The Ramsey Show - App - My Sister Wants Me To Pay for Her Car (Hour 1)

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

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 actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, number one best-selling author, Ph.D. in counseling, Ramsey personality, host of one of the most popular shows on the Ramsey Network these days, the Dr. John Deloney Show. He's here to help. And so if you want to talk about relationships or crazy in your family, he's here to help with that. And we'll talk about your life. In general, what we do around here is we talk about you right in front of you.

And we get paid for it. So thanks for hanging out. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ronald is with us in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, Ronald, what's up in your world? Nothing too much. How are you doing, Dave? Better than I deserve, sir.

How can I help? So I have a kind of a strange situation. My sister called me this morning, and she was crying, and she told me that she had her car repossessed because she didn't pay for her car for about four to five months. And she wants me to help get the car out of the impound and pay the full amount of her car payment to get it out of repossession. Wow. So what's going on in her life that allows a car to get repossessed

i think just bad money choices um she only makes five hundred dollars a week and i'm pretty sure she bought the car for sixteen thousand way over her income and she's just been drowning in the debt. She's single, I guess? No, she has a boyfriend, so I wanted to tell you that as well. So she has $1,000. Her boyfriend has offered $2,500 towards the car, and the balance is $8,000 after like repossession fees. And she wants me to take care of the rest.

Okay. Well, my rule on helping people is that I have to back up a minute from all the emotions and my heart, because my heart wants to help her right now. She didn't call and demand. She asked, and she was crying, and she was scared, and her brother wants to help her right now uh she didn't call in demand she asked and she was crying and she's scared and her brother wants to help her and i think that's all good there's nothing wrong with her requesting this and nothing wrong with you hearing her

her heart on it so my heart wants to help her right this second i may not in a few minutes but right now i do and so uh then the i have to step back from my heart and use wisdom which says i want to do something here that is a help that when five years from today we look back not five minutes that it actually helped her okay and so um number, I assume you've got some money. Yeah, if I have a good reservoir going for me. Okay, and are you married? I'm engaged. Okay.

What would your fiancé say if you helped your sister? Not too happy about it. Why? Because I've helped her in the past. Oh, okay. So there's a pattern yeah that is that the help wasn't help instead it became dependence exactly which john would call you co-dependent at that point an enabler i think john would say that i think that's what psychologists call it so um yeah so that's a bad clue when you're when your wife or you're in this case your fiance

says uh you're not being wise then that's something you need to listen to assuming you're you know assuming she's just not mad at your sister for some other reason. But, yeah. So the money you gave her before didn't help. Yeah. It was you participating in her crazy world. Yeah. That's what I don't want to do again. So I have one question. So at first I was thinking about, you know, helping her, you know,

pay the whole entire thing off and then her immediately selling the vehicle, and then paying back everybody that she owes, and hopefully have a little bit of money left behind so she can have a reservoir. Then I went on to offer to sell the vehicle, and then she could drive my truck for however long that she needs it until she saves up her money. No, I wouldn't do that. We need to create something that's what we call sustainable at the end of the story. When we finish helping her, she can operate without more help. Okay? okay so what that probably sounds like is she sells the car buys a two thousand dollar car and um pays off all of her debts and goes into financial peace university that you pay for or i'll give it to her through you and if in order for you to help her she has to promise to do two

things that help her one is she needs to go through this class and freaking learn how to handle money. Two, so that this doesn't happen again. Two, she needs to sell the car and get a car she can actually afford. Oh, I'll add one. Three, she needs to work on her freaking career. She's broke. She's living at the poverty level. Yeah.

She doesn't work much. Or if she does, she's got the worst job on the planet. Yeah, that's why I told her that she needs to find another job. Yep, yep. So if you give her three or four things like that to do, what's she going to say? I'm not sure, honestly.

You know. She's been your sister a long time. Junior, I will. her honestly you know she's been your sister a long time junior i will oh man that's a hard question i i i'm i'm guessing by your hesitancy you know that you're going to put some things in front of her and you probably have most of y'all's life together and they're pretty low barriers to entry and they include a lot of support from her brother and she doesn't she doesn't make the choice to to do those things is that right yeah a lot of the time yeah i'm with your fiancee then yeah i think this one she figures out on her own brother for her good dave that's tough love. No, darling, that's love.

