“We’re in Way Over Our Heads With $1.5 Million in Debt”

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Speaker 1 Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life.

Speaker 1 From the Ramsey Network and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 1 I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Jade Washall, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Speaker 1 You jump in, and we will talk about your life and your money. Heather is with us in Nashville.
Hi, Heather. How are you? I'm good.
How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, thank you so much for taking my call.

Speaker 1 My husband and I are in.

Speaker 1 Oh, sorry.

Speaker 1 We're in way over our head.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 I'm just looking for some help.

Speaker 1 We are about $1.3 million in debt.

Speaker 1 That's with

Speaker 1 two businesses, a house loan, a car loan, credit cards, and back taxes.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Pretty scary. How old are you guys?

Speaker 1 We're both 28.

Speaker 1 How long have you been married?

Speaker 1 Six years. Okay.
All right, cool.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 how much do you owe on your home?

Speaker 1 Uh, about 48,000.

Speaker 1 Okay, and what's it worth?

Speaker 1 It's

Speaker 1 from from last we had it evaluated is about uh 250.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So what do you what do you owe on your cars?

Speaker 1 $17,000.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 This is starting to scare me. And

Speaker 1 what do you owe in taxes?

Speaker 1 $30,000. Good.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm a little less scared than I was a minute ago. And that means we have a whole bunch of business debt.

Speaker 1 Yes, sir. Yeah, like $1.2 million worth.
Yes, sir. What in the world? On what?

Speaker 1 Well, so we got into business. My husband was fired from his job,

Speaker 1 what is it, four years ago,

Speaker 1 and found all jobs, but was never able to find like stable full-time work.

Speaker 1 But we ended up starting like a summer camp in 2022,

Speaker 1 but built that with credit card debt.

Speaker 1 And then to

Speaker 1 it's going to sound really stupid, I know, to make that stable, we bought,

Speaker 1 it wasn't a business sale, it was an asset sale. We bought basically another business's assets

Speaker 1 for the 1.2.

Speaker 1 Oh, so

Speaker 1 the one business, not the summer camp, the summer camp has how much credit card debt?

Speaker 1 That's the one that's got about, it's still got about like $15,000 out of the credit card debt.

Speaker 1 Okay, I didn't get credit cards earlier. I just got cars and house earlier.
Okay, so the credit card debt totals, how much?

Speaker 1 It's about $19,000, so $4,000 invalids. So you have one business that's the problem?

Speaker 1 Yes. Okay.

Speaker 1 And you were able to secure a loan as unemployed people with a summer camp for $1.2 million. Why? Who?

Speaker 1 Who is dumb enough to make this loan?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I mean, the summer camp was doing extremely well.

Speaker 1 No, but the loan was not on the camp, was it?

Speaker 1 No, sir. You don't own the land on the camp, do you? No, sir.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So basically, you're renting a piece of ground in the summer, running a camp on it, and you make what kind of income on that?

Speaker 1 Oh, that makes about $200,000 a year. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. And the business that you purchased, what was the assets?

Speaker 1 It's it's rentals. It's event rental, so it's like staging and life and audiovisual and inflatables and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 All the fun stuff for the camp.

Speaker 1 Yes. Mm-hmm.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And you borrowed one point two who who loaned you one point two million for that? The SBA. I bet they did.
I bet they did.

Speaker 3 Is the camp still operational?

Speaker 1 Yes, ma'am. We still do that every year.

Speaker 3 Is there a way that you can add things for the other seasons to earn

Speaker 1 quadruple the amount, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, that's what we've been trying to do.

Speaker 1 It's just we've,

Speaker 1 I mean, y'all know, like, we've hit a point in the economy where people are trying to figure out other solutions for fun stuff or child care, you know, so they're trying not to spend as much.

Speaker 1 So we kind of are stuck with the businesses that everybody's trying to avoid.

Speaker 1 Not really true, but in the situation as you are or in, being so overwhelmed, I can see how you could start to think that.

Speaker 1 Because when nothing goes right, nothing goes right. When life looks like a country song, it just looks like a country song.
Lots of people still renting kids kids stuff all over the place.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. The economy is quite booming in some areas.

Speaker 1 So, no,

Speaker 1 the economics at your house suck. And so, I'm so sorry, honey.
It's so scary.

Speaker 1 So scary.

Speaker 1 Okay. Is there any possibility of selling

Speaker 1 the last business that you bought for anywhere near what you owe on it?

Speaker 1 No, sir. No.
How do you know?

Speaker 1 Because the more it was like the layers of an onion, the more we peeled back, the more we found the deception.

Speaker 1 That you had overpaid.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay. By how much?

Speaker 1 By

Speaker 1 like $400,000.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 3 How much does this cost you every month to pay the minimums on this?

Speaker 1 For the business,

Speaker 1 we're operating at a cost of $50,000 a month.

Speaker 1 And you're not making that.

Speaker 1 I mean, some months we are.

Speaker 1 Some months we are. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's both of our businesses are very seasonal.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Here's the first thing. I was your age, been married in their distance of time when we went broke and lost everything and ended up bankrupt.

Speaker 1 Okay, so the first thing I want to tell you is the worst case scenario is you lose the business, you lose the camp, and you start your lives fresh after a bankruptcy, and you hold on to each other, and you hold on to Jesus, and you hold on to your marriage.

Speaker 1 And so what?

Speaker 1 Okay, lots of people have gone broke. That's the worst case scenario.

Speaker 1 So I want you two to sit down tonight and accept that emotionally and look at each other and hold hands and say, we got this together, no matter what this is.

Speaker 1 Because I don't right now see how you're getting out of this. But here's an idea.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I would sell it for whatever you can get for it if you can get 800 000 for it take it

Speaker 1 okay and go to the sba and do a short sale and hire an attorney and tell the sba you get nothing honey if you don't take this 800 because i'm walking and you're going to own a blow-up inflatable

Speaker 1 okay and the sba is not not in the inflatable business and so you go to the bank and you say we're going to do a short sale on this business because we got screwed you participated in it because you idiots loaned us the money.

Speaker 1 And they are idiots.

Speaker 1 Anybody that made this loan should be just lined up and shot. Oh my God.
This is ridiculous. So because they've screwed you in the process.
So yeah, I'm going to short sell the business.

Speaker 1 If you can't short sell it, sign a note for the difference and scratch your way through that 400K,

Speaker 1 making 200 and something. And you can bust through these other little debts and pay the stinking IRS.
They're not bankruptable. Before you pay anybody else, you pay the KGB.
I mean, the IRS. Okay?

Speaker 1 They're first on the list.

Speaker 1 So, hang on, we're going to set you up with one of our coaches and see if we can get you some better advice than you got here because I'm a little short on time and I had to rush that. I'm so sorry.

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Speaker 1 The rich rules over the poor,

Speaker 1 and the borrower is slave

Speaker 1 to the lender.

Speaker 1 You don't think that's true? You talked to our last caller.

Speaker 1 She turned on, when I turned on the phone, put her on the air, she started crying.

Speaker 1 $1.2 million

Speaker 1 in debt

Speaker 1 on blow-up jump houses.

Speaker 1 Good God.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 And then some of of you want to call me up and tell me how debt is how you go into business.

Speaker 1 Because you have an idea that no one's ever done before, like fried pickles. Well, there's a reason.
There's a reason no one's done it before.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the more debt you're in, the more risk you take, and the more you understand the slavery aspect.

Speaker 1 And she's sitting there with some basic income coming in and nowhere near enough to even service the debt, much less

Speaker 1 everything else. And she can see the writing on the wall.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't know if that kid makes it or not.

Speaker 1 They'll make it, but I don't know if they make it without bankrupting. I hope they can.
If they sell it,

Speaker 1 if they sell it, they claw their way through the $400,000. Making $200,000, they can do that.
And they clean up the other $100,000. That's $500,000 in debt, making $200,000 plus.
You can do that.

Speaker 1 That's very doable.

Speaker 3 My thing is the fact that somebody lent them the money. And when you're that young, you do.
You think that if somebody will give you the money, that means you're good for it.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, that's like, yeah.

Speaker 3 You know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I mean, when you're

Speaker 1 first starting, a lot of things do dumb things. I mean, it's like people think if you have checks left, there's money in the check.

Speaker 1 That's right, that's right. You know, so

Speaker 1 then,

Speaker 1 of course, no one even knows what a check is anymore. So that choke doesn't land anymore, baby.

Speaker 1 But yeah.

Speaker 1 It's, yeah, you've got a responsibility to not not get yourself in these kinds of things. And here's the thing.

Speaker 1 He lost his job. They run the summer camp.
Everything's going good.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then there was some kind of a desperation or a greed thing that kicked in that blinds you to doing a deal that's that dumb.

Speaker 1 Because that deal, by any measure, is dumb.

Speaker 1 I mean, I didn't say the people are dumb. I've done dumber.
I was $4 million in debt, $3 million in debt. So they only did $1 million.
So I've got a PhD in DUMB. So

Speaker 1 I have done dumb things. That does not make me dumb.

Speaker 1 I did them for dumb reasons. They did this for a dumb reason.
And oh my goodness, folks.

Speaker 1 So my point is the teachable moment when you listen to the show, yeah, you can just get entertained and go, that's ridiculous and that's crazy and how sad for those people or how weird is that whole thing.

Speaker 1 And you can kind of get that, you know, Jerry Springer effect off the show if you want. Or you could actually try to learn something.
Right. What's the lesson in that?

Speaker 1 Well, the lesson is after losing that job, that guy's heart was broken and he said, I'm never going to be there again.

Speaker 1 And he read some story about some guy becoming a millionaire after borrowing money on TikTok.

Speaker 1 And he went and borrowed money out to his ears.

Speaker 1 And now he can't breathe. And his poor little wife is so scared she can't breathe.

Speaker 1 And that's exactly how Sharon Ramsey sounded at 28 years old.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. But there's another, the other lesson for him and for her too, because she was part of it, is exactly what you said.
When you do something like that, Dave,

Speaker 3 the shame, but the shame of it, because you think I'm dumb. You think

Speaker 3 I'm stupid.

Speaker 3 It's my fault we're in this. But they've got to remember going through this that the business plan was bad.
The loan was dumb.

Speaker 3 The business idea was stupid. They're not.
They cannot wear that as an identity.

Speaker 1 The thing you need to, the takeaway for all of you listening is this. When you're in the middle of doing something like this, you've done it.
I've done it. And every one of you have done it.

Speaker 1 You have a moment of sanity while you're in the middle of this going, this doesn't feel right.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, you get that real quick.

Speaker 1 And you go past that moment and do it anyway. And 100% of the time, you knew better.
Every one of us.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a proverb that says

Speaker 1 the simple see trouble and move forward.

Speaker 1 And the wise

Speaker 1 avoid it. and take refuge.

Speaker 1 And the simple are punished for it. Wow.
And that's exactly what that is. Because when you're doing something like this, when I did something like this, I was simple.

Speaker 1 It was not wisdom. It was a fool.
But you had that moment.

Speaker 3 You had that moment.

Speaker 1 I was like,

Speaker 1 I know this is out of control, but I can handle it. There's an arrogance, a greed, a desperation that causes you to plow through it.
And that's a simpleton. It's a simpleton.
It's not a wise person.

Speaker 1 Not biblically wise. It's a biblical fool.
And

Speaker 1 you don't want to be a Bible fool. That's a real dumb person.
That's really dumb. And so, you know, but I've done it.

Speaker 1 I was, I, every one of those things in Proverbs, it says you're a fool if you did this. I did every one of them.
You know, and so that way I don't have to do them ever again.

Speaker 1 And now I can be the wise person I sit on those books. So, yeah, but, but it's, you know, people, you know, when you're getting ready to sign for that brand new car that you cannot afford.

Speaker 1 You got a $400 a month raise and you're taking out a $1,200 car payment to celebrate.

Speaker 3 And if you have to start rationalizing it, that's how you know.

Speaker 1 And you know, when you're doing it, you You know you're sitting in the office that this doesn't feel right.

Speaker 1 Your heart rate is,

Speaker 1 your spouse is looking at you like you've lost your dadgum mind because you have. And you try to tell them how smart you are and that we're going ahead anyway.

Speaker 1 You just don't understand because of the way you were brought up. You sound like your mother.
And you go straight past it and straight into the dadgum fire.

Speaker 1 And man, that poor girl, that's exactly what they did. And it's what you've done out there if you're listening to this.

