The Ramsey Show - App - Have a Tiny Rent, Not a Tiny House (Hour 1)

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions Broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones this hour as we talk about your life and your money. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. Chelsea starts off this hour in Virginia. Hi, Chelsea.

How are you? Hey, Dave. I'm good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Good, Dave. I was just calling to see, so I've had a whole life policy in place for about six years now.

I'm sorry. I know you're against them. So my question is, should I close it down? I do have term as well. Should I close it out and take the cash and put towards debt, or should I keep it open since I've already paid all my premiums? No, you close it and get out because it's not going anywhere good from here. As soon as you've got the proper amount of term insurance in place,

how much life insurance do you need? My term is around $1.7 million. Okay. And what do you make a year? Me and my husband combined around $300. No, no, no. What do you make? The term on you is $1.7?

Yes, the term on me is $1.7, and I make around $200. Okay. All right. So you've got a little less than 10 times your income, but that will probably take care of everybody if something happened to you in your case because you've got an unusually high income. Wonderful for you. Okay.

And, yeah, you've got an unusually high income wonderful for you okay and um yeah you've got enough term insurance in place and uh you know if you don't need to do anything different than yes i would not keep whole life life insurance it's a bad place to park money when you die the cash value goes to them they only send you the face value and you have paid for both. You paid for the cash. You paid extra to build up the cash value, a lot extra, and it grows at almost nothing, you know, 1% to 2%, somewhere in there, growth rate. And, you know, you overpaid for the life insurance. You got a bad savings program, and they bundled them together, and that's all this is. Yeah, and that's how I was sold on it.

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, you move on, you do your investing in good investments, never in life insurance, and you always buy the less expensive term life insurance. Hey, thanks for the call. So, folks, term insurance is about $5 for the same amount you pay $100 a month for the whole life. So it's about 1 20th. So $5. The other $95 out of your $100 going into a whole life policy a month is going into this savings program.

And if you notice the savings program on a traditional whole life policy, when you look at the policy, the first three years, your cash value is zero. So you're paying an extra $95 a month for a savings account. And for the first three years, they keep 100% of the money. That's called high fees. That's called you're getting screwed. High fees. These aren't just inconvenient high fees. It's not the difference in a 4% student loan and a 6% student loan. No, this is they kept all the money you put into the investment for three years. This is stupid.

And then once you do finally start building up some money, accrues between 1.2 and two percent and then once you do build up some money after you got past the three years of nothing the land of nod and you got the land of not and and then you got finally a little bit of build-up and it's making a whole one percent and then you die the 95 a month out of every 100 paid that you've been paying to build up savings goes not to your family but to the insurance company so you have a savings account for the first three years they keep all your money after that they don't pay you much and when you die they keep your money who would use this bank most people in middle class america that's who because your life insurance salesman sold you this crap it is the payday lender of the middle class most middle class and upper class people don't fall for the payday lender because they go oh no that's a ripoff.

But then they wander in and do whole life life insurance and lease their cars, which is just right there with payday lending. Mathematically, it's just a different tool to get at the middle class. And so but walking around acting like you did something. I did it. I bought that crap. Sharon and I were straight out of college. And some guy that she knew from a fraternity where she used to date some other guy, that should have been my hint right there.

But, no, I let this goober into my house, and, of course, he's all preppy, and he's got his little button-down going, and he's brand new in the insurance business. But he had the pitch down, and I bought it. I've got a degree in finance, and I this crap that's how dumb i was so if you did it too don't feel dumb just get out of it get out of it as quick as you can everybody does stupid stuff the trick is to not do the same stupid stuff twice that's the trick because there's plenty of new stupid stuff to do without doing the same ones over so just figure it out i mean you figure out buying a new car when you're a broke person

new car goes down in value like a rock that was stupid so don't buy more new cars until you're not a broke person anymore until you got a million dollar net worth quit buying new cars over and over and over again and somehow rationalizing and justifying and telling mythology and legendary tales about how used cars break down and they're not reliable that one has always cracked me up because you know what a new car is after you've had it a year it's a used car did it suddenly become unreliable after you've had it two years no so that's complete rationalization BS that we tell ourselves. And then we go buy the largest thing that most people buy that goes down in value. A car.

