The Ramsey Show - App - Don’t Invest Your Money Based on the News Headlines! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "Should I pull from retirement to pay off credit cards?"  Investing to retire early, from the blog: Can I Retire Early? Where a HUD loan goes in the baby steps, Using a brokerage account for a down payment on a house, Taking out social security early to pay off a mortgage. Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Want a plan for your money? Take our FREE 3 minute assessment: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods of Moving and Storage Studios, it's The Ramsey Show. This is the place where we help people get out of debt, build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Thanks for hanging out with us. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today.

Starting off this hour is Patrick in Fresno, California. Hi, Patrick. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi. Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Here's my question. So I've got over a quarter of a billion in my retirement account. And over the years, I've seen it go up and down. And after hearing the news about what went down this weekend, you know, with the two banks in Silicon Valley, I'm wondering if I should take money out of my retirement and pay off my credit card debt.

That's my major debt is my credit card followed by my home, my car is paid for. So it's basically those two debts that I'm working with. What do you have your money invested in? In, you know, when I left the county, I had it in their retirement plan, 401 and 457. In mutual funds? Correct. What's that got to do with the bank? Well, last time that all happened in 2008, I just shut the door on that book because it looked so bad.

You know, is it going to fall and I'm going to see this money diminish? Would it be better off to use the assets I have now, pay off my debt, and that way the money I earn is mine. I can put it in the bank and invest it. How old are you? I am going to be 60 this year. I want you to pay off your credit card debt, but not for that reason. How much credit card debt do you have?

About $27,000. And I've got $23,000 to pay off my home. $23,000 pays off your home. Correct. And we're on a good pace to do that. How much money do you have not counting your retirement? Not a whole lot. We have about $5, grand in the bank what's your

household income about it fluctuates between uh 60 and 70 okay all right and your money is currently all in your 401k and you still work for the county uh no i don't oh you know i moved on yeah about the two and a half years ago and when you know when it started to hit the fan i go you know what uh i just got hit up for a position and so i'm working part-time right pay off your house and i would pay off your credit cards if you cut up your credit cards and if you get on a budget because you've been really you've been really sloppy with money the two good things you've done you've done a good job paying down your mortgage and you you've done a good job building up some retirement,

but your monthly management of money is not good. It's chaotic and out of control, and you're going to end up backing credit card debt just because you pay them off doesn't fix it if you don't stay under control. Is that right? Right. That's the goal is to get it all under control and stop that, stop bleeding out. Yeah, but the credit card debt is the symptom. It's the goal is to get it all under control and stop that, you know, stop bleeding out.

Yeah, but the credit card debt is the symptom. It's not the problem. Okay. And so we, you know, yes, we can pay off the credit cards, but they will grow back if you don't get yourself on a system, on a budget monthly. Are you married? Yes. Yes, my wife, thank God, has that under control. She does a great job for me. What's your full nest egg combined?

Because you mentioned the $250,000 in your retirement accounts. What other money do you have in retirement? Does your wife have money in retirement too? Not really, no. During my career, she raised the kids and stood home, and that was our way of doing things. I just want to make sure that you working full-time or working part-time is the right choice right now

with what you have in retirement. Right. That's something I'm looking at changing, you know, picking up more work, maybe not with this position that I'm currently in, but picking up work elsewhere. Because if all you have is the $250,000, that's not really a, am I going to or not? It's a, I must. That's not enough to retire on. Right, right. I got that.

Yeah. I'm not ready to retire just yet. So Patrick, here's what we would tell you. We tell you to do several things. And if you don't do all of them, then any one of them might be wrong. Okay.

So number one, okay. And re-engage a full-time career. Number two, build a budget with your spouse that the two of you are both participating in and get your emergency fund built up from five thousand to three to six months of expenses then number three yes pulling fifty thousand out and be a hundred percent debt free which will help that budget and build that savings up because now you don't have any payments but i

don't want it to grow back and number four get out the credit cards tonight and cut them all up. Have a plasectomy. Okay. I'm not kidding. It's not a joke. No, no. No, I've threatened to do that before. Okay. Now, I'm not threatening.

