The Ramsey Show - App - If You Don’t Stand for Something, Your Money Will Fall for Anything

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

🎟️ ⁠⁠The Ramsey Show Live Tour: Tell us where we should go next!⁠⁠ Dave Ramsey and Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "Should I accept my girlfriend's offer to pay off my debt?" "Should we pay off debt with a baby on the way?" "Can I put $200,000 I've received from a settlement in a bond?" "I want to save money but my husband keeps getting us into credit card debt..." "How do my fiancée and I tackle our $177,000 of debt?" "We have almost $300,000 of student loan debt. How do we get out of this?" "How do we plan for taking in our 3 grandchildren permanently?" "Should I solicit my van for voluntary repossession?" "Is it fair to ask my fiance to save up now for when we get married?" "I was evicted in January and now owe that apartment $12,000. Should I prioritize this in my debt snowball?" Next Steps: ✔️⁠⁠ ⁠Help us make the show better. Please take this short survey.⁠⁠⁠ 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 weekdays from 2–5 p.m. ET or⁠⁠ ⁠send us an email⁠⁠. 📱 ⁠⁠Get episodes early in the free Ramsey Network app! ⁠⁠ 📚 ⁠⁠Set and actually reach your goals with the NEW 2026 Ramsey Goal Planner! Hurry—they sell out every year!⁠⁠ ⛰️ ⁠⁠Find out your Baby Step and get a plan for your money. ⁠ 💵 ⁠⁠⁠⁠Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app!⁠⁠ Connect With Our Sponsors: Stop paying more and start shopping smarter at ⁠⁠ALDI⁠⁠. Get 10% off your first month of⁠⁠ BetterHelp⁠⁠. Go to ⁠⁠Boost Mobile⁠⁠ to switch today! Learn more about⁠⁠ Christian Healthcare Ministries⁠⁠. Get started today with⁠⁠ Churchill Mortgage⁠⁠. Get 20% off when you join ⁠⁠DeleteMe⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠ FAIRWINDS Credit Union⁠⁠ for an exclusive account bundle! Find top health insurance plans at ⁠⁠Health Trust Financial⁠⁠. Use code RAMSEY to save 20% at ⁠⁠Mama Bear Legal Forms⁠⁠. Visit⁠⁠ NetSuite⁠⁠ today to learn more. For more information, go to ⁠⁠SimpliSafe⁠⁠. Use promo code RAMSEY for 18% off at ⁠⁠The Nokbox⁠⁠. Get started with ⁠⁠YRefy⁠⁠ or call 844-2-RAMSEY. Visit⁠⁠ Zander Insurance⁠⁠ for your free instant quote today!  Explore more from Ramsey Network: 💸 ⁠⁠The Ramsey Show Highlights⁠⁠ 🧠 ⁠⁠The Dr. John Delony Show⁠⁠ 🍸 ⁠⁠Smart Money Happy Hour⁠⁠ 💡 ⁠⁠The Rachel Cruze Show⁠⁠ 💰 ⁠⁠George Kamel⁠⁠ 🪑 ⁠⁠Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman⁠⁠ 📈 ⁠⁠EntreLeadership⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy⁠⁠

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey show where we help people build wealth, do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Washaw, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author is my co-host today. The phone number here is 3,8-825-5-2-2-25. Garreg is with us in Canada. How are you? Hey, good morning. I'm doing well. Thanks.

How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I appreciate you taking my call. First-time caller, I wanted to talk to you. So my question is more of a, like, a principal's question rather than financial. So I'll give you some context after. but my question is, should I accept my girlfriend's extremely generous offer of paying off a debt for me?

No. Okay. I imagine might say that. I'm very hesitant. She made the offer about a week ago, and I've been sitting on it. You don't pay off dating relationships debt. You do that when you're married. When you get married?

Well, that's the thing. So we're both divorced, and since the first time, since my divorce, I've actually considered getting married again. I thought I'd never would get married again. And the thing is, we're in a long-distance relationship. I'm in Canada. She's in Switzerland. And part of the reason to pay off the debts and so that I can afford to save up for chips to see each other back and forth. Why can't?

Why can't you save up? What's your job like? I'm trying to pay off these debts, right? But I'm currently on track to trying to clear these before next summer. So before the beginning of next summer. That's my goal. How much is it? It's about $35,000.

What do you make, sir? Okay. What do I make? Approximately $85,000 gross. And so what's it take to fly to Switzerland? How much money does it take to buy an airline ticket? from where you are to Switzerland? $1,600, approximately.

Okay. So tell her to buy an airline ticket and come to Canada and visit. Yeah, she's done that a couple times. Okay. And already. And you want to increase the frequency of the trips by her paying off your debt. No, thank you. Yeah, it doesn't match up.

What she's saying is I'd rather pay $35,000 in debt than $1,600. than $1,600 for to go to Canada. That doesn't make sense, mathematically or logically. Fair enough. Okay. So I can also go there back and forth and just be a little more fair about it instead. Well, you don't really have the money to do that. I think if you set up the conversation and say, okay, we both agree that it's important

for this debt to be gone. However, how we do it is where we differ. I think it's my responsibility to pay off my debt. We're not married. I don't want to put you in that situation. So what I need from you is to support me in the best way possible, which your support for me would be if you could come visit me while I'm busy paying off this debt and putting my income towards that,

that would be the best way to support me during this time. Yeah, that makes sense. That's kind of, that's what I was originally thinking, and I just didn't know if I should have. Yeah, you're going to change the tone of the relationship. You're going to change the whole thing if she pays me off your debt. Yeah, exactly. You know the old joke.

You know the old joke if you loan your brother-in-law $100 and he never speaks to you again. Is it worth the money? Right. Yeah. Because what happens when you loan people money is it changes the relationship. Now she's looking at you as like, uh-huh, and you're going, I feel like I'm didn't own, you know, as all this other stuff now enters into the equation rather than I'm a dude over here doing my thing, girl over there doing her thing. Yep. We'd be talking.

That's way different than you got into my wallet. Uh-huh. You already have distance working against you. You definitely don't need borrowed money working against you. Yeah. Or, you know, just any kind of feigned obligation. I mean, what happens if she pays that off and then this relationship goes sideways? Oh, now what are we going to do?

Then she calls us on the air and goes, I was so dumb. I paid off this guy's dad over in Canada. And we're like, yeah, you were. Yeah. That'll be the call right here. That is. Like, I know that we're talking to Gehrig, but I'm like, I want to talk to the girlfriend because I need to make her understand this is a bad move to even offer. Yeah.

So, folks, do not pay debts for people you're not married to. Do not buy houses and cars for or with people you're not married to. Crap happens and you're going to get sideways and you have a problem. The worst one I can ever remember was a guy buying. at a house with his girlfriend, they're going to shack up, and he gets killed in the car wreck, and now she owns the house, and there's no will. She now owns the house with her future mother-in-law. She's now a partner.

Oh, my gosh. She's not his heir. They're not married. Yeah, that's right. So his half of that house goes to his mother, who she didn't like, of course. Of course. And now this is great. Now I have a partnership.

This is the crap you don't think of when you think, oh, we're just going to play house. and instead of really being like grownups and get married. Yeah. Yeah, it changes the whole deal, man. I remember a guy called in. Yeah, he had a girlfriend. He co-signed on the car with her $17,000, $18,000. They broke up.

And she got the car. Well, she stopped paying it. And he called in. He said, hey, I've got a mountain of debt. She's not paying the loan. How do I get out of it? I said, is she going to refinance it over and put it in her name? He said, no.

I said, well, you better add it to your debt snowball then. You better get rid of that car. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. She wouldn't sell it. Yep, that's the problem. So that's the kind of stuff we run into these days. And it's the unintended consequences, not thinking things all the way through.

There's an old book out 100 years ago by Dr. Stephen Covey called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And one of the habits is begin with the end in mind. Smart. Yeah. So begin with everything possibly falling apart that could fall apart in mind. And you'll go, oh, I would never do that. Well, yeah, that's the opposite of what you want to do, because when you're excited about something, you like to visualize all the ways that it works out and, you know, the best. There's only one way it works and if it's all work.

Yeah, that's right. And it never works that way it's supposed to ever. Nothing ever works the way it's supposed to ever exactly. The timeline, something changes. And then there you are caught. But that's not being, that's not being a Debbie Downer and it's not being, you know, a pessimistic. That's just being logical. We're not dream killers. We're nightmare killers. because your little dream is going to be a nightmare and we're going to kill it before we can let it grow, kill it now, stomp that thing. Yeah, nip it in the bud. That's right. So I'm happy to kill your nightmare. You just don't see it as a nightmare. You see it as a dream, but I'll help you with that.

And so, because we love you and we want you to win, we want you to prosper. We're thinking about the good version of you 10 years from now that has survived all of life's bumps and bruises and prospered anyway. And that's how successful people actually do it. They fail forward. That's right. They don't make a set of assumptions that things are always going to work out the way they are. So there's about 90 ways this could go wrong and only one way it goes right. So we don't do it.

I'm going to go out on a limit and say most success as a result of something that was learned, not a bright idea that was executed the right way the first time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the number of times we've launched a product at Ramsey that the prototype ever sees the light of day is precisely zero. what we think is going to work doesn't make it through beta. Right. It doesn't make it through alpha.

It doesn't make it through any of those Greek letters because it is a delta. And so there you go. Yeah, you look that one up. Anyway, open phones here at AAA 825-5-225. Steve is in Pennsylvania. Hi, Steve. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you doing, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up?

So my wife is pregnant with baby number two. Yay! Yes, we are shocked and very excited. We have about $30,000 in debt. We're moving for a job in the coming spring. How should I handle debt payoff and preparing for baby? When's baby do you? end of April beginning of May

you're moving before a baby comes in the ninth month of a pregnancy it's a little less than ideal yes sounds like suicide my man why are you moving at that date what's the what's driving the date to be crazy that's when we agreed with my employer about making the move would be in the spring before that we found out we were pregnant.

Okay. So you're being transferred with the same company? Correct. Okay. Have you said anything to them about possibly coming a month later or two months earlier? We haven't. I spoke with my wife about that, and she said that she would prefer to be moved before the baby comes. Okay.

