The Ramsey Show - App - Don't Look for Validation From Other People (Hour 2)

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studio, this is the Dave Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. My name is Anthony O'Neill. I'm co-hosting with me today is one of my favorites, Dr. Pete, Dr. John Delon. It's going to be a great day. It is a great day. It's a beautiful Nashville day.

It is. It is a beautiful, beautiful day here in the beautiful city of Nashville, Tennessee. And wherever it's beautiful where you all are, we want to have a conversation with you. So give us a call. 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. Anthony, how we doing, man? I'm doing all right, man.

I can't wait to get off this show and go golfing. Oh, my gosh. Golfers. Yes, sir. I don't understand it. I got my Tiger Woods polo shirt on. I'm going to go out there and hit 18 holes after this beautiful day of helping people. And I'm going to go out there and enjoy this beautiful weather, man.

Here's the thing. I don't know much. You don't? But you're not going to shoot like Tiger Woods. I can tell you. You don't? But you're not going to shoot like Tiger Woods. I can tell you that right now. Listen, I'm not going to shoot like Tiger Woods. I'm going to shoot like Anthony O'Neal. Three or four digits.

It's good, man. It's good. Listen, man, I don't need to be like Tiger. My name is Anthony O'Neal. Tiger Woods, if you're listening, you can come hang with me, man. You can teach me how to play golf. I can teach you how to deal with your money. Oh, man. How are you, John? play golf. I can teach you how to deal with your money. Oh, man.

How are you, John? How are you? What's new in your world, man? You know what? We're doing okay. We're doing okay. Okay. It's a messy, messy, messy mess.

Dude. Well, you know what? It's not even a word. Messy mess. Well, we're both doing okay. Let's go out to Wisconsin and have a conversation with Mike. Mike, good afternoon, man. How can Dr. D and I help, man?

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my calls, guys. So, yeah, I just started listening, maybe like a week or a week and a half ago to Dave, and I fully fall in love with the plan, the baby steps. Personally, I'm on baby step two right now. The problem is my fiancee, we just got engaged

in February, and she's not on board. She wants now, now, now. I want a house now. I want to get married now. I want to start a family right now. And I'm trying to preach to her patience, and I want to know how to get on board. You're the first person to ever ask this question, Mike.

And I'm just kidding. You're not the first person at all. So, hey, when are you getting married, man? Okay, so the COVID kind of pushed our plans out. We were trying to get married sometime in August, but now we're pushing out to May of 2021. So you're going from – I don't want to get in your business. I'd say get married in August, but that's just me. That's just me.

Okay, so that's not even the question you asked. Get married in August. That's my recommendation. But how to get your wife on board so here's the deal most and i don't want to gender this but most guys hear the dave ramsey plan and anthony tell me if i'm crazy they get real excited they do the math problem they do the information problem and then they race to their significant other and dump a bunch of information on them and they don't talk about the heart they don't talk about the values they don't talk about the legacy shift they don't talk about i want to change our trajectory from the inside out

and so mike what i'm going to recommend with all of my heart is that you have fallen in love with dave you've fallen in love with Dave. You've fallen in love with the baby steps. Getting out of debt makes sense. The math works. And you don't have your baby's heart in your hands. And so I want you to take your fiancée, this woman who I think you should get married to in August, by the way. Don't let COVID steal your joy.

Take her out to breakfast at some restaurant that's opened up on a saturday morning when emotions are low and you can look each other in the eye and you can talk about the heart behind this yes there's a math problem but there's the heart behind this here's who i envision us being together in five years and 10 years and 20 years and mike that's how you're going to convince your wife to get on board with you Anthony you know you're married so you're coming from a married perspective and I'm thinking from a single man who

desires to be married one day I'm kind of happy they're not getting married in August because this kind of forces a deeper conversation to the heart. And so, Mike, what I'm going to suggest is like what he said, maybe choose breakfast or maybe choose dinner

and let's go out there and let's have an honest conversation because I think there's a good thing and a bad thing here is, you know, you want to go after your goals. You want to become debt free. She wants to spend, spend, spend. And so right now I don't know if that's a great

road path for both of them to be going into a marriage. There needs to be clarity going into the marriage. And so for me, this is what I'm going to suggest. When you sit down, explain to your wife why you want to do this. Make sure that she can see why you want to do it and just say let's do some priorities.

