The Ramsey Show - App - Focus on What YOU Can Control (Hour 1)

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Washall, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today as we answer your questions for free. And some say the advice is worth what you pay for it. So join us. The phone number is 888-825-5225. We're glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Kristen is with us in Pittsburgh to start off this hour. Hi, Kristen. How are you? I'm great, Dave, how are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? Well, I'm calling because my husband and I are both 55 years old. We have a good income, primarily mine. We make over $300,000 a year, and we have for about the past um 10 years and um successfully paid off our student loans in a 10-year period over 125 000 only owe about 35 000 on our um 400 000 home mortgage wow and um have no no revolving credit or debt we don't drive cars that we have car payments on we pay for those in cash um we don't you know we don't drive cars that we have car payments on. We pay for those in cash. We don't, you know, we don't have any kind of debt in that way. Good for you. Our problem is that we don't have a nest egg. We're not saving. And so looking down the road,

I want to be able to retire at some point. And I'm just trying to come up with some options of how we should be taking our money and investing it and potentially not just paying our children's student payments, you know, to colleges out of the cash that we have, maybe using it for something different. So you have some cash? We do. How much? So I get a nice bonus every year in March. How much cash do you have?

Well, typically we have about $75,000 a year. How about typically right now? How much cash do you have? Oh, right this second, none, because we just paid two college tuitions. Oh, so you got two in college? We have two in college, one already graduated, yes. Okay, yes. Okay, cool.

Cool. Good for you. All right. And so you're cash flowing college out of your 300K, but you have no debt except $35,000 on your mortgage? Correct. Are you currently putting anything aside, 15%, 5%, anything into retirement? Yes. So we put in 10% in my 401K, and then we also do an additional 5% in a Roth IRA.

Okay. So you're doing baby step four, 15% of your income going into retirement, right? Yes. How long have you been doing that? We've only been doing that since, well, the bigger chunk of it, we were doing about 8% up until two years ago. And now for the past two years, we're up to 15%. Okay. If you never get a raise for 10 years, you make $300,000 and you put 15% of your income aside for retirement for a decade, you will be rich. Okay. You're doing everything exactly right.

Okay. Now, I mean, I guess we need to define rich. You won't be a billionaire but you'll be a millionaire now but let's let's let's play out though what you should be doing which is more than that um so okay you don't have any cash but you have an emergency fund yes how much is in it well um i would say that we are it's just in our bank account. It averages somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 just in our bank account. I would move that to a separate place.

Let's move that to like a high-yield savings account and get it out of the checking account so that it's clear this is money for three to six months of emergencies. Maybe put a little bit more with it. Yeah, sounds a little low for three to six months. Yeah, okay. And do you have any other non-retirement investments? We have property. We have two separate properties.

Oh. And my husband is an antique car collector, and so he uses a lot of car. But you don't have any mutual funds or stocks or anything that are not in a retirement account? No. No other savings that you're leaving out here? No. Okay. Now, the other property, so you've got properties that are cash flowing.

Do they have debt on them? There's no debt on them, but they're not cash flowing. He uses them for his hobbyist. He's a hobbyist for his cars, so he uses them to house those. But potentially we could turn around and sell our house. Yeah, you're good. You're full. I mean.

So you need $35,000 to knock the house out. As soon as you knock the house out, $35,000, you've got to cover tuition. You knock the $35,000 out on the house. Then you're at what we call baby step seven around here, meaning there's nothing left to do but build wealth and be outrageously generous okay so you'll finish up college and then you're gonna have 300 000 plus to invest then you would max out every 401k every roth ira that you have available to you and you're gonna even do more investing because you're going to have money coming out your dead gum ears when you've got no college students and no house payment.

Right? Yeah. We'll be excited. Yeah. You get the little goobers off the payroll and you get the house paid off. The thing goes ding, ding, right? Yeah. So that's where you're going to be.

