The Ramsey Show - App - Don’t Let Others Try To Define Your Success

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, Ph.D. in counseling, number one best-selling author and host of the very popular Ramsey Network production, The Dr. John Deloney Show. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in and call. The call is free, and some say the

advice is worth exactly what you pay for it, which, John, we are going to prove what this is worth after all, because announcing today to you guys in the public, a few of you have heard about it over the last week on some download stuff, but announcing today, John and I are going on tour. We're going to do the money and relationship tour. No guitars will be killed in the producing of these shows. No music will be said at all. It's not that kind of tour. It's Dave and John talking about money and about relationships and about anything else we want to talk about or you want to talk about because we're going to do the weirdest live events I've ever done.

I think this is pretty cool. I've not seen this done anywhere, and I think it's going to be rad. Yeah, we might have made it up. We might have found someplace obscure to steal it from. I don't know, but it's very different. So we basically, this morning we came out of a meeting. We had 27 different 10-minute talks listed. We're going to post them before when you come into the audience

and you guys are going to vote which ones we're going to do. That night in Louisville, Kentucky, April the 21st, Durham, North Carolina, April 23rd, Atlanta, April 25th 25th Phoenix May 5th Fort Worth May 7th Kansas City May 9th now you can pretty much be assured that the list of talks is uh ones that we approve so they're things that we actually know something about and so we will talk about things that we know something about so it might be a little bit in there about money might be in there a little bit about uh relationships or mental health or anxiety or whatever. My wife tells me that I'm always talking about things that I don't know what I'm talking about. So I don't mind doing that either.

But people won't pay for that. So we're not doing that. They won't buy a ticket to that. So we're not going to do that. But John and I, and we're going to just have some free-for-all discussion on the stage as well. We're both just going to be up there the whole time. It's a little different, not a little different, completely different format than I've ever done. I'm excited to try this. I think it's going to be up there the whole time it's a little different not a little bit completely different format than i've ever done i'm excited to try this i think it's going to be fun the money and relationship tour so you want to check it out it's going to be about money about relationships about mental health about wealth building and how all these things marriage how all these things

intersect and interweave to cause each other to happen uh limited amount of tickets these cities we're not huge venues we're not doing arenas or something like that they're amazing theaters fabulous amazing theaters i've ever seen yeah the the absolutely cool and tickets on put them on sale today uh they're going to go up pretty regularly as we go through the sellout process but the initial out the door today only 49 bucks so you can get your tickets at ramsey solutions.com slash tour and if you're tuning in on youtube or podcast click the link in the show notes again louisville durham atlanta phoenix fort worth kansas city all april and may of next year on sale now i mean based

on our initial pre-sale stuff we'll probably sell these things out in just a few weeks it'll be a blast so i'm looking forward to wild wild in the streets yeah you and i stirring up trouble in all these different cities and then we get to come home that's good yeah all right matt is with us to start off this hour in sacramento hey matt welcome to the ramsey show hey dave big fan appreciate you taking my call. I'm honored, sir. How can we help? Well, I am pretty much on the edge of bankruptcy, I think. I don't know whether I should go through with that or not. I'm in quite a bit of credit card debt, which is pretty embarrassing because I've worked your debt snowball before. I've read your books, and I still find myself in this predicament. So I've got about $100,000. Well, I started a business and I've used my personal credit basically to fund the business. So I'm in about $120,000 in debt total. About $100,000 of that is credit card debt and $20,000 is an SBA loan from

my first business that didn't go too well during COVID. So I'm kind of at the point where I'm trying to decide whether or not to throw the towel in on my business and, you know, get a regular job. Maybe it'd probably declare bankruptcy because I don't think the payments are doable for me or, um, you know, I'm, I'm kind of just lost at this point. Scary. How old are you? Very, I am 37. You married? No. Okay. Single. Okay. I don't have any kids. What kind of money is your business making?

Well, you know, we started off bringing in about, it actually grew pretty quickly. I had a team and everything. I started it with a friend of mine, and we were doing up to about $20,000, $30,000 a month, and now I'm down to pretty much $5,000, $6,000 a month. Gross. Gross revenue. Yeah, that's... Before expenses. I'd say, yeah, before expenses, $5,000, $6,000.

Okay, so after expenses, what are you netting? The business is actually profitable now. It's netting like three, 4,000 a month. So what happened? Why did it go from, what'd you say, 20,000 to 5,000? Well, I had a team at first, so I had a... I know. Why'd you get rid of him if it was working what happened well so my my partner and i had a falling out he long story short had a drug problem and i had to buy him out so that's where the first start of the credit card debt started piling on because i kind of used the credit card money to to buy him that should have caused your business to prosper why is your business failing?

Well, inflation has killed us. No, it doesn't. You raise your prices with inflation. Why is your business failing? Right now it's failing because I'm just spread too thin. I'm doing everything myself right now. Why did you go from $20,000 down to $5,000? Well, our cost went up.

They kept going up. The cost doesn't cause your revenue to come down. The revenue is down because the leads are down. I was buying leads at that point, and the lead cost doubled. Now they're pretty much tripled, so I had to kind of stop doing that. So you were buying paid leads on social? No, I was actually buying from a lead generation company. So that was kind of only a temporary. They were buying them and they tripled back to you

because all your paid socials have gone up 3 and 4X with Facebook and Apple 13. And, yeah, it's jacked. it's jacked a bunch of us yeah okay well so what is it you're selling uh car shipping so we are auto transport brokers okay all right well and let's go let's go let's the reason I'm asking all these questions is you've got to get to an income. When you get to an income, then you've got the way out of this. Until you get to an income, you don't have the way out of this. And so far, all I'm hearing is a race to the bottom. So if you need to close it, close it and go get a job.

Or if you need to work it on the side and go get three jobs, that's fine. But you're not bankrupt. You just don't have an income. I mean, what if you went and got a job making $200,000? You could pay it off in no time. So your problem is your income, not your debt. And this business is running you. You're not running it. So you need to get some income coming in, dude. When you do that, we can walk you right out of this credit card debt. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Shauna's in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi, Shauna. How are you? Good. Howna is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi, Shawna. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? Hey. So I sent in a question to you guys, and I had said that in the six years me and my husband have been together, he hasn't wanted to work. Yikes. What's his excuse um so it's kind of a long story but make it short i bet i bet i bet it distills all the way down to something pretty simple huh yeah i i just feel like he has no motivation i mean but when he doesn't work what does he tell you the reason he's not working? Well, he's streaming on Twitch.

I'm not sure if you all know what that is. Yeah, I do. Okay. Well, he's streaming on Twitch and doesn't even make enough money to get a payout every month. You have to make a minimum of $50 to get a payout. And he calls that his job. job yeah that's not a job so what are you gonna why are you put up with this for six years what are you gonna do yeah i got about six minutes and i'm done how you get to six years uh that's the part i don't know i'm not sure so how have you approached this with him in the past?

Well, red flag number one is when I first met him, he wasn't working. And... You know, Shauna, you do a lot, and this is me walking with you. I'm not poking at you. You do a lot of should haves in the past. So let's bring it to right now. Okay. should haves in the past so like let's bring it to right now okay how have you communicated to him that him rotting his life away playing video games for no money is not okay with you well i've left him twice over it okay why'd you go back why'd you come back

he begged me to come back and said he would get a job, and he actually started putting applications in and even had interviews but always had an excuse as to why he couldn't take the job. Yeah. So you came back too quick before he actually got the job. Yeah. Instead of just more mouth promise. Right. yeah instead of just more mouth promise right well i people can disagree with me on this but

i look at this as a matter of um fidelity as a matter of immorality and some people can cheat on their spouse with somebody else with another person and some people can cheat with their video games and their lack of seeing the person they're married to and saying i don't really care what you what you need i don't care about our family i don't care about any future we're trying to build what i care about is um sitting on my butt and playing video games so you go on about your life and um as far as i'm concerned that's a that's a violation of the marriage contract y'all made. He abandoned you at that point. Yeah, he's left you.

The problem is he's left you in his own living room. And his body didn't go. Yeah. Unfortunately, the only path forward is some really firm boundaries, and most of the time they're hard because you've been holding up every spin and plate in that family for a long time. Being very clear about what you require, what you need, what you want,

and you've been burned twice, and so I think the next round is to be very clear. Or, here's the deal, make peace with it. This guy you married, he didn't have a job when you were engaged to him, he didn't have a job when you married him to him he didn't have a job when you married him it's kind of what you signed up for if that's the road you want to take and you're not and you're not going to move on um and not hold him accountable then stop beating yourself up every day make peace with it move on hope that's not the path you take but you're welcome to take that it's not good for you or him

right yeah that you could take that direct that route there's nothing wrong with that route other than it's not good for you, not good for him. I think if I were in your shoes, hon, I'd sit down with a good pastor, a good marriage counselor, and have someone guide me through setting the boundaries very firmly and very clearly and say, this is what I need to be in a marriage. I need a husband that participates in the marriage. And that involves you getting a job and keeping a job. And it does not involve you applications. It does not involve you going on

interviews. It does not involve in you taking a job. It involves in you taking a job and works. And let's flip it around because what he's going to do is going to say, oh, you did this. You left me. and i think by being very clear about what dave just said no you chose you chose he is making the affirmative choice to end your marriage because he's not participating if you do not go get a job you are choosing to end our marriage behavior is a language you're choosing to you and i hope that you don't make that choice yeah i hope you go get a job please don't leave me and if um if he doesn't then you don't come if you leave on this basis you don't come back

right okay that's it okay it's pretend like um let's if you changed what was going on to something that you really can't that that makes you kind of throw up, let's pretend he was doing cocaine. Mm-hmm. Okay. How long would you sit there? Not long. Not long. Okay.

