The Ramsey Show - App - When Are You Going To Clean Up Your Financial Stupidity? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: July 1, 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. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host, open phones at 888-825-5225. Dr. John is a PhD in counseling, number one best-selling author many times over, also host of one of the more popular shows on the Ramsey Networks called The Dr. John Deloney Show, where people call him for on-air questions to the counselor. Well, you can get to him today, 888-825-5225. Crystal's with us in Colorado Springs. Hi, Crystal. How are you?

Hey, I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. How are you? Hey, I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Yeah, so I'll try to make a long story short. I have a question about where and how to move forward with a relationship with my dad. He recently wrote me a letter, um, about a situation that happened three years ago that he felt I handled, uh, wrong. Um, and just, uh, the cliff notes of that is that, uh, about 20 years ago, I, uh, bought my parents' house back from the bank after they lost it. Uh, they lost their house and their business and everything. And so we quote unquote put it in my name with the expectation that they would take it back. But over the course

of those 20 years, my dad cheated on my mom, got divorced. I ended up moving into the house, you know. And so it's been in your name all along. Yes, sir. Okay. So you ended up, you ended up with a house after all. Sure did. Yep. And, um, and so when we, uh, when, when my husband and I sold the house, uh, I, I didn't feel that the down payment money was rightfully mine, uh, because my parents did pay that. So I gave that to my mom, uh, and said, do with this as you wish. If you want to split it

with dad great if you whatever um but the proceeds from the house i felt were mine because it's been my house for that length of time uh at the time you bought it back from the bank after they lost it they put up the down payment so they gave me money for the down payment yeah this one they pulled some cash together yes sir okay how much was that about 34 35 000 okay all right so you returned that to her sure did all right and um and then you know we uh didn't give my dad anything, told my mom she could share that, but we didn't feel like we should, like any other house was theirs. He hadn't lived there in years or anything. And apparently that's been a really sore issue with him.

And he wrote me a letter about three weeks ago saying how that was terrible. The house was not rightfully mine. I should never have done that. I'm selfish. I'm going to have to answer to God one day for that. And just had his own, as we always do, his own perspective of reality. And I have my own, and they do not align.

And so it was good to hear him out. And I responded and said, hey, thank you so much. It's really good to hear your side of the story. I didn't realize there was even an issue here. And then I said, well, let me respond to this. So I responded in kind to his letter with a letter of my own, just really diplomatically, zero emotion saying, here's how I see these facts. And so he has not texted, emailed, called, answered calls, anything since then. And I'm just wondering what's healthy. Like the financial thing I don't feel like is what I want advice on.

It's the relationship piece. I have three young kids who love their grandpa. And, um, can we go for it? How do we go forward? I ended my letter saying, you're still my dad. I still love you. You're still welcome to have a relationship with me and the kids. Um, so I just haven't heard anything. Do you live by him? No, he lives, uh, he lives in Michigan. I live in Colorado. Have you picked up the phone and by him? No. He lives in Michigan. I live in Colorado. Have you picked up the phone and called him? Yes. And it goes straight to voicemail.

Okay. Ugh. It sounds like, unfortunately, he's making a grown-up dad decision that he gets to make, which is, I don't want to talk to my daughter. I know. And I hate that for you. Yeah. I hate that for me, too. And I hate want to talk to my daughter. I know. And I hate that for you. Yeah, I hate that for me too. And I hate it even more for my kids

who love their grandpa. Yeah. But it sounds like their grandpa loves being right in his own heart and mind more than he loves the relationship with those kids. Mm-hmm. And I'm sorry.

That's heartbreaking. That breaks my heart for you guys this is one of those that falls in the bucket of you can't make other people behave yeah i had a counselor tell me that before and also that you can't spend a lot of energy trying but it just doesn't work oh gosh some people's kids i mean i've kept right i've contemplated just flying out there getting a plane ticket showing up at his door but then i'm like that just that doesn't seem right no that's desperate and you're not desperate you've not done anything wrong hon what you've described was very logical and um it's fine i might not have written him back i might have called him yeah i wouldn't have written it back i would have called him but but that's no big deal that's not like a principled thing you didn't do

