The Ramsey Show - App - Is There Such a Thing As Good Debt? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Education, Debt, Savings, Home Buying, Home Selling, Investing Tools to get you started:  Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete G...uide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Music Music Live from the 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. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225.
Starting point is 00:00:56 Kelly starts off this hour in Sacramento. Hi, Kelly. How are you? Hi, Dave. I'm good. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?
Starting point is 00:01:06 Yeah. I feel like I'm in a little bit of a tough financial situation. I, long story short, graduated with a bachelor's degree and then later found out I wanted to pursue nursing. So I am taking nursing prerequisites right now, paying for that out of pocket. However, I do have a decent amount of debt and heading into nursing school whenever I get there, it is going to be challenging to work full time while I'm in nursing school. So I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it to take out another additional loan, basically just to live, you know, while going through nursing school and trying to pursue this new career. How long have you been listening to me? Not very long, to be totally honest with you.
Starting point is 00:01:49 That's fair. That's okay. That's why I was asking, because we teach folks not to borrow money. Okay. Period. Because what you said, what was the phrase you used? You said it would be you didn't say uncomfortable you said something else difficult that's what you said right it'd be difficult to make it through right now without doing this right and the problem is student loans
Starting point is 00:02:18 are difficult also and so you're trading one kind of difficult for another kind of difficult. And what we have found over 30 years of helping people with their money, and particularly these student loan things, is that you find some other way to do this without debt. And then when you come out of nursing school, you're free instead of, I'm further in bondage and i can't breathe and i'm desperate to take a job so i take a bad one um and that kind of a thing so um you've got nursing school paid for is that what you're saying no i i don't i am paying for um the pre-reqs to get into nursing school yes how are you going to pay for nursing school?
Starting point is 00:03:08 Probably not the answer you want to hear. Okay. All right. But your plan before you called me, your plan before you called me was student loans to pay for the school, and then your other question was do I borrow even more to live on? Correct. Okay. I'm making sure I understand the question.
Starting point is 00:03:20 Okay. Cool. All right. Well, listen, I got to tell you, i am a huge fan of nursing as a career having done financial coaching and counseling for 30 years my in general nurses can always get a job and they can always get extra jobs that pay really good and so you're always going to have work i love your degree field that you chose i think you're going to i think it's going to cause you to prosper particularly if you love people and the healing arts and you want to be involved and helping people and loving people well and that kind of a thing i think you're going to be an awesome nurse
Starting point is 00:04:00 and i think it's going to make you a lot of money and so i want you to do this i just want to help you figure out a way to do it without going in debt, head over heels, even more. Because I don't want you to spend the next decade cleaning up a mess because you chose to do this. So what do you do now? I work for an athletic company for their corporate team. I'm working from home at the moment due to COVID.
Starting point is 00:04:22 Yeah. Well, okay. All right. Yeah. What I would ask you to do, uh, what do you do? Uh, honestly, it's basically like customer service. Okay. Admin or customer service. Okay. So what I'm going to suggest you do is you're a non-traditional student, meaning you're, you're not a 22 yearold nursing student, right? You're an adult. You're a grown-up and all that.
Starting point is 00:04:48 So I'm going to start looking for scholarships that are aimed at you. And the other thing that's out there is if you'll start talking to some of the hospital companies and some of the medical companies in the Sacramento area, or for that matter, around the nation, are you married? I am not. Okay. How uh are you married i am not okay how old are you 25 okay so you could move yeah you could move correct so here's the thing stuff companies like there's a huge the largest hospital company in america is here in nashville called hca as an example okay and other companies like them that own lots and lots of hospitals are all over you know america in different cities and if you could if you were to have conversations with them
Starting point is 00:05:33 you would find that they have a nursing shortage that you becoming a nurse and being beholden to them is highly attractive to them i suspect you probably could find some situations where you go to work for one of them and they pay for your nursing degree. Maybe you have to promise to work there for three years or something after that. But you get to000 to eat on. And now I've got to clean up that mess making $70,000 in Sacramento, which is tough. And those are tough numbers for you to push through. So I'm looking for scholarships. I'm looking for work programs with medical companies that want nurses,
Starting point is 00:06:27 companies that have a bunch of doctors as a part of their setup, and they need nurses. There's all kinds of people that will pay for you to go to school. You've just got to scratch around and dig them up, and that's harder now but easier later. Right. So I'm going to send you a copy of Anthony O'Neill's book, Debt-Free Degree. It's the number one best-selling book on how to get a degree debt-free.
