The Ramsey Show - App - My Work Hours Have Been Reduced...What Should I Do? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave 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 am Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney. Ramsey personality, best-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Mike is starting us off this hour in Buffalo, New York.

Hey, Mike, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Hi, John. Thank you very much. Thank you. How can we help? So my parents got divorced about 15 years ago. Since then, my mom has been paying for a whole life policy

insurance plan on my father. She's done paying for it. She's offered to kind of transfer it to me. It's a hundred thousand dollar policy. There's $5,500 cash value at this moment. Um, and I believe the annual premium is about $3,000. Not sure what to do. Uh, why would you do this? Um, my wife and I were talking about it and if we, he's 74 years old, so I realize it's kind of like shorting a stock and talking about the life of my father,

but if we only were to quote-unquote invest $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000 into it to get $100,000 in the end, it seems like it might be an okay idea. Won't be if he lives 20 years. That's true. How's his health? If we're just going to get cold and short your dad here. He's 74. He's had diabetes for about 30 years, and he's had a double bypass heart surgery.

We're not that close. I hope so. I love him as my father, but we're not that close. And you would become the beneficiary? I'm currently the beneficiary. Oh, you currently are. Yeah, but my mother has decided to stop paying on it, so she's offering for me to continue, me and my wife, or just take the cash value now and do something with it.

Okay. Well, you know, the thing about personal finance is it involves more than just mathematical analysis. We have to consider emotions and relationships and conscience and morality and behavior. All of those things enter into a wise answer to your question. Mathematically, I think you might come out. Yeah. But do you really want to do that i don't i don't want to do that yeah i mean we're joking around a little bit of being a little bit sarcastic about it you shorten your dad or whatever that kind of thing but i uh it's just not you know i don't i don't i don't when i'm 75 years old and i'm on my deathbed i that i didn deathbed, I don't want that going across my mind that I did that.

I don't think you're doing anything morally wrong. It's just weird. Would you agree? Yeah, I think that's why we're having a little bit of confusion about it. It feels weird. You know why it feels weird? Because it's weird. And, Mike, what you're going to start doing in your...

How long have you been married? Eight years. Okay. So you're still in a young marriage. What you're going to start doing is you and your wife are going to start counting this $100,000. You're going to start leaning into this $100,000. Well, we can get this kind of house or we can not deal with this. You're going to start making life decisions as though this is a sure thing.

And what happens is it's going to further press on that relationship with your dad. And I get that it, like Dave said, I get that the math may work out. You may make some money on this deal. He said he doesn't have much of a relationship with him. But it's just the same. I just don't want to. I wouldn't do it, and it has nothing to do with the same i just don't want i don't i i just i i wouldn't do it and it has nothing to do with the math i wouldn't either and i i'm the same way i just did i think you might

win the math argument but i um i don't think you're at the end of the i don't think at the end of your life you're going to be proud now if my dad came to me and said i've had this no no still no yeah i just don't want to short my dad no i me and said, I've had this. No. No, still no? No. I just don't want to short my dad. No, I definitely. It's just straight up what we're doing here. And it's just whether you like him or whether you don't. Right.

I mean, maybe you haven't spoken to him in 30 years. I don't know. But it doesn't matter. That's not the, it's just, it's, I'm not going to do it, I wouldn't short a stranger. No. I wouldn't do it. That's what I'm saying. But, again, I might if my dad came to me and said,

hey, I've been working on this deal. I've got a scheme for us. But me and my dad are – he's an old homicide detective. He talks about death at our house. That's just wrong. No, I hung out with your dad the other day. It's still wrong. Okay. Yeah, you can't short your old man.

Yeah. Even if you don't like him. In fact, I would say especially if you don't like him. Man, once you start leaning into spending that money, that's hard to come back from. You can do it if you want, but you called us and asked. And again, the answer here is based on the whatever scarring that this event does to your conscience that's causing you to ask the question. And this will leave a scar. And I don't want that scar in your spirit.

I love it. That's what I'm trying to avoid. Dalton is with us in Waco, Texas. Hey, Dalton, how are you? I'm doing pretty good. How about yourself? Better than I deserve. How can we help?

