The Ramsey Show - App - The Difference Between Real Love and Codependency (Hour 2)

Episode Date: June 18, 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 joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money.

Don is with us in Orlando. Hey, Don, how are you guys? Good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? All right. I have kind of a unique situation, and I've got to give you a quick rundown real quick.

So basically, my wife and I picked up Complete Guide to Money back in 2012. And with gazelle intensity, got ourselves out of debt to where we are currently now. We just owe on our house for about five more years. Good. We have a $10,000 emergency fund saved up. However, as of recently, I just graduated with my master's degree. And it was based off of a tuition reimbursement program where I work. Um, I'm a fire chief and I am also an instructor at the local college. I bring in about 80,000 a year. Um, now this is where it gets a little bit interesting. I've recently been,

uh, offered a job with the federal government where the pay is about $110,000 a year. If I take it, I will not stay with my organization currently the amount of time they require in order to take advantage of that tuition reimbursement. In other words, I'll owe the money back. How much? I could. It's about $11,000 is what I owe. But you make $30,000 more a year, one. I'll make $30,000 more a year, yeah, and also I'll only have to work one job as opposed to two.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. I have the money. I have it between my savings and my emergency fund. You said you have $10,000 in your emergency fund. We have $10,000 in my emergency fund right now. But, you know, between that and just my regular savings.

Well, the first thing I'm going to do is try to not drain the emergency fund. Will your existing municipality not allow you to pay it off, like, over 12 months or something? 90 days. 90 days. Yeah. All right. You can almost cash flow it in 90 days. Yeah, I guess.

I mean, you got a $30,000 a year raise. That's $2,500 a month. Yeah. Over 90 days, that's $7,500. Increased income. Now, you'll have some taxes out of that, but your income has gone up $2,500 a month. Okay. So I'd have to crunch the numbers on it.

I mean, if I have to touch the emergency fund at all, should it be completely off limits? No, I'm taking the job. We're going to work this. But the emergency fund really should be used for emergencies, and I'm going to try to not make this an emergency. Okay. Because what I want to do is leave it alone as my first option. My second option is, in worst-case scenario, do that but you ought to be able to cash flow at well over half of this during the 90 days just due to your raise alone plus plus you don't have any debt no okay so that means you

cash flow even more of it i think i think you just cash flow it i mean what is it, $3,300 a month is what you need. Okay. Or what happens if you pay them late? To be honest, I don't know. I don't either. No one's ever done that that I know of. Yeah. So, you know, I can't pay it over 90 days, but I'll pay you back over four months.

Okay. And just say no and see. What are they going to do, sue you for 30 days? No. They're months, you know, and just say no. And so what are they going to do? Sue you for 30 days? No, they're not, you know. But, yeah, I don't mind. I mean, I want you to honor the agreement that you made with them, which is to repay it. But let's do that in a way that's wise.

But here's the thing. Let's say that you got within $2,000. Well, yeah, you take that out of the emergency fund if you have to. And then the next month you put it back, right? But I think you can budget $3,300 a month and just do it. Okay. Because you got a raise of $2,500 a month. You following me?

So when you were paying off debt, how much debt were you paying off a month? We hit it really hard. We hit all of our student loans, and it was probably about $50,000. And we got it paid off within a year. Okay, that's more than what we're talking about. That's $4,000 a month. Yeah. If you did $4,000 a month on your debt, you can do $4,000 a month with a $2,500 raise on this.

Yeah, yeah. Is this making sense? Yeah, perfect. So I think you just pay them, and you definitely take the job for sure. It sounds like it's what you want to do with your life, one but number two is 30 grand more and you work less this is life's good here this is a good all the way around andrew is with us andrew is in phoenix arizona hi andrew welcome to the dave ramsey show thanks for taking my call dave sure what's up uh my wife and i moved back to Arizona back in October of last year, and I started at the current place that I'm at, and so I didn't have health insurance. My wife

basically passed out in a parking lot, and I had to take her to the hospital because she wasn't responding. They admitted her. Within three hours, she was completely responsive. My pastor came, and we prayed for her, and she started responding. But in that three hours, they completely responsive my pastor came and we prayed for her and she started responding but in that three hours they hooked her up to an IV did an MRI did a CAT scan they could not find anything wrong with her and the doctor came after about two and a half hours said that it was stress induced go home and get some rest and we said oh okay you know and then two weeks later we got a bill for $10,000. Did you dispute the bill at the time?

