The Ramsey Show - App - We Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck (Hour 1)

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Девочка-пай 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 amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney, bestselling author of Building a Non-Anxious Life. I guess I'm an aspiring bestselling author, John. I just pre-launched a book, and I hope that it's successful as yours. It's called Breaking Free from Broke. It's on pre-sale right now at ramsaysolutions.com. Work hard, George.

Inspiring. May you accomplish all of your dreams. But we're both YouTubers, so we succeeded in that regard. Well, you're crushing me on YouTube. If that's success. Well, let's take some calls. The number is 888-825-5225. We'll help you take the right next step with your money, your mental health, your relationships,

whatever it is. We will give you our advice. That is a guarantee. All right. Let's start with Jessica in Boston. What's going on, Jessica? Hi. So I'm wondering how my husband and I have, we're a family of five.

We have three kids, five and under. We both work. We make a very good living north of 300K a year, which almost 50 of it is tax-free because my husband receives VA disability pay monthly. But we've had several crises, I guess, come up the past two years. And we were debt-free, but now due to the unexpected occurrences, we're now living beyond our means, paycheck to paycheck, have no savings. And, you know, our emotional,

our physical health is taking a toll. Our marriage is taking a toll. And we want to stop living paycheck to paycheck. How do we get out of this? And how can we repair the relationship along the way. I'm sorry to hear what you're going through. Yeah, what happened? What were the crises?

Yeah, so the height of the real estate market, right? We sold our first house. This is our opportunity to get debt-free. We were probably, I want to say between 50 to 65,000 in debt. Um, at the height of the market in 2021, we sold our first home, uh, walked away, got free, um, paid off the entirety of our debt. Um, and then I got pregnant with our third child. I was only six months postpartum. Um, and I was actually struggling with postpartum depression in the interim. We had major complications.

I was in preterm labor for almost three months, and I am the breadwinner between me and him. you know, uh, software, uh, sales, technology sales, I should say, um, job and which forced me to, uh, need to take a medical leave of absence due to my postpartum getting so bad. Um, it was literally for the safety of myself and my family that I had to take a medical leave. And the day I returned to work, I was laid off. In turn, we literally two weeks, yeah, it was bad. So I want to say a month prior to me going back to work, we had just closed on a new home, our forever home, and the bills piled up quick. So how much debt are you in now? It's probably, I want to say between $22,000 to $25,000 total.

And what kind of debt? Yeah, so it's unsecured loan debt, credit card debt. Should I include the car or no? Yes, that's debt, isn't it? Okay, then it goes up from there. So I would tack on a total, an additional $60,000. So you're probably $85,000 in consumer debt. Are you back to working now? I am, I am.

I found a new job fairly soon, within a month, and I am working. Are you still making $300,000? It takes some time to build the pipeline again. Okay, what's your husband do? Yeah, he works for the government and he was a Marine and now

he works for the government as a safety inspector for OSHA. So I'm going to let George talk you through this debt situation, but I want to say a couple things, okay? Okay. The first thing is I'm really, really glad you're still here. Thank you.

And making that call when you're holding a baby is one of the scariest calls you can make, right? It is. Yeah. Because there's that demon telling you that they're going to take your baby away. People are going to say you're crazy and they're going to lock you up. And I'm so, so proud of you for doing that. That's hard.

And we're good now, right? For the most, most of the time. I still have moments. Let me ask you this way. You're always going to be around here, right? Yes, for sure. Good. The second thing is is if you haven't already there's gonna come a moment when y'all are gonna have to and the quicker you get here the quicker you can begin to do the walk the path that jordan's gonna lay out for you you're gonna have to make peace with grieve the crap out of but make peace with here's the life had, and now here's the one we're in right now.

Okay. The more you try to, quote, unquote, get back to what we had, the more you're going to make yourself nuts because you're just going to run in a circle. You're going to be dragging what used to be. That's a fair assessment. Right? So we used to have $60,000 cars.

We don't anymore. We're a Camry family now. Yeah. We used to have a humongous house and we had our forever house. It's not our forever house anymore. You and me are forever husband, but the house isn't. And that's okay. Okay.

And we used to make 300 grand. Now we don't. And maybe one day we will again, but that's not the world we're in right now. And so when you make peace existentially with those moments, then remember we had Alexis? Yeah. But now we got, now we got a Corolla and it gets us where we need to go

and you got a bunch of dope marine tattoos but you're going to look awesome smoking hot getting out of a Camry. That's just the world we have now, right?

