The Ramsey Show - App - You’re One Hard Decision Away From Financial Peace

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

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From the Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John John Deloney and we're taking your calls at triple 8 825 5225. That's the only way to get some advice on this show and reminder is free. So that's what you paid for. April is in Miami to kick us off. What's going on April? Hey, how are you guys today? Great, how are you guys today? Great, how are you?

I'm all right, I'm okay. So I've tried the Baby Steps, I started the Baby Steps, I'm not trying it if I quit. Started the Baby Steps, cleared up about $13,000 worth of debt in the last six months. Way to go. Thank you. So starting at $150,000 and I'm about 137 now. I have a college student I have to save up $5,000 for him to go to the dorms this fall but the huge setback is my husband passed May 21st. Oh man, I'm so sorry. So sorry. April, what was his name?

Um, Paul. Paul? Was he a good guy? Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. Was it real sudden? No, he was sick for about a year. So sorry. Well that definitely puts a wrench in your baby steps plan.

That's a wrench in your life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, are you feeling guilty that you're not making progress or what? Yeah. How can we love you right now? No, I feel like I'm drowning. Like every time I try to make a couple steps forward. It just goes right back. Um, I was prepared to pay off my car last December, but then my son got in the car accident. So, you know, the blessing was I had to cash to buy him a car that it kind of just pushed me back a little bit. Um, I had most of the money to put him in the dorms and then that same cash

card that engine blew up and I have to buy another one. Um, I spent all April on basically the beans and rice thing that Dave always talks about. Shasted the entire month and as soon as I was out of my fast, everything started going haywire. And then my husband passed, passes on May 21st and his finances and dad. Everything started going haywire and then my husband passed his arm May 21st and his finances and dad and I feel like I'm I can't make progress All right. Let me let me tell you this real quick. Okay

Yeah, I want you just to exhale for a second, okay, and The all of this it feels like chaos. it feels like everything's coming down on you. I want you to exhale through this and we'll walk you through it. But you can't solve all of this in 30 days, okay? You got way bigger fish to fry. You just lost your ride or die, okay? Okay? And I would tell you, anybody in any situation, not to do anything for six to nine months. Because you've got, most people don't know,

and I'm gonna say this crassly, but I'm saying it for people listening, most people don't know that after somebody you love passes away, it becomes a full-time job dealing with bank accounts and insurance and medical bills and who's calling what and is there a will or is there a ten thousand dollar policy through some old job like wading through all that mess is a nightmare right? Yeah.

Okay. You've mentioned on this call three different times when you have to bail out this 17, 18, 19, 20 year old son of yours. I want to free you from that. You can't keep doing that right now. Do you want to? Yeah, of course. But you don't have the money or the bandwidth or the whatever. What's he doing this summer to help with that 5,000 bucks to get him into school in the fall? He works. Okay. He works. If you haven't already, I'd get on the phone with the university and let them know that dad just passed and see if there's

something they can do to help you all out, okay? And if your son takes a semester off, that's not the end of the world. In fact, it's just fine. The number of semesters I took off is comical and I'm doing okay. My mom started in a community college and went all the way through that and she still ended up with her PhD and she still ended up teaching at Oxford. So if he needs to take a semester off, if he needs to, everything in your life is different now and trying to keep it the way it was before this big loss, this big transition, is it's going to drive your body to the madhouse because it knows things are different, but you're still acting like they're not. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, and I think I'm pretty sure I'm doing that because my son's father, somebody took his life 16 years ago and I know what that grief feels like and the process feels

like and it really sucks and I think this time around I'm trying to power through it but it's not really working. So let me tell you this, can I tell you what the greatest gift you can give to your son right now is? Yeah. To show him that you're really sad because he's sad too but if he sees the other adult in his life trying to just power through and pretend like, all right, we just moving forward, he's gonna feel crazy because he's heartbroken also. Right?

So the greatest gift you can give him is to hold his hands and weep in front of him and say, your mom's heart's broken right now. And we have a whole bunch of business to do. I do as the wife of this guy who just passed and you and I, we have a math problem to solve here and I love you too much to go borrow a bunch of money and I love you too much to put you in a car that neither of us can afford and I love you too much. You know all that stuff. No amount of

powering through is going to take away his grief right now, let me put it that way. Everybody's hurting, right? So can we give you permission to pause the baby steps? Yeah. As you pick up the pieces? Just pause. And you can restart from a place of strength

when you're ready? Don't borrow any more money if you can at all avoid it. But just keep up. Yeah, make minimum payments. Try to make sure that you guys have enough to cover those next upcoming expenses. Get a little buffer because did you lose an income in the process too? No, he was at well for like a year so it was just me for quite a while. Was there any life insurance? There's nothing.

I have a policy. You never got one. Okay. So sorry. So some of these, here's some of the realities and George can walk you through them, but we're going to do, we're going to start from square one. I want you to imagine, close your eyes real quick. Imagine your life is on a table and it just got wiped clear. and that's both terrifying and you're free to deal with the next important thing first and so we're gonna go back to the OG four walls house utilities food and transportation we're gonna do that before we get any more cars before we worry about dorms before

we were about any of that stuff, we're gonna take care of those things. And how old's your son? 21. Okay, 21 you said? Yes. Awesome, he's old enough for you to both be at the table when you do this, it'll be a gift to him.

Bring him into the process, you don't need to shield him from it. Yeah, he's a grown man. April, I wanna gift you a financial coaching session with our team. You're not gonna pay for it, but we wanna make sure that we can walk through your situation, and I'll just leave you high and dry here without a plan

to get some financial footing, build the foundation, and continue to plow through that debt. You're doing a great job. So I have full confidence that you're going to get out of debt, but right now we need to pause, deal with the grief, deal with all the pieces that have been left in your lap. And I'm so sorry going through it, but I can tell that you're a warrior. That's who you are. You've been carrying a lot for

a long time. Just let it down, breathe, and take the right next step. Hang on the line, we'll get you connected to one of our coaches. Samantha's up next in Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to the Ramsey Show, Samantha. How can we help? Hey, yeah, thanks for having me on. I have kind of a messy situation. That's the kind we take on the show. Yeah. So I have, my mother is basically asking me for money. And I kind of know y'all stance on that, but she's asking for a loan basically from me. Wow. Why you out of all people.

I can drive into more of the details, but yeah. Why is she coming to you and not the bank? Yeah, so she is going through a divorce with my dad and she's not really going through with alimony. She doesn't wanna push for that, but instead they decided to basically basically my dad is gonna keep the house that they lived in together and then they sold the house their rental home and so she is taking that money but she's gonna have to pay the 1030 not 1031

tax on that and she's basically trying to avoid that. How would that avoid it? By getting the loan money from you? So she's, her plan basically is to buy a couple other rental properties. To avoid the tax. And she can't afford those properties, hence the loan from you. Right, hence the loan from me, and she can't afford to take out a loan herself.

Can I just make a wild guess here? That she's had ideas about things, and you've been the person fixing them for most of your life? Wow, you're spot on. No way. Can I just say this? George will walk you through the money,

please don't do this. And here's why. She made a choice. I don't wanna ask for alimony. She made a choice. I don't wanna sit down like adults and actually divide this estate. And she made a choice like,

we need to, you need to either buy out the equity of this house that we shared together because we're getting divorced right and she came up with a scheme the only problem is she can't afford that scheme and she's like ah like always daughter will bail me out yeah and what she has done is she is but you know like you know our stance on like taking out a HELOC and besides taking out like a HELOC, it's bad math, but you're putting your house on the block, right? You're mortgaging your home for a thing,

which for all of human history would be clinical insanity, but now we call it a good deal, right? What she has done is she has mortgaged her relationship with you. That's what it feels like. It's what's happened. And that's an unfair position that any parent could put any child in.

Now, if she was destitute and your dad was a serial cheater and had just left her, totally different situation. I got ton of compassion for that. And I would probably be telling you, hey, probably need to move mom in, right? That's not here at all. She's trying to come up with some schemes like she always has, trying to come up with a deal,

yet not have a hard conversation because that makes her uncomfortable. And then she calls you to fix it. Whether that's you showing up on a night's notice to do dinner that you don't want to do, or to come to Christmas that you don't have the money to come to, or this time it's just give me cash. And at some point you're going to have to say no. And it can be now, it's gonna be 10 years from now, but this will

never stop. It will just increase in intensity until you decide I gotta be done with this. I love you too much mom to continue to put our relationship on the block like this. I know and so I had kind of communicated that I didn't really want to bring money into our relationship. I mean, I've listened to your show and the Ramsey show for a while. So I kind of had that wisdom in my mind and I knew that I didn't, and I just instinctively knew that it didn't feel right to bring that into our relationship. I tried to communicate that to her and she, she's a little bit of a loose cannon sometimes with her words, so I try to give her grace, but she like-

You are so kind. Not back on me. What did she say? She lost it on you. I gotta hear what she say. It's tough because like, it's hard to do phone calls necessarily, but I know that's the easiest way

to hash this kind of stuff out, but this time you were just texting so I sent her explaining it just just so I could get all my words out for her and then she responded well money is not gonna be in our relationship at all if the IRS takes it all and I and you think you back out like yeah you you know, that's exactly what, what somebody says when you sit down at like a car dealership and you're like, Hey, this is all I have. And they're like, Oh, it's because you hate your family. You don't want to get into this upgraded vehicle for it's the same exact thing.

She's trying to sales pitch. Yeah. Yeah. And she's been doing this your entire life. How old are you, Samantha? I'm 27 and we're actually expecting our first baby in August. Oh, congrats. That's exciting.

Can we ask this question? Can you even afford to do this? So that was the other piece that I wanted to like share and like, you know, give you more detail. So I have been given a trust through an uncle that passed away like, I don't know, I want to say five years ago now. Her brother? So it's actually, well, I guess it's a great uncle.

It's my dad's uncle. So I was given some money and it's just been kind of in my account, my investor's account. And I decided to give my mother a,000 of it. Oh boy. Just as a gift because she, get this, she was originally in the will, but then she upset my great uncle and he ended up taking her out. And you decided, you know what?

How much money is here? Yeah, how much money is here? Like what can I give? How much is in that account right now? I didn't feel like I deserved what I got. I have, I put, we put, I wanna say like 200 into our house. No, how much is in this trust?