anything wrong you just would have better stood a better chance of of possibly hearing tone and so forth um yeah you know but anyway it's um it's neither here nor there the whole thing's messy so he has the deal is this okay every time he sees you hears you talks to you he is reminded that he failed your mother he is reminded that he failed in business and lost his home and his own child had to bail him out and so i'm sorry but you're a bit of a source of shame for him not you don't make him ashamed you remind him of his misbehaviors does that make sense yeah yeah i haven't thought of it that way yeah and you can't you can't fix that you didn't cause it that's a brick he's carrying around and you can't knock it out of his hands yeah yeah i'm so sorry it's just not the problem is there's not a good answer

except i know except just you know one of us to walk over and knock him in the head but you know um yeah i mean i could give you his address i know it's a possible it's a possible thing i mean we you know there's there are people that solve it that way but you know i don't think it worked that way either knock some sense into the man i'm rattling some ideas through my head he's giving up he's giving up a relationship with his own grandchildren over stuff that happened 20 years ago. Yeah. And that's sad. I might, I'm trying to think if this is manipulative

or if this is restorative, but when his birthday comes around or Father's Day comes around, I might have my kids, I still want them to do the next right thing. And they may send Granddad a picture or send Granddad a video. But you'd have to be very careful about your spirit on that. Yeah. Not to stomp on, but to make sure those

kids know that even when things are tough and someone chooses to not respond to you, that until they say, stop calling me, that we're going to continue to try to love them the best we can. But I'd have to think twice before I did that. But you do not change your principles to attract him either. Correct. And you've been doing that your whole life.

Don't do that. Yeah, you stood up this time on proper ground. You stood somewhere along the line. You've done some good work. You're standing on proper ground. The decisions you made were all accurate. This is The Ramsey Show. If you guys want to help us out, we could use your help.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Doug is in Phoenix. Hey, Doug, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, guys. Thank you for having me on.

Sure. You're so amazing. Thank you. Great job. Thanks, brother. So, to answer my question, I am in a spot, I have a company that came recruiting me and I'm offering me a much higher increase in my base salary. My current company contributes quite a bit to 401k and, um, they have company stock

that they basically hold. When I look at the net numbers, the new company is a little bit more, but it's cash in my pocket and in my actual earnings. The other, they can kind of retain it. If you leave and go to a competitor, they can hold it back and not pay you out. And so I'm kind of weighing this option on baby step two right now, trying to pay off the debt and wanted to know your advice on how to... How much of the cash in the pocket versus the bennies, how much of that is the swing? So, I'm looking at my base salary would go from about $130 to right around $200. Whoa.

Yeah. This is a 30% swing. Yeah. Okay. In cash, not in kind. I mean, in kind, it's about a net-net, but about a 30% swing cash in pocket. That's a lot. What do you do?

I'm in commercial banking. Okay. All right. The other thing is I don't want to trade short-term gain for long-term pain. Yeah. So if you're going over to a toxic, hot mess, grotesque bank, don't do it. I mean, life's too short, right? And if you're going to someplace where you'd be capped out and there's no chance of your career being furthered,

and at the other place you could grow, I wouldn't want to do that. So I don't want to take the short-term money and then two years from now regret it, right? Jeopardize, yeah. Yeah, I think what I'm looking at with the new place, the opportunity is really, really good there. They've sort of come new into an area, and they need someone to lead out a team and stuff. Culture and environment decent or good? Yeah, they have a very good track record in that area. Leaving the place

where I'm currently at, it's sort of unknown what the path looks like. There were some things that they kind of promised that didn't pan out. And so it's sort of a, I don't know.

The other part of it, in this baby step two journey, we're coming out of, got into a lot of debt over the last few years are you moving financial no it'd be same same market okay so there there's no there's no baby step two issue because you're moving up in cash yeah that's better than that's if i'm jumping into something in order to fix some yeah i just don't want you to do short-term gain for long-term pain. That's all I'm saying. If the long-term gain, like culture and upside for the career, is great

and the money's more, it becomes a no-brainer. Yeah. I think. Am I missing something? No. I think the things I'm trying to make sure I'm not doing is trying to fix a big problem with a now money thing. There is some unknowns in the new place.

