The Ramsey Show - App - How Much House Can I Actually Afford? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Kristina Ellis discuss: Pausing investing to pay for college, Knowing how much house you can afford, Disagreement about how to use an inheritance.   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. We help folks build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Christina Ellis, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. As we answer your questions at 888-825-5225, that's 888-825-5225. John is in Atlanta starting off this hour. Hey, John, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Christina, Dave, thank you for taking my call.

I really appreciate it. Sure, what's up? Hey, I got a question. I'm 48 years old. Me and my wife have saved enough for our retirement. At least I think it's enough. We have no debt. All we've got is a house

payment. I've got two kids in college, two boys that we are paying for their education, paying cash. Here's what my dilemma is. I'm hoping to retire by 55, that's about seven years. And I think I have reached a point when I do my calculations with my retirement savings so far that I have, my contributions now don't make a whole lot of difference just the way the compound interest works 10 years from now or 6 years, 7 years from now. I was wondering if I can just stop contributing, just do minimum 4% so that I can get an employer's match, and then start saving after tax, pay my house off, pay for my two kids' college, my younger son who's starting medical school in about a year and a half, pay for his medical school cash that way he doesn't have to take any loans, and then me and my wife can retire at 55.

And then everything, you know, just leave the way my investments are. And now if 10% or 8% a year and a compound interest in seven years, I should have a decent amount to retire. How much is in there now? At the beginning of this year, it was $2.6 million in there. Okay. Well, if you don't touch it and it's invested at 10, it'll double in seven years. Right.

That's what I'm – so I'm hoping even if it doesn't double, it's $4 million at least, $4 to $4.5 million. It'll double. I mean, if you've got it in good mutual funds, you're going to make that on it. So, yeah, you're going to have $5 million at 55 years old, and you're saying you want to – And I've got two investment properties that are completely paid for. What do you own your house? I owe $130,000 on a house. Its value is $900,000.

Yeah. What do you make? We make close to about $200,000 a year. Yeah. You've just been very wise over a long period of time, then. Well done. Good job. No, I appreciate it.

Good job. Yeah, I like your plan. Yeah, cash flow the kids' college, pay off the house as soon as possible. And, you know, here's the thing. I want you to run the numbers out two ways. Because the amount you're putting in, your 401K, is only, what, 19 grand. Okay? That's right.

But I'm also doing for Roth and and you know yeah okay so 30 grand out of 200 let's call it that all right whoopee and so that doesn't really you know if you ran it out saying i'm going to keep fully funding everything how long does it take me to pay off the house and cash flow the kids college you can do that by the way. Or I do the plan or run the numbers out with your plan at 4%. How long does it take you to pay off the house and cash flow to the kids' college? Because after both of those things are done, you need to crank this back up anyway just to keep the stinking government's hands off the money. Right.

And I don't think you – if you run the numbers out, it's just a straight cash flow analysis. It's really – I mean, it's sixth grade math. You can do it. Everybody can do it, and you're certainly smart enough to do it. But I think you're going to find that 20 – you know, don't do the Roths. At least do the 401K. That $20,000 a year is not going to delay this whole program over this seven-year period of time, but about a year.

Yeah, actually, if you think about it, Dave, it's about $50,000, because my wife does the same thing, right? So both of us. Okay, well, I wouldn't have you both. No, I wouldn't have you doing that anyway. I would only have you doing 15% of your income going into retirement. That's baby step four and that would be 30 grand on 200 right okay that's our baby step four and if you do 30 grand versus only doing

uh seven grand you know we got a 23 000 swing and per year and how much does that delay you paying off a $130,000 house? Not much. It's not even a year difference. You're giving the stopping of this retirement or virtual stopping of this retirement way too much weight in your head. It's not as heavy as you think it is. Yeah, I think what's bothering me, not bothering me, but I do want to make sure that my kids are debt-free with their graduate.

Oh, I completely agree with that. Run that out. And if you've got to borrow money, you've got to borrow money, all bets are off. Stop. Do what you're playing, okay? But I don't think you've got to borrow money. Make $200,000. So I think you're putting too much into retirement.

