The Ramsey Show - App - What Do You Truly Value? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm your host, Jade Warshaw. Next to me is number one bestselling author and host of The Dr. John Deloney Show, the man himself. We're taking your calls for the next hour. You can call in with whatever it is you want to talk about relating to your life and your money. That number is easy. It's 888-825-5225. And the wonderful Christian will pick up and screen your call.

Make sure you're not a psychopath so we can talk to you on the air. That's how this thing works. So let's take a call. We've got Lynn in Houston, Texas. What's going on, works so let's take a call we've got lynn in houston texas what's going on what's up lynn you there lynn i picked up the wrong line let me go out of that and go back to lynn who is on not line five but line six hey lynn are you there hello what's going on hey lynn jade is still learning how to work the phones you know numbers are a difficult topic for me what's going on how can we help thank you

uh yes so i have a question for dave and my heart is racing so forgive me here um so my situation is i'm 39 years old and I just recently lost my husband unexpectedly. And, um, I just kind of want to get some opinions on next steps for me. Um, and just looking at, uh, finances and things like that. Um, expenses are about like two and a half times my personal income. And I was just curious what Dave's suggestion is on how to like allocate life insurance and things like that. And as well as like 401k. How recently did your husband pass away, Lynn?

At the end of February. Oh my goodness. What was his name? Paul. Pretty amazing guy. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I just want to like, um, do the right thing. I know. Handle things. And, um, are you, are you, so here's the, the rule of thumb, generally speaking is if you can, don't do anything for six months. Don't move.

Don't sell something. Don't jump through hoops. Life insurance check will come deposit that in a high yield savings account and sit for six months. If you can't, not everybody can do that. So walk us through where you are. Do you have money for rent, for mortgage, for food, or are you going to need this life insurance money to figure out next steps? I'm good for right now.

I think I don't have baby step number two obviously taken care of, but I do have baby step one. And if I skipped over two, I think I have baby step three just in savings. But I certainly would need to figure out how to handle baby step two. When you're talking about it, my initial impulse is to say, pause paying off debt and all of that for right this second unless you're drowning if you can make minimum payments for six months can we just do that

yes yes I can do that you're going to get tons of people in your life coming out of the woods wanting a piece of your money telling you what you need to be doing I think you should do that I want you to tell them all to go fly a kite what I want you to do this. I want you to tell them all to go fly a kite. What I want you

to do, it sounds like you're in a position, a not rare position, but not a common position to just be really heartbroken and sad for a while. Okay. And that's right. And that's holy. And that's why I got life insurance when I got married. So if something happened to me, my wife isn't running to Walmart on Monday after my passing because she can't pay bills, right? And you're not in that situation. And so I want you to grieve and miss this guy and figure out what even the sun looks like when it comes up because everything in your world is different now, right?

Right. Right. Right. Okay. Do you have some people in your life that will sit with you when things get real heavy and sideways? Oh, definitely, definitely. Okay. What about a budget?

Do you have, and it sounds so trivial, but sometimes just little grasps of clarity and sanity give us something to lean on when everything feels like it's upside down. Do you have a budget? Like, do you know what it takes to live every month? And do you know where the bills are and things like that? So I always pay the bills. Like I handled like paying the bills, but I never really like wrote them down until like recently to see like what that looks like by the month. I just always knew we had some leftover like savings and things like that. So just where I

am right now, like to make minimum payments, it's more than my salary we'll be able to handle. But I have enough in savings to let me get through that six months. Okay. What's the life insurance total? I think $250,000. Okay. And you said there was also money. Did you say, was it other investments or was it retirement? 401k retirement.

Okay. What's in there? I'm just curious. I think around 220. Okay, good. Okay. Yeah, I'm 100% with John. Exactly what he said is right. Six months is just you getting, is just you time. And you've got a great emergency fund sitting there that will be there.

I'm with John. I'm not making extra payments. I'm trying to, I'm really going to look at this on a, almost like a four walls. I'm going to make sure I'm covering minimum payments, prioritizing four walls. Cause like you said, even if you wanted to do all of it, you don't have the money to do all of it. And then just being really smart with what I do choose to do, because most of our budgets comprise of things that are needs and some of them are wants. So maybe I'm pulling back on a few of those wants just so that I can make sure that this emergency fund does last me.