I tried to dispute the bill. They said the only thing they could do was try to give me a relief on it, but I couldn't make more than $3,500 a month. Now, this is not an income issue. You did not provide $10,000 worth of services. Right, and that's what we tried to tell them. They said, look, there's nothing really we can do. Yeah, there is. They can do whatever they want to.

They didn't remove her freaking appendix. They put an IV in. So what happened is that we just found out over the weekend that this hospital declared bankruptcy and is closed. Their doors are closed. And we haven't made any payments to them because they said, look, if you don't make any payments, like, we'll just send you to collections. And my wife and I were like, okay, fine, we'll just,

we'll make a deal with the collection agency then when it goes to collections and we'll try to make it, you know, make a deal with them then. But now that they've declared bankruptcy and their doors are closed, what should we do now? Should we just leave it alone until somebody contacts us? Or has that been forgiven because it was forgiven to them? No, it is not forgiven. Your debt to them is an asset of theirs, like the furniture that was in the hospital.

Everything that is an asset of theirs will be sold to someone. That someone will be in touch with you, and you will have to settle with them. They likely will pay a nickel on the dollar for this, though, which is going to help you to settle with them. And that's what we were planning on. I thought that's what we were hoping to do, that we can probably settle with them like on a one-time payment thing. The biggest problem is you're going to have some damaged credit

that's going to continue until you get this solved. But other than that, you don't have a problem. You're going to have to wait and figure out but other than that you don't have a problem you're going to have to wait and figure out who ends up owning this debt okay because you can't just pay it to anybody you got to pay it but all of their debts there's probably you know hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars of their debts that are in collections and they will all be sold to someone a debt buyer that will then try to collect those debts. The debt buyer will pay probably a nickel on the dollar for it, though.

So, yeah, you're going to end up getting this settled. In the future, go ahead and deal with something up front and push and push and push and try to get something that's a fair amount and go ahead and pay it. But on this one, just play it out now. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs?

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To learn more, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org. That's chministries.org. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org. Thank you for being with us, America. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, which means even if you mismeasure or you pick the wrong color, they will remake your window blinds for free.

Site-wide savings are happening right now. You can take an additional 5% off if you go to blinds.com slash Ramsey. Blinds.com slash Ramsey. Moesha is in Hawaii. She says, I'm 21 years old. My husband's in the military. The only debt we have is our car, which is $24,000 left to pay. Both want to get rid of it, but we don't know what steps to take to make that happen.

We have a used car as well that we paid for in cash, but it's not as reliable. What do you recommend? I recommend you get rid of it. I don't know what your income is, but I'm going to guess at 21 in the military, you're not making a pile of money. Could be wrong. And that $24,000 is probably eating your lunch. So, yeah, I'm getting rid of that thing. The steps you do to get rid of it is you have to find out what it is worth in terms of if you were to sell it.

For instance, on Craigslist, that's called a private party sale. You go to just go on the Internet and look at a private party sale, and you can figure out what the car is worth. And let's pretend it's worth $20,000 and you owe $24,000, which would probably be close to right, which means you're upside down. You're in the hole $4,000. In order to sell it, you have to be able to get the title from the bank. They're not going to give you the title unless you pay them $24,000.

