The Ramsey Show - App - Don’t Let Panic Influence Your Financial Decisions

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a Free Personalized Plan Ken Coleman & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "We are falling behind on Baby Step 2. Should we get a debt consolidation loan?" "How do we help my father-in-law get out of debt?" "Should we change our rate of retirement investing?" " I completely trashed my credit and now I can't find a place to rent," "Everyone is telling me to file for bankruptcy, what should I do?" "What should I do with my $200,000 inheritance?" Next Steps: ✅ Help us make the show better by taking this short survey! 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 weekdays from 2–5 p.m. ET or send us an email.  🎟️ Dave Ramsey and John Delony are going on tour this month! Get tickets today 🏘️ Find a Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agent 💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app! Connect with our Sponsors: 🛒 Stop paying more and start shopping smarter at Aldi 🌱 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp 📱Go to Boost Mobile to switch today! 🏥 Learn more about Christian Healthcare Ministries 🏡 Get started today with Churchill Mortgage 🔒 Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe 🏦 Go to FAIRWINDS Credit Union for an exclusive account bundle! 🥗 Save 15% on your first Field of Greens order with code RAMSEY ⛨ Find top Health Insurance Plans at Health Trust Financial 💸 To find out more about student loan refinancing, check out Laurel Road 💻 Visit NetSuite today to learn more 🗂️ Use promo code RAMSEY for 18% off at The Nokbox 💵 Learn more about Timothy Plan 🏛 Get started with YRefy or call 844-2-RAMSEY 🔐 Visit Zander Insurance for your free instant quote today! Explore more from Ramsey Network: 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

This is the Ramsey Show where America hangs out to have a conversation about life, specifically your money, your profession, and your relationships. Alongside the fabulous, incomparable Jade Warshaw, I'm Ken Coleman. We're going to be together for you all today. Jade will lead out on what to do with the money, and I'll help out on how to make more money. So that's a good combo, and we're excited to have you with us. 888-825-5225 is the number. 888-825-5225. You ready to go, partner? Are you ready?

Giddy up, Kim. Get all your vocal exercises. Me, me, me. She's ready, folks. Aaron will start us off in St. Louis. Aaron, how can we help? Hi, guys. I appreciate you taking my call. I hope you guys are doing well today. Yes, sir. I appreciate you taking my call. I hope you guys are doing well today. Yes, sir. Um, brief and to the point, uh, about a year, about last September, my wife had a, uh, um, a major medical, something happened medically that, um, has left her to where she is on temporary disability. Oh, I'm sorry.

Um, well, thank you. Uh, the, the problem is, is that the temporary disability is less than half of what she was earning whenever she was working. We're waiting for some sort of a resolution to come with us medically so that we should get back to work. But in the four, the four walls are built. Um, the, I've asked her if we could sell the car, but that's a nonstarter for, um, so why is that a nonstarter? Because we was able to make the payment whenever she was, we was able to make the payment on the car whenever she was, uh, um, working. And she said that whenever she's able to get back to work, we'll be able

to, your car payment will be, we'll be able to cover that too. Okay. But what she's wanting to do is she has a hundred dollars dollars worth of student loan debt that we've already tried. We've already went through a little override and they're not in default, so we couldn't go through Y refi. So we can't refi the student loans. She's current on those. The problem though, is, is that where we're at with actually killing us right now is the, uh, we have about $30,000 with the credit card debt and she's wanting to do a debt consolidation loan. I've considered this. She's wanting to do a debt consolidation loan in order to possibly, um,

wrap those all up into a, into a lower payment, smaller than the payments that we have right now. And I was just kind of curious to sort your idea of what your opinion is on this. Yeah, before I get to the debt consolidation, I wanna know a little bit more about the financial, the income situation. So she's on less than half.

What are you bringing in every single month? Monthly, I make you bringing in every single month? Uh, monthly I make it's 13, I make 1909 every two, or, um, uh, twice a month. So what is that? 4,000, something like that. 4,000 a month. Okay. And then what's hers? Hers is, I want to say 1800.

Okay. So you're 38, hers is 1800. And is there, has anybody, has anybody said, hey, she'll be able to be back to work in six weeks or she'll be back to work in 12 weeks? Has anybody, has a doctor given you some sort of prognosis on that? Not yet. No, right now her life is actually being, her pain is actually being controlled by medicine and it's something called trigeminal neuralgia

Which is long story short they call it the suicide disease because it just drilled into her into the nerve in her jaw holy smokes Yeah, it's it's very I don't know if it's rare, but um, that's literally what it's called and um, the only way to treat the only way to treat the pain is with, uh, um, anticonvulsants. Oh, wow. So she is in mad pain. Yeah. Oh, I'm so, so sorry. Oh, I'm so sorry.

Okay. She's not awake. She has to take the pain medicine, the pain medicine puts her to sleep. So is there any end in sight? Right now? No, there was a one and that's something else too is that we was told that there were two specialists that could do surgery for it. But there was a 70% chance that she would, that she would be healed. The surgery was going to be $30,000 out of pocket and insurance would not cover it. I took a loan against my stocks to put, I took a loan against my stocks to pay off one of my credit cards to get a better

credit score. So that way I could potentially get a loan for at least half and then they was going to work as a payment plan. But they said that unless we was able to come up, if we could come up with half of it, they could do it. But then where we are, we got turned down to the loan, so right now there's literally nothing else. We're like on, there's no end in sight for this.

Okay, thank you for the information. I mean, my heart goes out to you. I know, Ken, you feel in the same way. This is terrible, I'm so sorry. Let's talk about what you've brought to the table here. So based on what you just said, that there's really, I mean, there were some options, but we really don't know. Even if she does a surgery, it's only a 70% chance.

All of that, yeah, you gotta sell this car. Cause she's saying, oh, but when we're both working, we can afford it, but we don't know. Like truly, we don't know when you're both gonna be working again and nobody needs that kind of pressure, right? You don't need that kind of pressure. She doesn't need that kind of pressure. So tell me what the car, what you own it and what you can sell it for

2020 300 to the Sun and We owe about 30,000 for it and I booked it a couple of days ago I think it looks for like 23,000 23 or 28 Like 20 story, I think okay, and there's that private sale Yes Okay, I wish it were better. Is there any other debt, any other vehicles, any other thing else I should that Ken and I should know about? No there's no other no other debt aside from like I said the credit card debt it's about 30,000

and then she has 100,000 with the student loan debt the house is completely paid for. What's the payment on that Tucson? The Tucson's 900. Okay, so here, let's go down the line. Student loans, they're private, I'm assuming based on what you said. So it's not like they're being forbeared like everybody else in the safe plan right now.

You've got these student loans. Yeah, you gotta sell the car. Yeah, you've gotta, I'd rather you be in seven thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars once you get a little beater than thirty thousand dollars. Right. And that's going to make that payment a lot less. So I would be on the phone trying to make that happen. I know you said your credit's a little sketchy, but let's make that happen. A lower payment is going to really help you out right now

to try to make ends meet when you do your budget every month. What's the deficit? What are you at right now? What are you? How much are you in red? 1500. 1500. So this is going to help find some of that. And you're doing an every dollar budget. Yeah, she, she does the budget and then I reveal it with her. But it's not every dollar on the app. No, but we do have it written down. It is a written paper budget. OK, I want you to get every dollar. It's going to help you a little bit more. And it's going to help you guys stay on track, because this is also

anything that can make life a little bit easier right now is going to help you. And I want you to go through with a fine tooth comb. Where is it that we can skim anything out of forty six hundred dollars a month? Where can we cut back? What's your mortgage or your rent? What are you paying? We don't have we don't have mortgage or rent. OK, so the house is paid for. Great. And we paid that. Yeah, we paid off like five years ago. Great. And do you have young kids, anybody in

daycare or anything like that? No. OK, so where's the right question then is those are the two biggest budget items. And next to that is food. So this money, this forty six hundred dollars a month is going somewhere. It's not going to a mortgage, not going to daycare. You guys need to get on that budget with a fine tooth comb to figure out where this is. Do not do a debt consolidation because Ken, you and I know it ain't good. Yeah.

And I would just add to this. If I were you, I'd be working as many jobs as I could. We've got to get the cash for this surgery. She can't keep living this way. You have to. This is so serious. It's the way you describe it. If I were you, I would be doing everything in my power,

everything that Jade said, plus I would be making extra money to come up with half the money that insurance, I guess, has promised that they would pay. Yeah, that's right. To get this surgery for your wife, you just can't keep this up. That's my concern. So hang on the line.

We're going to give you every dollar so you don't have to spend any extra money right now. Hang on the line. Michelle is joining us here in Nashville, our neck of the woods. Michelle, how can we help today? Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm calling because my father-in-law has been in the hospital in California for about three

months off and on in critical condition. My husband just came back from visiting him and was given financial and medical power of attorney for him. And we have found after pulling his credit report, because he's an avoidant personality, that he is in an extreme amount of debt and he's behind on his house payments and we have no idea where to start to help him. Okay. Does he have any income coming in? He does not. We have applied for the state of California, but nothing has been done yet. He was on FMLA leave, but there

is nothing, there is no income currently coming in for him. Okay. Was this sudden? Like what, he was working up until the point he was in the hospital? Is that what happened? Correct. So he ended up with a broken foot and he was walking on it because of complications of diabetes, had no idea it was broken and got septic. He has had three subsequent amputations and his progress just keeps getting back and back and back like backlog. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Okay. How much debt? What's the debt picture? So the debt picture is he has credit cards, a vehicle, and a home loan. His home, he is worth about $850,000 on a good day. He currently owes about $282,000 on that. His credit card debt, oh, he owes about $26,000 on his car, and then the remainder out of that $65,500 is

credit cards. How much is the car worth? I would say it may be worth probably about $18,000. I'm sorry, did you say $65,500 on credit cards? Between the car and credit cards, yeah. Between the car and credit cards. Got it, thank God. So what is the medical situation? Is he now going to be going into some type of care facility?

Is that the next step? I'm assuming he cannot live on his own, correct? So his situation is that they're trying to discharge him to a care facility based off of his medical insurance. He only has 30 days left at a skilled rehab facility. We have put in an application for Medi-Cal, the state health insurance, to try to get him some options. There's no current rehab facility to send him to.

Ideally, what my husband and I would like is to get him out here to Tennessee and maybe take the cell of his house and get into a home together to be able to care for him as he goes through the physical therapy and learning how to walk again and you know, all of his medical treatments that he's going to need. But right now he cannot be moved from California. And how old is he? 58. 58.

So let me ask a quick question. Why would you live, why would you, don't you guys already have a home or are you guys renting? That's the part I'm not sure about is living together with him. What's your current living situation? We're renting. We're working the baby steps around baby two, baby step two right now.

We do have a special needs child and so we've got probably about twenty thousand dollars left in debt ourselves. So the goal was to maybe use the equity from his home sale to go in on a home together that would have enough space for us to be able to take care of him and our family. The reason I'm asking all this is there's no question that given the situation that you, your husband has power of attorney on all this stuff on his finances, I would absolutely Jade sell the house. 100%.

