The Ramsey Show - App - Making Ends Meet on a Low Income (Hour 1)

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Free Livestream: Is the housing market going to crash? Register now: https://bit.ly/3n9bhyR   Dave Ramsey & George Kamel discuss: When married couples disagree on how much house to buy, Pulling money out of a 401(k) to put in a Roth, Trying to make ends meet when income is low, How to get money out of a shared investment.   Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the 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. We help people become wealthy, do work that they really love, and create actual amazing relationships. Ramsey Personalities are always on the air with me. Today, George Camel, Ramsey Personality, host of the Fine Print podcast, and also participating with Rachel Cruz and I tonight in our live stream on the Real estate reality check we are looking out our studio windows if you're listening to us this is uh july the 14th and we'll be doing that event tonight

we're looking through uh all the equipment tonight that'll be used we're actually going to use our our lobby as our studio for the streaming and so all the equipment's out there and feels like 48 million miles of cable just to run this thing. It's pretty impressive. And our normal audience that's up close to the screen has been pushed back into another county out there, way back there, guys. So they're having to watch from back there, which is probably helpful for how good-looking you and I are. We look better from back there. It definitely helps. If they could dim the lights, it would be even better.

So if you want to join us tonight for the live stream, the Real Estate Reality Check, George, Rachel, and I will be talking for about an hour, and we hope you can join us. It is a free event, and we're going to be talking about the real estate market, what's happening with inflation, recession, house prices, interest rates, all of that. And what's not happening, too. And what's not happening, yeah. Is it going to crash? Is it going to crash? Is it going to crash?

Spoiler alert. We're going to tell you it's not. But we're going to actually deal with a lot of, we're going to have a little bit of a college class, little charts and graphs. I've never seen so many graphs and charts in my life. But we make them fun. You're going to wear a tweet jacket and go full professor on us,

and I can't wait. No, I'm not. I'm not wearing a tweet jacket. Just don't leave us to be a lecture professor. Little elbow patches. Yes. Does that mean I would have tenure? You will have tenure. No, I'm not. I'm not wearing a tweed jacket. Just don't leave us to be a lecture professor. Little elbow patches. Does that mean I would have tenure? You will have tenure. Oh, there you go. I've always wanted that. I don't even know what it means still, but it sounds cool. It means you can't get fired

even if you're stupid. Wow. That's what tenure means. I see why people want it so badly. We've proven that with some of the college professors I had proved that. Do you offer that here at Ramsey? No, we do not. We do not have that. We don't have tenure. So, RamseySolutions.com slash reality check.

Join us tonight. It is a free event. Andrea starts off this hour in Dallas, Texas. Hey, Andrea, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Oh, Dave, it's good to talk to you again. You too. Thank you for having me on your show. Well, thank you.

I don't know. You probably, I don't know if you remember, I actually met you back having me on your show well thank you um i don't know you probably i don't know if you remember i actually met you back in 2019 at your studio my husband and i stopped by and i i i'm a balloon artist i made a bunch of balloons for your grandkids oh thank you thank you darling i'm sorry i bet so many people i can't remember my name so but i'm glad you're here how can we help Okay. I was hoping you could help me with a little disagreement I'm having with my husband. We've been married 10 years, and I have listened to you longer and got him on to the Total Money Makeover, and we followed you and were able to get debt-free. Good.

And we like it. He likes it a lot. And, but now we are having, um, our second baby due in November and he's having to work from home and I'm nesting and we feel like it's time to move up in house. And we have a little bit of a disagreement. I feel like I found like the ideal dream house and he feels like it's too much. And it would cause us to have a mortgage again for a little while. And he just doesn't want to do that. And I'm just like, don't feel like I want to settle when we're going to be in the house, hopefully a long time. So that's...

Okay, so what is your current home worth? We are hoping after realtor fees that we can get about $300,000 out of it. And what would the other house cost? The other house that we're looking at, our realtor thinks we could get it if we made an offer for $495,000. So a move of $200,000. Do you have any money saved above the $300,000? We do. We've got our emergency fund of $16,000, which we're not going to touch. Correct. And then in other various accounts, we've managed to save up about a little over $100,000. Okay, so you're only $100,000 in disagreement. Basically.