And it's not less than, it's just different. It's different and it'll be back. It'll be back. You're a hustler. Your husband's a brilliant guy. I mean, you'll be back

but let's make peace with that new world, right? And that new world is awesome, by the way. It's top 1% of planet Earth. It's a great world. Just we've got to let go of what used to be. It used to be awesome, and then we got laid off, and it sucks. And here we are now.

Now it's awesome again. Just a different kind of awesome. Okay. So, Jessica, this is going to start with some simple math, but it's going to end with some sacrifice and behavior change. You ready for it? Absolutely. Okay. Is your husband on board too? This is an important factor. He is. He knows how you feel about all this. Okay. We're going to get you to solid ground, and I'll give you some options. It'll be a choose your own adventure.

My guess is your take-home pay is somewhere around 15 grand a month. Yes. Correct. Okay. So let's look at what our expenses are. What do we need to keep the household running? And you're going to do that with a budget. I'm going to gift it to you. It's called EveryDollar. I'm going to give you the premium version. It's going to have paycheck planning, connect to your bank account, all the good stuff.

Your homework is to list out every single expense you have as a family and ruthlessly cut out the stuff that doesn't matter that you don't need right now. You got that? Okay. Give me a rough estimate of what that would add up to. Five grand? For cutting out or the essential? The total expenses that would keep the house running.

Food, shelter, utilities, transportation, all that. Probably 12. 12 grand? Yep. With our nanny included, child care included. Oh my god. Remember those sacrifices I mentioned, Jessica? This is where we might have to figure out how to get that

12 grand down to 5, so we have 10,000 to throw at the debt, and we can be done in 8 months. That might mean selling the cars if you can't make those sacrifices. It might mean letting the nanny go for a season. This is not going to be fun, but your life on the other side is going to be way better for it. So hang on the line. We'll gift you every dollar. We're wishing you the best. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney.

We're taking your questions at 888-825-5225. You jump in, we'll talk about your relationships, your mental wellness, your financial wellness, all of it right here on The Ramsey Show. Our question of the day is brought to you by Neighborly, your hub for home services. With 19 home service providers nationwide, the network of local service pros on Neighborly.com can help with just about anything you need done in and around your home. Visit Neighborly.com slash Ramsey to find out more. All right, today's question comes from Leanne in Virginia. Leanne writes, I've been hearing that the U.S. dollar may be obsolete

and so-called experts advising to do something with money sitting in various large banks like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, etc. Since the market has been all over the place and the CD rates have been up, sitting in various large banks like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, etc. Since the market has been all over the place and the CD rates have been up, we stockpiled a couple hundred thousand dollars in Wells Fargo, but now after seeing these alerts, we are a bit concerned. What are your thoughts on the U.S. dollar becoming devalued or obsolete? Wow, a lot going on here, John.

A lot going on here. All right, I'm going to let you talk about the investing strategy, George, but here's my two cents and you can do with it what you will. The U.S. dollar is how the world does business, right? And I had one, a friend of mine, she was a legal scholar who said, the world spends, planet Earth spends on one sentence. The United States will pay its bill in U.S. dollars, right? Pay its bills. That's why things like government shutdowns and letting the debt ceiling, not dealing with this long-term issue will be an explosion of catastrophic events if we don't get this

debt under control nationally and we don't continue to figure out ways to pay our bills. And if you owe 30-something trillion dollars, it makes the whole world nervous. And if you just print and invent money, it makes the whole world nervous. And other people can't divorce themselves from you. Other countries can't if they have to pay their bills and your money, right? They can't devalue your currency because then they're devaluing the amount of money they owe you or you owe them if there's debt, right? So there's been the conversation with Brazil and Russia and China. Like BRIC is the big new thing.

BRICS, I think it is. Which is we're going to start, we're going to create an alternative world currency that's not the U.S. dollar. Not tied to us. And then everyone goes, it's all coming down. So here's what I can tell you. I can tell you that if the U.S. dollar

does not continue to be the world currency, and Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and fill in the blank, all fail, any amount of things that you think you have done to prep for that moment, you have not done. It will be a drastically different planet. Okay. The world will be different at that moment. So I have like this, like every other, it's all gone. Move all your money to gold, start buying coffee and burying bullets and silver coins in the ground. And buy a bunch of Beanie Babies.

