The Ramsey Show - App - $1000 Doesn't Feel Like Enough of an Emergency Fund (Hour 2)

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Mark is in Midland, Texas, starting this hour off. Hey, Mark, how are you?

I'm doing all right. How are you guys? Good, man. What's up? So, new listener, first home caller, no idea what I'm doing, no clue about the baby steps. But just over the last couple of days, what I've kind of started to do is I've dropped my 401K. I have about $130,000 in total debt. That includes two vehicles, credit card, and a home. I was without work due to for six months uh so we tapped into to the reserves that we had and um

along with uh you know the 401k that we had uh just to uh to keep up with bills um so you cashed out your 401k i did i took advantage of the uh of the covid relief on that um how much was that uh we we we were about uh 70 000 um total that we had in savings at that point and that's all that's all gone uh not all of it i've got 15 uh 15 left i have a truck that i owe two on okay and uh like i was saying i dropped my 401k to uh to zero my company does a 10 match regardless of what you know if I put in six, they'll still match me at 10. So I figured I can catch up on that.

Yeah. Yeah. Man, I'm sorry. You've had a hellacious year. Are you back to work? Yeah. Just recently started back to work. Good.

So you owe two on the truck and how much on the other debts? You said a total of 130. Two on the truck and how much on the other debts you said a total one on the truck yeah two on the truck four on a credit card um my wife's vehicle eight and then 115 on a home mortgage which is actually being rented out at the moment and i'm kind of break even on that why is it being rented i no longer live in that area. Oh, okay. What's it worth? $170,000.

Good. Okay. Well, I'm honored to have you as a new listener, sir. What do you make now that you're back to work? If I stay at my current rate by a 12-month period after taxes and everything, it would be a little over $81,000. Okay. Good for you. And are you guys renting right now, Mark, where you're at, or do you own? No, we actually own a piece of property, and we live in my wife's trailer, which is also paid for, older trailer. So that alone kind of makes me nervous to do anything with what we have saved.

Yeah, for sure. Because it being an older trailer. Well, the point of the Baby Steps, Mark, it really is this plan to get you guys, you and your wife, on the same page, being intentional with where your money's going, getting you in a place where you have an extremely solid financial foundation under you. So that means no debt, you have an emergency fund in place, and you start looking towards the future. So a couple of things, I mean, you could start, I mean, you have that 15K, when you guys pulled that 401K that you have left um that i would i would drop that to a hundred to a thousand and i would start working my way paying off your debt using the debt snowball which is the smallest

to the largest and so paying off which oddly enough will pay off all your debt except your house right that's 14 and that leaves you a thousand dollars which is scary as crap but you're going to be on a budget to be able to attack from there. I'd put the house on the market. Well, that's what I was going to say, too, is selling the house, and you can take that equity. I actually attempted to sell it. The lady in there didn't want to get out.

She wanted to re-sign the lease, so I let her because of the times. How long is the lease up, or when is the lease up is it a 12 month yes it's a 12 month lease uh she re-signed it last spring everything was kind of uh oh last spring so so a few more months is left then you put it on put it on the market when the lease is up yeah because that's 70 000 then you take that money so you're out of debt except this mortgage and she's paying the rent right now okay so day one with no truck payment no credit card payment no car payment you take all your money and squeeze it out of your budget and you add it to that thousand dollar account you're gonna have ten thousand dollars saved up real fast in your emergency fund and then getting back to that investing mark yeah and then you can start back investing and and when you sell that other house, I would use that as a down payment and build a house

on this land that you're living on, or buy another property and sell the land in the trailer, one of the two. But I would get in a permanent home, like you said, living in old trailers, got all kinds of downside to it. But by June, I'm in a permanent home with the equity from the sale of that other house. I'm debt-free with an emergency fund, and I'm investing again. Okay, that was a lot, Mark. Hold on. Let's just throw it. When Mark gets off the phone from this call,

what's the very first thing you would do immediately? I would sit down, and I would go to the computer or my phone, and I would download the um i'm going to give you ramsey plus for a year okay so i want you to jump into ramsey plus and i want you to do your budget on every dollar the very first thing and then i want you to do your budget again without any truck payment car payment or credit card payment so you can see what i'm talking about because if you take those numbers and add them together and squeeze every other dollar that you can out of your budget you're going to see that one thousand dollars in your

