Yeah.

Oops, I left a brooch on the dresser.

Yeah.

Don't create stories in the future and let them keep you up at night in the present.

Yeah, it's just, you've been running this over in your head.

You burned a whole lot more calories on this than she has.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry you've been through this.

And what she did was horrible.

She's a horrible being.

You're an amazing daughter.

She's a horrible human being and you did all the right stuff.

So come out with the rewards, which is, you know, I did the right thing.

I put my head on my pillow.

But yeah, go prepay the nursing home with the conservator's permission and put the rest in your pocket to recoup all of your time, your expenses, your legal fees.

I'll guarantee you there's $80,000 there for sure.

We've all done dumb things with money.

I've done them with zeros on the end.

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

You got to have a plan.

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

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

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

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

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

Mike and Lori are on the debt-free stage in the Ramsey Solutions lobby.

What's up, guys?

Hi, Dave.

Good to see y'all again.

Y'all were on the cruise with us.

We were.

We were.

Wow.

Well, welcome.

Welcome.

Glad you didn't wear your swimsuit on the Deffrey Stage.

You don't want to see that, John.

I've already seen it.

I'm all right now.

Everything's better now.

Everything's better now.

How much debt have you two paid off?

$175,000.

Wow.

How long did this take, Mike?

29 months, Dave.

Whoa.

And your range of income during that time?

Range of income was $210,000 to $250,000.

Woo!

What do y'all do for a living?

I am an accountant.

I'm actually a client services representative for a MCO, a workers' comp MCO company.

And I'm a healthcare administrator and a nurse.

Ah, awesome.

Very cool.

What kind of debt was the 175?

It was mostly

our home.

Oh, look at it, we're people.

I'm telling you.

House is paid off.

I love it.

What's the house worth?

About $600,000.

Very cool.

And how much in your retirement nest eggs?

Over a million, Dave.

Yeah, between us.

So you're baby steps millionaires.

Yep.

Debt-free house and everything.

How old are you, pups?

Today is Mike's 60th birthday.

All right, very cool.

Kind of a milestone.

And I'm 57.

All right.

And you got a net worth of a million and a half to two million dollars.

Way to go, y'all.

Very proud of you.

How's that feel?

Amazing.

It feels amazing, Dave.

It really does.

Like you say on the show,

it just takes something off your shoulders when that happens.

Just amazing.

Yeah.

Man, I'm so proud of you guys.

That's so amazing.

So, how did you run into the whole Ramsey thing 29 months ago?

I'll just tell you, I'll start.

Just started watching your, Lori got me really hooked on your YouTube videos, and we just started watching those.

That was a big part of it.

I'll just tell you this.

She bought your Total Money Makeover book about over 25 years ago, and I think you're right, it was kind of just on the coffee table for a long time.

Yeah,

it's a good coaster.

And then we're like, we started reading it.

We're like, oh, this is unbelievable.

And just, I think the goals are so so important.

I know we'll talk about this.

But just the system itself is just incredible.

And we're very thankful.

So you went in all, you took it off the coffee table and went full in when?

Well,

when we took the FPU, so we kind of baby Ramsey did it a little bit.

Yeah, when was that?

Probably during COVID because we couldn't travel anymore.

Okay.

Most of our first.

Most five years you've been going, but the last 29 months was paying off the house.

Right.

Okay.

Pretty much.

All right.

Wow.

Good for you guys.

Fun, fun, fun.

Man.

All right.

Now that you've been through all of that and you're standing here,

I mean, do you remember being 20-something and thinking about being a millionaire someday?

Oh.

No.

I do.

I do remember that.

I remember it.

Yeah.

But I had no idea how much work it was going to be.

Right.

Right.

And I had no idea how good it was going to feel.

I had this.

this feeling like i was in my head it was like hitting the lottery yeah but it's quite the opposite it's much deeper richer.

The money's not as important.

It's what you become while you're getting it together.

Yes.

True.

And who you are as a couple and who you are as people and the way you see things is completely different.

No doubt about it, Dave.

Yeah.

What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt and being a millionaire, almost two millionaire by the time you're 60?

I just think the main reason is just, it's just, we just, we almost acted as one, Dave.

