The Ramsey Show - App - My Husband Doesn’t Know About Our Debt (Hour 1)

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Девочка-пай Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by bestselling author and host of The Rachel Cruze Show, Rachel Cruze. And this is your show, America, so give us a call at 888-825-5225. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money, and we will tell you the truth even if it hurts your feelings because we love you that much. And we appreciate all of you tuning in today.

Becky is in Bristol, Virginia to kick us off. Becky, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? Well, I am currently $85,000 in debt that my husband of 35 years does not know about. And I have just had my oh crap moment when I overdrew my checking account because 20 years ago we had to file bankruptcy. And at that point, my husband and I separated our checking accounts because he is a favor and I am a spender and I bought a sender that mess. So now I am door dashing.

I'm working my full-time job I'm selling everything that I have purchased trying to get out of this debt because I do not want to tell him and I don't want to ask him to help me and I can't find door dash where I live is not that popular because it's just a rural area. How much do you make? I make $38,000 a year. Becky, what's the $85,000? What kind of debt is that? It's all credit cards.

Wow. And what are you buying? What's on the bills? I was buying anything and everything I wanted. If my kids wanted something, which they're now grown, I would buy them something. If my mom needed help, I'd just give her a credit card. Okay. What made you wake up today and go, I'm done with this? When I overdrew my checking account,

paying these minimum payments on these credit cards. And are you paying any other bills right now? How are your finances going with your husband if everything's separate? Our house is paid for, thankfully, because of him. And I pay my own car payment and cell phone bill. What's your car worth and what do you owe on it? I owe $15,000 on it and it's worth about $10,000. And was that one of the things you were planning on selling? I don't see how I could because I don't have the $5,000 to make up the difference. Is the $15,000 wrapped up in that $85,000 you mentioned or is that outside of that?

No. No. No. My husband knows about the car payment. So you got $100,000 in debt? Yeah. Anything else? No. Okay. Okay, so Becky, you do realize you're going to have to tell him. I don't want to, but... You think you're going to go to the grave and he doesn't know this ever happened?

Well, I would do just about anything to stop it because, like I said, I've got us in a really bad situation 20 years ago, and he's not this type of person. He's not a spender. He's a saver. He paid our house off early. I just can't imagine having a healthy marriage going forward while you keep this secret. You can't. Yeah.

I mean, your marriage will not be where it could be ever with secrets, right? And that's financial or otherwise because there's a part of you Becky when you hold those kind of secrets and you're trying to be the one to fix it all on your own which I'm not saying you shouldn't I mean like we can get to that discussion in a little bit but that that's going to come out other ways like within your body i'm like you you can't people humans are souls we can't carry that around it will it will come out sideways one way or the other and so coming clean for you becky and not even just for him to have the knowledge for you it will eat you alive for you you can't carry this secret around it has to be taken from the darkness of inside of you to the light

and and it is going to be an excruciating conversation um but i think for the for any way for you to move forward not just financially but in other areas of your life becky you have to bring him into this or and or someone else if you have a good friend who knows you both well, maybe even going to a third party first and having them sit in with you if it's too difficult because of your history. But whatever that looks like, I mean, I really would encourage you, you have to tell somebody and then eventually you have to tell him and have this conversation. And Becky, and I want you to do some good work too. I'm like, you know, we'll get you some John Deloney,

Dr. John Deloney material too, because there's some real stuff going on, Becky. Like I know like when you look at those numbers on your screen and you realize, holy crap, I can't even keep up the minimum payments with what I'm doing. That's your old crap moment. But there's a lot of other stuff, Becky,

going on that caused this, right? And I mean, I don't know if there's a level of a shopping addiction. I don't know if it's really poor boundaries that you've set with people, a sense of not living in reality, right? Like there's all these elements that I want you as a person to overcome because money's just the symptom. This $85,000 in credit card debt is a symptom of other things going on within you. And until that's fixed and until that's addressed, I mean, really with a good counselor and a therapist, are you going to heal from that, be aware of that and be able to make different decisions day in and day out. And I wish there was an easy button. I wish there was an easy button, but it's going to be a season for you guys, a season of financially paying this back, whatever that looks like, and however you guys decide within your marriage.

