The Ramsey Show - App - In-Laws Won't Listen to Their Snot-Nosed Son-In-Law! (Hour 1)

Episode Date: November 16, 2018

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Dave Ramsey Show. Where debt is done, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is your show, America. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Thanks to all our friends in San Antonio for a sold-out event last night.

Right at 3,000 of you hanging out with us. Chris Hogan and I doing a smart money event. We just got off the plane returning here to Nashville. And what a great event. A lot of energy. A lot of you watched. Another 15,000 of you or so watched with streaming

around the nation. So about 20,000 folks last night. And we appreciate you. We appreciate you hanging out. We had a good time with you. Had a lot of fun. And unless I am misunderstanding something,

and I don't think I am, that is our last event of the fall. And so now we will be shutting down live events through Christmas, of course, but they're still for sale for the spring coming up. January 17th is Colorado Springs for the smart money. Irvine, California, January the 22nd. Raleigh, North Carolina, February the 5th. Grand Rapids, February the 22nd, Raleigh, North Carolina, February the 5th, Grand Rapids,

February the 20th, Cincinnati, February the 21st, Atlanta, March the 14th, and San Diego, March 25th. I'll be on some of those with Chris Hogan or Anthony O'Neill, and the rest of them, Chris Hogan and Anthony O'Neill will be on. And so we look forward to those smart money events next year. The Smart Conference, of course, we're all due together, is a day-long event in dallas in january the 12th it is not yet sold out but it will be selling out very early it's currently trending that way money and marriage events with les parrot and rachel cruz nashville february the 14th a special money and marriage

event for the valentine's day celebration people coming in from all and marriage event for the Valentine's Day celebration. People coming in from all over America for the Nashville one. It'll be a lot of fun. Kansas City, April the 1st for them, and Des Moines, Iowa, April 15th, and Dallas, Texas, May the 16th. And then Entree Leadership Summit is completely sold out, of course, and that is in San Diego in April. So that's our little spring schedule.

Sounds like I'm going to be tired. So I'm looking forward to having you guys and seeing all of you all over America. Come out and join us. And if you didn't hear your city and you want to go to one of those cities, just jump in at DaveRamsey.com and look for tickets. They make great stocking stuffers. Carl is with us in Sioux City. Hey, Carl, how are you?

I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? Speaking of stocking stuffers, I have a question for you about giving, please. So my question is, thanks to your teachings and everything you and your staff do there, after almost four years of trying to eat an elephant, I finally reached

Baby Step 7 a couple months ago. Woo-hoo! Yep, right? So exciting. Congratulations. Paid off the house and everything, dude. I did. Dang.

It's exciting. Yes. So one of my motivating factors with that, because it's a hard process, obviously, one of my motivating factors with that is I love what you say about giving and changing a family tree. I'm single. I don't have any kids. So one of my goals after I finally made it to Baby Step 7 was I wanted to put some money in my niece's and nephew's ESAs. They currently don't have one, and I wanted to start the ball rolling with that.

So my question for you today, Dave, is I'm kind of butting heads with my brother on who should be responsible for how the money I put into the ESA is going to be managed. I feel like I should. He feels like he should. And I was just wondering if I could get your thoughts on that, please. Why would he feel like he should be responsible for money you are giving them? That's weird. I think he's concerned. I think his heart's in the right place.

I think he's just concerned that, you know, later on maybe I might do something silly with it or, you know, something like that I think is heart's in the right place. I think he's just concerned that later on maybe I might do something silly with it or something like that, I think, is what it is. Yeah, but it's your money. Well, it's a gift, so I want to give it to him. I know, but I mean, it's your money. Yeah, I'm going to give them money, and then I'm going to screw it up. Exactly. That's strange.

