The Ramsey Show - App - Focused Intensity Over Time Will Move the Needle (Hour 2)

Episode Date: November 6, 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 amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw this hour, and we are here for you, America, taking your calls about life and money at 888-825-5225. Let's kick it off with Barb in Baltimore. Barb, what's going on? Hi, George and Jade. Thank you so much for taking my call. Absolutely. How can we help? Well, my question is that in my post-career season of life, do I have enough assets, given that I would not be saving as much in future years, that I could afford to do a very limited remodel of my kitchen? Oh, the old post-career kitchen remodel, Barb. This is exciting. What are you looking to do in the kitchen? Well, it's builder grade stuff in there. And I guess counters,

cabinets, sink. I just had to replace the refrigerator. So that's already done. But it's a small kitchen. It's not. But I'm thinking it would be maybe around the range of between 20 and 25,000. But I recognize it's not a necessity, but it's not functioning all the time real well, and I would like to be able to have the kitchen in these, you know, future years to be, I don't know that I'd ever have to sell the house while I'm alive. But anyway, I just have not been able to make the decision. And I wanted to talk to Christians about it because I'm very, I love stewardship. I've always been good at budgeting and I have no debt, but I don't know if I have enough money. And I've got all my numbers here. You can ask me anything, whether I have enough to be able to take that amount of money and use it for something that's not, you know, like the roof, I replace that. Sure.

But this is just a Barb wants it. And that's okay to admit. Nothing wrong with that. How old are you, Barb? I am 69. I'm excited that in a few months I'm going to turn 70, which is a milestone. That's awesome. And what kind of a nest egg do

you have sitting around okay here's here's my um um my my house i have no debt and my house is paid off my car i've never had credit card debt i thought i'd tell you that because i don't i don't ever i've never done that um i have in my i guess you call it deferred tax, what came from my 403B that is now with an investment company, that's $200,000. And I don't plan on, I'm living on my Social Security and a part-time job, and I can actually live on my Social Security. I have a very simple budget. And how much is that um my currently my social security well this year total um that i what does it get what does it pay every month what's what's the check that you receive okay um the 1991 okay and that's enough for you to handle everything. Even if you quit the part-time job, you'd be okay.

Yes. What led me to call you today is that the dear lady that I've been taking care of part-time as a caregiver this year, she just injured herself, and it's unlikely I'm going to have that job for, well, unless she recuperates totally, she may need more care than what I can give. So I may be back to for a while, just living on my social security, which is fine. I can do that. But, but that brought the question more to mind. What did that job pay you when you were doing the health care? Well, this year, this year I made about 9,000 from that private pay. Um, um, so, so this year that, you know, and, and that, that mostly went into savings. I mean, I really, um, I, except for the big things like the roof or the, you know, um, so that's, that's, but I do have

some other savings. You want me to tell you the other numbers? Yes, ma'am. I have a Fidelity account that my investment guy said is he could, that this is actually the money that I put away a long time ago for the kitchen. It's now $37,000. Okay. And that, yeah. And that's just in a brokerage account? It is invested? It's not on the money market side? No, well, I don't know what you call it, but he says it's liquid, that he could give it to me at any time. Okay, so it's probably on the money market side, and it's ready to be invested, but it's just sitting there,

you know, basically at 0% interest. Okay, great. Well, it does grow. At one point it had $8,000 more, and now it's got like $3,000 more. The principal I put in was $33,000, so it's $4,000 more than that right now. What other accounts do you have? I have a $20,000 CD. Okay. And then I have in savings, I have $30,000.

There's an extra. I keep all of my non-monthly bills. I keep those in that savings account too, and I take them out and put them in my checking when I pay my bills. So when you take out your bills, what's left? $28,000? No, $30,000. There's about $2,000 in there towards. Okay, so you just share that with your normal. Your Social Security goes in there, you pay your bills, and then that sits at $30,000. Any other investment accounts? Well, the checking account is where I pay things from, and that's where my social security goes into.

