The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Move In With My Girlfriend?

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

George Kamel & Rachel Cruze discuss: How to get rid of a leased car, Should you sell your house and buy a new one, Pausing your investments to rebuild an emergency fund, How to handle money disagreements with your spouse, Moving out of grandma's house to live on your own. Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

🎵 From Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help you get control of your money, get ahead in your career, and get on the path to living well. I'm George Campbell, your host, joined today by Rachel Cruz, bestselling author and host of The Rachel Cruz Show. We're taking your calls to give you the right next step with your money, your work, the housing market, cars, inflation, you name it. So give us a call, 888-825-5225. Anthony kicks off this hour in Huntsville, Alabama. Anthony, welcome to the show.

How are you doing? Rachel and George, can you hear me? Yes, you sound great. What's going on? Thank you. My wife and I are in Baby Step 2. We have a car lease. It's $413 a month, and there's 22 months left on it. And then our other debt remaining is student loans.

There are 12 individual federal student loans that total about $45,000. And we're struggling on how to order this, which ones to pay off first. We do have $6,000 that we can use to go get a car. And we just don't know if we should put it on the student loans or get this car thing sorted out. Do you know the early buyout amount on the car? I've checked it several times, but not recently, so it always changes. I think it's somewhere around like $35,000. It's a Jeep Gladiator. What's your income?

Combined, we're at about $150,000. Okay. There's some good news there. We got a nice shovel to clean this up. Yeah. And that's the total debt is the 45 student loans plus the car lease.

Yep. 45 student loans and car lease. That's all of it. Well, do you like the car? I don't. My wife loves it. Because right now, as part of your financial world,

it's not that big of a... I'm okay with you keeping the car if you want to do the early buyout, but you've got quite the mess here to clean up still with $80,000 in debt. Yeah. Because kind of the rule of thumb to anthony is we don't want your car to be half of your annual income so it's not getting close to that but um i've been getting out of this lease yeah because if you get out of that you have six thousand6,000. I'd go buy a cheap beater car, which in this market, $6,000 gets you a beater car, unfortunately. We saw a Toyota Prius for sale in 2006, and we'd be going from a truck to a Prius.

But I'm kind of willing to do it. My wife doesn't know if we should lose the security of the lease, that it won't break down. And we've come to the terms that we're paying off these loans, even though everybody thinks the government's going to forgive them. We're paying them off, these federal loans. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, right now you have the illusion of security. You don't have financial security. And the idea of your car is just constantly breaking down because you drive a used car is a myth. I think a lot of people truthfully use it to justify why they need to keep their nice

new shiny car. And so that's going to be the toughest part, honestly, is the conversation with your wife about getting rid of this car if you're not going to keep it. Yeah. I don't think we were planning on buying it at the end anyways.

It's a lot of money for it. She likes it a lot and it is a nice car, but we want to own our car, and we don't need a $35,000 car, I don't think. Yes, so I think that's the feeling. That's it, and especially if it's not something that you were going to buy even at the end of the lease. I think letting it go now, I think you guys are going to breathe. It's going to hurt, and it's not going to be fun,

but I think it's the wisest decision right now, looking at the numbers for you guys, and then that way you can start attacking this debt and you guys make a great income too anthony so you're going to be on the other side of this really quickly okay all right you see sometimes you just make it sound so simple and i've been snooping and stewing over this for days yeah we tend to do that we try to over complicate things and the truth is, the money plan that we pitch here on the show is real simple and it's real hard

because it involves emotion, it involves behavior, it involves sacrifice and saying no, delayed gratification, all things, you know, it really harkens back to our childhood days, Rachel, when we're kids, you know, and we just want the things we want.

We want it now. And so we go do it and we go, oh, that was a mistake. And we just want the things we want. We want it now. And so we go do it, and we go, oh, that was a mistake. How do we get out of this? Yep, for sure, for sure. Well, thanks, Anthony. Thanks for the call. Yeah, appreciate that. Nick joins us in Denver, Colorado up next.

Nick, welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you. What's going on? So currently, me and my wife, we have a house here. And I guess just a quick rundown on it. We're on a 15-year loan. We're 1.75% interest rate, and we pay $1,740 a month for our mortgage. We get $1,000 a month for a studio that we have on it.

Nice. So we bought the house in 2018. Of course, property values, everything's doubled. We bought the house for $275,000. We could probably sell it for $600,000. Awesome. So the other thing is that we have now is we currently have another house. We have a little baby, starting our family, so we need to upgrade. We need a bigger house. We have some family that has a house that they offered to us. It's much bigger.

