The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Let My Car Get Repossessed? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the 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 christy wright ramsey personality number one best-selling author of the book business boutique is my co-host today as we take your questions at triple88-825-5225. The call is free, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. 888-825-5225. Christy is also in Olympia, Washington, and is our first caller of the hour.

Hi, Christy, how are you? I'm good. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay. I'm a little nervous, so bear with me. No problem. I've been dying to have a reason to call you, and I finally do. We have a house in California that we're currently renting out. My husband's in the military.

We bought the house before he joined. So we are renting it out currently. We're not making any money on it. We considered raising the rent just to make ends meet. But my question is, we're on track to move again in six months to New Mexico. Ultimately, we would love to be back in California, back into our hometown. Should we sell it?

Yes. I knew he wasn't even going to let you finish, Christy. And I knew that was going to be your answer, but I didn't know what you thought was the current market, what you thought it would be in 45 years. Let's try reverse engineering it okay you're in the military and you're moving from city to city and you're not going to be in california for at least five more years correct and you don't own a house there let's pretend

you don't own a house there and you woke up one morning thought you know what i'm going to go over in this little town in california and buy a rental house that i don't make any money on you would never do that right and yet you have yeah so let's undo it sell it but and and okay so now we currently might be um profiting like a hundred thousand would we should we just put that into something and let it sit there so when we do come back to california we got a big chunk of change to put down on a house or should we buy something in new mexico yeah that'd be a great house fund do you have any do you have any debt though no no debt we have um thirty thousand in the savings wonderful okay yeah i'll just take whatever profits you have. Of course, pay your taxes on it and set it aside in a future real estate mutual fund.

Put it in a mutual fund. Okay. And just in your mind, you could kind of mark that file. That's my house fund for the future. And you can keep adding to it, by the way, if you want to. That wouldn't hurt anything. And by the way, there's not a law that says that you're necessarily going to end up back in California when you're done. Five years ago, you never dreamed you'd be where you are right now.

That's true. We do want to be back in our hometown with family. That would be our goal. And that's why we have a smaller mortgage right now with that house. I would just be afraid of coming back to California and then getting into a bigger mortgage than before just because of the prices. Well, the problem is you're going to lose money between now and then, and you're going to wish you had just not had to fool with this whole thing. You're better off not long-distance landlording.

You're better off not fooling with this. It doesn't make sense. And we're not, I mean, I know it's your goal to be back there, but no one knows. I mean, five years is a long time. A lot of stuff happens in five years. Yeah, things may change. Dave, you use this example a lot. So speak to the principle at play there, because regardless of the circumstances,

Christy's question was about the house, but I hear you say that a lot. Okay, let's reverse engineer it. If this was not true whatever the circumstances are would you go do it would you go buy it would you create it the answer is always no right the question answers itself not necessarily i mean you know uh if i didn't own a ski boat i'd be buying one this week because i'm going to the lake this weekend right but i'm saying something that someone's trying to get out of i guess i mean the point is she do i keep it or do i sell it yes and you can ask that about anything an investment you can ask it about a ski boat you can ask it about um whatever but if you look at

something and you say if i didn't already own that i wouldn't go buy it for the very reasons that you wouldn't go buy it you're not using it you wouldn't go buy it. You're not using it. You don't like it. It's a bad investment. It's whatever. It's the same reasons you wouldn't keep it. That was what I was going to ask. So whenever you ask the question, if this weren't true, would you go do it? Are there ever circumstances where that doesn't apply? So you're saying it's like if the answer is yes, I would go do this today anyway, then

you'd keep it. Then you know. Okay. You'd keep it. Okay. So for instance, let's say the first place this always comes up is with a pure investment. Like, let's say you bought stock in, I'll just make up a company, Home Depot. Okay.

Bought stock in Home Depot. And let's say you bought it at $75 a share and it went down to $50 a share. And you say, gosh, I'm going to wait on it to come back up. I go, well, would you buy stock at $50 a share? Yeah, because I've got real reason to think it's going to come up. Then you would sit and wait on it to come up. And then you say, oh, no, I wouldn't buy it at $50 a share. I wish I hadn't bought it at $75 a share because I think it's going to go down.