When's the last one graduate? So our youngest is a freshman in college. Okay. So three more years. Our daughter is a fourth year, so she'll be done next year. Yeah, and you just wrote tuition checks. Yeah, you just wrote. So you're getting ready to be down to one,

and then three years from now you're done, and your house will be paid for by then. And so you're maxing out above whatever little bit of tuition you got, and then when tuition's all gone, three years from today you're maxing out above whatever little bit of tuition you got and then when tuition's all gone three years from today you're 58 and you're making three 350 or whatever it is at that point and you start chunking away everything you can in any kind of retirement program to keep the stupid government's hands off of your money okay yeah and then above that you start investing further in mutual funds and in other things that

you if you buy any real estate you pay cash for it and the next real estate you buy needs to be income producing not hobbyist i will tell him yeah no more toys until we get the house paid off and we got we got the retirement underway okay okay i got a 1960 corvette i love toys i'm not against toys i'm not anti-toys i'm anti-toys when your house isn't paid for okay so paying off the houses big time that should be easy yeah now in my in my that's why i was searching for cash i wanted you to pay it off today i had a feeling you had a little bit of something under the couch cushion somewhere and i couldn't find it well i will in march okay i will in march oh how much is that um probably about eighty thousand oh good okay pay off house in march okay good and then start chunking and then crank up everything see if you'll run the math out

and good growth stock mutual funds averaging 11 which is what the stock market's average since it started in uh in your 401ks in your Roth IRAs, with matches, where you can, you run the numbers out on that from 55, 56 years old to 66, you're going to see an incredible number at the end of that. Okay. You're fine. That makes me feel better. You're fine.

What you do need is you need to be very precise in what your next steps are because otherwise you'll buy another antique car you are right yeah i mean we all we all have the antique car somewhere and so it's a metaphor for buying crap out of order you know before we've got the other stuff done you shouldn't be wringing your hands about retirement and have a barn full of cars that's kind of that that's bad words right that's just wrong so there you go yeah this is the ramsey show thanks for joining us america we're so glad you are here open phones at 888-85-225. Well, one week.

One week we'll be there. That's right. We'll be doing the student loan live stream. How we got student loan debt. How we got here. How we get out. That's right. And you and me and Rachel.

Jade being the $280,000 example of having paid off student loans for that live stream. We'll be doing that for free for you guys it's september the 12th at 7 p.m central time you do have to tune in live that's it that's your shot and it is free did we mention it's free and it's probably worth more than that 100 it's probably worth we'll give you double your money back if you don't like it. Can't beat that. They could cut our pay in half. So there you go.

Anyway, it's going to be a blast. There's so much solid information out there to give you hope in a time when it seems overwhelming and you're standing at the bottom of Mount Everest looking up and you do not see Joe Biden's face. So you know that you have to climb the mountain. You know it's got to be done. You know the government is not going to rescue you. Everyone has figured that out. Well, I say everyone.

Not everybody. Most everyone should have figured that out by now. We'll make sure they figure it out. If you're slow to the party, we'll get you there. But we're also going to show you, not leave you hopeless, but show you what to do and what people who have successfully done away with their student loans make you believe again in yourself and in your ability to do this and give you some tools to knock it out as fast as possible. By the way, no magic answers. If I'm doing a live stream on barbecue, it's not going to involve microwaves.

Microwave barbecue 100% of the time sucks. And money is like barbecue. It has to cook. Slow roast it. So if you think that you're going to get out, you got in $100,000 worth of student loan debt, it was easy to get in. It's not going to be easy to get out, but we can get you out. That's right.

You just got to be willing to cook for a while. That's it. So, RamseySolutions.com slash studentloans. One week from today, September the 12th, Tuesday night at 7 p.m. Central Time. Completely free. You need to sign up, though, ahead of time for the live stream. And we'll send you the link and you'll be able to turn it on. Pop it on your television.

