The Ramsey Show - App - Married Couples Are Wealthier Than Unmarried Couples (Here’s Why) (Hour 1)

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Kristina Ellis discuss: Sole Proprietorship vs. C-corp businesses, Affording to buy a house in this market, When your credit score goes to zero after paying off debt, Why married couples tend to be wealthier than couples who cohabitate https://www.wsj.com/articles/moving-in-together-doesnt-match-the-financial-benefits-of-marriage-but-why-11667761626 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET 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 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods of moving and storage studios, 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 build wealth, do work that they love, Taking the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Christina Ellis, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today.

Open phones here at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. Our latest numbers reveal that there's about 22 million of you out there. Thank you so much. We're honored. We appreciate that. We are here to serve you. 888-825-5225. Mark is with us in Knoxville. Hey, Mark, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, how you doing? Better than we deserve, sir. How can we help? I am self-employed. I'm the only employee. I have been for about 25 years, always filed as sole proprietor.

And my brother is telling me I need to switch to C-Corp. I'll save money, but he can't really explain to me why. And when I tried to look it up, I don't know if I can since it's just me with no employees. So is it something I can do? And if so, should I do it? You can do it and you should not do it. And you should not take any more accounting advice from your brother. Okay. Okay.

Now, if you do want to, the only reason for a sole proprietor like yourself to incorporate or to open an LLC would be to risk manage. Meaning, what do you do? What kind of business is it? It's auto detailing. Okay. So if someone was walking past where you were auto detailing, they tripped over the hose and broke their face, okay?

And they said, said oh this guy looks rich we're going to sue him well you have two options and uh number one you'd have insurance that would pay him for his broken face because it was your fault his hose your hose tripped him i guess i don't know how the world works today but i reckon that's how it happens right and um the second thing is if your business assets the things that your business owns are owned by an llc a limited liability company or a sub s corporation the only person that they could sue would be the company that owned the hose which isn't you it It's your company. Your company's assets consist of your tools, probably, right,

and whatever cash you have in the company checking account. So they could sue you and get all of that stuff, but they couldn't come after your personal home, your personal checking account, because it wasn't you that owned the hose that tripped them. It was this company over here that you own. Okay. So it's what we call risk management.

There's no tax benefit at all for a sub-S or an LLC because 100% of your profits pass straight through and land on your personal return, and you get taxed on it exactly the same way you would if you didn't have this. And you can write off your business expenses as a sole proprietor exactly the same way. Personally, what I would tell you to do is talk to your insurance broker, get a good business insurance policy that covers some liability if someone tripped over your hose, and I wouldn't bother to incorporate. The reason I wouldn't is it's going to cost you to

incorporate or to build the LLC, and then you got to file a tax return on that entity every year in addition to your own tax return. So you get this bill from your tax preparer for producing this. The only reason you would want to do this is if you have a large target on your butt now are you worth over a million dollars personally no okay then if somebody might want to come out find some excuse to come after you then you'd have a target on your butt then you might want to do this but your business isn't of enough size that somebody's probably going to go lick their chops and go oh i'm about to get rich here okay and mark i have general liability business insurance then you're fine

what you're talking about yeah what he's trying to see saying is that he he was also a sole proprietor but he switched to the seaport because he says it's going to save him money something to do with social Security or something. I don't know exactly. You can write off the Social Security portion as an expense. That is an addition, and you do that with a sub-S as well. A C Corp, you get taxed twice. The corporation pays taxes, and then when it pays you, you pay taxes again.

So a C Corp is asinine for a small business holder because you a small business owner because you get taxed twice i've got uh a bazillion llcs um and i have one s corp i don't own a single c-corp and i don't um uh and i don't own anything anymore everything is now in some entity's name other than mine even my cars are in something else's name i don't own anything anymore. Everything is now in some entity's name other than mine. Even my cars are in something else's name. I don't actually personally own anything because I'm a walking target. I see. And so you're saying that I should either do S-Corp just to have the liability savings

or just stay where I'm at with my general liability insurance. Right. And you can, he's actually right, you can write off a portion of your Social Security as a business expense. But it amounts to, you know, it's not going to save you enough in taxes to pay you back for the attorney fees to build the stupid thing or your tax preparer fees to file the extra filing every year. It isn't worth it.

