The Ramsey Show - App - What To Do When You Question Your Life Choices (Hour 1)

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

What's going on? This is John and my good friend George Campbell, and this is The Ramsey Show, live from Nashville, Tennessee, where we talk to people about their money, their relationships, their mental and emotional health, their work, just about any and everything. We're taking your calls live, 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225, and we're going to go out to Redding, Pennsylvania, and talk to Anton to get this show going this afternoon. What's up, Anton? How are we doing?

Good. How are you guys? Outstanding, brother. Is it Anton? Yes, Anton. I had a sneaking suspicion. Oh, great. Sorry, Anton. Just want to respect the name. That's all good.

Can you guys hear me okay? Yeah, we got you, man. Sound right. What's going on? Awesome. So I wanted a little advice on a situation I got going on. So I run my own business, and it's been going really well. Um, but two weeks ago I had a seizure, which, uh, my heart stopped beating for a little

bit and I stopped breathing. And when I came to and I'm healthy, uh, it kind of, you know, made me reevaluate every decision I've made, every decision I'm making. And, you know, the best thing to do to leave my wife in a good situation in case anything happens. Wow. Have they worked through what happened? Have they been able to give you some clarity on what your body's doing? Yeah. So, I pretty much had a severe panic attack that was brought on by some previous trauma, and my body pretty much just decided to shut down, and they said, hey, that's it.

You're going to have a seizure now. And we're out. What's the trauma that your body was replaying? It's some prior PTSD from some family stuff that happened with my brother. Fortunately, he's doing great now, but it's just things that I have to live with. Okay.

Did this happen out of the blue, or was there family stuff going on that started a domino effect that ended with this collapse? You know, surprisingly, it was a scene in a movie. And the scene was pretty much exactly what I lived. My brain told myself, this could be a problem. You can handle it. And sure enough, I couldn't handle it. Gotcha. So what's been the follow-up? So, I mean, I'm healthy now, which is good. My brain's a little rattled. And, you know, I have a business where I build custom fish ponds and I breed high-end koi fish. And the business is great. Things are doing good. But, you know, after that, I was like, oh man, you know, my time on here could be, you know, limited at any moment, provably, like if it's time to go, it's time to go. So I was thinking about, you know, what do I what do I do with my business if I were to go? And,

you know, my wife can't do what I do. I have money and investments and things like that, which she can have. But I'm trying to figure out if I maybe pivot to something that's more, you know, palatable for her to be able to run if something happens to me and I sell my business, or if I just keep going and pack money away and, you know, get ourselves in a better situation. Can I challenge you a bit, Anton? Absolutely. Anytime we have a moment where we feel like we're betrayed by our own body, when it lets us down, whether it's an anxiety response or a panic attack response or a heart attack or a stroke or an aneurysm, there's that, the foundation of our life gets shaken, right? It feels like the sidewalk we were walking on is suddenly cracked and it's not safe to walk on anymore because the one thing we could always count on was our bodies, right? Yep. And when family relationships are screwy,

when neighborhoods, when finances, when politicians, whatever, I can count on me. And then your body said, and we're out, right? Yep, yep. So times of reflection after that are really, really important because you're right. Yeah.

You got to peer over the edge and be like, oh man, our life is fragile and it's quick and it's short. And you can also take reflection a little bit too far and you can respond to this type of kind of shaking of the snow globe with an entirely anxious response,

which is what you're doing because here's what you're doing. You're now starting to plan for problems in the future that are aren't real oh yeah the fight or flight's telling me to you know flight right and so you are trying to flee from your present reality and so what you're going to do is you're trying to live into the future into a create a job in the present that one day your wife will carry on without you because you're going to die young and then you want to make sure dude, you're now you're inventing stories to try to solve in the present as a way to not deal with. You've been through a lot, haven't you?

Yeah. Uh, I grew up with nothing abusive household, you know, dug ourselves out and like things were finally going great. And then this happened and I just felt like that little kid again of being out of control. And it's scary. Okay. But when you came to, tell me about your marriage. Oh, marriage is great. I mean, we've been through a lot. Um, hold on. Don't, don't qualify. Don't qualify it. You've been qualifying your whole life. Your marriage is good. Okay. Fair enough. Marriage is good. You love the woman you're married to? Absolutely. A hundred percent. She loves you?

