The Ramsey Show - App - Building Wealth Is Hard but Being Broke Is Harder

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Jade Walsh, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. We'll talk about you right in front of you. The phone number is 888-825-5225. The call is free, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Tommy starts off this hour in Reno, Nevada.

Hi, Tommy. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Good morning, and thank you for taking the call. Sure. What's up in your world? Well, I'm a 75 year old senior with a 68 year old wife. And I found a month and a half ago that I was $53,000 in debt on credit cards. I thought I was debt free for quite a while now. And I come to find out that there was um money being put against the credit cards

from casinos mostly uh for the last five years anyway to right now i'm lined up to borrow eighty thousand dollars at a credit union at six point six two five percent thirty year amortization but it's a balloon payment and the reason I went with that is because I can pay different amounts at different times because I make 30 to 50 thousand dollars extra approximately every year over my our retirement our retirement income is57.35 a month. Who racked up the credit card bills, your wife? Yes, ma'am. And you didn't know about it?

I wasn't smart enough to keep my nose in the books, and I trusted her 100%. How long have you guys been married? 13 years. It's my second marriage. Okay. And so approximately half the time you've been married, she's been lying to you? Yes. Because she has a gambling problem? Yes.

Okay. Well, you described to me how you're going to try to fix and get out of this. What about stopping the problem? What are we doing about our gambling problem? Well, she left me because she knew I'd be really upset, and she went to her mother. So she says she's getting counseling every week, but I'm not sure it's for the gambling problem. What do you think it's for? She's going to a Christian counselor, and I'm not sure she's admitting that she has a gambling problem yet. Well, it's good that she's in counseling. I'm sure if it's a great counselor, they can get to the core of what's going on.

Right. But she has not had contact with you? No, we have contact every day now. Okay. And we plan to get together again. She's just been kind of dragging her feet as to when. Well, the good news is she's looking for help, and then it's up to you and her to decide together

what the boundaries are going forward and what the marriage needs to look like going forward. Right. Now, these cards, I assume they're in both of your names yes they are okay and you guys you guys have you don't you don't have any money saved in retirement one card is just in her name that was kind of hidden and the others are in both our names yeah do you have any money saved in your nest egg? Not very much. I have a $10,000 IRA and I have a $5,000 in checking right now and my wife has a little IRA and she won't tell

me how much is in it but I don't think it's more than $50,000. $50,000? $50,000, yes. Didn't you say that was how much is on the credit cards yes about 53 okay i think i see a plan evolving here you may have been drawing out of that without telling me too i mean there's some dishonesty here yeah well yeah obviously a lot okay yeah and i don't i don't have access to her ira yeah um which i should the the 5 735 you're getting every month is that social security what is that it's uh our two social securities and i'm a retired teacher okay why would you borrow 30 000 more than you need you said you're going to borrow 80. I finished, we've been full-time RVers for

quite a while, but I finished a one-bedroom house last summer, and we finally moved into it, and I'm trying to finish it off completely, and I need about another $30,000 to put the final

touches on it. I would not borrow this money. No. Essentially what you're doing is you're trying to borrow money to get out of debt, and that's impossible. You have to pay in order to get out of debt. You have to use your money and pay off the bill. Yeah, okay.

So what I'm going to do in this situation is, how do you eat an elephant a bite at a time? Priority number one is establishing what's going to happen with your relationship. And for your relationship to be brought back together, trust has to be reestablished because there's been a lot of deception. And so there's a path forward with you and the counselors where everybody comes clean she comes clean as being a gambling addict which she obviously is and gets help for that and a part of a normal restoration plan in this situation would be that she does not control money again for the next three or four years that you control all of it and if you're together okay now obviously if you divorce then that's a

whole other thing if you divorce as a part if you come back together we're going to find out what's in this IRA we're going to use it her $50,000 IRA or whatever's left in it is going to go towards this $50,000. And then we're going to cash flow through the credit card debt, like Jade said, whatever that doesn't cover. And then we're going to pay out of pocket to finish up the repairs on the house because you've almost got the house done. Right. And you weren't planning to borrow money before all this blew up.

You just said, oh, I'll just add that while I'm cleaning up this other mess. And now you've got a massive debt, 80,000 bucks, that you don't need that around your neck at 75 years old. So, yeah, so the first thing is establish if we can reestablish trust and what the boundaries are going to be in our relationship. If it goes the other way and you end up divorcing, then you're still going to go the same route, and that is I'm going to find out how much is in this IRA, and we're going to use all of her assets to clean up her mess. Whatever's left, you'll have to negotiate on the balance of the credit card debt.

But anything she owns in this divorce settlement negotiation, if I'm in your seat, she's going to use to clean up the deception and the lies and the gambling addiction. I'm not using my money, and I'm not borrowing money to pay off your stuff. You're paying off every bit of this, especially the cards that have my name on them. And that's your divorce negotiation. But you've got to decide first which direction you're going to go. And obviously, she's got a say in that. And so getting with the counselor and establishing some boundaries.

But addicts don't get to handle money for the next three to five years. Someone's coming off of alcohol, off of cocaine, off of sports betting, off of casino gambling, off of pornography. When they're coming off of this stuff, addicts all are manipulative. They all lie. And so they can't be allowed to handle the family money. And she's that. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel, do you ever get these sketchy text messages that are like,

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Open phones at 888-825-5225. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. So it is normal, Jade, in most marriages for one of the people to be more, we call them the nerd, laughingly around here, to be more detail-oriented, money-oriented, the one that likes spreadsheets, right? The sicko, that's me, right? And it's normal for the other one to, we call them the free spirit, to, you know, just whatever you want to do, honey. And that's a normal process. However, I will tell you that when the person that is handling the money, unquote, quote, unquote, does not have a good, clear stream of communication where everybody, where in my case, Sharon knows exactly what's going on because I'm the one doing the budget.

Which one of you do it? Sam, are you? I do it. You do it. I set it up. Tell him about it. He's like, looks good. Yeah, because Rachel doesn't touch it i

mean it's winston i mean winston lays it out and so either way it doesn't matter who it is yeah that the other person is is involved enough in the budget to a have input on where our money's going and b um ever have agreement that this is where our money's going and so if you have agreement that this is where our money's going. And so if you have agreement before the month begins of where every dollar is going, one of you is the nerd and you did all the details and the other one looked at it and changed a few things and then agreed to it. There is no room in that because we've agreed to where every dollar is going. That's why we call the budgeting app EveryDollar. We've agreed where every dollar is going. Now, again, if you're the free spirit, the I don't care whatever you want

to do, honey, I'm not asking you to become a nerd, but I am demanding that you do be an adult and not ask the other person to be the only adult in the family. Well, my husband don't give me any money. My wife won't give me any money. Well, what are you, a child? I mean, you don't get a vote in the house. Yeah, it's your responsibility. It's your responsibility you, a child? I mean, you don't get a vote in the house? Yeah, it's your responsibility to check in. It's your responsibility to have a vote? You go, no, I mean, we decided what we were going to do with our money. The nerd will execute the plan.

The nerd will probably develop 90% of the plan, right? Yeah. But you're in agreement. neat thing about that is it creates a real clear combining unified marriage where we're unified we're agreeing on our dreams we're agreeing on our fears because these are two grown-ups both speaking into where the money that we work so hard for goes. Where does it go? Two grown-ups. When you do that, I don't get the call that says my wife was hiding credit card debt. It's almost impossible to do then because you know where the money is going.

That's right. Even if you're the free spirit and not the nerd, right? It's almost impossible to do so you alleviate that or my husband you know went and bought a bass boat without my permission now all that kind of that stuff doesn't happen yeah so this is perfect dave this weekend we had the money and marriage event and i was talking about creating transparency in your marriage and i was saying there's a couple of things that you can do just practical things that will make it like you said nearly impossible to hide money and one of those things is sharing passwords right everybody should have access to the bank account everybody can log in everybody can see what's going on turn on the spending notification like those are practical things that you can do and there's it alleviates any illusion of you're

hiding something i told him i said in our house it's you would have to work very very hard to hide something from me or vice versa because it's all out in the open nobody has anything to hide i know every one of sharon's passwords to everything she knows every one of my passwords to everything there's no chance i'm doing porn on my computer because she can open it up anytime she wants and look and get in there and it's not to say that you're simple spy it's not even anything about spying on your spouse or creeping on your spouse if you're doing crap you have you don't that you're ashamed of you try to hide it then you hide it if you're not doing things you don't that you're ashamed of then you don't have anything to hide. That's right. So it's a pretty simple thing, right?

And so, you know, it's a little difficult. I ran into a guy the other day, he's $300,000 in debt on credit cards. His wife just found out, and it's all sports betting, which is probably the fastest-growing addictive problem that we're running into in the money world right now. That's right. Out-of-control sports betting. So the dirty little secret of FanDuel, right? the dirty little secret of all these ads you know why they're

buying ads on the super bowl because they can afford to they're making so much money off of you guys because you can buy you can bet on you know whether they're going to dance backwards or forwards after a touchdown you can bet on anything right and they are betting on everything and it's out of control some of you are losing your entire futures to betting on watching someone else earn a living and it's stupid and yeah so but but that doesn't happen if husband and wife are both on the same page you don't have an ability to pay the bill on that without it showing up and so it's like you know uh you know it just doesn't work so and here's the thing there's this huge not only is it a preventive medicine for things like misbehavior in a marriage but the

more importantly it combines you guys and when the preacher said and now you are one when you are when you are unified and having a greed future that we are both pulling towards the probability of you hitting it goes up like like 10x yeah that's right you're probably going to be wealthy and the number the inverse of that is the number of times we talked to millionaires we studied 10 000 of them and said how many of you did this in spite of your spouse being an idiot in spite of your spouse being out of control in spite of your spouse my my husband's an out of control spender my wife's a princess you know how many of you did that in spite of the fact that you had a child attached to your hip you know almost none they almost all said in the 80 percentile

which is statistically mind-blowing said the one of the reasons we're here is we're both adults and we both agreed that we wanted to be here and that's how you become a millionaire the chances of you marrying some moron and then becoming a millionaire are almost zero. So be careful. Yeah, I saw a guy on the- You people dating? Oh, Lord, be careful. I saw a guy on the internet talking about the most important decisions, and I agreed

with him on this. One of the most important decisions you'll make is who you marry. Yep. If not the most. There's one with Charlie Munger on that. Is that the guy? Yeah. Yeah. And it's so true. And so again, if you're looking for those ways to be proactive, sharing passwords, passcodes, I'm talking about banks, investments, savings, your will, your spouse should know where the will is. Even your electronics, they should be able to have

the passcode to your phone, your computer. They should be able to log into your social media and slide in your DMm so they can see who else has been sliding in your dms like this is the transparency you want combining bank accounts we have every dollar spousal accounts now so that you guys can all have the profile all see what's going on and finally dave this one's controversial but the little location app that's on your phone where you can turn on your location i didn't know you you could do that, but my best friend called me up. She said, Jade, share your location with me. And I said, what are you talking about?

