The Ramsey Show - App - I Work for My Parents & Want To Ask for a Raise (Hour 3)

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Dr. John Delony & George Kamel discuss: Budgeting woes, Money disagreements during an engagement, Asking for a raise when you work for your parents, Working through a divorce. 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 in Nashville, Tennessee, this is The Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your money and your life and your relationships and your mental health, anything that's going on in your life, 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. I'm John Deloney, joined here by Ramsey personality George Camel, and we're taking your calls on just about everything. Give us a shout. Let's go to James in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hey, James, what's going on? How's it going? So I recently looked into buying a house, and I'm only 20 years old. And I'm wondering if, based off my income and debt-to-income ratios, this is a smart decision. My loan is going to be 50% of my income. Nope. Why'd you do this?

How'd you get into this well well um based on housing market and everything and from everything everyone's told me it's going to continue to go up right hold on hold on i want to do this i want to back out and start the whole thing over i'm going to ask you what happened and then i want you to take a hundred percent full ownership of what you did and why what was your thought process not what the market did what people have been telling you take full ownership so so man what happened what got you in this mess um i got money and i had some money set aside and i've been wanting to move out of mom and dad's obviously um and i wanted to invest in something to help myself, right, have equity and things that would bring my equity up.

Both noble ideas. Get out of mom and dad's house and put your money somewhere smart where you think it will grow. So how did you end up in this situation with this house, this particular house that's half of your income? Well, talking to real estate agents and everything, um, and based off where it is, I figured it would be, um, a good investment because it's an easy sell if I needed to resell, right. Um, or rent. Um, and based off of that, I figured I could

make enough money out of the rent or if I rese reselled to make more money, there's that option. If I rented, I could make enough to pay for the mortgage instead of going somewhere and renting to someone else, right? Probably not. There's a lot of hypotheticals, and then there's the reality that 50% of your income is being swallowed up by a mortgage and you can't breathe. Right. So where are you at in this purchase process? Have you signed a purchase agreement? Yes, I've signed a purchase agreement. I've already had inspectors come out

and look at the home. I'm in the process of getting an appraisal, and it's for a marinal appraisal. And it's for a Maranello appraisal and then closing in two, three weeks. How much did you put down on this house? 5%. And it's, I'm guessing, a 30-year? Yep. What's your earnest money?

What are you in for already? So I'm in at, I think it's two grand on earnest money. Okay. 1,600 to two grand somewhere around there. What's the total purchase price of this house? 160. And what do you do for a living? Retail management.

So what's your income? 35K right now. A year. I would work with this real estate agent and look at this contract and see what the stipulations are to get out of it. I mean, obviously you're going to lose your earnest money. That's a best-case scenario. And you've already put a lot of money into this just with appraisals and inspections

and closing costs. I mean, you will lose money on this. But it's going to be a short-term loss versus – I'm telling you right now, you've set yourself up to have a hole that is going to take you decades to dig out. A while. Yeah. So here's where I'm torn. You signed a contract, and you have an ethical obligation to see your

contract through if you're a person of character and integrity. And as a person of character and integrity, you also looked in the mirror and said, what in the world am I doing? And so I would working through your realtor, I would see about, tell your realtor's going to be disappointed in you and try to

talk you out of this. You make $35,000 and you bought a $160,000 house by barely putting any money down on it in a white hot market and people are acting foolish market. You are the recipe for somebody who gets into something that gets them in trouble. I would talk to your realtor and tell them you made a foolish decision and you want to be in talks with the seller and see if they will let you out of this thing. And you're going to lose two grand.

You're going to. But I think it helps my heart to let the seller know I made a mistake, screwed this up. I got in over my head. I'm 20 years old. I was trying to do right by me, which I love your spirit, man. And by doing right by me, I ended up setting myself up for a future catastrophe. You're going to lose your earnest money.

You probably spent $400 or $500 or $600 having the house inspected. But that's going to be a knucklehead tax that is going to be well worth your time if you can roll out of this thing. Okay? How much money did the bank approve you for, James, the lender? $165,000 is what it was. Did you borrow $5,000 from somebody else? Yeah, that was my money, my $5,000.

So anytime the bank says, all we can give you is this, always go way below that number. Right. Never listen to the bank. Listen to your budget. And your budget told you you're broke, and the bank said, hey, let's let this 20-year-old use up half of his income to pay this mortgage because we can still make money off of him. And let's be real clear about the state of retail sales right now. It's a mess. use up half of his income to pay this mortgage because we can still make money off of him. And let's be real clear about the state of retail sales right now. It's a mess.

