The Ramsey Show - App - Should We Sell Our House Before the Economy Collapses? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, number one best-selling author, host of The Rachel Cruze Show and the Smart Money Happy Hour co-host. My daughter, Rachel Cruz, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. We're so glad you're here. Shane is in Denver. Hi, Shane. What's up? Good afternoon, sir. How are you doing today? Better than we deserve. How can I help? Of course.

Yeah, hey, I'm just calling to my wife and I. We bought our house in 2021. We bought it for $500,000. We put $100,000 down on it. We had about $100,000 in our savings account that we kept in there too for our emergency fund. We have now paid it down to about $280,000 on it as of today. So in three years, we've put down another $115,000 into it.

You're killing it, dude. We have no debt. Our cars are paid off. We have no debt, and we have still about $100 in our savings account today as well. We are worried about the house economy crashing here in the next six months or so, and our mortgage rate is at 2.5%. Let me stop you. I'm sorry. Why are you worried about the housing economy in Denver, Colorado crashing? I don't know. I think my, I don't know. My wife is, she's, she's more of a relative, a realist than I am. And so I'm so I'm just kind of going with the flow, and we're just trying to be.

I'm sorry, what does being a realist mean? You mean a pessimist? I guess so. I'm not trying to talk down on her. Oh, I wasn't either. I'm just saying there's a realist is someone who observes facts. There are no facts in the marketplace that indicated a housing crash in Denver, Colorado in the next six months.

Absolutely zero facts. Well, that's good to know. And then also we're wanting to see if we should sell our house and collect our revenue. It's already at 700. No. No. Okay. You guys need to get off the internet.

That's what I say too. No. No. Okay. You guys need to get off the internet. That's what I say, too. Yeah. I'm sitting next to the Ramsey family conspiracy theorist. I'm a conspiracy theorist. I don't know. When AT&T went out last month, I thought, this is it. Rachel, what's the Denver housing conspiracy? I missed this one.

You're up on all the conspiracies. It does have the Denver airport. You are close to the bunker. That could happen if it all goes down Shane that's your greatest asset right now again at the same time to my son we have a seven-year-old son um and I travel a lot for work in the state and we're trying to maybe move to the southern part of Colorado to where I don't have to travel as much and I can work. Okay.

If you want to do that, but please don't do that because the Denver housing market is going to collapse in the six months, next six months. That should not be, that should not be one of the factors that drives your decision because it's not, it's not going to collapse. Okay. Well, and then percentage wise, we didn't, I didn't want to go

get a new house and then pay a percentage on something with a higher interest rate at when we're at two you're not going to have a higher interest rate for much longer because you're paying it off so fast yeah that's true i mean it might be three or four years you carry it but you're not going to carry it for 30 years so it doesn't matter but make your decisions out of a glass half full not out of panic and really quit reading the internet i'm serious okay there's some really dumb dark people out there yeah that's that's and i'm too busy with work my wife's a nurse practitioner in psych and the last couple years she's been just a stay-at-home mother with our kids during the during these years and now my son's getting to be where he can be in full-time school so she's about to go back to work too now so we're gonna have a double income yeah that'd be great you

know but i mean psych nurses you know maybe she oh oh my gosh she's just seen a lot of great crazy stuff no pun intended right and so um you know it can that can that can leave a mark on you and so but i don't want her to live in fear i don't meet people who anticipate the end of the world who prosper none great i just don't the people who who not mean there's preppers and then there's crazy preppers okay preppers one thing but crazy prepper that's anticipating the end of the world like i've got a friend who has gold bar i have a friend who has gold bars in his basement well and it's not and that's just not right and let's keep talking about this though shame because the housing market is a point in our economy that a lot of people are panicked about and back you know during covid when that when everything surged in 2021 we sat here at this

desk and people like it's a bubble it's a bubble it's gonna bust and you're like it's not supply and demand supply and demand we did the real estate yes we did the real estate you know hour and all of it so it is though shane to your wife's credit it is a it is a point of fear for a lot of people because i think it's her credit empathize with her i understand how people are afraid but Is though, Shane, to your wife's credit, it is a point of fear for a lot of people. Not to her credit. Empathize with her. I understand how people are afraid, but that doesn't mean that it's accurate or logical. Okay, so then give us the logic behind it.