Right. But what it is, it's an unacceptable cray-cray behavior. And it's unsafe. It's unsafe. It's not good for anyone involved. Right? Right. And so if you're going to do cocaine, I'm gone. And it's not like a little bit of cocaine. It's not like I sort of might stop someday. It's not like I went to a meeting to talk about stopping. It's like

no cocaine in this house if I'm in the house, period. That's what you would do. But this one is a little bit different because this doesn't feel in the same category but if you kind of think it through in your brain the way your brain works around it as if it was something more bizarre then you would go no i'm tapping out you're done it's a slow growth cancer yeah this one's more socially acceptable so to speak being lazy is not as big a deal as doing cocaine in most people's minds and i accept that but i always if i you know if they're just overspending you know or lying to me about money that's way less than doing cocaine sure but if i put cocaine in my head in my

brain and the way i'm thinking about okay if they were doing cocaine what would i do bottom line is it's a behavior that i'm not willing to accept, so I'm going to, in those situations, put my foot down because I don't want to be in that situation. It helps me to kind of almost go off the deep end in the decision-making paradigm. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it's hard to wrap your head around

because he's not doing the typical thing. He's not hitting anybody. That would require energy. Exactly, right? to wrap your head around because he's not doing the typical things not hitting anybody he is um that would require energy exactly right he's not he's not doing anything um and the challenge is somebody can wreck your boat or they can slowly pull the whole thing underwater at the end of the day the whole thing's still underwater drill eighth inch holes in it i've just got a i've got a broad picture of what fidelity is and i'm just i'm sick of and abandonment that's right abandonment but you're gonna pay for me to continue to live here like i've left you i'm

just gonna stay in the house and it uh it breaks my heart man because because people go to the mirror and they say what did i do what am i doing what's wrong with me and it can be cruel i can just be cruel and you haven't done anything wrong except put up with it it's the only thing wrong you've done so for your sake really for his sake you know uh shauna we had a guy working here that um we found out after he was here a while had a pretty serious alcohol problem and he was um out of town calling on a customer for us and showed up at the situation drunk after we you know had a couple discussions about this so we fired him and uh because we love him and that we're not going to participate in his crazy because it's not helping him and um you know i that was several years ago many many years ago and i got the

coolest email from him the other day completely changed his life he's completely dry sober his wife stayed with him because he because he got clean but the thing that did it was we fired him yeah consequences it was it woke him up and he goes thank you for loving me enough to not participate in this wicked script i had written for my life you know that wasn't exactly how he said it but i mean that's what's going on right and um sometimes the most graceful something you usually get from somebody you fire right well sometimes the most graceful thing we can do for other folks that we care about is to say no more yeah i'm not gonna i love you enough to say stop i'm not gonna be right here while you're doing that yeah i'm not gonna be here while you act that way or do that thing

you know that's that's and you also mentioned like y'all had walked with him and walked with him and talked to him and met with him and offered him resources. Yeah, it wasn't a singular thing. Of course, yeah. And then he shows up with a client drunk. You know, that's pretty singular right there. That one alone will get you, but it was kind of the straw, right? Yeah, but gosh, man, he's doing so good. I'm so proud of him.

This is The Ramsey Show. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get ten different answers. Economic growth or a recession. Business taxes will go up or down. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball. That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle,

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you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next. And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today on the debt-free stage. In the middle of the Ramsey Solutions lobby is Troy and Laura. Hi, guys. How are you? Doing good. How are you doing? Doing better than I deserve. Where do y'all live?

Norfolk, Virginia. Cool, cool. I got to tell you guys, those of you not watching on YouTube, if you look deeply into your radio, these guys, matching t-shirts, matching outfits, matching everything. T-shirts say legacy changer. Yeah. I like it. I like it a bunch. Very cool.

How much debt have you two paid off? $157,056. love it and how long did that take 60 months good for you and your range of income during that five years started at 95,000 and we're looking to or we're projecting to hit 185 double this year double in five years what do you guys do for a living I'm a quality assurance supervisor for the Department of Defense. And I'm an educator. For the entire journey, I was a school counselor. And I just transitioned out of that, working in our testing department at a local high school. All right.

Very cool. What kind of debt was this $157,000? A little bit of everything. Yes. Student loans. Half of it was student loans, so about $78,000 in student loans. And the other $78,000 was a time share a personal loan credit card debt credit card debt retirement loans yes um kind of normal so normal you had all the kind of debt that you don't want yeah yeah wow look at you guys so how

long have you been married 17 17 years. 17 years. And five years, 12 years into the marriage, five years ago, something happened. Yes. What? So our journey actually started back in 2013. So in 2013, as a Christmas present, my Aunt Lisa, shout out to Aunt Lisa, gifted all of her younger nieces and nephews the Total Money Makeover audiobook. And I'm going to be honest, when she gave it to us, I looked at it and I said, who is this old man? I don't know what this is, but we're good. It's like my Aunt Lisa gave me socks for Christmas.

We don't need this. We're good. And so we did not, or I did not listen to it. And so from 2013 until about 2018, we went on living our lives financially separate. Yeah. And 2018, beginning of 2018, we had our son, our second child, and we purchased a house all within four days of each other. A house we couldn't afford. Correct.

All within four days of each other. That's what we do when we have babies. We always buy a house we can't afford. Because they need a home. Yes. Yes. and four days of each other that's what we do when we have babies we always buy a house we can't afford because they need a home yes and so from 2018 to 2019 we could really start to feel the weight and the pressure of those poor financial decisions and we started to struggle we paid utilities with credit cards yeah um you know gas gas um and we just really started to feel that

that weight and spring of night 2019 is when everything came to a head honestly yeah myself I had started having car issues didn't have any money no emergency fund to take care of the automobile ended up taking out a personal loan to do that a couple of weeks after that the car broke down again which is how we ended up getting a car loan to actually get a full car and during that time you know not unbeknownst to me my wife was having her own uh struggles with dealing with our financial situation like she said prior to we were financially independent you know we didn't what was the thing that you finally go okay what happened y'all were come to all i i can feel this boil coming up yeah yeah so when did it boil over it was the thing summer of 2019 his car went out

i finally looked at my student loan balance i had avoided it for years and literally all of this happened around the same time and i saw that big balance and i was in my office and i've pulled up the balance 78 000 literally could not breathe felt just this weight on my chest and it was at that moment i googled how to get out of debt fast of course your information popped up we had a conversation and we said if we're ever going to accomplish these goals that we have for ourselves and our family we have to do something radical that was the word that we used that night yeah and we sat down and started the journey we got the ever dollar budget uh budgeting app we uh joined financial peace university uh at a local church in portsmouth shout out to uh brian and april

we were our coordinators yay yeah and realized that this was the exact same information that lisa had tried to give us six years prior of course yes but when the student is ready yeah the teacher will appear did you ever look at her and be like you knew about this she said i tried to tell you yeah all right y'all make it sound all easy how hard was it because i mean y'all are making good money both of y'all have really respectable like y'all have positions that in your community you're proud to say what y'all do at parties, right? Absolutely. I'm an educator.

I work with children who are struggling. I work with the Department of Defense. Everyone goes, ooh. Yeah. And so when they see what other car you drove up in, they're like, wait a minute, right? So that had to be hard over the course of five years. Yeah, over the course of the five years, it was. In the beginning, we were so focused that we were locked in. It wasn't difficult starting out the first, I want to say maybe

a couple of years sticking to the plan and, you know, knocking out those small amounts and working our way, working the debt snowball. Yeah, we were just so tired of, you know, where we were in all the debt that it was easy to get started. It was easy to keep going. And then I think we started to feel that fatigue right around three years, three years in. And we had been so laser focused and had, you know, paid off so much debt. We had started to find more margin, way more margin in our budget. Oh, yeah. And so that's where it became a little bit more challenging because we wanted to push through that. We stayed well for me, focusing on being content with where we were and what we had.

We relied on each other a lot. And truthfully, we did take a little pause. We still lived by the principles, but we knew we just needed a small short break. And so we paused. So you've been married 12 years when you start this and now 17. Yeah. Talk about the marriage before this and after this. So before this, our marriage was always happy, not always the best communication. I really think starting this journey and going on this journey helped our communication a lot because we didn't discuss finances. We made a lot

of separate financial decisions from taking out. I took out a loan to start a network marketing business. She took out a loan to get the driveway repaired at our first home. Yeah. So there was a lot of, you know, we're high school sweethearts. So this is my best friend. So that part was always there. So you kind of went from happy roommates to being married. Correct. Yeah. Because our financial conversations, you know, prior to starting this journey were very tense. Lots of arguments when it came to paying bills. And so I think that was one of the things that drove us, that connected us to this program. We were so excited. We finally found a system. I love checking boxes. I love processes as an educator and systems. And so we finally got our hands on something that allowed us to be able to accomplish and work towards

all the goals that we have for ourselves and our family. A simple process. That's what drew us to the program. How does the energy or electricity in your home differ for those two kids in the home y'all grew up in? Oh, way different. I grew up with, you know, lights getting cut off, water getting cut off, not really having enough food. And throughout our, since we've had our, since we've been parents, they haven't had to worry about that. But where we are now, we can build on that. And there's more of a future for them to not only will they never experience that, but their children won't experience that. And they will experience like abundance and preparation for the world growing up. Legacy changer.

Yeah, absolutely. That's your why. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Very well done, you guys. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? So for me, we're married, so I say shared vision and having a shared vision. Like I said, living separately, she didn't really know the stress that I felt as the husband.

And I knew my financial situation, right? But, you know, there's vacations and things like that that, you know, we all want to do. And her not really understanding my anxiety and stress when it comes to our finances. That was a big thing. So having a shared vision, a common goal, a common purpose. Let's bring the kiddos up and get their names and ages. They're going to participate in the Scream, right? Yes.

Let's get them up there. All right. Very cool. How old are they? We're coming up to the clock here. We have? Yes. Let's get them up there. All right. Very cool. How old are they? We're coming up to the clock here. We have Linaya and Troy Jr., 10 and 6. Perfect. All right.

$157,000 paid off in 60 months, making $95,000 to $185,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! That's how it's done. I love it.

This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. I'm not a fan of the big banks, and you probably already know which ones I mean. But I do like credit unions because they're nonprofit organizations that focus on their members. And I'm proud to endorse Fairwinds Credit Union because they share the Ramsey mission of helping people get out of debt

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experience, you can log on to Fairwinds and do anything you could do at a physical location. So go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey to learn more. And while you're there, look at the combined checking and savings account bundle. They created just for Ramsey. If you haven't heard, we have the Ramsey Network app you can download and use for free. It has the last segment of this show every day. It has a lot of the special things that we do. You get them a day or two early on the Ramsey app.

For instance, the interview I did with President uh last week posted on there a day before we posted it on everything else so you can get access to things early and you can ask questions on the ramsey network app this one's from amy before the new rules went into place our home listing agreement included a six percent realtor fee with the new regulations should we ask to change our listing agreement yeah can you clarify all that there's been so much drama around it well my personal opinion is it's a bunch of crap um the uh i mean the idea that basically the real estate business the realtors the national association ofaltors and some of the larger businesses were sued for price fixing. Because they held the MLS number.