Speaker 1 So don't be too quick to make fun of her and don't be too quick to make fun of me. I've done it too.

Speaker 1 But listen, the lesson is when that bell starts ringing in your spirit, that's God's spirit saying, don't do it, fool.

Speaker 1 Turn on your heel and walk out of the room.

Speaker 1 Run away.

Speaker 1 Run away.

Speaker 1 Carl, or Jay, is with us, rather. Jay is in Portland, Oregon.
Hey, Jay, what's up? Hey, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve.
What's up?

Speaker 1 So I am currently getting out of the Army and looking to move back to Oregon. Cool.
Thanks for your service.

Speaker 1 You're in the Army, you said, or just the military? Yes, sir. Army.
What was your rank? What'd you do? Staff Sergeant. Human Resources.
Cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm currently looking to go back to Oregon, and I have a basically like the job of my dreams.

Speaker 1 The only problem is, is that it is located about 70 miles away from where I'm going to be living living for the first year that I'm back.

Speaker 1 Why? And so I need reliable transportation. Why are you living 70 miles away from work?

Speaker 1 What's that? Why are you living 70 miles away from work?

Speaker 1 Just for the way that my child custody agreement is set up. Huh, okay.
That's the closest you can get.

Speaker 1 For the next year, yes.

Speaker 1 I've gotten it worked out, and I will be able to move closer to the job within approximately 15 minutes after that.

Speaker 1 So it's just for the first short little bit while I'm back.

Speaker 1 But anyways,

Speaker 1 I am looking to get a new vehicle, and I have been looking at a Toyota Corolla. I have talked them down from their asking price down to approximate, I think it was $23,000.

Speaker 1 As of now, I do not have a vehicle. I sold my vehicle that I had out here.
And

Speaker 1 with the amount that I'd be putting down, I'd be able to afford it. How much money do you offer? I'm going to have to go within the next year.
Sorry? How much money do you have?

Speaker 1 About $7,000. And between that amount, I will have my Baby Step 2 completed

Speaker 1 other than the car loan.

Speaker 3 Then why would, so you're going backwards?

Speaker 1 You have $7,000 in cash.

Speaker 1 Yes. That's all you have today.
What does Baby Step 2 completed come in?

Speaker 1 You're already at Baby Step 2. I'll have all my debt.
I'll have all of my debt. Have all? It's not all paid yet?

Speaker 1 No. Well, how much debt do you have now?

Speaker 1 I have the remainder of the money for my divorce to pay off, and it's about $3,000. Okay, so you have $10,000

Speaker 1 today.

Speaker 1 No, I have $3,000 left of debt.

Speaker 3 You have $7,000 saved and $3,000 of debt, so you have $4,000 to your name, correct? Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 I would not go into debt to do this.

Speaker 1 You're going backwards. I'll buy a $4,000 car.

Speaker 3 And then save up some more. And if you want to trade it in to get a little bit more dependable, if it becomes a problem, you can do that.

Speaker 3 But don't go back into debt when you're spending all this effort getting out of debt. You can't solve a problem while simultaneously creating it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, can't get out of a hole while digging out the bottom. So, yeah, I, you know, you're going to go buy it, though.

Speaker 1 I kind of think we can talk you out of it in 30 seconds, but no, there's no chance. I'll ride a bicycle before I get a freaking car payment again.

Speaker 3 Take the bus.

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Speaker 1 Our question of the day is brought to you by YReFi. Defaulted private student loans don't define you and they don't have to control your future.

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Speaker 3 Alrighty, today's question comes from Jesse in Texas. They say, I'm 27, make about 100,000 a year.
I have 18,000 in student loans, no other debt, and have 25,000 in savings.

Speaker 3 My old car died and I need to replace it.

Speaker 3 I'm nervous about draining most of my my savings to pay cash for a car because I've seen my parents make big purchases that sent them into decades of struggle.

Speaker 3 So I'm wondering if I should get a car loan that's in my budget and pay down excessively over the years. I want to make the choice right.
I want to make the right choice. What should I do?

Speaker 3 Okay, first off, you've got a great income. Yeah, you've got the $18,000 in student loans, no other debt, $25,000 in savings.
You have the money to do this in cash, so I would do it.

Speaker 3 What I'm really focused on is the part where they're afraid of draining the savings and the part where they're comparing this purchase to something their parents did,

Speaker 3 I don't know, decades ago that caused ruin in their life.

Speaker 1 Now, if you paid cash for a car, it did not cause them to struggle for decades. No, going to the business,

Speaker 1 it would have been the car payment that caused them to struggle for decades.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 This cycle of always borrowing every time I want something, and I like my savings more than I like,

Speaker 3 you know, that's one of those things you kind of have to play out and ask yourself, like, what's really going on here?

Speaker 3 Because when I see stuff like this, Dave, this is just fear operating unchecked in the background. And you don't even know what it's based off of.
It's very, like, it's very vague.

Speaker 3 It's very, I'm afraid I'm going to ruin everything. I'm afraid I'm going to ruin my life.
My parents ruined their life, but there's no real clear detail.

Speaker 3 And when that's the case, it's very hard to track it down and find out, okay, like, what, what am I actually, what's actually going on? So if I were them, I would look at this and say, okay,

Speaker 3 what is it? If you're really afraid that you're going to, your life is going to turn into your parents' life, right? Like play it out. What actually did they do?

Speaker 3 Because what you're probably going to find is what Dave said, they went into debt and this caused a domino effect of events. And that doesn't have to be the case with you.

Speaker 3 And then I look at this part where he says, I'm nervous about draining most of my savings to pay cash. I mean, we see that all the time, Dave.

Speaker 1 Why would you? Okay, start with, you're driving a piece of crap now.

Speaker 1 So why do you need a $20,000 car to replace a piece of crap?

Speaker 1 You don't.

Speaker 1 So, by the way, when someone says my old car died,

Speaker 1 I'm an old redneck.

Speaker 1 I fix the car.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 You can fix it, or you could spend a little bit more and replace it. You don't have to spend the whole $25,000.

Speaker 1 Take your old car, sell it for $2,000, put $4,000 with it, and buy a $6,000 car, and then go pay off your student loans.

Speaker 1 And you're debt-free with a $6,000 car. Now, save like crazy, get your emergency fund in place, properly done.
Now, start saving like crazy and move up in car. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But drive a $6,000 car for a year,

Speaker 1 making $100,000 with no payments in the world.

Speaker 3 I love that. I love that.
But okay, you gave the numbers side. I'm going to give the emotional side to the bottom.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because that's where in your book, what no one tells you about money is that you have to not only crunch the numbers, but you have to deal with this person in your mirror who's misbehaving.

Speaker 3 Because a person in his mirror is going, oh, but I'm so scared of.

Speaker 3 So he's got to go, all right. I'm afraid.
I will own that. Now, what I talk about in the book is understanding rational versus irrational fears.
Exactly.

Speaker 3 Because the irrational ones are the very vague, oh, I'm going to ruin everything. Oh, I'm just going to be stuck on the side of the road.
Oh, I'm going to repeat my parents. No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 What are you specifically afraid of because if you can't be specific you can't solve it now this guy could say well here here's what i'm afraid of jade uh i'm afraid if i drain my my savings down to ten thousand and get a ten thousand dollar car i'm afraid my ac is going to break and it's going to cost twelve thousand right tell me exactly what you're afraid of then we can go back and we can go well let's play out the worst possible scenario worst possible scenario is this how would we fix it and we can give answers dave to all of that but as long as you let it float around and just be in la la land, you're never going to do it.

Speaker 3 So do yourself the service of taking a moment and go, why is it that when Dave and Jay told me to buy this car cash, I froze up. Right.
What is it specifically that I'm afraid of?

Speaker 3 What did my parents do specifically? And then it's like our friend, Dr. John Deloney says, you've got to, the facts are your friends.
Exactly. Is there anything true about this?

Speaker 1 Like you have to refer to it. The irrational fear is don't touch a hot stove.
An irrational fear is I'm not buying a stove because someone might touch it.

Speaker 3 Because somebody I once knew that I heard, read about in a book got burned on the stove.

Speaker 1 My mother, when she was 14, got burned on a stove. We will never have a stove in our house.
Well, that's cray-cray. I mean, that's, but that's the same kind of stuff.
That's where our brains are.

Speaker 1 Our little drama queen that lives in our heads,

Speaker 1 just that little drama queen does its little dance, and then all of a sudden you're in Stupidville.

Speaker 3 That's right. And I mean, I'm not, I'll validate the fact that it's real.
We all have it to some degree, but

Speaker 3 it can only be an excuse for so long. A good reason, if you let it go around long enough, becomes a bad excuse.
And so you've got to look at the reason and say, why am I doing that?

Speaker 3 What's the reason I'm doing that? I don't want it to be an excuse for me moving forward. And you've got to work through that.
And that's what we talk about in the book.

Speaker 1 And I'll tell you, when I hit bottom, I said these words, never again.

Speaker 3 Never again.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you're sitting here right now, Jesse. You make $100,000 a year.
You have a piece of crap car and $18,000 in student loans and $25,000 in the bank. And I don't like this feeling.

Speaker 1 So do something about it, son.

Speaker 1 Say never again.

Speaker 1 I'm going to clean up these freaking stupid student loans.

Speaker 1 I'm not going into card debt and I'm going to pile up some cash and by the end of the year, I'm going to have $30,000 and no freaking payments because never again do I want to feel this feeling again.

Speaker 1 And, you know, what no one tells you about money is you got to get a little pissed off at some point and go, I'm not living like this. I've had it.

Speaker 1 And that's what you and Sam did. And that's what you talk about in this book.

Speaker 3 I do. I talk about just being able to understand, hey, there's more to it.
Some people, I'll be honest, I'm generally the type of person who can just up and change.

Speaker 3 I get to that sick and tired of sick and tired point, but then there's those moments that the wrong thing hits you in the wrong way, and it's like you feel paralyzed.

Speaker 3 And you're like, why do I feel so paralyzed by this? Why am I getting so upset about this? Why am I, why do I feel like I'm going backwards?

Speaker 3 Why did I push pause when I was going so quickly at one point? And those are the times you got to stop and pause and go, what's going on here?

Speaker 3 And to his point, he's thinking about something that it wasn't even in his life. It's something his parents did.
Yeah. That's causing him to stop.

Speaker 1 Dude,

Speaker 1 27, you make $100,000 a year. Here's an idea.
Stop being broke.

Speaker 1 Get off your butt and fix this.

Speaker 1 And that, you know, when you kind of get that own thing going inside of you, that voice saying that stuff to yourself,

Speaker 1 that's when you're going to just flip this whole thing around. But right now, you're dancing around all the sides of it.
Go, I'm going to touch them.

Speaker 1 A little of this, a little of that, a little, no, knock it in the nose dude Reach up and smack the bully in the nose.

Speaker 1 You are either gonna tell your money what to do or you're gonna be miserable the rest of your life

Speaker 1 Because money's gonna tell you what to do and other people are gonna tell you what to do and you're gonna watch Instagram and figure out that other people have a better life than you because they lied on Instagram You know and so nobody has a life that looks like their Instagram life if you didn't know I'll just clue you in there's no such thing so I was with Willie Robertson this week He was telling me, he said, we were talking about a television show.

Speaker 1 And he goes, no, that's like a show that really happened. I do reality TV.
It never really happened. It's not real.
It's not real. It doesn't happen that way in real life.

Speaker 1 Oh, my gosh. Okay, Jesse.
So

Speaker 1 the prescription is

Speaker 1 what no one tells you about your money is that there's an emotional side to personal finance, a psychological side, a spiritual side to personal finance that's very much much about you looking you in the mirror and telling you, dealing with the stuff you said to deal with.

Speaker 3 It's three parts. You want to change your mind, you have to consider three parts.
The numbers in the math, your behavior, and your emotions. I say it like this in the book.

Speaker 3 I say, if behavior is the car, behavior is the vehicle is where you want to go. You get in it.
Your behavior is the vehicle. Your belief is sitting in the driver's seat.
That's the thing.

Speaker 3 Do I believe I can do it? If I believe it, I mash on the gas. If I don't believe it, I go in reverse.

Speaker 3 And your emotions are the thing that say, I'm going to keep steering it down the right track. If you get spooked, you hit a tree.

Speaker 3 If you feel good and you are managing those emotions, you go straight forward to the goal. Yep.
That's how it works.

