The Ramsey Show - App - My Wife Keeps Using Her Credit Card Behind My Back (Hour 2)

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

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Music Music Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's The Ramsey Show, where dad 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 am Dave Ramsey, your host. This is The Ramsey Show. Chris Hogan, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones and you can get in at 888-825-5225.

That's 888-825-5225. Colton starts off this hour in Nashville. Hi, Colton, how are you? I'm good. How are you guys? Great. How can we help? Good. Hey, so I'm kind of, I mean, this is a good stress to have, I guess, to a degree. So I have right now about $7,000 in credit card debt and then $6,000 in student loans. And then we have about $25,000 in minors in a car. And then we're about to close on our first house, and we are going to need to put down around $21,000 to avoid PMI. And we have currently sitting in our checkings around, um, 87,000. And so I guess my question is, um, do I, obviously I'm going to have the 21,000 coming out in about a month for the house. Um, do I tackle all these debts, um, right right now because we have the money,

or I guess just kind of get in the house, get that settled, and then, like... What are those debts total? So debt total, we're about $38,000 with the car, student loans, and the credit card debt. Okay. All right. Well, we teach folks not to buy a home until you're debt-free and have your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses in place. But it sounds like we can do all three things with $80,000. Yep. Yeah.

So write a check and be debt-free today, a series of checks. Put $21,000 aside for your down payment, and set the rest of it aside as your three to six months of expenses for your emergency fund. Yep. Okay. Colton, if you do all of those, if you do all of that, after the $87,000, you would still have $21,000 left

as part of your three to six-month emergency fund. Yeah, and I think that that just stresses me out because in my mind, I hate being under a certain amount in our account. Then you should sell your car. What's up? Then you should sell your car. I should sell my car? Yeah, your car is causing you stress, or you shouldn't buy this house.

It's causing you stress. Because when you start buying a bunch of crap that you don't pay for, and you don't admit it, and you act like you don't have stress because the money's laying over there in your account, that's falsehood. That's a faux piece. It's not real peace. Yeah, and I think for our income levels, I think that we're okay.

I think the biggest part that worries me is about $130,000 per year. Yeah, great. How old are you guys? So I just barely turned 28, and then my wife is 24. Well, you've done a good job saving. You've done a sucky job with debt. Yep. And you haven't done a good job organizing all of this, and you just kind of go buy stuff whenever you want to.

That's right. And you can clean all this up. In one fell swoop. Because you've been saving good. Yep. And here's what will happen. When you get out of debt, you don't have any money. I mean, you've got $20,000 or so in your emergency fund.

You don't have any debt except your new home. And be sure to put that on a 15-year fixed, by the way, not a 30, then what you're probably going to do, because you're a natural saver, you're probably going to put some more in that emergency fund before you start investing, because that $21,000 is not enough for you to feel comfortable. That's maybe three months of expenses, but it's not six months, and you probably want six months since you're a saver by nature. Yep, but you're going to have to stop the stupid with the debt, which means as you write these checks, you guys are looking at each other saying, we're not doing anything else.

Like prime example, Dave, I feel this in my bones. I do. It's not the cold weather either. It's wisdom. Because you buy a new house, and guess what? You think you've got to buy new furniture. Uh-oh. Furniture.

Yeah. Oh, you've got to get furniture because you've got the new house. You need a new couch. The old couch can't come to a new house and guess what you think you gotta buy new furniture oh yeah oh you gotta get furniture because you got the new house you need a new couch the old couch can't come to the new house yes it can too because it's a couch okay slow down they do what they're told slow down you're trying to do everything at this light speed and i'm telling you it increases debt back into your life move with the furniture that you have. Sit down, make a plan that you're going to save up and you're going to pay cash. Yeah, for furnishing the home. Yeah, yeah.

