The Ramsey Show - App - You Can Rebuild No Matter Where You Are

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

🤔 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Can an online will work for you? Take this quiz to find out!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ George Kamel and Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: “What should I do with my 401(k) after getting laid off?” “Should I take out a HELOC to help my aunt financially?” “How do I get out of debt with my income?” “How do I convince my fiancé to work the baby steps?” “How do I decide if making a career change is the best thing for my family’s future?” “What should I do about a car that is underwater and needs repairs?” “My husband wants to quit his job to drive for Uber again...” “How do we figure out ownership of a house we bought with my parents?” “What should I do with my 401(k) after my company is acquired by a larger company?” “Should we buy a new house or remodel our current home?” “Should I change my attitude about tithing?” “How much should I spend on a car?” “My husband wants to be involved in how money I inherited is handled because we are 'one'..." Next Steps: ✔️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Help us make the show better. Please take this short survey.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 weekdays from 2–5 p.m. ET or⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠send us an email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 📱 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get episodes early in the free Ramsey Network app! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💵 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎅 ⁠Hurry—Your chance to win $5k is almost over! Enter the Ramsey Cash Giveaway today!⁠ ❤️‍🩹 ⁠Open Enrollment is here—get free help from a RamseyTrusted health advisor⁠ Connect With Our Sponsors: Stop paying more and start shopping smarter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ALDI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get 10% off your first month of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ BetterHelp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Boost Mobile⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to switch today! Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Casper Sleep⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use promo code RAMSEY to learn more. Learn more about⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Christian Healthcare Ministries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get started today with⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Churchill Mortgage⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get 20% off when you join ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DeleteMe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ FAIRWINDS Credit Union⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for an exclusive account bundle! Debt collectors hassling you? Take back control of your life at ⁠⁠Guardian Litigation Group⁠⁠ Find top health insurance plans at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Health Trust Financial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Use code RAMSEY to save 20% at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mama Bear Legal Forms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ NetSuite⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ today to learn more. For more information, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SimpliSafe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get started with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YRefy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or call 844-2-RAMSEY. Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Zander Insurance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for your free instant quote today!  Explore more from Ramsey Network: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Ramsey Show Highlights⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🧠 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dr. John Delony Show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🍸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Smart Money Happy Hour⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💡 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Rachel Cruze Show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💰 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Kamel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🪑 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📈 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EntreLeadership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Normal is broke, and common sense is weird, so we're here to help you transform your life from the Ramsey Network in the Fair Ones Credit Union Studio. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm Jade Warshot next to me, George Camel, taking calls about your life and your money all hour long. and even longer. So if you want to get involved, the number's triple 8, 825, 5, 225, that's how you do it. All right, Amy is in Canada. Hey, Amy, how can we help you out today? Hey, thanks for taking my call.

So my question is how to navigate parents giving lots of gifts, knowing it's from debt, and it makes us feel anxious. So, yeah, I guess we're just wondering, is it okay to say no to my parents spending money on our family? Well, yeah, of course you can always say no. I mean, you don't have to accept it, but I kind of want to get juicy. I want to know more about what type of gifts. What kind of gifts?

How much are they spending? How long has this been going on? Yeah, so they'll spend upwards of two grand per child, so four kids, multiple grandchildren. for Christmas and even for birthdays where they always want to take us out for dinner. They always have points to upgrade their flights or our flights or fly us across country. Wow. And we know that, so they're empty nestered hoarders, and they have, I don't know how much debt they're in, but I know they have a few ATVs, a trailer, a fifth wheel, a boat, a vacation home,

and we know that none of those are paid off, maybe just a couple of the ATVs. Do they have any, because some people live a lifestyle where it's like, I have a bunch of debt over here, but I also have a bunch of assets over here and I just play that game. Do they have a bunch of assets somewhere or do they not have enough to retire? No, they keep like talking about how they need to keep pushing their like 60 and they need to keep pushing back their retirement. They still like have a home that's not paid off. Got it.

How much have they shared with you regarding their financial problems? My dad has shared a decent amount. He was not aware of the finance in their home until maybe five years ago. But then once the mom found out, then he kind of has stopped sharing as much. But he had no idea how much that they were in. And so the whole situation just feels irky. and then it's how to protect our family, but knowing that we can't advise them,

but we don't know how to just say stop spending money on us. Well, I don't know that you can tell them or make them change their behavior large scale. I think that it makes you feel icky to take a gift, you can easily say no. And I think that that's probably more what this call is about. So if they say, hey, everybody, we're all, we're loading up the family and we're going to Bora, And we're paying for everybody. You can say, oh, well, me and Steve will pay for our own ticket.

You know, that's, that's fine. Are they pretty aggressive with it? Yeah. And we've tried to put some boundaries in place and they will just show up. And if we say no to a vacation, I mean, we can't afford to pay our way, then it's like very dramatic. So wait a minute. So when you put boundaries in your life of we can't afford that, then that irks them. Of course. Why would we not go in debt to go on a family vacation? Yeah.

But you think you have a better relationship with your father to have a serious conversation with him and go, hey, based on what you've told me, there's a lot going on here financially, and it feels like you guys covering all of our expenses is only hurting that. And we just don't want to be a part of making this problem worse. How would he respond to that?

Yeah. I think he probably would respond well, I just, I don't know how much control he has over the actual. So it's mom, that is the out of control addictive spender? Yeah, I would say so. Well, that might be a conversation he needs to have with her. Yeah. If he has the place of authority in the relationship versus you, then it's going to need to be him convincing her that, hey, we're in a bad situation, and if we ever want to

retire one day, we need to start cleaning this mess up, and it starts with not being overly generous when we really can't afford to be. And you know what? I'm really thinking about this because I also think if you can approach this, I'm kind of thinking about it in the way of how we talk about college and how we should set expectations about parents paying for college. I'm kind of thinking that same thing. I think you need to go because I'm always about keeping the ball in your court, right? What's Amy doing? What's your life about? What are your boundaries? Because you can't really control them. So I might have a conversation with dad and mom. and say, hey, I would like to set some expectations on my end regarding your retirement. And I would just let them know. I'd say, hey, I want you guys to know up front. I don't know what your plans are, but I want you to know. I keep calling your husband, Steve.

I don't know what his name is. But I just want you to know Steve and I are not going to be able to contribute to your retirement. So I just want you to know that up front. I want to tell you that early and often so that there's no expectation that we would be able to help you out financially in any way. don't know what your expectations were, but I just want to let you know this is where we're at. And that way, when the time comes, because like I said, you can't change your mom, can't change your dad, you can, you know, gently nudge them and tell them what you think in a loving way,

but they may not do it. But that way, if the time comes, they know don't come knocking on your door for extra money in retirement. And so that's one thing that you could do. And that alone might get their wheels turning on, why would she say that? I wonder if she's concerned. Should we be concerned? So sometimes just putting your boundaries in place is enough to get the other person thinking about their own situation. Yeah, that's good. I like that. And then the other piece of this is you may not be able to change them. You may not be able to stop them. And I have family members like that too. Or they just love to be generous. And so I realize, you know what, I'm going to let go. If they want to spoil the grandkid or the niece, then that's what they're going to do. And, you know,

I'm more like, I don't want more crap in my house, so don't get us physical things I have to then store and keep around. But other than that, there's just a piece of it where you go, this isn't my life, this isn't my finances, and I might have to deal with a fallout later. That's right. Like Jade said, you've got to set the expectation. We're not going to cover you if you guys retire broke. You're not going to move in with us and we're going to cover all your bills. So get your crap together now because we're not the plan. We are not your retirement plan.

I love that. And you're approaching it from your side as opposed to pointing at them saying you're not doing this and you're not doing this. It just kind of takes the heat off. But those types of questions, George, they're always so tough because you love the person. You don't want to see them fall. You don't want to see them feel. It kind of reminds me we have a question from Facebook from Kristen. Very similar. She says, how do you stop grandparents from spoiling their grandkids? Again, one party is spending in a way that another party doesn't like, but it affects you. So what do you do? Oh, my goodness. I mean, you have a really hard conversation.

That's what I've done, is just say, hey, listen, we can't fit any more stuff in the house. If you want to do something, contribute to her 529 plan, but please, every time you come over, you don't need to bring more cars and toys and things that I have to then deal with. I know, that's right. And go give to Goodwill six months from now. Yeah, I do that. You know, around Christmas time, I had to say that to my own grandparents of my kids. I was like, listen, you guys need to cool out.

Number one, they can't intake it all. Like, it's too much on them. It's like stimulation overload. So I'm like one thing, and please, for the love of God, can it just be one or two pieces? This business that has like 100 pieces and you got to have a box to keep it all in, and now I've got to go by Tupperware storage to hold all of those. I got to assemble it like IKEA furniture all weekend. No thank you.

Please, no more. I love you, parents and grandparents, but you got to chill out. You got to chill out. Public service announcement. all right back to the phone lines we've got mike who's in oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plane you weren't expecting that what's up mike hey thanks for taking my call um so about well a few months ago in july i got laid off and i'm 45 i've been in the oil field my whole life i don't know anything else i'm having a hard time finding another career

And my question is, what do I do with my 401K? Should I roll it over into my IRA to have more freedom with that money? Or would that be a mistake? Well, it is smart to roll it over, but what do you mean when you say to have more freedom with that money? Because we don't want you on plugging the investment. Well, I don't want to do that either. But right now I'm under the umbrella of my former employee's plan, so I'm limited to what I can do with it.

If I had to touch it, God forbid, you know, I'd be penalized and all that. And I don't know if, for tax purposes, if it would be smarter to roll it over, would I be paying taxes on that right away? No, the way to avoid all of this is a direct rollover. So you never actually withdraw the money. It just straight gets transferred. So is it a traditional 401K? Yes. Okay.

So you'd want to do a direct rollover to a traditional IRA. Okay. And that, you know, I use a smart vester pro for that. If you want to jump on a Ramsey Solutions.com, get connected with one. They, they help me with this and made it super simple to get all the right forms done, make sure the money gets moved without any issue or tax penalties, all of that. But I think it's a great idea to get, to move it from the old employer, because you're paying fees, you have no control over it.

And you do have more control over the investments once it's in an IRA. Because now you're not beholden to whatever, you know, HR picked, the 14 funds. You have access to thousands. And so I would stick to good gross stock mutual funds, but at least you'll have all the options in the world once it's over in that IRA. So what about the job hunt? So you've been an oil all your life. Are you open to doing something different? What do you think, if you were to say, Jade, here's the problem.

What do you think the problem is? That's a good question. Is it a bad interview? Is that I'm just not even getting into the interview? Is that opportunity? The oil field's all I know. And what I've learned in the last 20 years doesn't really translate to anything else.

Well, I mean, would you consider oil field a skilled trade? Yeah. Did you work on equipment? Yes. Okay. I mean, you just gave us your resume right there. You know how to use heavy equipment, right? Were you on the maintenance side?