Absolutely. Do you have little ones? No. What's the state of your finances? Finances are good. We have been paying off debts. I only have about $10,000 left and I took my house from 30 years to holy down to only having four years left on it. So we are sitting pretty for our age. How old are you? I am 26. Awesome. Do you have life insurance in place? I don't. It was something that I was in the middle of

working on and the paperwork should be started soon, But I was listening to Ramsey a lot and kind of figuring out, you know, all of that. And so we were looking at some options that kind of follow the Ramsey plan a little more. Please do it today. As soon as you're off the phone, contact our friends at go to zander.com and get a term life quote 10 to 12 times your annual income, 15 to 20 year term should be great for you. But that's going to give you the real peace of mind you're looking for of the like, what if something happens to me? It's not going to be the business. It's how is she going to pay the bills for the next 20 years? Yeah. And so that's something I would do today to give you a little bit more peace as you figure out what's next. Yeah. And

if you're following the Ramsey plan, we'll tell everybody to get life insurance. to you got to you got to um you're gonna have to go through some extra testing probably that's just par for the course cool just head right into it but here's what I want you to see your body immediately took you back to when you were 12 years old and getting beat up in your own home right yep and then when you came to you came to in the present where you're a great husband and you're a hard worker and you've transformed your family's future financial situation. Yep. And one of the things our bodies does is it just replays those old stories until we can show it that we weren't safe then, but we're safe now. Yeah. And so you mentioned early in the call, you're all good now.

I'm going to tell you, brother, you're not. But you're also in a remarkable position to now go get the healing that you need to do. Right. And my goal for you is not that you can undo what happened in your kid because you can't, but you'll be able to think about it. You'll be able to watch a movie scene and your body won't drag you back 20 years back to hell. It will remember and you'll go, and your heart rate will go up a little bit, but you'll recognize you're surrounded by a woman who loves you, the family who's with you now. You're safe financially, you got a team, you got a gang and so on and so forth.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It makes sense. I just needed to talk through it, man. No, you got it. I'm proud of you for saying it out loud. You want to quit your job, quit your job.

Don't quit your job because 20 years from now, you might drop dead and your wife's going to not want to carry on a koi business. Right? Yeah. And my guess is you love what you do. I think you love raising fish and you love doing all and creating ponds. That's amazing. That's awesome.

Continue to build that business. Build that business so big that the pile of money you leave your wife, she won't have to work. And then she can sell it to some other young guy who's creating his life moving forward. But man, you're on the right path. Your healing journey starts right now. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, so I was born and raised in Texas,

and I love the myth of the lone cowboy. You know, the guy who doesn't need anyone or anything. It's a fun story, and it's a lie. In our self-obsessed society, we're obsessed about our own diets, our own workout routines, our own jobs, our own social media feeds, everything. It's easy to forget that no one can do life alone. And I don't care if you're an introvert, an extrovert,

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betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Ramsey Radio. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by George Campbell, 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Selling a house the Ramsey way makes home ownership something to celebrate, not something that ruins every part of your life. The Ramsey Trusted Program is the only way to find an agent that you can trust to keep you on track with what we teach here at Ramsey. And here's the deal, to get you the best offer on your house or find the right

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Find a Ramsey-trusted real estate agent for free. It doesn't cost you anything. Just go to ramseysolutions.com slash agent. All right, let's go out to Charlotte, North Carolina, and talk to M-A-T-T. What's up, Matt? How we doing? Good. How are you? We're partying, brother. How can we help, man? So I sort of have like one question.

So I'm not like an avid watcher of the Ramsey show, but I see a lot of clips online where you guys talk about mutual funds and investing in mutual funds. I was wondering, why do you recommend mutual funds over index funds? Great question, man. How old are you? 21. Lovely. And are you investing right now? Yeah, I've been investing since I was 15. Oh my goodness. Dude, that's amazing. Who taught you that?

My dad taught me a little bit and I read about it. Nice. What have you been investing in for the past six years? So I was doing like mostly index funds, but I like to play around, do some stock picks, but obviously not a big portion of my portfolio goes towards that. Okay. Are you working full time? Yeah, I'm in marketing. Nice. That's amazing. Okay. And how much are you investing as a percentage of your gross household income? Probably like 25, 30%. Oh my goodness. Okay. So you're going to be a multimillionaire regardless of this conversation that happens next. Can we agree on that?