Yeah, if you had another $100,000, would he be okay with a $500,000 house? He would be thrilled with it. His thing is, like, some of these things are not. It's not too much house. It's no debt that he wants. Right. It's not too much house. It's no debt.

He says, this house is fancy. It's a want. It's not a need. We shouldn't go into debt for a want. Okay. And, okay, I got it. I got it. And so what's your household income? So 2021, we did a combined 101,000. How quickly can you save a hundred grand? I don't know. Um, we, I mean, if we.

Less than three years, probably? Two to three years. Two and a half years, maybe? Two to three years. Maybe. No, definitely. I guess they were projected to do $119,000 to $120,000. If you had to do it to save your life, you could save $100,000 in two years,

but three, you could definitely do it. Okay. Because you'd be living on beans and rice again in order to hit this goal, to do two years, but three, you could definitely do it. Okay. Because you'd be living on beans and rice again in order to hit this goal, to do two years. Three years, you can definitely do it. Okay. Or you can pick up, do you have anything else you can sell? Oh, nothing that's, like, worth much.

I mean, it's not like we have. You got expensive cars? No, they're used cars, and they are paid off, and they're, you know, kind of old. Okay, they're not expensive. Okay. What about going to a $400,000 house, and you pay cash for it? Have you looked into what that would look like? We're still looking and keeping our eyes open.

We haven't ruled it out. Okay, so here's the deal. What we're really arguing about is not whether you have too much house. If I'm understanding your outline, what you're really arguing about is the hundred, is whether we go in debt or not. Right. And your husband's going, I finally got free. I can't walk willingly into another bear trap i can't do it i can't i can't swallow the pill as much as i love you as much as i want you to

have what you want i just can't go back there it makes me throw up into my mouth right and that's what he's saying it's also like inflation is going up and what if i buy too much house and then like the country's gone crazy and i can't like no you don't have to worry about that you don't worry about that what you've got to worry about is what you can control your bottom line is you guys are arguing about a hundred grand and two to three years that's what you're arguing about you're not really arguing about whether to move if moving is valid whether the five hundred thousand dollar house is too big a house,

whether we're really not arguing about any of those things. We're just $100,000 short of doing what you want to do, and you're willing to go in debt and he's not. Correct. That's what it comes down to. And so once you quantify it that way, it gives you some real good points for discussion. I don't think either one of you are in the stupid zone with this. If you took out a little mortgage and paid it off real fast, it doesn't violate our guidelines.

But I've got to personally agree with your husband. Once I got out of debt, you weren't going to drag me back in kicking and screaming under any circumstances. There wasn't anything Sharon wanted bad enough for me to do that or I wanted bad enough for me to do that ever and i was actually more likely to want something than she was but you couldn't get me to do it again so i kind of understand where your husband's coming from i don't think george and i have an answer for there's no one right or wrong here you guys have to get on the same page whatever you do going forward and i don't think you're buying this unless you both come into agreement that's's for sure. This is the Ramsey Show. People all over the country are discovering a faith-based and budget-friendly way of meeting health care costs through Christian Health Care Ministries.

Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM, is a nonprofit organization that helps members carry one another's burdens with health care expenses. And they have successfully shared each other's medical bills for nearly 40 years. See if CHM is right for you by visiting chministries.org. CHM is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Talking about your life and your money. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Pete is in Boston.

Hey, Pete, how are you? How are you, Dave? Thank you again for taking my call. I talked to you about 18 months ago. I followed your advice about paying off my mortgage, and you're right. The grass really does feel greener. Way to go, Pete. Your peace of mind is priceless.

But I did have another question, Dave. I'm 65 years old. I have around $2.4 million between 401 and IRA. I also have individual stocks and taxable mutual funds worth about $520. I just sold an inherited house and I have about $140,000. And my question to you is, I don't have any Roth account. None of my assets are in Roth. And I'm wondering, at this stage of the game at my age, should I be getting involved with Roth? Should I use some of this money from the house to pay the federal tax to... To roll some of it to Roth, yeah. How old are you again?

