The Ramsey Show - App - Never Buy a House With Someone You Aren’t Married To (Here’s Why) (Hour 1)

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

From Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm Ramsey personality, George Campbell, joined by the incomparable Jade Warshaw. That's right, best-selling author of Money's Not a Math Problem. And we're going to be taking your calls today about your money and your life, and it could get messy, and we're going to give you some advice you may not like. But at the end of the day, here's what we want. We want to see you win.

We want to see you have more peace in your life. We want to see you build more wealth than anyone has ever built in your family to break generational curses, to finally just go to bed and sleep and not be worried about what's going to happen tomorrow with the bills and how we're going to accomplish that financial goal. We want to show you a proven path to get there. So give us a call at 888-825-5225, and we will do just that. Alex kicks us off in Dallas, Texas. Sorry, Alex, what's going on with you? Not much, sir. How are you doing? I'm doing... I got choked up already. I'm very emotional today, so we got to watch out. How can we help? All right. So in a nutshell, I bought a home last year for me and my daughter,

and then I met someone, and I am looking at getting engaged, and she is talking about wanting to put $40,000 down to help pay off the home faster. She's the one that pointed me towards financial peace and all that. But my line of thinking is this is my debt and my mess to clean up, and I just wanted an outside opinion on if I should let her do this or not. So are you guys engaged yet? I plan on popping the question here probably within the next month or so. Okay, well hopefully she's not listening or else she just got a spoiler. In this, yeah, go ahead, Jade.

So just to clarify, you have the home, the first home was with your daughter? I have a four-year-old daughter. Okay, got you. Okay. So how much do you owe entirely on the house? Just over $138,000. And so her putting the $40,000 down, is that just her to be like, this is going to be ours together? Like what's her motivation behind that? Just to help pay off the debt? Just to help pay off the debt?

Just to help pay off the debt. We also talked about possibly refinancing to add on. But then the $40,000 is what she has been saving up for a long time now to buy her first home. So what would happen if after you guys got married, you guys decided how that $40,000 was best spent, whether it's to put it towards a mortgage or some other thing that you might need to... A renovation. Yeah. How's that hit you?

My line of thinking is it's a three-bedroom house. We've had the discussion about possibly having more kids, and if that happens, the house I'm in now is not big enough for that. This feels like a very future decision because this doesn't have to be your forever home together either. She could move in. So let me play out how if I was advising you guys kneecap to kneecap, I'd say, hey, let's wait until we have the document from the courthouse. We come back from the honeymoon. We combine the bank accounts married, we don't need to combine any of our finances, any of our savings. Once she's there and she's your wife, then we can say, all right, we want to stay in this house. Let's pay down the mortgage down to zero.

We can roll all that equity into our new home down the line a few years from now, once we actually run out of room because we actually have the kid there, that's when that decision should be made. Okay. So I don't know the urgency of her throwing all her savings at a house she doesn't own. Because I'll tell you, I hope and I think it's all going to work out perfectly, but the calls we take on the show is when everything didn't work out perfectly. And now it's an ex-fiance who has $40,000 stuck inside of the equity of your home, and now there's a big legal battle.

And so it is very unwise to mix finances before you're married, before you have legal protections, before you've really combined your life. She had just brought it up of, you know, after we were married, that's what she wanted to do, and I just kind of hit the panic button, I guess. Well, after we get married is a great sentence. That changes everything. Yes.

And so you can start to make plans. Just don't make any actual moves until you're back from the honeymoon. But I hope it works out, and congratulations to you. That's exciting. That is exciting. Nothing's on fire. A man on the cusp of proposing. Oh, yeah.

Hopefully she didn't hear this. Well, I think she knows it's coming, it sounds like. It isn't going to be no surprise to her. The names were changed to protect the innocent. All right, Doug is in Atlanta, Georgia, up next. What's going on, Doug? Hey, guys. Really appreciate what you all do.

