The Ramsey Show - Be Planning for the Future Before It Catches Up With You

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

💵 Sign-up for EveryDollar today - The simplest way to budget for your life! Dave Ramsey & Ken Coleman answer your questions and discuss: "We are retired but don't have enough saving," "My car payment is $900 a month," Why there's a difference between doing idiotic things and being an idiot, "How do I pay off $79K of debt as a single mom?" "Should I use another job offer as leverage?" "Can I sell my rental without harming the tenant?" Support Our Sponsors: Zander Insurance BetterHelp Churchill Mortgage Next Steps 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET or click here! 🏦 Take Your 3-Minute Money Assessment - Get a personalized money plan! 🍎 Enter the Teacher Appreciation Giveaway 🎟️ It's game on! Get your ticket for Total Money Makeover Weekend.  💼 Find The Work You're Wired To Do 📈 For help with investing, get connected with a SmartVestor Pro.  Listen to more from Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. Ken Coleman, number one best-selling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose and host of The Ken Coleman Show. He talks about your professional growth, including where you work, how you work, and all about career stuff. He's going to be here to help me today answer your questions. The phone number is 888-825-5225.

You jump in and we'll talk. Joy starts Rapid City, South Dakota off. Hi, Joy, how are you? I'm very well, thank you. Good. How can I help? My husband and I are 69 and 70 years old. We retired two and three years ago, but we still work what we call retirement jobs. We just don't have a very big net worth at all, and we don't mind keep working our retirement jobs, but I guess I'm wondering what more can we do? I'll tell you, we have a traditional IRA. We have two Roth IRAs, and we have an annuity. How much is in all of that if you totaled it up? About $140,000, and that's all. $140,000, okay.

Yes, we do not own a home. We did our stupid a few years, 10 years ago, and, yeah, so we do not have a home, and I don't know. I guess I'm just really wanting to see these figures move up. Okay. And obviously you've got Social Security coming in. We do live on Social Security. How much is that a month? That's how much?

Oh, okay. I bring in $1,333, and my husband brings in only about $300 in Social Security because he has a foreign pension. And because of that... Okay, so $1,600, and how much is his foreign pension? Let me see. He brings in, I have it right here, to $3,300 a month, depending on the dollar ratio. Yeah, what the conversion rate is, okay. Correct.

Okay, so you've got $5,000 a month to live on. What does it take you to live? We live on probably, yeah, $4,500, maybe just $4,000 sometimes. Well, you got that much coming in. You got $5,000 coming in. Yes. And then you're working on top of that. Yes. Okay.

So, I mean, the good news is you have a sustainable situation. You're not going to be hungry or the lights aren't going to get cut off, right? That is correct. You're probably not going to spend summers in the Mediterranean, though. No. Okay. We are very carefully saved if we have to take a family trip or something like that. We save.

You don't have a lot of margin, but the good news is you're not hungry. When you started this out, I was afraid you were hungry. Okay, good. No. So what is it you're trying to accomplish that you're not accomplishing now? Let me understand. I just know that $140,000 in retirement is not enough for one person, let alone two. Agreed.

I'd love for you to have a million, 140,000. I know. But you don't. At our ages, we're not going to get there. I got that. That's what I'm saying. So I'd love for you to, but the reality is this is where we are. And so the work that you guys are doing is just adding to your $5,000 a month income

and gives you a little bit of lifestyle bump and the ability to do a few odds and ends without cashing in the nest egg to keep going, correct? That's right. That's right. I don't know. What is the $140,000 invested in? It's in a bunch of different things. It's Roth and traditional and annuity.

How much of it's annuity? $6,800. $6,000 is all. Oh, good. Okay. All right. So most of this. No, no, $68,000.

Oh, $68,000. Oh, crap. Okay. So, all right. The only thing I can tell you is that we might get to – you might reorganize and shuffle the deck on the $140,000 and get it invested in some good mutual funds and get it working a little bit harder. Okay?

But let's say it's earning 10% or let's say it could earn 10%. That's $14,000, and right now it's only earning $5,000. That's $7,000, and right now it's only earning $5,000. That's $7,000 a year. So we're only talking about $500 a month difference, even if you get it working a lot harder. So it's not going to be a massive change in your life if we get the $140,000 invested perfectly, as opposed to the way it is,

because the $68,000 in the annuity probably sucks. It's probably doing poorly. I don't know exactly what you got, but most likely that's a bad product. Uh, some stupid insurance person sold you that instead of a real investment person. So, um, the, um, cause they can't sell real investments. So they act like they're investment people, although they're actually insurance people and they're not licensed and qualified to sell investments. So they sell annuities under the heading of their life insurance license because they're not licensed to sell investments for those of you out there. Okay. Now, I mean,

it's not just me calling them stupid, although that does completely apply to that situation. So, all right. So here's what I want you to do. Go to ramseysolutions.com and click on our Smart Investor Pro and sit down with them. And Ken, that's going to help because at least then you'll know what you've got is just working as hard as it can. Yeah. And, you know, we sit in this situation, practically speaking, Joy, this is about stacking cash. You're just going to have to stack cash. The investment opportunity is just short. Maybe their retirement jobs could be better.

Maybe they can make more money at their retirement jobs. I think so. You know, here's where I go. My mind goes to, you know, are there Walmarts? Maybe their retirement jobs could be better. Maybe they can make more money at their retirement jobs. I think so. Here's where I go. My mind goes to, are there Walmarts? That's what I call a retirement job. Instead, I would like to see them be self-employed and go make like $50,000. Because I got to tell you, man, if I was broke, I'm entrepreneurial enough,

I would just start something even if I'm 69. I was thinking that, although I would say low risk. Let's do some low capital. We're not buying, we're not putting out the $140 to open a business. But I mean, let's get some kind of something. Let's say he's got a trade skill, right? So if he has a trade skill at 70, now my father-in-law, I'll give you a real example, is 74. Very healthy though. But he is a former custom home builder and he's retired. And he is working more than he could possibly want to work, but he's making such good money doing small renovations, fixing a kitchen here, doing a bathroom here in Williamson County

where we've got plenty of money and people have got time and they can spend it. And so if I had a trade skill at that age, I would absolutely be doing that instead of working for a Walmart. Because to your point, you're going to get a premium rate for your time. We're talking about an hourly rate. Maximize what you can make. And stack cash at this point. And don't just say, well, retirement job means awful.

I agree. Minimum wage. I agree. If you have a skill at this point, listen, in the economy. Or start something. That's what I mean. By starting something off of a skill. Oh, I see.

In my father-in-law's case, he started his own home renovation business, and he's not doing full rebuilds, but he's doing a lot of stuff. And he's not swinging a hammer. No, he's got a crew. He's subbing it, yeah. He's still being a GC in that sense. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

That's the way you do it. So there's a lot of stuff. So, Joy, let's do two things. One is, what can we do to get your income up better quote retirement jobs, unquote, and get with a smart investor pro and let's see how, if they can help you get that 140 working a lot harder, those two things together. And you got to stay on a tight budget and I think you're going to be okay. But I don't think there's going to be anything here that adds a million dollars to this issue.

This is the Ramsey Show. One of the questions I get all the time is, which life insurance company should I use for my term life policy? A valid question since there are hundreds of companies out there with rates all over the place and riders and add-ons that are simply a waste of money. You need to get this done and make the right decision. That's why the only company I use and have recommended for over 25 years is Zander Insurance. Zander is a broker who shops the top term life companies for you

and finds the best rates available from the only plans I recommend. They also save you time whether you want to work online, over the phone, or via text. Their team will cater to your needs and help you make the right decision. This is an absolute necessity and Zander has made the process easy and convenient. Call them at 800-356-4282 or visit zander.com for instant online quotes. Ken Coleman Ramsey, personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. So, those of you that are not as old as Ken and me,

you're not old like us. You're youngsters and you're out there watching us on the YouTubes and all that kind of stuff, right? I want you to go back and listen to that last call. So if you're 27 instead of 67, here's what I can tell you. If you save $100 a month from age 25 to age 65 in a series of decent growth stock mutual funds that perform as the market has performed for the past 100 plus years. If they have normal historic values from age 25 to age 65, $100 a month is $1,176,000 in your retirement.

And that way, you're not in the same situation that sweet lady was in. That's exactly right. And so you're not having to worry about your, in air quotes, retirement job. And so I have another friend, Ken, who's way on the other end of the spectrum and his father-in-law is their age or a little bit older than them he's uh in the in approaching 80 and he was a um he became um he's probably legitimately a billionaire. Wow. And starting from nothing, he was a poor kid. He grew up poor.

And his goal was to give it all away before he died to ministries around the world. And my friend is married into that family and sits on the family, sits on the board with the rest of the family as they're giving this money away the old man is still alive and he has just about succeeded giving it all away wow i need to get in touch with him pretty quick that's how do you get on this list i just came up with an idea for a non-profit ministry i know i got a ministry idea right now it's not your car yeah um it's not the next car you want. That's right. I mean, you know, that's beautiful. These are all ends of the spectrum here.

Yeah, that's beautiful. A hundred dollars a month is a million dollars. Living on Social Security and a retirement job are trying your best before you die to give away a billion. Yeah, that's amazing. These are three ends of the spectrum. I mean, two in the middle and two ends of the spectrum. So these are the things, if you're a youngster out there, you could be thinking about that, I'm saying. There's a lady out on the front row of the lobby that's just trying to wrap her brain around giving away a billion dollars.

Man, that's a lot of money, isn't it? That's a thousand million. That means you could take a thousand different ministries and give them a million dollars. That's amazing. And they've done more than that because it's continued to grow through the years oh i'm sure it's not just been one time it wasn't a one-time thing they've been systematically for 30 years giving it away you know that puts a real shine on give like no one else yeah like you've been saying for a long time that's pretty wild and this guy was not a trust fund i mean he started

from nothing started from nothing yeah andrew is in min Started from nothing. Yeah. Andrew is in Minneapolis. Hi, Andrew. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Better. Good. How can we help? Almost answered it right.

