The Ramsey Show - App - Money Problems Are Often Symptoms of Relationship Problems (Hour 1)

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people with their money, with their work, with their reason for getting up in the morning, and with their relationships. If you want to be on the show, give us a buzz at 888-825-5225. We've got an opinion on just about anything that's going on in your life, and our promise is we'll sit here with you,

walk with you, and we'll figure out what's the next right step. I'm John Deloney, joined by my good friend, Rachel Cruz, and we're taking your calls. Again, 888-825-5225 on this special Valentine's Day episode. I know, the manufactured day of love. Oh, gosh.

I actually like it. You don't like it? You like Valentine's Day? Yeah. Why? Oh, wow. I would have thought you would have been like a skeptic, like a, eh, love is all year round. I like love.

I do too, but not when it's like a holiday. Here we go. All right. Really? Are y'all like doing something you and she like going out tonight dude i got into my car today and there was like a gift in the driver's side of my car gosh the delonies love valentine's day no we love each other i know what about your house rachel let's go we went out to dinner last night that's yesterday let's Let's go to Emily in Cincinnati, Ohio. What's up, Emily? Hi there. I'm good. How you doing? We're figuring it out. Hey, real quick before the call. Are you thumbs up or thumbs down on Valentine's Day?

I think thumbs up. Yeah. You know why? Because you're a person with a heart. That sounds cool, Rachel. Yeah, I am. It's like the Hallmark. This is how Hallmark makes their money. Okay, Emily, we're here for you. All right, what's up, Emily? How can we help?

Well, my husband and I got married about a year ago. I've been single for 23 years. My goals were to have my house paid off debt-free. I achieved that goal. Had money in the bank. I discussed before we got married his financial situations. Everything was brought out. He basically had a house. He didn't have a house at that point, but he had a car payment and he paid that. And so that was about $700 and then he said he had was helping his daughter with her student loans she's 36 his son is 33 after we were married we I found out

a few months later that he was in debt to his two adult children uh $86 thousand dollars oh gosh after and then after the marriage we got taught um so that didn't go very well with me and then i found out that he had racked up about forty thousand dollars in credit card bills because part of the wedding um we just bought a new home um he's he makes very good money and And then when I heard about the $40,000, that just blew me away. He didn't tell you about that when you were going through the $86,000? No. What a coward. And he didn't tell me that he was racking up his credit cards. We went on honeymoon. He lost his job two weeks before our wedding. That was fine. He did put $200,000 down on a house that we did purchase. Um, in that time we've had to move. We just sold the house, but I had, I had paid cash.

I had sold my house prior to this other house. So how can we help you? There's a lot going on here. Um, I know. Give me some direction here. How can we help? Okay. I want to know is right now the credit card bills he paid off by turning in his stocks. So now that is a zero balance. How do you know? You know what? I don't know. You don't know. You have a man that you share a home with that you can't trust as far as you can see. And he's so full of crap, his eyes are brown and he is just running through life, dragging you behind him. Right. Well, well he makes, so he did the budget and after we went over the budget, we had about $900 left to live on

and that's without paying our credit card bills. He makes $170,000 a year. How do you know that? Through his paychecks. I did look into that. I said, I need your pay stubs. I want to see what's coming in. I want you to pull credit reports

on everybody in the house tonight. Well, we did because we just purchased a house and his are in the house tonight? Well, we did because we just purchased a house and his are in the 800s. So now that we... So the thing is, his daughter, who is 36, I guess we owe about

$36,000 in debt to her bills. They are in her name. He's a cosigner. His son... And what was he using that $36,000 for, Emily, when he borrowed from that one daughter? Like, what was that for? Just lifestyle?

Nope, nope. It was for her student loans. They're for her student loans. Oh, okay, okay, okay. And then his son, I found out we owe $55,000 on. $55,000. Student loans. Student loans. And he's 33. And both were communicated to the adult children that he would pay for them.

