The Ramsey Show - App - Dealing With a Stolen Identity (Hour 3)

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

George Kamel & Dr. John Delony discuss: Finding out how much you owe on a debt, Moving for an internship, Dealing with a stolen identity, The best way to buy a car right now.   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

МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА From Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help you get control of your money, get ahead in your career, and get on the path to living well. I'm George Campbell, host of The Fine Print and Entree Leadership Podcast, joined today by Dr. John Bologna, bestselling author and all-around good guy. And we're excited to take your call today. 888-825-5225. Let's talk life, money, relationships, boundaries, mental health. Let's do it.

You had thoughts about that? Add that to your resume, all-around good guy. It is. That's the, on the top of my resume, it's got my name and underneath it in Comic Sans, it just says all-around good guy. Way below is two PhDs, blah, blah, blah. top of my resume, it's got my name, and underneath it, in Comic Sans, it just says, all around good guy. Way below is two PhDs, blah, blah, blah. None of that matters.

Yeah, okay. Love it. And on George's resume, it says, George Campbell. And underneath it, it says, where's Denim and Corduroy in August? And self-proclaimed renaissance man. Self-proclaimed. That's on there, too. No thanks, Tom Hanks.

Well, let's go to the phones. That's where, that's what this show's all about. Marcy joins us up next in Jackson, Mississippi. Marcy's go to the phones. That's what the show's all about. Marcy joins us up next in Jackson, Mississippi. Marcy, welcome to the show. Hey, guys. It's so cool to get to talk to y'all. We are honored to talk to you. How can we help today? I've got a weird question. I'm going to give you a little bit of background, otherwise it's going to sound kind of crazy. Marcy, this is what we do for a living. John only has weird answers. Just bring it.

All right. Well, my husband was delivered from for a living. John only has weird answers. Just bring it. All right. Well, my husband was delivered from 20 years of drug addiction and has been clean for three years. Beautiful. Yes. God's restored our broken family, but our finances are still pretty broken. During his active addiction, he would take unnecessary ER visits. He would take out payday loans.

It just messed us up. So now we're ready to clean up the mess together. We don't know what he owes because no one's actively collecting. And he had hidden the bills and destroyed a lot. So I have no idea. I have an idea, and the number scares me. Because when I checked a few years ago, it was, I mean, we're heading up toward $200,000. So can I ask you?

How do you find out what you owe when you don't know what you owe? Why didn't you all deal with it then? He was still in active addiction. He was still hemorrhaging money out of our family. We separated soon after that, and I went into survival mode. Good deal. Good for you. Yeah.

Good for you. Where. Good for you. Where are you guys at today as it stands financially? I am working. He turned in very last paper for his seminary degree today. He will be looking for a teaching job, ASAP. At a seminary? I went full-time. Well, he wants to do college.

He wants to go for his PhD, but he wants to be teaching, too. He agrees that he needs to be contributing to the finances. Yes, I agree, too. We all agree on that. Yeah. And it's going to be very difficult to find just a college teaching job right out of the gate. So he's going to need to have another plan. And I'm coming from the college world, okay?

I've hired a number of people through that system. It's going to need to have another plan. And I'm coming from the college world, okay? I've hired a number of people through that system. It's going to be a tough sled. It's going to be a tough sledding ahead. So he might want to find a high school teaching job. He might want to find another job that he can do in the meantime while he's sending out resumes. Like school starts next week or in two weeks across the country. And so faculty hiring is on a cycle. And he's probably looking at next year before he would land even a part-time gig yeah yeah he also builds computers so he's looking at

stuff like that he's helped um looking for jobs building web pages and um kind of checking out adjunct positions for january good that's wise right there there you go so what is the current debt that you know of that you guys have as a household? As a household? I know for sure that together we owe about $65,000, probably more than $85,000 in student loans with his stuff. And then mine and the kids' medical is going to run probably under $1,000. As far as what I know for sure, when I added up all of his bills back in 2017,

