The Ramsey Show - App - It's Okay to Admit You Don't Know Something (Hour 1)

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

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

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'm Dave Ramsey, your host. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. Joining me today on the show, Dr. John Deloney. And I'm looking forward to having John here to answer your questions and be part of the program. So you got questions about your relational IQ issues, things in the family, and these tie into money very often, and sometimes they don't. You're dealing with anxiety or fear, and maybe it's about the economy or when things are opening up.

I don't know. There's a lot of things going on out there, John. There's a lot of things going on. Things are starting to shift and move and start and stop and coming and going. It's interesting that with the economy starting to reopen in certain areas, the people are facing a whole different – like their fear is coming back. Like they got to the point they were safe at home. They felt safe at home. And now since people are starting to come out of the caves, so to speak, some people's fear is starting to rise back up again.

I'm actually more worried about this fear because it's going to weaponize people against one another are you too close to me i can't tell because you got a mask and i can't see if you're smiling or if we're friendly or not so we're going to have to use our words like grown-ups i tell my kids like i can't understand when you're crying you got to use your words what happened right so we're gonna have to be grown-ups we're gonna have to really be graceful with one another and um we'll get through it yeah we'll get through it. Yeah. We'll get through it. Absolutely. So open phones. You want to talk to Dr. John. He's here.

And you want to hang out, and we'll talk about money. Whatever you need to do. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Starting off this hour is Sean in California. Hey, Sean. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, guys. Great to talk to you. You too. What's up?

Quick question. So I have seven kids. I'm in here in LA. I have no debt except for my house. I have a pension, but realized I probably need to be doing more than that. And I'm going to be inheriting about $200 not sure what i should be doing okay how old are you i'm 45 and you don't work i do work oh yeah i said i have a pension and i didn't understand a pension uh no additional. Oh, you mean for retirement. Okay.

Yes, yes, yes. I thought, man, this guy's retired with seven kids at 45. Okay. It took me a second. Not quite, huh? All right, so cool. What's your household income? Not quite.

About $135,000. Good. Good for you. Okay. Well, where we would say you are in the baby steps is make sure you have your emergency fund fully funded, three to six months of expenses. That's baby step three. I suspect you've already done that.

Correct. Okay. I've always had that since I got married. Good. And then baby step four is we put pension aside. You put 15% of your income into retirement. That's what we're doing. And that's what's not there now.

That needs to be in the budget. Maybe Step 5 is starting to save for kids' college, and, man, we've got a big hill to climb there. And then if you find any money after that, I would use it to pay off your home. If I'm in your shoes, I've got this $200K coming in. That's $30K a kid. We're not doing the college thing most of them are going into trades or firemen or police um okay so i'm trying to i'm trying to prepare for that like do i pay the house off in the next two years i owe 235 on it that'd be nice

dump it down yeah you could you could dump the200 on that and then knock out that other $35 pretty quick, and then cash flow whatever you needed to do on kids' educations. So should I wait until I pay the house off and then do basically my entire house payment into... I'd be putting 15% of your income into retirement. I'd take your $200,000 inheritance and throw it at the house debt, leaving only $35,000 there, and then I would knock that $35,000 inheritance and throw it at the house debt, leaving only $35,000 there. And then I would knock that $35,000 out very, very quickly. As soon as that's knocked out, you are on baby step seven at that point, which is build wealth and give with outrageous generosity.

But the bottom line is, at that point, you'll have $135,000 income to save for retirement and to take care of whatever education, your seven kids, whatever you need to do with that uh whatever you need to save for and invest for on that and that gives you the margin and the room to do that so you've done a really good job sean i think he's close to 10 i say he get a couple of three more kids and go ahead and get double digits is what i think he's got seven you might as well not quit now uh okay not not really all right tracy's in idaho hey tracy how are you i'm good thank you good your question for john today how can we help so i'm a huge fan long-time listener here's a little background my husband and i started our debt-free journey in 2018 we We're 100% debt-free except for the mortgage. We have three to six months. We have our life insurance in place and our will. We paid off $40,000 in 18 months and live on one income and now invest just my income

for retirement. My question today is in regards to our 18-year-old son who moved out in, sorry, I'm going to try not to get emotional, who moved out in 2019. He didn't want to live with us. He didn't want to live with us. He didn't want to live with our rules, our guidelines, morals, values, structure. He's been living with a family for the past year that's pretty much let him run amok, skip school, just kind of be his own thing. He's 18, even though he's a senior in high school. So us as parents, how do we move forward with it?