It's a mess. And it's unstable. So, yeah, man, I would call my realtor today and say, I need to sit down and talk with you in person and look across the table over coffee that you're going to pay for, tell your realtor I've screwed up, and I need to explore an exit strategy here and I want to be a person of integrity. I did sign a contract.

I know that. I'm way, way over my head. And then get out of your parents' house by going to rent an apartment, man. Just get an apartment. When I was 20, you just rent with a bunch of dudes. Yeah. It's a good time. We were in no place to be buying a house.

That's right. Especially with a $35,000 a year income. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not as mad at James as I am about the system that allowed this to happen. No, actually, I love James' heart, man. He's thinking big and thinking. He talked to some folks who gave him some advice, and he's trying to get out there and

just start swinging, man. But if you get in a ring and start swinging at somebody that much bigger than you, man, you're going to get yourself hurt. He probably follows some YouTubers and TikTokers that said, dude, you got to to do the house hacking thing you can put no money down and get into this house and i just see a young dave ramsey who went bankrupt that's exactly right leveraging all this real estate and debt and man it just scares me for this generation because that's what they're seeing the parents are saying hey well you got to get a house by now when i was your age i paid eight thousand dollars for my first house. I remember, George, right after

the housing crisis back in 08, 09, I bought a house, I think, in 2012. And I went in and said, I'm not going over this amount. And I was qualified for double or triple that. Oh, yeah. And I looked at my banker and said, what are you doing? I thought y'all fixed this. And she goes, this is fixed. And I thought, oh, no. Yikes. Man. You know, we did a survey recently looking for ways that we could serve you better. One of the top things we learned is that people need help when it comes to life insurance. Most people know it's a top priority, and oftentimes money's not even the issue, since term life is really just cheap. Some feel guilty for not taking action.

Some need encouragement to follow through, while others are confused about the options. This is why I hammer away every day talking about term life and Zander Insurance. You've got to get this taken care of, and Zander is the only company I recommend. They built their business to serve, whether you just want information or you need that extra attention to get things done. In the end, they will help you make smart, confident decisions for your family. Wherever you are in the process, whether getting a quote or getting your policy approved, please take the next step. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282 and let them help. It's tax season, and I don't know anyone who loves taxes.

Anyone who loves taxes. Speak for yourself, John. I'm right here. I think we talked about this, but man, I've got all my tax returns. I've got all the stuff sent in, all the giving things, all the stuff in a big pile. And I sat down after the kids went to bed like, I'm going to do my taxes. And you did it with Ramsey Smart Tax. I did it with Ramsey Smart Tax.

I opened the screen. And there's your face. Oh, I apologize for that. There's your face. My face is on the home screen for some reason. The team thought, that'll get people to get excited about taxes. So those of you who get the courage to do your taxes, just know. it to dave's after you're oh they did yeah oh that's an excellent move it's tax season and i don't know anyone who loves that unless you're an accountant

the truth is most of us dread taxes it's a pain it's confusing and if filing taxes wasn't bad enough the tax software most people use hits you with extra fees or worse, they try to sell you debt. But filing your taxes doesn't have to be horrible. We created Ramsey Smart Tax to give you software you can actually trust. Smart Tax has steps that are simple and clear so you know you've done your taxes right.

No more headaches and second guessing yourself and we'll never tack on surprise fees or sell your info to scummy companies and we'll never try to pawn you off to some debt. When you sign up for Ramsey Plus, it's even easier. You can actually file your federal taxes

for free. And I'm saying this, not just trying to pitch this, I use this tax software in my house for my family, and it was fantastic. It was quick. It was simple. It was clear. It was great.