Starting point is 00:06:53 And there'll be some good hints in there as well. Not all of it applies because it's more of an undergrad thought process for a kid coming out of high school and that kind of a thing. But it's a mindset thing to go find the money without having to borrow it and a shift in your mindset. And that's what I want you to do. And I do want you to get the nursing degree. So hold on. I'm going to give you a copy of Anthony's book, and we'll see if we can get you some help.
Starting point is 00:07:20 And let me know how this turns out. I'd like to hear your story at the end. Alicia is with us in Missoula, Montana. Hiicia how are you hey doing well how you doing better than i deserve what's up hey so my husband and i just got out of debt on friday paid off our last payment very very excited about it yeah we we uh we started our journey when we got married a year and a half ago, and so pretty stoked on that. But my question is about Baby Step 3 and Baby Step 3B. So neither of us, I'm 30, he's 28, have started anything for retirement, but we are working on our fully funded emergency fund, and then we want for sure to have 20% down on the house.
Starting point is 00:08:03 Good, good. That's like a definite thing for us. How long are those two things going to take? So I'm thinking that it'll probably take close to four years. Okay, you'll be 34. Okay. That's great. I didn't know if it was like, is that too long or is there a certain point where it's like...
Starting point is 00:08:18 You know, four years is about the most I want you to not do any retirement for a down payment. And so, but I bet you end up doing it sooner than four years because you're on a roll, kid. Right on. Well, thank you so much. So, yeah, I think you're right on track. You know, don't take ten years to save up your down payment and stay outside of retirement. But three, four years, that's probably your max somewhere in there. Hey, good question.
Starting point is 00:08:42 This is the Dave Ramsey Show. You know, so many people have such a negative attitude about life insurance when it's actually one of the most caring and giving things that you can do. Still, seven out of ten families either have no life insurance or they don't have enough. I don't get it. Look around. People die. At all ages. I know it's sad, but that's reality.
Starting point is 00:09:12 What's worse is when they leave their family unprotected, creating even more hardship. Yet somehow we find reasons not to get it done. It can't be the price. Term insurance is just plain cheap. Now, that's why I talk about Zander Insurance so much. Not because they're just an advertiser, but because they offer a crucial service that helps you and me. Call them at 800-356-4282 or check out their rates at zander.com. Listen, in the end, you need to get past the unpleasant images and just make sure your family's protected. Be responsible and feel good about what you've accomplished.
Starting point is 00:09:46 Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. 800-356-4282. amber on twitter asks i just spent one thousand dollars on a new phone i have not bought the extended warranty yet but i have 60 days to decide should i buy the two-year extended warranty for two hundred dollars a two hundred dollar warranty on a thousand dollar phone oh this is a classic okay amber here's the deal 100 of the time i do not buy extended warranties. In other words, never buy an extended warranty. Let's walk through this for a second.
