The Ramsey Show - App - A Debt-Free Scream From Belgium! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

Debt, Home Buying, Retirement   Tools to get you started: Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE   Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

🎵 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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Savannah starts us off this hour in Pennsylvania.

Hi, Savannah. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay. I've been listening to your podcast for a while now, but I've never really like stuck to the baby steps until recently when I was just tired of being in debt. Okay. I want a baby step too. I just kind of started, like I made a plan last night, but once you're baby step, it says to do the snowball effect and do your first debt um your smallest

debt first but before when i was like trying to get rid of my debt i consolidated some of my credit card debt into a loan with my bank and the payment for it every month, they automatically take it out of my account, is $105 every payday. So it's like $210 a month. I was trying to figure out if I should just pay that off first so that I can have that extra $200 a month and not have to worry about it being taken out of my account. And then just then start on like the lowest one that I have. How old are you? 26.

And what do you make of your? Well, I'm about to get a pay raise in, like, two weeks, so about 43. Good. Okay. Have you been stubborn most of your life? Oh, yes, very much so. Because you're hell-bent on reinventing my system, aren't you? I am.

I like you a lot. You're fun. You're fun. Hey, you know, one of the things that's really hard for me, because I'm kind of wired like you are, I'm pretty stubborn, is to – I had a friend of mine that's worth about – he's worth a couple million dollars, and he does this big podcast. And I sat down with him a while back to do the podcast, and we finished, and he turned off the microphones. He said, you know what? He said, I paid off $500,000 in the last three years doing your stuff. And I said, really? Because he's like a big dog, you know? He said, really? You did this? And he goes, yeah. You know, he said, I've been listening to you for years, and I just didn't – I didn't want to do it your stuff. And I said, really? Because he's like a big dog, you know? I said, really?

You did this? And he goes, yeah. You know, he said, I've been listening to you for years, and I just didn't want to do it your way. And he said, you know what happened? He said, I got out of debt when I finally listened to this word. Because this is a big dog. Here's what he said. He said, when I finally submitted myself to a proven system.

And it's kind of like you and I are the kind of people that hire a personal trainer who has a six-pack and I have a keg and I'm arguing with him about how to do a sit-up. That's who you and me are. Okay?

So, you getting the point, Savannah? I am. Don't try to fix this. Just execute it, kiddo. You can do it. I'm proud of you, and I'll help you. I'm on your team, I promise. Thanks for calling.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Kate is with us in California. Hi, Kate. How are you? Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call. Your ministry is such a blessing. I am so excited to ask your wisdom on some family finance issues.

Well, thank you. How can I help? So my family is currently kind of considering getting a reverse mortgage for my grandparents. They're currently in their mid-80s. My grandpa is the primary caretaker for my grandmother. She's totally sound of mind, but not really able to walk and is really not mobile. She's otherwise in good health. He's aging and can't really be the caretaker for her anymore. He doesn't need care himself, but

she's a little bit heavier and he can't really lift her if she falls. So he wants to stay in their house by any means necessary. So my parents, who were just down there, my parents just moved to Idaho, they were considering getting a reverse or telling my grandparents to get a reverse mortgage so they can then afford care for her in a home, but he can stay in their home. Okay. Well, reverse mortgages are a very, very bad product. So I would avoid them at any cost. But we've got to try to figure out some way we can help your grandpa and grandma in this situation.

So I take it they have no money? They have about, I would say their house is worth probably $650 to $700. It's paid off. It's in L.A. They get a $3,000 a month pension because my grandfather was a teacher. And he also has an annuity that brings in about $1,000 a month pension because my grandfather was a teacher, and he also has an annuity that brings in about $1,000 a month. And I think they probably have around $100,000 in cash, but that would just be sitting in a savings account at their bank.