No, because they said, you know, you got to pay 6%. But it wasn't. It's always been negotiable. Right. But it's not any more or less negotiable now that they've been sued other than they've had to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars because you know that's the world we live in today so somebody was a victim apparently of signing up for something so amy um you could do whatever you want to do uh but you can you're allowed and have always been allowed to negotiate the fees for anything that you buy. The person selling the thing that you buy, the service or the good, can make a decision to lower to your price or you can make a decision

to walk away and not do business with them because we can't come to terms on the price. When you walk in and buy a loaf of bread, you accepted the price. If you didn't like the price, you went and bought a different loaf of bread or didn't buy a loaf of bread you accepted the price if you didn't like the price you went and bought a different loaf of bread or didn't buy that loaf of bread so you're accepting a price anytime you work with something if your real estate agent says i want to charge six percent to sell the home uh if you say okay then you accepted the price i i did not know that's what this was i thought this was something about holding the MLS number and you couldn't list the house without them. I've always done 2.5 or 2.75 within 30 days.

I've always had some sort of negotiation around it. Yeah, it has nothing. I mean, the multiple listing service or real tracks, depending on where you are in the country, is available to anyone that is in the Board of Realtors. Right. And they're allowed to charge whatever they want to charge. I had no idea it was over this.

By the way, in commercial real estate, we typically charge a 10% commission. If you're doing a lease, you often charge four on a long-term lease, like a commercial real estate lease. Like if you do a 10-year lease, you might charge four. If you do a three-year lease like a commercial real estate lease like if you do a 10-year lease might charge four if you do a three-year lease you might charge seven would it be on the on the entirety on the everything added up that's how that's but i mean bottom line is is it's a negotiated rate if you go to um get your hair cut and you don't like the price of it you go somewhere else right that's how well i didn't know that's what this suit was about. It's price fixing.

They claimed that they were price fixing. It's absolute bull crap. But anyway, so Amy, no, you don't need to change anything unless you, you know, you could go back to them and say, I think I want to cancel my listing agreement. If you don't drop your rate, you could do that. But it has nothing to do with the suit. It just has to do with you're now suddenly dissatisfied with the agreement that you made so um and as a non-realtor i would suggest you signed a contract well uphold your integrity there yeah there's that and here's the thing if you're gonna sell a house right now you're probably gonna pay around that to list a house

with almost anyone it's about what it is i mean that's the going rate but it is not a fixed price that's the thing it's you technically can argue about it and you technically could argue about any price i like arguing about prices i'm i grew up hillbilly we negotiate everything call it horse trading even though there was never a horse involved and so and by this this would be three and three wouldn't it yeah yeah typically the buyer's agent is getting three the seller and so you know you could put it on for four and you might your house might not get shown because the guy doesn't want to take his buyer over there yeah he'd rather get three instead of two and so you know this is how life works. So, yeah, nah, nah, nah, nah. I, Rick, listen, if I was a real estate agent that was a professional

and was one of our Ramsey-trusted real estate agents, and I sell 100 houses, 200 houses a year, which most of them do, and you wanted to negotiate with me, I would say, you know what? You're going to get what you pay for. You probably ought to go to somebody else. Because I'm a pro, and this is what I charge. And, you know, there's a reason some attorneys charge $1,000 an hour and some charge $100 an hour.

There's a reason. And so that's what we're doing. So, anyway, it's up to you, but there's no additional rights that you have now that you didn't have before or bull crap like that. All right. Let's see. Kristen is in Austin, Texas. Hi, Kristen.

How are you? Hi. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I think I know the answer, but I'm so honored to have both of you on the line today because I listen to both of you daily. So I'm recently divorced. I have a domestic violence.

I am out, but I currently have the vehicle. I tried to, you know, make our marriage work with marriage counseling, and I'm a Christian, and we tried everything, and he hit me for the last time. Oh, yeah, the first time will be the last time. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you. Well, I have two disabled children. Okay, so what's your question of the day, hon? My question is, I'm getting the car and the divorce,

which our car payment is $488. I grossed, I just got a raise. I grossed over $46,000. I was doing the math, and I was wondering, should I get rid of the car? And you said you already knew the answer, right? Yeah. Should I get rid of the car?

What's the answer? Get rid of the car? Is that the answer? I don't know, because I'm just afraid to be carless. I didn't want you to be carless. I didn't want you to be in a car, though, you can to be in a car though you can't afford this car's eating your lunch yeah it is i 100 agree yeah the punching bag boy signed you up for this and we got rid of him too i'm sorry yeah i have to file bankruptcy too because like before i started listening to you i pretty much did everything when did you file bankruptcy i haven't yet i have

the money on retainer i haven't done it yet why are you filing what are you filing bankruptcy on other than the car a mobile home why because we have they foreclosed on you i think they're in the process i i've been working with them. Is that the only thing you have other than this car? Some debt, the personal debt and everything between me and my soon-to-be-ex-husband divorce will be final pretty soon. How much is the personal debt, hon? All together, it's like $100,000.

Counting the car and counting the mobile home? Yeah. Okay. Well, count, wait, I'm sorry, it's like $100,000. Counting the car and counting the mobile home? Yeah. Okay. Well, count, wait, I'm sorry, it's $136,000 with the mobile home. I'm sorry, it's $196,000 with the mobile home. I'm sorry. I'm trying to do math really quick. That's okay.

You're fine. I'm not that great at it. All right. You're not living in the mobile home, right? No. I live in an apartment. Okay. Good. All right. I would not file bankruptcy until they force you right? No, I live in an apartment. Okay, good.

I would not file bankruptcy until they force you to. I don't think you're bankrupt. Okay. After they foreclose on this mobile home, I'd be a little shocked if they even come after you. You'll just have the foreclosure. And after you sell the car, now we got rid of the car and the mobile home and we get us a cheap car, then whatever debts are left, I would go and try to negotiate with those and pay them pennies on the dollar,

and I think you can probably walk away from this. Okay, yeah. Your divorce attorney told you to file bankruptcy, didn't they? No, I was going to file. I talked to three realtors trying to get out of the mobile home, and it made me sick because I'm highly allergic to formaldehyde. Yeah. But you're out of the mobile home.

It's just a matter of what it ends up looking like after the foreclosure. I think you sell the car, and you just mess with the other debt and try to settle it and just wait and see if the mobile home forces you to file bankruptcy five years from now. But I don't think they will. I think they're going to walk away from you because you don't look like you're somebody they can get money from to me. You're what we call judgment proof in the business. Broke, no money for them to get.'s what that means and i think you can get out of this live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions it's the ramsey show where we help people build wealth do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality,

number one best-selling author and host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, PhD in counseling. He's my co-host today. Thanks for hanging out with us. The phone number is 888-825-5225. John, I don't know if it's because I'm getting old or it is just our culture but it's probably both probably both probably both I know it is amazing to me how quickly my mind moves on to the next thing tell me about that so a week ago tomorrow we posted the Trump interview I did with President Trump. And for those of you who don't know, we reached out to Vice President Harris' camp and to President Donald Trump's camp

and offered to do a long-form sit-down interview, talk about ideas, not name-calling and not stump speeches because I really am sick of all that crap. I just want to hear what's really good. What are you really going to do? Not what have you done, not what you like about yourself or any of that. Just what are you, what are you going to do? I want to know. And Trump's team responded. We were up in New York, filmed it, and we posted it a week ago tomorrow on the Ramsey

network app. And it's a week ago on Wednesday, two more days. So not even a whole week, it goes on YouTube. Okay. So we've had over three, almost 3 million full views, over 16 million people have interacted with it in one way or another, but completely watched all the way through almost 3 million. Uh, and, and, and it's not even a week and I've already moved on. I mean, it was a huge splash hit on our YouTube channel, huge splash hit on the app and those kinds of things. A lot of people wanted to see it. I've gotten lots of comments from my friend group that kind of junk over the years people i hadn't talked to in five years sent me an email that kind of stuff because what i do here every day is the same thing over and over so that was something different so they went oh you did something different who knew

and so um but and and i'm already over it it's done you know but anyway you guys you don't have to be over it if you hadn't seen it you could still go watch we're gonna leave it up it's all completely free and if you don't like it turn it off. If you haven't seen it, you can still go watch. We're going to leave it up. It's all completely free. And if you don't like it, turn it off. It's okay. And if you're mad at me, then turn me off. It's okay. We'll get through all that.

But yeah, it's how fast we move on to the next thing. Megan is in Las Vegas. Hi, Megan. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, hi. Speaking of YouTube, I actually feel like it was such a blessing. I saw you recently on the George Janko Show. Really? Which was, hi. Speaking of YouTube, I actually feel like it was such a blessing. I saw you recently on the George Janko show, which was yes. And it was like so amazing because it was the first time I've heard somebody that I've related to so much of building something amazing so quickly and then

falling into almost, well, going into bankruptcy and losing it. And I feel like that's the situation I'm in. So I have spent like the past six years creating a seven figure business. I made over $5 million. I'm full owner equity. I haven't made stupid decisions as far as cars and stupid things like that. I've really, I pay myself like 68,000 a year. I basically between our current state, what's happening is the fast funding that I've got that, you know, quick capital that you have access to. They take 17 percent of daily sales. I've racked up a bit of like a credit card to between the ad spend that we do because we're primarily D to C. But what's really great is our D to C still. I mean, it's hard. It's hard out there with ad spend, people buying less and everything. My biggest challenge is the debt seems to be taking more

than obviously what's coming in. Are you saying you factored your receivables? Yeah, so my cash flow is like running down. Well, we have B2B that's now really coming around being like, hey, look at you guys, this is amazing. You got receivables on a B2C? No, B2B. Well, B2B, but it's not fully through yet.

And my problem is my cash flow is running out that I'm not sure if I can hang on to that new momentum. Okay, wait a minute. Let me stop a second. Sure. You can't do factoring when it's cash on the barrelhead B2C. Factoring is when you have a B2B, and I thought you said your business was B2C.

No, we're D2C, B to C primarily that's like 98. So why is there a cash flow problem in B to C they pay you for the good? Well we have all this interest but not actually payment. You don't have interest on B to C? Right we no I'm sorry not interest like physically, I mean people emailing us and being like, Okay, you have people wanting to buy from you on your B2C. Yes, correct. All right. What is your top line on this company right now?