account is not going to be that way for very long but i'm going to write the checks today and be debt free but the house and no payments then i'm going to be in attack mode from this point forward now you got to allocate for christmas in the budget you got to make sure stuff's done in your budget it's a real world budget this is freaking December. Last time I noticed that's when Christmas is. So you got to do this stuff. But then you say, all right, with no truck payment, no car payment, no credit card payment in January, I'm going to put $4,000 in this account. The next month, I'm going to put $3,000 or $4,000 or whatever it is. And you're going to be able to see that you can do that by doing the budget. The second thing is I'm going to write the checks and be

done with those debts. The third thing is I'm going to pull that lease out and go ahead and start talking to that tenant, let her know to look for a place because we're going to put the house on the market when the lease is up, period. Start talking to a real estate agent in that area and get them ready so that day one that you're able to put that thing on the market, put it on the market. Then when it sells, I'm taking the money from that and buying a house over where you are or building a house on the land, whatever your plan is over there on that side. Oh, by the way, when you have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses saved, which in your world is about $20,000, and you don't have any payments at all,

you're in a really good place to restart that 401k and get that match, and you'll be able to rebuild your retirement that you drained. Oh, by the way, you're going to have to pay taxes on that money. You don't have a penalty, but you've got taxes on $70,000, so you have a $15,000 tax bill coming up in April you've got to get ready for. That's also something they have to consider. That may have to come out of the 70 from the sale of that house, something like that in there. But all we're doing here is just working get ready for it. That's also something they have to consider. That may have to come out of the 70 from the sale of that house. Something like that in there.

But all we're doing here is just working you right down it. Now, we're going to give you Ramsey Plus, which puts you through. Financial Peace University puts you in the Every Dollar Budgeting app, gets you community and coaches there that you can ask questions from. We're going to give you everything as a gift because you've had a horrible year. I want you to get a reset right now, Mark. Time for you to reset. Ready, set, go.

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There's still time to ship and get you things, so this is the time to get them ordered, and you will not beat these prices if you check around other places on our books because they're just unbelievably good deals. Brian is with us in Philadelphia. Hey, Brian, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Hey, Rachel.

Nice to talk to you both. You too. What's up? I just had a quick question. It's something that I heard you speak on a couple weeks ago. My wife and I recently purchased a house, and we were fortunate to do the 100% down plan like you recommend. So we purchased the house from my in-laws, and when we did the purchase, we did a quick claim deed.

Now, what I was wondering is we paid $180,000 for the house. Currently, houses in our neighborhood are selling for $320,000, $330,000. So with the quick claim deed, could you expand a little bit on what exactly that entails, and am I going to have capital gains, or is there anything I can do to shield myself from some of that as well? Yeah. You don't have any capital gains because you just bought a house for 180, and you pay cash for it.

Now, when you sell the house, to see if there is a gain, married filing jointly, you have to make a half-million-dollar profit for there to be a gain, and so you'd have to have $180,000 plus a half-million when you sell it before there's a gain, a taxable gain. Oh, okay. Okay? So you don't have to worry about capital gains. A quit claim deed simply means that they quit claiming any rights to the house

and gave whatever rights they had to you uh the benefit of that in most states i do not know the law in pennsylvania but in tennessee for instance where i am the benefit is you can record that deed for three dollars in tennessee you record a warranty deed which is the proper way to transfer a house where you warranty that you actually own the house and you're selling it or the piece of real estate that's a normal deed to transfer things and in most states you will pay a the equivalent of a sales tax a recording fee and it'd be thousands of dollars to record that deed. Okay? Tax at the courthouse one time.

Now, in most places, it wouldn't be $10,000, but like, for instance, in Tennessee, it'd probably be a couple of grand to do it on your deal. Okay? Give or take. Okay. It depends on the county that you're in and that kind of stuff. So that's what you avoided. What you didn't get is you didn't get a normal transfer. You got a handoff that says, whatever rights I have, I am giving to you.

