The Ramsey Show - App - My Realtor Said To Waive the Inspection and Now It’s Costing Me!

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

John Delony & George Kamel discuss: How much should you budget for extravagant gifts, Controlling your spending in the wake of a divorce, Funding 529s for grandkids, The risk of waiving the home inspection. Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

I'm out. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. Scary, scary times. Give us a shout at 888-825-5225. We're here to talk common sense and put some perspective and some peace and some back into your life. 888-825-5225.

I'm John Deloney, joined here by my good friend George Campbell, and we're taking your calls on just about everything. Let's go out to Dalen in Boise. Back to Boise, one of my favorite places. What's up, Dalen? Hey, how you doing? Good. My brother, what's up? Hey, so before I actually say my question,

I just want to say that I'm very excited and happy that I DMed both you and George on Instagram and got a response from both of you. So I feel like a rock star. That was actually us dalen just want you to know hey it actually is us and here's my thought if somebody takes a moment to reach out and say hey i appreciate you it's pretty lame for me not to say hey i'm grateful for that because those little notes um we get a lot of people drinking the haterade and those little notes are uh just a little bit of coal to help the train get down the track a little bit further.

So I'm grateful for you, man. Thanks for reaching out. So what's up? Perfect. I'm glad to hear it. So my question is I want to buy a car for my sister-in-law because she's graduating high school tomorrow. She's walking tomorrow. And I'm not aiming to buy this anytime soon, so to say, but within the next, I guess, few months. But I'm just wondering, since it is a pretty big purchase, you know, depending how much I decide to spend on it, what percentage of my

savings and or net worth should I put into that investment? I mean, put into that car, knowing that it's not for my pleasure. Well, give us a little bit of your financial picture. Yeah. So I make currently about $90,000 a year in net, so in take-home. I'm on track to making $125,000 this year. I got quite the raise at work, so that's good. Quite the promotion. And I have about $160,000 in liquid cash in my savings. And then I have just, you know, I guess you can say $5,000 or less in my checking. But anyways. And debt-free? Debt-free, yes.

Do you own a home? Yes, I do. Is it paid for or you got a mortgage? So I have a mortgage. Okay. How much? The mortgage is So I have a mortgage. Okay. How much? The mortgage is about $1,800. How much do you owe in the house?

Oh, I think I owe about, I would say $280,000 probably. Why do you have $160,000 in cash and $280,000 in mortgage? I guess you're right, yeah. I want you to be generous. I'm just prying to figure out where you're at and where she's at. How much are you wanting to spend on this car for her, and what's the heart behind it? So it's just to give her a good jump start in life

so she has a good car in college, I guess. And I'm only thinking to spend probably no more than $12,000. Okay. I mean, when I was in college, I was under no illusion that I had to drive a nice car. Does she have a car currently? She does not. Oh, so no vehicle right now? No vehicle.

Do you know her financial situation? What's your relationship with your sister-in-law? So they're really close. My wife and sister-in-law are really close. And, you know, we love her to death, of course. We're family. So I don't know. I almost want to show off a little bit, but not show off, you know, so. So that was going to be my my question here is is the car something that she has needs and that you all have circled up or and this is the pot talking to the kettle here man are you wanting to buy a car a because you can you're doing really well but you also like going a little bit over the top to show and like look look at this. I'm a pretty generous guy. Because if you buy a gift for somebody to show them how great you are, you've completely wasted that gift.

If you buy somebody a gift to bless them and to give them a little bit more peace, to bring them joy or laughter or kindness or whatever, meet a need, for them, man, that's a whole other ballgame, right? And so I don't know that there's such thing as a percentage. George, off the top of my head, you've got $160,000 in cash, buying a $10,000 car for somebody. Yeah, it's not going to tank you. It's not a big deal at all.

You'll still hit your financial goals. Now, part of that's your emergency fund, right? Right. Okay, so there's the lesson there. I'm just looking at percentages. Hey, if you're going to drain your entire savings account to do this, that's not going to be a blessing to you. And so the way I look at it is, if I did this anonymously, would it still feel just as good? That's a hard question to ask

yourself. If your car just showed up on her driveway, she had no clue it was for me, would I still have the same amount of joy? Or get three or four other family members who can pitch in 25 bucks or 100 bucks. Or 1,000 bucks. Or 1,000 bucks and you put everybody's name on it as though it came from everybody equally. Okay.

