The Ramsey Show - App - Stop Letting Your Financial Past Ruin Your Financial Future

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

From Ramsey Network, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by best-selling author Dr. John Deloney, and we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Don't be shy. Give us a buzz. And if you're kind and you've got a great question, Christian will let you through, and we'll try to give you the best advice we can. If you're not kind, that's fine.

Well, I think if you're a jerk, I don't think that's going to help your chances. It might. Does that work for you? No, it doesn't, but it makes good radio, I guess. Just be kind is a good life principle to live by. And would you know it, John in Fort Worth, Texas is kicking us off. This guy is from Fort Worth. He's from the 817.

He's from the right side of DFW. He's going to be kind. What's up, John? Salt of the earth. What's going on? I'll try to be kind. How are you guys doing? Excellent. He's going to be kind. What's up, John? Salt of the earth. What's going on? I try to be kind. How are you guys doing?

Excellent. I understand that when an Oklahoman comes into town, it makes it really tough, but you're trying. I appreciate you. It's a whole different story then. What's up? Okay. I'm 57 years old. I've got $51,000 in debt.

I've been served on three of the accounts and just don't know where to go. I'm considering Chapter 7, but I don't know if I have any better options or not. Well, a better option is not filing bankruptcy, for sure, because it's going to implode your financial life. What kind of debt is the 51? I've got four credit cards and one unsecured loan. What happened? Oh, gosh. Back in the COVID years, I lost my job. I had a hard time finding one after that.

And that occurred a lot of it. John, what do you do? Because I go i was i've lived in texas most of my life and most of my friend community still lives there my understanding it's been a hiring bonanza the last 36 48 months what do you what do you do for a living that you struggle to find work i'm in purchasing and customer service. Okay. What are you making right now? Well, right now, I'm unemployed again. I got laid off about three months ago. Okay. My division that I

was working for moved to Atlanta. And did they go without you, or they want you to move and you didn't want to make that jump? Well, I mean, it wasn't even an option. I wasn't going to move to Atlanta. Okay. And I mean, I've put in an option. I wasn't going to move to Atlanta. And, I mean, I've been on Indeed and LinkedIn. I've put in various applications and just not getting any feedback other than thanks but no thanks.

But what are you doing in the meantime? Right now, I'm doing nothing. Have you been in contact with the companies? I'm guessing not the credit card companies anymore, because that's long gone. Now it's with the collectors? I haven't contacted them at all, no. Okay, have they been contacting you? Because they've been serving you. The one open, my credit cards, they've all been closed.

They haven't particularly contacted since then, other than I've been served on three of them. And is it the credit card company suing you personally or is it collections coming after you? Uh, this would be the credit card companies, I guess. Okay. I would contact them and let them know what's going on. I want you to be proactive about this. I know it's kind of easier to be just ostrich head in the sand and be in la-la land, but I would let them know, hey, listen, I got laid off three months ago.

I want to pay you back. When I'm working, can we set up a payment plan? Can we negotiate this instead of filing bankruptcy? Okay. Because you file bankruptcy, they get nothing. But if you work your butt off, you can clean this up, avoid bankruptcy, and give them something and clean up this debt. And that's what I want to lean on, man, only because I love you.

And I'm just trying to think of myself in your situation. What have you done for the last three years or four years? Well, I mean, I was working at that time. Let me ask you this. At what point will you say, okay, I've done purchasing for a long time. I'm trying these avenues. It keeps being things, but no things.

I got to go to Walmart and get a job. I got to go get three jobs because I've got literally zero dollars and I'm getting sued by multiple people for money that I've already spent that they loaned me like there's there's a sense of this is all happening to me and I'm trying to re-establish your sense of agency you've got a lot more control in this deal and it's not going to look like you did what were you making before as a purchasing guy? My last one was about $55,000. You could go find two full-time jobs that you work in a single day to make more than $55,000.

But just sitting there for three months. I mean, you can go move boxes at Walmart and make some good money. Right. If you make that choice. You have to swallow your pride and you have to go get to work but but i mean you're literally not doing anything you have no no income coming in do you just the uh unemployment yeah i mean i want more for you than that are you living alone no i'm married okay and what's your wife do she's's a retired teacher. Does she have income from that?

Does TRS? She does, and she's also subbing us as well. Okay. Because if she can work more and you work twice as hard as she does, we can climb out of this thing and actually retire with some dignity. But I feel like right now you've lost your fight because you got knocked down a few times. Right. Which is understandable, but, man, you've still got a lot of life ahead of you.

And I don't want you to spend it cleaning up after bankruptcy, because guess what? They don't want to drag you through court. They don't want to pay all this money either. And so I would be in contact with them saying, listen, we're going to work our butts off to get you guys some money and get rid of this debt. Will you settle for X, Y, Z? Chances are, if the debt's old, they're going to settle for cents on the dollar. So you say, hey, listen, I got $10,000. Can we call this debt good? Paid in full. Don't give them access to your checking account.

And we move on with our life. Because bankruptcy is not going to solve all your problems. You're going to be right back to where you were because zero habits changed. And John and George, I missed the number. How much is in collections here? $51,000. Is that right? $51,000. That's correct.

And are you continually going into debt right now? No. Okay. So are you paying all your bills? Do you have any other debt that's not in collections? I have like a second mortgage that I did, which is up to date, and a car payment. What's left on those total? About $10,000 on the mortgage and I think about $3,000 on the car. Okay. Have you talked to your wife about this? A little bit, not a lot. Is she concerned? Is she just like, you do you, John? What's her attitude? She's pretty concerned. I think she lost her husband.

Right. This isn't the Fort Worth, Texas guy she married. Mm-hmm. Can I ask you, where are you? I'm pretty low. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about it.

Well, I mean, I just feel defeated. Yeah. Like, the rug's been pulled out, and there's no, you know, safety net or whatever, you know? Will you get up today and go have work by Saturday morning? I would love to. Okay. I guarantee you there are places hiring,

and they are not going to be traditionally sexy places. And you're not going to be able to tell your friends and community that you're a purchasing guy. You're going to have to tell them, hey, I'm an assistant manager over at Culver's, or I'm throwing boxes from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., and they may raise their eyebrow at you, and they may smile real big and say,

that's what a husband does when the rug gets pulled out from under him. He gets knocked down, and he gets back up, and he goes and knocks on the door. And it's not your forever jobs. These are your right now jobs. And you're going to get your swagger back and your dignity back.

And then when you go into one of these interviews, someone's going to say, you're my guy. Let's go knock on the door and get a job by tomorrow. You can do it. Let's go knock on the door and get a job by tomorrow. You can do it. We believe in you. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers. Economic growth or a recession.

Business taxes will go up or down. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball. That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite and you should too. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. With one unified business management suite, there's only one source of truth for the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions.

NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next. And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You call up, we'll try to help you take the right next step for your life, your money, and your relationships. Well, John, get this. You know this stat. Nearly half of the U.S. population reports their lives are affected by anxiety, stress, or burnout.

Anxiety is everywhere. And you know anxiety is not the actual problem. Occasionally it is, but almost always it's not. Something below that. Right, right, right. We're unsafe. We don't have the people in our lives. We're unhealthy. There's just so much going on. We've created a chaotic world, and we get mad at our bodies for responding chaotically, right?

Yeah, and it's one of the reasons you wrote your best-selling book, Building a Non-Anxious Life. And right now, during this campaign, we've got $12, which is incredible. You walk through the six daily choices. Dave always sells our stuff. I feel like with inflation, it should be more. But, you know, Dave does what Dave does. So you can get that right now for 12 bucks on the Ramsey Solutions store. You can get Questions for Humans, which will improve your relationships with

55 conversation starters that will leave you laughing, spark meaningful conversations, and so much more. And John's other bestselling book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future, also 12 bucks. So get these bestsellers and so much more on sale right now. But it ends August 31st, which if you're doing the math is like right now, there's just hours left. So go check it out, ramsaysolutions.com slash sale. All right, let's get to Rachel in Myrtle Beach who awaits. What's going on, Rachel? Hi, thanks for taking my call. Sure. My husband, well well i guess it came through my side but i recently received we recently received an inheritance um of about seven million dollars before that seven million have you gotten used to just saying that sentence

no okay you said it so casually yeah we got our inheritance seven million who passed away um my father i'm so sorry what was his name oh um his name was dan man what a legacy what yeah no kidding that's amazing yep So how long ago did you receive this inheritance? It's been about six months. Okay. So where is $7 million sitting? Is it just sitting in an escrow account somewhere? So we have it with a financial advisor,

and it's getting slowly invested into different things okay okay um how can we help today so so the problem well you'd think it wouldn't be the money and i know this isn't a typical you know problem for people um usually the opposite but so before we received that inheritance um my husband and i worked really hard to save a million dollars ourselves. Um, I've been a stay, I've been a stay at home mom and my husband just worked really hard. We paid off all our debts, our house, everything without ever thinking we would ever acquire any inheritance. You know, we had no idea, um, that this even existed.

But anyway, so whenever I found out I was going to get the inheritance, um, I initially thought it was going to be maybe 3 million. And I came home and told my husband and I was just crying because I was like, this is going to make, you know, him feel so much better because he's always so worried about money and he's worried about, you know,

if we're going to be okay in the future and just about retirement. He's like so worried about it. And so I was like, so happy that this is going to help him make him feel peace. But when we got it, it's actually been the opposite. Um, now he like is super scared about losing it. Doesn't want to spend any of it. Um, we're actually building a house right now. We were building it before we received or had any idea we were getting the inheritance. And, um, but he's just like, I, I've kind of wanted to do some extra things now that I, that we got the money.

And he's kind of, he's like pretty upset about it. He's scared you're going to blow through the money and have nothing in retirement? What did you say? Is he scared you guys are going to blow through the money, like you're going to be frivolous with it? Yeah. So. blow through the money like you're going to be frivolous with it yeah so even though we've never been like that and we just aren't like i drive a super old minivan still like he drives an old he's stuck in his scarcity mindset it's just on right this this anxiousness has never been about the money there's something i don't go ahead go ahead sir i was just gonna say i don't it's it's really

affected our marriage i mean money has always been a big issue in our marriage um just the fact that he he wants to save save save and i'm all about it like i've i've supported him i've done my best to be frugal with our kid you know he does it's not like he's ever made a ton of money, but we just worked really hard. And I don't know how, I feel like he puts his value in his money. And, but I also feel very controlled by it. Like, I feel like he doesn't, almost like he doesn't love me because he, not that he doesn't love me, but kind of that he doesn't love me. He loves his money more, more than he would like me to just enjoy things sometimes. Like we're building a house and before we had this money, we were going to do the basic, you know, like it was going to, it's a lot of money, but it was going to cost us $500,000. We were going to pay for it in cash. And we were just going to do the basic

things like land up floors and you know, whatever. But since I got the money, I was like, well, I want to spend some things that I want. Like I want to get, you know, quartz countertops instead and like tile in the bathrooms instead of laminate, you know, things like that. So I kind of made myself a budget of like 50 or $60,000, just extra things that I would like, that I would enjoy in my home. And he takes that, like, I'm'm personally hurting him. And so he doesn't want anything to do with the house. He doesn't want to be a part of it anymore because it's like I'm hurting him. Do you know?