It's all good. It happens. It's like automatic of 30 years. He's only said it two billion times. You've got that experience. It's all good. Yeah. You've got that experience. It's all good. Um, yeah. So my question, uh, is basically, um, if you were trying to start over, um, I had a small business of mine wasn't technically

legitimate, but I tried, uh, when I was about 19, uh, and it fell through and then a whole lot of life came apart for a few years and I'm, uh, getting myself back together. I'm in a corporate job now as a mechanic and I wanted to open my own restoration shop and originally it was actually supposed to be a non-profit as well. So my question to you is kind of how... It actually was, that's why I closed. Well, yeah, you're not wrong. So yeah, my question to you is what might restarting that look like, or how would you do it debt-free starting at 28 years old? So fixing cars just for everyday people? Ideally, no. I can, but anymore, that's getting into just changing parts.

So describe what you want to do. You want to do frame-up restros on cool cars? Frame-up restorations or customs where I'm actually changing things and turning them into something better than what they were. Turn them into rods. How much equipment would you need if you were going to start today? Do you have the equipment, or could you rent it as a part of the job? Could you rent the rest?

I have some of it. Right. Potentially. So the biggest obstacle that I don't have is a space to do it in um all right could you if i said that you had to define space in the next week to be able to do a restoration for dave could you find the space if i made you answer it right now you don't know i bet you could find a space don't Don't you think if you really had to? It's a freaking garage.

Yeah. Well, I have a small garage, but I've had a lot of obstacles come up with that. My landlord's not letting me upgrade any electrical. I think you're missing the point. You're coming up with all the reasons why you can't find space. Say again? How much do you make? I'm around 70, but I have a lot of debt on a, I have a lot of just student debt, nothing else that I've been working on for a while

now. Okay. And do you have anybody that might be your first customer in mind? I've tried one or two once I actually give them a proper cost, they tend to step away. I haven't found the right people yet. So the answer is no? Yeah. Okay. We don't go rent a garage when we're renting a house and start this, but I think you've – how much debt do you have?

I've cut it all the way from $100 grand down to about 30 in the course of three or four years. Way to go. All right. I think if you finish that up and you talk about renting a garage for four or 500 bucks a month somewhere, because location does not matter other than they can't steal your tools every night. Yep.

But if you can lock it up that's all that matters right and so um it looks you know so cheap and and and you know simultaneously while i'm trying to find that and i want to rent it an old gas station or something like that that well they don't even make those anymore um but the uh um in any kind of a thing that had a bay in it. But before I actually start writing checks for that, I actually want some customers, doesn't he, Ken? Yeah, you got to get it started. And if I'm you, okay, this is how we answer these questions. If I'm you, I'm now starting to stick my nose back in the industry,

local guys that are doing cars. Here's what I know. I know for a fact in just about every city in America where you want to get a car restored, there's a long line and you got to get on the list. And the reason that is, is because there's just not enough hands to do the work, which tells me that there are several shops around you, Andrew, that if we looked hard enough, if you and I got in the car today and drove around, I think I could get you a freelance job before the day was over. And so I'd start there.

I'd start freelancing, just kind of, hey, you need me for 10, 15 hours a week. I got a day job. On the side. On the side. I got a day job. Nights and weekends. Nights and weekends. And that's going to help you pay this debt off.

So we got two things. We got two birds with one stone here. Extra money to pay down the 30 grand quick. I really believe you could do that within a year if you really got hustling all right and then the second thing is i'm back in the industry or still and i and i got i'm meeting people i'm getting paid to get reconnected in the industry and that's when i start finding out about more people well i can't take this job but we would never take this job because it's too small. But for you, a $10,000 job is great. And you'll jump on that and you do it on the side. So I

would build the business up on the side, rent the equipment, do not pay cash for any equipment, rent anything you need as a part of the job itself. The big stuff. That's right. The big stuff. And I think I would just slowly start to stack cash. And then here's what I tell everybody. How do we go from day job to that side job being the dream job? In your case, if you're making 70 grand, I want to have 70 grand in the bank. Ideally, I'd want 12 months. You could go as low as six months of that, which is 35 before I ever walked away from the day job. And that's just me playing it safe because this is why, Dave, I'd hate for somebody to have this massive pressure to feed themselves right away. I want some cushion there so that you can really focus on doing the job and growing the business.

This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This is the season for Halloween. It's October. We're wearing costumes and we're wearing masks. If you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. And while you're thinking about it, I want you to be honest. A lot of us hide ourselves. We hide our true selves behind costumes and masks all the time. We do this at work. We do this around our friends. We do this around our families. We even do this when we look at ourselves in the mirror. I know because I've been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Deloney. Well, I don't know when you happen to be listening to this, but we're going to do something we don't usually do, and that's tell you the date. The date of this particular broadcast that you are hearing is april the 15th it's the day that my net worth goes down because my government steals my money you need to pay your fair share well you should then and shut

up 49 of americans don't pay pay zero federal income tax so don't talk to me about fair share okay i got your fair share it's not very fair not fair at all i can't breathe anyway so i i do a lot of whining and crying and cussing and and you know beat on people whose it's not their fault just for the fun of it this time of year just because i'm generally in a bad mood when i sign these returns and um did you see your good buddy mark cuban went public with the his tax amount i know you're not on the twitter much anymore i'm not it's not good for blood pressure but what did how much did mark pay 288 280 million dollars and he was putting it out there that's how much he paid in taxes yeah then he revised it this morning and said showed the note from his accountant it was actually 278 and he was espousing the importance of paying your taxes as though we have an option but it was a little

political move but nonetheless that's not the point he put it out there that's what his tax burden is saying he liked that he said i'm happy to pay my share you know what he could just send them some more that's what pay mine if you want if you want to send them some more you can since you're dadgum happy mark yeah communist there you go oh my gosh i wanted your hot take on it and boy did you deliver thank you dave i love you i love you mark but that was stupid uh i got some friends that do stupid stuff we've all done it. No one's immune. Really excited to tell us all how much you paid. Okay, James, so you found somebody else that's crying, right?

All right, so this is going around the internets. Where's all your money gone, buddy? Tax it. Nine, ten, eleven. Playing Monopoly. It's okay. It's part of the game. No, it, eleven. Playing Monopoly. Who likes my houses? But it's okay. It's part of the game. No, it's not.

It's not fun. It's not fun to what? It's the worst part of the game. Oh, it's what? To act it. I think the kids are on to something. Couldn't agree more. I got a little verklempt in the middle of that

I'm thinking Monopoly's got I got a tear in my eye watching Monopoly too it's just like oh man oh well uh just to remind you guys if you're getting a tax refund it is not time to celebrate uh because a tax refund simply means you paid in too much and they gave you your money back without any interest that would not be something to celebrate it's an interest-free savings account with a freaking federal government so you didn't do something right if you got a tax refund you did something wrong because you had too much taken out of your check and then they send it back to you santa claus is not in charge of the irs He did not send the money. I know him. He doesn't go anywhere near Washington, D.C.

Those people are all on the naughty list. So that's how this works, boys and girls. You don't get a refund unless you pay in too much. Let that sink in a second. All right, so now, if you haven't done your taxes, you've got to get them done right now, of course, because they're due by midnight. So there's two ways to do it at ramsey we've got ramsey smart tax software which is very inexpensive if you have a simple return don't go to something like turbo tax or those guys

because really all they're doing is actually trying to sell you debt they put you on the credit card list they put you on their home equity loan list they just start hammering your butt to put you in debt and the add-on fees will get you. So Ramsey Tax, Smart Tax, is just a very simple, very inexpensive way. Boom, you file it. Like if you've got a 1040 Easy, you can do it in a few minutes with this, and it's very, very accurate, very well done, very well built out. And if you've got a complicated return, go to RamseySolutions.com slash tax, and you can see our tax-endorsed local providers,

and you can get a pro to do your return for you that we have done the due diligence on, and God knows it's complicated. So you've got to have somebody who knows what they're doing if you have a complicated return. So you can get an ELP, and, you know, you're going to pay a professional to do that, and if you don't have a complicated return, just use the Ramsey SmartTech software. Both of them are real easy to do that and um and if you don't have a complicated return just use the ramsey smart tax software it's both of them are real easy to do um those people that are members of ramsey trusted or i'm sorry of um ramsey plus they're a financial peace university and all that stuff they get ramsey smart tax free and so for a quick easy return so that's just one

of the benefits of being in that thing henry's in fort lauderdale hi henry welcome to the ramsey show hi how you doing dave better than i deserve what's up um so my question is um i did something very stupid last year um i went ahead and got a tesla at 13 percent uh my payments are 903 dollars a month um and i just we my wife and i i didn't listen to my wife and i did whatever i wanted to do so now i'm stuck in this mess man that's like four dumb things tesla 13 percent nine hundred dollars didn't listen to my wife that's four dumb things yeah so um so my question is um we were thinking about getting a personal loan to pay the negative equity because I owe $43,000 on the car, but it's only worth about $19,000 to $20,000. When did you buy it?

Last year, around March. I wasn't aware they were depreciating that bad. I make fun of them all the time, but that's a lot. Did you roll negative equity into the deal? About $5,000. Okay. Where are you getting your number on what it's worth now? That sounds very low. KB, Webster KBB. Yeah. Private sale or trade-in? Trade-in. And it's because I use my car for work, so I'm putting a lot of miles every single day. How many miles did you put on it in a

year honey uh about 30 000 okay it's up it's at 65 000 right now yeah but trade-in is the lowest value you can get yeah i mean private sale but still it's not going to be like five or six thousand higher probably so you can get 25 26 for sale, and you owe 48? 43,000. 43. Yeah. And we have some money saved up. How much? About 15,000.

15? Yes. Okay. Well, I'll cover it, won't I? Well, I'm down, what is it, 25,000 negative. That's if you try it. No, you're 23. Not, not, I'm not going with a 19.

I'm going with like a 26 private sale and you owe 43. That's not, that's, um, that's more than 15. It's 18. So yeah, but you still got scratch. What's your household income? Uh, 80,000. Okay. Yeah.

I would use the majority of the savings, and I would sell at private sale, and I wouldn't panic. Sell it for, I mean, you can find somebody who loves those things. And, you know, get a private sale number for it, not a trade-in number. And then you may have to take out a small personal loan, $4,000 or $5,000 it sounds like. And then you've also got to figure out how to get a hoopty that you can drive as your penalty. What were you driving before this? I was driving a Toyota hatchback.