What's in it right now? Right now, I've already given her her 100. No, but what's left in it? What's left is, yeah, what's left is 100,000. So that's what I have left. What did she do with the $100,000 that you gave her? So she used that in combination with the profits of the rental that she sold with my dad

to buy a home outright. Okay, no more money. She has that, but she needs to do another one in order to satisfy the country. She doesn't need to do anything. And save $30,000. She wants to continue scheming and use Bank of Samantha to fund this operation, and it stops today. Yeah, she's got quite the elaborate spreadsheet of percentages. And if she's done so well that she owes so much taxes, welcome to America and capitalism stops today. Yeah, she's got quite the elaborate spreadsheet of percentages. And if she's done so well that she owes so much taxes,

welcome to America and capitalism. She should celebrate and have a party. And by the way, the words, anytime you think the words, I don't deserve, dot, dot, dot, anything that comes after that, that is, we could unpack it for an hour, that is shame-based language that you developed in your home

because for your entire life, your mom said, you better be really damn grateful that you got me as your mom. Now you go fix this, do this, show up for this and take whatever you want, whatever you feel and shove it down because you are in service to me. And you married somebody else, y'all met a human together that's about to enter this crazy world and it's over. It's over. And you, I want you to choose guilt over resentment. Feel bad. That's why I've been saying that out loud.

Good. Guilt over resentment every time. Good. But I just like feel. Here's the two options. You're going to have to face the music and realize that this relationship hasn't really been there the whole time or You become creditor and she becomes debtor and the relationship gets even worse than it is now Those are the only they're both really hard options

They're really hard, but one frees you and Stops her misbehavior and has her start to face conflict for herself instead of look to you to bail her out for another time I will say this and this is gonna sound awful, but I'm just gonna say it what it is. I can't imagine a world where I would come up with a bunch of financial schemes and then call my daughter. She's nine at the time, so 20 years. I can't imagine a world where I would call her and say,

I came up with a scheme, you need to do this or the government's taking us all out. I can't imagine putting her on the block for my insanity. This has got to be the time you say, no more, no more. As you're listening or watching today's show, do us a quick favor, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, hit the share button, wherever you're at. It's a small token of appreciation that helps us spread the word about this show and you guys are the best marketing plan we could ask for. Appreciate you guys doing that. Libby is in Seattle, Washington up next. Libby, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? My question is, I am in Baby Step 6, but I do not own my home in Seattle. I rent. I do have a rental property in Texas, and I'm getting a divorce. I have enough money to pay off the rental in Texas

that's currently using my VA entitlement. Should I go ahead and do that before I buy a primary residence? Hmm. What's going on with this divorce? Do you know the financials yet? Oh, yeah. It's generally amicable. We're generally splitting things 50-50.

Okay. So what will you get out of this divorce as far as assets, numbers-wise? So we decided to liquidate our money market accounts not retirement account so I'll have about a hundred and eighty thousand available to me. I could use it for a down payment on my own home or I could use it to pay off this rental. Got it. What's left on the rental? Income about 160. Okay and do you have any other debt? No. Just the rental. Okay, and what is your payment on the rental every month? I'm going backwards. So I pay 27, but the rental income is only 2200.

Cool, cool, cool. Why not just sell the rental? Um, it's sentimental reasons. I bought it with some inheritance money from my father who passed away who wanted it to be used for a rental. I could do that, but I'm not quite ready to let go of it in that way yet. But a stranger's living there and is robbing you of $500 every single month for the pleasure, correct?

I haven't looked at it that way. Yeah, okay. So imagine yourself sitting at a Denny's at 6.30 in the morning with your dad having coffee. If he knew you were getting divorced, knew you were heartbroken, knew you were about to be homeless in Seattle, would he say, no, no, no, no, honey, I wanted it just for this? Or would he say, baby girl, I want you to have a home, go get a house. You're talking to two dads of two daughters. I can guarantee you what both of us would say.

If your tenant has more stability than you, the landlord, you got it backwards. So I would much prefer you find some stability in a very chaotic time. And if you want to get back into the rental game sometime, you got it backwards. So I would much prefer you find some stability in a very chaotic time. And if you want to get back into the rental game sometime, you can. But right now, I feel like we need to build some foundation and build our own financial future. Even if this rental was cash flowing, I still might go, hey, do you really want the rental? It feels like you kind of fell into it. And I understand that it's sentimental.

I'm not trying to take away from that or diminish it, but right now you need a place to live and how cool would it be to be able to pay cash for a place? What could you sell this rental for? I could probably sell it for 315, but in Seattle that will not go far and if I did pay off the rental I would have 2,200 a month in income coming in that I could then add and make a house payment on. Yeah, but if you had $315 plus the $160 you're about to have, you can buy a house for $450,000. Right, but it would only be $315 minus $160. Minus your mortgage. Minus some fees.

Let's say you walk away from the rental with $130 plus the $180 you're getting. Is that fair? Right. Okay. Let's say you walk away from the rental with 130 plus the 180 you're getting. Is that fair? Right. Yep. Okay. So that gives you, you're back at 310 in cash and could you use that as a down payment on a place nearby? Yeah, for sure. And I promise you this, here's what your dad was telling you. I want my baby girl to be okay. And as you know, all of us dads think we know what's best for our kid and we give them all of these things that we want to be just the way we want them to be in their life and then we pass away, we move on, life happens. And so you have to ask underneath that gift, what was your dad trying to tell you? I want my baby girl to be okay. Okay.

Not, I want you to be a landlord with 6,000 miles between you and this property. I want you to lose money every month. I want you to, because of my generosity to you, I want you to lose $6,000 a year, not to mention any repairs. And I want you to have to6,000 a year, not to mention any repairs, and I want you to have to pay a company to go in there and do basic things because you live so far away, and I want you to consider every month you don't have a place to live.

That's not what your dad meant. No, I'm not really ready to buy though. Okay, then don't. Then have $300,000 in a high yield savings account and then you make the 500 bucks a month instead of letting your your renter beat you $500 a month. You would make uh over a thousand dollars passively from that savings account literally passively not like it's passive income bro just if you parked it in a high yield savings right now with the current rates you'd be looking at about 12 grand a year.

Instead of losing six grand a year at minimum, which is the current status. So I'm totally fine. You went through a divorce. Let's just breathe, go rent somewhere, sign a six or 12 month lease, and then begin the home shopping process later on down the road when you've got,

and keep stacking cash on top of that. Cause you'll be completely debt free. And what's your current income? I make about 140 a year. Amazing. So this extra two grand that you maybe could have gotten if you paid it off, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze.

You're the secret sauce here. You are very talented, very skilled. You make great money and making 140 with no debt and no tenant, you're gonna be able to stack up some cash, won't you? Yeah, yeah, that's definitely true. So think about that, you're gonna gain 12 grand in the savings account in the next 12 months

if you just park the money, if you sell it, plus how much could you stack every month from your income? Oh, definitely a couple thousand. Say three grand? Four grand? Mm-hmm. Probably three. Okay. That's another 36 grand a year on top of that, on top of your 12.

So basically you're going to have 360 grand to put for a down payment, which is incredible 12 months from now while you rent and get some foundation underneath you. I like that plan. That feels a lot more freeing to me than being a landlord at this stage of my life. Are you still in service? Are you getting out? No, I am a veteran. It's using my VA entitlement actually right now, the rental. I want to be able to use it again and then my spouse is still active so my ex-spouse is still active. I'm used to being a long-distance

landlord. I've done it for years. Iouse is still active. I'm used to being a long-distance landlord. I've done it for years. I know, but that means you're also used to not sleeping a full night all the way through too. I would, I'm just telling you, I have a nine-year-old little girl, and I know you're not a little girl, you're a grown woman, you're a veteran, you're a gangster.

I know that, you're very smart. But I don't care how old I get, how old she gets, I'm gonna want my daughter to be okay. And beneath okay means in my world is in the 21st century, I'm gonna solve for peace. I'm not gonna solve for maximum or a while. Look around at our culture, man. Everybody's burned to the ground.

I want my daughter to, when she walks in, whatever home she lives in, to walk in with a smile on her face and her shoulders dropped. Not, okay, I got to check my email to see what the tenants did, did the check clear, do I have this? Okay, minus $500. I don't want that life for her. Do I want my daughter to have a bunch of real estate? That's what she wants. That'd be awesome. And I guarantee you, your old man would be sitting there smiling at the woman you've become, right? Thank you, appreciate that. Is that true?

Yeah, yeah, he definitely would be proud. Of course he would. He'd be like, you make what? And you'd be like, that's right, dad. That'd be awesome. And then he'd be like, you're losing 500 bucks a month. And you'd be like, sorry, man. Right, that's exactly what he would say.

So you can hang on to it, man. If you were my daughter, you were my sister, you were my mom, I would tell you, put that house on the block today. Call a realtor in Texas and sell that thing. Have it sold by the end of the summer. And have $300,000 in a high yield savings account, just making free money for yourself for a minute

while you figure out life after marriage and You're gonna feel invincible dude. You're gonna sleep for the first time in ages With no meds Thank you that makes it did a good deed today John we were helpful nothing else We got to help Libby and it was an honor. I'm proud of you, dude. And thank you for your service, Libby. You're amazing. You're awesome. Those sentimental gifts are hard to navigate, whether it's a home, whether it's a guitar, whatever it is. And I always want to get underneath that. What was the sentiment behind that gift? Yeah, because it's not the asset itself. It's the person and their character and the memories

we created with them. but it's not the box Right that is somehow strings attached to that The fourth of July sale is here for four days only you can buy one select hardcover and get the second for 50% off Books include the total money makeover my friend. Dr. John Delaney's book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, my book, Breaking Free from Broke, as a part of the sale, Baby Steps, Millionaires, and more. These books give you the plan and the push

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that you wanna help out. Christina is up next in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the Ramsey Show, Christina. Hi, thanks for taking my call. Sure, what's going on? So, dealing with some of those emergencies. It's actually a medical thing that came up for my daughter. And so I'm trying to figure things out with my husband

if we should use all of our emergency fund, if we should take out a home equity loan, or if there is a better way. We're just not figuring out right now. And I'm sorry, I'm emotional. That's okay. What happened to your baby girl? Well, she's 13 and she, we just found out a couple of months ago that she has scoliosis and she needs surgery. So we were walking through things,

trying to avoid surgery, see if there was something they could do but it's it's progressive and that's just the nature of the disease and she's skeletal immature, so she's got a lot of growth left and that's when when they have the rapid growth is when the scoliosis gets worse her curve is already rapid growth is when the scoliosis gets worse. Her curve is already at like, I think we just met with a surgeon on Monday and I think they measured it at 80 degrees if I'm not mistaken. She has an S curve, the top one is the one that's really concerning. So she's at 80 degrees. The top curve is either 80 or 90. I think it's 80. And the bottom curve is around 40. It's her, yes, when we were trying to do things to avoid surgery, the exercises and things,

we went to an alternative medicine. So they were doing physical therapy, chiropractic, different things. Her bottom rib cage started sticking out more. And so we're just really concerned. We don't feel like it's something where we can wait and stack up cash. Yeah, how soon does the surgery need to happen according to the surgeon? Two surgeons both said this fall. September, October, that's what they're saying. So after your health insurance covers what it's going to cover, are you talking about being out of pocket here?