But it's also going to be a season of rebuilding trust because trust will be broken. It's been broken. And hard conversations, I mean, it's going to be painful, but it is the way to healing, Becky. That is the way to heal. It is not to hold this and try to fix it yourself. Okay. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you're in this.

And I know there's probably so much shame and guilt and regret that you have. But moving forward for you to be able to take that weight off, healing has to happen. And it can't happen on your own. It really can't. We have to have other people around us and I think good professionals as well.

And long-term, we have to get your husband back to husband mode instead of roommate mode. One of the best parts of marriage and one of the hardest parts is having the accountability of a spouse. And I think that could have helped a lot of this if there was transparency in the finances and him saying, hey, you need to cut up that card. Remember, we don't use that anymore. We got burnt. We went through bankruptcy 20 years ago. We don't want that to happen again.

And so I think you need accountability right now. It may not be your husband because there's already a lack of trust there, but we need accountability from other people you've been doing this alone and keeping the secret and how old are you i'm 50 you're 50 so you have a lot of years left becky i'm like you have a whole second part of life we've seen bigger scary numbers yes to be lived and i we want that for you and more and i want that for you more than just the money side. I want this fixed for you. But Becky, I'm like, man, there's so much for you to heal from and your story, what brought you here. And I really want you to be able to do that. If you hold on the line, Christian's going to pick up and we'll give you a bunch of Dr. John Deloney's books and different

materials because I think walking through that and kind of opening the door to that part of the world and understanding yourself, I think is big. And Christian, put my book, Know Yourself, Know Your Money in there as well. But we just want to get you some good resources, Becky, and push into this. Don't sweep it under the rug. Don't try to fix it yourself. Do the hard work. It's hard, but that's where the healing is. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Rachel Cruz this hour. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ben is up next in South Carolina. Ben, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for having me.

Sure. How can Rachel and I help today? So, my wife and I discovered last year when my mother-in-law went in the hospital that my mother-in-law had $100,000 or more in debt. And so now she's in a post-acute care facility. She's not able to walk. She just got approved for disability and you know, the debt's still there. So we've been back and forth on just like, I think, uh, bankruptcy is the only way for her, um, to get out of that because no income and on disability, I don't see a way of her getting rid of a hundred K. It's just, is there any other solution? Does she have assets? Does she have a home? Uh, no, she had a car, but my wife had to get durable power of attorney, which lets her, uh, move assets and make medical calls. It doesn't financially tie us to her, but,

um, whenever she's not able to make calls or manage assets, we can move them. So she had a car and that was the only thing of value that she had. And my wife had that put into my wife's name so that that way we could cancel the bills for insurance and everything. It was paid off, but we had to cancel insurance and taxes and everything so that a car that's not being driven isn't being paid. What kind of debt is the $100,000?

Credit cards, microtransactions, little loans. I don't know how much medical debt is now being accrued because this was the debt before she was in the hospital. How old is she? 55. And do you know how much the disability payments will be? I don't know. She just got approved for it.

And so we're still looking at like setting that up. And what's her plan moving forward? How long will she be in this care versus being out on her own? Like what's the timeframe? That's hard to say. My wife and I, as bad as it sounds, are kind of of the negative opinion that this might be permanent. What happened? What's wrong? What's going on with her health?

So she wasn't very healthy to start with before she went to the hospital. She was on 27 medications. She was 300-something pounds and under five foot tall. She had heart problems. She went to the hospital because she had an infection in her heart and had to have an aortic valve replacement. And the surgeon said that she'd never seen that much infection in her heart. And so her blood sugar at the time, her regular blood sugar was like 400. So it's a miracle she's even alive right now.

It was a miracle she was alive before that, yes. But she's, yeah, right now she is healthy to the point of, like, we're not worried about infection or anything. All the stuff's under control in the facility. She's as healthy as she's ever been, but she's not able to walk is the issue. It's just a matter of she needs to get physical therapy and they canceled that because they weren't seeing, they would saw her plateau on her progress. So they canceled it. Um, it's just a very, not very good situation. So motivation's lacking. We've gotten her to therapy

on a tele thing. And so we think that solutions like she's we've had to when we discovered how bad she was in debt um my wife's grandparents cut her out of the will because uh i mean you're not going to leave all this misbehavior yeah well i'll answer this as if i was in your shoes i'm sorry you guys are going through this. Has your wife had a hard conversation with mom to give her the reality of where things are at? We've kind of had the reality check, and I even spoke to her just a few hours ago of, like, no more credit cards, no lotto tickets, nothing after this. Does your wife have power of attorney for the financial part of her life? Does she have all access to bank accounts?

