The Ramsey Show - App - You’re Headed for Stupidville… This Is a Weird Freaking Family (Hour 3)

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Dave Ramsey & Dr. John Delony answer your questions and discuss: "My husband is inheriting a house his ex-wife is living in..." "Should we use the 529 for private school or wait for college?" "How do I invest past the 401(k) max?" from the blog: How to Plan for Retirement Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Pods Moving and Storage Studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they actually love, and create real, actual, amazing relationships. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. Dr. John Deloney, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, is my co-host today. He's also the number one best-selling author of the book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future.

Sarah is in Detroit, Michigan. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My father-in-law bought a home for my

husband's ex-wife to live in about 15 years ago. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. This sounds hillbilly already. I'm having trouble. What in the world? I know. Your husband's dad bought your husband's ex-wife a house to live in.

Yes. Why? And the moonshine's still out back? You know, I don't understand the situation at all. My family doesn't do things like this. No, normal people don't do crap like this no normal people don't do crap like this it usually is the other way i mean you know byron oh my goodness okay so he after the divorce maybe he's taking care of the kids maybe that's it was his grandkids

okay i can see that were there all right okay yeah it is somewhat more sane okay it was still stupid but okay at the time they had um two teenagers and um i think that i think he uh one was about 10 years old so this was about 15 years ago so she's lived there since then um she doesn't pay rent father-in-law has upkept the home and the house is not in her name he bought it and lets her live there yes and kept the house in his name okay good okay that's better even okay is it yeah this is going to be a supernova i can't wait this is going to be great so um the kids are grown now um she still lives there. And I just happened to see a piece of paper that said title on death, the title to go over to my husband when my father-in-law passes away. So, I guess my father-in-law is expecting my husband to keep the house up and pay taxes on it.

I don't care what he expects, no. As my wife told me once, John, I'm not doing chores for you after you're dead. Yeah. Okay, so here's the thing. Regardless of how it occurred, where it is today is stupidville. Can we agree with that? Yeah. So your husband needs to go sit down and have a cup of coffee with his dad

and say, Dad, I don't want to have to deal with this crap. You need to deal with it now. Ex-wife doesn't have a reason to live there anymore. Free. The kids are grown and gone. She needs to move on now. It's not mean. It's not mean it's weird it's weird just say it out loud she's lived rent-free for 15 years he did it because he's a grandpa's heart i got it i got a grandpa's heart right and grandpa's heart sometimes will cause

you to do stupid butt things and he did a stupid butt thing but he needs to handle this before he dies what yeah okay so i don't even know i can hear in your voice he's not going to so your is your husband a wuss when it comes to his dad a little bit no of course he is he bought his ex-wife a house of course yeah okay so here you really you need to give your run down down to Walmart and pick your husband up a backbone. They're on aisle three. And you need to send him on over to his dad and say, Dad, I don't want this house unless you move her out before you die. Because I don't want to have to deal with her. She's my ex for a reason. We don't want the house. Take my name off the deed or get her out, one of the two. Because I'm not going to have to deal with evicting my ex-wife because the day the day you inherit this she gets evicted

if she doesn't move voluntarily right which i don't think she will is the free ride that comes to an end to my girl time to move and when dave starts talking french you know he's serious that's hillbilly french right there uh yeah redneck that's just not this is dumb go ahead sarah would it be an option for him to instead just feed the house over to the ex-wife since he wanted to if he wants to give it to her he can give it to her i don't care this is a weird freaking family okay but i if i'm in your shoes i want to tell you what I'm trying to do with all my sarcasm and bombasticness is you think this is crazy and you're right. That's what I'm trying to do is affirm you.

Your feelings about this are completely correct. This is Strangeville, Stupidville, Weirdville. Okay. Let me affirm one more thing for you. There are three towns right together and the intersection intersection is ex-wife's house, okay? I'm so glad it's not just me. It's not you. There's 22 million people listening to this going, oh, my God.

