The Ramsey Show - App - My Fiancé Wants Me To Sign a Prenup (Hour 1)

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental 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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney, best-selling author and host of the ever-popular Dr. John Deloney podcast, is my co-host today. You can talk directly to him.

The phone number is 888-825-5225. If you didn't know, he talks about life and anxiety and boundaries and mental health and those kinds of things, relationship issues. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about your money. We'll talk about your life, and we're going to do it all right in front of you. The phone number is 888-825-5225.

Starting off this hour is Caitlin in Houston, Texas. Hey, Caitlin, what's up in your world? Hey, Dave and Don. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? Hey, so my fiance and I were due to get married in about two weeks, and I'm due with our first in September. My question is about prenups.

I've heard you talk about them previously, but not as it relates to a business. And he's brought it up once before. I explained to him why I don't like them, and I actually sent him a podcast you did on it, and apparently he understood from there, and the subject was dropped, but he's brought it up again, and he wants his business land, money he's acquired to this point,

all in the prenup. So I don't know what to tell him or how to help him understand my perspective, or maybe I'm wrong about businesses and a prenup. He had a previous business partner go through a divorce, and the wife tried to take part of the business. So I think that's part of his concern, but I don't know what to tell him or how to go.

What does he make on this business? He has a 50-50 partner, and he makes about $67,000 a year. Okay. Whoopty. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say high five, man. Yeah, that's awesome, but, I mean, he doesn't make $680,000 a year. Yeah. I have a year. Yeah.

I have a lot of thoughts, and most of them are too mean to say out loud without filtering them. And it's hard for me to be quiet because I've got a lot of mean thoughts in my head. Well, you go first, old meanie. Hey, Caitlin, I don't like... Here's mean John. Here we go.

I'm going to go nice. I don't like prenups. I don't like them. It feels like you're walking into something that there should not be an exit strategy for with at least a crack in the door or a toe out the door. Unless you've got some really complex situations, I just don't like them. And I get that he's seen somebody get burned. That makes sense to me.

What I don't like is you guys sat down and had this conversation. You talked about it. You made peace with it. And then two weeks out, he circled back. And that feels like a move to me. That feels like a move that lacks integrity. Yeah, like this discussion should have had before we made a baby. And it sounds like you did have it, right?

And this discussion should have been had before we were two weeks from marriage. Yeah. This is ridiculous. I just i i basically i said no and he and i and he agreed with the pay agreed with our stance on the podcast so our stance on the podcast is what john is saying okay and i'll repeat what i probably said then because it's what i say every time i get this question okay if everything is fairly equal and this is fairly equal uh I would not marry someone that required a prenup because you are planning your failure you're planning your failure and there's he loves his business his half of his business more than you he's more worried about his business partner than you and that's just he didn't mean to say that but this action says that and so no no now the only and i used to when i first started this and you heard this on that podcast probably because i almost always say this

i used to say no prenups ever the only time i say a prenup is a good idea is in extreme situation that's why i asked about the size of the business if he's making a million dollars a year on this business and they own 20 million dollars worth of property and you got nothing yeah that's an extreme situation and that would warrant the differentiation is a the difference is a extreme situation and even then i'm probably not 50 of the prenup is for the actual marriage but 50 of it is for both of your crazy relatives because uncle crazy is a june bug shows up and decides he wants your uncle crazy june bug decides he wants a piece of your husband's business that was there before you were or uncle june bug showed up and uh and you can just throw up your hands and go i can't

help you're gonna prenup and so it keeps the weirdness of your extended family in line and all extended family has weirdness it's just every family so that's it's good in extreme situations this is not extreme enough this has to do with he was wounded by the other deal and he's extrapolating that into your new marriage, and that is not good medicine. Right. Here's my concern for you. This leaves you really exposed either way, right? Because now you're having to either go into a marriage and sign a piece of paper that you don't feel comfortable marrying, which is going to put a wedge between you and this guy that you are tethering yourself to for the rest of your life,

or you're going to be a single mom here in September, right? Yeah. So he's put you in an impossible situation, and that's why even beyond the prenup, I'll even go as far to say I get that he's been burned and he's been hurt before, and that's a scar fresh on his soul. I get that. Cool.

