The Ramsey Show - App - How to Manage Big Homeowners Insurance Claims (Hour 1)

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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. This is your show. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Lisa is with us to start off this hour, Montgomery, Alabama. Hi, Lisa. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, okay. So my husband has been on board with you for years, and I've just recently got on board in January. We've paid off some credit card debt, but the last thing we have is my car note,

and I'm doing the student loan forgiveness. Now, I keep going to the bank and trying to talk to them about this per diem that they're doing on my car note, but they will not change it. So it's steadily pushing forward my due date instead of putting all the money toward the principal. And should I save the money and just pay it off, or should I continue to just continue to pay the lump sums that I'm trying to pay? You should save it and pay it off if you can't convince them that this is a simple interest loan. That's crazy.

It is so crazy and frustrating. That they will not accept principal reduction payments. That's nuts. So continue just to pay ourselves and then pay it off. Yeah, and just write a check. But if you can't get them to, you know, but I'm going to go in and talk to a manager. I mean, this is very few car loans. Is it a high interest loan?

It's 3%. 3%? 3%. Okay. With your local bank? Yes. Huh. Okay.

Because most, I mean, you can get into a loan that has a prepayment penalty, and it's calculated on what's called Rule of 78s, and they will not accept they'll just do prepaid on i mean they'll just mess with you when you try to prepay principal but most car loans like you're describing are what are called simple interest which means that the interest should be calculated next month on the outstanding principle and that's what i thought i just assumed when we originally got it that that's what it was because that's how we paid off our first cost.

Yeah, it should be that way. I think your bank's stupid. So I think I'm probably going to talk to the branch manager and go, what is your all's problem? I mean, really? You have a 3% loan that has a prepayment penalty on it? Why can you not apply extra principal payments to principal and reduce the interest charge. I mean, that's just dumb. Because we only owe $8,000 on it.

Doesn't matter. Okay. I mean, I'm really going to bust on a bank just for the fun of it, just because I think they're messing with you. I think you've got an idiot somewhere in the pile there that doesn't know how to calculate. Yeah, that's the first time we did a loan with them, so we won't do that again. Yeah. The student loan forgiveness, I know that you kind of frown on that,

so I don't know whether we should be trying to pay it off or continue with that. It's just my second year in it. Yeah, which means you have eight years if you're doing the 10-year plan. Is that what you're doing? Yes. Why do you want to stay in debt for eight years? I don't know. I don't either.

I don't. My husband paid his off yeah how much student loan debt have you got 65 000 and how much car debt have you got eight you said you said eight and what's your household income 115 oh good lord pay that student loan off girl don't be sitting in that no no no no, no, no, no, no. Get out of that debt. Why wait 10 years? No. You can be done in two years. And you have your life. You make a good money.

Yeah. Okay. Knock it out. That's why I don't like it. The reason I don't like it is it keeps you in bondage. I want you free. Because if you don't have any payments in the world, you're set up to change your life. That's what we want you to do for you.

It doesn't affect me, but that's what I would do. Brandon's with us in Dallas, Texas. Hey, Brandon, how are you? Hi, how are you? Thanks so much for taking my call, Dave. Sure, what's up? So I have a quick question. My wife and I are currently building a home. I have been following you for about six months now, and my wife has upside down on our leases. So what I was wondering is if we should wait until the house is completely built, until we make a change, or just pay off the difference,

sell the car, and buy us some junkers right now. How are you paying for building the house? So it's through a developer. Okay. So what does paying off the car, how does it affect the house? Well, so we have the down payment now for the home, and we have a little bit more for savings, but we don't want to deplete our savings just in case the home isn't finished until November. We make decent money, but we're just kind of young, and we're just not sure what to do. Okay.

What do you mean if it's not finished until November? What would that be? The home won't be finished until November, so we don't close until then. We don't have to give our down payment until then. Right. And we're not going to use the down payment to get out of the car debt, right? Correct. We have about $7 thousand dollars on top of

our down payment as of now and uh it's the end of may now so we still have quite a few months until we close now one of the car leases up um not for another two years on one and or they're both two years okay you need to run the calculations out you You may not be able to, if you're $6,000 upside down, it may not be worth it to get out of it early. You may want to ride them out. Because what you look at is this. If I ride it, you know, how much is your monthly payment on the car? So each of ours is $430 each.