So total, $200,000, let's see. So about $287,000? um 200 um under 69 49 69 70 about 20 270 000 if you count the the retirement fund which i don't want to that 200 000 okay and what's your home worth by the way you said it's paid for well it's anywhere from this year because prices went up people tell me it is about $310,000, but normally it's $220,000. So that's what I was counting as the actual, you know, I think it's closer probably to $220,000 than it is to $310,000. It's a small townhouse. That's a big leap. Let's call it $250,000. Okay.

So you've got about a half million net worth. Yes. And you're wondering, should I be spending this $20,000? You have the money to do the kitchen remodel for $25,000, but are you wondering is this a prudent and wise financial decision based on my big picture? Yes, because if I live till, you know, God hasn't told me when he's taking me home. So if I live till I'm 90 or older and, you know, have, and there's going to be, you know, my heating is going to go security and you know that if that all goes well I won't need to take from even if I don't get a new caregiving part-time job so I can't decide it myself I need I need you to tell me if you think that you're not knowing how much I'm going to live in the future and how much I will be draining from all those savings.

Well, just listening to you talk, you're living off your Social Security. You haven't touched any of your retirement, which in your case is great. I do feel like you have a lot of money that's kind of sitting uninvested that I would make sure is invested so that money is truly working for you. You've got $20,000 in a CD, $30,000 saved, and another $37,000 that we're not really sure where that is. So if I were you, I'd make sure at least $50,000 more of that money is getting invested so it can earn a return for you. And then I'd have a professional come out and I'd see what really is it going to cost. If I were you, I'd probably try to spend somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 and do it on the low low. Get a few bids and be reasonable. But this sounds like a good move if you're willing to continue living frugally.

You are listening to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Jade Warshaw this hour. Give us a call at 888-825-5225. Our question of the day is brought to you by Neighborly, your hub for home services for over 40 years. Neighborly has an exclusive network of trained local service providers backed by the Neighborly Done Right promise. So if it's not done right, Neighborly will make it right. Visit neighborly.com slash Ramsey to learn more. And here's the question of the day brought to you by Jade. Thank you. It says, today's question comes from Mark in Arizona. He says, I was sadly laid off earlier this month. Between my wife and I, we have around $54,000 worth of credit card debt.

We are currently trying to figure out the best way to handle this debt while I search for a job. Should we just pull our limited extra leftover money and just slowly pay off the cards one by one while neglecting the minimum payment? Or would a debt consolidation or a debt settlement company be better to handle this? You know, if I'm looking at this, I think that what I'm sensing is you guys are panicking because it's like, oh my gosh, I just got laid off. We've got this debt. Now it's like, now we want to pay it off and you're feeling the crunch.

I would call this a storm though. And whenever you're facing a storm, you want to make sure you're just battening down the hatches and making sure that you're getting out of the storm and getting through that safely. So I probably, one of your options here was should we just pull all of our extra leftover money? And no, I would not do that. As a matter of fact, I would just kind of hold tight. And right now I would focus on making the minimum payments, right? Just satisfy those minimums. And then I would really put all of your effort into finding another job. That's thing one, we've got to get income coming in. So we're paying minimum payments, getting a job coming in. And then once you get the security of a job coming in, now we can start reworking those baby steps.

And in this case, if you're on baby step two, yeah, list those things out smallest to largest. And now that you feel how this can negatively affect you, hopefully that feeds into your intensity to get this paid off super fast, right, George? Absolutely. And debt consolidation comes up a lot on the show and we're not fans of it.

And there's a good reason. It's because it doesn't actually change your world. It doesn't change the behavior that caused it. All it does is make you think you did something by moving debt around. Now, there are situations where if you've got 17% interest, 22% interest on this credit card, and you can go down to zero and you already have the gazelle intensity, it can help, and you'll pay a little less in interest,

but the bigger thing it does is help you feel like you're making progress on the debt by knocking it out faster. But if you don't already have that kind of gazelle intensity, which many don't, then what they do is they get comfortable because they go, well, we're not paying any interest on it. So we'll just, I kind of like sometimes that there's a higher interest rate that makes you go,

gosh, you see how much we're paying in interest? Never again will I go into debt. That's why I call it- Versus a shortcut like debt consolidation. And these debt settlement companies, Jade, these drive me crazy. Oh, they're the worst. They're borderline scams.