Starting point is 00:11:10 The extended warranty, number one, most products have a decent warranty on them these days anyway. Number two, your $1,000 phone is going to be replaced fairly soon anyway. You're going to get a new phone. Think about how many times you've gotten a new phone. I wish I had a whole lineup of all the phones I've owned in my life, from the one that used to be attached to my car to the brick phone all the way up to the tiny little phone, and now the classic smartphone, or so it says it is. You're going to get another phone. You're not going to keep this phone that long anyway, and that's true of most electronics. In the 50s and 60s, electronics and appliances, we fixed them. We didn't replace them. Now we throw them we didn't replace them now we throw them away and we get a new one
Starting point is 00:11:45 when your tv goes out very seldom do you fix it you just get another one and that's just part of the rhythm because the electronics are so stinking inexpensive compared to the repairs so let's talk about extended warranties now the math works if you open an extended warranty company and you're going to sell an extended warranty to amber for two hundred dollars i think it would be fair to assume that the extended warranty company opened to make a profit they want to make a profit on that so what is the cost of issuing an extended warranty? The statistical probability of the breakdown. And so you can take a thousand or ten thousand phones just like yours Amber if you're an extended warranty company and do an analysis that says on average x number of these
Starting point is 00:12:43 ten thousand phones are going to break down, and on average, it's going to cost us Y or Z to fix them in the coverage of the extended warranty. The actual repair and probability of the repair, statistically, on an extended warranty, is 12.5% of the cost of the extended warranty. The other 87.5% of the cost of the extended warranty, $9 out of $10, $180 out of your $200, is profit, commissions, and overhead to operate the company. The actual insurance that you bought was only $20, roughly. That's what it actually cost them to insure your phone.
Starting point is 00:13:40 The other $180 was called Amber getting screwed. That's what that was. And so you are much better off to self-insure through your electronics breaking down, meaning you have an emergency fund. So my little smartphone does not have an extended warranty. My televisions, my cars, my nothing has an extended warranty. I don't buy them because they are 87.5% profit, commissions, marketing, and overhead, and only 12.5% actual insurance.
Starting point is 00:14:25 That's the national average. Now, it varies a little bit from industry to industry, electronic to electronic, but that's roughly your numbers. The point being, it's a highly profitable business for them. And so if you self-insure on average, put the $200 in your pocket, and on average you have to do the $20 repair. You come out ahead $180 on average. Now, you probably won't have a $20 repair to a cell phone.
Starting point is 00:14:54 But the point is, mathematically, you'll always come out ahead. So there's big electronic stores, huge electronic stores full of televisions and computers and phones and cameras and appliances. And they have really good prices. Even the name of their store is Best Buy. I mean, they have really good prices. They don't make a lot of money on the sale of a television there. Their margins on those are fairly slim. They make all of their money in those stores on two things.
Starting point is 00:15:29 Selling you a credit card for the store or a finance package for your TV. In other words, on financing they make their money. And on, ready for this, extended warranties. That's why when you check out buying a number two pencil, they will try to sell you an extended warranty at these stores are you sure you don't want the extended warranty and they look at you like you've lost your ever-loving mind if you don't know my pencil does not need a warranty thank you you know no i if you cannot afford to fix the item or throw it away. You shouldn't be buying it. Don't buy extended warranties.
Starting point is 00:16:08 Use your emergency fund to replace or repair and put the difference in your pocket. You're going to come out way ahead. Extended warranties are a complete mathematical ripoff. Gosh, I hope I wasn't unclear. Don't buy extended warranties. Period. Period. I know it seems tempting. It feels good for someone else to pay for it, but someone else isn't paying for it. You are. Don't buy extended warranties. It's all about profit for them. Thank you, Amber. Really good question. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Folks, have you ever wondered if an online will is right for you? Do you need a trust
Starting point is 00:17:01 or do you need a mirror image will? Do you need a power of attorney? What kinds of powers of attorney? This stuff can get complicated and you hear me say everyone needs a will, but I get a lot of questions asking if a simple online will is right for someone's specific situation. With your questions in mind, our team decided to build a quiz. This quiz gives you custom results based on if you're married or single, where you live, and even the size of your estate. It helps you understand exactly what you need for your specific situation. The quiz is free, and it'll help you figure out the best way to go at this will stuff. Take the quiz to find out what you need to protect