And so, by the way, I could give you a quit claim deed to that. It wouldn't be worth anything because I don't have any rights. But I'm saying whatever rights I've got, which happen to be none, I can give you that deed for that now nobody does that that'd be weird okay but that's the problem with that deed and it may you may run into problems someday when you get ready to sell it they may question why it was a quit claim deed now the last part of the equation is your in-laws do have what year did this happen uh we just purchased the they purchased the house in 2016 we just did this a couple months ago oh so it's in 2020 good okay your in-laws need

to run to their tax lawyer or tax accountant or estate planning attorney because they have a gift tax due if they do not file proper paperwork on the difference in the value in the 180. You can't give somebody $200,000 that's not a charity without having gift tax on it. And that's what they just did. Even through real estate? Even through real estate. Yeah. If the thing is, if they ever get audited by the IRS,

and the IRS establishes the value at the time of sale being $320,000, but they gave it to their kids for $180,000, the difference is a gift. Okay. And it's going to be taxed at 55%. You do not want this. No. They don't want that. One piece of paper they can file with their taxes this year and it's called

write this down it's called the unified estate tax credit and they can use up part of their estate tax credit which is 20 million right now so that i think they're okay uh unless they got any unless they got assets over 20 million they're not a problem with this uh they can use up part of that instead of paying gift tax okay that makes sense yes perfect thank you very much unified estate tax credit they have to file the paperwork or they're going to be liable for 55 of of $140,000. They do not want to miss this piece of paper. Perfect. Thank you very much. And you're okay everywhere else. I would, I'll tell you what I would do.

Run over to the title company, and it's probably going to cost you several hundred dollars, but I'd buy title insurance on this house, on this transfer. And that'll help you when you get ready to resell it, when they look and go, oh, you just have a quick claim deed. Yeah. Well, I got title insurance. Okay. Well, the title company insured this transfer as being accurate.

Then that's going to help give you quality of title, so to speak. You know, proof of the chain of titles clean and all that kind of thing. I would buy title insurance to help you on the resale. And I buy it today. And I may have missed this, but why do a quit claim deed? Well, the only reason people do it is because you don't have to pay the taxes when you record it. That's it. That is cheaper.

That's the reason. So it probably saved them several thousand dollars doing that. Sure, but that's the main motivation. In a family transaction like that, another time you'd use a quit claim deed is if there was a divorce and the husband's going to give the wife the house in the settlement. Yeah. transaction like that another time you'd use a quit claim deed is if there was a divorce and the husband's going to give the wife the house in the settlement yeah he would quit give a quit claim deed for his half of the house that's a very normal way of doing that yeah um one time i had a piece of property that i sold and eight years later the guy uh an attorney contacts me

and says hey would you do us a quit claim? Because the way that title was done or the way that deed was written up, it looks wrong. And the insurance company won't insure it. I said, sure. I did a quit claim deed for them. They did all the paperwork. They paid for the recording. It just helped them clean the title up. So it's like I had a little piece of ownership still in a house that I really didn't own

because it was done wrong eight years before. So I was helping them clean the title. So you use it for stuff like that usually instead of a regular real estate transfer. 99% of the time you buy a piece of real estate is a warranty deed. And that says, as the seller, I am warranting that I am the owner and that I have a deed to give you. And I'm promising you that this is good and proper title, you know, and then you buy title insurance to make double sure.

But that's why they call it a warranty deed. When you buy a foreclosure, it's a special warranty deed because they're not going to guarantee the title. They're just selling it at the foreclosure steps at the courthouse. Right, right. At the courthouse. So you'll see these different names on these deeds, and they do mean something when they come along.

But you get ready to resell a foreclosure, which I used to buy foreclosures, as you know. And so you get ready to resell that, and you've got a special warranty deed, and you didn't have title insurance. Sometimes that gives you a hiccup. Yep, for sure. So that kind of stuff.

One of the houses that you and Winston lived in when you first got married that we bought. Winston and I bought it at a foreclosure. We bought it from a bank that had foreclosed on it. They gave us a special warranty deed. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you actually have owned a house with that, believe it or not, at one point. So it's interesting. I think, you know, but the quit claim deed, 99% of the time you hear about is divorce. When I'm quit claiming their half, I'm going to give my ex-spouse my half. And that's usually where it comes up. So there's your little real estate class of the day, folks. Just in case you were driving around. Real Estate 101 by Professor Dave Ramsey.

You were bored and now you're really freaking bored. All right. This is The Dave Ramsey personality is my co-host today here on the air. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ron is in Alexandria, Virginia. Hey, Ron, how are you? Hey, Dave, I'm doing terrific. Thank you and Rachel for taking my call today.

