The Ramsey Show - App - What Advice Would Dave Give to His Younger Self? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

Dave Ramsey, George Kamel, & Ken Coleman take questions in front of a live studio audience in our new Ramsey Event Center! "What advice would you give to your younger self?" "Is $1000 still enough for the starter emergency fund?" "How long will my credit score stick around after I pay off my house?" "Should I get a HELOC?" "What happens to my parents' debt after they die?" Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

🎵 Live from the brand new Ramsey Event Center, broadcasting from the pods moving and storage studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. We're here in the Ramsey Live Event Center for the first time ever with a few friends hanging out with some good people. Welcome, guys. Somewhere around 1,500 folks here in the live studio audience.

George Camel, Ramsey personality, host of the newly minted George Camel YouTube channel, and co-host of Smart Money Happy Hour is my co-host. Also co-hosting this hour, Ken Coleman of The Ken Coleman Show, helping people with their work, with their careers, and with the number one best-selling book, Paycheck to Purpose. We'll be taking calls from all across America at 888-825-5225. And we're also going to take some questions here from our live studio audience and get to hang out with you guys in person in this process. So let's start with the studio audience. Up first is Tommy. Hi, Tommy, how are you? Hey, doing great. How are you?

Better than I deserve, sir. Where do you live? Georgia. Wow, good. Welcome to Nashville. And your question for the day? My question is, so my fiance and I are 24 years old, recently engaged three weeks ago. And congratulations. Yeah, thank you pretty much. My question for y'all is if you could go back and talk to your 24 year old self, what are the top three pieces of advice

that you would give yourself? Wow. Should we narrow it down? There's three of us. That's nine pieces of advice. All right, George, I feel you putting the pressure. I'll go fast and leave all the time. So I think the first thing is I would tell myself to learn how to fail faster. And what I mean by that is step into things,

try things faster, fail, get into failure quickly because the quicker I fail, the quicker I learn. And then I would also learn how to get over the failure faster. So that's what I mean by fail fast. Jump into stuff. Now, not be crazy risky, but just try things, do things that you want to do and learn through the failure and then get over the failure.

Second thing would be hang out with older people more. You know, I'm middle-aged now and I don't feel that way except for after a round of golf. But I think that the people that have reached the 60s and 70s and 80s have so much to teach us, even now at my age. And I wish I had sat with some older people in my dad's church more and asked them about life and asked them about marriage and parenting. So I would say that. And then I'd say, you said 24.

So Stacey and I are getting ready to celebrate 25 years of marriage in May. And so I got married at 23. Thank you very much. And I would have said, apologize faster and better. Yeah, Cause you're wrong. Yeah. She's not, you're wrong. Yeah. So he's absolutely right. So that'd be my three things. For me, I'm going to, I'm gonna start with this one for the engaged couple. The best marriage advice I think is to out serve each other. And if you do that from 24 to 74, you will have an amazing 50-year marriage. On the money side and on the life side, you have time. I meet so many people

who are 22 or 32 and they're going, I ruined my life. I made money mistakes. There's no time. Dude, you have so much time. And the third one is don't squander it. And so be intentional and realize that patience is is the game and think long-term have long-term vision long-term goals and you'll have a great life and a great marriage wow you guys are good y'all y'all ought to do this for a living that's pretty impressive i'm not sure i've got anything as good as theirs um you know i i think one of the things that Sharon and I learned through going broke and 40 years of marriage is just to, we spend an awful lot of time being, talking through

things and reaching agreement before we move forward. So we don't do giving, substantial giving. We don't do purchases. We don't, we run our calendar and our budget together and so we she says time to do calendars and we sit down and look at okay I'm gonna be traveling here I'm gonna be in Salt Lake City this month I'm gonna be in Anaheim I'm gonna be doing this you know we've got this weekend smart conference I've got May I've got entree leadership so I know what my work stuff is and and we've got this with the kids and we've got this with the grandkids. My grandkids softball and t-ball and soccer are on my calendar. Don't make all of them, but I make some of them. And they're at least there where I can see them. So managing our time, managing our money and being

