The Ramsey Show - App - Manage Your Money, Not Your Debt! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

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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 dumped, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. We appreciate you calling. And we appreciate you participating in the show today.

Merry Christmas to you, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. Dave is in Indiana. Hey, Dave, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Merry Christmas, Dave. Thanks for your time. My pleasure.

How can I help? My questions regarding my parents, they are 76 and 78, have six kids, five brothers and sisters. They currently have $60,000 in a pre-tax account, and their house is paid off. So we're kind of trying to develop a plan how we, as their six kids, can help them through this time. So my questions are, they're paying one and a half percent to an advisor on that money. Wanted to know if that was sustainable and the right thing to stick with, how they should allocate their pre-tax account, and then just your advice for what's the best way for us to six kids to help them during their retirement years. So the home is paid for, and it's worth what?

Approximately $125,000 to $150,000. Okay. And they have Social Security coming in, obviously. How much is that? Correct. Their annual income between pension and Social Security is $35,000. Okay. And they have $60,000 saved. One and a half percent is about normal for a managed account with a good advisor. That's nothing, that's not a bad plan. I always recommend that you invest in

growth stock mutual funds with long track records. I'm a few years younger than them, about 16, but I'm invested across four types of mutual funds. Growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international. At their age, I might, if they're worried about risk, I might substitute the aggressive for maybe a balanced fund, and that would calm the portfolio down slightly, but I'm going to stay in that. I'm not going to move into money markets and bonds and that kind of crap. So if their investment professional is one of our smart investor pros, that's the type of advice you would be getting from them, consistent with what you hear here on the air.

Still not going to generate much money, maybe $400 or $500 a month, something like that, if you start pulling off the earnings on it um they have uh required minimum distributions i assume on this is it an ira um i don't know it's from my dad's pension so i know it's he's not paid taxes so they pay tax on the withdrawals and they do have the minimum distributions every year but they're small like thirty five hundred dollars a year So he had rolled that. Well, that's about the earnings on it if it's invested in mutual funds, so a little bit more maybe.

But he had rolled an old pension distribution into an IRA? Years ago, yes. Okay, good, good. That's where it should be. That's properly done. So they've done good with all of that. And so the only question I've got then is when we put them on a written budget, can they make it on $4,000 a month? Sure, and they have month to month.

The problem is the house is 100-plus years old. I brought them from the hospital, and it's beginning to – some of the wear and tear. They had a tree fall on a front porch they had to have done. They're having HVAC units go out, things like that. It's a big-ticket, one-time expenses that's starting to really, you know, worry us kids that I don't know how many more of those they can kind of weather. So we're... How is their health? Oh, good. They're still mobile. They, you know, they can both drive. You know, they're great parents and we feel like, you know, we're just trying to help them any way we can.

But so far, I think they're probably too old, but I would get in touch with one of our endorsed local providers for long-term care insurance and investigate if that's a possibility because if one of them went into a nursing home, you don't have the money. Sure. You've got a real problem then. And you get to keep your house and go into a welfare nursing home called Medicaid, and you get to keep a certain amount of cash,

probably would get to keep the $60,000 in the house. But it would be very, very difficult still. And so I'd love to see them get some nursing home insurance. If you all provided that, if it was a cost that made sense after you analyzed it, then that would be – I'm not sure you can get it at this age but i would check sure okay uh so that's one thing the second thing is i think that the six of you guys just look and say all right what's the budget for one-time trees and heat and air a year above their they're going to live on the 4 000 we don't have to support them monthly

but we're probably going to drop you know know, $1,000 a piece into this, $6,000 a year for odds and ends. Okay. Yeah, we've kicked that around. What do you think about at some point, if some of this, you know, their nest egg continues to dwindle, selling the house just to become more liquid? I know you don't control your housing expense at that point point but you know 150 000 in cash would last a long time um because it's costing about eight thousand dollars today to operate the house with taxes utilities etc um so is there a point where that becomes where do they live oh they're in south end Indiana. I might look at moving down into an $80,000 condo. But I don't think I want to be out of the home ownership business. They could live another 20 years.