You're the guy with the house paid off. He's the broke guy. And I do have different views on investing, so I thought so, but him and I are butting heads on it, so I was hoping you could. I've done wrong before, so I just wanted to get some clarification on it. I'm kind of a control freak when it comes to the money that I am managing for God. And so I don't, we don't, you know, through the Ramsey Family Foundation, for instance, we don't give to ministries who are not transparent with how they handle money Mm-hmm.

Exactly. for Dave Ramsey to be paying debt payments through a ministry, right? I mean, that just as an example. And so that makes me a control freak. I'm telling them how they have to operate in order to get my donation, right? Exactly. Yes, you are. You see my parallel? I do. I do. I just thought maybe I was missing something. I think your brother's kind of weird, but that's all I can say. I mean, if somebody wants to give my kids money and they're going to control how it's handled, bring it.

It's a gift, you know? And, yeah, just that's strange. But, no, here's what we're going to do. We're going to invest it in good growth stock mutual funds. And, dude, if you don't want me to do it, I don't have to do it. I don't want to cause a problem here. I'm trying to be helpful. i don't have to do it i don't want to cause a problem here i'm trying to be helpful you know i don't have to do it and um you know what you can do by the way you could just have a mutual fund or two that you just open up and you just earmark

it in your mind that you're going to give it to them someday you might have some gift tax implications you might have some tax implications that it won't grow tax-free like it would in a esa or a roth but i mean esa or 529 but you know at least you know you don't have to just have an argument that way you just go i'm going to set this amount of money over here to the side and it's got my name on it i own it and i have to control it and all that but in my mind i've earmarked that for the kiddos and you could do that and then just go you know later on just pop up and pay for their college or something right so anyway yeah i just it's a little strange dude i think i'm gonna come down on your side on this you don't sound like an unreasonable guy um and when you are giving it is okay to be uh

you know to have a say in how this stuff goes down so that it's a blessing. That's what you want it to be. Hey, thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Dave, do you recommend only selecting one mutual fund per category or having several in each category?

One is fine until you've got several hundred thousand dollars. And then if you want to have two or three in each, it's fine. I mean, usually what ends up happening is you've got a 401k and you change jobs. You move that into a set of funds. And so I've got, you know, a lot more than one per category. But the truth is, if you buy, you know, a growth stock mutual fund or an aggressive growth stock mutual fund from one brand and then you turn around buy that same category in another brand you're going to see a lot of

the same stocks in the thing there's going to be a lot of overlap so it's not like you're getting pure diversification by having 19 different funds so i just keep it clean and simple um but once you've got maybe a half million dollars or something, if you want, if you want to spread it out across some other funds, there's nothing wrong with that, but there's no, um, there's not a huge advantage. Number one. Um, and, uh, number two, I just don't want to overcomplicate things. I want to keep things as clean and simple as I possibly can. Hey, thanks. thanks for following us there on Twitter, where that came from, Ethan. And I appreciate that.

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

That's why every day I talk relentlessly about getting term life insurance. Just go to ZanderInsurance.com or call 800-356-4282 and see how inexpensive it really is. Be the family that takes those deliberate steps to be different and responsible. It really does make you the hero of your story, and it puts you on course for better things ahead. Julie is with us in Indiana. Hi, Julie. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hello.

Hi, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, so six months ago, my husband and I were feeling the pressure of not being able to make minimum payments on our debts, on our credit card debts, and we fell for the debt relief program. Then two months ago, we were introduced to you.

Now we are so confused. We don't know if we need to get out of this, how we get out of it, how we even come to terms with being six months past due on all of these debts now, as well as paying for the debts that we've kept. Okay, so what is your household income? $108,000 last year. It'll be maybe around $110,000, $115,000 this year. Gotcha. And how much debt do you have total, not counting your house? Including what we put into this consolidation loan? The debt.

Well, without that. How much debt do you have outstanding, not counting your house? $93,800. Okay. How much of that is credit cards? $23,700. Okay. And what's the other $70,000?