Yeah. Okay. Where do you live matt um right outside of charlotte no no like do you have your own place your own house your own apartment you're living with mom where you living no i still live with with my mom at home okay all right cool how much do you make a year? Yeah. 80 to 90. Oh my goodness, dude. You're crushing it. So we're talking, you're investing like 18,000 a year. Yeah. And you've got a 401k through your employer? No. I use a Roth IRA. Okay. So what happens after you max that out? I just put in a regular brokerage.

Okay, great. So let's talk about index funds versus mutual funds. And for the listener's sake, if they're like, what are these goober nerds talking about? Index funds are basically passively managed mutual funds. So still a giant group of stocks, but it's tracking an index, basically a set list of companies, whereas the mutual funds that are actively managed has an investment manager that is selecting the funds that make the list. Let's go even simpler for guys

like me. When you say indexed, they're indexed and they're passively managed. So indexed, there's no one running the show. It's just a set list. So they pick. I'm making these up. The S&P 500. There's 500 companies, the largest U.S. companies. And if they go up,

then the index fund goes up. And if they just they go up, then the index fund goes up. And if they just all go down, then the index fund kind of goes down. And over time, we hope these companies just keep getting bigger and growing. And then can companies fall off the S&P 500 and new ones pop in? Yes. So the whole thing should be just going up over time. Exactly. And so index funds means nobody's driving.

It's just following whatever those- It's the autonomous vehicle of the investing world. You like that? You just ruined it for people. John, like, I know. There we go. Excellent. Okay, okay.

Is that a good summary, Matt? Because you know about this stuff just as much as we do. Yeah. Okay. I mean, one thing that's sort of important to, like, note is that mutual funds sort of have built-in fees, right? You know what I mean? Correct.

Like, there's built-in fees, right? You know what I mean? Correct. There's built-in fees. There's an investment manager. There's people to pay because this is their job to run these. So they do have fees. The perks of the index funds, as you know, diversification, which mutual funds have, low expense ratios, which index funds have, and predictability. And every investing rose has its thorn. For starters, your index funds

won't beat the market because it represents the market. Does that make sense? So you'll settle for the average of the market. You can never beat it. The goal of the mutual fund is that that investment manager is picking, is hand-selecting funds based on tons and tons of research that they're doing every day, day in and day out, in order to attempt to beat it. So let's say the market does 10%. Well, the goal of the mutual fund is to do 12% or 14%. Now, as we know, they won't hit that goal every year. We don't have a crystal ball. We can agree on that. Do you look for specifics in a mutual fund to try to hit those funds? Because I know 80% of mutual funds don't beat the market. No, that's actually factually incorrect.

Morningstar did this article, and they said nearly 57% of mutual funds, these active U.S. equity funds, they beat the average index fund peer over the 12 months through June 2023. So that means 6 out of 10 mutual funds beat the index. Wait, over how long? Over a 12-month period. They looked at, here's what mutual funds did, here's what the peer index fund did. Six out of 10 beat the index fund.

Right, but why are you looking at a 12-month period versus like, you know, decades? You can't look at decades, and it's going to change depending on the decade you look at. And the truth is, there's going to be mutual funds that don't beat the index, and there's going to change depending on the decade you look at. And the truth is there's going to be mutual funds that don't beat the index. And there's going to be years the index beats the mutual funds. And so the goal here is to slightly beat the copycat of the stock market, which is the index fund. And so the index funds also do have a fee. You'll see it listed as a 12B1 fee. And so that kind of makes up for the fact that the mutual fund fee is there.

So it's not exactly free. And here's the thing. We're not anti-index funds. There's a time and place. In fact, Dave Ramsey invests in index funds outside of retirement. You have that taxable brokerage account, right? Yeah. Dave would say index funds are the smart play there because of the low turnover. They're not moving things around as much, which makes the fees less. But in retirement, you're not having to pay those fees because you're not worried about turnover because this is a long-term play. And therefore, he invests in mutual funds for his retirement accounts, index funds outside of retirement. So there's a time and place for both. What do you look for in a mutual fund, though?

