The Ramsey Show - App - If You Participate in Crazy, You Can Expect Crazy (Hour 2)

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

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Live from the new headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. This is your show. It's because it's a show about you. The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Darren is with us to start off this hour in Iowa. Hi, Darren.

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Thanks for taking my call, Dave. Sure. How can I help? Hey, my mother-in-law is telling us that we shouldn't invest so heavily in our 401k and keep the extra as cash instead. What's your advice for excess income that we have and how is the best way to build wealth with it?

Is your mother-in-law a financial advisor? No, just the experience, I guess. She regrets putting so much in her 401k, and now she's concerned about the taxes that she has to pay when she pulls it out. So she says that she just would have left it as cash. Well, it wouldn't have grown if she left it as cash. Right, I agree.

So right now we're putting about 20% on our 401k. Wait, wait, wait. If you take $100,000 and it doesn't grow so you don't have any taxes on it, that's better than taking $100,000 and it grows to a million dollars, but you've got to pay taxes on it. That's stupid. I'm always happy to hear that she's wrong. We're putting about 20%, and is that too much?

Well, we teach people to follow what we call our baby steps. And baby step one is to save $1,000 cash as your starter emergency fund. Two is to be debt-free but your house before you start 401Ks. Three is to have your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Baby step four is 15% of your income going into retirement planning, and that would be Roths. It'd be a 401k up to a match, and then do Roth whatever, whether you do Roth 401k or Roth IRAs, and in good mutual funds. And above 15%, we move on to Baby Step 5 and start kids' college savings. And past that, move on to paying off the house at Baby Step 6 before we go all the way up to 20 going into your 401k.

So do you have any debt not counting your home? No, house will be paid off beginning of next year. Great. Well, you're really killing it it and you have an emergency fund uh i'm guessing since we've had all these discussions about cash you probably have some yep thanks to you how much cash do you have uh twenty thousand okay is that your emergency fund well that's the emergency fund and we got an extra five that we use to spend, and we get ahead every month or whatever. Okay, good for you. Well done.

Okay. Then beyond that, baby step four is 15% of your income, not 20, going into retirement until your home is paid off. Do you have children? Yes. Have you started their college funding? We haven't. Okay. So, again, 15% we would limit until we get something going on college

until we get the house paid off but my guess is in about two to three years you're going to be have your house paid off and have college funding well underway and you're going to swing back around to that 401k and roth IRAs and just max them all out um but your mother-in-law's math is bad. Okay? Okay. I mean, really. I mean, you know, one way to pay no taxes is not make money. That's the theory.

So if you make money on your money, unless it's in a Roth IRA, now, do you have a Roth 401k available at work? Yeah, I guess does that change? Yeah. Well, I guess it wouldn't change your answer but they're all we have all ross yeah so it changed but it changes her argument because there's no taxes on this growth right her argument's gone there's zero tax on your growth i wonder i mean so she gets no growth and pays no taxes you get growth and pay no taxes where's the argument yeah i think she doesn't yeah she doesn't know we have roth but then what do you do because i can't pull that

money until 57 and a half 59 and a half yeah if you start getting to where you have way too much money in that and you don't have any wealth built aside from that and you're 48 years old or something you may want to slow down on your 401k at that point and start loading up what we call bridge investing which help you bridge the gap between the that 48 and that 59 and a half thing how old are you now 32 okay what usually happens and what happened to me uh uh what was that you that I maxed out everything, and then I still had some money to do investing once I got my house paid off. And so I just naturally started investing, and that solved the bridge issue.

And so oddly enough, here I sit getting ready to turn 59 and not planning on cashing out any of it, continuing to work, don't need any of it, and it's all just building and building and building and building. It's awesomeness. All right. Well, thank you so much, Dave. I really appreciate your show every day.

Hey, I appreciate you listening. It's a good question, good discussion. And so one rule, though, is that we're not required to convince other people that our plan is smart. The only person that matters is you and your wife. Other than that, it's a theoretical discussion. Your mother-in-law does not get a vote in your finances. If you want to have a theoretical discussion about it, that's fine. Talk about it, and then she can go do whatever she wants.

