The Ramsey Show - App - 5 Toxic Money Habits of Narcissists

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

George Kamel & Dr. John Delony discuss: The best way to become debt-free, Should you move to a cheaper area or try to earn more? When can you take a vacation during the baby steps? Should you use your emergency fund to buy a car with better gas mileage? 5 toxic ways that narcissists handle money. Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

I'm out. From Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help you get control of your money, get ahead in your career, and get connected in your relationships. We want to help you learn how to live well, give you the right next step wherever you might find yourself in this journey. I'm George Campbell, joined today by Dr. John Deloney. Open phones this hour, 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225.

Timothy kicks off this hour in D.C. Timothy, welcome to the show. Hey, guys. Thank you so much. I'm excited to have the opportunity to ask my question. So I have a three part question. Uh, first I would say I have, I just was given the ability to move anywhere in the United States. I currently owe, I currently owe 689 on my house.

It is worth 940,000. That's the first note. The second note is I have a rental property that I owe 85,000 more and I met, you know, the, the, um, the rent I received is like $1,200. I have a car that I owe $68,000. If I was to sell it, I would walk away with $23,000. to become debt-free if I sell this house and take the profit, pay off the other house, and then sell my car and take the $23,000. So my question is, if I do that, where does that put me when I go to move somewhere else? That's awesome, Timothy.

Well, you've got a lot going on here. Why do you want to become debt-free? I'm curious. You know, I just started listening to your station probably a month or two ago, just in the morning when I was taking my kids to school, and I'm starting to catch the vibe of, you know, the freedom that I can have. But from a financial perspective now, we rank in around about 275 combined. Awesome. We don't have any credit cards.

So I'm at a sweet spot. I would call a sweet spot from managing my bills and having residual income but i just don't know if i move and what's the worry with moving the moving is if i pay off everything as i mentioned and i get down to the location i want to move to the housing market is where it is so out of the number, the calculation that I ran with all those numbers, I could probably have maybe like $80,000 or $90,000 left over if I paid off everything, the rental property, sold his house, sold my car. So you want to keep the rental property but pay it off?

Is that right? I need guidance. Okay. Yeah. Well, George is going to help you walk through the math of this um i'm going to tell you like just at the 30 000 foot view um you do really well and it's you've got a you've you've got an incredible income clearly you're good at what you do because the your employer just said i don't even care where you live. We want you on our team that bad. And so you are clearly way out in front of the game. The part that's dragging you down is that you are trying to look the part too.

And it's keeping you from becoming super wealthy, generational, transformationally wealthy. Okay? And so it's going to take a season of you not looking like you make $275,000 a year. And then you're going to hang out with people and you're going to realize they make $400,000 a year

and you'd never know it. I walked, I ran into Dave when we were doing something here in Las Vegas, Dave Ramsey himself, who's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt that I could get at Academy. And that's not me blasting him. That's just saying there's a certain level that when you cross a line, you're not impressing nobody. You know what I mean? And so right now, you've got a million-dollar house here, a rental house over here, a really nice car over here, and your money is sprayed out everywhere.

And you've got this concentrated nuclear reactor of a salary, man. And so here's what I'll tell you before I hand it over to George. seat like if you and i just trade places today what i would do is i would sell my house i would think real hard about selling that rental house real hard about selling that rental house i would sell my car i would move to the town and i would rent in this new city for probably six months to a year and i would pile up cash and find the place in the house that i want to live and that's gonna you're gonna go what you're crazy you know how much money I make? And I'd say, exactly. Right. So George, take it on the map. Yeah. I love what John's putting down over here. Timothy, here's the deal. That rental property, you said it brings in 1200 a month. Yes. That's 14K a year. You make 275. This rental property is not changing your life.

Correct. It might feel good because you're like, ooh, I'm a slick real estate investor. But did you make that in a month? In a month? Hey, how much is the house worth if you sold it? They've been charging me

like $189, $190. And you owe $85? Yes. Okay, so here's my napkin math. You'd net $250 on your personal residence. You'd net $23 on the car sale and you'd net $100,000 from the rental sale.