Okay. You know, I isn't worth it i i okay you know i wouldn't do it you've got 99 of the same write-offs that an s corp has i i wouldn't fool with it i you know i don't think you've got the risk management issue and there is no write-off issue and c corps are double taxed no never do that the only time you do a c corp is if you're building something to take it public and sell it to some other big corporation or something. There might be some advantages then, but for the normal person like you and me operating our own small business, no way, never a C-Corp. So just stay sole proprietor, keep up my general liability insurance, and just leave it like it is. That's what I'd do. Keep your

life simple, man. Okay. That's what I needed. Yeah, yeah good question thank you for calling in this comes up a lot with the entree leadership group the small business folks that we coach and counsel all the time we hear this same thing that comes up everybody's looking for some kind of tax dodge and they think that the rich have some tax dodge that regular people don't have and they don't that is good to know and i think it's interesting that his brother brought this up after he's been in business for 25 years. Like, Mark's been doing a good job keeping up with everything and following through. And it was very interesting that his brother felt that now was the important time to have an opinion. Yeah.

Well, there's, yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, the only, so if your business is small, you would never do it. Number one, if you're, uh, unless you have a large thing. So for instance, let's say you're worth $2 million and, um, you decide you want to open an art studio. Well, you might want to put an LLC over that because again, if somebody trips on the threshold falls or whatever whatever whatever the scenario is that somebody decides they're going to sue you um and everybody's you know not everybody but too

many people in our litigious society are looking for a free ride or a free ticket and you've just got to do risk management protect yourself as you start building wealth the other thing you can do guys once you get to on liability issues once you get up over a half million to a million dollar net worth you can pick up a an umbrella policy for about 300 bucks a year for a million dollars and it covers that much more this is the ramsey show We'll see you next time. i pretty much went to christmas year round i love christmas i love christmas time traditions we've got an awesome christmas tradition here atsey. We do the Ramsey Christmas Cash Giveaway. Yep, all month long, all the way up until Christmas, you can enter to win one of our weekly $500 prizes

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We're like the Costco hot dogs. Our prices aren't going up. Oh, there you go. We're in the big time. We're in the big time. We're right there with the Costco hot dogs. If you're there, you're in tall cotton, I'm just saying. All right.

Christina Ellis, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Rickette is with us. Rickette is in Phoenix. Hey, Rickette, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than we deserve. What's up? So, Dave, I have a question for you. I am debt-free. I listen to your book, follow the instructions, and I have become debt-free. That means my cars, the loans, the whole shebang. Way to kiddo income yes debt to income ratio is zero i owe nobody nothing but my dilemma is now i feel like i probably missed the race of me purchasing

a home like i this would be like my first time ever purchasing a. And so my question to you, Dave, is I know interest rates are up, prices are somewhat going down for a home. Should I buy? Like, what should I do? Because I mean, I don't know what I should do right now. I want to buy a home. I feel like I'm ready to buy a home. My credit score is 810. My debt to income ratio is zero. And I'm ready to buy a home. My credit score is 810. My debt-to-income ratio is zero. Why would you not buy? I'm ready to purchase. Why would you not buy? Because everybody is saying that the interest rates are, you know,

the housing prices are too high, which means my mortgage would be too much. Have you noticed that everybody is stupid? Have you noticed that yet? Yeah. everybody's in debt not raquette very true do you have a down payment saved up i have about like um well total my savings i have like 50 000 like completely saved okay that's not including that's not including um my pension you know i work for the um i work for the state a government job so i've been here for like five years so if you leave your emergency fund out of that and you put the rest of it down and you can do a 15 year fix where the payments no more than a fourth of your take-home pay then i wouldn't hesitate to tell you to buy uh your phoenix market had shot up and has

adjusted down it is one of the handful of markets that have adjusted down the rest of them have just slowed their growth rate but you're not going to see a market like 2008 where phoenix prices go down substantially you're just not going to see it's too much demand okay and if you buy with high interest rates and interest rates go down what do you do ding-ding you get the prize and I think it's just important that you still get a house that you can afford I feel like a lot of people in this market assume you know if they are gonna go in then they got to go push up their monthly payment a little bit more or something like that. But still look at a house that, you know, brings your monthly payment to a quarter of your take home pay or below.

