The Ramsey Show - App - How Do I Get Started Investing in Real Estate?

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

Dave Ramsey & George Kamel discuss: How to sell your book independently, How to get started investing in real estate, Helping your parents sell their house, When is a good time to start a family? Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the 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. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. He's also the host of the Entree Leadership Podcast and the podcast that has absolutely exploded in listenership called The Fine Print. You can find all of those with Ramsey Networks. Be sure and check them out. We're here today to talk to you about your relationships, your mental health, your boundaries, your money, your job, your career, whatever it is in your life you want to talk about.

It's a free call. Some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Jennifer starts this hour off in New York City. Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. Sure,

what's up? I have a question. We're on baby step number two, and to increase our income, I decided to write a book. Now, I recently finished it, but I don't know where to go from here. There's so many masterclasses and websites and all of these things out there, and you don't know if it's a scam or not to platform it. I don't know where to put it. Okay. Good question. What's your book about?

How to Begin Your Gluten-Free Lifestyle When You Get Diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Wow. Okay. Wow. Well, what we did, the very first book I did was called Financial Peace. And I, you know, it was very analog world in those days. There was no internet. And so it was all about just guerrilla marketing, we called it, just hand-to-hand combat. And just how can we get the book out there today you've got some digital tools available to you that make it much much easier than the way i did carrying the books around in the trunk of my car and um so what i would tell you to do first is probably just jump on the amazon platform um you can take your manuscript download it put a cover on it um and just sell it as an e or sell it as a demand and they'll print them sell them on demand they've got a whole publishing system there and get started with that

it's not very economical and so you don't make a ton of money uh on your first few thousand books but you can get the book started get it moving make some money on it before you spend a bunch of money to market it okay okay um the second thing i would do is investigate on-demand printing other than amazon um and then i would be looking for websites like the celiac anything having to do with celiac right and try to try to write articles with some keywords in it that bring up celiac so people that are searching celiac will find that and it can link to your book. You could link them to your Amazon. That would be okay to do too.

But somehow let that world that's out there know that you've got some ideas and opinions about it. George, you've done a lot of online marketing. As a matter of fact, that's what you used to do before your personality. And I'm gluten-free, so this is a great crosshairs. Are you really? Yeah. Well, my wife is celiac, and so I didn't adopt it because of that.

Why did I answer this question? I didn't know any of this. Well, the principles still stand, but I just had some ideas for her on top of everything you said, which is great advice. First of all, as a side hustle, you may want a more reliable source of income. So you may want to go do something that can produce money today because the book may not take off like wildfire. This could be a five-year journey to get this kind of business off the ground. But something else you could do is nutrition coaching, and then the book can be a part of that as an add-on.

So that may be something you can do today. Sit down with people who are recently diagnosed. I'm just a person suffering from celiac. My daughter has celiac and I just remember how overwhelming it was. Yeah. Not to know where to start. Oh, absolutely. I think it's a great resource.

I'm not an expert, but I just wanted to help the people. There's a lot of like Facebook groups that you can jump into and start offering some of your resources and say, hey, I was just diagnosed with this. I wrote a guide that I hope helps others that are experiencing this. And if you search on the Internet, there's tons of forums, people that are wondering about this, recently diagnosed, and they want to know how to navigate this. So you need to be proactive in going to find those people right now to get this thing off the ground. And the good news is you can do that any time of the day like after the after the kids are asleep you know i mean you you can hustle while others sleep in uh working these chat rooms working these forums working these

facebook groups and if you've set the book up as an on-demand uh amazon product you can just drop your amazon link in there and go if you want it here it is and but i i would suggest uh not overtly selling but instead kind of give your opinion give some suggestions give some help empathize show them how you felt in in your response say on a facebook group if you go in there and just start selling stuff a lot of them will boot you out uh but if you go i did all this and i wrote this if you want it it's okay but um you don't have to go in there and be the bookseller of the world but george is right i think some other streams of income are going to be really important uh this is a missional thing for you matters deeply to you but here's the actual numbers okay of all the books published in the united states 90 and by

publishers professional publishers that are supposed to know what they're doing 90 of them never sell over 8 000 copies okay so a book that sells 100 000 copies or more is a unicorn there's not many of them now we specialize in unicorn production here at Ramsey Solutions. Our books generally sell several hundred thousand copies. Baby Steps Millionaires, for instance, is about to hit 300,000. It came out in January. But we've been doing this bestseller stuff a long time, and we have an unusually large marketing platform that allow us to create those situations.