I don't know if that makes sense. It totally does. But I need you to internalize what I'm about to say. This has nothing to do with the money. Okay. I don't know i don't know i know he for whatever reason it could be that he grew up and money was scarce growing up it could be that he saw people make fun of his old man for not making enough who knows where these where these little nervous system gps pins got put in place. But at some place, his nervous system says, it's all coming down at any second and it's going to be your fault. And so this doesn't have anything to do with the money. By the way, you coming in the door with $7 million,

probably poured gasoline on that fire because you solved the biggest crisis of his life, which is, do I have any worth? And you said, look, we're free. And he goes, oh God, now I feel even smaller. And often the only way to feel bigger is to puff your chest out and to take your ball and go home and not actually sit down and solve some of the problems. So this isn't about money. You are well within your rights. I mean, hear us, me and George say, you're not crazy to spend $60,000. I think you're crazy to only spend $60,000. You have a check for $7 million. That's like John getting a taco. Do you understand the scale here? I mean, imagine your dad, how big his smile would be if he got to see you put in a pool and like whatever else you want to do.

Right. So here's the bigger conversation. The marriage that you had is over with a period at the end. Yeah. What you and your husband have to decide to do is are we going to build something new? Because our life, every bit of our life is different now. We are multi multi multi millionaires and now the game has changed and you have to own that new reality and then you have as a part of

building something new you have to ask hard questions like what do you need and what do you want and what's going to bring peace to you and then you get to say the same things also and just like y'all go through the fixtures and build this new house y'all got to do this with and what's going to bring peace to you. And then you get to say the same things also. And just like y'all go through the fixtures and build this new house, y'all got to do this with your marriage because it's all different now. Yeah. He spent his whole life building a sandcastle

and you just wiped that all away with one big wave. And now there's a mansion there that he didn't build. And I think that scares the crap out of him. Yeah. So I think John's right. And I think you also need to sit. He needs to sit down with a therapist. You guys both need to sit down with a financial advisor and actually crunch some reality numbers and go, listen, dude, if you put this in a savings account, you're going to make 350 grand a year by doing nothing.

So this idea that you're just going to lose it all is hogwash. You're not going to put this on single stocks, the lottery. You're going to invest this wisely, like you guys already have been doing. But you also, also, there's a math problem here, but his problem is not math. That's what he thinks it is.

I know, but it's not, because that's not reality. He could put it in a high-yield savings account. You can prove it to him by showing him the math, and he's going to go, yeah, but it doesn't matter. Then it wasn't about the math. Yeah, it doesn't matter.

What he needs to know is, I see you, and I I love you and I want to build a new thing with you. Will you come with me? And hopefully he says yes. And y'all got to go, like George said, you got to go sit with a professional and y'all got to work through this. Congratulations. Your dad left an amazing legacy. Hey, George Camel here with a not-so-fun fact. Every American social security number, including our children's, has been hacked and is now on the dark web. And this is not a scare tactic. This isn't fear-mongering.

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Not cool. And to be real, it's not a matter of if, but when. So you've got to protect yourself with Zander's ID theft protection. Zander has all the cyber tools to help, including home title monitoring, full recovery services if you do become a victim, and stolen funds protection. Not to mention, it's the best value on the market. They've been protecting my family for over a decade, and I trust them to protect yours too. So get enrolled today by calling 800-356-4282 or just visit zander.com. That's Z-A-N-D-E-R.com. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel. My co-host today is Dr. John Deloney. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Our question of the day is brought to you by

YRefi. If you're in default with private student loans, contact YRefi. Obviously, we don't encourage letting your loans get into default. We teach responsibility. But these amounts have some of you really struggling out there, and this is a path forward. YRefi was created for people in your situation. So go to YRefi.com slash Ramsey. That's Y-R-E-F-Y.com slash Ramsey. May not be available in all states. All right. Today's question comes from Scott in Michigan. Scott writes, I have been in the auto industry for almost six years. I started as a mechanic at a large dealership, moved up to service advisor, and recently was promoted to sales consultant.

I bring in about $150,000 a year. After reading George Campbell's Breaking Free from Broke and the chapter about car loans, I felt guilty for being a part of this industry. Way to go, George. Sorry. You guilt peddler. I've always thought of myself as an honest salesperson and I don't just sell people a car.

I try to educate my customers into making the right decision, but yet I feel very convicted after reading this chapter. Thanks again, George. I went to college for business management, but dropped out so that I wouldn't accumulate any more debt. And I've been gazelle intense so that me and my wife and kids, my wife and kids think I've gone crazy. I fear that if I pursue another career, I would not be able to earn what I currently make because the auto industry is the one I know. Is it hypocritical to continue to work in an industry that keeps people in debt while working my butt off to get myself out of debt? Hey, Dave, can I come work for you? Honestly, we are hiring, Scott. So we have a lot of sales roles open at ramsaysolutions.com slash careers,

but that's for another day. To your question, truthfully, here's my take. John may have a completely different take. I feel like we need Scott in the car industry. We need people with integrity who are leading people to the right decision who aren't scumburgers. And it's easy to generalize an entire industry as this is a gross industry. But I think what Scott's doing here is noble. It's moral. There's no issues with it. If you are in the lending department and it eats away at your soul, you need to get out of there. But as the salesperson, it's not your job to say, hey, here's the lending part. Here's the financing part. They're going to go to another guy to deal with the financing. You're there to say, hey, what is your budget? Here's a car that is in

your budget. And then if they have questions along the way, you can steer them to go, hey, this one might be better for you guys. I want you guys to walk away from here debt free. There's nothing wrong with that as a salesperson. And yeah, you might not get as many commissions as going, you should get the car that's way too expensive because it has the sweet feature. I think we need people with integrity steering people toward that. So you think Scott can sit down with people and say, okay. Until it eats away at his soul.

What kind of money do you have? There's a soul tax to pay. I think a Corolla is a great option for you. Instead of saying, oh, they just walked in the door, let's get them in a Land Cruiser. Even though we know they can afford the payment, right?

So they may be the voice of reason. And people are adults when they buy cars and they could always... It's not on you. So don't feel the personal responsibility of that person's decision to buy a car they can't afford and i want to address the the bottom of this um and this is this is a heavy one this idea that for whatever reason and we live in a wild world now where because of Twitter and because of social media, we know how our bosses vote.

We know who they vote for. We know what they think about this issue and that issue. And we know where they stand on this and this. Not to mention, oh, I thought I was selling cars. I didn't realize that y'all only make money on finance. We know so much more. Millions of people look in the mirror and say, can I be a part of this particular business for X, Y, and Z reasons? Because I've got this set

of values and somewhere along the way in this chain of value hierarchies, we don't align. The question often comes up, but I won't make this kind of money. A, I think that's a false sense of scarcity. If you've been able to work yourself up, like clearly this guy is good at what he does. He's a person, a character. He works really hard because he's moved from this position to this. He continues to get promotion. So let's let what has happened be the map forward.

You'll find a new industry and you'll work really hard. You'll be a person of integrity. You'll make your way through. He's a problem solver. That's right. That's the skill set. He's clearly a good leader or they wouldn't keep moving him up. That's number one. Number two, you always have to go back and ask yourself, what's your integrity worth? And that's a scary, hard question. That's

a scary, hard question for a guy like me, right? Like what if it's in my core guts? I just thought at the end of the day, when I put my head on my pillow, I think you can get rich from airline miles. And my boss, Dave is like, you can't get rich from airline miles and my boss dave is like you can't get rich with airline miles i'd have to ask myself what's it worth right what's it worth um and so i think there's incongruence every day right and i just haven't been able to find a way to sleep at night when when um there's incongruence in your life like that and so i think all of us have to ask that hard question and then go ask, all right, what must be true? All right. But your kids will feel that lack of congruency. Your spouse will feel that lack of congruency. Your body will feel that lack of

congruency. So you might think you're just plugging along, making such and such paycheck, but man, it will, it will burn the rest of your life to the ground. It's tough. It's tough. So if you can be a change agent, a change agent here, Scott, and stay in it and make peace with it and not eat away at your soul, do it and keep helping people. But if you can't, like John's saying, then you got to make the move out of here. And we both believe you have the skill set to move into any other industry and know that the other industry, they probably also sell stuff that someone can finance. So can I tell you that there was a pivotal moment in my life from a friend and extraordinary mentor of mine.

His name is Dr. Richard Beck. He's a psychology professor. He's an experimental psychologist. He's a genius, literal. One day I was sitting with him and some things had happened to some students and I was really struggling with it, whether the university's response was appropriate. It didn't sit well with me. So I went and sat with him. And here's what he said. He said, John, I get your tension here. I get the angst. And I think you're right. As a mentor, as a friend, I want you to know

you're free to go. You're right. And then he said, just know that if you leave, those students will still be here. And if everybody runs out the door, just because, quote know that if you leave, those students will still be here. And if everybody runs out the door, just because, quote unquote, because they can. Right. And that particular interaction shifted. So now I want to find places where maybe I can offer an alternative voice or maybe I can say, well, let's think of it this way. And where can we find, where can we, like, I love it. You said this, Scott, this may be the greatest place for you. You may be the one salesperson that continues to say, you know what? I don't think you can afford the Camry, but the Corolla is an amazing car. Let's go check it out. And that you're the

person constantly getting poked fun at by your fellow salespeople because your commission checks are smaller because you keep directing people to cars that they can actually afford. You know what? The new lot is not for you guys. Let's go over here to the certified new lot because I think this is going to be a better option for you and your family long term. What if you were that guy and you slowly, painfully changed the culture in that and people kept coming back to you because they trusted you? Well, that word of mouth alone. I'm going to go, hey, you need to go see this guy scott he's the good guy he'll tell you the truth it's so much easier to stand out in a industry filled with scum yes you're the one good guy so if you if there's a place where your boss votes differently the i quit okay or what if you

stayed what if you stayed and what if you said let's think about it this way what if you stayed? And what if you said, let's think about it this way. What if you became over time a voice of reason, a voice of a new perspective, and you continue to show up and continue to show up? I think that's how the world changes. If everybody heads for the exits when it gets hard and scary and uncomfortable, nothing changes. In fact, everything gets more polarized and everything gets harder. And so ask yourself that question, Scott and everybody listening. What if you stayed?