For real. This is you need to change your lifetime. Because if you don't, you're going to end up at 65 with $200,000, and you will have $40,000 in credit card debt. Because it will grow back. Right, right. No, no, no. It will grow back.

That's not the path I want to go down. I know. I don't want you to go down that. And then the last thing is this. Do not jump in and out of investments based on what you hear on the news ever. Okay? The stock market is not going to crash. The banking system is not going to crash.

This is a completely different kind of bank a completely different kind of scenario than 2008 and so i am not pulling one dime out of my mutual funds today or nor did i last week nor will i next week and i'm 62 i'm older than you and i don't have much time left, but with the time I have, I'm going to continue to invest, okay? So, you know, it's serious. Stay in your investments. Quit making your moves based on the news. You can't let the color of the ticker tape on the news and the music that they use denote your investing strategy when the ticker is is red and it says breaking news and the music is you know and it just gets your

heart rate up and you start sweating and you're like oh my god oh my god you can't let that you know they don't ever do that when it's green i know right they don't have like happy music no they don't breaking news it's awesome yeah awesome. Yeah, nobody does that. That never happens. It's always breaking news. The market's down and you're going to die of a tornado. If it bleeds, it leads. And it leads people to do dumb stuff. And it leads them to do things that are not good for them in the long haul. And so we've just got to, these are the times where you lock in.

And if you just hold. Oh, by the way, I got to hit one more thing. Hit it. Like 2008. Okay, let me tell you what I did. Let me tell you what I did in 2008. if you just hold. Oh, by the way, I've got to hit one more thing. Hit it. Like 2008. Okay, let me tell you what I did in 2008. Come on, Dave. Stock market went from $13,000 to $6,500. You know how much I took out?

None. You know what it did after that? It went to $35,000, $38,000 from $6,500. You know what a million dollars does when it goes up from $6,000 to $30,000? It becomes $5 million. Nobody talked about that, Dave. Because I didn't get out. I rode the roller coaster.

So I kind of hope it does what 2008 did. Okay. Because I'll be getting in. I know this right. It's on sale. This is the Ramsey Show. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey personality personality is my co-host today thank you for joining us america our question of the day is brought to you by neighborly your hub for home services the ramsey show is sponsored by neighborly uh they anything from repairs to maintenance to remodeling stuff

like mr rooter mr electric uh Molly May, you know these names. They're all part of the Neighborly family. So go to Neighborly.com and get local experts and home service providers to take care of you, and they'll schedule a service today. Today's question of the day comes from Jeremy in the Baby Steps Millionaires group. You can find that on Facebook. I'm 47 years old. If I plan to retire early, like say 50 to 55, should I be maxing out my 401k or funding more investments that I can pull from before I turn 60?

My Roth is fully funded each year in January. It's a really good question. You know, I have more questions for you, Jeremy. I would wanna know if you have any debt. I'd wanna know if your house is paid off. Those are the things that I would prioritize first is making sure that you're out of debt, making sure that you are going from baby step four and five and six. And then if you're in baby step seven, you could do additional funding into different

investments. It says that he's funding, fully funding his Roth in January every year. It sounds like he's got extra money. If I were you, I would work to pay that house off. And then from then on, if you wanted to throw money into, I guess, a taxable brokerage or something that you could get into before you hit 59 and a half, I'm not mad at that. What do you think, Dave? Yeah, the term that people use is bridge investing to make a bridge from 55 to 59 and a half.