Even though you put the, and here's the exercise. The exercise is I'm not giving somebody something to puff my chest out. I'm giving something to somebody sacrificially to help them out. And if you do this, here's the deal. So, George, tell me if I'm wrong here.

We'll sign off on it. You buy her a $10,000 or $12,000 car. I think it's a beautiful gift. I mean, of course it's going to be a blessing to her. And you pull out $40,000 or $50,000 for your emergency fund. The other $100,000 goes on your mortgage that same day. Is that fair? That's fair.

Yeah, I'm all for it. Let's knock this thing out. What does your wife think about this? I mean, it's her sister. Is she all for this? Yeah, she's all for it. You know, her and I wanted to get her an iPhone, but she already bought an iPhone herself.

What are her, your sister-in-law, what is her relationship with money? Do you know anything about her money habits? Is she bad with money? Is she great with money? So she's more of a spender than a saver, but I don't know how much she spends and how much she saves. Yeah, my only worry on her side is, is this almost enabling where she goes, sweet, I can keep being an idiot with money because now I don't have to worry about saving up for a car. And she doesn't get the satisfaction, the growth of having to save up and pay cash for that car, and now she drives it differently because of that. That's very true. Or maybe you get her this car and you sit down and say, we're going to buy you a car, but you have to commit to going to college debt-free.

Okay. I'm going to bless you, but this is going to buy you a car, but you have to commit to going to college debt-free. Okay. I'm going to bless you, but this is going to come with some strings. So that's going to be the opposite of what we're talking about. We're not giving this thing away anonymously, but we're giving this thing with a set of this. I'm setting you up to go make good in the world, but here's what making good is going to look like. And if you take this, great, but you're going to be committing to four years of

this car is going to help you get from campus to your job and then to your second job because we're going to get through this thing debt-free. Yeah, I want you to help her with her life and not just college. And so it's a little bit of the teach a man to fish approach where you go, I want to help her have these money principles that will guide her for life and not just give her a one-time gift and allow her to continue to outspend her income in the future. Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah. Thank you so much. All right. Love your heart on this, man. That's awesome. So to think broadly, giving is for someone else, and it always feels good when you do it. It always feels good.

Best thing you can do with money. Is give it away. It's one of my greatest things. We'll be right back on The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Let's go out to Zach in Huntsville, Texas. What's up, Zach? How we doing? Well, first off, I need some thanks because about two months ago, I called you and Dave was very, very angry about a divorce, and you guys pointed that out.

Not going to lie, I was actually shocked when I heard the call later when the episode played, and you guys were right. I've followed some of your advice, and I've calmed myself down quite a bit. So with that in mind, I'm calling back to reiterate. Real quick, can I just tell you, one of the hardest drugs in the planet to get off of is the drug of anger. And the fact that you were able to exhale and say, I don't want to die young. I don't want to burn the people around me out.

I'm worth more than that. And you're putting in the work to bring all that down, dude. Thank you. Like that's an inspiration to millions and millions and millions of raged out angry men. So thank you for that. That's hard,

man. What you're doing is hard and I'm proud of you. I do appreciate that. So what's up, man? So now that I'm less angry and have a little more clear head considering, I was going to try to get what I had called that day for, which is I need a little bit of budgeting advice on how to budget on a fluctuating

income for the month and how to possibly get some accountability. Cause like I mentioned the last time I drive a truck for a living and I'm trying to figure out how to get accountability for the days where my depression and issues with the divorce still hurting and stuff get to the point where I just want to say screw the budget and go spend some money so that I have a little bit of can have a little bit of fun or do something to myself all right so George is going to walk through the budgeting and we'll circle back at the end there for the depression and control stuff go ahead so Zach what's the range of your income being a regular? Give me a range. I make on the high set. Apologies if this takes a few minutes. My stutter's acting up today. It's all good, man. I make between 15 and,000 and $2,000 a paycheck each week.

Sometimes if the freight's not great, it will go lower. Like this week, I got $700 because I didn't run very much last week. Are you able to make all your expenses right now? Are you covering all your bills just fine? I'm covering all the bills. And the couple of problems I run into is I've been splitting the bills up like budget saying that this week I'm going to do like this week, I paid my phone bill and I paid for a dentist appointment that's coming up. And then like next week, I'm going to pay a half of my rent and something like that.

