The Ramsey Show - App - It's Time to Dream Big! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is donned, 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. Thank you for joining us.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today on the air. We appreciate you guys hanging out with both of us. He's here to answer questions about your relationship IQ, anything having to do with relationships and families and individual stress

and those kinds of things, especially in these particular coronavirus times. So money and life here on the radio, which is pretty much what we've always talked about. So Barry is going to start us off this hour. Barry is in Indiana. Hi, Barry, how are you? Hi, Dave. Thanks in advance for taking my call. Sure. What's up? What is your process or method to put a valuation on a business and real estate? Well, real estate would be separate from the business. It has its own value. And, you know, there's several ways you can appraise a piece of real estate. Usually it's just done on a comparative basis.

The business is only worth what profit it generates. There's two ways to value a business. Well, there's three or four ways, but the two ways that are most often used is if the business is not making a profit, it's probably worth what we call book value, which is if you sell off all the parts, the inventory, you collect the receivables that are owed to the business, any cash that's in the business, any fixtures and equipment that you can sell off for the business, and the total of all of that is called book value.

And sometimes the parts of a business are worth more than the businesses because they're not generating much or any profit. If you're making a profit, a real profit, after all leadership and management has been paid market rates, then a multiple of that of four or five would give you a 25 or a 20 percent rate of return, a 20 to a 25 percent rate of return. And so what is the net profit on your business? Well, it's a business I'm thinking of purchasing. Okay, what's the net profit on your business? Well, it's a business I'm thinking of purchasing. Okay.

What's the net profit on it? You know, Dave, that I can't tell you. I've not seen the books. He's trying to come up with a number. It's specifically a storage unit complex. I don't know if that makes any difference or not. Okay, now that's more of a piece of real estate, and you have tenants then. The business is not separate from real estate.

That's like buying an apartment complex, okay? Okay. And then you have what's called, in real estate, you would have what's called NOI, net operating income, and that is the piece of real estate has tenants that pay rent minus the expenses equals your net operating income. The rent collected minus expenses. Okay? The gross rent, gross potential rent, is if all the units were full. Minus a vacancy rate, minus a some-don't-pay't pay rate a collections rate gives you your actual rent collected minus expenses to run the thing property taxes insurance a manager on site

locks that break legal fees for evictions all of those things are expenses right and there's a should be a simple set of books that show that and then the net profit on that will give you uh a an noi and then you've got to figure out in real estate we call it a cap rate that you divide that into um and so if you want a 10 rate of return then you divide the noi by 0.1 and it gives you the value of the building. Because in this case, the building's only worth the income that it's generating. Because it's an income-producing piece of real estate. That's how you value an office building. That's how you value an apartment.

It's how you value any income-producing real estate. I will tell you that these storage units are cash cows. The thing's probably making bank if it's being run well and it's in a decent location. For the money invested to build one of them, the ROI is tremendous. They really do well. So, I have a half-acre lot directly across the street from this complex. Do you think I would be money ahead to start small and build my own complex? Well, you're going to be in competition with the other one then.

If there's enough market for storage units if that one's staying full all the time and you know then people the other people don't have place to go and you give them a place to go then yeah but if he's half empty and now you're going to make him a quarter empty and you're going to be a quarter empty that's not going i mean three quarters empty that's not going to work so it depends on how much of a market there is uh is there is there a reason for the thing if it's a successful unit in a booming area you probably could do really well with that but i'd want to buy both of them i'd want them to i'd want them to work together rather than against each other sure so what you need to

do i'd pick up the phone and call a couple of real estate agents find a commercial agent in the area and ask them what cap rate they're putting on storage units right now. Because apartments will have a different cap rate. Different types of leases in commercial buildings will have a cap rate that's a different. The, you know, the lower the cap rate, the greater. I mean, if you're willing to accept a lesser rate of return, the more the property is worth. And that's what your cap rate is, so your capitalization rate it's called.