And so we'll have this other lump in good good mutual fund investments that get there but you're right that's a baby step seven activity so if he is at baby step seven and he's debt free house and everything has his emergency fund maxing out his retirement can i also what else can i do or can i even slow down retirement a little bit and throw some at the bridge because i'm going to need something to eat on and build up a pile of like you said just taxable mutual funds what you're looking for there are what are called low turnover mutual funds and they're mutual funds that don't sell the stocks inside of them very often and so it does not activate the gains for taxes so you don't pay taxes on gains as they occur unless you sell it and uh that way it's basically a tax deferred investment like a good place to do that kind of

a thing it's a no-brainer is an s&p 500 because it's going to have i was looking at one today had a two and a half percent turnover ratio which means that uh 97 and a half percent of the stocks do not sell in a year so 97 and a half percent of the gains approximately are not going to be taxed in a year so you would that's a low turnover creates the it's not taxed until you finally do sell it would the fees on something like that be lower as well since it's not since the funds aren't being swapped out as much yeah there will be i mean you can buy it as a no load you can also get it through your smart investor pro if you got a smart investor pro managing your portfolio they can just throw that in with what they're doing

it's not a problem at all um i use a lot of high of low turnover mutual fund investing to park money in until i get ready to buy my next piece of real estate. It's what I do with it. Love it. I can handle the volatility mathematically and emotionally of the stock market going up or down, but that's at a different place. So that's a baby step four thing. You're looking for a bridge investing. Do not start that, as Jade said, until you're debt-free, though. That's right.

Angela is with us in Boston. Hey, Angela, how are you? I'm great, Dave. Hi, Jade. I'm thrilled to talk to you guys. Thank you for the work you do. Thank you. How can we help?

All right. So I'm cleaning up stupid. I came to the Baby Steps movie two years ago, but before that, I bought my first home, and it was, you know, by the baby step standards, well out of my payroll, you know, my pay. So I'm cleaning up what I did. I did a, um, I had a loan modification, um, that was performed. I had an FHA loan and what was done was a partial claim by HUD. So it's a interest free, loan of $100,000 that was removed from my mortgage balance to reduce my payments when I fell behind, just to keep me in the home.

So where I am now is I've paid off about $40,000 on Baby Step 2. I'll be finished with Baby step two in about three months and i'm just looking ahead to see um if i should be paying off this partial claim even though it's tied to my mortgage and baby step six or should i be pulling that in since i have that ability to to pay it down um through hud what's your household what's your household income sure i make um between 138 and 140 i would i would leave it as a baby step six okay because i would treat it like it's a second mortgage or a home equity loan and we do not pay those off if they're more than half your annual income okay until you get to baby step six now when you get to baby step six you're going to

work your way through it but you said it's an interest free loan they took a they carved a piece of the mortgage off set it to the side and put a moratorium on it with no interest right yes i'm in no hurry on that one okay i do want to get rid of it but i'm in no hurry would i okay would i prioritize the interest bearing portion of the loan before the interest-free? How would I recommend? I don't know what their rules are on that kind of a modification. But if they allow it, yeah, you'd be the last one you paid off of the two. Okay.

But I'm not going to keep it like a pet either. I mean, but we're going to set it over at Baby Step 6, and we're not going to be here eight years from now and still be going, 10 years from now, still be going, no, I'm not going to pay it off. It's no interest. No, I do want to get rid of it. And they may not allow you to do that additional principal reduction on your first mortgage until you get that modification paid.

Yes. It would be logical that they don't allow it. Okay. But who knows with hud i mean you know logic is a federal government logic has nothing to do with this exactly yeah the the partial portion isn't due until the first mortgage is either paid off or the home is sold and if you pay off the first mortgage is it due in full instantly or you have to begin paying on it yes it's due in full instantly so i'm trying to pay the first yeah you can't off the first mortgage, is it due in full instantly, or do you have to begin paying on it? Yes, it's due in full instantly. So I'm trying to match up the amortization. Yeah, you can't pay the first mortgage off then,

because you're going to have a balloon of $100,000 looking at you. It would. They allow partial, so you can almost just throw money at it to reduce it, but it can't. Yeah, you could get it down to $20,000 or something and then reach over and knock off the $100,000, right? Okay. But that's all at Baby Step 6.