Okay. All right. And what is their shortfall? Why is it that they have $4,000 a month coming in? I take it they can't live on that, right? Well, they could now, and they certainly are, and I think that's where most of their cash savings came from, but especially because in California the care is so expensive, they wouldn't be able to afford both like a full-time care facility for her and for him to stay in the house and cover like living expenses. Okay,

all right, and so they want to move her out or they want to bring someone in to care for her? I guess they're not opposed to bringing someone in, but it's kind of with the way her health is going, they're anticipating her needing full-time care just to be moved and things, and that will probably need to be done in a facility. Okay. Have you priced that? My parents, I think they visited

some places when they were down there last time. It's, I think, most of them around $5,000 a month or so. That's about right. Which would mean you would have about two years worth of cash to do that. Did you know the average nursing, let me tell you, the average nursing home stay in America is two and a half years. Okay. I don't want to be cold and calculated, but I will be for a second, okay? Statistically, your grandmother's not going to live long enough in that facility, on average, to burn through $100,000.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, very true. And I would do that before put took out a reverse mortgage if she did and you get to the end of the money um by then grandpa may be ready to move i think with a tiny bit of family help with care a carefully selected facility the one hundred thousand dollars that they have and a little bit of family help and him living on the $4,000 a month in the house would probably take care of her through end of life. If it doesn't, I'd look at selling the house at that point. Because let me just tell you, these reverse mortgages are a scam.

The big advertiser that you see on TV all the time just paid an $800,000 fine because the washed-up actors are lying to you. Anytime that your financial product is advertised on cable TV between walk-in bathtubs and Snuggies, it tells you it's a bad product. Okay? And so they're really, really bad. The interest rates are high. The fees are high. The entire business section is slimy.

There are legitimate ones, but there's a lot of slime around it. And I would avoid it. I would avoid it. I would select something that's $40,000 or $50,000 a year for her care and plan on going through that $100,000. And at the end of that, or as I approach the end of that, I'd put his house on the market. That's what I would do in this situation. Because they're in their late 80s.

It's just statistics. And again, I know it's your grandpa and grandma, and I'm not trying to be mean or cold. But that's the numbers you're dealing with. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. If you've turned on the TV, read a paper, or been on the web lately, then you know this country's in the midst of an identity theft crisis. Equifax is attempting to settle with its 150 million breach victims. Now that's a joke. And Capital One exposed the records of over 100 million Americans. These are just the breaches making the news. You can't

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They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, which means even if you mess up, that's a good guarantee. If you screw up, if you mismeasure, you pick the wrong color, they'll remake your window blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code RAMSEY to get the best possible deal. Laura's in California. We cannot contribute to a Roth IRA because our household income is too high. I've heard that it is still possible to have a Roth by converting a regular IRA to a Roth. My question is whether or not we can then contribute to the Roth after the conversion,

or do we start a new IRA and convert it every year? You start a new IRA and convert it every year. It's called a backdoor Roth. I do them every year. My wife does them every year. And all you do is you open an after-tax, not a traditional, an after-tax IRA and roll it to a Roth. But you can't then add to that Roth. You just have to open an after-tax every year and roll it to a Roth because rollovers

always are separate accounts. They always have different account numbers. And so, you know, you're just going to end up with a bunch of account numbers but a big old pile of money. Oh, darn. Okay. Catherine is with us in Georgia. Hi, Catherine. How are you?

Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I was curious about how to invest in real estate without going into debt. Because I like to invest, my husband and I would like to look at investing in real estate as part of our retirement portfolio. And that's something, we're debt free, we have an emergency fund. I'm about to finish up my accounting degree and sit for my CPA.

Look at you. And he's teaching. I love it. Yeah, we both graduated college debt free and then I went back for an accounting degree so I can get my CPA debt-free. So your home is paid for? We rent right now. Okay. All right.

First goal is get your home paid for. Okay. That would be your first goal. And then once you've done that, then you're at what we call Baby Step 7. Okay? And what we did at the Ramseys, and I think it will work for you guys too because you both are great careers, and you're very focused and very intentional with your money, so I think you're going to be able to do this. I simply took any extra money we could take off the table for investing,

and I dumped it into an index fund, an S&P 500 fund, until I got enough in there to buy a house, and I would buy a rental house. And then I would do it again, and then I would do it again. Interesting thing is the first one is very hard because, of course, and I would buy a rental house, and then I would do it again, and then I would do it again. Interesting thing is the first one is very hard because, of course, it's just all of your personal income to do that. But then you've got all the rental income because guess what? A rental property with no payments makes money, and it helps you buy the next one.