His house and clear his debt up. I don't know if I like the idea of using some of that. This is where I'm bringing in my partner here. I have a check in my spirit. I got a big ol' check. So I'll lead and go down on the diving board and then let her score my dive. I like him selling the house and let's clear his debt. He's got plenty of equity to do so. So he's now debt free. I am not in favor of you all using what's left of that to buy a house together. I think he needs those funds for right now set aside

for his ongoing care in some form or fashion. So I would, I don't have it all figured out because I think this is a complex situation, but I would hold the money left over after paying off his debt and let's get into a if we got to get a different rental or something like that and maybe some of that, but I got to check in my spirit about buying a house. I do too. I don't you are going to be providing care, but I don't think this is like an opportunity for you guys to get in a home because I don't I mean there might an opportunity for you guys to get in a home. Um, because I don't, I don't, I mean, there might be something that you guys talk about with him. I don't

know how, is he 100% lucid? Like he's got a power of attorney, so I'm guessing not. He's not making smart choices. He's been refusing medical care, uh, documented in his chart, but then he's telling us that he hasn't been. Same thing, he says, oh, I only have four credit cards, then we pull the card report and there's five. Does he have a will? He has an outdated will that has his deceased wife on it, and he has a trust.

Okay, what I'm getting at is, if there was something that you guys knew, hey, when he passes, we were to get his house anyway, or we were to get his assets anyway. If you knew that ahead of time, that might make this feel a little bit different. But because we don't have that, there's part of me that's like,

hey, right now we've got to keep things separate. Help him out by, if your husband has power of attorney, help him out by clearing his debt, selling the thing. Yeah, move him when you can. And maybe it's just getting him set up in a, maybe he is staying with you at the rental if you have space. If you don't, maybe it's him being in a little condo and the rest is for his care.

But I think that you've got to be careful here. I think you've got to be careful here and keep your needs completely separate from his needs, if that makes sense. I think you're a great person by the way. I'm not trying to say that you're doing, trying to be shady. That's not what I'm saying.

Yeah, not at all. I just think you need options. No, the only reason we had thought was him coming to us is because he can't do cleaning, he can't get out of bed on his own. And so him living separately, if he falls or something happens, he's not gonna be able to care for himself.

Right, right. I get all that. Is there space in the rental? Is there no space in the rental? I mean not currently. We would have to convert the living room into a downstairs kind of bedroom area for him. Would you be willing to do that? Here's your options. The options are you do that conversion like you're talking about and depending on the amount maybe you use some of the sale of the house to cash flow that right or the other option is I don't like the idea of you converting a rental I don't know what that costs so part of me is like maybe you move into a rental that has more space and you use a portion of like a small portion only if you need of that money to help float that new rent, but mostly, the biggest thing is you're gonna need

that money for his care. And so, to Ken's point, we can't be blowing through that. I would take the chunk left over, just to be very clear, the chunk left over from paying off his debt, so you're gonna sell his house, the proceeds, pay off his debt, the rest of it goes into a high yield savings account just so we can see what the future holds.

I think there's so many unknowns that are out there. I want to be in a strong as possible cash position. And it's not your responsibility to do that. You guys are already trying to get out of debt. I don't want it to slow your momentum. So getting into a house and all the expenses, I agree with Jade. I'd get a better rental situation if dad's going to be with us. Because see, that's temporary too.

That's right. You don't know what his health situation is. God forbid something go worse. But I don't think that's out of the realm of reality right now. So the reason I just want you to know why we're giving that advice. This is an onion. And right now we wanna have as many stable options as possible. That's why we're saying don't buy a house with that money. Okay.

Make sense? We don't want this. You're already in convenience and this can really create hardship on you and your husband. So let's not make it worse is my point. By getting into a house. Correct. We want to maintain the family relationship and not let there be like any kind of divide

there as well. We really do just want what's best for him in this scenario. Then I would keep the boundary of not using his leftover money to buy a house for us. I just, I do, I would rent, let's see what the future holds. Okay. Yeah. I just, I do, I would rent, let's see what the future holds. Okay. Yeah. Stability here, Jade, is essentially having as many options as possible.

That's right. When you have such an unknown, topsy turvy situation like that, where you don't know which way it's going. Yeah. I want to get a wide base financially and just kind of hold and just kind of hang on through the storm. You're right. You taught me that on the Ramsey cruise. She saved me in a pickleball

match. She saw me. I was all over the place. She said, get a wide base Coleman. And I did. That's what I do. All right folks, how you doing on the baby steps? If you're new to us, you don't know what the baby steps are, well this is also a good thing for you. Head to the show notes and click on the link titled, Are You On Track With The Baby Steps? and complete the quiz. And it's going to let you know your progress status and you get a personalized plan on how to start moving through the baby steps. This is so important. So again, the link in our show notes will get you there.

Let's go to Ann in Phoenix, Arizona. Ann, how can we help? Yes, I have a question about how much of a percentage I'm currently putting into my retirement. I'm going to be 60 this year. My husband is 63 and we currently have, um, 400, we have about 400,000 in our retirement. Um, and I, uh, but we also have a special needs young adult child that we know we want to, um, plan for. We've just gotten to baby step seven, two months ago.

So I'm feeling still like I should hold on really tight, or can I relax a little bit, or where should I go? And I'm looking for some guidance on that. Congratulations. First of all, let's not just fly by Baby Step 7. How does that feel? It feels amazing, but I have lived until I found you all pretty hopeless about ever retiring. So I'm adjusting in my mindset to like, can I take my family on a vacation? Well, the answer is yes. So I just, and I always worry about the future for my daughter. I have kids, both my oldest who have special needs and probably will never live independently. Sure. Okay. Okay, couple quick things. One, I want you to, on the Ramsey cruise, we had all these, you know, folks from the tribe that, you know,

are Baby Steps 4 through 7, and one of the things that we kept coming into, it was funny, we were talking about it on stage, we saw it in conversations on the boat, but a lot of Baby Step 7 folks are still trying to adapt from intensity to intentionality. And you're so, yeah, you resonate with that. And you're so new at this, right? You've been Baby Step 7 for two to three months. So number one, it's going to take time for your nervous system to adjust because you have been-

Yes, I feel that. Right. Yeah. And so I'm just calling it out to go, this is normal. Okay? Okay. Right, yeah. And so I'm just calling it out to go, this is normal, okay? Okay. It's a function of how intentional you have been with intensity. Now, we want to begin to downshift from all this intensity and go, here's the good news, we're going to be great. Now we want to be intentional to take care of our daughter. So give us a snapshot of what you guys have in

retirement accounts as of today? So as of today, in my 401B, I have about $357,000. We just sort of discovered, you know, it feels shameful, but whatever, Roth IRA. So I've got $47, thousand in my Roth 403 B and Our and my Roth IRA individual IRAs for my husband and I okay does he have any are you just giving us the totals? That's the total so it's all back our total about four hundred and three. How old are you both? Sixty and sixty three and what's your house worth primary? 60 and 63. And what's your house worth?

Primary. Pardon? What's your house worth? 437. Okay. And you're about ready to tell us something else. Go ahead. And I'm the primary income earner.

He does caretaking for parents and our oldest child. What is your income? About $250,000. All right. That's great news. What in your mind has been the age by which you said, I'm out of here. See you later, folks. Well, I thought I would never retire before.

I got some hope. So when I've been looking at it now, if I were to retire in seven years, you know, with that rule of seven, I think based on my calculations, I'd probably end up with about, in my current rate of retirement savings, which is about 19% of our income, I think I'd have about 1.4, but I just don't know if that's enough. Well, so 1.4, that doesn't include the house, right? Not including the house. All right, so that gets us at, let's just round up to 1.9. So we're sniffing 2 mil at that stage.

Yeah. How much are you contributing monthly? How much are you contributing monthly? Monthly, I'm putting in 90% of my income, I'm sorry, 19% of my income into my retirement. So that's my match. That's my Roth 403B. Do you know the number of that just so I don't have to do the math right quick? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, my monthly right now that's going in to Roth 403B is $2,622.

Good job. And then I have going into my match is about $1,210. Wow. Okay. So can we round that up, Jade, to what we got? Okay. So yeah, we got 3,800, like, yeah. Every month going in there. Yeah. All right.

So what's going on here? Jade has got her trusty calculator out and she's doing a little investment calculator to run these numbers. What do you got, Jade? Okay, yeah, so if you continue to do this, you're pretty close to what you said. You're pretty close. I did a really conservative rate of return for the haters, but you know, I think that you're

going to actually do better. So let me just, I think you're going to be fine if you keep doing this in the next seven years. I have 1.3 million. You said 1.4. Great. Same thing. Right. Yeah. The question you need to ask yourself, and I think this is what Ken also was getting at, is you're thinking about your special needs daughter, you have a paid for home, so great. Your special needs daughter is gonna have a place always to live, right, if you pass that along.

Then for you, if you and your husband can live comfortably off of the interest on this, then you're gonna have this wonderful nest egg that is going to continue to grow for her care. And so that's kind of the way to think of this is what is it going to cost annually once you and your husband you know have beamed up, what's it going to cost you annually for her care? And is she able to draw that off of your nest egg without touching it or without you know know, deeply deplenishing it. And I think that...

And knowing that we also have another child, so they would split whatever we've got. That's the other... Uh-huh. Yeah, good point. Yeah. Well, the only way to change this is you're making a good salary. The only way to change this, in my mind, is your husband to get a little bit better paying job.

I appreciate what he's doing. But if he can make... What's his income? I'm guessing it's what? Less than 40? His income, so he does part-time real estate, so it varies. So it's probably, he's doing maybe six houses a year. It's not a lot. You said caretaking of some sort. What does he make a year? Give me an average, roughly. He's probably making 10 to 15 thousand a year. Okay, listen, I don't want to be unkind, and this is not unkind, but I'm going to shoot you really straight. Are you okay with that? Yeah. Okay. If I was hanging out with your husband, I'd pull him aside and go,

hey bro, no disrespect, but your wife is seriously crushing it and you guys have a really unique situation and I'm not judging you at all, but you can make way more than 10 to 15 thousand, number one. And number two, you should be. Let's just say he listened to me. He's like, you're right, Ken, I need to step up. Let's say he got serious about selling real estate and he made a hundred thousand and all of his money went to juicing this retirement. If he does that for another ten years, that's a million dollars, a hundred thousand a year. I'm not pulling crazy numbers out of my you know what, M.I.

Ann. Yeah, yeah. All right. So this is all possible. That's the answer. We put an extra million dollars in this situation, Jade. Now we don't have to worry about our adult child who is going to need special care.

Exactly. I don't know why he's not fired up to do this. I'm not judging him, Ann, but I am gonna shoot you really straight and go, he should be making way more money and every nickel of it should be going into Jade's fancy calculator. Yeah, and I also want you to get on

with one of our SmartVestor pros and talk about if it makes sense to convert some of these traditional funds to Roth funds so that when the time comes that they are drawing on this money, they're not paying taxes on it. And they're able, do you see what I'm saying? That money can continue to grow tax-free.

We want that for them. We don't want them to have to deal with that as they take your inheritance one day. And I'd play it. I'd play that conversion process right now. Everything's tied up in my current employer's plan. So until I retire from that, I won't be able to convert. But that's my thought is to convert over time. Yeah. The sooner you do it, the worse the tax hit. So you, uh, you've done a great job. Replay that call for your hubs.

Hopefully you don't get upset at me. And I just think that you didn't mean any harm, Ken. No, no. I just think that that is a massive play right now. If I was in their shoes, that's exactly what I would be doing. Right. All right.

