The Ramsey Show - App - You Don't Have to Repeat Your Family's Mistakes (Hour 2)

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

Rachel Cruze, Home Selling, Debt, Career Tools to get you started:  Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. You jump in and we'll talk. At the bottom of the hour, Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author,

will join us for a couple of segments in the second half of this hour. If you have a question for Rachel, you can jump in now. The phone number, 888-825-5225. Treva is with us in Colorado. Hi, Treva. How are you? Hey there. How are you? And my name is Treva. Treva. I'm sorry. How can I help? No, no, no. Well, okay. So here's my story. I have $300,000 in my 401K. I'm 62. I still work. I have two condos. The one I live in, I owe $200,000 on. I have a rental.

If I sold it, it would be like $160,000 worth of cash. It does cash flow today. So it pays, and then it pays000 worth of cash. It does cash flow today. So it pays, and then it pays a quarter of mine. And I don't know, should I sell it and pay this off, or just keep going the way I'm going? What's your household income? About $100,000. Okay.

Well, we want to enter retirement with the house paid for that you're living in. Okay. How are we going to do that best? When do you plan to retire? Probably never. Okay. That works for me. So you're making $100,000.

How much can you pay towards your $200,000 mortgage, and when are we going to get that house paid off if we keep the condo that's a rental um i could put like maybe 20 000 more a year on the um mine mine that i own that makes you 72 with it paid for what's that that makes you 72 years old before your house is paid for oh my god 62 and 10 right right so would it be better just to sell that condo pay this off and then just save money and then also be able to have money to give to little kids well there's never enough money to give to little kids because that's the best thing you can ever do with money but um what i want you to do is i want you to have a plan where you enter retirement with a good nest egg and your residence is paid for. Here's why.

Your most, your largest expense item in your budget, when you look down the budget, is always housing if you have a mortgage. And when you get rid of that mortgage, you stabilize your retirement because your rent is never going to go up because you don't have rent. You own it. Now, you may have an increase in insurance or taxes or something, but I'm talking about in general, you have locked down for the next 25 years, 30 years, whatever it is that you're alive. You have locked down the largest expense line in your budget by owning property and by getting it paid off. And so if you want to get radical out of your income and say, you know, in the next five years, which would be 40,000 a year, we pay this thing off. That's kind of like fighting to keep the rental condo. Then you might want to do that. I don't know how badly you want to keep this rental condo.

I like rental property, but I don't know how much you want to cut and where you want to cut it. So you just decide, do I want the rental condo or do I want to give up about $40,000 a year for the next five years out of my income in order to get that rental paid for? Then the rental is part of your retirement picture, see? You've got a $300,000 nest egg that, if it's invested in mutual funds, would have doubled in about seven years. So you're 69, you've got $600,000 and a paid-for condo that's a rental property. That wouldn't be a bad place to be at all. It would be a nice little situation to be in.

You'd probably be a millionaire at that point. And so, you know, but again, I don't know how much you can shop or want to shop out of your budget at this stage of the game in order to keep that rental. If it's doing great and you love that rental and you really kind of want to fight to keep it, then you would do that. If you're kind of ambivalent about it, I'd sell the crud out of it. Hey, thank you for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Taylor's in Georgia. Hi, Taylor. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I had a question about,

so all the panic of coronavirus and the stock markets are plummeting, and I'm just not panicked, like you said. It's ridiculous. But I I'm also not an investor I've never invested and my husband and I have kind of been waiting we're personally at the point where we're trying to save up three to six months of income so yeah you need to get that you need to do that for investing part but in general if someone has gotten past this point if they're at the point to invest if they're new investors what should they be looking at how should they be going about moving forward um all i all i do i don't do anything fancy and i i don't suggest

people do something different than i do because i have like some secret day formula or something like that all i buy is growth stock mutual funds. Mutual funds that are 90 to 200 stocks in the mutual fund and companies that are growing. So it's well diversified. Is there a minimum amount you have to have to start that process? You can start it with your Roth IRAs and stuff when you get to your baby step four pretty easily. That's a good place to start it.