Evidently. Okay. Yes. And he says that's true too. The adult children say that and he said that. Well, I'm not talking to the adult kids kids right now because i'm i'm furious okay um yeah and and and the girl um she's a nanny and claiming that she doesn't make enough money to pay anything so emily emily emily emily your rage is misguided and it's not helping no i know it's. Yeah. You're not addressing the core issue, which is you married a man and right out of the gate, he lied to you to the tune of over $100,000. Correct. On multiple occasions. That's where this conversation has to begin.

Right. We'll get to the money part. You know how you pay off money? He's going to have to make a whole bunch more. And you're going to have to sell a bunch of stuff and cut your lifestyle. But beneath that, you don't have a man that you trust. And so you're running around mad at everybody,

enraged. How much are you working? What are you doing? All of that is misplaced. All of that is your body trying to cope with the fact that you are connected to somebody that you don't trust. Have you sat down and said, hey, you lied to me. We have to rebuild this whole relationship over. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Absolutely. I told him that. I said, and on top of this, let me tell you one more thing. He is a game collector, board games, and he probably has close to a million dollars in board games. Well, cool. He could pay this crap off then. Bye.

That's awesome right well well when i asked him and so let me ask you this i said he doesn't he doesn't want to get his kids to pay for uh their schooling or take on responsibility for it or he's still paying for his son's 80 89 phone bill to even to this day and i said how about if i get divorced and i get the best lawyer, and I take half of your retirement, which he has about $800,000 in, and half of your games? Well, Emily, but now you're getting in the mud with a pig. I know.

Don't do that. Be a person of dignity and respect. Stay above it. If you have decided, you know what, I can't be married to a man child like this but until they make your choice but right now you're just jumping in your cannonball into the mud with them yeah and i would and i would keep saying yes and if you want to fight for the marriage at this point though financially i would i would stay away i would have a separation i think that's a very healthy boundary to have at this point and you guys need to go to marriage therapy and all of this has to be resolved because to John's point,

the trust is completely broken, not just from the money side, but in other aspects as well. And so until that, until you feel confident that you guys are working as a team, then you can move forward financially together. But I'm so sorry, Emily. You need to give him a roadmap of what he can do to earn trust back. Sell games, have hard conversations with his kids, give him a path back.

You need that and he needs that. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back. This is The Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225 for this very special Valentine's Day episode. Yeah, and speaking of love, John, the event that we put on that we both loved. Speaking of love. That we love so much.

The Money and Marriage Getaway, you guys. It is back. We're so excited. So this fall, October 24th through the 26th, John and I will be spending a whole weekend with you guys here in Nashville focused on your marriage, focused on your money. It's a two and a half day. it's two and a half days full of

Teaching you when it comes to Communication intimacy and money And there's gonna be lots of Q&A we get to Answer questions from you guys that was a Great part of the event I feel like we had a conversation The entire weekend with you all And we want you to walk away with tools That you need to build

That deeper connection when it comes to your marriage, when it comes to your money. And so our platinum tickets are already sold out, but there are a few VIP tickets left, which includes a meet and greet with us. And we just want to make sure you guys can get those before they're gone. So tickets start at $799 at RamseySolutions.com slash events. And it's still a bargain for a, 800 bucks is a lot, but two and a half days for a marriage retreat that we've not got one.

That's rare. We've not got one. One couple that's written back and said, we wish we hadn't done that. Oh, yeah. It's the opposite. You could just hand out cash in the back of a room and someone's going to be like,

I can't believe that you, and not one person totally it's it's been so remarkable yeah so very very cool it was a great all right so um during money in marriage we do lots of direct q a so people leave feeling like hey we got our our question answered or here's the thing we're struggling with or how do you all handle these things in your own homes and it was a pretty um intimate weekend because we had our spouses out there we kind of opened the yeah open the cupboard doors at our own of our own relationships so here's some questions that didn't get answered that they pulled together for us um here's one um let's see here pick a number between one and eight oh gosh this is so scary let's go six i grew up with very little and now i have more money than my family ever had growing up controlling it has become an obsession how can i disconnect from the childhood fear of not having money and focus more on being