But just to tell you, just putting a book out in the wild and never having done it before. Hoping for the checks to come in. And not really having a platform, the chances of it. And your subject, honestly, is very nuanced to the point that George deals with it in his home every day, and I didn't even know it, and I know George pretty well. So just, I mean, you're're gonna have a limited audience obviously and so it's not it's not a broad market uh subject yeah it's a nuanced subject it's not for anyone who wants to lead a healthy lifestyle it's a very specific thing but dave your story of putting your book in a video store back in the day is inspiring and that's the kind of proactive

mindset i want jennifer to have where she goes'm going to go to a local business, a nutrition coach and say, hey, can I put my book out front? Okay. I'll split the cost, you know, whatever that is, get creative and start trying different things out. Have some fun with it. But I think my point is back to yours. And that is, let's not count on this to be real side hustle income. It might be just more missional. It may not get you out of debt faster if it makes some money that'll be great too i'm glad for that but i think you'll make a whole lot more money doing a more traditional side hustle uh as while you're working on your book do both you know but but if you're saying this is going to get me out of debt no it's not low probability of that uh the

length of time it took me to sell my first 1 000 books uh was absolutely amazing and again i was doing in an analog world i didn't have the benefit of on-demand publishing i didn't there were no such thing as chat rooms or forums or couldn't just start an instagram account there were chat rooms it was just called the lunch room at the uh middle school that was called a chat room but there was no there was no internet. So this is The Ramsey Show. I just saw a study that really made me sad. It showed that families owning life insurance in the U.S. was at its lowest point since the 1970s. After what we've been through the past few years, I'm just lost on how people don't make this more of a priority. How are you going to make sure your family needs

are met if something happens to you? This is why getting term life is an absolute necessity. Rates have never been cheaper and the whole process to apply is pretty simple, with many companies not even requiring an exam anymore. This is why I send you to Zander Insurance, and I have for almost 25 years. They'll make sure you get the right protection at the lowest cost possible, and they're there for you and your family every day. I challenge all of you to make sure your families are protected. It needs to be a top priority.

Call Zander at 800-356-4282 or visit zander.com. That's 800-356-4282 or zander.com. Well, George, we're really excited. Ramsey Solutions is hitting the road. You guys out there already know that our Building Wealth event is coming to Las Vegas and Orlando in May, and we're pumped to add a few more cities for the fall. More to come, but already we're adding this week Sacramento in the fall, Minneapolis in the fall, and San Antonio in the fall. Tickets are on sale now for the Building Wealth live event. We're going to tackle the latest get-rich-quick

trends, dive deep into investing, saving, planning for retirement. Might sound like a lot of complicated stuff, but the truth is it's way easier than you think. Me and Rachel Cruz and George Camel will do this, along with Dr. John Deloney and Ken Coleman will be there. All of us will be signing books, taking photos, hanging out with you guys in each of these cities. So tickets are on sale now for Las Vegas, May 5, Orlando, May 19. Almost sold out both of those. Sacramento just on sale November 1st. Minnesota, November 10th. That's Minneapolis. And San Antonio, November 15th. Tickets are only $25.

You can get a four-pack for $60, which is less than the cost of a pizza these days after inflation. So bring your friends because it's going to be amazing. Get two couples of you or something or four buddies or four gals or something and come on. We'd love to have you. $60 is a deal for a four-pack. Go to Ramseysey solutions.com slash events to learn even more and we'll see you there that's ramsey solutions.com slash events george i'm so ready to be back on the road oh i can't wait and the fact that we're kicking off a building

wealth event in vegas and telling people how to get rich slow the irony is rich i'm excited about this it's a super fun event. You know, it didn't even occur to me. We found a good venue, and it was a good city, and I never even thought about the irony. We just did it, and there you go. But leave it to you to figure that out. You can spend $25 on this event, or you can hit the slots. It's up to you.

