The Ramsey Show - App - You're Answering For Your Previous Financial Choices (Hour 1)

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, live a life worth living, do work that they love, have great relationships, all of it. 888-825-5225. It's 888-825-5225. We're taking real calls from real people who are going through all kinds of challenges in their life, and we're going to help you out.

Our promise is to sit with you and walk alongside you as we figure out what's the next right step. 888-825-5225. I'm John Deloney, joined here by Jade Warshaw, and we're taking your calls on just about anything and everything. Let's run out to Salt Lake City and talk to the great and wonderful Stacy. What's up, Stacy? Hi.

What's up? Nothing much, just hanging out here with my son. What's up with you? We are just hanging out together too, how can we help? I am calling because my husband and I can't afford child care And we're not succeeding financially, we're really struggling And I'm just trying to figure out what better we can do than what we're already doing How many kids do you have?

One, he was a surprise. He's eight weeks old. Eight weeks. Wow. You guys are in the thick of it. Cool. Yes. So what's the solution now? Are you just staying home? I'm on maternity leave. I'm supposed to be going back to work in about four weeks. I was full-time. I'm still technically full-time, but the hope is to go back part-time, but it's retail, so it's in-person. So I'm looking for something I could do remotely so I could stay home with him. Okay. And then my husband works in an office. So is the issue that you're having a hard time finding the part-time job that you want to make this work? Or is the problem that you're having a hard time finding a daycare price that would work in any case? I'm having a hard time finding remote work.

I'm hoping to work remotely full-time. And also, I just, my husband knew I brought a lot of debt into the marriage, and we were working at paying it off. How much is it? Surprised us. Between car, personal, and credit cards, and school, probably between $30,000 and $40,000. We're working on the credit cards first. I just dealt with a lot of mental health struggles growing, you know, in my young adult years. And also, I just grew up poor, so I tried to learn on my own how to how to do it all. And I didn't fully succeed.

So forty five thousand between those that you listed. Thirty and forty. Between thirty and forty. OK. And does your husband have any debt or he's not bringing any into the relationship? He didn't bring any other than his truck. But his parents are currently paying that. And how much is that?

I'm not sure just because it's not one of my current bills, but it was a used truck. And so I'm pretty sure it's like, you know, between $10,000 and $15,000. Okay. Yeah, $15,000 at the most. If you had to guess, I'm sorry, I'm just getting the particulars, so I get a lay of the land. No, you're good. If you had to guess between the two of you, because it sounds like you're not fully combined on your finances, it sounds like you kind of have a separate thing going on,

but if you had to guess, what do you both make combined before you make these career changes? What was it before? We're making about $4,000 a month total. We work together, but we do a separate account at the moment just because we never did combine them, but we work together on paying stuff. So I know we make about $4,000. He pays rent and I pay pretty much everything else. So let me clarify, because a lot of people do this thing where it's like, I make my money, you make your money, and then we throw some of our money

into this joint pile that pays all the bills, but there's also other money in my personal account. That $4,000, is that all the money combined, or is that just bill money? What does he do for a living? Ironically, he works in finance. He's a debt collector. So he doesn't make enough money.

No, he doesn't make enough money. He just started his career and stuff. Well, cool. He just ended that career because he's got to go make more money. Yeah. Yeah, I know. And? He sometimes makes bonuses

and stuff but that could care less about that it's not enough yeah and i don't know that you can go to not working or even working part-time i think whatever you do you're going to need to work full-time until he's able to make that spread as well. His mommy's still paying his truck payment. Could she wash your kid a few hours a day? No, we're in different states. Okay. And, yeah, we're in different states, and I am planning on working remotely full-time. As soon as I can find something, it's just a matter of finding something.

Okay. And then it's like running out of time. How hard are you looking? Are you sending out 15, 20 applications a day? Probably not that many a day, probably three or four a day, just because, you know, taking care of my son and stuff. But I'm applying to as many as I can. Okay.