And when you've got two of them doing that, oh, the next one's even easier, and you've got five of them doing that, you get about ten of those things. You can buy another one every year just off the rental income. Okay. But it's slow. So I guess. It's slow. It takes time. And it's going to frustrate the crowd out of you.

Because you're going to want to go faster. And I don't recommend going faster, but you're going to want to go faster. And I don't recommend going faster, but you're going to want to go faster. It was easy for me because I had been broke in real estate doing it the other way, and so I wasn't going back, and there's no chance I'm going into debt, right? So it was easier for me because I had all this pain in my rearview mirror telling me not to go into debt again. But you don't have that, and you've got all these people around you in your ear going, real estate investors always borrow money and i gotta tell you you will meet very few real estate

investors that have been investing in real estate 50 years that are deeply in debt the ones that go deeply in debt go broke the zero down guys you can't find any of them still in business put nothing down buy Buy real estate. Come to our seminar. We will show you how to use other people's money and get rich buying foreclosures. When you do that crap, no one 10 years into the business is still open. They're all bankrupt because risk catches up with them, and debt is risk. So just take your time.

Pay cash for it. Get that first one. Then get that second one, and you'll end up with them, and debt is risk. So just take your time. Pay cash for it. Get that first one. Then get that second one. And you'll end up with a bunch of real estate. I got a bunch of real estate now. But it took me forever, so I'd like to buy that first house. All right, up next is going to be Johnny in Virginia. Hey, Johnny, how are you?

Hey, Mr. Ramsey. Thank you so much for taking my call. My honor. How can I help? I just want to say the last nine months, my wife and I have been following the program. We paid off $45,000 in debt, and now we have our fully funded emergency fund. Look at you. The plan definitely works.

Way to go, man. Proud of you. My question today is we have a fully finished basement in our single-family house. It's a basement apartment with a kitchen um our my question is should i either rent it out for about 1200 a month to a tenant uh six months to one year lease or try airbnb where i could probably get about 70 bucks a night but the volatility is uh you know unknown because i'm not sure i never did it before yeah well uh the problem in either case is your tenant or the good news is your tenants downstairs the bad news is your tenants downstairs yeah right so you've got access to you them they got access to you and so you've got to have clear boundaries with whatever you're doing

uh if your market is hot what part of virginia are you in? We're about 30 miles outside of D.C. Okay. You should be able to keep that pretty full Airbnb. Yeah. And if you're willing to, the biggest difference is that there's going to be, you know, you're going to make a lot more money, but your hassle factor is going to go through the roof. Yeah, yeah. So what happened is my wife is staying at home now with our baby, so she would have more time to, you know, kind of be the host and take care of downstairs, and it would bring more profit.

If she's willing to be a property manager of a hotel, then the Airbnb will make you a lot more money. Okay, great. But is she willing to do that? Because I'm telling you, man, this is, you know, you're not just making more money. If you make 10x more money, you're going to have 12x more hassle. Yeah. What would you think a good goal per month would be compared to the $1,200 from a regular tenant to Airbnb? Jump on Airbnb and look at similar units and see what they're going for in your area.

Okay. And that'll give you a market study right quick. You can do it in 30 minutes and figure it out. Here's the thing, too. Okay. Here's the thing. You've got to put some careful guidelines on who moves in down there. Your wife and your child are upstairs.

Yeah, yeah. We had to rent it out last 12 months, and we had good luck with the tenant. I know, but Airbnb has some not pretty stories around it, too. Yeah, yeah. We had to rent it out this past 12 months, and we had good luck with the tenant. I know, but Airbnb has some not pretty stories around it, too. Yeah, yeah. That's a concern we were having, and that's why I wanted to get your wisdom on it. So two things. One is them tearing it up. Two is the safety and security of your family.

