The Ramsey Show - App - The Best Calls of the Year (So Far) (Hour 1)

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of the very popular Ramsey Network's produced Dr. John Deloney Show, where we deal with all kinds of relationship and mental health issues. He's my co-host today as we're taking your questions. Phone number is 888-825- 5225.

This is where common sense meets reality and life. And it does it every day here. Thanks for joining us. The call's free and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Elizabeth is with us in Dallas. Hi, Elizabeth. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hello, how are you? Great. What's up? Hi, so I have a question. I've been with my partner and boyfriend for seven years, and we have two small children together, and I recently brought up the fact that we should get married and actually have one baby count and do everything together, and he says that he doesn't want to do that.

Why? He doesn't want to do marriage. Why? is not. Why? He doesn't want to do marriage. Why? He says because he's already previously been married, and he's just not going to do it. Why does he think he's not married now? I'm not sure. He's got everything to do with marriage right now. So now my next question is, I don't know what to do.

He gets sick. He gets sick. He wants you to make him chicken soup right yes yeah what's the difference in this in marriage i'm confused well he says that he says that he's not interested that either accept him or what should we do so elizabeth i want you to hear what he's actually telling you he's telling you he went all in on somebody once and got hurt or broke up with or whatever. And he's looking at you after seven years and two children and saying, you're not worth that.

I'd rather have my illusion of singleness in my back pocket at all times so that I can preserve my little fragile ego. Meanwhile, play house. And play house with you. And you be my wife and I'll keep all the equity and everything and I'll keep all my money and I'll basically pay you like a live-in nanny. But this is all mine. That's what he's telling you.

I hate that for you. I'm sorry. I hate that for you. I'm sorry. I hate that for you. How old are your babies? One is four and the other is one. Little boy, little girl, what? It's a one-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl. So at this point, I'm at the point that I don't know what to do i don't know if i

20 years from now your daughter is 24 and she asks you this question what do you tell her i don't know i'm not gonna i'm not gonna be the person that tells you you gotta stay or leave because i don't want i don't want you to hang on to this guy said this. That's a decision you're going to have to own. What I will tell you is I think you are worth going all in on. And I think you're worth having a home that two people want to do life together and create a safe space to raise these two beautiful little babies. You're worth that. But you're going to have to make the grown-up decision

on whether you stay and you try to build a life inside of a cocoon or you make other decisions. In two weeks, I'll be... I'm mostly more worried as well. Go ahead, I'm sorry go ahead babe what I'm sorry um I'm mostly more afraid it's like if I walk away how would I manage with money I haven't worked in a while so that's I'm going to be truthful that's exactly what's stopping me now from walking away and that's a very real fear i mean that's a very real fear that the data

suggests that when men and women split up especially in this situation his net worth will actually go up and yours will go down for a season until you get so pissed off that you become a multi-millionaire later but yeah um but yeah the uh uh so in other words you can't do this today it's theory because you got babies you have to feed but you can say alright I'm going to plan my escape and I'm going to get my career tooled up and I'm going to go get a job

and I'm going to start making some serious money and then I get to make decisions from strength rather than from weakness get to walk to from strength rather than from weakness get to walk to something not run from something and then you can walk in and go uh not sure dude that i want to marry you so there's that and that's what we call an elizabeth burn right when you flip the whole thing around mic drop yeah but that comes from strength and you're you're you're um when you're scared and broke it keeps you from making decisions so let's move from scared and broke and then remake the decision you might make the decision under strength to stay

but you would need to make it from strength rather than from weakness is that logical yes so if it takes you a year to start making forty thousand dollars a year then take that year and go do it that's fine i got no plan i got no problem and you're in dallas he ain't going nowhere yeah and you're in dallas man there will be people that will hire you. In about 20 seconds. I don't want my kids in daycare. Then marry their mother. Hey, Elizabeth, it's not uncommon in this situation, especially after this long, that this isn't the only thing that this person won't, quote-unquote, do.