And you'll be done. Well, our event will last several hours. The slots will last about a minute and a half. That's true. And you'll be done. More bang for your buck coming to our event. And you're done. Just like that.

This is fun. Well, join us. It's going to be a great time. We did this event locally here, and now we're taking it on the road, and I can't wait. Each of these venues, we didn't do super large venues. There are only about 2,000 folks, and so they're going to sell out early, every one of them. So, I mean, we just put it on sale yesterday, and several hundred tickets out the door on each of those fall cities.

People are tagging me. They said Sacramento meet and greets sold out. I wanted to get my ticket, so jump on it. It really will disappear. It's already gone. Okay. Wow, there you go. Not the whole thing, but the meet and greet.

Just the meet and greet, yeah. Okay. If you want photos and book signing and all that good stuff. So cool. Yeah, the whole gang's coming, or most of the gang anyway. Yeah. And as far as the Ramsey Personalities team, and we're really, really excited. We like being with people, and it turns out people need to be around people.

It's healthy. It's a good thing. And God said it is not good that men be alone. There you go. So human beings need to hang out with other human beings. You're just sick of staring into cameras for live streams. You want to be on a real stage with real people, not staring into a black hole of the abyss. I was sick of live streams about the first minute and a half I did one.

So I like human beings in the audience and having an interaction. It's just a whole lot more fun. That's a different energy. A lot more fun for us, a lot more fun for you. So come on out, guys. Joseph is in Seattle. Hi, Joseph. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Appreciate you taking my call today. Sure. What's up? Well, I'm finishing

off the baby steps and super excited to start building wealth. I would love to get into real estate investing, but I have no experience with real estate investing. I'm wondering if it would make more sense for me at this point, rather than directly investing in real estate, to invest in some high-dividend REITs that would be paying like 10%, 11% dividends, or to get deeper into actual physical real estate. Either one's fine. I mean, the REITs in the old days underperformed growth stock mutual funds. These days, there's plenty of REITs that are performing as well. And like you said, 10%, 11%, 12% is not unusual on a REIT, especially in a

market where real estate's doing what it's doing. REIT, for those of you who don't know, is a real estate investment trust. It's basically a mutual fund for real estate is how it functions. And so, and that way you can put in, you know, a few thousand dollars versus needing 50 or $100,000 to be in the real estate world. So what do you make? I make about $550 a year. Whoa. What do you do for a living?

I'm an economist. Good for you. Good for you. It's working out for you. I'm proud of you. Well done. It's been great. Oh, thank you. Appreciate for you. Good for you. It's working out for you. I'm proud of you. Well done. It's been great. Oh, thank you.

Appreciate it. Love what I do. Your debt-free house and everything then? You said you finished the baby steps? Yeah. So, well, we're just actually just got a pretty good change in my comp structure this last year. And so that puts us in a range of finishing the baby steps in the next couple of years. So I'm thinking forward to the next couple of years. Okay.

And then thinking forward to the next steps. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Well, when you're out of debt with your home and you make $550,000 a year, you ought to be able to save up a couple hundred thousand pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it works.

But again, I mean, I don't have the experience with taking care of real estate, dealing with the property management. I know there's a lot of understanding of markets that have to go in to find the right location. There's a lot of learning to go into there. And as much as I love learning, I also want to get that real estate investment going. Well, I think what you're identifying is some holes in your knowledge, some knowledge gap. And you fill in that knowledge gap and you fill in that knowledge gap before you start dropping a couple hundred grand on something so probably

would start with some REITs and then just go okay I'm going to go learn three neighborhoods this year or three areas of of Seattle uh if you're thinking about residential I'm going to start talking to and interviewing property managers learn how this works. I'm going to learn how, talk to some people that have property and start looking at best practices on landlording and start, you know, reading some books on the subject and, you know, start filling in your knowledge gap. If you really want to put money in it, you need to know more and that will lower the fear that we hear in your voice right now. Yeah. And when it comes to this, you know, obviously we want you to have a paid for house, which you should be able to do fairly quickly.

