The Ramsey Show - App - How Do We Plan for a Family When We're in Debt? (Hour 3)
Episode Date: May 6, 2021Debt, Insurance, Career Sign Up for a FREE trial of Ramsey+ TODAY: https://bit.ly/3rZTUAx Tools to get you started: Debt Calculator: https://bit.ly/2Q64HME Insurance Coverage Checkup: https...://bit.ly/3sXwUn5 Complete Guide to Budgeting: https://bit.ly/3utmVXi Check out more Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3fHhbVE
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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios,
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.
I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney.
Ramsey personality and host of the Dr. John Deloney podcast and YouTube show, is my co-host today.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.
That's 888-825-5225.
Haley is in Denver, our first call this hour.
Hi, Haley.
How are you?
Doing good.
Thank you.
Good.
My husband and I are currently on baby step number two.
Our annual income is about $115,000 per year, and we have about $75,000 left in debt to pay off.
So I'm thinking that we can be completely debt-free within the next 24 months.
Amen. debt-free within the next 24 months amen um and my question is where do we prioritize family
planning into the baby steps if we're facing an untraditional path to start our family through
surrogacy or adoption uh well there's not a baby in the baby steps um you have babies when you're
ready to have babies uh but you throw a curve in there when you say there's not a baby in the baby steps. You have babies when you're ready to have babies.
But you throw a curve in there when you say there's a different kind of a cost here.
Okay?
And so, you know, I think, and I guess the other possible question that comes up that's similar,
you're not asking that question, but the similar is an in vitro uh you know when do we do that and i'm
you know i'm 36 and i i you know i don't want to wait two more years and that kind of stuff i get
that question over the years a lot that's in the it's in the same bucket of questions um and so
uh i i think if you're going to do surrogacy or adoption you would do the uh you would learn so much about these two things
that you would find that there's a vast spectrum that people pay for these things,
5,000 to 100,000 spectrum.
Yeah, we're seeing about 45,000 to 60,000 depending on which route we take and if it's in the United States or international.
And my husband is 35, so age is something that we're definitely thinking about.
I think you've got more research to do.
Okay.
We've worked with many, many, many families that have done adoptions for half of your low number or less.
And so I think you're getting the Bentley pitch rather than the Chevrolet pitch on the adoption process.
So, no, it does not cost that much.
And so I think you've got, you know, here's the thing.
When I, the more information I gather and the more options I have,
the more power I have in making a decision.
And I don't think you have enough options yet.
As a matter of fact, I'm sure you don't because the prices you're quoting me are ridiculous.
Well, that's mainly for our first choice, which would be surrogacy, so that we could have a biological child.
The adoption would be secondary, which we know we can do cheaper.
Okay.
All right.
And obviously, there's a lot of ways to compensate a surrogate, and a lot of price ranges on that as well so it's such a personal thing and
such an intimate thing that it's very hard for somebody on the radio like me to speak into it
and and not sound callous or not sound like i don't care about it i do care about it
it's just you have it can cloud you from
treating it like a business transaction as much as you should.
I want it to be emotional.
I want it to be intimate.
I want it to matter, but I also want you to use wisdom in the process.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm not trying to be unfeeling, in other words, but so anyway, I can tell you in our
life, me and my wife, when we were walking down some of these steps, we put an end, a
line we wouldn't cross because we knew that once we um our hearts got into this deal
and once there are people around you always saying well there's another option there's
another option there's another option that suddenly you wake up and you're you're you're
so far of your head or you're so far underwater it's just the whole thing what was going to be
this joyous precious moment gets really really, really cloudy. What's the $75,000 in debt?
Oh, my gosh.
Everything.
We have cars.
How much of it's cars?
About $25,000, but last July it was $90,000.
We sold, well, we surrendered two vehicles, and then we're paying off the deficits on it.
But we have two cash cars now.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
We have two beaters right now.
Okay.
All right.
So the 25 is the deficits.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yes.
And then the rest is some debts, too.
I have a loan with my parents, and then credit cards, just furniture.
How much do you owe your parents?
About $20,000.
Okay.
All right.
You know, I might consider making that a pause point
and clean up the rest of that snowball,
because you do want the cash to be freed up
to be able to do these other things.
So I want you working your debt snowball,
and I want you pushing through the majority of it,
but that 20, I might ask for a moratorium on that
until after the baby, and say,
Mom and Dad, I'm not going to pay anything on this
because we're going to get you a grandkid.
Oh, that's a good tip.
Yeah, blackmail!