Priority number one, can we agree that it's to get out of debt? Then priority number two is, OK, let's go ahead and set aside a down payment to get you a house. You know, but we both got to be on the same page going into the wet and going into a marriage. You know what? Am I right? I'm going to say in front of America, you're right. I'm wrong on that one. Thank you. Let's have the hard conversation first. Let's have it before we get married in August. Here's the deal, Anthony. They're going to have it. She's going to hear his heart. She's going to be excited. They're going to be married in August.

She said yes to the guy, so I'm not saying that she's going to. No, you're right, though. But I just think that you've got to be on the same page going forward, and I do believe America, that the conversation should happen soon. I 100% agree with you. And there's nothing wrong with having a hard conversation.

Here's the deal. You can have a hard one now or a harder one later. Come on, man. Punting the conversation, a difficult one, whether it's about what size house you're going to live in, how many kids you're going to have, what's your money going to look like, all that stuff, right? All that stuff, that conversation is going to happen at some point. It needs to happen. Have it over breakfast before your house is on fire and you're trying to have it, right? Man, listen, listen.

America, you're listening to The Dave Ramsey Show, Dr. D and Anthony O'Neill. We would love to have a conversation with you. Give us a call, 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225. And during this hour, we're going to take some social media questions. And so you can find myself on Instagram, at Anthony O'Neill. Where can they find you? You can find me at John Deloney. It's the same.

All the tubes and the Instagrams. I'm still learning all that stuff, man. Oh, man, you had a great YouTube show as well. It's coming. It's trying. Yeah, I like it. It's nothing like yours, but we'll get there. Dude, I really do like it.

We'll get there. I really do like it. Jose is asking from Twitter, Dr. D. We just did that one. We did that one in the last hour. Let's go to another one here. Okay, cool. Let's do that one.

All right. Clint from YouTube asks, in Baby Step 3, why not save three to six months of your monthly salary instead of three to six months expenses. You want to take a stab at this? That's yours. You're the money man. Hey, man, I am. I just want to see if you know what you're doing.

You know, that's a good question, Clint, and here's the reason why, because we want you to be prepared for emergencies. Now, once you go ahead and get your three to six months of expenses, if you want to up debt to three to six months of your monthly salary that's fine but listen to the key thing we say we want the minimum of three to six months of expenses okay that's where that's the bare minimum now once you get into that and you start investing into your future and you want to bring it up to three to six months of your salary that's fine i'm cool with that you know but at the same time uh if you're single i'm always telling young uh single people

in their 20s three months is cool okay but if you're married with the family six months is cool but if you really want to go further we're not going to be upset with you there's a lot of people in america that wish they had three months of salary saved up three months ago listen i mean i've stretched myself to that but i started with three to six months of expenses right this is the d Ramsey Show. 888-825-5225 888-825-5225 888-825-5225 Dr. D and myself, Anthony O'Neill,

we're here taking your phone calls. We're going to go out to New Hampshire and have a conversation with Adele. Adele, how can Dr. D and myself help? Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call call I appreciate it Thanks for all you do So my wife and I were kind of

Struggling financially And we owe About 110 In debt between student loan Credit cards, car loan And also time share That we get into.

Did you say $110,000? $110,000, yes. Okay, go ahead. Our income, both, about $110,000. And we're trying to prioritize and see how we can tackle this debt. We did watch the seven steps, and we had some emergency funds in the bank about 10k and you know my my question is how you know can we you know prioritize and tackle all these

steps step by step and the second question is that we're also trying to get back to uh school and um i'm kind of bored what i'm doing right now and um i'm just trying to see if if you know if it's um it's you know a good time is it is it a you know time to make the move or should we wait until we tackle this step um so the second question let me go to the second question we're going to back backtrack to the first question um uh sure let me understand it let me make sure i'm understanding what you're saying that you want to go to school because you're bored of what you're doing but your combined income with you and your wife right now is at 110 000 in new hampshire correct Okay, so the average family household income is right around $58,000 to $62,000 a year.

