The Ramsey Show - App - Budgeting on an Irregular Income (Hour 1)

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss:   "My old lady and I are thinking about getting married..." "Should we pay off our house or buy a new car?" Budgeting on an irregular income, from the blog: How to Budget With an Irregular Income, "How do I get out of this mess I'm in?" "Should I keep investing while paying off debt?" from the blog: When You Should Stop Investing, Keeping a home as a rental vs. selling it. Support Our Sponsor: Neighborly Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Here's an EveryDollar deal just for our listeners: get a 14-day free trial PLUS $15 off your first year of premium. Click the link below and start budgeting today! Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Interested in advertising on The Ramsey Show? https://ter.li/s64ye3 Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

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We're going to tell you the truth. Wyatt is with us. Wyatt is in North Dakota. Hey, Wyatt, what's up? I'm good. How are you doing? Better than we deserve. How can we help?

So my old lady and I are talking about getting married. How old are you? I am 28. So how ancient is this woman, this old lady uh she's only 25 oh she's ancient she doesn't know that he called her the old lady i'm telling you we we were thinking about getting married until wyatt got on the ramsey show and called me an old lady okay anyway um so we're thinking about getting married um we're up here in north dakota working in the oil field making pretty decent money we'd like to kind of simplify things and combine our income

to be able to pay off debt quicker um i had talked to her about just going down to the courthouse quick getting it done and then later on after we're completely debt free saving up and having a big ceremony as big as she wants it and everything but i can't quite convince her you sound just like a guy he's so romantic you're such a guy she she's more she more wants to go she's all for like eloping and then paying off debt. Well, what's the difference? She wants to go on like a small vacation. Oh, okay. Look, for me, I like, you know, if somebody says, hey, I want to delay the big expensive party until later. And for now, courthouse, eloping, whatever.

I just want to make sure you're doing it because you want to get married, not because you want to pay off debt faster. Like, I feel like there's a little bit of motivation and behind that and my guess is that's maybe the part that doesn't sound as romantic for her if you're if you're putting it to her and serving it up on the platter of hey honey we can pay off our debt faster if we just go down to the courthouse and get the paper as opposed to i want to marry you today i don't want to wait and save up money i'm ready to put a ring on your finger today. Like that feels different. So maybe just frame it up a little differently for her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to do it as cheap as possible. Okay. So what do you guys make? Combined 240. Good Lord. Okay. And how much debt do you have? About $205,000 combined.

Okay. And so you're in North Dakota, so you hop a jet for the weekend and have a nice weekend in Vegas and spend $3,000 or $4,000 out of $240,000. And this is the first time in your marriage you will learn the lesson happy wife happy life exactly okay but please don't say to your wife i want to get married as cheap as possible like let that keep that in your heart yeah that's that's good that's good lady advice for you there why okay yeah yeah yeah you can't make it sound like a business transaction and go hey let's let's do this and we'll have a big party next year too but spend a couple of grand you know three three grand and buy you some airline tickets a nice place and go to Vegas or go to whatever's I'm thinking of what's handy to North Dakota okay yeah but I mean pick you out a spot and uh you guys go to Yellowstone I don't care care, whatever it is. But make it a nice weekend that's a notch above the courthouse,

but still 15 notches below the expensive wedding. Awesome. I appreciate it. Yeah, and just I appreciate what you're trying to accomplish mathematically, but you've got to play the long ball. You can't just play short term. Yeah, it makes sense. Long term, you're going to tell this story for the play the long ball. Okay. You can't just play short term. Yeah. Makes sense.

Long term. You're going to tell this story for the rest of your life. Right. And it needs to be a better story than the one you brought to us. Don't let Elvis do this. Don't let Elvis be the officiator of the wedding. You don't want the Elvis wedding? Come on.

Look, not me. I'm not the one. Christopher is with us. Christopher is in Charleston, South Carolina. Hi, Christopher. How are you? Hey, sir. Doing well, Mr. Ramsey.

