The Ramsey Show - App - Taking Time to Grieve After Sudden Loss (Hour 1)

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Dave Ramsey Show. Where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for being with us. This is Common Sense for your dollars and cents. Tanner starts off this hour in Minneapolis. Hey, tanner welcome to the dave ramsey show hey dave thanks for taking my call how are you better than i deserve what's up hey dave uh so i was just calling um i have about um around thirty thousand dollars in debt um I make about $38,000 to $45,000 a year. And just kind of wanted to break down the debt

and see if you have any advice, like if I should keep my car, get rid of it. But I got $3,000 in credit card debt, $9,400 in a car loan, and about $17,800 in personal loans. Are you 27? I'm 24, just turning 25 in January. Okay. Pretty close. Okay.

That's what I figured. That's about where you should be with the mess you got. I'm sorry you're facing this. I'm glad you're waking up and you are facing it that's good news um the car is not out of line based on your income i mean if you make 45 000 a year driving a 9 000 car is not a bad thing um the trick is what we want to do is how fast can we find 30 000 making 40 if you did 15 a year, for two years, you'd be done. And, you know,

you ought to be able to do that. So you ought to be done in two years. 15 out of 40, I think you can live on there. Are you single? Single, yeah, and I do own a home. I bought it when I was 20 and back when I was pretty good financially. What is your,

what's your house payment? It's about $585,000. Okay, that's very reasonable. I have about $76,000. Yeah, that's very reasonable housing then. So you're in pretty good shape overall in terms of you've got a good income. The trick is you've just got to control the hardest part in this entire equation which is you you got to look in the mirror and go you're the problem oh and by the way you're the solution

you can do this right so uh 15 000 a year is 1250 bucks a month okay so you know 1200 1300 bucks a month and here's the other thing. You could get out of debt even faster if you took an extra job. Right. $1,000 a month changes your life. Absolutely. Yeah, if you made $1,000 a month, you're probably out of debt in a year. Pretty close. In a year.

Yeah, well, $1,000 a month is another, you know, that's another $12,000 a year, right? That is 100% new money in this discussion. All of that goes on the debt. And on top of that, you take $15,000 out of your other stuff. I mean, you're pretty close to being done in a year if you made $1,000 a month. Awesome. So that's what I'm doing. You see how I'm doing that math?

Yep. Okay. So the trick now is jump on every dollar, get your budget going on your phone, and then go, okay, this year is the year. It's the year. Game on, baby. Game on. Absolutely.

And when you do that, then you can move the needle here. But, you know, it's easy to talk about. It's hard to do. Because you're talking about you're not going to have a life. Your party days are over. You are going to be at work. You have no life. You are not going out to eat.

You are cooking at home, rice and beans, beans and rice. And you cook an extra batch to take to work with you at your extra job. Just keep on rolling, baby. But in one year, you could be done. And i'm a band-aid off fast guy so i find people get out of debt faster if they get out of debt faster they are more likely to get out of debt if it drags out for 10 years you're probably gonna quit you probably ain't got the emotional stamina to stick it out for 10 years oh god most people just can't do it right and i i mean very few people can do something for I ain't got the emotional stamina to stick it out for 10 years. Oh, God. Most people just can't do it, right?

And, I mean, very few people can do something for 10 years. So get her done, man. That's the thing. All right, Josh is with us. Josh is in New Hampshire. Hey, Josh, how are you? I am doing fantabulous, Dave. How are you?

Better than I deserve, sir. How can I help? Hi, I'm looking at moving out of my parents by the end of October. And one of my job benefits is they have a construction team that goes to other states and they would cover all my living expenses. And I would get roughly about a thousand dollars a week doing that. Um, my alternative is should I follow up with that or can I stay at home, find my own apartment up here and have a heavier burden on my regular day toto-day while I'm trying to pay off the last of my student loans by the end of the year.

So if you got $1,000, you said a month for living expenses? No, my income would be about $1,000 per week. It'd be about $300 a week for actual living expenses. Okay. Can you live on that? Yes. Okay. And you currently make what? I currently make about $3,000 a month. Okay. And so we go to about $4,000 a month. So you go from $36,000 to about $50,000. Correct. Tem you go from $36,000 to about $50,000.

Correct. Temporarily. And you have no living expenses because that's all covered. Right. And how much student loan debt do you have? How much student loan debt do you have? It's on a reimbursement basis. Yeah.