And then I want you to be paying cash. And I know that's going to move a lot slower than the courses you hear about out there from real estate gurus. But Dave, after going bankrupt, you started building back your real estate portfolio in cash. And the amount of financial peace that gives you and return that gives you is absolutely incredible. Well, my rates of return are ridiculous. I don't have any debt. And so the real estate makes money like crazy when you buy it that way. It's a little slower to get started. It's not get rich quick. But the guys that are doing the nothing down real estate and that are screaming and yelling about, you know, debt know debt is you know people who tell people

cash is horrible don't be in the cash business they they're screaming they're having a fit out there flopping around on the floor foaming at the mouth and carrying on the guys are doing that stuff um basically if you follow that i defy you to find someone that 10 years later is not broke when you do nothing down real estate i was in a nothing down real estate club 100 the people that were in that club are no longer in real estate or they paid it off and got out of the nothing down world yeah i'm gonna use debt debt is my friend that is my friend debt is my friend dave ramsey and the ramsey people are crazy well that's because you're selling a course on nothing down real estate a get rich quick crap and it's not going to get rich quick it's get rich you know you'll get rich

i got rich i had a million dollar net worth at 25 years old 26 years old made 200 000 but i lost it all because of that and uh because i was following these guys that are running around on the internet today screaming they're not on the internet in those days but they were in hotel ballrooms you know so um you know the guy that wrote the book nothing down robert allen went chapter 11 okay i mean so this just tells you you know and not mad at robert you know he just he believed that stuff but uh but it's just you know so you you have to decide which of these paths you're going to follow. And I defy you to find someone that has followed the get rich quick, nothing down real estate, the cash is bad idea that those guys. I defy you to find someone that's followed that strategy and 20 years later still owns a bunch of real estate.

They just don't. There's a correlation between you getting rich slow and then keeping that wealth. And you getting rich quick and then losing it all. Exactly. Exactly. And if someone has to flop around the phone with their mouth to get you to do their stuff, then... Run the other way.

Thou doth protest too loudly, young man. You know? Some Shakespeare right there. Seriously. This is? Shakespeare right there. Seriously. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Shane and Kelly are with us. Hey guys, how are you? Hi, doing great. How about you? Better than I deserve. Welcome you guys. It's so good to have you. Where do you live? We are in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, right outside our capital.

Very good. Up in the Harrisburg area. Very good. Good to have you guys. And all the way to Nashville to do a debt-free scream. How much have you paid off? So we got rid of $229,000, cash flowing $109,000 in 16 months. Whoa! What was your range of income during that time? We started out at $81,000 and increased to $132,000, and then any stimulus or child tax credit went right to our debt. Right. Cool.

Did you sell something big, too? You had to. That is part of our story. Okay. All right. Well, tell us your story. What happened? So in 2014, I got out of physical therapy school.

I graduated with my doctorate in physical therapy. And so we had over $200,000 in student loans. And at that point, I went on Pinterest and started looking up ideas of how to get out of debt. And I found the baby steps. And in the same week, my little sister mentioned Dave Ramsey. So I read the complete guide money in two days, total money makeover in two days. Oh my gosh. And we attended FPU. Game on. Yes, we got gazelle intense at that time, but then we decided to start a family and Shane became a stay at home dad at that point. And, um, when the pandemic hit in 2020, the hospital I work for was offering a ton of overtime.

So, um, I worked from 3 AM to 7 AM and then went to my full-time job until four and then shane went to work from 4 30 p.m to 1 a.m whoa we worked around the clock wow but you were making bank yes so that was that was not 132 you made a lot more than 132 that year yeah that was our taxes for last year but oh it was with all that work yep all that work but work. But we lived on nothing, basically, nothing. I mean, when we went gazelle intense, we relied on Christmas for people to give us underwear and socks. That's how we wanted to get it done. Okay, but you said you paid off $229 in 16 months.