intentional with it that's a great question yeah that, that is a good question. Yeah. So I would say this fear drives a lot of people. I found this when I was doing research for my book, Know Yourself, Know Your Money, how much the childhood idea that if money was a stressful point and whether that was verbally or emotionally, how many people, I mean, they swing the pendulum so far the other way of like not wanting to be that, like they're so adamant about it. And so what I think you have to do is like you you you have to almost practice and live out these money habits day in and day out to remind yourself that you're okay that you're okay and it's almost like you can tell your head that but if your actions and your body don't follow it's you're not living in that fullness right and so uh i would you know, you've probably created a budget

because you're obsessed with controlling your money, which is great. But I would force myself to spend some and to say, I'm okay letting this money go because as tightly as people hold on to money, sometimes it's hard just to open your hand, right? And spend it and let it go. But I think as you start to live that out

and then you practice spending, you'll see I'm okay. I'm okay because you're spending on a plan. You're being reasonable about it. But until you can actually go through those motions and that becomes part of your rhythm, you're not going to know it because you can know in your head all day. But until you actually live it out, you're not going to. You have to teach your body that you're okay. Yes.

There's a kind of a behind closed doors quote in counseling which is the thing that kept you safe as a kid is what ruins your relationships as an adult right if you learn to hide as a kid it kept you safe from maybe an alcoholic parent and that makes it really hard to develop intimacy if every time something gets scary in your house or you get into a fight with your spouse, you hide, right? So very similar, if you develop this sense of control to get you out of a thing, it's that gazelle intensity. Cool. That's the thing that kept you safe. And probably this person worked really hard, has gone to college, has got a great job, has done all these things so that I would not be like them. And then they got there and they realized, oh, that tension's still there. Right. And so, okay. The thing that got you here, cool. You're safe now. Now you got to,

like you said, practice something new. My friend, Michael Easter here with Comfort Crisis, he has a line that I love and he calls it gear, not stuff. And so him and I have just had some personal conversations and he's written on this about, you know, the anxiety of clutter and too much stuff everywhere and just going to buy stuff to buy stuff. Right. Right. And so he's categorized as stuff and gear. Like I need this backpack that's really great.

And here's why. That's different than I'm just going to go to the mall and spend some money. So maybe you make yourself a gear list. Yeah. Like I do need a pair of pants. There's like utility to the thing you're buying. They need to be nice because I don't want to buy another pair for five years. Then I'm going to buy a nice pair of pants.

That's different than let's just go shopping, right? Yes, yes, yes. So maybe make a gear list that you're going to slowly get over the next year. And also, I think generosity helps with this too. Like practice opening your hands and letting some money go. Yep, yep. Intentionally. That's awesome. Alright, let's go out to Christian in Martinsburg,

West Virginia. What's up, Christian? Hey guys, I'm doing well. How about y'all? Outstanding, brother. What's up? Yeah, so I've got a question for the two of you here. My wife and I purchased a vehicle in 2021 with a loan at a 3.99

interest rate and we've been making monthly payments all on time of $275 a month. So we've currently got about $7,072 remaining on the loan. And timeline wise, it's looking like we'll be paying it all off in about 26 months. Sorry, sorry, Christian, $72,000 left? No, ma'am, $7,072. Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Good. No, you're good.

What kind of car did you buy? I was like, what kind of car did you buy? No, just a Toyota Highlander for my wife and the kids. Hey, that's about $70,000 these days. That's not a cheap car. Well, I work in insurance, so I see those numbers, unfortunately unfortunately more and more these days but um part of the reason for my call here is i'm considering just a ramsey debt reduction

strategy and i've been looking at our finances we have about fifty nine hundred dollars uh in a robin hood account and about ten thousand dollars in savings because we're and we're still really trying to build up the emergency fund up. So should we sell the stocks in the Robinhood account and take some from savings to immediately pay off the loan, even if it means lowering our emergency fund? Or is the monthly car payment low enough where it makes more sense to leave the money in the stock market and have more in the emergency fund? No, I would cash out the stock market and have more in the emergency fund. No, I would cash out the Robinhood account, that $5,900. So yeah, I would throw $6,000 at this,

take a little bit from savings. And that's the only debt you guys have, right? We do have a mortgage, but it's the only other debt that we have. So yeah, so that's what I would do personally. And then your savings will be down to around $9,000 or maybe $8,000 after taxes, if you have taxes in that account. But yeah, that's what I would do. And then take that savings account that you have that will have around $8,000 and then build on that to your three to six months of expenses. So it's the Ramsey Baby Step. So you'd be at Baby Step 3 at that point. So that's what I would do.

