The Ramsey Show - App - How to Attack the Scholarship Search (Hour 2)

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Shoshana is with us in Michigan. Hey, Shoshana, how are you? Hi, Dave.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, my husband and I are currently going through a FBU class. We are going to be starting Step 7. Good. Or Lesson 7. step seven or less than seven. Um, but taking the class has really motivated, motivated me to, I guess, find an occupation that pays a little more. Um, so we can get through our debt a lot

faster and where I'm currently at right now, um, they offer a program for a free college and it's for associates degree. I've decided to, you know, get into that, take that next step. And it's going to be business management, focusing on finance of all things. And, but I guess my question is, I know I'll complete this, it's free. So books and everything, it's going to be online.

I don't have to pay for any of that, but I will probably want to continue on to a bachelor's. And just for that next two years, how would I be able to do that for free? And if there are scholarships for adults for college. There are, but there are fewer than there are for kiddos. Non-traditional students, they call us. Yeah. Because we're not 22.

No, not anymore. Yeah. So you're in what part of Michigan? Southeast. Okay. And so what is the four-year that's near you? Well, the online class is out of Ohio. that transfers to a four-year in your area yes i have i have um two colleges ray and adrian um but there's like a there's a community college ray and adrian as well and they all they do now offer four-year degrees so i could train and it's

down the road for me really for that college so i could transfer to that to continue it on they do offer a four-year the jackson does yes that community is that likely where you would finish yes because it would be a community college should be cheaper um i don't really care about the name of you know the fancy colleges so um i would like to and then they really do focus on business management as well oh they have you know so then you want to make sure your online school will transfer and get full credit at the new at jackson yes you want to verify that sure yeah before you put in all this effort even though it doesn't cost you anything you don't want to verify that. Yes, and I would make sure. Yeah, before you put in all this effort, even though it doesn't cost you anything, you don't want to have all the effort and then go,

well, we don't really take their classes as credit. You've got to start over. Or you have to move to some other city in order to finish your four-year. No, we don't want to do all that. So we want to make sure that the handoff, the baton handoff, is available and is solid. So, yeah, I think the other other thing by the time you finish this associates will you be out of debt in your house other than your home yes that's my husband said pretty much the rate we're going right now i will probably be out of our non-mortgage debt before i even

complete my associates yeah that's what i mean. And then you could cash flow the last two years if you had to. Yes, everything would just get the house gone. Yeah. And then invest it. And then I have two daughters. One's a sophomore, one's a freshman, so it would be stepping right into the college savings. So push that in there. Yeah, you're going to have to cash flow that as well probably because you haven't started that yet, right?

No, unfortunately not. Okay. So we've got a lot of scholarships to find for you and the kids. We've got a lot of work to do and some planning and just projecting out. I would definitely do the associates even if you had a little gap between when you finished the associates and when you continued and got knocked out the other two years. You might have to take a breath because you might be paying for that sophomore's freshman year. Yeah. You know,

if you're having to pay for it out of pocket, if you can't find some scholarships for non-traditional, but you can also spend some T-I-M-E on that. It's good. It's time well spent. And hit Anthony O'Neill's website. We got 10,000 scholarships on that scholarships tool, and they're not all for traditional. So there's some for everybody there's just not 10 000 for you there's 10 000 for oh yeah

you know the others but if you could find even a list that had three or four hundred on it and you apply for all of them and got three or four of them it'd be a big help right oh yes definitely yes yeah so that that's kind of law of large numbers is how you do when you're attacking the scholarships thing you get turned down for most of, it's a law of large numbers is how you do when you're attacking the scholarships thing. You get turned down for most of them, you get a few of them, but it's 10 grand, you know. Well, I plan on getting Anthony's book when we get it in the budget. Yeah, well, I'm going to send you, I'll send you one. Oh, well, thank you so much. Sure, we can do that.

I appreciate that. So you guys, we appreciate you being in Financial Peace University, and I appreciate that you're really doing all this planning. Now. Oh, I love it. I love it. Last thing I want to ask you, because I think I heard this in the way you're structuring your sentences, but I just want to say it out loud. You're getting this four-year degree in business.

