The Ramsey Show - App - Can I Add My 3yo Kid to My Payroll for the Tax Benefits? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Dave Ramsey & Rachel Cruze answer your questions and discuss:  "Should I take out a car loan so I can keep my employer's car allowance?" "Can I put my kids on our payroll so we can put money into a 401(k) for them?" Selling a house to pay off debt, from the blog: Should You Sell Your Home to Knock Out Debt? How spouses can balancing handling finances together. Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Join a Personality-led FPU class. Click here! Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Interested in advertising on The Ramsey Show? https://ter.li/s64ye3 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods, moving, and storage studios, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Number one best-selling author, host of the Smart Money Happy Hour, co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour, Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality. My daughter is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225.

Olivia starts off this hour in Columbia, South Carolina. Hi, Olivia. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Sure, what's up? So I get like a separate line item on my paycheck for $600 for a car allowance every month. I have to have a car in over than five years. I've been pushing it to year, I'm on on year seven and they're just now saying like you need a new car so i'm trying to decide if i should just like say never mind don't give it to me anymore because we've been throwing it at our debt because we're in baby step two we're going to be done either in a month or december or should we sell my husband's truck because he has a work car that you can use for personal use it's in his contract it's totally fine and then buy a new car with like the rest of that or i don't i just don't know what to do

well you don't have to buy a new car just a newer car correct yeah yeah let newer than five years to keep that or is it even worth it i have a great 2016 honda civic because if you keep the car what what ends up, your employer is... She loses $600 a month, right? Yeah, that's it, yes. And the gas card, which would kind of suck, because I use about $300 a month in gas for my job. Oh, so it's $900.

Yeah, if you think about it, yeah, because my gas is free for all my business use. I fill it up personally though okay so that's what eleven thousand five hundred dollars a year yes um and you're what would it cost you to move up in car three years so that you're one year inside of the you got a four-year-old car oh um fifteen or 20 000 no no have you even looked no because i was just thinking i was just gonna forego it um no i think you're gonna do it i

think you're gonna do it i think you're gonna i think you're what were your husband's truck sell for um 30 on kelly blue books oh okay paid for wow okay yeah we just have the student loan the What will your husband's truck sell for? $30 on Kelly Blue Books. Oh, okay. And it's paid for. Wow. Okay. Yeah, we just have the one student loan left. And your student loan's how much? $17, the last one.

And your household income's what? $140. Wow, okay. You guys are doing great, Olivia. Mm-hmm. You're doing great. Thanks. We're like, someone gave us your-

So, I'm just doing math. $11,000 a year or great. Thanks. We're like, someone gave us your car. So I'm just doing math. $11,000 a year or not. Okay, so if we sell the truck and pay off the student loan and use the remaining money and sell your car and move up a little bit in car, we get an extra $11,000 a year. And we're out of debt. And he needs a car, though. No, he's got a car. He's got a company car he's allowed to drive.

Yeah. Oh, that's right. He can drive it wherever he wants to yeah i'm doing that olivia yeah that's my plan i'm gonna start i'm gonna dump his truck take out the student loan put the other 13 with your car you don't have to spend it all on a car but um but move up in car you know a little bit enough to get back in this because they're basically, we're going to pay you $11,000. So if you move up $11,000 in car, you broke even the first year on that. Okay. So I think this is a keeper. And that's not, by the way, what they're asking you to do is not unusual.