So the insurance, as far as I can tell, because we've been paying for testing and things we have to do, MRIs and stuff. The insurance will cover the hospital. This is something with the surgeon and this particular surgeon that we found because we don't want to cut through her back and everything. We'd rather spare her back muscles. So we found this surgery called anterior scoliosis correction. The surgeon, because the medical industry is a mess,

says, well, we're going to, this is how we operate, if you pay this deposit, this is all you will pay out of pocket. We will bill your insurance, and then if the insurance doesn't cover what the surgeons are requesting, it's fine, like we don't pay anymore to the surgeon. So you just pay this deposit no matter what?

Yes. Okay. So that's the number now. If we're focusing on just the facts here, what is that number? $50,000. That's quite the deposit. And how much do you have in your emergency fund? $20,000. Christine, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not an expert here, but this is not passing my smell test. Okay. Well, please tell me what is it?

Well, have you sat down with another potential surgeon? Because here's the thing. Let's say you write a $50,000 check. And what I don't like about this is, is we don't have any idea what this surgery's gonna actually cost, up or down. And so if this ends up being a $30,000 procedure, then you're out.

If it ends up being a million dollar procedure, technically you might win, right? I understand what you're saying. And their financial documents, it does say, you know, if our insurance was to pay the full bill, then we would get money back from that deposit. But why are we doing this on the back end? Let's contact insurance and find out what surgery they will cover and where ahead of time. Okay, well, I can ask that. Maybe I'm being too particular, but... No, you're not being too particular.

I want the best for my daughter, so I don't want to do a spinal fusion surgery. Totally got that. I'm pretty confident they would do that, but that's where they cut through the back, like a foot and a half, and they put in a metal rod. And that's not the surgery that we want. What I'm saying, for the surgery that we want. What I'm saying for the particular surgery you want, are there other surgeons in the general area

who can do that but through your insurance on the front end? You're right, I haven't looked at that. So that's what would be my next fight is talking with insurance, figuring out what they will cover. Will they cover this exact surgery? Okay, where is in network that they will cover? Then we know the exact number, and it's likely gonna be way less than 50,000 out of pocket.

Cause you have an out of pocket maximum, and likely, I don't know your exact insurance, but they likely will cover 100% beyond that. And the other part of this is, is the moment you walk out of any surgery, whether it's posterior, anterior, any surgery, especially in a child, you immediately go to rehab.

And your insurance company, if the doctor says we have to do this follow-up care as an extension of this procedure, then they should cover that too. And I'm worried about any kind of deal that I signed with a doctor, I put a period at the end of it. I've had this happen. I looked at a,. I put a period at the end of it. I've had this happen. I looked at a, I had to go to ER a couple years ago. It was on Christmas Eve for crying out loud.

I did something totally dumb, ended up in the ER, and I said, I will pay you right this second, but I can never get another bill from you. I said, I want you to record this. And they're like, done. You will never get a bill from us. I got another big old bill from the doctor and they're like hospitals like no no you paid the hospital that wasn't about us we don't even and so my fear is some way

somewhere along the line you're putting a period at the end of a sentence you're basically signing a contract but you don't know if you're gonna get billed from the the doctors the parking lot attendanceants, the physicians assistant, like, I just wanna go in totally clear right, and here's where this is important. You said this best, and I wanna applaud you. You wanna get the best for your daughter. And I don't know about you, but when I get to thinking

about what's best for my daughter's care, I get a little bit worked up and a little bit like fight or flight. Like I gotta do it right now, I gotta solve all. And so what I need is, I need somebody that I trust who will be an advocate for me that when I'm like, I don't want this kind of surgery that would say this is the kind of surgery that's right right now. Or I want to get this done right now. You can wait till November and dot dot dot dot dot. And so knowing that about yourself, is there a social worker or a medical advocate or somebody in your church who's a physician who could advocate with you and explain this to you so you're not just going down YouTube rabbit holes, making yourself kind of bonkers? You get what I'm saying? And I'm just saying that that's what I do.

And I end up, I don't I'm just terrified. You're going to sign your name to a piece of paper that says you owe me 50,000 bucks then you're gonna get a massive bill from the hospital then you're gonna get another bill from the rehab center and this thing's gonna crush all because medical medical debt is what destroys more more families than anything else yeah and so it's just stepping back from the emergency of all of this and saying, hold on, before I sign a piece of paper, I want to make sure I'm clear-eyed on this. Yeah. Well, and I know that's why, you know, one thing that you guys always say is, you know,

don't jump into things right away. Sure. And so I've been trying to like, go through the anxiety. No, you're doing great. You're being just like all of us would be. I don't want, I don't, you know what I mean? And you better do it now. I would be living in a cloud, unable to think clearly.

And so we're just trying to help you think of options that don't involve you out of desperation, taking a HELOC out on your home and just writing any check that they ask for. And so I would, number one, use your emergency fund. This is an emergency. That's what it's for. And so don't feel bad using it,

but don't take out a line of credit. I'd rather you get a bill from the hospital and we figure out a payment plan on the back end likely with no interest versus taking out a HELOC with variable interest. So do not go into debt for this. Do all of the homework and research you can, and we're wishing you and that little girl the very best with their healing and recovery. This is The Ramsey Show. Mallory is in Salt Lake City up next.

What's going on Mallory? Hey, I'm just calling in. So I'm having an issue with my husband not wanting to combine finances with me and also not disclosing his finances with me. How long you been married? It's one year, exactly one year. And this has been happening

since you guys have been dating or what? Or is this a new development? Since we've been dating. You know nothing about this guy when it comes to money? Correct. Like you don't know what he makes? Nope. Wow.

I've asked. He gives me, he tells me it varies. And I say, okay, okay well what does that mean what did you make last month he said I don't know probably the same as you all right there's no way this happens in a black hole what are other areas in your marriage where you don't know really know what's going on there what do you mean like this kind of person doesn't operate in a vacuum meaning they're not What do you mean? This kind of person doesn't operate in a vacuum, meaning they're not the perfect upstanding ride or die husband, partner, spouse that's all in on building a future with you.

And just this one thing, you can't know anything about my finances, how much I owe, how much I make, where I spend my money. You shut your mouth on that stuff. But everything else we're aligned on. Where are other places y'all are not aligned? Or let me ask you a different way. Where are other areas where your gut just knows something's not right? I have caught him texting another girl before. Yep.

But other than that. What do you mean other than that? That's like the whole thing when you get married. Right. Is you are the person. Right. So here's the truth. I know a lot of people who just are not comfortable

for a variety of reasons with sharing a single checking account. Right. I know that. And I know what I think about it. I know what me and my wife do. I know what George and Whitney do. But I get that, hey, I was married to somebody and they took everything. Or my father was financially abusive and I feel unsafe. I get that. But if he's not also showing, here's my

bank account, here's all my checking account. It's not about secrecy. It's about safety. You have a much bigger issue on your hands. You have a person who's deceiving you and in this situation it's very rare for somebody to act like that who doesn't have somebody on the side or is not struggling with some sort of substance abuse or gambling challenges. It's not 100%. You may go through his checking account and realize, oh, he's kind of a great guy. He's just perfect. He just is weird about this. I would be willing to bet that's not 100%. You may go through his checking account and realize, oh, he's kind of a great guy. He's just perfect.

He just is weird about this. I would be willing to bet that's not the case. Okay. Do you have the pass codes to his social media too? No. Do you have the pass codes to his phone? Can you just pick up his phone and read his texts whenever you want?

No. Okay, then you do not have a marriage. Okay. Do you get that? And you know that too, right? I know it's a harsh way for me to say that, but you know that intuitively, like in your chest, right? It seems like, you know, I mean, he is, I live with him. We have a child together. You know, that is that. I mean, that happens all the time without two people wanted to build a life together I want to build the life I know what I'm getting at and behavior is a language and he's being very clear with you I do not want

to build a life with you he claims he does though like he but behavior is a language right but he wants to buy a home together. Of course he does. You're going to pay for it. He can do whatever he wants. He can see other people. He can spend money however he wants. He can do whatever he wants. Of course he wants to buy a house with you.

How do the finances work right now? Just out of a dark curiosity because I don't think I'm going to like the answer. We're in a rental home and we split the rent 50-50. We split utilities 50-50 and we split our child's daycare 50-50. So we kind of operate as roommates financially. So there's no joint account. You just send him the money and he pays all the bills?

No, like we've been most of the landlord and then his credit card is linked to the daycare and mine's linked to the daycare. Like everything is done separately. We just pay our own half. Okay. You hear this as you're saying it, right? What'd you say?

Like I want you just to like absorb what you're saying. Like what you just described is how I lived with every roommate I've ever had. Yeah. The four dudes I lived with every roommate I've ever had. Yeah. Four dudes I lived with in college, this is how we did it, minus a kid. I guess I'm looking for the love in all of this. Other than him getting you pregnant. I've had this conversation with him a million times

where I'm like, hey, we're operating as roommates, like why can't, I actually had a financial advisor booked for us today. The financial, and we already did the consultation last week went well. My husband agreed to move on to like the second step, which was meeting with him today. And then all of a sudden this morning he backed out. I know, but you're not hearing what I'm saying, okay? Okay.

Behavior is a language. I don't care what words are coming out of his mouth. I can tell George all day long, I'm your best friend, man, I'm your best friend. And then I'm punching him in the mouth and I'm keying his car. My actions- That was two hours ago.

That was two hours ago, literally, that's right. Like my actions would show him what I really think about him. And so it doesn't matter what words are coming out of his mouth. He's been saying words to you for years. That's how he got you in bed. That's how he got you to move in with him.