And if there's some rooms that are unfurnished, guess what? It's fine. Throw a box in there. Go sit down on it. It'll be fine. But I'm telling you this from wisdom because I've done that stupid, where you feel this being compelled to do things before you have the money, which ends you back in debt. So, Colton, take a deep breath, buddy.

Write checks. Clean this up. And move forward with your financial future on a whole other level. You guys need to get plugged into Ramsey Plus. The problem is you've not had a plan. You guys have just kind of been doing. Yeah, that's good. That's good. You know, I was just sitting here thinking, in the 60s, 1960s, it was very difficult to borrow to buy furniture.

It was unusual. And so my mom and dad moved into a 1,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath ranch house with a full basement in it and um i remember most of my life my younger years anyway up until maybe i don't know 12 years old um our living room didn't have any furniture in it had this wonderful green shag carpet that you had to rake remember the rake you ever rake shag carpet no you have to rake it it had it like a grain to it and when you got finished vacuuming you had to rake it it like it's like cutting grass and so but there was no furniture in there until uh because we had the money to buy furniture and you couldn't buy it they wouldn't i mean at least regular people i mean rich people i guess could but i guess regular people couldn't borrow money because there was no

rooms there they went i mean it was just there you know, no nothing down on a couch or zero percent interest until your tax is gone. When did that stuff come aboard? Was that in the 80s? The 70s and big time in the 80s. Big time in the 80s. But it starts showing up in the mid to late 70s is the first time. 90 days same as cash, particularly big in the 80s and moved on from there.

But I mean, it's just, so my point is that you're correct that it's okay to save up and pay cash for furniture it sure is even if it's a few years which in his case is not going to be he makes plenty of money by getting them couch but i had a friend of mine he went to goodwill got some furniture for a room and he said when we get the money one piece will leave at a time and i never thought this guy would be that kind of person. But he put his pride aside. And he goes, we're not going to let this rush us. We've done stupid before.

Dude, we bought a $6,000 leather couch for $600 at a garage sale and the rich people into town. Yep. That's what we did. And it was a great leather couch. I wish I had that leather couch. It was awesome. And it's probably still okay because that leather lasts forever oh yeah it's real cow but yeah it was like a real cow and um comfortable too but it was real expensive

yeah rich people stuff and we bought it for 600 bucks because they just changed the color out you know mama's redecorating whatever over there on that got you a deal yeah man it's amazing what happens if we can change our thinking. They probably wish they had that couch back. This is The important than ever. While some circumstances can't be controlled, there are items within your budget you can take charge of, such as your health care costs. For nearly 40 years, Christian Health Care 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. Chris Hogan, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. It means even if you mismeasure, you pick the wrong color, they'll remake your window blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code RAMSEY to get the best possible deal. All right, today's question comes

from Rebecca in Washington. She says, I'm on step two of my baby steps. A year ago, I started a new job and was given stock in my company. When I started, our stock was around $33 a share. My stocks have now vested and a quarter of them are being released to me. Shares are now sitting at $127 per share. Is it wise to sell my shares to pay off debt? Or since our stock prices continue to rise, should I leave my shares invested? Oh, Rebecca, listen to me. I want you to sell what you're able to sell. Be aware of the taxes. Reach out to a tax ELP. Talk to a smart investor pro.

But get this sold and apply it to our debt as soon as possible. Absolutely. Let's pretend, because we don't know numbers, but let's pretend there's $20,000 worth of stock. And there's $20,000 on a credit card. Okay. So there's a way you can analyze this, Rebecca, in the future and others of you. And it's helped me over the years to do this. I read it in the Harvard Investment Newsletter about probably 25 years ago.