She's gotten some access just from passwords and everything that her mother's let her do, but we don't, we aren't financially tied to her, which is what we've been avoiding because we were big fans of the Ramsey stuff. So we are doing very well in our lifestyles. I've watched your videos, George, on where you should be in life at certain ages. We're 27. We're about double of what your goals should be. So we're doing well, but I'm not going to—my wife and I agree.

We're not going to financially cripple ourselves to pay off her 20 years of bad choices. But I think it may be helpful to have the ability to cut her off from making this worse. And if she's unable, I can see her just at home if she only has access to a phone and laptop and she's stuck there just continuing this spending out of emotion and depression. So here's what I would do if I was in your shoes, man. I would pull her credit report to get a full picture of all the debt she owes, who she owes it to, what the amounts are. Then I would begin the process of contacting all these creditors and explaining her situation very honestly.

This woman is broke. She's on disability. She is lucky to be alive. She can't pay these debts. And many of them are going to go to collections, and that's just the sad truth of it. There may not be a situation where she just goes and pays off $100,000 in debt at this point of her life and at this age. So you would say do that over bankruptcy? I think this is the start.

It's the first step. Is pulling the credit report, contact the creditors, explain and see what they say, what they're willing to do, what they're willing to work with her on, what they're willing to forgive, and then figure out what is her disability income and how do we manage her future expenses so that this problem doesn't get worse. And so helping her get on that budget. And that's where I think the control comes in, where you guys have to kind of help her manage this. You're not hitching your wagon to her financially, but I think she obviously needs some help here, and it may be your wife's doing, because of the daughter-mom relationship,

to have those conversations. But that's as much as you can do. As much as you want to help her and get her out of the debt. I mean, she may end up going through bankruptcy. I hope it doesn't happen, but that's a very real possibility at her stage with this amount of debt and her inability to work. Yeah, no assets or anything.

I mean, because she's got no savings, no retirement. She has nothing. But again, bankruptcy, while it may solve her debt problem, we still have to think about how is she going to survive. Moving forward, that's it. Yeah, I mean, it screws up your – I mean, you're just, you know, for a decade. The issue with getting her on board with this is that she's kind of lived life as a hoarder, which is how she's accumulated the debt without having

anything of value. She doesn't have a choice anymore. She's opted out of having options. Yeah, but it is, to the end of the day, though, what's so hard about this

is she could choose to go on a laptop, open a credit card, and do it, right? I'm like, because I don't want, Ben, I don't want you guys to feel like you then have to be the parents and control every little aspect of her to save her

her grandparents have done that yeah and there's a point that she's to it yeah there i mean and it sounds harsh and it but there's there's nothing in your ability to be able to control every little behavior of someone else you just can't and for her, I mean, there might be a reality where she faces the music and truly it's bankruptcy. But we don't want, you know, like as much as we can avoid that for someone, we try every other possibility than just going down that road.

But it's hard, Ben. And it is that, it is such a delicate balance of family of saying she's 55 and you know i know she's not in great health so i don't know how obviously how long she has but i mean it could be another three decades and and it you and your wife have to yeah come it sounds like you guys are very much on the same page but figure out what are our boundaries like where's the point that we draw a boundary that we've tried to help as much as we can, but there's only so much that

you can do. And the truth is she may go to the grave and still owe this debt. And that's when it gets forgiven. As long as none of it's in y'all's name, it's not going to get passed on to you. It'll go against her estate, which there are no assets. And so the debt will just get eaten by these creditors. So that's the truth So that's the sad truth of the matter. And I'm sorry you guys are going through this, but I'm also, I'm proud of you guys. You've changed your family tree just by going, that's not going to be us. And you've had great boundaries already. By not enabling and propping her lifestyle up.

You guys are doing the right thing. And I'm sorry you had to grow up so fast this way. But I'm wishing you guys and her the best with her health and financial situation, Ben. That's a really hard thing to do, but again, we can't change people. As much as you want to help her, she's got to face the music at some point, and that's going to have consequences either way. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show.