in agreement on where they're going is how we have managed our lives together. And it's caused us to be in agreement. Jesus says, your treasure is where your heart is. And when you can agree on your spending, you've really agreed on your fears, your future, your dreams, you're agreeing on those things. And when you're not in agreement, you spend so much time and angst pulling at each other and pulling away. I would do that. The second thing I would tell you to do is both of you make sure you get a really tight friend group of people that win. I've been very careful to put a group of guys in my life, group of men in my life for 25 years now. There was a group for the first 14 years,

was a Bible study every Wednesday morning at my office. And then after that, it's been a different group of guys or some overlap, but for the next 10 years and currently today, 10 of my closest friends and six of those are carrying my casket if I go before them. These are my men. And they've got strong marriages, strong spiritual walk. They're smart at business. They're well-read. Many of them have written more bestsellers than I have. They're successful in their area, and you become who you hang around with. So be really careful who you hang around with. I mean, you can love anybody, and I'm not saying snob people or something like that, but I'm talking about your crew, the people that you spend time with, because you're going to use

the same language they use. You're going to read the same books they read. You're going to adopt the same values they do. You're even going to have same books they read. You're going to adopt the same values they do. You're even going to have their accent. It's ridiculous. And so choose it carefully. Choose it carefully. Be not deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits, the Bible says, and that is very true. So not nearly as good as those guys, but that's my two. No, that's good. And I would tell you, Dave said something that made me think of something that Stacey and I have, we've just learned recently walking through this, but the people you start out with won't necessarily be the people you finish with.

It breaks your heart. And it's hard. I got to tell you. And so be okay with that. So I would tell myself, be okay with that because we are going this way. This is the life that we're going to choose to live. And not everybody's going to be on that same lane. If we look at the life as a track lane and we're in lane six, there's going to be some people that you'll start with that won't finish with you. And it's going to hurt, but you're going to have to choose to live your life. And you don't control all. No, you do not. It's not like you climb the ladder and kick people off. You didn't say leave us. Yeah. That's not what's going on. It's not, you're kicking people off the ladder. They chose to jump. That's right. Or chose to not climb. Yep.

Or chose to misbehave in some other way, invalidating their presence in your life. They just do that. You can't keep them from, it's just, it hurts. It hurts. Good question, sir. Congratulations. Very well done. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, host of The Ken Coleman Show, is my co-host today. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my other co-host this hour. We're taking calls from the auditorium here, our questions from the auditorium floor,

as well as calls from across America at 888-825-5225. Chris is next up. Hey, Chris, how are you? Great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So as you're aware, the Total Money Makeover was published in 2003. And I'm sure you're also aware that the first baby step is to save $1,000 to our emergency fund. So my question, since the book has been released for 20 years, and with the current dramatic rise in inflation, do you still feel $1,000 is the correct amount to start to be successful with your plan?

$1,000 was not enough in 2003. It was never designed to be enough. It's enough to buy an alternator for a car or a tire, maybe one or two. It's enough to take your kid to the pediatrician if they're sick. But it's not enough to be a real emergency fund. It's enough to keep the little things from kicking your butt off the get out of debt wagon. Because when we first started this stuff years ago, I said, use all your savings. Have zero. And that didn't work, honestly. If you had come to Financial Peace University when I was teaching it with an overhead projector before we had the baby steps, I just was hardcore.

Just like you're in bootcamp, shut up, sell everything, use all your money. Don't whine, get your butt out of debt. Cause if you don't get out of debt, none of this is going to work. And, but we discovered pretty quickly that every little thing that came along that wasn't in their little budget, the first few months, knock them out, knock them out, knock them out. And then they would give up hope. The people in the financial piece would give up hope because they couldn't do the system. The system wasn't working. So we decided, okay, we're going to give you just a little bit of a beginner starter emergency fund just to knock the little stuff off. If you have a car transmission go out, it's not enough. If you have something big happen,

it's not enough. It's not designed to be enough. It's just there to cover while you'd go through the typically, it's about 18 months. Out of the 10 million people that have been through Financial Peace University, it's 18 months to get out of debt, not counting your house. Baby step two. Now, that means some of them do it in three months, and some of them do it in 30, but the average is 18. So it's designed just to keep the little crap away. But if your car blows up during that 18 months, it's not enough. And it never was designed to be enough. So it doesn't need to be inflation adjusted because it wasn't supposed to be enough. But good question. Thank you, sir. I just want to say something very quick about inflation because that's all we hear about.

