The Ramsey Show - App - Cash Value Life Insurance Is a Horrible Investment! (Hour 3)
Episode Date: August 28, 2019Debt, Retirement, Insurance, Taxes Tools to get you started: Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit....ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR
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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions,
broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios,
it's the Dave Ramsey Show,
where debt is dumb and cash is king.
And the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW
as the status symbol of choice.
I'm Dave Ramsey, your host.
Thank you for joining us.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.
That's 888-825-5225.
Thomas starts us off this hour in New Jersey.
Hey, Thomas, how are you?
Good, Dave. How are you doing?
Better than I deserve. What's up?
I have a question for you.
Where I work, we have a traditional 401k,
and then a few years ago they implemented a Roth 401k as well.
It took me some time.
It took me about three years to convince them to allow the conversion feature.
So what I want to do is since I didn't have the opportunity to invest
originally into the Roth,
I want to take some of the money from the 401K converted into the Roth.
I'm currently contributing 14% total, 7% going into the Roth, and 7% going into the traditional.
Why?
Why aren't you putting it all in the roth
i i just because since i work freelance sometimes my hours can fluctuate so sometimes i don't work
as many hours at certain weeks than others that doesn't get anything i just felt i just felt like
it allowed me to be able to contribute more total than being able to have some of it being tax
deferred but yeah you're right you have a good point i just put it all in the rock to be
contributing more yeah i just put it all in the roth from this point forward and i would not
convert your old traditional to roth until you're out of debt house and everything
because you don't need any extra tax bills while you're trying to get out of debt.
Yeah, I currently don't really have any debt other than getting out of my car fleece in maybe about a year or so.
Your home is paid for?
I currently rent.
Okay, okay.
Yeah, get your car taken care of then, and then save up the money money how much money is in your traditional 401k
um right now it's a little over 29 000 okay and so you're going to create taxes of about seven
thousand dollars so you need to be debt free have your car in place have an emergency fund of three
to six months of expenses and then have the $7,000 in taxes that it'll create,
and then I would flip it all to a Roth.
Okay.
I just thought maybe if I convert parts of it each year just slowly
until I got to the point where I could then move all of it over.
Yeah, I mean, when you got $7,000, you just do it.
Okay.
Because that's what it's going to cost you roughly.
Gotcha. Okay.
Yeah, just that way.
But I wouldn't do that until you've got the other things in place.
You follow me?
Yep.
Because when you convert to Roth, we're creating a new bill.
We're creating a new IRS debt.
And we want to be ready for that.
It's a good thing to do, but we want to be ready for that so it doesn't sneak up on us.
Hey, good question, man.
Thank you for joining us.
All right, Cynthia is in Colorado. Hi,ynthia welcome to the dave ramsey show hi dave thanks for taking my call sure what's up so uh i was divorced six years ago and in as part
of the settlement um was given i guess ownership of two life insurance policies,
one of which, and this was fully disclosed at the divorce,
one of which he had taken, I think, a $25,000 loan on.
And that's not been a problem until this month.
And this month, I need to pay.
I just got a grace period notice that said I need to pay
$748 in order to keep the life insurance policy current. And I guess I'm wondering if I should
just let that go. I'm also wondering, um, new to this, um, my new husband and I just read the
total money makeover on a road trip home from dropping my last daughter off at college.
And the other life insurance policy has a cash value of a little over $15,000.
Wondering if I should take that and just let both life insurance policies go.
Yes.
After you have your term insurance in place.
Okay, so I don't have term insurance.
I actually own three insurance policies.
One, my dad got for me.
You don't need to keep any life insurance that has investments in it.
It's a horrible place.
I don't think the one my dad did does.
It's a horrible place. I don't think the one my dad did does. It's a horrible place to have money.
Okay.
It makes a lousy rate of return, and when you die, they pay the face value, and they
keep your savings.
And so you're much better off to have term insurance in place and cash all this crap
out and do investing in good investments.
Okay.
So do you have children at home?
I think we can be debt-free.
We just dropped my last child off at school.
She says with great glee.
Oh, kind of.
I'm an empty nester.
Yeah.
All right.
All right. All right.
So the thing you ask yourself is how much money would someone need if you were not producing an income?
What is your income?
Our combined income?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I said, what is your income?
Mine alone is about, well, right now it's $12,000 annually because I was a stay-at-home mom.
I coached something.
Are you getting ready to engage in a career that your new husband is going to be counting on that income?
No.
Okay.