So I've got a pretty interesting situation here. My wife and I, we did financial peace, and we were doing pretty well. We paid off a little over $30,000 in a year. Good. And now my career situation, not my career, but my job has changed. So instead of working a consistent schedule, basically what I do is I go where, uh, where I'm needed, uh, different nursing homes. So essentially I don't have a steady, consistent, uh, income, you know, uh, you know, I might make a thousand one week. I might make less another.

So the issue we're trying to figure out is how to go about getting our budget back on track. Did your overall income go up or down? It's hard to say because this is a brand-new thing. I've only been doing this for a couple weeks. What do you think? I think it has the potential to either stay the same or go down because I'm also going back to school. So my days are limited. Why are you going back to school if you've got financial problems?

Well, I was furthering my nursing is what I was doing. Yeah, but you weren't doing that before when you were paying off debt. Now you added a variable to the situation after you lost the stability of your income why well uh frankly i've been a uh an lvn for over seven years now and i uh i'm really chasing trying to push to get the uh bachelors for nursing to go get into a hospital that'd be. Why don't you do that after you get out of debt? Well, that's a good thought, too. Yeah. Nothing changed here except you decided to go back to school

at the exact time your income became unstable. Bad choice. So I'd probably put off the school a little bit, and let's get this mess cleaned up first. As far as how to handle the irregular income, just run what you think your low average is going to be, and then make a list of things you want to do with money when you come in with more money than you thought. And so if you think it's going to be an average of about $1,000, run your debt budget on $500 or $700.

And then when more comes in, have a list of things that it automatically goes to that are your next priorities. It's an irregular income planning sheet, if you want to do it analog, in the back of your Total Money Makeover book. You know what disappoints and angers me to no end? As folks are going through some pretty hard times, identity thieves are using every opportunity to prey on us. With everything that's going on, thieves are setting up fake websites posing as government officials to get your personal info and claim

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Join us next Tuesday night, January the 12th at 7 p.m. for our free Reset livestream event to kickstart your money goals for 2021. I'll be joined by Chris Hogan, Rachel Cruz, and Craig Groeschel. We'll give you the motivation, the guidance that you need to hit the Reset button and say goodbye to money stress for good. 2020 needs to be in the rearview mirror text reset to 33789 right now and sign up to take the first step towards lasting financial peace or you can sign up at davramsey.com slash reset and if you're in the oklahoma city area you can

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you do not want to miss out on this Bill is with us, Bill's in Toledo, Ohio hey Bill, how can John and I help? Hi Dave, hi Dr. John I've got a pretty easy one for you where in the baby steps should I max out my contributions to health savings account unless you have ongoing health problems chronic health problems seven baby step seven that's easy enough for me yeah because you're doing 15 of your income into retirement at four

kids college at five you've got an emergency fund You probably got some money already in the HSA to cover deductibles and stuff. I'm guessing with the way you described it. I use my HSA and Baby Step 7 as an additional investment. I've never used it for health, knock on wood. And it's ended up being basically another retirement plan. I got a couple hundred thousand bucks in it. Nice. Yeah, we just finished up our

baby step three this month yeah so just let's go on with four five six get the house paid off and then you're looking for anything you can do to keep the government's hands off of money and the hsa is one method to do that okay hey thanks for the call man dave do you know off the top of your head if there's a cap for what I can put in annually for an HSA? Yes. It will depend on your HSA policy, but it'll be up to about $7,500. Okay. Somewhere in that range.

Whatever your deductible is. And usually the deductibles are five to seven, somewhere in that range. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't even remember what ours is here. I think it's $3,500 here per person but family that's right about seven family would be seven yeah and so um sharon and i max hours every year okay and just like we do a roth ira a backdoor roth yep um and so sheila and i were just having just having this conversation the other day and so i that's a good way to think of it is to think of it as an investment versus I got

my emergency fund to handle that stuff. Now, you've got a benefit here as a team member to get a $500 match. So I at least want to do that. Yeah. Take the free Ramsey money, right? Take my money. I'll take it all day long. I'll take it.