I don't like that he waits until 2. That feels like a move to me, and that feels like somebody that's going to pull move after move after move on you here in the future. And even if he wasn't meaning to do that and was manipulative, he has unbelievably bad timing. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At a minimum. Yeah.

That's giving him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, you know, you settle this before we make babies, before we get engaged. Right. And here's the bigger thing, Dave. I know there's millions of people that are going to hear this and say, that's stupid. That is stupid. You've got to protect yourself. If they say that, they're stupid.

I wasn't going to say that. But here's what I was going to say. If that's your first response, then don't get married. Yeah. Don't get married. Let me give you a weird, the weirdest one i ever had was a lady called and said uh my fiancee has a classic 1968 mustang that's worth 140 000 that he built frame up and he wants a prenup to protect that and uh papa dave said don't marry him yep what don't marry him he loves this stupid car more than you that's right don't marry him

if it's my daughter i'd run that guy off with a gun right no do not marry him this is not marriage material he has his priorities all screwed up if you love a car more than you love your fiance you are not marriage material and it will move over time that car will become a boat which will become a house which will become a my kids going to this college and nobody else it'll become a thing it has to be i'll take a bullet for you it's the only shot you've got i was making it through a marriage yeah because there is you gotta you gotta burn all the boats man because marriage is hard yeah it Everybody's going to have a moment where you go, I'm done with you.

I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. And if you say you haven't had that, then you haven't been married. Then you're lying. Or you're lying. You've got to run to the shore and realize, oh, I don't have any boats. Oh, God. I said, yeah, there's nowhere to go.

I can't drive off in my classic car. And so, yeah, you've got to make it work. I want somebody that will look at my daughter and my son and say, I'll set that car on fire for you. Yeah. That's the guy that's going to sit at my kitchen table. Yeah. Right?

And this business is how I make a living, and I love my business, and I love being in business, but it doesn't even show up on the same spectrum of my love for you. I'll walk away from it all tomorrow. Of my love for you. That's right. Now play that one back for Bubba. This is The Ramsey Show. If current times have shown us anything,

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and I'm calling bogus on these surveys, about the timeshares. Well, at least there's one done by the timeshare business. This is 87% of the people love their timeshare. There's one done by the University of the university of florida i believe it was it said uh central florida i believe did it said 87 people hate their timeshare so that was probably more credible right i did a survey of husbands in my home who think they're incredible and it was a hundred percent response they really are doing a great job four out of five dentists

who used the tooth but yeah but the uh so we're going to do a timeshare piece. We're going to do some research and see what you guys think. So we're putting it out there. We're going to do it to the public and we're using our normal research procedure. But we're also going to ask you guys. You hear me talking about timeshares? I want to hear from you. Are you a current timeshare

owner? Are you a former timeshare owner? The new survey, we want to know your thoughts thoughts your opinions and your experience with timeshares so if you want to participate in the research and the survey and tell us your thoughts um notice i'm not telling you what to say but you we'd love to have you call i mean we know what you're going to say because you're listeners but anyway uh but uh yeah it'll we're you know gonna look at that as a part of the research. Text TIMESHARE to 33789. That's TIMESHARE, one word, to 33789.

It might be really interesting to have some of those issues that are exposed in that research turned over to some of the state legislatures that regulate these businesses i wonder what would happen then yeah i would love to see well they need their constituents to reach out and say hey we're tired of being trapped by this yeah and it could be it could be that you know this research shows that their constituents are being screwed and maybe they're maybe they get tired i don't know you never know you just never know data man has a way of humbling us all, right? Data, data is real. Michael's in Phoenix, Arizona. Hey, Michael, how are you?

I'm good, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call, you and Dr. John. Absolutely. How can we help? Well, so we moved, my wife and I moved to, actually to Nevada, Las Vegas area, back in September. Thought she needed to be in a bigger city for her work. I was commuting close to two hours for my work. Obviously, COVID changed everything.