You're only going to get $20,000 from your buyer, so you have to have the other 4 000 figured out and that means you have to either borrow that money from your local credit union um or work extra and save up the four thousand dollars in order to do that but my my guess is that this car was a huge mistake, and it's probably hammering you. You're probably hemorrhaging money right now. So I could be wrong, but I'm not. So, you know, you do need to get rid of it,

and you're going to have to go borrow the money, even if you put the other $4,000 on a credit card. Dave Ramsey said use a credit card. No, Dave Ramsey said you're already $24,000 in debt. When you sell the car, you're $4,000 in debt. I think we're going in the right direction here, people. So you move that debt onto something else and get rid of this car. But you've got to cover the amount that you're in the hole,

the amount you're upside down in order to make the transaction work. Tamara is with us in New York City. Hi, Tamara. How are you? Hi, Dave. I'm okay. I was calling because for the last two years, I've just found myself in a lot of debt. Before that, I was, like, I think, good at saving and managing myself. What happened?

I had two kids in college at the same time, and they didn't follow my advice. They picked very expensive schools. One of them got some scholarships, and the other one didn't follow my advice they picked very expensive schools one of them got some scholarships and the other one didn't get any and you supported their bad decisions and i had to support no you didn't have to you chose to okay yes but then now i i have like credit card debt because i charged some of their tuition on my credit card. Yeah, on a school that they couldn't afford. Yeah. Okay. Yes.

So is this over? Is this over? Are they out of school? Well, no. I just told my son because he wasn't giving me his grades and stuff like that. I told him I'm not going to support your school if that's how you're going to behave. Okay. And then my daughter, she feels like because she gets at least like 60% to 70% of scholarships for her school,

that like, you know, the father and I should split and pay the rest. Oh, so she gets to tell you how you're supposed to do with your money. This is a bright kid. Very. Manipulative? No. She didn't get to tell you anything title the new generation is very entitled no your daughter is very entitled

yes yeah okay um but i just i don't like debt and i don't like the financial situation i'm in and i have like old emergency fund but it's like every month it's like i find myself taking a thousand dollars from it so it was like about 25 000 now it's about to month it's like I find myself taking $1,000 from it. So it was like about $25,000. Now it's about $17,000. Okay. And I have about $40,000 of debt. So I was wondering if I just take that emergency fund, pay it down, and just snowball the rest of them and start over.

Yes, ma'am. Yes. If and only if you learn a new word. You ready for the word? No. That's the word. No. Can you use that word?

Yes, I'm trying. No, you don't try. You have to do it. Because here's the thing. If you don't stop this, the Titanic is going to go down. You can stick your finger in one little hole, but it's hemorrhaging on the other end. The thing's just bleeding water. I mean, it's just everywhere. So, you know, your daughter is going to go

to a school in a place that you agree with because you can afford to support it. Or she gets nothing. And the same with your son. It has to fit your budget. Or the answer is no, you don't get anything. They don't get to tell you what to do with your money. It is not child abuse to not support your children's stupid decisions. That's not child abuse.

You're not a bad mom. And I don't care if she's 20 and she stomps her foot and her little lip sticks out and she has a little fiat. Oh, bless her little heart. I couldn't give a crap less. You don't get to make decisions with my money. And when you make decisions that I approve of, then you have a shot at me financing them. But I am not paying for you to make decisions that i do not approve of now why do i not approve of them two reasons one is it's a bad decision and i'm smarter than you because

i'm older than you and i have this thing called wisdom and experience the second reason is it's my freaking money so i get to decide where it goes to i don't have to put up with you 20 year olds telling me where my money's gonna go and so you've got to reset your parenting with her and you can do that gently and kindly you're a gentler kinder person than i am by nature i'm a little more in your face and you're sweet but you can still be sweet and still say no because it doesn't fit your budget she doesn't get to tell you where your money goes and you're not going to endorse with your checkbook her bad behaviors and her bad decisions these are three reasons one sorry to interrupt but one other thing is that there a company that is pitching to me for my student loan debt, which I didn't include that in the debt.

It's like they can help me discharge the debt, but pay them a fee. No? No, there's no such thing as discharging student loan debts unless you're permanently disabled and you're on SSI or you're dead. These are the only two ways that student loan debts get discharged. That's a scam company. You need to stay away from them. If it's a traditional federally insured facility-made loan, that's the answer to that.