Yeah, 65, 65 gonna be 66 i probably wouldn't fool with it um you can if you want here's the benefit yeah all right let's say let's say that you move 400 000 to roth and you use this and you use 100 000 to pay the taxes okay yeah now you've got $100,000 that from this point forward will grow tax-free. Now, having traded $100,000 for tax-free growth is not going to come out until it grows by more than $100,000. Yes. Yeah. And so you would have to commit to leave that particular account alone probably until death. And just let it be inherited.

Okay, I guess my, well, that was part of my concern is that I have three children. It would be inherited tax-free for them. But I guess my concern is when RMDs come along. Yeah, it'll help with that, too. It'll help with that too it'll help with rmd yeah and so that portion would not be subject to rmds but it won't grow enough tax-free dollars for a good decade anyway to have justified this yeah okay so if you're going to leave it alone at least 10 years and it sounds like you don't need the money, you've got enough other money.

Yes. So you could do it. I mean, there's no harm in it. And it does help with RMDs, and it does help with inheritance. And it does help with the fact that the growth saves me $100,000 in taxes because I've already paid it? Yeah. It would be close to a decade.

Yeah. So it's something you wouldn't necessarily do if you were in my business. You would or I would. I would if you're going to commit to not touching this particular account for over a decade. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

All right. I needed to know that. Ironically, just one other thing. I have a 401k and there's about a 1-6 in the 401k. I got about 600 in the other one, in the IRA. And the IRA is the one I have a financial advisor, and it's down almost double what my 401k is. And I know you have to wait to mark it out, but it's just amazing.

Yeah, when you pay attention. Now, out of this $2.6 million at 65 years old, did you start out or did you inherit a lot of money or did you start out with a lot of money or how did you get this? No, this is from working, putting money away all my life. I inherited about $600,000 taxable. After you were already a millionaire or did that make you a millionaire? Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Long after. Okay. So you were already a millionaire and or did that make you a millionaire? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, long after. Okay, so you were already a millionaire, and then you inherited money. Yeah. So you're not a millionaire because of inherited money. Okay, interesting.

I just want to verify that because there's lots of these guys out here all across America, and for those of you that are so stupid that you think everybody inherits their wealth, it almost never happens statistically. Very few. or wealth it almost never happens statistically very few less than 10 percent of americans become wealthy are exclusively become millionaires because of and we've got data to prove that because of that and so when they become wealthy and you say stupid butt stuff like you're so lucky luck didn't have squat to do with it that's like looking at the farmer who just had corn grow and saying you're sound lucky after he planted the freaking corn yeah pete didn't win the lottery to

get here he just consistently invested over a long period of time and now he's got these kinds of options it's amazing but sounds like he can do it but not for the roi benefits mathematically but more for some other benefits with the rmds and being able to pass it on. Yeah, well, the ROI will be there probably in 7 to 10 years. That's what we're saying. But the trick is that the tax-free part has to offset the part that you put that money up front. And so it takes about a decade for that to work out. I've done all of mine years ago, but knowing that I wasn't going to touch it, I'll probably never touch any of those accounts while I'm alive. Just get passed get passed on yeah and so all of them be everything i have is in roth now i've

converted it all and paid the taxes and i even even the matching portion that comes in we we converted and pay the taxes uh courtney is in canton ohio hi courtney welcome to the ramsey show hi dave how you guys doing better than we deserve what's up i wanted to hear that um so not quite sure the shortened version of this basically uh i don't have much of an income right now uh i'm basically my only income right now is door dashing i am about to take an exam to get my insurance license to get an actual income and have an actual job. With the limited income that I have, I've been trying to do your baby steps for I can't tell you how long. Unfortunately, because of another relationship that I ended back in February was why I couldn't really fully do the baby steps. At this point, I have $5 in savings.

My question is, what is the best way to still work towards that end goal of at least creating that $1,000 starter emergency fund with only having about $100 a week? How come you're only making $100 a week? How many hours are you doing DoorDash? As often as I can. A week. What else do you do? What's taking up your time? I don't have a babysitter.