And honestly, this is the definition of an emergency. So it's there for you to use. You don't have to feel guilty about that. But it won't last forever. And that's the stark reality of this. And when that life insurance does come, we want you working with a smart investor pro to make sure it's being invested properly and um i would love for you to get to a point to where this life insurance maybe there's a draw on it that's going to help you get back on your feet but then you are getting to the point to where you

are able to cover the lifestyle with your paycheck whether that is whatever that looks like and i'm not going to bog you down with what that might be right now but you will get to the point where your money is what's keeping your lifestyle afloat right okay and all of this is i mean you're three or four weeks out right yes yeah this this is something that you're going to nod your head to you may not even remember this conversation in four months okay what i want you to hear us say with as sober and as clear of thought is um you might end up selling the house that you live in and part of you might think i'll never sell this house and part of you may think i can never go back in that house again all that up and down is right and it's good, and it's normal.

But what I don't want you doing is going to sell something, or going to buy a new car. Let's make sure we have friends and loved ones coming over on a regular basis. We have people who are showing up with meals, that you got some guys from your church that'll mow your front lawn. And let's begin to settle in for a few months because everything's different now.

Everything's different. And then like Jade said, there will come a time when the sun will come back up and you'll begin to make some decisions on what the future looks like. So sorry for your loss. So, so sorry. Hang on the line. We're going to send you every dollar so you can begin to track this budget as you figure out what new normal looks like. You're listening to The Ramsey Show. I am Jade Warshaw. Next to me is Dr. John Deloney. We've been with you for the last couple hours taking calls about your life and money.

We still have a little more time, so give us a call. The number is 888-825-5225. We'll chop it up. We'll talk about your life and your money. Hey, it's tax season. I didn't have to tell you that. You knew that. Most of us don't like tax season. Let's be honest because taxes are confusing, right? And if you buy into some of the tax services that are out there, they kind of make you feel like you're never going to get it. Like you'll never be able to understand it. It's over your head. So why should you even try? Or worse, they'll kind of suck you into these offers that will never help you win. It'll never help you understand. And we honestly here at Ramsey, we think that you deserve the truth. So here's today's tax truth. Are you ready? A tax refund is not a bonus. It's not, guys. It's not a bonus. It's a refund.

It's you getting back money that you overpaid. It's not them giving you anything. It is certainly not a gift. It's been your money all along, and it's money that you earned, and you've just been giving it to the government to hold with no interest, by the way, and then they give it back to you. And so if you get a big tax refund, a lot of you are like, listen, Jade, that was my trip to Disney. Like, that was my down payment for a car that I was planning on buying with debt. Like, a lot of you knew what you were going to spend this money on, but I need you to stop, right? And if you do get a tax refund, remember, just throw it at your baby step, not a new car. But what you really need to do going

forward is adjust your withholding. Yes, it's on your W-4 form. But what you really need to do going forward is adjust your withholding. Yes, it's on your W-4 form. That's what you need to do because your tax withholding is the amount of money that you're estimating that they should take out of your paycheck every time you get paid that they'll hold that. But if it's too much, that's when you end up with a refund. So we're going to adjust our withholding. That is the word of the day, because this is money that you could be putting back into your month to month budget to use for paying off debt, investing or putting towards whatever your baby step is, whatever your goals are. So say it with me.

A tax refund is not a bonus. And by the way, I just want to talk about this since we're talking about taxes. I put on social media basically the same thing, John, that, hey, you need to go in there and adjust your W-4, adjust your tax withholding. And somebody said to me, they were like, well, hey, Jade, for me, I'm not good at like, what's the big deal? Like, why can't I just take this money and let them hold it? And then I do have a big chunk of money. And I'm happy. I'm like, I'm going to throw it at my debt. I'm happy to throw it at whatever baby step I'm on. And what I told him, I said, listen, you're loaning that money and there's no interest.

