The Ramsey Show - App - Are We Ready To Buy a House Right Now? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Kristina Ellis & Dr. John Delony answer your questions and discuss:   "Are we ready to buy a house right now?" Delony reacts to a study finding "Five ways credit cards can improve your mental health", from the blog: Do I Need a Credit Card?, "Should we move to another state?" Saving money on groceries. from the blog: How to Save Money on Groceries Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET 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 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Pods Moving and Storage Studio, it's The Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. I'm Ramsey personality Christina Ellis, joined today by fellow Ramsey Personality, Dr. John Deloney. And we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Hey, if you like the show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review and sharing it with a friend. All right, let's go to

the phones. First up, we have Chris calling from Tampa, Florida. Hey, Chris, welcome to the phones first up we have chris calling from tampa florida hey chris welcome to the show thank you for having me thank you for taking my call thanks for calling so my wife and i are kind of like in a uh kind of like a paralysis um we've paid off about 170 grand of debt we're pretty much that's awesome, man. Thank you. We've been hammering at this pretty much since 2017. Are you all still friends? Yeah, even closer. Wow, fantastic.

Thank you. So right now, I make just under $50,000 through I'm retired out of the military. My wife makes about 120. And then when I was working, I just got cleared medically. I got into a car accident. I was trucking for a little bit, making about 85 and I had a drunk driver hit me on my time off. So I just got medically cleared not too long ago. So we're looking at trying to buy a house. We have enough for down payment. We're looking at a to buy a house. Um, we have enough for down payment. Uh, we're looking at a house that's going to run about five 50, uh, about 26, almost 2700 square foot house. And what's kind of got us in the paralysis of everything is basically this,

um, we can buy down points and get down to like the low fives. Um, and it would take about four years for like the $350 a month, month payment, um, to recuperate that money. Um, but on the same token with this house, it's going to need a new roof within about five to 10 years. Uh, the pool is going to need to be redone and the windows are going to need to be redone. Um, our mortgage would be looking at about three, about000 a month. Now, with the state of Florida, because of my veteran status, I don't have to pay property taxes. So it does help out tremendously on that end, dealing with the monthly mortgage payment. But we're very scared between the homeowner's insurance kind of going up, the cost of everything. Another company offered me a job, which would bring our

income to just about net 16 a month. And so it would just kind of be like food, groceries, and then just a nanny for our two children. Throughout the day, my wife does work from home. And then obviously, you know, working locally, driving around, I'd be out of the house too. I just don't know if we should continue to rent and rent something for about $2,500 and save the money and maybe save up a whole lot more money to fix and repair things like that. Hold on. Let me interrupt you, Ryan. I can see why y'all are paralyzed. You've got 50 things going on all at the same time. Yeah. Let me start here.

Do you owe anybody any money? Nope. Zero. So you're completely dead free. You don't owe anybody anything. We have one credit card that has $1,000, and her company that she works for now reimburses her for buying stuff like printer ink, things like that. They give her a stipend every month,

and it just gets paid off. But that could be paid off right now if I wanted to. But that's all we have is literally a thousand dollars on a Chase credit card. Why don't you just do a debit card? We have a debit card for all that. So our credit got hit really bad. And so we've been kind of putting things on the credit card, pay it off, and then put it on the credit card, pay it off every single month. And that's kind of raised up our credit. Um, when we were 170 and grand, that was like,

we were still renting. What kind of debt was that? That one 70. Uh, that was a bachelor's or two bachelors and a master's, uh, truck payment, motorcycle payment,

and about 35 grand in credit codes. Do you know what my credit score is? Zero. Probably. I don't even know. I don't even bother checking it. 35 grand in credit cards. Do you know what my credit score is? Zero, probably. I don't even know. I don't even bother checking it. And that's not because I'm like some kind of fancy rich or whatever. I just don't care.