Most car allowances do have a mileage and a year model uh floor they will not let you go below and they've let you get away with it for two years because it's not because they're stupid it's just because they in in you know they've run some statistical analysis and if they're going to pay for your car they don't want you in a hoopty that's breaking down because you're supposed to get to work. Okay. That's what the purpose of that is. It's not random. So, yeah, it's not a bad gig, and you're driving a lot. Oh, yeah. I'm, like, working with right at 200,000 miles right now. Yeah. Oh, dang. Yeah. So, whatever, you don't want to move up too much in car because you're a road warrior,

so whatever you drive, you destroy its value with the mileage. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm going to move up to a three-year-old. You said you're driving a Honda what? A Civic. Yeah, move up to a three-year-old Civic. Whatever the difference is in that and yours,

you should be able to pay that out of what's left over after paying off student loans on the truck. How much can you sell yours for, Olivia? When I did the Kelley Blue Books, it was like $3,500. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And I think $13,000 with $3,500 will get you up to where I'm talking about. Okay.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Well done. Yeah, she's on it. I had a girl on my, I did an Instagram live with the car mom. It's a girl. She's a young mom and she's built this huge following because she goes in as a mom and goes and walks through all these cars, right?

Like she gives you tours of cars and this whole thing. The car mom is a car expert. Yes. That's cool. Yeah. She grew up, her dad owns a car dealership. So she grew up around cars. That's cool.

So she's like kind of taken this on and she's like got this great following and everything so good for her but we were talking about used cars but she was still saying like with repos being high and because people taking out loans on new cars still the used car market is like it's still on fire she was like it is still so difficult and so just as a word out there for people if you know you have to replace your car in the next six months start searching now like start actually doing the research looking saving and all of it because and don't get in a panic yes don't yeah be prepared because it's still i mean there's it's still it's not it's not like it was but it is no it's not like they're not back to the car the market is not flooded with used cars either. Right, exactly.

Yeah, still. Interesting. Yeah. Very fun. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Now, traditionally, not counting the burp in the market after COVID supply chain stuff, okay? When the Mississippi ran backwards and used cars went up in value, okay? I mean, this was a weird moment in history and an anomaly statistically, okay? So not counting that, the new car market has traditionally lost 70% to 80% of its value in the first four years.

And so they go down in value like a rock. That's where Chevy got that, like a rock, okay? And I'm a Chevy guy, so it's okay. And Ford's no better. It's found on the road depreciated. So there you go. And if it has wheels, it has a motor, has a battery, it's going down in value. Now, what we're saying is there was a period of time where it actually went up for a

short period of time prices went up everything went backwards in covid for a minute there remember that and then now we're back to more normal but it hadn't cooled completely off is what you're saying yeah yeah and i was looking at some stuff even online um just after we talked and i was like oh yeah like i mean you can find stuff but it's really difficult. But also the encouraging thing is cars today. She was like, cars that have 200,000 miles, they're not breaking down. Those are good quality cars. So that's another good thing is that they last you so much longer than they used to. Yeah. They don't build them like they used to. Thank God. Good. Thank God. That's right. Yeah. These actually have disc brakes and stuff. I mean, good gosh. Wow.

I got a 1960 Corvette. You can't stop that thing in a 10-acre field. I mean, you just kind of have to let it coast to a stop. It's unbelievable. Cute. Very nice to drive around a little antique, but the new one is a lot better. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys.

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Chris is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi, Chris. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I'll get right to it. Me and my wife recently started a side business. We both work full-time. I'm kind of looking to pay off a ton of consumer debt and realize you can only save so much. So we started this side business, Dog Sitting, with the intentions of paying off the consumer debt and spoke with my accountant last year. And he suggested putting my two children kind of on payroll, right. And paying them to benefit, you know, investing into their Roth IRA and maxing out for them because he suggested that,

you know, they don't pay taxes on that. So that now kind of threw me for a loop, and I think that's what we're going to plan on doing for this year. And my question is, we are pretty late to the game with investing for ourselves, right? And I kind of wonder if it's foolish to do that for them. I just recently learned the power of compounding interest, So that's the reason why I'm doing this. You know, there are three and five. It just seems like a unique opportunity because we don't plan on doing this forever, really just to pay off the consumer debt. And we're not really struggling. We have a plan, you know, to pay off the consumer debt. And if it takes a little bit longer because we're paying our children and investing in a Roth IRA. It seems okay.

