The Ramsey Show - App - My Sister Keeps Asking To Borrow Money (Hour 2)

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Dr. John Delony discuss: Dave's crazy ancestors and his love for Downton Abbey, How to handle a relative who's asking to borrow money, The foolishness of waiting on the government to forgive student loans. 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

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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. Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. We're here to talk about your relationships, your boundaries, your mental health, your job, your career, your money.

All of it right here every day on The Ramsey Show. Tyler is in Pennsylvania starting this hour. hour hey tyler what's up hey guys how we doing today better than i deserve what's up all right i'm looking to get some advice um i'm currently making around 40 000 a year um and i don't know what my next move should be um i pay around 900 for rent um and i have one kid now and another kid coming in around this week we're doing the 25th congratulations thank you thank you my wife is um a stay-at-home mom and and so, you know, we're kind of just working with my income right now. I have around $5,000 in savings. I have my 401k. I have stock. You know, I'm trying to see what I can do, and, you know, I just need some guidance in what my next step should be in housing. You're doing very well. Congratulations. How old are you?

Thank you. 19. Dang, man. Wow. What do you do for a living? So I work, I do like sales and food service. It's kind of both. It's kind of like a convenience store, but a better growth convenience store, if that makes sense. You're having baby number two at 19. Yes, yes.

Dude, my mom gave me a talking to at 19 before i got a dog she's like i don't think you're ready for this you are in it brother so how old were you when you had the first one i was 17 wow you're just getting after it huh so your hands are full okay so um what is your 35-year-old you going to be doing for a career? Oh, man. I have dreams of kind of being retired, and, you know, I look to you, Dave, as, you know, a huge mentor. I'm a new listener. I don't want you to be retired at 35. I want you to be making $2 million a year.

What is it you're going to be doing? I don't really know yet. You know, I'm working for a good company. I get, you know, there's an ESOP program. I get a good 401k. I'm looking to get into real estate at some point. I'm also really interested into stocks. You know, I have a lot of options due to me being young, but, you, but I don't really have a set journey yet. Okay. Well, in one sense, you're 19 and you shouldn't have all this figured out. In another sense, you're making $40,000 and have two kids, so you've got to start figuring it out.

Right. Because here's the thing. You're going to hit what you aim at. And if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. Right. And the chances of you opening your eyes at $27,000, making $40,000 with the same company are strong to quite strong if you're not headed somewhere. Yeah, exactly. So the way we solve your rent problem is in the short term, you have to be very careful and manage and pick out a good property and just kind of deal with life with two kids and super young marriage and all that. And you'll laugh about these days later on and go back in our 23.

We were starving to death. But, you know, but the but for right now, it's just a pain in the butt. But the way you overcome this is you are aiming at something further down the road. And that will have – so let's just pretend. Let's pretend that over the next few months or even years, you decide you want to be doing something, and you just give it a name, whatever the thing is, and you're going to be, you know, doing real estate, and I'm going to be making $100,000 a year when I'm 30 years old. Okay? Once you start saying that a lot and start to believe it and start to study what you have to do to make that come true,

you know, what must be true that is not true today for me to be there, then immediately you start moving off of the 40 and start moving up which starts to solve some of the immediate problems as well and so that's why i'm asking you all of that instead of answering your 900 rent question because truthfully it's not going to be easy to rent a property and feed two kids on forty thousand dollars right. Right. You can do it, but you don't want to do that for a decade. Doing it for 10 months while we're heading to something else, and I'm not teaching you to be dissatisfied with your job. I'm just saying even if it's inside this company,

when you start talking to the supervisors and the managers, what value can I add to this organization so that I can move up? Because I've got two little babies I've got to feed, and I'm trying to be ambitious and wise beyond my years. And show me how to do that. And when you start talking that and thinking that and being that and identifying that that's who you are, that's when the income is going to start to change.