And the bank, when I bought my house a few years ago, I think I had to sign another form and show them my pay stub. You know what I mean? So all I have to say is I'm not going to'm not going to play dance with those dance with the devil just to to raise my my debt relationship score up why are you moving let me why are you moving are y'all moving just to get out of somewhere like what's this why you want to get to florida so bad so we were we were in um up in uh north carolina uh just outside of Raleigh. And moving down to Florida is where family's at.

And so we were paying like really cheap rent and everything else, you know. But we just moved back to Florida just due to the economy, family being here. Just kind of was tired of the state. You know, my wife got taxed out the yin-yang for state income tax. Just things of that nature. And so we just kind of just got tired of it. How much did y'all have in the down payment? We got about $28,000 set aside.

Okay. What percentage is that of $550,000? How much down are you putting? It's about 5% or 6%, huh? Yeah. um so it's about five or six percent huh yeah so if we were to go through with it so the escrow um the escrow was six grand and this is once again we haven't gone through anything but it would be six grand uh for this and then the rest would be for a closing cost i was looking at doing a debate between like a va or fha um and that's been another big kind of pull each way.

This would be our first time buying a house. Well, I think that's where some of the anxiety is coming from, is that that's not a lot of money down on a $550,000 house. Plus, you know this house is going to need repairs, like significant repairs, new roof. That's not a small $5,000 repair. That's a major repair. So if I'm in your shoes, i'd be feeling a little nervous too not because it's not time to buy a house not because you know there's anything wrong with the housing market per se

but i would personally be nervous with having a smaller down payment knowing that i also am going to have about you know potentially, potentially $50,000 in repairs almost immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the whole thing. We're trying to talk to him now about getting the roof covered. And that was like a big thing on buying it. The reason why we've really been big on this property is it's two and a quarter acres.

So we kind of want chickens. We want to like have a garden and then obviously land for like, you know, my kid and all the rest of that. Here's what I'm most worried about for you, Chris. Most worried about. Are you in Florida yet? Are you all still in North Carolina? We're in Florida. Okay.

Y'all just renting right now? I'm with my parents and I've been here for two weeks. I don't want to be here another day. Don't blame you. Oh, man. That's why we're kind of like all thrown with it because this company offered me my hand in 2016, okay? I know, I know, I know, but here's what's about to happen. You are dating somebody and she's wonderful.

She is kind and she's beautiful, all the things, and she is not right for you. You have talked yourself into this property and you are going to bend over backwards to make it happen and you're going to end up in a mess. And you're talking from a guy that waited years to land at the place that I wanted to raise my kids on property with some acres and all that stuff. And I hated every second of it until I finally got there. I'd hold off, man. I'd go rent a tiny little place. I'd rent a two-bedroom apartment if you got to and save up all your money, put 20% down on this place

and move in with some peace, not just sprinting into this thing just because, ah, you're going to get yourself in a mess, my brother. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. We're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. All right, John, I came across an article on mental health. You know, it's in your wheelhouse. Wanted to kind of see what you thought about this.

I like to just call out. Usually when I get surprised on shows like this, George has like some TikTok clip. So thank you for being an adult and bringing an article in. Oh, great. What do you got here? Yeah, this is a good one. It's called Five Ways Credit Cards Can Improve Your Mental Health. Well, I got hemorrhoids, America. This is a real article. Oh, I got hemorrhoids, America. It's a real article.

Oh, my gosh. All right. What? So let's go. It says, according to a money and mental health report by Bankrate in partnership with Psych Central, just under half of U.S. adults say that money has a negative impact on their mental well-being. That's true.

The ability to provide for a household or keep up with day-to-day expenses can cause major stress. Pair these responsibilities with the possibility of a recession and record high inflation, and it's no surprise that many of us are feeling the heat. I like this setup.