Then why are you falsely waiting on it to come back up to be your measure of when you sell it you need to say you don't analyze it based on the past you analyze it based on the future yep okay you're forward looking with your decisions and going okay if i wouldn't do that again now then i don't keep doing it just because of the past yeah and that's an investment this is called a sunk cost analysis what you've put into it your cost is irrelevant as to whether you keep it virtually irrelevant i mean you may have some tax implications but it's virtually irrelevant the the investment analysis should be and for that matter the possession of a boat should be the future of that not my family's always had a boat i've always had a boat this boat's not been in the water for 10 years. It sits in my garage collecting dust.

But because of the past, I'm going to continue to keep this thing in the garage. Yeah. Okay, well, that's dumb. Yeah. But if you're going to use it this weekend, and you've always used it in the summer, then you would go get a boat, or you would keep your boat in that case. So you're looking forward with all of your decision-making analysis, not the past, the weight of the emotions, the weight of the cost of the item, not that.

And so, you know, if you would go and buy a small house in a small town in California because you're afraid real estate prices are going to go up, and if you didn't own it now and you would go do that now, I wouldn't suggest that. But if you would do it, then maybe you would keep that. And that's where we see it the most. Every time I host with you, it's always around real estate i had a house i'm holding the house now i'm renting out the house and it's another state and the house is almost always inherited into that situation meaning no one set out in those situations to be a landlord right right it's a landlord by default is where most of those questions come from. Yes. I became a landlord by default.

I got married. We moved into her house, but we kept my old house as a rental. That's landlord by default. We're in the military. We move. We bought a house everywhere we've been, and every time we move off, we turn it into a rental property. That's not I decided that's going to be my rental investment strategy. It's landlord by default. And it's not wise.

It almost never leads you to a good real estate purchase or keeping the right piece of real estate as an investment. I own one piece of property that I formerly lived in right now. And it's a great rental. And I would buy it again as a rental. So I pass the essence. But the house I currently live in would not be

a great rental. It's too stinking ridiculous. So not a good idea. So it's going to be sold. That's the deal. This is the Ramsey Show. I'm sure most of you have seen the news recently about ransomware, cybercrimes, identity theft, and more and more data breaches. If you thought it was bad before, let me tell you, it's gone off the charts and it's out of control. It's impossible any longer to just bury your head and hope it doesn't happen to you.

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This is the Ramsey Show, where we talk about your life, your money, and your life. We're talking a little bit about life balance, and any of you have any questions about that subject, you can jump in here on the air as well kelly will put you on the phone number is triple eight eight two five five two two five uh gabriel is with us in los angeles hi gabriel how are you hi christy hi dave how you guys doing great man what's up hey so i had a question for you dave um so. So I'm on baby step two right now. I have about $12,000 in my savings. And right now at the moment, I know I got to pay off all my debt.

And I have two car payments. One of the cars doesn't work, though. The engine went out. So it's going to cost me thousands of dollars to fix it. So my question is, I know I heard you, it might have been a couple weeks back, saying that a zero credit score is fine if you have cash because all your debts paid off. So my question was, do I let this car go that doesn't work and let them take it, even though it's going to mess up my credit, or do I pay it off? That's my question. Okay.

So what do you owe on the car that works? The car that works is, I still owe a lot. I still owe about $24,000. What do you make? I make $40,000 a year. Okay. Have you got that car for sale yet? The one that doesn't work?

The one that does work. You can't afford it. okay no so what you got like a 600 car payment right uh it's 490 yeah okay and and you make 40k this is a car you can't afford this is what's killing you so the car that doesn't work what do you owe on it i owe about 10 what is it it's a honda tucson what year uh 15 and the engine blue yes um it's kind of a long story i don't i Well, I'm just trying to ascertain what to do. You said the engine's bad. What does that mean?

