The Ramsey Show - App - Do NOT Adjust Your Life for Your Girlfriend (Hour 1)

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. This is the show where we talk about your relationships, your job, your boundaries, your family. Yeah, the crazy ones. Yeah. We talk about your money. Yeah.

We talk about you right in front of you. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, host of the Ramsey Network's Fine Print podcast, a very popular podcast where George explores the fine print is my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225 that's 888-825-5225 David's in Providence Rhode Island hi David welcome to the Ramsey show Dave how are you George how are you great man what's up? Dave, so I've called into you a couple of times. Last time I called, I forgot to ask you a very important question. My wife and I, we sold our vacation condo, and we made a lot of money off of it. We used a little bit of the money to put towards my debt snowball.

Most of my debt snowball is business-related debt. And currently, I have about $68,000 left in debt that I have to pay off. And we have $75,000 left over from what we made from the condo purchase. And I'm just wondering if I'm better off taking some of that money and knocking out the rest of my, well, basically almost the rest of my debt snowball, or I have a commercial piece of property that if I take the money and I put it on the commercial piece of property, which would completely pay off the property, and I generate about $6,000 a month worth of rental income. I want to put it towards the building, but I'm not sure following your steps as to what you should do.

Yeah, I wouldn't. I'd just pay off my debt. You work on your building later. It's a Baby Step 6 item to work on your building later it's a baby step six item to work on the building the other stuff's baby step two okay yeah let's go ahead and knock it out and the reason is this whether it's business related debt or not you sign for personally it's all personal debt all right and so it's um the law doesn't call it business related debt the law calls it dav in Rhode Island's debt.

And so, yeah, I would just, I'd be clear of that. And then take your income, which you've got a great income, obviously, and let's begin to attack that commercial building and your home if you haven't paid off your home as well. Yeah. And a good reminder, David, when you clear that $68,000 in debt, you're going to free up a lot of payments, which is going to give you more ammo to pay off this commercial property even faster. Yeah, yeah. I doubt you'll free up $6,000 worth of payments, which you said you would have done on the commercial property, but I don't think your payment on the commercial property is $6,000 either. I think that's just the income that you're talking about there, which you've still got that income and probably have a $600 or $700 payment on that mortgage yeah so you're probably going to free up thousand to two thousand dollars

a month by doing this and um you know reach over then and continue on down the baby steps make sure you've got your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses uh start putting 15 away of your income into retirement and start your kids college and then let's attack real estate debt home debt commercial building debt at baby step six alex is in minneapolis hey alex welcome to the ramsey show thank you dad what's up my question is i'm on baby step four and baby step six, single with no kids. And to get out of baby step three, two and three, I took two part-time jobs in addition to my full-time job. And my question is, how do I start to transition from being in the gazelle intense mode to adjusting to baby step four and baby step six? Well, we say you go from gazelle intense to intentional.

And so there's the difference when you hit four and six. And, you know, me and my wife, we were a little bit intense in six because we just wanted to pay off our house. But this is kind of a choose-your-own-adventure at this point. As long as you're investing 15%, I still want you to have a goal as to how you're going to pay off this house faster than 30 years, faster than 15 years. But once you have that goal in mind and you're sticking to that, I want you to enjoy your life too. I don't want you calling in going, man, we've been

gazillion tens for 20 years and we don't even know how to spend money. We don't know how to give. We're just socking away money. So I think you need to set a goal still, but you also need to enjoy yourself and not be working three extra jobs. Exactly. You go from sprinting to marathon and I would drop the jobs, unless you're just loving them or they're taking you somewhere. From a career standpoint, you know, you're following a Ken Coleman process of some kind. But if they were just for money to get out of debt, and they represent gazelle intensity, not intentionality,

then, you know, if you love one of them or it's taking you somewhere, I'd keep one of them, but I wouldn't keep both of them. Yeah. And, you know, again, there's just being very careful and very intentional, say, to six times. But, I mean, that's the thing. You go from sprinting to marathon. I like still having a goal in mind. Absolutely.