They're like trying to just like make us all feel warm and fuzzy and like, yeah, we're all afraid. We're going to give you something good. Okay, I just want to tell you, for everybody listening, I want you to call this out. Anytime you read an article and it's talking about one organization in partnership with another, usually that means that somebody is buying the authority of somebody else to sell their product. It's why you'll see companies buy a professorship at a university so they can do their quote unquote research for their R&D, for their programs.

And they put all the negative findings in a drawer and then they just published all the glorified stuff. So just seeing this, I'm reaching well, buckle up. Just seeing this. It gets better. I'm reaching for the Preparation H. Go for it. Luckily, there are still ways we can take control of our finances. Thanks, Bank Rage. Strategic use of financial tools like credit cards can allow us to put our money to work for us.

With this at our disposal, we can steadily chip away at those money and mental health woes. Here are five ways credit cards can improve your mental health. I just want to say to my friends at Psych Central, y'all should be ashamed. I don't even know what you are, but if you're under, if you're, if you are about helping people, you should be ashamed of yourself. Bank rates just do what bank rate does. They're trying to sell credit. And I mean, you got a rattlesnake in a bag. I'm not going to be mad at the rattlesnake for trying to bite me if I put my hand in there. But a mental health group, if that's what Psych Central even is,

this is just, it's disgusting, man. Yeah. It's gross. Well, okay. They got five tips and even just reading it kind of made me nauseous. I'm like, oh my goodness. So the first one is using it to pay down existing credit card debt so basically just switching things over taking advantage of the zero percent apr basically alleviating your issue with another temporary solution they're lying to you now they're saying they're paying down credit card debt but all you're doing is moving debt around yep and then the second one this one is just this one's kind of epic it says plan a free or heavily discounted vacation y'all we're we're in we're in stress we're feeling mental health

issues because of credit card debt so let's go on vacation oh man and let's Hold on. You should pick a rewards card that best aligns with your spending habits and use your rewards earnings to cover costs. So we have record high inflation, the possibility of a recession. We're really feeling financial stress. What you should do is spend, just use the right card, and then go on a vacation. This is madness yeah i mean and and we've talked to a lot of people that are doing their credit card rewards and all of that and everybody thinks that they're going to be able to be the person that uses the rewards they never go

into debt but that's so sad that we're literally talking to people who are this article is talking to people who are stressed out right they're already in credit card debt they're frustrated they're feeling inflation they're feeling all these things and it's like hey like what why don't you try this out well and let me tell you this like and i've mentioned this on the show before i used to have a card and i paid it off every month i never had any debt on it but i always i put all my expenses in there and to just get free flights i did all the time and i got free flights i really did and it occurred to me one day this airline company's not my friend so there's got to be something else at play here and then the more i dug into it oh it's that single mom who can't afford food, who's paying for my vacation with her 32% APR fees.

I'm not participating in that nonsense because it's just squashing people who are desperate, who are struggling, who are hungry, whose kids need shoes, and they get this kind of nonsense. And then I get a free flight out of that deal. I'm out of the system. I'm gladly going to pay for my flights that are not going to be on the back of somebody who can't afford to make the payments. Does that make sense? I'm out of the system. I'm opting out, man. Yeah. I literally just posted that yesterday. I was doing an interview and posted that that's my same reasoning that it's like, somebody, in order for me to win with points, somebody else is losing. That's right. And that's

just so sad. The other points are save on everyday expenses which they're talking about like cash back and basically making sure you spend enough so you get cash back which is kind of crazy what i was on with george one day and he was doing the math on like how much you'd actually have to spend to get that free flight or that amazing cash back and it was ridiculous um Another point is build your credit, of course. And then the last one is to navigate the cost of a large purchase. They are suggesting to use credit cards to navigate large purchases. They basically say that they talk about emergency funds. It says our bank rate survey cites insufficient emergency savings as the leading cause of negative impacts on mental health surrounding money. Whether prepared or not, emergencies happen and they

can be costly. A credit card can be a great tool to have in your arsenal to cover you in a pinch. You don't need an arsenal. You don't need an arsenal. You're not at war with your life. You just need an emergency fund, which means you need a couple of years of really, really uncomfortable, awful, hard work, not seeing your family, not seeing your friends, not eating restaurant. It just it sucks. I've been there, man. You've been like it's not it's the worst. Yep.