Chris, I'm an IRS auditor, and I'm sitting in front of you, and you paid your three-year-old to do work. I'm not believing that the three-year-old did any work, and I'm going to undo everything you did in the audit. You're going to lose. Your accountant is a moron you have to be able to be working if the child is actually working you can pay them the market value for their work but you can't make a case that a three-year-old is actually working. Be struggling to say a five-year-old.

It happens to be walking dogs, so we can do this. Now, an exception would be like I did have a client one time who had a baby who appeared in multiple diaper commercials and made serious bank. The baby was actually working and so yeah we put that into an IRA for sure because of the power of compound interest but what you have to be able to make the case that they were paid you know like Rachel for instance at 14 years old would go and do a three-minute talk on the stage of why it's tough to be Dave Ramsey's daughter. It was like eight minutes. It was like eight minutes. Eight minutes?

Okay. I'm sorry. We would work the events, though. Anyway, it was not eight hours. It was a few minutes, okay? And then she would go work the book tables, and I would pay her a percentage of what the kids' books sold at the book tables back then. She's a teenager.

And it was a healthy percentage, but I didn't pay her $100,000 a year. You couldn't justify that to an auditor. You follow me? So, I mean, I think, you know, so you can't do that. The dog sitting, I mean, it really is. It's not, you know, feed the dogs, watch the dogs, play with the dogs. Three-year-olds are not allowed to work. Okay.

I mean, really. Just use some common sense, okay? Yeah, yeah. What would you actually, if you ran a business, would you actually hire the neighborhood three-year-old to go over? No, you wouldn't. I might hire the neighborhood eight-year-old to help me and there's a market value to that doing dog sitting okay and you can actually make a common sense case for that yeah

but the three-year-old still barely potty trained oh my god and now we're trying to potty train dogs no no no no no no no no no this doesn. This doesn't work. So your accountant is willing to set you up for losing an audit, which is why I'm saying I don't think you need this accountant anymore. And, Chris, and here's the deal, too. Even if you wait until they're 8, 10, 12, 14 years old to start this process, they're going to be fine. They're going to be fine. You don't have to start at 3.

So you can do this in a morally legal way eventually that's that's great what he's saying that he's going to not do the dog sitting thing after he gets out of debt so it's not the opportunity is not going to be there no i'm just saying in general though like in general they can go and like y'all could start something or you know whatever life looks like when they're when they actually are able to contribute and it's not like you're kind of you know and you don't need to be behind on your investing when i did this for our three kids you have to file a tax return on the kid and there is some taxes due okay there's no income tax due but they're going to get hit with fica and uh self-employed income and so each one of them i filed a tax. I looked at their actual income.

I had to make sure it was market value or slightly above market value for the duty that they were performing. And I filed a tax return. I paid the taxes. They kept the money that they earned. And I put the equivalent amount into a Roth IRA on their behalf. All of them were teenagers by the time we were doing that. Yeah. And, or thereabouts.

I mean, Daniel might have been 12, I mean, or something. But, I mean, they were, you had a justifiable case. And we were at Baby Step 7 and my investments were okay. I didn't do this kind of stuff, you know, and then my, and then I'm going to retire broke, but my kid has a 16 year old has an IRA. No. Right. Right. Yeah. It's a balance. And again, Chris, I think the urgency that you're feeling is, I mean, he just said, he was like, I just learned about compound interest. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So there is an urgency. And I think, you know, again, the heart behind it's incredible. Absolutely. And to be

able to set our kids up really well. And there's time to do that is what I would say. So don't let this urgency of this new information make you make bad decisions and lead you into something that's just not wise. How often do they audit? Well, I mean, the thing is, the point is not are you going to get beaten. No, no, I know, I know. There's like a moral thing here. But when you said that, beaten? No, no, I know, I know. There's like a moral thing here.