Why? Well, business is, I'm just saying pick business management, because I figure it would be a lot more options, especially a general business management for healthcare being that that's going to be in a need. So that was my option. And right now I'm only 14 an hour wage. So I wanted to, you know, further my, and I know I can do so much more for myself and

with my education. So that's kind of why I chose to go back. I think if I were you, would also uh narrow that down and say i want to do x y or z right now you're saying i want to do the whole alphabet and the uh and the business degree will allow me to do any any letter i want to do and it's a little too broad i want you to have something a little bit more refined that you're aiming at with this you're generally saying if i get an education, I'll make more. If I get a degree in business, it's applicable a lot of places,

and that's more of a shotgun. I want to narrow this in a little bit because you could end up getting this degree and getting nothing out of it as a result if you don't have a defined intentional goal that you're going after or a series of defined intentional goals. It doesn't have to be one thing, but i'd like to be doing x or y or z that pays eighty thousand dollars a year when i finish this when i finish this uh study track and i have thought that through have looked at that job category and it's not just generally i'd like to make more money and this generally is an applicable thing it's not a bad place to start the discussion.

Not a good reason to spend four years of your life going after it, though, because you may find out that nothing happens as a result of it if you don't have good, clear goals and a good, clear target that is an actual possible job or career field that pays considerably more than you make now. So you're starting the discussion right. You're not going to end it well if you don't take it all the way through. Good question.

Hold on. Madison will pick up. We'll get you a copy of Anthony O'Neill's book. Very well done. That's fun that you took a class at your church from Financial Peace University, and it makes you reevaluate your education goals and your career goals. Ding, ding. Almost like we're doing our job.

I love it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Let me tell you a story about two families that are very much alike in a lot of ways. Both families have two working parents and a couple of young kids. Each has debt and a struggle to make ends meet. But they're starting to make headway with their budgets and smarter decisions with money. They have dreams and plans, and the only real difference is that one family has the right amount of term life insurance and the other doesn't. Big difference. If one of the parents die, and that does happen, their well-being would be destroyed. Paying for the mortgage, utilities, food, and other bills would be impossible, let alone saving for education

or retirement. That's why every day I talk relentlessly about getting term life insurance. Just go to ZanderInsurance.com or call 800-356-4282 and see how inexpensive it really is. Be the family that takes those deliberate steps to be different and responsible. It really does make you the hero of your story, and it puts you on course for better things ahead. Thank you for joining us. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com, the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos every month, you save even more. Here's the magic word, the promo code RAMSEY.

Saves your money. It should. Betty is in Michigan with our question. She says, our mortgage is our only debt we have. On paper, in quotes, we currently have 19 years left to pay off the mortgage. But this does not reflect the extra we have paid. We recently checked into refinancing to get lower payments so we could throw more money at the principal.

That's not necessary. However, it did not make much of a difference to do that, so we chose not to. Have you ever heard of recasting a mortgage with the bank? In my initial investigation, it looks convoluted, confusing, and does not appear to have much of a positive effect on the investor. Listen, mortgages are calculated as simple interest. And so if you had, here's a simple way of looking at it. Your monthly interest rate is when it's compounded.

And so if you have a 6% mortgage, that's 0.5 or half a percent a month, 6% a year, APR, annual percentage rate. And so whatever your outstanding balance that month is, if you have a 6% mortgage, is charged a half a percent on that. Regardless of when you paid extra, whether it was a 30, whether it was a 15, whether the next month you pay extra, whether the last month you paid extra if you have a traditional conforming va fha fannie mae conventional mortgage that's how it's calculated now if you got a rip-off mortgage of some kind with a prepayment penalty high interest rate some kind of subprime crap then that's a whole different ball game but a typical regular mortgage recasting says i'm going to take my 10-year or my 19-year remaining balance, and we're going to have them recast it, reset the mortgage like it's a 20-year.

All that does is lower your payments because you're going to be in debt longer, but the interest charged will be exactly the same, except for that last year because you stayed in debt longer. It's that simple. The more you pay on principal the next month, the more goes to principal. Because every time you pay it down, if you pay it down $10,000, if you pay it down $1,000 of principal, there's that much less that's charged a half

a percent the next month. So if you had a $100,000 mortgage and you paid an extra $1,000 or you paid $1,000 in principal the next month, the half a percent is charged on $99,000. Regardless of how you did that principal, as long as it was applied to principal, you just don't want to prepay interest. I paid my payments four months in advance don't do that pre-pay principal and as long as you're doing that recasting is not necessary on paper is not necessary and you know if you really want to kind of get real nerdy and nitsy about it if you look at your principal balance on your amortization schedule you know

the little schedule that prints off we used to print them off 100 years ago they were on green computer green bar computer paper right back in the day and they would have a column that is your principal and interest payment then the next column is how much of your of it is interest the next column is how much of it is principal. And the next column is the reducing principal balance of the mortgage every month. And so if it says $100,000 on your principal this month and you paid $1,000, which was some extra principal, then you would just slide your finger down until you find $99,000. And that might be three months from now, four months from now, that it would have been had you paid your regular payment.