But, yeah, you probably need to get just a little bit of commercial real estate advice on all these things and make sure you're not overpaying for anything and make sure you're not stepping in it as far as the other stuff goes. But it's a great business. I recommend you continue to pursue it, especially if you're paying cash for it. Lisa's in New Mexico. Hi, Lisa. Your question for Dr. John and me.

Okay. First off, I arrived at Baby Step 7 recently thanks to you, Dave. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. I am an overworking nurse. I will say recently with the craziness, I've been working about 300 hours a month. And I love my nursing career. But I have a son who is medically fragile and is going to need an operation probably in June. And my sweetheart is 70 years old who I'm just not seeing now.

And I'm thinking of taking a hiatus or go into retirement. Why not? Why wouldn't you? You just laid it out for me. Feels right. My commitment to my patients. I think that's it. I've had such a strong commitment to them, but now I'm feeling torn and feel like I need to pay attention to family during this time. Amen.

Ten years from now, which one will you regret? feeling torn and feel like I need to pay attention to family during this time. Amen. Ten years from now, which one will you regret? That's the one you go do is the one you're going to regret ten years from now. Yeah, your son and your husband win that one. That's an easy equation. Touchdown. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. For most of us, health care costs seem to increase every year, and saving money on health insurance feels more and more out of reach. For example, take the Olcheski family from LaGrange, Texas.

Jeff and Carice had just celebrated the birth of a new baby boy. Shortly after, they had a health scare involving one of their kids that was completely unexpected. With today's healthcare climate, this could have bankrupted them. But thanks to Christian Healthcare Ministries, the Olcheskis were spared from a ton of medical bills. As members of Christian Healthcare Ministries, they're part of a group of believers who financially and spiritually support each other. Thank you. the Olcheskis. To be a part of Christian Healthcare Ministries, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org. CHMhost this day on the Dave Ramsey Show. John, one of my favorite things about doing this show all these years is that I've gotten to meet some of my heroes and actually become friends with a lot of them over the years.

And this next guest with a brand new book is no exception, one of my favorite people on the planet, Bob Goff, obviously the author of the book Love Does. And I emailed him last week, and I saw he had a book coming out, and I said, dude, you want to jump on and promote this book launch on the show? And, of course, he agreed to do that. Bob, how are you, my friend? Oh, doing good. Great to hear your voice, Dave. Hi, John.

How are you, Bob? Hey, I'm just so grateful. Even at kind of a crazy time, I've got my eyes open and looking for the things to be grateful for, and there's plenty of them. Amen. Amen. So the new book is Dream Big. Know what you want, why you want it, and what you're going to do about it. Sounds to me like you're doing more than just dreaming. It sounds like you're going to go for it and make it happen. Yeah, you know, dreaming about it, a lot of people think dreaming's something you do when you're asleep. And I think it's actually when you're fully awake to your faith, to your family, to the things that are most important to you. So that's kind of like what do you want.

And if you want a convertible, then it's going to end up in the shop later. But what if you want some things that are actually going to outlast you, right? And a fuel injection system won't cost as much. But so just want some things that are going to actually last. But then importantly, ask yourself, why do I want that? And sometimes I want things because I'm insecure. I want things because I'm looking for validation. So to do a little of that deeper work to just ask the question. So I've done a lot of my books the way you ended up doing this one. It was first a workshop. It was first a seminar, first an event. And I interacted with the audience and got to figuring out what was working with them and what wasn't before I put it into a book. That's what happened with

Dream Big. So that tells me it's going to be a blockbuster. You know what? We have learned a ton, and we've done it everywhere from the Department of Labor to Kabul, Afghanistan. We've gotten people together in these locations and said, what do you want, and why do you want it? What are you going to do about it? And then we call it, I've heard you speak enough times, Dave, we call it like a breaching whale. When you say something and it resonates with everybody,

you hear in the crowd, you hear this big, mmm. So essentially, it's like getting out the cheat code. I took, having done this with thousands of people, I just took all the parts to where there was a breaching whale, where it seemed like it made sense to people. And I said like, well, could we move from this time of a lot of introspection and fear and concern to really purposefully intentionally charting a path forward?

