The Ramsey Show - App - Be the Tortoise Not the Hare

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Live from Franklin, Tennessee, from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people with their money, their relationships, their work, their mental and emotional health, with just about everything. I'm John Deloney joined by my good friend George Camel. And we're taking your calls live. 888-825-5225. If you were born in the last century, the call is toll free. And if you were born in this century, you don't even know what that means.

888-825-5225. Let's go out to Orlando, Florida and talk to Grace. Hey Grace, what's up? Hi, how are you guys? I mean, I don't know a way we could be better. We're actually doing pretty good right now. I love that. I love that. Thanks for having

me. What's up? I was calling in because I am getting married later this year. My fiance has no debt but I am calling in because I am getting married later this year. My fiance has no debt, but I am bringing in quite the load. I have about $180,000 in student loan debt, so it's all private, and about $15,000 in credit card debt. And I've been told multiple things. I've been told to file for bankruptcy while I'm single. No!

Who's telling you this? You can't even discharge that $180,000. Yeah. So I just, I see a can't even discharge that 180. Yeah. So I feel a lot of options. I've been grinding. I got a higher paying job and I'm really trying, but I'm just curious. Did no one bring up the option of paying it off? They have, but my monthly payment is about $800.

I've defaulted on two of them already because it's four separate loans. And I just feel like every single month I'm barely scraping by. What's your income every month? So I just took a sales job. I was working in ministry before. My base income is $55 for the year. So I make about $3,500 a month, not including commission. I'm just starting to make any kind of commission. What in tarnation was this degree for? I wanted to go to med school. And so I went to a private school. I went and played volleyball. I made terrible choices. I didn't have great oversight from my parents on what signing a private loan meant. And now I'm 27 and I'm really, really feeling the weight of that. So you didn't graduate?

I did graduate, but I ended up feeling like I was being called into ministry. So was obedient to that. Decided that I wasn't going to be. Were you also called into 200 grand of student loan debt? No, no, no. But I was 18 and stupid. Okay. So what's the actual degree you got? Biology. Okay. And you're not in that field currently, or are you working in a close field? No. So I work in medical device sales. Okay. So you can make some cash in that gig. Yes. Yes. I'm just starting though. I'm literally three months in. All right. What does your fiance think about marrying somebody who's going to bring 200 grand and of debt into the

marriage he actually is not scared he knows that this is right and this is from the lord and he is like we're going to do this together we're going to tackle it together why won't you allow him to love you as he is signing up to do for the rest of your life. I know. You just believe him. No, this is about shame and embarrassment. Yeah. He's signing up. He knows. If you were lying to him, that'd be a different thing. He knows. And he looks at you and says, I love you. And it was good build a life. This is going to be issue number one of about 10,000. You and I are gonna have to tackle together over the next 75 years. Let's, let's make a run at this thing. Yeah. And if you want some encouragement, go check out our friend Jade Warshaw's story. Her and her husband were making, what, 30 grand when they started paying off almost

half a million in debt. So we've seen worse. And what they did was they got their income way up. By the end, they were making over 200 grand. And you guys will be too once you're married. Let's set a plan. We're going to say, all right, we're going to throw $5,000 of this debt every month. That's $60,000 a year. It's done in this amount of time. And bada-bing, bada-boom, you're out of debt in less than three years. Yeah. So it's not as – I don't want you to think this is like, oh, my gosh, everything's on fire.

It's bad. Let's not mince words, but it's not the end of the world. I need to file bankruptcy and start over. And can I challenge you with something? Yeah. the end of the world i need to file bankruptcy and start over and could i can i challenge you with something yeah i didn't i didn't hear you say this and so i'm reading the tea leaves and so maybe this isn't you but maybe this will help another caller who's not you if god wants your attention he'll get it yeah and sometimes we feel called into things and i can imagine feeling called into ministry but if you've already dug yourself a $200,000 hole most ministry is not going to pay you enough to cover that right if you're somebody who on the right on a regular basis is just waiting to get some kind of word or some kind of

I hear that more and more these days and what it's doing is giving people this pseudo permission to sit on the sidelines and wait for life to just happen to them. What I want you to do is to begin to take full action in your life. And if God wants you to go a different direction, I promise you, you'll know. Yeah. But I would love to see you take this job. And until you start raking in big bucks,

drive for Uber at night, get up early and do, I don't know, I was going to say do a paper route, but those don't exist anymore. I don't know what else you could do, but here's the thing. I want you to begin to feel some skin in the game because right now you feel like a loser. Yeah. And you're not.

You're just another student of which there are millions who did what everyone said. You have to go to this private school so you can get into this medical school. And then suddenly your heart was pointed in a different direction and you dug yourself such a hole. Now you think you're such a loser you can't do ministry because you can't afford to. Yeah. You don't even think that you're worth marrying. It's nonsense.

Right? Yeah. Will you do a homework assignment for me? Yeah. Will you write 18-year year old you a letter? No, listen, I'm being serious. Yeah. Write a forgiveness letter to 18 year old you. You know who does stupid stuff when they're 18? Every single 18 year old who's ever existed. They don't all do $200,000 worth of stupid, right? But we all would love to have things back from when we were 18.

And you've got to stop carrying that crap around, especially into a new marriage to a man who's like, I want all of you, including the $200,000 in debt. Yeah. But you've got to let yourself go get married. You've got to let yourself go be a great salesperson, right? You can be the saleswoman of the year. Go get it. Yeah. The richest irony is that your name is Grace

and you have none for yourself. Mine is John, which is a toilet. So everyone can see that one pretty clear. So Grace, there's two parts of this. One, there's the emotional healing that John's talking about. And then number two is the tactical, I got to work my butt off doing three side hustles

and guess what you guys are going to get married it's going to get paid off if it's two years or four years whatever it takes it's going to happen and so i think right now it feels like it's never going to happen therefore i need a shortcut and there's option c that we forgot about in brass tax here if you file for bankruptcy, you can clear the $15,000. That's it. Student loans are not dischargeable by bankruptcy. So whoever's telling you to declare bankruptcy... They haven't done a Google search.

I won't cast you. Yeah, exactly. They haven't Googled, right? Yeah, it's a lawyer, so that's scary. Oh, yikes. There we go. Well, they probably want your money if they're a bankruptcy lawyer. They're like, I'll take the the money even if it doesn't help you exactly oh grace i'm so sorry you're in on this grace are you ready to rock and roll i am and i feel empowered so thank you all right here's the deal your marriage gift george and i are going to hook you up with financial

peace university i want you to watch the digital lessons it's nine lessons you and your fiance watch them together i don't want you to look at him and hold his hand and say, I'm so glad that you picked me and you better be really glad that I picked you and we're going to ride or die together. Second thing we're going to send you is the EveryDollar app. You got to start practicing budgeting and it's going to give you some skin in the game

so you don't feel lost. And the next time you are looking for a hack and somebody has Googled something and they're like oh you should just holler back girl at us i know you ain't no holler back girl but just holler at us and we will give you the next right step this is the ramsey show 888-825-5225 we'll be right back Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance, or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John.

Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're not going to die or something? Well, I used to be one of those guys. I didn't even think about it. And one of my buddies said, hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids. And I immediately went and got term life insurance. That's a gut punch. For decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse. They've lost somebody important to them.

Me too. And they don't know what to do next. Terrifying. You're going to have a crisis here. You know, you got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow. She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly right. These are the two options. It's saying I love you to your family. Term life insurance. Jeff Zander and the team at Zander Insurance makes it easy and affordable.

I've used them personally for 25 years. They're the only people I trust. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, sitting next to the one and only George R. Camel. What is your middle name? Not true. Starts with a P, and I'll never tell.

Reddit, if you guess it. I want to hear your best of guesses. I'm sure it's Googleable. I'd like the mystique. Oh. You know? As public figures, we've got to have a little mystique, John. I regret that entire sentence.

I don't have any mystique. Do I? No. No. I think I'm kind of mystique-free. Well, you are a private guy. I mean, you're big on privacy. You know?

You want to live out in the woods. No one can find you. All that. Yeah. There is that. But it's not really a mystique. It's just... I don't know how there is. I was on social media at seven years old, John.

I was ready. That explains so much. I was in the AOL chat room, baby. I was anxious and depressed before anyone else was anxious and depressed. Let's go out to Boston and talk to Anthony. What's up, Anthony? Hello, can you hear me all right? Yeah, we got you, brother.

What's up? Great. So I graduated undergraduate about four years ago, and I've been working in consulting ever since. And I've just been treating Bitcoin as like a savings account, just kind of dollar cost averaging into it for a decent amount of time now. And I'm contemplating if I should, you know,

pull out and reconsider long-term savings strategy or continue down this road. I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. Are you talking about all of your money? Do you have an actual savings account? Do you have money in the bank? No, I don't have a savings account.

But I have like a 401kk but this is like the majority of my savings do you have any debt i have about 70 000 in student loans federal and state combined how much do you have in bitcoin uh probably over 200 000 Can we just salute you? Most people are kind of Bitcoin light, and you're all in. And I got to tip my hat, because there's people who play around on the edges. Anthony's not fooling around. You went full bonkers. Does your social media profile include the word Bitcoin? No.

Okay. I just want to know how far on the spectrum you are okay bitcoin bro 27 that would be awesome anthony you've done really well and the truth is when you put your money into any single item a single stock a single cryptocurrency you're putting yourself at risk and it may not feel that way because for the last you know the bitcoin bros will tell you it's just been going to the moon forever we don't know what the future holds we just saw i mean chat gpt this week china comes out with deep seek and all of a sudden it tanks the stock market because everyone's freaking out and so all it takes is one thing to happen in the news or everyone starting to dump their crypto

for you to lose big and so i would if this was if you were in a in vegas right now i'd be like dude cash out and go home and so that's what i'm telling you to do cash out pay off your debt get an actual emergency fund in place and then you can still invest you know i can't call it investing you can still speculate in crypto and put some money there but i wouldn't do it until after you've taken some prerequisite steps which is pay off your debt, get an emergency fund in place and liquid cash in a high yield savings account, then begin investing 15% of your income

into retirement accounts. Then any money beyond that, some fun money, you can put it into Bitcoin. And here's the deal. Don't think you're going to do that. I'm just telling you, I'm going to sleep well at night

knowing I told you that. If you were to ask me and George, who are both husbands or both fathers, this is what we would do with our money. So it's not just like Instagram, back of the Instagram reel, like, yeah, bro. Two things I want you to think through. When you talk about guys who own real hard assets, like who are wealthy with tangible things, I'm thinking of Warren Buffett, I'm thinking of with tangible things. I'm thinking of Warren Buffett. I'm thinking of Dave Ramsey. I'm thinking of guys like that.

They invest in things they can touch and feel. And I have no doubt in my mind. Like I basically live in a, I want to say Bitcoin, but I have a digital currency anyway. Dave Ramsey doesn't hand me cash every month. It deposits in a series of ones and zeros into my account, right? And then I move that into this account into retirement.