Well, there's a lot of pieces of it, including rate of return, the expense ratio, what the fund is made up of, who the fund manager is, have they switched the investment team recently? If it's been doing great for 30 years and all of a sudden they switched the crew, well, that's something you want to look out for because things might change. And we actually covered this in depth, Matt, in our Investing Essentials live stream. And it's not currently available, but just for you, I'm going to send you a link to watch that for free. How's that sound? Good. But isn't that sort of inevitable?

I mean, if a mutual fund has a 30-year history with one manager and I'm 21 and I want to invest for another 30 years, isn't there pretty much a guarantee that the fund manager is going to change, the fund management team? Sure, over time things may change, but what we're looking for is that longer-term track record. And so we're not going to choose a fund that's been around for a year. We prefer the one that has a track record of 10 or 15 that's had the same team with the same record of success.

But, dude, that's like saying I don't want to root for the yankees or the astros because they're gonna have different players in a few years the whole the goal is you hope that they have guiding principles and they have the same desire to win and they have the same integrity over time some teams are better integrity than others with the teams I just labeled. I know. Kelly's looking at me not to ask questions. Kelly's upset. But you see what I'm saying? Like, yeah, the fund managers are going to roll over, but it will change over time.

Matt, here's the deal. We can argue all day, and I can tell you like this, but you can be a multimillionaire just from your index funds. You don't have to ever touch a mutual fund if you don't want or are going to still be friends. You're doing great. The key is your savings rate. That's the key.

That's what's holding people back from having money. It's not the discussion of index versus mutual. That's for another time. But for everyone else listening, just freaking invest. Be like Matt at 21 years old, invest 18 grand a year. You're going to have money in retirement, regardless of where you put it. And for what it's worth, George and I both put our money in mutual funds. Call me a dummy. And me too. They do, George. They call us dummies. We'll be right back. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down.

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and for them when they experience a medical event. So listen, y'all, there's no better way to take care of healthcare costs. CHM programs start as low as $98 a month. So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget at chministries.org slash budget. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by George Campbell. 888-825-5225. Campbell. Not Campbell. I heard Campbell.

That's the most American name out there. George Campbell. The B came out. I don't even know where that came from. It happens to the best of us. Jorge. Come on. I call you John Baloney sometimes.

You do. It happens. That one's on purpose, though. That's on purpose. Let's go out to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and talk to Brittany. Hey hey britney what's going on hi there how are you outstanding how are you good um i'm calling because my husband's employer um which is the federal government hold on the way you said that was incredible my husband's employer pause for disdain the federal government all. What has your husband's employer done this time?

Okay. So they are relocating his department from Harrisburg, PA to Columbus, Ohio. So he is currently making $88,000 a year. even though we are in South Central Pennsylvania. The specific base he's on got like lumped in with the DC pay. So it's like this gem that everybody wants. Low cost of living with an amazing salary. Exactly. So now they're wanting us to move to Columbus, Ohio, where the pay is less and the cost of living is higher. So he's currently at $88,000 a year.

They're saying his supervisor is leaving. And so in an effort to fill some voids, because not everybody is moving, they are telling him that that would be perfect for him to move into that position. And so then if we were to move here and he were to start his supervisor's position, he would be making $91,000 a year. So it's not that big of a bump. Just because of the pay here is obviously not as good. So they're going to pay like relocation expenses, closing costs,

and then they are also offering him a status bonus of 25% of the salary, which is great. We have a month to decide. They're supposed to give us the official letter any day, like anytime between today and June 30th. Hey, Brittany. I, yes. Do you want to live in Ohio? I don't know.

That's the question here. Do you want to live in Ohio? It's hard. Do you have kids? Like I, I, we do, we have two teenagers and they, I homeschool them. Okay. And we're all open to it. Um, Brittany, do you want to live in Ohio? Uh, I don't know. That's, it's the unknown that's scary i think you do know you just don't want to say it out loud it sounds like you're trying to find a way on paper or twitter that you're going this doesn't make sense we shouldn't do it when it's really just i don't want to do it and both are okay have you talked to him about this and shared your honest feelings like listen yes it doesn't make sense but also i don't really want to go to ohio well here's the thing we're on the same page he like he's the one that said call i'm like

we're in ohio right now he's here working for the week and so we were on the way yesterday and he said just call and let's just see what they're thinking because he has worked so hard to get to where he is and i feel like like, you know, every few years, it seems like it's another little step back. And so we got this job two years ago and it's just tough. Like our house, we only owe about a hundred thousand on it. And we have such a low interest rate. And if we move here, we're going to be starting over on that.