Student loan, car loan, 401k loans, and cell phones. How much is a car loan? $16,800. Okay. All right. So the $23,000 is what's in this debt consolidation thing where you've been paying them, and they stopped paying all your credit cards in order for them to go into default so they could negotiate with them, and that's their debt relief plan, right? Yes.

Yeah. Yes. That's the them and that's their debt relief plan right yes yeah yeah so you destroy one has been negotiated yeah so they destroy your credit and they sit on their hands and don't do boo which is what these people do they're absolute absolute losers uh okay we currently have fifteen hundred dollars sitting at this debt relief place waiting for them to do something. Have them return it. We can do that. We didn't know if we could find a contract, if we can even get out of it. Yeah, we're ending the program, return our money. Okay.

Period. And if they argue with you, tell them you're going to turn them over to the Federal Trade Commission if you don't get your money back in 48 hours. Okay. Because these things get hammered by the Federal Trade Commission. One of the largest complaints of any industry is the, quote, debt relief industry, unquote, which usually doesn't relieve much debt, as you have discovered. All they do is destroy and screw up your life.

Now, what this means is that then you have to take over and start calling your credit card companies and start working deals. Okay. You make $108,000, you can do this, okay? Okay. And so you're six months behind on all of them. How many of them are there? Eight of them.

Okay. That's not too bad. So you have eight pretty severe arguments that you're going to have to have repeatedly. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's not too bad. So you have eight pretty severe arguments that you're going to have to have repeatedly. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then you're going to settle this in writing before you give them any money. And so you owe $3,000 to a card that's six months behind. You offer them $1,000, and you go back and forth until you get it to $1,200 or whatever, and then you get that in writing, and then you give them payment,

and you do not give them payment out of your main checking account. You can get a prepaid debit card if you want. You can have a separate checking account. It doesn't have any money in it except what you're dealing with because these people lie, cheat, and steal in collections departments at credit card companies. You can tell they're lying if their mouth is moving. And so just because they say they gave you a deal verbally, you do not have a deal. If it's not in writing, it didn't happen.

And don't let them have access to your account because they will freaking clean you out. They lie. We deal with them all the time. They're scum. Okay? So you've got to go in there and fight this through now but the difference is is that now it's actually going to get done as you've discovered these other people don't follow through right no no they were telling us for well of course when we signed up for it they tell you what you want to hear and they said in three to six months, and now it's been six months, and they've had one settlement, and they were telling

us four years. Yeah, yeah, nothing. And four years isn't going to happen either, because they don't work. They're incompetent. They don't follow through. The whole industry is just scummy. So, yeah, you just have to take control of your own life, and that's the only way you're going to get this done.

Thanks for calling in. Open phones at 888-825-5225 you know we've actually looked at trying to do something similar except actually doing it but the industry everything around it is just so scummy i just didn't want to put my foot in it i don't know if i'd ever get it off my shoe you know sean is with us in biloxi mississippi hey sean how are you how are you? Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking the call. Sure, what's up? So, I just recently started listening to you a couple weeks ago.

You're going to speak directly into your phone. I can't understand you. I'm sorry. I just started listening to you a couple weeks ago, and I'm trying to get organized here and get rolling on this debt snowball. I've added everything up, and I've got about $90,000 in both credit card debt, student loans, and auto loans.

But my question is, before I purchased my house two years ago, my dad financed some debt I had so that I could get into the house. I really bought something that I couldn't afford. And now I'm kind of stuck on how to organize it into this snowball and pay it back because I haven't paid him. I haven't been making the monthly payments on it for about a year and a half, and he's been putting the bill for me. How old are you?

32. How much do you owe him? It's down to about $8,000, but like I said, I hadn't paid him in a year and a half, and it's about $380 a month is the note. Yeah, that's what you owe him? Yes. Okay, all right. And, well, it would be fairly early in your debt snowball, wouldn't it?