So we basically have a digital currency. It won't surprise me if this technology is used at some point. It also wouldn't surprise me if tomorrow some AI kid in St. Louis with a laptop figures out how to decode and spread bitcoin out everywhere using ai it won't surprise so it's so such an insanely risky gamble to hold two or three or four years of your life worth of money especially when you're leveraged seventy thousand dollars into the government do you get that and so it it's it just sounds bonkers to me on the other side of this thing if you told me hey i've got a house that i own that's mine that no one can ever take from me i've paid it off i don't

owe anybody anything especially the government i want to put some money over here and see what happens with it i'll shake your hand high five you i do that just not with bitcoin with other stuff so i'm totally i'm totally game on that. Um, but tell me what your resistance is. Cause I can hear it. You're not buying it. Uh, I don't know. I think it's kind of like, uh, if it's not broke, don't fix it. I understand like definitely volatile. And I've experienced a lot of psychological with the downs. Psychosis? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, psychosis. But the last four years, all I've done is dollar cost average

and effectively outperformed every hedge fund on planet Earth. So it's like, I see what you're saying. I guess having all your eggs in one basket sort of argument. But you were zoomed into a very particular spot in history, and I'm trying to help you zoom out and look at the big picture and go, it may continue to go up, or like we saw in 2022, Bitcoin took a 50% hit.

Even the housing crash of 2008 didn't take a 50% hit in the stock market. And so it's way more volatile than the traditional stock market. You can handle that risk right now as a young single guy but we're telling you as married guys who have seen a thing or two that it's not a good long-term play and here's the other thing go google and you can dig into the researcher i'm sure you're a tech guy so you've probably got more sophisticated um problem solving software than I have. Everybody thinks they can beat the market until they can't. And everybody thinks they've figured out the magic serum,

the Harry Potter wand that nobody else has, that trillion-dollar hedge fund managers don't have access to, but I figured it out in my basement. I've got it until they don't. And so if you, yourself in your room have figured out this thing, you're the one guy who's kept this thing afloat for four years. Awesome. You said it best. I think, and George and I've talked about this on air. I think in moving into the future, as everything is being leveraged, it's going to be disrupted and everything's going to look different in five years and robots are going to be mowing or whatever's going on i think that the

wealth of the next hundred years is going to be peace is how can i get off this insane roller coaster that i've put every egg in the basket every single one so that's george and i telling you solve for peace you have been on the roulette wheel for four years and you haven't fallen off. Your moment will come. And George and I are just saying, man, there's the wisdom is knowing when to leave the table and go buy breakfast for your friends in Vegas and then put the rest of the money in your pocket. Especially when you're sitting on all these student loans, which tells me if you had the money to pay for your student loans, most people go, yeah, I'd love to pay them off. But you said, nope, I'm going to hold because of really what it is at the end of the day is it's a greed.

There's a level of pride and greed that goes, nah, I'm going to keep riding this ride. Well, it's arrogance. I'm better than the system. And if you want to think, if you want to use a Vegas analogy, you went and pulled $70,000 out of an ATM machine. I mean, off a credit card, except the credit card is the government who can garnish your wages, take your stuff. And you went and put that money on a roulette wheel. That's what you've been playing. And congratulations, bro. You made it. I have too much anxiety for these 24 seven cryptos. I mean, you could pull up at 3am and it's going up, down, up, down, up, down. Okay. Now it's here. Now it's there. Some people, I even will go with you. I mean, cocaine and meth is an issue, right?

People use drugs and they like the ride. I even get that. There's just a moment beneath it. I made it sound like I do coke and meth. I don't. I understand it intellectually. But at least have enough wisdom to what they don't tell you on Instagram

is the big players have a house. The big players are not leveraged a hundred percent. And you get these young 21, 22, 23 year olds who get out of college and put everything into these assets. And they think they're playing the same game. These bigger guys are playing these wealthy multimillionaires, billionaires are playing. They're not the billionaires. Long tails are covered. They've got their housing taken care of. They've got their insurance. They've got life insurance covered. And then they go play with big sums of money.

And so you think you're playing in the major leagues. You're not. You're playing right into their hand. And at some point, they're going to take your money off the table. Got to build a foundation. Build a foundation, man. And at least pay your debts to the government for crying out loud, brother. This is The Ramsey Show.

We'll be right back. Rachel, do you ever get these sketchy text messages that are like, hey, you need to update your address and verify so we can get you the package you didn't order? Yes, I have, George. Sketchy and never trust them. And that's why we recommend Delete.me. They help with that. Yeah, they do. Delete.me actually goes in and removes your information from data broker websites. And it is an incredible service that everyone needs. And there's a lot of shady companies out there that solely exist to sell your personal data to bad guys. And that means your info, like your email address, your home address, your kids' names,

your name, everything is just out there for scammers and spammers to find. That's right. And then once they remove your information, then they're going to send you a detailed report telling you where they found your information, when they removed it, how many hours they've saved you. I mean, it is incredible. So detailed and it's beautiful. I love these reports. So far, get this, they've reviewed 27,000 listings on my behalf, removed me from 240 data broker sites and saved me 77 hours of time. It's incredible. Absolutely amazing. And Winston and I now get fewer texts, weird emails, spam calls, all of it. I love it. So you got to be sure to check them out. Ramsey fans get 20% off their annual plans.

Just go to joindeleteeme.com slash Ramsey. That comes out to less than nine bucks a month. Super affordable. It's amazing. So again, that's joindeleteeme.com slash Ramsey. Make sure to check it out, you guys. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. If you were born in the 19th or the 20th century, I guess, 1900s, that's a toll-free call. If you were born in the 2000s, you don't even know what that means. It just means you can call from anywhere, anytime. 888-825-5225. John Deloney joined with George Camel. And listen, if you just listen to that last call talking about

putting all my savings in Bitcoin, and I'm smarter than hedge fund managers, and I've got it figured out. I know I've got $70,000 in student loans, but I've got this thing figured out. There's so much nonsense about investing, how to do it, what to do. And the one thing that we don't often do, George, is we don't often put down TikTok and put down the blogs and put down Reddit and actually ask people who are very wealthy, what is your playbook? Will you just show me, please? Like, don't just tell me like, here's what I think and here's what's going to happen.

What are you doing in your house to keep you and your family safe and your legacy secure? So here at Ramsey Solutions, we have an amazing two-night virtual event. So you can watch us from your house. To get real questions, Dave Ramsey opens up his portfolio and says, this is how I have built what I have built.

Dave Ramsey, George Camel, it's called Investing Essentials. It can be overwhelming. It can be confusing. And here's what we're going to do here. George and Dave, not me, because you guys are way smarter than me. Love for you to be there.

We could use a studio audience, John. We could. The last time I heard Dave talking about this stuff, I was like, oh, you're Good Will Hunting. Like, it's just, he's beautiful mind with it all. This is stuff people go, well, we've heard all of it on the show. No, you haven't. Not this stuff.

This guy's pulling out formulas that I think even mathematicians are astounded by. But here's the thing. People think Dave over the years is just, he plays hillbilly on the radio. And I'll tell you what. I'm a simple man. Dave is a savant. He'll run circles around you. Especially when it comes to algorithms and why he does what he does when it comes to his money.

Especially real estate. Exactly. So night two, we're focusing on real estate, real estate investing, buying investment property. And Dave pulls up real properties that he owns, showing you exact calculations of how he gets their cash on cash returns. And there's eight pods. John, it's amazing. The number of calls we take from people who are scrolling TikTok and went and immediately got married and bought a duplex

and they're going to live in one half and they're going to rent out the other half. We live in the bathroom. We rent out the other four bedrooms. That's right. And then we're going to stack cash on cash. Listen, Dave's going to open up his playbook. Dave and George are going to walk through step by step

how they do it so you can get clarity and you can get just the playbook on how you can invest with confidence and start building wealth. March 4th and 5th, it's virtual. You can watch it on your iPhone. You can watch it on your laptop. If you're a crypto bro, you can watch it on those two big curvy screens that you watch your whole life go by on. And tickets are 199 bucks. We charge for this one because the return on this thing could be amazing. I guess you reserve your spot, but there's not really spots. It's virtual, right, George? It's a virtual ticket. Go to ramsaysolutions.com slash events, or you can click the link in the show notes if you're tuning in on podcast or YouTube. Go check it out. I would, except I

have one of the highest privileges in the world, which is I just text you on Saturday morning. I'm like, hey, George, should I move my money to this, to this? And you go, yes. You have the pleasure of sitting next to Dave and on a break, you're like, hey, Dave, can you tell me about this? And he just goes, yeah, I just do it like this and this and this. My favorite is that Dave says, who's going to care about this? They don't want to go that deep. And then people were like, please, we want to go deeper. Tell us more. Yeah, exactly. So Dave calls it nerdville because it really is. We kind of nerd out. We obviously cover the basics. We're going to tell you how to invest, how to pick mutual funds, retirement plans. We cover all that. But then we go deeper into what about beyond that? What's

beyond the baby steps? That's right. And it's the question that when you're scrolling TikTok, they don't give you the reasoning or the math behind it. They just give you some 60 seconds of excitement, some proclamation they got off somebody else's TikTok account. So RamseySolutions.com slash events or click the link in the show notes. So that's a Sacramento, California and talk to Brayden. What's up, Brayden? How you doing? Man, I could not be doing better, brother.

How are you? I'm kind of in a pickle. We got you. We got you. George loves pickles. I specialize in brined cucumbers. Yes. Let's do this.

That was a deep pickle reference, George. People don't know, John. This is me educating the masses. That was fantastic, brined cucumbers. All right, so what's up, Brayden? Okay, so I finished my first baby step. I have about a thousand or twelve hundred bucks sitting at home um but i got a fifteen thousand dollar loan out on my truck

and i work a lot under the table so i don't have income and i had to have my grandfather sign on to my loan wait wait pause there what do you sell drugs no, no. I work for a lot of farm properties. I make about $4,000 a month. Just cash? Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know the government listens to this show too, right? I'm totally playing with you. They don't. See, they just scrambled your signal there.

They're on to you now, Braden. All right, so you make $4,000 a month in cash, all right? Yeah. So he signed onto my loan and I just got news that they are pretty heavy in credit card debt and they need to take out a secondary mortgage on their house because they both are disabled and can't pay for it. But they can't take it out because they're stuck on my loan for my car. So I kind of already know the answer. I just need clarification. Do I just sell the truck?

That's the answer. Yeah, it probably would. It's going to hurt. How are you going to get to work? Well, I got it for $3,000 under, or about $7,000 under market value, and I paid $9,000 got it for three grand under, or about seven grand under market value. And I paid nine into it. So I have about 14,000 I can get out of it just to get something else. But I just kind of needed that clarification from that.

Sell it right now. Yeah. How much could you sell it for? Top dollar? I got it for 20. I can get it for 27. And like I said, I only owe $15,000 on it. So you can sell it for $27,000 today?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, do it right now. And then go get yourself a $9,000 truck and never borrow money from your granddad again. Never put a family member in that kind of position again. Okay. And here's how you go car shopping from now on. You have $9,000.

That's your new car budget. Not $10,000, not $12,000 because the salesman was like, oh, well, you could upgrade to this model if you just put it. The one you can afford in cash is the one you drive right now. And then with more savings, you're going to be able to save up with no debt to upgrade that over time to where it's not crushing your life and hurting your relationships. How old are you, brother?

I'm 19. Okay, you don't know this yet, but I'm going to tell you a secret. If you go to do work for a 45 year old on his farm and you roll in there in an 88 truck and it's got some character to it and some patina and it's got some dents in it they're gonna look at you with more respect than if you roll in there with a 2025 car that cost 120 000 because000 because they're going to know, oh, you may be good with tools or throwing hay or whatever you do, but you do not know how to handle money. You don't know that yet because you're 19, and I totally get that. But, brother, dude, if you just go get a truck you can afford

that's going to run and run and run and run that you can actually work on yourself. Now, George, these trucks are like mobile iPhones. There are some mobile homes at this point. Some people have to live in them, John, because the payment is more than rent. $120,000. It's insane. All right, let's go out to Newark, New Jersey, and talk to Lucas. Hey, Lucas, what's up?

