The Ramsey Show - Building Wealth Requires Trusted Principles, Not Popular Opinions

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

📈 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a Free Personalized Plan.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ❓ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Have a money question? Ask Ramsey is here to help.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Jade Warshaw and John Delony answer your questions and discuss: I'm 48, have nothing saved for retirement, and I can't rely on my husband financially I feel like my husband's new employer is engaging in shady business practices My husband follows a TikToker who promotes getting a first lean HELOC, is this a good idea? We're paying off our home in 3 weeks, what does that process look like? My property is not cash flowing but I will take a loss if I sell it I don't understand investments, where should I put my money? Next Steps: 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 weekdays from 2–5 p.m. ET 📩 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email Dave On-Air With Your Questions on Debt and Finance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💵 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🏠 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get organized and prepared to buy or sell a home⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🛡️ ⁠⁠Get trusted insurance coverage that fits your budget⁠⁠ Connect With Our Sponsors: Go to⁠ Angel Studios⁠ to discover entertainment you can feel good about. Get 10% off your first month of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ BetterHel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠p Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Boost Mobile⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to switch today! If you want your car to keep going and going, trust ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christian Brothers Automotive⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Find a local shop and get an exclusive Ramsey discount of 10% (up to $250) off Learn more about⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Christian Healthcare Ministries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get started today with⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Churchill Mortgage⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get 20% off when you join ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DeleteMe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ FAIRWINDS Credit Union⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for an exclusive account bundle! Debt collectors hassling you? Take back control of your life at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Guardian Litigation Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find top health insurance plans at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Health Trust Financial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Use code RAMSEY to save 20% at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mama Bear Legal Forms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ NetSuite⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ today to learn more. Try ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Quo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free, plus get 20% off your first six months. Quo: no missed calls, no missed customers. Sign up for your $1.00/month trial at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shopify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get started at World News OR use promo code RAMSEY for a 30-day free trial. Get started with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YRefy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or call 844-2-RAMSEY Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Zander Insurance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or call 1-800-356-4282 for your free instant quote today!  Explore more from Ramsey Network: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Ramsey Show Highlights⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🧠 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dr. John Delony Show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🍸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Smart Money Happy Hour⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💰 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Kamel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📈 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EntreLeadership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brought to you by the every dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life from the Ramsey Network in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. This is the Ramsey Show. I'm Jade Warshaw next to me. Dr. John Deloney taking calls from you for the next couple hours at least. Triple-8-825-225 is the number that you call if you want to ask your question and we sure hope that you do. All right, we've got Maria, who's in San Diego, California. Beautiful. How can we help out today, Maria? Hi.

I'm 48 years old. My husband's 33. We've been married 13 years. We have one son who's 12. I've been stay-at-home mom since I was born. Maria. Maria, you're breaking up a good bit. If you can go to another part of the house or just speak directly into your line to make sure we can really hear you.

Okay. Should I repeat myself? No, I heard you up until then. Okay. So I've been a stay-at-home mom. I do not have any savings, nothing, retirement. And my husband and I, our marriage is not in good terms. So I think I'm going to be walking away with nothing.

So I want to know what I need to do to help myself. Okay, that's a good question. What happened with your marriage? What's going on? It's been volatile since we've been married. Volatile, like, abusive or volatile yelling and screaming? What does volatile mean? Yeah, a lot of yelling and screaming, and he doesn't share money with me.

I do not know. I just recently found out how much he makes. He does the grocery because he doesn't give me any money. Oh. Nothing. Yeah, we call it financial abuse. You're in an unsafe situation. So first I would say if you all have been together for 13 years, you're entitled to a big chunk of what he's got. And so don't just walk away. You're in an unsafe relationship because you're being held hostage by the person you're married to financially. So if you choose to leave, make sure you get an attorney and do that in a in a right way. The second thing is, is you'll be faced with the reality that that that the, that the, that the, that the, that the, you're just a, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.

life you wanted to have. I want to be married. I want to be a stay-at-home parent. I want to be focused on my 12-year-old. You're going to have to go get a job, maybe two. And you're going to have to create a financial world where you are financially safe. And that might mean being in a one-bedroom apartment. You're in one of the most expensive markets in the United States. And so it might be moving. Like, there's a whole bunch of things that's going to, it's going to stem from you choosing to live in this scary word called reality. This is my new reality. This is my new reality. not my new, what I wanted it to be, but this is the facts I'm facing here with my living expenses, my eating expenses, my 12-year-olds expense, all those things, and we're going to just have to

create a world around that reality. Yes, I looked into all that, yes. So, Maria, you just found out what your husband earns. How much is it? And do you believe him when he said what he earns, or did you find out because it was written on a paper, or how did you find out and how much is it? He took out a HELOC to pay off some debt, $70,000. So it was on the loan application.

He makes $90,000 a year. $90,000 a year. And he took out a $70,000 helock to pay off all of your debt. Is there any other outstanding debt other than the mortgage that you know about? No, just the mortgage in the $60,000. How are you positive of that? Well, when it comes to debt, he'll share it with me. When it comes to spending, he won't share anything.

Okay. What does he have in retirement savings? I have no idea. I've never seen it. He has his mail routed to his parents, so I don't see anything. Oh, wow. Okay. Do you think that maybe he has been saving?

Like, does your sense tell you that he has been, or do you think he probably doesn't have much? You may not be able to answer that, but. He's been in the company 40 years or 30 years. Okay. Yeah, so I think he has some type of investment. estimate, but I have no idea how much it is. Okay. You should get half of it.