Agree, agree. And the housing could become the deal that breaks the camel's back on this budget. Okay. So I like having the housing stabilized. I'm not panicked about this. It sounds like the fun is leaving this house. Trees, heating and air. It's over 100 years old. It costs me $8,000. At least it is for you. I don't know if it is for them. Well, selfishly, right, we're trying to be,

we don't want to get the call in five years that we have no money. All we have left is a paid-off house, and we need help. Yeah, well, they should not be burning through the $60,000. The $60,000 ought to create, at 10%, it would be $6,000 a year. That's $500 a month. Sure. I agree. And so if you're invested well, if you start pulling that off, you should not be eating that up.

And if you guys are covering, if they live on the $4,000, that's $500 from the investment plus the $3,500 they're getting from social. Did I miss something? No, sir. Okay, that gives them a budget to live on, and they can live on that, not counting the one-offs, correct? Right. Then you guys can make a decision and say, well, this house is killing you.

Let's move down into an $80,000 condo that's paid for. Less maintenance, less hassle, less worry, less junk, you know, all that kind of stuff. Simplify. And, oh, by the way, that frees up $50,000 more to put in this investment account. Right. And that raises us another $300 or $400 a month coming in. And, you know, this is going to be tight no matter what happens here. There's no wiggle room in this for sure.

That's right. They just don't have much of a nest egg, and that's where their problem is. But the good news is they've got a lot of kids, and you guys are paying attention, and you're thinking about it ahead of time so it's not going to sneak up on you. But, you know, the big thing is I think they need to be accountable to you all about meeting the $4,000 a month budget. That's the part of this that concerns me. Are they doing that well?

Are they frugal people? Month to month they're frugal. It's some of these one-time things. And they've probably become more frugal a couple years ago when they probably had $150,000 or $200,000. They were not as frugal as they probably should have been. Yeah. I'm saying, are they going to stick to a $4,000 budget and not run up a credit card debt because mama keeps going to the mall or something? That's what I'm worried about.

I think they can do it because it sounds like that's their lifestyle level. So this is doable. Hey, thanks for the call. Thanks for taking care of them. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. How often can you get the best of both worlds? Not very often, right? Well, with the rate secured program at Churchill Mortgage, it's possible.

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Chris is in Rhode Island. Hi, Chris. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? So basically I've been a listener for about two months now.

It's been game on ever since. As of last month, I was on Baby Step 2. Right now the breakdown is I have $300 left in a personal loan, $5,400 in student loans, just shy of $10,000 in credit cards, $13,000 left to my mom. And I had a car payment total, or what I left owed on the car was $19,000. So altogether it's about $47,000. And basically, I looked into it, and according to your system,

I didn't need to get rid of my car because right now, I'm on a estimate about $60,000 to $65,000 this year after taxes. And so I looked into the Kelley Blue Book anyway, so I was at the contemplate selling it. And last week week i ended up rear-ending somebody and totaling it oh no you okay yeah okay it was totally there they were okay it was a girl in a listed jeep uh basically everybody was okay but my car and my ego a little bit but it ended up being a huge blessing from god. I have USAA, and the settlement that I agreed to ended up being $17,000. Cool.

Yeah, so it ended up being really good. Now I'm stuck because I basically have the $1,000 for my emergency fund. And the issue I'm looking at right now is right now for work, I have to travel uh it's either an hour to an hour and a half um back forth to cape cod and basically uh what makes that worth it is uh my company gives me about 88 to 92 dollars in uh non-taxed uh they call it car miles to go there yeah so how you been getting there since you totaled a car uh because i told us usaa gave me a free um rental car for how long uh so i have to have it returned tomorrow

and i mean just just as an example here we just had a snowstorm and on uh on my way home uh with a real car i uh fishtailed i mean thankfully i'm gonna recover from it there's there's no one near me i was driving safely at the time, too. But I mean, I've been looking for an all-wheel drive or a four-wheel drive vehicle in that $1,000 range. And basically, the other context is I have a bonus sign-on bonus that's owed to me. It's about, after taxes, it'll be about $1,100, $1,200. And then we also, I have a $2 raise since the end of September and our contracts had just gotten signed. So I'll be getting some retro pay altogether. That's like looking at like another $1,700, $1,800 that I'll be getting within the next like couple of weeks. So I'm really kind of stuck because like, I don't want to, I mean, I'm willing to buy something in that lower $1,000 range,

although I can't find anything that's, like, four-wheel drive or all-wheel drive that looks mechanically sound. Yeah. Why don't you talk to Dollar Rent-A-Car and just rent you a car for a week or two? So that's looking like my immediate option. My big question was, am I just stopping my debt snowball? Yes, you're stopping everything. You're in the middle of a crisis.