But I can make something different. Yeah. You don't have to spend it, but you can spend it. Okay. And how much is your student loan debt? I have $17,000 left. Okay. So if you go on the road, how long do you have to be gone? Is there a commitment?

The bare minimum is two weeks. Oh, okay. But I would much rather go down there. I am 30. Okay. Well, what if you did six months like that and finished up your debt and then come back and settle in with no debt? Well, that was actually my goal is to actually come back home as soon as the debt was cleared. Okay. Yeah, but my point is it's not a permanent decision.

It's like taking kind of an adventure. It's an adventure. You're a single guy. You take off, go to another place, get to enjoy another town, work there, make more money, get your debt cleaned up, have your living expenses paid for, and come back. I kind of like that. It kind of sounds fun to me. Does it sound fun to you? It does.

I'm just still doing what I'm going to do after I come back and I drop back down to roughly $3,000 a month. Well, then that's the other question is, what do you want to do with your career long-term? And, you know, what training do you need? Do you need to change jobs in order to make more money? Do you need to change career directions in order to make more money? But on a temporary basis, it sounds like you've got a really cool adventure in front of you,

and it pays really well, and you can go make some money, pay off your student loan, then come home, settle in in and then let's start having our long-term career goal adjustments at that point yeah i like this plan but it's whatever you want to do man i mean it's not nothing stupid nothing under the stupid column on either selection but um if i were in your shoes i were 30 and had you know no wife or kids or anything i mean that kind of sounds fun if you're leaving a bunch of people at home, that's different. But this is a single guy going off and having an adventure and paying off student loan debt. Sounds like a flat plan.

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Open phones at 888-825-5225. Matt is in Spokane, Washington. Hi, Matt. How are you? Oh, not doing real great right now. Uh-oh. What's going on? My wife passed away about a week and a half ago.

Oh, my gosh. And we're still kind of trying to, we were in baby step two. And I'm just trying to figure out how to keep going on. Wow. What happened? How old was she? She was 33. 33?

What happened? What happened? The coroner report said it was a pulmonary embolism. Oh, my Lord. She had an eight-centimeter blood clot in one of her lungs. And didn't know it? No. She was putting away groceries with our daughter, and our daughter came to get me and told us that Mommy said, oh, no, and fell over.

Oh, my goodness. How old is your daughter? She's seven. Oh, my gosh, man. All right. And so you were on baby step two, and you said you got life insurance that's on the way then? Yeah, she had two policies. I found out one for $100,000 and one for $500,000. How old are you?

I'm 37. How long were you guys married? We just had 10 years in June. You know what I tell folks to do in these situations? Let's be very careful to do nothing but cry. Just give yourself some room to cry. Okay. Just give yourself some room to cry. I don't think if your 33-year-old wife passes away suddenly, unexpectedly last week, that anyone would expect you to make really good decisions today.

I know if that happened to Sharon, we've been married 38 years. Getting ready to be 38, I wouldn't be able to breathe for a little while. And just listening to you, you can't even breathe real good right now. And I don't blame you. I understand. So here's what I want you to do, okay? I want you to keep food in the house and pay the lights and pay the water bill and pay the house payment and any other payments you guys have.

Just go ahead and pay those but don't make any big financial decisions right now okay just breathe it's going to take you it's going to take you six months for your brain to work right again does that make sense to you uh yeah and and all that makes you is not a bad person it just makes you a human okay none of us none of us when we get hit this hard does our do we think well for a while and so we're going to give you we're going to give you a little time for the fog to clear all right and do nothing do nothing for a little while now yeah so all you gotta do is just eat and feed your baby and hug your baby that's all you gotta do and you got to do is just eat and feed your baby and hug your baby. That's all you got to do. And you put $600,000 in the bank, and you don't touch it for anything.

Don't buy anything. Don't travel. Don't blow any money. Don't touch that money. Just forget that it's there for six months. And this is September, and so we're going to say in March, when the spring comes out and the flowers come out and the grass is coming out again and it starts getting a little warmer, then we'll start thinking about this. But we're going to take from now until then to breathe again.

Is that okay? Yeah. Well, I'm worried because she was half our income, and her last paycheck came today. Okay. So what do you make? Well, it's going to change at the end of this month, but I was making about $63. It's going to jump to $75 at the end of this month. And you can't live on that?