it was hard to figure it out because some of the bills would come in and they would be adding on to a previous bill. So I tried to weed all that out, but when I finished adding it all up, plus the student loans on his side it was around 150. I know it's higher than that now. Do you still have any of those bills? I don't when we separated I packed it all up in a box and I handed it to him and I said I don't care what you do with it. But you know where those bills came from right? You know hey it was from this hospital it was from this lender. Yeah. Okay. Well I know hospitals. I don't know. They'll have sold it by now. They'll have sold it to some debt collector

at some point. So I would start there of what you know and go to all those lenders, go to the hospital and say, hey, I want to make sure that our accounts are clean. Can you look up our name? Let us know, you know, bring any documentation because you guys have nothing. And so what you need right now is to try to find all the documentation you can find from all of these places to get a real picture of what this adds up to. Because some of it may have disappeared into the ether.

They may have written it off. I'd go pull a credit report on all three credit reporting agencies too. And they're going to tell you what outstanding debts you have. What other companies are claiming you owe them. And you can pull those for free. It was once a year. They may have increased that to where you can pull it anytime with COVID stuff, but you can definitely pull those for free. I would do that on both of you to get a real picture of what is out there as far as documentation. Okay.

That would be my first plan. You also have the pile of debt you know about. So either way, we're attacking a bunch of debt, and we're going to try to stockpile as much money as we can, which is going to help if he starts working soon. And I'm happy to talk to him, whether he wants to call this show or call my show, or you can talk to him via me and George here. But this is not the season to wait for the dream job.

He needs to get his butt to get to work. He's run the family into a significant financial hole. And, um, I'm proud of the growth he's done. I'm proud of the healing he's done. He's used to get his butt to work. He's to start making a lot of money, right? What is your current household income? Um, I, I went full time this year. I was, I was going with my kids, but right now I'm still homeschooling, but just not doing it very well. I'm going to make about $100,000 this year, and that's a significant increase. Well, that's great news.

I was hoping you had a big shovel because you've got a big mess to clean up. Yeah, I do. What does child care look like? Well, he's been in child care. Because I'm a nurse, I can work odd hours. So we're still going to tag team and just be home with the kids because we don't live close to any town. Okay. So it's hard to get childcare.

Can you work any double shifts over time, anything like that? Oh, yeah. Because I think your income right now with the way you can ramp it up is going to be more helpful than anything he could bring in for the short term. Right. Hey, Marcy, can I poke on something for a second? Sure. You're still carrying this family right now. Yeah.

That's getting real, real heavy, isn't it? It's been heavy for so long, I just don't even know what to do with it. I mean, it just is. It is. You're right. And just don't even know what to do with it I mean it's just it just is there's it is you're right and you've done what you had to do but when he said can I come back and you said yes and it's going to be different and this is what I need and he said I'm all in you haven't held him to that standard is that fair that's fair You've given him a lot of grace to heal, which is great. Now it's time for him to take a significant chunk of the burden you've been carrying for a long, long time. Cool?

Yeah. Yes, cool. Okay. Conflict deferred is conflict amplified. Okay? Stop being a peacekeeper now. Now that he's out of school, he's going to get his butt into work and he's going to get a job he's going to be a contributor to this family which by the way is

going to significantly aid in his healing down the road but it's time to stop talking it's time to stop high-fiving it's time to get to work got a big mess to clean up សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី I'm George Campbell, joined today by my good friend, Dr. John Deloney. You're listening to The Ramsey Show. Right now, you're hearing a lot of talking heads in the news stirring up fear about the real estate market. listening to The Ramsey Show. Right now, you're hearing a lot of talking heads in the news stirring up fear about the real estate market. And if you believe them, you think the housing market is going to crash. And it's going to be a repeat of what we saw with the 2008 housing crisis. But you're not hearing the truth. And you can't make decisions based on fear. You need the facts.