Okay. So you're stopping everything. You're going to use your $1,000. You're going to use the $1,700. You're going to use any other money you can scrape out of the corner of the couch. You're going to work like a crazy person. You're going to look around and see if you can sell something on eBay or on Craigslist, we're going to scrape together, you know, maybe you can get together $3,000, $4,000

and get you a little four-wheel drive something, right? Perfect, yeah, no, that's exactly what I was looking at. It's like the minimum. If you can scrape, and it sounds like you can put that together in about two weeks. Yeah, no, that's right. I just didn't want to buy something that thousand dollar range i don't i don't blame you and it's okay if you have to but the good

news is you've got some other money coming we just got to tap the brakes and um you know make this work right tap the brakes bad bad pun in this case but yeah let's start this whole problem now uh yeah so yeah yeah i think you've got i think you've got your plan laid out i would just rent the cheapest thing that'll get you back and forth to cape cod for a little while and um you know in the with dollar or rent a car and then uh uh literally not worry about the uh all the driving the rental um i'm just it's up to you it's up to you the second day second or third day after yeah just find out i mean i'm not driving there so i don't know but you you figure that out but every dollar you spend on the rental car is a

dollar you don't have to buy a car with right yeah so we want that to be as cheap as you can do right because it's that's all we're buying here is a little patience right yeah i basically i just don't want to be foolish and not spend an extra you know what me 40 80 dollars getting a uh all the drive as a rental uh and then you know wrecking it because we have like snow here and stuff well it's up to you i mean i guess you could you got an hour drive so uber's probably out of the question, right? Yeah. Do you work with anybody that you could pay to take you to work? No. Unfortunately, basically, so I work for Peter Pan, and I'm the spare guy right now.

So when someone's on vacation, I cover them, but otherwise I'm just driving up to the lot, and I'm basically hanging out alone there. So unfortunately, like, i'm in between like the different shifts um i did look into because there's like a really early bus that we had out from providence to like hyannis and not born near where i have to go but i mean you can do almost anything except walk for two weeks right that's all we got to do here okay so the good news is this is not a permanent solution it's not a long-term solution. We're just trying to get to that $1,700 check to put with this

and scrape together any other nickels we can find. Stop everything. Tighten your budget as tight as you can do it. Don't spend any money on anything and put it all in this car fund. Buy you a car in two weeks and then restart your baby steps with starting to fund your $1,000 baby step one again. Perfect. Okay. You can do it. You were almost there before you called me, right?

I know, I know. And, like, I just couldn't get myself to try to put it on the market for the, you know, for that $7,000, $8,000 I'd lose, and this made it worth it and yeah so yep get her done man get her done you can do it there's always another day another day to fight good for you yeah sometimes this all i'm doing here is telling people what they already knew they needed to do and i just say it out loud and then sometimes that's all a good friend needs to do is just tell you what you already knew you needed to do and so that's my uh my gift well the show's free to listen to so shut up this is the dave ramsey show So

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Visit LinkedIn.com slash Ramsey. That's LinkedIn.com slash Ramsey. That's linkedin.com slash ramsey. Terms and conditions apply. James is in Arizona. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, James. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Mr. Ramsey. How are you? Better than I deserve. How Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Mr. Ramsey. How are you? Better than I deserve.

How can I help? Good, good. Hey, so I'm going through a life-changing event right now, and I just wanted to get your opinion on a couple of things. One, so I'm going to be going through a divorce pretty soon here, and I was just wondering if I should sell my house or keep it and just buy my wife out. I'm sorry, how long are you married? Five years.