Then your need for life insurance, if you die in two weeks, okay,
and you leave him no life insurance, he's going to be fine.
Yes.
Okay.
Then cash all this crap in.
Every one of them.
All right.
I think we can be debt-free tomorrow.
There you go.
That's a plan.
Much better than, you know, owing a debt on your own money.
Some of you folks don't know what I just said.
Let me try that again.
See, cash value life insurance, instead of paying $5 per $100 a month,
you pay $100 a month.
$5 will buy you the term insurance of equal amount.
The other $95 is going into a savings plan called cash value.
It builds up only after three years of zeros, which means they keep all your money the first
three years in fees.
After that, when you do finally get a savings account going, it pays about 1% on your money.
And after that, when you die, they pay the face value of the policy, which is the insurance
portion that would have cost you $5 instead of $100.
The $95 you've been put in savings, they keep.
So you have a savings account where all your money goes away the first three years to fees.
After that, it pays 1%, and when you die, they keep your money.
This is a dumb savings account.
This is why Whole Life Life Insurance is the payday lender of the middle class.
It sucks.
It's horrible.
It's why the towers in most skylines are life insurance companies and
banks now we know who the villain is the villain in your story who's getting all your money you
think santa claus built those dead gum buildings you built those buildings america while they
screwed you these banks and life insurance companies.
And so that's the deal.
So you never invest inside of a life insurance policy.
Oh, by the way, your cash value builds up, your savings count,
and then if you want your money out, you have to borrow it and pay them interest.
That's what she had, a $20,000 loan, and the loan came due on her own money.
How backward is this? This is the Dave Ramsey Show.
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best deal today's questions from diana in idaho my husband and i have never had debt except for
house payments and now we don't even have that i know that you recommend not buying a new vehicle
but what about those of us who have never who have bought new and driven them until the wheels fall
off uh we've done that a number of vehicles in the past the last one we had 265 000 miles on it
i should also say we've always paid cash for them so without the interest payments does it all come
out in the wash well diana you can do what you want but here's your math okay just because you
drive the wheels all the way off of the thing does not mean you did not lose
substantial money in year one cars go down in value about 70 percent of their value is lost
in the first four years about half of that is in the first year. So you could have bought a one-year-old car and saved 30% and still driven the wheels off of it.
And I don't suggest you take those financial hits unless you have a net worth of in excess of a million dollars.
Now, if you have a million-dollar net worth and you want to take a financial hit and drive a new car, that's fine.
I don't mind.
Because you can afford to do it at that point.
But just because you're 100% debt-free does not change the math on the car.
Even if you've got a million dollars, it doesn't change the math on the car.
It just makes you more able to accept the hit.
The theory that if I'm going to drive the wheels off of it so I can buy a brand new,
mathematically doesn't hold water.
Drive it 265,000 miles after you bought a 12,000 mile one-year-old car.
And you will have saved 20 to 30% on this transaction.
And that would be the way to go.
So no, I do not recommend you buy new cars unless
you have at least a one million dollar net worth uh because again you know you're turning thirty
thousand dollars into ten thousand in four years and most people can't afford to take that hit
and still build wealth now once you've built wealth you can afford to lose the money and that's
what it amounts to so it doesn't hold water sorry kiddo all right up next is going to be brianna in
utah hi brianna how are you good dave how are you better than i deserve how can i help
yeah so my question is um i am on baby step number two.
And when we started this journey, me and my husband, we agreed on it.
We sat down, did our budget together.
But now it comes to my spouse has been taking money out of our checking account.
I'll go to buy groceries with my envelope envelope and there's money taken out of there when i ask him about it he just brings up oh well you know i make most of the money in the
household so if i need to buy something i'm just going to go ahead and do it so basically my
question is what should i do you need marriage counseling. Okay.
Because your husband made an agreement with his wife and then he lied.
He broke the agreement.
If I tell my wife I'm going to do something and then I don't do it,
I broke my agreement with the person on the line,
out of all the people on the planet that I should keep my agreements with.
What if he signed a contract in business and then just said,
oh, you know what, I decided I don't want to do that.
It's the same thing, isn't it?
I mean, because you feel lied to and betrayed.
It's not about the money.
It's like he's throwing his weight around like, I'll make all the money.
What a bunch of crap.
Really. I mean, what a bunch of control freak crap i mean what if i did that with sharon ramsey you think that hillbilly woman would put up with that no i've made all the money in my house
for 35 years and and we have a budget that we agree to and we have a net worth and we have money,
I do not come in and go, I make all the money, I will do whatever I want.