You could do the same thing. If you wanted to, you could say, hey, all this money that I'm getting back, I'm going to just put it in the HYSA, a high yield savings account, and I'm going to let it sit there, which I've done before. Because sometimes when you have a stack of money, you can make a deal on your debt. But here's the thing. At least with a high yield savings account, you get 5% back. Like you get 5% interest.

So if that's what you're, if what you're trying to accomplish is a lump sum of money, do it in a high yield savings account. Still get that money back into your budget. Do it there. And I just went and did this. Did you? For the second year in a row, I got a return and I went upstairs and Dr. Debian said, I'm tired of loaning the government my money interest free.

Maybe if they spent it better, I would be like, all right, y'all can borrow. Nah, still nah. They don't do a great job. And here's the thing. A lot of people, it's like we say that and they're still like, but wait, what do I do? What do I do? For most people, here's the thing. It's tax time. And most of us have already done our taxes, hopefully. So if nothing has really changed in your situation, like if you haven't had a baby,

you haven't bought a new house, haven't adopted a child, like nothing major has changed. You can kind of use this year as a template to go, okay, if I got back $6,000, what's that divided by 12? Because there's 12 months. And if you get paid two times a month, divide it by 24. And that's essentially how much money you could be getting back into your paycheck. And then it's as simple as what I would probably do is I'd go right to my tax preparer and say, hey, can you help me real quick? I need to change this on my W-4. Can you help me do that? That'd be thing one. Or you could go to HR at your job and they could help you do it. Or if you say, well, Jade, my situation is going to be very different. Then for the next year, I would just do a, like go on irs.com. You could use that calculator,

which I'm not going to lie. I don't like it. Or you could just use a software and do a fake tax return to estimate what it's going to be and then adjust it from there. And I would say, though, like as a cautionary tale, if you're a person who's self-employed or you're on 1099 or there's a lot of different things going on, definitely make sure you're working with somebody because I don't want you owing a bunch of money. So there's a balance here and I want you to strike that balance. But at the end of the day, if you haven't already filed your taxes, make sure you work with a service that you can trust. If they're complicated, you can use our Ramsey Trusted Pro on your side. That would be good. And if you're comfortable with filing your own taxes, you could just use Ramsey Smart Tax. I would say that's the way to go. It's got low

upfront pricing. There's no hidden fees. There's no agendas except to help you out, right? So go to ramseysolutions.com slash tax to see what's best for your situation and get started. Again, that's ramseysolutions.com slash tax. Love it. All right, John, speaking of taxes, speaking of money, speaking of all this stuff, I saw this article today and I thought, man, this is crazy.

So I'm gonna share it with you guys. It says, as the Fed considers interest rate cuts, inflation continues to drive up grocery costs. So, I mean, I don't think I have to say it, John. I think we all know that interest rates are up. Inflation is up. We feel it so many places, but one of the places we felt it the most is at the grocery store, right? It's been crazy times with this inflation. It says, frying eggs and bacon at home might seem like a frugal move, but as the battle against inflation continues, it's still going to cost you. Although let me just say it's still cheaper to cook at home. Don't let this fool you. Overall prices rose 3.2%

in February on groceries compared to this time last year. However, that's still down from its 40-year peak, which was 9.1 in June of 2022. But grocery bills still have people making hard budget choices. So here's how much breakfast items costs on average in February of this year compared to recent peaks of five years ago. So I'm going to go through this. Hold on, before you get to this, I didn't know this. Food and energy, like gas, natural gas, those are not included in the core inflation rates analyzed by policymakers.

So kind of like the employment numbers, those numbers are cooked and they're baked in a way that make everybody feel really bad or feel really good. But just know when they say inflation is coming down and you think, why is gas and food continuing to get more expensive? I mean, when we talk about how expensive it is to live, we don't include food and gas prices. Those are over here.

We're talking about other things. And for most of us, food and gas prices, that's a big chunk of our life, right? I mean, it's up in the big picture, but it's lower compared to its peak. Of course, yeah. So that's kind of the thing to keep in mind. Percentage-wise. Percentage-wise, yeah, which is good. We're going down as we have gone up.