Does that sound right? Yes, sir. So you're looking at $375,000 in cash if you make all these moves. And then you'd have to go spend $25,000 and buy yourself an F-150 or a Camry, and you'd have to just look in the mirror and go, yep, I'm that guy for this season. Or get yourself something nice. You have $375,000 in cash, right? And the world is your oyster, Timothy. You said you can move anywhere. Do you

know where you'd want to go? Yes, I do. But I want to say this in case somebody's... Oh, you got it. You got it. You got it. Yeah. So here's my thinking though. If I had $375,000 in cash and I made $275,000, what would it look like to pay cash for a property somewhere, be completely debt-free, get a cheaper car, and then you go, I make $275,000 and I don't have any payments in the world. Do you know how quickly you can build wealth? Do you know how quickly you could buy rental properties? Do you know how much earlier you could retire if you made these moves? Does that excite you? It does. So the one caveat, and this is why I'm calling for advice, no pride, is it's like we work so hard and it just certainly brings us joy. I got you. Dude, I drive an 06 truck, and that's just because I wrecked my wife's 2010 Prius, right?

I've had to take my pride and set it aside and say i i value my kids and my grandkids having a different kind of life more than having a fancy leather seat in my car on a depreciating asset i've had to say i am willing to and by the way it's not a sacrifice at all, to have a hundred, I mean to have a thousand or fifteen hundred square foot less on my house size so that when I die, my grandkids

are going to inherit infinite amounts of money. See what I'm saying? So the why we're doing this is way, way bigger than how hard I work. And I just had to change the picture because our culture tells us, you work so hard, so you deserve this. And my thought is, I work so hard, so my family's going to live differently forever.

Amen. Timothy, if you can stop caring what other people think, it is a superpower, my man. Dude, you can do this. You can build wealth. Because the truth is, there's people making $40,000 that have a higher net worth than you. That should make you mad. I want you to build your net worth and not build your reputation. You don't need this. You're doing so, so good. Make these moves. You're not going to regret it. This is The Ramsey Show. I just saw a study that really made me sad. It showed that families owning life insurance in the U.S. was at its lowest point since the 1970s. After what we've been through the past few years, I'm just lost on how people don't make this more of a priority. How are you going to make sure your family needs are met if something happens to you?

This is why getting term life is an absolute necessity. Rates have never been cheaper and the whole process to apply is pretty simple with many companies not even requiring an exam anymore. This is why I send you to Zander Insurance and I have for almost 25 years. They'll make sure you get the right protection at the lowest cost possible and they're there for you and your family every day. I challenge all of you to make sure your families are protected. It needs to be a top priority. Call Zander at 800-356-4282 or visit zander.com. That's 800-356-4282 or zander.com. All right. Imagine the energy of a jam-packed arena filled with people ready to experience what it means to live life to the fullest.

Now picture all of your favorite speakers together in one stage, empowering you with tools and principles that will create unstoppable momentum in your life. That is Smart Conference. That's right, folks. Smart Conference is back. It's been three years since we've done this event, and we are so pumped to get it back on the road in the great city of Dallas, Texas. Dallas, we're headed your way on Saturday, October 22nd. Mark your calendars. It's going to be an amazing time. This is our

biggest event of the entire year. You don't want to miss it. It's a day-long opportunity to get advice from leading experts on money, personal growth, leadership, mental health, relationships, and your career. And you're going to leave with all the knowledge and motivation you need to reach your goals and live the life that you want. And all of us here at Ramsey will be there, including my friend right next to me, Dr. John Deloney, and special guests Craig and Amy Groeschel from Life Church. They're coming too. They're going to be talking about marriage.

It's going to be fire, as the kids say, John. Tickets are $39. That's amazing. This is a full day event for $39. Yeah, it's pretty cool. You barely can go to Chipotle with your family for $39. This is wild. Get your tickets right now before they sell out.

Go to ramseysolutions.com slash events if you want to learn more. And this is a destination event. So if you don't live in Dallas, Texas, you should go to Dallas, Texas for this event. People travel from all over the country. It's going to be a packed arena. And John's going to be there, Rachel, Dave, Ken, you name it. Yeah, it'll be a blast. And if it's anything like last night in Vegas with our Building Wealth Live event, which

five of us were on stage. Yeah, it was a party. It's going to be electric. So go get your tickets, ramsaysolutions.com slash events. It's going to be a bunch of fire emojis right in a row. That's not a thing. Do people still do that? I don't know.