And that's what your listeners are all about. They're just saying they know what they want. They want to be out of debt. They know why they want it. It's just so they don't get the bill and so that they get the freedom, right? And then they decide what they're going to do about it. And so I would say that would be the story of each of the characters in the Gospels, that they knew what they wanted, why they wanted, what they're going to do about it.

But the other thing is they all got confused along the way, every once in a while, right? You know, all those folks with Jesus, they thought he was going to be the conquering hero, and then they were like, wait, what? Like, this is a plot change for us, but it wasn't for him. And so, for us, I'm just hoping that we have more clarity for this time coming up and we can just start dreaming again. You know, I think the timing on the book is perfect because I keep hearing, and I've been trying to yell at the top of my lungs and answer to this, and a lot of people in kind of a whiny, Eeyore kind of voice

are saying, well, there's going to be a new normal. Things are never going to be the same. And I'm thinking, I hope they're never the same. I hope they're better. Dream big. Yeah, you ain't seen nothing yet, baby. And that's why I think God's just yelling that with this book, man. I'm so proud of you.

I think there's half of your listeners out there afraid they're going to lose their job and the other half are afraid they're going to keep it oh that's so true that's a ken coleman line awesome opportunity you don't need to write a long uh resignation letter just say i quit send it to me i'll mail it into your boss being a new creation it doesn't take long sentences to convey it i'm done that was crazy i was watching forrest gump i love that movie and did you know that every time the force was about to make a change he wore a blue plaid shirt right from from the army to getting out of the army. Remember he met Jenny, he wore blue plaid shirt when he was painting the name on the shrimp boat, blue plaid shirt. Oh, and the last scene in Forrest Gump, his little boy is getting on the bus. What's his little boy wearing?

Blue plaid shirt. So I think for some of your listeners, it's time to get the blue plaids out. I think it's time to say, I'm going to actually change some stuff. And if you decide that you got to figure out what you want, figure out, do a vetting of it. So figure out why do I want, is this just me being insecure or is this me being super purposeful? And then just say, what's, what am I going to do about it? And you have touched countless lives, helping people decide what they're going to do about it. The book is Dream Big by bestselling author Bob Goff. And if you've not read Love Does, you're one of the few that haven't. And all the Bob Goff books, you can learn about Bob at BobGoff, G-O-F-F. If you don't know about him,.com, you need to.

I'm going to order this book during the break. Seriously, during the break. I know a guy. I can hook to i'm gonna order this book during the break yeah well you're in the break i know a guy i can hook you up man yeah exactly but uh hey uh so talk about one of your favorite stories in the book you know there's a uh friend her name is kelly and kelly's ambition was to be a mountain climber but then she her heart she picked picked up some virus along the way and it attacked her heart. She actually was lifelighted. The UCLA Medical Center told you only have one day before your heart stops beating. And tragically, somebody had been in an automobile wreck.

They took this heart out. They put it in Kelly's chest, gave it a flick. And what Kelly's been doing is going, going around the world, climbing the highest mountain peaks with a brand new heart. I love that. Like that was a thing that what, what Kelly's challenges is this, uh, her heart, because all of the nerves were severed, uh, always thinks it's at sea level. And so when she's climbing the Matterhorn, she's actually had to learn how to whisper to her heart and to let her heart know this is really hard work and you have got to beat. And I think

for some of us, this has been a difficult time and it's been really hard work. And I hope we can just find a moment of pause and just get real with that. Get authentic and just say, this has been really hard. Maybe something financially is going on. It's just been really hard. Kelly's other problem, when she gets to the top of the mountain, her heart still thinks it's climbing. And so she actually has to whisper to her heart again and say, it's time to rest. And for some people, we thought this couple of months was going to be a time of rest. Oh, heck no. I mean, everybody's, I thought Zoom was the sound an airplane made until six weeks ago, but it hasn't been restful at all. And for some of you, I just hope if you're listening that you'll whisper to your heart to say, you know what,