How about yourself? Better than we deserve. What's up? Well, sir, I'm moving to Oklahoma. My family's moving into, we're downsizing a little bit to a less expensive home. And so basically when all is said and done, after we sell the house in Charleston, we'll have just enough money to pay off the house in Oklahoma completely. Wow, that's awesome. Without losing our emergency fund.

That's awesome. Yeah, which is great. Thank you, sir. Yeah, we're really excited. I'm on baby step number six, so this could be a really big moment for us. The thing is, I'm a husband and a father father too. We're looking to expand our family. We are going to need to buy a minivan. And then we also do need to do some renovations on the house. So is it worth it? My question for you is, should I just throw all my money at the house, get it totally paid off

and then figure out the car and the reno later? Or should i figure that stuff out first and accept an outstanding mortgage on the house um what how extensive a renovation are we doing are you moving her into some kind of shanty no sir not at all not at all they're they're wrapping up uh an inspection this afternoon we probably will need to replace some flooring um there's a couple other things we want to do but i'd say probably about $10,000. And what's your household income going to be in Oklahoma? $100K. Actually, probably closer to $95K.

Okay. And what do you need to spend on the minivan? Well, they're pretty expensive right now. I'm thinking to get something that's not going to break down all the time, that's going to meet our needs. I would think about $30K. Yeah, there's lots of $20K that don to break down all the time, that's going to meet our needs, I would think about $30,000. Yeah, there's lots of $20,000 that don't break down all the time. Okay.

This thing that break down all the time is kind of an exaggeration. They all break down, even the new ones. But, you know, there's lots of wonderful $20,000 events. Okay, so, and you have two kids currently, and the third is not on the way yet. Not on the way yet. That you know of. Okay. All right.

Not that I know of. That's right. And so, yeah. So I'm paying off the house. I'm going to do the renovation, and then I'm going to move up in the van. That's what I do. All with cash. I mean, because you're going to roll this equity from the previous home into this home.

I mean, you're not going to have any payments. No payments in the world. You're baby step seven. Yeah, you'll stack up that cash in no time. Okay. Yeah, because what's your house payment now? It's $1,500 a month. Okay.

So $2,000 a month is not even a stretch. Yeah. $3,000, $4,000 a month is not even a stretch. So in three months, two months, you've got enough money to do the renovation. Okay. Right? Yes, sir. months two months you've got enough money to do the renovation okay right you know what you haven't what's hard to do until you actually let your brain knows you're going to have a paid off house but your emotions haven't reminded you to put that into the formula

because with no house payments dude it's amazing what i can cash flow okay that's what you're not used to doing because you've never been there before. So way to go. How old are you? 29. You're stud, man. Way to go. Way to go.

I'm proud of you. That's great. They might decide they want to do something nicer with the upgrade because they have money and they can just keep saving quickly. Now there's that. Wow. Very cool. Love it. Love it, love it.

This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thanks for hanging out with us. Hey, if you guys want to help us, we could use your help. If you want to help us promote the use your help if you want to help us promote the show uh that would be a big deal to us we would appreciate it you are our only

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had that. So, and you guys are the reason. So thank you. Thank you. We appreciate all the help. All right. Brandon is next. He's in Columbus, Ohio. Hey, Brandon, welcome to the Ramsey show. Hey, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Hey, I own a, own and operate a business renovating homes, and my wife is a wedding photographer. And we just have some irregular income, and we are sitting down at the beginning of the month and planning out every single dollar. But it just seems like we'll get week two or week three into the month, and bills start coming out. And it almost seems like we run out of uh at the time the bills come out and so we sit down and our budget hits zero but at the same time like when when certain bills come out

we it seems like we kind of ran out so just wondering what the best way to do with that is it sounds like you don't have any money or your planning sucks which is it paycheck planning i mean yeah you ought to know those bills are going to come out when you sit down at the beginning of the month, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think so. I think it's just a matter of like week two, we get a certain amount of money. Week three, we get no money, that kind of thing. So the problem is you guys are looking at the whole, you're going, okay, for this month, we're going to make $5,000, but you're not considering, and we get paid on the 10th, we get paid on the 13th, we get paid on the 17th, we get paid on the 29th. So what you've got to do is, and by the way, if you don't have every dollar,