I spread it across four types of mutual funds, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth, and international. Some funds are as little as $500 to start or a monthly draft. Some are as much as $2,500 or even more to start. Most are in the $1,000 to $2,500 range if you're doing a lump sum starting. But if you're starting a monthly draft for a Roth IRA and you said, I want to open a Roth IRA, $6,000 a year, that's $500 a month, you can get in almost any of them. Okay, and so for individuals who are self-employed,

my husband and I are both self-employed. Okay, so we would start with the Roth and then move toward those mutual funds. Well, mutual funds inside the Roth. Right. There are mutual fund purchases inside the Roth, and that's what you do. Now, if you were to drop a million dollars into that today with the market being artificially down based on panic and drunkenness that is out there today, if you were to drop a million dollars in there today in that, you're not going to make as much. It's not going to double in 90 days.

The stock market's not going to go from 22,000 Dow to 44,000 Dow in 90 days. It's not going to. It was only at 30 before the drop. So, you know, but you're going to make some money doing that. And that's the only money I will make. Now, were I to be a person that plays single stocks, I don't, and I'm not going to do this, and I don't recommend it, but you would buy stocks in companies that you think the value went down based on fear, not based on math. See, stock price is something that is based on math see stock price is something that is based on math and can be calculated

based on the company's income and their assets and did their assets all go away because of coronavirus no so stuff like cruise lines and airlines and stuff that are taking hits because people are panicking or hotels that kind of, then they still own all those ships. They still own all those planes. And they're going to be making money in August, and coronavirus is going to be so far in your rearview mirror, you're going to forget about it like you did Y2K. You know?

It's the same thing. So those are the ones that are undervalued if you're playing single stocks. But I don't play single stocks if you do this one simple thing that we all do you are literally at risk of being hacked and someone stealing what you've worked so hard for do Do you ever use public Wi-Fi? I'm talking about getting online at a coffee shop, a store, the airport, or even at home. Hackers can use a simple $100 device to mimic Wi-Fi, and with just a little bit of skills, they can take over your financial life. This means you may think you're on your bank's site or app or securely making that purchase online, but hackers could see and steal that information.

That's why I trust CyberGhost VPN. CyberGhost thinks about cybercrime so you don't have to. You can try it for free for seven days. Protect up to seven internet devices and keep all of your internet connections secure. That's CyberGhost VPN. Download it today from your app store and be secure in seconds. Coming up at the bottom of the hour, Rachel Cruz, number one bestselling author and Ramsey personality, will be joining us for your questions. Open phones for her at 888-825-5225.

In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, William and Montana are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Doing good. How are you? Better than I deserve. Welcome. Where are you guys from? We're from Boone, North Carolina.

Very cool. And in another hour, we just had your brother on, right? Yes, we did. So it's a family day for Debt Free Screams. Yes, sir. I love it. How much have you guys paid off? $14,266.13.

Very cool. And how long did this take? Three months. Three months. You did it fast. And your range of income during that time? $70,000. Okay.

What do you all do for a living? I'm a registered respiratory therapist. Uh-huh. And I work for the State Department of North Carolina. I do bridge construction and maintenance. Very cool. And the $14,000 debt was what? Cars.

Cars. Okay. All right. And so you did this really fast. We did. Did you have money saved to throw at it? We did. My wife, she's always been a saver,

and she's kind of held me back from wanting to get what I wanted to get. She always made me, you know, I got my mower that I wanted, and I had to finance that. And she always said, you know, you only get one thing at a time. So, you know, she never got out of hand. We weren't, you know, strange or weird, extremely weird before. So how much did you have in savings when you started this idea? Probably around $11,000.

Oh, okay. So that's what makes it happen in three months then. Yes. Okay. All right. So your brother got involved and he got you guys involved. Tell us the story. So he kept wanting us to to uh join the program with him

and like i said we we kind of felt like we had our head on our shoulders and we had things figured out you know we had money in the bank and we had little payments that we could afford we decided that we were going to uh build a house and so we started saving for that but so josh said that he was going to, uh, introduce the program to people at work. He said, do you guys care if we try it out on y'all? And we said, yeah, sure. So we got together and we looked at it and, you know, we sat down through the first one and we were like, wow, this is pretty cool. We know this is, you know, he's a really good speaker and we're really enjoying it. And the second video really caught us, you know, and we're really enjoying it and the second video really caught us uh-oh you know and