But when you said that, I was like, man, I wonder how often, like. Well, you have to be able to defend everything you do in an audit or you shouldn't be doing it. Yes, totally, totally. It's not only proper tax process, but it's also the moral and ethical thing. Totally, yes, yes, for sure. Like we've just finished this unbelievable two and a half year audit just similar to an anal exam at ramsey and so uh but we have paid every stinking dime that we've ever owed and so we've not lost a single category not a single category

and they've turned over everything in this building um you know and uh you know so but but we're fanatics about paying the exact being amount every honest every bit of cash we collect is taxable income we don't have any side gigs going every it's very traceable and it has nothing to do with i like taxes or i think taxes are wonderful or it's my way of being generous. It's not. Taxes are extortion. They're theft by your government. They're horrible. I hate them. I hate the IRS.

But it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with my integrity. It doesn't say anything about them when I cheat on my taxes. It says something about me. And so, Chris, that's not aiming at you, but that's just a further soapbox on this whole thing. So good motivation bad information good thoughts bad timing so later on when you're at baby step seven and you've got

and your retirement's underway and you can do justifiable market value labor for your kid like if your kid is 16 in a few years and they're doing they got this wonderful dog sitting business that they spring up because mom and dad used to do it and they go make a bunch of money you could do what i did with our kids and it'd be perfectly fine no issues there at all uh and you'd be teaching them entrepreneurism in their teens which is a great idea so that's the kind of thing you're looking for bad timing though you can't unless the three-year-olds in a diaper commercial three-year-olds don't have a market commercial pull-ups okay at three yeah hopefully hopefully yeah that's good we're in the middle of that we have a three and a half year old i thought oh you don't want you don't want charles watching your dog

now amelia the eight-year-old oh yeah she would be pretty she knows how to take care of jim better than i do i mean she's pretty much game on yeah phenomenal but not the three-year-old no well they're you know i'm not gonna say it okay they're just they're fine they're fun that's what we're gonna say what are you gonna say no i just i would say it about all of them not Not just, not just that one. Dave likes babies. Papa Dave wants babies. Little babies.

Once they hit like two. When they're doing the pull-ups, it's just, that's somebody else's job. I'm done. I'm good. That's completely somebody else's job. Until you can ski. I don't need to ski. I have nothing to do with you. There's a transition period there.

This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Hey, guys, we get people that tune into the show every day. You can even answer the questions faster than we can. Fairly predictable answers. I mean, you can. And you're still stressed out about money. Your money's still not working.

How is that? Well, because knowing what to do is way different than actually doing it. I know not to eat a box of chocolate donuts. It's important, though, that I don't do it. Otherwise, I get larger and larger versions of Dave. And the proven way to change your behavior with money is the same thing. It's you have to get plugged into a program. Financial Peace University has helped over 10 million people get out of debt,

become wealthy, and change their family trees. The class is the difference between trying to get in shape by yourself or reading a book on fitness versus actually going for a walk and backing off from the donuts. Hey, that's why this class has worked for millions. After nine weeks, you'll never handle money the same way again, and you'll make progress faster than ever. Don't just listen to this stuff, this show. Do it. Join a Financial Peace University class at ramsaysolutions.com slash FPU. ramsaysolutions.com slash Financial Peace University FPU.

Ryan's in Tampa. Hey, Ryan, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave and Rachel. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So my question is, should I sell my house, should my wife and I sell our house to pay off our debt? Um, and a little bit of backstory is,

um, we have, we're a family of five and we're currently living in a two one. And two one, is that what you said? Two bedroom, one bath. Yes. We're in a two one is that what you said two bedroom one bath yes we're in a two one um so and we have eighty three thousand dollars worth of debt one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in equity um so our thought process is if we sell our house we need we need a bigger house we've got three kids so um and our thought process is if we sell our house, we can pay off the debt, have enough money for our emergency fund. Cause we're currently in baby step two and then grant for a couple of years and just do baby step three B. How long have you been married?

