Lean Into Hard Things—That’s Where Change Happens

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Normal is broke, and common sense is weird. So, we are here to help you transform your life.
From the Ramsey Network and the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show.

I'm John Deloney, joined by Rachel Cruz.

here we are here we are back again we slapped up flipped it and reverse it and i'm driving today and we're here to help you make the next right move in your money and your work and your relationships your life let's go out to boston to boston and get a lag and talk to derek uh let's see here what's up derek how we doing brother hey how we doing team we're good man what's up

Awesome, man. Hey, so been watching you guys for a little while.

Love, love the content.

I am currently with my significant other. We've been together for three years.

And in the last three years, we've been able to overcome a lot of obstacles such as, you know, alcoholism and some addiction. And we're on the right path.
We just had a baby.

But when it comes to finances, it seems that we have a hard time communicating and getting on the same page. So

I love what you guys do. And I figured I'd give you a shout and just see, see, you know, if you could help point us in the right direction.
Dude, that's fantastic, man.

So tell me about, you said overcoming alcoholism.

That's

a bold statement, man. Tell me how y'all are working through that.

Honestly, it was just a decision.

You know, one day

I

started with me. I was just tired of the way life was going.
And, you know, had a lot of things that had happened that were just, you know, I guess would say rock bottom. And very cool.

Are you going to meetings every day?

I'm not, but I will never touch it again. I'm I'm it's been three years and I'm I'm in a good spot.
Yeah, I'm proud of you, man. That's fantastic.
Yeah, it's amazing.

All right, so when you come when you say it's hard to get on the same page with money, tell me about that.

Right now, you know, because the baby, I am the sole income.

You know, she she came into a little bit of money by selling some land.

I am the one that's paying for most of the bills and whatnot, and

she's paying down her debts.

But it's just, it's when I'm paying for most of the bills, it's been hard for me to build up my savings account.

And

so it's just, you know, how to

figuring out how to navigate through this,

it's

you're not going to like the way I start this, okay? And so you can just ignore me, but I've got to say this.

You're going to continue to struggle mightily in this area, especially now that y'all are linked forever because y'all created a human together until

you decide to marry this person, y'all get married, and you decide that individually, y'all's stuff is now y'all's stuff.

Yeah, because the hard thing, Derek, is it's almost like you guys are playing house. You're playing marriage without it actually being that.

And that keeps being the run-in of I'm having to provide because I have a baby and a girlfriend who's dependent upon my income now in order to support herself.

And she's paying for her debts with her land that she sold. Very condiluted.
So I want to get my savings. You get what I'm saying?

The path forward here is for y'all to make official what y'all have been dancing around for a while and then go full in. It's y'all's debt.
It's y'all's money from the land sale.

It's y'all's savings account.

And then you begin building this thing together. Yeah.

Is marriage in the discussion, Derek, at all?

It's been a thought. She's been married before.
We haven't really had this conversation, but

yeah. Okay, so I would say where you guys are at relationally, from a financial perspective, which is difficult because, again, she just had a baby.

Is she going to go back to work or is she on maternity leave?

What's her plan?

The plan as for right now is for me to be the sole income just because I do make a decent amount of money. Okay, yeah.
So

what I would say though, Derek, is again, because of the situation, if I were her, almost if she had called in, I would tell her, girl, you got to go to work because he could wake up tomorrow and be like,

I'm done. And then

she's screwed and there's no official marriage. So there's nothing, no, nothing the courts can do.
There's no splitting assets. Like there's nothing on her end that's protecting her.

And so that scares me for her. So what I would say in a perfect world, she goes and gets a job.
You're working.

And if you guys choose to live together and not be married, you're splitting the bills 50-50. And because she has to learn how to support herself, because if you end up walking out,

she's up a creek, you know? And so I'm not saying you're going to do that. I hope you're not.
But the fact that y'all haven't even talked about marriage, I'm like.

And

here's the second layer here, dude: is

she's just over there making her plans.

So, even your language, like, I guess I'm, I guess she's just going to stay at home.

Here's what money does: it reveals what matters to y'all,

to both of you, and it also reveals your shared values, it reveals the path y'all have decided to take together. What you're scared of, your fears,

yeah, what you, what freaks you out. And so, maybe for you, money is revealing, I need some,

I'm a dad now, man. I need some savings to feel safe.
And she might say, I'm a mom now. I've got this debt hanging over our head, like my head and this potential baby, like, or this baby's head.

Like, all those things are part of the conversations you take, but it's deeper than, hey, I want to save some money. I want to pay this off.
Well, I paid the light bill.

That's only playing surface. The real conversations are you taking your arm and swiping it across the table and saying, I love you.
We're linked forever now because we have a kid together.

What kind of life do we want to build together? And then money is going to reveal the path. Do we want to get, let's get out of debt as quick as we can?

Let's get some savings so that we can both exhale in this house. So this baby doesn't grow up in a house of tension.
Let's decide, okay, we're going to stay at home.

You're going to stay at home for a year, maybe two years. We want to have a second kid, right? You see all these deeper values conversations.

Money just reveals, it's just the, it's just the lights on the dashboard that are telling you where you're going and how good your car is.

Yeah, makes sense. so if you sit down with her and say how about this if i gave you um

the every dollar app like the the the premium version the best budgeting app and y'all sat down could y'all create something together absolutely okay

would you would you have the courage to do the next right thing with her and say I'm interested in, I know you got burned in a previous marriage.

I'm interested in being in your life forever and in this baby's life forever.

Absolutely. Okay.

That to me is the next, what I would say is the responsible thing. And dude, I've been digging into all the data on marriage.

And if people decide that we're going to be married together, he takes both of you. We want to have a good or great marriage, every part of your life improves.

It's extraordinary. Financial, the amount of sex you have,

your health outcomes, everything is

a massive ROI on that way. But you have to both choose that we're going to do this thing together.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, and you, and you guys do have, you know, not that everyone has it easy by any means, but I mean, you guys have come over addiction.
She's been married previously.

So there's, there's some, you can do hard things, yeah. Yes, there's some elements here that are really, I think, great for you guys.

I mean, it just shows that you guys can persevere, push through, but don't let those things also keep you stuck. Yeah, they can act like shadows.
Like, uh-oh, what about remember when? That's right.

I mean, you've overcome. you're here, you've done amazing things.

Now we're going to take the next harder step, which, in my opinion, is y'all sit down and have a hard conversation about getting married and making this thing official so both of y'all can feel safe, and then joining this thing and knocking out the debt and the savings together.

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You do not have to buy anything to be able to win. Let's go out to Austin, Texas to the 512 and talk to Sam.
What up, Sam?

Hi, how's it going? Good, brother. How are you, man?

Living the dream out here. Living the dream.
Very cool. Y'all recovered from that F1 trip? That was a wild weekend, huh?

F1 trip? I don't. It's been a team weekend here.
I'm not sure. Oh, good.
I think a few weeks ago, there was that F1, like five million people showed up in Austin, Texas. Wild, dude.
Oh, yeah.

No, we're a little bit on the outskirts. Oh, very good.
Well done. Well done.
All right. So what's up, brother?

Yeah, I'm just trying to get some guidance on how to merge mine and my girlfriend's finances.

Tell me more.

So I make before taxes about 88. She makes about 35.

And,

you know, we spend most of our relationship together, sort of broke college kids. And I'm about a year and a half into actually making some good money.

And I'm just thinking, well, you know, why is she paycheck to paycheck? And I'm over here, you know, putting into my retirement savings and all these things. That doesn't seem right.

So I'm trying to find sort of the best way to merge those two

and ideally ideally kind of maintain a little bit of independence. You know, I'd like for her to have a savings account for her goals and me for mine and something for our goals as well.

So that's the situation. I would recommend with all of my heart and soul that you do not combine income yet.

Okay.

The number of people that we have talked to over the years that combined income when they were dating.

or paid off each other's debt or bought each other a car or both bought a house together and then they broke up. And I know y'all are perfect.

Y'all are never going to break up, but I would not have a job if everyone's plans worked out the way they thought. Right.

And

the thing about, we always tell people when you get married, the day you get home from your honeymoon, put everything in the same account, right?

But,

and this sounds kind of gross to say, but when you're married, there's a legal process for separating assets. Right.
When you're just college kids, there's not.

And you can find yourself in a situation where you've paid for somebody to go go to college and then she just breaks up with you because the quarterback pay for her life. Right.

Or you pay for her life.

I'd much rather you get yourself set up and become the most marriable version of yourself possible and begin practicing these things in your life.

And if you want to pay for dinners and all that, that's awesome.

And you want to make sure she never has to, I don't know. Yeah, buy meals and you can take her on a trip or like whatever y'all want to do, fine.

I would not get into combining finances and saving together and creating retirement plans.

I mean, I just wouldn't get, I wouldn't go down that road, man, because there's no path for separation when it goes sideways.

Interesting. So, excuse me, I'm getting all dry in the throat because I'm nervous being on.
No, you're nervous.

I'm not very good at this, man. You don't have to be nervous about anything.

Does

Does your answer change or your viewpoint change at all if I say, okay, we've been together seven years? I mean, we, you know, have, I say we, we live in in a home together, right? We've built a home.

That does not mean we own a house together. Um, and if anything is the next step, it is marriage.
Does that change your answer at all? Or would you say no? There's a ring. No.
Okay.

Because, I mean, I talk to people who've been married for 20 years and they split up. So, yeah.
People that have just, yeah, yeah.

And for her, Sam, for her sake, kind of like the last caller, you know, I think about it from her perspective.

And you were like, it feels unfair that she, you know, I can't remember the wording you said. And I'm like, no, it is fair.
She's working and making $35,000.

And she has to learn how to manage that well within herself because,

you know, if I don't know, and who knows what happens, right? And like John said, y'all, I'm sure y'all will be together forever, which is great.

But if not, if for some reason in six months something changes and she's been dependent upon you for so long

and you're and you walk out, well, then she's got to figure out a whole life with making $35,000. So if I were her,

if you you guys are, do you guys, did you buy a house together? Are you renting together? What? No, we're renting together. Renting.
Okay.

So yeah, if what I would advise you guys to do is you just split everything 50-50.

And if you choose to do something different, that's totally fine.

But just remember always in the back of your head that this is your income that's not protected at all from a legal standpoint because there's no marriage. And

if something were to happen, you're just going to have to say, swallow the pill of, dang, for two years, I put her through probably,

yeah, there's probably, you know, $30,000 or whatever that I gave to this woman that I'm not going to have in my retirement, X, Y, and Z.

Right. So, so if you do, so I would go 50-50 on everything.
That's what I would do because I would want her. to understand how she needs to budget and the decisions she has to make.

And again, like John said, if you want to, if you want to pay for dates or whatever you want to do, you can. But just know that any amount of money that you are going over on her end over her 50%,

it's a little bit of a gamble financially. It's a gift.
If y'all been together seven years, what are you waiting for?