Speaker 1 What no one tells you about your money, the next bestseller from Jay Bashon, which is in pre-sale right now. And you get all kinds of goodies when you buy it at Ramseysolutions.com.

Speaker 1 Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance, or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John.
Why don't people want to take care of their family?

Speaker 1 They think they're going to die or something?

Speaker 3 Well, I used to be one of those guys.

Speaker 2 I didn't even think about it. And one of my buddies said, hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids.
And I immediately went and got term life insurance.

Speaker 1 That's a gut punch.

Speaker 2 And oh, you're telling me, and for decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse. They've lost somebody important to them.
Me too. They don't know what to do next.

Speaker 1 Me too. I mean, you're going to have a crisis here.
And, you know, you've got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow.

Speaker 1 She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly.
These are the two options.

Speaker 1 And terminal. Take care of your dadgum family, man.

Speaker 2 Term life insurance can replace income, pay off debts, cover funeral expenses, so your family can actually have the opportunity to just be sad. Yeah.
To just miss you.

Speaker 1 That's exactly what it's supposed to be. It's saying I love you to your family.
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Speaker 1 Bo is in New York City. Hi, Bo.
Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 1 Hello, sir. Thank you.
Sure. What's up?

Speaker 1 I don't even know where to start.

Speaker 1 I guess my overall question would be how to handle the overwhelming stress of the holidays while we're climbing out of debt and still trying to

Speaker 1 be what we need to be for the children.

Speaker 3 What's the overwhelming stress, buying gifts?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 How old are the children?

Speaker 1 When there's literally nothing.

Speaker 3 Well, we'll get to why is there nothing, but how many children?

Speaker 3 Four. Four.
And what are their ages?

Speaker 1 15, 11, 10, and 7.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 Tell me why there's nothing.

Speaker 1 Just not enough. There's not nothing, but there's not enough at the end.
There's not anything extra.

Speaker 3 There's paycheck to paycheck.

Speaker 1 Hour to hour.

Speaker 1 Okay, what are you earning at this point?

Speaker 1 Four

Speaker 1 jobs right now.

Speaker 1 You have four jobs?

Speaker 1 A year?

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 You yourself have four jobs?

Speaker 1 Well, one full-time job and then three like gigs, Amazon, catering, flex.

Speaker 3 And that equals $120 a year?

Speaker 1 About, yeah.

Speaker 3 What's your main job?

Speaker 1 Managing a small grocery store. Okay.
That was mine that I sold to them last year.

Speaker 1 Did they give you money for it or you just got out?

Speaker 1 They

Speaker 1 gave me a good chunk of

Speaker 1 help toward the debt. How much? Still some left over.

Speaker 1 On paper? Yeah. $200,000, but I owed about $240,000.

Speaker 3 So there's $40,000 left of business debt?

Speaker 1 Pretty much. Yeah.
There's

Speaker 1 a total SBA loan.

Speaker 1 There's personal debt. There's school loan debt.
There's

Speaker 1 a mess. What do you make at the time for the money?

Speaker 1 What's that? What do you make at the grocery store?

Speaker 1 That's $100,000. Okay.

Speaker 3 Tell me, so there's the $40,000 SBA loan. Tell me the student loans.

Speaker 1 Well, different ones, but between my wife and I, close to 30.

Speaker 3 Tell me about the personal loans.

Speaker 1 Not loans, credit cards that we took out in our own names to help the business in the last year, you know.

Speaker 3 How much is that?

Speaker 1 If I had to guess, it'd be 30 to 40. I'm so sorry.
I called on a whim. I'm listening to the

Speaker 1 I got you.

Speaker 3 I got you.

Speaker 1 But 30 to 40. I mean, we haven't

Speaker 1 taken anymore. I will say that.
How much do you owe in your car?

Speaker 1 I know you're going to hate that, but we have one car that we owe about $13,000 on, the 2018 Forerunner.

Speaker 1 And then I take your advice, and I went and I bought a Hoopty

Speaker 1 and it blew up. So I had to buy another hoopty and it broke down.
So now I'm on my third hoopdee, which is a 200,000 miles, 200, 2009 Silverado that you paid cash for.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it spends more time at the mechanic than it does in the driveway. So I think

Speaker 1 I spent less on the forerunner over the past two years. Well, I chalk that up to

Speaker 3 your, you might not be, know how to select a great older car.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's what I chalk that up to.

Speaker 1 I was bought one of those Astro vans that your wife drove.

Speaker 3 So $123,000 of debt. How old are you?

Speaker 1 I'm 43, just turned 43.

Speaker 1 All right. So here's the thing.

Speaker 1 Okay. You live in one of the most expensive cities

Speaker 1 in the world to live in.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And you can't afford to live there, can you?

Speaker 1 I think you need a change of scenery.

Speaker 1 I know, well, there's a

Speaker 1 problem that legally can't

Speaker 1 yet.

Speaker 1 Is this custody?

Speaker 3 What is this?

Speaker 1 That was vague. What do you mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 My oldest son is not my own son.

Speaker 1 And he's, you know, we're tied here to the father. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 So, okay, then let's talk about. Let's still talk living situation because they.

Speaker 1 Well, we have it in we live in a beautiful, beautiful area that we don't deserve to live in. We pay less in rent than you would think you'd pay for a basement apartment.
What do you pay? We have

Speaker 1 $2,000 a month. Okay.

Speaker 1 Does your wife work outside the home?

Speaker 5 No, she homeschools our four kids.

Speaker 3 We might need to change that.

Speaker 1 I know. I know.
It's kind of hard to

Speaker 1 bring that up.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but let's play it out.

Speaker 3 But let's stop for a minute.

Speaker 1 Hey, Bo, listen.

Speaker 1 Something's got to change, dude.

Speaker 1 You're going to have to decide what it is. Not even any more hours in the day.
No, you can't work anymore. You got no emotion left in your gas tank.

Speaker 1 I'm talking to a guy who can't even form a sentence because you're completely exhausted. Something's got to change.

Speaker 1 You're going to have to change something. You're carrying all of this.
You're the plate spinningest dude I've talked to, and I don't know when.

Speaker 1 And these plates are crashing all around you and you're scared to death. And every time we bring up, you got to try something, you got to try something, you got to try something.

Speaker 1 You go, I can't do that, can't do that, can't do that. Something's got to change.
You got to change something. You're going to have to rise up and bust something and change something.

Speaker 1 I don't know what it is, man, but I love you and I want you to win. And I'm talking to a guy who's scared.
I'm talking about the wrong work.

Speaker 1 I think you've got to move. I think you got to do something different.
Your wife's going to work. Somebody's going to work.
Something's going to change. Your job changes.

Speaker 1 You get away from that grocery store that failed because every time you walk in there, you feel like a failure. I don't know what's going on, but your emotions, man, are all in your words.

Speaker 1 And it's, you're, you're, if you could, you need to play this back and listen to it on the podcast because you're, you're, you're, uh, you're defeated.

Speaker 1 Is everything that comes up? I'm already defeated. I've already lost.
I've already lost. I've already lost.
And you have not lost. You, you, you do.
You're a hardworking guy.

Speaker 1 You managed to keep a family together in freaking New York City. My God, I mean, you're amazing.
There's a lot of stuff you can do.

Speaker 1 Just because your stupid grocery store didn't work doesn't mean your life is over.

Speaker 1 Your life's not over. There is a lot of stuff my friend Bo can do that makes more money and better decisions.
You are not stuck,

Speaker 1 but you are going to have to change something.

Speaker 1 There's an old thing when the lumberjacks in the mountains of the Appalachians used to put the trees in the river to run them down the river, to deliver them to the sawmill.

Speaker 1 They would get stuck in the bend. When they go around the corner, there'd be a log jam.
That's where that saying comes from. You know how they fixed it?

Speaker 1 They'd light dynamite and throw it in the middle of it. That's how you bust up a log jam.
You bust up some stuff.

Speaker 1 Now, I don't know exactly what it is in your life, but I'm going to start selling everything in sight. Anything is on the line.
And I'm going to look at the kids and go, kids, we're freaking broke.

Speaker 1 We're freaking broke. We got no money.
So we're going to have to figure out a very creative Christmas this year.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to get on the phone with the old ex-husband, wife, whatever the flip is going on, and going, hey, you know, we cannot stay here anymore because of Junior.

Speaker 1 Okay, so something's going to have to change. And something's going to change because you cannot, the guy I'm talking to is not in a sustainable situation.

Speaker 1 One year from today, you cannot be saying the same exact sentence as you're saying to me right now. You cannot exist exist that way.
It won't work. Something's going to blow.

Speaker 1 You're going to blow a gasket. Something's going to blow up in your marriage.

Speaker 1 We're going to find you in addiction. Something's going to blow up because you're just the stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck.

Speaker 1 And just start yelling at the stuck and say, no, I'm throwing dynamite on your butt.

Speaker 1 Now, I don't know exactly what the individual tactical thing to tell you to do is right now, except to encourage you and say, I think you're a whole lot better than you think you are right now.

Speaker 3 I'll give you some homework. If I were you,

Speaker 3 let's send you, find the work you're wired to do because I think you need to get on a different career path.

Speaker 1 I think that's a good grocery store for sure.

Speaker 3 What you did before is that's just hanging over your head. And the longer that you work in that, it's just driving you into depression.

Speaker 3 You need a new job and you need to not have four jobs because you've been doing that for too long. I'm going to look at this homeschool situation because your wife needs to be able to work.

Speaker 3 You need her help earning income in this season. I'm not saying it's going to last forever, but those are the two things that need need to shake loose immediately.

Speaker 1 Something's got to move. You decide what it is before it decides for you.
That's the situation. Bust up into it, Bo.
You're better than you feel like you are.

Speaker 1 Hang on, we're going to send you finding the work you're wired to do because you need some new work.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. I'm Dave Ramsey, Jade Washall Ramsey personality number one best-selling author is my co-host Carl's in Chicago.
Hi, Carl.

Speaker 1 How are you?

Speaker 5 I am better than I deserve, I hope. How are you too?

Speaker 1 Just the same, sir. How can I help?

Speaker 5 How can I go about helping someone that I truly care about without financially ruining myself in the process?

Speaker 3 Who's the person and what do you need to do to help them?

Speaker 5 So this is

Speaker 5 a girlfriend.

Speaker 5 We're dating for about two years.

Speaker 5 We actually technically, I ended things a couple weeks ago just because of the patterns with her, her money and her finances just kept leaving me in a bind.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 now she's like really in a bad spot to where she's like facing eviction and she's got a young son and I don't know what to do because I don't want to enable her at the same time, you know, because I've tried many things until we got to this point, but I just, I also don't want to see her homeless either.

Speaker 3 Are you thinking about this young son more or are you thinking about like, is it more about the son or is it more about her?

Speaker 5 I think, I think a lot. I mean, it's, it's got to be the son.

Speaker 5 He, we obviously had like a really close bond like while we were together and it's just, I don't want to see a kid on the streets or like well, what stops her from working?

Speaker 3 Like, is there something that keeps her from being able to have a job?

Speaker 5 Sort of. She was working when we were together.

Speaker 5 Early 2025, she did get sick where

Speaker 5 I took over the family finances and everything.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 she still has this sickness, but she ended up going back to work after we had broken up.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 she's had two jobs since we've been together, and I did make her several budgets. I'm like, hey, this is how much you make.
This is how much you work. Like, this will work if you just don't overspend.

Speaker 1 It's just always been 27.

Speaker 3 And what type of,

Speaker 3 I mean, I'm not trying to pry, but what kind of sickness was it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Stomach ulcers. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 3 And she's smart. Yes.

Speaker 5 Very, yeah.

Speaker 3 So what do you perceive? Like, just be flat out honest. If I say to you, hey, level with me, why isn't she working? Is it because she's lazy? Is it because she has a toxic trait?

Speaker 3 Like, tell me why isn't she working?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think more so. It's like she has toxic traits that obviously led to our breakup too.

Speaker 5 But, you know, obviously when I met her, you know, our first eight months were great until we got into the money issues and like me having to spot her.

Speaker 5 But it was just...

Speaker 1 Okay, so you were living together. Were you living in that apartment?

Speaker 5 Yes, for a little bit. I mean, we never officially lived together, but I was over there fairly often.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And so you were paying the rent for a while i was yes i was helping her when she wasn't working correctly yeah and how much is the rent uh 1050. okay okay and how much does it take to get a current

Speaker 1 uh it's like four thousand okay and you you've been gone for i thought you said you broke up two weeks ago we did i mean we got how's she four months behind if you were helping with the rent uh i was helping with the rent until june when we broke up oh i thought you said you broke up two weeks ago

Speaker 5 we started talking again but never official but yeah um did she ask you for help?

