You Can’t Fix People by Funding Their Bad Decisions

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

I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney, host of the Dr.
John Deloney Show, one of our most popular properties on the Ramsey Network. Number one best-selling author Ramsey Personality.

PhD in counseling, by the way. And after Thanksgiving, some of you probably need a little of that.
Yeah. Open phones here at 888-825-5225.
I'm not saying your family's crazy.

I'm just saying somebody in your family is crazy.

Yeah, that's our standing joke around here. If you think there's crazy in every family, and if you think there's not in yours, that means it's you.

So, yeah, welcome to Thanksgiving, and here we go to Christmas baby yeah just keep it rolling the hits they keep on coming Bonnie's in Las Vegas hey Bonnie welcome to the Ramsey show

hi Dave how are you better than I deserve what's up amen

um well we've been long-standing uh huge fans of yours and uh we just appreciate everything you do and um

We have our 19-year-old. We adopted her when she was 16.

And so we did the best that we could, you know, for the few years that we had where she was living under our roof, just teaching her, you know, how to

how to save money, just be wise, you know, with financial decisions.

And ultimately, it just was not,

you know, received well. And,

you know, so I,

my husband and I, I think, are

at odds because you know, one thing led to another and she just wasn't really making wise choices in any area.

And it just kind of was a better situation for her to leave the home, you know, because we have five little ones

at our house as well. That, you know, she was ultimately an example to as well.

But she's, you know, living with another family member is safe and good. But she's in a situation now where, you know, she doesn't have car insurance because she can't afford it.
And so she's

because she's not working. And now she's, you know, not working because she doesn't have a car to get to work.

And so my mama heart wants to come in and, you know, kind of save her and

help her out.

You know, I don't necessarily know what that looks like, but my husband kind of says, well, she's kind of got to maybe hit rock bottom, hit, you know,

a low so that. you know, she can kind of wake up a little bit.
And, you know, if she wants help, she can come and ask us.

And I'm kind of like, well, maybe she doesn't know that she can, you know, that she can ask us for help.

So we're kind of, you know, at odds there. And I was just wondering if you had any suggestions.

You guys have got big hearts and you're sweet people. And you're really trying to make up 16 years

of mess in just three years.

Yeah. And you did not get to enter into the development stages of her child development.
You didn't get to lay any groundwork there. So basically, you're taking a quasi-adult at 16 and

trying to fill her up with 16 years worth of stuff she didn't get before, and it didn't work. Right?

Yeah. So this is a lot bigger than car insurance for her, isn't it? Right.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I hear the pain in your voice.
I'm sorry. But the.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

So

I'll let John pick it up, but the thing I run into with the money piece the nicest people on the planet, and you're one of them,

and the one day a year that I'm the nicest person and the others I'm not, but that one day I am, I can fall into the same bucket. We become enablers.

Right.

And we say things like mama's heart. It's not mama's heart.

So what I want you to do is I want you to define the word help

to be not something that temporarily takes away her pain, but something that helps her be a better 30-year-old

Yeah

and this and you just caving and running over and throwing money on her while she's misbehaving rebelling and doing a whole bunch of other stuff She shouldn't be doing for her own sake is not really help is it?

It's giving a drunk a drink

Yeah, yeah, so John Yeah,

it's been my experience working with teenagers and young adults who were adopted, especially late that

I don't think this is a conscious thing at all, but there's always going to be a push to see, are you going to leave me too?

And that's a recurring limit to how far can I push you? How far can I stretch these boundaries, stretch this, this rope you're giving me, so I can prove to myself that it's me that's the problem.

And so the challenge for you is, how do you constantly stay in communication to this young person that you adopted

and let them know I will never leave you and that's different than I'm gonna always give you whatever you want whenever you want it

sure

and where I've seen families be successful is it's a little bitty things like a recurring breakfast together

it's a um anytime I'm gonna call you once a week. I'm gonna call you twice a week.
We're gonna meet at the local waffle house there in Vegas once a week on Tuesday mornings.

I'm gonna be there at seven o'clock in the morning, or I'll be in front of your house to pick you up because you don't have a car.

I want to see you

and I'm going to continue to not just talk, but I'm going to do these small steps to prove to you

that I'm in this for the long haul. I'll be your cheerleader and your coach, I won't be your bank.
I'll be your number one fan, but I'm not your bank. That's right.

And like Dave said, we're aiming here for a 30-year-old that believes in themselves,

not a happy 19-year-old. Those are two very different things, right?

And that means you're going to have to weather a storm. And you've weathered one for the last three years.
Is that fair?

Yes. Yeah.

I know it's been messy and ugly. And there's going to be days you sit outside and she doesn't show up.

There's going to be days you're sitting at a diner by yourself and so take other work you got to do or whatever.

But you want to constantly be showing yourself until she says, I don't want a relationship with you.

But like days.

But if a relationship relationship is based on you writing her checks, that's not a relationship. It was never a relationship to begin with.
A purchased relationship has another name. Yeah.

And

there may come a moment when you have to exhale you and your husband and say, we did the best we could for three years in this person's life.

And this person's an adult now and they don't want anything to do with us. And that'll be heartbreaking and all that.

But like Dave said, what is a way that we can be supportive? So you get a job

and I will help you for four months with car insurance until you're under on your feet. Or I'll match you.
You save up part of it. That's my favorite part is the match.

Something like that. But I'm going to call you up and pay for it and call that mother's heart.
No, that's just giving a drunk a drink. Yeah, that's enabling.
Sure.

Right.

And so it's you and your husband getting clear together what are ways that we can partner with

a young adult who has never had any sort of modeling up until 16 years old.

That's just tough. It's tough for that, for your 19-year-old.
It's tough for you all. It's tough for everybody because there's gonna be a lot of hurt involved.

Right.

Yeah, there has been. Yeah, yeah, and yeah.
And you had to get her out of the house away from the kids. So this kid's out of control for sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm sorry. Yeah.
But you're a good person.

You're sweet. You're trying.

And just don't get confused about the definition of help.

Real help helps her when she's 30, not when she's 19. Some 19-year-olds, real help is unlimited beer.
No, that's not what we're talking about.

Yeah, ask yourself: who do you want this 30-year-old to be when they're 30 and reverse engineer that?

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?

They think they're going to die or something. Well, I used to be one of those guys, 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.
That's a gut punch.

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.
Me too.

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

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.

And take care of your dadgum family, man. 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. That's That's exactly what it's supposed to be.
It's saying I love you to your family. Term life insurance.
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Gary is in Riverside, California. Hey, Gary, what's up?

Hey, good morning, Dave and John. Thank you for taking my call.
I'm calling on behalf of my mother-in-law. She's 85 years old.
She's on a fixed income through Social Security, and she's a widow.

We just recently learned that she's racked up $38,000 in debt on credit cards through QVC, JTV, things like that.

She's gone into a debt consolidation company without our knowledge. And then she's still spending using her ATM card through QVC, JTV, HSN.
And every purchase is the five easy payments.

So she's got money coming out of her ATM now

daily that's drawing her into the negative. And on top of that, she was just starting, we found out she's trying to refinance her home that would take her mortgage up to

about 55% of her income. So we're looking for suggestions, one, with the debt that's in collections, and two, how to stop the ongoing money that's coming out of her account literally on a daily basis.

Doesn't matter if she goes back and does it again next week.

We think we finally got her to the point where she realizes that she's got a problem and she can't do it.

Will she sign it over to you? Because right now you don't have a legal claim to tell her to stop.

So she does have a living trust and I am her financial power of attorney there, but she has not been declared incompetent or anything like that. We don't want to know whether or not...

I want her to shut down all of her checking accounts and she has no spending available to her except what you give her and you operate her account as if she's incompetent.

Voluntary. One of the things, that's one of the things that my wife and I were discussing was whether we should shut down that account and for her own good.

Not because you need her money, but I mean, she ain't got any to start with.

But the bottom line is, I don't believe her.

This is a lonely lady that is getting someone on the phone who's talking to her on the shopping channel, and she's figured out a way to have a conversation when she's sitting there by herself, and she's going to do it again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

Until you take all manner of payment out of her control.

And the only way to do that right now, since she's not deemed incompetent, isn't it? Is voluntarily. She has to give that to you.

Yeah.

Look,

I've heard this story a bunch of times in 35 years, okay?

And

it's a classic. And so

I'm not just jumping to conclusions here about this unique situation.

I'm telling you what I would do if it was my mother-in-law. I would say, I really can't help you unless I help you.
And here's how I can best help you.

I will make sure you have food and your house, and I will get these bills paid off for you, but we're going to stop all spending, and I'm going to control the account and make sure you have stuff

until you can get the other side of this. And then we'll look at whether we want you to do it or not.

But we're going to take the Social Security check, put it in a different bank, and we're going to open up an account. And I'm going to be in control of that account.

We're going to close the other account.

Okay. And then you can jump on the phone with the miscellaneous payment people and just go, good luck.
She's 85. She's on Social Security.
She's got nothing.

A matter of fact, if I can scrape together a few dollars of hers, I'll settle it with you. I've got full power of attorney.
I'll send that to you.

And so what you did was prey on old people and took advantage of them and sold them stuff they couldn't afford. So you're going to get what you deserve, which is nothing, honey.

So I'm going to totally mess with them, bloody their nose. I'll pay them something.
But

they can be cleared up. You're just going to have have to bully them for what they, and that's what they deserve.

Yeah. But you can't do it if she's doing 10 more tomorrow.
Right, right.

And she will, dude, don't you think?

That's our number one concern, yes. Yeah.
Larry Briquette used to say financial problems are not the problem. They're the symptom.
If these problems are the symptom, then what's the real problem?

I think it's loneliness.

Part of it, but some of it she's clicking through things on Facebook, and they're signing her up for things that she's not even realizing that she's signing up for.

Okay. She's being preyed upon as an elder that doesn't understand the technology, and she's lonely.

100%.

Yeah.

And so,

you know,

I've got to build a system that brings that into consideration to help her. And that's what I'm outlining.

Will she turn it over to you?

You think she'll do it?

It depends on the day.

At times, she seems like she's wanting help, and then at others, she gets stubborn and is like, I know what I'm doing. Just leave me alone.
It's your wife's mom. Yes.
Your wife got siblings?