Or do you use Dave's language? Y'all are playing house. Why not go make it official and start building something with deep roots to it?

Sure.

Well, to be honest, the reason is because deep roots got my dad living on someone's couch after it didn't work, and he got her mom donating plasma to keep food on the table after their deep roots didn't work.

That's sort of the main thing. And so

let me let me take that and I think that's a very real honest answer that nobody ever gives me and so I want to shout you out. I would hug you if you were here because that's a very honest answer.

You've seen marriage go awful

and so you're hesitant to jump into that. What I would tell you is that's like going to the gym and seeing somebody lifting weights.
Seeing a whole bunch of people lifting weights.

Maybe you went to one of the original CrossFit gyms and everybody's getting hurt. That doesn't mean that exercise is bad.
In fact, exercise is really, really important.

What then becomes important is I got to learn how to do this well and do this right and do this safely over the long haul.

And so if you look at the marriage on data, there's a reason Jeff Bezos is getting remarried.

There's a reason why the people who are running these massive, that's why they all go do it, is because it has deep, powerful benefits that are spiritual, that are emotional, that are financial, that are sexual.

It's got all of it. It's incredible if you make the decision to go all in and learn those skills that your parents didn't have

and avoiding it or trying to do a hack around it, which is we're just going to do everything but that, that actually is going to set you up to get you into more trouble down the road.

I was going to say statistics are worse with what you guys are doing. But dude, your fear is real, honest.
It's wired into your nervous system, man.

You've got a picture of a car wreck. That doesn't mean you never drive again.
That means you go sit with a professional.

That means you learn how to drive really, really well, defensively and safely, so that you can drive for the long haul. Because, too, Sam, I'm sure you guys want to start a family, right?

I mean, you would love to have kids with her, I would assume.

Yeah, we're not so certain about that. Okay,

geez, Rachel. Relax.
Yeah, I was going to say, that's a. Kids are great.
Sorry, Sam.

Hey, you're here because somebody had kids, but

you called just

for the budgeting part.

How old are you guys? Yeah, how old are you? I just turned 29. She's going to be 28 here in a second.
Okay. Yeah.

The best thing I can tell you to do is to have a deeper conversation about facing that fear.

Okay. Your anxiety when it comes to getting married is real and it's earned and I honor that.

And I'll tell you, every bit of data says if you will go in and do the hard work of having a good or great marriage, everything in your life

is better.

Gotcha.

Okay. Well, I appreciate it, guys.
You're the man. Appreciate you, brother.
We wish you the best. And if you want to come down here to Nashville and get married,

there is a pedal tavern waiting for you and all of your friends because this is where everybody comes before they get married. Did you get a pedal tavern, Rachel? No.

I was married 15, 16 years ago. They didn't have those here.
Oh, they didn't? No. Oh, they had horse and carriages and all that stuff back then.
It's a long time ago. The horses drove the carriages.

Oh, man. And just a bunch of people.
Me and Sam. I'd like for y'all to have kids.
I don't know. They're going to.
After you get married. I like Sam.
I do. Sam's a real deal.
We'll be right back.

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Let's go out to Denver, Colorado and talk to the great and wonderful Aubrey. Hey, Aubrey, what's up?

Hi,

I'm excited to be talking to you guys. I'm doing good.
Hey, I'm excited to talk to you. What's going on?

Well, I've been following your content more recently. I really like the things that you share, especially around marriage.

And that's something like I've applied to my life. So I've been married for about 10 years.
My husband and I have three kids.

Y'all are in it right now.

Yeah, so hopefully you don't hear any screaming, but

we've got kids at our house, too. It's all good.

Thanks.

We're happy. We've been working really hard financially.
So we both work

and we do

we're working really well towards our goals and so the reason I'm calling today is

I've I like to try and turn around and pay it forward and so I've

we've been helping my mom out so my mom she's a single lady she has my sister who's about 11 and they have been moving in and out of apartments not great apartments and such and so we're blessed enough to have two houses we live in one and they both have Airbnb basements so we decided to rent the second one, the top level, to my mom and my sister.

And with the condition of like, hey, we're going to be Airbnbing the basement because we live near ski resorts. So that's been really good for us.

And she understood that. And we give her a reduced rent.
We do make her pay rent, but reduced just because we want to help her out. Sure.

Yeah, and it hasn't, it's been a couple years and we've kind of run into some major problems. So

what are the problems?

She kind of is a hoarder.

And so at first it wasn't bad, but it like accumulates over time, which at first I was like, you know what?

Like, I'm going to let her like live in the house the way she wants to, as long as the outside of the house is okay.

But long story short, we now have a cockroach infestation in the house, which is really bad. And we got a lot of like bad Airbnb reviews.

And so we just, we just had to cut the Airbnb income, which is not great.

And so we're trying to navigate that because I obviously, we want to help my mom, but at the same time, it's kind of biting us in the butt. So I'm calling to see if you have any recommendations.

Yeah, remember this line. The tension is the path.

Okay.

So it sounds all woo-woo. Where the uncomfortable conversation is, that's where you got to head directly.

Yeah. And so you guys know what has to happen here.
Either

there's two things y'all know have to happen. Either she's got to move out and y'all have to have exterminators come in.

Y'all going to have to do some work on that place and get it back up and running, or she gets to stay under some very strict new rules, one of which is no hoarding.

We're going to have a cleaning crew. We're going to like, we're going to do some of those things.

And y'all know that one of those two things has to be true. And so the path is not trying to figure out a nice way to do that because it's

nothing you do moving forward is going to be received as nice.

Yeah. And you've you've probably been doing this dance your whole life, right?

Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah.
And it breaks my heart for you, breaks my heart for your mom, especially this 11-year-old little girl. Uh-huh.
But you all have to take that path directly towards it.

And now, if you sit down and say, here's not, hey, mom, we need to, but hey, this is what's going to happen next.

If you want to stay in this house, we're going to have a cleaner come in. We're going to have all the stuff's going to have to be removed.

And we're going to have somebody come in every 30 days and check the house. If you want to stay here, great.
Will she pack up and move

and throw a fit or would she exhale and say thank you?

I honestly don't know. I think it could go either way.
So

that's kind of tricky. And

here's what's going to happen.

If you say nothing and you do nothing, the house just goes into further dis it ends up with her leaving at some point. Yeah.

And so

also, here's another great line to put in your back pocket. Choose guilt over resentment.

Choose the guilt of the hard conversation and not

she doesn't deserve your resenting her existence. And if you let her live there and just destroy this house from the inside out, I'm going to put that back in your court.

Because you didn't want to have hard conversations because it was going to make you feel bad. It was going to hurt your mom's feelings.

And so every time her phone, you pick up your phone and she's called in, you're going to resent the fact that she's there. You're going to resent the fact that she's calling you.

You're going to resent the fact that she didn't. They have a little bit of that now because you had to close the Airbnb.
You know, like, I'm like, ooh.

And you even knew, like, well, she's kind of a hoarder, but as long as she keeps it here and as long as you knew how it was going to end, right?

And so it's you just saying, okay, I'm going to own what I've got to own here. And then I'm going to create what happens next.

Yeah.

One way I could see it going too, and I'd love to hear your thoughts is like us laying the ground rules, like, hey, this needs to happen in order for you to stay and her like saying like, oh, yeah, sure.

And then not really following them

so

how would you navigate that like you give her one warning and then say sorry we're gonna end your lease well i would put some things in place uh-huh like a cleaning crew will come here

every 30 days or every two weeks i'm gonna put that on your rent um or we're gonna cover it but somebody will be here every every two weeks um

if the we're gonna double the trash service i would put some very concrete things in place that are really outside of her control these things aren't aren't going to happen. To help her.
To help her.

Because these are things to like. Correct.
Yeah. This is in service of her and of that home.

But to your point, Aubrey, if for some reason it's just, it's unmanageable and the cleaners are like, we can't even. We can't get in the door.
Yeah. Then all of it.

Yeah. Then to me, that is a, that, that, that's her then breaking the boundary that you guys set.
And that's on her at that point, not you.

So she has, in that sense, displaced herself because she didn't keep the rules of the property, which any landlord would have, right?

It's just messy that it's her daughter, right? Was she kicked out of you said that she was going from apartment to apartment?

Was she kicked out of these places or she just had to find a new location or cheaper rent? Or like, what were the reasons before that?

One, I think she was politely kicked out. And

the other one, I actually don't know, but I know she got in a big actual legal disagreement with the landlord over her security deposit. Oh, okay.

Yeah. So she has a history of not being a great tenant, right?

Yeah, and we knew that. And maybe another thing to put on the table, if y'all are in a financial position, is to say, we're going to pay for six months for you to go see somebody finally.

And you've had a hard life. We know you've had a hard life and you struggle with various mental health challenges and emotional health challenges.
We're going to put, we got six months of counseling.

We're going to put that, but this is contingent. If you want to stay, you've got to go see somebody, and we're going to pay for it.

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that.
That's a great suggestion. Thank you.
But that might give her an excuse to go, fine, I'll go see somebody so I can keep my house.

But it lets her hang on to like the illusion of dignity while going to actually get the care that she knows. She knows she needs.
I've never met a hoarder who wants to be in that situation. Yeah.

Right. Yeah.
But it's that compulsion. It's just, it's just this inner engine that just keeps running.
And so maybe that's another way to help.

But it's going to come down to you having some really clear, firm, here's the boundary and here's the exit strategy if and when this happens. Aubrey, your husband, where is he in the picture?

Is he overly frustrated? Is he like done or does he have like tons of grace and he's on the other side of you even?

He, so I kind of, poor guy, I kind of put him in as a mediator because my mom and I don't have a great history.

I basically do it for my little sister and he's on board with that, 100% on board. Yeah.
He's definitely like on the frustrated side. Yeah.

Because we've had to replace the fridge because she was, you know, putting too much stuff in the fridge and other things.

Okay, so Aubrey, I'm going to ask John. Yeah,

you have to relieve him of that. Yeah, you got to.
You can't put him in that situation. You have to be the one.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. That's fair.

Hug him and say, thank you for going first. And he went out on his shield for you.
And it's time for you to just step up. Or y'all can do it together, obviously.
But

my rule of thumb is the child of the parent needs to go first.

Yeah. Yeah.
That's fair. It's hard.
It's hard, Aubrey. I mean, we get calls, not necessarily with this specific thing, but whenever a grown adult passes their parent

and they end up having to parent their parents, do you know what I mean? Like from that emotional side, all of it, like it's just, it's, it's really, really hard.

So I think y'all's generosity and you lending out kind of that olive branch to her, wanting to help her in life and for your sister, I understand that's part of the motivation. It's just so beautiful.

It's so wonderful. But being able to do it, I think, in a way that's good for you guys, too, right? That you're not going to be able to do that.
Yes, exactly.

Is there a chance your sister can move in with you?

Oh, I would wish that, but I don't think that's ever going to be a possibility. Okay.
Yeah, y'all have got some hard conversations to have.