Sure, what's up? So, I have been following you and the Ramsey Solutions team for the last couple of years. We started paying off debt in April of 19, and that's when I became familiar with your teaching and your principles and everything you folks do, and I've been following it since then. So I'm familiar with the baby steps. We started out with 54K in debt. We're now down to 31K and still working to pay off. But my question is this. as i'm working to pay off this debt i've kind of taken a shotgun approach to the baby steps and i wanted to get your take on it so uh yes we're paying off debt um i started out with a thousand dollars put that away uh we ran into some problems with the house where that wasn't enough and unfortunately

went into some more debt so uh what happened to the house uh we had to get all of our pipes replaced all the plumbing because we had uh faulty plumbing um that was in the house and uh it's bad stuff uh and we had to get it all replaced there was a lawsuit that happened but we weren't we didn't fall in that window, so we ended up replacing all the piping in the house. And that was our decision. Yeah, that was our decision. We had four leaks within three years, and each one got progressively worse, so I made the decision to replace it. Okay.

And so we had those expenses. What's your household income so i just got promoted and we're now making between my wife and i and my military retirement and my my current job 128 000 and how much was the pipes 11 000 okay all right and i did not have the savings right built up at that time, Dave. That was the issue. Yeah, I understand. And so then –

But the pipes were not – it was not a sudden thing. I guess if you had called us, we would have said, stop your baby steps and quickly, making $100,000 a year, save $11,000 over the next three months, two months, whatever, and then do the work with cash okay there was not an emergency there was not an emergency you just had a toxic situation that needed to be dealt with but you'd been dealing with it for several years already yes sir yeah okay all right just i'm just thinking through this with you okay so you've so in and since in a year you paid off 30,000 bucks and

fixed 11,000 worth of pipes uh making 130 is that what you're telling me uh yes sir okay cool um so we had we had debt prior to that as well um it was 11,000 on top of what we already had. Um, but so now I'm at 31 and, um, I'm also putting money into our emergency fund. Uh, I've got about 8k in that right now. Um, I had stopped my TSP contributions this year to pay off the debt and I just started them up again because, you know, the call of the 5% matching is pretty strong. And so I, I went ahead and started them up again because, you know, the call of the 5% matching is pretty strong, and so I went ahead and started that up again. And so, you know, I've kind of got several balls up in the air with this approach. Yeah, you're doing your plan.

So my question, yes, sir. Okay. And this is why I'm calling. Yeah, how can I help you do your plan? Your plan doesn't work. How can I help you? Oh, no, sir. I want to do yours.

Absolutely. Well, no, you don't. You know what it is, and you're not doing it. You didn't like it. Okay. Right? Yes, sir. Okay.

All right. I mean, so, listen, here's the thing. Here's the thing. The call of the 5% is not a siren song, and it doesn't make you wealthy. What makes you wealthy is getting out of debt so that you have control of your most powerful wealth-building tool. A $1,000 emergency fund is not enough. It's not intended to be enough. We're supposed to be kind of scared with a $1,000 emergency fund, which drives us really hard to get through the $31,000.

And in your case, making $130,000 or $100,000 plus, how fast do you pay off $31,000? Eight or nine months. So you're really not going to have a $1,000 emergency fund for very long. As a matter of fact, you don't have $31,000 in debt because you have $8,000 in savings. I'm going to take seven of it, and that puts you to $24,000. How fast do you pay off $24,000 without putting money into the TSP and without this? Here's the problem. People don't win at money because they don't focus on one thing.

They try to do six things at once, and none of them work. And that's what you're doing. Yes, sir. So you can do it if you want. I'm not going to be mad at you. But it's not a shotgun approach on the baby steps because the baby steps does not account for a shotgun approach it is the baby steps say the power of winning is based on focus for short periods of time you're doing what we call in the business world and when we're doing

a technology project our guys do sprints and they go we're going to dive 17 people on one project like crazy for a week and see if we can get this project done and that's what we're doing here so you dive on the ball and you got a thousand dollars for how long you take to pay off 24 000 bucks making your kind of money six months max and then you're debt free now you build your emergency fund from 1 000 back up to three to six months of expenses and then you restart your tsp and you have plenty of money in your TSP. You can do it your way if you want to do it. Yeah, and all of this, I mean, honestly, it's a year.

You're going to look up 2021, December. You're going to be out of debt. You're going to have an emergency fund with cash, and then you just start investing again. So it's a one-year pause is the way you look at it. And I think that's the thing you have to wrap your mind around is as literal as you can get, write it down. I mean, visually see the plan on paper. That gives you a little bit more peace.