Speaker 3 Or are you just looking at this saying, I need help? She needs help.

Speaker 5 She hasn't asked yet, but she has before when she gets in these situations, like just trackable money since we've met.

Speaker 1 Does she have any money at all?

Speaker 5 None. No.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So does she have a job now?

Speaker 1 Yes. Okay.
So if she was current, could she stay?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 1 If she couldn't make it going forward. How much money do you have? Maybe.

Speaker 5 I've got about $7,000 in my name.

Speaker 1 Okay. You can't help her.
You don't have enough money. Uh-huh.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's really sad.

Speaker 3 Does she have family?

Speaker 5 Yes. I don't know the dynamics too well.
Obviously, when we were together, she had a lot of family issues too. So I don't know if they would help willingly.

Speaker 1 I just don't know.

Speaker 1 You don't have the money to help her.

Speaker 3 And if I were in your shoes,

Speaker 3 here's the facts. She hasn't asked you for help yet.
That's thing number one. You're kind of thinking about this and it hasn't even happened yet.

Speaker 3 I'm not even sure why you know all of this if you've been broken up. Number two, if

Speaker 3 let's just play this out because let's pretend they did end up on the streets. I don't think they will.

Speaker 3 I think she's going to figure something out because the truth is she was probably existing just fine before you came into the picture or she was surviving.

Speaker 3 I don't know if she was doing just fine, but she was surviving before you came into the picture.

Speaker 3 If for some reason, you got wind of the fact that this little boy was on the street, where are you living?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I live on my own right now.

Speaker 3 So, is there a way that you could say he can stay with me for a couple of weeks until you get on your feet?

Speaker 5 I could do that, yeah.

Speaker 3 So, there are some options here that involve you helping if it got to the worst case scenario, but I don't like the idea of you trying to be Superman and keep any of this from happening to begin with.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you had 700 grand and you wanted to write a one $4,000 check to walk away from this clean, dust your hands off, shake the dust off your feet, and walk away,

Speaker 1 that'd be okay. But you ain't got 700 grand.
You got 7 grand. You don't have any money.

Speaker 3 You're broke. And you've got debt too, don't you?

Speaker 5 No, luckily.

Speaker 3 Oh, good. Okay, that's good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're not in a position financially to give up half of your network.

Speaker 3 4,000. Yeah, 5,000 bucks.

Speaker 1 To do this. It's just not, it's not, it's not tenable, and it's not your job either.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 within two miles of you, there's eight of these people. You just happen to know this one.
That's true. Okay, yeah.
Yeah, and you're just not, you're not Jesus. That's his job.

Speaker 1 You can't, you can't do his job for him. And so you can only do what you can do.
And yeah, and so I'm with Jade. If, if you find out that the little boy needs some help, you can help him.

Speaker 1 If it was, you know, if it was a small percentage of your world, I would give her some money and then just no more ever again. And

Speaker 1 she's going to mess it up again.

Speaker 3 And he said he's already done it. And here's my thing, because I don't want anybody to think, oh my gosh, Jade, you're screwed.
You're so mean.

Speaker 3 There's nothing wrong with her. If she was on drugs, if she was having some sort of, I mean, she's got stomach ulcers, but it seems like she can work.
She already has another job.

Speaker 3 I think that in this case, it would be enabling. I think that it would be for her, somebody who's just kind of softening the fall.
Okay, I don't have to work as much. Okay, he's going to be here.

Speaker 3 I think that she can do this. He said she's smart.
She's capable. If she has personality issues, go see a therapist.

Speaker 1 Amen. That's all I'm saying.
Amen. So it's interesting that a lot of the things that

Speaker 1 keep us from working, the income from working solves.

Speaker 1 Work. Yeah.
Money. Yeah.
Money. Work creates money.
And then you don't have anywhere near the stress. And so the stomach ulcers, which are a stress-induced by and large thing.

Speaker 1 I mean, the reason you got stomach ulcers is you've been broke all your life because you don't maintain a job all your life. And so these are created situations.
And so,

Speaker 1 yeah, your anxiety, so to speak, that everybody throws their word around these days, goes down.

Speaker 1 Your stress goes down.

Speaker 1 Your health improves when you create some margin in your life. And there's only one way to do that.
And that's work

Speaker 1 a lot.

Speaker 1 And you won't die from hard work. Right before you die, you pass out.
You won't die. So just working all the time, just like a crazy person.
And it creates this big old pile of money.

Speaker 1 And money's not everything, but paid rent is.

Speaker 1 Paid rent is, and paid electricity is, and food on the table is, and Christmas presents are, and all those things happen. All that stuff's what money buys.

Speaker 1 Money's not important, but what it buys, oh, the stuff it buys is really important.

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Speaker 1 Alex is in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Hi, Alex.
How are you?

Speaker 1 Good. How you doing, Dave? Good.
How can we help?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I've gotten myself into a pretty big hole with payday loans.

Speaker 1 Totaling about 3,500.

Speaker 1 You know, the APRs on them are all 500% or so. Yep.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I took them out because I got laid off in August, and I didn't have a good enough credit score to get a loan to get me help with rent and everything.

Speaker 1 And I'm starting a new job in about three weeks. And in the meantime, I've been working uh Lyft and making about eight hundred or so a week.

Speaker 1 And basically all of my money just goes to those payday loans and basic living expenses. And I just really want to get out of this cycle.
What's the new job pay?

Speaker 1 Uh it'll be sixty-three plus some bonuses, so probably about seventy.

Speaker 3 That's good.

Speaker 1 What else can you do for the next three weeks other than Lyft?

Speaker 1 That's the thing. I don't know.
I'm already doing 10-hour days, five, six days a week. Yeah, so you're making a dollar an hour.
What else can you do?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Do you have a lawnmower? Can you go cut grasses and trim hedges and rake leaves and detail cars? Can you do something like that where you can set a higher rate?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I've been looking on Craigslist and Facebook for just general odd jobs, and the only thing that I've been able to get was I helped this guy

Speaker 1 move all his furniture and stuff for like 200 bucks.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 you know, it's not really the best area to get something that I would be qualified for.

Speaker 3 What about I'm just I'm spitballing with you. What about it's holidays.
What about like hanging up lights? People need help hanging up lights. What about something like that?

Speaker 3 I'm just trying to get a bunch of things.

Speaker 1 Just FedEx, you can throw boxes.

Speaker 1 FedEx and UPS are hiring right now.

Speaker 1 And they're paying more than than you're making with Lyft because you're making $800 coming in, but you got gas and wear and tear on the car coming out of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. If you're driving that car 10 hours a day, you're not making any money.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought about going and just getting that simple being a server or a bartender or working at UPS or FedEx.

Speaker 1 I just don't want to go through that whole process and then just leave in two weeks because

Speaker 1 keep it. Your new job doesn't work on the weekends.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Work Saturday and Sunday.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I could do that.

Speaker 1 You're going to need to. And clean this mess up.
In the meantime, the first thing you do is you buy food. The second thing you buy is you buy electricity.
The third thing you buy is rent.

Speaker 1 The fourth thing you do is pay a car payment. Only after all of your living expenses are covered do you pay anything on a payday loan.

Speaker 1 And don't you ever walk in those places again and borrow money the rest of your freaking life.

Speaker 1 Remember the pain of this and remember the stupidity of this and the ridiculous trap that you've voluntarily stepped into so you never do it again, okay?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't ever want to pay 500%.

Speaker 1 Teach your children.

Speaker 1 Teach your grandchildren. Teach everyone's children to stay away from those scumburgers.
They are screwing people.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 the other thing was I was thinking about just revoking my bank authorization to them so they can't charge me anymore until I can get out of it. Yes, that's fine.
That's fine.

Speaker 1 But you can stop it. That's fine.
Just stop it or change your bank account or close your bank account. I don't care.

Speaker 1 But the point is, you're going to have to pay them the $3,500 and you're going to have to pay them a bunch of stupid interest at some point.

Speaker 1 And the more money you make, the faster that's going to happen. And then never,

Speaker 1 under any circumstances, go in there again.

Speaker 1 Okay? Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 I knew it was stupid, too. Yeah.
I mean, it's just,

Speaker 1 you stepped in a bear trap and guess what? It ripped your leg off. Oh, my gosh.
This is ridiculous. I'm so sorry.
Wow. It's such a trap, though.
It's such a ripoff.

Speaker 1 But yeah, you just have to be one of those guys that goes, yeah, back then when I was that, Alex, I did that, and I won't ever do that one again.

Speaker 1 And I got a lot of those in my life, Alex. A lot of stuff that I used to do that I don't do anymore.

Speaker 1 And it's caused me to have money and it's caused me to have a better life and a better walk with Jesus and everything else because I don't do the stuff I used to do, the other version of Dave, right?

Speaker 1 And so it changed everything. And that's where you are.
That's who you're going to be. And you're on your way.
You're to clear this up.

Speaker 1 But the faster and the more you work, the faster you create income and the more income you create over the next four months, the faster this thing goes away and becomes a memory of that dumb thing I did a long time ago.

Speaker 1 Back in, you'll tell your grandkids, back in August of 25,

Speaker 1 I was over over there debating, you know, you can tell the grandkids story, right? And go, yeah, I did that stupid stuff, son. You stay out of them places.
You'll be that grandpa, right?

Speaker 1 And that's the grandpa you want to be, not the one that's still living broke.

Speaker 3 The thing is, though, what I keep thinking about when I hear his call is he had been on the edge. Before.
Before.

Speaker 1 And he had no margin when you get laid off.

Speaker 3 No margin. And all it took was one little flick, and then all the dominoes fell down.
Yep. And somebody listening is on the line.

Speaker 1 It's on the edge.

Speaker 1 Like there's a whole bunch of somebody's listening. Uh-huh.
And so you need to

Speaker 1 knuckle down right now.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, you're going to get laid off at the work. Because

Speaker 1 they don't come in and tell you like seven months from now, we're going to lay you off. Right.
They come in and tell you seven minutes from now, you're leaving the building.

Speaker 1 And that's what they tell you. Yep.
Because corporate America has one job, and it's piss on their employees. And so that's their only job, and they're really good at it.

Speaker 1 So, you know, this is what happens. So now you've got to build a margin of an emergency fund and no debt payments.
You got $30,000 in the bank and no payments, and they lay you off.

Speaker 1 You look at them and go, What's the severance?

Speaker 1 You got $30,000 in credit card debt and no money,

Speaker 1 and they lay you off. You go, Oh crap, I am heading down to the payday loan place.

Speaker 3 You're at the mercy of whatever desperate thing you do next.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Sarah's in South Dakota. Hi, Sarah.
What's up?

Speaker 1 Sarah

Speaker 1 is gone. Locked out.

Speaker 3 She dropped out. Scary question.
Scared her off.

Speaker 1 Scary question. Brian is in Minneapolis.
Hi, Brian. How are you?

Speaker 1 Good morning. Or good afternoon, Mr.
Ramsey and Jade. Hey.
I'm doing well.

Speaker 1 Question for you guys, which I'm glad I have, male and a female. I'm engaged.
I'm 45 years old. My fiancé does not quite know what my net worth is.
How do I

Speaker 1 tell her fully and that I, my lawyer says I pretty much have to have a prenup. Well, your lawyer's not in charge of your life.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I

Speaker 1 gave prenures. Number one,

Speaker 1 lawyers give advice. They don't tell me what to do.
And then I decide if A, they don't want them to be my lawyer anymore. And B, if I'm going to take their advice.

Speaker 1 They don't get to tell me I have to do something. That's not how you're not the boss of me.
Now, so how in the world do you get engaged and have never told her?

Speaker 1 You should have told her before you got engaged.

Speaker 1 I agree. She knows I'm worth a decent amount.
She just doesn't know the full amount.

Speaker 3 What is the full amount?

Speaker 1 Close to 20 million. Wow.

Speaker 1 Close to 20 million. That's a little vague.

Speaker 3 Did you say close to 20 million?

Speaker 1 Just shy of the last time I had my financials audited.

Speaker 3 And you're telling me there's no signs that you're a 20 millionaire?