There's another layer to this. Also, you're realizing in real time your husband is, like Dave eloquently said, doesn't have a backbone and hasn't dealt with something that should have been dealt with a long, long time ago. And it's right for you to also feel that sense of who is this guy? When things get sideways, he just goes, oh, it's going to be okay. This is XY. This is somebody that's out of his life. They went through a legal process.

It's over. And so you're right to call him on that as well. You'll need to have that conversation because you're losing respect for him right here's the thing he's going to deal with it or he's going to deal with it or he's going to deal with you he's going to deal with it with his dad he's going to deal with evicting her after he gets the house or he's going to deal with you he gets to deal with this it's not an option he just gets to choose what he deals with and the easiest path is go sit down have a cup of coffee with his nutty father right and go dad no i don't want this house no i don't want your time

share either don't leave me that either both of them are dumb i don't want this and if dad won't deal with it then you two need to decide um are we going to go through a legal proceeding and evict her and sell this house? And she's going to sue us and all that? Or are we going to deed the house over to her and just walk away? No, I'm not giving it to her. There's no way. There's no way. She just needs to leave.

This woman has had it. I've had enough of this woman already. This woman needs to move out of this house. Okay? My God, what a freeloader. And so, no. Okay, I was feeling guilty. No, you don't need to feel guilty

this is dumber than a rock so here's what okay here's the steps if it's me you need to sit down with your husband and the two of you need to address the fact that he won't address this john's right because this is going to put a splinter in your relationship you don't want to leave there number two then he needs to go really he does need to go sit down talk to his dad very calmly nicely he doesn't have to be as crazy as i'm being on the air i'm doing that to give you strength and remind you that you're normal and that what you're thinking is real because the voices i just gave were also in your head so i'm just i'm just saying them out in the loud okay now he sits down with his dad calmly and says dad this is weird i don't have to deal with this i don't have to deal with

her that's why she's my ex. And you need to move her out of there before you die. Or you need to take my name off of this whole thing. If dad won't deal with it and he leaves him the thing, the instant dad is ill, your husband needs to tell his ex-wife she has 30 days and we're going to be selling the house. You've got to move.

And your husband needs to handle this. None of this are you responsible for. He has to man up and handle this. It's his freaking family and his freaking mess, and he's got to do it. And you've got to kick him hard enough to get him to do it. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. It is a free call at 888-825-5225. Paying off debt smart, saving and investing is smart. Being outrageously generous is smart

there's one key to winning with money that people overlook and that's protecting your finances from emergencies and this is where the right kinds of insurance come in and that's smart there are 10 kinds of insurance that might be smart for you we've built a free tool called the coverage check up to show you which types are smart which which ones to add, drop, or adjust. Drop the dumb ones. Keep the smart ones. We'll show you how it works. And it's all free, and it's fast.

It takes about five minutes. You need to go to RamseySolutions.com slash checkup, RamseySolutions.com slash checkup. Don't let an emergency sneak up on you. Protect your family now. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. Peter is with us in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Peter. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hey, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for the time today. Sure. How can we help? Question for you. So my wife and I are on baby step four, five, and six. We recently bought our first house as a family. We put down about 300, so we only have about 100 left on it.

We have 30,000 in a 529, and we make household income about 110 a year. We currently pay about 12,000 a year in daycare, and we're looking at sending our son to private school, and we figured tuition is probably going to be roughly what we pay in daycare today. Kicker is, we're older parents. I'm 50. My wife's in her early 40s, and we have a three-year-old son. So question is, would it be wise to draw down a portion of that 529 to pay for a portion of the private school tuition, which would allow us to pay down our mortgage faster with the thought being that having a paid-off house would make college easier to cash flow later. I wouldn't call it dumb.

I'm struggling with it from a timing standpoint because I'm thinking of all the – I always think of the downsides because I always get to deal with people when their plan didn't work because life blew up, right? And so how could life blow up and mess up this plan? Okay, you're an older parent. Let's say four junior gets to college, you die. Well, your plan didn't work because you're not there to cash flow college. You with me? Right.