That's how he got you to the courthouse, right? But his actions, and you want this to work so bad, and I'm heartbroken with you on this. I get it. Did you guys have the child before you were married? He got me pregnant like two months before we officially got married. Okay, so you were engaged at the time?

Yes. Okay. I was just wondering what caused him to propose and even move forward with this commitment if he really wasn't wanting any? That's a good question that I think about a lot. I do think potentially he's hiding debt and maybe he thought I could be a financial asset to him. Correct.

Correct. You'll take care of his killed. You'll pay half his rent. The collections and the trash can as well with his name on it the other day. I'm getting butterflies in my heart just hearing this love story. I thought I'd be a good financial asset. Hey, do me a favor. Pull your credit report, okay?

Make sure he's not taking debt out in your name. Correct. And I would freeze it if I were you. And here's why. Freeze my credit report? Yes. Because you're married now. And he has access to your social security number. And here's why. Are you using my credit report? Yes. Because you're married now.

And he has access to your social security number. He can take out debt on anything and you won't know. Because it wouldn't occur to you to do that to somebody else. But you're dealing with a person who's untrustworthy. Right. You know what I mean? He filed our taxes jointly with his CPA and I've been contacting them like daily and they still don't have an update.

And it's like what? Halfway through the year. What do you mean update? You're asking for your tax return, a copy of it. They won't give it to you? Exactly. They won't, no. Are you confident that he filed your taxes?

Whenever I talk to their receptionist, he reassures me that they have. Okay, just so you know, George and I got our taxes done at the same place this year and we walked out with our return. And I walked out with my spouse who was there the whole time. Yeah. And our returns are pretty complicated,

but we walked out with them. Mallory, I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. I can't make the decision for you on what to do next, but I can tell you this is bad. It's not a healthy marriage, is what we're telling you. Melissa's up next in Richmond, Virginia. Welcome to the Ramsey Show, Melissa. What's going on with you today?

Thanks for taking my call. I'm hoping to get some guidance, I guess, because I'm currently in $2.3 million in debt and I don't even know where to start to try picking up the pieces and moving forward. Who gave you $2 million? Did you buy a spaceship? So, I wish. No, it's actually a combination of business debt from a business that we had a close medical debt. We actually had two medical emergencies happen within days of each other. The biggest one being my youngest had an accident and was life flighted to another hospital with multiple surgeries, hospital stays. She actually just had another surgery last week. And then we found out that because of everything else that was going before that, I missed

filling out some paperwork and we lost our health insurance. My husband's a combat disabled veteran, so we had Champ VA and they denied all the bills, even though we've gotten all of that taken care of and we're back on there, but they aren't paying for anything that happened when it was cut off. You had a gap in coverage and then life crap hit the fan. And now you're on the hook for how much total in medical debt? Um, her medical debt is I haven't gotten any of the stuff on this, you know surgery, but thankfully insurance covers the majority of it. Um, probably about $400,000 for just her stuff. How much is the business out of the 2.3? How much is the business, Dan, out of the 2.3? Probably about 2 million.

No, not even. 1.8 plus about 100, so about 1.9 million. What kind of business was this? I had a family entertainment center, but we had actually signed a 10 year lease about two years ago, and then within weeks of that, we actually had a house fire. So I was trying to run the original business, get the new location ready,

because we were gonna expand. There was so many delays and financial stuff that just kept going. So the business is kaput? What happened in the entertainment center? At the same time that all of the medical stuff happened, my landlord decided not to renew my lease and we had to close pretty much abruptly.

What did you use the $2 million on? Well, a lot of it is the location that we had signed our lease on wants their money. But you said they kicked you out or are you talking about your personal residence kicked you out? No, so we actually had an existing location and then we actually signed a lease on a new

location and it was going to be larger. We were expanding and that landlord when I told them, hey, we're not moving forward with this, they've sent the paperwork through their attorney. They want their money. For 10 years of a lease agreement? Yes. How much was that? 1.8 million dollars and you didn't fight it. That's attorney fees Do you have your own attorney I

Do My attorneys telling me to file bankruptcy and move on I do. My attorney's telling me to file bankruptcy and move on. But I, I mean, besides that portion of it, the rest of it's, you know, like my mortgage, my car payment, my house, you know, like all of that stuff. And I don't feel right just saying,

I signed on the line, so I'm not going to pay this and just move on. Like it doesn't sit right with me, but I also don't know how in the world to fix things either. Well, I would sell everything we can. I don't know how much there is to sell, and I assume you guys have zero dollars to your name right now.

Is that correct? Zero dollars to our name, and at this point we have nothing really to sell. We had the house fire, we lost 90% of our belongings. I'm still dealing with insurance. Do you not have homeowners insurance that cover the contents? We had the house fire, we lost 90% of our belongings. I'm still doing the insurance. Do you not have homeowners insurance that cover the contents? I'm still doing the content claim with insurance.

The process that they're having me do is, it's almost the equivalent of three full-time jobs with how detailed of a list they want. They want me to list literally every item I'm claiming, when I bought it, where I bought it, how much it was worth. And what's your husband doing right now? Currently, he's dealing with my daughter, but- Are you guys working full-time?

No, my husband's disabled. He has physical diagnosis issues as well as brain injury. So he's 100% total and permanent veteran. So is he on disability and getting paid? Yes. How much is that? And that's the income we have. That's about $4,000 a month. Our mortgage is almost $2,000 a month. And are you bringing in any income right now?

I do everything I can to bring in some money. Like I do like side hustles and stuff, but nothing concrete. I'm going to get paid every week or every other week kind of thing. I've tried working out at the home, but my husband can't care for our daughter's medical needs solely because with his brain injury, he forgets steps and things like that. And so medication is dismissed and there's problems. So I've tried working like, hey, I can work from this time or this time,

but I really wasn't getting any phone calls back. can work from this time or this time, but I really wasn't getting any phone calls back. Divided up, and I don't know if your schedule with the, if your 10 year lease was a graduated one or if it was just like the same year over year, what was one year's worth? Like year one, what was that agreement worth? Or was it just split evenly over 10 years?

It split evenly over the 10 years. And you guys were paying $15,000 a month for this lease? Yes, as well as, uh, I mean, the landlord had played, paid some money towards, you know, some remodel that needed to be done. Um, but we were the ones paying like doing the floor and everything like that and so we also dumped in a lot of personal money, business money to get this thing to grow. But you still have, so they broke the lease? I'm just confused why I don't just try to continue this business to at least bring in some

income if you already have the lease agreement paid for ten years. Oh no, we haven't paid it. He wants the money. No, but you know why don't you move your business to this and keep your your business running that was doing so good you thought about expanding it? Honestly, my mental health, I don't think I can handle one more thing at this point. I'm barely hanging on. But you said you took out two million dollars in loans. So where did that money go if it didn't go to the landlord? No, I didn't take the loan out for that. That's what we were guaranteed to pay. So 1.7 million of this two million dollars is in a

decade-long lease. So you're just on the hook to the landlord. It's not like you owe a loan. Correct. It's not like a small business loan. So have you sat down and said, look, we have nothing. Yeah, they're not gonna get Jack Squaw from us. What is one year or six months worth? And I will be on the hook for that.

And y'all need to rent this out to somebody else. Cause here's the deal. They can take whatever that, I don't know what that number is divided by two, they can take $200,000 from you guys, or they can get nothing, because you're gonna file bankruptcy and they're gonna lose everything.

I think that's kind of where my attorney is at this point, because every time he's brought up negotiations, they flat out are like, no. Well, here's the deal. I wouldn't worry about the business debt right now because it's kind of monopoly money. And the medical debt, I'm wondering if you can work with the VA to have a portion or all of this forgiven. The VA, we've done the paperwork for them and they still, they keep declining those charges we weren't covered at the time I've made payment arrangements with the doctor's offices the hospitals or flight the life flight company they won't negotiate or settle each month pardon they won't negotiate or settle at this point? No, well the life flight company said that instead of paying like that's a hundred and

something thousand dollars if I paid in one month's time that they'll give me a discount and it's only 62,000. Yay! Right? This is gonna be a lot of fighting and I understand it's taking a toll on your mental health, your family's been through a lot, but you're gonna have to claw your way out of this one piece by one piece, one day at a time, and just take the right next step and hopefully your attorney can help you fight some of these battles. So sorry

Melissa. I can't help you, this one's too big. Sorry. If you're tired of living paycheck to paycheck, feeling like you can't get ahead, join one of our free EveryDollar trainings coming up this month, every single week, and they're hosted by one of us Ramsey personalities, myself included. We're going to show you how to stick to a budget, even find $9,000 of margin, that's right, using EveryDollar so you can get out of debt and start building wealth. Plus, you can ask us any question during the live Q&A.

Join us, sign up for free at everydollar.com slash webinar. Jennifer's up next in Birmingham, Alabama. What's going on, Jennifer? Hey, thanks so much for taking my call. I really appreciate it. Sure. I guess the best way to start is just to jump right into it. I got a bit of interesting news from my

husband this weekend and he let me know that his parents need to do some big repairs on their house and he doesn't think they're in the financial position to take care of it and he wants us to come in and pay for these repairs. So a couple of things, happy to help but my biggest question was why can't they do it themselves? You know, they also have a grown son living with them as well. So to income home, if you will, and that's their household, their responsibility. So just questions I have. Um,

as it turns out, you know, he clearly knows more about this than I do. And their grown son has had some issues with drugs and divorces, all sorts of things. They're kind of a mess. So they have spent a massive amount of money and it sounds like they have sent themselves into oblivion trying to pull him back from the best. And so now they're in this position that they're in. Um, so to be fair, they haven't asked for money, but they have in the past. So I'm, I'm just struggling with what to do. I want to be able to help them,

but I'm having a hard time sweeping in and helping three grown adults who've got their car stuck in the mud, you know, with their own decision. And it's not the first time. As a Christian, as a believer, right, not the first time. Like, I feel like... How much did you give last time? And what was it for? Well, let me tell you, we had a tough conversation and I said I don't believe we should be buying their son a vehicle because of his drug use and he wrecked three in the in the past year and so as your wife if you think we ought to I will you know it's your call to make but so he took my advice and he said no it was tough because the whole family got on the phone and derailed me for saying how dare you we need this. Whoa he told them I would like to,

but my wife said no? Yeah. Oh boy. Yo, this is not about your in-laws. You've lost respect for your husband. The fact that he even brought this back up. Yeah. Deal with that issue.