That would fly with that hillbilly woman about 30 seconds and she would go off on me.
And rightfully so.
You follow me?
So, I mean, basically your problem is that he agreed to something and then broke his word, right?
Right.
That's what's bothering you.
If he had come in instead and said, hey, you know, there's something over here I really want to do.
Let's talk about adjusting the budget.
Let's look at this.
You might have considered that.
That would be a reasonable way to approach this.
Hey, I know we looked at the budget and laid it out, but I got this thing I want to do.
Let's look at adjusting the budget.
I'd really like to pull this off.
And you look at it and you go, yeah, okay, I'll go with that.
That wouldn't be a problem.
And it might have accomplished exactly the same thing.
Instead, he, like, steals the money out of the food envelope?
Really?
Yeah.
How old is this child?
He just turned 25 today.
Oh, okay.
Well, it's time for him to be a man now and keep his word.
Okay.
And so I'm picking at him, and I'm having a little fun with you, okay?
But the truth is it's breaking your heart because your man is acting like a boy.
Yeah.
That's the truth because he's not keeping his word.
Men keep their word.
And so you need to call him out on that and say, listen,
I don't care who makes the most money.
We share everything here.
We have an income.
We have a budget.
We have a plan.
And if you don't agree to that, we now have a problem.
And we are going to sit down with the pastor and have some marriage counseling.
And that's what I would do if I were in your shoes.
So I think you call him out on it.
I just did in front of a whole bunch of people.
Like millions of people just heard me do it.
So, you know, but you can't, you know, here's the thing.
You guys aren't going to prosper in your marriage in this situation because you're really getting frustrated and angry and hurt by him breaking his word.
And couples that do not work together on their money have a very low success rate.
Almost all the people we send, we meet that get out of debt and become everyday millionaires
the vast majority of them work together like 90 there's almost no one overcomes this and becomes
wealthy there's almost no one overcomes this and has a high quality marriage it doesn't work that
way so you gotta you gotta work this through and. And sometimes it's okay to sit down with a marriage counselor
and have somebody be the referee and throw a flag and blow the whistle,
like I was just doing, because I was definitely blowing the whistle just then.
Hey, thank you for the call.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.
You know, when we first started teaching Financial Peace University all those years ago, 25 years ago,
I would do the class live with an overhead projector and a bad suit,
and then we'd have a small group discussion.
And the class, when we first started doing it, was 26 weeks long.
Six months you were with me.
And, you know, then later we changed it to 13 weeks. Now it's nine weeks.
But at the end of the class for the last 25 years,
invariably someone would walk up and say,
this class saved our marriage,
or this class made our marriage a bazillion times better.
We had a good marriage.
Now it's fabulous.
This class impacted our marriage.
And at first I was like, what?
I'm teaching you to get out of debt and do a mutual fund.
What's it got to do with marriage?
But what I was forcing people to do as a practical matter would be to get on the same page, do a budget together, combine your finances, and as a couple, attack the problem.
As a couple, attack the opportunity.
And I was forcing people to do that.
If you didn't do that in there, man, I'd get all up in your business in person.
It was rough.
And so what I was doing, unbeknownst to myself, I was just doing it because that's what worked.
It wasn't like I was some relationship expert or something.
But unbeknownst to me, what was happening was people were combining their decision-making. doing it because that's what worked. It wasn't like I was some relationship expert or something.
But unbeknownst to me, what was happening was people were combining their decision-making.
They were combining their goal-setting.
They were even in agreement on what their fears were.
So there you go. I mean, wow.
That's the thing.
So when you combine your value system, when you combine your dreams,
when you have agreed goals and you're spending money together and you're working on goals together, it causes you to combine in your relationship in ways you never thought you would.
This is the Dave Ramsey Show Kim is with us in Virginia.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Kim.
Hey, Dave.
How are you?
Thanks for taking my call.
My pleasure.
How can I help?
Dave, I'm 49 years old, and I've been married to my career and have been working for 30 years.
I never had debt other than walking across the stage, and now I'm debt-free from that.
And I've saved money my whole life, and I don't know when or how to retire.
And I thought I was going to retire sooner than later until this weekend.
I listened to your book, and then I said, I shouldn't be retiring.
Those who retire early die early.
