The Ramsey Show - App - Buying More Stuff Won’t Make You Happy, with the Minimalists

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Kristina Ellis discuss: The importance of teaching financial literacy to kids, with The Minimalists, Helping a father who doesn't have life insurance, Paying off debt vs. investing. Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. We help people build wealth, do work that they really love, and create actual amazing relationships. Well, two of my favorite guys stopped by. We want to hang out a little bit. Joshua Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known as the Minimalists.

They are world famous and two of the coolest guys I know. I'm always a little cooler when I hang out with y'all for a few minutes. Oh, keep going. So it's an honor to have you come by. Thanks for swinging by Nashville and seeing us. And let's just start with the important stuff. The new film, Les is now nominated for an Emmy. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.

Congrats, guys. Thanks, man. Never in my life. If you'd have told me at 20 years old, you're going to be nominated for an Emmy, I'd be like, really? It's crazy. It's weird. They don't know I'm in it yet. So when they find out I'm in it, you'll get disqualified.

But it was fun for a minute. Yeah. It was great. It was great. Show up. Right? If you win, I'm going to just take all the credit, though. I would love it.

Of course. We'll hand it to you. It'll go right there on the shelf. We're just going to take the award. We're going to thank Dave Ramsey and then get off the stage. Well, that's what Mike Rowe did on the Borrowed Future documentary we did. He said, yeah, the reason it was so successful was that you had me in it. Because humility is one of Mike's things.

Right. Same stuff, guys. Well, cool, guys. Thanks for coming by. Now, we're working on a new project together that I am so excited about. If you don't know who the minimalists are, minimalism is an art and a science that these guys have founded, initiated, and gotten lots of people to get their lives decluttered

and get some meaningful lives when it comes to the stuff and your interaction and your view of stuff. If you haven't seen their documentaries, read their books, be sure and look up The Minimalists and learn every bit of that. But the story starts of you two before you were minimalists, when you were materialistic like all of the rest of us. You were growing up in Ohio and you were childhood friends. Yeah.

We've known each other since we were fat little fifth graders. Yeah. True story. Now, Dave, we grew up really poor, and we thought we were so unhappy because we didn't have any money. And so when I turned 18, I spent my 20s spending, basically. And it wasn't my money because I was always spending toward the next promotion, the next paycheck. I got that corporate job and was climbing the corporate ladder and always spending, spending, spending until I got to a point where I had nearly half a million dollars

in debt. And ostensibly, I was successful. People looked at me and said, they saw the luxury cars, the big suburban house with more toilets than people, all the stuff to fill every corner of my consumer-driven life. And we were sort of living the old American dream, not realizing that this wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare. and it was a nightmare because we had so much debt and that's really why we're here today is we want to help all of the kids in in and around Dayton Ohio our hometown learn how to um well how to stay out of debt so our high school curriculum is foundations in personal finance it's now been talking about 45 percent 48 percent actually of America's high schools all across america pretty pretty incredible but you guys came alongside us and said okay we want to we want to

sponsor a ramsey education crowd funding initiative yeah and i put it out to your audience and then your audience can come in and help you sponsor this for Ohio schools where you guys are from. Yeah. So they can go through. Because what's ended up happening, the reason we've become good personal friends is that our messages overlap so much. And so does our fan bases, for that matter, our tribes, where you've taught people to live with less. And we teach them to live on less. Yes.

And so it's a good combo. Amen. Good tag team. Absolutely. So it's pretty cool. So where did the financial literacy connection work? I mean, it's obvious to me, but an underhand pitch question is, where does your passion for that come from?

Just the whole background, the whole backstory of materialism? Yeah, just growing up poor. And yeah, I had the magic equation uh if i can make fifty thousand dollars a year i'd be happy and i got that equation from my dad who uh he had a painting and wallpaper business and uh i worked with him during the summers uh in high school and we're working at this really nice house and i'm like how much do i need to make in order to own a house like this and he's like son if you can make fifty thousand dollars you could probably own a house like this so i thought all right that's what i'm gonna do yeah that's rich that's happiness yeah