Yes. Making $132, that doesn't work. Nope. So the other part of our story is the debt was our suv our student loans at that point then we're about a hundred in the hundred thousand range and then we own two houses right next to each other and our long-term plan was to combine the two houses um but getting enough debt was more important to us so we decided to sell the smaller of the two houses that got rid of the $89,000 mortgage. And then we put the $29,000 profit to our student. Okay. Now my numbers

are working good. Okay. Well, good for you. Was it worth it? It definitely was. I mean, you know, it was just a struggle. I would say like when we first got married, because it was just like, you know, we were throwing money away and just money would go here vacations and now it's just you know we have that money now and at the time it was a struggle yeah yeah we were probably only making like i would say eight thousand dollars a year maybe when we first started that we got married like 12 years ago but we found we found you in about 2014 and then went gazelle intense in 2020. Yeah, okay. So where did this come from? I mean, it sounds like just overnight. It was like a 180. Yeah, well, like I said, we knew about you,

and we were gazelle intense before children, and then we kind of went Dave-ish. And then in 2020, with the pandemic, we didn't have anything else to do, and like I said, my hospital offered so much overtime, so I was able to pick that up. Yeah, and there were other side jobs that we had, just like babysitting dogs. I mean, we sold everything that we owned.

Yeah. Everything. I mean, the kids really did think that they were going to be next. So I'm wondering if, because of all the opportunity for extra work, you mathematically could see that we can do this, and that got you back to intensity. Yeah. The hope made you go again yeah yeah so you went from gazelle to dave ish or ramsey ish and then but then when you saw hey we could pick up this work and finish this and you got to game on again yeah yep okay

all right i'm starting to understand what happened good very good way to go you guys all right what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? I would say hard work, dedication. I mean, you really have to put in the time. Like, if you want something, you've got to go for it. And that was something that we wanted to change our family tree and for our kids to have a better life. And I'm glad that we did it and we followed the steps. I'd say work as well.

Work, work, work. Work around the clock and also having a strong why. I appreciate that Anthony O'Neill says, if your why doesn't make you cry, the price of commitment will. So having our strong why, our boys, and then also staying connected to the podcast and the Baby Steps Facebook group, I think we're really beneficial. Staying motivated on the plan. And it sounds like the kids were a big driver for why this life change was happening. You wanted them to live in a debt-free home live a debt-free life and have opportunities you didn't have yes yes wow so you paid off the student loans you sold the house next door did that include your mortgage you paid off no not yet so you're

debt-free but the mortgage yep we're on baby steps four five and six perfect good for you well done well done i'm so proud of you guys thank you who were your biggest cheerleaders um our good friends christina and klaus they attended fpu with us and cheered us along the way and our families of course of course and each other yep for sure yeah well i'm telling you you guys put in the hours i mean these 80 90 hour weeks you're talking about here were real and that that's that's crazy you can do that for a short period of time uh if you work like no one else later you get to work like no one else too you work whenever you want if you don't have any stinking payments yeah that's actually part of our story too um since we paid off the debt i was able

to go part-time as a physical therapist and now i'm home with the boys during the day and then chain works full-time um during the day so we get to spend so much more time together ah very good yeah you got your life back yes we definitely did you stole it back from sally may yeah she stole it you stole it back wow yeah what do you tell that person who's got two hundred thousand dollars in student loans and they're going well i'll wait for someone to forgive it yeah just do just do it. Get it done. Work, work, work, work as hard as you can because it's so freeing to be debt free and you can do what you want. Yeah, and we didn't rely on anybody else. It was just us doing it. We weren't going to sit around and wait for somebody just to give us a check and pay it off, but I'm so glad that we did it and we put in the hours and we're

here. Amen. Amen. Good job. Well job well done all right we got a copy of baby steps millionaires for you because for sure that is the next chapter in your story and an extra copy of total money makeover for you to give away to someone and completely cause a ruckus love your t-shirts cash is king live like no one else and you brought the kiddos with you let's bring them in what are their names and ages we We have Roman. He's four. And Hudson is two. And the t-shirts say, I am a Y. Oh, that's so great.