Okay. Thank you so much. When did you do this? Oh, Dave. No, when did you do the modification? This was in 2018, 2019, I'm sorry, 2019. And the basis that they gave you this relief was based on what? Hardship was between jobs, and the criteria was my current mortgage balance and payments did not match my income in between those jobs. So there was a trial period, you know, after I got my new job that I could pay the new,

you know, reduced and modified loan. So it was a hardship application. And how long did it take you to get the hardship application through? I haven't seen one of these in decades. I'm really interested in this because it hasn't happened much. You pulled off something pretty unusual. It was a blessing. You know, I did stupid at the beginning, but it definitely was a blessing to keep me in my home. How much hassle was it to push this through? I would say I was about three payments behind going into four. So it was a loss mitigation through my mortgage company. There was maybe a month of application with documentation, hardship

documentation, proof of income. And then there was a three-month trial period where they modified and basically paused my old mortgage. And I had to do a trial payment based on the new modification monthly payment. You had to prove you could make the new payment yes and then after that that was proven we went into basically a new closing with an fha and i closed on my modified um and hud took it off the books of your old mortgage company too it's not sitting at your old mortgage company is it yes so if you look at my my um yeah my oh what i owe it's removed from even my credit. Yeah, it's sitting over at HUD. They bought the loan back and redid it.

That's amazing. I haven't seen that in a long time. Feet of strength. Good job. Keep your house and get the mess cleaned up now. Wow. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today.

On the debt-free stage in the Ramsey Solutions lobby, Luis and Delia are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hi, Dave. Welcome. Where do you live? We live in Houston, Texas. Houston, Texas. Houston, welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you guys paid off? Oh gosh, we paid $132,685. All right. Way to go. How long did this take? Around five years.

Good for you. And your range of income during that time? Well, we started with $64,000 and our current income is $135,000. All right. Good. What do y'all do for a living? I'm a mechanical engineer. And I'm a high school teacher. Okay. So what kind of debt was the $133,000?

It was credit cards. We had 10 credit cards all maxed out and we had card loans and student loans. Wow. Normal. So tell us about this five-year journey. That's a long journey. Yeah. When we got married, we just started just thinking that that was normal, that you pay, you always have a car loan, you always just use your credit cards and shuffling credit cards and it got to the point where we were just you know got to the cashier and had to flip credit cards so our marriage was in a desperate mode really so we uh learned from our church grace woodlands and they promoted the the class so i was like let's take it let's We had to invest the money, obviously.

Well, you signed us up. I was not on board at the beginning because it was about numbers. And I just, I'm not a fan. You know, I don't like math. And he took me to the class. And I was hooked on the very first class. I was just like, okay, we're doing this. And then we started seeing that our marriage was improving because we were communicating a lot. We ever sat down to do our budget meeting.

And we got excited after our first credit card was paid off. And then we just kept going and going and going. And I picked up like extra tutorials at work and like extra duties. They always paid something extra for that. And we just went gazelle intensity. Wow. I love that. So you get to the register and you're trying one credit card.

That one's not working. You're going to the next one. That one's not working. And that was that breakthrough moment that you guys said, we're changing our life. So what was the hardest part? I think the hardest part was saying no to myself. I'm the free spirit and he's a nerd. Okay.

And the voice of Dave Ramsey on my brain, he was like, do you want it or do you need it? And until this point, we transitioned that to our daughters. And that was the hardest part, saying no to myself and wait until we got the cash for it. What was it about the first class that hooked you that you thought okay maybe I can do this? First of all you're very funny. That's helpful. Yeah. Helps the medicine go down. Yeah and it's just seeing that the people actually do this at first it was like this is just a scam it's not going to work and then we took the class so many times at church we took it like five times but we took it that

many times because we needed the accountability from the people going through the same journey and we took it so many times that a church was like you should be the coordinators for a church and now we coordinate the class all right thank you very good so the former reluctant spouse is now a coordinator oh yeah there we go i like it the medicine went down yeah that's good good for y'all okay now that you've coordinated all these classes you've been through classes you paid off 133 000 what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is consistency yes consistency and we started seeing the improvement big steps and we both were on the same boat at first he was the one like no we're doing this we're not buying that so i i hated all that process but then until i saw how much minimal payment we're seeing on our credit cards