Exactly. And so you need to screen these tenants very carefully, whether they're Airbnb or whether they're regular traditional tenants. I don't care. But Airbnb is going to make you more money, but it's going to be a lot more hassle. If your wife wants to be in the hotel business, then that's essentially what you're doing. And you'll make more money doing it. No question about it. But it's a complete, I mean, it's like a resort property.

You make more money on it, but it's a pain in the butt. Same kind of thing. Lower income property. You make more money on it. but it's a pain in the butt. Same kind of thing. Lower income property, you make more money on it, you make a better rate of return per dollar invested, but the hassle factor is way up there dealing with a lower class tenant in most cases. So it's just you can't, and if you're going to deal with Airbnb, you have to look at the quality of the person in terms of the issues and problems they bring you, but more importantly,

the security issue for your family. Justine is with us in Arizona. Hi, Justine. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

So I'm 24, and I just graduated, and I'm on baby step number two, so I have lessons to pay off my car and my student loans. I have three different loan lenders, and I was wondering if I should consolidate all my loans. Only if you can lower the interest rate. Okay. What is your current interest rate on the three? So each loan lender has, like, five or so many different loans.

So I made my highest, and on one of my loans it's like 11%. Okay. But if you look across all of them and look at your average interest rate in there, if overall you can lower them, that's fine. What's the total amount? It's total in debt about like $86,000. Okay. Yeah, you may want to look at refinancing those if you can get them down,

especially if you've got an 11% that's a big chunk of that. But the only reason to refinance is not to get them all into one loan number. It's to get a lower interest rate. And if you can't do that, then don't do it. And fixed rate, not variable. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. We've got a long-distance call from Belgium. Jacob is on the line. Jacob, I see on my screen you're debt-free.

Congratulations. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. Well, congrats. That's awesome, man. How much have you paid off? $133,000. Very cool. And how long did this take off? $133,000. Very cool.

And how long did this take you? 32 months. Okay, great. And your range of income during that 32 months? About $100,000 to $110,000. Okay, very good. Very good. And what kind of debt was the $133,000?

It was all student loans, Dave. All student loans. Okay. Are you English or Belgium? No, I'm Dutch,000. It was all student loans, Dave, all student loans. Okay. Are you English or Belgium? No, I'm Dutch, actually. Dutch, okay. Yes, I live in Belgium, but I'm Dutch. Okay, all right, very cool.

So how in the world did you get tied up with a hillbilly from Tennessee to learn about money? This is an interesting story. So I was living in Australia at the time. I had actually finished my degree, and I moved out to Australia to work there as a chiropractor. And I was not making a lot of money. I was not in a good state financially. And my housemate there, he actually recommended your show. He didn't, he wasn't too positive about it.

He just said, oh, you should listen to this guy. He's crazy, and he makes fun for people taking bad financial decisions. It was more of a gimmick, really. But I ended up listening to your show, and I was like, wait a minute. This guy's making a lot of sense. So I started listening to it, started following your program, and here I am, debt-free. Wow. How does it feel?

Great. Great. It's surreal. It's just been so hard before I had your plan just to know what to do. And now that I've followed it and I've followed it through, it's just liberating, Dave. It's really great. Really great. Yeah, because you're making good money and you don't have any payments.

You've got a good life now. Yeah. Yeah. I can't complain. Well done. I feel very blessed. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? Well, in my case, Dave, to be honest, personally, it was two things.

One was just taking ownership, you know, being deliberate with your money. You know, really, I was, when I started out, just after college, and I knew I had this big debt. I was just making the minimum payments. I was just trying to ignore it. And long-term financial planning wasn't even part of the equation. I just, you know, if I had enough money to do something, I did it. If I didn't have enough money, I didn't do it. And that was it.