And I'm reaching out to people and stuff like that. If in four weeks when your leave is over, if you haven't found that full-time remote job, what do you think the plan of action would be? In your mind, what's the course of action at that point? I'm hoping that's not the case, but if you find yourself in that situation, what would you do? At that point, I'll work evenings and weekends at my current job and probably do DoorDash during the day with my son. And would that be enough to cover the daycare?

We aren't comfortable doing daycare and I want him with me. And so whatever work I want to do, it's something I could do with him. That's why I'm looking for remote work. Here's the deal. You may have answered this question several years ago with some of your financial choices. And I know this is hard to hear, but you owe $45,000. And so what you want, not to mention whatever your husband owes. Like 35, yeah. Whatever it is.

And here's the problem. A, you don't fully know what that number is, and you don't know what his number is. You don't know what exactly the amount of money you make is, because you don't know if he has a separate account or if his mommy's sending him money to help with the, you don't know. I have access to his account, full access to his account. To the one he gives you. Jade and I wouldn't have jobs if husbands and wives told each other the truth all the time about money. That's right. And so this isn't a math problem.

This is a wife who is living the life of a single mom inside of her own house. And you'll have to get together. And he has to recognize he's got to go make a whole bunch more money, and he just started a career. That career does not provide for his family at this moment. And you want to stay home with this baby, you may have to work for a season to get that $35,000 knocked out so that you can afford to stay home with this baby.

Yeah. And I know that's scary. I know that's hard. But we love you too much to not tell with this baby. Yeah. And I know that's scary. I know that's hard. But we love you too much to not tell you the truth. That's right. You have a lot more years ahead of you with that baby. And it's easy to forget and think that it's just right now. But you've got years and years to stay at home with that kid.

She's got a big, big hole. All of this starts with you sitting down with your husband and saying, I'm so scared. I can't breathe breathe we have to put everything on the table and tell the truth this is the ramsey show 888-825-5225 i'm john deloney joined by jade waw. Jade, what did you do? I didn't do anything. You did. You super did. Look, I posted a video on Facebook specifically about how like zero credit scores work. And these folks came for my life, John.

Dude, they were showering you with the haterade. So I was thinking, you know what? I usually stay out of the comments or I'm like pretty, you know nonchalant about it but these these comments were extra and I was like you know what I need to I need to I need to clap back on this so let's play the video so you guys can just see how innocent what I said was and you can be on my side and then we'll chop it up all right let's do it it usually takes about a year to see your credit score go down to absolute zero if you completely stop borrowing money and here's the thing if you dilly-dally with this and you're like i'm gonna keep that one credit card open it's never gonna

go to zero you're just gonna have a bad credit score and then when you try to go buy a house you're gonna run into problems look yeah i stand by that i stand by that message i approve that message all right i'm gonna read some of the haterade all right read it chad says these people are crazy zero credit score is not even possible okay uh tim says this is absolutely not correct you need to raise your credit score not lower it this explains so much about some people Derek says this kind of crap's annoying while it's possible to buy a house without a credit score it isn't worth the hoops okay better off with a credit score the next one's my favorite yeah Jacob says says the woman with tons of assets to lean on and has no need for credit cards.

I can't. I can't. I'm coming out of my seat right now. And I did reply to that one. I was like, oh, you must not know me or my story if you think I came from wealth and assets. Are you kidding me? I got to throw my pen across the room. Hold on.

Hold on. This cat says, I swear, the Ramsey team's advice on credit is the stupidest beep-a-beep ever. Good luck getting approved for Jack beep-a-beep with no credit. That's the whole point. Here's my thing. Here's my thing, John, and this is crazy to me. People would rather be right about what they think and about what they know

than be free, than be happy, than be better off in life. They'd rather be right about what they think and about what they know then be free then be happy then be better off in life they they'd rather be right about the fact that there's no other way to get ahead in society than to be strapped with debt for eternity yes like you have to play the debt game that's the only it's the only way to make it in america is to have a credit score are you kidding me you'd rather be right about that. And I'm like, really? You want to be right about something that keeps you in slavery your entire life forever. It's that important to you. And dude, for all of human history, this is how governments captured their citizens by giving them a plot of land and saying, when

it's paid off, then it's all yours. And you're free the next year. It's like, oh, well, we had to raise the price. So, uh So and they do that in perpetuity. And now we wear this score like we win something. And I'm the only one. The folks in this room are some of the only ones in the United States. In the world telling y'all, hey, there's a better way. And we try to do it with love. We try to tell y'all, hey, there's a better way.