Make sure you're still reasonable and thoughtful as you go through it. Because I think the fear can do both things that can make you either stay out of the market or go a little crazy and try to justify some purchase that you shouldn't make. We've had several people call in and say, you know, we got a house, but you know, the market's so crazy. And we look at the numbers and it's 40% of their take home pay. Don't do that. Like still be reasonable, still use wise decision making in it. But if you have, you know, no debt, if you have a down payment and you're ready to buy and you find a house you can afford, then still go for it. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's a really good point. Just because people in Washington are stupid, just because they've gone crazy, just because inflation's

gone crazy, doesn't mean you need to go crazy. Because guess what? They're still going to be crazy while you're being broke because you did something stupid. So don't just go, oh, well, you know, I don't have to worry about math anymore because there's inflation. Math doesn't count this year. We get a year off from math. No, you get math in California, in Manhattan, and in Nashville. You get math everywhere you go. And math is going to kick your butt when you buy something you can't afford. And you used all of your emotions to justify it.

Christine is exactly right. This is the deal. All right, Penelope is with us in Little Rock. Hi, Penelope. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks so much. Hi, I'm on the step seven.

I paid off my house sort of mid-September of last year. But my credit score has not gone to zero. It's hovering in sort of the 647 area and i'm obviously excited for it to go to zero i was wondering should it be there by now or is there something else i could do to make it go to zero well it doesn't matter because you're not gonna be borrowing money but it is a it's just something we want to see happen here. I don't disagree with you.

So the deal that we understand, now listen, FICO, they run their deal, and they keep their algorithm, they keep their formula under lock and key. So no one knows for sure, but all we've been able to do is observe Ramsey followers that when they have 100% of their accounts closed down, zero balance, no activity, no outstanding bad credit, nothing on the Bureau. It's squeaky clean when you pull up all three of your credit Bureau reports. You go to Experian, you go to everybody, you look at every one of them and you make sure there's not a single thing showing up not any uh eight dollar water bill from eight years ago that you

forgot was on there that'll keep it down there at 600 you know it's got you got to have a clean 100% clean usually in six six months to nine months it's gone if you're 100%. Zero balances, no activity on the account. Yeah, that's what I thought too. I've had some soft inquiries from, you know, like insurance companies and, you know, just stuff like that. But other than that, yeah, all closed accounts and, yeah, no activity. You can put marketing blocks on and keep the soft inquiries down. But you haven't had any hard inquiries where you applied for something even a cell phone or anything like that nope nope nothing like that

yeah well the okay what we usually find when it's taking much longer than six months is somebody's got something open on there of some kind that's what you want to go back and triple check that and check it with all three of them all three of the credit bureaus, and not just one and not just Credit Karma. Okay, so get in there, and if you're really concerned about this, and you are enough to call here, so you've got to do that. But zero activity for six months and no accounts open, there's no credit history there to score, should get you to an indeterminable or a zero credit

score, which I've had for well over 30 years. That's kind of fun. That's a fun stat. Hey, I have a question. So if somebody's in baby step two, they paid off all their debt, then they go to baby step three, they stack up the cash for an emergency fund pretty quickly, and then they want to buy a house, they're somehow able to get the down payment pretty quickly. If their score is kind of going down in that period of time can they still get manual underwriting or do they need to wait till it goes to zero uh well it won't go to zero well if they had if they don't currently have a house yeah it would go to zero yeah you're probably going to have to i mean you can't it's going to be tough to land one if you got a 500 or a 600 score

it's going to be hard uh to do manual you've got a 500 or a 600 score. It's going to be hard to do manual underwriting around that because that score is still sitting there. It's still real. So, yeah, you've got to wait for it to become indeterminable. But typically it's six to nine months. But typically it takes six to nine months to get your down payment together after baby step two is completed anyway. So you don't own a home.

You have zero activity of any kind, zero accounts of any kind open, no outstanding anything old or new, nothing on there that's moving because anything that moves will bump that number. That's a very good point. Yeah, and it's pretty sensitive. We do know that. This is The Ramsey Show. are you sick of planned obsolescence you, when companies make products crappy so you have to buy more of their crappy products? Well, me too. And it's why I love companies like Grip6. Grip6 is all about quality products meant to last forever. That's why their comfortable, bulk-free belts, slimline wallets, and lightweight wool socks all come with a lifetime warranty and simple returns and exchanges. So

check them out at Grip6.com today and get up to 20% off with the promo code Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Nick and Brittany are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? hey guys how are you good how are you welcome welcome where do y'all live dalton georgia oh just down the road well ascenton ashville how much debt have you paid off we paid off 123 544 dollars in 28 months excellent and your range of income during that two and a half years? The peak was about $190. We're about down to $130 now. Low was about $90,000.

Oh, $90,000 to $130. $90,000 to $190. We're about $130 now. Oh, okay. All right. $90,000 to $190 to $130. Goodness gracious. What do you all do for a living?