So you're ahead of that. So I'm going to say right now, school is not a priority. School is an option, but it's not a priority because you have a lot of debt right now. Let's look at the facts here. You have $110,000 in debt, and you all make $110,000 a year. So if it's fair to say, right now you're living paycheck to paycheck. So my number one priority for you, Adele, is going to be we got to get out of debt. So I want you to tell me real quickly, what is the smallest amount of debt you have right

now? Is it your credit cards? Is it your car? What's the smallest? That would be credit cards, yeah. Okay. A couple of them. I've got a couple of them.

What's that amount? About $2,000. Say it again? All together? Yeah. All together. One of us, probably $36,000. $36,000 in credit cards?

Yep. Okay. And what about your student loans? I owe about $23,000 and my wife owe about $15,000. Okay. So you're looking at about $23,000, $15,000, $30,000. Okay. All right.

And then what else do you owe? Our loans, we owe about $20,000 plus. On a loan, a personal plus On a loan A personal loan Yes Okay We'll finance that Yeah Okay

Alright 30 plus So here's the thing Adele And here's what I really want you To hear me Hear me clearly And ask any questions I really want you to hear

My heart on this Let me ask you this question How old are you Adele How old are you And your wife 31 You're 31 And are you and your wife? 31. You're 31. How old is your wife?

29. 29. Okay. Young couple. Your future is so bright. Your future is very, very bright. I'm 35 years old. And here's my thing, Dr. D, and Adele, hear me.

I want you to line up all your debt using the debt snowball, which is baby step number two. After this call, I want you to hold on. I'm going to have Kelly send you a copy of my book, Destroy Your Student Loan Debt. That's a deep dive into baby step number two, specifically around the student loans, but you can do this with all of your debt as well. And I really want you to get this book.

So we're going to bless you with that book. But right now, your number one priority is to take control of your finances. And to do that, Adele, this is what I want you to do. Sit down with your wife, and I want you all to come up with a vision. I want you all to sit down and really think about, okay, where are we going? We're 31. We're 29 years old.

Where do we want to go? Do we want to be homeowners? Do we want to travel the world? Do we want to start a business? Do we want to bring kids into this world without debt? Where do we want to go? Do we want to be homeowners? Do we want to travel the world? Do we want to start a business? Do we want to bring kids into this world without debt? Where do we want to go? Get a clear vision. And then the next thing is you got to attack this debt. Sounds like your credit cards. You don't line up all your credit cards from smallest to the largest. And then from there, you don't line up your student loans followed by that line up all your debt using the debt snowball. And I'm telling you right now, you have to get on the budget, and you all, for the next two to three years, are going to have to focus. Be done.

That's it. And here's the thing. You talked about creating a vision. Anthony, I say this all the time, and I'm just going to keep saying it all the time. We think in pictures, but we speak in words, right? Yes. And so he talks to his wife about having a good family. I'm kind of bored.

I want to go back to school. I want this other job. I want this other life. Yeah. And she's got a picture of a life that involves X and Y. And what happens is they both have this life, and it's undefined. It's unclear. It's not undefined. It's unclear. It's not connected.

It's not the same picture. And so, exactly, Anthony. Adele, get a picture with your wife. Co-draw it together. Don't write it. Don't make a flowery mission statement. Draw a picture of it. And here's the other thing. Don't quit a job

because you're bored. There you go. Don't go back to college because you're bored. Go back to college and quit a 50 or 60 or $70,000 a year job because you are inspired to transition your life to something else. Because here's what's going to happen. The worst part about going back to school is that you're going to go with you and you're going to go back and that guy's going to get bored too. And that guy's going to get bored too. And you're going to go back, and that guy's going to get bored too, and that guy's going to get bored too. And then the next thing is going to get bored too because you're not going to something. You're just meandering around away from something.

But I also want to say this, Anthony. He made the phone call. He made the phone call. And this is the moment when you hear it, you make the phone call, you look yourself in the mirror, and you say, today's the day. Today's the day. And America, hear me me to all the young people out there who are in that age bracket of