Sit there and watch it. Pop it on your computer screen. Even on your little phone. And and you can watch it and we'll do it just for you because hey we were you know we poke fun all the time but we also know it's scary and it's um overwhelming it is it's overwhelming i hear from people all the time on social media on instagram and facebook and they don't know what to do and i tell them i, I'm like, look, we're doing this live stream. It's practical answers. You'll be able to walk away from it, use the tools and do something that day to better your situation. So, but if you come looking for a magic wand, spoiler alert, we don't have any.

It doesn't exist. But we will tell you what millions of people who have been successful in getting rid of their student loans have done, and we'll show you exactly how to do it. Oh, and tell your friend who's still living on denial on the riverbank. Denial river. Denial, yeah. All right, Michael is in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hey, Michael, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, guys, thanks so much for having me. Quick little synopsis of our situation. So my wife and I, I'm 29, and she's 25. I run a small video company, so it's just myself. And then we've got two 1099 contractors that work for us. We do about 300 in top line, about 175 take home. But we started listening to youtube clips about six months ago

um and then i should have started sooner i should have listened to my wife sooner and she was like hey we need to go full bore like no debt on anything we need to just do the full day plan i'll let you're right let's do it so we've got no debt on anything except a rental property that was our first house that we kept uh we've got no debt in our business all the cars are paid for and our credit cards anything like that way to go go. Thank you so much. Um, so the, uh, my, I guess my question is, we bought our townhouse in 2020, right before the world went crazy, um, for two 17, it's probably worth three 40 now. Um, and then we moved when we found out she was pregnant and wanted some more space and less stairs with the dog and all that stuff.

We have our current residence that we owe about $330,000 on. It's worth about $450,000. But my question is, should we just go full bore, sell the townhouse? We've probably got $140,000 in equity in it. And I've got about $150,000 in mutual funds that I could pull out that's not retirement. Should we just go full bore? And you could pay off your house. That's what I'm saying.

But, you know, I also say, you know, that townhouse, our rental property, you know, produces its rents for $1,750. We could probably get a little more for it. We're in North Atlanta in a gray area. So, you know, should we pay the townhouse off or should we just go full bore and get the house knocked out before I'm even 30? Okay. Well, one way i make some of these decisions and if you've been binging youtube you probably heard this before as i reverse engineer it sure let's pretend you did not have money and a mutual fund and you did not have a rental

property and you were sitting in a paid for 450 000. And you woke up this morning and said, I'm going to go borrow $330,000 on my home in order to buy a rental property and put $150,000 in mutual funds. Would you do that? I don't know that I would. What that does is it makes you also think with your heart where you measure risk. Because when you say that, you go, wait a minute, I have a paid-for home. And for just a moment there, you were sitting in the, you know,

out on the patio with a cool cup, with a great cup of coffee on that paid-for house. And for just a moment, it was paid for. And then I took it away from you. Your stomach jumped up into your throat a little bit even though it's not really paid for it was just a discussion but it still causes a physical reaction doesn't it yes absolutely yeah that's risk once we had our daughter that's right i i was much more risk averse before our daughter came here i was like oh no we'll go for it we'll do all these different things i want to i'll do 10 rentals like we're just going to get after it. And now I'm like, I don't know how I feel about that.

Now you're the antithesis of TikTok, right? So you grew your brain in. It's good. Having kids does that. Having kids will do that for you. I'm saying all of that to say I personally would sell it and pay it off and be debt-free because I'm the end of the story okay you're you're 31 or no you're not even 30 you were doing this before you're 30 right yes sir i'm 29 i'm 63

so i did it when i was your age and now i've got a whole bunch of real estate and it's all paid for i paid cash for it as i bought it and it really does cash flow when you don't have payments on it, dude. Like a bandit with a gun. Yeah, I'm just saying. So yeah, I mean, so the end of the story is it's not that you will be without real estate as an investment. The end of the story is you've learned that real estate's a great investment. You've also learned debt-free is cool and the shortest path to wealth, and so I predict that when you're 40, you'll own several pieces of real estate that you paid cash for that make you a lot of money. Love it. Yeah. There it is.