and then he told me we could have spent all this money on traveling or on whatever we wanted to but we couldn't because we had to pay our debt so that that's when we both decided okay we're doing this as a team and and we just went off honestly also I want to say the every dollar bud uh app oh yes it helps because she can actually just it's just easier for her just she she just And we just went off. Honestly, also I want to say the EveryDollarBud app. Oh, yes. It helps because she can actually just, it's just easier for her. She's just thought, I can just drag and drop where it goes in the budget. Yeah. I love it.

And you don't have to keep the budget easy. And you don't have to be good at math. I had an Excel spreadsheet and she hated that. I can imagine. I can imagine. I love that. I can't imagine an engineer with an Excel spreadsheet. That's never happened before.

That is so good. Way to go, you guys. Very, very well done. We're proud of you. Thank you. Who was cheering you on? People in our church. Yes.

Our family, too. And our family. My in-laws, they also do. They completely paid off the house. And every time they went to advise it was like okay you can do this we did it you can guys do it too so family members in our church yeah and that's a a class that you said grace woodlands yeah that's a great place great way to go guys excellent thanks grace woodlands for teaching the class a couple right here

your church is out there. This is what happens when you do this. Way to go, guys. Very, very well done. Good stuff. We've got the Live and Give box for you.

It's got the Baby Steps Millionaires book, which you will be on your way to being one of those now soon. And, of course, the Total Money Makeover book. Give that away and get it moving for someone.

And then another Financial Peace University membership, and you'll find somebody deserving that needs to go through the class, and you can help them as coordinators give that away. So we'll let you be the conduit on that. Awesome. Way to go, you guys. All right, let's bring the kiddos up.

I want to know their names and ages. This is Aileen. She is 11. And this is Olivia. She is 8. Ooh, beauties. All right. Excellent job.

Very good. Those girls look like their family tree was changed to me. Yes, absolutely. Very good. All right. Luis and Delia Ailed. Ailed. Ailed.

And Olivia in Houston, Texas. $133,000 paid off in five years, making 64 to 135. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We are debt-free. We are debt-free. Yeah.

Very cool stuff. Very cool stuff. So, Jay, that was kind of you and sam i mean you guys went through the class then you ended up coordinating how many classes did y'all coordinate at your church before you came here five five five classes and that look if you're out there you're walking through the baby steps you're in baby step two even if you're in three four five or six this is how you stay committed and this is how you stay motivated is you you do the stuff and you teach the stuff and the more you teach the stuff you the more you want to do this stuff oh by the way coordinators go through the class free yeah so if you just wanted to go through the class for free start a class that's a great idea

yeah that's a great idea do that all the stuff's on our website we'll show you how just go to ramseysolutions.com and uh the the reason class works is, A, we're teaching biblically-based common sense education and empowerment. I mean, it's God's and Grandma's ways of having money. Live on a lesson you make. Live on a plan. Save and invest. Be outrageously generous. You know, understand what you're doing with real estate, with insurance, the two things

that people do that mess them up all the time. Right. Make sure you've, this is the class that you should have been taught at like 15 years old. Oh, most definitely. 16 years old. But no one was taught this. And so we've got an entire series of generations walking around in America that don't have basic personal finance info. That's right. So we're going to give you the information. Here's the thing. None of the information is going to blow your mind. None of it's going to be like, oh, I never heard that. That's so complicated.