we started the debt snowball and that day we paid my truck off wow what we had in the bank account after the second video yes oh my gosh so just like that boom yes we were very motivated it worked all right so your brother tricked you into it he said i gotta try this at work but you guys look at it for me make sure it's okay knowing full well that he was gonna get you that's right he laid a trap for you that's awesome i love it very cool so you've been through the whole class now you're debt free i guess you're working on your emergency fund now yes sir and uh then we start working towards that house you were working towards but this time with no payments so you'll go really really fast that way very cool so now

that you've done this i mean you had a pile of money so that kind of made it easier right but uh but what do you tell people now what have you learned in the class and really in what you've done to uh become debt-free what do you tell them the secret to being debt-free is um with us working together uh that's definitely you know the number one key is trusting your partner. When we first got our budget together, I'm not going to lie to you, you know, there was fights and there was disagreements. And she was like, you know, we've got to save for this house and this money's got to go to this. And I was like, you know, I was the free spirit. I was like, babe, you know, it's going to be okay. And she's like, we're not going to be able to do this.

And at that point, you know, it clicked in our head. We're like, we've got to eliminate all debt so we can get, you know, a hold of our money and be able to do this and at that point you know it clicked in our head we're like we've got to eliminate all debt so we can get you know a hold of our money be able to do what we want to do with it and uh both of us working together being able to do that our marriage has gotten better um we meet once a week with our family and uh you know we've started doing the legacy we did the smart conference and wow it's become you become routine for us to meet every single week. And it's really improved the relationship with my family, with my wife. And we're going to be able to teach our son how to – he's going to be a millionaire before you know it. I bet.

He'll be there fast. I love it. That's changing your family tree right there. So, Montana, it sounds like your husband went from someone who you kind of held on a leash and had on an allowance tour. Now he's a willing partner carrying part of the load with you, right? Yes, he is. We're working together. Budget, budget, budget.

Very cool. Very, very cool. Well, that's a big deal. That does change your marriage right there for sure. It does, yes. And we're both of you are carrying the weight together and making decisions together. And one of you is not dragging the other one around and all this kind of stuff it changes everything because most people do it the way y'all were doing it before right you know and and that's why there's so much stress around

it in relationships so you guys are incredible very proud of you i know your family's proud of you oh yeah i'm sure your brother's proud of you without a doubt very very cool well we've got a copy of chris hogan's book for you everyday millionaires because as you said your brother's proud of you, without a doubt. Very, very cool. Well, we've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Everyday Millionaires, because as you said, your son's on his way, but I think you're on your way, too. So, did you bring your son with you? He's here? Yes, he's here. Okay.

Oh, let's get him in the picture. There we go. Good, good, good. Make sure we do the debt prescreen proper here. Yeah. This is Wes. All right. Hey, Wes.

All right, Wes. All right. All right. $14,000 paid off in three months, making $70,000. Changed everything. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one.

We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! This is how it's done open phones this hour as we talk about your life and your money it's a free call at 888-825-5225 that's 888-825-5225 christian's on Instagram. What advice would you give someone trying to move into a completely new career path with no degree? Well, you're probably going to be at an entry level in that new career path with no degree. And even if you had a degree, you're probably starting fresh with no experience. So you usually start in the bottom rungs of the ladder and work your way through.

I would jump on KenColeman.com, Ken's website, jump on the radio show with him at Ken Coleman Show and talk to him about career things. He's actually much better at this stuff than I am. My advice is just more old Dave has been around the block a time or two type advice. It's not necessarily I'm a career expert like coleman is but um basically if you're moving into something with absolutely no degree you've just got to get your foot in the door and add value and then i would read everything i could get my hands on

the truth is no one reads anymore and yet the average millionaire reads a non-fiction book a month and if you were to read 15 books on any particular subject you would be one of the nation's leading experts on that subject that's how dumb we are now you read 15 really good deep marriage books you are a marriage expert now because no one has read 15 marriage books anymore. Not even people in the marriage community that teach that stuff. And so whatever your field is that you're going into, read, read, read, be self-taught and read articles, read journals, attend conferences, listen to speakers and teachers, and just gather information like crazy. It is not required that you have a degree in something to win at that thing.