So how do I know when I can retire how much do i need well
financially if you can live off of eight percent of your nest egg and you have your nest egg
invested at more than eight percent like you know if you had it in good mutual funds and it was
averaging 10 to 12 percent and you're pulling off eight you know you would never be touching
the principal or seldom be touching the principal and um if you can so, you know, you would never be touching the principal or seldom be touching the principal.
And so if you needed $80,000 a year and you had a million dollars, you'd be ready.
So how much do you have in your nest egg?
Well, here's the thing.
I probably have a million and two in IRAs and 401Ks, which will be taxable.
Right.
And then I probably have a couple hundred grand in cash, and I have some property.
Does the property produce income?
The property does not produce income.
Okay.
All right.
So you don't have anything that produces income between now and 59 1⁄2 unless you take penalties.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So you need to start working on some bridge.
We call it bridge investing,
and that $200,000 in cash is too much in cash.
You don't need that much in cash.
So what does bridge investing look like?
It's just in mutual funds or a rental property or something like that that creates income before you get to 59 1⁄2.
But, you know, you're poised.
What do you make a year now?
About $200.
Okay.
Well, you're not going to make that a year if you retire.
Oh, no, I won't be making anything, and that's what I was trying to figure out.
But, I mean, let's say you were 59 1⁄2 and your million-two produced 10%.
That would be 120, right?
If it produced 8%, it would be 100 right half of what you're making now so you're not going to live like you're living now
no definitely not that's going to be a hard adjustment yeah okay so the so um what is it
that about retirement are you trying to just say am i financially okay or are you trying to say um i hate my job and i'm rather do i'd
rather do something else now i'm saying well i personally would like to get out of the rat race
and the stress and the commute and do something different um i know i can make money doing
whatever i'm doing yeah but i just don't want to what do you do for a living i'm an executive consultant so i
give people advice okay and you're working 60 80 hours though uh no not really i have a i have a
good balance in life um i don't i don't work 16 80 anymore i used to in my 30s. I don't now. So you're working 40 and making 200?
Yeah.
That's pretty sweet.
And so what is it?
You have to go into the office to do this?
Yeah.
And so I guess my thing is I would like to have some sort of residual
or some asset that makes money for me so I don't have to make my income.
So in retirement, I can have an income.
Is there any other way to do that besides real estate?
Well, I mean, in retirement, you've got a million-two that will create at 59.5 income.
That could be invested in mutual funds and throw off an income.
The income is going to be taxable.
But if you take it prior to that, it's going to be taxable plus penalties,
and I'm not going to suggest that.
So what I think you need to do is a combination of career adjustment
and start investing in things other than 401K.
Okay.
Just good mutual funds, simple as that.
If you had $500,000 in mutual funds and that produced $50,000 a year,
not counting your 401ks, right, that would be a nice chunk
and you could slow down a little bit, right?
So how do I determine who I trust in the mutual fund market
and also what companies, you know, how do you choose Fidelity over Morgan Stanley, over
all of the ones that are out there today?
What I've had good luck with is not letting someone else do it, but letting someone else
teach me.
And so the mutual fund investing advisors that we recommend, that we endorse, are not
people with the heart of a salesman,
but instead the heart of a teacher.
And so their job is to teach you, say, okay, here's some options,
and here's why they work, and then you understand that,
and then you're making your choices.
And, you know, they'll teach you how to do some due diligence on a mutual fund
and feel good about it.
Most of the way that I personally select a mutual fund and feel good about it. Most of the way that I personally select a
mutual fund is just its track record. You know, if it's, you know, been open 50 years and it's
got an average annual return of X, and that's what I'm looking at. You know, and so, you know,
Fidelity is a, you know, it's a family of funds, a brand of funds, and they've got many, many,
many different funds. And some of their funds are excellent and some of them suck.
And that's true of every family of funds, every brand of funds.
All of Campbell's soup is not good, but maybe their vegetable soup is good
and maybe their chicken noodle is not or something.
The same thing is true of mutual funds, okay?
Within Fidelity, there's about a bazillion funds.
There are American funds. There's a bazillion funds Or American funds, there's a bazillion funds.
Or Vanguard, there's a bazillion funds.
And then you just look at them and you say, you start to look at the track record long term and you make a decision based on that.
That's what my primary point of consideration is when I'm personally picking a fund with my advisor.
But I don't want to thumb through 8,000 funds and try to figure all this out.
That's why I use an advisor to narrow it down and to teach me some things,
the nuances of what's happening in the market that I might not have kept up with
because I don't read mutual fund stuff every morning when I get up.