She's now able to work solely from home, pretty much, with very little travel. So we decided to move closer to my job so that I could actually be part of my family. We had several months left on the lease. We worked it out with, we asked our landlord, hey, if we get someone else in here to take over this, can we get out? He said, absolutely. Then he listed the property for $400 more than we were paying. We thought we had someone else lined up, that fell through, but we went ahead and made the move to Arizona anyway to cut out that commute. And so now the lease actually ends on August 10th. We're already in a new place in Arizona.

And so we're just trying to figure out what the best thing is to do with this situation at this point. The deal was that if you could re-rent it, that he would let you out, but it didn't re-rent. It is not re-rented as of now. So you're not out, so you're in. That's the deal you made, right? Right. And so I'm wondering, it's causing a lot of stress and anxiety for us, and I don't know if it's better just to finish payout the rest of it,

or if it's better to hold on and hope he does. That's your deal. Well, no, I wouldn't finish paying it i'd pay it out monthly okay you have rent due at the first of the month i would pay it at the first of the month i wouldn't pay it in advance because he might rent it and so if you pay um well i guess july is coming up and then you've only got august 10th so you've got a partial due august 1st right right but even that might be even that might be forgiven if he rents it august 1st

and and i guess my question too is is this something that i need to like have a conversation with him about i think that he's overpriced the market and he doesn't really care because i mean he's he's got us paying the rent he He's going to carry August 10th. Yeah. And that's exactly what we kind of saw. Which if I'm in his shoes, August 10th is approaching quickly, and I'm going to price it appropriately so that I have a tenant in there August 1st so I don't skip a beat even if I lose 10 days on you. But prior to that, he was just fishing for a nut to get somebody to come in high. Right?

Right. Yeah, I agree that he didn't necessarily do you fair uh whether it was intentional or not but it is the deal you made and you didn't you know you didn't save any on the rent but yeah i would just pay him july 1st and pay him uh 10 days on august the 1st and just be in communication with him and say you know by the way you're gonna drop this so you can get it rented and get me out? Because it seems like you're high. And my guess is, if y'all got the money, the anxiety you feel is that you're walking around all day thinking, I should be doing something.

I should be doing something. I'm getting ripped off. Just let it be, man. Pay the rent and then move on. And you're going to feel some peace in your life. All right. Well, that is great advice. Thank y'all so much.

It's annoying. It's frustrating. By the way, Michael, you didn't do anything wrong. You did this properly. If you would have called me and asked me in advance what to do with it, I would have told you to do exactly what you did, except I think you didn't get the agreement in writing, and you should have gotten that. But other than that, I think you did a good deal here. You used good decision-making skills.

It just didn't work out. You didn't get out of the lease because they didn't rent it. And, you know, you might have on the front end stated that you're going to, you know, we've got to list the thing at market value and let's establish market value, but you don't get to tell the guy what he rents his house for. That's his house. So that's part of the problem. And you learned a lesson next time that you move, you'll never make this mistake again, and you'll figure it out, and you'll go from there.

Yeah, you don't move before, or you plan on eating it. But you did. You approached this the correct way. I do want to tell you that. I don't think you messed up. I don't think it was a mistake. I think it just didn't work out. John is in Cedar Rapids.

John, how are you? Doing well. Hope you're making it a great day. We are, sir. How about you? Doing quite well, thank you. How can we help? So me and my wife have about $15,000, $15,500 in student loans that have been in default

for quite some time. And I've got it on top of that at about $1,117 in medical debt. And we have been working on baby step one, and we have amassed about $23,000 in savings. And the biggest problem we've been having is we've not been able to communicate with some of the student loan collectors. They're not taking our calls. They're not answering our letters. Same thing with the medical debt. And my work is a free legal service that includes debt negotiation and debt assistance with a lawyer. And my question is, I've got the money, and I won't be too far into our emergency savings so that we can pay this all off and be debt-free in one go. Should we, A, be using the lawyer to take care of that and also looking at potentially negotiating down that debt but still having it be paid in full?

And, B, I want to be debt-free, so I want to be done with the student loans regardless of the fact that it's zero interest until September. Yeah, you need to write the checks and be done. You just got to find somebody to write them to and find somebody to get agreement on what the amount is because all you've got is an estimate. Yep, and I want payoff letters so that I can literally have cashier's checks cut and sent and be done with it. Exactly.