The only thing the degree gives you is the classes and the knowledge you gather up in order to get the degree. The knowledge is what's valuable. My business degree in finance has made me zero money. A lot of the things I learned in order to get that degree have made me a lot of money. And so knowing accounting and knowing statistics and knowing marketing and knowing basic finance and those kinds of things and those critical thinking skills that are developed to get a four-year degree in that, around that, have made me a lot of money. But I have never walked in and laid down my diploma in finance and someone just handed me money.

It's never happened yet. But the things you learn on the way to getting the degree. So the point is, if you don't have a degree, you can learn things like you would learn on the way to getting a degree and make yourself just as valuable in the marketplace once you get your foot in the door you prove yourself and that's what i would do so good question coming up next rachel cruz be sure and get your calls in right now at 888-825-5225 this is the dave ramsey show Ramsey Show. We've been voted one of the best places to work in Nashville 11 times. You want to know how we do it?

Well, our team has been using LinkedIn jobs for years to find the best people from all over the country to come and help us change lives. Think about it. LinkedIn has more than 600 million active members. I'm talking about people who come to LinkedIn to make connections, grow their careers, and discover new job opportunities. In fact, 90% of LinkedIn users are open to new opportunities, but not actively scanning job boards. This means LinkedIn Jobs gives you access to an entirely different demographic. Don't wait. One hire can change the direction of your company.

Post a job today at linkedin.com slash Ramsey and get $50 off your first job post. That's linkedin.com slash Ramsey. Terms and conditions apply. Joining me this half hour, Rachel Cruz is with us, number one bestselling author. Ramsey personality. Also happens to be my daughter. Welcome back. Yeah, thank you.

Good for y'all to be back. Yeah. You and mom were gone for a little bit, so it's nice to be back. Yeah, it is. It's excellent. So, good times. It's good to be back in the saddle here and get things back. You're back off maternity leave. Everybody's back.

Back, back, back, back, back. All going. Things are happening. And you guys, you've been busy. As soon as you got back, everything started going again. I mean, the Money in Marriage event was a huge event. Largest one we've ever done. Yep. With you and Les Parrott.

Over 2,000 people. And yeah, every week there's something happening. So it's fun, though. Heading to New York to do our dinner that we do every year with our media folk that we work with up there all the time and all the different types of media and we always get them all together and just have a thank you dinner with them telling them thank you for all the things they do for us every year and the shows that we're all on and all that heading up there and uh then we've got the smart conference coming up uh april the 4th we've got financial peace accelerated coming up April the 4th. We've got Financial Peace Accelerated coming up April 25th.

And you're involved in both of those. And you'll be on the Ramsey Cruise for part of it. That's right. Yeah, coming up soon. I think we'll be there. That'll be a week from today? No, two weeks from today. Two weeks, yes.

Two weeks from today we'll be cruising. We will have been cruising a couple days by then. That's right. Okay. Because, by the way, folks, we are going, in case you're wondering. I will be there. Maybe on the high seas by myself, but I will be there. So unless they cancel it.

So that's what you're looking for. Unless the cruise company cancels it. But otherwise, we will be the Ramsey team. We're committed. We said we're going to be there, and we will be there.orge is going we know george is going as long as george is there as long as george is there we'll all be okay that'll that'll solve it all right let's jump in take some calls too many jokes i can't do i can't i have so many jokes in my head i can't go there though you just can't you just need to leave them all right there in your head

all right jenny is with us in north carolina hi jenny welcome to the dave ramsey show hi wow i'm such huge fans of both of you and rachel thank you so much for writing your contentment journal i just love it good i'm so glad absolutely so i have a question regarding a family member that you all would term you would call him a left winger dinger. And I kind of fall more in the libertarian views of things. And I only see the family member about three times a year, and he is much smarter than me. And I'm the type of person where when we're in a conversation, I do about 95% listening and only about 5% talking. So just to get your tips on how to talk to him more intelligently next time on this topic, because I know it'll come up again