That's why you hear people calling this show tyler that almost every single debt-free scream during the time they were getting out of debt increased their income now some of them just did it they took an extra job pay off debt but some of them walked into the boss's office and said what can i do to add value and the boss goes well you know what i haven't given you in a raise a while here's another 20 grand and ding ding you know it's just stuff like that happens all the time but it's because you're paying attention to it and there's something magical about sitting down with a supervisor or maybe not even your supervisor but somebody one step ahead of you and say hey can i buy you some cup of coffee like walk me through your arc here when did you start here how'd you get to

this role people love to tell their story, and you're going to pick up a lot of wisdom along the way about how your group operates, how the groups around you operate. Hang on the line here, and Jenna will get your information. We'll send you a copy of Ken's book, From Paycheck to Purpose, that just walks you through that process. But start thinking and dreaming big. In the meantime, keep your rent low.

In the meantime. Grind it out. Manage your budget. And live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else. In the meantime, you're going to live in a place that you don't want to live in for very long. But you'll live there for a little while. I did when I was your age. I did too.

And it's not to say that it's mandatory to do that, but it's just to say that there's no shame in that. I'm okay if you could live in a really wonderful place because you were making $200,000 a year. That wouldn't make me mad at all either. It's not required that you have hard times, but you are square in the middle of something. So you might as well get the getting.

Might as well get what's there to get. Good for you, man. You're just a stud, man. Unbelievable. I mean, my gosh. I'm not sure I could have dialed the number to call this show. No. When I was 19, the number of 19-year-olds I've worked at that can't figure out where the intramural office is.

Good grief. Trying to check out some ping pong paddles, and I can't find the... Oh, my gosh. And this guy's having a second kid. It's amazing. Well, it'll grow you up. I can tell you that. It obviously is. He's wise beyond his years.

You're a good young man. You call us anytime we can help. Hold on. Proud of you, man. Jen, I'll pick up and give you a copy of Coleman's book, and we'll move you on to the next move. Fantastic. Really cool. Wow.

Wow. This is the day that I feel old the 19 year old this is the day huh the 20 well shut up this is the 21 i just caught up just today suddenly i mean the 21 year olds and the 19 year olds and it's like oh my goodness america dave needs a mirror well i've got you john John. This is The Ramsey Show. Most people know me as the guy who did stupid with a lot of zeros on the end. I made my first million dollars in my 20s the wrong way and then went bankrupt. That's when I set out to learn God's ways of managing money and developed the Ramsey baby steps. By following these steps, I became a millionaire

again, and this time the right way. After three decades of guiding millions of others through the plan, the evidence is undeniable. If you follow the Baby Steps, you will become a millionaire and get to live and give like no one else. My new book, Baby Steps Millionaires, is now available for purchase. When you order my new book, you'll learn how ordinary people built extraordinary wealth and how you can do it too. I'll walk you through how to invest, build wealth, and bust through the barriers preventing you from becoming a millionaire. Baby step your way to becoming a millionaire. Get your copy today at ramseysolutions.com. That's ramseysolutions.com. Thanks for joining us, America.

This is The Ramsey Show. We're so glad you're with us. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. And Dr. John Deloney came to our product team, and they came up with this very wild idea, conversation cards for adults, conversation cards for families. And we've got them for several categories, right? How many categories? Yeah, there's ones for people who have been married for a while.

They help you get a little bit deeper in your relationship. And then for families, grandparents and kids and everybody in between. And then there's ones for just friends hanging out. Okay. And just a conversation of starters. That's right. And I promptly laughed and I went, we've reached the point in America that we actually need a deck of cards to have a conversation. This is absolutely freaking ridiculous.

These things will never sail. And they have sold thousands, tens of thousands. They're going to pay my house off, Dave. I'm telling you, I've never seen a product like this. I love it when I am wrong like this. I do, too. So they have challenged me to get involved, especially since I was so negative, with the conversation cards. So you've got some of them.

This is how this works. This is how this works. I'm just pulling one up. So imagine me and you are getting chips and queso or just having a conversation in front of a couple of 10 million people. What's one word or phrase that's way overused? Literally, literally. Oh, literally is the worst. Literally.

Rachel Cruz literally is everything. Literally. Literally. The word I can't stand is the word awesome. And I say it. it sounds like an old like sad my pastor my pastor friend has a fit about that because he says that word should be reserved for god it's okay i say it all the time too like i'm some kind of surfer boy or something well it sounds like an old youth minister in shorts like you're awesome yeah and we're like we shouldn't

be saying this but yeah it's yeah it's a great word but it is yeah overused all right what physical activity well dave's out on that one what physical activity or i'm just being ugly today what physical activity or sport whooping on john this is my favorite pretty much anyone at say it again what physical activity or sport could you defeat pretty much anyone at? None. But I am in the top 1% on a water ski or barefooting. You are incredible at that. And I'm 61 years old.