I mean, you dropped a rod. It's a complete meltdown. Or it has to have a new engine or it just needs heads put on it? I mean, what's the situation? No, it needs a new engine. Okay. All right. So that car fixed is probably worth $12,000, isn't it?

Yeah. Okay. That's my guess. I'm not too sure. Well, it's probably worth at least what you owe on it. And the one that you owe $24,000 on, what do you think it's worth? I don't know. I'd say maybe like $15.

How old are you? I'm 32. Do you have family in the area? Yeah. I'm actually married with three kids and a fourth on the way. Like your parents are around, your uncles or aunts are around, or anything like that? Yes.

Yeah, they're all around. Okay. Here's what I would tell you today, all right? You're going to use some of the $12,000 to get a used engine from a salvage yard, a junkyard, that a local mechanic, not a dealer, puts in this car. You can do that for $2,000 to $3,000. You're going to fix that car. Because if you turn it in right now, it's worth $1,000.

They're going to sue you for the other $9,000. And you're going to have a repo. That is not a plan. Not when you can spend a little bit of your cash fix the car and then we're either going to drive that car or we're going to sell it because we're selling the other one you don't need a 24 000 car when you make 40 a year right that's that's broke people stuff right there so we got to get rid of that and you may have to use some of your $12,000 to get rid of that $24,000 car because you're probably upside down on it. Right. So if you write a check for $2,000 or $3,000 and get out of that car and a check for $2,000 or $3,000 and get out of the other car, you still got $6,000 left in your savings account and um you're either going to use that to go buy a car

for cash to drive or you're going to drive the ten thousand dollar car and start working your way to paying it off right after you put a used engine in it so here's the deal somebody totaled a car just like that and the car they total only had 20,000 miles on it, and so the engine that's sitting in that totaled car on that salvage yard is a perfectly good engine, and it is the cheapest way to put an engine in a used car, a used engine in a used car. And you can do that in the Los Angeles area. The reason I was asking about family in the area is my advice is kind of

old-school redneck advice, and I was hoping one of your daddy or your uncle or somebody actually had turned a wrench at some point in their life and would know how to pull off what I'm talking about with a good local mechanic. I'm not suggesting they actually do the engine change out, but the point is that somebody can get their head around this. Because, dude, if you just walk away from this, you're going to get sued for $9,000, and you're still going to be sitting on a twenty four thousand dollar car

you can't afford right that's not a plan that's five years from today that's you're gonna look back and go both of those things were dumb and if you fix this in the next four or five months the way i'm talking about uh you would have no car payments or very little car payment gabriel i hope you really do it you sound a little sleepy to me i hope you really do it you would have no car payments or very little car payment. Gabriel, I hope you really do it. You sound a little sleepy to me. I hope you really do it. You've got a baby on the way, a fourth baby, by the way.

I hope you really do it. Get yourself out of this mess. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is, you know, Larry Burkett used to say, and he was a guy in the christian world that taught on money he said whatever time it takes you to get into a mess it usually takes you about the same time to get out and i have learned that it did to disagree with that it usually does take you about half the time okay so if it took you three years to make the mess it might take you

a year and a half to get out okay but it usually doesn't take you three years to get out. In his case, he's either going to continue making messes by being half asleep and turning this car in and continuing to try to drive a $24,000 car he can't afford. Right. Because he's sleep deprived with a house full of kids. I don't know. um or he's going to throw his shoulders back straighten that spine out and step into this thing and go i'm going to show i'm going to go into a short-term intense amount of inconvenience and pain yeah to limit my long-term damage well it's like you always talk about you can wander into debt you cannot wander out people get into a mess gradually incrementally by degrees accidentally no one few people go headlong into like i really want to mess my life no one looks at something and goes that's really stupid i'm

gonna do it anyway i can't wait to do it i can't wait to know unless they're doing drugs i mean no one just does it right no it's gradual and so it takes you three years of gradual missteps and then you look or it is a really dumb idea but you just thought it was smart sure at least you thought it was smart you know i mean i've done a lot of stuff and i've been an enthusiastic ignoramus several times right same same sure uh but then when you get when you decide what you're going to do to fix it you get an intensity about you that lessens the time it takes to get out that's what you talk about with the gazelle intensity that's what you talk about with the you know year and a half versus three years. You have an intensity and a drive and a fire under you to fix it.

