The Ramsey Show - App - Break Free From Money Stress in Your Marriage (Hour 1)

Episode Date: July 5, 2018

The show about you

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is your show, America. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Jay's with us in Canada.

Hi, Jay. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I'll be heading down to the States for university in October. I'm looking to work part-time there

and, you know, make a little money on the side. My question is, like, how would I maximize my savings during those three and a half years so that I'm well off, like, after graduation? Okay. How are you paying for school? I'll actually be going through a loan because it's something that my parents and I can't really out a way to completely go through college debt-free, which is really what you ought to do.

Your first goal is to not go into debt for college long before building up savings. Is that logical? Yeah. Yeah, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to try to save it. I'm going to use the money to go through school um and to either limit the amount of debt that you take out um you know but but certainly you know the thing i always teach people is to try to is to not try but to figure out a way to go through college debt free april is with us

in seattle hi april how are you hi dave thank you for taking my call sure what's up um so my question is first i've been you know uh someone turned me into you about 10 years ago uh before i married my husband we've married five years he's in the military and i just became a gs employee um earlier this year okay our household income's about. It's probably going to go up to about $115, $120 by the end of this year. Great. He had a promotion, and I did, too. Thank you. So my question, since he's really not, I had to direct him as to move his TSP to Roth

from reading your books and listening to your show. Good. And so my question is, how do we allocate our TSP to which fund appropriately? Since we don't have kids, we don't have any debt, we give to the church, and we might have kids later, we're not sure. We're in our mid-30s. Yeah. Well, you need to have your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Do you have that?

That's done, yes. Good, good. We have about 30 to 40K each on the bank. Yeah, you're doing great. Well done. Very well done. Well, when we're doing with the Roth, as you said, with TSP, the first thing I want you to do is do the Roth version.

And then the second thing is I put 60% into the C plan, 20% into the S, and 20% into the I. Now, the S and the I have not done as well recently, and some people are converting that, and they're going 80-10-10, 80 into the C. Yes, I've heard that, too. And 10 into the S and 10 into the I. Either one of those are fine. I don't do the L plans at all. That's the automatic pilot thing that moves it around based on how old you are.

And I don't want the government deciding all of that. And you don't do the G. That's just a lame-o fund. It's not doing anything at all. But the C is the best one in there by far. But the S is the small company. C is like a growth stock mutual fund. It's like an S&P 500.

Okay. Oh, okay. That's about what it looks like. The S is like an aggressive growth fund. It's your small company funds. And the I is your international. Okay. And so of the three, usually the international is the lowest performing of the three, and the International is the lowest performing of the three,

and the C is the highest performing. But you can go back and look at the track record on those and see what they've done over the last 10 years, and you'll see why I picked that that way. Very cool. All right, Brian's with us in Charlottesville. Hey, Brian, how are you? How good are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? I have a question. I'm a fairly new listener, and over the last couple of days, you've talked about annuities and kind of avoid them. Someone talked me into a financial advisor a couple years ago, and that was one of the things that he basically sold us. We have a very low annuity that he sold it,

and we've been in it about two years. Should I try to get out of that somehow? It looks like there's some fees to do that, and I'm just kind of curious. Yeah. How's it performing? It's terrific. I mean, I'd say about over that time it probably be about, I'd say, 5% to 8%. Okay.

Well, the variable annuity is basically mutual fund options inside of an annuity. Okay. And so if you don't like the options and you're going to stay in a little while to avoid the surrender charges, which is probably what you're going to end up doing. Because at two years in, you're probably going to get hammered by them with surrender charges if you get out. It was like $15,000 or $16,000. Out of how much is invested? About $150,000.

Okay, so about a 10% surrender charge. That's pretty substantial. So, you know, here's what I would look at. See if there's some other options inside the variable annuity that you can move the money to that will perform better. Then the other thing you can do, if not, is you say, okay, let's do some quick math. All right. If this thing is performing at five and they're going to charge me a 10% penalty, but I could move it to something that is making, I'll just use round numbers, going to make 10, okay?

