The Ramsey Show - App - Forgiving Yourself for Past Money Mistakes (Hour 1)

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Thank you for joining us, America. We're so glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Number one best-selling author and Ramsey personality, Jade Warshaw, is my co-host today. Thanks for being with us. Alyssa is with us in Dallas, Texas. Hi, Alyssa. How are you? Good.

How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? So, big fan of yours. My husband and I are on baby step six, but I needed your advice with my stepdaughter. So, the situation is, back in April, I had wanted to plan, I planned a family vacation, rented a cabin, and I wanted my husband's family included. So there was about five families total. I also wanted to include his 30-year-old daughter, and she has an eight-month-old son.

It was $270 per family because my mother-in-law paid for the majority of the cabin. So his daughter had paid me $170, leaving a remainder of $100. Five days prior, she kept asking how to budget for the trip. I felt like she was trying to get me to offer to pay for the remaining $100 and plus the expenses that she was asking about. I didn't offer, so she told me to keep the $170 and that she couldn't afford to go because she had to take off work from being sick the week before. I told her, okay,

and then, you know, that I hope she could come, and then she told me, asked me if I would ask the other family members to pitch an extra to pay for the $170,000 she already paid me. I asked them. They said they didn't feel like they owed her so then she asked if I would pay her the 170 I asked my husband he didn't feel like we owed her because I brought up to her the fact that she had paid um it's his daughter right yes okay all right and how long have you been married to him two years okay all right and he didn't want to he didn't think his daughter should get a refund no because this is what she's really mad about i brought up the point that she had spent money on other things like a plane ticket and to go be in a friend's wedding and the olympic

weight loss shot and and then from there she just after she figured out we didn't really feel like we owed her the money she went off on me my husband this is really toxic on both ends by the way okay okay this is i could tell this is a toxic relationship you guys are just tit for tatting am i wrong because what is her it nothing what she's spending her money on is you know none of your business yeah and but you're bringing that up as she's asking for this here's the thing she needs the money that's why she's asking for it and she figured out hey i can't go on this trip i can't afford it and i'm glad she did you don't owe it to her but if you could get it to her is it really

hurting anybody because it's not do you see what I'm saying is it hurting anybody it feels like this is more about all the things that have happened in the past with her than this actual event yeah I there really wasn't anything in the past. That's not true. Yeah. Well, she told me she was struggling. She couldn't make ends meet. But then we see the way she spends. I'm talking about for the last eight years, her dad has observed her misbehavior.

And he's like, I'm not chiming in on that. No refund. Independent of you. Right. So I'm thinking this is about the past more than it is the actual situation itself. It's her pattern of living that nobody, the other family members, including your husband, wants to endorse. And you're new to this problem. Only two years have you been observing this dysfunction.

Yes. two years have you been observing this dysfunction yes yeah and so um yeah you you're not in a seat to give her advice about her spending um obviously because she didn't take it all she took was offense because you're not sitting in a seat of love or a seat of respect or a seat of um uh where she's asking and values your opinion she simply wanted her money back and you started teaching her about her money wrong right that doesn't work that piss anybody off by the way yeah that's unsolicited my grandmother used to say those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still and so that that's what you were trying to do and and so um yeah i i don't think you owe her the money back but you probably but you do probably owe her an apology for interfering in her life you know you didn't you didn't you went you went

there i mean you if you wouldn't have spent money on this and this and this, you could have come. Bridesmaid thing and the drugs. No, just leave it alone and go on and just go, you know, we've looked at it and we don't want to pay you. We don't want to do this. It's not that much money. Well, that's the thing. Like, let's think of it. You said there's five families going. So essentially, if we run this backwards, what you're saying is that if she hadn't

agreed to go nobody would have agreed to go because that's saying well if she doesn't pitch in her 170 the rest of us can't go no they just didn't want to refund her because the way she acts i get it i really don't blame them for that he didn't ask us she said when she said she told me to keep the 170 and then she asked me to ask them then she said well i'm not to keep the $170,000, and then she asked me to ask them. Then she said, well, I'm not paying you the $100,000 I owe, and you owe me the, it was just more of a, I wish you would have asked. Yeah, it was entitled. Yeah, like, she said, you, then you pay me the $170,000. I wish it was more like, hey, I'm struggling, I can't do it, this, can't you? Then I would have been, because I have, I've been very generous with her in the past and i'm

really easy to sucker but you gotta sucker me don't say i'm not paying you you owe me yeah don't don't sucker me don't entitle me i guess you know my son i don't disagree with you i don't disagree with you on that if she comes at you if she comes at you she bought 170 is what she bought. And so, yeah. I mean, I don't disagree with that at all. The only thing is that it feels like she's, there's all these other family members that she's on the outside edges of the rings of this family already. She already feels like an outsider.