And, but yeah, or or i mean negotiate that with
talk to him about it and and so um you know that's a different kind of debt that you could get uh
you know no payments and no interest while you work through this other thing and then come back
to it after baby and get it done that would be fine but um the question is not really when to
have babies the questions were to stick a sixty thousand dollar or forty thousand dollar or twenty
five thousand dollar expense in the middle of your debt snowball and it's an expense that is very
intimate very emotional and um and worth every penny yeah Yeah. I would strongly recommend
going to a counselor
that you recommend
or a pastor.
This is one of those moments
where your pictures and words
get screwed up, right?
We think in pictures,
but we speak in words
and we're both saying baby
and we're both saying kid
and we're both saying
pay off the debt.
And that's when one of you
has one picture
and the other one's got another one.
So just being able to have
a third party
to walk you through, make sure everybody's on the same page,
where are we headed, what do we want to do here, and what order do we want to do that,
man, you can't go wrong getting everybody on the same page.
Yeah, that's important.
And I agree with what you said earlier, too, that you and Sheila talked about.
You do have to put a line on this because otherwise your emotions will plow past anything that's reasonable.
You'll look up
maybe 150 in yeah or something and i've seen people within vitro where they just break the
bank yeah they just keep going back and that was my wife's wisdom up front let's draw a line here
let's say this is this is as far as we're going to take this and then we're going to work hard
but this is we're not going to cross this line. And that ended up being extraordinary wisdom, as usually our wives provide us.
Yes, absolutely.
It's just one of those things that's very – it's impossible for people or yourself to tell yourself no on.
Yeah.
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Christophe is with us in Los Angeles.
Hi, Christophe.
How are you?
Better than I deserve.
How are you doing, Mr. Emcee?
Just the same, sir.
How can I help?
Well, I'm a fourth-year medical student about to start residency actually in Nashville in one month.
I have $100,000 in med school debt.
And based on what I'm trained to do, I'll be a medical resident for the next six or seven years,
making $60,000 to $70,000 per year.
However, when I'm done training and become an attending physician, I'll be making $330,000 to $500,000.
My question is this.
With the knowledge that I can easily, you know, more easily
write a check for a hundred thousand dollars in seven or eight years, should
I make minimum payments now to be able to live comfortably as such as living
close to work, having my own apartment versus having roommates, uh, being
like that, you know, in an intense, uh, uh, residency program working 80 hours
a week, or should I be really aggressive right now at the expense of being able to live more comfortably?
Man, off the top of my head, I'm going to tell you to be real aggressive right now.
I don't know what the world's going to look like in eight years, man.
Yeah, I would get it.
I agree.
I would get it off of me.
And here's the thing here's what's
running through my head it let's pretend that you just called me up and you said i make seventy
thousand dollars a year and i have a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt and that's
all you said and that's all it was because there wasn't a three hundred thirty thousand dollar job
out there you made seventy thousand dollars a year and you had a hundred thousand dollars in
student loan debt uh i would tell you pay it off in three years beans and rice rice and beans and
work your way through it and i don't know why you can't do that in this situation um you know and uh
yeah you're you may have a roommate situation you are an inexpensive property that you're living in
but if you made seventy thousand dollars a year and had $100,000 worth of student loan debt,
that's what you would do anyway.
So that's not different.
The only thing that's different is you are in a high-stress,
high-pressure cooker situation as a resident, like you said, 80 hours a week.
So no opportunity to make any more.
You are stuck with that income.
And you do have this payoff at the end.
But, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and clear it. It's going to take you two and a half to three years to the end but yeah I'm going to go ahead and
clear it it's going to take you two and a half to three years to clear it but I'm going to go
ahead and clear because that's how I'm going to treat it is as if you're just made 70 grand you
had 100 what would you do well you'd pay it off and I'm going to tell you something it's going
to sound counterintuitive I've done some research on med student mental health and And in fact, I'm going to speak to med school here in the fall.
I would lean towards not living what you would call a solitary life where you work 80 hours and you go by yourself into a home
and you can shut everything down.
I would actually, especially in your first couple years of residency,
I want you leaning in and having some friends.
I'd recommend having some roommates, man, have some people you can go home to and that
can be with you and be a human with you.
One of the biggest challenges that medical residents have is this becomes their planet,
their universe, and it is dealing with other people's pain and trauma all day long, 24-7,
365, and no sleeping.
Grab a granola bar on the way to the next thing and the next thing, and man, there's
something about being tethered back to a group of people.
I tell you to live light, man.