I am starting medical school in August, and I've never been in debt in my life. And I looked into different types of loans that I could get to pay for this, and it seems like the smartest decision would go for the federally unsubsidized loans. Um, but seems with the interest rates, um, it's going to be quite a bit of money taking out. And I've listened to y'all show for a long time. And I, uh, the idea of going in debt for the first time is really scary. And, um, so essentially the, the total amount of costs or cost of tuition plus cost of living I can take out of seventy three thousand dollars tuition is around forty four and the way the loan situation is structured it's

two separate loans you can take out for the first cost of the tuition and the second cost up to seventy three thousand dollars for a total amount of seventy three I have some funds saved up but I'm not really sure how to go about this. What do you have saved up? So I have about $30,000 in cash and another $30,000, and it's in a high-yield savings account, yielding about 5%. What a life. And the other amount is in investments, but it's not a retirement fund. How much is in the investments? That's not retirement. About $30,000 as well.

So you got $90,000 just laying around? No, no, no. It's about $60,000. Okay, $60,000 laying around. Okay, there's your answer, my guy. We're not going to tell you the best debt to take out because we don't think that there's a scenario when it is best to take out debt. That's like saying, what is the best Nickelback CD?

I don't know that I can tell you honestly. No, I totally hear you. I just, the looking long term for, I'm just kind of scared to completely liquidate all that. Well, yeah, that's my question for you. You called with a question for us. My question for you is, why is it more appetizing for you to take out debt rather than just pay cash and be done and done with this is it i mean what totally makes sense um but the situation is is that the tuition for medical school it's that's yearly so um it's 43 a year okay and then the living and things like

that so it's over four years of medical school and i won't be even making any type of income until residency which will be essentially five years from now but the good news is you have the better part of that for two years i mean you've got you can cover you could cash flow the half of this is what we're saying with the money you have so can you come up with another 13 or 15,000 within a year's time? I think that you could, and then get ahead on the next year prior to that. And if you have to take a semester break in order to make this happen,

the point is don't go into debt when you've got time and you've got money, which are two really good resources to have here. And you have any help from family? Not really. That's kind of at this point is like everything is on my own. Man, that's real tough. If I'm you before this semester starts, and even if you can put it off a semester,

I'm stacking up as much cash as I can. Because if you can come up with a little bit more cash to make this work, you're going to be able to cash flow this whole thing, which I think you can. Thanks for the call, Doug. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw.

Well, if you're looking for something fun to do in less than a year from now, check out the Live Like No One Else cruise. Okay, that was really good i legit was like we got sound effects every time in the booth hitting the sound effect button nope that was just old jade that was pretty good if you weren't aware of what that was that's the uh the ship horn i don't know what it's called yeah the ship's horn let's go with that i feel like someone out there is like just glazed over and i'm going this guy this ship this ship horn. It's going to be Dave, all of the Ramsey personalities, seven days at sea for the ultimate debt-free celebration, March 22nd through the 29th. And on top of our whole crew being there, we've got special guests. We've got Stephen

Curtis Chapman, Manit Chauhan from the Food Network, Dina Carter. We got comedians, magicians, you name it. There's so much entertainment on this cruise on top of, you know, hopefully some transformational, life-changing content from us personalities. George, I want to hear you do a set, a comedic set. Oh, Jade, that's called a tease in the biz. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Because I got a captive audience who can't leave.

I thought this is the time to try out stand-up comedy. Listen, you and Espido is not enough. We need to hear the comedy, George. Yeah, that's not funny. That would just send people to get refunds. So you won't be seeing that. But we will be seeing some sights, Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas. It's going to be a good time. And again, this is for those who are debt-free, meaning baby step four or above. So if you're in debt, I wish you could join us, but please don't because you got priorities right now. This is for those who they're out of debt.

They've been waiting to celebrate. You want to meet other Ramsey fans and the whole crew. We're going to do, I think, the Guinness Book of World Records largest debt-free scream on the ship. Let's do it. I'm here for it. So VIP upgrades already sold out. Most of the suites are sold out. In fact, many of the cabin types are completely sold out.