Yeah. And this just drove a stake in that. It feels like an outsider yeah and this just this just drove a stake in that it feels like just listening to the story i don't know i just want to make sure it's worth 170 170 dollars to me right i just want to make sure they weren't holding it for spite like you told us this and this is what you do and so we're gonna hold it i think i think her dad said this is a pattern of hers she pulls this crap all the time we're not playing and and you know you put the deposit up and uh place play adult games get adult results yeah and i think i don't think he would he just said enough i mean it's her dad that is true if it's the if it

you know if it's a stepmother you could think maybe well maybe there was some more spite but true i think dad just looked at it went yeah, eh. And the other family members are like, I have no responsibility for her. Of course I don't. That's true, man. Y'all drive a hard bargain. It lands back on Alyssa. And then when she came at Alyssa, Alyssa went back and went, yeah, but you bought an airline ticket. That's true.

And you got this prescription and you got these other things. It's a matter of choices and you're making bad choices. Tone matters. But I think the girl, I think you're right. The girl's hurting financially. Yeah. And she's not very good at relationships. Yeah.

All the tones were off on this one. If she had asked in a better tone, if it had been received, I feel like tone is what messed up this whole transaction. And patterns of living that I'm not going to give a drunk a drink. That's true. I'm not going to reward this continual flightiness and irresponsibility and impulsiveness. And I'm not responsible for your lack of maturity. You know, that's her dad.

I can hear it in my head. This is The Ramsey Show. Don't miss your chance to join us on the Live Like No One Else cruise. And don't put up a deposit because I won't refund it if you're not going to go. That's a fact. Following that call, I do a cruise ad with a deposit. Anyway, actually, it wouldn't be with me anyway. It's with the cruise line so you have to

deal with them there you go because i love you and i'd probably give you your money back not really but anyway i'd leave it up to the cruise line so seriously there's not that many uh cabins or suites left if you want to come we're going to be doing this uh march the 22nd through the 29th uh that's next year of course 2025 we're going we're going to Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, a hundred percent of the Holland America first class, almost new ship will be Ramsey people. It's going to be like a huge baby step four and beyond party on the seas. Lots of baby steps, millionaires, lots of debt-free people screaming lots of us doing events on the boat talking about all kinds of things all the ramsey personalities dave and sharon will be there

too me and my wife the whole time plus manit shohan from the food channel steven curtis chapman uh dina carter and many others we've got all kinds of lineup on this thing it's going to be a lot of fun just a handful of cabins you can still get one and you can put down the key 600 deposit to secure your cabin i don't know what the refund is on that you'll have to check all joking aside and check it out at ramsey solutions.com slash cruise. It's the first time we've actually done one of these. We attempted to do one, and there was this little thing, this little disease thing going around, and it kind of ended the cruise back there a while back.

Fauci pandemic. Yeah, the Fauci pandemic got us. And so, you know, anyway, we're back on the high seas now, and we're rocking, and here we go. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm just glad Sharon's coming to keep you in check. Yeah, there you go. There you go, because I'm known for being out of check.

There you go. Bria is with us in Seattle. Hey, Bria, what's up? Hey, thanks so much for taking my call. Sure. How can we help so um i have been i watch your show every day um and ever since i started watching um what you teach has lit a fire under me and i've been paying off debt like a psycho person um so far we've paid off a $10,000 car loan, about $5,000 in credit card debt.

And the remaining debt that I have is $6,000 in student loans and a $1,000 medical credit medical credit card. Um, I'm so grateful for your advice. Um, but now that in the next few weeks, my husband and I plan to pay off the remainder of our debt you're incredible well done thank you and while I would have imagined that I would be full of joy and full of excitement to be debt free I just find myself feeling like there's just a cloud over my head because I can't seem to forgive myself for the debt that I racked up. The credit cards were used for really dumb things like eating out and buying stuff that I wanted in the moment that wasn't necessary. And so my question is,

as we embark on applying for a home loan and just building our future, my question is is um as we embark on applying for a home loan and just building our future my question is how do i forgive myself for falling behind on finances when i could have been ahead if i hadn't gone into debt and how do i stop obsessing over my past financial mistakes how did you do that because jade had a lot bigger mess than you, and my mess was bigger than both of you put together. Yeah, I think what's passing through my mind, and I'm going to misquote it, but the gist of it is that Maya Angelou quote where she says, like, once you know better, then it's your responsibility to do better.