She said, there's a little button you can add me and I can see where you're at. And at first I was like, why would you wanna do that? She goes, you know, you go for runs early in the morning. I just wanna know, make sure you're all right. And I thought, that's great. And so she showed me how to do it. And I said, Sam, show me your location.

He was happy to do it. And it's not like I'm on my phone looking, where's Sam going? But if you're a person who's not hiding anything and you want the best thing for your marriage, transparency, that's the key that shows, hey, I have nothing to hide. If we did that, I might not be able to find Sharon, but I could find her phone. Which I am tasked with looking for pretty regularly. That's funny it's true that's old people problems right there can't find my phone oh man but Dave you know the people we say what's the passcode and and they're like I'll I'll type it in for you yeah and they want to type it in for you they don't want to

give that that's a red flag right there I I'm telling you. Yeah. If that's your husband or your wife, it's a problem. That's a problem. So here's the thing. All the data that we have from 40 years of doing what we do says not only can you avoid people's misbehavior in a marriage, addiction being one of them, affairs being another, a little difficult to have a budget line item that says honey. That doesn't work. Right. Right. That doesn line item says honey you know that doesn't work right right that doesn't work side side honey that doesn't work right so you can't have a budget

line item that has that that one that one won't that one won't pass that won't fly so um you know all not only do you avoid all that but you also are almost guaranteeing your ability to build wealth because you're working together and you're aiming and you're agreeing on our fears. We're agreeing on what we're going to do. And it gets rid of I told you so too, which is a neat thing to get out of a marriage. This is the Ramsey Show. There's a time in your life and in the baby steps for renting, but you don't want to do it forever because when you rent, you're still paying for a mortgage, just somebody else's. Plus, rent means instability in your budget because it always goes up, never down. So when you're ready to buy, make sure you work with a mortgage partner you can rely on,

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NMLS consumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Thank you for joining us, America. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Arabella is with us in Springfield, Missouri. Hi, Arabella.

How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I have, my husband and I have a crypto portfolio that is at about $60,000 right now. And we are about to close on the house. And we have no credit card debt, but we have $14,000 in student loans and $37,000 in an auto loan.

And we don't know if we should sell our crypto right now and just pay off all of our debt and, you know, start this process with a home with a mortgage debt free or try to wait out the bull run that is projected to happen with crypto in about April and sell, you know, at whatever price it'll be around then. I wouldn't try to time the market with it. I mean, you guys are in debt today and you're closing on the house really quickly. And so I would liquidate this crypto and I would pay off this debt. I would do that instantly. Okay, but do you have any advice on like what if it were to go to the projected amounts that the coins we hold are going to go to?

You know what the other projected amount is, right? The other projected amount is zero that they go to. Do you have a recent memory about crypto? So we are not invested in meme coins, which is, I mean. You are invested in crypto. Do you have a recent memory, like in the last 36 months, of what that category of investing has done? It's one of the most volatile high risk

investments on the planet and it's not technically an investment it's actually called speculation we were up thirty thousand dollars more than we are right now just um right before the tariffs so interesting and so what happens when trump burps again you're screwed Interesting. And so what happens when Trump burps again? You're screwed. Okay. Okay, listen, stop a second. You're acting like this is some kind of steady, predictable investment because it has a long track record.

The only track record that crypto has is extreme volatility. That's the facts. so we've been writing it out for five years but you are not listening arabella do you know what you sound like you sound like somebody's in denial someone who's in denial and somebody who's like much i do very little cocaine someone's at the crap table who's at the craps table i'm just gonna let it ride i'm hot right now. That's what you sound like because it's basically a form of gambling because you don't know what's going to happen.

And just because you had a great week, two weeks ago, you don't know. It's speculation. It's the roll of the dice. You're in Vegas and your car payment's on the line. So the answer to your question is what Jade said, cash it out today and pay it off. But another way to help you analyze this from a decision-making paradigm is to do a sunk cost analysis.

Pretend in your mind before you called us and asked this question, pretend in your mind if you said, okay, I have no credit card debt and no car debt. Should I go borrow on my car and on a credit card to buy $60,000 worth of crypto? Absolutely not. Well, it's the same thing. Okay. If you don't sell it today, you borrowed it again tomorrow.

It's the same thing. It says if you borrowed it. You understand that? I have one more question then. So the reason we invest in crypto in the first place is obviously we are Christian and we do not gamble and don't think gambling is okay. But we felt like God showed us these three specific coins that we're invested in. Like a crystal ball. And we have just been waiting for the right time for him to show us when to sell,

which is why we've been holding for five years through two whole runs. Arabella, I'm upset with this. I'm upset that you're telling us this. This is really, really bad theology, Arabella. Really bad, okay? Because there are no instances in the Bible, zero, where speculation, which is what this is. It's not gambling, but it's speculation. The difference in investing and in speculation is speculation is you're buying something you hope is going to go up that has no track record. That's speculation.

You're looking for a short-term gain. Investing is a long-term gain. Investing over a long period of time is scriptural. Playing short-term games with money that you don't have because you're broke. You have a car payment. You're broke people. And you're borrowed on your car and on your credit card effectively to play a short-term game,

please don't blame that on the Holy Spirit. It might have been a spirit, but it wasn't the Holy One. That's nuts. Okay? So, sorry, now I've insulted you completely, but oh well. That's for the rest of the audience who's at a vacation. That's all i can say because i don't think i'm going to help you at all oh my gosh yeah clear the air okay

let's go and matthew gets to follow that in chicago hey matthew how are you hey mr randy not much uh in the parking lot. I'm a barber. I'm going to go into work after this. I called you today because last June, I was looking for a car, a vehicle. I couldn't get approved for a car for credit. I'm 23 years old. I've been through debt like twice, like $10,000 worth. And I've read your book, The Snowball Method.

I got out of like a $10,000 debt twice. And then I saved my money a little bit for a down payment for a vehicle. I have a son. I have a fiance. I live with my fiance's mom at her house. What's your question, hon? My question is, I got a loan from my grandpa for like $35,000 for Jeep Grand Cherokee. His folks co-signed for me, but he didn't want the title in his name, so he just paid it off.

So I made an arrangement with him to pay him, and he wanted 5% interest. Okay, sounds good, whatever. I paid $687 a month to him with the interest without the principal. The principal is like 602. And it turns out this is not all it was cracked up to be. You're not having fun, are you, buddy? Pardon me? This is not all it was cracked up to be. You're not having fun, are you, buddy? Pardon me? This is not fun, is it?

Um, it's, it's, I'm. No. I could have. Why'd you call us? Because I'm throwing, I feel like I'm throwing money. I realize, okay, this is not an asset. It's a liability. I make a decent amount

of money where it's like I'm good at saving, but then I save more. I want to get my own house, my own property with my wife. Good for you. Get rid of the $35,000 car then. I know.

You already knew that before you called, didn't you? I did. You just wanted somebody else you called, didn't you? I did. You just wanted somebody else to say it instead of your own brain. Yeah. And my family's against me because I said, like, okay, I might as well go to CarMax, sell it. All right, I'll take $8,000 loss. That's fine. I will pay my grandpa back in a few months.

Then I'm out of that debt, right? Yep. And then whatever, i'll carpool my wife or i'll buy a beater why are they against you why do you feel that your family and by family is it just fiance is against you no no no my uh my my father is he paying the payments no he doesn't get a vote right right you're like a grown man and stuff i know you get to decide this does your family want you to move out or are they convincing you to move in he's in his fiance's no no it's nothing nothing no it's not my fiance your family believes that they're going to be in

their whole lives they've lost hope i haven't lost hope in you i think you can make it because i think you've got a good brain i want you to learn to trust your own brain your brain is telling you before you call that this is a stupid situation and to get out of it yes sir and i agree with your brain i think you've got a good brain you can trust it not your dad's yours your dad's not a bad guy he just doesn't have any money and you should never take advice from financial advice from broke people man it's like taking diet advice from fat people it's a dumb idea this is the ramsey show hey you guys i'm not a fan of the big banks and you probably already know which ones I mean.

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So go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey to learn more. And while you're there, look at the combined checking and savings account bundle they created just for Ramsey fans to help you take control of your finances. That's fairwinds, F-A-I-R-w-i-n-d-s dot org slash ramsey jade walsh all ramsey personality is my co-host today open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five we started pre-sale on my brand new book it comes out april 15th and we started selling it yesterday thousands of you have already bought it. Thank you very much.

We appreciate the endorsement of you going ahead. The book is called Build a Business You Love. It is the system, the Entree Leadership System that we have developed. We know from counseling 10,000 businesses plus over the last many years, plus what we've done at Ramsey growing it from a card table in my living room that business goes through five stages and there are six things that drive the business through those five stages and that is essentially the baby steps for small business that's the way it works this is what you're going to experience in small business just

like you do with the total money makeover with baby steps so that's what this book is about it's the detailed unpacking of the five stages and the six drivers build a business you love mastering the five stages of business it'll come out april 15th and it's on sale today at ramsey solutions.com in the store if you pre-order you get $350 in free bonus items. Nice. Sal is in Philadelphia. Hi, Sal. How are you? Hey, guys.