People that you're not treating.
Yeah.
I tell you to live light.
Have a group of people that you're sharing life with that's not going to sound like,
I'm in residency.
I'm a doctor.
I'd say have a house full of roommates.
Get this debt paid off.
And then you're going to look up three or four years later.
You're going to be living a lot lighter, man.
Then you can make some different decisions.
Yeah.
Good call.
Alex is next in Phoenix.
Hi, Alex.
Welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave and John.
Pleasure to speak with both of you.
You too.
What's up?
So my wife and three of our four kids were recently in a car accident,
which totaled our vehicle.
Oh, no.
Is everybody okay?
Everybody all right?
Yeah.
Yes.
It was a pretty bad accident, but thankfully everyone
is just fine. Good, good.
So we're working on replacing it
and I'm comparing a lot of vehicles
of the same make and model,
very similar model year and
trim level. The only real difference
are the miles and the price.
So is there a calculation I can use to help
decide which vehicle has the best value
based on that vehicle's mileage and price?
So I assume you've got the money to buy whatever you want?
Within reason, yes.
I mean, within the range that you're talking about, you've got the cash either way?
Yes, we do.
So the simple thing is just how to put a valuation on a vehicle?
Yes.
Okay.
I mean, you can hit a little bit more money.
Probably the gold standard is, in terms of placing a value on a vehicle,
would be kellybluebook.com, kbb.com.
Edmund's car guide is pretty good as well.
That's not a bad one.
There's four or five sites you can go to.
You can look at trader.com and just look at other vehicles exactly like it that are for sale.
And a lot of these sites now overlap and have APIs where they talk to each other and everything else.
So it's fairly easy if you just spend an hour or two surfing to actually put a pretty good valuation on the vehicle
in terms of what is the best, in quotes, value,
usually the older the vehicle with the lower the miles.
And so if you had a 20, I don't know, I'll make it up,
a 2015 with 15,000 miles or you had a 2018 with 100,000 miles, the 2015 is going to be more bang for your buck
usually because it's got more life left in it it didn't lose much life during those three years
the miles put more on it than that years do in terms of the actual uh use of the vehicle typically
i mean it can depend on the car obviously but the other thing you get into is the technology advances so quickly in the newer ones that it's just the creature comforts in the newer ones are big time different.
Sometimes two years makes a world of difference in terms of the goodies.
Just to decide if it's worth it spending a few extra thousand to have it 10,000, 20,000 miles less. It sounds like you're saying it's not value-wise, even though the vehicle might not last as long.
I am still getting more value if it has higher mileage and a lower price.
Yeah, I think that's very car-specific.
Yeah, and if we're talking about 200,000 miles, we're talking about 20,000 miles.
It's a lot different.
But, I mean, what kind of car are you looking at?
A Honda Odyssey.
Oh, an Odyssey.
Okay.
And what price range?
Around $13,000 to $19,000.
Okay.
And what kind of miles range are we playing with here?
So, to give you a few examples, we have 144 000 miles for 13 5 115 000 miles for 17 4 75 000 miles for 19
1 now the only one that would get my attention based on the miles would be the 17 the uh the
the 13 would sounded like the deal. With the 144?
Yeah, that's the one that sounded like the deal.
Because, you know, the good news about a Honda, I mean, it's just you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that thing's got a 250,000-mile car if you take care of it.
So it's got 100,000 miles left in it.
You know, it's not worn out if they've taken anywhere near care of it.
I mean, I don't know what condition they're in, that kind of thing.
But, yeah, you're not going to mess up.
None of those right there are going to ruin your life.
You would not overthink.
If a car's got 1,000 miles more, I wouldn't overthink it.
Yeah.
But 75s, you know, it's a lot different.
You jump way down all of a sudden on that one.
And that's the only one that kind of got my attention.
But the other one, 13, was the first one that got my attention.
Interesting.
None of those are dumb.
No, you win with all three.
Yeah.
This is The Ramsey Personality,
is my co-host in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage.
Mark and Ashley are here with t-shirts that say weird people say must have paid off their house.
Way to go, guys.
How much debt have you paid off?
$406,075.
That's house and everything, huh?
That's house and everything.
Woo!
Wow!
I am looking at weird people.
I love it.
And how long did this take you?
53 months.
Good for you.
That's perfect.
And your range of income during that time?
Started about $140, $250 to $250.
Wow.
What do you all do for a living?
I'm a veterinarian.
And I stay home with our kids and take care of them.