I would sit down with your husband and y'all write these things out, and I would probably put everything in writing, and then y'all sit down and have the next hard conversation.

The tension is the path here.

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All right, let's go out to Indiana and talk to David. What's up, David? How are we doing, brother?

Doing good. How y'all doing? Doing great.
What's going on, man?

Not too much. I just had a question about buying silver.

We had some friends that

did that and they got pretty big returns on that. And we were just, we didn't know if that was a good decision or not.
No, not a great one.

Just because, David, usually commodities like that, gold, silver, all of it, is so dependent upon, honestly, the fear of what's going on in the current moment.

So, if something bad's happening around the world, usually that stuff spikes. And then, if everything's good and everything's fine, it dips.

And so, you can really see a correlation with the amount of fear that the American people have in life. And if there's a lot going on and something scary is happening, all of those prices go up.

And so,

overall, your investment strategy should just be in the market it sounds more boring and all of it and people also will take on precious metals and stuff for not just an investment purpose but they do it for like an end of the world apocalyptic you know plan um to think that if something were to happen to the us dollar like that they have a bunch of gold and stuff and

listen i love conspiracy theory i could uh i could go down that rabbit hole really fast but the truth is if everything in if literally the u.s dollar did just completely crash, like if, if we had no currency, but

gold and silver, that's not even going to be something that's worth it because at that point, I still have to trade that for coffee.

The way the world, yeah, I mean, it's going to be ammo and food and clean water, like, right? Like, I'm like, it's that, that's not even a little bag of gold. Everyone's like, I don't need that.

I need food and shelter. Right.
So at that point.

So just overall, yeah. Just an investment strategy that's just more proven over time, has a longer track record of a consistent, you you know, an idea of like a consistent return that you can see.

It is, it's still in the market. And here,

like the existentially or philosophically, like you've got that answer, right? But I would tell you, like,

on the ground, the wealthiest guy I know personally that I hang out with is Dave Ramsey, and he owns zero dollars of silver or gold commodities.

Okay. That's for me and my house.

We owe zero of silver and gold. So I don't put my personal money for me and my family into that stuff.

Okay. That was kind of what I was thinking, but I just kind of wanted to make sure.
I know we did the total money makeover, and

we have our money in a 401k and then some CDs.

I've been retired for five years, but we just heard someone was

bought quite a bit of it and the price of silver went up. But that was, I was kind of leaning toward, you know, what you all just said.

Yes. Yeah.
And, you know, and they could have. You know, they could have sold when it was high.
You can scratch a lottery ticket, dude. Everybody does, and they win, and somebody wins every day.

But also, I always think about this. Someone said this years ago, and I was like, that is so true.

They were like, if they have commercials on cable TV, it's always reverse mortgages, buying gold and silver, and walk-in bathtubs. Like, that's the, that's the

market they are praying for. Yeah, I mean, genuinely.
So you're like, okay, if they're going after a group of people,

you know, for these things, like reverse, all of it. I'm like, eh, probably not the product that I want to put my money into.

Yeah, okay. Well, I know I've heard Dave say that the more, the higher interest that you get on investment, the riskier it is.

Not necessarily, but

it becomes more of

a lottery shoot, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I would say you look at the stock market last year, David, if you guys looked at your 401k, it was like 24%. I mean, it was last year was crazy, crazy returns.

And that was very safe, all in, you know, index funds or mutual funds, nothing wild.

So, um, so sure, the economy can go up and down, absolutely, but it's not as volatile as commodities or precious metals, like what you're saying.

So, yeah, from an investment strategy, we would, we'd say, now you're better off doing, yep, having your money exactly what you're doing. Just keep being boring, dude.

Just keep being boring because that same friend is going to come back next month and be like, I just lost all my pants on silver. And you'd be like, oh, well, there you go.

Just goes up and down, up and down. Let's go out to Pennsylvania and talk to Sean.
Where is he? There he is. What's up, Sean?

Hey, how you doing?

Good, brother. My call.
What's up?

Hey, okay. So, my wife was a travel nurse, and we

financed an RV, Fifth Will,

and

currently upside down on it by $40,000. Oh, man.

Dude,

that's a kick in the guts, man. Yeah.

And so we bought a house because

we decided to settle down and we were going to get rid of the RV. Well, when we went to go get rid of the RV, we found out that we were $40,000 upside down.

Okay, so

can I ask who gave you the estimate of what it's worth today?

I blue booked it. Okay.
Okay.

And I've tried private selling. I've tried going to a dealership.
Dealership, of course, is going to give you

a very low number of people.

What did y'all buy it for?

Bought it for $100,000. And it's worth now.

We've had it for a couple of years.

We owe $80,000 on it right now, and it's currently worth $40,000.

Man, do you have any savings?

$1,000 babysit. I'm

fun. Okay.
Okay. How much do you guys make a year?

$180,000. Okay.
Well, that's a good thing. I mean,

honestly, Sean, at this point, I would, I would still, you know, if someone will take it, that's great. You're just going to have to pay the difference.

And a part of me would love for y'all to save up and have that cash versus going and taking out a smaller loan.

But if you, if you did get, if you had it for sale and for some reason someone like, I don't know, messaged you and was like, oh, great. I would love to buy this thing.

Then you'd have to go get a small loan for the difference. Well, it wouldn't be small and be a $40,000 loan.
Well, compared to $80,000. I'm trying to help Sean out.

I'm just saying,

it's no big deal. You can do this.
Have you ever heard Dave talk about the stupid tax?

Yes. That might just be this one, brother.
Yeah.

Yeah.

A very painful, painful $40,000. I mean, I can't even, that's a lot of money, dude, but that hurts.
But there's not a quick other pattern.

Yeah, it feels better than 80. Yeah.

And I kind of got,

a little dumb with it.

Last year, I

went to go sell it to a dealership and they were going to give me $54,000. And I was like, well, it's kind of still a little low.
I'm upside down like $25,000. And then I went to go do it this year.

And they're like, oh, we'll give you $40,000. And I was like, oh, that turns.
Yeah, those things depreciate all the time. So fast.
I know. Anything with motors and wheels is just

all the way down.

Yeah, I mean, that's just what you're going to have to do, Sean. I hate to say it, but

I would rather pay off $40,000 than $80,000. I hope you get it sold.
And I would just put the $40,000 like a baby step two. What other debt do you guys have?

So, of course, we've got the house, and then I've got a couple of personal loans, a couple of credit cards.

How much are those?

Credit cards, roughly about $25,000. Okay.

Personal loan, I've got

that's about,

well,

I pay,

it's like five, seven thousand dollars for the personal loan. Okay.

Uh, and that's it?

Yes.

Okay. So, yeah, so yeah, it'll be around seven.
Yeah, yeah.

Yep. That's good.
That's good. Yeah.
So $70,000. But you guys, you know, make a ton of money.
You make $180,000, right?

I mean, before taxes. So, yeah, I mean, I would force myself, Sean, you know, golly, I would try to live on nothing.

Like, we say beans and rice rice and beans yeah i mean like oh easily yeah for sure give yourself 18 months and y'all just knock it out and just do nothing with your lives but work and eat at home and pay this debt off

all right that

i'm sure we've we've struggled before and we've

you know, pulled ourselves out of it before. So, and this kind of was okay.
Let's not do that anymore. Let's learn.
Let's stop. Let's

cut up the credit cards. No more personal loans.
Like, once you guys get get through this and pay it off, be done. Be done with it.
Learn. Like, everyone does stupid stuff.
So there's nothing.

There's no shame in that. But it's kind of stupid to go back and redo stupid stuff over and over again.
Like, we don't want to do that.

And we did it. We did it because we were actually treating it as a house for the RV.

Yeah, but it's a terrible investment. Real estate goes up, RVs go down.
So you guys need to do some more digging and research. It's one of those things like we wanted this to be true.

So we figured out a way to make it true. And that choice just came up back and bitched to the business.
You guys can do it this way. 40 grand.

Totally, y'all can do it. Y'all be debt-free in no time.
Let's get after it.

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Normal is broke, and common sense is weird. So, we're here to help you transform your life from the Ramsey Network in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio.
This is the Ramsey Show.

I'm John Deloney, joined by Rachel, the one and only Cruise.

And we're going to walk alongside you as we figure out what's the next right step with your money, with your relationships, with your work, whatever you got going on in your life. We are here to help.

Let's go out to New York City.

Man, they have have not been in the news recently and talk to Nicole. What's up, Nicole?

Hi. How's it going?

I'm doing okay. Happy to be on the phone with you guys.
We are happy that you called. What's going on?

So I'm calling currently on Baby Step 2. My husband and I have paid off all of our credit card debt

over the past couple years. We paid off our cars and most of my student loans.
Good for you guys, Nicole. Well done.
Yeah, it's awesome. Thank you.

However, over the past four years, my husband, he developed a gambling problem. Uh-oh.

We

take a breath, take a breath, take a breath, take a breath, take a breath. You're good.
You're good. We worked so hard to pay off all of this money.

And now he had wrapped up around 21,000 of credit cards and

depleted pretty much all of our savings.

He He was laid off, unfortunately, in May.

He was unemployed for the past five months, and he actually just started a new job this week. So that's finally something positive.

I just feel conflicted because I feel like we were working so hard to make so much progress.

And then we took a big step backwards. And now I have all of this credit card debt

that I feel like is just like another mountain to climb. And I feel conflicted.
Do I pay off the credit card debt that he racked off?

We had separated our accounts and the profits of all of this because I kind of wanted to get a better handle on things. Yeah.
Which you should have. You got to keep yourself safe.

That was the right move. That's right.
And,

you know, I've been working to pay down. I just have a small amount of student loan left.

And I've been working to pay that down. We kind of went into storm mode.
So I've just been paying the minimum on that for the past couple months.

So here's how I want you to look at this right now. Here's how you look at it.

I want you to think of it as though he had a romantic interest outside of your marriage. We call what he did around here financial infidelity.
He cheated on you with money.

Y'all made a commitment.

Y'all etched it into stone and he went behind your back and did something else. Okay.

And here's why that's important.

When somebody calls and says, hey, my wife cheated on me and I think I want to try to make this work and I don't know what to do next, one of the first things I'll have them do is to create a 30 or 60 day path back to trust.

And you get to decide, the person who gets cheated on gets to decide what rebuilding trust will look like. And the person who did the cheating gets to decide, are they in or they out on this path?

And so if it was was another woman, you might say,

I don't want you walking around. I want you to cancel all your social media accounts, delete them all.
And I want to see your texts. And I want to have location

on your tracker on your phone for 60 days. You get to decide those things.
And the other person can say, I'm not doing any of that. And then they're saying, I want out.

And so my question for you would be: if you're going to stay married, you punishing him by making him earn and pay further, it's counterintuitive, but it further separates you guys and the only way I'll survive this sort of betrayal is to decide we're both gonna take a step back in but not blindly and not naively but with a path and you get to decide what that path is so question one is do you want to stay married to this guy

yeah okay

you have to deal with two things I heard one is betrayal financial betrayal and the second one is

Just the way you said he's been out of work for five months, you've lost respect for this as with him as a man.