When you participate in crazy people stuff, that's not love. That's just weakness. When people are doing stupid butt stuff and you help them, how are you helping them? You know, I'm not fussing at you, Ronald, but people do this all the time. I do it. I have to catch myself. It's like going into the gym and taking the weight off the bar to help somebody lift, and then they get put in a situation where they need that strength and you've robbed them from it and like ronald i mean the world needs more compassionate people who will sit next to somebody who's hurting and say i've got a path

for you but you've got you've got to meet me on this path and um love love this person enough to allow them to meet you and she's not able to meet you right now. That's good. You know, let's make this even harder, just for the fun of it. Let me tell you what happens, Ronald, when you get a car repossessed. You feel like someone stole something from you. It is a weird emotion. I've been foreclosed on when I went broke.

I know what it feels like. It's a weird emotion to look up and your car is not in your driveway. You think it got stolen and instead it was just repossessed. Let her sit in that. Tell her, no, you won't help her buy this car out, but you'll give her but you'll buy her a $1,000 car. You'll give that to her if she'll go through FPU.

I love that. And then she's not going to do either one because she wants her life back, her unreasonable life back. And when you don't help her with that, she's going to react poorly and you're going to know what's going on. And if you buy her that $1,000 car, you have to say, this is it. You have to hold to that.

Done. Hold to it. Finne. Over. No more. Money. That's it. You're going to go through class and learn how to handle it so you don't need me anymore. And you need to go get a better job so you don't freaking starve to death. This is how we talk to people we love. This is The Ramsey Show.

Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Sam is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Hey, Sam, what's up? Hey, Dave, thanks for having me on the show. Sure, how can I help? So I'm an independent financial advisor, and I use your investing strategy

in a lot of accounts that I have for clients. I love it. You know, I've definitely seen strong performance with it. And so one question I sometimes come across is, within clients' 401k plans that they have, their investment options are often pretty limited. So I was wondering, with your philosophy, I try to follow it in there,

but sometimes the international fund options are pretty lousy, as you know. So I was wondering if it's okay within a 401k plan to maybe follow like a little bit less strict to, you know, the exact strategy and maybe just use like a large cap, mid cap, and small cap fund and kind of nix the international. But I was just wondering, just wanted to get your thoughts on that. That's a very intelligent question by your customer. You've done a good job because you've taught them well to where they are looking at the track records

because of the four categories, growth, growth in income, aggressive growth in international, the international category among those four underperforms the other three dramatically including in my portfolio so i'm really impressed that they actually figured that out that means that they were that you did a good job teaching them to look at their long-term track records so so much so sam that uh two years ago i had my personal smart investor pro that handles my mutual funds. You know, he and I are always bouncing ideas about our advice back and forth

because there's nothing in the Bible about this. This is not a – it's a Dave idea, okay? It's not something that can't be wrong. It could be wrong. And I'm looking at it going, these internationals suck. And I've got good ones. I got some of them. I mean, I got the highest performing, and they still are underperforming the others.

And so I called my guy, and I'm like, hey, let's run some hypos. Let's run some hypotheticals. You know what that is, where you run the, you know, but for the audience, that's where you run. Go back 20 years. Go back 25 years and say, what if I had run just growth growth and income aggressive growth and did not have international even go back 50 years and do that and run me some hypotheticals out on my four categories or the three categories without and let's see if it makes if the diversification even makes sense because over time the diversification should make you more money

you and i know that, Sam, right? And this category sucks so bad, I was just like, I think I may change my advice after all these years and pull it out. Well, we ran those hypotheticals out, and the weirdest thing happened. We made less money because in the inverse market, because the, and I couldn't figure out why at first, and he and i finally traced it down what we figured out is is the internationals run about inverse of the others and so when the market swings up and is doing real good like it is right now the internationals are sucking wind and that's when you notice them when the market takes a dive down the internationals hold or pick up and that diversification then ends up making you more over

the long haul as a concept okay now that's a different part that's an overarching thing on the ramsey advice of the four mutual funds so i me and him came to the conclusion of probably a good idea to leave it in there even though i when i look at their returns i just kind of want to puke a little you know and so it's just awful but anyway so but back to your particular thing anytime i'm inside of a 401k and any one of the four categories has only extremely weak i don't know if I would leave it out, but I might not do fourth, fourth, fourth. Right. I might do 10%. That's my question.