now's the time for you to get that because inside of every dollar, you can plan out your paycheck. So you can basically go in, right, you've already listed all of your expenses. But then you can go in and say, and not only do I have it listed in as budget your expenses, but then you can go in and say, and not only do I have it listed and it's budgeted for, but this is the date that it goes out. And this is the date that this one goes out. And it will tell you, hey, that's not going to work. If you do that, you're going to run out of money. If you do it in that order, you're going to overdraw. So it helps you kind of stack these things in the right order so that you're planning when you're actually going to spend the money. And that's the piece to this that a lot of people are missing they they put all the expenses in there but they don't actually sit down and plan how and when those are going to come out and if

that actually will work does that make sense yeah that makes total sense every every dollar is the world's best budgeting app we produce it and run it and it's called the function that she's talking about it's called paycheck planning it's in the every dollar app and so it's free if you want to try it for free there's an upgrade that includes connection to your bank that automatically loads the debit card charges into your particular categories and so you go okay here's a grocery store charge that showed up on my debit card i just grab it and drag it over into groceries and it keeps up my food budget right so it makes it very easy to work with your spouse and to budget now do you have enough money coming in each month to pay the bills and it's just landing on the wrong dates is that's what's

happening yeah exactly yeah we get it's hard because sometimes it's front loaded sometimes it's back loaded um just a matter of when we're giving those payments but yeah i mean we're paying ourselves like we're you know budgeting for the same about the same amount every month it's just a matter of when we get about six thousand okay cool well the other thing you can do is get a,000 ahead and just leave 1,000 laying there that you don't touch, and that's just your slush. So a little $200 item hitting on the wrong week doesn't blow you up. Yeah. That'll help smooth it out as well. Sharon and I did that because we ran with irregular income from what we have for our whole lives, but it was extremely volatile when we first started this.

We would make nothing, literally zero in a month. And then I was doing real estate deals and we might make 20,000 bucks or something the next month. So yeah, that was how we started. It was completely volatile, but we were making good money annually. Yeah. I think those two questions that you and Brandon hit on are the two biggest pain points that people have a hard time realizing, oh, that's the

problem. Because they're like, I'm doing my budget, what's going on? You know, I listed all the expenses. But if you don't do that critical step of planning that paycheck and planning when those items are going to come out and have that, like you call that cushion i always call it just a cushion line item amount you can't set it to zero like zero based budgeting doesn't mean you have zero it's not zero but it's not zero based checking account balance yes it's zero it's i'm going to spend all of this month's income on some category that's right it doesn't mean you keep a zero balance checking account but it is zero budgeting. You do spend every dollar this month that is coming in on something. But no checking account at zero. It can be saving.

It can be charity. It can be whatever you're doing. It can be your tie at the church. It can be whatever you're doing there. But you spend every dollar. And then the thing that makes it go fastest is when you find money by doing that. Because as soon as you start doing a budget, you'll feel like you've got a raise. That's right.

When you find money and they're, because as soon as you start doing a budget, you'll feel like you've got a raise. That's right. When you find money and they're doing that for the first time, you're going to kind of have this aha moment. Because most people, budget is real intimidating. And when you finally start doing it and you're making it behave instead of you're being intimidated by it. Yes. Then it opens up a whole new world. And then you start working the baby steps with what you find. The found money gives you the ability to accelerate through the baby steps. And inside of every dollar, we help you do that, too.

And that's the financial roadmap. That's right. Yes. And then, of course, you put real gas on it by going through Financial Peace University while you're doing all this. And now, man, now we got this is like the sub sandwich with every kind of meat on it. That's right. OK, this is like the big mama jam. this is it we're gonna get her done okay and that's when it opens up paul is in new york hey paul how are you i'm good how are you dave better than i deserve

how can we help yeah so i find myself in a very peculiar financial situation. To kind of give you the rundown, I had a job in tech and unfortunately with the tech layoffs this year, recently got laid off. I was making $150,000 base plus benefits. Additionally, I do have a car loan. I do have some student loans, which I know are coming back online soon, and then as well as a personal loan. Thankfully, I have never paid for credit cards. How much are your student loans?

