The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Break Up With My YOLO-Minded Boyfriend? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

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I'm Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your money, your career, your work, your relationships, your mental health, and your life. I'm Ramsey personality, George Campbell, joined today by Dr. John Deloney, best-selling author and host of The Dr. John Deloney Show. And we are here for you, America. Give us a call. Phone lines are open, 888-825-5225. There's no silly questions here. Maybe you need some confirmation. Maybe you're at a fork in the road with your life, your career. You're not sure what to do. You've got a question about budgeting, about a relationship, we are happy to take your call. Tammy starts us off this hour in Wichita, Kansas. Tammy, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi there. I have been in a long process

through a divorce, and it was just finalized here a couple of weeks ago after 27 years. Oh, Tammy, I'm so sorry. What happened? Thank you. Ah, cool. A lot of bad choices on his part that resulted in more than one family. I'm so sorry. So it's been a long two years.

Sorry, just got choked up on that one. No, no, no, I'm sorry. That's a hard, hard. Jeez Louise. How can we help you today? The Lord's been good and faithful. So my question is, with that taken care of, you know, finished finally, and me starting this process of moving forward,

I then had a career when we were first together, you know, finished finally, and me starting this process of moving forward. I then had a career when we were first together, left that, helped him with his business, had children, raised, homeschooled all the way through, just sold our property. Finally, the Lord said I needed to release that to move forward, so I did. Sold that, split off everything. There was a huge IRS mess that I discovered that I worked for the last two years trying to get out of. And thankfully, the Lord surrounded me with a really good tax team to protect me. So there was one year that I was bound to that came off the top of the house being sold. So everything else for me was done individual.

So I'm not bound to that. And then the rest of the house for his portion went to go satisfy the mess that was tied to him. Great. So hopefully that's all done. And I still have now a mess bed, but I'm starting at, you know, 49 years old. And he didn't finish college because I started raising my family, homeschooling, helping him with his business and, you know, doing that road. Um, so no, nothing set up for retirement, nothing set up for down the road. Um, even through working, I've always been in management or leadership or chairing committees or fundraising, even in a volunteer world,

you know, with, you know, all the things that we were always involved in. So, um, so what's your question? How can we help? I'm trying to figure out what to do with this check I have for my house. And then also with I'm getting monthly support for the next probably six years, you know, provided he doesn't fight that. And trying to think, do I go back to school? Do I start a career?

What do I do with this check that I'm, you know, down the road? I might want to buy a house I'm renting right now for a year or two just to let things settle good um what's that check and what's it worth uh it right now it's 327 my only debt right now is about 7300 left on my car which i'll pay right off the top once i cash it yeah um i absolutely love that you have in your soul, I'm going to rent for a year. Because the grief from this is going to roll off of you for years, right? Yeah. And the what's next is going to roll off. One of the things that I didn't understand this

until I just sat with so many and talked to so many, there is the devastation that somebody that you were close to would do this, hurt you in this way, right? But there's the equal devastation, and I've heard it in a couple of things you said. I even wrote them down, is you don't trust you anymore. How could I have not seen this? How could I have not done something about this when I thought I kind of saw something, right? And you mentioned in your call, I'm 49, I don't have any college degree.

You're already setting up reasons why you can't go make the back half of your, the next 50 years magical. And I need you to hear me say, you got burned. You got absolutely run over, and that doesn't mean you're not worth being well. It doesn't mean you're worth anything less.

In fact, I want you to stand up tall and stare this grief in the face. Get some people to walk alongside you as you walk through this grief, and it's going to be brutal. And you've got a year to pay your rent hopefully that the child support i mean that the the support comes through can you live off that support check can it pay your rent and your bills i think so okay yeah i think so i'll have to you know be wise with it and thankfully throughout the last two years of this whole process i was getting double that so i was able to pay down all my debt. I was able to pay off our house, which is what we used to satisfy the IRS thing.

And I tried to keep some of the ranching principles in my head, even though I took the course, he never did. You know, so you can't run it by yourself. Of course. So I tried to really focus on improving the house, getting it ready to sell the ranch, or the ranch, and getting it ready to sell and doing all that and getting my debt down.