Well. That's the, cause that's the issue on the table here. Mm hmm. There's a proxy world. You're like, mm hmm. Like, like, yeah, this this and you just said, well, it's his choice. Why is it his choice to make if it's y'all's money? Right. Well, that's you know, we don't have, you know, the joint savings account, taking account, we deal with everything as a unit as a whole. But in this particular time, he said, the joint savings account, checking account. We deal with everything as a unit, as a whole. But in this particular time, he said, hey, I have some extra money.

I want to use my money. And I'm like, this is the first time you've said my money in our whole marriage. It's ours. You know, we're in it. Did you know about this extra money? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And he's so generous. He's so kind. He's not withholding anything, but in his mind, you know, baby brother, the guy who's got his life together and a wife, and they're doing financially okay. And he, you know, he wants to swoop in and help them. And I just, I feel like it's a bit manipulative from his parents. It's manipulative, manipulative all the way down the line. It's manipulative all the way down the line.

From brother to parents, parents to son, and then him to you. Using you as the scapegoat. To go, well, I'd love to, I'm a real generous guy, you know me. How dare any husband get on the phone with his family and be like, hey, I would help you out, my wife, the drag here. No husband does that.

That's not true, husbands do that all over the place. No self-respecting grown man does that they look at their own brother and even if like there's been choice decisions I've made and my wife has said I don't agree with this and my wife is generally wiser than me because I'm impulsive and if how dare me get on the phone to my family be like hey guys I'd help out but you know her. No, I say, hey, I'm not gonna write you this check. And I mean, my family didn't ask for money, but you get what I'm saying.

That's the issue here. And then he came back to you. Did brother wreck this car by the way? Oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry, y'all said no. What did he end up doing to get a car? We did say no, we did say no. And then he got a car. How?

From whatever means, I don't remember. And then he got a car. How? Whatever means, I don't remember. It's been about five years ago, but surprise, surprise, he wrecked that car as well. Oh yeah. So here's what I'm trying to prove to you though. If you don't help them out, they're gonna find another way, won't they?

Yes, they are. In my opinion, let me, I don't wanna be cold hearted, but you ought to. You're grown. Yeah, and it's up to them. Listen, if they want to go take out a HELOC to do all these repairs, that's their decision. But you don't have to be enabling this.

It doesn't feel cool for me to say, sorry about your living condition, sorry they suck, we're doing just fine. And the truth is, we work really hard and have jobs that I don't particularly like, but I have, these are my goals. Do you have like savings for future home repairs, knowing that eventually home is going to need repair?

Exactly. Exactly. So let's like teach them how to make a budget if you want to give them some tools, but I wouldn't just throw money at it because then you just become Bank of Jennifer and they come back six months from now when they have another problem. Well, you gave it to it last time, what's different about this time? And I wanna reframe it.

I don't ever wanna put myself in a position where, and it's hard in this current cultural climate we have. I do this so they should fill in the blank, right? I don't ever wanna prop myself up with, I'm working a job that I hate, so I get this and you don't get, I don't wanna live like prop myself up with I'm working a job that I hate so I get this and you don't get I Don't want to live like that because the reality is My wife and my daughter can get hit by a car on the way home from the grocery store today

And my whole life is different, right? But what I do want to say is this I know that giving them money is not helping Period. It's not. And so you can do what you want, you and your husband can do what you want. I live by two rules and I've learned these the hard way. I don't step in to help, unless I'm like picking up groceries for somebody

or tipping well or something like that. I don't rush in to save somebody that I'm in relationship with unless they ask me for it. And I don't give advice to people that don't ask anymore. And I've ruined friendships doing both of those things. And so right now your husband has created a world where he gets to be the savior for a problem he hasn't even been asked to solve yet. That's true.

And so they're not asking him for this stuff. He wants to swoop in and help and be like look look look I'm still a good kid I'm still a good kid I'm still a good kid. He's feeling guilty yeah. Right. They're in misery apparently and he's doing okay. But every single choice is everything they every place they are is a choice they have made and on top of that they have not asked for your opinion they haven't asked for y'all's help. And he doesn't realize it, but he has a marriage issue. Right.

Because your respect for him is draining out of that hourglass sand, like little grain of sand by little grain of sand, right? And I think he- No, I think so. After three days, we're like, okay, we need some counseling because this has brought up some big issues. It has.

And I don't think he realized it. He's trying to help and save and I'm like, this isn't a problem we created. No, that's not it. That's not it. The whole thing, listen to me, the whole thing's a proxy war. You passed the buck when you said, this is like in your chest, this is going to be a violation of our marriage, but you go ahead and make it if you want to. And then you held that against him. And he blamed you for it. Both of y'all have created a dance here that neither of y'all can win. And so you gotta turn the lights on, turn the music off of your marriage, and y'all get in the room and have to learn how to trust and respect each other. Because he thinks you're going to put it all on him. He doesn't want to make you mad, but he doesn't have the courage

to stand up for himself and against his family. You see what I'm saying? It just creates this churn and then y'all are talking about brother's addiction. You're talking about mom and dad's house. Y'all have a marriage challenge you all need to deal with. Does that resonate? Yeah, it sounds like we need to get to counseling now. As somebody who, like a random podcaster, that's what I would recommend, that y'all go talk to somebody because I think y'all have some deeper challenges that y'all need to work through. And it's a much better use of money than putting out a fire that they're just going to spark

probably three weeks from now. Today's question of the day is brought to you by Yreify. You didn't plan to default on your private student loan but now you could have a way out. Yreify helps you explore refinancing options with a low fixed rate and a payment plan based on your ability to pay. So take the next step at yreify.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey may not be available in all states. Today's question comes from Taylor in West Virginia. Taylor writes, my boyfriend and I have been living in his mom's house. This is awesome.

So we can save for a home of our own. We have similar incomes, no debt, and a child together. My boyfriend pays the mortgage and utility bills and he regularly gives his mom cash. Our child expenses are my responsibility." Good God, can we just stop? Okay. Like just, okay. This is like a made up question to make John angry today. Our child expenses are my responsibility and I buy all of the groceries. Recently my boyfriend suggested that I help his mom financially as well and contribute to funding the renovations on her house. I feel like I'll lose all of my savings. No, that's not a feeling. That's a math problem. You will. And we'll stay in this house forever if I do this. You will not actually,

you'll be asked to leave at some point. What should I do? Oh boy, is she really asking? I mean, I don't know the quality of this relationship. So if you're asking- Yes you do, you 100%. I think I know the quality of this relationship. You do. Listen, you are in a weird pseudo marriage with two people,

his mom and the boyfriend. And it feels like the mom is living in his house, but he doesn't own it. But he's paying all the bills and building her equity and funding all the renovations while she gets the best ride ever of having no bills to pay, not working at all. And so I think we need to- And he's not co-parenting. You're paying for everything when it comes to food and taking care of this child. I think we would need- I would lay all the cards on the table with everyone.

Go, guys, this is messed up. This is not how it should be. We need to figure this out. If mom can't afford to live here, she needs to find somewhere she can afford to live and not have us fund her life while we somehow get a benefit. So here's the deal. I rarely say this, but Taylor, if you were my daughter or you were my sister or you were a close friend of mine,

I would recommend that you go get an apartment and you take the child and you'll move into the apartment because you'll have a lot of work to do on your relationship with this guy that clearly has not left his mommy's house and y'all have got you've got a long way to go relationally before you've already made a kid together so y'all will be forever linked but before you start getting any more tied in financially legally all, all that mess. I would get my own place, I would get an apartment,

and I would start the repair process of this relationship because this is an absolute mess of a dumpster fire of a mess. Do not give his mom a dollar, do not fund any renovations on a house you don't own. You need to protect your money at this point. Protect this baby. And if he then goes,

I can't believe you don't want to give my mom money. This relationship's okay, then you go. He just gave you the cue. And so this is a real messy situation. You've done everything backwards. This is like on my do not recommend list. You've checked off every single box. Other than the no debt, I love that part.

That's good news. Otherwise, I don't see much more good news than this. This is all bad news. But I'd recommend you get your own place and if you wanna continue in a romantic relationship with the father of your child, then you need to be very adamant about what you want in a marriage partner.

And that includes putting you and the child over priority of home renovations for an existing parent or all this, this is just holding madness, but that would be what I recommended that you do. So sorry, you're dealing with that. Not fun. All right. George, am I out to lunch?

I feel like more and more and more and more and more, one of two things is happening. There's either, it's this weird barbelling thing that's happening. 30%, 25 to 30% of the calls that come into my show are about relationships that have ended. Like parents have cut off kids because they vote the wrong way or they didn't,

right, they're still mad about COVID or whatever. Or kids have cut off parents because they're so awful. They have different opinions or whatever. There's that side of the barbell. Or just an increasing, with increasing regularity, there are these kids that cannot and will not, and I'm calling them kids even though they're maybe 35 years old. They are just living as though they're in high school. They have full-time jobs. They're doing well, like they're not doing great, but they're doing fine financially. But their parents are still guide, guarding, and directing their lives like, like a marionette, like puppeteers,

like you will pay for this, you will live here, you will stay here, oh, you had a baby, then the baby moves into my house, and there's this inability to break free over here. So we have this caustic, dude, sit at a table with people who have different beliefs in you, my God Almighty, so you can't, we're never gonna see you again, family members.

And then over here, it's, yeah, honey, you're gonna pay all the groceries and all the kid bills because I'm gonna just stay in my mommy's house and take care of her. And it's this strange insanity on both ends. And I feel like it's more and more and more and more. And I just don't think it ends well for all of us. It's madness.

Yeah, we are seeing an uptick. I've done six of these Ramsey shows in a row and I've never seen so many more relationally broken calls than Touch Money. And as you know, and the reason we love having you here is money is rarely the actual issue. It's all of these proxy wars and these unspoken commitments and people not pulling their weight

and then other people going, well, I guess I'll enable their misbehavior. And that's really hard to untangle. I would much rather math problem of we wanna pay off the debt, tell us about the debt snowball. That's rarely the call we get anymore. It's messy situations like this where they're going, I'm trying to build my own future.