Thanks for taking my call. Appreciate it. Sure. What's up? So I'm 21 years old. I have a baby on the way. Congratulations. When's it due?

July 14th. Awesome, man. I'm very, very excited. Good for you. Thank you. I have my own business in pet care i'm a dog trainer and i am three hundred thousand dollars in debt from what so my question is so my question is do i focus on expanding the business hiring and trying to be able to make the business self-running so i could be as present of a dad as possible or focus on paying off debts. Is the debt business debt? Is it from you building this business?

Is that where it came from? Yes. Yes, that's where it came from. Most of it. How does it take $300,000 to train a dog? Yeah. So we started mobile. So I started the business when I was 19,

doing it mobile, kept costs low, did it out of my truck. Um, and then as we expanded, we decided that we needed a facility. Um, so we rented and then, uh, like kind of renovated a 4,000 square foot facility. Um, that was in April of last year. So we, I took a home equity line of credit loan from my, from my dad, which I know now from listening to you guys is a no-no. Just give me, give me a quick synopsis. If I bring my dog to you and say, I'm dropping my dog off, train him. What does it cost me? What do you cost for a service? I'm just curious. Our lowest package is $3375, and our most expensive package is $8,000. Okay.

And these are house pets. They're not service animals or anything. Some are service dogs. Some are protection dogs. We work with a large range. You're doing protection dogs for $8,000. Wow. That's low.

Okay. All right. So you spent money renovating someone else's building that you rent? Yeah, so we did like walking kennels. We had to put in some like a vault. But you don't own the building? No, it's a rental. Okay.

So you spent $300,000 on someone else's building? So the home equity line of credit, the total of it was 20, I'm sorry, was $225,000. And then we use some of that to do employee salaries. When we first moved in, we'd sum a lot of that for renovations and then also into marketing.

Then we have $30,000 for a van that we use. Are you profitable? Yeah, so last year we did $300,000 in sales. $40,000 of that was profit for our first year. Wow. What's all the overhead coming? Wow. So our total overhead per month is $17,000 000 okay and and so what's your question hon

so um do i focus on expanding the business no hiring trying no okay you need to make some money with all this money you've spent like you need to double your revenues with your existing facilities and your stupid 30000 van that you did not need. Okay? You have never seen anything you wanted that you didn't go buy it. Stop it. You're going to run yourself out of business so fast it's unbelievable. You need to learn to organically grow the business. Ramsey Solutions has grown from a card table in my living room to a $300 million business, and we've never borrowed a dime.

100% of our growth has been funded by profits. A little bit and a little bit and a little bit and a little bit and a little bit and a little bit. And so now you've invested leasehold improvements in someone else's building. What's the length of the lease you have? It's five years. At the end of the lease you have? Five years. At the end of five years, all that money's gone if that guy wants you out. You've got to amortize all of that cost in five years on $40,000 profit. You can't even come close.

Did you know that? Did you realize that, or you just didn't care? I'm just curious. Realize which part? The part that you're the part that you're leasing and that you don't own the building so when your lease is up there's no guarantee that you get to stay there with all the renovations you've made so what i figured while going through the process of it like i believe that the total cost of renovations alone that we did was between like 15 65 000 um but the goal was to then extend our

lease once that five years was up oh that's a goal that's a wish that's a hope it's not how you run a business okay so what you as a young entrepreneur what i would have you to do is i want you to concentrate on getting revenues up without spending any more money would that include stop quote expanding no work how many employees do you have it's just me i work completely by myself i thought you said you've been spent some of this on salaries where the heck did the 200 grand go all i got is 30 and improvements or 40 and improvements and a 30 000 uh uh van where the rest of it go you paid yourself out of the loan no no i didn't pay myself out of loan we had employees we had up to three at one point

um but then in october we got pretty slow so i let everyone go went went down to just me working, and then I just did that for a while. You have a $40,000-a-year job that you own. So your job is to make it an $80,000-a-year job that you own, and then a $100,000-a-year job that you own. You need to find out the most profitable areas of your business and grow those areas, and, yes, you need to do it. As far as you being at home with the baby, fathers, since time has begun, You need to find out the most profitable areas of your business and grow those areas, and yes, you need to do it. As far as you being at home with a baby, fathers, since time has begun, have gotten up and gone to work, and babies have survived.

And you're going to work, my son. You have $300,000 in debt. You've made a mess, and you need a shovel, and you is the shovel. How much is the lease every month? Lease is $4,200. Yeah. That's why you brought in $300,000 and you're only making 12% margin on a service-oriented business because you've used it all up. Your margins ought to be double, triple what they are in a service business. You don't have any cost of goods sold except dog food, for God's sakes.

He needs your book, Dave. And so, yeah. I'm going to send you a copy of the Entree Leadership book, but and jump in on the Entree Leadership podcast and start listening to it that I do on small business and so forth, because we've coached people exactly like you for 20 years. And I love small business people. But the disease that you have is the idea that if I spend more, I'm always going to make more. And that is a disease that doesn't work in business. Spending does not equal income.

And so you've bought everything fresh and shiny and new. And now you need to go make some money. And you probably ought to dump the $30,000 van and get rid of it and get some of the money back towards your dad. Anything you can get rid of and still operate the business and get money back towards your dad. I want you to concentrate on making money, not spending money and quit telling yourself you just need one more marketing plan or you need one more purchased for this to get breakthrough in business. If you are not the secret sauce, you're screwed. The other stuff around the dog training is is window dressing your ability to look at an animal and teach it to behave is the secret sauce and your ability to

teach other people to do that that work for you is the secret sauce it is not whether you have a van and it's not whether you have a rental property with a kennel in it it's your ability to do your job and so if you'll go do that and make a bunch of money you're going to be a great dad financially and you're going to be fine but you got a lot of work to do and it's not unusual for a young dad to be working it's not a Solutions, 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, Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today.

Thank you for joining us and for hanging out. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Mark is in Portland, Oregon. Hey, Mark, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Something's not working, guys. Let me try again. Put everything on hold. And three. There

we go. Mark, are you there? Yes, sir. I'm here. Good. How can I help? Well, in 2012, my dad passed away suddenly from cancer. I'm sorry. And he didn't have a very concise will put together. He had directives. When he died, he was taking care of his mother, who was suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's. Six months after he died, she died. And that left everything that was supposed to go to kids and grandkids and cousins kind of up in the air, and then eventually everything was in my aunt's name um how so yeah so how now the good how did it end up in her name probate she was the

deciding that no no probate no probate somehow we skated by probate. Nobody was arguing about anything. My aunt happened to be the last surviving child. And it just, it just went everything into my aunt's name because my dad's will was not in good shape. Um, but my, my grandmother's was, um, but she died after my dad, so nothing went to him. So I am in a position now to where, like, I'm the only person who has a steady job out of my siblings, and I'm trying to get my siblings and my cousins together because my aunt's husband is also dead. So she has my aunt, and she's kind of going into a little bit of a mental decline.

My siblings are okay. Everybody knows who's supposed to get what. From the aunt? From my cousins. Yeah, from the aunt. Because she's okay with everybody getting what they were supposed to get in the beginning. Oh, okay. The cousins,

nobody's arguing about anything that they're supposed to get. But she's not put it down in a will. And there's no judge involved. Correct. So what we've got, this is the biggest struggle, is my aunt's two children, the only bicker is over her own personal effects that she had and her husband had. Not about the properties nothing that anything my grandmother had they're fighting over those things and it's making it difficult for any of the rest of us to get a regular will set up okay um well uh um what's the value of all of this?

If you had to guess. Okay. So I, I'm going to be, I'm, I'm collecting rent on two homes. There's no mortgages. Everything's paid for. There's no mortgages.

I'm collecting rent on two together. They're about three 75. And those are to become yours. Yeah. Okay. All right. If I'm wearing your shoes, have you sat down in person and talked to your aunt and asked her to do a will? Yes, I have.

And what did she say? She is reluctant to go along with it unless her two kids agree on what is supposed to be divided that was my aunt's and her husband's do either of her kids have you said she's got mental decline do either of them have like power of attorney or is that on track to start at any point um are the two houses that you have are they in your name or your aunt's name everything's in the answer. You're going to lose those. Okay. If your aunt does not leave them to you or deed them to you prior to your death, you're going to lose them because you do not have any standing in this family anymore.

She has confiscated all the assets into her name. Her assets, if there is no will, will go to her children. You're going to lose these houses. That's my struggle. No, you are. It's not a question if you don't get this done. This is a $400,000 problem for you and your brother and your sister. If I'm you and your brother and your sister, I'm going to grab

my cousins and put them in a headlock and go, all right, you twerps, we need to get this straightened out because I'm not letting you take these houses. Y'all need to get over there with your mama and get this written down. That's what we're struggling to do. Do you have like any suggestions and like how to speak to them in such a manner?

Because headlocks won't work. They're a bunch of hillbillies. So we all are actually but you know um i mean i just sit down with them and go okay do you think it's fair that i lose these properties because you won't sit down with your mom and get this other stuff worked out i don't think that's fair okay and the other thing you could do is you could go to your aunt and ask her to quit claim deed the properties to you. Okay.

So if that was to occur, would there be like some sort of like net gain tax? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. She'll have a gift tax on them. Well, she could actually, but she could avoid it by doing a unified estate tax planning document, but it's easier to just do a will. But I can, you know, write this down, unified estate tax, okay? If the estate tax is still in place, and the GOP is currently looking at doing away with it on the federal level,

but if that's still in place, you can use up some of her estate tax exemptions against her gift tax. So she would not have gift tax if she files that document. But I've got a feeling this bunch of people doesn't file documents. They just kind of make up whatever they want to do and think it works. And that's how it's been. Yeah, that's their problem, though.