We can get it for a really good deal for what the current real estate market is. So they're going to sell it below market, too? Yes. Wow. They are. That's generous. Yeah. No, that's why it's a good opportunity.

How much is it? We're trying to figure out whether we should keep our house here. How much is the new house? The new house is $450,000. Is $450,000. And we have $100,000 down to put on it. That's your equity in the current home? No. That's what we have.

If you didn't sell the current house, you still have $100,000 in cash to put down? Yes. Okay. And if you did sell your current house, how much could you put down? Could you pay cash? You could sell for $600,000, you said. Yeah.

Yeah, so they could pay cash for it. But they have a mortgage on it. So how much equity do you have in the current house? Oh, we have, well, yeah, we can sell for $600,000. We owe $230,000 on it. Okay. Okay. Good question.

So you'd net like $350,000. So what I'm saying, though, you'd net $350,000 off the sale of your house plus the $100,000 you have. Boom, you just paid cash for this house, and you don't have a payment anymore. Right. So if I'm in your shoes, that's what I'm doing. I do not like the idea of you having two mortgages. Even if you can make it work on paper from a risk management level, having no payments is better than having two.

Okay. You know, one thing, our goal with this, myself, I don't have a retirement because of my, I guess, my career choice. What's your career? I'm a hunting guide and a ranch hand and stuff like that. Cool. Nice. You have my husband's dream job. Yeah. I'm very lucky and fortunate.

My wife's a nurse, so we're pretty secure, which is nice. We did, you know, kind of when we bought this house, we were looking at it as a retirement plan. Well, I don't like a home as a retirement plan because that's going to be real hard to create a meaningful income off of that. So my principles still stand, Rachel. You can disagree here, but I'm going to sell it, pay cash for the next one. Then you'll be able to stack up real fast.

You can do investment property later with cash. You can actually start a safer retirement. That's what I would be doing. That feels a lot safer. That's financial peace. This is The Ramsey Show. I get asked all the time, when in the baby steps is the right time to buy life insurance? My answer is typically now. Life insurance is not part of the baby steps because it's needed when your family has debt and not enough savings to provide for their financial needs. That's when they're at the highest risk. And no matter where you are in your baby steps, it's a necessity, not a choice. This includes working husbands and wives, as well as stay-at-home parents. It's pretty expensive to replace those stay-at-home parent responsibilities.

I only recommend term life insurance, since it's the most affordable way to get the right amount of coverage and not break your budget. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. These are the guys I personally use. Term life insurance is inexpensive and your family needs this no matter where you are in your baby steps. That's Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. Zander.com. We've laughed over the years at how people have tried to call Dave Ramsey and the growth of Ramsey Solutions a much more exciting story, but we've seen enough stupid to know that overnight success is too short and shallow to produce anything with momentum and meaning. So if you want unstoppable momentum in all areas of your life, you have to focus and spend time in the trenches and invite God into your efforts.

Then you will see amazing things happen. Now, creating momentum is hard. It isn't for everyone. Not everyone is ready for that next level of living. But if you are, we've got great news. Dave Ramsey has written a new quick read called the Momentum Theorem to give you our formula for unstoppable momentum. And the cool thing is the Momentum Theorem is not exclusive to just his story. It can be your story too.

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Nicole is up next. She's in Augusta, Maine. Nicole, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you guys so much for taking my call. Absolutely. How can I help? So me and my husband just sold our house and we were able to become debt free and put 15,000. Yeah, I know.

So exciting. And put 15,000 away for So exciting. And put $15,000 away for our emergency fund. And yeah, now we have $50,000 left. We currently put 15% of my husband's paycheck into his TSP because he's in the military. I'm going to school, so I don't have any retirement funds started. So we have $50,000 and we want to go on a vacation and we want to buy some new stuff for our new house. But I also want to invest it and just looking for your guys' advice. Cool. So you sold the house, you catapulted through Baby Step 2 and 3 into Baby Step 4,

and you said you're in a new house now. Did you purchase a new home or are you renting? Actually, we are living with friends right now he's getting restationed so we are renting at um his new station okay cool so you're renting you're saying you want to buy some stuff for the new place and you want to go on a vacation what's your hesitation with doing that um just i want to i wanted to open up a Roth IRA. So I was curious and I wanted to put some money into that and start like another, because we have the TSP and we wanted to start like another thing for like retirement. I just didn't know how much I should put in there and how much should I spend on vacation.