You need to get down to 15%, and then you need to start throwing money at kids' college and at your house. Work the baby steps straight up, and I think you're need to get down to 15 and then you need to start throwing money at kids college and at your house work the baby steps straight up and i think you're going to get there i don't think you're going to see much difference in that or stopping the 15 making it only four percent yeah but john you're very impressive you're killing it to have 2.6 million in retirement at 48 you're you're doing amazing and i love that you're calculating things so well that's how he got there right he paid attention it's very obvious that yeah you you do the math you work the plan and you're very diligent you know that just i think that guys that are listening you're going wow that's impressive yeah you know what you know what he did he just did on purpose winning

is not an accidental event no one accidentally has an awesome marriage no one accidentally has great kids i don't know how they turned out they just let them run loose and they worked out that doesn't work that way you know no one accidentally has a career that is amazing and fulfilling it's it's a matter you it's intentionality no one accidentally becomes wealthy they don't and if they do they don't stay wealthy often they usually lose it and so you know this random accident winning is a series of intentional acts and john is a walking poster child for that he's an inspiring dude yeah and the cool thing is it's intentional acts that may feel annoying to do right now. It may feel like it takes effort. It is annoying.

It is annoying. It's a pain in the butt. It is. But the long-term reward is amazing. And the pain of not doing it long-term, of not having enough in your account for retirement, for having to take out money for student loans, all this other stuff is way more painful than being intentional on the front end and dealing you know, dealing with doing a budget, running the numbers, and being really, really intentional with your money up front.

Yeah. There are some people whose mom and dad are both skinny, so they're skinny, but most of the rest of us, it's not a natural act. Most of the rest of us are donut eaters, you know? I mean, oh my God my god you know i had a friend whose dad was a beanpole and so he was a beanpole and he could eat anything it just made me mad at him all the time but but most of the time you know even you can even screw up good dna sometimes you know and so it's an intentional act and that guy right there you know he wasn't freaking out he wasn't wringing his hands he wasn't money obsessed he you know, he wasn't freaking out. He wasn't wringing his hands. He wasn't money obsessed. He wasn't greedy. He wasn't a horrible capitalist that had taken advantage of

children in the salt mines. He was just an intentional guy. He's got $2.6 million. Baby steps millionaires. This is how it happens, boys and girls. I love it. I love it. I love it. This is The Ramsey Show. In an uncertain world, being a good steward of your money is more important than ever. While some circumstances can't be controlled, there are items within your budget you can take charge of, such as your health care costs. For nearly 40 years, Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM, has provided a budget-friendly means of sharing for medical bills when our members need it. Learn more by visiting chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a Ramsey Trusted Provider. Christina Ellis, Ramsey Personality No. 1 Bestselling author, is my co-host today.

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help keep teaching your kids the right way about money, and shop the back-to-school sale at Ramseyysolutions.com. Matt is with us in Rochester, New York. Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave and Christine. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So my wife and I, we are, I'm 31. She's 30. We're in baby step three B thanks to your guys' teachings that we have been following for almost three years now. So, um, thank you. Thank you. Um, so we're getting to that point where we're looking to become homeowners, but it's a little bit more complicated now that home prices are quite a bit higher than they were, you know, year over year, and interest rates are going up too. 25% of take-home pay for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage,

that does not include retirement and college funding, right? But it does include property taxes, insurance, HOA fees, et cetera. Yeah, it would just be your house payment. So the point is this. You can qualify for almost double that payment. And when people do that, you know what happens? They got no money. They become house poor.

That's why they call them mortgage brokers. Exactly. You got the plan. And they become house poor because you're broker and broker. But then the next time a car comes up, it becomes a car payment because you've got no margin to save up for the next car. Next time the heat and air goes out, you've got no margin. If it's over the emergency fund, you're screwed because you can't cover it. And so because it's all going to a stinking house payment because you saddled yourself with that.

So you're obviously not going to go that far over into the land of stupidity. Our guideline of 25% of your take-home pay, meaning whatever you're coming home with, not counting just taxes. Taxes out of your check is all. What would you get home after tax? Now, if you've got health care coming out even, health insurance, you can take that out of the equation if you want.