Tonight, Jade, Dave Ramsey, Dr. John Delaney back out on the road. This time they're in Durham, North Carolina. And this is fun of it. They just did the first one in Louisville. And do you say Louisville or do you say Louisville? Look at my face. Louisville.

Louisville. Why did I have to look at your face? Louisville. What did that have to do? Do I look like Louisville? Oh did I have to look at your face? Louisville. What did that have to do? Do I look like Louisville? Oh. I don't know, I feel like I'm gonna get in trouble if I answer that. Louisville.

Louisville. And then they're in Atlanta on Friday nights. We got two of these coming up. This is a great, great event if you feel trapped in the same patterns in your money and your relationships. Dave and John are doing a really fun event and coming to Phoenix May 5th, Fort Worth May 7, Kansas City May 9. Oh, Kansas City sold out according to my notes here.

And Fort Worth is not far behind. So you better move quick if you're in Fort Worth or the rest of those cities. Ramsesolutions.com slash tour. Ramsesolutions.com slash tour. ramseysolutions.com slash tour. If you're watching via YouTube or listening via podcast, click the link in the show notes and you can get the tickets there. Sarah is up now in Dallas, Texas. Sarah, how can we help today?

Hey guys, thanks for taking my call. You're welcome. I have a two-part question, a little bit of background. I have worked for the last 10 years as a travel nurse, and I was making pretty good money anywhere from like $16,000 to $18,000 per month. And I'm a single mom of six, and in December, one of my children actually unfortunately tried to hurt themselves and so I gave up traveling and I took a local contract to be there to support them and it came with a huge pay decrease and so

suddenly my budget was not very good and very affordable anymore but unfortunately I had never really managed that money well even though I was making a lot I was spending even more. So I do have poor credit, I have an eviction on my record, I have a repossession on my record. And so when I kind of found Dave and money makeover and I sat down with every dollar budget, the clear answer was to move out of our rental

because we have a very expensive rental home. But as I started booking, nobody would rent to me. So the first part of my question is, if you have any suggestions for alternative renting, like rental avenues to kind of get us out of this, because that would free up a lot of my budget. And then the second part of my question is, I've heard Dave say he has a PhD in DUMB

and things like that on the show. I am having a really hard time with the shame and the guilt of not being able to provide for my family because I made so many poor decisions. And if you guys have any advice on how I kind of jumped that hurdle of the emotional weight and just feeling so pathetic. Well, let me jump in real quick. I'm so glad you're sharing that with us.

But you aren't pathetic and you are gonna have to forgive yourself. The kids are doing their thing, that's gonna all cycle out. I think a lot of this is a tremendous amount of guilt and shame over the kid who's trying to hurt themselves. I agree. And that's pretty dark.

It's pretty dark stuff, and there's no way for you not to personalize your child's pain. There's just no way not to. So I don't have any fix with my words. It's impossible to fix, but I do hope you listen to me and you do forgive yourself on the things that maybe you should forgive yourself and then also realize that you're not to blame for a lot of the stuff either. Blame for the financial decisions, sure, but who among us hasn't made dumb financial

decisions when we weren't healthy? Exactly. So you're a part of a pretty big tent, and I hope that helps you with shame. Let me move practically real quick to the first thing that came to my mind on the rent situation. If you're not involved in a local church, there's a church on every corner in your neck of the woods. And I would swallow any pride

or whatever issues you have with faith, and I'd give the people of a good church a chance to help you. And I would go in and I would tell them your story. And I would be, if I were in your situation, looking for maybe an elderly couple, Jade, anything, yeah. An older widow who's got some space over a garage.

Right now, your kids can adapt to anything anything and I know you can adapt anything and just a safe place She doesn't care about credit score or they don't care about credit score, but finding something like that I just believe that when we ask for something like that we can find it And when you seek you find and I would be going that route. I'm not saying that's the only route I want to bring Jade in, but I did, that just popped into my mind for some reason, to give you a season to get stable. Because the fact of the matter is,

if your kid's not hurting themself, and you're not having to come back to where you are, you could have dug out of this, correct? Yes, and that is a plan. I do have a wonderful church family, I do want to say that. Oh, great. But like you said, I will swallow my pride and go wherever I can right now. Lean on them. No, if you've got a church family, if you've got a church family, I'm saying go to them and say,

I can't do this alone in this circumstance. But once I can get my kid back on the rails and all the kind of stuff, then you can dig out of this, because with your background, you can make good money. So this is temporary. That's the plan. We have good church family support and good family support that when he is in a little bit more stable place, other people can step in to be there in that role

and I can get back out and make a lot of money quickly. Good. Yeah, this is a temporary situation. That's the good news. The hard news is it's a very tough temporary situation, right, it doesn't make it any easier. I agree with Ken wholeheartedly. The people that love you are the people who wanna help you

and you have to ask yourself, if a close friend of mine were in the same situation, you would almost be hurt that they kept it from you, right? Because you want to help. And so you have to remember that people have a heart like that. Yeah, I with Ken, I think Ken, I think you almost basically covered it. Find a rental that's from a human being, not from an, you know, a corporation or an agency, people who can go, Hey, I know you, I'm looking at you. I see your situation. I believe you'll pay me as opposed to trying to go to apartment complexes or like I said ones that are owned by big conglomerations Yeah on the other side of this have you learned how to budget do you have I know you you're familiar with our materials

But how can we bless you today? I? I'm working on learning it. I did, I purchased every dollar premium last month and I'm trying to work on that. And yes, and more importantly, I've learned what the problem was, that I just wasn't budgeting. That's good. And I've really, that's hit home to hear all of you, but especially Dave and many make-over that I'm just not even watching my money, so it's leaving and I don't know where it went.

Did you say you have six kids? I do. That's what I thought. How old are you? I will be 40 next week. Okay. And I don't normally ask a lady her age, but there was a reason that I asked.

I wanna leave you with this. I've already gave you the pep talk on shame and forgiveness, but I want to remind you that I don't think there's a tougher organism on the planet than a single mom. And you have already made it a long way. At the age of 40 with six kids, you've already proven to everybody who knows you that you're tough as nails. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. So hear me. You can do this. I love that you were so honest and vulnerable with this to say, hey I know what the problem is, Jayden, Ken. I just didn't budget. Well guess what? That's

something that's forgivable. And you can learn that. And now you were just trying to hang on to survive, and you didn't know how to budget. Now you know how to budget. You're getting better at it. You're going to keep getting better at it. And when you get through this storm, you're going to come out on the other side. And I'm not saying you won't have tough days ahead, but you won't have to go backwards financially. There's no way I'm betting against you, Sarah. No chance.

You got me? I mean, there's no, there's nothing you wouldn't do for those kids. Am I right? No, nothing. All right. So shoulders back, head up, forgive yourself. No shame in your game, mama. And we got six kids that we gotta take care of,

one who specifically needs you. So you gotta take care of you during this season, get safe, get stable, you'll come out on the other side of this and you're gonna be fine. And your kids are gonna talk about how great a mama you are too. So hold on to that and we're here for you. Call back at any time, you got me?

Yep, thank you. All right, head Yep. Thank you. Alright, head up. Shoulders back. Great hour, Jade. Ken Coleman. Well done, my friend. Little tear-jerker there at the end. It's tough stuff, but community matters, folks. It does. Can't do it alone. This is The Ramsey Show where America hangs out to have a conversation about their money, their profession and their relationships. 88825-5225 is the phone number to jump in. We'd love to hear from you today alongside the incomparable, fabulous Jade Warshaw and Ken Coleman. 88825-5225 is the phone number.

Tina starts us off in Tucson, Arizona. Tinazona tina from tucson how can we help i think that it might call under the purpose for my call to me uh... is just to see if there's other options the fight uh... and bankruptcy i've been told at this point that pretty much that is kind of my only option at her to be around the i don't really follow the show and i was listening to worship music and ironically a segment came up and I happened to click on it and decided, you know what, maybe I should ask somebody else and see if they love that.

It feels like this might be a little bit of a divine appointment, worship music to one of our clips and now here you are and I can tell you there are more options, but hit us with your story. It's really strange because Tell us your story and why. Yeah, go for it. No, so I just I've been working in the mortgage sector for a very long period of my life and in 2020, ironically when the market was sort of going down because everybody wasn't able to work, we were super busy and slammed with loans and so at that time we were making a lot of money. But ever since then and the market sort of turned again,

my company has done pay decreases and obviously we're no longer making bonus or commission, so that's really affected my financials. And at this point, like I said, I've consulted with a few different attorneys and they're all kind of on the same boat that really the only option at this point is to file bankruptcy. Why? Again, I want to know your situation. Yeah, to know your situation. Give us the details of your debt. Oh, okay. So you want like amounts of... Yeah. I want to know why this is so dire. Sure. So I make about 80 to 85 a year. And before like pre-COVID, it was almost like 250. So it's a huge, huge difference in pay

structure. My mortgage is about 305 right now. And I have about $160,000 in unsecured loans, meaning not tied to anything. Can you break it down? Yeah Sure, one of them is like 83,000 and the other is the difference of that 160 To what and then the credit card? Yeah, hold on. I'm out to about 50 Before you speed through it like we need to get a handle on it So you said you've got 83,000 of just personal loans. Is that what you're saying? No, so it's 83,000 is one of the personal loans. The other is the balance that makes up the 160.

Yes. Okay, and it's all credit cards you're saying? No, that's just unsecured debt. That is not credit card. And what I'm trying to ask you is, who do you owe this to? You owe 83,000 to who? So 83,000 is to a credit union,

and then the balance of the 160 between the 83 and that difference is to another credit union and then the balance of the $160,000 between the $83,000 and that difference is to another credit union. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. What we're trying to do is, in order for us to help you, we've got to know who we owe the money to. So we've got two credit unions in the amount of $160,000. Yeah, $83,000 and $77,000. And then didn't you say that there was credit cards?

Yeah, so there's an additional 57 in credit cards. Okay. And is there anything else? No, I actually I sold all my autos. I've liquidated anything that was of value to try to pay up the difference. At this point, I'm even selling personal items just to get by like month to month. So I have nothing at this point. That's what's left.

Okay. So is it just you? Are you single? Do you have kids? Yeah, I'm single and I have two kids. Single with two kids. Okay. Now let me, I'm just trying to get a background on this. I'm trying to see where your head's at.

So before, before your income got cut, you're making 250. How long have you been in this state of lower income? This has been going on for now, I would say coming up to three years, three years. Okay. And I've been managing trying to pay my payments. And obviously, I'm not late or anything. But I'm at the point where sure, because my employer is planning on lowering my income again, in the upcoming months, I've

already been told that just based on business needs, okay, it'll be at a point where I will no longer be able to make those payments. Okay, what will your income be? We're supposed to drop another $4 an hour, so we're paid hourly. Okay. So, sorry, Jade, I'm getting you some numbers here. So you're going to go from 85 to what, roughly? Well, if you take $4 times $41 an hour. Okay, I didn't know we were doing the math on the spot. Okay, I'll't know we were doing the math on the spot. Okay.

I'll do that math while Jade's helping out. Okay. Yeah. Ken, you do that math and then we're going to come back to Ken to help you with the career side because you're going to have to switch jobs. That's true. Yeah. What I'm trying to understand is did all of this come as a result of your $85,000 in pay

or was this a result of before kind of living without a plan? Because I want to know, are you able to meet your, does that make sense? Are we able to meet our bills now and you're just realizing, holy crap, I made a mess? Or is this mess a result of trying to live on an income that's just not sustainable? Does that make sense?