And then on the other side of it, man, I don't need an arsenal. I don't know. I mean, and I think what's so what's bothers me so much about this article is it is it it's talking to people like they're your friend, like the credit card company is your friend. Hey, you have a mental health struggle. Hey, you're feeling down. Inflation's getting you. We have a solution for you. It's like leading a sheep to the slaughter.

It's like that is not the solution. That is like the opposite of what we're trying to do here. It's the opposite of how we're trying to help people. And it just breaks my heart that there is somebody who's feeling mental health struggles right now. That is like the opposite of what we're trying to do here. It's the opposite of how we're trying to help people. And it just breaks my heart that there is somebody who's feeling mental health struggles right now. And they're reading this article going, oh, man, like maybe that is the answer. And they're now going to be calling us four years from now with $70,000 in credit card debt. Yeah. That is affinite.

Because Bankrate in partnership with Psych Central did their study and uh here we are guys so speak to the mental health of somebody who feels very fragile right now and they're overwhelmed with their finances and they don't have an emergency fund and they feel frustrated like what would you tell them if they read this article right now what would you tell them to help them go the other way um they're oh geez there's so much here ultimately this um and i think i can make a pretty compelling neuroscience case if you owe somebody money your brain is never gonna let you rest because even though your frontal lobe knows and i don't get all nerdy but your frontal lobe knows hey that's a good deal that's zero percent apr it's no payments for five years

whatever it's it we can look at a spreadsheet and call it a good deal. Your amygdala, the part of your brain that's designed to keep you safe is going to sound the alarms. And those alarms might look like anxiety. They might look like depression. They might look like any number of things because your brain knows in its core, core being that Toyota Motor Company is deciding what you do tomorrow, Discover Card is deciding what you do tomorrow, not you, that you're not safe. One little glitch in the matrix and you don't have food because this other company is going to say,

I want my money now, and you're paying for last month's rent this month, and you're paying for last month's food this month. It's just a nonsensical cycle that we've got to stop. You can't go into more debt to solve your issues. And I'll also say there is some emerging research that's really powerful that suggests going through challenges, heading into the storm,

that's the way to mental health healing. And most of us can't do that by ourselves, as we talked about earlier, about getting a counselor, getting somebody to walk alongside you, getting a group of friends that will walk with you. But avoiding these things and trying to hack your way to better financial health or hack your way to better mental health, it's not how it works. It's not how it works. You got

to take the long, difficult path and do it with other people. And that's the path to healing. So good. We'll be right back. This is The Ramsey Show. We're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. On the line, we have Ryan calling from Portland, Oregon. Hey, Ryan, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Thanks for taking my call. Thanks for calling. How can we help? Well, I really want to know if I'm making a smart decision.

I'll kind of give it all to you here. I just recently paid off a good portion of all of my consumer debt, all my credit cards and everything. I paid off $29K. Way to go, man. In 11 months. Way to go, dude. I'm excited about that.

You should be. I definitely got my emergency fund. I lost the $1k at this point the only remaining debt i have left is my wife's student loans and that's sixty thousand dollars you mean y'all y'all student loans what's that yes but all student loans yes exactly there you go there you go we'll get it we'll get it y'all student loans okay um but this is where my dilemma is i really want want to move to Texas, and my whole family does. Not just me.

My whole family wants to move to Texas. And we have saved up about $30,000, and we could apply that $30,000 towards the student loans. But the cost of living, the schools, and the job opportunities that my wife and I could have in Texas is very intriguing. And I want to know if that's a smart decision to move my family to Texas and spend that 30 grand that I saved up. Or is it smarter to put it through those student loans and continue staying where I'm at? And about a year ago, I talked to Dave and he ended up telling me to move out. I live in a bachelor pad, but that's pretty much where I'm at. You live in the bachelor pad with your wife? No. Well, I did. I still do.