and he's up in arms. Well, he's always up in arms about something, but he's up in arms right now about the like inequality of wealth distribution and how the rich keep getting richer and how is someone that's down and out to come up and out if they don't have a car if they're on parole they've never had a job they're in this such and such circumstance and the only intelligent thing I feel like I brought to the conversation Dave was I years ago, you did an analogy of you versus Brad Paisley. So I did it, me versus Taylor Swift of it's not unfair because you kept saying the term, it's unfair. It's not unfair that Taylor Swift makes more money than I do because she's a better performer. She's beautiful. She's great at what she does. So do you guys have any tips? Because this conversation will come up again,

and I just would like to put forth more intelligent, you know, words to the conversation next time. Yeah. You know what? I seldom enter into these arguments anymore except here on the air because in our families I've not found them to be fruitful because I don't think there's enough words in the right order to change this guy's mind. And I don't think he's really taking a poll.

I think he's just running his mouth, and he doesn't really care about what anybody else thinks, nor is he planning to change his opinion. So I don't really think you can change his opinion. I've got family members that are politically on the other extreme from where I am, and I'm pretty extreme on the other side, and I just love them enough to love them for who they are, and I really don't think I'm going to change them. So I just encourage you to sit there for a while and be comfortable in that first and foremost.

But, I mean, the analogy you laid out is that wealth inequality is fair, is accurate. It would be unfair for everyone to have the same level of wealth because everyone does not have the same work ethic. For someone to work one hour a week and someone to work 40 hours a week and then to have the same money is called communism. It's not wealth equality. That's called communism. And it's completely unfair for someone that works one hour a week to have the same income as someone who works 40 hours a week. And it's completely unfair if someone has a greater talent at something

and the marketplace is willing to pay them more than someone who does. someone who can't play a guitar versus someone who can play a guitar, getting paid to play the guitar. You know, you don't know how. I've never strung a single note on a guitar, at least on purpose, that made sense together. And so for me to get paid for that would be completely unfair. And that was the Brad Paisley comparison. Brad's a friend, and he's a world-class performer, world-class musician, world-class guy in general. But he shouldn't get paid for being a world-class guy. He gets paid for singing.

And I'm on talk radio because I can't sing. And so he gets paid more than I do. And that's okay. And I'm okay with that. So I can't throw a football like Peyton Manning. That's kind of the discussion we had. But I don't think that those arguments are going to change this guy because this guy, he's living in an echo chamber where all he hears is the same stuff all the time from his little group. Yeah, and I think that, I mean, some of his points, Jenny, I think that it's fair to say, though, like to bring humanity into all of this.

Like, do some people have harder stories than others? Have others dealt with things in their life, you know, that are more tough than others? Yeah, 100 percent. Like everyone's life looks different. But the belief, I think, is different. And that you, you know, I believe that no matter who you are, again, some people, it's a more difficult situation than others, but no matter who you are, as long as you've not lost hope there, you can have a different outcome with your life. You don't have to keep repeating the same mistakes in your family story. Cause that's what we see a lot of, you know, you can look at,

you can get into poverty, you can get into all these, you know, social subjects, uh, where there are some really, really tough problems and really sad situations. But if you just believe that that's how it's always going to be, then you've lost hope in that point. And I think that, you know, dad and I both would say no matter who you are in the world, you have to have hope. And when that hope is there, that you can create a better life. I mean, everything that Chris Hogan talks about with, you know, with millionaires that, you know, 80 percent of them, eight out of 10 are first generation rich. I mean, like, so you just hear these. We hear the incredible stories of people that have dug themselves out of really tough situations and some of them were high school dropouts that were parolees that's

what i'm saying that's what i'm saying but to his point that a really hard story yeah and i just think both sides can be polarizing in the sense where you just take the humanity out of everything but you can bring it down and say yeah i hear you uncle or whoever you are like yeah i mean there are some really really sad tough situations but i still believe in the american dream and i think you know if you can do it but i don't even know if you need to engage in it just like dad was saying earlier because the thing is too the the question is when you're thinking if you were really going to try to intellectually debate with someone on that situation is the problem is not that we don't agree that those are both situations. I mean, poverty is a real situation.

