The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Cash Out My Day Trading Account To Pay Down Debt? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Dr. John Deloney is my co-host today. We are taking your calls about your life and your money. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225.

Dr. John, I was listening to your podcast. Uh-oh. And listening to you take a call about a serious marriage situation where the wife is having an affair, and you're giving her husband some advice on that and walking through it, and you get into life questions like that all the time. And one of the things we have discovered, obviously, many years ago, and we've got you now here to help us address it, is that marriages can use a date night especially right now an evening to come together so we are announcing today a great date night rachel cruz and dr john deloney are going to be doing a money

and marriage streaming edition the valentine's edition the third time we've done this so dr john deloney and rachel cruz money in marriage streaming live february the 12th at 7 p.m and they're going to guide you and your spouse through an unforgettable evening where you realign your goals on your marriage learn healthy communication and early bird passes for the money and marriage live stream are on sale right now twenty dollars they won't last long so earmark that twenty dollars in your february budget get over to dave ramsey.com slash events get your tickets again money and marriage valentine's special live streamed for 20 bucks february the 12th at 7 p.m y'all been working on this content i saw you downstairs working on it today yeah and my favorite my favorite part is it's jam-packed

with great information. We were all sitting around with the content folks and Rachel and I this morning all nodding our heads. Some of us were taking notes on what other people were saying. Like, that's a good idea, right?

For our own homes. And we were laughing so hard we couldn't breathe. And so this will be a fun night. It's going to be a fun night. It's going to be a hard night, a discussion night, but it's going to be a fun night it's going to be a hard night a discussion night but it's going to be a blast yeah well you into it you and rachel uh yeah that's right yeah that just spells fun right there i'm just saying that's f-u-n right we do laugh a lot right yeah it's um y'all are trouble you know trouble you're trouble looking

for a place to happen so it's going to be a lot of fun and you'll learn a lot and it'll give you some actual tools one of the things about a ramsey event that i learned way back with the overhead projector when i first started speaking um was that money and marriage uh these difficult subjects um spoonful sugar makes the medicine go down absolutely the quote the great philosopher mary poppins and um so you got to have some laughter around these subjects that have so much shame and pain and i don't know almost self-loathing yeah just a lot of it i don't know any couple on i don't know any couple in my in my world um who has not had to have a series of tough conversations over the last year. Whether it's financial, what are we going to do?

Or whether it's, man, if I see you in this part of the house again, I'm going to set you on fire. It's whatever it is. And some couples have come out. Wait a minute, John. That was a little weird there. That was pretty close, right? You just opened up. That may have been Sheila.

Do you need to see a counselor? Trust me. Yes. Everyone struggle with it. And here's the cool thing about an event like this is you're going to be sitting on the couch next to somebody that you care deeply about. And we're going to give you permission to ask some questions that may be hard to ask otherwise in your house. And so we're going to give you – Set the table.

We're going to throw the ball for you. That's right. Underhand pitch. That's right. Set the table. We're going to throw the ball for you. That's right. Underhand pitch. That's right. Set the table. It'll be fun. So, yeah. So always Ramsey events are a spoonful of sugar.

So there's always going to be humor. It's always going to be stories. And there's always two major goals. One is we want to lift you and motivate you. And also we want to give you stoneld steps of information to actually do something. I don't want to motivate you with nothing to do, and I don't want to tell you what to do without motivating you. So we've got to get both things going, and every time any of us do a talk, it's a demand I put on the personalities I have put on myself since I started. Because people that just do fluff and they don't tell you what to do drive me nuts, and people tell you what to do and put me to sleep with a root canal, your mother's 401K meeting.

I don't want to do this either. So it's not who we are. And so this money and marriage event is going to be fun, funny, uplifting, and give you concrete things to do. And in the back end, it's going to be hard, right? There's going to be some things you can talk to your spouse about. There's going to be some challenges that we're going to give to you about your money, about your marriage, about your intimacy, about your kids. All that stuff,

we're going to touch on it and then we're going to give you some concrete steps to go make it better. Our third annual Valentine's edition of Money in Marriage streaming live to your home

February the 12th, 7 p.m. Central Time. Rachel Cruz, Dr. John Deloney, both Ramsey personalities, both best-selling authors. And you can get early bird passes right now for only $20. So jump online and get that before the $20 versions of these tickets are gone.

