The Ramsey Show - App - Being "Normal" with Money Sucks, Be Weird!

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Rachel Cruz, number one best-selling author, co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour, and Ramsey personality, also my daughter, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thanks for hanging out with us, America. The call is free, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Katie is with us in Los Angeles. Hi, Katie.

How are you? Hi. I've been better. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? Well, I am a stay-at-home mom of two young kids and my husband is a business owner. I've been living with my head in the sand for the last couple of years as he's managed the money and I've just recently discovered how poorly he's been doing that.

We are in a world of debt right now and trying to find a path out of it. Okay. So what caused you to suddenly become aware? He called me one day and said, I'm going to tell you before you get home to see the mail today, but we got a foreclosure notice on our house, which was due to a second mortgage he took out on our house in order to purchase a warehouse for his business. I naively thought, okay, I'm going to fix this. I'm going to cash out one of my 401ks, pay that off, get the house out of foreclosure, and then we're going to move forward and do everything right

from here on out. That was very naive. As I started to dig deeper, I realized the trouble that the business was in. He has a huge overhead and is not making enough to sustain that how old are you guys i'm 39 he's 42 how long you been married six years when was the phone call on the foreclosure notice to you well on the house or on now when did he call you what day how, when did he call you? What day? How long ago did he call you and say? Oh, this was back in May. May. Okay, so you've been gathering more information, and you all have been having more discussions for a couple of months now.

Correct. Okay. All right. So what is he now saying? He has a very motivated mindset and he feels like he just needs to keep pushing forward with the business and things are going to turn around any day any week and he's going to be able to fix all of this meanwhile it feels as if things are not getting better. Things seem to be getting worse. Twice this month he's not been able to make payroll for the employees.

I've found out about some IRS debts, some property tax that's delinquent. So why are you, once you discovered one thing, why do you not have a conversation when the two of you sit down and he tells you everything why are you having to continue to pull the thread on the sweater well eventually he did once i found out about that so we're all on the same page today what's the total debt katie uh including mortgages yeah sure yeah about 4.5 million. Okay. And how much is the mortgage on your home? Our mortgage is, we owe 480 on the house, plus the additional, the second mortgage, which is 400. So about 880. Okay. What's the house worth? Probably 1.1. Okay. What's the mortgage on the warehouse?

Is there one? The mortgage on the warehouse, yes, there is. The mortgage on the warehouse, we owe about 3.3 on it. And the monthly payment on that is about $26,000. And what's it worth? It's worth 4.1, 4.2. Okay. Is it on the market for sale? Yes. I sat down with our broker. Good. Okay. So that's on the market. Is your home on the market for sale? No. Okay. And so what other debt is there other than these two? There's credit card debt, which totals about 120 000 there's a personal loan from my parents

which is 115 000 there is the property tax which is about 100 000 there are are ridiculous cars which are 140 000 are they on the market for sale no No. They need to be today. Okay. Okay. Now, the thing about business is this, okay? You do have to be an optimist to operate a business. And to operate a business in California, you have to be an unbelievable optimist with the taxes and the regulations and the crap you all face, okay? It's unbelievable.

So he has to be an optimist or he's dead in the water. So we have to have that category we can put him in that's a good thing um but what you need to hear and i don't know the answer to this is you need to hear him articulate a detailed tactical strategy strategy overall but the tactical implementation of the what items are we doing to make this thing profitable? Because all you're describing to me are signs of death of the business. He has some reason, hopefully logically, that there's a reason for life. And the business, I don't know what that is.

I can't I'm not hearing his part of that story it is possible that he's got four things that if those that if three of the four things levers flip that he can turn the business around okay but the poor management and continue to go further further into debt is a pattern of i think i can out earn my stupidity and that's what you need to see him stop doing because it's driving you nuts so the two of you need to sit down and, you know, it's okay for you to quote, require of him for your peace of mind as his wife, that he show you what the clear path is and exactly what the steps are to get out. Not just if I grip my teeth, it's going to get better because if I grip my teeth and keep doing the same thing, it ain't

going to get better. It's going to keep doing and keep doing the same thing, it ain't going to get better. It's going to keep doing the same thing. Yeah. And I think a timeline is appropriate too, Katie, because you guys could sit here in this cycle forever and ever and you need an end date or I would. I would be like, hey, I will give you X amount to figure this out. But at some point, you got to just stop it and go get a job. Like we have to clean this up.

I mean, it's just. So Henry Cloud says in his book necessary endings that you end something when you lose logical hope that it is going to get any better okay so when do you close a business you close a business when you have no reason logically to believe it's going to turn around and you need to see something other than all the death signs you feel like you're sitting beside the hospice patient hearing all the signs of death coming and you've and yet it's not a hospice patient maybe maybe it's just a patient that's got the flu but that's how you're

feeling because you don't know what's going on here i don't know what's going on um selling the warehouse is going to be a big lick that's going to be really helpful getting rid of your cars is really helpful and um you know we got to get back to scorched earth we got to get this thing right sized to where we can make payroll and we and we see a path a light at the end of the tunnel that's not an oncoming train the two of you need to find that together uh and if you don't see it kat Katie, you speak up too. Because so far the pattern's not been here. IRS stuff. I mean, it's not looking good. No, he has poorly managed it.

That's for sure. But if there is a clear path. But otherwise, we need to talk about how we're going to sell everything off and shut it down. So you're right on track. And trust your gut. You've got good gut instincts on this. This is The Ramsey Show. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers.

Economic growth or a recession. Business taxes will go up or down. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball. That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite, and you should too. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. With one unified business management suite, there's only one source of truth for the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with actionable data.

And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next. And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. Sometimes our segments aren't long enough to get into everything. Obviously, the lady with $4.5 million worth of debt, a husband, the business is failing. She didn't know anything about it because she was not involved until a few months ago, and now she's trying to find her way through that,

and giving her a quick answer on that's very difficult. But there's some principles that Rachel gets to talk about, and I get to talk about a lot, that weave into a situation like that. By the way, the irony of that call is it's almost exactly where we are, where only I wasn't 42, I was 28. I had $4 million worth of debt. Rachel was a brand new baby when we hit bottom, but it took two and a half years of fighting for us to go all the way to the bottom, to bankruptcy. So by the time I filed bankruptcy was the year she was born, but Sharon was a full-time mom with Rachel's older sister and had absolutely zero

knowledge of anything going on. Not because I was deceiving her. I just didn't ask, nor did I tell. And neither did she ask. She's like, she just classic, whatever you want to do, honey. And just assumed I had a clue. I thought I had a clue and I was wrecking a business. And, um, so there's a couple of things that go with this principles for you guys to use out there, uh, that'll keep you from finding yourself in a situation. They may be so far gone. They don't make it out of that. They may be bankrupt. They may lose everything we did.

Um, because we were so far in. So principle number one is men in particular, but ladies too, when you are running a business, it does not give you relational or wisdom permission to keep that all the other side of some kind of wall. Now, you don't need to come home and whine every night to your spouse about everything being hard nobody wants to hear that but your spouse needs to be involved in all major decisions that affect the household and that includes the running of the business period and here's why proverb says who can find a virtuous wife for her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her and he will have no lack of gain. And so while my sweet little wife is at home with a little baby, and she's a full-time mom with a home-ec degree.

She is academically not qualified to speak into the operation of my business. But the Bible says that if I listen to the wisdom of my virtuous wife, I will have no lack of gain. The way Sharon says it is, I may may not understand but I have common sense and she throws that around like like and she does have common sense she has wisdom and so I after I went broke and I learned that proverb I no longer make major financial decisions major decisions of any kind without Sharon and I talking it through and being in agreement now sometimes we argue about it sometimes she's wrong uh sometimes she's right and I hear something I never heard before and uh but I don't you know we don't go and buy a

two million dollar building and then tell her we did it um we can but we don't and so we don't you know i don't book we run our calendars we run our budgets together we know where everything that's going on in our time everything's going on in our money um and therefore we make better decisions and the added benefit is that it absolutely solidifies your marriage against the storms that will come. Yeah, and being able to, I think, go there with your spouse, too, is what we talk about so often, is having this knowledge and understanding of who they are, because usually in those business conversations and or the money conversations, the person and their fears and their, you know, anxiety around this subject over here or the thoughts of this or the excitement of that, like you get to know

your spouse in the middle of it too, right? I mean, like there's all this added benefit to not only having somebody outside the picture looking in with a different perspective, which is so wise and so healthy, but you also, you're doing stuff as a team. And when you're married, that's where a rich marriage comes from is that you're on the same team and you're talking about it and you get to know your spouse in the middle of it even more versus again, feeling like, okay, this whole part of our life is over here and I'm not, I'm not going to bring you in. So if you're in the situation where that lady's husband is, you're the husband or the wife, and you're in that situation, you're running a business. As of today, it is now your job to unpack everything that's going on that is of note, anything of size.

We don't have to discuss where we buy copier paper, okay? But we are going to talk about the big things that are happening in the business. Here's what's going on. Here's how we run the business. Here's the things. And we're not going to move the big pieces around the chessboard without talking about it further. If you are the person who is at home or is not in the business, so to speak, it is your job as of today to know what the flip is going on in your own life.

You are not a little child. You have to plug in. And if they don't want you to, that's a bad sign. If you're just too lazy to, you don't want to put forth the effort. Oh, he's handling. I'll let him handle it. That's just laziness. And you're going to make really stupid, but decisions, and you're going to craft a life that you don't like at the end of the story if you don't plug in and make these calls together like two grown-up adults one well we're not alike we don't we look at things differently absolutely most of the time opposites attract larry burkett used to say if two people just alike get married one of you is unnecessary of course one of you is a spender of course one of you is a saver of course one of you is an abundance and the other one's a scarcity

of course so what that what that means is you're getting good rounded viewpoints on these major decisions and you don't reach a point that oh i borrowed on our home where our children sleep to buy a warehouse can i say that feels deceitful like when you start to muddle the waters which i know happens a lot in business but you you start to reach over to the like putting that in danger that that feels like it's i don't know why it feels different if it's like oh i went and got a warehouse but my own home like my home that feels so personal i don't like it that felt that felt deceitful to me well it's not um because the arrangement that they were no the arrangement they were operating on is she don't care he can do whatever he wants and so he did whatever he wants and he had no he had no thought that he

was going to lose the home he he thinks it's just going to turn around he's going to out earn his stupidity make all this other money he didn't he didn't sit down and really sat down and go now well i will tell you this having adopted this we don't do major things without sharon it means that i actually have to not only sell myself on the idea of going forward on something i have to sell her her on it. And it makes me critically think through the idea more thoroughly, knowing I've got to get agreement from someone else. I've got to be able to explain it in such a way that it makes sense and get agreement.