Yeah. Or maybe not half, but half since you all have been together. Uh-huh. That's true. So there might be, your situation might not be as financially. Emotionally and relationally, yeah, it's a mess, but financially, it might not be as bad as you think it is. I hope it's not. What about the mortgage? What do you guys now owe? Or what did you owe and what's the property worth? I'll already account for the HELOC. So we bought the house in 2017 and we bought it for 340 and it's still 340 right now plus now the helots and I think the value is about 550. Okay.

Okay. So there's the numbers there. John's right. You know, since the marriage, most of this should be split down the middle. That doesn't give you, I don't think unless he's got this crazy nest egg somewhere. I don't think that's going to give you the ability to walk away, get your half and never have to work again. So the question then becomes, what can you do for work? You've been out of the workforce for a while for 12 years.

Were you ever in the workforce before you had the baby? Yeah. Yeah, I work in the legal profession since I was 17. And I had a good job before I quit my job. My son was born premature, so I just didn't go back to work. Okay. And then eventually I'll do a pick up some contract work one month here. are. Okay, so you feel like you have an exit strategy as far as career is concerned?

Yeah, but I'm 48, so. I mean, that's not old. I'm competing against a younger junior. Yes, but let me, let me, you know, inform you on this. A lot of people, they, they earn the most they've ever made in their 50s. Like, that's their clutch year. So you're approaching that. And obviously, you've been out of the workforce. There's some variables there. But I do want to encourage you on that. And don't get it twisted, raising kids has life experience all over it. Those are transferable skills. So let's be honest about that. What's precluding you from making that step? When do you plan on making that

step? Do you still feel barriers to making that step? Let us help you with that. What else is there? Well, because my marriage is not stable. Divorce was not an option because I don't want to share custody. I don't know what he's going to stay to my son about me. So I'd rather stay home and take care of my son, picking him up from school, drop him off, and helping with homework and activities and all that. That's kind of what's preventing me from going back to work. Because I actually went back to work for one year last year, and my son didn't do well in school. So I felt like, you know, I should be with him for now. The greatest gift you can give your kid right now is stability.

Okay. because there's no way that this is that your husband is being this insane with how he's treating his wife and also being a plugged in attentive good dad. So John, be clear about what you think stability looks like because you could interpret stability as I'm not going to rock the boat right now. I'm just going to stay where I'm at. I'm not going to. What do you think stability is?

What I would tell you is for your kid, the boat is rocked. Yeah. The boat is rocked. in wild ways. The greatest gift two parents can give their kid is a rock-solid marriage

and giving your kids something to anchor into. And the data is pretty clear A, no, don't quote-unquote stay together for the kids. Fix your marriage for your kids. Fix your marriage for you and your kids benefit.

But if a marriage is unhealthy, it's bad, it's abusive, like yours is, then quote-unquote, staying together for the kids is not good for the kids, right? You have to ask yourself, is your personal safety and well-being and your child's health and safety and well-being

worth your potential, I might have to share custody sometimes? And the reality is, this is still his dad. And so he's still going to need his father. But sit down with an attorney, a good licensed attorney, and ask these hard questions so you can get a picture

and you're not just living on made-up stories. Hey, George Camel here. Listen, if you've had your phone two or three years, your phone can now be unlocked. That means you can switch to Boost Mobile to get unlocked, bring your own device, and keep more of your money where it belongs. Look, the Fat Cats of Big Wireless, they are counting on you, just staying put and overpaying every single month. They want you to think switching is complicated, risky, or just not worth it. Meanwhile, your bill keeps climbing like it's training for a triathlon. But Boost Mobile makes switching simple and way less spendy.

You bring your phone, keep your number, and get unlimited wireless for just. $25 a month. Yeah, $25 a month. Not for six months, not for a promotional period, forever. And there's no contract, no hidden fees, and no, we changed your plan because we felt like it, email. So if you're tired of overpaying for something you already own, this is your moment to save money. Go to boostmobile.com slash Ramsey and get unlocked today. That's boostmobile.com slash Ramsey. $25 forever requires customers to remain active on Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. Back to the phone lines where we have Leah, who's in Akron, Ohio. Leah, how can we help out today?

Hi. So my husband had a job offer for $62,000 a year's salary. And then as he had started the position and he's, you know, talking to people with, like, HR and payroll, he's being told that, you know, of course, he wouldn't get paid overtime, but he still has to clock in, clock out, and if he doesn't make 40 hours, he's being docked somehow, which sounds hourly and fraudulent. Okay. So are you going to get clarity, or are you simply not going to take the offer? Oh, he already accepted the $62,000 salary offer, but we got our first paycheck, and they're not allowing us access to his pay stub.

And based off of the number we received, it would seem that he's being paid something entirely different than what was agreed to. What does it look like he's being paid? Hourly, which we don't even know what the price is hourly. What's being paid? What's the pay stub? What's the pay stub amount? And how far off is?

And is it off higher... What do you mean? How do you not allow somebody to see the... Yeah. But... Well, it's supposed to be on the app, which he has access to the app. But like when he goes to the tab, it essentially says that his employer has him blocked. So can he, did he go down to HR and say, hey, I'm blocked on this?

Can you fix it? And did they say no? Or has he just not done that? Because he's not how much he's paying in taxes and FICA and all that stuff. Exactly. You refused? The way that they're conducting business. business is they tend to just be like, oh, well, we'll get to it. We'll see. We'll talk to you later.