Don't get taken advantage of by your tax software ever again. Start your free trial of Ramsey Plus and file your taxes for free at RamseySolutions.com slash Ramsey Plus. That's RamseySolutions.com slash Ramsey plus. That's Ramsey solutions dot com slash Ramsey plus. Let's go to Elizabeth in Philadelphia where she was born and raised. What's up, Elizabeth? Hi, can you hear me? Absolutely. What's up? Wow. I can't believe I got through. You did. We can't believe it either. What's up? Um, I, so thank the Lord. I've been able to avoid pretty much all forms of debt up until, um, this point I have a teeny bit of credit card debt, but I'm in grad school on a

scholarship, no student loans, no car payment. I paid, um, my bachelor's degree pocket and I just can kind of feel the stress of like, Oh, like I have like $1,500 of credit card debt I don't want that to keep rising but at the same time I'm in grad school on a GA scholarship so I have to you know obviously invest myself in that for my tuition to be free and I work part time but I also want to apply myself well in my school work so yeah I just want to like think about how to proceed wisely I just actually downloaded the every dollar budget app last night and it's like even with just my bare bones expenses and like what I can make it's like barely making it so I guess I don't know if it would be worth it for me to like take out a small loan for like expenses or what are you studying Elizabeth? Hello? What are you studying? I'm

getting my master's in counseling. Very cool. All right. So I'm going to speak to you as a former counseling grad student myself. Okay. And you're not going to like my response. So you ready? Yep. I worked full time as the Dean of Students at a law school. And I was the dad of two little kids and a mediocre at best husband. And I worked part time for the police department in the middle of the night running around doing victim services, crisis response. And I was a full-time PhD student. So what does that mean? That you think you're busy, but you're going to have to turn up the gas. Love yourself enough.

Love your future clients enough. Do not go into debt. Okay? So here's what that looks like. That looks like I just need to decompress. What's a job? Can I deliver Uber Eats and listen to podcasts while I'm decompressing and drop food off for people and get paid handsomely for it? Can I decompress and put headphones in and deliver pizzas?

Right? How can I double dip in some of these things? And I'll tell you, when I graduated, I slept for days and days and days. And during your practicum, when you're actually seeing clients, it's going to be hard to work. So I would even suggest you double up and triple up now so that you have a little bit extra income

to get you through the practicum season. Because that's hard because you're seeing clients and you're doing your GA work. And depending on your faculty advisor, you're going to be up to your ears and grading and all kind of making copies and whatever else they got you doing. So how long do you have until this thing's done? So I'm finishing up.

This is my second semester. So it's a three-year program. And I just kind of like I feel it like, all right, I think I can be handling this better so I want to kind of get on top of it now um and yeah my my like motto has always just been like oh I put stuff on my credit cards and then I pay it off but now it's like oh I can't keep living this way like I don't want to be stressed about it all the time yes and it sounds like what you need less than uh alone is you need a plan.

That plan is going to give you an ability to breathe because you're going to have a direction and not just your fallback, which is put on a credit card, which you know is making you sick. It's keeping you up at night. Let's get a plan and something we can work towards. So hang on the line. We'll send you – we're going to put you – this is our contribution to you who's going to be a future mental health practitioner in this country, which we desperately need. I'm going to give you a year of Ramsey Plus, and it's going to come with the super version, the souped-up version of the EveryDollar app, plus all the Financial Peace University courses and the budgeting tools, all of it. Okay?

That's our gift to you, but you've got to promise you're not going to take out a loan. Okay? I promise. Pinky promise. I promise. Elizabeth, what are you doing right now for your part-time work? I actually do billing for a nonprofit counseling center that I love with my whole heart. What's it pay? They take really good care of me. So I'm, I'm working 20 hours a week for them. And then I nanny um just here and there so yeah I door dashed them too and I kind of I kind of cut back on that a little bit because I was feeling myself getting kind of exhausted but at the same time like I'd rather be exhausted now and not be in debt so oh I love that yes hey plan on it okay the next two years is gonna be tough make no mistake I've walked those shoes it's gonna be be tough it's going to be

hard and you're going to be exhausted and I will tell you being on the other side of it graduating without any student loan debt my first degree my first PhD my wife and I we graduated household total of six figures I graduated my second PhD debt free and I'm going to tell you there's a

drastic difference because you know what I could do after graduation anything I wanted to because I didn't owe anybody anything you know what I mean yeah so I thank goodness I was able to pay my bachelor's degree out of pocket from working two jobs absolutely like so I kind of know I kind of know like the struggle and then like the relief so there you go all right sounds like that's the thing to do so So hang on the line here. Kelly's going to hook you up. I want you to make a plan, get a budget, get one of your grad school compadres to walk alongside you. They can watch the videos with you.

Y'all can make budgets together. And I know that sounds, Oh, that sounds super lame. I'm telling you your clients on the other end are going to be grateful that you're not coming into sessions completely stressed out because you don't know how to pay the student loan off. Or when they throw all the sessions online and you don't know how to pay the student loan off. Or when they throw all the sessions online and you don't know how to do Zoom counseling because they've closed down services again, that you're not going to be losing sleep because you have all these bills to pay.