It's one of your smaller debts. Yes, sir. Yeah, it's one of your smaller debts, so you're going to get him paid off pretty quick. Well, first thing I do is just start paying the monthly payments that you're supposed to pay but you pay minimum payments on everything except the smallest debt and you attack the smallest debt with a vengeance that's the debt snowball plan and so let's get back to paying the 380 and what's your income it's about 62 to 65 with part-time income. And how much do you owe on your car? Mine is about $13,000, and my wife's car is $33,000, and we're actually putting it up for sale. And that's part of the $90,000?

Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah, that car is gone. When I ask your income, I'm sorry, I meant to ask your household income. What is your household income? That is my household. My wife stays home with the three kids. Yeah, that $33,000 car does not fit in a $60,000 income with a $90,000 worth of debt. There's nothing in that equation that says you can keep this car.

It's gone. So I agree with you. Yeah, get it sold and then, you know, call know call dad and go hey i'm getting on a plan here and i'm gonna start paying you monthly and uh he's gonna say don't worry about it and i'm worried about it i want to get done so um we're gonna list it smallest to largest and when you get down to the that one is the current you know when you pay down the little ones above it um and you get down to that one then you just start paying as much as you can squeeze out of the budget at it until it's gone and then you move on to the next one, just like it was a loan over at the credit union,

treated exactly the same way, unless he's starving or something. Is he starving because you hadn't paid him? No, because, you know, he's drawing his military retirements, and he works full-time. He's got his money on point, and I don't. Okay, so it's not like you're killing him as a result. I mean, if he was, you know, 80 years old and couldn't eat because you hadn't paid him, I might put him at the top of the debt snowball, but otherwise I'm going to put him right in line where he goes,

and that's smallest to largest. We got rid of 33,000 just now on the one car, and, you know, get a beater to drive until you get this mess cleaned up and start to work your way through it. You got a pretty big hole here, dude, with a medium-sized shovel. You can do it. You're going to have scratch and claw. There's going to be some work here, and like you said, some extra work as well.

So, hey, thanks for the call. And if you need some more help, you call me anytime. It's what we're here for. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. It's common sense. Well, not always exactly, but mostly it is. It's all revolving around this idea that if you don't have any payments,

you've got money. And you can become wealthy, and you can be more generous, and do all these kinds of things. But you give it all to the bank, and you've got to stop that. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options?

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That's chministries.org. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org. Josh is with us in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Hi, Josh. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. It's great to talk to you. How are you doing today?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Dave, I just want to. Great to talk to you. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve. What's up? Dave, I just want to say thanks to start out with. I've been listening to you since I was 22 years old. I'm now 33. Happy to say my wife and I are on baby step seven. With that being said, we currently both max out 401k options that we have available to us. Additionally, something I've never heard discussed on the show is we were

informed that my wife's 401k failed some sort of testing and she was going to receive a portion of her 401k contribution back. My question for you is with that amount that we are going to be receiving back, I've already looked into it and we were told we will not be receiving any kind of penalty for early withdrawal since it's not something that we chose to do. It was defined as essentially an excessive contribution. Should we take that money and invest it in a taxable account, or what other options would you recommend us doing? Are you doing Roth IRAs as well?

Due to our income, we don't qualify for that. You can do backdoor roths the backdoor the backdoor roth is where you open a traditional after tax not before tax ira and then you instantaneously roll it to a roth i do one every year okay and you can do that with your smart investor pro they don't just tell me you want to do a backdoor roth and how old are you guys? 33, and my wife's 32. Okay, and you can do $5,500 each. Will that cover the amount they're sending back? It would be pretty close, yes.

Okay. What's happened is she makes over $120,000, doesn't she? And she's a highly compensated employee, and the 401K's got poor participation. Yes. And that's what's happened here. If you make over $120,000 a year and enough of the other people that work at the organization in the lower ranks of income don't participate in the 401K, they don't allow just the highly compensated people to put money in and the lower compensated people not.