Sorry, what do you mean? Total revenues annually. Oh, so annually we do at least a million. $1 million annual revenue. Usually 1.2. What percentage of that is direct-to-consumer B2C? Oh, my gosh, like 98. Okay, so you're doing $900,000 top line.

There is no cash flow problem with that at all. They're paying you when they buy it. Right. Oh, correct, yeah. So that's not a cash flow problem. Correct. So where in the flip did you get interest on $100,000 that's killing you? Not interest per se.

I mean, so my problem is, is like, I keep my cash flow. We've had two net negative years because our advertising cost has been significant between all of our overhead, which in this 2024 has slashed. That's not cash flow. That's you lost money. Right. That means you weren't profitable. No, no, no. And then this 2024,

we've been getting even less sales coming in and not profitable. So you've never been profitable on a million dollars gross revenue? We were for the first two years and then not the last and now not this because of seo cost um i guess because of all the overheads your ad spend your ad spend went 5x yeah i mean we're spending like anywhere from four to six sometimes and i've said 400 to 600 okay i think i've got the picture i'm a little fuzzy on the edges but i think i've got the picture i'm a little fuzzy on the edges but i think i got the general idea and and what is your question what are you planning

to do with this so because the cash flow is like it's not cash flow money it's profit you're not profitable right so because the money in the bank is becoming to the point where that is going down so much yeah you're burning your lack of profit. You're losing money, and you're burning up your savings. Right, correct. Yeah, okay. And so that's where, like, I don't know, like, I've been trying to hang on every single day, but I don't know, like, I've looked into Chapter 11.

You're not Chapter 11. You could just close it. You don't have to bankrupt it. What kind of debt have you run up? So I have the 500 covid uh eid loan so half a million and then i have about a hundred in credit card to chief bank and i have about 40 000 to like my dad most of that's not bankruptable okay your dad and the erb aren't they're going to come get you

the government's not going to bankrupt the covet stuff um so you've really never really made any money so we were no no no you propped it up you propped it up with these loans and made you think you were. Yeah. Yeah, essentially that's right. I mean, what I did notice is, like, I finally got to a point where I didn't need that fast funding. Oh, I'm sorry. I do have another, like, 80K. Are you married? Yes, I am.

What does he make? About $105,000. Okay. All right. I would talk to an attorney about where you stand with a government loan. That's the only one I'm concerned about here. The rest of them can be worked through. Um, uh, and it's okay to put an end to something that's over.

And I don't hear anything right now, except you're continually making less and less and less money and you're burning up your, um, you're burning up your savings. So it's fine to end that. I don't, it doesn't sound like you're turning the corner on it. Um, and that's very hard to do emotionally. I'm so sorry, but it does sound like you need to put up, put a stake in this thing and move on. I'm so sorry. I've been doing this show for over 30 years and some of the saddest calls I have taken are from situations that are completely preventable. Yeah. And what's so hard is I feel like one of those, especially the ones that I'm like, oh, it's terrible. People that call in and their spouse has passed away suddenly and they don't have life insurance. When you have to think through how am I going to pay my bills in the middle of all that grief,

like it's just, it is, it's terrible. And so life insurance is the one thing, especially as a mom with three little kids that I'm like so big on for people to get because it's inexpensive. Zander is the place that Winston and I actually get all of our life insurance. And it doesn't cost much because Zander shops among a gazillion different companies. It doesn't cost much. You just have to admit that someday you're not going to be here. You got to say it out loud and you got to say, I'm going to say I love you to my family by taking care of them and taking the time to put this stuff in place. The cost of stinking pizza. To get a free quote, call 800-356-4282. That's 800-356-4282 or go to zander.com. Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co-host today.

Hey, Christian, grab that last caller that was in that business mess and put her on the Entree Leadership Podcast with me. I can take more time there and get down into the nuance of her business and unpack it and see if I can give her a little better answer. And because I was fishing around trying to get the actual numbers out before, and it used up the whole segment. So I do want to help her, and I feel like I dumped her. And so let's get her on the entree, and I'll see if I can pick her back up and help her. The Ramsey Show question of the day is brought to you by Y Refi. Hey, we've all made money mistakes. So if you have defaulted private student loans, not judging you, but we are saying you can do something about it. Contact Y Refi. They were created for people in your exact situation. Go to Y Refi.com slash ramsey that's y the letter y r e f y.com slash ramsey might not

be in all states all right today's question comes from bobby in north carolina bobby writes my wife spins like a drunken sailor hey we don't allow people to talk about sailors around here that's right about 40 to 50 percent of our income goes to her shopping and restaurants her spending habits have always been poor but they have escalated in recent months she gets mad when i ask to discuss this and even more upset when i talk about the baby steps she's taken out credit cards in my name and max them all out and today we're behind four mortgage payments owe the irs several bucks, and we're slipping on a few other smaller bills. She recently got a job where she makes about 25K a year and I earn $150,000 a year. Should I lock her out of the primary account, which should go to paying bills and provide her with a spending account? I know this is financially what needs to happen, but how do i address the concerns in our marriage oh man um yeah dave when

i when i hear something like this um i'm always thinking about um a group of ems men and women on the back of an ambulance and the first thing you got to do is stop the bleeding like this is rough um she's spinning them into the hole like irs. They're about to lose their house. The government's going to start taking money. This is a big, big scary deal. There's only one way that could be, though. She's currently doing all the bill paying. He's not. Or she's spending so much of their money.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He could have just at me. If I'm controlling the check writing, the mortgage is not behind. Yeah. Unless there's no money in the account. No, there would be money in the account. There'd be no money in the account for her to do spending. There you go.

Because the mortgage would be current. So he's not paying the bill. She is. Okay. Mechanically, tactically, that has to be. It's the only way this is happening. So he dumped all this on her, and then he's bitching about how she's doing it yep so yeah i i think everybody's got to stop everybody's got to stop we gotta turn the

lights on yeah music off lights lights on no more dancing no more pretending this isn't real you're about to lose your house and the irs is about to come take a take their pound of flesh too and it's not dave ramsey it's not Dave Ramsey. It's not Baby Steps. Quit saying Baby Steps. Baby Steps is code word for she doesn't get what she wants, and she's a spoiled child. So quit giving her words to latch on to. Just go, enough.

We're done. I don't want to be homeless. We're not going to do sixth-grader stuff anymore. We're not four years old. we're not a kid that's on the cereal aisle that stomps his foot and throws a fit and lays in the floor and foams at the mouth until they get lucky charms you're a freaking grown butt woman you have to do math to exist in this world this would be the fight that i would be having yes and and and if i'm married to somebody and she is about to get us uh homeless and in debt

to the government um i would go change my direct deposit if i'm making 150 grand a year yeah i'm just gonna open up an account and i'm gonna handle everything and i'm gonna put you on i'm not even giving her a spending account i'm just going you get nothing until i get the house current right we're gonna eat and we're gonna have lights on and you can eat here right if you want to eat somewhere else you're gonna have to figure that out right and then we could going to eat and we're going to have lights on and you can eat here right if you want to eat somewhere else you're going to figure that out right and then we can talk to the divorce attorney about all that that's right you know but this is stopping and here's the thing it's gone on too long the the thing is how do you get four months behind 18 months of doing this bullcrap yeah and you stood by and watched it

and it was okay it was okay until it wasn't i mean dude this guy he's his his passivity is unbelievable until he wasn't and they maybe i'm crazy but this it does it absolutely does but not. It rarely, this type of behavior happens in a vacuum. No. This is a world they've co-created and. It's not a sudden thing. It's my point. That's right.

There's nothing suddenly. Yeah. She's just suddenly. No. I mean, the only way she suddenly is you had nothing to do with it up until now. And then you look down and start calling her names, you know, and well, you know, what name are we going to apply to you so um you know yeah she's spending like a four-year-old and she's acting like a butt

i don't have any question about that but um but but you've tolerated that for 18 months in order to be four months behind on your mortgage this didn't just suddenly occur and so and now you want to go boom so yeah you need to sit down with a marriage counselor and you need to turn off all the money until we come to agreement like to adults that the money first goes to food second to water and lights third towards the house payment fourth towards taxes and transportation and until we take care of those things we don't eat out and we don't buy anything and until we're in agreement on that you get no money of any kind of mine and we're going to start talking to the marriage counselor about that

and see if we can save this marriage how how long before how many mortgage payments can you miss before they sue you i thought it would be before that no they'll foreclose it six to six to 12 months okay so if i'm in this situation i'm stopping everything and everything and get current on the house yeah Getting current on the house. Yeah, you're about to lose your home. You're about to be homeless. Yeah. Because you won't address these negative behaviors.

Right. And you waited so long that now it's going to be – anytime you've – here's the thing. Anytime you've got a mess, count on it taking almost as long to fix the mess as it did to get into it so if you're four months behind on your mortgage count it to be four to six months before your current and everything starts to smile again yeah as far as the math smiling i don't think anybody's gonna be smiling here for a while but well and there's an old psychology maxim that is conflict deferred is conflict amplified that's what we got if you think it's gonna just just go away, it's going to come back. It's going to be way worse.

It's going to be 4X worse, right? And it's not going to simply all be okay when you take away her ability to handle the money. No. No. It's all still there. Right. It's all still there. And for God's sakes, don't blame it on me.

It's not the baby steps, and it's not Ramsey and Dave Ramsey. It's you. You need to fix fix it and just go sixth grade math blame it on math you only pissed at something this math thing is a problem for all of us adults so yeah blame it on the math i got john singing over here this is really scary i lip synced that that was a deep cut right there was it okay yeah so seriously sit down with a marriage counselor yes turn off the spending until we can come into agreement with a marriage counselor i i'm a little bit afraid that this cow's gotten out of the barn i don't know if you can get it back in the barn yeah um in terms of your marriage i'm not sure you can turn this one if somebody let's say there was a couple and they

were working really hard they both got laid off and scrambling scrambling and they woke up and they were behind four mortgage payments and they owed the irs several grand what would their order of importance be like would you run down to the credit union and take out a loan to pay up get caught up on your house and get the IRS knocked off? If you have that ability. You probably don't. Yeah. You probably don't.