I was trying. Where's Gen Z when you need them? I was trying. To keep us cool. All right, Derek joins us up next. Where's Gen Z when you need them to keep us cool? All right, Derek joins us up next. He's in West Palm Beach. Derek, welcome to the show. Hi, Derek. Sorry, I'm having a hard time hearing you, man.

Speak directly into your phone. Not any better, Derek. Okay, we may have to hang on and see if we can get you later. All right, we're going to move on right now to Madeline in Naples, Florida. Madeline, welcome to the show. Hi, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my call. Absolutely.

Did I get it right? Is it Madeline? You could say Madeline, Madeline. Okay, see, I knew it was Madeline. That was very nice of you to say it that way. That's such a Madeline thing to do. All right, how can we help? You can just call me whatever.

Yeah, so we just found out we're expecting our fourth baby in December. Party. Thanks. Yeah, it is. We're so excited. But I do have a question about moving from this area versus increasing our shovel. Okay. So we're on baby step three. We live in a really expensive area, obviously in Naples. The amount of time saving up for our house just feels really far away for us. Our rent is taking up about 33% of our take-home, which is about $62,000 a year. And my husband and I both work some side gigs. I do some data entry on the side, and I'm also a stay-at-home mom. He's a chemist,

and we have family in the Midwest we're interested in moving closer to, either Kentucky or Wisconsin, but the opportunities he has at work are pretty good, so we're just having trouble weighing the options. So he'd have to uproot his career if you guys made the move to Kentucky or Wisconsin? No, because we're looking, there's lots of job opportunities for chemists in Kentucky or Wisconsin, and we would chase the job. But those are the two states we've been kind of eyeing.

Okay. So why do you want to stay where you are? The picture you just painted says it makes sense just to go be with family and go make good money and go chase it. Yeah. Why would you want to stay where you are? Um, well, there's a little bit of FOMO, I think it's fear of missing

out. It's pretty glamorous area we live in and you know, there's the beach and this is vacation land. Why would we leave? We also have, um, family here as well. His parents are here and they have a house and they're rooted here, I think. So, uh I think. So it's hard to part from them. They've been a big part of our lives and the grandkids. So let's flip it around. What if you just never moved? Just stay put? I think we would do pretty well. Is there FOMO there with not moving? I have a little bit of that because I've been away from my family in the Midwest for like

going on nine years ish. So I have that yearning, but we both are okay with staying. Like I am okay with staying in Florida. It doesn't feel like we're going to get a whole lot of margin as soon as I'd like it. It feels like saving

for a house is just going to take such a long time. Hold on, but you guys have a massive income. What's your yearly income? 62 take-home. Your take-home pay is 62? Yeah. Oh, okay. I thought you said you were paying that in rent. I was like, this is absurd. Okay. That changes things. Madeline. No, no. Madeline. Yeah. Two important things, okay? Yeah. Number one, you're allowed to miss your family and really want to strongly consider moving back to be around them. And somehow you've become over probably the course of your lifetime, you've become the peacekeeper and they want to make sure everybody else is okay

before we talk about what I need. Yeah. And your needs have value. And in fact, the greatest way to honor your spouse, the greatest way to honor your kids is to speak your needs out loud and have that conversation,

probably multiple conversations. Squashing that stuff will make its way out, and it's going to make its way out in all sorts of ways that you don't intend. Okay? The second thing is you are allowed to say that you have a desire with kid number four coming that I want to have our own home tired of renting definitely and yes things are shiny here and yes they're nice and the water's great and all that we can't afford to live here full stop and so we can visit here your parents

have a house that's what those are conversations that you need to have. And you have them in loving and direct and respectful and kind and dignified ways. But somehow you've convinced yourself that your needs go way beyond everybody else's, even to the point that you make up stories about other people's needs and insert them above your needs. And they may not even be real, right? Yeah. Yeah. So here's your homework assignment. I want you to sit down and say, write, put a piece of paper and write down,

not with a computer, with a pen, like old school, like it's 1986. And I want you to write, I need and I want at the top of a paper. And you may have never even thought about this.