And you're going to have to grieve the sale of a ranch too, right? Like your whole, everything's different. My ranch, I sold my ranch and my dad died the same day. Oh my gosh. Do you have some people you can walk alongside here? I do. I've been surrounded by amazing people. Good, good, good. Amazing people.

Good. So Tammy, do you have any other money in savings or anything? So, I'm just trying to figure out the next step. I have cash that I've been putting aside because, again, I didn't know if he was going to stop paying, keep paying, not paying, you know, sold some things. So, how much cash do you have? Oh, gosh. I look at everything. I haven't counted it, but I'm thinking probably maybe around $15,000.

$15,000? Yeah, I think so. Okay. So with the $327,000 and the $15,000, that puts you in a really good spot. I'm going to pay off this car immediately. I'd probably just keep the $15,000 as an emergency fund. I'm guessing that's what that would be. Right. That's what I was thinking. So that'll cover three to six months of expenses for you right and then you said you didn't have a nest egg do you have any retirement my the check from the no because i homeschooled my kids all the way through i mean i've hey no don't apologize for that we are oh i don't know i am proud of it good out of my goals i'm thankful for the life i that i was able to do that and pour the lord into them

love it no i have no regrets on any of that I'm just trying to be realistic about where I am now. That's right. So let's take off. I know this is hard, but let's bracket off this pain right this second. What do you want to do? What do you want to do? And I'm asking this intentionally, like we're two friends and you just won the lottery. What do you want to do? What would you love to do? You mentioned management a few times. That's what I've done all along and even volunteer like I said but

right now honestly I have two part time jobs. I do driving school in the afternoon and then I do just to get, you know I started these just to get out of my mess and to start helping people and working with people and I teach fitness classes to get out of my mess and to start helping people and working with people. And I teach fitness classes to seniors, and I love it. I love that, too.

But I can't make a living at that. I can't make a living doing that. We're going to send you a copy of our friend Ken Coleman's brand-new book, Paycheck to Purpose, the bestseller book, and it's going to walk you through, I love this stuff, but how do I turn this love into a forever job or a career, a calling? And we're going to send you that book, so stay on the line here in Austin. We'll get it to you. Yes, and Tammy, pay off that debt.

Get your emergency fund in place. You can start investing 15% of your income and park that money in a high-yield savings account so that you're ready to buy a house when that time comes. Thanks so much for the call. This is The Ramsey Show. It continues to amaze me how identity thieves keep finding ways to use our own identities against us. Not only do they commit crimes related to financial fraud, medical ID theft, and insurance benefit fraud, but now we have to deal with home title fraud.

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Why? Because you were trying to figure it out on your own. So if you've decided to take control of your money this year, don't do it alone. Get the support and accountability you need by joining a Financial Peace University class. You'll go through our proven money plan with other people who will help you stay motivated because they're trying to get out of debt and build wealth just like you. And right now there are hundreds of FPU classes getting started both in person and online. So forget the lame resolutions, make 2022 the year you take control of your money, and don't do it alone. Find an FPU class and get started for free at ramseysolutions.com slash FPU. That's ramseysolutions.com slash FPU. I'm George

Campbell. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm joined today by Dr. John Deloney, and we are taking your calls. The phone lines are open 888-825-5225. Melinda joins us in Cleveland, Ohio. Melinda, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. Sure. How can we help?

My husband and I are very new to the baby steps. We started the beginning of january welcome to the gang but thank you but we have 11 000 saved already and from everything we've seen dave says to take your extra over a thousand and put it towards your debt which we would love to do but we have a daughter who's medically complicated, so we never know when we will or won't be working if she needs surgery. So we were kind of struggling as to whether or not we should put it on the debt

or just leave it to cover like a monthly bill if she ends up in the hospital. How much debt do you guys have? Over $100,000. What kind of debt is that? About 80% of it is medical, and then we have a few small student loans left to pay on and car notes. We don't have any credit card debts. Okay.