It's like, you know, we're talking about running this morning, but you're a big time runner and you've done a lot more half marathons or marathons than I've done, but it's amazing to me that you can run 12 and a half miles over.

For me, that's a two hour yeah arrangement right and i'm turned the corner and after running jogging whatever for two and a half hours or for two hours and 10 minutes or five minutes or whatever i turn the corner and i can still sprint yeah yeah in my mind is but i mean at least I can run fast. You know, I've still got something left in the tank because I can see the finish line. That's right. That's right. And, you know, you go, I'm going to shave just a few more seconds off of this deal.

Yeah. And I'm going to bust that line right there. And I'm going to bust into it. Yeah. I'm not going to stop and walk across the line. You see people with this paying off their debt. They actually end up doing it quicker than they thought their goal because they get that intensity at the end.

That last six months because they start to believe. That's right. They kick it in. And there's something that goes with that. It's pretty powerful, you guys. So, hey, personal finance is 80% behavior. It's only 20% head knowledge. Most people know what to do.

But for 30 years, we've been convincing them to do it around here. It's called The Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Jason and Keisha are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hey. Great, Dave. Great. Welcome, welcome. Where do you guys live? In Memphis, Tennessee. Just down the road. Well, welcome to Nashville. And here to do a debt-free scream, how much have you paid off? $165,000. Love it. Awesome. How long did this take? 26 months. Wow. And your range of income during that time? We started with 109 and finished at

218. Okay. Got a few increases and bumps. A little. Sounds like it. What in the world? Well, tell us the story. What happened 26 months ago and what happened to this income to cause it to double? November 2018, it was Thanksgiving. And I always take off a couple of weeks for Thanksgiving. And I was wandering around the house. I said, we have too much debt. And where's the money going? So I came in and I said, hey, I know this guy that I was working for.

He would always listen to you. I went in the garage, and this is no joke, turned on the AM dial, and there you were on 990 AM. Wow. Yes, I was. I told my wife, I said, we're going to do this. The wrong thing to say. What did you say?

I had an attitude. I mean, I was starting to make a lot more money. Well, he's in the garage listening to AM radio. I mean, that'll give you an attitude right there. He comes out of the garage with a declaration. You're not there for it. Exactly. So just the way, and we've been married 21 years now, and I always would tell him, it's

your tone. It's not what you say. It's how you say it. And so I just didn't want to be told that day. Amen. Amen. Amen. So I wrote down everything on the budget, wrote it out for her, made it clear where we're going to start. This is how we're going to do it. I said, first, just listen to me.

She said, I'm not listening to this old guy. Did I call you old? I did not. It would have been accurate. It's okay. Hey, I said the same thing, Keisha. It's okay. Careful, careful.

So we started, and we knew our 20-year wedding renewal vow was coming up, and we wanted to pay for it cash because I told her we can't do it unless we're out of debt. So we paid off, that time, $80,000. I told her, I said, once it gets paid off, we can cash flow that. You can upgrade your ring, do all these things right here, but we have to pay this debt off. And believe it or not, I won a trip on my job for a cruise. We were in Charleston.

Jacksonville. Jacksonville. She had an interview the first time for the promotion that she got. It seemed like everything started falling in line once we got the ball rolling. I mean, the more we start tithing, giving to God, more time with him early in the morning, it seems like things just start opening up for us and before we knew it we were out of debt for our 20 year wow well not totally not so i have one we have one big one which i have it written down to the team but you asked to just what what happened

but i i have been at one job for like over 10 years, and I hated it. I can say it now. I hated it. So I just wanted to go. I mean, I had been working, but I really think, like Jason said, everything fell in line when we started to line up our finances. Prioritize. So everything just fell in place.