About $20,000. And how much is your car loan? The remaining principal is $28,500, I believe. And what's the personal loan? How much? $22,500. Okay. And now you're unemployed.

Yes, but I do have no credit card debt. I've always treated my credit card as charge cards. So I never carry a balance. Um, I do have an emergency fund right now of about $25,000. Um, I have a portfolio of, um, stock investments that are predominantly cash right now in my brokerage account at about $25,000. And then I also have, which included my severance in my checking account, I have about $30,000. Okay, so the day you get employed, you could write checks and be debt-free. Yep. Yeah, so here's now the catch, though, which is kind of why I'm calling in,

because I'm trying to figure out how to best handle this. As far as the job goes, I'm not too concerned about finding another job. I think my past experiences will help me get that. I'm kind of grappling with the thought that it might not be as much since things are trying to normalize right now in the market. Oh, maybe it's more. I think it's more.

Yeah, that would be great. No, I really don't. What do you do in tech? So I do business and operations strategy. Okay. All right. Yes, I'm not an engineer or a coder, unfortunately, but I do help the business side of tech grow. So there's that part.

However, the kicker that I mentioned before is that I decided to branch out and I bought a small business last year. You know, it was growing, doing very well. There's a SEA loan attached to that, which you can imagine comes with a personal guarantee. How much? The remaining principal is $209,000. All right. Hold on. Hold on a minute.

We'll come back to you, and we'll talk about this after the break. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host. We're talking to Paul in New York City. He's got about 80,000 bucks in the bank, and he's got about 80,000 bucks in debt until he opened a business. Now he's got 209 in an SBA loan, and he lost his $150,000 tech job. Is that a fair summary of what you told me numbers-wise, Paul?

Yep. I mean, I do have a 401K, but I've listened to your show long enough to know not to touch that. Right. How much is in the 401K? $26,000. Okay. And how old are you? I'm 29.

And what is this business that you paid $209,000 of borrowed money for? Yeah, so it's actually a salon, a grooming salon. So it's for pets. Okay. And what did you pay for it? The purchase price was $235,000, and I had 12% equity as a requirement for the loan. Yeah. And what is the net profit on this business?

Well, when I bought it, it was a year, which I understand was owner-operated, which I'm kind of semi-absentee. It was $120,000, but with changing business dynamics that I was not prepared for, it's looking at about this year, probably like 70, 80. What business dynamics changed? Yeah. So, I mean, one of the advantages that it had in the beginning was that it was hourly employees when historically it's been commissioned employees. And, you know, once things changed hands and the new year started, considering how it's a required trade for people,

because I'm not a groomer myself, you know, they kind of advocated for commission pay to be at, like, market rate. And with my hands tied behind my back, I kind of had to, like, give in. So that really contracted my margins. So you got confused about who owned it. You thought they did. Yeah. I've never had employees dictate to me. In 30 years, I've never had employees dictate to me what I pay them.

Yeah, you know, that's a good point. And the fortunate thing is, you know, when I try to look for alternatives, and fortunately in the area that I'm at, because it's a good point. And the fortunate thing is, you know, when I try to look for alternatives, unfortunately in the area that I'm at, because it's a skilled trade, I guess you have to go to school for it if you want someone actually good. You know, that's kind of like what the market is, and I thought I had more time to navigate that, but it came in. I think you have a business model problem and a comp problem

and a leadership problem in your small business. You need to go solve that. You sound like you are a victim to circumstances, and if you're going to survive in business, you can't be a victim. You've got to get out there and attack this and go, okay, I've got to get people back on the books the way the old owner had them on the books. Because everything you're talking about existed when you bought this business. And the old owner was running it at 120, and you managed to make it down to 70 pretty quick so you got to go clean this up uh and you're supposed to know business strategy that's what you're supposed to be doing at the other place so you got to go you got to get your labor straightened out and it

probably means you need to fire them all systematically not all at once but you need to get you need to get a new source of labor start believing in the system that you bought originally and go back and restaff it and you're probably lost these people because they think that they now think they run the business they unionized on your some kind of bull crap here i don't know what happened and then then you need to get this thing sold because you are not equipped to run it. It's running you. It's killing you. You've lost half of your value on this one issue because they led you.