It makes you click and that's what the media is supposed to do. But understand that the reason why inflation is stubborn, folks, is now wage pressures. And that's fancy economic language that I barely understand. But it means that hourly rates and salaries are at an all-time high. And the reason why your Burger King combo or your bread costs more is because they're paying the person in those positions at Burger King and the grocery store more. So when I hear that question, I think it's a good question. But let's also understand that we, the people, still have tremendous individual responsibility and power to see in this economy where we have about four and a half million more jobs available than there are people who are unemployed. And right now, in the gig economy, which means I go out and do something part-time, and freelance economy, there is more opportunity to make really good money.

So if your gazelle intents and that $1,000 isn't enough, you go make use of more money and pay for that alternator. You can go make plenty of money in this economy right now. That's a great point, Ken. And on top of that, Ken makes a great point. People don't think about, okay, let's walk through that worst case scenario. You have an emergency that's more than a thousand dollars. What do you do? We tell you to pause the baby steps and stack up cash really quickly. And most people doing the plan, they didn't have much more than a thousand to begin with. And so this hypothetical scenario where they had so much money and could cover all these emergencies, it just doesn't exist. If we made the emergency fund and baby step one, $5,000, we would have a tiny portion of the population be able to do that and have the hope and motivation to continue.

But Chris's question, if you were going to say the plan is, let's say we got to baby step three, and instead of saying three to six months of expenses, we said $10,000 or $15,000 in 2003. Now today, would we need to say, okay, that's not correct anymore. We would need to adjust it because it's not enough. If it was enough in 2003 to have a $15,000 baby step three, it's not enough in 2023. So his concept is valid, but it doesn't apply to baby step one. And the good news is that the other baby steps are not fixed amounts. That's the only one that's a fixed amount. The rest of them are percentages. And so they flow out of that percentage and the percentages will adjust with inflation and with wage pressures and with everything else.

So, you know, OK, a million dollars isn't what it used to be in your retirement account. True. But we million dollars is just a milestone. It wasn't the only target. We said put 15 percent away and maybe step four and hopefully 10 million is what you get. You know, I mean, so, you know, it's adjusted that way. And so three to six months of expenses, your expenses have changed since 2003. They should have. Yeah. And so your emergency fund would need to be bigger today. The baby step three one. So his concept is accurate in questioning a number, a fixed number from 2003. But it also gives me the opportunity to explain that baby

step one wasn't ever designed to be that in the first place. Because I get some of these idiots on Tic Tac or whatever that are, you know, Dave Ramsey doesn't know what he's talking about. His stuff's outdated. Yeah, that's right. The law of gravity is now outdated. But Dave, you've told people on air before, have you tweaked that $1,000 number based on a very specific situation where you went, all right, fine, you can do $1,500, you could do $500?

What are the scenarios? The other thing I realized is that none of these baby steps came from the Bible. They came from our experiences of coaching thousands of people. And so they're not absolute truth in that sense. They're based on concepts that are absolute truth, but they're not, the baby steps themselves are not magical. All they are is a clear path and everybody needs a clear path to do whatever they're going to do. Ken teaches a clear path to get into a new position and a step-by-step process. You've got to have a clear path. You know, if you get ready to go to college and you want to graduate, there's a clear path. It's called a syllabus.

Take the freaking classes, get the degree. You know, there's a clear path. You know what you have to do to get there. And so winning always involves a clear path and a process. So that part, and I'm aware, George, that somebody's going to decide to do whatever they want to do because they're like grownups and stuff. But I'm not going to vary on the air because every time we vary on the air, we not only vary for that single person that we're talking to, but 22 million other people are listening. And so then you start to blow up the whole idea. And the beauty of the baby steps of the clear path, including the one that Ken uses, is we don't vary from it because and then people start to believe it because it's a proven path. It's a proven system.

And if you submit yourself to a proven system, then you can hit those goals. So it's a good, it's a really good discussion. Everyone thinks they're special. Everyone thinks they're unique. They're the outlier. You know, like, oh, well, Dave, you don't understand my situation. You are, but that doesn't exclude you from the law of gravity yeah yeah that's right i'm special you're gonna hit the sidewalk shut up i mean it's like you know that's it i mean you're not you're special but you're not you know that we all are i mean you're unique you have unique situations and that's what makes the show interesting people calling in with unique uh family life and unique situations you're going that's what makes the show interesting, people calling in with unique family life and unique situations.