Yuck.
And so, you know, if you click SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com,
you can put in your information. It will drop down a list of the SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com, you can put in your information.
It will drop down a list of the SmartVestor pros in your area.
And we'll try our best to make sure that you're connected then to one of them that any of you connect to
or people we have vetted and they've got that heart of a teacher.
And you're going to hear advice that's eerily
similar to what i put out because why would i send you to someone that has advice that's
contrary to what i put out that'd be inconsistent hypocritical and weird so that's what you do
click smart vestor at davramsey.com sit down begin to develop you a bridge idea meaning build up a
nest egg that is not all trapped inside of a retirement
plan that's penalized if you use it before 59 1⁄2.
And then that allows you to start to make some adjustments to your career, probably
gradually.
And it might be that you just have an encore career.
You just want to do something different.
And you might make $300 a year doing that.
I don't know.
It could be something as simple as you want to change your career direction.
Like you said, get out of the rat race. You want to do something different. Maybe you make $100 instead of $200. I don't know. It could be something as simple as you want to change your career direction. Like you said, get out of the rat race.
You want to do something different.
Maybe you make $100 instead of $200.
I don't care.
You've done very, very well, though.
I know that, Kim.
Congratulations.
We're very proud of you.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.
Y'all jump in.
We'll talk about your life and your money.
Is it okay to borrow from my 401k for a down payment on my home, Lily on Instagram says.
No, it's not okay to borrow on your 401k for anything.
And the reasons are twofold.
One is when you borrow money on your 401k, you unplug the good mutual funds it was invested in.
So instead of making 10%, 12% on your money, you're making 5%.
And you're paying yourself the 5%, which is just weird.
The second thing is when you leave your company, and you will leave your company, when you
die, when you get a better job, or when they fire you, when you leave your company, you
will have to repay that loan at the most inopportune time because you no longer
work there and don't have an income maybe when you leave your company you will this loan will
be called due in full within 60 days if you don't pay it in 60 days you get hit with the irs penalty
of 10 plus your tax rate it's gonna end up being about 35 40 on your money you're going to get hammered
never borrow on your 401k ever this is the dave ramsey show Thank you. our scripture of the day psalms 94 18 18 and 19. When I said my foot is slipping, your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.
Martin Short said the mark of the man is how he responds to situations.
You're not going to avoid tough times.
We're all over the barrel some of the time.
What are you going to do about it
there you go open phones at 888-825-5225 caroline is with us in arizona hi caroline welcome to the dave ramsey show hi dave thank you for taking my call. Sure. How can I help? My question is this.
I'm in Baby Step 2, and I should be into Baby Step 3 by the beginning of the year.
Good.
Thank you.
I've worked real hard towards doing this,
but I put something to the side until now that I'm trying to –
I have a moral dilemma about.
I have a judgment against an old business partner,
and that individual has never been honorable in paying it to me,
so I would have to go into collections with them for that,
and I'm not sure what to do with this.
How much is it?
$126,000.
Wow.
And why was there a judgment taken?
What happened?
I sold the business to my business partner,
and they signed the agreement to pay me for the business,
kept the business, and never paid me.
Are they still in business?
They are not in that business business but they are in other businesses
so what you sold them they um did they profit greatly because of this
um they it was a profitable business the individual is doing the same thing but in
a different company now. Okay.
All right.
Well, I mean, when I'm looking at whether I'm going to pursue someone that owes us a debt,
I look at two or three things.
Number one, did I do something wrong?
Did our organization mess them up and so they don't want to pay us?
And if that's the case, it's pretty easy.
Obviously, we messed them up.
I'm not going to do that.
That doesn't sound like what happened here.
The second thing I look at is, is it collectible?
Meaning, do they have money?
Because it doesn't matter how much you sue someone.
It doesn't make them have money.
If they're broke, they're just broke.
If they have zero money, it doesn't matter if you got a judgment.
You can't get it from them um and then
the third thing i look at is if they have the money and i could get it from them um is it worth
the trouble you know is it worth the messing with to fool with here uh 126 000 sounds like it's worth
messing with uh for sure uh and then i guess lastly I look at I'm just in prayer and I'm going, okay, is there some reason, God, you want me to forgive this and just walk away?
And a few times I've had a situation where I just felt like there was no logical reason.
I was just supposed to walk away.
And I just walked away.
And it set me free.
You know, I didn't have to fool with it anymore.
So it's just a matter of how much hassle you want in your life.