In the past, yeah. I met my wife living in the same house, and we continue living in the same house. And there's like multiple roommates? Nope. Nope. Just my family. Okay. Is the smell still in your...

It's in a rough neighborhood. What's that? Yeah. That's what Dave was saying. It's just gross, but it's just a really bad neighborhood and everything. And a good portion of my whole family just wants to get to Texas and start something new. That's what Dave was saying. It's gross, but it's just a really bad neighborhood and everything. And a good portion of my whole family just wants to get to Texas and start something new. But I'm just trying, I'm having a hard time if this is a smart move.

You're saying your whole family, is that like kids or who are you talking about? My two kids and my wife. Okay, so you didn't move out of the bachelor pad? No. Okay. All right, let me, I want to free you from something okay your kids don't get a vote i know they don't get a vote um the reason is why i use his opinion i guess is because he will be starting high school and i want him to start high school in the same school like i don't want to pull him out of school i totally get that i i i think but again that's a

decision you're making let's just go ahead and and pretend that most kids most of the time want to stay in the same high school with the same friend group many want to leave and start over get a do-over they get whatever but again he's your kid and he's relying on mom and dad to make the best decision for their family he can't carry the weight of should we do this because if y'all move to texas and it's a disaster a 14 year old can't carry that burden so don't put it on him okay i'm not i don't feel like i'm putting it on him i'm just grabbing his inputs on whether he likes to stay here and move to texas okay he wants to move to texas too especially I'm not putting the pressure on him.

Okay. So this $30,000, are you wanting to buy a house in Texas? Are you just wanting to keep it in an emergency fund? What does this have to do with the move? This has to do with the move of getting from where we are to there. Just like transportation and moving costs. Transportation. Exactly.

What's your trade? What do you do? I'm a mechanic, exactly. What's your trade? What do you do? I'm a mechanic. Okay. What's your wife do? And my wife is a nurse. She's an RN. Okay.

Christina, hop in here and tell me you're an idiot. If I'm in your exact shoes, I grew up, I was born and raised in Texas. I spent 40 years there. I love it. Okay. It's where all my family is. All of them. Okay, it's where all my family is, all of them. Okay, if I'm you,

like you've cast too much weight on Texas. It's this mythical place. It's gonna help out all these other areas and it actually might. Some of the things you're mentioning, the schools, the cost of living, you get to keep most of your paycheck because there's no state income tax.

All this stuff's awesome. It's gonna be very different from where you are in Portland. Absolutely. If I'm you right now, I would take that $30,000 minus my $1,000 emergency fund, and I would be paying off my student loans until an opportunity presented itself, until your wife has a job, until you've got a job. And then I would negotiate with her employer, probably more than yours, but maybe not depending on what certifications you have to help them, have them help you move down, right? And make that part of her sign on package and cross that bridge when you get there. But right now you're living in limbo land and you're trying to play both sides of the fence, trying to pay off debt, but also save up some money and try to pay off debt, but also let's

move to Texas. And you see what I'm saying? You're just kind of spinning your wheels really fast in a muddy field. I agree with you. I guess I left this part out. My wife is applying for the job. We're waiting to see what the offer is. She had a job opportunity.

We're seeing what that is. Okay. I don't know if there's any sign-on bonus job opportunity. We're seeing what that is. Okay. I would see. I don't know if there's any sign-on bonus. I don't know any of that at this point. I just know the money that I have could get us down there. What's your take-home pay right now? About $150,000 a year.

Okay. Could be slightly higher than that. $150,000 is probably in the lower part of it, but it's a strong $150,000. It might be as high as $165,000. So you've got almost $30,000 that you can pay off right now. That leaves you with just over $30,000 left to pay with $150,000. Could you all have that paid off by this summer? No, I don't think so.