And that gets you guys, yeah, in a great position. Are you guys, do you have investments beyond this account? Do you have retirement 401k or a Roth IRA? Yes, ma'am. We have a Roth IRA that we're contributing to. And then I'm big on trying to help the kids out long-term with college. So we've also been making contributions to a Smart 529 account for them. Good, good.

Yeah, that's amazing. So great. So I would just keep all of that up. I mean, you guys are right there. But, yeah, I would cash out and pay off that car immediately. Internalize that. You're going to be debt-free in about 45 minutes. I mean, the idea sounds great, you you know having nothing but the

home to work at what a valentine's day gift when you slide across the table a zero balance on this car note for your wife how much is the car payment a month $275 okay so it's not huge

but you just got what? What's three times 12? 36? Yeah, you got a $3,600 a year raise just now. No, that makes sense. Right? A little bit less than that. $3,500 a year raise just by clicking a few buttons on your computer. And if your boss said, hey, what would you do?

You do this and this and this. I'm going to give you a $3,500 raise. You'd be like, all right. Well, here you go. Merry Christmas, man. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you guys so much. Great job.

Happy Valentine's Day to you guys, too. 888-825-5225. This is The Ramsey Show. Call us with your relationship challenges. I especially want you to call if you have your spouse with you and you're wondering, is it their fault or is it mine? Rachel and I will solve it for you. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225.

I'm John Deloney, joined by Rachel Cruz. We're taking your calls on money, life, and especially on your dating and marriage relationships on this special Valentine's Day episode. Let's go out to Marissa in Columbus, Ohio. Hey, Marissa, what's up? Hi, guys. How are you? We're partying.

What are you up to? Enjoying my day off. It's beautiful here today. guys. How are you? We're partying. What are you up to? Enjoying my day off. It's beautiful here today. Congratulations. That must be nice. Rachel's my boss, and we don't get those very often. What's up? We work.

I'm just kidding. Well, hopefully you do get a couple days off. You guys work hard, too. Thanks. My question is, so my husband and I, we're a little background. We're 32. Um, we live obviously outside Columbus. We just bought our forever home.

Like we had bought a starter house, um, probably five years ago, fix it up, sold it. Um, in June bought our forever house moved in. Um, so unfortunately we have a 6.9% or whatever interest rate. Our other house, we had a 15-year, like 2.5%. So quite a shock adjustment, but in the long run, worth it. So I guess we have no debt. For context, my husband works in IT. He makes about $150,000.

I'm a nurse, so I make about $80,000. And then we have a 10-month-old daughter. So we're just trying to figure out the best way to pay off this mortgage as quickly as possible, while also enjoying ourselves a little bit. We live very well below our means, but just that we have a financial advisor and talking with them about saving for our daughter's future and weddings and college. And if we have more kids, it's just like making our head spin. Originally, we had talked about, you know, of course, once rates lower again, you know, maybe high fours, low fives, refinancing. But then even that it's like, you know, we would still pay what we're

paying now, but like at the new lower rate to pay it off quicker, but it's still going to take, you know, 15 or plus years to pay it off. So I guess we're just trying to figure out the best way. How much is left on the mortgage? We have about 400 400 left okay um yeah so i have about 50 in savings my husband has about 75 um and then you know we have retirement accounts and stuff and then um with our financial advisor through other like iras and stuff like that we have about 30 okay um so yeah it's just like you know we had talked about maybe if we do refinance, like just putting whatever I make towards the mortgage and living off what my husband makes.