right exactly and it was in the 90s i made fifty thousand dollars um but i wasn't happy so i'm like well you know it's time has passed a little bit i didn't adjust for inflation so then you know i made sixty five thousand a hundred thousand and uh you know through through that uh that adventure i borrowed a lot of money and i really got myself stuck in a lot of debt. And now, you know, like Josh was saying, we're kind of living that old American dream. And now, you know, Josh and I feel like the new American dream is really living a debt-free life. And what we want to do is help these kids start off their life the right way. I mean, it's unfortunate, but, you know, a lot of people in this society, the majority of them are financially illiterate. And it's not our fault, right? I mean, we're not taught how to

manage our money as kids. We get talked into spending money we don't have, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like. And man, if Josh and I can help some kids avoid that pain and suffering that's compounded by debt, that would really make us feel good. Now, of course, we can't do this by ourselves. We've got to ask everyone for their help to do this. But yeah, you can donate $5, $25, $45. So $5, it doesn't matter what you donate. $25 will pay for a middle school curriculum.

$45 pays for a high school curriculum. So if you donate just a little bit, you could pay for one kid's curriculum for the Foundations of Personal Finance. And yeah, even if you donate $5, just all that money, every single cent of that is going to go towards giving the kids the money tools they need to start their lives off right.

You want to contribute and get these Ohio schools up and running with the financial literacy on the minimalist site, just go to ramseysolutions.com slash the minimalist or ramseysolutions.com slash sponsorship schools slash The Minimalist. That's too many slashes. Yeah, that first one I worked for is just fine. Somewhere in there you're going to get lost. But go in there and we can connect you up and let you make a contribution. It's a crowdsourcing, crowdfunding process here.

And, you know, what we established early on as we got to know each other was this tremendous connection between minimalism and personal finance. Yeah. Y'all talk about that a little bit. People call into our podcast all the time and they talk about all the stuff they have and all the money they don't have. And we're surrounded by things, right? What you see here is there's all this physical clutter and it's really a physical manifestation

of what's going on inside of us. There's a whole lot of other clutter besides material clutter, right? There's financial clutter. We're being irresponsible. There's priority clutter. Think about this for a second. I was at the airport the other day. I was watching one of the news screens and there was this terrible shooting that happened. And they interrupted it with breaking news to talk about the Johnny Depp trial. And it seems like that is our priority with our money as well. What is the shiny thing? So, in other words, that's a little confused,

and a lot of people are a little confused about a lot of stuff. Yeah, it's just sick. Yeah. And so we have all of this additional clutter, and it starts with the stuff, but as we start simplifying, we make room for the things that are truly important. And we start to realize, like, oh, this financial clutter is a result of my physical clutter. I thought I needed all of these things that were supposed to make me happy, but they're doing the opposite.

They're not making me happy. They're making me miserable. They're getting in the way of what's truly important. Josh Milburn, Ryan Nicodemus, they are the minimalists. And we're trying to work with them and get a bunch of their team, their tribe, our tribe, to get these into the Ohio area schools. RamseySolutions.com slash The Minimalists. Again, $45 to get a personal finance for one high school student, $4,500 to put $100 through.

So just whatever your budget is, jump in there. Part of this whole process is generosity. It fits in the mix, too. Amen. So good stuff. Thanks for coming by, guys. Love you, Dave. Good luck with the Emmy thing. I It fits in the mix, too. Amen. So, good stuff. Thanks for coming by, guys. Love you, Dave. Good luck with the Emmy thing.

I want to hear about this, man. All right, man. Look for us to be thanking you when we accept the award. Yeah, I'll be watching for that. Y'all be good. This is the Ramsey Show. Did you know, statistically, when it comes to life insurance and protecting your family, that women are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than men. This doesn't make any sense. Women make up half

the workforce, contribute mightily to family incomes, and in many cases are the breadwinners and take care of their families 24 hours a day. This is one of the most overlooked areas when it comes to financial planning. Maybe it's a relic of the past, but a loss of income or the need to replace family care is equally important for women as it is for men. Single moms, working moms, and stay-at-home moms all need term life insurance. Rates are actually lower for women, which is why I send you to Zander Insurance. They shop the top term life companies to find the lowest rates available. You can compare rates online at zander.com or call 800-356-4282. This is something every family has to deal with. That's zander.com or 800-356-4282. Christina Ellis, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today.