Okay. All right. And are they about $6,000 upside down each? Yes. Okay. All right. And they're about $6,000 upside down each? Yes. Okay. And so basically it costs you $4,800 a year to keep this car, right? Yes. Or you write a check for $6,000 and get rid of it early. So you're not saving much by getting rid of it early. That's my point.

Yeah. And then, so another question I was going to ask you is, instead of that, would you recommend trading those cars in for a couple, like, $8,000, $10,000 cars with a three-year loan for the same payment? And then instead of in two years having to turn it in in three years we'd have two paid off cars no i don't want you staying in having a plan to stay in debt or extend the time you're in debt um i'd be saving to buy two cars when these two leases are up and probably ride these two through to the end is probably what I would do. So build your emergency fund and build you a car fund and keep your house down payment fund and all of that

while these two leases run their course and make sure you don't run up over the miles and that the wear and tear factor doesn't cost you to have to write a check when you turn the car in. That would make this even worse. But you're not going to save a lot, a couple thousand bucks by turning them in early. And you give up two years of the use of the car.

So, I mean, you know, because you're getting the use of the car in there too, I'm probably going to keep both of those with the numbers you gave me. I don't want you to have them. But, you know, it's like you kick me in the right leg or kick me in the left leg which one you want to get kicked in and you know which one's going to get kicked harder and that's all we're looking at so hey thanks for the call this is the dave ramsey show Folks, the real estate market is on fire all over the country. If you're looking to buy a home and you need a mortgage, don't sell yourself short by going and getting a typical pre-approval.

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I trust Churchill Mortgage. Call 888-LOAN-200 or visit churchillmortgage.com. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. Equal housing lender 761 Old Hickory Boulevard, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Thanks for joining us, America. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Heather is with us in Sacramento. Hi, Heather. How are you? Hi. I'm okay. I is with us in Sacramento. Hi, Heather. How are you? Hi.

I'm okay. I've got a big issue. Okay. My husband and I were in Baby Step 2 right now. And last night we came home to a flooded house. Oh. And so we have... Flooded how?

Yeah. Flooded how? Yeah, really bad. Flooded how? The pipe really bad. Flooded how? The pipe broke in one of our bathrooms. You have homeowners insurance, don't you? We do. We do.

So here's my question. We have a high deductible. We have $5,000. Oh. We make good money, but we've been thinking every extra dime into our debt. So we have our $1,000 saved. We've got a $5,000 deductible. And it looks like we're going to be out of pocket for some reimbursable expenses,

but we'll have to cover those in the interim. So we're just trying to figure out every floor in our house was destroyed. And so I'm trying to figure out what the best course of action would be in this situation when you're not to step three yet, but you have a catastrophe. Yeah. Man, that sucks. What a horrible day. I'm sorry.

That's gross. That's pretty bad. It's like having a house fire. It's emotional. It's just screwed up everything. Yeah. So what is your household income? What do you make?

We make about, we're self-employed, so we make anywhere from $10,000 to $12,000 a month. It comes in sporadically, so we're right at the beginning of the month, which means a lot of our money is not going to come in yet or hasn't come in yet. But yeah, we make decent money. So what are the reimbursables? Okay, so we have a, it's going to be small things like for instance we have a very large 150 gallon saltwater fish tank that we now have to relocate somewhere so we're looking at options on doing that that's going to be something that we have to come out of pocket on the expense for and then insurance will reimburse us for it um but just to deal with that's probably going to be about a thousand dollars

okay um and it has to be moved because the repairs have to be done yeah every floor is going to have to be torn out and all the walls are you know the baseboards are torn out right now we had an emergency restoration company come in yesterday to do the initial. And yeah, so we have to move it out of the house. It's going to probably have to go in the garage and then we have to get special equipment in to make sure it maintains temperature.