I'm a speech-language pathologist. So when we started, I worked in the school systems. And I switched over, and now i work in home health oh okay i'm a nurse okay cool so both of you could work all you wanted to literally yes yeah so this is like a covid thing it happened right in the middle of covid huh yes wow or right around that time is when you got started what kind of debt was the 124 um so student loans and a car payment ah normal huh oh yeah how long y'all been married? We just celebrated our fourth anniversary.

Well, congratulations. Thank you. So a couple years into marriage, you're looking down the barrel of COVID, or whether you knew it or not, and you look up and you say, we have too much debt. Tell me the story. What happened? What got you started on this Ramsey stuff?

So I actually bought your book several years ago, but it was my husband he read it on our honeymoon actually um laying on the beach in hawaii but it wasn't until march 2020 um he really started we had our first in december of 2019 and so I think the financial worry hit him and so he was like we got to get this done and then when they shut off uh interest for student loans we were like this is the best time to do it they're not gaining interest so um we just hit the ground running and um March of 2020 this was when the world shut down oh yes yeah so this is the time you choose to attack this yeah lived at work for the next several months but uh it paid off um we were kind of dave-ish i would say honestly for close to the first year um my grandmother really just um out of nowhere um asked you know she kind of saw what we were doing um she asked about how much i had left on my

student loans we had paid off about 20 on mine so far, had about 20 left. Um, we, I woke up one day and my balance was zero. So, um, yeah, she paid off 20 grand. So that really kind of just, uh, kickstarted us even more just to really get more focused and more intentional. And I'll even say I wasn't really on board with the whole damn Ramsey thing I'm a spender I love to travel we lived three hours from Disney so I wanted to go to Disney like every chance we got so when he came to me and was like let's do this I was like oh we're fine like

everybody has debt but then when his grandmother paid off his debt and I realized we only had my student loans in the car it It became more realistic. So we had a goal to do it in four years by the time we were 30 and we did it in 28 months. Wow. Yeah. That's outstanding. So there's a lot of spenders listening right now who are in the same boat, right? They're resistant. They don't want to right now. They want to go to Disney. They want to travel. What would you tell them to encourage them to just get started? It's worth it through the whole thing. He kept quoting, we have to live like no one else. So later we can live like no one else. And that was my, I hated that quote. I can't tell you how many times that was spoken to me because I live 10 minutes from Target, 10 minutes from TJ Maxx.

And that's all I wanted to do. you know I got married I wanted to decorate my home um I had my first baby I wanted to buy all the things for him but in reality I was like you know I want to be able to take them to Disney when they're older um when it's more meaningful for them and I don't want to have to worry about the payments or the car payments um and so I was like okay if we can do this um if by the time we're 30, then, you know, it'll make, it will have more time afterwards to do all the things if we just buckle down and do it now. I think it's, is it Ken Coleman that says, do what you got to do so then you can do what

you want to do? Yep. Yeah. Kept coming out. So over and over again. So how does it feel now after all the sacrifice, all the work, how does it feel? Amazing. We actually went

to disney in september that's how we celebrated but we actually he sold his plasma to pay for the trip so we still didn't put money aside for disney he was like we're not slowing down we need our emergency funds so that's how we paid for our disney district it was worth it i'd do it again wow way to go you guys yeah very cool what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is um i'd say realize you're a team you're you're both trying to pull in the same direction um it's so easy just to get caught up in the the selfishness every day you know i want this i want that um i think this would be best for us when in reality we got married and we became one um and it's just hey we're both pulling same direction

try to get on the same page and really just get going and I think it's important too to have your why if you're just if you don't know why you're doing it then you kind of get lost and you don't pay it off with as much intensity. We, you know, wanted to be able to travel now that we have two. We want to be able to travel and see family that had moved away. And we really just wanted the freedom to go and do and not have those student loans or the car payment. So we actually got down to about our last 10,000 this summer and sold the car that we had just paid off in May and walked away with money so we could get out of debt faster. Yeah, just be done with it. Yes, sir. Drive a stake in its heart. That's it. I like it. Well done,

you guys. Thank you so much. Shall we ever go back in debt? Absolutely not. Both of you, not even for Disney. Who are your biggest cheerleaders um i would say our family um and then you know just each other there were days when i remember you know he was very addicted to dave francie became almost like a curse word in our house and i just remember looking at him before i got on board and i was just like you know this is too much we talked about finances every time we got in the car he wanted to turn the ranzi show on um but then once I got on board um we really just became a team and you know

because everybody would say well just take the trip you know you're in your 20s just take the trip you won't regret it I'm like maybe but I, you know, the 10 grand that I added on to my debt. Now, you know, we're 28 years old, and we can take the trip if we want to. Anywhere you want to go. Exactly. We'll have a payment in the world. Well done, you guys.