You go do whatever you want. We still love each other. Everything's fine talk about it and then she can go do whatever she wants you go do whatever you want we still love each other everything's fine but she doesn't really get to tell you what to do with your money um you know that's kind of what happens you know the old uh wedding vows that you leave your mom and dad and cleave to your spouse so it's clear boundaries on it on this but i'm guessing this is just a dinner table discussion it's not like you were giving her a vote but just to remind everybody she don't get a vote she can have an opinion and especially doesn't get a vote if her opinion's bad in this case math's off oh my goodness i'm scared to death i'm gonna have to pay taxes listen folks here's the deal i

hate taxes i hate taxes so bad i hate taxes almost as much as i hate that i hate taxes because we give these goobers in washington this money and they completely waste it i hate taxes but i don't hate taxes bad enough to cut my nose off to spite my face meaning oh god i don't want to go make an extra million dollars because i might have to pay taxes on it and only end up with 700 000 of it oh darn i don't hate taxes that bad um no and that's not a possible issue. It's not going to happen. So anyway, you're going to pay taxes when you make money with the exception of a Roth IRA. There's a few things you can do to, you know, 1031 tax deferred exchanges on real estate.

There's a few things you can do. But this idea that rich people don't pay taxes is a bunch of crap. Rich people pay more taxes than anybody else. But they also got a lot more money. And that's how that works. So, you know, it's just bourgeois BS. It's like little man can't get ahead. Rich man don't pay taxes.

Rich people pay more taxes than anybody else. Just add it all up. It's ridiculous. So, you know, that's just garbage. You cannot fall into these kinds of discussions. Yeah, pay taxes because you made a bunch of money. That's a good plan. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. You know, I get asked all the time, at what age should I buy life insurance?

Let me be clear. If you have a family, if there are people depending on your income, now is the time to have term life insurance. Let me be clear. If you have a family, if there are people depending on your income, now is the time to have term life insurance. I don't care if you're 20, 30, 40, 50, or whatever. Your age is less important than your financial situation. If you have debt and a lack of savings, it makes no sense to risk your family's financial well-being based on the cost of a term life policy. Term life rates are just plain cheap, even if you're not in perfect health. And the best way to compare those rates is through Zander Insurance. Zander only sells the plans I recommend and shops among the top companies to find the best rates and the right coverage for you.

Call 800-356-4282 or visit Zander.com. You've got no excuse to put this off, folks. Bad things happen to people all the time, regardless of age, and it's your responsibility to deal with this. That's zander.com or 800-356-4282. you know i'm getting old when i see stuff like this i remember i started actually coaching people one-on-one a quarter of a century ago, 25 years ago. And that's when I learned that most people are paycheck to paycheck. They can't cover a thousand dollar emergency. And it's most people, really.

I mean, if you're in that case, you're not by yourself. It's most people are living paycheck to paycheck. And that's why we created our Financial Coach Master Training to teach people what I used to do with the one-on-one coaching. It's a program that will teach you how to help others get control of their money, turn you into a coach. And our coaches come from all kinds of backgrounds. Mainly what we're looking for is people who just have a willingness to giving away one free enrollment to the financial coach master training during the next webinar this thursday july 25th at noon central time

all you got to do to is register to win all you have to do to win is to register for the webinar. I'll spit it out in a minute. That's pretty easy. So register for the July 25th webinar by texting the word COACHING to 33789. That's COACHING to 33789. Kristen is in Georgia. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Kristen. Hi, Dave. How are you?

Better than I deserve. How are you? I'm okay. I was just calling in. I'm super stressed out about money. I'm going to try not to cry. My husband and I, he makes really good money. When I say good, he probably makes about $80,000.

And I just started a new job making like $24,000, but I get commissioned on top of that. And we have over $100,000 in debt. Over how much in debt? Say it again. $100,000. $100,000 on what? I think $16,000 of it is in student loans. And the rest of it is credit cards and medical collections.

So we don't owe on our cars. I totaled my vehicle in April and had to pay cash for a car. So how much of the $100,000 is medical? Maybe like $10,000. So you have credit card debt coming out your ears. Yeah, we had a surprise kid when my husband was in school. That does not explain $75,000 in credit card debt. We have a spending problem. My husband has a spending problem.

Yes, you do. He booked a $1,300 condo to go to vacation in August, and he just spends and spends and yeah how old are you guys i'm 33 and he's 30 yeah okay and you handle all the bills right he doesn't work on the bills no i used to and he kept spending and then he told me i was really bad with money so we can cut it completely off so i don't have access he got a new bank account and i don't have access to it and i only have access to my money and then i wasn't working for a year because we moved to a different state because he got a job when he graduated so do you have a do you happen to have a sister by chance i don't.