I'm not going to go through all the bills because I can't run off the top of my head. But you're saying you're barely keeping up with what's happening next week and next week and hoping the check hits and it's enough. Kind of, and then I end up nickel and diming myself out whenever the miscellaneous things that need done at the house come up. I got roommates that I'm, they're helping me take care of my house while I'm on the road. And I am trying to control that and wondering about a budgeting strategy so

that I don't keep nickel and diming myself out of the rest of my paycheck by accident because we're trying to save up to move. Okay. And also I got the divorce and I may need a lawyer. I'm not sure yet. So when it comes to this budget, what I want you to do is you know your baseline income. You know on a really bad month it may be $1,500. So let's base it off of that. Then we're going to list out

the A1 things that you know you need to cover. So that's going to be your four walls, food, utilities, shelter, transportation. So list out those expenses. And you know, if we get $700, we know what's going to get covered first. We're going to keep the roof over our heads. We're going to put food on the table, put gas in the car. Beyond that, then you go down the list of priorities and go, okay, after that, it's going to be clothing. After that, it might be the Netflix subscription, whatever's on that list. And so whatever money comes in, you've already allocated towards those priorities. So that's the way to do it with a regular income. I'm going to gift you every dollar. How are you budgeting

right now? I appreciate the gift. I already have a Ramsey Plus subscription. Oh, great. Nailed it. You're using it. If somebody there can help me, I'm having trouble getting my bank to connect to it. I don't know why. Absolutely. Jump onto the contact page on Ramsey Plus, and we also have financial coaching available for you,

and they can walk you through what that looks like with your specific budget. Yeah, so stay on the line, and AJ will walk you through that stuff. But in the financial coaching, we'll hook you up with that looks like with your specific budget. And you can, uh, yeah, so stay on the line and AJ will walk you through that stuff. But, uh, then the financial coaching will, we'll hook you up with that as well. Um, you can ask very specific detailed, here's my budget and here's my situation and they'll walk you through that. Okay. Um, okay. I greatly appreciate that guys. That is really actually going to help me a lot more. Oh, you bet. And here's what I want you to do before you go to bed tonight, I want you to get a Sharpie, and I want you to write a small note that says the following words. Don't forget to remember.

And I want you to put that sign on your fridge, and I want you to put that sign on your steering wheel on your truck. Don't forget to remember. And this particular sentence has transformed my life. Because, like you, I'm kind of a hothead, and I'm always running and gunning and gunning and running, and we could sit down and talk about all the diagnostics we have, but at the end of the day, I get in my truck to go home, and I literally don't even process the number of cans and trash and shirts that I've just thrown in there.

And as I'm getting out of my car, I remember the phrase, don't forget to remember how good it feels to get back into a clean car on the way to work. And I'll stop and then I will look and say, okay, this has to get taken care of. And for you, don't forget to remember how good it feels to wake up in the morning when you haven't had a fourth or fifth drink or a second or third, or when you haven't had two frozen pizzas and slept on the couch. Don't forget to remember how good it feels next week when you still have $350 in your account. And all we're doing is beginning to train our brain slowly to pause between that moment of anger, that moment of frustration, and then whatever coping strategy we're going to come up with next.

Some people drink. Some people take a swing at somebody in a bar. Some people buy a bunch of crap. Some people fill in the blank. They call some girl they shouldn't call. Everybody's got the things that they use to wallpaper and duct tape over their hurt. All I want folks to do is to have a gap. Here's the second thing.

You have to get other men in your life that you go hang out with, period. Whether you go bowling, you go fishing, you go play golf, for God's sake. If you know how I think about golf that's i've seen john golf and i don't want to see it it's not great because i hate it but go golf do something with other men why because you need friends you need community you got to have connection and here's the third thing you do need a lawyer okay you've been avoiding it because the the this whole process is hard and it's scary and that makes it really real once the that she filed papers on you neither of us have filed yet i'm trying to navigate the fact that she skipped states and i'm going to be honest the only reason

i debated the lawyer is because we don't have assets to just decide between the only thing that i really want to keep is the dog and that's purely because she won't take care of her. She didn't take care of her while she was married. What an attorney will help you with, an attorney will help you, and it is expensive, it is, and you don't have assets now, but you might later. And what you want to do is close every loop, put a period at the end of every sentence so that you