Yeah.

And so it's giving him a path back towards trust and giving him a path back towards earning respect.

And so my next question to you would be, okay, what does a path back to financial trust look like?

Well, that's kind of my question.

Because I've separated our accounts.

been trying to manage this kind of on my own for you know the past little bit

and he he stopped gambling I would say like two months ago how do you know um

I mean

you here's you haven't seen anything come out of our account okay you don't you don't know it wasn't working hold on hold on you don't know right and so one thing you need is certainty I want you to go pull your credit reports all six of them three for you and three for him they're free you can pull them okay I want you to make sure

and if he has gambling apps on his phone I want you to, a path back to trust might be saying delete all those apps off the phone.

If he's got a group of guys that he went and hung out with and somewhere off, you know, 121st, I want you to say, I want you not spending time with those guys that are gambling every week.

That's what I'm talking about.

Until his job starts, I want to see you getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning and Ubering until workday starts. I want you to go throw boxes down the street with a moving company.

And then when you get off, I want you to start to go work until 8 o'clock p.m., drive an Uber to the airport and back.

You get to decide what those things are.

I'm just making some stuff up off the top of my head, but you want to see him reinvest in you, reinvest in your marriage, and you want him to do things that are going to help him become more confident and more sure of himself.

He's going to have to deal with the underlying challenge of why does he feel so dead in his skin that the only way he can feel alive in his life is to bet on professional sports.

Right? He's going to have to go do that work. You get to decide what those things are.
I can't give those to you. I can just give you some examples.

And so, say he, you know, makes a turnaround and he, you know,

decides that he wants to stay in this marriage too, and he is going to change his habits. At what point do I, you know, kind of

trust him and say that we can kind of like join our finances again and kind of

I would put it I would put I love calendar dates for and to be clear I want to try for six months your check is going to deposit into this account that I have

and and and in six months if we're living through all these things and we are reestablishing trust together you're continuing to follow the trust plan I put in front of you in six months we're going to sit down I've already booked us a nice restaurant and we're going to go sit and talk about where is what's the state of our marriage now

and if you feel still feel unsafe then in six months you're going to say i want three more months

or you're going to look at him you're going to say i'm going to go all in again

but i have an extra five thousand dollars in this account that i'm going to hold for six months until i roll it into our joint emergency fund like you get to decide those things the thing i want you to be i want you to be specific and have some dates on the calendar otherwise he's going to feel like

he's running after a moving finish line

you get what i'm saying and i don't yeah, I don't want that. And I don't want him to feel like I'm treating him like a child either.
Correct. But also.
You're not, you're earning back trust. Yeah.

And you have to protect yourself. You were very wise to separate your money.
And he made decisions that now there's consequences.

There's real-life consequences to a marriage that he has broken, in a sense. And so, so no, I don't think it's you being a parent.

I think if there were, if he had never done this and this is what you're doing, I'd be like, ooh, okay, something's going on, Nicole. But you're not crazy.
Like, this isn't, yeah, this is not.

No, you did the right thing. This is not out of the box.
We want to go clarity clarity and I want you to think of what is a path back to trust. And then you're going to have to be uncomfortable.

There's going to be moments when he's following that path and you're not going to want to trust him and you're going to have to lean into that too.

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Today's question comes from Mason in Wisconsin.

He asks, is it better to teach kids about money using cash versus the popular debit cards like Greenlight?

Should they know how to handle tangible cash first before getting a debit card, or does it matter?

It's a good question. I mean, I think, obviously, with little kids, it's going to be cash.
You're not going to be handing them like an app, right? Because they're not going to have

a phone or the app Greenlights to be able to, I guess, reconcile the debit card and to see the transactions come in um so if you're talking about little kids yeah i would say cash for sure and i do think still as teenagers i think you know having cash in the mix is big but i also know in 2025 i'm like you know i mean even like our high school babysitters they use venmo you know that's how you pay them now you don't pay them cash they because they have apple pay and they shop online and it is the world we live in so i do think you can transition to more of a digital

way of money with teenagers faster than you probably would have 10 years ago. That's how my answer probably would have been cash, cash, cash, cash, cash

for longer. But now the world that they live in, yeah, I mean, it's just how they handle money.

And so I almost want them to learn that responsibility of the method at which they handle money and how they're going to handle money outside your home and understand how to use that really well too.

So I would say both. I think having some cash is still great to let them experience, you know, a transaction where they're having to let go of some, you know, let go of money to get something else.

I still think there's something wired in us that's really important.

But I also know the reality of our world today, and it is. It's online, and it's apps, and it's and it's cards.
So, yeah, developmentally, I want kids, I want a tactile experience.

I want them to hold money and be able to count it and see the one and the five and the coin. I think that I think holding it and seeing it

spatially is important for a young kid. But we have a 15-year-old and we have a mix of both.

And again, like you say,

I could give him a $20 bill on his cross-country trip, or I can just

ship it from his account. Right, right, right.

So, yeah, it's just the world's changing. I know.
It's crazy. Crazy, crazy.
I know we were talking about digitals and phones and stuff during one of the breaks, but

we were even told like the high school football games, the tickets are on phones now. Like, it's that kind of thing.
I'm like, it's just wild. Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like an old woman sometimes, but that's what we call you behind your back. That's the world we know.
Grandma Rachel. Let's go out to Seattle Water

home of Alice James and talk to Star. What's up, Star?

Hello. Thank you for having me.
I appreciate you guys. Thank you for calling and trusting us.
What's up?

Yeah, so to summarize everything, I'm a newly single mother of four since March of this year.

Man.

Yeah.

So I do jointly own a home with the father of my kids since 2021.

We got it at a good, you know, 3% rate. And the mortgage isn't too bad.
It's at roughly $2,600 a month.

And so prior to the separation, I was a stay-at-home mom for four years. So ever since the separation, he's no longer contributing with anything financially.

So I've kind of been just like in this weird transition of trying to get back on my feet. And no child support.
You guys weren't married, Star?

Not legally married, correct.

okay i think he still has child support duties though legally

correct i just uh filed in august okay i know i took so long to do this but i was just kind of no there's a shell shop to it yeah yeah and let me let me say this the

yeah

you can have the greatest let me take it away from the house because houses are so sensitive especially with kids if I went outside and somebody was trying to sell me a brand new jet that would cost 15 million dollars if I bought it new.

They're trying to sell it to me for $500,000.

That would be an astounding deal.

The problem is I don't have $500,000.

So it might be a good deal in some marketplace. It wouldn't be a good deal for me because I don't have that money.

And so whenever somebody finds themselves in your situation, especially the way you frame that question, I want to ask you, I know you got a good rate.

I know the house you live in is a good deal for that house. The real question here is, can you afford a $2,600 a month house payment plus the electric and the water and the insurance?

Yes, I believe so. You believe so or you know so?

I know so.

How much money do you bring in a month, Star?

Roughly $4,500

okay now since i just started working that is really that's half of your income take take home in a lot of house probably too much i think i think it's too much house star if i would be honest with you

now i don't know what you're gonna do with four kids i don't know where you would go unless you had to go to a two-bedroom apartment but in seattle that might cost you 2600 bucks huh

yeah exactly mortgage is pretty much the same as rent right now yeah oh man um but then i was thinking like the child support that i'm gonna be receiving next month.

I'm not sure exactly the amount, but I'm thinking roughly 1500 roughly.

That would also help. That would definitely offset.
Yeah.

Part of it, for sure.

All right. So what's your question? I jumped right in on your house.
I kind of ran over you a little bit, and I apologize for that. How can I help?

Yeah, no worries. I was.
That was part of my question, though, is like, if it's the best for my children and I to stay here, we still owe $400,000 on the house.

And I was just thinking long-term of like, once I finish paying off the house, you know, reaching the goal of having no mortgage to pay and then saving up after that as much as possible.

That's the $400,000 against, what do you make, $60,000? Is that your salary?

Yes. Okay.
That's a really expensive house for $60,000.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And if you add the income of the child support, right? I mean, it can go up to $72,000 or whatever. You know, you could count.
$80,000 even. to $400,000 on $80,000 salary is still a lot of people.

But it's still, yeah, it is a

ton of house. It's a lot.

Are both of your names on it, Star?

Yes, we own it jointly. It's like a joint.
And so is he just hoping that you pay it and don't get behind? And, because, I mean, if something happens.

Sorry. Well, I was going to say, if something happens to the house,

he's on the line for it too. So I would think a little bit in his interest,

he's going to want to make sure that either you sell it and you guys split the equity or, um, or that you have enough of a means to keep it afloat.

Because if for some reason, if you went into a short sale or a foreclosure or whatever, right? Like, if you had, if you fell on hard times, his name's attached to it.

So, I would just think on his end, he's going to be somewhat invested in it. Does he want to sell it and take the equity?

He does.

But then I was just like, where are we going to live?

Yeah.

He does. He wants to sell it.
That's why he's kind of manipulating me like to not give me anything to sell the house

um are all are the four kids his

three of them yes three of them are okay well and since y'all

again check with your attorney on this but since y'all were not married i think you're gonna the only way to get him off of that is to refinance it

which will lose that rate yep so uh

I do want to mention that uh, I do, we did before the separation, uh, we verbally agreed to buy a family car. He said he was going to pay it.
Of course, that's my

verbal demand.

That's not what matters. Yeah,

you need to get an attorney. Yeah, I hate to tell you that.
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All right, let's roll out back to Kansas City and talk to Kelly. Where's she at? All right, what's up, Kelly? Hi, my name is Kelly.
Thank you so much for taking my call.

Of course, thank you for calling.

Absolutely. So I was calling because I'm trying, my husband and I are just starting out.

We're on step one. Oh, you're new to the gang, new to the cult.
We're going to send you a ladle so you can drink.

Welcome. We're super excited, though.
We're glad you're here.

Thank you. Okay, so

my primary question is,

I have about $9,000 in my 403B from work.

I have roughly just under $16,000 in a traditional...

Forgive me, my husband's mowing outside the window.

Yes, he should be, right, Kelly?

We're just under $16,000 in a

traditional IRA.

And then we have

just a little bit. It's under $1,000 in a money market.
Perfect.

But we're trying to figure out, do we use

the money market for step one, or do we pull that out and put it into a savings account? Or do we start a completely different savings account for that?

Or I guess I just don't know

what to do. Yes.
Well, yeah, the $1,000 baby step one, that's perfect. You can do a money market account.

More recently, high-yield savings accounts are doing really well, too.

I mean, it's not, it's your emergency fund is not a place to go and try to find like the best interest rate because this money's purpose is not to make money, it is to be just a safety net.

But if you can get a better rate, but usually money market accounts, high-yield savings accounts kind of are in the general same ballpark area.

So I would leave that alone and then focus on paying off the debt. And that money will come from cutting expenses and working extra, selling stuff, any way you can get creative.