We want you to be free. We want to help you. We exist to help the'all, hey, there's a better way. We want you to be free. We want to help you. We exist to help the people outside of these walls. And it's crazy that people clap back on me like I'm trying to hurt them. And they're not clapping back at the credit collectors. They're not clapping back at FICO or Experian or TransUnion. They're yelling at me when I'm the one going, hey, there's a way that you don't have to play this stupid game.

You don't have to rack your family with debt you don't have to you know rob Peter to pay Paul and move this money over here and keep your credit around for x amount of years with x amount of varieties of credit with x amount of percentage used like that is a game and the goalpost is constantly moving and one of the things I noticed that they were mad at me as I said hey if you if you're going to run our plan, like run it to the end zone, like do it all the way. Don't do this mess of, well, I'm going to pay off my credit, but I'm going to keep a couple of cards open or keep that one card open just in case, because that'll jack your credit even worse, right? Because there are ways that they're measuring your credit. It's not just, hey, have one credit card open. You have to utilize that credit and

you have to keep it around for a long time and you have to make sure the percentage is right. Otherwise, yeah, you'll have a score, but it won't be great. It'll probably be pretty bad. And the fact is, having a, I'm going to say it and I'm going to scream it till the cows come home, having a zero credit score is just as good, in my opinion, better than having a 750 or an 800 because I don't have to play the game of debt. I get to be my own woman, my own man, my husband, and we're autonomous and we are free and we don't have to be slaves to the system. So if you don't like that, you can go ahead and put that yoke back on and they can, ha, yeah, and you'll just pull the plow of debt for them. And you can do that the rest of your life. I'm not going as for me in my house. Making other people rich at your expense.

Look. Hey, can we run through this real quick? Yeah. These people are crazy. Zero credit score is not even possible. You're false. False. It's false. Once you pay off your debt, like I said, it takes about and you close the accounts. You've got to close them. It takes about six to 12 months for your credit score to roll to zero. That's how it goes. This is absolutely not correct. You need to raise your credit score, not lower it. Why? False. Why? You tell me why. So that one day you can go get on both knees and hold your hands up and say, dear lender, please. Please. And they'll say, well, let me look in my secret file

and see what your score is. Yeah. Instead of sitting down with your wife when your air conditioner goes out and you have become your own bank over 15 years, which is what took me and my wife. And your argument is not, please, please, can I? It's you call.

I'm not calling you call. I know, I know. I don't want to call you call. I love it. That's the most annoying fight you have. Yeah. Right. And I think people forget the fact that when you decide, John, like, hey, we're going to

pay off our debt. That simultaneously means and we're not going back into debt and we're not doing this thing called credit anymore. And the biggest argument is, yeah, but if you don't have a credit score, how are you going to live? And the biggest two areas that people are thinking about are cars and living situation, right? Can you buy a car without credit? Yes, you can. It's called buying a car in cash.

And I'm not talking about that you always have to save $40,000 or $50,000 to buy the newest model. The cars that Sam Warshaw and Jade Warshaw drive are from 2013. And I think we paid less than, I don't know, 20,000 for both. Yeah, each of them. That's how you do this. You don't have, and don't get me wrong, I could have way more car than that, John. At this point in my life, I just don't care about it that much. So don't tell me it's not possible. You save up your money and it takes time. Let me just say this. My husband and I, for the first time in our marriage, are a two-car family. And that happened last year because that's just the life we chose. We didn't have to do that for that long, but we said,

you know what? I don't care about going into debt over cars. And when we feel like paying up cash and buying a second car, we will. And that's what you're talking about you just choose it was it was up until this this year i i went from a 96 to a 2012 and i was driving 2012 forever yeah and dave just just dave as my friend goes hey i know what i pay you right what are you doing and i was like he's like you're trying to like make a point. And I go, I honestly don't care. I don't care. And it was only that I was like, I'm going to get. And by the way, I went all in on a Highlander. Come on.