Now, I like cars. But you have to stop and think about these things. Stuff like whole life, life insurance and fleecing your car and financing a car and buying new cars. And, you you know just start looking around and going i don't think i really want to do rent to own because i think by the time i've had that washer and dryer for six months i could have bought three sets with what i gave those goobs just do the math on the thing man it's hundreds of percentile interest and that's why rent to owns in the poor end of town rich people don't fall for that

stuff that's how they got rich think about it no lotto tickets hardly are sold in the rich end of town that's i don't need it no no you don't miss a point if rich people knew that the lotto worked they would hire people to stand in line to buy the tickets. They know it doesn't work. They know you're more likely to be struck by lightning three times on the way to the market one mile from your home. Statistically, you have a higher probability of being hit by lightning three times while driving one mile to the market than you do buying the winning lotto ticket rich people can do math that's one of the things that helped them oh and by the way most of

them didn't start out rich 79 of millionaires inherited zero start out like i did nothing nothing and stupid and the less stupid i got the the more money I got. Why is this a formula? Because it's how life works. We have to work our way through these things together. And that's why you're listening. That's why I'm here to help you. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We've been voted one of the best places to work in Nashville 11 times. You want to know how we do it?

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Post a job today at linkedin.com slash ramsey and get 50 off your first job post that's linkedin.com slash ramsey terms and conditions apply A fun new book by a fun guy who's got quite a life story. Hits the streets today. Available today. Scam me if you can. Simple Strategies to Outsmart Today's Ripoff Artist by Frank Abagnale. I never can pronounce it correctly. But former professional imposter and the author of the best-selling book and memoir,

Catch Me If You Can, made into a movie. And actually, I think Leonardo DiCaprio played you, didn't he, Frank? Yes, he did. I'm happy to be with you, Dave. Big fan. Well, I'm honored to have you, sir. I don't think Leonardo will ever play me in a movie, so you got me there, buddy. Very cool. I saw the movie. It was great.

Hey, just a side note before we get into this. We were just discussing, did you live in Franklin for a while here? No, but I did work for a company in Franklin for a while. Many, many years ago, doing consulting work, creating video training Franklin for a while many, many years ago doing consulting work, creating video training programs for banks and things like that. Okay, all right, because I knew there was some connection. The rumor was going around that you were around here where our neighbor, and I never got to meet you, so honored to meet you by phone. I've been an admirer for years.

It's fabulous. So obviously those that don't know the story of Catch Me If You Can, you were a professional imposter and chased all over the world until finally they caught you and you did a little prison time and ended up working for the FBI. And after that, in the fraud, forgery, cybersecurity, all this kind of thing, that was decades ago, right? How long ago was all of that?

That all took place back in the 60s i've been at the fbi now for 43 years so for about four a little over four decades okay and the new book is scam me if you can so uh i know the answer to this question but i'll throw you the underhand pitch how prevalent is fraud these days against the typical individual? Just millions and millions of people, unfortunately, fall for these scams nowadays. You know, I've written four other books. They all dealt with crimes against banks and financial institutions. This book went out to reach consumers because so many of these scams every day, if you're not aware of the scam, you can easily fall prey to it. And that's anybody, no matter how smart you

are, you can be victimized. I know I can be scammed, but if someone can help educate you, and I find that education is the most powerful tool to fighting crime, whether I'm training FBI agents or bankers or consumers like you, if you let them know the risks, people understand the risk, they're much apt to protect themselves from being victim to some of these scams. You know, I talk to a lot of people, and sometimes I personally feel the same way. With the explosion of technology, it just feels like there's nothing you can do to completely protect yourself, is there? No, and what's real scary to me, you know, back in the year 50 years ago when I did the things I did, there were con men and con women, and it stood for confidence men. But you had to deal with someone one-on-one in front of them. You had to dress

well, speak well, look well, have a good vocabulary. People had to like you. Today, you're dealing with scam artists that are sitting in their kitchen on a telephone with a cup of coffee in their pajamas in Moscow. They never see you. You never see them. So there's no compassion. There's no emotion. And they will rip you off for every single dime you have because they're not involved with you personally. And that's what makes it so scary today versus 50 years ago when I did it. So I get a phone call or I get an email if I'm sitting out there listening right now to Frank Abagnale, the author of the book, comes out today, Scam Me If You Can.