don't get a house and get remarried and have two kids and have a couple of cars and suddenly you bought a second and third truck with cash and you've got a little bit of an operation running here and you're doing really great and then one of these these sentences that you didn't tie up with an attorney um comes back and your ex comes back and asks for some stuff that is supposedly hers. And that could be a mess. So get an attorney, pay the money. Say you don't have any assets. You're just looking for some help in the proceedings

to put some periods at the end of these sentences. So hang on the line. We're going to hook you up with this stuff. Don't hang up here. And my brother, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. You're making these tiny grinding little steps towards being well, towards getting your feedback underneath you, to fixing your business, to getting control of your money. It's what we all have to

do. I'm proud of you money is more important than ever. While some circumstances can't be controlled, there are items within your budget you can take charge of, such as your healthcare costs. For nearly 40 years, Christian Healthcare Ministries, or CHM, has provided a budget-friendly means of sharing for medical bills

when our members need it. Learn more by visiting chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a Ramsey-trusted provider. This is the Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. George, I just, man, I got in last night from a week in Orlando. Started with the event that you and I and the rest of the gang did.

Oh, yeah. Building Wealth event. Dude, you've been on the road for like three weeks, it feels like. I've been out. Yeah, I'm tired, man. But that Building Wealth event was crazy it was awesome uh fantastic everybody came out there in orlando and then we hung around for entree summit i i've never seen anything like it here's a couple of things that made entree summit so great i mean there was like jamie liam kerna and jay leno and jaco and uhocko and Jade Simmons and Will Gadara.

Here's what was so rad was normally you go to these events, and as a speaker, you know this, you're backstage in the green room, and there's a TV on that has the speakers speaking. But everybody's going over their notes or laughing, playing dominoes, whatever. Dude, people were glued. It was cool to see the best of the best of the best getting off stage and running either back into the audience to watch the next speaker or to run back and pull a chair up in front of the screens to watch the next one. So you got Pat Lencioni and he gets right off stage and the next person is like, okay, I've got to watch the next guy, right? And it was incredible to see the people that you and I look up to who have quote-unquote made it, and they are still Iron Sharpens Iron.

Lifelong learners. Can I do this better? Can I even – ooh, that was a good one. I'm going to write that down. And, man, I've never heard Will Godera speak. I've never heard Jade Simmons speak. Incredible. It was next heard Jade Simmons speak. Incredible. It was next level.

Yeah, our leadership team was back here watching the live stream, and it was just as incredible. I'm sure the in-room energy was electric. And what I love to that point is if you watch Dave Ramsey, he's in the crowd taking more notes than almost anyone on every speaker. That's right. And it's like, that's Dave Ramsey. He doesn't need to hear this.

He's taking notes on every one of them, yeah. And he's soaking it all in. And so I love the mutual respect that you all have for each other in that room. I mean, a lot of brilliant minds, a lot of successful people gathered in one place. Even the business owners in the crowd. Every time I'd be at Summit, I'm like, these people are more successful than I am. Exactly. I'm happy to be in the room with them.

Yeah, it was something else. And also, you and I were talking off air. Man, it was a – it's sobering what the American businesswomen and American businessmen are going through right now. There's 3,000 people in that room, and the energy was off the chart. Everybody's excited, and it was heavy what people are facing, right? They can't afford to hire new people because it's so expensive, or they just can't find them. We went for breakfast this morning, me and my family,

and it was a two-and-a-half-hour event just to run down the street and go to breakfast together. I got back in town last night. We went to breakfast just as a family this morning. It's because there's no workers, right? And you've got these trucking companies and plumbing companies breakfast just as a family this morning is because there's no there's no workers right and you got these trucking companies and plumbing companies and electric electricians who can't afford to get to and from jobs because the gas is so expensive and so they're working 90 hours a week they're

trying to be good moms they're trying to be good dads they're trying to and it's just they found themselves in a vortex of hell and it's hard and so it was cool just to get with people in a room that could all exhale and say, I'm going through it too. But bravo to the entree team here. It was just next level. I was the best. I've heard Dave speak. The whole –

Everyone on the day game. Yeah, it was something else. And it was – you and I were talking. You mentioned that sometimes you're backstage. It feels like there's a limited amount of pie, right? And like, Ooh,

if that guy does really good on his, that means I have to do worse. Then that means he took something from it, man. It was a spirit of, Oh, you did that good. That's so great.