The idea of just having $1,000 and, oh, yeah, we got $31,000 in debt over here, and I do want to get that $5,000. It all kind of gets muddled. But when you say, okay, what if I took this approach and I really did take it down to $1,000, throw $7,000 at the debt the debt listing it out seeing how much you guys are making looking at your budget seeing what you can squeeze out okay yeah by july we'll be out of debt completely we'll take the next six remaining six months of 2021 save up some cash on the side and then we can keep going i mean it just is walking down step by step light dispersed lights a room focused is called a laser and will cut metal or do surgery

and life is that way when you focus on something to the exclusion of everything else you move the needle on it when you you don't, it's watered down because there's so much in this process that is not just a math problem. It's an emotional, relational problem because here's what happens. If I'm a little bit scared because I only got $1,000, which he is, and you should be,

I was, and I'm a little bit pissed off because I'm not getting my match, and I like the power of compound interest over here in my TSP, and that'm a little bit pissed off because I'm not getting my match, and I like the power of compound interest over here in my TSP, and that's a good thing. And those things make me go, when I sit down and look at the budget, we're cutting this out, we're cutting that out, we're cutting this out, because I'm getting rid of this debt so I can get on with this thing. And then when you get rid of all that debt, there's a sense of freedom,

there's a spiritual release because the borrower is slave to the lender. And, of course, there's a mathematic release because you don't have freaking payments anymore. And now you can easily do not 5%, 15% into your retirement for the rest of your life but the power of focus supersedes the the the need for an emergency fund short term it supersedes the but it causes deeper sacrifice into the budget and speeds up to get out of debt it also the the the disturbance in the force that happens because you're missing out on that compound interest is pushing. All of these things are piling up into your spirit, and you just go, it becomes a singular focus. I'm selling everything. I'm working extra.

I know we're not going on vacation. No, we're not going out to eat. I'm freaking getting out of debt. And when you get that in your spirit, instead of like, well, I just kind of do this, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this. And I'm not making fun of you, Ron, but I'm just saying that when your spirit does that, you lose the power, the momentum that comes from focus. And that's what it is.

Personal finance, 80% behavior, 20% head knowledge. It's not about the math. It's about about the math. It's about what's going on inside your spirit. And when you're focused, whew. This is why at Ramsey we are the most successful company in history helping people build wealth because we show them how to get out of that so that they can become wealthy. No one has done it on the scale or with the success that we have. And it's all based on these ideas.

This is The Dave Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jessica is with us in Bristol. Wait a minute, I'm pushing the wrong button there. Jessica's in Bristol, Virginia. Hi, Jessica, how are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for taking my call.

Sure, what's up? I found you guys probably about a month ago and i'm just trying to figure out i'm a special education teacher um and then i have a five-year-old daughter who has autism so like there's not an option for me to go out and work a second or a third job because my parents who takes care of your parents take care of her while you're at school yes i live with my parents... Who takes care of you? Your parents take care of her while you're at school? Yes. I live with my parents. I'm purchasing our family home from them in a private sale. Like, I pay them so much per month.

I don't really pay them. I pay certain bills. And so they... But my daughter needs me to be home. So there's not an option for me to go out and get additional work. And I already work 35 minutes one way from my house. I'm traveling about an hour a day, sorry, in transportation. How long have you been doing special ed?

I started out as an aide, so I was making about $15,000 a year. How long have you been doing this? I'm sorry. I've been doing special ed as a teacher for four years now. This is my fourth year. Okay. And you're raising a child with autism. Yes.

So this makes you what's known as an expert in the field of special education. Yes. You have experience, and you're a parent. I would come to you if I needed some questions answered on special education because I think you're a credible source. And this is your extra money, and it's all online. You develop an online presence, and you start coaching people and build support groups for people that have the same fears and hurts

and broken hearts that you have. You understand it like no other, and you can give advice and coaching, and you can build a following of people that will do that, and they will pay you for that. It may take a little while, and you have to develop a little bit of an entrepreneurial business model, but that's one thing that pops into my head. The other thing that pops into my head is while you're watching your child at home,

it would not be convenient, but for a short term, in order to make some more money to clean up some of your other stuff, you could watch another child that had special needs of some kind that allowed you to do both your child and that child. It couldn't be overwhelming, is my point, but you could do that. Okay. Or tutor. If I was to watch somebody else's child in my own home,