Two of them.

Yeah, she means to make sure they're in the loop.

They are.

But I mean, they're in the loop with you taking this over.

Because then they're going to be calling me and go, my brother-in-law stole all my mother's money. That's right.

Yeah. And then you're setting up another war when she passes away

because then it will be like, where's the money? What'd you do? And we didn't know you were doing this.

Just keep a real clear ledger so you know exactly where every bit of it went so you can handle an audit. And you just send them the audit and go, good luck, figure it out.
You weren't there.

You weren't helping.

But that's coming up too. But I'd send them a report once a month.
Let them see exactly what's going on once you take it over so that they don't come back at you later.

They don't have any legal basis, but I'm just talking about relationally.

Yeah.

Understood. And I have a personal rule of thumb.

It's not ironclad, but it just

seems to work better.

Does your mother-in-law listen to you more than her own daughter? Or is this a conversation that your wife and her siblings can have?

We've tried that. So

the siblings are out of state. My wife and I have been over there a couple of times over the last couple of of weeks, and we have the conversations together.

My wife is standing right here with me now as we're discussing this. Okay.

Sometimes a third party helps, and sometimes third party being you, and sometimes it makes it more convoluted.

And so y'all know your family dynamics better than anybody, but

that's always where I want somebody to start. And for some reason, sometimes people can't hear from their adult kids, but they can hear from somebody else.

And so if you're that somebody else, that's great.

Yeah, I had a family member of my wife, Sharon's, that asked me a detailed question about an estate thing and i said oh that's easy you just need to do this this this and this and if you don't do it you're going to create these problems and you need to do it this week do this this and this you got it yeah okay you know what they did nothing not that

nothing it was freaking dave ramsey that said it okay i mean this isn't like the other brother-in-law this is me you know so you know

god almighty nothing so yeah john's right sometimes it's the blood that's got to the bloodkin that's got to make the message go through. It doesn't matter who it is.
So you sound very credible, Gary.

I like what you're saying. And I think you're going to have to...

A partial is going to create a partial door open to Facebook scams, to shopping channel scams, and she's going to sign up for all of them. And she's going to end up.

And refinancing the house, obviously, is ridiculous. No, don't do that.
I would rather just put all these other bills in collections. Just let them go to collections and ruin her credit.

That'd be awesome.

Yeah, so she can't get any more.

Dave, so I hear this only because

I'm on this show. But if I read the headlines, all the headlines say is there's this

bajillions of trillions of dollars of wealth in aging populations.

But I have to believe that's concentrated because the more I'm on this show, I'm hearing more and more of what I would call the other untold story of aging populations that are increasingly falling for internet scams,

letting princes over in somewhere in Africa borrow money.

A Nigerian prince has a Bitcoin. Yeah, all kinds, like, but it's, it's becoming like really significant.

And I don't know if there's a broader conversation that needs to happen, but people need to sit down with their aging parents,

especially the ones that are, not the ones that have millions of dollars at the disposal as much as these folks who are on Social Security. They got nothing.

And they're they're mortgaging their souls for this stuff. Well, I've been hearing the shopping channel thing with aging for 30 years,

it's been going on forever.

What I will tell you has increased is two things: buy now, pay later, the four easy payments for a freaking t-shirt,

a $9 t-shirt, you get four payments on it. Okay, it's a problem here, people.

And then the other thing is just technology has,

you know, increased the size, the scale, the speed at which people get screwed. Yeah.
And it gives you a picture of it, too. Exactly.

You know, Facebook gives you access to some good things, but also some that aren't. Yeah.

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I get so confused by these sales and these sale holidays. So apparently we have Cyber Monday week.

This is so oxymoronic. Okay, so Cyber Monday week.
We have Cyber Monday, but it goes on all week. This is America.
Nothing's real. Not even days and weeks.
Yeah, weeks and months.

We just convolute whatever the crap we want so we can sell some stuff. That's what we do.
And we're, hey, at Ramsey, we are the same way. We're going to do the exact same thing.

So we have Cyber Monday week and the deals, they are in full swing. Got hardcover books, audio books, assessments, all with prices as low as $6.99.

Shut up. You can't get stuff for $6.
Yeah, you can here. Don't wait.
These deals end Sunday,

Sunday, the 12th, the 7th of December. I'm so confused.
That's the Lord's Day. Hey, go to ramseysolutions.com slash store.
Or if you're watching on YouTube and so forth, click in the show notes.

I'm so caught up in this. Sherry's in Dallas.
Hey, Sherry, how are you?

Good, Dave. how are you better than i deserve what's up

so honored to speak to you guys today i really need your advice well try i um i fell for the annuity scam and didn't know it was a scam until after i did it and after my 20-day window was over um in october we rolled six hundred and eighty nine thousand dollars of my husband's 401k into a fixed annuity And they gave us a 5% bonus, so the value today is $724,000.

The problem is the insurance company, as I'm sure you know, keeps 22% of that, and the first year's surrender charge is 13%.

So my question is, do we stay until the surrender charges drop?

Especially given, you know, I mean, this is 30 days old. This is 30 days old.

It's over that. It was in October.
Well, okay. I mean, it's 45 days old.

Yeah. He told me it's too late.
He told me I had a 20-day window. This is the insurance agent that told you this, that sold you this crap.
Correct. Okay, good.
All right.

I don't know

is the answer, but I want more information because I don't believe

the person who sold me something that's bad to start with. It's not a good source of information.

Fair enough. So go to ramseysolutions.com and click on Smart Vestor Pro and get one of our Smart Vestor Pros there in your area that you can talk to and tell them what you've got and see if

the insurance commissioner in Texas will grant you a little more leeway than that and you get 100 cents in the dollar back.

Okay.

And then get back out of it. So,

yeah.

And then get this into some good investments that aren't so front-loaded and crappy in performance. Right.

So do you recommend an index fund?

I recommend a fruit jar before you do this.

But the index fund is fine.

It was a 401k.

And so you've got, you need to roll it into an IRA.

And based on the fact that it's in an IRA, I'm probably going to put it in the four types of mutual funds that mine are in, which is a fourth in growth, growth in income, aggressive growth, and international with long track records.

That's what mine are in, and I'm 65. How old are you?

I'm 62. Okay.
My husband is about to be 60. Okay.
So, yeah, same category.

And that's what mine are in, because I'm going to leave it alone, and then you've got to start talking about moving some of it out of there before you get to 73 and a half, because you're going to have RMDs required minimum distributions on your 401k.

You're going to have that in the annuity as well, by the the way, because it's probably a qualified plan, too.

So, meaning it's an

13%?

Get the, I would take the 13% hit and move it because you may make 13% in Q1.

One quarter of the stock market might be 13%.

You know, it's certainly going to, you know, you're going to make your money back quick enough.

But

I'm not going to accept Joe Bob's answer, okay?

I want somebody that knows the laws and

the tolerance for this with the Texas Insurance Commission to put their hands on this.

It may be, but if I'm you and it's going to cost me 13% in stupid tax to get this moved, you'll make that back up in good investments rather than being stuck in this thing.

And the other thing is, every day you wake up and you see the company name, you're pissed again. I don't want to live like that.

Yeah. Now let's recount.

I'm going to

make mistakes. You were hoodwinked.
So let me tell people what happened to you and you tell me if I'm right.

A person contacted you in your 60s about helping you create a very stable,

predictable investment that would grow without taxes. And they are an investment advisor.
They're a financial advisor.

And the company name is an insurance company name, not an investment company name. But they posed as and sell themselves as an investment advisor.
Is that what happened?

Close. I actually reached out to them because they were promoted by a person in the church that's well known that I trust and follow.
Yeah.

And then they dropped some big names of people that they've helped and whose money they manage. And so that's what got me picked.
Yeah, but it's

you you did not place your money with an investment company. You place your money with an insurance company.

Correct. And going in, you were not planning on doing that.
That's not what you signed up for. You signed up for to do some investing.

Correct. And then they, but they, insurance agents are licensed only to sell insurance products.
Annuities are insurance products. They cannot sell mutual funds.

And so this is what they sell is this crap.

And

they put people in, and they can even sell a decent product, which is a variable annuity, but I wouldn't even have put you in that because you're getting double feed. So it's just a, it's a, yeah,

man,

it's awful. I'm sorry you're having that.

But if you only lose 13%, I would be in good investments versus a fixed annuity. Fixed annuity is like a high-yield savings account rate.
It's going to pay you 4% or 5%.

If you make 12% or 14% on something, In two years, you made your money back if that's all you make. And you ought to make more than that if you watch what you're doing and get some real help.

So as a possibility anyway, depending on what the markets are doing. So yeah,

I'm out of there. Wow.

That infuriates me, John.

Well, it's somebody else getting preyed on in their 60s, right? We talked about earlier. Yeah.

Tell me this. So when she says 13%,

is that of the growth since this thing was moved, or is that over

13% of the entire portfolio? The entire portfolio. Good gosh.
Yeah. Yeah, because they're going to get their blankety blankety blank commission no matter what.
That's a crazy amount. Yeah.

Well, the insurance business is all front-loaded. It's all, they all get their money on the front end of everything.

And so these are frustrated life insurance agents is what they are. They're not real.

And so sometimes I even see these things, okay, the whales jumping on the Pacific life. Yeah.
And we'll help you.

And you got people walking and they're holding hands in a rose garden and they're retiring and all this bullcrap. It's stupid butt life insurance stuff.
My daughter, you're not going to believe me.

My daughter yesterday, her and I,

I wouldn't watch one of Bluey or whatever she wanted to watch. I wanted to watch football games, so she curled up on the couch next to me.
And

they had a commercial, and she said, What does that have to do with whatever it is they're selling? She's nine. And I was like, Not a lot, Josephine, not a lot.

It's called branding.

It's called branding.

Yeah. And so

if the name of the company you're DNA ready to do your investment in air quotes with has insurance in the name

you're about to get screwed

that's a good way to remember it okay done so i mean if you don't do in you don't get your muffler fixed at the transmission store

you don't do investments with insurance okay it's that simple we go you know we go to qualified people who have securities licenses not insurance licenses to help you do real investing i just can't believe a penalty on anything would be 13 of the total of your portfolio.

What do you mean? And how about this? 20-day or 26 days with a 20-day cutoff?