Wow. What happened? Just a lot of disagreements. So I have a child from a past relationship that is not biologically mine, but I raised her since she was six years old and came to the point where my wife just didn't want to accept her anymore.

And, you know, she's 13 years old now, but my ex, her mother of the other daughter, she had a lot to do with it, just caused a lot of problems between me and my wife. Yeah, so now we're at this point now. And we're separated now.

I moved out of the house. She's still living there. So what is the house worth? The house is worth about between $260 and $2 and 270 and what do you guys owe on it uh about 183 and what do you make a year 100k okay any other debts that the two of you have to deal with uh that we do no i do have a couple of debts. Uh, like I have about seven grand of past child support, which I've been trying to settle with my ex on that as well. Uh, so we should be coming to some agreement here pretty soon. I owe about, there's another child somewhere. Yes. So, so

basically with, with that, um, the other child that's not biologically mine, I do have a child that is biologically mine with that. I got you. Okay. Just making sure I understood. Okay. All right, cool. Yeah. And so do you have custody of any of these children?

Joint custody. Joint. Just one. Just one that's biologically mine. Okay. Well, I'm sorry you're going through this. I've got a friend that does divorce counseling, and she says that a divorce, once the decision is made,

and it sounds very clear that this decision is made, then it turns a marriage into a business transaction. And so there's two pieces of business here that you need to consider. One is you would never leave someone in the home that you're on the mortgage unless it's you. Okay. So that would mean the house is either sold if she's staying in, if she can't, it's either refinanced into her name or it's sold or it's refinanced into your name. The second thing I would look at is I would just ask myself, if all this weren't going on and I make $100,000 a year with a few of the miscellaneous debts here as a single guy, would I buy that house?

And the answer is probably not. Okay. You probably just wouldn't be. I mean, let's just say you're living in an apartment, you're a single guy, which is what you're getting ready to be, right? And you're making $100,000. You've got a little debt. You're cleaning it up.

Would you go buy this house? I like the house. I like the house, but I think down the road I would end up selling it. Mainly the whole question is I feel guilty. I feel bad for my other two children that I currently have with my wife. I feel like I'm kind of kicking them out by selling the house. Okay, so you have two children with the lady you're divorcing? No, no, I have two children with my wife currently the one that you're divorcing yes yes oh so is this four

i have three total that are mine and one that 13 year old yeah okay all right i'm just making sure i'm keeping count here okay yeah all right so. So, uh, well, I, I, um, I didn't know they were there until just now. Um, but if she's going to stay in the house, she needs to refinance it. She can't afford it. She can't afford it. She shouldn't stay in the house. Then she shouldn't stay in the house. Okay. And, and I don't know why you would move in the house if she's not going to be there unless you're going to have them 50 of the time are you no okay no i mean it'd be more like 40 so that's that's part of my other question i mean i'm um i'm basically at the point right now

in my job as well that um i was already kind of planning an exit strategy to start my own business uh so i don't know if if i should just continue on with that or not i think the best thing for her and you is to sell the house and split the equity and she takes it and goes and gets her a nice place to rent in the similar neighborhood where the schools and so forth are similar and she stays in the general area. And that's what I would do. Would you recommend as far as being the job and the salary that I have, I mean, do you think it would be a good time to start my own business?

I don't think it's a good time emotionally. You got four kids in your life that are all going through trauma with this situation. You're going through emotional trauma with this situation. And please don't tell me it's okay because it's not. It hurts. And I would get emotionally the other side of this and get everything settled down, let the dust settle, get some of this behind you, and then I would talk about maybe starting a business.

But I wouldn't do it this year no i mean i wouldn't do it the next 12 months for sure hey thanks for calling i'm sorry you're going through this open phones at 888-825-5225 that's 888-825-5225 colette is in oregon hey colette how are you i am well how are you better than i deserve what's up oh i have a question that i'm pretty sure i know how you're going to answer but i want to double check it because i don't think i've ever heard it come up on your show okay So I'm gazelle intense and I sold my car and I had some negative equity on it. So I went to my bank and asked them for the loan and they said it would be 2% cheaper, uh, two percentage points cheaper to increase my credit card limit and put the remaining

amount on my credit card. Sure. Do it. So I, so i did that yeah but i have a refund coming from the gap and the extended warranty because i didn't even get into the extended warranty on the car and when i get that in should i keep with the debt snowball and apply it to other credit cards yes or should i be paying that credit card no you pay it right down the debt snowball all money that comes from any source goes right down the debt snowball.