It might be a bunch of everything to be honest with you. Okay, okay. I mean, I'm not a victim in this situation. Obviously I spent the money. I'm the one who spent it. Yeah, I'm not a victim in this situation. Obviously I spent the money. I'm the one who spent it. Yeah, you're not a victim. What you do next matters though, big time. And right now the answer to the solution

is lowering your expenses and increasing your income. That's always the solution. So while we have a little bit of time, Ken, why don't you hit the career thing first? Cause I actually think that's the most important in this conversation. Yeah, you can no longer allow this just to happen to you. You've let a lot of this happen to you.

And I'm not beating up on you. I just want you to know, we're gonna have to change our mindset. Because that's really what's happened over the last three years. Well, this happened, this happened, this happened. And you know, look, again, we're not judging you. We are where we are.

We know where you are. The pay cut is gonna be about75 to $7,800. I did some quick math on that, all gross numbers. So not a huge amount, but when you start playing that out, it's about $600 a month and you need every penny of that $600 a month. So we cannot take a pay cut. You just can't. The idea of taking a pay cut and then going into bankruptcy is not a viable option. So I want to get right back to the core question at the beginning of the call. That is a horrible option for you. What we need to do is take the skill set you have plus the experience you have had in that

industry that is transferable outside of your industry. It really is. You need a better paying job and soon. And that's what the play is. And then you dig out of this. You do not have to file bankruptcy and further ruin your life. You can dig out of this. We've helped so many people do this and I know you're new to us. But Jake, I mean we can do this. We can walk you through all this and get you out of this. But I'm gonna give it back to her real quickly,

but you have got to get very serious. I'm gonna give you two things at the end of this call. I'm gonna give you my book, find the work you're wired to do. It's got an assessment with it, take it. It's a 45 minute read that'll coach you through your results so that you can see what's out there for you.

So I want you to have that. and I want to give you the book, The Proximity Principle, as well, so you can start really making great connections, because that's where your opportunity is going to come from. But you've got to make that move fast. That's right. That's right. Hey, are you investing right now? Are you investing any money out of your check? I was, I don't know what you mean by investing, like I was tithing to the church. No, 401k or retirement.

Were you doing that? No, I don't have any savings. I don't have anything at this point. Okay, great. So what are you taking home every single month? You mean like after taxes? Yep. What are you taking home as your payment?

It's like 2,300 every two weeks. Okay. So I want you to have an every dollar budget. We're gonna make sure Christian picks up and gives you an every dollar budget because you need to see where every single dollar is going. And once you see that and you find out if your mortgage payment is more than 25%

of your take home pay. If it is, you need to be looking at that as well because unless you really change this and turn it around soon, because my guess is your mortgage is eating up all your money because you had your mortgage back when you're making $250,000. That's where I think the problem is in all of this.

So it could be time to sell. It likely is. Uh-oh. Tyler is up next in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tyler, how can we help? Thank you for taking my call. You bet. So, I'm currently 22 years old and I'm struggling with the fact that my parents are kind of

financially abusing me. I've been following the Ramsey's Baby Steps. I'm currently reading the Total Money Makeover book and I got my refund from school about in May and it was close to about $4,000. It was exactly $3,999. And I used that money to pay off my clarinet debt, my car payment, and as well, a little bit of my credit card payment. And they weren't really happy about that. They were just absolutely furious at me saying that that was their money and about how the

hard work they did to put me out here and everything like that. And my head's just spinning about it. Okay, hold on a second. Did they wait for what to do? Hold on, hold on, hold on. The money was from, was a tax refund for money that you did, like W-2 money? No, a school refund. School refund, correct.

Yeah, but they paid, did they pay for the school? Oh, school refund. Or did they pay for the school school refund or did you pay so? So they were helping me through financial aid. We took out a loan and as well Just through whatever else federal work study as well so was this let me let me clarify because the key word in student loans is refund and Refund sometimes means you took out a loan and the loan was too much for what school actually costs. And so they gave you the money back in cash,

but it is still loaned money. Does that make sense? So was this money that was still loaned money or was this actual cash that you had from doing work study and you were given that as payment? Clarify that for me. I believe it was a little bull from the work study and from the loan. Okay and whose name is on the loan? Mom's and Dad's or yours? Who's the who's the signer on the loan? It's mom and then me. I believe I'm the co-signer on it.

Okay so what where I'm seeing here is there's a lack of clarity on What's going on? So we do need to have that because you need to know if you receive four thousand dollars if it's student loan money You should know that because you have the right to be like, oh my gosh. I don't want to be on the hook for that I'm not gonna use debt to pay off debt, right? So understanding that's important, but it's spilled milk at this point. Um, I Can understand if it was loan money if your mom was like, wait a minute So understanding that's important, but it's spilled milk at this point. I can understand if it was loan money, if your mom was like, wait a minute, you took this loan money that we're both on the hook for

to do this thing without consulting both of us because we're both on this loan. So I can see that. So I wanna put that out there, but you used a really big word earlier when you said, mom and dad are abusing me with the money. So I see no evidence of show us that let us hear about that. The reason why I say that is because one, when I got that money, my first instinct was obviously to put it towards my debt and my both my parents are both spenders. My dad works in the middle

field. My mom doesn't work anymore. So I'm currently in I'm in another state from tech. I'm from Texas originally, I'm in another state working as well as in school, trying to pay all this stuff and all the things I can do. And they're helping me financially. But it's always about money, money, money. They my mom just bought a brand new Mercedes, my dad spends money constantly on his new truck. Okay. What's that got to do with you? Right. But what's that got to do with you? It's just a money struggle. They've always been haggling me for money as well as asking, when I ask for money, if I need it, they just never give it to me or they're 50-50 on it. Okay. So. But that's not abuse.

I don't think it's abuse. Like what I'm hearing, Ken, is, and correct me if I'm wrong, Tyler, what I'm hearing is your parents are spenders. It seems like they always have the money when it's abuse? Like what I'm hearing, Ken, is and correct me if I'm wrong Tyler, what I'm hearing is your parents are spenders. It seems like they always have the money when it's time for something for them, but when it's something for you it's a big deal. And it also sounds like they've hit you up for money. Maybe you had your job in high school and they're like, hey let me, can you spot me a 20? That kind of thing and they never paid you back. Is that the type of thing? Oh, but like recently they've been wanting me to get a truck and they want me to help pay a down payment. And I've been telling them that I don't want to do that. OK, then you don't have to do it.

You don't have to do it. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Your parents, your 22 now, your parents can make suggestions. They can even try to like strong arm you to do things their way. But you don't have to, my guy. Like you can say, I'm just not gonna do that. And that might be them being, pushing some boundaries, kind of being, you know, a little disrespectful,

but I wouldn't go the line of abuse, would you Ken? I don't know that I would go to that line. I would just- You're being very nice. I've heard enough. Listen, Tyler, there's two things, okay? Number one, I actually get your instinct. And I, your instinct to take that money

and put it on debt, great instinct. It's a good instinct, wrong move. Like right idea, wrong- I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm saying it was the right instinct, but you should have communicated with the parents because they're involved in this financially.

You can do both and also be frustrated with them for all the stuff you're frustrated with them about how they handle money. I see all of this together, but the reality is, is that you and Jade's right, you're 22 now, so now we begin the separation and now we create a little bit better boundaries. Yeah, you're right, you're right.

And she's right, you should have communicated much better on this deal. What's done is done. But let me be very clear, you need to stop saying they're financially abusing you. Because this is not anywhere close to it. I'm not knocking you. It's just disrespect. It's dramatic.

And by the way, words matter. So when we think that our mom and dad are abusing us and then we tell somebody And we tell two hosts on a big giant show Then we've now become We've come to believe something that's just simply not true and then that colors how you handle things They already handle money in a way that will continue to create tension for you going forward. That's clear. And by the way, good on you young man to go, I don't want to live that way. Yes. So I like the direction you're

headed. All that to say stop with this nonsense. Stop thinking it. Stop saying it. Stop feeling as though your parents are abusing you. They're not. And you just need to start to do things differently. You do. And honestly, how much are the student loans? So as of this moment, I checked last night, it was roughly about 40,000, but going into next year, I will be a junior. So it's gonna be tacked on roughly maybe about 80,000.

I transferred to the University of Tennessee. Here's what I need for you. Here's my, we took some time talking about 80,000. I transferred to the University of Tennessee. Here's what I need for you. Here's my, we took some time talking about mom and dad. I wanna talk about Tyler for a minute, because you were talking about mom and dad's bad money decisions, bad money habits. Tyler, you are following in those footsteps right now because you are taking on debt

and you're going to an out-of-state school and you're doing all this thing just racking up money. And I know that you're young, but you gotta stop doing that because you're gonna come out of this thing with $80,000 of debt. And what's gonna make it even more of a headache is you're gonna be tied to mama.

And so mama's gonna be breathing down your neck every month talking about where's the payment, you're messing up my credit, da da da da da, and that is gonna jack you and her. It's a great point. If I were in your shoes, I would be thinking long and hard about, do I need this degree, do I need to be out of state for this degree, can I do it in my home state where I have in-state tuition, and can I do it someplace where I'm paying, going at the speed of cash,

I'm getting a job, I'm doing work study, because $80,000 is a lot of money, especially when it's tied up with mom and dad. This is a great point, because they overextend themselves all the time. And that's why that tension around money is always there. They have a scarcity mindset. That's what you described. And so tied to that, it's gonna make your life miserable. So we prefer you not to have any more student loans,

but if you're gonna do student loans, do it without mom and dad attached. At the very least. At the very very least and do it in stays so that it at the very listen don't hear me say get student loans But do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, yes I understand what both y'all saying and I've done the math as well even when I Originally did transfer if I was looking back at other schools and some schools were the exact same price of the same major that I Wanted compared to here and what's the major they came to that sports management. What say you, Kay?

Well there's two ways to skin this one. You know there are a lot of people that would argue with me and debate me on you need a degree in sports management. And that's probably statistically true, not knowing that major super well. However, I know it's possible to get any of those jobs without a degree because I can point to example after example, you got to get in, you got to get in, you got to sweep floors, you got to be a janitor and then you work your way up to doing some type of analyst work. So it's possible to get into sports management without a degree. But I can tell you that my partner is right today. Nobody cares where you get your degree from. They sure don't. So listen, I know what UT costs for in-state students. I can't imagine what it costs for out-of-state students. Tyler. There's a better way. Tyler, no one has ever

asked me where I went to school. I'm not even allowed to tell anybody anymore. She made me stop talking about it. No one's ever even asked me what I got my degree in. Ever. What did you get your degree in? Music, commercial music. Well, that makes sense. Concentration on vocal performance.

And now you're a best-selling author. What a waste of time and money. All right, our question of the day is brought to you by WhyRefi. If you've got defaulted student loans that don't let you gain momentum, we get it, no judgment, but nobody is coming to bail you out. So take charge today at WhyRefi.com slash Ramsey. They offer refinancing to a low fixed rate loan built just for you. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. It may not be available in all states.