I'm George Camel, joined by Rachel Cruz. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Well, Rachel, I don't know what you're doing this weekend, but, you know, I'll be on the couch, maybe with some buffalo wings, watching the big game. Oh, Super Bowl Sunday. Looking for a Taylor Swift cameo. Me too, George.

That's the only reason. We are a house divided. My conspiracy theory is that Taylor and Travis are dating so that more non-football fans will watch the game.

Okay, people keep saying, we can talk, I don't want to talk about this conspiracy. I think that is so stupid. She needs, she does not need that and the NFL's

got to fix themselves. You know, they got to figure it out. Money talks, Rachel. You pay me $40 million. I might date a football player. She's fine. Is this the first conspiracy that you haven't wanted to talk about that's true rachel's like i'm shutting this conspiracy down here's the thing a conspiracy is only something that's like oh wow that's so like that would be crazy like this whole like

couples get together like this happens a lot in hollywood but she doesn't need it anyways we're getting off topic. All right. Well, we're here to talk about money, Rachel. So here's the trivia game we're going to play. And she's going to vote for Biden too. So everyone's like, oh my God, it's like a political thing. We all know that.

There it is, Rachel. We all know that. There it is. We all know that already. That's not a conspiracy. I just pushed the button so easily and I just, Rachel just went, just unwound. Okay, I'm done.

I'm done. Go. We're going to play a game around Super Bowl costs. Okay. Play a little over under. So I'm going to name something. You tell me what you think it costs as it relates to the Super Bowl. Okay.

Flights from any city nationwide to Las Vegas. What do you think the flights are costing? One flight, one way? Let's say round trip. Round trip. Round trip flight. I'm going to say you would pay, I'm going to grand wow you're over oh it says 300 to over a thousand dollars depending on how close and flight available i was thinking like 1200 one way because i feel like

they would have it's a thousand bucks for flights let's move on to hotels now uh most of them are sold out but staybridge suites is one of the only ones that has available rooms what do you think it costs for average per night um how far out is this in the city do you have geographical it says it's near the venue that's all it says oh gosh i mean i bet you'd pay i mean 700 you were spot on 696 i'm gonna call that a win all right so a thousand bucks for flight 700 for the hotel and now what about a resort near the venue oh you're you'll go uh 1100 1377 you're a little under on that one okay okay okay and hotels outside of the city that are more available it's still 200 bucks to 650 for one of those.

Okay. Now let's get to the tickets. This is the priciest part. What do you think the average ticket price is for the Super Bowl? Average. Right now.

We're talking secondary markets. If you just went and you wanted to buy one right now. I'm going to say 12,000. Gosh, she's good. What was it? 10, 5, up to 12 is the range on the secondary market.

Am I a Super Bowl expert? Oh, my God. You should go on Price is Right. You guess the price of Clorox and Rachel gets it right. I actually would be really good at that. Okay. Obviously. Look how good I'm doing here.

You win the dinette set? Yeah. There you go. Okay. Most affordable ticket. What do you think that is? So that was average. What do you think the most affordable ticket what do you think that is so that was average what do you think the most affordable ticket is right now i bet you could i bet you

could watch the super bowl live for i'm gonna go seven seven thousand a little under give me one more eight seven five seventy five hundred bucks for the most affordable ticket. And most of them right now for least expensive are ranging after fees from 7,800 up to 9,300. Okay, okay. So let's do the math now. Let's add it all up. Let's say the flights are a thousand bucks. The hotel's 700 bucks. Let's say you just stayed one night.

Somehow you made that happen. That's 1,700 already. Now the actual ticket you're talking, let's say that's 10,300. This hurts my brain.'re yeah i wasn't doing the math sorry were you wanting me to do the math well 10-3 plus 1700 that puts it at 12 okay so you're 12 grand you're 12 grand without anything just for somebody that doesn't like know this world very well that That's reasonable to you? I would have guessed it probably would have been higher.

If you just said, what would a night to stay, that doesn't include food, and go to the Super Bowl, I kind of thought it would be higher. You would guess like 15? Yeah, I feel like it would have been higher. Well, for perspective, Super Bowl 57's average ticket price was $57.95. So I don't know if it's inflation or what, or if this is a big game because of, you know, some celebrities that might be present.