I don't care. The point of the whole formula is not the nuanced exact percentage. The point of the formula is keep a small enough house payment that there's margin in your life and do it on a 15-year so you can get the house paid off because that's what millionaires do. Absolutely. So this past weekend, we actually got pre-approved for a mortgage payment that was 29% of our take home pay. Now this was 5% 30 year conventional fixed rate. And the problem was as well as with

the closing costs and the down payment that was going to have to dig into our baby step three fund. So I know obviously that is not something you guys would recommend. Basically what I was working on was, so I built my own mortgage calculator where the property taxes, so we live in New York, so we have pretty high property taxes. So on a 200 K property, you're looking at about 6300 a month or sorry 6300 a year in property taxes yeah um so 550 a month hazard insurance of about 75 dollars uh prepaid so and then for the closing costs we got prepaids are not monthly they apply that sets up your escrow account to pay your taxes and insurance right right so for our closing costs yeah so for for our prepaids we were quoted 8105 yeah and our closing costs of 6273 so just out of curiosity i created a calculator where if say we were going to go look

at a 175 000 house it would calculate those down to three quarters of that 200 000 quote just for rough math so i looked into okay like if we took out a 15-year fixed rate at 4.92%, which is what the average 15-year fixed rate is running at. So with our take-home pay, we could afford just for the mortgage, not counting the property taxes and insurance, about $957 a month. But even on a $175,000 property, that calculates out to about $53,400 down plus the prepaid and closing costs. Okay, stop, stop, stop. What's your question? is if we're going to be renting for a while longer, would it make sense to potentially start doing baby step four? So I have a Roth 401k.

You can do whatever you want. Baby step 3B is zero going into retirement, up to 15% going into retirement in baby step four. And obviously the more you put into retirement the less you're going to put into your down payment fund yeah yeah and so and the more you know and what you're trying to do is get into a house at this stage of the game and so here what do you guys do for a living so i'm a business analyst and my wife is a teacher you know so what did you make two years ago, three years ago? What were you making before COVID?

Well, actually, I've had pretty good pay raises. That's what I'm asking. Yeah, so two years ago, I was at $60,000, and my wife. What do you make now? She's $75,000. I do. Okay. And so if you take out a 29% today, in two years it's going to be 25%.

Right. Okay. And if that's principal interest, taxes, and insurance on a 15-year, that's not the end of the world. My point is not to take out 38%, which you can qualify for. Right. And you don't want to do that. But don you can qualify for. Right, right. And you don't want to do that. But don't over-nerd this, okay?

It's a concept. The concept is big, stinking house payment means no money. So the concept is get reasonable house payments so there's margin, and I can get through getting this thing paid off. But if you've got an income that's on an upward trajectory like yours is you're going to be at the 25 within 18 to 24 months and you're not going to have wholesale violated this concept and made yourself house poor that's what we're trying to avoid not trying to figure out some hard and fast pharisaical rule the the reason we teach you this is to limit your keep you from

going out test driving bentley's and then having to buy a chevrolet it's just hard to do that yeah that was my thought is it's not to be legalistic it's not to try to follow technicalities it's to give you freedom in the long run and to build wealth we don't want you tied into something that's going to really stress you out long term and prevent you from really building wealth. Yeah. But I mean, you know, I couldn't do it. It was a 25.5% of my take home pay. Oh, shut up.

That's not what we're talking about. Okay. And that's not this guy. But I mean, if you get to the point, understand the reason for these things and then like make grown up decisions based on that, guys, that's what we want you to do. This is the Ramsey Show. Thank you. Christina Ellis, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us here on The Ramsey Show. Jared and Kristen are with us in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage.

Hey, guys, how are you? Doing well. Welcome, welcome. Where do you guys live? We live here in Nashville. Ah, cool. Good. Well, congratulations on being debt-free.

How much did you pay off? We paid off $227,000 in exactly six years, with the last $189,000 paid off in 22 months while cash-flowing a master's degree. Whoa! Jamming. What was your range of income during that six years? We started at $60,000 and ended up at $200,000. Cool.

What do you all do for a living? We own a hardwood flooring company. And I also teach history in high school. Ah, very good. Very good. So what kind of debt was this $227,000? It was our house. Ah!

Look at it, weird people. Way to go, weirdos. Very weird. Paid off house. How old are you, weirdos? I am 37. And I'm 40. All right.

Paid off house by the time you're 40. And so what's this house worth? When we bought it, like I said, it was $227,000. Now it is over $500,000. Yeah. Oh, very good. Very good. And you own it. Yes. It's $500. Yeah. Oh, very good. Very good. And you own it.

Yes. It's all yours. Feels different, doesn't it? It does. It's a weird sensation. Yes. No payments anywhere in the world. None.

No. Wow. Wow. How much in retirement do you have saved? Right now we're trying to play catch up. We only have $150. Okay. All right.