Or you've got, you feel really guilty and i want you to write that stuff down all the way to my wife needs this thing called chit chat not super sure what it's all about but i just know that um at the end of the day she likes me just to sit while she's like doing stuff and we just we just talk i don't fully get it but i here's what she told me hey this is important for me and it's important for me to help meet her needs there and it's as simple as sitting down for about an hour every day no kids and just having grown up communication and it's fantastic okay yeah that's just a small need every all the way up to

our intimacy life are we have another kid coming. We've got this. I don't see you. Are you breaking bad? He's a chemist, right? Who knows what conversations y'all need to have? You just need to have them, right? All the way up to I want to make a plan to own our own home,

and I want to move back to the Midwest. And letting those things be heard. Can you do that? For sure. Yeah, he's a great listener. Awesome. Awesome. And most of the time when people will speak their needs out loud

and look at somebody across the table from them and say, I love you and I love us and here's what I want for us, the conversation is totally different. When you wait and wait and wait and 14 years from now, your last kid's going off to college, and you just have an implosion, then your husband's looking there in the ash of what just happened and goes, what happened? What did I do? Sure, yeah. And Madeline, realize that neither of these decisions are fatal.

So don't make it this life, like, what if we do the wrong thing? You can move, you can not move, and your life's going to be okay. But what I'm feeling is that if you stay in Naples and you've got four kids and you can't afford to have any margin to save up for a house, which is something that you told me you wanted, then you're not really living in a dream area. You're living a nightmare because you're frustrated every day by your situation. Yeah, you're living next to rich people doing their rich thing lives. Ding, ding, ding.

While rent keeps going up forever. So wishing you the best as you have these hard conversations pulling for you. And good luck with whatever decision you decide to go with. Appreciate the call. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. what's up america thank you for joining us this is the ramsey show i'm george camel joined today by dr john deloney our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. Find out for yourself why Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window covering. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use promo code Ramsey to get the best deal.

All right, today's question comes from Trevor in Idaho. Trevor writes, I'm looking for advice on transitioning from baby step two to baby step three. We will be debt free soon and my wife wants to celebrate with a small trip costing around $2,500. I want to continue ASAP on our emergency fund. What would you advise? Well, I'm sensing some marital tension here because he wants one thing, she wants another. That's right. And congrats on being debt-free, by the way.

That's awesome. This is an interesting one, John, because after baby step two, you're like, we did it. We can live our life now. We don't have payments anymore. And yet, you're still not out of the woods. The mathematical reality is you got to zero, right? You got to baseline. You got to baseline.

To flat earth. I just stepped in it with that one. It's not flat, John. You've been hanging out with Rachel Cruz too long. You get to zero and you work so hard to dig out of a hole to just be like, alright, now we're on basic ground now. And now we have to do the work to start building.

If you look at it this way, you're going to spend $2,500 on a vacation when you only have $1,000 in your bank account with your starter emergency fund still. So that scares me to death. And so I'm going to use that and go, okay, what if instead of we put this vacation on hold, the big one, but we still do a real small trip? Maybe it's local. Maybe it's an Airbnb. Maybe it's just a weekend getaway. How can we do this for $400 instead of $2,500?

That's right. Last summer, my family, man, we have some financial goals that we're trying to hit, and we're all being kind of obnoxious about them. We had a really rad vacation at the KOA, and we rented a cabin, and we all piled in it, and it was not glamorous, and it was outside, and the kids ran around.

Everybody had a blast. And so it was like $400, right? It wasn't that super expensive of a three- or four-day getaway. Or go have a fun night. So I think the answer here is both, both and. You need to do something to mark this occasion. Do something fun. Go have an obnoxious dinner.

Go spend the night in an Airbnb somewhere if you need something shiny and fancy. Or go spend a couple of days at a KOA somewhere. Go do something like that, but don't blow two and a half times your emergency fund telling yourself how great you are because you just made Baseline, man. Because you deserve a vacation. I'd much rather see you fully fund that emergency fund and then take $5,000

and go do something fantastic. It's not a no. It's just a not now. When you look at it that way, you go, okay, we can still start planning. We can get excited about it. Do something, man. It's around the planning. We can get excited about it. But do something, man. Yeah. Do something. And it's around the corner.