And that was all the planning I had. And, yeah, that's just a terrible way to live. So to really take ownership and have a plan and know what you want to do, that's a really big thing. And then obviously the budgeting is a big tool for that. But I think the biggest thing really is the attitude. And the second thing for me was just being able to dial in and listen to the podcast, you know,

to be able to connect to the Dave Ramsey community, so to speak, and just listening to you but also listening to other people doing their debt-free screams because out here, normal is broke as well. Everyone around me, the peers, they're doing stupid things with their money. They want you to do stupid things with your money, and it's just really good to be able to connect to the show and know that other people are doing what you are doing and are thinking the way that you are thinking.

And that's just been really great, and I really want to thank you for that, Dave. Well, thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I might miss my guest, but I think you're the first Dutchman from Belgium to ever do a debt-free scream, though. I think this is our first Belgian debt-free scream, our first Dutch debt-free scream. You got two for one here. Yes, thank you. Well, I'm very proud of you.

Thank you, Jacob. It's an honor to speak with you, and I'm glad that these principles were universal enough in the midst of all the crazy delivery that they made sense to you and were able to change your life. I'm very proud of you, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much for everything, Dave. Well, we've got a copy of Chris Hogan's Everyday Millionaire's book.

We'll send it over to Belgium to you, and we appreciate you calling in. All right, $133,000 paid off in 32 months. Took ownership. Key words there. $100,000 to $110,000 income. Jacob from Belgium. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one. I'm debt-free! I love it. Wow. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Well, thank you, sir. We're honored to have you in our podcast listening audience, which is exploding every day. Hundreds of thousands more of you.

It's pretty crazy how many of you are tuning into that stuff. Thank you very much. We appreciate all of you. Well, most of you. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ashley is with us in Ohio. Hey, Ashley, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave.

So glad to talk to you. You too. What's up? So I have a question. I was, I don't know, on Google, I guess, and I came across something that says you can do an ROBS, which is you can roll over your 401k to start a business, no taxes, no penalty. Is this a scam or is this real?

It's real, but it has unintended consequences that they don't talk about. Your business is then owned by your 401k. It's owned by your IRA, okay, which means that all your profit's stuck in there. You follow me so you can't use it until you're 59 and a half yeah you can't eat out of your business and so uh you know like for instance you could take your 401k and i had a buddy of mine do this he had a million bucks in his 401k and he rolled it to an ira and he took 500 000 of it and put it in a self-directed ira and bought real estate with it which is great because he paid cash for the real estate and it but it's now owned in his ira and he cannot use any all the income that that real estate creates is taxable and it's taxable with a penalty if he's not 59

and a half and so that's the problem. Yeah, you get stuck in there. And, no, that would not be the way I would go about opening my business. I would find a way to incrementally, gradually start the business without the huge capital needs that you perceive that you have in order to get started. And I would avoid that personally. Hey, thanks for the call. Beth is with us.

Beth's in Indiana. Hi, Beth. How are you? Dave, I am fantastic. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I have been a Dave Ramsey follower for the last 10 years,

thankful to my former boss, David Dock, that introduced me to you when I was just struggling with debt. Fun. When I had moved to a state without knowing anyone. So flash forward 10 years later, I've been married for four years and my husband and I have just finally finished Baby Step 3. We also now have a two and a half year old and a 10 month old.

Wonderful. So I thought we were on Baby Step 6, but now hearing now I'm kind of being more open to Baby Step 4 and listening to all of it, I'm wondering if we have fully funded his 15% or not. He is a carpenter, so he has pension, so he has a defined benefit pension, and then he has a defined contribution annuity that operates basically as a 401k. I'm contributing 15 to a roth 401k at my work so my question is should we go ahead and fully fund a roth ira for him to kind of make up that seven and a half percent difference yes okay yeah um yeah here's the thing the pension he's a union carpenter right correct yeah yeah so this is all union stuff i figured that um so, the pension, he's a union carpenter, right? Correct, yeah. Yeah, so this is all union stuff.

I figured that. So the pension is not in his control, even though it's his money going in. And so you don't have any control over the investments, the quality of them, what the returns are. You don't have any access to the money. Same thing with the annuity or the defined benefit. All of that is out of your control. And because it's out of your control and you can't access it, then for those reasons, I'm always going to say I don't count that. And I don't count 100 cents on the dollar towards my 15 percent because I want you to have money you can control. Because I don't think his pension's in trouble.