And go to DaveRamsey.com slash events, and you can learn more about this. It will be worth your evening, February the 12th, to set you up for Valentine's weekend, Valentine's Day. And it's just the right thing to do. Money and marriage. It is this rare one-two punch of the number one cause of divorce in North America today. Money fights and money problems. Number one thing couples fight about is around that. And it's, you know, as a coach, counselor, marriage counselor pointed out one time,

they're really not fighting about money. They're fighting about what it's doing. It's power. One of the things I noticed early on back in my practicum in grad school when you're finally out there meeting with real clients, Dave, within two or three sessions, folks would tell me everything about who they've loved, who's broken their heart, childhood traumas. They could not, to a person, get into a discussion about how much debt they had.

They could not get into a discussion about money, what their future looks like. Their throat tightened up and their larynx wouldn't work. Let's go back to my old boyfriends. How about that, right? Let's go back to childhood trauma. And it's just a pain point that there's just so much shame around it in our culture. And we've done such a great job presenting these curated images of ourselves that man once you get in there and sit on a couch and hold somebody's hand that you love we got to get into we got to do this you got to you know the the live stream is a rare thing in that regard because if you're

sitting in an auditorium with with 8 000 people um you, you can't really just elbow your spouse to the point you break their ribs when he says that. He's talking about you. That's right. But you can do that on the couch at home. Yes, yes. But also you can't run and hide, gentlemen. When you're in a room full of 5,000 people, you can't all go to the bathroom at the same time, right? And there's going to be some moments when you're going to feel like,

I probably should go get some more popcorn, honey, right? So you're going to have to stay plugged in and stay in there, man. And it's going to be worth it. I'm excited. Money and Marriage, again, the Valentine's Day edition, the third time we've done this, our third annual special Valentine's edition. It is live streamed this year completely. And Rachel Cruz, Dr. John Deloney, it is February the 12 this year completely and uh rachel cruz dr john deloney uh it is

february the 12th at 7 p.m tickets are only 20 at daveramsey.com make sure you jump out there and get her done this is the dave ramsey show Thank you. 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. Thieves are using your own personal info to take ownership of your home so they can take out loans, and you end up with a pile of debt and foreclosure notices. Over 4,000 data breaches happened in 2018, exposing 3.6 billion records. So thieves have plenty of identities to use, and there's a one in five chance it will be yours. That's why Zander Insurance is the only program I use and recommend. Their plan covers all types of identity theft, and it takes over all the work if you become a victim. Visit Zander.com or call 800-356-4282.

Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, best-selling author of the book Redefining Anxiety, is my co-host today. Tom is with us in Utah. Hi, Tom. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Yeah, it's a pleasure to chat with you. So just over the years, I've accumulated up about a $213,000 in debt. And granted, most of that is about 163,000 of that is just my mortgage. And then, uh, I've got 30,000 in a home equity loan and 20,000 between credit cards. Um, I mean, I've heard of your program, you know, over the years, but I figured I knew how to run my finances better.

Here I am, you know. But it's kind of how I got to this stage is basically just kind of living slightly outside my means and it just kind of built over time. But my main question comes down to I'm interested in your program. I want to start it. But I do, on the side over the past few years, I've just been slowly detrading a little bit, you know, and investing in little stocks in there. And I've actually built up quite a bit.

I originally invested like $4,500 and I've got about like $23,000 in there now. And I just wanted to know what you would do with that, whether you would just, my question is, should I just set that aside and pretend it's not there and just let it do its thing, or should I take that out and use it to slam on some of these debts and pay some of them off and get rolling on that? Okay. Well, the thing you've got to decide is you have to finish the decision that you've started, and then that will tell you what to do and the decision you're making is are you going to continue uh to work the plan that you've been working um are you going to

work some kind of modified version of our plan which is your new plan or are you just going to do our plan and and that's a decision you've got to make and it's up to you i mean there's there's no big shame in it uh you know the reason you're calling me is because we have a track record of helping tens of millions of people get out of debt and into wealth and then but the the but the things we tell people to do are uncomfortable and strange and they work every time but they're uncomfortable and strange and you feel weird when i tell you to do, but they're uncomfortable and strange, and you feel weird when I tell you to do them because they're so perpendicular to the way you've been thinking and living.