Alrighty, in honor of financial literacy month, as the cool kids say, fin lit. Today's question comes from Tyler at the McDonald County High School. He says, how much of my check should I set aside for spending, saving, and giving? I love this, because he already understands those are the three things that you can do with money, give, save, spend. And honestly, Tyler, you could do the

in equal portions at this point. Giving at, you know, obviously with giving, we, if you're a Christian person, we kind of have the 10% as the model. That's kind of like the tie thing. And that's a great place to start. If you wanted to give beyond that though, and if you, or if you saw other things that you wanted to do, you could. Saving, that's also very important. Spending. So at this point, I'm like, the ratios mean less to me. It's more about the fact that you're doing all three, because truly like certain seasons

might call for certain things. Like around Christmas time, you might go, yeah, I'm gonna split this evenly because I wanna give to my church and I wanna buy gifts for my mom and brothers and sisters and all of that. So yeah, that's looking like a 30% deal. And then I'm saving the other 30

and spending the other bit 33, technically. But I think it's one of those things as long as you're doing all three, and you're shifting those ratios as the year goes on to make sense. Obviously, if you were saving up to buy a new car, you might say okay, for this season, I'm you know, I'm giving 10% and I'm saving 50 and the other 40 is going for spending right. So you have the ability to do that based on what's going on,

based on if you have any debt or not, based on if you're trying to save up for something specific. So that's kinda how that works. What say you can come in? I totally agree. I think when you're a teenager, you're probably gonna go heavier on saving.

So an adult may be 80, 10, 10, meaning 80 spend, cause they've got a budget, they've got a household, they gotta take care of. 10% tithe, that would be under giving, if you will, to the church. 10% savings, I'm just making that up,

I'm not saying that's our rule. But if you look at the 80, 10, 10, 80, so for you, as a young person, you don't have a bunch of expenses, so maybe you're only spending 20% and then the rest is broken down out of the rest of the 80, as Jade was saying. I loved your advice on the seasonal.

And by the way, that teaches a young person how to actually budget by adjusting the priorities. Really good stuff. By the way, if you would like to enter our teacher appreciation giveaway, we want to love on teachers. We love doing this every year at Ramsey Solutions. Go to ramsysolutions.com slash teacher,

ramsysolutions.com slash teacher. ramsysolutions.com slash teacher, and I would guess that you could nominate another teacher as well, is that true? That feels right, that seems correct. Yeah, so what a fun way to nominate some teachers. ramsysolutions.com slash teacher, it's always big fun. Teacher. There you go.

There are things. Yeah, I'm gonna let that go. Just keep on going there. George Michael. Oh, very good. I was getting ready to ask because I'm not good with the lyrics. Like the show, was there a game show about the lyrics?

Yeah, don't forget the lyrics. Wayne Brady, come on. Shout out to Wayne Brady. If you would have put me on that show, I'd be the worst all time contestant. Oh, that is the one game show. I applied to be on that game show. Oh, well, America wants to see that.

Yeah, well, they didn't take me. Me, on the other hand, wouldn't get one thing right. It'd be the most embarrassing thing ever. Well, there was, don't forget the lyrics with Wayne Brady back in the day, and then there was a new one with Jamie Foxx and his daughter, remember? Oh, yeah. I can't remember

what that one was called. There you go. James would be very good at the lyrics. He's a music connoisseur. Don't let James fool you. Yeah. Koda Glow, in stores today. Is that his album?

Yes. Are we promoting his album? I just did. Well, I'd like to do more. What is it called? Koda Glow. Code? Koda.

Koda. Like when you go back and play it again? Like the Koda Return. CODA, correct. Koda Glow, wherever you can buy music. Yeah, get it. It's, I'm not supposed to be doing this. It's very good. James knows, people send me stuff all the time

and I'm like, yeah, that's good. Like, but this is really good. Is it an instrumental? No, it's him doing all his things. James. Playing everything. This is very exciting. I apologize for not knowing about this, and I will download it today.

I'll introduce you to the break. Oh, very exciting. All right, let's go to Kim in Detroit. Kim, how can we help? Hi, how are you? Well, we're having a blast. What are you doing? I think I have a good problem to present to you.

It's about time somebody gave us a good problem. Yes. A lot of bad problems today. What's going on about time somebody gave us a good problem. Yes. A lot of bad problems today. What's going on, Kim? Tell us this good problem. Yeah, so I'm in baby step six. And I just got a substantial inheritance. And I just want to be intentional with it.

So just looking for some advice. What is the amount? 200,000. OK. All right. And what was leading to this inheritance? What happened? Sadly, my grandma passed away just before Christmas.

Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't want to move past that. So sorry about that. What a tremendous legacy for grandma, huh? Absolutely. And it's put a lot of pressure on me to do the same for my kids and their future kids. Okay. All right. so you called us so what I'd love to do is between Jade and I will try to help you spend that 200,000 how's that sound?

Sounds great. All right, so baby step six. All right. So what do we got left in baby step six? So we we just moved into our house like four years ago, so we still have the leftover of the mortgage, which is 190,000. Oh, goodness. Okay. But let me say, we don't have the full 200,000 to our disposal right now, because the first thing I did was I paid off our HELOC and I paid off a window installment loan. So what's left? So that took away six, yeah.

So what's left from there is 136,000, but then I immediately took 40,000 of that and put it in a high yield savings for our emergency fund. Okay, okay, so now you're at- So we have about 90, 95. Okay, so you got 95 to spend. Hey, you did the right thing. We would have, because we would have told you that.

We would have said, hey, let's walk through the baby steps with this. If you're in debt, let's pay off the debt. Let's build up the three to six months of emergency fund. And you did that. Is there any other debt other than the mortgage we should know about that's still there? Okay.

So all those moves got you to baby step six. Exactly. Great, great. Well, I know what Jade's going to say, so I don't need to say it. I mean, technically at this point, unless there's something else that you really believe that your grandma would love to see you do, if you always talked about going to Ireland and you want to honor that and go to Ireland, you know what I'm saying? That sort of thing. Then yeah, the other reasonable thing to do would be to put

this towards the mortgage. And hear me say, I am not saying that you have to put every dime of this towards the mortgage. I do think that there's something about an inheritance like this that you should be able to enjoy. Plus, to your point, now you're in baby step six. So it's not like this, all of my money must go to my mortgage, it's about intentionality. And if you take this 95 and say, I'm going to be intentional

in some of this, a portion of this will go intentional and some of this a portion of this will go towards The mortgage maybe a portion of this will go towards I don't know that thing that grandma always wanted to see me do you you have that ability I'm not gonna be like super You know strict robotic with how old are the kids? There's three and five actually ones in the backseat so apologies if there's background noise. Oh we love background noise, no problem there at all. So we have a three-year-old and a five-year-old. Yep.

Yeah. And if you're going to ask about a 529 we're already contributing to that. She said I beat you to it, Kim. Kim, you literally took the words right out of my mouth. These people in the booth have never seen me speechless before, so way to go. So you're already doing that. Yeah, I'm with you, Jay. That was all I had is a couple of follow-up questions on what are some options to do with

the 95 because you're so close on the house. But yeah, I just think do what's right, what you think is right with the 95. What do you think is right? Well, my gut was to pay off the mortgage or as much as we can with what's left over. But in five years, roughly, I think we're going to need two new vehicles. So I don't want to take out a loan to pay for those. So I almost want to keep some of it reserved for that. What's your income? Because our mortgage is only a 3% interest. Income is about $140,000

with me and my husband together. I mean, I'm confident that you could probably save over five years to pay for those vehicles in cash, but whatever you run the numbers out and do what you think is best on that. But yeah. Yeah. Okay. Not a bad idea. Congratulations. Yeah. Congratulations. You're honoring your grandmother and I think that's really, really, really sweet and fun to see the discipline. Last little thing I'd say, by leaving that much cash sitting around, there's a chance for you to get tempted to use it for something else.

Yeah, the Caribbean always calls. Especially me. Especially me. If you are thinking about buying or selling a home, know that you don't want to do that on your own. You need an expert in your corner fighting for you. The Ramsey Trusted program is the only way to find a top agent that you can trust. It'll help you make this process a blessing, not a burden. Find a local Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Pro for free at ramsysolutions.com slash agent. That's ramsysolutions.com slash agent or

click the link in the description on our show notes if you are listening or watching via YouTube or podcast. Nolens is the way I used to say it, New Orleans for the rest of you is where we go. Jeremy is there. Jeremy, how can we help? Hey Ken, hey Jade. I have a not fun problem. I sold a vintage guitar and found out 11 days later that the credit card that was used to buy it was stolen. So what's the rest of the story? So, it's an expensive guitar. It's a $10,000 guitar. It was purchased overnight, which is not normal.

So I'm a YouTuber. I buy and sell guitars and I document the process. So this guitar sold and then I called the customer first thing in the morning and we talked for about 20 minutes. So this person sold and then I called the customer first thing in the morning and we talked for about 20 minutes. So this person knew vintage guitars. They said, well, you know, it's going for my son. And so I felt okay that this was a real person and a real transaction. I checked with my credit card processor.

They said, this is legit. The money's on your way to the bank. So I held the guitar for a day until the transfer happened to my bank. Okay. And then I felt comfortable to ship the guitar. So I shipped the guitar. But the first red flag was that the customer never told me

that the guitar got to them okay. And then, so forward, that was on a Thursday, on the Sunday morning, I got an email from the credit card company saying hey, this is potentially suspicious and then I heard nothing else until 11 days later When they said this was a stolen card and we're gonna take the money back tomorrow morning, oh man, so I So yes, so I called the person that bought the guitar. They've never answered. They never responded.

Of course they haven't. So you got gone. Well, so I was able to stop the money from leaving. So my bank was able to put a stop payment on the ACH coming back out. So I have the money, but I don't have the guitar. And now the credit card company has said that I have 90 days to pay them back. Yeah. Which I think that's unreasonable. Ooh, interesting. This is an interesting quandary because you're not the one that committed

the fraud and yet you're the one kind of paying the price for it. It right. Um, here, here's where I'm thinking. Like on the one hand, if I were the person with the stolen credit card and somebody used my credit card to buy a $10,000 card, I'd be like, I want my $10,000 back. And I would dispute it and I'd get my $10,000 back. Um, right. So they, they have gotten their money back. They've got their money back, but you've lost your person who's card. I found the car. I found the person who had the card on LinkedIn and they confirmed that they got the money

back. But they also said they reported it the same day. And you've reported all your stuff too. Right. Multiple times and I've lost the disputes. It's been two different rounds of disputes and they say that I did not pass and I have to give the money back. Wow.

This is, I'm sitting here just really processing this. Me too. Because it feels like there's some evidence here that the credit card company didn't do their job. They were alerted that this was stolen or that it was misplaced or whatever and they still allowed the transaction to go through. Right. And because of their failure, I'm just talking this out here,

because of their failure and their process, you got ripped off. Right. And you can prove this? I can. You can get it. I have all the receipts for those things. The communication with them, the screenshots of the card being the process or that the money coming to my bank. Yeah, but what about can you get an affidavit or a signed statement from the person on LinkedIn that said we actually reported

it, we can prove it, blah blah blah blah blah on the day they called? Yeah, I bet I could. He's been very responsive. I would go that route and you know what I would do is after I got that I'd go back to the credit card company and go okay let me let me walk you through where my head's at. I don't think that you should be allowed to ask me for the $10,000 or demand it or take it here's why. You all screwed up. I have a signed statement from this person who said, and they can prove it, they got a cell phone call at such and such a date, at such and such a time,

to you all placing a hold or a cancel on the card. You know, I mean, you just walk through this and go, look, I mean, I'm not gonna go down without a fight. Yeah, the merchant is liable for this. Yeah, and I'm not gonna go down without fight. Yeah the merchant is liable for this. Yeah and I'm not gonna be out ten grand because I'm out ten grand of this guitar. The guitar's gone. Not my problem. It's your problem on the ten grand. The ten grand is mine. I would really fight this. I would too. You can report it to the FTC. You might just consult with a lawyer and do one of those free consultations just to see.