Ryan is in Las Vegas. Hey, Ryan, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, thanks for taking my call. Sure, man. What's up? Hey, just a quick question for you. My wife and I are in an interesting position. We're going to be debt-free at the end of this year, which is awesome. We're paying off my last student loan at the end of December. And then the situation we find ourselves in is my father-in-law is, uh, you know, we're, we're, we're pretty confident he has Parkinson's. It's gotten pretty bad. He's, you know, he's got some money saved for retirement, but there's no life insurance.

There's no long-term care insurance. And, um, I love my mother-in-law to death. So we're just kind of trying to wrap our brains around you know what options we might have and i was listening to you today and i just thought i'd give you a call and see you know if there's anything maybe i haven't thought of that might be able to help with the cost because it's you know the big thing is that is the care piece of it which is going to get expensive and if there's no insurance cover that um you know we're just we're just kind of curious what what options we might have yeah if he's got a parkinson diagnosis, you're not getting long-term care or life insurance. Mm-hmm.

It's like you can't buy homeowner's insurance after the house burns down. And so that's what you're facing there. So what's the size of the retirement account? My mother-in-law just got power of attorney uh so she's in control of all the money and from what we understand we're thinking it's about a million to a million and a half um unfortunately there was no uh following the baby steps with with the way they kind of handled money so we're not really even sure what he has um we just don't want our mother-in-law or my mother-in-law to burn through all that trying to care for care for my father-in-law to burn through all that trying to care for my father-in-law.

Well, as long as she manages the budget and the process, and maybe you can help her with that, she will not burn through it. Average nursing home stay is $75,000 to $100,000, and the average time in a nursing home is 2.8 years. So how old is your father-in-law? He's in his 60s, later half of the 60s, and with the progression of the disease that I've seen in the three years I've been with his daughter, it's just progressed so quickly, we don't know how long it's going to be. It's just a weird situation at the end. Yeah. So this is horrible.

I'm so sorry y'all are facing this. I lost a good friend to this about four or five years ago, and I watched him fight it for about six years. And like you said, the progression is kind of brutal, really. I'm so sorry. So, yeah, I think the way she's got plenty of money she's okay all right uh and so just to be very cold and calculated for a minute i mean he's probably got a couple three years i'm not a doc what do you think

ryan you with me? Did I lose him? Well, we lost something there. Lost something there. All right, let's try it one more time and see if I can bring it. Yeah, he's gone. Okay. All right, so phone glitch or something, I don't know but so the problem with these situations is it takes a highly emotional situation like a tragedy like a debilitating disease and it turns it into a uh ryan are you

there ryan three two one okay i'm done with that y'all figure that out um the it takes a highly debilitating situation and the emotional charging of that. And what you've got to guard against is allowing in your, well, Deloney said, Dr. John Deloney says, in the middle of a situation like this, facts are your friends when you're facing a highly emotional situation facts are your friends so you got to come down off the emotion and step to the side for a second and have an out-of-body experience a little bit and then look at the math and the math is he's in his late 60s highly progressed so i'm guessing i don't know anything about this i'm just using observation i'm not a doc and i'm not saying that he could live 10 years for all i know but i'm

guessing he's not going to and so if he goes through um if he goes through uh three years of a hundred thousand dollars a year and they got a million and a half she's fine as long as you manage that you don't let somebody come in and charge you three hundred thousand dollars a year for care you know that would be but you can and that can happen if you don't keep your wits about you. So the thing that Ryan can do for his mother-in-law is give her a sounding board and some accountability and I'll walk with you so that together we can all make good wise decisions. And then if they do that, they got plenty of money. Yeah, that was going to be my question is what should Ryan's role be in this? because it sounds like he is a little bit worried about his mother-in-law perhaps

burning through the budget but i mean should he just volunteer to help her or what should that look like as he approaches her yeah you just you know can i please be your backup be be your uh uh you know the person that walks beside you i love you i love him i obviously love your daughter and i'll walk with you and we'll use some you know good we're gonna make sure dad's taking care of him we're gonna make sure you're taking care of and the way to do that is to spend the appropriate amount of money and no more for his care the appropriate and no more because if you do that you're gonna have plenty left over mom Mom, unless some kind of weird or bizarre thing happens here that I can't see with the information I have. But, yeah.

And then this is the reason that two things, this call reinforces two things. One is it's a really good idea to have some money when you get to your golden years. A million and a half changes this equation a lot. If you told me at 150,000, this equation's a problem, right? So that's a wonderful thing that they've done. They've done a great job of building some wealth. And then the second thing it does is it says, okay, if you're worried about this stuff, I think with a million and a half, they're okay. Maybe self-insured easy enough. But if you're worried about it, you should have had before this life insurance and long-term care insurance in place.