And I make about seven grand on like side stuff. Brittany, do you want to live in Ohio? Because if you don't, you owe it to yourself and you owe it to him to say that out loud. So that from a

foundation of honesty and a foundation of cool, let's figure out what's next. Y'all can make an informed decision together because y'all said till death do us part,

right? Right. And for better and for worse. And he's had an amazing run. And here's the deal, he's going to have an amazing run. And y'all are an amazing team. What happens if he says no, and he stays put? So if he says no, they will find him a position in the area. It might not be at that same base, so it could be at another one where the pay is, again, not going to be as good. I think it's up to a year, so he might end up on unemployment. I don't want him to leave the federal government. This was his goal for years.

He applied it so many times over and over. Let's play out the other scenario then. What happens if you stay and your life becomes worse and you're resentful for those reasons? Oh my gosh, he now makes $70,000 and this isn't fair. Is that a possibility? Or he's unemployed and now he's got to find a new job versus the known. This is the thing. There's so many elements.

I know. That's where I'm trying to cut through it. You got to let the money go. Y'all had a good run for two years. You got the golden goose for two years. That's gone now. The life y'all had is now going to be over. And the cool thing is,

is you get to pick which one is next. Is it a new one where he's a leader in Ohio? Where it's going to be a little bit more expensive and it's going to take you a little bit longer to be fully debt-free with a house? Cool. Or are you going to stay there and you're going to make a little bit less money?

It's going to take you a little bit longer to pay off your house, but you have friends and connections and family and whatever else is going on in Harrisburg? Cool. But you're skirting the real issue. The real question here is, do you all want to do life in Ohio together? Do you want to do life in Harrisburg? Or he had a dream of being a part of the federal government. After living in that dream for 10 years and getting moved and shifted and

pushed around every two years, it's just not good for the family. So we're going to get a new dream. But you keep wanting to make this about $2,000 here and $7,000 over here. And and pushed around every two years, it's just not good for the family. So we're going to get a new dream. But you keep wanting to make this about $2,000 here and $7,000 over here. It's just not – that's on the fringes. You're not dealing with a core question. Right. Is that fair? Yeah.

I mean, we've known about this for a year that this was coming, and so we've talked about every aspect and every scenario. And we feel like there's possibilities here and there's support at home. And so we're just torn 50-50. Where'd you grow up? My kids are open. I've lived in the same zip code my whole life. In Pennsylvania?

Yes. Okay. So does it scare you to leave? A little bit, yeah. Just a little bit? That would terrify me. Are you excited at all about the prospect of like, oh, this is a new adventure for us?

Or is it all just sort of like, ugh? I'm just, I'm torn right down the middle. Here's where I go. You can make both of these scenarios be wonderful. Yep. You could have a great attitude and go, you know what? This is going to be a new adventure. It's going to be fun.

We're going to be making more money. Sure, we'll have to find a new house, cost a living. They're going to cover a lot of that and it's going to be great. We'll get the house paid off. Here's our new goal. And you live a great life in Ohio.

You're going to get into a homeschool consortium and I'm going to make a bunch of new friends and it's going to be awkward and weird, but I'm going to go do this because it's going to be a blast. I'm going to make some new friends. Or you and it's going to be awkward and weird, but I'm going to go do this because it's going to be a blast. I'm going to make some new friends. Or you stay and you deal with whatever consequences come with that, whether it be unemployment, a dip in pay, and we slow down our goals here. I think either way, you just have to be okay with whatever's next based on the decision you make.

And what you choose to do with that decision. And can we just also, this is kind of a cool thing. What are the chances that within the next two to three years, something else gets moved or shifted or changed just based on track record? Well, this is, so this would be the first time they moved. This is supposed to be the permanent location for this now because technically harrisburg isn't even in the district that they're at so it didn't make sense so they're moving this is supposed to be it um it's not like it happens often okay there's an election coming up in november i i just as far as like stability and federal government stuff, I just, you're inside of it, so you have a better insight than I do.