Yeah, it's all a great question. Yeah, I mean, I think if I were you guys, yeah, the, I mean, you could take that 15% of the $50,000. If you wanted to look at it that way, you could do that and put around, you know, $7,000 into a Roth IRA this year. Yeah, you could fully fund a Roth IRA. And then take the remainder, you know, a little bit of that. Go on a reasonable vacation. Yep. How much stuff do you want to get for the new place? What are we talking? A few grand? Yeah, just a few grand. We really just need a dining room table. We want a new bed and then

maybe a new couch. But what our two focuses is a new dining room table and a new bed. Cool. Have you priced out what you guys would want in something like that? Because furniture just can range, so I didn't know if you had an idea. Yeah, a little bit. So I would say a dining room table, I'm fine keeping under like $1,000 or $1,500.

And then a bed, we haven't really priced out that much. We haven't looked too much but i would say maybe between like uh three thousand or four thousand for like a really nice bed yeah yeah well the great thing is y'all y'all have the ability to be able to do a lot with this fifty thousand so i think yeah i think go ahead and get get the furniture you want spend five six thousand on that what's your income my's income, because I'm a full-time nursing student right now, his income is probably about 70, 75,000 a year. Cool. Well, you guys have made the sacrifices to get to where you are, so I'm totally good with you making some purchases

and enjoying some of this money, but just balance that with the opportunity cost of, okay, if we want to buy a home down the road, well, that's our down payment money that we're eating away from, which is okay. We got to go on vacations. We have to have a bed and a dining table, but we don't need to go crazy and go, we're going to buy the nicest of everything while we rent.

And then you move into the new house and you go, well, the dining table doesn't fit in that spot anymore. And now we don't need it. Okay. You know, so I just want you to think about the long term as well. Yeah, do you guys move a lot because of his job as he stations? Yes, yeah, we move. Yeah, we'll be in his new station for three years,

and we plan to rent for the three years. Good, good. And, yeah, we have no idea what's going to happen in the future. We'd like to build a house, and we decide to get somewhere. So that's kind of an end goal. But do you guys would just recommend putting about five, six thousand and opening up a Roth IRA?

Yes, I would. Yeah. Going forward, you know, just invest 15 percent of your household income. So if you're still in school, that's 15 percent of his 75 into the TSP.

And beyond that, you know, you can start saving up for that Roth IRA as well. And into the TSP. And beyond that, you can start saving up for that next house. And into the Roth IRA as well. But yeah, Nicole, you have the ability with this $50,000 to be able, you guys can buy some furniture, take a trip, you're okay. So just take a breath.

You have permission to do it. You can do it. Absolutely. Thanks for the call. And thanks for your husband's service. Oh, absolutely. Yes. Thank him for his service. That's incredible. Ashley joins us up next in Kansas City. Ashley, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi. I just wanted to say really quick, I love Rachel. I love your Instagram reels. Oh, thank you. And I love your weekly Q&A. So I really appreciate it. Thanks, Ashley. That's awesome. But I have a question so me and my husband we've

kind of been David-ish because you know he was at least you know willing to start paying off the debt with me and we didn't have too much so we only had $15,000 but his main sticking point was that we had to keep our retirement at 15% so but now I feel like that's slowing us down when we're in Baby Step 3 because we're done with Baby Step 2, but we're right at the end of Baby Step 3. So we'll have our fully funded emergency fund of $12,000 next month. Awesome. Nice. But I feel like it's going to slow us down now to save for our down payment on our house.

So I was just wondering if you guys had to save that 20%. So we want to save around $30,000 to $40,000. And at the current pace. To put down on our house. Yeah, that's awesome. It's going to take us about three years to do that. Okay. If we keep doing the 15% and that'll probably maybe take us two, I mean, if we kind of really get after it, maybe, you know, a little less than two years.

And that's if you continue investing at 15%? Yeah, if we continue investing at 15%, it's going to take more around three years. Okay, so you're saving a year if we pause investing. Yeah, yeah. How urgent are you guys and buying something in the next two years well we have a two-bedroom house and we have three kids so i mean it's really cramped yeah the urgency is high the urgency is high so i mean for me it's high um but you know um how old are you like we're not gonna have he feels like we're only going to have like $1 million if we stop saving.