But we don't want to cash out any of the retirements because you will not only pay taxes, but also penalties and fees and all of that. Because, oh, are you guys 59 and a half?

I guess I should ask that.

Well, my husband is 71 and I am 48. Okay, perfect.
Yeah, I still would just keep everything there because it's growing.

And even though you wouldn't get hit with penalties and stuff, I would just keep it as retirement and you guys pull it out as you need when that time comes.

But then

how much debt is there?

We have $240,000 on our mortgage.

We have,

hold on, let me look.

Sorry, I'm just looking at my

Every Dollar app here. We have...
You went all in, Kelly. Every dollar is all in.

I have an interview for a second job on Monday. So look at what you've got.
You're like taking Kool-Aid shots. You're in.

We have $1,500 that we owe to the IRS. We have

about $2,000 on a personal loan for heating and air conditioning.

And then we have a credit card that's $14,300. Okay.
And that's it? And then $65,000 in student loans for, I'm a nurse. Okay.
Okay. Perfect.

No car payments. Correct.
Okay, great. We own the two we have free and clear.
Okay, awesome.

Yep. So, well, you listed them out, smallest to largest.
I'm assuming you know about the debt snowball as you're paying off the smallest.

And the IRS, regardless of the amount, gets bumped up to the front. You pay that off first and foremost.

And then how much do you guys make a year?

It's 100,

I think it was 110. Okay.
Is your husband retired? Or is he working? He is retired.

He just has his Social Security, but he's actually been talking to one of our neighbors and plans to start working for the city over the winter to bring in that little extra income from him as well.

Oh, amazing. Amazing.
How much margin are you guys finding in your budget just to throw at this debt per month?

Honestly, right now, very minimal.

We literally, like today, I paid for the

premium part of the every dollar budget. And I'm just, I'm really struggling because although it shows that we should be good and that I've got a,

you know,

it's an every dollar budget,

When I go in and I put in the paycheck planning aspect of it, it seems like every month we're

a lot of your bills probably hit a certain time of the month before the paychecks.

I don't know what it is, but it seems like we're overdrafted almost every month, at least once when we pay the mortgage. Yes, okay.

So part of that is maybe when the bills do hit, and that's why I love that paycheck planning feature in Every Dollar, because it allows you to see this is when my paycheck actually hits and what will be in my account

and what bills were owed before that hits right after and all of it so you can actually see so you you guys may after seeing some of this contact whether it's utilities even your mortgage company

subscriptions any anything that you have that's going out to see if you guys can even spread out and change the date of when those are due so that it it actually is more fluid if you will because if they're if they're all front-loaded but you in your monthly budget but you're only getting one paycheck paycheck on the 15th, that may not be enough to cover it all, right?

Or on the 30th. So you may just need to kind of spread those bills out.

So that'll be helpful from a logistical side. And then

from everything else, like if he even makes, what, 30,000, 40,000, like if he can bring in something and not even just through the winter, I mean, I really would, Kelly.

I would both be working, and I appreciate you even saying a second job.

Yep, to get all this, to get all this paid off.

If I get the job that I'm looking at, it'll be, I'm working full-time now, and then I'm getting,

my interview is for a weekend option. And so basically, I'll work two 12-hour shifts, but it's going to pay 36 hours.
Okay. And that'll be an additional about $6,000 a month.

Excellent. Amazing.
Just from me. Amazing.
That's so good. So, so good.

Yep. Because I mean, I think you guys could, I mean, if you're making, if you're doing that kind of work, I mean, $83,000, you guys can pay that off.

yeah we'll cook through this yeah i think you'll do great and kelly can i hopefully this gives you a little bit of peace do you know what the interest rate is on my emergency fund

on your emergency fund yeah

i i don't have any idea i don't either

i don't care what i'm what i i like that's not the point of it and so like circling all the way back to your money market question i like my emergency fund where i can get to it um if i need it, but I'm not looking for the best deal.

I'm looking for something that's separate from my checking account, right? So I don't quote unquote accidentally buy a boat, right?

Right.

And I want it, but I want it where I can get it.

Yes. And I think that's why we like the money market ideas because although a savings account would be

maybe easier, but it's also more easily accessible. I get it.
And right now I don't trust myself. Is your husband on? Why don't you trust yourself? You sound like you're doing a great job.

Well, because we're both definitely spenders. Neither one of us are savers.

And we're so early into this. And it's just like...
Yeah. Kelly, can I ask?

I feel like at least we know ourselves. Yeah,

he's 71.

Does he have any retirement?

No, ma'am. Okay, because the numbers you gave me were really low.
Social Security?

Yeah, he's getting Social Security. He gets a check for $2,096 a month.
Okay, but he didn't, during his working lifetime, he didn't put money away. He did not.
He owned his own lawn service.

Okay, okay, gotcha. Which is why he's mowing the lawn.
I bet he's pretty good at it. No, he's mowing the lawn.
He's mowing the lawn because his wife said, I'm calling Dave Rames.

And he's like, whoop, gut work to do. He did it outside.

I'm leaving the house. The sun is shining and I'm going outside.
I bet he is. I bet he is.
Yeah, well, Kelly, you guys are doing great. And you're just at the beginning of this.

I mean, I really give you props. A lot of people kind of just like dance around the edges and like, I think I may do it.
I may not. We call it kind of Ramsey-ish.

And it just takes longer to get the momentum going for people but people that really make a decision and you sound decisive kelly you're like nope we did we're starting it we got our thousand dollars we got our every dollar out like we are doing it and you just signed up this morning right like i'm like you're you're you're in the process you got the job interview i think you guys are going to feel traction like you've never felt before i think you're going to feel control over your money like you've never felt before and my prayer is that your husband and you together are excited you guys are working together and i hope it adds and brings something to your marriage too that you've never had before y'all are going to have to talk

and go on walks together because you don't have any money for anything else.

Right? You have to sit by a fire. Right now, we're, yeah, but I say right now we're

just trying to figure out, you know, the budget and Christmas coming up and trying to get everything planned for. That way, everybody's going to be fine.

I've got a little bit of a midlife crisis when I turn 48, and I'm like, oh my gosh,

so this year everybody's getting a love letter from their Aunt Kelly. They're not getting anything special because you don't have any money.

But next year, your gifts will be totally different because y'all sacrificed this year. It's amazing.
Proud of you. Welcome to the cult.

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It's the financial app that Rachel and I both use. George uses, everybody uses it, and it's pretty rad.
Let's go out to St. Louis, Missouri, and talk to the mighty Cam.
What up, Cam?

Hey, how's it going? Doing great. How are you? Oh, just another day.
Can't complain.

You could, but you sound like George. What's up? Yeah, it's just something.

So I have a question. So I have some business debt that I have strongly considered paying off early or paying off even some of it, like right now.

But I'm kind of in the predicament where I have some very knowledgeable people in my life, like my accountant and then some other family members and stuff that

pretty nice net worth.

And I know with Dave's method of the whole buy a rental property, pay it off, use the profit, put it in an index fund, and then buy another one, pretty well cash free, I guess, or debt free.

They've told me that it'd be better to leave that debt, I guess, and to keep it. You can leverage money differently and you could, I don't know.

They didn't, they never did, really did give me like an exact straight answer, but I'm kind of just wondering what your all's thoughts are and like why it would be beneficial to keep the debt, I guess.

To keep the business debt?

Because that feels different to me than the, and than the, um, buying a rental property with debt they those feel like two separate separate well it's kind of like yeah like I have a rental LLC I guess but using that LLC to buy well it would be essentially debt in general but it's all on business assets I guess yeah it's it's it's the it's what Dave went broke doing it's the it is I am going to take out a hundred thousand dollar let's pretend we're in 1985.

I'm going to take out a hundred thousand dollar loan on this house with no money down and I'm going to put a renter in there. And then I'm going to borrow against that house.
And

then I'm going to

flip it

for $150,000. And it ends up.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I'm going to take a 60-day note on it and try to flip it for $150,000.

And then I'm going to take out another.

When you say the word leverage, I want you to think of a teeter-totter, right?

Yes. Guys love talking about leverage and leverage and leverage.
Just remember the other side. There's always another side to that fulcrum.
There's always something else on the other side of that.

And so what Dave is saying is, I'm just not playing the leveraged game. I'm out.

It's just a dumb game. So here's the deal.

If you go in your rental property portfolio, in your LLC, and you buy a house and you own it, and then COVID hits, and the government says your renters don't have to pay rent for 18 months, it's really, really annoying.

It's not catastrophic.

Right? No, absolutely. Yeah.
And I don't know. Like, I think their thought process is like, I make enough to where it doesn't,

I mean, theoretically, I could. Today.
You make enough today. Without that.
You make enough today.

Exactly. Yeah.
And if something did happen, obviously that's a big deal. 100%.

Yeah. Or the market slows down.
I mean, who knows? You know what I mean? Like, there's just so many risk factors that people do not put into the equation.

And all they do when they do their calculations is if everything works out perfectly. It's all outside.
It's all good. It's all good.
Your job's going to last forever.

The market's going to appreciate at the same rate forever. The balloons, you're going to sell it because the real estate market's always going to work like it has the last three years forever.

Like everything's just assumed on best case scenario.

And Cam, honestly, too, when you run the numbers, when you're trying to play the rental game, because there's kind of the flip game, the rental game. My husband does flips.

We do it with cash, but like I know that game because we're in that. And so

I could speak to that. But even the rental side, because we did that for a little bit.

And I'll be honest, if you had a mortgage on it, the amount you pay for rent plus all the maintenance, everything that you have to put into the house and having a mortgage, it ends up, you end up not making a ton.

Like you would be better off financially just putting money in an index fund and just letting it grow. And that's hassle-free and stress-free.
You're not dealing with anything.

Or you play the game for 15 years or 10 years and hope the renters never miss and they pay your mortgage off someday. Yeah.
And that's a long time. That's two

Yeah. So it's just

like the rental game, it's just, it's not as liquid and easy and passive as people make it out to be. It's really not.
And so

when you get into it, it's like, it's just, it's a lot of hassle.

And again, I think if you, if there's not a mortgage payment and you're, that's why we always say, yes, to, to move at the speed of cash. And you can still do it.
It just is going to take longer.

But once you get a renter in and you don't have a mortgage, then yeah, all that cash gets set aside, set aside. But it takes a little while to build that up, a couple of years to even go and

cash flow something else too, you know? So it is a long game, but I would rather do that with no risk

than, golly, have four or five rental houses where I have mortgages on everything and you're trying to keep renters.

I mean, you are a property manager at that point and you're still trying to have a life and a full-time job. So Cam, here's the game I'm playing, okay? You don't have to play this game.

This is just the one I play in my house. Some people like to play the leverage game.

I've got this side of the teeter-totter stacked up and I'm constantly trying to shuffle and move things on the other side of the teeter-totter to keep this thing from falling, right?