My wife is mad at me because I'm trying to fund my parents' misbehavior. And what happens is it ends up creating a generational cycle. It does, on either side. That baby in that house is gonna have to pick up the pieces because the dad was busy funding his mom's life, so never built a life for himself, never had retirement.

Now that baby grows up and has to repeat this process. Right. And I am 100% all in. If my dad were to pass away today and he had no health insurance and had no life insurance, et cetera, I would 100% be there to take care of my mom. But it would have to be,

she would be a part of our, me and my wife's household. Not, I would not look at my wife and say, sorry honey, I'm gonna continue to fund my mom's lifestyle to the detriment of our children, to the detriment of our future, to prop up the life that she just happens to want. The world has shifted if in a situation like this So I don't know what happened to Taylor's boyfriend's mom's Marriage or husband what who knows how we got where we got I'm all about taking care of your parents But you have to do it in a way that you can actually afford and yet it might be Uncomfortable for millions of us. Yep. there's a third bedroom and mom lives in

there and it's not comfortable for her, it's not comfortable for us, but that's the world we have right now. But this whole you take care of the kid expenses, that's your job. I'll just pay all of my mom's mortgage and utility bills. It's madness and I love how you call that out. It becomes generational and so on the Ramsey Show we talk all the time about change your family tree. That is about money, but it's so much more than money. It's the way we talk to each other. It's the way we treat people.

It's the way we serve and love each other. And you can't serve and love somebody if you are burning your house down in the process. It's just, it's madness on every, on every end of that barbell. Well, we went from, well, I want to honor my mother and father to, well, I guess toxic codependency just runs in our family. That's who we are. That's right. I don't know how we got there, but I know that you can break the cycle and it's

really hard. It's really hard to be the first one to go, mom, we're moving out and we're gonna have to sell your house and find you somewhere that you can rent. But I don't want to sell it. This was me and your father's house. I know. And we have a, we have a really ugly heartbreaking math problem to solve here. Or the other side of it is, Hey honey, um, daughter, son, I'm calling you after three years.

I'm sorry. Will you, can I come visit you for a cup of coffee or Hey mom, dad, we cut you off three years ago because of a fight Over politics. I'm sorry. I don't talk about politics, but I miss my mom right there's ways to heal these things generationally But good grief this polarization in these households is madness. Yeah, you got to take care of your own household first unfortunately adults can make their own decisions and those decisions have consequences and Unfortunately the hard part to realize it's not your problem to solve. From the Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do

work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, here with Dr. John Delaney, host of The Dr. John Delaney Show, and we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Kevin is with us in Fort Worth, Texas, salt of the earth folks over there. What's going on, Kevin? Good afternoon, thanks for taking my call. What's up, man? So I met this wonderful lady about six years ago, and obviously marriage has come up, and that's the next step of progression. And my main question is, I probably struggle with it more than she ever thinks about it, but how do I be a dutiful Christian husband and a leader of the family when she makes substantially more than

I do? You can't. You have to make more money than her. Yeah, I know I'm, you know, I'm totally kidding man. I'm working on that. I get that. What is the gap out of curiosity? So I've always done well for myself or at least thought I did until I met her. I make about 200, 220. Loser.

Oh, you're just like phoning it in dude. I know I need to work on tripling that at least, but no, she's somewhere in the three and a half to four million a year. What? What does she do? They own an insurance company and a myriad of other, I always tell her, her business empire, it's a lot of things, but it's all related around insurance and financial services. Any chance she's taking applications?

Because... but it's all related around insurance and financial services. Any chance she's taking applications? Because, uh... Well, I've actually helped out a lot with the different businesses and whatnot, because I'm in financial services myself. Oh, nice. Well, here's the good news. She's not marrying you for the money. She's doing it because she loves you. So that will never be an issue.

Whether you make a dollar or a million dollars, it's chump change to her world. But here's the other thing, I've never read a piece of scripture that has told me the husband must make more than the wife or else you're not a dutiful husband. So I don't know where that came from. I'm sure it's just years of, you know, church repression. No, this is your insecurity, bro.

And you're gonna have to decide that this woman loves me and I'm worth being loved for my measly quarter of a million dollar salary that I make. Dude, I can go on a whole rant about this. We could talk for an hour about this, but this idea of Christian leadership is not about me sitting at the top of some throne. That's not leadership.

What that's referring to is, and if you read the whole scripture section, think of it this way. It is you choosing to get underneath the squat rack and get underneath the whole thing. Leadership is about service. It's not about dollars and it's not about muscles. It is about service. It's not about dollars and it's not about muscles. It's about service.

And so you'll be the chief service officer of this family. And that might mean I'm going to lay down my life. In this current world, it doesn't. Sometimes in this current world, protecting and providing means I'm going to protect my wife's spirit and her time. I'm going to provide a listening ear, and I'm gonna provide a safe space for her to crash because she's running 17 companies at once.

It's this whole just beefcake, magoo illusion that Instagram and YouTube has shoved on our throat. It's not leadership. And if you ask, I'm trying to think of the wealthiest guy, if you ask Sharon Ramsey Dave's wife she'll tell you they make dot dot dot and i have been in the room when Sharon makes a decision on something that doesn't make Dave not a leader that makes him a person who serves his wife and he quote unquote makes the money but they have created a household that they work at together George and his wife are

in the same boat me and my wife are in the same boat, me and my wife are in the same boat. Yeah. And you know, she's been really great about completely open about everything. I know about everything with the finances. In fact, I recently, in the last two or three years have taken over like managing some of the money. I've got my Series 7 and 66. So it's just growing up and you know prior relationships have always been the provider and then I run into her and it's like oh you've got this cute job though here's what I've got going on. And by the way you're still gonna provide it's just gonna look different than the internet says it is.

You're gonna provide a safe place to land you're gonna provide stability you might provide laundry service. You might provide all sorts of different things, but you are the chief service officer. That's what leadership is. It's not I get my way because I have bigger muscles and I make more money. That's just a nonsensical bastardization

of a really amazing scripture. Also realize that we take a lot of calls in the show where the husband makes more than the wife and they're terrible Husbands and they're terrible dads. So there's no correlation Between that now, can you provide? Yeah, absolutely That's an important factor to any future mate is can you be a good partner in this journey of life and provide for our family? Money is a part of that but you guys are this is not is a part of that, but you guys are, this is not even a

part of that equation. You guys are doing so well that it's not even a concern. So I want to get to the real root behind that. Aside from the money, what are your fears about marrying her? I don't have any fears. It's exactly what you all have talked about. It's the psychological thing of I was married prior for many years and we have a grown daughter together and I've just been used to like that's what the husband does you provide and that's what I did and running into this situation like I said everything's been completely open and honest and she's wonderful in fact she lets me take care of everything I don't I'd rather her not mess with anything around the house. If the sink breaks, I'll either fix it or

we'll get some over here. Can I interrupt you here? Yeah, go ahead. This is, this is, I'm, I'm letting loose a secret from our secret men's meeting that we all attend on Monday. I didn't get the invite to that. Exactly. You have a used Prius and two french bulldogs so you're not invited yet but here's the thing I don't know personally a dad who if they're being honest thinks they're crushing it and I honestly if I'm really honest I don't know a husband that when pushed would say I really think I'm doing a good job. And there's this meta message that we've all inhaled, it's the air we breathe for the last 50 years that our very essence is somehow poisonous. It's toxic.

Our being. And if you're coming off a divorce, coming off raising a daughter, you've got this in spades, right? Yeah, it's just been me for the last eight, seven, eight years. And if you're coming off a divorce, coming off raising a daughter, you've got this in spades, right? Yeah, it's just been me for the last eight, seven, eight years. Okay, so beneath all of this thing, most men, if you ask them, they define themselves, they answer the question, what are you worth with a number? Because that's all they have left.

Yep. And now you found a woman who says, no, no, no, no, no, I don't care about your money, I pick you, and you don't believe it. That's probably true. And so, no, no, no, no, no, I don't care about your money. I pick you and you don't believe it. That's probably true. And so, no, it is true, bro, because we're all in the same boat, even George. And so here's the thing, at some point you're going to have to exhale and accept this, that this woman chose you. And you're going to have to decouple your identity from a number and say the only answer to the question, what are you worth, is who do you love and who loves you?

Period. Does your daughter love you? You're doing the best you could with her? Yeah, she calls me all the time. It gets annoying sometimes and she gets more than three thousand phone calls. As it always does. Good. That's awesome.

Do you have a couple of ride or die guy friends that you call and reach out to? Yes, recently I joined a church group. I've been going to a long time. So that's been helpful. I don't really disclose all that. I know you don't. I know you don't. You're gonna have to find a couple of men that you can be honest with in your life because men die from keeping secrets. It melts it from the inside out. And then at some point you have to get the courage up forget the dollar amount You're gonna have to go get a ring and ask this woman To marry you if that's what you want to do

I would have done that like six months ago. I'm four years ago for me, but hey here we are six years into it Go get your spreadsheet ready. Let's figure out what ring we're gonna get. Let's go ring shopping my friend You're worth more than your bank account my brother. You're a good man, and it's it's an honor to know you Are you staying on track with the baby steps? You can take a quick quiz to check your progress and get a personalized plan made just for you. Simply head to the show notes and click on the link titled Are You On Track With The Baby Steps and complete the quiz. Claire is in Baton Rouge up next. What's going on, Claire? Hi, thank you for taking my call. So my question is surrounding really,

like how to have good conversations with money. So my husband and I are in a pretty good financial place. We don't have debt, we don't have mortgage. We have a large family and we have a business that's doing pretty well in meeting our family's needs. We both grew up with unhealthy dynamics surrounding money. In my home, it was, we didn't talk about money and it felt like needing anything was wrong.

And my husband's family situation was very up and down. It followed the ups and downs of business. So it was either all or nothing mindset. Now that we're married, my husband is so good at being generous, but when it comes to our own homes, sometimes it seems like we struggle with a scarcity mindset and we struggle to view money as a tool. And so I'm just wondering if y'all had counsel for how we can navigate that better. Do you struggle with being a people pleaser? I mean, sure, sure.

I love how you called about your husband's challenge with the scarcity mind, scarcity mindset, and it was, we struggle with it. Yeah. Do you struggle or does he struggle with this? I think truthfully we both do, but it definitely falls, I would say that he probably leads that a little bit in our home.