Okay. Then it would take you two years to break even on having moved it, right? Right. So it probably is not going to work out in that case because that 10% penalty is so high. When does that go away, do you know? I think it said 10 years so we still have like eight years to go oh really the surrender charge doesn't go away for 10 years pretty sure i'll just double check but that's what i said that's unusual that's very unusual

usually seven years is the max and most of them put you in a seven-year plan, but the surrender charge goes away a little bit at a time. But once the surrender charge gets to be small enough that you can offset it with increased performance by moving it, then you would look at moving it. And you probably need to sit down with somebody and have them actually crunch some numbers out and look at the details of this for you. If you want to do that and you don't have a good broker in your corner, just go to DaveRamsey.com and click on SmartVestor and put your name and stuff in there,

and it will drop down a list of the SmartVestor pros in your area that we recommend. And you can choose then which one you want to use, but they're all people that we recommend. We're not in the business. We don't have anybody that works for me that can sit down with you. But these are people that we endorse. And they are going to give you advice that's consistent with the way I look at this issue and the way I look at this investing stuff. So if you're doing an IRA rollover or you've got a situation where you're stuck in a variable annuity,

that kind of thing, you can look at it with somebody and they can help you work through and decide whether to stick with it and ride out the surrender charge or whether to go ahead and take the hit and move for the increased performance of a better investment. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Folks, the real estate market is on fire all over the country. If you're looking to buy a home and you need a mortgage, don't sell yourself short by going and getting a typical pre-approval. That's a false sense of security, and it's just not good enough in today's fast-moving market. Instead, call Churchill Mortgage and get their certified homebuyer program.

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Today's question comes from Denzel in Arkansas. I'm a full-time college student with a year and a half left. I'm on baby step two. I want to start a Roth IRA while I'm still in school, but I will have loans to pay off once I graduate. Is it a good idea to start a Roth even though I will be paying off loans soon? No, it is not. We teach people to not start their investing until they're debt-free. Baby step one is $1,000 saved. Baby step two is debt-free, everything but the house. Baby step three, which comes after two,

is put three to six months of your income aside as for emergencies. And then baby step four is start your investing, 15% of your income going into retirement, and that's what you would do. So you'd be debt-free, have your emergency fund in place before you start your investing, Denzel. So glad you want to invest. I'm glad you're thinking about it as a college student. I wasn't smart enough to even think about that stuff back then,

but I was looking for some get-rich-quick thing. So you're smart to be think about that stuff back then but i was looking for some get rich quick thing but uh you're so you're smart to be thinking about it but the shortest path to wealth is to be debt free because when you don't have any payments you have money and you have the power of your most powerful wealth building tool at that point in your control which is your income not only is your stress greatly reduced and not only do you greatly reduced, and not only do you make better decisions, and not only do you make better job interviews, because you don't have the stress of money around your neck, you're not desperate, but all of that says that with that emergency fund in place and debt-free,

then you're able to accelerate the whole wealth-building thing, and it changes the path. The shortest path to wealth is debt-free and so i'm going to take you there first every time cheryl is with us in pittsburgh hi cheryl how are you hi dave i'm great thank you how are you better than i deserve what's up well first i want to say thank you um because of listening to you starting a little over a year ago my husband and i started to get our finances in order and um started wanting to to get out of debt and so then this past march happened where my husband lost his job he was was the primary breadwinner in the family. We didn't panic because we had some money put aside. We were on debt free, but something, you know, the Holy

Spirit told me that something was coming. And instead of paying off this Parent PLUS loan, I was to save this money. And I did. So I didn't do anything with it and we have about now still about $45,000 in the bank. The question is, it's been now over three months, he is looking as hard as he can. He's trying to do other things on the side and make, you know, connections that might generate some side gig thing in the meantime. But some things have come up beyond just tweaking his resume and stuff, where headhunters are saying, well, for a fee like $3,000 or even up to $7,000, we pay them instead of them being paid by the employer. And we just don't know. It's just scary, scary for me to give up that much percentage-wise of what we've got.

They're wanting the money up front, not upon landing the job? I guess that wasn't really clearly stood out. It made it sound like in order to work with him that we would have to pay that and then they would work on his behalf. I'll pass on that idea if we pay him up front. But to give them a hit upon the hire would be reasonable in my mind. But, no, I don't need to pay somebody up front and then just hope they perform in this situation.

You don't have that as an option. So what field is your husband in? What space is he in? Well, he worked for one of the major communications carriers, and so IT, communications, data, all that sort of thing. So he was making $125,000 to $150,000, so it's not like those kind of jobs are just not everywhere, you know? And so it's been a lot harder. And frankly, harder than we even thought because he's been in the business for almost 30 years and thought that based on his experience.