So if you're trying to pick a cabin like one with an ocean view, you got to get your deposit in right now. This thing's going to sell out real soon. Book your cabin at ramsaysolutions.com slash cruise, and we'll see you in March of 2025. Can't wait. All right. Charlie is in Everett, Washington. Charlie, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, I really appreciate you guys taking my call. How are you guys doing? We're doing great, man. How can we help? Well, I'm trying to get it directly to the point. I am drowning. Paycheck to paycheck is a nice way of putting it. I own a home. Um, my biggest, I guess, mistake is an auto loan. Um, I'm about 20,000 upside down on it. How'd that happen? Well, I purchased the vehicle, uh, about three years

ago when I was making significantly more money. Um, a recent, um, a recent and abrupt breakup with who I bought my house with had me, because I drive truck and I did drive long haul over the road. And when the breakup happened, I switched driving positions to a local job. And so I'm making roughly, I'd say conservatively about 4,500 a month 4,500 a month okay that's your take-home pay that's take-home after taxes okay what other debt do you have so you've got this car you're 20,000 upside down on and what do you owe on it by the way um 50 52 000 yikes and yeah and you're saying it's worth 32 yeah roughly um and so i've tried to sell it for about a month and a half close to two months maybe and there's just mean, I can't blame anybody, but there's, you know, it's not going anywhere. At what price point? What were you selling it for?

Um, I, uh, well, at first I, um, put it up, you know, basically kind of like a takeover payments. This is what's owed. And then, um, I, I put a couple grand aside in hopes that I could maybe pay the difference, and that didn't go anywhere. And so I don't know if I should just do a voluntary repo on the thing. No, no, no, no. No. We'll walk you through some options. Let's get through the rest of your debt.

What else do you have? Okay. Well, I got $230 left on left on my house, $53,000 on the truck, one $12,000 credit card, a $3,000 credit card, and I got my lowest one trying to do the snowball. I got my lowest one down to about $600,000 now. Okay, good. And that's all the debt. All right. So if we knock out the credit cards, all that's left is fixing this car problem. Now we just have a mortgage to deal with. Correct. All right. And so with the truck payment, my mortgage is just under two grand. It's 1828 and the truck payment is 979. That mortgage is eating your lunch a little bit right now when it comes to your take-home

pay, don't you think? It is. And so, and where I live, I looked around. Luckily, me and the ex are on good terms as far as the house goes. She moved out. There was no, you know, I don't know really how to put it. Her name wasn't on the deed or the mortgage? She didn't have any equity in this thing? She does. She's not on the, how the mortgage company explained it is I'm the primary,

but she is on the mortgage. Okay. So what happens if you stop paying? They go after her? No, no, no. She moved out, and that was part of my, I don't know if it was maybe an ego thing, but it was, you know, in the heat of, you know, because like I mentioned, the split was not mutual, and it was very abrupt. And out of emotion and maybe ego, I said, okay, well, you want to do this? I don't, I'm not losing my house. So did you refinance or did you get her name off the loan? We are in the process of working those details out, but that is the end goal of getting her off the house. Okay. And so, but with the credit cards one of my the higher credit card that's kind of eaten up my trying to do just the minimum payments which on the on the one it's like

six hundred dollars a month and what were you making before as a trucker yeah you mentioned you changed your trucking schedule and it to where now you're making so you're making less doing local what were you making before i was making about 120 how can we go back to that um well currently um i i got a kiddo and animals at home and so doing going back to what i was doing is kind of out of the question for another couple years anyway is the kiddo new um no no no she'll be she'll be 18 in about a year and a half so again how does that change from before because you had the kid and the pets before we're just trying to understand what made you made you make that shift and why you wouldn't go back to it temporarily to clean up this mess. Well, the reason I was able to be gone on the road was because the ex was at home. And so when she left, as long as I was on the road, it was,

you know, payday hit. I sent her the money and the bills were paid. When does your 18-year-old go off to college or kind of do their own thing? It was, you know, payday hit. I sent her the money and the bills were paid. When does your 18-year-old go off to college or kind of do their own thing? She's thinking about it. She doesn't know if she's going to go to college or not. And you feel like you've got to be home with her? To a degree, just because a lot of her growing up, I was on the road. And so I feel like kind of between a rock and a hard place.