They have the gift tax, not you. So I'm going to go over there and say, Auntie, here's two quick claim deeds. I need you to sign these so the properties are in my name. Okay. That's the easiest, cleanest thing you can do here. And your brothers and sisters do the same thing. Because I'm afraid, because otherwise this is going to go to your kids,

and that's not fair. I need you to sign them right now. I'm not getting up from this table until you sign these because they were supposed to go to my dad and they're supposed to go to me and you know that and i need you to sign these and put these properties in my name that's a that's a one page document a quit to claim deed go see an attorney have that drawn up for each property and then um have a notary notarize them and then you file them at the courthouse, and the property is then in your name. It's over.

Now, she technically would be due gift tax on that, and she can avoid that within 12 months of her signing that over to you if she files under the Unified Estate Tax Credit Program. But I've got a feeling this lady's not doing any of that. She doesn't. This is a lady who's never even had a job. Yeah, I know. I can tell.

I mean, she's raised kids. I mean, that's work, too. No, I don't mean that. She's not got any level of financial sophistication. Not at all. Yeah. And so you've got to roll over there, otherwise you're going to lose $400,000.

That's the problem here folks in america everybody needs a will hello everybody needs a will if you need it if you got a simple estate go to mama bear legal forms.com it's very inexpensive you can have it done by morning if you got a complicated state sit down with an estate planning attorney uh but everybody needs a will it's not fair to the people you look at what his dad and his grandmother have done to him by screwing around and not writing this stuff down that's wrong y'all you need to take care of your family better than that what does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get ten 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. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. When we start talking about it, the word investing, most people's eyes roll back in their head going,

and now I don't understand. Now you've gotten complicated. This is weird. I don't like math. I don't want to talk about investing. You bunch of nerd people. And I don't have a master's degree in finance. And I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. If you're unsure where to start or you're afraid to make a mistake, our Investing Essentials virtual event is going to teach you

everything you need to know about how to get started and how to maximize your investments. It's happening March 4th and 5th, two nights, two hours each night. It's George Camel and Dave Ramsey, me, March 4th and 5th. Tickets are $199. That's what they start at. Plus, we're going to go into detail, Nerdville. For those of you super nerds that want to go into the detail, I'm going to open up my playbook.

I've only done it one other time, and that was about this time last year. I did one of these events where I go into all of the real estate. I own several hundred million dollars worth of real estate. I love real estate, and all of the proper analysis and the nerd analysis that we do when we're doing a real estate deal, and how to properly unlock all of that and look at it. And it's two hours each night. One night will be almost all real estate. It's live too, correct? It's live. Me and George live, Investing Essentials, March 4th and 5th.

And get your tickets at ramseysolutions.com slash events or click the link in the show notes and get signed up. There's usually a couple hundred thousand people on something like this watching us. And by the way, we're going to take questions live by email at the same time. So we stop in the middle of it. We don't, it's not just a straight teaching. George and I'll have conversations. We're going to answer your questions live.

Some of them, obviously we can't answer a hundred thousand of them, but, um, but we're going to weave in what as a regularly occurring question and make sure it shows up in there. And we really dig into this stuff. So it's not only going to have the basics, which we've been teaching for years, but it's going to have stuff you've never seen me teach before. And George is really, really good at the nerd stuff. So we're going to dig deep into this stuff. Our question of the day is brought to you by YRefi.

If you're struggling with defaulted private student loans, Y-Refi offers a great solution to get you back on track. For a low fixed rate or more flexibility, go to Y-Refi.com slash Ramsey today. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y.com slash Ramsey. Might not be in all states. All right. Today's question comes from Bobby in California. He says, should I purchase a home? I'm 48 years old and I have the cash to buy one outright. But my concern is I would be paying HOA fees, property taxes, and insurance, which equal what I'm paying in rent now. I'm happy with my current apartment. Should I just keep my money in a high yield savings and have less worries that way? Or should I bite the bullet and buy a home as an investment for my future? I love this question.

So first off, I mean, no matter what, no matter what you do, if you buy a home, whether it's on payments or you pay it off or you buy outright in cash, you're always going to be on the hook if you have an HOA for the fees and the property taxes and the insurance. That's just part of the deal. As far as should you buy the house or should you just remain where you are? I mean, you're 48 years old. You've got the money. There's no time like the present. And for me, I kind of break down home ownership into two areas.

Number one, it's like we say all the time, it's the biggest line item on most people's budget, right? And so we want to create stability there. When you're renting, it's fluctuating. It's going up and down. You have to deal with lease agreements, all of that stuff. But when you purchase a house, it's yours, you can lock in, especially when you're buying it outright in cash, right? And then the second purpose is it does help us build wealth. And so those are really, for me, the two primary purposes. And I think that you should do that. Otherwise, when you're

renting in perpetuity, you really are at that point starting to throw money down the drain because there's no end to the process. You're not doing it as a means to buy time so that you can buy. So that's my answer. So Bobby, if you're 48, think back to when you were 28 in 2005. What was that house worth then? What did you did so forth then don't you wish you owned that now that's the same thing you're going to have when you're 68 from 48 it's the same 20-year period of time and so houses go up in value over time unless you buy in an area that is a neighborhood in decline of some kind. In general, good, reasonably purchased, reasonable neighborhood,

single-family homes over a 20-year period of time are a goldmine. They go up in value, period. The other thing we can be 100% sure of, during the next 20 years, your rent is going to go up every year or almost every year. 100% of the time, your rent is going to go up. It does not go up when you own the house. The only thing that does go up is HOA fees and insurance and taxes,

but that's not going to keep up with rent escalation. I think he more so has an issue. You know, you see that big nest egg in your account, and he likes the way it looks in his account as opposed to. Yeah, but that's got to be invested at 10% to 12% to even keep up with what that house is going to grow to. And it's probably not. No.

So I'm going to go buy that house 100% of the time in this situation. Because 20 years from today, not because two years from today, but because 20 years from today, it's going to go way up in value. And 20 years from today, your rent is going to have gone up in value. And as Jade says, you're stabilizing the largest line item in your budget. She's exactly right. Brenda is in Greenville, South Carolina. Hi, Brenda. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hey, how are you doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? I do have a question. I'm 55, and I'm stilligning um i raised my four grandkids i have for the past 21 years and i just feel like i'm just too old to get out of debt oh you're ancient i can't believe old people like you ask questions how'd you even dial the phone as old as you are if you're old if you're woman i'm 64 who you think you're calling i said if you're old

there's no hope for days well i guess i just feel like i'm just you know i think about paying you know until i start listening to you guys i think about paying a house um and you know usually it takes 30 years and no it doesn't by the end i'm like no and no and listening to you you know i you know i've learned a lot i feel like and um so what is it have you got that now i do how much i do um i guess about well okay so i did something stupid you even have a um insta what is it youtube or whatever video of it that my son showed me or my grandson that it says you pay $800 a month for a car. But anyway, that's me. So how much do you owe on your car? 31,000. The same car sells straight down the street for 20,000. Gotcha. What do you, what do

you, what do you make? Um, um i make 43 000 a year okay all right and how much other debt have you got hon i have rent uh twenty one hundred dollars a month okay you rent a house right right that's your monthly that's your monthly okay okay. It's not debt. Do you have any other debt? Credit cards? Just a few credit cards. Okay. I have two personal loans. Okay. So the big issue is you just bought a car that's way more than you can afford, right? Exactly.

It's not fun. You're not having fun, honey. No. Sell a stupid car. Yes, do you want it? Sell it. Do you have any cash? Well, who's going to buy it? Somebody will buy, do you want it? Sell it. Do you have any cash? Well, who's going to buy it?

Somebody will buy it if you price it right. Do you have any money to cover that it's upside down? Because it's upside down $9,000, right? Well, you can get, yeah, exactly about that. Do you have any cash stored away anywhere? Any non-retirement money? Well, no, the only thing I have through my employee and i've been as a 401k and you can't get that out unless you're you can't um so where's the car loan who's got the car loan i have it

through santander through what oh santander it's called yeah oh it's subprime oh god it's even worse okay it is do you have a credit union i do and i tried to go through them and um they asked me to pay on it another six months to a year because i was so upside down in it yeah what i want you to do is i want you to go down there and i want you to get them to loan you the money for the hole you're in loan you eight thousand dollars okay and then you sell the car and get you a thousand dollar car okay and then you got no car payment and then you pl the car and get you a $1,000 car. Okay. And then you got no car payment. And then you plow through that $8,000. Then you got no credit card debt, no car payment.

Now we can start talking about saving up and buying a house. Okay. I'm working now, and I work at DoorDash on the weekends and sometimes at night. You're not afraid of work. You just bought something you couldn't afford. That's all. Exactly. Okay.

You're okay. We're going to show you how to do all that. I'm going to put you into Financial Peace University and show you how to handle money because you're not too old, honey. Definitely. Surely not. If you're still sucking wind, you got a shot, folks. So, yeah, we'll put you into Financial Peace University and every dollar.

We'll pay for all of it, honey, because I've been where you are where I'm scared and don't know what to do. And people help me. So we're going to help you. You hang on. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host. If you don't know, we do this show three hours a day, Monday through Friday, on the glass in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions.

And you're welcome to come by anytime. Homemade chocolate chip cookies and coffee are on us. And sometimes there's two people out watching the show live, and sometimes there's 200. So just come by. If you're making plans south of Nashville in Franklin, Tennessee, beautiful little town, that's where we are right off the interstate. Very easy to come by. In that lobby is a little stage we built called the Debt Free Scream Stage.

And that's what happens there almost all the time that someone's on it. And that includes Davin and Terry, who are here with us. Hey, guys, how are you? We're good. We're good. How are you? Where do you guys live? Kansas City, Missouri. All right. right very cool sorry about your chiefs

we're sorry too oh man too soon too soon yeah oh my gosh wow well congratulations you're debt free how much have you paid off 125 000 very cool how long did that take? $60.77. Okay, say all of it. Say it again. $125,000. $60.77. There we go. 28 months. Exactly.