Tay-Tay. Admit it. There was a lot of hype around this one comparatively. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never seen so much just press and news about football players. Amelia asked what time the Chiefs kick off. When your eight-year-old asks that, you're like,

Oh, they've been talking at school apparently about it. Is this school talk for your eight-year-old asks that. Amelia? You're like, oh, they've been talking at school apparently about it. Is this school talk for an eight-year-old? In third grade, yes. Goodness gracious. I know.

Now I'm sure the boys actually enjoy the football part of it. Would you guys ever take the kids and go see the Super Bowl? No. Not worth it.

I don't think I care about the Super Bowl that much. For $15,000, I think, well, I did an Instagram reel about this. You can take a trip for two, a cruise, seven-night cruise for two in a junior suite with a balcony. Oh, that's good.

To the Bahamas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do that all day. And it was $6,500. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I'd rather do that. Twice.

Even we compared it to used cars. You could buy a $10,000. I'm like, would i rather have an upgrade to the car or yeah or fully funding a roth ira as boring as i am you know that's what i would do six grand and here's the thing and again grand we're not the most sports loving host speak for yourself i of the ramsey show i love a play action pass when I see one. One of my favorite passes there is. Come on. The two point conversion,

I live for that. I mean, it's, yeah, the stress, the stress is high. I just think it's, sometimes it's just more fun

to be in the comfort of your own home. I agree. Well, can I be honest? I've been to one NFL game and the whole time I was just looking

at the giant screen because I could not see what was happening on the field and I went, I could just be doing this at home I could just be without grown men yelling all around me right right and also that my Patriots lost to the Titans in a bad way oh yeah like Brady just got spanked out there no good it was not no good well man there you go if you're

going to the game um good luck budget for it uh I prefer I I prefer I'm fine with FOMO on this one. Yes, for sure. No, I'm good. Watch an usher from my living room. There we go. That's why I do it. Halftime. And the commercials have been mediocre I feel like in the past few years. I'm really hoping for a good year of that. If you're dropping millions on these commercials and then dropping millions

to air it. That would have been a good stat. I thought that was going to be part of this segment. Oh, what a commercial cost. Yes. Dang. Next year. Hoping every dollar, what a commercial cost. Yes. Dang. Next year, hoping every dollar will have a commercial next year's Super Bowl. Maybe we can crowdfund it

because Dave's not going to pay a bajillion dollars for a 30-second spot. But if everyone pitches in, we can get every dollar in front of America. There you go. Get America budgeting.

Let's do it. That's what we need. That's what we need. Because I do wonder how much debt people will be in due to the Super Bowl. Due to all the all the costs involved yeah and it's just one of those things that again i was about to compare it to a wedding i don't know why because it's like that one day event type thing oh well your wedding is very different than a super bowl don't get mad at me

in the comments spending 15 grand on a game versus what a wedding costs it makes weddings look cheap yeah right so i'm like it is it's such a, I don't know, we're such a culture of experience that it's almost like you lose this gauge of reality sometimes and you're just all in. You're just solely focused on, yeah, that's what we're going to do. We're going to go to the Super Bowl. That's what we're going to do.

Now, if you can afford it and it's on the bucket list or your team's playing and you want to go, it's great. If you're like baby step seven, living your best life and 15 grand is not going to ruin your financial world, I'm not mad at you. No, but man, it could go far, that amount of money, George. True. And truthfully, one thing I didn't realize

when you're live at the game, there's no commentary. I didn't realize how much I needed that to explain what's happening. The pass action, what'd you say? action pass rachel get it right don't offend any footballers out there so i prefer the commentary i want to be able to get up and go to the bathroom when i want you know and not i think you can do that at a game yeah but you're crawling over people there's a line excuse me and everyone's like they're about to kick the field goal and you're like i gotta go and there are a few darker places in the world than a men's bathroom at a sporting event. Rachel, have you been to one of these?

No, I have not, actually. They give them like a trough, and it's just a free-for-all. It's disgusting in there. I have very big opinions on your, yeah, I can't. I think it's gross. We'll save that for another time. That's gross. But hey, enjoy the game. Hopefully you're watching from home. You did that for another time. That's gross. But hey, enjoy the game.

Hopefully you're watching from home. You did it on a budget. For real though, Chiefs or 49ers? I'm going Chiefs. Why? You know why. Okay. Well, Blake Thompson, who runs the Ramsey Network, is the biggest Chiefs fan I know.