It gives you a different level of confidence to face something like a job change. It does. And so once that started, I mean, my interview was like on Valentine's Day in Jacksonville, and it changed our life. Wow. It did. It changed our life that day. And then after the wedding renewal and all that done, we had a student lawn hanging around. Let me tell you how much, Dave.

She grabbed that paper. It was, well, it started at about. When we first got married. About $23,000. I'm not a doctor. I know you ask all the time, who's the doctor, lawyer, whatever. I'm neither. It started at about $23,000.

By the time we paid it off in March of this year it was 84 451 dollars and 74 cents and we paid that off in 11 months wow ding ding so you just took all this new wonderful income and dumped it that's it just acted like it wasn't there and threw it on that loan yes no vacations and done nothing we did only vacation we got is i wanted if i the job. Which is COVID, so he don't win anything this year. But, I mean, I just can't believe it. I mean, even with the student loan, and we've used this as a lesson just to anyone. Our children will never have a student loan. I wouldn't advise anybody.

So scholarships or cash, that's it. So it's been a life changer. 20 years of marriage. Yes. 21. You ever been debt-free before now? Never. When I was like 18.

Yeah, before marriage. Before marriage, yeah. Wow. Congratulations, you guys. I'm so proud of y'all. Thank you. You're rock stars, man. You're heroes.

This is amazing. So the kiddos were watching all this happen. Were they going, oh, we got no life because mom and dad have gone crazy and joined a cult? Or were they learning? They were learning. We made them participate. Okay. And what I mean by participate, I don't know if they showed you the pictures, but we got

the bubble on the wall that we would color in every time we send student loan their money. Yeah. I mean, we got it on YouTube. Yeah, it was just. And then we had another one that we paid every month. We just lined everything up so you could see it on a poster board. Yeah, that helps. You need to you need to see the traction, the progress.

Right. And it took a long time. I will say once we got probably midway, It seemed like at first it was going really fast. And then about the middle, I'm like, oh, my goodness. You know, I knew we were going to do it, but it did. It got a little tiresome. And so we did take a mini little break for a moment just to get, like, new appliances. I'm like, we got to do something.

I'm going to lose my mind. So we took a little break, and we got right back on it okay but i'm a i'm a i'm a car guy day oh i'm a car guy okay and that car got me in trouble oh but it saved us because i paid it off okay and now that everything is paid off you can enjoy it it's nothing like going to the gas station just filling it up and just yep saying that drives different when they're not dragging a payment book oh man exactly we'll never do never never do it again what do you tell people the secret to getting out of debt is no secret i would say be intentional that's one of my favorite words so you have to be intentional you have to make just a definite decision. I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do it. That's it. And write it down. And I'm a big writer, too. So write the vision. Make it plain. So write it. Stick to it.

And check your progress. Check in. How does it feel now to keep your money? You get paid and you get to keep that. Wonderful. Although we're about to start now tackling our mortgage that's how we have okay and so but it's still i mean it's spring not knowing you have 84 000 plus that's right hanging over from well 165 well really yes yes yeah so that the student don't

loan debt was um i guess the biggest thorn in my side is I tried to tell him when we first got married. Well, he knew I had the debt, but he didn't think it was important. I said it'll go away. Like everybody said, oh, it's going to go away. It's just going to disappear. I deferred, deferred, deferred and hid from it. And so I'm like, you just got to do this. And I think you said too before, Dave, you made the debt.

The honest thing to do would be to pay it so i can't defer it or get someone to take care of it or you know not waiting on the government to do it amen amen so the kiddos names and ages let's get them in the shot with you come on what are their names and ages joshua he's 17 and madison is 15 today all right happy birthday all right great birthday present. Very cool. All right, Jason and Keisha, we got a copy of The Legacy Journey for you. That's your next steps into completely changing your family tree. You are well on your way. Well done.

And an extra copy of the Total Money Makeover for you to give to someone else and pay it forward with that. Thank you. So very, very well done. Jason and Keisha, Joshua and Madison, happy birthday, Madison. $165,000 paid off in 26 months, making $109,000 to $218,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one.