That's why we always talk about don't do your money alone. Even if you're single, have somebody, something that you are accountable to, right? A spouse spouse a friend again if you're single maybe it's a mentor like whatever it is whatever it's hilarious that inside of our own little brains we can talk we can make the dumbest thing we're crazy we can make the dumbest thing sound smart inside our own little brains but when you have to speak it and set it out on the table in front of someone that loves you and that cares about your future as soon as you sit it out on the

table sometimes before they say anything you go oh that's dumb oh that's i and when that was in my head it was really smart but when i put it out there in the daylight it looks really stupid and it's almost like that time that you had this problem and you sat down with your friend and by the time you explained your problem to your friend, you knew the answer. And all that is, is your brain had to process from simple digits floating around in your brain into verbalized. When you have to turn something into language, your brain is required to go through another higher function of critical thinking skills. So when you turn something from a thought into language and put it in front of someone else, it makes you process the thing you're talking about more thoroughly. That's why you already know the answer before your friend ever says anything. You go, thanks for listening.

I now know what to do. And they never said a word. They just look at you like a hoot owl, right? And the same thing's true here. You know, when you have to do this with your spouse, it opens up everything. It's like right before this show, I was telling Dave about my new prepping conspiracy that I heard last night. And he looked at me like a hoot owl. And he just shook his head and we just went to air.

It's good to say it out loud sometimes. You're like, I don't know. I don't know about that conspiracy. I guess there's one in every family. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, so I was born and raised in Texas, and I love the myth of the lone cowboy. You know, the guy who doesn't need anyone or anything. It's a fun story, and it's a lie. In our self-obsessed society, we're obsessed about

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This announcement today will probably sell it out. Big announcement. Blow the trumpets.ets right here we go all right you ready we're going to saint thomas we're going to turks and caicos we're going to puerto rico we're going to the bahamas you knew that it is on a holland america high-end nice virtually brand new ship you know that a hundred percent of people on the ship will be ramsey people all people that are baby step four and beyond if they do what we told them to do, and they live like no one else.

Now they're living like no one else. It's a milestone cruise. You get to go on this cruise with all the Ramsey personalities, Manit Chauhan from the Food Channel, Dove Award winner, recently added to the Grand Ole Opry, Stephen Curtis Chapman, Dina Carter, country music star, Stephen Bargatze. That's Nate's dad. A couple of other comedians are on there.

And here's the big announcement. Drum roll, please. Cabins are running low, but just today we contracted with Trey Kennedy. And Trey will be a comedian on there with us as well. If you don't know that name, you should. He's one of the biggest, hottest things on Instagram right now, blowing up everywhere. The guy is absolutely stone cold hilarious. One of his specialties is making fun of me. He makes a lot of money making fun of me. And so for some reason, our team thought we should give him some more money to come on the cruise. And so now trey is going to come on the cruise and make fun of me uh that's fun that's

great there's a lot there's a lot of really funny stuff out there uh memes and so forth and trey is the source of some of it so be sure you check it out trey kennedy if you don't know who that is look it up you should uh it's a huge add to our lineup. And that is the last stone in the arrangement, the last flower in the arrangement for our lineup. There won't be any more surprise announcements. But there is just a handful of cabins left, so go get your cabin. You can put up a $600 deposit before they're gone. If you want to upgrade the cabin later, if somebody drops out, you can step up into one of theirs. Can't do that if you're not already on board. And so we help you do that. You can't sit around on the outside and hope it works out. It's not going to work out.

You're going to miss the cruise. March 22nd through the 29th, seven full days, all the Ramsey personalities, me included, all seven days. We're going to be doing all the events and it's going to be like the whole tribe is on there it's like a tribal thing cool so ramsey solutions.com slash cruise again trey kennedy awesome new brand new entertainer ad today and uh you don't you don't want to miss this ramsey solutions.com slash cruise and rachel it is disturbing that he doesn't make fun of you or no he's nice he's nice to me you know john you're just an easy you're an easy poke sometimes you know i'm an easy i'm an easy mark that was you're saying i'll leave i'll leave a lot out i'll leave a lot out there that could be my vibe and people like to go after it the boomer vibe oh yeah people people like to go after it's a good thing to go out i mean it vibe. People like to go after it. The boomer vibe. People like to go after it.

It's a good thing to go after. I mean, it's an Instagram thing to go after the boomers, so I get that. We're just mad that y'all bought houses that were, you know, $20,000. I bought a house with a bucket of strawberries. I traded one bucket of strawberries for my house. Now it's worth $42 million.

We're all just mad about it. You can make, you know, $20,000 and be fine in life you know just the 80s and y'all how were they and y'all never took economics to find out that those numbers are actually not true i was kidding but they're there we're just mad at y'all amanda is in memphis hey amanda what's up hey dave thank you for taking my call. Sure. How can I help? I need guidance. I need to know. We got a loan on our home.

And they were not transparent about any of the fees. What do you mean? And all the fees that were associated with the loan, the APR. The only thing we knew was the interest rate we knew that is the apr why did you sign the documents if you didn't know what you were doing well when it came to closing yeah um i mean so the lender was telling us all along that he would tell us the fees once we settled on the percentage that we were going to put down it was pretty cut and dry dave we wanted to walk away from our other home with 75 000

under six percent and have a house note two thousand or under it was that simple but it didn't it wasn't that simple when you went to the table and it wasn't that, why did you sign it? We didn't know it wasn't that. You didn't sign a mortgage paper that had a blank in it. That's bull. No, no, no. Didn't say that. Yeah, you did.

Okay, but the loan is just in my husband's name. It is not in my name. I don't care. Why did he sign it? I'm the one that did all the conversation. Were you at the table when he's there to sign it? I was at the table. And you looked down and the numbers aren't right and you signed it anyway?

Why did you do that? I wasn't the signer. But besides that, let me go backwards just a little bit, okay? Because the lender said, okay, 6.375. He said, I'll get you under 6% if you sign with us right now. And so we did that. We got on the computer, we signed with them and everything. And so then it became, you know, they wouldn't tell us any of the fees. The underwriter said, we'll get the paper over to you so you will know what all your numbers are before you go to the closing table. And if you need someone there to sit with you, we have someone

in your city that can sit with you. And we said, no, let's just wait. And we went through the process. And then we go to the closing, and the closing attorney says, you know, here's this. You know, you've already went over this, da-da-da. You know how they go through it. We went with this company because they said they were going to do everything. So we just assumed that's how it was, okay? When we told them what we wanted to go to we didn't know what our cash out was going to be until after all the papers were signed after all the papers were signed the closing attorney came downstairs with a sheet of paper and a breakdown and said and you're getting

65 000 like no we're supposed to be getting 75 000 so we didn't we we didn't know anything they were transparent i'm not transparent and they misguided us we had to pay for points they never told us we had to pay for points there were many things and to the point that i called after the loan to the underwriter okay why did you not around and look at the attorney and say, just tear up the documents. I don't want $65,000. That isn't what we agreed to. We're not doing this closing.

Our house was sold. We were in a stress. We're both 61. I mean, we were. That doesn't mean you have to accept a deal. No, we don't have to accept a deal. Just look at him and go go this isn't what we agreed to tear up the papers we're not doing this and where were we gonna live honey so so what

amounts to is is you willingly did this because you felt trapped instead of standing up and saying no i'm walking out of here so i you're right you're right about the trap part i mean i said because you felt trapped you weren't trapped stand up walk out go rent an apartment and give them the middle finger as you walk out the door don't sign stuff and and then gripe about that you did that what you signed when you sat down look your husband signed it after you sat there and looked at it if you said if you say to me you're going to give me the numbers before i go to closing then we don't go to closing until you give me the numbers and we don't go to closing if the numbers aren't what you tell me they're going to be i look at stuff ahead of time that was your job it's not their job but it's their job to get it to

me it's your job to not do anything until they do. True. Okay. You let this happen. But like you said, at our age and no family to run to, you're right, we could rent, no doubt. Hey, I'm sorry, darling. I'm older than you, and I ain't feeling trapped. And I don't need to run to my family.

I'm just going to walk out the door if somebody's trying to screw me. It's that simple. I'm going to stand up and walk out the door. I'm sorry, you're not a victim. You're not a victim of anything except your inability to look at someone and say no. Just look at them and say no. I'm not signing this.

It's not what we said. That's who you're a victim of. You're a victim of your own inability to say no. You and your husband should have thrown your shoulders back and said, no, this is not what we agreed to, and walk away. This lender didn't do anything wrong. They were just sloppy at best. This is The Ramsey Show.

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1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. I was telling our team and staff meeting on Monday that how we do what we do at Ramsey, helping people with God's ways of handling money, grandma's ways of handling money, common sense ways of handling money, how we do it has changed a lot over the 30 years.

The advice has not changed hardly at all because it came from the Bible. The Bible didn't change. And it came from common sense, and common sense doesn't change. Now, there was no digital anything when we started there was no computers uh we we didn't have a computer there was no internet there was no podcast for sure or youtube hadn't even been thought of um mtv was

quite the rage but the uh but you know it was a different time infomercials were a thing. VHS tapes are what we started with, right? And so we were telling the team this. I said, the things that I say that are from God and your grandmother are the exact same things I say today. I said back then. It really hasn't even changed. So our producer,ames um decided to take upon himself to prove that and somewhere down in the deep bowels of ramsey has uncovered a video of me on a tv show i guess it is from 1995 30 years almost 30 years So let's see if I say the same things or not. If you have very few of these, but a whole lot of these, you're going to like our show today. We're going to talk to a financial expert.