That's right. Take my money, please. Yes. Yeah. That would be the wise to go and get the $500 match at your stage because you're four, five, six. That's right. And you got to get the $500 match at your stage because you're 4, 5, 6. That's right. And, you know, you've got to get the house you just bought paid off.

When we get that paid off, then we'll go on and do the other. But I'd take the match. But beyond that, there's no reason to use it. I would use retirement plans. Use the Roth 401k here with a match. You want to take advantage of that. I just never considered an HSA retirement plan. Yeah.

If you end up with a ton of money in it, it ends up being that, especially if you've got health insurance. There you go. Like, I mean, if something happens and we have a half-million-dollar medical event at the Ramsey's, I'm $7,000 out of pocket. There you go. Right. And I can handle that a lot of different ways. That's right. Certainly out of your emergency fund, because it's got a max payout.

We have a 100% payout after the deductible on our HSA. Most of them are that, or they got an 80-20 with a stop loss after 15 grand or something like that. They're usually not going to break you. They're not going to wipe you out. Yeah, they're not going to wipe you out. You don't need $500,000 in your HSA to cover your health, unless you wanted to become self-insured later. Gotcha. Unless you wanted to become self-insured later.

Gotcha. You could do that. You could just say, I'm going to self-insure health-wise, like after retirement or something along those lines. That would be another thing you could use it for. That's a good question. Because it's tax-free when you use it for health. If you use it as a retirement, it's going to be taxed as you take it out. It'll be treated like a traditional IRA would.

Look at me learning here, getting smart. Look at that. Look at that. It can happen every day. Every day. Melinda is in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hey, Melinda, welcome to the show. How can we help?

Hi, Dave. How are you? Great. How can we help? So I have a question about how to possibly care for my mother-in-law in her later years. Currently, I'm on baby step two, and my husband and I have paid off just under $80,000 so far. That's awesome. His mom, yeah, we've learned a lot from you guys, so I really appreciate it. His mother does not really have that kind of financial

sense. She's almost 70 years old, lives in a mobile home, has $7,000 to her name, and we both stay up at night thinking about what her future is going to be. My husband has talked about, we own about an acre and a half, making her a granny suite and having her live on our property. I feel that's a little too close for me, but it's his mom, so I don't really know what to do. So are you asking a money question or a marriage question? Because it sounds like those are pretty tangled up in your question.

I guess both. that's that's fair so uh mom lives in a mobile home does she own the mobile home does she own the land uh no they uh she has to pay i think it's like in a community every month and then she doesn't have the mobile home paid off yet okay so um she's paying the payment, though, out of her what, her Social Security? She's collecting Social Security now, and then she does own her own. It's a service-based business, so when she, I guess, retires, she's just going to live on Social Security. Okay. Can she? It might be tight.

The other tricky part is we've been talking about starting a family, and she lives about seven hours away, and she said when we have grandbabies, she wants to move down here, and that's the other scary part. So it sounds like you and your husband need to have a bigger conversation in addition to the money, which is what are your obligations? What's the spirit behind how y'all are going to care for his mom? And y'all got to to care for his mom. And y'all got to get on the same page there. And when you're using words like scary and frustrated, I don't know if you're being funny about it because we're all funny about our mother-in-laws or if you legitimately

have concerns. And I know a lot of mother-in-laws that I'm just going to move closer to, they're not going to. They don't have the money to. They don't have any means to. It's not going to happen. And so you and your husband got to get on the same page with what your emotional, psychological, and familial obligation is going to be to your mother-in-law. If she stays where she is, she could probably almost make it on Social Security.

And if you decided you wanted to supplement that a little, you can. I wouldn't quote unquote stay up at night about how I'm going to take care of her. I don't think it's going to be that difficult. You're going to be out of debt. You're going to have an emergency fund. You're going to be living on a budget. You've got a decent household income, and you're going to be able to support her a little bit if you want to throw a couple hundred bucks a month on the table.