Long-term care insurance, if you've got under a million dollars, as far as I'm concerned, is absolutely vital once you reach 60 years old, and I would not buy it before then. But the cost of nursing home, again, the average stay in America is 2.8 years. Average cost is $75,000 to $100,000 a year. So you add it up. It's $250,000. That's the average, which means that some people are more and some people are less. And you can do in-home care cheaper, and some would argue in some cases that that's a better quality of care

depending on the issues that you're dealing with at home. And some people have to do that because they don't have a choice. And to make sure somebody gets high-quality care. But that's the process that we get into open phones at 888-825-5225 you jump in we'll talk about your life and your money so again people ask about this all the time let's just recap a little bit the you can be self-insured if you can absorb a $253,000 blow and still have enough left for the remaining spouse to live on. That's the big deal. That's good. In Ryan's situation,

it sounded like, so his wife, that's her father, how does he navigate both the emotions of empowering his wife to be part of these money conversations, but also the emotions of the fact that her father is going through? Yeah. I think you just have to say it all out loud. Yeah. You know, it's a lot of awkwardness is removed if someone just has the courage to just say it and say, you know, this really sucks. And my heart is breaking. The only thing that would make my heart break more is if we walk out this process in the wrong way to where mom is not taken care of. So we've got to walk this out in appropriate care for him, making sure all the while that

there's money left for mom. That's so important to highlight because I think a lot of people feel uncomfortable on one hand having these health conversations and the sadness of it, but also money conversations can be hard and people kind of want to avoid some of that. So it's important to have both conversations, even if it's sticky, if it's hard, if it's emotional, these need to happen up front. Yeah. You know, but what I found is in the years of doing financial coaching, sometimes everybody in the room knows something is there and just saying it out loud takes the power out of it. You know, it's like they tell you this whole story and you go, hey, did you know that sounded a little crazy? Like you're acting crazy. When you say that out loud, everybody goes, yeah, that is a little crazy.

Even the crazy person goes, yeah, that's a little crazy. You know, if you just name it, you know, it's like, this sucks. It hurts. I'm scared. I love everybody. It makes me want to cry every time I think about it. And it's horrible. And we're going to do it together because we love each other.

And this is called family. And when you just say it out loud, it takes some of the power out of it. It's all the bottled up that gives it so much power. And it's still going to be a hard process. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Christina Ellis Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the Dead Free Stage, Dylan and Bree are with us

from Sanford, Maine. Welcome, guys. Good to have y'all. Hey, how's it going? Where is Sanford, Maine? It's right outside of Portland, Maine. Oh, okay. All right. L.L. Bean country then. Yes. Yeah. Very cool. Well, good to have you guys. Welcome to Nashville. And all the way down here to the south to do a debt-free scream, how much did you pay off? $188,100. Woo! How long did that take? 34 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? When we got married, we started around $90,000, and then last year we ended up at $195,000.

Whoa! What do you all do for a living? I'm a biochemist. And I'm a machinist for a big airplane company. Good. Very cool. And you guys have been busting it then, huh? Sure have. Yeah, very good.

How long have you been married? Three years. Okay. So this whole thing starts when you get married, 34 months, and you knock out $188,000 of what? What kind of debt? That was our mortgage. You paid off your house? Yes.

First thing we do when we get married is pay off our house. This is just just weird that's just amazing how old are you two i'm 26 and i'm 25 with a paid for house what's this house worth about 350 y'all are amazing you're so weird i love you that's awesome way to go you guys absolutely killer very very good great stuff great stuff life is good what gave you the inspiration to do this tell us the backstory here so it all started on my 18th birthday my uncle gave me one of your books and it sat on my bookshelf for about a year and then i finally decided gives an 18 year old a dave Dave Ramsey? I mean, come on. That's like giving you socks for Christmas. And then after I read it, I was hooked.

I'm a planner, so I thought that was a great plan. So I decided to get my then-boyfriend, Dylan, at the time to go to Financial Peace University with me. Oh! And I did drag him there. Yes. He was not very excited. Nope. But you were exciting, so he got you.