And here's the facts. In 2008, there was huge supply of homes, but not enough buyer demand. So home prices dropped. But that's not what's happening in today's market. Right now, there are half as many homes for sale and twice as many buyers. You do the math, America. That means home prices aren't going down anytime soon. They're just growing at a slower rate. So if you're ready to buy or sell your home, you don't need to wait. You can still win in this market, but you've got to work with an experienced real estate agent. We've done the hard work of vetting the agents that know your local market and have the transactions to back it up. This is not your brother-in-law who just got his license. These are pros who sell tons of homes and help folks buy tons of homes every year. So if

you want to connect with one of our Ramsey trusted agents for free, go to ramsaysolutions.com slash agent and check out our endorsed local providers program. Again, that's ramseysolutions.com slash agent. Let's go to the phones this hour. It's a free call, 888-825-5225. Riley joins us up next in Atlanta. Riley, welcome to the show. Hey, how are you all doing?

Great. How can we help? So me and my fiance have a four-month internship coming up, and it's about an hour and a half commute depending on traffic there and back, so three hours total per day. It's about 50 to 60 hours per week working, and we were wondering if we should try to find a four-month lease, like an apartment kind of closer to the office, or if we should just commute. Is this a paid internship? Yes, we will both be making about $20,000 each over those four months.

Okay, over four months, $20,000 each. So we're talking $40,000 over four months as your income. And that will be your income. What is this internship? It's for an accounting firm. We're in school right now. We're going to be CPAs. And how old are you two? She's 19 and I'm 20. Okay, cool. And you're wondering if it's worth it for the three-hour commute to do this internship? Yes. Some of the apartments in the area are about $1,200 to $1,500 a month, and then that's just rent. That's not including other expenses, but living by ourselves. Where do you live now? We live in Villa Rica, Georgia. It's about, a like I said about an hour and a half do you have an apartment do you all share

an apartment together or something like that no we live at my parents house still okay for free or are you guys

paying rent for free we have no debt 100% chance George you can jump I'd drive I wouldn't go rent

an apartment that's what I would do that's just me. You're going to lot a lot of fiance time. That's for sure. So that's good. You're going to know. You're going to find out.

This was a good decision to put a ring on it. Three hours in the car together. I don't think my wife could handle three hours of me in the car. We would be listening to murder podcasts within about 30 minutes. Hey, you're going to find out. Now, personally, I'm not a fan of commutes, but if this is the decision you made together that this is going to be the right move for both of your careers, it's for four months. It's not forever. There's a clear defined end date to this, which makes me feel better versus we're not going to

move. We're going to take this job three hours away and just figure it out later. But because you have free rent right now, that's hard to pass up considering it's going to be maybe hard to find a four-month lease anywhere in that area. And you're probably going to be paying a pretty penny for that. Yeah, you'd be paying a premium for it, man. It's going to be annoying, but you're 20 years old, man. It's one of those things you're going to look back and when you're 30 or 40. He was sleeping in vans at 19 probably.

No, I'm saying like for a couple of years, I lived two and a half hours away from where my PhD program was and there was no online classes back then. So I would get done with my job at 2 p.m. that day and I would drive two and a half hours to make my class. I would go to class until 9 p.m. and I'd drive home that night to be at work the next day

and I just did that for several years. Was it fun? No, it was the worst, man. It was the worst. worst but you're gonna have some great stories at the end of this but you just it was just you do it right riley what's the alternative if you guys don't do this internship what does life look like four months from now if we don't do the internship that um maybe we just continue in school still living my parents because i'm i'm still working full time right now um we're trying to i'm trying to save every dime i can for a down payment on a house when we finish

school but i definitely want to stay like rent free as much as possible until we do finish college so other other than gas are you guys going to be able to sock away most of this money you're making it's 10 grand per month yes yes that's good That's good news. I like that plan. Does one of y'all want to drive and one of you not? My thought process was that would be like $2,000 extra we could save for a month.