Right now you can't do that, but later on you'll be able to do that if you wanted to. To the tune of $5,000 a month, you're not going to be in a position to do that. But she doesn't require that either. Okay. Unless you sign her up for it. But no, Granny Sweet would not be my option here. Granny Sweet sounds like there's a lot of reasons not to do that so what's really keeping you up is it the money a lot of it is the money um he our biggest fear

you always hear chris hogan when he talks about the mom that she's eating dog food and that's our biggest fear is sure something like that happening. If she's got a Social Security check coming in and you're looking over her budget, she's eating dog food, it's her fault. She shouldn't be. Okay? Because she can make the payments on what you outlined there with a Social Security check. I don't want her to. I don't want anybody to be in that situation.

It sounds like she's going to be. But you and your husband have got to get on the same page with what the future is going to look like emotionally. How are you all going to take care of this together? Yeah. $200 gets rid of the dog food issue. Right. It's not a money problem. It's an alignment issue.

My co-host today here on the air, Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, celebrating some kind of anniversary to your 29th birthday. How many anniversaries of your 29th birthday is it? Yeah, we've had a few 29th birthdays coming up here. That's right. No, this is the anniversary of your 29th birthday, meaning it's your birthday. How old are you? I'm 43.

43. Okay, the 14th anniversary of your 29th birthday. 14th anniversary. That's right. That's a good way of saying it. That's good. You're just a pup. Just a youngster. Just a little child.

Socks older than you. Yeah. Happy birthday. Thank you, man. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. Find out for yourself why Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. You get free samples, free shipping.

And with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code RAMSY to get the best deal. So today's question comes from Bridget in Connecticut. How can I prepare my children, currently teens to early 20s, to handle their alcoholic father when he comes to them for money when they are adults? We have been divorced about seven years because of the alcoholism. He's currently unemployed and running through an inheritance that will eventually run out. I'm working hard to raise my kids and put them through college debt-free.

I know someday their father will come to them for money. How do I prepare my kids now when they are still young to handle this when it happens so they feel comfortable turning him down? That's a mess. So Dave, here's my thoughts. I'd love to hear what you have to say. I think I got several challenges here. And again, I'm going to rattle this off the top of my head. Number one, I don't like it when people negatively forecast against their ex. So that said, there is a reality here. Bridget knows this guy probably better than anybody. But I'm telling you, in the wording dripping between the letters is some still latent anger and bitterness.

That's right. She's still pissed. Right. And you don't want to plant seeds of that anger into the hearts and minds of your kids. And alcoholic fathers sometimes will knock on the door for their kids for money. That's a reality. That's a reality. There you go.

She's right. She's right. And be careful. So we're walking a thin line here between being honest. Your kids are in their teens and early twenties. They're not young kids anymore. You can talk pretty boldly and directly with a teen, um, with somebody in the early twenties, especially about their dad, the reality. And you can honor the man while still being honest about what living with an alcoholic is like.

And it says you're working hard to raise them and put them through college debt-free. Part of raising them is teaching them about boundaries, teaching them about honor and integrity and having a budget, and teaching them how to say no. And here's the deal. Will any kid ever feel comfortable telling their dad who needs help no never so instead of unless they're a psychopath right so instead of teaching your kid how to handle it so they feel comfortable turning them down no you want to teach your child to be resilient to do the right thing even when

it's really hard and how to reach out to friends to you to a pastor when they have to do something hard and then they need to go get support of their community, right? So you're not trying to teach your kids that, hey, we're going to turn into robots and not feel bad. No, man, it's always going to be uncomfortable, but we're still going to do the right thing and then we're going to deal with our discomfort in the right way. Yeah, I think that's wise. They're teens right they were in the house when he was in the house that's they were so they are children of an adult alcoholic and they've been dealing with her

venom for this many years too yep i think it would be advantageous for them to hear how to deal with the same exact issue from maybe a coach, a counselor. Absolutely. My hope here inherent in this. Maybe she doesn't teach them how to handle this. Maybe the coach does. The counselor does. That's fair. If she's unable to, yeah. Well, I mean, even if she's able to, I think them hearing it from someone other than their mom

makes it less crazy to tell your dad no. Because when you tell your dad no, you feel crazy. You feel weird. It's going to feel weird. It hurts. It's always going to feel weird. No matter how crazy it is, you're always going to feel like you did something wrong. Yeah.