Yeah. than two months earlier. I don't want to move in the ninth month. Okay. That's just, I mean, I've, I mean, I, I, I mean, my wife Sharon's had three children, and I can't imagine asking her to move our home in the ninth month of a pregnancy. It's tough enough to do it. It's tough enough to do it two months after a child's born.

I did that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's just a bad, it's just a bad plan. But anyway, we're going to move in the spring. some time. So your question still stands now that I got into your business. But you called and asked, so there you go. Anyway, but the, so, and what's your household income again? I make around

$100,000. I work about 45 hours a week and I have unlimited available. I have unlimited overtime available. Okay. Do you have any money saved? I know you said you have 30 cane debt, but I'm just asking. we have yeah we have baby step one done and we've been working on paying off the debt i guess one thing that would be important to make of note is the debt is solar panels so it's kind of tied to the house that we would sell that's your only debt correct okay all right well the number one in general terms what we tell folks to do when you know you're in a storm and i got a baby on the ways of being in a storm uh is to push pause on your baby steps and just stack cash So even if we weren't talking about moving, even if we weren't talking about all the other things, we would just generally say, let's see how high a stack of cash we can build as much as we would have put on the debt, which is a lot, the same intensity we're going to stack cash with.

And then if health insurance covers what it's supposed to, which is most everything, and if, you know, and if everything goes well, baby and mama come home, everything's okay, the day they come home, we push play again, which means we would empty out this account that we have. haven't used, but was there just in case. We emptied out down to $1,000. And so you really don't lose any traction mathematically that way. In your case, what you're going to have is a stack of cash. You sell your house. Solar panels are cleared. You have no debt.

You make the move. Your stack of cash becomes your emergency fund. You go to the new place and rent, and you start saving towards a down payment. Okay. and that's what we were thinking so that how much equity have you got I was going to ask I think when we sell the home so we bought a fixer upper and we've pretty much completely redone everything I think we stand to make about 50k minimum inequity above the solar panels but no that would be not including the solar panels if we take the solar panels out I think it'd be about 25k that's on the low

yeah okay and if you stack 25k then you and you say or let's call that your emergency fund whatever you stack if you call that your emergency fund because you don't end up having to use it after the move then um you've got 25k to put as a down payment on the other side if you if that works okay and i'm going a step deeper i don't know when you plan on putting your house on the market but just having that cash there also i'm thinking two things moving in general is so expensive so you're moving from pennsylvania to where uh south Carolina. Yeah. So just keeping in mind, like, start pricing that out now because when we moved from South Florida here to Tennessee, the boxes alone, the boxes, the U-Haul truck, are you going to get one of

the pods? Are you going to, all that stuff? If your stipend doesn't cover it, like that's, if you're even getting a stipend, I don't know. But just price that out because there's a lot going on there that has the potential to creep up on you. Yeah, it can turn into a serious chunk of money. 100%. Dave, I was shook when I saw the car. to have someone drive your stuff midway across the country. Boxes. $20,000. That we're throwing away.

Oh, yeah, yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah, it's pretty serious. So, yeah, that's, be ready for all of that. Plan that out, plan the move out, and try to plan to where you're not moving with a three month or a three-day-old child or a child that's getting ready to come in the next three days. Those are, that's just the worst possible scenario from a family standpoint. Yeah, it really is.

The further back you can dial it one way or the other, outside the ninth month, either after the baby is born or before, she said she wants to move before. So let's talk about, you know, talk about February. Yeah, can't hurt to ask. Yeah. Can't hurt to ask. It probably doesn't make that much difference to them anyway.

So, yeah, I'm going to ask for sure. Good question. Denise is in New Jersey. Hi, Denise, how are you? I'm good, thank you. How can I help? Yes, so I just received the personal injury settlement of $200,000, and I know you don't like municipal bonds,

but I'm hoping you tell me in my case it's okay to do. I already have CDs, $450,000 CDs. I have mutual funds, $230,000. I have savings and checking. I have no debt. So I don't need to shelter the $200,000 because it will be tax-free on a personal injury. But I really don't want any more interest.

I don't understand. You don't want the money to grow? You don't want compound interest? Well, it's going to put me in another tax bracket. So what? There's not a 100% tax bracket. So, you know, Dave, I want to make $2,000 instead of $40,000 because of the tax bracket. That's not logical, Denise. Okay. So you think annuities then would be?

No. How old are you? 78. Okay. All right. So you've got all kinds of people in your ear, don't you? Yeah. Yeah, okay.

So I don't know what to do with the money. I mean, more than these, I don't think I can add it to my IRA. No, you can't. All right. So you are someone that risk terrifies you, doesn't it? well not so much at my age no I mean I really I think I have enough for you know to take care of myself yeah well I mean if I put okay I'm 65 so I'm a little bit younger than you but not much and if I put $250,000 in a high yield savings account or CDs and I make 3% on it and instead

I could have put it in a mutual fund and made 13%. That means I missed out on $25,000 a year worth of income, which is what you've done with the CDs and what you're getting ready to do with these bonds. So you need to decide if you're willing to put more money in mutual funds or not. And I would sit down with a smart restor pro at ramsysolutions.com and start to learn about the market and how the market's performing and what's going on and get comfortable with it. I personally, you know, would take the $250,000 in CDs and I would put it in mutual funds and I'd put this $200,000 in mutual funds.

But I want you to get comfortable with it before you go do that. But no, I'm not dumbing it down to municipal bonds. And no, I'm not going to tell you I would do that because I wouldn't do that. That would be a lie. If you're tired of living paycheck to paycheck and feeling, like you can't get ahead join one of our free every dollar trainings there's new trainings every week this month they're all hosted by one of the ramsie personalities either jade or george or rachel jade when's your next one oh that is tbd oh okay but it will be there when they need it all right

we're going to show you how to stick to a budget and even find thousands of dollars usually up around ten thousand dollars of margin using every dollar so you get out of debt start building wealth. And you get to ask questions during the live Q&A. So, sign up for free at ramsysolutions.com slash webinar. Ramsey Solutions.com slash webinar. Did I mention? It's free. Tam is in North Carolina. Hi, Tam. How are you? Hello. Thank you very much for taking my call. Sure. How can I help? And getting me to go back to work. And I would like to know, how do I save money when I go back when my husband does not want to save. So quick back story. We've done to Dave Ramsey. We came out of debt. And in 2021, he says he no longer wants to do that. And he wants to live for the day. And since then,

we are in this cycle of constantly being credit card debt of $20,000 to $30,000. I'm currently stay at home, but I'm going to go back to work. And I told my husband, well, when I go back to work, I want us to say for a future, so I just want to know how do I do that. You go get marriage counseling. Yeah, what sparked it? What sparked him to about face? Something caused that. That I don't know.

Because we, before we got married, he was $100,000 in debt. We dated, I told him I can't be in debt. I introduced him to Dave's Ramby. we got out of debt then he put us back into debt for a car and then we got out of debt for that I can't help you honey there's nothing we can tell you that's going to work

nothing will work until you guys fix your marriage you can't make enough at your new job to offset his stupidity and immaturity you're going to retire you're going to retire broke get ready to enjoy dog food Alpo is your choice for dinner That's why I was thinking when I went back to where

You can't out earn his craziness You can't make enough to do it So you don't have a savings vehicle issue You have a broken marriage issue Yeah you guys have got to work on that And if you ignore that And you think I'll just go get a job to save my money he's going to go in debt further than any amount you can possibly save because there's no off button for this guy, the way he's operating right now.

Yeah, and you guys were never, it sounds like you were never aligned when you paid off the first $100,000, it sounds like his motivation was, I got this girl, I'm going to impress her. We've just gotten married, right? Even though your wife may have been something different, and it may have seemed as though you were aligned, but clearly you are not. So that's one of the things that you can talk about in counseling is what do you guys align on as your vision, for the future. And it can't be about today. It has to be about where you see yourselves an X amount of years. Yeah. And honestly, I mean, I'm not being mean or anything, but his behavior pattern is one of someone who's going to be broke. When people say, thank God, it's Friday, oh, God, it's Monday. And that's their whole planning vision is make it

to the weekend, like they're freaking Huey Lewis or something or whatever, whoever's, who sang us on? Working for the weekend? Yeah. Is that Mike and the mechanics? I don't know. Okay. I've done this before, hadn't I? Yeah. I always get criticized. by lack of music knowledge. I knew what you were talking about. Yeah, I mean, anyway, you're going to be broke. If your whole planning horizon is trying to get to the weekend, so I can smoke and drink, and I just say, that's all I want to do.

I just want to live in the moment. That means you're four years old emotionally. Yeah. And you're not going to ever build wealth, and you're not going to build a quality successful anything, because no one does anything of high quality in five days. So you have to have a longer planning window for that, a bigger vision for your life, for your money, for your health, for, I mean, that's the same thing that leads to extreme obesity. Because there's, why not? Why wouldn't I eat everything in sight?

Because I'm living for the moment. And in the moment, that donut tastes good. And in the moment, I'm going to have six desserts and four bottles of wine. I mean, and then wonder why I'm 600 pounds. It's the same thing. it's the same thing I mean there's just no off button when you're that impulsive and immature and there all the data points tell us it's a very sad person a lot of anxiety there's a lot of depression around that because there's no vision and you know the bible talks about it it says

where there is no vision the people perish now think about that perish what's that mean roadkill baby perish die don't win that that's what that means and so you know in any area of your life, for your marriage, your kids, I mean, think about it. If you talk your kids that way, I'm going to live, I'm going to do the easy thing with the kids. Well, what you raise is animals. Yeah. That will drive you bananas because they have no discipline because they have no discipline. Yeah.