His name is Dave Ramsey. What's the number one question that you get on the air concerning financial problems? What do they want to know? Concerning financial problems, how to get out of debt. How do I get out of debt? And I would say the second thing is communication with spouses. It's the stuff Grandma talked about. So save money, live on less than you make.

Two concepts Congress can't grasp. And then we talk about getting out of debt, the borrower's servant to the lender. And so lay down a plan, have a budget, spend every dollar on paper before the month begins. Because it's more behavior than it is math. Don't spend money you don't have. Understand, when half your net worth is tied up in something that loses 60% of its value in four years,

you're not going to get ahead. I don't meet with people with a million dollars and say, gosh, Dave, I got ahead using credit cards and car payments. What solves it is getting mad at it. Some healthy, righteous anger and saying, hey, that's it. I'm drawing a line that's saying I'm going drawing a line. I'm going to be weird. I'm going to get this stuff paid off. Oh my gosh, I have no words.

I have no words. Your voice was so, you're so, it's changed. How old were you in that? How old? I was probably about your age. Mid-30s? Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Well, 95, I was 35. Yeah, I was your age mid-30s yeah oh my gosh well 95 i was 35 yeah how was your age wow wow yeah i'm 36 give me my year i'm sorry that and you still use the same jokes it's a the same exact jokes yeah it's live on less than you make a concept congress can't grasp now i did take um i had a guy come in and train me for a year and a half on uh and removed a portion of my accent so i've got i've got a lot less accent now than i did then that was pretty country fried there yeah that was that was some nashville that was some 80s nashville pretty southern pretty southern sweet tea there and uh the little comb over thing that little last that little last vestige of hair you got a little

bit there it was still stuck on it wasn't really a comb over y'all all just look old in those days do what like you look like you're 50 in that video isn't that interesting back in the day i just feel like the way the style was the way it was shot the style and you know a suit and tie and the glasses the mr magoo glasses yeah i mean like it, like, it just makes you, it just ages you. What's interesting is if you quit looking at all that stuff, which is fun to make fun of. I'm okay with that. That's good.

But what did I say? Give every dollar a name? Do a budget? The EveryDollar app? And now we have the EveryDollar app, and little did I know there was going to be an Internet. Communicate with your spouse? We would have an app called EveryDollar. Give every dollar a name and live on less than you make and cars go down in value people

don't get rich on credit cards and car payments yeah it's pretty wild yeah and 35 years later i'm still saying the same thing and i have more listeners than we've ever had before at this moment and i've not changed one thing i mean it's nothing new here it's very even the be weird element that was there wasn't yeah you said that just be weird be weird and now now when somebody comes on does their debt free scream we call them a weirdo right and that's before it became a political thing in the last few weeks but yeah we've still been doing that oh yeah oh man they hijacked the word. They stole my word. Now I have to clarify that it has nothing to do with the Trump campaign. It's weird because you're just not normal.

You're not normal. You know, it's so refreshing, though. Like, it is. There is something about longevity in life, principles in all of life. I think it's probably true within relationships and health, money, like spiritually, all of it, that it works. You know, the new flashy way to do something or newest thing, it doesn't have the proven track record.

It doesn't have longevity and the level of trust you can have in a system and a process that truly has been, yeah, for 30 years, same freaking thing. Do you get tired of saying the same thing every day for 30 years? I've been doing it for 15. Yeah. I've been half of it. Yeah, there you go. When we look back on this interview right now, this discussion right now,

your voice is going to sound weird. Oh, yeah. I was going to say. Look at that haircut. What is she wearing? right now this discussion right now your voice is gonna sound weird oh yeah i'm gonna say look at that haircut what is she wearing what did what where did she get that that's awesome well done james style you used to have back then that'll be it so but the whole the whole thing is that the truth something that's the truth and we're people of the book we're people of faith so we believe that the bible is the truth the truth does not change and it's not negotiable with your feelings and so that's why we've been able to have the integrity to say the same thing over and over and over and over again for 35 years through several fashion

changes and uh and not only survive but continue to prosper you guys to not only survive in the business but be able to continue to help you guys and it still helps you to hear those exact same things from that interview all those years ago so we still say them over and over and over. And that is a type of integrity, to stick with something, to finish, to not quit, to not abandon every time somebody has the latest. You know, all of a sudden, Bitcoin is the new answer, and so we have to stop. No, no, it's not.

It's not. All of a sudden, you know, NTF is the answer. No, it's not. Well, credit card points you know, NTF is the answer. No, it's not. Well, credit card points and miles, that game has ramped up majorly. Yeah, it's crazy. And, you know, when we started, there were no credit cards accepted in grocery stores, and there were no credit cards accepted in fast food. And I remember doing a rant, aghast, on the air that it was going to ruin the american family that they

could buy their groceries now and go into debt to buy their food and i remember going off about that um and you know now it's not even that now it's just delivered to your door your door in particular but yeah rachel hasn't seen the inside of a grocery store no no no I'll go if I have items before I on Mondays I work and that's why I do my grocery shopping okay I'm sorry conveniences yeah okay you gotta give and take people live like no one else later you can live and have your groceries delivered I'm sorry one thing I do for myself one thing when's the last time you've been in a grocery store? Why not since that video?

Yeah. Entirely possible. No, I've been there because your mother sent me. But I think the point is that these principles work and the way that we deliver them, whether it's tomorrow you know, tomorrow we may be on a hologram. I don't know. Tomorrow we may have some, there's going to be another technology in five years or what we end up doing with AI to be able to, we're going to use anything that's available to deliver the exact same message over and over and over again. Yeah.

And I would say for people that are newer to listening, because YouTube and podcasts has become like one of the major parts of this, of this show is, um, just because something feels simple and kind of boring and like, Oh, is that it? Really? You live on less than you make kind of that common sense. That's almost the, that's, those are the ones to lean into, right? Like, if stuff starts to get complicated and too fancy, and it feels like this, like, ooh, thing. So, to be confident for people that are new to this, younger people even, like, it's been working, and it still is. Helping people get free and control of their money, which is what we want. Some of the most profound things you'll ever learn in life

are easy to understand and hard to implement. Love your neighbor. Ouch. That's hard. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love,

and create actual amazing relationships. Rachel Cruz, number one best-selling author, Ramsey Personality, host of The Rachel Cruz Show, and my daughter is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Daniel is in Oklahoma City. Hi, Daniel. How are you? Hey, Dave. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve. What's up? Hey, got a couple questions for you. So I just recently got married about two weeks ago. Congratulations. I really appreciate it. To my wife that I met in college.

And we, you know, we talk about finances all the time and everything, you know, preparing for marriage and all that. We talked about that a lot in our premarital counseling through our church, and it was great. Big question is, so I'm coming out of college with no debt, which is awesome, but my wife has about $130,000 in student loans. We just have been looking at them a lot recently and realized her minimum monthly payment is a lot higher than we expected it to be. It's about $1,800 a month is what that minimum monthly payment is looking like right now. So we make about $5,000 a month after taxes right now. What's her degree in? Marketing.

Okay, and what does she make? She makes about $47,000 right now with her job. A brand new job out of college? So she's actually had the job for about two years. She had been doing some marketing stuff prior to college and had a lot of experience. What do you make? So I still have a little bit of school left. I actually make only about $25,000 a year right now. When will you graduate? I have a year left of school. Okay. And what will your degree be in? My degree will be in business. I'm actually taking over my mom's business. So I'll probably be making right at six figures once I'm out of school.

Okay. And that's a year from now? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. All right. Okay. So your big hope is that you can just keep things afloat, and then when your income kicks in, you'll be able to plow through this pretty quick, right? Absolutely. Yes, sir. It's really just the next year, just what do you think our best options are to do. Side hustles. And she's underemployed. Why is she not making more than that? You know, it's a big conversation that we have had lately. She's actually in the process of looking for a new job. I would guess she could probably add $20,000 or $30,000 to her income, don't you? That's about what the median is. It's about $20,000 to $25,000 more here in Oklahoma City. So

hoping she can find a better job that can make a little bit more money. But her job right now is nice. It's very flexible. But that's a big thing. Yeah, I wouldn't be looking for flexibility at this season, right? Yeah, absolutely Yeah, I mean, I think you guys just have a couple Of months until some stuff is really going to start Opening up for you, I mean, I would, if I were her I'd be pretty aggressive at finding a new job Because that's going to be significant

Right, a $25,000, and then A year from now You'll be working full-time Are you able to plug in more to your parents' Business, Daniel? For your moms? you'll be working full-time are you able to plug in more to your parents uh business daniel uh so right now i i'm that's what i'm actually doing i'm working for her on the weekends and then a little bit during the week okay i'm just traveling for her and stuff so that's how i'm making about twenty five thousand dollars a year see if she increased her income like we're talking about it would be about the equivalent of the student loan debt. Yeah, that's about what we were thinking, yeah.

1,800 is like 23,000. So that's, you know, you'd be right there, okay? So, yeah, that's... And I would say, Daniel, and I'm sure people, maybe if you've talked to them about this, but I just want to say that you're in, like, the perfect season, relationally-wise, like with marriage, no no kids you guys are starting

out like if you're going to be working extra hours this is the time to do it it gets more complicated right the the longer you're married and if kids start entering the picture it just becomes more weighty and so if you guys can really make a plan and just dream i would have fun and just say okay what if she made 25 000 more i100,000. How fast can we get this paid off if I'm making that in a year? And kind of map it out and you guys are able to see it. So that way, if you guys have to take on extra work for the next two to three months until her income's up, just to keep that, you want to keep that minimum payment for sure. Because these payment plans on the principal, specifically with student loans, I mean, people pay so much money and then they look and they owe more

than where they started i mean it's just it is so frustrating i'm not even looking at the monthly i'm thinking it's her income goes up by 25 000 your income goes up to 100 that puts you at 175 000 a year income you owe 130 you should do this in one year that went from the time that that happens i mean and that's a year from now. And during the year in the interim, just figure out a way to pay the payment, maybe a little more. Inside Hustles, get after it, though. Peter is with us in Austin, Texas.

Hi, Peter. How are you? I'm great, Dave. Thanks for taking the call. Sure. What's up? I had a quick question. I have 90% of my wealth.