How are you doing? It's an honor to speak to you guys. I really appreciate you guys taking my call. Hey, we're right up against the clock, so you've got just about a minute and a half. Get right to your question for me. Perfect. I'm 24. I live with my mom. I make around 135. I want to make sure that I'm ready to step out my mom's house. And if I am ready, do I buy a house or do I, you know, first rent to get that experience? Go get yourself an apartment this afternoon and be moved out by this weekend.

What makes you think you're not ready? To be honest with you, it's just taking that next step. You make $130,000. You've taken this step. Are you in crippling debt? Not at all. I have zero debt.

Oh my goodness. Dude, you're making more than double the average income in the United States. When's the last time you went on a date? Actually, I have a girlfriend. Well, she needs to call into the show because she should not be dating somebody who makes $130,000 and lives with his mom. Okay. Say, thank you, Mom. I'm ready to fly the coop. Yes.

I want to be an eagle. Because as Dave says, if you stay, you become a turkey if you never leave the eagle's nest. Well'm ready to fly the coop. Yes. I want to be an eagle. Because as Dave says, if you stay, you become a turkey. If you never leave the eagle's nest. Well, I kind of like that. So here's the deal. I want you to go get an apartment this weekend. And by the way, you can get a nice apartment.

Don't get a dive. Get something that's actually pretty cool. You make $130,000. Congratulations. That's awesome. Less than 25% of take-home pay. That's the angle. Yeah, not something stupid, but something cool. And then I want you to wrap up the key.

Actually, don't do that. Wrap up a copy of the lease and give that to your mom as a gift this weekend and take her to a really nice restaurant and say, thanks for letting me crash at your house. I'm ready to go be a big boy now. Thank you for raising me. Bye, Felicia. This is The Ramsey Show. There's a time in your life and at the baby steps for renting, but you don't want to do it forever because when you rent, you're still paying for a mortgage, just somebody else's. Plus, rent means instability in your budget because it always goes up, never down. So when you're ready to buy, make sure you work with a mortgage partner you can rely

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Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. 888-825-5225. I'm John Deloney joined by the one and only George P. Camel. Let's go out to Chatt the one and only George P. Camel. There we go. Let's go out to Chattanooga and talk to Beth.

Where are you, Beth? There you are. What's up, Beth? Hi. How are we doing? Oh, I'm great. Better than I deserve. Outstanding.

Exactly. We're the exact same. We're better than we deserve, too. How can I help? Okay. We're the exact same. We're better than we deserve to. How can I help? Okay, my question is about MPI insurance, and do you think it would be worth it to get that if you're purchasing a new home? Are you talking about life insurance? No, not life insurance.

It's mortgage protection insurance. Oh, got it. Okay. Yeah. We are actually looking to buy a new home and I've had several people tell me about that. So I was wondering your thoughts, if it's worth it or not. No, it's not something that we recommend. Why are you, did you hear that you need it from someone else? No. Well, yeah, kind of. My husband is self-employed, and I'm kind of concerned because he had a heart attack a couple years ago,

and also he has problems with his back. So if he becomes disabled, I want to be able to know that I'm not going to be living on the streets. Yeah. Well, the only time we'd recommend something like that is if you don't qualify for term life insurance. Okay. I do have term life insurance on him. We got it through Zender. Great. How much do you have in the policy?

$300,000. Okay. And what's his income? $300,000. About $300,000 a year. Okay. And what's his income? 300,000. Um, about 300,000 a year. Okay. So we'd recommend he makes 300,000 a year? Gross.

Yes. Wow. Beth, what is this? I'm afraid I'm going to be on the streets song and answer telling yourself. I, my brain couldn't even fathom when you said he makes three. I was like, oh gosh. How much much money do you all have in retirement savings? Probably about $75,000 right now. I'm a little bit behind on that.

I got a late start. You have $75,000 in retirement? Probably close to that. How old are you? I'm 62. And why are you guys buying a new house right now? We just want a different location. Can you afford a different location?

Can you afford a new house right now? Yes. Do you guys have any debt? Yes. We do. We have probably about $120,000 in debt right now. But part of that will be paid off. It's mainly business loans.

Okay. So I'm confused where this $300,000 is going because it's not going to retirement. It's not going to cash flow because you're going to debt. So where is $300,000 disappearing into? I i'm not sure i feel like i don't know i mean i do i do try to do a budget and stay on a budget and i do do the snowball and and you know beth do you do this or do, mainly I do this. Okay. We're working on the y'all part. We do have contract labor that we do pay out every year too.

So that takes up a lot of that $300. Not a lot of it, but part of it. Here's what I'm hearing, and I want you just to please trust me on this one, me and George on this. Yes, yes, that's why I called. Okay, so number one, don't buy a house yet. You've got some gaps in your marriage, and y'all are hoping a new location is going to fix it. It's not going to bring you the safety that you think it's going to. And in fact, I'm going to tell you right now, based on your financial situation and just the ambiguity around your financial situation, it's going to make it worse.

You and your husband need to sit down and have a come to Jesus, bear our souls, everybody being honest. I'm going to pull credit reports on both of us. Where are we? Yeah. Because I don't think you can breathe at night because you don't know where the money is and he keeps telling you we make i make three hundred thousand dollars a you don't know you've never seen it b you don't really know how much money how much debt he's holding

business-wise you kind of know some of it and it could be 70 or 80 percent of that 300 000 is labor cost and so he could be making $300,000 and be completely broke. He could be. And if he's using your family credit cards to buy stuff for the business, you guys got a mess on your hands. No credit cards.

Well, bank loans, whatever. If he's taking personal loans out for this business, you might have yourself a big old mess. So here's what I do before I did any kind of house purchasing. I would say we're going to have a sit down conversation about the realities of our financial situation. With $75,000 in the bank, a very unknowable, I don't even know where we are. We owe $120,000. Maybe the business does, maybe we do, or maybe it's a business loan that we secured with our personal, like you might have a mess. You're not in a financial position to move, quote unquote,

just because we want to. You're just not, you don't have that kind of money. Okay. Now he may sit down and clarify all this and it may be a really scary hard conversation if i were you i would start with the words as your wife i'm really scared right now all right and i just want to see it does any of this ring true to you or am i out to lunch um part of it might ring true and part of it you're out to lunch to be honest that's good i like going to lunch sometimes. I went to Chick-fil-A today. It was fantastic.

They are. I kind of, I pretty much know what's going through the business because I kind of, basically, I do the book. Okay. So, you know, I don't think he's hiding anything from me at all. Well, less about hiding it and more of it just kind of, like George said, it just runs through like a net, water through a net. It just goes everywhere. Okay, yeah.

Okay, gotcha. What do you pay yourselves each? Yeah, I don't think he's being deceptive. I believe you that he's not. I think you guys are aligned in knowledge, but we're not aligned on a plan. That's right. How much does he pay himself every year out of this business? I agree.

Not much. He just pays himself when he can. And that's one thing I'm working to do is to start paying ourselves first because it's been just paying bills first. Okay. So when I ask you how much y'all make and you say $300,000. That's business revenue. That's not your actual income. Yeah. That's not income. No. Because you said you have expenses, there's people you're paying. So you guys need to sit down and figure out what is our income going to be for 2025. And if it's $200,000, we need to be throwing the majority of that at our debt. We got to cover

the bills, the four walls, food, utilities, housing, transportation. But beyond that, we're not going to let this money disappear because we've been doing that for four decades now. And we're going to have to retire one day. What was your revenue last year that you reported with I can't remember. I think between his and mine, it was like $180,000, I think. That makes more sense. So that would be your gross income for the year, meaning you're probably taking home closer to $120,000. So $10,000 a month take-home pay. You know that money's going. You've only got $ got 75 grand in retirement right so here's it

just sit down and have a where's our money going um we make two if you're making 180 grand over the course of a year y'all combine you'll make way too much money for you to have 75 000 heading into the last the fourth quarter of your life right george how often do you hear when you sit down with people how often do you hear we just want to do this thing and you look at their situations like hey y'all can't do that thing you know what i mean it's heartbreaking especially when you get into your 60s and you're going hey we'd like to retire next year and i go the math says you can't yeah i'm the bearer of bad news now because i broke your heart but it's not a decision you get to make. The math does that for you. Otherwise, you're going to just carry debt until you die of stress and anxiety. And so in a situation like this, they can clean it up, but they need to be aligned on the plan of, all right, we got to throw five grand a month of this debt. That's 60 grand

a year. We'll be done with the 120 in two years. Then we can start tackling the mortgage. Then we can retire. And by the way, all the questions I just asked Beth to ask her husband to sit down and get answered, a bank is going to ask you the exact same questions before they write you a check for a mortgage. So you're going to have to answer these questions anyway. It's best that you all do it together behind closed doors and unite, and then go attack any of your financial goals moving forward. That's hour one of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be right back.

888-825-5225. I'm John Deloney, joined with George Campbell. Hang on, we'll be right back. Live from Nashville, Tennessee, I'm John Deloney, joined by my good friend George Campbell, and this is the Ramsey Show, where we talk with real people going through real challenges with their money, their work, their

relationships, their mental and emotional health, building wealth, all of it. You call in. We've got an opinion and an idea or two. 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. We have an amazing call screener, Christian, waiting for your call. Our board is completely lit up, George.

Let's go out to Salt Lake City, Utah, and talk to Kathleen. Hey, Kathleen, what's up? Hi, Kath. Hi. You're Kathleen. I'm John. Yes. What's up? Hi, John. What's up?

It's a good day. Yes, ma'am. How can I help? So my husband, my ex-husband, has not been able to hold down a job due to his health and he has not paid alimony or child support in five months. His only assets are his 401k and a little bit of the equity in the house that I got in the divorce that he gets that equity when I refinance when I finish school. So I'm wondering if it's fair to ask him to cash out some of his 401k to pay his responsibility. I know there's huge punishments, but he's working on disability and that can take a long time,

but he's got no other assets to feed his kids. What a mess. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, it's going to fall on his kids on the back end, right? Yeah, right. Like, I'd rather he, you know, keep his kids alive now than, I don't know, well. Well, I mean, no, but they're going to be propping him up right now, or they're going to be propping him up in the future. If he cashes it out, then he's going to be calling them when he's old and can't work.

Yeah. So let me ask about your situation. Are you unable to support them right now without his check? I'm getting financial support from my family. I'm going through school. I've still got years to go before I can have any training that can pay anything more than fast food. Okay. I feel like fair is that word has stuck with me. I'm like, is it fair? It's the wrong answer. It's the wrong question.

It's more like what is necessary to keep the roof over our heads and keep the kids fed and keep the basics here. I wouldn't use it as a punishment. And I don't think you are. You sound like a lovely person. Is he for real hurt or is he trying to end around not having to pay? No, no, I believe it's genuine.

He can't work. Okay. So let's take the alimony piece off. Cause that's, that's, that's a third rail right now. Let's, let's pretend y'all are still married. I know that's a big stretch, okay?

Your husband who's working in your home gets hurt and he can't make any more money. Y'all have to have some hard conversations about the house you live in. And you think, I'm not going to disrupt the kids' lives. The kids' lives are already really disrupted. I need to go to school right this minute so that I can finally get a degree so I can finally get to earning some real money so I can take care of everybody long-term. That makes sense unless you can't afford to do it right this second. So our housing, we refinanced this house when it was at the bottom of the interest. My interest rate is 2.6. My mortgage is $1,000.