We found that Baby Step 3, saving up that fully funded emergency fund, takes most people about six months. Right. So we're not talking, hey, three years from now we're going to go on vacation. We're talking six months from now or maybe eight months if we need another few months to save up for that vacation. But once you do that, man, it's going to be a peaceful place. You're not going to be on that vacation going, oh my gosh, what if we get flat tires? What if the HVAC goes out?

We're still broke. That's right. So, good question. Or we're right back in debt where we were before, right? Yeah, thanks for the question, Trevor. Appreciate it. Open phones this hour, 888-825-5225. Derek joins us.

He's back from West Palm Beach. Derek, can we hear you now? I don't know. You tell me. You sound like a million dollars in cash. Okay. What's up, man? Thank you for taking my call. What's going on? I had a basic call. I hate to wish you guys with such a basic question.

No such thing. You ain't wasting anybody's time. I'm glad you called, man. Thank you. Thank you. I travel back and forth to work about an hour. So my question was kind of similar to the email you guys just got. But mine was for is it okay to dip into my emergency fund a little bit to purchase a better car, not a new car, just better on fuel.

I drive a 05 Grand Cherokee. It's an eight-cylinder. It's horrible on gas. It's going to pay about $500 a month on gas. So it's just killing me. And I don't want to finance a car that's, regardless of what you guys say, that's just not something I want, period. Well, we weren't going to finance a car that's, regardless of what you guys say, that's just not something I want, period. Well, we weren't going to steer you in that direction.

We'd never say that, yeah. Not on this show, my friend. Yeah, I know you wouldn't. Okay, that's a great question. So here's the deal. Here's how I look at this situation. Your emergency fund has very specific parameters. And so ask yourself these three questions.

Is it urgent? Is it necessary? And is it unexpected? And the truth is, if you answer all of these three honestly, you're going to say no, no, and no. So here's what I'm going to do. I do think you need a better car

with better gas mileage, but what we're going to do is save up on top of the emergency fund and a separate savings account to buy this new car or used car. What do you want to get, man? Anything that's worth selling this one. I'm not... So what's the car worth? If you sold it today in this market, what could you get for it? Geez, I haven't priced it recently, but it was worth probably a little above a thousand. I mean,

I've put probably five times. A thousand bucks I mean, I've put probably like five times. Yeah, I've put maybe like five times as much into it. Hold on. You're saying your Grand Cherokee 05 is worth $1,000 in this market? I don't know about today, but when I priced it a little while ago, that's what it was. Okay, this is your homework. Go actually check on kbb.com. Go see what similar cars are selling for on Auto

Trader, Carvana. Just go and do some research to figure out what you can get for this car because that helps you figure out what the gap is to get to the next car. How much cash do you have? I have about $15,000. And that's your fully funded emergency fund or is that more?

No, that's the emergency fund. Is that three months or six months six months okay are you single uh single but i do have a girlfriend okay what do you do for work i'm a truck driver okay for a costco cool well if you want to what john's getting at is limiting your emergency fund shrinking that down to maybe three or four months. Is that okay? Yeah. I mean, if he's got a stable job, there's no chance.

If you're a single guy and you're like, hey, I can go hustle and go get something else, I mean, when you have two stable incomes, I feel a lot better about leaning towards three months. Yeah. So it's a little bit of risk, but he's not taking all $15,000 and going, well, I have no money in the bank, but I have a car. Right. Yeah, so do you hear what we're saying derrick if you've got a fully six month funded six month emergency fund it doesn't give me heartburn to roll back to say okay i've got four months of emergency fund i'm going to take that gap plus trade my car in and

in fact i'm going to save one more month and get another thousand bucks here i'm going to scratch and claw and say if i'm going to take that money and go find me a four-cylinder car. What's your income? It hurt my feelings. I make about $97,000, $98,000. Come on, Derek. Why don't you leave with that? Derek, you make $97,000 a year.

You're debt-free with an emergency fund? Except for my home. Okay. What's stopping you from saving up $6,000 to $8,000 in a few months? Other than, well, I invest a lot into my 401k and my Roth. What percentage are you investing from your income? 20. Okay. Let's taper that down because your life's not all about investing right now when you need this car. So I'm going to dial it back to 15%.