Were you operating it? Maintenance, yeah. Okay. So now we know. You have a very clear field. Industrial maintenance is a great field for you. And so I know it's scary because you go, well, if it's not oil, I don't know what I'm doing. But the truth is, you know a whole lot about what you're doing. It's just applying it to a new field. right so have you actually looked into industrial maintenance tech type jobs like whatever your title was take the word oil out and then pop that into google and see what kind of roles come up see what kind of experience they're looking for and then start applying with confidence and hey i worked in the oil field for this long i'm bringing this much experience i think i can really serve you guys in this way

yeah i think george is right i think uh i think you're capable of a lot more than what you really realize uh all those skills are transferable and we see see it. George and I see it. If you were employed this long, it means that you have value that you're able to add. So I really think it's more of a mental shift that you've got to have, that you have something to offer. And like George said, going in there with confidence, not, I probably won't get it because it's not oil. You know, I think you have to really work on that mindset. Before we get off the line, we'll give you a couple of resources from Ken Coleman. We'll give you, find the work your wire to do. We'll give you from paycheck to purpose. And I think that's really

going to inspire you, like Ken would say to do the work your wire to do. How are you covering your bills right now? I got some money saved up. How much is left? About 5,000, probably. Okay, so it's running out pretty quick, like in the next month or two. Correct. Are you single? Yes. Have you done anything for income since July, side jobs? No. So what stopped you from doing that? Because you know, a lot of times you do have to do some sort of work in the in-between. Any job is good until you get the job. So what's stopping you from, you know, hitting up one of these, you know, order delivery places and filling some time there or going over to FedEx or, you know. Any kind of retail work? Just something to avoid you depleting your savings to nothing. And then

the next step is, well, I guess I got to go into debt, right? Do you have any debt right now? Just my house. Okay. Good. Yeah, I'm worried about that because from the very beginning when you called in, it sounded like I think that somewhere in your mind the plan is when this $5,000 runs out, I'll be able to get my hands on that IRA and then I'll use that. I think that's living in your mind as your next option. And I want to eliminate that option completely off the table. Your next option is living off the paycheck that you're going to get because you're going to go down to Walmart or you're going to go down to Target or you're going to get anything where you can start supplementing and not drawing a full, you know, months income off of your savings. So what does that look like? I want you, I want to hear you brainstorm that. What does that look like for you over the weekend and over the next week?

What do you think that you could start with? I am on a job on already. I haven't had any luck yet, like I said, but... I understand for the major jobs. I'm talking about for the minors. what could you pick up that's just you filling that gap until you get the big job I don't know I haven't really thought about it like that yeah that's and I think that's what you need because um when you do that Mike it's going to help with what I'm hearing right now

which is a lack of confidence when you get any job it's going to help you it's going to give you something to do every morning it's going to cause you to get up you know get out of the sweatpants and go do something, and then it gives you something to say, today, I'm going to do my best at this. And that does something for us internally. We're created to work and we're created to do, you know, use our talents. And when you have a long stretch, when you're not able to do that in any capacity, it does. It starts to wear on your emotions. It starts to wear on your self-worth, all of that. And I can hear that in your voice. And you're too talented for that to happen. so that's that's almost as important as getting a couple bucks in the door right is just keeping your skills up keeping your talent up keeping your emotions and your confidence up because you are going to find another job but what I don't want is for you to go in there and because you haven't utilized your skills in eight months you know I don't want you to be feeling less than or overly eager at the interview because all that shows too does that make sense yes

Calm, cool, confident. So I would start looking at what kind of jobs have you applied to? I have applied to some of the industrial maintenance-type jobs, but I'm doing it online. If you don't hear nothing back, it's not like the old days, you know, when you go put a paper application in and go talk to someone face-to-face. Well, do you know people in the industry, and you let them know, hey, I'm looking for these types of roles.

If you know something, hit me up. Not really. I would be contacting everybody adjacent to the industrial maintenance oil world and just see what's available. Even if it's not the ideal thing, at least something for now to get your foot in the door. And then they go, oh, my gosh, you're way too qualified. We've got to get you in a different role where you can really use your skills. So that's the goal. That's what I would be doing if I was in your shoes.

And I know nothing about this field. You are far more talented than me. So I know you got it in you. And I think right now just applying online and hoping for the best. is not going to do it. You've got to be out there. You've got to be texting people, meeting with people, talking to drumming up business going, I need to be top of mind when someone has that open role. And Ken's books will help do that. I'm going to send you the proximity principle as well. This is the Ken Coleman package right here. It is. Everything we got. We're

going to throw it at you. So two pieces of homework, you know, obviously the resources we give you are going to help you. But if you don't do anything else, number one is, yeah, get on Uber Eats, good on DoorDash, something that you can just get out there, make a little bit of money. I mean, it's not going to replace your income but it'll do something and that's going to be so important for you and number two I want you to make a list of everybody you know that has done a job that you've done or know somebody who's done the job or has done something adjacent to the job make a list I want you to come up with at least 15 names and then I want you to hit the phones and I want you to call them don't text them call them up and have a conversation with them this is a sales job

and today you are selling Mike that's the goal Well, if you've been listening to this show and you like what you hear, or maybe watch on YouTube and you like what you see and you like what you hear, be sure to let us know and let the people know. Share the show if you can. Like the show if you can. Subscribe to the show if you can. All of that is so important. You can. I believe in you guys. I believe in you. It's easy to do these days. You're very capable. It is easy. There's that little paper airplane or you can just click the copy, copy link, copy and paste it, shoot it to somebody. It's a great way to share the content, help change some lives.

And it helps us out a little bit, too, George. Yeah. What a weird emoji that you, like, why had a paper airplane? I like it. Did you not make them when you were a kid? Oh, like send notes to people in class? Well, I didn't do that. I would just hand them over, but.

That's what I'm saying. Like, nobody used a paper airplane to, like, send messages. That's a good point. I don't know. Maybe it's like, I digress. Maybe it's a federal express. reference. Who even says Federal Express? You're really showing your age here, Jay. I'm talking about from Castaway. Oh, okay. I was like, do people call FedEx Federal Express? It's a very loose

connection here. Are you secretly a boomer? Reveal yourself. Oh, boy. Let's go to Nathan, who's in West Virginia. What's going on, Nathan? Hi, thanks for taking my call. Of course. What's going on? Okay, well, let me tell you my situation, and I'll see my question, if you guys have any financial solutions that I'm not thinking of. So I have an aunt who's almost 89 years old. And about 15 months ago, I got added to her checking account. I handle all over finances, make sure all of her bills were paid. And up until July, everything was going good. So her total income is about 2,200 a month. And I'm going to estimate that her bills, including utility, groceries, everything, maybe 18 or 1900 a month. So she doesn't have much

left over, but she did have enough to cover her expenses. Well, then started in July, we're paying caregivers 24-7 so I write checks you know every week the caregivers but you know we're paying about 2,400 a month just in caregiving expenses so the only way we've even been able to pay for it we've been selling assets we've been selling her cars but I'm estimating that she's going to run completely out of money probably in April or May so I'd been thinking well what are their options can I do that her house is all paid for so one option I had thought of was a reverse mortgage well then I looked on why she lives in in a 1973 manufacturer double-wide mobile home online that said you can't get a

reverse mortgage if the mobile home was built before 1976 because that's when HUD started that's fine I don't want you to do that anyway so we can go to the next one and then I thought well maybe home equity loan but I called a couple of places but you know when you take her income of 2,200 against maybe 1,800 of monthly expenses but then add in 2,400 of caregiving so now you're over 4,000 expenses against 2,200. income. So nobody's probably going to even, you know, loan money on her house when the debt income. So I can't think really of any other options that she's going to run out of money in the next several months. How much is the house worth if you were to sell it? Um, it's just a total

estimate. And again, it's a manufactured house. I'm going to say, it does have about one and a half acres of land with it out of the country. I'm going to just estimate maybe 60 or 70,000. Okay. And then what about with the land? Is that including the land with it? yeah and that's just a total guess in my part we haven't had any appraisal but and you said it's 2400 for care and have you priced out what if she had just like a single bedroom apartment uh in west virginia what would that cost um i'm gonna say it's gonna depend on the area i'm gonna guess you could probably get something for a thousand a thousand okay there might be a situation where you've got a

move her and invest this nest egg and kind of draw off of it what you can. Is it just you, or do you have siblings that are helping with this? Well, I have a sibling, but I'm pretty much doing it. Yeah, my sibling's not helping me, so not much. Would she qualify for Medicaid that would help cover the cost of caregiving? Well, I had checked into that just very briefly. On the, on the internet, it just said something out of it. If a single person made, I think, over, I thought it said 900 and something a month, although that sounds kind of low, but if she makes more than that, I had also thought about calling in West Virginia. I forget what it's called, but there's a senior services number through the state. I thought

about calling to see if there's any other options that I don't know about. My main options that I considered was the reverse mortgage or a home equity loan. Yeah, I would rather you look into the care options than debt options. I think what George is saying is that that's a better Avenue for you to look into if there's Medicaid or if there's any sort of state program there in West Virginia that can help. And then the other thought is, yeah, trying to get your hands on some of this money. What's her health like? Pretty, pretty good. My uncle, which is her brother, thinks that she has to mention. We don't know for sure. She's taking a test. I guess next month it will determine that. But other than

I mean, she's had some brain cancer issues, but she physically still gets around, still walks. Now, she quit driving probably about a year ago, but physically she does pretty good for almost 89 years old. Well, I would have a game plan. Let's assume that she lives a long life and goes to 99. Well, what's our 10-year plan to take care of this if nothing else changes in the expenses stay? So that's, I would be kind of planning for that worst-case scenario of covering these expenses for a long time, and that might mean you're pitching in to cover some of the gap. Are you able to do that? Yeah, I would be able to. And I actually even consider. were getting a home equity loan, but then I, and then myself, and I thought, well, but then

if she ended up going to nurse their home and we lost the house, there'd be no way to even repay. Yeah, we can't do debt. I would just take debt off the table as an option. I would rather you sell her place and invest that $70,000 or even put it in a high-yield savings account and utilize all of that money until that runs out, which will get you pretty far. Yeah. I mean, that's years of, you know, a few years of covering her expenses. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. that's I think today like I said you chase down and see what Medicaid will do what the state will do and there might be something that you can find there but in the in the near term you need money

because you said this is going to run out soon and that 70,000 invested it's not a ton but it'll give you something and if you can you know park it in an index fund and really only draw what you need and if you and your brother or you and your other sibling can get together and kind of fill those holes, that's really all you've got right now. And it's one of those things, you know, John would say, not by my hand, but in my lap. And this has just got set in your lap to deal with. And it sucks. Is there a scenario where she could move in with you or the sibling? I know even my mom and dad had even offered before about her moving in with them she didn't want to. And my uncle, which is her brother, I was thinking he may even said some of it.