And so, but that's all thinking in the moment that what's easy right now. I want the easy button. I want the easy button. You got to think about what you're planting because whatever you plant later on, that's what you're going to reap the harvest of so sad it's an awful way to live and it's such a it's it's such an indication of lack of maturity lack of hope and so that's the stuff you got to work on to him it's not um it's you know there's no amount of me if you go make 200 000 a year and you save all of it he'll he'll spend 300 because he knows his wife's over there stacking cash so he's going to be

really he's going to have hey i need two boats you know i mean really so this this is Austin is in Oregon, if I push the right button anyway. Austin, there you are, is in Oregon. Hey, Austin, how are you? I'm doing wonderful, Dave. How are you guys doing today? Better than we deserve. How can we help?

So my wife and I were three months married right now. Congratulations. Thank you. Yes, and one of the things that we decided to do when we first got married was to do your guys' baby step program. So we just finished up one. we've got a thousand dollars set aside right now and we're about to just attack baby step two uh we have about 10,000 dollars in debt and annually we bring in uh household income of around 95,000 oh great um so we want to get this we want to get that debt free as fast as possible

agreed so I'm I'm thinking of picking up a second job doing a few hours um after my normal job every day, uh, just to get that extra income just to throw out all that debt. Mm-hmm. Um, my wife, she's 100% bored on this and everything. She's thinking about picking up some shifts at our local fire department. Great. We both volunteer down there. And one of the things that she brought up, and I didn't necessarily have an answer for, but I, I, I 100% agree with her is she wants to make sure that we still have time for us during this entire, um, um, So budgeted. Yeah, but it's 10,000.

It's not going to last long enough to matter. You ought to be done in a couple months. Yeah, that's my hot take. If you had said we have 70,000, yeah, then I would say, okay, yeah, this is months and months ahead of you of, yeah, burning the candle at both ends. But for 10,000, you're going to be done in two months, three months, right? With doing all the things you said. Yeah, you're going to go right. Your breath for two months.

Yeah. I mean, really, it's not, it's not like we're doing two years here or something. So, but the other thing is this, the other thing is this, anytime you're doing anything, you're out of balance, okay? If you have a brand new baby in the house later, you're going to be out of balance because this kid is a demanding little piece of flesh when they're brand new, okay? They want your attention all the time. They are peeing or pooping or crying because they're hungry all the time. all the time and so you're out of balance you're probably not doing some other stuff like you should because you're taking care of this baby right now you're getting out of debt you're out of

balance for a short period of time jade just ran a half marathon you're out of balance for a short period of time because you're training in the mornings rather than doing something else so you're always out of balance so just choose you're out of balance and then when you do have time together turn off the stupid television and put down the screens and look at human beings in the eyes and then all of a sudden oh well we did spend time together who knew that's right Netflix is not time together okay scrolling doom scrolling is not time together guys if you like what you hear around here we could use your help click the subscribe button the follow button share the show if there's a share button on your platform to it that

way or send a link or let people know just to say hey people listen to the show you're our best marketing plan and a bunch of you have been doing that we know because our numbers are way up thank you very much for all the help mike's in dallas hey mike how are you i'm doing well dave blessed how about yourself better than i deserve how can we help hey uh just had a couple quick questions for you um me and my fiance we're getting married here and we've combined finances. We've got about $177,000 in debt, and we net before taxes about $200,000 a year.

Good for you. What do you all do for a living? So I work in construction, and she's a program manager for a wireless company. Excellent. So what's the 177 in debt? Um, we've got student loans about, uh, 75,000 on her end, 20,000 on my end. Um, we've got about $9,000 in credit card debt. And then we, the rest is two car payments that we've got. Um, obviously the, the credit card debt is kind of the biggest. She's got $2.30,000 cars? Yes, sir. Jeez. Wow. All right.

And so when are you getting married? Friday. Oh, wow. Okay, here it comes. This must really be weighing on you for you to call two days before a wedding. Wow. So how can we help? I just kind of wanted to see what y'all think would be best to kind of put our money towards paying down first.

We've got about $5,000. and savings. We've got 401Ks and stock options as well. So I think we kind of want to hold on to just the stock option side of things. How much is that? We don't. The stock options. In the stocks, about $100,000.

Wow. Okay. Is that in a retirement plan? It's not, is it? No, sir. It's not in a retirement plan. It's not restricted at all. No, sir.

Listen. So if you cash that out, you've got $100K. Yes, sir. And then we have to pay taxes on the back end. About $20K, that's mine, and $80K of hers. Yeah. So the way we teach is through a series of baby steps. Are you familiar with it at all?

Yes, ma'am. Okay. So then you know the first part of this is you go down to $1,000 and anything above that goes towards the debt. That's not retirement. That's not retirement. And in your case... That's $100,000.

Yeah, that's a lot. I'm using that to clear this debt up. I mean, because otherwise you effectively are borrowing on student loans to buy stock options. Exactly. Right. And I'm not doing that. Now, I asked about the money because we didn't go into how aligned you guys are on this. Obviously, you've started combining finances, but this whole idea of the baby steps and really what it takes to walk this plan to be successful with it.

when you go back to your fiancé, who will be your wife, you know, come Monday and say, here's what I want to do. How is she going to react to that? And do we need to talk about that? No, she supports, you know, we try to follow the Bible as best we can. And she knows that I'm wrapping my head around this, trying to get us on a right path or starting a family and buying a home. Cool. And so she's... So, Mike, what I figured out many, many years ago, is the basis for our teaching is the shortest distance between where you are now and wealth is to be completely debt-free because your most powerful wealth-building tool is your income.

And so do anything that I can use to clear that up, I'm going to use to clear that up because then I got $200,000 to work with to build wealth with. So temporarily, we're going to put 401Ks on hold. We're going to liquidate anything that's not retirement, including those stock options, including the five, four of the five grand. Now this is after you get back from the honeymoon, okay? We're not doing it between now and Friday, okay, but when you get back from the honeymoon,

and so basically I've got 100,000, now I got 77,000 in debt. I'd be looking at these two cars. And I'm going to be listing the debts smallest to largest, and that's the first 105,000 I'm going to pay off is the first 105,000 of smallest debts. So credit cards, the student loans are probably broken up into the several loans, are they not?

Yes, sir. Yeah, so I'm going to get them out as individual loans, and I'm going to list every debt, smallest to largest balance, regardless of interest rate, and I'm going to not take that 104,000 and go as fast through there as I can, and then wherever that lands me, going to cut up the credit cards, and then we're going to probably the cars are going to be the last two things you pay,

actually. Probably where you're going to end up. And then you're going to just attack those. You only got $77,000 in debt, and you got $200,000. to work on if you're both completely focused on that you could be dead free in a year and then you don't have any payments and now we build the emergency fund up to where it should be three to six months of expenses that's baby step three and then we restart the 401ks and now we start building

wealth and you're going to be in a really strong position to do that but what happens is that people keep this stuff they keep tinkering around they keep trying to hack find some kind of shortcut or some kind of hack, like, I'm going to keep the stock options because I like those. I heard you say it. And I'm just going to work on it over here. No, that's a hack. You're trying to find a shortcut. And listen, the stock options are not as valuable as you being free, mathematically. In no way does the math work on that because people look over here and they say, in his case, 100,000, I've got 100,000. I'm like, you don't have 100,000. If you owe someone 177,000, you're still 77,000 in debt. That's what math says.

Yeah. The math ain't math. Math ain't math. So there you go. That's what you say. So, yeah, that's exactly right. So that's how I'm going to do it. And what we're going to do is give you guys a wedding gift, financial peace university, and every dollar, the full every dollar experience, the paid version.

And if you guys come back from the honeymoon, start going through all that together, you got to start talking this through, learning the details of what we're showing you. And you're going to see how that in 10 years, you're going to be multimillionaires. If you follow this, if you screw around with this stuff, you're going to be 10 years and you're going to look about like you look now. And that's what most people do. All the money comes in, all the money goes out and they're just a rat in a wheel. They just run, run, run, run with no traction because they don't execute on a detailed proven process. And that's what we're going to beg you to do. So you hang on and we'll have Kelly pick up and we'll give you our wedding gift.

Congratulations on your wedding Friday. That's pretty cool. I'm with you. who calls two days before, three days before, not me. He's feeling the weight. I was not thinking about anything like this. No. He's feeling the weight.

Well, he's just a planner, extraordinary. I mean, that may be what, he may be the super nerd, and that's going to work to his benefit, too. Well, he has to promise us not to mention this at all. Until you get back from the honeymoon. Yes, please. Do not bring any of this up. And really, don't even reveal that you were thinking about this two days before the wedding. Don't tell that until maybe 10 years later.

Don't reveal that. That's not going to go well for you. Yeah. The names have been changed in this conversation to protect the innocent. His name's not really Mike. His name is really Joe, and he's not really in Dallas. He's really in Minneapolis. So anyway, but okay.

So I hope. You never know around here. There is something unbelievable folks about the power of folks. When you can choose extreme focus, meaning you're not doing anything else, you're only doing one thing, when you choose that in a culture that has the attention span of a gnat that is so distracted, everybody's looking at their phone 2,600 times a day, they're thinking about 47,000 things at one time, and they're not good at any of them. When you choose a singular focus, you set yourself apart from the general population. And we call those people successful people. That's right. That's right.

Listen, even Michael Jordan could only do basketball. We saw what happened when he tried to do baseball. It was kind of ugly. Yeah. One of the greatest athletes to ever walk the planet. He really wasn't that bad, but it didn't transfer. No. It didn't transfer.

He, yeah, it was. Got focus in one area The only thing he did is try You got to give him that But yeah Foufocus There's a power to focus Welcome back to the Ramsey show

Jade Washaw Ramsey personality is my co-host today Number one bestselling author Sean is with us in Tennessee Hey Sean how are you Better than I deserve days How are y'all? Just the same, sir.

How can we help? So, recently just graduated from college, bought a house, and started running the race like everyone else, and figured out that's not quite going too well. I've racked up about $125,000 in debt. That's between student loans, a car loan and consumer debt. And that's not feeling great. but it feels manageable.