Okay? Let's get through this thing debt-free, debt-free. Not fun, George. No. Let's just get through this. This is a big thing, though, John. A lot of people, they give us grief over our advice about just graduating debt-free. And we never said it was easy.

We never go, it's a piece of cake. Anyone can do it. We go, it's going to be a lot of work. You're going to be working while you're in school, which, by the way, tends to increase your GPA if you're doing it a reasonable amount, you know, 15, 20 hours a week like she is. But it's so worth it because the people that call in who said, I graduated debt-free, they have options. They get to choose the job they want. They get to live where they want versus the people who call in and they go, I got $100,000 in student loan debt. I can't breathe. I have to do the job that I hate. I have to live here. Here's the stipulations because I'm chained to this debt. I am uber compassionate about most things but not this i i've walked that walk right this one's hard

and so you got to suck it up and you got to do what you got to do and it might be your school's too expensive it might be means i gotta let this one thing go i love this agency but they don't pay me enough and so i gotta go do doordash which doesn't sound as cool as this but this one pays the bills you got to make some hard choices sometimes and you got to work and you got to work and you got to work but again the light on the other end of that tunnel is so good. It's so worth it. I'm so proud of it. She's doing the budget.

She just got onto it. It's going to be a game changer. So good. Hey, we'll be right back on The Ramsey Show. so Blinds.com's 100% satisfaction guarantee means even if you mismeasure or pick the wrong color, they'll remake your blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use promo code RAMSEY to get the best deal. Today's question comes from Amanda in Illinois. My fiance and I are getting married in April. We both own our own homes and

plan on selling his home and living in mine. Where we disagree is the timing of when he will contribute financially to the mortgage and house bills. I think he should start contributing when he moves in. He doesn't want to contribute until he sells his home because with his child support and his mortgage, he can't afford to pay half of my bills. I'd be fine with this if he were proposing to make up the difference after the sale of the home, but he is not. He feels that I'm being mercenary to suggest that he pay me for these expenses. My other concern is that the wedding is two months out and he has not yet met with a realtor or made steps to put his house on the market.

So Amanda, let's just pretend me and you were, I don't know, hanging out and you told me this story. I would tell you, no, let's just pretend you're my sister. My sister called with this. I would tell you, no, let's just pretend you're my sister. My sister called with this. I would say, absolutely do not get married.

Stop. I would tell my fiance in this situation, I'm going to pause the wedding and we need to go talk to somebody and see if this is really what we want to do. You are headed for a train wreck and it's coming right at you. Oh boy. Yeah, George, there's so many problems with this. He could be heading to a second divorce here. Money fights

and money problems. Number one cause of divorce in America. And they are about to run into a wall with their finances. Well, just the way they're talking. This is my half. This is your half. You sell this and I'll sell this. It feels like a bad business deal. It's exactly what it is. It's a transaction. It's a bad transaction. And this is not a two people coming together to say,

two of us are becoming one of us and we're going to do life together. And this is you owe me and you got to pay me back. And I don't think this is a recipe for disaster, Amanda. And I'm sorry that somebody in your life who loves you hasn't said what are you doing i'm sorry that somehow and i've just heard about this over and over that you know the train gets going like hey will you marry me yes and then all of a sudden it just sneaks up on us and we haven't had these hard conversations but

um this is going to be a disaster you're going to end up married with two homes he's going to be a disaster. You're going to end up married with two homes. He's going to hang on to what that home means to him and his singleness or whatever, and then it's going to be, y'all are going to be in a mess. I recommend y'all stop the presses on everything. It doesn't mean you have to go through with stopping the presses, but I would throw a flag here,

pause everything, and then go see a marriage counselor ASAP. What should happen is his house should have already been sold or should be under contract or should at least have a sign out in the yard that y'all are trying to actively get rid of this thing together, and then he will move into y'all's home,

and y'all will pay y'all's bills together, and child support will become y'all's child support because y'all are going to spend money together on things that y'all have to spend money on. And there's not my bills and his bills, and he's got to pay his child support. It is our child support. It is our bills. Yeah, if we're combining our income when we're married, then it's not as much of a question of, well, he's paying his mortgage and I'm paying my mortgage and he should be contributing. It becomes, hey, we're in this middle of this weird transition. We have two house payments that we have to take care of. And both of our incomes are going to cover that. Right. And how

it shakes down and how we fight over, that's not going to be part of the equation. Absolutely not. And yes, two months out and he has not yet met with a realtor or made steps to put his house on the market. That tells me something else is there. That's a flag on the play. That's right. I don't know much about sports, but I think that's what they say. That was excellent.