Uh, eight, eight years. How long have you been in this house? Three years. How long have you been working this house? Three years. How long have you been working this plan, this Ramsey stuff? This Ramsey stuff? I've been Dave-ish for a couple years. No. When did you start actually getting so serious that you're willing to sell your house?

Oh, a couple weeks ago. Okay. How much did you guys make a year, Ryan? $80,000. $80,000. Okay. weeks ago okay how much you guys make a year ryan uh eighty thousand eighty thousand okay um okay i i'm i'm nervous that the reason you want to sell the house is more because you don't like the house not necessarily to change the behavior to get out of debt yeah so like this would be like a silver bullet that would just, like, fix it all. But what I would be worried about, Ryan, is, like, have you guys fixed your behavior? Like, have you guys created and felt the sacrifice of new habits and changed that course? You don't have the track record of new habits.

That's the danger. And if you wave this magic wand and your debt is gone and you don't change your habits and you stay ish because two whole weeks you've been engaged i mean come on really i mean if you if that the danger is is you go back to ish and then you're going to be a renter that's broke right so yes i would do your plan but you know you and your wife are going to have to put the kids to bed and take each other's hands and look at the other one deeply in the eyes and say if we don't follow this plan exactly i'm gonna kill you i mean really i mean we have to do this it has to get like down in your soul, like, ah!

Because if you don't, this is a really bad idea. Because you're going to get stuck in renter land. Right, yeah, and we don't want that. No, we don't want that. So mathematically, you do get a better place. I did what you're doing. Sharon and I did it when Rachel was a kid. Different reasons.

We sold a home up in Nashville. The school system sucked, and we were driving 45 minutes one way twice a day, so several hours on the road to put kids in private schools, several thousand dollars a year per kid. And I'm like, like god this is nuts i can sell this move to a different county where the public schools are excellent rent clear up everything and i don't have the drive and i don't have the private school bill and so that's what we did but it was part of and so everything worked good but it's also part of a change we lived we rented this crappy rental for two years.

My wife will still tell you stories about how bad she hated that house. And then we were able to buy a house. But it was part of a plan. It wasn't a trap door escape mechanism, and then I didn't deal with the deal with. Right. So you've got to promise you. Your wife's got to's gotta promise you your wife's gotta promise her you gotta promise her that that we're going to lean in and stop the foolishness if you go through with this i like your plan other than that so rachel's right

okay so if i give you a financial peace university to get you guys going will you promise me both of you watch every stinking lesson every minute of every lesson and you have a conversation with the coordinator and with the class and you join the group in financial peace if you promise me you'll do all that i'll give it to you free yes i do absolutely okay and you and your wife yeah now because that if you'll get in that group you'll join this group of people that give you positive peer pressure to not do stupid or ish anymore and that's that's what i'm afraid for you because you don't have a track record if you told me you've been doing this six or eight months and you'd already paid off thirty thousand

dollars worth of debt making 80 and you guys were on a tight budget and you and your wife were close-knit and unified and we were getting after it it'd make this call instant yep to go do what you're talking about yeah and that's always the danger with you know we even get people that get an inheritance or that you know some type of large amount of money comes into their possession and they're able which is a blessing to be able to knock the debt out. But again, Ryan, like you buckling down and really promising and you guys are in a hard season with three little kids and it's a lot. And so you can't allow the stress of life, the exhaustion that you guys feel to get you back in habits that got you here in the first

place. So truly staying the course is what's going to be huge. And it's exciting, right? And on the flip side, it's like, if that part is true, then you guys are going to be really far ahead in these steps. And you guys are going to feel a lot of freedom, which is really great. And rent the cheapest thing you can rent that is a bigger, nicer house. It's not a two, one with five people. Okay, but don't go rent the Taj Mahal because every dollar you spend on rent is going to slow down your savings for purchase later. So the house we rented, I just explained to you, my wife was not happy with it.