And it sounds like that's exactly what happened. You got a hold of this information, and you said, that makes sense, like that rings a bell in my life, and then you started making the necessary adjustments. And so I know for me that that was a lot of it, a lot of the mistakes I made. And I'm not saying this to make an excuse per se, but I just didn't know. I didn't know what I was doing. And a lot of stupid is from ignorance. Like, you know, I didn't learn budgeting in school. I didn't learn financial management skills. And so there was a piece of it that I just didn't know better. But the key is once you do start to know better, if you don't start to do it, then it becomes,

yeah, it's your own fault. And so in your case, you're like, listen, I took this advice and I started running with it and it's still very new for you and there is a piece of this where you still have a longer period of time where you made the wrong choices therefore you don't trust your judgment then you've had time where you've been making the right decisions and I think the longer that you continue to rock walk down this road and it kind of starts to even out and you start having more years behind you where it's like okay I'm doing the right thing I can trust my instincts some part of that is just time passing and then you just choosing to say hey I didn't know I know now I'm changing my life and a lot of that is just you choosing that every single day to go all right I'm a person who understands it I'm a person who's responsible

and that's who I am now and that's how you view yourself. Yeah, I like that. The way you rebuild, let's say you violated trust with someone else, not with yourself. How do you rebuild trust with someone? It takes time and it takes a pattern of not doing the thing that broke trust ever again. Right. Right? And so, you know, we have calls on the air here that sound like, my husband quit doing alcohol three years ago, and I'm having trouble trusting him, or three months ago,

and I'm having trouble trusting him with money. I'm like, well, you should have trouble trusting him with money. He's been dry for a whole three months that's reasonable but if he if you call me up and say he's been dry for three years or 10 years and you're having trouble now that's on you that's not on him anymore because he's demonstrated a pattern of not returning to the bottle when you're just demonstrating a pattern of not making the same mistakes as Jade said, then you build trust with yourself. You're rebuilding trust with yourself. And so I have done so many different things, financial and otherwise, especially in my stupid, misspent hillbilly youth,

that no human should do, but I did them, and Jesus forgave me in any way, even though there's no reason. And I can just kind of sit in that and not even understand that level of grace, and it took me a long time to get really comfortable with. The windshield is a lot bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason. That's grace. The rearview mirror is small. You look in it and make sure that, you know, nothing's coming up from behind. The pass is not coming up to bite you again. You're looking in the rearview mirror to adjust your course to make sure you stay on track

and never go back to some of the stupidity again. But the big window is the windshield. The rearview mirror is small because you don't have to spend much time looking back. You spend most of your time looking forward. That is forgiveness. And once I walked into that, this sounds kind of goofy, but i forgave myself a lot faster than sharon forgave me so and uh she's still working on it no no i'm kidding she's not i'm kidding but i mean you know she was a terrified young mom with two little kids in the water and the electricity got cut off because of my stupidity in handling money not her fault at all and so anytime that i even have that facial expression or that body language or that tone around something we're discussing that reminds her of that and it's been 30 something years

you know her that wound inside of her spirit can open right up again and acid can gush out. But it doesn't happen hardly anymore. But I got to tell you, in the first like eight years, seven years after going through that, it took her a long time to trust me again and with good reason. Absolutely. Because I was not trustworthy. The more trustworthy you are, the more you are worthy of trust, the more you can say that other person did that.

I'm not identified as the worst thing I've ever done. That's right. That is not my identity. It's just something I did. And with every new choice you make, you're building that new identity. Yeah. I met a guy who has a fabulous life. He's very successful in business.

And very neat young man. Great dad. When he was 18, he robbed a bank. You don't hear that every day. Yeah, but he's a completely different human being now. You know, he served his time a completely different human being. And so, yeah, just small mirror.

Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality personality is my co-host today thank you for joining us america we appreciate you hanging out with us jawan is with us in springfield illinois hi jawan how are you uh good how you doing better than we deserve what's up hey so i'm trying to figure out my best course of action. Right now, I am trying to get a second job so I can hurry up, pay off all this debt, so I can get a down payment, get married. But I do have a kid on the way, nine weeks to go. We have two children at home. And my girl, she wants me to not work as much. But like right now we're in a situation to where, uh, the current living situation, uh,

I was paying $900 a month for rent, but how everything's going, I could possibly be paying zero dollars but moving somewhere else into like a uh like one of those housings so I'm just so what I'm trying to do is I just want to work as much as possible pay off all this debt build up a nice emergency fund as soon as possible and then just get out of there so I'm just trying to figure out what's my best course of action because I want to keep the gazelle intensity. What kind of work do you do? Right now I'm doing HVAC. I just got hired on probably about three months ago. I got through apprenticeship.

I was going to take a loan out for $15,000, but I called around and I happened to get an apprenticeship. So right now I'm just started off at $1,750. But within two and a half years, I'll be making $28 with like a double pension and all that stuff. Okay. And you're working 40 hours a week? Somewhere around there. I just started working Saturdays.

Well, they started letting me work Saturdays too. Okay. So roughly around 40, sometimes 47, 38, 39, something around there. Okay. And she wants you to stay home more because you're about to have three babies together. Well, it's my first child. We've got two children at home. So wait a minute. I'm sorry. Is your first child, then we don't have two children at home. She has two children that are not yours, right? Is that what you're telling me? Right, right, right. Okay, I'm just trying to make sure I

understand the dynamic of what's going on here. But this is the woman you want to marry, you know that. You want to marry her? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I disagree with the idea of you going to zero a month housing. I think that's a trap. And I think if you go there, you have the ability to get comfortable there. And I think you'll limit your income because of that. I would not do that. I think that's going backwards. Do you see why I feel that way? Yeah, I do. But that's why I wanted to keep working the two jobs just so I can hurry up and get out of debt. How much debt do you have? Tell us your debt. I mean, because I was paying, because right now when I'm living out, I'm literally making just enough to pay all the bills.

When's the wedding? The wedding? I mean, I want to get out of debt first. Why? You said why? Yeah. Babies are a bigger deal than debt. Yeah, than debt yeah yeah yeah I mean I want to be able to be prepared for all that but I wanted to I mean I wanted to get too late there's a baby coming

right right right right right and when we say just to clarify when we say get married like this could be you going down to the state courthouse and getting your marriage license I mean that was that was the uh I mean that's the goal goal. That's what I wanted to do. But you can do that in the afternoon, bud. Like, this is, you can do that instantly. Right. You could do that tomorrow. And I think you should.

I do, too. I mean, that's what I wanted to do. No, it's not. If you wanted to do it, you'd have done it. She wanted to wait. For what? She wanted to wait until the baby was out. Why?

I mean, she said, you know, she's dead. I don't say she's dead, but. For what? Why? She's thinking about a party. She's thinking about a party. And what you need to talk to her about, here's where she's not thinking. This protects her too. It protects this child. Because right now, it protects everybody. Because right now, she's just living in your house with her two kids. And she's the one carrying another baby.

She's the one at risk here. So you marrying her is an act of love that protects her. Yeah. Legally. Listen, so you called us. Ask us what we would do. And she doesn't want you to work as much. So I agree with you.

I think you ought to be working all the time like a madman and get the mess cleaned up to provide for this young family that you have now committed to and created okay so you have a child that's yours and two step children um if i woke up in your shoes sir i would get married this week and if we want to have a party later when she's not carrying a child and not you said big you know not she wants good nice pictures or something that's fine we'll have a party and a celebration later but let's get married and establish for this child when this child is 30 you can look at them and say when you were born we were married it does make a difference and yeah and that was my goal but i want to say that it's not your goal it's not your goal okay if it was your goal you would have

already done it okay you're you're calling me up trying to get out of debt with gazelle intensity and you're crawfishing like nobody i've ever seen on getting married so you you know if i woke up in your shoes i would go get married i think that's a bigger part of the discussion here than whether you work a few extra hours in the next nine weeks. I think so, too, because and then it's also we're talking about who this person is in your life, because if you call me and tell me it's a girlfriend telling me telling you to work less, I'm going to say she doesn't have a vote. But if she becomes your wife, there is a vote. I still think that she would be incorrect. You do need to work. She gets a half a vote because she's the mother of your child she gets a full vote because

