The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Wait to Cash Flow Grad School? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

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Music Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studio, this is the Dave Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. My name is Anthony O'Neill, and joining me today is the future number one national best-selling author down the road dr john deloney who is killing the airways right now on youtube and on podcasts with the dr john deloney show and so he's talking about relationships he's talking about mental health he is the newest thing that is taking dr phil for his money. And so if you want to talk to us about your life, about your money,

about your relationships, about anything around mental health, any questions you may have, give us a call at 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. For the record, Anthony, I think Dr. Phil's money is going to be all right. I think his money is safe with him. I mean, his money is good, but you are giving him a run for the money, though. Because, you know, you hot, bro. We're having fun.

We are having fun. You're helping people. You're different. You know what I'm saying? You're a little bit more spicy. I don't know about that, man. You're a little bit more real. You know what I'm saying?

You're very different. Well, I appreciate that. You're welcome. Thank you. Yes, sir. We're a team. We take care of each other. I'll Venmo you after the show.

Yes, sir. I'll Venmo you. Thank you. Venmo me $100. No chance. Man, let's go out to California and have a conversation with Karina. I think that I said her name correctly.

Karina, thank you so much for calling in. How can Dr. D and I help? Hi, I'm a new listener, and I'm on Baby Step 2. And I just wanted to know, if you were in my position, would you pay off your undergrad loan, or should I pile up cash for graduate school? I currently have a scholarship with graduate school, but that all depends on funding, like every year. Yeah, and it's particularly tenuous right now, right?

What do you want to get a master's degree in? I'm currently going for social work. Social work. So you have an undergrad, bachelor's degree in social work? No, I have a bachelor's degree in sociology, and then my master's is in social work. Okay. Where are you working right now?

Right now I'm working from home, and it's for a mental health department. So I'm getting paid pretty well with that too, and it's all online. Very cool. So you have a scholarship, and between the scholarship and your cash saved up, you could go get a graduate degree with cash, debt-free? Yeah. Well, right now I got a scholarship of $20,000 for grad school, and then I get one basically every year, but that depends on funding. And then, well, like funding.

So I got one for this year, so I got $20,000 for this year. And so they won't guarantee funding for next year? No, they won't guarantee funding for next year. And is a master's in social work, are you going to be a licensed clinician or just get a master's in MSW? What are you trying to do? Right now it's just a master's, and then after I'm done, I'm trying to get my license to be a clinical social worker. What's your undergraduate debt look like? It's only $16,000.

Okay. Which I guess is a lot. Well, I mean, we hear a lot worse. That's a low number for some of the things that we hear in here. I'm torn on this. I'd love to get Anthony's insight. Here's, Anthony and Karina, here's where my head's at. I understand in the mental health profession, to move up, you've got to get that graduate degree a degree in social work is an outstanding graduate program degree if you can cash flow that that's a it's the the possibilities of helping other people whether it's clinical and you go get licensed or you're going to work in a hospital you're going to work in a retirement center the possibilities are endless there that's

a great degree to have particularly if you get licensed. So I love the idea that you can cash flow yourself through that. I don't like that they offered you a massive intro scholarship and they said, we don't know what next year is going to look like. That feels bait and switchy to me. I don't like them putting you out there because what they're really doing is getting you in the front door. You're going to put 10,000 of your own bucks in, and then you're going to be on the hook for the next two years, and I don't want them to circle back and say, hey, we had to cut this by $15,000, and what was going to be a cash flow program,

you're out the door now. I don't like that about that program, particularly as schools are rolling back their school-funded scholarship dollars due to lost revenue in COVID. And so that's a real thing. The other side of it is pay your undergraduate off in 16 grand. That's just not a lot. That's a year. You can suck it up and do that.