You're going, that's cray-cray. You know, it's entertaining, you know. But the principles that we guide our lives by, you know, like you all told the young guy there, you know, be sure you apologize early and often. That's a great principle, okay? Does it apply every single time? No, I don't need to apologize to

my wife if she runs over me with a car, you know, it's, it's her fault, you know, that was a very specific scenario. I know, but I'm just trying to think of something bizarre, right? You know, somebody misbehaving, you know, so, but, but, but is apologizing a good principle? You bet it is quickly, early and often. You bet it is. It's so wonderful. It's a sign of, of, of strength, of confidence, of humility. It's a sign of strength, of confidence, of humility. It's weak people that can't apologize. It requires courage. So those are simple things, but these simple concepts do apply universally. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. This is the Ramsey Show. We're live in the Ramsey Event Center with 1,500 of our closest friends.

Woo! George Campbell, Ramsey Personality. Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality is my co-host. What you may not know about the Ramsey personalities, we actually enjoy hanging out together all the time anyway. And so we get up here and cut up. It's kind of like what it is when we're sitting in a meeting somewhere, we just cut up and carry and argue and fuss and fight and make fun of each other and everything else. So it's kind of part of the gig. And we just enjoy hanging out with each other because I like hanging out with smart people.

It's a good thing. Hey, by the way, speaking of smart people, thank you guys so much for helping us promote this show. This week, we are number 11 podcast in the entire world. Sometimes when someone says they're a number something podcast or a number something bestselling book, they're like, okay, I'm the number one bestselling book on Amazon among people who own French Bulldogs or whatever. I mean, it's these little nuanced categories, but this is the entire freaking universe of three million plus podcasts. We're number 11. So thank you guys very, very much.

Our guys are, for some reason, they are desperate to be in the top 10. You can help us if you share the podcast, if you share a link on it, if you let people know that we're out here, if you leave a review, a five-star review, if you want to leave one star, mama said, if you ain't got nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all. Don't bother. Just keep your butt moving on to something else. If you don't like it, it's okay. And this is what we're doing. And probably not going to stop doing it this way. So anyway, move on and thank you for that. And, uh, so I didn't want to, so share, subscribe, leave a review. That's it. Yeah. Do all those things. Click the follow button and all that stuff, right's a new thing yep on spotify it's now a follow on apple as well oh yeah okay so follow follow follow thank george george knows the technical i keep up yeah that's good so

yeah i just have people that tell me what to do around here that know these things so all right let's go uh move back to the studio audience jessica is here hi jessica how are you great how are you better than i deserve where do you live? Fort Worth, Texas. I love Fort Worth. Welcome to Nashville. Thank you. How can we help? My husband and I are debt free except for our mortgage. Yay. Thank you. Thanks to you guys. So here's my question. I've been waiting to see what is going to happen to our credit score now that we have no other debt except our mortgage. I'm not sure if it's going to eventually become unreportable or if it's just going to dwindle down and make it harder for us to buy another house, which we might be doing in

the next year or so. So what will happen to our credit score? Well, we're not sure, to be honest with you, because the folks at FICO hold, for good reason, and they should, hold the details of their algorithm very tightly. Because if they didn't, then people would spend their entire lives trying to manipulate their score. So they should not put out how this works. One, aside from that, we do know that if you have zero activity and zero accounts open of any kind, the only thing reported are closed, paid off accounts, that in somewhere around six months, as you said, your score will be undeterminable. But you have an account that's open. It's called a mortgage.

So you're sitting there paying the payment, paying the payment, paying the payment. Wait a minute. I got a test case right here. You had a mortgage, and then you paid it off. Before you paid it, before you paid it. And you had no score when you got the mortgage. Correct. So you, I would assume you got a score after that.

So what you're sitting there with one account, a mortgage paying it. What happened to the score? It disappears after six or seven months. No, after you paid the house off. Oh, it sticks around. While you were paying the house though, you had a score. It created a score and it was a good tax on the score. Did the score go down though after it came in? No. What was your score. It created a score, and it was a good tax on the score. Did the score go down, though, after it came in?