I still barefoot. So that does put you up there somewhere. I saw you get off the back of the boat. I couldn't believe it. If I hadn't have been there, I would have thought they were exaggerating. When you were on the back of the boat, and then you took the rope and threw it into the back of the boat, and you had... We were just surfing. Everybody surfs. We're just surfing.

I've never seen that. Well, it's really impressive when you've never seen it, but it's not that hard. I just saw you on some sort of device behind the boat, and nothing was pulling you, and you were still following the boat. That's surfing, yeah. Lots of people do that. A lot of people are going to be going, John, that's not that impressive.

I thought it was impressive. Yeah, we've been doing it since nobody was doing it. That's for sure. We started doing it. We had to get our own little board and figure it out, and then it suddenly became a thing. Now they build boats just to do that. What's a

movie or tv show that you're ashamed to admit you watched downton abbey lost my man card on that one do you like every episode yeah lost my man card on that one for sure oh man that was without hesitation boom just like that you liked it oh i loved it yeah completely lost my man card yeah the music just ding ding ding ding yeah the whole thing if you can't see if you're listening on podcast dave is actually hugging himself when he just said that no his arms are crossed in a bad body language position he is not he's hugging himself all right what's the strangest thing you know about your family history?

That you can repeat on the air. Yeah, really. Well, on the one side, I had a group that had my two great-grandfathers were both preachers. One of them was a circuit riding preacher. And on the back of a mule went around all throughout the South. And I've got his Bible from the 1800s that he carried in the saddlebags. Wow. That's on the one side on the other side someone murdered one of the ramses and uh the the widow was pregnant and when the baby was born 18 years later she handed him her his dad's gun and said the guys in montana go kill him and he did

so so you got preachers on one side and we got this other thing on the other side so i don't know yeah it's it's wild so america if you don't think genetics are a play years later hillbilly will send you your the son of your father to that you killed to come kill you i mean this is that's that's hillbilly stuff right there, man. Wow. That's fantastic, Dave. I'm not usually speechless. That's incredible. And I'm looking at the manifestation of that right now.

And you've been making fun of me. Just keep this in mind. I'm quiet now. Wanted to tell you that you're looking great. You look handsome. Looking kind of young. You're looking younger than I've ever seen you. And you look fast, too. You can just run fast.

That's incredible. Questions for humans, everybody. Man, you get a group of people around a table and... That is fun, I have to admit. Yeah, it's pretty cool. You can dig up something and get to talking about something other than just stupid stuff. Tell your friends that... You can not talk about COVID and not talk about whatever is on the news.

There's not a COVID question or a politic question in this deck. Thank you, Jesus. Not in this deck. No vaccine questions. None. Thank you, Jesus. Not in this deck. No vaccine questions. None. Thank you, Jesus. We did think about coming up with another deck on ending friendships, and it's just going to be all stuff.

When you answer this question, it's over. Trump is the greatest ever. True or false? Go. People who don't get vaccines are evil. Go. We're going to clear your friend deck for you. We're going to sell that deck at $100 a piece.

Separate the sheep and the goats. Y'all can just move over. So here's the fun thing. We're going to give you, when you buy two copies of John's new book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future, one for you and one for a friend. If you use the promo code FRIENDS when you check out, you'll get the FRIENDS edition of Questions for Humans for free. We will throw in this highly expensive deck of conversation cards as a bonus. This is Dave revenge for me giving away TMMO every episode. You're now giving away the Questions for Humans cards.

And another book. So there you go. With John's book and the Questions for Human Courage, you will laugh for sure. You'll probably cry. You may get mad. You'll definitely learn something, and you'll start connecting at a meaningful level. RamseySolutions.com. Get two copies of John's new book.