Starting point is 00:17:45 your family and your wishes text the word quiz to 33 789 quiz to 33 789 trish is in ridge crest california hi trish welcome to the dave ram. Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call, and thanks for all you do. You've changed my family's future, so thank you. Thank you. How can we help? Well, we just started Baby Step 4 and 5 this week, and we are a military family, so we have never owned a home. We've always lived in base housing. But I am receiving in the next month a pretty large auto settlement for a collision that the kids and I were in last year. And I would like that to become Baby Step 3B. But I'm just wondering, where do we put 3B? Do we put that in a high-yield savings account, or what do I do with that large chunk of money? This is going to be
Starting point is 00:18:43 sitting a while until you stabilize in your military career or you finish your military career. Agreed? Potentially yes. I mean we have two years left on this tour and it could be two years or it could be 12 more years. Okay all right but you've got two to five years before you'll be buying. So you can use a high yield savings would be super conservative. That way you don't have any chance of losing any money. How much is this check going to be? It's going to be $60,000. Okay. And you could put some of it in high yield savings and some of it in just a very calm growth and income type mutual fund with one of the SmartVestor pros. They can help you with that. But you really want it in something that's not got much volatility
Starting point is 00:19:27 because you've not got a lot of time horizon here. And I sure hope you guys are okay after that accident. And thanks for your service in the military. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, guys. At the Dave Ramsey Show, we really value your input. It helps us to know what's important to you so we can deliver relevant content to help you crush your money goals. We just launched a brand-new survey, and we'd love your feedback. It only takes a few minutes, and you'll be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card.
Starting point is 00:20:06 No purchase necessary. Take the survey at DaveRamsey.com slash survey or text survey to 33789. Thank you for joining us, America. Jen is with us. Jen is in Boston. Hi, Jen. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. How are you?
Starting point is 00:20:44 Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? I just wanted to ask you, when my husband and I first got married, we bought a rental property, and we've held on to it all these years. It's been about 23 years. Wow. It's been paid off for maybe eight years now. Cool.
Starting point is 00:21:03 And the rent is great. It's gone up over the years and everything and all is well with that. But we're getting to the point where it's like, how often do we want to deal with tenants going in and out and fixing little things? Because we could sell it for a good profit, pay off our home and just not have to worry about it and then have a paid off home. But that was never really, we always planned on holding onto it, maybe giving it to our kids, selling it to our kids for a good price, or just doing something more with it. So I know you're a big fan of real estate, and I listen to you all the time,
Starting point is 00:21:36 and I was just wondering if you were in this situation, what you would do. Here's a good way to analyze any possession or investment that you own ask yourself if i had that pile of money the equivalent of the value of it if it's a boat a rental property a stock a uh a coin collection and it's worth x if i had x in a pile of money in the middle of the kitchen table would i go buy that again today in my current situation is that a decision i would make today i think i heard you say you would not. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, agreed. It's been a good ride, and back then it was a good idea, and it worked out great, but today, if you had the value of that rental property sitting in cash in the middle of the table, and you didn't own that rental property, you would not go buy an equivalent property.
Starting point is 00:22:47 Right. That's what you told me. I thought I heard you say that. No, you're right. You're right. I'm just digesting it. I mean, my thought was, and I should have said this earlier. So for the same reasons that you wouldn't buy it again, you would sell it.
Starting point is 00:23:01 Yeah. And that doesn't mean you're wrong. It doesn't mean, you know, you don't like tenants anymore. They're no fun anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my thought was it's paid for and it makes money. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:15 Yeah. Yeah. But it would be if you bought it again. Yeah. You wouldn't sign up for this trip if you weren't already on it. Yeah. I suppose you're right yeah that's a good point i never thought of it that way and so i'm gonna undo it just because for you guys the piece
Starting point is 00:23:32 of having your home paid for and not having to screw with tenants is more valuable today in your life now someday in the future you might have a little pile of money sitting around and go you know i think we need to buy a rental house again. Because we did okay on that other one. And you might do that again in 10 years from now. You might do it, you know. But you don't have to have that one house. There's a house on every stinking corner.