I don't know. She was absolutely the nerd in our relationship. Okay. I'll tell you nerd in our relationship. Okay. I'll tell you what we're going to do. I'm going to put you with one of my financial coaches that's been through our training, and I'm going to pay for it. It's not going to cost you anything. And they're going to sit down with you and help you put your budget together

and help you get on track, okay? Okay. I think you can live on 75. I don't know all your details, but I think you can make it on your 75 And then let's not touch Let's not touch the other money Until you kind of get clear Where you can breathe again And then we'll probably just

What we'll probably do in March Is we'll just advance you through the baby steps We'll pay off everything And we'll pay off the house And probably that kind of stuff But we're not going to do that today. Today we're just going to cry. Okay.

Is that okay? I think so. Sometimes what happens is you just need room to cry. And I'm just telling you, take room. You've got room. There's nothing here in the finances that you're giving me that caused me to panic. There's nothing to be afraid of other than we've just got to be able to get our arms around some of the details and keep the household running, but you can do that.

And we'll help you do that. We're going to walk alongside you. We're not going to do it for you, but we're going to walk alongside you and be part of your healing in this time, okay? Okay. You can do this. And you call me back if you need any help, too, okay? Okay, thank you.

All right. I'm going to put you on hold. Stay on. And Kelly's going to pick up, and we're going to get you set up with one of our coaches. So hang on the line with me. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in, and we'll talk about your life and your money. Wow.

You just, I mean, I don't even know how to recover after that. What do you say that's intelligent after that? You can't. There's nothing to say that's intelligent after that. Ouch. Unbelievable. If that doesn't make you go home and hug your spouse tonight, then you weren't listening closely. If that doesn't make you say,

I'm going to get my financial house in order so that if God forbid something happened, then my family will be taken care of. Making sure you have the proper amount of life insurance in place. How much different is that phone call if there's not $600,000 in the mail? Could be different. Could be very different. But there's nothing to worry about there, is there? Nothing. Not financially.

You've got lots of other stuff to worry about. You've got a baby standing in the kitchen when her mama passed lots of other stuff to worry about. You've got a baby standing in the kitchen when her mama passed. That's enough to worry about, right? So that's why you have, you know, $600,000 in term life insurance. That's why you have your will in place. And that's why both of you are involved in handling the money both of you oh honey you're good at it you just take care of it does that sound like much of a plan after that call nope it's called grown-up land you're both

supposed to know what's going on with the money. He knows more than he's letting on. He's in better shape than he's just hurting. He's going to be okay. But you need to know. I'm the nerd at my house, and my wife needs to know about the money. You're the nerd at your house. Your free spirit needs to know about the money and what's going on. And we have to lay out a plan, y'all.

And it's not, well, I just live my life. I don't want to think about the money and what's going on. And we have to lay out a plan, y'all. And it's not, well, I just lived my life. I don't want to think about it. Well, it's time to be a grown-up. I'm sorry. Unless you're living in your mommy's basement and she's taking care of you, then you're going to have to be a grown-up. You're going to have to take care of you. And that's what this stuff does.

Because what poor Matt and his family are going through is what all of us go through at different times in one way or another, don't we? None of you, none of us are getting out of this alive and so we got to have a plan and we don't want to talk about it. I don't care if you want to talk about it or not.

Better talk about it now. Now's the time to talk about it while you can. Where there's somebody to talk to about it. Lay your will out. Go over with your family what the will says. Make sure that's done. Today. Put your life insurance in place.

Today. Make sure both of you are on the same page about money. Today. Today. Thank goodness Matt and you are on the same page about money. Today. Thank goodness Matt and his wife are doing most of those things. Doesn't make it any easier. Well, actually it does make it easier. One less thing to worry about while your heart is breaking. You have to worry about your house being foreclosed on while your heart's breaking.

That's a bit more of a problem, isn't it? That's how this stuff works in the real world, boys and girls. Ouch. This is the Dave time to buy life insurance? My answer is typically now. Life insurance is not part of the baby steps because it's needed when your family has debt and not enough savings to provide for their financial needs. That's when they're at the highest risk.

And no matter where you are in your baby steps, it's a necessity, not a choice. This includes working husbands and wives, as well as stay-at-home parents. It's pretty expensive to replace those stay-at-home parent responsibilities. I only recommend term life insurance, since it's the most affordable way to get the right amount of coverage and not break your budget. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. These are the guys I personally use. Term life insurance is inexpensive and your family needs this no matter where you are in your baby steps. That's Zander.com or call 800-356-4282.