Here's my thought. Your kids are in school right now, right? Like they've got to finish out the school year. Ideally, it sounds like your son wants to leave, but you could give yourself a little bit of runway and still do the move. Be debt-free, move to Texas with no debt and still negotiate the package.

Get your moving costs and just start in a really great place. Why couldn't you pay it off by the summer? Because like what we're doing to keep saving is we're putting so much money away. If that was the case, I don't think I could come up with an additional $60,000. Well, it wouldn't be $60,000. You'd pay that $30,000 that you have right now, that $29,000. But it would take me close to $20,000-something, maybe $25,000.

I'm not the exact positive on the number to move to Texas. I think you're making that number up, dude. I don't think that's accurate. Where'd you get that number, the maybe 25,000. I'm not the exact positive on the number to move to Texas. I think you're making that number up, dude. I don't think that's accurate. Where'd you get that number, the 25? My wife's been doing a lot of homework, and I'm getting that number from her. I don't have all those papers in front of me, but she's definitely put a lot of effort into coming up with these numbers.

I mean, having just moved from Texas across the country to Tennessee, it's not quite as dramatic a move from Oregon there, but the move was nowhere near that. It was expensive, but it was not that. Depending on how you negotiate in, her employer should pick some of that up,

particularly with how starved people are for good employees. I wouldn't just apply to one. I would not just apply to one job in Texas. If I'm her, I would be applying all over the place. If I'm you, I would be applying all over the place. Because you're going to cast all of your hopes on one offer from one place, and you have no idea what the market's willing to pay.

This is true. Well, and I think if you resign yourself too, like I love the idea of trying to negotiate the moving costs. And it's like if you've already resigned that $29,000 to this is going to be moving costs and I'm not going to try to negotiate. You're just going to spend that money. But it's like if you are hungry and you're like,

we have paid those loans off. We don't have the moving costs. So this has to be part of the compensation package. Like you're going to negotiate that much more aggressively. And it sounds a little bit like you feel a little disheartened right now. And I think that with a little bit of a mindset shift, you could really go in and tackle multiple goals rather than just kind of passively doing it. Here's what the bummer about moving to Texas is going to be. You're going to go with you. And if your marriage isn't great right now,

if you're exhausted by life, if you're worn out, Texas isn't going to solve that for you. It'll put some more money in your pocket. I don't think we have any of those problems. Do what? I don't think we have any of those problems. I feel like my marriage is strong and the household, I mean. I'm not trying to cast that on you.

I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying if you're putting all of this weight on this move to solve your problem, it's not going to. It may make some things infinitely better. But I want you guys to, like Christina said, your mind shift's got to shift now before you go. And you all decide, man, we're going to pay all this stuff off. We're going to be debt free. Let's go. Yeah, youall decide, man, we're going to pay all this stuff off. We're going to be debt free. Let's go. Yeah, you used the best word, Christina.

You just resigned. It's kind of like, it just kind of is what it is. It doesn't have to be that way. This could be an awesome adventure and we're going to make them pay us to come and we're going to be all, man, shift your mindset here.

Not just this, well, it's going to be like this. I'd pay those student loans off, man. Well, and it's just, it's the difference between going on and all in. We hear Dave say all the time that personal finance, winning with it, it's 80% behavior, 20% head knowledge. And it's like, you got to shift the behavior. That's how you win. This is The Ramsey Show. Let's face it, taxes are so confusing. And if you buy into some of the tax service ads out there, you'll believe that you're too dumb and you'll never get a grasp on taxes and you shouldn't

even try. Or maybe worse, they suck you into offers that won't help you win with money. But we think you're smarter than that and you deserve the truth. So here's a tax tip today. Are you ready? Let's do this. A tax refund is not a bonus. It's not free money that fell from the sky. It's a refund. It was always your money all along. You, because you're so kind and lovely and wonderful, you just loaned it to the government interest-free because they're great with money. And you thought, you know what? They need more money, so I'm just going to loan them some of mine. And then I'll fill out a whole bunch of papers