The game I play in my house is my financial strategy is to solve for peace. That's it.

And I will gladly pay 2%.

on a 5.5% mortgage or a 6% mortgage versus a 4% mortgage. I'll pay that 2% to have like I could be putting that money in the market.

And I would pay that two percent as a sleep tax because nobody can take my house from my wife if I was to die. That's peace.

No, absolutely. You know what I mean? So I opt out of the game and I'm just not going to play the leverage game.
And you know what? I've got friends in my life. They love it.
It lights them up.

And also they're aging way faster than me, right? They drink way more than I do, right?

But if you don't play that game, just know you're playing that game and it it has to all work out for it to be okay. I'm just choosing to solve for peace for me and my wife and my kids.

Nobody can take my house away from me. I've got stable investments.
I look at real estate. Like, I'm just going to be smart.
And when I make a move on something, I want it to be mine.

I don't want some bank to own it and me pretending I own it through.

Okay, no, that totally makes sense, Jack. Because I mean, so I have like my house is paid off.
My trucks, I paid, I wrote a check for. Amazing.
Good for you, brother.

I appreciate it. Essentially, I do have

i have like 200 and depending on the day like 280k in a brokerage account that i manage and it hasn't quite been in there for a year so i'm still looking at short-term capital gains if i sold it and then i've got like another 210 on hand i mean theoretically should i take that 210 on hand and just go ahead and wipe out my two rental properties or i would i would today yes

like if it was my house i would do that today then you'd have bro you'd have three houses free

for yes

No, yeah, that's kind of what I thought. Because in my eyes, like, no, they say you can like write off interest, but I'm not getting anything out of the interest.

That's what their thought process was. Yeah.
Market and make more, but

with the interest, but that's still not my money. Like, it's not going to my equity and it's not in my pocket.
So it's like, I don't see how that's really my money either. Right.

Yeah. And back to John's point too, Cam, like the math game, people say it a lot.
Like actually your exact scenario.

They're like, I literally have cash and I have a mortgage that I could pay off with the cash. But for some people, they're like, well, it's in the market and I'm making 18%,

but my mortgage, you know, is at 3%. Like, and I'm going to be making this amazing, you know, 15% spread and yada, yada, yada, all the things.

And again, at the end of the day, we have never met someone who has paid off their primary residence and or rental properties and just owned them and called us back.

And they were like, I hate being debt-free. I

want a mortgage again. I want a mortgage again.
Where can I go get a mortgage? That's the beauty of your situation. Nobody says that.
They're all like, God, that felt so good.

Oh my gosh, I didn't realize some level of stress that I carry that I don't even realize. Cause, you know, when it, Proverbs says the borrower is slave to the lender.
And that is a powerful picture.

And we don't talk about that enough in our world today that emotionally, spiritually, financially, you know, you owe someone something.

And when you are free and clear of that cam and you are a smart guy, you work hard, you do really well, you're going to stack up so much much cash so fast, and all that equity in those homes-like your kid that is changing your family tree.

Well, and if you hate it, pay them off today and give yourself two months of sleep. If you hate having three paid-off houses, go take a HELOC out on both of them February 1st.

Hey guys, it's Rachel Cruz and I've got great news for you. The Ramsey Christmas Cash Giveaway is here.
We are giving away $500 every week plus a grand prize of $5,000 in cash.

Listen, you can enter daily to boost your chances of winning and there's no purchase necessary. Just go to ramseysolutions.com slash giveaway.
That's ramseysolutions.com/slash giveaway.

Good luck, you guys.

Normal is broke, and common sense is weird. So, we are here to help you transform your life from the Ramsey Network and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio.
This is the Ramsey Show.

I'm John Deloney, joined by the one and only Rachel Cruz, and we're taking your calls on money, work, and relationships, and your mental, emotional health, everything.

Anything you got going on in your life, we will sit here with you and we'll help you figure out the next right move. Let's go out to Tampa, Florida and talk to MA22.
What's up, Matt?

How are we doing, brother?

Doing well. Thank you guys for taking my call.
You got it, man. What's up?

Well, I've got a question. I recently did a job change and changed companies.
And before I did it and kind of subsequently after I did it, I've...

I've crunched a bunch of numbers and I keep thinking to myself, this was a good financial move. However, there are just bouts of anxiety that kind of

I don't know overcome just kind of come randomly that are like hey you made a mistake and so I feel like I just need somebody else with some with some financial wisdom just to talk through and make sure I'm looking at everything correctly as I as I start the new venture all right I'm smiling

not at you, but at your math problem. So are you doing a math problem and it's not working out like you thought? And you're like, no, no, no, this was good.
This was good. Or

are you looking at this and you actually have a bunch of margin and there's other things that your body's trying to get your attention about this job move?

I would say the math seems to be working out. And I think that if you had said, let's look at Matt's financial position in August versus Matt's in October, you would be like, October's better.

Like October, Matt, is better. However, it's like,

I can't beat the anxiety away. Okay.
I can't beat like the fact that I don't know.

Let me get the numbers real quick because I think it's more.

I think John's hitting it right. And I just want to

clear it. So what were you making and what are you going to make in your new job?

So I was making about $520,000 at the old job and I'm making about $400,000 at the new job. $500,000, $520,000.
That's right. And then you took a pay cut of $120,000 to $400,000.
That's right.

But

I'm commission-only, so I'm in sales, and I got to bring my clients over. I've probably brought

make more than 400 you think because it's a sales job?

No, I think I

know I think I'll make 400 next year. Okay, that's what you're doing.

Yeah, and I have the potential to make more as time goes on. Yeah, but

Matt, do you have a lot of debt?

So when I took the new job, they paid me a

they paid me a pretty hefty signing bonus. And

a million.

Nice. Pretty hefty.
You undersold that one a little bit.

So you got a million-dollar signing bonus. So you paid off everything, right?

Well, okay. I paid off all consumer debt and a car loan.
I have about 800 left.

I put 150 in a side account, which is basically college funding for my kids, just to have it kind of earmarked for that.

And then I just have $65 or $650 in a non-qualified account

that I just want to do.

Do you have a mortgage or paid off house?

I got a mortgage. The house value is probably

$1.4 million, and I owe about $7.50. $7.50 on that.

Yeah, about a $5,200 payment. Okay.
You could pay it off today because you got $800K just sitting there, right?

Yeah, but I mean, I do have some of that year marked for college. My kids are...
Oh, yeah, I'm not saying to do that. I'm just trying to get the numbers right.

But to the point that, like, you guys are planning, like, if you had to in six months, you could have a paid-off house.

Uh, yeah. Yeah.
Okay. All right.
So now, so we're good. Matt is good.
Well done, Matt. Yeah.
Well done.

Well, by the way, so now there's anxiety and I need a job where I get a million dollars signing bonus.

I got a high five and a hug. Okay, so

Matt, here is a rule of thumb that I subscribe to when it comes to anxiety.

What if my body's right?

Not the way most people are trained, which is if you're anxious about something, that means your body is somehow malfunctioning.

And so if we look at your life, your marriage, your kids, your job, the potential impact of AI,

your parents' health, all these different things.

If we were to look at your personal health, your physical health, your spiritual health, if we were to look at these things and ask ourselves, if anxiety is simply just an alarm system, what is our body trying to get our attention about?

Where is our body seeing, hey, you're not safe right here?

Yeah, I think it's the

I think it would be the uncertainty

of

five years, 10 years, or 15 years down the road. Like I feel like at my previous job, I mean, I,

not exactly, but I mean, I feel like I could have almost mailed it in. I mean, I had the contacts.
I had the relationships.

I mean, I could have just been like, you know, oh, hey, you need this, yep, and just and just continue. And now that's changed.

And I've the failure of it not growing to that point in the future is like, hey, you could have just stayed. You could have not been stressed.
You could have not had any of this anxiety.

You could have just stayed at the previous company and worked. Or you could have been walking in a and a bridge collapse on your head, right? So playing the what-if game

is usually a symptom of something deeper.

It is, it's, it's the nerd word is rumination. It's your body's way of trying to come up with creative ways to solve future and or past problems.

And those strategies help you avoid dealing with what the real issue is today. Yeah, Matt, what caused you to change jobs in the first place?

Yeah,

I mean, I felt like I didn't, I didn't like the fact that I could mail it in. I felt like I needed to be challenged.
I felt like I wanted something new. So then you get it.

In a sense.

You got it. Now I've got.
Here's the worst part. You got it.
You got a million-dollar signing bonus. You got a $400,000 a year job.
And you went with you.

Yes. So I felt, yeah, maybe there's a little anxiety.
Like I, I bet on myself and I'm a little bit nervous that that's great. Okay.
That means that anxiety is right. Right.

It's good. And so Dr.
Winnie Suzuki at NYU, she says anxiety is an annoying, but a friend. It's just looking out and saying, I feel something is unsafe in this environment.

And it's you saying, oh, yeah, I doubled down on myself. By the way, if you bet on yourself with a million dollars in the bank, that's a pretty safe bet.
Well played, dude.

Right? Okay. Let me ask you a deeper question.
Do you have any friends, any guys that you hang out with on a regular basis in your new community?

Yes, I actually do, but I'm a little nervous to tell them.

I mean, I think I'm a little bit nervous to tell them about the financial situation. Okay, then they're not your gang then.

Well, because

they're not. Here's why.
Your friends are people you tell

the tough stuff to, the friends you tell the dark stuff to, but also friends are people you tell the good stuff to. And your wins, your celebrations don't come at their expense.

They're happy for you too

yeah i think they would be i think they're right about that then that to me is the that's your next chess move and it's not a bragging thing it's just a full picture of who you are matt here's the situation i just got into and i can't believe i'm still spinning out y'all like what is sit with me like i don't know you know what i mean like it's it's just the first year i got number one book i called one of my old friends he's the executor of my will And I said, hey, I need to tell somebody that I just had a crazy good year.

And he was so happy for me. And it didn't come at the expense of the year he had financially.
He's been my buddy for 30 years now. But we got to celebrate together.

But it started with not me being like, dude, guess what I did? It was, hey, I just need to share this with somebody. I had a huge win, and I can't tell anybody.
And man, he's so happy.

That's your next move, brother.

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Ramseysolutions.com slash coverage. All right, let's go out to Raleigh, North Carolina, and talk to Caitlin.
What's up, Caitlin?

Hey, how are y'all? Doing great. How are you?

I'm doing all right. Glad y'all are doing well as well.
What's up?

So my question is, should I pay a stupid tax and move my family back into our old home? Or should I put a renter in our old home and sell it for a lesser amount to an investor?

What happened?

So we put our home on the market and we had a buyer and the buyer backed out an hour before we were supposed to go to the closing table for the sale of our old home and the purchase of our new home.

Oh man.

Yeah. So that stop the sale of your new home or did you go ahead and buy it anyway?

So we did not buy it. It was contingent us being able to buy it on us selling our other home.
So the seller of the new home, we had already moved.