She didn't act like she's lived in the same house. She lives in the same house. Understood. But she doesn't have a choice. Yeah, respectfully, she's between a rock and a hard place here. So she's not going to have the choice when she doesn't have the money to live. Right. And so it's probably going to come down to that because either you pay for her rent or she lives with family.

I think those are the only options at this point. If her Social Security is not going to cut it and you need to keep paying these caregivers. So I would do my homework and uncover every stone to see what I can find out. out about getting her care that isn't $2,400 a month? Okay, okay, yeah. There's no easy answers here. The only easy thing to do would be going to debt, and that's a terrible, terrible solution. Can you tell me when you said that's $1900 for her bills? What are that, what's that $1,900 in bills? What is that? Well, she has three loan payments. The one is 244 a month. One is 200, and then one is 100.

And then the rest of them are just her utilities, well, food electricity, yeah. What are these loan payments? one of them was for several years ago he'd got one of those outside generators that if your power goes off and then these were all most of these are bad that was to a finance company her interest rate on that loans almost 26% what's the total balance of her debts well it's not too bad now because I've been trying to pay them down as much I can see the total of all her debt combined is probably about 5,000 a little over 5,000 okay yeah I would try to clear that and get out of your life and if worse comes to worse I'd cover her four walls before paying these bills

and let it go to collections if need be. Yeah. And I have been trying to pay them down with extra. About a year ago, there's three loans were about $14,000. Now they're down to about $5,000 and something. I might have a conversation with family and go, hey, can we all chip in and get rid of this debt? Because that would really

let her breathe a little bit with her current income and expenses. Yeah. That'd buy you guys some time. Yeah. That's the best you're going to be able to do with this. I, guys, cautionary tale, man. This is what it is. The time does come for all of us where we age and we get to the point where we can no longer work and we get to the point to where we need money coming in. So please, please, please do not put off important things like paying off your debt. Pay off your debt now when you're young and you can work extra and you can do all these things. Take advantage of compounding interest now when you can invest. Invest 15% of your income. The day is going to come. Please do not rely on Social Security. This is it. This is what happens. It's, we call social insecurity for a reason. It's simply not enough to survive.

All right, everybody, hip, hip, hooray. The all new every dollar is here. And now it's way more than just a world-class budgeting app. It can do everything. There's a ton of advanced features to help make your progress with money even faster, even easier. As a matter of fact, the average person is finding thousands of dollars in just the first 15 minutes. So if you're interested, which you should be, you can start every dollar for free today. You can get it in the app store or as always on Google Play. All right, Mary's in Columbus,

Ohio. Hey, Mary, what's going on in your world? Hey, man, thanks so much for taking my call. Mm-hmm. I would love, so I just started really binging all the podcasts and all the things. Awesome. And yeah. And I am not a math. lady at a at all so I would and I've done all my numbers I have and I would love for you guys as mass people to give me the Ramsey goal for those numbers as far as like a year or two years however that that I can set um to get myself out of debt well you called the right person you called George Camwell because I'm ready I got my calculator I'm pushing my glasses up I'm ready to go oh good okay lay it out for us how much debt do you have

All right. I have about $60,000. Okay, break it down. Okay. It's in the Ramsey order. It's about $316 in like a pay-in-for situation, my bank from Chase. Oh, man. That, you know, lets me borrow those. Yeah, it's like, fine, now, pay later. Yeah, yeah, that'll reimburse you into your account and you pay them back. Then I have $400 on one, $450 and one credit credit. card, $1,900 on the other credit card. I do own my car, so no car payment there, and then the rest

of it is school debt. Oh, my gosh. Wow. So are those all broken out? Oh, and there's $1,000 that I found on my credit report that is in collection. So I was thinking of paying like 10 cents on a dollar or something for that. But anyway, sorry, go ahead. So $57,000 of student loan debt? Yeah, that's all right. Okay. And what do you make? 45. 45. What kind of work is that? What kind of work do you do?

I work as a print project manager at my church. Okay. I have done so for many, many years. Is print, is like, print your focus or is ministry your focus? Like, what's the thing you want to do most? It's, I believe in what my church says. I, when I start, I have, you know, I have a history of emotional problems. They never fired me, all the problems that I'm sure I caused.

So I have a deep loyalty. It's not really ministry as in I want to do ministry. And no, I don't, I do not have a passion for print. I just asked so that we can get your, I just asked, because we're going to be thinking of ways to get your income up. And I wanted to know where your heart is. If your heart is, I want to do something in helping people, ministry, like that related. Or if you're like, I love print. in digital work and all that kind of stuff.

I heard project manager and I went, ding, ding, ding, we can make a lot of money in project management with your skill set if you're willing to look outside of the church for full-time work. Now, you can still be heavily involved in your church. It just may not be full-time employment long-term. Just because we're doing math. I would personally rather be a full-time volunteer. Yeah, we're doing math.

There's two factors here. George's going to walk you through one. But when we're looking at an equation like this, we say there's two major things we can. do we can lower our expenses right and that's lowering our outgo every single month it's stopping things like investing in our 401k it's stopping uh too much withholding coming out of our check right so those are all ways that we're kind of lowering our expenses and then the other side of it uh mary is we've got to get more money coming in and for you 45 000 with this kind of debt yeah we do need to get more

coming in um so let's talk about two timelines because as it is now george i mean yeah what can you actually put towards the debt per month right now? Can you put 500 or 1,000? Give us a number of what you can throw with the debt snowboard. Um, right. And actually the not mass part of me is got to back up because I do have, uh, I make, I have an, I have acting gigs that I do already and I've started door dashing. Great. So I do have more numbers. So it's just a, you know, a little bit more, but. But tell us this. After you've paid the minimums on all your bills, all your expenses, how much extra do you put on your smallest debt every month? About 100 and, no, wait, wait, wait.

Okay, so do help me. One is 75, 1 is 25, 1 is 35, 1 is 35, 1 is 75. That's how much. So you're not doing the snowball in that you're not making minimum payments on everything and then putting all extra money on one debt? I... Because that's what you need to be doing. Any extra money on the smallest debt yet because I just started the binge.

I just started this. Got it. Okay. But currently with your income, you can't put any extra toward it. It's just barely covering your bills with your income. Yeah, basically. Okay. So all the money from my side hustles would be.

So think about it this way. If you continue at the church full time and you get a little bit of extra money, you'd be lucky to get out of debt in six, seven years. Is that accurate? I mean, I'm asking you. Well, I mean, think about it, if you put a thousand a month would take you 60 months. That's five years. If you were able to do a thousand months total toward your debts.

So think about this. If you did 500, it's going to take double the amount of time. Talking 10 years. And so based on what you're doing, it's over a decade. And so that's why I want you to have the urgency of, I need to get my income up yesterday, like double my income. And so that's where you need to get a project management job that pays 60 or 70 and do the sidework. And then we can clean this up within a year or two. Oh, okay.

The good news is you know how to live off of $40, $45,000 a year gross. So anything you get, if you can double that, knowing that you can live on such a fringe, like shoestring budget is so good for you. And I want to flip that so that you feel motivated by that and not kind of like overwhelmed by that. If you can double your income by finding a higher paying job and adding a side hustle, which I believe you can. I believe you can get to 80 quickly. that means all of a sudden

I'm doing this in a year and a half I'm doing it in 18 months as opposed to the crazy time frame that you were on before Yeah So here's your nerd napkin math If you can throw 2,000 total at your debts You're done with this thing in two and a half years

Okay If you can throw 2,500 at it You're done in two years And so you can see the math It's sort of just kind of contracts and expands As you're able to throw more at it So the more margin we create The faster you're done

and the faster you can get to the more fun parts of life like building wealth having breathing room going on vacation upgrading the car and cash all that good stuff and so I love that

you appreciate your church and that they've been very good to you but I fear that this also leaves you stressed and broke for a decade I have my numbers now and my goals and I mean that's going to be my

job to work all that out that's right project management, that is your buzzword. We told you, hey, get more money. And so now you have the hard job of actually going to do all that. But I have full confidence, you start applying to project management roles, and your skills are going to transfer perfectly. And so I would sharpen up that resume, and this is not a knock at your church.

I'm sure it's wonderful. But right now, you're in a different season. Yeah, and they're probably limited in what they could pay you, you know, and you need to get out there. And they don't believe in debt either. Okay, there you go. I love it. I mean, very, they're wonderful, wonderful.

Listen, actually. It was great to have that opportunity. They turned me on to Dave Ramsey. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Hey, you know what? I'm going to send you every dollar as our gift to you to help you put all these numbers out. It's like George in your pocket doing the math, giving recommendations 24-7,

encouraging you based on your personal situation. Can I be, can it be jade in the pocket too? Yeah, but just let me, just let me have my fun. You're better at math in a year. I fit better in pockets. That's just the truth. Pocket-sized. Yeah.

I'm a little guy. It's one of my only spiritual gifts is fitting in pockets. But honestly, guys, let's talk seriously about every dollar. If you don't have it or maybe you've tried it before, you need to get into the all-new every dollar. It has changed so much, George, over the past. I mean, even just six to eight months, it's completely new. It's got everything you need.

It's not just a budgeting app anymore. It has everything you need to walk the Ramsey plan, the Ramsey way. So I know there's plenty of times where you're looking, you're like, what do I do next? I've just paid off my debt. What am I supposed to do? Is it three months or is it six months of expenses? Why is it three versus six? All those questions that you have, all you have to do is load in your information and do that onboarding, and it is going to walk with you step by step so that you can accomplish your goals faster. Get into it. All right, welcome back to the Ramsey Show. We're here in the Fair One's Credit Union's

studio continuing to take calls about your life and money. George Campbell is still next to me. Can't stop, won't stop. Can't stop it. I'm Jade Borshaw. Going straight to the phone lines, George, where we have Shelby in Missouri. Hey, Shelby, what's going on today? Hey, I am just, I just had some questions and struggling, but, um, so I've been trying to follow the baby steps program, um, you know, you save thousands and a thousand and then pay off, you know, the debts you have, that is the shortest, like the least amount, you know. I just turned 18 in August, and I've been with my fiancé for almost two years. And I have a lot of debt to pay off already, and I'm not sure how to do it and how to get my fiancé on board.

He seems to think he can't save any money until all his debt is paid off. I think it's just a mindset he's in But You said he can't save any money Until all his debt is paid off So he's not wanting to do baby step one Which is save $1,000? Right

Right And How much debt does he have? He has about $2,169 Okay And how much do you have? 26,318

What kind of debt is that? May I was getting ready to graduate in May and I had a piece of junk car and it had gotten me through and I was going to travel to Des Moines which was like an hour and a half from where we were living and my car would not make it that far so my mom went to a Nissan dealer

and she signed on a car for me that I am making the payments of but since I was not 18 at the time, it is in her name. It's completely in her name. So she took all the risk, and you're making, like, Venmo payments to her to then cover the payment? Well, the account, I made the account, like, that it automatically comes out of my checking. How much do you pay her every month for the car? Or how much do you pay every month for it? I think it's 14 or 417, but I wound up to 420 every month.