And so that's what you've got to decide. I'll tell you what to do, and then you've still got to go home and make that decision, okay? So, in other words, it's kind of like the way I look at it is like I remember one time several years ago, I looked down and there was this thing growing on the front of me. It was a belly. And I hired a personal trainer to come to my house.

I got a little gym in my house. And my wife is in perfect physical condition. It's ridiculously wonderful because she's my wife, but simultaneously shaming. And so, I mean, zero body fat. She's ridiculous. And the guy's like giving me nutrition advice. And I'm like, dude, you're here to work me out. I don't really want your nutrition advice.

And I go back upstairs, and she goes, you're paying the guy, and you're not listening to him. He has a six-pack. You have a keg. You got to decide. You know? And so you got to, you know, he's standing there, a Greek god, and I'm not, right? And so I got to decide if I i'm gonna do that or not and that's i'm poking poking at you here dude but that's what you got to decide because i'm your personal trainer

and i do this and i'm the best at it and you're either going to do this crap or not so having said all that i'm going to tell you what to do and then you still got to go decide whether you're going to do it or not i i don't do single stocks i I don't do day trading. And when people start our program, we take any money that is anywhere that is not in a retirement account, and we pay off debt with it immediately to become debt free. So that means I would pay off all your credit card debt and a bunch of your home equity loan with your day trade account. And I'd keep $1,000 set aside as your starter emergency fund. If you have any other money, I'm going to throw it at that home equity loan, and I'm going to get it attacked as soon as it's gone with great focused intensity.

I'm going to build an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses that is not in a trading account. It's in a simple savings account. It's not there to make money. It's there to protect you. It's your rainy day fund. Then I'm going to start investing in good growth stock mutual funds and baby step four, putting 15% of my income aside and working it in that order. That is the shortest distance between where you are and healthy, wealthy, and enjoying your new millionaire status.

The shortest distance is not day trading. There's no data points that says it is just because you know well my cousin made a bunch of money at the roulette wheel in vegas well that doesn't matter your cousin just got lucky once and there's no data points that says playing roulette in vegas is going to make you rich matter of fact it makes a casino rich that's why their furniture is nicer than yours and so while they have a 28 million dollar uh glass sculpture hanging from the ceiling when you walk into bellagio bought on the back you suckers yeah you you suckers bought that they didn't that you know that's that's how that works and so you know you guys got to decide that and what you're going to do at that point and so I always feel like somebody who's that much in debt, who's also, and we hear it all the time, got a rental house or I'm day trading. It's like turning every faucet on in your house and plugging up the drain with a towel and then heading on downstairs with a bucket trying to bail the water out.

You know, as it comes down, it doesn't make any sense, right? Go turn the faucets off, man. Stop hemorrhaging money with the debt yeah and then go close the credit card accounts swear off a debt and chop them up have a plastic surgery party pay them off and you know i i went broke tom That's how I learned this. Because I was a nothing down real estate guy. And it took me out. I built a house of cards because I got rich quick. I did get rich, but I got rich quick.

And you don't get to keep it when you get rich quick. It's he who hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. And you could have been this call saying hey over two years i got this much money man what should i do with it yeah i i would have been i mean if i had called into this show at two years in right 26 years old i would have said i have four million dollars for the real estate i owe three million dollars on it a bunch of it is in 90-day notes, and I'm making $250,000 a year. What should I do? And I would have been told to get out of those dadgum 90-day notes because that bank is going to chop your freaking head off with those things.