20s and 30s I hear this all the time I hate my job I'm bored at my job I want to do something different I want to have fun at my job and that I understand that because I enjoy what I have the opportunity to do but at the same time your priorities right now comes before what you really really really the opportunity to do. But at the same time, your priorities right now

comes before what you really, really, really, really want to do. And I think that if he can just knock out this debt, get that clear vision, he can eventually do what he wants to do by the time he's 35 years old. And I don't want to rain on the boredom parade, but boredom is so often

an attitude I bring to a situation. It's so often, you know, our uh one of our execs luke the other day talking about you know what you know my cool idols wouldn't be making this brochure like this right eddie vetter wouldn't make a brochure like this this isn't cool this isn't whatever i had this other vision dude boredom is an attitude you bring to your job yeah it's an attitude you bring to the, boredom is an attitude you bring to your job. Yeah. It's an attitude you bring to the grocery store. It's an attitude you bring to your marriage, to your parenting, and everything. Positive, optimistic, joyful approaches to situations beget solutions. Showing up angry, showing up, showing up.

Yeah. Begets me, right? It doesn't bring solutions, man. It doesn't bring it. It really doesn't annie from facebook asked you dr d she says i'm 52 year olds i'm a 52 year old single woman divorced for eight years and i was married to a spender that kept us deep in debt for our entire marriage i work a full-time job making around 56 000 a. Due to the circumstances of my marriage, I budget every single penny and never able to save or have any money.

My savings is my security. Should I loosen up the budget or continue to save? P.S. I'm debt free. Yeah, so I think it's so often when you leave a marriage, right? You lose trust in your partner. You lose trust in yourself because you trusted in yourself to make a good decision. And now you regret that decision. And so you transfer that trust to something else.

You transfer that trust to the baby steps and you run down that path. Yeah. And you never stop to re-identify with the person in the mirror. Wow. You got to go to something now. And now's the moment when she can trust herself. She can say, I'm debt-free. Yes.

I'm eight years free from this other mess. And now I trust myself. My new identity is no longer in a fighter and a runner. It's in a healer. I'm going to paint a new picture for my life. Go get it. Go get it. That's not the D.

I like that. We'll be right back. going out to uh new hampshire we're gonna have a conversation there with uh andrew andrew uh how can dr d and myself help man hey thanks for this opportunity um all things considered i'm doing pretty good um i'm 18 i just uh graduated uh high school and i've been having uh some thoughts on how to make friends um for a lot of my life i've had troubles um i went to a charter school um in my early years kindergarten to eighth grade and when i left my quote my quote unquote friends wouldn't talk to me and somehow I offended them or whatever. And when I switched over to public high school,

I was doing a lot of self discovery and asking myself questions and I made quote unquote friends, but I don't think there were real relationships. I think they're just being friendly. And in high school, I was taking advantage of dual credits. And for my senior year, I was actually at a local community college full time. And the same thing happened. I made an effort to do lunch or whatever with them, and they would just plan activities in front of me without inviting me. And I would see them around town, and they would barely say hi to me.

So more specifically, I'm just wondering what are some good ways to foster meaningful relationships? That's a great question, Andrew. Anthony, you go first. What do you think? You know, when it comes to fostering relationships at your age, Andrew, here's my thing. What I want to do and tell you up front is do not look for validation from other people for yourself. Okay. I understand that you want to have friendships, but do not put yourself in a place where you feel as if you have to have friendships to be successful, to be valued, to feel worthy. And so Andrew, what I would say is, uh, put yourself in the right places. You know, you're going to go off to school, go off to school.

And while you're on your journey, the right people, you will connect to them at the right time. Uh, one of the things that I did at a very young age, Andrew, I'm gonna be honest with you here on the day Ramsey show, be transparent and raw and real. One of the biggest mistakes mistakes i made dr d was when i went off to college i tried to impress people more than just be anthony o'neill i i wanted to be cool i wanted to be accepted i wanted to have a lot of friends and that that was one of the main reasons why i got into debt that was one of the main reasons why i got into debt that was one of the main

reasons why i became homeless at a young age because i was so concerned about everyone liking me when i really didn't even accept myself and so andrew what i recommend what i want to recommend to you before i recommend this i want to tell you this i don't know you but you're a sharp young man and you will be successful and you are appreciated you are valued and the right friends will come your way and those friends will help you accomplish your dreams and goals and make you a better individual but right now just just continue being you and there's a reason and again andrew you're 18 and so i say this with all due respect there's a reason, and again, Andrew, you're 18, so I say this with all due respect. There is a reason why 18-year-olds, as a society, we've said, eh, let's don't sell you beer yet.