I'm going to, it was, everybody was, there was, there was a never ending amount of pie back there. It was just something else. So kudos to everybody. Um, and if you missed it, you And if you missed it, get your tickets.

It's in Nashville next year. It's going to be a hometown for us. And, man, you would be out of your mind to miss that if you're a business leader. Yeah, if you're in a leadership position or want to be, this is the event for you. Golly, it was incredible. Just world class. Glad you made it back safe with the team. Yeah.

Again, I was asking you all. I thought it was Wednesday, but it's Thursday. John doesn't know where he is right now. That's exactly right. This is the Dr. John DeLonghi show. It might be. Let's go to William in Greenville, South Carolina. What's up, William?

Hey, Dr. John. Absolutely love the new book. Thank you, man. George, you're welcome. George, I got a question for you. I've been scouring tiktok and i couldn't find it so i figured i'd bring it no william do not get financial advice on tiktok but if you're too you're too smart for tiktok william what's going on with you

all right so i just went up yesterday and picked up my second child from college, and I realized we've got extra money in her 529. We've also got extra money in my older daughter, her 529. And I still have a son that's a sophomore in college, and he is going to have some extra money in his. And I started thinking about it, and I was like, you know, everybody says, wait, save this money because they might, and a few of them are going to grad school, but we'll be fine with that. But why wouldn't I continue to fund these 529s?

I was thinking, you know, I should still continue to put money in here, even though I know they're not going to use them, because by the time they get grown up and have children that are ready to go to college I can give them I can skip my my children's generation give them to them and they will have had an extra round of compounding so I'll have a lot more money and I've talked to a couple of I've talked to two different financial advisors about them and one of them was like yeah that's not a bad idea the other one was like that's a terrible idea to tie up that amount of money for that amount of time and i was just calling to see

what you thought about it because it seems to me i should be able to with a little bit more money super fund by the time they're old enough, my grandchildren. That's cool, man. That's leaving a legacy. I don't think your financial advisor is thinking that way. I think they're thinking, well, that's less money for me. He's not investing with me.

William, hey, just, dude, you're thinking generationally, and that's how wealth gets, good, man. Are you on track for retirement, William? Yes. Okay. How retirement, William? Yes. Okay, how old are you? 53. What's your net worth? About 20.

Golly. 20 million? Yeah. Dude, he just... That's a great mic drop. My eyeballs just fell out of my head, man. Dude, you do what you want. You should be giving us advice.

How did you get to $20 million at 53? Just curious. I have a great job. I have a lot of... I have a great job, but I don't got $20 million. A very well-funded job. And from the time I started working, I saved my money, and I now have several paid-for warehouses that are paying rent through the roof, and I'm just very lucky. Wow. Very fortunate, worked very hard, but lucky as well.

Well, you're inspiring, man. The truth is you can cash flow college for the next three generations. You don't even have to worry about a 529. Now, it's a great tax advantage strategy to save for college, but the truth is, and Dave Ramsey would tell you this, he'd go, people like you, they're able to cash flow it if there's not enough. And so clearly, there's going to be an abundance in the 529s. You're okay with that. You can change the beneficiary to the grandkid if there's money left over. There's a lot of things you can do with that money.

So I'm all good with that. And, again, you don't know what the kids are going to be doing with grad school. And, man, they've got options when you've got all that money in 529s and a dad like you who can cash flow it and help them go to school debt free here's here's what i like about it william is um it protects the investment that you have in your heart and mind that this gift that you want to go towards college it it seems to be a pretty clean way to make sure this money is used for educational expenses right well john it's funny you say that because one of like one of the one of the financial advisors told me he said why don't you just pay him out of your brokerage accounts? If you want to do that, why don't you just pay him out of your brokerage accounts?

And I'm telling him, I'm saying, look, I can put this over here in this little bucket and forget about it forever. I don't ever have to think about it again. And it's tax-free. It's tax-free. And if you get hit by a bus, William. again. And it's tax-free. It's tax-free. And if you get hit by a bus, William. Exactly. And it grows tax-free. It's basically an IRA for my grandchildren that haven't been born yet for them to go to college.

