The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Buy a Vacation Home? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

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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'm Dave Ramsey, your host. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today on the air. And again, we are answering your questions about life and about money. Jordan starts off this hour in Michigan.

Hey, Jordan, how are you? Good, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I work in public safety, and um the city that i work for uh we're all on 401k plans uh i contribute five percent they contribute 12 percent um but they're offering us now a pension so no switch over to you know just curious to see if that would be worth uh something to look into or switch over to, and I was just curious to see if that would be worth something to look into or switch over to.

No, 401K, much better. 401K, okay. Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. Okay. When you die, no pension. When you die with a half million dollars in your 401K, it goes to your heirs. Exactly.

When you're in a pension, someone else controls your investments. When you're in a 401K, you decide which mutual funds you want them in. Correct. You control your own destiny, and then you will have one. Absolutely. Cool? All right, well, that answers it. Thank you.

Thank you, man. Open phones at 888-825-5225. John, you probably, because you don't come from this nerdy financial world, when I started the show 30 years ago, 78% of Americans had a pension. The 401K is Section 401, Subsection K of the IRS Code. And it was just starting to catch on. Somebody dove deep down in the code and realized that it is perfectly okay for employers to payroll deduct pre-tax and put money into an investment on behalf of an employee.

And they were just catching on. But all the big companies back in those days had pensions. And the 401K was thought of as blasphemy because you had to put your own money in it instead of it given to you as a free retirement plan but when you die with a free retirement plan you got nothing and you don't control the investments and if the company goes broke it's an asset of the company your pension's gone that's been my understanding is that all of these pensions whether they're in these municipalities or they're in businesses they just go away a lot of them are in trouble right and and but in in terms of when you die you don't get anything right and you you know so the benefit is very shallow and and so over the

years now it's flipped to where there's almost no things except municipalities and a few unions and a few large companies offering pensions but other than that everyone's gone to 401ks and the beauty of that is you control your own destiny and when you control your own destiny you will have one i love that line when you count on someone else to you know cause you to win generally speaking they're not going to take care of you and it's not it's not it's like there's a cold world out there no it's just how things work it's okay or i'm expecting somebody 30 years from now who doesn't know me now to care about right some 30 years from now i expect you to manage a pension in my best interest that i signed up for a long time ago right well some goob managing the pension

when you're retired that wasn't born when you started that's exactly right that's what it amounts to could care less about your grandkids right i don't like that dana's with us dana's in north carolina hey dana how are you hey thanks for taking my call sure how can i help how can we help um so my son um he's 21 he graduated in december he has not been able to find a job and i've been helping him um with his bills he was in florida what kind of uh what kind of degree did he get he got a degree in game art in what in game art he's an artist game art as in like uh like video games yes okay oh okay cool all right so he's got a lot he's got a lot of graphic arts under his digital graphic arts under his belt then Video games? Yes. Okay. Oh, okay, cool. All right.

So he's got a lot of graphic arts under his, digital graphic arts under his belt then, right? Yes. So maybe he's not, and maybe he doesn't go to work for a game company. Maybe he goes to work for a company. Yes. Okay. That is the goal. All right.

But I've been helping him out, and I really can't anymore. And I just want to know how to go about that, letting him know that without ruining our relationship. Your relationship is only based on money? No, I just don't want to upset him because I've been helping him out so much. So first and foremost, you're going to have to put that down. And if the truth about my mom's financial situation impacting my inability to find work, like if that is if he has Dave just point out, if that's what my love for my mom is based on, there's other deeper problems. I think you take him out to breakfast and say, Hey, I've done the math on my own budget. And I can't keep doing this. Here's the finish line here. And I know your dream is to work for pixar i know your dream is to work for i don't

know what i'm gonna make up games fortnight or whatever the thing is um there's an animal farms that's one you like i don't yeah dude i don't know for pong that's the last video game i played it was pong atari um surely they've yeah um you're on your own you're gonna have to go find work he's a 21 year old college grad and he has lived under somebody who loves him and who's given him a soft place to land after graduation particularly in a covid mess but so how much money have you been giving him um well he lives out of state so i've been helping with everything um anywhere from six to eight hundred a month600 to $800 a month. $600 to $800 a month, okay.