All right. And how long did this take? 28 months. Good for you. Wow. And your range of income during that two years and four months? So we started at $89,000 and we went down to $52,000 for a little bit and then we ended at $107,000.

Wow. Nice. What do y'all do for a living bit and then we ended at $107,000. Wow. What do y'all do for a living? I work in a factory. I'm in social work field. Okay. Wow. Good for you guys. So what kind of debt was the $125,000?

It's a little bit of everything. Credit cards, student loans, a car. Well, two cars actually. Y'all were normal. Yeah, we were. Yeah. Normal sucks. Yeah, it does.

It's no fun. A lot of medical bills and collections. And now you're weird. Good for you, man. What got your attention? What caused you to go on this journey a little more than two years ago? Well, we decided to get married. And once we decided to get married, I think for me, just as a husband, I was like, oh,

okay, I guess I need to start paying attention to this. So we sat down to start paying and she had seven thousand dollars in savings and she put it on the debt and then that was enough for me to see and i was i was locked in and we we were running from there well it was all your debt no it was okay i was in a lot of student loan debt okay all right your degree for social work yeah yes i mean you guys were living on nothing how did you tell us more about how you did this? Because on 89, at some point you went to 50. How did this happen?

It was a lot of work, a lot of overtime. Yeah, that was really what it was, about 55 to 70 hour weeks. So she didn't see you. No, there was weeks that I was nights and she was days and we'd pass each other on the way out the apartment. Wow. We're like, we're on the phone and we're driving down the highway and we're like, hey, I see you. I love you.

See you on Thursday. So two years of that. That's hard. It was tough. Was it worth it? So worth it. Definitely worth it. You got the rest of your life with no debt, right?

Yes. Because you're not going back, right? Oh, never. Never. No. Yeah. Lots of sacrifices for sure the number one question folks ask me is how do you stay motivated and so I want to ask you the same questions how do

you stay motivated to almost two and a half years what does that look like I mean you're burning the candle man you're getting it I think it was a lot of talks about our future just whenever we have kids the legacy that we want to leave and just having reasons that were bigger than, you know, to keep going than reasons to quit. So I think that was it. For me, I think it was just a lot of prayer. There was times that we were, I mean, we're so tired of doing this. When are we going to be debt free? When are we going to be out?

And then just dreaming. We're running around and looking at houses and, oh, one day we're going to get there. So different things to just try to keep us motivated but for sure what was the dream um as far as like getting our own house is what i meant by that like we were wanting to have our own house and we want to um just set up financial freedom for the bloodline really yeah good for you change your family tree for sure that's a big why yes sir if you have a big enough why you can plow through some hard stuff because it's not forever it's for two years

two years sounds like a long time but when you look back you're like oh no i mean we're done yeah mic drop we're out of here oh yeah good for you good for you guys well done what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is go to work a lot a lot of work uh and then just be willing to sacrifice we missed out on family events and things like that but i mean at the end of the day it's all worth it because we don't own anybody anymore people question your sanity oh definitely yeah people thought we were crazy we're oh that's good for you but i'm not gonna do that people saying we need credit cards and we didn't agree on credit cards for like the first, I would say year and a half. Yeah. About a year of our marriage. I wanted

credit cards for the points. And I tell people now that wasn't a good enough reason. I cut all my credit cards up about a year and a half. Wow. And we hit the ground rolling. So has it happened yet? That moment where the same folks who are saying, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? Asking, how are you? How did you do this how did you do this how did you do oh yeah i think recently more so now yeah i actually went live on facebook not too long ago because i posted our journey and then people are like how did you do it so i was like i'll just go live and answer you guys's questions but yeah everyone's wondering how we did that yeah that's good good for you well a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion right so that's where you are congratulations very good stuff thank you

nobody can argue with your success because it's your success right that's where you are and right you want to go over there and live that way you can go over there and live that way but as for me and my house right yes what we're doing now how did you run into the ramsey stuff about the same time you get married so for me in 2016 the church I was attending at the time they had like this financial class and they were telling us about the baby steps and the snowball method and so I actually started paying off debt then slowly I wasn't attacking it like we did and then so I had paid like two student loans off I believe before we got married and so that's how I got started yeah and my uh my, he told me about the show.

So I was in the car with him and he was playing the show and he talked about the Ramsey show. And obviously I didn't listen at the time. And so, uh, then my mom gave me the total money makeover book. And, um,

yeah, it didn't really click to me until we decided that we were getting married. And I was like, Oh, I guess I need to take this serious. Time to man up now. Yeah. Life events do that.

Yeah. Good for y'all. Well done. I'm so proud of y'all. Thank to take this seriously. Time to man up now. Life events do that. Good for y'all. Well done. I'm so proud of y'all. Thank you. I bet you had to have some cheerleaders. Who was your best cheerleaders? Friends, family, parents, grandparents, siblings. Yeah, they're all going to be watching this.

I would definitely say our parents. Both of our parents. I mean, your dad's the one told you to listen to the radio. Yeah, definitely. Our family and friends, for sure. We had a good support system. Yeah, we did. Well, that's necessary. Because you to listen to the radio. Yeah, definitely. Our family and friends, for sure. We had a good support system. Yeah, we did. Well, that's necessary.

Because you're going to have the haters, too. So you've got to have the angels and the devils both right there. Yes. Good stuff. Well, congratulations, you guys. Thank you so much. We're very, very proud of you. Thank you.

Very, very well done. Thanks for making the trip from Kansas City. I hope you enjoy your time here in Nashville. Oh, we did. Thank you. We don't owe anybody, so it was great. We can do it. All all right davin and terry kansas city missouri 125 000 paid off in 28 months making 89 to 52 to 107 count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one we're dead free they did it they did it right well done you two jade you know what occurs to me watching those

two that um i mean they're young i didn't ask them how old they are, but they're young. And really, you probably even fall into the same category. My daughter does for sure. Y'all have all grown up with a magic wand in your hand. Uh-huh. And if you want something, you push a button. It's at the doorstep. And you get it. There's an app for it.

There's something, an easy button. It's a magic wand. Everything's easy. And it's not all easy, but, I mean, it's ridiculous how quickly we can access information or things or, you know, even solutions to problems. That's right. That are valid in a digital world. That's all good. The problem is none of that does what those people

just did you know what they got grit and grit is not a digital thing there's nothing easy about what they just did i mean they passed each other on the highway and sent a text i love you i'll see you thursday did you hear what they said i heard it newlyw Newlyweds. You know, well, what about life balance? Well, they didn't give a crap. They wanted out of debt. That was their life balance. The life balance is they wanted to be out of balance, so they're in balance the rest of their life.

That's right. That's right. You know what they can do now? Anything you by God want when you don't have any payments, you're set up to do whatever you want to do now. Don't talk to me about balance. Those people got grit, man. They're getting it.

I mean, those people are heroes right there. Yeah. And if you want to teach someone something that you love, your kids, your grandkids, teach them grit. Teach them the ability to roll up their sleeves and do what those two got. I don't know where they got that, grandparents, parents, but those two are studs right there, man.

They're amazing. Absolutely incredible. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. This is the last segment for all of you, unless you're on the Ramsey Network app. And then you can get the rest of the show on the Ramsey Network app. You can get the whole show on the Ramsey Network app. And then you can get the rest of the show on the Ramsey Network app. You can get the whole show on the Ramsey Network app,

and it's completely free, video or audio, however you choose to view it. And a lot of other features, including you can email us from the app. You get all kinds of searchable tools. It's a great app for managing this show, and it's completely free, and there's not a paywall and there's not going to be a paywall so go check it out ramsey network app download it and start using it and you'll get the entire show every day and be able to watch it there randy's in dallas texas hi randy welcome to the ramsey show thank you appreciate it sure what's up? My question is that my aunt, well, my sister-in-law had my aunt picked up.

And she's about 90 years old. Had her what? Had her picked up. Not picked up by the police. Had her picked up and sent into a nursing home. Who picked her up? Well, that's what we tried to find out. The police said that they didn't do it.

So they convinced her. They put her in a car who's there well the facility the nursing home picked her up correct they brought the little van over loaded her up told her they're going to the bank they signed some paperwork uh they signed some paperwork which is transferring her account or adding their names to her account so they have access the nursing home yes and then the bus went one way and my sister-in-law went the other way your sister-in-law was in the van no she drove behind him so she said it you're saying she set it up she set it up okay how is she? I'm a little bit confused. Sister-in-law, your aunt. Correct. So this is your brother's wife, right?

Correct. Your brother's wife put his aunt against her will or against the family's will into a nursing home. Why? Well, she has property. So they figured that once they gain access to her accounts and what she has, they figured they could cash her out and she'd be gone. They're banking on the fact that she may pass away. Well, she will pass away. Everybody does.

So what is all this property worth? Maybe half a mil. So when you call your brother and say you're a crook, what are you doing? What does your brother say? He acts all confused, says I don't know what you're talking about. She needed to go. She's mentally disturbed. She doesn't know where she's at.

Did she need to go aside from the property was it time for her to go no actually she's uh pretty independent for 90 years old she still drives she still pays her bills not anymore um no i can't get her out do what i can't get her out we're barred access we're barred access from seeing her. By the nursing home. By the nursing home. Correct. Have you hired an attorney yet? Yes, we have, and it's very costly.

And they told me to sit down because they wanted to let me know what this would cost and how long this would take. Okay. And what'd they say? We go to court. This is not his specialty. So why don't you get someone whose specialty it is? Is it some sort of a restraining order?