Even for when do I want to become a Baby Steps millionaire? When could that happen? When could I pay off the house? How much more could I give? Always having a goal is going to keep you motivated, and it's when you lose all of that, you just start to get a little fat, a little lazy. Well, in business, what we do is we call it

you need a desired future. Henry Cloud talks about that. You need a desired future. That's your goal. And then you start immediately asking yourself what has to be true to get there. Well, I've got to save $622 a month. Okay, that's what must be true

now you but you wouldn't have known that if you didn't set the goal yes you would have been just going i save money you don't have you don't have a detailed thing so you need to hit it and hit it and go okay i want to knock this house out okay good what's that mean okay i'm a i i think i can pay x number of dollars and that's going to pay it off in 8.7 years okay now we got a goal you know and the x number of dollars now becomes the rhythm yeah and that's going to pay it off in 8.7 years. Okay, now we've got a goal. You know, and the X number of dollars now becomes the rhythm. Yeah. And that's what you're looking for. And you can allocate, you know, in baby step four and six, you start to look at your budget and go, hey, let's put some more fun money in there.

We've earned it. Let's go on a nice trip. Let's have a vacation sinking fund and upgrade the car. So I want you to have goals in other areas of life other than just investing and paying off the house but but always have enough that the spending does not take up all of the ability to do baby steps four and six you got you can't you can't use it all up in consumption there but um there's a middle ground most people don't have that problem yeah mary joe is with us in tampa florida hi mary joe welcome to the ramsey show how are y'all doing this afternoon? Better than we deserve. What's up in your world? Well, it's kind of like a tricky question. We

have two kids all growing up, college, everything taken care of. We've worked pretty hard. We're now reaching both me and my husband, we're going to be 57 this year, and we want to retire, you know, five years from now. We don't want to keep working until we turn 67, which is the full retirement, you know. So now that both kids are out of college, you know, years from now we don't want to keep working until we turn 67 which is the full retirement you know um so now that both kids are out of college you know we got them outdoors six months ago the last one's out you know we're at this this is time for that so we said you know with this extra money we've been putting towards the kids let's pay off our house agreed so currently we were looking at our interest rate and sadly you know we couldn't concentrate on us for so long our interest rate is at 4.625 oh time to refi yeah i mean how much is your balance well the sidebars we had to do

a month vacation about 10 years close to what's the balance the balance as of today is 154 000 what's your household income household income between us two is $115,000. Okay, if you're not going to pay it off within three years, you need to look at refinancing it. You might be paying it off in three years, though. So you need to lean into that and look at it. If you're going to pay it off that fast, it may not be profitable to refinance it. And if it's going to take longer than three years, go ahead and refinance folks listen up i know some of y'all are putting off getting life insurance because rates went up restrictions were added due to covid but it doesn't change your responsibility to take care of your family. Lucky for you,

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best deal. Today's question comes from John in British Columbia. He said, my wife and I have three and a half years of car payments ahead of us and our monthly payment is 300 bucks. We've got two kids, earn about 45,000 a year after taxes, and our budget is fairly tight with no wiggle room. We have roughly 20k in the TFSA and 015k on the car. You say to use any non-retirement investments to pay off debt, but why should we use the 20k we saved, which is making 10% interest a year, to pay off a payment which has 0% interest? I don't see the benefit of doing that, especially since it would leave us with almost no savings. Interesting. Not the first time we've heard this scenario, Dave.

I could put my money in the market and make way more than my debt is costing me in interest. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. You make $45,000 a year. You have a $300 car payment that's causing you stress. Your best thinking has gotten you to this point. So are you going to keep using your best thinking? I have to ask myself those same questions.