You pay these people a giant pile of money and what they do is they tell you, okay, stop paying on your debt completely. We'll take it from here. It tanks your credit score, which we don't care about credit scores, but tanking it will hurt you as you continue to live your financial life on purpose.

And then they try to settle the debt, saving you money, maybe. But a lot of times what happens is scores, but tanking it will hurt you as you continue to live your financial life on purpose. And then they try to settle the debt, saving you money, maybe. But a lot of times what happens is you just pay them all this money and the debt sits out there. I just feel like when it comes to those consolidation places, whatever they're offering to do, you can honestly do it for yourself. Yes. Like you can get on there on the phone. And if you're trying to negotiate a lower interest rate, you can do that. If you want to negotiate a lower minimum for the other ones while you pay a lot on the little one, you can do that yourself. If you want to negotiate something where you're taking a portion of your paycheck and putting it towards your debt, you can do that. Matter of fact, we have an EveryDollar budgeting app that can help you do that. You find all of your margin and you put it towards your debt. So yeah, I would almost never,

well, I'm going to go on out on a limb and say never do a debt consolidation simply because honestly what they're offering, you can do yourself and you don't have to pay somebody. Exactly. Look at that. And putting all of your separate debts into one giant debt doesn't make it easier. It makes it harder because you don't feel the progress. You're not knocking out payments along the way. That's right. So I like to keep it all separate to feel the wins there. So thank you

for the question, Mark. But I would work on, like Jade said, you need to have no interruption of income. Go work, do anything you can right now in storm mode, and we'll get back to that debt as soon as we get some stability. Love it. All right. Let's get to Zach in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Zach, what's going on? Hey, guys. I'm wondering what you think about liquidating some Roth IRA contributions to fund the purchase of some acreage adjacent to my current property. Ooh. Why are you buying this land? Like, why is this suddenly very important to you? Well, so it just came up. Basically, my neighbor just has a plot of land that he's owned for about 10 years.

And he just said, hey, I'm, you know, within six months or so, I'm going to sell this place. Do you guys want it? And of course we do, you know, it'd be amazing to have 100 acres or whatever um so it did kind of come out of the blue but it's certainly something that we would like to have um just really for recreation so we have some acreage of our own and it butts up against it

so hunting and so how many acres do you already have? 20. And what would this add to it? Like how much are you looking to purchase? So this would add another 20. Okay, you'd go from 20 to 40? Yes. And what's it going to cost? About 85. Okay.

And how much do you have in cash? Well, I've got a little over 40 in a brokerage account that I would use for it. We've got well over a six-month emergency fund, so we'll probably turn that into more like a three-month. So maybe take 10 to 15 out of there. And then I was thinking, you know, I guess I have access to somewhere around 35 in Roth IRA contributions. I mean, ideally, that would be the last pool that you pull from. What would it look like if you bought 10 more acres for the 45 that you can get your hands on instead of 20 acres and touching your retirement?

I don't think, I'm almost positive our township doesn't allow for the acreage to be split up like that. You buy the whole thing or not. Do you have any debt currently? We have $300,000 mortgage. Otherwise, we have no consumer debt. And what's your household income? $160,000. Man, this feels like a lot to take on. Because I would tell you, let's pay off the house first before we go and get more land, more property.

I know you're itching to get more acreage, but unplugging now, for the listener's sake, let me make it clear that what you're talking about here is not withdrawing from a retirement account with taxes and penalties. You can take out the contributions from a Roth IRA without penalty. I wouldn't do it because it would hurt me too much to unplug all of that growth and future opportunity for that money. Absolutely. Because you sound young. How old are you? 35. Okay. Leaving that money in there, I would crunch the numbers because it may help you step off that ledge, my friend, and go, oh, that's going to hurt too much later on. If I left this $35,000 to grow in this account, what would that turn into 20 years from now, 30 years from now? And how much faster can I just save up and try to pay cash for this land if I really want it? It still feels like doing too much on top of your $300,000 mortgage to then buy another $85,000 worth of land. We're talking $400,000 here, making $160,000. In today's world, it just feels like you're biting off a lot.