I am Y. I'm sorry. I said it wrong. Oh, well done, you guys. That's beautiful. Very fun. Cute kids. Very, very fun.

All right. Shane and Kelly. Roman and Hudson from Pennsylvania. Our $229,000 paid off in 16 months, making $81,000 to $132,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Here's to baby number three. We're debt-free. I think we snuck an announcement into that.

Oh, my goodness. Look at that. Wow. Wow. That's how to do it. Make your baby announcement to millions of listeners while you're at it. I think Grandma and Grandpa are sitting on the sidelines. This may have been the first time they just heard that.

I'm not sure, but looking at the reactions, it's a possible thing. Is that the first time you did it? You just told it for the first time? All right. Oh, I love it. They're verifying through the glass now. Awesomeness. Very cool.

That's a lot of fun. That's inspiring. Yeah. Very inspiring. So, I mean, that's a lot of debt. I couldn't make those numbers work for a minute. But you know what happens when people start working like that? And they start going, whatever it takes.'ll sell the house we'll sell that house next door whatever it takes we've got to work 80 hours whatever it takes once you

start saying whatever it takes and you mean it you can make that go away there's nothing you're not willing to do but as long as you start going now wait a minute tell me about the uh is there what there's one little thing and is there a little angle and you know as long as you start going, now, wait a minute. Tell me about the, what little thing and is there a little angle? And as long as you're trying to figure out some way to scheme and scam, it's not going to work. No shortcuts here. Just hard work. Yeah, it's whatever it takes. That's what you just heard.

Whatever it takes. People change their lives when they finally say, I've had it. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's when you'll change. And not until. This is the Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Lucia is with us in Virginia. Hi, Lucia. How are you?

Good. Thank you. Good. How can we help today? Yes. I'm wondering if I should get or consider a trust for my elderly mother. She's going to be selling her home and moving in with us. So the proceeds, I'm kind of nervous about it. I want to do the best for her, protect those proceeds. So I've heard of a Medicare trust and different types of trust, but I don't know where to go with that. What are you protecting the proceeds from? Well, from other siblings that might, you know, inconsiderate siblings that might call

every time they have a problem, and then my mother would, you know, dwindle. Sounds like that's not a hypothetical. No. We already know who this is. They have a name, okay? Asking for a friend, yeah. Yes. okay asking for a friend yeah yeah yes um wow if you put it into a trust and she is the beneficial has the beneficial interest of the trust that means she's the owner of the assets in the trust in a sense. And you set someone that will say no to inconsiderate siblings up as the trustee.

Your mom would still have the power to instruct the trustee to release the funds. Okay. There's no way. If your mom can access the funds, which she would need to do if she needed them right then she can access them and give them away and um so you know i i think what we're going to do you know you could put some you could put the money with her permission into an account that requires your signature and her signature and you could refuse to give that signature but if you hired a professional trustee they won't refuse if you set yourself up as the trustee now you could say

no mom i'm not going to do it but you're going to end up being the bad guy with the inconsiderate parasite sibling but you probably are anyway aren't you yes well i mean generally the responsible one is the bad guy to the parasite that's generally the way it works in families i mean yeah have you talked to your mom about this had this conversation with her um no no not really i wanted to get um you know enter in uh the information and then present it to her of what you know what the options are yeah i think what i would do is make sure that she has a good estate plan and while you're meeting with the estate plan attorney ask them what some legal methodologies are to make it difficult for your mom to access the money in a moment of weakness, in a moment of enabling to a parasite sibling. And just talk out loud in front of her to the estate planner about that.

They could probably tell you if there's a way to structure a trust to do that. And you could meld that into the estate plan. That's one thing to do. You could set up a simple bank account that requires both signatures. That's not a trust, but it just requires both signatures, yours and hers, and you're not going to give it. That one's very clean. If you're going to set up a trust, the trustee would need to be someone who would say no.