And then you're circling back around. That's my thoughts. Anthony, what do you think? So, Karina and Dr. Dean, y'all can help me answer this question. Do you need the master's degree? I do because I want to be a licensed clinical social worker. Yeah, to move up in mental health profession, you've got to get that graduate degree and the licensure. to be a licensed clinical social worker. Yeah, to move up in mental health profession, you got to get that graduate degree and the licensure. Okay, here's

the next question. How much money are you making right now a year? I just started working and I get paid $22.50 an hour. So what is that yearly for you? It's full-time, so I think it's $22.50. Honestly, I don't know. Okay, so $22,250 an hour. Versus a licensed social worker in California making $150 an hour. $150,000 an hour. No, no. $150 an hour. Yeah. Or doing insurance reimbursements and minimally making $50 to $75 an hour.

So that's a significant increase. Okay. Sounds good. So Karina, answer this question. You have a scholarship for this year. If they come back to you and say, hey, we cannot give you the scholarship, do you have the income to cash flow the rest of your process? I believe so. I would just have to worry about housing because the tuition is only $8,000 a year. Okay, so tuition is only $8,000 a year. Where are you living right now? I'm living in Riverside area.

Okay. Yeah, I'm from San Diego, so I know exactly where you are. So here's my thing. If you can keep applying for scholarships because going from $22 to $150 an hour, absolutely, that is worth you going to school. So I don't have a problem with you pausing baby step two cash flow and the rest of this college experience and then attacking the debt as soon as you get done as long as you do not rack up any more student loans as long as you do not rack up any more debt period all right because then now what you're gonna do you're gonna you're making

your shovel bigger. And so when you go to pay off your debt, which is eighteen thousand dollars, now you can attack that within a matter of six months, seven months if you really work it right. So I'm going to tell you, go back to school, use this scholarship, any extra money you do have coming in. I want you to stack it just in case if they say, no, we cannot give you the scholarship next year. Now you have cash and reserves to pay for your college. Then as soon as you graduate college and as soon as you get that job, attack the debt. All right?

Okay. Good luck. We need great social workers out there. So pay attention, love people people well and go get them yeah and this is why we want you to call into the dave ram show because i mean this this would have been another route this would have been another person another person would have said hey i do not need this degree i would not have told them that right um if they would have said i'm going to go from 22 an hour to 30 an, I would not have told them to go that route.

Gotcha. But to go from $22 to like $150. Right. Yes. Right. Because your shovel doesn't just double or triple. That is a significant increase that you can cash flow the rest, come back, now you can attack this debt and kill it all. So give us a call, you guys. I love these questions that make us think.

I love them. 888 these questions that make us think. I love them. 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. This is Dr. Deloney and Anthony O'Neill right here on The Dave Ramsey Show. I get asked all the time about what people need to do to improve their family's money situation. Two of the most overlooked things are term life insurance and disability insurance. Both plans make sure that you have income to pay bills and take care of yourself and your family if something were to happen. For term life, you need to carry 10 to 12 times your income, and I recommend 15 or 20-year plans for most families. Stay away from cash value or return

of premium plans. They're just a ripoff. Disability insurance is just as critical. How are you going to pay your bills if you're unable to work? Disability is the leading cause of bankruptcies and foreclosures, and that's why I send you to Zander Insurance. They've been helping my listeners find the right plans at the lowest cost for almost 20 years. Call 800-356-1780 or visit zander.com and compare online. That's 800-356-1780 or zander.com. Going out to Nashville, Tennessee. We're going to have a conversation here with toya toya good afternoon how can dr d and i help hi um can you guys hear me yes we can thank you so much for calling in how can we help pleasure is mine hey i have a question i want want to put an addition onto my existing house, and I'm trying to determine if I should include it in my house refinancing or if I should hold off on it until I can pay for it with cash. Yeah. Now, I don't want you to refi your addition to the house.

No, no, no. I don't want you to rack up any more debt inside of the home. I would love for you to pay cash for it, though, for whatever the upgrades is. What are the upgrades? What are you trying to do? Yeah, and I probably should put some more context to it. So I'm recently divorced, and I have to refinance the house to pay for my ex's equitable portion of it. And I was trying to figure out if I should just include the addition with that refinancing.

What's the addition? It's the master suite. Okay. So you just want to fix and upgrade the master suite? I want to add a master suite. Okay, so you just want to make, you want to fix and upgrade the master suite? I want to add a master suite. So you already have one. You want to add another one? No, no, I don't have one.