No, ma'am, we can't do that now.

What business does that? Yes, someone who is. Home Depot will take your lawnmower back two years after you bought it and give you a full refund.
But not these bozos.

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It's that time of year.

We're going to be doing our special giving edition of the Ramsey Show up here in December. It's one of our most popular shows ever.

If you've ever been involved in giving, some kind of generosity, it could be an outrageous tip that you gave or received. It could be all kinds of different things that happen.

We want to hear from you. Go to ramseysolutions.com/slash ask, put giving in the subject line, and tell us your inspiring story of giving.
Giving and receiving both.

Either one of those would be great. And we'll put you on December 18th with us.
And we're going to do that annual giving show. It's one of our most popular shows.

Very inspiring stories always coming in. Go to ramseysolutions.com slash ask, put giving in the subject line.
Caleb is in Canada. Hi, Caleb.
How are you?

Hey, Dave, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Looks like you've had I had a month and a half longer to burn off that Thanksgiving turkey here in Canada, but I'm doing good. Doing

My wife and I are wondering how we can go from being intense to intentional. We

have never really had any debt, no student loans, no car loans. We do have a house mortgage that we want to pay off aggressively.

The only thing is standing in our way is we want to, my wife wants to travel. I want to pay down the house faster.

I guess we're kind of at a standstill there on just what approach we should take of finding a good balance between enjoying our lives and continuing to be aggressive with getting our house paid off.

Okay, so when you do the budget, you have X number of dollars extra that we could either throw at the house or at travel, correct? Correct, yep.

Why don't you just try and experiment, split it?

Okay. Half towards the house, half towards travel.

And just see how that works for a little while.

And then you may want to reset the percentages later the two of you agreeing on them not you persuading her that 100 needs to go towards house or her persuading you that 100 needs to go towards travel right you just have some conflicting goals both of which are good goals

yeah yeah we obviously want to enjoy we're pretty young we want to enjoy our um our lives but we also would would like that burden off of our shoulders of

having the mortgage they're both really good goals what's your household income sir

Combined, we bring about net, we bring around one pen home. Mm-hmm.

What's the balance on the mortgage?

$419,000. Okay.
So I'll run out some scenarios because you're the math nerd. You're going to want to do this and go, okay, the money that we have left in a budget is X.

And if I put half of it towards the debt on the house, we'll be done by year Y.

And then you go, okay, that's, I don't know, make up a number. $2,000 a a month we can put towards travel.
That's $24,000 a year. That's dadgum couple nice trips right there.

Yeah. I mean, I made that number up.
I don't know if you got $4,000 disposable or not, but whatever the number is, right? Y'all work on it. But I mean, just try something.

And as John says, just, you know, it's a muscle that's been undeveloped, underdeveloped, and now you're developing the travel muscle. And

both of you. You know, she's getting some of her thing, you're getting some of yours.
And if it's a smaller item that you're trying to decide, like buying a car versus a trip um

you know what we always do is just try to put which ones first not which one yeah and the thing about the

caleb what you're describing here i would want to know is there a place she wants to go Or is this an identity? We want to be people who go travel.

Because if it's a place we want to go, let's put a dollar amount on it. Let's do our research and let's let's, like you said, let's split it until we've saved up for that.

I've always wanted to go on a dot, dot, dot.

dot to costa rico or to australia or whatever let's save up and do that if she is saying no no i want to be somebody who always has a trip on the calendar somewhere i'm always planning that's what i was doing then that's a different that's an identity yeah and let's be honest about what that's going to cost because it might be camping or it might be no i want to go to you know wherever go to france and so um getting to the brass tacks of what that actually means yeah that's good that's good because yeah i think you're right we um my wife and i she would say i want to travel and i would say okay where do you want to go and how much is that going to cost?

And I missed what she was saying, which is, John, you're kind of boring and you like to go to bed and just sit at the house. And

I want to go out and see the world. And that was a different conversation.
I just missed it. Right.
Yeah. But that is different than I've always wanted to see fill in the blank.
A thing. Yeah.
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.
And you can, you can budget that one. That was easy.
Yeah.

That's a trip versus a car versus a couch versus a whatever purchase. So again, all we're doing is every dollar still has an assignment.
We just don't have to live on beans and rice.

We can do some travel. We can buy a couch.
We can upgrade the car. We can pay down on the house.
We can do all of these.

And just as long as we're together and we're doing a little bit on all of it, a little bit on the house extra. I don't want to do zero on the house extra,

or you can turn it up and turn it down. I'm going to turn it way down because we need to get a car.
We need to upgrade this car. Mama's car is bad.
You know, that kind of thing.

And then after we get the car, we'll turn it back up. You can give and go a little.

versus, and that's if you've got identified targets. Well, and beneath those targets is when I think

the beauty of, I don't have a different, I don't have a good word for it other than that's where true marital intimacy comes from because you get beneath the, hey, I want to pay this house off because I, I have this thing in my soul.

I hate owing somebody money.

Or I want to be someone who travels. I never got to travel as a kid, and there's so much in this amazing world.
I want to go see some of it.

You get to have those rich conversations and they get off the spreadsheet and into your spirit, which I think is a great conversation that many couples don't ever get to.

They stop at the spreadsheet and then they have a fight and then they both go their separate ways. And I love those deeper conversations.
And that's good that he's calling. Absolutely.

My wife and I are, we're, we're, We're juggling this. We're arguing about this.
And so that's good. But tell her why you want, what it would mean to not have a house payment as a husband, right?

I would know my wife is always taking care of if if something were to happen to me that's a different conversation than i just want to pay this off because it's the next baby step or you know the travel so it's getting to that deeper level and i think those make for great rich conversations agreed chris is in tampa florida hey chris how are you

better than i deserve dave good how can we help

I have a situation coming up. I have always had to pay,

well, for the last three years, flood insurance because I've had a loan on my house and I was required to carry it.

I've recently paid off my house, and now I'm looking at my flood insurance as going to be about somewhere between $4,500 and $4,800

for $250,000 worth of coverage with a $5,000 deductible.

Are you on the coast or on a waterway?

I am. I'm in flood zone aches.
I'm a moron.

That's not a moron. If you want to live on the beach, you want to live on the beach.

And floods happen. Floods happen because of hurricanes.

Exactly. And hurricanes happen in Tampa.
Yeah, y'all got a doozy a year or two ago, right?

Yeah, we sure did two of them back to back.

In that case, I'm keeping it. Absolutely.

Okay. Even if I had money, like for $250,000, I have $200,000 that we've been using to save up to

another area. How many years you got to go through?

Like 40 or 50 years or something to break even.

5,250, right?

Yeah, I was just looking if I could park that money in an account that would grow

and use.

So you would maintain your flood insurance at home. I would.
Just call it a sleep tax, dude. If it was me, I would.
And here's why, okay?

You guys remember Katrina? And we were talking about it earlier

in

just destroyed New Orleans. And the houses all got destroyed, but they didn't get destroyed by the hurricane.
They got destroyed because the hurricane destroyed the levees.

Everybody got wiped out by floods. State Farm paid nothing.

They paid no one anything on hurricane insurance because they declared it all to be floods. Wow.
And they were taken to court time and time and time again, and they won every one of them.

Same thing in Mississippi. Same exact thing happened, Gulf Coast to Alabama.
Same exact thing.

And because what happens is storm surge is considered a flood, flood, even though it's caused by a hurricane, and these

people don't pay their claims.

And so State Farm just walked away scot-free. They led the charge because they're the largest, and then all the other goobers followed them.

But yeah, and they won the court cases. It wasn't a hurricane, knocked the house down, it was a flood that was caused by a hurricane.
But that's, it seems to be irrelevant. I don't know.

Pisses me off every time I say it out loud. Dude, it's just, you're making my blood boil, man.

I'm not a state farm fan anyway. You know that.
So there you go. All right.
That just sealed it for me.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr.
John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of the Dr.

John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Networks. He's my co-host today.
Open phones at 888-825-5225. Daniel's in New York City.
Hi, Daniel. How are you?

Hi, Mr. Ramsey.
Big fan of the show.

Me and my girlfriend, we're both young. We'd like to start dating and move it.
Well, sorry.

We have been dating for four years, and we'd like to move in together and potentially, well, we'd like to get married. I was just curious on what your thoughts were.

The data is not in your favor.

Yeah, I'm aware. I've heard you guys read off the statistics before.

I'm actually doing some research for a new marriage project, and they actually have the cohabitation data longitudinally just for earned income.

And something as simple as household income over time is less than those who are married. Not to mention the statistics around the relationship not making it over time.

How long have you all been dating?

Four years. Four years? Why not just pull the trigger? What are you waiting on?

I would like to do it. My parents are advising against it, and they're saying that we should live together for six months to a year prior.

I would like to do it. It's just that I'm also heeding their advices.
How old are you? My parents. I'm

25, 26 in a month. Okay.
So

if you already have your, if you're a guy who's going to listen to their parents, even if you disagree with them, why are you calling two strangers on a podcast?

I was just curious what your guys' opinions was. You already knew.
Yeah, you already knew what we were going to say.

I started rattling off the data, and you're like, Yeah, I already knew that.

Right.

We both think we're very financially sound. We've saved up a bunch of money, so I'm just curious if that changes anything or no.
No, John, how old were you when you got married? Me? Yeah. 24? Okay.

I was 22.

Yeah.

I've been married 43 years.

I'm 23 now.

I think you can respect your parents and still disagree with them.

I do all the time. I love my parents to death.
They're good people. I respect John, and I disagree with him sometimes.
Yeah.

We disagree all the time. Not really.
And I'm usually right.

That's even harder. Not really.
Yeah.

Let me take it this. Yes, sir.
Are you calling us because you actually want to marry this girl? Yes, sir. Okay.

At some point, you're going to have to say, as for me and my household.

Yeah.

Your mom and dad no longer get to tell you what to do when you're a man, my son. They can only advise you.

Right.

So my next question was. And neither do podcasters get to tell you what to do.
You still have to do what you want to do.

Yes, sir. Understood.
So we've got about $6,000 saved up. I understand that you guys advise one month of income for

engagement ring or rings.

In our area for like New York City and Long Island, it's really expensive for rent.

We've traveled to a few cities.