The only problem is now my wife is going through school as well. So when she gets out, she'll have student loans. So you're actively taking the student loans out now today? Well, yes, she took out her first one just this month. And how much further does she have to go? she'll have the four more years okay so so you you went to she went to school you're in debt you can't breathe and so your plan is honey you need to go back to school and let's go further in debt to make sure we fail why is this a plan well it wasn't the plan until just recently it's not a plan it sucks

she should not be in school you don't have any money you got to stop it I'm currently the only one with the income, and this was before I found y'all. I mean, you don't have to find us to go, I can't breathe. Let's go deeper in debt. That was kind of what y'all's plan was. It doesn't even make sense, man. Yeah, what's she going to school for? What's she trying to become?

So she's going to school to become a pharmacist. I just recently graduated from pharmacy school currently right now at a pretty good job it's a hundred twenty five thousand a year okay that's pretty typical that's good so here's my suggestion hear me out because this is a big turn from what you're doing my suggestion would be you guys are together you're married you've you've both just finished school you realize that your student loans were a mistake couldn't you work for a while could she delay just a little bit while you guys start to clean this up is there something else she can do that's adjacent while you guys clean up this mess and start saving for her to go

little by little, because we don't want to repeat the same mistake twice. Right? Right. Right. I don't have a plan that helps you if she continues in school and is racking up debt. There's not a plan that helps that.

So it just doesn't, it's not logical to me. I don't mind her being in school. I don't mind her being the goal of being a pharmacist. That's all fine, but let's just pay for it. And right now, you can't pay for it because you're so far in debt, you can't breathe, because you bought a bunch of crap you can't afford. And now you're buying even more crap you can't afford, called her education. So you guys are really got to talk about this and change this direction.

I don't think you're going to, but you're going to crash. Yeah, yeah. You're going to crash. You're going to hit the wall, man. And it's going to be bad because you just keep buying stuff. Well, that's, it's, it really is insanity. You did a thing. It caused you to feel crazy and you're doing it again.

doing more of it. Let's do more. It didn't work, so let's double down on it didn't work. Yeah. It's not, no, no, no, no, no, Sean. And so not for your sake, man. I want you guys to be free and I want you to be able to live your dreams and all you're doing is creating a nightmare that you may never get out of. I don't know how long it's going to take you guys to clean this up. So, no, I would not do that. I would stop school. If I'm her, I'm going to get a job, making as much as I can make, you take on as much as you can make. You guys live on beans and rice, rice and beans, sell the stupid car, and let's tear into this debt and get it cleared up in a couple of years, and let's try to knock this out. And then start saving for her

to go to school and pay cash for it. And then your income will go way on up and you will have no debt. And you're in a position to build wealth. But, and all along the way have had a lot more peace. Yeah. And by the way, now it's not the time to buy a house and all those other things that people do when they... Too late. Enter the world, you know. Yeah. Yeah, you jumped in the middle of a rat race and acted like a rat, and that's not, man, it's a problem. So may even need to sell the house.

I don't know. Did they already get one? Yeah, he said he already bought a house, bought a car, and I missed that. I already did all that, yeah. Jen is in Mississippi. Hi, Jen. How are you? Hi, Dave.

I'm great. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Great. Thank you for taking my call. I'm married. I'm 60. We're in our forever home. It's a two-bedroom and started the debt snowball in January with 243, $243,000 in debt. On what? It was a lot of credit cards and different loans and a car and a boat. Is any of that the house?

No. I have it down now. So what do you owe on your boat? The boat I owe $68,000. Yes. Sell it. Okay. Okay. Well, I have a, there's been like a curveball in our life since we started all this.

I have the debt down to 150 right now. Oh. January. But you owe $68,000 on a boat. Right. Sell it. Okay. So.

You live in a two-bedroom house and you have a $70,000 boat. Well, it's not a small two-bedroom. But anyway, my, we recently last year got custody. temporary custody of our three grandchildren, and it's turning into permanent, and we really need to build onto this house to get them three, but to get some bedrooms. And I don't know how to manage paying off the debt and getting this built on $250. I owe $100 on it. Okay.

I would not build on to it. I would sell it and buy a home that has bedrooms. Okay. It's not a good plan in your situation. You have so many balls in the air, you're going to drop one. Wow. What in the world happen, kid, that you end up with these babies? Well, there was a death.

The dad died in a motorcycle wreck, and then they became homeless and living with four different people in a year and they had no bed they had no structure she the oldest one was 10 8 she was failing she failed second grade and was going to fail it again so we took um got got temporary custody and it's turning in to be full time so and i'm sorry you just gave your life away for those kiddos and you should because you love them and you want to take care of them you're well they didn't ask for any of this i know you're a neat lady i appreciate you

sell the boat and sell the house and go get a house that holds these kids we're going to focus on the kids not on your dreams that you used to have we have a new dream now it's raising these kids and everything revolves around that you took that on and that's and so i'm going to i'm i'm i would not do an extensive remodel and wait on that for them to have a bedroom that's simply put a sign the yard, put a sign on the boat, and then let's go get a house that holds that's got four bedrooms, maybe a different neighborhood, maybe further out of town, I don't know, but I'm looking for a deal. And let's try to get, you know, let's focus in on them, on those babies, and let's see if we can get them, get them back on track. Bless their hearts. Thank you for doing

that. I'm doing great. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. What's up? So my question is currently on Baby Step 4, 5, and 6. Married, no kids yet, but that is coming up hopefully soon. My wife and I are currently doing 15% investing. We're debating on getting your thoughts, I guess, on reducing that investing to the company match, which would free up more in our monthly budget to do on the mortgage because I currently drive 40 minutes each way to work and my thought is if I didn't have the mortgage, I could afford to take a lesser paying job that's closer to home. Why don't you take a greater paying job this closer to home now?

I've looked in the area, but we currently live in a smaller farm town and I currently work in a slightly bigger city. I just haven't seen any what do you make? A better income. What do you make? You're the one making the drive. Oh, sure. I currently make about 120, $130,000 a year.

So can I ask, I'm going to try to come at this another way. So you're saying the difference between the match and you going full 15% how much is that monthly for you? the number amount? Roughly $1,500 would be the less amount of investing in the extra to put on mortgage. And my voice is shaking. I'm pretty nervous. And how much time, because that's what's in question, how much time does that $1,500

save you and paying off your mortgage? It's $18,000 a year. What's the balance on the mortgage? We currently owe $460. Okay. So this is a long-term play. Yeah. So my question would not, would not be about backing down your 15% because that's so important

in the grand scheme of things. That's a lot of time that you'd be losing out on compound interest. What I'd be solving for is what can my wife and I do combined that will find us $1,500 a month? Is it a side hustle? Is it something she can do? Is it something that we change about our lifestyle? Are there cuts in the, do you see what I'm saying? Is there a way that we can get a lot closer to that 1500 without sacrificing something that's very, very important. Because I wouldn't want you to sacrifice something so important. Do you see what I'm saying? I do. I do. I have one other bit of info, and I don't want it to come off as, I'm not trying to brag or anything like that, but we do currently have about 150,000 invested total, and we're

both in our 20s. In the 401K? correct yes okay so my thought is we live pretty frugally um based on calculating different things even if i did nothing that's still going to grow to obviously a very nice nest egg obviously you're in your 20s and you commute 40 minutes correct that would be called normal i was going to say sure most people do lots of people commute an hour plus to go to their job? Sure. I'm not sure we're solving for the right thing.

No, I would not stop putting 15% away. And do you not like your job? No, no, I do. It's just the drive can just, I get it's not super long. It's just wintertime at everything. It's just, it can be long hours, just different things. So I just want to see anything I can do to not the mortgage out, but then also not having it. I mean, you're solving for in your 20s.

You want to drive 10 minutes, and so you're willing to take a $60,000 pay cut to do that once you get the house paid off. Even if the house was paid off, I don't think this is a wise thing to solve for. Okay. The tradeoff is not worth it. Now, what I might do, I mean, if that is that great a concern to you, move closer to your work. And let's solve the thing a different way. But this idea that I'm going to plan my life so that in my 20s I can make half what I used to make so that I don't have to have a commute. That's a bad trade, man.

That's a bad trade. You need to trade something else. There's something else needs to move in these variables. There's a handful of variables here. Let's turn a different knob. That's what I'm saying. The last knob to turn is your future, which is your retirement. Yeah, I'm going to put 15% away.

I may move or I may get peace with the 40-minute commute. But I'm not going to take a job under any circumstances in my 20s, half of what I used to make, unless I can't find a job because I, and there's like integrity problems at the other place or I hate the place or ethics issues or something like that. but none of that is up here. This is just, I don't like driving 40 minutes. I'd just be trying to whittle down that 1,500. Can I get it to 700?

Can I find 700 somewhere? I'd be looking at that number creatively. Yeah, but even then, the purpose of it is so he can quit his job. Yeah, you're right. And we're solving, that's what we're solving. That's the solutioning for it all the way through. And that's, I just don't want to participate in that part of it either. I hear you.

So I think, I think I'm going to solve this a different way. And I'm going to keep. putting 15% away, to your point. But even if you made more on these side hustles and you got the house paid off, then you quit your job over a 40-minute commute. I still can't get there. I can't go there with you. Austin is in Missouri.

Hey, Austin. What's up? Hey, guys. I appreciate you speaking into my situation. Sure. I have a question about a blessing. I've gotten my life. I'm a pastor.

And, excuse me, my church just updated. its PTO policy, so they bought us out of our PTO, and we can choose to take that in a taxed check or take it and have it put it directly into our annuity. And we don't have any debt. I'm sorry, you are in debt? We are not in debt. Not in debt, okay. No, sir, other than our home.

We own a home, we owe about $40,000 on it. I think we could sell it between $2 and $250. we would like to buy another home. We don't have one that we're actively working on buying, but we would like to. How big is a check? And I'm just going to $8,600. Okay. Let's pay the house down.