I want to add one. Oh, so you do not have a master bedroom suite in your current home. Okay, all right. So as part of the settlement, did you get enough cash to pay for this outright? The addition or the refinancing? The addition. Yes. I could pay for it outright, but I don't have enough cash to pay for both. Okay. You don't have enough cash to pay for the refinancing as well?

And the addition. And the addition. Okay. What about your emergency fund and any other existing debt that you have? Yeah. Right. So I think I'm good there because I don't have any additional debt. Additional. Do you have any debt?

No, I don't have any debt, but I will have debt once I refinance. And what debt will you have? Your mortgage? Just the mortgage, yeah. Correct. Okay, cool. So that's correct. Do you have an emergency fund that's fully funded? I do. Okay. So here's just something I'll think through and then Anthony, you can talk to the money part of it. The temptation after going through a divorce, wanting to have a new you, you're going to refinance this house. It's going to be yours. It's going to be your payments.

You're separated. You're starting new. You're starting fresh. While you're doing all this stuff, you want to go ahead and do this other thing that you've been wanting to do for a long time. Maybe he wouldn't let you. Maybe now's your moment.

What I don't want you to do is to get so excited or run from something or use any sort of feeling or emotion and jump into a swimming pool that doesn't have enough water in it. And I know that you want to do all this stuff at the same time. I know that you want to, you've got your eyes on this new master suite and I'd rather you refinance this house. Take that money that you got in the settlement, refinance the house, have it be yours, exhale a little bit, have a couple of months worth of payments, see what COVID is going to do in a partridge in a pear tree, and then make the decision with cash in hand what you want to do. That's going to limit what you do.

It's going to keep you from going overboard, from getting a $10 tile. Maybe you really can afford a six tile. Once we're here, let's just go ahead and add a couple. It's just going to keep everything wrapped up. And so it's going to be hard to be disciplined in this moment, especially on the back end of something that's so transformative in your life. That's my thought, Anthony. Toya, do you want to stay in this house forever?

It's a long time, but I plan on staying here for a while oh wow okay all right um here's here's what i'm going to recommend for you um and that is i'm gonna sit still i'm gonna sit still for a little bit i understand you want to go ahead and get into the house i understand you want to go ahead and um you know get the get the upgrades get it get it to you i and i want upgrades, get it to you. And I want you to get it there one day. But what I want you to do is after you refi, sit for a year, okay? And when you refi, I want you to look at our team, our guys, Churchill Mortgage, because they will help you with some lower fees and really help you get into this thing correctly, the correct way.

So that's one. And number two, I want you to sit for about a year just sit for this 12 months rethink the whole process because i think 12 months from now your heart and your position may change and then if you still want to add on to the make those additions make those upgrades then absolutely uh yes i want you to go in the head and and do that. But I would sit still and then just have a game plan on how to cash flow the upgrades. I'm not I'm not a big fan of refining mortgage, maxing out my mortgage and then trying to figure things out. Now, I want equity in my house, you know, and honestly, I want to pay it off so it can go towards my net worth. So that's where I stand on that.

You know, that was a great question. Thank you so much for giving us a call. And we are praying for your new journey. Going out to Augusta, we're going to have a conversation there with Jen. Jen, good afternoon. How can Dr. D and I help? Hi, thanks for taking my call. So my husband and I are on baby step two. And this spring before we started our Dave Ramsey journey, we bought a new car. We had been driving or we had some other cars that were just constantly needing work. And so we sold those and we ended up getting a brand new 2020 honda crb and part of me feels like we should sell it my husband does not agree with me we um were about 71 000 in debt still with the car and we can have it paid off in two years um and I just, I love the car, but I feel guilty having it. Why do you feel guilty having it? I just feel like every time I like listen to like the show or do my financial piece university, I'm like, like I should probably just sell this car.

Like we have a two-year-old daughter and we live way out in the woods in Maine. It's a, like, it'll probably be her first car. That's what our goal is, that we'll have it for, you know, 16 years, 20 years. So I just feel like it's like we could have our debt gone quicker if we sold it. So take away Dave Ramsey and us from you. Do you still want the car? Do you still think you made the right decision?