We just,

other than like, we figure you guys recommend a quarter of your income for living expenses. Can we permit up to like 35% where we are? We're both in the hospitality entry-level positions.

We graduated together with associates' degrees.

Okay. Well, that's a completely different set of questions, separate from what you called about, right?

Yes, sir. Okay.
All right.

So

yes, one month of your income is the maximum you should spend on a ring.

And yes, one-fourth of your take-home pay is the most you need to put into rent,

not for household expenses, but into rent, because you don't create a sustainable situation. You're short on money.

Your house poor when your rent is 35 or 40 or 50 percent, regardless of where you live.

So, if your income is going to be going up like doubling in the next year and a half or two years and you take on a little bit higher rent, then that doesn't kill you.

But if you try to sit there and prosper for four years where your rent is 35 percent of your take-home, you got a bad formula. It's not, you're going to struggle with that one.

Oh, but they're in New York, so all rent's going to be free from now on. They're going to be good.

Yeah, no, too soon,

Too soon. Plus or minus the rats.
Oh, yeah. Okay.

And I'm not talking about the rodents, but yeah.

Okay. Yeah,

I don't know. It's

no, Daniel.

The math still has to math, even in New York.

And

so, yeah, you've got to decide what you guys are going to do.

It may be if you're going to be in the hospitality business, if you can't move up quickly enough with your associate's degrees into sustainable incomes in a market that's that expensive, then you may need to be doing it somewhere else.

That's a possibility, too. Lots of people leave areas they can't afford to live in.
That's been, since time began, people have done that until they can afford to do it. And so,

you know, and New York City being one of the more expensive cities in the world to live in. So, literally, New York, Tokyo, London, San Francisco, I mean, this is the list, right?

Paris, these are very uber expensive to live in. Not just because they're recognizable major metro areas, but it's just stinking expensive, period.
And so try renting a flat in London.

That'll get your attention.

Scott's in Montana. Let's go the other direction.
What's up, Scott?

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call.

My wife and I, we are almost done with babysit 2.

I'm 49 years old.

I was approached today

at work to purchase a long-term care policy.

Nursing home care.

Yeah, it says if you become chronically ill, life and benefit term will pay you 40%. You don't need it.
That's what I was wondering. I was a little hesitant on that.
What's the main

deal is

long-term care insurance is vital when you're 60 years old and above. The percentage likelihood of you using it prior to 60 is very close to zero.

So we don't recommend buying it until you're 60. And if you're 60 and you got $10 million, don't buy it.
Just self-insure.

Just pay for the nursing home or pay for in-home care or whatever you're going to do.

But if you're, you know, you got 500 grand to your name and you're 60 years old and the nursing home is going to be 300 grand over three years. It's going to crack and scramble the nest egg.

Typically, the guy dies before the lady 75% of the time. And so Papa goes in the nursing home, uses up all the money, and then dies, leaves mama broke.

That's the one 60 years old that needs long-term care insurance. You don't need it at 40.

49. 49.
You don't need it until you're 60. I'm 65.
I got plenty of money. I didn't buy it.

That's where I was a little hesitant. And I have a life insurance policy now, a term life

that's done, I guess, until I'm, yeah, it's at 75 it ends.

I also have insurance through

the military.

Should I be purchasing any other type of

about 10 to 12 times your income on you

to cover your family if you die. And that's taking care of your wife and kids.
When you're 75, the kids hopefully will be grown and gone.

They'll be grown. Hopefully they'll be gone.
And so that's the game plan. And you'll be out of debt and have some money.

And so you're with some financial planning, you outlive the need for life insurance long term. But for right now, yeah, you do need some life insurance.

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John's in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Hey, John, how are you?

Good morning. Hey, what's up?

It's got a bit of a situation.

We were actually starting to think about a reverse mortgage, and I wanted it. I know you're always gay, so I want to hear

what you're going to be on. This is.

I've got a daughter, 32 years old, who became a widow and a single mom.

And we've got a, right now she's working one day a week from...

the office and four days a week at home and that's kind of working out but they want to move her back to the office and that's kind of unsustainable.

So, we're kind of thinking about trying to get her off the workforce for a couple of years until the kids are just a little bit bigger.

How old are those kids?

One

is about 2

this month, and the other one is about 33

months,

yeah. Okay, okay, so two years and three years,

yep, that's right. Okay, I thought you were getting ready to say 20 years.
I was about to freak out. Okay.
What happened to your husband?

It's a motorcycle crash. Oh, gosh, man.
I'm sorry. What's she do for a living?

She works in the education system. She helps disabled kids do exams.

Obviously, no life insurance.

Well, his debts pretty much were insured. The house was paid for.
And most of his debts were covered.

She doesn't have monthly income from it, but

quite a bit of the debts were covered.

Okay. All right.
But he didn't have life insurance to provide for her just to cover the debts. Okay.
Yes. Some of them.
Okay. Yeah.

So it was like a couple miscellaneous failed and the house insurance or the house mortgage was the biggest one. Is she asking to leave the workforce? Because my gut tells me this is not a great idea.

No, no. Me and my wife have come up with that idea.
We're kind of seeing this as when she has to go back four or five days a week to the office.

It's too long of a day for the kids to be gone that long. Like on the day she works, we go and take care of the kids later in the day.

But I mean, you're talking about a two or three year challenge here until the kids are in school age, right?

Right.

Yeah, I mean, I would sit down and have that conversation with her, but I, A,

I wouldn't put put myself at financial risk that she might have to clean up someday, number one. But number two,

it feels like you guys are watching your daughter grieve deeply, this sudden and

unfathomably traumatic loss, and y'all are itching to do something to help and support, but it's something that she isn't even asked to do.

Yeah, well, I know she won't ask.

Yeah, Yeah, that doesn't matter.

Taking her out of any support circle, any social circle and work, especially as a teacher,

your friends are there. Like, other adults are there.
Taking her out of a purpose outside of these two years with the kids. What does she do again? She works with disabled kids.

Yeah, kids with special needs. Okay, she works for special needs kids from her home

four days a week. How does she do that?

It's all online, and most of the tests are done online. With COVID, they tried to move as much as they could to there's not COVID.

No, I know, but

I've got the office. Yeah, I know, I know.

And our money is

spent off the money, too.

Jeez, yeah.

I wouldn't recommend it, especially with

a conversation with her. It feels like a temporary solution for a permanent problem or a permanent solution for a temporary problem.
I said it backwards.

Yes, that's it. Yeah.
And so

does she live in your community?

We're about 45 minutes apart. Okay.
Can you keep the kids?

Oh, she wouldn't part with her kids. No, when she goes back to work, full time.
How she's working during the day instead of daycare.

That would put us there five days a week instead of what we're doing now at two or three. And she likes dropping them off in the morning.

And then we pick up in the afternoon on the day she's logged.

Here's what y'all aren't metabolizing, though. How long ago did her husband pass away?

13 months. Okay.

It feels like there's still a pause on every single solitary thing has changed.

Yes. And I say this with as big a heart as I could possibly say it, but I spent my career sitting with folks who's the worst thing has happened to them.

Like, what you want is different now.

I wanted to drop these kids off. I don't want their life to change that much.
I want to be able to keep this job in this town and this house.

I want all those things, and all that is good to want that, but every single thing is different now.

And so, what we want, especially for the next couple of years until those kids get into school age, is got to go out the window to what do we have to do.

So, before I put my personal home at risk in my retirement years, I would babysit the children. That's what I'm saying.

All day, every day.

For five days a week, for two years. I would rather give that up than give up.

You can step into a reverse mortgage and screw up your home mortgage heading into retirement.

Or one or both of y'all move into the house for five days a week and y'all go home to your house on the weekends for the next 24 months or something.

Just say for 24 months, we're going to step in and help you get this done and look for another job. Right.
Or possibly you have to move closer now.

We have to sell this house because everything is different now. Yeah.
And that sounds so callous callous and ugly. I'm not trying to be ugly at all, but everything's different now.

And what we want, it comes second to the reality that we're faced with. So she's not going to get her perfect life back.

Everything's not going to be back together by you throwing some money at it.

Yes. And her stepping out of the workforce, all of the adults in her life, all of her support network, and just staying at home for two years.

And the meaning that serving special needs kids is giving her. Right.
All that's gone. Yeah.

And she needs that right now. Yeah.
So, no, I'm keeping her in the workforce and figuring out how.

That's what I would do. And it could be a change of jobs.
It could be a change of location. It could be helping with the babysitting, all those kinds of things.

But subsidizing her doing nothing

is not a good plan. No.
No.

We're both in agreement on that. Hey, thank you for the call.
And I'm so sorry y'all have been through this. It's a horrible, horrible thing.
Okay, folks.

I'm going to sidebar, and it's going to sound really callous, but here's the thing. When you're 30 years old, even in Canada,

you can buy

half a million dollars in life insurance for the cost of a pizza.

So go to Xander Insurance right now

and make sure you have your term life insurance in place. Yeah, do the commercial.
You can say whatever you want to say.

I've been endorsing this company because I think you need to go to Xander Insurance for 30 freaking years.

For the dadgum cost of a pizza, I don't have this conversation I just had.

So we had a young lady in Financial Peace University.

We videoed it and put it in the video, with her permission, put it in the old class that we used to have, that she and her husband were 23 years old.

They went through Financial Peace University, went and bought a million dollars worth of life insurance, and he got by a car three weeks later. Good grief.
And she gave birth to their new baby

for like a month and a half after he died. Yeah.

And she comes on the video and says,

this is what having a million dollars worth of life insurance means to me right now.

I'm a 23-year-old widow with a baby.

And I can't get my husband back. I can't do any of those things.
But for just a few dollars,

I'm,

you know, this is an act of love. I'm set up.

I'm set up. And, you know, that's the problem

because we don't know when we're going to go.

And you might get old and ugly like me, or you might go out on a motorcycle like him early.

That's not, you know, so,

and it's not to besmirch that young man at all. He obviously had some insurance, took care of the debts for the family.
She's got a paid-for house.

He did a lot of good stuff there. There's no question about that.
But I'm just saying, guys, this is an opportunity to remind y'all that it just doesn't take a lot

to completely set a whole different conversation up.