And so they'll limit how much you can put in in that case. What this tells me is is that her company desperately needs to do some education to their team okay and that's where companies bring our in our smart dollar stuff a lot during these times because that if you can walk through people through the smart dollar they get on a budget they get out of debt and then they're they start their 401k at 15 and that that's if they're making $20,000 or if they're making $200,000. And she's got a large percentage of the people that make less than she does in her company that are not contributing.

How big a company is this that she works for? It's actually a relatively large company. Excuse me. I know that they had made some this is not the first time this has happened they had made some adjustments to try and alleviate this from happening moving forward and we were hoping that it wouldn't be the case and ultimately i think they were doing some sort of automatic enroll and some other options to try and get people to people try the automatic enroll all the time, but the bottom line is broke people don't invest in a 401K.

And so you can't auto-enroll broke people because they turn around and turn the auto-enroll right back off. They're not going to put money in because they're broke. And so what you've got to do, what she's got... I mean, like, how many? Is this 20,000 employees or 2,000? No, probably closer to two. Okay, yeah. We work with companies that size all the time.

Tell her to holler at our smart dollar guys, get her HR team on it, because the education is the only thing that works. You can't force people to save when they're broke. Now, moving forward, if you don't mind me asking, I know obviously we would want to still take advantage of any contribution that would allow us to get the company match. Sure. But you're talking about the backdoor Roth option.

Should we only go to the company match and then assume that it's going to fail and not max out our 401k contribution, or should we continue to try and max it out and if we get the money back, then do the backdoor Roth? Is the 401k a Roth? Yes, that's the option we selected for her. They have both options. Okay. It doesn't matter.

I mean, you're going to end up in the money in a Roth either way. Certainly, I'd go up through the match. But above the match, if you go into this and they punch you back out every year and you pop it over into backdoor Roths like you're doing this year, that's not going to be the end of the world. If you like the options and things that are there. But I really, obviously, she's a leader in the organization based on her income. And I really would encourage her to sit down and talk with some of the other leadership,

and especially the HR people that are managing the 401K, because it is an education problem. And when we come in with Smart Dollar, most of these highly compensated penalties get reversed because other people start contributing. The only answer is for the people all up and down the spectrum to contribute. Otherwise, you're going to get hammered with this every time. Hey, thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Brandon is in Las Vegas.

Hi, Brandon. How are you? I'm doing good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So my question is actually regarding one of my in-laws. They basically live paycheck to paycheck,

and any money that's left over, they spend that there in Congress, as you would say. And I'm going to have a sit-down conversation with them pretty soon. And I'm trying to get some advice on how to really start this conversation and kind of get them rolling on saving and kind of planning for the future. Yeah. How long have you been married to their daughter? Just a couple years.

Yeah, this isn't going to work. No. They didn't ask your opinion. Did they? No, but they are always struggling. I know. I didn't say they didn't need the help. I just said they weren't looking for help.

And you're in a pretty weak seat from a credibility perspective. You're just the snot-nosed kid that married their daughter two years ago. And so what I would do is change my tactic. I don't think you're going to be able to sit down and be Mr. Teacher here. I don't think that's going to work. Because I think you're going to end up just offending them, or they're going to nod like a bobblehead and then just go do whatever they want to do and ignore your butt um so instead what i think i would do is um why don't you just start some conversations that sound like um hey this is what me and your daughter are doing and we were really struggling

and we were really scared and when we started doing this and doing a budget and we were really struggling and we were really scared. And when we started doing this and doing a budget and we started, you know, we cut up our credit cards and we started doing these things, man, we feel so much better. And, you know, and just kind of drop a few of those things out there. And occasionally and then sometimes somebody will look at you and say, wow, that'd be cool. I wish I could do that. Well well i could show you how now they've asked okay i'm trying to trick them into asking you but don't don't don't go in in any way talking about how dumb they are they are dumb but it does not talk about it okay don't talk don't be you know instead go in and just tell your story about how you were doing some dumb things, and you were hurting, and you were scared.