Very proud of you. Hey, we got a copy of Total Money Makeover for you to give away to somebody and get them started. And Baby Steps Millionaires, our latest number one bestseller, which is uh the definitely the next chapter in you guys story you're going to be there before you know it on that yeah and uh literally living like no one else there it is again and uh financial peace university one-year membership if you want to go through it that's fine or give it to somebody either way it's the

live and give bundle we'll give it to you at the commercial break here but congratulations all right let's bring the kiddos up and introduce them what are their names and ages um we have jackson he's two and then we have caden who is 11 months old all right way to go big guys i love it well it's a family tree right there that's changed by mom and dad being grown-ups and delaying pleasure to win. Very, very well done, you guys. Nick and Brittany from Dalton, Georgia. $124,000 paid off in 28 months, making $90,000 to $190,000 to $130,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Ready? Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yay! Ho, ho, ho, ho! what we're dead free this is how it's done dave you were a curse word in their house for a while now they like you well now they love you it comes and goes i'm it comes and goes i'm a i'm a mixed blessing that's what i am but the uh it's a spiritual gift.

But, yeah, I think there's a lot of lessons in that for listeners in the importance of spouses working together and the importance of listening to each other and the importance of not over clubbing someone over the head with our stuff. Because if he'd done that just a little bit more this wouldn't have worked at all i mean he went to the edge on a little too much dave there a little too much ramsey there in that mix but uh but it worked out and uh they both got on board they both got unified and that's the trick the unity is a big big deal this is the ramsey show This is the Ramsey Show. so Christina Ellis Ramsey personality number one best-selling author is my co-host today Christina uh Deloney and I were talking about this the other day there's several pieces of research out there that uh talk about that that married people,

people who are married versus single or versus shacking up, have a financial advantage. And the researchers have always called it the marriage advantage, that they tend to build more wealth than any other category. And also tend to move uh uh as as a category not not it's a generalization but i mean in other words there's exceptions within each category but they also tend to move faster in their incomes in their careers uh and uh researchers have long tried to figure out what is causing that exactly but they call it the marriage advantage, that it's to your advantage statistically as far as wealth goes, income and wealth in general to be married.

Wall Street Journal comes out today with yet another study. Moving in together doesn't match the financial benefits of marriage. But why? A walk down the aisle can be a route to greater wealth and prosperity for couples in the u.s married people have higher net worths and are more likely to be homeowners than their unmarried counterparts their age as of 2019 the median net worth for cohabitating checking up couples age 25 to 34 was 17 000 a quarter of that 68,000 married couples of exactly the same age range. So 25% of the net worth of a married couple on average, according to data from the Federal

Reserve Bank of St. Louis for singles is $7,300. Over the past two decades, Americans are moving in together at higher rates and the share of U.S. adults who are currently married steadily declined from close to 60% in the 90s to under half in 2019, according to Pew, who did the research. Over the same period, the share of adults 18 to 44 living with a partner climbed to 59%. Many young couples now approach marriage as a capstone event. The sociology professor says, if you build build an ark the kind of cornerstone while there are legal and tax advantages to marriage research suggests the financial security and long-term mindset of those who tie the knot may also be a powerful driver of wealth

more married couples pool their money such as sharing savings accounts and investing together to achieve certain goals. Cohabitating couples are less likely to combine finances and investments. Working with two incomes and combining their investments to maximize compound interest can significantly increase a couple's financial prospects, the research shows. Simply put, married people may be more likely to be on the same page financially and housing is one of the biggest factors in establishing a couple's wealth compared with single people and cohabitating couples married couples hold a larger concentration of housing wealth they're more likely to own a home if you're married than you are if you're

with a roommate socioeconomic factors play a role in the difference between married and partner wealth, the higher your income. The likelier it is you'll marry, well, that would affect these numbers. And, you know, that would be a cause and effect issue right there, you know, which one's causation and which one's correlation at that point. But yet this is fresh data in showing the advantages of marriage. And I think the couple that just did the debt-free scream, they're a perfect example of this data and how it can be effective. I mean, in their story, they're talking about how