And I breed dogs on the side and babysit and homeschool and sell things.
You've got a place to sell the dogs through this vet, you know, huh?
So what kind of dogs?
Standard poodles.
Oh, yeah?
All right.
Big boys, huh?
Yes.
All right.
Wow.
So one of you approached the other and said, I have an idea.
Let's get shirts.
There you go.
It was the veterinarian.
Mark has the fun ideas.
I thought you were asking about their money.
I just want to know who came up with this idea.
That's fantastic.
Okay.
So 53 months ago, you decided to pay off your house.
What caused that, and how did you do it?
So we had just bought into the practice, and it was about like five to six months after that.
I was outside grilling one afternoon, and it just, like, we did the budget.
We were kind of doing day-ish at that point um and at the end of
our month it was just tight like everything felt tight and uh i was thinking about like how much
money we made like this is ridiculous we make way too much money to feel this way um and that was my
yeah that was my hit moment we had paid off our student loans before that and we grew up hearing
about you dave and we had applied some of it um but i always felt we always felt really good
because we didn't ever um have big balances on our credit cards or i didn't bounce checks at the
bank and but we could not get any traction we We really were slow to pay off our loans,
and for the amount of money that we made at the time,
I just felt like it should be more.
It should work better.
So that's when we decided to submit to the principals and get it done.
Okay.
So you investigated a little deeper and figured out exactly what the details were
to do the baby steps and to do our stuff.
Yep.
And did you go read a book or go through Financial Peace or just listen to the show or what?
We listened to the show a lot.
Yeah.
I actually heard a lot of Financial Peace growing up.
My family didn't practice it, but my parents enjoyed listening to you.
I actually took a class through my church as a teenager to, like a young adult.
I just didn't. I felt like a young adult um i just didn't i felt like i was
pretty smart i didn't i have to i have to do everything my way first yeah i got it okay so
you just kind of went back and revisited yeah all of that and said okay we're going to really do the
stinking plan yep i think just hearing hearing people's debt-free screams hearing you every day
a lot of the stuff that you speak is truth,
and it really got to our hearts.
And eventually we were like, he has helped lots of people.
So we're going to get on board.
I'm so proud of you guys.
Very, very cool.
Very cool.
So where do you guys live?
What city?
Green Bay.
Close to Green Bay.
Oh, okay.
So what's this four hundred six thousand dollar
mortgage house that doesn't have a house doesn't have a mortgage on it worth uh the house is worth
uh 250 probably now like 250 so maybe about half of that's the practice buy-in oh okay and half
it's the house and so you own the practice 100 are your partners no eight partners eight partners
okay small animal large animal everything large animal, everything. Large animal. Large animal.
The whole thing's large animal.
Yeah.
Wow.
Okay.
And my dogs.
And your dogs.
And I have to do the dogs.
Those are large animals there.
This is not a toy.
Yeah, that's a standard.
Wow, very cool, you guys.
I've got this moment.
You're on your back porch.
I just have a picture of you in my head of you raising a spatula to the sky, saying no more, pretty much.
Braveheart with a spatula.
Yeah, just a spatula and lightning strikes.
And then you come in and you tell your wife.
Highlander.
Walk us through that conversation.
Yeah, so he probably would have done this a lot sooner.
I was the one who dragged my feet for sure.
I just really like stuff.
I like to buy stuff.
Looking back, I
just really struggle with self-control,
struggle with contentment.
His job was
convincing me to get on board.
I love him. I want
him to be happy
and to thrive and do well.
That's kind of what he long as he doesn't tell
me no yeah right you can thrive in that atmosphere i want him to be happy in my lexus yes
that's great yeah so it took a little while for me to come on board um so what's the first big
thing you're going to get to do now that you don't have any debt i bought her a new van or a newer van good good
yeah that's perfect it was coming for a while yeah it was needed i can tell the funny story was
i knew she had bought in the year before we bought the van uh we had set aside from the
air and bonus stuff to buy a van and And it was like a few days into that,
like after we'd set it aside,
she came to me and said,
I think I'd rather put this towards the house.
Wow.
And I had done the math and I had mapped out
if we put this towards the house
and your bonus towards the house
and we pay on it like we've been paying off our debt,
then we can probably pay the
house off in a year.
And I think it's only going to get harder because we've got kids that are growing and
they've got plans and goals.
Wow.
He grabbed that spatula and he waved it.
That's right.
We're in it.
So good, man.
I love it.
Well, congratulations.
What do you guys tell people the key to getting out of debt is?
I think the why.