You know, they don't have a long track record in this market. So I'd be kind of creating a culture and building out a lot of that stuff, which creates some excitement. You want to fix a big-time problem with right now money. That's what Baby Step 2 is. Yeah. There's got to be something else here y'all stopped your spending are you doing baby step two correct or you're just still spending like you're in congress no we've it's it's been the last 10 months or so it really ramped up and

you and your wife are on the same page and there's not a problem yeah so you've changed that you've changed the cause of the problem, correct? You? Yeah. Yep. Okay. Me, exactly. And if that's changed, then there's no downside. Now, if you're trying to band-aid over half butt doing baby step two,

then yeah, we could go there. Yeah. But I didn't hear that. No, I think we talked actually just recently as we're kind of contemplating this that we need to probably get fully on board. I think there is some spending, you know, where it's like, oh, we went over on that. We just kind of bumped the budget amount up. So I think there's some tightening up of that that we could do.

And we're not doing this to consume more. We're doing this to get out faster and because it's a good career move, both and. How much do you owe, Doug? Yeah. We're about $150,000 between HELOC and credit cards and solar and car. So what does an extra $70,000 a year do to escalate this for you? Yeah. Or to accelerate this?

We're done in less than two years. Yeah. Yeah, no-brainer. I would have done it yesterday. You better be. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, get after it as long as you've addressed the issues now if you're again if you're just doing this to mask over the fact that you really didn't change and you told me you're doing baby

step two but you're really not because you're half butt dragging along and you're still going on vacations and still buying crap you can't afford and that kind of stuff then that's a different issue if you are masking over it then this is not going to mask over it. It's going to come back. As my friend Les Parrott says, when you bury these things, they have a high rate of resurrection. So this stuff will come back to haunt you if you do that. But if you and your wife have really both said, look, we've been out of control.

We're stopping the out of control. We're going to be in control. We're going to live on beans and rice, rice and beans for a period of time and get this $150,000 in stupidity cleaned up. And then you take this job, then I'm in. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. Layla's with us. Layla is in Washington, D.C.

Hi, Layla. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I'm a long-time listener. I listen to your podcast to work every day. Thank you. How can we help? Well, so long story short, this Saturday, my husband and I had like a series of not pleasant like rental car experience.

And so my husband, I think, emotionally decided to buy a car over the weekend and he put the deposit down, but like we can still backtrack. And I was wondering if you had any tips for talking him out of this decision because he really just don't need a car. Okay. You had an unpleasant rental car experience. Yeah. Like we got a zip car to just get out of the city for a little bit and it was just you don't own a car no okay so your husband said because we it made him

recognize we might want to own a car he put a deposit down do you have the money to pay cash for the car you put a deposit on? Yes. Okay. Is it a brand new car? No. It's a used 2012 car. And how expensive is it? It's $9,900. Okay. And what's your household income?

So he makes $130,000 and I make $99,000. Okay. All right. So do you have any debt other than your home? No. We're on baby step four and we don't have kids. So why can you not afford this car? We can.

We just don't need it. And part of the reason that we picked where we lived was his whole argument was that we wouldn't need a car so um ten thousand dollars in a used car is not going to change your life much probably not it's just it's a big car it's like an suv and there's just like the two of us so i don't i don't know i feel like there's the type of car and then there's i don't need a car and then there's i don't know. There's the type of car, and then there's I don't need a car, and then there's I don't like this car. And I think you're being emotional. There's a whole lot of things you're accusing him of here.

So I think you need to get on the same page. But the answer to your question is can you afford a $9,000 car if you're paying cash for it? Yes, you can in your situation. And so, no, I don't need to talk him out of it but you may need to talk him out of which car he's buying because you don't like that car you should be aligned on that before you make a major decision together um and that's happened at my house i can promise you this is the ramsey show show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book,

Building a Non-Anxious Life. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Daniel's in Colorado Springs. Hey, Daniel, what's up? Hey, Dave and Dr. Deloney, such a pleasure speaking with you, too. You, too, sir. How can we help? Okay, so I have two questions, one about my business, one about my house. I'll give a little background. So I just hit four years from filing bankruptcy about a week ago. I was about as broke as broke gets.

I now own a construction company that I opened April of 2021. The mental impasse that I'm at with myself is, do I sell this business in a couple years? Do I just continue to do this and continue to hire more people so I'm not working as much since I'm about to have my third child? I feel like asking these questions to myself almost makes me feel like a sellout because I care about my employees, my best friends, my vice president, and I just don't know what to do. Okay. Why would you sell it? I don't want to do this forever. This wasn't even really a plan. I opened it April of 21.