So give me an example of what that looks like and here's why I'm asking. I struggle with this too. Money was tight in my home growing up. There was some scary seasons and I have an extra deep freezer full of meat at all times, right? And I am always balancing between being overly giving away too much and holding it really tightly. What is, give me an example in your house of what is a scarcity mindset look like played out? So a scarcity mindset might look like if I have an opportunity, we have eight daughters

that have an opportunity to take two of my girls for just some alone time with them on like a weekend trip, it comes down to like dollars in, dollars out, and there's just anxiety for him surrounding like overspending. But if we hear that somebody in our community, for example, is struggling, I mean, there is no limit to his generosity. And I love that so much about him, but I want my girls also to be raised with a, to view money as a tool and to live open-handed and not like clenched fist. Sure. I get that. Finding that balance is-

Does he find it selfish to spend it all on his own family when it could be going to other people who need it more? Very much so. Is that it? Very much so. He's like Mother Teresa out here. Okay. Well, I mean, it sounds like he probably got a message across the course of his life that people like us don't do that kind of thing. Or those are the folks that waste their money on vacations or you're not worth a vacation, right? And so it's some of that's just taking ownership of, no, this is us. And we're actually

working really hard and doing well. And having some joy in our life isn't a sin and it's not some zero and all that. But that's a tough thing to do. George, what do you think? Well, how much money do you guys make? I'm trying to see how much reality there is to this and how much is just insanity. So we live very lean. So we have a trust fund and we have a business. So we bring into our home $6,000 a month and like we make that work for our family. And then if we need more-

A family of 10? Yes. Where does your grocery bill? I think people want to know. Yeah, I'm a pretty shrewd grocery shopper and we eat really a lot of vegetables and meat. Are you buying like manager special here? Like what are we talking when you say I'm frugal?

Are the neighbors missing all their pets? How are y'all coming up with all this meat? No, so we, I do shop at like when meat goes on sale or like in our town, there's a lot of like buy one, get one if any meat sells. So we buy and we freeze and then we cook that and our children are pretty young, so they're not eating a ton of food yet. Buckle up, man. We've exhausted a lot of them. Yeah. Well, good for you. That's amazing.

And so you bring home $6,000, but what is your total net worth? Probably close to like 8 million. Okay. I just threw my pen. Just so you can, if you'd heard that. So here's the reality. You kind of buried the lead on that one. How are y'all worth $8 million?

Just generosity as far as like, we got a big inheritance. And we just want to anyway, we got a big inheritance from a business sale. Okay, there's there's a few books that I think would help you I can send you one of them. One is Know Yourself Know Your Money from our friend Rachel Cruz. In it she walks through the different money classrooms. And I think that's going to be very eye opening to help you guys understand each other better and understand how to move forward from that to put away the emotions from the facts. The other book that I would recommend is one called Die with Zero. And it's not one that I agree with entirely, but it unlocks something for me because I am a very scarcity frugal guy. And it really walks through the argument that you should use your wealth and your inheritance

while your kids are still alive, instead of sending them what will be likely $100 million by the time you guys pass away. And your kids are then in their 60s by then. And so I think that will help unlock something for you and your husband if you go through those books to go, you know what, we have $8 million. If we just put away 4 million for our family,

let the other 4 million grow, we're gonna be okay. We could spend, you can get with a financial advisor, they can crunch the numbers to help you understand that if you spent, let's say $250,000 per year, you would still never even touch the principle on the investment account balance. Yeah, now investment account isn't that full amount. When you asked total, I was thinking like house, business,

and trust. Sure, but I mean, as far as money you have access to, could you increase your household income, quote unquote, to $10,000 per month, and it wouldn't affect your wealth. Gotcha. Do you see what I mean now? That's an extra four grand a month. And if you allocate it, here's what I would do,

sit down and make a budget with every dollar with your husband and force yourself to add some line items that make you a little bit uncomfortable, that scare you a little bit. To go, you know what, we're gonna spend a thousand bucks on clothing this month for the girls. And we're gonna put in a $2,000 monthly vacation fund so that we have 24 grand to spend to have some amazing experiences while these girls are still young. Because Disney ain't cheap and I think you should take all eight of them.

Hear me say this, like if you had a family of 10 and y'all, your take home was $6,000, I would tell you that your husband's scarcity mindset is probably well founded. He's very nervous. Knowing you'll have a net worth of $8 million, then what I would suggest is it's bordering on pathological. Right? There's a disconnection from reality because the reality is you all really have to lose your minds to burn through this. And so the day-to-day actions are either gonna be

something like George just said I want you to hear this word practice we're gonna often George you hear listen to the show we're often telling people you got to practice saving money because you've never done that you'll have the exact opposite or some people have to practice generosity you got to practice put a line item them in your budget that makes you uncomfortable and give that away, whether it's tips, local church, anything. You guys have to practice the experience of feeling joy,

the experience of spending money and watching your daughters laugh and smile. That's a thing, that's a muscle you'll have to practice. He might need some hobbies where he practices spending money on things that feel frivolous to him, that actually give him joy and fill his cup. And remember, there's only three things you can do with money.

You can give it, you can save it, you can spend it. You guys are great at the first two, aren't you? Yes. But we have a flat tire on the spending category and it's affecting your mental health. It's affecting your family. It's affecting the experiences and the growth of these wonderful girls that you guys are raising.

And so there's a lot of people who spend way more than they make, and they're out of control, and we have to yell at them and try to convince them to do better. You guys are on the very opposite side of the spectrum. We're begging you to waste some money. And here's how I know this isn't principle based, okay? He didn't give $8 million away. Which means he's giving away his discomfort, which in a gross way means he's using other people on a week by week, month by month basis to make himself feel better.

That's not a principle that's using other people as a Xanax. You get what I'm saying? So we're going to look at this, we're going to practice spending money on ourselves, and we're going to practice joy. Hang on a line, I'll get you Rachel's book, Know Yourself, Know Your Money, and look up Die with Zero as well. This is The Ramsey Show.

Two weekends are on sale now for the money and merit getaway. You can spend three incredible days here in Nashville with your spouse, learning the tools to strengthen your connection, deepen your intimacy and more. And bonus, Dr. John Delaney and Rachel Cruz will be there hosting you the entire time. This is happening in November and February. Early bird pricing is available now. Tickets start at 749 bucks per couple.

And you can get the tickets for the lowest price before they end at ramsysolutions.com slash getaway, or click the link in the show notes if you're listening on YouTube or podcasts. And I assume John is hard at work preparing. We already are. We do an entirely new event every year. So I'm excited for it, man.

Cause you take all the feedback and a lot of people come back. And so now it's like, we gotta give them something new. Half the room sells out before that one's always over. It's become like an annual retreat in a good way. Not like our marriage is in crisis, but just like, man, this is so refreshing to connect, leave the kids at home.

It's the best marriage event in the country, I think. And it's a lot of fun. And Nashville's a great city just to come hang out in. 100%. So join us. Go to ramzesolutions.com slash getaway. Sarah is in Albany, Georgia coming up next. What's going on, Sarah? Hey. Good talk to you guys. I'm kind of nervous now. Don't freak out, but Dr. John Deloney is next to me.

Okay. So my question is, but Dr. John Delaney is next to me. Okay, so my question is, so my husband and I have been married going on eight years this September. We've got three kids. We just had our third just right at a month ago. So, you know, we're getting- How are you even speaking coherently? I don't really know. So my my youngest two are actually only 15 months apart so our last one she was a little bit of a surprise to us. Surprise! Yeah kind of a surprise and we actually also survived we survived the hurricane Helene that just came through in September so she we found out about her right afterwards so yeah I don So yeah, I don't know

how, I don't know how I'm talking clear coherently right now. We'll help you through it. What's your question today? So basically, after my husband just recently changed jobs, it was a little bit of a pay cut, but it's a higher ceiling to grow from where he was at previously. But with that pay cut but it's a higher ceiling to grow from where he was at previously but with that pay cut it's kind of set us back a little bit financially. We have a little bit of debt and this setback has kind of got us to where we've always been paycheck to paycheck but now it's got us to where we're just kind of just scraping by and we're not able to really work at our debt the way we need to. So kind of trying to get an idea of you know how to cut down the debt because that is a majority of where our

finances need to be going right now. How much debt do you have? Taking a lot out of us. About 42,000. Yeah, that's more than a little bit. Okay, what kind of debt is that? Most of it is in a car payment and then the rest of it is kind of spread across the credit cards and then yeah. Have you cut up the credit cards and stopped using them completely yet? If it were up to me, we would.

Oh. But my husband is, yeah. We're kind of back and forth on it. He's just kind of like, well, this is what's helped us survive so far. And neither of us have very good financial upbringing, I guess you would say. And so we're trying to do the best we can,

but it's kind of like, you know, he's just trying to survive at this point. Okay, so he likes the security blankie of 29% APR and under the guise that we are somehow helping our family. What was the long-term move here? I have multiple times in my professional life taken a pay cut for a job that would offer increased opportunities, but it's always ROI'd itself pretty quickly. What was your plan on taking a pay cut? What was his plan on doing that? So really what the job he was working at before it was, um, he was getting up at two o'clock in the morning to go make donuts and he was

very just kind of, uh, you know, that's, it was exhausting. And we, we weren't, he wasn't able to make anymore. Like they weren't going to be able to offer him very much more money. Um, and so this job is starting, you know, they started him out with just a little bit less of what he's making. What's he making now? Oh my word. Yes, I think it's monthly he gets take home is probably about 3,500. And what are these growth opportunities they promised him?

So as the business grows, his department is going to grow. So he would move up in the company as he grows. What kind of work is he doing now? So he's over the logistics department for the portable shed building company here from where we're from. But they've actually opened up other branches in other states now.

So it's growing very quickly. It's just his paycheck is not growing like he needs it to. Yeah, this feels two things. It feels kind of MLM-y to me, and like multi-level marketing-y. Like, all right, bro, listen, we got all these opportunities. Get on the ground floor.

Yeah, get in early and we're gonna open up all these shops and whatever and you're gonna grow job to job to job. When a company does that, what they get is the benefit of his employment and his loyalty. And then they get to try them out for six or seven years. And so they don't have as much skin in the game. And in exchange, he takes a pay cut, comes in, works his butt off and does really good.