Speaker 1 She knows I'm a millionaire, but she doesn't quite know that much. No, I live very frugal, lived in the same house since 2005, drive a vehicle from 2011.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you said you you said your net worth is close to 20 million. Did I mishear you? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 No, you did not mishear me. You said 12 to 20.
I thought I heard you say 20.

Speaker 3 Close to 20.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I did missear. Last time I had a closure.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's call it 20 million. 2,600,000.

Speaker 1 What do you make a year?

Speaker 1 700-ish thousandth. Does she know that?

Speaker 1 She knows I make a good amount, yeah. Well, she doesn't know that.

Speaker 3 No, how long have you been together?

Speaker 1 Three years. How long have you been engaged?

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 1 eight months.

Speaker 3 So, you were, can I, can I ask a clear question? For that long of a period of time, that means you were intentionally keeping it from her. There was a point that came, I'm not going to tell her this.

Speaker 1 Yes and no. And my question for you is: why?

Speaker 1 I was in a relationship once where I found out it started because of the money. Yeah, that makes sense.
I guess I never wanted a burden to have.

Speaker 1 Hang on, we're going to talk about this after the break because it's a good question. I appreciate you calling in.
Hang on.

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Speaker 1 We're talking with Brian in Minneapolis. Jade Washaw is my co-host.
Brian has a net worth of around 20 million. He's been engaged for eight months and has not told her yet the amount of his wealth.

Speaker 1 He makes $700,000 a year, and she doesn't know exactly how much. She knows he has a lot, makes a lot, but that's all and not everything.

Speaker 1 And that's that's about how far we got in the conversation he's asking how to let her know now and to talk to her about a prenup so let me backtrack for a second so the reason you've not disclosed this to her is because you got you had someone before that was after you and you realized they were only after you for your money right

Speaker 1 yeah you could sum it up to that yeah and so

Speaker 1 how do you know this lady's not

Speaker 1 She's, I can say one of, we did have a talk about death because obviously I'm not a fan of it. And she did at one time have some debt, and I went in.
How do you know she's not after your money?

Speaker 1 Because she never asked for anything. She tried to pay me back, tried to give me money every month when I did that.
And I obviously said, I don't want it, please. Oh, you gave her some money?

Speaker 1 I did pay off her debts. She had debt, and I did pay it off.
And I looked at it that

Speaker 1 looked like $40,000.

Speaker 1 So I wouldn't, it was some student loans, car, and she had, unfortunately, a payday loan, like you just talked about.

Speaker 1 For someone who's so worried about her not finding out that you have wealth because she might be after you for your money, you sure did write a $40,000 check. Right.
That's inconsistent.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I look at that as I've been with her, you know, for years, and if it got checked up, that I got burnt on it, hey, I got burnt.

Speaker 3 How early into the relationship did you pay off her debt?

Speaker 1 Two years.

Speaker 1 Okay. So not early, early?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 I mean, I looked at it that if she left me, I couldn't. And did she ask? Did she ask? She did not ask me.
Okay, you did say that you didn't ask me. I was going to pay it back.
All right.

Speaker 1 So, okay, here's the thing.

Speaker 1 So just the fact that she's never asked you for anything and offered to pay that back makes you think she's not after your money.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just think I would have seen it in the in the close three years that we've been together that gee she never came to me for money how do you react to this statement how do you react to this statement you should have told her before you asked her to marry you

Speaker 1 agree okay

Speaker 1 all right

Speaker 1 because you shouldn't ask someone to marry you that you can't be honest with and transparent with that you don't trust

Speaker 1 you know i i i fully know i'm in the wrong okay

Speaker 1 so i think the i think the conversation starts with that. I owe you an apology.
We should have talked in detail about our finances before we got engaged.

Speaker 1 And I didn't do that because I was afraid because of this other person the way I was treated before. I don't think you're that person.
And I didn't know how to handle this. And so I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 Now I've got to do something that I should have done eight months ago, and that's unpack for you what I have.

Speaker 1 Yes, no,

Speaker 1 I truly agree. I just

Speaker 1 think that's the way you have the conversation, and you have it. You have 24 hours, my man.

Speaker 1 Okay. No more dreading this.
No more thinking about it. This is cost.
You can't sleep. You're fretting about this.
You're worried about this. Bothers me.
Second, quick question then.

Speaker 1 I actually won't see her. We actually,

Speaker 1 I'm an American, and she's a Canadian, so I travel back and forth. So I won't see her for actually a couple of weeks.
Well, then wait till you see her. This is in person.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is in person. Yeah.
Okay. And we do not recommend prenups except in situations where there's extreme difference in their net worth, and there's extreme difference here.

Speaker 1 So I do recommend a prenup.

Speaker 1 Okay. I recommend it.
I'm not your lawyer. I didn't tell you you have to do it.

Speaker 1 And let me tell you, if you think that you need a prenup

Speaker 1 to protect you from her, don't get married.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't believe that for one moment. Okay.
The only reason you're getting a prenup is to protect you from her crazy relatives.

Speaker 1 And she has one. Yeah.
Well, everybody does. And if you think they don't, then that means it's you.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 All right. So when you get, next time you're in person, we sit down and you start with an apology that you should have trusted her enough to unpack this before you ask for her hand.

Speaker 1 Okay. And then you tell her what's going on and what we're doing.
And,

Speaker 1 you know, a financial advisor has suggested we discuss,

Speaker 1 has recommended we have a prenup to protect us so you can look at your family and say, I don't have anything. He handles it all.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you go out of the marriage with what you came into the marriage with and basic prenup stuff, okay?

Speaker 1 Sounds good. Yeah, very interesting.

Speaker 1 Thanks for the call. Thank you so much.
Appreciate it. Yeah, have a great question.
You too. So, Jade,

Speaker 1 John Deloney posed an interesting question to me the other day, and it'll come up again in the next few months because he's doing some writing about it.

Speaker 1 He read a book, I guess it was, or talked to an expert somewhere that said,

Speaker 1 you know, we tell people get a will,

Speaker 1 right? Why? Because if you don't get a will, the law tells you, and the court system tells you what's going to happen. That's right, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 And this guy's argument to get a prenup was so intriguing. We had a great discussion about it the other day on the plane.

Speaker 1 This guy's argument was, you have a prenup because the law is there.

Speaker 1 The law, the judge and the court's going to, just like with a will, they're going to tell you what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 But with a prenup,

Speaker 1 you decide what's going to happen. And I've been so anti-prenup over the years that that created a really interesting discussion.
I'm still not going to tell you to get a prenup, but

Speaker 1 it did make me, it did frame it in a way I had never thought about it before.

Speaker 3 Which is you can pre-decide while you're in your right mind.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just like you do with a will.

Speaker 3 Without spite, without anger, without.

Speaker 1 Just like you do with a will. And then the judge doesn't tell you.
The judge has to go along with what the prenup says.

Speaker 1 Judges, you know, if the prenup's properly written, it can't be, the courts can't undo it.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 by and large, there's some movie scenes that tell you. But I mean, it's,

Speaker 1 I think of that one with Clooney that's hilarious. But

Speaker 1 anyway, the

Speaker 1 yeah, yeah, you pre-decide what's going to happen. Otherwise, the law decides and the judge decides.
That's the same thing we tell people to do with a will.

Speaker 1 Now, the difference is you're going to die, and you might not get divorced. That's facts, that's facts, yeah, yeah.
There's a difference there. And, you know,

Speaker 1 while dying is a spiritual decision, so is divorce.

Speaker 3 I think the divorce thing, it's like that forebode. It's almost like you're going to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Speaker 1 Exactly. That's the problem.
You're planning something, and so you're aiming at it unintentionally. You spoke it.

Speaker 3 Yes, because everybody dies. Everybody doesn't have to get divorced.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I get it. Exactly, yeah.
So it's just an interesting. I had never heard it framed that way, and it made me stop and think about pre-nups.
I was a little lighter, a little calmer,

Speaker 1 because I'm real anti-prenup.

Speaker 1 I know. We had one lady call here on the show many years ago, said her fiancé wanted to get a prenup because he had a 67

Speaker 1 vintage Mustang.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, don't marry this guy. He loves his car more than you.

Speaker 1 Run, girl. Run.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, that's the kind of crap I associate with prenups. Right.

Speaker 3 But the idea that two people could.

Speaker 1 If you got 20 million bucks and, you know, that's a lot.

Speaker 3 But even the idea that two people could sit down and say, hey, we're getting married. Let's do some planning.
And if you decided together, here's

Speaker 3 in the unlikely event.

Speaker 3 It's like it's like when you ride a plane and they go through the safety precautions. Yeah, exactly.
In the unlikely event of a water landing, a divorce landing, here's what we're going to do.

Speaker 3 And then it's like you've done it before there's anger, before there, I don't know. It's an interesting conversation for sure.
Wow.

Speaker 1 I'm at it. I'm still not a fan.
I'm still not going to tell you to do it. But I will, I'm admitting here on the air that it made me stop and think about it.
I'm thinking about it now.

Speaker 1 It's a different framing to the whole prenup discussion.

Speaker 3 As I'm thinking about it, though, I'm also thinking if Sam Warshaw came to me with this conversation, I'd be like, Yeah.

Speaker 1 The door is that way. We'd be done, bud.

Speaker 1 We'd be done, man. Yeah.
We be done. Yeah, so yeah, that is.
So there you have it.

Speaker 1 The other thing is, I mean, Sharon and I got married at 22 years old. I had $1.12.

Speaker 1 Yes. I mean,

Speaker 1 I couldn't even have paid to have the prenup done. Right.

Speaker 1 Much less thought about I needed one. Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 And I had negative dollars.

Speaker 1 I was just so happy to be here. You know, that's all.

Speaker 1 I'm just happy to be here.

Speaker 1 Wow.

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Speaker 1 We would love to have you. All right, Jennifer is on a Zoom call with us in California.
Hi, Jennifer. How are you?

Speaker 8 I'm well. How are you? Thank you so much for having me, you guys.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 It's an honor. How can we help you today?

Speaker 8 This is a hard question. I need help around my heart because my heart is not right.
I'm having resentment and I'm a Christian. I don't believe that that is what we need to do.

Speaker 8 I married a wonderful man, but now we are continuing to pay his ex-wife's child support. She went back for more, and I am angry and resentful.
And it's, we're snapping at each other more.

Speaker 8 And I took Jade's advice. Jade taught me this where she said, fight the problem, not fight each other.
Right. So I'm like, okay, we're going to fight the problem.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 8 but it's affecting everything. It's affecting even me parenting his kids.
And it's just affecting everything.

Speaker 3 The amount, the amount of it or the, the, him having to deal with her.

Speaker 8 I think all of it because he's, cause we, we do everything together, right? So it's not just him. That actually triggers me.
I love that you said that too. Like that he's going through it.

Speaker 8 And I'm like, I'm going through it too. Yeah.

Speaker 8 It's my money as well. And he just got a layoff.

Speaker 8 And so his last, you know, he's going to end December and then he's he's laid off. And Mama does not make enough for our four walls.
Like our four walls are $7,300. Just to exist is $7,300 a month.

Speaker 3 And what do you make a month?

Speaker 8 Mama only makes

Speaker 8 $3,884.

Speaker 1 And what was he making?

Speaker 8 He makes uh 50.60, so 5,060.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 how much is the child support?

Speaker 8 So the child support's not killing, it's 500. It's 500 right now.
We go back because he's laid off. So the court knows that he's getting laid off.

Speaker 8 So we go back in February because she wants, she wants like the gut, the all of it,

Speaker 8 the gun, the good stuff.

Speaker 8 And so thankfully, they, they, and she, she surprises too that she came to court and was like, oh, well, I was laid off too. So now we're like, oh, what?

Speaker 8 Like, yeah, you didn't tell us that you were laid off. We were transparent and let her know that, oh, gosh, you know, he received a layoff and we're done in December.

Speaker 8 But then we found out, like, because she's remarried, but then we found out she's not remarried. And she's

Speaker 8 out of ceremony. She's married.

Speaker 3 Can I bust in here? Because I'm not in your situation, but if I were in your shoes, I can see why this is a pain point. I can see how it's annoying.

Speaker 3 I can especially, I mean, this woman's in your life, whether you like it or not. If I could make this way more, if I were in your shoes, I'd be picturing the child.

Speaker 3 Because the fact is, if you make a human being, you got to pay for them, period. Like the same way you pay for money to raise your kids, that's just part of it.