Whatever the thing of the day is, I always like to look on the other side of it and ask myself, will the world be the same? Like this world I'm preparing for, will it be the same on the other side of this? The answer would be no. It would be a radically different world that we're all going to have to adjust to when we get there. So what does that mean? That means I'm going to go throughout my regular day, not trying to time the meteorite that's going to hit us one day. I'm going to do the next right thing.

And the next right thing is, given the information I have in front of me, the world currency is the US dollar and forget the world currency. My country that I live in uses the US dollar. That's what I'm going to put in the bank and I'm going to invest it for long term and I'm going to pay off my debts and I'm going to next right thing, next right thing, next right thing. I'm just not going to get on YouTube and listen to the just absolute drivel that is coming out of some of the news stations out there who have no vested interest in information, quality information, truth. They have vested interest. They're publicly traded companies. They have a vested interest in one thing, clicks, your attention, so they can sell ads.

They're not incentivized to give you correct information. And so they're incentivized to get your attention so they can sell ads. They're not incentivized to give you correct information. And so they're incentivized to get your attention. How do I get your attention? It's all coming down! Right? That's one way. Right. And then you go, what's coming down? The dollar! Well, John, if you upload a video and it's like, guys, the dollar's fine. Everyone just go to work

and love your families. It's going to get zero views. Nobody wants to watch that. It's not exciting. Right. And is there some challenges? Are you freaking to get zero views. Nobody wants to watch that. It's not exciting. Right. And is there some challenges? Are you freaking kidding me? Yes. We owe $37 trillion. We have people in Washington just throwing crayons at each other in a sandbox. Like, you're dumb.

No, you're dumb. And then, I mean, it's madness. So if I am a trading partner in the US, would I be concerned about the absolute insanity I see everywhere? Yep, I would. No question about it. Should the average citizen who has a mortgage and a car payment and some credit card debt be trying to think through a strategy for what happens when the dollar goes away? No, I would not spend my time doing that. I think there's a ton of hurdles between the US dollar going away

and brick or whatever these things kick in. There's a lot of strategies. I mean, a lot of hurdles in between now and then. The biggest thing we can all do is take care of our homes, take care of our personal finances and vote people who will do what's right. And that's the game.

That's what we can do. That's the game. That was a good intellectual take, John. Mine was not that smart. What do we do? I just underlined things that I thought were funny in this question. So-called experts are advising me to do something. So, no, I'm not going to trust the so-called experts out there

who are using fear to get your clicks, and I also wouldn't stockpile hundreds of thousands of dollars in a bank account because your biggest problem there is not devaluation.'s inflation eating away at your money which is very real that part is real and so i would be investing that money anything beyond your emergency fund and your current savings goals invest it in the long term i still believe in the u.s economy and some amazing companies that are innovating that will cause you know the economy to rise and the gdp to grow so i have faith in that and it it's all – at the end of the day, I can't control any of it, John. So I'm just going to – the best thing you can do is be debt-free and have a pile of money in the bank

and be investing for the future. That's it. Otherwise, I'm not worried about the dollar becoming obsolete anytime soon because I've got to pay bills, John, with dollars. I do think what you said earlier is something I wish everyone would double down and triple down and quadruple down on, which is a great inflation hedge, don't owe anybody any money. A great guy just got laid off hedge, don't owe anybody any money. A great anxiety mental health challenge, don't owe anybody any money.

And if more people would default to, as for me and my house, I'm going to take care of that. And I'm going to work seven jobs. I'm going to work 15 jobs. I'm going to get rid of the nanny like the last call. I'm going to get rid of the cars. We're going to drive Corollas. We're going to make this thing work because so many of the things on the, what can I control and not control? Can any of us individually control whether the US dollar becomes obsolete? No, absolutely not. There's nothing we can do. Can I control that I don't owe anybody money? And if one day a foreign currency calls and says, I call your note, and I'm like, I don't owe you anything,

they'll be like, okay, I'll go to your neighbor. Dang it. Exactly. So I think the most important thing almost every one of us can do right now is not owe anybody any money and work like bloody hell to get there. Yeah, that's an interesting take. If you're truly worried about what could happen with the economy,

then why are you owing Ford Motor Company a giant check every month for that car you must drive? Why do you make a payment to Visa? It just doesn't make sense. You don't care about the economy. And it sounds like this question, they have a bunch of money that probably aren't carrying debt, but it's one of the best things you can do to sleep better at night. Because when it all comes down, the lenders are still going to want their payment. And they will do whatever it takes to get it.