Okay. I can't rent a studio apartment in Utah for under $1,000. I got you. I get it. The financial sense means that the kids and I stay here. If I was still married to him, we would keep this house. If we were still married, I would ask him to petition some kind of hardship to get into his 401k. His parents are paying his rent.

I guess my parents are, my parents are paying my mortgage. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, you can, you can contact your attorney and you can say, Hey, I want him to forego his, his stake in the equity of this house that didn't put cash in your pocket. his stake in the equity of this house that didn't put cash in your pocket he needs to do a bankruptcy because of his uh his credit card debt and since the divorce and so he's threatening that he needs a bankruptcy and i'm worried that this is an asset on his in his name i'm going to be honest with you i think you're grasping at straws here okay you he owes you money the bank says he does morally he owes you money he

doesn't have any how much is in this mystical 401 that you that you think he can give you to his $250,000 in it and how old old is he? He's 42 years old. And he's done working? Is he going to have to fight with disability forever? He's going to have to fight to get on disability. He hopes that he can rejoin the workforce someday, but based on his last 10 years of health, I don't see how it's possible. He's hit an early dementia.

Okay. So, I mean, that's the question I'll ask you. I mean, I guess you can. What's he going to do besides call your kids and ask for money? I just feel like I'm asking my family for help to take care of his children they're your children too though yeah no they are and I have a plan I'm getting through school as quickly as I can I'm selling my blood money no I mean I know everybody's working hard I think there's just a global situation here which is the guy guy's hurt. He can't work. And we don't like him. We're mad at him. He blew up our life.

All those things fill in the blank, the divorce and all that. He didn't have it. But I mean, doesn't he have it? Can't he get into that 401k? Isn't it better to use it now? Then when,

then when, when he's 65 and he has zero, nothing. I don't see him living until he's 65. Who's the beneficiary on the 401k? I don't know if he switched it over to his new wife and his kids, but I have a life insurance on him that I kept from our marriage. Okay, what's the policy value?

His is $500,000. And you're the beneficiary? I am. Okay. Here's the deal. I don't know enough to know Utah law. I would go sit down with somebody and even see if you have a claim to it. I don't even know if you have a claim to it.

My gut says if you, the attorney, the courts, they're going to say, hey, this is a last ditch thing that we would need to approve in order to garnish his retirement to make this happen. They're going to explore every other option and they may end up where you are going. This is all this guy has. And here's how much we're going to garnish to make this work. But he's broke. And so we can't just rob his entire retirement and just give it to you. They might have a different option. So we have a guy who's very unhealthy, has been.

He's got early onset dementia. He's got and he's it to you, they might have a different option. So you have a guy who's very unhealthy, has been, he's got early onset dementia, he's unable to work, he's trying to piece together Social Security and piece together disability. And maybe you can find a judge that will force him to cash out part of his 401 and take the 35 or 40% penalty, whatever he's going to have to pay, and give you the other piece of it. Is it fair if I, because my sister's supporting me and I'd like to pay her back someday, is it fair to say, hey, if you forego the equity that I owe you, then you can not pay me the child support? Yeah, that, if I'm you...

That's the best solution based on what you told us. And I think if you went to the courts and an attorney, they'd probably tell you something similar, is let's explore that before we garnish his retirement. But that doesn't put cash in your pocket. on what you've told us. And I think if you went to the courts and an attorney, they'd probably tell you something similar. Is let's explore that before we garnish his retirement. But that doesn't put cash in your pocket. No, but I mean, my sister, she can float me, but not forever. I think we need to figure out

how to make Kathleen's life sustainable without the outside help. And that might take some sacrifice in the short term. You might need to pause going to school. What are you going to school for? I'm going for radiology technology. Okay.

It may be that you can't afford to do that right now. And you have to go work three or four jobs. And it's an awful economic trap that single moms find themselves in. And I know that sounds like two steps back and I don't want to. I just don't think anybody's in a situation to do anything that they want to do right now. I think we have to do some different things. You can get with a lawyer and try to go do what you got to do. I don't know what the laws are, so you need to get with an attorney there.

I would want to look in the mirror first. We'll be right back. Hey, you guys, I'm not a fan of the big banks and you probably already know which ones I mean, but I do like credit unions because they're nonprofit organizations that focus on their members. And I'm proud to endorse Fairwinds Credit Union, because they share the Ramsey mission of helping people get out of debt and live generously. In fact, they design products to help keep you from going into debt in the first place. Fairwinds has been in business for over 75 years, and they serve hundreds of thousands of members worldwide. You can feel secure because your deposits are federally insured by the NCUA

up to $250,000. It's easy to join and Fairwinds partners with more than 5,000 credit union locations around the country so you can bank in person wherever you live. But if you prefer the online experience, you can log on to Fairwinds and do anything you could do at a physical location. So go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey to learn more. And while you're there, look at the combined checking and savings account bundle they created just for Ramsey fans to help you take control of your finances. That's Fairwinds, F-A-I-R-W-I-N-D-S dot org slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. George, that last call, I think it's important just to say this.

On this show, we're often able to help somebody with their money or their marriage and see a path through it, right? And when you're living in chaos or the world is falling down around you, sometimes it's helpful to get somebody just to shine a light and say, hey, I see a path out where you can't see it. I'm at a different vantage point, right? When military, when they're doing a raid, there's always people, eyes in the sky. It's important to have people looking at a problem from different perspectives. Sometimes the situation's just bad, and there's not a lot of great options.

There's no secret thing you haven't thought of. That's right. Other than put down your anger and put down your hatred and just go do the next right thing. And it sucks. And I hate it. Not by your hand, but in your lap. Here we are.

The hurricane hit your house and any amount of poking and yelling and screaming and raging and running, your house is still falling down. What are you going to do next? Right. And that's a, that's a, that's one of those bummers when you're listening to the show when you and i are on the like trying to help somebody it's like there's not a good option here um you can take a really painful route or maybe a less painful route but all the routes are painful and so choose the one that's going to get you the most dignity and respect and where you want to end up and i imagine when

something traumatic happens in your grieving a piece of that grieving often looks like trying to find a villain, trying to find a shortcut to fix this, someone that can take this on. Yeah, there's a great proverb that says, I finally confronted my anger and sat down and she took off her mask and revealed herself as grief. And it's like, I want to be so enraged and mad.

And here's the reality, this just happened. And in that last caller, I don't want my husband who we got divorced. He's got this small 401k. I don't want him to pass away because he's literally passing away. And I don't want his new wife to get it. Right. Exhale. Right.

This is just a bum sit. The whole thing's a mess. Right. So anyway, sometimes there's just not not a there's not a silver lining you gotta go straight through the middle of the storm and uh hang on right and hang on that's part of the show right thing we don't always have magic answers no sometimes when we do it is magic it is cool but sometimes it's so man i'll pull up a seat on the curb next to you in front of your house that just blew down and i gotta i gotta lighter if you gotta smoke and i'll sit here with you but it's nothing nothing's easy from here

on out right scott's at toronto and talk to bethany what's up bethany how are you awesome how about you i'm okay thank you excellent what's up my question My question is, so I'd be paying off my only debt I have, which is my car payment tomorrow. So that would be clear. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. My husband has just a $7,200 car payment, and he just took out another line of credit for $8,000. So my question is, I have about $600 spare from my car payment. Should I help him pay back his line of credit?

But my worry is that he paid off $10,000 line of credit last year, and he took another $8,000 and put it in stock. So my worry is that if I help pay him, like help pay his line of credit back, he's going to take another line of credit, and we're going to be in debt still over and over again. I'm more worried about the marriage than the debt. Way more. Me and my roommates in college were more aligned on our finances

than you and your husband are. Yeah, we don't have joint accounts. We have separate. But I heard on the internet that it's best to have separate accounts, and here you are telling me? Yeah. Okay, I'm joking with you because this is the hate we get when we tell people combine finances for this reason, for transparency, accountability, because it's real hard to make financial mistakes when your partner

is locked in arms with you. You have someone else to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't take out that line of credit. So did you know he was doing this and agree to it? Did you tell him stop? Did he do it behind your back? So I didn't know he took out another eight grand. He was talking about it, but I didn't know as she was doing it. All I said was you, we just paid off. Well, he just paid off the 10 grand. He worked overtime to do that. And he said, well, I really want to do stocks. You know, I was like, okay, I looked into it. And he took out eight K for it. And i didn't think he would actually do it because we just he just finished so he essentially went into debt to gamble yeah it sounds like he has

he may have some addiction issues here well he's so he got into finances after reading dave ramsey books yeah he didn't read any book d Ramsey wrote, I can tell you that. He wanted to do something different, I think. He wanted to do stocks. He's into stocks now. I have no idea what... He's probably day trading. Basically, what day trading is, it's...

It's gambling for financial nerds. Well, even better than that, it's a piecemeal donation to large hedge fund managers. Okay. That's what it is. He's just taking that $8,000 and he's breaking it up in little pieces and giving it away to really rich men and women to make them richer. Okay. It's not good. So let me answer your question simply.

Should you help your husband pay off his debt? No. Should you guys pay off your debts? Yes. So there's a different piece of language that's going to require some hard conversations, some resets, some alignment to go. We're doing everything together and that means no more debt. We're paying this off once and for all. And you're not going to make any decisions behind my back. I'm not going to make any decisions behind your back. And I think what I'm hearing here, Bethany from Toronto, is your marriage is in a mess.

And I would recommend sitting down because this kind of stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not like y'all are completely aligned on raising kids and the future and vacations and holidays and savings. And then all of a sudden he pulls out an $8,000 loan and puts it in the stock market, puts it on red 50 and spins the roulette wheel. This is two people who are barely roommates who are trying to co-manage a house, but this isn't building a united marriage that it's you and him versus the world, which is what you have to have to survive these days. So you sit down with him and y'all say, and you exhale and say, I'm scared about us. I'm scared about the way we handle money. I'm scared about the way, I don't know where things are going and how they're going. Will you join me on this? But your marriage is on some pretty thin ice and that's worth addressing before you get into the

money stuff. But yes, once y'all are aligned, you both work really hard to pay off each other's debts because it's y'all's. There's one debt. It's ours, right? Let's go out to Tampa, Florida and talk to Victor. Hey, Victor, what's up, brother? How you doing? Doing great, man. What's up? So I'm just getting into investing

and I was just wondering if WeMo was a good platform to start with and how do I start investing into a mutual fund or an index fund? Why are you going with Webull? Why go with any singular app that you can get on your phone? So I had actually Webull for about a year now. I haven't really done nothing with it. I just had it. And then I found you guys' channel and started watching you guys.

So I didn't know if, you know, I really just don't have any knowledge on it. Well, the best thing I can tell you, the best thing I can tell you is what George and I do with our money that helps feed and honor and protect our wives and our kids. And that is we call SmartVestor Pros and we sit down with them and they walk us through

and then they do the investing on their platform. Or we use our workplace 401k. And maybe get on and do a index fund or something. Webull was designed for day traders, which if you heard on that last call, that's the kind of people who are using Webull. It's not to say you can't find some decent funds on there and invest in an index fund.

What I'm telling you is if you use one of those apps, it's going to psychologically get you to do something dumb. They're going to give you notifications. You should make a trade today. We'll give you a free trade if you make five trades. Okay. Or, uh-oh, stocks are down. You want to make a trade?