What if you stayed and you just began to slowly offer different ways to see the world? I think that's how the world changes. Well, and especially in this industry, cars are amoral. Now, if this was a product that is inherently gross, if he's working for a payday or a title pawn, I'd say, all right, get out of there. That whole place is coming. Or like Dan, the cocaine dealer. Yes. It's a car.

Suddenly I can't. It's a car suddenly i can't it's a car right it has utility so uh this was the choose your own adventure scott we're not going to tell you to do one thing or the other but uh you need to follow your conscience and your values and the fact that you wrote in maybe tells me it might be time for a different career shift who knows there you go or you come here uh work for ramsay and thanks for reading the book by the way i didn't know i was that convincing john that's amazing yeah you've convinced me on some things really yeah to do what um name one uh i got venmo oh that's right you convinced me to get venmo you've almost convinced me um i was in pennsylvania two nights ago and i reached out to you and said hey will you

john doesn't know how to do Instacart or food delivery. Will you send ice cream as a surprise to my family? And I said, John, I'm not your personal assistant. I'd be happy to do that for my hourly rate, which you can't afford. I can't afford. You can't afford that. I can't afford that. But I would do it as a friend.

But you did convince me to get Venmo, and I may get Instacart? Baby steps. I think I'm going to get Instacart. Let's take it one day at a time, John. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Welcome, 21st century. Here I come. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever

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So listen, y'all, there's no better way to take care of health care costs. CHM programs start as low as $98 a month. So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. The phone number to call is 888-825-5225. Selena's up next in Washington, D.C. How can we help, Selena?

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for having me on your show. Sure. So I have no knowledge of financial literacy at all, and I'm in a space where I am really trying to get my life together. So I am on baby step two, but I just have a general question about the amount of college debt I have and some concerns with that. So I understand that you guys say to start off with the lowest amount that you have first in debt and then to work your way up. My college loans are $93,000. And I know that after working for the government, after 10 years, these loans can be forgiven. So I'm kind of confused on if that's something that I should be even paying like a lot of attention to, or if I should just say, okay, well, after 10 years,

they're going to be forgiven anyway. I just don't know what to do with that so Selena number one I would say that I'm proud of you it is hard to turn and face the storm and that's what you're doing amazing welcome to our gang or cult whatever you want to call it whatever the internet's call us we're glad that you're here it's amazing Thank you. Can I ask you a wild question? Sure. Who was president 10 years ago? Who was president 10 years ago? My brain doesn't work that way. I don't know. Exactly.

So you know what the federal student loan relief policy was 10 years ago? What was it? Yeah, I don't know. But I know this i know i had a lot of extraordinary brilliant law students who did not go into um private uh large firm law because the government said it was going to pay off all their student loans in 10 years and i know that many of them went in to do public defender stuff they went to help the least of these in our local communities and that relief never came because somebody else got into office and then somebody else got into office and somebody else

writes a bill and then somebody else sends this to the supreme court all i have to say is if i look around i don't have a ton of trust that the government's going to do what they say they're going to do in 10 years. I do have a lot of trust in my ability to get up and say, okay, as for me and my house, here's what we're going to do next. And that's a sad state of reality, but that's just me choosing reality. Yeah, I agree. It feels nearly impossible for me to even think that $93,000 is something that I can pay off myself. Why? Who told Selena that? It's a lot of money. And then the interest that I see, like two years ago, I was at around $87,000. And then I look again this year, it's at $93,000. But that's because you didn't have a clue

about personal finance. And now you're getting a hold of this thing. I have no idea. And you're going to pay extra. You're going to do the baby steps. We're going to get you out of debt in a few years. And the worst part of your story is, I hate to tell you this,

it makes my heart hurt, but it's kind of awesome that me and my wife paid off $110,000. And me and George's friend, Jade Warshaw, her and her husband paid off, what, $450,000 of student loans? So here's the deal. You don't see that you can do it.

George and I are on the other side of the tunnel. We know you can. We can tell you. We can show you the math. We can show you the path. But you've got to believe in Selena. Because we do. Are you working right now? I am working. And I'm making the most I've ever made. But I just feel like I don't know where my money's going. Because we do. Are you working right now? I am working, and I'm making the most I've ever made, but I just feel like I don't know where my money is going.

There we go. That's a great problem to have. And guess what? Next year, you're probably going to make more money than you've ever made. And the year after that, you're going to make more money than you ever made. And so what are you making right now? I'm making $96,000. That's amazing.

And what's your total debt load out of all your consumer debt? My total debt load is around $102,000. That's amazing. And what's your total debt load out of all your consumer debt? My total debt load is around $102,000. Okay. What's the other $9,000 other than student loans? Well, I have two credit cards. One is $4,100. The other is $4,800. And then I have my phone, which is $800. I'm also paying a car that I didn't include in that debt, and that's $375 a month. Okay. So making $96, let's imagine that you get a little raise and you're making six figures sooner rather than later, and you have about $100,000 in debt. How much do you think you could throw at the debt each year?

If you got on a budget, you worked extra, you cut your expenses, you live like a broke college person, do you think you could throw $30,000 throw 30 grand, 35 a year at the debt? If I eat beans and rice, like you guys say. Yeah, there we go. You think you could manage to throw three grand a month at the debt if you really tried? Three grand, I don't think so, right? Because the expenses I gave you were just the debt, like thing that i have in debt but i still have bills i still have rent and i pay everything by myself i know that but i'm saying if we got real creative with every single line item on top of working extra i think you could find it whatever the gap is you can go find it you're that resourceful and if you do that just based on napkin math you're done with this thing in less than three years. And you get your life back. How old are you?

30. So you'll be 33 years old and completely debt-free. Or you could be 40 while politicians still dangle the carrot and you spend all this time waiting and hoping and waiting and hoping, and now we still have 100 grand left ahead of us at 40 years old. I'm not taking the chances. I think the variables are, there's far less with Selena than there are with all the outside factors. And so Selena, here's what bonkers looks like.

Jade Warshall and her husband did not have a bed. They slept on an air mattress for years. Me and my wife sold our house and we moved into a dorm, a college residence hall with a toddler. Because we said enough is enough is enough is enough. And I ate in the cafeteria at the university to save money. Here's what I'm saying.

When you decide enough is enough, and when you decide Selena's worth going to war for, beans and rice become a delicacy. It's not a sacrifice. It becomes a small price to pay for freedom. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, definitely. But you have to flip that switch,

or it will always look like $96,000, $96,000, $96,000. By the way, how much is this car you're driving around that you didn't include in your total debt? So the thing is I am helping my mom to pay this. This is her car and I just have it temporarily. So I don't really know how much the entire car is because at some point I'm planning on giving this back to her when she's ready. But you're driving it? Yes, I'm driving it. Why are you paying for your mom's car?

She was working from home. She got into some health issues and all of her responsibilities were a lot. So we decided that I'd take the car just until she's back on her feet. Can she afford a car? Yeah. It doesn't sound like she can. But you're paying it. I'm paying it.

She could afford it until she couldn't afford it. She's working from home. What kind of car is it? It's a 2019 Toyota RAV4. Okay. I want you to get what the payoff amount is on that car, and I want you to ask yourself a hard question, because it's a depreciating

asset so it's worth less money every month over every year yet your payment is the same and i want you to ask yourself what if we just sold this car and when mom needs to come back online and start working not from home anymore then she can buy a three thousand dollars she can buy whatever she can afford with cash and you're going to buy whatever you can afford with cash. And suddenly, boom, you got $300 back a month back in your budget to go towards student loans. You're right. We talked about that too. Sell it, sell it, sell it. And Toyota's have a great resale value. So sell it. Be free from that one. Okay. Now, George, what kind of tools can we give her to help her out? I'm going to gift you my book, Breaking Free from Broke, and there's a specific chapter in there that I think is really going to help.

It's called Margin is Breathing Room. In there, I lay out every one of my best ideas for you to find some margin in that budget to get you to $3,000 a month or more. And you're already making $96. You've got some skills. I think if you put those to work while cutting expenses, you'll get this amazing thing called margin, and you will be in control of Selena's life. And you live right down the street from these politicians, Selena. You've seen what they're

saying. But the truth is they don't care about Selena. Only Selena is going to care about Selena. And so you've got to do what's right for you and your family. And I want you to have a different life than the generations that came before you. And that means we're not going to carry debt into our 40s and 50s and 60s and hope on the government to fix our life. We're just going to fix it. Let's also hook her up with a year of EveryDollar. Oh, I like that.

It's the greatest budgeting app in the world. And, Selena, it's going to teach you how to budget. It's going to help keep you accountable to it. Hang on the line, and we'll get you hooked up. It'll show you all the nooks and crannies you can be saving when you go, oh, my gosh, I never actually looked at all of it at one place. Yes. All my income, all my expenses, I can do better. I can find $3,600 a month, right?

And suddenly it just is every... Or it shines a light on just how bad things are, and you gotta get your butt in another gear. And now you can take the next step. I like it. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back before you know it. From Ramsey Network, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by the one and only Dr. John Deloney, and we are here for you to help you take the right next step for your life, your money, your relationships, your mental health, and pretty much anything else.

The number to call is 888-825-5225. Darlene kicks us off in Chicago. How can we help, Darlene? I'm wondering if I can role play with you guys so that I can tell my children to get their act together. Yes! Who gets to be the children? Well, my children are three girls, three boys, ages 23 to 40. Yes. Who gets to be the children? Well, my children are three girls, three boys, ages 23 to 40. Wow. Yeah. My husband and I today, we've sacrificed 44 years and we've put our time

and energy into fostering, adopting. And we have a 37-year-old son, and mom's about burnout. Mom's tired of doing the budget thing and saying, yeah, I can loan you money on this app, that app, and then the goals that I have for next year for retiring to our little escape is not going to happen because I'm trying to pay down bills and have everything free and clear so I can live on our budget. So you're still giving grown kids allowances essentially and you're sick of it? Pretty much. Okay, Darlene. Their cell phones, their insurance. I super want to role play this because I think that'll be fun and instructive, but I have to ask you this

question. Yes. Let's not talk about them for a second, okay? I want to talk about you. Yes. Every time you give them money, every time you pay their cell phone bill, you, my new friend Darlene, get something. What are you getting? I'm getting anxiety. Nope. That's not true. That's not true. You're getting, that's what your body is doing because of the choices you keep making. You're getting something positive for this, or you wouldn't keep digging a hole deeper and deeper that,

that you keep falling into. What are you getting from this? Cause that's the root here. Your kids are not the problem here. All they're doing is what has always worked for them. Right. You're doing what has always worked for you in a weird

sideways way. So what are you getting from this? I guess the satisfaction of trying to push them into adulthood and being... Nope. Nope. Because you're not pushing them. You're just putting money into their, into their slot machine. What are you getting from this? My guess is you're getting the feeling of being needed.