We're debt-free! Thank you, Jesus! I love it. That's how it's done right there, boys and girls. I love it. Woo! That's how it's done right there, boys and girls. I love it. 165,000 rock stars. Man, those people are heroes.

Well done. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Christy Wright Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Dan is in Iowa City, Iowa. Hi, Dan. How are you? Better than I deserve, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve, Dave. How are you? Just the same, sir.

What's up? Awesome. First, I just wanted to say thank you to you and Christy for everything you guys do. You guys are so awesome and such an inspiration, so I really appreciate you guys. Thank you. Thanks for saying that. My question today, Dave, is about early retirement. So for background context, I'm 24.

My annual income is about $37,000 a year. I have no debt. My car's paid for. And I heard you say, you know, a couple of times that when you, before you get married, when you buy a house and then you get married, you realize you bought the wrong house. So I don't know when I'm getting married, but I wanted to call in and see like, like, what would you prioritize in my situation? Would you prioritize early retirement if the goal was reachable in, say, five years? Or would you put the money in a mutual fund towards a sizable down payment or preferably a cash purchase on a home, a small home? Okay, let's go back a second because you're 24 and early retirement is in five years. So you're from 29 years old on for the rest of your life.

What are you going to do? I would like to start my own company. I want to do something in e-commerce that sort of like is my ministry tool. I'm a part-time photographer, outdoor photographer, and a lot of my friends, like 98% of my friends love the outdoors. Okay, so by retirement, you don't mean go fishing. By retirement, you mean you don't have to work a regular job and you can go live your dream of owning your own business.

Yeah, exactly, just financial freedom and just supplemental income from investments. Gotcha. Okay. All right, good. business yeah exactly just financial freedom and just supplemental income from investments gotcha okay all right good um well i think you can start making moves towards that now i don't think that requires that you be financially independent a lot of people don't right as a matter of fact it might be your shortest path to financial independence. Because if you've got your business up and running, you might make more than $37,000. That's true. Yeah.

Yeah, what made me ask the question, Dave, is because I listen every day and have for about a year now. And I'm on baby step, I guess you'd say, I guess you'd say four. Um, uh, so I've been investing 15%, um, but wanted to know like, okay, what do I prioritize? Because my expenses are so low. Yeah. Like rent aside. Um, my, my yearly expenses, Dave are only $2,000 a year. That's just with my, my only bills are car insurance phone. Um, and so you're living at home that's really it um no so i just i usually i move around a lot so my rent is kind of hard to say like what it is for a full year but it's usually between 350 and 450 and so i'm that's more than two thousand dollars a year yeah i i just wanted to do retirement just so I could, like, basically set up early retirement

so that when I'm in a place where I don't have a rent or a mortgage payment, I would be able to focus on that. Okay, let's change the word from retirement to you just want to build some wealth, okay? Sure. And so I think you can begin to work on your new idea for your business as a side hustle. Don't you, Christy? Yeah. Sure. Start that now.

You're going to learn a lot in the process. You don't have to wait until some magic five years from now or certain income to be able to do it. Start now and learn about what you want to do and what the market needs. Yeah. Let's get that going and let's start that and get your income up. And when the income gets close to what you make now, go ahead and start working and living your dream. Don't wait until you have a pile of money to go live your dream. It's not necessary.

Sure. I haven't. I started two businesses, both of which were very successful, one of which failed later, my real estate business. But I started both of them with literally nothing and got started. So you can do that now and ease into this and organically let – you can take all the money you make in the business, pour it back into the business and just live off of your day job, and that's fine until you get the thing up and running. And so if that's working, then that doesn't require any investing. Then we can say, oh, let's redirect all your cash towards paying cash for your first house.

And that's probably what I would do at that point. I would just go that direction. So because, you know, and then if you do buy a house and it's the wrong one, you can sell it and buy another one if you get married, all that kind of that joke and all that stuff that we talk about. But it's joke wrong one, you can sell it and buy another one if you get married, all that kind of joke and all that stuff that we talk about. But it's joke based in fact. But, yeah, that's, you know, I don't think that you need a half a million dollars and a paid-for house in order to start your business.