Okay. So, since I'm 18, my insurance is out of whack. How much money do you earn? What's your monthly income? Just you? Just me, it was about $1,800. Why did you say past tense? We moved closer to my fiancée's work. He was spending $250 in gas every two weeks. And we moved. He's now 10 minutes a week. way while I'm currently unemployed I'm going stir crazy because I want to work but we're in such a small town there's nowhere really around I've applied at jobs called to check status in the

application work from home call service yep I applied for what is he doing for work customer service rep he works at um a hog barn what does he make uh 1950 an hour What does that amount to every month? What does he take home? Every month for him, $2,600. Okay. And then together it was like $4,200. So we were doing pretty good.

And you guys, have you combined finances? No, no. Okay. Are you living together? Yes, we are. Okay. How much is rent? It is $6.50.

Utilities are $225. no matter what okay um um so i you called for one thing but i have to i can't just you know move past something like you didn't say what you just said so you're you're very exposed um right now shelby you're because you don't work so you're right now depending on someone to take care of you essentially you're in a house that another person's paying for you have a car that's not in your name that at any point somebody could say you know what say again it's just very overwhelming it is and so I want to get you I want you to be in a safer space for you especially at 18 I want you to be in a position where you can work when when's the wedding um we were planning

on just us, too, going maybe next year, just going to Vegas or Hawaii or whatever. You can't afford to go to Vegas or Hawaii. I'm going to hit you with a lot of questions. What would be the point in waiting so long? Versus getting, going to the courthouse. If you've been, this has been your fiancé for two years. Everything has been a rush. I'm going to rush to move to my fiancé, a rush to move across the country with this guy.

And now we're going to take our sweet time. with the wedding. What's your family say? What's your family saying? I know my stepdad made a joke of like, what is a courthouse? It's free on Thursdays. I'm like, I'm okay with that. Okay. But I think my fiance wants to do something, like experience something new for the both of us. In all your family. He's about to experience living in the hog barn if you guys don't take care of business here. I mean, you're still like children. Mm-hmm. But we're living like adults too fast, too soon. And you have a $26,000 car that is not in your name and you can't even make the payment.

So I would have a lot of urgency, number one, to get rid of this car. You do not need a $26,000 car in a town that doesn't even have a stoplight. You can't keep the car. And my biggest thing, I asked about your family because I want to know, is everybody on board with you getting married? If they are, the people that love you and trust, that you trust, if they're saying, hey, we like this guy. we're wondering when you're getting married, then I am too. And I would say get it done sooner than later so that you can protect yourself. Because what happens here, Shelby, if this goes bad, George and I get the calls all the time.

And it leaves you on the line to dry because there's no legality protecting you in any way. So if this guy loves you, let's go ahead and let's go ahead and get married. And then in a year from now, you guys can have a great trip in Hawaii or Las Vegas if you can afford it, pay cash. But today, let's start the building blocks of getting this foundation a lot more firm than it is right now. And that starts with you guys solidifying a union there, getting married that way legally. It's cool for you guys to go ahead and combine your finances. Everybody's way more protected that way. Then the next thing, thing too, is now I can go get a job and I can feel good about bringing this check home and us together paying off our debt and walking through those steps.

So that's the two things that you need to sit down and talk with, I don't know your fiancé's name, talk with Trent tonight about that, okay? Okay. And the other piece of this is he's saying he can't afford to cover his $2,000 in debt. Is that right? No, we're kind of tackling it together. You said your finances are separate. Together with what money?

You don't have a job. Right. So I had some money in my checking account, and he had a credit card payment that was coming up because when we got... Why would you pay someone else's debt when you're not married to them? He was paying the car payment. So you guys are just debt swapping? No, I don't know. Like, I think another problem is, like, when we were bringing income, like, the $4,200 every month, is when stuff comes out during the month. It's not a money problem. Shelby, you're right.

It's not a money problem. The problem is you guys love each other. I get it, but you have, you both have it twisted. You're getting everything out of order and it's getting real tangled up and really confused. Do the two things I said. You need to get married and you need to get a job. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show and back to Daniel, who's in Roe's, Rhode Island. What's up, Daniel? How can we help today?

Hi, guys. How are you doing? We're great. That's awesome. So, the short version of my question is, how do I know if making a huge career change is the best thing for mine and my family's future? Yeah. And then I'll go ahead and give you the backstory. So I am in the final stages of the hiring process. process for what is essentially my dream job. It's something that I've always felt like I wanted to do. Pay-wise, it would be basically paying me the same as what I'm currently making starting off, but there is definitely a huge potential for raises and growth in the first few years. However, the big question mark for me and my wife is that it would also require us to relocate to a major

city in the northeast, probably either New York or Boston. I like my current job. I'm not positive, though, that it's something that I will be passionate about in the long term. However, my boss and I have developed a really, really good relationship, and she's basically told me that should I choose to remain working? with them that she would like to groom me to take over her position within the next few years. Is that your dream job to take hers?

No, it is not. Then I think it's the wrong next move. It's cool. I mean, it's nice to be, I mean, it feels good. You're flattered. Like, there's room for growth here. I like it. They're treating me well.

But at the end of the day, it's going to, there's a sole tax to be paid knowing there's this other thing over here that you want to experience. And so I don't think either of them are bad. but I think you're not going to regret taking this new leap. And here's the good news. Nothing is fatal. Let's say you move to Boston, you take the next gig, you do it for a year or two, and you realize, well, I guess my dream job, this ain't it either.

Or I want to do this job, but it's somewhere else. You have the freedom to make that jump, too. Let me add another layer into it. I'll probably be devil's advocate here. So tell us about your family. How old are your kids? Tell us about your community. Tell us on that side of things.

Yeah. So that is kind of like the thing that makes it complicated for me because I know myself and I know that like if I was single and everything like I already know the choice that I would make. But you'd be gone. I am recently married. My wife and I are wanting to have kids within the next few years and we have a really, really good support system where we currently live. My wife is also really well established. in her job right now and is probably going to get promoted within the next year if she stays there as well. So that's really where the big question mark comes into play for me. And her job won't transition. She can't stick with the company and she can't find something related in the new city that pays more? She could find something related, but I think that it would be a lot more of a headache and I think that it would just like set her back more in her career than where she currently wants, whether she's currently projecting to go to, I guess.

What does she say when you tell her about the opportunity? Is she like, honey, you have to take it? Or is she like, oh, man, I mean, I want this for you, but it really is tough. What's her demeanor? More so the latter. She has said that she will support me and commit it to me if it is what I decided do. But for the sake of her own preference, she has expressed that she would prefer to stay where are. What about financially? How are you guys doing? Do you need the money? Tell us about that. Are you in debt? And this would really, you know, push you forward. Tell us more about that part. Yeah. So it's really hard to say, truthfully. I think that it would increase our cost of living, definitely, where we to relocate. But I do think that this new job also brings the opportunity to earn additional income, because

There are pay raises that are basically guaranteed over the first couple of years, and it's also gives me the opportunity to earn overtime as well in this new field. And is this like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Is this dream job still going to be there two years from now? Really hard to say. So it's a government job. I'll say that now. So it really is kind of dependent on what, like, the political atmosphere is and everything,

whether or not it sticks around. Interesting. You know, I will tell you as a person who's moved across the country for a job, it is all these things weigh heavily on your decision. And what I can tell you as your friend is both you and your wife need to have peace about it. That's thing number one. Like money and all that stuff aside, once you do feel like you've landed on something, both people need to feel like, okay, like peace about it. And I mean, I don't know. I'm just talking to you like a friend right now. I'm the type of person. I would pray the prayer. I'm like, God, make it so clear. Like, make it like 90. I want a 90-10 decision.

I don't want a 50-50, right? 50-50 is like, well, I kind of feel like we could stay or we could go. I want to feel so overwhelmingly like this is what we're supposed to do. And so that would be my prayer for you guys. And that would be what I, if I were you, I'd sit down with your wife and say, this is what we need to be praying about. That we feel so overwhelmingly peaceful about whatever direction we choose and that we both feel and we both, you know, have that piece about it. Money-wise, just from a money thing,

since that's what you called about, you know, at first I was more like, oh, yeah, this dream job feels it. But then what you were saying about the political climate did kind of, I had a little pause there. I also wondered about, you said the pay was going to be the same, but you're moving to a major city. So I do wonder about lifestyle for you and with kids. I wonder what that looks like. Is this a job where you would be kind of like in the city? Or would you be, far on the outskirts. Those are some questions that I have. And what does that look like with the values that you think you'll have with kids and a family? That's something to play into the mix as well. Yeah. I believe that the requirement is that we just have to live within the general

area of where I'll be located, where my office and everything was located. So we wouldn't have to live like necessarily in the city exactly. But, you know, sort of regardless, it would definitely be like a more expensive area for us. Yeah, that's something to think about. Yeah. Your income has to go a lot further in cities like, you know, D.C. or, you know, Philly, wherever you're going to be. Would they cover moving costs, relocation costs?

They would, yes. That's a nice bonus. I will say this. It's going to be easier while you guys don't have kids than once you do have kids to make a dream job type move to a different city. So I'm still in the boat and I'm not Mr. you know like let's do it adventure time but this just feels like we'll figure it out we'll figure out her job if this really is the job for you that you really want and it does have room to grow

I'm going to say let's say yes to this adventure and later on if we're like hey this is not an environment we can raise kids we need to move further out we need to switch careers you can do that a few years from now and hopefully your incomes have gone up by then as well so I don't think we can just tell you I mean I think the flags are there for you to go make the move or to stay So it's not like we're swayed one way or the other It's such a personal decision Like Jade said that you guys both need to have peace about So I would continue to

I don't know if you guys are people of faith I'd be praying about it I'd make sure that my wife was in agreement On whatever we decide to do And then let's just do it And not look back and say what if we had stayed Don't be a pillar of salt don't do that Because either way you go you go

You're gonna have the like what if scenario Well what if I didn't take it And what if I did take it And so that's the part you have to just let go of and go, this is where I'm at, I'm going to do my best to make this a great season. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say, you know, if for your wife, part of change, I think that makes it so difficult is we're not, we're just looking at the negative side of it. But if she can start to get excited, that makes change a lot more fun. So if she starts looking at jobs in that area or

if she can start to see opportunity in that area and start to generate some excitement, that also can help if you are trying to sway her over to your direction. Excitement is the name of the game. That's what we told our kids when we came to Tennessee. It was like an adventure. Like we're going on an adventure. So, anyway, that can help. Good luck. Good luck to you. Whatever you do, you're going to be okay. That's how I feel. You can always, you can always go back. All righty, back to the phone lines. We go. We got Elle, who's in Idaho. What's going on, Elle? How can we help today? Well, I'm just trying to navigate what the right next step is. I guess my main question would be, what do I deal about a vehicle that's worth about $4,000 that I owe nine on? It needs a $5,000 repair. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I can't begin to explain how far underwater I am. I'm sorry. All right. I hope you took a deep breath there with me. I know. Anything else besides the car that's eating your lunch? Oh, sure. About $19,000 in credit card debt.