Well, the logic is there's a housing shortage. Still. There's still three buyers for every stinking house on the market. And houses have gone up right now, today most major markets homes that are on the market are getting multiple offers but they're sitting on that they're sitting on it longer though it's not like eight days no it's no but it's not the average days on the market has gone up eight days in the past 12 months it just i my wife sent me something the other day and it says new home sales fall as mortgage rates way down how well people i know when the mortgage rates they go

it slowed it down though no one no one clicks on stuff unless it bleeds that's a clickbait lead okay mortgage housing starts fall as mortgage rates go up which they did a lot of builders slowed down there's not as many houses coming out of the ground you know what that does it means there's an even bigger shortage of inventory which makes your home even that much more but house prices didn't fall builders slowed down building because they didn't want to get caught with specs if the market slowed down on but not if the market crashed housing starts did drop but headlines always go everyone's dying that's what the headlines always say because that's what people click on is that stuff yeah so you know you know yeah so look that's what i mean by don't read the

internet okay and with the election year coming up traditionally in election years things slow down closer to the election too so you may see that happening traditionally interest rates go down because the sitting president doesn't want to get unseated by a stinky economy um we'll see yeah yeah we'll see but um interest rates have come down a little bit in the last month and a half they've come down a full point and the market is you know some areas the southern areas of the country the grass is starting to get green people are coming out of their winter caves they're starting to buy houses and the house market is heating back up it's a dirty little secret nobody's talking about it but um i've been anecdotally involved in three or four deals lately where i'm watching and there's

multiple offers coming in on these yeah and so i'm getting ready to put our home on the market and i was just looking it's a different dollar amount but i mean i was just looking at the you know what's the average days on the market? The average days on the market. What's the inventory? Inventory's dried up. I'm sitting pretty. My timing is excellent to put a house on the market.

It's far from a crash. Quite the opposite. Yeah, you're going to see your homes go up in value in the next 12 months. Just write it down and say the old bald guy said it. This is the Ramsey Show. Well, there's one thing most of us agree on. Taxes suck. This is the time of year which I generally stay grouchy, just in general,

just because I think about how much theft my government is involved in. Can we talk about this real quick, too it adds on to the text yeah um i don't know why it was kind of an epiphany i had yesterday where i was like it is weird that like you could pay off your house you could be completely debt free but if you you still have to the government to a degree still owns it like you got to pay your property taxes in a sense they kind of own your career if you don't pay your taxes you get put in jail and then car insurance you have to pay off car but you got to pay insurance like there's a level of of of this that you're like man yeah it's not like some of these things never stop it's what it feels like yeah for real i don't know i had that epiphany the other day i was like man so you got two choices for claiming tax

deductions understanding the difference can save you big bucks. Literally over 7 out of 10 Americans get a tax refund. That means 7 out of 10 of you are doing math poorly. There's a shock. You know what? Because, listen, I'm old. I know Santa Claus. He's a friend of mine.

He never goes to Washington, D.C. That money that's coming to you is not from Santa Claus. He has nothing to do with it. It's not a gift.C. That money that's coming to you is not from Santa Claus. He has nothing to do with it. It's not a gift. It's your money. You sent too much money to the freaking IRS. They held it all year at no interest, and they send it back to you, called a refund, and you have a celebration like you hit the freaking lottery. All it was was a bad Christmas account. You know, you just saved up money, and then they sent it back to you with a 0% interest with the stinking IRS because you had too much taken out of your check. Stop it. Adjust your deductions to the proper amount of tax withholding to where you don't owe any taxes

and they don't give you a refund. That's the proper thing to do. Now, this is what you got to do, guys. Now, if you're doing your taxes right now, you can take a standard deduction. That's the easy option. If you're single, you make $ you can take a standard deduction that's the easy option if you're single you make 65,000 a year the standard deduction knocks off close to 14,000 so you only pay taxes on 51,000 of your income and not even that really that's if you're single so itemize your deductions if you're going to do that it takes more work and you need a bunch of deductions right so if you want to know more about all this tax stuff, there's two things we'll do to help you. One is if you have a very simple return, you can get the Ramsey tax smart software, Ramsey smart tax software. I can't say it.