So there you go. So let's look at some of these numbers because I think this is crazy. So something like coffee, for instance, like coffee per pound. In 2020, you could buy a pound of coffee for 25. Then in June of 2022, it was 579. And then in February of 2024, it was $6.09. So it's gone up over a dollar and a half.

Sliced bacon, same story. It's gone up almost a dollar um from 550 to 656 eggs they've gone up it's come down that's true it hit a high in february bacon is a food group of the deloney house and we sat out 22 because it got it got out of control seven dollars and 40 cents a pound that's that's madhouse so it it crept up hit a peak and then went down a little bit still higher than than it was uh eggs we i mean do we really have to talk about it folks were buying chickens it was getting so crazy so they went up about a dollar and a half over the course of the from 2019 to 2024 and

white bread again from 2019 went from a dollar 28 to two dollars and one cent this year and here's the thing you look at this number and you go, wait a minute, Jade, it's a dollar and a half. It's a dollar. Like, what's the big deal? And it seems small, but I mean, I don't think anybody here is going to argue that we feel inflation at the grocery store. Nobody would argue and say, yeah, it costs the exact same thing. Or a dollar and a half is no big deal, right? We feel it. It compounds. It's a slow drip. But every time you run your credit card, you're like, dang it, I got 10 things. Why is it $50? But we've got to apply that same logical thinking to getting out of debt.

A dollar and a half matters, whether it's the imperfection and the uncomfortableness of inflation, or it's you finally deciding to get your budget in order. You cut spending, that same dollar and a half adds up. And in that way, it adds up to savings. So again, we've got to have that balanced, logical thinking. A dollar and a half either matters or it doesn't. And I think with inflation, we've all seen that it matters. So make it matter on the flip side as well. This is The Ramsey Show. You're listening to The Ramsey Show. We help you with your life and your money.

Caveat, there will be work required. You can give us a call. The number is 888-825-5225. I am Jade. This is John. We'll help you through it. Let's go straight to the phone line where there is Nick in Seattle, Washington. On line five. What's go straight to the phone line where there is Nick in Seattle, Washington on Line 5. What's going on, Nick?

Well, Jade and John, thank you so much for taking my call. How are you today? Doing good. How can we help you out? Good. I'm a little nervous. I get one shot at this, so I hope I remember everything that's been on my mind for so long. You listened to Eminem growing up, didn't you? You only get one shot.

That's it. Okay, so my wife and I always shared the dream of acquiring some legacy properties for our kids and our great grandkids. Hey, Nick, talk directly into the phone for me. You bet. Can you hear me now? Nah, much better. Yeah, go for it. Oh, good. So my wife and I always shared the dream of acquiring some land as legacy property for our kids.

So at a very young age, in our early 20s, we started a business from the ground up. We are now in our mid 40s and we've had about two weeks off in 23 years. Wow. And we're exhausted. We're thoroughly exhausted. And we're wondering, see, we always went by the philosophy, if we work hard now, we can play more later. Yeah, but that's crazy. We're finally at the point. Can we finally play? Is it time to sell the business? I mean, you could do whatever you want. What's the business?

So it's a residential housekeeping business. Last year, it grossed a million dollars. Over the course of the last 23. And we did acquire our legacy property of 70 acres with a hundred year old log cabin, which is also paid for. So all in all, we're sitting at about 2.5 and we owe about 400,000 on two of the houses combined. Have you marketed your, have you sat down and thought about what it would cost us? I mean, what you could get to sell your business? Yes, we did get it evaluated. It evaluated for about 900 and they said it could evaluate for more. But when we first purchased the house that we run the business out of, we did a lot of repairs to it and that's made the sale price go down. So we would have to wait a couple more years for that to be off the record, all of those expenses, and it would show the growth income

a little bit better there. Yeah. Can you hire a couple of people to take the load off? So we did. We actually had a manager for about 13 years and she went on maternity leave and decided to become a stay-at-home mom. And in our line of work, it sounds like you could just hire somebody to just come, you know, day to entry, but it takes a real intimate knowledge of our clients and our schedule changes by the second. We have fleet vehicles. We're just always putting out fires. So we would prefer to hire from someone within who knows our business and our procedures, but we don't really have anyone that's interested in that lead role at this time.