And I have a house that's tied up in a divorce. And it's, I can't get it to sell because it needs repairs and it's not in great shape. And we can't seem to communicate. So everything's through lawyers at this point, which makes everything super complicated. So the total debt with everything is $21, $4141, $21, $214141. And when I'm looking for things to cut out, because I'm like, well, I've got to figure, it out because if I pay all the minimums of everything, I'm $605 in the negative. And that's no groceries, no gas, that's mortgage, a car payment that I'm paying on

that doesn't run. I'm borrowing a vehicle. I mean, I have multiple credit cards. My income is $4,133, and that's a job that I work 35 hours a week at and child support. So my next step was... How much of the $4,000 is child support? $1,333. Okay.

What type of work do you do? I'm a dental assistant. A dental assistant? Okay. What you're making, so you said you're working 35 hours. Could you do the same work at an office where you can pull more hours and do maybe overtime hours? No, not where I'm located. There's not a whole lot of overtime hours, and actually the office in my area actually pays higher hourly wages than any other office in this area.

I've definitely looked. Okay, okay. If you guys end up selling the house, does that help you clean up this debt and fix a lot of these problems? Oh, man. Yeah, in theory, it definitely would. Does he have the money to fix it up, or is he broke? No, he's broke and disabled. so I know it's just a mess and are you working with a real estate agent yeah I was but our contract ended

and because of like the turmoil and the drama she didn't want to renew her contract with us okay so now I'm searching for a new one what type of work does the house need like tell us about it is it a fixer-upper or is it like no one would buy this house it's got major problems tell us about it I mean, I begged him not to buy this house. That's the type of house it is. It needs major work. I mean... Like foundation repairs or the kitchen's ugly?

There's a huge difference. Yeah. Like, it can be old. We're not talking about, like, we're not talking about, like, paint and aesthetics. We're talking about, like, the foundation and the core of it. We moved in and my two daughters, who are 17 and 15 now. When we moved into the house two years ago, we discovered that the 1930 house, didn't have proper wiring or insulation.

It was cinder blocks on the other side of the paneling. So we ripped them to the studs and redid everything. The basement, like if you go into the basement, the floor above you, you can see how it's like planted. So like the basement, we need to lift the like main floor from the basement. We're talking like major. Like whoever buys it is just going to destroy it and rebuild a new house on top. They're just getting the lot, yeah.

So what could you sell it for as is? I don't know. Somebody offered us $225,000, which is technically more than we owe on the loan. But because of the way the divorce decree is stated, we didn't have to accept that offer, so he denied it. So I guess my question is all that was in place before you bought the house. And did you know that going in? So did you buy, I guess what I'm asking is, did you buy the house for a fair price when you bought it? I bought the house for like 100. Yeah, I mean, like I don't, I feel like it was a fair price based on sure, like the value. But like, did I know going into it the amount of repairs it was going to need? Yes and no. But at the time, I mean, you should look up the housing market in Sun Valley, Idaho. It'll well your mind. So we're just outside of.

of that or an hour outside of that. So the house would be considered reasonable based on that. But just the amount of repairs and what needs to happen to the house is just like astronomical. Well, there's part of this where I go, hey, you bought the house. So somebody's going to buy it. And it's not like all that was hidden from you. And I'm not suggesting that you hide it from anybody else. But my point is somebody's going to look at this and go, I'm willing to do the repairs.

I want the property. I want to be close to Sun Valley, whatever that is. so I think it is worth getting with a realtor who's willing to take this on and can find the right buyer for you I think that's going to help at least clear some of the confusion out of all this you might not take away much money from it is what it sounds yeah why didn't he take that offer being a knucklehead did he want to just drag this out like was it out of spite

like I don't really I feel like that is the nicest way to say it Like, he just, he had to, he just wants to, I don't know, he just wants to control the situation. And it's, it's kind of messed up because 30 days prior to that, the house had been listed at a lower value. And again, if that offer had been given to us 30 days prior, we would have had to take the offer no matter what, because it was within 95% of the listing price, which is what the divorce decree says. So 30 days later, he and the realtor decided to increase the price. and I just went along with it because I don't care. I don't care what we sell the house for as long as we pay off the loan. I literally don't care if I make even a dime on it.

Yeah, we don't have the luxury of trying to get the money. We just need to get out of this so that you guys can both have some closure and stabilize your financial lives. So I don't know if that means going back to the decree and getting a judge to go, hey, if you get an offer above this, you have to take it. Yeah. And to make to force the sale. I have a lawyer who I'm not having to pay because I went through a special

program. So I have a lawyer that I'm working with that I'm meeting with on Monday that I already met with on Wednesday. Okay, so you're on the path to doing that before the time runs out. I'm trying. You are. And then this car situation. Let's talk about the car. Let's talk about it. Okay. Who's car are you borrowing now? You said you were borrowing someone's car. Who's helping you and how long are they going to help you for? I'm borrowing a car from a friend and I can't have access to that car at all time. Okay. Is your credit completely shot? If you went down to your credit union for a loan for the difference, would they give it to you? I think my credit is probably shot.

It's probably like low sixes at this point. I would at least try and explain to the credit union, hey, I'm underwater on this car. I need the difference I'm underwater on plus a little bit to get a different car, and then you let go of that car. You might get $500 for it for parts at that point, but you do not need to be hanging on to this car because if you put $5,000 repairs, you're still underwater on it, and it's probably not worth $5,000 at that point. point. It's definitely is not. It's not worth it. So you did that. Your goal is to just get the amount

you're underwater on to clean the title and then get rid of it. Yep, $5,000. That's what you need. And that gets you some breathing room. How I have the vehicle. Then go talk to them. Tell them, you have bad collateral here. I am way underwater on this loan. I'm not going to be able to pay you back unless you give me a different loan to clear the title and get out of this underwater situation. Yeah. That's first on the list. And then number two, is, yeah, you got to get, I think if you can get out of that car, that's going to give you some breathing room. Obviously, now you're tasked with saving up some money. You know, it's great that you have a friend loaning you a car and I understand that it's inconvenient. But for the most part,

it's a blessing more than it is inconvenient. A huge blessing. Yeah. So get with her and say, here's my plan because, you know, she's doing you a solid. So here's my plan. I'm going to try to get this other car paid off. I'm going to need a little bit more time because I got to stack up like four or five thousand dollars so i can get myself a beater and try to get out of this because i don't know if the credit union is going to lend me money for that right and then selling the house you can clear the credit card debt with the proceeds and since the girls are older you got to get side jobs at night just to try to float the difference that you're you said 600 bucks yeah try to do something that you can work from home and do so you don't need the car i would suggest customer service

Buying or selling your house is a very, very big deal. Okay, there's a lot of clickbait headlines out there. There's a lot of conflicting data out there. And it really is hard to know what's actually going on in the housing market. But don't worry, we're here to help you. We've always got the latest trends and we make it very easy for you to understand. Okay. So, for instance, meeting home prices dropped a bit last month.

Now they're around $426,000. A typical season shift, a typical season shift as we head into the fall. So that's normal. also buyers have more options and negotiating power while sellers face more competition so if you want to learn more about the housing market trends and get free tools to help you buy and sell with confidence we've got you covered just go to ramsysolutions.com slash market or click the link in the show notes if you're listening on podcast or youtube so important all right george let's keep it rolling with brie in philadelphia pennsylvania hey brey hi how are you how are you doing we're doing great how can george and i help so basically yesterday I had a talk with my husband and he thinks that he want to change his job he's right now assistant manager in a truck company so it's a big load of work and stressful work talking with the truck drivers and mechanics towing trucks and everything like that and he thinks that we need to take a car on credit and preferably on mine because

because my credit score is better than his. And it will be like Toyota, Sudan, so he can do Uber. Oh, he wants to quit his salary job to do Uber and take out a car loan to fund this, quote-unquote, business? Yeah. Did I just sum that up? Basically, he's making right now a week, 1800. and his friend at work told me told him that on Uber they can make like $2,000 and more a week. Oh, boy.

So that's why he's thinking about it. No, I would not listen to this friend. Especially, especially if you're thinking about going into debt for this. Yeah, here's what's going to happen. He's going to drive that car into ground and the depreciation is going to hit it so hard that you guys are going to be underwater on this car within the first week. Do you guys have any debt now? Yeah, we have like 40,000. Oh, perfect.

Well, let's just add to the pile then and pretend it doesn't exist. Okay. What kind of death's the 40? I'm thinking, to be honest, but, like, I don't know how to tell him that he doesn't even know that I'm calling right now. What do you do for work, Bree? I'm a state-home mom. I'm having a baby one year and nine months, and also we're having a baby on the way home. Wow.

Congrats. Okay. Thank you. So now is definitely not the time to put our income in flux. Mm-hmm. And rely on people who need rides downtown. Like, he need to stick to it. Like, maybe ask, maybe at work he can do less work.

Here's an idea. Riddle me this. Why doesn't he, on the side, after work, go out and drive with the car he has if he wants to try it out? He cannot because we have 20-year-old Lexus that doesn't. have major issues with the engine. Okay. So he cannot do it. Then I think that's a great indicator that this is not the job for you. There's a lot of jobs, Bree, and this might be the way you frame it to him.

I don't know what kind of guy is, but there's a lot of jobs that have prerequisites to be able to do it. Like if you want to be in the NBA, you got to be like seven foot tall or you got to be able to shoot like Steph Curry. And if you don't have that, you can't do the job. And in this case, if you need a brand new, you know, Lexus truck, that you don't have. You can't do the job. And I think it's just as simple as that. You could go out and, you know, pull all these strings and pull all this debt to try to force this in. But that there's

no guarantee there. Okay. And so I think that if he doesn't enjoy his job currently, that's fine. I'm all for him looking for different jobs that he enjoys more. But if I were in your shoes, I would say, honey, I want you to do work that you love. But here's my my boundaries. We can't go into debt for it and if possible, I'd like to wait until this baby is born so that we can have some solidity going through that and then once the baby is born, you know, go do your thing. Do you think he would listen? I think he will. Like I was trying to think like logically is it a good idea even to get a new car because like we were planning after giving birth. Of course we need more space.

especially with a car. I don't have a car, but... Yeah, you definitely need a new-to-you car, but that doesn't mean we're going to go into debt. Yeah, and you should be. You need a different car, but what you don't need is another $25,000 loan on top of your $40,000 in debt.