Okay. So let's back all the way out here for a second, because you're ready to go to war here, okay? A little bit, yeah, because I just, I don't understand what's happening, neither does he, and they're not answering any questions. Okay, so sometimes people get offered positions. I'm trying to think of, like, if you went and got a job as a state trooper, right, it would say something like, can make up to $110,000, base salary, $60,000 or something like that. But that number is a clock in number. It does have an hourly wage to it. And at some point in the HR process, they'll tell you that.

Or I have other buddies who work in industries where part of the management practice is to track hours, but they're paid a salary. And so I've never heard of somebody being paid a salary, but if you work 39 and a half hours, we're going to take money away from you. That's what it is. That's where I am having an issue with, is that they're saying if you don't meet the 40 hours, your pay gets stocked. But are they guaranteeing him the 40 hours? Sorry. Are they guaranteeing him the 40 hours?

And so is it a situation to where we're guaranteeing you the 40 hours? But if you step in and say, yeah, I got to go to a dentist appointment or something that you're not basically clocked in for those hours, then they're docked. Is that exactly what you're saying? Right. So, like, say he, because he, it's in construction. So it's very, like, based on the weather. And so say if he's late or if he's done with the job early, it'll be that 40 hours. Like if he's done with the job early

He's not getting however much He would have to use like pay time off to account for him leaving a job early Because the job is done And that doesn't make sense I see what you're saying But how much of this? I'm a little perturbed is that I mean if you're not making your 40 hours

And you're docking my pay By how much what's the hourly there And also if you're telling me that In the opposite side of the coin I mean, if I work 60 hours, you're not going to pay me 20 hours of overtime. Right, right. So, let's, let's, two things here. One, is there a chance that your husband didn't ask what the hourly rate is when he took this job?

Well, I'm actually looking at the job offer paperwork now. Okay. And it says, you will be paid an annual salary of $67,000 per year and paid in accordance with our every other week schedule. Okay. Okay. That's verbatim what it says. In all of the paperwork, it says nothing about hourly. Okay, so let's do two things. Let's number one, just focus on what you can control. You can do one of two things right now. You can call a lawyer and you can write a demand letter. That's number one. Number two, you can suffer through this crappy deal and he can immediately start applying for other jobs because

not because of you know hourly or whatever but because I'm not going to work for somebody who doesn't have integrity and integrity and integrity is

I don't know if you're taking out taxes for me and I don't want to get hit with a tax bill at the end of the year also I don't know if you're pulling out Social Security for me and I don't get hit

with that bill at the end of the year like that's just that's just business 101 is he 1099 or is he a W2? He doesn't even know I know every time he's asking any kind of question.

Okay, but hold on. I'm going to put this on him. This should have been determined long before a contract was signed, ma'am. I got to know what I'm signing up for. And I got an offer letter. I would say get it in writing. You got that. So he's entitled to that amount of money legally because they signed a contract with him. But number two, I'm going to ask bigger questions because I would need to know,

am I going to take $67,000? Do I need to pull 30% of that because I'm 1099? I got to pay my own taxes? Is that going to come out of this? Right? Those are questions that should have been asked during the interview, and they weren't. Right. I do think...

I mean, I will say, like, we were a little... We were very much in need of money. Okay. You know, obviously, you can't live on, like, unemployment. It's unreliable. You don't get it every week. I got you. I got you.

But let's just control what we can control here. Right? Yeah. And, yeah, I definitely think we'll probably be looking for somewhere else. They don't seem to be managing. much of anything very well. Right on. And can I, can I say this?

I'm uncomfortable with the whole thing here, and here's why. Why are you calling? Why isn't he calling? Why are you reading his contracts and his, like, why isn't he taking control of his job, his finances, his employer? Right? Well, I do, like, I'm a stay-at-home mom, so I handle our finances. Like, he goes, he brings in the money, he does the work, you know,

and I do the child wearing the finances helpful. And so, like, I mean, I'm not very intelligent, per se. Yes, you are. Don't say that. You know, I just have like a basic understanding of, like, a salary versus an hourly. And it feels like they're really muddling it. They are. And it just doesn't, it's just, you know, the math isn't mapping.

Correct. You're right. Yeah, I mean, if I were in your shoes. He has asked questions. He has tried to talk to the paper. people and he has tried to talk to HR but again they just keep saying like oh I don't know right now we'll come back to it we'll come back to it and that's not right I'm on your side and if you're asking is this right or wrong I don't think it's right the way it's being handled I think the question

to go in is like hey am I salary exempt tell me what's going on answer my questions if you're not going to answer my questions and there's there's no solve here and that's frustrating I you know I I like what John said which is you've really got two routes you can either lawyer up and really try to fight this and get what you thought you were signing on the dotted line for. I don't even know if I go that far. I think I just start looking for new jobs because the benefit of him having this job right now is at least he's searching from a perspective of, I have something. I have a gig, so I'm not desperate. And that's going to help him have more opportunity to find what it is that he's really looking for. So there is like a silver

lining to this cloud. But my biggest thing going forward is I think you you both have learned the lesson of. We have to ask our questions early and make sure we're getting very clear answers, making sure things are documented in writing. And I have a feeling, I don't know, Leah, but you can, when you're in the interview process, you can start to sense what people's character is like, are they wishy-washy, are they putting you off, you know, that sort of thing. And I think that you're going to, you can chalk that up to experience at this point and going

forward, feel to call that out. I need a job right now. I'm going to take what I can get. I support that. Yeah, for sure. But if your boss isn't a person of character, I'm going to get out of there. Let me tell you what I get asked all the time. When should I get term life insurance?