That's a good plan. Good job, Dylan. Yeah, I showed up. Yeah? Yeah. And then what happened when you get to class, Dylan? It took about, what, four or five weeks until I really liked it. I was halfway through the class.

And then I got on the plane and paid off the truck, paid off the motorcycle, and she paid off some of her loans. So when you get married, you were debt-free. Yes. And then went and bought a house and said, we're knocking it out now. Well, we originally planned to buy the house and pay it off in about seven or eight years, which is the average when you're on Dave's plan. Yeah.

I've heard. Unfortunately, COVID happened, and we couldn't do anything. Oh. and um i've heard fortunately unfortunate covet happened and uh we couldn't do anything we were supposed to go on the ram to cruise and then unfortunately that got canceled don't tell anybody um so we took the money from the cruise and we put it on the mortgage and we saw the amount of the mortgage go down um pretty pretty drastically wow and uh it got us fired up we're like we paid off 13 000 that cruise yeah it ended up working out for us we're a little bummed so we have to do another one okay so so if we book another one you'll go absolutely yeah really you're you're willing to go back out there on the high seas today dave with uh with with the pandemic in the background you're willing to go i don't know if I'm willing to do this again. It was pretty painful for me.

We'll drag you just like Bree dragged me to FPU. I'll be straight with you. I was drug into the first one, but it worked really well until the pandemic took it out, and then it became a PR disaster. But, oh, wow, way to go, guys. I'm so proud of y'all. So what did the journey look like for y'all? You guys had a huge income jump,

but what all did y'all do to get out of debt? I worked seven days a week for the last year and a half, 10 plus hours a week a day. Sorry, a day. 80 hours a week for a year and a half. And Bree stayed home and cooked and cleaned and saved us money from the groceries front. Well, I also had a full-time job as well. So I was working 40 hours a week, and then I would come home, cook dinner, clean the house, make sure everything was all set for when Dylan came home from his shift, all he

had to worry about was eating and going to bed. And doing it again. Exactly. And so that was kind of the way that we had divided the workload. So it didn't make sense for me to do overtime at the time. It made more sense for him, and so that's what we did. But you were both in agreement to this ridiculous schedule for a short period of time because it knocks it out. And some of the drastic things we did, I really tightened up our grocery budget. I got it to about $20 a week. And so I was couponing

and really pinching pennies. We didn't eat terribly. We ate very well, Dave. So impressed. We bought all of our meat in bulk, and we went to the store and bought veggies every week, and about $20 to $30 a week. Lobster's cheap in that area. Yeah. Not that cheap.

Wow. Amazing, you guys. You guys are fun. So what do you do now? I mean, you're 100% debt-free. You make like $150,000 to $200,000 a year. I cut the overtime down. I guess.

So now we're making about $150,000. Yeah. It's put us in a spot where Free has been able to leave her job and go to another job. Took a little pay cut, but it's a job that she's happier with. And so we're just going to scale back into working and do more traveling and be together more. Is there a certain big single thing you wanted to do now that you're free? I guess the big goal in the end was paying off the mortgage will help me one day become a stay-at-home mom. And that was our long-term goal. Without having a house payment,

it makes living on one income so much easier, so much less stressful. We can still save money. And so that was really the big long-term goal until that point comes, really just traveling and enjoying spending time. We need to get that Ramsey Cruise up so that you don't have to get a babysitter. Yeah. Get it going fast. Way to go, you guys.

You're impressive. Who were your biggest cheerleaders? We kept it mostly a secret. We had a couple of friends that I work with and a couple of family members that knew about it. But mostly it was just the two of us keeping each other going. That was going to be my next question is that, you know, you guys are 25 and 26. Paying off your house at any age is not normal, but doing it at 25 and 26, that's really weird and awesome. Yeah. is not normal, but doing it at 25 and 26, that's really weird and awesome. What would you tell

people that are in your generation that are young who think like, ah, no, I'm going to keep student loans forever, paying off a house, that's strange. Like what would you tell them to break through and help them believe that it's possible? I think what I would like to say while we were getting through this is I became, or we both became comfortable with being uncomfortable and really you know pinching pennies and and making hard decisions and you know I remember sometimes I'd look at the clock and you know it's eight o'clock and Dylan's still not home from work and he left you know at five o'clock in the morning and so really learning that these short-term sacrifices will give you so much more in the end and that all of the pain that you go through and the hardships are really worth it.