Jade, I'm gonna make a statement. You tell me if you think I'm wrong because sometimes I can be Cranky Ken and James and my wife Stacey always call this out. So I feel like I'm starting to get it. I like Cranky Ken. Let's get into it. James, this is Cranky Ken on his behalf.

Cranky Ken believes that $10,000 is a drop in the bucket for a big old credit card company. And if I become a real thorn in their side and promise to fight them to the bitter end and I become more of a nuisance than they wanna deal with, I think they walk away. But I think you gotta send a message, I'm not paying you a nickel, here's why,

I got all the proof. If we gotta go to court, we'll go to court, but you're going to pay my, you're going to pay my attorney's fees. I just think that they will go away. I really do. If you've got all this proof and you could show it to them and anybody with a brain can see this trail. That's what I would do.

Jay, is that too? Yeah, I'm not sending the money back. I'm not sending it back to them. I believe with what Ken said. I think if you put your foot down and stand on business as Ken would say. Well there's my, where's my hat? I didn't bring my hat to the studio today. I got a standing on business hat and if there's ever time to wear it this is the call. Yeah. I just don't, I don't think they're gonna want to mess with this and spend

all this time and money on 10 grand. They just write it off. Jeremy, what kind of guitar was it? Oh, do you hear James? That's a good question. It was a 1969 Martin D28. That was the last year of a Brazilian rosewood back inside acoustic guitar. That's brutal, man. Look at James.

Yeah. He can tell. He shed a tear. I saw it. He's getting a little dusty-eyed in there. That's a nice guitar. Those Nashville boys. No guitars. They do. They do. Well listen, hold the line on this one, man. I like our strategy here. I think this is a game of poker. Yeah. And I'd push all my chips in the middle because you got the cards. Yep. I really appreciate it. And thankfully having done the Ramsey program for 10 years and being

completely out of debt and you know, it makes it to where this is a lot of money but it does not break us. Way to go Jeremy. Gosh that's been the peace through all of this. Good for you. That's great. That's fabulous. Thank you all. Sorry you got got but hold your ground. You learned something though right? Did you learn something? Absolutely. Yeah. Very interesting. All right, my man. Well, you get the last word. What is your favorite guitar that you don't own but you'd love to have?

Oh, I would love to have a pre-war Martin OM 42. Okay. It's a very pearly, very pretty guitar. Who played it? Eric Clapton has played one. I mean, that's the holy grail. Those are $100,000, $125,000. Wow.

Yeah, James has one right beside his desk. So that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, he. All right, I like that. I like to ask people those kinds of questions because you knew he had an answer. Oh yeah, and somebody listening, that was like gold for them.

For me, I was like, what was it? I didn't even know what it is. He said pre-war and the rest of it was Charlie Brown's teacher for me. I didn't hear anything. I understood Eric Clapton. But I did appreciate that he said it was pearly. Yeah, I did.

I like a good aesthetic description. A pearlescence, yeah, that's great. Yeah, a little pearly. All right, James, what's your go-to guitar? Money's no object. What guitar are you getting? I'm more of an electric player, but acoustic wise, a Gibson J45 is what I would get.

Who plays that? Oh, a bunch of like, it's kind of a folk guitar. A lot of bluegrass players and stuff like that. What's a mint condition, one of those gonna set you back? Oh, I have no idea. They use the vintage guitar market. You can spend 20,000. I mean, they're crazy.

Wow. You learn something new every day, Ken. I think you and I need to start a YouTube channel selling guitars. I don't know anything about them, but I can sell them. Okay, well, I'll get got, because I don't know. This is The Ramsey Show. This is The Ramsey Show.

This is The Ramsey Show, where America comes to have a conversation about their life, their money, their money, their relationships, and their profession. 888-825-5225 is the phone number. 888-825-5225. Alongside the fabulous Jade Warshaw, I'm Ken Coleman. Let's go to Brett in San Antonio.

Brett, how can we help? Hey, so I am looking to do start doing some travel work because I can make significantly more money on the road and in order to do that I'm looking at buying a fifth wheel RV in a truck and selling my house. The only thing that makes me kind of nervous is selling a appreciating asset my home and buying two very expensive depreciating assets You said it you said it brother. So there better be a great Reason why we would take this job and go on the road How much more money is it gonna make us and then the second part of that question is

Does it set us up for a much better future? To where this is a very calculated decision to buy these two depreciating assets? So answer those two questions. Question one, how much more money? So about $70 more an hour. 70? Yeah, I could only make about 180 an hour, but the job that I'm looking at is somewhere right now around 250 to 270 an hour. Fantastic. What do you do?

I'm a CRNA, nursing anesthesia. Wow. Wow. Really? Wow, that is great money. So let me ask a really dumb question. Why do we need a giant truck and an RV to pull this job off? So, you know, basically I would be living in it. Now you can do these travel jobs and they'll put

you up in like a hotel or like an Airbnb or something like that while you're taking these contracts. But I'd rather just have my own personal kind of space. And then I have this big giant house that I'm just living in by myself now my kids are out of the house. It's just me and the single guy and I've got like this you know 3,500 square foot house that I'm living in by myself. What's it worth to sell? Probably like $550-ish I'd say.

What do you owe? Like $450. Okay so you'd get you wouldn't even clear, I mean, maybe clear 60 or 70. How much would it cost for the truck in the RV or whatever? Yeah. So the truck I'm looking at is about a hundred grand and the RV is about a hundred grand as well. Would you be going into debt to pay for it?

Uh, probably about half. Yeah. I'd probably put down about half on each, but I could have, I mean, well, the thing is the notes on both of those would be about half of my mortgage is yeah, but yes, but they're depreciating That's the difference don't do this You could if you told me if you if you told me hey, I can pay cash for this I'm gonna do this for the next 15 years. That's my game plan. I Could be like I could be down for the adventure, right?

I don't like the, I would say 100% no to the idea of going into debt for these things that are gonna go down in value, but it could be something that you say, hey, I'm gonna sell my house and I'm gonna come up with another shorter term solution because if I heard you right, you're gonna be making 10,000 bucks a week?

Oh yeah, easy, I make that now. I'll be making more than that. Right. So how quickly could you save up to buy something is what I'm saying. Why are we talking about debt when your income is wonderful? Yeah. So I mean, the biggest thing is just like, I'm kind of ready to go now. I don't have this like ready to go, I guess. All right, I get it.

Let me jump in with an idea. The difference in pay is going to be, you know, once I start, like I kind of have to start taking these jobs in order to... Wait, Ken, before you do a next idea, you said you've been making that, right? Well, I just got another army. So just for about a year and a half ago. So what have you done with all that money?

Most of it has gone to just retirement, taxes, paying off debt. I'm currently debt free free except for my mortgage. Got you. I pay off my truck and student loans and all that stuff. Great. So we're not going back into debt. Okay, great. Yeah, I just, I want to scratch the itch that you have, but not go into debt because you

just don't need to with the kind of money you have. So all I'm trying to do is ideate on something very practical. And here's what I'm thinking. Why don't you just Airbnb it? You have your own space. practical and here's what I'm thinking. Why don't you just Airbnb it, you have your own space. I know it's not yours but it's also not an RV and all that kind of stuff. Why don't you Airbnb it in all these places until you save up enough money to then get a sweet RV that is your deal and and you know drive that.

Why have a truck plus pulling something along? If we're going to do that, go get a tiny home and drag that behind a mortgage. No, you'd sell the house. We told you to sell. You'd take the 70,000. So that'd be enough to do part of this, whether it's the RV or that. Cause what did you tell me again, what you're going to spend on the RV? It's probably going to be around a hundred. And oh, and a hundred on the truck. Okay, so with the 70, you're 75% there. How long are you on location or in a place? They vary. I mean, they can go anywhere from permanent, but my plan is to move to a place, work there

for three to four months, and then kind of move on to the next spot. Okay. Bro, listen, to each his own, I just hate the RV idea. But that's me. For all of the reasons that you identified. Plus the fact is, you're not really, you know, you're coming back to the same thing. You're dragging that thing around. You're driving it all over creation. Why not just Airbnb and stay at these really cool places? You're making so much money man what's the time frame on this because we can run these numbers out what's the

time frame I'm not particularly on a time frame I guess but I'm saying if you said that there was one you could say hey I'm gonna do this for five years yeah how long are you gonna do this my plan is to do it for at least five to six years. When I ran the numbers, I could pay the truck and the trailer off. And then basically, then all the money that they would be paying me to spend in Airbnb or a hotel

would just be more money in my pocket. But what I'm saying is, I'm saying is, look at it like this. Let's say you take a span of time and you say, okay, it's costing me $200, dollars to buy this RV and trailer How many Airbnb cool apartments could I stay in? How long would it take me to spend two hundred thousand dollars is basically what I'm saying. It take you a long time And good point. They're saying they're paying you and they're exactly those places

You can turn that money into so much more. I gotta ask. I cannot help myself. Are you in a relationship or plan to be in one? So I'm recently divorced, but now I have a girlfriend who's in trouble with me. And she's gonna be fine going from town to town living in the RV? That's the plan. I didn't ask you that. I said, is she fine with it? I think so. Is she contributing to it? The girlfriend? Or she's just... No, no she's gonna be along for the ride. That's a whole other discussion. Say it. Yeah. She needs to contribute. She can't just be a stowaway. She's not your wife. No. She needs to be paying something. And if I were her, yeah, I wouldn't want to be paying rent on an RV, but I would be willing

to chip in on a pretty nice Airbnb. Yeah. Here's the deal. Just the thought. You're going to do what you're going to do, and I think you're an RV kind of guy. Is that right? Have I read you correctly? Not really.

I guess I'm just more of a like, I just want to travel. I've never really seen a lot of the country. Yeah. So you're not an RV enthusiast? Never lived in an RV. Oh, OK. OK. So I'm coming fast. All right. Listen to me, Brett. Dude, you're going to end up hating that.

We don't know that. No, no, I'm telling. No, no. And let you know, if you're not an RV guy, he thinks this is cool until he's got to deal with that thing all the time. You got to deal with the rag and listen, suck out those pipes, Airbnb, Verbo, whatever. Go check these places out. Your girlfriend's going to love it. Jade's right.

She needs to be contributing. She's got a sweetheart deal right now. But man, you're going to enjoy living instead of dealing with that RV and more money in your pocket. Congrats on the job. Oh, congrats. Boy, that's big money. Anesthesia.

I know. Wow. He's a smart guy. Is that right? Wow. I'm going to sleep. The Ramsey Network app is the only place to get the full episodes of The Ramsey Show. Download it for free using the link in the show notes.