I think you should be his financial advisor. Yes. You need to call him and say you're willing to take his business, but the fee is going to be high. I think you're exactly right. And this is a way to say, hey, we took care of your educational expenses. Whatever. College may look different in 20 years, but investing in education is always going to be a good way to say, hey, we took care of your educational expenses. Whatever, college may look different in 20 years, but investing in education

is always going to be a good way to use money. I want to be William when I grow up. William, you have set the bar, my brother. It's an honor to talk to you. Yeah, I'd put some money in that and take care of generations to come. We'll be right back. Well, folks, it's been proven over and over again. You can crush your financial, personal, and professional goals,

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That's sad. I mean a quarter gallon, I mean. I saw a video. It went up to $200 in California. It was like they were filling up 26, 27 gallons at six bucks a gallon. Oh, wow. That hurt my brain. $200.

Nope. I'm really missing the Prius that I crashed into the wall. Oh, gosh. That's a story for another time.

Have you shared that on air? I have. It's a really expensive breathing exercise now with gas prices, man. It's a hilarious story. Now knowing you're safe, it's a hilarious story.

But man, I wish I'd had that now instead of that truck out there. Yeah. All right, let's go to Matt in Hartford. What's a hilarious story. But man, I wish I'd had that now instead of that truck out there. I just got a Matt in Hartford. What's up, brother Matthew? How are you doing today? Good, my man. What's up? Thank you for taking my call, first of all. So I've got a bit of a difficult financial situation. I'm very fortunate to be in this position, but I've still kind of got a lot of expenses piling up and I'm kind of just worried about how what the best way is to navigate it. So I was able to purchase a house in cash. It's been a

dream of mine for many years and I saved up for many years. And I was also in a very fortunate position to be gifted with some money from my family as well. And all that together meant I was able to buy a house in cash. But the problem that I'm running into now is that I have a very large amount of repairs that need to get done with the property, and I have a very limited amount of cash left after spending all of it on buying the house. And I'm just wondering about the best way to potentially cash flow some of these repairs and if my income is going to be enough to do that and if I might need to get a second job potentially in order to help pay for some of it. Okay. So what's your income?

So I just got a new job and it'll be 44,000 a year. And how much money do you have in the bank? Liquid? Right now I have about 11,000 in cash. I just wrote a check for 6,800 bucks. So when that clears, I have 11 grand left in cash. Okay. And is that your emergency fund at that point or part of it? Yes. So we got to really build that. That's my emergency fund. Okay. So what I want you to do is separate out your emergency fund from the home repair fund, because I'm worried that they become two in one and all of a sudden you are very, very broke. Yeah. That's what I'm worried about too.

What's the urgency of these repairs? Can you do them over the next six months? I mean, is that a safe place to live? I'm hoping that I can. I think I can, but I don't 100% know. There's some things I need urgently addressing. I just wrote a check for $6,800 for asbestos removal. That was urgent.

I had to get that done. And I've got electrical problems, and I've got an electrician coming next week to hopefully sort out that. But I'm guessing it's going to be, I don't know exactly how much it's going to cost me, but I've estimated it's a few thousand because the amount of electrical work that needs to get done is expensive.

Half the lights in my place don't work. Was this a fixer-upper? Yeah, why'd you buy this house, man? Did you get an inspection and appraisal on it? No, I didn't get it. My realtor advised me to waive the inspection because of the market that we're in with the real estate market being what it is i was fortunate i didn't have to pay over asking price i paid exactly asking you're not fortunate brother you're paying your real estate agent encouraged you because they got the fee man how much did you pay for this house?

$200,000. Well, the good news is you don't have a mortgage, and so you have more margin in your income. I would get the side job at least until the repairs are done and it's in good living condition. Matt, have you sat down and written out all of the repairs you're going to need? I have a pretty extensive list. There are some things that I don't know for sure exactly when they need to get done. For instance, I know I need a roof done, but I was told that I might have up to a year before I really need to get it done.