This person's been telling you that your things you think are funny or stupid and the feelings or concerns you have about any number of things are dumb you can't fill in the blank and after seven years after almost a decade of this you've come to believe that stuff to be true right i have my doubts yeah i don't i don't either because the girl that called here has got more stuff inside of her than she sounds like she does or thinks she does now go get it get you some thank you yeah really i mean don't forget two old guys believe in you yeah and uh and you got a four-year-old daughter watching to see how mama is a warrior princess look out here comes xena you remember that one yeah but don't make that little weird noise call thing keep that one to yourself don't do that let that only be in your head yeah don't don't do that

yeah yeah dave you bring that up. There's a concern, obviously, which is financial, which is real. That's math. There is no debate about that. And what about my babies? And what you bring up is really important. There is a ringside seat to, oh, this is what a mom and a wife are supposed to just accept as reality. Or I had a ringside seat to watching my mom go from a live-in boyfriend that told her, dude, I'm not wasting any more energy on you,

all the way to a successful business owner. Warrior princess. Running shop. And they got to watch that happen in real time. Yeah. Some of the most powerful people I've met, a single mom raised them. Oh, man. And she was a go-getter, and she wouldn't be denied. Yeah. And yeah. The kids take that work ethic, and then they go become a surgeon or something, and there's no stopping them. Exactly. It sets up the next generation. You're setting up the next generation. So spend the next year deciding that and getting ready. I'm sorry you're facing this kiddo. This is The Ramsey Show.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Chris is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi, Chris. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, thanks for taking my call. Sure, what's up? Get right to it. Me and my wife recently started a side business. We both work full-time and kind of looking to pay off a ton of consumer debt

and realize you can only save so much. So we started this side business, Dog Sitting, with the intentions of paying off the consumer debt. And I spoke with my accountant last year. And he suggested putting my two children kind of on payroll, right. And paying them to benefit, you know, investing into their Roth IRA and maxing out for them because he suggested that, you know, they don't pay taxes on that. So that now kind of threw me for a loop. And I think that's what we're going to plan on

doing for this year. And my question is, we are pretty late to the game with investing for ourselves, right? And I kind of wonder if it's foolish to do that for them. I just recently learned the power of compounding interest. So that's the reason why I'm doing this. You know, there are three and five. It just seems like a unique opportunity because we don't plan on doing this forever really just to pay off the consumer debt and we're not really struggling we have a plan you know to pay off the consumer debt and if it takes a little bit longer because we're paying our children investing in a Roth IRA it's okay Chris I'm an IRS auditor, and I'm sitting in front of you, and you paid your three-year-old to do work. I'm not believing that the three-year-old did any work,

and I'm going to undo everything you did in the audit. You're going to lose. Your accountant is a moron. You have to be able to be working. If the child is actually working, you can pay them the market value for their work. But you can't make a case that a three-year-old is actually working. Be struggling to say a five-year-old. It happens to be walking dogs dogs so we can do this

now an exception would be like i did have a client one time who had a baby who appeared in multiple diaper commercials and made serious bank the baby was actually working and so yeah we put that into an ira for sure because of the power of compound interest but what you have to be able to make the case that they were paid you know like Rachel for instance at 14 years old would go and do a three-minute talk on the stage of why it's tough to be Dave Ramsey's daughter eight minutes what it was like eight minutes eight minutes okay I'm sorry sorry we would work the events though anyway yeah it was not eight hours it was like eight minutes okay i'm sorry sorry we would work the events though anyway yeah it was not eight hours it was a few minutes okay and and then she would go work the book tables

and i would pay her a percentage of what the kids books sold at the book tables back then and she's a teenager and and it was a it was a healthy percentage but i didn't pay her a hundred thousand dollars a year you couldn't justify that to an auditor you follow me so i mean yeah you know so so you you can't do that the dog sitting i mean it really is it's not you know feed the dogs watch the dogs play with honey three-year-olds are not allowed to work okay i mean really think just use some common sense okay yeah yeah what what could what would you actually if you ran a business would you actually hire the neighborhood three-year-old to go no you wouldn't yeah i might hire the neighborhood eight-year-old to help me

and there's a market value to that doing dog sitting okay and you can actually make it a common sense case for that yeah but the three-year-old still barely potty trained oh my god and now we're trying to potty train dogs no no no no no no no no no no this doesn't work so you know they so your accountant is willing to set you up for losing an audit which is why i'm saying i don't think you need this accountant anymore. And, Chris, and here's the deal, too. Even if you wait until they're 8, 10, 12, 14 years old to start this process, they're going to be fine. Like, they're going to be fine.