It's like it's like a tie tying your funds to a tiktok account is that right george yeah so victor if you want to do i have no problem with diy investing if you know what you're doing you're comfortable with it you've already built a foundation but most people going on here are in crippling debt trying to get rich off a stock trade and that's not how building wealth works. And I guess the bigger picture is, I always go back to it like, I'm friends with Dave Ramsey's SmartVestor Pro, right? And so if Dave isn't playing around thinking he could beat the market

and he's got a guy who takes care of the mutual fund allocations, that's good enough for me because I know this. I'm not smarter than that guy when it comes to this. could beat the market and he's got a guy who takes care of the mutual fund allocations. That's good enough for me because I know this. I'm not smarter than that guy when it comes to this. And these people are not doing retirement investing in Webull. So I would start there. You want tax advantaged investing in a retirement account. Go with that with your employer, a Roth IRA. You can go with one of the big three if you want to do that. Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity. But I would not mess with these bells and whistles apps that try to get you, lure you back in for another trade. That's how you lose your shirt, my man.

888-825-5225. It's the Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by the one and only George P. Camel. Today's question of the day is brought to you by WhyRefi. Now, we don't recommend refinancing on everything, but for distressed private student loans, there is WhyRefi. We trust WhyRefi because they help you with a low fixed interest rate you could not get anywhere else. They help you stick to your budget and

ultimately get out of debt. Learn more at YRefi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y.com slash Ramsey may not be available in all states. Today's question comes from Kurt in Florida. I'm a 30-year-old business professional making six figures with a car payment and a mortgage. I bought a home in Florida mainly for my mom, who now lives with me. I cover all the household expenses, including food and bills. She receives $1,000 in Social Security every month, which she doesn't touch, even though I ask her to at least contribute to the cost of groceries. My mom also pressures me to send money to relatives in another country,

even though I've explained that I don't have much left after my financial priorities. Am I wrong for asking her to contribute financially, even though I can technically afford it? How do I set boundaries without feeling guilty or jeopardizing my financial goals? My father passed away three years ago, so it's just me and her. Let's start at the end here. How do I set boundaries without feeling guilty or jeopardizing my financial goals? You don't, you don't. You set boundaries. I love how Dr. Becky Kennedy says, boundaries are something that require nothing of somebody else and they require me to act. And so I'm setting a boundary here. I'm not going to put any more money out there or I'm not going to send any money overseas. And then your body might feel guilty. Your money body might feel shamed for a bit, whatever. Fine. But then I'm going to go on and do the next right thing because I'm not going to be dragged around by my feelings by the nose.

And is it, am I wrong for asking her to contribute financially? No. Is she going to? No. So what are you going to do? you're going to kick your mom out over her not paying 500 in whatever bills you get what i'm saying like i mean what are you going to do well it sounds like he's by the way this is all phrased he's resentful that he even is in this position i bought a home in florida mainly for my mom she gets this money i ask her to contribute and she's not doing it she's asking me to do this for relatives in the other country so he's fed up with this whole situation that he's put himself in he set the whole thing up and his mom looked at him was like yeah am i doing that and so you have a decision to make

and you want to be an honorable son which i think is what has caused a lot of this of saying well mom didn't prepare for retirement she makes a thousand bucks a month which by the way is below poverty level right and now i need to float her bills oh and by the way is below poverty level. Right. And now I need to float her bills. Oh, and by the way, dad passed away. So now I'm the man of the house needing to provide for her. And by the way, she pressures me. Dude, you're a grown man. You just bought a house. Stop feeling pressured to do something that you can't afford to do. Move on with your life. So this is some tough love here, George. Here's Kurt's options. Sell the house. Tell mom you're on your own. You make 12,000 G's a year. Go make it happen or continue to share a house with your mom and continue to pay the bills and

choose every day. I'm not going to choose misery by walking around looking at all the stuff she's not doing that I would shoot. Move on with your life, right? There's no gray area here, right? You're going to kick your mom out and go on about your life, or you're going to make peace with the fact that your mom gets a thousand bucks a month and she shoves it in an account somewhere, probably going to you, but maybe going overseas, whatever, fine. I'm just to a point now, George, where we create these situations and what we want is for everything to be exactly how we want it and perfect it. I get to say what I, you can do that. But every one of those conversations, every one of those demands, everyone's boundaries comes with consequences. And the consequence might be cool.

Your mom's out on the street. That could be a consequence. It might be that your mom nags you. Okay. I'm moving on with my life, right? It might be that you're frustrated because your other 30-year-old buddies are out doing stuff. They're hanging out. They're dating.

They're having fun, and you're stuck. You're taking care of your mom. I get that. That sucks, man. That's hard. And what an amazing place to be that you get to help and take care of your mom, right? You get to do that. And maybe you got to sell your car instead of having a car payment.

And you make six figures, and you wanted to drive a Lexus, but all I can afford is a Camry because I'm a guy who gets to take care of his mom because I make six figures. What a blessing. Move on with your life. Just stop the all the time. I'm thinking about if you get rid of this car payment, that's kind of like what mom would have given you for groceries.

So you can kind of create that income for yourself by getting rid of this car that you couldn't afford. And choose to not be miserable. Choose freedom. As my friend Dr. John Deloney says. That guy's usually wrong, but on that one I think he's right. Choose freedom. You're taking care of your mom.

What a blessing. What a blessing. It was backstage at a John Maxwell event I was speaking at. And the other speaker you may have never heard of. His name's Deion Sanders. Heard of him. One of my top three favorite Deions. Talk about feeling good about yourself.

And then he walks back and, oh, he's keynoting after you. Right. So Deion walks back there and he was having a conversation with somebody. And he said the phrase, I'm so blessed that I'm in a position that I get to take care of my mom. And I remember thinking, what an amazing perspective shift. I have to take care of my parents. I have to. I get to. Amazing. Right. And so you can choose that way of seeing the world, or you can choose

that the whole world's out to get me. And my mom is blowing her thousand dollars by sending it to other people in other countries who may need it too. Right. So I'm just not going to choose misery anymore. My favorite part of this question is the fact that he referenced himself as a business professional. I've just never heard that in real life, and I appreciate that, Kurt. I'm going to refer to myself as a business professional. I think you qualify for a business professional, or as they say in the biz, a BP. Let's go out to San Antonio, Texas.

Nobody refers to that. That's batting practice. And talk to Kristen. What's up, Kristen? Hello. How we doing? Well, I'm calling y'all, so... So not well. Thank you for your honesty.

You have reached the bottom of the advice barrel. Most people are like, I'm doing so great. We're like, what's going on? You're like, well, I'm in crippling debt and super stressed. All right. What's up? Well, I am calling because my husband and I, when we had some debt issues, we went to like a negotiation company. Basically, you know, they have us going into delinquency and then they

negotiate. You give the payments to them instead, which tanks your credit, collectors come after you, and then they go, we'll help you settle and it'll all work out, right? Yes. And I was totally against it. My husband, it just, okay. So this is the reality. So they have negotiated, we have a total of about $38,000 in debt with three different creditors, its credit cards. So two of our credit cards were negotiated or settled, I should say. And we spoke to the representative yesterday because I'm like, I want to know, can we get out of this? What's the penalty? You know, what does get out of this? What's the penalty? You know, what is this all entail? And so right now, um, we still have one creditor that has not been negotiated yet. And I'm trying to tell my husband, I'm like, I want to get out of this. I think we

can handle it ourselves. Um, but, uh, you know, he's kind of like, well, we're in it now and we need to stick with it so we can get out of this and I'm just trying to see if we do have a path to get out of it. You do and you'll have to cancel the contract with them so you'll need to check the document you signed for a cancellation clause, see if there's any fees or penalties for getting out of this. How much is it? So the fees and penalties, so we've been 10 months into the program. Once they do your negotiations for every payment that you do, it's $347 per credit card, you know, that they are negotiating just to fees. So, I mean.

It's insane. And that's for 12 months is what it is. You see why I'm not a fan of these companies? Oh, absolutely. Hey, let's help you get out of debt by screwing you over completely. Exactly. But they're like the payoff right now for those two would only be 16,000 how much money do you guys make so we uh very much a budgeter uh but uh we're about bringing home about 6,300 that's after taxes amazing which tells me you guys on that budget can get out of this on your own.

And so I would figure out what the fees are and calculate it and go, all right, we're going to be out of this debt faster on our own instead of hoping, wishing, waiting on someone else to do it while screwing us over. Just chalk it up to something that Dave famously calls a stupid tax. Maybe a sunk cost fallacy. Ooh, I like that. You're like, that's a fancy word for it.

We've got some fees we've got to pay because we signed this thing because we were scared. We're not scared anymore. We're heading straight into the storm. We're going to pay this stuff off. We make enough money, we'll figure it out. It's the never again fee. There you go. Ooh.

How's that? That's a nicer way to say that. I coined it. How millennial of you. It's the Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel here with Dr. John Deloney.

If you've been listening to the show for any amount of time, you may have heard us do a Baby Steps Millionaire theme hour. And so from time to time, we like to hear from real-life millionaires, not the ones you see on Instagram and private jets. Those are not millionaires. They're either faking it or they're billionaires. Real-life people like you and me. There's only two, John. There's only two types. The one that rent it by the hour and the people who own it. There you go. And so we're going to hear from Kirk in Las Vegas and see how he did it. How did he actually create a million dollar

net worth? Kirk, what's going on, my man? How you doing? I'm doing great. How are you doing, guys? Great, great. So tell us your story. How old are you and what is your net worth? I am 53. My net worth is 2.6. Wow. Okay, give us the breakdown of the 2.6. Okay. IRA is 401k, almost 1.5. Non-retirement, 370. My home and inherited home uh 620 and i have a side business uh it's about what 180 ish somewhere in there awesome that's impressive okay and what's your household income uh 220 and how long you you been making that kind of money? A few years.

Okay. What do you do for a living? I'm an accountant. All right. Love it. And did you get a degree, I assume? Yes, I did, yes. Okay. And what was your GPA? My undergraduate, about 3.3, 3.4, and then graduate with my master's, it was about 3.7. Nice. I like that undergraduate GPA.

That means you went to class and you had a good time. Well done. So that's a solid mix. So the majority here, you said how much in the IRA and 401k total? About 1.45. Okay. So that makes up the majority. And then the next biggest chunk would be real estate.

Correct. Way to go. Yeah. It would be my home and my mom passed a year ago and inherited her house. Yeah. How much inheritance did you get and when? $330 total. And that was November of 23. Long after you were a millionaire. Oh, yes, for total. And that was, uh, uh, November of 23. So long after you were a millionaire.

Oh yes, for sure. Okay. So that proves our point. A lot of people think, well, a lot of these people inherited their money, so it's easy for Kirk to say, but you already did the hard work and then you got a pile of money from mom's legacy. Correct. Amazing. Okay. So what do you attribute this to? About 240 from her IRA and the home value is about $90,000. Okay. So when did you sort of get your finances together? I mean, you're obviously in the accounting world. You understand basic mathematics. If I put money away, I'll have some. If I spend it all on stupid crap and pay interest, I'll lose it. So did you get this early on? Actually, yes. It's kind kind of funny I didn't come across Dave's

principles and teachings until about 10 years ago but I've been living this way since I was in high school I mean I hate you know no debt hated that you know wasn't it once invest I want to become a millionaire what the options of retiring early or not and and so it's funny when I came across Dave's principles I was like oh, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I do. I was glad to see that somebody else is out there, and they're telling people this is what you should do, versus, oh, just go get a loan, go get a loan, put it on a credit card. I was like, no, and I hate debt.