they got on the same page, they set goals, they set a why, and they really learned to work together. I think a lot of people who are just cohabitating, they're not having those conversations. They're not getting into, you know, shared goals and a shared mindset of really attacking their finances. Well, what we do know, and this is fairly easy to extrapolate into this conversation with reasonable certainty, is that there is a direct correlation between the length of your planning window, how far out in the future you look with money, and how much money you have. If you think, thank God it's Friday, oh God it's Monday,

and you live for the weekend, you're Huey Lewis in the news, right? Then you're going to be broke your whole life, YOLO, right? You know, that's where you're going to be. You're not going to have any money because you don't plan past Fridayiday night you're just trying to drink your face off on the weekend and forget it and you're not planning but when we when we interview wealthy people the wealthier they are the longer their planning window has been for many years and that's what caused them to be wealthy in other words when they get ready to buy a car they don't think about this weekend they don't think about this year they think about five years from now how's this car purchase going to

affect me they have and when you think longer term you automatically will invest more because you're thinking long term you're believing there is a future and i'm i and i'm i know my future self needs to like my current self but um future self doesn't talk to um a present self with the the broker somebody is and the more likely they are to be broke so if you want to go from broke to wealthy the point is change your planning window mindset quit living for the weekend and start thinking, okay, in 50 years, where do I want to be? I want to change my family tree. How about in 150 years? What do I want my great grandkids to be? Let's look at compound interest out 150 years and play with some numbers. That will blow your freaking mind, by the way, how many hundreds of millions of dollars that can become. You can be old man Rockefeller, old man Vanderbilt, old lady Vanderbilt, whatever, get this thing started. So

that planning window thing comes in there. So that comes into, then, this discussion of marriage. If you're married, unless you are planning to divorce right now, you are thinking you're going to do life 50 years from now with this person. Right, yeah. And when you're cohabitating you're thinking maybe maybe there's a chance it's not exactly sure and it changes your shortens your planning window when you're shacked instead of married and so that's one of the things that i've always

thought it gives you the marriage advantage because very few cohabitating couples think what's going to what's going what's life going to be like in 40 years right well i think it's interesting this article says that a lot of people see it as a as a cornerstone event so what this means is that people see an economic bar they need to clear before they get married couples wait until they have good jobs a car that won't break down, maybe even a house, then they get married, which I think is interesting because it's like they're trying to do something in order to get themselves ahead. It'd be a lot easier if they were married. But they're actually holding themselves back.

Yeah. That's interesting that the data shows that. Yep. So if you're in that boat and you're feeling, you know, hesitant to get married because you feel like you have to meet a certain barometer, you need to have a certain amount of your debt paid off. You feel like you need to have a better job or a house that actually could be working against you. If you actually find the right partner, if you find someone that you know you want to be with for the rest of your life, getting married actually could set you on way better footing financially. And it is not smart to combine your accounts with somebody you're not married to.

Totally. And there is all kinds of data, including this data here, that says combined accounts have a tendency towards more wealth. Again, it's a unified look at the future. It's a fairly simple concept. If you're not thinking about the future, you're not going to have one. Right. You know, if you're not intentional about the future, you're not going to have one. And, you know, I don't care if you're 26 or you're 36, you're not thinking about the future you're not going to have one right you know if you're not intentional about future you're not going to have one and you know i don't care if you're 26

or you're 36 you're shacking up you aren't you're not talking about changing my family tree that doesn't come up otherwise you would have already gone done done done done done if you want to change your family tree you need to have a family to change the tree i mean you know there's not there's not even a tree not even a family so i mean you're you're not thinking that way you the inherent in the socioeconomic and the psychology of living together versus marriage is short-term thinking versus long-term thinking and that will always limit your wealth so you know these guys that call us up here and they go well you know we've been engaged for 10 years.

And I'm like, dude, painter, get off the ladder. Really? And they do call us and tell us that. And I've had a few calls over the years that they've been separated but not divorced for seven years. And I'm like, why? Well, I don't want to get divorced. Well, you are divorced. You just hadn't admitted it yet.

Oh, my gosh. That is not a good long-term strategy. Yeah, so you have, where there is no vision, the people perish. If you think long-term, and you think long-term with your partner called marriage, you have a much higher statistical probability of building wealth. And therefore, if you don't do that on purpose, then you have no right to whine about having not built wealth. It's not anybody's fault but yours. Ding, ding. The Marriage Advantage. This is The Ramsey Show. Have you been inspired to make a change with your money?

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