Also, our Every Dollar team is offering multiple free trainings for you this month. Join live to learn how to break the paycheck to paycheck cycle in just 90 days. You're going to get a step-by-step walk through the Every Dollar Budget app. Spots are limited. We've already had over 160,000 people join these. Sign up for free at everydollar.com slash webinar. Everydollar.com slash webinar. All right, Regina's up in Las Vegas. Regina, how can we help today? Hi, good afternoon, Jayden. Good afternoon, Ken. Thanks for answering my call. Sure. I am two-pronged, so I'm so

glad it's both of you guys today. So number one, my job ended on the 31st and I'm currently looking for a new job, but my passion is to become a CPA and I'm thinking about going back to school. The second part is I'm currently in litigation with my ex-husband. It's been a 15-year issue and it's going to continue for another year. Being that I'm unemployed, I only have $7,000 in a 401k. That was my emergency fund since now. I've had to pay the attorney and I've had to figure out how to survive after this job ending and I'm really stuck. I don't know which way I should turn.

What's the litigation advice and I need financial advice. Sure. Yeah. We're going to try to help out. What's the litigation over? Every two years, my ex husband takes me back to court in order to get additional child support because he refuses to be an adult and work for a living. So he's been a student for 27 years and he only makes $10.87 an hour. And how much money does he want from you? Because you don't have any.

Well, they just upped it. They want $585 a month now. Okay. How many kids? One. Was this prior to you losing the job? It just literally happened today. I literally got out of court and I said, I'm calling.

I am just blown away. So they did this despite the fact that the judge knows you've lost your job? Correct. How often do you see the child? I have not seen my daughter in two years. I've been, it's been parental alienation. That's, that's been half this litigation and it's been financial. Can I ask a question?

Yes, ma'am. And I don't mean any harm. I'm just, I'm listening and I'm hearing. Why are we fighting? Why are you spending hundreds and thousands or hundreds and tens of thousands of dollars fighting, paying $585 a month for a child? That's a child that you'd easily spend that on

to take care of. Or unless there's more to it that I don't know. That is correct. It's actually multifaceted. He wants full control over her mental health, full control over her, and he wants to take her away from me 100%. Got it. So it's not about the money is what you're telling me.

It's about the other things. Well, it's about both. It would basically up his ante with the child support because he would own her. And why, why, is there any, this is not part of the question. I'm just wondering, is this a battle you can win? Is there a reason that he's fighting you like this to take this daughter away? I wanna know, is this a battle you can win

or are you putting, showing money into this where it's like, hey, it's not happening? I'll be quite honest, it's been 15 years of ongoing litigation back and forth. It has literally bankrupt me as of six years ago. And honestly, all I want is to spend time with my daughter and I don't want to lose her. So as we all know, as parents, we fight to the bitter end to make it happen and to make things work. Um, it's, it's just what it is. And I don't know how else to make it happen and to make things work. It's just what it is and

I don't know how else to do it. How old is she? How old is that? She's 15. And do you have a relationship with her? I do. It's very strange because he controls her life and her phone and her communication with me and we're currently going to therapy together to work things out and to be more in communication. Things are going very well. But it's just a process and it's very costly. I'm paying for all that too.

What will it cost you this year to do the last year of litigation? Right now the court has ordered that I pay for all the, um, the therapy and that's about 800 a month. Uh, and then then just ongoing court, you know, court costs and then ongoing attorney costs and what's paying him another amount. I really don't have a ticket for you. Okay. I want you to figure that out. That's part of your homework because having real, a real grasp on exactly what's going

on I find can find can be really helpful when you're dealing with something like this. When everything's kind of floating in the air and you can't put a thumb on it, that makes it even more stressful. So by you knowing this year, it's going to cost me $7,000 to deal with all of this, that is a good number to know because it's a cost to you.

And then that will also help inform moving forward with the career side of things. Here's what I can do, here's what I can't do, here's what I need to earn. What were you making in your previous job? 52. Doing what? Quality engineer and I was not going to be compliant so you're an engineer by trade uh... i'm actually quite tricky

i think actually a food and beverage director entertainment manager but i fell into the industry by accident and i love it really and what's the latter look like give me two or three runs up the ladder financially what are you doing? Honestly, I was looking at the CPA role of life because honestly I fell into the compliance side as well for a long time and it just really fit for me. And being a CPA, honestly, it was the next step up the ladder for me so I could really get into that compliance CPA level.

Okay, so there's a path, there's a greater path through CPA, even higher, correct? Absolutely. I'd like to work for FINRA. Making how much? What do you see as a realistic projection if you had your CPA license today or training? What could you, what's the future look like? 200 plus a year. Okay.

How quickly can we get a raise from 50? I don't have, like I said, it's not a raise. I'd have to go back to school to apply to CPA. No, no. I know that. Sorry, that's my fault for not clarifying my question. So that's one path is CPA training. What do we have to do right now? How can we, what can we do now that would get us a bump above the 50-52? New job, no training, just- That's been my challenge because unfortunately, I worked remote for the last five years, so all the people that I had connections with, like you say, go out and work your connections,

every single one of them will let go, all 600. So I'm really kind of at a loss there, and I don't have that interaction in an office where I've missed all those connections again. But you do have some type of a base near Vegas, correct? I do, but not with this. I work in New York. I work in New York offices. No, no, I get it. My point is we got to work with what we have. And what we have is we have a base of people in Vegas and we got to start shaking the fruit trees in Vegas to see what falls off the tree in the line of work that you have been in, even if it's food and beverage.

Like if I got you a food and beverage gig making 85 right now in Vegas, you're taking it. I actually applied for a couple and I got two interviews. The first interview went famously and then they told me I was overqualified and the second interview did not go famously but they told told me that- That's one. But Regina, Regina, all you're doing is throwing at me what happened and you're just, it's a defeatist attitude. I get it, you're going through a lot.

What I'm saying is, the fact is, is if I got you that job and I handed you a job for 85,000 in the food and beverage world, you'd take it without even thinking twice. True or false? Correct. Right. My point is, I'm pushing you

towards we don't have to stay in the same industry that we're in and that we really enjoy. What we need is a bump in income so that we can weather this last legal storm to Jade's advice. I'm picking up where Jade left off because her homework assignment is absolutely right. The person who aims for nothing hits it every time. We gotta know what the target is, and then we go find a way, and you will find a way, to get a better paying job.

Then, what we do is we're gonna get a better job, and we're gonna float the cash to get through this legal battle. We get on the other side of that, and we start cash flowing the CPA training, and we just stair step this thing. I don't have a quick easy solution or a platitude. This is going to be as hard as building a bridge with your bare hands but you can do it and you must do it.

There is no retreat. You gotta do this. You gotta fight with everything you have. And that means I gotta get a better income and fast. Maybe two, three jobs. Whatever it takes with everything you have. And that means I gotta get a better income and fast. Maybe two, three jobs, whatever it takes to stay above water and then we dig out. All right, let's go to Zach in Portland, Oregon. Zach, how can we help? Hi, thank you so much for taking my call.

So I am 24 years old and I'm getting married at the end of next month. Congrats. Thank you. And so kind of where I'm at is I bought my house about a year ago or so and have a high mortgage, about $3,600 a month. And I haven't combined any of our expenses or anything like that or any income, but I'm looking at both of ours for when we combine. And so I can pay off, like I have free cash at the end of every month, it's around $1,200 for me. And then for her, it's around 19.

So combined it'd be about 3000 and my, our debt combined would be 46,000 and that comprises of two car loans, one credit card, and then a family loan. And so I'm trying to figure out the best way to basically set myself up. You know, I have the mortgage which is $3,600 but we don't have any kids, no kids or anything like that and so it's a three-bedroom and I probably jumped the gun on that one a little bit. How long ago did you buy that house? About a year ago.

And help me understand again, okay, the mortgage is $3,600 and what's your income monthly? My take home is $6,900. Okay. And hers is $2,800, so combined $9,700 take home. Okay. And you're thinking about selling this house you bought, right? Is that where this is going? Yeah, it kind of just, I can get an apartment, and I've talked to her and she's okay with it too, for like $1,600.

So I'd save like $2,000 a month by renting. I'd give it, and,000 a month by renting. I give it, it is renting, but. Yeah, no, I'm tracking with you. I could pay it off much faster. And then also I'd really like to retire early. And I've, you know, I've maxed out my IRA for the last four years.

She has the last two. We're going in a lot of directions. I feel like we need to focus on one key thought. I'm gonna ask you a question on his behalf. I'm gonna be his lawyer. Okay, be my, yeah. Okay, this is just fun. Is his mortgage payment too much of their take-home pay?

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yes, you are correct, Alex, yes. There you go. Yeah, so the problem here is you're over by about 1,000, 1,200 bucks on this mortgage. And you're gonna, with your future wife combined into that, and you're gonna, so right now you're really feeling it, but even once she steps into the picture and is,

you know, her income is part of it, you're still gonna be feeling it. So for that reason, yeah, Ken, we're getting out of it. So then his next issue is they've got about $40,000 in debt combined. Is that right, Zach, Did I hear that right? That is correct. All right. And he's run their budget and he thinks they're going to have, with the mortgage payment, about $3,100 of surplus after paying all the bills. Did I

also get that right, Zach? Correct. Where's the $3,100 of surplus coming from? Well, she really doesn't have any expenses. So she still lives at her house. And so all she really has is car payment and her insurance. Okay. And then you've got your car payment and insurance and then you guys have to eat and then you've got gas. Have you put all of this in an every dollar budget?

Yep. Yeah, I did the every dollar for both of us individually. Okay. Um, and that's kind of why I came to, I mean, I've been doing a lot of projects around the house. So truly in the past, it hasn't been that number. Um, but I knowing how much I spent in tracking on expenses that are not on home projects, that's how much it is extra. All right.

But let's say you guys pay off the $40,000 in debt within a year, which you should easily be able to do. Okay? Jade, how do you feel about that mortgage payment if they knock that debt out in 12 months or less? How much is your debt costing you every month? payment if they knock that debt out in 12 months or less. How much is your debt costing you every month? What are the payments?

So for mine or both of ours? Both of you together, because you're about ready to get married. Yep. Yep. So combined for debt is going to be $3,600 for the mortgage, $530 for the car. So $4,100 for me. Okay. And for her it's $360. Okay. And what about the family loan? The family loan is they're not asking for anything. Yeah, but you owe it. You owe it. What is it? So it's $7,000.

Okay. So my thought is what I'm trying to understand is what you'll actually get back in your pocket. It's gonna be around a thousand bucks back in your pocket. Here's where I, here's the reason that I think about this. You'll probably be fine if you see your income trending up as you're also paying off this debt. You can maybe close that spread, but here's what I find all the time.

Somebody will buy a house that's overextending them and they think, hey, yeah, we'll be able to be fine, just fine, and then the wife gets pregnant. And then the wife stops working, and then the wife has a beautiful little baby and decides, oh, I can't go back to work, this baby is so cute. And then the next thing you know, it's like,

oh, well, if we put the baby in daycare, it's's gonna stretch us too much and then should I go back to work and this is where the people call in and they're like Jade how do we make it work so that's all I want to put that bug in your ear so you would you sell the house it's a thousand dollar spread you're not it's not tight for you right now no I would just put that in your ear. I'm not telling you to do that today, but I'm just putting that in your ear that if this starts to feel tight,

this is the reason why. So then if it starts to feel tight, you would sell the house. I would. I agree. They're a young married couple. They don't need that big old house right now. Yeah.