It's called a sunk cost analysis. And all that means is you reverse engineer it. And you say, what if I didn't own this stock and I didn't have this $20,000 worth of credit card debt? If I had the opportunity, would I borrow $20,000 on my credit card to buy this stock at $127? It's the same exact math. No, it is. The reverse engineering, though though gives you pause yeah and makes your stomach leap into your throat and go no i would not do that yeah well if you don't do

that by holding on to the stock and not paying off the twenty thousand dollars twenty thousand dollars worth of stock and not selling it at 127 a share to pay off a twenty thousand dollar credit card bill mathematically it's exactly the same thing. Wow. When you reverse engineer it, though, it grabs you by the heart. Oh, you see it clearly. And you quit doing the math stuff.

Yeah. And it's kind of like, let's say you could do that with anything. I mean, it doesn't have to be an investment. You can say, I've got a $20,000 boat sitting in my driveway that I have not had in the lake in four years. Now, if I had $20,000 piled up in the middle of the kitchen table, would I go buy a boat if I didn't own one? And most people, if you haven't had the thing in the lake in four years, would say no. Which means it's time to sell the boat.

You would rather have the cash than the boat. Right. And when you pretend like you're doing it in reverse rather than the way you're sitting on, then it makes you go, why am I doing this? Yeah. And it really has helped me not do or undo a lot of things. A lot of stuff. That I wouldn't ever go proactively do.

Another one of those that comes up often is, hey, we want to move out of our current house and make it a rental and go buy another house and have debt on both of them. Should I do that? Well, let's pretend you were already over in house B. Would you go buy that old house with that much debt on it as a rental? And most of the time, people go, no. Well, you're just becoming a landlord by default, not by intention. And so when you reverse this stuff, sometimes it grabs you around the throat and makes you go, that's stupid. I'm not doing that.

It helps me a lot. No, it does. That's a really good way of looking at it. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Derek is with us in Minneapolis. Hi, Derek. How are you? Hi, how are you doing?

Thanks for taking my question. Sure. How can we help? Well, a couple things. When I was in college, I had a ton of credit card debt, and I said I'd never do that again and kind of worked my way out of it. It was pretty bad. And pre-Dave Ramsey, before I knew about you,

my wife, she had a ton of credit card debt and we worked really hard for a year or two to get it paid off. Recently, I just bought a car from a guy. He asked me why I paid cash for the car. I could afford a better car than that. And I said, because I hate debt. So he left your book and my car. One of the best gifts ever.

So the question is, twice now, we've paid off my wife's credit card. We kind of have things separated now. And now she wants to go back again to us paying them off because I'm kind of pushing the Dave Hansen model. How do I get her to be motivated and not go behind my back and run a credit card debt again? Why are your finances separated? Well, right away we were together.

We paid off her credit cards. It was about $16,000. How long have you been married? 14 years. Yeah, so why are your finances separated? This is why. I live my life to death. This is the only battle we have.

After we paid them off, I thought we were done with them. She told me she cut them up. I actually watched her cut them up. The next year when we got our tax returns back, that's kind of when we paid our last $1,000 on them. But our tax returns the next year, she said, let's use the tax returns to pay off the credit cards. I said, we don't have any credit cards.

So I have to worry about that. She said, well, I have $9,000. Okay, so you didn't separate your accounts. You never had them together. No, we had them together. Oh, that's impossible. It's impossible that you had them together because it's impossible. She has credit card debt.

You don't know about if your finances are together. Right. My mom and dad are kind of helping her on the side. Doesn't matter. Oh, so they're paying the credit card bill so she can hide it from you? Pretty much it yeah so we separated then for the next 14 years and um she asked me you know how much money we have so like that's a kind of show and she she noticed i've saved up a ton of wealth kind of using your system by myself and now she wants to get back on and do this together it's not it's not my system if you're not doing it together.

Yeah. Okay. And, Derek, I'm going to tell you this. Trying to do money stuff, you guys have a marriage issue. There's a... You know, it's tough. Trust me, we don't hardly ever fight. No, no.