You only have $40,000 to go. Wow. Yeah, now you only got $30,000 to go. That's awesome. Yeah, okay. I didn't ask, do you have three to six months of expenses? Yeah, yeah, we've got about $25,000 in savings. okay yeah sorry i said that no that's okay i just mind to ask yes ma'am even with the tax that

that might come on that you'd say just put it toward the house oh yeah currently got okay definitely that's where that's where you are in the baby steps all lump sums that unless you need it for something around the house that's the other thing we're in baby steps four five and six so we're being intentional not intense and intentional might mean you need to upgrade a car there might be a couch with a spring sticking through it you need a new couch i don't know you may need for some of that too but if you've got it as free and clear and you don't have other needs for it before i would put it into the annuity i'd under your retirement i'd put it on the house yeah yeah and let's get that house knocked out you're heading in the right way way to go man that is so awesome

that's very very good so jade um i think it's good occasionally to recap on a couple of these things um when we laid out the baby steps and came up with that process and started teaching teaching people to follow that. We ran, that was 25 plus years ago. And we ran a whole bunch of scenarios down and said, okay, under what are the numbers that allow people to get their home paid off, to invest for their kids college, and still be putting something away for retirement? Right. And we ran the scenario, you know, at the time is a long time, time ago, like a single mom making 23,000, or a doctor making 230,000. Now the numbers would be different than that, but you still run the numbers out. The expenses are different than they were

then, too. But you wanted to work for anyone. Exactly. And oddly enough, it wasn't a biblical exercise, it was just a math exercise, but oddly enough, that 15% in Baby Step 4 has turned out to be the right number. It turned out because we ran like 12. We ran 17. We ran 10. We ran 20. And then the house didn't get reduced if too much was going in. Sure. Or 10%. It wasn't enough. It wasn't building up fast enough. And so guys, these numbers work. So you're not going to catch us adjusting them very often because they've proven out over decades to work. And that's work for everyone. All kinds of different scenarios. The 2026 Gold Planner, Ramsey Gold Planner, is now available.

And between now and September 1st Labor Day, you can get the best deal ever on the thing. $35.97. This is the best deal you'll get on the planner for a limited time. These planners go really, really fast. They're very expensive to produce, and we only do about 10 or 20,000 of them. and they always sell out very, very quickly. So don't wait, grab it by Labor Day for just $35.95. So the way this thing is laid out, we turn our creatives loose, and they have just a lot of fun in their own little sandbox there.

It's a beautiful, beautiful piece of work. And Jade has written, Rachel has written, and John Deloney have written the entrance, a little devotional, to start each month with. Basically, yes. And so you can open up when you get each month, and then when you turn the next page, you have. have on the two pages face up in the spiral bound you've got the entire month and then when you turn the next page you've got a week and the next page is a week next page is a week next page is a week to you get through the month and then you get a new devotional a new write-up by one of them and it takes you all the way through your year for 2026 it is a very very popular item

it's very well and I think you're going to really really enjoy this year's version as well so get yours at ramsysolutions dot com slash store click the link in the description. Get it before the first of the month because after Labor Day it's going to be 3597 right now. After Labor Day, it's going to go way up. Again, this thing is very expensive to produce and we just do a limited quantity of them. So be sure you get them before they're gone and before the price jumps up as well. Daniel's in Ohio. Hi, Daniel. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? so last month it kind of kicked for me and I just got really sick and tired being sick and tired

I've been like this before and that kind of makes my wife question if I'm serious or not but last time I had a financial advisor he actually idolized you and just everything that you did and he was very close to being a multimillionaire before he eventually passed away right after he was helping us with our budget. So I got real disheartened and stopped budgeting. I just stopped everything and just... Why did that not inspire you instead of disheartening? I know. I know.

And that's kind of what I'm feeling now. I'm feeling more inspired to do this. And, I mean, how ashamed he would have been. It just scares me. And so I'm starting my baby steps. I know I need to save my $1,000, and I don't think I'll have an issue with that. My issue is I went to one of those stupid buy-here, pay-here car lots where they are the bank, so they finance you through themselves.

And I ended up paying close to $34,000 for a Dodge Caravan. It was $19.9, but after interest, it was close to $34,000. Oh, boy. Um, I have been paying $175 a week for this van for the past two and a half years. And, uh, yeah, I've had nothing but issues with it. Um, so next month I'm getting a check, uh, from a job, uh, for $2,500. Um, and I was going to use that to buy a family vehicle with no payments and give the van back on a voluntary repossession. No. I just listened to an episode today that said you would never do that. Nope, I would not.

So I thought I would call. Okay. So the $34,000 is not the balance. No. $34,000 is the total of payments, including all interest through the end of the loan. And so that's not your payoff balance. So what you need to get from them is what the actual payoff is if you walked in there with a check today. it would be right around 14,000 oh good oh that's way better and what's the van worth uh it's

probably worth about two thousand dollars who said uh the transmission is going out you said um okay yeah i said okay so the transmission is struggling but and the vans but but you paid originally 20,000 and now you think it's worth two two years later that's a bit of drama I don't believe you it wasn't in the best condition when I got it I know but you didn't pay $20,000 you're not that dumb for a van that was worth eight and you didn't and so this van's not worth two now it's probably worth seven or eight okay you need to figure out what the van's really worth and get the drama out because if you turn this into them they're going to sell it for two and they're going to come after you for 12 plus repo fees you lose control of the sale price

of the van when you do a voluntary or a regular repo and they're going to sell it at below wholesale because it's what they do at those lots this is the scam they run so they want you to do this So now I'm going to find out what the van's really worth and I'm going to get it sold and I'm going to cover the difference with a loan at the credit union or wherever Even on a credit card if you borrow four or five thousand dollars and you get out of a $14,000 loan and a crappy van and you take $2,500 and go get you a little car I'm I'm with you on your general direction that this thing's got to go But a volunteer repo is not a good plan Okay. I mean, you're going to end up owing $6 or $8,000 more by doing this.

That's why it's not a good plan. You understand. They're going to sell it for way cheaper than you would sell it for, so the hole that you're in is going to be a lot larger. And then they're going to come after you for that amount of money. Yes. You're going to get sued for that amount of money if you don't pay it to them. And they will.

This group will. They'll come after you. It's what they do. It's their modus operandi. What's your hesitation? I worry like even if I sold the van I worry about not being able to get a loan to cover it my credit is at like a 574 yeah that may be difficult and you know you might go back down and talk to them and say is there a situation where you guys would buy this back

and let me sign a note with you for the difference and just pay them I'd rather you owe them $5,000 or $6,000 than I have it voluntarily repoed, right? Okay. So you talk to them, I'd talk to your credit union, I'd take out a credit card, any of that, because any of that's, you're all, at the end of the day, what we're doing is reducing your debt. So any of that's, we're just changing the structure of the debt and reducing it. And that's what you've got to do, man. And you can't just, you can't sign up for something this horrible, stick your foot in a bear trap,

then go, oh, the best way to get out of the bear trap is chew my foot off. No, you can't do that. You've got to open the thing, heal, you've got to fix it. You know, you're going to have to go through some more pain to fix the bad decision that you made when you impulsively did this, and you knew better when you were doing it the whole time. The whole time. Yeah.

So this is the price you pay for that, and that's okay. We've all done stupid stuff, but just, you know, don't compound it and make it worse now. you go you know fix it the right way the least damage to your foot after you stuck in a bear trap that's right and so so guys um when you have a car loan of any kind doesn't matter whether it's pay now pay here by here whatever the note tote the note people or whether it's freaking lexas motor credit and ford motor credit and christler credit and anybody like that it doesn't matter this is not a hertz run a car that you can just drop the thing off right and say I don't want it anymore.

They're going to assess that. They're going to run it through a repo auction, and I've bought cars at repo auctions, and they sell below wholesale. And sometimes they run them through Mannheim. They run them through the big auctions, the auto auctions. And they, you know, they say this is a repo. And, you know, and so you're expecting some dings. You're expecting some problems with it.

If you're the buyer, and I'm going to discount it below wholesale. So that I'm getting a deal if I'm the buyer. and so it's going to bring the least possible price in that scenario and then they're going to sue you for the difference and you've got a repo on your credit yeah meanwhile you could have sold it and and you know doubled or tripled yeah and cut cut the problem down so you guys i don't like my car anymore so i'm going to just drop it off at the dealer y'all can't do that okay you're killing yourself it's not a hertz renter car Today's Ramsey's show question is brought to you by

Why Refi if you've been turned down for refinancing your defaulted private student loans, you're not alone and you're not out of luck. Why refi exists to give people like you another shot. Go to yrefi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. not available in all states. Today's question comes from Savannah and Alabama.

She says, my partner and I are engaged in living together. I have about 200,000 in student loan debt, and he has 125,000 left on his mortgage. We have separate finances, and he's supportive of me getting out of debt. The problem is that I have a hard time watching him splurge on hobbies and travel,

which he can easily afford while I can't. I agree that when we get married, all this changes, and we've already talked about being frugal together. Is it fair to ask him to save now for when we get married? And if not, how do I manage this disconnect? He should want to save that. Because he's going to have to face the piper later. Yeah.

And it's going to cause him to kick the can down the road on the marriage date. Well, that's my thing. It doesn't sound like there's much of a date. She doesn't mention a date. And so I wonder about that. Okay, we're already acting like we're married and. every sense of the word we're living together uh-huh go get married like this weekend yeah that solves it which is what you should have done in the first place actually yeah the whole thing is weird

they're living together it's his mortgage it's her debt um yeah there's a lot of problems you're trying to do everything in the wrong order and in the wrong way so it solves it all just go get married this weekend and then both of you attack you know that shuts out on the whole discussion if you were living separately and he was making a lot of money and had no debt except his mortgage and the same question came up i would expect him to want to if he called ask us what to do we would tell him to save money like crazy so that as soon as he comes home with the honeymoon he makes a big lump some hit on that thing, right? Yeah.

And that would be the more normal way to, I don't know, normal is the right word, but it would be the more, if everything was in the proper order, that's the way it would go. Yeah. Instead, we've gotten things out of order here. He doesn't think that you guys are getting married anytime soon. And nor does he have an incentive to. No, he doesn't. So, of course, he's supportive of you paying off your debt.