Speaker 3 So I'd be thinking way more about the kid as much as you can. Imagine them, think about what that $500 is doing for them, and try to keep her out of that vision as much as possible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is not ex-wife support. This is child support.
Right. Yeah, that,

Speaker 1 and that, you know, and honestly, when he is working, what is the child support?

Speaker 8 We don't know yet. So, because she's still he's never paid child support? No, he did.
Well, so he, she actually was not awarded child support and alimony, which she went for the first time.

Speaker 8 She was because when he laid everything out, he paid everything already. He paid her car insurance, he paid cell phone plus all the, all the kids.

Speaker 8 So what the court decided was just disparaging income, he got family support.

Speaker 8 So he used to pay about 500 family support with the stipulation that he continues continues to pay everything, all after school care, dental, you know, all the things, plus her car insurance and her cell phone and stuff.

Speaker 8 He still had to do that for two years. Okay.

Speaker 1 But that's over now. That's over now.
So that was over. And you married into that, though.
You knew that when you got married.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay.
So let me, let me, so that was how much total in a month that he was paying.

Speaker 8 So she, he, oh gosh, to total all the bills, I don't know. All the bills were like all the medical, her car insurance, whatever, probably.

Speaker 1 Okay, so when you go back, it's not going to be any of that. It's going to just be a a percentage of his income.

Speaker 8 Yes. Okay, good.
In February, it'll be whatever.

Speaker 1 That's really good. Because really, what that does is it disconnects her from misbehaving and wanting it paid for.
Okay, she just gets a fixed amount of his income regardless.

Speaker 1 But she doesn't get it anyway. Kiddo gets it to Jay.
It's a child. So we're paying this for this child.
And you knew this when you came in. It's not his fault.
It's not your fault.

Speaker 1 And it's not even benefiting the lady,

Speaker 1 the ex-wife.

Speaker 1 It's just benefiting the kid. And truthfully, the reason I ask how much is most of the time in most states, the child support that is paid is not enough to raise a kid.

Speaker 3 It's a very small amount.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so he's going to pay a lot, but and it's going to be bothersome, but it's still not enough to raise a kid. And so, yeah.

Speaker 1 And how old is the child?

Speaker 8 We have two. Well, he has two.
So he has a seven-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter. And then I have two.

Speaker 1 Okay, how old are you?

Speaker 8 Our family is six over here.

Speaker 1 How old are yours?

Speaker 8 So mine. So, oh my God, you guys, we're in the thick of it.
We have a seven-year-old, a 10-year-old, an 11-year-old, and a 12-year-old.

Speaker 3 So then this is easy for you to imagine these kids when you write that $500 check or whatever it's going to be.

Speaker 3 It's easy for you to imagine, okay, yeah, they, they go to ballet and they go to, you know, they have soccer and they have school lunch. You know what this money's going for.

Speaker 3 They need new boots, all that stuff. That's what you, you need to focus on that.
And you need to get practical about this.

Speaker 3 You need to have it somewhere when where when you start to spin out and you're thinking about her and you're thinking about him and you're thinking about the past because you you told us a lot of stuff that's not even currently happening anymore you need to focus on what is happening today and what is the benefit and just remind yourself here's why I'm doing this I got to refocus and I think that's going to help you his youngest is how old

Speaker 1 seven okay so you got so you got 10 years 11 years yeah Yes, that's really not much. In the scope of life, that's not much.

Speaker 1 It's a meme problem.

Speaker 8 I just don't know.

Speaker 1 I'm not, we're not, we're not picking on you.

Speaker 1 I think it's normal to have the emotions that you have. You ask how to handle them, and we're just suggesting we redirect them and compartmentalize them.

Speaker 1 You've uh in the way you've described it with your language was it's all about her. And Jade's point is none of it's really about her, other than she's obviously a test pilot for a broom factory.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 so I mean, you know, no, there's a reason she's called the ex. And so, you know, and so we get that part, but that's normal dealing with exes.
There's a reason they're gone.

Speaker 1 And so,

Speaker 1 but yeah, you're going to be in weddings together

Speaker 1 and you'll be at other things together in the future and for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 And it'll get easier and easier. But yeah,

Speaker 1 I like the idea that we're getting away from paying individual expenses like her cell phone. That sounds kind of ridiculous and personal.

Speaker 1 I would be much more torqued about that if I were in your shoes than I would just writing a child support check yes that was very difficult when i first yeah that's just that's just that was stupid that was just a bad idea yeah but that part's over yeah it's gone that part's it's done and gone so you know wrapped up put a bow on that i have a feeling you love your husband and i have a feeling you actually love his kids i do yeah of course i do so this is their this is their money yeah and you would help them because you're a good mom

Speaker 1 so yeah that is really helpful yeah oh my gosh that's the that's the right way to do it yeah you're heading in the right direction for sure there. So I'm proud of you.
It's a good question.

Speaker 1 It is good. And I appreciate you being vulnerable and coming on the air with us and talking about it.

Speaker 3 It's such a human way to feel. Yeah.
You know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's hard. I think

Speaker 1 kiddos are kiddos, and that's where we are. Thanks for calling.
We appreciate you being with us. Fun.
Wow.

Speaker 3 I like that video situation. That's nice.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's super. I mean, we get these calls in there on the air, on the phone.
It's anonymous. We're out here.
You just walked up. Yeah.
Right into her house. I like that.

Speaker 1 And on a very personal, intimate question. Oh, yeah.
So very interesting. Very interesting.

Speaker 3 That's not easy. That's not an easy situation to deal with.

Speaker 1 No, but I mean, I'm, you know,

Speaker 1 so I guess some advice would be for everyone out there, if you're going through this, don't set up a situation where you're paying for individual bills like that. With the ex.

Speaker 1 Like, for God's sakes, her cell phone.

Speaker 1 That one's just whack a whack.

Speaker 3 Well, then you're in their life.

Speaker 3 Without wanting to, you're judging how they're, you know, judging the cost, judging.

Speaker 1 I want them to be away.

Speaker 1 That's the reason they're ex. Go away.
Yes. Way away.
Way away. Way away.
Go find an away place to be.

Speaker 1 And I don't want to know what your issues are.

Speaker 1 I actually know what they are, and I don't want to know about them anymore.

Speaker 1 And so, yeah, I don't want to know about medical.

Speaker 1 You deal with your stuff.

Speaker 1 There's an idea. That's what you signed up for when you became the ex.
You deal with your stuff. And here's what the law says I have to do, take care of my baby, and I will do take care of the baby.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm under.

Speaker 1 Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Speaker 1 Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. Jade Washall, number one best-selling author Ramsey personality, is my co-host today.
I am Dave Ramsey, your host.

Speaker 1 Albert Einstein famously said, compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it.
He who doesn't pays it.

Speaker 1 If you invest $100 a month and you got average stock market returns for the past 100 years or so, you would hit around 12%.

Speaker 1 $100 a month invested from age 25 to age 65 is $1,176,000.

Speaker 1 How is it that $1,200 a month for 40 years becomes $1,000,000?

Speaker 1 $1,200 a year for 40 years. There you go.
Yeah. Becomes, it's called compound interest.
So compound interest,

Speaker 1 Buffett described it as a snowball rolling down the hill. So a little snowball picks up a little snow the first time it comes around.

Speaker 1 The next time it comes around, it's larger and it picks up more snow. The next time it comes around, it picks up more snow.

Speaker 1 And the next time it picks up, and that's called a mathematical geometric progression.

Speaker 1 And so, compound interest shows you that interest works on a curve, it is not a straight line.

Speaker 1 So, an example of that is if you took a $500,000 mortgage, now interest rates currently on homes for a 15-year fix is 5.5%.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 so if you took out a 5% loan, we'll call it to make it easy on a half a million dollars,

Speaker 1 your payment on that 15-year fixed-rate loan would be $3,953.

Speaker 1 If you doubled the amount of time

Speaker 1 that you're in debt from 15 years to 30 years,

Speaker 1 you would think, if you didn't understand compound interest, that your payment would be half.

Speaker 1 So 15 should be double what a 30 is, correct?

Speaker 1 Well, it's not. It's only 33%

Speaker 1 more

Speaker 1 to be in debt half 50% of the time. That's right.
Because the compound, because you're doing away with the principal and doing away with the need to pay interest. And so you pay a lot less interest.

Speaker 1 And so your payment is only 33% more to go to a 15-year from a 30-year.

Speaker 1 It's not double. But if you don't understand how the math works, you think, oh, a 15 and a 30 is a 50 is a thing.
So a couple of weeks ago,

Speaker 1 President Donald Trump came out with this crazy idea for 50-year mortgages,

Speaker 1 to which instantaneously my friend Seth Dillon over at Babylon Bee

Speaker 1 does a photoshop of me in intensive care. Dave Ramsey's in intensive care, in critical condition after learning of 50-year mortgages.
Mr. Get out of bed.

Speaker 1 And I really look pretty sick in this.

Speaker 1 Here's the dumbest thing, okay? All of my 65-year-old and 60-year-old and 70-year-old friends sent that to me laughing because it's the best dad joke ever. But

Speaker 1 none of my 25-year-old friends thought it was that funny. They didn't even get it, really.
It's like, I don't understand. But I did look pretty sick in there, Seth.

Speaker 1 I mean, did you really, you doctored the face-up and everything? You were slim. You were the guys at Babylon B, I look kind of old.
You're like, I mean, it's like, water, I need water.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So Babylon B is funny.
They're friends of ours and they're always pick on me, but it's good natured and we love them and they're great.

Speaker 1 But here's the thing: President Trump actually realizes, I suppose,

Speaker 1 because he is

Speaker 1 a math guy and a real estate guy, that the difference in a 50-year mortgage and a 30-year mortgage is more about

Speaker 1 looking like he did something to help people

Speaker 1 than the math is.

Speaker 1 This is a political stunt

Speaker 1 by President Trump. if he actually knows what's going on.
Otherwise, it's an ignorant stunt by President Trump. I don't know which one it is.

Speaker 1 Because the difference in a 50-year mortgage mortgage and a 30-year mortgage, as we just described, you would think it would be almost half, but it's only 16% less.

Speaker 1 So your payment on a 50-year, on a half million dollars is $2,200.

Speaker 1 On a 30-year is $2,600.

Speaker 1 You save a whole $300

Speaker 1 by going in debt an extra 20 freaking years.

Speaker 1 And you save $300.

Speaker 1 And this is going to fix America's housing crisis. Oh, horse crap, Trump.
That's absolutely asinine, and you know it. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 I mean, come on.

Speaker 3 And then talk about the interest.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is like Joe Biden saying he's forgiving student loans when he knows he can't, okay? It's just the same. It's political stunt.
You know you can't do this.

Speaker 1 The law won't let you do it, but you're walking around strutting around acting like you did something. You politicians.
So Trump's like, I'm going to give him a 50-year mortgage.

Speaker 1 Because he's got billions of dollars of mortgages on all these New York buildings, and he just loves debt. He thinks it's awesome.
He and I have disagreed on that since back in the Larry King days.

Speaker 1 I remember, y'all remember Larry King? Oh, Larry King Live before. We used to do those TV shows, and they had like six people on there.
Looked like

Speaker 1 Brady Bunch. Looked like the Brady Bunch.

Speaker 1 We're in the boxes on the Brady Bunch, and Trump would be in the left-hand bottom corner, and I'm up in the other corner, and I'm yelling at him about getting out of debt.

Speaker 1 And he's like, who is this hillbilly on the thing with me? And that's the first time he and I ever talked was I got in a big fight with him on Larry King like 25 or 30 years ago.

Speaker 1 I actually like President Trump in in general and I've been around him several times, but this is an absolute bogus political stunt and he knows that he's over laughing at you people going, oh, 50 years, we're not going to have to pay anything.

Speaker 1 We can get a mortgage for almost nothing. Compound interest, baby.
We just explained it to you. It saves you almost nothing over a 30-year mortgage.

Speaker 1 16%, but you're almost 100% more in debt.

Speaker 3 But talk about the fact that it's a trap in that, because I've heard a lot of people say, well, I can get it. It's a great place to start.

Speaker 1 And then later on, I can move to something else. Yeah, there's a great place to start to go to a payday lender, too.
It's a great place to start to go to a pawn shop.

Speaker 1 This is an absolutely stupid statement.

Speaker 3 They're not thinking about when you do that, how quickly are you gaining equity? It is

Speaker 1 an equity. Except the house goes up in value.
Yeah. But you could get an interest-only loan, and it would be almost the same thing.

Speaker 3 Basically.