I mean, just doing management in that area or was he? He's a sales account manager for sales, but mainly sales. I guess primarily sales. But he was an account executive. And, you know, we had such an outpouring, you know, when he was let go. I mean, his customers were mad and they went on LinkedIn and they put in all kinds of great, wonderful things. And we just really didn't expect this to last this long. But obviously this is something we're just meant to um yeah

we're just supposed to follow through he's 54 okay so we're in here here's the thing i the only thing that i hear in this that and um i don't know a lot about selling in the space he's selling in i do know this the selling is one of the best and most marketable possible skills he could have. It might be that you expand and say, you know, how about he could sell anything? Because if you can sell, you can sell. Selling is about building relationships. Selling is about serving. Selling is about finding the needs of the customer and figuring out if your product serves them and if it does, showing them how, and they buy.

And, you know, he's obviously been good at that in the technical arena and if you can expand that idea in your search um it might be that he finds something else to apply those talents in that makes him more money it wouldn't be unusual at all because selling is actually one of the best paid of all professions. There's so few people that can do it well at the scale that, obviously, your husband's done it. He's managed large accounts, and he's done some technical sales, and those are very difficult. And so it sounds to me like he's got some pretty marketable skills. If he might need to broaden it out past the technical view. I don't know. But I'm just always excited about a person who can sell because I think that that has a lot of opportunity in the marketplace typically.

But yeah, I wouldn't pay somebody up front to answer your question if it were me. Hudson's with us in San Antonio. Hi, Hudson. How are you? I'm doing well. And yourself? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, my question for you is, I am getting ready to join the United States Air Force here in the next month or so.

And I'm trying to weigh the financial pros and cons of the housing options that we have. With the Air Force, I am married. I'm 27 years old. With the Air Force, if you're married, they provide on-base housing for you free of cost. Or the other option is if you decide to live off-base, they give you a housing allowance each month. Correct. Your rent, mortgage, utilities, and so on.

Correct. So my wife and I were in the process of trying to get rid of our debts, and I'm trying to basically weigh the pros and cons of should I try and rent something off base for less than what the housing allowance is so that I can apply that extra money each month towards paying off debts? To start with, thank you for your service to the country. You should not buy a home in most cases when you're in the military until you've been in the military long enough that they're going to leave you put in an area. As you enter this as your entry-level career, they're going to move you every two years probably or sooner. And it becomes a nightmare to own a home in those scenarios because you get stuck with a home everywhere you've been stationed

because you can't get them sold, and you end up with these rental properties dotted all over the map, and you don't want to do that. So, no, I would rent as cheaply as I can. I would also rent as cheaply as I can in your case because you're not out of debt, and you're trying to get out of debt. And you can analyze the quality of the base housing in each situation and determine if that's what you want to do or if you want to live off base and take the allowance. Most married people do.

But, you know, some of the base housing is excellent. So you can look at that and then make the decision. But, no, I would not buy in your situation. Thanks, Hudson. Hey, this is Dave Ramsey. You know, most of us have gotten behind on our bills at one time or another. That's nothing to be ashamed of. It happens. And many of us know the embarrassment that comes with those harassing calls from collectors.

Some of these guys are just scum. But then there are the collectors that are just plain crooks. These are the guys that take it a step further, and they violate the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act on a daily basis. They're breaking the law, and they need to be stopped. The truth is, debt collection is the most abusive, out-of-control industry in America today. But you don't have to put up with it. If you have collectors calling you multiple times a day,

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Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Paul and Shannon are with us in Springfield, Massachusetts. Hey, guys, how are you? Hi, Dave. Hi, Dave, how are you? Hi. Hey, welcome, welcome.

I see on my screen you're debt-free. Congratulations. Yes, we are. Love it. How much have you paid off? $35,000 in 23 months. Very good. And your range of income during that time?

$95,000 to $100,000. Very cool. What do you guys do for a living? I'm a truck driver, a gasoline hauler. Shannon works for the school. Okay. Very cool. Well, congratulations, you guys. What kind of debt was the $35,000?

It was a car loan, a camper loan, which is what got us basically started on your plan, and also a credit card. Okay, cool. So how did the camper loan get you started? Tell me the story. Well, it was kind of like the best worst thing that we ever bought because um our budget got so tight and um that's when we we've been a long time listener and um we realized after buying the camper that we both needed to finally get on the same page to be able to do this and make things work okay so it tightened you up and stressed you out, and you said, okay, now I can't be a listener anymore. Now I've got to be a doer.

Exactly. That's right. Okay, cool. So whose idea was that, Shannon? Yours or Paul's? Well, in the beginning, when we first started listening to you, it was his idea, and we just weren't on the same page. And then when it got to be where we bought the camper,

it just was stressful in our marriage. And, yeah, it was just scary, and we didn't want to be that way anymore, you know. So, yeah. So then you looked at it and said, okay, I'm going to do this stuff. We're going to get on it together. That's right. Exactly. Cool.