What has to happen for you? No, he has to go to the court, and the court has to appoint a guardian ad litem for this lady and take all the power away from the thieves that is his brother and sister-in-law. There you go. And the judge can do that. The judge will do that in 30 seconds once he understands what's going on. You just got to get in front of the judge. Well, we get in front of the judge, and lo and behold,

the lady or the attorney who's overseeing her in the nursing home, who's appointed her attorney, the attorney that's working what we thought was working for her best interest, they're both working together. So they go in front of the judge. The one you hired is working with the other attorney? No, no. No, so she has an attorney. So apparently they appointed her an attorney, not allowing me to sit here and say so she has an attorney. So apparently they had pointed her an attorney,

not allowing me to sit here and say, I've got an attorney. So you can bring your attorney if you'd like to. Here's the hearing. No, that's not how it works, dude. You can file suit on behalf of your aunt as a guardian at Lytton and have a judge review the situation because you think a scam is going on and a judge will look at it. You need a new attorney.

I think your attorney is an idiot. We asked to have guardianship, and she said, we'll take a look at that. So we presented the information for that, and they went first, brought all these people in, brought a lady in that said, well, she has Alzheimer's. This is what's going on. So when we question her, she's been doing this less than a year. And she said, well, it's really not my specialty. So when we asked the judge, it's not even her specialty.

She doesn't even know whether she can assess the lady's mental state. He goes, I'll take that into account, but let's continue on. Let's just stop. You've been at this story for a while, and I'm not sure we know how to help you. Everything I've told you to do, it sounds like you already are doing. So you're in court. You've got a judge looking at it. That's where I was taking you immediately.

You were already there before I got to you. So how can we help you? Well, the problem is that every time we turn a corner, it seems like we run into a dead end. And the thing is that the judge, the person that we thought we hired, not my attorney, but the person we thought we hired to help is basically building a case against us. Why did you hire them? Well, we didn't hire them.

Well, we hired them to help. And then basically they weren't really helping us. So you need a new attorney, like what Dave said. Whoever you're working with, you need to start fresh. That's the advice. I mean, I don't know how we're supposed to help you. This is a convoluted mess. But what you've got to do is you've got to get good counsel on your side

and start making a solid case before the judge that what has occurred is that your brother and your sister-in-law have stolen a half million dollars from a 90-year-old lady and put her in a nursing home against her will. And that the judge needs to see that, and then you've got to present evidence that that's what exactly occurred. And he will undo all that if he believes that, or she, the judge, whatever it is. And if the lady is lucid like he said she is, bring her up on the stand. Bring her up. Put her on the stand.

You know, let's make an assessment right here in front of everybody, God. But anyway, we're not experts in any of this. The only thing we're experts in is stirring up trouble, and it sounds like you're already doing that. So that's the thing to do. How far do you want to take this? How much do you want to invest in this? And, you know, and then relation relationally how are you going to treat the crooks that are in your family from this point forward wow because that's the devastating part

is that you've lost a brother in this process because you can't have any dealings with someone that acts that way and he's not confused i don't care how he acts he's not confused as dr john delaney says behavior is a language and he has spoken very loudly and you can try to blame it on his wife if you want but he's a wuss so it's his fault if his wife's running over him so you know that's just ridiculous so um and they put everything in their names now possibly a 90 year old lady does need some care right that's possible but um you know and no one else was looking after her it's almost like the question is is the issue that auntie went into the nursing home or is the issue the property because if the issue is the property

then he maybe needs to focus on that as opposed to getting her out of the nursing home because that might be the right spot for her yeah i don't know who her heirs are but they whoever they are if he if he's one of the years should be upset about the theft that has occurred so there's that part of it but it is also possible that in a situation like that that someone is uh in declining mental state and someone did care enough to get them some care when no one else did and then you go well my sister-in-law threw my aunt in the nursing home well i mean no maybe she needed the care that's true i don't know i don't know that about this case i can't

tell one way or the other i'm going on the only thing i've got to go on is what randy's saying which is that's not what's going on here but you do have that separate piece you're saying which is the theft of a half million dollars yeah and so that's not caring for someone right that's not taking care of them so um that's sad yeah it's a sad mess it's horrible some people's children wow that puts us out of the Ramsey Show and the books. 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.

Jay Boshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. Paul is with us in New York City. Hi, Paul. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, how are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help?

Hi, so I have a question. So one of my siblings is looking into buying my parents' home from them. Better than I deserve. How can we help? I have a question. So one of my siblings is looking into buying my parents' home from them, and we're wondering, in terms of the other siblings and I, what percentage of the discounts fare for the sibling, given that they're paying with cash and we're not going through realtors? 20. 20% is a reasonable discount and then let me help you with how i got there okay typical real estate commissions are going

to be six you're going to have some closing costs and some other things and you'll have some negotiating room it'll typically end around between 15 and 20 I set my estate plan up to where the kids can buy each other out of different pieces of property based on the 80% level. Okay. So if the home is currently assessed around 850, the seven range that's being offered is there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, whatever. I mean, but somewhere around 15% to 20% discount,

because they're going to have that and expenses if they sell it in the open market, right? I guess that's what we were trying to figure out. Yeah, I mean, 6% for real estate commission plus some negotiating room, some time on the market, probably some repairs and things that you might not have to do if the kids are bringing it in a discount so mom and dad aren't going to have to replace the xyz thing that they might if there was a home inspection everything in the last year yeah well not everything i mean there'll be a home inspection on this and i promise you it'll find something oh yeah so yeah it's supposed to be next week. Well, I'm saying in that case, if the kids are buying it at a 20% discount,

whatever the little details are, parents don't have to fix that crap. Kid gets that. You see what I'm saying? Yes. So, I mean, you don't nickel and dime them if you're getting a deal. But, yeah, that's a fair number. It's the exact number i've used in my estate plan as i said so um because that's a net net net of everything involved and

you know you've got you've got an actual appraisal of 850 yes we have well not uh like an actual company doing it we have several realtors in the area came and gave anywhere from 8 to 9 50 and uh most of them say it'd probably go for around eight fifty okay all right yeah and so you know eighty percent of that's going to be seven hundred right yeah yeah so it sounds fine to me yeah it sounds like everybody the good news is everybody's communicating and nobody's throwing things at each other right yes nobody's throwing things at each other and we just want to make sure the siblings that a that they are getting a deal that's good for them but also making sure our parents weren't just saying oh since they are

a kid we're just going to give them something and hurt themselves in the future but if you're saying that's fair then that's all of us could say, okay. I mean, do you see how I arrived at that? If you do, then you'll, I mean, it wasn't like I'm not the arbitrator. I'm just using the number I used, and here's where I got the numbers. But, you know, you could go with 90%, and you'd still be okay. But, I mean, somewhere in there, the 80 to 90 range is fine. You guys are going to get this large enough estate. You guys are all going to get something, and it's all going to be fine.

Yeah, I agree. Good stuff. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Krista's in Rochester, New York. Hi, Krista. How are you? I'm well. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? So three years ago, my husband had a pretty significant stroke, and he suffered significant short-term memory loss. I'm going to try to keep it together here. At that time, we were making $94,000, and we were leading a very moderate lifestyle, not new cars, you know, so on and so forth. His company tried to make reasonable accommodations

for him with his short-term memory loss. So for example, he understands everything that happened up until his stroke remembers everything. He can't remember what we talked about two minutes ago. Um, so he can't, he can't work. So we were poised to take over president and CEO of the company. He was let go. So now we have only Social Security income, and the purpose for my call is to understand what we're supposed to do with these two cars. I apologize for getting teary. No, it's a reason to be upset, absolutely.

So you guys have a nest egg as well? No, we do not. No, we do not. You've not saved any money. We saved his divorce. She got 60% of the 401k in New York. And then we were able to put money back into the 401k to the tune of just $70,000 over the course of the seven years

that he was there at his company. We took that $70,000 over the course of the seven years that he was there at his company. We took that $70,000. We moved back home to where our family and friends are for support. And we cashed out the 401k and paid cash for a house and then made the appropriate repairs because it was a flip, made the appropriate repairs, and then we're able to get an appraisal. We purchased it for $70. Six months later, we got an appraisal for $153. We took out a cash out refi and applied it towards all of our bills. So we have zero debt of any kind, just the one mortgage payment that's $834 a month, which is half of what we were paying when we were paying our bills individually. So we have these two vehicles. Both of them are older, respectively. They're $9,000 in the negative on both of them. Um, our social, I've never worked before in my life. I've always been

blessed to be a stay at home mom, but I can't bring much to the table financially speaking. Um, and my husband obviously can't work anymore, so our income is Social Security only. How much is that? It's $2,300 a month, and then we have our disability hearing coming up in the fall, and that'll add another $500 to the pot. Okay. What do we do? What do you owe? Who do you owe the money to on the cars? One of them is an advantage credit union. The other one is IQ credit union. I have spoken to both of them because of the negative equity. Neither one is willing to refinance them. And because of our lack of income, they're not willing to give us a personal loan to cover the

difference either. Well, I'm going to call the credit union manager back at both of them and explain to them where they really stand. Okay? I kind of have. I've even put the voluntary repossession on the table. Like, is that the route we go? I don't know. You already have a personal loan for the negative equity

because the asset won't stand good for the loan. So by definition, the deficit amount is an unsecured loan, right? Yeah. So you might as well admit that, Mr. Credit Union, and let us sell the car and we can try to pay you the difference. Otherwise, we've got a repo and good luck collecting it because you can't get it from us because we don't have anything. Because Social Security is not, they can't garnish it.

So you're judgment proof. So try to negotiate with them. And if they won't, toss them the keys, tell them to come get it. Okay. You don't have any money. And I'm not worried about paying them. And if they won't, toss them the keys, tell them to come get it. Okay. You don't have any money. And I'm not worried about paying them. I'm worried about eating.

Your number one thing is to take care of your husband and your food and your lights and your water. And, you know, I'm not going to worry about them. If they won't work with me, I don't have anything I can do.

You know, they have a bad loan and they should work with you. But they may not. Most of the time, credit unions are pretty good. So I'm going to have another conversation with them before I do that. Jade Walsh, Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Money and relationships are two of the most important parts of your life and they don't function independent of each other. They work together and they don't function independent of each other. They work together or they don't. It's that simple.