That bothers me because we drained his 529 so that he could go to private Christian kindergarten, and we traded that for college. Yeah, I'm not making that trade. I'm going to cash flow it or I'm not doing it. Cash flow the private school tuition in the short term yeah okay yeah because i need that i need that nest egg there to back him up if you're not there to back him up yeah that makes sense we were just saying the other night when we were talking about it uh you know it would make this decision a lot easier if we knew what the future

yeah you get that one figured out let me know i'll help you franchise it but yeah yeah i think michael j fox figured that out for you he's got three installments you can watch oh it's great back to the future yeah that one yeah careful yeah okay i didn't know what you're talking about there for a second appreciate it yeah back to the back to the future there yeah um i tell you what dave i if I want to go here. You can just say, let's move on. I get more blown up on social media. Like, the people who follow me are so kind.

I get blown up on one issue. One. No, two. Travel sports. And the other one is I send my kids to public school. Well, I can help you with that. I'll just tell you. I'll take the heat.

Yeah. All three Ramseys went to public schools, and none of the three Ramseys did travel sports. Because Daniel was pretty good at ice hockey, but he wasn't going to be playing in the NHL. So I'm not dropping 15 grand a year for the kid to play travel sports and me be out of town every weekend. He ain't going to make it.

Yeah. But I'm going back to what this guy was talking about with i mean he's talking about literally mortgaging his future for this to get my kids out of this school so they can come to this school well he's gonna send him to the private christian school that was not an issue it was just how to pay for it was the only question yeah and so uh now then he didn't ask if we thought it was good idea you know that wasn't the point but yeah there's uh um you know there's when someone wants to go to a private christian school there is usually uh one of two or three reasons yeah one is they live in a neighborhood where the public schools aren't, they don't perceive them as being safe. Yeah.

Okay. And a rough, rough area. Yeah. Okay. Two is they want to ensure that the teaching is done from a Christian worldview, not with all the wackadoodle that truthfully a lot of the teachers unions and other things are put into the schools now. There's wackadoodle in the schools. Yeah. And they don't want their kids in there.

And like I was watching this guy was cracking up on a post the other day. He said, yeah, he had homeschool kids. And he's like, people tell my kids, tell me, what about homeschool children? They're not going to be properly socialized. You want socialized by drag queens? Oh, man. I mean, really? Thank you.

No, thank you. I don't want to be socialized by drag queens. So homeschool is a really good idea. Yeah. It's really a good point, actually. So. But the idea is, well, what's the third one? So safety, religion.

Yeah. And academics. Okay. Sometimes the academics are better. They want to go to a – it's not always a private Christian school, but a private school for better academics. And so like in our neighborhood, we have – in our neighborhood here, I won't name it, we have a private school that's well-known. It does have a Christian underpinning or background,

but it also claim walks around claiming to have a, uh, better academics. Gotcha. But the graduation from college rate is exactly the same as the public school. That's a mile and a half down the road. Right. Exactly. And, uh, and it's, it's like 30,000 bucks a year, you know, per kit, you know, so, uh,

you just got to decide, is it worth it? Like you decide if you're going to go to a college that's more expensive. What is the value proposition in that case? And I think there is something to be said. And the more wackadoodle the world gets on just worldview of the teaching staff, it's that, you know, I don't want wackadoodle talk to my grandkids, okay? Now, we live in a weird bubble where our public schools in this county are unusually the number one in the in the state they're incredible and number one in the state and the people in our

general area here share our values yeah by and large there's there's a few wackadoodles out there but i mean most of the people are like normal humans they're not aliens teaching in the classroom uh like you read about on sure you know in the news and everything but uh so you know we've we're a little bit spoiled yeah in that regard so where hank goes or where my grandkids go to public school yeah all of my grandkids go to public school but that public school is better than a whole lot of private schools in a whole lot of ways right right so but it's unusual not all public you can say that about so anyway um you know you just got to look at the situation but

yeah i get blown up on that too because i this idea that i mean if you've got extra money and you want to spend i mean rachel did uh competition cheerleading sure two years yeah and we paid some money for her to go to the gymnast thing and learn how to do flips off the somebody's shoulders or whatever it was she did and um and then i think we went to one competition in atlanta or something where she flipped or whatever but um it's you know today as a 34 year old mom and best-selling author of three books, has not done a single flip lately. So I'm just saying. It's not come up again, you know? So that's – but it's part of our childhood.