And I feel like I'm doing minimum payments. Here's the deal. If this is between a rock and a hard place and you're saying, well, there's going to be a voluntary repo, probably can't afford the mortgage long term. I'd rather you go to work now for a year and clean this mess up. Because here's the deal. You get out of this credit card debt and we get out the underwater piece on the car. Now we can breathe again. But you need to be making eight grand a month instead of four grand a month in order to make this work.

Okay. Because to your point, even cleaning up these credit cards is going to free up 600 bucks a month. I mean, that's going to change the work. Okay. Because to your point, even cleaning up these credit cards is going to free up 600 bucks a month. I mean, that's going to change the equation big time with your numbers

to have an extra $600 a month to put towards this upside down car payment. So if I'm you, I understand what you're saying.

Kids, you know, obligations with pets. Pets, I could care less about in this situation. But with your daughter, maybe it's you having a sit down conversation with her and saying, listen, I could care less about in this situation. But with your daughter, maybe it's you having a sit down conversation with her

and saying, listen, I know I haven't been there. I have made a mess of things and I'm getting about the business of cleaning that up. And part of that is me cleaning up my financial life so I can be there for you. That's a different kind of sacrifice, but it's the one that'll stick with her. Seeing her dad get out of a mess

and just own up to the mistakes and go, I want to have a different legacy for your future. Maybe you help her cashflow college, but you got to have money to do that. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Don't be scared. Give us a ring. We'll try to help you figure out what the next step is for your life and your money, regardless of where you stand and how long you've been listening. That's what we do on this show. Ashton is in Oklahoma City up next.

What's going on, Ashton? So we've got kind of a weird and unique situation. I like that. In 2018, we went through Financial Peace University. We moved out of our rent house. We moved into a super small apartment and we went hard and we saved up enough money that we were able to get completely out of debt. And we were able to start saving money to buy a house, which we did in 2020. And everything was great right up until I got sick. Oh, how sick?

I've had really sick. I started having a whole lot of neurological issues in the last four years. I've had three brain surgeries and I need another one. Yeah, that's beyond sick. I'm so sorry, Ashton. It's okay. I'm just glad they know what's wrong with me at this point because it took them a really long time to get here. But in the meantime, I was no longer working.

My husband had to quit his job because he couldn't get me to and from all these doctor's appointments and help me take care of the kids. How many kids? And that put us kind of in a situation. Three. Three kids. Okay. So you're in the house. Three kids.

You've had these medical issues where are you guys financially after the storm okay so let's hold right before we get to that so when he quit his job we opened up a company and we ran that company we stayed positive the whole time we it was. We were able to replace his income and we did really good. Just him running solo on his own. What year was that? That was in 2021. Okay. Or no, no, I'm sorry. 2022. Okay. In 2023, another small company approached us and asked us if we would buy them out. I was like, yeah, we'd have a lot of money for that. And they were like, well, what if we didn't own our finance? What if we carried, we carried it and you just pay the profits to us? I knew the company was super profitable

because I had seen them around and I felt really comfortable with that. So we purchased that company from them on an owner finance on the contingency that I do not have a minimum monthly payment. I only pay them 60% of whatever the profits are. And then we retain 40. And how long would that take before you've paid the full price? Roughly, we estimated that it was going to be around 18 months. The industry, because of the economy has kind of tapered down a little bit. So I'm thinking we're going to be closer to the 24-month mark right now. I don't think it'll take us very long. It's also profitable. So in all of this, okay, all of this that's going on of learning

how to run a business and trying to deal with everything. The surgery that I need is really, it's new to medicine. It's more popular in Europe than it is in America. And last in April, we actually had to fly to Spain to meet with a doctor who actually is leading the research on this condition. Okay. And there's a very good possibility that they're not going to be able to do the surgery here. While we do have health insurance, we do not, we can't use it out of country. And that's kind of problematic. What would it cost? About $50,000. Ooh, yay, yay.