He won't communicate with us, return phone calls, text messages. We're getting a lot of outside influence right now from just people that know us, family. And we're just questioning, where do we go from here? We have a small college fund for him, but I'm sure he's going to graduate. And we have our will in place. And we've written it kind of with some guidelines if he wants to come back into the family and be a part of our family. There are some dates and ages where he would inherit different amounts. You know, we're just confused as parents. Where do we go from here?

That's so painful. Yeah, that hurts. So, Tracy, when did he step away? June. So he moved out. He ran away basically in May, Mother's Day weekend. And we called the cops and we brought him home forcefully. And then in June 5th, 2019, he left and never came home.

He did break into our home twice to get himself. He's never had a face-to-face conversation with us since June regarding any of this. I've been counseling. My husband's been in counseling. We're trying to work on our side, but we just don't know how to move forward. So I think there's a couple of things. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things you can do right now. And then I'd love to hear Dave's wisdom on the long-term financial planning. I think you're going to have to, do you have other kids in the home too? We don't. He was the youngest of four. We have kids from 13. He'll be 19 in July. We have kids from 32 to 19 and two grandkids. Does he have a relationship with any of his

other brothers and sisters? Nope. He's cut them all off. Okay. Any addiction in his life? We suspect. We've never had that conversation with him. Okay. So it's going to be – He was a straight-A student. I mean, his junior or freshman, sophomore year, straight-A student. His fall semester, straight-A student. His grades started tanking spring of his junior year, and he's barely passing his junior year. I'll tell you what. You hold on through the break here.

When we come back, we need to take a little bit of time with this, and I'll try to answer it in 15 seconds for you. You hang with us. We'll be right back. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. you know what disappoints and angers me to no end at a time when most people are pulling together to help one another identity thieves are using our heightened levels of fear and anxiety to prey on us in some pretty scary ways. Scammers are setting up fake testing sites just to collect people's credit card and social security numbers. They're also sending out texts

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And their 18-year-old moved out and is living with another family and has shut off communication with them. Pretty extreme situation. And that's about how far we got in the discussion. You bet. So, Tracy, first, I just want to commend that you love your kid and that you love your husband and that y'all are taking the steps to heal yourselves and to try to get wrapped your head around what's going on here.

So here's a couple of thoughts here. Number one, it's going to be very important for you and your husband to grieve the loss of the picture you had painted for this young man. a couple of thoughts here. Number one, it's going to be very important for you and your husband to grieve the loss of the picture you had painted for this young man. And that's a, that's a hard, the only thing harder than that is actually losing your son. And when you grieve this loss, a foundation of this grief is that you and your husband are going to have to do it together. And so if you're seeing separate therapists for separate reasons, that's your business, but you're going to have to come together either with a family therapist or with a pastor

that you trust and grieve together because what happens is people grieve differently and then you start comparing grief and then you end up way further apart than when you started. This kind of stuff can drive a wager to marry. That's right. So you have to be hyper intentional about staying plugged in and connected with your husband. And that means y'all are going to have to be graceful with one another as you grieve the loss of this and then start to develop a new picture that's going to be more

geared towards the reality that you face. The second thing is, is you're going to have to let your son know that you love him and that he's always can come home, but you're not going to give him a dime and that you'll pay for the meal. And we haven't since October. We haven't since October. Good. And that's going to test your soul like few other things will. And when he burns up the couches that he's sleeping on and then he moves on to the next place and next place, everything in you is going to say, go run and rescue him. So here's the issue, though.

The parents are saying that they're the safe place, that we are the bad home. Sure. And we just found that out from anyways. Well, of course. Yeah. These are the kind of twerps who take people in. Yeah. That's right.