It was not glamorous. The only thing it did was meet the goal of getting our other house sold and getting in the correct county where the kids could be in school system and uh so that that you know and we didn't have the private school bill and we didn't have the drive anymore so we got quality of life we got money back and and you know our our rent was not that high um even back in the day but yeah uh back then you know when dinosaurs roamed the earth you could get cheap rent but yeah no i mean it's it's a it's a thing it's a process that you're you're resetting your mind in this thing and it's just very important that you do this right

so you know getting getting the habit patterns that are it it you know i made a comment about donuts earlier and it's exactly true though on that the the correlation with fitness is i mean fitness is not a one-time event yep it's a daily event um of of nutrition and caloric intake and calorie burned with exercise and choices that you make and choice with everything controlling the person in your mirror you know i mean it's incremental people who are vastly successful at their marriage didn't send flowers one time to their wife they every day every week do something in their marriage it's not a singular event you can't go be a jerk for forever and then go on one cruise and she's happy. That's not how this works.

This is the Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. If you want to know more about what's going on around here, get started. Click the Get Started button at RamseySolutions.com. It's a free little journey, and we'll help you get lined up and figure out what your next steps are. Ruby's in Louisiana. Hi, Ruby. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. So my husband and I, we've been together for about a decade now. I'm 25 years old, so we were high school sweethearts. I had kind of a rough childhood. I moved out whenever I was 16 years old, and a lot of the time I was financially responsible for myself from then. So the beginning of our relationship, I, you know, I worked three jobs and he was in school and a lot of the financial responsibility fell on to me. And I kind of had

that control at 18 years old. I bought us a house, you know, I bought and paid off a car that, you know, he drove back and forth to work, just different things like that. I've always kind of been primarily the one who was responsible for the finances. How long have you been married? We've been married five years. Okay. Okay. Yes. With that being said, fast forward to now, we started having kids three years ago, my daughter's three.

And after we had children, I started staying home with the kids. And so, of course, he started working and he makes great money now. And, you know, he pays all of the bills and he supports us financially and i've just been i was struggling with mental health issues and so it was hard for me to keep that control over the finances so i kind of just relinquished that to him for the most part. And since then, don't get me wrong, we're still financially very responsible. We have a truck note and a mortgage. That's the only debt we have. We've never had a credit card ever. We have no other debt ever other than a vehicle and our mortgage. But between, you know, after having kids and now, I kind of just wasn't focused on the finances. I was focused on my children. And in that meantime, we kind

of took a lot from savings, not just him, me as well. You know, he was making such good money that we'd never made before, and we really just kind of indulged. Right. How can we best help you today, Ruby? Well, I guess what my question is, now that my kids are, you know, kind of getting older, and I've been trying to get us back on board financially, trying to save money. I actually read your book when I was 18, 19 years old. And that, you know, is what I was always doing, kind of going with those plans and trying to get us,

you know, financially debt free. And it's just been a struggle between him and I. I think the dynamics are different. And I don't want to emasculate him because, you know, I'm finding it difficult. I don't want to be controlling. Like I want a partnership and it's just very hard to find a common ground now. He works in a field where, in the oil field where there's a lot of money. So Ruby, I would say a lot of what I'm hearing from you is there's a lot of motivation out of this that is pretty fear-based. You don't want to go back to how you grew up and you're thinking, oh my gosh,

what do I need to do to protect myself and making sure that I'm okay because I don't want to go back there. And in the meantime, it's kind of like you guys have just been existing. You guys don't have goals together. You don't have dreams of where you want to be as a family together. You guys probably don't do, I mean, I'm assuming a monthly budget and sit down every month and look at the line items and say, hey, here's exactly what we're going to spend our money. It just seems like you guys are existing. And again, you had a baby. I get it. But also, there's just a better way to do it. And I think that's why you're calling is because