And you've reached the end of being able to do that, you're saying. How much longer could you do that? Probably not any more. Not at all? You're out of money? Right. Okay, so it really doesn't matter. You just got to tell him because you can't give him more money.

You're just done. Right? Okay. So, yeah, my suggestion, have breakfast isn't going to work. But it's a FaceTime conversation. Yeah, but just get on the phone or FaceTime or whatever and just say, you know, I'm so sorry. I've reached the end of my money. I don't have any more.

And so you're going to have to, you know, go do something. So you're $600 or $800. He's not surviving on that. Well, he lives with other people, so they split rent. So his rent's like $200. So he doesn't work at all. No, he hasn't. Like not delivering pizzas or Uber or not mowing grass or blowing leaves or anything?

Not that I'm aware of. Not that I know of. Okay. Yeah, that ends today. I mean, when I ask him, he says he's been looking at the other thing. Yeah. Yeah. I promise when he gets hungry enough.

Just say, I would go pick up anything and everything, honey. It's what I had to do when I was your age. And I love you. I'm cheering for you. I'll do everything I can to help you I just don't have any more money I'm so sorry I'm out and it breaks my heart I wish I could help more but I can't and if he gets mad about that that is on you know okay is he gonna get mad thank you is he is he a person that gets mad at his mother no I mean I don't think I don't

think he would I Okay. All right. I just don't want him to, like... If he was my son, I would have already had this discussion about six months ago, and we would have been delivering pizzas. Go down to Home Depot, buy a leaf blower. Rich people are afraid of leaves. You can get a job. I mean, there's stuff to do, okay?

Hey, and Dana, you're a good mom. You are a great mom. You're a good mom. You're a good mom. You are a great mom. You're a good mom. You're a great mom. The level of your Mother of the Year award is not based on dollars. Ever. You're a good mom, Dana. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. hey folks father's day is just around the corner if you're looking for the perfect unique gift to give dad i've got it grip. If dad's like me, he's not a fan of traditional

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How can John Deloney and I help? Hi, Dave. So I just finished Baby Step 3, so I'm on Baby Steps 4 and 6, and I'm a little stuck. So like a moron, I took out a 30-year mortgage on my house two years ago. I'd like to start paying on it early to be able to just knock out my house payment. However, I do want to put the 15% into retirement. So I guess I'm a little stuck on where I should be going and how fast I should be doing what.

So you're single? I am. And your income is what? In between $120 and $130. Okay. So you're bringing home about $6,500 a month? Yep. Okay. And your house payment's what?

$1,900 right now. Okay, well, you're still south of 30%. You're not at 25%, but you're close of your take-home pay, so you should have room to do that. Oh, that's on a 30%. I'm sorry. And then you put 15% of your household income into retirement. Why do you not have money to put extra on things

after you put 15% into retirement, making $120,000 a year? So I do. I guess that's where I'm stuck is where do I get that extra money? Do I throw it towards retirement? Yeah. Okay, no. Baby step four is 15% of your income towards retirement five is kids college which does not apply here six is you pay everything extra past that on your house

and that's everything extra left over in your budget now your budget in four five six should also include buying a replacement car buying a replacement couch, buying a replacement couch, going on vacation, other stuff. So those are the things that are going to limit how much you pay extra on your house. But you can put 15% away and still pay extra on your house. The only question is how much. Right. So you're going to be able to get the house down to 15 years. How old are you?

I just turned 31 last week. Oh, you're doing great. You've won life. You're doing great. You've won life. You're doing great. I'm trying. I mean, you're debt-free, but you're house, and you're 31 years old, and you're making $130,000, and you're putting 15% of your income away for retirement. Touchdown, baby.