Basically our boss on the show. I don't want our boss in a bad mood, essentially. Oh no, Deanna's. Oh, San Francisco 49ers. Warhouse divided. Winston's going 49ers. I'm going Chiefs. Caroline's going 49ers. I'm going Amelia, Kansas City, Charles, Kansas City. At the end of the day, Rachel and I are Team Taylor. And that's the truth. Who cares about the sports? I'm all for it. I'm here for the queso.

This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm joined by Rachel Cruz. I'm George Camel. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Well, our team is starting to get geared up for a brand new event happening May 10th and 11th. It's called Total Money Makeover Weekend. And I know there's millions of you out there,

you've been listening for a while, but you haven't really followed the stuff. You've maybe been Ramsey-ish. Maybe you followed it to a T and now you've got a journey ahead of you of just investing and building wealth and you need a little pep in your step. Well, in just one weekend, you're going to get that. You're going to get a crash course on everything we teach about money. All of the Ramsey personalities will be there, including Dave Ramsey, brand new content on budgeting, beating debt, investing, and so much more. So regardless of where you're at in your financial journey, this is going to light a fire under your butt to keep making progress. We're going to have live Q&As throughout the weekend. So bring your questions. We'll do a live Smart Money Happy Hour recording with the crowd. And we just met Jonah out in the

lobby and he said he wants to be there for the recording. People are very excited about the Smart Money Happy Hour. They may come just for that. It may just be the only reason people come. We do have a good time. So make plans to be there.

Get it in the budget. Plan the flights, the lodging, all the good stuff and make a trip to Nashville to see us in May. Early bird tickets start at just 99 bucks.

That's an amazing deal for a weekend event. And the tickets will go up over99. That's an amazing deal for a weekend event, and the tickets will go up over time. So get them now. The Ramsey Event Center holds about 2,400 people, so this event will sell out. Get your tickets now at ramsaysolutions.com slash events. Gavin is up next in Raleigh, North Carolina. Gavin, welcome to the show. Hello, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's going on? So I'm getting deployed here in the next few months,

and I don't really have many expenses, so I should come back with a decent chunk of money, and I'm just curious on what I should do with it. Wow. What branch are you? I'm a Marine. Okay. Thanks for your service, Gavin.

Thank you, guys. That's amazing. How old are you? So I'm 20 years old. I've been in for, I'm going on my third year now. I left when I was 17. Yeah. Wow. What are your future goals as far as finances go?

I would like to be financially free, you know, as soon as it's possible. But I do, I take my finances pretty serious. So, you know, I just, I'm not sure if I should come back and try to invest into some real estate with my father or put it in different, you know, funds or a CD or cause I come back from deployment and I'll have about a year and a half, two years left before my contract is over. So. Okay. So how much savings are we talking about all right so depending on how long where we are and whatever it could be between 25 to 35 000 okay and you have no debt uh i have about two thousand dollars in credit card debt um you know just young young you know, whatever. And then I have about

$8,500 in a raw IRA that gets taken out of my paycheck automatically. And it is matched 5% by the military. I have $6,500 in a brokerage account and $5,000 cash savings account. Okay. Well, I'm going to give you advice, and I hope you take it. I would pay the credit card off today, and then I'd cut it up. You'll still have $3,000 in cash, and then you can start using every single dollar coming in to save up and build wealth. And you need to have a – I know you won't have many expenses,

but I would have an emergency fund there to protect you, and that may look like $5,000 for you while you're deployed for three to six months of expenses. Yeah. And just put that in a high yield savings account, Gavin, so you can get to it if you need it. But I would just, yeah, I would just set that money in there and I wouldn't make any big decisions until you're home. And even, you know, I mean, you know, you're so so young which is great that you're starting this process but even you know just you know being patient till you're you're you're out which will be another two years um and then until you go and you know whether you choose to get back in i don't

know what that looks like or go get a job but by that point is when you can actually say okay where do i want to settle in do i want to i would buy a house for yourself before i'd go invest in real estate uh we want to start doing retirement you know you start kind of those processes but i wouldn't worry too much about that right now a part of me would just save money um and and gavin you know we talked to a lot of um military out there and we're so appreciative of everyone out there that serves our country and the hard thing is is what we see outside of so many military bases is these payday loans traps i mean there's so much and they just they prey on the military