And he thinks we need more like $3 to $5 million because of inflation. We're 30 and 31. Wow. You guys got another 30 years of your career. You're telling me you're only going to have a million dollars after investing for 30 more years? He's always the worrier. Well, there it is. So, Ashley,

number one, amazing job. You guys have killed it. It's phenomenal, the progress you guys have made. So, obviously, you're doing something right. I know you're funding your retirement. I get all that, but you're making the progress. You guys are doing it. So, what it

sounds like for him is he needs facts. So for you to say, gosh, I just feel like we're going to be okay. For him, he has numbers. So I would run, Ashley, some scenarios with an investing calculator. You can just go to RamseySolutions.com. We have them there. And run and say, hey, if we pause retirement for 18 months to save up for a down payment, here's where we're going to be at 65.

And then remember, your income is going to go up, Ashley. You're not going to stay stagn for a down payment. Here's where we're going to be at 65. And then remember, your income is going to go up, Ashley. You're not going to stay stagnant for 30 years. You guys are going to be making more money as you get greater your career. So factor that in and run some fun scenarios. Give them one, two, three scenario and show them, you guys are going to be okay.

You're going to be okay. But I appreciate his worry. But he needs some facts and logic. Good points, Rachel. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, host of the Fine Print and Entree Leadership Podcast, joined today by Rachel Cruz, host of The Rachel Cruz Show. You can find all of those shows on The Ramsey Network or wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. Olivia joins us next.

She's in Houston, Texas. Olivia, welcome to the show. Hello, and thank you for having me. Absolutely. How can Rachel and I help? All right. My question is, we recently, me and my husband, opened up a company, and he stopped working.

I do part-time. Our question is, how do we tide off of our business profit? Like, we, first business, we are so used to tithing every paycheck and now it's a little bit confusing for us. It means, how do we go about tithing from our business yeah i mean it's a it's a great question olivia and i love your heart in it and i always say with this kind of these kind of questions that there's i don't like having like a major legalistic approach to it so i think you can never go wrong with being overly generous so

if you skew the way of going overly generous, I don't think you can go wrong there at all. And then I would say on the other end, I would still feel comfortable that whatever your take-home pay is, that's what you guys tithe on. Or for people that make a salary, if it's the net or however they look at it.

But I don't know if it's necessary to tithe on the profits of the business. I would just do what your taxable income is. Yeah, what your take-home pay is from the business. Well, at the moment, my husband's not really getting paid yet. And why is that? Well, we don't know how to go about it yet. So that's the thing. I mean, there is money there.

The company is making money. But he's not paying himself? That's correct. Is this y'all's business together? Yes. Okay. So where's the money going? It's there.

The bank, I guess, it's there. I mean, I am working, but I mean, he's been saying I need to start getting paid. I need to start getting paid. Is he working in the business, though? That is correct. He is working. That's what he's doing full time, yes. Okay, yeah.

So he should. But he's not paying himself. But he should pay himself. He should pay himself for the work. How are you guys paying your bills? I do have a part-time as well, so that's how we're doing. I mean,

our only bills are light, our water, and I guess our gas for a car and insurance. Okay, what kind of job, what kind of business is this? This is a field technician he does uh calibrations for the water plants okay and and do you guys have any debt no no and you oh you don't have a mortgage no dang okay that's so great so how um

so your part-time income is what's paying all the bills, and then the business income is just going to the bank and just sitting there in an account. It's going to the bank and, of course, paying, I guess, the business side. Expenses. Correct. Okay. Well, you've got to start drawing something on this business. It's got to create an income for it to be worth your time.

Do you guys have investments and stuff, Olivia? Like, do you guys have retirement set up and all of that? Not yet. Okay. I just want to, I'm just trying to get a picture of where you guys are financially. So you have zero debt, no mortgage. Do you have cash saved in the bank for an emergency fund? We do. Okay. So you have that all covered, but you do not have any retirement? No, ma'am. Okay. How old are you two? I am 36. He's 37. Okay.