How much do I need? Is it affordable? Those are the right questions to be asking. So let's take a quick review. The fact is, term life isn't a baby step. So if anyone is dependent on your income, you need to have 10 to 12 times your income in life insurance. Now, and most people are surprised by how affordable term life really is. Even if you're not in perfect health, look, I understand the hesitation since most

insurance companies make it more of a hassle than it needs to be. Not at Zander insurance. They're not an insurance company. They're a broker that works for you. That means they'll shop and compare the top term life companies to find the most competitive options on the coverage for your family. For almost 30 years, I've recommended Zander for straight answers, competitive rates, that actually protects your family. Call 800-356-42-82 or go to zander.com for a quick and easy quote. That's zander.com. Well, are you sick and tired of working so hard but having nothing to show for it?

Well, can I tell you that that's normal and unfortunately normal is broke? And you don't have to live that way. Our every dollar budget app helps you find extra money every month and builds you a personalized plan to beat debt and build wealth. Just 15 minutes, you'll find thousands of hidden margins. You'll feel like you've got to raise. So don't live normal when you can live like no one else. Start every dollar for free in the app store or Google Play today.

All right. Brooke is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Brooke, how can Dr. John and I help you out today? So my husband is currently following a TikToker who is promoting this first lean helock. and I'm very hesitant about it. In fact, my family gives me the name Dream Crusher because I'm just not a risk taker. Dream Crusher.

Hey, here's my big problem number one, Brooke. Your husband's quote following a TikToker. That should be your first problem right there. Well, that's what I say too, but he thinks that I don't really understand the process. He's following a TikToker. Right, but I don't. I look at, but I'm looking at the numbers and I just don't feel, I just can't see how it could work.

So tell us about it. Yeah, go ahead. Tell us about the first thing. This is my favorite call the whole day. There's no way a call is going to be better than this one. Are you, are you 16 and he's 17? Did you don't get married real young? Well, no.

I'm actually my 50s, but we have been married for a long time. Please tell me your husband's a 50-year-old TikToker. He is. He is. He is. Every once in a while I wake up and I just think, as a society, we're doomed, and this is another vote for that. Right. Well, I think it's once you, you know, once you click on something, then you see all of the same things. And so this particular guy keeps coming across. And the way that he advertises, it sounds, I don't know, to him it sounds great. But this first lien he lock serves as your bank account.

I know. I know. I know. Why? And just to be clear, if you, typically if you take a HELOC, like in the order, it's like you've got your mortgage and then you've got the HELOC under it. So if you were to foreclose, the money would first pay off the mortgage and then the he lock would go next.

With first lien, it reverses that order. So the home equity line of credit is first as the first thing that's paid, that sort of thing. My question is why? Why do you need this? Why are you guys to the point of doing these types of things? I don't think that we do need it. But see, the advertisement is that, oh, you can pay this off in three to six years, which... What's he using the money?

Like, what's the purpose of the... What's the purpose of it? The grand purpose in his mind. We need to get the first lien he lock because I need to get a boat or because we're funding college. Like, what is... Why? The why is the payoff in three to six years. I mean, we're trying for retirement.

We're trying to get things settled before we retire. And so that's the attraction, is to pay off this early. But we don't have, like, this huge income, like, minus our debts that we have to even throw at this helock. Right. Because that's what it seems like to me that you need. You need this huge income. Right. So the problem here is you still owe X amount of dollars.

Yes. And there's not a fat, there's not a, there's not a way to not owe that much money. Well, our income is okay that we, we only owe $220,000 on our house. It's worth about $5,000 to $600,000. Okay, but we have it at a two. Like, I get that, I get that, but here's what's important. You owe $200,000. Right.

Divide that by six years, 72 months. And I can't do that math in my head like Dave can, but, Like, do you have that much money to put towards this? No. Okay. There's not going to be a secret atomic way to make you owe less than $200,000 in your mortgage. There might be a way that you can reduce your interest rate, maybe. And so technically, you owe $200,000 after six years, you're going to be paying interest also.

So there might be a way to make it a little bit smaller, maybe. You get what I'm saying? No matter what you're doing, you still owe $200,000 and you got 72 months that this thing is telling you you could pay it off. There's not a way to contract time or to contract money from what you owe. Right. So your gut feeling is right. You know why?

Because it's just math. Yeah. Well, in our mortgage is only 2.75. Right. So if I go over to a heel line. yeah it's a daily rate of like 8%. And is it variable? Does it vary?

The heel lock apparently would be. Yeah. And that's scary too. Why would you? There's, I can see and I'm trying to say this in a non-incredulous way, but truly I can see no good in this. None. I can see no good in this. And if the goal, if you guys have sat around and said, what's our goal? Our goal is to pay off the mortgage.

Yeah. That's actually a very simple process. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it is a very simple process. I pay my mortgage payment, and then anything and above my mortgage payment, I apply it to the principal. And I do that as often and as many times as I can and as high amounts as I possibly can. And every time I do that, I'm affecting the amortization schedule. Every time I do that, more of my actual mortgage payment is going towards the print.