And you may not regret it later. You may regret it. I don't know. Down the line, you may call back and say, I shouldn't have bought this land, but if you're going to do this deal, I would pause. And is there any urgency? Is he going to give up this land to someone else tomorrow? No, he has told us we have a few months, and he will let us know for sure before he lists it. So he's been very nice about it.

And he wants to do a private sale. He wants it to be easy, so there's an incentive for him to sell it to us yeah should i i mean is the the price versus like what the actual value might be because i feel like he's giving me a decent price should i be considering that i wouldn't i mean because i'm i wouldn't because at the end of the day what really denotes whether or not you should buy something is whether or not you can actually afford it, not whether or not it's on sale, not whether or not it's a deal. You either have the money or you don't, regardless if it's a deal, regardless if it's on sale. So in this case, the only way that I would consider doing this is if you were only buying half the amount and you had the cash to pay for it and then you still got your mortgage there. But to be honest, you really should focus on your mortgage first and

put that same intensity that you're looking to buy new land into paying off the land and home that you already have. And that's just keeping it real. Yeah, I'd take money out. Anything beyond that emergency fund, I'm throwing it out of the house. If you guys are debt free, let's just knock this thing out so that when an opportunity does strike, you're ready for it. That's right. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel. She's Jade Warshaw. This is The Ramsey Show. You can call us at 888-825-5225.

We'll chat about your life, your money, and we'll give you our best take on what we would do if we were in your shoes. Diana joins us in Los Angeles. Diana, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hello. Hi. Hey, what's going on? I have a question. So I have co-signed a car with my mom. She's 83 years old, and if she passes, is the car going to be mine? Well, is the title in your name? Yes. Okay. Mine and hers. As well as the loan? Yes. Okay. Unless there's something else dictated in her will and wishes,

it's your car. Okay. I mean, isn't it at your car now? It is in both of our names, yes. I don't think she has a will, but I am the power of attorney for my mother. Okay. Is she still driving? No, she can't drive anymore. So we're paying monthly payments on a car that's just sitting there? I'm driving it. I'm using it. I take her to and from, you know, whatever she needs. So you don't have a personal car? This is the only car I have. Okay. What does it take to get

her name off of it? Just to make it clean? I don't know how to go about that, and if I can, I don't know. Well, you would have to be able to afford the loan on your own. Would you be able to afford it? I don't know, honestly. That's a good question. What's the car worth? Where do I...

$23,000. And what do you owe on it? The payoff is $23,000. That's still the amount. You're not sure what it's actually worth if you sold it private party? Yes, I did the Kelly Blue Book and it shows about $17,000 to $19,000. So I'm upside down about $4,000.

Somewhere there. And what's your income? about $17,000 to $19,000. Okay. So I'm like upside down about $4,000. Yeah. Somewhere there. And what's your income? My income is about $6,000 to $6,500 net a month. Okay. Is this your only car or do you have another car that you were driving before you signed up with this one with your mom? I have another car that has like $3,000 on it

and my daughter's using it. How old's your daughter? She's 29. What would it look like and what's her financial situation real quick? Can she afford her own car? Not at the moment, no. Here's what I i'm getting to i would love for everybody to have their own cars like i would love for your 29 almost 30 year old daughter to have her own car that she pays for i would love for you to then have your car back that you bought and only oh three thousand dollars on it and then i would like you to get rid of this car that you got with your 83 year old mother who no longer drives that's that's an ideal setting in my mind because right now it's kind of a little bit of a spider web I thought about that honestly but I'm kind of like so bad because she'll be

left without a car and she is working. So I don't know. But she's working, right? Does she have kids? No, no kids. Okay. She's a fully grown woman who's got a job. I don't think you should feel bad about that at all. I think you should feel like, wow, I have confidence in my daughter that she can make it in the real world and pay cash for a car that she can afford with her job.

Sure. You know what I'm saying? I agree. Do you have any other debt? A lot of other debt, yes. And I have been listening to the show for a while now and have made so many mistakes and now I'm back again. I'm following the Ramsey solution way.