And when my sister comes over, we call her Aunt Tealoka. When Aunt Tealoka comes to the house and she gives my kids as much gum and Twinkies as they want, man, they love her for a few days. Right. kids as much gum and Twinkies as they want. Man, they love her for a few days, right? And then when Tia Loka leaves, we have a cleansing process, both physically and psychologically. And we love it when she comes and she spoils them rotten, but that's not long-term, right? So this is going to have an expiration date on it. And the important thing is that y'all are there when he turns around, right? But not at his beck and call and not feeding whatever things he's stumbled into and making sure you and your husband are connected united in this

yeah that's a big deal that you guys stay connected and then um and here's the thing there's all these uh geniuses out there that will tell you things like what john just told you is tough love no what John just told you is love. Love sometimes has a lot of strength to it to hold someone tightly or to let them go or whatever it is. It takes a lot of love to do that. So what you're going through is very, very difficult. And what John said about the two of you being on the same page and not caring what everybody else thinks,

the other stupid family or your relatives or your friends who all have an opinion and they're mostly wrong, you just can't, you're not really gathering input from the community at this point. You've got to get aligned on what you guys believe to be right with the help of a good coach, a good counselor, and then lay out some steps that say, okay, the boundaries have been violated, and for you to return, here are the, you know, here's what it's going to look like. You're always welcome under these circumstances.

And, you know, if you break in my house again i'm going to put you in jail okay you're not going to do that and if you're going to come around here you're going to be respectful you're going to abide by our values and you know i you know like i told one of my teenagers one time you might be willing to talk to your mother that way but no one talks to my wife that way. And so, you know, it's that kind of a thing where you're just saying, this is who we are. And if you want to come around here, this is who we are. And that's not going to change. And we're not going to suddenly allow you to smoke pot in the downstairs bathroom just because that makes you happy.

And the other family allowed that. Our values haven't changed. And so this is who we are and we love you and we miss you dearly. And we're hurting because of this. But that, that, that, that. Now, as far as the money goes, again, you guys can do what you want. But I think that boundary is a current situation. We're not going to support, which john said uh in any way and um you know i i am going to uh have a clause i have a clause in my will today that my grown

children if they decide to go off the ranch and one of them is going to do cocaine and live on the back of a yacht somewhere with our money i don't think so uh and so we don't have a lot of money but we're we're just like we can't we can't we're the same we have the same belief we can't contribute to his lifestyle exactly that's exactly what it is i don't want to fund his insanity with my debt while i'm alive or when i'm dead yeah because i love him too much to to come alongside and support his bad decisions. And leaving him in the will does that.

So taking him out of the will is not punitive. It, again, is actually an act of love because if you're doing cocaine and you leave him $200,000, that means they're going to die. They're probably going to die anyway if you're doing cocaine, but they're for sure going to die if you leave them the money to overdose. And so why would I leave a cocaine addict $200,000 if I love them? And that's how we felt. I mean, he's got some guidelines.

If he wants to come back around when he's 25, if we were to die today, I mean, our younger daughter's executor, she knows what it says, and she's in control. But if he doesn't want to even engage with his siblings or his nieces and nephews, then by the time he's 40, if he still hasn't't come around we basically left it to his kids no that's fine you know i mean that's and i don't know people are like well love is love if you love him it should be equally divided no that's not true i can't do that right now no no no no that's an inaccurate statement that's a toxic bs statement that that's a that is not love that is wimping okay that's supporting

if i don't if i don't really care about someone i will support their misbehavior or if i don't care about my kids i'm gonna i'm gonna do the same things for both of them whether it's accurate on one and hurts the other right yeah you know love is love so i'm gonna leave the heroin addict enough money to kill himself that's a dumb butt statement well it's not love no it's not so whoever says that is is now uh prohibited from giving me any further advice you know whoever said that is prohibited from giving me you're you're no longer i no longer have this conversation with you you're an idiot you know that's what it goes through my mind i've got people in my life that have parts of their life that is so bizarre that i don't have conversations with them in those subject areas because it's not going to go well

so there's not a good reason to have that conversation i'm just not going to talk to you about this because you're stupid you know and i'm i don't say that but that's basically a boundary i put up with people in my life. You know, I've got a friend that's spiritually gone bananas, just nuttier than a fruitcake, you know. And so I'm not going to engage in that. If he wants to, you know, but he doesn't get to speak into my life because he's off the ranch. I don't ask. I don't ask.