You're getting the feeling of that little tiny neurochemical hit. That is, I just help them out that all of us parents love when we get to help out our kids that you're continually like as much as you hate it you also love that your kids have to keep coming back

to you because you don't ever the thought of them ever going away and being independent completely and quote unquote not needing their mom I can't I can't go there I hate paying their cell phone bill but the idea of them waking and being independent completely and quote unquote not needing their mom. I can't go there. I hate paying their cell phone bill, but the idea of them waking up and not needing me is really heavy. Could that be true?

That's pretty realistic, but at the same time, I feel like I've given them resources and education over the years, and I feel like I need to just lie to them and say, no, I don't have any more money. You don't need to lie to them because then you become a person that you don't respect. Can I ask one more thing? Yes. How much guilt do you have that they're 36 and they're still asking mom for money? A lot. Okay. And so a way to punt that guilt a little bit further down the field is just to give them another $130 for their cell phone, and the next month, punt it a little bit further, and so it's time for you to stare you down in the mirror, Darlene, because you're the epicenter here. Your kids are just doing what works, and we can blame them all day long, but they just,

mom pays our cell phone bill. Let's role play the part where you stop giving them money. What are they going to do? Throw a fit? Yeah. That's not going to feel good. No, but they're going to be angry at you, right? It's going to hurt the relationship. You know, the last time I said, nope, I don't have money in there. I'm overdrawn.

I don't have money to loan to you so that you can go. Yeah, but that's not true Darlene the integrous way the stand tall way to do this is to send an email to all of your kids and to say effective September 1 or October 1 mom is no longer paying cell phone bills

insurance etc yes I'm deleting all of these apps from my phone. You'll have 30 days or 45 days to get your own insurance, to get your own cell phone bill. And then you have to be prepared for the wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.

It's not fair. It's your fault. Blah, blah. And just know it's coming. Okay, cool. But that's the only way to do it. And by the way, I don't know if cruel is the right word.

It would be not cool if you just said, hey, tomorrow I'm not doing, like that's kind of leaving people out into the wind because you brought them along and suddenly you just are like, I'm taking your coats and I'm going inside even though it's freezing outside. So, but giving them a date

and saying effective this date, I'm deleting all these apps from my phone. Y'all are adults. Y'all are on your own. Not that I don't have any money because that's not true. The truth is I love y'all enough to let you go. I love y'all enough to let you go.

That's it. We're not a bank. No more cash app. No more Apple Pay. No more Zelle. You have to delete those from your phone. Especially temporarily because you don't have the self-control to listen to your kids cry and whine and not go in and rescue them and that doesn't make you a bad person that just means you are you have now you're enabling instead

of helping do any of them live at home with you no thank god We had a house fire in 22, and we helped the youngest to get their own house paid off, and she's still burying herself because she won't pull herself up by her boot screen. And I think the hardest part for you is to go, that's her choice she's making, and I can't continue to rescue her. And Darlene, you've been clipping her bootstraps every time she reaches on to pull them up. Pretty much. Yeah. And so I think the actual challenge over the next six months is not the whining adult children. It's going to be you feeling like my kids don't need me anymore, which means I don't believe I have any value anymore, which is not true.

It's a lie. But you're going to have to deal with those feelings. And you're going to have to look at that knuckleheaded husband of yours and say, hey, you want to build an amazing new marriage? How do we do that? That's the new adventure. And it might expose the fact that this relationship was largely

transactional. We have to create a different relationship that's not based on what mom gives to the kids. That's hard to connect in a different way. I feel like I just need to tell them we're entering our new season and

you guys are on your own. Yes. And I'm deleting all of the apps. I will not pay for the following effective this date. Be very clear. Clear as kind. We say that around here all the time. Clear as kind. Yes. now let's role play hey mom um it's october 1st and our insurance is going to be due you want to go ahead and just cash out me that money nope sorry i already told insurance company that here's your information

call you and i've deleted the apps i don't even have a way to do it Sorry, I already told the insurance company that here's your information. Call you. And I've deleted the apps. I don't even have a way to do it. No more apps. They're gone. And I love you enough to let you figure this one out. For real. Hey, Darlene, you're making a huge change and it's very, very hard.

And we're proud of you. But now you got to go do it. There's a time in your life and in the baby steps for renting, but you don't want to do it forever because when you rent, you're still paying for a mortgage, just somebody else's. Plus rent means instability in your budget because it always goes up, never down. So when you're ready to buy, make sure you work with a mortgage partner you can rely on, Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is Ramsey trusted to help you make the move

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at churchhillmortgage.com. That's churchhillmortgage.com. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLS consumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell joined by Dr. John Deloney.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Let's go out to Hannah in Atlanta, Georgia. What's going on, Hannah? Thank you so much for answering my call. The question that I have today is, my husband and I have been married for about 12 and a half years. We have one eight-year-old child, and back in 2018, I became disabled, and I'm not able to work very much. My income is roughly a thousand dollars a month for both myself and I receive a little for my child. It's a lot on my husband. He is a diesel mechanic. He was in the military for four years and got out. It was not much money at all. He got out. We quit traveling with the military and came

back home to Georgia. And he went to college to be a decent mechanic. I was in college to be a surgical technician and, of course, was unable to fulfill those dreams. I have been back to college trying to finish, but it's proven to be very difficult. I've been going back to college on and off for the last eight years. But just dealing with, you know, the stress of being disabled is tough. So we have no savings. We live in a single wide trailer. I drive a vehicle that I bought about five years ago for $5,000. I do not have a car payment. We don't live beyond our means. We try to, financially speaking, we try to live, you know, smart for lack of better words, but we have no savings. We've been married for 12 years and lately our trailer needs a lot of attention,

probably close to about maybe $30,000 or $40,000 worth of work to it, which we can't afford. We'd have to take out a loan in order to, you know. But it's just, you know, we go back and forth about, well, do we take out more loans? Do we take out another loan to try to fix things up? Or could we possibly buy a house within the next five or ten years? It doesn't look possible, but, you know, we just, I feel like financially we're not in a very good position. He doesn't want to go back to college because, of course, that puts the stress of, I don't think it, I mean, it could be possible for us to live on $12,000 a year. It would be really hard, you know what I mean? What's he making right now?

Roughly $50 a year. Okay. And do you guys have any debt? Just what we owe, what we're left owing on the trailer. And he owns a vehicle that we have a payment on. He pays about $650 a month for his vehicle. Whoa. Good God.

That's a huge chunk of money right there. What's left on that loan for the vehicle? Roughly about $30,000 to $35,000 maybe. It's a 2019 F-150. Does he need that for work? Can he get a 2010 F-150

that does the same thing? It's possible that he can do away with the truck, but his argument is, you know, it would save us $7,800 a year. And I get that's a lot of money, but $7,800 a year, that's kind of like, you know, his argument is, I work, I earn the money for the household.

I would like to have a nice vehicle to drive because we don't have much. I mean, honestly, we... Yeah, but you're also making no progress if i was able to just give you a ten thousand dollar raise it would change your life right that's ten thousand bucks in savings you could have by the end of the year by getting rid of this truck right so we've got to make some changes if you guys want a different life otherwise we're going to stay in the cycle and what I'm going to say is it's going to sound not compassionate,

and I don't mean that in any way. When we did the millionaire study here at Ramsey Solutions, we found the number three on the millionaire list was teachers. Teachers. That's $50,000 to $60,000 a year. And at the time, it was less than that, but inflation was less, okay? Right. And there's some discussion about,

well, teachers are really good at planning because that's what they do for a living. And so they're good at planning their expenses. I have a different theory because my wife was a teacher and my wife bought a Corolla. And you know why? Because she knew I was only going to make $50,000 a year forever.

And she made peace with a certain kind of life. And what your husband wants is both and. He wants to be a diesel mechanic, which is an incredible, noble, necessary job. But for whatever reason, he's a diesel mechanic that makes 50 000 50 000 bucks a year that's the job he has accepted and the path he's accepted with that mathematical reality you don't also get to say while my family is living in a depreciating asset home a trailer

that is falling apart around you i deserve this truck i get to have this because we made some choices about math with our job we paid made some choices about our career path all good but you know then get to say math doesn't count my family's future doesn't count because i get what i want do Do you see what I'm saying? Right. That does make sense. So if he chose to be a diesel mechanic and he chose to work his way up and become a manager of other diesel mechanics and to one day own his own diesel mechanic shop, great.

With that will come a bunch more stress and with that should come a bunch more money. And with that new money, go buy yourself a new f-150 you can't afford that now and all of these things are a series of choices your situation your health it was probably not a choice what happened to you where you can't work multiple sclerosis i was in a wheelchair back in 2018 are you out of a wheelchair now i am out of a wheelchair congratulations sister you've been working hard haven't you uh well life is very hard it is and and i am a substitute teacher in my hometown and it is 100 a day but there there's 170 school days. So, I mean, I cannot physically work all 170.

I'm actually only able to work about roughly five on a good month, days out of the month. That's not a lot of money. So, I mean, and I'm super, like, don't get me wrong, I'm so thankful for our house. I don't hear one ounce of a lack of gratitude. I hear somebody who's very, very tired. Yes.

And that's exactly what it is. I don't say most husbands. That's not fair. I don't want to over-gender it. Most people need to hear that from you. Hey, honey, I can't sleep at at night we have to do something different because i'm just looking and we keep doing the same thing over and we keep getting re-frustrated that the same thing is resulting in the same thing right so okay the truck if he bought a cheap little

dinger car two thousand three thousand, we do not have a payment that takes care of, I mean, we could have $8,000 extra a year. But ideally, what's the goal? I would like to have a savings and we've been married for 12 years. And at this point, what are we doing with our lives? So what type of advice? Well, if he sells a truck, that's one part. If he can increase his income, whether that's with his core full-time work or extra work, that's more income. If you can increase your income a little bit by doing something different, that's more income. And I would stop sinking money in this trailer and I would go rent somewhere

while you continue to save up the emergency fund and then save up to get a house one day. Okay. And guess what? Five, 10 years of savings, you'll be able to have that house. Or we could be right where we are, fixing up an old trailer that's going down in value while we drive our nice truck that's going down in value while we make no progress. That's the current status. And I think you're worth more than that. And I think all of this happens with a conversation where you have a neighbor that

will come wash your kid for a few hours in the morning and you and your husband go have breakfast somewhere and y'all say, okay, we've been together for 12 years. You've served our country. You've gone to school. I'm seeing you provide. I'm working hard. I'm out of a wheelchair. I'm working when I can. We've gone nowhere for a decade. And in 10 years from now, I want things to look different. What must be true today? So that 10 years from now, things look things to look different. What must be true today? So that 10 years from now, things look different. That makes a lot of sense. And then we're just going to build a map.