Good. And I've put my debt together and I kind of have numbers if you want to, you know. Well, I'm wondering, are you able to pay off this car in a year or two? No, I don't think so. If you can't pay it off in the next year or two, I would sell it. And I would scrape up together the money

that you're underwater on. That's $4,000. Scrape that up, sell the car, be done with it, and get you a beater car for now until you can upgrade. What's the payment? My worry is about I had a beater car and I got rid of it because they break down and I can't afford to fix it. So that's what made me go in there and get the new car out again.

How long is... Sorry, I'm changing. I'm going in another direction. How long has your daughter had the $3,000 car? Has she had it for a long, long time? Just about a year now. She's making the payments and paying insurance. And is that in your name?

Yes. Yeah. You got a lot of financial risk on your shoulders right now. If it were me, I would get that car back. I really would. I'd be like, hey, I'm glad that this has helped you out out let's get on a plan for you to get your own car and let's set a timeline for this because i'm trying to get my financial house in order and i like you said i've made a lot of mistakes and honestly one of the mistakes i made was getting our you know

getting your grandma a car and then sliding my car over to you and i've got to make this right daughter how long can you how long will it take for you to get a little bit of cash together so you can buy a car in cash and so that I can have my car back so that I can sell grandma's car okay so that's the plan that I would set in motion I'd set that plan in motion today I'd call her up and say hey let's get on a three or four month plan here. Yeah. Okay. So give her a timeline like to. Yeah. Give her some time. I mean, you're not going to just snatch it out from under her, but I think, I think it's good for you to say, hey, I've made

mistakes and I'm trying to get my life in order. And maybe that will push her to do the same because it sounds like she's got some things to get in order and then in the meantime what other debts do you have i have about a ten thousand dollar uh credit card debt i have the car obviously it's 23 000 i have a plot that i just bought which is like 12 000 and i have um tax debt how much is the tax debt um I would say 2700 plus 1900 whatever that total is okay one one's a tax from Utah and one is here in California okay and what's your income that you're bringing in uh bringing net uh six from six thousand to six oh that's right you did say that you did say that okay and what was the plot for was this like a funeral plot i'm sorry was this a funeral plot

yes the plot for me yes okay bought it and i'm making payments on that too okay well the step zero is to stop going into debt. And that's the hardest step, truthfully, out of this whole plan, is just to stop the bleeding and go no more. Debt is off the table. If we can't pay for it, we've got to figure out another way. If that means public transportation and getting on a bike, we're doing it. But right now, we've got to have that line in the sand.

Otherwise, we're going to continue down this path, and there's always going to be something else that comes up. There's always going to be another reason to swipe the card. So I would cut up the cards, number one, and stick to using your own money. I already have all of them. I already have. And I paid off one small debt. I did something trying to do.

I'm a step number two. Excellent. I just have $1,000, and that's all I have. The plot you bought, is that for you? Or were you trying to help out your mom again? No, it's for me. My mom has hers, but we just paid off and, you know, it's there. So this one is mine.

Okay. So let's put this IRS debt at the very top of your list. This trumps everything in the debt snowball. We've got to attack this one with intensity and get this monkey off our back. Get Uncle Sam out of there. Then we can start focusing on the smallest debt, smallest to largest. We're going to increase our income. We're going to do what Jade said with this car and get out from under this weird situation

where we found ourselves in. And that's going to give you some traction right there. You free up that car payment. How much is that? My car payment is $379. Great. That's about $400. You can start throwing it the next smallest debt and the next smallest debt, and you'll

get there in no time. This is not a huge amount of debt comparatively to your income. Yeah. It's just confused. It's all over the place. Okay. We just haven't had traction, but I love that you're on the plan now. You're ready to do this thing.