There's no good conversations when someone dies or gets killed in their 20s. There's no good conversations.
But when they got little kids, a little wife, a little husband left at home,

and they're sitting there with a half million dollars or a million dollars or they're sitting there with nothing giving them and having these conversations about how to come out of the workplace to take care of two littles.

Man, it's incredible.

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Start every dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play right now. James is in Rhode Island.
Hi, James. How are you?

Good, Dave. How are you guys doing? Better than I deserve.
What's up?

All right. So I'm a 40-year-old guy.
I got a fiancé and a baby who turned two in July. And my fiancé and I, we have three Airbnbs that are doing really well.

Four years into it,

last year we grossed about 102,000.

This year, we're forecasting to do about 127,000 gross on the three Airbnbs with a 62% profit margin. Day job is hospitality sales.
I make about $100,000, $120,000 a year. She is a psychologist.

She makes about $110,000.

So our issue is

there are these micro-lofts, and another one is available, but it's in a super historic old building. And I'm thinking about getting a fourth Airbnb.

But the banks are telling me that I got to put 40% down. They're going for about two and a quarter.

So

I want to hear your take if I should get another profitable Airbnb

and have it under the same roof as all my other ones, or is that considered maybe too high risk?

Okay.

Well, I'm not sure you called the right show. I'm not sure that you know what we do.
But

the

so I own several hundred million dollars in real estate. Okay, I love real estate as an investment.

I went broke in the real estate business in my 20s, if you haven't heard the story.

And the way I did that was I borrowed too much money.

And

the banks called our notes because we were in a high-risk scenario.

The Airbnb business is basically the hotel business.

It's a very high

labor-intense,

you know, a lot of hassle.

So the money that you're earning on those Airbnbs, you're working your hiney off to get that money. And you're probably working,

you're working some other people's hiney off because it's a lot of hassle.

I'm the maintenance man. I'm the housekeeper.
I'm the guy checking them in.

And you have a two-year-old. You have a mile away.

Yep. Yeah.
Why don't you pick up golf, too? Oh, my God. You know, I mean, you ain't got time to do nothing.

So

I don't know that you have the bandwidth to add another one on your personal number one. Number two,

the risk with Airbnbs is that as you probably know, and I don't know where it stands in Providence, Rhode Island, but many

HOAs, many neighborhoods, many entire municipalities are passing zoning to stop it

because they're disruptive to the neighborhood.

And so I know a lot of people that have lost the ability to run an Airbnb on a property they bought for an Airbnb.

And in a historic setting, that's very possible.

Right.

It's in a unique building. It's the oldest mall in America where there's retail on the first floor and the second and third floor was repurposed to Airbnb.
So it is in a commercial zone.

Okay, so that means the risk of them rezoning it and keeping you from doing it is less?

To my understanding, yes. Or it's going to take one new tenant downstairs that's a big tenant that says, I don't want people living upstairs.

Well, we're all on the board. No, they're already got residential in there.
It's just a matter of whether it's nightly rental

residential because it's a hotel in a sense. So I don't know.
You're doing some things I don't want to do. And I don't recommend people do things I don't want to do.

So number one thing you're doing is you're buying property with someone you're not married to. Very dangerous.
Number two, you're going in debt to do it. Very dangerous.

Number three, you have a high-risk business model that's dependent upon someone else called Airbnb. Very dangerous.

Number four, you have to do all the freaking work and you're getting ready to add 25% of the workload going from three to four and you have a two-year-old. Very dangerous.

So that's what I meant by, I don't know if you've been around as much. And I'm not trying to be mean to you.
I just think that all you have seen in this is the upside.

You've not considered any of the downsides. And that's the way I was in my 20s.
And it's what caused me to go broke. And so now I'm always looking.
I'm not a negative thinker. I buy.

I mean, like I said, I own hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate. I love real estate, but I have low hassle real estate.

I don't own a single Airbnb. And we've got enough residential, I easily could do that.
But we don't want to screw with it.

It's just too dadgum much work for for the money, too much drama for the money. And so

we'd rather make the money,

you know, a little slower and with a lot less hassle factor, and we don't borrow money. 100% of our real estate's paid for.
I don't borrow money to buy real estate.

So I'm a fan of the category of real estate, but after that, I've kind of given you some things to think about.

So until you've thought through all of those things and make sure that you've decided how you're going to own, what ownership vehicle you're going to own this in with someone that you're not married to oh real dangerous um

you know that that

you get yourself into all kinds of messes here and i think that's what the bank is smelling and that's why they're wanting a huge downstroke um but um

you know a good way to look at any business opportunity too james is to scale it in your mind and if it doesn't scale then don't grow it meaning if it works for 40 Airbnbs, we might do four.

If it works for four, but not five or not ten, then maybe we shouldn't do four.

Why is that? Well, because it's going to

the the

idea is not scalable to where you get out of being the maintenance man.

You just have to keep absorbing more work and more work and more work. And pretty soon you're going to go, I want to quit my job and be Mr.
Airbnb. Right.

And that's not not standard. Your one Airbnb app change or one Airbnb municipality change or your one.
Yeah. Apple decides they're not going to support the app anymore.
That's right.

With 13-point whatever. Oh, my crap.
You know, I mean, all kinds of people. I mean,

that little move right there cost us about $20 million two years ago. So,

you know, just because Apple decided to cough.

And so,

you know, all that stuff. So these are things you can't anticipate, and you leave yourself vulnerable to it when you're just living

right on the wire, when you're right on the edge, and then you just keep adding to it, keep adding to the plate until the food falls off.

You know, and that's, that's what I heard here as a really super busy guy. Well, ambitious guy.
You said this, and man, this has become increasingly,

I felt it heavier and heavier. I have a very real lived experience being in the workforce during 2008, 2009, and there seems to be a lot of folks who have entered into

2010 to 2025, and it's been seemingly mostly upside. It's just been win after win after win after win.
Plus or minus COVID.

Yeah, plus or minus COVID, and there's the assumption that it's just going to keep going that way. And there's no,

I mean, it's tough to tell somebody, hey, you have to be prepared for when this thing goes south a little bit or when the roller coaster takes a, you know, goes down.

And man, people don't, don't have the psychology for it right now. Yeah.

I mean, if you've got your thing based on the Airbnb income of four and suddenly they don't rent for four months, you're in bankruptcy. Whereas if you own them all in cash, you're annoyed.
Exactly.

You're annoyed. Well,

you put renters in. Yeah.
And you get it out of the Airbnb business and you move on, you know, and that's it's not a big deal. Right.
You know, but yeah, this is a problem. Yeah.
So no, I'm

I

like James because he's ambitious and he's going after it. He's going for it.

I want to support that, but I I believe in being a nightmare killer, not a dream killer.

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R E F Y dot com slash Ramsey, not in all states. Today's question comes from Amy in Mississippi.
Amy writes, I have been dating a kind, loving man for the last three years.

We begun talking about marriage and moving in together.

we both like the idea of keeping my house in my name and his house in his name and living the next 10 years in my house and then the last ten years of our lives in his house this is all assuming we both live to be 80 and we can live independently I've been thinking about our wills and trusts and currently I have all of my assets to be left to my two adult children and he has all of his assets to be left to his two adult children.

Considering we're getting married so late in our lives, is it wrong to leave everything to our children and not to each other, especially if we're on the same page about doing it this way?

No, it's perfectly fine. Just make sure you've taken care of the one left behind.
I mean, you know, so we've hear the stories of, okay, you're in his house,

he dies and leaves it to his kids, and they want you to move out in three days. Because they want that money.
They want that house. And so, you know, you need to kind of figure out a way.

Well, they wouldn't do that. Oh, yeah, they will.
Oh, yeah, they will. Yes, they will, too.
So you have no idea.

So I'm fine with y'all leaving everything, but just figure out a way that he is cared for if he happens to be living in your home, that he gets to live there a year

or something, and that there's some, and then make sure he's going to have enough money to eat if you die before him, and vice versa.

As long as you've made sure the other one's in good shape financially and is going to be okay. But if you've got enough money that you're independent,

if he dies, you're fine. You die, he's fine, then that's perfectly fine to do this.

But just make some clear communications and some clear things in the will to make sure that you don't get tossed out of the house on short notice or something.

I don't want you living there 10 years, but

after he dies,

if the intent was for the kids to get the house,

but 10 minutes is not okay either. So you got to kind of think about this stuff.
And don't just assume everybody's going to be nice. Write it down and tell everyone what it all says.

And then tell them they're going to do that. And then they will, that's what they have to do.
So they might as well be nice. Yeah, that, but I don't have a problem with that.
Do you?

Now, would you recommend, I've never even thought about this question. Let's say two 65-year-olds, two 70-year-olds in this situation, financially established or getting remarried.

Is this a situation where you'd still have both people put their money in one checking account? Or are we living pretty independently at this point?

I would operate the household off of one checking account

because we're not talking about the incomes. We're talking about the ⁇ I mean that I would combine my incomes and live as one household.

But then if one of you dies, then the other one's income is going to go away either because the investments are left to the kid or the pension dies with the person. There you go.
Right.

So you're back to your half or your portion to live on. And, you know, just make sure you're able to live on your part.
He's able to live on his part when something happens.

If you are, then this is very clean. And you could even, this is a situation where you could even do a prenup.
Yeah. And

it'd be fine. I'm thinking about this in real time.
I like the idea of us joining. It sounds like they're 60.

Yes, joining our money together and saying, we have two light bills, we have two water bills because we have two houses together. Yeah, what are they doing with the other house during the 10 years?

They're not later. I guess they're going to rent it out, would be my guess.
Yeah, that's a, somebody's up for a renovation. Yeah.

So you got to have time to renovate the house that you weren't living in before you have to move back into it because you've been renting it. For 10 years, yeah.
Yeah, that's

something to think about. So, yeah, but that's the only part of this.

Just have a real clear cut and think through the details and write them all out as a part of the plan, as a part of the will, and then talk about it with both your kids.

You're getting everything, but she gets to stay here for six months. Yeah.
And,

you know, this and so on. So you can, you know,

all of that is possible. And if one of these houses appreciates 200%, if we have like what happens, it's in your name.
That's in your name. That's right.
Yeah, you win. Yeah.