I was told that it's not something I need to get done tomorrow. All right. If I'm you, here's what I would do. This is me, it's not something I need to get done tomorrow. All right. If I'm you, here's what I would do. This is me just telling you exactly what I would do. If I'm in your shoes, I would pay the money and I would, um,

go get an, a home inspection and have somebody, a professional walk through it from, from nose to tail. It'll cost you a few hundred bucks. Yes. And it's going to be money. Well,

well spent. And they're going to give you a list, a 20 or 30-page document with photos and say, here's everything that would make the house just able to be sold. And then you can ask the inspector. They walk through it with you as part of this and say, what has to be done right now? And that way, that will give you some peace because you don't even know how big of an elephant you're trying to done right now. And that way, that will give you some peace because you don't even know

how big of an elephant you're trying to eat right now. You're just scarfing down every little bit that you can and what you're going to do is like George said, you're going to end up broke and you're going to end up

fixing one thing and you should have spent the money over here. So dude, you need a plan. Back up. Slow down. I'm real tempted to tell him, George, sell the house

because dude, this could be a 50 or 60 thousand dollar hold. I would start with the inspection. And then the inspector goes, dude, you're looking at 100 grand. I mean, who knows? If you need a new roof, the foundation's messed up, the asbestos. I mean, it keeps adding up. This thing's a loss. So I would get an inspection done.

They're going to give you a big report. And you walk through it with them. The inspectors that I've worked at in the past are just great, and they work for you, so they're going to tell you the truth, and I'd get that done ASAP, man. And then, yeah, you're going to know what kind of hole you've dug, and then that's going to dictate what kind of side job you need to get or two side jobs or three side jobs.

But please remember what George said. Do not just dump all of your, quote-un quote unquote extra money that's not being used for bills into the same pot. You've got to have an emergency fund that sits over here for true emergencies when that roof caves in on you, right? And you got to go get that thing fixed. Yeah, this house is very quickly turning from a blessing into a curse. That's right. And I'm proud of them for saving up the money. And of course, there's some family money that came in to help them do this with cash, which is amazing. But a lot of people right now, John, are making some bad decisions when it comes to housing because of fear. That's right. And because of greed, they're going, well, now's

the time. If I don't do it now, I'll never do it. And my realtor said, my realtor said, don't do anything you're not comfortable with. That's right. And if you're not comfortable with it, get a new realtor. But do not waive inspections and appraisals because you end up in a situation like this even with no mortgage he's stressed out to his eyeballs yeah that's right um i mean i just personally i had helms inspected when we're trying to buy nashville and you know it's like trying to buy nashville and i walked away from a few deals because i didn't know once we put a shovel in the ground i don't know what that step is going to actually damage. It's going to be $4,000 to $60,000.

Well, that's a big margin, right? And so I walked away from a few deals. And my realtor was hard and was frustrating. But, dude, I'm not going to buy a home. I'm not going to buy that big of an investment without somebody telling me what I'm... It's the biggest purchase of your life. This is not the time to go,

yeah, we'll buy it sight unseen as is. I'm sure it'll be fine. It'll be cool, man. Yeah. Because, man, those repairs could be a mess. Let me ask you this, George. So let's back up and say this guy could do this over. Principle-wise, financially, if he, instead of putting,

and I don't remember exactly what he said, how much did he say he got? It was 200 grand, so then he paid cash. Okay. If he had mortgaged 125 of that, I mean, I'm sorry, he had mortgaged 75 of that, put 125 down and then kept $75,000 for potential repairs and then once that smoke clears to put the rest of that money. Yeah, I like that plan.

Because then you're putting 75% down on this house and you leave yourself some cash to live with. But if you're buying a house that you don't know much about because you didn't get an inspection, I'm going to assume there's some problems I need to fix and therefore I need to have the funds to make sure I can fix that. So I would have a big cash reserve on top of that. I'm going to sell you something and they say,

you're not allowed to look and see if it actually works or not. That should be a big red flag. Maybe I shouldn't buy that. Yeah. If I'm buying a car from a stranger, I'm going to get this thing inspected. Yes. And that's a car, not a house. It's a car, not a house.

That's right. So I treat it the same way. Excellent, man. Well, hey, thank you so much, everybody, for calling. George, great job. Appreciate it. People and the folks in the booth. The peeps in the booth.

Thank you all so, so much. And I'm John Deloney. Listen, be kind to one another. No amount of worrying is going to bring gas prices down. It's time for us to get into action. We'll be right back on The Ramsey Show. Do you love a good day, friend? Want to see the latest Ramsey Show videos going viral?

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