You're sweet. You're awesome. I love you. Well, thanks. You're killing it. I have one more question. Okay. So I'm a professor, and so I have a 403B, not a 401.

And so they don't match. So do you recommend I throw my retirement into, like, a Roth, or do I stick with the 403B? Do they offer the 403B in a Roth? They don't. Then I would start with Roth. We always say it's kind of like but not really like rock, paper, scissors. So match beats Roth beats traditional.

403B without a match and without a Roth element to it is traditional. So you don't have a match, so we go match beats Roth, and we max out your Roth. Past that, I would do some 403B. Be careful with the 403B on the college campus and make sure that you're putting it in mutual funds not some crummy insurance product and if you do that you'll be just fine you're doing really really well i feel like i was just sitting next to goodwill hunting on that last call sometimes watching your head work man what are you talking about you can do math in your head i've been doing it so long eunice is in new jersey hey eunice how are you hi how are you better than i deserve what's up

um okay so really quickly i um i have about 54 000 in student debt i got married two years ago my husband makes the bulk of the money in our household. He's in accounting, so he controls the money that comes in. Before we got married, my plan, and I expressed that to him, was the fact that I wanted to be out of debt as soon as possible. But as we're talking more and more, it just seems like my student loan is taking more and more of a backseat. And I am kind of scared because I want to be debt free. I don't like the loans. I don't have credit card debts or anything like that. It looks like for the fall, I may have to take more loans because, well, COVID wiped out my job, kind of funded my semesters. And I just don't know how to. How are you oh oh i'm 44 okay you're talking a lot in

i is there not a we here because you're married and so this this idea of he controls the money and you might have to take out a loan for your school. Have you got a roommate or a husband? Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I feel more like it's all about what he says that goes. Is he controlling in other subjects? Huh? How controlling is he in other subjects?

Pretty much. I'll tell you. He makes the final decision on things. We've had this discussion and had blown-ups about it, but it's pretty strong-willed. But when it comes to my loan, I just don't want that to be in the back burner. I'm not paying a loan for 10 years, and I just don't know how to approach this subject. One of the rules I learned a long time ago, Eunice, is that financial problems, including when I had them, are very seldom the actual problem.

They're usually the symptom. So your loan is not really the problem. It's the symptom. Do you think, John? Yeah, absolutely. This has, with all due respect, Eunice, this doesn't have much to do with the repayment structure on your student loan. This has to do with a man in your life that is not honoring you, is not valuing your voice at the table for whatever reason, and is like, to use your words, is controlling the way you move about the world. Right. Your voice sounds heavy.

Yeah. Well, it is frustrating. Is this new behavior? Did it emerge after you got married, or is this something that is kind of new walking into the front door? No. We've known each other a long time. It's just that...

How old is he? 40. How long has he been in accounting? Quite a while. Are you guys in a good church? Well, I go to the church. He does not, not often at all. Okay.

I would suggest that you sit with your pastor and that he have them suggest a good faith-based marriage counselor and have that counselor give you some verbiage to entice your new husband into the marriage counselor's office. office because if you don't one of two things is going to happen you're going to lose who you are and surrender to a toxic situation or you're going to divorce one of the two yeah if you do not solve this and i think it can be healed it could be as simple as he's a very detailed very uh he's a guy who controls the controllables he's an accountant okay he's a very detailed, very, he's a guy who controls the controllables. He's an accountant, okay? He's an engineer type. Right. And that person can see what they're doing as an act of love.

Mm-hmm. But they also need to understand that what they're doing is toxic as crud. Because in talking to you, I'm almost a little afraid for you. Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. Yeah, I... Hey, are you okay? Are you okay in that house?

Yeah, I am. Okay. No, no, no, I am. I'm just checking. Just this situation, I mean, the personalities definitely are crashing, but this situation definitely is a problem. Yeah, but I think what we're saying is the student loan problem and you having to take out a loan problem

and him controlling all the flow of cash in the household are all toxic relational behaviors long before their financial issues. You understand that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's treat that. Let's work on that.