I love that. I love that reverse engineer because it helps you see what you truly value in a moment. Now, that's a good way of saying it. And you can do that folks with anything i mean if you've got a boat sitting in the driveway you can go uh if i had that if i had that fourteen thousand dollars in or forty thousand dollars or whatever that boat is right in a pile in the middle of the table would i go buy a boat you go yeah i use the stinking thing every weekend yes i'd go buy that boat then you keep the boat right that's right you keep the boat i got two boats and two jet skis and I was down there this weekend at the lake house.

And, you know, I'm not selling those. No, not happening. They're not for sale. Yeah. And, you know, I got two Mastercrafts, the best ski boat in the world, and I got the opportunity to buy one finally when I got some stinking money. But, yeah, you know, it was that. So, no, I'm not selling that boat.

But you can reverse engineer and decide to keep it. Yeah, that's right. That's a good mental exercise to go through, though. Yeah, it was that. So no, I'm not selling that book, but you can reverse engineer and decide to keep it. Yeah, that's right. That's a good mental exercise to go through, though. Yeah, with almost anything. So yeah, very good. Michael, I would do that, but only on the caveat that you play all the way through and become rich and pay cash for your real estate. So I want you to join the Baby Steps Millionaires League, and you're not far away, and you're

not even 30. And then, you know, then you start saving up and paying cash for stuff. The weird thing is, it's a reverse debt snowball. Like, when you buy your first rental property with no debt, you make a lot of money every month. I bet. You know what I mean? There's no other expenses. You got expenses, but you got no payments.

Yeah, no payments. And so you got money in the account every stinking month stacking. And then you use that money pretty quick, buy another one. Now you got two of them stacking. That's the type of snowball I like. And then you got three of them stacking. Then you got four of them stacking. And I just buy real estate from my real estate now.

I don't even touch my regular income to buy real estate now. It's just an income snowball. Ooh, I like that one. I like that too. This is The Ramsey Show. Buy real estate now. It's just an income snowball. Ooh, I like that one. I like that, too. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. By the way, you ought to come by and visit us.

We've usually got 50 to 200 folks sitting and watching us do the show. We do it from 1 to 4 central time every weekday afternoon and we'd love to have you come out and hang out with us the lobby's of course free there's all kinds of ramsey things to do around here including free coffee and free homemade chocolate chip cookies and you get to watch from the debt-free stage some debt-free screams isaiah is here to do just that. Hey, Isaiah, how are you? Hey, how's it going? Better than I deserve. Where do you live, sir? I live in Tampa, Florida. Awesome. Very cool. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you paid off, sir? $176,000. Yeah, yeah. How long did this take? It took me six years. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? I began at $41,000 and I ended up at around $95,000.

Wow. Good for you. Wow. What do you do for a living? I'm an IT guy and for my side gig, I'm on the radio. I knew it. I thought you have a great radio voice. That's so funny.

Sorry, that was an outburst. Oh, it's all good. You do. So what do you do in radio? Producing shows from fishing shows sports shows any type of thing they want me i'm here let's go let's have fun and get to do some voice work in the middle of it i do yes very good good for you very fun what kind of debt was the 176 it was just a mortgage you paid off your house yep that was it look at it where people game on man way to go it wasn't

anything related to you know mortgages credit card debt now i already had that done and gone out of the door yeah just a mortgage just a mortgage six years ago you get on this journey making 41 000 and you end up paying off your home and everything making making $95,000 in the end of the story. How old are you? I am 34. What's the house worth? Now it's worth almost $450,000. Way to go, man. And how much is in your retirement accounts?

I wish it was a little bit more. It's around $150,000. Good for you, though. We're going. You're killing it. You have $600,000 already, and you're $600,000 net worth, and you're only 30. Man, that's just great. I've got to keep going.