Thank you. That was the – Fooled you. It didn't – well, I just thought – I see that you wrote that down, and you've been waiting to use that. Flag on the play. Sports reference that will be great to insert sometime because I don't know much about

him. It's going to make me sound tough and masculine. Alright, let's go to Glenn in Los Angeles, California. What's up, Glenn? Hey, guys. How you doing? What up? Yeah, doing great. What's up? So, I'm active duty Marine. I got

served with War Papers in December. I've got a three-year-old child and i'm receiving orders to go to a new school for a new job in september i'm sorry uh two questions one i'm not sure how to budget uh because my wife used to do all that and um two i'm not sure how to budget with um because i get basic allowance for housing I'm not sure where that fits in if I want to buy or rent a house and how much percentage that would equate to, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Man, so what happened?

Why did she serve you papers? She just said she's not happy anymore. We've been through counseling. We've been through counseling a couple times. We've been married five years. It'll be six years this May. She's just not happy. She's finally got her own career going off the ground now. She's in the Air Force as well.

Yeah. And she just wants to go in a different direction. We're still amicable. It's not like we're not having big fights or anything. We work better as friends, which I did, and just to try to make it as best we can for our daughter. Yeah, man, I'm sorry. Even when it's amicable, it's a mess.

Especially you threw a sweet little baby girl in there, man. Things get complex, and that's a lot of heartache, man. So I'll talk about the service, I mean the housing allowance, and then we can roll over to George and walk you through the budgeting. When it comes to the service, with your service housing allowance, right, do you have to use that on base base or can you take that off? You can, that's basically, I can use it anywhere. Okay.

It's based on the zip code the base is at that I'd be stationed at. So it fluctuates depending on where you go. But yeah, it can be used for private housing, buying a house, renting an apartment. Will you get paid during school too? Yeah, I'll still be getting my basic pay and stuff because it's military school for another occupation okay so really at that housing allowance becomes income right you're just going to budget that as though you would add it on right and there's not a cap is there like you can't use it for three years they're going to cut you off

uh no as long as i have uh yeah no i'll be good i'm going to cut you off? No. As long as I have a... Yeah, no, I'll be good. I'm going to strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly recommend having lived in multiple military cities with bases. Please don't run out and buy a big house or any house in a community that you're going to live 24 months in. Okay?

I know that's the cool thing. And you're like, well, I can just rent it, and I can do this. I've just seen service member after service member get themselves in trouble doing that. And then they make these special VA loans for you that just let you walk in the front door. I'd much rather see you rent long-term that's going to be better for you. If you think you're going to stay somewhere 5, 6, 7, 10 years, which I know that's fanciful thinking if you're going to stay somewhere five six seven ten years which i know that's that's fanciful thinking um if you're active duty um then you settle down and buy a house man but most folks get themselves into some pretty serious trouble they can't get out of the house it just becomes a quagmire okay um but yeah take that as income and dump it on top of your regular basic pay

and that's you're going to look at that broadly speaking then george will walk you through the budgets yeah glenn uh you know we have about a minute till we had to break here, but here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to gift you one year of Ramsey Plus. That's our online membership that will give you access to Financial Peace University. All the video courses are every dollar plus premium budgeting tool that connects to your bank account. I want you to do this, create your first budget, and to make it easy on you, Rachel Cruz, our friend, has a course in there called Budgeting That Actually Works. So watch that one first to get a handle on budgeting, then go through all the Financial Peace University videos. But it's simple. You're going to pay attention to where your money's going. Every single dollar is going to have a job, but no

dollars go unemployed. All of your income minus your expenses equals zero. And we're going to cut the frivolous stuff. Do you have any debt right now? Yeah, after this is all settled, I'll probably have about $30,000 in debt. And funny you said about the VA loan house, we do have a house in North Carolina that will become mine. It's currently being rented out. I would take advantage of the market, and I would sell that house. Be clean on this deal. And, yeah, take that extra money.