I just turned 62, 90% of my wealth in my Roth IRA. And I've kind of gone down a path where I've been doing it all in private lending, doing private notes, but 150 average. I'm only doing firsts, and I'm at 55% or less in loan-to-value, and I'm getting 12.5% right now, and I like that. But I'm wondering what risks may be associated with that, and if I should diversify that as I keep the money there. You spit that out in such a way that it makes me believe you do actually know what you're doing.

Most people don't in that world, but I think you probably do so that doesn't bother me so what is the risk on 55% LTV mortgages that you're holding only if the bunch of real estate collapsed and you became the owner of it right yes that would be your own that's not a real high risk I think what's the average loan value loan size'm doing anywhere, average would be $185 right now. Okay. All right. So you're not sitting on $2 million ones and that kind of thing. What's the total? The total portfolio? Approximately 2.6. Okay. So you're just doing a self-managed IRA, got it in a Roth, and you're rolling this money over in private lending. Wow, that's pretty cool.

That's what I've been doing. Yeah, that's what you've been doing. It's like your job, too, almost. It is, but when you have them going, and they go for anywhere from, let's say, three years at the average with a nice prepay, they come back in early, it does well. And I'm trying to simplify my life and be simple. I have a little bit of fear of the stock market and feel that $2.6 million coming in each year.

I don't have any fear of it, but I don't have any fear of what you're doing either. So if you wanted to, I mean, diversification equals lowered risk always. I love real estate, and I'm heavy in real estate. I'm probably, I don't know, 80%, 90% of my net worth is in real estate and I'm heavy in real estate. I'm probably, I don't know, 80%, 90% of my net worth is in real estate. Um, so, uh, but I love it. I'm comfortable with it. I know what I'm doing. It's not a, so I have very little risk associated with that, but I've got a, you know, then I've got a bunch in, uh, a lot in, in the stock market in mutual funds. And so, but, um, and I haven't done what you're doing, but because I, the, the amount of effort it would require, I'm not willing to put in. Uh,

so yeah, there's nothing wrong with being heavy and something you're good at and no, that's my point. So I'm not, I'm not panicked about where you are. Uh, but always, it's a good question to be asking yourself, should I diversify more? That's a good question to be asking yourself, should I diversify more? That's a good question to constantly look at and go, all my eggs in one basket. The Bible says, put your portions into seven, yes, to eight, before disaster may come upon the land. Diversification is in Ecclesiastes. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today.

Thank you for joining us. Today's question of the day is brought to you by Y-Refi. If you're in over your head with private student loans and tired of getting calls from collection agencies, you need Y-Refi. Y-Refi refinances defaulted private student loans that other places won't touch. They give you a low fixed rate, a custom-built situation just for you. Go to whyrefi.com slash Ramsey today.

This is a great hack, y'all. It's a great fix. The letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash ramsey might not be in all states all right today's question comes from robert in texas my wife and i put our kit our children through college bought them cars and provided them for them till they moved out to this day we still pay their phone bills in spite the fact that our oldest child is a doctor and our youngest is a manager for a high end retail company. Both earned six figure salaries due to unforeseen circumstances. We were hit with two natural disasters last year, a flash flood and a fire to our home. We didn't have flood insurance, but we're able to cash flow

the repairs for the flood and are deductible for the fire. We currently only have three debts, two vehicles, which replaced the ones that we lost in the flood, and our mortgage is $47,000. Even though our children earn four to five times what we make, they say, according to your teachings, in parentheses, they have no obligation to help us. They have told us, well, dad, Dave Ramsey says to allow you to sink or swam because your debt is your obligation. Are we wrong to ask them for help or are they interpreting your advice incorrectly? Wow. Okay.

It doesn't sound like they're seeing i mean first thing is it's weird when you pay your grown kids bills of any kind including their phone bill and you know whose fault that is robert yours you should have cut that off when they left home i don't pay rachel's dadgum phone bill i don't pay her netflix bill denise does y'all's Netflix password, though. Well, I didn't give it to her. That's besides the point. That's not the point. So that's thing one. Thing two, Robert, when you raise children, and as part of raising them,

you buy them a car and pay it for their college, and when they leave college and they become successful adults that does not obligate them they're not in debt to you that was like your job you're the dad that's what you're supposed to do there you know well i changed your diaper so you need to send me to france on a vacation what you i've heard this crap my whole life. I do not understand it. Okay. Your children are not obligated to any of you because you did your job as a mother or a father. They are not in debt to you because you fed them.

Period. So the entitlement that is dripping through this robert uh you know my disgust with your entitlement yes that is my teaching that's a disgusting entitlement that you should think that your children owe you something because you were just simply a father and did what you were supposed to do my children are not obligated to me. Now, I have never said, Dave Ramsey says, allow you to sink or swim because your debt isn't our obligation. That is not a phrase. That's not phrasing and verbiage that I would use.

So either your children have added drama to what I say or you have. I'm not sure who. What I would say is, is it's not their job to take care of their mom and dad. They're not morally or ethically obligated to do that. Now, if they are able and mom and dad are in a pinch and they want to give mom and dad some money because there's somebody that I love and they're hurting, I've never said not to do that, but that's way different than being obligated by the fact that you simply did your job as their dad. That's different. Okay.

So if you have car debt, it's not because of the flood. You had car insurance that would have replaced your car in a flood. Flood insurance is on the real estate. It's not on the cars. So you cash flowed the repairs for the flood and the deductible for the fire because you had insurance on the house for the fire, and we only have three debts, two vehicles, which replaced the ones lost in the flood.

No, they didn't. You bought cars that were nicer than you had in the flood, and that's why you're in debt. You upgraded after the flood because you got a check from the car company on your car insurance when you lost the cars in a flood. And oftentimes when people lose a car or get a car total, they for some reason use that as an excuse to upgrade and go into debt when they weren't in debt before. I do not understand, but people do that like you did all the time, Robert. So that's not, none of this is your

children's fault and none of that is a natural disaster. You actually cash flowed through the two tragedies. Congratulations. And then went and got you a couple of car payments to celebrate. So, uh, they are not obligated to pay your car. They are not obligated to do this. Because they make six figures and you once gave them some food. They're just not. That is not how life works, buddy. But sink or swim, we're not that harsh about it. I just want to draw a line. There's charity that is extracted through guilt is not charity

if your children want to be charitable towards you and give you something that's wonderful they've got money they do it done well mom and dad just got a little mortgage a couple car notes we're going to reach over and knock them out just because we love mom and dad but not because mom and dad think they're entitled to their money there's a difference yeah and he sounds a little resentful in some way yeah even though they earn four to five times what we make you know yeah and Dave Ramsey says just tell you sink or swim you know it's like oh brother there's a little bit of yeah Yeah, Roberts. I bought their cars. I bought their cars.

Bought their books and sent them to school. This is always a hard line for me, the adult-child-parent conversation, because we get this a lot, that the parents are struggling and the adult children are able to help. And even vice versa, right? The parent has an adult child that needs help, right?

That's always a hard boundary for me to navigate because it is so situationally specific maturity specific relationally specific I mean there's just so much yeah I mean there's so many elements of it that can go quickly one way or the other but but what is a in this case when when okay so parents should never expect their child to help them but there is something honoring in about you know what i'm saying like like what's that taking care of it's the difference it's a cultural thing too in america we're very independent though you go to other cultures and it's a we bring mom and dad home like it's a generation we are in america so that's where we are we are that's where this question took place but i'm not saying we're right either so i'm curious yeah we are and don't be

judgmental be curious here's the thing here's what whitman so the proper thing is robert uh goes and says hey we need some help can y'all help us yeah not your children should give you money because you gave them cars and bought them books and sent them to school yes the entitlement versus the request in love yeah those are two different things yeah um but this is dripping in bitterness like they owe him something and that is not that's a non-starter that's not that's a non-starter the thing is, if you're going to help someone, particularly someone you love, particularly someone you love inside your family, you should help them in a way that causes them to reach sustainability on their own, not become dependent upon you.

And so if you reached over and paid off the house and paid off the cars it would be mom and dad you're getting on a budget you're going through financial peace university so that you can live on your money for the rest of your life and this is just going to give you a little smoothing start yeah it's going to give you a jump start so even when we're helping like your sister runs our family foundation and we're helping someone that's in a poverty situation we don't just throw endless money at a poverty situation we throw money in a money in a way that causes the person to step up out of poverty and stay out. We're the lift out, but we're not the keep them in check. I don't want to keep them in the, I don't want to be the one writing check, allow somebody to stay in it. So we're not enablers. And that's the

thing you got to get to when you're on the giving side of this. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever to get anything approved through the bureaucracy. So if you feel like the system is working against you, try a biblically-based alternative to health insurance, Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM is a health cost-sharing ministry that's helped hundreds of thousands of families like yours take care of over $11 billion in medical bills since 1981. And CHM has also helped them stay true to their values and avoid miles of red

tape. And CHM support goes far beyond meeting financial needs. They'll also help meet spiritual needs. Members become part of a family who will pray with them and for them when they experience a medical event. So listen, y'all, there's no better way to take care of health care costs. CHM programs start as low as $98 a month. So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget at chministries.org slash budget. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author. My daughter is my co-host today. We invite you to stop by Ramsey Solutions. We do this show on the glass in our lobby Monday through Friday from 1 to 4. There are two of us sitting here every day for three hours answering questions.

It turns into a radio show, a podcast, a YouTube show all at once. You can come and sit and watch and, you know, watch the show unfold. The homemade chocolate chip cookies in the Baker Street Cafe are free. The wonderful coffee is free. And, you know, we'd love to have you stop by. We're just a little south of Nashville in a wonderful little town called Franklin, Tennessee. And so make that a part of your trip if you're ever cutting through here. And we come out at the commercial breaks and take pictures and sign books and get to meet you.

And we love getting to see you in that lobby. We also, right here across the glass from us, installed the debt-free stage, which is where Chris and Jennifer find themselves. Hey, guys, how are you? Good. How are you doing? Welcome, welcome. Where do you all live? We're in Raleigh, North Carolina you? Good. How are you doing? Welcome, welcome. Where do y'all live?