Yeah, you're on your way. You'll be a baby step millionaire in no time. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. So what happened six years ago that put you on this Ramsey journey? So what happened was that I was getting my mortgages and I was just paying the minimum and I was looking at the interest and it was just a couple of pennies every time that was going less. And I'm like, just a couple of pennies. That's it going less and i'm like just a couple of pennies that's it so i was like you know what let me do something let me research something and i was recently single too at the time and i was going on facebook and i was like dating group i was scrolling around and i found something for dave ramsey dating group i was like who's dave ramsey and what's his dating group so i i began to do some research and I was like oh a finance

guru let me actually jump in a little bit let me talk to these cool cats they were talking about baby steps and I was like what is baby steps so I began to do more research I was like oh okay so right now I'm on BS6 how can I do BS7 so I was thinking of going to gazelle mode which I which yep and then I was like okay let's go gazelle let's do what we need to do to get that to be zero there you go very cool that was it yeah it was fun it was exciting it really was so who was on your side during all this you you decide that you're going like animal mode going gazelle mode on this mortgage were there people around you who are like dude you're 34 like you can just you've got time or people around you who were like, dude, you're 34. Like you can just,

you've got time. Or was there somebody who was like, come on, dude, you need to have ambition. You need to have the passion. It's just because of what I saw with my, with my family. I saw my mom, she was one of those 1980s, you know, Oh, credit card, let me swipe it and forget it type of thing. And then it took her around 25 years to pay that off so i was like you know what i don't want to be like that let me do something different and you just have to be self-motivated because being debt-free is great yeah way to go man so the the odd pop-up site that we have by the way disclaimer we have nothing to do with any dating sites nothing nothing not a zero yeah full disclaimer here and yes it's been proposed as many times as a bean beans and rice cookbook so don't send me the proposal okay we're not doing it why not oh man i'm just glad you i'm glad you wandered in the back door man it's just

amazing yeah it's very cool the dating group had some cool cats in it, and I had a lot of fun, and we all helped each other out to resolving to become everyone being debt-free. I love it. It's really nice. Very good. Wow. Good for you, man. Well done.

How does it feel to not have a house payment at 34 years old? I don't know what to do with my money, except let's reinvest it. Let's put it up in my 401k. Let's max it out that's awesome good for you that's really cool are you are you doing anything to celebrate are you going anywhere what's the big trip what's the actually i had a uh big party uh a few weeks ago actually over at my house i invited my friends it was like a double party because not only did i become debt free but i also got uh i finished off in my second bachelor's degree.

Sweet. Oh, wow. Because with my job, they do free education. Always max out those benefits. So that's what I did and got myself a second bachelor's and I'm going for my master's and I'm looking for my doctorate. Let's go. Wow. Why not?

Game on. Yeah. Hey, if you don't have to pay, let's go. This is very, there's nothing wrong with this. No, not at all. Well done, sir. Thank you. Well done. Well done. Okay. don't have to pay let's go this is very there's nothing wrong with this no well done sir thank you well done okay so when the guys at the party they said okay you're 34 years old you have paid for a $450,000 house this is weird how did you do that what do you tell them the key is to getting

out of debt the key is be self-motivated is to have passion within yourself because if you don't have that passion you're not going to do it and don't listen to most of that media saying that debt's cool that's not cool you know you got to pay off the debt you got to get yourself debt free and it's like change it's like it's like being uncuffed from being in prison or something you know you're free you can do whatever you want and it's and it's fun and it's a cool journey from going from different baby steps and whatnot and i try to encourage my friends to do the same thing and live that ramsey lifestyle wow and some of them will do it some of them won't that'll be perfect wow very good man congratulations proud of you thank you we're excited for you well done and appreciate you taking the trip here to nashville to do your debt-free scream we've got

the live and give box for you for you to have the baby steps millionaires book which is definitely the journey that you're on you won't be there for very it won't be long for it till you're there and total money makeover book to give to somebody and get them started and even financial peace university membership all of that uh just to say thanks for coming up here and you can live some of it you can give some of it so it's perfect sounds great very cool very cool who did you bring along to cheer you on here uh my friend jocelyn she too is on the dave ramsey journey baby steps right now so she wants to see what the good life is like all right here we go all right find out what it's like to be truly weird well done isaiah you've joined the club my man i'm proud of you all right isaiah from tampa florida 176000 paid off in six years, making $41,000 to $95,000.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. I'm debt-free! Yeah! That is how it's done. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Man, his enthusiasm was contagious infectious you know