wouldn't I need some sort of insurance to protect? No, it's just called tutoring. You're just tutoring. You're going to start tutoring high-functioning autism students, and you're going to tutor them to increase the skill of math or reading or whatever it is that the parent is concerned about because you know how to do that and you can do that for an hour a day at home twice a week and you could make fifty dollars during that hour an extra two hundred dollars a week an extra eight

hundred dollars a month and that's a lot of money in your world yeah it is yeah i made all of that up just now by the way i have no idea if that's right but my point is you're not going to go out and work the quote extra job because there's no one to watch your child your parents have already been doing it all day and you need some time with them. They need you. The extra money, Jessica, what are you, your question calling in? Is it, do you need extra money? Are you looking for ways to earn it? What's your main question?

I'm pretty far in debt as far as student loans, credit cards. You know, the house payment isn't that big a deal um how much debt how much debt do you have um about um 120 000 in debt roughly okay so you're overwhelmed i mean you're what kind of debt is this um The majority of it is student loan debt because I was working as an aide before working as a teacher, and I couldn't live on being an aide. I couldn't cash for my education being an aide, but I had to do something in the field that I loved. And so I went from making $15,000 a year to making $36,000 a year, which sounds amazing when you think about it like that, but it doesn't take care of it when you have almost $100,000 in student loan debt.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think you've got to develop a side gig that allows you to be with your child and also allows you to create some income. And those are the two ideas that popped into my head. They're not magical and they're not easy and they're not instantaneous. You could do both of them. But I mean, you work on online stuff when your kids sleep at night. But you're right. It's going to take too long at $36,000 to address $100,000

student loan debt. And even if there's a family, Jessica, and again, all of these are short-term solutions. Like, we don't want you to live like this for the rest of your life. I mean, this is for the short term, maybe a year, two years, whatever it is. But even if there's a family near the school, one of your students that you have in class that lives near the school, so you're already driving out there. Maybe you go an hour earlier, 45 minutes earlier, do some one-on-one tutoring at their home before you go in to work or things like that.

But again, it's thinking outside the box, something that, again, doesn't take you away too long from your child. Because I hear you. And as a working mom, by the end of the day, you're ready just to be with your kids um but it is having to think outside the box you're not outside the box like you're going to go in this whole separate area my point is you are an expert utilize that in some way to give you the lift and you you you know as long as you have the emotional capacity to spend that much more time with uh special needs folks then if you've got that then i i would highly recommend that you're doing this and you're somehow coaching the moms and dads along it's just a it's a as you know

it's a great community of people that gather together on this and so there's word will get out that you have the answers and uh you know and that you had you know when when you get with miss jessica things happen you know i mean that's that that's that's what you want people saying about you all right jeffrey's with us in springfield missouri hi jeffrey welcome to the dave ramsey show yeah how you doing dave ben average thanks for taking my call. Sure, what's up? Yeah, so I've been listening to you on your show for the last three months or so. My boss showed me, gave me this book, Total Money Makeover. And anyways, so what I called about was, so we actually have, I'm in the military, so is my wife.

So we actually have, I'm in the military, so is my wife. So we actually have no debt. Actually, I had a small, like, credit card. I actually had the money. So instantly, I paid it off, right? So we actually had no debt. So instantly, I have, actually, besides the house. Okay, Jeffrey, before I run out of time, right quick, ask your question because I'm up on the clock here. Yes. Okay. So fast forward, I have all my Roth IRAs and everything else. I'm four, five, and six. So,

my question is, my wife is not really completely on board, right? But she, we do have controlled money. I'm kind of doing what I have to do, investing and whatnot. But my wife is not completely on board.

So, my question is, is there something that I can do? Like, is there something that I can show her to kind of get her on board uh to kind of be on this journey yeah you're going to need to ask more questions and make fewer statements um you're telling her everything and you're not involving her and she's getting tired of you preaching at her she gets enough orders during the day she's in the military and so if you'll ask and draw her into dreaming again as chris hogan says have a dream

meeting with your spouse about where we're going and then how are we going to get there what do you think we ought to do with this not here's what i think we ought to do with this she's tired of hearing what you think did i miss something no and uh you know baby steps two and three that's the that's the hard stuff but you guys are you're in you're in a good spot the fact that you're there already uh says a lot about what you guys have done. Yeah. Very good. You'll get there, brother.

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