So by the time you're 43 or 44 you're going to be millionaires yeah yeah well done y'all baby steps millionaires looking at them in the future here well done y'all cool cool cool so what in the world inspired this journey y'all went crazy here i mean you did all kinds of stuff uh well actually actually, it started a long time ago when my oldest was two years old. We were really struggling financially. At that point, we were making $28,000, and we were in a place of desperation. And I was at a friend's house. She gave me her book.

I read it. And one day, I'm the type A personality, and I said, hey, we're doing this. I hope you're coming along. And he is very easygoing, balances me out, and he said, yeah, this makes sense. So we paid off consumer debt a little less than $20,000 back in 2012. And when we bought our house, I had the vision of paying it off. My goal was to pay it off by my 40th birthday. And then with our business, it just felt disorganized as far as the finances. So I sent him a link to an Entree Leadership podcast episode and I said, hey, you're going to listen to this today, please. And he came back on board. Yeah, i actually read the book and uh the biggest thing

that stood out for me in the book was when you said whatever's wrong with your business it's your fault um so they got me to look at my business look at where we were going what we were doing and surely it was my fault so we started to change things started investing in our business more invested in our employees and ever since then it started to grow very cool good for you well done that's a big deal i mean and when you start a business it's you know you're just all you could you know especially in the early days it's you're the ceo the chief everything officer you got to do everything so you haven't even got time to stop and think you just got to work and uh it's a very difficult stage and you really rose above that well done yeah and once he saw that vision of me saying,

hey, if we get organized, this is what we can do, and then when he got on board, it was game on from there. That's awesome. You guys had that huge income jump, $60,000 to $200,000. Was that the business getting organized? The majority of that was the business getting organized and growing, yes. That's awesome. Then what else did you all do to get out of debt honestly it was just persistence being intentional

every single day and we still went on vacations because we were in baby steps four five and six you should um but we just put thought into everything we do Do we really want this or do we want this more? And one thing that we did to stay motivated was really encourage each other. We would send each other screenshots of our mortgage account every time we made a payment on it. So we would surprise each other, like, oh, I put this amount on there. And so we were each other's cheerleaders to keep us going. And we got our kids involved. I had a little thing on the refrigerator that they could color in the houses as we paid off, you know, so much they got to color it in. Yeah.

And then we balanced it out, too. We had fun, but we always looked at, well, how much money have we put toward the principal and the mortgage this month before we decided to do something? If it was at our average where we expected to be, where our goal was, like $6,000 extra to the principal, then okay, then we can go do something fun. But if it was below that, we held off and made sure we put at least $6,000 toward the principal that month. Yeah.

That's awesome. Wow. So someone who feels like y'all back in 2012, they're making $28,000, they're feeling overwhelmed with their finances, they're listening right now thinking, wow, I can't even imagine paying off a house. What would you tell them? I would say the plan works whether you are making $28,000 or $208,000.

We have done it at both ends of the spectrum. It takes a lot of grit to just keep moving through those obstacles. I lost both of my parents within eight months of each other. He got into a car wreck. All of these things kept happening, and it kept feeling like, what else is going to come at us? And it was working together. And, you know, either way, we can either get out of debt

and all of these horrible things are still going to happen, or we can be more financially secure. And when they come at us, you know, I can have that hope of seeing a brighter day. Yeah. Wow. It's powerful. That's well done. Because, you know know the truth is

what you've done for the last six years while doing all the other things you did during those six years is a complete pain in the butt it's hard you know we're here to celebrate today but grit is is an understatement i mean you got to have grit and you got to have you got to be a little mad and you got to be pushy and you know and and then you look up and you're 37 and 40 years old with a paid for house yeah but but you know it you know we all we do these debt-free screams every hour just about on the show here one an hour and i always want to i don't often enough talk about how hard it is it is hard it's an adventure to go through what you've been through

and anytime you go on an adventure and you do it together you come out more unified uh because you fought a battle together and uh and now you're now you're uh you know you're you're two members of the same army at this point uh the same platoon at this point and it changes everything because it's hard i mean it's hard uh the only problem is it's worth it yes 100 good for you guys i'm so proud of y'all thank you you're amazing young couple beautifully done and i'm you know revolutionized your business your life uh got a master's what's your master's in my master's is in uh education from lipscomb yeah good for you y'all are such shining examples i love that like it wasn't just a straight line you guys can stand there and say there were ups there were major downs but you did it and now you're standing here getting ready to

do your debt-free scream how does it feel not a payment in the world uh it's great it was weird the first month not to have a mortgage payment to actually pay ourselves instead of paying the bank. Yeah. Yeah. It was just kind of like I just sat down a 300-pound weight. Yeah. And mentally, it's such a relief because, you know, right now, business is booming. Construction is booming in Nashville.