No. What was your score? Do you know? I think it was in the 700s. So with just a single house payment, paying it on time, no other accounts at all, you had a 700? Yes. Then you'll be fine. So it's not going to ding you.

Now, here's the thing. If you're going to buy a house within six months after you pay it off, do you think, or would it be a while? We're probably about a year out from buying a house, and we've been debt-free except the mortgage for a little over a year. But you're not going to pay off the house before you buy the next one? We probably won't buy, yeah, we probably won't pay it off. Okay. So you're going to be sitting there just paying a payment like he did with a single one account open that has activity on it and you pay it on time. You're probably going to be in the 700. I've got a one-person case study that I based that on, okay? Very scientific. But anecdotally, that's what I've seen as well. But conceptually,

that's what we've heard is that it doesn't just like keep going down into the 600s, the low 600s, even down into 500s, right? Just because you only have one account. If you only have one account, you pay it properly on time, it should level off. Now, you're not going to get an 880 with that because an 880 is people borrowing, paying, borrowing, paying, borrowing, paying, borrowing, paying. They're trying to drive the score. And we do know that there's five things. FICO publishes this. There are five things that cause your score. All of them are related to being in debt and how you relate to debt and how you pay the debt. None of them are related to your income, your financial health, your net worth. We do know that.

FICO publishes that. So the FICO score is not a measure, for those of you that don't know, of financial health. It's a measure of how much you've been playing kissy face with the bank. That's all it is. And so, you know, to worship at the altar of the FICO score is to worship at the altar of Bank of America, which is a really stupid butt idea. But in your case, you've got a very valid thing that you're trying to manage your life in such a way while being responsible that doesn't keep you from getting this next house. But it sounds like you're probably going to be, I mean, generally speaking,

that you probably, if you had up close to 800, you paid off a bunch of stuff and it's come down into the 700s or, you know, and it's, and it should have leveled off and it should just sit there. That's what we've been seeing in general. And I'm glad I could confirm that with you. I just realized I had one sitting here. Yeah. And there's three things that would happen. Number one, you guys upgrade with cash, which would be a cool goal for your next house. Number two, you get a mortgage and you still have a credit score and the mortgage company uses that and it'll probably be a good score. Or number three, the credit score goes away and you go through the manual underwriting process. And so either way, you're going to be good to go there. You're doing it the right way. But the credit score will not go away as long as

you have that mortgage on the books. Yeah. Good question. Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate you being here today. Let's go to Nick in Milwaukee on the phones. Hi, Nick. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Good afternoon, sir. Afternoon. Okay, my question is, I was told that we should get a home, excuse me, home equity line of credit to add to our retirement profile. Who told you that, Nick? What is your thought? I was told by our banker. That makes sense. Your banker told you you should be in debt?

I'm so shocked. Wow. Well, we're not bankers, and so we have your best interests at heart. They just want your interest. And so here's what I would tell you. The HELOC puts your home in jeopardy and puts you further into debt. And so I don't understand how this is a smart part of like a wealth-building plan. The smartest thing to do would be to pay your house off, not use a HELOC, pay cash for everything,

and not have your home at risk because your home is collateral with that HELOC. Correct. That's a safer retirement in my book. Nick, let me just be real, very, very clear, okay? If you want to build wealth, the best thing you can do with a banker is never talk to them again. Okay? Okay. I have never met a millionaire that says i used all my bankers advice and so i became a millionaire never once has that ever happened it's never come up they're they're they're really really bad at everything except getting you into debt they read you know if you got a financial planner that works at your bank don't use them them, get another one because he needs, he couldn't get a good job. I mean, he got stuck at the bank. I mean, it sucks. So, you know, that's the thing you want to do for sure. That's just, um, oh my goodness gracious. Yeah. And the second thing then Nick is

to, uh, always be sitting with someone with the heart of a teacher. And when you have a conversation that sounds like the one he had, when you get home, you need to take a shower because you know you've been in the presence of slime. And so it's, you know, and we all know that feeling, right? And slimy people. And so you need someone with the heart of a teacher, not the heart of a salesman. That guy had nothing to do with Nick's best interest.