Starting point is 00:23:58 I would sell it and pay off your house. Because of the way you described the situation. Now, I love real estate. And I've worked with tenants my whole life, and so I have a great relationship with tenants because I don't put bad ones in, and I very seldom have a problem. My son-in-law runs my property management, and so I don't have any issues, and so it's not a big deal. So I'm in a different situation, but you described a situation where you don't want to own this house anymore,
Starting point is 00:24:27 and I think that's perfectly okay. That's the beauty of personal finance. And later on, with a paid-for home, you're going to have piled up some cash, and if you want to do some investing in real estate again, you could choose to. But you don't have to even then. Valerie's with us in Butte, Montana. Hi, Valerie, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, thank you for taking my call. Great, so my question is about asking for a recommendation about going, taking out a loan, taking out a couple loans. Currently, I don't have any debt. I own an older vehicle,
Starting point is 00:25:08 and I just started nursing school. So I'm going to have to take out some loans to complete school, and I'm going to need to take out a loan to get a vehicle that will be sustainable in montana weather for the winter um so my my question is what is your recommendation what did you do last winter oh i had i had the same vehicle that i have now in montana in it in montana and you made it yes okay keep the vehicle yeah yeah okay all right problem one solved listen you don't go into debt to buy a car because you think it's going to snow in montana we already knew it was going to snow in montana it snowed last year in montana and you made it last year okay so you're going to limp through you're a broke college student you don't go in debt buying cars please darling please don't do
Starting point is 00:26:14 that okay how much is nursing school costing you um for the two and a half years left, two and a half years. So I have about $15,000. Oh, that's wonderful. You can find $15,000 and finish nursing school debt-free? Awesome. Well, I don't have the $15,000. No, we've just got to go get it. Right. That's awesome.
Starting point is 00:26:42 You didn't tell me $150,000. That would have been harder. Oh, that's so good. Are you living at home? $150,000 feels like a lot. I know it feels like a lot. I do. Oh, that's awesome.
Starting point is 00:26:52 So you don't have overhead. Mom and Dad are feeding you and putting you up while you're going to nursing school. By the way, I'm happy you're going to nursing school. If you haven't heard, I'm a big fan of nursing school. I think it's a great career you've picked up. I have heard that. So how old are you? Thank you. Well, I'm a n-traditional student. I'm 27. Okay. So I'm
Starting point is 00:27:10 back at home now. Gotcha. Okay. And so you have a year and a half of nursing school left. I'm sorry. I have two and a half years and fifteen thousand dollars covers that yes in two and a half years so seven thousand eight thousand dollars a year so what i'm what i'm calculating from is i do have some grant money that i good have secured for school good good good but here's the thing here's the thing you do not go to nursing school on saturday and sunday and you do not go to nursing school at on thursday night do you that's true this is when you're working and this is where you get 800 to a thousand dollars a month by the way a thousand dollars a month is twelve thousand dollars, $1,000 a month is $12,000 a year. Over two years, that's $24,000. You only
Starting point is 00:28:06 need $15,000. Okay. You need $1,000 a month income, no overhead at home, make the car, make it through, work your little tail end off, and come out of school with absolutely no debt. Absolutely no, Dad. The 30-year-old version of you will love the hardworking, hard-nosed, tough Montana girl that's 27. But if you wuss out and go buy a car on payments, and you wuss out and go run up $20,000 in student loan debt, the 30-year-old version of you is going to come back and kick your little wussy butt. Okay. Am I right? Yes, and all that makes perfect sense. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard. I think I'm planning on my car failing. I think that's where my fear comes in of how am I going to... I plan on all my cars failing. They all suck. All of them break. So what are you driving? How many miles this thing got on it?
Starting point is 00:29:09 It's a 2004 Taurus, and it has 101,000 miles. Oh, definitely a piece of garbage. Yeah, definitely a hoopty. Okay. So that's worth what, $1,500? Maybe, yeah. Okay. So we may want to add another $1,500? Maybe. Yeah. Okay. So we may want to add another $1,000 of extra work somewhere and come up with another $1,000 and get a $2,500 car instead of a $1,500 car.