My wife told me to stay with it. I didn't listen. How old was it? What was it worth? It was about $25,000. Where did that go? I traded it in for the Tesla. Did you owe money on it?

And I rolled 5,000 negative equity on it. Okay, that's right. You did say negative equity. Okay, all right. Yes. Okay. All right. So have you had enough fun with these cars that you can't afford?

No, I have not. I mean, buy something cheap, dude, and get your butt straightened out, and then save up and become wealthy, and then get you a nice car. These things are wearing you out. $5,000 here, $10,000, $15,000 here. It's starting to turn into some money that you're losing. Yes, I agree. Yeah.

I'm going to give you two words you should practice over the next, I think, year and say it a lot, especially in light of this. Yes, I agree. Yeah. I'm going to give you two words you should practice over the next, I think, year and say it a lot, especially in light of this. Yes, dear. I agree. Or you could substitute sweetheart if that works better. Yes, dear. I agree, yes. That's all I got for you.

Oh, I got three. Don't save the planet or whatever. Four, whatever that is. Yeah. Oh, gosh. 13. Don't save the planet or whatever. Four. Whatever that is. Yeah. Oh, gosh. 13% on a battery. You're killing me. I wish George was here.

I wish Rachel was here to make fun of. Cut this clip up and send it to George and Rachel. They're both Tesla drivers, so we just love making fun of them just because it's fun. Oh, man, I'm so sorry you got yourself into this, but yeah, you figured it out. There's four things you don't do. $900 car payments, 13%, Teslas, and listen to your wife. These are four things you don't do. This is the Ramsey Show.

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Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host at 888-825-5225. You know, we had a lot of fun at that last caller's expense. He was being kind to us let us do that but um but we also answered his question in the process i think it's probably good for take a second and just um talk about for our audience um the we were joking about listening to

your wife but talk about the the principle that's involved here so when i went broke uh 35 years ago and lost everything we had owned i was buying and selling real estate was doing flip this house before chip and joanna were born and so um and i i've owned pieces of real estate that to this day we're driving around nashville'll tell Sharon, I'll say, you know, we own that house. She's like, never knew it. I was doing deals and my wife had, I wasn't hiding it from her. I just didn't ask. I was just running my business doing deals and she's with babies at home

and we just didn't talk about it. I was just doing it. And she didn't ask about the structure of the business and I was doing whatever I wanted to do because I was a genius. Not. And after we went broke, I started I was a baby Christian, just just met God. And I started finding out that the Bible had principles of how to handle money. And they all almost every one of them.

They're not really mystical. They have they're all basically common sense things like borrow or slave to the lender, so stay out of debt. Don't build a tower without first counting the cost, so do a budget. Live on less than you make because a foolish man devours all he has. So there's scripture that says live on less than you make, stay out of debt, save money. And the one of them I found is, well, i can't call anyway who can find oh it's proper who can find a virtuous wife for

her worth is far above rubies the heart of her husband safely trusts her and he will have no lack of gain and i went wow okay there's a couple elements i like here one is um no lack of gain i like that plan um and i can safely trust my wife and um and she is virtuous now part of being virtuous is is you don't take that particular bible scripture and decide you're the holy spirit um wives and so um you know that you're you're not the holy spirit you're and so virtuous is i might be wrong virtuous is i've got an idea i've got an opinion in my wife's case she's from the hills of east tennessee she gets a feeling and so it's a seven-syllable word and it's a failingelan. And if she gets a Phelan about something and I go against that, it costs me a minimum of 10 grand every time I do it because

her Phelan is never off. It's just, it's spooky. Now she has a degree in child development, home ec, but she has insight into multimmillion dollar business deals based on this failing yeah and so proverbs 31 and and so um you know and and those of us have been married i've been married 43 years so those have been married a while we know that and is she perfect no she's not perfect and sometimes she's just straight up wrong but um but but but she's virtuous about it i mean she very seldom is a butt about it and um and so i learned from that to never again make major financial decisions without having not just her permission but her alignment and agreement that there was no bad failing about it and so consequently now you know we're i mean our net worth has returned hundreds of times over uh since then all those years later

i mean these buildings were sitting in are worth five or six hundred million dollars and they're paid for so i mean you can blame that on her right so uh the point is is there's a high correlation between people who work together in their marriages and have a respect for each other's talents, insights and abilities and make major decisions together, not in spite of each other. Larry Burkett used to say, you know, most people that get married are different. One's a spender, one's a saver, one's a nerd, one's a free spirit right and uh so opposites attract and if one of you know and you know uh otherwise one of you is not necessary if you marry somebody just like you one of you is not necessary so um you know you need to be it's good that you have different insurance wired completely different stacy's wired completely different from y'all and i've watched y'all use the same principle it's a financial principle it's a marriage principle it's a spiritual principle no lack of gain to be on

the same page on major problem major deals with your money yeah well and this is also beyond just the spouse part the spouse represents someone who is giving you counsel bible is clear many times on the wisdom of counsel. In other words, getting multiple pieces of feedback. But I want to just back up Sharon's feeling for a second. So scientists not too long ago studied, Dave, grandmaster chess players. They put heart monitors on the world's greatest chess players, and here's what they found. And every time that one of those grandmaster chess players made an incorrect move that ended up costing them deeply in the match the heart rate spiked and all that means this here was the

direct takeaway that the feeling the gut feeling he's talking about that sharon has it's not some spooky east tennessee talent what it is is that it's actually the brain sending a signal to the body, this is a bad decision. And so I say all that to say, if you've got a bad gut feeling, what they determined from that study was had those chess players listened to their body, they would have said something logical up here is saying don't do this, and they overrided it, and they overthought their way through it. Trust the feeling is the point. Yeah, yeah. And that slows you down. You don overthought their way through it. Trust the feeling is the point. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that slows you down. You don't impulse.

That's it. And, you know, you should have peace. That's right. There ought to be a sense of peace in the air before you make a major move. That's right. Not a sense of angst. That's right. And if there's angst, it could be because it's a bad move or it could be because you haven't studied it hard enough.

That's correct. And you don't understand. So, for instance, if you're doing an investment you've never done before, it doesn't because it's a bad move, or it could be because you haven't studied it hard enough. That's correct. And you don't understand. So, for instance, if you're doing an investment you've never done before, it doesn't mean the investment is bad if your heart rate's spiking. It means you don't know enough about it to do it yet. You need to get comfortable with your knowledge base to be able to buy that. Same thing with buying the next house, right? And here, I want you to comment on this, Dave.

How many times have we all done something and go, I knew better? That's exactly right. You look back in the rearview mirror you know you're like hindsight hindsight's 2020 baby but here's what i want you to weigh in on dave let's say that your spouse doesn't feel good about it but you've actually done your homework and you know that it's actually not a silly decision but they still don't feel that way, it's still important to hear them and then do a better job of casting vision or walking them through their fear. So there's a flip side to this, too, that it's relational, too.

Well, I mean, sometimes it's I got to unpack and go, okay, here's the way this works. And she goes, it doesn't feel right. Well, that, okay, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's that thing, right? It could mean she doesn't understand it. That's right. right i can our same thing back back at me i mean she says i think we ought to do this because and i go okay well i need to hear the because because right now i don't want to do it right right and so i need to hear a really good because you're going to bring it and and so but there's a what happens is you end up with a long marriage that is good the data back set up high quality marriage your

health is improved and your wealth is improved yeah that's what getting aligned and so when we say stuff like okay you ought to be in one checking account uh couples ought to combine their finances and not act like roommates uh and then all you people go bananas because you were raised in a feminist world uh where everybody has to be independent. Listen, if you want to be independent, don't get married. That's a great point. Because it'll screw up that whole independence thing. I'm just saying.

I don't even know what that is anymore. It's like, I mean, you need to learn to work. If you can't play well with others, it's like, wow, I need to be independent. Good. Just head your butt over there and do it somewhere else. If i need to be independent but good just head your butt over there and do it somewhere else if you want to be independent the data says you will be not as healthy and not as wealthy that's going to freak some tiktokers out but go research it on the google that's not my opinion it's good to mess with tiktok you got to keep tiktok on its toes so yeah that but there's

data and tons of research and spiritual counsel and wisdom from thousands of years behind this concept. And so we can all joke around and go, well, you shouldn't listen to your wife. But that's almost like, you know, he should be henpecked and do whatever the woman says because he's scared of his wife. That's not what we're saying. No. We're saying a healthy relationship respects the other person's input. We work our way through the differences. And until we do, we don't make the move. And you wouldn't have bought a Tesla at 13% interest.

Oof. Rolling negative equity into it and ending up with a $900 car payment making $80,000 because there's no amount of logical analysis that's going to make that smart. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose, host of The Ken Coleman Show.

He's my co-host today. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. Elizabeth is in El Paso, Texas. Hi, Elizabeth. How are you? Hello, good. How's everybody doing? Better than we deserve. what's up in your world good good uh my question is just wondering if i should go back to work i'm currently a stay-at-home mom and just to try to help with the financial burden uh with our household right now what's

your husband make he makes about 73 um 70 percent of that being commissioned, so it does fluctuate. What's he do? He works at T-Mobile. He's a sales rep. Okay. How many kiddos you got? Two girls, two and four. Okay.

And what would you be doing if you went back to work? I came from the corporate world working in wireless. Before I left, I made about $110,000. It is very demanding on your time, so I was thinking about doing something like a teaching job at a Christian school that would allow me to also have my daughters attend a Christian school and kind of like have my kids and eat it too, I guess. Well, that's where I was going to go is how much is your child care situation going to

be? Have you run the numbers on what that would take? And I'm assuming that they have a preschool program where they could go free or heavily discounted. Is that the truth? Yeah. The child care here isn't too expensive for two kids. It could run about $800 to $900 a month.