How old is the judgment?
The judgment is three years old.
Okay.
And how much money do you think these people have?
I would say the individual probably makes about $60,000 a year.
And has no assets?
Has no assets, no.
Yeah.
It would be, and I don't even know if it's collectible on if there
was an inheritance that individual's parents have a lot of money um i did contact a collection um
agency collection agency is not going to do anything they're just going to call him and bug
him right you can do that and you don't need them to do that right you can just pick up the phone
and call him and bug him i I mean, that's useless.
What you would do is just get an attorney that would start seizing his pay on a garnishment or any assets that he's got.
But it doesn't sound like he's got much.
Not very much, no.
I mean, if he paid you $1,000 a month out of his $5,000 income, it'd be 10 years.
Right.
Yeah.
How long has it been since you've had any contact with them?
It's been since the judgment.
I have not even had any contact.
I don't physically have a phone number for the individual.
I know that they've moved to a different state,
and I have information on them,
but not enough to be able to contact them personally.
Okay.
Depends on how you want to handle it what i could do if i might spend 500 bucks on an attorney and have them contact and
offer to settle it because if they can get mama to give them some money if you'll give me thirty
thousand dollars i'll go away otherwise i'm going to come over there to that state and start harassing
you because that's you've now come up on my list of things to do and i'm getting ready to put a garnishment on
your wages and what state's he in tennessee okay yeah you can put a garnishment on his wages in
tennessee you can attach bank accounts and assets then it's called executing on the judgment and
across state lines it can be a little bit of a hassle and a little bit of a problem,
but an attorney in Tennessee could pull it off for you without any trouble at all.
So I probably would invest a couple hundred bucks in an attorney in Tennessee to try to negotiate a settlement.
Because let's say that bad business partner has no money but mama does,
and you call him up and say, hey, we know mama's got money,
and so if you want this to go away, I'll take $30,000 cash today,
or I'm going to come after you and I'm going to start taking your wages.
Okay.
And see if you can push them into a negotiated settlement.
Because in this case, I would like to get a little bit
of money and just call it a day that's what i was hoping for because this would put me into
baby step four and you know just be done with it yeah well and just just put a bow on this mess
that has been an unbelievable problem you know uh you know it's just been a nasty you just got screwed you know yeah and it's just
yeah you just want to put that behind you as fast as you can that's the thing so yeah it's um
and lesson learned you don't take them you know the process that you use there where you didn't
get your money is not a process you want to replicate ever again. So, hey, good question. Yeah, I would have an attorney in Tennessee contact them
and open a negotiation with them.
If it was mine, that's what I would do.
And if you don't get anywhere,
then you can decide if you want to fool with pushing it even harder or not.
But my suspicion is if there's a big inheritance in the background,
Mama might come forward and help him settle,
and that might not be a bad thing.
It would be good for him to have this out of his life, too,
because he's got this thing hanging over his head all the time.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.
Elle is with us in Tennessee.
Hi, Elle.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave.
Hey, what's up?
Well, I have, I guess my story in a nutshell is I have a lot of debt, but, like, my husband doesn't. Hey, what's up? of merit and most of my debt is like student loan debt and he makes significantly more money than me
on my student loan payment plan i was paying zero dollars because my payment was so low
so since we were married filing jointly of course that skyrocketed my payment plan and my student
loans have therefore been in like forbearance and how much how much do you have in student loan debt
um eighty thousand dollars and what's your household income, you and your husband combined?
He makes $84,000 on his job.
I think when you follow income because he and these properties are just in his name.
He has two other homes he owns besides what we live in right now.
He married a woman with eighty thousand dollars in
debt you guys need to get it paid off you need to work together and get it paid off as soon as
you possibly can there is no program with the government where you dodge payments due to income
and you you step in hardship and you do all this stuff and all and then one day it just goes away
there's not one of those it's not going to do anything except get worse. You're just putting it off.
It's a monster in the closet.
Let him out of the closet and shoot him in the head.
Okay, because my other question is, we didn't know if we were married if you filed separate at the time.
Don't dodge your student loans.
Get your student loans paid.
The two of you working together as fast as you possibly can.
Quit trying to be his girlfriend.
You're his wife.
For better, for worse.
For richer, for poorer.
In sickness and in health.
All my worldly goods I pledge to you.
These are the marriage vows.
Put it together and get it done.
That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show and the books.
We're supposed to 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.
Hey, it's Blake Thompson, Senior Executive Producer for the show.
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