I'm not saying you... Listen to me. Some of the nastiest fights are nonverbal. And so what I'm saying is, is you guys need to go sit down with a marriage therapist, a marriage counselor, and find out what this is that's standing in the way of you all connecting. Because this money stuff has got to be done together as a team. And it's putting the cards on the table and being upfront and real. So you guys can make some decisions about how you're going to move forward. Your probability of continuing to build wealth at the speed you should build wealth is very low until you guys get on the exact same page and you're doing a monthly budget together that both of you know where every dollar is going before it goes, and you're both in agreement on the basic tenets of how you're going to handle money, an emergency fund, you're going to be debt-free, we're not using credit cards anymore. But you're sent her off over there by herself,

and then you're shocked that she runs up a credit card bill. That's not right. Well, she makes a ton of money. I don't care. Yeah's not right. Well, she makes a ton of money. I don't care. Yeah, I know. So I could, literally, I could pay off all the credit card bill. I don't care. Okay.

You guys need to combine your freaking lives. You're not going to fix this otherwise. You're right. You got a roommate, dude. Are y'all splitting who uses the mayonnaise? Who uses the mustard?

I mean, who gets to drink which beer in the refrigerator? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. You know, y'all need to be on the same page. It's a big deal, man. It's a big deal. And you do big deal and you don't you do not grasp what you're missing out on that and then you turn around acting like somehow she's deficit right

because she's running you know you said go run your own finances and then you're shocked that she did of course she did yeah and of course she did whatever the flip she wanted to do so i don't think this is her fault dude i think it's yours yeah no and again you guys it's pronoun problems you keep saying i and she it's got to be we what are we doing moving forward i think the first step you guys need to take is to get with a marriage counselor to sit down and get real about your situation and what you want from the future. It's imperative, or you're going to keep going in circles, my friend. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Chris Hogan, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today on the Dead Free Stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. Joey and Maylene are with us.

Hey, guys, how are you? Good, how are you? Great. Where do you guys live? We're south suburbs of Chicago. Awesome. Welcome to Nashville. Good to have you down here in the middle of a snowstorm.

Yeah. Wow, just like Chicago or something, huh? Something like that. Guess we brought it with us. Who would have you down here in the middle of a snowstorm. Yeah. Wow. Just like Chicago or something, huh? Something like that. Guess we brought it with us. Who would have thought? It's your fault. We were wondering whose fault it was.

Why would you do that to us? How much debt have you guys paid off? We did $54,085. Awesome. How long did this take? 12 months. One year to the date. 12 months.

Love it. And your range of income during that time it was 56 000 to 100 000 nice jump whoa how'd you how'd you double your income we just we were very intentional turns out when uh you run a business with no debt you can give yourself a pay increase oh okay so you just said I'm bringing more home. Yes. Pretty much. And worked all the time.

We did work a lot, yeah. What kind of business have you got? I have a pet salon and then another side hustle, but yeah, I have a pet salon. And that's where you made the money? That's where I made the money. Okay. Very cool. Lots of pet care, huh?

What do you do, Julie? Oh, lots of pet care. I'm a union electrician in Chicago, local 134. Good. Good for you guys. Well done. Very well done. What kind of debt was the $54,000?

Pretty much everything you say not to do. Family loan, consolidation loan, credit card from the consolidation that we didn't close, and some student loans. And business debt. I had in the business, I had taxes. I had, and I say I because at the time I did not involve him. I was just doing it on my own and not really talking about it. So it was a quick loan.

It was that my mom did for me. It was just everything that you talk about. So you guys were normal we were so normal completely normal so what happened because you did a complete 180 this is amazing we did um it started back i was working on myself and um seeing a just a counselor and i realized that we were like making all this money and we were just living paycheck to paycheck and it made no sense to us so i just brought it up to him and um he was fighting it for a little bit and then i showed him i spelled out like all

our debts not including the business but all the debts and um he saw the numbers and then he still didn't want to do it yeah so i said we were too broke yeah our our church um we go to parkview um and our church actually was having it at a discount the financial piece and so um i told him i was like hey i know we've been back and forth about this but like they're discounting it and it starts on tuesday like let's just do this and he goes we do not have any we don't have the money to do that and i go well that's why we need to do it so um we signed the next morning for our daughter's birthday he signed us up and we started our journey wow so harlow's church yeah uh-huh oh he's a good friend yeah good man yeah joey his son-in-law used to work here for a long time. He did? Oh, cool. Joey, as you look back on it, what was the thing standing in your way?