And I'm not smart enough to say it. And so it's not very expensive and it's very easy to implement. And a whole bunch of people have moved from those other guys. Like 100,000 of you will do your taxes on the Ramsey SmartTax software this year. So it's very easy, very simple. Now, if you have a complicated return, like you have a small business, a side hustle, you bought or sold a house or whatever like that, and you want to get a tax pro, we've got tons and tons of tax pros that are endorsed local providers that we have vetted. I was just talking to one a minute ago from Houston,

and there she is waving at us. She was at the break getting her picture made. She does taxes for you in Houston. So good folks taking good care of you. That's the way to do it. Go to ramseysolutions.com slash tax, and you can find out about either one of those. Noah is in Sacramento.

Hi, Noah. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave and Rachel. Huge fan. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I'm just, I'm in a, I got myself into a predicament. I moved, I was living in Huntington Beach around 2021. And then after COVID and stuff, I lost my job and my family in Sacramento said I can come live with them. So that's where I've been the last three years. I got a good job. Well, I make about 60K. But over the three years being here, I've made some very bad decisions. Um, severe gambling addict. I think that

me just having to pay my parents a couple hundred a month, I gave me too much, uh, not enough responsibility. And I was just blowing it left and right, uh, maxing out credit cards. Long story short. Um, now I'm here. Um, I told my parents everything and I just told them that I have a game plan to move out of here by September and just pay off everything I can until then. I got a job opportunity to go out and spray for pests, the pest control in Texas, that is guaranteed $30,000 for about four months of work until September. I'm wondering if I should quit my current job and go do that and go pay off all my debt, but I'd come back with no job. Where in Texas? Waco, I think, Waco, yeah.

You think? I'm sure where it is. Yeah. What have you done about your severe gambling addiction? I haven't gambled, what is it, three or four months, it's been about all year, but it was bad. I broke down and told my family. How have you dealt with it?

You just decided to stop and that's it? You've got no help at all? No. It cost me my relationship and a bunch of stuff, and I just realized I just had to stop. No, I haven't got like a therapist or anything, but I've been good. Deleted all the websites.

Okay, there's two possibilities in this conversation. One is you don't have a severe gambling addiction. You were just stupid. That's one possibility, and you decide to stop being stupid. Two is you have a severe gambling addiction, and if that's the case, you have not done enough to fix this. You would need to get into Gamblers Anonymous, and you would need to be seeing a counselor.

Okay. Okay. How old are you? Okay. I'm 25. I just turned 25 in December. Okay. So, I mean, I've never had a severe addiction, but I have done stupid stuff.

So I can relate to one side of it as a possibility. I don't know if this is just immaturity and stupidity, and you can ask yourself that question. I'm not calling you that. I'm just saying your actions were. And the way that you just quit cold without any help at all kind of makes me think it was on that side rather than the addiction side, but I'm not a therapist. What do you think? Is it a compulsion? Do you know what I mean, Noah? Like usually with an addiction, there's a level of compulsion there.

It was compulsion, yes. It was being bored. I don't have any friends in Utah. I mean, sorry, in Sacramento. And, um, when I got here, I got a job right away, but it was, it's work from home. I've been working from home for three years, so I never met anybody. And that's my bad. I could join a club. I could do stuff, but I haven't. And so I've just kind of been working in my room. And after I get off, I'm in my room gambling because I'm it's just it's just been horrible yeah how much how much debt did you go into for it

uh I've been climbing myself out of it all year um I also have a car payment because I just had to have the Lexus you guys know it's stupid um but I have a credit card with 1800 on it, um, 4k on another card and that's it for the credit cards. And then I have a $10,000 car loan. I also owe the IRS $1,300, um, because I decided to go exempt on some paychecks, which was really dumb. Yeah. Cause you were gambling.