What's the car worth that has the loan on it? I want to say it was blue booked around $5,000. Okay. And how much do you owe on it? About $3,000. Okay. Well, probably not worth selling. I was just seeing if we could speed up this process for you guys. How much money did you owe to make? We got home about $100,000 last year. Okay. That's good well i'm sorry to hear about uh your child with the complicated medical situation that's a that's a really tough thing to

walk through and i know it's scary especially with your finances going all right what if we have to be out of work and can't make that income is that the biggest fear right now for you guys? It is. What's the medical complication? She has an inoperable brain tumor. So every three months we have to go get MRIs and then that's when we find out if we're good for three more months or if we need to do something. I'm so sorry. How old is your baby girl? Ten. She's ten. I'm so sorry. Do you have good health insurance? Are you having a lot of costs associated with this, or is it covered?

Our insurance is pretty decent. I mean, considering everything she's been through. She's had, like, six brain surgeries. We've already been through chemo once. So we're doing okay our insurance is decent so i i'm tempted and george step in here i'm tempted to sit down and look at what are the known knowns here and you know that every three months we're gonna have to go to the hospital and do an m and here's what that's going to cost and this is going to feel hard because there's so much emotion wrapped up to

your daughter into the hospital trips and they're heartbreaking they're hard and all this sit down and do this is hard but sit down and do the math on this and pull it apart from the emotion just for a second and say each one of these trips cost this let's make sure we have this in an account for this year because we know this expense is coming and here we call it you know uh you know during storm mode you want to pile up cash if you know you got a baby coming this is similar you know these expenses are going to come and it may even be that you sit down with your hospital administrator and say we know these four are coming. We're going to try to pay these out of pocket.

What kind of cash discount would you give us if we just came and wrote you a check for this stuff? Or if they're not going to do that, or if you've got to run these through insurance? You get what I'm driving at here? Is coming up and saying, these are our knowns. And then, of the last five years, you years you've had what six brain surgeries plus another surgery right what do those run yeah um her big one put us about for 40,000 40,000 for her uh debulking yeah that was her biggest one okay man i see this more as a sinking fund for medical costs more than I see it as we're trying to skirt the baby steps. Like John's talking about, this is a storm mode, and you want to make sure that you're able to get the care you need and that you're not going deeper into debt.

So I'm okay with this setting aside. What I don't want it to do is you start to – this kind of gets out of control, and you just keep saving and saving out of just fear of the unknown because I want this debt paid off. With medical debt, the good news is you may be able to negotiate this, and like John's saying, there may be cash discounts. There could be hardship programs that you can work with that, the hospital for that you owe the money to. So I would be investigating all of my options and really trying to fight all of this medical debt because it is one of those debts that you can go, hey, I know we have 80 grand, but would you guys take 20 today and be done with this? And in that case, they may say, sure, we'll do that. And so if I'm you guys, I'm still going to put as much money as I can on the side to pay down the debt, to cover all of the healthcare costs that are involved. And I'm hoping this is a season and not a lifestyle, because if it is, then we've got

to make some moves. We've got to still pay down this debt. You and not a lifestyle because if it is, then we've got to make some moves. We've got to still pay down this debt. You guys have a good income, and so make sure that you're doing a budget. Are you currently doing a monthly budget? I know you're new to the plan. We actually just really started hammering it out, writing it down, everything this month. Great. Awesome.

Well, I want to gift you guys a subscription to Ramsey Plus, and that is our online membership that will walk with you. You have the EveryDollarPlus budgeting tool that will help you put a plan to paper for where your money is going. It's going to give you access to all of our courses and online content like Financial Peace University. So do that together, and maybe it will give you guys some hope, some vision, some clarity for what to do with your money and your life as you move through this storm you guys are in. I'm so sorry to hear that. Yeah, hey, Melinda, is this a terminal diagnosis here, or is this just going to be the rest of your, I mean, it's going to be years and years and years of this? It's going to be years and years and years of it.