You know what's interesting is, you know, he's young asking this question, and it's actually similar to what we were just talking about before the break where your priorities change. And when you're young and you have a small sense of what you want to do, but you can't predict the future, none of us can, you can say, okay, what do I want to do based on what I know today? Based on what I know today is I want to build wealth, I want to start a business, let's start it on the side.

I'd like to get married, but I'm not dating anybody. I'd like to buy a house, but I don't have the money yet. So let's just do what we can do today with what we know today, with what we have today. And then if your plans change. That phrase you said earlier, what's right right now. Right, and then in three years today what we have today that's what you said earlier what's right right now right and then in three years five years get married buy a house what's right then good robertson san antonio hey robert how are you hey dave doing great how are you better than i deserve what's up that's what i thought hey listen we've got a business decision i've got to make. I'm 66 years old.

I've got a business that I'm having some offers on. I'm a veterinarian. And some of these corporations that buy veterinary clinics offer three to three and a half times the gross. And that doesn't include real estate. Now, I don't have any shortage of money. I'm in pretty good shape. I just don't know if I should sell it. Well, what's the long-term plan if you don't?

I'm just going to keep on working. Till when? You're gone? What happens to it when you die? Until the day they bury me, I'm going to keep working. Okay. What happens when you die? What happens to the... Well, then I go to my wife, go to my kids yeah and then they sell it for three times gross i'm sure it'll just appreciate their value yeah okay so what's the pressure to sell it now i don't hear any well i mean it's a lot of money and sometimes i get locked into just my life and working and all my hobbies and things, and I don't look, you know, and that's why I need a different perspective. Yeah. Well, I will, you know, it sounds to me like you would have some joy stolen from you

if you weren't working down there. Oh, yeah. That's a hard one. Go ahead. Go ahead. You go ahead. Well, the hard part, Robert, is sometimes people call in, and this is a similar question, where you can do either, but we can't tell you what you want.

And it kind of comes down to what do you want? You're 66 years old. What do you want? I think you want to work at another 10 years anyway. That's what I think. Just listening to you. I want to keep working, and thank yous if I sold the dang thing. I'd have to work for a corporation for at least two years. anyway, that's what I think. Just listening to you. I want to keep working, and things have sold the dang thing. I'd have to work for a corporation for at least two years.

No, thank you. You don't want to do that. No, thank you. You've done this yourself too long. This is your baby. Let me tell you. Here's what I would do. Before you make the decision, I think this will answer your question.

Order a book when you hang up. You can jump on Amazon or whatever. From Simon Sinek, the book is called Infinite Game. Infinite Game. Yeah, what you're being tempted by is a finite game and putting closure on this and turning the key. And the infinite game is you just keep playing. And that's the temptation that's in front of you.

And there's something in our culture that says if you don't take the cash off the table while the hand is hot, that you've done something wrong. And I've got good friends. I have a good friend that sold his business for $400 million, and the last time I was with him, he cried. He hates his life. He works for this publicly traded company now, and he said, I hate my life.

I would give them an extra $50 million on top of the $400 million if I could buy the thing back and let me have my soul back. That was his comment. And I kind of think I'm hearing a little bit of that in your discussion. I got a question, Dave, about the terms of something like this, because is it always the case where, in Robert's case or your friend's case, where you have to work in the business, or can you sell it and walk? You could sell it and walk, but they probably want him to stay a while

because you're probably a big part of the secret sauce of that one. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm part of the recipe. Yeah, you are the recipe. I think you're not going to want to be wanting to work for a corporation i'm just listening to you i'm not telling you what i would do i know what i would do i wouldn't work for him but uh um and so i i do think you need a long-term handoff that's better than tossing the keys as you fall back into the grave that's not a good handoff

but but i don't know that you're ready to sell it and work for a corporation for 10 more years either. So somewhere in between there is probably a better plan. I predict it. But read that book, Infinite Game, by my friend Simon. I think you'll like it. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer for The 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've heard about during this episode in the podcast show notes section or head to theramseyshow.com. Thanks for listening.