I mean, it's like, you know, I hired a personal trainer one time to come to our house and had a little gym in the bottom of the house, and Sharon's making fun of me. You're paying somebody to help you count to 10, 1, 2 know and i'm like it's not what it is and she says well you don't listen to him you don't do what he says he's got a six-pack you got a keg i mean you ought to listen to the guy my best thinking got me a keg his best thinking got him a six we're gonna listen to so who you're gonna listen to your your best thinking or someone else's yeah that's that's at the core of this and that's not because i'm offended that you didn't just jump on this but you know one of the things we have to do in this process is uh go my way is not working a new way i mean if you keep making a cake over and over again and you

want chocolate cake and it keeps turning out vanilla you need to change the recipe yeah uh doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. So that's at the core of this. And then we can answer the question too. Yes, but then that foundation needs to be there. And what's happening here is I love math as much as the next guy, but if you just do math, you go, wow, this works, man. I'm going to invest all the money in the market and leverage all the debt I can. But math is only part of the equation. We've got to talk about behavior. We have to talk about risk. We've got to talk about options and freedom, which he doesn't have right now because he has a car payment. And so if you want to have that freedom, you've got to make a sacrifice here.

Based on your theory, John, you would borrow $300,000 on a car at 0% and put it all in the market at 10%. and obviously when i say that out loud you hear the absurdity of it and that's how absurd your overall question sounds actually so um and the reason is you've left out risk you've left out cash flow you've left out peace and so what i want you to do you can do whatever you want to do but what we would teach you to do is pay off your car today or sell it if you're going to keep it if you're not going to keep i mean if you don't want you want to keep the money that's fine sell the car uh but but i'd pay it off today if i'm going to keep it and then i would continue to move through the baby steps

which puts you if that makes you debt free then you're going to move towards your emergency fund i'm building that up and then you're going to move towards retirement accounts which it looks like he'd have about 5 000 left over even after paying off the car. So that'll get him some headway into baby step three. So I'm not sure in British Columbia what a TFSA is. I'm assuming the way he asked the question that it is not retirement account. Yeah. But conceptually, if it's not a retirement account, I'm pulling the money and paying the car off or I'm selling the car.

You need to get rid of your car payment, John. But the other thing you've got to really think about is, my best thinking brought me here, number one, that's not working. Number two, you have to ask yourself if the information I'm getting somewhere else is credible, and if it it is credible i'm going to submit myself to that new way of thinking and so um you know it can be just simply uh i was reading a book on parenting when the kids were little and it said this this and this and i went i've never done that i've never even thought about that and i thought yeah but the source the author was somebody i believed in and i thought you know what he probably knows more about it no no so i'm going to start doing that do it his way you know after reading about 15 of those books the kids turned out none of them live

in my basement so there you go so it's um it means i'm a success right so there you go open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five For you basement dwellers, you have to know that an eagle who fails to launch is eventually known as a turkey. I like that one. I don't know if I've heard that. That's where you go. So set the little eaglets free. It's good for them.

The little wings will develop. Turkeys get shot. We will have society. And we eat them at Thanksgiving. So there you go. Oh, that we eat them at Thanksgiving. So there you go. That's gross, but okay. That metaphor unfolded poorly.

Dylan is with us in Gainesville, Florida. Hey, Dylan, what's up? Great. How are you doing today, Dave? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Well, I got a couple big life changes coming up. I'm graduating college this May with a degree in computer science, and I have a job offer in Florida for after I graduate. However, my girlfriend wants to sort

of live abroad for a bit before settling down. And another thing that might help with context is I received a half a million dollar inheritance from my grandparents. So I have a little bit of flexibility, but I was just wondering what advice you have. So you're trying to figure out how to talk to your girlfriend about this, that you don't want to move overseas? I'm interested in moving overseas. However, I'm just scared about, I enjoy the safety of staying in, you know, having a job offer. I was just wondering. Well, if it's your girlfriend, it a job offer. I was just wondering. Well, if it's your girlfriend, it's one thing. If it's your fiancé or your wife, it's another.

Okay. Girlfriends, you just send them overseas. It's fine. Fiancés and wives, we don't want to be separated from. Am I wrong? That's true. I mean, if she wants to go over there and live, that's fine. She just puts at risk the fact that you might find somebody else while you're hanging out there in Florida. I mean, that's how that works.