And so if you really want to be nerdy about it, that's a way you can do it. Or you can sit and recalculate it. You can set up a little spreadsheet to do it. It's really not that much because it's simple interest is the interest is calculated that month if it's compounded monthly on the outstanding balance, on the monthly rate of interest. And so that's all it is. It's a math formula, and it's not, you know, I've paid all the interest.

No, you didn't pay all the interest. Well, the first five years, this mortgage was all interest. That's because your payment consisted mainly of interest, but you weren't prepaying interest. The interest charged in those first five years was the exact amount due that month. And the rest of it in your payment was the exact amount to the principal in order to fully amortize or fully pay it off during the payment term of 30 years or 15 years or whatever it is. So you do not have to recast a mortgage to pay it off early. You have not wasted it if you refinance it because you paid all the interest on the front end.

You did not pay all the interest on the front end. You paid the interest that was due. That was all you paid ever unless you have a ripoff type mortgage. Jocelyn is with us in New York. Hi, Jocelyn. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? So my husband and I's financial life is a complete wreck. We have about $95,000 in debt. I have about $25,000 in student loans. He has $12,000 in student loans. There's credit card debt in there, a $15,000 car loan. We just started on Baby Step 1.

We don't have much. We just started, but I'm just a little, we've never addressed our bad decisions as far as, like, our finances are concerned. And I'm just scared that the decisions that we made are just going to ruin our life. It's just really scaring me. How long have you been married? We've been married for five years. How old are you? 29.

Okay. You are in an amazingly good place right now. Because you have had a very thorough oh crap moment. Yeah. You woke up and looked at this and went, oh my gosh. Right? I hear it in your voice and your verb usage. It's amazing.

That is so good because that kind of intensity will get your butt cleaned up. Because for you, this is no longer an intellectual exercise this is now emotional yeah love it love it you are in a really good spot because right now you're like i don't really care what you think we're doing this stuff i don't mama i don't care if you like it your facebook friend doesn't like it you don't care you're about to get after it aren't you yeah yeah you got word people don't people's opinion doesn't matter it you don't care you're about to get after it aren't you yeah yeah you got word people don't people's opinion doesn't matter this is not an intellectual exercise this is i feel stuck i'm overwhelmed i never want to be here again oh crap i'm getting out that is

an awesome place to be those are the people people like you are the ones that have the most success turning their lives around oh my gosh you're gonna You're going to be great. You're going to be great. What's your household income? So I'm a medical biller. I make about $35,000 a year. What's your husband make? My husband is a city cop, so right now he makes about $50,000. But when he hits year five, he'll be making about $105,000.

When is that? He's on year three right now, so we have two and a half more years. Okay. So for the next two and a half more years okay so for the next two and a half years you guys make eighty five thousand dollars a year what do you own your house so we don't have a house what do you own your credit cards um so as far as the house is concerned dave we literally just signed a lease like two months ago and our rent is two thousand one hundred and fifty dollars a month good lord yeah okay um yeah it was really stupid i really regret it and one

thing that i did want to ask you was i was thinking ask ask your landlord what circumstances if you got an if he could find a new tenant would he out? Yes. So we were going to talk to her because we're very close with her. She's a very great person. And I was thinking of asking my parents because it's just my husband and I. They have a nice big house that would fit us for at least a year, and I was thinking of asking them to move in with them so we can pay off all of our debt within two years. I think you can pay it off fast. How much credit card debt have you got again?

So we have about $25,000 on an American Express, but we refinanced the American Express and got like a personal loan because the interest rate was like 25%. Yeah, okay. If you want to move home, you can. That's always my worst case scenario. But I would get a one-bedroom dumpy apartment at a minimum and get out of this lease if you can without stiffing your friend. I don't want you to stiff the lease. But I want you to get your costs down.

And let's get you on a written budget. I'm going to send you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover, which has got all the steps in it of exactly what to do when. You're awesome. You call me back as you're walking through this, and I'll walk with you. You can do this. Jump on the Facebook if you like that thing, and the Ramsey Baby Steps community, 250,000 people in there,

and they'll walk with you and show you. Our team is in there. People are, it's a good community to be in. Thanks for joining us, America. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Stephen is with us in Maryland. Hey, Stephen, how are you?