You don't have to start at 3, you know. So you can do this in a morally legal way eventually. That's great. What? He's saying that he's going to not do the dog sitting thing after he gets out of debt so it's not the opportunity is not going to be there no i'm just saying in general though like in general they can go and like y'all could start something or you know whatever life looks like when they're when they actually are able to contribute and

it's not like you're kind of you know and you don't need to be behind on your investing when i did this for our three kids you have to file a tax return on the kid, and there is some taxes due. There's no income tax due, but they're going to get hit with FICA, self-employed income. And so each one of them, I filed a tax return. I looked at their actual income. I had to make sure it was market value or slightly above market value for the duty that

they were performing. And I filed a tax return. I paid the taxes. They kept the money that they earned. And I put the equivalent amount into a Roth IRA on their behalf. All of them were teenagers by the time we were doing that. Yeah. And or thereabouts.abouts I mean Daniel might have been 12 I mean or something but but I mean they were you had a justifiable case and we were at baby step seven and my investments were okay I didn't do this kind of stuff you know and then my and then I'm going to retire broke but my kid has a 16 year old has an IRA has an IRA. No. Right, right. Yeah, it's a balance. And again, Chris, I think the urgency that you're feeling is, I mean, he just said,

he was like, I just learned about compound interest. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so there is an urgency. And I think, you know, again, the heart behind it's incredible. Absolutely. And to be able to set our kids up really well. And there's time to do that, is what I would say. So don't let this urgency of this new information make you make bad decisions and lead you into something that's just not wise how often do they audit well I mean if the thing is you the point is not are you going to get no no I know I

know there's like a moral thing here but but when you said that I was like man I wonder how often like well you just you have to be able to defend everything you do in an audit or you shouldn't be doing it. Yes, totally. So that's not only it's not only proper tax process, but it's also the moral and ethical thing. Totally. Yes. For sure. Like we've just finished this unbelievable two and a half year audit, just similar to an anal exam at Ramsey.

And so but we have paid every stinking dime that we've ever owed. And so we've not lost a single category, not a single category. And they've turned over everything in this building, you know, and, you know, so, but we're fanatics about paying the exact amount. Yes, being honest. Every bit of cash we collect is taxable income. We don't have any side gigs going. It's very traceable.

And it has nothing to do with I like taxes or I think taxes are wonderful or it's my way of being generous. It's not. Taxes are extortion. They're theft by your government. They're horrible. I hate them. I hate the IRS.

But it has nothing to do with that it has to do with my integrity it says it doesn't say anything about them when i cheat on my taxes it's something about me and so chris that's not aiming at you but that's just a further soapbox on this whole thing so good motivation bad information good thoughts bad timing so later on when you're at baby step seven and you've got and your retirement's underway and you can do justifiable market value labor for your kid like if your kid is 16 in a few years and they're doing they got this wonderful dog sitting business that they spring up because mom and dad used to do it and they go make a bunch of money you could do what i did with our kids and it'd be perfectly fine no issues there at all uh and you'd be teaching them entrepreneurism in their teens which is a great idea so that's the kind of thing you're

looking for bad timing though you can't unless the three-year-olds in a diaper commercial three year olds don't have a market commercial pull-ups pull-up commercial. Pull-ups. Okay. At three. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully. Yeah, that's good. We're in the middle of that. We have a three-and-a-half-year-old. I thought, oh, you don't want Charles watching your dog. Now, Amelia, the eight-year-old.

Oh, yeah. She would be pretty. She knows how to take care of June better than I do. I mean, she's. Pretty much game on. Phenomenal But not the three year old I'm not going to say it

Okay they're just they're fine They're fun That's what we're going to say I would say it about all of them Not just that one Dave likes babies Papa Dave wants babies Once they hit like two

Papa Dave's like I'm done. Once they hit like two. When they're doing the pull-ups, that's somebody else's job. I'm done. I'm good. That's completely somebody else's job. Until you can ski. I don't know. Yeah. And you're old enough to ski.

I have nothing to do with you. There's a transition period there. This is The Ramsey Show. Thanks for joining us, America. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Dylan is with us in Salt Lake City. Hi, Dylan. How are you?

Good. How are you, Dave? Thank you for taking my call. My pleasure. What's up? So my wife and I have been married for three years now. We've been going to school and going to college. She graduated this past May with an engineering degree,

and I graduate this upcoming May with an engineering degree. We're 100% debt-free. We made it through college with no student loans, and we've been able to save about $60,000 that we've earmarked for a home. And we're curious as to whether or not now is the time to buy with interest rates so high and with with just everything going on in the market uncertainty um yeah so what's your what's your advice for me or other questions you have you're gonna you know you're gonna stay in that area yes we are okay so you get um i mean you get out of school, and you're going to take a job,

and that's not going to change the real estate decision? Yes. Okay. All right. I mean, I can believe that. I just wanted to double-check. And you have zero debt of any kind of $60,000 for a down payment? Zero debt of any kind, $60,000 for a down payment? Zero debt at any time. $60,000 for a down payment and about $30,000 in retirement accounts

and two years funded HSA account. Good for you. Okay. Well done. Well done. Okay. I would buy now regardless of interest rates. Here's what I don't know 12 to 24 months from from now i don't know what interest rates will be

i do know house prices will have gone up seven to eight percent a year during those that time okay house prices are continuing to go up in print and and uh regardless of interest rates because there continues to be a shortage of housing versus the number of buyers looking. Now, so in other words, the strategy is we can predict that the cost is going to go up, so we might as well get in now. We don't know if rates are going to go down or not, so waiting on them to come down, they might not.