Zander.com. Is your house payment the only thing standing between you and debt freedom? Did you know we offer a free mortgage payoff calculator on our website? If the last thing you've got to pay off is your mortgage, we'll show you how. Show you how to get out of debt, period. But if you just deal with the mortgage, we've got a mortgage payoff calculator on our website. You can find it under tools at DaveRamsey.com. You know the information about your loan and how much extra you plan to pay towards your principal balance, and then we'll show you how much money and how many years of mortgage payments that you save.

If you've got too much house, well, our endorsed local providers, who are the top real estate agents in your area, can help you navigate selling your current house and buying something that better fits your budget. All of that at DaveRamsey.com. Tiana is with us in California. Hi, Tiana. How are you? Hi, Dave.

So good to talk to you. You too. Thank you so much for everything. Thank you. What can I help with? Well, I'm a single mom. I've been living with my mom for the last couple I've taken on some of my mom's debt as well because of sharing the home. So she's in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy with only about nine months left on the payment plan.

And then there's like the HOA payment. And we're coming out to be about, with her Social Security and my income, we're coming out short about $600 to $800 a month. And I've been juggling, like sometimes I short pay my car payment so that I can pay one of those other bills. What do you make a year? i make about 35 to 38 with overtime and what debts do you have um student loan about 10 grand and my car and then how much do you owe on your car about nine grand okay so 19 000 and you make 38 000 a year and what else um and then there's about seven

or i don't know how much exactly but there's there's probably about between five and seven thousand on credit card stuff okay so if you were out of debt and on your own how much debt does your your mother's in a Chapter 13 coming out, which means that that will all be clear in nine months. Has she got any debt other than what's in the Chapter 13? No. Okay. And how much is her house payment in the 13?

It is. It's $324,000. Okay. And so she's paying a house payment of how much? About $1,400. And what is her income? $1,200 a month. Okay.

And how old is she? She's 70 years old. Okay. She can't live in that house anymore? Okay. She can't live in that house anymore. Okay. You can't have a $1,400 house payment with a $1,200 income. Okay. That doesn't work.

What that means is you have to live there until she's 90 and pay her house payment yeah that's not gonna work this is a really really bad plan i don't know how she got into this mess but um so when she comes out of chapter 13 bankruptcy her house payment will be fourteen hundred dollars a month it would it should be less there's an extra she didn't pay property tax so there it should be 1200 but they're charging 200 extra a month for the back payment on property tax but her income is 1200 exactly yeah so does she have any money anywhere no she's in chapter 13 yeah no and she doesn't have anything she owns, right, other than this house? No, just the home. What's the house worth?

It's actually worth, they came in and said that it could be worth about $600,000, but I've been trying to, she doesn't want to sell, and we're trying to look at it. We might look at it again after the Chapter 13 is over. I talked to her about downsizing because we've been listening to your show, And we're trying to look at it. We might look at it again after the Chapter 13 is over. I talked to her about downsizing because we've been listening to your show and trying to get out of the situation. Well, here's what I want. I want you to be in your mother's life and loving her well,

but I don't want you to design a financial plan that requires that you live together the rest of your life. Right. That's a bad plan. Would you agree? Yes. Okay. So let's try to develop a plan for her and a plan for you. And if the plan to get to those things is accelerated by you temporarily being together, that's fine.

But I don't want to put together a thing where you're dependent upon each other for your plans to work. So she needs to sell the house and buy a $300,000 paid-for condo that she can live in, and that means you're out on your own at that point, and we're going to get your income up and cut up your credit cards. We're going to put you into Financial Peace University. I'm going to pay for it, and we're going to put you into financial peace university i'm going to pay for it and we're going to walk you completely out of debt because you've got a bunch of debt and not a lot of income for orange county california agreed right i have a certification

um coming up that my employer agreed to pay for um. So I should be making more. Good. What are you getting your cert in? In a certified professional coder. Okay, good. So you're doing technical stuff and you're getting your certifications around that. Right, right. You keep doing that as fast as you can do it and get as many of those as you can get