But as you well know, some of them get in trouble, right? Right, yeah. It's not, it wouldn't be the first union pension to get turned upside down and have problems. And so I don't want to count on something I don't have a say-so in as a large chunk of what my savings is. So yeah, I would jump in there and do those Roths for him. You may also want to do a roth outside of your stuff uh just to just to beef it up a little bit and then let's go on and get to your baby step six

good question thank you for joining us this is the dave ramsey show Thank you. I was showing some people around for our grand opening today, and I was just reflecting as we were going through some of the different things that have happened to this radio show over the years. Of course, when we started, we were on one radio station, and then later we were so proud we were on 10, and then we were proud we were on 100, and then we were proud we were on 500, and then we're proud we were the third largest talk radio show in America with over 600 stations carrying us. And then we were proud that we were in the Hall of Fame and another Hall of fame and a marconi and and so we just got real proud all the time too much proud right um and you know then what happened was uh technology kicked in and we started putting this thing out as a podcast and the where in the world world weird world of talk radio not everybody thought that was a good idea because some people wanted you to be have to pay to get a podcast or you know because talk radio makes a lot of money off the commercials.

And so and I love talk radio. I love being on these radio stations. I've worked these radio stations for years, and it's just, you know, most of the time it is just an incredible, incredible industry. And then we put the thing out on podcast, and now we've got like seven million people listening on podcast. And it's a completely different group of people that don't even listen to talk radio. And it's very interesting. And then we put it on YouTube. You know, YouTube came up with this thing where we can stream the video.

So you're there watching me on YouTube, right? And so it's live streamed on YouTube. And now I've got like 100 million downloads on YouTube. What? That blows my mind. We're in the top 1% of YouTubers. We just got a thing from YouTube the other day that told us that. That just blows my mind.

I thought it was all about cats chasing lasers. I had no idea. It turns out it's a thing. Who knew? And they let me on there. I think they let everybody on there. But anyway, based on what some of you people do on there. But oh, my gosh.

Wow. So this life-changing content, we put it out there. The Chris Hogan Show is a podcast. How to Become an Everyday Millionaire. The Ken Coleman Show is a talk radio show. It's on XSEN, SiriusXM, and about 40 radio stations now, and it's a podcast. The Business Boutique Show with Christy Wright is another podcast that's booming and zooming. Rachel Cruz's YouTube show, TV show, is a massive success and has turned that into a podcast as well.

Entree Leadership is one of the top leadership podcasts in the world. And then the Dave Ramsey show, which, as I just told you, just blows my mind. It's like the fifth most listened to podcast in all of iTunes. It's just crazy. So thank you, guys. We appreciate it. But the point of all of that is there's a lot of different ways you can listen to this

for free. We're like everywhere for free. So just join us, hang out with us. And you could walk up to your Alexa or your Google Home, your little box, the thing that does stuff for you, and you could say, play the Dave Ramsey show. And for a whole bunch of your houses, I just started my show. If you're Alexa, heard me say that just now, it just started.

Yeah, there you go. And so it'll jump on Spotify for you. It'll jump on wherever we are. We're everywhere with this thing. iHeart has its own channel. We have our own channel on iHeart's app. So if you want this information free, this show free, it's almost everywhere. You should not have trouble getting it.

And we want you to win. We have figured out one of our core values. We have 13 core values here, 14 core values here. And one of them is if we help enough people, we don't have to worry about money. So, you know, 100 million people download my information on YouTube for free. I didn't get paid a dime for that. But it tends to work out. Some of them will buy a book.