So have you ever had debt? Well, yes, when I bought my house initially, yeah. Mortgage, okay, that's it, but no consumer debt. Mortgage, yeah. Oh, no, no, I'd pay cash for cars, you know, the whole deal, yes, I bought my house initially, yeah. Mortgage. Okay, that's it, but no consumer debt. Mortgage, yeah. Oh, no, no, I pay cash for cars, you know, the whole deal, yes. Wow. What are you driving? Can I ask what you're driving today?

Yeah, we're both driving 2014. I have a BMW. My wife has a Mercedes, so they're 10-year-old cars. Bought them when they were about three or four years old, somewhere in there. And you've maintained them well? You kind of drive them till the wheels fall off, and then you'll buy something else with cash. That's the plan. Kirk, I don't know if you know this. I know there's been a flurry of executive orders signed recently, but one of the new executive orders is it's illegal to drive a 10-year-old car if you're

rich. Gross. You know you're driving like a ticking time bomb, Kirk. Yeah, it's just not safe. You know you're not making a wise decision. And the other thing is your neighbors, they're going to talk about you on their TikTok accounts because you have a 2014. They probably think you're poor, Kirk. Yeesh. Yeah.

Wow. Hey, where did this just like wild dose of common sense come from? At an early age, my parents basically said, you want to go to college, save your money. We're not going to have it for you. So I started, you know, cutting grass, selling snow, had a paper route, buying savings bonds for college. And, you know, that was the plan. And my dad taught me about money and stuff and and just that was a big interest to me and I was like okay here's how money can work for you with investing and here's how it works against you with borrowing and that was my philosophy from day one and like I said when I came across Dave's teachings about 10 years ago it was it was like oh my gosh this is confirmation

of exactly what how I've been thinking what I've been doing. And then I took my wife to FPU because she was just the opposite. I was trying to get her out of that mentality. And finally she's like, oh, okay, this is what you were telling me about. But now somebody else told her about it, so now she's going to listen. Hey, it's the end result of that. There you go. How long have you been married? It's been 16 years.

Amazing. Can I ask how your, I guess, financial freedom, your wealth, how has that affected your marriage? Has there been less money fights over those 16 years? What do you guys fight about now? Fight about now? About spending it. Yeah.

Are you tight-fisted going? No, we got to just, why would we do that? You're the frugal one and she's sort of trying to get you to let go. Yes. But I'm trying to, now I'm at a point where I'm trying to, she works in a stressful healthcare environment, hospital, trying to get her to, okay, here, now you can retire early and do just do per diem what you want, where you want. But cause now I have to, okay, now you can retire early and just do per diem what you want, where you want, because now I have the financial freedom to do that versus, oh, you have to do your

nine to five weekly. And so now we're at a point now it's actually going to help her to have that. To give you the flexibility. You mean to show you, you mean to tell you a hack? Here's a hack you can use with her for that. What's that? Take her to some concerts there in Vegas. Oh, yeah. She goes all the time.

But you go. Take her to a couple of comedy shows. I go with her sometimes. No. Start going with her more. And show her we're okay. I go during the non-tax season. A true accountant. Yeah. 80, 90 hours a week, whatever, you know, during tax season.

So, yeah. There you go. Awesome. Can I ask your plan for quote-unquote retirement? Sure. Because you guys will have, by the time you're at retirement age, 10 years from now, your net worth will be, my guess is, probably closer to $6 million. And that's if you do nothing else.

Right, right. Yeah, the plan is, at some point, I mean, I have a full-time job. I'm a controller for a company, but I also have my side business, tax business. At some point, it's retire full-time. Maybe work part-time as a controller, and then the tax business and consulting business, just do that year-round. Do it for fun. You get to choose your clients.

I can't do nothing. Yeah, I can't do nothing because I like what I do. I like helping people. So I can't do nothing. So I will at least do that and, you know, give my wife the freedom to, hey, you can leave your job and you can help me during tax season and we'll turn it into a full-time thing. And, you know, then the rest of the year you can travel, you know,

because she loves to travel. So I try and travel more with her, but she goes with her family as well. That's amazing, dude. Congratulations, brother. So just talk to the 23-year-old out there who might be listening going, I'm going to either listen to this TikTok I found on How to Get Rich Quick or Kirk. What advice would you give that 23-year-old? Yeah, it's funny because that's advice that I had myself when I was 23 was basically I'd

tell young people now, be the tortoise, not the hare. I've been telling people that for 20 years and I came across Dave's teachings and I hear the same thing. I have no problem with the long run, but start young. I started investing, I was in my early 20s, but at that point it was just IRAs and you only put $ long, long run, but start young. I started investing, I was early twenties, but at that point it was just IRAs and, you know, you only put $2,000 away. I didn't have an opportunity with a 401k until I was 27.

So I was, I was, I was stuck doing 2000 a year in IRA back then other than not retirement stuff, you know, buying some stocks and stuff. But, but, uh, now there's so much out there. Start young, get it in there, and forget about the fancy car, the new car, and the stuff. Just delayed gratification. Be a crockpot in a world full of microwaves. You're an inspiration, Kirk.

Thank you so much for sharing your story. What a hero, man. You're down the road for both me and George a little bit age-wise, and you're a good light for us. I'm really grateful. Ramsey Network app is where you're going to find the next hour of this show, or if you're listening to it on radio, we're coming right back. Join us on the Ramsey Network app, the only place to get the full episodes of The Ramsey Show.

Download it for free using the link in the show notes. We'll see you in the next hour. Stay tuned. Live from Nashville, Tennessee, it's The Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by George Campbell, and we are taking your calls on money, life, building wealth, your marriage, relationships, your kids, work, everything. Any questions you got, we probably have answers to. 888-825-5225. For those of you on live radio, where my heart and soul still lives, I'm glad that you're still listening to the show, and the rest of you are behind the Ramsey Network app,

where the party goes down. Let's go out to New York City city new york and talk to steve what's up steve how we doing hey how we going outstanding what's up excellent so so i uh recently uh got laid off and was on an appointment for a two month stint. And then I got a job, uh, making, you know, half of what I was making and the kicker is it's, it's overnight. So it's a night shift and my, to mix things up, my wife, uh, is pregnant and we have a four year old and she works a four day schedule that rotates and it makes it hard for childcare. Yes.

And with me working 10 PM to 6 AM and then her working 6 AM to, uh, 4 PM on days, it makes so that we need childcare from 4 45 AM to, uh, to 6 15 AM or on the flip side, if she works from 1 PM to, to 11 PM, then we need, uh, childcare for when I leave from 9 30 PM to 12 AM. Yeah. for when I leave from 9.30 p.m. to 12 a.m. Yeah, neither of those are hot shifts for part-time child care people. It's been difficult.

We've had to rely heavily on family. So what's your plan moving forward? Well, it's been on a week-to-week. No, no, I'm saying backing out. So like losing your job is, the psychology says, the research says, it can be as devastating as losing a loved one. It's a gut punch. It was. I worked there for eight years.

They paid me very well. They paid me $90,000 a year. And then I took a job making $55,000 with the promise of making six figures within three to six years. But that job is unsustainable because it's costing you your family. Yes, that is true. i've been told it is a it is a sacrifice for the long-term payoff this job includes a pension it includes every holiday paid on the on the whole schedule on the whole year around okay so every single holiday okay but listen to me and then listen to me it's costing you your marriage you won't survive long enough to see the pension. Yeah. Dude, I hear shift workers. I hear railroad guys.

I hear people who work these jobs with this big, huge carrot. Like, in 60 years, if you give us your soul, we'll give your spouse some pension, too. And so, dude, you can do it, but you're living it in real time. How long is this, quote-unquote, sacrifice for the payoff and some paid holidays? How long is the sacrifice supposed to go on? How long are you supposed to keep working this shift where you don't see your wife, you don't see your kids? Yeah. So, I mean, I do see my kid. I drop her off at school and then I see her until she goes to bed. I don't get to be in bed with my wife, but two days a week, you know, we sleep together. And then obviously I'm working and obviously makes her uncomfortable that I'm not in the house.

Uh, you know, so there's that. So how can I, how can we help? Well, I just want to know if I'm doing the right thing or if I, if I should take a different job. My gut tells me what you've done is a very noble thing and I'm proud of you. You got hit in the mouth when you had a really good job for almost a decade and suddenly they yanked the rug out and it's gone. And you went and found a job making half the money, but you're a guy that's going to support his family,

you'll even work the night shift to take care of him. And I think that's noble and good. It's also sounding like this is not a long-term solution that works for your entire family. And sometimes protect and provide is about fists and direct deposits. Sometimes protect and provide is I need you here. I want you with me, and I'm going to provide stability. I'm going to provide laughter and joy is I need you here. I want you with me and I'm going to provide stability. I'm going to provide laughter and joy and peace in the household. And so I think

it's a both and. I think you should stand tall because George and I talk to people all over the country who get laid off and they just don't do anything. They do nothing. Yeah, I could have stayed on unemployment at age 50 a week for four more months. You're not that kind of guy. That's not you. And I couldn't do that. That's not you. My wife is home a lot of the time because she works 40 days a week. That's right.

So that put us together a lot. You're making a sacrifice. I applaud your sacrifice. It just doesn't sound viable long-term for your family. And so I think there's a, my hope is she recognizes that she married a good man who's willing to stay up all night in order to support his family, which is awesome. And that y'all will sit down and say, okay, what's three months, what's six months, what's nine months? Because I'm not going to sell my soul for a paid president's holiday. I'm not going to sell my soul for Christmas Day off.

I'm just not. So three months is me being permanent because I'm technically 10 for six months. And then nine months is, or six months, six months out is with a transitional period for a year where they can reassign me to any other facility. And then, or they can not, or I could, yeah, or I could not do that. And I could take a job making almost what I was making or more somewhere else during the day.

What I, if I'm you, that's what I, that that's what sounds like would be the best gift for your family is you're working this job, you're crushing it, you're doing good. And while you're at home, you're applying out to every job you can. This job is amazing. They're essentially paying for me to get my CDL right now and training me as part of the job, which costs five Gs. Okay, but here's the deal. You're fighting me on it. I don't have a, I don't have a skin in the game. You just asked me what I think. I told you, and that's what I wanted. I wanted,

I wanted to hear that because that's what I need. They can be an amazing company and treat you well, and it could still be the wrong thing. It's the wrong thing for you guys in your household. And for some people, a spouse that works overnight shift four nights a week works for them. Your wife has, your pregnant wife has looked you in the eye and said, I need, I need you home. I, or even more than need, I want you home. You know how many husbands would dream their wives would actually say the words, I want you at home, right? Yeah. It's more, it's more that it's more, it's more that the child care situation for the odd hours is creating a

huge hole of anxiety. Okay. And so that... Well, then if you guys can get together and solve that problem, then get together and solve that problem. And make a budget and go, what do we actually need to get this household running? And if that means I can take a pay cut and be home and do a day shift somewhere else to make less, let's do that temporarily until you get that next job. I can work a day shift and make the same amount, and we're good. I mean, our cars are paid off.

Our mortgage is good. Then I wouldn't do it for the benefits because they're covering a CDL. I would find a day trip that makes sense. And here's the deal, Steve. Here's what I think is happening. I think you got laid off, and I think a company came in and sat you down and said, hey, we see value in you. Here's all the stuff we're going to give you.