Yeah, maybe 10% in a week, sister. And then up the others to, you know, 33 or something. Something, you know, that kind of a thing. Or 30 it would be, I guess. But something like that. I like to have the flavor of that inverse relationship in there if I can get at it. An example of that would be when we're making TSP recommendations, we do not tell people to do fourth, fourth, fourth in the Thrift Savings Plan. We tell them to because, honestly, those indexes that they put in that thing,

most of them are just horrid. That's the problem. They're so bad. Yeah, the C plan outperforms everything else so drastically in the TSP that we finally said, okay, we're going to do 80% C, 10 I, which is their international, and 10 Ss which is their small cap and so 80 10 10 is our tsp recommendation and that's a similar question to what you're asking about a particular 401k does that make sense yeah no that that makes perfect sense i guess that was primarily my question because like within accounts accounts i manage like we can go through fund selection and find something that's you know pretty decent for international category.

But it tends to be tougher when, you know, the options are limited within a 401K or 403B or something like that. So that makes total sense. Yeah, that's more like the TSP in that situation, and I would just change the ratios somewhat. But, again, you are obviously well-versed in this stuff as an advisor. And the thing that people forget is the power of diversification. You know, having some money and different things is very important. So even if it's just a little, maybe we don't want quite as much Tabasco in there as we want other things, but we do need the spice in there, you know. And my mouth just watered.

And Sam, I was going to say exactly word for word what Dave just said. All that stuff about sea funds. I was going to do exactly that same. So kudos to you, Dave. I'll let you take that one. I'm just going to run with it, and you're right on. Okay. That's good.

Thanks, John. That's good. Thanks for covering for me there. I appreciate it. Let me talk. That's good. You've got to get your voice back in this show a little bit yeah what's what's interesting folks is the the bible does say in ecclesiastes spread your portions to seven yes to eight for disaster may come upon the

land now keep in mind ecclesiastes is not the positive thinking book of. Okay. Pretty much everything in there is the world's coming to an end. You're going to die. It's the choose reality book. It's worse than that. It's the we're all going to die book. It's the zombie apocalypse is on the way. All the, you know, it's all this. So, but, but yeah, choose spread your portions to seven.

Yes. To eight for disaster may come upon the land uh you know fauci may come upon the land the you know spread your portions to seven yes to eight some people might vote wrong spread your portions to seven yes to eight and and and that in other words diversification not necessarily the four types of mutual funds I talk about, but not having all your money in one thing, your portions, seven yes to eight, diversification is biblical. And I think it's important, you said this, but to double click on it, when you have a, what I call a failsafe or a stopgap, or we get a lot of grief for telling people to put an emergency fund in a high-yield savings account just leave it alone it's not to it's it's to be there when you need it I like the idea of there being a what feels like a drag sometimes but man

when the market goes south and this thing has proven over time to hold steady or to kind of buoy everything yeah I like it that's discipline right let me keep doing the hard thing even though i look at it and look at and get frustrated get frustrated but over time it proves itself out well when i was young and rash i only wanted to invest in things that were going straight up that's right but i see that on instagram and tiktok that they do that too and they're going to fall off a cliff right exactly and so you would only buy an aggressive growth stock mutual fund in a small cap fund because the world's just going to always be. Yeah, it's always going to be high tech. Yeah, you don't have that wisdom.

It's going to have the high tech in there. It's going to have all the startups in there. It's going to be exciting. But that's also the one that falls the fastest as soon as the market turns down. That's right. And then you'll be glad you got the boring growth and income, which is really seriously boring. It's awful. It never does anything.

It just sits there. Oh, God. But you're so glad you have it when the market turns down. I was going to say, you know what else is boring? Being broke. Diet and nutrition. Being a good person. Mental health.

What is that, the old? Spirituality. The worst part about being a Christian is that it's every single day. You can never wake up on the first day of the month and memorize all five books. You know what? This week I'm just going to raise hell. Yeah, next week. The worst part about exercise is

you just got to do it again tomorrow and then again the next day. And you look up over time and you have a healthy life, right? Yeah, it's worth it. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Well, you have almost missed it, but not quite. We're going to be doing the Live Like no one else cruise in march and there is a handful of cabins left if you still want to go you can still get in it is a totally ramsey boat yep the whole thing nobody on there but people doing our live like no one else cruise it's not a partial the whole thing is us it's all the Ramsey personalities all week long. Plus, Manit Chauhan from the Food Channel. She's amazing. She's going to be doing some cooking demonstrations and things.

We're going to have all kinds of events and seminars on the ship as we go around. We're going to Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas. It's going to be amazing. We're going to have a blast. Stephen Curtis Chapman, Dove Award winner, Grammy Award winner. Our friend will be there doing a concert for us. You're going to love this, and we'll be with you. I'll be on the boat all week long, or the ship.