Okay. So usually what happens is you can probably get this mortgage caught up before they foreclose. You know, it might go five months, but then by then you've saved up two or three. And then it might go the sixth month, and by then you've saved up the other. So you can work a payment plan to get caught up with a mortgage company. They will work with you. The problem here is the cause of this mess has not been fixed. That's right. So that couple you describe there, they're going to – he lost his job,

but we're together in this, and we're identifying, okay, we're not going out to eat, we're not going on vacation, we're not spending like a drunken congressman. I'll quit calling sailors name. But the, and we're not doing nothing until we get food on the table, lights and water and the house payments current. And we get the IRS out of our house. And, you know, we're going to walk down the most force rank,

the most important things. Eating out and vacations aren't on even on the list until those things are done. We don't even have a discussion about those things. So, and shopping and restaurants. We don't need to go shopping. You have enough crap. There's nothing to go shopping for unless it's food. You already own enough clothes.

You have way too dead gummy shoes and definitely enough purses. You do not need to go shopping. Your house is four months behind. This is really not rocket surgery here. This is The Ramsey Show. There's a time in your life and in the baby steps for renting, but you don't want to do it forever because when you rent, you're still paying for a mortgage, just somebody else's. Plus, rent means instability in your budget because it always goes up, never down. So when you're ready to buy,

make sure you work with a mortgage partner you can rely on, Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is Ramsey trusted to help you make the move from renting to home ownership wisely. Churchill understands that when you buy a home the Ramsey way, your mortgage payment will be a consistent, manageable part of your monthly budget. Plus, when your home is paid off, that was your largest expense. Now it's extra money in your pocket and an asset towards turning you into a baby steps millionaire. So get started on the American dream of home ownership today at churchhillmortgage.com. That's churchhillmortgage.com. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLSconsumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender.

1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Jonathan and Ashlyn are on the debt-free stage. Hey, guys, how are you? Hello. Doinglyn, are on the Debt Free Stage. Hey, guys. How are you? Hello. Doing well, Dave. How are you?

Welcome. Where do you live? We're just outside of Manchester, New Hampshire in Deering. Ah, fun. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you two paid off? $238,000. I love it.

And how long did that take? 45 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? Started at $103,000 and ended at $363,000. Cool. What do you all do for a living? I'm a medical coder.

And I'm now self-employed. I do well pumps and water filtration. Ah, very good. Good for you. And what kind of debt was this $238,000? A lot of everything. Credit cards, student loans, cars, and the house. Yay!

You were normal and now you're completely weird we're weird way to go you guys i'm so proud of you what's this house worth about 350 to 375 i love it how old are you two 37 and i'm 34 and you have a paid for house in new hampshire that's worth 350 thereabouts yep wow how much in your nest egg in your 401k stuff just over 500 wow not not including the business i'm now self-employed okay and with the valuation of the business you're probably easily millionaires yeah way to go you guys and you're not even 40 i love it yes sir well done well done all right four years ago 48 months ago this is a 45 month journey so four years ago things weren't like this no you were normal you had debt coming out

your ears like everybody else in america and you woke up tell us how you woke up and how you got connected to us well it started just before covid i was on a job with a contractor I work with regularly talking about trucks. I was just an employee at the time for a family business. And talking about trucks, and he says, well, make sure you do what Ramsey does. Shout out to Pee Wee. He's who turned us on to you.

And I said, pay cash for a truck. And I just said, okay, whatever. Well, then the pandemic hits, and I'm tired of listening to the radio telling me the sky's falling. So I turned on the podcast, heard you you guys talking and brought it home to ash and we looked at the baby steps and away we went wow just like that just like that so water pumps and home filtration so you probably had an increase in business big time because everybody's sitting

at home going oh i really want this fixed yep take them out of the schools and their work and put them in their house they're using a lot more water yeah absolutely yeah wow yeah we were both deemed essential during that time frame sure water is kind of essential and medical medical and medical is obviously essential yeah oh i bet you got some great coding stories don don't you? Oh, yes. That came later. We won't talk about them because we'll get shadow banned, but I bet they're awesome. Oh, they're great. Yeah, there's a thing. All right, cool, you guys.

So the podcast, this podcast, you started listening to it. That's what got us to it. And then, like I said, brought it home to Ashlyn, and it was game on. Really, you talk about a why, and we never really had our why until we came out of baby step two. So during baby step two, Ashlyn's father was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. We get into baby step three and we're working through that. And Joe took his turn for the end and being debt free at that point afforded us the ability for Ashlyn to be with her father as she needed to be with her father as she needed to be. For as long as she needed to be.

So that really exposed, you know, this is, the freedom's real, you know. Yeah. And then. And the freedom matters. It matters, 100%. That's right. We didn't owe anybody anything. We didn't have to get her back to work right away. She was there for as long as she needed to be.

And then a year to the day after Joe passed, suddenly my dad, who was my partner, passed as well. Oh, my. Yeah. That was now the big income bump. Wow. Yeah. So y'all have had a lot of loss. Yeah.

It was a hard process, yeah. But because of the work y'all started four or five years ago, man. Yeah. Y'all get what I think is one of life's greatest privileges is the opportunity to grieve yeah we definitely did yeah man i was afforded a lot of opportunity to spend the time that i had with my dad over the last two and a half weeks of his life and i had a lot of closure which was really nice those are those are minutes and hours that can't, you can't put a price tag. No,

absolutely not. It's amazing. And, and a lot of people don't have a choice. That's right. Cause they're, they're strapped to some stinking debt payment. Yeah.

Yeah. Good for you guys. Well, I'm, I'm curious, um, when we were the only voices and I was brand new at the time, we were the only voices saying,

Hey, the only thing you can do is the next right thing. Go do the next right thing. And everyone else is screaming that the end of time is here. What was it like on the other end? Did we sound crazy? No, it sounded, it was a light in the dark, really. You know, it gave us something to focus on.

And it was the perfect timing, as odd as that might be, where everything was on pause. I mean, we took full advantage of all those things so it really you guys were instrumental in us getting through the pandemic really we hired john to help us with mental health and we thought okay we'll move in and gradually and you know we'll take two or three four years and and um then we went uh all of america's crazy john we're getting on the air right now and there was no gradual on ramp we just dropped him in through the ceiling and here we go great timing yeah he worked great for us yeah well thanks wow congratulations you too i'm so proud of you thank you wow how does it feel to be completely free and millionaires before you're 40

freeze the word i, it really is. I don't even know. It's just free. What do you all tell people the key to getting out of debt is? Well, communication. It's really helped our relationship. We were good at the beginning, but now it's just we're so much more solid. Nothing stops us. Yeah.

Nothing. Yeah. very cool. I think sometimes people, I think freedom has in many ways become a slogan. And the way, I hope people who are listening to this will just go watch this on YouTube to watch how you two just described nothing can stop us. That's right.

And watch you all describe the word only word that keeps coming to mind here is in the worst moments of our life we had peace that's right right and so when you think freedom it's not just something you stitch into a pillow it's peace it is this understanding that we are unhitched and we are unhinged from any restraints, and you cannot stop us. That, like, y'all put meat and bone and muscle and skin to freedom. That's amazing. It's cool. It's awesome. Thank you.

Thank you. What's the next big thing? What are you going to do now? Well, we got to do some stuff to the house, but we really want to get out to Greece. We want to go out there. Greece? Yeah. I like it.

How many of you New Hampshire neighbors got grease on the whiteboard? I don't know. I guess we'll find out. Anything in particular? Any reason? Or you just like it? Just beautiful country. We want to go for the food.

I mean, everything. You know, the culture. Yeah. We'll definitely hit the islands. Go to Santorini and Mykonos. Thank you. Been there several times. And they're as good as the pictures.

Yeah. And the food. Yeah, the food. That's what I'm food that's what the views and the food and my mouth's kind of watering right now i think i may catch a plane yeah well done you guys see that's what happens when you don't have any dadgum payments and you're 37 years old we're just gonna go to santorini man have a have a greek salad no when i was 37 we were like all right we can do arby's this month this month you guys are going to greece wow that's it let's live like no one else later you can live and give like no one else and your business is going to prosper and grow you'll make different decisions now than if you were desperate in the business and um and when somebody calls and says can you

be here you say yep i'll be right there. That's right. And you can go. That's amazing. Good for you. That's the great part of this story. Wow. So proud of you two. Very well done. Jonathan and Ashlyn from New Hampshire, 238,000 paid off.

That's house and everything you guys are listening to and looking at a couple of weirdos. They're millionaires. They're not even 40 baby steps millionaires. Did it in 45 months, making 103 up to now 363 on the way to Greece. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free!

Yeah! Wow. You got to love it. Got gotta love it. Gotta love it. Man. Go visit the Parthenon in Athens. Yeah. Mars Hill where Paul preached.

Yeah. Yeah. I love people explaining, like, with their facial expressions and their clenched fists, this is what freedom feels like. Yeah. This is what it feels like. It's a real thing. It's not a slogan. It's an actual thing that you can go get. This is The Ramsey Show.

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Ready, aim, fire. That's how you do it. You do the same thing with your money. Tell your money what to do. Don't wonder where it went. That's how people win with money. It's magical. You do the same thing with your money. Tell your money what to do. Don't wonder where it went. That's how people win with money. It's magical. You'll feel like you got a raise.

Give every dollar an assignment. That's why we named the world's best budgeting app EveryDollar, because you give every dollar a name, and it's absolutely an incredible app. We've got about almost a whole floor here at Ramsey full of software engineer nerds that work on it and make it better every day. And they don't mind me calling them nerds. They're kind of proud of the moniker actually up there. And so they're brilliant is what they are. And they're making this thing better every time, every week.

Tens of millions of people are using EveryDollar. You can download it for free in the App Store or at Google Play. Click on the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or the podcast. Hey, reminder that the next segment of the show is going to only be available on the Ramsey Network app. So go to, again, Google Play or Apple and download the Ramsey Network app for free. You get the last segment of the show, the last portion of the show for free every day. Matter of fact, you get the whole show there. You get all of our shows there. And we'll do early releases like we did with the President Donald Trump interview at the Ramsey Network app. So

this section we're getting ready to do right here is the last portion before we jump over to the app with the rest of it. Those of you on talk radio, you're going to get the same show you've always gotten, no change at all. It's all completely free, by the way. Be sure and check out the Ramsey Network app. Download it for your phone from Google Play or from Apple. Sarah is in Los Angeles. Hi, Sarah.

Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hello, gentlemen. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My husband and I are in baby step two, and we're dealing with a lot of resentment and jealousy. I'm the only child, so I've never dealt with any of this. My husband has a stepbrother that, um, is just that quick, uh, get, get rich quick guy. And I recently found out that my in-laws have invested quite a lot of money. Um, they know that we are working through it.