And that's at that school? No, that's just like a little kind of daycare but at the school it would be it would be discounted um anywhere from 50 to 60 percent off and that would be about uh 500 a child how much would you make hold on yeah that's not you said 900 before now you said 500 a child after the discount no no no with the it's 500 with no discount but at a daycare it would be 800 for both yes okay so the daycare is cheaper than the school after the discount after the discount the school will be cheaper oh 500 total not per kid right okay i'm sorry i'm gonna i was in the same boat okay anyway so 500 or 900 but how much would you make teaching

you know that's going to vary from 40 to 60 thousand dollars um i don't have teaching so you say 400 on daycare but you are making 50 dollars less than if i were to go back to something in my career yeah so if you're gonna go back to work go back to work i mean fifty thousand i wouldn't trade four hundred dollars worth of daycare for 50 grand right what do you guys what do you need more income for give us the big picture why are you feeling this picture is we moved to El Paso. We bought a house. Obviously, we paid off a little bit more than we can chew. My husband's car broke down. He ended up getting a car, so we had an additional $400 payment. I have a $300 payment,

and then on top of that, our escrow was short $400 a month. So now we're short $400 a month. How much is your house payment? It was 2200 and it went up to 2500 okay we have 32k in savings how much do you owe on your cars a total of 41k and 700 a month to both cars yes yeah yeah okay you did buy out bite off more than you can chew on the house so unless your income is going to go up you need to sell your house okay okay yeah either your income goes up or you need to sell it because you it's why you can't breathe you you're quickly identified it i mean you can sell both cars sell the house and get you a couple hoopties

and a cheaper rent and you have a great life there's nothing wrong with that either by the way if that's what you choose to do but basically to keep that house in those cars you're going to put your kids in daycare that's your choice and either one is a fine choice it's just you need to make the choice that loud y'all need to say that's what we did And either one is a fine choice. It's just you need to make the choice out loud. You don't need to say, that's what we did. Because you should be making $10,000 a month take-home pay to take that house payment. Right.

And you're not even close to that. Yeah, you're in deep. So I'm okay. The other possibility, of course, is your husband realigns his career and gets his income up 50K. I don't really care where it comes from, but your income is going to need to go up pretty dramatically or you're going to need to sell the house.

And you're already feeling that. That's not me saying that. The math is saying that. Why'd you chuckle when dave threw out that as an option is that just such an emotional out of left field selling the house you can't even process it yep that's what i thought how long you been in that house um it's been about six months yeah see the last time your life was good was before you bought the house pretty much yeah and if you trace your steps back to the last time your life was good then it tells you where you went where you turned left and you turned left

so yeah um so i i know plenty of people uh including dave and sharon ramsey who took on uh a lower lifestyle because it mattered to us that she was at home with the kids and it's what she wanted to do but it means a different car and a different house in order to do that until the income comes up to justify otherwise and so we stayed in a super conservative situation after our bankruptcy losing everything and until my income came up then we could afford to do that because uh she could have gone back to work right after the bankruptcy and it would have made sense actually um but it was a choice that we made and we said okay the trade-off is a better house and better cars um now eventually we'll get them anyway because my income will come

up and his income will come up but but now i want to trade that for uh time at home with the babies she said i don't want to leave i don't want i let's do anything where i don't have to leave home now if she had said i you know uh like if she had said like rachel cruz i want to be in the marketplace rachel's in you know in phoenix doing a book signing so rachel's out there professional lady speaking writing doing this show um and has um you know has folks help with her children as a result and so uh she chose that though and so you need to choose this because this is choosing you is the problem the the stress chose you the last time because y'all just thought there was no implication i can just buy whatever house i want like you're in congress or something you spend whatever you want and so you got to go

back now to tonight so tonight y'all need to sit down talk about it elizabeth and say all right do we keep the house or do i go back to work or what can we do to get your income to 120 from 70 and that probably means you're not working t-mobile store probably means you're doing something else so which of these three things are we going to do? Because sitting where we are is not going to work mathematically. The math is screaming at you. Not Dave and Ken, the math. This is The Ramsey Show. It's Financial Literacy Month nationally,

and this month we're celebrating teachers. The teachers of America do such a good job. They work hard. We all know a teacher that made a big difference in our lives, and probably more than one. It's weird that 40, 50 years later, I can remember them like it was yesterday. The good ones, the ones that really poured into the kids. Everybody can name their teacher, or six or seven of them I can name, that made a huge difference.

And here at Ramsey, we want to say thank you for all you do with our Teacher Appreciation Giveaway sponsored by Ramsey Education. One teacher will win a $5,000 vacation, plus two additional teachers are going to win a $3,000 vacation to wherever they choose. Completely free, no purchase is necessary. For more info, send teachers and teachers go to ramsaysolutions.com slash teacher and enter today for your chance to win one of those vacations if you're a teacher.

Up next is James in Richmond, Virginia. Hi, James. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How you guys doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Oh, you're my wife. Okay, Joc the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How you guys doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Oh, me and my wife.

Okay, Jocelyn and my wife. We're 45. She's 42. We've been stuck, I guess, and we're trying to figure out what's going on. I've been a business owner for 18 years. Not a very good one, apparently. Before that, I was in retail. She just retired medically from the Navy two and a half years ago.

Before she retired and I was in business, we were doing okay. We bought a house, you know, decent interest rate on it back when it was a few years ago with a VA loan and something we could afford. It was $19.60 a month and we were making $85,000 to $10,000 a month with my restoration company, Water Damage, and her and Amy. And she got discharged, and the doctor paid down to like $2,000 a month. And then work dries up, and we've been stuck now for a year and a half. And it seems like every time we start to build, we were on step three for a while,

and then all of a sudden something big happens and crashes us, and now we're eight months pregnant and due next month and can't figure out what we've got to do. Congratulations. Thank you. On the baby. Yes, not on the rest of the stupid baby. Yeah, yeah.

So what was the nature of her medical discharge? She had a lot of things. She got almost 90% when they finished with her, with migraines, stress fractures, different tendonitis, and some other things. They got her all on that. How's she doing with the baby then? She's doing great with the baby. It was unexpected. That was completely unexpected.

But a happy surprise to us last October. I'm sorry when we found out. But yes, baby's doing great. We don't know what it is yet. We're not going to find out. So your crisis, it sounds like, more than anything,

is income. Yeah, our crisis, and we don't know what we want to do. I've applied for jobs recently. I never haven't done that in 15 years, but we're applying for jobs, yes, and we're down to the point now where we can't even afford to buy our lead service to get more jobs to come in for where we're at. And we're in $30,000 in credit card debt over the last two years trying to just make ends meet. We're trying to get rid of them.

We had them snowballed, and she had almost $20,000 in the trade-off. And then we just got to where food was, and we couldn't even eat. Yeah, we need to get some income fast. Real quick, give me a couple snapshots here. What's your combined income right now? I think I might have made $40,000 total with us last year, and she made her $24,000 a month. We might have made $66,000.

We got an 18-year-old going to college next year. All right, let's reverse engineer this. Do you have a good grasp of your budget to know what's a number, combined or you, that would give us a lot of room or at least a decent amount of margin to start attacking this debt? What's that number? Okay. Is it $80,000? Is it $90,000?

No. What is it? No. Okay, we have a house, which I guess that's debt too. So we owe 360 on it. We bought it three years ago at 383, 360 on it. It's worth 425 now. We've got two vehicles that we pay for. One is a truck that we bought from my restoration company that we're not even affording. All right. Let me jump in here. Let me try to fast forward this. What is the number one skill you have? Water damage restoration, mold remediation. Great, okay. And with that skill,

you've got some other handy skills, my guess is as well, correct? Not just the knowledge of that function, but you've got some other skills around being handy, I'm wondering? Yes. I can't take a lot of that in Virginia because of licensing, registration, regulations, and all that kind of stuff. So I have to be very particular what I do take aside jobs. Okay. Tell me what you could do today. I know Virginia well. What could you do if I hooked you up with a couple of builders and stuff like that? What could you do without the licensing stuff? Just real work. Water, mold, fire, smoke, crime scene cleanup, disaster recovery. Okay, what else? Tearing down buildings.

I looked at a pressure washing job a few days ago for a large private school. It's a $17,000 bid. We'll see if they go with it. So we – but we're – Hold on a second. Can you swing a hammer? Can you do basic carpentry? Yes.

Okay, let me just tell you this right now. I want to give you a snapshot. We have a shortage of carpenters in this country. A shortage of carpenters. It's all over the news. You can look it up if you think I'm just making this up. I'm not. And let me tell you something.

You need to be out working, working, working. So the mold remediation, I got a friend of mine who owns a company in that space, the water remediation space. They're making money hand over fist. You know what he tells me? We should be, but I keep running out of money. No, listen to me. You don't need to buy leads.

It's not you. You need to go work for somebody. You need to buy leads. You don't need to buy leads. Stop buying leads. Good God. Listen, I think right now you need to figure out how to run the business later i think you need to go work for somebody who's crushing it you need a good

hourly rate if you're making 25 to 30 bucks an hour that would be a raise for you a big raise am i right i just went to an interview last week with bms cat for the director of operations position that was a hundred and something. Yeah. Hello. Good job. Keep doing that. But my point is, let's not wait for it. I'm putting applications and I'm putting them in every day. I know.

But James, James, if you and I weren't hanging out in Richmond, Virginia right now, and I used to live there, I know where I'm talking about. And I know where I would get in a truck with you and say, James, come on, we're going to go and I'm going to be your agent. We're going to walk on job sites and we're going to introduce ourselves. This is a serious, serious, serious situation that you are in. You got a baby on the way. You're upside down. You got the waters right under your nose.

You need to go out and work. And we're talking $25, $30 an hour, anything I can get. I'm going to go work for somebody in remediation who needs an extra set of hands. I'm not going to work for myself because I haven't figured out how to do that part well yet. I'm not knocking you, but I just want you to get some air back. I think you can go make $100 to $120 doing something in these areas. I do, too. Running a crew for somebody that's crushing it right now.

And there are people out there crushing it. Here's the thing. You're spending a lot of your time beating James up, and you need to let old James up. He's not that bad a guy. That's right. You need to let him up. You've been beating the crap out of him on this call the whole time because you're getting ready to be a dad, and it's scary,

and you feel normal people feeling up. I remember when we lost everything i felt like i was an idiot because i had done some idiotic things and i discovered there's a difference between doing some idiotic things and being an idiot and so uh you know so you need to give my friend james a break he's a good guy he's getting ready to be a dad he's's thrilled. He's happy. He knows how to do a lot of things and with a smile and a work ethic and I'll show up on time or early leave late, not early. Uh, you hire me, you're going to get the best guy on the planet cause I'm a guy with a brand new baby and I need to feed them. And I'm going to take care of you cause you're taking care of me. Man, I got to tell you, in the world we live in today, that's a big plus.