You feel like you did something wrong. Because he's going to be, you know, one thing we do know about all addicts is they're always going to feel like you did something wrong yeah you feel like you did something wrong because he's going to be you know one thing we do know about uh all addicts is they're master manipulators if he's a good alcoholic man he'll make he's a master manipulator he's a travel agent for guilt trips that's right yeah so that's going to come up and so it's going to be good for them to just kind of learn that in the process of learning maybe what has happened to them as children, adult children of an alcoholic. Right. Because you have certain things that you're going to exhibit in your future, potentially exhibit to one, maybe to an extreme even, in future relationships. That's right.

So like, you know, when your daughter who's 15 someday is 24 and is dating and in a serious relationship thinking about getting married, there's going to be stuff boiling and boiling in that cauldron that's real. That's right. And, Mom, if you want to, one of the things I get questions from parents like this all the time is, what do I say? What book do I get them? Never forget this, Bridget, and to every parent dealing with hard conversations with their kids. You can, quote, unquote, teach them all day long, but they are watching you.

They are listening to you. That's way more of a teacher. So you want to teach them how to say no with grace? Yeah. You say no with grace. You want to teach them how to honor their dad and still respect themselves? Then take this venom, Bridget, out. Go deal with your hurt and pain, which obviously is still here, right?

Yeah, yeah. And that's why it's invalid for her to try to teach them. I think it's wise. Well, I always, I don't want moms. Completely. Right, there we go. We're the only teacher. That's it.

If I hear this from someone who has an ax to grind, it's one thing. When I hear it from an independent third party, the exact same words, they have more impact on me. That's right. That's right. A disinterested, so to speak, emotionally disinterested. Right. And what I'm trying to – and, Dave, I was just having this conversation with somebody yesterday. I'm trying to navigate what I'm seeing a broad picture is this outsourcing of parental insight into the lives of our children.

We don't want to do that. Right. I'm just saying that. But I think you're right. You know, that there's an advantage to having several people around. Absolutely. In a quasi-functional household. You know, them having a trust, a youth pastor that I trusted and that they trusted to go and bitch about their dad. That's right. Is a good thing.

Yeah. And I remember when my dad quit being a detective and became a minister at a large church. He said something and it stuck with me all these years. And I didn't realize how wise it was at the time but he said from this point forward you're not going to be able to hear me so i want you to find somebody in this church i want you to find somebody in this community that you can lean into yeah because now i'm always that's not that's not he's not saying i'm not going to parent you he's not saying i'm not going to try but you're you know you've got this fog called hormones that is releasing he's always going to be dead i'm not going to parent you. He's not saying, I'm not going to try. But you've got this fog called hormones that is releasing. He's always going to be dad.

I'm not going to be able to hear him in this other role. So, yeah, I think there's absolutely some wisdom there. But I think I want it to be both and. I want Bridget to model this being a good parent, right? I agree. But it's a really good question. It's a great question. That's right.

And I appreciate her thinking about this. Yes. There's a lot of tension here don't forecast don't forecast bad behavior and ill will on somebody into the future and prepare right i know why dr henry cloud has now sold 10 million boundaries books it's quintessential right yeah boundaries are just it's like it's something that no one escapes having to deal with. And none of us are taught this when we're young. None of us are taught this. It's not a relational skill in most households.

It's really not. And it's not a cultural skill we have anymore. No. And instead, we pretty much model the destruction of boundaries all around us at all times. You just melt people as a sport. That's right. That's right. Great question, Bridget.

Very, very good stuff. Very good stuff. Good, good, Bridget. Very, very good stuff. Very good stuff. Good, good, good question. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Remembering that our Reset event is coming up.