Yes, I am. And I have a goal to be debt-free, and I just don't know when I'm going to get there. I'm just very overwhelmed right now. Write it down and put it on your bathroom mirror to remind yourself every single day. And let us give you every dollar because if you can plug these numbers into every dollar, it won't be an unknown anymore. You can use the financial roadmap feature, plug all your numbers in and you can see exactly when you'll be debt-free, exactly when you'll have your three to six months of savings. And that is going to give you a lot of peace of mind going forward. And you can sign up for our free EveryDollar webinar we're doing this Friday. I'll be leading it. EveryDollar.com slash budgeting. I'll walk you through how to set it up

and hang on the line. We'll gift that premium version to you. Thank you so much for the call. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw. The number to call is 888-825-5225. Well, Jade, producer James introduced a very interesting article to us that delves in the world of politics. I'm not going to get political, but it also crosses over into our land of personal finances. So I thought I'd read it to you and see what you think about it. Yeah, okay. Read it.

You ready for this? This is a Fox News headline. Claim that Speaker Johnson lives paycheck to paycheck makes him relatable, say defenders. So here we go. Some Americans rallied behind House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday after a report nitpicked his personal finances and put a harsh spotlight on the possibility that he lives paycheck to paycheck. So this is speculation. Pure speculation.

But here's Daily Beast published a report that says, does new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have a bank account? It featured a subhead that said he has never listed a bank account on his financial disclosure and his newest disclosure doesn't list a single asset at all. And apparently he has no, there's no record of him owning a single stock, no investments at all. That's crazy. This man is not on the grid. It says, of course, it's unlikely Johnson

doesn't actually have a bank account. What's more likely is Johnson lives paycheck to paycheck, so much so that he doesn't have enough money in his bank account to trigger the checking account disclosure rules for members of Congress. What's crazy to me is like, number one, broke equals relatability. That's just sad. We need to change that. And that's basically why we exist here.

Hashtag relatable. Wow. What I am thinking about, so I just googled because i wasn't sure i googled the salary for speaker of the house 223 500 a year and he just got a raise here so he just got that to his credit yes which is like that's a lot of money but i think sometimes people think if you're in the government you're automatically like wealthy blah blah blah but there is that stat george that says a third of Americans who make $250,000 or more live paycheck to paycheck, which in my opinion is really sad because at that

point, your salary is up in the upper, you know, at least 7%. And if you're living paycheck to paycheck, it's just a testament that your income doesn't denote that you are good with money and no matter how much money you make if you are a poor steward with your money or if you don't know how to handle your money well it will escape you and you will be known what is relatable as relatable or also broke that's right and to be clear we have no idea his financial situation he may be fine but you know this is news trying to drum up some drama around whatever they can to get some clicks and you know that's the name of the game i think that when here's this is just jade's take i think that the the more money you

make the slipperier the slope because when you make fifty thousand dollars when you make 40 you know forty thousand dollars sixty thousand dollars you're just kind of like right in there you know median income i think is like sixty seven thousand it's kind of like this is you know this is americana i'm in my life you know i've got my used vehicle you know you don't have this standard that you have to prove to the world but i think when you start creeping up peeping and creeping on a hundred000 and peeping and creeping on 200,000, people start to be like, oh, you know, I have to show like there's a little bit of status that comes into that where people feel like they have to show a certain lifestyle. And so it's like suddenly your mortgage is a little bit more and suddenly you're buying that new Escalade because

everybody else around you has that. And now all the people around you are eating at more expensive restaurants and you feel like you've got to get on board. And not only that, but when you if you make the decision like, hey, maybe I need to step back and like get myself on track. It shows like you. It shows when you're like, you know what? I don't want to go to Ruth's Chris. I want to go to Chili's.

Like, are you telling me that your friends aren't going to notice that? Are you telling me your friends aren't going to notice when you go from driving a brand new Escalade to a 2013 Tahoe? You know what I'm saying? So it's almost like you really have to get your mind right when you're in that situation, because people, if you decide to change, people will see the change. It's not like, you know, one of these things that you can just do and keep it under wraps, like it's going to show and that's okay it should show but i do think that it makes it more difficult that's a good take right there and there is a piece to this you know we found in our millionaire study teachers were one of the top careers for millionaires and again teachers aren't trying