You're very marketable. So we're going to send you both of Ken's books, The Proximity Principle and Paycheck to Purpose. And I want you to go to KenColeman.com right now and for free start looking at all the different forms and processes Ken has on there about getting a position. And it's all about face-to-face contact. It's not about filling out applications on the Internet. That's useless. It's a complete waste of time.

Nobody looks at that crap. You know, you get eyeball-to-eyeball with the dude making the decision. He'll hire you if you'll start liking you a little bit better this i like you y'all too this is the ramsey show ken coleman ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of ramsey solutions on the debt free stage mason and Mason and Chelsea are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Good.

How are you? Better than we deserve. Where are you from? We are from about an hour south of Montgomery, Alabama. Oh, okay. L.A., lower Alabama. That's right. I like it.

Good for you. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you guys paid off? We paid off $160,000 in about 36 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? We started out at about $110,000 and then we ended around $140,000. Excellent. What do you guys do for a living? I'm a math teacher. And I'm a manager over a water authority. Okay. Did y'all sell some stuff? That's a lot in 36 months.

I sold my Jeep and my wake boat during this time. Whoa. So we sold some things. What did those two things bring? It wasn't too much. Probably about 15 between both of them. And we had a little money saved up from before that we had put towards it. Probably about 30 or 40, probably.

Okay. So of the 160, almost 60 of it went out the door that way yes then you knock off 100 about 35 000 a year for three years yes very good that that works good for y'all y'all been careful you got fired up didn't you yes so what kind of debt was the 160 it was our house you paid off your house you got rid of the cheap and the wakeboard boat to pay off the house. How old are you two weirdos? I just turned 28. And I just turned 29.

And you have a paid for house. Yes, sir. Y'all are whack. I love it. What's this house worth? Probably around $330, something like that. I love it. And you're not even 30 years old and a paid for house.

How are you doing on the nest egg? How's your savings going? We're getting there. we're slowly but surely but we're putting towards it yes good for you well done guys thank you congratulations how long y'all been married we have been married next month will be seven years okay so about halfway through the marriage ding ding ding something happened and you plug into this Ramsey stuff tell us the story how'd you find us and what happened well when I turned 18 I was working in the oil field offshore and it's the first time I was making money and uh he was going out the door as fast as coming in and I just did a google search and I found you guys we've been plugged in ever since and about three years ago we you know we built our house and then we just followed the principles and then

we just wanted to pay it down as soon as we could we got we had two little boys in the three years ago we you know we built our house and then we just followed the principles and then we just wanted to pay it down as soon as we could we got we had two little boys in the three years too so we had some you know some reasons to do wow very cool good for y'all well done so two babies paid for house and everything was paid for before that you just got rid of some of it because you wanted the house paid off more than you wanted the stuff. Yes, sir. That's right. Okay. And the savings too. So extra savings. Way to go, y'all. Way to go. Yeah. I've got to ask because there's an emotional connection to these baby steps. I mean, once you get to a place, you've heard Dave say you get sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sometimes it's different emotion, but I got to know what was the range of emotions you went through when you sold a Jeep and a wake boat all All for the purposes of paying the mortgage off.

Well, I tell you, Chelsea set a hard goal of the end of last year to be done with it. And I said it'd be the end of this year. And she said, well, we can get it done the end of last year. And we sold some things and we did some hard things to get it done. But when we set the hard goals and we got it done, you know yeah so was it worth it it absolutely was absolutely how's it feel to be completely free awesome free it feels amazing yeah wow i like that you just dropped it and said no we're doing it at the end of the he wanted 12 month extension and you said no sir yes and wow yep it was it was tough and he he had to dial me back in a couple times

well it's that's how it works it's a little bit of give and take i love that and stay on page together that's the thing yes well done you two very well done y'all are heroes and those little boys they have no idea how great their parents are. Appreciate it. Look at that. Oh, they're beautiful. They're set. We're looking at the picture on YouTube, y'all.

I mean, wow. Wow. They're set up. Their whole lives are different. They are. I mean, you ever know anybody that by 30 had a paid-for house that was worth $350,000? I didn't when I was your age. I don't.

Yeah. I don't. Very strange. It is weird. It is.. It is. It really is. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? My thing is to don't let yourself see the money in the checking account to begin with.

Go ahead and put that money in savings. Go ahead and be paying stuff off because if you're anything like me, when you see it in the checking account, you want to spend it. But if it it's not there then you don't have to worry about it gotta have a plan yes exactly that's right okay what about you mason anything to add to that i'd say just you know set hard deadlines when you want to get things done your goals you know it's very important to me just to do that and then just keep on you know just keep on your plan start one and then just stay with it and it's just you know that's that was the main thing for us yeah from the very beginning um we you know started a budget we

lived off of his paychecks at the very beginning and mainly because i was still in college and then whenever i got a job it just made sense to just keep living off of his paycheck instead of spending mine too. So from the beginning, my checks were going either in savings or then once we got our house was going straight towards our house payment. So it just made sense to stick to that. And even though we got raises, we still lived as if we didn't. So who were your biggest cheerleaders? Probably our parents. They were behind us the whole time.

We had some friends that were behind us, but we did it. So your parents, you grew up in a house that had common sense? Getting that way, yes. They were at least cheering you on. They were. And that's what we talked about before. If they had known what we knew, then they would have followed these steps too. Like they knew if they had known then, you know. Yeah.

So they were definitely behind us cheering us on. Yeah. Very good. Good for y'all. Well, congratulations. Thank you. Very, very cool. Thank you for coming all the way to Nashville to share that story.

It inspires people. So, Ken, this is what I'm always talking about i'm constantly i was on fox business the other day and they said so what about this gen z generation and i'm like i love them yeah i think they're awesome what do you mean a bunch of deadbeats no they're not i mean there's some of them are but then i meet these like this here all the time and these there's good ones there's hope for this country people like that right there these are heroes man they take control of their life they looked in the mirror and said you're the problem and you're gonna fix it and man they stepped on it i'm so proud of y'all way to go guys thank you way to go very very well done we've got a couple of one year subscriptions to every

dollar for you one for you guys you can give one away to one of your buddies and get them started on the every dollar budgeting app as well so good stuff mason and chelsea from montgomery alabama or just south of there 160 000 paid off house and everything in 36 months minus a wakeboard boat making 110 to 140 count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one we're debt-free yeah love it yeah baby whoa this is how it's done boys and girls this is how it's done man any i'm telling you if you're out there riding right this second you're driving in your car and you're listening to this that couple drove up here so you could hear that story no question and that means that you i'm talking to you right now you're supposed

to be doing this you're supposed to decide to get control of your freaking life instead of living thank god it's friday oh god it's monday and start putting this stuff down get the every dollar app loaded start laying out a plan, a budget. Because nobody plans to be broke. They only plan to not be broke. So lay you out a dadgum plan, baby. And get with it. You can do this stuff.

Anybody can do it. Ken, we've seen people from every walk of life, every region and state in the country. That's right. Every race, creed, color, national origin. This stuff knows no boundaries. The only color that we're worried about here is green. Yeah. So get with it.

Get with it. We're here to help you. We're here to walk with you and show you, inspire you, inform you. So you go do this stuff and you can stand on this debt-free stage and scream, I'm debt-free. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And one of the things I just took away from this too is you get the sense that they are impacting the generation ahead of them with their parents. Yeah. That this is going to potentially change. They're young, so that means their parents are still

young. And I love this. This begins to influence so many people around you. When you live this way and you live like no one else and you give like no one else, it becomes highly attractive. And so think of this as not just financial freedom for you but maybe your family extended family and i i'm really blown away by that it means you guys have done it well yeah classy and how you did it very well done very well done even how you answered the question yeah that's right this is the ramsey show well it's book launch week here at Ramsey Solutions. Rachel Cruz's new book, For Children, I'm Glad for Where I Am.

The second in the series comes out tomorrow on April the 16th. Those of you that have pre-ordered, it'll ship. And she's going to be around doing signings in several of your markets. We'll be letting you know about those this week in Phoenix and Dallas and Los Angeles and Atlanta and so on. So we'll let you know where she is and make sure that we get you out there for that. Also, Ken Coleman's new book, The Get Clear Assessment, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. We've been selling Ken's assessment that our team built with Ken here on the website for a while. So almost 100,000 of you have taken that assessment. And we decided that it'd be a good

idea to do a book explaining exactly how to interpret the assessment. Right, Ken? That's exactly right. So the assessment answers the question, who am I? And we're talking about as a professional, meaning what are you good at and what do you love to do? And then the book comes along almost as a coach. And we wrote this short, takes you about 45 minutes to read, but it only is effective if you've taken the assessment. The good news is, Dave, you get an assessment with the hardback when you pre-order it, and then you're going to get an e-book with another assessment code and the audio book with another assessment code, all of your pre-orders. So essentially three books, three codes, which means it's the gift that keeps on giving. And again, as a professional, if you want to make more money,

more money is all about your ability to grow as a person. And I like to say it this way, it'll help you get better so that you can get a bigger paycheck, right? The bigger the paycheck is always about how much better you are improving yourself. We know this. And so that you can get a bigger paycheck, right? The bigger the paycheck is always about how much better you are improving yourself. We know this. And so that assessment in the book is going to answer the big questions. Who am I? What do I want to do? Where can I do it? And the book comes along and helps you get there. And that's a game changer. As you know, 96% of millionaires loved their work. And oh, by the way, they were good at it too. Yeah. Well, it's hard to be good at something you hate that's right except for golf for me yeah well it just depends

on which holiday problem but the uh the uh but the thing is this um you don't have to necessarily change your whole career that's correct it could be you're just doing it in the wrong place in the wrong way. It could be just some personal growth and landing in a different location. It could be a complete change of direction. Could be. Either one's fine. But sometimes people mistake and say, oh, well, what I need to do is just quit my job and go to school. That's right. No, no, no. You need to find out where you are and figure out if school is required to get where you want to go. Yeah. You know what the superpower is, Dave, for all successful men and women? Self-awareness.