One for you, one for someone else. Own your past. Change your future. There's all kinds of add-ons when you buy that. And put the promo code friends in and we will also now in addition to the other stuff throw in the uh friends edition of the conversation start very cool free and that's a big bonus because these things are selling we really don't have to give them away no yeah we're not really going to be stuck with them or anything they're going to sell goodness gracious and then you can call my

show to find out what happens when you find out that your boss has a murderer in the family wow hey far enough back that you know that doesn't affect me it is not far enough back doesn't affect me well do you just keep that in mind i'm just scooting over right now gabriel gabriel is with us in atlanta hi gabriel how are you hi i'm um nervous but excited how are you d Hi. I'm nervous but excited. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. John's in rare form. You should be nervous.

What's up? So I am an elementary teacher. I have been that for nine years now. I make close to $60,000. I have a little bit over $110,000 in student loans and I'm a single parent. When I'm, I'm currently a part of the loan forgiveness program, uh, four years in, um, by being a part of that program, they base how much I have to pay off of my debt to income ratio in the fact that I have a daughter that I support. By the end of the program, after 10 years,

I would have only paid a little bit over $31,000. I've been reading your book, Love It. I completed it a year ago, and I started to listen to the podcast about a month ago, the Money Makeover book. So I'm on baby step number two. I've knocked out credit card debt and personal loans, and now I'm sitting with the student loans. And I'm wondering, do I just hang on for the ride for the loan forgiveness program

because it's going to mean I pay back less, or do I now try to figure out some way of continuing as a teacher and being a single mom and figuring out how to get good deal about paying this debt off? When I do the math, it's like a little bit over. Stop, stop. There's three times that student loans are forgiven, disability, death, and the private student loan forgiveness program. 726, 811 people had applied for the program that you're on.

750,000 people applied for it as of the end of the year. So far, 8,000 have gotten it. 1% are getting it. It's a lie. You need to pay off your student loans. Do not sit and wait on that. It's not going to happen. The government lied to you.

They are not doing it. The actual numbers are in. 1.6% so far have actually gotten their forgiveness. The rest did not. It's a lie. I'm sorry so Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Brandon is with us in Denver. Hey, Brandon, how are you? I'm good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, so this has happened before with my sister. This is basically what it's about. So my sister, I'm 27 years old, and my sister is 46.

She'll be 47 in April. And she always seems to have trouble financially. And recently she asked me for $100, and I'm not sure if she's aware that I know that she owes my mom $800. And I kind of wanted to, like, offer her advice and help her out. But in my mind, I feel like she's going to go, okay, what is this 27-year-old punk trying to school me on anything? He's the one with $100 you don't have.

That's who he is. I know. Yeah, no, I get it. And it's a little frustrating because I feel like if it was, I feel like if anyone's asking for money, it should be the other way around. But, you know, it's like I don't know exactly how to bring it up to her because I don't want to because I feel like my mom and dad always end up giving her money. And I've always told them this isn't really helping her. It's more so perpetuating her mismanagement of money. And I guess I just don't know how to go about it without causing a rift between us.

So I want you to re-approach the situation. You did not cause the rift. The rift between us. So I want you to re re approach the situation. You did not cause the rift. The rift was thrown at you. All you are doing now is responding to the rift. Okay. And as simple as, uh, um,

no, I, I'm not going to loan you a hundred dollars. Thank you, though. Anything after that is you trying to smooth over your boundary, and that's not your responsibility. So there's a simple, peaceful answer. I'm not going to judge the fact that you owe mom. I'm not going to explain stuff to you unless you invite me into that conversation.

I'm just going to tell you. No, I'm not going to loan you $100. All right, John, that's not how this ends, though then it's like why not exactly you're not just gonna you're like well what does he say when she says well why not because that's exactly what she's gonna say yeah why not entitled brat oh you mean you can't even yeah i'm just gonna choose not to and if you want to go down the road of well well then what because this is going to cause a rift between you and me and our relationship, and I'm not going to do that. And this is you drawing a boundary

that no one's ever drawn from her. You know what that's going to feel like to her? Abuse. Oh my goodness, hatred. Here's the thing. You can't control her response to your boundary. You can't. Yeah, I guess the thing is, i do feel kind of bad i this

was about a week ago she asked me and i didn't even respond to her because i'm just like i had no it froze i'm just like i in my mind i'm thinking are you serious right now yeah good hey and good for you for not lashing out for taking a break okay that's that's wisdom yeah you're you're smart and because putting the snark on it that we all want to tell her. It's not going to be helpful. Me included. It's not helpful, okay? It does not help her.