Your investments appreciate 200%, his don't. Or one of yours falls off a cliff.
That's

what happens. That's how it worked out.
Elisha is with us in Knoxville. Hi, Elisha.
How are you?

I'm good. Can you guys hear me? Yes, sir.
What's up?

Hi.

I'm calling about a question. My in-laws want us to pay them back for the money they spent on my wife's unfinished college semester.

One semester?

Yes. Why? Well,

I don't really know where to start with this, but

I started

dating my wife. We got married a couple of months ago.
When I started dating her, she was in college for engineering, and I pretty quickly found out that she absolutely hated it.

She was miserable, and it also made me miserable. She also has a heart condition, inappropriate planostachycardia, and it was making that way worse.

She also got really sick in the spring semester of 25. She came down with double pneumonia and was just unable to keep up with classes.
So

she dropped the semester. And currently, she's a born dance teacher.
She doesn't have plans to go back. We've got married since then.

Her college up until that point has been paid for by a fund left by her grandfather, but her parents say that they were unable to get the money for that. And

from what I am told, that's about $6,000 that they want us to pay them back.

And

it's not a lot of money, but it's a lot of money for us. No.

Are they objectively not good people, or do they not like her marrying you? They're really not happy that you got married.

Correct. Correct.

This first came up actually as a way to stop us from getting married. Yeah.

And the main reason that they were against us getting married is they,

for since she was like 10, they really pushed her to go to engineering. And when I was talking to them to get permission to propose,

her mom specifically asked me that I need to tell her that her degree is the most important thing in the world to me. And I couldn't do that.
I got permission from her dad, but not her mom.

And her mom really doesn't like me.

And we haven't heard anything about this since we got married. How long have you been married? I was really finishing up before that.

He's been married since August the 2nd. And how old are you?

21. Okay.

All right. Honey, this is not going to go well.
Yeah. Sorry.
Man. Yeah, I know.
Yeah. I just, I want, I want to do everything I want to do.

This is not about tuition.

This is about control. Yeah.

I know. This is a flex.

The ultimate flex. And so

you just have to look at them and smile and say, you know,

I'm sorry we can't do that. Or really, their daughter needs to do that.
Yeah. Just tell mom, sorry, we can't do that.

Well,

I'm sorry we can't do that.

Don't get into an argument. Don't try to explain it.
Don't try to get into some kind of moral construct because there's not one.

This has nothing to do with moral constructs. And by the way,

are her parents

in charge of this money from this fund? Or could your wife go back to school in five years if she wants to go be a therapist or something?

So her aunt is managing the fund.

I don't know how much money there is left in it, to be honest.

They recently told my brother-in-law that he has to stop going to the school he's currently going to and go to the community college near them because there isn't enough money for him to go there.

Okay.

So

say that's why they didn't get their $6,000 because there's not any money in there. Let me say this as blunt as I can.
The relationship that you think you're trying to preserve for your wife

has never been there.

Yeah. Yeah.
If you repay this, these are still two very unhappy parents. Yes.

And then there'll be another flash.

And another flash. Anything at all? Or what it is? No, no.

There's just nothing to do down the road. It will come up when you have your first kid or it will come up in another.
There's nothing to do. No.
And you don't have $6,000. That's what's going on.

I'm sorry we can't do that.

I would not say why.

I would not say when.

I would not put terms to it. It's a simple, closed-ended, one-sentence reaction.
Mom, I know you'd like for us to do this. I'm sorry we can't.

That's it. It's over.
And it's not going to go well, dude. These guys are going to go off like rockets because this is a flex.

It's a boundaryless power fillet.

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio. Dr.
John Deloney, Ph.D. in counseling, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author.
He's my co-host today.

Open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five warren is in raleigh north carolina hi warren how are you

i'm good how are you doing better than i deserve what's up

so um

we um make a decent income but we're living paycheck to paycheck and i got to get this figured out so i was calling for help okay cool so what's a decent living what do y'all make

uh well it now we're making about a $140,000 a year collectively.

I was laid off for,

I'm not laid off at three years. I was out of full-time work for about three years and was doing part-time work.
I recently took a full-time job

as a town job.

She makes around $9,000, and I make around $50,000, right at $50,000. So that brings us to $140,000.
Okay.

The challenge is

we make make our mortgage and we make a car payment, and how much is your mortgage

mortgage is $2,187, and that's with an adjustable rate mortgage of $5.6.

And what's the car payment?

Car payment is $465,000.

What's the other car payment? It's a Q

we don't have another car payment. I drive a 2003 Corolla.
Gotcha. Okay.
So what do you owe on the car

that's a 465?

$29,000. Okay.

And

what other debt have you got?

We have one credit card of $4,000,

and then

we have my daughter's college loan, which is $50,000.

Your parent plus loan or what?

Yes, parent-plus loan. Okay, and you're paying on that now?

We just started, and that's three sixteen. So she's graduated?

Yes, she's working. Okay.

And what else?

Um

we have a

um

a water treatment si system that's one hundred and nine

that we owe six thousand on that.

Mhm.

And outside of that, I we that's it. Okay.
From a debt perspective. Yeah.
Do you have any money saved?

We have about $4,000 in savings, and we have a little over $500,000 in retirement. Good.
Good for you. Okay.

All right.

Well, what you've described, Warren, is normal.

The only thing is around here, we say normal sucks. Because all the money comes in, all the money goes out, and only the names are changed to protect the innocent.

You make freaking $140,000 a year, and you feel broke.

Yeah, true. Yeah.
Well, I'm 56, she's 54, and we're now to the point where, you know,

we want to retire when we're 67.

How long have you been back to work?

A month. Okay.
I got my first paycheck next week. Good, good.

Okay.

All right, good. So now you're like, okay, we got to fix this.

We've been kind of treading water for a while. Now I'm back in the saddle, and let's tear into this.
Now, what do we do? If that's what you're asking, we can help you.

The prescription is rather the

prescription that the doctor is going to give you is rather painful though. We're going to teach you to live like no one else so that later you can live like no one else and give like no one else.

And so what I will tell you to do is for the two of you to sit down tonight, open up the app Every Dollar and start filling out what you're going to do with this month's money and the two of you be in agreement on what you're going to do with this much money.

You stop all retirement savings temporarily.

You

stop eating out. You stop going on vacation.
You're broke and deeply in debt. And you have a mess to clean up so that you don't retire and have to eat dog food.

Because that's where you're headed if you don't fix this mess. House is okay.
The rest of this debt has got to get paid off. And, you know, you've got $85,000 worth of debt.

And you've got to quit buying crap on credit.

You need to get the credit cards out and cut them up and list your debts smallest to largest, pay minimum payments on everything but the little one and attack the little one like your life depends on it.

But part of what you're going to have to go through emotionally is you're still recovering emotionally from the time that you didn't work for a while, which took a little bit of your confidence away.

I hear it in your voice.

Yeah, you're right.

And so I want you to get like you're 18 again, stick your chest out, throw your shoulders back and get after it again, okay?

Okay.

The fact that you didn't work for a little while is not the end of the world. You're working now.
You're a good man. You're calling.
How can I take care of my family?

I've got to clean up this mess from my daughter's college tuition. I got a car that's expensive.

We've been spending some money on credit cards, and we bought a water treatment thing we couldn't afford. And because we didn't pay for it, that's how I know we couldn't afford it.

So now we've got to stop all that crap and get in attack mode and clean up this debt. So making $140, if you paid $40 on your debts, you'd be debt-free other than the house in two years.

So you ought to be debt-free in 18 months.

But you're going to have no life during that 18 months.

And you and your wife got to lock arms and go, we're fighting this like the devil is at the door.

Right.

And if you fight it with an intensity. She'll just stay with me.
Yeah, she'll go side by side with you. She stuck with you through this last patch.
And let's get it, man. And that's the thing.

So it's a reset of your emotions after the unemployment thing. So I went broke in my 20s and

lost everything because I was stupid. And one of the things I lost with it was a bunch of my confidence and my self-esteem.

And I had to rebuild it in a different way that wasn't just arrogance and cockiness. But instead, I rebuilt it just based on solid wisdom gradually.

And so I ended up becoming a different man the other side of going broke. And that's how I can hear that in your voice because I had it in mind.
I recognize it.

So you're a good man, Mark. I appreciate it.
You're a good man. You're a good dad.
You're a good husband. You're not afraid of work.
And

you can do hard stuff. You drive an 03 Corolla, man.

Bro, I've been there. It's got 300,000 miles on it.
And you know the problem with that Corolla?

It's going to go another 600,000 miles before it dies off.

The only thing I have to pay for is to paint it.

so yeah you're in it's mine in the parking lot i'll never leave will your wife sell that car her expensive one yeah she will yeah okay you may want to do that to accelerate this process to get your life back because if you didn't have any payments but a house payment and you two were together doing a budget every month before the month begins giving every dollar an assignment you're going to see margin in there and that margin will allow you to build wealth that after you get out of debt and that margin will allow you to increase your generosity and i'll guarantee you that in your late 60s, you could be a millionaire if you'll follow through on this.

We'll do it. Our conversation this weekend was being a good steward on what God has given us.
And here's the thing.

Here's what's cool. You're calling here in the beginning of December.
Here's a way the Cosmos is going to call your bluff. Instead of doing Christmas presents for you this year,

I want you to get that $4,000 credit card gone.

I can do that. And that can be the great gift y'all give each other is full commitment.
And that's going to be better than any trinket or any knickknack you're going to get under the tree. Amen.

The two adults, that is. The two grown-ups.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Hey, hang on. We'll get you signed up for the every dollar premium.
We'll give it to you as our gift. We want to be part of your story because you're going to turn this around.
I can feel it.

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If you're watching on YouTube or podcasts, click in the description. John, this book is absolutely amazing.
I am so proud of Jade. It is the real key to getting unstuck from someone who's been there.

She just speaks from the authority of experience. Dude, I had her on my show, and it's one of my favorite episodes of all time.
It hasn't been released yet, but I've traveled the country with her.

I've shared meals with her and her husband Sam. They're good friends of ours.
And I did not know. the depth of the story behind the money.
Oh, yeah.

And if you are, tells it all, baby. If you are one of those families across the country that is struggling with the math part and you're also dealing with the guilt part and the shame part, man, she

unravels that in this book. You got to get it.