And so what I would do if I was in your shoes is go, all right, we need to save up to get a reliable car, and then we're going to clean up this $40,000 of debt. And he's not going to be switching jobs. He's going to be working extra. Yeah. Because you guys make $7,000 a month right now? Yes, yeah.

You guys have a fine income. And so how quickly can we pay $40,000? We have a fine income, I think, but still we barely managing to cover everything. Do you guys have a budget? Kind of. That's a no. I'm trying to keep up, but to be honest, I don't know what is going on in his credit cards because basically all that we put on his credit card.

So this is, all of them. This is a very, Bree, you're helping. so thank you for calling in because you're helping so many people right. You're right. When you're on credit cards and, you know, the spouse has a credit card in their wallet, that's different from what the other spouse has in their wallet. It does. It makes it very hard to stick to a budget because unless that person is going to bank connect all their credit cards to the budget so you can see every transaction coming through, you're right. You have no idea what you're spending. And it's very easy to overspend on credit cards so that at the end of the month, if you plan on paying it off, yeah, you're spending

up every bit of extra margin that you had to pay down this credit card. So I... That's what I found out for September. We overspent for $1,000. Yeah, yeah. You have some big conversations that you need to have, Bree. And I'll give you three takeaways that I think, the first one I already gave you, which is you need to tell him that your boundaries for him switching jobs cannot include debt.

And the second thing is it needs to happen. after this baby is born. And then the third thing is you want to talk about a more transparent way of handling finances that doesn't include credit cards. Like I want a one checking account. We both have a debit card. We both spend the money that we have on the debit card

because I am freaking out because of our debt. So those are the three things you have to tackle, write them down and you can, I mean, you know him better than we do, so you know the best way to kind of be tactical about that. But those are your non-negotiables. Do you guys come from the same cultural background? No, like similar.

Okay. What's his background? He's from Uzbekistan and I'm from Ukraine. Okay. And are you guys immigrants or are you born stateside here? We are immigrants, everything clear. Great. My parents were immigrants as well.

And here's what I want to remind you. You guys came here for a better life, I assume. whether you chose to or your parents chose to, right? We chose both. And so here's what I want to remind you. The American Dream is now going to as much debt as possible to fund a fake lifestyle so that hopefully we can impress people. And I don't want you guys to fall into that track.

That's always to hear it out in our young 20s. Yeah, they say, hey, come get a credit card. It's the American way. You'll love it over here. Get your credit score up. We'll give you a more line of credit. Hey, we can get you into a brand new car. Wouldn't that be nice?

Do you see how insane this is? It is. And so that's what you need to convince him of. Remind him of what he's doing on this earth. He's got a little baby, a little baby on the way. We need to take care of our family first, and that means getting out of debt and staying out of debt. That's what's going to cause some actual peace.

That's going to cause a real American dream to happen, not trying to do Uber full-time with a car loan that's supposedly going to put yourself in a better financial position. I can guarantee you it's not. He's going to be calling the show a year from now saying, how do I get out of this? I'm $20,000 upside down on my car loan. So I hope that helps you with the conversation. Again, like Jade said, you know how to convince him better than anyone. And I think your feelings and emotions around this should be the first thing you lead with. And if he doesn't

respect that, you have a marriage problem. Yeah. And that's so true. This is a good indicator. When you bring this to him, if he starts flipping out or does it anyway, if he does this Uber thing anyway, your next step is we need to get into some counseling and spend some money on that. That's the tough part. Oh, my goodness. Oh, boy, oh, boy. So sorry, you're going through this break. Me too.

Me too. And he needs to find better friends who aren't like, dude, you got to do Uber, man. I'm making great money over here. They don't live your life. They don't know your stress. I know that's right. Stick around. We'll be bad.

Welcome back to the Ramsey show. We're here in the Fair One's Credit Union Studio. Continuing on with your calls, your life, your money. That's what we're talking about. We do it through live calls on the phone lines. These are not rehearsed. We don't know these people ahead of time. They don't give us a script. This is just, we're flying by the seat of our pants, George. Life is improv, baby. That's right. That's go. Elijah's in California of the United States. What's going on, Elijah? That's what it says on the screen. What's going on, buddy? How's it going? Thanks for taking the call. You're welcome. How can we help? so ultimately my question is trying to figure out how to separate from my parents about two years ago we found out my grandpa was going to lose his home we grew up in that house for 15 years we ended up trying to help during that process there was a lot of a lot of speed bumps along the way

my parents had to pay off some debt of theirs to get qualified I had to get a loan from boss to get it and we ended up we ended up getting it done um but it's been two years and what was long-term game plan here um really it was to have my grandpa honestly just lived the rest of his life in his home comfortably that he's lived in for about 15 20 years um that was that was there you know what we were trying to do i found it as an opportunity for me i told my parents this It seems like a good opportunity for me later in the future if we end up selling the house to, you know, come up with some cash and just get my future started. But there's been, you know, some pushback, some discrepancies about who owns the house, how the money is getting split, and it's just been a real headache. Well, whose name is on the deed?

All three of ours. So my stepmom, my dad, and me are all on loan and title. Okay. Wow, okay. And that's a, is it a third each? I mean, we never really discussed that. I would assume it's a third each. Like if you sold today and you got the profits, you'd split it three ways, right?

You all put in equal amounts? No, so I put in $14,000. I got a loan for my boss for $14,000. That feels awkward in an of itself. Oh, gosh, a loan from your boss? Yeah. Kind of awkward asked for a raise after that. Yeah, man.

Yeah. He's been really good to us. He really helped us out with that process. It was definitely awkward. We did some things along the way that I, you know, wish we didn't. I didn't know about you guys before that. So we took some money out of the equity, consolidated debt. How much did your dad put in and then how much did your stepmom put in? Not put in anything. According to them, if you ask them, they're going to tell you that they put in $28,000. But in my, interpretation of that. They put in $28,000 toward their debt to get qualified for the house. Okay, it's not a dance routine. There's no interpretation. It's how much was actually

down when the house was purchased. It doesn't matter what they did to qualify for whatever. So they paid down their own debt just to qualify for the loan. Correct. But they put no money into it. No money. Here's my thing. If you put

14 in, you should get a third of the profits plus the 14 you put in. Is that fair? Yeah. The way we've done it from then is because, you know, they want to claim some of the taxes. They want to do these things. I kind of push back on it like you guys haven't really put any money into the house. Why should you guys get, you know, all the profits from it? That thinking is probably wrong. But I ended up splitting the 14,000 to make it fair to feel like, hey, we've all put in to the house. So, you know, we split it three ways. And now it made me feel. a little better, like, oh, you guys put the same amount in as I did.

When you said we ended up, what do you mean you ended up saying? What do you mean by that? There was just some discussions about the house being sold, and they wanted to claim, you know, my stepmom and my dad wanted to claim their portion, and I was going to get the smaller portion. I felt like I slightly deserved a little bit more because I put most of the money in. Right. So. And there's no written agreement for any of this.

Unfortunately, there is not. Okay. And I'm saying who, I guess it doesn't really matter. When does, when are you guys putting the house up for sale? So the thing is, is one of my questions, is it, is it worth fighting for? I've given them options like, hey, dad, how about you guys claim the house for 20 years? and that'll be like my way of buying you guys out. You guys claim the property taxes.

I just call BS on this was all for Grandpa. This was just a nightmare for the entire family, and now it's turned into financial transactions of who gets what. What's the house even worth if it were to sell today? I looked on Zillow, and it says about 900, but I don't think we're going to get that because it's just not in the condition. It needs a new roof. The air conditioning doesn't work.

got quotes on all these things and what's the mortgage just the mortgage left is 551,000 okay so let's say you guys get 800 for it is that fair that that that could be fair yeah pay off the mortgage pay some fees 200,000 is what you guys net divided by three everyone gets 66 and you call it a day or you get a little bit more because of your 14 I don't know if you can convince them of that you can create an agreement I don't know if they'll sign it this is on all of you for having no written agreement. So you must know there's a stupid tax here to be paid that might lose you 14 grand. And that's if you can convince them to sell it. Yeah. And there was also equity we took out. So that would also have to. Oh gosh. Who took the equity out? It was supposed to be taking

out for property taxes that we couldn't pay one year. We ended up taking out $115,000. Hold on. All three of you together couldn't afford the property taxes on this home? I mean, at that time, no. I could afford a couple thousand, but my, you know, I don't want to, you know, speak down on them. But my parents at the time, just financially, there weren't in the position to come up with $3,000, $5,000. Then none of you should be in the home ownership game, let alone together as some sort of weird business partnership. I would try to get a quick claim deed and get your portion and they buy you out. And if they can't afford to, we force the sale. the numbers you quoted was that before or after the 150 so are we are we deeper in debt yeah are you only going to earn 50,000 off this sale or are you going to um probably but that's you know that's just another discussion in itself that i have kind of heard coming from them that i shouldn't get more than them um i shouldn't get more than them they they should get a bigger portion and um well if we do what you said which is if there's another loan out there for another 150 what you

you know you don't stand to make much on this yeah so it's i mean that then we're really talking about like how much do you really want to fight on this because you said it's worth 551 maybe you sold it for 800 but if we subtract that 150 out of this that 200 000 that we thought we would net suddenly goes down to like 50 or 60 split three ways so now you guys are quick You're quibbling over $20,000 a piece, which don't get me wrong, $20,000 is a lot of money. But you have to decide at what cost. They probably can't afford to refinance this thing and get you out of it, right? Uh-huh.

No, they can't. Well, I mean, I can, I've already talked to people about refinancing. I just don't think they want to take their name off. Everybody wants out, then just force the sale. Yeah. That's what you're going to need to do. You guys all should have come together to cover the mortgage for grandpa, not buy it off of him and create this, family drama. This is destroying a legacy, not helping keep it up.