Yeah, yeah. But knowing that the house has paid off, knowing that things slow down, that it doesn't take as much to live off of. So even things do slow down, we're still okay. And you don't have to take bad customers just to have a customer. Exactly. Yeah. The weird thing is you'll end up making more money. Yeah.

That's the weird thing. And that's happened. Because there's a relaxation in the process now. Well done, guys. Well done. All right. Bring the kiddos up. What are their names and ages?

We have Jackson, who's 12. Sam is 9. And Christopher is 6. All right, bring the kiddos up. What are their names and ages? We have Jackson, who's 12. Sam is 9. And Christopher is 6. All right, ready to go. We got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you. As we predicted, you'll be there in just a few years. That's the direction you're going. How ordinary people built extraordinary wealth.

How you can, too. We got a copy of Total Money Makeover and a one-year subscription to Financial Peace University. All right, $227,000 paid off in six years. House and everything! They're weird! Jared and Kristen, count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream! All right, one, two, three.

We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Way to go, you guys. Man, that is awesome. This is the Ramsey Show. Christina Harris-Ramsay, personality number one,-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Dana is with us in New York City. Hi, Dana. How are you? Hi, Dave and Christina. Thank you for taking my phone call, and thank you for changing my family tree. Sure. What's up? I have two questions for you today, if that's okay. Sure. What's up? Step 6, with no children yet. We have $286,000 left to pay on our home, and our home is valued at $459,000.

My husband would like to invest the money in the market in a large-cap fund, but I would like to pay off the mortgage with that money. What would be your recommendation? Well, apparently you're on Baby Step 6, but he's not. Right? Yes. So, because, I mean, it's a trick question. You already knew the answer.

He insisted I call, so I'm calling to confirm. So the concern is not that the money came from an inheritance. The concern is that you guys are not in agreement on what to do with money, which means you're not aligned on whether you're working our system or anybody's system. Okay. Because if you're working our system, the answer is already, it's a foregone conclusion, you're going to pay the house off. Yes. There's never been a time in the Baby step history of doing

this for 30 years that i told somebody to oh no let's put money in mutual funds instead of paying off the house never one time have i ever said that anywhere anytime in the history of my life correct yes so you knew what i was going to say so you i mean you tricked your husband. If I became the arbitrator of this, then you tricked your husband because you knew what the answer was. Well, he wanted to put it into the market because he was running a 30-year projection on it, and he thought that it might be a better long-term investment than paying off the mortgage, but we're following the baby steps.

Okay. Well, then do we need to discuss for a minute why the baby steps work better than his plan? I think it would be great for him to hear. Okay. All right. Because I'm a nerd like him, so it took me a while to get there. Number one, I started with the idea that I don't borrow money because the Bible says the borrower is slave to the lender. I started from a faith perspective. Later on, I'm a math nerd, and I had to dig into the math. I had to figure it out, not because I wanted to play God,

but because I really knew that God was smarter than me, and I was just trying to figure out what he was saying. So here's the thing. When your husband says, I'm going to put money in a large cap fund, he's looking at a 10% to 12 percent rate of return on a good large cap okay and he's thinking okay instead of paying off my three or four percent mortgage i can make 10 12 so i'm making a spread here on that money and and he and then he ran a spreadsheet out based on that which is what i would have done because i'm a classic nerd like he is you know if that worked then why would we ever pay off the house? Well, what you left out of that formula, and what I left out of that formula in my early days,

what he's leaving out of the formula now too, is risk. And 100% of the foreclosures occur on a home with a mortgage. When you're walking around without a mortgage your risk has gone down and to mathematically not include risk in your math formula means your math formula is incomplete and no one does that in this discussion until i kind of came up with it so uh you know if if you're doing a sophisticated analysis on a company and you're buying stock in that company one of the things you would do is is you would become concerned if the company had too much debt because that stock then is riskier debt equals risk and you

would discount the price of the stock if you're doing a sophisticated analysis based on the the level of bonds they're carrying and other debt instruments that they're carrying. So the more in debt the company is, the more likely it is to fail. Everyone would say yes. We all agree to that. And so debt equals risk, and debt equals risk here. Now, is it manageable risk?