But even then it would still, you know, take quite a bit of time. It wouldn't be like a quick couple of year process. Hey Rachel, before you walk through the numbers, can I ask Marissa, can I ask you a question? Yeah. Is this house worth it? A hundred percent. Yeah. Oh yeah. through the numbers can i ask marissa can i ask you a question yeah is this house worth it 100 yeah oh yeah because you're like you're doing a lot of of financial gymnastics like you're spending a ton of energy what about this what about this what about that what if we did this and so i think it's just important to go stop for a second say is this still what we want to do

like we love this house it's our quote-unquote forever house, which, by the way, no such thing as that. But, like, this is a house that we love. But, man, it has taken all the fun out of our life. Right. You're still all in on it? Yeah. But you guys said you live far below your means.

So how much margin do you guys have a month, would you say, that you put into savings? So I put about $1,000 and then an additional $500 a month goes to like our financial advisor. My husband puts $500 a month and then... And this is like non-retirement, correct? Correct. Yeah. Just to whatever, like we've got various investments.

Okay. And then my husband's probably saved an additional 1500 on his end okay okay so i'd say here a couple of things um yeah number one i keep hearing you say like my husband's money my husband has this i have that i would challenge you guys to combine everything because you guys are working towards the same goal but you're still on two separate roads financially. But if you put everything in one pot, you know, instead of saying, well, I have 50,000 and he has 75,000, like no together, this is what we have. Like there's, there's a, there's something about that unification that happened when you are unified that helps this plan go faster. So what

we found, Marissa, is that you are trying to do a couple of things and well-intentioned things. So I would kind of put some structure around them. Okay. So I would, at this point, you guys have a well over a fully funded emergency fund. I would say 50 grand is plenty for you guys for an emergency fund. You could probably even lower some of that if you wanted, but I would look at that extra 75,000 and just have the conversation. Hey, is this something we would just want to put a chunk of that towards the house? I mean, you're're gonna knock off almost a hundred grand towards the principal in the house if you do that like that's an option and then from there let's invest 15 percent of our income into retirement nothing more nothing less let's put a little bit away for college I would not worry about weddings

and all of that you're adding in a lot with a 10 month old so like I know it's so easy to like dream but yeah that's that's muddying up kind of what John was saying he just feels like you're trying to do all these things it's kind of muddying the water so just look at what you really need to do and so we'll put some money away every year for college and you can kind of run those numbers and just decide from per household what feels right to you and then anything above that I I would throw towards the house and throw towards the principal of your mortgage doing that. And then, I mean, Marissa, we find that people that follow this plan, they pay their house off in seven years.

So it's not a two-year process. On average, it's about seven years. And so as you guys map it out, I mean, you make $230,000 and you have a $400,000 mortgage. So I'm like, golly, in four years, if you guys just lived on $130,000. Or three years. Yeah, you could pay it off. Can I tell you one golly, in four years, if you guys just lived on 130. Or three years. Yeah, you could pay it off. Can I tell you one hard thing, Marissa? Yeah. It sounds like you lean a lot on your financial advisor. If you get with the wrong financial advisor, you need to remember that they can be very

self-serving and they will talk you into taking huge chunks of your money. You want to get a financial advisor that works for you, not the other way around. And they'll look at you, the wrong ones will call you. The financial advisor we had definitely kind of, when we were younger, like took advantage of us. We were newly married and kind of sold us on the whole life first term life and we ended up doing both. And then, you know, we had paid $10,000 in, but only, you know, we're out,

you know, we were out five or $6,000. So we ended up switching to a friend. Good. Well, so follow Rachel's policy now. And I want you to know, we don't have a financial stake in your success here. We're rooting you on on this is what we would do in our own house um put 15 percent away and put the rest towards your house and your financial advisor may be like oh you're so stupid you're missing out but 15 percent aside you're gonna be fine you're so far ahead of the game with the people we talk to right now. And you owe what on your house? 400? Yeah, we owe 400. We just moved in in June. Okay. Imagine this. Six or seven months. Imagine this. What if you sat down and had a conversation with call yours and you put 75 from him. And by the end of this weekend, your mortgage is done to three 10 already.