And I mean, I'm struggling to buy my kids Halloween costumes this year, and I'm trying to make sure that we're paying off all of our debt and doing everything. And I just feel like it's a total kick in the gut of like, you're donating millions of dollars or investing millions of dollars to this family member that has lost everyone's money. And you see that we're trying, we're working really hard, we're doing all these things, and we're doing it all on our own. And it's always the compare game when it comes to my in-laws.

Who's comparing? You? My in-laws. No, no, no, my in-laws. They're comparing you to Get Rich Quick Boy. Yes, because he lives in this mansion and has a gorgeous wife and all these kids in his open marriage and very unchristian values. Hey, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. You don't want to be him.

Yeah, you're going to bury yourself. No, I don't. Here's what I want you to do. I don't want to be any of that. I know. Here's what I want you to do. Yeah, but there's a sense of injustice and a sense of loss and a sense of disgust and you're caught in an age-old trap of you are just chugging poison every morning hoping that he pays the penalty for it right and i just refuse i i'm maybe it's because I'm old now. I just refuse to drink poison and hope

other people die. I'm not going to let them cost me my marriage and my joy, even in tough moments. I'm just not going to give that away anymore. Can I tell you that the action that healed me is going to sound like a childhood camp game. And it came from one of my grad school colleagues who is a multi-decade therapist. She's brilliant. Here's the exercise. I want you and your husband to go home and get like a, if you're just at your house, you can get a bowl or if you have a box or something like that. And I want you to sit across the table from each other and ask this magic question.

From this point forward, who gets a vote? And I want you to write down on a card and drop it in the bowl. And there should be no more than five or six people. And what you're going to do is you're going to quickly distill down who are the people in our lives that get a vote into how we act, how we talk, how we buy, how we raise our kids, who gets a vote. And by the way, our parents, we love them. We're going to be honorable and respect them. They don't get a vote anymore. Our brother-in-law, God help him when it all falls apart. He didn't get a vote. And when I did this, I ended up with about six people, and then I was challenged to do an even harder thing.

I called them and let them know. You want to talk about weird? That's weird. Calling your buddy who's an HVAC guy in Texas and being like, hey, I just want you to know you get a vote. And he's like, I think you have the wrong number. I'm not a felon. I already had a vote. Are you in jail?

So here's the thing. Then from that point forward, anytime those things come up, when you start to say like, I can't believe they don't get a vote. So let me give you a hardcore example of that. That's kind of fun. Okay. The sweetest people in my life or my grandma and grandpa Ramsey. Okay.

They were, had zero entrepreneurial zeal. Zero. He was an accountant at 38 years at Alcoa Aluminum. She was a second grade teacher, whole life. So I opened a business. And so my grandmother's definition of success is, do you have a paycheck that's steady from a steady organization, like a big company like Alcoa or the government if you're a teacher, right?

That's her definition of success. The day, and I love her, and she was sweet, and she was precious, and there's a lot of things I would give her a vote on, but my career she got zero votes in because she's wired different than me okay she was not in the bowl you follow me the day i got word that we had sold the millionth book on the first book financial piece she called that day and asked me when i was going to get a real job david when that's you going to get a real job? That's why she doesn't have a vote, okay?

Isn't that sweet? That's so sweet. But if she had a vote, you know what? I would have been pissed off for seven weeks. Insulted. How dare her question my acumen, my business acumen. I've sold a million bucks. Instead instead my wife and i had a really cute laugh over it because she didn't get a vote so will you do me a favor yes and no one's going

to tell you this in any of the blogs or anything okay this is just your friend this is just your big brother john cut yourself some slack you're doing good you've never yeah you're an only child you didn't see this thing done at home you're off in the woods you and your husband with machetes trying to carve your own path you have you have you have the picture of everything this show stands against which is integrity honesty doing things slow in the right way, just laughing at you. Right? Cut yourself some slack on those mornings you're mad, those mornings you're frustrated. When you go to buy Halloween costumes and you and your kids have to make them from home, by the way, they will remember those costumes. They will.

Oh, and what's your household income? $140,000. Okay. It's not a true statement to say I can barely afford Halloween costumes. Yeah. It is a true statement to say we have chosen to allocate most of our money to things other than Halloween costumes. But if you make $140,000, you can buy the Halloween costumes.

You can buy every one of them on Amazon tomorrow. I mean, like seven per kid. You can afford it. It's just you're making like adult choices and stuff. Yeah. Because you're like a grown-up in the land of immaturity. Right? I'm trying to be.

No, you are. You are. You are. You're completely doing good. But you're just letting the wrong people have a vote. John nailed it. And by the way don't don't arrest yourself for thought crimes when you're driving to work and you're like

why won't my in-law it's okay to be mad and then you got to go do the next right thing which is turn on some good music and sing real loud and say a prayer and exhale and remember me and my husband are planning this and go aren't my in-laws foolish they've made the wrong investment in the wrong kid what a goofball and then i'm on to the next and by the way you're probably beautiful too stop judging yourself against your brother-in-law's wife good lord you're good to go man don't need that one this is the ramsey show live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual, amazing relationships.

Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, Ph.D. in counseling. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jared is in Birmingham. Hi, Jared. How are you? I'm good, sir. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So my father unfortunately fell victim to an online scam where he ended up withdrawing nearly his entire retirement, about $800,000.

Oh, no. He's got a pretty hefty tax burden. My mom has dementia. What was the scam? So my mom at the time, she has dementia. She was at home at the time. Kind of the classic thing, a virus popped up on the computer screen, said, you've been hacked.

Called Microsoft security team. They called the number. They asked him, oh, well, do you use online banking? Who you use? They told him who they use. They said they use fifth third, give them another phone number to call. They called the number. Do we need to transfer you to this federal agency of a secure funds? They call that number. This is yes. You've been hacked all your family. If you contact anyone via phone, they'll hack your son.

You can't talk to anyone about this, but what you're going to need to do is go withdraw money from your account, go to these stores, buy these Target gift cards. $800,000 worth? Yes, sir. Unfortunately, this went on for several months. He traveled to tri-state regions, all different stores, gas stations, bought all of these gift cards, sent pictures of them to this phone number, and to the point that the folks at the store start to know him.

So if he was scamming people to the point that he was getting pulled into loss prevention offices, but he was so concerned that the cartel had access to his account and was going to come after us. How old is your dad? He's in his early 70s. Oh, my goodness. Early 70s. Very isolated.

My mom had dementia,-verbal at home that's a thorough thorough con job and he was running around to protect you huh correct yeah so he asked like well can i talk to my son in person like well does he have amazon alexa they've had they can hack through that they're gonna take your son's information so he was very isolated and afraid my mom couldn't talk he was just terrified my dad's a very smart man he still works full-time but he just fell victim so he pulled 800,000 out so he's got taxes of 200,000 and the money's gone i assume fbi has been able to do nothing i've talked to fbi secret service ftc because the bitcoin aspect of it as

well nobody can do anything. We talked to the Attorney General's office in our state. The money's gone, but now he's looking at this very hefty tax fund. There's $40,000 or $80,000 in withholding. He still hasn't paid taxes. He talked to – he was crippled by this. He was suicidal. We have him in therapy now.

But I think we're still kind of paralyzed. He's still kind of paralyzed with doing something as far as the tax hit goes. So he hasn't paid taxes. He hasn't filed anything, but we know the shoe's going to drop at some point. My mom's in a facility that takes up about 90% of his income. He saw him to work full time. He's going to work till he's 80 just to make ends meet and pay for my mom's care. Uh, but we're just, we're very nervous about when this tax bill is going to hit. The little research I've done, seeing that theft or fraud is no longer like a write-off loss. Correct.

And so we're, yeah, kind of at a, at a dead end and would love some advice. Well, the thing is the monster right now called tax is in the closet and he's really large. What we need to do is get him out of the closet and see how big he is and, you know, give

him a name and, oh, okay. He's green and he's four foot two. He's not 480 feet, whatever it is, or even if he's large, but we at least need to know his exact size. When you don't know his size, the size of the problem, then it compounds the drama inside your mind as to how bad this is. So the first thing you've got to do is get all the way down to brass tacks. Jump online at Ramsey Solutions and get one of our tax ELPs, endorsed local providers, to help with this,

because what you're probably going to have to do is do the filings, even if you don't pay because they don't have the money to pay. You need to do the filings properly and establish exactly what is owed. And then there's two possibilities. One possibility is that you would simply put it on a payment plan with the IRS or go borrow the money and pay them one of the two and then pay that payment, which is what I would prefer you do, him do, if that's an option. The second thing, and I'll give you a very low percentage probability,

but you can write this down and remember it. How broke are they? He has a home that I think he has a fair amount of equity and he probably about two hundred thousand dollars in equity he bought it in 2020 to the very you know low interest rate doesn't want to sell the home doesn't want to get stuck now paying i know i know but then then this idea will not work but i'm going to teach you about it so you don't get scammed by the people on tv that do this stuff because the people on tv that sell this stuff will take another $10,000 of your money and do nothing. It's called an OIC, an offer in compromise, which is to get the IRS in a negotiated position

to accept less than the actual tax that is owed. And you see the TV ads that say, do you owe more than $10,000 to the IRS? We have agents that work for us that can actually bull crap. Okay, run. Okay. Okay. One percent, two percent of the people that apply for us that can actually bull crap. Okay, run. Okay. Okay. 1%, 2% of the people that apply for an offering compromise get it. The baseline, the acid test to see if the IRS will accept less than the amount of tax owed is you have to basically prove pauper status, meaning no equity anywhere, no money anywhere, and no income anywhere.

If you is completely flat broke and living under a bridge you can get an oic through but your dad with two hundred thousand dollars worth of equity owing a hundred thousand dollars in taxes has zero chance of that going through okay don't let somebody convince you to pay them ten thousand dollars for to do an offer and compromise an oic application it will not work in your situation. I've run, I've run hundreds of them with our people here. I mean, we get people in here all the time with IRS problems and in our counseling sessions with Ramsey coaches. And so we do know what we're doing with this. We don't run them, but we run them through the tax people. Like I'm sending into the ELPs.

And so I know exactly how it works and your dad doesn't qualify okay okay um so uh don't let them take that but anyway you can get on a payment plan and and listen if he owes a hundred grand and he can go get a hundred thousand dollar home equity line i'd rather him have that on his house than owe the IRS. It's less interest, less penalties, and much less, and they don't have unlimited power. The IRS has unlimited power. If they want to just come take crap, they do. It's unbelievable.