They will take you to court in the midst of a pandemic. They'll do whatever it takes. And so the best thing you can do is just live a debt-free life and turn off the headlines if you're starting to spin out of control. And, John, I know there's a lot of people out there who genuinely want to they want to stay in touch with what's going on in the world but what is the balance there between going all right all the headlines are telling me it's all coming down my real life says i love my family and i like my job and i'm just going to go to work and go home it's just become like an old trope right which uh i control what i. And so when I hear something going on, um, like this, I mean, what can I do? What can I do about it? What can I literally do about this?

I know I'm going to lose money due to inflation. If I put the money under my bed, I know that real estate usually has a good return over time, but I'm not going to borrow money to do it. So I'm going to put it in a high yield savings account. I'm going to invest my money on the long-term strategy. And that's how we're going to roll. And number one, I'm not going to owe anybody money. And we'll deal with this as this rolls out. It's that simple. And John, you lay out six daily choices we can make in your new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, which I highly recommend for Leanne in Virginia. It actually may help more than anything. And George can turn anything into a sales pitch. That was impressive.

That's what I do, America. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Dr. John Deloney. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. You jump in, we'll talk about money, mental health, relationships, and whatever is on your mind. Quick reminder for you all listening, the Ramsey Christmas Cash Giveaway is here, and you could win one of our $500 weekly prizes or a grand prize of $5,000.

And there is no joy greater than giving away Dave Ramsey's money. Let me tell you right now. So you can enter every single day at RamseySolutions.com slash giveaway to increase your chances of winning. And while you're there, we've also got the $12 sale happening where you can get lots of great meaningful gifts at a great deal. Best-selling books like The Total Money Makeover, Baby Steps Millionaires, and Own Your Past, Change Your Future. And we've got some of Dr. John Maloney's questions for humans conversation cards for as low as 10 bucks right now. And we've got the Christmas edition. It's back and these sold out last year. So be quick, be nimble, shop the sale at ramsaysolutions.com slash store. And while you're there,

we've got a lot of new stuff. Rachel Cruz has a new kid's book. My book, Breaking Free from Broke is on presale. We've got the 2024 goal planner, something for everyone on your list. Would you consider yourself quick and nimble? I am, actually. It's the one thing I am good at as a small person. I disagree. I appreciate that. I'll outrun you any day, John.

You're a small person, but you're not quick or nimble. On that note, Chris in Albany is waiting with bated breath for our answer to this question. What's going on, Chris? Hey, George, Dr. Don. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Sure. What's up? How can we help?

So I guess one of the things I noticed when trying to get on a budget and one of the things that's kind of like a hampering thing, I should say, is the constant bombardment I'm getting of emails, marketing emails. It seems like every time I check my email, like 99 out of 100 of them are something trying to get me to spend money. So I was just wondering if you guys have any tip strategies or anything to kind of combat this and to stay on track with the budget.

What does that have to do with your budget? Well, just making sure that we don't spend extra money, you know, that temptation to spend money from the constant emails and trying to have you to spend. So if I gave you a really sophisticated answer, which was just don't, what's your pushback to that? Other than that, I don't have much pushback. I didn't know if it was something that your audience or anybody might have had issues with, maybe just trying to combat that. Yeah, there's a simple and effective way to do this. And I talk about this in Financial Peace University. John and I tag team a lesson on why spending. And I talk about this tiny thing at the bottom

of that email. There's this tiny link. It's an invisible font about size, you know, 0.4. And if you click it, it'll say, sorry to see you go. And you say, okay, bye. Unsubscribe. That's it. There's an unsubscribe link. And that gives me, it gives me no greater joy than to hit that link on every single marketing spam email, unless it's a Ramsey email, and then I accept it with great joy. But for real, that's all it takes. What kind of marketing emails are you getting, and did you sign up for them?

Are these stores that you love? It's mostly just because I really try to get on track with my spending and getting on a budget. To be honest, I really haven't been that great. So products I've bought in the past, whether you signed up for a rewards program or something in the past and then you're just consistently getting those emails and it feels like it's non-stop and and also i'm not sure like is my email also been sold to other companies as well and i think i think it's so much and i get the unsubscribe thing i've done that just it feels like just there's so much it's just get the unsubscribe thing. I've done that. It feels like there's so much. It's just very overwhelming.