We're in Raleigh, North Carolina. Love it. What a great town. And how much debt have you two paid? We have paid off $500,000. Wow. How long did this take? About six years. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? We're in real estate. It varies. We started out in different careers, so it was around 200 at the time. And then, you know, we're anywhere between 500 and 550. Whoa. Yeah. Doing great. Way to go, you guys. Thank you. All right. So I'm going to guess and say that might be your mortgage and you paid off your house. We are on baby step number seven. Yeah. Looking at a couple of weirdos, a debt free couple house and everything. Absolutely. How old are you of weirdos a debt-free couple house and everything absolutely how old are you

two weirdos i'm 47 uh-huh i'm hanging on to 49 i will be 50 this year so that was a good and a paid for house that's worth how much about 1.3 million i love it and how much in your nest egg uh we have about 60 percent of real estate about about 40%, you know, in IRAs, 401ks, you know, investments, things like that. So about $3 million. Total net worth. Yeah. Way to go, Baby Steps Millionaires. I'm guessing you didn't inherit any of that.

We did not. Not a dollar. You've had a fabulous income and have done a great job with it. Way to go, you all. Great job, you guys. Way to go, heroes. All right. now you're 50 years old three million dollar net worth zero debt in the world making a half million a year

dad come man who wouldn't want to be you too wow how's that feel it's weird it's i know we we talked about it we thought we were going to have this this feeling when we accomplished it and and it is a wonderful feeling but we're just overachievers so now we're like what do we do next what's our next you're moving on to the next thing yeah you are overachievers what are you going to celebrate big we're here oh come on i'm something big um we are going to do uh we're going to go on the bourbon tour and uh in kentucky a little bit later this year um we've we've never been to Kentucky we thought it would be something cool to do with our friends and we're big tennis players and it's our tennis community we're going to we're going to go do that and it's going to be kind of a quiet celebration so we're yeah great well if you

fill the trunk with bourbon and you go across state lines we call that whiskey running so head back over to Raleigh with a whole truck full of bourbon yeah you don't know what that is I don't know anything about that I've never known anyone that did anything like that way to go you guys congratulations thank you thank you so fun so six years ago what made you guys I mean because you're you're doing fine you could have just kept the mortgage on you know for 30 years or whatever it was what made you want to just get rid of it six years ago? Well, ironically, we had talked about achieving this goal. And then I was working from home and Chris came home for lunch and he was like, I think I'm going to get laid off today.

And I said, what? You're going to get laid off today? He said, yeah, I think I'm going to get laid off today. I said, that's crazy. He went back to work, came home at four o'clock. He was laid off. Oh, gosh. So he was a biochemist before and I was a professional fundraiser and he had gotten his real estate license and it's a passion

of ours and that terrible moment in our life really spurred things forward for us to take that step and trust in ourselves and throw ourselves into real estate and then once the business got up and going then I left my career and joined with him and we've never looked back so well that's a different biochemistry straight into real estate it's not something I sign up for every day I get that a lot so yeah I you know I did the corporate world I was in big pharma for about 20 years I did anything from drug development you know head of quality control um you know we made vaccines we made flu vaccine in my last job and um you know just head of quality control. You know, we made vaccines, we made flu vaccine in my last job. And, you know, just we were kind of talking about at lunch, you feel

like you're held back a little bit, you could just be doing more. And I always wanted to own my own business and just kind of try that. But you know, you've got a salary, you've got benefits, you've got that security, you're a little scared to go make that jump. So they helped you. They helped me. Yeah. And it was, it didn't feel like it at the time, you know, but we went ahead and we talked about it. We did it. I made the decision. We work with a smart investor pro in Raleigh, Brent Spessart, and he's been, you know, super, super supportive this entire time. He actually pushed us to kind of get us, get this house paid off. And I called him, he's the first person I called and said, Hey, I'm scared.

Can I do this? You know, I'm leaving everything. Can I do this? And he goes, absolutely. You know, I'll put you in touch with the right people. And honestly, the day that I went and quit my corporate job, you know, we were getting, I got laid off, but I was doing some contract work until I got the business up and going. But until I jumped into full time, I literally went in, resigned. The next day, Jen lost her job. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. Re-org. I mean,

re-org the family. It happens, but it's one of those things that's probably the best thing that could have ever happened to us. And it launched us to get here. And it's just one thing after another. And that's why it took six years you know we yeah we were really comfortable and god made us uncomfortable in the best way for sure so part of the motivation of selling the house is just to remove risk as well like if it's just this feeling of i'm sorry i'm sorry hang it off that's what i meant but just the idea of oh my gosh like we it made you that much more motivated to get the risk out is that right yeah just because you know we're there's so many factors in real estate we can't control. Interest rates, the economy, people losing their jobs like we did.

There's just so many unknowns. And I expected to pull into the driveway and there'd be fireworks going off and, hey, you're celebrating. But it wasn't like that. But actually, a couple of days after that, I had a deal that was going south. And I remember it was just this calm and this peace. I didn't have any concerns. It was okay.

And it worked itself out. You know, I mean, nothing really fell apart. But in that moment, I was like, oh, this is what he's talking about. You know, when you don't have that stress and you don't have to be, you know, burdened by debt, it's just unreal. And our friends have just been so supportive and family this entire time. It's been great. Yeah, it have just been so supportive and family this entire time. It's been great. Yeah, it's awesome, you guys. Amazing.

What do you tell the key, people the key to being 100% debt-free and having a $3 million net worth at 50 years old is? I think it's not living like the Joneses. You know, I made the comment to one of my friends, and I said there's no handbag or shoes or anything that's worth the feeling that you get from being debt-free. And I think mine would be surround yourself by friends and family that support you. I can't tell you how many people over the years go, why would you want to pay off your debt or your mortgage? Can't you take that?

Can't you invest it? And I just knew that we were in the wrong circles, right? So we surrounded our friends and family and where we're at in raleigh and it was just it was a great feeling they all supported us and they understood what we were trying to do and it's just been it's just been a great experience you know that's an interesting way of looking at it i i've done that too and i never thought about it but it's like if you're gonna sit and tear down my plans and tear down my dreams just because you're that person. You just opted to the back row of my friend list.

Exactly. Correct. Exactly. And you get to sit on the back row because I'm not putting up with that crap. I want the cheerleaders up here on the front. Now, I don't mind somebody telling me the truth if they're concerned. That's different than just negative ninny. But negative ninny can opt to the back row, right?

Yeah, we've had so many people tell us that we should use that money we should leverage it we should buy other you know businesses do all these things but that's not our goal that might be their goal it's not ours yeah hey not everybody goes from biochemist to real estate agent to whiskey runner that's right all in one fell swoop i'm just saying that's right not everybody can do that to go, you guys. I'm very proud of you. Thank you. You look like life is great. You guys are like a great picture right here.

It's awesome. Very, very cool stuff. All right. It's Chris and Jennifer. Raleigh, North Carolina. 500K paid off in six years, making $200 to $550. And a $3 million Baby Steps Millionaire net worth in the process. Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Woo-hoo! That is how it's done, ladies and gentlemen. You've got to love it. This is The Ramsey Show.

I've been doing this show for over 30 years, and some of the saddest calls I have taken are from situations that are completely preventable. Yeah, and what's so hard is I feel like one of those, especially the ones that I'm like, oh, it's terrible, are people that call in and their spouse has passed away suddenly, and they don't have life insurance. When you have to think through how am I going to pay my bills I'm going to eat next week yeah in the middle of all that grief like it's just it is it's terrible so life insurance is the one thing especially as a mom with three little kids that I'm like so big on for people to get because it's inexpensive Zander is the place that Winston and I actually get all of our life insurance and

it doesn't cost much because Zander shops among a gazillion different companies. It doesn't cost much. You just have to admit that someday you're not going to be here. You've got to say it out loud, and you've got to say, I'm going to say I love you to my family by taking care of them and taking the time to put this stuff in place. The cost of stinking pizza. To get a free quote, call 800-356-4282. That's 800-356-4282 or go to zander.com.

The best way to make the most of your money is to make your money do what you want it to do instead of wondering where it went. Tell your money what to do instead of wondering where it went. Most people in this life live reactively. But people who are proactive, who happen to things intentionally, are the ones that we call successful people. In the wealth-building world, if you're going to happen to your money, you do that with a budget.

And every dollar is the budget that will help you do it. It's the app that's free in the App Store and Google Play. Download EveryDollar. Get the premium version while you're at it, and start working with your spouse, working the baby steps, working paycheck planning. There's all kinds of tools inside this thing. They're going to help you do the Ramsey system more efficiently,

and it really sets it up to win. Go to EveryDollar.com or download the every dollar app for free in the app store or google play today dorothy is with us in fort myers florida hi dorothy how are you hi david hi rachel thank you for taking my call and i'm in naples just so you know okay cool how can we help today? Well I unfortunately am a widow. My husband committed suicide last year. Oh my gosh. Sorry. And I would really appreciate it if you'd let me borrow your magoo glasses to see my way through my mess. I'm so sorry. Wow. Me too. Me too.

It was certainly something that we weren't expecting. And now I'm, you know, I have a lot of debt and I want to get rid of it. And I have some very specific questions for you. One of them is I have an IRA that has some money in it that was part of his, you know what the drop is? Have you heard of that term? How much is in the IRA? It's not a lot. It's about 40 grand. About 40K. And it's not invested in anything that's earning us and earning me anything. How old are you? I'm 57. Okay. And what is your career? I don't have one. My husband wanted me to be his playmate when he retired. And we had a granddaughter who was born with

some complications. And so I stopped working to help, you know, get her through that. And he just did want me to go back to work. So I didn't. And, um, so we played and we accumulated a lot of stuff and I know I can sell that stuff to get into a much better financial situation. And it's just taken some time to kind of sort through, sorry, to kind of sort through everything. And I wasn't expecting to get emotional. To sort through everything and get some clarity in all of it, you know. So I know I need to get a job. I do know that. And I want one, and I've already started looking for one,

and it's kind of hard not knowing what to do because I have no technical skills whatsoever because I've been out of work for so long. I'm a personal person, so I know, you know, like customer service and things of that nature, I should do pretty well at. So I plan on doing that right away and I plan on selling several assets right away. It's just taken me some time to get there. I understand. I already downloaded your EveryDollar app, and so I'm, you know, working with that right now. What is the most pressing thing you have today that we can help you with? Well, you know, I still have our two trucks that I have payments on, and I have some credit card debt.