But I'm not readjusting my life plan for a girlfriend. I wouldn't if I were you anyway. I'm certainly not. I have one girlfriend. I've had the same one for 40 years as my wife. But I'll adjust my life for her because she is my wife so but uh i'll adjust my life for her uh because she's my wife but i'm not adjusting i would not suggest here's better way of doing a young person or an old person adjust their life for someone that you are not committed to long term you're making long-term decisions

with a short-term person okay and if i have long-term commitments then that might change things i guess this is sort of like the deciding point. Yeah, I don't know if you guys call it. How old are you? 21. Yeah, I don't know if you guys call it this anymore, but when my kids were like teenagers, they called it the define the relationship conversation. They still call it that.

That's a thing. Yeah, and that was new to me even then I was old. So, but it's definitely new to me now. But that's kind of what we're having here is, you know, the only way I'm going over there is if we are going over there. Yeah. And if you break up when you're overseas, that's awkward. Yeah. That could happen. All for a Vax card.

Yeah, there you go. This is The Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Alex and Sarah are in St. Cloud, Minnesota, to do a debt-free scream, it says on my screen. Hey, guys, congratulations. Thank you very much, Dave and George. Welcome, welcome. How much have you paid off we paid off 48 000 of student loan debt in four months good wow and your range of income during

that time uh we made 150 000 household okay so you had some money in savings you just threw at it or what yeah well we were blessed initially by my wife's grandma. She gave us $10,000 as schooling to help pay that off, as well as we actually had $12,000 of the student loans sitting in a bank account that we were going to use. And we're like, hey, we can just pay that back to the student loans and help speed this up, as well as I had a decent year in sales so we had some money sitting around to just throw at it okay so how much did you have

laying around and then you cash flowed the rest yeah we cash flowed the rest no we had about maybe um i had about 10 to 20 000 in commission sitting around okay so you had like 35 of the 48 and then you just plowed through the rest in four months yep way to go man yeah what was the wake-up call what got you moving well our dave story starts off of we uh when we moved up here kind of took over a business and ended up with going into bankruptcy because of that business and went through FPU actually during the bankruptcy. And then from there, that kind of got our butt in gear and, you know, we retired. Wow. Wow. Okay, cool. Good for you. Yeah, it was. So it was after the bankruptcy, you said, I'm never going to be here again. Yes, basically. We had a day moment.

Yeah. I got to learn how to say never again what that process looks like exactly yeah it was it was not fun so you roll into financial peace university and you're looking at this you're going i think we can do this if we just pull all these different accounts together throw it at it and then and then jump on it for a few months we'll knock it out oh yeah nope yeah we starting with a financial peace our you, you know, leader, Stacy, she was just kind of walking us through everything. And it was like, hey, we, you know, looking at the money we had in the account, it's like, hey, we can just throw all this money at this and, you know, not have any payments

here in the future. Because another big motivator was we didn't want to pay any interest on it. So it was just sitting there, you know, interest-free because of the government. And we didn't want to pay any interest when it started it was just sitting there you know interest free because of the government and we didn't want to pay any interest when it started back up what do y'all do for a living now um i'm in sales and my wife actually just took a job as a lifestyle consultant okay cool what does that entail what's a lifestyle consultant i'm wondering if i need one i'm a lifestyle consultant you're spending too much so I work at a weight loss clinic. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Very cool. Wow. That's a good way of saying that. I like that. It makes me feel better about it. Very cool. So what kind of sacrifices were you guys making?

I mean, you were just gun-ho. You were ready to get this thing out of your life. Yeah. No, we were, I mean, basically our beans and rice story consisted of running to Costco and buying straight beans and rice in the 50-pound bags. Wow, you took it very literally. We were committed. For four whole months. For four months.

That's awesome. Good for you. How does it feel to be free? Oh, it feels great. I mean, the big news is you have a new way of looking at things after all you've been through. Oh, yeah. And it has now proven itself out very quickly for you, so now you've got to live it. Yes.

We had a wake-up call instantly, and, yeah, just the mind shift that happens, even through financial peace, is unreal. Yeah. Way to go, you guys. We're proud of you. Excellent, excellent job. Good, good work. Got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you,

How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth, How You Can Too. That's the next chapter in your story. We want you to play all the way through now and finish this and do it right and end up with some wealth and be in a position to be just crazy, outrageously, wonderfully generous.