Before that, I worked with a guy who was probably the worst human. I'm part of the military, and I've dealt with some bad people, but this guy, he broke me to the point where I opened my business because I didn't want to be an employee again. And it takes so much time away from my two daughters that I have, four in one, and then I'm having my third child in January. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You work at night?

No, no, no. I usually get home at like 5 or 6, and then my girls get up at 8. So why does that take so much time away? That's like a normal job. That's fair. That's fair. The part that's in my head of where the bulk of my time was spent was June of last year, we got a really big hailstorm in the Colorado Springs area.

Yeah, but that's not every day. That was a moment in time. That was an anomaly. I'm talking about day in and day out. You're home at 5 o'clock, and you're telling me you're taking too much time away from your kids. That's absolute bull crap. Well, and I only get my kids half the time as well. I know.

Okay, I didn't know, but that doesn't change the equation, does it? Their dad still has a job right it's like a normal human that's what you think you're going to sit at home with a four-year old and that no and that's that was actually that leads me into that the same question of if i did decide to sell and and for the record what what brought this to my mind the company that i started with in 2017 when i got into this industry, he owned his business for six years and then sold it to private equity, made a really big sum of money. I don't want to go that route because I don't necessarily know what else I want to do because this is kind of all I know other than corporate America and before I got into this industry. And what I don't want to do is sell my business, make a good amount of money,

and then not have anything else to do. So my question is- And not have any clue why you sold it. Exactly, because I've heard your, you know, I'm an avid listener and I've heard that you have a lot of friends that even sold for 200 million and they still regret the decision

of selling their business. And that's kind of what I fear. I think for me, I just don't want to be the one that everybody looks to and customer problems and people not paying their bills on time. It's just mentally stressful. And I like the idea of, let's say, three to five years from now, getting into real estate investing. Don't you think there's going to be people there that you have to be responsible for too?

And customers that have to be taken care of too? That's fair. Everywhere you go, there's someone with a problem. that you have to be responsible for, too? And customers that have to be taken care of, too? That's fair. Everywhere you go, there's someone with a problem. Your job is to solve their problem. That's how you get money. True. And so what did you do in the military?

IT. IT. Okay. Yeah. For how long? Four years. Thank you for your service. thank you yeah i don't know um who do you what do you build uh we we do all exterior renovations on uh after hailstorms okay

so oh okay i haven't found anybody who can keep a successful business long term who does not have a deep compassion for their end consumer. Right. And so if you can wrap your head around somebody like take me 15 years ago, I bought my first house and I couldn't breathe because I was up to the threshold, and if a hailstorm was to come through, and you show up and say, I'm going to shake your hand, and I'm going to make this thing right, and I'll work with an insurance company, you would have been a gift to me as a dad, a young dad, and as a husband. You wouldn't just be fixing my exterior. You would have been helping me out. And that's kind of why I do what I do, because I used to work in insurance on the other side,

where I was the one responsible for handling the claims and i didn't like that because i was protecting the multi-billion dollar insurance companies now i get to protect your average homeowner which that is absolutely the most fulfilling so if you stay so you have to be willing to deal with the crap on either side of the highway because your mission is i'm gonna take care of those homeowners who just got caught under the wrong storm right and man that will that will be fuel that will take you all the way that's the one thing i like sitting by dave is he has what i would call almost psychosis about the end person he can't get that woman who is struggling to pay her bills and has been lied to by everyone and their grandma about how to handle money and he's got an answer for her and if you're not good and and i have the same obsession with people's marriages like so you have that i feel like you're looking at a lot of instagram telling you how to flip this and roi this and get the the money there and bro you have

something that brings you joy in your life and your daughters are going to be filled up by watching their dad work hard on behalf of the average homeowner in their community and show up ready to rock and roll as dad once he picks up his girls. I agree. I think you're struggling. And that's what puts me in the – for the record, I don't have Instagram. I don't follow any of that. No, I know, but you know what I'm talking about.

Somewhere you're getting fed information that tells you what you're doing is wrong, and nothing you're doing is wrong. I can agree with that. Running this business for the next 30 years is not wrong. Selling it and moving on to something else is not wrong, but it's not going to solve, it's not going to give you more time with your kids if you have a life and have a career and have dignity in the workplace.