All right, George, we talk about some very important things on the show, possibly none more important than the will itself, because you amass all this debt, you've done well financially, but one of these days you're going to leave the earth. And so you need to make sure that your family and your loved ones know what to do but we get a lot of questions surrounding will so let's do a round rob and i'll ask the question you say the answer all right all right how do you know george if i how do i know if i need a trust or if my state is too complicated for an online will okay in general if your state is worth less than a million uh will online is a great option for now love that okay well what do i need to start my will online it's answering some hard questions

like who do you want to get your stuff who's going to take care of the minor kids who do you want to make decisions if you're incapacitated. That's where it gets real. But you've got to know those answers. You do. You do. You do. Okay. So number three is an online will legally valid. Yes. It's valid in your state. So it's got to be state specific and match those laws. So if you move, you need a new will. That's right. Same thing happened to us. All right. Why would I want an online will versus doing a traditional one with a lawyer? I mean, it's like saying why would I want to get my license renewed online when I can go into the DMV and pay triple. That's kind of what it's like. Do you want to work with a lawyer and pay three, four times more? Be my guess. But if you can do it online, it's cheaper, more convenient,

so knock it out. There you go. That's it in a nutshell. So if you have more questions or if you want to know if an online will is right for you, go to ramsysolutions.com slash will's quiz to find out if an online will is right for you. It was right for me a while, you know. I used that Mama Bear legal forms, and it's super easy. It is. It is. All right, let's go to Isabel. She's in San Antonio Tejas. What's going on, Isabel? Hi. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I just had a question. I have been at my job for a little over a decade. We were recently acquired by a bigger facility, so I have a pretty substantial amount in my 401K with my previous employer. My question is, the new company that we were required by does offer a 401k as well.

I'm on the fence on whether I should move it. My husband thinks that we should move it to the new 401K. I just don't know if a direct 401k rollover into the new one is the best option since they're both 401K. So I was just looking for some guidance. Are they doing sort of automatic rollovers with this merger, where they're saying, hey, we're going to take all these old 401Ks and just move them into the new 401K?

What are they saying? They're saying that we are given the option for a 401K. It's not going to be a direct rollover. Unfortunately, we're still going to be getting the option to have it, but no, it's not going to go directly to that. Oh, so you can't do a direct rollover. You have to go to an IRA? Yeah, you just do a direct rollover to an IRA that you would control.

Okay. Yeah, because they said everything that I moved to it is not going to get, you know, if I have a substantial amount in there, it's not going to get, like, I don't know why the amount would matter. Is there, like, some sort of limit to where they won't roll it over if it's over a certain amount? No, no. Okay. I just never really dealt with it before, so. I would get in touch with H.R. and see, hey, what's going on with the old 401Ks? What's the plan? If you have great options and low fees in that new 401K and they can do a direct rollover, that's fine. Or if you want to do a direct rollover to an IRA that you control,

that's also fine. The key here is you don't want to actually take out the money. You never want to see this money because then you're going to get hit with penalties and fees. So that's the simplest way to do it. Is just those are the key words, direct roll over. Great call. Great question. All right, we've got Monica who's in Chicago, Illinois. Hey, Monica, you're on the line. Hi, thank you for taking the call. You bet. My question is centered around my home, you know, my My husband and I, we bought a home in 2020 when the mortgage rates were really low, so we have a great rate of 2.5, but we, you know, the last couple of years, we just outgrown the home, the layout of the home is just doesn't fit our needs anymore,

and we are looking either to take out a home equity loan to remodel, extend our current home because we have that great mortgage rate, or potentially purchasing a new home, but every home that we've been looking that would fit our needs is much much higher than our current mortgage at a higher interest rate. So we're just trying to, what makes sense

what's the best, you know, case for us? Well, what I'm hearing, I'm hearing two sides of an equation. It's like, hey, if we keep the current home, we'd like to remodel it, but we don't have the money to do that, so we'd have to take debt to do it. And then I see another side over here,

which says, well, what if we just took debt and got a bigger house and then you realized but if we did that we couldn't afford it. So the second is the second option is shining light on what's really true, which is you can't afford it. Does that make sense?

Well, we don't have any other debt we make a fairly stable, good income. We're under the equation that they recommend like how much of your monthly income, how much are you

allocating towards your mortgage? We're way under that. I understand that, but if you were to add that debt, if you were to take that same amount, let's say, how much do you think you'll spend on a remodel? Like another 150. Okay. So if you went out in the market and bought another house for $150,000 more dollars, you'd suddenly realize, oh, my gosh, I can't afford that, which is what happened. So you're kidding.

Especially when that he lock is at, you know, 8% interest and now it's variable. So you're not really winning by keeping the two and a half. Right. Do you see what we're saying? I was looking for options between, like, not a queue because I've seen that that has, like, a variable interest rate. So I was thinking, like, another type of home equity or personal loan. I mean, even a home equity loan, it'll be a fixed rate on that, but it's still going to be much higher than your two and a half. So I just wouldn't hang on to these golden handcuffs of the low rate.

But the math of it is you guys can't afford to move to a bigger house with the current numbers, and you can't afford to do the renovation. So we need to find out a compromise here, which might be we're going to save up and cash flow these renovations over the next year or two. So how much money can you guys save up right now per month? We can probably save about 4,000. That's not bad, yeah. So that's 50 grand a year, and you have 150 grand of renovations you want to do? Is that really what's going to cost? That's approximately we just had a couple of quotes here and there, and they vary between 80 to, you know, depending. I could be up to 200.

Oh, gosh. So it's multiple rooms. You're doing multiple rooms of the house? It would just, it would be an extension, and it's an older home, so if you're already going to knock down one. My other fear is that you overbuild in the neighborhood. That's true. What kind of homes are in your neighborhood? What are the going numbers people are selling for?

The neighborhood is actually getting better, and we see these type of home, the conditions or renovations, like coming up a super block every couple of months. So the neighborhood is actually, you know, moving along the same path of doing this, extending your home. They're all smaller homes and as a time passes every other block, every, like, out of down our street, there's three right now happening. Would you guys want to stay there forever, regardless of the mortgage interest rate? Is this the forever home if you added 100 grand of renovations to it or at least, you know, five-year home or something? Yes, like if we were to, you know, accommodated, renovated, we could see this. being our forever home.

So that's why we were kind of liking the idea of like, well, we have a low mortgage rate, we pay a low mortgage, we're able to save a little bit, but if we want to do it soon, we would have to incur in this. Yeah, what's the exact urgency here? What changed in your situation that the home was good in

2020, but now it's not anymore? Did you have kids? Well, we just got married. We were. We didn't have kids, we didn't have pets, and we weren't thinking that this was going to be the forever home, but it's time passed, and now we have a daughter and pets and we're starting to see things more long-term. You know, back then it was even so hard to get a home because of prices were so low.

Well, if your mortgage is so reasonable right now, couldn't you move up and home? That's what I was going to say. I feel like your money is better spent saving up for to close the gap on a down payment of the home that would really suit your needs because adding an extension and building on and blah, la, la, la, that feels like to Georgia's. point that you could really overbuild and that you're just uncovering a nightmare of just more and more and more expenses. It's going to be stressful for the next year or two, even doing this with or without debt. So I would encourage you guys to go, okay, if we just keep knocking out this

mortgage, we're just building more equity. And when we go to sell, we'll get more profit. We can put that toward the next home. That's what I would encourage you guys to do. That's what I've done in the past. If you guys can knock out that mortgage, well, now we have 100% equity when we sell. So that would be my goal for you guys, is just move up in house and make sure that mortgage is 25% of take-on pay or less. All right, it's time for our question of the day, which is brought to you by YREFI. If your private student loans are in default and if you feel stuck, I'm telling you, you're not out of options.

YREFI specializes in helping borrowers just like you find real solutions with low fixed-rate refinancing. So go to Y-Refi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y.com slash Ramsey. Remember, it's not available in all states. Today's question comes from Declan in California. I'm currently earning more than I ever have, but I find myself struggling to tithe. I haven't stopped, but I'm doing it with a heavy heart. I'm married, we're debt-free, and have a baby. It's not the same to give $10 when you earn $100,000 as it is giving $10,000 when you earn $100,000. At this level, you start measuring the opportunity. opportunity cost, what that money could mean for your family, the experiences it could fund, and the security it could provide. I'm not questioning the principle of tithing, but I am wrestling

with the posture of my heart. My concern is that even though I haven't stopped tithing, it might not be pleasing to the Lord if it's not offered joyfully. Do you have any advice for me? That's a very thoughtful question from Declan. I appreciate the way he phrased this all, and I relate to it. I can actually see where he's coming from. As the number starts to get bigger, it's different. There's more zeros on the end, even though because 10%, like he said, of 100, well, yeah, 10 bucks and I got to live on the 90, that's something. Now 100,000, and I'm given 10,000, it definitely puts some pause. I mean, yes, you could say that, but you could also flip the script and be like, listen, if you only had 100 bucks and you had to give 10 of it, you'd be like,

shoot. Like, I already couldn't do anything with this money, and now, look at me now. There's a threshold of like, I can survive off of this. So, yeah. there's a piece of it where you go, well, you can you live, can you be grateful that you make a hundred thousand dollars? Now, in California, who knows? That might not get you very far based on where he's living. And I don't know how much he makes. He's giving us the principal. He didn't say how much he's actually making or how much he's giving. He said he's not questioning the principal, but I do wonder if there's something missing from what he believes. Because I think the heart posture thing, I think, and I don't know, Declan, but I think the biggest reminder

is if you can remember it was never yours. Once we start thinking of it as ours is when all bets are off. Yeah, we call that, you know, being a steward is what the Bible says. And it definitely changes it when you go, I'm not managing this for me. I'm managing it for someone else. If it's not my money, then it's not my business. I'm just going to do what's right. I'm going to be faithful and obedient do the 10% and learn to live on the rest it's like we do with taxes you know now taxes are not fun i hope you have more enjoyment tithing than you do paying taxes but you go all right i got to pay my 25% to the government and i'm going to learn to live to live on the rest yeah and i mean i would just it does feel different when it's the government because it's like that's anger inducing that's anger

inducing um i would encourage you since you seems like a a faith-filled person i would encourage you to pray about that and ask God, hey, help me out with this. I want to do it, but I don't want to do it based on legalism. I want to do it with the right heart, and I want to be a cheerful giver. Tell them to ask for help. And when you ask, usually that door is open. You shall receive. That's right. I like that. You know, it's kind of this like, God, I trust you more than my money. And so it's not about losing 10%. It's just about acknowledging 100% belongs to God. That's, that's the faith posture. And it's not, that takes a place of spiritual maturity. Yeah. that it's difficult to get to. And so I appreciate you kind of showing us this journey while

you're in it. And a little practicality on it. You know, you're faking it until you make it. But a little practicality would be to remind yourself of all your blessings because you were blessed with now one, you know, the $10,000 that you now have to tithe from. Or I'm sorry, the $100,000 that you're not tithing from. If you can kind of list out, oh my gosh, here's how my life's better. here's how this has been a breakthrough for me like all of those blessings i think will also give you put you in a greater spirit of gratitude to be able to do that so and a good a great resource on this is dave ramsay's book the legacy journey he unpacks this beautifully with scripture and the heart and the motives behind it and all about wealth building as well so make sure to check out that book

all right very good back to the phone lines becca in austin texas what's up becca how are you doing good thank you for taking my call absolutely my question for y'all is so i'm in the market i need to buy a new car and based off of my savings i'm wondering what you guys think i should spend on a car and if you think that i should take out a loan and if i do take out a loan how much should i put down now becca do you think we're going to tell you to take out a loan on a vehicle okay yeah we like becca too much that one off the list we just like you too much to put you into debt. So let's figure out how much car we can get. How much do you have in savings? I have just over $60,000. Does that include your emergency fund? Is that everything?