And I would have said, oh, no, not me, because I've made $4 million worth of real estate, bought it from nothing. I mean, I've got a million dollar net worth four million minus three million in debt and i'm 26 years old why would i listen i mean it's like it can't happen to me other end of that teeter-totters gotta come down at some point right and i'm not saying tom is saying all that but but you're that's the way your brain works when you're in these situations and so there's so many people out there and this game stop story today is just fabulous for that because these little day traders are just so fun. They're a bunch of rebels.

Yep. And they're punching holes in the big fat cats on Wall Street, just knocking the crap out of them. But if you boys stay in that stock, when it comes back down to what that company's really worth, you're going to have taken a spanking. Right. So today would be your day to get out and just call yourself lucky right you had your fun but you had your fun because you think you got it figured out now you think you got your angle now and now you're now you're now you're ba you know you can hit that dude and he'll stumble then you better run because when he turns around man he's coming

back for you yeah and we're not talking we're talking about life and math we're not talking about the the fat cats on wall street they don't they're gonna survive right but um some real funny stuff going around on twitter about the hedge fund managers calling the dave ramsey show how to get out of debt now because they're deeply in debt that's funny so dave ramsey said so you'll car you know so i saw some great ones today about man uh the hedge fund managers with their MBAs shaking their heads as they walked to work, as they got defeated by mama underscore big guy 84 at hotmail.com. Like, yep, he beat you, buddy. Yeah, today he did.

Yeah. But the bottom line is they're both playing a game that is not a long-term play. That's right. They're both playing a risk game. Yeah. And they're both going to get their heads taken off. And it feels good. I mean, you start at $4,500.

It's just like you said at perfect. It's like sitting at the roulette wheel. You spin it, and then sometimes you get three or four in a row, and you start sitting up taller. Acting like you know how to spin the wheel. You ask for another drink. You ask some people to come around, and then the casino is just counting on you to keep that money in there, right?

You must have been there when Rachel Cruz was at the craps table. I've heard the rumors. I've heard the stories. This is going to go forever. She actually had the audacity to say in another hour that she's good at rolling dice. Oh, my gosh. She said that out loud. You're going to need to watch The Money in Marriage saying we're going to set it all straight.

That's right. Man. This is The Dave Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Cheryl is in Chicago. Hi, Cheryl. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave.

How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Good. And hi, Dr. John. I guess he's sitting next to you over there. He is. We're good.

Hi. Good to talk to you. Okay, good. Good, yeah. Okay, so I'm 48 years old, and I'm a middle school math teacher. All right. I make make 59,000 gross. I'm recently divorced and just finished furnishing my house. And I have, I took FPU last year through my church and I have saved the thousand dollars for the emergency fund.

But I do have some debt. I have a personal loan that was consolidated credit cards and my divorce attorney fees. And I have a car loan and then I have $35,000 worth of student loans for my bachelor's and my master's. How much was the car loan? Right now, like my balance is about 15 17 000 okay and what is the uh the consolidated loan uh about 7 700 okay all right so so my question is because i'm getting up there in age i'm kind of nervous about my retirement i do have my teacher's pension and then i will also be getting half of the marital property of my ex-husband's operators and laborers pension. We're married for 22 years, but I'm sure I need more. And so my question is, should I continue to do the baby steps in order, or should I sort of try to do a couple at the same time or jump around and make sure that I have sufficient retirement funds.

You're 48. Yeah. You trying to say what? Pretty insulting that you think you're up in age. You're not old, man. I'm 60, okay. So, I'm, hey, Cheryl, I'm sitting next to an old person. You are not.

Sorry, sorry. No, I'm kidding. All right. So, here's the thing. The most efficient way for you to build wealth is to get out of debt first. So the baby steps still work. Now, what the fear that you've got of getting a late start on retirement and really wanting to build that nest egg is a good fear, and then it's going to push you to do great things and push you to sacrifice to get the debt cleared out.

Right, okay. I see what you're saying. Yeah, so you've got $57,000. You make $50,000. So, I mean, I would make a plan with some extra tutoring and some other stuff. Math tutoring, you can make $20,000. I do. I do tutor. Yeah.