Sharon says, quit calling it a boat. Well, it's a very large boat. It's a ship. So there you go. Hey, you can secure your spot with a 600 deposit before all the cabins are gone at ramsey solutions.com slash cruise we have not done one of these this is the first one we've ever done we attempted to do one and there was this little virus thing that kind of screwed it all up and ended up getting canceled because we didn't want to die on the high seas or

something so now this is we're doing this thing, and we're excited about it. March of next year, March 22nd through the 29th. John, this is going to be fun. I can't. I'll tell you what. I can't wait. It's my first cruise. You've never been on a cruise?

Never been on a cruise. This is my first cruising experience. Wow. Well, you're starting out on high cotton, because this is like Holland, America. This is not Walmart on the seas here. This is a big dog. I'm a Walmart on the seas kind of guy, so I'm pretty excited about this. This is good stuff here.

You're living high. Good stuff. Hey, it's to live like no one else, Chris. By the way, that means you should be in Baby Step 4 or beyond. You're not supposed to be taking vacations if you're in 1, 2, and 3, getting out of debt and building your emergency fund. So we want you to come and celebrate with us if you've gotten out of debt, everything but the house, and you're working either four, five, six,

or you're at seven, something like that. You got a little money and everything's okay now. We got you away from the edge of the cliff. We're not trying to take money from broke people on a cruise. That would be kind of backward, wouldn't it? So, no, we want you to come uh matter of fact you can aim at it we'll probably do another one someday because this one's almost sold out so but here's a here's a great idea you're getting ready for school it's back to

school starts all the drama imagine just sliding over your spouse like hey honey in march i got us taken care of we're going on cruise. You probably should discuss it with her before you slide over there that we're doing it. Way to go, fun ruiner. I know, I'm a fun ruiner. That's me. Don't make large decisions. That's a guy that's made large decisions

and got hit for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Turns out my wife is not into surprises. Who knew? All right, RamseySolutions.com slash cruise. That's how you do it. Anthony's with us. Anthony is in Omaha, Nebraska.com slash cruise that's how you do it anthony's with us anthony is in omaha nebraska hi anthony how are you good how's it going guys i'm a huge fan well

thank you how can we help today all right so i'm in uh i'm a newer listener to the show and uh my And my baby step number two, I got about $5,000 in credit card debt and a bed that we financed. And I also have a car payment that's $500 a month, and I owe about $25,000 on that 9% interest. So my question is, I live in Sioux City, Iowa, and I drive to Omaha every day for work. It's about an hour and 40 minute commute. I'm a journeyman plumber in Omaha, and my boss pays for my gas and maintenance on my vehicle. But I'm afraid that I'm going to drive it into the dirt before the loans paid off. And the whole reason I started working there was because he told me he would get me a company vehicle and benefits and stuff like that. But it's been about a year, and none of that has happened yet. So I'm wondering if I should switch and go back to Sioux City and work there really close to my home.

I could get a company vehicle and get rid of my car, pay off the remaining balance, but I would be making about $30 an hour instead of $40, so it would be about a 30% deduction in pay. So my question is, I just, I don't know how I should handle it basically. When you make $30 an hour, where does that take you in five years? Definitely more than 30. And I don't know for sure that's what they'll pay me. I'm just low-balling it. But I would imagine it's going to be around there. Why is it less? Same job?

Journeyman? Yeah, same job. The demand for work is just higher in Omaha. There's not as much in Sioux City. They don't pay plumbers as much. But there are guys at the company that I'm talking with that do make upwards of $40 or more. Okay. How old are you?

I'm 31. Okay. I would not make the decision on a singular piece of data, meaning your job. There's other parts to the data. There's your future. Where do you parts to the data. There's your future. Where do you want to be in 10 years? There's where I want to live. Are you married?

No, engaged. Okay. And where is her family? Her family lives in Sioux City. Okay. Well, pretty high likelihood you're going to be in Sioux City, right? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. That wouldn't be unusual anyway. I mean, unless you just decided to move. So if you wanted to, you know, make more, you could go to even a

bigger city than Omaha. You all leave Sioux City. What does she do? She's a pharmacy tech okay so she can land anywhere and i mean you could go to kansas city bigger than either one of those and let's just pretend make 60 okay so it's 60 40 or 30 based on the demand in the areas because kansas city's a boom town um so you know i'm just making this up okay but in the in all of that you're choosing to move away from her family and really what sounds like your hometown too so choice number one is where do i want to live okay where do you want to live do you know um it doesn't really matter to me i know but you're married and hurt do you guys want to leave there or not you know um no okay all right so we're going to live in sioux city all right then that helps me a bunch because i ain't driving an hour and 40 minutes for 10 bucks