she's your wife she gets no vote if she's a girlfriend as a matter of fact it puts her in jeopardy if she's telling me i can't go succeed facts we might put her on the street in that case so um for real i'm not hanging out with somebody telling me not to win yeah no thank you he needs to clarify like he's not talking to have a party later he just wants a piece of paper if a guy says listen i want to marry you tomorrow i'm saying yes so that we can go into this with the right relationship with the right protections in place no one even knows you have the certificate like if you want to keep it a secret who cares and have the party later surprise surprise between you her and god that's right that's it and whoever the justice of the

peace is that's what i would do because it sets up then okay now my wife and i and our baby on the way and her two children uh from a former relationship are our family unit and it is now my job honey to go and provide for this family unit i know it's difficult right now because you got a baby coming any minute and you got i mean my my daughter-in-law's getting ready to have a child any minute and she's got a three-year-old who's you know that's more than anybody should have to deal with right there that right there is enough okay and your wife's got two sitting there on top of this and it's just she's i mean because i know because grandma and grandpa have been picking up the three-year-old and getting her

off because she's driving everybody crazy so he's driving everybody crazy she's not but um so you know that's that's what all this dynamic is going on and she feels like you've uh left her at home to deal with all of it and so i think what we're talking about is woven into this and then sit down and go okay I'm going to help you with these kiddos and I'm going to work like a maniac yeah so let's figure out how I can do both because we've got to get up and get out of this mess yeah and we got to go to where 10 years from now we look back and go well that was the start of a whole new wonderful life. And because Juwan ain't afraid of work.

That's a big deal, Juwan. You ain't afraid of work. You can go win, brother. That's a big deal. And Dave, I don't know what you would call this, but there is something that happens when you change titles. When you become dad, husband, wife, all those things, you have to then rise to the occasion as opposed to...

I don't want to be tacky, but husband is a lot bigger deal than baby daddy. I was just going to say that. I don't want a baby daddy. Give me a husband. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I mean, and I don't want a baby mama or whatever you call it. No, thank you.

I want a wife. I mean, I want to be joined in partnership to go live the goals into the future. Yes. Step into a vision. Step into a dream. And kids want dad, not Jawan. Not you can just call him by his first name. Right.

They want dad, papa, dadaada all that yeah i'm a dinosaur that first name thing's tough for me i know it's hard yeah my kids didn't do me do that until they came to work here and we made them start calling dave so that it didn't freak out the rest of the employees but other than that oh my gosh this is the ramsey show jade washaw ramsey personality is my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225 jason's in kansas city hi jason how are you i'm good how are you thank you for taking my call sure Sure. How can we help? All right. So I may break down a little bit on this one.

So I'm getting ready to inherit about $185,000. Who passed away? Following the baby steps, my dad. Oh, I'm sorry. When did he pass? Just about three weeks ago. I'm so sorry. What happened to him? He was in Vietnam, so Agent Orange got a hold of him,

and throughout the years, just dementia, prostate cancer, amongst many others. How old was he? He just turned 81. Wow. Yeah, so he turned 81, and seven days later just turned 81. Wow. Yeah, so he turned 81 seven days later. He passed away. Wow. And you're getting $185,000.

Yeah, through cash and life insurance policies and a few other various things, we're estimating it somewhere between $170,000 to $190,000. So about $185,000 is pretty close. Okay. And I interrupted you, but I wanted to know more. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sorry for your loss. I appreciate that.

So my biggest question is, I'll start with the question and then we can go from there. My biggest question is, when it's all said and done after following the baby steps and everything else, would it be acceptable to take some of that money and purchase a newer truck? Uh, I currently have a truck that I owe about $4,800 on it. Still, uh, our only other debt is, uh, about a $2,900 credit card. We'd be able to have a fully funded emergency fund. I've been doing a 15% investment for quite a while. We adopted two kids in 2022, so the state gives us a subsidy from there. 100% of that subsidy is being set aside in the 529 for their college. So that puts us pretty close to step six. What's left is not quite enough to pay off the house. We plan on

investing quite a bit. We plan on setting some money aside for future home improvements. And so my question is, would it be acceptable to purchase a want at that point? If you're in four, five, and six, a want is acceptable. Okay. But you've not been following the baby steps, and you're still not following them with what you're outlining, so let me go back and clarify, okay? Yes. You don't have an emergency fund in place yet, correct?

We've got about $3,000. You don't have an emergency fund in place yet. And you started Baby Step 4 without that being done. So you're not following the Baby Steps. And you've got debt of $2,900. So you've not been following the Baby Steps already. So if you want to follow them, we can show you exactly how to do that. But then you've got to say, that's what I'm going to really do.