Okay. Um, so. Yep. on some paychecks which was really dumb yeah because you were gambling okay um so well you hit your rock bottom though and i think for a lot of people there is that part of their story where it's just you you lost everything your relationship all i mean it's just you got to a point you can't you couldn't continue to move forward until you had those conversations right that to to actually bring up what's been going on. But I'm with Dave on that, that I would, just for your own sake, and I think that all of this is good for anybody,

just to do some work around who you are, how you got here, what are these things, these compulsions, where is it coming from? I mean, just doing some digging into your story. Yeah, the problem with going to Waco is you go with you. Yeah. So all of these things are still there you're not you're not getting away from them totally i the the good thing is they're they're putting me in a hotel i know which is you were in a room before by yourself that was dangerous yeah they're paying for uh rent i have a work truck

waiting for me out there i know it sounds like a good deal except that you're going with you i would just and i'm worried about you yeah i would just say if you were to do this from a financial aspect i would put i would put some parameters around it and i would i mean things like like ga is so great i mean the 12-step stuff is so good. You need to plug into Gamblers. Yes, being in a weekly group. I mean, honestly, it's like these practices that you put yourself in front of continue to work on the shame. It continues to work on the actual act of it.

I mean, I just, I think it's, I don't know. Without having, without being sure you're healed or in a healing process, just taking off to Waco is a bad idea. So if you're engaged in some kind of healing process and Waco is part of that process, great. But running away and you following you is a bad plan. This is The Ramsey Show. It's common sense for your dollars and cents. This is The Ramsey Show. Proving that having common sense is somewhat like having a superpower today.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, we have a wonderful thing called the Debt Free Stage. When people stand on it, they do their debt-free screams. We do this show on the glass five days a week from 1 to 4 every afternoon. You're welcome to stop by and join us here in Nashville. Anthony and Susan are on the Debt Free Stage. Welcome, guys. Hey.

Hi. Where do you guys live? St. Louis, Missouri. Oh, wow. Nice. guys. Hey. Hi. Where do you guys live? St. Louis, Missouri. Oh, wow. Nice. Welcome to Nashville. How much debt have you paid off? We paid off $54,773.

Very good. And how long did that take? About eight months. Good for you. Nice. And wow. And your range of income during that time? Yeah, we went from making $165,365 in 2022 to $266,678 last year. Oh my gosh. Jumped 100K. Yeah. What do y'all do for a living? So I'm a nurse. She's a registered nurse and I'm a precision plater for a defense

company. Okay. So what y'all do? Just like work overtime out your ears? Yeah. Or did you take promotions or what? 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Y'all went nuts. Oh, my gosh. What kind of debt was the $55,000? The big bulk of it was student loans and also a Discover card. And then we had a lot of smaller stuff like jewelry loan. We had phones that we owed money on.

We had a 401k loan. Y'all were like normal. Pretty normal, yeah. And normal sucks. Yeah, it did. So you woke up and said, this sucks. How long y'all been married? 15 years.

So 14 years this has gone by. Yeah. And what happened a year ago? What was the blow up? What was the Ramsey connection? Well, a year ago was about a year of us really being stressed out with having a lot of debt. And I remember we were always sitting in the hot tub that we, of course, got a loan for, right, finance, and complaining about the burden of the debt and what do we need to

do to get through it. That is a great picture yeah yeah it was pretty crazy i'm sitting in my finance hot tub whining about the debt right yeah and it's so great um i i actually um had an injury where i had to have a medical procedure done and i was out of work for three months oh Oh, and that put the pinch on stuff. It did. Yeah. So, and you went, oh, this crap ain't working. Yeah. We took a 401k loan out to try to cover that span of, of time. And then the credit card just took off, um, because it wasn't enough. Um, and so at that point we knew that something had to change. So at the point, okay. So the pressure

built up, gave you a wake up call. Then what'd you do? Well, we had your book sitting on our shelf for three months, the total money, or for a long time, the total money makeover. And we started to read it probably three or four years prior because we wanted to change things, but we didn't think we had a big enough problem when we dove into it. Well, God put it on our hearts at the beginning of last year that we could change, and the book was staring us in the face. So picked it up and read it within a couple days. Started really listening to the podcast and watching you on YouTube. And then we just buckled down and we started to create a budget.