Okay, so it's not a terminal diagnostic here. This is just part of her physiology. No, it's not terminal yet. Okay. So yeah, just like it may be that you and your husband sit down and say, do we need to go get different jobs? Do we need to go make a different amount of money? This is a recurring expense that's going to be a part

of our life forever. What I don't want you to do is continue to rack up medical debt just indefinitely you get what i'm saying yeah and um that those are hard conversations to have but it's sitting down one of the things the budget forces you to do is look at the reality of the life that we're living is this house too big is this house too small can we afford to live in downtown New York? Do we need to move to Nebraska? Can we, we love our jobs. We make a hundred grand. Is it time I go get a different job that's going to make us more money? Or you get what I'm driving at? It's a truth-telling

agent, a budget is. Yeah. And if you have 11K and you go to the hospital and say, hey, we literally have 10K to our name. Would you take that in exchange for this 80,000 in medical debt? They may say yes. And if that's the case, I would give them that $10,000 and you will be freed up from all of that debt, leaving you with the small car loan, the student loans to clean up. And that's going to really give you guys some peace as you move forward because you're not going to be so reliant on income when you don't owe anyone anything. Yeah. I had never thought of that. That might be a great, I don't want to say a great move, but it'd be like, take your bank statement. Say, this is all the money that we have, and I want to keep $1,000 to make sure I keep the lights on in my house when you take this in exchange for this medical debt. Yeah. clear this up. But at the same time, you've got to know that in two more months, you're going back for another MRI. Three more months after that, you're coming back for another MRI. So again,

it's about looking at reality and saying, how does the way we're living match up with our financial reality? Yeah. Hang on. Our friend Austin screening the phones there. We'll pick up. He'll get you connected with Ramsey Plus. Get plugged into that. Watch the videos. Do the budget. I hope that gives you guys a little bit of peace, a little bit of control over a situation that feels out of control right now. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Welcome back. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm Ramsey Personality, George Campbell, host of the Fine Print Podcast, joined today by Dr. John Deloney, bestselling author and host of the Dr. John Deloney Show. Blinds.com 100% satisfaction guarantee means even if you mismeasure or

pick the wrong color, they'll remake your blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every single month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code Ramsey to get the best deal. Today's question comes from Jade in New Hampshire. Jade writes, my boyfriend and I do not agree on money. I'm 24 and he's 27 and we've been together for three years. We constantly fight because he wants to spend all his money and then my money instead of putting some money in savings. I try to explain we need to be financially stable by budgeting, but he says we are young and shouldn't worry about saving money. Genius.

I've already started a retirement account, and I'm currently debt-free. Should we break up if we don't agree on how to spend money, or am I being unreasonable? No, you should break up because you're dating an immature child. Keyword dating, John. There's so many red flags here for a girlfriend and boyfriend, and he's spending her money, and they're trying to tell each other what to do with their money,

and they're trying to be financially stable. My guess is they're living together based on just the situation. Right. There's just a lot of mess going on here, and it's not looking good as far as the long-term outlook of this relationship so let's go through this we constantly fight red flag i don't want to marry somebody that we constantly fight during the great years when we're dating when we both still love each other right the honeymoon period the honeymoon break uh we constantly fight he spends all his money immature

child cannot does not have the adult discipline to say, hey, tomorrow's going to come. The month after that's going to come. Next year's going to come. I need to start planning. And then he takes your money. That's red flag number three. Because now he's taking stuff that's not his.

And he's taking it against your wishes. He is bashing through your boundaries to get some of what you've already said. Hey, I want to plan long term. I'm debt free. I got a retirement account. And he said, I don't care what your boundaries are. I don't care what your wishes are.

I want to feel good now. And this is going to come up with raising kids, buying a house, living in a certain town. I don't care what job you want. I want to stay at home and run, run, run, and then keep running. You're worth more than this, Jade. I've got to give props to Zach running the graphics in the booth. The lower third for this question says, should I dump my YOLO-minded boyfriend?