I want you to take yourself out for coffee, and I want you to take a pen and a paper, not even a computer. I want you to take a pen and a paper, and I want you to write down your feelings. I want you to write down what's being controlled. What are the things that you're not able to say out loud? What are the things that are leaning on you and squashing you? And take that to a marriage counselor. Take that to your pastor and read it to him.

Yeah. And then let's get some help. And maybe we can turn this thing around. I hope you can. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Business leaders, now more than ever, we need people with the right skills to support our communities, especially the frontline workers who provide resources and care for those most in need. To help, LinkedIn is offering free job posts for health care and essential service organizations

that need to quickly fill critical roles with the people who help us all. If you are hiring for one of these organizations, free job posts on LinkedIn can help you quickly find the right people for your front line. LinkedIn jobs can help by screening candidates for skills and experience you're looking for and putting your job post in front of qualified people who have what you're looking for and putting your job post in front of qualified people who have what you're looking for so you can find the right person to quickly fill critical roles to post a health care or essential service job for free or if you're in another industry and have hiring needs visit linkedin.com slash ramsey linkedin.com slash ram Terms and conditions apply. Rudy and Jessica are with us in Denver.

I see on my screen you guys are debt-free. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you, Dave. Way to go. How much have you paid off? We paid off $40,000 in seven months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time?

It was $77,000. Okay. What do you guys do for a living? I'm a truck driver. And I work at a municipal court. Cool. All right. And what kind of debt was the $40,000?

It was a bunch of miscellaneous. We had personal loans, car loans, and credit cards. What was the big one? The biggest one was my car. Your car. And you're a truck driver. Hey, man, that's awesome. I love it well well done well done you guys congratulations what happened seven months ago that put you on this journey um well we um definitely were

fighting a lot as uh as a couple you know, finances tend to do to people. And we, or my wife actually, found your program, your radio show, and that's when, you know, we started talking about becoming debt-free. And, you know, we were praying about it and everything, and that just gave us faith to believe that we could do it. That's powerful. How long have you guys been married? It'll be three years in September. So how does it feel to not have the money fights hanging over you now?

Oh, yeah. It's a huge blessing. It's just indescribable. I feel free. Do you have any kids, Rudy? Jessica? No, no, not yet. Wow. Well, you are free. Congratulations. Very, very well done.

What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? Definitely perseverance, having a support group, uh, definitely watching the Dave Ramsey show. Well, we appreciate that. Money, discipline, and self-discipline. Okay, cool. How old are you guys?

Uh, I'm 23. And I'm 24. Man, oh man, oh man. And you got the biggest subject in marriage whipped. Right. I mean, this is the big one you get this one whipped you can work out everything else man i'm so proud of y'all well done who are your biggest cheerleaders i think ourselves honestly you didn't tell a lot of people you were doing it uh we told uh you know family and whatnot but it just sounds so weird it is weird really understand it you were normal before fighting about money and broke yeah man and rudy and

jessica i want you to not miss the moment that you're going to bring kids into a situation where there's not that stress not that sword hanging over your marriage, not those frustrated fights. They're going to come into a totally different environment because you all worked hard as a 23- and 24-year-old. What a gift you've given your kids and their kids on down the line. You've changed the legacy. It's incredible.

Way to go. Way to go. Very, very well done. Very well done. Okay, so you listened on the radio, and then what happened? And then you started watching on YouTube, you said, right? Yeah, correct. And then we got the Financial Peace University.

Oh, you went through FPU. Okay. Yeah, we did. Okay, cool. Cool. Sometimes that's the progression, and sometimes it's not. So, well, very, very proud of you guys. Congratulations.

Congratulations. Was it worth all this? What was the hardest part of this for you? Having no lives. For seven months you had no life, and the rest of your life you have one. Yeah. It's a fair trade. It's a fair trade.