There's a weird thing that goes with that travel sports thing, and I think it's the same button you're pushing with the private school thing. Well, I had a unique perspective of dealing with students whose parents outsourced – They hid their kids from these conversations, never had them, never had them. And then they show up in college and the world's sideways. Yeah. And so there's something about, I love the idea of my kids hearing things and being challenged and then coming home to me. Yeah, yeah.

Not to their 19-year-old roommate, right? About how life works. There's just people with wackadoo ideas out there, man. Is God real? That's exactly right. Let's have some conversations at home about this, by the way. I'm not outsourcing children's spirituality, but that's another conversation. I bet you.

This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Hey, guys, listen up. Our brand-new Ramsey Events Center is going to be opening to the public with our inaugural event in two weeks. April 14th and 15th, we're going to be doing our very first live event there, the Nashville Smart Conference. We're going to be doing this show live from the stage there.

There are some free tickets to watch that left. If you want to check our website at RamseySolutions.com slash events. And then the Smart Conference is Friday evening and all day Saturday, teaching you everything about all the different areas that we teach on, from jobs, work, and career, to money and investments, to just getting better at life, and, of course, relationships and mental wellness with Dr. John Deloney. All of that's going to be there.

There's 2,500 seats in there. It is almost sold out. There are 71 seats left if you want to come. It's only $119. You're going to get an inaugural pass. You're going to be the first one ever to be at a live event in that in terms of the public in that particular building and we're looking forward to having you ramsey solutions.com slash events come on out we'd love to have you all right desmond and uh sierra are with us on

the debt-free stage hey guys how are you we're doing well did i say that right is it sierra it is sierra okay great good to have you guys where do do you live? We are in Atlanta Georgia. Fun welcome to Nashville. How much debt have you paid off? We paid off $130,000. All right how long did this take? It took us about four years. All right and what was your range of income during that time? We started out about $80,000 and then we ended up about 115,000. Very good. What do you do for a living? We're both special education teachers.

Oh, wow. What a great calling. Wow. That's where I take a moment of silence. Y'all are incredible. Yeah. Incredible. Fabulous.

Well done. All right. And what kind of debt was this 130,000? It was all student loans. Student loans. All right. So how long have y'all been married we will be celebrating 12 years of marriage this may so eight years into your marriage you looked up and said there's an unwelcome person in our house her name is sally

may yeah we need to evict this old woman she'd be ugly tell me the story what happened well it actually started when i was in college i got introduced to financial peace uh from my chick-fil-a owner operator luke go luke he he was a coordinator at the church that he was attending and he challenged us to go through the the class and and i just went through it and it was good um and then was good. And you flunked. I failed the class, though. You flunked. You did nothing. I flunked the class.

Did nothing. But it was instilled. You know, the principles were instilled in me, and I always wanted to do it. And so one of the things, one of the funny stories is I had a difference check, and I actually paid for her engagement ring with the difference check after the class. So, you know. Of course you did difference check after the class. Of course you did. I failed the class.

We'll just say that. That's all right. Okay. So you got her a ring, though. I got her a ring. You got the girl. I got the girl. All right.

And now we start living. Now, what was the wake-up call four years ago? Well, I had a very long journey getting through school. I had challenges with choosing what I wanted to major in and so it took me a long time to finish and so Desmond said once you finish school in 2017 it is time for us to get started we know the principles we know what to do it's a matter of doing it of course he was ready to go but I was like it took me a long time to get through school I'm not trying to pay nobody's debt. I want to have fun. I want to spend money. So it took a while for my heart to catch up with what I knew I needed to do in my head.