Yeah. There's no guarantee they're going to come down yeah um and uh they they sat at six for a decade before and then in 2008 they were artificially driven down because of the housing crisis and the government just straight up manipulated the market and drove the rates all the way down to about 1% there for a minute, and then up to 2%, then up to 3%, and then back down to 2.5%, and then up to 3%. And it sat there for a while and then jumped up just recently, you know, to 6% and 7% again. And everybody's freaking out like that's a high interest rate.

But over the scope of history, it's not really a high interest rate. So what I would say is this. We know house prices are going to go up, so let's buy. If go down which we don't know you can always refinance you're not stuck but you are stuck with house prices yep so buy now okay another question for you is in that case say we we buy in the next six months how much house house can we afford? Our income last year was about $80,000. We have a baby on the way due early next year, so my wife won't be working as much. But when the baby comes in, I'll be working full-time.

So that's kind of the projected income is about $80,000 a year. Yeah. A fourth of your take-home pay on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage is our suggestion. And that's going to mean you're probably going to buy less house than you thought you were going to buy before this call. But that's okay. It's your first house. You're in your early 20s. You've got time.

You're both engineers. You're both working someday. You can easily move up in-house later. So, again, I would get into the game. The only thing that's now making me hesitate is i don't know if i'm going to move a pregnant woman in her third trimester that sounds like a hell on earth to me i don't think i want to do that yeah but um but you know you might i don't know uh the further along in the pregnancy she is the less likely i am to buy until after the baby so

just because it's you know it's hard on her i mean really she's got y'all got enough on your play that deal on the hanging curtains for god's sakes so um yeah it's okay to not buy there's no sin that says you have to buy immediately but you know we were discussing interest rates and prices a minute ago now we're talking about your life so i might wait till after the baby comes my way to you uh year just for comfort, you know. There's nothing that says you have to do it now, and you have plenty of time, and you'll both have great careers. You'll both make great incomes.

You're going to be debt-free millionaires in your 30s, no matter which of these you do, whether you buy before or after the baby. But a 15-year fixed where the fourth of your take-home pay is going into the payment, and you'll be right on track, get that house paid off, or move up later on when everybody's back working and all that kind of stuff. And the other thing, too, is I think he's short-changing himself as to what their income could be. I know his wife's going to back off a little bit. He'll be coming out into the market. I think it's very possible if they wait

a year that they might find that their income is is higher yeah that's very possible it might put you into a different house um if interest rates stay the same and house prices went up seven percent during that year which is probably what's going to happen um you know the only thing that's really going to push interest rates down that i can see today is the fact that we're going into a presidential election year and generally the sitting party will try to drive rates down to say look what i did that's correct um and they you know and and we all know that why weren't you doing that two years ago then you know i mean it's that there's always that but um i i don't i wouldn't hold your breath because, uh, Jerome

Powell's gone on record as saying, and when we've got this, uh, inflation rate where it is, and it's still a little higher than they expected when, when, when July report came in. And so unemployment still very, very low. I would expect him to raise it a couple more times. They're just screwing with it just to prove that it's not, uh, it's a whole nother discussion they're trying to trying to use a hammer on a phillips head screwdriver but they're just because they don't know what the heck they're doing but the it's a disaster but anyway all of that to say i don't know that you're going to see interest rates come down so you just decide in the scope of your life with a baby on the way when we're going to buy ted is in saint paul minnesota hi

ted how are you. How are you? Great. How are you guys doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? I got a career question for you guys, so I hope I picked the right crowd today. But I am in a role that I really like. I'm a marketing analyst, and I make good money.

My wife and I are in a good financial position. I feel like I can continue to grow. I just want to know and bounce some ideas off both of y'all of how I can best grow in my career. So if you're good with it, I have the get clear assessment. I can read you my purpose statement if that's good with you guys. Sure. Yeah. All right. So I was created to use my talents of connection, compassion, imagination to perform my passions of promoting, advocating, protecting to accomplish my mission of service by producing assistance and protection.

