The Ramsey Show - App - Insight On Switching to a More Fulfilling Career (Hour 1)

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

The show about you

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. This is your show. Thank you for joining us, America. It's a free call, 888-825-5225. That call 888-825-5225 that's 888-825-5225 starting off this hour is julie in dallas hi julie how are you hi i'm very good thank you good how can i help um i guess i was just wondering um if we're on the right track, and then once my... You're a little bit muffled. Can you speak directly into your phone, please?

Yes. Is this better? Not much. Try again. Okay? Okay. Is this better? Hello?

No, ma'am. I'll tell you what. I'm going to put you on hold, and we'll see if we can get you a clear line, and then we'll come back to you. All right. Rebecca is with us in Canada. Hi, Rebecca. How are you? Hi, and we'll see if we can get you a clear line, and then we'll come back to you. All right. Rebecca is with us in Canada. Hi, Rebecca. How are you? Hi, Dave.

I'm great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Thank you so much for taking my call. I didn't think I would get through. Well, I'm glad you did. Me too.

Looking for some advice regarding career prospects. I'm 27. I've been teaching for about five years now. And for the last two or three years, I just really haven't been feeling like it's what God's calling really is on my life. So I'm looking for some practical advice in terms of how to go after what you want when you're not quite sure what exactly it is you want yet. What is it that you hate about what you're doing and what is it you love about what you're doing? Okay, so I love having the opportunity to lead a team towards a goal. Everybody who's motivated and passionate and really pumped to be doing what they're doing.

I think I kind of went into teaching a little bit delusional, expecting that most people would be on board to do awesome stuff every day. And unfortunately, I've experienced that there's not that feeling necessarily all the time. And I know it's not going to happen all the time. Are you talking about the students or the other teachers? Other teachers. Are you in the classroom? Yes.

So how does them being in a classroom and doing a half-butt job mailing in two doors down affect you? Because we're expected to collaborate with one another. And over the last couple of years, I mean, I've tried to do awesome stuff consistently. And instead of it being, okay, let Rebecca beat to her own drum, it's ended up being that I take a lot of flack from other people around me for doing more or doing things differently. And I don't know if that's an issue with my self-confidence and not being willing to ignore the negativity around me. But I think I would like to be doing something where, you know, there's that motivation. Do you like the actual teaching part? Do you actually like that?

Sometimes, to be honest. most of the time it's a no most of the time i would prefer not to be um okay so what is that the students the parents the process a combination of students and parents i like organization i like making sure that things are the way that they should be very outlined um, uniform, that kind of thing. And I like forming one-on-one connections with the kids. But overall, in terms of a large class setting, it's not what makes my heart sing. Gotcha. Okay. All right.

So we've learned that you don't mind going it alone. Right. You would prefer that to trying to drag a bunch of people with you. You're not a performer. You don't enjoy being up in front and being the dancing poodle you're all about tactical and result if you throw bait in the water you want to see fish totally yeah yeah you're you're um okay so i think you could do probably do some personality tests that would confirm all that something like the the disc model, we sell that on the website. It's like $20 or something.

I'll give you access to one and let you take it for free as my gift. And what that will do is, you know, read through that. Are you married? Yes, I am. And then let him read through it. The first time Sharon read through mine, she started laughing and said, Oh, that's what's wrong with you. Well, no, that is me.

That is me. That's not what's wrong with me. But, you know, so is me. That is me. That's not what's wrong with me. But, yeah, so, you know, you've got to look at that kind of stuff. And then that will start to lead you. I mean, if you hate details, you probably shouldn't go into accounting, you know, that kind of thing, right? And with you, you don't need to do something where you're trying to be in front of large groups of people. And huge numbers of people do not give you energy. Smaller numbers of people that are adopted to one set of tasks that give you energy.

You got it. Yes. But like, you know, my daughter, Rachel, for instance, is, you know, one of our speakers, teachers, writers. She gets energy being around people and being on stage and just generally the dancing poodle routine, right? The other daughter, if I had her do that, she would be like, I'm mentally, physically ill now if I put her up in that same situation.