no way life sucks on the road that much and yes you're destroying a very expensive vehicle this makes no sense at all. So yes, you take the other job, but you don't even have the other job at 30. You probably walk in there and go, hey, I got a car promised over here at 40 and benefits promised over here at 40. If you guys will give me the same car and the same benefits he's promising me, you don't have to say you got them because you haven't got them yet. But the other guy promised I'm making 40 and he's promised me a car and benefits if you guys are giving me a car and benefits in 40 i'm here you'll probably get hired right and then the question then the question you're asking me becomes a no-brainer you don't you don't even have to think about it i'm not commuting an hour

and 40 minutes to make the same money no right right so go see what you can get and then that answers your question so what you're doing is you're proposing you're giving me and and john an actual versus a hypothetical because you don't have a solid second option yet. You need to turn your hypothetical into three different solid job offers. And then I think the decision will be instantaneous. John, that's kind of a faulty way of approaching decision making, right? Yeah. I don't ever, like you said it best, I don't like ever making a decision based on a singular data point.

And I also think it's worth, you're about to say, I do, you're about to create something totally new with another person. I think it's worth asking that person, what do you envision our life like? And I can't imagine a spouse saying, well, I imagine you on the road for two and a half hours of every single day. So you won't be around. So we can get married and I can just get your check. And so I, yeah, create a world where you can live where you want to live and make that thing happen unless you just can't live in that city like being a book editor in manhattan you probably gotta move it's too expensive right yeah but um man i i think dave i think you're a good journeyman you can go to sioux City and make it happen.

Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. If you haven't listened to the Dr. John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Networks, it is one of the top podcasts in the world right now. And talking about relationships and mental health issues. He's a Ph.D. in counseling, so he's there to help you. Somebody told me this weekend you're America's coolest shrink. I accept that. I'll go with that. I accept that.

Rock and roll T-shirts, Led Zeppelin T-shirts on your shrink, right? I had a woman say, you know you're the big brother I never had, and I thought, that's about right. That's kind of nice. Yeah, I'm the uncle, and now I've become grandpa. You're grandpa. I'm the grandpa you never had. First, I was the friend.

And then later, as I went along, I got to be the uncle. And now I'm the grandpa. But that's okay. All that's good. I'll take it. Steven is in Austin, Texas. Hey, Steven, what's up? Hi, Dave and John.

Hey, I have a question. My wife and I have $30,000 in Apple stock burning a hole in our pocket, and we have a tight, structured lifestyle with three kids, and I would love advice on what to do with those shares. Okay. Well, anytime someone has any kind of a non-retirement asset, like mutual funds or stock or anything like that i'm always going to use that to further them on our seven baby steps because we have now proven data after decades of doing

this that that is the fastest right way to become wealthy so all that to say uh do you all have any debt? Yes. We owe $170,000 on our house. We have a $20,000 student loan and then just a furniture loan of $2,200. Okay. All right. Well, we teach folks the baby step one is to have $1,000 set aside, a little starter emergency fund. Then two is become debt-free everything but your house. Three is to build an emergency fund on two is become debt-free everything but your house three

is to build an emergency fund on top of that thousand that is three to six months of expenses so i'm going to use any assets you've got that are not retirement including the stock to do that first and foremost so i'm paying off your student loan and your furniture loan today when you sell that stock and i'm going to use the rest of it to start building my emergency fund as fast as I possibly can. And now that I don't have those two payments, I should have a little more room in the budget to build that emergency fund quickly. I see. And here's how I know that also works. Do a little reverse engineering. Let's pretend you did not have a student loan and someone came up and said, you can borrow $20,000 on a student loan and someone came up and said you can borrow $20,000 on a student loan and buy Apple stock with it would you do that no no no you would not do that I would not let you do

that that would be silly okay and in essence that's where you are it isn't how you got here but by not selling the stock and paying off the loan it's as if you did that you follow me yes it's the same risk portfolio same risk analysis same mathematics involved and all of that and so yeah clean it up man and work it all the way through so you're new to all this Ramsey stuff. Let me send you a copy of the Total Money Makeover book. It's the one that's the baby steps on steroids. It'll show you every little nuanced question about walking those steps and why they work. And, you know, we've sold 10 million of those at this point. So we know we've had 10 million people go through Financial Peace University also.