I just, I think y'all could make a decision to move to Ohio and put two years on the calendar, 24 months. And if it's miserable, y'all can move. Or chances are y'all going to get moved anyway, or there's going to be some new something or other. I imagine his ceiling is higher moving into a supervisor role too, right? Yeah. So we got to also think about what that does for our financial future.

Right. I know, but listen to me on this side, Brittany. As two guys who have worked really hard and have quote unquote earned positions, which that's a whole other language conversation we could have later. I want my wife to be whole and happy. My life isn't just about what I've earned professionally. It's about the life my wife and I are creating and the life George and Whitney are creating. And so he can quote unquote earn any job he wants, but if his wife longs to be somewhere else, no job is worth that. So I think you have to sit down and be honest and say, I want to go, and I'm going to go all in on this.

I'm going to go 100%, or I don't want to go. I really want to stay here. Make peace with whatever decision you do make. And then go make a good time out of it. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. Let's go out to Dallas, Texas and talk to Alex. Hey, Alex, what's going on?

Hey, guys, how's it going? Outstanding, brother. What's up? So my wife and I are going to wrap up Baby Step 3 in about a month, month and a half. And so as we look forward, we are sort of split between saving up for a house or maybe saving up to start a business. Exciting. What are you guys doing now for work? So right now I work in HR for an electricity provider,

and she works in HR compliance for an auditor. Beautiful. Love in HR. We love to see it. Okay. What's your household income? About $145 pre-tax. Amazing. And what is the business you want to start? We want to start a coffee cart business, essentially serving coffee to weddings. Most likely on the weekends, we wouldn't like to let go of our weekday jobs. Okay. And what is it going to cost to start this business? We're estimating probably like $20, $25. For the actual cart itself? For the entire thing, cart, espresso machine, and essentially initial investment.

Okay. And how long have you guys been married? We're about to hit two years in August. Fun. And you're renting right now. What is the urgency to buy a house in Dallas, Texas? Is that feasible? That's the thing. Like when we look at what we can afford with our budget, we either have to buy something that is a little bit on the older side when it comes to a home, or we would have to go way off into either east or west, too far from our jobs. And yeah, it would make our commutes a little too long in our opinion.

Okay. Well, I don't think these are mutually exclusive. I think you can start to attack both. And so one thing I would do is set a down payment goal and then make sure you guys are sticking to that. And on the other side, any leftover money, because we're not going to put 100% of our margin toward that, is let's start saving up for this coffee cart to pay cash for it. Yeah. How much margin will you guys have to throw every month toward these goals once you're out of Baby Step three and you're investing 15%? After investing 50%, we'd be looking at maybe 2000, maybe a 2,500. Okay. So let's say 25K a year. So one route you

could go is, all right, for the first year, we're not going to save up for a house. We're going to continue renting. And in one year, we're going to have the money to start this coffee cart business. It sounds like you're real excited about the coffee cart business and the house thing is like, well, we can push that down the road a little bit. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. It just, whenever we look at houses, it just, you know, whenever we think about the investment, it doesn't seem as exciting at the moment, just with interest rates. And again, just our purchasing power right now is not, it doesn't excite us, at least from the houses that we've looked at. That makes sense. And George, I had a buddy one time, and Alex, I'm going to ask George a question

on your behalf. It's more of a global question. I had a buddy one time, this is years ago, I was going back and forth whether I was going to buy a house or not buy a house. And it was a small house. It's all I could afford and this and that. And I kept running these investment numbers. And it was like, well, if I rent here and then 36 months here, the math just never came out. And one day a buddy of mine who works in finance said real emphatically, dude, buy your wife a home. And I looked at him and I was like, yeah, but look at the, and he interrupted me and he is the most ROI guy I know. He said, get your family a home. And yes, this will become an investment over time, but that property that is your home is your home, right? It's where you anchor in.

And that sentiment was something I had never considered. And it has since transformed everything I think about when it comes to buying real estate and homes. If you're buying real estate for investment properties, you buy investment for properties. That's awesome. But there's something about having a home that in my opinion, after, you know, buying and selling houses and being married for over 20 years, that transcends the spreadsheet, the spreadsheet. I like that.

It transcends the spreadsheet. It's, it's, it's a place where the Deloney's anchor into, and we've had multiple of those, but this is where we come in and drop our shoulders. This isn't the don't touch the counters. Don't touch the walls.