I just need to take a little rest. You know, can't be all gas and no break. And I think that's where we do some of our clearest thinking. That's where we collect our thoughts about what do we really, really want? In other words, what's the thing underneath the thing? I thought I wanted to be an accountant, and that's an honorable job. But when I figured out in college, the thing underneath the thing is that I wanted my dad's approval. And my dad wanted me to be an accountant. I wanted his approval. It was a perfect match. I got a degree in accounting. I can't even add anything about

that. But if you say like, why are you doing what you're doing? Just get real with it. Say it's about approval and say like, well, what's the thing underneath that thing? And what would it take? Who would it take? A faith response, getting a couple safe friends, and then finally to let people know what you need. Absolutely. Bob, thank you for hanging out with us, brother. Love it, love it, love it. BobGolf.com. The book is Dream Big.

Know what you want, why you want it, and what you're going to do about it. Anything Bob Golf writes, you need to read it. There you go. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. you may feel like there's not a lot you can control these days but i'm here to tell you you can control your budget and you can control what you feed your family my longtime friends at e-meals are here to help they have simplified meal plans and created new recipe collections such as easy pantry meals and freezer meals utilizing basic ingredients. It has never been easier to shop smarter and stay on a budget.

Try it free for two full weeks at eMeals.com. Joining me today on the Dave Ramsey Show is my co-host, Dr. John Deloney. Ramsey personality, answering your questions about relationships and about different mental health things. Your relational IQ, including with yourself. Heather is with us. Heather's in Alaska. Hi, Heather. How are you? Hi, Dave.

Hi, John. I'm doing well. How are you? Great. How can we help? Okay. So me and my husband are both active duty military, and we have just recently finished Financial Peace University,

and we're here. We've got our budget done. We're being very purposeful. We're changing the way that we do life. We're no longer keeping up with the Joneses, but we did for many years. And we've paid off all the little things, and now we're sitting here facing the big things. We have a vehicle for sale. We have another vehicle we would like to sell,

but we're upside down on it. We have a credit card that we owe way too much money on. But we feel most constrained by our house that we still own in Virginia. And the house has been on the market a few months now. It's sitting empty. So that's where the majority of our budget's going is paying the mortgage on an empty house we've done the work it's painted new landscaping everything and we're just not getting any movement on it and so we want to move like gazelles but we feel very caged in and we just you know do you have any advice on that well um the great news is is that you've got a very clear target and the natural thing that happens as soon as you have a very clear target is why aren't we there yet resistance shows up hey what is the what is the kids always ask us are we there yet it's like oh no we're not there yet

um you just got started you got all these things activated it's going to take a little time for the gumbo to cook uh now that's assuming you've done everything possible on the pricing the condition of the house in virginia and that you have a real estate agent that has that's high octane that knows how to sell houses and actually sells houses. Is your real estate agent one of our ELPs? She's not one of the ELPs, but she is in the top 3% for the area. She's done all the work. The house is staged. Is it priced where she said to price it?

It's priced $40,000 below what it's worth right now. Below what she said to price it? Yes. Okay. And how to price it? Yes. Okay. And how long has it been on the market? Just over three months. Okay. And a month and a half of that doesn't count?

Right. It definitely slowed down. Yeah. But it's picking back up. Yeah. And the area around the house, is the economy opening back up yet? I'm not 100% sure on that. The market is still very good there,

but typically in the lower price range than what our house is sitting at. Okay. And what do you owe on it? We owe about $380 on it. And what's it on the market? I'm sorry, you owe $380. What's it on the market for? $449.