And so for me, that's just, you know, my Christian faith. I really want to serve others and, serve others and impact lives to, you know, help people live their best lives too. And so I feel like I get to do that a little bit right now, and I want to continue to grow in doing that as well in my career. So do you have a specific idea? Well, let me say this, your assessment results scream people. There's really four types of work in the world, people work, ideal work, process work, and then objects or things. And your results scream people, screams people. And so the question becomes, for you to be very fulfilled, you're going to want to find work that allows you to use the people skills because you have a lot of people talents here. And then you very much love working with people and your motivational

driver, that missional result of service means I want to see the results of my work come through in the vein of serving people. So you got to figure out the people you want to help, the problem that they've got, and the solution to that problem. That's high level. And so that's what you're looking for. But I would not be in any kind of rush to leave a job you like, because I want you to figure out what is that path? What's the steps along that path to get to that work? But I would guess you have a good idea what it is. And so one of the things I want to do is I'd love, we're running out of time. Austin, I'd love to get him on the show, on the Ken Coleman show. And let me work through that with him in great detail as to what his ideas are.

Because, Dave, I know this one. Somebody calls with that type of question, there's something in them that's burning and itching, and they're looking for confidence to step forward in that direction. Yeah. He thinks he knows, but he's not sure. Yeah. This is The Ramsey Show.

Thank you for joining us, America. George Campbell, Ramsey Personalities, my co-host today. John's in Atlantic City. Hi, John. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How are you? Pleasure to talk to you guys.

Good to talk to you. How can we help? All right. So I've been listening to you for the past month or so. And before that I was buying real estate, but I think you'd disagree. I'm just going to lay out what I have. I have 52K in the money market, 8,000 in checking. Um, and, um, I have a credit card debt of 9,000 and a car loan of 21,000. Um, my wife, her only debt is her car. And we have a house that we owe 426 on and my three rental properties I have, I owe $125,000 on, $126,000, and $110,000. But they're all rented out.

So I was going to buy another piece of real estate, but what do you think? I think you should take all that money in that money market and knock out all of your debt and leave you with a nice emergency fund and slow down on all this real estate investing. Until you can get some of it paid off what's her card debt yeah her card debt um she's going to be paid off in four months i'm not sure exactly the number you don't know what the balance is now now i just know she's going to be done in four months her uh payment is so3,200. So it's a couple thousand bucks. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So you can write a check today and be debt-free. Am I understanding you right? Yeah, but then, I mean, you know, I know you're dead against it, but I love having the rental properties and having the money come in, but I also understand the Ramsey way. Well, here, let me, how old are you, John? Uh, 34. Okay. All right. When I was, uh, 24, I started buying real estate. And, um, by the time I was 26, I had $4 million worth.

I was aggressively buying it and I was buying really, really good deals. I was buying stuff at 70, 80 cents on the dollar. And so I had good equity positions. Some of the property I put mortgages on and I was renting some of it. I had short-term notes on and I was fixing it and flipping it during that time. Now that was a long time ago. That was back in the 80s, okay? During that time was another, that moment in time, there was a real estate craze. Real estate was the answer to everything like it is right now. Everybody's talking about real estate right now. Everybody in your age group, the 20s and 30s, think it's all over social media. It's all over everything.

It's like the thing to talk about, like you're cool if you're doing real estate right now you know it's you know what i'm talking about it's everywhere right 100 it was that way then and in those days we didn't have social media we didn't have the internet but we had these things called infomercials that would run at night and a guy would sit by the the side of the sea with the waves crashing in and talk about how wealthy he was and how he had bought all this real estate nothing down and you could buy his tape set for $3,000 on how to do it and that kind of stuff. There was a bunch of those characters out there. Um, one of them has got a really nice winery now in Napa Del Dotto. And, uh, he was one of the biggest ones, uh, and, uh, makes a great bottle of wine called the beast side note. But anyway, but anyway so i was in this group there was a

group of people that started in each city there was a guy that went around got a group of people doing nothing down or low amount down real estate real estate investors club of nashville and i was in this club with about 60 people that were doing exactly what you're doing and that were doing what i was doing back then okay and um they were all buying with as little money as they could put into it and making the rent, you know, collecting the rents and hoping that was going to pay the bills and so forth. Now, here's the reason I tell you that long, long, drawn-out story. No one from that club 30 years later

is rich. None of them. Except two guys. Wow, so you think the best, the quickest way to get a millionaires Both of those guys worked diligently to reverse the process and get out of debt.