you're like, how do we do this? So I think one of the most important things is that you guys have to see each other as a team. And if you can't do that, then you guys need to ask the question, why? Is it because he doesn't want to, he's cautious towards you because maybe you're controlling or maybe you're cautious towards him because you feel like he's irresponsible. Like, I don't know what the fears or the concerns or the caution would be, but if there are those, say those out loud, talk about those, but you guys need to sit down. And this is more of the tactical side, Ruby. But you guys need to sit down and say, hey, here is what we need to do month to month. Here

is our budget. Together, regardless of gender, husband or wife, together, we sit down. We both have a voice and say, hey, here is where the money's going to go. And then I want you guys to sit down, Ruby, and say, hey, in the next five years, what are our goals? What do we want? Do we want this car paid off? If so, then let's start attacking that and let's put extra money from the budget to do that. Do we want to take a trip in two years and we want to start saving towards that? Start actually dreaming and living life together. It sounds like it's been so separate for so long. And even the tactical side, Ruby, sitting down and doing that is going to expose a lot of what's going on with you guys in marriage, in the good and the bad. And I think that it just ends up becoming a much deeper

conversation when you start with something tactical, even like a monthly budget. So if you hold on the line, Ruby, Austin's going to pick up because I want to give you guys not only Financial Peace University and you guys together go through this. So you guys are on the same page, but also EveryDollarPlus. And this is our budgeting app. And it's phenomenal. My husband and I literally this morning had ours open on each of our phones and we were talking through some stuff. So it is the most practical thing you can do with your money and especially if you're married you share an account and you guys together walk through this but but ruby i would really um i i would i would really search yourself in a sense to to figure out okay what is going on in me that's wanting this control where is this fear coming from um because a lot of this is your

motivation austin give him a copy of r's latest, number one, to know yourself, know your money. It talks about how you came up and how you grew up and the parents and how that affects handling money. So yeah, Rachel, Ruby, Rachel hit it exactly on the head. You were doing all the right things in the early days with money, but you were doing them white knuckling, gritting your teeth, holding your breath because of fear and because you didn't want to go back.

And that's where you came from. That's perfectly valid. But what you're figuring out is, is that there's no peace in that. There is a piece in doing the exact same things you used to do with your husband, both of you talking about it and being in agreement and leaning in towards the future,

and you're doing it out of a motivation of winning rather than a fear of losing. And there's a richness to that of soul versus I'm just never going back there yet. I mean, because you could become worth $10 million and not deal with the stuff you're talking about, and the only reason you became worth $10 million was just so you didn't go back to your childhood.

Not a good motivation. I mean, you want more peace than that out of this process. And so sorry for what you've been through, and I'm glad that you took away good things from it. You grew up early, you grew up quick, uh, and you were able at 18 to do stuff.

I can't get 58 year olds to do so because you were ahead of the head of the game. But now let's not do it from a white knuckle anymore. Let's do it from some peace and some future goals like Rachel's talking about there. And that's what's setting all of this up and, and where you're coming from. Any little thing he does that might look like fun or even slightly irresponsible

is magnified 5,000 times beyond what it actually is with the lens you're looking at it with. And that's, and you know that intellectually, that's why you called in the words you're using. Tell us you recognize that, that you're looking at it with. And you know that intellectually. That's why you called and the words you're using tell us you recognize that, that you're doing that. But it's okay to just say, hey, the reason I do that is, God, man, I left home at 16.

Hello. I had to buy food. And you're not going to demasculate him by speaking the truth and being involved either. So step into that and be confident in what you're thinking and feeling and all of it. And you guys together, see yourselves like locked arms. And out there is the money issues, right? It's not in between you guys. You're not each other's enemy.

The money issues are the enemies. Let's attack that instead of each other. I think you're pretty cool, Ruby. I think you're going to win. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Rachel Cruz. If you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey baby steps, go to ramseysolutions.com and click the Get Started button. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. That's ramseysolutions.com and click Get Started.