And we're talking about awareness in what they do really well, what lights them up, and they find a way to get in that spot. And when they do, it's when greatness happens. Megan is in Chicago. Hello, Megan. Hello. Megan, are you there? Hi there.

Hi. Hi. Hi, Ken. How can we help? Yeah, I've been Danish now for a while, and I'm wondering, how do I pay off $79,000 in debt? Well, it sounds like you know. Stop being Danish. Well, I mean, what you're saying is you're doing some of the things we teach, sort of. I am.

So I'm a single mom of two kids, and I've off and on over the last several years worked on my finances. And I feel like every time I'm making progress, something happens, or there's something that I do wrong. Can you give us one example? Give us a recent example of you were going along great, something happened, and then you didn't make a great decision. Probably a year ago, I had a washer and dryer break down, and I used a credit card to buy a new washer and dryer, and then at the same time needed to replace the flooring

because it had rotted where it leaked. So rather than, you know, find some salvage washer and dryer or hand-me-downs, I bought new with a credit card. And then being in Davis, what would we say a washer-dryer going out, what would we call that in our world? An emergency, right? Yes. Because we've got to wash clothes.

They both went out the same day. Well, the dryer had been on the fritz for a while, and the washer leaked all over the floor for several weeks. And caused the damage. Because I didn't have the funds, exactly. I didn't have the funds to do anything about it as a single mom of two. You know that thing right behind the washer where it has a faucet handle? Yeah.

Yeah, that cuts the water off if it's leaking for several weeks. Yeah. You don't have to have funds to go lefty-righty. To be smart, yeah. Okay. I'm just, okay, so I'm not picking on you. I'm just saying that what you're, what happens is that we get in these situations and you get um

you get scared and you get um you add drama to it i do this and you've done it i heard it you add drama to something and turn it into something a lot bigger than it is my point being you could have just turned the water off the first time you saw a leak and then said, okay, I'm going to go to the coin laundry for a little while until I can save up some money. And then you wouldn't have had a rotted floor and the driver's already on the fritz. So that wasn't new information. So we took all of these things and we added them together and a catastrophe was created

in your head. And that's what we all do but so but but it's a what it is is anytime there are problems the more we avoid them that they get worse they don't get better and the washing dryer is almost a metaphor for that so uh how long have you uh were you divorced or widowed or never married or what? Never married. I have two children, two separate fathers. I do receive child support on one. How old are the kiddos? They are 13 and 8.

And what do you make a year? I bring home, I mean, a monthly I bring home $2,500. Okay. All right. What do you do? I work from home in insurance. Is that sales or customer service? Authorizations. Yeah. So you're 40? 37. 37. Okay. All right. 37 37 okay all right i have a mortgage and a car payment how much is your car payment um it is 440 a month okay all right so um what i think i'm hearing and if if I'm wrong, you just tell me, okay? But I think I'm hearing a lady that for a little over a decade, life has happened to you.

You've not happened to life. Yes. Like you're not crying and you're not whining victim, but you've also not been on the attack. You've been on the defensive. Correct. Yeah. but you've also not been on the attack you've been on the defensive correct yeah and so let's flip that script a little bit and start saying okay your job sucks you don't make any money yeah and so we got to work on that and we got to get megan where she's proactive rather than reactive on everything including money including her kids including her job including

everything else because you you you fell backwards into this job you weren't out hunting going gosh i hope i can do phone work for an insurance company from home i sure hope i can do that for thirty thousand dollars a year and starved a freaking death i hope i can do that that wasn't what you're doing you just took something because you were hungry am i right uh yeah i work in health care so it was the best fit during covid to work from home so it just works out that way right but here's the point i'm going to give you no it really wasn't oh no it really wasn't because you're hungry you're broke so that's not a best fit it's what you chose to do yeah okay well are you a nurse actually are you a nurse no no when i when i took this job i increased my income because i was working as a medical scribe in a cancer

center okay then then that was a better fit. It's a better fit than what you had, but the job before really sucked then because you're not making any money, girl. Yeah, so what's going on is that you have to do two things. You've got to decide you're going to find a way around debt when something breaks next time because you'd find a way to feed those kiddos if that's all that you had to do. And then secondly, hang on the line.

I do want to give you the Get Clear Career Assessment in the new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do, because you're worth double. You're worth double what you're making right now. And that'll solve a lot of problems. I didn't say you suck. I said your job does. That's why, because I don't think you do. I think you're awesome.

You're a warrior princess. Now it's time to go to fight instead of being beat on. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, that they love and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality,

humble and best-selling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose, and host of The Ken Coleman Show. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Mina is with us in Washington, D.C. Hi, Mina. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve. What's up? Good. Yeah, so I recently got married, and we have a baby coming on the way,

and my husband, I personally don't have any debt. I don't have any student loan debt, but my husband has some from undergrad and his master's, and he's wanting to be a theology professor. And so currently he's pursuing his PhD with a, you know, fully funded with a stipend and everything. But we have about $87,000 in his student loan debt. And, I mean, thankfully, I have been, like, set up pretty well. And so I'm kind of in a position where I could wipe it all away for him. But I didn't know, like, if there should be a different strategy because we have a baby coming in a month.

What do you mean set up really well? What have you got and where did you get it? So I worked for my dad basically since I graduated from school, and so he helped me a lot with my savings and investments and everything. So I have money in, like a Marcus Goldman Sachs account and, um, money in like invested. Um, so right now I have, um, about 60,000 saved. I mean, that's, that's actually after we combined bank accounts. So like that is me and my husband's combined savings. And then we have about another 50 in my investments,

and I include that in my Roth IRA. So I've built up some in my Roth. Okay. How much is in your Roth? $17,000. Okay. That's not accessible so you have third so you have 23 or 33 33 left other than that right they did say it was accessible um i think it can i think it can be you know we're not messing

we're not messing with the roth okay so we got uh 23 and 60 so you got $83,000 and you owe $86,000. Mm-hmm. 33. I'm sorry, you have enough to pay it off and have $5,000 plus your Roth. Mm-hmm. I don't want you doing that until the baby comes. Don't do that until the baby comes? Right.

Because I want mom and baby to have the comfort of a big old pile of money. When baby comes and baby's okay and mom comes home and we figure out what we're doing with life then and we're living on a budget where we live on less than we have coming in and we've got a game plan, then yes, I do want to pay off his student loans. Okay. But, yeah, I guess what scares me is that the interest is accruing i mean obviously it's not accruing that much while a baby comes it's just a little bit

yeah i i mean it's right now it's it's accrued about um about 2200 as of today like 2200 in interest which um yeah obviously it's moved it up to 87,000 about. Yeah. You're going to get a little bit of interest, but in return, you're going to have a bunch of money. Okay. If you want to throw, if you want to throw a 30 or 40 at it, that's fine. But I don't, I want you to have a really fat nest egg until baby comes.

And then you can talk about coming down to 5,000 bucks and clearing it out. But, um, the last thing i want you to do is have zero debt and zero money and have a baby come and there's a bit of a hiccup and you know it throws things sideways by ten thousand bucks and now you got to worry about a bill and a baby and we don't need to be worried about that so yeah and you would suggest then putting forty thousand like at most. Yeah, that'd be fine. $40,000 or $50,000 towards it out of the, you got about $90,000.

And so if you throw $40,000 or $50,000 towards it, you'll be fine. And that at least lowers the interest that's occurring. You're still sitting on $40,000 or $50,000 at that point. And then when baby comes, you just pay it off. Pay it off completely? Yes. Like I should just have it appear? it off completely like there's no like i should yes i should just have it appear yes zero zero yeah and he's not borrowing any money to finish

the phd and are you going to be working or how are you guys are living off the stipend or what yeah so we're living on the side i'm working full-time as a tennis coach um but it's i mean it's i don't plan on like ideally i would like to be home with the baby but i just don't know like with i will i mean insurance will obviously be through the roof well the good news oh well it's not that bad you're young and healthy uh uh and and the good news about tennis coaching is you could do that with individuals and and set your hours and you know not be leaving the baby very much right i i don't even know if i yeah i want to want to do that i think i mean he himself has talked about how he'd rather like be working okay as long as you guys can eat and you're not and you're not broke i just long as

you can have enough income coming in between the two of you that you figured that out. Yeah. Our grocery bill is pretty high, though. It's kind of like our – I mean, we're living in D.C. It's not where we want to be. We want to be in, like, a more red state. But, I mean, just our grocery bill. I mean, we – Is that where he's studying or something

yeah yeah for the two of you it's just the two of you right it's just the two of us right now yeah let me tell you something i got three teenagers two of which are boys don't even talk to me about grocery bills it's crazy you guys can do better than that yeah you got a lot of other things to worry about than your grocery bill. I was going to say. So here's the thing. I love her intensity, Dave, but I hope she grasps that you are giving her an insurance policy that means peace of mind until baby gets here. And then you can attack it.

But that's such a huge deal. I hope a lot of people hear that. That's really great advice. The first three baby steps of people hear that. That's really great advice. The first three baby steps, save $1,000 quickly with great intensity, pay off all your debts except your home, smallest to largest in that order with great intensity, like sell so much stuff the kids think they're next, put the dog on eBay, the cat on Craigslist. I mean, everything's gone. No life, scorchedched earth beans and rice no

eating out no vacations we're cleaning up the mess baby step three in that same intensity is finish the emergency fund now when you finish the emergency fund and you have no debt except your house then you move from intense to intentional but until then you're wide open. Now, when you're in the middle of a storm, like you say, the boss comes in and says, in 60 days, we're laying off 70% of the people that work here. Well, that's a storm. So you push pause on paying off the debt or building the emergency fund, wherever you are in one through three baby steps, until you get the other side of the storm. In the case of a pregnancy, obviously it's a blessed event. It's not a storm, but we're going to prepare as if it matters more than the getting out of debt because it does.

Then we get the other side of it. Baby comes home. Mom and baby are okay. We push play again, which means we clean out everything down to a1,000 and pay off debts until we're debt-free. That's exactly what I was telling her to do. This is The Ramsey Show. Thanks for joining us, America. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. Today's question comes from Julian in Texas. My responsibilities at my job have increased significantly. I've received routine raises, but they're not reflective of the increased responsibilities I've been given. I approached my boss with my concern and gave him a number that I think I'm worth based on similar roles. My boss agreed that I deserved a raise and said a raise would show up on my next check.