You didn't lead them. And you accepted that the marketplace told you something. And when you're in business, you tell the marketplace things. That's how you do this. So you've got to impose your will man uh and then you're going to get your back back get get back out there and get your job at 150 again and then write a check and pay off all your debts but you need to sell this thing for 235 if you're lucky after you get your labor cost straightened out and um that's what's going on we deal with this

stuff all the time and entree leadership i do the entree leadership podcast i take calls from guys like paul every day and this is why you don't borrow money to buy small businesses sba loans are probably the dumbest thing on the planet second only to student loans and so and both government funded by the way government's going to help small business out they just help this guy who's 29 years old doesn't know beans about anything go two hundred thousand dollars in debt to buy pet grooming did you just hear that this is what you did with your tax dollars okay and now it's just a you know and it wasn't, yeah, no, no, no, no. So you may need to go to school and learn to pet groom for a little while. It's almost like he could have created his own pet grooming business and earned $209,000 a lot faster than buying.

I promise you. You know what I'm saying? I promise you. Yeah. I'm not paying for that. Yeah. It's too ease of entry on something, and that's where we're going. So, yeah, Paul, you got some serious moves to make here,

but part of it is you got to readjust your mindset and how you're approaching this so you can get the value back in this business, and then you need to get it sold. You thought you were diversifying and investing, and you weren't. You went deeply in debt, and as you said, signed it personally. So we got to get you out of that as fast in debt and as you said signed it personally so we got to get you out of that as fast as we can get you out of it but the best way is you get the value back in the thing and then let somebody that wants to be in the pet grooming business that knows something about it come along and pay you what you paid hopefully that owner for ben is in atlanta hi ben welcome to the ramsey Hey, how are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Yes, I just had a question about contributing to a 401k when you're trying to pay off debt. So I'm in a position where I've got some debt that I work on paying off, and my employer matches 50% of 401k contributions. So I'm curious if it's a good idea to continue to contribute there and just use whatever extra I have to pay the debts or to stop contributing completely and pay the debts off and then go full force in a 401k. I mean, I think it's great that they're offering you that sort of a

match. And the good news is after you pay off your debt, it'll still be there for you. So if it were me, the whole thing about paying off the debt, right, is you need this intensity. You need as much money as you can get your hands on going towards this debt. How much debt do you have to pay off? Just about $100,000. $100,000. So, man, you need every dollar. So, instead of putting that money to your 401k, pull that money back out, have that available to you to put towards this debt. And my guess is, man, you're going to be, what's your income? About $125,000. All right.

In two years, you'll be ready to go. Yeah, you're going to live on nothing, beans and rice, rice and beans. So what we figured out, Ben, is that what we're suggesting you do is stopping your 401k. You're going to miss the match for two years. That is mathematically incorrect advice. Agreed? Mm-hmm advice agreed yeah it's weird as a matter of fact in the financial world it's blasphemous right okay yeah and so people call us heretics all the time we should be burned at the stake but what we've discovered is the number one key to becoming wealthy is to be debt free because you get control of your most powerful

wealth-building tool, which is your income. Now, once we know that that's the number one key, then what's the number one or number two key to becoming debt-free? What we've discovered there is it is not a math problem as much as it is an emotional decision and this incredible focus and what you give up in math on the match you gain in speed on getting out of debt because you are laser focused on one thing light dispersed simply lights a room focused it's called a laser and you can do surgery with it and so that's what we're doing we're completely laser focusing for a short period of time and even though it on the surface it

appears to be mathematically incorrect on the whole over a 10 or a 20 year picture it is more mathematically correct because you will actually get your $100,000 mountain climbed and be done with it. And there's something else to add to that. When you make the choice, hey, I'm going to stop my contribution, that also signals, okay, this is serious. This is important. I can't lollygag with this. Your mind is saying, game on.

Yes. Game on. Because you don't want to miss out on that over this five, six years. You've got to pay off this debt and make that contribution pause worth it. Yeah, half-butt doing five things gets you nowhere. All in on one thing, I'll bust it. And that's what happens. Everybody tries to half-butt do about six things at once.