I went bankrupt while I was in that club. I lost everything at 28 years old. And so did a whole bunch of those guys. As a matter of fact, the guy that wrote the book called Nothing Down, named Robert Allen, went bankrupt. Filed Chapter 11. Okay? And so the proof is in the pudding when you visit it 10 15

20 30 40 years later you can see okay did this work didn't work the ones the only ones that worked for were the ones that reversed the process and cleared the debt like george just told you to do so i i love how aggressive you are i I love that you love real estate. I love real estate. I've got a bunch of it. I mean, after I went broke, I made a bunch of money later, and I own several hundred million dollars of real estate now. I think it's an excellent investment. I like real estate, but 100% of my real estate is paid for. So, George, I mean, I think you're right. I would stop buying. I would clear the personal debt, and I'd clear my mortgages, all of them, including my house.

And you've got the ability to do this because, dude, you're a go-getter. You're a guy that gets crap done. But if you don't watch, you're going to outrun your coverage. That's what scares me with John. I'm looking at a guy. He's seeing his cash flow from three properties. I see a guy who has $820,000 in debt and one misstep could tank him. Oh yeah. One life situation is all it takes. And so I understand being kind of

starry eyed with a pile of money going, well, that means more real estate. I see it as a, we could get out of debt and reduce our risk and start to attack these properties. You end up with all of these properties paid for in three to five years, including your residence. You can buy another property a year for cash with the cash flow you'll create by doing that. That's what I did the second time. The second time I got, the first one's really hard. You get these three paid off. That's really hard, but you get those three, you get pure cash flow from those, no debt at all. You can buy another hundred, $200,000 property pretty quick because you'll have enough cash. It just piles up.

It snowballs in the right direction, you know, and that cash will snowball for you if you're not giving it all to the bank. But 100% of the time, debt equals risk. More debt equals more risk. Less debt equals less risk. 100% of the time. And that's why all those guys went broke in that collapse. Well, it's amazing how if you move a little bit slower right now you can go much faster later on oh yeah that's what happens when you get

rid of the debt and you have more cash flow you're going to be able to save up and pay cash for those what others perceive as faster but yeah the percentages shift on you because you know once i got you know a couple hundred you know i don't know five hundred thousand dollars worth of paid for real estate i'm got i got serious debt a serious cash hit in the bottom line every month. And then I added some income money to that and I can reach over and buy another one, reach over and buy another one, reach over and buy another one. And that thing gets to moving and it does, it feels like it accelerates. Well, then one emergency, the HVAC goes out, a tenant, some tenant vacancy. You're not freaking out. Yeah. You have a great position. Yeah a great position yeah i mean like i don't know something could happen like covid where people don't pay

their bills nothing whatever oh wait that actually happened yeah oh yeah that's it and then you can't evict them legally oh yeah that uh moratorium moratorium on evictions yeah and i'm not gonna pay because there's a moratorium on evictions so good luck with that landlord i know but you know house is paid for and when this is lifted you'll be homeless and i'll have a house so that's what happened a couple of them they tried to play shyster and we're like yeah it didn't work out i had one other come to me that was in a business that was you know you know i got a strip center and they came to us and said you know we're in trouble. Can you help us? Please give us some mercy.

And we went, yeah, we can do that. And will you forgive the rent? And I'm like, no, but I'll stop collecting it for now, and you can pay it back later. So, I mean, we can just pay no payments for four months, and then we'll pay double payments for four months or something like that. We'll work it out with you. Because, I mean, I get where you are, and I don't want you to go broke. I don't want to be the guy that calls you to go broke. I'd rather you be alive and pay me the rent, you know.

So let's work it out. Let's go no rent for this month, and we'll look at it next month. No rent next month. Okay, because we still got, you know, we still got, you're still getting Fauci'd. So as long as you're getting Fauci'd, I'll try to help you here. And you had the margin to do that because you had paid cash. You weren't desperate.

I mean, payments. You're not desperate. You know, and we did have one tenant one time. The old lady's single mom got terminal cancer. And, you know, I have the margin to be compassionate and not charge her and just turn that house into a ministry for a period of time. It was a horrible thing, a horrible process she went through. And she didn't make it.

Sad end of the story. But she didn't have a landlord problem. Because her landlord didn't have a mortgage problem. Hello. See how this works? This is The Ramsey Show. Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the entire back catalog of episodes.

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