Good job, dude. Very, very well done, sir. We've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Everyday Millionaires. That is the next chapter in your story. That is predictable right here. There are some variables we can see in people's lives when we talk to them after having done this a long time,

and you guys are on a trajectory that's pretty stinking cool. I'm very proud of you. Very well done. Rudy and Jessica, Denver, Colorado, $40,000 paid off in seven months, making $77,000 with no life for seven months. But they're debt-free. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one. We're debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! That's how that's done. Woo! Woo! Yeah, baby! Look at the people in the lobby clapping for folks on the radio.

It's awesome. Yeah, 23, 24. I mean, those of us that are older, we go, If only. Can you imagine? I mean, those of us that are older, we go, if only. Can you imagine? I can't even imagine. If only. If only, if only, if only.

23 and 24. What a gift. And you know what we're getting a lot of debt-free screams now are what we call financial peace babies. They were raised in a financial peace household, and they go off, get married. They're 24, 23, and they revisit what mom and dad trained when mom and dad were going through it back when they were kids and you know quarantine forced a homeschool adventure that uh you might not have done voluntarily but you got to do it and um uh you know some of you people are actually thinking about money in life with your kids now and we're going to have a big sale right now to help you with that it's called the adventure pack it's family favorite. It's for the smaller kids, the kids 12 and under.

And it's filled with storybooks, activities. The best part is you can add an extra kit for every sibling, and it's got everything you need. Now, if you've got teenagers and you want to teach them to be entrepreneurs, Anthony O'Neill's The Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox is an incredible process for teaching a kid to set up and run a business like hard work and leadership and responsibility and keeping a P&L and all of that. And we guide your mom and dad through how to coach them as they're doing that. All of this is on sale right now.

Teach your kids how to handle money. And that way they don't come home and live in your basement. This is how it works. Ramsey Concierge Team, a 888-22-PIECE. They'll get you set up or check out daveramsey.com the ramsey concierge team 888-227-3223 the uh the data that you've seen in the counseling world on marital conflict last several calls we've had both talked about conflict one positively handling it one negatively handling it but all around the subject of money money truly is the

number one cause of divorce of and of disagreement and if you can get on the same page on that it's really not money that you're arguing about money represents power. It represents choices. It represents your dreams, your fears. And when you can get aligned on those things, the only way you can get aligned on money is to get aligned on those things. And I think alignment's the key word there. And we talk about this often, but we, you know, speak in words, but we think in pictures. And sometimes it's just we both say husband and we both say wife, but I've got a picture of what a husband does in a household, and I've got a picture of what a husband does in a household,

and they don't match, right? And you're going as hard as you can, trying to be the best husband you can, and she's trying to be the best wife she can, and you all have different pictures and different words and different explanations, and you're both trying to love each other hard, but's not alignment and you end up so far away and money just emerges as the neon sign that it's like you get married and you say i have a blueprint for my life and the other one says i've got a blueprint for my life and unless you sit down and reconcile them uh one of you's got a split foyer to build one of you's got a ranch to build

and if you try to build that without reconciling them you build a pretzel that's i mean an unlivable house it's not it's not livable yeah and so you know you don't break ground on this puppy until you get alignment and when you can agree on your spending your jesus said your treasure is where your heart is you're really agreeing on what's important to you values your values yeah it's i value saving i value staying out of debt yes i value generosity yes i value retirement i value paying cash for my kids college so we don't have so our kids don't have student loans like we did i value never having a payment because my dad never had one i value never having a payment because my dad always had one right whatever it is intentional

yeah and you're not going to ever avoid the hard conversation. You can have a hard conversation up front or a painful one in the back. Yeah. But you're never going to avoid it. Yeah. Henry Cloud says, If you bury negative feelings, they have a high rate of resurrection. Actually, I think, or is that Les Parrott? One of them says that.