That doesn't, that's no skin off his back. Yeah. And there's no reason to get married. He's got everything he needs. there you have it hello all right i'm just saying all right mya is in colorado springs hey mya what's up hey how are you all better than we deserve how can we help hey so i've got a debt snowball question so i'm getting ready to start baby step two and i've got all my debt posted out smallest to largest so i was evicted in january and i still owe that apartment complex about 14 000

Why were you evicted? I lost my job due to a medical complication. I'm re-employed now and was able to get another rental place with a larger deposit. Great. What do you make? Yeah. I make about 42,000 a year. All right.

Good. So you got a huge debt there, huh? Oh, that's just a portion of it. I'm about 53 in total. Okay. But my question is, my ex-boyfriend, my boyfriend at the time, was a co-applicant on that apartment with me. He was in another state. He never lived in that apartment.

He was just helping me out because my credit is so bad. So I'm wondering if I should get that one paid off first so that he's not screwed when his lease is over, or if I should still just follow the snowball and go smallest to largest. Well, he's already screwed because he's got a judgment against him. yeah okay so i mean when his lease is over that's going to show up on his credit bureau right so i mean it'll either show he's got a judgment had a judgment against him that's been paid off or he's just got a judgment because the leasy sign got evicted so that's going to yeah he's got a pretty heavy damage to him already he most of the damage has already been done

is my point right so whether it's paid off or not is not it is not really going to keep him from getting something over in another city. So you got 54,000, you said. What's the other debts? 53. Let's see. Let me pull up my notes real quick. I've got some credit card debt.

How much? Some other small personal loans. How much credit card? About 16,000. All right. That's 30 of the 53. what's the rest of it personal loans how much is that i've got about 14,000 on a car that was wrecked that i didn't have insurance on and then uh a little over 12,000 to the um

apartment complex and then just some other small things like old wife fighters that i haven't paid insurance i've been dead on stuff like that okay um you are paying double and triple for a lot of things because you're paying it poorly. There's a lot of things on this list that are out of control things. A car that I wrecked. I didn't have insurance on. Other stuff I haven't gotten around to and it's piled up back there. So there's a lot of different crises represented in those things that you created by not

taking care of business. Yeah. Like keeping car insurance in place. That's like a priority because otherwise you end up with this mess on a car. And you don't even have the car anymore, right? Correct. What kind of work do you do? I'm a dog groomer.

A dog groomer, okay. And I'm just trying to understand how this all originated, how this kind of started spiraling out, like Dave was saying, where that instability came from. Is it coming from dog grooming as a profession, or is it coming from something else? No, so in November, I was diagnosed with a disease that prevents me from driving. and I'm a mobile dog groomer. Now it's managed and medicated and I'm back to work, but that's kind of when all of that happens. Okay.

I wasn't able to pay the rent and the car insurance and everything just quickly piled up. The credit card debt is just for me being irresponsible. And you've cut them up since. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So, okay. Yeah, no, I'm going to work the debt snowball straight up.

List your debts, smallest, the largest, pay minimum payments on air. everything but the little ones and attack the little ones with a vengeance and work your way straight through as fast as you can. Are you on a salary at 42? No, I make around 800 a week, depending on, you know, tips and all that sort of stuff. Right, okay. Are you able to work more than you're working? So the branch in Colorado Springs just opened.

About two weeks ago, I was able to pick up a third day, and as it grows, I'll be able to pick up more work. A third day? Yeah, I currently work three days a week. What are you doing with the other four days? I door dash take care of my kid in my home. Didn't sound like it. Didn't sound like it to me.

It sounded like you're doing nothing. Pretty much, yeah. Listen, you're broke. You've got to be working, girl. Yeah. All the time. Okay. How old is your baby?

She's three And who takes care of them when you're working? My fiancé Okay Okay, when are you getting married That is to be determined Depending on how long it takes us to not be broke That's how, no, that's how fiancé works

We have a date Otherwise we have a promise that is not got a date Okay And so, yeah, that's an issue. How long have you all been engaged? November. Being debt-free is not required to get married in the state of Colorado. This is true.

Okay. So what does he make? Right now he's not working because he was in a motorcycle wreck. Okay. Y'all are a hot mess. How is he taking care of a baby? I mean a three year old Yeah I mean he can Manage you can work I think you both need to work more

A lot more Yeah That's why I asked the question before Less partying More working Lots more working Money comes from work You need money

You need money Welcome back to the Ramsey show. Jade Washaw, Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling author, is my co-host today. Andreas is with us in Austin, Texas. Hey, Andreas, how are you? Hey, Dave, thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can we help?

Well, I need your help trying to figure out how to retire my wife. We have, we had a baby a few months ago, and it's now time for her to go back into the office. and every time she leads for the office, I can see it in her eyes. It's killing her to go to the office. And I would love nothing more than to work, you know, and just take, I mean, sorry, I am working, but, you know, take care of all the bills and do all that.

The problem is she makes more money than I do and not buy a small margin. She's in software. I'm in construction. And so I'm trying to figure out, you know, I make $5,000 take home. What does she make? $7,200 a month.

Okay. And can you live on $5,000 a month? Uh, we have to figure it out. We got a mortgage, but no other payments. How much is your mortgage? A mortgage by $3,441. You can't live in that house. You can't live in that house if she's at home.

That's the big picture to this. That's the big key to this is, you know, You'd have to sell the house. You'd have to downsize, and it'd have to be something to where the mortgage is no more than 25% of $5,000, take-home pay. $1,250. $1,250. Half the house. We do have various investments.

We have about $415,000. In what? We have about some of it's retirement, about 60 for each of us in 401Ks. then the rest of it is in brokerage accounts and some company stocks. Which totals what? The non-retirement totals how much? So it would be 412 minus about 120. So let's call it 300 grand, okay?

So what's your loan balance on the mortgage? We owe 269. We have about 200,000 in equity. so if you paid off the mortgage with your brokerage account you don't know mortgage now you got $5,000 that's better than selling it that's extra information we didn't have early in the conversation that's a big piece of it yeah yeah I think you should probably do that anyway you should do that anyway the money so is that yeah what now that's an excuse so I mean Having the money and the, you know, invested is not, that doesn't make more than, because I think our interest rate on the house is 6%, but the average return on the investment should be like seven or something for the year, right?

Sure, but you said, you opened the call with saying you are looking for a way to, to use your words, retire your wife, but she wants to be a stay-at-home mom and you were looking at how can I do that? And we were saying, here's the solution to what you're saying. Now, to Dave's point, we would have told you to do that regardless because it's non-retirement funds, it's stock, and you still have the debt of your home laying around. So we probably would have suggested that to you, regardless of the fact. No one has ever, no millionaire that we've ever interviewed, Andreas has said the way I got rich was I borrowed money on my house and invested it in a brokerage account. Zero. Zero millionaires say that. Right.

So that's mythology from TikTok. okay this doesn't work because in the real world we have this thing called risk and babies so if we paid off your house how much other debt do you have nothing we own our cars we don't have anything else no other so without a house payment sit down and do a budget with your wife tonight on the every dollar app and commit to living on your income and not a dime more And just to drive this solution home, I just wanted to ask, did you have any suggestions of how you could do it? Well, I mean, so here's another factor. Because she's in software, her next, she should be getting her trajectory, she should be making $400,000 like pretty soon.

Okay. So I'm just wondering if we can't move the assets that we currently have around. And, of course, I'm going to do my best to get my money up, too. But just if we can do something here just with what we have to get to that point where she can step away from that job, you know, in the next five or five years or so. So you're saying, can we push? I'm so confused. You are so screwed up on your goals. You need to decide what it is you want, honey.

You called up and said my wife's eyes when she leaves a brand new baby she just has, I want to retire my wife. We just told you how to do that. Now you've got her work in five more years. I'm confused. Well, that's the biggest question is, is this her saying to you, I want to stay at home? Or is this something you've put in your brain that you want to, like, surprise her with? She has expressed, you know, not demanded, but express it would be nice to have that option. Sorry, I may have not be clear.

Y'all got to sit down tonight and figure out what you want to do. Does she want to work and make $400K or does she want to be at home? Yeah, clearly. You need to pay off the house either. way and you know figure out if you can live on five grand dude and then you work your career and get your career up and some day she goes back to work by then her software skills will be completely irrelevant and she gets to start completely over so um if she steps out you don't get to step out of that world for five minutes much less five years and so that world's cutting edge

bleeding edge changes every 10 minutes and so um the number of things that that the people in this building that do software engineering are doing today that they did five years ago is zero nothing is the same and so um about the time i start understanding a little bit of what they're doing it's over then i have to start again so uh yeah that's but that that that's okay it's um but it's not a skill set that you can put on the shelf and take back off the shelf later uh you know it's not like i'm a nurse you know anatomy he's not going to change when you come back five years later, okay? But the, and, you know, there may be a few medical procedures that are different or something

like that, but nursing will still be nursing five years later. You can put that one on the shelf, keep your certs active, go back to work when the kid goes to kindergarten. That's not an unusual thing. People do that stuff all the time. This one, you're just saying, I'd rather be home than make 400K, and that's not, that's perfectly okay. But you don't want to enter that on assumptions is all I'm saying.

No, you don't want to go, we're going to do this and hope it works out. you need to lay down this is what the budget looks like on $5,000 and this is what we are both willing to do. Yeah. And if you're not willing to do that, then don't quit. Yeah. And weigh out all the opportunity costs on that because $400,000 is a big income and I'm not saying money is everything. But to Dave's point, there's a lot to be weighed and considered there. Kind of like what you said in the first segment about you have to make a decision with the end in mind. I'm pretty sure 98% I make that number up of 99.9% of the ladies who have their first child and when they go back to work, it's very difficult. Yes.

Now, I have a lady working here that just had her third child and she couldn't wait to come back to work. Listen, you did not lie, Dave. There is no lie. So it, you know, I'm talking to get out of the house. It's a normal thing to have this, you know, have this angst. And if you're a career lady, that's a normal thing. And so you just got to work through what's real here. Are you staying on track with your baby steps?

You can take a quick quiz to check your progress and receive. a personalized plan just for you simply head to the show notes click the link titled are you on track with the baby steps and complete the free quiz and we'll send you a personalized plan Nicole is in Utah hi Nicole how are you I'm so good thank you so much for taking my call how are you better than I deserve how can we help good I'm so excited I can't I'm a little nervous Okay, so I have a question. My husband and I are on baby step number two. We've gone through a lot of, we've got a lot of medical and credit card debt.