You can pick it up where great books are sold. So, Frank, I get the phone call. How do I start to know, oh, this could be a scam? You know, in doing the research for this book, I found that no matter how sophisticated the scam was or no matter how amateur, there are two red flags. At some point, I'm going to ask you for money, but I'm going to tell you I have to have it immediately. So go down to Walmart, get me a green dot card, and then come back and read me the number. Give me your credit card over the phone,

give me your bank account, wire me the money. It has to be right now, this moment. And the other red flag is at some point, I'm going to ask you for information. What's your social security number? What's your date of birth? What's the code number on the back of your credit card? No matter what type of scam it is, those two red flags have to show up at some time. And if you just learn those red flags, remember you didn't solicit the call, you didn't solicit the email. So when I start calling you and saying I'm your bank and I suspect that there's suspicious activity on your account, all that's well and good until the point that I ask you to start giving me personal information about your account. You didn't make that call. You don't know that you're banked. That's the time to hang up, call the 800 number on the back of the credit card, and call the bank's call center and verify if they actually called you.

Now, the IRS does not call people. IRS doesn't, Medicare doesn't, Social Security doesn't, none of those agencies do. So the minute they say they're from there, what's so easy today is manipulate call IDs. So I can have the caller ID say anything I want it to say, U.S. Treasury, federal government, IRS. But just because the caller ID says that doesn't actually mean that that's calling. I can spoof the call and tell you, look, miss, you see the 800 number I'm calling from? Just look up Social Security and you'll see that's the 800 number I'm calling you from. Well, they're not. They just spoofed that call.

So today you have to be a little smarter. You have to be a little wiser consumer than you ever did before you can't rely on the bank you can't rely on the government you can't rely on the police to protect you you have to educate yourself like listening to your show making yourself a little smarter understanding what's going on around you and that's the only way you keep from being victimized frank abagnale professional imposter now now working for the FBI for over 40 years. He was in the movie and best-selling book Catch Me If You Can and has written several other best-selling books. His newest book, Scam Me If You Can, comes out today.

You want to check it out at all places out there. Frank, what percentage of scams ask you for money in order to give you more money? Yeah, that's the most amazing thing. All of these sweet steak scams, first of all, I always amaze when someone says to me, well, I fell victim to the sweet steak scam in Jamaica. I said, well, did you enter a sweet steak in Jamaica? No. Well, how would you have won any money from it? So they get a call and they say you won the money, but you have to pay the tax as a processing fee. You have to pay that fee. So they're asking you to pay for something up front. Many, many scams are like that. For example, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today, and I know you know this, now the scam is

I can help you with your student loan, but there's a $1,250 fee and a $40 a month fee after that. What they're telling you is what you can do yourself. You don't need them to do it, and many of them are just scams. They're not going to do anything. They're just convincing you to send them the $1,250, and it's just another scam. Yeah, the Nigerian Prince letter and then became an email later was the most absurd thing I've ever seen,

and I couldn't believe people ever fell for it. And then when I started doing this show, I actually found many, many people had fallen for that basic scam, and that one's really bizarre. I mean, it's like something out of Tales from Narnia or something. Or every day that you read about, like in the grandparent scam or something like that, and they tell the person, go down to Home Depot, buy 10 cards, and call me back with the gift card number on the back. You would say to yourself, who would do that?

But unfortunately, some people are just, they're basically honest. They don't have a deceptive mind. They think it's very legitimate. These people are very convincing. And if someone hasn't told you up front, they feel that it's probably real. And when you can send out millions of emails, you know, years ago when I talked about the Nigerian scam, the agents in training would say to me, well, where do they get all the stamps to send out these 10,000 letters? I said, no, the stamps are counterfeit.

They're not real. It doesn't cost them to send the letters out. So they were limited to how many letters. Now you can send out millions of emails, and you're only looking for one-tenth of one percent to respond, and unfortunately there will always be someone who does. Yeah. How do you protect your phone from being hacked these days? There's not much you can do. One of the big scams going on now is, you know, we put out so much information about us on social media

that these people call the phone company, they say they're you, they ask them all the security questions, what's your mother's maiden name, what's your social security number, all these questions, but you have the answers to them all. And then you basically say, you know, my SIM card is broken in my phone. They say, well, we'll send you a new SIM card. And they send you the SIM card, you put it in your phone, and now I have everything that was in your phone. So, you know, years ago, I worked with LexisNexis, developed a technology called knowledge-based authentication, but now that doesn't work anymore because we tell everybody everything

about us so they know everything about us. Wow. Frank, thank you for stopping in. The book is Scam Me If You Can. Good to talk to you, sir. Thank you, Dave. My you, sir. Thank you, Dave. My pleasure, sir. Thank you. Let's talk about low interest rates, baby.

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Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. I thought it was great that Frank was ahead because I feel like such an imposter saying that I'm doing your plan. That's funny. I like it. Good.