Like, that is the way it works. That is how folks do it. That's how millionaires do it. And that is probably, if I were to really try to form an argument against this other than just kind of like sheer logic and simplicity, I would go back to our millionaire study, John, and I would just talk about how we've studied what the practices of millionaires are. Everyday millionaires, baby steps millionaires. I'm not talking about billionaires. I'm talking about millionaires. And what they do is they pay for cars and they never do car payments again.

And they pay off their home mortgage. avoid debt and they budget their money. These are the practices of what I'm going to refer to as the 401k millionaire, the average millionaire in America. This is what they do. And so for me, this sounds like a very complex, heady strategy to do something that's actually simple to do. Why am I going to add steps and add rigmarole to something that doesn't require it and honestly adds risk to the equation and and let's let's like let's say your home mortgage was at 10% and you could get a first lean he lock at 2.75 somebody could sit down and make the case that I have just and even though it's variable interest rate and so if interest rates go up thank God there's nothing going

on in the world or the economy that makes me any somewhat nervous at all about the future right I'm being ridiculous right now. So if you could somehow magically flip a switch to where you're paying 2.75% mortgage versus a 10% I couldn't say you were crazy. I might say it's not something I want to do. Yeah, sure. I don't want to put my house on the block again. But what you're doing is you're creating essentially a line of credit.

You'd have to be superhuman to never spend this line of credit. There's no way you're going to get a better interest. Well, the HELOC is acting as the primary mortgage. But you can draw from it. So it's a credit card at a variable rate that's higher than your mortgage. Like, there's no possible win here. Yeah. And I don't like the fact that like the temptation is there that you can withdraw anytime you want from it.

I don't like that. And has he, has he, and I don't know if he's gone so far as to say, I ran the numbers like this and I ran the numbers like this. And here's how much faster we could do it. Here's the exact amount of money that we've saved. I mean, obviously, John or I, I mean, you would have to play a perfect game, I feel like, in order for this to... It still wouldn't matter, though. You got a 2.75%. That's also true. You've already won the mortgage lottery. But has he done that? Has he even done any due diligence as far as to say such things?

No. No. I have on my part. Challenge him here. Challenge him here. Write me a plan to where we pay off. this house in 72 months at $200,000 the remaining balance plus our 2.7% mortgage. Here's our plan. Here's how much we'd have to pay off every month. Show me with your

first lean helock math how we would accelerate that by six months or a year or two years. Also with the variable interest rate that it could go up. It could go way up. And with the temptation that we could spend against it. Right.

It's just total madness. If you run a business, you already know this. Bad information leads to bad decisions. And right now, AI is everywhere. But AI is only as good as the data behind it. The best AI is built on the best data. That's why I recommend NetSuite. NetSuite is the number one AI cloud ERP and more than 43,000 businesses run on it, including us here at Ramsey Solutions. Their AI isn't bolted on, it's built in, and it connects everything that runs your business, accounting, inventory, customer data, all in one place. Because when your numbers are connected, AI actually works like it's supposed to. NetSuite's AI helps flag cash flow problems, spot inventory issues, close your books

faster and cut down on manual reporting. If your revenue is at least seven figures, go to netsuite.com slash Ramsey for a free product tour. That's net suite.com slash Ramsey. John, I'm thinking about TRS Live and I'm thinking about we had some good times, man. We had a good time recording that show in front of a live audience. We went on the road back in April. And if you didn't hear, we traveled to four different cities.

We did the Ramsey show live in front of like a 300. There's a rad theater there in Denver. One of the top five wildest things that's ever happened to me at a live event. I've done thousands of live events from my... The wildest thing... I know what you're going to say. I don't know. Can I give it away, Kelly?

Yeah, sure. The big thing that happened that we're not going to tell anybody. It was so crazy. We all, we couldn't believe that it happened. I know. But we were hoping. Oh, super hoping it would happen. Let's just say it happened.

It happened. Yeah, it was a super fun time. It was. So we dropped the episode from Charlotte a week or so ago. We just now dropped the Denver episode. And up next, we got Phoenix and Anaheim. Those are coming in the next few weeks. So stay tuned for those.

It was super fun. I think you guys will enjoy it, hopefully as much as we did. I don't know about you, John. But for me, I love being. and direct contact with you guys. Like over the phone lines is great, but it's still over the phone lines. But if we can be in the same venue

and we can breathe the same air, like that to me is electric. I love that. So be sure to go check them out on the normal Ramsey show channel. So where you watch the Ramsey show normally on YouTube, Spotify, and the Ramsey Network app.

Any other memories you want to share? I'll just say, we may have had a spontaneous debt-free scream that led to a spontaneous engagement that led to, a spontaneous marriage. She got to listen to the show. It was a blast. That's good, good, good, good. Again, yeah, check them out. Wherever you watch the Ramsey show, they will be there, watch them.