Okay. If your best friend sat down and told you what you just told me, what would you tell them? Probably to leave your husband. No, I wouldn't start there. It might end up there. But I think goob needs a wake-up call because your husband is being a goob. Right. He goes out to eat like probably five times a week.

You're $100,000 in credit card debt. Your husband has cut you off from access to household money, and he's running rogue. This is out of control. You do need marriage counseling. You don't need financial counseling. Okay. Financial counseling won't help you because you don't have any control over this situation now if you put him on the phone i'll give him some financial counseling yeah right yeah perfect yeah so the deal the deal is this he's mistreating his wife she's on the phone crying with a guy she's never met okay you seem like a nice guy well i'm

a fairly nice guy but you know this is the point your marriage is at you following me right are you guys in a good church by chance he's not interested his parents are pastors of a church and he was raised in all of his life and he's no longer interested okay he's got a lot of issues doesn't he yeah i guess you could say that so it's not something that i can you can't just fix this you can't just fix this you need to you if he you just tell him listen i'm i i have had enough of the stress i've had enough of your misbehavior and your irresponsibility. I am going to marriage counseling to try to save our marriage.

Do you want to go? And see if he wants to go. If he doesn't want to go, you go without him. Because you need a marriage counselor to guide you through the end of your marriage if it is going to be that. If he wants to go and work on it i think you can probably turn this around in about 30 seconds once everybody in the involved realizes how stupid we're being okay but you know i can't make him behave you can't make him behave and how long you attach stay attached to craziness is up to you i don't

recommend ending your marriage over this i think you guys can turn this around. I think he's just being an immature goob, and somebody just needs to smack him upside the head and get his attention. That's all it is. And you've tried, and that hasn't worked. And nobody tells this guy what to do. Right. He doesn't want to be in a church where somebody talks to him about what to do. He doesn't want to listen to you about what to do.

He just wants to go do whatever he wants to do as if there are no consequences. And there are consequences. There are consequences. When you sow poison into the ground, you will grow an abundant crop of poison. How long have you guys been married? Ten years. Ten years, yeah. So for ten years, every year this has gotten worse.

Oh, yeah. I mean, until we had the baby, we were fine. We didn't have credit card debt or anything. When did you have the baby? In 2015. Okay. So for five years, this has gotten worse. Right.

Yeah. Really bad. Yeah. And it's just, you know know we're out of control with our spending you make a hundred thousand dollars a year and you're broke yeah that's kind of crazy that's kind of nuts so you guys have yeah i'm not fussing at you i'm just trying to speak strength into you to say you have to you're correct to be stressed out you're correct to be worried but you've got to take some action now and just you need to contact a good marriage counselor um and you might contact his parents about who a good marriage counselor is in the area if they're if they're a pastor maybe they know somebody in the area that's a good

a good marriage counselor and then you need to announce to him that um you've had it with the stress and you've had it with his irresponsibility and i am going to marriage counseling because i want to try to save our marriage i think the only shot we've got of doing that is if you attend but i'm at least going to go whether you go or not you want to go okay and your marriage counselor, if you get a good one that has strong boundaries, is going to teach you how to communicate and how to work through this, how to give grace and time for this to turn and for that to turn instantaneously. But on the other hand, how to not just continually participate in crazy and expect anything to happen except more crazy

okay so that's putting up good boundaries for you and it's not just walk out the door i don't want you to do that but i'm afraid if you don't deal with this you're gonna finally just throw up your hands and walk out the door so go get a coach in your corner to try to help you and your husband learn how to communicate and help him learn how to, you know, make decisions in joint with his wife. You just, this idea that you're just going to tell your wife what to do does not work. And wives that are just going to tell their husbands what to do, that doesn't work either. That's not how a relationship that's healthy occurs. So, good question.

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Natalie is with us from California. Welcome welcome to the dave ramsey show natalie hi hey what's up um so first of all it's so exciting to be talking to you i've been listening to you non-stop for a few months now well thanks i was just wondering i'm working on my debt snowball. I have a medical credit card for $8,500, a car loan for $9,800, a big credit card for $24,000. And then my student loans are almost $40,000. And I'm just wondering, I know that I should be tackling the smallest amount first. Yes. My student loans are actually five smaller student loans. Okay. You break them apart by that. Okay. So, and in doing that, I know that you say not to focus on the interest rate, but by doing that, I will actually be paying off all my student loans first and then leaving all the high interest rate credit cards for the end.