I mean, when you get an agreement about that and neither one of you is whining about the process, it changes the whole formula. I mean, if you'd been whining about the work or she'd been whining about it, my new husband's gone all the time. Instead, we're like, game on, game on. It's just for a short period of time.

We're going to live like no one else, so later we can live and give like no one else. You were like grown-ups and stuff. Way to go, y'all. Wow. So impressive. Very cool. I'm proud of you. It's very, very good.

It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. You're a sharp couple. You're going to go big. Go big. We've got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you. That is definitely the next chapter in your story. No doubt about it.

You're on the way to do that. And I've got a feeling you're going to be able to do some really cool things with money in your life. It's going to be a great tool in your hands. You'll be master of it instead of the other way around. I've got a copy of the Total Money Makeover for you to give away and get somebody started. Once you start telling the story a little bit, people are going to want to know how you did that. And Financial Peace University won your membership as well. We'll put you you in that or you can give that away if you want to whatever you want to do what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is the key main thing

for us for me anyway it was communication um we talked about everything we bought something we talked about at first um and that got us on the same page with money and actually a lot of other things too. Brought us closer together. And so that was the key for me. Just talking about everything. Going through Financial Peace University really taught us how to communicate really well as a couple. And something you bring up in Financial Peace University is the amount of money fights in marriages.

And we can stand here today and confidently say we've never had a money fight and so that you got him past the fourth lesson yes yes i'm the kicking and screaming of the first lesson i was okay yeah that's great you guys are awesome congratulations dylan and brie from maine and 188 000 paid off house and everything in 34 months. Lots of hard work. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free!

Yeah! That's how it's done, boys and girls. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Well done. This is The Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Paul is in New York City. Hey, Paul, how are you?

I'm good, thanks. You, Dave? How are you doing? Better than I deserve. How can we help? Okay, so we have a bit of an interesting situation. The last two years have been dreadful. I heard the rumor. And we have two rental

properties. My wife and I both work. And one of them was flooded back in September. It's located in a non-flood zone. So we don't have any, we didn't have any flood insurance on it. So we had to pay everything out of pocket. So I zeroed out a lot of our savings in order to keep everything afloat, pay the mortgage, etc. How pun intended with a flood. Exactly. And I live in New York, so we had the eviction moratorium, so they stopped paying and I couldn't even do anything with it. So it was just a horrible, horrible mess. So we finally got a sale. We're under contract. And my wife and I were sort of at different ends of the spectrum with her. She wants to do a 1031 exchange and go into more

real estate. I want to be a seller in this environment. I don't want to be a buyer. I don't think I want to wait at least for some prices to come down. And I'd rather pay off some small debts that we have and sort of take the rest of the cash and just put it away and put it aside. So that's- What's your household income? Mine is like a little bit north of $100. She's around $90, $95 or so.

What does she do for a living? She is a project manager. What do you do for a living? And I work in utilities, so I'm an engineer. Okay. All right. So some of this is personality style. You're an engineer.

You're a detail guy. And the overwhelming number of details in the crisis has gotten to you more than it did to her. And that's okay. That's just the way it is. And so what you guys just need to recognize is I'm going to send you a copy of Rachel Cruz's book and I want both of you to read it. It's called Know Yourself, Know Your Money because a lot of what's happening here is not that a 1031 is right or wrong

or not that taking some time off from this market is right or wrong. Either one is actually okay, as a matter of fact. But it's not okay that you can't get on the same page and that she's not hearing the amount of stress in your voice that I'm hearing. This has worn you out, dude. Yeah, I'm just really done. You're bleeding.

You're wounded. We've been bleeding. No, you're a wounded done. You're bleeding. You're wounded. We've been bleeding. No, you're a wounded warrior right now. Yeah. And you're bleeding emotionally. I can hear it. I can feel it talking to you. Okay?

And I'm not saying you're weak. I'm just saying that's a reality. There's times in my life I got the crap knocked out of me, and I was bleeding too. So, I mean, that's just life. You just need to recognize that. And then she needs to recognize that too and not be such a player right now. This is a good time for y'all to pull back and heal.

So I'm going to actually take your side, but not because you're right, but just because you need to be together and you both need to be doing stuff from strength, not when one of you is pulling the other one along from weakness. What other debts do you have? We have the mortgage on our primary residence. We have another rental property, but that's paid for by the rents that are coming in. No, it's not paid for by the renters.