So we know this process works. And that's, you know, the ninth question that you can go that way. And it's also when you have stock like that, like just say Apple stock or Tesla, it's easy to say, I'm going to use this for something great, not to go back and pay for something I've already been a part of. But think of it this way, like Steve Jobs just put you through school. Let's just be happy about it. Let's come up with some way to frame it.

That's good. If 20 years ago, if someone said, hey, Steve's going to give you $30,000 to go to college, I'll take that deal. So it's hard to pay for something you think you've already gone through, but you haven't paid for it yet. Let's just cash it out, pay for it, and let's move into the future. Very good. Riley is in Charlottelotte north carolina hey riley hi uh how are you doing mr grandly

great brother how can we help so uh i'm calling i've been watching all your videos for a little while now and i wanted some advice on uh an engagement ring for my girlfriend as far as price goes. I'm about to graduate UNC Charlotte this fall. Congratulations. What's your degree in? It's actually going to be in history. And the reason why is that was one of the closest things that I could get to finishing on time.

Originally it was going to be criminal justice, but my job doesn't care what my degree is in and they'll still give me a 10% increase in my pay once I get through some of the training. Cool. What are you going to do? I'm going to be a Charlotte police officer. Oh, good. Thank you. Very cool. Yes, sir. So the real question is how much should you spend on this engagement ring? Yeah, yeah.

Well, how much do you love it? Right now I'm an idiot. I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding. You didn't go there much so so what when will the um when will you be getting married so um it would it would be next year probably the end of next year will you be a police officer by then yes i'd be through the academy and they're paying me officer salary to the whole academy so okay and how much will you be making as an officer uh about 65 000 a year okay all right um the jewelry stores will often tell you three months of pay our rule is one month of pay okay five grand okay or less okay that Okay. How old are you? Yes, sir.

23. Okay, good. And then I'll throw in some unsolicited advice. Diamonds and furniture are the two things that are marked up the most that we buy in our 20s. High markup big margin so my point is what you would pay for a one carat at a retail jewelry store you can probably buy that diamond for half of that okay by snooping around and finding a broker now the danger in doing that is and it can be dangerous at the retail store too you you're going to invest five thousand dollars in something you're getting ready to learn a little bit about diamonds as you

go along okay and meaning you're going to learn about clarity cut uh you're going to learn about flaws uh you're going to learn about these things because you want to know about it meaning you're going to learn about clarity cut. You're going to learn about flaws. You're going to learn about these things because you want to know about it. If you're going to spend five grand on something, you should want to know about it. And I bought quite a few. My wife has several things that sparkle in her life. And so the but but, you know, and this is very tacky sounding and you would really need to have someone with you that knows something about jewelry if you happen to have a friend or a father's friend

or something like that that is in the jewelry business that would go with you if you can find it at a pawn shop and it's a good stone you probably can buy it and have it reset you probably buy it for 25 or 30 cents on the dollar like i bought it i bought a diamond for 12 000 bucks that was easily a 50 000 diamond okay just to give you an idea and but but i've been screwing around with it a little bit i still wasn't completely comfortable with my level of knowledge to do that so i had a buddy of mine come over and look at it with me. And I did know the guy that owned the pawn shop and I trusted him. He was actually a friend and a good, he knows, knows the stuff too.

But I checked it two different ways and I grasped what I was doing. So that, that can be kind of a little bit of a fun treasure hunt for you. So don't just walk into the people that are, oh, he got it at Jared's. No, thank you. No, he shouldn't get it at Jared's. You should never get it at Jared's. I'm sorry, Jared. But whoever Jared is, bless his little heart.

But, yeah, those people, that's going to be like buying furniture at the mall. Okay, you're going to pay full stinking price for it, no deals. You're in North Carolina. You know about furniture deals, right? And so you run over to Hickory, and it's 50 cents on the dollar, right? Yes, sir. Okay. This is what I'm talking about.

So poke around, learn a little bit about it while you're doing that, and have some fun with it. And if she wants to pick out a certain type of thing, that's fine. You can find diamond brokers out there that will look for it. I wouldn't break my back on this, but I also wouldn't just walk in there like sheep being led to the slaughter thing, you know. That happened to me, man. You paid full time?

I paid full time for the first one. First one was.23, baby. Yes. We're talking a speck. Yes. .23. You can't even see it. That's what love looks like, baby.

That's what love looked like when I was 20. Had no money. That's all the love there was. $1,166 in 1982. I'm just saying. And I remember those $56 payments, too. Wow. Unbelievable.

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