Some of them will figure out they need to go to Financial Peace University. And it just tends to work out if you just help people. It's kind of a business principle. Some businesses need to relearn. Lindsay is with us. Lindsay is in Illinois. Hi, Lindsay. Welcome to Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, I've got myself into some trouble with debt. And so I just started your program just recently. I finished baby step one. I have about 2000 in savings and I'm just starting on to step two. And then my basement flooded and we had to completely gut it out. Problem is both of my, my children's bedrooms are down there. So in order to fix it, it's going to cost me about $15,000. How did it flood? Um, from,

we had a whole bunch of rain. Oh, local creek or creek or river or something? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I have this really ridiculous tiny creek in my backyard that doesn't really flow very well and surface water just flowed in and flooded our basement um yeah so i had a contractor come out and look and he said it's going to cost me about fifteen thousand dollars to fix it and i'm scared because i don't i don't even have anywhere close to that amount of money um to fix it. Now you're single? You're single? I'm divorced, yeah. I'm a single mom. And how many kids do you have? I have two.

Okay. And how big is the square footage upstairs? It's a pretty small home. I don't know the exact square footage, but I have two bedrooms upstairs and then two bedrooms downstairs. Where are the kids staying now? One of the bedrooms upstairs? Yeah.

One's sleeping with me and one sleeps in the one of the bedrooms upstairs yeah one sleeping with me and one sleeps in the other bedroom joyful okay yeah it's a little tight up here and what do you make a year um i make about 98 i'm a nurse practitioner well that's good news okay yeah and you don't have any money you have to you have two thousand dollars and you have how much debt uh probably close to two hundred thousand and that's a lot of it is from school loan yeah i'm really how long you've been a nurse practitioner um just a year i've been a nurse for over 10 okay so how old are your babies mom my daughter's going to be 15 in a couple of days, and then my son is going to be 13 next month. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. Let's do two or three things, okay? Please. Number one, they at least have a place to sleep that's dry and warm, and you've got one contractor bid bid i want you to get at least two more contractor bids okay uh because there's safety in numbers on that and right uh some contractors will do a will give you a proper bid when they walk in and see a single lady with two

kids and some of them uh will see that as an opportunity to gouge. Right. And so I want you to guard against that with safety in numbers. Do you have family in the area? Just my mother. Okay. And are you in a good church in the area? Yeah, there's a church in my backyard, actually. Okay. Is that where you go?

It is. I have a hard time going sometimes just because of work. Oh, yeah, you work a lot. Both days and nights. Won't you holler at that pastor and tell him what you're up against? Sure. Okay, tell him I'm a single mom. I'm a single mom.

I've got two teens over here. I talked to Dave Ramsey. He said to tell you my problem. Because they may have some men that have a ministry in that church that might come over there and, you know, give you a hand and at least get these things livable just as a gift to you and you wouldn't be you're two hundred thousand dollars in debt you're broke it wouldn't be bad for someone to help you okay right they may not and i'm not gonna be mad at them if they don't but i just want to make make your need

known to a congregation a good church and, and a good pastor, okay? Yeah. And sometimes there's a result that comes from that. There's no guarantee. We're going to get three bids. We're going to let the pastor know. That's step one. Step two.

And then step three is I'm just going to put everything on hold in terms of that snowballs, in terms of baby steps and all of that. And you make good money, and I want you to work as much as you can work and still take care of your kids like take all the ot you can pick up pick up a some er work or whatever you can do and throw some extra money on the uh some extra wood on the fire here and let's let's just real quickly scrape up ten or twelve thousand dollars and let's get this work done right okay and then once you get that work done we're back to ground zero zero again. Then we can, you know, everybody's a little more safe. Everything's going good. Then let's start our baby steps and start working your debt snowball.

Because it's going to take you a little while to plow through $200,000. If you caught me up and you had less debt, I would tell them, kids, sleep on the floor for two months and let's knock this debt out. But you've got a little bit of a slog to get through $200,000. It's going to be a while. They may get in college before you get out of it, and I don't want to do that. So there's one way to get rid of them. But, yeah, let's try three things.

Save like crazy. Get three bids. Talk to your local pastor. Between those three things, I think the talk to your local pastor between those three things I think the answer to your problem will surface this is the Dave Ramsey Show Hey it's Kelly associate producer and phone screener for the Dave Ramsey Show

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