And it's not going to avoid responsibilities if you have a life and have dignity and you're plugged into the workplace. And you're not going to avoid angry customers if you have life, have dignity, and are plugged into the workplace. All of those things are going to be anywhere that there is money. That's fair. In my mind, I think where the mental impasse is, I'm at the point now, like we've grown very much. So I started in 2021, we did 800,000 gross. 2022 did 1.6. Last year did 4.1. This year we're projected for eight and i have in my mind well

if i want to continue to scale to this rate it's going to eventually continue to take more time so do i want to do this for 10 no it doesn't take more time it takes less time because you're getting big enough now that you're going to be able to afford the quality leadership team as well as quality people that's you haven't grown your internal infrastructure inside the business and so you got the whole weight of the thing on your back that's what's crushing you and so you've got an internal business structure problem you've not spent enough of your profits on team to grow to put leadership structure in place the best time of my business life ever started about a decade ago around here.

And we were at that point, we were at that point at about a hundred million and I could afford to put leaders in place that were smarter than me, that managed segments of the business that were larger than the original business was as we grew it. And my life became amazing because I just stood back and watched other people do amazing work and i was at home at five o'clock at night uh and have been at home for several decades at five o'clock at night because of delegation to quality people but spend some of your profit on your team and here's the deal dude you got you got some internal growth plug into the entree leadership system go over to entree leadership Elite and plug into it, our Entrez program,

and start listening to the Entrez Leadership Podcast because that's exactly what's going on with you. You're doing the work. You can't scale past where you are. You're what we call the trailblazer stage. There's five stages of business. It's like there's seven baby steps. And you can't scale any further until you build your infrastructure out internally.

Your systems and your processes and your leadership org charts sucks inside this business because it's hockey sticked. It's gone up and to the right fast on you. And it's getting away from you. And you feel out of control. And that's what's scaring you. Now I finally found it. It was in there somewhere.

Okay. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. Selling a house or buying a house in this current market is wacky. It's crazy. It's a great time to sell, and it's the best time in the next five years to buy because house prices continue to rise even though the market's wacky. So if you want to buy a home or sell a home and do it the right way, it's a blessing.

If you do it the wrong way, it's a curse. All real estate transactions are not good. Only ones that make sense inside your situation are good. And sitting around waiting on the market to change to suit you is not a plan. The Ramsey Trusted Program is the only way to find a real estate agent that you can trust to keep you on track with what we teach here at Ramsey and to help you get the best offer on your house or get the best deal if you're buying. So we send you some of the top agents.

All the Ramsey Trusted real estate agents are high octane, high protein, high producers. They're not aunt Sally who got her license three weeks ago, or the guy Charlie down at the church who just got in the business. And that's not who you want selling your most expensive asset. Hello. You want a pro somebody's done it a bunch. And I'm sorry if that hurts your little friend's feelings,

but I don't really give a crap. It's your house, and it's a lot of money, and you need to take care of it right. So Ramsey Trusted Agents have years of experience. Find a Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agent for free at ramsesolutions.com slash agent. Linda is in Seattle. Hi, Linda. How are you? Hi, Dave.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I am trying to find out if it's wise to buy, to purchase a home at my age and my financial state, what my options are versus renting with the cost of rent continuously going up and being ridiculous. So I'm just trying to figure out. I'm 66 and a half and I am collecting my full social security, but I am also still working. Okay. How much do you make?

I make, I gross $3,435 at my job. A month? Yes. Okay. And then my $1,563 a month with my Social Security. Gotcha. Do you have any nest egg saved? I have $100,000 in a money market account. account and then i have an additional 10 to 11 000 set aside that i have a car that i purchased

two years ago and i wanted to pay it off this summer so i'm pretty close i'm right there how much do you owe on the car um about 10 to 12 000. I'd pay it off today. If you have to take a little out of the money market, that's fine. Get rid of that. Okay. Not sit around and wait on the summer to come around and knock it out. Okay. And you have no other retirement money? Not unless I retire from my school job.

Oh, when you retire from the school job, what will you make? The retirement that I paid into would only be about 15 000 okay and my the school would only be paying a very measly amount okay you know a few hundred a month um so it wouldn't really be profitable to retire all right well here's the here's the here's the the paradox you face, okay? You're 66 if you live to 96. That's 30 years. Rent is going to go up every year, okay? Buying a house.