People who have never had a chance are born into a zip code. That's a real, what you're saying is there's a humanity that, that's a real situation. We don't disagree on the other side of the coin that there's a situation. We disagree about the solution. Right, yeah. The solution, what's your solution to help the little man? A government program? Tax the rich so there's a government program so you want to help the little man with a program that's as efficient as the dmv well see that's where we don't agree on the solution

there's been no government programs that have proven to help poverty. Zero. Zero. Government programs have alleviated poverty. None. And yet, the capitalistic system in America today is where the little man has had the best chance in the history of the human race to move up the social ladder, to move up the income ladder. No other system in the history of the human race has given the little man as much of a chance as that. So it's not the problem that we're not in agreement about. It's the solution to the problem that we're not in agreement about. But again, I think you're just barking at a dog.

I mean, it's just not just a bunch of dogs barking at each other. He's in an echo chamber. He's not going to hear anything. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. open phones this hour rachel cruz joins us this hour number one best-selling author and uh ramsey, of course. She'll be speaking on the Ramsey Cruise coming up in a couple of weeks here. And her number one best-selling book, Love Your Life, Not Theirs, Seven Money Habits for Living the Life You Want. The 14-Day Money Finders out there.

You can follow her on Rachel Cruise. Of course, her YouTube show comes out every two weeks. It's a massive hit. You can find that all on YouTube at Rachel Cruz. And register or subscribe to that, of course, whatever you call that. And, of course, she'll be with us in Baton Rouge on the Financial Peace Accelerated event on April the 25th and the Smart Conference in Orlando on April the 4th. We are back busy again.

Going, going, going. It's fun, though. Absolutely. Let's go to Michelle, and Michelle is in Wisconsin. Hi, Michelle. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. How's it going?

Better than I deserve. How can Rachel and I help today? Hey, so my husband and I are thinking about kid number two, and with kid number two we were contemplating the possibility of me being stay-at-home mom right now we both work um and we're just trying to figure out what's the best way to get ready for that so we do have some debt um but we want to know you know we just bought a house last year so those repairs things like that so how much do we put away for an emergency fund versus how much do we put towards the debt?

Was that kind of in the back of our mind? You want to take it? Sure. Yeah, I would ask how much debt do you guys have? For debt? Yes. So we have a house that's $150,000 mortgage, and then we have $14,000 on a boat yet.

$14,000 on a boat, and that's it? That's all the consumer debt? Yep. Is the $14,000. And then how much do you guys make a year combined? About $120,000. And then how much of that is yours? About $60,000.

We're pretty equal. Pretty equal, half and half. So you're going to cut your income in half when you come home, and you have any money in savings? We have about $4,000 plus about $7,000 to $11,000 in savings. $11,000? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, but you're not expecting now, correct?

No, no. We're just trying to plan to even think about if it's a possibility. Okay, perfect. Well, it's always a possibility for sure. I mean, you want to be in a good position for you guys so you're not just absolutely stressed out. So, yeah, I mean, if I were you, I would take your savings, throw it out the debt, get that out of, I mean,

because you'll have, what, three grand left after you throw the savings at it and pay that off and then save up for that emergency fund. But I think for you guys, having a six-month fully funded emergency fund by the time the baby comes would be a great starting point. I would go ahead and do a fully funded one. I mean, usually I say a three-month one if both are working. Maybe you don't have, you know, kids dependent upon your income, but you wanting to transition out of you guys used to making 120. It just a lifestyle shift but I think that it's a great one if that's what you guys want to do but I mean at this point since you're not expecting I would 100% start working off to pay off that debt to pay off the boat and then from there save up a

six month and that would be what I would do until I go work on retirement and stuff. You know, and again, we usually say, let's start a combined income at the top of your page and do your zero-based budget with your EveryDollar app, right? Every dollar of your $120,000. However, in this case, what I would tell you to do is practice living on his income and putting your income towards those other goals. If you can get some of his income towards it too, that'd be great. But you need to just be able to run your household on his income and prove that to yourself. Because you can't save enough to come home and not be able to live on his income. You will burn through whatever savings you build. So you've got to prove to yourselves that you can live on his take-home pay.