And, hey, hang on the line. Not only are we going to give you Ramsey Plus, but I'm grateful for your service, my brother. And I'm going to give you a copy of Total Money Makeover. This is Dave's book that's going to walk you through it. I'm going to give you a copy of my new book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future. You've got some stuff that you've got to walk through, some healing. And then you've got to be about what comes next, and my book's going to walk you through that.

So we're going to give you all this stuff. We're grateful for your heart and for your service. Let's start today getting well. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. today's scripture of the day is philippians 1 9 and this is my prayer that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight oliver wendell Holmes says, a moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. Let's go out to Rex in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. What's going on, Rex? How you doing?

How you doing, John and George? Excellent. How are you? Fantastic. So what's up, man? How can we help? I'm 25, an accountant, and accountant and i have 37 000 left in my baby still student loans i'm trying to do side hustles to speed up my baby uh step two uh so i

do accounting and virtual assistance work for both of my parents' businesses uh but i haven't been paid yet oh no did y'all have an agreement? Yeah. No. So this is the issue. How do I bring up paying me again and how much of a discount from the market should my work be? Oh, man. George, hop in here.

So your parents needed some tax work. You're an accountant. They said, hey, will you help out? And you said, sure, I'll help out. And you did taxes for your parents. And you... It's all bookkeeping. You know, I do do tax work.

I was a tax accountant for a couple of years, so I know how to do taxes. But it's all bookkeeping work. It's part consulting as well. So, I i mean from accounting to operations to social media anything you can think of that's what i'm involved in and this was all just a kind of a handshake yeah i'll help you out no one agreed on pricing no no yeah so this is the deal man you're not getting paid on this no um what i my path forward here if i'm you

would be one of two things. Mom and Dad, I did this free last year. I'm trying to pay off the remaining debt, and so I'm going to have to go get jobs that are paid jobs. I love helping you guys out. It makes my heart feel good. I love being able to take care of it. If you all are interested in hiring me to do this work this year,

I would love to stay, but I've got to go get some paying jobs. I think you're going to be, it could be viewed as you lacking integrity to circle back and demand payment for something that somebody thought you were just helping out with because y'all didn't have the conversation on the front end. We had a conversation about me being paid.

I just haven't been paid yet. It's kind of great because- They don't even know what to pay you. You said you didn't ask for a specific number. Yeah. Tell me about this pay conversation. Yeah, I mean, it was more a conversation of saying, hey, alright, I know that I've done this stuff for you guys in the past, but you know that I'm trying to pay off my student debt. I'm doing these baby steps. My mother actually did the Dave Ramsey way getting out of her debt after their divorce. So she knows what I'm doing. But my dad, I do more work for him. I just told him, I said, hey, like, I need to be paid. And he just basically told me I don't. He didn't have like an answer for me when I said, hey, how much, you know, what's your number? You know, and I said, I would like to be paid.

Can you let me know? But I'm kind of getting ghosted and he needs things from me. But I don't really know when I'm going to get that number back to say, hey, like, I'm trying to work with their budget also, but I still need to figure out how much I should be charging. So I'm like in this weird space. I don't know what my number is and they won't tell me there. All right. So let's, let's back out here.

Let's take them off the table. Okay. Okay. You can control two things on planet earth, your thoughts and your actions. That's it. That's it. Yeah.

So just because you know what they have, does it mean that is the appropriate amount for you to be paid, either up or down. Right? Yeah. So you've got a couple of boundary issues that you need to work through. Number one, you need to come up with a market value for recs. Right? Number two, you've got to come up with pro bono recs.

I do pro bono coaching behind closed doors all over the country. People call in and I work with them and people who are struggling with various this's and that's and a friend of a friend that kind of thing but I'm able to do that because Dave takes care of it as well right and I've got other

income streams what you're going to have to decide and is there a mom and dad rate there's not really a good way to do that other than you just say this is mom and dad rate. And if they can't meet it, they can't meet it. You and your dad are going to get into a steering contest. And what's going to suffer is Thanksgiving. What's going to suffer is Christmas.

What's going to suffer is your relationship with your dad. And I'm going to put the onus on you that you did work without a contract, without a firm number. Because if you had said, I'm going to charge $20,000, and he said, deal, and and he's not paying then he's the guy that's got to look in the mirror right but y'all didn't do that you said hey uh i did some stuff and i kind of like to be paid he's like well how much like i don't know how much you got and he's like i don't know how much you got man i i would chalk this one up to i learned a hard lesson and now i gotta go be about getting paid and i wouldn't i wouldn't beat my parents up over it um because i didn't do the hard work on the front end of setting those boundaries and setting those prices. Yeah.