And after listening to many Dave Ramsey shows, morning, noon, and night. Desmond, you're merciless. The worst date in Atlanta. I drank the Kool-Aid. I got addicted. He did. We listened to it so often and even going through Rock Solid Finances, which actually taught how to steward money from a biblical perspective.

A mixture of all of that actually allowed my heart to catch up with what I knew I needed to do. And so we got started. All right. And so once she comes on board, it's game on. It was game on. We started chunking everything at the bit when she got her teaching job that kind of boosted our income so we just started doing all sorts of things i i got a bus driver's license just to be able to get extra money wow we were i coached uh

she took extra side hustles and so we just it was game on and we just went on with it well good for you guys well all right so take me to 10 months in. Like the adrenaline's worn off. You're already done. What kept y'all going? Actually, we're coordinators, financial peace coordinators, so we use that to kind of help us to keep the motivation going.

And so that helped, you know, because we had to live it, you know, teaching the class and everything. And so those types of things, continuing to listen to the Ramsey show, debt-free screens, getting motivated. I mean, that's what kept us going. Yes. And also having little milestones along the way, because I'm a shopper. I like to shop and I'm like, look, we're going to do this. Like I need to have some moments where we can celebrate when we make meet a payment goal. And so having those moments along the way was very helpful. So what kind of celebrations did you do?

So one time we went to the Fox Theater in Atlanta. We went to go see the Lion King live. Oh, nice. So that was a big celebration, but we had to pay off a large lump sum before we did that. But that's good. I like that. Yes, it was good.

Little things here and there to kind of keep us motivated and keep us going. Carrots to dangle. Yes. We had to trick ourselves to keep going. So what's it feel like to owe nobody nothing? Oh, free. So free.

We were talking about that earlier today. It just feels freeing to not have that weight over you anymore and to not owe anybody anything. So it feels great. Yes. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day. They said they felt grown up. Isn't that weird?

Yeah. It's like I made the little kid inside me behave so that I could be like doing grown up stuff. And that was a pretty cool thing. I like that visual. Because that's what happened to me. Yeah. You know, that's how I felt. And because I remember going to I used to think when you went to Costco or Sam's like you had to leave with $200 worth of stuff like it was federal law.

Yeah. Like that's why they check your receipt on the way out. They want to make sure you spent your $200, right? You got to go back in, Dave, get some more peanut butter, man. Get that eight gallons, right? And I mean, I don't know what it is, but it's weird. And so, well, congratulations, y'all. Thank you.

Very, very proud of you. Sierra, have you been on a barn burner shopping spree yet? Yes, I have. I'm not going to lie to you. I have. That was always the struggle that that line out of in the budget yes close and we always had a 30 to 15 minute argument let the record show that they have foil t-shirts incredible that say they look amazing live like no one else i'm thinking

desmond had nothing to do with these t-shirts i I did. I did. Oh, you did? He did. It was his idea. I wanted a t-shirt. I called it wrong. Did you produce them? No. A teacher friend of mine created the shirts for us. Okay. Yes. Well, I love it.

Very good. Okay. They look great. They look great on camera. Did you bring us one? No, but we can get you one. We can get you one. It goes viral.

I love it. It's awesome, guys. Way to go, you guys. All right. What do you tell people the key? You're leading a class now. And one thing about leading the class, like you said, you can't be a hypocrite. Sometimes that's a bigger motivator than doing it for yourself.

But you're leading a class. What's the secret to getting out of debt? Well, one thing that helped us to get out of debt was definitely remembering our why. You know, we both grew up in single-parent, single-income homes. And so we got to witness what the struggle was like to make ends meet. And we said we wanted something different for the royal family. We didn't want to live in debt. And that verse comes to mind constantly.