It's a little bit fickle right now because of, you know, COVID. There's people that commit to it, and then they pull out of it because it's basically remote because you can't meet in person. So that's been up and down this whole school year. Yeah, but I'm going to stack them up really high because the good news about them being remote is you don't have to drive anywhere so you can stack them back to back to back to back to back and then if you got one drop out it's not as big a deal i'm gonna work like a crazy person and be done in two years oh wow 20 25 26 000 28 000 a year out of your, which means you're on beans and rice, rice and beans.

You're not going on vacation. There are no frills. Because I'm worried about retirement, I want to get this out of the way. Because if you don't have any payments but a house payment, you can save aggressively for retirement, can't you? Well, yeah. Yeah, so after, well, right now I'm just renting a house. Well, I mean, anything but the rental.

I mean, I'm just saying the point being that when you don't have any payments except housing, you've got room in your budget to save aggressively and build your nest egg quickly, and that's what you need to do. So you go back to your Financial Peace University materials, and I'll tell you what, hold on, I'll have Kelly pick up, and we'll put you through again. You can go into Ramsey Plus and go through Financial Peace and just get in those groups that are in Ramsey Plus, the Financial Peace groups. And there's some Ask a Coach options in there, too.

And you get some people around you to encourage you because you're going to get ready to engage in a very harsh level of sacrifice for two years to set yourself up at 50 to begin saving aggressively for retirement and it's going to feel extra exhausting because you're coming off the heartbreak and the pain and the exhaustion of a divorce yeah and so you feel like oh now we're just going to lay down and no you just swim across the the channel and now it's time to keep running because there's more lions on that side. Yep, absolutely. Austin is with us. Austin is in Portland, Oregon.

Hey, Austin, how are you? Hey, Dave. Hey, John. I'm in some desperate need here of some Uncle Dave advice. I've got an HOA, um, for my townhouse that, um, we're voting on a special assessment and it's, it's up for vote, um for repairs for dry rot and mold. I'm at a little bit of a loss as to what to do or how to deal with this. I'm skeptical of the honesty of the HOA. I don't know the contractor, obviously.

I talked to the HOA, the head guy over there yesterday, and he told me my best bet would be to try to contact my insurance today and try to get special assessment insurance, and they'll probably cover it. That sounds like insurance fraud to me, if I've ever heard it. And it hasn't gone through yet, but it's up for vote. And I don't know if I need to hit the campaign trail and talk to my neighbors or if there's anything I can do about this. Well, there's two problems.

One problem if it's all true and one problem if it's not. And so there's, you know, if the place has fallen down and you've got dry rot and you've got to fix it, if you don't fix it, the whole thing is going to go down in value and you're going to lose your property value. And the fact that it's gone this far without somebody starting repairs before they got this far behind means that they've mismanaged it at a minimum. So new HOA officers and management company come on board recently? I don't know how long ago. It was before I lived here. I lived here three years.

Okay, I know. So they just suddenly woke up and realized the place is rotting down. don't know how long ago it was before i lived here and i've lived here three years okay no so they just suddenly woke up and realized the place is rotting down this is so strange look there's been an ongoing lawsuit um i think it's been going just on just before i i had um moved in a few years back lawsuit by who um it was the lawsuit the hoa sued the original contractor um for negligence and they got 500 000 from that but the bid is 1.7 million the hoa also has 200 000 in reserves that they tell me they can't legally use for this because it's not in a foreseeable issue like a roof or you know some kind of foreseeable maintenance was this disclosed when you bought the place they should have disclosed to you were in the middle of a lawsuit and like you would have a

claim there i was not told but i'm sure it may have been in the bottom line of the last page of some paperwork that I signed. You know, I'm going to change tactics here. Let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to sell this piece of crap and go somewhere else. Yeah. This is clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. You ain't going to get out of this.

It's a circus either the place is rotting down and or there's a crooked contractor involved and or an hoa that's mismanaging or some combination of all this nothing in this whole deal sounds like it's gonna i don't i mean if you get in there and you spent you're gonna spend an enormous amount of energy auditing all of their books and auditing their processes and making sure that they're competent and that this contractor is not the brother-in-law of the manager of the HOA and you're not getting screwed somewhere there. You're going to spend an amazing amount of energy pushing back against the tide here only to end up with a fixed semi-rotted townhouse after it's all said and done. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to sell it. Let them screw with it, these idiots.