By taking the internship? Yeah, or just by commuting. We'd save $2,000 because we wouldn't have to buy rent or anything. So you're eight grand positive at the end of the four months. Yeah. Right, right. I mean, it's a sacrifice, but it sounds like it's one.

I've done it, so it's just one of those stories. Just make sure you're on the same page, because what worries me is she's into this a month, and she's going, this is misery, and now we have to live with this for three more months. I don't think so. You just go get a three month lease. I mean, it's not going to, you know what I mean? What are you guys driving?

We're going to take her car because she has a Ford Escape and it gets like 25 miles per gallon. Okay. Luckily, gas has gone down in price slightly. This is an adventure, brother. Y'all can sing on the way. You can, I don't know. You're going to find out every single quirk.

I have an idea. Stay on the line here. We're going to give you every single deck of questions for humans. Yes. Can we do that, John? There's like 18 of them. Yeah, that's true. Not the school ones because they're not middle schoolers.

We'll send you the ones that make sense. We're going to send you the ones that make sense. You don't have kids. You don't need the kids edition. I'm going to help with the commute for the first month or two, okay? Y'all are just going to ask each other these questions. I thought you were going to say you can listen to the Dr. John Deloney show every day. That would be a long commute, man.

It would be having a lot of hard conversations in that car. But, hey, you've got to promise me this. After this is over, if this has strengthened your relationship to the point that you're getting married, you've got to invite us to the wedding. Is that cool? Oh, definitely, man. Okay, cool. We'll receive an invite.

All right. This is going to be like Wedding Crashers with Dr. John Deloney and myself. Can't wait. Have you seen that movie? Yeah, absolutely. Probably that's not going to happen. Okay, cool. It'll be like just me and you just going to...

Actually, George wouldn't go to the wedding anyway. I would. Hey, so tell me, why wouldn't you commute? I'm just not a fan of commutes. I've never heard of anyone being a fan of commutes, but why wouldn't you commute? I live like seven minutes from work, John. If I could live closer, I would.

I think part of it is I get like car stress, like the anxiety of just like fighting traffic and getting to work. It's a lot for me on my little body, you know, you understand. But I watched my dad, I mean, for the last 20 years, he just retired. The guy commuted an hour each way in Boston, in traffic. And I was just going, how is he doing this? That's hard, man.

That wears on you. Exactly. Such sacrifice. I'm a big believer in we can all do hard things for a short season. And if this was indefinite, I'm going to take a job an hour and a half away. It's just commute, three hour commute every

day indefinitely. I'd say that's not a good idea. We've got some Ramsey team members. One of them lives in Alabama, which is not too far. We're right on the border of Tennessee, Alabama. About an hour and 15 minutes every day. But still quite the commute. But it's a sacrifice you make and go, this is life right now and we like where we live

and we can always move later and I just choose to live as close as possible to work. And that's a decision I made for my family, John. Mostly so I can go home to my dogs at lunch. You understand. The sacrifice you make for your dog. Legendary. Legendary. Well what I was saying. You understand. The sacrifice you make for your dog.

Legendary. Legendary. Well, I appreciate the call, Riley. That's a, at 19, 20, now if they were like 45 and had kids, this would be

a different scenario. But at 19 and 20, I don't even know if it is. I think you do hard things in short seasons when you have a goal and you want to get there.

I think, I think we as a culture are trying to find the easiest path towards every single, um, goal. And I think one of the things that made me appreciate my degree made me think through it. I would get out of class and I'd have a couple hours to think about what I had just experienced in class and did I agree with it? Not agree with it. I think the entire gravity of that process, the grit and the, I didn't want to do it. It was hard, made the end result so much more powerful. There's a lot of growth. A lot of growth when you do hard things, especially really hard things for a short

period of time. It's a gift. And we've tried, we tried to avoid as a culture. That's what I say, man, for four months, choose the hard path. All right, you changed my mind, John. I'm with you. This is The ramsey show i'm ramsey personality george camel joined by my colleague and good friend, Dr. John Deloney. Open phones this hour, 888-825-5225. Charles joins us up next in Dallas, Texas. Charles, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for taking my call. Appreciate y'all.