Mabaro was a slave to a lender. We didn't want to be a slave to our lender. We wanted to free ourselves. And so that's the key that kept us going. Well, you are the royal family. That's my last name. My last name rhymes with lunch meat, dude. I like it.

You got Deloney, Bologna, and we have the royals. You got the royal family. Good grief. That's perfect. The royal family should have a better life, I'm just saying. What's your key, Desmond? My key was the discipline needed. In Hebrews 12, 11, we got that on our back. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness.

And that's so true. We just struggle. It's tough while you're in it, but if you keep pushing along, you can get to the other side. So we leaned on that verse. And I'll add one more thing. Making sure that you have some good accountability. It is a tough journey. And so having some accountability along the way is also

helpful. Amen. Desmond and Sierra, $130,000 paid off in four years, making $80,000 to $115,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah!

Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Way to go. Way to go, you guys. Congratulations. Wow. Changed the royal family. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co-host today our scripture of the day is James 1 5 and 6 if any of you lacks wisdom you should ask God who gives generously to all

without finding fault and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. Theodore Roosevelt said, In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The next best thing is the wrong thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Ooh. I like that. That's good emily's with us in dallas texas hi emily welcome to the ramsey show thank you so much for taking my call sure how can we help okay so my husband and i we make uh 247 000 uh we are debt-free and I've been working full-time right now and going to law school. So I've been cashflow in my way. I graduate next month. And so for the first time I'm able, because all my money was going to law school, for the first time I'm able to invest my money. My company has a 401k, but they don't have a match and then because of our high income we can't i can't invest into a four or Roth IRA sorry and so my question is should i should i just go ahead and invest in my firm's 401k or is there a better route of investing wow and you're 100% debt free yes okay way to go that's incredible incredible, Emily. Congratulations. That's really hard. Very cool.

And you've landed your law job. Yes. I'm working in my law firm now, and they're just waiting for, we're actually just waiting for bar results next week. Okay. Because I did get the bar exam early. Wow. What a wonderful time for you.

Congratulations. No, actually, Dave, this is the worst time. The week before the bar comes up? No, it's waiting. Yes. Waiting is hard. But I mean, this is, all the work is done. Oh, yeah.

I mean, you've worked for a long time to be sitting here right now. Incredible. Way to go. All right. So the answer to your question is, what about a house? Have you all got a home? Yes, we do. Do you owe anything on it?

Yes. I think we owe about half on the house. or maybe like 150 okay you owe 150 000 on your home you say we you're married yes and your household income is what 247 excellent excellent excellent excellent okay do you have any money in savings? Yes. I have about $10,000, and then we still haven't put our savings together. How long have you been married? We've been married about two years. Okay.

Put them together tonight. Okay. If you can share a bed, you can share a bank account. Okay. Will do. If you can share a bed, you can share a bank account. Because all the data is people who try to live like roommates don't have anywhere near the relational success nor the financial success. All the data says couples that combine their finances, combine their goals, combine their fears, combine their dreams combine their goals combine their fears combine their dreams charging forward are the couples that have the most wealth built and the best quality relationships so that's where

that comes from i didn't just make that up and let me tell you this emily um you my my nerd research was on the mental health of attorneys of lawyers was it really yeah Yeah. And listen, wow. All of your training and your job is you are outside the bell curve. Your whole life is dedicated to serving and loving people. Who's the, the things that don't happen to the rest of us all the time happen to them, which means you lived outside the bell curve, which means all the marriages you read about and experience are ones that blew up. And so it's really common to start creating little pockets in your life of safety. Like, I'm going to have my savings. He's going to have his.

She said she'd do it tonight. But yeah, but I heard it in her voice. Still good speech. She's not. Oh, really? Yes. So, Emily, you have to decide right now. I'm going to live this life because the world needs attorneys.