So did you sell the camper? We tried to. We got a couple low-ball offers, and we're like, not going to take that much of a loss on it. So we figured we would just buckle down and pay off as much as we could and get it paid off as quick as we could. Okay. And so I'm seeing the pictures of it showing up on the YouTube channel. It looks like it's a big fifth wheel, right? It's actually a travel trailer.

Oh, it's a trailer, okay. Yeah. Wow, very cool. Okay, so $35,000 in 23 months, so you averaged about $1,500 a month. How did you do that? What do you tell people the secret to getting out of debt is? Definitely being on the same page and doing our budget every month together envelopes and the envelope system

so shannon you adopted the envelopes at home and used them for groceries and that kind of stuff oh yes i use it for everything i love it we get laughed at pulling out our envelopes everywhere we go yeah i get laughed at too and i envelopes everywhere we go. Yeah, I get laughed at, too, and I'm a multimillionaire. It worked out for me. Exactly. We don't care. That's right. That's exactly right.

Laugh all the way at the bank. That's right. Broke people making fun of your financial plan means you're on track, kiddo. Exactly. That's right. Well done, you guys. Congratulations. Very proud of you.

Excellent job. Man, that is just awesome. How does it feel now to have no payments? It's amazing. Very empowering. Yes, freeing. Gosh, it's hard to explain unless you've been there, right? Yeah.

How long have you guys been married? Where we're headed. How long have you guys been married? 21 years. Well, we're headed. How long have you guys been married? 21 years. Well, we've been together that long. We'll be celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary, the 21st of this month. Got it.

Cool. Have you guys ever been debt-free since you were married? No, sir. Nope. This is the first time. So a whole new ground you're breaking here. It sure is. Very cool. Exciting. Well, congratulations. We're very new ground you're breaking here. It sure is. Very cool.

Exciting. Well, congratulations. We're very proud for you, very proud of you. Well done. We've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book, Retire Inspired, for you. I want that to be the next chapter in your story where you're millionaires now and you're outrageously generous along the way because your most powerful wealth-building tool, your income, is now in your control. Just think if you invest all that money you were paying on a camper payment, how rich you're going to be.

Yes. That's where you're headed. That's the real world. If you stay in control and stick with it, are you going to stick with it? Oh, you bet. Absolutely. We're excited about it. I love it.

Don't try it right now. Very cool. Well, congratulations, you guys. All right. It's Paul and Shannon. And did I hear another voice in the background? Caitlin. Did I hear your daughter or son or something?

Caitlin. Caitlin. How old are you, Caitlin? Nine. Cool. Have you been practicing the debt-free scream to do it with your parents? No. Well, kind of.

Kind of. Okay. All right. Well, we're going to hand the phone back to them. We're going to do our debt-free scream. I love it. All right. Paul, Shannon, and Caitlin.

Springfield, Massachusetts, $35,000 paid off in 23 months, making $95,000 to $100,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're going to pay! I love it. Well done, you guys. Very, very well done.

Open phones this hour at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. How do you pronounce this, Kelly? I can't even think about how to say this. All right, Marisa Bell. Is that right? Or Marisa Bell?

Did I say it right, Marisa? Yeah, you said it right. Marisa Bell. Got close. I stabbed all around it anyway. So, from Phoenix, how can I help you? Well, good afternoon, first of all, Dave. It's an honor to talk to you.

You too. I'm calling because I'm pretty desperate. My husband and I just bought our house last year, and we are really struggling to make our payments, make pretty much end meet. So we are kind of... Let me ask you, what happened? You thought you could pay it when you took

it out was it bigger than you thought or did the you lose a job or something what happened um it just after we bought our house we kind of you know started buying things for it um took kind of just got more than what we could afford. Gotcha. How much is your house payment? Our house payment is $1,300. Right. And what is your take-home pay a month? A month, we make about $4,000. Okay.

Together. But we do have a car loan, and we do have some other debt, like credit cards. How much do you owe on your car? On our car, we owe about $40,000. $40,000? It's a minivan. $40,000? Yeah.

And you make $50,000 a year? We make about $65,000 a year. Yeah. Yeah. And we make about $65,000 a year. Yeah, yeah. And you take home $4,000, not on $65,000 unless you're getting a big tax return. Are you getting a big tax return? No. No, we're not.