So it's just how you're wired. And so you start to look for things then that run some parallel to that. You steer clear of the things that steal your energy, and you steer towards the things that steal your energy and you steer towards the things that give you energy. What was it that originally drew you to teaching? I was very much stuck in a phase of I'm not sure what to do. I was thinking HR might be for me. My parents are both school principals, so I grew up in an education family, and it basically boiled down to I don't know how I'll find a job in HR, and I know how I'll find a job in education.

So I'll go that route. Okay. Now, bad reason to choose something. Okay. Absolutely, yeah. Okay. Okay. Wow.

I guess project management type stuff, it sounds like you would enjoy where you're pulling, you know, running a project, especially if it has a defined. You don't mind. You don't need the routine. You don't mind starting and stopping new things as long as we've got a team that's working on it together. Exactly. I actually like that. Yeah, that would give you some energy. So, you know, in our world, we use a lot of project managers that manage a, you know, a book project from the top to the bottom or the launch of a piece of the website from top to bottom

and that kind of thing. And what they do is they pull all the different stakeholders together and cause the project to happen by leading through the details and the timelines of the project. We've got several project managers on our team throughout the building that do great work. And really, a lot of the projects, the efficiency of them has increased. They're very seldom the boss. They're almost always the person who coordinates everybody else together, but they're working

on a team that, as you said, cares and wants to be coordinated. They want to be pulled together. So interesting discussion. You know, let me send you also, I'll give you the sign-up for the disc. Let her have a free disc profile on our website. And also send her a copy of the book, Start. And hopefully that will help you out. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

That's 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Ben follows me on Facebook. What are some litmus tests you use to vet people who rent your property? We love pets in other people's houses. We don't allow pets. That's one litmus test.

Because other people's pets do not behave in other people's houses. I've got two dogs. I love my dogs. One dog's allowed inside, though the dog's not. It's a hairy dog, and Sharon doesn't want the hair. We have an outside dog, inside dog. We're not anti-pets, but as a landlord, I don't have any pets.

No cats, no dogs, no parakeets. That's one. The second one is, obviously, we want to see some kind of a form of job that shows you can actually pay the bill. We'll check your credit and see if you've paid your bills. If you have a bunch of outstanding bad debt, you know, I don't really need to be one of your bad debts. So we're going to check all that kind of stuff. Probably check your last couple of landlords and see how you acted when you were in there. And we'll interview you and just do a personal interview and say to ourselves, is this person crazy?

She don't want a crazy tenant they're kind of hard to work with. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. I hate to see people waste money. And that's exactly what happens when you spend hundreds of dollars a year on ID theft protection plans like Trusted ID, LifeLock, ID Watchdog, and any of them. Well, let's face it. Identity theft is a nightmare, and it's not going away. But there's no need to freak out and buy the most expensive plans out there because you think you're getting the best protection. Wrong.

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and your family. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Julie is with us in Dallas. Hi, Julie. How are you? Hi.

How are you? Better than I deserve. Much better. How can I help? I guess I was just wondering if we're on the right track, if there's anything that we can improve so that we're okay for retirement, I guess. And then my second question is, my youngest child is going to be going to school in a couple years, and is it okay not to work and not to really feel any guilt about it? Sure.

It's okay. The question is just, you know, are you meeting your family's goals, and what are the tradeoffs? And my wife is a full-time mom the entire time our kids were growing up, from the time they were born until today. And, you know, did not work outside the home during that time. And it's not because we're holier or not because we're something else, but we just decided that the tradeoff was not there with what she would have been making versus what I was making versus, you know,

the impact on the family wasn't big enough to offset the negative impact on the family. And so, you know, that's what you look at. Now, you know, I don't know if you're a neonatal surgeon and you can make $800,000 a year. Well, you know, we might think about it. So, you know, you just think about what it is that you want to do. Do you want to work? And then the second thing you think about is what negative effects on the family are there going to be. Some families more than others, right?

Depends on the situation you're facing. Versus the benefit to the family of you working and you wanting to work and so forth. But are you lazy if you don't work outside the home while your kids are in elementary school? No. No, absolutely not. I mean, you work hard doing that stuff. It's real. But I think you just weigh out what it is that you can make and contribute,

and is it worth the strain, number one? And number two, is it something you want to do? I mean, I've got a lot of high-performance ladies on our team, and they actually want to be here. It's not like they have to be here, and they're just working, and their lips stuck out, and I don't want to work. But I'd rather be home full-time. No, I encourage them to be home full-time if that's what they want to do. But I've got a lot of ladies that, you know, if they were at home full-time, you know, it wouldn't be good.