Like

you talk about marriage, we always felt like we had a solid marriage over the years, but it just took it to a new level where we're just doing something that we each have a goal for, and then we just did it together.

Don't you think, Han?

Yeah, and I think

having a vision and finding a plan.

And when you look at a plan, I mean, the Ramsey 7 baby steps is the best plan to have.

And I have to say, one of the things I really, I know Rachel gets a lot of hate mail for this, is one thing I really had a hard time doing was combining bank accounts.

And we did not do that until closer to the end of our debt freedom.

And it simplified our whole entire life.

So I just, I think, keep saying that to people because I think we do need to hear it.

So you were the one that was resistant?

Yeah.

Is that what you're saying?

Okay.

Why?

You know, probably some rooted fear somewhere.

And

well, Mike is a scary guy.

Don't smile, not happy.

Yeah, that's right.

You mentioned something that we've started saying more and more around here.

There's solving for this fear somewhere, and there's always going to be more fear over the horizon.

But you went in and did this, and you started solving for peace, and just the idea of getting multiple bank account statements every month, reconciling, just looking at each other and just reconciling one, gives you 30 minutes back a week or an hour back a week, and suddenly you start to do things together.

I just, I love it, man.

What's a tangible you're in your 60s.

I like to say that.

Oh, sorry, that was pretty harsh, but she's not.

That hurts.

Yeah, she's not.

Imagine there's a couple who's in their 30s.

They've been married for three or four years.

What would you tell them right now what the other side of this journey feels like?

Oh, I just think it's just,

you just got to focus.

I mean, the big thing is just believe.

You know, a lot of people out there, I think you talked about this on the show, they don't believe they can do it.

And no matter what your debt is, you've seen it with Jade, with others, it can happen.

And just focus, get on the same page with your spouse, and and just go at it.

And it's so worth it, John.

Like you said, it's just, it's not an easy thing,

but it's a lot easier than being in debt.

Lori and I have gone on trips over the years prior to COVID, and we'd budget a certain amount.

We went to Italy, went to London, went to Hawaii and stuff.

And then we'd always use our credit cards over and above what we budgeted.

And that's just, you can't do it.

Just go over it.

And then it's so rewarding once you do get that control.

I think it's about doing the right thing biblically and just doing the right thing as human beings.

It's so strange that discipline is satisfying.

Oh my gosh, Dave.

It's a very good thing.

It's a strange paradox.

And she's amazing.

I just have to say this.

She's the reason we kept on getting

the increase in income.

That's Lori.

I've had the same job.

I love it.

I like what I do.

But she has just gone over and above to get new jobs.

She also even did a side hustle.

She got her nursing degree, and she does a side hustle working at

this village, actually, senior village in Columbus.

So she was a big part of this, a huge part of it.

Yeah.

Well, the bigger the shovel, the faster you get out of the hole.

That's a big deal.

I don't know how I would feel if a nurse walked in and was like, hey, this is my side hustle.

That didn't sound good.

No, that's incredible, guys.

I'm so proud of you.

Thank you.

Proud of you.

Well, it's hard.

It's hard to change patterns in a marriage this far along.

And for you to say,

How long have you been married?

23 23 years.

I'm scared to do something as seemingly simple as join a bank account.

We've been doing it this way for this long.

Yes, this isn't working.

I'm going to try this.

That takes real courage and bravery.

I'm proud of you, man.

That's hard.

It's hard to stop the dance that's been going on for 20-something years.

And you did it.

That's amazing.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And you'll reap the benefits of it of being able.

So now you're worth a couple million dollars.

You're 100% debt-free, house and everything.

You're making a quarter million dollars a year.

what's the first big financial fun thing you're gonna do well we're gonna take my mom to spain next year yeah

yeah why spain

we've always wanted to go oh because you wanted to go okay and how she wants to go too

of course she wants to go i bet she does yeah it's a cruise too dave so you guys got you got us kind of hooked on cruise cruises out there all right that's good john i just have to say this um we actually did the marriage class with you and rachel and it was phenomenal i mean i just want to thank you well you guys are so entertaining too.

You're funny.

Oh, yes.

They're like a couple comedians doing stand-up marriage stand-up routine.

Well, I'm glad y'all came.

Thank you.

That's good.

All right.

Well, enjoy Spain.

I'm very proud of you guys.

Excellent.