Starting point is 00:29:34 But with cash, of course. Okay. Your dad does stuff like I'm talking about, doesn't he? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can do this.
Starting point is 00:29:46 It's hard now, but easier later. Easy now is really hard later. You get to choose which place you do the hard. Do it now. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Our scripture today, Psalm 37, 5, Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him, and He will act.
Starting point is 00:30:31 Orrin Woodward says, One person with commitment accomplishes more than a thousand with an opinion. Oh, that is so good. In a world full of people with opinions, one person with commitment accomplishes more than a thousand with an opinion. I love it. They say there's never a statue erected to a critic. And for those of you on Twitter, there are no Twitter troll statues erected to you.
Starting point is 00:31:10 They don't erect statues to people who live in their mother's basements. Just helping you with that. That's how this works. One person with commitment accomplishes more than a thousand with an opinion. Robert is in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hi, Robert. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave.
Starting point is 00:31:31 Hope you're having a good day. I am, sir. How can we help? Well, I am, let me start by saying I'm a new listener, so I'm not super familiar with the baby steps. But, you know, I've been kind of intrigued about the idea of kind of eliminating all debt but my question was really more revolving around the idea is there such thing as good debt if the interest rate is low enough
Starting point is 00:31:53 and let's just say for example I have enough cash to pay off the substantial amount of debt but that cash is busy with investments currently would it be better off to pay off some low-interest debt or let the money stay with those investments? And they make money in those investments that is greater than the interest rates, I guess is the way to describe it. That's a great question, and one that a lot of people have asked over the years. I used to kind of subscribe to the same thing because I'm a math nerd,
Starting point is 00:32:26 and the idea that if my mortgage rate is 3% and I can put money in a mutual fund and it makes me 10%, then I made a 7 spread. Why would I not do that all day long? Sure. That's the same kind of a thing that you're saying, right? Correct. So, for example, I have a business in Colorado, and we own a warehouse, and so there's a very big loan against said warehouse.
Starting point is 00:32:53 But the interest rate, fortunately, you know, the coronavirus didn't work out well for this one. It was only 2.5%. Ta-da. There we go. Okay, now, that's exactly what I'm coming to. What I discovered, and you're a new listener, so you don't know the whole stinking story, but I started buying and selling real estate in my 20s, starting from nothing.
Starting point is 00:33:12 I had $4 million worth. I was a millionaire when I was 26. Then I lost it all because the loans got called by the banks, and my theory of making the spread all went to kaput because I got zero out of it. I ended up bankrupt at 28. And I got the opportunity to start over, which made me question my former theories because my former theory didn't work. What I had left out of my theory, what most people leave out of this theory that you and I are discussing,
Starting point is 00:33:42 the 3% versus the 10% mutual fund, the 7% spread appears to be there. What we leave out of that theory is risk. Sure. And mathematically, if you install risk into the equation, it starts to dilute or do away with the spread. In other types of investments, in sophisticated investment analysis on, for instance, an aggressive growth stock mutual fund compared to a growth and income stock mutual fund.
Starting point is 00:34:12 The aggressive is much more volatile, much more risky. The traditional mutual fund, the growth and income is much less risky, has a lower peaks and valleys if you chart it. Do you follow me? Yeah. risky has a lower peaks and valleys if you chart it you follow me yeah so you would never compare a high risk volatile fund rate of return apples to apples with a lower risk less volatile return so you might make a 10 on that growth in income you might make 22 on that aggressive but you don't compare them the same because we don't compare the roulette wheel with a CD. Sure.
Starting point is 00:34:46 We adjust for risk. And what happens in what you're discussing is we forget to adjust for risk. So I learned the hard way that risk is real, and people learned it again in 2008, and they learned it again with COVID this year, that risk is real, and that when you have debt, you are susceptible to getting your freaking head taken off. Well, I agree. Yeah. My question, I guess, in regard to that...