The answer is yes. And when you put it that way, I'm just going to say yes without context on that question. And the key word here is boyfriend. Now, they're not married. There's nothing to fight for here. They're 24 and 27. You'll be okay. I think if you can't get on the same page about your financial values, you got to find someone who does have those values. It's not even about financial values. It's about respect and dignity. Yeah. And this man is. It's about respect and dignity. Yeah. And this man is not treating you with respect and dignity.

Respect and dignity is about we're going to plan together, so we're going to sacrifice the YOLO now for safety and security down the road. It is what's going to make you feel safe, what's going to make you feel loved, and this guy cares about one thing, spending everybody's money. She is 24, he is 27, and she is still dating a child. That's not okay. Time to go, Jade.

Sorry. There's other men out there for you. Good luck. All right, let's go to the phones this hour. Natasha joins us in Butte, Montana. Natasha, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Thank you. How can we help today?

I'm actually calling for some advice regarding my mom. My dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in November of last year, and we lost him in January. It's been almost a year. Natasha, I'm so sorry. So sorry. What was his name? Thank you.

George. Awesome guy? Yes. Fantastic guy. What was his name? Thank you. George. Awesome guy? Yes. Fantastic guy. How old was he? He was 57. Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry, Natasha.

Yikes. That's okay. One day at a time. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So how can we help? Well, my mom, so previous to him getting sick they had sold their house and started building a house on a piece of property pretty remote um they spent five years building it um and when i

say building it i mean building it like they hand milled every piece of lumber in the house wow and so a true dream home yes and he had always wanted to build a house he had never built a house before um when he passed uh my brothers and i and my husband uh kind of helped my mom finish it it wasn't quite done yet um she listed it this summer and then pulled it down um emotionally it's been very difficult for her. It's worth about $2 million. Right. Um, they've got a main house and then a cabin and 56 acres. The house payment is roughly 2000 a month and she has about 200,000 in the bank. And she just cannot figure out what the right answer is, whether to put it back on the market. She could make it work financially to continue making the payments.

She's been doing Airbnb on the cabin on the property, and she's looking at a long-term renter now. But mathematically and emotionally, she's having a hard time between the two. And I can't give her advice because, you know, we helped. Mathematically and emotionally, she's having a hard time between the two. Yeah. And I can't give her advice because, you know, we helped as often as we could on the build, and there's a lot of him tied up into the house. There's not a lot. His entire spirit is woven into that thing.

Literally, the nails in that home were hammered by, you know what I mean? This is different normally you you talk to couples and they you know met with architects and picked out fixtures together and and this is different he built this thing right so let's take the and this is hard and this is gonna even be offensive the way i say this and so i apologize ahead of time but let's take the emotion off the table for a second no that's if you're that I just can't do so no I got you I got you if your mom had the opportunity with two hundred thousand dollars in the bank would she buy a two million dollar property to become a landlord and to manage 57 acres and a couple of homes on her own in the middle of the wilderness in Montana?

No, probably not. And so that, to me, is the answer to the ongoing, do we sell this or not? Is what is the life we are trying to uphold? And the fact, right now, it sounds like she's trying to hang on to this incredible man that built this home that set them on this they had plans right they had a vision for the back half of their life and it just yeah it was actually going to be a glamping and camping property of course it was yeah it was gonna be amazing i mean god almighty i'm just i'm thinking about what an incredible dream that is and so it's separating the fact that he he is deep within her in her heart he's a part of her at the cellular

level he is not he is no longer in this home and it's being able to pull that apart and say what would he want he want me to take the equity of this home and go live, not our dream, but what do I want to do? What's my dream going to be? And so getting her to say, okay, if I, if he take him out of the picture, I wouldn't go buy a $2 million property that I can barely, barely, barely afford and run it. Even with it's over my head. What would I, what would I do? Where would I live? Would I go move my grandkids? Would I get a condo and take a wild vacation once a year? What would that look like? And would my husband want me to have $2 million in the bank?