I think just believing in it. She pushed me over that edge and got us going. When I started downloading this stuff, it turns out I had the EveryDollar app on my phone for like two years and never opened it. Her pushing us forward and really getting it in my face showed me it's totally doable. So how far were you into the class, Joey, before you went ding, ding, game on? That first class. Oh, the first one. Yeah, I was easily persuaded.

Wow. You know, I saw it. I'm like, this all makes sense. Let's go all in. So you didn't hear that. Yeah, because I'm like you in the sense I go into stuff a lot of times with my shields all up. I'm like, nah, I'm a scam alert, scam alert, scam alert. Is this guy, is this guy, is this guy, what is this guy?

And then it takes me a little while to believe on something because I have the gift of cynicism. But once I do, then I'm all in, and that sounds like what you did. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. All in. Well, that's what a lot of people do and that's okay

way to go man way to go you guys yeah I love that you guys it sounds like you united yeah in a big way and I give all the glory to God because he truly

guided us our path to this where we are now and strengthened our marriage our marriage is in a whole new place and it's the best thing

yay that's awesome that is so proud of you guys yeah thank you very well done so when someone hears They're just in a whole new place, and it's the best thing. Yay. That's awesome. That is. So proud of you guys. Yeah, thank you. Very well done. So when someone hears you paid off $54,000 in one year, you completely combined your finances. Yes.

And we're making more money than we've ever made in our lives. And they say, how do you do that? What do you tell them the key is? For me, the key really is just communication. That's one of the things that when we got married, I always told them. I sometimes am over-communicative. But now that we've gone through this, it's really just communicating about every part of your life when you're in marriage. And not being afraid to talk and just lay it out there and not judge each other.

And just know that we all have our faults. So there and not judge each other and just know that we're each, you know, we all have our faults. So just be open with each other. And it's a beautiful, it just makes the world of difference. Yeah. Teamwork. And then budgeting. Yeah.

Like a budget is so much, so freeing. Yeah. And it seems like it's going to be the opposite when you start. Yeah. I was, I think that was my biggest thing. It's all like a budget's going to be the opposite when you start. Yeah. I think that was my biggest thing. It's not like a budget's going to be a straitjacket. Yeah. When we started, I had a plan for her 30th birthday, and I was going to take her to Nashville.

And I was like, all right, we can do this, but let me still put this money aside. But you can't know why. I was all in at that point. I was like, no, we can't do that. It's not the plan. I'm like, well, cash flow, it's fine. Just trust me. And I fought him all the way up until the shutdown happened and we were stuck at home. We got back to work and I'll tell you what, I was like, let's just breathe and go take a break. And we came here and it truly just kind of,

because during the shutdown, because we were budgeting, we were able to get through it without taking any more debt. We were able to just pay off and still pay off our debt in the time frame we wanted to. So it was just like a relaunch to both of us. And we sat down and revisited where we were at. And that just skyrocketed us right to the end. Our goal was to be done by the 31st of last year and bring in the new year that way.

It was probably the end of August. I was looking at the bank statements and I was like, we have this much left and we have this much in the bank. We can just take it all out. Everything is paid for. We were able to pay it off on our daughter's sixth birthday, which was to the date when we started. I pay it off on our daughter's sixth birthday,

which was to the date when we started. I love it. Very cool. She got to hit the button. Oh, that's fun. Yes. It was awesome. The button is her family tree being changed.