It's a free live stream. Over 100,000 people are already registered for it. It's free this coming Tuesday night, January the 12th at 7 p.m. If you want to register, text the word RESET to 33789. That's 33789. We'll be right back. Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co-host today here on the air open phones at 888-825-522-5. Jamie is with us. Jamie is in Sarasota, Florida. Hi, Jamie. How are you?

I'm doing well, Dave. How are you and John doing? Great. How can we help? Wonderful. John, by the way, happy birthday to you, my friend. Thank you so much for everything that you do. I appreciate you, good man.

Thank you. Absolutely. All right, guys, let me go straight to the point. I'm 38, married, have a child, one on the way. Yay. Baby, I know. Thank you. Baby step six. We owe on our mortgage 13,000. We have about $27,000 in savings, so we're going to pay that bad boy pretty soon. Like today? In the next

few hours. Yeah, great! So, yes. I have a two-part question with that background. Number one, first and foremost, this is not our forever home. In fact, we're probably going to be here probably another two,

I am assuming two, three years tops before my job moves me again. And I'm wondering, first and foremost, should I invest into this home, say like gutters and fences and all that? And my second part to this question is that now that the home is going to be paid off now what okay well now what is you max out all retirement and you begin to save outside of that towards your next purchase and uh i've been doing this show coming up on 30 years it's only in about the last five years that I've heard the phrase forever home because most people know there's no such thing. You will never have a forever home.

Your only forever home is heaven because no matter where you move, you're going to move again. You're not going to stay. Your life changes. Your phase of life changes and everything else. So anyway, it's just not a house you're going to stay in, and you're going to move in the next two to three years. That's awesome.

That's cool. So what repairs or enhancements do you do to it? There are two types. Ones that are small enough that you can live up the enjoyment. In other words, whatever you spend. If you spend, you got two little babies and you spend a couple thousand bucks on a fence in the backyard and it helps you know that your little baby's playing in the backyard are safe and not running wild out in the neighborhood or something,

then that's probably worth that even if the fence doesn't add value to the house. Okay? So that's one type of thing you would do. In other words, it's a small enough investment that when you move, you just burn that money and it was just for the good of the three years of enjoyment. The second type of thing you would do is you would talk to an ELP, one of our real estate endorsed local providers, and just say, okay, I'm thinking of spending this on the kitchen.

I'm going to spend $7,000 on a kitchen in a house that's worth X. Do you think I'll get my money back? I don't think so. Well, you might. I mean, some things you might. I don't know how bad your kitchen is, okay? But, you know, does it increase the value dollar for dollar or more than you're spending? I mean, if you spend $7,000 and it increases the value of the Home 10, that's probably a good thing, right?

So you would do those kinds of things that increase the value equal to the thing you want to do or more. Especially if it's more, you would do some stuff like that. So gutters sounds like normal repairs that should have already been done. We've been getting the house for about two plus years. So, yeah, that was probably going to be my next project yeah um i mean if the roof is leaking you got to do that regardless because it's just a repair has to be done yeah right i mean we bought the house brand new so we weren't you know why does it need gutters after three years if it was brand new well that's really

why i'm asking is like is it even worth investing in now why does it not need gutters after three years if it was brand new. Well, that's really why I'm asking is, like, is it even worth investing in? Now, why does it not have gutters? Oh, it just didn't come with gutters. It's a – I mean, I don't want to put anybody on blast here, but it's a – The type of home you bought or the price range you bought just did – the standard model didn't have gutters. Okay. So then the question you ask yourself is you get a bid on gutters,

and you ask yourself, am I increasing the value of the home by that, or am I going to get enjoyment of it that much? Either one. The good news is guttering on a basic guttering system, on something like that, a continuous flow, they bring the trucks out. It's a pretty cool thing they do. It's unbelievable. And it's not very expensive.

So it's not a super high item but my guess is you bought a neighborhood that none of the rest of them have gutters so it's not like it's devaluing the house unless it's causing damage or something else so you just got to look at all that and just kind of go okay is this a repair that should be done anyway or am i doing something that's not done in the neighborhood an example an extreme example would be if there are no swimming pools in your neighborhood and you put in a swimming pool, you're going to lose 80% of the money you spent on that. It is not going to increase the value of the home but about 20% of the cost.