I'm going to put money in my kid's college. I'm going to put money in my retirement. I'm going to put money extra on the house. I'm going to go on a vacation. I'm going to use credit card points. I'm going to half-butt my life away and end up with no freaking money. And that's what most Americans do. Thank you for joining us, America. Jade Warshall-Ramsey, Personality, is my co-host today. Daniel's in Pensacola.

Hi, Daniel. How are you? Hey, Dave, Jade. How are you guys doing? Great. How can we help? All right. So I just got a quick question.

It's a planning question. I'm in the military and heading to be changing locations in 2025. We did buy, we purchased our home here in Pace, Florida, and we absolutely love our area. It's unfortunate that I have one more place to go before I retire from the military. And I know we've gone through all the, we anticipate being on Baby Step 4 in 2025, just to get you just to have kind of an idea of where we're heading towards. And I want to know what to do because we don't want to lose our home here. We want to come back here. We love our church here. We love our community here. And I know the Navy's got three

more years out of me once I leave from here in 2028, I'm done. And we've thought about some things in my life and we just want to know what the right thing to do is. I really don't want to sell my home, but I want to do what's financially smart. So the options I've brought to the table with me and my wife I've talked about is, hey, how about I'll leave wherever the Navy sends me. You stay here with the kids, and after three years, I'll come back, and I'll roommate with someone, whatnot. But I don't think that's smart relationally. Uh,

and we thought about maybe increasing our savings just a little bit more so that we could anticipate the risks of renting it out. I don't know. I don't know what the right thing to do is here. And we don't want to lose this community and our low interest rate right now. Um, again, I know selling it might be the best option just based on what i've listened to in the past yeah i just don't want to lose we love this how long you've been serving 15 years now um after i'm done here it'll be at yeah thank you for your service thank you for your service you. You guys have paid a price, and you moved all over the world.

Yes. Yeah. If you move, take your wife with you. Life's too short, dude. Okay? And then you decide what you're going to do with the house. We typically, and we work a lot, as you know, Daniel, we work with the military a lot. Thousands and thousands of military folks have gone through Financial Peace University

and the chaplaincy program and other places. Okay. So while we do a lot of interface with the military, we love you guys. And what happens a lot, as you probably heard me say in the past, is every time you get stationed, you buy a house, and you end up with rental properties dotted all over the map of your history. And that's a really bad method for collecting rental properties your your goal is a little different okay your goal is i'm going to

come back to this house i love because i love this community i love this church um you know if i could hold my nose be away from my wife i just let her stay here but that's a little rough i don't think i could do that so you you can do whatever you want to do, but I couldn't do that. So I would move them with me, which means that either the house is sitting empty or you're renting it. Both are hard on a house. Because I don't care. The best renters in the world, when you move back in your home after someone else lived in your home it is emotional it's yuck it's not the same home it's yuck the spirit has changed you know what i'm saying and i mean i own a house that i used to live in and i don't i cannot imagine this and i've walked

back through it several times when we know when we've renovated it for renters you know it's 20 years since i've lived in that house and it's get every time i go through it it gets weirder when i walk in there it's just it's like going back to your old elementary school crap shrinks you know you know it's just like the room shrunk it's like how did we even golly you know it's not like the room shrunk. It's like, how did we even golly? You know, it's not like we're spoiled brats or snobs or something, but it's just the world is weird. The appliances are going to be three years more outdated. The roof is going to be three years older.