You know what I mean? And dude, every day I get in it, I smile so big. Like I've beat somebody. Like I've won some game. And my buddies are like it's it's not it's not a cool car john come on i know it's like i know but it doesn't have a cd player in it anymore right here's the deal when you unhook yourself from the external expectation yeah my wife likes me and you know how i know she likes me because she was dating me when i was

driving an 88 trussell easy hatchback let's's go. I know this is love, right? And when we were making it, when we were, when Dave was paying us more money than any Delonis had ever wrapped their head around, I didn't need to prove anything to anybody. No. It's not a game, right? It's like, yeah,

I was able to cobble together the money and pay for that in cash. And it's just, it's mine. The money. See what I'm saying? What you buy doesn't determine your worth. Hey, one more thing. What about housing?

Let me hit this right quick. People think you can't buy a house with a zero credit score. Yes, you can. It's called manual underwriting. I did it. John Deloney did it. George Campbell did it. I know Rachel Cruz did it.

All these folks did it. All you need is payment history. 12 months showing your trade lines, cell phone bills, utilities. You need actual money. You need to show 12 months of bank statements and just your last 30 days of payment steps. But that's so many hoops. It's not. It's almost the same as the normal process.

It's not. Hey, by the way. Churchill Mortgage is the place to go, guys. Yes. And, man, if you just weren't so rich, you wouldn't be able to talk like this, Jade. This is the Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. I'm John Deloney, joined by Jade Warshaw. Let's go out to Destin, Florida, and talk to Josh.

What's up, brother Josh? Hey, how you doing? Good, man. How are you? I'm okay. I appreciate you taking the call. You got it, man. What's up? Oh, I guess I'll cut right to it. So I've been following you guys for a little while, trying to get my finances on track. I've come to a decision i need to start handling my life and get some stuff on track and i want to go to rehab so i can uh quit my drinking yeah i'm proud of you man hold on hold on don't blow by that that's huge what led you here um there are millions and millions of people in the united states that need to make this decision and I want them to hear where you landed.

You'll be a gift. In the past, I battled with other substance abuse issues, and I let that go. I've been clean from all that, and I just kind of picked up the bottle. And I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of doing the same things over and over again. Tired of relying on something to feel like I need it to function. Awesome. I'm proud of you, man. I'm proud of you. So, uh, how can we help? Well, pretty much my insurance situation, the only way to get into treatment, uh, it covers most of it except for about $6,000.

Okay. $6,000 to $10,000, depending on location. So really not trying to get into any more debt. Sure. But I want to take care of this. The first question I would ask is often, and I'm talking about rehab places that are not like go to Malibu or you're in Destin, not like a beachfront place that's going to be a resort. Okay. Yeah.

Often, if you sit down, places will wave the gap between the insurance and the cash out. Okay. It's the equivalent of a scholarship program. So I would have that conversation with the place. Have you done that? I've been calling and asking for scholarships. I've called hundreds of places probably. You haven't called hundreds. Maybe a slight exaggeration.

Yeah, a big exaggeration. And nobody will waive the gap? No, that'll cover my insurance. What do you mean? Because that's the cheapest thing I've been able to find is a $6,000 copay. Is that your deductible? Yes. That's the

cheapest thing I can get. I've applied for scholarships. They're saying they're not doing it. So do you have guns or guitars or a truck? Do you have something you can sell? No. I mean, I've got a truck, but it's my work truck. Can you go down in value on it?