You say this often. I don't ask broke people for their insight insight about money right exactly exactly and so but i mean once someone makes a statement that's inconsistent with the direction you're taking and that you and your husband to believe to be correct then uh you can love them but i'm not going to have these conversations you you lost your right you lost your vote uh in my life on this subject because you're being an idiot and so that that's you know this this idea that you're going to make all those kinds of people happy you're not but the boundaries here that wait a minute that's the statement of somebody so codependent oh man that they can't breathe you know what that's i think it's a great point

you know who doesn't get a vote about their feelings in my life? My two kids. They don't get a vote because my wife does, and I've given her that permission to have a vote on how we're going to solve some of these solutions in our house. But I've got a 30-year view and a 40-year view and a 50-year view of the young man and young woman that we're raising. And so I'm not going to take a short-term easy way out

and say, sure, sure, sure. We're playing a long game on this one. So kudos to you and your husband. Stay connected on this one. And always look for opportunities where you can connect with your son. I'll give you a prediction. By the time he's 25, this will be over.

Oh, he's back. He's back. Yeah. Prodigal son will hit the bottom, find himself in the pigsty. And that's what the Lord made Waffle House for. Those are great reconciliation meal places. Well, or not.

Or not. They're closed right now. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Folks, since you're spending more time at home these days, why not make the most of it? Now, I know not everyone has the means to do a full renovation, but thanks to our friends at Blinds.com, there are some small changes you can make to help improve your home. Blinds.com makes it incredibly simple to shop top quality blinds, shades, and interior shutters from home with easy online ordering and free shipping right to your door. Listen, window treatments are a simple project that you can do that really benefits the look and feel of your home.

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And with the new promos they run every month, you save even more. Use the promo code Ramsey. Dr. John Deloney joining me on the show today. Dr. John, our questions from Kelly in Texas. We're approaching the end of Baby Step 2, our fully funded emergency fund. Curious as to how a required military travel card will affect us in Baby Step 3B. Theoretically, one of us will not have a credit score, and the other will have a low credit score from the one open account.

Will this make us ineligible for manual underwriting? No account. Will this make us ineligible for manual underwriting? No. It doesn't make you ineligible for manual underwriting. You just simply explain it. The thing about manual underwriting is it's actually a human being looking at the situation that knows what they're doing. And so manual underwriting is how mortgages used to be made in 1978 when I was 18 years old and I got

my real estate license. You would sell a house and you would take the person to the mortgage company or in those days the savings and loan and they would sit down with the person. They would pull a copy of their credit bureau report which would show bills they had paid on time or hadn't paid on time. The person could look at that and explain what was happening, if there was a bad thing on there. They would send a VOE, a verification of employment, in the mail. Can you imagine that? There wasn't an Internet.

To the employer to verify employment, make sure you had a job. They would send a VOD, a verification of deposit, in the mail to your bank to verify that you had money in your savings account to do your down payment, and this was called underwriting a loan, meaning looking at all the facts to ensure that the individual making the loan could actually freaking pay the bill. That just sounds like common sense to me. It sounds rather slow and primitive, but the idea that today mortgages are made with no verification of employment, no verification of deposits, no verification of anything except looking at one number, a FICO score.

And it's supposed to encapsulate all of that, and it obviously doesn't. And so these ninja loans, they're called, are made that a monkey can make a loan. If a monkey can identify the number and go, ooh, ooh, big enough number, you get the loan. You know? It's that deal. So manual underwriting simply means that a human being is going to actually use common sense and go, would I be smart to loan you money? And that instead of like, ooh, ooh, the number's big enough.