And that's going to include you having hard conversations like, we can't afford this truck and I know you want it and I want you to have it, but we have a math problem right now. Okay. Okay. And this is a rebuild. We're going to rebuild our marriage. We're going to rebuild our finances. And none of this is easy. We're going to rebuild our marriage the same way as we're going to rebuild our finances. And none of this is easy.

You're going to choose your hard path. The hard path of continuing to do the same thing over and over and over again and end up 10 years from now just further behind, just with more repairs on a trailer. Or we're going to do the hard thing and 10 years from now, like George said, we're moving into a new house that we put 40% down on. And it's going to look very, very different. Thanks for the call, man. You get to choose. This is The Ramsey Show. We are back on The Ramsey Show.

I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. And if you're watching on YouTube or the Ramsey Network app, you'll notice there's another handsome guy next to us. And that is Tom Bilyeu. He's become a friend of the show. You probably have seen his face on YouTube. You probably listen to the podcast. Impact Theory is the media company that he co-founded.

And before that, he co-founded a little company, a little startup called Quest Nutrition, from nothing to a billion-dollar business in five years and exited from that. And so he's just this amazing serial entrepreneur, and we align with a lot of things, Tom. It's an honor to have you. It's an honor to be here. You guys have been a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed my time. It's always a surprise when we're fun, John. People don't expect that. No, they think I'm fun. The jury's out on you. And so it's good. It's good to hear that we're both fun. We've got to hang out and do interviews and stuff for our other shows these last few days. And I want you to tell people who you think entrepreneurship is for, because there's a fallacy out there with young people going, I'm going to go work

four hours a week and I'm going to crush it, not work a nine to five. Yeah. So the ingredients of an entrepreneur are going to be a high tolerance for risk and a just desperate desire to be punched in the face. And if you have those, boy, do I have something for you. So yeah, I mean, that's the hard reality is building something big is extremely difficult. Now it's incredibly gratifying and it puts you in control of your own life. And it is, if you are a competitor and you always wanted to play sports, but maybe you weren't gifted at that, but you really want to compete at something that matters to you, that you love, you have passion for, that's business and you always wanted to play sports, but maybe you weren't gifted at that, but you really want to compete at something that matters to you, that you love, you have passion for,

that's business and you don't wear out. And in fact, in many ways, the older you get, the better you get. There are limitations. You do fatigue a little bit earlier as you get older, but it's pretty extraordinary. Business is the game of athletics that you never have to retire from.

So that's fascinating because we have young people exiting the workforce in record numbers because quote unquote, they don't want to work for anybody. They want to set their own hours. That's sideways, right? They are so misunderstanding what is about to happen. So there you go. Nobody works more than the CEO. Now you do get the autonomy. So if they're like me and they are pathologically incapable of working for somebody else, which is not a good thing.

That's Dave Ramsey. They just described him. If you really just can't do it, then it is liberating. But like there have been periods of my life where I'm working 120 hours a week for eight months straight. It's grueling.

This last round, my wife had to come up and say, you're now damaging our marriage, which is like an alarm bell that she can ring at any time. And she said, yeah, this is getting too much. And so you're not going to work less. You are for sure going to work more because what they think they're up against is their boss. And they're forgetting that their boss is up against the marketplace. And so now when you go out into the real world, you're up against the marketplace, man. And the right way to think about the marketplace is the cold dead eyes of a shark. They do not care about you. They just want a solution to their problem. And if you can deliver it, then they feel like you're bestie, right? Because you've solved the problem for them. The second you don't,

they're out. They do not care. So it's brutal. So I guess leaving your nine to five because of the stress and anxiety and trading that for entrepreneurship, you may not relieve that part. You may not. But look, there are companies that you can find that you may align with more and work better. I'm not saying stay in a job that you don't want because it's worse out there. No, no, no. If control is your game, go start your own thing. But there's going to be a high price to pay for that. If you hate your current job, make sure that your skills are such that you can go find another one, but go find it. I mean, you can and should love Mondays as much as you love a Friday or Saturday. And that's real, but most people don't get good enough to put themselves in that position.

Yeah. Well, John, one of your hallmark philosophies is that winning won't make you well. And you've experienced this, Tom. You were worth millions on paper, and yet you were miserable. What happened there, and what have you learned since then? In addition to that question, will you paint us a picture? I just imagine you sell Quest for a billion dollars. And I'm making up a number here just for fun but they move 500 million bucks into escrow for you and you wake up the next day still time well the crazy

thing is it actually happened in real time so you're on a call with all these lawyers there's literally like nine or ten lawyers and uh i was in the gym in my garage at that point. So living a sort of nice middle-class upper middle-class life at that point. And, uh, we're in our just ugly. You have to imagine something ugly with a lot of spider webs. Okay. So that's where we're at. And, uh, I'm on the phone with the lawyers and they count down lawyer one, uh, ready to transfer to ready to transfer. And they go around the room. They all say that rocket ship literally. And so then they press the button and you just sit there on your banking app and you hit refresh, refresh, refresh. And then all of a sudden, boom, it's crazy. Wow.

Now, the best part is you throw your fist in the air. You're like, oh my God, we really made it. I'm out of this. No more spider webs for me. Yeah. And you're like, oh, but wait a second. I have all the same insecurities that I had 45 seconds ago. You go with you. Yeah. So the thing I want people to understand is money's more powerful than you think. Don't listen to anybody that says money doesn't matter.

Money matters a lot, but it will not make you respect yourself. And so once you understand psychologically, all you actually care about is, do I respect myself? You can lose if you respect yourself. But if you win and don't respect yourself, you will still be in emotional turmoil. And so thankfully I had already learned that lesson from the period you're talking about

where I was worth a couple million bucks on paper and I was completely miserable. So I was like, huh, telling the world that I'm a multimillionaire has solved exactly zero problems for me. So now what is this really about? And at the time I would have said, it's about feeling alive. Now, what I would tell you is that if you want to feel good, like really good, the money's great. It'll be a cool thing, but it's

about becoming the kind of person that is capable of winning a championship. So if you understand, it's better to be playing in the championship game and lose and never get the ring than to sit on the bench of a team that wins the ring. I would rather have been on the field, played my guts out and just not won. It just didn't work out for me. But I was there, man. And I pushed myself and I played like that I can handle, but winning and knowing I didn't contribute. Yeah, that's tough. Yeah, it's tough, tough, tough, tough. Yeah. You, you say struggle well, struggle toward the thing that is worth struggling for. Yeah. Cause you, you, no one can guarantee success, but you can guarantee the struggle. I promise if you try something sufficiently difficult, you will struggle for sure. Uh, and so now just, were you struggling towards something

that you enjoyed even while you were losing? And that's the right way to pursue something. So you've developed a reputation as what I would say, one of the most hyper-intentional people I've ever been around. Like thoughtful, like I want to solve for this. I'm going to reverse engineer it and solve for this. And I want a better marriage. I'm going to reverse engineer this and I want to make this much money. So I'm going to reverse engineer it and solve for this. And I want to, I want a better marriage. I'm going to reverse engineer this and I want to make this much money. So I'm going to reverse engineer my health to be this way. Broken down intentionality is a series of habits. How do you teach people those? Like, what do you tell people about those habits that you're going to do on a regular basis to get to the thing that you want to get to whatever that thing happens to be? Honestly, I repeat this a

lot when people ask, but I never go out of my way to tell people. But if somebody is asking a specific question about what I do, I will tell them what I do. I will tell them why I do it. But the short answer is everything I do, I do for cognitive optimization. So whether you're trying to be a better husband, if you're a brain fog, if you're tired all the time, if you're grumpy, you're never going to be able to help. And so this is why I say, I want people to understand they are having a biological experience. So get sleep, get sunlight in your eyes, make sure that your diet is on point. Like if you said, Tom, you need to improve somebody's life, but you can only touch one metric. The metric that I would go for is blood sugar. And so if you let me control your blood

sugar, one, it's going to positively impact your sleep, which people don't see coming. It's going to have a massive impact on your joints. And it, from a metabolic standpoint, is probably the leading indicator of brain fog, fatigue, being hangry, all that stuff. And so you would not expect somebody to say one of, there are many more, but one of the keys to my success as an entrepreneur is my ability to get control of my body. I used to be 60 pounds heavier, six zero. Wow. And it took me two years to lose that weight. I've kept it off for almost a decade. It's just really simple rules that if you follow, you're going to be fine. That's amazing. Tom Bilyeu, go check him out.

That's B-I-L-Y-E-U. And be sure to go to impacttheory.com. Check out Impact Theory University. And of course, his amazing show where he talks to the best minds in the world with fascinating conversations. Tom, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell camel joined by dr john deloney well john the live like no one else cruise is almost sold out more than 80 of the cabins are already booked so if you want to join us in march of 2025 secure your cabin today how's the uh i heard you had a gmail list going for your cannonball competition that you wanted to we're working on it yeah i like the gmail list is that a dig it's a google doc form i was trying to think of a technology thing john's never even used that i was gonna say a yellow pad but you don't have that no i don't

think my body could even create a splash if i cannonballed yeah you'd be like one of those small divers exactly yeah it's amazing well if you don't know what the Ramsey cruise is, the Live Like No One Else cruise, it's the ultimate debt-free celebration. So if you've paid off debt, you've sacrificed, you've paid the price to win, you're in baby step four or above, this is your time to join us to celebrate.

We're going to Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, the whole Ramsey crew, special guests, musicians, magicians, songwriters, celebrity chefs, and even Dr. John Deloney. We got him. We booked him. So it's March 22nd through the 29th of 2025, a seven-day cruise, and it's going to be a blast. You can secure your spot with a $600 deposit before all the cabins are gone. Book it today, ramsesolutions.com slash cruise to get all the info. All right, let's go to the phones. H gone. Book it today. RamseySolutions.com slash cruise to get all the

info. All right, let's go to the phones. Haley joins us in Phoenix up next. What's going on, Haley? Hi, thanks for taking my call. How can we help? So I'm 19 and I'm a sophomore in college and my FAFSA was delayed and I don't know when I'm going to get it. So what I budgeted over the summer and thought what I'd be paying for school this semester has more than doubled. And I don't know what to do. I feel like I've thought of every option I can, but I still feel lost in what I should do. Why'd your FAFSA get delayed?

Because my school counselor basically emailed me and told me that my mom didn't file her 2022 taxes. And so that delayed it because I'm still under my mom's insurance. So I have to file with her. So we had to... Well, it's not because of the insurance. I mean, she's still claiming you as a tax deduction. Have you talked to mom about this? Yeah, have you talked to mom? Yeah, I've talked to her. I basically had to talk her into doing her taxes. She's not that great with money.