That's fine. That's fine? Okay. How much is the – what are the amounts on your student loans? So there's five of them. The – from smallest to biggest is $3,700, $7,400, $7,700, $8,800, and then the biggest one is almost $12,000. Okay. So you'll have everything but the – I mean, you said credit cards are $24,000.

Yeah, my biggest credit card is $24,000. You have one credit card that's $24,000? Yes. Okay. All right. Yeah, then you've got that right. But your last two student loans will be the other side of your medical and your car, though, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, put them in order of smallest to largest. Because what's your household income? I'm a nurse, and I make per month I take home anywhere from $5,000 to $6,000. Okay. You're single? Yes $6,000. Okay. You're single? Yes. Children?

No. Good. Just two puppies. Okay. The puppies aren't going to see much of you. Yeah. You're going to pick up all the overtime, and you're going to go crazy for a little while. You can almost double your income by doubling your hours, and you can get hours.

Okay. ER, right? to almost double your income by doubling your hours and you can get hours okay er right uh no i work in the trauma surgical transplant icu i know but if you need some extra hours you can work er uh sure yeah in addition to that anywhere do you work wherever you want to work i don't care but we just need to get your hours up and your income up so that you can plow through this. So, because you've got, what, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 in debt, and I think you can be clear of all of that in two years. Okay, yeah. But that's going to be no life during that two years, okay?

Okay. It's completely doing one thing with your life, and that's cleaning up your life. Can you imagine what it's going to be like two years from now when you're exhausted and you have zero debt? I actually don't think I can imagine it. I mean, that's hard to get your head around, isn't it? Emotionally, it's just like you're kidding.

I mean, how old are you? I turned 31 years old yesterday. So happy birthday. When you're 33 years old, you're going to be debt-free and exhausted. Because all you're going to do is work from now until then. And put all of this money on this debt, and you're going to hammer it. We're not playing games. You have made a big mess, and you are going to clean it up fast.

The bad news is there's a big mess. The great news is your career field allows you to make a lot of money by working all the time. You're not going to see your friends your pup your puppies are going to get you know they're going to get psychological disorders because you're going to be gone all the time all the time you're gone you just work and get out of debt because then you're going to be free for the rest of your life yeah it's going to be so worth it it's gonna be so hard but you know what you're gonna do it aren't you i am you got this you can do this i'll call you in a couple years i'm ready to hear your debt-free screaming hey if you get tired in the middle of it and you need some encouragement or

you just got a question you call me okay i will thanks natalie m Mary Grace is next. Mary Grace is in Tennessee. Hi, Mary Grace. How are you? Hi, Dave. I'm doing well. Thank you for taking my call. My pleasure. How can I help?

Yeah, I'm calling because I received a letter in the mail that a database containing some of my personal information, like my name, my date of birth, potentially even my social security number, has been compromised, and I don't know what to do. Because obviously there's no way to know if they got my information specifically, but that could be really bad. And particularly they have recommended that I go to the three credit reporting agencies and freeze my credit. Is that a good idea?

Okay, it'll help um that's one of the things i would do the second thing i would do or the first thing i would do before i did that is i would call zander insurance or go to zanderinsurance.com and get the zander identity theft protection okay and then if anything occurs with identity theft, they assign a caseworker to your case, and they do all the work to clean up the mess. Because here's the thing. If a crook takes your information and goes and opens a credit card and runs up a debt, you are not liable. Okay. But you have all the hassle of dealing with some moron at a credit card company trying to explain to them that you didn't do this and that you have to get an affidavit from the police department

and you have to get it notarized and you have to go through all this crap. And every time they open another account in your name, you've got to go through all this crap. So identity theft doesn't actually cost you money. It just costs you days of your life trying to clean up the mess sure and trying to convince these idiots so that's what zander insurance will do now freezing your credit report can't okay anyone a future employer a future landlord no one can get it and so if you get ready to go rent an apartment and they're

going to check your credit you're going to have to uh unfreeze it and then turn unfreeze it back okay okay mine is frozen and has been since they offered that as an option all of my kids and my unfreeze it, and then turn around and freeze it back. Okay. Okay? Mine is frozen and has been since they offered that as an option. All of my kids and my wife are frozen since they offered that as an option. Because we don't borrow money, we don't have any reason for anyone to be checking our credit. Sure. And so it's no downside to freezing your credit. It does not protect you from everything. Okay?