You've not got much more to drop. Okay. Right. You'll start writing checks if you drop it a lot more. The other thing we have done, and you ask your agent about this, is sometimes we've paid a bonus to the agent that brings the buyer in addition to normal commission, put a $5,000 bonus on it or something to to get their attention to get them to get it to pop up in the mls uh and wave a wave a red flag in front of the bull and um sometimes that'll help but mostly you probably just got a

little bit of patience here because it's gonna you have the market's gonna have to come back to life. You're doing all the stuff right that you're supposed to do. And, you know, Larry Burkett used to say, a guy that did this stuff before I did it 100 years ago, that it takes you longer to get out of the mess than it did to get into the mess. I have not found that to be true. I've found that it usually takes you about half as long to get out of the mess as it did to get in the mess. But if it took you five years to make a mess and it takes you two and a half to clean it up, that's still not a bad trade.

And that's kind of what I think the ratio is. And you're just in the early stages of that. I'm sorry, but it's going to take a while to cook the gumbo probably. And thank you to both of you for your service, by the way. We appreciate you. John's in Georgia. Hey, John, your service, by the way. We appreciate you. John's in Georgia. Hey, John, your question for Dr. John. Hey, Dave.

Thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? So, question is family related. I'm 26 years old, and I moved out of my parents' house a couple years ago at 24. They kind of want me to move back in. That's one thing. But the other thing is a couple of

years ago, they had a talk with me about estate planning and they said that they have money that they want to leave me and my brother and sister, but there are a couple of conditions. And I just want to get your opinion of those conditions being fair or it's causing a boundary. Why do they want you to move back? Just so that I can save a lot more. Are there things in your life that they're worried about, or are they just hyper-controlling? You're 26 years old.

Do you have a full-time job? Yeah, yeah. I make a – Hello? John? You still Hello? John? You still there, John? John? Yeah, I'm here.

You cut out. What do you make? I make about $60,000 a year plus bonuses as an engineer. You're an engineer and you need to live at home. No! I don't think so. I was making about half that. My dad put his foot squarely on both of my booty cheeks and kicked me out with a smile.

I moved out on my own. Yeah, we hugged, but I was going out. Something doesn't smell right here to me. Okay, so what's the conditions on the inheritance? There are three main ones. One's education-related. They want me to obtain both a bachelor's degree which I've done and a master's the master's may or may not happen

I'm deciding the second one is get married to someone of our ethnic group and culture and religion that one's kind of hairy because I'm technically dating someone that's not of our ethnic cultural background

you should never refer to the person you're dating as Harry, but go ahead. That's very true. I'm just being silly. Go ahead. Go ahead. What's number three? And then the last one is to take care of my parents in their old age, and honestly, that's something I would have done anyway.

But do those seem appropriate to you, or it seem like i think they probably have good intention but uh if i were in your shoes they would feel overreaching um but i think they they mean well because they want they want you to have a good life and that's their definition of a good life so they're they're not they're not um they're they're saying if you do these things, it's going to be good for you. That's what they're saying. I'm not sure I agree with them, and you don't either necessarily. So I think we can cut them a lot of slack, and this is a loving act on their part. What is your ethnic culture and background?

Indian. I'm Indian. Okay. part uh uh what is your ethnic culture and background um indian i stopped indian ah okay okay i and i also default to at the end of the day whether you and your heart believe these things are good ideas or not good ideas it's their money and whether you agree with it or not they can put the stipulations they want on their yeah i mean you you're just you're saying i i i'm not gonna do that and they're saying okay you don't get the money you know and that's okay there's nothing wrong with that either by the way you can just go um the only thing is that every time i've seen them lately they keep telling me that i'm like veering off the path that they wanted for me and they keep bringing out the money and then i don't know i just haven't been talking to them much lately.

Starting to drive a wedge. Right. So something I talked about on a recent YouTube shoot was this idea of you get to choose which voices in your world, in your ecosystem, have permission to hurt your feelings. That's a decision you make. And one of the decisions I made a few years ago was I started taking people out of my box. I realized I was allowing so many other voices permission, folks I didn't know, folks I haven't talked to in 20 years, and then folks that I truly, deeply loved, like my parents, because they had a picture of what they wanted my life to look like. And like Dave said, it's a picture that they had that was good and right and holy in their heads, but it was different than the one I wanted.