Also got a copy of The Total Money Makeover for you, and that's a book you can give away and help somebody else get on this same journey that you're on. So way to go, you guys. Who was cheering you on? Our biggest cheerleaders was actually our FPU group. Stacey was awesome via Eagle Brook Church up here. Oh, yeah.

Eagle Brook's incredible. Yeah, that's an incredible church. They do a great job. Oh, yeah. They were a big fan of your support. Yeah, that's an incredible church. They do a great job. Oh, yeah. Very cool. Good, good. Well, way to go, you guys. Well, thank you for calling in and sharing your story.

You're inspiring. Well done. I appreciate it very much. Alex and Sarah in Minnesota. $48,000 paid off in four months after they gathered the accounts together and then finished it with some beans and rice, making $150 a year. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one, we're debt-free. Yeah. Way to go, you guys. Woo-hoo. Blake is in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Hey, Blake, what's up? Hey, how's it going, Dave? Great, man. How can we help?

So, I got a question. So, I'm currently an apprentice over at a Ford dealership. I got a job off over becoming an HVAC apprentice. My dad talked to me and gave me that. I'm currently making $12.50 an hour. I'll be bumped up to $16.50 an hour, but I'll be having to go to school in the fall.

Two nights a week, and that's $850. The thing is, too, is I have a bunch of tool debt, about $1,000 in tool debt, and then $1,000 of debt on the motorcycle I bought beginning of last spring. So I'm right now in a pinch. I'm like, I don't know if I want to take this job offer and have more school loans to have or what okay i got lost somewhere you're currently doing hvac uh no i'm currently an apprentice as a over at a four

dealership right now apprenticing for what uh. As a mechanic. And that's where the tool debt came from? Yeah. And then the opportunity to move into HVAC tech requires you to go to get some VoTech classes? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And that's working for your father? No. My father was the one that told me about getting into HVAC,

and that's what I'm trying to pursue right now and get out of the mechanic industry. Okay. But you're going to have to pay for these classes, and you don't have the money to pay for them. Yeah, my dad said he would help me out, pay for all of them, and I'll just pay them back later down the road from what he told me. No, we don't go in debt, and we don't go in debt to dad for sure. Bad plan.

How old are you? I'm 20. Okay. Why are you How old are you? I'm 20. Okay. Why are you doing any of this? I'm trying to get a trade job. Why? I don't want like a normal just office job or anything, so. You like working with your hands, is that what you're saying?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm a hands-on type guy. That's good. Okay. What I don't want you to do is I don't want you to invest heavily with your time, your life, your education into something just because it sounds like it might be a good idea to make some money. And that's what this sounds like. Yeah, I've done a bunch of research now that I'm watching YouTube videos on. It looks like something I could get into because of Mechanic and A now.

It doesn't seem like it's really for me. Why? It's pretty much the same thing every day. I'm spending all this money each week on new tools for a special job, and it's just repetitive. Dude, hitting an error is repetitive. It's only a couple of times. There's only a couple of things you can do there.

Yeah, but I'm not spending all this money each week on new tools, though. Okay, well, that's not the question. You don't have to keep spending money on tools to be a mechanic. That's just something you got sucked into. It sounds like you've got a real good tool salesman stopping by the shop to me, but both of these are repetitive. True. Yeah, we just don't want you to go down this HVAC path and you go,

man, I've got to buy new tools and this is really repetitive and I've got to do something else now after spending all this money. So I think you've got to take a breath and figure out what you really want to do, and I'm happy to send you a copy of Ken Coleman's book, From Paycheck to Purpose, and I'll also get you the Get Clear assessment that he has, because I think right now you just need some vision for your life. I think you need to take that assessment and really start asking yourself, because I'll tell you what I am sure of out of this conversation after talking to you for just a minute.