And then when I started doing the X and Y and Z, wow, things got so much better. And their daughter goes, Mom, man, my life is so much better. It's so cool. And they go, well, I wish I could do that. Well, we could show you how. As soon as they say, I wish I could, now you've got an opening, okay? But when you call a meeting for an intervention with people you don't have a a distant an in-depth relationship with that's short term you've been

married a little while they're they're just not gonna listen to you i don't think i don't think it's gonna work so but let's try to get them to ask for your help um and then you know you could just leave them a book or something at that point, a total money makeover book or put them in financial peace university or whatever. And then let me be the bad guy and the expert with an attitude and all that kind of stuff. I'm pretty good at that part. So, um, but yeah, you, if you can just lead them into a handoff to, to me, then I think we can get them there.

But if they called you up and already said, hey, I love what you guys are doing. Would you all come over and show us what you're doing? Oh, now you've got the opening, right? Then they'll listen because they asked for it. But you're just watching them, and it's hurting your heart because they're hurting themselves, and they're broke all the time, and they don't need to be. They make too much money to be broke.

And, you know, you've got the solution, I understand, but they didn't ask. You got to get them to ask. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Well, if you want to check kids off your Christmas list before Thanksgiving, you can save up to 63% with our Christmas Kids Sale at DaveRamsey.com. You can get Financial Peace Junior, which is the box of teaching aids for teaching kids about money. $18.99, that's a deal. Or upgrade to the best-selling kids bundle, the Adventure Pack, $45.99. That's the Financial Peace Junior kit, the whole story time book set with six children's books,

and a smart saver bank to help them start saving. If you've got teens, we've got you covered. We've got the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox. It has everything you need for your teen to get started making money and becoming an entrepreneur, and we'll show them how to do all that. Check it all out at DaveRamsey.com or call us at 888-22-PIECE, 888-227-3223. Rich is with us in Phoenix. Hi, Rich.

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How's it going? Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I've got a real estate question for you. My wife and I had a big plate of life thrown at us recently.

We've been married eight years, had a bunch of debt, paid it all off, started doing some real estate investments. We were basically living debt-free in a house that we owned outright. I bought another one, cash. We own that outright. That's cash loan for us. We have a three-year-old. We wanted to have more kids and said, you know what, let's upgrade. We've always lived beneath our means, Dave.

I've got a great job, a decent income. And we buy this house, and three months after we move in, we start trying to get pregnant and end up having triplets. Love it. And so I'm glad you think that's funny. Fabulous. Yeah, praise God, right? Yeah.

Anyway, this house is way too small. We try to make it work. And now, mind you, the house we bought, I put 20% down. We've got a mortgage on it, but I'm thinking, you know what? It's a fraction of my income, the mortgage. I got these other two that are cash flowing. We got a fully funded emergency fund, you know, but it's too small, right? Now we're bringing these triplets home, and I'm going, oh, gosh, we don't fit.

We literally don't fit, right? So we buy a bigger house. I put 20% down, no problem. And this one's rented, the one that we're trying to dump. And my question for you is, if I sell this with the profit on the house and the cash that I'm going to get from it, I could pick up about $120,000. And in Phoenix, you can buy a condo. You know, right now, the rent on that one covers the mortgage plus another $500 that it's cash flowing. But should I buy it?

I could buy a condo and rent it for $1,300, $1,400, and I'd own that outright. Or would you take the $120 and throw it at the mortgage on the new house that we just bought that we owe? We bought it for $6,000, and we owe about $380,000. And what's your household income? I'm full-time commissioned, so it ranges between $220 and $240. I just said $200. That's right. Okay.