It's next level. It's so good, man.
It's so good. Yeah, I agree.
Come on. Gifted, gifted writer and storyteller.
Yes, she is. Yes, she is.

And you're going to find out that she understands right where you are, but also to show you how to go win. And that's one of our specialties around here.
So very, very good stuff. Good tools to win.

Casey's with us in Birmingham, Alabama. Hey, Casey, what's up?

Hey, how are you, Dave? Great. How can we help?

I appreciate you taking my call. So my wife and I just recently found out that she was pregnant.

It's not like we were necessarily trying to avoid it, but we were not planning on it happening this fast.

My question is, I have an emergency fund that's about six months,

a little over six months.

We both drive old cars that neither one of us have had to have any car payments on. We're completely debt free other than our house.

And we've been throwing all of our extra money towards our house to get it paid off quickly. So I don't necessarily have a ton of extra money to just pay for cash out of a for a car.

So should I pull my money out of my emergency fund to buy her a safe

family friendly car?

Or would you think that it'd be okay for me to finance the car, but pull all the money that I've been throwing at the the mortgage, get the car paid off within the next year to avoid a ton of interest payments.

Isn't it fun how a baby on the way just makes you grow up?

Man, I'm telling you. So as if you would put your wife in an unsafe car where she's going to die.

Your wife is not driving a car in which she is going to die. You would not have done that to her before she was pregnant.
You love her.

Well, to be fair, she's had this car for to be fair, if you thought she was going to die because this car is unsafe, you would not let her drive it.

Have you ever seen a newborn?

Yes, it's

pretty much as big as the palm of my hand. Exactly.

That baby will do great in this car for six months, for a year. Yeah.

What are you really worried about?

Are you just trying to be like the best possible husband and father you can be, and you're just looking for every possible way where you can make this thing world-class?

I just want she's if you saw her car, she's in a 2009 Scion XD. It's a little box car with the door panels on it.
All right, you had me a box car. I may be with you on this one, dude.

So the thing is, I mean, I can afford to save up and pay for it a year from now, but again, she'll be giving birth and be severely pregnant within the next four to six months, seven months, she'll be giving birth.

Yeah. All right, honey.
The baby can ride in that car that you have.

It's not a pretty car. It will not hurt the baby.
It did not hurt your wife. It's a safe enough car.
Is it an ideal car? Absolutely not. It's a piece of crap.

But babies have ridden in pieces of crap since time began. And your baby's not going to die from re, and you're not a bad dad.
And no, this is not an emergency.

You just got pregnant and you're thrilled and scared and hyper-responsible all of a sudden. And that's very cool.
So, what I want you to do is, do you have any debt except your home?

It sounds like you don't.

No, we

don't have any debt

for you. And don't ever call me and ask me to get a card payment again.
I'll kill you. All right.
Now, once we got that out of the way, because I love you. All right.
I'll kill you. So that's it.
So

now, so the

so what we're going to do is we're going to just save.

And

so the baby is due. Do you have a due date yet?

July next year. So

we got some time. So you got eight months?

Yeah, about seven. Okay.
How much money can you save by July?

About $15,000 to $20,000 if we really just buckle down and I work a bunch of overtime. Okay.

Well,

so the car she's driving is worth, the car she's driving is worth, what, two or three thousand dollars?

Yeah, at the most. Okay.

So go ahead and pick out the car that she would like that is $15,000.

And the month before the baby comes, go buy it and pay cash for it.

Okay.

And don't touch your emergency fund.

Okay. Save the $15,000 between now and then.
That's a very nice car, by the way.

Especially when we compare it to the piece of crap she's driving today

pretty much anything is a luxury

a rickshaw would be nicer than what she's got yeah one of those new electric bikes yeah but yeah but yeah the um man and by the way you don't have to go from a 2009 to a tricked out 2025 yeah no absolutely not 15 000 will buy a lot of car if you if you watch what you're doing It's a crazy.

The reason why I called today and asked is I was planning on doing the saving for the next six months and then shelling all that money out for a car in cash.

But I saw a car that is essentially what we want, and it has a really good engine, transmission, reliable. It's a decent price, low mileage, one owner.

And I said, man, I could get this car now and not have to worry about it in six months. I don't know if that car is going to be available in six months.
Oh, believe me, there's another one.

There will be. There will be plenty.

Can I paint you the other side of this?

And I hate to even put this in the ether, but I'm doing this because I love you. Is that cool?

All right.

You buy this car on a car note,

and then your baby is born, and there's some complications, and your baby's in NICU for two months

or for one month.

And things get real complicated real fast, but this car note keeps showing up at your door.

I would much rather you have $15,000 in cash about to pull the trigger on a car and you've gone into what we call stork mode around here and you've got some margin to take care of everything until you're holding a nice, wonderful, healthy baby, which I'm confident is what's going to be.

But what I don't want you to do is to get so excited right this second, six or seven months early, that you jump the gun and then you chain yourself to something and take away all the freedom that you've worked so hard for up until this point.

Yeah. So listen, here, all that happened you got really excited and hyper-responsible because you're going to be a daddy.

And that means you're going to be a great daddy and you're a good husband and you care about everything that's involved here and you want to make sure your family's taken care of.

And that's caused you to jump the gun. And all we're doing is saying, down, boy.
You're okay. Down, boy.
Stay the course, man. You've done so good.
So good. You're going to be great.

You're going to be a good dad. But just don't get pregnancy brain.
Only one is allowed to have that. And that's her.
So, you have to just chill. Let's ride this out.
Everything's gonna be okay.

You could wait till she comes home with the baby before you buy the car. Yeah, bring it, bring the baby home in your car.

Yeah, and um, baby's not going anywhere for a few little while anyway, and then everything's fine.

And then you go out and buy a car that she looks at on the internet, and you go buy it, and everything's good. And the meta lesson here is stop buying box cars.

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Henry is with us in Atlanta. Hey, Henry, how are you?

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call.
Sure. How can we help?

So I work as a personal assistant for a client, and it's a great job, and I love working for her. I've done it for the last two years, and over the last two years, the scope has creeped quite a bit.

I used to work like nine to two, and now it's more like eight to five, and my pay hasn't changed. And I just don't know how to have that conversation of, I feel like I'm on call 24-7.

I got a call on Thanksgiving to book a flight, and I just need my salary to reflect the value that I bring to my client's life. And I don't know how to do that.
What do you make?

$4,500 a month as a flat rate.

That's low. Yeah.
For that.

It is low for that. For

a 40-hour week. I mean, yeah.
For that position. And that's not including the weekend calls.
Like, I get calls. I got to call at 2 a.m.
to come get the dog to go to the emergency vet.

That was a few months ago. It's just, I love my client, and I love not having like a corporate job, but I need,

I'm in baby step two.

I paid off a ton of debt this year and I'm facing down the last 10K and baby step three and four just seem further and further without side hustles and that's not the point in those steps. Exactly.

Are you looking for more money to stay with this client? Are you looking to not have weekend on-call 2 a.m. vet runs?

I would rather have more money and work more. I love to work and I love that I have this very privileged job.
Okay. But it needs to be reflected in my pay.
Yeah. Okay.
All right.

So the easiest way to remember to do this is just flip the script. As they say, let's walk a mile in the client's moccasins.

If you were the client and you had someone that was taking good care of you and describe, you know, and you probably are aware that you've increased their hours and that you've started to add some weekend stuff.

You're probably aware of all that, but you hadn't thought much about it. How would you want want to be approached? Well, I'm an employer.

I have a thousand folks working for us, okay, close to 1,100, all right? And so how do I want our leaders to be approached when someone wants to talk about their compensation?

Well, number one, with gratitude,

with honor,

not belligerence, and not entitlement. And I didn't hear any of those in your voice, by the way.
I'm not correcting you. I'm just helping you.
So I think you have a very,

I think

your voice tone and the way you're approaching this does not have any tinge of spoiled brat or victim in it which is really what i don't want to hear okay so you're you're really already on a good foot so i i would just sit down and just up front just say hey i'm really enjoying this i love working with you my hours have expanded and and you seem to be using me more on off hours and um and i'm working to get out of debt and uh i'd like to figure out what I can do for that to end up being reflected in my paycheck.

Can we talk about that?

Can I add one wrinkle to that? Sure.

So in September, I went through a pretty bad health scare. I was diagnosed with diabetes, and I had to course correct everything very fast, or I would probably not be here December 1st.

And I had asked, I said, you know, can I get a small raise? And to me, it was $500 because that would cover all my supplies. And her reaction was, oh, I can't afford that.

And then today, we were just kind of talking. She had a meeting with her financial folks, and they literally said, Need to spend more.
So I just, I don't know.

I feel like the purse is a little bit tight. I don't want to rock the boat too much because, again, I don't want to go back to the corporate world.

Well, I think you could go do this for someone else and make twice as much.

You're in Atlanta.

You're in Atlanta. So

jump online and see what personal assistants

working for someone make in Atlanta, Georgia. I think you're going to find it's more than you're getting paid.

Okay, great. And let me say this.
If you have the kind of supervisor

or you have a supervisor slash boss slash CEO, you've got one person who's over everything in your life, right?

Right. If that's the kind of person that you can't sit down and have this type of conversation with, that's a person who lacks integrity and just basic kindness.

And I don't know that I'd want to to work. I trust my weekends and 2 a.m.s with that person regardless.

Like, I've sat down with Dave and we've discussed things, or I've sat down with my leader and we've discussed things, and I haven't got what I wanted sometimes. And I trust them.
We got heard.

I got heard. And there was good reasons given.
And I didn't get fired. Not I can't afford it.
Right. You know, you get what I'm saying? So,

but if they're illogical about this, so from an employer's standpoint in general, a position is worth

what you can hire the next one for.

And so if you're a personal assistant at Ramsey and you're making $4,500 and the next one's going to cost us $6,000, then that's the marketplace for that position.

And that's what that becomes worth. That's very impersonal, but that's one way to look at a comp model.
Then beyond that, that position is worth how long you've been there.

My personal assistant, Patty, has been with me 23 years.

She can finish my sentences. So her worth is worth, is much greater than

the next person in to replace her, and she's retiring. And I'm going to have to do that.
So, which is driving me crazy. But yeah, but the

yeah, there you go. But you see what I'm saying? But the point being, I mean, she works here in the building and

has for all this time, but

her longevity here and her knowledge base inside this organization makes her more valuable than someone in the marketplace, not less valuable.