Can you feel like we'd be starting over? So, okay. How long, how many years did you say would take for that other stuff to kind of fall off the book so that it looks more valuable? Two more years. Last year was our first gross of a million dollars. The two years prior, 22 and 21, are where we put so much money into this new building that it's not reflecting the true value of the business. So is there a way that you can split the difference in the way of, listen, going 22 years and only taking two weeks off is not the move. So is there a way that you can create a more balanced work life for yourself and for your family? Even for just 24 months? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No, well, we try. And if we're not interrupted with something from the business, a vital concern or decision-making. Okay, hold on. I challenge you. What's a vital, this sounds like a case of... Listen, it's your business.

Listen, it's your business. It's your baby. You've grown it. It's become successful. It is, you're talking to a fellow business owner. When I left Warshaw Entertainment to come here to Ramsey, it was like,

you're going to have to pry this from my dead lifeless fingers like it was hard right um it's your baby you've grown it and so there's part of you that you it's hard but you have to do I want to uh Christian when he gets off the phone give him Dave Ramsey's delegation um quick read because it's really going to help you understand what's important the things that you must hang on to, and the things that you've got to be able to delegate out to other people so that your business can grow or so that you can be a person and ultimately be a better leader and a better dad and a better husband, all of those things. And so I think you've done really, really well. I just kind of want to reiterate and make sure I understand. You've got six different properties,

right? It's your primary house, then you've got the acres with the log cabin, and then it sounds like you've got one, two, three, four other properties, one of which you do business out of. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. And you only have debt on two of the mortgages out of all of those, right? Correct. And it's $400,000. So are you... And we've got about $300,000 in the bank. And you've got $300,000 in the bank. That's not retirement funds. That's just savings. Yeah, we have no retirement. Actually, we thought the investment properties would become our retirement. And as we got older, we would sell them to our kids. Yeah, I think... Also help them get into a house i think that's

good but i do want you to be balanced in the way that you've also got money in in in the exchange as well like i don't i i want you to have a more balanced portfolio in that way so i would be doing what we say to do which is still finding a way to invest 15 of what you take as income so that you're building that other nest egg as well. This $300,000 that's in cash might be a good place to start. That's personal savings, right? That's not considered business reserves. Some of it, about half and half. Okay. Well, I'd keep the business reserves because that's going to be part of your valuation when that time comes to sell it. And then your $150,000, again, just like I would

teach personally with your personal money, the baby steps, make sure you're setting aside whatever your three to six months of expenses. And then, you know, there's part of this that's very business. And then part of this is like, your debt is your debt. And so you have to treat the debt

that's your debt as such, right? The 400,000 on those mortgages, you kind of have to treat it in that way. And so I would still, until the time comes that this business sells and you're able to pay things off, I would still do your personal baby steps with your personal money and make sure that's handled properly. And then when the time comes to sell, you know, you've got a nice windfall situation going. And I would definitely use whatever money of that to pay off what's remaining on these mortgages. And then you're completely whatever money of that to pay off what's remaining

on these mortgages. And then you're completely free. You're still putting away, you know, some of that into invested exchange funds, mutual funds, not just real estate. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. We're not really sure where else to invest. We've been too busy to ever really get that far. Yeah. I mean, I would do what I tell everybody to do. Number one, with your amount of money, I'd work with a SmartVestor Pro. And then number two, it's the same as everybody else. You and your wife, it's earned income. You're investing into Roth IRAs. You're setting up some sort of simple 401k or some sort of to get as much of this money invested as possible. And again, working with a SmartVestor Pro is going

to help you see your options because you still have two years left money invested as possible. And again, working with a SmartVestor Pro is going to help you see your options because you still have two years left as a business owner. And my guess is there's, I mean, a significant amount of money that you could be putting away for that. And then, yeah, you're going to be sitting pretty, dude. This is exciting. Here's the big deal, Nick.