That's what I was guessing. So here is the deal. You are a hardworking dude. You're a sales guy, and I'm cut out of the same cloth you are a hard-working dude you're a sales guy and um i i'm cut out of the same cloth you are for many years i tried to out earn my stupidity and you make a lot of money and you've out earned some of your mistakes along the way you've done a really good job overall and you make and you make really good money and you're really really good at what you do so um and and i suspect you're a great dad too so um so you ask so i think what i would say if i were in your shoes is um in other words you don't hesitate to go for it you're that guy

yeah and this that's what this question's about do i do i hold back and backfill the household which feels like super super super conservative to you or do i go for it and buy the condo and uh i'm going to tell you to to go against your nature and let's get the home front paid off your next goal should be get your home paid for and you can do it pretty quick with the numbers you gave me so let's get your house paid off and then let's resume buying rentals with cash okay and just keep everything on a cash basis because they said that sets you up in a such a strong position remember, if you can kind of revisit in your spirit that moment in the story before the kid, before the triplets and all that stuff,

there was a point in the story, I think, that you were 100% debt-free, weren't you, house and everything? Yes, everything. You remember how that felt? Yeah. Okay. That's where I want you to go again. And let's get there, and then from that, you're going to be sitting, you know, you're going to be a very young millionaire.

And you're going to be sitting in a house that's paid for that's very nice in Phoenix. Your family's taken care of. And now it's just about monopoly. Let's just go around the board and pass go and collect our 200 bucks and keep going, right? And then start buying properties. And that's what we did um the second go-round first go-round i was just completely stupid and went broke but second go-round i just said we're gonna get the house paid off and that frees up a ton of cash um and i'm good at making money and so i just make the money buy stuff make the money buy stuff make the money buy

stuff and it's all paid for and it changes the way you handle renters it changes your sense of desperation i need to get this thing rented it changes you know the whole thing and so that's what i would do good question very interesting situation uh kirsten is with us in dallas hi, Kirsten. How are you? Hi. I'm fine, thank you. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

Well, so I am getting a divorce. And so I have kind of phased out the steps that I think I need to go through, and I just wanted to make sure that I'm aligned with your thoughts on the best way to handle the debt and save where needed as I kind of progress through this. So I kind of wanted to use you as a sounding board. Sure. How long have you been married? About 20 years. Wow. I'm sorry. Yeah, I am too. It stinks. But we move forward. And when is the divorce final? So right now we're in pre-divorce. The papers are filed, and I'm expecting it to be finalized maybe in December or January.

Okay. And we have a home. But everything, the issues are all settled as far as the financial part. A lot of it is settled because I've always been the one to take care of everything. So, you know, as long as I continue to just, you know, take care of all of that, I think he's mostly going to agree to it. You know, I won't know until the ink is dry on the paper, but that's what I'm sort of expecting.

I've got a friend of mine that does divorce counseling, and he says divorce turns a marriage into a business transaction. It definitely does. It definitely does. That's the phase you're in. And beware to make decisions on that basis and not on the basis of hurt or anger or wishing something wasn't going to happen

that's not going to happen or making somebody be nice or anything like that. It's just a transaction now. I'm so sorry. Okay, so what are you going to end up with and how can I help? Okay, so currently my salary sits around $92,000 to $95,000 annually, so I come home with about $5,000 a month. Right now, pre-divorce, we share ownership of the house, and we both contribute into a joint checking account to pay all the bills, all that kind of stuff. And I've been squirreling away money for a rainy day, as it were, for unexpected.

Okay, so before I run out of time, what's your question? Okay, so transition, divorce is final, but house is still owned. I'm thinking even though the debt is split, I pay the minimum. No, the debt is not split on the house. The debt is not split on the house. It's joint and several. Correct, just credit cards. Are you going to get the debt is not split on the house. The debt is not split on the house. It's joint and several. Correct, just credit cards. Are you going to get the house or not?

We're going to just sell it. Okay, good. So we're going to wait until it sells. Okay. Any debt that is in your name, regardless of the divorce decree, you are still technically responsible for. The divorce decree does not take your liability away. So anything that's in your name, know that you may have to pick it up. Or joint names, know that you may end up having to pick it up if he doesn't follow through.

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