Anyway, still a great line. If you bury negative feelings, they have a high rate of resurrection. Somebody important said that. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Folks, save cash by fixing your major appliances yourself. Get your parts from my friends at Appliance Parts Pros. We just heard from a listener who said he saved his family at least $500 by getting his parts and expert advice to fix his leaky fridge and dishwasher from Appliance Parts Pros. These guys carry over

2 million appliance and outdoor power equipment parts and offer easy returns. Order your parts today at AppliancePartsPros.com. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, my co-host here on the air this day on the Dave Ramsey Show. Julie is in Arizona. Hi, Julie. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Can you hear me? Absolutely. How can we help?

Thanks for taking my question. I want to ask your opinion about purchasing a vacation home um my husband and i have been researching this recently and we we'd like to get some advice okay a uh a vacation home i have a lake house that i uh will be heading to uh tonight and it's one of my favorite places on the planet. A vacation home, however, is a toy. Toys you should always pay cash for.

Are you able to pay cash for it? Yes. We are, but we also are able to use it as an investment as well because it's a condo that we can, you know, put on VRBO and we can rent it through the resort property that we're interested in. Yeah. So we –

Give or take COVID, yeah. And so, I mean, a lot of people VRBOed are in foreclosure right now. But you're paying cash, so, you know, it'd just be lost income is all it would be if you didn't get that. So it helps to justify it financially. But by and large, what you're paying for it, you are going to consume with the exception of whatever VRBO income you create. Agreed? Yeah. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. You just want to keep your toys paid for in cash, and they should be a small percentage of your world. So what is your current residence worth?

Maybe $550 to $600 in that ballpark. What's said beach condo going to cost? The asking price is $460, but we're offering $440. Um, we're hoping to, you know, bargain down a little bit with them, but in that range. All right. So you're going to have a, and what's your total net worth? Um, probably. How much you got in retirement?

A million. Okay. All right. How often will you got in retirement? A million. Okay. All right. How often will you use this property? Well, right now we both still work full time, and I'm a teacher, and I have six more years. My husband owns his own business, so he's a lot more flexible. He could take time more often than i could um so we were our vision is for this beginning six years of owning the property we would primarily be using it to make money hopefully okay let's let's call it one fourth let's call

it one fourth of your net worth okay it is not a good rental investment. So you cannot rationalize it on that. Resort property is the worst rental investment. Everybody buys it based on that, but it's very volatile. As soon as the economy burps, it shuts down for whatever reason. Because that's the first thing people quit doing is going to the beach and the mountains. And so, you know, it just – and therefore, the values are volatile. And that would be true of my lake house as well. So you need to have it as a small percentage.

It's a 25% of your net worth, which is a lot. That's not a deal breaker. If it's 50%, I just call foul and we throw a flag and end the conversation. So you can do this if you want to do it. Don't do it based on the revenue it's going to create that is a rationalization just do it because i've worked my butt off i got two million dollars and i can afford to put 400 grand of it into this okay okay and then if you get some rental income it's gravy on the biscuit now suggestion

for two years rent something down there. You mean? When you get ready to go, rent it by the week. Be the customer instead of the provider. Have you been going to this location and renting VRBO? We've stayed in this particular resort twice. Okay. Do it five more times

in the next two years okay prove to yourself that you're going to use it enough to spend 400 freaking thousand dollars on it right right because it's you know we were actually sharon and i we've got this lake house but we were also talking about getting something on a golf course on a beach down in florida and we flew down there and spent a couple days goofing around and just, you know, doing empty nester fund stuff and looking at condos, which I just love real estate. So I was doing that anyway. And then we sat down and figured out how much our kids would use the condo down there, how much we would use it down there. And we threw a flag and went, you know, we can rent condos for the rest of our life by the week and not spend one-tenth of what we would have spent on this stupid thing. And so we just called it you know we figured out we're not gonna because when we actually put our

usage to the test it it it's it spoiled all the positive emotions right i i have this question dave um y'all are talking about y'all are in a different bracket right you're talking about second homes and vacation homes i think that same logic should be applied to my buddies who have garages full of saw equipment and boats. Or four-wheelers or side-by-sides. It's the same thing. They're all toys. I love that reframing. It's a toy.