This has become like a 3-2-1 draw. What's your number? What's your number? We'll meet in the middle. It just doesn't work like that. Especially not with your dad. Right? So dust your hands off, man.

And we move forward and go, hey, going forward, here's what I need to charge. Otherwise, it's been fun working with you all. I can steer you in the right direction, get you someone else who can help, but I can't do this any longer because I care about this relationship more than I do the business transaction. And Rex, I want to give you one more piece of Deloney wisdom. Cool? It's not going to cost you anything, so it might be worth what I'm charging you for it, okay? Any moment after you hang up the phone with me and George,

any moment that you spend angry about this is a choice for you to be miserable. You're choosing misery. Any second you spend on resenting your parents after this moment, after you hang up the phone, is a choice to intentionally poison yourself hoping somebody else gets sick. Okay?

So at some point, I want you to find peace in your heart about this deal. You did a lot of work. You had your fingers behind your back crossed hoping you'd get paid, and you didn't. You learned a lesson, man. And it's probably disappointing that your parents didn't circle up and be like,

hey, we are so grateful for your work. We're so grateful for your Dave Ramsey journey. We're going to give you $50,000 to help you out. That would be great. And you may even be able to see in the books and know they could afford it, which makes this whole thing worse. But they didn't. They didn't. And if they want to hire you, great.

I'll even cut you a mom and dad deal, but we're going to do it with a contract. We're not going to do it with a handshake. I'm your old man. You're going to give me a contract? Absolutely. Yes, sir. I'm running a professional business. I got to keep up with my taxes, my work. And there's going to be a pushback there, but there's also going to be some respect there. Some mutual respect, business to business. I'm cutting you a 50% dad deal, a 75% off dad deal, whatever it is.

But we're going to do this above board. Everybody's going to be on the same page so that we all know. We can all share Thanksgiving dinner with smiles on our faces. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I know that hurts, man. I know that hurts. Hey, and by the way, you do good work, right?

Yeah, of course. You work hard? Very. Then charge what you're worth. Cool? Yeah. Charge what you're worth. It's tough when it's your parents. I feel like in some way you kind of get into not lending your family money,

but anything with the dollar sign attached to it. It's like this person is partially responsible for me being alive. It's really tough to ask them for money. Rex, the truth is I wouldn't work for my parents. That's just the truth. I wouldn't either. It's the same as loaning money. I'm not going to loan money to my family members.

I might give them some. And so I'm not going to charge my mom and dad unless I'm a hired employee. The same way Rachel Cruz works for Dave Ramsey, and they have an agreement as part of her contract that's written out so that everybody knows who's paying what and who's getting paid what that's different if I'm doing something for my parents I'm just gonna help them out and do it um I'm not gonna I'm not gonna charge my parents like that we say to be unclear is to be unkind and so we've got to be clear we've

got to communicate we've got to have the boundaries in place so that it doesn't cause resentment and hurt these relationships yeah think long term hey, you learned a lesson. How old are you, Rex? I am 25. Brother, it took me until my mid-30s before I realized how much clarity helps my family relationships, both my marriage, my parents, my brothers and sister, everybody. So you learned this a decade ahead of me. You're way, way ahead of the game, my brother.

Clarity is everything. Clarity is everything. Clarity is everything. And if you don't feel like I can charge my parents to either do the work for free or say, I don't have time to do it this time. That's hard, George. Yeah, that's tough. I mean, just boundaries in general. We've taken a lot of calls this week where it's just people didn't put clear enough boundaries up and then there's resentment and it hurts

the relationship and it always points back to you when you have to go, that's on me. I didn't set up the boundaries. And so next time, I'm going to be good about boundaries. Well, that wraps up today's show. I want to thank James and Ben and Kelly, even Zach. Thank you all for a great show. George, you're getting there, man.

Thank you. You did a good job. You're trying real hard. You're trying real hard. I'm John Deloney in America. We're so grateful that you joined us. Be kind to one another. Be kind.

Turn the devices off and go play. We'll see you soon. Hey, it's John Deloney, co-host of The Ramsey Show. Did you know over 18 million people listen to The Ramsey Show every week? A lot of those people listen on one of our 600 plus radio stations across the country. To find a station near you, go to ramseysolutions.com slash show.