Which way were you leaning, Zach? Cause that's how you set the question up at the start of the call. If you didn't have us to bounce this off of and you had to make a call today, which way were you leaning, Zach? Because that's how you set the question up at the start of the call. If you didn't have us to bounce this off of and you had to make a call today, which way were you leaning? I actually don't know. I think I'd probably be leaning more towards stay, and that's where she's leaning. Of course. What newlywed doesn't want a three-bedroom house? I mean, she's no idiot. Yeah. I love gonna put the question cash and really put that towards my retirement. Alright, there's the answer by

the way. Which way were you leaning? That's where you were leaning. You personally. You were leaning towards selling the house. Which again, I am pro that. Nothing's on fire just yet, but just know I mean you're at like 33-35% of your take home. Yeah. So closing that gap, like you would have to work hard to close that gap, paying off the debt will help a little bit, but. I try to ask the question, Zach, I want you to admit it. Which way were you leaning before you called us?

I was leaning towards selling, and that's the reason I brought it up at all. Because think about it like this too, Zach. Once you pay off the debt, you have an emergency fund. So you've got 4,100 extra dollars of leeway, basically, right? Because you're no longer paying the debt, plus you get the payments back.

Now we start investing 15%. So suddenly, it's 15% of our take home. So suddenly that 4,100 goes down significantly. Now we're in baby steps four, five, and six. You also need to put some away for kids college. So that's going to dwindle it down and we're going to be paying extra on the mortgage. So these are the things I want you to think through as you have this house. How much actual cushion do you want in your monthly budget? That's a lot. And you want a lot. That's why we say 25% of your take home because it allows you to do all of those things and truly still live

The you know a comfortable life you guys got great income Zack I'm gonna tell me to play big brother. I'm probably I'm probably old enough to be your dad to be honest So I'll stick with the dad card listen in that jean jacket. Let's go with big brother. Come on. Let's go or cool dad Maybe the cool dad in the denim Thank you. Here's what I would do if I were you as I would play the dad card and I'd go, son, being married is its own deal. You got to figure that out. You guys have two great incomes, double income, no kids. I would sell the house, take the proceeds of that, get ahead, get the emergency fund,

pay off all the debt, and let's just go find a cute place to rent and love being double income no kids, and let's get the investing going towards our future day one. That's the play because I know your peace of mind is attached to this. I can feel it on you. Marriage is hard enough in and of itself to bring two completely different people and different lifestyles together, I would go peace of mind all day long. And that's what I would do.

I'd sell the house if I were you. I think your instincts were right. I think your fiance will get over it. And then you guys get your own house down the road. And by the way, that's not a long road making this move. So that's what I'm going with, Jade. I second that emotion. All right, very nice.

Our scripture of the day comes from Romans 5, 4 through 5. Patience produces character and character produces hope and this hope will never disappoint us. Our quote of the day from Brian Tracy, character is the ability to follow through on a resolution long after the emotion with which it was made has passed. That is so good. Yeah, that's uh, there's a depth bomb right there. Yeah, it's like when you go to like a rally or like you go to a conference and you're all hyped up on, yes, I can go run through a wall. And then once it wears off, are you still going to do the thing? So good. Reminds me. I went to a Tony Robbins event and uh,

he challenged everybody one night at the end of a long day to walk on coals, the whole fire walking thing. Yes, did you do it? No. Oh. I love disappointing you right there. That was a big disappointment. You know why? Why not?

You were scared to burn those baby softs? I will tell you, I got some tender feet, I'm gonna lie to you. They are tender. But that was part of it to like, I don't know that like I'm hyped up enough to pull this off and not get burned. Yeah, yes.

And I also wanna admit that I'm bit accident prone. And I'm your friend who gets a hot coal between one of his toes. Oh heck yeah. And I'm in the ER. And we're like, what happened to Ken? I thought he was at. I thought he was all brave and everything.

Wow. And so I started calculating all this. And then I was like, but here's why I'm bringing this up in the mindset to do it. I also was like, this is a hype thing that I don't think has anything to do. I'm not knocking to I love Tony Robbins. Sure. But I thought this is a thing that just gonna get me hyped up. And I don't think it's gonna make me be different. And so I was like, I'm not doing it. Well, let's liken this to money because this is great. I mean, how many people hear the baby steps? Maybe you were scrolling Instagram

and you saw Dave talk about it, or you saw me or Ken, and you were like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And then you read Total Money Makeover, you messed around and watched some videos on YouTube, saw the debt-free screams, got all hyped up. And then when it came time to actually put your money where your mouth is or put your feet where the coals are you were like? Ah wait a minute. Yeah, and you start talking yourself out of it I did cuz you were thinking what if I get a coal stuck between my toes meeting what if I have to sell my car? Coal stuck between the toes what if I you're preaching right now saying no I see it so don't talk yourself

I see it So don't talk yourself out of it. I see it. I receive it You know fantastic that didn't quite go the way I wanted to go. She turned that right back on me I have to make it about money. Well, I do think I got afraid of the coals There's no question about it. But that's a legitimate fear by the way, you know, I mean I can't even walk on pavement I like an excuse to me Ken. You try to watch me walk across the parking lot without shoes Yeah, just it's not good for me. across the parking lot without shoes. On some hot sand. Yeah, it's just not good for me. Yeah, it's a metaphor.

It's a metaphor. Jack is up in San Diego. Jack, how can we help? Hey, how's it going, guys? Thanks for having me on. You bet, what's going on? Yeah, I'm looking into an interesting business decision here.

I'm looking to purchase a boat and turn it into a business. I couldn't imagine buying a boat at a sunken cost right now, but I thought if I could make it into a slight money-making opportunity for me, it would make some more sense. Sell me on the side business. What is it? How much are you going to make? It's a Burials at Sea. It's out here. There's a lot of people that have a real connection with the ocean and you know, another part of the world. You know, they'll pay to have their loved ones buried at sea and me and some of my buddies really enjoy

going out on the boat ourselves so we thought if we could make you know financial smart decision to build a business out of it we could you know kill uh hit two birds with one stone. Yeah careful careful wow. Now wait since you said that I can ask the question that's on my mind is this like ashes or is this like guys? We're saying the same thing dumpin ashes Okay, okay, cuz the way you said it buried at sea is actually the corpse goes right over the old side of the ship I mean, I should rephrase it but that's how it was. That's how we spelled out the name So I was thinking the same thing good dudesudes all wrapped up and we just meet.

This is like swimming with the fishes. Yeah, it's mob style. The loved one says a few words, sings Amazing Grace, me and the buddy pick him up and dump him over. That's where I was going. How much would it cost to spread one's loved one's ashes? What is that going to cost? That really depends if you want to come out with us and do it and be there. Some people don't, some people do. Hold up, timeout. That could be actually a really great

ceremony. Wait a second. You're telling me that there's a market for people paying you and your buddy to take grandma's urn out in the middle of the ocean and dump it without them there? And they don't go with you. We make it special. It's not that hard to believe. I mean, that's how I wanna go when I go. But I'm saying, but they don't go with you is what's the- Yeah, that's my question. You're saying people will- Yeah, yeah, I mean, those people, yeah.

They live in a different state and they know that their loved one is up in San Diego and from the water and they don't wanna make a whole trip out of it, but they wanna get a video. I'm not criticizing it. I'm not criticizing it. I know it's, I'm just shocked by this.

Okay. This is cool. This is very cool What does it cost for for spreading one's ashes with with the family in attendance and without? With the family attendance around $800 without 150 to 300 depending on certain factors interesting and How what's the market for this? Do you know anybody who's in this business? What kind of gross revenue? That's where we kind of got the idea. Our friend has done this before and he kind of used the same business model

to get a boat for himself. So we thought we would kind of replicate it if we could. And you know. What kind of gross revenues did he do in a 12 month period? He never really shared that information with me, but he said he was able to pay off the boat in a matter of six months. I'd find out. I want to know more. Jack, I don't know enough about this business but I mean I'm just putting you through, this isn't even shark tank level stuff here, but there's just not enough information for me

to say this is a good idea. But now if I get this other guy on the phone and I say hey, what'd you make in the first 12 months? And he says, well, you know, we grossed $75,000. Okay, well, all right. Now we got something to work with, but how much is this boat going to cost you? Let's come back the other way. And how much is it going to cost you to acquire your customer? How are you going to find... Do you see what I'm saying? My mind goes to the marketing is like, how are you going to get customers in?

What's that going to cost you? That's kind of what I'm thinking. And I wonder if you've thought through that part as well. Yeah, I work in tech. I'm able to build up websites pretty quickly. I have a friend who does SEO. There is several ways to do it. My friend, he distributed pamphlets out in certain spots

that aren't directly adjacent to the ocean. Yeah, sure. You're right, those are marketing tactics. I'm wondering what's it gonna cost you? Oh, see, yeah, I haven't. We don't know. I really wanted to ask you guys if it's even worth looking into.

Sure, it's always worth looking into, and that's what we're telling you to do, is get the facts on those numbers so that you can start to really build a business plan on this now so you can figure out What what cash do I have to put up because we're not going into debt over this? Yeah, we'll get you halfway there Let's run the numbers real quick. What kind of a boat means. Excuse me. What's the cost on the boat? You're thinking about? 20k is the one we're looking at right now and you got cash Yeah, yeah, I have around $70,000. All right, great. So keep in mind, we want you to pay cash.

You've got the 20. All we're saying is, is can this business more than pay for the 20K and basically reimburse yourself? Is essentially what we're looking at. Yeah, what our friend said was absolutely. I have to get the exact numbers from him and I should have came prepared for that. But here's what you got to do though. So you know he's charged, let's look at his prices.

So it was 800 bucks to dump the ashes without the family member. With the family member. Oh, 800 with, 150 without, you're right, I'm sorry. All right, so let's just say, what do you think is the more regular situation? Family members with or nobody out there? Oh boy, we lost him. You there? I'd say family members with. Hello?

Yeah, we're here. Alright, so at 800 bucks then you just start doing the math. We don't have to belabor this on the air. But just start doing the math on that. How many of those $800 services do I need to book to reach 20,000? It's pretty simple math, eight into 20, right? Not a whole bunch, but that's the kind of thing you want to do so that you don't talk yourself into this great idea and then you're like, oh, geez, I should have just bought the boat. And think about the odds and ends. Think about what that marketing is going to cost. Think

about what's it going to cost to create a nice experience for the family because you're going to want to make something boutique about it to where it's- It's about building a nice experience for the family because you're going to want to make something boutique about it. It's about building a good experience. How big of a boat are we talking about? I feel like it's got to be a good size boat in order to make this. Like a 20 foot around boat, 21, 20, 23 feet. That feels better.

You don't want to be bobbing around in the ocean singing Amazing Grace and that whole thing gets a little weird. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I got to say my man, Jack, it's the most fascinating small business entrepreneurial question I've ever received on the show. I didn't know it was a service.

I think it's a very interesting thing, good for you. Pay cash no matter what, do your homework on this, and don't turn this thing into a regret. I've heard the old phrase, the best day of your life, and the worst day of your, or the best day in your life is the day you buy the boat, the day you get rid of it or something along those lines? I jack that all up.

Oh well, that's why the internet exists. This is The Ramsey Show.