They are fun. You get the same information, just packaged in a more fun way. Well, and there was some times that we would push back on folks, and then, like, later on in the show, they would come back up or their spouse. Remember, their spouse came back up. I was like, hold on. And it got more fun and more fun. Yes. It was a blast. It is. It's just different. It's one thing, like, when you guys call in, we can assume maybe the faces that you're making or we like create a persona in our mind but to see you standing there to see the faces that you're making in response to what we're saying uh it is different and it kind of changes a little bit of how we say things and the whole audience booze my answer it's just fun it is fun it's a different element all right aaron is in lincoln nebraska aaron

how can dr john and i help out today well i want to buy my husband a really nice truck well he want, he needs a car. And he's getting cold feet and we decided you're the tiebreaker. I love this question. These are our favorite questions, Erin. So you want to get the new car. Tell us, tell us all of it. So we're in Baby Step 6 and we have spent 15 years, you know, he and I had $450,000 of student loan debt. It's paid off. You know, we're in Baby Step 6. We're paying. We're hand off our house, but he needs, like, he needs a new car. And he wants a truck, a really, really nice truck, has always wanted it. I think he deserves it. And how much are we talking for this new truck? And like, what model? We want to give us the gory details. He wants the,

the loaded GMC Silverado, but he'll use it. And we're the type of people that keep, you know, cars for a really long time. Sure. What does something like that cost? A hundred grand? The one, I mean, $79,000. Okay. So I'll put $80,000. And you guys are baby step six. How much is left on the mortgage?

So we have $400,000 less on our mortgage. We are on track. You know, the number moves a little bit every year, but on track to pay it off in 10 years. Okay. Back to that, Silverado. Is this brand new or is this a year? you're used? Like what year are you looking at? Looking at brand new, there's just not a lot of good used trucks on the market right now. Is that true, John? And I'll tell you, man, I want to hear

like, what's your total net worth? Like, like what your house is worth minus what you on it, plus what you got in retirement. So we're baby steps, millionaires in the sense of our house is worth about $8.50. Okay. We make a really good income. What does that mean? 780 a year. So you make 780 a year. You've got $400,000, give or take of equity in the home. And what do you have in retirement?

Combined between the two of us, about $1.5 million. But the market's been good. I mean, you know. And that's in retirement funds, 1.5? 401Ks and a brokerage account. Okay, so you're almost worth $2 million then. Did I calculate that right? Yeah. Okay. So the parameters that John was getting at and asking that, and this is not just for you, Erin, you might not, you might already know this, but for those listening, when we're thinking about whether or not somebody can afford a brand new car, this is hot off the lot, we're looking at, is your net worth more than a million dollars? Generally, if it is, you can take that big 20, 25% depreciation hit that's going to happen in the first year or so. And you're basically saying, I can take that cash.

I could throw it out the window, let it roll out the window while I'm driving the car on the interstate home, and I'll be fine. It's not going to affect my well-being in any way, shape, or form. Other thing that we look at, and this is not necessarily with brand-new cars, but we look at what percentage, if we were to compare it to your take-home pay, we say things with wheels and motors shouldn't be any more than half of your annual take-home pay. Obviously, at $780,000 a year, which you guys are smoking it. Like, that's crazy. Y'all are killing it. This doesn't even come close at all. So here's what I'll say, Erin.

Okay. So here's one more awkward. Well, not apt. You know, he lets me handle the money. Okay. You know, we sit down once a month. So I, we haven't had a car payment in a really long time. But in our every, every dot, like in our budgeting, I've paid ourselves a car payment.

Okay. And so. for the most part, you know, I don't want to finance it. You don't need to. You make $780,000. Aaron, Aaron, I'm going to stop this conversation. But he wants to put it toward the mortgage.

Well, I'm going to tell you the most wild thing of everything that you're saying that I hear has nothing to do with the GMC Silverado. The most wild thing that I heard you say is that making $780,000 a year, it's going to take you 10 years to pay off a $400,000 mortgage. Pay off your house in two years. That's what I,

took away from this conversation and said, that's bananas. And get him a truck. The car is like whatever. The truck is whatever. Why is it going to take you 10 years? Well, we're just, we're, that is the word. We plan for the worst case scenario. No, hold on.

What does that mean? Do you do you? I do. Yeah, exactly. And what do you mean by that? Like, what does that look like? Does that look like I just squirrel away all the money into retirement instead of paying off the, like, what does that look like tactically for you?

you? You know, saving for, you know, I got a elementary school-age son, you know, saving for his college, which I feel pretty good about now. Sure. Yeah. You should. Help, you know, we had a little bit helping, you know, a now deceased parent. Okay. Um, financially. So, you know, there were some variables to where up until the last, you know, two or three years, you know, there were some, I don't want to call them expenses, you know, just things that you do. Maybe I got a little ahead, know, giving generously. But how much could they have, how much could it have knocked your salary down from $780 to $500? Well, and so the last couple of years is the first time we made that, you know, my husband was a medical resident. So we had to pay off the debt. Okay. He made nothing.

Yeah. And I was fortunate to where I run a business that, you know, finally in the last couple of years got off the ground. So making that much is a relatively new. over the last of new. Fair enough. So, kind of adjusting to make real money. Fair enough.

So listen, I'm going to tell you, I drove an 06 truck up until a year ago. And at one point, just private conversation, me and Dave on the road, he was like,

hey, what are you doing? And he was right. I was trying to make a point to myself. And so I'll tell you what I did. I went and got a fancy that same year truck, but I found one, and it's beyond my wildest imagination. It's like a truck, but it's like driving an iPhone, right? It's ridiculous.