and keep getting those raises because that's going to cause your income to double in the next three years. Yeah. If you keep pushing on that, this is just the first certification you want you to get. Then I want you to go get some more of them and keep your employer paying for them and keep growing and growing and growing and growing because that's going to solve your problem. That's very good news okay now if you guys want to stay there for the next nine months until you she comes out of 13 and then she sells and that helps you get out of debt that's fine but it sounds to me like

you you would be better off and she would be better off if she sold it now i we talked to a realtor i mean i'm we only talked to one but um and he was he was saying it could be complicated not impossible with the chapter 13 and you need a new realtor it's not a big deal chapter 13s take payoff letters every day okay as soon as you get the as soon as you get a closing and you got a six hundred thousand dollar check in your hand to pay off a $300,000 loan, that's really not rocket science. Okay. It can be done. Because otherwise you are going to be paying like $600, $700 out of your pocket in order to live there, right?

Right. I don't know. That sounds like it's expensive to me. Yeah. I mean, maybe you want to pull that that off maybe you want to work an extra job in order to do that for nine months uh and then sell it it's okay you can do either one but really a year from today y'all aren't don't need to be living together yeah this is not good for either one of you. Are you catching on? Yes. And not because I don't love your mother and you don't love your mother. We want her to be taken care of and we want you to be taken care of. But this thing of joining together and staying in denial about this house is a bad plan.

This house is gone. She can't afford it. You can't have a $1,400 or a $1,200 house payment when your income is $1,200. I mean, everyone knows that. And now you do. So now everyone does. So, yeah, get her sold. And then get you a place and get your income up and you work your debt snowball.

Hold on, I'll have Kelly pick up. I'll put you into Financial Peace University. We'll help you on your journey because you've got a difficult one for the next 12 months. After that, it's going to get better and better and better and better and better and better. Cut up your credit cards today, all of them. It's time for plastic surgery. You cannot live on debt around there anymore. This is a family trait that needs to be broken today.

Hope that helps you, kiddo. You call me if I can help you. That's what we're here for. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Abby is on the line in Tampa, Florida. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Abby. Thank you. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? So I have a money slash career question. I'm 25 years old. I'm not married or have question. I'm 25 years old. I'm not married or have kids. I'm on baby step four. And I just need advice about my current job. So I'm currently in sales and I make a decent base salary.

I haven't seen much commission come through just because I've only been in the role for about eight months. But I drive about 300 miles a day. That being said, I love my car and I don't know when the next time I'll be able to buy a car is. So I do have a job opportunity. It's a manager position at a local boutique gym. So it's kind of like Orange Theory, but it's just starting out. The only thing is the base salary is about half of what I'm making. And with the commission and bonuses, they're expecting me to make about what I make right now.

But I know that that's a huge risk. So, I mean, eventually I want to buy a house and all that. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. So are you spending nights on the road? No. No. Okay, so you're just out and back running all over the place. Correct. Yeah, because you're putting like 75,000 miles a year on your car.

You understand that, right? That's right. That's about where I'm at. Okay, so whatever you drive, you are destroying its value as a part of this job. Correct. So if you drive a $15,000 car in one year, it's worth $5,000 because of what you're doing to it. If you drive a $10,000 car in one year, it's worth $3,000 because of what you're doing to it. So that's a cost of you with having this job. Okay. So the job you're currently at as a base pay of what?

$50,000. Okay. And they're talking about $25,000 at the gym. Correct. Okay. That sucks. Yeah. That is not a good offer.

Okay. You currently have a job of $50 dollars a year but you're losing 10 so you're netting 40 after your vehicle expense but you also may have commission on top of that what do you anticipate your commissions being on top of that uh projected wise i should be at 65 thousand um after my first year okay all right All right. And so, yeah. And what are you doing now? In sales. Selling what?

It's really selling a service. We work with UPS. Okay. And so you're going to businesses? Correct. So businesses around, you know, my territory, which which is one of the biggest territories in the country. So it's a lot of miles. Yeah, it is.

Okay. So one of your expenses is you're going to destroy a car every two years and have to replace it. And you have to save to replace it. I don't know when I'm going to get a new car. It's not a plan. You are going to destroy this vehicle's value. In two years, you're going to put 150,000 miles on it. If 300 miles a week is accurate. Okay? Did you say

a day? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's between 200 and 300 miles a day. A day. Yeah. Okay. But that's 75,000 miles a year. 260 working days, okay? So, yeah, that's, so you have to, as a part of having this job, systematically save to replace your car with cash every two years. So you need to be saving $600 a month for your car replacement, where you can buy a new car every two years. Okay?