It's going to be like unbelievably easy to understand and hard to do because you've got to control the person in your mirror, which is the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life. I figured out if I could get the guy in my mirror to behave, he could thing you'll ever do in your life. I figured out if I could get the guy in my mirror to behave, he could be skinny and rich. Oh yeah. You know, in my, in my financial peace class, I'm finding right now we're talking about credit cards, Dave, and cutting up the credit cards and people are, they have lost touch with trusting themselves to stick to the budget. I trust that I can stick to the budget. I trust that I can handle my own

money. I trust that I can do what I said I was going to do. And that's what we teach you to do. We trust you to make a deal with yourself and keep your end of the bargain. That's it. And then the magic of the class, the big thing is the people in the class. Yes. The coordinators like Jade, the coordinators like that couple. We're a community. And the the people in the class. Yes. The coordinators like Jade, the coordinators like that couple. We're a community. And the other members of the class that are encouraging you. Oh, and they'll hold you accountable, too. If you want to do stupid, they'll argue with you.

Oh, yeah. Because they're going to love you enough to help you stay on track. Oh, yeah. We hold each other accountable. I see Price and Veronica and Stacy twice a week. There you go. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host.

Hey, get ready for the experience of a lifetime at the Smart Conference Weekend. It's going to be April 14th and 15th here in Nashville, the inaugural event of the brand-new Ramsey Event Center. We're all really excited about it around here. It is a beautiful new building up on top of the hill here, and we're looking forward to having about 2,500 of our closest friends in for this. If you've never been to one of these live events, we go all out for our fans, and this one, big time we're going to because it's the first ever event. You're going to get a memorabilia.

What do you call it? Oh, my gosh. The ticket is a. Oh, like a collectible. A collectible ticket. If you come to this one, it's pretty cool. Ramsey personalities, Rachel Cruz, Dr. John Deloney, George Camel, Ken Coleman, Christina Ellis, Jade Warshaw, and myself are going to give you a plan to improve every area of your life.

It is all day Saturday. But before Saturday, we're going to have a big bunch of stuff going on Friday, the live broadcast of the Ramsey Show. We've got some Nashville surprise. Some of the folks in the music business around here are going to stop by and hang out with us on Friday night and after the event. So, I mean, after the show. And then we'll, of course, do the Smart Conference all day on Saturday.

Platinum and VIP tickets long ago sold out. You can still get general access tickets for $119. There's just a few of those left, though. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash events today to get your smart conference weekend tickets. They are coming. Jason is in Napa. Hi, Jason. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Thank you very much, Dave. Thank you, Jade. I appreciate it. Sure. What's up? Looking for a little what would Dave do? Married. I'm 47. Wife is 37.

We are on baby step six. We make about 195 combined. Our combined nest egg is about 285, and we are now looking to sell our condo and move into a house, we should be able to pull about $200 from the sale to put towards the new purchase. My question is, we have another non-retirement brokerage account with about $170 in it. Would you pull that out and apply it toward the down payment as well? I would have already if you're in Baby Step 6. That's what you should have already done. You should have already paid it down on the condo.

Gotcha. It was hers pre-marriage. Are we married? Are we staying married? Oh, absolutely. I don't give a crap about pre-marriage then. It's now ours. Yes.

Understood. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, definitely, definitely. And it sounds like you're going to move up in house and your new payment's going to be something you can pay off. How quickly? Uh, we are looking at 12 to 15 year payoff okay all right

so we're going to be paying it off faster than uh anticipated you put it on a 15 year mortgage put it on a 15 year fix where the payment's no more than a fourth of your take-home pay and i'd be aiming at paying it off sub 10 that would be aggressive and we will look at that for sure well you're if you're if your income doesn't go up but your income is going to go up so it's not really that aggressive yeah so we are on that track uh as well as being retired uh or planning to retire about that same time so pay off the house and retire live happily ever ever after. Ding, ding. Sounds like a plan, brother. Thank you for calling in.

That's the plan. That's what we're going to do. So Baby Step 6 works where you don't have any money anywhere except your emergency fund and money you're saving to pay for Christmas. Yes. And we don't have side brokerage accounts while we still have a mortgage. Yeah, there's that. And I'm also thinking about, I kind of wanted to hit on this briefly, which is the, it's our money deal.