they do so staying away from all of that too um and just kind of have a hard line in the sand for yourself and not get roped into something. Even your friends and the cars they're driving, like there's going to be a lot of temptation in the next few years. And so if you can just keep the blinders on, you're already doing such a great job on the investing side. And so just making sure you dial that back. And part of that is cutting up the card because truly you don't need a credit card. You're so smart at this young age. You're going to be just fine using your own money to live your financial life. So here's the steps. Pay off the credit card today, cut it up, rebuild that emergency fund, then invest 15% of all future income. And you can do that with that Roth IRA. You can do that with other retirement plans you may have access to. And then beyond that, I would just save up as much as you can in that high yield savings account that Rachel talked about. So when you come back from deployment, you've got, you know, 20, 30, 40 grand in the bank and you've been investing for the future.

And I'm telling you at 20 years old, you're going to be a multi, multi-millionaire before retirement age. And what do you think? Because I kind of feel like I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry about investing too much while you're deployed. When you come back, be looking into that because I would want a lot of cash coming back home because that transition coming home and kind of figuring out where you're going to go in the next year or two, I want as much cash as possible to have all the options that I want and not tied up in retirement yet.

And then once that's kind of settled, then press play time. We call this baby step 3B, Gavin, where some people choose to save up down payment while investing some. Some people invest nothing to get the down payment faster, and so that's the tension here. Yeah, and it's not even a down payment necessarily, but it is like, okay, I have this money during this transition of figuring out what do I want to do.

I don't know. That always just makes me feel safe just to have that. Well, and you might need a car once you get back. Yeah, right, right. You might need a deposit for a place to live. And so there is going to be a lot more expenses than you have now. So the more cash you have stacked up, the better.

You won't regret that. But I would not get into real estate investing with your dad yet. I would wait and get your own place, get that place paid off, and then work on saving up cash for an investment property down the line. But you're 20.

You have so much time. So don't feel like, I'm 24, I still don't own a house. Breathe. You're doing great. You're just so driven that it's hard to almost pump the brakes and just enjoy life. Thank you, guys. Yeah, thank you so much for your service again. Impressive.

Abby's in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Abby, welcome to the show. Hey, guys. Thank you so much for taking my again. Impressive. Abby's in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Abby, welcome to the show. Hey guys, thank you so much for taking my call. I appreciate it. Sure. How can we help? Yes. So I'll give my question first and then some context if you need it. So me and my husband recently took on some medical debt, some very unexpected medical debt, and we have some existing credit card debt, which for the past year or so we've been trying to just attack with as much as we possibly could. And so this medical debt, some of it has kind of started to go to collections pretty quickly. And I guess

my biggest question is, I've heard that medical debt, when it goes to collections, doesn't hurt you like your credit score or anything. I could be wrong about that. So I'm wondering if I should let it go to collections, kind of talk it down to a smaller amount while continuing to attack the credit card debt, or if I should take another approach. How much do you guys have in medical debt? It's about $9,000. Okay. And how much in credit card debt? About $29,000. $29,000 in credit card debt about twenty nine thousand twenty nine thousand in credit card debt what were you guys buying um yeah so it was a mix of we did a kitchen renovation and we didn't put that on a credit

card we did it on a heloc um and so but that's all kind of mixed together credit card debt heloc debt okay and how much is how much is just the credit cards? Just credit cards? 18,000 probably. Okay. And it was, is that just lifestyle? Yeah, it was lifestyle. It was Christmas vacation. Okay. What do you guys make? The American way. Yeah, totally. What do you guys make? We make, my husband nets about 4,600 a month month, and I net $2,300 a month. Okay. You guys can tackle this quickly. I would not let the medical debt just go to collections.

The problem is they're not going to settle and negotiate when this debt is so fresh. It would have to be years old. And so I would just get it current and make plans to pay it off and use that debt snowball. Small is the largest balance. You guys make great money. What we need to do is ratchet down our spending. Yes, cut up the credit cards, Abby. Cut them up.

Be done with it. Be done with this. And really focus why we got here in the first place. Because until you fix yourselves, you're going to see this continue to bubble up. You'll be back right to where you started. We don't want that for you. This has been another hour in the books of The Ramsey Show. My thanks to Rachel Cruz, all the folks in the booth, and you, America.

We'll be back before you know it. Bye.