Happy to take it. What's going on? Yeah, I got a kind of unfortunate incident happened with my parents. My mother got a scam call. I'm sure the one everybody's been hearing about. They called her and, you know, scared her into logging into giving her access to her computer and all this stuff. Well, long story short, she goes to a couple of stores to get some gift cards and she's out a she, she's out a couple of grand. Um, well,

I'm in, I'm in the tech space. And as soon as she called me and I was kind of onto what was happening, I said, I don't know who else you're talking to hang up the phone right now, but, um, damage has kind of already been done at that point.

But, um, been in touch with the, uh, you know, FTC and those proper channels. But, you know,

after the fact, I'm kind of like, well, really can't determine what information since they were in her computer, what information that they have gotten. Um, and so I'm just kind of looking for some type of, uh, path forward just to give my parents some peace of mind, whether it's, you know, a lifelock type, uh, product like that, just in case they did get a, get a hold of some type of information, you know, so a couple years down the road, you know, if it flags, you know, just kind of looking for some

path forward post events going forward. So I don't think they had any type of identity, you know, insurance or anything like that up front. It's all kind of after the fact, so. Man, I'm so sorry to hear that. That's a bummer. We do have, there is a restoration service through Zander, Identity Theft Protection, and Dave actually, he covers every single Ramsey team member with that, and I actually went through identity theft soon after I started working here, and it was a game changer to have that in place, but there are restoration services through Zander that you can check out to help get kind of her life back and make sure that there's no further damage being done. So I actually covered this on a Ramsey Solutions article. There's like 12 things on

there, obviously asking for a fraud alert to be placed on credit reports on those accounts and freezing those. Has she done that? I believe believe so i think she's gotten in touch with you know all the credit cards uh unfortunately uh there's more than there's more than one there's more than a few but um has she filed a police report i believe i don't know if she's gotten to that point yet it was first cancel credit cards uh gift card provider then ftc we kind of saved that not for last, but just kind of like what much they were going to be able to do, you know. I would just look in the Dallas area, file one with your local police. They may have a way to do it online. But what happened to me,

I met up with a police officer locally and that really helped to have that official report because you can use that when it comes to collections and things like that. There's a legitimate piece of information out there saying that this happened. Obviously, you mentioned the FTC. You filed a report with them. And then obviously monitoring every single dollar coming in and going out of her accounts and canceling all cards, getting new cards, all of that new bank account. That's a step you could take as well. Yeah, I already got them on to doing all of those things. Fortunate thing, they're very old school. They don't even have online banking, which in this scenario really saved them. That's what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, take that Gen Z.

That's right. I wrote a check the other day and I felt right about it. So good for them. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I love it. Yeah. Well, and I felt right about it. So good for them. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I love it. Yeah, well, I appreciate the advice, guys. Just kind of want that peace of mind going forward, and I think y'all definitely helped me there. And I would check out Xander's ID Theft Protection. It's a great product.

Again, we have it on all of the Ramsey team members here. And there's a lot of things you can do. Obviously, they're not super tech savvy, so that helps. But as just a rule of thumb, just don't answer calls from people you don't know and then go and do money orders from Western Union and go buy gift cards. Have some common sense, but they use a lot of fear tactics and urgency. And some folks here at Ramsey recently had to deal with some scams, and they are very savvy now. I mean, they can fake, they can spoof numbers and they can spoof the sheriff's department and the voices sound real. And so you've always got to take a pause, be very skeptical when it comes to these calls and always they go, oh, we wouldn't call you to collect. No, it doesn't work like that. Whenever you actually call that place that says

you owe money to. So there's a lot of things you can do for the future, but this is one of those you categorize as stupid tax and you learn from it and you move on. Yeah. And you know, I've, you know, I'm, I'm actually in the IT world and I've preached it to her and she's so good, like being online banking, like she's usually always so vigilant. And of course she's just kind of traumatized now, but I just couldn't believe, you know, not that she fell for it, but it's like, it can happen to anybody. They've gotten so sophisticated. It's really scary.