They need to be at work, and they're high performers and that's what they they get something out of it you know not to mention getting paid so it just depends on you know what what you want to go what your goals are and uh you know in the income that's created versus the offset of the pain in the household that being away creates steven's with us in richmond virginia hi steven how are you good dave how are you? Good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I'm going to try to make this brief, but I wanted to give you a quick background. My parents, they've never had problems giving like no one else,

but I think that they've had problems living like no one else so that they could be in a spot where they should be. People are kind of taking advantage of it. I remember when I was a kid, my uncles would come over and they would give them money. And I remember when I was about 13, they filed bankruptcy. And I think a lot of things were consolidated into the home mortgage and everything. But I've been telling them about you and that we're working the baby steps, my wife and I. And I found out that they are actually maybe upside down

or close to upside down on their house that they built years ago. And they bought 10 acres back then with the goal to let me or my siblings build a house on there. Well, I didn't take advantage of that, but my sister is looking to take advantage of that now. But the mortgage company doesn't want them to give two acres of their 10 because it would definitely put them upside down or even worse on the house. So my dad had even tried to refinance to a higher interest rate just to go to a different lender. I don't know.

He's really pushing hard to try to a different lender. I don't know. He's really pushing hard to try to get this done. But what I was wondering is if you thought that I should try to talk to them or my sister, try to talk them out of this. I mean, my sister's in the house now that I think that her husband feels like they can afford more. And I think that she's trying to get them into, you know, probably a bigger house. And I think that the real issues that my parents just haven't, you know, ever really learned how to manage money properly. I mean, they put a bathroom in this house, and my sister can move in for two years while she's saving her whole family when the house needs a roof, and it's needed a roof for a little bit of time now. So what you're saying is they have a lifelong pattern of bad decisions around money. And your sister's kind of picked that gene up, it sounds like, participates in the equation.

Yeah, and I don't think she's ever really learned to manage money because they've always kind of just been there and, you know, helped her along. And when they really need to be helping themselves. Well, I think the question comes down to how old are you? I'm 25. Okay. All right. I doubt you've gone over the tipping point where they care what you think. Right.

At 25. If you were 35 or 45, it might be. And that is an age thing, I know. Right. credibility to actually have this discussion and um and so uh the most you could hope to do probably is to use what credibility you have to get them to a class if you could get them into financial peace that kind of a thing because then i've got the credibility and i can from the video bust on them but i'm not busting on them directly. If you're sitting there at the kitchen table talking about it, it's they're the only ones in the room that are stupid, you know. And when I'm talking about it from stage, everybody, including me, has been stupid. You know, so it's a little more deflecting and a little more easy.

It's a little easier to receive from an outside expert that, you know, we've been making bad decisions here in the name of generosity. But basically, they're giving generosity a bad name because they're misbehaving and calling it generosity. And it comes out of that generous place in their heart because they don't value money. They value relationships above money, which makes them wonderful people. And I would recommend that you value relationships above money. But they do it to the point that they put themselves in peril.

And so these are very fine, kind, gentle people, I suspect. Yes. Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. And that's normally who would fit this pattern. I mean, these are not people who are combative and that kind of a thing. That's not who they are.

So I don't know that you can get to them because you're going to run into what's called the powdered butt syndrome. Once someone has powdered your butt, they don't really want your opinion on money or sex. And so it's hard to give your parents advice in other words and hard for them to take advice now once your parents are old and you're old too then that starts to change right i mean i've got a friend who's 60 and his you know a mother is in her 80s and in a nursing home and you know it's role reversal time there but that's different than 25 and 45 or something so um you're gonna have a hard time with that. The best you can do is say, hey, guys, before you make this decision,

would you just do one thing for me? Because I've watched you guys struggle all these years. I've watched all the decisions and how much pain you've had and how kind and generous you've been and yet how much pain you've had. Would you guys just go to this class with me? Just do that as a favor for me. And throw all of your credibility and weight some direction, and then let me call them stupid.