You're not quite there yet. Let's don't do X. Let's don't do Y. Because teenagers' brains aren't fully formed yet. Middle schoolers aren't known for making great decisions. Yeah. High school John, God almighty, I'd like to have some of that back, right? Yeah. And so Anthony is exactly right, Andrew. Be yourself.

Yeah. Continue to sit down with folks. Continue to make yourself vulnerable, and the right crew will come along. And here's one more thing. You mentioned something, and keep this in your back pocket. When people are nice to you, when people reach out back out to you, don't immediately assume, yeah, they're just doing it because of this. Assume it's because you're cool. Yeah. And assume it's because you're a good human being. Yeah. And it's assume it's because you're a person of value. Absolutely. And you're someone worth loving. And you're asking the good question. It's hard. Being a teenager is the worst.

The worst. But, man, I'll tell you this. Nobody told me how hard it was to make friends at 42 when you pack up and move across the country. Come on, man. And so it doesn't get any easier. I got to get stronger. And I got to get more secure in myself. And I got to be able to look people in the eye and say, hey, man, you'll be my friend.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Thank you so much for Andrew for calling in, man. And we're praying for you because you will be successful. We're going to keep the conversation going and go back out to Pennsylvania, have a conversation with Brett. Brett, how can Dr. Deanna help?

Did I say your name correctly? Yes, it's Brett. All right, cool. Well, first of all, thanks for teaching and preaching the right way to live life. Yes, sir. Thank you. I've always done it. I've been a long-time listener for 20 years, and now I've come up with a problem,

and I'm hoping that you can give me some good advice. We'll do our best. Yes, sir. How can we help? Okay, so I'll read to the question. Unfortunately, I'm going through a divorce, which has been lingering for four years now, but I think it's coming to an end. And I don't know what to do about alimony.

Should I take money out of my IRA to pay the lump sum or continue to make payments for the six or seven years that they're asking for? You know, from the, how much, how much are they asking for? Let me ask you that question first, Brett. She's asking for a thousand dollars a month for six to seven years. Okay. For six to seven years, she's looking at $12,000 a year. All right. What's your annual income? It's $55,000 a year. $55K a year.

Do you have any debt? Well, no, I do not. However, with this divorce, I'm going to have to buy half the house again. So I'll have to take out a home equity loan. Okay. Okay. Wait, wait. You're going to take out a home equity loan. Okay. Okay. Wait, wait. You're going to take out a home equity loan to buy the house? Well, to pay for her house, yeah.

Okay. So what you're saying is you've got to buy the house, all of it. Right. So you're going to live in a house? Yes. Yes. Okay. All right.

All right. When it comes to the alimony, here's the thing I want to tell you. Do not touch your for do not touch your retirement. All right. From the practical side, I'll let Dr. D talk to the personal side. But from the practical side, do not touch your retirement. OK, what I want you to do is figure out and add this into your budget. You're going to do throughout the entire time. Now, what I have heard and what I have seen happen before when it comes in money side, let's say for an example, you can work hard and come up with some extra money. There are some people who actually let you settle it. So while you're paying $1,000 a month, maybe you can get a part-time job and offer her

maybe a $20,000, $25,000 lump sum. And she might accept that, her and her attorney. I don't know. I do know I have had some relatives and some friends go through that. And some of the spouses, the wife said, hey, Dr. D, I'll take a settlement, you know, instead of for paying me $1,200 a month, if you just cut me one check of $25,000, I'll take that all day long. So I'm going to suggest that you go ahead and make the monthly payments. Do not touch your retirement. Okay. And then figure out how you can build up your income work a little hard maybe for a year or two and then go ahead and add that on to and offer her one lump sum

so that way you don't have to go throughout the whole six months um so that's one thing that i would recommend um and then also too i want to recommend to uh maybe just instead of taking out a home equity line if you're buying back the, just refinance the whole house into your name. Don't take out another loan on top of a loan. Just refinance the house into your own name. Check out Churchill Mortgage for that. But I'm not a fan of home equity line of credit. It's not.