Yeah. Or do you want me to manage a 57 acre property all on my own? That's the question I would ask. And my guess is he would say oh honey take the money and go do the thing you've always wanted to do right he told her towards the end oh he did so he's already freed her yes yes and so the thing i always tell folks is what's the best way to steward this money when somebody passes and it sounds like as hard as it is, the ultimate outcome here will be we're going to sell this thing. If you've got a $2 million buyer, if you've got

a $2 million person who's willing to take it off your hands, I would lean in that direction. You've got to grieve this, maybe do a ceremony, commemorate what was, do something special, but we've got to have some closure here and move on. That's right. And then go build a beautiful next chapter.

Oh, I'm so sorry. We're thinking about you guys. Our scripture of the day, Colossians 3.14. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. Nelson Mandela said, may your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. I love that. That's a good one. Love it. Really good.

All right, open phones this hour. Anthony joins us in San Francisco, California. Anthony, welcome to the Ramsey show. Yeah. Hi, John. Hi, George. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. How can we help? Yeah. I'm 29 years old. I have a girlfriend. We're about the same age and we went to basically high school sweethearts. But basically we're in a kind of a hard place kind of figuring out the next direction within the next two to five years in terms of getting married, you know, having kids in a house and all within California. But then we have our own student debt and I have a car payment and just kind of getting a little bit more sense of the

direction on how we can start to approach things. Okay. How much debt do you have? Well, hold on. Approach what things? Approach your financial situation or just how you're going to build a future together? Are you asking a marriage question or a money question or both? I guess it's a little bit of both. For me, it's more, you know, taking care of our finances first. So we've had to talk about marriage already, you know, year after year, just, and our relationship's really strong, but obviously we don't want to jump into things, getting married and house and kids right away because we're both coming out of college debt. I guess for me, I've been a lot better in terms of paying it down because I got a job right away after high school.

And then she was pursuing the medical field. So it took her time to get through all the schooling and things like that. How long have you guys been dating? We just hit our 11 years a few days ago. 11 years and we're still just taking it slow. Brother, what are you waiting on? I think it's more so the money. Is it the money?

I'm genuinely curious. Is it really the money? I don't know. I think it's just been difficult living in California, especially in the San Francisco area, just trying to make the right moves. I guess you can say we can get married. Do you all live together?

Yes. Anthony, there's something bigger than this. What's the holdup? Is she not the one? No, no, definitely she's the one. We just wanted to make sure we were financially stable first because she's coming in right now out of college about 80K debt. People get married with debt all the time.

It's not going to affect your marriage if you're on the same page. Yeah, and then you're just going to work together and crush this thing out. There's something else here. No, I think for me, too, because when I was paying off my college debt, it was just hard to kind of, I guess, support at the time because when she was living with me, I was the one working, trying to pay my debt down, keeping up with the interest rate before COVID, you know, and then my dumb self at the time bought a $25,000 car coming out of college. That didn't help. And then she was, you know, going back to school and she didn't have a job. So I've been kind of

helping support her for the last three to five years. So are you waiting until she gets around to paying her debts off? I guess before we, I guess for buying a house in that aspect, but we've already talked about probably getting married next year in 2023. And over the, so I've just saved enough to pay off my debt and for me and car balance. If I was to write a check today. So I've done that over the last eight months. And then I guess now that I'm saving for a ring and I think I can get that in the next three months. So it was my plan to propose this year. And then next year, we kind of move everything full-fledged and just kind of go heads-on after that. But I didn't think at the time it was right for both of us to come.

I mean, I guess we can get married, like you said. Yeah, I mean, it's so much semantics right now. The only thing I'm hearing you say is you want her to pay off her debt. You've saved up money. You've worked hard to pay off yours. Do you not feel she's pulling her weight? No, no, no, no. It's not that.

I think what floated down was that when she was still doing school after college, she wanted to be a doctor. So after she graduated college, she took a year off because she said college was crazy. So it was fine. And then the next two years, she was going back to school to get her GPA because when she applied to med school, she got rejected because her grades weren't competitive. So it took her about two years to take more classes. She then reapplied to med school at a lower level, at the DO level instead of the MD level, got rejected again. And, you know, as she's applying to these med schools and cycles, it's once a year, and you don't know the decision until the year after.