So, yeah, you've got to say no. You've got to put some boundaries around your life and your money, and then you know how to manage money. You just have chosen not to because these kids have been running your life instead of you running your life. And I'm sorry that that you got there but that's exactly what you described to me and you can get out of this yes in that case if you will stop the bleeding stop the giving money to people that you can't afford to give because they're making decisions you can't afford to support then yes you would use your emergency fund and yes you'd get on a tight budget and yes you would

snowball your way right through this and you can do all of that you really can you know exactly what to do you've just got to go do it now it's very hard though to tell your kids no it's very hard to tell people that you love no even if they're being stupid and it's just hard i mean every one of you've got a relative i have have relatives. You look at them and you go, that was stupid. And you don't say it out loud, but you're just looking at them going, you're stupid. And, you know, and if they come to you asking for you to support stupid, you're not loving them by supporting their stupid.

You're actually participating in something that's bringing harm to them. So I'm not going to finance something that brings harm to people that I love. Why would I do that? I love them. That's tough love. No, darling, it's just real love. Love that supports something that's damaging to someone you love is not love. That's called codependency.

It's different than love. Way different than love. It's a toxic form of relationships. All of us have some of it at one time or another in our lives. Boy, it sure does get over into the money stuff. Woo! Man, oh man. There you go. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Okay, I need you to listen to this. Because one normal routine that everyone does can cause total chaos in your life.

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600 million people worldwide have downloaded Anchor Free's Hotspot Shield. Download it right now. Just search Hotspot Shield on iTunes or Google Play or go to hotspotshield.com. You can be secure in seconds. Download Hotspot Shield by Anchor Free today. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Lee is with us. Hi, Lee. How are you? I am thrilled to be here. How are you, Dave? We're thrilled to have you, sir. Where do you live?

I live in Dallas, Texas. And all the way to Nashville to do a debt-free scream. All the way to Nashville. Love it. How much you paid off, brother? Ifree screen. All the way to Nashville. Love it. How much you paid off, brother? I paid off $70,000 in 4.75 years, about 60 months. There you go. All right.

4.75 years. Good. And your range of income during that time? Range of income was $45,000 to about $80,000, $85,000. Cool. What do you do for a living? I'm an actuary, but I'm doing like general business analytics. Okay.

Just the real exciting stuff, of course. Well, it is for those of us that are math nerds. So, cool. What kind of debt was the 70 grand? Oh, well, I diversified my debt. So, I had, that's right, I had student loans. I had a car fleece, and then I had 14K of like who knows what. Gotcha.

Credit cards, you know. So tell me your story. Five years you've been working on this? Yeah. Tell me about that. Well, my story starts about 10 years ago. But five years ago was that moment where, you know, my car broke down. And I was on the fence. I'm like, I need to get a car. car i've never had to buy a car so i went and got a car fleece and it brought my debt over 50k and

so i was looking staring down the barrel of you know 50 plus k debt and that was the aha moment where it's like i can't do this i can't this is this is un this is unsustainable and so that was the aha moment where it's like, I can't do this. This is unsustainable. And so that was, I had been listening to your show for six years at the time doing like some form of the program. You wouldn't call it your program. Ish. Ish, yeah. The lead debt-free program, which isn't as effective.

Okay. But when I really actually started doing your program, things started clicking and, you know, that was the moment where, you know, the moment where I realized I have to stop taking on debt to get my debt down. I know it sounds obvious, but I was paying down my debt for 10 years, but it was growing. So there was a problem there. So during what period of time did you have the most success, and what were you doing during that time?

Most success paying down my debt? Well, it's, I mean, I feel like the whole period was successful because, you know, each paycheck I'd have a target and whether or not I'd hit that target, I'd put something towards that. And maybe, you know, maybe sometimes I wouldn't have anything left over at the end of the budget. And that's okay.

But, man, when I would get my tax return, boy, I would just throw that whole thing in there. And that felt good. Yeah. Okay. All right. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? The key to getting out of debt is it's definitely your program, and it's following it to the T, but it's, you know, it's a very personal experience and it's a very personal challenge.