And so

whatever it takes to hire the CEO of an organization like this, a personal assistant, an executive assistant,

then Patty's worth more than that, 23 years' worth, okay, and gets paid more than that, by the way, which is good. She should.
I'm happy to do that.

So in your case, you know, you're providing extra beyond the normal 40-hour work week because this is a very residential kind of an arrangement. And that's cool.
I like that.

I think it's a cool service you're providing. And I think your client may be a bit unsophisticated in their analysis of what this costs.

So you might have to even provide, go, hey, look, I'm not trying to leave or anything, but I looked it up and here's what some other people are making doing this.

And it kind of made me think, what do I need to do better? to be able to be worth that to you. And because this is what, you know, if you hire somebody else, this is what you'd have to pay.

And just help your client's level of knowledge base,

but not in a belligerent way, not in a threatening way, and be very, very careful.

And, but that approach it like you would want to be approached where the shoes reversed.

Treat other people like you'd want to be treated. Jesus called that the golden rule.
And let me throw this out there, Henry. Prepare yourself for her to look at you and say no.

And then you're going to have

most people, I don't say most people, many people will head online and talk about their boss and they don't do this, they don't do that.

I would call you to a higher form of character, which is to say, all right, cool, I have a grown-up decision to make.

Do I want to stay in this job

at this pay because my boss has been clear, or do I want to look for another

person like this CEO because I like this work, or I don't want to go back to corporate America, but right now I have some financial needs, and so for the next two to three to five years, I'm going to go do that.

But it's you looking in the mirror and saying, okay, here's what I can control. And I'm not going to be a complainer.
I'm not going to be a whiner.

I'm going to say, okay, I shot my shot and she said no. And then I've got to make some grown-up decisions now.
Yeah, that's exactly right. That's good, good input.
And

that's very good, Henry. And I, you know, my hope is that you can provide some facts.
in the type of voice tone that you used with us. And

those facts also would give you some confidence to have the conversation and make it a very serious conversation, not a threat. But this is what's going on.

And so, you know, if one of our developers comes in and goes, a developer that's a, you know, a

dev three, you know, they make $220,000 in the market right now. You guys are paying me $180,000.
We go, oh my gosh, let's look at that. We must have messed up something.
Let me ask you this, Dave.

Over the years, when an employee has come to you and said,

I have this thing in my life and I need more money versus,

hey, here's what the market is.

I don't, their need for money is only, that's a ministry. There we do that.
Okay, it's just generosity, but I'm not changing your comp. There you go.

That's what I was getting at. But when someone comes and says, hey, my hours have increased, my responsibilities have increased, this is the market.
Now we're having a business conversation.

And that's a reasonable conversation.

That's a job.

But beyond that, it's me taking care of somebody that I love. There you go.
That's generosity, but that's not a comp discussion.

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Our scripture of the day, Job 17:9, the righteous will hold to their ways, and those with clean hands will grow stronger.

James Clear says, You don't have to be the victim of your environment, you can also be the architect of your environment. There it is.
I like that. Alyssa's in Chicago.
Hi, Alyssa. How are you?

I'm good. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve.
What's up in your world?

So I had a question

regarding rent.

I was wondering if you recommend to

stay living at home, which is my current situation, at my parents' house, paying $1,000 towards my parents' rent, or moving out.

I'm taking it since you're calling, it's not a good living environment.

You know, I am the oldest of four kids.

So I'm 30 years old, and the youngest is

19. And so we get in a bit of tiffs here and there.

Okay, why are you back living at home? Why are you living at home at 30 years old?

So I did move out a couple years ago in the city with my ex-boyfriend, and things didn't work out.

So I've decided to move back home and hammer down paying off a debt I paid off 10k in student loan debt so it cleared that out what do you make saved up 70k

70,000 and you're 30 years old

okay and what do you do for a living

I am a digital content specialist but I'm looking to pivot into UI and UX design

you're looking to pivot into what

UI and UX design. These are experience design.
It's like welfare development and like app design.

Okay.

And that would pay more?

Yes, significantly.

So if you're home cleaning up, like, I'm 30, I've got some, I made some choices that

dug me a hole. I've got to clear myself out.
How long have you been back? Then that's one thing, but

I want to say like two or three years, and I was able to save up an emergency fund of, I think, like three to six months. I forget exactly, but like a 12K emergency fund.

And then I also saved up 15K

for a car that I would eventually buy. And then I'm saving up for like furniture.
Okay.

All right. I'll just stop.

At 30 years old, if you're not sick and you haven't been abused,

there's no reason for you to to be at home. You need to be like a grown-up woman and stuff and go have a life.

You're freaking 30 years old. You make $70,000 a year.
What the heck are you doing in your mother's basement? Yes, move out. Yeah.
For sure.

Yeah. Buy your own milk, girl.
Buy your own electricity. Yeah, you do not need to be living under mommy's roof at 30 freaking years old.
You've stunted your development. Yeah.

Stand up, square your shoulders, go be somebody. It's time.
It's past time. Like three years past time.

You know, if someone goes through a, let's say that she went through an abusive thing with a boyfriend and she comes back home to heal a little bit, six months or something like that.

So we want to provide a safety net for our grown kids, but not a hammock. This is ridiculous.
That's a good line. You need to get out of here.
Yeah.

Well, and you said it best,

there's a safe place to be. Let me say this.
It's like going to the hospital when you're sick, but you got to leave the hospital or you're never going to get stronger again.

And you got to go back out and let your immune system do its work. You got to let your bones do its work, let your muscles do its work.
You got to get back out there.

And it's uncomfortable, but you got to get back out there.

So, yeah, it's unless there's something you're not telling us, which I have in my guts that you are, but yeah, it's time for you to go and get your own place and to get back out there and join a bowling league or go join a book club, go do something, but get back around other adults your age.

And don't hang around. Neither of which go bowling, but yeah.
No, dude, they're coming back. Bowling leaves are coming back.
Is it really? It's zooming back. It's ironic.

It's like James in his tight shorts and fender guitars. Like, these guys are bowling again.
It's coming back, man.

The cool kids are bowling? I wouldn't call them. Yes.
You just made all that up. No, I'm serious.
I'm serious. I've read about it.

They're coming back. Because here's the thing: kids' lives are awful on screens.
And they're like, we got to start doing something. And bowling was the answer? One of many answers.
Wow.

I like a good bowl. You do? I'm terrible at it.
I'm the worst. I would say.
I'm worse at bowling than I am at golf, and you know how bad I am at that. Yeah, you're happy Gilmore for sure.

I'm not good at that.

Teeing it up in the fair way. Yes, he did.
He did do that, boys and girls. I watched it happen.
All right. So, yeah, honey, you need to move out.
That's no question. Okay.

Next is Tristan in San Francisco. Hey, Tristan, what's up?

Hey, Dave. Hey, John.
How are you guys doing? Better than we deserve. How can we help?

So I'm going to be proposing to my girlfriend, and we agree on most financial things.

I've been talking about not using credit cards or building a credit score like Dave teaches, but I struggle to explain how people get approved for things like apartments without a credit score when landlords check it.

And so my question really is, how do people practically live without a credit score? And how can I explain that to her? They do all the time. There's a few landlords that check it, but we did.

We've had George got on his YouTube show and called a whole bunch of apartments, and every one of them took him in the, he just said, hey, I'm moving to town. I don't have a credit score.

I just got out of school.

You rent to me and they went, yeah,

you have a month, two months deposit, whatever. And yeah, we'll rent to you.
Just proof, you need proof of employment. But

I think two out of like 20, like 10% of them said they wanted a credit score or they wouldn't rent. The rest of them said, sure.
That's mythology that everybody spreads. It's absolute freaking lie.

When you actually start calling apartments, they rent to you.

Yeah.

The same thing with housing. Yeah.
Yeah.

Some mortgage companies don't know how to do a no credit score loan. But again, George and

George and his wife got Whitney. They got married, met here, got married here.
And well, they're both working here. And they went and bought a home with no credit score from Churchill Mortgage.

And somebody else did.

Me. I do the same thing.
No credit score. They do manual underwriting.
It's called manual underwriting. Yeah.
You do it with a no credit score all the time. That's all.

You just got to, but not all mortgage companies know how to do it. So you can't just walk into any old mortgage company because a lot of them are dumb.
They just look at the numbers.

It's like a monkey. They look at the number.

Number's big enough. Ooh, ooh, number's not big enough.
That's credit score lending. There's no brain involved.

They just could depend 100% on the algorithm. But it's mythology because it's not a measure of financial health.
Yeah, if I gave you $10 million, your credit score wouldn't change.

So it has nothing to do with your wealth. It's not a wealth score.

It's like a dating app for how well you've dated

debt in the past.

Yeah. Yeah.
I tried to explain that to her one time, but I didn't really have the words to tell her.

She's really good at paying off her credit cards and

she uses them. Let me tell you what, I am too, because I don't have any.

Yeah. I'm really good at it too.

I'm not good at it, so I've been

getting rid of them now.

I'm 24. All right.
I learned this lesson in an embarrassing way in front of a college president at the age of 28. Okay.
So you got a four-year head start on me. You ready for this advice?

Yes. Never enter into a persuasive argument without knowing your facts and figures.

So if you think you shouldn't have a credit score and she says, why?

And you go,

I heard on the radio. Because there's this podcaster.
He's awesome. And then you're going to lose that.
So do your homework on that. And that'll be work in your marriage and at your workplace.

Yeah, and just, you know, you can jump online. There's plenty of our clips and things you can get on explains how the whole algorithm works and everything on the credit score.
It's a complete charade.

100% of the math in the algorithm to build your credit score has to do with how you interface with debt. It is not your income.
It is not your net worth.

It is not anything to do with health or wealth when it comes to anything. All it is is, did you borrow money? Did you pay it back? What kind did you borrow? How much did you borrow?

It's an I love debt score.

And if you don't love debt, you get a real low one. I've had a zero credit score for decades.
It's not determinable. That's what they call it.
ND.

That's what I am. I'm an ND.
I like it. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books.
We'll be back with you before you know it.

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