It's a little bit of an ordeal. I don't expect a lot of things like that. I think we're going to try and stay in the house during the whole time. So it's just going to be little things like that that are we're going to try and stay in the house during the whole time so um it's just going to be little things like that are going to come up we're going to have to deal with that's our deductible which we can save for that yeah well you can cash flow it i mean if you stop

right you're going to stop baby step two you're in the middle of an emergency so you push pause until we get past this a little bit it's probably going to take two months to get past this. Right. That'll be covering your deductible and the miscellaneous reimbursables, okay? And then you're going to be able to, you know, you'll get some of your sanity back at that point, and the cash will be straightened around. You'll be fine. But you're probably going to take two months off on your debt snowball.

Okay, and just kind of sink our cash flow into this situation. Yeah, just push pause and clean up the mess. And then I imagine, this is the first time we've ever been through a house catastrophe, but I imagine that as you start dealing with insurance and contractors, that kind of sorts itself out through their processes. Yeah, they're supposed to pay the contractor. Okay. You shouldn't be paying them them that's not reimbursables um as a matter of fact they ought

to pay to have the fish tank moved they will they will but they you know we know they ought to just pay for it you ought to hire a company to move the fish tank and they ought to pay the company directly that is a really good idea and we've been looking all morning for a company that does that and so far have not. We've been told no at every turn so we're still trying to work that angle. Go down to the local saltwater fish tank place whoever helps you with your supplies stuff and ask the guy that owns that to do it as a side job and send a bill to your insurance company. Yeah okay. You've got a supplier somewhere on all this stuff, don't you?

We do. Yeah, we do. They're just not used to this kind of situation, which is surprising because I'm sure people have these situations. It doesn't come up that much. I mean, the number of times a saltwater fish tank gets moved during a homeowner's operation is not much. It doesn't come up. not much doesn't come up it just doesn't come up so um but i mean if you got is there an aquarium specialist person that you buy supplies from and fish from in the area yeah there is we're going to head down to the store we got

see if that guy will do the job even if he does it on the weekend and bill it to your insurance company yeah okay and that takes care of that the cash flow all we're doing is fighting cash flow here and the insurance company has plenty of money we just want to everybody bill everything direct to them and that's what they should be doing anyway that'll be covering every bit of this and then you know five thousand dollars worth of stuff bills land on your desk at some point because that's your deductible but everything else ought to be just direct bill yeah okay and so far it is the restoration company is dealing directly with them exactly just like that everything else needs to be and so there really shouldn't be any real as a matter of fact like for instance

during a house fire usually the uh adjuster will show up on site and pay your hotel bills yeah he did say that he would put us in a hotel for a moment too and he can't cover can't figure Usually the adjuster will show up on site and pay your hotel bills. Yeah, he did say that he would put us in a hotel for a moment too. And he can't figure out how to pay for a saltwater fish tank movement? I think I can help him with that. You just may have to help them have the imagination on who they're going to bill. At what point do they hit us with the $5,000 bill? Well, it's a deductible, meaning some expense will come through to you directly at some point in the process.

But just keep all the major stuff coming at them, and then you pick up. You may even end up having to pay them if they overpay. But some portion of the contractor bill or some portion of something else. But just argue it through with them and just cry and whine and moan because that's what they're there for. That's why you pay them premiums. Right. And make really dadgum sure that everything is fixed to your standards, not that they don't cheap out on you to lower the cost of this claim.

Yeah, because we have furniture and everything that's been affected. they're gonna they need to you need to be careful to do really good inventories really good documentation lots of detail here and just beat the snot out of them we're not trying to make money on this but i don't want this to end up costing 100 grand because you didn't hold their feet to the fire on every little thing okay because this is a big claim yeah it's going to be your part-time job for a while okay it really is managing the claim as a business transaction with your insurance company with great detail as a project manager is going to be your part-time job and they're going to show up it sounds like they're going to show up on friday to assess damage good so that's going to be the start of it and and so

it begins now yeah so you you know you're going to have to go uh you know i don't really care if it says 200 000 i don't really care if it says 115 000 all i care is it's all fixed, and it's up to you to get somebody to fix it for that. Ta-da. Oh, I'm sorry. One more question. As far as contractor, I don't know if you can answer this or not, but I know they have contractors they're going to recommend. Do you recommend that we get multiple bids, or should we go with someone that they recommend? As long as they're paying for 100% of it and the person is of of quality i don't care this is our due diligence on who they recommend exactly are they going to do it

right are they going to try to cheap out and cut corners so they get more insurance company business later okay yeah or are they straight up people and they're just that just part of their gig is they do insurance work there There is both out there. And so you're looking for quality. All you want is your house put back, and you don't have to write checks. That's all you want. But believe me, this is going to be a process. You're going to not like insurance companies when you're through.