They're either at each other's throats or they're working in unity. If you're committed to learning how to navigate these conversations and grow in your relationships and your money, you don't want to miss the money and relationships tour. It's me, Dave Ramsey, and Dr. John Deloney, our Ramsey personality that is a Ph.D. in counseling. We're hitting the road for six amazing nights that are unfiltered, Dave Ramsey, and Dr. John Deloney, our Ramsey personality that is a PhD in counseling. We're hitting the road for six amazing nights that are unfiltered, unscripted, packed with wisdom that you can use to tackle the important things in your life, like raising money-smart kids, how to fight a fair fight in a marriage, how to find contentment. We're going to be live

in Louisville, Kentucky, April 21. Durham, North Carolina, April 23. Atlanta, Georgia, April 25. Phoenix, Arizona, May 5. Fort Worth, Texas on May 7. And Kansas City, Kansas on May 9. It's coming soon. Don't miss seeing us. We'd love to be there live with you.

Tickets are still available at ramsaysolutions.com slash tour. If you're tuning in on YouTube or podcast, click the link in the show notes. Bijou is with us in Long Island, New York. Hi, Bijou. How are you? Hi, Dave. I've been watching your clips of your show on YouTube for a few years now, so I'm really happy that I can speak to you for a few minutes.

Well, I'm honored. Thank you for calling. How can we help? My dad passed away a handful of months ago, and he left my brother and myself about $106,000. And we all cope in different ways. And my brother, when he saw the money, he just said, B, just take the money. When he comes out of this, I know I owe him $53,000, but I put the money in the stock market and it's been growing for the last two months. So what do I give him when it comes to his fences? I would give him his portion of it. It sounds like what you're doing is you're taking his part and your part and you're investing all of it yes and you're doing yeah i just do it all yeah and so i just give him his part if you're saying hey i'm investing

this because it's what i'm doing and probably what you should be doing too then i would give him his cut along with his cut of the growth yeah 50 okay okay so like right now when i looked at it before calling you guys it's at 120 120, so I would give him 60. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you'd give him 60. Okay, okay. No problem. Yeah.

And the other thing I would do is I would end this. You don't need to babysit him anymore. Okay? I'm sorry. You're right. Everyone copes with these things different. I'm sorry for the loss of your dad. How old is your brother?

He's 50. He's 50 years old. Correct, yeah. Yeah. I would just say, if it was my brother, I would have a cup of coffee with him and say, look, I can do this for a couple more months, but this is not a good long-term plan.

I don't like the responsibility I have handling your money. And I'll be happy to coach you on it or i'll be here for you if you any questions or anything i'll show you what i'm doing and you can do the same thing if you want i'll connect you with my financial advisor and he can say and he you can tell him to do everything i'm doing uh or you can do whatever but this idea that because i'm afraid if something goes a little bit sideways, I'm going to feel responsible, and I don't want to be left in that chair. I think it's good for your brother at 50 years old to manage his own affairs.

I mean, you give him a little grace, a little time, like you said, until he comes to his senses, but I'm going to help him if he doesn't. Yeah, just because I think this is going to go poorly at some point. I mean, you wake up 10 years from now and there's a million dollars. This is going to go poorly at this point. Scott's in Bozeman, Montana. Hey, Scott, how are you? Hey, Dave.

Hey, Jade. Thanks for taking my call. I've been listening for a long time. So yeah, my question is, my wife and I, we are on Baby Step 2 and the only debt that we have in Baby Step 2 is our two cars. I've been contributing for years now to my retirement and I was thinking the other day after I was listening, especially something Jade had said, that maybe it'd be a good idea to pause that and get these cars paid off just so we can get out of Baby Step 2 and on to bigger and better things. Yeah, I think that's great. How much are you contributing every month? It's about $750, and then they match that.

So for a short period of time, you'll miss out on the match in order to accomplish your long-term goals. And that is what we teach when you're in Baby Step 2, to stop all investing and saving and throw everything at the smallest debt and get it cleared as fast as possible. Because that focus, that focused intensity, even though you're missing out on the match, and that makes me cry a little, but you're going to make it up in the future by far by not having any more car payments. But you've been messing around with this, and the needle's not moving fast enough. How much do you guys make?

Is it worth it to keep the cars? How much do you make? Yeah, we're roughly about $130, $120 a year. How much are you guys make? Is it worth it to keep the cars? How much do you make? Yeah, we're roughly about $130,000, $120,000 a year. How much are the cars? They total $36,000. They're probably worth, each of them are worth way more. So each of them have, we have $18,000 debt on each of them, but we could sell them both. So if you guys quit going on vacations and went on a scorched earth budget like we teach, how quick can you knock them out?

I think a year I could get them done, both of them. Good. Yeah, you need to do that. It's probably more like nine months. And then do we pause it for the next step? Until you have your emergency fund in funding place till you're at baby step four okay okay baby step four okay we can do that yeah you got it all right you're just fine tuning you've been listening around the edges now it's time to get real yeah that's right you're

gonna go faster than you've ever gone yeah and but it's going to be more intense and more people are going to be criticizing you so you and your wife sit down and go okay we're going to roll to roll up our sleeves. We're going to knock this thing in the nose, get it in our, get it in the rear view mirror so we can go be wealthy and we can be, go be generous and we can change our family tree. And these stupid cars have got to be paid off or we got to get rid of them. So let's, let's just get them paid off. Let's do it fast. Really, really, really fast. Ian's in Provo, Utahah hi ian how are you i'm good dave thank you for answering my call sure what's up um so right now i i'm looking for a little bit of advice because my wife and i decided last year to jump in and do like a debt consolidation program. Oh, no.

And with this company. I've listened to your show for a little bit, and I know a little bit about some of your guys' opinions on that. And when I was rereading our contract with this company, it gives us the ability to cancel it. I haven't canceled it yet. Um, but how much debt is in it? So total is about 22,000. We've been in it for a year. Um, mostly consumer debt. It's a household income. Um, I make about 2000-ish a month right now. What about your wife?

My wife is stay-at-home. With how many kids and what age? We got one kid who's 15. Wait a second. Okay. So you got a 15-year-old and your wife is still staying at home. She's not at least working part-time to help with this? You're making $2,000 a month. Is there special needs? Is there more to it? No, no special needs. I'm not making more right now because I lost my job a couple months ago and not for lack of trying, I've been applying it.

A couple like two or three or a couple like seven or eight? A couple like two or three. it was beginning of november so it's mostly recent but so again that's even a better reason it should be all hands on deck right now yes you should be doing what you know scraping and scraping to get a position similar to what you had but she also needs to get some skin in the game on this as well because two people working is better than one two people working a part-time job that they don't really love is better than one person doing that you see what i'm saying yeah i get it what um what other debt do you guys have uh we have a car

and uh we we kind of been talking about that to how much how at... How much do you owe on the car? About $10,500. All right, so $32,000 cleans up your life. Yeah. That's $3,000 a month for a year. That's what you need. And it's all gone. It's all gone. So the two of you need to go get your living expenses plus $3,000 a month,

and you're done in a year. It's an income problem, dude. That's how you attack it. This is the issue. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Sarah's in Cleveland, Ohio. Hi, Sarah. How are you?

I'm good. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. What's up? So, first of all, I just want to say thank you for taking my call because I know you're so super busy and the amount of knowledge that you have is insane. So, I appreciate you even doing this. But how are you today?

Better than I deserve. What's going on, kiddo? Better than you deserve. So I have quite a few things going on here. I currently live with my boyfriend. I have a daughter of my own, and he has a son of his own. And we decided to start living together in May of this year. And, um, he moved in with me in my apartment and that wasn't an issue. Um, but the only thing is, is now,

um, since then in July, I lost my job and he started working with my dad and he started doing as much as he could, um, to keep his end of the deal going. Um, and I started to fall with my end of the deal because I lost my job and everything. And I was trying to get a new job and all the jobs I was finding just weren't it. They weren't making, they weren't making me enough money. They weren't fulfilling my needs, you know, in every way possible. So I finally found a new job, but the plot twist to this is, is now I'm being evicted and I had a court date and everything. And I literally have one week. Is this because he wasn't paying any rent either? Well, we made a consecutive decision together that we were going to go at this together

and I wasn't too concerned about him making money because at the time I made enough for us to be okay. And now that I'm not, I'm just kind of like, what the heck? You know what I mean? This is March almost. You lost your job in July. So in August, the two of you are not talking about how to pay rent? Well, we were.

And I had a job, but it wasn't a full-time job. He was working. Why was he not paying the rent? He was at that time. Okay. When did he quit paying the rent and why? So he got laid off due to weather because it was construction. So he got laid off due to weather basically the beginning of November.

But before that, we were able to make our rent, we were only late on December and January. And how much, how much is your rent? Uh, nine 94. And what did you used to do before you got, before you lost your job? I was a store manager, um, at a subway store. And you made what? $17 an hour. Okay. Well, I mean, every big box in Cleveland is hiring at $20 an hour right now, and they were definitely hiring all through November and December for Christmas. Why weren't both of you working there?

Dave, I am in a spiral down swirl here i had a car that got repoed last two weeks ago i got my car repoed yeah because you've not been working why yeah why have you not been working i've been trying and the thing is is i've been doing door dash i've been doing a walmart, grocery orders and everything. I mean, did you go down to Target and apply? They're paying $20 an hour. Dave, I have had so many interviews. I've sat in on interviews and they've hired me. They've actually hired me and I show up to work and they tell me that they've filled my position. That has happened to me three times since I've been trying to get a job. It is the craziest thing to me. Wow.

Okay. How old are the kids, by the way? Seven and eight. Okay. Okay. So two adults, neither of you have been able to find any gainful employment anywhere in Cleveland, Ohio in six months. Well, we live like an hour and a half away from there, so we're kind of far from Cleveland.