Because I can get away with it. Because I've been stupid too, so I can get away with it. And I'm old, so I can get away with it. And then they go, oh, yeah, that guy's probably right. We need to rethink about this. Honey, you think really refinancing the house is a good idea? No, babe, I don't think we ought to do that. And maybe the bathroom instead of the roof was a bad idea, which it was a really bad idea.

So, I mean, hopefully we can get them thinking about it. That's what you'd look for. Hey, thanks for calling in. We appreciate you joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Yeah, this is a show for people that have done stupid things with money. Oh, that means it's for everybody. Because everybody at some time or another has done something stupid with money.

Oh, and it's conducted by a guy who's done stupid things with money. I've got a PhD in DUMB. I know what it looks like to do stupid. I've looked stupid squareD. in DUMB. I know what it looks like to do stupid. I've looked stupid square in the face in the mirror. I know what he looks like. So I can tell when you're stupid because I've been him. I know. That's the deal.

This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Can you believe this real estate market? Home shopping has become so competitive. There's a ton of new buyers in the market, and bidding wars are the new normal. Folks are under a lot of pressure to offer more money to get into that house. Don't do that. Get certified instead. The Churchill Mortgage Certified Home Buyer Program is a game changer. You can quickly position yourself as a more reliable buyer and you get an upper hand during the negotiations. You can close two to three weeks faster than your competition. So call Churchill Mortgage today and get certified. They've helped thousands of listeners and team members here at my office

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Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, which means even if you mismeasure or you pick the wrong color, if you screw up, they'll remake your blinds for free. With Blinds.com, you get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you save even more. Be sure to use the magic word when you check out the promo code ramsey valeries from utah says i have a one-year-old son and i want to know if the gerber grow up plan is the best life insurance for him if not who do you recommend okay if you stop and think about it for just a second you say it out loud in this sentence it'll make you laugh i'm going to buy life insurance for a one-year-old from a baby food company

does that sound as stupid to you as it does to me that's dumb okay now i'd say it's a it's a tiny little whole life plan that is a complete gimmick. It's a complete waste of money. And no, you don't need to buy life insurance on a one-year-old. Now, some people buy a rider on their own term policy, which is enough to, like a $10,000 or $15,000 rider, which is enough to bury a child if, God forbid, we were to lose a child. And we carried child riders for a while when our kids were little and we were more broke, when we didn't have $10,000 or $15,000, in other words.

And then as soon as we got a little bit of money in the bank, we dropped the child riders and saved that money. But you don't need life insurance on child. This is a, the Gerber Grow Up Plan is a whole life policy, meaning it is a savings account a tiny little savings account inside of a tiny little baby food jar sized life insurance policy and um it's basically um people that have babies are you know when we have new babies we're really um all in drama mode and we just spend money like it's going out of style and we want to do such a good job as a mommy and daddy, and that's wonderful, and you should.

But no, buying a whole life policy on a little baby would be stupid. Buying a tiny little whole life policy on a baby would be a tiny bit stupid, but it would still be stupid. And buying life insurance from a baby food company would be stupid. So there's a lot of stupid going on here. No, I wouldn't do it. I would not do it. Hope that helps you.

Nathan's with us in San Francisco. Hi, Nathan. How are you? I'm doing really well. Thanks for asking, Dave. Sure. You're a fan of the show. Thank you.

How can I help? By giving me advice. You're infinitely smarter with money than I am, at least now. Okay. I was wondering, my wife and I were planning a move to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We bought a house there, and we owe about $212,000 on the house. It's worth $285,000. We bought it a year ago, put 20% down, and we since then changed plans

and are going to remain where we're at in the Bay Area here near San Francisco. Really? How did that change of plans occur? Well, we sat down and looked at money, something that we hadn't done. And we realized that even though the cost of living here in the Bay Area is what it is, we pay about $40,000 a year in rent. And we realized that the difference in income between here and there was well over, I think it was over like $60,000. I mean, it was a huge difference in income. You bought a house in Grand Rapids before you discovered this?

Sounds really funny when you say it like that. But, yes. So is the house up for sale? It's not. Why not? That's – you know, that's why I wasn't sure. Well, you're not moving to Grand Rapids. Why would you need a house in Grand Rapids?