And so most of that, you've got to do a lot of swimming in three years to make that make sense, right? You're going to be out there every day. So otherwise it just doesn't make sense. But that's the thing you look at is, am I increasing the value more or at least as much as I am spending? Jake's in Atlanta. Hi, Jake. How are you?

Good. How are you doing, Dave? Great, man. What's up? Life and I are here. We have just a couple questions about questions about like next steps. So, uh, we've been following your plan for several years. Um, led us to being debt free in 2019. Way to go.

It was, uh, thank you. Which was a good timing considering 2020 happened right after that. Yeah. Um, so, uh, currently where we stand, uh, I'm in the film industry. My wife is a marketing director for a real estate company. So our income fluctuates from time to time. You know, there's years that are really, really good. The years that are, you know, decent and we get all the bills paid and we have a little bit of extra savings. She's probably having a great year and you're not.

Yeah. Yeah, she's probably having a great year and you're not. Yeah, yeah. Basically, all of COVID, I was on unemployment. So that kind of threw an obviously big wrench in our plans because we were looking to buy a home. Come February of last year, we actually found out we were pregnant. So we have a brand-new. All right. Who was born in October. And we are stuck in a one-bedroom loft right now. So the space is very tight,

but we have done definitely the best we possibly can, considering where we're at. And we'd like to buy a house. We'd like to buy a house um we'd like to you know get into the steps of like a possible 529 you know investing you know doing everything that we can do to maximize uh where we're at right now we kind of don't know what to tackle first uh i'm back at work okay so you are debt free 100 because% because you're renting. You have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. We do. We have about 18k in the savings. Good, okay, and are

you putting money into retirement yet? No, because we put that on hold so we could pay off all the debt. Okay, and now are you going to keep it on hold to save up for a down payment on a house? If you do, that's okay. That's one of our plans. We were thinking about that, but I'm 35, she's 32, so... Well, you're not going to save for 10 years. What's that? You're not going to save for 10 years.

You're going to save for 10 months. Correct. Yeah. For a house, yes. Yeah, that's what I mean. You're not going to stay out of retirement long if you do, but if you want to go ahead and start retirement and save for a house, yes. Yeah, that's what I mean. You're not going to stay out of retirement long if you do. But if you want to go ahead and start retirement and save for a house, that's fine. Or sometimes people pause on retirement just a little bit and do what we call Baby Step 3B and save for a house.

So four is 15% of your income into retirement. Five is kids' college, and six is pay off the house that you haven't yet bought. Correct. And that's the baby steps. And if you'll just work them that way you're going to get to everything you're going to have a baby your baby's going to have a college fund you're going to get there you're going to be putting money into retirement you're going to get there and you can either do all of that and then save more slowly for a home or you can uh uh

save faster for a home and put everything on hold temporarily and do a baby step 3B, and that'll get you there. So it's – But here's what I hear in his voice, Dave. I know that we're supposed to do this in order, but we want a house right now. Can we go ahead and just put 1% down and do it? No. And you may have to go to a two-bedroom apartment for another year. Right.

And nobody wants that. It's not going to be fun. If you can have to go to a two-bedroom apartment for another year. Right. And nobody wants that. It's not going to be fun. If you can't live where you are, you're going to have to go rent something for another year while you save up your down payment. And it's moving twice

and all that. Yeah. That's okay. It's better in the long run. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Definitely. Oh, I'm sorry.

I missed that. Good catch. All right. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show on the Books. Thanks to James Childs, our producer,

Kelly Daniel, our associate producer and phone screener. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, and we'll be back. This is James Childs, producer of the Dave Ramsey Show. On your smart speaker, you can add our skill by saying, Alexa, open the Ramsey Network skill. From there, you can listen to all our shows. Ask Dave money questions like, how do I invest my money? Or what is the debt snowball? by saying, Alexa, open the Ramsey Network skill. From there, you can listen to all our shows. Ask Dave money questions like, how do I invest my money?

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