And that was one of the questions i wanted to have any do you have any cash other than this 40k no sir okay how are you how are you paying light bill and food bill and all that his pension i i get it yeah and that's supposed to how much is this how much is his pension? A year or monthly. Monthly it's just under $5,500, and for annual it's like $6,500. And how much is your house payment? My house payment is $1,900. And how long does the pension last?

The pension is going to end in less than five years. Okay, Good. So we've got a really good plan here. You can survive monthly. You can survive and have been monthly on the 55 with the every dollar budget. That's very possible. We may or may not use the 40. We'll see.

Prefer to wait till after 59 if we can. Okay. And you're going to get rid of the truck payments by getting rid of the trucks and getting you a car you can afford. And you're going to start the next chapter of your life. You're a wee 57-year-old. You have a lot left. A lot left.

This is your chapter two. This is act two. After the curtain comes back up, we took a bow. It's an encore. Didn't turn out like we thought it was going to. The story takes a twist, a rather tragic turn, and the heroine steps forward with her shield and her sword.

Okay? Thank you. Thank you. That's you. That's where you're going. And so what's going to happen is three years from today, you're going to be booming as the biggest real estate agent in Naples or whatever it is you choose to do.

Okay. And you're going to be laughing about this little tiny pension, but it survived you. It sustains you when it should have. And that was good. But it's certainly not your future. You are your future. Okay. Right.

Mathematically, you are. Emotionally, you are. Spiritually, you are. Yes. Financially, you you are. Emotionally, you are. Spiritually, you are. Yes. Financially, you definitely are. So you're the secret sauce to the equation, and you're up to it. You can do it. I can tell by talking to you.

I mean, you're hurting, but any normal human would be hurting with what you've gone through, honey. But I think there's a lot going on inside Dorothy. How much debt, Dorothy, you mentioned that, you know, you guys kind of just traveled and, and bought stuff and racked up some debt. I'm just curious what, what all is the debt?

How much credit card debt is it? I have about, it's actually $18,306 and 38 cents. Okay. And what other debt is there? I have the, the house is just a little over $100,000. That'll be under $100,000 after September's payment.

I have two trucks totaling $21,000 and an RV that's at $15,000. So the trucks and the RV are gone and get you a reasonable car. But that's it, right? Okay. And then we're going to plow through the credit cards. Is there anything else? credit card um no i mean just monthly payments of course yeah yeah all right here's what we're gonna do okay i'm gonna load you up with homework are you ready to go to school yes sir all right can i ask you one more quick question yes ma'am you might

now i'll wait till you're done, and then maybe I'll ask. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Go right now. Well, I had already taken one of the credit cards and put it on a 0% for 18 months, and I'm plugging away at that one. The other one has an interest rate. It's the one that's only at $6,000.

Would it behoove me to transfer that to a 0% for 18 months? Doesn't matter. You can if you want, but that's not your problem. Your problem is getting the income up and having your future lined out. And once you see that, then you can turn up the heat and just get rid of them. And the interest rate doesn't matter when you're paying aggressively on them. So if you want to, it's okay yeah but it's not really the answer to your situation at all so hold on christian's going to pick up we're going to put

you into financial peace university we're going to provide you with a financial coach all is our gift okay we're people of the book and the book instructs us to take care of widows and orphans and we will do that today okay so you're going to get that. I'm also going to send you Ken Coleman's book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. It has in it an assessment. I want you to take the assessment, and I want you to start the process of dreaming about what the new future looks like for Dorothy.

What is it you want to be when you grow up? You're just a wee 57-year-old, just a tiny little one. You can do it. You can do it. And, uh, Dorothy, and I'm so proud of you. Can we just say to you, you haven't messed anything up when people go through tragedy. We even tell them just to pause for even a year. Right. So like you, you, you're not behind all of it. I know it probably feels very overwhelming, but you've done the right thing. Hey guys, if you, I'm sorry, if you, if you want to hear the next 40 minutes of the show, it's on the Ramsey app I'm sorry, if you, if you want to hear the next 40 minutes of

the show, it's on the Ramsey app, the Ramsey network app. So you can download that for free in the app store or Google play. Make sure you jump over and get it there. If you want to listen to all three hours or watch all three hours, you can always do that on the Ramsey network app. It's completely free. Doesn't cost you a thing. So the last 40 minutes of the show. Now, if you're on talk radio, it's still there, right? Where it minutes of the show now if you're on talk radio it's still there right where it always has been but if you're on podcast or youtube it's on the ramsey network app in the app store or google play it's completely free this is the ramsey show live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions it it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us.

Rachel Cruz, number one bestselling author, host of The Rachel Cruz Show, co-host of The Smart Money Happy Hour. Ramsey personality and my daughter is my co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour. Ramsey Personality and my daughter is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Joe starts this time off in Baton Rouge. Hi, Joe, how are you? Hey, Dave, I'm good. Thanks for having me on. Sure, what's up? So, I just graduated college in which I created a tabletop game. It became kind of popular amongst friends. So I decided I wanted to make a business out of it. Now kind of back to the college fees.

My parents paid for my college, which I'm incredibly grateful for. And they're in the process of paying off the loans that were kind of left over. And so I'm at the point in his business where I've kind of spent all the money, uh, the small amount of money that I, that I had to, to pay off like the LLC fees, stuff like that. Um, so with this loan that my parents have left over they're going to pay it off all in one uh lump sum so i am thinking about offering them the choice of me taking over the loan and they pay or they kind of give me the money um that they were going to pay and I use that for my business. No, absolutely not. We're not borrowing on a student loan to start a small business and

effectively that's what you're doing. Oh, and by the way, keeping your parents, the loan is in your parents' name. Uh, yes. Yeah. You're keeping your parents in debt. So your parents are loaning you the money instead of paying off a student loan. Effectively, that's what's going on. No, no, absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Listen, here's the thing. Yes, sir. What's your new job? I work marketing for a nonprofit. What do you make? Around $48. Why did you choose to be underpaid? That's a good question.

Well, it's part-time for now. Oh, it's part-time. Yes, sir. So a lot of my day is going into... So it doesn't take much to open up an LLC, so you don't drop big money on that. Your board game, is it a prototype, or have you trademarked it yet? I am in the... So that's what a lot of my money is going towards. It doesn't take much. It takes a couple hundred bucks to trademark something.

Okay. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You don't need to hire some company and pay them $10,000. You didn't hire one of those stupid invention companies, did you? I did not. Good. Okay. All right. So where are you going to sell the game, online or distributed through some stores?

So I'm going to start at my old college. I stayed in my college town because it has to do with football. I went to an SEC school, so it's the perfect demographic. Yeah, LSU fans are rabid fans. It'll work. I like it. Okay. to an SEC school, so it's the perfect demographic. Yeah, LSU fans are rabid fans. It'll work. I like it. Okay.

That's a good place to start. I love it. Tap into the religion, baby. All right. Now, so what does it take to produce one? So it's going to be our minimum order quantity for a manufacturing firm that I've been speaking to is about 500. They're going to have to outsource certain parts of the product. So we're looking around $32,000 to have our minimum order quantity get to the states.

Okay. You haven't finished your research yet. That's absurd. $32,000 for 500 units well it's it's uh it's pretty large it's um kind of without the trademark i'll give you no don't don't don't don't give me your secrets i'm not talking about that but here's the thing okay um we've done board games we do products here all the time uh some of them we build in the States. Some of them we build out of the States.

We no longer deal with China, but we did years ago. So I've done a lot of what you're doing. And here's a couple things I know for sure. One is your game is going to change. You're dealing with a prototype, and it will iterate after you get it in the marketplace so don't over order on your first order it's okay to pay a little bit more per and even dumb down some of the parts and let's get the thing into the market and get it making a little money if you can set up a reasonable cost of goods sold which you've not found yet that's very high um if you can set up a reasonable cost of goods sold per unit you've not found yet. That's very high.

If you can set up a reasonable cost of goods sold per unit, what are you thinking of retailing this thing for, by the way? About $125. Ooh, okay. So it's not your typical board game. This is serious. So it's more of a tabletop game. Think more cornhole-esque.

It's not like a Monopoly board. I got you okay yeah yeah thank you that's helpful all right yeah so uh yeah so moving up 500 of those units is a lot yes sir and i think you will i think you will discover okay i'll give you an example we have a rachel cruz wallet all right okay that we have someone out there had it that we have sold a billion we've sold a billion of them okay and that wallet that wallet has changed the the design of it the the quality of the zipper the snaps has changed almost every time we've done it i think this is the fourth or fifth iteration of the wallet. Okay? Each time it's gotten better because when we put it out in the wild,

it stress tested it, and we found what didn't work, what the customer didn't like. We had zipper gate here. We had a big blow up of bad zippers about five years ago. It's not the current ones. No, and the current ones are fine. But we did go through a quality thing with the one of the vendors we were sourcing on and it's just part of doing a product you you can't but when you so when you put your thing in the market the way the

thing moves or one of the gear shifts or one of the thing is going to end up stress testing and not working and you're going to end up changing it so i don't want you to have to throw away 400 of them because the first hundred you discovered something that is a pretty major change you want to do, okay, especially when you're paying as much per unit as you're paying. We cried when we threw away all those wallets, and we weren't paying anywhere near what you were paying, okay? But we had to throw them away.

So anyway, that's an example. We did the act your wage board game, which is nowhere near as expensive or as cool as what you're doing. And I think it's sunsetted. I think it's gone. Oh, is it? I believe. There may be some in the store left.