So the goal here is to help her. Yeah. Okay? And so, John, let me ask you, is there a way that you can couch this? I get that the boundary is simple. No. I'm not able to do that at this time. Or I'm choosing not to do that. I'm not willing to do that at this time or i'm choosing not to do that whatever i'm not i'm not willing to do that at this time okay why not yeah um is it okay to then is is it

productive then to say you know what i would choose to do is if you will go through this class financial peace university that costs a hundred dollars i'll pay for it for you yeah so so that you can learn how to handle money so you never ask anybody for money again, because I've watched you struggle, and it breaks my heart. Yes, and – Well, the thing is, is I know that she – her and her husband, because she does DoorDash on the side, and her husband's a breadwinner, but he makes really good money. And I know they, I think, hired a financial advisor like months ago,

but apparently, obviously, didn't really do anything. Or the financial advisor's an idiot. Yeah. Or that. Financial advisor has nothing to do with cash flow. It has to do with other things. Here's the thing. When she finds herself in a situation where she has to go to her brother,

her 20-year-younger brother, and ask for money, if not already, she is dangerously close to the, her 20-year-younger brother, and ask for money, she's already in a... If not already, she is in dangerously close to the fight-or-flight place anyway. Something has come up that has pushed her to this area. And then you say no, and every alarm she's got is going to start ringing. And so, while what Dave said is...

If you can sit down and have a cup of coffee with her and say, can we talk in person? Yes. I care about you a lot. This has come up a lot. I know you've, you've been with mom and dad. I want to see this. I want to help. $100 is not going to help.

It might bail you out of a thing you think you have. But in that moment, usually people can't hear me. That's why I always, I always recommend wait to be invited in. If you want my money, here's what it's going to come with. You're going to sit down and you have to have a cup of coffee with me. So maybe that's the angle. I'll give you a hundred bucks, but you have to meet me in if you want my money here's what it's going to come with you're going to sit down you have to have a cup of coffee with me so maybe that's the angle i'll give you 100 bucks but you have to meet me in person and you have to listen to what i have to say and that may be where you have a little bit um that's kind of the i mean i'm visiting back because i'm originally from maryland i'm not from colorado yep so i'm visiting home soon and that's kind of something

i'm a little nervous about visiting because i don't know if to see her but i think it's also kind of a good opportunity as you're saying to kind of sit down with her and talk to her because i just it's been going on i think ever since she got married for like 18 years this has been going on because apparently she used to have a better credit score than my dad so and now her credit score is like really not good yeah she's got bigger things going on and maybe that's the angle is you sit down with her and say, I want to take you to breakfast or take you to lunch, and then say, you asking your little brother for $100, what's going on?

Are you okay? And when she says, what do you mean? I'm fine. I'm fine. You say, you just asked your little brother for $100. You're not okay. And that becomes an angle that is going to give you permission into speaking to her and what's going on in her soul, right?

But the end of the story is regardless of her reaction or her choice to respond in any of these conversations, under no circumstances do you give her $100 except in the event that she is going to plug into things that cause her to start winning with money so that she never has to ask for it again. Yeah, that's kind of my angle. That's been my angle for a while because I even get upset with my parents

because she's asked me for money before, and I only gave her money one time. She's probably asked me for money like five times, and I said no all the other four times. The very first time I said yes, all the other times i said no all the other four times uh the very first time i said yes all the other times i said no she even asked me if i could co-sign for her daughter for a car and i said absolutely not good for you know all about that so this is this is long term it's been going on for a while so i think this fifth time she's asked you and it's a small and you know i think the other thing you do is do a john deloney and say this by way, is the last time we're going to have this discussion. Right.