What's it worth? No, I'm upside down in it. What's it worth? Probably about $11,000. What do you own it? I've got about 200,000 miles on it. $12,000 miles on it 12 what what would happen you owe 12 it's worth 11 what would happen if you sold that and went down

half the value and just bought yourself a little truck that that'll get you is there anything do you see what i'm saying? Like this is temporary. No, I get what you're saying, but it's a truck with 200,000 miles on it. And not that many people are going to spend $11,000. Well, if it's worth 11,000. There's a whole bunch of people, Will, my friend, because they're in your situation too. What about a parent or family member? Nope. Unfortunately, no.

Okay. So here's what I would tell you. I would start, if I'm you in this situation, I would start with a couple of different areas. Number one, I would walk in this evening to the local AA meeting. Have you done that yet? Yeah. Okay. I would ask around and tell them I've got a gap. And my guess is there's people who would say, I know X, Y, and Z.

I know this person. My church has a sponsorship program. There's gap payment here. We can help figure this out. I would start there. Okay? Okay. And this is you being super, super vulnerable. It sounds like you're so sick of all this

that you're kind of done giving a crap. Is that fair? Absolutely. Okay. The second thing is, I'm going to give you three months of free BetterHelp. I want you to talk to a licensed counselor. I want you to hang on the line here.

And I want you to make sure that just full-stop rehab is the right move, the right next move for you. Okay. Okay. Okay. They might say, hey, I want you to go every day to a meeting in the evening and in the morning for 30 days and let's circle back before we make this big leap. Okay. Okay.

The third thing is I want you to be honest, deeply honest with what you can part with right now. Because here's what I'm trying to avoid. I don't want you to come out on the other side of a 30-day in-treatment program or a 28-day outpatient program and have that clarity of mind, that sobriety, the light is on, and then that credit card bill hits you right in the mouth. That's what I want to avoid at all costs. And that's another thing I'm worried about. Finances bills keep coming. They do keep coming.

I've even been looking into detoxes and it's still about that same number just for like a week detox they do i want you to go to a meeting and i want you to be vulnerable and raise your hand and say i'm stuck okay yep if you tell me after 30 days of knocking on every door put your car Facebook Marketplace and see if you can get $6,000 for it or $11,000 that's going to give you six grand and you go buy a $5,000 car with 250,000 miles on a truck. I get it. Not pretty. This is a local credit union and figure out that gap. Or I would work out, before you did that, I would see if you could work out a payment plan with the rehab place.

Probably they won't do that, but it'd be worth a shot. Oh, no, no, they will. They will do that. That's why I was no interest, but that's why I was on the call because I've already got other debt racked up. Okay, I'm okay with that one. If the last option, and listen to me, this is not a pass for you just to go,

sweet, I can go, I want you to exhaust every avenue because my brother, Jade and I have sat with people, they walk out. And then reality is a cold dose of water and it's easy to fall right back into old habits when old fists hit

you in the same mouth. Yeah. Cause even if you can find a couple of thousand, like even if you can find a couple of thousand from selling things, you visit a local church and say, Hey, is there any, like, is there a ministry here? What, what can I do? Can I serve to earn this money? Like whatever you can figure out, even if you're closing that gap with cash in some way, that's going to be worth it to you. Or if you got two weeks and you decide, I'm going to wake up at five o'clock every morning and drive Uber and I am going to,

I'm going to work like mad and earn this money, right? There's going to be some little victories there. But if you tell me, hey man, I can't, I'm underwater right now. I'm wanting to go to rehab because I'm drinking every day and I can't stay clean i get that and i honor that okay but i want you to go to a meeting tonight and i want you to raise your hand and ask that question okay okay if you can if the hospital where you are doing your um inpatient rehab is willing to say there's an interest-free option here for the gap, then I'm okay with that

as a last DEF CON resort option. If a clinical supervisor has said your only option is rehab. Okay. Okay. So I want you to hang on the line. I want you to walk through. I want you to, when you go through the BetterHelp, I want you to click on struggling with substance abuse, struggling with alcohol. And I want you to put in the notes trying to make a decision on whether I need to go to rehab, go to inpatient rehab counseling. And then when they reach out, they're going to walk you through an assessment and y'all can make that decision together. Is that cool?

Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate everything. Hey, I need you to hear me say I'm really proud of you. Me too. Thank you. This is real hard. Thank you very much. You've been drowning for a long time, haven need you to hear me say I'm really proud of you. Me too. Thank you. This is real hard. Thank you very much.

You've been drowning for a long time, haven't you? Yeah. Yeah. We're done? Okay. Are we done? With all the drinking? Yes, I want to be.

I mean, I'm tired of it. Good. Hey, I'm going to put a little star on this. I want you to call back in 30 days with your 30-day chip. And we're going to celebrate you on the air. Alright? I'm proud of you, my man. This is the Ramsey Show. We'll be right back.

888-825-5225. This is the Ramsey Show. Hey, it's almost the holiday season. And if you are already getting sweaty armpits thinking about Thanksgiving with family and Christmas, I got you. I got you. We've created some new questions for humans this year.

We have a Thanksgiving deck to talk about gratitude. You can sit down at the Thanksgiving table and look around and say, no politics. Nobody cares. No negative nonsense on this one. No TVs. Everybody put your stupid phones down. We're going to ask these questions and it's for the whole family.

We also made a new Christmas deck and what's super rad, we made a new deck and this is because you asked for it, for grandparents and kids. It's a great way for you and your spouse to go out to dinner and say, Mom, Dad, you can be with the grandkids, and don't be weird. Here are some cards. We got you. Go to RamseySolutions.com and save your holidays.

I love that. Let's go out to Detroit Rock City and talk to Sarah. What's up, Sarah? Hi, how are you guys today? Good, how are you? I'm doing amazing, thanks for asking. Awesome, what's up? I am calling because I am debating on if I should move

or if I should stay in my current home. We currently have a home where we owe about $132,000 on it. We have a great interest rate of only 2.25%, but we have some structural issues going on in our basement. My husband and I, yeah, and it's going to be really expensive. How expensive? It's going to be maybe like around $70,000. The person who sold us the home was not 100% truthful about the issues that were going on. He covered up some stuff. Sounded like he was 0% truthful.

So if you were to... Actually, we're dealing with some foundational issues, and he covered it up with cement. So it got past me, my husband, the inspector. It got past everyone. And now we're in jeopardy of losing our homeowner's insurance. Oh, if you don't get it repaired. Exactly. And they're giving us like a very short window to get it repaired.

What's the window? Like three months. What's the window? Um, like three months. What? Dang son. Uh, if you were to let go of this house, let's, let's pretend you did sell it.

Uh, what would you, what would it bring? In profit? 15,000. 15,000. Hmm. Yeah.

And how long have you lived in this house? We've only, we moved in in 2020. Okay. How much would it bring you? Well, from the suggestions of my realtor, the house is worth, based on the area, the house is worth a lot more than what we would list it for. But due to the foundational issues. Yeah, the issues.

Yeah, she's thinking that we should list the house at 159. But if we were to possibly try and at least do part of the repairs and maybe speak to the homeowner's insurance company and see if maybe they can work something out with us. I'm wondering about that. I'm wondering if you and your husband sit down and put together a plan of phases and say, hey, in phase one, this is what we're getting done. And here's the time frame for that. And then in phase two starts at X date.

And here's what we're doing there. And here's the 12-month plan or the, you know, whatever month plan for this to be completely fixed and healed. Yeah. Did you guys, did y'all try to report it as an insurance loss and they came out and went through everything and then they tagged you for it? That was a mistake. Yeah. That's happened to me before too.

And then when they came out, we were thinking that maybe they would cover it and they were like, no, we're not going to cover it and we're not going to renew it. Pretty much is what happened. Yeah, I hate that. You can't even ask a question anymore and they'll just burn you. I want you to, while you're doing this, Jade's is what I would do if I'm sitting down with my wife.