Very good. Well, the reason I'm calling is that we're finishing up paying off a credit card right now. Good. And the next step on our debt snowball is a second mortgage. And my husband and I are having disagreements on where exactly it should go. If it's more than half your annual income, household income, it goes in six. If it's less, it goes in two. Yeah, it's more than half our income, but it's $117,000.

And we have an annual income of about $140,000 together. That's our gross. It's in Baby Step 6. Okay, because my husband's saying that because it's with credit cards and a motor home and some student loans, he wants to keep it where it's at. You mean you rolled your motor home and your student loans into your house? Well, we did. And how much do you owe on your first mortgage?

On our first mortgage, we owe about $100,000. That's good news. What's the house worth? The house is owe about $100,000. That's good news. What's the house worth? The house is worth about $300,000. And what's the interest rate on your first mortgage? The interest rate on the first mortgage is $3.25, and the interest rate on the second mortgage is $4.5. Yeah.

I would consider refinancing and just putting your first and second together on a 15-year. Okay. Have you sold the motorhome? Oh, no, no, because that has to pull the buggy that we have, too. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's a total. He has to pull the buggy? We have a dune buggy that he built it all by himself, and it's amazing.

But it's one of those, like I said, imposter because we're on Dave Ramsey, but we're paying all these toys off. That don't really fit in your plan. Right. Because you can pull a dune buggy with a $100 car with a trailer hitch on it. You don't need a motorhome to do that. Well, we have four children, which is part of me. Well, you can't fit four people in a d hitch on it. You don't need a motorhome to do that. Well, we have four children, so, which is part of the... Well, you can't fit four people in a dune buggy.

We could when they were babies. You can't now. No, we can't now. So that's another conversation. Well, here's the problem you're going to run into, okay? Yeah. The advice that we give you really doesn't work very well when you only use parts of it yeah it's not it's you're going to struggle so i'm not sure i'm giving you the right advice if you're going to half butt do this stuff

well so i basically no i basically he became, we went to Financial Peace University last year and he was the reluctant spouse that we dragged into it. And so, you know, it's, he's been on board, like we've paid a lot off and we've got to the point now where we use his income to live on and we're using my income to pay stuff off. So we're paying $ paying 40 000 off a year um in terms of he wanted to keep it in baby step two because he wanted to have it done in the next three years instead of putting it to baby step six where you know we would have that there you know a few years longer since you guys are making up your own plan you can do whatever you want it's pretty easy for you guys just decide what you want to do i mean that's kind of what you're doing so it's okay it's it's fine whatever you want to do but um yeah the the keeping highly expensive things that go down in value that are more than half your annual income, which is what you all are doing, and then walking around saying he's on the plan.

He's not because you're not. Neither one of you are. So that's okay. You're just doing your own plan. But then you really don't need my input about where something falls in my baby steps because you're just making your own deal up. So it's okay. You can do whatever you want. Open phones at 888-825-5225 josie is with us in new jersey hi josie how are

you hi dave how are you better than i deserve what's up i'm good uh i want to i had a question um i just got off of a phone call with my father and he had told me that he just had a question. I just got off of a phone call with my father, and he had told me that he just had a very large tree ruin his roof not too long ago. And he called and he asked for some money. Does he not have homeowner's insurance? He does, but it's not going to cover the full cost. Why not? I don't know.

I asked him the same question because it didn't make much sense that they would only cover part of it and you still have a third of a roof to fill in the gaps. So his statement was that he is basically short a difference between things that he can fund of about $4,000 for the contractor to finish the job, essentially. I don't know why the homeowner's insurance won't cover it. How old is your father? He's 62. And why is he broke?

That's a very good question. He's not very good with money. I guess that's the short answer of it. How much money do you guys have? Well, I make about $91,000 a year. My husband makes more than me. And together, I've paid off all of my college debt over five years ago. And, you know, we've made it work.

I worked baby steps a long time ago. How much money do you guys have? Together, it's, I mean, gross amount is probably 91 plus. No, no, I'm not talking about your income. Do you have any money? We've got our full emergency fund. Fully stocked. Not much more left over beyond that. We're paying our daughter's college savings right now.

We've maxed out her 401Ks, so we are doing all of that. So you have a household income of like $200,000, and you're just getting up through baby step three. You've been working the plan. And how much is in your emergency fund? About $50K.k okay all right so if you give your dad four thousand dollars it's not going to kill you well we're um we're working on some some side hustles and uh just two passion projects and that kind of thing and that's usually where our leftover money has been going into. In order to give your dad some free money for his roof, which doesn't even make sense. So, no, I would not loan him money.