If you want to sell a business, sell a business. But don't plan on being 43, 44, 45 years old and doing nothing. You got to have a next plan. And we're busy people and we're very frugal people. So we're not afraid to work or hopefully even develop on that property that we've got. But listen, that's... How fast time has gone, we're going to lose that opportunity.

No, you're right. And I get it, but some of this is like what Jade was saying. You guys decide to not take vacations, and you say, if we don't, then this is going to... It's probably not. There's probably very, very few. Either we are here to deal with this issue or the whole business goes away.

There's probably very few of those. Maybe an angry customer. Maybe a frustrated car that needs repair or whatever. fleet vehicle right but y'all have to decide you know what our marriage our our relationship with our kids that's more important than this dumb thing we're going to go on a trip we're going to go on a vacation we're going to take a break we're going to so important fill in the fill in the blank there but you can't plan to sell this business and high-five each other take that money money and then stare off into space or say for the next 40 years, we're going to work on the property. You're going to have to have something that requires you to get up every day, that you have purpose, that you can make some money.

You use that creative part of your of your mind. So make that plan before you sell this business, man. This is The Ramsey Show. You're listening to the Ramsey show I'm Jade Warshaw he is Dr. John Deloney your scripture and quote of the day Romans 15 13 it says may the God of all hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him love that Benjamin Franklin said the constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness you have to catch it for yourself I know that's right Ben you got to run after this thing it's a pursuit it's not an entitlement oh love it all right let's go to Peachy in Edmonton Alberta

I like it I want to say like is everything peachy keen is everything good what's going on hi oh my gosh I'm so excited I'm excited um I'm so excited I just can't hide it awesome yeah so I have this question um I'm a stay-at-home mom, a homeschooling mom, and over the years, we've been doing the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps, and we're on Baby Step number six now. And my thing is, I know I'm very busy with homeschooling and everything, but I can't fight the urge to go and make extra money because I want to get the mortgage paid off quicker. And an idea that I came up. Yeah. So recently I was looking at renting out our SUV on Turo, but I wasn't sure if that's a good idea or not because we bought brand new. We made the mistake of buying brand new seven years ago

because we just couldn't agree on whether we should buy used or not. But anyways, now it's just in my driveway. And because I homeschool, we walk, everywhere we go is like walking distance with the kids, and it just sits there, and I'm looking at it every day. And I'm like, I could make money off of this if I rent it out. And I just wanted to know, like, for where we are right now, am I pushing things, wanting to bring in this extra income

to pay off the mortgage? Or should I just relax? Or should I, should we sell it? Or should I rent it out? You have options. So I do want to clarify, I think you know this, but just for listeners, we talk about the first three baby steps being very intense, right? We're always saying gazelle intense, go fast, go as fast as possible, intense, intense. But then the last ones, baby steps four, fast, fast. Now it's just about, hey, I'm going to be intentional about paying what I can extra in order to pay this house off or I'm going to or put towards kids college, what have you. And so in your case, you and your husband, it's up to you guys to decide what in what intentionality feels like. Right. And so for you guys, it might be something as simple as saying, okay, we're going to sell this SUV and whatever it brings, half of it, we're going to buy a cheaper

car and half of it, we're going to put towards the mortgage. And we're both happy with that. And that's fine. And that doesn't feel like this major sacrifice. Or you might say, yeah, I've got time. I'm willing to pick up up a couple extra hours doing something or I'm willing to pick up something that might, you know, make us a little bit of money. And if that looks like something like Turo, fine. Is this your only vehicle? No, we have two vehicles. So like as the years went by,

like I found because it's my husband too, buying secondhand and he bought a secondhand vehicle for himself for work which is like cheaper on gas and everything so it's a smaller vehicle um and that's what he uses every day and he bought it for really cheap um my concern i think peachy my concern is that i and again i can be a fun ruiner when it comes to these kind of conversations is it's easy to look back and go hey we just walk everywhere and I think of yeah but what if one of those kids falls and breaks their arm

how do y'all get that's the point he's making how do y'all get somewhere yeah I don't know enough about Turo he'd have the other car someplace else it's not like you'd be able to have access to the second vehicle that you have no able to have access to the second the second car the second

vehicle that you have no because you take that to work every day what i i would just research it because i i think i don't know i'm not going to sit here and be a true expert but the people that i know that successfully do it i have a buddy that does it successfully and he doesn't rent his personal vehicle he has a dealer's license and he goes to auctions and he buys cars in cash and fixes them up and rents them out. And it's a business for him. And it's a whole thing.