We used the EveryDollar app. And that was the game changer. Was there one of you guys that was more like hardcore? We got to start, we got to start more urgent about it? Or were you both pretty equal? I think he started things off, but then we were together wanting to get rid of the debt okay yes yes in that process so what was the hardest part for you guys for eight months i mean you're

working insane hours and i mean you're doing a lot you went crazy yeah in a great way yeah yeah for me it was like he's working all the time so i'm taking care of everything at the house and the kids um and the scariest thing for me, honestly, was putting my 401k on hold because I've always invested like 10%. And he was like, we have to do this. And I was like, I don't know. But we did it, and that was the scariest thing. And the weird thing is it's only eight months.

It didn't hurt. No, it didn't hurt. We ended up doing the whole year and saving more money. And then this year we started with a new investor. And my 401k is like doing better than ever before. Okay. Yeah. Funny how that works.

Yeah, we hooked up with a smart investor pro and he really sat down with us and explained what we were doing. And, you know, like you always say, the reasons we started to understand. And she just pulled up a statement the other day and and that since she started taking some of that advice the the changes have been pretty insane so wow good for y'all so encouraging well done well done excellent all right now when people find out you did this and you got completely out of debt we were just bopping along 14 years of marriage and then boom we get a year of hell and we get out of debt so that we don't have to live in this mess anymore when people ask how'd you do that what do you tell them the secret to getting out of debt is i think for me um the

big thing was it you got to go to work you have to you have to work hard you have to go to work. You have to work hard. And not only that, you have to get on the same page and create a budget. For us, for the longest time, Susan always handled the finances. I was like looking back an ostrich with my head in the sand. She would come to me and say, this is going on. And I didn't want to hear it because I felt like it stressed me out. And I needed to grow as a man and step up and we needed to lock arms and come together and create a vision for what we wanted the money to do. And every wife in America just went, touchdown! I don't know if they said touchdown, they probably said amen. Amen, hallelujah.

That's so good so so good and the budget this had to impact y'all's marriage then big time yeah yeah like Susan you're not carrying the whole way the stinking thing on your back right right it's been really awesome sitting down with him we sit down every week and do the budget do the bank book together do everything together and you know it was just me for like the longest time so that's just it's amazing so Anthony did it when you actually started leaning in and doing it did it stress you out as much as you thought it would back in the day when you said I don't want to look at that I might get stressed um in the

beginning I wouldn't it might have stressed me out because I know for um a while it was hard to learn how to be um how to how to compromise um so there were things that I saw that like that money was going to places that I had no idea. And so I had to learn that like this needs to go there. Like this isn't like frivolous or anything like that. Like I,

because my eyes were open to where the money was going. If that makes sense. That's very good. So I had to learn to compromise. And you weren't scared of hard work before, but when you had a reason for your hard work you went after it kicked it in overdrive yeah big time you kicked it

hard well done guys well done i'm so proud of you you're heroes man thank you you're heroes and you have three kids yes yes all right let's bring them up and introduce them and give me their names and ages please so our oldest daughter this is courtney she's 14 hey courtney good good and our middle daughter is sophia she's 12 and our youngest daughter abigail is seven all right miss abigail all right very cool and there's so many families that are in the middle of this journey and i really think you guys just being here is such a beautiful picture that it's possible yeah it's so possible well. It's so possible. Well done.