I don't even open them, though. Yeah, what's underneath this? There's something underneath this. Well, I think it's also just in the email. Just like, oh, there might be important emails that I'm not collecting. Sometimes I'll just won't even look at them. But then I may have missed an email as a result. Give me an example.

What's a store that you might be tempted to spend at? I don't know. Maybe it could have been anything from, I'll throw one out there. Maybe it's Amazon. Maybe it's another company where I bought clothing, things like that. All right. So if you were struggling with alcohol, one of the things I would tell you, if you and I were sitting down and you had wept and I'd heard your story, I would tell you, you have

to agree today you're not going back into a bar period. And then you would probably say, well, that's where my friends are. That's right on the way home from work. That's my routine. That's where my community is to my laughs are. It's where I get connection. And I would say, and it's killing you. You cannot go back into a bar and you'd have to figure out another way home. You have to figure out other people, but you'd have to figure out another way home you have to figure out other people but you'd have to figure out another way to deal with that thing inside of you that you are trying to wallpaper over with purchases and purchases and FOMO and what if what if this is an important email what if it's not and so here's my challenge to you delete your email account

just delete it there's 700 services, email services. There's Google. Is Yahoo still a thing? I'm sure Hotmail still exists, does it? People have it. I don't know why, but they have it. I have an Hotmail address, actually, yes. There's ProtonMail. There's stuff all over the place.

Delete your email account. Just delete it. And if there's three or four people that you want to have your thing, just send them a note that says, hey, this is my new email address. Just clean slate it and that would tell me i'm that you are serious about dealing with this part of your life that is out of control because dude i get emails from some of the coolest companies and i go through their stuff and i am like i want this i would love to get this. It'd be so rad. I have that. And then I just don't. Or I wait 60 days and then I do. Or I ask my wife and she's like, really?

Okay, but okay. And then I just don't because she's right. And Chris, you mentioned the budget at the top of this. And the budget is going to dictate your spending. And so you're the boss of the budget, but when the budget's done, it's the boss of you. So if you have a $200 shopping line item, then you have permission to spend $200 on shopping. And it may be stuff that just Chris wants. If he's out of debt and he's in a good spot, it's okay to buy stuff.

It's when we do it with the wrong motive, when it's not in the budget, when it's not the right time, when we haven't really done the research, it was just impulsive or emotional, that's when it gets out of hand. And it feels like that's what you're getting at. You're self-aware enough to know you have the tendency to go there. Yep. Just hear me and George say, I don't fully get the link between your budget and these emails. I think it's before I had a lack of a budget, Dr. John. And I think now that I'm trying to get on a budget, get everything set,

I'm still seeing those emails, just to avoid that temptation, don't go off the budget. I guess that's kind of why I'm trying to... Delete your email account, dude. And whenever you sign up for stuff, here's what I do. I have like a spam marketing account, and that's what I give to all these companies, and then I never open that inbox. Because I know what's coming.

Yes. So that may be another way to go about this. If you can't delete your email account, if it's connected to 14 million things. Okay. Well, I appreciate it. That becomes your junk email account and you send it over. But I usually go through a tirade where I just keep unsubscribing from every single thing for a week straight. And then I tend to stop getting those emails. It's really nice. It's a nice feeling. Hold on, hold on. This is important. Any behavior that you think I can't stop,

like I can't control, A, do what he did and reach out and talk to somebody. Whether it's alcohol, whether it's spending, whether it's pornography, whatever it is. The second thing is look at the environment that's allowing this thing to happen and begin to make environmental changes. And that's, I'm not going to go in that bar anymore. That is, I'm not going to go back in that house where this person is abusive anymore. That is really tough. If you don't have any money and you're scared and you're all alone in a new city, I get that. Or it might

be, I'm deleting my email account. I'm just going to get that serious about it because this isn't a spending issue. This is something beneath that. He created a budget and realized he went with him. He created a budget and he realized, I've been running from a long time from something inside of me and I don't want to deal with it and I don't want to deal with it

and I don't want to deal with it. And that budget forces you to look in the mirror and say, no, what do you actually value, dude? Like who are you going to be? And that's tough. That's a scary moment. When you look at your bank statement for the last month or two and you go, this represents who I am as a person, what I value, my identity, who I'm becoming, who I've been, man, that'll set you straight. You're like, that was a lot of Taco Bell in a month. Who am I becoming? Mine is mostly Thorne supplements, but I get what you're saying. That's who John is. That's right. A man who values his health. That's a good reminder. And John, you walk through three really important questions in that why spender lesson of Financial