Okay. But even with that, there's no way you take this other job. Now, if you don't like the sales job you're in, or you don't like the people, or you don't like what you're doing, and you want to be in the gym business instead, that's fine. Let's look around for something. But I wouldn't take a job at 25 when I've got a job making 50 headed towards 65 with a new company that we don't even know is going to make it.

Right. Yeah, if they offered you 100 with a new company that we didn't know was going to make it, we might try that. But we don't take a pay cut with a company, new company that we don't. I mean to make it we might try that but we don't take a pay cut with a company new company that we don't i mean there's no much there's not that much romance in a gym no thank you does that make sense now again i think you start asking yourself i think this has caused you to say i might have an itch in the career area i need to scratch and so you start asking yourself hey i, I'm 25.

What do I want to be doing when I'm 35? What do I want to be doing when I'm 45? And what are my steps to take to become one of those? And if you want to own your own gym or something like that, if that's really your long-term goal, then let's start taking some steps that way. But one of the steps is not pay cut in half with a new operation that might not make it anyway. Right. So even if the commission structure, you know, were pretty comfortable that they're predicting. I'm not comfortable.

It's not even open. Yeah. Their projection on their commission structure is what's known as a guess. Right. That's a guess. I'm not comfortable with that at all okay i mean i wouldn't take it now if they if they're so comfortable with it won't they just pay you 50 well that's what i was wondering too yeah they're not because they're not comfortable with it besides that they're brand

new i don't even know if they can pay the 50 right i don't even know if they're gonna stay open i mean jim jim's close like every 20 seconds, right? About the only thing with a higher failure rate is restaurants. Okay. So, nah, I wouldn't do that. Now, but I think what this does, what this conversation you've been having inside your head and with your friends that are opening the gym does is it tells you maybe the job you've got is not nirvana right maybe it is time to start kind of thinking about what do i want to be when i'm 45 and what are the steps for me to take to get there if you're

going to stay in your current job though start saving for car replacement because you got to buy a car every two years okay okay definitely and and so with that being said do you think that you know sales and saving up money is the right way to go if that's something that i want or do should i focus on a car and keeping you know the car i have i mean it's only three years old so what's the car you've got worth uh i'm i the last time i checked it was like 28 i'd probably sell that because you're gonna you're destroying it yeah if it's still worth 28 i mean what do you want to destroy a ten thousand dollar car or a twenty eight thousand dollar car ten thousand yeah i mean it's a business decision because it's a business it's a cost of you doing business if

you stay in that job. But if you really like your car and you're going to change jobs anyway, drive it a couple more months while you're making your decision on what you're going to do because you might have a different job that makes 50 or 60 and a whole different career other than we've talked about today, right, that does not have miles driven, does not have miles driven. So it might be that the answer to your job equation is not A or B, but C, none of the above.

Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. Thank you very much. Hey, thank you for the call. I appreciate you joining us. You're a sharp, young lady. I think you're going to do very, very well.

I'm proud of you. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jim is on Twitter. Dave, I'm a landlord, and I know you are too. What service do you recommend for rental background checks? I don't do it. My son-in-law runs our property management company, and I have no idea who we use. I mean, I know we physically do, or not physically.

We do our own check off the application, but we run with I mean, I know we physically do, or not physically, we do our own check off the application, but we run with a service, and I actually don't know which one it is. What I would do is just price them out and look at what they'd cost and what they give you for what they cost, and I don't want to pay much for that, a minimal amount for a background check, because mainly I'm going to do a tenant interview, and I'm going to check the references that are on their application. And that tenant interview and checking those references and looking at their finances and can they pay the rent, and the feeling you get from interviewing them in depth as if you were hiring them for a job, not just moving in

your house. Oh, by the way, you are hiring them for a job because they're paying rent. That's their job. Yeah, that's how I'm treating this. And that solves a whole lot of problems that a background check really won't bring forth. And always check with the landlord before their current landlord because their current landlord might say anything to get rid of them when you're doing background, when you're doing reference checks on tenants, check the two back. Now, that helps too.

That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Hey, it's Kelly Daniel, associate producer and phone screener for the Dave Ramsey Show. Did you know that in 2017, Dave Ramsey Show listeners paid off $50 million of debt? That's pretty impressive. And it could be you this year. Keep listening for more inspiration.