If I'm being honest, trying to put skin in this game, I would sit down with my wife and say, okay, we don't have $70,000. I'm assuming you don't have $70,000 in cash? Oh, absolutely not. Okay. Do you have any money? Right now, at the moment, no. We're currently working on the baby steps. We paid off all of my husband's credit card and we're paying off mine as well. What do you have left to go on the debt? Maybe like around 20. Okay. Okay. and can i just ask you guys's combined income 120 120 so 20 000 left in debt 120 income yeah i mean we're pausing this right now you you think

jade i i i think you have to if they're giving you three months before you lose your insurance and be like yeah you you gotta you gotta move this to the top of the list or at the very least like i said you've gotta come up with this plan of action find out what they're gonna do now let's let's give her option b just in case option b is i want you to call my friends at zander insurance okay and here's what zander is. They're a broker, and they call a whole bunch of different companies and get you the best rates. And I want you to be honest and talk with the broker and say,

we got some foundation issues. We called our insurance company, and then they did this to us. And let them walk you through what the next step is. If they tell you, I'm sorry, this means your house is completely uninsurable, well, now you know, but I bet that's not going to be the case. That is.

Okay. And that gives you option two. Here is not option three. I don't want you going out and borrowing $70,000 on this house. That's right. Okay. You think you're stressed now? That's not passion. Well, yeah, You think you're stressed now? That's not passion.

Well, yeah, you think you're stressed now. You put seven, you go upside down on your house on foundation repair, and you're not going to be able to sleep or breathe. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. Okay. I love the idea of sitting down, getting one or two, not one,

getting two or three different quotes on this and have them do it in stages. And what they're going to want to do is come to it all at the same time. You can look at them and smile and say, I'm going to pay for cash as I go. I need you to break this up into have to have right now, right this second, what's stage two, what's stage three and on and on and on okay okay yeah i mean look these are those moments where you being brutally honest with whoever's coming to your house and doing those estimates they're gonna because there's a real person on the other side of that right and if you say to them hey you know like this is gonna cost seventy thousand dollars here's what the insurance told us we cannot afford to lose this house you know our interest rate we can't go into another market where the interest rate is

going to be seven percent. Like, if you start talking like that to a human being and you're showing that you're a human being too, a lot of times you will be surprised at what they're able to meet you at. And if you can have them, you know, kind of shift into your shoes of like, you know, what would you do? And, you know, is there any way? Because if you were in this situation, I mean, it seems like you would want to do the same

thing. If you can get them thinking like that that's good and by the way 70 000 bucks on a hundred and fifty thousand dollar home what are they doing man they're gonna lift your whole house and redo the whole all the blocking underneath the whole thing yeah that's the thing too where we've had like three people to come out and give estimates and 70,000 was like at the top of the list but okay they're all three of them are saying three different things one is saying oh we can just waterproof it the other one is saying oh we can put beams up and push the wall out and then the third one is that we have to redo the entire wall of course let me ask you this, Sarah.

How do you feel about it? Because I'm listening to you talk and I'm like, dude, if I was in my house and they're telling me there's structural damage and like what my house can crumble on me and my family. There is part of me, John, that's like, get me out. I'm out. I don't trust any of y'all to make sure that this is right, especially if y'all are all telling me something different. Is that does that hit a nerve at all? It did at first um we were actually in the process of trying to move and list our house but when i just looked at the numbers it just didn't seem worth it to me as i as they ran y'all said i'd rather eat beans and rice and just thug it out and keep my current home because I love the home that we're in. Okay. There you go. Okay. Then that's what you do. It may be that you have to bite the bullet

on this one and pay to have it waterproof so you can get it through the insurance. And then you're going to have to save up money and have them come put piers in that wall and lift the house up and level it and go with piers. And that's going to not only get you through inspection, but the whole house is going to be structurally sound, right? And yes, it would be cool if I could do a complete frame-off restoration of my truck. I can't afford to do that, but I can replace the shocks, right? And it's going to drive great. It's going to be safe. And so it might be finding some middle ground over time.

But call our friends at Zander and get some updates on the insurance because you may want to tell your insurance company, you know what? I fire you. I fire you. Hey, this is the first hour in the books. We'll be right back on The Ramsey Show.