And so within the framework of your program, I found what works for me. You know, what worked for me may not work for someone else, but just it's a whole different mindset. And it's a marathon. It is not a sprint. Well, that's different mindset it's and it's a marathon it is not a sprint well that's for sure yeah it is a marathon did you have people cheering you on on the marathon or telling you you're nuts for running it um more so nuts for running it also because i i was doing a lot of weird things you know i'm i'm buying a driving a former canine unit cop car

that i bought at the auction. Bought and paid for. I looked really official on the streets, but man, did I look weird showing up to work. Boy, my car in that lot, it just... Didn't fit. It did not fit. I'd park it in the back away from the Lexuses. What'd you do with the lease? Well, the fleece, that was one of the first things i got rid

of i and i had to pay you know i i was on the hook for i think like 20 grand i had to pay four grand to get rid of that thing okay all right i just got rid of it okay that got that but you wrote a check and sold it and got rid of the car then and that helped move some of the 70 grand that's right okay well done sir very well done proud of you good job good job well we got a copy of chris hogan's book retire inspired for you that needs to be the next chapter in your story that you're a millionaire and uh outrageously generous along the way so well done lee very well done how old are you i'm 31 All right. And this whole journey was me, single, just pushing the thing along. Very good.

Good for you. Well done. Lee from Dallas, Texas. $70,000 paid off in 4.75 years, making $45 to $80. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. I'm debt-free.

Yeah. There you go. You're the opera version. Well done. Very well done. Bree is in New York. Hi, Bree. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My boyfriend and I have been dating for five years, and against your better wisdom, we have been shacked up for three of those. During this time, I have had a career conundrum, and so I have been working various jobs in order to keep going on my baby steps. My question is, he is frustrated that I'm working so much if it's not involved in a particular career that I'm aiming to pursue.

So he has offered to either combine our finances or give me a stipend a month so that I can work less and focus on figuring out what it is I want to do for a career. I do not want to combine our finances, nor am I okay with receiving a stipend. And so my question is, how do I try to work 11 or 12 hours a day, but also be pursuing something else? Why don't you get married? That's a good question.

He says that we should just combine our finances so that we can test everything out before we get married oh you've been kind of doing that for three years you've been doing that for three years right and legally like you've said a bunch of times like there's no protection yep you know in case we were to break up well and here's the thing it also changes the um it he bless his heart he's trying okay but what he what what he just said was i'm gonna pay you to live with me that's what you heard and that's what i heard but he didn't mean that okay but but that that when you start this down this road a stipend seriously i mean is that not just a little bit insulting to a girl i mean come on you're about as romantic as an actuarial i mean gosh unbelievable

yeah so uh and i don't want to be like if you want it put a ring on it you know that's not very romantic either but at the same time it's like i don't know i feel like i'm in a lose-lose situation where i want to keep you know pushing forward on my baby steps and being gazelle intense yeah and i don't feel like supporting that i you know you guys have got to decide what you're going to do my advice to you would be um get married you've been living together three years you've been dating five years. I think we've established a level of compatibility. Go get some pre-marriage counseling and get married, and then that solves this whole issue. That's my advice to you. It's not put a ring on it, but

it's just a matter of you're already doing everything associated with marriage, except you don't have the legal benefits, and it creates a weird relationship dynamic when someone you're not married to is paying you and you live with them i mean that's just kind of feels weird doesn't it i mean it just it and i understand he doesn't mean it that way but it's almost like he's um you know paying you you know that's just weird you weird. You don't want to be that girl, for sure. You know, so, and he doesn't mean it that way, but it shifts the dynamic in this. And so, you know, if I were in your shoes, I'd get married.

That's what I would do. I'd get some pre-marriage counseling, see if there's any toxic stuff left in this relationship, short. I'm talking like September. I'm not talking like September. I'm not talking about September of 2019 either. Like this one. So five years is enough.