So the medical debt came from, well well here's the thing you can you can turn it over you say it's prepaid legal or somebody like that yeah well it's uh work my work pays for my employer pays for a prep a legal plan that uh basically i can get a ticket to my lawyer and they charge the legal plan and it doesn doesn't cost me anything for matters like this. Yeah. Well, the problem might be that you don't get good attention from the attorney. And so you can try that, but I would put the attorney on a short fuse and say, you know, I want this solved. If it's not solved within 60 days, I'm going to take it back and fix it myself.

Totally understand. Yeah, because I'm a little bit afraid somebody slow walks and puts you on the back shelf. It's a small amount. It's a prepaid legal thing. I don't know what's going on with all that. So I want to make sure you get service. But if you want to turn it over to them for 60 days, that's fine. But do exactly what you're talking about. Otherwise, you're going to have to start just really trying to source this by pulling a copy of your credit bureau report and trying to get back to the original medical provider that you owed this to and see if you can go back through them to get to whoever it is. It may require just a little bit of effort, but it might,

try it with a lawyer if you want, but ultimately you need to get it pushed through quickly. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Thomas and Emily are with us. Hey, guys. How are you? We're excited to be here. We're nervous and excited. Good. Good to have you.

Well, you'll be okay. We never lost a patient. I know. So where are you guys from? Charleston, South Carolina. Oh, love me some Charleston. Oh, yeah. Talk about a food scene almost as good as Nashville.

Almost. Maybe a little better. Oh, dude, they recoiled at that, man. It's okay. They're both really good food cities, I'll tell you that. Yeah. Good. Welcome, guys.

And how much debt have you paid off? We've paid off $103,831. Whoa. Love it. How long did this take? 28 months. Okay. And your range of income during that two and a half years? It was $84,000 to $150,000. Whoa. Love it. How long did this take? 28 months. Okay. And your range of income during that two and a half years?

It was $84,000 to $150,000. Wow. Nice jump. What do you all do for a living? I work in HR for a food and beverage company. Of course you do. And I'm a professional chef. I was too.

I was a student, a full-time personal trainer. I did Rover, dog sitting during this time, and Instacarted. But now I just got my real estate license, and I'm actually working for one of your ELPs. Oh, wow. Very cool. Welcome to the fold. Very nice. How long have you guys been married?

Three years. Yes. Excellent. She looked at you like, don't mess this up. Don't mess it up. Don't mess it up. Yeah. And what kind of debt was the $104,000?

So it was mostly student loans of $74,000. And then we had seven credit cards of $16,000. And then phone and a personal loan to wrap it up. Okay. Who had all the student loans? It was pretty evenly balanced. I had a little bit more than she did. Okay.

I did a lot of D-U-M-B to get mine. I got you. All right. Good for you guys. So obviously you had talked about this prior to marriage because right after you get married, within just a few months of getting married, you dove in and started getting out of debt, right? So tell us the story. What happened?

Well, we got married, moved from West Virginia to California. Most of our baby step two took place in Bakersfield, California. Oh, wow. So newlyweds, new city, new jobs, new church, everything. And we were in a small group, and a rams a night there was a small business owner, and I wanted to be a full-time personal trainer. So I went to go have lunch with him, like, hey, let me ask you some questions about running a small business. He basically looked at me like, you're not ready, man. Started asking me all the questions that you would ask on the show and later that week at church he was like hey I got a gift for you

you know after church we met up with him and he gave us the FPU box kit that had the book and the you know portion to go online and take the FPU course so we pretty much went home talked about it very shortly and just started chugging along through the lessons and watching the videos and emily was you know she was ready to jump all in i was like okay i'll certainly do this with you i don't have a problem with this but it took me a while uh uncle dave to to hop to hop all on and uh really to believe that it was possible because we had a pretty big hole. Yeah.

Well, it's impressive. Well done. Yeah. Got to feel good. Y'all feel great? Oh, man. It feels amazing. Yeah. I mean, you got rid of $104,000 worth of debt.

Yeah, we did. That's stinking amazing. Okay. So, Emily, at what point in this 28 months did Thomas go all in from instead of I'll help you with your plan? I would think about four months in. That's not bad. It didn't take that long.