Speaker 1 They had interest-only loans for a while. Y'all remember those? That was stupid on steroids.
Hello, 2008. We're calling.
And yeah, does anybody remember Stupid on Steroids? I remember it.

Speaker 1 How about a one-year adjustable rate mortgage tied to an index that already started in the hole your first day?

Speaker 1 In other words, if you had to adjust it the day you took out the mortgage, you would already be going up. That's how all the one-year arms are set up, by the way, boys and girls.

Speaker 1 This is why it's stupid. The game is rigged.
So what you want to do is if you're going to get in the game, you want to get out as fast as possible, not plan to stay in.

Speaker 1 So you're not saving anything by taking out a 50-year mortgage. Sorry, President Trump.
Bogus move. You either knew it or you didn't, but now

Speaker 1 when you hear this, you'll at least know. And I was on a call with him just a few weeks ago on some other stuff.
You told him it was dumb? No, it wasn't out by then.

Speaker 1 It came out about three days after that.

Speaker 1 But I'm not going to, you know, he'll hear about this or he won't. It doesn't matter.
He's not taking Dave Ramsey's opinion anyway. I can tell you that.

Speaker 1 He is not worried about what I think at all. You're not worried about what anything thinks.
But bottom line, boys and girls, this political move.

Speaker 1 Whether you love Trump or you hate Trump, a 50-year mortgage has no mathematical substantiality to if it cut your payment in half we could talk about it

Speaker 1 but it cuts it 16

Speaker 3 don't be stupid if you're interested in lowering your payment 300 just get a slightly cheaper house oh whoa

Speaker 1 mic drop whoa

Speaker 1 this is why we pay her the big money right here boys and girls

Speaker 1 When you're tired of feeling stuck with money, there's just one solution. To get different results, you have to do something different.
No one accidentally wins with money.

Speaker 1 You have to have a game plan, and that begins with our get started assessment. Go to ramseysolutions.com slash start, answer some questions, and we'll show you what steps to take next.

Speaker 1 Don't stay stuck. Take control of your money starting today.
Go with ramseysolutions.com slash start.

Speaker 1 Tis the season,

Speaker 1 time of year when we talk about giving. We're going to be doing our giving edition, the special giving edition of the Ramsey Show in December.

Speaker 1 We want to hear stories from you about how you have given generously some time in the past, and maybe you tipped a waitress $100 or $1,000 or bought Thanksgiving dinner for a family who couldn't afford it, or or maybe you blessed someone in need by giving them a car.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was something other than that. And we want to hear something that makes everybody be inspired to give.
Generosity is the most fun you can have with money.

Speaker 1 Maybe you've been on the receiving end and had your life changed by someone who was generous to you. Well, we want to hear from you either way.
Go to ramseysolutions.com slash ask.

Speaker 1 Put giving in the subject line. Tell us a little bit about the story.
And we do this every year at Christmas time. It's one of our most popular shows.
It's coming up on December 18th.

Speaker 1 So start sending in your stories on giving today. Let's celebrate living like no one else so later you can give

Speaker 1 like no one else. Robin is with us in Orlando.
Hi, Robin. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 1 Thank you for taking my call. I really appreciate it.
You're the only person I think that I want your opinion on this. My husband wants to buy a $300,000 car,

Speaker 1 and it just puts a rock in the pit of my stomach. Wow.
So, my question is: What is the car? Yeah,

Speaker 1 like a Shelby.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 1 Oh, see, now you like it. See, that's my finance guy, Matt.
I say to Matt, Matt,

Speaker 1 listen, it's a very cool car. But so the question is:

Speaker 1 is just, you know, how much is $300,000 in Euro's world? What's your all's net worth?

Speaker 1 Close to $20

Speaker 1 million. So you have twenty million dollars.
Okay. Yes.
And w are you retired or does he work?

Speaker 1 We're retired. We retired last year.
Okay. Sold the business and we are, yeah, fully retired.
Plenty of investment. I mean,

Speaker 1 I really have no reason to say no to this, except something in me says, this is absolutely ridiculous. This is the worst idea he's ever had.
But I don't want to cause a problem and say that.

Speaker 1 So I need somebody to tell me which direction to go.

Speaker 1 I think you should say that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then I think you should say, that's how I feel. But my brain tells me that we have the money and you've worked hard a really long time and this is a small amount of money to us.

Speaker 1 My heart doesn't understand that and my stomach definitely doesn't understand that.

Speaker 1 Because you remember the old days when you all were broke and

Speaker 1 couldn't afford to go out to eat, right?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. I always took care of the money.

Speaker 1 So here's the thing. I've gone through the same stuff, Robin, Sharon, and I have.
And,

Speaker 1 you know, we've got 1,100 people working here. We buy the coffee for our team.

Speaker 1 The coffee bill at Ramsey blows my freaking mind, okay?

Speaker 1 Because my mind still remembers my 28-year-old self that was bankrupt and couldn't feed my kids, right?

Speaker 1 My emotions still feel that. My mind, though, knows that the company took in $300 million last year.
We can probably pay the coffee bill.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 We can afford that. So the math says it's no big deal, but the emotions are remembering the past,

Speaker 1 not the current.

Speaker 1 And so I have to use my intellect to go, it's okay to buy coffee for 1,100 people because it really is a small percentage of our overall budget and overall world. And here's the thing.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing.

Speaker 1 When Sharon wants to buy something expensive, or Dave, or we want to give away $300,000 to charity, to a ministry, okay, in your situation, we ask ourselves, if we took that amount of money and burned it in the kitchen floor,

Speaker 1 would our life change?

Speaker 1 So here's the thing. The stock market will move on your $20 million worth of investments more than $300,000 in the next 60 days, up or down.

Speaker 1 True. And you won't even look at it.

Speaker 1 That's true. Yeah.
So it's not, because

Speaker 1 it's not relevant, it's not going to kill you.

Speaker 1 If it moved $18 million out of 20 million, yeah, I'm starting to have a duck fit now, girl.

Speaker 1 Okay, I like how you put it. It's a small percentage of your world, and you will survive.
And

Speaker 1 the thing that makes you want to scream is remembering how hard it was in the old days to get to this point.

Speaker 1 And it's hard for your emotions to keep up with the math.

Speaker 1 A $300,000 card is just

Speaker 1 outrageous. It is.
It is outrageous. You know what else is outrageous? You got $20 million, girl.

Speaker 1 That's freaking outrageously wonderful. That's so wonderful.
You know why? Because y'all busted your butt all these years and then you sold that business and somebody wrote y'all a big old check.

Speaker 1 This is very true.

Speaker 1 Luck didn't have nothing to do with this girl. You paid a price.

Speaker 1 You worked overtime.

Speaker 1 Y'all know what a callus looks like. What kind of business was it? It was construction industry.
You definitely know what a callus looks like. You put up with some bull crap over the years.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It just makes him so happy.
But

Speaker 1 I'm not really

Speaker 1 sure. It's not going to make it happy.
I want to talk to your wife and see what she says. She would say do it because I drive a Raptor that's probably

Speaker 1 over 100.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 my Raptor R pickup truck is nuts. It's crazy.
There's no reason anybody should ever have a truck like that, but it's a very, very small percentage of our world.

Speaker 1 All right. You've made me feel better.
I appreciate it. I don't think you're being dumb.
I don't think he's being dumb.

Speaker 1 I think you don't understand. I don't think you appreciate cars like he does, and that's okay.
You don't have to.

Speaker 1 And I think you're a good lady for looking over his shoulder.

Speaker 1 And I like, don't you love the way she's,

Speaker 1 she really is asking the question. She's not telling us the question.
You know what I'm saying, Jade?

Speaker 1 I do.

Speaker 1 Well, it's been eating me. And, you know, kind of funny because I called a couple of times and then I would find out, well, you weren't on, but I couldn't hold on anyway.

Speaker 1 So I just happened to get right through today because I knew I needed to ask you this. Oh, it's just me.
I feel a lot better.

Speaker 1 Well, I just, I feel like you, you attitude with cars. And again, I wanted to talk to your wife more than you, I think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, doesn't everybody. We can't get her to come on.
She comes on Rachel's show, but she won't come on my show.

Speaker 1 Darn. All right.
You made me feel better. The rock in my stomach is a little easier.
I will tell him. At least it'll get off my chest.
Tell him you think it's dumb, but you think he's earned it.

Speaker 1 That's the way I'm going to put it. I think it's dumb, but he has earned it.
That's the truth. He has earned it.
$20 million freaking dollars for a construction company.

Speaker 3 I'm back.

Speaker 1 Back? Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 Did you go around the planet once?

Speaker 3 I went around the planet. I did an orbit, and now I'm back.

Speaker 1 So when you live like no one else, one of the things we're discovering is we've shown people how to become millionaires, in some cases multi-millionaires.

Speaker 1 Now, we didn't show them how to sell their company. They did that.

Speaker 1 We'll give them all the credit on that. But we've shown a lot of people how to build a really nice level of wealth.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 But a lot of money is always a lot of money. Even if it's a smaller percentage, everybody can look at $300,000 and go, that's a lot of money.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I can look at that and say, you just see what I'm saying?

Speaker 3 That part doesn't go away, I got to believe.

Speaker 1 And honestly, probably top of the market for, I mean, the Shelby.

Speaker 1 This is a special car, but it's

Speaker 1 a special car. I don't know.
I'm not sure. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 it doesn't matter again it passes the burn the money in the middle of the floor test right and so this is why you can't afford to spend twenty

Speaker 1 I don't know let's just say twelve thousand dollars and go spend a week on fast pass at Disney when you have twenty thousand dollars to your name

Speaker 1 you just spent all your money on Disney now see that's way different

Speaker 1 you know if you want to put this in a ratio with her uh you can afford a Chick-fil-A biscuit So that's drive-through. That's that's your drive-through biscuit.

Speaker 1 That's your drive-through budget right there. So this is like you buying a biscuit

Speaker 1 if you got $20,000. Yeah, same thing.
So $20 million, $20,000.

Speaker 3 But it doesn't feel, somehow it still doesn't feel that way. You know it, but it doesn't feel that way, huh?

Speaker 3 Or does it feel? Did buying your raptor feel like a biscuit?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's the third one. It's the third one I bought.
Okay, okay. You got three biscuits.
I've gotten practice.

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Check it out. South Dakota's calling.
Sarah's with us.

Speaker 1 Hi, Sarah.

Speaker 1 Hey, how are you guys today? Better than we deserve. What's up in your world?

Speaker 1 Well, say, just have a quick question. So

Speaker 1 my husband and I got a term life insurance policy through Xander when our son was first born.

Speaker 1 But that was 15 years ago. And

Speaker 1 since then, life has hit a little bit. We are still making progress with our debt snowball.
We're actually planning to pay off our last debt by

Speaker 1 hopefully February.

Speaker 1 However, we're not there yet. But over the years, our income has increased quite a bit.
So when we were first married, we were making about 70 combined. Now we're making about 180.

Speaker 1 So my question is.

Speaker 1 Why is it taking you 15 years to get out of debt?

Speaker 1 Well, you you know, maybe we'ren't so gazelle-intense.

Speaker 1 Not at all. Okay.

Speaker 1 Right, right.

Speaker 1 But we're getting there now, so we're getting really close.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you still have a mortgage and you still have what else?

Speaker 1 We have $8,000 on my student loan, and we've got our mortgage, and that is all we have left. Wow.

Speaker 3 So what's the question today?

Speaker 1 So the question today, we are curious, do we need to consider increasing our life insurance through Xander,

Speaker 1 given that our income has gone up?

Speaker 1 I know the recommendation is like 10 to 12 percent of

Speaker 1 your overall income. Or because we're so close to being debt-free, do we not need to take that approach? Because ultimately we'll be self-funded through insurance.

Speaker 3 No, you need to extend because self being self-insured would denote that you've got a massive nest egg of wealth that can cover you when those situations arise and you don't have that just yet.

Speaker 3 If you keep going with intensity, you will. But if you play the next 15 years, like you've played this last 15 years, you're still going to be in debt.

Speaker 1 You'll still have a mortgage.

Speaker 1 Well, we are definitely not looking to do that. We're definitely looking to get to attack that mortgage as soon as the student loans paid off.
So everything is going to be a good idea.

Speaker 1 When you have enough money in investments that the income off of the investments will support you if he dies,

Speaker 1 then you're self-insured. You're not there.