I'm pro attorney live this life because the world needs attorneys. I'm pro-attorney to the end, but you have to decide we're going to do this the right way, and we're going to choose to buck the system and be united in this thing, or it's just going to crumble underneath you. Okay, back to your question. Back to your question. Here's what you do. We're going to walk you through what we call the baby steps. The first thing you need to have as a couple is an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. So I'm going to call that in your all's world, 30 or $40,000 cash. You never touch that except for a rainy day, an emergency, an unexpected event. In other words, you never touch it because you make enough money to cover 90% of your unexpected events out of your cash flow. Okay? But this is something big blows up, and you've got an extra $30,000 laying over here that the two of you say, that's Grandma's rainy day fund.

You know what that means, right? And so you've got that. Once you've got that, then I want you to save 15% of your household income into retirement. No more. And that's maybe step four. Five is start saving for kids college you don't have any kids yet so we're not doing that i think you don't have any kids yet you don't have any kids yet right no no kids okay so no kids so we don't need to do baby step five

which is kids college baby step six is while we're putting 15 of our income away towards retirement we're going to throw the rest of the money we get that that we can that we have a slush money above living a reasonably good life. I mean, you make really good money, so you live a good life. Throw the rest of the extra money at the house until the house is paid off. So what I'm saying is if we don't need to max out retirement to get to that 15%, then we don't have to worry about your question. But let's go ahead and walk it through anyway. So the first thing I want to do is I want to do Roth.

The first thing I want to do is do a match. You said your company does not match. Does your husband's company match? Yes. I think he's investing about 12%, and he has like an 8% match. All I care about is the total of your household. Between the two of you, the total is 15% going in. Not you 15, him 15.

That would actually be 15, but he could put in 12, and you could put in more than, and you could put in 17, as long as the total is 15 of the total household income. You follow me? Yeah. Okay. So that's what I'm after. You follow me? Yeah. Okay. So that's what I'm after. Everything above that goes to the mortgage. So I want you to max out your 401K.

I want him to max out his 401K. And I want them to be in Roth 401Ks if Roth is available. Roth is better than traditional because it grows tax-free. The only thing better than Roth is Roth with a match. And he's got a match you don't, but we're still going to max max yours out it's going to take that probably to get to 15 percent of your huge income so and then you can do Roth IRAs they're called backdoor Roths and you can do those with a good investment broker if you don't have one go to ramseysolutions.com click on smart investor the people we recommend will be there and you can choose one from the list.

They're really good, and they'll show you how this works. The backdoor Roth IRA, I do want, and my income is well in excess of the max, and all it is is you open an after-tax traditional IRA, and you fully fund it, and 30 seconds later, you flip it to a Roth. It creates no taxes, and it's an after-tax traditional. I can do that at any income limit and then flip it to a Roth. That's called a backdoor Roth. I do those every January for me and Sharon. And it's not that much.

It's only six or eight grand, depending on your age and all that, but you can still do that, and those things will get you to that 15 but when you get to 15 of your total household income going into your total retirement between roths backdoor roths 401ks his 401k yours roth 401ks available do those whatever whoever's got the match ought to go there first that's him uh when you get to 15 stop and throw everything else towards the mortgage until the mortgage is clear. When the mortgage is clear, then you max out everything else. Then once everything's maxed, Dave, beyond the backdoor Roths and both 401ks, then what do I do?

Then I buy mutual funds that have a low turnover ratio, which does not activate the capital gains because they don't sell the stocks inside of them very often. That's a low turnover ratio. Or I buy real estate that I pay cash for. But you're not going to be there for a couple of years because you've still got a house to pay off. And that's where we're going to get to. Wow, that's interesting about attorneys. I did not know that.

We do need attorneys because we need attorney jokes. We need lawyer jokes. No, we need people who are rational third parties that keep people like me who are the hotheads from doing dumb things. Yeah. You know, you've had different experience with some attorneys than I have. But, oh, okay.

I've had some rough ones, some very, very rough ones. I got some good ones that are friends and some of them on our team and all that that work here. I like them, really. But they really give me a hard time about ripping on attorneys. But it's fun. It's fun. Hey, Emily, we're very proud of you.

Good luck. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. That's RamseySolutions.com and click Get Started.