Starting point is 00:35:11 And so I consequently decided to be and live debt-free as the shortest path to becoming and staying wealthy. Yeah. Well, I can't go all that way. There is no risk. Yeah. Exactly. Or very little.
Starting point is 00:35:23 Sure. You know, much less... There's other risks, but it's not the banks. We're not going to get foreclosed on. Sure. At all. Now, do I buy fewer things because of that? Yeah, because it takes more money.
Starting point is 00:35:35 I don't own as many buildings. I own a bunch. I own several hundred million dollars worth of real estate nowadays, but I probably could own a couple of billion if I leveraged the same amount of equity into stuff. But then I would be up at night when COVID hits. I'd be up at night when 2008 hits. I'd be up at night when Trump gets crossways with the Chinese.
Starting point is 00:35:56 I'd be up at night worrying about how I'm going to make my freaking payments because some tenant didn't make theirs. Yeah. And so life is too short the shortest path to peace in my finances security in my finances i might be sacrificing some return but i doubt i really am at the end of the day because adjusted for risk i didn't really lose that much so i live a hundred percent debt free so if you're sitting on some investments and you could pay off all your debts, I would pay off your debts. And then I would use the increased cash flow to
Starting point is 00:36:31 begin to build some other investments and not have any debt laying around. Because with no payments, you have incredible cash flow. With no payments, you have incredible peace. And that's where I came to. Honored to have you as a new listener. Thanks for letting me discuss that with you. Leslie is on the line. Leslie is in Baltimore, Maryland. Hi, Leslie. What's up?
Starting point is 00:36:53 Hi. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Thank you for taking my call. I have a 40-year-old daughter who had a brain injury in April, and she has absolutely no money to her name. She had an apartment we had to clean out. She is now on Medicaid in a long-term nursing home,
Starting point is 00:37:15 and I, because her address was moved to my address, now I'm receiving all her mail, and I'm getting her medical bills and creditors and things like this. Do I need to contact them? I mean, she's not going to be working anymore. Are you functioning as her power of attorney? No, I did not have that before this,
Starting point is 00:37:33 and she's considered that she's unable to give it to me. Okay. How are you going to conduct her affairs then? Right now I'm just not doing anything. The only thing I have is a medical surrogacy so I can you know make medical decisions that's good if it came down to life or death I cannot do that you know but pulling the plug they wouldn't that there because she didn't give that to me for all this half I
Starting point is 00:38:00 understand are you married I'm married she. Okay. And she's living with you guys now? No, she's actually in long-term nursing care. Oh, I see. 147 care. And what is your household income, ma'am? About $300,000. Okay. I'm so sorry. What a horrible thing to have to go through. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:22 Well, here's what you can do. You can talk to an attorney about becoming her guardian ad litem. Guardian? Guardian ad litem. I can't spell it because I don't do my Latin well, but it's pronounced that way. And it's basically the court is appointing you her power of attorney and guardian of her life. Okay. To do anything on her behalf.
Starting point is 00:38:49 And that will give you then the power to conduct business on her behalf. And what I would do is just develop a form letter. And I wouldn't give a ton of information, like no contact phone numbers. You don't want to talk to these people. But just let them know that she is 100% disabled. She will not be paying these bills. Okay. You're not liable for them.
Starting point is 00:39:12 She doesn't have any assets. Is that what you told me? Correct. And she has virtually no income, right? None, no. Yeah. I'm so sorry. She should be collecting disability eventually once it takes time.
Starting point is 00:39:26 Well, I hope it comes around. But in the meantime, I would just send them a form letter that says she's incapacitated, unable to work, in a nursing home, and is not going to be paying you. And just let them know. That's all you've got to do. You could do that without the guardian ad litem, but I'd go get the guardian ad litem for other reasons anyway so that you can continue to help her beyond the medical surrogacy.
Starting point is 00:39:50 That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Dave here. We just launched a brand-new survey, and we'd love your feedback. Christ Jesus.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.