We have renters there. Yeah, but you don't need a rental house in Grand Rapids. You live in San Francisco. Yeah, my parentsters there. Yeah, but you don't need a rental house in Grand Rapids. You live in San Francisco. Yeah, my parents live there, and we're generating $400, $500 a month. Yeah, if you did not own a house in Grand Rapids and you got ready to buy rental property, that would not be what you would do is buy rental property all the way across the United States

and hope your parents helped you watch over it. You became a landlord not by strategy or plan, but by default of the bad decisions making process sell the house hey that's what i wanted thanks so much easy enough man thanks for the call open phones at 888-825-5225 nick is with us in spokane hi nick how are you i'm doing good dave how are you doing better. What's up? Hey, just want to say my wife and I appreciate you a lot. You've helped change our family. So thank you. Thank you. Hey, so I got a what would Dave do question. So my wife and I are in this sticky situation. Basically, the background story is we moved up kind of across the state. We

were on the West Coast, moved to Spokane about a month ago. I'm now currently working in real estate. So we kind of made a leap into a new career field for me. My wife is a recent graduate from a university with a creative writing degree. And we're currently living with my in-laws. So no income coming in. I'm trying to work in real estate. I don't know anybody in the Spokane area. I've been a month in so far, and my wife is looking for a job. We're on baby step number three. We've had to dip into some of our emergency fund during this transition,

and we kind of knew that going in. But now we're a little further along than we wanted to be with no income, and we don't know what to do. We need to move out. We realize that we need our independence, and we need our privacy, and I need my dignity, and so we just, we're ready to make that jump, but obviously with no income, we don't know what's next. Yeah, so you're going to take some uncomfortable jobs that are not really part of your long-term plan in order to get your life

back while you work your long-term plan okay like anything i don't know if you're delivering i don't know if you're delivering pizzas and are cutting grass or blowing snow and she's waiting tables i don't know what it is maybe she's taking care of puppies dogs babysitting i don't know what she's doing what you're doing, what you're doing. But you're going to do some things for money right now to get your life back in control while you work out some of these other career decisions that are a little bit longer pipeline before the real estate creates money. And it's not going to create money until you learn the area and learn people in the area.

It's a very difficult job to move into town and start making money in the real estate business. Yeah, I've learned that pretty quick. Let me throw you kind of a clicker on top of that. So I'm right now working as a residential agent looking to switch over to commercial. Do you recommend while we're kind of in this transition period getting our own place, doing all what you just said? Yeah, I don't mind as long as you can pay for it. Right now you don't have an income.

Should I put my license on inactive then until that until that time comes no i think you can if you can find some part-time gigs that are painful but that allow you to work your commercial that's fine okay if not i probably would put it on active but i mean i i, if you're working commercial, 90-something percent of commercial is done 9 to 5. Right. It's not done at night. Residential is done night and weekends, which means you've got a lot of time to deliver pizzas or do whatever, right, on the weekends. And, you know, if you worked every night doing something and every Saturday doing something, you can support a real baseline, you know, basic budget operation.

Your wife doing the same thing um she's picking up freelance and doing all she can to get her creative writing going and try to find a job with an agency or something right somebody that needs content production uh but in the meantime you know she's gonna be doing something else to create money and i don't know again i'm just throwing out traditional part-time jobs but uncomfortable part-time jobs that make the most possible money for a short period of time, which gets your feet back under you so you can start to live the dream again and work towards the dream. Because when you shift to commercial, you just lengthen your pipeline double or triple.

Yeah. I mean, a residential deal, you can close most of them in 90 days from the time you meet the person to the time they move in. A commercial job, it's a lot more than that. I mean, even a lease deal, it takes three or four months a lot of times to pull these things together. And if you're talking about the closing of a good-sized commercial building, it may be six or eight months from the time you do the contract before they get their due diligence. So those deals take a lot longer to crunch through.

And, you know, Spokane's a medium-sized market. It's not like a huge metropolitan area like an Atlanta or a Dallas or something. So you've got a limited market there on commercial as well. I love the commercial business.

Got a bunch of it, but tougher work road. Hey, this is Dave Ramsey. You know, most of us have gotten behind on our bills at one time or another. That's nothing to be ashamed of. It happens. And many of us know the embarrassment that comes with those harassing calls from collectors. Some of these guys are just scum.