And you jumped at it because it felt right, and you went to work. I'm proud of you for that. I would listen to my wife who's saying, hey, I need you here. And the child care thing is a proxy war. It is a need, but there's a bigger conversation that needs to happen in your house. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel here with Dr. John Deloney. We're all about taking control of your money on this show.

That's what it all comes down to. And that usually means you have to pay attention to your money. And the best way to do that is by creating and sticking to a monthly budget. And if you're like me, I'm not a pen and paper guy these days, although papers are scattered all over this desk and it stresses me out. I prefer a nice, clean, simple app. And our team created one called EveryDollar that makes it simple to plan your spending, track expenses, and say for what matters most to you. And if you've got a spouse, you can have a shared spouse right there joining in. Accountability, transparency, all in one place. So go download EveryDollar for free in the App Store or Google Play

or click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or podcast. All right, let's go out to a hive at Boston, Massachusetts. Never again. Did I sound right? That was pretty good, actually. I appreciate it. Talk to Tim. What's up, Tim? Hey, how you guys doing? Good. Are you calling from a Harvard bar?

Not quite, but close enough. He doesn't even live near Boston, and I can tell from that lack of accent. What's up, Tim? How can we help, man? So, I've been dating my partner for about two years, and we really love each other.

It's been great. But we're thinking about moving in together, and I'm wondering what questions I need to ask them and check in about. I would ask them, will you marry me? And then just go do that. I don't want to yet. That's a great answer. I'm a very cautious guy, let's say.

So the data tells me if y'all move in together, you're more likely to break up. If you get married, the data tells me people figure it out. Sure. So there's just that. Because you guys, if you do this, you're already going to be committed financially. Just not relationally. Just not in a house? Or get an apartment?

Playing house? Yeah, I mean, the thought would be get an apartment with probably someone else right now just because it makes more financial sense than just us two. Yeah. But, I don't know, it's just sort of like I want to be on the same page with them yeah I I mean

the the honest truth that I'll tell you is if my friend if my son me like if if we're moving in together I'm making a long-term commitment there otherwise I I it feels like I'm practicing it feels like we're we're and I actually get that logic that logic makes feels like I'm practicing. It feels like we're, and I actually get that logic. That logic makes sense. Like I get the, we're going to try this thing out. I'm going to test drive the car. I'm going to see if we're compatible. I'm going to see if, and I get that that sounds like it makes sense. What the data tells me is it doesn't work out that way. It just doesn't play out. So I can't in good conscience say, you know what? You should test drive this rail on a block, see if y'all are compatible. Y'all been together for two years and you're ready to make the leap. I would make the leap all the way in. I wouldn't

put one foot in the boat and then try to keep one foot on shore. And if you're not ready, then I would suggest you're not ready to move in either. And if y'all been together for two years, I strongly recommend even couples who are dating, man, go see a counselor, a relationship counselor to learn some skills, ask some questions, and y'all can dig into that. But that's my thoughts. George, you got anything else? Well, he asked, what question should I ask?

I think the main question to ask is, why are we doing this? Because if it's to like split rent because it makes financial sense, it's not going to move the relationship forward. It just makes you more like roommates, which is the opposite of a marriage. Right, right, right.

And there's something to be said for, we said, I do. We said, I commit forever to like, just us together, one, ride or die. And that's the kind of toothpaste you want to use? That's how you do laundry. You just put it in a pile, right? You just, that's where you put your wet towel, like in a pile on the floor. And you'll figure those things out together, anchored to, I'm not going to leave.

And it makes solving those problems sometimes more frustrating, but also you're more vested in solving the problem, right? So now as a guy who lived with dudes until he was married, let me tell you, it's God's way of saying, whatever's after this is going to be so much better. Living with a woman versus a bunch of gross dudes, I'll take that. My wife called my last roommate that I lived with and just thanks him regularly

for domesticating me a little bit. And it prepares you. If they leave dishes in the sink and then your wife does, you go, I've been here. I know what happens. Or opposite in my house. All right, let's go out to St. Louis, Missouri and talk to Sarah. Hey, Sarah, what's up?

Hi, guys. How we doing? I'm really nervous. That's okay. We're not that good. We won't mess you up too bad. What's up? Okay, cool.

My husband and I have a small business. Uh, we have a carpentry company and we just started it the last year. Um, I do like the bookkeeping, the taxes, all of that. Um, and then we have a nonprofit and, um, I'm just kind of getting him warmed up to the concept. I had a girlfriend talk to me at church the other day. She told me she started doing your program, and she's been able to eliminate debt. And so I'm trying to get my husband on board with that. And, yeah, like today he told me put the health insurance on the credit card because we don't have money right now.

And I'm like, oh yeah so i just kind of want like how should i get him on board with this i guess can i can i answer this honestly or i'm gonna answer at surface level uh all the way all right um i wouldn't say in trouble you haven't given me enough insight to say in trouble, but your marriage is not in a great place. Okay. Y'all are really, really busy running around trying to serve a whole bunch of other people. And that's good. And that's great. And sometimes running around and helping everybody out there allows us to avoid the hard conversations and realities we need to deal with in here. And as my friend, pastor right down the street, Ian says,

if busyness is your drug, rest will feel like stress. Yeah, God has taught me to rest in this season believe it or not he hasn't talked to your husband yet i guess or he is trying to and he's not listening yeah what is your husband's pushback with trying out a different plan one where you're not sinking i think it's just um getting acclimated to it like we've we've started talking about a budget now you know i told him i want everything to run through the bank account. So there's total transparency and everything. I don't want to use cards.

I want to pay them off. And so... Would he be willing to cut up the credit cards today and say, hey, we are burning the ships. We got to try something else. This ain't working. I believe so. I mean, I just added up interest that I paid,

and I only use one card now, and that's for my daughter's therapy. And so I'm paying that balance down. Can I stop you right there, Sarah? Yeah. Just that language makes me nervous for y'all. Because when you're one, when y'all are all in, you don't have your account and he has his and you pay your interest down, he pays interest down and you pay for your kid. Yeah, we just got married in 2022. So we're kind of figuring all of this out. I love the- I mean, we're going on three years.

I think the honeymoon phase is over. We got to get this thing together. And I love the words George just used. When you get married, you burn the ships. It's you and me. Okay. We're in this thing together. We share one checking account. If we have business accounts, we don't run all that

through our personal account. We have a business account, but we share bills. We share debts. We share successes. It's our cars. It's our house. It's our retirement. We're married. Now, obviously there's some complexities if you come in with kids and you have alimony and child support and all that kind of stuff. I know there's some complexities there, but this is the spirit that we're talking about. So here's how you do it. First is George and I are going to send you Financial Peace University, the whole course for free. It's a digital course, but you've got to promise y'all will sit down and watch all the lessons. Are you in?

A hundred percent. Okay, I'm going to send it to you for free. Here's the second thing. You have to sit down with this husband of yours and say the words, I love you and I'm scared to death about what happens next in our life. Okay. If you sit down and say, you need to get on a budget, you need to stop using credit cards,

and he's going to fight you because people have been telling him what to do for his whole life and he's sick of it. If the woman he loves, the woman he promised going to fight you because people have been telling him what to do for his whole life and he's sick of it. If the woman he loves, the woman he promised himself to sits down and says, I'm scared to death because I don't know how much money is coming and going. I don't know how much we owe because we are in this thing together. Will you please help me be less scared by talking about our money every week? Will you please help me be less scared by getting insurance together, paying off the house together? Will you help me be less terrified of my own skin? And any husband worth of salt will say, right, right this second, I'm in. So hang on the line. We'll get you hooked up with Financial Peace University. Game on for you too. But y'all got to go all the way. This is The Ramsey Show.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by my good friend, George Campbell. One of the best things to do for your finances is to have a really good tax pro in your corner that you can trust. I talked to mine yesterday on the phone, said buckle up. It's a big one. I got my appointments. I'm actually looking forward to it. I am too. I'm the worst. Here's how lame I am.

I ran all my own stuff through the Ramsey tax software just to see where we were going to end up. That's smart. And then I ended up sending it out to somebody. And then every year I like to see how close I got. That's a fun game. Yeah, I don't have a lot of friends. So listen, get a good tax pro. They'll help advise you on the best moves to make for your situation or for your small business,

especially if you've had some big life changes in the past year. As I was just telling George on the air in front of all of you, I like to do my own taxes, especially the Ramsey tax software because it makes it so easy. But I am comforted by having somebody who does this for a living, who always finds extra things, who always calls and asks questions. Are you sure this is how? It's so amazing to have somebody in your corner. To me, it's the best money I spend all year just to exhale, have them stamp it with their license and then go on. And a good tax pro will save you more money than they cost you. Yes. the key yes so good so good go to ramsey solutions.com slash tax pro to find cpas and enrolled

agents that have been vetted by the ramsey team and again this isn't george and i just shilling we use these folks in our lives for our taxes that help protect our families and we just recommend the things we do in our house, we recommend you do it in yours. Let's go to Buffalo, New York. Ooh, they've had a rough week. And talk to Matthew. Hey, Matthew, how we doing?

Hi, I'm looking forward to this convo. Yeah, us too. Hey, how's the Buffalo community? Y'all doing okay? Yeah, I mean, this is nothing. It's a little cold. Oh, not that. I was talking about the big Buffalo Bills loss.

Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I... He's clearly not a part of it. You're like George. You're like, sports ball? What is that? What is that? No, I went to the watch party,

and I prefer not to talk about it. Oh, you're in a season of mourning. I've been there. Sorry. So quick aside, this is not why you called. When I was a child, I was a diehard ride-or-die fan with a team called the Houston Oilers. Yeah.

And you Buffalo Bills ruined my childhood with, at the time, the greatest comeback of all time. And I'm sorry. Well, I just need to let you know that this weekend i gave an extra fist pump when they called that clear first down when they turned it over on downs so yeah i just need you to know that i feel like the gods have righted the ship and i will no longer root actively against buffalo for one moment so yeah no i swear the the refs and the Mahomes is going to have their first baby together. Nope.

I'm a Mahomes ride or die. He was at Texas Tech when I was there. I love him. All right. So get to your question. What's up, dude? Yeah. So I have a trust that's coming from an inheritance from my family.

Right. And part of this inheritance is a real realty-based inheritance oh sweet so you get to split a bunch of property with family members you don't like yeah exactly so um right on i hadn't spoke to this person for 15 years you know i'm i'm 24 right so it you know since i was a kid um and that's just because like uh know, it's just wasn't a good relationship. And now we're entering into a partnership with us and, uh, you know, the, you know, my sisters, there's two of them. We want to get out in order to, you know, not have to be around. We want to sell our shares. Um, so, um, basically if we stayed in it, it would be,

uh, 800 bucks per month. But if we were to sell out a lawyer said it would be around, you know, $500,000 worth of value. And, you know, from a, a um because it's part of a property right the way that the rent money works is over time that eight hundred dollars would become larger and larger right so it would gain value um based off the property of the building that it's working on and i'd be saying as the market rent increases, so would your share? Okay. So here's the deal. I think the question you have to ask yourself is, do you want to be in business with the people you have overnight been forced into business with?

And the answer is a clear no. Yep. So the math and the algorithms and all that kind of stuff, I don't care because I don't want to do business with you. Yeah, exactly. So we're trying to get out, right? And she is not letting us. She is even going as far as to trying to prevent us from making amendments to it that can allow us to leave if we wanted to for any reason.