Peace University that our brains are asking on ancient technology. Do I belong? Am I safe? And does this feel good? Right. And marketing is trying to get at all of those. It's trying to tap into the fears and going, it's going to feel so good. If you just take this supplement, John, you're going to sleep so much better. Or the dollars going away, like the earlier question, right? Like, are you safe? Right. Do you belong?

Hey, look at all the guys like us. We're all using this thing and wearing this thing. And I want to be like those guys because that's the tribe I want to identify with. So, yeah, always step back and ask yourself, is this something I need or is this something I'm trying to use as duct tape over a person I don't like? Usually the latter. But hey, if you want to check out that lesson,

it's lesson five of Financial Peace University. John and I tag team it. I cover all the ways companies go after your money and what you can do to regain control of it. You can go check it out, ramsaysolutions.com slash FPU. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. Hey, if you're a new listener to the show and you want a deeper dive on the Ramsey baby steps, you can go to ramsaysolutions.com and click on the Get Started button, and we will help you figure out the next best step for your financial journey. That's ramseysolutions.com and click on

Get Started. Heather joins us up next in Baltimore. Heather, what's going on? Hi. I'm calling to figure out next best steps. My husband and I, we've been married about 20 years. About, I'd say 10 years ago, we did the Financial Peace University. We were in a ton of debt. And we did that for a while, and then we got distracted and stopped working on it. But happily now, even though we didn't pay attention for a while, we are out of debt other than our house. I have a six-month emergency fund and everything. And recently, I got an inheritance from the passing of my father for some extra cash. So where we're at now, we bought our house 15 years ago.

It's 170-ish years old. Whoa. And my biggest argument is stop watching HGTV before you buy a house because it was the stupidest thing we've ever done. So you thought we're going to turn this into some Victorian dream? Maybe not that, but we just thought we could do a lot more than we have in 15 years. So I'm very aware. I even take all the blame because this is 100% on me to tell.

Well, peace, I'm done. So where we're at now, my husband has always, always wanted to build a sizable workshop. He has hobbies that are big, heavy machinery, and he's slightly hoarderish. That's a good combo. Really expensive machinery plus hoarding. Not as expensive. They're just big. So right now we have about $120,000 or so from the inheritance,

and he clearly wants to go forward on building a workshop because the plan always was build a workshop. Then we would have the space to solve other house problems. I have been here long enough to know that my house needs too much. Like our foundation, massive issues. Like, you know, everything is old. Nothing is, everything is basically going to need replaced at some point. In fact, it's needed replaced.

So just sell your house. Sell your house. That's what I am thinking we should do. Like it would be smarter to sell our house and find another house. The area we live in, Maryland is an incredibly high cost of living area. Just sell your house, just sell your house. What could it sell for as is without you putting all this work into it? I might be able to get $20,000 out of what we owe. What do you owe? $190. And you've lived there 15 years? We bought it in 2007 right when the market crashed, so it took a long time just to get

back to what we owed. Just sell your house. Sell your house. Sell your house. I'm there. The other concern I have is that I really like our mortgage. Where is that now? Hey Heather, sell your house. I have is that I really like our mortgage. Where is that now? Like I, he was a full-time.

Hey Heather, sell your house. Sell your house. I'm on that. So I want to do that. It's just, but to buy another house, I'm looking at like 400,000, 450 other houses that I could convince my husband to move into. Okay. Here's another idea.

I just thought of it. Don't sell your house. Okay. Uh-huh. Ta-da. How does that hit you? Well, that's the other one I'm at, but then I have to spend all the money either. I still can't say yes.

I got a new idea. I have a new idea. Sell your house. And we're back. Here's the deal. There's not a right or wrong here. You have just twisted yourself up like a pretzel. Oh, I have. Yes.

That was tricky, John, what you just did. Do what? You talked about the anxiety thing. My $1,500 a month mortgage doesn't give me anxiety anymore. A new house, another $1,000 a month mortgage on top of that does. But you're forgetting that $1,500 is not $1,500. It's going to be $150,000 because of what you're going to have to do to this place over the next decade. But if you just got a $100,000 inheritance and you put $100,000 into that house, it will appreciate for what?