Here's why the credit card companies are so stupid that they issue a credit card without checking credit eight out of ten times okay only two times out of ten do they actually check your credit so that's why a guy called me from virginia one time and got a credit card issued to a fictitious name named Buck Naked. Okay. This is how dogs that are dead get issued credit cards. This is how stupid the business is. So if they don't check your credit, freezing your credit won't protect you, right?

Right. But the ones that do check your credit that are trying to steal your identity will be denied and so it will help two out of ten cases with a credit card it'll help in other situations where they actually bother the lender actually bothers to check your credit and that's what it's all about so yes i would freeze it but more importantly i would get zander's identity theft insurance in place which takes which everyone should get i've got it on me i've got all on all of my team here at ramsey gets it as a employee benefit all of my family has it we've got it on everybody because identity theft is just rampant most people have had their identity stolen in one way or another

right okay so you're you're not by yourself it's just you know you just got that stupid letter in the mail from somebody that didn't protect their data well but there's hundreds of millions of people whose data have been compromises most people have now mine is compromised you know it's out there floating around on the dark web somewhere. So what? You're going to have a hard time convincing somebody Dave Ramsey borrowed money. That'd be funny right there. I don't care who you are.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Jim is with us in Georgia. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Jim. Thank you, sir. Dave, thanks for taking my call. I wanted to ask you if you could help my wife and myself make a change without making a mistake at our age. We are wanting to sell our home that we've raised our kids in. It's about $350,000. We owe about $99,000 on it. It's going to leave us about $249,000.

And after the real estate fees and such, you know, we're $228,000 or so. But the piece of property that we're looking at we want to purchase is about $180,000. And the reason it is, and listening to your YouTube, you've heard you mention, I was against this until I heard you mention location, location, location, and it's one of those locations. It's up on top of a mountain. It's a beautiful view. We thought of purchasing it, building a home there. Oh, so that's just the dirt. That's just the dirt. Okay.

So you're buying a $180,000 mountaintop. Exactly, but I'm 59. So I just want to get through this without making a financial mistake. I can take, I've got about, well, a ton of thousand, but it'll be more like 75,000 after the government gets their taxes out of my 401k. So I can put that money to it as well. We don't have any debt besides the house, all cars, everything's paid for. There's no more money going out of the home besides the house payment. But you don't have any debt besides the house. All cars, everything's paid for. There's no more money going out of the home besides the house payment. But you don't have

any nest egg? We have a retirement. What's that mean? Yes, sir. And those are just our 401ks. Oh, how much is in your 401k? Oh, um, mine's probably less than hers. Mine's probably

two. And then hers is probably going to be about 250 or so okay so you've got 450,000 401ks you got another 75 and something else is that what you're saying well uh yes sir i'm working um for the government we haven't paid social security some time so right that was that social security just going into that 401k. Okay. And you're going to get $228,000 out of your house and pay $180,000, so you've got like $50,000 left there. What's the house going to cost that you're going to build on top of the mountain? Well, I can't see building anything less than $250,000 to $300,000. It's just hard to do that.

Okay, so you're going to go into retirement with a paid-for house in Mountain with $150,000? Yeah. That's a little scary. It is, isn't it? Yeah. How much longer are you planning on working? Well, she's still in school.

She's actually in school for counseling after she retires. We school for um counseling after she retires we're still working like i said we're still going to work for another six seven eight years and what's your household income uh we're about 230 okay uh yeah i would do this but you need to really look at your budget on the house and see what you can. You don't have to cut it from. It can't grow on you. I mean, it can't be 400. No, it can't.

So you're going to have to set a real hardcore budget on this and, you know, pay cash for it. The house needs to be paid for. I mean, I need to look. You need to look down the road and say it's 67, 68, 69, we're making 250, and by then we've put X number of dollars aside. It's grown to X number of dollars as my nest egg, and I've got this paid-for property. So if I go into retirement at 68 with a half a million dollars in a paid-for property, you'll be fine. And I think you can do that with your incomes.

But you're going to get very aggressive on your investing to play catch-up because you're pretty much cracking and scrambling your nest egg for this deal. Yeah, would you do $15 or $30 to have a cheaper payment up there? I would not have a payment up there. Okay. I'd pay cash for it. Okay. And rebuild.