Right. Yeah. We have, yeah. We've talked about that. Cause yeah, like I said, we've obviously both have our own accounts and then like a joint account. So we were just talking about that last night. Like, what if we just put so much amount from our nest egg in? But then, you know, it's just like, there's almost like too much good advice because then, you know, like his parents are like,

well, you guys should just wait to refinance. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, they're wrong. Listen, here's what I want to be your guide. Solve for freedom. What's not, what's the best. What's the best interest rate? What's the best move that might happen in three months or six months? Hey, by the way, I'm looking to buy a house.

And everybody's waiting for these interest rates to drop. And they didn't the other day. Oh, yeah. Then everybody freaked out. And then the inflation report came out. Dude, everybody's just throwing darts with a blindfold on. I want you guys to change your metric. Solve for freedom.

What's the fastest path to our family not owing anybody anything? Forget the interest rates. Let's be free. And let's give that kid, your new kid, yeah, a wedding's going to be awesome to save up for. College will be awesome. Let's give their kid, your new kid, yeah, a wedding's going to be awesome to save up for, college will be awesome. Let's give their nervous system 18 years of parents who don't owe anybody anything.

That's peace. Then that kid can rappel off and go do some amazing things that our culture desperately needs young people to get involved with, right? Let's solve for freedom, not for everybody else's advice. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back. 888-825-5225. This is The Ramsey Show. Let's go out to Kimberly in Seattle, Washington. Hey, Kimberly, what's up? Hey, are you still there? We're here. How's it going? How can we help? Good. Well, not good, but maybe you can help me out with some suggestions. My husband just like about a week ago went to the hospital and was diagnosed with basically his liver is shot. It's beyond repair. They gave him maybe a year, year and a half to live. Oh my gosh.

I'm so sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And he struggled with alcohol, you know, addiction off and on over the years. And he, you know, he said, I knew that this was probably going to happen, but you know, addiction off and on over the years. And he, you know, he said, I knew that this was probably going to happen, but you know, when you're addicted, you're addicted and it's hard to stop something. So anyway, our situation right now is, um, he, uh, he's working or trying to work because he doesn't feel well. And, um, I've been doing the best I can to do Ramsey stuff without him not being on board,

which means not very much. Anyway, I have questions here as to what we should do because this freight train is moving. Um, do you guys have moving forward? Do you guys have kids? We have adult kids who are doing really well off on their own. We're made. They're amazing. How old are you guys? Um, uh, I just turned, I just turned 60. He's a few years younger than me three years younger than me okay um anyway and in fact i just worked out i had a hospital bill i worked uh took a grinding job to pay that the balance off because of insufficient you know insurance and just got it done so here we are with another hurdle. Um, so I'm looking at,

we do own our own house, but, um, because I haven't been had access, you know, I haven't had access to the funding I wanted to do to keep up on it. It needs exterior repairs that are fairly expensive, as in roof gutters, some siding, and then paint after that. It's an amazing house. It's in really good condition, but that would have to be done if we were to possibly sell and downsize, if that would be one of the options we should consider. I don't know. We have a lot of stuff sitting around that my other half cannot get rid of anything ever. So getting those options for getting those things sold and how to approach him on that, we'd have to have somebody come and remove things.

Kimberly, let me hop in here. Yes, please. You've gone directly, and quite honestly, if you've been married to somebody who's struggling with alcohol for a long time, you have been responding to crisis after crisis and thing after thing forever, right? Amen. And then, so the way you said this, I want to challenge you on it.

Well, now we got another hurdle. This is not just another hurdle. No, it's big. This is the stop sign, right? Yes. And so you have been working with somebody for a long time. Everything in this conversation has changed now

and the conversation changed to changes to now we have a an hourglass we have a clock that's ticking and the doctors clicked it on for us and so we're not talking about how you feel if you really like this collection of bottle caps you've been keeping for, like that, that ship is over. That ship has sailed out to Harbor. We are now creating a life that I'm going to have to inhabit because you're going to be gone.