In a high cost of living area, would it double? Would it be worth $350,000 to $400,000? No. Because the money that would put into it is like the invisible stuff that still just gets it back from not falling down anymore. Okay. Here's an idea. If I don't have $1,000 into it, I'm probably getting close to $300,000 to $350,000 maybe. Okay. Which almost doubles it.

Well, it's at $200,000 now, but yeah. Okay. What would it it. We'll put $200 now, but yeah. Okay. What would it cost to rent somewhere? Let's say you sold it. You have $140. You keep saving and saving on top of that. George, the blasphemy. What if for one year you rented while saving?

Would your husband go for that or does it crush his dreams? Not for five seconds. Why? He has stuff problems. Okay. Well well let's deal with the stuff problems instead of putting ourself in a terrible financial position here's what i think can i tell you can i just say what i think you tell me if i'm wrong say you're an idiot and you're wrong i think your marriage is not as good as you're letting on and i also think and maybe your marriage isn't bad. You and your husband are on two very different pages.

Y'all are great co-managers of your house, your roommates. And you have some other stuff going on. And this is a big merry-go-round that you can get on and go around and around and contemplate all the reasons you should stay and all the reasons you should go. And what it allows you to do is avoid dealing with the scary, scary truth sitting inside your house, probably sitting on your couch right next to you. There could be relevance there. There could be relevance there.

That was awesome. This doesn't go anywhere. Right. So if I were to take on additional mortgage no no no no no we're not doing that what do you mean i'm just on my house okay listen to me back to that what about this what about taking your husband out for dinner and saying honey i planned us a date and sat down and said i'm scared to death about the trajectory of our marriage. I want to get you a barn, but how you spend money and your addiction to stuff scares me. And the fact that I'm running really low,

some might call it depression, and I'm anxious a lot, scares me. I'm scared our house is going to fall down. I'm scared we can't afford to move. I can't breathe in this house. What if you did that? I just felt my shoulders drop just saying that for you. This wouldn't be a new conversation. Okay. Then you have to deal with that reality and selling your house or not selling your house is not, you and your husband are going to go with you to your

new house. Yes. You and your husband are going to go with you to your new house. Yes. You and your husband are going to go with you when you build a shop that you can't afford. Well, that's not happening. Because I won't say yes to that. Yeah, him having this dream workshop solves zero problems. Yes. So we need to deal with the root problem,

which, number one, is we are way far away on our values when it comes to our dreams and vision financially. So we need to align on that first before we make any decision. And if we can't find alignment on that, it's worth reaching out to a third party, our friends at BetterHelp. We need to get to the root of this because if he still has his addiction to stuff, we're going to be broke three years from now regardless of what we do you sound really close to resentment that's not resentment what is it this has been here for a long this i this is our reality you've resigned i can't change another person i can choose to make decisions going forward based on the reality that exists like. Or I obviously could leave, but that's not an option. But the only thing that stops me really

from trying to buy a different house is that then brings on, it just makes money tighter. And we were a single income family for a long time for the last few years. We've not been, and it's amazing to not feel stressed about money anymore i like that so some sometimes when i've had a house that i just want to get out of really bad yeah i sometimes over inflate just how the house is falling down it's gonna fall down it's i'm not no no i'm just i'm just saying what i did not what you do i would go through that list of questions, like the things that you think have to be done, the things that you had planned to do because of HGTV back in the day,

and then the Chip and Joanna things that would just make it amazing. Like make a list of those things and put real, not imaginary, put real dollar amounts to them and just see what you're talking about. Because right now you have no data. You have a storm that just is on repeat in your mind and your body's wearing out because of it. Sit down with real numbers and real stuff and then see what this looks like. I don't know another option for you because you said you've had the hard conversation with your husband and he'd rather have his big toys than have a wife that feels loved and safe and so as george said you're gonna have to deal with a marriage counselor at some point but i would love for you to sit down

and say okay let's get serious about answering the questions about this house let's that's gonna allow us to get serious about what we do next but i'm telling you right now these imaginary conversations you're having over and over and over in the loop and the what if but then what if and then what if you're driving yourself into an early grave you're worth over and over and over in the loop and the what if, but then what if, and then the what if, you're driving yourself into an early grave. You're worth more than that. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books.