Who's your claim with? What's the company? Farmers. Who? Farmers Insurance. Farmers. Who? Farmers. Farmers, okay. Farmers is one of the better ones. That's good news. That's good news. Thank God it's not State Farm.

Because they're a complete pain in the butt. But there you go. Yeah, that's what you go after. And just make sure that the thing is put back and is completed. That's what you're looking for. And stick with it. You got this.

But, yeah, take a couple months off on your debt snowball to manage the turn on this project. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs? Based on New Testament principles, Christian Health Healthcare Ministries, or CHM, helps Christian families, churches, and ministries join together as the body of Christ to share their major healthcare costs. Christian Healthcare Ministries is the original health cost-sharing ministry, a Better Business

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sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org. thanks for joining us america in the lobby of the dave ramsey show jordan and valentina are with us hey guys how are you great how you doing better than i deserve welcome where do you guys live atlanta georgia fun welcome to nashville and you're here to do a debt-free screen yes sir Good, how are you doing? Better than I deserve. Welcome. Where do you guys live? Atlanta, Georgia. Fun. Welcome to Nashville. And you're here to do a debt-free screen. Yes, sir. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Very cool. How much have you paid off? Dave, we paid off $110,000 in 27 months. Way to go. And your range of income during that time? $85,000. Right out $85,000 the whole time. Okay.

What do you guys do for a living? We're both police officers. Oh, very cool. Which county or district or what? Atlanta. Atlanta City. Atlanta Police Department. Wow, very cool.

Well, welcome. Good to have you guys. Very fun. So what kind of debt was the $110,000? A little bit of everything. We had about $80,000 in student loans, about $25,000 in car and motorcycle, and about $5,000 in credit cards. Wow. Wow. You had it all. You were normal. We were normal. How long you two been married? November.

Oh. Yeah. Only about six months. So you got married after or in the middle of doing all of this. Right. Okay. Cool. So we did it separately and we were coaching each other and giving each other some motivation. And then when we got married, we combined incomes, combined debt and finished it off. Yep. Finished it off. Very cool. So obviously during the engagement period of the dating period, somebody was working on this. Tell me the story, how'd this all work out? Uh, so Dave, my sister, uh, a little over two years ago, she had, she had given us some motivation telling us that her and her husband were trying to get out of debt. I did some Googling and found the Total Money Makeover, and I read it.

I knew we were getting serious, so I told her I think this is something we should do before we get engaged. And she was right on. She said, yo, you haven't been doing this already? You know, so this was good for us that's awesome very cool so what do you guys do for the police department i'm on the mountain patrol so horseback riding and jordan's on the SWAT team okay all right so you probably see a few things here or there domestically that has something to do with the money fight don't you absolutely absolutely i'll bet i'll bet because it's the number one stress point in

marriages and so i bet you guys get to see some bad bad news versions of that oh absolutely so i'm guessing that that might translate to go uh we don't want to be those people so we got to get our crap together here right exactly absolutely yeah very cool very cool so uh once jordan reads the book he sits down you say well where you You know, you needed to do this anyway. So you guys tore into it at that point and then were engaged and then married six months ago. Yeah, well, we actually went, we spent a whole night just going through every single portion of the Total Money Makeover. And then the next day we sat down, we wrote down every single debt, and then we just started from there. Okay.

All right. Very cool. And then you just held each other accountable and cheered each other on and everything else as you went through the process until wedding day and then finish her off over the last six months. Absolutely. And we actually cash flowed the wedding and her master's program. Oh, wow. Very cool. During the same period. Good for you. Very cool. Good. Fun. So what was the one debt that you hated? and when you paid it off, you went, I'm so glad you people are gone? Well, I'd say it was Sally Mae. Jordan had about $60,000 to Sally Mae.

Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, I fell in love with him for his intelligence. So the whole time I was trying to say, okay, that gave me that brain, so I've got to pay it. But that was a hard one. That was the final, the white whale we had to just go. That was the last one. Exactly. Okay final, the white whale we had to just go. That was the last one. Exactly. We were so motivated by that point.

It wasn't even the hardest to do, but it was definitely the one that felt the best. Yeah, because it was so big. It was huge. It was heavy lifting. It was huge. And everyone we knew with that size of debt, it took them 10 years to get rid of them. So do a lot of people in law enforcement that get a criminal justice degree, a lot of them walking around with student loan debt?

Absolutely. And what's crazy is you don't even need a college degree to become a police officer. It's just something you get. And like you tell people all the time, people don't care what school you went to. So that was a real lesson to us and something that we try to share with younger people is that you don't have to go to this crazy expensive school. You don't have to take out all the student loan debt to get whatever path you're on. Now, I'm a little slow on the uptake,

but, I mean, I can see mounted policemen in New York City walking around. I see them all the time when I'm there on horseback. I'm having trouble seeing that in Atlanta traffic. So so where do you patrol everywhere we go downtown we're right in the middle down peach tree street anywhere and everywhere in the city that might yeah probably central district but central business district more than out right we go everywhere it just depends on where the crime's at um we do high crime areas we do high population areas we do everything the parks everything the parks of course yeah that would make sense big parks We do high crime areas. We do high population areas. We do everything. The parks, everything. The parks, of course. Yeah, that would make sense.

Big parks. Interesting. Very cool. Very cool. So what advice do you have to someone that's out there fighting the student loan debt, fighting the credit card debt, looking at getting married, engaged, that kind of a thing? What's the key to getting out of debt? Well, I think we kind of have different keys.

For me, it was the dream dates. So Chris Hogan talks about it sometimes, those dream meetings. We would sit down, almost every single paycheck, we would sit down. I would rework all the numbers and be like, look, this is where we're at. These are our goals. We're so close. And just kind of rework those. So we had a lot of dream dates.

Yeah, I think we know who the nerd is. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Okay, cool. And the biggest thing for me was every day had to be, was the struggle. You know, whether you're going to get a $5 coffee and a $10 sub at lunch and going out to eat. You know, $20 a day was what really, you know, when you look at it and we're going to pay off $100,000 in 27 months, you're like, okay, we're motivated. But every day when you wake up, you got to like, you know, really.

It's the little things. really do it. Yeah. And it's little things that can be the winner or the loss for that day. And you know, Dave, like at our age, it doesn't seem like people care about this. You know, it's not something for right now. It's something for later in life or something to kind of put off. And, you know, our whole relationship, we've been getting out of debt. We didn't have that honeymoon phase. We didn't get that newlywed phase because we've just been so focused on this so that was probably one of the hardest parts is that we had to really turn into gazelles we're not 20 year olds right now we're we're gazelles and we had to kind of really force that yeah you live like no one else though now you live like no one else how's it feel now that you don't have any payments amazing

feels great you lost 300 pounds. Yeah. You know, a lot of people complain about whatever their salary is and benefits packages and stuff. But when we don't owe a dime to anybody, no payments, we love what we do. And now, you know, it just makes it a lot easier to be passionate about, you know, what we do with our lives and our profession. Very cool. Very cool. Very cool. Okay, so you brought your debt chart. And I've got to tell you, as a gun guy, I really love your debt chart.

Yep. So we're both police officers. So this is our target, our debt target. Yeah, and that's obviously from your range, right? Exactly. It is. So you put the debts on the debt target. For those of you listening on the radio,

it's got the shape of the bad guy that you would hang up at the range if you were going to do some shooting some target practice but you put all the lines drawn with all the numbers on there of all the different debts and then uh when you finished it tell me tell me about this you finished it and then you took it to the range or what yep we shot it with every gun we had i think we used like six different guns and just pretty much all the ammo we had stored. People save ammo for the apocalypse. We saved it for this and just shot it. You blew this guy up. This is zombie right here.

He's gone, man. Exactly. I love it. Okay, so what's the SWAT guy use? What's the firearm of choice for this thing? The M4A1, the fully automatic, was able to get them pretty good. Oh, a full auto.223, huh? Absolutely.