I mean, just run. And once they fix it, you've still got the same people leading, right? Yeah, you've still got to, I mean, run. They're going to knock on your door next month. Run. That's exactly what I would do. And I hate HOAs. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Our question today comes from Blinds.com.

They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. It means even if you mismeasure, you pick the wrong color, they'll remake your window blinds for free. Free samples, free shipping, new promos. Always use the magic word, the promo code Ramsey. All right, today's question comes from Matthew in Illinois. My sister is going through a divorce. She's asking my wife and I to lend her money for a new house down payment. When the divorce finalizes, she could pay us back through joint assets she has with her soon-to-be ex.

I don't like lending family money and friends money because it changes the relationships. I was wondering, how would you gently tell her no? This one's hard, Dave. I'm pretty strong when it comes to these boundaries. I'm interested. You've had this question for 30 years. Rabbi Daniel Lappin wrote the book Thou Shall Prosper, and he has a great line in there when it comes to people asking for your time, people asking for your money.

His response in writing, like a letter, for instance, he's writing a letter response is, because my commitments to this, this, and this are going to prohibit me from being able to attend this meeting, whatever it is, right? That kind of a thing. And so maybe that phrasing will help us here a little bit. And it might even be I won't in this case. This is my sister. I'm going to look at her and say I would if I could, but I won't. I could, but I won't because I could, but I won't.

Because I don't think you should buy a house right now. You're coming out of a divorce. I think you should rent for a little while, heal a little bit. I think you're going to make a wiser decision a year, even two years, after the trauma of the lost marriage is behind you a little further than you're going to make in the heat of the moment. And so I don't want to assist you in doing something that I think is going to be bad for you. Right.

And if you know anything about how the liquidation of joint assets, it's a mess. It's never what you think it's going to be on the back end of this. And I think you're right. You can come stay with us for a month. Come stay with us for a few weeks, a month's a long time. Or not. Or not. I'll pay for your hotel room, but, yeah, I'm not loaning you money.

At the end of the day, I wish there was an easier way to say this, Matthew, but you sit down and tell your sister you love her, and either you can't or you won't. I'm not going to do this. I love you. I don't think you should do. I'm not going to do this. I love you. I don't think you should do this because I think it's unwise. I think you're going to make a much better decision a year after this is all over. You'll have your own money to do it then, and you won't be making a decision during the worst week of your life.

That's right. And I want to walk through this with you. I want to love you as my sister. Yep. And not. I'm your cheerleader here. Like, yeah, put strain on yet another relationship of somebody close to you in the hardest moment of your life. Yeah.

And she's not going to hear it. And it's going to be like, I needed you when the chips were down and you didn't come through for me. And at some point, you've got to be okay knowing you're doing the right thing for the preservation of this relationship long term. Yeah. Henry Cloud says that when you set a boundary with someone that doesn't have one, they seldom react well. That's right, yeah. And here's the thing.

She'll barge up against it, try to knock that boundary over, see how firm it is. And you can become a travel agent for guilt trips. Tell her you love her. Tell her you love her. And she doesn't need someone else to judge her. That's hard when you say. I'm not judging you. No, I'm telling you. But she's going to feel it, right? You're's hard when you say. I'm not judging you. I'm just saying.

No, I'm telling you. Yeah. But she's going to feel it, right? You're saying, hey, this decision's a bad one. I know better than you. She's going to hear that that way, and I get that, and it's hard. But, man, I'm not going to hand you gasoline in the middle of a fire and expect us all not to get burned. Here's some matches.

Light yourself on fire. Yeah. You know, and I gave you the matches. So, so now i i if you'll slow down and make a better decision i can help you more yeah and it's not that you're dumb or something like that it's just you're no one when they're in the middle of extreme trauma makes great decisions that's right and if you think that divorce is not an extreme trauma then you it's one of the worst right one of the worst well we? One of the worst. Well, we went through a good divorce.