So that finally caught up to us year after year. And now that we've turned 29 and we're approaching our 30s it's kind of like okay let's just you know start to get things rolling um so she's currently working at a an eye clinic right now full-time um in hopes of trying to apply to PA school a physician assistant of school okay um so we when we could talk about your future. Here's the thing. Your ball has been rolling for a long time, a long, long, long time, whether you all want to acknowledge it or not.

You all have been together for more than a decade. And so you all have been playing house for however many years. You either know this is the person I'm going to marry and I'm into this or it's time to move on. You say you want to marry. Great. That's awesome. I would take all of the I don't know.

I'm just saying, bro, you're in. Get going. You know what I'm saying? Like, just get moving on down the road. Anthony, I feel like you need a little gas in the tank, man. Like, you just got to man up, propose in the next month or two, pay off the debt today, get your emergency fund in place, and when you guys are married, you can tackle her debt together.

You can do it together. And you're going to be fine. But sitting around waiting and making the, well, you know, when money's less tight, maybe I'll get around to it. But that's the problem with playing house. You don't feel any urgency to make any real big moves, and so you kind of just meander through life. And you up and it's 11 years later we're like that's probably let's just get serious you're 29 man you act like you're going on 50 like well time's running out so i'm

gonna sit around and keep waiting so anthony can you pay your debt off today and be debt-free today yes will that feel good yeah it Yes, it'll feel incredible. And then can you and your wife, your spouse or your girlfriend, can you all just go down to the JP tomorrow and get married? Just call it good. Say we'll have a party later.

It's COVID season. Let's save $100,000 on a wedding and let's just go get married tomorrow and we'll call it good. Okay, so then I guess after that, you know, does that mean... Because I guess it was part of my responsibility to kind of save for a down payment

because she was going to work on using her money to pay off her loan. It's going to be all y'alls. There will be no... You will have a singular pronoun, us. We. There's no like, well, she does the dishes and I save up for the down payment.

And you guys got to get married to get on the same page. Yes. Same team. And that's when you would combine accounts. That's when you set goals together. You have a vision for your life. And you go, what kind of life do we want to have? Great.

Let's knock out your debt. Let's get our emergency fund in place. Let's save up for the down payment on the house. Let's invest 15% of our income. Let's become millionaires. Do whatever you want to do, but you got to do it together. Right now it feels like you're kind of it's tit for tat i had when she took her time off i had to save up all the money and then i had to do that's relationship that's marriage yeah people

are struggling somebody else lifts their arms up and then somebody else is struggling we're there to support each other and walk alongside each other we're both doing great then you can really make some progress we're both struggling we struggle together that's the whole relationship that's what man you don't want to say it but you don't think she's pulled her weight over the last 11 years financially oh you mean so if we just get married i just i just gotta i gotta save up and buy it right now this is a roommate with benefits that's yes if you're the only one working then yes if she's got a full-time job optomet optometrist, she's going to kick in too. You're both going to pay off her debts.

You're both going to save up and buy this house. And if she peels off and goes back to school, she'll go back to school, man. And you will help support her because you'll be her husband. You'll be in a relationship with her, man. You've got to change the way you're looking at this. Well, I did it. I and she did it. Y'all are doing this together. Get it, man. That's a good a good word john can't wait to hear more from you at uh money and marriage

it's a great pitch you and rachel cruz are going to be doing that february 11th yeah a couple weeks so go to ramsey solutions.com it's gonna be a fun event i'll be tuning in from home fun show john thank you so much thank you brother big shout out to ben hill running the board today austin selby on the phones kelly daniel a producer brown back to Ben Hill running the board today, Austin Selby on the phones, Kelly Daniel, our producer. Caitlin Brown back there on YouTube. Caitlin running the video side, Zach on graphics, all the crew that makes this happen. We just happen to be here, too. It's been awesome.

Thank you so much, America. We'll be back with you before you know it. Until then, spend wisely, save intentionally, and give generously. Did you know you can listen to The Ramsey Show on your smart speaker? Just tell Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri to play The Ramsey Show podcast. Check out all Ramsey Network shows on your smart speaker today.