And that's really what it comes down to. So it works really good. It's kind of like if you go to rent a house from an individual person like me, like I'm a landlord, we actually look at the human beings. And I don't want to go, you know, no, there's a history of drug use here. I don't think I want them in the house. No, you know, or there's a, there's this or that or whatever. And you, you know, you're, you're qualifying the people like you're hiring them for a job, you know, that kind of a thing, right? And so then you get a lot better situation that way. It requires more thought and more effort, but you get a lot better situation.

Barbara is with us. Barbara is in Florida. Hi, Barbara. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great. I really enjoy listening to your program. Well, thank you. The reason I'm calling is I've heard a few, I'm pulled money and I'm getting ready to pay off the house. Okay. And, but it's

just been under three years since my husband died. And then after that, I had cancer last year, stage four cancer. Wow. How yeah how you doing I'm doing great absolutely great and so this year I'm finally finally getting my legs upon underneath and moving forward and you know taking responsibility and putting my big girl pants on so um so my situation is is I owe just $20,000 on it. And the money that this payoff will come from would be insurance money that we had when he died. $235,000 on a lot of fee and cash. I gave $210,000 in a CD

making about 3% and then the others in a savings account because the CD matured in January. And how much is your mortgage balance? $19,000. Oh, it's nothing. You got gobs of money. Yeah, and I know I'm set with mutual funds and that, but I don't have any income. So what's your question, Barbara? So I guess I just want confirmation

to pay the house off and then maybe a little direction. And I've looked at your different books, and I'm like, okay, do I start at the first step or do I go into the retirement? Okay, let's pay the house off. And then click at DaveRamsey.com on SmartVestor and put in your information. It will drop down a list of SmartVestor and put in your information. It will drop down a list of SmartVestor pros in your area,

and I want you to meet with at least two of them and interview them. Here's a couple of rules on investing because you need some rules. Okay. Rule number one, never invest in anything unless you understand it. You don't do it because your investment broker, your smart investor pro said, you don't do it because Dave Ramsey said, or John Deloney said, you don't invest in anything unless you understand it. That's rule number one. Rule number two, never work with a financial person that makes you feel slimy or pushed or sold.

Always work with a financial professional, whether it's someone doing your will, your mortgage, if you're buying a house with a real estate agent, or you're meeting with a smart investor pro, you always meet with someone that has the heart of a teacher. And you will know they have the heart of a teacher if after meeting with them you learned something. Back to number one. Now I'm learning something.

I don't know about mutual funds, so I can't invest in them. So I have to meet with someone who can teach me about them until I get comfortable with my knowledge of them. Then I can invest through that person. But I'm not investing because they have a nice office with a big desk and a suit. Right. Because I don't know anything about money, but I got me a guy that watches over me. This is the phrase of people who go broke. They lose all their money, and they end up with Bernie Madoff.

Okay? So you understand it, and you will get to a greater understanding when you find someone to teach you instead of sell you. And if you'll do those two things, over the next six months to a year, you'll become an investor rather than a saver, because you need to have some of this money invested better than it is, but only after you have increased your knowledge of things. And, John, there's a sense of power that happens in any subject of our lives when we're making decisions based on our knowledge rather than someone else's recommendation. Always. Always.

I've got a team of people in my life that I trust that, like, when oil went negative, I didn't know what that meant. I grew up in Texas, and had never heard that. So I called it never had, I called the financial guy and he, you know what he said, the smartest financial guy I know. And he said, I don't know. I had to call somebody and, but he taught me and he taught me very simply. And now I know. So yeah, there's something about learning it and knowing it, internalizing it almost well enough that I could go teach it to somebody else. And then you just have peace. Yeah. You don't wake up in the middle of the night going, oh, I wonder if my guy is doing a good job for me.

Because you're your own guy. There you go. You want to find your guy? Look in the mirror. There you go. That's my guy. That's my gal. That's the one that takes care of me right there.