Is it? Because the next time you call me for money, I'm just going to tell you no, and you're going to know what I meant when I said no. Yeah. Because I don't need to cover this with you. I don't want to cover this with you every time. Well, she knew because even, like, she texted me. She didn't really even call me, which would sound weird, but she texted me, and she was like, I know you don't like giving me money. It's like, well, yeah, you know I don't. It's not even like, but it's not you, though. was like, I know you don't like giving me money. It's like, well, yeah, you know, I don't, it's not even like, but it's not you though. It's

like, I just don't like giving people money, like money that I've worked for. I mean, if I, I'm all about giving people gifts and maybe like charity and volunteering and stuff like that, but it's like repetitive. And my parents, I get kind of like, I don't, I know I can't do much about them, but when they keep giving her money, I always tell them, please don't do that because they're digging a hole. You're giving a drunk a drink. They're digging a hole for themselves to put somebody out of one. Here's the deal.

You said it, and I want to reiterate it. You can't do anything about what they're doing. So you spoke in your piece to your parents. I would get out of their head i'd get out of their decision making process and don't don't let them have don't let this issue have any more real estate in your brain it's a real simple thing i'm willing to help my sister when i in a way that i am really helping her not in a way that i am giving a drunk a drink it's very simple and if she does not want to participate in that then i'm unwilling to have any more

conversations even about this until she is. And I know I'm your little brother. I know this is weird. This is where we are. Yeah. I mean, I know it feels weird because you're old enough to be my mother. You know, I mean, she's 20 years his senior. And so that is very weird.

It's not a classic sibling relationship. And so, yeah, you just say, you know, here's my terms, and they're all for your good. I don't need the $100. I could give you $1,000. But none of this is going to help you, but I want to really help you. And something's clearly not okay. Yeah. She's got bigger problems than $100. Heartbroken.

A lot bigger problems. Because they're chronic. They're ongoing. This is the Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today, best-selling author and host of the podcast, The Dr. John Deloney Show. Be sure and join it. It's right here on Ramsey Networks.

Paul is with us in Sacramento. Hey, Paul, how are you? I'm rocking on to the break of dawn. Hey, what's up, Paul? Sorry, John, I stole that from you. I like it. Oh, my, a Dr. John fan. Okay, what's up?

All right, so I'm going to give you my whole life and financial picture. I'm 19 years old. I'm planning on getting married in the next two years. And then I'm going to want to rent for two years after that. So I'm looking to buy a house in probably four to five years from now. I have $40,000 in cash right now. And I'm thinking of putting that in an S&P 500 until I'm ready to buy a house and just keep adding to that. But my mom says that I should probably, that I should hold that as cash in case a good deal comes up or something like that, just to have that cash ready on me on hand because I'm going to be going through a lot of changes. You can get it out of an S&P 500 in 20 minutes. Yeah.

It's as liquid as your savings account is as far as getting a hold of it. The downside is the stock market might be down that day or that week or that month. And so, I mean, if $40,000, if it had a 10% drop in the stock market, that would be an unusually bad year, statistically unusually bad year, and that would have cost you $4,000. If the stock market is up 10%, 15%, you're going to make $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 per year doing this. So if you can handle emotionally the swing of you may make $4,000 or $5,000 or $6,000 and you might lose four, that's probably you're over and under on the thing,

then the S&P 500 is okay if you can handle all of that. Right. The chances of your 40 turning into 20 is very, very, very low. It's only happened a couple of times in history. The chances of your 40 turning into 80 in one year never happened. It's never happened. Right. So, you know, so you're over and under is what you're looking at.

You know, what's your best case scenario, worst case scenario, and can you emotionally handle the swing between those two numbers. So, John, from a psychology situation, PhD in psychology, you're in counseling. I was reading a study, I don't know if you've ever seen this data or not, that when someone loses money on an investment, you have seen it, I can tell you're smiling, when you lose money on an investment, for every dollar that you lose on an investment, to feel the same way emotionally, you have to gain $3. Losses impact our emotions at a 3 to 1 ratio heavier than gains lift us emotionally.

Yes, I don't remember the exact teeter-totter there, but I know Daniel Kahneman, he changed the world with his studies on that. But this idea, and I never thought of this, Dave, I'm so obsessed with losses that I don't think about non-future earnings, right? So we get so obsessed with, yeah. Well, and the reason is that you've experienced probably, you may have a scar yeah where you say okay i lost that money and you know i i but you know the stock market

like people uh well here's an example okay when in 2008 when the market dropped from 13 000 to 6400 dropped basically in half uh the dow did we had people and people will tell you to this day that they lost all of their retirement in the 2008 downturn well mathematically that's completely impossible it's inaccurate right it's completely impossible that you lost all of your retirement if it was in mutual funds you lost half of it if you happen to buy at the very top and you happen to be the most unlucky person in the world when you chose to sell at the exact bottom, you would have lost half of your money. And by the way, it's not at 6,500 today. It's close to, you know, north of what, 30,000 today. So 40,000.