You can't sort of. You either is or you isn't, okay? And so you isn't right now. So the first thing is we pay off the $2,900. The second thing is we fully fund the emergency fund, and then as you said, four and five are already underway, which brings us to six. But what we teach is when you're in baby steps one

through three, which is getting out of debt and having the emergency fund, you're intense and you don't buy anything. You don't do anything until you get the emergency fund in place and they're out of debt. Now you're going to accomplish that in one fell swoop here. Then when you're in four, five, and six, you move from intense to intentional, and that's when you would use some of your money to upgrade a truck, buy a couch, go on vacation, and put the rest towards baby steps four, five, and six, the house, not invest some of it. Now, what's this home repair or remodel future thing?

We had thought about upgrading some landscaping. They're basically more or less wants also. To what kind of a number? We had debated about 50,000. Of landscaping? No, no, no. I'm talking total home improvements because we're looking at possibly redoing the driveway.

There's painting or siding, the new gutter. That's fine. All right, so let me walk back through this, okay? $2,900 is their only debt other than your home, correct? No. The truck, right? Oh, $4,800 on the truck. That's right. Okay, so we pay off uh well let's just round that call it 10,000 bucks okay you're debt free and then you need another

15 in your emergency fund that's 25 out of the 185 that puts us at 160 I think uh out of 185 I just spent 25 to get you through baby step. You know, $160,000. What's the balance on your mortgage? $181,000 and change. Okay. And what is the truck worth that you're driving today? I've blue-booked it at anywhere between $9,500 to $13,000. All right.

Let's call it $12,000. And if you get $12,000 for it, what are you going to buy? What price range? I was looking for less than $40,000. What's your household income? Last year, I made $106,000. This year, I'm looking at anywhere between $110,000 to $115,000. What's your wife's car? She drives a Dodge Caravan. This is $40,000 too much. You don't need to have more than half your annual income going into things with wheels and motors. And you will have more than that with her van and your $40,000 truck will be more than half your annual income so we need to back your truck down to uh uh 50 minus her car value we'll call her car value 10 for the fun of it um that would put you at 40 um but 30 is going to be fine that's enough

so i'd move you into a 30 truck so you need 18 more to do that because you've got a 12 truck. Okay? So we're going to upgrade by 18 or 20,000 bucks in truck. We'll make it 20 for the fun of it, so I can keep this in my head. So 160, that's 140 left. And then if you're going to spend 40 on the landscaping and home improvements, that leaves you 100 to throw towards your mortgage, and you owe 80 okay you don't do investing you throw all money above 15 at baby step six and above lifestyle and you're you're using some of this for lifestyle a little bit on the house and a little bit of upgrade on truck and you're cleaning up some of your earlier baby steps right

quick and then you're gonna throw the rest of it at the house that's what i would do that's what we would teach that's following it that's following it to the letter okay and then how quick we're gonna pay off 80 grand on the house making 100 with no payments in the world and living on a tight budget and watching what we're doing you can still go on vacation you can still go out to eat You can still go out to eat. You can still enjoy some of your money. But I want to start throwing some money at this house and be done with this house in like three or four years. Okay?

That sounds good. That sounds like a plan. How old are you? I turn 50 here in two weeks. Okay. And what's the house worth? Last estimate was about $320 to $370 depending, what website you're looking at. Okay. And how much is currently in your 401ks and mutual funds?

Uh, I've got a IRA that stands about 125,000. Uh, I just started this job about two years ago, so I've got about 30,000 in a 401k.. Okay. Based on that, at about 55 years old, you'll be a millionaire. Good. If you do what I just told you to do. If you keep screwing around with so much other stuff, you won't make it that fast. Were you paying off debt before you got this inheritance? Were you actively working on it?

We've gone back and forth. We've been debt-free before, and then we've kind of made a few mistakes, and then we very quickly scrambled to get back out of it and stuff like that. You're going to have to pay careful attention. You're going to have to pay careful attention going forward that you don't get sloppy because... Yeah, brace yourself for a guilt trip. Are you ready? Yeah.

You got a hold of something? Yeah. You got a hold of something? Yeah. Okay. If you go back in debt after this, you're dishonoring your father's memory. Yes, I can understand that. Okay. The best way you can honor him is to do good with the money he left you. Yeah.

So this is your last time to fall off the wagon, my friend. Time to get with it. You're 50 years old. Now let's play. Well done, sir. Well done. Appreciate the call. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Bye.