It's amazing. We've got a one year subscription for every dollar for you for the premium and another one as well for you to give away to somebody and get them started on it. Way to go, you guys. You're heroes. Very proud of you. Those three beautiful girls. Lives have been changed by a grown man and a grown woman doing what they're supposed to do.

Well done, you guys. Very cool. Anthony and Susan, Courtney, Sophia, and Abby from St. Louis. $55,000 paid off in eight months, making $165,000 and then went to work $266,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! three two one we're dead free that is how that is done man i mean all the questions we get i can't get my husband involved

i can't get my wife involved that that guy just outlined right there. He just stepped up. That was the most manly, masculine thing I've heard in a long time for that guy. He owned every bit of it and stepped in there beautifully done. And so many women were hurt that are running the household on their own. And it's a lonely place to be. And so when you sit down, you end up talking about life. You end up talking, this is where the money's going. What's going on here? And it's so much. The connection point is so huge. It's massive. This is The Ramsey Show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, my co-host today. Emily is with us in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Hi, Emily.

Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, how's it going? Good. How can we help? Good. So I'm reaching out today. I feel like I'm a Ramsey kid growing up. Your theme song has been like a jingle in the household for the last 26 years of my life.

I'm reaching out today. I'm kind of nervous, not sure kind of what to do at this point. We make just under $100,000 a year, my husband and I, and he is getting ready to hopefully go back to school here in a couple weeks, just kind of waiting on that official acceptance. And we will be losing about 60% of our income. And we were running numbers last night, sitting down, trying to evaluate things, and I'm just not sure what we do with such a large

reduction in our income based on what we kind of saw with our expenses. Are you guys able to cover the basics on 60% or on 40% of your income? Barely. We do have two kids, so we are bearing the price of child care times two. On the positive side, he's old enough now. He's in his early 30s where he's going to be going to school on a telegrams and scholarships, so we don't have to necessarily work on the cash flow in his education. But I'm just kind of concerned with how we're going to structure our living expenses. How long will he be in school for?

Roughly 8 to 13 months. And it's a full roughly 7 days a week, 9 to 5. They said don't plan on working during the program because it is such a vigorous course. Well, that means child care is no help at all. Exactly. Okay. So child care stays there, and you're making $40,000, and you can live on that or not? If the answer is not, you can't do it.

Yeah. I mean. Yeah, I don't think, you know, and we've looked at a couple different options. You know, my parents are getting ready to retire, but I don't really want them spending their whole retirement watching their grandkids five days a week. Eight to ten months is not their whole retirement. True. True. True. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, if they want to do it, that's another thing. I mean, they may not want to do it. It may not be an option. But, I mean, what's he going to study? Electrical linemen. So he wants to do high-power voltage. Okay. And so he's making 60 now he'll come out making 80 day one yeah i think they said apprentices start roughly 45 to 50 an

hour flat rate not including any overtime you know so the in-keep apprenticeship is like only a couple of years and then he'll be making serious money yeah yeah is he going to travel with it no i think he plans to stay local and we bought our house in 2020 for fairly cheap at a super low interest rate so we're not really willing to give that up right now because i mean if he's traveling it's a whole different world even in in that in that world as you know uh okay um well here's the thing uh it feels like the way you're describing this that you first decided for him to do this um and then tried to figure out if you could afford it rather than the other way around like you should have figured out if you could afford it before he decided to do it.

Because his primary job is to not become a high wire guy. His primary job is to feed his family. Yep. And if he can't do that, then he can't do this. Yep. And he's talked about picking up like a part-time job or working with his current employer to see if he can work odd end hours to kind of fill those gaps. But they said not to do that. Yeah, they didn't recommend it until they kind of get into like the core of the program. So he's been working towards this roughly about six years. We've paid off roughly $7,000 in debt

because currently we've done step one. We've been working on step two, but as soon as he started to get the beginning of the acceptance, it's just, we kind of froze that step two for a minute to say, okay, how much did you guys have left Emily for our debt? Yeah. Not including our mortgage,

about 35,000. Okay. On what? Student loans, um, a vehicle. And then we put a new roof on our house after we purchased it. How much do you owe on the vehicle?