and maybe they'll send it back to me at the end of the year. Come on, guys. If you get a big tax refund, sure. It can be super fun and you can spend it on guys. If you get a big tax refund, sure, it can be super fun and you can spend it on stuff you don't need. The smart thing to do if you do get a refund is to put it on your current baby step. Then adjust your paycheck withholding so this doesn't happen again this year. It's your money that you could use each month to pay off debt, invest, or put towards another goal. If you haven't already, make sure you work with a service you can trust. You got complicated taxes? Get a Ramsey Trusted Tax Pro on your side like

one of our endorsed local providers or national partners. If you're comfortable filing on your own, Ramsey Smart Tax is the way to go. And Christina, I've used both of these. I did Ramsey Tax from my kitchen table a couple years in a row, and then this year I reached out to a Ramsey Trusted Tax Pro. And they've already, I was way late to the deal on that one. I should have done that a long time ago. But both of these options are amazing, right? And they got low upfront pricing with no hidden fees, no agendas. We're not bringing you in with a low price and try to sign you up for a bunch of stupid credit cards or whatever.

Go to RamseySolutions.com slash tax to see what's best for your situation and get started. That's ramsaysolutions.com slash tax. All right. Today's question of the day comes from Steve in Rhode Island. I may have missed it, but is there a document of what Christina buys at the grocery store? That feels a little free as well as what her family's meal plan is. We would love a copy. Oh my gosh, I love this question. Yes, there actually is. I posted it on my Instagram account on January 6th.

My Instagram is at I am Christina Ellis, and that's Christina with a K. And Deloney, you're probably a little bit confused about why somebody's asking this. Just to clear up the air America if you want to know it's in my grocery bag a bunch of organic stuff in pounds of gummy candy that's a that's basically my shopping list a winning diet exactly exactly so we did the no spend month in January which we basically you know we cut cut out all discretionary spending, all non-essentials we spent on the four walls and just tried to save as aggressively as possible.

And part of that was we cut our grocery budget down to $100 a week for a family of four. Yeah, it was pretty intense. In December, we were not spending $100 a week. I say that our budget got pretty fluffy, kind of like my body did after eating all the cookies at Christmas. And we just needed to fine tune. We were like, we should not. I know there's inflation, right? And it's crazy. But like, we should not be spending this much money on groceries. This is insane. So we need to cut back. We need to cut it down. And so in doing that, I wrote out a meal plan where I had other people on Instagram. We did this as a whole community, which was super exciting. We had hundreds of people doing no spend.

And I wrote out exactly what we were buying to keep it at $100. And I wrote out recipes because I wanted to show people that it's realistic. And that's literally what our family followed. And it was so amazing and exciting to do it in community because we had people who were like, I was spending $1,500 a month on groceries and we knocked it down to $100 a week. Like I never thought I could do that. And it was crazy. The overall totals for the month, we had people saving everything from $200 to there were multiple people who saved over $6,000. So it's just right it's with everything going on with groceries with all of inflation it's a good thing every now and then to just do a tune-up and go you know can we

cut back or an overhaul if you're paying six thousand dollars right that's not a tune-up that's a new engine but it's been amazing for our family too so we went really extreme for a month right we did the hundred dollars for a family for and what was cool is we actually wanted to use from our pantry so a lot of weeks we only spent like 30 or $40 because we were trying to use what we already had. So just doing that now, we've flexed our budget a bit, we allowed a little bit more and we're already we're still spending about 125 a week, just because we were so disciplined for a while that now it's like, I don't really want to go back to spending all that money. Like why? Why is it needed? I'd rather go on vacation or save for a house and do these different money goals that we have versus