That's what I thought. Yeah, and you're doing everything right. Way to go. Awesome. We paid off almost $20,000 in three months. Way to go. How does that feel? It's actually feeling really good. Yeah, it's like you're like you're in

control of finances yeah like you're making the money behave for the first time huh yeah we're managing our finances and not our debt yeah oh that's a good line that's good we're managing our money not our debt that's very good good. Well, well done, kiddo. Excellent. Merry Christmas to you. That's absolutely fabulous. That's exactly how you do it. It is amazing when you just pay attention to something, how you can change the whole discussion around it. If you just pay attention,

what you pay attention to, what you're intentional about, what you focus on is what you win at. The old Earl Nightingale talk from 1960, The Strangest Secret. You become what you think about. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he, Jesus said. What you pay attention to is what's going to happen.

And the rest of it just goes by in the peripheral vision. Pay attention. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Merry Christmas, Brandon in Iowa. How are you? I'm great, sir. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

I have a question for you. To take you back, 2016, my wife and I got married. In that time, I was upside down on a loan with a truck. We ended up selling the truck, paid off that loan. The rest of the remaining of that loan, which is probably about $5 about five, $6,000. We also paid off her wedding ring, which is approximately $10,000 and then paid off her vehicle, which is probably about another $15,000. Good for you. We also paid off about $20,000 of my student loans, maybe closer to like 18, something like that. But I still have about about five thousand dollars in student loans and then in that

time i also bought a truck and i currently owe about twenty two thousand dollars on my truck why would you do that i thought you were getting out of debt well i agree we kind of made a dumb decision but not kind of it's it's one of those things things where we've had two children in the last two years, so we have two girls under the age of two. I just recently changed careers. So I worked in law enforcement for about seven years, and I've been putting into that retirement fund, which is an IPERS retirement fund out of Iowa.

And I'm a vested member in that, so I have about $28,000 in that. I can leave it alone and start collecting it at 55. I can roll it over into our IRA, or with the amount of debt that we have left, which is about 25, I could take that out of IPERS along with a little bit we have set aside and pay off all my debt, and we could be debt free. So my question is what I can do with that for retirement. No, you couldn't because you get hit with a 10% penalty plus your tax rate. Right.

What's your household income? Between 90 and 100. So you're in a 25% tax bracket plus 10% is 35% of that money goes to the government. One third of it, $10,000 of it. Yeah, correct. So we'd only get $18,000 of that, and then we have a little set aside that we could tack onto that. I mean, so we'd have a couple, probably $2,000 or $3,000 left to pay off after we put all

that towards the debt. We'd have about $2,000 or $3,000 left of debt is all. Yeah. No, I would not cash out your retirement account. I would roll it to an IRA. Would you leave it alone in IPERS? No, I would roll it to an IRA in good growth stock mutual funds.

And what we teach folks to do is stop borrowing money in order to get out of debt and leave $1,000 only and you've got more than that, in an emergency fund, a starter, beginner emergency fund, live on a written tight budget, and attack the debt.

So I think you ought to seriously consider selling this truck. Okay. And then you obviously would finish that student loan. There's only about $5,000 left in that. How much do you have in savings? About $4,000. Okay, so I would take that down to one. We had about $15,000 in there, and we threw $10,000 of it at student loans

to kids that are trying to get out or get rid of that. I'm recasting for you, resetting for you what we teach. Okay? Now, you can work your system if you want to. I'm not going to be mad at you about that. You get to choose what you're going to do. But you called me, and so our system is Baby Step 1 is $1,000. Baby Step 2 is stop borrowing more money.