I'm not as stubborn. That's not bad. You didn't drag him halfway through. No, no, no. So what do you think flipped? What was the switch that flipped, Thomas, for you where you went from I'm going to be helpful, I'm not going to be a hindrance, but instead I'm going to be a hindrance but i'm gonna instead

i'm gonna be half of this i'm gonna carry the load it was really just owning up to you know just where we were at and where i wanted where we wanted to be um and where i wanted to be um i come from a family that experienced some financial hardships growing up and i didn't want to be i didn't want to be in the same uh. I didn't want my kids to be in the same situation. But that was true before the four months. Yeah, you know, I— What happened at the fourth month? You know, I don't know. Here's what it is, Dave.

She looked at him and said, your hair care products are coming off the budget. So we're done. He said, I'm all in. I'll take that compliment. I'll take it. I'm only saying it because you've got beautiful hair, and I'm jealous. I think it was listening to the show.

John, you're just creeping me out at this point. It definitely was the radio show. The radio show was phenomenal. After I started listening to, I guess, the debt-free screams and all the other people who are our age and our situation. That was before you were on. In our same hole. Fair enough. It made me believe that we could do it, too.

So, yeah. You guys are hilarious. That's awesome. Hey, so how has your marriage changed? You're a young married couple. You went from West Virginia to California, back to the East Coast. How has it changed your marriage? Yeah, it's changed everything.

We've learned so much about each other, about marriage. I would say that why you can keep going is for like what is the dreams afterwards? And so what do you want to be doing? Where do we want to go? And so your communication of why we're doing this was a lot stronger. It's a much easier way to communicate even if it's a different thing or goal he wants. I understand

why and how we're debt free. We can start to prioritize how do we go after all of them. That's good. Now you have a roadmap for all these conversations. Of course. It's so nice being on the same page especially with money. We don't have to really think about it it's just kind of yeah it's just this is what it is and this is what it's going to be so very cool what do you

tell people the key to getting out of debt is you've been through financial peace university you paid off 104 000 you're rock stars i would say the tithe um continuing to tithe the whole time um letting god do with 90 what we could do with 100%, 100% of the time it works. And then communication with Thomas. Yeah, mine would be ownership. Like I said earlier, you've got to own up to where you're at, especially when you start thinking and talking about dreams and where you want to be. You have to really go all in. You can't get out of debt easily, like you say all the time.

It's easy to get into debt. It's hard getting out. For me, it was about ownership and working together, combining everything, realizing that it's a team effort, and just working together. What was the hardest point in the whole process? Oh, man. Well, we moved to California. Starting, ending, middle? Starting was, I would say middle.

I mean, we lived in California for the majority of Baby Step 2, and there's so much to see and do out there, and we wanted to do as much as we could. And it was saying no to a lot of things. We had a great family out there, Discovery Church. We had some Bakersfield parents, Dustin and Jenna, who really helped us out during those hard months or hard weeks where we were saying no to a lot of things when people were going and doing a lot of stuff. And Dustin and Jenna actually took us to

one of your live events out there in Orange County right before COVID. Oh, wow. Very cool. I would say we also said yes to things that I wouldn't have wanted to do, like 13 dogs for Christmas for dog sitting. So the side hustle just exploded. Yeah, we dogs had a lot of dogs. I walked a lot of dogs. It was quite the ordeal. How much? We sacrificed.

I think at one point we had 18 dogs on the books during a given week. It was kind of wild. We would have been your favorite tenants, Dave, in one of your rentals. We would have been like, we're getting out of debt. You had to move to Charleston to get rid of that smell, man. You have no idea how many times I steamed clean carpet, how many times I would look at Emily and be like, man, this is worth it.

Your landlord in Bakersfield, you just said, you know what, you keep the deposit. Yeah, we were like, you can have it. You can just have that. We're so proud of you guys. Way to go. It's incredible. Now that it's all done, will you ever go back in debt?

No. No. No. No. No. Good. Very good. We got a copy of The Legacy Journey for you.