So it's child care. I have tried, yes. I have tried numerous people, and they've've all it was either my teenage sister being a teenage girl or the other person that i was able to find it got a better can you find work from home right now maybe a customer service job online uh starting to take my exam took up a lot of the past couple weeks not an insurance exam yes an insurance exam is not that hard no i how old are you i don't know 25 okay all right um here's the thing before this i had i was trying to start like an in-home cleaning business so i had income since february but since then it's

it didn't, I guess, prove to be as successful as I wanted it to be to start off. What you don't need is an income. You need to allocate more hours to work some way or another. You've got to find some way to go make some money because you don't have any money. You don't even know how many you pay for food. Right? $100 a week won't pay for food. Fortunately, I get assistance in that.

But, yeah, no, if I didn't have that assistance, I wouldn't be able to. What kind of assistance? Food stamps. Oh, okay. All right. Well, here's the thing. The reason you don't have any money is you don't work much so we've got to find some way we you have to find some way to find some hours or some method uh that the kid rides along with you i don't know what it is that you go make money

because that's your problem there's not going to be a situation what happened if you got like a full-time job making a hundred thousand dollars a year? Well, you'd have to find a babysitter. Yeah. And what happens when you get ready to go sell some insurance? You're going to have to find a babysitter. So you're a single mom, and you're going to have to solve that equation. And that's the problem you've got. There's no magic wand that makes $100 a week work.

We don't have one of those. So this is an income crisis, kiddo. You have an income crisis, and you need to treat it that way. This is The Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Steve and Dawn are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hi, Dave. Welcome, welcome. Where do you guys live?

Northville, Michigan. Oh, cool. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you paid off? We paid off $315,000 in seven years and five months. Way to go. And your range of income during that seven years and five months? It was starting at $140,000 and ended around $230,000.

Excellent. What do you guys do for a living? I'm a preschool teacher. I'm sorry. I'm an IT. Okay. Excellent. Very cool.

So seven years and $300,000, I'm guessing you might have paid off your house we did you're weird people looking at weird people normal people have a mortgage and a spare bedroom for sally may not you you're a hundred percent debt free that's right we are way to go guys all right tell us the story what in the world happened seven years ago they got you connected up with this Ramsey stuff? Well, it was around 2010 that I learned about you by my friend Heather. She had Total Money Makeover and told me, you should read this book. So I read it in like two days and told Steve about it and got him on board. We were pretty excited.

But, you know, life kind of got in the way. And, you know, we only had car debt at that point. So we were told by a lot of people, you're always going to have car debt. You know, you don't have to worry about getting rid of that. But we decided that we were going to do it. And our daughter, Kate, I remember driving to the credit union making the last payment. And she was like six at the time. And she said, Mom, are we going to call Dave Ramsey and do our debt-free scream?

I love it. And I said, well, I would like to wait until we pay our mortgage off. Wow. So here we are seven years later. So, yeah. So then a few years later, we decided to get when we bought our current house that we were going to be really focused and paying the mortgage off. Yeah. Awesome. Way to go, you guys. Thank you. So Steve, were you on board immediately?

You just said it like, yeah, so I just got Steve on board. It's not always that easy. I was not on board immediately. I had to be talked into it, much like a lot of things in my life. So it was a persuasive speech. That's right. And you went, okay, fine, I'll give it a shot. Absolutely. And you started doing it and you went, oh my gosh, we can do this. Yeah. And it's like Cardette. It just seems ridiculous now, right? Like why would anybody have Cardette? You know too much to ever go back. Wow. That's impressive. And Kate, I mean, she must have seen a lot along the journey. She must have been inspired by you guys and your financial journey.

We say more is caught than taught. Do you think this stuff has stuck with her? I think so. And she's actually, through her high school, she's going to be taking the foundations course her senior year next year. Awesome. So we're really excited about that. Fantastic. That she can start off.

So we just have college next. We're hoping that we know we're going to be able to cash flow college. Oh, yeah. Wow. This income and no debt. I mean, what's the house worth? Yeah. I'm sorry, $480,000.

I think $480,000. How much you got in retirement? We have about $600,000 in retirement. So your baby steps millionaires. We are. Way to go, guys. That happens a lot when they pay off the house. That finishes it up.