Once you do that, you're going to give yourself a little raise, a little margin to save up for this car. And beyond the 15%, I want you attacking the house. Okay, I didn't catch that. You guys were both talking at the same time. So I want you to invest 15% of your income instead of 20. And that 5% that you get back into your life now is going to give you some margin to save up for this car very quickly. So I'm doing some research. If I'm you, I'm going Toyota, Honda, sorry, Toyota.

They get very upset with me for saying Toyota. So here's what you're going to do. Look up what these cars are going to cost for maybe a 2010 Civic, a 2010 Camry, something like that, and then figure out the gap, figure out how long it's going to take, and go get that car and sell the Grand Cherokee. But I wouldn't dip into the emergency fund more than two or three grand. Okay. You got this, man. Good luck.

Safe travels out there. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Our scripture of the day comes from 1 John 5, 14. This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. Corrie ten Boom said, What wings are to a bird and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. Now, if you don't know, Dr. John Deloney has his own show, aptly named The Dr. John Deloney Show.

And John, you get a lot of calls about narcissism. And that can be a squishy word. People have a lot of opinions on what that means. Can you help us understand this? Yeah, and we got this article here about narcissism and how they have toxic money habits that often go ignored or unnoticed. But I think it's important to step back and say, okay, what's a narcissist? That's a word that is way overused in our culture.

It's just someone I don't like. We have a lot of jerks and a lot of exhausted people. A pathological narcissist worthy of the diagnosis of narcissism, personality disorder, NPD, those are very different levels. So clinically speaking, narcissistic personality means someone has a very inflated sense of self-importance, a need for admiration, a lack of empathy. As my friend Dr. Cloud, Henry Cloud says, narcissistic people need to feel special. They have an inflated self-worth.

They're always looking to feel better, and they will use you for those means. To prop them up. You're a pawn their scheme it's think of a dementor i'm gonna get my spirit and my self-worth by taking from you that happened in space jam i remember that they suck the powers from the basketball just trying to connect and relate here john it's all right to who to like kids eating cereal space jam fans they understand oh my gosh leave it to george to bring this back to a lucky charms commercial so here's the deal so you've got folks who um are jerks we've got folks who are rude we've got folks who are struggling with things and they they can lash out at people they can hurt other people narcissists spend their life always trying to fill internal holes with

external solutions. I need everything from you. I need everything from this. They're going to try to look a certain way even though they're not paying their bills. And I assume it's never enough because they're not actually... It's an endless, yes. And it's actually a facade

to cover up for somebody who's really hurting. And it's a way to create space and to look the part here. But it's just this pervasive sense of this fantasy or this behavior that I'm better than everybody. And everybody around me. And there's a lack of empathy. And it goes on and on. We've been around people who have these fantasies about success. What are you talking about?

Like, yeah, my job, I'm this. I don't think that's the case at all, right? What a narcissist often does is they make you feel crazy in their presence because they talk so emphatically about how great they are and how wonderful they're doing and how great their money is and how incredible their sex life is. And you begin to think like, I'm not seeing that at all i thought you were an assistant manager and i know you assistant to the regional to the region and i know you make 41 000 like i don't and so you begin to feel crazy right and that's why gaslighting so important it's such a particular part of narcissists but so we we land here with these five toxic money habits that often go

unnoticed or ignored um in this article here from from cnbc so it says number one narcissists are often secretive about their finances they keep you in the dark they say things like let me be in charge of the finances so you don't have to stress about it and this can happen in business too right um a narcissistic co-founder might casually tell you, the article says, since you're the creative genius, I'll just manage the boring money stuff, which is an incredibly subversive power move

to take over the control. There's a lot of deceitfulness. That's right. A lot of deception happening. It's about getting power, right? Number two, they're only generous with money in public. Spending large amounts of money on others can be a way to get people to like them, but then they're really stingy and private, right?

They might cover dinner for colleagues or give gifts just for the show, and then their wife is like, hey, the kids need some clothes, and they're like, oh, you don't have to figure that out on your own, right? That's narcissism. So a lot of showiness happening here. That's right. They're willing to do it as long as other people see it. Because the purpose of covering that meal is not to honor and love and serve the people who are at the meal.