So we still got time here. Do you guys have employees? Like, is this a big business? Just one. Just one. Okay, okay. So, yeah, I mean, if I were you guys, I'd run market rate on what he would be worth out in the marketplace,

and you guys look and say, hey, this is what you're worth, and let's pay this but but then maybe you do say to olivia like hey we have no bills we have no debt we're just like basically living off our essentials so we don't we may not need i'm just making up a number here but say it's a hundred grand and you're like y'all may not need that to live off of maybe y'all are comfortable with 70 i'm taking home 70 so that's 30 extra that you can look at and say hey maybe we invest extra um to maybe you know in an extra mutual fund maybe we take some of that and enjoy life and go on a trip or if you need to upgrade a car um so it's not a

requirement that you guys take out what market rate is but i would at least run those numbers just to know hey here's how much it is. And you guys have that conversation because he may say, no, I work my butt off and we could have $100,000 that I make a year. That's how I would feel. And I'd be like, yeah, pay me $100,000 if I'm worth that or whatever. If I'm putting the work in, I want to feel the results of that. Yes. And when it's just sitting in a bank, you don't feel it.

He recently, yes, I guess this past month, just started telling me exactly what you're saying. Yeah. I want to see my part too. Yes. For sure. For sure. And then you guys as a couple decide, hey, here's what we're going to bring in.

Here's what we really need to live off of. And then all this other stuff we can maybe give generously. We can spend some. We can invest some. And yeah, you guys get to decide. And that's the beauty about owning your own business is you kind of have this flexibility to kind of figure out, hey, what do we need in our family financially? What's it bringing in?

What's being responsible and mature? You're not going to be obviously using your company as like a bank and making more than what you should, but running those numbers and kind of just getting an idea I think would be really smart.

But great job, Olivia. You guys are doing awesome though. Yeah, great work. Question of the day comes from blinds.com. Find out for yourself why Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use the promo code RAMSEY to get the best deal.

Today's question comes from Amanda in Wisconsin. While you're rebuilding your emergency fund, would you recommend pausing your investments and only paying minimum towards your mortgage? I'm 28 and earned $48,000 net, and I'm on maybe step six. I had to dip into my emergency fund for the first time to replace my furnace in a tune of $4,000. If I continue investing and pay off my home at my current rate, it will take me eight months to replace the $4,000 versus three months if I pause investing and paying extra on the mortgage. Aha. Interesting question.

Yeah. I mean, it's an eight-month swing. So in my opinion, I think you're fine continuing it and letting it take eight months. Eight months versus three. So there's five months that she's losing. Yeah. Five months that you're losing. If it was five years,

I would say pause everything and restock. But if it's five months, I don't even know if I'd go through the work of pausing everything through your HR department and all of that. She's 28. She's got plenty of time to keep investing, so it's not going to break her retirement

and her ability to build wealth if she pauses. What I would say, split the difference, continue investing, but maybe pause the extra mortgage payments. There you go. Until it's built back up. And kind of dangle that as a carrot to go, I really want to get back to paying off that house early. So I want to hustle and get this emergency fund back in place. And if all of her emergency fund was drained, I would pause it all just to get some cash in. But if it's $4,000 out of it.

We don't know what her full emergency fund is. But I'm assuming here that $4,000 is not a fully funded emergency fund for any person. No, no. I would think she has more in there. Am I lazy just to be like, I don't know if I want to go through the effort of pausing? I'm not going to answer the question. I'm not going to answer that, Rachel. This is a trap.

I'm not going to say if you're lazy or not. But no, I think there's no right or wrong hard and fast rule here. I don't think there is. Especially at 28, this is not a huge amount of money. And the time frame is not that long. I would pause the extra mortgage payments. That's my take. Okay.

I like that, George. Keep investing, pause the mortgage payments, and use that to fuel you to get this thing built back up. Because I can tell. She wants to do this thing. I think, yeah. Amanda, either way, I think you're going to be okay. But George, I'm going to go with your answer.

Ding, ding, ding. Remember this moment, America. Continue retirement investing. But yeah, pause the extra on the mortgage. Yeah. That's good, George. This is good stuff. And you should do this for a living.

I'll think about it. Well, Rachel, I want to shout out before we go to break here that we had a monstrous, amazing, viral Instagram reel that we posted about Chick-fil-A. So I want to encourage America to go check that out. We did, George. You can go to at Rachel Cruz on Instagram, at George Camel on Instagram. That's Camel with a K. If you need some Chick-fil-A hacks. We had them.

I mean, $2, Rachel, to get a sandwich. I'm just going to leave it there. This might be a new theme. Maybe it'll go into other. The pairing of George and Rachel. We a sandwich. I'm just going to leave it there. This might be a new theme. Maybe it'll go into other. The pairing of George and Rachel. We'll see. Four people will probably go check out that reel. But there's some good money saving hacks there and some good banter back and forth.