The raise was 5%, less than half of the number I'd suggested. Feeling frustrated, I applied for a couple jobs at other companies. I received an offer for 2% more than the amount I asked my current employer for. But the kicker is I didn't like the interview and I don't intend to take the job. Is it inappropriate to use a job offer to leverage a raise at my current job? My heart is telling me no, but I want some of that good old-fashioned Ken Coleman sense knocked into me. Okay, wow, that puts the pressure on me. I got to cuff him upside the head, apparently.

Julian, here's the thing. I think there's too much emotion in this, and I think at this point to take in the job offer that gets you 2% more, so it looks like a 7% bump from what you've just been offered. I think here could get really manipulative. And I think the emotion I'm seeing in this, and I understand why you feel the way you feel based on what you've said. But if your boss agreed that you deserve to raise, you told him a number and you gave him what you think was evidence. Now, I don't know how good your evidence was here. I don't have the luxury of talking to you back and forth uh but based on what you're saying uh the boss heard you agreed you told him the number you think you deserve

and they gave you half of it uh and you don't want the other gig anyway so this feels really manipulative is it inappropriate no unless well let me finish what I mean by inappropriate. I know what you're saying. It's not unethical, but it runs the risk of being very manipulative. And so if you want to call that inappropriate, then certainly I get that. And so I just wouldn't do this. You've been given the raise. They told you what they think the raise is, and now you've got to be an adult. And going back in and trying to waive another job offer in front of them that you do not want feels childish to me, and it wouldn't do it.

I don't think it'll serve you well at all. It doesn't change the fact that, let's say that you went back in and waived this, and they gave you a 10% raise. Way through the roof. Yeah. All of a sudden, you're not going to be over all these other things. That's exactly right. Yeah. You, you, you feel underappreciated used.

You feel like they didn't take care of you. And the only way that you get your right amount is to threaten them. So when, after you finish threatening them and they give you a big raise because of that even maybe even more you're still going to feel like they don't have your back like you're underappreciated like you know the only way i got what this company should give me is i had to be a jerk and you know and so you need to leave is what you need to do because you're done but you don't need to take this other job so you need to keep looking get you another job you need to leave yeah that's what you need to do

yeah well here's what happens this will wear off dave is right if you they gave you the 10 immediately you would feel like you won something uh but you'd still feel like well they're going to keep giving me more keep giving me more and that and that's the. A raise doesn't fix this kind of damage here. I'm not sure this company did anything wrong, but you think they did. And the fact that you think you've been mistreated by them, you're done. You know, your language all through this email is I'm done. I'm done. And so you don't really want them to give you the money because then you'd be staying in a situation that you think is unfair, unjust. They don't appreciate you. They whatever.

They don't. They're not fair people. They don't pay comp. Right. They don't. You know, whatever. You just don't like these people anymore. And so that's thing one.

Thing two is this. Anytime you're facing a business ethics question, or for that matter, most ethics questions, you don't have to take a class on business ethics. All you got to do is switch shoes. Walk a mile in the other guy's moccasins. All right. Now, you're an employer. You had a guy that came in and said he was worth X. And you said, yeah, he's probably worth some more.

And you gave him some more. He's pissed about that. He works for you. And then he comes back in and says, hey, I got an even better job offer. The whole way this goes down, if you work for us we would say take it that's right we'd say take it so if you switch that if you switch it you see how scummy it is yeah and so just to wave something in front of their nose that you don't intend to take just to manipulate them ken's right that you know you wouldn't want somebody to do that to you,

so don't do it to somebody else. Treat other people like you'd want to be treated. It's a real business ethics lesson. And so, you know, if somebody came in and started waving something in front of me like that, I'm going to be going, you know what? I think you should take it because you don't work here anymore so you're gonna need a job you know it's stuff like that you know i mean i mean we probably wouldn't be quite that snarky about it but that's how it would that's how it would be playing in my

head yeah and even if they didn't tell you to go right away it would start to erode the relationship to where it's already the beginning of the end and it's already gone that's right yeah don't ever put yourself in a corner folks here's the thing that's that's playing chess against yourself and uh that's not smart because then you're forced out to take a job that you don't want i'd rather you leave on your own terms jerry's in raleigh north carolina hey jerry what's up hey how are you today better Better than I deserve. What's up? So, about five years ago, I came to America with a full scholarship and a cell phone. I work for a year now in public accounting, and because of a visa issue, I have to go back to school.

Now, throughout this year, obviously, I started at zero. I've saved about $30,000, and I'm going to have to pay for college, which for me is going to be about $45,000. So I was wondering, as I won't be able to take out a regular student loan, and I'm going to have to take out a personal loan, would it be more beneficial for me to pay most of college cash and take a small amount or just keep the 30k and finance a whole amount that I would go to college with and pay it off throughout the next few years as I go back to public accounting probably. Explain really quick on the visa why you feel like you have to go to school. Okay so I work for a big four firm and they decided to sponsor my visa, right? So that puts you into a lottery. And in this lottery system, unfortunately, I was one of the unlucky few. You have about a 20% shot. It used to be about 50, but in the last few years, it's changed about 20% shot. And now I have to go back to school. And then after school, I should get

another three years if I get a STEM-based degree, which is why it costs about $45,000. That will give me another three shots. And the company I work for has already agreed to hire me back. All right. And then on the $45,000, what type of school are we talking about? Well, it is harder for me to get into school since I am an international, so it's going to be a regular state school.

It might be even a private school, but it'd be a good degree like business analytics or something like that, something I'll be able to use. All right. All I'm going to challenge you to do is get the absolute cheapest option possible. You're getting this degree to get another ticket in the raffle, and I just think you can beat that price to where you don't have to pay anything out of pocket other than the 30 or way less. I just do not rely on student loans for this to get a raffle. Or loans, private loans. No loans at all. This is a raffle ticket, and that's American language for it's a lottery. It's exactly what you called it, but it's like, hey, and I just think there's so many other ways for you to get this degree that are much cheaper. There's this thing called college hacks, and it sounds crazy.

It's not. But you can actually test. It's like good old-fashioned CLEP test is what it is. And you can actually get that degree for a fraction. It's not the degree. You're saying you're going to shift from a work visa to a student visa, right? Yeah, yeah. So I didn't get my work visa.

So I have to go back to school in person. Well, which gives you a student visa. That's the only way you get to stay, right? So you don't get my work visa so i have to go back to school in person which gives you a student visa that's the only way you get to stay so you don't have to get the degree so yeah okay so you're this is all a visa play you're moving from work visa to a student visa and you're hoping to move back to a work visa after that right yes sir yeah so again you're buying a parking spot to change it from a raffle ticket. And so buy the cheapest parking spot. Go to school somewhere for $30,000 or less. Don't take out a loan.

Yeah. Because it has nothing to do with getting the education other than you're going to benefit from that while you're doing it. But pay cash for that. And, yeah, that's what I would do. Thanks for the call. Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jackie is with us in Canada.

Hi, Jackie. How are you? Hi, Dave. Hi, Ken. I'm so glad to be connected with you today. You too. How can we help? I just have a question. So my husband and I, we followed your principles for probably the last 10 years, I'd say. We took financial peace years ago, and we are in a fortunate position to only have our mortgage, and it's $70,000.

And the property that we live in, that's our primary property, is worth about's $70,000. And the property that we live in, that's our primary property, is worth about $570,000. And just recently, our mother-in-law, she had a fall and she's going to be living in a retirement home, which leaves the family farmhouse available for us to live in. And we're just wondering, my husband's an owner on that property, we're just wondering, would we sell or would we rent our primary home at this stage? So that's the question. So you're going to move into his childhood home.

Exactly. And who are the other owners of the home? Just his mother and him. Okay. And her portion is turned over to him at death? Exactly. Yep, that's exactly right. Is that via a will or a deed restriction or what?

Well, they're both co-owners on the deed. They're just, you know. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Well, I don't know Canadian law. Okay. Okay, no, the will's the same. The will is all written out. It's his property.

Okay. His sister, she's also a farmer. She's already been given a farm as well and she has her own farm so she has two properties nearby okay so your mother-in-law has gone into a nursing home probably will not live in this house again no i would not expect that yeah okay Okay. And so you're going to move into the farmhouse. It needs a bit of work. So we could cash flow the renovation. Our income's about 180,000 between the two of us. Plus we have two small rental properties and they bring about 37,000 a year.

What's the, how much renovation? I can't picture it being, you know, you could spend a whole ton if you wanted. To make it livable, I'd say probably $20,000. Well, it was habitable when she left. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's just, you know, water. More livable. Yeah. There's no water. Yeah, there's just, you know, water. More livable. Yeah.

There's no water. Nope, there's water. It would just need a treatment. And as well, you know, because of the condition of the water, maybe some of the bathrooms and the plumbing would need upgraded. I see. Okay. All right, so how much cash do you guys have?

Well, my husband likes to keep a large emergency fund, so there's enough money there, $65,000 there, plus, you know, a few other accounts. I'm sorry, how much money do you all have? All told? Yeah. Liquid access? Yes.

Or you just mean in-depth? How much cash do you guys have um well over a hundred thousand dollars cash okay and then we have about half a million in retirement and then we own the two rental properties and a lake house for ourselves okay all right so um the hundred thousand includes your emer a proper emergency fund of three to six months exactly exactly yes that's in there you guys make 180 so if we set 30 aside you have 70 left and if you spend 20 on the farmhouse that only leaves 50 to throw towards your mortgage are the other two rental properties paid for? Yes. Yes. Okay.

Are you going to rent your current home? That's what we're thinking. We're not sure. Do we rent that or do we sell that? Only if you plan to pay it off very quickly. Yeah. Two years is what we were hoping. Oh, I think about one year.

Okay. Because I'm going to use all your cash. Okay. Okay. Very good. $30,000 emergency fund. Yep. Do the renovation. That leaves $50 leaves 50 to throw at the 70 you

make 180 you ought to pay off 20 in less than a year okay okay you follow the math yeah that's very doable yeah yeah and so you end up with three rental properties and a paid for farmhouse and it's renovated a little bit you're probably going to renovate it some more as you go along, but you make $180,000 and you have zero debt. At that point, you can renovate it a little more if you want to with cash, right? Exactly, yeah. How many acres? 400 acres.