It's to demonstrate to the room how great and important and well I'm doing. Wow, John's such an amazing guy. So generous. That's right. Yeah. Number three, they skimp on the essentials here. So they can be grandiose when it comes to self-serving, unnecessary spending,

like buying designer watches they can't afford. We see this a lot with, I've got six figures of student loans, but I've got this Mercedes and four rental properties that I've bought on because I want to have this appearance

to show the world how great I am. Those intimate relationships with them may have to quietly save money on the side. I hear that a lot. I have to create a separate world so that I can live, right? Whether that's people avoiding abuse, that's people avoiding starvation, right?

I'm pilfering money over here into a secret account so the kids can have clothes for school, that kind of stuff. And it just doesn't even enter the mind of a narcissist, right? So this is like I'm wearing a Rolex, but my spouse is complaining that the car is falling apart. And I'm like, yeah, that's fine. I need my Rolex. That's right, because fixing that car does nothing for my image out into the public.

For your reputation. Yeah, that's right. Number four, they're hypocritical. Most narcissists believe the rules don't apply to them, even though they are quick to enforce them on everybody else. A narcissistic partner may freely spend on themselves and regularly blow the budget and they turn around and criticize you for, you bought that shirt?

And you're thinking, you just bought another car. It's so hypocritical and it's often so disproportional the response to what actually happened. This is a lack of integrity. Right. There's no consistency here.

Right, right. And the final one is they are punitive with money, and we see this a lot with narcissists. They weaponize money. They use it as a way to get things. I've heard this done. Well, we didn't sleep together this week, so no money for you this weekend.

Or if you don't do this or this or this y'all we're not going on vacation right it's a it's a tool for punishment um they may plan something really luxurious for your birthday let's say the article says here and then after an argument they're going to refuse to pay for the expenses leaving you on the hook because you signed up you like go ahead and book those tickets we're going baby and then you you booked the tickets you get in a fight like i'm not paying for those tickets and now you've got a mess right so here's one important um caveat about this we are real real bad in our culture george about quarterback um diagnosing our friends and our loved ones ourselves um it's the webMD effect or the Google effect.

You can put any number of things like, my partner does this, this, and this. They may have any number of things, right? Any number of diagnosis. I would say don't do that. Don't do that. If you are wondering if you are trapped in a relationship with somebody who's not safe,

A, focus on the behaviors, not the diagnosis. If someone makes you feel unsafe, if they're making you feel crazy, if they're gaslighting you all the time, if they have put you in a position where you can't pay for basic necessities, go reach out and call a professional ASAP because you're not safe. Leave the diagnosis to the psychiatrist or psychologist. Let's focus on the behavior, and if you're not safe,

get out of that situation ASAP. So as you see these symptoms, it's obviously you have to create some boundaries and have some really hard conversations, which is not easy with a narcissist because there's – It's virtually impossible. They're the kings and queens of spinning things and making you feel crazy like you talked about with gaslighting. So what is the right way to approach that if someone's like, I think this person is a narcissist. How do I get them out of my life or keep them at bay? You need to go talk to a professional counselor. You need to go get with a couple of friends who you trust who aren't going to be, yeah, not those kind of friends, but ones that you can stand and say, hey, here's what's happening in my life.

Is this normal? That's the most disconcerting or heartbreaking thing. When you talk to somebody who's in a relationship with a true narcissist, they come to you saying, hey, can you help me because I'm not good enough? Or hey, can you help me because I'm really struggling to be a good wife or a good husband? And you listen to their story and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not normal, right? And so if you feel like you are the worst husband ever or the worst wife ever, if you feel like you can never do anything right or you find yourself secretly hiding money, not because you lack integrity but because you're trying to make sure the kids have clothes,

go talk to a professional counselor ASAP. Great wisdom there, John, and good hour. Thank you so much. And thank you, America, for tuning in today. It's been a fun show. Thank you to all the folks in the booth, keeping the lights on, keeping the audio moving. We appreciate you guys. This has been The Ramsey Show. Until next time, spend wisely, save intentionally, and give generously. Do you love a good day, Brandt? Want to see the latest Ramsey Show videos going viral? Check out your favorite moments from the Ramsey Show on YouTube.

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