I'm trying to remember I'm better than I deserve, Dave. How about yourself? I understand. How can I help? So about a year ago, in August of 2018, I signed a lease with individuals I believed were longtime friends. One of them fell behind on her rent payments. She is the only other individual besides myself on the lease. We have two authorized residents. One of them moved out at the same time.

The roommate on the lease was unable to make her rent payments. And then after talking to her and trying to help her find a job, she fell five months behind and I kicked her out, but she never removed her name from the lease. And I was wondering what my options might be, because I know it's incorrect to think that I'm kind of a landlord in this situation, but the way that I see it, she still owes me for the rents from January when she moved out to today because she never removed her name from the lease.

Well, I guess you'd have to ask a lawyer if you can collect on that. I doubt you can legally. I don't know for sure. As a practical matter, the girl's broke, dude. You can't get money out of a rock. You can sue her into oblivion, but it doesn't make her have money. Correct. And so, I mean, if you just want to bankrupt her or something as vengeance, I guess you could.

But, I mean, you're not going to get money as a result of suing her. Hmm. Because she didn't have any money. Correct. In that situation, then, if I may ask a follow-up, do you think it would be prudent to take a hardship from my 401k to get my landlord paid because I'm facing eviction on the first of the month? Do you have anything else you can do to get money? Well, I've picked up a second job.

I work in guest services, so my regular 9-to-5 alters the hours every week, so it's very difficult. Do you have the ability to borrow the money? I do not, no. Okay. Is your credit bad? It is because I was on Baby Step 2, got reverted back to Baby Step 0 because I pulled out my savings in order to try and help the individual who was...

When is this lease up? August of 2020. Have you discussed with the landlord the ability to get out of it? Yes, I have. My landlord is willing to let me out of the lease before pursuing legal action, so long as I'm able to find the tenants to essentially make a new lease with the landlord, and then the landlord will let me out of the lease currently. Have you been working on that?

Yes, sir, I have. No tenants? No tenants. Nobody that would pass the background check that my landlord puts through. But he's not looking for a tenant. You are. That is correct, sir, yes. Okay.

Can you borrow on the 401k? I wouldn't do that. The only time I tell people to take money out of retirement is to avoid bankruptcy or foreclosure, and this is the equivalent, being evicted. So, yeah, you're going to have to take that money out of the 401K if you can't borrow it. If you can borrow it on a credit card or something, I'd do that before I'd cash out a 401K. You're already in debt by five months.

I'm not telling you to go into debt. I'm telling you to get a different kind of debt to pay this debt off. See what I'm saying? Yes, sir. So Dave Ramsey's not telling you to go borrow money. I'm telling you to go move this landlord debt onto a credit card if you can, if you could go apply the local credit union, work something out, anything you can do. But, yeah, you've got to cash out the 401K because you're going to be in the street.

And suing her, going after her is going to be, honestly, if you've got money, it would be two years from now probably, and you're probably not going to see any money because she didn't have money. She wasn't contrary. She was broke. Right? Yes, sir. Okay. How old are you?

I'm 28, sir. Okay. So the bad news is you've gone through all this. The good news is you have the rest of your life to never have another roommate that you count on to make payments. Yes, that's the way I'm looking at it. You've completely learned this lesson thoroughly, I hope. Oh, and then some, sir.

Yeah, okay. And then I guess you've got to get some other roommates or get a new tenant, or both between now and August, or you're going to be right back in the soup, aren't you? Yes, sir. My general plan has been to try to not break the lease, but get out of the lease, work out a payment plan with my landlord. When I was on Baby Step 2, I canceled the only two credit cards that I had and been working on payments for those.

So I'm not sure. I know I won't be in the house come the 15th of november oh really yes sir but you're going to be on the hook for the lease i believe so sir yes okay so what do you you're going to go into debt on that again or what i don't understand oh no sir i'm trying to uh work out a payment plan with my landlord get out and then work with her and pay the um the fees of advertising for the um uh what's it called um for the advertising for people to come view the house and i've also worked out a payment with my landlord to um be essentially kind of a handyman during the interim as the house is being unoccupied.

But you're still on the hook for the rent? Yes, sir. I do believe so. Up to the 15th of November. After the 15th of November, I will no longer be on the hook for the rent. Oh, the landlord's going to let you go? Yes, sir. Oh, great!