Let's not do that. Yeah, and it's going to feel, after four years of dragging it on, Brett Brett it's going to feel like whatever I can do just to have a period at the end of this sentence just to be done with this and I can actually then start the grieving process for real and I can move on um but don't steal from your future yeah to deal with this thing right now it's heavy and it's going to be sitting there like Anthony said I think getting with your attorney see if you can settle a lump sum and see if you can punt that down the road 12 to 24 months, if you can save up some money

and do that. But don't steal from yourself in the future to deal with something. And again, it's admittedly, it's a heavy psychological burden. I know you want to be finished. I know you want to move on to the next thing. But don't steal from yourself. Yeah. And we're praying for you, man. Sorry that you're going through this, Brett. And, you know, Dr. D,

this is one of the reasons why I take my time. You know, with me being single right now is because I do not want to get a divorce. Yeah. And, you know,

I think sometimes when you take your time, things get sideways. They do. And it sounds so common. It sounds like it happens all the time. Yeah. And then when people go through it, they don't realize how much it hurts.

And so it's a death, it's a loss, and it's heavy. And, man, our hearts are with you, Brett. Yeah. But, yeah, you're right, Anthony. Got to take your time on the front end and then work on it every day. Every day. America, I'm praying for everyone who's going through a divorce right now. We're praying for you.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. to find out more information about myself and dr d i want you to consider following following us on social media you know dr d right now um i had an amazing conversation with this young couple. Let me ask you this question. You ever heard of this? America, YouTube. I want to know, have you heard of this? Let me know if you've heard of this.

Interviewed a young couple from Nigeria. And this young man had to pay thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars, yeah. To marry his wife. Yeah. And I'm sitting there interviewing them because they paid off all their debt. And he was like, yeah, man, our wedding was only $3,000. I was like, oh, that's a dope wedding.

He's like, but. I was like, but? He's like, yeah, but I had to drop like 20 grand on my wife. I was like, 20. And I learned about dowry. Did I say it right, dowry? Dowry, yes. How do you feel about that?

Because I don't. It's just cultural differences. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And I would have had to. My wife would have cost me a couple of million at least, right? A couple of million? No, she would have paid a couple of Diet She would have paid

A couple of Diet Cokes for me On the other end I love them Because they're young They're in their 20s Put down like 30% On their house

And they'll be debt free They're paying off their house Within the next 2-3 years This is just a great interview. But I learned something about that particular culture. And so I want you all to go check it out on my YouTube channel. Go over to YouTube.com forward slash Anthony O'Neal. Subscribe to the channel.

We have a different kind of conversation over there. We have fun. Younger people than Dr. D. A little bit more cooler than Dr. D. I see what you're doing. I see what you're doing. Your YouTube show is just extraordinary, man. You're putting out some great stuff. We're just trying to help a lot of people.

I really do have a heart for young people. I really want to help that high school senior that's graduating, going into the real world to that 20s and 30-year-olds, individuals. I want to help them get out of debt. I want to help them pay out of debt i want to help them pay off their student loans i want to help them start businesses i want to help them build true generational wealth instead of for looking fate rich let's really get this money yeah and so i'm really excited about it man so head over to

youtube.com forward slash anthony o'neill follow me on ig at anthony o'neill let's just have a good conversation i love it you know uh let's go out to texas and have a conversation with josh uh josh uh good afternoon how can dr d and myself help hey guys how are y'all doing good man how about yourself i'm doing pretty good cool how can we help uh so my wife um she lost her mom in february um and she lost her mom in February, and she lost her job in December. We found out her mom was sick, and we agreed that she wouldn't go back to work because we were pretty sure it was cancer, and we were pretty sure she was going to pass away. But it's been a couple months now, and we're kind of struggling. And I'm just not sure how to have that conversation.

I've kind of tried to talk to her about it, and I don't want to push her until she's ready, but just wanting to kind of not move on with our lives but start planning for the future. You bet. So when you say your mother-in-law lost her job or your wife lost her job, she stayed home to take care of her mom? No. Well, so they offered her to stay.

She was at a position, and they offered her to stay. And then she found out her mom was sick. It was a temporary position. And she found out her mom was sick, and so we agreed that she should stop working because we could make it while her mom was sick. And it's just been like six months now. Her mom passed away in February, like I said.

It's just been tough. You bet. So, number one, Josh, my heart goes out to you and your wife. And that's a heavy season. And you are wise to be saying, what do I do now? So a couple things I want you to do. I want you to buy the book Finding Meaning by David Kessler. It's a recent book.