Yeah. And that looks like making sure I got a home with four walls on it and I can pay bills. Right. And some of it you're going to i i i remember sitting with um um somebody that i care about deeply and i was helping them and their house was full of stuff and i was trying to help them throw that throw it away this is several years ago and i just finally stopped and looked at him and said i need you to hear me say this when you die i'm gonna throw all of this away i can do it now or i can do it when you're gone and there was a long long pause and they said you're gonna have to do it when i'm gone and i said okay i'm moving on with my day

i'm not gonna spend another second here i've already made that choice but i'm not gonna fight that in this moment see what i'm saying so i want, because he was not even used to that idea yet. It hadn't even been introduced, right? Right. So here's what we're doing. We're reverse engineering this thing for the four walls. I hate to live like this, but this is the clock you've been given. I want to go 18 months and start working backwards.

What does life look like? And you don't have to do a roof and siding and gutter. You don't have to do all that at the same time. We're going to price each one of those things out. These things that we have to do so that we can keep our house, these things that we have to do so we have transportation, you're going to have to have a job if you don't have any retirement. Yeah. What's the financial status, Kimberly? Do you guys, I know you said you own your home outright, so there's no mortgage or anything on it, correct? Yeah. Well, I was, you know, in the earlier days I was working to, you know, pay a little extra here and there because I'm the, you know, I'm the one that doesn't want to be in horrendous debt, a debt of any kind actually. And, um, he used to work a very, uh,

a very good job and part of it was, um, an investment account, um, that was like a retirement, right? And, um, and he got to a point where he wanted to start his own business. He'd always wanted to do this because his family had done it and they had done it poorly and they fought and they divorced, but it still is a dream of his. So did he cash out the investments?

So over time, yes, he cashed out almost everything. So what's left? He threw into a business about knowing how to run a business. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Kimberly, you're going to have to set that aside because you got an emergency in front of you. Yeah.

So what debt? I know. No, no. You're fine. You're fine. What debt do you guys have? Any at all? Any consumer debt?

Credit cards? Car loan? No. Okay. We have no debt. No debt. Okay. And how much money are you...

Property taxes and things like that. Okay. Are you working debt. No debt. And how much money are you? Property taxes and things like that. Okay. Are you working, Kimberly? Do you work? I was in order to pay off my hospital debt. Okay. Yeah. Horrendously huge. And I finally got that paid off and it, but it was very hard. It was just a hard job. Okay. How much? Yeah. Okay. Physically. Okay, okay. So not in a great position to work. Okay. What was he making a year? What's he making now? Yes.

To keep you guys. Crap, I should know this. No, it's fine. 30,000, 70,000? Yeah, 30 something. 30 something, okay. Okay, and that's enough. Okay, so any investments, sorry,

I know you said he cashed out his to start the business. Do you have, do you have any retirement? Okay. So there's no investments, no retirement. And does he, does he have life insurance? Nope. Nope. Okay. Okay. So what I want you to do, Kimberly, is the, the, the silver lining from a financial standpoint, all of this is you, you guys have no debt. I mean, you don't even have a mortgage. So it's your, so that in and of itself is like, that's a relief. So what John was saying,

the four walls, I want you to go and do a budget Kimberly, and I want you to stay on the line and we're going to give you financial peace university and every dollar premium. Cause I want you to start budgeting and I want you to know to the penny. I do have every dollar already. Oh, you do.

Okay. So to know what you, know to the penny. I do have every dollar already. Oh, you do? Okay. So to know what you... Thank God for that. That has been like saving my emotional... I'm so glad because I think if you have those numbers in front of you of the things you have to do, you have to keep the lights on, the cell phone bill, your insurance, food, gas in the car, you have all of that. And that's what you're going to have to look at, Kimberly, and say, OK, I have to at least make this right when the time comes.

I have to I have to at least make this. And then I would not encourage you to sell the house or even to put in a ton of repairs right now. I think you're fine. What I would do is I don't want to. Yeah, and I and I wouldn't unless your roof is linking or something. But like for now and then, Kimberly, when the time comes, I want you to grieve. I want you to go through that process

and don't make a big financial decision until about six months to a year. And if in two years, three years, you decide to sell the home and downgrade, take some of the equity, you can do that. But don't feel like you have to make these big decisions today. Today, I just want your four walls covered

between now and 18 months. I'm so sorry, though. I'm so sorry. That's the first hour in the books. We'll be right back on The Ramsey Show. I'll see you next time.