We have a small child and we had to be out of the house at closing. So we had already moved everything into our new home.

So the seller was gracious enough to allow us to pay additional due diligence every month to go more towards the down payment of the home and allow us to stay there because

you're basically renting it.

We're basically renting it. But you've not signed anything.

Correct. Okay.
Correct. So we've invested a little over $10,000 of money in this house.
And, you know, we have small children. Our family is settled.

And our older house has not sold like we thought it was going to.

So my question, should we pay the stupid tax and leave all that money in the dust and go back to our old home?

Or should we put a renter in it to pay that mortgage and then save up enough money to purchase this home?

How long ago was all this, Caitlin?

So we were supposed to close at the end of June. Oh, so you guys have been in this other home renting from them, not even buying for six months.
Yes. Okay, and what's been going on for six months?

Have you been waiting for your other house to sell?

We have. And it's just been sitting.
It's just been sitting. Yeah.
It's kind of, you know, when a house comes back on the market, it has a black cloud over it.

People think something's wrong with it, and there's not. Yeah.
They like flag it or something.

How far of a distance? Is it different cities or just a different part of town?

A different part of town. The reason we were selling the home is the street we were living on was consistently getting busier and busier.
My husband was actually hit pulling into our driveway.

Someone wrecked in our ditch.

That might be another reason it's sitting. And having small children, we just didn't feel safe on that road anymore.
And we want to expand our family, grow our family. We're a young couple.

So that was the goal. Yeah, no, I hear you.

I'm so sorry. That's so frustrating.

But I,

yeah, I mean, Caitlin, I hate to say it. I would, I'd pay the stupid tax and go back.

I mean, I almost would just see it as a gift that you guys didn't actually go through with the contract of this new house.

Because if you had two mortgages that you had to pay, like this would, you know what I mean? Like that, that would be golly.

Unless you can take less of a stupid tax and drop the sale of the, I mean, if you're going to lose 10 grand or 15 grand or whatever it is going to be, could you drop the price of your other house that much?

That's that's what I'm thinking. If I were to sell it to an investor, obviously we would have to lower the price of the home because investors, they're there to make money, not spend money.

Can you talk to an investor that's interested? I have talked to a few that are interested.

They want a renter in it first before they would purchase it because it doesn't have a history as a rental property. It only has a history as a home.

So should I give it some more time and see if I can find a renter? No, I don't. No, you don't need a plan.
No, no.

Here's what you've done, and I say this often on the show, and so I'm kind of beating a dead horse here.

You have backed yourself into an either-or corner.

And anytime I, in my life, when I back myself into I have to do this crazy thing or I have to do this extreme thing, that's when I get myself into trouble.

And so an exercise I use in my own house when I feel like I have to do this or I have to do that is I force four or five other variables on the table just as a what if. What if this happened?

And so what if you went and interviewed another

you found who is the top real estate person in your area. After this, I want you to get on ramseysolutions.com slash real estate, get a real estate pro.

And you sat down with that person and said, this has happened. I've got $10,000 to drop this.
I would love you to sell it before it even comes to market. Can you help me?

And I've had that conversation and the guy I did that with said, done. And he did it.
It was amazing. Okay.
After nine months of a house being on the market, it was wild. Okay.

But maybe that's one. Or maybe you get aggressive with, we're going to drop it $20,000 and we're going to end up paying a stupid tax, but we're not going to have to move.

Or like, and And again, I'm just making stuff up off the top of my head, but I want you and your husband to back out of:

we either have to stab this thing or we have to burn this thing. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Before we do one of those, you don't have to sell it to an investor or pack up everything and move away.

And on the other end of that formula, the other thing is, too, that this house that you're currently in is not the only great house either.

So maybe you do move back and you guys press pause for a year, find something else. Because again, I just don't want you stuck.

You need to have a deadline of how long you are going to basically be paying your rent and this other mortgage.

They never gave us a deadline of when they would want this. No, I know they didn't, but you guys, yeah, because you could be on this for two years and it just, you know what I mean?

Like you need some level of urgent, which I know you guys feel urgent. I know it's like a lot and very overwhelming, but

to get, to force yourself to get creative to what John's saying

versus just like, well, we'll just see how this all plays out. Have a deadline and say, okay, for sure by February, like something's got to, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know.
Like,

that's going to help, I think, bring some sanity when you have some clear timeline and it's not just this perpetual ongoing situation. Absolutely.
Absolutely.

But yeah, but I would talk to a great real estate pro because in the perfect world, the house sells and it's been on the market for four months.

I'm seeing here on our board that the

median days on market is 62 days for houses. So you're double that, basically.

But not crazy, right? I mean, it's four months.

And so, yeah, maybe you get a realtor and you say, hey, for the next three months, we're going to just do some things, creative things to figure out how to get this house sold.

And this may show my ignorance here, Caitlin. I'll ask Rachel because she's in the real estate game.
If I see something that says house back on market,

I instantly run to it.

You're thinking you can get a deal. I think either I can get a deal or somebody wanted this and they got to where they couldn't afford it.
I've never saw it as a black cloud.

I always saw it as like a for sale. An opportunity.
Yes. Yeah.
And whoever's looking on the MLS or like, if there is someone that's trying to buy in your area and they see that,

all they have to do is call up and be like, hey, bad inspection. You know what I mean? And from the integrity of the agent, they have to be honest.

And if it was a bad inspection, they'd have to say that. And then you guys are going to have to fix it, all the things.
But no, it was just that the buyer left at close, like an hour before closing.

And we had nothing to do with that. You know what I mean?

And it is a weird house. It has a weird layout.
It's one of those split-level homes. Yes.
It is on a busier road. So it does have its full.
So its value may have dropped since.

Yeah, maybe less than a traditional comp would be. Yeah.
Yep. Have y'all dropped the price a lot yet? We have.
So it appraised for $310 in June, and we've since lowered the price to $289. Okay.
Yeah.

Okay.

Would you rather it depreciate like that and get it sold and you guys stay in this new house? Would that be like your perfect plan and just write it all off, but at least save your new one?

In the perfect world, I would rather like lose some money on the sale. Yeah, I don't have to upload.
That's great. So, that's a good decision.
And you hate this house too, by the way. You hate it now.

I do. I genuinely hate this house at this point.
I'm ready for it to be

off of my hand. Oh, God, I've been there.
Oh, I've been there. Yeah, yeah.

Buying and selling a home is a big deal, and you want an expert in your corner fighting for you to get the right deal at the right price.

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Let's go out to Kansas City, Missouri and talk to KIM. What's up, Kim?

Hi, how are you? Doing remarkable. How about you?

Good. Good.
What's up?

We are trying to figure out when we can retire. I am 42.
My husband's 45. And we feel as though we have a decent number in the bank.
But when we do the calculations, it just doesn't seem like enough.

And so how do you know when enough is enough? That's a great question.

Great question. Great question.

Well, the ideal would be to

be able to do the calculations and say, okay, ideally, if we could retire around age, I don't know, you could pick your age, 62, how much would be in the investments?

How much do we need to live off of at that point in life? Would we have a paid off mortgage? Would we really essentially have no debt, no bills? Would we still have a mortgage?

What do we want to do in retirement? How much do we want to travel, right?

And you kind of figure out your lifestyle and would you be able to live off of without touching the nest egg is the goal off of basically the interest that it's going to create. So,

I mean, there's, yeah, a lot of different ways.

Yeah, a lot of different ways you can slice it. But I think the big question is:

are you guys trying to retire early, or are you just like, no, we're just looking at normal retirement age, but we feel like there's not enough?

So we are trying to retire early. Okay.
My husband would like to retire yesterday.

How old are you guys?

I'm 42 and he's 45. Why do y'all want to retire?

What's the rush? I'm just curious.

I think we want to do things that we actually enjoy and love instead of just making money. Okay.
Why are those mutually exclusive in your mind?

Because we are definitely the bootstrap type of people. And so we have, he has worked his whole life at the same company in order to get this nest egg where it is.

And so in order to leave, when you've worked for a company for 20 years, that's very difficult. You don't just walk away.
And when you're our age, it's a harder game than it used to be to find a job.

And so I think he's ready to just be done and do that thing like pick up golf balls on the golf course where maybe you don't have insurance or you don't have a. Here's the thing.

You have, y'all have created,

you've twisted the math, if you will, and not real math, but you've twisted the reality to make it to where it's okay for him to get a new job or to change his life.

That makes sense. Here's what I know.

Y'all are two hard-charging people who have worked really hard your whole lives. You will go stark raving mad.

It's not good. It's not, it's honestly.
The research says

if you just retire to quote unquote do nothing, or if you retire away from a thing, not towards a thing, other than picking up golf balls on a golf course, your body says, okay, cool, we're done.

And it starts shutting off.

And so I'm interested in what are the things you're trying to escape and what kind of life do you all want to build together? And how would,

I think we are built to work. And I think we are wired for purpose.
And so you extract those two things out and you put all that on a number.

Man, y'all, I just worry about what happens at your 48th birthday. Maybe y'all are like, dude, this is the best life ever.
This is awesome.

But that doesn't sound like who y'all are.

Sure. I think that we are looking for more flexibility.
And so we're trying to figure out what that looks like

in the next

step. Sure.
Yeah. And I think what we're saying is you may have, you may be in a place, which we haven't gotten your numbers, so we can dig into that in just a second.

But, you know, you can get to a place where you're like, hey, I don't have to do the nine to five, but I have this talent over here, this passion for this type of industry or this group of people.

And I'm going to put some hours of my week into this service and, you know, figure out a way to still, yeah, go travel when I want and do what I can.

And maybe you guys worked hard in order to earn that. But when you just stop and do nothing at the age of 45 through the rest of your life for the next 40 years, come, it's not good.

I mean, genuinely, all the, and it sounds, I know it probably sounds magical because you guys have been working your butts off, but I am telling you, people shut down.

I mean, we even, I even see this with, you know,

God bless them. They have passed away now, but even different sets of grandparents and the ones that would just sit in the chair.

and watch cable news all day deteriorated faster than those that like was out that you know they would come to school they would they were moving and doing things you know what i mean like

there's something about um this equation that work is just terrible and we got to get out of it. And to kind of reshape that to what John said at the beginning, that I think is important.

Finding something that gets you out of bed in the morning.

And again, that can be not as many hours as you guys are working, but I would still have something that you're looking at.

And even if it's volunteer, maybe I don't even care about that, but there's something bigger that you're living for and not just golfing. All right.
So, how much money do you have?

Quite a bit. So, I'm a sole heiress of a real estate mongol.
So quite a bit.

What's quite a bit? 500 million, 5 million?

2 billion. 9 million.
2 billion. Do what?

About 9 million. 9 million.
Okay.

Okay.

And so is that all still tied up in real estate assets?

So we own our own business. So part of it is, yes, we still have real estate assets that we do still manage on the daily.

And then other of it's in investments in the market, other of it's in cash. I mean, it's in a lot of different veins.
So, your total net worth is 9 million? Yes. Okay.