And then kind of use and abuse him without any sort of increase here. And so without a plan for, okay, I'm gonna come in here for two years, I'm gonna run this thing. And then the next step will be X, Y, or Z. It's all like, yeah, when this thing gets really cookin', then we're all gonna, right? And this thing's never gonna, quote unquote,

get really cookin', because, well, we had to open up the location, we had a leadership challenge, and bro, dude, we're in this together. And that just, I don't know, dude, it just makes me feel uncomfortable. I would get some clarity on what it looks like to get that bump, get that promotion.

Is it a certain revenue metric? Is it a six-month performance review where they're going to look at everything versus just like a wish and a hope? So that's one piece of it. Okay. This car loan, what's left on it? $27,000. And what is it worth?

I actually really don't know. Okay, add that to your homework assignment to jump on Kelley Blue Book, find the private party value, not a trade-in value, you're gonna get hosed on that. And I would see if you can sell that because that car is more than half of your annual income. That's a major problem. And contrary to popular belief,

we had two kids in a Corolla, we had two kids in a used Prius, George has two car seats in his used Tesla. You can make it on other cars. Okay? Yeah. I know it doesn't like, well I really, you can and y'all can't afford this car. Yeah. Is it his car? Is it a truck? What is it? It's a security blanket for him. It's a GMC Acadia. But like what he was saying, it's kind of a security blanket. He grew up just broke down the side of the road. To him, it's like I would rather, I would be,

I want to make a car payment and know that my family's in a safe car. And, but it's still, and I totally, totally get that. Both George and I won our families in safe cars. And that's a false dichotomy. He's drawn a false picture. It's not an either or. There's a whole bunch in between. By the way, your nice car they're making a payment on, we took a call earlier where there was somebody

whose engine exploded. So you're, it's, you're not. There's no guarantee there. Yeah, you're not hedging anything here. And so if you sell that and you save up enough in cash or take the difference, if you can profit from the car and buy something in cash, you don't have to buy $2,000, you know, 1997, but you can do a pre-purchase inspection,

make sure it's a reliable vehicle, research the make model and year that works for your family. And it's just for now, this might be a year, but that's gonna get you guys out of over half the debt you're in and the rest is all credit cards? Right, yes, yeah.

So his game plan is just to continually go into credit card debt thinking, well eventually, maybe, hopefully I'll make enough that we can climb out of this? Yeah, basically, yeah, at least until he can get a raise and get kind of, get back to where he was. I promise you that's not how it works. Guaranteed.

There's going to be some side hustles involved from you or him. Maybe he gets home and you guys high five and he takes over with the kids and you go to work. But the only way out of this is increasing the income and getting rid of this car. Hang on the line. We're going to send you Financial Peace University. You'll have to watch all nine lessons together. If you promise you'll do that, we'll get you hooked up. Hang on the line, we're going to send you Financial Peace University. You'll have to watch all nine lessons together. If you promise you'll do that, we'll get you hooked up.

Hang on. Our scripture of the day, Lamentations 3.25. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. David Lee Roth said, money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it. That's the most David Lee Roth quote. There you go. Man, we are really reaching for some of those words of wisdom.

Right next to Jeff Bezos in the happiness yacht. Geez. Allie's up next in San Francisco. What's going on, Allie? Hi. My quick question here is how do I set myself up specifically financially as we head towards a possible divorce? Oh gosh, I, so sorry. How possible? We had some affairs, infidelity things happen,

I don't know, six, seven years ago, and now we are going to marriage counseling to discuss like wrapping that up, like how can we move forward from this? And so I felt like he's kind of been half in, half out. So I kind of just asked like, Hey, are we going to be, I felt like God showed me this vision for like what our new marriage should be and how it should be centered in Christ. And so I kind of shared that and I was like, cool, I would like to know if you're all in on us doing this and having a new marriage or if you're all out. And he kind of said, maybe. And then towards the,

he said like, Oh, I need a couple of days to think about this. And then he, towards the end he said no, but then he wants to go back in a week to see the marriage therapist again, to talk about his, maybe he changed his mind. So that's why I say possible. So he kind of ended the session with no, but now we're going to see her tomorrow a week later to see if he has changed his mind or not. I'm not really sure. So I just, I'm like, I don't know what to do if he says, yes, yeah,

let's start this new marriage with new skills or no, I don't want to continue. So, what you've how long have you been married with him? 11 years. So you know what he's going to say tomorrow. What do you think he's going to say? I mean, you know it. I think he's going to say yes. Do what?

I think he's going to say yes. I think he's going to say yes, I want to do this a new way. I want to have this new marriage because we both are recognizing like we both kind of sucked up being married and we want to do this new thing. So I feel like he's going to say yes, but I want to be prepared. Even if he does say yes, our finances need to change because I'm really in the dark with a lot of it. Okay.

Do you guys have kids? Yeah, we have four, four of our young kids. So like between five and 11. Okay. So I'm like a stay at home mom. And that's a scary place that you're finding yourself, right? Or it's an exposed place, right? Yeah, yeah.

I feel like that's been a big barrier. That was like one of the big conversations I wanted to have as we went into marriage therapy, but I really felt like God was telling me to ask him like, hey, are you all in first before we continue even diving into the financial conversations? So, I think the meta question here, no pun intended since you're in San Francisco, but the meta question here is, is can we have a marriage that doesn't have any more secrets? And that's sharing pass codes,

that's sharing checking accounts, that's sharing financial information, that's being completely honest about past affairs, that's putting everything on the table. And neither of you are gonna be able to fully put both feet in the boat until you both feel like everything's out there. You don't have to go into details,

like I don't wanna hear all the gruesome details of your past affair, but I gotta like everything's out there. You don't have to go into details. Like I don't want to hear all the gruesome details of your past affair, but I got to know what's out there. Right? And so I think getting your finances in order is first about even knowing where you are, having any semblance of what's going on. And if you're a stay at home mom of four young kids, then there's not a whole lot of getting in order

the finances, right? Cause it's not like you're working a full time job that you can start putting money in a checking account to prepare for yourself, right? You're really exposed. Yeah, I think that was my biggest worry. And maybe that comes up and if he says yes, I mean, I think it's fair to put on the table

The thought of you saying no made me realize how scared I how alone I feel in this marriage Yeah, and How scared I am for my own safety and any husband worth their salt doesn't want the woman They're with to be scared about their own existence, right? be scared about their own existence, right? Yeah, and I think I haven't like ever shared that because I feel like I just it's hard for me to share my feelings and like be dependent on somebody. Yes, and that's part of the dance that y'all have co-created because he knows you're not fully in the boat either because he doesn't really feel like he

knows you because he doesn't yeah he just knows when he's around you you feel less safe and he doesn't know what he's doing so maybe I'm gonna go make more money and maybe I'm gonna go do this so that we can and it just creates that dance and that's I'm so proud of y'all for going to the therapist and just turning the lights on and stopping the music and say we got to quit this we got to quit this particular dance are you willing to learn a new one but that means you got to tell the full truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yeah.

What's your financial picture look like? Do you guys own a home? No, we're renting. Okay. Do you have debt? Yeah, I feel like we have a lot. I don't know what that's compared to, but it feels like we have a lot. What's the number?

I have, I don't even know. I'll to but it feels like we have a lot What's the number? I have I? Don't even know I'll throw it out. We can add it I have three credit cards that have gone to collections because he decided he wasn't gonna pay for my bills anymore. Oh, wow so I think I have one that's like 10k 5k and 4k so I think that's a Pretty good ballpark for the three credit cards I have. Okay. Those are the debts that are under my name specifically and then I know that he has a couple

credit cards he had one for like I think 20k that I think he recently paid off with his bonus so I think that one is mostly done if there's anything left maybe a couple thousand on that one and I know he has two other credit cards. Okay. I want to, I want to challenge you real quick. Okay. I know George is digging into the money. Y'all have already separated. Yeah.

I feel like that happened when he decided, oh yeah, I'm not paying for this stuff anymore. Right. When, when he started using the words yours and mine and you've, as you're talking to us, this is mine, that's his, and I'm not paying your bills but you're not paying mine y'all are already separated y'all just live in the same house yes I agree that's why I've decided to ask that question I don't even want to continue marriage therapy if we want to formalize this separation or do we want to formalize a reconnection awesome so yes I agree yeah so you've got 19k in credit card debt. He has an unknown amount in credit card debt any other debt

Um I think that's it. We have a car that's paid off And then he has two motorcycles. I believe those two are also paid off actually Yeah, okay So that one thing you can do is to check your credit report You can go pull it at annualcreditreport.com from all three bureaus, it's free. And that'll give you a real clear picture

of what debts are in your name tied to you. And then your job is gonna be to clean up your mess and to make sure that you don't go into any new debt and that you don't have any debt that's attached to him that has your name on it. Okay. So that's one way to start to protect yourself. I assume you guys have separate bank accounts already.

No, we actually have the same account. Just one joint account? So when he says that's your credit cards, what did you buy? I actually used them during kind of like the three or four years of all of the affairs and stuff like that because he was also spending a lot of the money. So I just had to use their credit cards to literally just buy groceries, like just basic

necessity things that have kind of like stacked up. Okay. Were y'all both cheating on each other? You referred to the affairs. Was it both of y'all or was it just him? No, it was just him. Yeah, it was just him. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Well, no, you know, there's going to be state laws that come into play and divorce decrees and judges deciding who's going to get what and custody. It's going to be messy and it's probably going to take a while, but on the other side, there's likely going to be, you know, alimony and child support. I hope he pays. We've taken a lot of calls this week where they just go, yeah, he just decided not to.

And that's it. And so I don't know that situation on your side. But I would definitely start to get your ducks in a row to make sure that you at least have as little damage to clean up as possible. Do you have family support? Yeah, I have a really good family support. They're not super close by, but I think immediately I would be able to have access to their support and things like that. So if on the off chance he comes in tomorrow and says, Hey, I'm out. Yeah. The faster you can metabolize what the life I had is over, the faster you can get to what I would call survival.

It's the people who are like, no, no, no, maybe the boat's not sinking, even though it's half underwater. The faster you can say this boat is going under, I need to get to a life raft, the better. And so the faster you can say, okay, I didn't wanna move in with my parents, but I got to, because I got four young kids. I didn't wanna go to work and put four kids in daycare,

but I have to. The faster you can get from that reality to your new reality, it's not gonna be any, like, feel any any better, but man you can start making some headway But hopefully he says I'm sorry I'm gonna repent for how I've treated you and these in these kids and I'm ready to go all in on a new marriage We'll be thinking about you guys Music