Say rent. Yeah, if you rent. No, I didn't say rent. I said rent's going to go up every year if you rent no i didn't say rent i said rent's going to go up every year if you rent and the most expensive line item in your budget is your housing cost agreed correct and so your most expensive item is variable and going up and out of your control as long as you rent so renting is really a bad option at retirement. It's a bad option long-term, period, but it's really bad at retirement because it's going to go up a lot faster than your Social Security inflation adjustment.

And your income is going to go down when you retire dramatically. Okay? So that's going to put the pinch on you if you stay in the rental mode the problem is it's very expensive to buy real estate and you're in freaking are you in seattle well i'm i'm about an hour and a half north of seattle i'm closer to the canadian border border but i um okay so you're you're in a much more ruled... You're not in Seattle real estate market. Thank you, Jesus.

Good. No. I'm in a small Skagit County. Okay, good. So you have a better chance of finding a piece of real estate there than you would Seattle with your situation. I've been looking for a couple of years. Yeah.

So what I want you to buy is the cheapest possible thing that you can buy. Because when you buy it, what happens is even if you've got a small mortgage on it and you put some of this $100,000 down, you keep some back for your nest egg too. So you put $50,000 down as an example. And at least your payment, whatever payment you select, is not going to go up then, except for taxes and insurance might change. Right. But if you don't do that, every year it's going to go up.

Rent is going to go up. So the good news about buying is you fix, lock in, the most expensive line in your budget. And that's going to be a big deal 20 years from today for you, that you're locked in at you're locked in at those old 2024 numbers okay but i can't afford a 15 year the payment on a 15 year well you can afford it if you buy a cheap enough house and that's what i'm worried about here that's the paradox i said is you need to buy a house but i don't think you can afford one and i'm trying to figure that out

as we're talking through here. But if you don't buy one, you're really going to be up a creek. But if you buy something too expensive, it's going to drain you out anyway. So that's the paradox. So the only answer to the equation is buy something unbelievably cheap somewhere, somehow. And I don't know what your particular real estate market is or how you know quote unquote affordable you can find a one-bedroom two-bedroom little condo or a little farmhouse out in the middle of no freaking where um yeah or whatever i mean it does it does not need to

be fancy it needs to be housing correct and the only thing i just don't want you to be somewhere Correct. to be ideal whatever we do is going to be a strain we're just going to have to choose our heart is there a point when you would tell somebody look to move well she is she moved to the right area she's out in the middle of nothing i mean she's in a rural area very rural inexpensive area seattle's what came up on the the phone thing and i thought good lord she's never going to make it there so because even after if you're looking for a couple of years and you still can't afford rural like well i'm gonna i'm gonna you know she's not uh she got forty thousand dollars a year income forty five thousand dollars a year income so it's not gonna be easy be very tough because she's operating at a lower income level with not a lot of money to put down and so we're gonna be in lower income housing type uh lower price housing prices, which is fine. There's no shame in that.

It's better than being a renter for 35 years, though, or 30 years or 25 years or whatever the number is, because it goes up every year. We've got to lock in that line item. And folks, just to backtrack for those of you that are 32 and you're listening to this going, I'll never buy a house. You know, yeah, you will. You got till her age to figure this out, but you'll get it figured out. But you need to get it figured out, and then you need to get the house paid for.

Because if you can come into retirement with a nest egg, let's just make up a number, a half million dollars, and a paid-for house, even if it's a modest house, you've locked in the most expensive line item in your budget, and you've got money to live on. And then you're set for retirement. You don't have to be a millionaire, but you've got to, you can, you know, what we're aiming at. And, you know, if I could backtrack in Linda's life, I don't know what all happened to her, but if I could backtrack in her life 20 years and take her to a better place today,

I would, obviously, but I can't. So we'll work with what she's got. So I'm going to buy the cheapest possible thing as soon as I possibly can. And then if interest rates go down, you can refinance. Folks, you marry the house, you date the rate. The rate is not permanent. You can refinance and get rid of the rate. So if rates drop, I can't buy in these rates. Yeah, you can.

You can buy in these rates. You just don't. We're not keeping the mortgage forever. A, we're going to get it paid off, and B, we can't buy in these rates. Yeah, you can. You can buy in these rates. You know, we're not keeping the mortgage forever. A, we're going to get it paid off, and B, we can refinance and drop it if it goes down. So date the rate, marry the house. That's the plan. So get something inexpensive and get it going. Get your foot in the door. And that's what I want from Linda.

Bless her heart. This is The Ramsey Show. you