I mean, yes. I love the car. I feel safe in the car. My family fits really comfortably in the car. It's perfect for where we live. What's your total household income? It's $90,000. Okay. How much did you buy the car for? $34,000. What's your other car payment? Our other car payment is $250. We owe about $7,000. We're about to pay off our last credit card or a small credit card, and that's our next kind of we're going to get rid of that car payment. So you guys have $42,000 in car debt right now,

which is half more than half of your $70,000 in debt. Yeah. Right now, it's not about feeling guilty. Right now, it's about how do you make the right decision for you and your family? That's what it's about. And if you really look at it, 56% of your debt is in cars. In depreciating assets. In depreciating assets, like my brother said.

Yeah. That's where I have a problem at. So I'm going to tell you, sell the cars. Now, you're going to have a problem because you bought a 2020 car. And you know you lost at least 10 10 to 15 percent this year alone just because yeah the kelly blue book is like uh trade-in is like 25 and a private sale is um 29 and we owe just a little over 33 000 on it right so what i would do is go ahead and sell that car now sell the car now before you add more miles onto it and before

things uh can possibly go wrong you're upside down about four or five grand um cat if you had that cash put that on there um i don't have a problem if you don't have zero cash i don't have a problem you're taking that loan for five thousand dollars uh to go with the what the car is worth to get out of it because you go from 34 to $5,000 in debt on the car. So that's what I'm going to recommend. Get out of these cars. And there's 0% chance that 16 years from now you're going to give that car to your kid. It's a fun fantasy.

I've shared that fantasy too, but it's not real. Get rid of the cars. Sell them today. Sell them right now. And you're halfway to your journey of becoming debt free. This is the Day Rant Show. Hey, guys. At the Dave Ramsey Show, we really value your input. It helps us to know what's important to you so we can deliver relevant content to help you crush your money goals. We just launched a brand new survey, and we'd love your feedback.

It only takes a few minutes and you'll be entered to win a 100 amazon gift card no purchase necessary take the survey at davramsey.com slash survey or text survey to 33 789 so dr john deloney one of the things i love about being on the dave ramsay show was our not just our producer but our uh music producer as well james chow he always brings in some of the um dopest well let me say this again for the Dave Ramsey show. For the coolest. Some good stuff. He brings us some good stuff.

For some of the real good music, man. So listen, I love it. You guys, I want y'all to head over to my YouTube channel. I did a video this week called How to Be Single and Happy. Really just being honest and being vulnerable there. I talk about some of the key things that I am doing that I'm practicing during this single season of my life that is keeping me happy, that's keeping me productive, that's keeping me going.

So I want you to head over to my YouTube channel. As a matter of fact, just text this, AO to 33789. Text AO to 33789. And you'll, nine, text AO to three, three, seven, eight, nine. And you'll get some information back on how you can watch that video and get a bunch of content because I'm really called Dr. D to help out millennials and young people and really help them in that 20s and 30s really create that solid foundation in their life. Because I really wish I had someone speaking to me when I was 20, when I was 22 years old. I just posted something on my Instagram talking about how if you start investing at 20 and if you say you start investing at 25,

those five years has almost $400,000 in difference. So it's like I really want to help young people start off at an earlier age. What about a guy like me who had people all around him? Uh-huh. I was just an idiot. I didn't listen. Yeah. What do you tell the 22-year-olds out there

who are getting wisdom from people, who are having people say, hey, man, don't do that, or who stumble on this show and Dave's saying, sell the car, and they're like, well, I don't know, man, because I got a great deal, 0% financing. The government says I don't have to pay my loans back.

What do you tell that knucklehead 22-year-old? What do you tell John Deloney years ago? To shut up and listen. I love it. I'm serious. I wish someone would have told the knucklehead Anthony O'Neill, 18, 19, shut up.