to flaunt anything i mean they're just trying to survive the next day with these kids and so they're not driving around luxury cars and you know he's probably got a brownstone in D.C. and paying top dollar. And it's an expensive lifestyle in the big city with the big job, with a big salary. Yeah. And so it makes sense that they're living paycheck to paycheck. I mean, you just add up a few debt payments and all of a sudden you got a thousand dollar car payment, four thousand dollar mortgage. Yes. You're trying to keep up nice clothes, eating out. Yes. And all of a sudden you got nothing.'re used to that lifestyle so the minute somebody's like hey you're gonna have to cut your country club membership it's like you know it's like hey by the way so painful you're not gonna have a personal trainer anymore like you know listen real stuff speaker of the house mike

johnson if you are listening to this show we're here to help uh you can contact us privately let's give them every dollar for free we'll be we'll give you everything we got man to help if you can just start to leak some of these good financial principles to congress that would be a game changer look i've got an every dollar promo code with speaker of the house mike johnson's name on it there we go but i hope none of this is true i hope he lives a a fine financial life and he just isn't trading stocks very shadily like those Congress members who know a little too much about what's going on to be trading stocks. I think I'm for that getting shut down, Jade.

Absolutely. That's my political take. Again, this is just George and Jade talking. This is speculation. None of this is fact. But hey, speaking of the government, let's shift to something very happy. This is speculation. None of this is fact. But hey, speaking of the government, let's shift to something very happy. This is exciting. In honor of Veterans Day, for those that have served, we're giving away Financial Peace University to 10,000 veterans, totally free, right now through Monday, November 13th. So FPU, if you don't know,

is the proven fastest way to beat debt, to build wealth. It's helped nearly 10 million people. And we love our service members out there. So if you're a veteran, you want to take FPU for free on us, go to ramseysolutions.com slash veterans and fill out a very simple form. And if you guys could help us get the word out, I know every single one of us knows that we have a veteran in our life that we love. Please share that link with them and tell them to get it. ramseysolutions.com slash veterans is the way to get it. Thank you so much for that. There we go. We ended on a happy note.

We did. Budgeting is always a happy note. I love it. All right. We have time for a quick call. Let's get to Shanna in Portland. Shanna, what is happening in Portland, Maine? Good afternoon, guys.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I wanted to get your take on a question that my boyfriend and I have had for a little while, which is, is getting married financially beneficial for a couple that owns a business together? What does that have to do with it? It really is not. We see marriage as a contract. We feel like we are committed. We've been together for eight years. This sparked up when we told our accountant that we wanted to start a business together. And he said, I'm not a marriage counselor, but this would be easier if you guys were married.

Well, not only easier, but safer for both of you. And I guess that's my question. Like, why would it be safer, and what is your take on that? Well, the heart of the question is strange, because it's like, well, if there's a financial benefit, I guess we'll get married. That's just a weird way to go about it. And so while there are financial benefits,

I wouldn't just get married because of the tax benefits. That's weird. I would get married because it's the right move for you guys. And I mean, you've signed some business documents together, right? Which felt like we did, which felt like we were getting married when we were signing those. Right. I mean, as far as risk goes, yes. If you called in here and you were just like, hey, me and my boyfriend, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We had this business. We had this house. Trust and believe I'd be like, y'all need to go ahead and get married. And my my attitude behind that would be more for the safety and benefit of both of you. I mean, you clearly love each other. You clearly want to do your life together. So that in my mind, George, goes without saying. But in this case, if you're going to be in a business together heaven forbid something should go wrong with your marriage you want the safety of having a union together so that

when you do get a divorce and this goes behind before a judge there's complete fairness on both of your sides otherwise if you don't have that cover of marriage it's like either one of you at any point could just be like hey i'm out oh and. Oh, and I'm taking this money. Oh, and I'm doing this. And there's just not the same protections there. Okay. I understand. Not that you would do that, but do you see what I'm saying? You never know what the future holds.

Shanna, I hope you guys, if you're ready to get married, which I assume you are, you know, eight years together, you're running a business together. Take the next step. It sounds like it's time. If you have a healthy relationship, you've already committed to business. So let's commit to each other in that big way. Excited for you guys. I hope the business goes very well and the impending marriage goes well.

That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. My thanks to Jade Warshaw, my co-host, all the folks in the booth, and you, America. We'll be back before you know it.