And what does that pay out to you every month?

That's a tough question because we have it all in different buckets. So, our business is in one bucket.

My husband works full-time for another company just to have another source of income.

And so, everything's bucketed out. So, I can't really tell you how much it brings in monthly because we don't look at it at that aspect right now.

Okay, you've got to know what your expenses are and you've got to know how much you bring in every month

as this age. So we do know those numbers.
Yes. So those numbers are hard.
We do know like what we bring in every month. Which is

about 9,000.

Okay. So that like the rental incomes and if you've got derivatives coming in and his paycheck, all that adds up to about nine grand a month is what y'all make?

That is just what our business pays me and what his job pays him. We don't touch any of our investments outside of that, and we take nothing out of our business other than what it pays me.

Okay, so what do y'all owe? Are y'all good for the next 20 years on cars, house, everything?

Yeah, we owe nothing on anything. Okay, so if you were to quote unquote retire next month, let's just play that game.
Where are you going to be getting money from?

We would still have our investments. So we would still have our real estate side of our business that brings in approximately $40,000 a year.
That's what pays us.

It brings in more than that, but that's the portion that we use for salary. But what would you do? You can't.
Okay. Yeah.
Keep going.

And then we have investments in the market that we'd have to start using.

We'd have to pull off from those, which we haven't done before. How much are in those?

About $3 million. Okay.
And

is the real estate

do you own it now? Like, did your parents, like it's been passed to you? So you have full ownership, your name's on it and everything. Okay, good.
Okay. Yes.

So, you have 3 million in, I don't have a calculator.

It's in the market. So, is it in? Yes, just in the market.
Okay. Okay.
So, could you guys live off of

250 a year?

Or is that feel like less than what you guys live off of now?

Oh, we live off way less than that now. We do.
We live off of

probably about 120 on a year. Okay.
So, what I would probably do, Kim, honestly, is I I would sit down with a financial planner and map all this out. Because of your assets and what you guys have,

that doesn't always mean, obviously, it's all liquid. I mean, hopefully, like, there is money coming off of those assets that you guys can use and live off of.

But I want you to get some more concrete numbers and figure out. So, the only like red flag I always have with like, it's kind of that fire movement is what it's called.

Like, they try to like, you know, retire early. Yep.
Um, that's my husband's eyes. Okay, yeah.

Okay, so the, so the two downsides to those is all what we talked about at the beginning of the call is that you basically you lose any level of motivation to do anything purpose motivation

and it eats you from the inside out over time. It does.
So that's one negative. And the other negative is how life changes and how your lifestyle might change.

So you guys might be great living how you are right now, but 62-year-old Kim may be super bougie and is like, well, I want to go on this type of Mediterranean cruise.

And it's like, well, we can't do that this year. We got, you know, you're like, man, I wish we could.
I don't know why we, you know,

your preferences may change over time, and you're kind of locked into one way of living for the rest of your life, too. But the 9 million changes it.

So I would sit down with, I really would, and look at all your assets and to be able to figure out, okay, what can this roll off of and how can we be smart about it so that this can take us long term.

But that purpose and meaning thing is big, Kim. I want your husband to quit his job and then y'all figure out him getting a new job for a year and try that.

Today's scripture of the day is Proverbs 22, 3. The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.

Graham Norton says, A good rule to remember for life is that when it comes to plastic surgery and sushi, never be attracted by a bargain.

Excellent. Excellent.
I think that is, that's good. No, yeah, no Groupon for

the old plastic surgery. Bro, I have a gas station, sushi story.
I can't even do, I can't do sushi at an airport. You can't? No.
That and gas stations and grocery stores. I'll tell you, James.

I know why. James hooked him up with what I think is the best sushi in Nashville over at Jasmine, which just love it.
James showed me that place. Great spot.
In the strip mall, off Moore's Lane.

Right by Guitar Center Club. 100%.
By PetSmart, too. Yeah.
That's what we're talking to people. This is like free advertising here.
This is fantastic.

Yeah, where else?

We're going to put a pin down in the show notes here.

Exactly. All right, let's go out to Charlotte, North Carolina, and talk to Michael.
What's up, Michael? Hey, how are you? I appreciate you taking my call. You got it, brother.
What's up?

My wife and I are expecting our second child in a few weeks. Congratulations.

Thank you. Get ready.
Appreciate that. Get ready.

Yeah, we are. We're excited, but we're a little nervous.
It's going to be a lot. Man-to-man defense, but you got it.
Yes. Yeah.
Not outnumbered quite yet. Nope.
It's good.

We own both of our cars outright, but neither of them can accommodate. a growing family.
So we're planning on buying a minivan as soon as possible. Yes.

We have a nice start to our retirement nest egg for our age, and we have the cash to buy the van with no debt, but we're both natural savers and we're already losing sleep overseeing the numbers in our bank account plummet.

So how do we get over that anxiety and how should we change our investment rates such that we rebuild that cash fund at a good pace?

Okay. Do you guys have your debt free, you said, right?

We just a mortgage. Yep.
Okay. And how much do you guys have liquid cash? That's not the emergency fund, but just like sitting there that you're like, oh, yeah, we have this.

So our

liquid and emergency are combined. I typically rotate them through T-bills, four-week T-bills, so that they're still growing and we have access to that money at a reasonable pace.
Okay.

We have about $70,000 in cash. Okay.
And that includes the emergency fund. What would you consider? How much of that is the emergency fund?

Half.

Okay.

So you got 35.

So you got the emergency covered. You have 35 for

a new car

or new to you, I guess.

Correct. How much do you make?

Combined, we make about 200K.

Okay.

And

what could you sell the current car for? What would you get for that?

They're old. We are very much drive our cars into the ground.
Okay. So I think maybe two or three grand.
Okay. So not a ton.
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, from an income perspective, you're not completely, you're not off at all.
I mean, we always say don't, not to have anything with motors and wheels. That's half of your annual income.

So that'd be $100,000. So you guys are way below that.
You have the money for it. The only thing that kind of,

I kind of hate that you're wiping out all of your savings, right? I mean, your emergency fund will still be intact. So I would not touch that, obviously.
But the fact that everything else is

going to be gone i could see how that's a little bit like oh man i think i would love to have a little bit more cushion for in case something comes up right and again you can use the emergency fund for that um i always like to lean in and this is an annoying question and i know that lean in on this question when somebody says the cars we have simply cannot accommodate a family of four Yep.

Because we drove a Prius and a Corolla for a while with two little ones.

And so, like, what kind of cars are you talking about that can't accommodate two kids?

A sedan and a small hatchback. So, kind of similar to yours.
So,

you could, it's a pain in the butt to bend over every time to lean over to get the car seated out. It's the worst, but it's still possible.

And here's why I'm asking: if y'all make 200 grand a year and you could pull aside four grand a month for six months,

you're good to go.

The issue is we also have two dogs

and we do a decent amount of traveling in the cars. So right now with one car seat, you know, the back seat is car seat, dog, dog.

Once the second car seat is in there, it's going to be, you know, car seat, dog, car seat, and then

this is an awful, awful thing I'm about to say, but

that ends up meaning your dogs are worth tens of thousands of dollars and

travel costs. Yeah.

And that's a tough pill for me to swallow.

So listen, you have the money for it. You really, you know, you, you're not, it's not an astronomical amount.
You guys make good money. You could rebuild this.

And you, and I, considering you both are, the fact that y'all both are anxious about it is a red flag to me. I just want this to be a purchase that y'all are excited about and you feel good about.

So if that means pausing and waiting another two or three months and piling piling up some more cash just to have as a buffer of the emergency fund, then maybe that makes y'all feel better.

You know what I mean? Like I want this to be

a purchase that again, that you're like, oh yeah, because

I don't know. I'm kind of with John that like you guys would be okay in this car for another five, six months.
I mean, years if you had to, right?

If you, if you literally said, we have no money, we'd be like, okay, we got to figure out easy peasy. Yeah.
Parents can come visit you. Yeah, figure out what you got to do.
But you have the money.

You guys have worked hard and you saved. And again, it's not an astromal, it's not, it's not over that half of your annual income.

So you are in the perimeters of it, but you're wiping out everything but your emergency fund to do this one purchase.

And if the heat, you know, I don't know, again, you can always tap into the emergency funds, but I, me,

as a spender, I have, we have an emergency fund and then we kind of have another emergency fund that just kind of sits there too that we really don't touch.

So like, I just like to have a buffer in my savings.

And I don't know if y'all feel that way, but if you do, then just pause for three months, save up a couple grand you know each month and then be like okay good we have an extra 10 over here

that feels good let's let's let's buy the van you know and let me ask you recommend go ahead sorry go ahead no you go ahead brother so would you recommend then you know our our 401k and other investment contributions are high would you recommend dialing those back to like

15

15

okay so keep those at 15 and then everything left over you think just put into cash. I would.
Yeah, just to give you guys no T-bills either. Just put in cash.

Because some people were in your situation and they're going to feel great about buying it because they have the money for it.

And you do. And you got, but you're like, golly, we're just stressed.
And like, oh, I don't know. So then give yourself some buffer.
And

what's y'all's, did y'all come from not a lot of money? Where's this money stress come from?

Both of us come from like middle-class families. So, you know, nothing extravagant, but there was always food on the table type thing.
Sure.

To be honest, I don't know where the stress comes from.

We know that it's totally unwarranted, but for some reason, we have this conversation over and over and over again about, you know, are we really okay?

I mean, could you get, could you find a $20,000 van? Yeah, or make that part of the fun that you'll find a $30,000 van or instead of a $35,000 or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that might be part of it.
But I'll also tell you this. There comes a moment when you have to do the next right thing for your family.

Now, I wouldn't say spending $40,000 because your two dogs like to travel, but like there's the next right thing for your family and

it might feel uncomfortable. You get what I'm saying?

And so, like, no matter how many number one books I had, no matter how much success I've had the last few years, all that, I still got that little kid inside of me whose dad was a policeman and money was really tight.

And so when I got a new car several months ago, it was like I had cashed for it, went and wrote a check for it. It was still hard for me to pull the trigger.

And it was, it was nothing, none of it was rational.

And so I knew I'm going to go write this check. I'm going to buy this car.
I'm going to drive it home. And I know I'm going to have a night of regret and guilt.
I'm going to feel it.

And then in a couple of days when I'm taking a trip, I'm not worried about the front tires rolling off my car. I'm going to be happy that I have this.
And that's how it ended up.

And so there is, if you know your body is getting your attention on something and you know that it's not real or that it's not true, great.

Feelings are designed to keep you safe. They're not designed to tell you the truth all the time.
And so, y'all feel it and then go make the purchase.

But I like Rachel's idea of what if y'all just held off three months and y'all just proved to yourself we could put 15 grand away over three months, you make 200K,

and then go buy the band that y'all want. All right, thank you so much for being with us.
And remember, there's only one way to peace, and that's through Christ Jesus, the Prince of Peace.