Well done, guys. You just wake up and go, oh my gosh, I guess we're millionaires. Look at that. That's awesome. When we got really close at the end, it was like we were just aggressively tacking the mortgage. Like paying crazy amounts onto our mortgage. Well, you can see the finish line. You can sprint.

That's right. I mean, you can do it. Even if it's a long run, as long as you can see the finish line, you'll find out how much you've got left in the tank. Absolutely. That's cool. Well done, guys. Very, very well done.

Proud of you. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? I think it's just perseverance. Do not stop. Yeah. And just realizing that, you know, there's an end in sight and you're going to get there. And just, I think we added on $300 onto our mortgage payment for a while. And then we increased it to $500. And then we increased it to $1,000. And then pretty much we were we were paying an extra two thousand dollars on our mortgage that's awesome so as your income came up you just

threw it all at the yeah pretty much at the house yeah we did and that curve took you on out in seven years yeah yes you want to be your personal best and go how much more can we put on this month we can beat that we can beat that i'll beat the pr yeah it's awesome yes so having a goal that's it it made it matters it matters how does it feel to be free? I don't think it's sunken for me yet. We're still living like we have a crazy amount of debt. What's the first big thing you plan to do now that you're free? I need a new car.

Okay. That's fair. So I've been driving the same car since 2008. Yeah, it's time. It's got 200,000 miles on it. We just put a crazy, large improvement on that car. So, I don't know.

Wow. Gotta get a car. I like the car. I like the car. Oh, you like the car. It's the coolest thing about me, Dave. Oh, boy. It's a low bar.

That's the year the iPhone came, the original iPhone came out in 08. It's time to upgrade. Probably. That's awesome. You know what came out in 08. It's time to upgrade. Probably is. That's awesome. You know what you're going to get? No. No dreams yet.

No idea. You're still hanging on to the old beater. I love it. Yeah, pretty much. Cars are really expensive right now. Oh, yeah. We're maybe going to wait just a little bit. Sure.

Yeah. Way to go, guys. Very, very well done. We've got a copy of Baby Steps Million millionaires for you since you are one that'll be perfect and a total money makeover book as well you can give that to somebody and show them what to do and a one-year subscription to financial peace university as well we'll get you the card for that and all of those may be things you give away maybe some of them you'll use yourself but either way they're great and so we're we're proud of you guys way to go heroes thanks man you're weirdos not only you out of debt house and everything but you became baby

steps how old are you became baby steps millionaires 50 years old 52 okay that's exactly the average millionaire it takes them 7 to 10 years to pay off their house and they're 50 to 52 years old in our in our study that's what we found. You guys are averaging the best way possible. You're the stereotypical Baby Steps millionaire. Perfect. Well done. Steve, I'm sorry? Dave, if I can just say one more thing.

Our son, Cole, is with us too, and he's off-site right now. But he has special needs. He's 20, and, yeah, he's just been a part of this journey as well. So we just wanted to mention him. Absolutely. He's part of the process. He is. Very cool.

Good stuff. Thank you. All right. Steve and Dawn, Cole and Kate from Michigan. $315,000 paid off. House and everything. They did it in seven years and five months, making $140,000 to $230,000. That officially puts them over the line, and they're Baby Steps Millionaires.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! We love it. Well done, well done, well done. Beautiful. Dave, we've got to talk about this.

So paying off your house, we're doing this event tonight, Real Estate Reality Check, and a big part of becoming a baby steps millionaire and building wealth is becoming a homeowner and paying off your house. That's a huge part of the wealth building equation, and I think people don't always connect the dots there when they think about wealth building, becoming a millionaire, and being a homeowner, and paying off the mortgage early. Not sitting around for 30 years and doing the HELOC and doing all kinds of stupid stuff and renovations, pulling money out. It's about paying it off. Yep, yep. And not about moving up, moving up, moving up, moving up. It's about paying it off. So they bought a $300,000 house that's now worth $500,000, and they've got

$600,000 in their 401ksks that puts them at a million one net worth see your net millionaire means you have a million dollar net worth what you own minus what you owe assets minus liabilities it does not mean your income well nobody should have a million dollars it's not a moral construct you can discuss that if you want to discuss that definition you'll it's an accounting definition and so i don't feel like i have any money doesn't matter it's not a feeling i don't think it's enough doesn't matter it's still a million it's there there's only one definition of millionaire it's not a feeling it's not a moral construct it's not a it's not any of these things it's simply assets minus liabilities it's not your income it's not what your broke brother-in-law's opinion is about who you should vote for.