Stop borrowing more money and then list your debts smallest to largest and use any non-retirement assets that you can sell to clear these debts. So, you know, you have to decide because I've got to tell you, I don't see a bright future for you guys if you continue to borrow money to buy trucks. And that's one of the reasons I'm telling you to sell it, because I want you to feel the pain of this. I want you to say, I'm done borrowing money. That was a really dumb decision, and I'm not going to make that same dumb decision again. Now, you're probably going to keep the truck, and you're probably going to pay it off, but you're also going to probably borrow to buy the next one,

and you're going to get off the rails again, and you're going to have a problem. You have got to draw a line in the sand that says, I'm done. You have to. All right, for your sake, it doesn't affect me. Cheyenne's in Arkansas. Hey, Cheyenne, how are you? I'm doing good. How are you all?

Better than we deserve. How can we help? Well, I just need some advice from you. I just really trust your wisdom so i've been um i've been debt free since march and then about a month ago i left a domestic violent relationship with my ex-husband he got divorced in february and i'm also pregnant i'm expecting my baby in may and um just moved back home to Arkansas from Minnesota. So everything is just like, woo, whirlwind. I'm living with my mom and my sister. My siblings

and high school friends are nearby. And I'm just kind of curious like what to do because my mom, so I've been trying to help my mom for at least a year get out of debt so she's at least six year 80 grand in debt besides her mortgage i don't think you can help your mom you're in you're the one in a mess yeah i mean let's get you straight first before you start fixing other people i mean you've you've been through hell, and you're broke. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

How long were you married to this twerp? About a year. I'm sure glad you got away from him. Yeah, I didn't even realize it. I mean, it's kind of crazy. I left, went back, left, went back. it's kind of crazy i left went back left went back it's kind of nuts yeah how everything fell into place are you done the pregnancy really saved me aside from the pregnancy are you done oh yeah i mean the fog once i got pregnant the fog lifted and i was like yo why am i putting up with you but But, I mean, I guess I'm just curious because, like, I'm just curious what you think about me staying here.

So did you tell me the divorce is final? Yes, it was finalized in February. It wasn't messy. Okay, I'm sorry, but you just left? So you went back to him after the divorce? Yeah, I know. But now, I mean, I'm done for good because you know like I said there was really a fog and I didn't I knew there was something wrong but I didn't realize that for you it was

just going to keep changing we tried therapy so many times so anyway let's talk about your money do you have a job no I've been putting I have an interview friday i've been putting in resumes left and right and i i was massage therapist in minnesota but i don't have licensing here so i'm what does it take to get licensed there a lot um a lot of money i have well i have to i have to take some extra courses and then pay 200 for a test that I've already taken once and failed. I'm not sure if I'm ready. I only have $800 to my name and I can start working, doing other things. There's a live-in position about an hour away from my family and it would bring in around $1,400 a month and I don't have any debt. So my bills are just the basic stuff like phone and insurance for my car.

So I'm trying to kind of decide if I should, you know, move out as soon as I get some income or if I should stay with my family and save and save and save for the baby because he doesn't intend on taking care of it financially and given and given given the domestic violence that's okay order protection so i'm just like yeah we want him as far away we want him as far away from all this as possible yeah right so i don't know if i should get my own how can you make the most money and take care of you and the baby probably i don't know i guess i guess get licensed as a therapist maybe exactly exactly instead of that's how you can make the most that's how you can make the most money

and take care of you and the baby and if they'll give you a place if they'll give you a place to live while you work five jobs getting the money together and getting that test passed and getting the classes taken or whatever you've got to do in order to get that certification in Arkansas and get it done. And also call the state or the area that does the licensing and explain to them what you've got and what you're doing and is there any way they can help you speed this up? Okay. And I should move out of my family's home for the sake of, you know, myself. If you need to. I didn't hear an issue with your family at the moment, but if there's an issue with your family, that's fine. But you're not able to take care of other people. You have a full-time job just getting back on your feet after this mess you've been through.

I'm so sorry. Hey, you call me anytime, and I'll help you any way I can, kiddo. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Did you know you can now listen to The Dave Ramsey Show on Pandora and Spotify? For all the ways to watch and listen, check out our show page at daveramsey.com slash show.