Really. It's time to paint or get off the ladder. Really. You've got to decide what's going on here. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. There are few things in this world that irritate me more than when people pay too much for their mortgage. So many of you are paying way too much, and you don't even know it. I've got my good friend Mike Hardwick with Churchill Mortgage here. Mike, how do you help these folks? It's unbelievable, Dave, how much people can save if they just make a simple call.

We've helped thousands of your listeners save hundreds each month or take years off their loan, helping them to save thousands of dollars in interest over time. Folks, do yourself a favor. Make a quick call to Churchill Mortgage today. I'm telling you, if you're paying a mortgage, you're potentially throwing money away that could be piling up in your savings account. It's true, Dave. With the rates the way they are right now, if you're making any mortgage payment these days, you're probably paying too much.

Call Churchill Mortgage, guys. It's well worth a few minutes of your time. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. Equal housing lender 761 Old Hickory Boulevard, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. You guys believe we're halfway through 2018? Wow. I can't believe it's 2018.

Well, our technology team here at Ramsey Solutions is absolutely booming. And we've brought in over 25 developers just this year who want to see the code that they create actually help people change their lives. See, like when you write code here, it's like changing millions of people's lives because we're creating all these digital products and ways that we help people with apps and all kinds of different things. And we're currently on the hunt for several key developers. We need a Salesforce developers, Ruby on Rails, particularly seniors, Java, front end tech,

you guys that are front-end developers and if you're a top-notch object-oriented developer who wants to work with 120 150 other tech gurus this place these are smart people and they're fun to work with because they're working for something that matters so it's an unusual tech team oh and by the way we go home at 5 30 we don't we don't work 80 hours a week. We want you to go be home with your family. If you guys don't know that in the tech world, developers are notorious for being worked 80 hours a week. And we just don't do that.

You go home. If I walk through here and you're here at night, I'll send you home. You should be. I'm here at 6 o'clock. You ought to be gone. You ought to be gone. I mean, if there's an exception, if something's broken or something, we've got to work on it right then. We can't have, like, the website down or something, but I mean, occasionally we run into something like that, but this rhythm of work is

we go home. So, anyway, you want to check it out. We've got all kinds of positions we're hiring for in addition to tech, but a lot of tech roles here at DaveRamsey.com slash, roles here at DaveRamsey.com slash or just at DaveRamsey.com on the right hand side there's a little tab that says Dave's hiring and you can click on that and I'm actually learning a lot about tech I'm not always up on cultural things and cultural icon things that are brand new. Rachel helps me with that live on the air in front of all you guys. But anyway, but the actual workings, because we spend so much money on it, I just felt like I ought to understand some of it.

So they're teaching me, and I've learned a lot from these guys. Really, really sharp team. Really sharp team. Debbie is with us in Lexington, Kentucky. Hi, Debbie. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? Well, I just got an $80,000 insurance settlement, and my husband wants to pay off our house, which I'm kind of on board with. But my question to you is, should I go ahead and pay off the house and invest what's left of it or invest it? Because this will take a big chunk out of income that I would have had coming in. So what I'm wondering is, should I go ahead and pay off the house?

What's the settlement from? I had a work injury, and it prevents me from doing any other type of work. So at least anything that I'm used to, I can't do physical labor anymore. How old are you? I'm 60. What happened? It was kind of a fall injury. I worked on a grounds crew, and, you know, it was in the wintertime

and slipped and fell and just totally messed up my shoulder and the right side of my hip and everything. How are you doing now? Still deal with pain, but, you know, I mean. But you won't be doing that job. But because of that, you won't be doing that job anymore. No, no, I haven't done that job for a few years. I had to retire.

Now, did you get more than $80,000, or was that all you got? No. For the last four years, they'd been paying me on a monthly basis about $960 a month. Gotcha. What was your income before? I probably made in the neighborhood of $2,500 a month. Okay. And what's your nest egg, all of your retirement picture?

How much money have you all got saved? Oh, geez. My husband's really good at that. He's been listening to you. We probably have in the neighborhood of $400,000 to $500,000 invested. Okay. And you said you're 60. How old is he?