So you're in a rural community? We are, and that's the issue. Everywhere that we go is either full or they're not hiring or it's only part-time. But we were like, okay, well, we can both get a part-time job. You know, that'll work. We can try. And it's just bogus every time.

And I don't understand what, like, at some point I was like, it's me. You know what I mean? Like, it has to be me. But, like, I'm a smart girl, you know. And, like, I try my best. I do everything I can. It just drives me nuts. I'm like, I just feel so lost right now. What about something remote? Have you checked into something that's not in your community, but you can do from your community? I would love to have a remote job. I would that have you looked for one like virtual virtual assistant

call center yeah yeah um i've definitely definitely looked into it um i applied to quite a few positions remotely haven't heard anything back from them um i i just don't know and at this point i am like i have a job a job now. I just accepted a job. I just got off work. Okay. What are you making? Praise God. What are you making? Okay, good.

Good. Yes. But now you don't have a place to live. Now I don't have a place to live. And what's your boyfriend doing? He's also actively trying to find a job, but the problem is we have one vehicle. So I'm trying to get him to work at the place that I work at so we can at least try to get on the same schedule and we can both work.

But it is like I don't know what to do. I would be nonstop. His full-time job right now is applying for jobs. And call center, anything, anything that's work from home for now because you don't have any way to get anywhere you need a phone what is the size of the the town the village that you're in um we live in a uh it's i would say there's probably oh big enough they had a subway. Yeah, we have a subway. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, you know, it's possible that you're in an area that doesn't have a lot of economy going on. That's what I was trying to fish around for. And you may need to move to more of a metro area in this process to get back on your feet. Have you got somebody you can stay with temporarily i and that's another thing dave i have no family i have nobody where's your dad he was hiring your

boyfriend yeah he he's he's not reliable my dad he dabbles in a lot of things he shouldn't do and he i don't feel comfortable with my daughter around that so i would prefer not to do that i would prefer not to be homeless yeah what are your other options so where are you going i understand where are you going i i i don't know dave i don't know i i am so i i don't know and he has a studio apartment it's not like i can just move my daughter in with him you know what i mean like what about your boyfriend? Does your boyfriend have family anywhere? Friends? Do you guys have best friends? We don't. We keep to ourselves and it's terrible. We don't have anybody like he's from Virginia. His his both of his parents passed away when he

was younger. My mom passed away when i was younger um and we he doesn't have anybody he met he was talking to his grandma and she doesn't let me let me play back for you what you're telling us okay there's no possible jobs and there's no possible housing that that's that's the mentality you've gotten yourself into Sarah and you know nobody and you know that and you don't know a soul that'll help you um and that's the mentality you've talked yourself into I and I I been talking to you for a few minutes and you're intelligent and you're reasonably uh you know you have a reasonable grasp of the English language I I so um I think your mind and your emotions have caused you to believe

those things. But what's happened is, is you've shut down all possibilities because you're so overwhelmed. And so you're feeding us a reality that you believe, but I don't believe it about you. I don't believe that you have no friends, no family, no possibilities, no nothing. I don't believe that about you. I think you do. But you're scared and you're overwhelmed and that's clouding what you're doing. So what I want you to do is reach out to a good local church, go sit down with a pastor today and see if they can give you some short-term help to keep your family off the street and give you some hope back and get you plugged in and get you moving again. But you're believing a lie that's a hopelessness that's not accurate based on the lady I'm talking to. our scripture of the day proverbs 22 26 and 27 do not be one who shakes hands in a pledge or puts up security for debts if you have nothing with which to pay why should your bed be taken from

under you milton burrell said it's amazing how fast later comes when you buy now. Buy now, pay later. Remember that? That's cute. Wow, ahead of his time. Cute, cute, cute. Very good. Shannon is in West Palm Beach, Florida. Hi, Shannon.

How are you? I've seen better days, Dave, but I'm hanging in there. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Okay. I have a unique situation. So I gave birth to my daughter, Pres Presley on December 6th of 2024. Sadly, she was very sick. She was with us for 33 days. We lost her on January 9th. She spent her whole life in the NICU.

I'm so sorry. Thank you. Yeah, it was a shock. So anyway, on top of that devastating loss, we're now facing close to a million dollars in medical bills. Did you not have health insurance? they've denied a lot of the claims. And then, you know, they don't pay the whole claim. So then I'm also stuck with, you know, a couple hundred here, a couple hundred there. And just for her to be in the NICU for a day was around $5,000. Yeah, but 33 days, the total is a million, but you don't have a million. Correct. Yeah.

So how much of this is you so well there's one claim on there right now that um has been denied that one alone is 858 000 now i i don't know what's going to happen with that one yet but there's just pages and pages like i i don't have a physical number i just it's so overwhelming i haven. Like, I don't have a physical number. I just, it's so overwhelming. I haven't even, like, I don't even know where to start. Okay. Well, there's, wow.

It's just, all right. Now, the reality is there's probably two or three parts to this. Yeah. Part number one, if I'm in your shoes, my heart is broken and my brain is going, I don't really give a crap about all this stuff. Sure. And it's making it hard to fight because it's about such a negative, tragic situation. That's one thing you're going to have to work through, you and your husband together. He needs to be helping. The two of you need to make spreadsheets a new hobby.

But it's a very difficult hobby because it's such a horrible story right now. And so you just say that out loud. It's just awkward and awful. The second part of the story is when you actually do figure out what you actually owe, it's probably going to be manageable. If it's not, the hospital will probably write off most of your part if they get most of the other money from the insurance. The third part is if there's an $850,000 claim that's been denied, I'm going to work on that a little bit myself with the hospital and the insurance company, and then I'm going to hire an attorney. Yeah. Because $850,000 being denied is an insurance company playing crap.

I'm not believing that. For sure. A sick baby goes into NICU, that's pretty standard coverage on almost any health insurance policy. Yeah. Just because they don't like it, I don't care. Exactly. No, I agree.

I thought that was pretty outrageous myself. Yeah. So I'm going to give them a little bit of time to get that straightened out with the hospital and with me doing a little bit of work on it. After that, I'm going to turn that over to an attorney and make a spectacle out of these people. But that means you're not paying $850,000. Correct. Okay. That's what that means. And it means that so out of a million you've got stop loss and you've got copay and you've got deductible those are your three words right okay do you know what your stop loss is i don't okay uh do you have an hsa by chance a health savings account program on your health insurance? No. Is it a PPO?

No, it's an HMO. Okay. Well, there's another thing that may come into play. They may have a maximum dollar that they'll pay out. Most of those are over a million. So most of the time you're okay there. Your stop loss is your maximum out-of-pocket. I don't know what it'll be in that HMO.

It might be $50,000. It might be $20,000. It might be $10,000. A lot of HSAs are as low as $10,000. That's your maximum out-of-pocket. That's a stop loss. Okay? Okay.

Your copay, of course, and your deductible are part of that. That's your maximum out-of-pocket. That's a stop loss. Okay? Okay. Your copay, of course, and your deductible are part of that. So you would pay your deductible, plus if it's an 80-20, you would pay 20% until you get to your stop loss. Your deductible plus your 20% gets you to the stop loss, and that's not going to be i would be amazed if it was a hundred grand okay very unusual okay yeah and again so let's say that the total bill's a million one and a hundred ends up on you after all the smoke clears that's when you go and you sit down in front of the administrator at the hospital you and your

husband and say okay you're getting a million of the million one we don't have a hundred what can what kind of mercy can you give us and we want to be honorable we're not here we're not angry with you we're not threatening lawsuits there's nothing like that we owe the money we don't have it i'm asking for mercy and you do that in person after all the bills are totaled up and and you have exact knowledge you don't do that about vague ideas right sure and then they will give you mercy okay hospitals are in the mercy business it's what they do and by the way they got a million of their million won. I was going to say, they got the money.

Yeah, yeah, they're okay. Yeah. They're not going out of business because of you. They're okay. They're not losing a million dollars. This is still so fresh. I feel like there's... Yeah.

Oh, it's awful. Nothing's had time to settle in any way, shape, or form. I don't even know you, and I'm having trouble thinking about it. You know? I know. Yeah, it's awful it's just devastating yeah and you know i've of course like i've attended like routine doctor appointments and i'm sitting here turning this into a business transaction and it's your baby you know yeah but that's the reality of where you are too it is it is it's unfortunate you're gonna have to do the business side of it

or they're gonna make uh the next five years of your life hell absolutely yeah the last thing i want is people calling me for money for you know my daughter's hospital are they already oh they're already they they have no mercy days you know what i would do instantaneously when you realize that's what it is, hang up. I would. Oh, that's what I, yeah. Don't even talk to them. I'm not even having a conversation.

Absolutely. Just push end. Don't say bye. Just hang up. There's no reason. Because there's no point. Because they're trying to collect a bill you don't know. Right.

Until the insurance has figured out what they're going to pay, you don't know anything. Yeah. And unfortunately, like when they call, it's almost as if they haven't received the memo of their current status, you know. They don't care. They don't care. They don't. They're stupid humans on the other side of a phone, and their job is to dial for dollars all day long. And there's no heart.

There's no soul in it at all. And so I'm not talking to them. They don't have any power to fix this. Just hang up on them. Just hang up on them. But make sure you're being proactive on the other side to force the insurance company to get the proper number to the hospital that they owe. So you need to know what three things are, your deductible,

your copay, your stop loss, really four things. What's your max? What's the max coverage that you've got on this policy? And make sure you're caring for yourself. Make sure you're going to see somebody because this is already a hard loss and this is insult to injury what you're dealing with right now. Yeah. And so make sure you're seeing somebody, you and your husband, because this is devastating. It's more devastating than you're letting on in this conversation for sure you're being strong yeah yeah it is um yeah we're doing our best thank you thank you and i'll tell you what hang on i'm gonna have christian pick up we're gonna put one of our coaches with you as our gift to try to help you navigate this stuff, okay? You hang on, we'll

get you signed up for that. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show and 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.