Speaker 1 We want you to be okay if something happens to him and you're not there.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And we want him to be okay if something happens to you and make sure the kiddos are fed and so forth.

Speaker 1 And that would be that, you know, and so if you had a million dollars and it was producing 10%, that'd be $100,000.

Speaker 1 Okay. And that's not even, that won't even take care of you now because you're making $180,000.

Speaker 1 And so you'd need about $2 million in investments right now in zero debt in order to be self-insured, equal to, you know, having the right amount of life insurance.

Speaker 1 So, no, yeah, you need to increase your life insurance and buy new policies. Yeah, if your 15-year fixed policy is running out, buying

Speaker 1 by new ones. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah, and here's the thing.

Speaker 1 If you do get intense,

Speaker 1 if that did happen and you get out of debt and you look up and there's a million or two million dollars in investments and zero debt, you can cancel the life insurance.

Speaker 1 You don't have to keep paying it. You can just call them and cancel it.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 if you don't smoke, folks, and you're not overweight, life insurance doesn't cost anything. It's very inexpensive.
Very.

Speaker 1 So 15-year level, 15 to 20-year level fixed rate.

Speaker 1 And the idea is that during that 15 years, you pay off your mortgage yeah and you get out of debt and you build up some investments and the kids grow up and leave that's right during that 15 to 20 years and so we don't have kiddos to take care of we've got a pile of money and you you work your way into a net worth that allows you to be self-insured policy and so but you guys have been slow

Speaker 1 so you get to re-up your life insurance and uh and then you can always drop it later but for right now you're not ready that's a good question yeah felix is in los angeles hi Felix. How are you?

Speaker 1 Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be on the show.
Sure. I'm calling today to get more, to get your advice on my current living situation.

Speaker 1 I work for a government utilities agency in Los Angeles as an engineer.

Speaker 1 I currently live in downtown L.A.

Speaker 1 I'm paying about $3,000 in rent per month. And I just turned 30 this year.
And I watch your show. I hear

Speaker 1 your advice about ownership and owning a home someday.

Speaker 1 And that's a goal

Speaker 1 for my life as well. And I wanted to get your thoughts on renewing my lease, which expires this month, or going back home to stay with my parents.

Speaker 3 Well, how much do you bring home every month?

Speaker 1 So after tax, I bring home about

Speaker 1 somewhere between $6,000 and $6,500.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 what you're telling me is your rent's 50% of your take-home.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes, it's around that.

Speaker 1 If you include utilities and, you know,

Speaker 3 so I think you know

Speaker 3 there's one of two things that can happen here. You can either figure out a way to bust free and suddenly make $20,000

Speaker 3 a month, or you can look for someplace that's far less expensive for rent. What would you do if you moved

Speaker 3 away and moved towards where your family is? What would you do for a living?

Speaker 1 Well, I would still be an engineer.

Speaker 1 My family stays in Fontana, which is about maybe 50 miles away from Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 Do you have an engineering degree?

Speaker 1 Yes, I have a bachelor's in civil engineering and I have a master's in environmental engineering. And you make $70,000 a year?

Speaker 1 Well, that's, that's, no, I make around $105,000 a year. How long have you been out of school?

Speaker 1 I graduated with my master's in 2023 and shortly afterwards when I moved to LA and got my job in Los Angeles.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, you're living in one of the most expensive places in the country.

Speaker 3 So there is always going to be a limit because of that.

Speaker 3 So I, I, if I were in your shoes, yeah, I'd be looking for other places. Now, Fontana, that you mentioned, I mean, have you priced it out? What's the difference?

Speaker 3 Could you get a one-bedroom and what would it cost? Would it get you to the 25% range?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 in L.A.,

Speaker 1 it's very difficult to find a place to stay.

Speaker 1 I'm talking about Fontana, like you said.

Speaker 1 I'll be staying with my parents. Okay, so Felix, here's the thing.
What you want, staying with your parents is not your play because it doesn't take you to the future you want.

Speaker 1 you've said no you've said nothing about where you want to be in 20 years in 10 years and and how staying with your parents is going to get you there all we're doing is solving the immediate problem by going backwards so no i'm not going to do that if i'm you i'm looking for a new job that pays 150 000 in a market where the rent is half of what it is in la

Speaker 1 and you make a move for your career, you're a single guy, and you go out there and make some money and get your cost of housing down. Because

Speaker 1 if you're working for a utility, your bumps, your increases in pay are going to be moderate to poor.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's a government job. Yeah, it's going to be moderate to poor.
The pay is already low, and it's not going to get better.

Speaker 1 You're going to get cost of living bumps and nothing else. And so as an engineer, you can go out there and make twice what you're making now in an area that costs half what it costs to live in L.A.

Speaker 1 And that puts you in a position to build a life, a financial life, including home ownership. But the ratio you're giving me right now, going back to your parents doesn't solve it.
No.

Speaker 1 That's regressing instead of saying, how can I move forward? So I'm going to be figuring out a way to move forward.

Speaker 1 Either a different kind of engineer application for my master's in engineering in Los Angeles where I make a lot more, or a different city or both.

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Speaker 1 Our scripture of the day, Ecclesiastes 3.11, he has made everything beautiful in its time. He's also set eternity in every human heart.
Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Speaker 1 Andy Warhol said, they always say time changes things, but actually you have to change them yourself.

Speaker 1 All right. This is true.

Speaker 1 Megan's in Detroit. Hi, Megan.
What's up?

Speaker 1 Hi.

Speaker 1 I love you guys. I just want to say that first and foremost.

Speaker 1 But my question is, my husband and I just got married in September. And this year so far, we've been really working the debt snowball and paying for our,

Speaker 1 like paying off some of our loans while saving for our wedding. And the plan was when we finished saving and paying for our wedding, we would go back and really like work our debt down.

Speaker 1 And six weeks before we got married, my little brother died.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah. It's not really what I pictured this season to look like.

Speaker 1 And I guess my pro my

Speaker 1 question is: I'm just curious on your perspective of like taking a break from the Dead Snowball in the first year of this time.

Speaker 1 What happened to him?

Speaker 1 He was in an accident.

Speaker 1 How old was he? 23. What was his name?

Speaker 1 Rocco. Rocco.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, Megan. That hurts beyond belief.

Speaker 1 And you were obviously close. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And how old are you?

Speaker 1 29.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.

Speaker 1 Well, um,

Speaker 1 you're welcome to do whatever you want to do. It's your life.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And if you and your husband sit down and say, we're going to take X number of time off and just we're not going into debt. We're not going to grief spend,

Speaker 1 but we're just going to take some time off with the intensity and cry a little,

Speaker 1 that would be perfectly fine.

Speaker 1 What I would recommend is, A, that you stay on a plan because you can have a tendency to drift and go, well, I'm having kind of a down day, so I'm going to overspend.

Speaker 1 It's called grief spending, okay? And you don't want to do that. You don't want to lose ground.

Speaker 1 You won't like that later when you look back at it. Does that make sense? Yeah.
It's easy to medicate grief with spending. A lot of people do it.
And so be careful with that.

Speaker 1 But if you say, okay, we're going to slow off on the intensity, we're just going to pay the bills, go no further into debt, and just give ourselves a little cushion for some time to get to where we can breathe again.

Speaker 1 Well, that would be a human act. There's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 1 What's like,

Speaker 1 I guess... Because I know this is not really like a unique situation.
I mean, it feels unique to me, but you guys hear this call a lot. Like, what's a good amount of time

Speaker 1 to give yourself before you get away from the future? You know, we don't get this call a lot. We get the call where it's a spouse.

Speaker 1 And that's the one I've answered many times in the 35 years, but I don't know that I've gotten a call from a sister with a 23-year-old that was killed in an accident. I mean,

Speaker 1 that's a different kind of thing in your spouse.

Speaker 3 It could be a good idea, and I'm just talking out loud.

Speaker 3 It could be a good idea to give yourself a time limit so that you don't stay wandering for too long, almost like, okay, I did my thing, it's time for me to get moving.

Speaker 3 It's kind of like when you're sitting on the couch, after a while, you need to just get up and stretch your legs and move around again.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what's your household income?

Speaker 1 So, after tax from our day jobs, we bring in $9,800 a month. Okay, and how much debt do you have?

Speaker 1 We total $59,951. Okay.
And you're obviously the nerd of the family. You know everything to the point.

Speaker 1 I love you. You're awesome.
Okay. I love my husband.
He's not like a money stressor or why don't the two of you talk about it and pray about it and say, all right, how long do I need to get the

Speaker 1 majority or enough of my heart healed that I can focus?

Speaker 1 Okay?

Speaker 1 Because we do know this about grief. When you're addressing it, if you address it properly, and you may need to sit down and talk to someone about it, may need to get a good therapist involved,

Speaker 1 but if you're addressing it properly,

Speaker 1 the pain never leaves completely, but it does get further and further and further in the rearview mirror.

Speaker 1 And it's not that we're going to forget Rocco, that's not the point, or that his death's not going to be unimportant at some point. That's not what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 But I am saying right now it's taking up a lot of your headspace. A year from now, it will be less.
Five years from now, it will be less. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 1 I hope so. Yeah, you don't want to be sitting in exactly the same place of pain, and he wouldn't want you to.

Speaker 1 So we just say, you know, we acknowledge that it's hurting. We sit down and get some help with that, and we walk through it.
And so,

Speaker 1 you know, you two talk about it, and I don't really care, but I would highly recommend, A, that you stay on a system where you're not spending more.

Speaker 1 You're not going further in. That's a big deal.
The two of you agree to that. But we're not going to work six jobs.
We're not going to, you know, we'll go out to eat.

Speaker 1 We're going to take some time off here. We're not going to throw money out the debt snowball like it's, like our life depends on it.
We're not doing any of that right now.

Speaker 1 And we're going to give ourselves a period of time. And so

Speaker 1 I'll give you just a guess, but it's not a professional guess because Dr. John Deloney's not here.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm just dad. Okay.
I'm just the old man. So it feels like that you need 60 to 90 days.

Speaker 1 And I think at the end of that time, if you're working on this, you're going to have a lot clearer head.

Speaker 1 That's my guess. But this happened right before the wedding.
And then you had the wedding. So you had these two huge events all within a couple of minutes of each other.

Speaker 1 And now we're going into Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 And so it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Agreed?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
So you get the other side of the first of the year and let things calm down a little bit and get a little bit more boring because the boring has not been your life lately.

Speaker 1 And then then that that's kind of when that's kind of when some of this will flush out, I think. But that's just an old guy talking, not a professional.

Speaker 1 Does that feel right to you?

Speaker 1 I think so.

Speaker 1 I definitely like it's har I like I want to be intense about paying off our debt still and then when I go to do it I just don't.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's not it's not it's not the most important thing to you right now and that makes sense.

Speaker 1 Yeah. This this saps some of your strength takes some of your energy away.
And that that just means you're a good person. It means you're a good sister.

Speaker 1 So I just I think I think you and your husband pray about this. I think I would sit down.

Speaker 1 Are you guys in a good church?

Speaker 1 Not

Speaker 1 really.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, not here.

Speaker 1 We've kind of started looking around. Yeah, I think I'd be looking around and,

Speaker 1 you know, find a good therapist, find a good pastor to sit down and unpack some of this with, and put it on the calendar that the 1st of March, we're go time.

Speaker 1 Or something like that. I don't care.
If you decide it's the 1st of April, but it doesn't need to be 2028.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I think that'll give you some peace. You're a very analytical, detailed person, and this drifting is not something that gives you peace.

Speaker 1 You need, it's going to give you more peace to say, all right, I'm going to work on this hard, this grief thing, and I'm going to honor Rocco

Speaker 1 very intensely for this period of time, and then I'm coming out of the fog on this date.

Speaker 1 And if you give yourself that as a set desired future, a set goal, I think it's going to help you because of the way your brain works. Am I reading you right?

Speaker 1 I think so, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're a good sister and you're a good husband or you're a good wife and your husband is lucky. So you're going to be great.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And yeah, take a minute. Take a minute and breathe.
You should. If you didn't, you'd be weird.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 I mean, that'd be weird, wouldn't it? I mean, just to act like this didn't happen, that's going to blow up.

Speaker 1 And it did happen right before your wedding. I mean, come on, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is like, yeah, this is hard. This is bad medicine right here.
So, yeah, sit down and talk to somebody, kiddo. Set a date prayerfully with your husband.
I think you're going to be great.

Speaker 1 She's going to be great. She's going to be okay.

Speaker 1 That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.