the first time i took a call or somebody on the debt-free stage that had paid off their home i was aghast and then the first time i had somebody that was like 40 years old pay off their home i was aghast and now it seems like every week we've got a 30 something in here with their homes paid off i know and are almost millionaires already uh it's like happening earlier and earlier and earlier this younger generation is catching on faster than the boomers did. That's true. Yes, they are. Yes, aghast is the word. Yeah, it just, I mean, it's, wow, wonderful. Not a payment in the world, and he's not even 35 years old.

Yeah, and light as a feather. Light as a feather. Light as a feather. Not touching the ground when he walks. I mean, this is how it works, you know, because you don't have to carry all those chains around and uh you know it changes how you work it changes where you work it changes the quality of your relationships your your ability to set boundaries in toxic areas of your life when you have no money problems is pretty powerful yeah and uh he he didn't have that in his story that we know of anyway.

But just to let you know, if you don't have any payments and the boss starts yelling, you can just start walking off. Yeah. I'm leaving. Where are you going? I don't have any payments. I'm not putting up with this crap. Next.

I mean, it changes everything, boys and girls. It changes how you walk. And because you're not, you don't walk like a slave anymore. You walk like a free person. It changes. It's worth it. It's hard. But it changes everything.

This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Ashton is with us in Akron, Ohio. Hi, Ashton, how are you? Hello, I'm good. How are you? Thank you so much for having me. Sure. How can we help? So, since I have met you through the interwebs, I have referred to you as my financial father.

Prior to discovering all the Ramsey products, I didn't know anything about how to handle money. That was never discussed growing up, and neither did my husband. But with all the time we had on our hands staying home at the beginning of the COVID crisis, um, we found you again and we signed up for financial peace university. We dedicated every Sunday to go join the class online. We went through it. Uh, that was February, 2020. Since then we've paid off 160,000. Yes.

So my next call will be a debt-free screen and hopefully we can do it in person, but that's hopefully soon. But we have our house left, of course, and about $45,000 in debt left to pay off aside from the mortgage. And really I'm looking for advice or some kind of push on how to gain some traction. We kind of feel like we're stuck. I don't know if it's been the change in just all the changes with the world today and the prices of things. We also have my mom living with us since March. So that's changed some things financially and covering her expenses. But I feel like this last $45,000, it just feels like forever. It's not going anywhere. Is it because your margin has dramatically decreased or is it just you're getting tired

of chucking the money towards the debts every month? I don't think we're getting tired. I know that we're still pretty excited because we do still have our meetings, my husband and I, we do them every other week where we're sitting down and looking at our budget and our spreadsheet of all the things and we see how it's working. It's just for some reason this 45 and then how our budget has had to

change so you don't have as much money going towards it oh no we do have money going towards it you have as much as you used to oh yeah yeah we do okay how much let's stop a second what's your household income okay um bring home is 143.6 okay and how much are you how quick do you think you're gonna have the 45 done what's your project i'm hoping to have it no no no you got numbers it's not hope what are the numbers tell you what 16 months 16 one six for 45 000 making 145 000 so you can't live on 100 what's that you can't live on 100 for the next year oh we can we're we're also paying um like we have my mom living with us too so all of her how old is your mom but you know just 66 okay you're you started you're muffled like you cover your phone or something um Oh, sorry, 66.

66, okay. And why is she living with you? She had to move out from her home due to some domestic violence. Okay, so there's a divorce in process? No, no divorce involved. She wasn't married at the time, no. So she didn't own the home? No.