Just having a big why.
And the bigger the why, the better.
I think the most important thing you say every day, Dave, is the only way to true financial peace is to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.
And that's a huge why of we're stewards. I mean, you talk about it all the time. We're stewards and that money's not ours. And we're responsible for taking care of it and using it
wisely. Yeah. And for me, it was learning that self-control and contentment. Sometimes I reflect
back. It felt like a really long time, especially when you look at the time that we were Davis all the way to paying off the house, pretty much our marriage, we've been paying stuff off and trying
to live frugal and trying to get good at that. And sometimes I look back and I think it took that
long for God to get through to me, to change my heart. But I definitely would say for me that was it and honestly i'm a bit of a wheeler and
a dealer i love to uh see the potential in things and i'm really good at selling things and doing
that stuff but my superpower ended up being just to sit still and to save our money and not spend
it and to find ways to grocery shop better that's a a life change right there. That's a family tree change right there.
Godliness with contentment is great gain.
So you brought the kiddos with you.
What are their names and ages?
We've got Reuben, who's 10, Vienna, who's 9, Tori is 7,
Maddie's almost 6, and Jen's almost 4.
Okay, and they have the T-shirts.
You are looking at it.
The why?
What are we looking at? You are looking at weird the why what are we looking at you are looking at weird people
it's not it it's an exclamation point i love it well we've got a copy of the legacy journey for
you because that's the journey you're obviously on what a great looking family and of course you
uh also we'll give you a copy of the total money makeover to pay it forward and give to somebody
start their journey.
So you are looking at weird people, exclamation point.
That's perfect.
You're looking at a changed family tree.
It's incredible.
That's awesome.
Very cool.
Very, very well done.
All right.
Mark and Ashley, Ruben, Vienna, Victoria, Madison, and Geneva.
Count it down.
$406,000 paid off in 53 months, making $140,000 to $250,000.
Let's hear a debt-free scream.
Ready?
Three, two, one.
We're debt-free!
Wow!
Wow!
Man, that's powerful.
That's incredible.
A lot of transformation happening, not only in their family tree, but in each of the individuals.
That's powerful stuff right there.
Wow.
Every decision they make is going to be good.
The house and everything, the practice, it's all not a debt in the world.
So powerful.
Woo!
This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Ecclesiastes 7.12.
The protection of wisdom is like the protection of money,
and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.
Albert Einstein says we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Amen, amen. Requires new thoughts.
That's what we're here for. To make sure you have some new thoughts.
Some of them are good. New actions.
Kevin is with us. Kevin is in Fort Walton Beach.
Hi, Kevin.
Welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave.
Hi, John.
Thanks for taking my call.
Sure.
What's up?
So the question that I have is about life insurance.
So we are debt-free except for a house we are currently renting.
And the plan for the financial freedom is we should be, I guess, kind of at a financially free point in, I would guess, about five years.
But my question is, so how much and for how long should we get life insurance, assuming we're going to be able to self-insure in a fairly short time horizon?
Okay.
Self-insure means that five years from today, you're going to have a paid-for house,
your kids are grown and gone, or you have so much money that your kids are taken care of if you die.
Anyway, how old are you?
So we are, both my wife and I are 34.
And you're renting?
We are currently renting.
You have children?
We do have two children.
Okay.
And how much money do you have?
Currently, we have around $500,000.
Okay.
And what do you make a year? Um, so we are, our income right now is about 140. We live on about a third of our income. So we're able to put a lot into investments.
And then my, um, so due to a, uh, job change probably within about a year, our income should be increasing substantially.
Okay.
Well, I mean, apparently you understand my definition of self-insured is there's enough money in investments that your family will have enough income coming off of those investments without touching the principal to take care of them easily without your income being there.
Your income is replaced by income off of investments without having to touch the actual principle of the investments.
If you're going to be there in five years, then, you know, you're there.
Are you guys healthy?
Yes.
Okay.
Because here's the thing.
I mean, a million dollars on a 34-year-old just doesn't cost but the cost of a pizza.
It's not much money.
And so –
And I do – yeah.
You're not – It's not much money. And I do, yeah. And I guess that's my question is do we do that?
Because I know you kind of typically recommend the 10 to 12.
Yeah, I'm just saying.
But, I mean, if you buy a million and a half on you or whatever, you know,
I mean, it's just not much money.
We're not talking about some super expensive policy.
If you go to ZanderInsurance.com and you quote out a million and a half, two million, whatever, on a 34-year-old, it's just not that much.