I think you're probably not only like working with your hands, you're probably gifted at things mechanical. It gives you joy to make things work. And you probably need to pursue something in this field, but I'm not sure you selected HVAC any more carefully than you selected mechanicing. I think you just saw something different, and you're tired of that one. So I want you to take those things and then you decide what you're going to do and make sure you cash flow whatever education you pursue you're

going to pay cash for it no debt or don't do it just don't do it if you have to go in debt even to your dad this is the ramsey show We'll be right back. George Campbell Ramsey personality is our co-host today thank you for joining us here on the Ramsey show where we talk about your relationships your mental health your work your career your money it's all right here George regarding our last call with that young 20 year old young man there um earl nightingale who uh was kind of the grandfather of the motivational speaking movement back in the 60s he used to say in one of his motivational talks that i listened to when i was probably that young man's age that too many people spend more time picking out a suit of clothes than they do their career and uh what we're we're trying to get to there was you know how many people picked out a career

because their friend got a job over there dumb idea you know how many people picked out a career because their mama said you can make good money doing that? Dumb idea. You know, and so Ken Coleman and we at Ramsey, we spend our lives around here trying to get you to find something that aligns with your talents and your passions. And that is that you're going to get joy from and you're going to make money. And you don't go spend a bunch of money on education then to become educated to do something that you don't end up doing and which is like a everybody just about right so um you know you really need to parents uh don't do that to your kid don't say um oh you can make good money you gotta go over there uh why no how about more like um you have the this unbelievable ability to see things mechanically um and it can lead you to

a whole lot of places yeah it's very important oh yeah and parents it starts with the parents and a lot of parents are pressuring their kids for really terrible reasons and go to this school because i went there it's my alma mater and you got to get this major because then you'll have a steady job that you'll hate. And then you're going to end up trying to switch careers and call us going, I hate my job. My parents forced me into it. And so I just see that future of that bright young man.

And I don't want to see him calling us back on. I hate HVAC. Help me get out of this. I'm not sure HVAC is a bad thing for him. It's certainly not a bad thing. Yeah. But the thing that the reason he was describing leaving that one job is exactly what he's going to get in the other one so it sounded

like frying pan into the fire to me so um but it's it's man you can do so much in the trades to make money if you want to go in the trades using your hands today we love the trades let's make that highly recommend them yeah but but get But get into something where you have a specific thing that kind of gives you a little electricity when you talk about it. Other than just I can make some money. Beth is in Detroit. Hi, Beth. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave.

Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm a little bit starstruck, so I'll try to get through this call. George does that to people. That's what I was going to say. George does that. George does that. People get that way when they're with him. Well I am a long time listener for same caller and I appreciate you taking my call. My husband and I are just kind of getting our ducks in a row a little bit late but still doing it and I'm interested in learning about a ladybird deed, and if you know anything about it or can help me to know if that's the right way for us to go.

Okay. It's simply a life estate, and people nicknamed it Lady Bird because Lyndon Johnson did it with his wife, and so they nicknamed it Lady Bird Johnson, so they nicknamed it Lady Bird Deed. But all it means is that, for instance, if your husband had kids from a previous marriage, he wanted to leave the house to the kids, he could leave you a life estate, meaning you're allowed to live there, and the kids can't do anything with the property as long as you're alive.

Okay. It essentially clouds the title, meaning that you are in control of the property. They can't refinance it. There's not really anything they can do with it without your permission. If you are given the life estate, that would be an example of how it's utilized. How are you talking about using it? Well, I mostly was – I just wanted to make it easy for them when we're not here anymore to just take – you know, do whatever they want with it, sell it, take it over.

Oh, I wouldn't do that then. I wouldn't do that. Okay. I'd just leave it to you. all you know do whatever they want with it sell it oh i wouldn't do that then i wouldn't do that okay i just leave it to you and i just what i do is do mirror image wills and a mirror image will says that if uh you die it all goes to him if he dies it all goes to you and if you both die you both are in agreement on where it's all going i see what about a medicare protection you know how they go back so many years if you medicaid yeah not medicare oh medicaid oh forgive me okay and that's they go if you want to go into a welfare nursing home you want to get the property out of your name five years before but i don't recommend welfare nursing homes that's what medicaid is welfare medicaid's welfare

okay definitely no i wouldn't plan to be there okay so you need you need long-term care insurance That's what Medicaid is, welfare. Medicaid is welfare. Okay. Definitely, no. I wouldn't plan to be there. Okay. So you need long-term care insurance and money. Long-term care insurance and money. She wrote that down. I like that.