Yeah, and there's a lot of shame and guilt that come along with that where you beat yourself up going, how was I so done? Listen, I'm sure she's a smart woman. This can happen to literally anyone. But she's learned her lesson, and I hope that that folks listening call your parents and tell them about this and say hey don't answer calls from random people don't go get gift cards if it sounds fishy hang up and say hey I'm gonna go to the website for that place and I'll call that number and if they start to get angry that's how you know it's a scam just hang up well and or say hey if anyone ever calls you for money have them call me and I'll be happy to do that for you

and I will handle it. That's right. Oh, that's a bummer, man. Thanks for the call. Pablo joins us up next in Ontario, Canada. Pablo, welcome to the show. George, John, what's shaking, guys? We're just south of the border living our life, man.

How are you doing? Oh, live the dream. You know how it is. What's going on? We're way south of the border. George is not an excellent geography student. It's just south. I never said how far south. You know how it is. What's going on? We're way south of the border. George is not an excellent geography student. It's just south. I never said how far south.

You said, all right. What's up, Pablo? This is about Pablo. What's going on, man? I got a question, gentlemen. If I got the cash to pay off my mortgage, do I pay it or do I keep investing? What are you currently investing? In terms of value? Per, percentage wise of your income?

Um, no income at the moment, but, uh, last two years has been very well for me. Did you get laid off or did you quit? Uh, I got laid off. Okay. What, what's your trade? What do you do? I was an electrical technologist here. Okay. How long have you been unemployed? About a year. Why?

Some health reasons and a few other things that happened. Okay. So how much is left on this mortgage? $324,000. And you have that in cash? I purchased the home just before COVID as a new build.

And it took about six to eight months to build. So in that meantime, I was selling rental properties. So you had some profits from those sales that you've been just stocking away in the bank. Exactly. So within a year or two, my personal home just tripled. And so I just pocketed that cash waiting for my investments to go up. Luckily, I cashed out at a good time. So how much money do you have in liquid cash?

Well over a million. Wow. Yeah, dude, pay off your house yesterday. What do you mean by keep investing? Well, do I just keep all my RSPs are maxed out, all my TFSAs are maxed out? I'm just wondering, it sounds like you can do both with this level of cash. You're going to continue to invest. This home payoff is not going to hold you back that much. Yeah, that's kind of my problem is do I pay

off the mortgage, invest the rest? It sounds like you just love investing and seeing money grow. And so to put it on the house, you feel like, well, that doesn't make sense. I could see this money grow at 10%. Exactly. That's my issue. Okay. So here's the deal. You made a killing off the other side of the market, didn you there's a comes a moment when you keep not dealing with the risk side of that teeter-totter that you become the person who somebody else makes a whole bunch of money off of so what that means is get rid of all of your risk you're gonna sleep so good take your take your mortgage off the table, man. What are you doing, man? That's your sleep. It's a sleep tax, man.

Pay it, dude. Sleep. That's not even a big part of your world, dude. You got this, Pablo. You know what to do. And I'm telling you, there's nothing like having a paid-for house. And you've got plenty of other money to invest. You're going to be a multimillionaire.

Sounds like you already are. You're doing great. Good problem to have. Thanks for the call. This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Acts 20, 35. In everything I showed you that by working hard in this way, you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Jackie Chan said, I do small things. I try to do good things every day. If everyone does some good, think of what a good world this will be. I love Jackie Chan. Big fan. Huge fan. How can you not? All right, let's go to Xenia in South Carolina.