And I found one that somebody had driven for about 2,000 miles, and they brought it back because they wanted an even bigger one. They were more insecure even than me, right? But that took 10 grand off of the same. It was basically a brand new truck that I got for 10 grand off. Yes, but you could have got. You could have just up and gotten the truck. But listen, yes, Aaron,

go by, tell your husband to get over himself. Y'all, you make three quarters of a million dollars a year. Y'all have millions of dollars to go get the truck. If you're waiting for the perfect interest rate before you buy a home or refinance, that moment may never come. That's why people should talk to Churchill mortgage, because rates move every day. And when rates drop, buyers flood the market,

which means more competition and higher home prices. Smart buyers know they can't time the market. They move with a strategy. Buy the home you can afford now and refinance later if rates improve. Churchill helps you understand what you can actually afford, not just what you qualify for. And with their certified homebuyer program, you can get fully underwritten before you shop, so you can make moves faster and make stronger offers. And right now, Churchill has a special offer only for the Ramsey audience.

Go to Churchillmortgage.com slash Ramsey offer to learn more. That's a special website. Remember this. Churchill Mortgage.com slash Ramsey offer. This is a paid advertisement. The Churchill certified homebuyer program is available for qualifying borrowers and select loan types only. NMLSID 1591. NMLS ConsumerExS.org Equal Housing Lender.

1749, Mallory Lane, Sweet 100. Brent went into C, 37227. Welcome back to the Ramsey show here in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. I'm Jade. This is John. We're going to Tiffany in Houston, Texas. Tiffany, how can we help out today? Hi. So me and my husband got married in March. We're a blended family. And about a month ago, we were getting ready on our way to go to the bank to combine bank accounts, combine finances. And my husband mentioned that he would like to, that he has been contributing $150 a month to each of his children for savings. And he would like to do that he has been contributing $150 a month to each of his children for savings. And he would like to do.

that for all four kids now with our finances combined. And I asked, is this savings for just college or is it for whatever? He said, you know, should they choose to go a trade route? It could be for a down payment for a house later, whatever. And then my question was, you know, well, how long have you been doing this? And he's been doing it for 16 years. And I said, well, you know, that's quite a bit more money than I have saved for my children. Why don't we make it even so that they can, you know, can have the same equal opportunities. And that created a big risk. And we have since not combined finances.

So my question is, what is the right way to go about this? Because it just doesn't settle well with me. because in my mind, I think, you know, we should see our children as our children. Neither of the other parents are involved. His children's parent, mother left and ended up accidentally overdosing when they were three and five. And my children's father has not been in their lives since they were very young. So he's been the only one contributing to this. It's not like out.

It's not like grandma said, I'm giving you this money and I'm contributing for these two children. He's just been doing this, right? Okay. Right. And in fact, he didn't realize he could have been getting death benefits for them. And when we were dating, I said, hey, you know, you could actually get this. And I got him signed up for it. And so now he is getting that income for them.

He just didn't realize he could get it. Uh-huh. And so it's really just, it created a big fight. And we're not fighting right now, but we're also not combining finances right now. And so I'm not sure what the right way is to go about this because he seems very protective of this money that he has saved. Yeah. Let me hop in here. Okay. And Jade, you tell me if I'm wrong.

I always want to look at an equitable starting line. Right? So when y'all joined families and y'all joined each other, these four kids and you and him started at a new starting line, right? Right. But the finish line is going to be different because two of those kids had another starting line in a previous life. Right. And so I can't help but hear that you've got, it's more about ego for you. I don't have this much for my kids, and so it's not fair for them.

Instead of seeing the blessing that this is, which is they're going to have more than they would have had, because we're going to be doing this thing together moving forward. How old are the kids? How old are his kids and how old are your kids? So mine are 20 and 17, and his are 16 and 14. Okay. Yeah, and that even changes it even further. Um

Yours are older His or I mean your kids are out of the house right? Yeah No they're in college Already but they're still living with us Just going local

Um I might disagree with I might disagree with John on this And not in the way that saying Yeah let's fight Let's fight Not saying that you're wrong I just may have a different point of view on it

So And I'll explain mine John has explained his if you want to add more, add to it. Because I don't know, like I said, varying different, different point of views. I don't know that John is wrong. I'll tell you mine. When I think about combining money, when I think about marriage, I think about two worlds coming

together like a sandwich. And everything we all had was is in the middle. So if it's like wheat bread, wheat bread, peanut butter in the middle, the peanut butter in the middle is all of the assets. And now it's smeared on all of us, right? Like we're just sharing it together. This is a horrible analogy. But and so that's what you're thinking.

You're like, hey, if we're pooling our income, we should be pooling our retirement. We should be pooling our assets. We should be pooling everything together in the middle. Everything's the peanut butter. I thought that that's the way it worked. Wouldn't that also include things like 529s? Wouldn't that also include all of the assets? So I understand your thought process, which is shouldn't we share everything and shouldn't be,

shouldn't it be completely like even ground? And to John's point, I think I see it as... I think it's even ground starting now. Well, I think I see it as that is the new even ground as, okay, the new starting point is now we're... We're either a family or we're trying to pretend like we're kind of over here, but I also am not over... Like, there's part of that that I'm like, I don't know. I think I like the idea of if we're together, we're together. And maybe I'm a sibling in this that before I had my own...

room, but now I have a step sister and she shares the room with me. So even though I've had my own room for this whole time, now I have a step sister and we share a room. Like, but I think we're saying the same thing. Maybe I did a bad job. So I'm saying, for clarity, I'm saying that, yeah, I agree. Let's pretend there's $20,000 for his kids. I'm saying that now, yeah, I think I would be okay with it being five, five, five, and five. Oh, okay. And I look at it as if he's got 10 grand save for one and 10 Graves save for another and he wants to start continue putting money in their individual accounts and now he wants to start putting money

in your kid's accounts. Like 150 across the board for each kid now we're going to up it to instead of 300 we're going to put 600 towards each kid. That's where I would look at it. I think I would say both. I would go okay whatever is in this pool of like kids

money I would have it equally distributed and then going forward I would put equal amounts and all I believe that that's what I Now, hear me say. I would do it differently, but. Yeah, I don't think it's a wrong or right thing. I think it's, can you guys meet in the middle?