Has the lawyer looked over the actual ownership structure in the trust? Yeah, no, she's a majority. So it's kind of like we have very little power in it. So you need their consent in order to do anything here? Basically, yeah. So is your only option to stick with it? I mean, it sounds like, again, your lawyer trumps anything John and I have to say about this, but are you just stuck with this and you just have to make the best of it? So I guess that's my question is, one, is there any way around it? But two,

if you were in my shoes, would you try to get the lump sum? I mean, I would try to get out of it because you want to get out of it. Yeah, I'd try to get the lump sum because I don't want to do business with this person. Regardless of any financial gain here, whether it's the lump sum or what's the bet, you want nothing to do with this. And so I would do everything in my power to say, hey, you can have this property. I want my share and I'm out. Yeah. All day. And here's the bigger thing. And this is just a different matrix that you're not going to find on Instagram or TikTok. I, me and my wife, we solve for peace.

I don't solve for maximum return on whatever. And I don't solve for, I've not liked you since I was nine years old. And so I'm going to sweat this thing. I don't solve for that in my house. I solve for peace. Yeah. And so what most people are going to do in your situation is they're going to get a valuation from an attorney that says,

actually, if you sold, you get 500,000 bucks. And then, this person that you don't like, she's going to offer you 100 grand to go away. Yeah.

And you're going to feel like you just lost $400,000. Correct. When in reality, you got $100,000. I'm not doing business with you. Me and my wife, we're going to to take our money we're going to go have peace or i'm gonna get a lawyer i'm going to sue you and we're going to try to get a judge to dissolve us and force a sale on this thing which probably can't happen but maybe yeah that's your best bet is you know have you looked

into a partition action with the lawyer to see if you can force the sale of this? Yeah, it's kind of goofy, right? Because I'm the youngest of three. So my sister looked into a lawyer to kind of try to force it, right? But I just don't know all the details. Here's the deal. You're 24. You just got thrown into, I say this jokingly, tongue in cheek, but kind of serious too. You just got thrown into big boy land.

You got thrown into big leagues. Yeah, no, I know. And so don't work through sisters and cousins and like you get on the phone with an attorney and ask the questions. Here's a copy of the trust. I want to work with my attorney and walk through this thing. Gotcha. Because everybody's going to hear it a little bit different.

I just want to know what's the best way I can maximize my exit from this thing. Gotcha. Okay. And if he says, or she says, your attorney says, well, you can sue him and it's going to be three years and this, and you might get 30%. I'm going to be honest with you. Me and my wife are going to, I'm going to wash my hands of this thing and Merry Christmas.

You can send me my part of the $800 check until you get bored. I'm not playing. I'm out. Yeah. But by the way, if she's a majority owner, she's going to take the $800 check and she's going to send a letter to everybody that says we have to reinvest this in the property. And so nobody gets any dividends. And what she's going to do is she's going to try to increase the value of this thing so her bigger chunk than y'all's gets bigger over time.

It's going to be a huge headache for you. Gotcha. Yeah, she's been in everyone's hair and just causing my sister a ton of grief and standing up for them now because it's gotten to the point of being ridiculous no amount of money is worth your peace you can build wealth on your own and so if you have to go kick rocks and pound sand i'm out that's what you do will she write you a check to

buy you out uh that's the thing she's not having it she claims she doesn't have the money to have it but we know that's a lie because we've seen the numbers and the inheritance. Part of this is happening because it was a grandparent's money. I got to let you roll because we're running into break.

Hey, John, remind me never to do this to my family. Exactly. I know grandparents think they're helping and they're like, I'm going to leave it to all the grandkids. And this is what happens. This is what happens. Don't do this to your grandkids. This is The Ramsey Show. show the scripture of the day is proverbs 17 9 love prospers when a fault is forgiven but dwelling on it separates close friends amen dude wow ancient wisdom elon musk says forgiveness is important if you don't forgive an eye for an eye makes everyone blind did he really say that you should probably verify that quote i take it doesn't sound very Elon to me, but I take it. I just feel like when you own Twitter, you can claim any tweet was your original quote.

You know what I mean? Hey, man. George, this goes back to that conversation we were having earlier. Somebody does you wrong. It's four years later. The divorce is final. If you don't forgive, you're choosing misery. You're choosing misery.

And forgiveness doesn't mean you let somebody off the hook. Forgiveness doesn't mean you're all best friends. Forgiveness doesn't mean there's no consequences for what they did. Forgiveness just means I'm not carrying this around anymore. I'm no longer giving you permission to ruin my life. You've already done that enough. I'm letting you out of my life. I'm not carrying your bricks anymore, dude.

Well, a lot of time we look out there for that kind of freedom when really it's on our shoulders. We're carrying it. That's right. But we're like, no, but they justice must... Sometimes the justice is you letting it go. I am taking you out of my backpack. I'm not carrying your crap anymore. And you're off to the races, man. Thanks, Elon. Good word, Elon, and the Bible.

Let's go out to Evansville, Indiana and talk to Ashton. Hey, Ashton, what's up? Hey, I'm needing some i need some advice on needing or knowing how much i should be making right now we got you four hundred thousand dollars yeah i was gonna say seven hundred thousand but what you got so right now i am making uh forty thousand a year and i've got uh me and my wife we're renting right now and we have one son and then another dude in september what do you do for living i work construction excellent uh is she at home with baby? Yes. Okay. All right, so what's your question?

How much am I needing to do the baby steps in the most efficient way, I guess is what I'm trying to find out. There is no magic number, so let me free you with that. The answer is as much as you can make without destroying yourself and your family. Yeah, as much as you can make without destroying yourself and your family. Yeah, much you can make in service of your family, not in spite of your family or at the expense of your family. And a good parameter, here's how I look at it. Most people do baby step two in 18 to 24 months. So if it's going to take you a lot longer than that, that tells me we need to get the income up. So how much debt do you have? Right now, about $8,000.

Okay. What kind of debt is that? 23 of it is credit card, and then the rest of it is medical bill. Okay. Have you cut up the credit card yet? Not yet. I will just as soon as our tax return comes. That's the first thing that's happening. It's getting paid and it's getting shredded. I dare you to do it today because here's what I found. This is statistically proven. You can't go into credit card debt if you don't have a credit card.

That's science. That's science. We are $1.2 trillion now in credit card debt as a nation. We are $0 in debit card debt. Aside from overdraft fees. That's straight from Andrew Huberman's science. Here we go. So let me for you there. So how much can you put toward your debt each month right now with your current income?

Right now I could put $300. $300. So let me just do the napkin math for you. $8,000 divided by $ 300 means it's going to take 26 months to pay that off. Would you agree that sucks? Oh yeah. That's not a lot of debt. And so what if you could throw 750 at it? Well, now it's 10 months better, right? Yeah. So what's the gap there? An extra 450 bucks is what we need, which means I got to go through the budget.

Can we spend less? Can I make more to make that happen? And that's the gap you want to aim at. So I would have an aggressive goal that scares you to just a little bit to go, hey, what if by the time baby's here, we're completely debt free and we have a little savings in the bank? How cool would that be? That's what I'm looking for there. And the other caveat is you guys have a baby on the way, which means you would actually pause the baby steps and go into what we call stork mode where you just stack up cash and savings so that we don't have another medical bill that is about to go to collections. Right. So either way, this debt is going to get paid off fast, but you do need to focus on this income piece, maybe on the spending piece.

You're not spending lavishly, but I would still go through a budget audit with your wife and go, hey, can we do better here? Do we need to reshop our insurance? We need to pause investing? Yes. Do we need to look at our tax refund and change our withholdings? Yes. Go through all of those pieces and I'll walk you through it in my book, Breaking Free From Broke. I'm going to send it to you. Read the Margin is Breathing Room chapter. I have a bunch of ideas for how to spend less and make more to increase the gap. How does that sound, brother? That sounds like what I'm kind of after there.

So let me ask you this, dude. Do you not want to earn more money? And I'm not asking that like a jerk. I'm asking that like, do you like your job and do you like your hours and do you like what you're doing right now? Or are you recognizing we're not going to be able to get by with two kids at $40,000 and I want more for my life? See, the thing is I'm a furnished company truck, and the vehicle that I was driving is down. And I'm trying to get my debt paid off before I put money into my vehicle. So I'm staying here for the vehicle and I don't know how you would pay it.

But what John's asking is what does it look like to make more money in your current field, current company? Is there an upward track for you? Is there a growth plan? Not much. Not at this company, no. How old are you, man? 22. How hard would you, man? 22. How hard would it be to find another job?

The last time I was in Evansville, they're building like crazy, but that was a couple years ago. How hard would it be to find another job making $60,000 right now? It probably wouldn't be that difficult. Get on the phone today. Also, are you handy by chance? Yes. You can fix some stuff around the house? Yes. John and I both have paid handyman

a lot of money in our day, and you can easily charge $50 to $90 an hour. Which, if you're doing the math at home, that's six figures easily. And so I would jump into your Facebook group. That's what my nights and weekends look like. Yes. Good. And so doing that, you'll find that gap of an extra $400 a month.

But, dude, do not, do not, do not stay at a job that's costing you $20,000 a year because they offer you a company truck. Right. We call golden handcuffs. Well, that's not even golden. That's like tinfoil handcuffs. That's like... Is it a sweet truck, though? Yeah.

Is it a pretty sweet ride? No, it's not even golden that's like tinfoil handcuffs that's like is it a sweet truck though yeah is it a pretty sweet ride uh it's not jack i mean it's it's all right i guess better than what you got i would rather see you i gotta furnish no fuel so it's pretty all right i would rather see you scrape together a little bit of money and you use your ability to fix stuff and get your truck up and running even if that meant pausing the baby steps because you have an emergency right now and getting your truck up and running, and then go make an extra $20,000 a year or $10,000 a year at a job that offers you more than, hey, you can borrow our truck. That'll buy you some gas, that kind of raise. Does that make sense? And some of this is just flipping the math around. When you're 22 and someone goes,

I'll give you a job, but I'm going to give you a free car. It's easy to feel like they're hooking you up. But if they let you borrow a depreciating asset and they pay for your gas and they underpay you $20,000 in market value, they're not helping you out. They're taking advantage of a 22-year-old. So now's the time to just get after it, get after it, get after it. Let's take one more quick call out in Colorado Springs. Let's go to Zach. Hey, Zach, get right to the question.

We're up against the clock, brother. All right. Thank you for taking my call. You got it. My question is I'm wondering if it makes sense for me to pay for an appraisal fee to get PMI removed off of my mortgage while my wife and I are in baby step number two. We're at the tail end of it. We got about $14,000 left. How much equity do you have? I'm just wondering if it's roughly $ 120,000.

Okay. What percentage of that, of the home's value? Uh, it should be over 20%. Okay. And you've made on-time payments for two years? Yeah, for the last five years. Okay. Have you contacted the lender about this, to see if they would just go ahead and remove it without the appraisal? Yes. They sent me a letter telling me that I need to get the appraisal.

What's your PMI every month? It's about $100 a month. Okay. So if you spend $300 on the appraisal and it gets rid of it, you make your money back in three months. I'm going to say that's a good ROI. If it's $1,700,

I might punt. So it's just going to be a simple math calculation. Maybe three to five months. Yeah, within six months you're making your money back. I would do it. I would do it too. Hey, thanks for joining us, George. Well done. Men and women in the booth, well done. And America, well done. Be kind to one another. Pay off

your debts and choose freedom. We'll see you next time.