Are you 60? Are you 60? 62, and my husband's almost 64. Perfect. You don't have long-term care insurance to cover nursing home or in-home care? Well, I'm embarrassed to say that I don't. That's okay. That's okay. No problem.

What's your home's net worth? How much money have you got? Probably between the house and, oh, gosh, I was a stay-at-home mom for a long time, so we are not totally doing wonderfully, but we have our home that's paid for that might be worth about 300 we've got probably about 150 in the bank and then we've got a couple hundred in um iras perfect you need long-term care insurance go to ramsey solutions.com and click on elp for long-term care and get with one of our ELPs and they'll

help you get it going because here's the scenario that usually happens where you are if you had three million dollars if you told me that in your retirement I would have told you to self-insure because you could pay for the nursing home because average nursing home stays not but 2.3 years so you can pay for the nursing home or in-home care but what but 75 percent of the ladies outlive their husbands and so what normally happens is he passes away or he goes into a nursing home uses up your 300 grand on the nursing home and then passes away and leaves you broke with a paid for house we don't want that so we're going to get insurance to cover the nursing home that's long-term care insurance that's all you need and then you need

a will that leaves the house to the kids for both of you. That's all you need. Dave, what's the magic number about 60? We tell people get long-term care insurance at 60. It's a statistical thing, a probability thing, and the probability of utilizing nursing home services prior to age 60 is less than one-half of 1%. And it's weird. Almost every day after you're 60, it goes up dramatically. I mean, it's like a hockey stick curve, right?

And so, you know, you need that. Now, those of you that are baby step millionaires and have got $5 million, you're probably not going to go to a nursing home. You're probably going to hire 24-hour in-home care, which is not a whole lot more than a nursing home bill, actually. And you can get, you know, be in your environment. That's what I'll do, in other words, in my situation. If something happens to Sharon.

You'll miss out on bingo night. No question, yeah. And we're going to take care of this and be in my own environment, be in control of the whole situation more. And one of us will be, whichever one is functioning. But, you know, you can do that for more than a nursing home bill. But if you've got $5 million, you know, you're still not going to burn through even $300,000 or $400,000, $500,000 of it. You can afford it.

You can take care of that person, and you're still going to be okay. So you self-insure, in other words, through the final days of care routine if you've got substantial wealth. But where she's got the $300 the 300k that's the exact number they're going to burn through probably so they definitely need to get long-term care insurance she's right on that bubble and uh and no you're not going to be you're not even going to be eligible for medicaid no matter what you do because the only way you get eligible for medicaid is you have to prove that you're broke which means you moved all of your assets out of your name in order to get welfare and that's technically welfare fraud is what that is so um some people call it elder care law but it's uh it's it's

immoral is what it is so no we don't recommend that that you act like you're broke so the government pays for stuff for you i don't don't recommend that at all but what a good question that's very cool so but the life estate that's our the ladybird deed that's such a cool name you know i never heard ladybird deed until the last estate, that's the Lady Bird Deed. That's such a cool name. I never heard Lady Bird Deed until the last few years. People started naming it that more lately. I grew up around the real estate business. We always just called it life estate.

Life estate. That's really all it is. You've got to give it a snappy name. That way people will do it. Yeah. But you have, as long as you're alive, you have access to the property if you leave life estate. Does that create any weird relational pieces with the kids and whoever's living there? Of course. Because they want you to die at that point.

Yeah, you're going, would you please? That's awkward. Especially, you know, it's like stepmom, right? Because this kid's from a previous marriage. So we're like, would she die and get out of the way? I want the house. Yikes. So, but you could actually sell, you know, okay, I'll agree to everybody to sell it,

but I get some money. You could do that if you hold the life estate. You don't technically have to, but, I mean, if you want me to get out of the way, you've got to pay me. I like that. Prior to death. All right. So there you go. Gives you protection and gives you a place to live.

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