So, you know, that Dow Jones Industrial Average, in other words. So that, you know, market is jones industrial average in other words so that you know market is up 5x from the bottom there but in that effort to lose you know to emotionally recover from that downturn you completely avoided the market since 2008 you've you've missed that your million dollars would have been five or six million right or we see this especially missed out on when you put five thousand dollars or twenty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars or a million into your company and your company's not doing well we're so loss averse that we keep dumping money into that thing instead of cutting our losses and moving yeah it's very difficult and especially when it's a small business person who

their dreams or identity are tied up that's right yeah you just do with marriages too we just keep going we don't stop and have conversations. Yeah. We say, uh, necessary endings. Yeah. Our buddy Henry Cloud, right? Bill in Traverse City, Michigan. Hey, Bill.

What's up? Hey, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? What dollar amount should we have set aside for a long-term care? And we're just kind of wondering if we're going to make it with our current finances. What's your net worth?

Uh, 2.8 million, not counting real estate. You made it. You're good. You made it. So go nursing home shopping in Traverse City and, you know, find the highest and the lowest and one you can reasonably do. Also talk to some in-home care specialists that will furnish round-the-clock care in your home, which you have enough money to do that instead. And it's sometimes not even as much as a nursing home, okay? And here's your averages.

The average nursing home stay in america is 2.3 years the average cost is 75 to 80 thousand dollars a year times 2.3 okay so you have a 200 000 exposure with a two million dollar net worth. You made it. Now, let's say you had something happen that was twice as bad as average. Can we agree that statistically that's unlikely? Twice as bad as average. That'd be $400,000, right? Right.

You're still not broke. The person that's left is still a multimillionaire. Oh, let's just say that statistically it's highly unlikely that it was three times the average and you spent six hundred thousand dollars on a nursing home you're still actually fine still a multi-millionaire with real estate bill what makes you think you're going to run out there's something beneath this question. Just a lot of our neighbors, their parents are having situations, and I'm like, my wife and I are early 50s, and we're like, man, we don't want to strap our kids with this type of situation, and they're scrambling, you know what I mean?

So we started looking, and I'm like. Unless you do your nursing home in Trump Tower you're gonna be okay okay i feel better you guys have worked hard and you still got 20 more years of work left yeah so and you know and by the way let's just say that you know the the percentage of people that go into a nursing home prior to 60 is less than one half of one percent okay so let's say you got another 10 years anyway so let's say you got another 10 years. Anyway, oh, let's say you got another 14 years. This is all going to double two more times if you've got it invested decently during this time. You're going to have a $10 million net worth by the time you address this issue. And then, again, go shopping and have some actual facts and say, okay, here's the nursing home we would choose.

And today it is $110 today it is 85 000 and the average is 2.3 years and um if we're triple the average are we still okay easily easily easily and oh here's what in-home care if i hired a nurse full-time bought a hospital bed and dropped 50 grand on medical equipment for that room to take care of my wife because i didn't want her to be in a nursing home and i've got 10 million dollars so we're going to do this at home with full-time care a plus blue ribbon care what's that going to run 150 grand maybe you know and this is world-class everything so i'm making these numbers up but i'm not far off so once you get actual

numbers instead of my opinion on them and you put them down on paper and you look at them compared to the money you have you're going to go we're self-insured we're good and it's always important when you're sitting around with a group of people and everybody's talking about the end of the time get a counterbalance which is what he did he called somebody and said give me another perspective on this yeah and it's always good to get another perspective on a problem. Yeah. Always. And lastly, your neighbors that are worrying about all this likely don't have your net worth, dude.

That's right. Very likely. Because you haven't told them yours, but I'm betting you that they don't have your net worth. This is The Ramsey Show every week? A lot of those people listen on one of our 600-plus radio stations across the country. To find a station near you, go to RamseySolutions.com slash show.