Yeah. Wow. Very neat. Yeah. Well, congratulations, you guys. Thanks. I'm appreciative of Pastor Harlow and Parkview and the guys teaching the class. Us too.

Makes it available to you guys. Absolutely. Well very well done good stuff who are your biggest cheerleaders you know i would have to say um for the most part everybody closest to us were very like on board they weren't quite understanding why we were doing things we did but um his mother was really in shock she was so proud of like happy for us but but she was like, you guys are working all the time, and we were meeting babysitters like all the time. So just to really all of our friends. Even if they didn't understand, they stuck beside you. They stuck beside us, yeah.

That's family. That's good. And I'd say anybody who said we couldn't do it. Yeah. That was fuel. Kept us going. You're that guy. I like it.

All right. You too. Yeah. Very fun. Congrats, Eugene. Great job. One thing I was really excited about with this journey is it also got my parents on board because we both grew up with, you know, our parents didn't necessarily know how to manage money together

or just in general. And all of them, or my parents, ended up doing the journey. And they also became debt-free in the same time as us. All right, let's get the kids in. What are their names and ages? Emma is six and Layla is two. And we got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Everyday Millionaires. That's the next chapter in your story. Emma and Layla.

Layla. Layla. I'm sorry. And Maylene and Joey from Chicago. $54,000 paid off in 12 months. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. 3, 2, 1. We're debt-free! I love it. Way to go.

Yeah. Fantastic. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Here at Ramsey Solutions, we want to transform so many lives that disruption spreads like wildfire across our country. Imagine a world where it's weird to have a student loan. Instead of assuming that it's the only way to get an education. Imagine a world where the majority of people pay cash for their cars. Imagine a world where credit cards are the cigarette of the financial world.

Imagine being part of causing that level of disruption with the work that you do every day. At Ramsey Solutions, that's why we have 1,000 people at our company working together to create digital products and services to help people transform their lives with the goal of disrupting the toxic culture in America, whether it's parenting, marriage, mental health with Dr. John, money, careers with Ken Coleman. We want to disrupt it. If you want to join us on that crusade, we're on the hunt right now for software engineers

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And for a lot of people, 2020 was a year of reflection for you, where you looked around and you realized that maybe you weren't working at the kind of place you wanted to be. Well, this is the time to make that change. We talk about controlling the controllables. And so you've got a great opportunity to join a team that's on a mission. And so go over, check it out. If you're interested, go ahead and apply. Don't wait any longer because I'm going to tell you, we're voted as the best place to

work because that's exactly what we are. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. Jason is in Washington, D.C. Hi, Jason. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, thank you. It's an honor to speak with both of you. You too.

How can we help? I lost my dad about six weeks ago. Oh, what happened? It was a brain infection. It was rather sudden. He had a tumor, and then was a brain infection. It was rather sudden. He had a tumor, and then it went to infection, which was unexpected, of course. He was gone within a few months. Wow.

I'm sorry. Thank you. We're still in a bit of shock, of course, helping my mom with next steps. I wanted to ask about how to best help her invest. We have a SmartVestor Pro meeting in a couple of weeks. The only asset is a house. It's nearly paid off, but he did leave my mom with $350,000 in insurance and life insurance. I did those claims. I'm just not quite sure. Obviously, we'll work with the SmartVestor Pro, but I wanted to see what your thoughts were.

Okay. So is that all the money she has? She's got $10,000 liquid in a checking account. She gets a fixed income. She's going to get my dad's check. So total, she'll have about $3,200 a month in fixed income every month. She can afford that without attempting this insurance money. We're going to have to sell the house to a downsized hermitage

for the only honest income. How old is she? 66. Okay. All right. So the plan is to move down into a house that she can afford and pay cash for it, I take it? Correct. The current house is about $300,000. There's about $70,000 left on the mortgage, and we can get her a house for about $200,000.