It just came out a few months ago. He was Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's research assistant or research co-writer. And it's a remarkable read, and it's a powerful read. The second thing is this. Everybody grieves differently. And everybody grieves on a different timetable. And one of the challenges of being married is when people start comparing grief. And it's not even married, man. I shouldn't even have said it like that. Friends, uh significant others is when you get into this comparative grief right you should be over it by now you should feel better by now hey when are we going to start moving on by now and so what i wanted to challenge you to do is to keep your

heart open and keep connected and that leads me to the third thing um set up a time ask your wife um for a time when you can go have this conversation and and say hey in the next week or two i want us to go have a meal um i prefer breakfast anthony's a dinner guy for a serious conversation yeah so is james our producer james is definitely a dinner guy um but i want you to say i want us to say, I want us to go out. I want us to get out of the house. I want us to go off site where it's a neutral place where there's no additional emotional baggage in the house. And I just want to talk about how I can support you. Not about how we're going to get our money back on track. Not about when you're going to be over this, but how can I love you better in this season? And your job moving forward for the next few months is to just listen.

And then your wife's going to give you some ideas. Read this book together. But man, I love your heart. I love your heart, Josh. Love it. If every husband on planet Earth was to say, okay, how can I love my wife better?

How can I support my wife better? Man, the world would spin a little bit more clean. It really will. Let's keep the conversation going. Go out to Michigan and have a conversation with Dylan. Dylan, how can Dr. D and I help? Hey, thanks, guys. Appreciate taking the call.

Did I say your name correctly? Yeah, I'm just a girl, not a boy. Okay, all right. I was like, wait, wait, wait. I hear a young lady. Gwen Stefani said that years ago. I. All right. I was like, wait. Wait, wait, wait. I hear a young lady. When Stefani said that. Yeah. Years ago.

I love it. How can we help, Dan? Yeah. So I'm calling. I'm kind of stuck. We bought a house recently. Congrats. We had a debt.

Saved up our emergency fund. Thank you. And it's a fixer-upper, so we actually haven't moved into it yet. Okay. And I'm kind of struggling, caught between step three and four. So we're putting cash flowing repairs. I haven't started our retirement yet, so I'm trying to figure out where to draw the line.

Is this your primary residence? Yes. Okay. All right, all right, all right. And what's wrong with the house? So just really old. Introduced to the whole house. Okay. so just really old okay but the whole inside was

old and falling apart so say that again Dylan you're breaking up on us oh yeah the inside was old and falling apart is that what you said yeah inside was old and falling apart super old it was like it's a hundred year old house so we just wanted to update like the kitchen and the

bathroom before we moved in. So as far as the foundation, AC, heat, that's pretty good. You all just want to update the current stuff. Okay, good. So pretty much your question is, what should you do? Should you go ahead and start investing the 15% into your retirement, or should you go ahead and update the house? Am I correct? Yes.

Yep. retirement or should you go ahead and update the house am i correct yes yep so we started updating and i think at this point it's that whole issue of like well we could keep updating stuff like we're cash flowing it but i want to start investing so yeah yeah that's a good question dylan here's here's the thing i like the fact that you all into the house but right now uh with you with your age bracket right now i'm going to say you know move into the house make sure that it is uh safe to live in but go ahead and start investing into your retirement okay because here's the thing that you're going to face is that you won't have any retirement if you keep investing stuff into the home and so what i want to do is go ahead and

get compound interest on your side right now especially at a young age and while you're investing you can still be building up your house you may not build it up as fast as you want but I would definitely say right now time is your best friend when it comes to retirement so go ahead start investing the 15% and I promise you this much, you will thank your younger self when you become older. And is there ever not another project you can do in your house? Oh, no. I just bought a house, and I'm doing projects right now. And right when you finish those projects, you're going to think, I think I'll do another project. Yes.

Man, I'm trying to tell you. There's always a project. There really is. You know, Dr. D, thank you so much, man. I enjoy rocking out with you. I love sitting at the table with you. I want to thank the number one producer in the world, James Shiles, and associate producer Kelly Daniel. Remember, the caliber of your future will be determined by the decisions we make today.

America, this is The Dave Ramsey Show, and thank, subscribe today.