Yeah, but so is a small backache. It's manageable, but your back still hurts. And so, you know, that's what we're dealing with here. So the end of the story is that when you don't have any debt, you end up making better decisions relationally, medically. Your physical health is better. You're more likely to have a higher quality and lasting marriage. Your children are more functional because there's not any weight on your shoulders, tense between your shoulder blades when you get home at night. Everything changes, and when you quantify all that math up,

it'll kick that little mutual funds butt because you lowered the risk and you set down the 300-pound weight that you got used to carrying, and all of society carries it, and so they think you 300-pound weight that you got used to carrying, and all of society carries it, and so they think you're strange for even having this discussion. Yeah, it's quote-unquote normal. But Dana, we're really sorry for your loss, too. It's not a fun way to get your house paid off through an inheritance, because obviously that means you must have lost someone, but I do hope that in paying off a house, it'll be a good way to honor them being able to be debt free and free of any payments that'll be a really wonderful way to bring honor to that

money yeah and i i do want you guys to go back and address the idea that somehow dana you got on the baby steps and he didn't because that's going to be important going forward that you are aligned on money and what we're going to do with it. So I'll give you an example, Dana. Now that we got our house paid off many, many, many, many years ago, Sharon and I did. And so, you know, how do we have to become aligned about money? Well, one of the things we did was we laid out a percentage calculation to every dollar of money that we now get, because I'll get a big check from a publisher or a big check from this or a big check from that and if i don't already have that aligned with my

wife where that's going then i have to redo that every time and that burns a lot of calories in the relationship yeah and so we have a simple system a certain percentage of every check we get now goes we were christians evangelical Christians, so we tithe 10%. I'll go ahead and tell you what part of it is. We set aside 40% because the government takes that because we make a lot of money, we're evil, we're rich, we must be punished. And so 40% goes to them, 10% to the church. Now I've got 50% left over. That 50%, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it's broken between three categories.

Increased lifestyle, which is a very small percentage of that increased investing and increased generosity beyond the tithe and so every time i get a check-in i can apply that formula to it because sharon and i are aligned on our system and i don't even have to think about it she didn't have to think about it and so we got some money in the fun account over here and i say hey let's get you a different car that'll be fun and she goes she doesn't have to go oh where'd that come from are we investing enough or are we generous enough it's all set it's all done we don't have to have the discussion again because we are in alignment and dana that's what i want for you more than i want your house paid off even because that going forward you guys being in agreement on principle of what you're going to do how you're going to do things is that and so you know other principles we use we do not give to or invest in anything unless we're both in agreement and have peace about it that's good when in doubt don't i've got a funny feeling about

him then don't donate to his ministry or don't invest in his thing or her thing you know because every time she has a feeling cost me a lot of money if i go against it because her feelings are always right drive me nuts but um you know that's the thing so that that's what i want for you dana i want that kind of alignment to where we don't have to and you know you know if we get money in from wherever it comes inheritance bonus check sale of something what are we gonna do with it this is what we're gonna do yeah and i love that y'all have a system too that makes it so simple it takes a lot of the stress off of everyday decisions. You don't have to revisit it every time.

Right. It's automatic. And then it releases you. Because Sharon's a freaking tightwad. I mean, it's hard for her to enjoy money. Not hard for me. I'm a spender like Rachel. But, you know, once she knows it went in that lifestyle bucket, then she'll go buy, you know, another stupid thing for the house or something that she wants and not feel guilty about it. That's great.

Because it comes out of the stupid house bucket. You know, that kind of thing, right? Yeah. But you've got to have buckets for this stuff that you're in alignment. And then I'm not mad that she went and bought something from a stupid house because we're in alignment on it. On the same page. It's like being in alignment on the budget. It's the same thing.

So Dana, that's what you guys got to do. You need to get your philosophies a little bit more lined up. And we don't borrow money and we don't invest money while we got debt on the house. This is The Ramsey Show. Have you been inspired to make a change with your money want to know where to start take our three-minute money quiz to get a plan you can follow go to ramsay solutions.com and search for get started to get a plan for your money