You're not a grown man. you wish you were a grown man let me teach you how to become a grown man and i think this generation of young people they want to run they want to be in charge they want to do things on their own and when they want to do it and what they do do not understand that the choices that they're making today is impacting their tomorrow, that the caliber of their future will be determined by the caliber of the choices they made today. And so what I'm teaching myself, even at 36, you know, I'm asking Dave questions. I'm asking my mentors questions because they are they have accomplished what I want to accomplish. And so do I listen to 100 percent of every single thing that they tell me to do no i'm a man uh but do i listen to a lot of things that they say yes absolutely i seek wise counsel why because i eventually want to

become wise counsel to someone else very cool so man if y'all really want if you're in the 20s and the 30s and you really want to rock with your boy and you really, really want to learn and grow, text AO, AO to 33789. We're going to send you some video links and we're going to send you some information to help you build a solid foundation for your life. Very cool. You got a question, man? Yeah, let's go over to blinds.com. Blinds.com's 100% satisfaction guarantee means even if you mismeasure or pick the wrong color, I feel like they're talking to me every time they say that, they'll remake your blinds for free.

It's idiot proof. It's John Deloney proof. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use promo code RAMSY to get the best deal. Of course, rules and restrictions apply. All right, Anthony, here's today's question. Save even more. Use promo code RAMSY to get the best deal. Of course, rules and restrictions apply. All right, Anthony, here's today's question.

It comes from Jared in Oregon. He visits DaveRamsey.com to ask, I grew up in Southern California and graduated from a CSU in 2018, age 23, with $20,000 in savings and only $4,000 of debt in the form of a car loan. Shortly before graduation, I unexpectedly lost my stable living situation. I was unable to find a roommate and due to the high cost of living in the region, my savings fell to $4,000 in a single year. I was nowhere near affordable living.

I now live with my parents again in a different state, and I just don't know how to start over. How do I pick myself up after seeing years of hard work disappear so quickly? I was extremely careful and frugal through college, and yet now I'm so far behind. Where do I go from here? How do I rebuild my financial ambition? Here's the thing. You're not too far behind.

Life happened. He was in perfect place're not too far behind. Life happened. He was in perfect place. Yeah. Life happened. Jared, you did it, man. Just redo it again. Life could happen. Life happened to millions of people back in March.

It's happening to them right now. It's happening to people right now. I think oftentimes people feel as if when life happens, when things happen, that, oh, now I'm behind. No, no. The fact that you still have $4,000 in your savings account right now, you're still ahead of 50% of the people in America right now. And you're 23 years old. Or you're a little bit older now, 26 years old. Yeah, right.

So here's the thing that i would recommend get a plan get a vision and just follow that plan stick to that vision and do not give up you fell off the horse yes but thankfully you'd taken care of that horse yes the horse was in great shape yes now you got to dust yourself off brother jared and get back on that's it bottom line twenty thousand dollars in savings for a young man graduating college is an excellent achievement anthony i hear this a lot which is i finally started quote unquote living right yeah and i expected the universe to rally around me and make all my dreams come true and make all my pains and sadness go away and as a culture, we have lost any and all language for discomfort, for frustration, for bad things, for sad things. We just want everything to be okay all the time. And it's just not the way the world works.

You have $20,000 in savings for this moment when your living goes away. Yes. You were able to get out of this, brother, without owing anybody anything. Yep. For those of you who say, I just out of this, brother, without owing anybody anything. Yep. For those of you who say, I just got a little car loan, let Jared be a lesson. Sometimes your housing just goes away. Yes. Right?

Yes. But you came out with some bruises, man, but it didn't end you. And now you just got to get back on the horse, and this time you're going to do it stronger and you're going to do it better. Good for you, Jared. Good for you. Let's go out and talk to another young person, Judy, out at Rockford, Illinois. I'm sorry. Judy, good afternoon. How can Dr. D and I help? Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. I started the steps this

month and immediately went to step number two. I am renting. I am 60 years old and I am single and I'm looking to retire in about seven to eight years and moving. I don't like the state I'm in. So should I continue to rent when I move after going through the steps at my age or should I purchase a home with the nest egg that I plan on having once I do retire? Where are you going to move to? Well, I'd like to move south, possibly Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, somewhere around there. We would love to have you in Tennessee. Let me ask you this question. So when you say about seven years, so about 67 years old, you will be retiring.