Rebuild your emergency. Well, you know, maybe i wouldn't either let me think i would because i don't borrow money that'd be the only way i could do it um but i don't fuss at people for a mortgage you know if you did a five-year mortgage or something like that to keep from cashing out so much of the 401k and let that 401k sit there and grow more that might be wiser because we're not tapping into those taxes yeah let's let's leave let's not disturb the 401k more than necessary but then put yourself on a five-year plan to be debt-free on the house okay yeah you see what i'm saying because

if you cash that out we're we're giving the government all that tax money that would have been growing for you to accomplish the same goal. If you're debt-free in five years on this house, you're going to be okay if you leave your 401k alone by and large. And I think you can do that. I mean, $60,000 a year or $70,000 a year paid towards the house for five years is $350,000. Right. Okay? And that makes you debt-free out of is $350,000. Right. Okay? And that makes you debt-free out of your $250,000 income,

and then you've got a half million dollars now that will, in seven years, be a million dollars. So that gets us there. Yeah. Okay. But that, you know, you really are reaching the edge of this. You can't throw another $ thousand bucks on top if you want to do that it's got to be something you add on later with cash after you're sitting there uh you know fat sassy millionaire right okay okay i just need to hear from you yeah you see how i'm doing that because here's the end goal the end goal is have enough of a nest egg to live off of and be 100% debt-free when you want to quit working.

Right. Or need to quit working, whichever it is. Yeah, the other part was just, you know, we could be totally debt-free in about a year without moving. We just thought we might want to move now while we're still young enough not to have to go up steps, have the master domain, all that kind of stuff. You could do that. And, you know, the other way you could do this is just tie the property up for a while and pay cash for it in two years, option it or something,

and then, you know, save up and pay cash for the build and move in it when you're 65. Instead of starting the build next spring. The numbers I ran, you start the build, and move in it when you're 65 instead of starting the build next spring. The numbers I ran, you start the build next spring. Right. And your house, you know, we've got to liquidate your house, and we're in this process. Okay. All right.

Does that look like a plan? Yeah, you've got a little bit of two-stepping to do. You've got to be careful. But remember, your end goal is whatever the number however the numbers crunch out you got to be you got out of this house paid for you know by your mid-60s and um and you and you need to have built a nest egg to retire on by your mid-60s and and otherwise you're otherwise what we're doing is this thing is destroying your future and we don't want to do that that was what. That was why you were calling.

You were concerned about that. All right. Up next is going to be Marie in Illinois. Hi, Marie. How are you? Hi, Gates. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure.

My question, yes. My husband and I are at a crossroads. My husband's 62, and I'm eight or nine years younger than him. And we've sold all of our businesses and we have three rentals. And we're trying to decide if we should keep the rentals and diversify or sell them all and invest money. We have our house is approximately $400,000

and we have $170,000 worth of debt. Okay. Are you getting money out of the businesses? Yeah, we have about $1.2 in the bank. Okay. So are you going to stay in the house you're living in? We're thinking we might want to sell it because it's in Illinois, and we're afraid the property value is going to go down in Illinois.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, you know, we're moving towards debt-free with this million bucks. Okay. So the rentals, do they have mortgages? No. No. Okay. Are they in Illinois? Yes. If you're not going to live in Illinois because property values are going down, then you wouldn't invest in Illinois because property values are going down, then you wouldn't invest in Illinois because property values are going down. Okay? Okay.

What did you say? I didn't get that. I said if you're not going to live in Illinois because property values are going down, it would not be logical to invest, have investment property in Illinois because property values are going down. If that's the belief that you're making your decisions on, to be logical, we're going to liquidate all of these properties. Now, I'm not sure that I completely agree with that.

I don't know where in Illinois you are, what neighborhoods we're talking about, those kinds of things. You've got to decide that. But if you guys are fed up with that situation and you're going to move, then sell the rentals, too, for the same reasons. And then you've got a big pile of money, in addition to this million dollars, to go buy your next residence and maybe to do some real estate investing with cash if you want to. That puts you in a position to do all of that. But that's what it sounds like is coming down the road for you guys, if you've made that decision.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Did you know you can now listen to The Dave Ramsey Show on Pandora and Spotify? For all the ways to watch and listen, check out our show page at Dave Ramsey.com slash show.