It's great. As we tend to do. It's great. We've got to have a good time. Always. Always, always. We'll be back soon. Give us a call.

888-825-5225 you are listening to the ramsey show Thank you. Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 12, 3. No one can be established through wickedness, but the righteous cannot be uprooted. Stephen Covey said, There are three constants in life. Change, choice, and principles. I like that.

Change, choice, and principles. Good stuff. Change, choice, and principles. Nailed it.

That's good. That means change will always happen? Yeah, that's right. And choices will always happen, and principles will always be there. But you always want to keep them consistent. Your principles. Thank you for unpacking there. But you always want to keep them consistent, your principles.

Thank you for unpacking this. This is very helpful to me. These quotes and stuff, they always kind of get me. Our team pulls them, and I always want something new. A lot of depth. It's great. Sean is joining us up next in Phoenix, Arizona. Sean, welcome to the show. Hey, guys.

I just had a quick question to ask you guys. I'm just wanting to get your input. All right. Absolutely. Get us. Yeah, so my wife and I, we own a condo, and with the housing market, how insane it is right now, we kind of have a situation where I want to sell so that we could pay off the rest of my wife's law school debt. But ever since we've been living here, she really likes to keep it. Sorry, we missed that. She wants to sell.

So you want to sell it to pay off her debt, and what does she want? Right. She wants to keep it. Now, we came to an agreement. If a house keeps going up in equity, there's a certain point that she would want to sell it. Okay. How much debt is this?

$90,000 is what I found her last year. $90,000. How much do is this? $90,000 is what I found for a long school loan. $90,000. How much do you guys make a year? $160,000 household income. $160,000. How much could you get for the condo? Like what's our end price after everything? Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, yeah. What you owe on and everything. Net profit. What would you net? Around $170,000. $170, sorry. Yeah, yeah. What you owe on and everything. Your net profit. What was your net? Around $170,000. $170,000. I mean, man. And the total debt you guys have is the $90,000 of law school debt?

Correct. Just the $90,000 left. I don't think you have to sell this. I don't think you do either. I think you guys can really live like you're back in college for a year or two and pay off this 90 and keep the condo. Yeah, that's the other option is we could pay off in about just over a year if we just really pay off the go hard on that. Yeah, I would do that. It's going to be hard, Sean, because I know kind of in a weird way, the easy thing would be like sell it, make a big profit, write a check.

There's nothing wrong with selling it and just getting out of debt tomorrow, but I also don't think it's a dire situation where I go, dude, you're on fire. You need to sell this thing. You guys have an amazing income, and we say if you can get out of debt in 18 to 24 months, then keep the condo. Then keep the car. It's okay. So that's my take, but I would say split the difference.

If you're saying, I want to sell this to get out a debt faster, get creative and talk to your wife and go, hey, what could we do to make this process happen even faster than one year? Can you work overtime? What if I got the side hustle? What if we could cut these expenses and we got on a bare bones budget for a year, like Rachel said, in order to speed up this process and sacrifice for a shorter period of time? Yeah, because do you guys, I mean, do you all like the condos? I mean, she obviously loves it because she doesn't want to sell it.

So is it a place that you're like, no, we could be in here for another four or five years? Absolutely. We both like the condo. The reason why we bought it, we bought it about two years ago before the huge jump in the housing market. Yeah. Was because we had a good down payment for it. And we bought it for two reasons. One, to lock in the rent prices,

because the mortgage doesn't go up, but rent prices do. And two, to eventually sell it and collect the equity. And then that way we could buy a different home. Gotcha. And so that's why I kind of want to sell, because it's gone up so much in equity that with everything going on in the economy, I do think there's going to be a slow return in the housing market for a couple of years.

And I just want to get debt free, keep saving money and take advantage of that. Yeah. Then Sean, what happens is you sell it and you got to go turn around and either buy something that's super expensive, it's the top of the market, or you're going to rent super expensive because the top of the market. And so I know that it's, it feels like a good move to sell right now, but you're stuck in a corner at that point and so i'm good with keeping this condo paying off the debt yeah and then over time you can save up and upgrade if you want to later down and the other i mean or the other option is too sean if you guys weren't happy with the condos why i asked where he's like no we're wanting to upgrade soon if that was in the near future in

the next 24 months then you could then sell pay off the debt have 80 grand put down uh on a new place if you guys wanted to buy high i mean it's you know it's kind of it's whatever you want to do but i would if you guys want to stay put and you're comfortable staying put for the next couple years to appreciate so don't worry about this market right now houses will always go up in value over a long period of time. Great question. Thanks for the question, man. Chris is joining us up next in Miami, Florida.