It is none of it. Wealth inequality is just unfair. It's none of that. It's none of that. Fair is where you get cotton candy and ride the tilt-a-whirl. That's what fair is. Don't forget the deep-fried Oreos. Deep-fried Oreos?

Yeah. You've been going to some redneck fairs. Hey, listen. I'm fully ingrained in the south now as a boston deep fried oreo try it sometime it'll change your life my mouth's watering what do you mean it'll change your body chemistry i it did thinking about it it's awful we'll go to the fair together dave deep fried i've done deep fried moon pies i've made them wow i've never done that's a thing i didn't know well of course you, of course, you go to Sphere, you can get deep-fried anything.

Don't deep-fry anything in the South, Dave. You know that. That's true. That's true. Well, I don't know what that has to do with being a millionaire, but there we go. We rabbit-trailed hard there. Yeah, hard left. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today.

Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Common sense for your dollars and cents and for your life. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Markita is in Seattle. Hey, Markita, how are you? Greetings, gentlemen. Greetings. How may we help?

I am calling because I need some advice, Papa Dave. Okay. My grandfather was a longshoreman. He bought property two lots in California and two lots in Mississippi. When he passed away, he passed the lots. He gave the lots to his 10 children. Out of the 10 children, four have passed away. Three of the four that have died have heirs.

Six are still alive. Two that are currently alive, their health is deteriorating. One had a recent stroke, and my mother is dealing with ALS. Oh, my gosh. And so my question is, what is the process and the cost selling sibling estate interest for income just so that my mom, who's dealing with an illness, can have some sort of income to live on? Is there any communication among this huge number of heirs? There's no communication, and this is what's prompted me to call you because it's always been circling in the back of my head subconsciously because no one's talked about it.

And now that they're getting older, the 10 siblings are in their late 70s, early 80s, they're passing older, the 10 siblings are in their late 70s, early 80s. They're passing away, but no one is. I haven't heard any conversations about heirs inheriting their parents' interests that have passed away. That's what will happen. Right. And so that has happened. However, no conversation has been tabled.

And so now that my mother is dealing with alf um you're getting ready to be the owner of my mind yeah you're you're getting ready to be the owner of this and she could use the cash right now correct and i wanted to know what is the process and the cost doing um for selling her and not pardon me if i'm not using the correct verbiage is it the estate interest? I don't know if it's the joint ownership of my two siblings. She's got a basket full of partners, and she's just selling her portion of ownership to someone,

preferably the most likely would be another relative of some kind. So what I do is start calling all the different relatives and say, is anybody interested in mom's portion? And then you would say, okay, her portion is, what is it, one-tenth? Is that what it was? I don't know what the percentage is. It should still be a tenth.

Whatever her original percentage is still is. You said there be a tenth. Whatever her original percentage still is. You said there was ten kids. Yes, one tenth of ten siblings, yes. So if we say the lots are worth a million dollars as a group, then her one-tenth is worth $100,000, and we'd be willing to sell that right now for $65,000. Discount it. Got it.

And then if somebody wants to buy out her 10th um and you know maybe somebody in that pile of siblings more likely uh kids of the siblings nieces and nephews uh might want to be trying to kind of gather up ownership because if someone can gather up 51 of the ownership they can act on behalf of everyone else because they have controlling interest. 51%, which is a little over half? Yeah. I mean, you can force a sale at that point. You can force the others to sell it, which is really what should have happened.

That should have happened decades ago. Right. They should have put these properties up for sale and divvied up the cash because cash will always divvy right yeah is there any formal agreement that you have there's no formal agreement i checked with my mother and she said and i asked her to verify she listed on the property has she seen the deed with her name on it? Does she recall if she has a percentage or is it joint ownership?