As you noticed, if they don't pay, you can't get them out. You still have to pay a stinking payment. That's mythology. Yes, absolutely. That's mythology. And then we have this other mortgage, but we're under contract. Yeah, and you don't have any personal debt at all? No, not real personal debt.

I mean, I have like a small credit card that's around $8,000. She has another small credit card that's around $10,000. What do you owe on your mortgage? For something, $420, $430. What are you getting out of the sale of this rental? Net profit in your pocket. Net profit after all is said and done, probably like $200, $250, something like that. All right.

See, I want you guys to have some peace. You haven't had peace in a while. That's why I wrote a book called financial peace two words that don't go together like airline service right and so you guys you just you cannot you cannot run with no emotional margin in your personal finances and win long term now i'm more like your wife my wife is more like you paul on the other hand she's like slow down we got time it's going to be okay i don't feel like doing this right now i'm kind of wounded and i'm like game on warrior mode you know and so i'm more like your wife but i can i can hear it

in your voice and from years of doing what i do i've learned actually to have a little bit of empathy a tiny bit but a little bit the thing only the thing that stresses me out is that i mean the 1031 is great because you know you defer the taxes and whatnot but the you know it's the 45 day window no no the whole freaking thing of owning rental property and being back in debt and dealing with the tenant after you just went through everything you went through stresses you out. You want out of the real estate business at least a little bit. Calm down a little bit. It's all she needs to do. It's okay. I would not do a 1031.

I would just sideline this money for right now. You don't want to jump back in. You said you don't want to jump back into this market right now while it's still hot. It's still hot, and I want to be a seller. I don't want to be a buyer. Exactly. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Some of them, Mo, are just legitimate emotions.

Trauma. Small T trauma. I mean, you know, brain damage. You didn't almost die or something, but you've just been through crap. And a lot of people have in this season. We've been through all kinds of stuff with covid and inflation and i mean i had a little trauma when i filled up my truck i mean it's funny you mentioned that that's funny that you mentioned that because two two two uh what was

it a couple months prior to this phone i actually went in for brain surgery whoa yeah are you okay yeah no i mean it's a recurring thing i have um i have a condition from my childhood years i have to go back every every so often for uh revisions and repairs yeah bad choice of metaphor then sorry okay no it's okay i didn't know but yeah yeah so i i do think that you have to here's the thing. Personal finance is also personal, and you have to take into consideration what's going on in your life. Brain surgery, floods, bad tenants, moratoriums during pandemic. This has all left its mark on you and your wife again.

Her answer is not wrong. I'm actually personally doing a 1031 right now, so it's not wrong. Okay. But I got zero stress over it i'm not it's not putting it's not it's not activating me the way you're being activated with this and so i think you just chill a little bit let's pull back i might i might even throw the money at your mortgage and start thinking about how fast we pay off our mortgage making 200 a year yeah that's my thought is just how much less stress they would have if they followed the baby steps and worked through paying off the mortgage. And then once they hit baby step seven, invest in real estate and do it with cash.

That'll just feel. Or if the other mortgage on the rental is like $200, reach over and just pay it off on that other mortgage. And then you just have your only debt would be your home mortgage. Get rid of these stupid credit cards. Let's get on a plan. Calm. So good.

Steady. Wise. And what happens is when we get all frenetic and get in a hurry, and I do it too. I'm the world's worst because I'm so freaking task-oriented, but I'm the guy that doesn't need'm so freaking task oriented but um but I'm you know I'm the guy that doesn't need to be telling anybody else about this but I the truth is I can I can just smell it on him you can feel in the air can't you oh you can feel it my heart feels like it's like

in a knot just listening to his voice and like you can feel the stress yeah and that's not weakness that's just saying this is reality it's not not, you know, if you had brain surgery, you know, and you had, you know, reality is it just leaves a wound. And it takes a little, give yourself a little room. You'll make better decisions. You'll make better choices when you're not as wired and spun up in the whole process. And I'm going to take your side, but not for the reasons you presented, but instead just saying you just don't need rental property right now. You already got one.

That's probably one too many. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. Good job, Ms. Christina, Austin, Ben, Zach, Andrew, James, Kelly, and the booth. Good work. I am Dave Ramsey, your host, and we'll be back. Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the

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