just literally eating, eating our food, just eating our money away. Like what's the point of that? So yeah, I just encourage everybody who's feeling stressed out about grocery costs. Like there are ways to really, really cut back. And I posted it January 6th on my Instagram, hopefully can give you some tips and advice on, you know, ways to do it really cut back. And I posted it January 6th on my Instagram, hopefully can give you some tips and advice on, you know, ways to do it. And they're not going to be the fanciest meals. Like I'm, I'm no chef and I don't love cooking. I basically was like, I want meals that literally in the next like four or five years, I could teach my four-year-old how to make. I don't want it to be fancy. And so can I tell you that the derivative benefits,

the downstream benefits, your kids are participating in cooking. Y'all get to spend an extra 30 or 45 minutes or an hour, right? So easy just to say, hey, kids, get out of here. Go watch something while I do this. But if you bring them along, then suddenly you have this connection time together. They're learning how to measure stuff like so the learning benefits are forever we get to learn lots of patience right yes and then i'll tell you i've got a 12 year old now and the other night he came in and said hey do you guys mind if i make dinner and we were all my wife and i were like game on like we won that is my dream that is literally my dream and so but my wife has been

bringing our kids along all the way like and teaching them math and how it all works and all but now um it's it's fantastic so i love what you're doing and you hit on something that was a i i wish i had learned this 20 years before when my wife and i when we sold our house and moved into a residence hall to pay off that that was was part of the story. Part of it, we paid off that part of it. I was so anxious. I couldn't breathe because how much money we owed. And I was on a trajectory. You're supposed to get a new house and a bigger house. And every time you get promoted, you're supposed to get another big house. And every time one kid grows half of an inch, you need to get more room for everybody, right? All that. And then we moved into a residence hall a tiny little apartment tiny tiny as a dorm right we will never it completely reshaped the way we will own homes

in the size of the home we'll live in moving forward not that owning a big home is is is bad or anything like that it's just we realized we actually enjoy living together where we're all we have to make do and we have to love and we have to say, I'm sorry. We got to say, excuse me. And it just reshaped our entire trajectory of how we're going to buy houses because we just hit the pendulum all the way over here. And it's kind of like what you guys experienced with your meals. We just went caustic for one month and then we realized we can do this. And not only can we do this, we kind of like a lot of this, right? And it shaped how y'all are going to do food moving forward. That's so good. I think it's important for all of us to stop every

now and then and go, why are we spending this way? I had the thought that like, Amazon kind of came out of nowhere on us, right? Like we went from when you wanted something, you had to go to the store to buy it to, okay, there's this Amazon Prime, I'm going to order every now and then to all of a sudden, there are packages on your doorstep every single day. And it's like, that wasn't a conscious decision. I didn't just suddenly become an Amazonaholic. I just like fell into it. And even just stopping for a month and going like, I can walk in a store still. Like, I don't need to buy something every single time. It crosses my mind. Like, I can wait. And even with grocery stores, I saw a study recently where it's like back in the 50s, there were like 3,000 options of things you can buy.

And now there are like 40,000 options. In our brains, I mean, you talk about- Can't handle it, man. It's too much choice, yeah. So much choice. So just cutting back and cutting down and going like, I need to have things be a little bit more simple for a while. I need to like regroup.

And especially with everything changing so fast in our culture and inflation and all these things, just taking time to go. I love it. Okay. And with what you said with the kids, our kids actually felt it. My son's four years old. And like that was a big thing for me, even like pausing to go, what am I teaching my kids about consumerism?

Like he now knows that like when we want something, we buy it on Amazon. And do I want him to know that? So just taking the time to be intentional with your finances, pausing every now and then and saying, you know, do I really need to spend that much on groceries? Do I really need to buy on Amazon every time it crosses my mind? Like what am I doing with my money? How do I want to live my life? And what is my legacy? All right. That puts this hour of the Ramsey show in the books. Thanks to all the guys in the booth and to my co-host, John. We. John Deloney. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey,

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