Chris, welcome to the show. Hey, how's it going, guys? Great. What's up with you? Right. So essentially I'd like to figure out a way to get moved out of my family's place and move into my own spot and also get my girlfriend to move in with me as well,

pretty much. Okay. How long have you guys been dating? Coming up on a year in about a week. Nice. Three days, actually. Chris, why don't you propose? I'm still a full-time student

and I'm still living with family. So I don't feel like that's the smart decision as of right now. So why are you wanting to move out? Well, so it's kind of, it's a little bit more complicated. So she, we live, we're doing kind of a long distance relationship. I live in Miami. She lives with my family in New York. She lives with your family in New York. She lives with your family?

My family, yeah. With family in New York. Oh, okay. Gotcha. And she's just graduated with her associates and she's doing a year of working because she's not like on a full, I guess she's not a U.S. citizen. So she's working for a year so she can get some money. And after that, she's going to finish and do her bachelor's degree. But I'm down here in Miami living with some other family. And I just feel like it's time for me to get my own place. And like this, I don't feel like I'm being challenged enough. Like I feel it's too easy living with family and it, you know.

How much do you make a year, Chris? So I'm still a full-time student as well. Maybe about starting 2022, I've been making maybe five to six grand a month. Okay. You're saying next year you'll be making five, six grand a month? No, that's as of this year, as of 2022, I've been making about five to six. That's great.

Yeah. While doing school full time? While a full time student. How is this possible? Next week. Yeah. How are you doing that? I'm just curious.

I work from home. My schedule really works wonders with me. I'm a full time student online and I work from a sales job from home online. Awesome, Chris. Great job. Good for you, man. I'm impressed. And how old are you? 23. 23. Okay. Very cool. So yeah, Chris, I mean, I think kind of having your own dignity is what it's sounding like of like, I have the ability to do this. I mean, you make, you know, 70 grand. It's awesome. You're making a great. So yeah,

I mean, I'm totally comfortable with you, you know, creating a budget and saying, hey, how much could I spend on rent? What's food going to look like? I mean, go ahead and list out and make a mock budget of what it would look like for you to live on your own. And I think that's a great idea. And I think that'd be awesome to make that step. I'm not a fan of living together before you're married so I would bring you know if she wants to come down and rent a place next to you

or stay up in New York where you are I mean the long distance relationship is kind of tough I understand that so I mean if she wants to come down to Miami I think that's awesome but also I would be like hey if you're willing to move in with someone I think it's time to be thinking about

I mean the only thing that stopped I'm not willing to move in with someone i think it's time to be thinking about put a ring on it i mean i mean the only thing that stopped and we just i'm i'm not comfortable comfortable in my like financially like i don't feel like i'm stable where i've reached where i wanted to because i'm again i i plan on going to law school and i'm only just at my associates right now so i see like a law like a long, like a long, uh, progress between where I'm at now and then. And it just doesn't seem like,

yeah, like a benefit to marry, I guess. Sure. I hear you. I would just say, yeah, and I'm not,

I'm not pushing you to get married. I would just say if it's, uh, you, people are married in law school all the time, so it's totally doable. So you can, you can go that route. But again, I'm not pushing you to be like, you, all the time, so it's totally doable. So you can go that route.

But again, I'm not pushing you to be like, you need to marry her. But I would make life decisions to set you up well for the future. And we've just seen time and time again, and studies show that the divorce rate goes up when you live together before you're married. I think there's a- More money problems. Yeah, there's just an element there to keep things separate. So I would continue to do that, Chris. And you're going to be able to cash flow law school because you're making a great income.

You're doing awesome, Chris. So great job. Yeah, graduate college and live it on your own. It's impressive. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. My thanks to Rachel Cruz, my co-host, all the folks in the booth, Austin, Will, James, Andrew, you name it. They're there. And you, America, thank you so much for listening.

Until next time, spend wisely, save intentionally, and give generously. Hey, it's Rachel Cruz, co-host on The Ramsey Show. If you want to do your debt-free scream live on the show, visit ramsaysolutions.com slash debt-free scream. We'd love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story. That's ramsaysolutions.com slash debt-free scream.