And I had to choose what my life with my wife, what we had to choose together, what our lives were going to look like. And so they didn't get a vote anymore. And then that allowed me to actually love them deeper because I didn't have to pretend. I didn't have to be quiet about certain things. I got to live fully. And so you get to choose which voices get a vote and what you want to do. I'm going to send you a copy of Dr. Henry Cloud's book, Boundaries. It'll be a good read for you in this situation.

Trust their intent, but then you decide whether it is for you. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Please hear me loud and clear. The government is not going to bail you out of your student loans, at least not completely and not without a catch. What they're talking about only impacts federal, not private loans, and you need to take responsibility for what you owe and pay your debt down quicker. Right now, Splash Financial is offering their lowest rates ever. With lower rates and extra payments, you could just find yourself debt-free in the next five

years. Visit SplashFinancial.com slash Ramsey to see if you qualify. Lamar is in California. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Lamar. Thank you, Dave. It's really a pleasure to be on the show. Our honor to have you, sir. How can we help? Yeah, well, my wife and I, our son, live here in California.

And we are, I'm going to be starting medical school here pretty soon. And we have no debt. We're all babysat for. We do have a home to be owned. It's not paid off yet. And we're just wondering, going into medical school, I do have a scholarship that's covering all tuition and fees, so it's about $4 million in scholarship.

Whoa. Let's just pause right there and learn how you did that. I just asked Dave off the air, how does somebody do that, and you just clowned it. So, yeah, I want to hear this. Yeah, well, basically I applied to a variety of schools, and specific schools that did offer scholarships that covered all tuition and all fees. And the school I'm going to is a faith-based medical school that specifically covers or awards a few scholarships to people who are looking to do mission with their medical degree. So that's what caused you to stand apart to qualify for this?

Exactly. It wasn't necessarily grades or something else? It was also a combination. So it was grades, it was academic standing, it was prior experience, life experience, and also the desire to work in a mission. Not necessarily an overseas mission, but any kind of nonprofit organization. But you're committing a portion of your career informally, committing a portion of your career to missions work.

Correct. Yeah. Wonderful. Good for you, man. Wow. You just made my day better, Lamar. That's a great tradeoff. It's not actually a tradeoff. So how many of these kinds of programs did you find when you were out there searching for them?

So there's several that are military-based or one that's military-based that does require a year of service. There's another one that is government-based, National Health Service Corps, that also provides a scholarship and a stipend for living. But you also have to do four years of service after that. And the school I'm going to right now also has a program where they pay for everything, but they require you to do 10 years of service overseas. So those are the major ones. The two national ones are the major ones.

And there's other schools that offer scholarships. Other medical schools, in fact, offer full-ride scholarships. Some new schools, if they're a brand-new school or only been open for a couple of years, they'll also offer full-ride scholarships to their students, the first two classes. Well, you're schooling us up, man. I appreciate that. Absolutely.

How can we try to help you? Well, yeah, my question is this. So we have about $20,000 in our emergency fund plus another $10,000 that we have, you know, for a project that we're going to do in our house to make it an additional dwelling unit. And we're just wondering, with the tuition and fees being paid, we still have living expenses that are probably going to be around 30,000 a year, um, during medical school, the four years of medical school. So we're wondering, do we just take out the loans now and just, you know,

bite that bullet or do we put everything we have now to just try and, and, and, and, you know, cash flow our medical school living expenses for my wife and my son and myself, and do that as long as we can, and then we'll get as long as we can, or what would be your advice in this situation? You are this close to getting a medical degree with no debt. So I'm going to continue to take debt off the table for you. And so figure out how we're going to do this i i probably hear i mean if i'm in your shoes if i could become an md