That is the next stage or the next chapter in your story for sure. And am I seeing a little one off to the side? You are. Our everlasting gift from Bakersfield. This is Elizabeth. chapter in your story for sure and am i seeing a little one off to the side you are our everlasting gift from bakersfield this is elizabeth we moved right in the middle of a pandemic emily started a new job um and we we we had a little baby right in the middle of all right in the middle of 2020 fabulous okay and she's got the headphones on so you can do an actual this is ready yeah this is not gonna blow her blow her mind i know very cool that's awesome well you can do an actual business stream. Yeah, this is, yeah. Not going to blow her mind. I know.

Very cool. That's awesome. Well, you've changed your family tree, and you are leaving a legacy, so the legacy journey is our gift for you. And one of my latest bestseller, and then, of course, the total money makeover, which you can give to someone else, pay it forward, and get someone else's journey started. So proud of you guys.

Very, very well done. You're heroes. Thanks. Very well done. You're heroes. Thanks. Very well done. Thomas and Emily Charleston, South Carolina, 104,000 paid off in 28 months making 84 to 150.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. 3, 2, 1 We're debt-free! Love it! Woo-hoo! Man, she brought that one from the floor Yeah And those headphones work That baby didn't move That's awesome Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today.

Amber is in Dallas. Hey, Amber, what's up? Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? I am calling with a little bit of a different question about trying to manage life in crisis or in high stress. So my husband and I have been married for two and a half years. We're just second marriage for both of us. We have combined kids who are 14 14 18 19 and 21 we both work full-time um and and you know have this family of seven that we manage and in the in the two and a half years we've been married uh one full year was um cancer treatment for me and another year has been a pandemic. And while we are doing really

well financially, I think we are just both completely spent. And right now I feel like we can't get our feet underneath us to try to make any financial progress. We're just kind of barely holding on financially despite making a lot of money. So I'm just trying to, I guess, ask how do we manage that? How do we take it into bite-sized pieces when we really don't have the time to take any bites? So walk me back to a couple of years ago. Yeah. You met each other.

You get married. Did y'all just jump in and say, Hey, we're going to be the Brady bunch. This is going to be a blast or seven of us. We're going to figure it out as we roll. And then you got hit upside the head with a cancer diagnosis. How'd that play out?

Oh, that cancer actually came before the marriage. It came about six weeks after the proposal. So by then we were already sort of jumped in. And that was an awful year that had a job loss and a new job and a wedding plan and a remodeling and a move and cancer. And, you know, chemo, surgery, it had everything that year. How are you feeling now? Yeah. Good.

I'm good. So I may be reading into this, but I hear in your voice that if you talk about this just on the wrong day, you can cry real hard and it's hard to stop. Is that fair?

We're just really tired. You sound exhausted. Not tired, but you sound exhausted, right? Yeah. So often when folks get into survival mode, they just start sprinting as fast as they can in a thousand different directions because their body says run and fight everything.

And one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself is come what may, we're going to stop. And this sounds cheesy, but you've got to just acknowledge and take a state of the union, and then you've got to sit down and grieve what was, we thought this was going to be, what's not. And only then can you then begin to heal

and make plans for what's going to come next. But the more you run, the more exhausted it gets. So it's almost as much as some sort of marriage retreat or family retreat or we're just going to go away for a day. And people do this in their businesses. We do this in our marriage a lot now. We learn this the hard way because I like to solve things by getting busier and doing more stuff, which usually led to more tough stuff

or no margin to handle whatever calamity came our way. What do you do for a living? I'm the controller of a university foundation. What about your husband? My husband, he works at a big aeronautics government manufacturer kind of thing. What do you all do on Sundays? Well, we used to go to church, and COVID kind of took that away. We haven't gotten back in the habit.

Well, that wasn't to shame you. I was just trying to figure out if you ever have a down day um you know with five kids it's hard it's really hard you just say no we're staying home and your youngest one's 14 we do that yeah we have 14 year old twins and then three girls in college oh so three are not there well they are right now they are right now for the summer. But sometimes we have the third inner college in the fall. But they're independent human beings, though. They don't need your emotional energy or they shouldn't. But in theory, yes.

Well, I mean, you can stiff arm them a little bit. I mean, really, Sunday, you need to pick a day, what John's saying, and get back to a rhythm of slowing down. And I think if you did a calendar audit, you would probably find too much crap on there that doesn't need to be on there. That's true. That's probably true. And that is the symptom of what John was saying. Right. And even the way you just responded, a lot of times folks will get cancer.