If you have a lien on your house, they have to go through a judicial procedure called a foreclosure or something else in order to just take stuff from you. But the IRS just shows up one day and your stuff's not there anymore. You do not want them in your life long term if you can get rid of them. They won't do that, by the way, if you got them on a payment plan. So at least get them on a payment plan. But if he has enough equity to borrow his way out of this, then borrow your way out of it after sitting down and actually doing the tax filings.

But I think what you're going to find is with all the wound and the hurt and the shame that this story has in it, that this monster of taxes is bigger than it actually is when you get down to it. Yeah, and he's going to need you or your brothers or your sisters to sit with him because he's not going to trust anybody now. He doesn't trust himself. He doesn't trust. That's right.

He lost trust in himself. And so be gracious with him as you all get these things filed. It's going to be tough, tough, tough, tough slutting, man. Yeah. Take your time. Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. Knowledge gets rid of the fear in this stuff, and it'll wash away some of the shame. This is so sad.

This is The ramsey show thank you for joining us america we're glad you are here selling a house the ramsey way makes home ownership a blessing instead of a burden the ramsey trusted program is the only way to find an agent you can trust to keep you on track with what we teach here at Ramsey and get the best offer on the house or get the right house for you if you're buying. We send you the top agents in your area that we trust. You review their stats. You interview them.

You decide which one you want to work with. But they're all high-oct protein ramsey trusted to find a ramsey trusted real estate agent for free go to ramsey solutions.com slash agent or click the link in the description if you're on youtube or podcast jeremy is in toronto hi jeremy welcome to the ramsey show hi john hi dave how you? Better than we deserve. What's up? Good. Before I get to my question, I just wanted to say thanks. You guys are doing awesome work. You helped my wife and I pay off about $63,500 in about eight months. Good for you. Well done.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, so my question, we opened a business about a year and a half ago, and it's doing really well. And we're opening a second location, and we are trying to do, you know, your advice, not taking out loans. So the point is, we're going to be cash flowing the second business to the first, but under a different corporation just to protect the first one. So we technically be loaning ourselves the money. Is that like the best way to go about it is that fine okay I do not know much like almost nothing about Canadian tax law okay in the US you could simply make a you're gonna pay taxes on your profits from the first company anyway. And then you could use that to the money in your personal bank account because

you made profit on company number one, location number one, the good one. Okay. And then that money would be in your personal account or in your, even in the U S it could still be in the LLC if it was in the U S, but you still would have paid taxes on it already and so the money's just sitting there and you can use that to capitalize meaning fund like pulling money out of your personal savings account to start a business okay so it works exactly the same way from a tax perspective in the u.s i do not know

what that does in canada um and so there would be no reason to loan it from one corporation or LLC to another one. You simply would use one of them to capitalize the other one, meaning you just transfer the money. But I don't know what your corporate pass-through is in Canada. I don't know how that works in the U.S. Sub-S and LLCs all pass-through, meaning it's as if you did it on your personal return, and so there's no benefit to hopping from corporation to corporation like that. Okay.

As far as I know, it's separate from your personal account, so it would be, you know, you don't have to pay. Okay, the money that's in the company on that corporation, that's a profit. How much profit did you make last year? We profit around $25,000 to $30,000 a month. Profit. Okay, so you put $300,000. Awesome.

Way to go. And it's sitting in that company. Now, at the end of the year, if you don't pull it out of that company and take it home in the U.S., you still would pay taxes on it, even if you don't take it out. Okay? Do you? Yes, correct.

Okay. Then there's no benefit to loaning it. You could just move it and use it to get – pretend like it's in your savings account at home because it is. It's just a savings account. I didn't know how it works because it would be under separate corporations. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Okay. If you did not own a business and you had $300,000 in your savings account and you wanted to open one and start a corporation or an LLC, you can capitalize that, meaning move that money from your savings into that to start that business. Okay. And there's no taxes by doing that and it sounds like you all are set up exactly the same way from what you're describing to me so you've already paid the taxes

it's already your money the profit from the other one and so use your money to start your business you don't have to do a loan you don't have to loan yourself money there's no benefit to that there there is a tiny little piece over in the U.S. law. If you're doing C-Corps, which a small business should never do, then you might actually do that. And you're going to wish you hadn't done any of it if you got into that stuff. But in an LLC or a sub-S-Corp in the U.S., it works exactly like I'm talking about. All right. Julie's in Kansas City. Hi, Julie. How are you? Hi, Dave. Great. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. It works exactly like I'm talking about. All right. Julie's in Kansas City. Hi, Julie. How are

you? Hi, Dave. Great. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I just was having a quick question about my mom and how to pass along any assets she has once she passes on, my dad died in February. So we've been thinking about this lately. Yeah. And she's done a good job so far. Does she have a will? She does. Okay. And what kind of assets are we talking about?

There'll be a house, a car, and some bank accounts. Okay. And when did they buy the house? Oh, gosh, 10 years ago. Okay. And when did they buy the house? Oh gosh, 10 years ago. Okay. All right. The most tax efficient way would be for the will to simply state that those items are sold after she passes and the money's distributed to her heirs. So like you got brothers or sisters and it's going to be split among y'all is that how it works i'm the only child okay so it's going to go to you okay so and i'll i'll teach you why so this house is worth what probably close to 300 okay and what do you think they paid for 10 years

ago like 150 probably right uh she paid 204 204 okay so there's a hundred thousand dollar gain on this house if she transfers the title to you prior to death the basis that you have for calculating capital gains is what she paid for it so if she transfers it prior it's as if you paid $204 for it. You follow me? Yes. And you're going to pay capital gains on everything over that. Okay. Okay. If instead the house is transferred or sold, either one, upon her death, the regulations have what's called a stepped-up basis.

It steps up from $ 204 to market value and so if the house is worth 304 that market value upon her death is your basis and so if you sell it within six months of death you have zero tax got it so it's going to be that on just the house alone what we just discussed is a fifteen thousand dollar swing good phone call that you got for free right here yeah you guys are great i really appreciate it i'm kidding with you but no that's that was a good phone call because that's that's a mistake lots of people make is that mama says oh i'll just go ahead and move it to you now and then when i die you won't have to fool with it no that's a fifteen thousand dollar error in your case and in other people's cases it's even more dave something i've seen

come up just recently in multiple situations is grandparents who pass away or parents who pass away and just leave it quote unquote to the kids and i haven't seen a situation yet where every kid has a different picture of what that looks like. Well, I want to keep the house. I'm thinking about selling the house. Well, but I want that truck. They need to dictate it. Is it easier to say you're going to get these cars or you can either name the actual item in the will or what we've done?

I'll just I'll share what we did. We said like we got a bunch of real estate okay and um each kid is going to have one third of the value let's say the whole value was whatever i just make up a thousand bucks okay it's a 10 million dollars okay the whole value so each kid has three million dollars worth right they got they got chips yeah and they go okay i'd like to have that property that's three million for my three million gotcha and this other one says i'd like to have those five houses over there there's three million for that or whatever the number is okay so they're going to buy they're going to be

able to use that and if they cannot come to agreement it has to be sold the cash distributed ah gotcha so it's all laid out that way that way they're not required to sell it has to be sold the cash distributed ah gotcha so it's all laid out that way that way they're not required to sell it because they might want to keep it right but they're also can't be in disagreement and that there's not 10 million dollars with three owners plus all their spouses and their cousins and it just becomes a disaster that's a disaster no it needs to be distributed to each name okay yeah pushed Yeah. Pushed out. Now, yeah. Or it can be in a trust. Some of ours is in a trust.

So anyway, there's two things going on. Anyway, this is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. Amanda in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi, Amanda. How are you? Hey, guys.

How are you? Thank you for all you do. Thank you. How can we help? Okay. My husband and I are 50 years old. We don't have any debt, and we have a nice nest egg and a paid-for home. Good for you.

And we have, thank you, because of your help. We also have a successful auto repair business that has no debt. Wow. And we have three children, 29, 24, and 18. And unfortunately, our 24-year-old son has chosen to live his life without his family. He doesn't want contact with us. So we are trying to update our will. It's pretty out of date and do some planning for when we're not here. And we want to be fair and generous, but we also want to

make things as easy on our other two children as possible. Is there a way we can plan our estate and include our son, but be cautious? And I guess another specific question is our estate and include our son but be cautious and I guess another specific question is do we include our business in that estate planning or handle that separately well the last question is easy yes your business is part of your estate planning period okay okay so what happened with a 24 year old hun uh a girl um yes he's just with someone who's um not healthy oh so she you know says if you're going to be with me you can't be with them yes she drove a wedge yes okay and you have zero contact with him um he doesn't have contact with me or our girls but he works for our business so he has professional contact with my husband how does that work

not very well to be perfectly honest yeah okay um well you guys have to make your decisions on what you want. If you're asking a technical estate planning question, you're allowed to do whatever you want to do. It's your stuff. So there's no moral or legal obligation to leave him anything. And I don't know how you do something cautiously, because at that point you're dead. So, I mean, when you leave something to someone and you're dead, there's not much you can do

to control it. I mean, you could leave it into a trust and the trust could have some weird terms, like if he grew his brain back and got rid of the bimbo, you know, he could have some money or whatever, right? Right. But the... I would say the one thing you don't protect is what we were just talking about offline, Dave, which is don't just blanket leave, quote-unquote, your stuff to the three kids. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Because then she's going to sue everybody. It's going to be a mess. Our youngest is still at home. Yeah. No, I'm trying to prevent that. Our youngest is still at home and said,

you know, if it was tomorrow and she was facing a decision, she wants to stay there. So then how do I? No, she's 18. She didn't get to make that call. Yes. Yeah. So putting it all into a trust, is that kind of the most succinct way to handle this? No, liquidating it all and splitting the money three ways is the most succinct way to handle this no uh liquidating it all and splitting the money three ways is the

most succinct way to handle it okay operating an auto repair shop from the trust is sounds to me like hell on earth yeah for on the behalf of minor on the behalf of people who don't work there that should just be sold and they split the money your house should be sold they split the money 18 year old gets an apartment with a pocket full of money. Yeah. Okay. And they're fine. And then you guys have got to decide.