So we had to mail them out since we couldn't submit them digitally. And I basically can't get my aid until I get the 2022 tax transcript. Are you already moved in? Yeah, I got this email the day I moved in. Okay. What's the shortfall?

How much do you owe? So I have four payments a month and it's $3,500. I paid the August payment and I paid till November. So I've already got the first one out of the way. So that buys you another few months or what? I'm sorry? How much time does that buy you before the next payment? So I pay every 15th of the month. So I have till September 15th to come up with another $3,500. And what did mom say? Does she have any money to help you out with this, or do you have any savings? Yes. So I had an emergency fund, so I dug into that for this. I saved over $6,000, almost $7,000 over the summer.

So I have money left over. So by the time September 15th comes, I'll have $3,000, but I'll be short $400 something. But I don't get paid until the 18th. So I don't know. I'll have enough by the 18th to pay the rest. But I don't know what the punishment enough by the 18th to pay the rest but I don't know what the punishment is for paying a few days late so here's what you got to do you got to go sit down with your financial aid counselor and every university has one and you just have to lay out a map

because here's what I don't want you to do. I don't want you to take all $7,000 that you earned this summer only to be told mid-October you have to move out. Okay. And what you'll have done is burned all the cash you have. You'll be worse off for having gone to college. You'll have an unfinished transcript, and they'll either fail you on everything or they'll let you finish a semester and you won't have access to your transcripts

until you come up with the rest of the money. Okay. But I would sit down with a financial aid counselor and say, here's the map. Here's my plan on how I can pay this. But I'm going to be three days late here. I'm going to be four days late here. There is a Hail Mary pass here. This time at the end, I mean, at the beginning of every school year,

there's sometimes an overspend and sometimes an underspend of scholarship dollars. Colleges will, they will budget just like we all budget. They budget for how much scholarship dollars they're going to spend depending on how many ACT scores of a 29 they think they're going to get and how many athletes are going to get, et cetera. Sometimes they come through and a whole bunch of students, kind of like an airplane, they oversell the airplane and a whole bunch of students show up with 30 ACTs and they overspend their scholarship budget. Also, they often underspend it. And so there may be, this is a Hail Mary pass, there may be a pocket of unspent scholarship dollars still there

that they can move to your account and get you through this semester. Here's the ugly truth. There's not a long-term fix to this. You're going to have to decide in realistic fashion, can I afford to go to school here? And George and I are both going to tell you, please don't take out loans. Please don't even mess with the FAFSA. If you can't afford it, you can't afford it. You can't afford it. That means we have to go look at other alternatives, working all the way through

school, going to a community college there in Arizona that they're going to pay for any number of other options that you can afford. But right now you're driving a Lexus that you can't afford it. It doesn't matter that everyone around you is taking out money. George and I are just telling you, we've had to pay off student loans after we graduate and it's a nightmare. It's tough. Yeah. But I would go sit with a college official ASAP and get their plan in writing and find out what happens if we get to October and I don't have the other $3,000 to finish the semester. What are you going to actually do? And are you going to kick me out of school, make me move out? Like, what's the deal? But I don't want you waiting on mom's fast food to come in so that you can borrow your way into staying. That's just punting this

inevitable trap downstream. And the graduates who have gone before you owe in the, was it $1.8 trillion at this point? And I just can't in good faith tell you to join that crew. What are you studying, Haley? Forensic science. Are there other programs, universities, even online options you could do that would be cheaper in case you can't afford this? Okay. So I have looked into this. I work for the state of Arizona. So they had this program that I was looking into where they reimburse you and basically help you pay for your school. Excellent. But they only offer it for online students. And unfortunately, since I'm a science major and I have lab courses,

I can't be an online student. But I also thought about commuting to school because I live an hour away from where I go to school. How many days a week? But I live on campus. I have classes five days a week. Okay. I did this when I lived at home,

and I made sure my schedule was I packed everything in on three days to limit my commute. Yeah. Once you're not a sophomore anymore, you have a little bit more flexibility schedule-wise. Sometimes, sometimes not. But, hey, take that scholarship in. Take that reimbursement in. And sit with your financial aid counselor and say, I need us to figure this out. And often universities will do what they can because they want to receive money from any outside source possible. And they may figure out a way to help you do this. And it could be a

classification code. Another thing you may want to try to do is see if you can, you got a job with the state of Arizona. Is there a way you can get a job at the university? Because that often comes with a tuition discount or a full reimbursement there too. But continue to just beat the drum and beat the drum with this one idea, I'm not going to borrow any money. That's going to take getting creative, Haley.

We're wishing you the best. All right, for all of you listening to this show on YouTube or podcast, it is about to end. But good news, more calls are coming up in the Ramsey Network mobile app

and that's where you can finish full episodes of The Ramsey Show. And if you're listening on radio, stay right where you are. The show will continue as scheduled. Two ways to get the free app. You can click the link in the show notes or just search Ramsey Network in the App Store or Google Play. You don't want to miss what's coming up next. I can see some hot calls on the board, John. It's going to be a fun hour next. Hot calls. That's what we say. So go finish the show in the Ramsey Network app for free, and we will see you there. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books.

From Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. This is your show where you call in and we attempt to give you the right next step for your life, your money, your relationships, and anything else. The number to call is 888-825-5225. Sam is going to kick us off in Houston, Texas, one of John Deloney's favorite places. Go Astros! H-Tone, what's up, Sam? Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having me.

We're good. What's up? You know, I feel like with the amount of money my wife and I make with our series of bad decisions and lifestyle creep, we're at a point where we're still paycheck to paycheck, despite making pre-tax $300K a year.

Currently, from a house purchase, there's a lot of excess furniture that was bought, lured in by low payment plans or 0% interest rates, and this is causing about a $16,000 monthly burn rate. So I feel like we're making progress the past few months, trying to make sure we don't spend more than we make, keeping the savings to a minimum, which is hard to make significant progress based on all these different payments we have. Just trying to see if you have any advice on what

we could be doing differently. I think right now we're doing a balanced transfer game between debt with high interest rate to minimize loss to interest on a monthly basis. Just trying to see if there's any other advice you can help us with. George is going to walk you through this. He's a savant at this, but I just have to see if there's any other advice you can help us with. George is going to walk you through this. He's a savant at this, but I just have to ask you,

and this is hard for high net worth earners, okay? Is your plan working? I feel that our overall debt is going down on a monthly basis. So I do feel like it is working. I know some of it is patience because of the situation we put ourselves in. But again, I'm just nervous because we're one injury or one layoff away

from everything just collapsing, right? It's like a house of cards if you like it. Okay. So the first step here for a high earner, somebody who is successful in business, you make a good amount of money, which means you have something on the table that is worth a high value.

It is often hard for that person to go to another part of their life and say, what I'm doing is not working. Or I am balancing on a tight rope, but this whole thing's about to fall over. And that humility is from the ash of that humility comes a new family tree that is extraordinary. But you have to be willing to drop your shoulders and say, all right, dude, I realize I am ping-ponging interest rates to this, to that, and I'm trying to pay off this couch that's in this part of the house that we never even go into. Like, okay, I'm ready to say I'm good at what I do over here professionally, but I'm not good at this. Will you help me?

Are you there yet? I think that's why I called because I feel like we're at a point where we just need to see if we need to take things to another level to get out of the situation we're in, right? Alright, you called the right guys. Can we play pretend, Sam? Sure. Here's your way out of this situation we're in, right? All right. You called the right guys. All right. We're ready. You're in. Can we play pretend, Sam?

Sure. Here's your way out of this. You're going to play pretend and you're going to pretend that you make $50,000 a year. And that the other $250,000 you're making is not your money. It's the lender's money. And it's going to go to paying

all of this debt really quickly. That's the level of sacrifice. And anything you can sell, like if there's cars involved here, if things you can return, things you can sell on Facebook Marketplace, we're going to sell everything, and we're going to lower our lifestyle down, and it's going to be painful. But it's only going to be painful for a little bit amount of time. So instead of a seven-year plan that you're probably on right now to get out of debt, what if it could be two or three? Are you tracking? Yeah, I just feel like there's, you know, there's some like high expenses that I don't know if we can get out of. What are the high expenses? Like what? So right now our mortgage plus property tax and home

insurance is $3,700 a month. Okay, and what's your take-home pay every month? $16K post-tax. And why is a $3,700 payment crushing you when you make $16K? Well, sorry, it's a combination of that. That's one of the highest ones, but there's a lot more we have on a monthly basis. So what's your total amount of consumer debt? Let's put the mortgage aside. What's the total consumer debt? I guess roughly about,

factor all that in. Carry the zero. Divided by 12, square root of six. Just ballpark it. Yeah, I guess. All of your debt minus your mortgage. Oh, all of our debt minus mortgage, take that.

Oh, sorry, about $400,000. Okay. $400,000 mortgage debt, then $200,000 student loans, $20,000 personal loan, $25,000 car loan, $70,000 credit card debt, and $45,000 and $41,000 loans. Okay, Done.

We can solve this problem, brother. So here's the deal. The question now becomes, making $300,000, how little can we use of that to get by and survive covering food, utility, housing, transportation, and insurance? Which means everything else on your list, we got to figure out a way to get rid of or cut down. And I assume you guys have built up a pretty sweet lifestyle, right? Yes, we're good.

So as you've laid out a budget, and we're going to give you every dollar premium to help you with this, you're going to list out your income at the top, that's 16K a month, then all of your expenses that you actually have to pay for. and everything else is going to disappear off that list, how much money could you throw at the debt if you work that hard? Out of the $16,000, how much could you throw at your consumer debt? $5,000 a month? $10,000 a month? This is some homework for you. This is no concerts. This is no football games. This is no concerts this is no football games this is no um big fancy dinners this is no um uh this is no like sponsorship tables at these

fancy river oaks recruiting events or or um charity events we're none of it we're not eating out we're cooking at home we're not not going to Whole Foods. We're going to Kroger or Randall's there in Houston. This is a choice to say. One of the things we've started doing, especially in the past few months, is trying to make sure we reduce our miscellaneous as low as possible.

I think there are ways we can improve that. I think right now we're consistently where we're not spending more than we're making, right? So the debt is continuously going down as much as we can. But my guess is you're not listing smallest to largest. You're looking at what's the highest interest rate. Let's start there. What we want you to do is list your debts in order of smallest to largest, and not just student loans, $200,000. All the individual student loans.

All the individual credit cards. There'll be a $9,000, a $6,000, a $4,000, an $8,000. And then after your $3,700, you're going to have, what, $1,200, $3,000 left. And this month, I want you to take $6,000 of that and pay off that lowest credit card. And now you're one down. And whatever that payment was on that lowest credit card,

plus next month, $6,000, I want you to pay that next one off. And that's the snowball method. You're going to start building, and pretty soon, you're going to have this stuff one after another after another, and you're going to see real progress. Every month, the payment's going to get freed up, and you're going to add that payment to the next debt and to the next debt.