They sell debt. That is what they do. Matter of fact, I don't even want my savings account where that guy is. He's either after you're with malice or he's just dumber than a rock. And both are really dangerous. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. We're here with 1,500 of our closest friends

at the Ramsey Live Event Center. Ken Coleman, George Camel, Ramsey Personalities are my co-hosts today. A lot of questions, particularly this time of year, about taxes. Let's unpack one from one of our listeners. What happens if you file your taxes late? You'll be penalized. And if you pay them late, you'll be penalized with interest. And you definitely want to avoid that, especially if you owe taxes. Here's why. If you miss the tax filing deadline, you'll be charged a late filing penalty, a failure to

file penalty, a just we don't like you penalty. They come up with all kinds of penalties up there. It's pretty cool. And the longer you wait, the worse the penalty is and the more the interest is, the longer you wait to pay. There is no penalty if you miss the deadline and don't owe taxes. But if the IRS owes you a refund, of course, you won't get your money back until you file. Here's an interesting thing, too, that we've learned over the years. People in crisis with their taxes or in crisis with their finances and their taxes, they do not put people in jail for failure to pay. They will put people in jail, 2,579 last year, for failure to file. It is against the law to not file your taxes, but we do not have a debtor's prison yet.

And so not paying your taxes is obviously not a good idea, but the big thing is make sure you file. And the best thing you can do, even if you can't pay, is file on time. Because it gets rid of some of the other penalties just on failure to file. So for God's sakes, file your taxes. And I'm off the grid. No, you're not. You're just- My favorite is the crypto bros who are like, it's unregulated. I'm like, what's the first question when you file your taxes? Did you make money from crypto? So much for your unregulated. I'm like, what's the first question when you fire taxes? Did you make money from crypto? So much for your unregulated money, guys. Yeah, any income you have in America, if you're a U.S. citizen, it's taxable.

It's period. I mean, it's just that's unless it falls under a deduction under the regulations. But you don't get to go, oh, well, I don't have to report that. It's cash. No, that's not how it works. All right. Okay. Open phones to this hour at 888-825-5225. And we're also taking live questions today from our live studio audience from the floor.

Up next is going to be Matt. Hi, Matt. Hey, how are you? Great, man. Where do you live? Doing good. Green Bay, Wisconsin. Very cool.

Good to have you, sir. How can we help? So just wondering if when my parents pass away, if they have debt, where does that go? Well, when someone passes away, what you own has to stand good for what you owe. And so if they have any assets, like say they had a house or say they had a car or something like that, those items have to be sold to pay their debts before there's an inheritance. If there's money in a bank account, it had to be used to pay their debts before there is an inheritance. If someone dies with a negative net worth where they owe

more than they own, then some of those debts are simply not going to be paid. They do. Children do not inherit debt in America. Okay. Our current legal system, you do not inherit debt, but it does keep you from, you can't go, I'm going to keep grandpa's truck, but we're not going to pay any of his bills. No, that's not how it works. Okay. Grandpa's truck is one of his assets. And so you can't just go, I get to keep the assets and not pay the debts. But, you know, you don't have to worry about inheriting a bunch of debt from someone who's got a horrible financial situation, all dead and no money or whatever. But you can't keep things. The biggest place that comes into play that's really painful is if one of the spouses, they've

kept their money separate, which is stupid. And one of the spouses has run up a bunch of debt and they own a house together. And so Papa dies and Papa has $80,000 in credit card debt because grandma couldn't tell him nothing, right? And so, but they own a house together. Well, she's got to pay that $80,000 in credit card debt in order to keep the house because half of that house is his and it has to stand good for his stuff. And so you can't, that's the problem with being in partnerships with people too, is you get into these exact same mess. So, but as far as you, like for your parents, as an example, I don't know if you're talking about for real example but if your parents died and had a bunch of debt it does not wash over to you but you can't have any

of their assets until that debt is paid yeah and if you co-sign for it you would be liable but as long as you're not a co-signer on any of their debt you're good the creditors may try to come after you they don't have any legal standing you send a death certificate and it goes away people get confused like i i i want grandpa's, but do I have to pay his mortgage? Yeah. Yeah, because they'll foreclose on the house. You're not technically liable for the mortgage, but they have a lien against that house. And so they'll take the freaking house if you don't pay it. The weird thing is you can actually take over the mortgage and you're still not technically financially responsible for the mortgage and someone's death. But the house still stands good for the mortgage. And so if you want to keep the house, you've got to pay the mortgage