Xenia, welcome to the show. Hi, y'all. Thanks for having me. Happy to have you. How can we help today? All right. Well, I'm graduating at the end of the year on my 19th birthday with an associate's degree, debt-free, and I'm getting married in May. So I was wanting to get some advice on purchasing a car

in between now and then. Do you have a car now? I don't. I've never owned a car. And what's the urgency? Are you needing it to get around right now, get to work? No, not necessarily. My parents have two vehicles, so that's working around right now, get to work? No, not necessarily. My parents have two vehicles, so that's working out right now, and I work close by. So you're borrowing their car? I am.

I will be moving across the state when I get married. In May. So are you saying you can borrow this car until May? Probably. Okay. How much debt saying you can borrow this car until May? Probably. Okay. How much debt do you have, if any? None at all. Debt-free?

The degree is debt-free. I didn't know if there's any other debt in the picture. That's great. Do you have any cash? Around $6,000. I have an emergency fund, too. Oh, great. How much is in the emergency fund?

$500. I took the teen course. I was going to say, I was like, 500 sounds awfully like what we teach in our personal finance curriculum. That is awesome. You've been following this plan. So if you want to buy a car right now, I think the best path forward is to go buy a local emergency room and have them remove one of your kidneys and get on Craigslist and sell it. And you should be able to wrangle up enough hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash to buy a good used Honda. Someone out there is going to take John's advice.

Don't. Don't. Okay, so you've got $6,000 ready to put towards this car. And are you working currently? I am. About 20 hours a week. Good for you. What do you make? $12 an hour.

Okay. So what's your question question? You're saying what's the best way? When should you buy it? How much should you spend? Where should I start? Well, I think we got to start with a goal of doing some research and looking around and saying, okay, if I bought a car today with cash, with my $6,000, what kind of car could I buy?

And you can start doing that research. There's a lot of car buying sites. You can start with one like AutoTrader and start to sort it from low to high and go, all right, not going to go with the $2,000 Beater car. I could go with the $5,000 Honda or Toyota, right? And then you have a goal in mind if you're going, okay, I really want that $7,000 car, and I can do that by February if I save up another $200 a month, $400 a month. And so once you set that goal, it'll become pretty clear of kind of what you're aiming for. And I would avoid major dealerships. To find a car in that range, you can look at Facebook Marketplace, you can look at Craigslist, you can look at AutoTrader, like I mentioned. And from there, you always want to do

a pre-purchase inspection so that's where you're going to take it to a separate mechanic to get it independently inspected before you ever make this purchase promise me you'll do that i promise it'll cost probably 100 bucks right john or 200 bucks yeah 100 bucks 200 bucks and it is worth the peace of mind so you don't go i got a great deal and now it needs a new transmission and a clutch pack piston and i don't even know what that means um can i xenia i'm gonna make an admission here okay so this is my confession i am terrible at buying cars okay so one of the rules i have for myself is when i'm about to buy a car i take somebody with me who knows what they're doing and i know about cars i like cars um i've bought a lot of cars in my life, but I'm just terrible at doing it.

I either get attached to something, I get bored with the process, and I just want to hurry it up, and I end up buying a car that probably wasn't the best car for me. So here's why I tell you that. Are you and your dad still close? Would it be possible for your dad, who's just trying to love his daughter and be involved, and she's about to get married and graduate and move on if you said hey dad could we go test drive a few cars and you could teach me what what to look for absolutely that would be a former mechanic too oh gosh you would make his number one don't call a couple of knuckleheads on the radio and your dad's mechanic doing here number two man give him this one give your old man this one. He's going to love this. I will.

He will love it. I promise. And say, this is how much we have. I can't spend any more than this. He's probably going to dump some on top of it because you're his baby girl. And everybody's going to win. But he's going to go to bed at night like, that's right. She still likes me.