Live like no one else.

Now you can live and give.

Take mom with you to know like no one else.

I like it.

Reward it.

That's good.

So, $175,000 paid off in 29 months.

House and everything in the process.

Confirm and become Baby Steps millionaires.

Mike and Laurie, Columbus, Ohio.

Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one.

We're debt-free.

Yeah.

That's how you do it, ladies and gentlemen.

Worth all the trouble.

That's all I can say.

And I'll say this.

The biggest lesson I'm taking away from Mike and Laurie is, It's never too late.

Amen.

It's never too late.

It's never too late to change the way you interact with your marriage.

It's never too late to change how you interact with your money.

It's never too late.

Proud of you guys.

Well done.

Our scripture of the day, Romans 8:37, yet amid all these things, we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through him who loved us.

A.A.

Milney said, don't dodge difficulties.

Meet them, greet them, beat them.

All great men have been through the ringer.

And women, for that matter.

That's true.

Yeah, true, true, true.

Pam is in Houston, Texas.

Hey, Pam, how are you?

I'm just fine.

How are you doing?

Better than I deserve.

What's up?

Well, we have a house that's paid off, and we have a lot of equity in it.

Good.

So my question is, you know, I just see an opportunity to put more money into the stock market, and I don't really see a lot of our money growing with all the equity that we have into it.

So I wanted to get your thoughts on different scenarios, you know, sell the house, you know, because we're in, you know, we're 65 and 63.

What's wrong with the house?

Oh, nothing's wrong with it.

It's just

we're thinking of selling it, renting, and taking that money and then, you know, stocking it away in the stock market.

What's the house worth?

We're We're about a million.

And what's the, how much do you have in your nest egg currently invested in 401ks and so forth?

We've got several seven figures.

Several million.

Several million.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like more than three.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

So the answer to the question is this is a hypothetical because your life is okay.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

But I hate seeing money set idle.

It's not sitting idle.

The house house is going up in value.

Well, I mean, that is true.

It's going up in value almost as fast as the market is.

Well, I would hope to think so.

No, I mean, the actual data says that.

It's not a hope.

Well, that's good to hear.

I buy real estate as an investment because it goes up in value.

Yeah, and that is true.

We've bought several properties and some that we've made money and some we've just kind of broken even with.

But, you know, I just felt I just thought that, you know, by freeing up some of this money, we could just buy more stuff in the stock market that we would like and just see if that would, if that's a good investment.

And if we rented anything, it would just be what I'm paying right now and property tax, med tax, you know, HOAs and insurance.

I wouldn't want to go over that particular number.

So

if you rented.

I got confused.

I thought you mean you're selling the house in this scenario.

Yes.

If I wanted to sell the house and then we'll be a renter.

Yes.

At our age, we have the flexibility to not worry about the house.

And I could take all that money and then just sock it away in the stock market and then make my kids' lives easier if something should happen to us.

Your kids are okay.

Your kids can be fine.

And if they're not, it's their problem.

Wow.

I want to ask this question.

And you, Pam, you and Dave are in a different stage of life than me financially and age-wise and otherwise.

I keep asking myself, if I got to be your age

and I had that kind of resources, I'm living in a paid-for million-dollar house.

Yeah.

Why wouldn't you look to have fun?

Oh, we do have fun.

We do have fun.

I mean, we just got back from a three-week trip in Europe.

So is the house a burden in some way?

It's a lot of work.

It sounds like you want to move and you're looking for permission to move.

I guess so.

We do a lot of the yard work ourselves.

It's just, you know, that's who we are.

We're hard workers.

So just move.

So stop it.

Yeah, pay somebody.

I don't do yard work.

Not because I'm a snot.

I can just afford not to do it.

You say you enjoy it, but I don't agree with that.

You say you enjoy it, but you want to sell it and start renting.

Well, it just frees up.

You know, I don't have to worry about the house.

You're trying to make the fact that you don't like this house anymore into some kind of wise, sophisticated financial move, and it's not.

Just sell the house and move.

That's That's the answer to the question.

If you want to move, that's okay.

If you want to move into a,

you know, if you want to sell the house and buy a condominium for half of the price and all the work is done for you because you want to travel and see the world and you're tired of the upkeep and those kinds of things, that's a different motivation than, Dave, I think it's wise to borrow or to sell my house and put all the money in the market and be a renter for the next 35 years.