and that's obviously a goal for you um i'm willing to say four years all bets are off if we can become a debt-free md and that means i'm willing to sell the house my wife might work some uh during this time uh we might use up the money that we have in all of our accounts uh you know we might start an ebay business on the side i don't know i mean but you are this close and so i i you know if i'm you i would prefer to get this degree debt free over owning a home i would prefer this over x or over y or over this becomes a a an obsession for me if i'm in your shoes to just knock this out because it's for such a short period of time because you can always get a house after you're a doc and you're already know you're going to mission field anyway so you can always get another dot dot dot after you're a doc you can always stay at home the

rest of your life with the kids the wife can if you're a doc and so you know there's a a four-year period of time here where you pay the price to win and uh you've been very creative you've even schooled us on how to do this up to this point and i would continue to use that extreme creativity and focus but uh earl nightingale used to say the problem with setting a goal is not what you're willing to do to get to the goal it's what you're willing to give up to get to the goal what are you willing to give up to get to this goal and uh man when i start doing that with stuff, then I start figuring out how important the goal really is.

If I'm in your shoes, because this is a short period of time, it's only four years, I'm willing to do almost anything that's legal and moral to pull this off. It's amazingly sharp. Amazingly sharp. Wow. And this is the kind of guy you want being your doctor. Yes. That's the guy you want to come to when the chip's on the table of guy you want being your doctor. Yes.

That's the guy you want to come to when the chip's on the table. He solves problems. Before they even come. He doesn't even, he doesn't wait, and he doesn't read the manual. You know? He writes the manual. Solves problems. Man.

You're right. This is who I want as my doc for sure. Nicole is in Florida. Hey, Nicole, your question for Dr. John. Hey, guys. How are you? Great. How can we help? Hey, Nicole, your question for Dr. John. Hey, guys, how are you? Great. How can we help?

Hey, okay, so kind of hard to follow up after the last guy. You know, he was so incredible. Womp womp. Go ahead, Nicole. Not really. Okay, so I've been on a date with this guy for about two years now. We met online, and, you know, after a year and a half of dating, we're like, let's get serious. So I was trying to get out of debt. I sold everything I own pretty much. I moved down here. We live in two separate houses. We are keeping it traditional, and, you know, we don't want to live together until we're married.

But anyways, so I've tipped off like 80% of my debt. I'm almost there. However, he has debt on his house um we've had to sit down conversations of you know you know babe this is very serious to me i take dave ramsey very serious uh he's on board he's you know interested he's never really had debt before other than his house um so this is kind of almost like a wake up call for him in a sense, kind of like a, Hey, you know, uh, but basically, uh, going together, we are two different religions. Um, I've been out of church, uh, personally for a couple of years now. And, uh, he's, I'm Baptist, he's Pentecostal, uh, but we have agreed, you know, going forward

with our relationship, church is going to be part of our family. Being debt-free is going to be part of our family. So I guess really just the question I have is, how do I, you know, learn or I guess not learn, but how do I become one with somebody since I've been so focused on my own debt for so long? And how do I, you know, kind of accept his religion and things like that? I think you're going to have to sit down and have some hard value conversations. I'd recommend getting with a good premarital counselor that's going to walk alongside you guys and help you identify these values and these goals. Okay.

One little minor point of clarification. You have a different denomination, not a different religion. Okay. They're both under the heading of Christian as a religion. Okay. It's just different ways of worshiping Christ. Okay. Okay.

We have a lot of the same kind of values like you know um not living together married you know as far as like money goes and thoughts like that i guess i'm just kind of nervous well hey you should be entering into getting married to somebody is a forever commitment so if you don't have some nerves that's having nerves is normal the bigger question about values is this over the arc of a relationship over the arc of a marriage you're going to both experience new things and want to try new things and have dreams about new things and so when i'm talking about values you've got to be on the same page with your religion you got to be on the same page with your particular values but

almost as important as you have to be on page with how you talk about values together and how you work things out does Does that make sense? And so getting with a counselor is going to help you not only talk about and identify the values that you all have now at the beginning of what might be your marriage, but how you're going to experience and change your values over time together. When somebody brings a value that the other person disagrees with, how are you going to honor each other in this transition? This is The Dave Ramsey show.

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