She still needs me. Right? What a great gift you can give to that old man. Ashley, don't listen to outside people and pressure that say, well, Ashley, you work so hard. You deserve a really nice, reliable, safe car. And that's why you have to get a new car. That's $30,000 and put as little, don't do that. You know, you know better, but I just, I'm telling you, there's a lot of pressure out there from people. And right now you got no one to impress except dad. And dad's going to be proud of you for paying cash for that

car i love it and so and i'll tell you i bought a car in 2017 and it cost me exactly six thousand dollars got it from a former ramsey co-worker honda civic 09 leather seats whole nine yard it was beautiful john and that same car today goes for about $76,000. And I got in a wreck in 2019 and I didn't even give a rip because it already had body damage. And so at 19 years old, I think every 19 year old should drive kind of a crappy car. That's just a weird old man stance I have.

I 100% agree. I just don't think they deserve Jeep Wranglers that are brand new at 19 years old. I don't know if it's a deserve thing. I just, yeah, I think it's good to put your time in. You're going to bump it against some things in you. So take your time with it and make the decision when it's right for you, but there's no wrong way to do it except for going into debt and not getting an inspection. So thank you so much for the call. All right, let's take a quick one from Ashley in Maryland. Ashley, we're up against the clock. Let's get right to it. How can we help?

Oh, sorry, North Dakota. I thought that was an M on my screen. Yes. You're way, way far from there. We are. We're almost to Canada. It's very cold up here. Wow. So my husband's Air Force. He's active duty. We live on the Air Force base, so we don't pay rent, just come straight out of his paycheck,

VAH. We do not have to pay utilities, which is a huge perk, um, especially with how cold it gets during the winter time. But we found a property that we're interested in. That's about 10 minutes away. Um, we can try and get it for 275. Um, and it has two acres. It's a nice, nice property, but the, I mean, it needs a lot of work so like the location is beautiful actually when are y'all gonna have to move again three and a half years don't do it i'm so sorry i wouldn't and okay i'm telling you as a guy who loves acreage and the woods and if i had to live on base i would feel like i would feel so constricted and i see you and i work with you and i just

want to have a place where there's not a bunch of jacked up Jeeps everywhere. I get it. And man, in three and a half years, there's who knows. I mean, this property may triple in value and it may be just a mess for the next three years. Going to fix this place up, fall in love with it, have some peace and you're going to have to move again. Yeah. And that's what we're afraid of. But then I thought maybe the land would grow you know

you know having two acres close to town maybe that would be worth more in three years when we sell yeah it might yeah it might it might um do you have enough money to get into it yeah are you guys debt free with an emergency fund and the down payment yes so we are debt free we have about have about $150,000 in the bank. And so we've been saving for the last eight years for a house. Okay, well, then I take that back. I'm an idiot. I mean, if you're going to be there for three or four years, I don't know, George. How much work does it need?

Okay, so it needs all new flooring. We want to do like, I mean, we don't need a real hard work. I mean, is this like $50,000? Give me a ballpark of what you think it would cost i yeah i'd say probably 75 to 50 to make it look really nice i wouldn't that's because then you're going to put 75 down on the 275 because then you're going to need the rest of the cash to do all these repairs and if you don't you're going to be half miserable in this house of this was my, but now I can't accomplish it because we don't have the cash. I would tread lightly.

But again, if you know you're moving in three years, you're going to just have settled in and then all of a sudden have to go around and turn this house you poured your soul into. That you love. That's a tough place to be. Hope it recoups. Yeah, that's hard. It's not a dumb decision, but I just don't want you to have regrets either. I guess it's one of those that the dollars work fine. But thanks for the call, actually.

Wish you the best. It's tough, though. And thank your husband for his service. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. Thanks to John Deloney, all the folks in the booth, and you, America. Thanks for listening. Do you love a good day, Brandt? Want to see the latest Ramsey Show videos going viral?

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