I want to say roughly $5,000. Okay. Is there a way for him to delay this like a year and you guys get in a position where you pay off debt, you can get savings or like any level of traction? If you had no debt and had your emergency fund fully funded you could probably see your way through this a lot more to rachel's point yeah and that's something he's considered i just know the program he's currently in you you know put it off and talked about it and he's applied and so what no that really matters if you

have hungry children wow yeah so and you know it's tough this is grown-up land yeah you got to do what you have to do to feed your family first and then you do this so you'd be in a much better condition if you said i'm going to intentionally spend this next year getting our crap together so that when i do this it doesn't put my family in jeopardy. Because you're really calling saying you can't figure out how you're doing this. You keep saying we're barely going to make it, but what you're really saying is we can't make it. Okay.

Aren't you? Well, looking at the numbers, I think it's slightly doable, but it's then again getting out of our comfort zone of our current lifestyle and getting into that new lifestyle. And I'm just concerned. I can handle you. I mean, you can give up your comfort zone. That's whoop.

You know, that's nothing. It's not comfort zone I'm concerned about. It's food. Yeah, and, you know, the necessities will be met. That's our biggest thing. You know, I'm just worried about, you know, any additional expenses or things that come up. How much is your house payment?

A thousand. And your take- house payment? $1,000. And your take-home pays $3,300? Yes. And you're going to run the rest of this household on $2,300 a month, including $35,000 worth of debt? Bull crap. Yeah, the numbers aren't crunching and no they're not crunching at all yeah so they're crunching but it's not a good sound of crunch um yeah

yeah i um yeah i i i would wait emily honestly i i i don't i'm not a dream killer but i love killing nightmares. Yeah. And so I don't want to kill his dream, but if his dream puts his whole family, you know, you call me back eight months from now, you know, he went, but we're in foreclosure. You know, I'm not going to sign you up for that and have my stamp of approval. I want him to go do this, but I want him to do it in such a way that he doesn't put all of you guys in jeopardy and he he doesn't want to put you guys in jeopardy but you just you

guys have not thought this through until last night yeah so we've been you know looking at stuff and you know i've pretty much run our budget i mean he's not a spender um it's not the question i'm not saying he's a bad guy. I'm saying you guys together have not thought this through until last night. And you have to. Stephen Covey says one of the seven habits of highly effective people is they begin with the end in mind. And last night, you did that for the first time on this, and it took your breath away, and that's why you called. Yeah, because I just wasn't sure i'd have to do so

here's what i'm going to tell you if i were in your shoes here's what i would do my first choice would be for him to wait a year rachel's suggestion is excellent and if it if it takes 18 months or if it puts the whole thing in jeopardy so be it i'll call that god and so god put it in jeopardy because god says don't do things where you can't feed your own family those that don't take care of their own household first are worse than an unbeliever bible okay so we're you know we're going to call it that now the if but i am but i am convinced that if he can get in there this round, he can probably get in another round. So that's choice one. Choice two is you guys look around there and figure out how we're going to increase our income above your base.

And mom and dad are going to commit to keep the kids and drop your daycare bill. Because your daycare bill is probably, what, two grand a month? Yeah. Honey, your daycare and your house and you don't have any money left for food i just did that yeah so that's over and we're looking at child care alternatives and reaching out yeah trying to find is your is your child care two grand a month yeah plus a thousand three thousand your take home's300. Your budget's not tight. It's impossible. You cannot go forward unless you adjust something.

It's fantasy. Okay? You don't have any... That's just ding-ding. So, adjust the childcare, sell a car, take six jobs. He works on the side even though he's not supposed to. And for eight months, you grind it out like that? And for eight months, you pay a price for him to get to be this?

I'm okay with paying a price to win, but I'm not okay paying a price knowing I'm going to lose. That's a bad idea. It's one life event away from, to your point, foreclosure, a car. No, they can't even make it. It's one month away. You can't even get to the food budget here. This is The Ramsey Show.