It's a toy, and there's nothing wrong with adult toys as long as you pay cash for them and they're a small percentage of your net worth. But are you going to use it twice, or can you borrow your buddies? Exactly. Exactly. Can you trade a couple of pizzas for your soul? I mean, the number of people that bought a motorcycle because they wanted to ride across the country, be evil Knievel, and haven't gotten on it in two years and sat in the garage with dust on it is everybody.

Right. You know? That's right. It is. on it is everybody right you know it is i mean unless you're a hardcore biker and just didn't really into it it it just it the romance of it doesn't match the reality and that happens with vacation homes that happens with you know ski resort house you're going on a ski trip and you get looking at real estate i do it i do it i get hooked and i'm i i and then i have to back up and go wait a minute wait a minute here's a math, wait a minute. Here's a math brain here, too.

And so we can rent this house like 4,000 weeks before we can afford to buy it. And I can do it on a lesser scale at Home Depot. While I'm here, I should go ahead and get the bandsaw and the table saw. And I could have bought all the furniture custom made from the guy who already had that cheaper. Yes. Or I could have taken my buddy out for the nicest dinner on the town for him to come over and help me and we would have had more fun together doing it right i still got the same table and the same but it's doing the math it goes back

to what we're talking about earlier just being intentional yeah well the if you look at things that's what that's the good reason about doing every dollar budget what rachel talks about all the time when you look at things holistically this item as a part of a picture might not make as much sense as it does just this item right like just looking at this couch i can do this couch but when you look at it as a part of the overall picture it's like crap we're behind on our student loans we can't do this couch or this couch is 60 of my take-home this month it doesn't make sense right it's like all of a sudden you know when you look at it as a part of a whole it it is it glaringly yells at you so deb so nothing wrong with what you're doing uh julia i think you can afford the

vacation home if you want to just go get it but my suggestion from having gone through this angst personally myself several times and um uh and you know is and i've got friends that own these properties and stuff and you know uh i would rent for two years aggressively even if you went down there and rented for six months all winter and then just said we're going to pay for it for six months and we're going to do a six-month lease on a condo and say okay how much how many times do we go down during six months? Because six months is not 400 grand. It might be 10, 15.

I don't know how nice a condo is, but it could be 20. But still, I would spend $20,000 to investigate to make a better $400,000 purchase. And what is your actual usage going to be? You might be going, I'm really glad I don't know rental because that's really all it's going to be because we're not going. And then you'd go, okay, we may look at that again after the six years, after the retirement comes. And you may dial, you know, you pan in, you pan out and start to look at these different portions in your life. And it causes you to make different situations. I just know I'm a lot different guy than I was six years ago

and six years before that and six years before that. And so I love the idea of renting, thinking it through, and not doubling down on half a million dollars. Well, we actually talked about that on that Florida Beach condo. I said, okay, let's just rent one for the winter. And then we sat down. That made us sit down and look at the calendar and go, okay, let's just rent one for the winter. And then we sat down. That made us sit down and look at the calendar and go, okay, when are we going? Oh, we can't.

I'm working, and then there's like this Christmas thing, and then there's Thanksgiving, and there might be a football game, and we're not going. So I think it'd be kind of dumb to rent it. Well, it'd be double dumb to buy it. It forced me to deal with myself on it. That's all I'm saying. And so that's just a suggestion. What a gift.

That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Hey, guys. It's George Camel, host of the Dave Ramsey Show video channel. You can now listen to the show on your smart speaker. Just tell your Alexa or Google device to play the Dave Ramsey Show or find out all the ways you can benefit at DaveRamsey.com slash smart speaker.