I think that you and your husband should probably sit down with someone to guide you through some of these relational things. And then that might lead you to your conclusions on the actual estate planning. I know at Ramsey, we've had, for instance, real clear things here. If you won't speak to your mother, you don't work here. That's easy. And I also get your dilemma that you feel like if we cut him off from work, we lose him forever.

But he made these choices. You didn't. He left you. Yeah. He left you feel like if we cut him off from work, we lose him forever. But he made these choices. You didn't. He left you. Yeah. He left you. You didn't leave him. And then the little snot thinks he gets to keep his job. And he thinks if y'all pass away, he's just going to get that shop and get the business.

Well, he's going to have to. Honey, we love you. And anytime you want to come back to the family, this is a family business. When you're in relationship with the family, you're eligible to be discussed to work in the business. But when you're out of relationship with the family, you don't work in the family business. That's Ramsey code. That's the lonely two. If you don't talk to my wife, you don't.

I'm not going to. I'm not going to. I don't want. Yeah, I don't want someone on my payroll that I can't trust to honor my wife. There you go. You're going to treat my wife with dignity and respect. You know what? I hadn't thought about that, but if someone here wouldn't speak to my wife, that wasn't

kin to me. If Sharon walked in, I was like, you're fired. I don't talk to her. I don't speak to Sharon. Yeah. You're fired. You're an idiot. That's right.

She's the queen bee. The last thing you screw with is sharon come on i mean seriously oh yeah i mean that that's how that's what's going the emotions that are going through when i'm listening to this my heart breaks for y'all because you probably have some more pain coming before you have less yeah but i think you guys ought to you and your husband ought to get some counsel and come to an agreement on whether he works there and then also and there's there's also room for uh redemption anytime you want to come back to the family honey we'll talk about you being in the will and we'll talk about you doing this but our our the ramsey estate plan is set up if you're doing cocaine and living on the

back of a yacht doing a reality show you're not in the will you've just exited the family you get zero i didn't work this hard for 60 years for god to build up this thing helping people in the name of jesus for you to be acting that way and me fund your cocaine habit from my grave not a chance that's shameful I'm not doing it you're out of the will and the only but you could come back and the the two children that are remaining the Ramsey can can they will decide if you are off your drugs or not you know and in this case he has a different drug it's bleach blonde or whatever but yeah amanda can i can i um can i offer you two two little glimmers of hope he will come back he will come he's gonna come back yeah and here's what i want when he comes back i want him to

whether it's with his paycheck or this whatever i want him to have a weekly collection of a handwritten letter on a piece of notebook paper from mom meaning you start writing him now just start right now once a week just write him a note want to let you know what's going on the house your brother's doing good your sister's doing good we miss you and not in a shameful way not no we wish you would come up not like that i'm just going to gently keep you abreast of what's going on in the family because i miss you and here's what one day the light bulb is going to come on and he's going to have even if he throws out a letter away without opening it he's going to know my mom never stopped coming after me okay and one day this this this this hypnotic state that he's in with this woman it will end i assure you it will end i just i don't want to add on to that um his his new drama that he'll have to wallpaper over his

shame with with mom you don't even care no i cared i wrote you a letter every single week every every single week you had something for me okay i'm sorry yeah it it it is not drawing him back for you to put him in the will when he's estranged. It's not drawing him back for him to keep his job if he's estranged. It's disrespectful, and it's wrong. So you guys do what you want to do. You always get more of our opinion than you want when you call here, because we're going to give you the whole enchilada, baby. But yeah, yeah.

So the answer is, yes, your business ought to be in your estate plan. I personally would set your estate plan up with what you're describing if he is in the family to be sold and split three ways, if he's not in the family to be sold and split two ways. That's what we would do at the Ramsey's. And that is, ours is in trust. And so if someone decides to go off the ranch after I'm gone, the other two can eject them based on behavior. It's written out in detail, what behaviors are have to have to occur and

what behaviors have to occur to return to the benefits of this. And it's not because we love our money more than our kid. It's because you're's because I'm not going to fund misbehavior. And you're actually loving your kid more than your money in that case. That's not going to fund it. Not going to fund disrespect. Wow, that's so painful. I'm so sorry, Amanda. I hate that for you, Amanda.

This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Hebrews 4.12, for the word of god is alive and active sharper than any double-edged sword it penetrates even to the dividing soul and spirit joints and marrow it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart maya angelo said what you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it if you you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Well, that'll work. Hannah is in Tulsa. Hi, Hannah.

Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Honored to speak with you. How are you today? Honored to speak with you. Better than I deserve. How can we help? Hi. So my question is, I have been unemployed since July, and I am on the verge of being unhoused, and I have $3,000 left.

My question is, what can I do with my $3,000? What were you doing before you were unemployed? I was working at an urgent care facility. Doing what? I was doing patient scheduling. Okay. Making what kind of money? About $17 per hour.

Okay. Did something happen? What happened? Yeah. They eliminated my position from the company. Target pays $20 an hour in Tulsa. Yeah. Walmart too.

Yeah. They'll hire you tomorrow. I would love to say that's been my experience. Yeah. I've been applying to those places actually. You walked in and talked to the manager. I did not walk in and talk to the manager. Okay. Yeah, I would do that in and talk to the manager. Okay.

Yeah, I would do that. You're about to lose your home. There's a shortage of labor. I would be talking to everyone. Because $20 an hour is FedEx, UPS, Target, Walmart. I mean, we're reading articles every single day. They can't get help. Amazon's about to lay off three-quarters of their workforce

because they're all pissed off because they have to come back to work at the office. Yeah. And you're not as scared to go to the office, right? I'm not. I have a slight barrier with that. I don't have a vehicle. Yeah. Okay.

Where'd your vehicle go? So it was considered a total loss after Grand Theft Auto this summer as well. And you didn't have insurance. I did. I received an insurance check, and that's why I have money left over currently. Okay. I would even go as far as to take two months and find one of those places, and I would Uber back and forth until you could save enough cash.

Well, you got $3,000. Go buy a $1,000 car once you get a position. But, I mean, you don't need a fancy car. You need like a 1994 buick skylark that's what a thousand dollar car is okay and it's kind of uh the uh the the upholstery in the back is curling up kind of that's that's the car you need but but it runs and it'll get you over to walmart at 20 bucks an hour and you're not homeless, right? Not yet.

Are you in a good church by chance? I am. Have you talked to your pastor? I have talked to my young adult pastor. I've not spoken with my overhead pastor. Yeah. About your needing a job? Yeah, the whole spiel. And they haven't been able to help at all.

They don't know anybody in the church that's hiring. No, that's what they told me. Yeah, I think businesses these days are kind of over the, what I would call the grenade lobbying of just mass filling out online emails um or online forms i would go today this afternoon and in here dave and i can't care more about this than you do um i know you're scared and sometimes we get scared we just shut down you're about to lose your house and so let's go today and say hey i used to put on scrubs i used to walk into a medical facility and it was kind of an esteemed job

and i'm embarrassed to go to box store a or box store b but there's dignity in that work and go knock on that door at the customer service window and say um can i get a job application i'm ready to start today until i was working at the hospital they eliminated my job um i'm a hard worker and i'm ready to go and i would be stunned if they just tell you to go ahead and leave i would just i would be stunned maybe that's the case but i would be stunned especially if you'll find somebody yeah yeah you haven't got anything else to do yeah go in person in person. Where's your family? That's who I've been staying with.

They live in the area. Oh, I thought you had lost your apartment. I mean, I thought you had an apartment. You were afraid you were going to lose it. No. So I'm with my family currently, and they've asked me to move out. We don't have a very good relationship. You're with your family, what?

And they're asking her to move out. I know, family. Your mother or your father, what? Yeah, my mother. Okay. Yeah, I would make the move, man. I would go there today. Have you got any other family in the area? No. No, they're out of state.

Okay. You sound like the world's caving in on you, and you just kind of are defeated. Is there something else here? It does feel that way. Yeah. I would just say disappointment. Yeah.

I can't wrap my head around losing a job that I liked and my mom telling me to get out. I mean, that's just a lot of loss all in a row. I hate that for you. Well, thank you. I hate that. I know it doesn't pay your light bill but i hate that for you it's hard to um it's hard to walk in and look like a super confident person that everybody wants to hire with a little bit of swagger in your step when you're feeling like you do right now so

um uh but i would take a deep breath before i walk in the door and go uh for the next six minutes you know, I'm going to set all this, I'm going to set the weight of the world off my shoulders and leave it on the target sidewalk till I talk to the manager and let's start moving along like that. And yeah, confidence is not something that can be given to you via words. It has to be something that you experience and what you need is a couple of small wins and even if you look um hiring managers in the eye and they tell you we're not hiring at this time

i want to count that as a win you got out there and you and you went for it and you got in the ring and then you got in the ring again you got in the ring again and i'm telling you we're heading into the holiday season somebody's gonna pick you up and then when you get there i want you to work really hard i want you to sign up for extra hours and what you're going to find is a little bit more strength and a little bit you know a little bit taller stance and you're going to get that swagger back and in six months um you're going to be working two jobs i mean you're going to be running and gunning and then you can sit down and begin to process and my mom kicked me out when I needed her most. And it's hard. And the activity, sheer, frenetic, crazy levels of activity on your part will also change the way you feel. So, like, huge amounts of walking store to store to store, restaurant to restaurant to restaurant until, you know, until your feet hurt.

And you've, you know, not two, 22 before I go home. Because you're worth that. Yeah. And just go out there and put the shoe leather and the knuckles on the door and the sheer amount of activity will start to change your body chemistry and change the way you feel as you walk into each one. Instead of getting more and more down, you're going to get, oh, I'm going to get this. We're going to win this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you're facing that. I wish I could wave a wand and make it go away for you. But income is the answer to your mathematical problem. That's why we're leaning on it so hard.

It also starts to solve some of your other issues. And the confidence problem. Yeah. And Dave, I harp on this all the time. I'm always telling people that they got worth, but it's hard when your business tells you, nah, you're not worth being here. And when your mom tells you, you're not worth being here. It's hard not to look in the mirror and start to believe the people around you.

And what Dave and I are telling you is we believe in you. Yeah. And you're worth going to 22 different places today and tomorrow and being exhausted and collapsing down in your bed tonight when you go to sleep and being able to tell your mom this time next week i'm out of here i got i got a job i got two jobs i'm gone got three jobs i'll take my three thousand and go get a little apartment after it yeah we changes the odds you go take action yeah that puts us out of the ramsey show in the books we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace

and that's to walk daily with the prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. I'll see you next time.