So I've never been able to speak to it as a side hustle. I only know it from that side of it where that's like one of his big things that he does. So I would just research it. I gotta imagine it's a little bit of a trickle as far as money, because I gotta believe that they're taking a big percentage because of insurance purposes and then yes it is insured yeah how much how much do you um what do you take off of what's the percentage split yeah um to be honest with you i didn't look into that. How much do you owe on your mortgage?

We just bought this house two summers ago, so we're still at like $2,070 around. $270,000 left? Sorry, $270,000. $270,000 left. What's your husband bring home? He brings home about $95,000 a year. Okay. Tell me about your kids.

How many kids you got? Two kids. Two kids. How old? Six and three. Okay. Are you going to homeschool them all the way through? Are you going to get them through elementary school, to middle school?

How far? All the way through? Are you going to get them through elementary school, to middle school? How far? All the way through. Okay. That's the plan right now. How old are you? I'm 39. Okay. 38. I'm turning 39 soon, yeah.

So here's some facts. We know that when people walk through the baby steps, most people are able to pay off their mortgage within seven to 10 years, which is amazing considering that the world tells you it's going to take 30 years on a 30-year conventional rate mortgage, right? So that's what the numbers tell us. And that's just by you knowing it, by you being intentional, by you having paid off debt so you have extra money freed up in your normal budget with your normal margin in order to make this happen. So again, it's up to you guys. I would not jump into Turo. I mean, I'm not saying this to be whatever, but it sounds like you've not done

any research on it. It's just kind of like, oh, here's an idea. So I would do that research before you make any decisions. And you might find that there's something that you can do that doesn't diminish the value further of an asset that's already going down in value like your SUV. You might find something that makes you more money without having that depreciation kick up. And this is a full circle conversation because Jade and I started off a couple of segments ago, a couple of hours ago, with this very conversation. You guys have made a values choice in your home. We don't want our kids in public schools

and we don't want our kids in private schools. And that's awesome. Whatever your values are, good for you guys. And all of our values come with a cost. And so what's not going to bring you peace in your home is living by your values and then being obsessively checking your mortgage every day to see if it's any lower.

If you have said, hey, we're going to, a value is this important to us. So in my house, not owing anybody anything, freedom was the highest value. My kids went to public school because our highest value was I want the Delonys to make the best decisions

for our family, not what some stupid banker is going to tell me I have to do. And that doesn't make us any better or any worse. That was just our value. And in your house, it might be our kids

will not go to public schools they will be taught by me their mom great that's gonna mean that you're gonna push out how long it takes you to pay off your mortgage that's okay but it's being at peace with your value judgment and sometimes jade we make value judgments at work when our boss says you're gonna do this and you're gonna and you say i can't do that yeah and it's gonna cost you your job yeah right and that's why we tell you like don't owe anybody any money have an emergency fund for that very moment right but i think we again we live in a culture that what we want to have our values met and we don't want to pay the piper on the other end and when you have when you've got values then you have to

ask yourself, what's your price? Yeah. What's your price? Well, culture tells us any price is okay and you can go into debt to make it happen. You can have whatever you want all the time forever and there's no accounting for it. When I was in South Florida,

there was this furniture warehouse and people buy furniture, they go deliver it. It's the big delivery truck and the slogan on it said, everybody can live like this. And it's just that whole idea that you don't have, there's no trade involved. There's no sacrifice.

Everybody can live like this. You should, if you want it, you get it. No sacrifice. But life is just not like that. And like you said, John, very eloquently, you get to choose your values and they come at a price, but you get to choose that. So thanks for hanging out with us. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll see you next time.