I always want to go. Oh, so now we know why you got divorced. It's the lying. But I mean, off the air, you and I were just talking about, man, when you are in it, you won't think clearly. Your brain has some mechanisms to take care of you, so you're not thinking clearly. It just wants you to run or fight. And that's when, Matthew, you as her brother,

can step in with some hard love and some hard truth and keep her from making a tough, wrong decision here in the middle of a hurricane. Kathy is with us in Milwaukee. Hi, Kathy. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. And thanks so much for taking my call today. Sure. How can we help? I'm hoping you can help settle a disagreement that my husband and I are having. Yes, I love that. I've got the whistle and I've got the referee's shirt on. I'm ready. I love these. I'm team you and Dave will take your husband. Let's go. All right. So we're very fortunate. We are debt free. I follow Dave Ramsey. My husband, I would say, is Dave Ramsey-ish, but we've managed

to work together over the years. We recently sold a business with a sizable profit, and with a sizable profit comes capital gains tax. We have had much information from friends and others sharing their advice to us. One advice that my husband is entertaining is that we would take out a loan from a financial institution that we invest with at 3%, invest the entire amount of our profit for a presumable greater than 3% gain and pay off the loan with the profit

over a series of about five years. I said, I don't think that's a great idea. I do not want any debt. And he said, well, what do you think Dave would say? And I said, let's call and find out. Ooh, Kathy Burr. He doesn't really know much about Dave because you completely got him, girl. I mean, you snagged him.

Yeah, that was tricky on your part that you're sly i try i try how much how much is this dadgum business how much money did y'all get it was uh multiple millions multiple millions over 10 no nope okay still fairly nice day huh Simple millions. Over 10? Mm-hmm. No. Nope. Okay. Still a fairly nice day, huh? Good. A very nice day. Yeah. Listen, I'll tell you what I personally do in these situations. I pay my taxes and take what's left over and I live my life with it.

Investing it and giving it and enjoying it and whatever else I'm going to do with it. Okay? So it's real simple. There's not a chance under the sun Dave Ramsey is going to tell you to go borrow the money. And I'm going to go further. Whoever this investment company is that's suggesting this is suggesting it so that they make more commission. Because you're going to be investing more because you borrowed money to not pay your taxes. And not only is their advice wrong, it's self-serving.

And so I would not only pay my taxes, I would get a new investment advisor. I love it. I love it. You validated everything I said to him. Kathy, I can feel your smile from Milwaukee all the way to Nashville. It's coming through the phone. That's right. You're absolutely right. Listen, it's a fool's errand, I mean, to run around borrowing money in order to invest. And essentially, that's what we're doing here in this discussion, or what's being suggested to you.

And it's a fool's errand to listen to friends who have never had a multi-million dollar liquidation event where they had that money laying in the middle of their kitchen table like you do. So you need to, I mean mean i've had this happen i've made that kind of money on a transaction and i'm sitting there looking at the taxes and so i haven't so tell me that's that's got a sting right oh god no it doesn't sting like i'm talking about multiple days it takes me to get over being pissed off having to send a check that size to those idiots in Washington, D.C. I was going to say, man. It melts my brain down.

Yeah. Yeah. So now you just got personal, Dr. John. Now we're going to do a counseling session. For those of you not listening, the whole room just got real hot. Real hot. Well, I mean, you think about it. Let's just say they

got four million dollars. All right. That means they're going to be sending eight hundred thousand dollars. More money they've

ever seen in their life. They're about to write a check. It's their freaking money because they ran that business. Not some toadstool in

Washington, D.C. That's right. God, so maddening. Let the rich out of pay more in taxes. Oh, shut up. Way to go, the rich ought to pay more in taxes. Oh, shut up! Way to go, Kathy. Now you got me in trouble.

This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. This episode is over, but if you heard about an event, product, or service and didn't have a chance to write it down, don't worry. We list everything you heard about during this episode in the podcast show notes or head to DaveRamsey.com. Thanks for listening.