Yeah, so you lit him up with that.223. Yeah, I didn't miss from seven yards. Well, I hope you didn't miss from seven yards if you're spot. Oh, my gosh, yeah. Yeah, he's got serious holes in him, boys and girls. I'll just tell you that. So what about you, Valentino? What's your sidearm of choice or your firearm of choice for this guy?

I use my full-size 9mm and then my little baby gun, my 43. Ah. Ah. Luck. Be careful about those baby guns. Those are the ones that get you. That's my favorite one. All right.

Very cool. Well, thank you guys for your service to the city of Atlanta, and congratulations. We got a copy of Chris Hogan's retire-inspired book for you. That's the next chapter for you guys to become millionaires and outrageously generous along the way. We'll be back. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one.

We're debt-free! Love it! How fun is that? Wow! That's how you do it. It's the focus. It's the intensity. It's the intentionality.

It's the little things. It's having a plan. You hear it every day here. When are you going to do it? Yeah, when are you going to get in Financial Peace University? When are you going to do this? It's time for you to do it. Yeah, your turn.

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Kevin is with us in Birmingham, Alabama. Hi, Kevin. How are you? Doing fine, Dave. I appreciate your program. A quick question. I was looking at the possibility. I wonder what your opinion is about investing in a condominium that you can rent out to make income. I'm not really a fix-it-up guy, so it's hard for me to, I guess, buy a house and do that. We've vacationed down in this area and we've watched a certain condominium that's been on the market now in a place where we have been before. And the price has continued

to come down, so I think they might be a little hungry that we could maybe make, like you've said, kind of a crazy offer to see what they respond. But our situation is our house is paid off about $300,000 is what it's worth. We have about $400,000 in savings and CDs and about $360,000 in my retirement right now. So we're really debt-free, and I have this, you know, we can continue to save, but I didn't know if maybe... What's the price range of the condo? What kind of an offer would you make? Well, they started out at about $230,000.

They're now down to about $210,000. So, you know, I don't know what I thought about, you know, if we just threw them an offer, hey, we can pay cash, $150,000, and kind of see what they say. And I guess my idea, and again, I'm not sure. My idea was I could begin to rent that. And then, of course, you know, down the road. This condo is down on the Gulf Coast? Yes, sir.

So what, two or three hours south of you? Yes, that's right. It's about four, maybe four and a half hours. Okay, all right. Well, the good news is you've done a great job with money. Congratulations. You're in a position to pay cash for it. Congratulations.

Congratulations. If it just sits there and doesn't do anything and you guys go use it, you've earned the right to do that in your finances. It's not going to harm your finances. In other words, you don't have to rent it to make this make sense. If you want to rent it, that's an adventure that you'll go through with resort property. The rental market is a different market, and so it's not going to be rented much, and when it is, it's going to make a lot of money,

and the management company is going to take a lot of it. And so it's a high percentage for maintenance and management, in other words, when they do rent it. So that will be up to you. You can make the decision on all of that. As an investment, resort property is the most volatile kind of property. It goes up and it goes down really fast and um you know i've got a i've got a lake house here in tennessee that i love it's one of i dearly love it we don't rent it out at all we just use it and we just use it 98 in the summertime and uh and but

you know a couple years ago when the market real estate market went down, stuff around the lake went way down. And guess what it's doing right now while the market's going up? It's going way up fast. So anytime it's around water or up in a mountain or on a beach, you know, you're pretty much assured that you're going to have more volatility than other categories. But you can afford that volatility as long as you don't go into freak-out mode because you paid cash for it, and it's a reasonably small percentage of your overall net worth. Okay? Gotcha.

So what I would do if you're going to make a lowball offer is what I always tell them is cash, and I'll close on Friday. We'll close right now. Get the paperwork ready. We can wire you the money back tomorrow if you all want to close it. If you want to sell this thing, it's sold. It's gone. Because real estate agents, sometimes they get all insulted

when you insult their seller, and you have to just explain to them, I'm not trying to insult you. I'm not trying to make you mad. But, look, this is cash. This is cash. And we'll close it Friday. And, you know, be prepared to walk back away and don't be walking in there. There's a reason that thing has sat on the market.