Okay, good. He's an absolute saint. Yeah. Well, he's also sick of you people. Okay, very cool. Good, good, man. Well, that's great. You're free. You're not evicted.

You've paid your bill, and you're going to have to have a little money to get into the next place, and you're working six jobs, and you're going to turn this around, and this time you're going to just move into something super, super cheap that you can cover by yourself, right? Hopefully. The D.C. suburbs is a bit expensive. That makes it difficult. Well, hopefully you've learned your lesson, and you don't go back into this.

So if you want to figure out a way to rationalize getting right back into this, then I'm questioning your sanity. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. We're at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Ron is with us. Ron's in Florida.

Hey, Ron, how are you? Hey, Dave, good. How are you? Better than I deserve, man. What's up? So I just wanted to pick your brain. We are a one-income family. We went from debt-free, including our house and everything, to moving to an area with a higher cost of living,

and so we had to take a mortgage. It's not a huge mortgage. We took about $150,000, 15-year, and it's right on 25% of our income. So we have about three or four months' worth of emergency fund. We don't have a very strict budget just because we don't have a lot of debt, but we're just trying to figure out, you know, where to go from here. You know, our cars are paid off and I have a very patient life with two kids. We have one on the way also.

So what's your question? What is it you want to do? Just kind of some advice, just some, some guidance on, you know, should we continue to build? We have about three months' worth of emergency funds. You've got plenty of emergency funds. You're out of debt, everything but your house. Your house is at 25% of your take-home pay. If you're working our baby steps, you're on a budget.

Now, a strict budget doesn't mean necessarily a tight budget. A strict budget means we are going to lay out on paper, me and my wife, every month what we're going to do with money, and that's what we do. Now, you can have some wiggle room in that because you're not in the get out of debt phase of baby step two, and so you can have a little bit of a, it doesn't have to necessarily be a super tight budget, but it's a strict budget. And that's the only way people win with money is to set detailed goals and stick to them. And so you're going to have to do that. And then you'd start putting 15% of your income away for retirement as baby step four.

Five is start saving for your kid's college. And six is anything extra you can find. You start throwing it on the house and get this house paid off. Good news is you don't have a very big house mortgage. And let's get in attack mode and be done with that as soon as we can. You sound kind of lackadaisical. You sound kind of kicked back. I kind of want to ship you a case of Red Bull.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. one of the things i love these days is i get to meet all of these people who have gotten control of their money and now they're enjoying outrageous generosity. Generous people make you smile, don't they? Generous people make me smile. They make my eyes leak. I love these stories of generosity, where people just do random things and just completely blow somebody's world up in a great way.

Christmas is around the corner, I know. I know it's too early to start talking about Christmas, but it's my favorite season because it's all about generosity. God gave his only son. It's all about generosity. And I love this. So if you've ever received a gift that changed your life, or maybe you've witnessed a change, a transformation due to generosity,

we want the story. We call it the generosity effect. You see, I think when you give somebody money and it impacts them, what happens later when they get on their feet is they give more than you gave them. And so there's kind of a butterfly effect of this. You know, the old thing of the butterfly flaps its wings, and somewhere around the world a hurricane starts four years later, 10 years later, 40 years later.

Of course, that's not true, but, you know, that concept. But the concept's true in generosity. Sometimes you give somebody $20 at just the right time they become a multi-million millionaire and they give away millions it happens all the time there's a there's this exponential impact with it so email me your generosity stories and we're going to use them all through the Christmas season. Dave on air at DaveRamsey.com. Put my generosity story in the subject line. No dashes, no spaces.

Capitalization doesn't matter in email. Dave on air at DaveRamsey.com. Put my generosity story in the subject line at time you were generous and you saw the impact or someone was generous to you and you were changed by the kindness the compassion the physical gift the thing that it did that that it changed everything because you were in a you were in a pinch and somebody got you out love it c Cody is with us. Cody is in Illinois. Hi, Cody. How are you?

Good, Mr. Ramsey. How are you today? Better than I deserve. What's up? I appreciate your taking my phone call. All right. So I did the debt spill ball probably about five years ago. I've been debt-free ever since.

I paid off roughly about $55,000 five years ago. Good for you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks to you, good things happen. So fast forward five years now, I moved from Iowa to the great tax state of Illinois. And I'm a self-employed, I'm 35 years old. I'm single. I have no dependents. I've been renting since I've moved here. I found a house that I'm kind of interested in. I'm just a little hesitant to bite the bullet. And just life's been great the last five years. And I'm just looking for a little, maybe a little guidance on what you think I should do here. You going to be there a while? See, that's the question.