But then there are the collectors that are just plain crooks. These are the guys that take it a step further and they violate the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act on a daily basis. They're breaking the law and they need to be stopped. The truth is, debt collection is the most abusive, out-of-control industry in America today. But you don't have to put up with it. If you have collectors calling you multiple times a day, calling you at work after you've asked them not to, cursing or threatening you in any way, then you need to visit CollectionBully.com. These folks will connect you with an attorney who I know can help you. These attorneys know how to stop collection agencies from bullying and threatening you

anymore. CollectionBully.com. Go to CollectionBully.com today. That's CollectionBully.com. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you are here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thanks for being part of the program today.

Casey is with us. Casey's in Flint, Michigan. Hi, Casey. How are you? I'm good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Great.

Well, I'm not sure. I have a collection agency that has kind of come out of the woodwork because the debt is going to be, it's approaching seven years old in the spring. And I, about, I don't know, about four years ago, I offered them less in payoff and they wouldn't take it. And it kind of just settled down. I never heard anything back for a while. And now that the debt is getting old, I've started getting collection letters from them again. And I don't know if it's going to do me any good to offer again. What was the original amount? It was approximately $550.

It was a doctor bill. A doctor bill. Okay. Yeah. Well, the bottom line is a couple things. Number one, you owe the money. Right. Number two, it's going to continue to come up,

and usually at the most inopportune time. Okay. And then number three, of course, it is dinging your credit. You have a defaulted bad debt laying out there. Right. And so that's showing up. So, yeah, I would deal with it. I wouldn't pay them $5,000, but I would pay them $550.

You owe them that. Right. If you can get out for that, that's a great deal. What are they trying to get out of you? Well, right now they haven't offered me anything other than what i owe um 550 yes yes and um a few years ago like i said i offered them i believe it was 300 i think at the time is that's all i had at the time um and they told me no um and know. Do you have 550? I can come up with 550, yeah. Okay. Well, just pay the bill.

Okay. All right. Well, that's what I wasn't sure. I thought, oh, should I pay off? No, I wouldn't pay them. I wouldn't pay them, you know, 1,500 and extra thousand in late fees and collection fees and all this other stuff. And whatever you do, get it in writing that 550 pays the entire bill. The entire account is settled for 550. Don't give them any money until you have it in writing that 550 pays the entire bill okay the entire account is settled for 550

don't give them any money until you have that in writing and even then don't give them electronic access to your checking account because they'll take more and then you have trouble getting it back okay so should it be done like with a money order versus a money order or a prepaid debit card and then you throw it away and close the account after that, or something along those lines. But don't allow them to have access to your operating checking account, because they'll take your rent money out of there. Right, right. Okay.

And you'll be stuck. Thank you very much, Dave. I appreciate it. Thank you. We appreciate you joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money.

Shane is with us in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Shane. How are you? Very good, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? All right.

Well, my question is pretty simple. It's about a brother-in-law, but I just first wanted to say that I appreciate everything you do. And my household has been scorched earth for the last six months. We've paid off $32,900, and everything has been on the chop block, and I even sold my truck. Good for you. Wow. So thank you.

So, yeah, we are debt-free. I have a question about my brother-in-law. We had planned for a month now, and we knew we'd be out of debt, that we were going to go to the zoo. And I have a niece and a nephew with him that's on my wife's side. And we're going to go to the zoo. Everything was planned out. I sent him a text saying, hey, the zoo's still on.

Everything is good to go. And he told me no. He wasn't sure. He spent more than he wanted to this week, and he was mad about it. And I just want to know, where's the healthy boundary that I can set with him? I wasn't sure. He spent more than he wanted to this week, and he was mad about it. And I just want to know, where's the healthy boundary that I can set with him? Because he's made it clear to me that he doesn't care to hear anything about my Ramsey Solutions stuff, financial piece.

Why did he make that clear to you? You already got in his face? Well, he knows my stance on borrowing money and credit cards and just not borrowing money, period. And I told him about financial peace and total money makeover, and he likes it. But he said, well, that's good for you. That's not going to work for me. I can't get my wife on the program. And he just gives up. Okay. Well, one of the interesting things about adulthood is that we all have people in our lives,

family and friends, that are doing stupid things. And the more we love them and the more we watch them do stupid things, the more painful it is. And you obviously care a lot about this guy. And the sad thing is you care more about his finances than he does. Yeah, that's true. And so he's not ready. There's not anything you can do. You know, you can just say, man, I'm heartbroken we can't go to the zoo.