If you decide that you want to get to the bottom of this and require him to start doing some smarter things with money, you would give him the money. But, no, I would never loan him the money because all that's going to happen there is he's going to disappoint you. He can't pay you because he mishandles money. And then you're going to be mad at your dad. And your dad's going to be embarrassed and ashamed to be with his daughter. And we don't need to do all that. The borrower is slave to the lender.

You're going to change your relationship. Just give him the money if you're going to. But I smell a rat. Yeah. I think dad's full of crap. He kind of has had a history of trying to get money out of us in the past, and that makes my husband not very keen on giving him money, to be honest. I know that's not going to be a great conversation later.

You know, I'm worried about him, but we haven't. Yep. It makes me nervous. Well, I mean, it's not logical, okay? If you have a tree hit your roof and the whole roof has to be replaced, homeowners pays for all of it minus the deductible. There's only one program. You cannot buy a homeowner's policy that pays for part of your roof.

They don't exist. Okay. So dad's running a scam here. Oh, boy. I mean, something's wrong with the story, right? Yeah. He spent the insurance money and then unless something's wrong with the story, right? Yeah. He spent the insurance money and then unable to pay the contractor, and he's got himself in a pinch.

I know he's trying to pay off a divorce at the same time, so I don't know. He spent the insurance money, and now he's got the contractor, and he's in a pinch. Yeah. That's what it sounds like. I don't know. But you can run it to ground if you want to run it to ground. You can close your eyes and be in denial and throw him four grand, but you can't loan it to him.

Right. And what kind of advice could I provide? I mean. I would say, Dad, if it were me, I would run it to ground, make sure he's not scamming me. And then if I determine that it's a real need and it takes a little more time and effort and tears and he's probably not going to like it you questioning him which i don't really give a rip he's the one asking you for money you know so um you know you're going to ask him stuff that's uncomfortable for him and if you decide it's a legitimate need then you say i will give you the four thousand dollars but on one condition, that you attend Financial Peace University, Dad. This is a lifelong pattern of you misbehaving with money, and it's time to stop.

That's my cost for this gift. I'm Dave Ramsey. Cameron is in California. Hi, Cameron. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. So my wife and I have been following your plan for about three years. We're on baby steps four, five, and six. This year we bought a house. We committed giving extra on our tithes to support our church through a giving initiative.

And then we got pregnant with our first child. Yay! Yeah, yeah. And then her employer notified her that they've been overpaying her for the last three years, and they're demanding repayment of $30,000. So we're trying to figure out how do we handle this, and do we do a repayment plan? Do we pay down a lump sum? Do we treat it like it's a debt snowball situation? Okay.

What does she make a year? She grosses about $68,000. And they were overpaying her by $10,000 a year, and you didn't notice? Yeah, because she gets mileage reimbursements with every paycheck, and she gets it on direct deposit. And so we don't ever really look at the pay stubs. And through their own mistakes, they put a payment in that was supposed to be one time and then it ended up being recurring.

And, yeah, a lot of crazy things were happening with their paycheck at the beginning of her employment. Yeah, but I guess my question, part of my question is, for three years you've been receiving an extra $800 a month and you weren't keeping up with your budget enough to notice that? Well, it wasn't that much. It was more like $450 a month. But, again, we weren't really focusing the budget on that. $450 a month is not $30,000 in three years.

Okay, they've calculated it all out, and that's what they told us so okay um 800 a month is 10 000 a year times three is 30 000 okay um yeah we've looked over the numbers and it is around 3030,000. Okay. So, did you receive too much every month or in lump sums? Yeah. There was an every month. They made a mistake with her retirement and had to reimburse her for something and it was supposed to be a one-time

payment added to her check and then it was made recurring and just came with every check. Okay. All right. Well, I would just... It's absurd for them to make the mistake and then require you to pay it in a lump sum.

They're not requiring a lump sum. They are requiring repayment, though. Okay. Coming out of her check for how many years? Three years? They've offered... You know, they're flexible on it. They're saying you could do five years, two years, ten years.

It sounds like it's kind of up to us and that's why I want to know what the best would be to do. Do we make a lump sum payment and then put it on a yearly plan or do we throw as much at it as possible as we can? They can do some stuff with taxes to where some of it gets taken out pre-tax

and so then the overall amount that we have to pay back is less. But I still don't know if we should try and stretch this out so it's a minimal hit on our monthly income or do we knock it out as quick as possible to get it out of our lives. How likely is she staying in this job? She really enjoys working for the county and she's really good at it. And, you know, obviously things can change when you start having kids, but I think right now her plan is to keep working.