So it wasn't her home? No, she was renting. Is she able to work at all? She does work some, yes. Does she take Social Security? Not yet, no. Does she contribute to your household at all she does when she can she has a lot of medical bills of her own from from that uh attack i guess if you want to call

it um so she's covering those bills um at the time she didn't have insurance because she got you know hit with all the bills so trying to help her where we can. So like the grocery bills, all that has adjusted. How many kids do you have? We have three kids. Okay, so mom's in the house. Correct me if I'm wrong. Mom's in the house.

So now you're buying a little bit of extra food. There's maybe a little increase in water, that sort of thing yes that's not that's not changing yeah that doesn't feel like the reason that this is slowed down my question to you i i asked it a couple of times and i felt like you're kind of going back and forth i think that you're just um one of two things is happening either you're not putting as much money to the debt, and therefore it's not moving, which it sounded like you said initially, but then you said, no, we're putting just as much on it. So both can't be true. You paid off $160,000, right?

Yes. In what period of time? Three years. From February 2020 to, well, August. So almost three years. Almost, yeah. I think based on what you're telling us, I think. That's $55,000 a year.

Yes. Okay. That's not $45,000 over 16 months. So your energy has slowed down. You're not putting as much towards the dead as you were yeah that's what we were saying you should be done with this in like 12 8 to 12 months somewhere in there if you turn it back up i think um i don't know i'll give you a guess you the way you mentioned mom and then you tell us what has happened with your mom, the trauma she's been through, and how the emotions around some dirtbag hitting your mother to the point that she needs medical attention are very strong. If you're a redneck, it means you want to kill somebody, okay?

Like him, okay? I'm not saying you should. I just said it makes you want to because that's actually what he deserves, okay? So the emotions around that, so not only did mom come in and is eating a little bit of food, what mom did come in and do was use up a whole lot of your emotional bandwidth right now. Yeah. Yes, I agree. yous up a whole lot of your emotional bandwidth right now yeah yes i agree which is okay because you're supposed to take care of her because she got the crud beat out of her that's horrible right i mean i'm so glad you're there for her but i think you're you know you guys had a singular

purpose in life coming out of the fauci quarantine your singular purpose in life was get out of debt, wasn't it? And now you've got like two or three purposes. And so it's diluting some of your emotional focus and energy. At least one of the purposes is valid, but just recognizing that it's there helps you deal with it. And that is I'm probably slowing down just because I'm, you know, mom's situation is taking up some part of my emotional bandwidth. I think she's hitting you all harder there than she is in the pocketbook. I would probably agree with you.

Yeah, and again, I want to validate that i think that's probably the right thing to do she needs you to be there she needs to remember she's not a victim that or she is a victim but she's not a worthy of what happened to her because that's what goes the shame that goes with domestic violence so helping her turn the corner on this and getting her to where she can contribute to your household financially would be good for her dignity in this as well. So that'd be okay if she started either getting a job or collecting Social Security, I don't care which, and dumping that in the middle of your all's table to help cover the food and housing right now.

That's good. And then we also need to work out a long-term plan, which is not her living here for 25 years until she's 94. We're not doing that. So we need a better plan than that. But short-term, you've been a safety net and you should. Yeah, I think you're right, Dave. I think you hit on something with the emotional part

because I think that's what people tend to do when something emotional happens. It's like you go out to dinner more, you tired you don't cook it as much at home you she doesn't probably doesn't want to say no to much of what her mom is requesting like there's all of these things that make you feel like how can I help how can I just decompress from this moment and unfortunately sometimes that includes spending dollars you know and i think that's what's happened here you relax and as soon as you relax money flows to stupid sure does and i'm not saying you're doing a bunch of stupid at all i i don't think you are but there's singular focus is what

got you 160 done in two and a half years and singular more singular focus to the extent you can and still take care of your mom is what will get you moving again, kiddo. You're doing better than it feels like you're doing, I think. I think so too. And I think you're an amazing daughter. Well done. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, what's up, guys?

It's Jade. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey, we have a weekly newsletter that gives you trending and helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Just go to ramseysolutions.com today to sign up for our newsletter. Again, that's ramseysolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.