If you know I'm doing this money stuff and if I can ever be of help to you, you know, in any way, you know I'd like to help you. But I'm not. You've already told me to leave you alone. So I'm not going to bother you. But I in any way you know i'd like to help you but i'm not you've already told me to leave you alone so i'm not gonna bother you but i'm here if you need something and um so you know you just talk it through that way and i just let him know because there'll be a point that he hits quote unquote rock bottom and says okay he gets frustrated enough you know dude when you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, you call me, okay? Okay.

Because I can't make you do this stuff, but I love you, and I'm watching you do stupid all the time. Right. And just depending on how close to him is how blunt you can be, right? Yeah. I mean, I've been pretty blunt with him, and sometimes it seems like a gift to him, and he's like, you know, that is really cool. And then other times it just, he said, you know, that is really cool. And then other times it just, he said, you know, this is not for me and good for you.

Yeah, how old is he? He's 35, about 36. He's old enough to grow up then. Yeah. And maybe it's because I'm younger than him, and then we got the twin thing going on. I have one of the twins. He has the other one. Oh, I got that. Sharon's a twin, and her twin sister's married to Mac.

My brother-in-law and me and Mac compare notes pretty regular. For 30 years we've been doing that, as a matter of fact. Oh, my goodness. Well, yeah, I, you know, and even typically with twins, they're opposites in terms of personality style. And, you know, one of them is going to be frugal, one of them is not. One of them is going to be very detailed, one of them is not, and so on. And so he may have gotten the free spirit twin, you may have gotten the one that's frugal. I don't know.

But you guys just talk it through and just, you know, always talk about that it's working for you, and I'm not trying to put you down. But when you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, I've got the antidote. I mean, I got the antidote, dude. I can give you the vaccine whenever you're ready, and I just not going to – I don't want you to be mad at me because I'm always up in your business,

but you need to know I care about you, and you need to know I got the vaccine over here. So you just call me when you've had enough and when you say uncle, and I'll take care of you. We'll pay to put you through the class or whatever you want to do, however you want, whatever kind of offer you want to make. Jim is with us. Jim's in Washington, D.C.

Hi, Jim. How are you? Better than I deserve, Dave. Cool. How can I help? Well, I have a question for you. I own a house in Dayton, Ohio, and it's very underwater, and I can't seem to get away

from underneath it. I'm active duty army, and so I can't just, like, walk away from the place with a foreclosure, because that would affect my security clearance. Exactly. I owe $37,000 on the place, and cops in the neighborhood are going for $8,000 to $12,000. Whoa! What happened?

So, it was in an okay section of town. The section of town it was in was getting better. I bought it in 2003, you know, shortly after getting on active duty. I'm like, hey, you got to own a house. It's got to be a thing. And then, you know, I failed all three steps for real estate, location, location, and location. And so it's not in a great place, but the neighborhood was getting better.

Yeah, what's your household income? About $108,000. Okay, well, treat it like you have a $20,000 car loan. Because you're $20,000 in the hole. Right. And just pay down on the thing, down to $ things down to 18 and then get it sold because what you're describing to me is not going to get better no i've got it in in uh on the market now listed at 14.9 and i got one offer like 6900 cash it's it's bad in that area okay and so do you have the

ability to borrow the difference to pay off the mortgage? I might, but it would be like signature loan if that was, you know, maybe an option. Dad, if you can get rid of the bleeding, you know, get the guy up to $8,900 or whatever, and let's get rid of the thing. Because you're telling me the thing's worth like $10,000, right? Yeah, ballpark, you know, as far as I know. And it ain't getting any better. No, no, it's just been a lower priority because we're, you know, $200K in the hole. Well, I mean, this gets rid of a $10K of it and stops the bleeding.

So I would, yeah, I would get rid of that thing and just sign a signature note for the difference if you have the ability to. And then begin to work your dead snowball and clean your way through the mess. Man, I'm so sorry. And thanks for your service to the country, sir. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey guys, this is Blake Thompson, Chief Production Officer for The Dave Ramsey Show. Here's a tip.

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