I hadn't really got a health problem with the last three to four years. So now we're just struggling to pay all our credit cards and our medical bills. I was listening to you earlier and somebody called in and you told them to stop contributing to the 401k in those kind of cases. Is that right? Yes. Okay, my question is, would it be smart or really stupid to take that 401k money out to help with the debts and the monthly payment? I would not take the money out of the 401k that you have stocked up thus far, but I would stop contributing to it. How much are you currently contributing? We stopped contributing about a month ago, so we're not contributing anymore.

How much debt have you got on credit cards and medical bills? In credit cards, we've got close to 20,000 in medical debt. It's probably 4,000. Okay. And how much do you own your cars? We don't owe any in our cards. We drug dealers or 2004. Good.

What's your household income? It's about 115. for my husband and I make like 12 I just do part-time work okay so are you are you still ill um no I'm I'm feeling better and I I'm able to work now um full time so I'm slowly increasing that which is helping a little good okay um if you're all better now why are you slowly increasing it uh just just to just to get my momentum up back to where I'm 100% functioning I had a knee replacement during knee surgeries and carpal tunnel. So it's like kind of fresh and I still have to recover from it a little bit.

When did you have your knee replaced? A year ago. You should be back functioning. It does not take a year to do a knee replacement rehab. Well, it also depends on what kind of work you're trying to do. Yeah, I actually work as a lunch lady at this school and I also on the side do door dash deliveries. just to try and make the money. So this for you is a lot of standing, a lot of lifting.

I still agree with Dave. I feel like you should be ready if you've done the physical therapy. Yeah. What's the doctor say? The doctors, I don't say much at all. They're not my favorite people. They'll let you know if they're clear to work. Yeah, I mean.

Yeah, yeah, I'm clear to work for sure. Yeah, and so you need, we don't need to be door-dashing and lunch lady we need a real job and start getting some money coming in. And you guys aren't managing the 115 very well either. This should not, 24,000 should not be killing you if you make $115,000 plus your income. I agree. I think you're not on a budget. Am I right?

I know you're not on a budget. Okay. So we're going to have a written down one, but we don't follow it very well. Yeah, it's not the same. We're going to hook you up with every dollar, all new every dollar. It's the best budgeting app out there. but not only that, it's going to help you walk through what we're teaching you here. Okay, so at the end of this call, as long as you open every dollar,

it's going to pick up where we left off and keep you on track, okay? But you have to promise that you're going to log in and on board. No more eating out, no more vacations, and you need a full-time job. Yeah. Now. Okay. Now, a year after a knee replacement, you need a full-time job. And your family needs the income, and you guys need to clean this.

mess up. So it sounds like talking to you that your body has recovered more than your emotions from the medical problems. You hit the nail on the head there, yeah. Okay. I don't blame you. I'm a wuss when it comes to pain. So my wife is like a Navy SEAL, and I get a hangnail, and I'm an ICU. So I get that, but I think it's going to be really good for your emotions and everything. your energy level will go up when you've got something to a harness to lean into to pull. And so go do that. Go do something now. And the more activity you have, the more endorphins are released, the more some of the cloud,

the fog starts to lift and you go on. And so hard work actually solves a lot of stuff in this situation. But yeah, you guys need to get that 115 barking and then you add another 50 to it. And you guys are not only going to pay off this debt, you're going to build an emergency fund. you're going to start building wealth, and that's where we're headed with this. So let's go somewhere with this rather than simply survival and trying to find some hacks so we don't have to deal with our disorganization, like borrowing on your 401k or cashing out your 401k.

You're not going to do that. That doesn't make sense. You have enough money to get this paid off very, very quickly. You should be debt-free in under a year. Amen. Maybe around six months, depending on what you make at your new job. Full-time job, big-girl job. Like get up eight o'clock to morning, go to work, come home, five o'clock.

You'll feel better. Yeah, real job. And it's not lunchroom job. Go do something. I don't care what you're doing. Customer service, I don't care what you're doing. You don't have to do something that's necessarily physically exerting, but you've got to go get engaged for 40 freaking hours a week. And DoorDash is a cop out.

And go get her done, girl. It's going to be good for you. Cynthia is in Panama City, Florida. Hi, Cynthia. How are you? Hi, Dave. doing better than I deserve. How are you? Just the same. How can I help? Great. Great. Well, I wanted to say, first of all, and I'm kind of nervous. I hope that I can

word this so that it's understood. And I wanted to say, thank you for teaching me how to become a millionaire. I believe in the Bible. I believe your advice, and I believe I will become a millionaire. So thank you for teaching me how to handle money now. And when I become millionaire status. Perfect. And so my situation, I did complete financial youth university recently, and I'm doing the every dollar budget, but I'm stalled out on baby step six because I'm in a situation now where I'm a caregiver for my parents, my elderly parents, there 88 and 93. We went through the hurricane in 2018 that destroyed my house, their house. My husband helped us put everything back together, but he's passed away. And now my plate is very full with being a caregiver, and I never want to go through having to rebuild another house by myself.

My question is, should I sell the house, rent until I can make my next move and just make the proceeds from the cell until I can get out of this state? Are you living with your elderly parents that you're giving care to? Partially. I'm there during the week, and then I come here. Oh, so you have a home separate, and that's the home we're talking about. Yes. Okay. And so what's your current home worth? 370-ish.

And the reason you're selling it is because you don't want to rebuild it if there's another hurricane? I'm afraid that another hurricane will come, and not only will I have damage to my house, but my parents' house, evacuating them, finding a place for all of us, going through the, the hell that we went through in 2018 alone. You're going to do it again if you live in Florida. Yeah. Most likely, I mean, it's a... Even if you rent, you're not going to escape it. How long have you lived in Florida?

Your whole life? I moved in 2013 from Texas. And so in 2013, this hurricane that came through last, was that your first big one? Yes and no. You know, I had lived in Florida previously, but it was far away from the coast. That was Opal. Opal was just a lot of wind and rain.

Unless you plan on moving your elderly parents out of Florida and everybody sells and moves north, there's no avoiding this. Yeah, I mean, moving into a rental doesn't avoid it. It just means that somebody else has to rebuild the house, but... You still have to evacuate. You still have to do all the things. You still have to go through all the issue. So, no, I don't think that's a logical fear that I would deal with. I know it's been hell, and I know you've been wounded by this, and I'm hearing the pain in your voice.

I'm sorry for that, but no, I would not liquidate a home unless I'm moving away from Florida. Yeah. Buying or selling a home in this weird wild world. requires facts, not drama, and there's a lot of drama and falsehoods floating around particularly stuff like TikTok and so forth regarding real estate and what's really happening out there. You need real facts. We'll help you with that. We have a website called U.S. housing market trends that gives you simple facts, so you'll know what's really going on. Check it out at ramsaysolutions.com slash market or click the notes and click in the show notes if you're

on a podcast or YouTube, and it'll put you right in there. Jessica is in Massachusetts. Hi, Jessica. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

I just have a question, kind of more of like advice on how to proceed from here. So just a little background. My husband and I followed your steps. We paid off all of our debt, and thank you for, the leadership in that way to get us through to where we are now. Congratulations. I'm proud of you. Thank you.

So we're having a little bit of an issue with interpersonal relationships now that we are in a spot where we're kind of living like nobody else, like you have stated. And a lot of our friends and family members are kind of making, remarks towards us when we do do something because we have the means to do it um like we bought you know my my husband bought his truck outright and you know people are like oh it must be nice who are people some of it's mostly um people like my husband's friends um he needs new friends that's that's that's called hater raid that's that's

reiterate that's you know what I'm saying real friends are exposed when two things happen crisis and success that's when you find out who your real friends are so your husband has found out that he has acquaintances yeah they're not friends yeah so true yeah yeah friends know how to celebrate you yeah I mean yeah I've got I've got a friend that hit you know made made an amazing amount of money selling his business the other day. And the only thing I can think of to say is way to go. I'm proud of you. Right. Because he's like my friend. Right. Yeah. I didn't roll my eyes and go, all billionaires should be taxed. You know, I mean, really. Yeah. That's just dumb. Yeah. So is that what they're saying

must be nice? That's what they're saying to him. Yeah. Yeah. And kind of like making like snide remarks like that when, you know, when we talk about it. And I mean, it's not like we didn't try, like, when we first started to do your program. Number one, we don't need to talk about it so much. We just need to do whatever we're going to do. Yeah. Doesn't need to be a lot of discussion. But number two, if somebody does that, they get about two of those and third strike they're out. Yeah. I mean, if it really, if you really think it's a friend, which the behavior doesn't suggest that. But if it is something that you're like, man, I really want to see, then just ask him about it. That's what I would do.

If I had a friend that I'd been friends with for years and they started with this business, I would believe in the friendship enough to say, hey, when you say that, what do you mean? Because if the tables were reversed, I'd be happy for you. And I would just ask them. And then you're going to learn a lot by their response, or he will, and then you can take it from there. But I think what you've got is you're not real friends is what I think. Okay. All right.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yeah, I think you're just going to find out. I mean, you know, we found out during COVID. We had a whole bunch of negative press, and we found out who our friends were. And we found out when we're very successful, and we get in the Hall of Fame,

and we have another number one best-selling book. We find out who our friends are. But the number of times I'm going to tolerate someone calling up and going, well, look at you. You know, I'm going to be going, well, look at you, moron. I mean, seriously. I want to give a little bit of grace for sometimes people have moments where they do not show up as their best self. I mean, I'm just saying.

Yeah, but I'm saying call them out. You're going to be a little more gentle in calling them out than I am. I don't know about gentle, but I am going to call them out. Yeah, I'm just definitely, I'm going to be going, hey, you know, that what you're doing right there is just dumb. Yeah. Don't do that. And we're not going to be doing this anymore. So not if you want to hang around here.