Cause this is an investment property. We're going to flip this in a rose. This is a place where we do life, right? We make memories. It's where our home exists. And so is that a bad way to look at that? No, not at all. Okay. I just, you know, everyone's had different values and it sounds like Alex and his wife, they've been married two years. The home isn't the thing that they're like racing toward right now. Right. They have these, you know, while you're young, before you have kids, let's start this coffee cart business remember when we did that so it feels like that's where you guys are leaning um and you can also you know change your aim and go all right we're

gonna get a condo in the next two years and that's gonna mean this much down payment and we're gonna use the coffee cart money to also throw the down payment which will speed up the process so you can think about it as a as not separate things but one thing that will help the other alex have y'all done the math like i'm sure i've done on the back of a napkin but have y'all done process. So you can think about it as not separate things, but one thing that will help the other. Alex, have y'all done the math? I'm sure y'all have done on the back of a napkin, but have y'all done grown-up business math on this coffee cart business? What do you think you're going to make? We would expect to probably bring at least first year. I mean, we'd be looking around maybe a thousand, a thousand per, per event. If we're working one Saturday, I mean, that would be around 12,000. And again, we're not in a hurry to start this and, you know, go all off and quit our day jobs, but we're passionate about coffee

and would like to start that. And maybe, you know, what we're thinking is that it could potentially give us more money to cut towards a down payment for a home. But yeah, we've looked at the numbers, definitely a napkin math, but we should, we could probably dive in a little bit more. Well, in the, in the, I had a buddy who was really passionate about barbecue really. I mean, was the best cook there was and that passion became starting a restaurant and being really passionate about barbecue was different than being a passionate restauranteur right right and being really passionate about coffee we love coffee like sourcing it we like making our own we like sharing it with our friends that's one thing running a business that's going to be all Friday nights and Saturday nights and

Sundays for indefinitely, that's a different type of passion, right? And so I think it's just navigating which passion is the real passion. And as George said, in what order, right? When we look up in three years, do we want to have a thriving coffee cart business? And if that was to be true, how much money would make that thriving? Or do we want to have a home? And what would that look like? And where would it have to be in the DFW market, which is chaos like every other market in America right now? Those are some great questions.

If you had to flip a coin, Alex, and you could have the coffee cart business of your dreams or a home, what would you, what would you pick right now? Oh man. Um, I think the first thing that came to mind was, was a home and, and, uh, Don, that's something that, you know, I think we've been so focused on like, what will be a return on our investment, right? What will be better for our money? But emotionally, maybe we haven't had, we haven't been having those conversations. I think we have a new conversation. Sit down with your wife and go, okay, what really is the priority right now? And can the coffee cart business wait? And can we do the coffee cart business sooner and cheaper? And instead,

we just rent the espresso machine and we get a nice folding table with some cool decor around it. And we don't have to go buy a, you know, a mobile trailer for a coffee cart right now and we'll do the 500 weddings instead of a thousand dollar and start small maybe do the first one for free for some friends and you know you take some cool pictures and put that on a little website and you just start small and start sooner while saving up for the down payment i feel like that would give me more peace from moving toward both and george i've got entrepreneur friends who would rather set themselves on fire than buy a house. Like they are too busy trying to start a thing and then start a business. I don't have to worry about a house and the maintenance and the repairs.

I'll sleep under a tree. I want to start a business. And so I love that Alex is going to shift the question from what's the best investment? What's the best ROI? It's what's the life that we want to create two years into our new marriage? Do we want to be a entrepreneurial couple that's going to build businesses together and we're going to start with a coffee and then one day we're going to have a wedding planning business or do we want to look up in three years and be well on our way to paying off a kind of old house, but it's ours and we'll fix it up over time or we'll upgrade when the time's right. That's a different set of questions than what are we passionate about and what's the best roi right

now and i love getting to that what's the real question behind what's behind the spreadsheet there you go yeah that's a good question cha-ching that's a good conversation every once in a while people need to actually use a spreadsheet everyone has those dreams like i want to do the house but i also want xyz or i'm really passionate about music you You don't have to quit everything, right? Or what does that mean? What's the question behind passion? I love coffee. I'm not trying to make money off of it. I'm not smart enough. You do consume enough to where your heart one day will

explode and we'll see it from space. That's it for this hour, America. We'll be you next time. you