Yeah, go ahead and hit on that. If you've got, if you're married, the money's ours. And I know a lot of people struggle with that, but if you're married, go ahead and combine your finances. I tell folks all the time, you need to do a vocab rehab which is basically taking the words me my his hers out of the money conversation and it's ours we need to get on a budget our money needs to you know it's we and our and that that counts for the money and that counts for the debt so that's just a quick little kick in the pants for you guys is that a jade ism a vocab rehab that's a jade ism right there vocab rehab the vocab rehab i'm going a jadism right there, vocab rehab. The vocab rehab. I'm going with that.

I like it. It's got, you know, that's what we do. We're going to have to start collecting these jadisms, James. I think they might be valuable someday. Well, hopefully you guys remember that. So go home and tell your spouse, I heard some crazy lady on the Ramsey show, and she said, you can't say anymore, you're spending. And that's your debt. She said it's our debt and you would be right

about that so go home and start some arguments and uh one of the most poetic things that i've ever heard about that that i just love is and it kind of it harkens back to yesteryear when uh when some things were a lot worse and some things were a lot better uh-huh um i mean it's good that we have penicillin and it's good we have indoor plumbing now. Right. So we don't want to harken back to yesteryear for everything. But yesteryear was good. In the old marriage vows in the Book of Common Prayer, I mean, we all kind of know the vow,

the for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part, right? That still shows up in a lot of marriage vows even today. But the old Book of Common Prayer was, and unto thee all my worldly goods I pledge. Yes. There it is. It becomes ours. Yes.

I don't get to just keep this little thing to the side. We are now French. Oui, oui. Yeah. And where your money is, your heart is also. So I would have a hard time with my spouse saying yes to all of this but no to the money because i'm wondering is your heart with me yeah apparently not rachel cruz catches hell on instagram and everywhere else anytime she

talks about having joint checking account but she says you know if you can share a bed surely you can share a checking account surely you know sure don't call me surely all right love it love it love it all right kathy's in pensacola hey kathy what's up all right so i'm wondering if in our situation it makes sense for me to take my social security early in order to pay off our mortgage oh i like it i like your mortgage being paid off. You can't pay it off early without doing that? No. You don't have any money?

No, we have money. How much money do you have? Cash or everything? Everything. Retirement, cash, equity, everything is right at a a million and how much is your mortgage 113 why don't you just pay off your stupid mortgage you have 113 000 you can get your hands on out of a million yes pay it off you don't have to mess up your social security to do that. A large portion of our cash is a personal injury money that I received and is intended to make up for the loss of income

long-term that I had from my inability to work. I'm currently on disability, we bought ONOC policies a long time ago. That will end. How old are you? At 66, 62. I'm 62. Okay. But you have a million dollars. And so right now, yes. Well, no, but I have it, yes. But again, about four and a quarter is retirement.

Yes, about four and a quarter is retirement. About 275 is equity. Equity in what? Equity in mutual funds? In the home. Oh funds in the home oh in the home okay all right and then we have your mortgage um pay off your mortgage and make sure your personal injury money and your retirement are all invested in good mutual funds which should average well above 10 the market has since it began okay so we don't have enough money to pay off the mortgage unless we use the injury money so what pay off the mortgage the injury money's all the injuries done i mean you you got it's over it's not over you're still

suffering i'm not making fun of you but that money is there to invest for you to live off of the income also if you use some of it to pay off your mortgage you need less income to live because you don't have a mortgage anymore this is true and and my hesitance on that has been twofold one is the amount of our mortgage is only about 640 a month the p and i But you're getting ready to take out your Social Security early to pay it off because you're acting like you're a broke person because you pigeonholed this money emotionally because it's associated with your injury. The money is no longer associated with the injury.

The money is just now part of your net worth that you are going to spend the rest of your life living on, and you should use it to pay off your mortgage today. Hope I wasn't unclear. This is The Ramsey Show. Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the entire back catalog of episodes. Download the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the entire back catalog of episodes. Download the Ramsey Network app in your favorite app store today.