You have money coming out of your checks going into 401Ks? Yeah, I have my insurance on mine. We have kids. We have four kids. You need insurance, yeah, but I'm talking about 401k money. Do you have investments coming out of your checks at work? Yeah, I do. Yeah, you need to stop that immediately.

You're broke until you get this mess straightened out. Okay, you make $65,000 a year. You have a car you owe $40,000 on. You don't have a house problem. You have a car problem. That car is in the stupid zone. I know. And we kind of need it because, like I said, we have a budget.

You don't need it. That's an absolute load of crap. You don't need a $40,000 car. You don't need a $40,000 car. You want a $40,000 car. You need a $3,000 car. You don't need a $40,000 car. You want a $40,000 car. You need a $3,000 car is what you need. Yeah. You need transportation is what you need.

Yes. It does not take a $40,000 car to haul four kids around. You understand that, right? Yes. Okay. This is insanity. You're calling me up and stressed out because of a stupid car. Sell it.

Okay. And keep your house. Your house is high, but it's not your problem. Your car is insanity. That's the problem. Okay. You get rid of this car payment, your life is going to balance right out. You can get your other debts paid off.

You can get in control. This car is nutburger land. Seriously. It's not even close to being something that you smart is not on this page in the dictionary. Okay. It's just not even near this. I mean, and you just got all mommied up and bought you a mommy car hauling them kids around is what you did. And so I'm selling your car. I'm all up in your business right now, reading your mail. And so I'm selling your car. I'm all up in your business right now reading your mail. This ain't your husband's car. I can tell by talking to you.

So, kiddo, you want your life back? I'll tell you how to do it. Amputate the vehicle. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Okay, I need you to listen to this. Because one normal routine that everyone does can cause total chaos in your life. I'm talking about the simple act of using Wi-Fi. When you're on Wi-Fi anywhere in public or at home, you're at risk of hackers easily seeing every site you visit and every search you're doing online.

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Download it right now. Just search Hotspot Shield on iTunes or Google Play or go to hotspotshield.com. You can be secure in seconds. Download Hotspot Shield by Anchor Free today. Regina is on the line in Las Vegas. Hi, Regina. How are you? Good morning, Dave.

How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? Well, I just wanted to say, number one, thank you to you and your team. I've been in touch with Marshall Walker, and he's helping me on my journey to becoming an FPU teacher. Good. So thank you so, so much. Cool.

My current question is this. I have unfortunately lost my brother. Oh. And I'm having, I'm going to get through this. I'm going to try not to cry. Okay. I'm trying to figure out the best way possible to honor my brother. Mm-hmm.

I live on the West Coast and he lives on the East. Mm-hmm. and my brother i live on the west coast and he lives on the east i am currently debt free but if i take this journey i'm going to wipe myself clean um the journey to go to any of this to happen and of course this is one of those unexpected emergencies and i just need your advice Sure. And so he lived where? I reside in Nevada, and he resided in New York. Okay. And so the funeral is planned like this week, I guess. Well, it's all on me. Unfortunately, I've lost all my family to cancer. Oh, my gosh.

Okay. And so he didn't have a wife or kids or anything? No, sir. Okay. Okay. And, okay, did he have assets? Did he own anything? No, sir.

So he was homeless or renting or whatever? Correct. He has an apartment that the landlord keeps calling me and calling me and calling me. So, yeah, there's stuff, but there's no assets, no. But the stuff's not worth anything. You know, I apologize, Dave. I couldn't answer that question. I really don't know.

I'm assuming no. My brother and I haven't spoken for a bit. I see. Okay. Okay. Okay, so was he a veteran? No, sir. Okay.

So how long ago did he pass away? Well, he passed away about three weeks ago. It took some time for them to find me. So now that they have found me, I'm getting a lot of pressure from everybody involved to, you know, make the plans, make the plans, make the plans. What are we doing? And I'm trying to do the best thing to honor my brother. But my financial situation, being what it is, I'm having a big struggle with it. Oh, I understand. And so you have a little bit of savings, it sounds like, but it's going to wipe you out.

Is that what you're saying? Yes, sir. And how much savings do you have? I have approximately $2,000. Okay. And that's including my emergency fund right now because I'm currently out of work. Okay. And that's including my emergency fund right now because I'm currently out of work. You're out of work.