Does she remember any of the verbiage? And she could not recall, but she did say her name was listed. All 10 siblings were listed on there. So I don't know. Do we need a real estate attorney or an attorney? Not until you have a buyer. I don't know what's the process. Got it. And the only buyer likely um nobody really wants this i wouldn't want it for any price i wouldn't give you two

dollars for it because i don't want to deal with this basket of crazy okay um but the uh but one of the one of the people in the basket may want it that's your most likely buyer by far so i just start contacting them you have any semblance of any guess of what these lots are worth uh two of the lots are in a historic black town which is the first black town in in allensworth california which is uh about two and a half hours away from uh i don't need all that. What are they worth? I don't know. Okay.

That's all I'm asking. I mean, because if you're dealing with one-tenth of $100,000, I'm not even going to fool with it. If you're dealing with one-tenth of a million dollars, then maybe it's worth fooling with. Makes sense. You know, I wouldn't spend $12,000 in legal fees chasing $10,000. Yeah. makes sense you know i wouldn't spend twelve thousand dollars in legal fees chasing ten grand yeah so you know i try to get some guess of what they're worth and try to have some contact with some of the uh more intelligent more business-minded uh nieces nephews or and or siblings but probably nieces or nephews and then start trying to talk one of them into buying up controlling interest

in these things so they can flip them and get the mess cleaned up because the likelihood of getting all of these people to line up and sign a deed together and sell the thing to somebody else as an individual who's an act of congress right there well we're trying to get people disagree that didn't even talked i mean i mean to agree to do something and not only to agree to sell it but also to agree on the price oh my what is the right way to do this dave if you're the grandfather leaving this to 10 kids is there a simpler i would have just sold it requires it's auctioned or so it's sold or auctioned within 12 months of my death and then that money's divvied up among the kids because 10 people owning a piece of real

estate's unwieldy as we just discovered okay it's just it's unwieldy now our case our real estate is left into a trust and the trust sets up all the agreement for how things are operated and then the kids are the beneficiaries of the trust and it's been clearly communicated everybody knows this there's a full plan out on how it will function and so forth and then you know the kids they have voting rights in the trust and if two of the three ramsey kids decided to sell it all they can sell it all and divvy it up majority they want to hold it they can hold it but they've got a process for governance and communication and a process to decide whether to keep a certain piece of property within that trust or not those kinds of things set a wild wild that's one way you can do it but just dumping a whole bunch of people onto a deed with no no mechanisms for governance

uh is well it creates a mess you know what we've got here is we turned a piece of property the value of it into zero potentially and then it's split because of the errors and now it gets way more complicated exactly exactly. Oof. Wow. Exactly. So, yeah, you do want – this is one of the reasons we talk about mama bear legal forms have a will. You know, get with somebody, get your will in place, and if you've got substantial assets, leave them into a trust.

But in that guy's case, he might have just needed a will, and the will could have simply stated, Grandpa, the original Grandpa in the story you know upon my death these lots are to be liquidated and turned into cash by slow sale or auction within 12 months of my death you can just say that in the will and then whatever they bring the kids divvy it up and by the way if one of the kids wants to buy it they can yep so there you go nice and um we actually have a few pieces of real estate that are not left in the trust and one of the things we did that just for fun just to tell people because uh if one of if uh somebody

wants to sell a piece of real estate uh or buy it uh if if the other person wants to keep it they can buy out the other shares at 80 percent of their share. At a slight discount. Well, because you're not going to net 100% after real estate fees and closing costs anyway. And so you have it appraised, and at 80 cents on the dollar, the other siblings can buy out the other one. The deal has to make sense. So it's already set up, though. It's not a negotiation. It's set up. If you want to buy it, this is the price.

It avoids conflict, that's for sure. Lots of communication, lots of clarity. That's why I told her $65,000 on $100,000 there. Just avoid discounting and get rid of it. This is The Ramsey Show. Do you love a good day, friend? Want to see the latest Ramsey Show videos going viral?

Check out your favorite moments from the Ramsey Show on YouTube. Go watch and subscribe to the Ramsey Show channel on YouTube. Ramsey Show.