So, you know, and if it's. it's family, then you just limit the amount of time you're around them. Just go, I can't hang out here. It's too much, too much negativity. You know, all you're doing is trash and everything I've been working hard for. It's like, you know, the one I love is, um, you're so lucky. Oh, that one pisses me off. That's your, that's like a hot button. I'm like, lucky's got, lucky's got work overall zones. What lucky's got. Lucky's got calluses. Lucky's got out. Lucky's got out of spent while you were sitting on your butt drinking beer watching Netflix that's what Lucky's got I got your lucky okay that gets me lucky's butt I I you know that I can

man that gets me going right there you're so lucky luck didn't have squat to do with this darling it was not luck at all God's blessings I'll go with okay and my hard work there is some corn in the field because we freaking planted some corn luck had nothing to do with it okay hello I tell this really bothers you yeah this one bothers me i can't stand it it's like and it's even it's even people out there just in the comments and stuff i don't read the comments and junk but that i used to get like in when i used to uh interface with people on twitter when it was new and you could argue with people back then it was kind of fun and i would just go at them you know because it's so

fun and then but then but yeah you know what i hate it's too it's a it's a combination of two when people say, oh, are you still doing your little budget or whatever? Oh, yeah. It's little or whatever. Demeaning. Yeah. Are you still doing that little business thing? Yeah, I'm still, it's got, you know, I got a little million dollars from it.

And so, as a matter of fact, I got two little million dollars. There's two of those little million dollars over there from that. And it might be three soon of those little million dollars. Yeah. Yeah. But still working on that little. Yeah, you're right. I hate that.

That's so demeaning. I hate that. It's like, aren't you pat you on the head, aren't you cute? Oh, you're doing that little. Aren't you cute? Still working on that little

project, you're still doing that little Dave Ramsey cult thing? Oh. Yeah. That one, that's, that's hilarious. Right. So here's the deal.

The Catholics have a wonderful saying. They say that envy is one of the seven deadly sins. Wow. Yeah. And so jealousy is I want what you have. Envy is, I don't think I can have what you have, so I don't want you.

you to have it. That's diabolical. It's diabolical. It's evil at its core. That is. And so that's the kind of stuff you run into, Jessica, as you start to win. But it does. It separates the sheep from the goats.

It separates the wheat from the tears. And it's pretty obvious. I mean, I got poison over here and I got fruit over here. And so I'm going to hang out with the fruit and the poison is going to have to go away. Yeah. Because they can't cheer you on. You are opting out of my life by being a butt. I'm serious. I mean, it's just how this works. We'll talk about it, depending on how long the friendship, quote, unquote, has been going on, be how gentle we are or how much we talk about it. But if it's a casual thing, I'll just casually not be available anymore. That's right. I'm casually not going to show up at your next deal. I'm saying that, because I'm going to hang out with a bunch of goats.

That's so good. Not the deal. So, yeah. It is disappointing, though, when that happens. It does aggravate you, but, and I'm still capable, obviously, of getting aggravated. about it. But yeah, you're so lucky. You're so lucky. You must be nice. Yeah, man. Just line up behind that luck and think about the number of hours, the number of airline miles. Oh, my God, the amount of time I spent a jet. Flying and going through freaking TSA and, oh, man, the stuff we've done, the stuff, the hard, the work, the hotel rooms, gross, grotesque, gross, instead of sleeping in your own bed. You know, you're so lucky. I don't think so. Our scripture of the day, Luke 637, do not judge and you will not be judged, do not condemn and you will not be condemned, forgive and you will be forgiven.

Benjamin Franklin said, creditors have better memories than debtors. This is true. Marcia's in Spokane, Washington. Hi, Marcia. How are you? Hey, I'm just groovy. Cool. How can we help?

Hey, yeah, my husband passed away this last winter or spring. I'm sorry. And I'm, yeah, it was kind of a bummer. But trying to get things put together financially. You know, fortunately, I don't have a problem in that we have money, which is nice. but trying to figure out how to be wisest with what I've got and I've been listening to you and you know hearing about I think it has turned the IRAs into to Ross and wondering if that would be a good choice for me what I don't know if it helps you to know what I've got going

how old are you I am 60 I'll be 67 in a week 67 all right And how much were you left in IRAs? Well, I got 1.2 in CEPs, 300 in IRA, and then I've got right now 420 sitting in a high 3.75. And debts are about 50,000 on our house, and that's at about 3.75. also. And then we have a rental in Huntington Beach that we use for our kids who are missionaries down there and other missionaries to live in. And that one we owe about 725 on.

And it does not create an income because you furnish it to missionaries. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. It's just kind of on its own. I have income. Um, fortunately, you're last, uh, conversation with, because, uh, we had a lot of years tell us. Oh, yeah. You're cutting out a little bit, Marsha. I didn't hear all that. You have an income that's what?

I have an income of social security of 3,700 or my husband. Uh-huh. And then about 30,000 a month from our network marketing business. Okay. All right. Good. Okay. So you got plenty to live on, obviously.

I got plenty to live on, yeah. Yeah. All right. And if you got how to be the wisest. Yeah. With the other stuff. Well, the no-brainer is take some of the high-yield savings to pay off your mortgage. The $50,000.

Yeah. Like tonight. Yeah. Okay. That's a no-brainer. The other two areas I do want to work on long-term, but none of them are a panic is I want to start get with your SmartVestor Pro or whoever's helping you with your investments and start talking about moving the IRAs and the SEPs gradually in.

to Roth because whatever's not there when you hit 72 and a half you're going to have required minimum distributions and you make enough money from the network marketing stuff to pay the taxes that are created if you move some money over systematically every year for the next several years because if it's all in Roth it's growing from that point forward tax free and it passes to your kiddos if you've got them or your heirs tax free and no required distributions on any of it if it's in a traditional it's going to have required distributions over 10 years on inherited and required minimum distributions if you're if you're alive and it's you know paying out to you required to pay out to you so they're going to get their tax money it's just a matter of when and

what it looks like here's another thing i didn't throw in there on that 300 in the IRA that's actually from an old IRA that he had with Shriners through whatever. So I have three years to decide what I want to do with that, if I want to continue it where it is, move it into something else. I don't really understand that. I don't know what it's in, why you would have anything that's three years. Well, within the three years, it's in Transamerican, I think, is what does it. But I got a letter, and within three years, I need to decide.

what my final place I want it to land. Okay. Again, do you have someone that's advising you on your investments? Not really. Okay. So jump on Ramsey Solutions.com and find a couple of the smartvestor pros and interview them in the area. We're not in the investment business,

but these are people that we have vetted that give advice that sounds like we did it, like we said it, okay? And that's why we're willing to put our name beside them. And they have the heart of a teacher, which is most important because I want you to understand everything you're doing or don't do it, okay? But basically I see two things, three things I want to do. One, I want to pay off your house today. Two is I want to begin a systematic move of the IRA and the SEP into good growth stock mutual funds and Roth IRAs. And I think you can pay the taxes out of your huge income because you're making $360,000 a year.

And I got a feeling you don't spend anywhere near that. you're right you're right yeah and so if you spend 100,000 dollars a year on taxes out of that and you're able to move all this stuff into Roth it's really a good move

and I'm going to begin to do that it doesn't have to happen immediately but put a system on that and the third thing is I got to deal with that $725,000 mortgage the mortgage has got to go away at some point and I don't know what you're going to do to make that go away whether you're going to use some of your investments

and some of your income to make it go away or whether you're going to look at selling it. Yeah. How long, I mean, what did you think when's that going to play out until having other people stay there? Well, as long as the Lord calls their ministry to be there, they head up a ministry called Circuit Riders

from Youth with a Mission down there, and that's something we've been committed to... Yeah, and what's that property worth? About $2 million. Okay. Well, I mean, another option is find a million and a quarter property that you pay cash for it and move them into that. Sell that and move them into that. That might be another option.

That's a great idea. You know, something like because that's not a bad, that's not exactly slum in it. Yeah, no, no, it's not. They live downstairs and then upstairs is a mother-in-law and they have four staff members live upstairs and pay rent also up there. Okay, which I don't know, I mean, I don't care how you do it, but whether you move to a million and a quarter million and a half and you pay cash for that, but I don't want you sitting there at 75 years old with a $700,000 mortgage for a missionary property. I want you to pay it off. Okay. Somehow or another, because I want that stability and peace for you because you're being so generous and I appreciate what you're doing and I'm familiar with youth with a mission, very familiar.

and so I know exactly what's going on there and I think what you're doing is awesome so keep it up but let's figure out a way to do it where it doesn't leave you quite so vulnerable and it could be that we okay we got 420 and a high yield savings we take 50 out that's 370 towards 7 and a quarter that's only 300,000

you may just pay it off out of your income reduce it by that high yield savings and then pay it off out of your income but I'm not going to be sitting there with a high-yield savings account and a bunch of mortgages. That money needs to be used to start clearing stuff or some other strategy. But those are the three areas if I were in your shoes

that I would be working on. I'm sorry for your loss. But it sounds like you guys have done an absolutely wonderful job, creating income and taking good care of it. So congratulations. And obviously you and he together have, left you in a really good spot. Yeah, so important.

That's good. So, yeah, three things. Let's clean up those sepiras and move them into Roths. Let's pay off your house tonight. And then let's start trying to figure out how we're going to pay off the property in Huntington or how we're going to shift it to a different property to where we end up net, net, net, net, debt free. And so, I mean, I don't care if you just pay it off and keep it. It's not a bad idea.

I think that's kind of what I'd probably do. I throw 370 of that high yield savings at it. And then, you know, $30,000 a month coming in, I'm going to just chunk that puppy and be done with it in about a year and a half, two years. I don't want you to hit in 70 years old with the mortgage. That's what I don't want you. Even if you got a million bucks laying over there, I still don't want you having a mortgage. So we've got to work towards that. That's the direction.

Good question. Good question, Marcia. Thank you for calling. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show and the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace. Christ Jesus No matter what you want to do with your money.

No matter what you want to do with your money, you need a budget. Start budgeting for free today with the every dollar app, the easiest way to budget. your expenses and reach your goals faster go to every dollar dot com today