That's 401k Roth IRA checking savings. Oh boy. Okay. Well, let's take retirement out of this. How much do you have that's non-retirement above your emergency fund? I have just in my checkings. I have just over $22,000. Okay. Do you have savings like for an emergency fund? Or, is that it? Yes. I have savings on top of that. Okay. So what's your three to six month emergency fund? How much is in there? Honestly, I haven't broken that down. I have a pretty relatively low cost of living. So I know that I could live off of that for quite some time. Well, I want to encourage you to split it because here's what happens. The car becomes the emergency and then it depletes your emergency fund. So I would have a separate, you know, maybe you create another account within a savings account. You can have multiple.

and one is emergency fund, the other one is car fund. That's what I would do. So take three to six months, set it aside. Whatever's left over in cash becomes your car fund. And if it doesn't get you the car you want right now, keep saving. What's your income? I'm in college, so I make just under 23 an hour. I work four to five days a week, so it comes out to about 24,000 a year.

Okay. And how much car are you looking at? Tell us the number or the make and model. either a Toyota or a Honda I was hoping originally to spend about $9,000 but the car market right now is not great so that's not going to get me quite what I thought you know I want to get something that is worth buying something new my family lives in a different city so you know I want to be able to drive and see them as well what if you spent like 12,000 okay that would be my number

That would be my top number. So here's our parameter. You should never have things that have wheels and motors that add up to more than half of your annual income. So if this is your only car and you make $24,000 a year, $12K would be my out-the-door number for you. And so that's what you're looking for, which definitely changes your search. You're not going to the new car dealership. You're not just looking at any car because if you look at a 20-23 corolla, well, now the 2012 looks like I'm not going to drive that hoopty. Right, right.

And so especially for a college kid, I think you should be driving the way. worst cars as when you're young and it should only get better over time. Absolutely. And too, I see too many 16-year-olds in my neighborhood with nicer cars than me. I know that's right. It drives me insane. What are you doing? I agree. I, yeah, thankfully I, I'm not used to a luxurious car. Mine is almost as old as me. So I'm, as long as it works, I'm happy with that. Well, Becca, you've done a great job. You're young. You don't have any debt. You've saved up money. You're working. I'm proud of you. I I think a $12,000 car is going to be just the thing you need. George, I love when somebody young calls in and they got a good head on their shoulder.

It's fantastic. When she said she wanted to spend $9,000, I said yes. Let your budget drive what kind of car you get, not the kind of car you get drive the budget. Because that's where we get it twisted. And we go, well, they upsold me. And they said they can work with me on the payment. And then they end up with $20,000 and car loan debt at 23% interest. Right.

Oh, my goodness. All right, George. We have time for a question. from let's go with this one from Noel on TikTok okay he says should I put the $1,000 emergency fund in a high-yield savings account so it can grow instead of just sitting there I mean sure but grow is is relative it's about how much I'm going to grow in height at 36 years old let me do the math for you right now you would get $35 in a year so three bucks a month is what you'd make if that hey if that gets you

excited, I'm happy for you. But I would park it. I mean, I would keep it in a high-y-old savings account just because it's a good place to keep it. But not for growth. Not for the growth. It's not meant to be an investment. This is your insurance policy against life throwing you some ankle-biter emergencies while you're trying to knock out the death. Yeah, it's better there than like in your sock drawer or like, you know, stuffed under your cushion because then you might pull it out if you're just running to 7-11. Well, those socks get eaten up in the laundry, so your money might go with it. I don't want that. We don't want that. You work too hard for that thousand dollars. savings account is great for it.

All right. Our scripture and quote of the day, Isaiah 55, 8 and 9, my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are my ways. Your ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. reflex. I know, right? Come on now. Albert Einstein said, two things are infinite. The universe and human stupidity. And I'm not yet completely sure about the universe. Man, just shade. Classic. Classic Einstein burn. The shade. Golly. Tell you what, man. He's right, though. All right. Lauren is in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Hi, Lauren. How can we help today? Hey, thank you for taking my call. Yes, I am in the final stages of tying up my dad's estate, and the first thing on the list is we're going to be selling possibly one of my dad's cars, and my husband feels that my inheritance is now ours because we are one, and that wives are to submit to your husband in all things, and he really wants me to sell the Lexus.

and I'm feeling very conflicted. And I'm not at peace because I'm not ready to sell it. I'm not sure what I want to do with it. But I also don't want to be going against what my husband thinks is best. So I'm hoping for some wisdom on how to handle this because this is just the first item we've got a long ways to go. When did your dad pass? He passed away three years ago. Three years ago.

Okay. So you've just been going through. through, you know, little by little and sorting through everything? Yeah, we ended up in probate, so you know how long that can take to get through things. Okay. So what all did you end up with? That's in... So I have, I ended up with an investment account that's worth $390,000, and inherited 401K, that's worth $300,000, about a quarter million in gold. and then his house, which is worth about $1.1 million, and in the car. What's the car worth?

It's a 2018 Lexus, L.S. 400. I'm going to guess it's probably around like $45,000. I can't remember how many miles it has on it, but it's pretty low. So it's the smallest asset in the entire estate, and we're already arguing about this. And you want to keep it for yourself and drive it? I don't know if, I mean, I wouldn't, my car is. paid for. I drive a 2018 Honda CRV.

So it wouldn't be like I'd be driving this all the time. I would still... Yeah. What's the Russian selling it? Why can't you just keep it because you like it? And it reminds you of your dad. You got a bunch of money here. I do have an emotional attachment to it. So that's what I'm

struggling with. And I think his concern is like the upkeep and where are we going to keep it, which are all valid concern. Okay, I see. What are the ultimate goals that you guys had before any of this existed? Our ultimate goals with the estate?

With just money. Like, where are you trying to pay off debt, trying to pay off the mortgage? Where are you guys at? So we were just paying off our car loans. We didn't even own a home. We were just renting. And we actually bought our home with the life insurance that my dad left us. So we don't have any debt right now.

How much was that? Um, it's, our house is worth about 380,000. Okay. What's going to happen with his house? Are you selling it and going to invest the cash? I do plan on selling it. Yes. I don't, it's in Atlanta and I, um, I won't be able to, you know, keep that up or anything. It's more house than I would. So the 40, the, so the true, the true argument around the car, there's only one argument that I see, which is we don't have space for it. So I'm I'm guessing you guys have a two-car garage and it's just sitting in the driveway blocking everything and it's annoying for your husband. Is that it? Yeah, we actually don't have a garage, but yeah, we just have our driveway. So it would need to go somewhere. That is a hurdle if I were to keep it. And I don't

think he's excited about having to pay to store it somewhere or, you know, he thinks a lot of the responsibility would fall on him to keep it down. Well, it's kind of almost like, I'd almost, if you did store it somewhere, if you did, I'm not saying you should, but if you did, it's like your grandfather, it's like your dad's paying for it, right? Since all this money came from him. I mean, you still have another $2 million that will, you know, manifest itself here from all the other assets. What's your plan with that? Um, I really don't have a plan yet. I do have, like I said, I have an investment account and, um, I didn't want to get ahead of myself. on what to do with it.

I was just trying to close up the estate, you know, before I figured out how to, you know, diversify it. But I really don't have a plan. Does your husband have ideas of what he would want to do with this $2 million? He does. He wants me to put it in stocks. Single stocks? No, I don't think so.

I think they're group stocks. Like mutual funds, index funds. Okay. Yeah, that sounds wise. have any experience with that. I know he does. So, but yeah, I guess I'm just, I don't want to go against my husband, and, but I'm feeling very conflicted because I really am not ready to get rid of it, but I feel like it's going to cause. What do you guys make a year? Issues. So my husband's a stay at home, or my husband works for himself. I'm a stay-at-home mom. I

my home school, our 6-year-old. He, on our last tax return, made about 15,000. He just works part-time. 15? How are you living before you inherited this money? We're using my investment account money to supplement our income. But how were you before you received it? Did you have a trust fund before?

I did not. No, he was working full-time at that point. He's, since I've received this money, he is cut back. a lot. And is the game plan just to live off these investments for the rest of your lives and never work again? I do not think that that's wise. No, I do not want to do that. Let's let me, I'm going to give you some real talk right now. There's, there's something, there's a thread in this that that doesn't sit right with me from hearing you talk. And I'm just going by what I'm hearing you say um i feel like this this money came from a loved one of yours and it is your money it's both of

your money but it feels like your husband is feeling like this is what i want to do and so this is what i'm going to do and it's almost like for him it's it's it's permission to do what he wants to do which is now i no longer want to work even though you're saying hey i think you still need to work and this is just here for the family to to you know for us to live on later and it will continue to be an inheritance for our children, right? And don't get me wrong, there's parts of that that you can enjoy. But then over here, when there's something that you would like to enjoy, which is I'd like to keep this car around, this reminds me and my dad. And if we have to store it, we'll just use some of the millions that my dad left us to pay for it. I'm fine with that. But then over there,

for some reason, he's not letting you do that. And I've heard you use a little bit of language that is kind of making me feel like it's being taken out of context. So I just want to tell you, like, you do have a vote in this and you and it's okay for you to say I don't want to do that and I don't agree with that and we need to stop and no one needs to do anything until both of us agree at the very least and that's not being disrespectful that's just you being able to have a say and have a vote and what goes on and it's okay for you guys to not do anything until there's mutual agreement. And that goes with working or not working. Like I think you guys need to have some tough conversations and you need to let them know that you're not feeling heard in this relationship.

And the truth is he's just thought about this longer than you have of what he's going to do with this money. He has a little bit more financial literacy. And so your job now is to gain some financial literacy because you've just got a whole bunch of wealth to manage. And that might mean you get some pros in your corner. You have a good tax pro, a good real estate pro, good investment pro, to help you figure all this out, to help you understand it, to help you make the right next move, and then you and your husband can get aligned based on all of the advice they give you and what your personal goals are. But right now, there's no real vision for this household. And so I don't trust him trying to control you with Scripture when he has no vision for the family

other than I'm going to make, you know, 10 grand a year for my hobby. And so I think we have a lot of things to figure out before we do anything with this money. The car is just a symptom of a whole bunch of problems underneath. So I hope you guys can get to the root of that. Yeah. What a gift, but allow it to be a gift. Don't turn that blessing into a curse by letting it pull you guys apart. That's, that's for sure. Woo-wee. All right, guys. Well, that does it for this episode. And remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace. And that is to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. No matter what you want to do with your money, you need a budget.

Start budgeting for free today with the Every Dollar app, the easiest way to budget. Track your expenses and reach your goals faster. Go to Everydollar.com today.