Wow. Yeah, a beautiful piece of property, legacy. You know, a couple generations have lived there and three living generations. Jackie, that sounds really cool and romantic. Is that where you want to live? Oh, yeah, I do. I love the property. We also have a lake home so we can enjoy, you know, time between both pieces.

Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Just making sure you weren't living his dream and not yours. No, not at pieces. Okay. All right. Yeah, absolutely. Just making sure you weren't living his dream and not yours. No, not at all. Okay. Shared, very shared. Sounds like a lot of fun. Sounds like a lot of fun.

It's 400 beautiful acres. Wow. I'm a little jealous. That's amazing. And Jackie truly represents the most positive stereotype of Canadians that I have ever heard. She is poster child, so kind and nice and pleasant. Just an enjoyable person. She represented her country well.

Well, you hear about the Canadians being the nicest people on the planet, and Jackie is exhibit A. What a fine lady. There you go. Easy to get along with. Yeah, so great. We're moving to the farmhouse. Yep. She's like, of course I love it, Dave. Just got to have no more of that water.

That's all. That's all I require. It's low maintenance. Very fun. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Hey, folks, our event season is in full swing. We would love to have you be part of our events. We have the Total Money Makeover weekend coming up May 10th and 11th.

This is the best of the best. Ken Coleman's going to be speaking on how to get your income up. Dr. John Deloney, how to bring peace and tranquility to your home, not as much anxiety and stress. Rachel Cruz, George Camel, Jade Warshaw, Daveave ramsey we're all going to speak it's friday afternoon evening down all through saturday here in nashville on our campus you're going to come in uh maybe maybe not knowing what to do maybe knowing part what to do and you're going to leave with an exact plan dialed out to go from broke in in debt, stressed, relationship problems,

all the way to leaving with making more money than you've ever made in your life and your mind showing you how to do that and how to actually become wealthy and get out of debt. So we're going to cover every bit of that. Bring your reluctant spouse. Bring your friend who's been making fun of you. Pay for their ticket. They will leave as crazy as you are at that point. And we're going to show you everything to do, every process, every detail.

It's a very intense weekend. We're going to have a lot of questions and answers, very experiential. We're going to have a lot of fun, a lot of laughter, a lot of tears. And you're going to leave exhausted and completely changed. The Total Money Makeover weekend, May 10th and 11th. To get tickets, go to ramseysolutions.com slash events, and you can learn more and get your tickets right now. The VIP Platinum is sold out.

The VIP is there, and there is some Platinum there that are not combined, and there's a few other special sippies in there that you can get, and, of course, general admission is there. But this thing is on track for an early sellout. If you want to come May 10th and 11th, that's just, it's less than a month from now. You could come and enjoy the Nashville environment. We're going to have a lot of fun here on the Ramsey campus, and we invite you to be part of it. It's going to be a blast, Ken. It really is. It's a, you know, it's an incredible environment when everybody shows up in the room because they want to get better.

They want their life to get better. And that creates electricity. I know our team, we're working hard. And it's going to be a lot of fun. A lot of fun. It's going to be great. We would love to have you. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash events.

Also, on the following week, about 11 days later or 10 days later, May 21st and 22nd, I'm going to be doing Dave Ramsey's Investing Essentials as a virtual event, a two-night virtual event. George Campbell's going to hang out with me as well. We're going to go through the basics of investing, but we're also going to get deep into investing. And I'm going to open my personal playbook, what I do, including what I do with real estate. And I actually own a lot of real estate. This is not a theory for me. So if you want to be part of that, you can check tickets on that as well.

This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 3, 6, in all your ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. Thomas Sowell soul says some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not god classic classic passive-aggressive just mic drop there by thomas soul boom there he goes david is in chicago hi david welcome to the Show. Oh, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Sure. How can I help? My question is that I'm trying to do the baby steps.

I got myself a little bit of a quagmire with my debt, mostly real estate investment, but nothing horrible. So I'm trying to apply the baby steps, and I'd like to sell one of my rentals, but I just don't think my tenant is going to be able to relocate and, or it's somewhat of a, a moral quandary. Not anything. Why, why is your tenant, why can't your tenant relocate?

I just don't think that she'll be able to get another home, especially one as nice and large as this one, to house her and her kids. So you're not charging her market rent? Yeah, it's close. I mean, I could probably charge her more. So if she's getting close to market rent, why can she not take close to market rent and go rent something else? I just don't think that it's really available i think it's really going to put her in a position and i think she's why is it not available you think you have the only house no no i don't i don't but she's i think she's paying for her mom's rent too and i've tried to counsel her to like

maybe they could live together but i don't think that's a i don't think it's available she's been late and behind you know you know how it is as reynolds and i just like i said all right well let me just let me ask a question i'm curious did you feel this way did you have this concern for her before you talked to her about the possibility that you were going to do this? Yeah, I did. And what was her reaction when you told her that this was a possibility? I broke it to her a little bit, but I really haven't come down. You didn't answer my question.

I didn't really say anything about selling it. It really hasn't come up yet. I know it's not going to go over well because I don't think she anything about selling it. It really hasn't come up yet. I know it's not going to go over well because I don't think she's going to find. Well, but there's a lot of thinking. You keep using the word think. Listen, it is not your job to manage her house. That's right. You're her landlord, not her boss.

You're not her daddy. And so she's paying almost market rent so she can pay this take the almost market rent and go rent something else and if she wants to combine households with her mom that's completely her business and her problem it is not your job to manage her life yeah you're right and you're not doing anything wrong no to take an asset of yours and say you know yeah i you don't want to be uh mean or nasty about it and if you want to give a little bit more notice there's no nothing on fire here uh you know we're going to instead of giving you i don't know she on month to month she is now she didn't want to resign last summer oh she didn't want to resign last summer no yeah i get a fair amount of runners like that that don't want to resign yeah but they're not committed to you you don't

have to commit to them the point is i think if you said okay i'm legally bound by the lack of a lease to give you one month's notice. I'm going to give you three months. That's a good compromise. And that gives you plenty of time to work your way through this. I've appreciated you being our tenant, except for those times that you didn't pay on time. And you don't have to say that, but you're acting like this is some kind of freaking stellar tenant. They don't pay market rent and they don't pay on time. So I missed where I'm excited about this tenant.

So, you know, I and that's not being mean. It's just like you got really one job when you're a tenant. Two, don't tear up the house and pay the rent on time. These are the two jobs you got. So it's your job to make sure you're charged market rent. So no, you don't have a moral dilemma at all. You can be kind and you could give more than adequate notice and say, you know, I'm sorry. Gosh, if there's any way I can help you with this, I'll try to help you.

But if helping you means you staying in the house past this 90-day mark, that's not the type of help I'm talking about. But if we can assist you in any way, I can tell you about my friends that have properties, help you find something like that. I appreciate this, but that's what we're going to do. We're going to give you three months' notice. Listen, she can process this in three months and if she's angry at her landlord who she refused to sign a lease with for giving her three months notice who's only required to give her one month

notice uh that's her fault not yours that's her fault and so I think this is all about David. He's such a nice guy that he's worried about a confrontational situation and understand that. But this is nothing more than a difficult conversation and it's not his bag. And I get it. But she's going to be fine just by virtue of only she don't want to sign a deal anyway. She's got options. She knows it could change at any time. David, you're a really good dude, and you're just fretting over a difficult conversation. And it's going to be over in about 45, 50 seconds. I mean, there's not a lot to it. Yeah.

It's, hey, going to be selling the house. I'm going to be sending you a note in the mail. So we make it formal that, you know, July 1st, we're going to be done, August 1st, whatever it is. And I'm giving you plenty of time. You have a 30-day right, but I'm going to give you 90 days just because you've been here a while and I want to be kind. And thanks. That's it.

I'm done. That's really it. You really don't have to have a big, long thing here. It's not a whole bunch of feelings. I've had landlords in my life and none of them had any feelings for me. That's right. I just, none of them did.

I just, I never had one that did that. And, uh, I mean, if you get a situation like we had one, one time that, uh, you know, guy got a terminal cancer diagnosis, you know, and he's got four months to live and he lost his job cause he lost his health and his wife had three little kids at home and all this. And so, you know, we just didn't charge him rent we let him live there and let her live there after he passed for a little while i mean we worked we worked with him but but that can't go on for eight years either no even that you know it's a is a period of time we can have some grace and mercy with somebody in that situation but just simply they're going to have to move. That's, you know, this lady, she really just got to move.

I mean, that's why, folks, that's why you want to be an owner when you can be, and not in a stupid way. Don't go buy something you can't afford because I'm afraid my landlord's going to do that. Oh, by the way, if you don't want to have to move, sign a lease. Hello. If he had a one-year contract, then he'd have to honor that morally, ethically, legally, everything at that point. So there's the process.

And, you know, here's the other thing. Those of you that are thinking of owning real estate you need to have a policy of raising the rent every single year because i've been doing real estate for about 40 years and rents have gone up every single year and the people that i know that get stuck in situations like this they don't raise the rent for five years because it's a nice person and they pay on time and they cut the grass in a little pattern. And then we just love them. And you don't raise the rent for five years and suddenly you've got a way below market situation. And then you try to raise the rent and they have a fit like they think they're the owner.

So it's really good. It just keeps the relationship accurately defined when we raise the rent, even if it's really good it just keeps the relationship uh accurately defined when we raise the rent even if it's a little bit what's the dave ramsey way on that do you look at the market and then we look at the market and we go if they've been with us a long time it's a little under market okay but not i mean i'll take it all the way the max plus some been there one year we just take it up to market if they've been there five years we we tell them when they come in too right next year yeah just expect this and just expect go ahead and know yeah good you know and that way they're not shocked like what you know what right i don't understand what i mean what you mean what rents are going up and so that if you don't have that uh pattern you set these you

set an entitlement expectation in place and it creates real serious problems later it's a real bad idea that puts us out of the ramsey show in the books we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace christ jesus Jesus. Hey, folks, Dave here. You want to hear even more life-changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place, like The Ramsey Show, Smart Money Happy Hour, and The Dr. John Deloney Show. You'll get real talk about life, relationships, money, and your career.

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