And that just requires that you slow down a little bit. Make it a priority and and it's okay to um it's okay to admit you don't know that's that to me is the foundation of wisdom is being able to say can you there's a great office episode where he says can you write this in crayon for me so there's something so powerful about just saying explain it to me one more time just learn just learn yeah i'm sorry i should but i still don't get it ask questions like a child and you'll learn you'll learn yeah when you're posing is when you lose money don't be a poser that's when you get wet on on thin ice yep dr john deloney with me this hour answering your questions as well or on today's show, this is the Dave Ramsey Show. Business leaders make your life easier with FreshBooks.

Whether you're starting a business or you've been at it a long time, FreshBooks is one of the smartest decisions you'll make this year. FreshBooks is an accounting software designed for people like you that lets you do the things like automate your invoicing and your online payments so you get more time to work on your business try fresh books for 30 days free at freshbooks.com slash dave ramsey ariel is up next in georgia hi ariel how are you hey i'm good how are you guys doing today better than we deserve what's up hey so i called you guys last week and um you guys gave me some really great advice on how to handle my spending while also trying to get my bipolar 2 disorder under control.

One of the things that you guys both suggested was that I hand over my debit card to my husband and I did that. And Dr. D, you said that a series of little wins will be important in my life. And that felt like a little win. It felt so freeing and like, just, it felt so great. But now my question is, I'm a stay at home mom with a five-year-old and how, how do you guys suggest I go about like getting groceries, taking him to those last minute doctor's appointments and stuff that just kind of pops up along the way that I might need a debit card or potentially cash for.

I just want to say, first and foremost, I am high-fiving you. You are in Georgia. We're here in Tennessee. I want to say I'm proud of you for handing that over because I know you had to have a conversation about it. How did your husband respond? Did he smile ear to ear? He did. He's on board. We're excited. It ramped us up for sure. So here's next little win. Next little win is to sit down and map out those trips. And that's going to be real frustrating, especially if you feel yourself heading into a hypomanic state or a super low state for a minute,

those are going to be hard for you to go back to the agreed upon. Here's the day I go to the store. Here's the day that we're going to go to the doctor. And those few and far between things, you can manage those. And it can be as easy as your husband calls the doctor and says, hey, here's the number. But there are definite things. What we tend to do is when we get a little wind, we go, ah, one of the biggest challenges for bipolar is to keep people on their meds.

They feel great. And then they're like, I'm good. So I stopped taking them, right? And you've probably been down that road too. And so stay on it because now what your brain's going to start doing is start saying, but we need that little card. We need that little card. We need that.

And so stay on the plan. And when you start feeling yourself leaning over a little bit, you've got a guy in your life that clearly loves you. He's sticking by you. And go to him. You'll have a good conversation and stay connected. Yeah. I think it'd be very easy to just – the problem with a debit card is there's no end to it.

It doesn't have an off button. Right. Cash has an off button. And so if you said, okay, this is the grocery budget for the week. I'm going to the grocery store. Even if you didn't have a certain day, if you need a certain day under John's direction, I'm fine with that. But from a

cash management standpoint, if you said, well, tell me, okay, what's it take to buy groceries for a week at your house, Ariel? Around $100. Okay. So if you had $150 in an envelope, and across the front of that envelope the word food was written, whenever you went to the store, you would know you would just spend it on that. And even if you completely screwed that up and blew that out and misbehaved, it's only

$150. It's very limited. Okay. So you've still got good boundaries and limitations on how much, quote, damage you can do to yourself, which is what we talked about the other day when you called, is to try to not damage. We're trying to set up something together here with you that you don't damage yourself at your request. Okay. And so, yeah, I think the envelope system for that, and even if you paid the doc in cash

or if you had a certain amount of money laying around that was just loose money at the house, if it's $100, it's not the problem here. It's the $1,500 thing that's the problem. Right? Yeah. So, I mean, if you got $100 in your food envelope and you have $200 in a miscellaneous envelope, miniature emergency because I'm a stay-at-home mom envelope that you just don't touch, even if you screw that whole thing up, it doesn't really damage you,

except you took a step back on some of your quick wins, became some quick losses. So I think you're fine on that. The trick is just not to be carrying around a gun with unlimited ammo, which is the stupid debit card in that case. So, yeah, I think if you had that, again, you've got guidelines. You hold yourself. You're giving yourself boundaries that you and your husband have agreed to on that amount of money, and I can be trusted with that much.