And you could throw all of yours towards the debt and then all of yours towards the emergency fund and then all of yours towards anything for a little while just to kind of like this is a test kind of a thing. You're testing yourself to see if you can pull that off. And the great thing about, you know, I think what we teach is being able to free up the fact that you don't owe anyone anything at that point. I mean, that's part of being debt-free that we get to celebrate with people is that now your life's freed up and you

have choices and options. And so we see a lot of we see a lot of women decide, no, I want to be home with my kids. And when you don't have the payments, you have that option that's available. And so that's the great part of you guys paying this debt off quickly is because you can get that option back. If you had a baby on the way, I'd sell the boat. I'd be done with it quick because I'm not trading your desire to be at home for a boat, although I love boats and I love being on the lake. It's my favorite place, but I'm not going to trade mom being at home. If she's got the desire to do that full time with the babies for a boat, that's a bad trade or a car or anything else for that matter.

I've known people that move down in-house so that they can afford to live on the breadwinner's income so mom can stay at home. And there's nothing, matter of fact, that there's nothing wrong with that. No matter of fact, that might even be preferable. So, you know, this idea that I work so that I can pay the van payment to haul the kids around, that's nuts, you know, and not when you don't want to work. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was going to say, especially when you don't want to work yeah yeah that's what i was going to say especially when you don't want to because then that's exactly the mantra i feel like we beat on the show all the time is that man that's that's your money controlling you at that point it is literally dictating your life to you when you can switch that and say hey we have no payments we have nothing now i get to choose the life that i want to live and that i want to love and so i

think that's that's huge that it. That's a big deal. Andrew's with us in South Carolina. Andrew, your question for Rachel and me. Hey, how's it going? Good. How can we help? So I've got a little bit of a problem with my parents. Trying to get my mom some advice. My dad has MS and really struggles with managing money.

He's been put on long-term disability and make plenty of income, but he just makes poor financial decisions. I put a lot of strain on my mom and my younger sisters, and I'm wondering what advice I should give my mom. I know my aunt has said she's mentioned divorce. Somebody else has mentioned having the disability money put in her name. But my dad doesn't really want to give it up. He's like one of those strong, hard-headed guys. Where are they financially right now, Andrew? Are they retired?

What's their debt? I mean, what's their story? I mean, they've got like $100,000 on credit cards. My dad likes to fix her up kind of guy, and we have like a $30,000 excavator that he just bought because he wanted to do the work on his property. He has MS, and he bought a $30,000 excavator. Well, that's just like a long line of things that he's bought, and it's just a mess.

But, I mean, they make, from the disability insurance, they make $18,000 a month. They need marriage counseling. Okay? Yeah. Because he's acting out and misbehaving in his disease, and he's bringing his family down with him. Because what you're describing is out-of-control purchases, $100,000 in credit cards, an excavator when you have MS is asinine.

Yeah. That's just ridiculous. And so, yeah, he needs somebody to sit down and get in his grill that he trusts. Are they in a good church? No, they're not. Okay. My dad's kind of cut off Christianity for some reason. Oh, that's a shock.

And so he's cut off anything. Anybody that tells him anything he doesn't want to hear, he cuts them off's not gonna like me either because i'm gonna love him enough to get in his grill so um you know uh the the deal is this guy's a hard head and he's acting he's misbehaving and it's taking his family down with him and he's using his disease as an excuse to do that like he's in control he's not in control. And so I do think you need marriage counseling immediately. And I think the marriage counselor, if the marriage counselor has a backbone, is going to help your dad see that he's destroying his family. And if he can't help him see that, he's going to help your mom see

that she's going to probably make a proposal to him that he changes or she's leaving. Gotcha. Because if you don't do this, if they don't do this intentionally under the guidance of a counselor, what's going to happen is it's going to build up, it's going to build up, it's going to build up, and she's going to blow, and she's going to exit this thing, and there's going to be no re-owner back in. She'll be gone.

She'll go around the moon twice, and she'll be done. Just think about that mom. When they flip the switch like that, they be done just think about that mom they when they flip the switch like that they're done you can't bring them back yeah rachel cruz thanks for joining me this hour yeah thanks for having me on ramsey personality rachel cruz you're joining us number one best-selling author you're going to hear her at rachel cruz facebook youtube instagram all that fun stuff that puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Hey guys, it's George Camel, host of the Dave Ramsey Show video channel.

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