He's 60 also. He's two months and one day older than me. Okay. So you can live off of the $400,000 and do so much easier if you didn't have a house payment, agreed? That's true. See, he's retiring in a year. It's not really like your money and his money. We're married.

It's our money. Right, right. Well, he's retiring in a year in April of 2020. Right. And he brings in like $4,500 a month right now. I'm just concerned that when he retires that that's going to go down and then my income is going to go down to like $800 a month. Well, let's pretend that your $80,000 was invested just for easy math at 10%. That would be $8,000 a year.

What's the balance on your mortgage uh that would be right around 67 000 okay all right and so if you put that in that's let's call that 70 000 all right if there's 70 000 invested at 10 that's 7 000 a year if you guys have 400 000 already and you have Social Security and you have whatever other retirements that you guys have, I don't think $7,000 a year is going to mean one way or the other, is it? No, not really. So let's pay off the house.

Yeah, that's what he said. He said, go ahead and call Dave Ramsey. Yeah, but regardless of what he said or regardless of what he said, or regardless of what I said, do you see what I'm talking about? Yeah, I do. Okay. I do, because right now that would bring close to $1,200 a month into the picture, which is probably a couple hundred dollars more a month that we'd be saving

or gaining in his terms. We'd be gaining $200 and something a month. Yeah, if you throw $800 a month more into savings, you'll have that money back in no time. That's a great idea. You know, because you don't have a house payment anymore. We don't owe on anything except the house. Yeah, without a house payment, just start paying yourself a house payment, and that $70,000 will be back there in no time.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, I'd pay it off. I think that's what we'll do. I'm sorry you went through the fall. That sounds like a lot of pain from that. I'm glad you did get a reasonable settlement for that. That's a good thing. Maria is with us in Greenville, South Carolina. Hi, Maria.

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi. Hi. How can I help? I'm glad to speak to you today. I'm glad to speak to you today. I have a question. My husband and I have bought a larger house to move my mother in with us.

She's 80 years old and her health is getting to the point where I'm concerned about her being alone all the time. My question is, when she moves in with us, we're selling two houses, combining household incomes. Do we need to actually, or should we, physically combine our incomes? Okay. Is she putting money into the purchase of the home? We both are. Yeah. Okay. So she's putting some of her money in. So what happens to her portion of ownership when she dies? I'm an only child. It all comes to me. Okay.

And there's a will. I'm the executor as well. Okay. And that's all set up. Okay. Good. And it's in a trust as well. Then it really doesn't matter. It's more emotional up. Okay, good. And it's in a trust as well. Then it really doesn't matter. It's more emotional than anything else. Because you purchased the home, and you're managing the money for her at 80 and very closely with her at 80. If it helps her to feel like she still has the dignity of some independence, that the money's not just all piled into your checking account, that's fine.

Because you've got your hands around this anyway. And I assume you've got powers of attorney set up if she lost capacity, right? Yes. Okay. It sounds like you've done a good job setting her estate plan up and everything is laid out. And so, realistically, you've got control of it. And so it is combined from a practical viewpoint. If you want to physically, tactically combine it, dump it all into one checking account,

and you just manage it, as long as that doesn't give her heartburn, I'm okay with that. There's no downside to that because it's all yours anyway. You're taking care of her. Right. You know, it's all yours. I just didn't know whether we should approach it from there since she is putting money into the house and we're putting money into the house. Basically, this mortgage is going to be gone in probably no more than six months

because we're selling two houses and we'll pay this one off. That's awesome. That's wonderful. Yeah, that's one issue is the ownership of the home, but then the monthly cash flow is where you're talking about combining. You've already combined those dollars. The purchase dollars are already combined. But it's just your monthly cash flow, and just what lets her have a sense of dignity,

a sense of well-being. She may need some of her, quote, own money, unquote, just to help her feel different is all I'm saying. But it doesn't matter. You've really got control of the whole situation should you need to. Hope that helps. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Hey, it's Kelly Daniel,

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