How much of a nest egg do you think you will have? Well, I'm in debt $22,000. I have $33,000 in credit cards, 14 personal loans, and 5,000 attorney fees. I have a 401k within my work, and I have two small IRAs. One is an add-to, and I mean, they're very small, which is another thing. Should I invest those the floral or the IRAs to a different source? Because the interest isn't really high at all. You know what? I like this question. This is what I want you to do. I want you to stay right there.

We're about to take a break, but I want to come back and dive a little bit deeper into this and help you out with this question because there's a couple of tools I want to give you and connect you with one of our personalities that I believe you would love to follow and he will help you out. So stay on the line. We're going to come right back to you right in me you may have peace in the world. You will have tribulation, but take heart.

I have overcome the world. John chapter 16 verses 33. My Angela once said that we may encounter many, many defeats, but we must not be defeated. Going back to Judy, before we left, Judy was talking about how does she set herself up to win after retirement? And she has some good questions. So Judy, let's pick back up. So how much debt are you currently in right now? I'm in $22,000. Okay, so $22,000 in debt right now. But hold on, you mentioned $22,000, but then you rattled off a couple of other debts. So when you say... Well, that was included.

That was all included. I was just breaking those down. Okay, cool. So a total of $22,000 in debt. How much do you have in your investments right now? As far as 401k, through my work, $20,000 in there.

My two small IRAs that I have, they equal like $1,400. All right. So we have about $34,000, $35,000 in your retirement accounts. Do you have anything in savings right now? No. OK. All right. So how much are you how much are you making right now? Why are you working an annual fifty thousand fifty thousand? OK.

So here's here's my suggestion to you, Judy. I want to honestly stop thinking about the house right now and you've already said it that you're going to pay off all your debt you're going to do baby set number two so i love that um then also i really want you to focus on baby set number three which is set aside for you and because of your age bracket the season that you're in, I would set aside six months of expenses. And then I would sit down with one of our smart investor pros. And yes, once you pay off your debt, you get a fully funded emergency fund. I want you to sit down with one of our smart investor pros that can help you really start channeling up your investments. So this way, by the time you do come into retirement you have some funds a little bit more than what you

have right now so do that how long do you think it would take you to pay off the 20 the 20 000 of debt well i gave myself um 24 months okay so we got two years that's great so that is with five years how long do you think you would come up with you with your emergency fund? Probably another year and a half. Okay, so now we're looking at four years there. We got three years. So then as soon as you get there, you're going to jump on a phone with a SmartVestor Pro, and you all are going to walk through, okay, what do I need to be doing now to start making an, an allowing compound interest

to be my best friend. Now I'm not going to tell you yes or no on buying a home. I'm scaling more towards the no side. And here's why, because you are getting older. And when you retire, your income is going to come down. So I would honestly prefer you to be in a comfortable place with that without a huge burden burden over you. But you may find a mortgage. I don't know what your smart investor may advise you to do at that time and during that season of your life. But I would definitely say this. There's nothing wrong with renting. OK, there's nothing wrong with that at all. So you can choose which route. But if you were my mom, I'm saying, Mom, hey, you know what? How about we just rent? OK, you're debt free. You have a retirement check coming in. You got some small investments paying you back a little bit here and there.

Mom, just chill. Don't worry about getting a mortgage right now. That's a huge responsibility because now it's not just a mortgage payment, Judy. Now you got to take care of grass. You got to take care of the water. You got to take care of this. You got to fix things when they break down. And sometimes doing that on a fixed income, Dr. D, it will be hard. Judy, you said you're new to this weird group of people who are following this plan? Yes. Are you all in? I all all in totally i'm all all in all right well here's the deal judy today at the dave ramsey office is one of our annual parties it's the battle of the bands everybody's in a good mood everyone is closing down a little bit early and they're going to head outside and so we're going to give you a year subscription to ramsey plus

and we want you to follow it from start to finish. Yes. I want you to go through all the content, all the lessons. There are some free contact infos in there, and we want you to get plugged in and we want to set you up. I think you can get on top of this thing. I think you can get moving quick and I think you can be out of this debt quicker than two years. And I think once you get some of this content in your heart and soul, where it's not just a plan, but it's a way of being, it's a new way of seeing the world, it's a new way of honoring you in the back half of your life,