It doesn't cost that much.
So, you know, if you buy that100,000 a year to live on.
So you've got, you know, a million, million and a half in investments that they can draw off of.
Once you reach that point, you would just cancel the insurance if you want to.
You may find other uses for it in terms of just padding things and that
kind of stuff but um it it's yeah the difference in a 10 year and a 15 year is not going to be
substantial enough at 34 years old to screw with it i wouldn't worry about it or even a five year
i mean it's just not it's not going to blow you away that it's not triple. You know, it doesn't cost that much more.
And so I would probably just go ahead and get a 15-year, 12 times your income,
and then if you reach self-insured before the 15 years is up, cancel it.
And I look at those decisions in my life, Dave, on a seesaw of risk, right? And so what's $500 or $600 or $700 a year versus my family being taken care of if something happens?
It just doesn't make any sense on the other side of it.
Right.
I have the advantage and the distinct disadvantage of having sat with 34-year-old widows.
Yeah.
That had $2 million or had nothing.
Correct.
As if I.
It's death versus 500 bucks for the cost of policy or whatever it is.
And it's not just a game changer.
That's such an understatement.
Right.
Such an overused cliche to say that.
It's oxygen.
Yeah.
It's everything.
And it's not that money replaces somebody or anything like that, but it's a way different conversation to be sitting in that living room with somebody and they're going, Dave, and they're friends of ours.
Dave, we did this stuff you said to do in the class, man, and I got $2 million coming, and I'm scared I'm going to mess that up.
That's a different thing than I'm scared I don't know how we're going to eat next week.
I've got to go to work on Monday.
So it's just not that much money.
Carson is with us in St. Louis.
Hey, Carson, welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave.
Thanks for taking my call.
Sure.
What's up?
So my wife and I, for the last year and a half, have been on baby steps four, five, and six.
The two years prior to that, we were on steps one, two, and three and paid off about $80,000 in debt.
My question is, so we've got a little one-year-old boy and my wife.
Well, we're both kind of contemplating together.
She wants to quit her job.
What does she make?
What does she make?
She makes probably will be about $135,000 this year.
What do you make?
I make about $150,000, $160,000.
So what do you lose when she comes home and your income goes in half?
Well, so the way that we've been living right now,
essentially we're living off of my income and saving everything from her.
So you lose the savings.
A little bit, but, well, a lot of it, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you're saving $135,000 that you won't be saving anymore.
Exactly, yep.
Yeah.
And that's okay.
So you're not going to be quite as wealthy, but she's going to get to be there with her baby.
Do it.
Okay.
Well, and I'm all for that, too, but I also know what, you know, 135 and growing over the next five or ten years,
if we put all of that into an investment account, you know,
what that can grow up to, you know.
What does she do for a living?
She does digital advertising.
Okay.
I would tell her just for the fun of it, for the intellectual stimulation,
to do some freelance.
Absolutely.
Just to keep herself busy, because a one-year-old will drive you freaking bananas.
And if she'll stay current in that world, she can step back in whenever she wants,
or whenever you all want.
You have absolutely no financial need to do that,
and I trade one-year-olds for money in about 30 seconds.
Yep, yep.
And I totally agree with you.
It's more just is it, you know, what we could have in the future?
Is it a wise decision?
You don't need it.
I'm on your side, I think.
You don't need it.
Okay.
Yeah, hey, it's not a math problem, Carson.
You can be multimillionaires on $150,000.
Okay.
And, by the way, you're not going to make $150 150 000 in the future because you're gonna be making more and she's also gonna have some
freelance income and when the kids are eight and nine and ten and she's sitting at home by herself
while they're at elementary school she's gonna go back to work and do something because this woman
likes what she does she just likes one year olds better yeah way more than i'm worried about your
your income i'm worried about her identity and so she's i'd recommend her getting some um professional women some stay-at-home mom
women in her circle yeah and she she's got a good great community too and and so uh i think that
makes me a lot more comfortable with the decision just hearing you guys talk it out so i really
appreciate that thank you i'm so proud of you guys i'm proud that you got up to baby step four where you can do this and it's a no-brainer. Yeah,
y'all worked hard to get to this exact moment. This is living like no one else so that later
you can live and give like no one else. This is exactly what you're doing. Well done. Very proud
of you. John, good show. Thanks, man. Good show, James and Kelly in the booth. I'm Dave Ramsey,
your host. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember,
there's ultimately only one way to financial peace,
and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.
Hey, guys, this is James, senior producer for The Ramsey Show.
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