The weeds are going to be three years taller and start to look like trees. And, you know, it's just a thing. So I can, if you want to do it and keep that house, the thing you've got to be prepared for is you're going to spend some money when you come back, more than you think, putting that house back into Daniel condition, okay, and smell and everything else, and it's still going to be an older house when you move back into it i personally have owned enough real estate and i grew up in the real estate business

mom and daddy our furniture when i was a kid our furniture was trained to jump on the truck i mean we moved all the time right so um i i don't have a lot of emotional tie to houses it's just a stupid house there's one on every corner so if it was me i'd sell it in about 30 seconds i don't have a lot of emotional tie to houses. It's just a stupid house. There's one on every corner. So if it was me, I'd sell it in about 30 seconds. I don't want to deal with long-distance renters, and I'm certainly not going to move back in after I rented that house. It's too weird for me. So I just move back to the community, buy another house down the street

or buy a house in a newer neighborhood that's near that church and start my life again in Pensacola after I retire from the Navy. That's what I would do. I wouldn't keep it. I think you're putting too much stock in this house being your method to return to Pensacola. Yeah, I think that sometimes when there's something that you want, right, and you want to have this thing and you know the method of you keeping it is not the smartest choice, right? You know that it's not the smartest choice, but you'll do that in order to say, well, this is the way I get back.

But honestly, in three years, if it's meant for you to be back in pensacola i'm pretty sure you'll be able to find a house yeah they got houses they got more houses and they got newer ones yeah and so just better ones relinquish some of that control and know if you're supposed to go back to pensacola there's a housing market there if that's god's plan for your life you'll be back you know you'll be back at the church you'll be back in the community and you'll be able to find the right house for you and i don't know what the real estate market will be like i mean let's pretend that the real estate market really sucked in three years and you could get a great buy right and you might move up substantially i mean what what if three years from now was like 2008 the best buying opportunity in real estate history?

I bought so much real estate in 2008. It was unbelievable how much real estate I bought. It was awesome. It was the best buying time ever. I know it was hard times for folk, and it was sad, but, I mean, it was the best time to buy real estate. Because it wasn't that good for me, Dave. Let's just be honest. I'm just saying, if you're a buy-in, it was like a dream freaking come true. We're buying stuff a quarter on the dollar.

It was incredible. Oh, man. I don't know. I'm not predicting that, by the way. I think the real estate market's going to get better, personally, but I'm always half full class. But yeah, I'm selling it, Daniel, and that's all my reasons. But in your case, if you choose to keep it, I'm not going to yell at you.

If you were going to be doing three more stations before you got out of the Navy, I would just say you're stupid, dumb, sell it, period. Don't do it. That's dumb, okay? Because you're going to end up long-distance landlording in five different places, like I just described. I don't want you doing that. But you're probably coming back to Pensacola,

but I think you are underestimating how difficult it's going to be to move back into that house. It's going to need work. We have this idea. And I'll tell you the other time this comes up, Jade, and it's also just as naive is a nice way of saying it. Delusional is what I was thinking. But there's an illusion. It's not delusion that we have is I'm going to buy the house i want to retire in 10 years from now

you know i live in kansas city and i'm going to buy a house in florida that i want to retire into and i'm going to rent it between now and oh gosh and you know by the way you have a 10 year old dishwasher look or if you buy a five-year-old house you got a 15 year oh wait a minute no you have a new dishwasher because you've replaced it for the renter oh the hot water heater hello i mean so this is the stuff we don't think about these appliances don't have 30-year lives no and the people you put in there aren't taking care of it before we moved to tennessee we had renovated our previous home top to bottom it was just the way we wanted it and i remember thinking oh man i wish there was a way i could keep this house because you know that it's like the guy i

love this community you know i'd love to go back there even if we just vacationed there but it didn't work out financially right do you know we've gone back to look at that house since somebody bought it and has rented it and it is so clear that's not our house anymore it's not our house that's exactly what i'm talking about the house the house that i own is not my clear that's not our house anymore. It's not our house. That's exactly what I'm talking about. The house that I own is not my house anymore. It's not my home anymore. It's my house. I own it.

But it's not my home anymore. It takes on a different. And it's a great neighborhood. It's a wonderful property as an investment. But I can't even get my kids to talk about moving into it. And they grew up in it. Isn't that weird? how would you like to move back to your childhood never okay it's the same dadgum thing it's the same thing i'm talking about that's exactly how it works very fun it's a good discussion daniel good discussion thank you for calling in with a question and again thank you

for your service to the country absolutely Absolutely amazing. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey, we have a weekly newsletter that gives you trending and helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Just go to ramseysolutions.com today to sign up for our newsletter. Again, that's ramseysolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.