Okay. And do you have any money saved? We've got a little bit i would say we've probably got about 5 000 in savings right now okay um and no debt uh we i have about 1500 in credit cards but to be honest with you the credit cards are what we use for the business just so i don't have to have people have a debit card and i can track their expenses a lot better. So we have two employees and each employee has a credit card. We run a $300 million company with company debit cards. Just saying. It just makes me nervous. It makes me nervous because y'all are racking up debt and your health is on the line.

I'm just saying debt is not adding any peace to your equation right now. Can you tell us the urgency? Sorry, I'm just trying to, I want to make sure we spend plenty of time with you. So you need to have the surgery. Can you explain to us the urgency of the surgery? Is it like, hey, I got to have this thing instantly or else my health... I'm going to go blind. Okay. How soon? I've got like less than a year. Less than a year. Okay. So the surgery needs to happen within the next 12 months.

Yep. Okay. Does it get riskier the longer you wait or is it just kind of the same thing? It's more of a chance that there's right now they feel really comfortable if they did it right now that my vision would return. Okay. Right now, they feel really comfortable if they did it right now that my vision would return. But we don't know in the future if this will continue and if when they do the surgery, if I will get my vision back. Okay. Tell us about your assets. What type of vehicles do you have that you have paid off? I have one vehicle that's worth about $5,000 that we paid cash for that I own outright. We do have two car payments.

We kind of got in a situation with one of the work trucks that we have to have a work truck, and we couldn't afford to pay cash for one, and the other one was, it just wasn't financially reasonable to repair at this point. So those two have debt on them so they're not assets um anything else do you have that you could sell off because obviously the only place that we're at right now is the possibility of selling our house using the proceeds from equity in our house to buy an RV and live in an RV for a year or two and just kind of do what we do well I wouldn't do an RV I wouldn't do an RV but I mean your health is on the line few few things are more I don't think anything's more important than that

so it's a possibility for the house yeah but just rent so my only concern with renting and that's kind of where why i wanted to reach out to you is that the rent prices are really more even for like a two-bedroom apartment yes but an rv an rv is going down in value and so you have to calculate both costs you might say yes i'm spending x amount of dollars on rent but you're spending a lot more up front to buy something on debt that is going down in value when you do an RV. So you're losing a heck of a lot more money. You just don't feel it in the same way because you're accustomed to debt. But trust me, you're losing a lot more money.

Five people in an RV. I've looked at, so, so we have about a hundred, about a hundred, $125,000 in equity in our house. Okay. We're to fall out. I think that where you're at and you unless there's something that

you haven't included with a fifty thousand dollar surgery coming up with no real assets other than your house you're you are against a rock in a hard place and because you do have a lot of debt between these trucks and you've got some other things going on with the business it could could make sense for you to get your health in place. You guys rent temporarily. You get your financial footing back on. Because to what George said earlier, the amount of peace you're going to feel going into the situation, owing nobody nothing is priceless. Then you're getting the surgery that you need. You're going to be able to have time to recover without just this feeling of we've got this business and we've got to do this and we've got to do that and we've got a mortgage that we've got to cover. I think that for you guys, having a fresh start with fresh health is going to be a good move.

Yeah, that's kind of where I'm at. What is your household income? You're living off 40% of the profits. What does that amount to a year? We take home about $70,000 and then I leave the rest in the business accounts. Okay. So you guys are making $70,000. You have to pay all these payments. Here's what I would do if I was in your shoes. I'd sell the house. You have the equity, the $125,000. Use $50,000 of that for your surgery if that's where you guys are going to go next, right? Right. Pay cash for the surgery. That you with 75 plus the five you have in savings. And that becomes your fully funded emergency fund as we get through the storm. And then we rent.

And then once things are back to normal, we own the business outright. We're back to getting 100% of the profits. Then we can look at buying a new home. Yeah. And mind you, it's not going to just be 50,000 for the surgery. Cause I mean, you're going to Spain and your husband's going to, and he's staying somewhere and there's flights and there's recovery and the trip back. So really make sure you price this out with that money from the sale of the house. That's an all-inclusive price. All in. Okay.

Okay. Great. Great. Great. So I love to hear that. The health care over there is tremendously, tremendously cheaper. Okay. Well, I wouldn't do the RV move.