That is not wise.

Okay.

Okay, mathematically, that's not wise because what you have to have, your largest line item in your monthly living expenses is housing.

And when you do not own the house, your largest line item called rent goes up every single year.

And you destabilize the situation.

Now, not enough to cause you guys to be broke.

You've got enough money.

You're going to be okay.

But it's a destabilizer rather than a financial mathematical blessing to do what you're talking about.

And the data also tells us this, that the typical millionaire in the first $5 million of net worth has mainly investments in 401ks and a paid $4 million house.

That's the typical millionaire.

None of the millionaires, precisely zero of the 10,000 that we interviewed, said, I became a millionaire by borrowing on my home and investing it into the stock market.

That's not what you're proposing.

But you are proposing to

go backward in the line of financial evolution and become a renter instead of an owner.

I got you.

And that destabilizes the situation.

Now, can you afford to do that?

Yes,

if that's what you want to do.

And you'll still be okay with the numbers you gave me.

But we're not going to blame it on the fact that it is a financially sophisticated move.

It is not.

Or if you want to,

instead of paying rent, take a quarter of that and hire a full-time yardkeeper.

Butler, maid, cook, whatever you want.

Yeah.

Turn this thing into Downton Abbey and ring a little bell.

And it's okay for y'all to do that, to say, hey, we're 60 now.

We don't want to do yard work anymore.

We're going to go for walks instead.

We're going to have long coffees.

You're here.

You made it.

You're here.

And that's okay.

Or if you want to sell, like Dave said, if you want to sell a house and buy an 800-square-foot house, do that.

But don't say it's, don't try to come up with some

matrix algorithm.

Just say this is what we want to do.

But no, it's not wiser to be a renter and have the money invested in the stock market than it is to be an owner of your personal residence.

Mathematically, it is not wiser.

That's the answer to your overall question.

And can I say one more thing?

Yep.

Your kids are going to get millions of dollars when you pass.

They're fine.

Now

there's a level of...

I'm trying to think of the right word, codependency.

I need to make sure their future problems that they haven't even experienced yet are going to be okay so that I can be okay now.

Yeah, so I cut my own grass.

So, right.

Don't put that on your kids.

I cut my own grass so that you have an inheritance.

They're going to get a million dollars each.

They're going to be fine.

Y'all go on about your life.

And if they're not, they're still going to be fine.

It ain't the million dollars' fault.

They've learned how to work hard for me.

Plus or minus a yard fee.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Your kids are good.

Y'all are good.

Yeah.

So

I cut grass as my

high school thing.

And 27 yards to cut when I was 12 years old.

I cut cut so much grass by the time I was 19, God said I never had to do it again.

No, he didn't.

So he did.

It was a personal appointment I had with him.

He said, he spoke audibly to me.

Nah, I'm kidding.

But I've not picked up a weed eater or a lawnmower

again.

I mean, I mowed my grass.

I mowed my grass when Sharon and I got married for like one year.

And after that, I just, I'm done.

I'm done with mowing grass.

And, you know, but guess what?

I can make more

during the time that I would be, you know, and

calling myself a hard worker, riding a zero-turn mower around and around in circles, like all the old men on my street.

And I could do that, but no, I can make more in that two hours than that guy costs.

And he's got a good job, and I got a good job, and everybody's happy.

And I don't have poison ivy.

You know, life's good.

You know, it's just these, there's some things that you, what, Arthur Brooks talked about this the other day.

He, you know, I had him on Entree Leadership, and you had him on your show too.

The happiness professor from Harvard.

One of the things that money does is it buys back your time.

To me, that's the single greatest thing money does is

it buys you time.

It buys you time.

It's a time machine.

It does buy you some comfort,

creature comfort things, but it buys your time back.

And so if I don't have to do this thing over here, then I can do something else.

And that's what money does for you.

It will buy your time.

And that's the beauty of having been as incredible as Pam and her husband.

We're picking at her.

But,

I mean, God almighty, they got $3 or $4 million.

It's pretty incredible.

You can do what they want.

Well done.

Very well done, y'all.

Pretty stinking cool.

That puts this Hour of the Ramsey Show in the books.

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

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