They will feel that during that healing process, everybody rallies around them. And then there's a guilt, and then there's a, I'm going to make it up by being everything to everybody. Am I right? To some degree, to some degree. I mean, we really don't even have kids that are highly involved in things. I mean, we're not heading off to soccer games and that sort of thing. It's just between trying to keep up with a household where things break and two very busy jobs and, you know, it's just a lot.

Well, here's what I heard from my seat is the same thing John heard, is just exhaustion. And it's almost impossible to manage money well when your emotional tank is completely empty. Right. That's exactly where we are right now. And we have plenty of money. We make a lot. We have no debt. But you have no emotional energy to make it

behave exactly that's exactly where we are yeah i have zero control over our finances just comes in but it's just the spending is as frenetic as the earning and as chaotic as the earning they're both chaotic and um there's nothing there's nothing it's a crazy cycle and the only way to get off the crazy cycle is pull the plug and rest. Okay. And you've been through trauma after trauma after trauma

and trauma's cumulative. Think of it like a backpack full of bricks and until you sit down and take them out and show them to your husband and say this is what I've been carrying. Y'all may have experienced the same thing, but you experience them differently. Grief demands to be witnessed, so you're going to have to show him. He's going to have to show you, and you're going to have to go, whoa.

And then at some point, you bring your kids into that. The old Vessel Vander Kolk book, the classic, the body keeps the score. It's got a tab on you, right? So until you guys stop and go, we have been through hell. I mean, I went through COVID as well in the sense of it was a year from hell trying to keep this business open and running and keep an extra dose of the haters coming around and all that kind of stuff. We had all of that here. But you know what? I didn't have cancer the year before. So I came into that strong, emotionally, spiritually, physically strong.

Now, I got drained through that year, but you came into that year with chemo, off the backside of chemo. Absolutely. And so, you know, you're like the WWF. You tagged up between two traumas. Right. Right. So, you know, you're like the WWF. You tagged up between two traumas. Right. Right. And then last year got a promotion, which is a great thing, but it has meant just a full out at work.

Yeah. Well, and he's going to have to dial that down. Yeah. And you're going to have to dial it down. You guys are going to have to have some margin where you just sit and breathe. And you won't have to do that very long before your budget will start to make sense. Because you don't have the power right now emotionally to tell yourself no. Right. Or your 14-year-olds no.

It takes a lot of power to tell 14-year-olds no. That's completely draining. Just eating out when you're exhausted, that's another thing. Yeah, that's the other thing. And you don't eat well because you're eating junk, and then you don't feel good, so the cycle perpetuates itself. Yeah, you ask your 14-year-olds, hey, you guys pick up your clothes, and they go, I don't want to, and you don't have any energy to push back on a 14-year-old to say whatever,

and then they get a little sassier, and the whole thing comes back to this one magic word of intentionality. Yeah, so I'm going to tell you to audit your calendar and look at your bosses and back it down so that you've got a little margin to love each other well and put that stake down on a budget. And then you've got the emotional strength to make your money and the people touching it behave. Okay. All right. That's helpful.

That does not come from where you are i hear you i feel sorry for you because i've been right where you are and when you are down to nothing when you're down to the emotional nub i mean it's just hard the gas you just got to get some gas back in your tank and hey and let me just tell you the fact that you're there after what you've been through does not make you a bad person it makes you a human and you're strong normal humans normal humans would be right where you are that's right you're not crazy you're not crazy you a bad person. It makes you a human. And you're strong. Normal humans would be right where you are. That's right. You're not crazy. You're not crazy.

You're strong. You didn't do anything wrong. And the beautiful thing is you're smart enough to have recognized where you are. That's right. And so I think you can turn this. And you'll be surprised how fast you turn it, actually. But it's a new word. It's the ancient word.

You have to use it. No. No, we can't do that. No, we're not spending that. No. No, we're turning off the TV. No. Put the screens down. No. We're going to breathe on the back porch. This is the Ramsey Show. Have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of Ramsey advice in their life? Let them know about the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast. It's a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes. Check out the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.