I would rent even though it hurts, because right now you've been building all this equity, and you're going to trade that and, quote, throw away rent. You're buying peace during a time where your life is chaotic. Yes, sir. And so I'm going to be thankful to pay rent to that landlord because I don't have to deal with all the problems. And I wish you the best in your health, truthfully, Ashton.

I hope that this is all resolved, and you call us back with a wonderful update, and I hope the financial part will figure itself out. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jay Warshaw. Here's a friendly reminder as we head into the summer to come visit us at The Ramsey Solutions headquarters just south of Nashville, Tennessee. So make us part of your road trips, your flights,

if you want to make a trip to Nashville. And we'll feed you with cookies and give you a free mug and you can enjoy the show on the glass here if that's what you're into. And lots of lovely people out there visiting us today from all over the country. Wonderful folks.

Great. Let's get to our question of today. Today's comes from Alyssa in New Hampshire. Yeah, she says, my fiance and I are getting married next year and plan to merge our finances. We agree on working together after the wedding date to be debt-free.

Love that. He will be coming into the marriage with student loans and a car loan. I am budgeting with every dollar and my debts should be paid off by the time we marry. His financial advisor is telling him to use the avalanche method to tackle his debt and has brought up other financial suggestions

that are not in line with the Ramsey method. Since our finances are separate now, it's fine, but how do we compromise once we get married? This is a great question. So first off, avalanche method versus debt snowball. For anybody listening, with avalanche method, you're listing by interest rate. so you're considering the lowest interest rate and you're listing them that way and paying them off uh whereas the debt snowball we list them by balance we completely disregard the

interest rate because we know that over time um honestly the difference is negligible and for most people um they get more of a psychological benefit when they're focusing on the smaller balance. They get quick wins. And there have been many studies that have shown that this is actually the best method. Harvard Business, Time Magazine, they all came out saying, we agree with Dave Ramsey. This is actually the better, more, this method will get you to success more times than the avalanche method. So now we're getting into the nitty-gritty his financial advisor is telling him non-ramsey things and i think here's the thing here's what i want to clarify when we tell people wait until you're married to combine finances that really is the nuts and bolts of uh bank accounts and debts and things like that but you can still be talking about what your methodology

for handling your money is going to be and And on that, I think you should be very detailed and very as detailed as those conversations can be. Yes, we both care about paying off debt. Yes, here's what we're going to do exactly when we get married. So I kind of feel like the advisor's leading him astray. Yeah, I'm concerned about this financial advisor. I might consider firing him and finding someone else. But the fiance doesn't see that it's a problem. Yeah, this whole compromise once we get married,

I think what it's going to be is, you know, your word versus his and what the better method is. And, you know, we have a proven plan. Millions of people have followed it. It works. This guy is carrying debt for who knows how long. And the problem is a financial advisor like this would say, oh, don't worry about paying off your debt aggressively.

You know what? You should be investing that money instead. So invest with me and I'll sell you these products. And I'm a big fan of having a financial advisor in your life. There's a time and place and there's a right way to do it. And we can help you find a trusted financial pro at ramsaysolutions.com. I don't know that now is the time for him to be working with a financial advisor. He needs to get his butt in gear and be working, getting that income up and paying off the debt. And the sooner he is to debt freedom by the time you're married, the faster you

guys will excel in your own financial journey. So I'd go through Financial Peace University with him and say, this is premarital counseling. If you want to marry me, this is part of the deal. We're going to go through this as a couple and and you're going to watch every lesson with me, and we're going to talk about it. Hopefully that gets them on the same page. But that's a big, I mean, that's one of the biggest life questions. How do I get my spouse on board? How do I get my fiance on board?

It takes time. If you want to be my lover. That's all I thought about when you said that. Spice girls. That's usually what's happening in Jade's mind, if you're ever wondering. Nathan is up next in Reno, Nevada. What's going on, Nathan? How can we help you today? Hey, Jordan, Jade. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it.