or pay it off or whatever you're going to do. So those things stand that way. But when you die, your net worth is what you own minus what you owe. If there's anything left, only then is there an inheritance. If there's a negative figure left, then somebody's not going to get paid. And we've had to walk, sadly, in financial coaching sessions through with people where we go, okay, dad died and he left $60,000 worth of credit card debt. They're calling me wanting the money. And I'm like, well, you don't owe the money. So all you got to do is get your dad's death certificate,

send them a copy of it and go, here you go, Bank of America, here's what you get. Nothing, which is kind of fun. But yeah, because it's what you deserve. You're an 89 year old, $642,000 on a credit card. You deserve to burn, right? And so you get nothing. And just send them the death certificate because that's what they get, nothing. Because there's nothing

there. Dad's got nothing. He died in an apartment, nothing. His clothes are all that's there. That's it, penniless. And we've had to walk people through, get the death certificate to get them off your back because you don't owe it. You simply don't. Debt does not transfer generationally. And so open phones here. Thank you, sir. Very good call. Very good question. Appreciate you. 888-825-5225. Ken and George, talk a little bit about this thing. We're getting more and more and more of it. We had a weird call, I guess it was yesterday or the day before, of a will that had gone bad, an estate planning thing that had gone bad. How important it is to get your estate plan in place and inform everyone the details of it while you're

alive. Well, number one, everyone in this room, you guys don't have to worry about dying with debt because y'all are going to be debt-free with money to burn and leave to your children's children. That's the goal. That is my goal for everyone listening, everyone in this room. And on the will side, people think, Dave, they're going to somehow die earlier if they have a will. But the truth is, a will just is how you say I love you to your family. The last thing I want is grieving on top of a financial mess because they don't know where to find half the crap. The government then has to decide what happens through probate. That's a nightmare. It's so much easier in today's world now.

You can just do it online. We've got Mama Bear legal forms. It took me 20 minutes, and I was done. The thing I would add is just looking at it as a father of three, and by the way, this plays into life insurance as well. And so I hope you listen to our message about taking care of your family. And I sleep better at night, number one, but number two is my parents are getting older. They're now in their mid seventies and talking with them and making sure that they've got everything set. It takes the tension out of

a season of grieving. And I think that's what I've always appreciated about what Dave teaches about that is that it's very clear the directives about what I want to happen with my assets and everything are very, very clear. It takes the argument out of the situation and allows people to grieve and then move on. And it's part of leaving legacy. We teach that all the time. You want to change your family tree and leave a legacy, have a will so that we're not happy that you're gone, but we are not grieving over the nightmare we have to take over with your finances and the assets. I mean, the world's worst is a bunch of hillbillies in the backyard

with a metal detector trying to find the coffee can. I got that call, Dave. He had $100,000 in coffee cans. I said, what's your address? For real? I'll be right there. It still happens today. Since we're making big announcements,

this is not as momentous as what you're saying to people earlier, but I've decided to change my will, and at the time of my untimely death, you will get all of my shoes. Oh, that's such a blessing. Wait, what size are you? I don't know if there's a size. Does that matter? Kind of.

You killed the joke, George. Sorry. I was hoping you were going to say golf clubs, honestly. Oh, no. You get some nice clubs. I was hoping you were going to say golf clubs, honestly. Oh, no. He gets a nice club. My shoes are worth way more than my golf clubs. That's one of those, like, you know you might be a redneck. You know you might be Metro if your shoes are worth more than your golf clubs.

I'm just saying. I had to get him back for the gap. He made the gap kids joke. I had to get him back before the show was over. There we go. See, you walk into it. That's right. Mess with the bear. I had to get him back before the show was over. There we go. See, you walk into it. That's right. Yeah. Mess with the bear. I love it. Ken Coleman, George Camel, this hour. Good show, gentlemen. This is the Ramsey Show. Hey, George Camel. If you like what you heard in

this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey Baby Steps, go to ramseysolutions.com and click on the Get Started button. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. That's ramseysolutions.com and click Get Started.