And again, an attorney is not going to say no they're going to take the instruction of the person that has the beneficial interest um they're going to be uncomfortable otherwise and you're just going to look at her and say no no you can't do that mom because you're going to need this money i don't need the money but you're going to need this money to take care of you and uh you know so that's the two things that come to mind um and uh no matter how uh it is structured whatever you decide to do with her input and maybe with the input of the attorney i think you go ahead and have a little um a little town hall meeting here with the spout with the other siblings and say, listen, here's what we've done.

This is mom's money, and nobody can get to it except her. We've trapped it. So that kind of puts them on notice. Don't even ask because it's useless for you to ask. And then you're not put in the position later that says, oh, I'm the one that has to say no. But if you just act like, hey, we put it in a lock box a legal lock box and it can't be opened so you can't get it and just let them know to don't bother and i i do i do that as a conversational head them off at the past thing and put it put it in the rearview mirror

but that's not an unusual thing you're facing, by the way. Parasite siblings with an enabling mom is a fairly standard playbook we see out there a lot. Creates a lot of relational drama, especially when you don't have this conversation, and all of a sudden mom's gone and we're all trying to fight about it now. So I like having the conversation now. Yep. David is in New Mexico. Hi, David. How are you

hey dave hey george thanks for taking my call sure what's up so uh my wife and i we've really been committing to going through the baby steps and right now we are doing baby step four and um great what i want to know what i wanted to know was was when you guys thought would be a good time or a good baby step to start thinking about a baby um so we're at that point where we're considering it um i don't really like uh public schools in our area so i want to send them to private school uh do you guys have any suggestions as far as when to start thinking about that? Yesterday. You should already have babies.

Go get babies. Babies are awesome. Okay. What's holding you back right now? Well, so the main thing is to both my wife and my work, she's a labor and delivery nurse, which probably explains why she's really wanting the baby. So my concern is once she has our first baby that I would really like for her to be able to stay home,

that's going to have a shift in our income. Yep. And so I don't want us to have to take any steps backwards since we've been able to move forward so well. You shouldn't have to take steps backwards. You structure your household to where you live on your income. Can you afford to live on your income alone, David, today? So the biggest issue would be the mortgage um you know we we took on the the mortgage prior to the whole you know dave ramsey baby steps um you know so it's a little bit more than our uh that

portion of our income um so right now at my current income that probably might be feasible but we definitely have to do the whole beans and rice, rice and beans again. You know, so... Well, it may be that you choose to not live in that house to have babies. Or you choose to not live in that house to have babies and her be at home with them. Or she works, you know, 312s,

which a lot of nurses do. And a newborn's not going to private school so we don't need to worry about that right now either at least not in my house no do they have private schools for newborns that's scary yeah oh boy yeah the um they got everything for newborns but yeah listen we don't tell people when to have children uh it's not a financial step the baby steps have nothing to do with babies. And so, you know, you have babies when you and God decide to have babies. And that's the time to have babies. And I'm a big fan of babies. Yeah. And it becomes a line item in your budget.

That's it. Yeah. It's an added expense. And so what you're doing, David, is you're saying, okay, I really want my cake and eat it too. I want to be able to live in this house. I want to go to private schools. I want her to not have to work. And I want us to, you know, to prosper and go forward. And you can't have all that. You're going to have to choose something.

Your income is going to have to go up. She's going to have to maintain some kind of income. Or you're going to live in a different house. Or, or, or, or. And thus is the joy of raising a family. But, yeah, I highly recommend it anyway. Yesterday. It's the babies are the best thing I've ever done.

And I've done some really cool things, but babies are the best. The only thing better than the babies, of course, is the grandbabies. And if I'd have known how great grandbabies were, I'd have been nicer to their parents. So there you go. Rachel and Daniel and Denise, they ended up just fine. They turned out. They're great. It's okay.

But, yeah, it's because of their mom. This is The Ramsey Show. Do you love a good day, Brand? Want to see the latest Ramsey Show videos going viral? Check out your favorite moments from the Ramsey Show on YouTube. Go watch and subscribe to the Ramsey Show channel on YouTube.