It was priced too high or that market's soft or the rental market is soft or there's something wrong, right? Yes. And so you don't need to pay what they're asking for whatever reason it is and i'd like to know what's wrong with that market why hadn't this thing sold because a lot of that stuff on the gulf coast is going zoom zoom again i mean you couldn't give like what five years ago you couldn't give them away there were entire towers sitting empty down there you know and now it's just it's filled back up and everybody's going crazy again and it's like go it's like a gold rush thing on all this resort stuff you

know what i'm saying yes sir so that's your downside but you got the money to play you got the money to be at the table and so be at the table but don't you know find out what's wrong why it hadn't sold and use that as the reason that they should take less and cash and we'll close it by friday y'all let us know i mean sold your condo sold if you want to buy it back you can but it's sold would you buy it back for 150 that's what i'd be asking them just remind them that's the business they're in all right jason is in the ukraine hi jason how are you hey how you doing, Dave? Better than I deserve.

What's up? So my question is, I'm a professional athlete. I play in Europe the last five, six years. I recently got engaged to my fiance in October. And I live in Philadelphia during the summer months. And, you know, we're trying to get, you know, rent an apartment or try to, you know, get a condo. I mean, I've saved up some money. I have like $23,000 to be on my $33,000 in cash.

I just got started this past summer. And then $10,000 in our emergency fund. So, you know, we're just trying to struggle with the decision of, you know, should we try to rent something, even though, you know, our season goes from about August until May, and I'm only, you know, we're only in the States through the summer months, and, you know, we're just trying to struggle with that decision right now. But it just depends on what you want.

I mean, you're going to let it just sit empty in the winter? If you own it, you're not going to rent it, right? No, not right. Okay. I'd be tempted to just rent just because of the quality of life. It's just something else you don't have to mess with. Because it sounds like about nine months out of your 12, the thing is just sitting there. And you're newly married, and you're newly married, and you're enjoying Europe,

and you're enjoying the, you know, what are you playing, basketball? Yep, yeah, basketball, yep. Okay, cool. And so you're enjoying the basketball career there for now, and you're probably looking at how many years that's going to be or not be and that kind of thing, and then you're going to come home. When you stabilize, I mean, when you come home for good, that's probably when I would buy. But if you run the numbers out, you can do it because you're probably making enough to do it and to pay for it.

But you can rent a really nice place for three months when you're home. I mean a really nice place for three months when you're home for a whole lot less than what we're talking about here. And so, you know, I looked at that. We've rented a house out on the ski slopes several winters in a row to go snow skiing. And, you know, it's pretty stinking expensive for a week or two, you know, to do that. But, you know, divide that into about $3 million for the cost of that stinking house. You know, it's like I can rent out there for about three lifetimes and never catch up, you know. So never cause that to work out.

So it's got to be a small percentage of your income to be able to put that out there. And it needs to be the place you really want to live when you settle down in order for you to buy it. So I probably would buy, but I might wait until I've been married a couple years and then make a decision and just enjoy the simplicity of renting three months a year back in the States and not having to fool with a house or a condo or something nine months a year while you're overseas. And it just kind of keeps you, you know, it doesn't put a leash on you.

It's quite so tight. And you'll get around to your investing. You're going to have plenty of time if you're watching your money, and it sounds like you are. Sounds like you're doing a good job with it, Jason. If we can help you further, just let us know, man. Open phones at 888-825-5225. I love real estate.

And several of these calls today are about people buying a piece of real estate or refinancing a piece of real estate. And it's a great thing to do. But sometimes you need to just stop and think about what else you could do. And on the short term, what is the smart move? And sometimes renting is the smart move on the short term, what is the smart move? And sometimes renting is the smart move on the short term. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show and the books. Our thanks to James Childs, our producer.

Blake Thompson is our senior executive producer. And Kelly Daniels, our associate producer and phone screener. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, and we'll be back. Hey, it's Blake, chief production officer for the show. And here's a little tip for 2018. Go download our revamped Dave Ramsey Show app from the App Store. We're always listening to your feedback and adding new features to make it even better. Check it out.

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