Do you see how much progress you'll make that way? Yeah, do you think that's worthwhile? I guess right now the smallest debt is like something that has 0% interest in something. I don't care if it's 1,000% or 0%. Your plan doesn't work. If it's the smallest balance, it gets paid next. Do you trust this

that this will work? Because right now, you want to do Sam's plan. You want to do math. Math says if you make $300,000, don't spend $600,000. So, we're going to gift you every dollar premium. I'm going to send you a copy of my book, Breaking Free from Broke. And I really want you guys out of this. I don't know that you want to get out of this badly enough.

But the spreadsheet math is not the way out. It's going to take Sam and his wife getting really intense and cutting down their life to nothing to make this happen. We're rooting for you, my man. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. You've heard us mention this app a whole bunch around here, and it's our budgeting app called EveryDollar,

and it's the best way to make the most of your money because you're actually making a plan before the month begins, and you're sticking to it. You're tracking your expenses. It doesn't have to be super nerdy. You don't need spreadsheets. All you need to do is go download the app from the app store, just search EveryDollar, and it will make your life so much better. Henry will join us up next in Los Angeles. Henry, what's going on? Hey, fellas. Thanks for having me on. Sure. How can we help? So the question is pretty simple, I think. Should I sell my stock

right now at a loss in order to pay off debt now? And then kind of like, you know, what would be tax benefits, if any, to that? Well, I don't, I don't, I never pay off debt with the thought of tax benefits. I like to keep my tax strategy and my debt payoff separate. But tell us about the stocks. How long have you had them and what were they, you know, what'd you purchase it for and what are they worth now? So I started investing for like the first time back during the COVID lockdown, kind of like probably a lot of people did. But, you know, I ended up buying the majority of Disney stock at a pretty high price. And it's down substantially total. I'm down $17,000 right now in the market. How much did you put in?

I put in, what would that be? Close to 40, but that wasn't initially, actually. So I actually put about maybe 70 grand to start. Just in Disney? Not in Disney. It's spread out. So I got i got tesla yeah sorry probably should have cleared that up so i got tesla i got bowling and different stocks and why'd you pick some doozies brother henry's these are gonna take off yeah you learned why henry preach against single stocks hey if you were you were here, I would just hug you, man. You're dude. You picked Boeing, Tesla, and Disney?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you couldn't have picked three worse stocks. That's amazing. I know. Tell me about it. The last three years, I've just been kicking myself in the butt. Trust me. You've got to remind me.

Hey, we're laughing with you. Kind of at you, but mostly with you. If we don't laugh, we cry. I'm heartbroken. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm still hoping, man. I got my fingers crossed.

Hey, you know who loves that? Like Caesar's Palace. They love guys like you. Eventually, eventually Red 14 hits. If I play long enough, I'll come back around. Eventually, right? So how much debt do you have? What's your debt load?

Yeah, so $70,000 in student loans, $20,000 in consumer debt. That's spread out over a whole bunch of kind of like promotional balances, right? The zero interest stuff. And then $10,000 in credit card, $5,000 in a bank loan. So, I mean, me and my wife,, I'm sure you guys will want to know this too. We make about $200,000 a year take home, what, probably be $170,000-ish, I would say. $170,000 take home? Yeah, annually.

So why have you been playing all these games? Why the credit cards? Why mess with all this debt, making that level of income? You know what it was? It was a matter of not doing what Mr. Ramsey told us to do and save up and pay things with cash. And we got a new house, what was it, about two years ago, did not put 20% down. And we were just... So the goal was, let's minimize how much we spend. We can make a spread if we just invest that instead. I'll just take out the credit card debt, move it from 0% to 0%. I'll figure it out. Yeah. With the intent of paying all this stuff off before interest hits and stuff like that. So, and I have, I've paid off about maybe two or three credit cards over the,

the four year time span, but, um, you know, I just, I'm trying to tackle the debt now. So it's, should I sell these stocks at a loss so I can, you know, just take care of whatever debt I get. What would you gain if you sold everything after, you know, I'm guessing there's not much taxes to be paid because there were no gains here. You sold at a loss. There's probably some tax loss harvesting. You can work with your tax pro on that piece. Yeah, the government may send somebody to your front door just to give you a hug. I'm hoping at this point I'll take anything but yeah if you

sold it what what would your check be if i sold it total it would be like 20 grand right now um oh no actually only yeah if i sold it at a loss it would be it'd be about 20 grand plus the 7500 i have in crypto um so that's 27 grand. Do you have anything in savings? I have a thousand dollars in savings, you know, and I got, you know, probably $4,000 in the bank account right now. Let's call that your monthly expenses and your starter emergency fund. So you're square and baby step two, trying to knock out these debts, smallest to largest. With 27K, could you knock out the bank loan, the credit cards, and then part of the other consumer debts? Absolutely, yeah. So that was pretty much my idea and reasoning

behind should I even sell this stock. So the thing is, I'm going to be out like another $20,000, you know? Yeah, I would cut your losses. I'd call this what we call stupid tax around here, and it's one of those, I touch the hot stove, I'm not touching it again, and it's going to hurt. But guess what? There may never be a day where you find the gains from all these stocks that you bought. And so I don't want you sitting around for four years

on this money that could be helping you to get freedom today. Okay. And can I tell you this, Henry? Oh, absolutely. The internet bros are not gonna like what i'm about to say they're gonna roast john on reddit for this one i'm actually long on disney and i'm long on tesla and i think and if i were you right now i would sell everything i got and pay all this debt off and i think this is gonna be because here's the deal you're real smart i know you are and you're almost too

smart for your own good are you a guy that does a ton of internet researching about what's the right workout instead of just going to work out no no i was an athlete in college man so i had a i had a pretty good foundation but i i do research you know before i you You love risk, and you're like, oh, no, I got this. And that's what makes you so successful in your marriage and in your day job, and it's the same skill set that will burn your net worth to the ground. I just tell you, I think this one's going to be a long burn, like a good cigar, and it's just going to hurt for 10 years. Gotcha.

Because you're going to be the guy that's like, dude, if I'd kept that Tesla stock, those idiots on that podcast, and your wife's going to have to pat you on the back and say, yeah, but you got to sleep for the last decade. That's what I think is going to happen. And I may be totally wrong. Tesla may go up in flames. I don't think so. And maybe Disney never comes back. I think they will. But I also think, dude, you've got

a, you got part of your house is on fire, and you got to put that fire out. Yeah, no, I see it. It was just kind of having that come to Jesus moment, right, that reality check. Here's the good news. You have an incredible income. You'll be out of debt in less than two years. Yeah, with discipline, yep, and following the steps.

So if we pause investing, we sell the stuff we can, we get on a written budget using every dollar, and we go, all right, we're not going to be living la vida loca anymore. We're going to cut down our expenses. Maybe we work extra. And we're going to put the majority of that $170K take-home pay to work paying off debt. And you're going to knock out, just by selling the stock, you'll knock out a quarter of your debt today. So you got $75K left making $170K. You could probably be debt-free in 12 months. Now that's factoring in my $4,000 mortgage, right? Yeah. I mean, how much do you take home a month? To take home a month, it's like between me and my wife, it'll be just shy of $11,000. Okay. And your mortgage alone is $4,000. Yeah.

You guys got a lot of house. Well, you're in Southern California, so you don't really get a lot of house. You get a little house for a lot of money. Yeah. You got a nice 3-2 with one garage. That is a big chunk of your take-home pay going toward the mortgage, and so that's something to assess. I hope your income continues to go up. If we can get your income to $15,000 or $16,000 take-home pay a month,

you're going to be in good shape with this mortgage. Or even better, or not not even better but another alternative is if they do a um an interest rate cut which everybody's expecting the pent-up demand on the housing market's about to explode like a champagne cork and maybe you and your wife have another come to jesus part two meeting and you'll put this house on the market and you'll rent for a little bit and you can breathe for the first time in 10 years. I love it. She actually just sent me a picture from our house listing on Zillow right now. Wow.

Divine intervention? I don't know. I think next month in September, if they drop the rates, what people are hoping they drop the rates, I think we are going to see a pent-up real estate market absolutely come unglued, which will be fun. It'll be fun. Call it divine intervention, Henry. I like that. Or two morons on a YouTube show. Either way. Either way. It's going to work. But the key is you got to change your habits. Once we get out of this, we don't want to ever go back in. So we got to make sure we create new habits to replace the bad ones.

And we're rooting for you, Henry. You seem like a great guy. John and I would like to hang out with you sometime. Come by The Ramsey Show. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. Terry's up next in Phoenix, Arizona. Terry, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, thank you for taking my call. Sure, how can John and I help? Sure, anyways, I started an investment account for my daughter when she

was a baby. She's now 28 and about to get married. And we like the guy, but we aren't 100% sure. Oh, no. How much is in this account? What was that? How much is in this account? How much do you not like him?

We like him, but money can change things, right? So I made some good, maybe lucky investments, you know, in BDF, Visa, Axon, Taser, Zscaler early on, and the account is right at a million dollars. Wow. Wow. How much of that was your contributions?

All of it. And her investments obviously did better than mine. But I was saying, how much is growth? Like you put in $100,000 and it turned into a million? How much was your... I put in $30,000 total over the years. Wow. That's quite the investment. Terry, congratulations.

You should have talked to our last caller. He did not pick as good as you. I listen. Anyway, he knows nothing about the money and my question really is about how can I tell her to protect that money? You know, I signed it over to her when she turned 18. What kind of account was this?

Was it like a UTMA? It was a custodial account when she was first born. And then when she turned 18, I had to sign it over to her. And it's still out there. She's never touched it. She's scared to touch it. She thinks, you know, we scare her off by saying, hey, you touched that money, you have to pay taxes.

And that's kept her away from it. Okay, so she knows it exists. She knows how much money is in there? Yes. Okay, but the fiancé doesn't. He doesn't know anything about it. And your worry is things change with the fiancé, his attitude when he finds out that she's got a million?

Yeah, we don't. My wife and I kind of joke, hey, he's going to find out about that money, and next thing we know, he's going to have a Lamborghini. Okay, Terry, you got to do two things, okay? Mm-hmm. Are you tracking with me? I'm tracking.

All right, I want you to take a humongous, as deep as your Terry lungs can fill up, deep breath. Take it as deep, and I want you to hold it. Ready? One, two. Suck it in as hard as you can. One. I'm holding.

Two. Blow it out. And drop your shoulders. All right. She's not your little girl anymore. She's going to be his wife. She's always going to be my little girl. I know, but she's going to be his wife. She's always going to be my little girl. I know, but she's going to be

his wife. And the moment she crosses that line, I think she is spiritually, she is morally obligated to go to him first. And as a dad of a daughter, I'm with you.