Okay. Wow. Are you involved in a church in Las Vegas? No, sir, i'm not um have marshall connect you with one and let's see if we can get somebody in that church community to uh to assist you a little bit okay yeah um so uh there there's a whole lot of um things going on here okay yeah um you're unemployed you're on the opposite side of the continent um you hadn't spoken in a while you have no idea what's in that apartment i mean you could walk in there be twenty thousand dollars in a shoebox and you wouldn't be surprised but you would be really because you don't i doubt he had anything it sounds like correct but um, and so, I mean, was he the type that that might be the case?

Not to my knowledge. And, again, I may be speaking out of place because we just not, we have not been close. It was a long road, so. Yeah, I understand. I understand. Okay. Well, you've not been close, and so the amount of stress that you put on yourself, you know, to really mess your life up to, in quotes, honor him, needs to be limited.

We want to be reasonable and classy and that kind of a thing. And that's exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. I don't know if it's worth you flying over there or not. I might just tell the landlord, hey, clean the stuff out. It's your place. He's gone. Good luck. And just let him have it, right?

Unless you think there's something in there that you think is worth a plane ticket to fly over there and look through. That would be the only reason I would go over there. And then as far as his remains go, I would investigate cremation and try to find some ways to get his remains taken care of on a very tight budget. You don't have the money for a funeral. You don't have the money for a casket.

No, that's exactly what I've been doing, and I've been investigating. But unfortunately, I know that what I've investigated, it's exactly how it's price point-wise and exactly what you're saying. The budget is exactly what I have. Okay, so it costs $2,000 to do a crem-wise and exactly what you're saying, the budget is exactly what I have. Okay, so it costs $2,000 to do a cremation, is that what you're telling me? Yes, sir, in order to get everything done and everybody involved taken care of and all the necessities, that's what I have found for New York, even on a limited budget.

I understand. That's the affordable end. I understand. I'm trying to, I'm not an expert. I'm just trying to walk with you through this because it's such a bad situation for you. I'm sorry. What happens if you don't do anything? And that was my question, but I feel bad. I feel bad. Oh, I understand, darling. I get the heartbreak. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying just mechanically, what do they do with his remains?

I guess he's publicly buried, or what does the hospital do? They haven't answered that question. Now that they've found me, I guess they want to make me responsible. You're not responsible. Okay. You're not legally responsible. That I'm sure of. Okay.

Well, they sent me paperwork saying that I'm the next of kin, and I'm just, again, trying to do the honorable thing. Don't sign paperwork saying you're liable for this until you decide to be liable for it. Understood. Okay. But I would ask them and say, you know, I don't really have the money to do anything. What happens to his remains if I don't do anything? And just ask them. They may take care of the cremation.

That may be what they do. I don't know what they do. And I'm not trying to be cold or harsh. I just honestly don't know. And one thing I've learned in high-stress situations and heartbreaking situations like this, the thing you want to do is you want to, and you've done a good job because you're able to answer all my questions.

I want you to keep asking questions. The more options I have for a decision, even if it's a heartbreaking decision, the better chance it is that I make the best decision. If I feel trapped into only one possible option, then I usually make a bad decision. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Absolutely. You were my option, so that's why well

and i'm not and i'm not being much help because you've already investigated anything i thought of so you're ahead of me but um but but the two things i would have you do is call marshall on our team who you said you talked to he's been with our team a long time and he can connect you with some church family there in las vegas we've got a lot of churches we work with there and some of them will come around you and walk with you through the decision process and and they maybe even have a benevolence fund that they can help you a little bit with on this it's not an unreasonable thing to look at and then that that's one thing i would do the second thing i would do is i would ask the question because i i'm ignorant i don't know i'm sure all my callers my listeners know and they're going dave if this is what they do well i don't know i

just don't there's some things i don't know this is one of them uh but if i were in your shoes i'd be asking the hospital okay if i do nothing what happens to his remains and um that might be the only option you have that is reasonable. It might be. And at least you could say, okay, this is what they're going to do, or do I want to spend the $2,000? Do you recommend me doing that if I feel that's the honorable thing to do? I don't really want to put it under the heading of honorable. If you feel like that that's what God's leading you to do, I'll do that.

But I'm not going to question your honor if you don't do it. Because you didn't have a relationship with him anymore. And he didn't leave any money or plans. And you don't have any extra money. If you're worth $10 million, write the check, you know. But you're not. You're down to your last $2,000 and you're unemployed, kiddo. So I'm sorry. I wish I could be more help.

I'm so sorry. What a heartbreaking situation. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Blake, Chief Production Officer for the show, and here's a little tip for 2018. Go download our revamped Dave Ramsey Show app from the App Store. We're always listening to your feedback and adding new features to make it even better. Check it out.

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