You know, the logical answer is I live across from St. Louis in the Edwardsville, Illinois area. The logical answer is I move across to Missouri and everything's good. The thing is, I'm in a sales job. I travel. I drive roughly about 50,000 to 55,000 miles a year. I'm not looking to add any more to that um so um yes i my job is great i love what i do i work with non-profit organizations i'm in fundraising um and uh um i would love to be here long term. If you're going to be in the area more than two years, buying a house is probably going to make sense.

Okay. And in your case, you're going a lot. You may want to look at a nice condo, because that way you don't have any exterior maintenance. And there's, you know, you've got a management company all around the exterior to make sure everything's taken care of. You're not a fool cutting grass and stuff as much as you travel. Right, right. exterior to make sure everything's taken care of you're not in full cutting grass and stuff as much as you travel right so right right but but you know make sure it's a solid good condominium project if you're going to do that something like that makes a lot of sense but

you need something with minimal upkeep because you're not going to be in the business of doing upkeep you travel too much and you don't want something that weighs you down you want something that's a blessing um and you're 35 and single you don't want something that weighs you down. You want something that's a blessing. And you're 35 and single. You don't want to move into a retirement community. What fun would that be? Not at all. You know? So there's no mandatory thing that slaps our hand on the table and says you have to buy this year or you have to buy next year.

If you're going to be in the area a while, two, three, four, five years, it's probably going to make sense for you to own a piece of real estate. Over the scope of your life, between now and 65, you're going to want to be a homeowner because they go up in value, tax-free for the first half a million dollars if you sell it, and married filing jointly. And, you know, it's a big part of the millionaire data point to have a paid for home all of these things long term you want to stabilize the biggest item in your budget which is housing

and rent doesn't stabilize it rent goes up every year so buying a home is a really really wise financial thing as a long-term philosophy it's not wise if it interrupts and screws up your life it's not wise if you're not going to be there long enough to recoup even the closing costs when you sell out the back meaning you live there 18 months you put it on the market you lose money after expenses you wouldn't want to do that and so there's nothing mandatory like you're a doofus if you don't go by right now but again over the next 20 years, you're going to want to be in the game. So you decide when that is. Sue is with us in Florida.

Hi, Sue. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thank you. My question is, my dad passed away this past May from Alzheimer's. And thank you. He had long-term health care insurance and after witnessing how wonderful it is, it has myself thinking about getting it. I'm 58 and I was

diagnosed four years ago with hypothyroidism and I'm just wondering, I know you recommend 60, but with the recent change in my health four years ago, I'm wondering if I should look at this sooner than later. I would run some costs on it. I'm guessing, I don't know what this diagnosis is going to do to your premiums because long-term care insurance does have a health, a medical element to it. And if you've got something where you're heading straight into a nursing home, you don't, but let's say you had early onset dementia as a diagnosis. Well, you can't get long-term care insurance.

That's like buying homeowner's insurance after the house burned. You can't do it. And so I don't know what this particular diagnosis will do to it but get in touch with uh go to our website and hit our elps for long-term care and price it out if you want to jump in a couple of years early that's fine the only thing i push back against is the industry likes to sell long-term care insurance to anybody and in the general population the chances of you spending time in a nursing home prior to age 60 is way less than one percent and from the time you turn 60 it goes up exponentially every year and so that's the

actual usage of the product and so you know in other words if you buy insurance for something that is very very very unlikely to occur ever in the history of your life um you know that's not a good plan and so but in your case you know yeah i would investigate it because you not because of your dad's situation but because of your situation right okay your dad's situation just highlighted it you know and just made you aware of the need but um it's a big deal i mean it's um it is a great product i'm a big believer in long-term care insurance once you are 60 for 99 of the people out there. Thanks for the call. Now, if you got $5 million in the bank, you probably can self-insure through it, okay?

Because the typical nursing home, depending on where you live, it changes, but nationwide, it's about $50,000 a year. And the average nursing home stay is way less than three years. It's 2.4 years. At $50,000 a year, that's $150,000 for three years. Okay? And so if you've got $2 million, you can self-insure through that. But if you don't,

then you need to have long-term care insurance once you're phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. This episode is over, but if you heard about a product or service and didn't have a chance to write it down, don't worry. We list everything that is mentioned during this episode in the podcast show notes section. Thanks for listening.