Okay. And she's okay with this idea? She loves it. This is a big house. She's ready to move down. Perfect. Okay. And that's still going to leave the $350,000 clear, right? Correct. Yeah, so we're just going to invest that money and let that add to her monthly income. She should be able to invest it with a SmartVestor Pro and those mutual funds should create a monthly income for her to add to what she's already got. It's a fairly clean process.

I'm glad she's got you there walking with her. Yes. Yeah. And she's, you know, Jason, your mom is young at 66. So, you know, glad that you're going to invest and have a long-term kind of mindset for her in moving forward. Yeah, if you can live off of the income that she has plus the income that those mutual funds create with no house payments, which she probably can do, it sounds like, then you're going to let that money sit there and it may even grow. You may not even pull all of the income off of it.

You don't have to. There's not a rule that says you have to. But also I would want her to be taking good care of with in terms of the margin in her monthly budget i don't want her on beans and rice okay there's no reason no reason for her to have to be here so i mean she should have an income of with all of it combined north of six or seven thousand dollars a month and i think she can make it on that with no house no house payment absolutely yeah uh but just let people know out there you know if you're ever bumping into a situation where it's in your family or you bump into friends that have lost a loved one and if

insurance money is coming in we typically advise that you park that money for three to six months just sit it over in a money market account uh and and get yourself together kind of get your heart in the right place. Get a game plan. Get a structure. Because what you don't want to do is ever fritter away or misuse that money. It's very important that you become extremely intentional. And sometimes parking it there for three to six months will let you get yourself together

so you can make the right decisions. Absolutely. In this case, there's no downside to going forward with what she's talking about. That's right. That's a way of parking it because we're not using it. That's the point. It's just going to be sitting there invested. So, oh, well.

Hey, man, thank you for the call. I'm sorry. What a horrible thing you guys have gone through. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Esteban is with us in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hi, Esteban.

How are you? Hey, good. Sorry. Good. Thanks for asking. I just want to say thank you for taking my call. I've been watching you guys for a couple years now, and so it's just an honor to be able to speak with you guys.

You too. How can we help? Awesome. So I'm 19 years old uh recently just got married to my wife um she's 18 we live in fable arkansas um and now we recently just found out that she's pregnant and so we're going to be expecting in november yay yeah pretty exciting um we We have a little over $5,000 saved up right now. Our goal doing the baby steps was saving our three to six months worth of expense, saving that three to six months. But now we're expecting, and so I was just wondering what's kind of the, is there anything that should shift or change,

or what should we prioritize right now on doing? Yeah. Well, the only thing we prioritize right now on doing? Yeah. Well, the only thing we teach you to do while you have a baby on the way is not do the baby steps. You just push pause in the middle of them, wherever you are, and pile up as big a pile of cash as you can possibly pile up between now and the time baby comes. There's no downside to that, because after baby comes and baby okay, mommy's okay, and come home from the hospital, we take that money, take it back down to the $1,000 at that point.

Baby step one, pay off all debts in two, three, finish the emergency fund. We work the baby steps with that money. So it's just a nine-month delay on getting started. But meanwhile, you're piling up cash to get a quick start. Okay. Is there a certain number that we should kind of aim for to have saved up? As big as you can. Save as much as you can possibly save.

You can't have too much in your savings account. Right. Yeah, because, Esteban, you're going to, as Dave said, once the baby gets here, you're going to start now taking that money, and you're going to start applying it to the baby steps, and it's going to keep you right on pace, my friend. Right. Now, go ahead. Oh, I was just saying, I have an associate's degree.

I graduated from an early college high school, and so I applied to U of A to go in the summer. Now, do you think we should probably wait on me finishing school? I'm fine with you going as long as you pay cash for it. Yep. Just don't go into debt. Yep. Yeah, that'd be awesome if you finished up your school. What a great life you've lined up for yourself, young man.

Well done. Very well done. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit DaveRamsey.com slash show and register. We would love for you to come to Nashville and tell your story. We'll see you next time.