And then the longer I am trustworthy with that, the more we start moving back to a different kind of normal. You know, you ratchet up. You wouldn't want 10 years from now, if you've not had any real problems with your bipolar 2 and you've been managing it for 10 years we still you wouldn't be on this system you should get better your system should bring you back to a normalcy over time as you uh begin to trust yourself and you and you know and you've re-earned

trust with him uh through this and so in other words i don't hold i if somebody calls me it goes hey i you know i haven't done cocaine in a month that's different than i haven't done cocaine in 20 years in terms of how i would advise them on handling their money you know uh you know it's a it's a different thing obviously this is different than drug addiction i don't mean that but the but the metaphor still stands so hey congratulations high five kiddo. Proud of you. And we're here if you need some help. Call anytime. Love to hear your progress, by the way.

All right. Elizabeth is with us in Texas. Hi, Elizabeth. How are you? I'm good. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Well, on Sunday, we put an offer in for a house that was accepted. And then on Monday, the oil market crashed. And my husband's a petroleum engineer. We put an offer in for a house that was accepted. And then on Monday, the oil market crashed. And my husband's a petroleum engineer. So now his company is not, it already wasn't doing very well. So now his job is double at risk. So we have an option period for five more days. We close in May.

And we're just trying to decide, should we go ahead and move forward? We think if he loses his job, it'll be within the month, or should we wait to know more and go ahead and pull out of the house. Is the contract contingent upon qualifying for a loan? We have the loan. It's still in underwriting. Okay, but I mean, if he loses his job, you don't qualify for the loan, and you'd be out of the contract, correct?

Correct, correct. As long as he lost his job, if he's going to, before the closing. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, either one's okay. Here's the thing. There are houses on every corner. And if you pull out and go, you know what, with what oil did, we're not doing this.

And you've got that right at this stage during this five days. And so you've not violated the contract. You've not violated any moral promise you made. And you walk away and you sit on the sidelines for a month and see how this settles out. There's nothing wrong with that. Okay. And there's nothing wrong with going forward, depending on how scared you are about this. What I don't want you to do is for him to lose his job three days after the closing.

Right. And if you go past the five-day option period, your contract is subject to or contingent upon qualifying for a loan, and you would no longer qualify for the loan if he lost his job right yes okay so you you could still get out of it between now and the closing after the five-day option if he lost his job before the closing and that's just what you've got to do but here's the thing sometimes we get down these we get down a rabbit hole on this and we get to thinking oh this is the one house this is the one house and it's like you know um i'm never going to get married because i've lost that one girl you know and so there's a house on every corner and you can get another house so it's just a stupid house. I mean, there's houses everywhere.

So, you know, if that gives you permission to sit on the sidelines, then sit on the sidelines. And that's what I would look at. So I think, John, I think I got disconnected from emotional ownership of homes because I got in the real estate business. And I was in a house on every corner. I mean, you know, hundreds of them. Right. I've owned hundreds of pieces of property, and I've sold lots of properties and been in lots of properties for sale, and I'm like, you know, they're everywhere. I'm going through that.

My wife and I just went through that. We put an offer on the house, and it didn't pass inspection. And so I moved on, and she had already planted the garden and had already thought the kids were going to play here. And so I rushed to move on, and I didn't honor her grief in that process. And so I've got to sit down and have a conversation. And then we decided not to pull the trigger on it. We withdrew, and now we're on to the next one.

Yeah, but you do really get committed emotionally to these deals, and that's a normal thing. And certain people get more committed than others, right and i guess yeah yeah that's true that's true dr john deloney with me on the show today your calls at 888-825-5225 this is the dave ramsey show In the middle of these uncertain times, Ramsey Solutions wants to give you some hope. For the very first time ever, we're giving you Financial Peace University free for 14 days. Go to DaveRamsey.com slash hope so you can watch from home. Folks, I love telling you about well-made, well-thought-out products. Today, I'm talking about Grip6 belts. I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of traditional belts.

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