But anyway, it's been around for a while. It kind of ran its course. So the point is we have discovered the hard way is that you're going to change it a little bit, enough that you don't want to have heavy quantities on hand from your first two or maybe even three runs. If you can set up a cost-of-good-sold that works on a smaller amount, flip it around, and turn it over, then what you can do is you could literally buy 10 of them, sell those, knowing that you've got a four-week turnaround on the

others, and go ahead and take the orders for the other ones. You don't have to have them in stock to take the orders legally. Now, you have to be able to get them within six weeks, Federal Trade Commission, back to the customer, but you don't have to have them on your shelf. So if you've got a production time of three weeks, you can take the them on your shelf. So if you've got a production time of three weeks, you can take the orders off the 10 or 20 that you've got floating around and the thing will self-fund and you don't have to go screw up your parents' life to do your idea here. Organically grow this out on entrepreneurially. I love what you're doing. I just would never do that to your parents. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for being with us, America. The back-to-school hustle usually brings with it a time to reflect on your goals. Now we're back

into the normal rhythm of life. Maybe I need to reset my finances. Maybe I need some help with some other things. Maybe I need to reset my job, my career. Well, we have a huge sale going on here in August with all the fan favorites. Smart Money, Smart Kids, the first number one bestseller that Rachel did. And she and I did that together. It was a big hit on teaching your kids how to handle money. Rachel's next number one bestseller, Know Yourself, Know Your Money, or that was the last one, wasn't it? Yeah.

Second or third? Third. She's got so many, I can't keep up with them. Total Money Makeover, a couple, a little over 10 million copies of that in print. Thank you. Number one forever. And Baby Step Millionaires, my latest number one

about what the baby steps have led people to be millionaires. All of this is on sale. Be sure and check it out. RamseySolutions.com slash sale. Hit the store, baby. You'll find it all. Don is with us in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Don.

How are you? Hello. I'm well. Thanks for taking my call, guys. Sure. What's up? So in 2020, I bought a property as a primary resident, and I had to move for a job. So I got a tenant in the property with a property manager.

But I'm looking to sell the property this next coming spring. My question is, when do I let the tenant know? And also, should I keep the property manager as a realtor or should I go with my normal realtor? You should go with a high octane, high producing realtor that sells 30 to 300 houses a year. Do either one of those people fit that mold? The realtor I normally use has 22 sales in the last 12 months. She's been doing it for 35 years. Yeah, medium. At least she's not a beginner. But, I mean, she's not killing it. That's a couple units a month.

She may choose to do that if she's been doing it for that long that may be that may be her retirement plan i don't know but uh um you know i like people that crank stuff so i want and i bet your property manager is not selling any so i don't use the property manager probably as far as the tenant goes you can give them as much or as little notice as you want do you have a lease with them? The lease ends at the end of January. Okay. Is that when you're going to put it on the market? I was thinking of putting it on the market in the spring, like April or May.

Okay. Well, I would let them know as soon as you want to. I mean, certainly before the end of January you'd let them know. And just go, hey, I'm going to be putting the house on the market in the spring. I want to let you know that. If you want to stay past the January, we'll do that on a month-to-month, as long as you keep the place clean and it's accessible to be shown. If you don't want to stay in that situation, I understand.

And if they don't, then I just plan on putting it on the market at the end of January, not in the spring, if they bail on then i just plan on putting it on the market at the end of january not in the spring if they bail on you okay okay so you would actually recommend shopping around for a different realtor yeah yeah i mean it's okay you're interviewing someone what's the house worth um 310 okay i'm interviewing a marketing consultant to handle a $300,000 transaction. Yeah, I can talk to more than one. I surely would, yeah. But she had a lot of integrity, and she was very helpful with the purchase. That's kind of the reason why I don't want to just, you know. Well, it's up to you.

But, I mean, you don't have a – it's interesting, Don. You are a very kind person and a gentle person, and you're very concerned about what everyone in this transaction, how they feel, how the tenant feels, how the real estate agent feels, how the property manager feels. I don't struggle with that disease. I couldn't care less how they feel. Dave needs a little bit of Don, you know. I need to be a little more like you

don i need to be a little nicer no i mean i can be kind to them but their feelings are not going to motivate me and how we do this transaction we're going to do the transaction gently kindly with courage clarity integrity and we can do all of that no one has to be abused it doesn't be a toxic environment but uh you know uh what what you know the person that has been around the deal doesn't necessarily mean they get the deal and so if you want to take her that's fine that's fine but yeah and a good place don if you wanted just to check it out you can go to ramsey solutions.com slash agents and our um trusted pros are you know they're all over the country as real estate agents too uh because that's an idea go get one of those and talk to them just just yeah yeah phone call

one or two of them and compare her and then it's great like it's yeah and let me change this let's pretend you had a job and your boss at your job said hey hey, Don, I need you to sell this thing for the company. It's $300,000. I need you to go get a marketing consultant to do it, and I need you to interview a couple of them and get me the best one. Pretend like that's how this is going down instead of like Don is trying to navigate his feelings on this. No. I mean, your job, God owns this this property your job is to do a good job

stewarding managing this asset and to get the best people to help you do that at this moment in time and the best way you would do that is you would always interview more than one and so any of you that are thinking about using ramsey trusted or smart investor pros interview more than one talk to them them. It's okay. It doesn't cost something to talk to somebody. And then pick out the one that fits you guys the best, fits your style of doing things the best, and that you feel like is going to perform.

Edward is in Memphis. Hi, Edward. How are you? Hi, Mr. Dave. This is Donald from Memphis, or Edward from Memphis. And I had a home insurance question, but I actually had that question answered. But I do have a comment that I wanted to make, and that is that I'm totally out of debt. My home is paid in full, car is paid off,

it only has 40,000 miles on it, no credit card debt, and I have an emergency fund. Way to go, man. Good for you. Way to go. Thank you, thank you. And I just wanted to let you know that I learned a long time ago from Larry Burkett to get out of debt, stay out of debt, pay cash for purchases, and have an emergency fund. I also learned those things from you, and I want to thank you for that. Well, I learned a lot of it from Larry myself. Bless his heart and rest his soul. He was a good friend and a good man,

and he started the whole movement in the evangelical world on biblical financial teaching. And he, Ron Blue, Howard Dayton, all friends, Howard and Ron, are still with us. And Larry passed, of course, many years ago but uh thank you for that edward i'm glad for you i'm happy for you way to go hero that's very very cool open phones here at 888-825-5225 you know rachel i'm thinking um i was talking to some of our folks internally on a project the other day and it kind of goes back to our discussion about Don with the real estate agents. Decision-making paradigms, decision-making frameworks are very important to help you make wise decisions. Now, one framework that you need to avoid is what we call a fatalistic framework, And that is, there's two possible things I can do in this situation, and both of them suck.

And I'm stuck. If you ever face that situation, you go, and, you know, both of these are bad ideas, and I got to choose between them. What that means is you're not stuck. You're only stuck between your ears. What that means is you've got to look for other options you got to scratch claw figure something else out you got to get some other way out of this thing some other way at this thing some other way to skin this cat and you you really have to lean into getting more and more options when you are making decisions back to don's point options are power because they give you confidence when you've researched the market if you're getting ready to

rent a property and you go oh there's only one house for rent you're so full of crap you're just in love with a house go take a cold shower oh my gosh well we hear the same with you know student loans we'll have a 18 year old call well the only way I can go to the school is if I took out loans. So what I do is just not go to school. And it's like, well, let's look at other options. What school choice? What school choice? Or, you know, working scholarships.

I mean, like what's taking a gap year, waiting? You know, I mean, like there's other options out there. And so, yeah, when people call in with like, well, this is all I can do. So I'm in a corner. To your point, you make really bad financial decisions when there's not options. More options, more power, more confidence, more wisdom. And if it feels like it's going to go bad, you know why? It's going to go bad.

That's why it feels that way. The simple see trouble and keep going forward. The wise avoid it. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. Tatiana is with us in Phoenix, Arizona. Hi, Tatiana. How are you? Hello. I'm doing good. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? I feel like I'm in a really bad situation right now. I have been dating my boyfriend for five years. My parents want me to give him an ultimatum, but I don't agree with that. So yeah, I just want some clarity. I don't really know what to do. I feel like I've been pretty stressed about the whole situation right now. And the ultimatum is, I'm assuming marriage or not is what your parents are saying. Break up or marriage kind of thing. Correct. And you don't want that ultimatum? I do not. No, I don't agree with it. Why? I just feel like it's more about me and what i want versus what is actually best for the

relationship like when i think about an ultimatum i think about a spoiled child just telling mom and dad i need this and i need it now and it's just not what i want like it's just not what i feel like it's right yeah well putting them in a corner, I could see being like, oh my gosh, I mean, they're like forcing you to marry me or something. And I want you to do it out of your own will. But also you're in a relationship with someone for five years that hasn't moved forward, you know? So like, that's odd too, right? Absolutely. I think, you know, that's what I think that both sides have their points. Like I do see where my parents are coming from. And I do agree with some of the things they say.

Tatiana, how old are you? I am 27. Okay. Your parents don't get a vote in your life. You know that, right? You're an adult. How can we help you? I think I just need clarity to see what I could do.

So when I talk to my boyfriend about marriage, right, I guess I just don't know what to think, to be honest, because I do see that both sides are right. So when I talk to my boyfriend about it. No, there's not a side here, okay? There's Tatiana is worth being pursued, and she's not being pursued. Yeah. When I met Sharon Ramsey 43 years ago,

I couldn't keep my hands off of her. Okay. Jeez. Yeah. I closed the deal, man. I wasn't letting that one get away. Right? Right?

You're worth being pursued. Rachel's my daughter. She's embarrassed right now, but oh well. She has no idea how she got here, apparently. So, so, we're having a meltdown in the studio, Tatiana for you so here's the thing dr john deloney dr john deloney says that um behavior is a language yeah what people say doesn't matter as much as

what they do and this guy needs to paint or get off the ladder. You're worth that. That's not you being a spoiled child. The reason you entered into a relationship is not to hold status quo. You entered in a relationship to move the relationship forward and to grow. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

And it's not growing. It's frozen in time because he's scared or he's not whatever so i i don't know that you have to give him an ultimatum but i think you need to speak clearly to him uh as to um what was it rachel y'all used to call it like when y'all were teenagers like define the relationship or something we need to talk about where this is where this is going where's this going yeah and Tatiana what do you want that's my question to you I mean do you like what do you want who cares you know your parents are saying one thing he's saying something but like do you long to have a marriage with someone and start a family and live your life I mean if that's what you like think about what want, not what everyone else is going to perceive. What do you want?