The thought of that, my daughter's eight, the thought of that ever happening already breaks my heart. But I think it would be morally wrong of you to get between her and her husband and say, you will go through me. You raised her for this moment. True statement.

And so here's the deal. The second thing I'll tell you is the person I learned from is Dave. Dave, his kids knew he was doing well. They had no clue as to like, oh, good God. Well, right. And he called him family meeting when the second daughter got married. So there was two husbands married and then his third child, his son. And they all sat down and said, okay, here's the reality. And I think it would be cool if to show her, I trust you and to show him

you're taking my most important thing in the world to me, which is my daughter. And by the way, a million dollars. And you can make some guy-to-guy eye contact and say, don't blow this on both accounts. But I think there's something to be said for here you go. And by the way, you're going to have to sit down and talk with both of them at some point about here's your future, what your will look like, what's going to happen when you pass away and your wife passes away,

which that will come to. But this is part of that process of letting your daughter go. And by the way, she's 28. It should have happened a while ago, but I get it. It's hard, right? Yeah. You know, these days kids stay engaged for 10 years. I know.

I know. All right. So how does this hit you? Just dad to dad? Just thinking about it and realizing that money is out there and you know, we want the best for her. Do you think she's going to steward it wisely? Does she have

enough of a backbone to not let someone take advantage of her? She does. She does. But again, like I like i said it's always gonna be my little baby and i want to give her sound advice and this guy's not marrying her for the money currently right he doesn't know a thing about it and he still would choose her regardless if there's a million or not yes that gives me some hope and, I'd probably sit down with my daughter and say, if you're going to marry somebody, don't keep secrets. Don't walk into a marriage keeping secrets.

Oh, I get that. I get that. So there's a lot of relational, emotional pieces here. There are some legal things you could do. If she wanted to get a prenup because there's an inordinate wealth that she's coming in with, and she wanted to protect this account in case something did happen down the line you could do a prenup and protect some of these assets you can't she could she can't but this is in her name and so this is again all her decision you can recommend some things but i like john said getting in the way of it and going i don't trust this guy it's only going to hurt the relationship between you and her.

Totally understand. Have you done this? Have you done any sort of relationship building with him? Yeah. He's a good guy. It's just, you know, she kind of pretends like that money is not there. That's how she's never touched it. Right.

But what makes you think he's going to go get a Lamborghini instead of, what if we paid cash for a home we don't really think that it's just okay that's kind of a running joke in the family between my wife and i but we think he'll be fine with it just you know again wanted to give her some solid advice um i mean i've even got drastic enough in my head say turn back over to me i I'll put it in a truss because the truss is all yours someday anyways. I can't think of a more beautiful gift than to give your child, son or daughter on their wedding day and say, hey, here's a house.

Sure. Start your lives completely unchained from any outside influence and build an amazing marriage. My expectation is you all are able to do this for your kids someday. Alright. I'm going to talk to my wife and I'm going to take

that deep breath again and I'm sure you're spot on. Can I tell you this? A large part of my career has been spent with dads who don't give two craps about their sons or their daughters. I would tell you if you were sitting with me, you're way over caring, but can I say I'd rather that than the other?

So thank you for loving your kid. All right. Now open your hands and let her be the adult you've raised her to be, my friend. It's good, man. What an amazing story. I want to be that dad when I grow up. I got a one-year-old now, John,

and we've been contributing to her college fund, and I've been thinking about this kind of stuff of, okay, do I want to have an amazing story. I want to be that dad when I grow up. I got a one-year-old now, John, and we've been contributing to her college fund. And I've been thinking about this kind of stuff of, okay, do I want to have an amazing, do I buy her a house one day or be able to do those things? And the reality of it is very different than the dream of it when you get started. Like, this is going to be so cool. I'm going to invest for her at one-year-old. And now there's a million and she's 28 and about to get married and now i have to release the control that i had but but that's hard i mean legally he released the control when he signed the money over when she was 18 all he had was that uh influence like it's all gonna go away it's like right so there's some fear tactics there and that's whatever the harder thing i think

here is oh she's getting married she's always gonna be my little girl but she's gonna be his wife right uh and that works for that works for every parent with all their kids there's something about that recognition that oh she's got to go to him they're together they're gonna build a new world that i'm second and now i may not get a vote in her life anymore um i just get to i get to be dad and i get to be granddad and it's going to be different right like and that's a hard transition it's a spiritual transition it's just tough tough i've talked about that with my wife of like it's crazy that we our job is to raise this amazing human for 18 years and then they're just poof for somebody else else. Gone. To build a life with. Make your own decisions.

Start a life with someone else. We have no say. Right. After having a lot of say for two decades. And that transition of, I want him to have all the information that I want him to have. You know what? I want him to always know that I will love you.

Come hell or high water and you can always come home. And that's the shift I want. I want parents of adult children to make. That's the second season. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, 1 Corinthians 2.9. It is written, what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him frank zappa said your mind is like a parachute if it isn't open it doesn't work

frank zappa frank like a wildly creative guitar player god rest his soul you don't know Frank Zappa? I know of Frank Zappa. Hey, Will, Frank Zappa, right, had Steve Vai, brought Steve Vai along. Is that right? Yeah. Frank Zappa. It's before my time, John. I'm 12 years old. That is true. I want to remind you.

All right, let's get to the phones. Lynn joins us up next in Huntsville, Alabama. What's going on, Lynn? Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking my call. I'm a little nervous, but I'm going to make it through this. I'm nervous. I'm sitting by George.

Good grief. I'm a 75-year-old retiree. I do have a side job, but my question is, should I take out about $35,000 from my IRA to pay off a loan on a second house, a lake house? Okay, so you've got $35,000 left on the lake house? No, I have $133,000 left on the lake house, but I've got $85,000 in a CD, and I have this job that I make $22,000 to $ out another IRA every year because that helps me in my tax amount. And then the leftover, I've been using for house projects and things like that. But I do have $30,000 in an emergency fund.

Oh, good. Okay. What's your total nest egg? What's in all these retirement accounts? Well, I have four retirement accounts, but they totaled $544. I mean, $544,000. I was going to say Lynn. Lynn. All right. That's a lot better. $403. Yeah. Okay. So you got over half a million in retirement. And is it just you? Are you living alone? Well, that was something I didn't want to... No, I'm married. I'm married to... We've been married for five years. And we had a prenup saying that we would contribute half of everything to everything, and so that when splitting up between our adult children after we're gone, everything can be split evenly.

Okay. So if you paid off this lake house with the CD plus $35,000 from the IRA, you would still have over half a million in your retirement accounts. And that's my contribution. He would be making the same contribution, which he's willing to make. He won't have to. So he would pay $133,300. Oh, so there's more than $133,000 left. There's $266,000?

Yeah. Got it. Okay. Sorry, I didn't have the full picture there. So you're going to put your half. He puts his half. This lake house is paid off. Yes.

I like it. I just hate paying all paid off. Yes. I like it. And I just hate paying all that interest. Well, I get it. I wouldn't worry about the tax deduction for this year with the IRA and all of that. I would go ahead and just pay this off and be free, because guess what? You're also going to free up that mortgage payment. What's that payment every month? $1,100.

Okay, so you free up $1,100. And $1,00 for his and i've been taking that from my rmds from these ira i think you're making the right move lynn if i was in your shoes i would be done with this mortgage payment at 75 years old i don't want to owe people money anymore well that's the way i feel i get it just every time i that, how much is going to interest, it just... It's like most of that payment is going to interest. And I listen to y'all every day, and I just want to be completely free of it. But I was worried about taking from my IRA. Hey, Lynn, can I throw one other wrinkle into this?

Uh-huh. How much equity do y'all have in that lake house? Well, let's see. You pay it off. What's that lake house worth? Well, it's appraised for $425,000. That's what I was thinking um how much have you already paid into it do what uh that that's the lake house is the second home right right but you have a page

for first home how much have you already paid into this lake house house? Gosh, I don't know how to tell that. It sounds like the guy you married has a lot of money. Is that right? Well, not a lot of money. Well, at least as much as you. He's about like me. About like you? Yeah, he's about like me. Okay. His is is he he had 33 rental properties okay it's more heavily in real estate versus investment accounts well he sold them he sold them okay he's got cash yeah yes so you got this prenup to split things up to make it easy for dividing things up when heaven forbid but it's coming for all of us when one of y'all passes away or both of you pass away right yeah yeah he's eight years older than i am okay so the bigger question i would ask is do my kids want to deal with immediately selling this lake house and dividing it up with his kids or having to buy out his kids when he passes away

if he passes away before you another alternative to this if he has the cash is he just pays it off and that when he passes away his kids sell this home you see what i'm saying how do i get my money out of it then he buys you out oh okay however much you put in is what you would get out maybe plus the appreciation uh-huh but other because here's the deal if you guys both pay this thing off today and he passes away tomorrow uh-huh his kids have a legal right to his half of this house, right? Yes. So you're selling this house because you don't have the cash to pay his kids for the home.

Yes. That's why we did this, this prenup, because I can't keep up two houses, and he can't either. So if I go first, he wants to keep the lake house. If he goes first, I'm going to keep the in-town house. Then why don't you let him buy the lake house? Okay. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, just buy me out.

He buys you out, he buys the lake house, and if you pass away first, which hopefully it doesn't happen then he moves into the house that he owns and your kids deal with what to do with mom's house and vice versa you know he suggested that i couldn't i couldn't wrap my head around that because just just think just think through it if if he dies if y'all pay this house off tomorrow, he passes away next month. Right after his will is executed, his kids will say, cool, we're going to take this lake house and put it on the market. And so the money you just pulled out, they're going to sell that house.

And if you would say, okay, cool, I'm not going to that lake house anymore. I'm just going to stay in my paid for house. Mm-hmm. And if you would say, okay, cool, I'm not going to that lake house anymore. I'm just going to stay in my paid-for house. It's mine that I brought into this marriage. Then I would consider letting him buy that lake house. Well, yes, but when we married, he contributed half

of the amount of the house. To your primary home. Okay, so everything's already intertwined anyways. Yeah. Y'all have a prenup, but it's still going to be messy. I would at least lay that all out and make sure it's crystal clear

what should happen and who's going to get what. Well, we have, and we told our, I mean, we had a meeting and told everybody. Okay. Okay.

Make sure it was on CBA. Just another thing to consider. So y'all think I'm okay with going ahead and taking out of the IRA? I'm saying if I was in your shoes, Lynn, I would pull that money out and pay it off along with a CD. It's not going to decimate your nest egg. You're still going to have over half a million growing for you. Even 10%, that's $50,000 a year. You're back at where you were.

So that's what I'd be doing in your shoes. Way to go. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. Thank you to Dr. John Deloney, all the folks in the booth pulling the show off, and you, America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Take care.