I think you can knock it out real fast. So you said you were all in. I want you to be all in. We're going to hook you up, stay on the line, and Kelly's going to get you taken care of. Man, you said that, you know, everyone is shutting down early to go out there and party, but me, you, Kelly, and James,

we still ain't here working. At least four people got to keep their lights on in this place. That's right. We out here taking y'all phone calls. As a matter of fact, Jeffrey just called in from Orlando, Florida. We're going to help Jeffrey. Good afternoon, Jeffrey. How can Dr. D and I help? Hi. I was calling to kind of get some advice with my mom's financial situation and I guess to just ensure that I'm

not being the evil son and giving her poor, poor instruction. Yeah. How can we help? Sorry. So she's at a point now where she's in her early seventies, no retirement. Um, my stepdad passed away and then she got a small life insurance settlement. So she's looking to sell her house and break even on that and walk away with no debt there. Um, and she's looking to move from Texas to Orlando and, um, her worth is somewhere around $20,000. You know, if you factor in everything she's got in savings and maybe a couple of grand on the vehicle. I'm basically trying to tell her to, you know,

slash and burn, sell everything you have, don't pay anyone to move it out here because it's a large chunk of what she has, you know, and then what's left over is pretty much what she has to live on. And I don't know if I'm just being too harsh with her or, you know, am I, do I need to reach into my pocket and help her out? Is that what you advise? I mean, I don't have a great relationship with her. I don't, I don't want her living in my house. I don't want to, maybe that's me to me, but. Now that you're being honest, what does she say when you tell her to sell everything and move um well she wants to move

but she don't want to sell everything she wants to take some money and pay someone to pack it up and move it out yes i'm going to fly out and help her relocate i just physically i can't lift like a piano and sure so to answer the math problem there if you've got twenty thousand dollars and it's going to cost you 10 grand or 15 grand to move from Texas to Florida, I don't think that's wise. That's expensive. Now, I don't know about heirlooms. I don't know about family pianos and family china cabinets and all that kind of stuff. That's beyond the scope here. Sounds like your question is a deeper one about my mom's getting to the end we don't have a great

relationship she doesn't have a whole lot to live on and you're starting to see the writing on the wall that some of this may fall on you is that fair yeah that's fair okay and so you don't want her living in your house what's her plan when she gets to florida uh so she does have social security i assume like most people end up falling back on that um which is depending on whether or not she ends up being able to take my stepfather's money which was like 14 and a half or hers which is like seven and a half we're thinking some sort of rent controlled home housing community for elderly um we're still actually driving back from interviewing one of them now. Okay.

Are you married? I am. Okay. What you need to do is you need to sit down with your wife, and you all need to make a decision on the front end of this deal, how much you're going to support, what the living situation is going to be, what she's going to do if she can't afford something. You need to have that conversation because you're kind of circling around it. You're kind of spiraling around that question and you're

kind of avoiding it. And by kind of, I mean, you're completely avoiding it. You need to sit down and be honest with yourself. And then once you put those things on paper, once you and your wife agree, then you're going to have to deal with the consequences on either side of that. That means having a real hard conversation with your mom saying, I'm not helping. Or having a real hard conversation with your mom saying, you're not living here. Or maybe your wife and you

have a change of heart and you say, okay, we're going to help you this much or that much. But you got to start with a plan. And yeah, I don't recommend that she spend three-fourths of what she's got left just to move.

I totally agree with you, man. Thanks for calling in. Dr. D, thank you so much. I want to thank the number one producer in the world, James Child, number one assistant producer in the world, Kelly Daniel. And America, I want to thank you, the number one listeners in the world. Don't forget that the caliber of your future will be determined by the choices you made today. So make the right ones, you guys. This is The Dave Ramsey Show.

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