Yeah, I think that's like the main question, too. I have had conversations with them about it, like where is this going? And I have been pretty clear. I think the hard part, and this is where I'm struggling, too, is because I am in grad school right now. And we have been long distance for this whole time because I have in grad school right now. And we have been long distance for this whole time because I have been in school. And we also have an age gap, which none of this sounds great. I know.

You guys are probably thinking this lady's crazy. No, we're not. Not yet. I might get there, but not yet. I think being in grad school and pursuing my PhD makes me feel like I'm just, I have so much to think about that I can't imagine having a child right now. Oh, sure.

We didn't ask you to have a kid. No. We're just talking about getting married. Just say in the future. Yeah, for sure. I definitely want to get married and I want to have kids. I want to start my family. And I just feel like it's, like right now I feel like I have so much going on.

And I think that he says the same thing, and that's what worries me, that it could be an excuse. He has made it clear that, like not clear. How old is he? He is in his early 40s. Okay, and what's he make? What's his income? Let's call him John.

Okay. What does he make? What does he make? Yeah, what's he make? What's his income? Let's call him John. Okay. What does he make? What does he make? Yeah. What's his income? I'm sorry. What was that? What is his income?

What does he make? Like 80 to 100. What's he do for a living? I don't want to say it, but it's a government job. Okay, that's fine. Works for the government. Yeah. And what are you studying for your PhD?

I am in a mental health. It's a psychology program. Okay, the answer to your question that you called us about is in your psych book. I know, and that's what makes me so upset because I'm like, I should know. I should know. And that is anything that's not growing is dying, and behavior is a language. And if you were the queen of his world, he would have already put a ring on it kiddo so he needs to uh you know you want somebody's crazy about you that's pursuing you don't you well that sounds so casual and so well

that and sure and the same values as well like that that's the bottom line too um it's like well yeah what do you value in life? And it may be different. And that's really sad that, you know, it would be an end of a five-year relationship. And for you, you started in your early 20s dating this guy. So it would be a big change for you. And it would, you know, I mean, it's terrible and sad because you probably thought, oh my gosh,

this is my life with him. But at the end of the day, you're learning, we don't have the same values and that's not going to work long term. That's not going to make Tatiana happy long term. I mean, you have your entire life still ahead of you and finding someone that values and is in a similar mindset of how life is and relationships and all of that is going to just benefit you.

And this isn't doing that. Yeah. I don't know that it's necessarily an ultimatum of we get married or we're done, but it does, there does need to be a, an ultimatum of we need to get lined up on a trajectory here. This trajectory feels like it's leveled off, plateaued, stuck in status quo, stuck in the ditch. And we need to start moving towards something at some pace that we're both talking about because that otherwise the behavior is you are saying with your behavior you don't want me yes and some of the caution to Tatiana from him or you is I mean when you talk about marriage that's serious and marriage doesn't just fix

everything so my question would also be what else is going on in the relationship you know if there are other red flags because I think some people just feel like rushed into marriage because it's just what you do next but you don't have to marry them right i mean like there is something to be said that maybe as you start digging into this you're like oh wow this if you're gonna be a therapist what would you tell you if they were on the other side of the desk the other side of the couch you would tell you the same thing we're telling you right now because you're you're you know you know what to do you've already studied all this stuff now you've just got to apply it to your life and the problem is it hurts because it might mean that this doesn't that this isn't going to end well it might there's a there's

a risk of that but the behavior is a language when someone will not get off the ladder and they will not paint they need to choose paint or get off the ladder. And that's what they need to do. And that behavior is a language. It's saying something to you. His words don't matter compared to his actions. Read the tea leaves. And then, yeah, I'm going to define this relationship. Might not ultimatum it, but I would define it. You're worth that.

This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Hebrews 11.6. It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. Dolly Parton says, find out who you are and do it on purpose. I like that. Gotta love Miss Dolly. Harry is in Port Huron, Michigan. Hi, Harry.

How are you? I'm in a lot of pain, Dave. I really don't even want to get out of bed these days. Oh, my gosh. What's wrong? I'm 60 a lot of pain, Dave. I really don't even want to get out of bed these days. Oh, my gosh. What's wrong? I'm 60 years old. I'm blind. I'm on Social Security.

And about six months ago, Dave, I was praying about my finances, and God put something in my mind I would have never thought myself. He said, Harry, what happened in 1860? I said, well, there were slaves. He said, well, what did the slave owners say? And they said, I said, well, Lord, I don't know. I don't remember. What did they say? I studied it. He said, they said, we'll house you, we'll feed you, we'll clothe you, we'll give you medical treatment for free. Just don't run away. Just stay in slavery. I said, God, what does it have to do with me? And he said, Harry, you are in financial slavery to the government.

I want you out of it. I want you out of any government program that asks you how much money do you have and anything like that on the application. So he said, I want you out of Medicaid. I want you out of food stamps. And I have done that. But I'm in a bad situation now with not those, but where I live, Dave. I live in a HUD housing, low-income housing. And they have really tightened up on income reporting now they used to

be more lenient and now they're saying instead of $200 in a month if you make any kind of income they're saying even if it's $10 a month or whatever and they raise your social your Social Security goes up your rent goes up and now they're even getting to the point where it's saying penny for penny if you make any money at all we're going to raise your rent and i've been saying to god lord i've done what you told me to do um i don't know where to go from here i love living here for me as a blind person i can walk to the store and i don't get hit by cars or you know there's stop streets but no lights we've had many blind people how long you've been blind here

all my life okay what did you do for a career throughout your throughout your life i didn't i didn't um how did you exist just with the social security your whole life you've lived on your whole life yeah you know try to make good decisions and i have a chance now to make a lot of money um and you do don't i don't know if it's going to be a job or if it's taking this money that i have this debt-free snowball that you mentioned and i could do some good things with that for myself and uh wait a minute i'm sorry but i'm sorry i'm in a real what money where's what is this it's uh well when you talk about the debt-free snowball when you're out of debt yeah and debt-free you can take that money and do something with it oh so you have debt currently i'm working my way out. How much debt do you have currently?

$1,200 left. Good. Okay. And then when you're debt-free, what are you going to do? I want to take that money and, well, two things, 25% into my emergency fund, and then I want to put the other 25 into this fund that I'm trying to create or get some kind of employment either way. I got you.

So you are, I assume you read Braille. Yes, I do. And I assume you keyboard. Yes. Okay. All right. So what have you explored as career options to get you out, to get you off Social Security? Because Section 8 housing when you're on Social Security is not a bad gig,

but you're saying God told me to lift up and out of that. And so I guess the way we do that is we find some income, right? That's right. And I want to take this fund. I want to take this idea. God's been talking to me about six months now about take this instead of wasting money, take this after you get debt free, take this fund or take this money and create something with it. Okay, I'm good with that.

But I'm really scared because I'm in a good spot where I live. I have a grocery store two blocks away, and I don't get hit. We've had blind people hit by cars. You can live next door and not be in Section 8 and go make $100,000 a year. I mean, so there's nothing to be afraid of. If you go make some money, you've still got choices to live in places where you don't get hit by cars and where the community is handy for you to get to the grocery store and so forth. You can still choose that. Section 8 is not the only way to accomplish that goal.

But what you do have to do is you have to create some income from somewhere in order to step up and out. And I applaud you for your spirit. Way to go. Pretty incredible. If I were in your shoes, what I would do, since you're referencing your discussions with God a lot, I'm going to try to get a good pastor, a good church in the area that I can get some community around me to help me judge some of the ideas that I've got and help me apply some of those ideas in the marketplace. If you've got some kind of small business idea or something you're

thinking of or a product, I don't know what it is. Um, and, or help you get into a position that you can do that you keyboard. And there's, you're obviously a bright guy. You can do a lot of stuff. So you are not, uh, destined to live in section eight on social security but i think you need community it's not good that man be alone and to bounce ideas around and to help you lift up and to help encourage you and pull you along and i and the way i found good community is good church on that and so god's people and god's people are not perfect some of them are crazy but uh but but they are helpful most of them and um and they do enjoy having someone like you in their life and so i'd

plug into that and um then i would begin a steady path uh to income into a career that lifted me out of that i think you're incredible way Way to go. Terry's in Atlanta, Georgia. Hi, Terry. How are you? Hey, Dave. I'm doing great. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. How can we help? Hey, Dave. So my grandfather owned a lot of land and left it for his 10 children, including my mother. And my mother passed, so I inherited her portion of the land. You're an only child? No, I have a brother. So me and my brother, we inherited our mother's portion of the land. Right.

And it appraised for $500,000, but there are nine other co-owners of the land right and it appraised for five hundred thousand dollars but there are nine other co-owners of the land how do we factor this into our network what's happening with the land what are y'all going to do with it uh it's going to be put in a trust and um right now is it's really nothing no no, no immediate plans for it. You're just going to say who's going to pay the taxes. Oh, we're all paying the taxes jointly. Okay. All right.

Well, your mom owned 10%. So you and your brother each own 5% on $500,000. That's 25,000 bucks. Okay. That's your net worth. But there's nothing you can do with it because you can't get to the money. Wait, the whole land is $500,000, Terry? Or that's your mom's portion?

The entire piece of property is priced for $500,000. So each of the 10 children got one-tenth. That'd be $50,000. Your mom's portion was $50,000, and that means your brother and you have a $25,000 portion each today in value. Now, it could go up in value. And don't pay 10% each, you and your brother. You pay 5% of the taxes. The other – your uncles and aunts pay 10%.

They own a tenth. Right. You follow me? So, yeah, I mean, let's just keep that going i i um i think it would be better for everyone involved if we develop some kind of a plan for turning this land into money at some point it's hard to split up dirt and i'm not real fond of y'all sticking in a trust because that sounds like he's going to sit there forever and then eventually somebody's going to be mad because nobody did nothing

it's a lot of people yeah there's a lot of humans involved in this story and that's a opportunity for a trip Rachel's exactly right so but that's your deal that's your that's what your value is five percent of it because you got half of a tenth. There we go. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Thank you.