Yeah, I would put it on about a two- or a three-year thing, just coming out of her check. I'm sorry, what was that last part? I would put it on a two- or a three-year thing just coming out of her check. Okay. But you guys got to get on top of your stuff better. Yeah, we did track her income, but, you know, we were tracking it based off of the checks that she was cashing

and figuring her income off of that. No, but, I mean, you should be able to look, and when you did your taxes and go, we got $10, dollars more than we should have you need to be on top of your stuff better than this and even in this conversation you thought it was 450 even when it's got to be 850 and you still don't know and while i'm talking to you how in the crap this got to three thirty thousand dollars other than we went through the numbers, but you don't know the numbers. So your warning there is that this happens.

I mean, it's happened here. As an employer, I have overpaid people. I've never requested they repay it. I figure if we're that stupid, we lost the money. So when we overpay, we just let them keep it. But we're not the county government, so they don't have the flexibility I've got. But your job is to be more on top of your stuff than this, to know what's going on with your money in more detail than this.

You don't have to be completely nerded out. But, I mean, when you make $60,000, $70,000 a year and you get an extra $10,000, that's noticeable. This isn't an extra $1,000 where you might go, well, I didn't know I was being able to withheld on the taxes. I can't tell that close and that kind of thing. But, um, I mean, you guys just got to look at your pay stubs and stuff, you know? So anyway, yeah, you're going to be repaying it.

You're legally liable to, and I would do it over the next two to three years, uh, because with a baby on the way i don't know how much longer she's going to work and i do not want you to get in a situation where she doesn't work there anymore because but she feels like she has to because this is still hanging over her head so a good question thank you for joining us dan is in missouri hey dan welcome to the dave ramsey show uh Dave, thanks for taking my call today. Sure, what's up? So I have a question about family business.

So my wife's sisters, one of them recently moved back with her husband. So my brother-in-law and I have been kicking around the idea of going into business together kind of as a side project in the real estate area. So get your perspective on that as background. One brother is an architect and a licensed general contractor one has a painting business and then i've got a i'm a fractional cfo with a cpa background and i've swung a lot of hammers in my career okay but i know you say a partnership is the only ship that doesn't float so that's my objection to it not that it's family it's just the i wouldn't do partnerships instead i would let one of you be the owner and the rest of you

figure out a way to get paid off the bottom line as if you were owners but um you know anything with three heads is going to be a monster before it's over so i would avoid that i would not avoid you know family business i love family business family. Family businesses are more fun and they're more successful than non-family businesses. The statistics are really, really clear on that. And so, I mean, the average family business lasts 60 years. The average publicly traded company lasts 15 years. And so, you know, there's nothing wrong with the family part of the equation. It's the partnership part of the equation that I would avoid.

Abigail is with us in Kentucky. Hi, Abigail. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hello. Thank you. So my situation is me and my husband, we moved from Fort Wayne down to back home. I'm from in Kentucky, and we moved in with my parents because we didn't have a place while we were looking for a place

and we ended up planning on going to move on to my uncle's farm and start a homestead and so we, there's not a house or anything on his farm so we bought a travel trailer to renovate and live in at the time but it turns out it was crap

and so we had to scrap it all and just take it down to the trailer, and we were just going to build a tiny home on top of it. In the midst of that, now my parents have said that we need to move out, and we don't really have any place to go. We haven't even officially started our baby steps. Kind of just got into and just don't know what to do. Yeah, okay. I think you just need to go rent the cheapest thing you can rent and get get you a little apartment of some kind and get

your feet on the ground and start building up some money you're out there trying to do real estate deals and you're broke and that'll kill you i mean you've gone through some money on all these escapades all for a piece of ground that you don't even own. Right? True. Yeah. So let's don't do tiny house. Let's go do tiny rent and get yourself on solid ground. Get some money saved, get out of debt,

and then start saving for a down payment on a home. And that will put you in a much better position. You can't trick your way into this stuff. There's no scam or scheme. There's no shortcut to any place it's worth going. You're not going to side angle this and it suddenly work out. Every time you do that, you short circuit your real wealth building. So go rent the cheapest thing you can rent and start working the baby steps.

Hold on. I'm going to send you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover, to help you do that. This is the Daveave ramsey show this is james childs producer of the dave ram Show. Did you know you can now listen to The Dave Ramsey Show on Pandora and Spotify? For all the ways to watch and listen, check out our show page at DaveRamsey.com.