Sure. So I left my job of about five years, like two months ago. What had happened is the management tree kind of kept changing. My boss's boss changed and it just became kind of frustrating to work there. They wanted me to do things that that I didn't excel at or didn't go to school for, wasn't qualified to do. So eventually this led to me leaving. It was just getting too frustrating. I moved to a new job where I work remotely, and the money is better. Everything's kind of better on paper. I just really don't like this job at all, and it's been a super frustrating experience from basically week one.

What don't you like? The fact that it's remote? I don't like working remotely. I find it demotivating. My boss is not a strong leader at all. And because of that, we've been having, I guess, professional disagreements frequently. What is not the nature of the work? Yeah, it's not. Well, it's a little bit the nature of the work too. So I am a programmer slash database professional. And they kind of sold me this dream on this job to say that, you know, we're very high-tech, we're very fast-moving. And I came into this job, and I realized very quickly what they meant by high-tech

and fast-moving was spreadsheets. And I feel like I've kind of checked all of my skills at the gate coming into this job. So you're bored? And so I'm bored, yes. Oh, man. Well, we can't stay here. What would light you up? Like if I snap my fingers, are you in an office and you're doing this,

are you in database administration? What's the sort of goal if I could put your role on paper? Yeah. So what would light me up is, so I really like the work I did at my last job, just not the management. I love working with databases and scripting data pipelines, things like that. And so that would make me very, very happy. And I don't see it happening. And you don't think that exists locally?

Because it sounds like you want to be in person or at least have the flexibility to be in person. Yeah, it doesn't really, there's not a lot where I am. I know my location was listed as Reno. I'm actually in Elko and it's a really small town. There's not a lot of options here. What's keeping you there? What was that? What's keeping you there? I really like the town. Other than that, not much. No family? We have family all around here. When you say we, are you married? You have a wife? Yes. Yeah. Sorry. I have a wife and a child and another one on the way. Okay. What's your wife do? My wife is a stay-at-home mom. Okay.

Well, we can't have the cake and eat it too, so we've got to decide, is this where we want to live? And if so, I've got to be okay with A, working remotely, doing the work that I love, or B, I'm going to have a commute getting to whatever locale has the work that I want to do, right? Yes. So there's going to be some level of compromise in there. Either I've got a 45-minute commute, but I don't mind because I love it, or you know what, if I just had the right boss, I could do this remote work thing and fly out for the company yearly meeting, whatever.

And so I think we need to start looking at other options. And my biggest worry for you, Nathan, is that you go with you. And so my worry is you to start looking at other options. And my biggest worry for you, Nathan, is that you go with you. And so my worry is you go to the next job and you go, oh my gosh, this one, the boss is this way and the work is this way. And I'm just worried you're going to fall into the same trap. And so at some point, it's kind of like going to college. You kind of get what you put into it. And if you excel at every opportunity and you've got the right attitude about it and the work that, you know, management's not toxic, I think there's a lot of opportunity wherever you are to grow and excel. And so that's, I would do some homework

and a little bit of soul searching as well to figure out what's next for you. But I would not quit until you had that next thing lined up. Okay. I don't want you going back to the old job. There's reasons you left there, and for those same reasons, you're probably not going to like it once you get there. Okay. Even if they would have you. I don't know if they would.

Plus a pay cut, it sounds like. Yeah, just a little bit. So unless you were hired into a management role or something where you went, hey, I want to lead people, it doesn't sound like that's you, but you have to go and step up an opportunity, not down. Is there any way,

and this is just me throwing this out there. Is it a large enough company where there might be a move laterally where you could go into the database thing and maybe you're working with a different leader? Yes. Yes, there is. I explore that.

And I don't know if your leader is the person you would go to for that based on your relationship. Hey, I don't really like working with you, but the other guy seems great. So, you know, be kind, you know, treat others the way you want to be treated, but also don't settle. Nathan's life is precious and it's worth more than just staying at a job you hate. I'm going to send you Ken's new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do, which has the Get Clear assessment. I hope that helps you, Nathan.

So hang on the line. It will help you out. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. Thank you to Jade Warshaw, my co-host, all the folks in the booth keeping the show afloat, including Kelly Daniels sitting in for James Childs, our producer. And you, America, I'll be back before you next time.