I am going to say this. And here would be my pushback. I'm thinking about how I would feel as the kids on this. And so if my mom got remarried and I was 20 and she married a guy who had a 12-year-old that been in saving money for that kid's college, I wouldn't feel as a 20 year old that suddenly you owed me that amount of money that you've saved for him. It's not even a thing. I think that's the attitude. Okay, I think we're getting to it. So I think part of it is attitude, which is I don't think you can have the thought of I'm entitled

to this and kind of be like mean or haughty about it. I think that spirit is not right. Yeah. But I do think of the spirit is we are now a family and we're going to go forward. like a family and we're all on equal footing together, that's kind of more of the mindset that I'd have around it. And I'm not saying that's easy. I do want to say that. Yeah, it's messy. So, Tiffany, is there a way to take the dollar amount off of this thing and look at the

individuals and what they need in the season of their life? That's a good. That's good. Well, and that's what we talked about. And he said, you know, I've been doing this and I want to keep doing this for my kids. Yeah. He said, I want to do the same for your kids. And my argument was if we're looking at it as giving each kid an equal opportunity

because they have no idea that this is even there. And it's hard because your kids are younger. And so even the idea of trying to catch up is not really there. And equal opportunity is going to look different when it comes to support. Hey guys, healthcare is one of the biggest stress points in your budget. It's confusing and most of the time it feels completely out of your control. But there is a better way to handle it. Christian Health Care Ministries isn't health insurance.

It's a health cost-sharing ministry where Christians share each other's medical bills. And it's not a new idea. CHM has been around since 1981. It's predictable and proven, and they've shared over $13 billion in medical bills for their members. Plus, you get more flexibility. There are no network restrictions, and you don't have to wait for open enrollment. Now, let's talk about how CHM helps your budget, because programs start at just $115 a month, and many families save hundreds of dollars a month compared to traditional options.

So if you are tired of feeling stuck, check out Christian Healthcare Ministries. Right now, CHM is offering new members a 50% credit towards their first month of membership. Go to CHMinstries.org slash budget and use promo code Ramsey. That's CHministries.org slash budget and use promo code Ramsey. All right. Let's go back to the phone lines where we have David, who's in, Wisconsin. Hi, David. How can John and I help today? Hi, Jaden John. How are you? Doing good. What's up? My wife and I are set to pay off our house in three weeks and we're curious on

what that process actually looks like, anything to look out for. Do we get an official deed? Is there anything related to our insurance that we need to adjust when that step happens? Number one, congratulations, man. So awesome. Thank you. It's going to probably feel both amazing and quasi-anticlimatic. Okay. So are you given like a big lump sum, or are you just taking in the final payment? We've been chunking it for six years, so it'll be a chunk payment, but it's not massive by any means.

Okay. I'll tell you how I did it, because I'm a nerd. but I like to go in the bank and shake the person's hand. But like Jade and I were just talking offline. She would probably just hit the button from her house. I'd sit in bed. Mind you, I'm in baby step six. I haven't paid off my mortgage.

So I'd be sitting in bed with my coffee. I don't want to go out of the house. I just want to hit the button and refill my coffee cup. It's going to be up to you to have some cool celebration that you all plan because you're going to walk out of the bank or you're going to hit the button. and confetti is not going to fall from the sky. And so, but I want confetti to fall from the sky. You just got to set up the confetti, whatever that looks like, okay?

So my wife, she knows we're close, but she does not know what's happening in three weeks. I got a date that we're going to go to the bank and do it. Amazing. Any, like, fun things or suggestions that you think would be fun. I mean, you know her better than we could ever know her, but I would have a reservation in her favorite restaurant. If you have a weekend getaway. I mean, it's going to be life content. It's going to be depending on your life right now.

But dude, plan something for you all to go celebrate. If you have a couple of friends that have been walking alongside you in this journey, then invite them somewhere and you can meet for lunch or something. I think that would be really cool. Yeah. I mean, some practical things. Like, I mean, you might want to update your homeowners insurance. Yeah.

I mean, that kind of stuff won't change. You'll get the deed in the mail eventually, right? But they'll shake your hand and it will just go through the process. You'll get a thing. I wanted to print out that said zero balance, right? Keep that forever. Yeah, just all those documents forever. Just to hold it close to my heart.

Yes, absolutely. In a file. Fire safe. Your house is still worth, but your house is worth, right? Yeah. And so that kind of stuff is going to say the same. And you're still going to have your homeowners taxes. You're still going to have your homeowners insurance and stuff like that.

You're still going to have to pay every month towards a thing. or you can make it annual now and just write one big ugly check once a year. It depends on how you want to do that. And there are some nerdy things you can do. Like you can check the property records and make sure that everything is confirmed. Like all the liens are satisfied. Everything is documented correctly. Like you can do all that stuff.

And I think that's good. You actually sound like the guy who would do that. So I think you should do. We talked about keeping all the documents forever changing and just up, not changing, but updating your homeowners insurance. and making sure that if the lender was listed on the policy, they've removed the lender, they've updated contact information, all of that stuff. Those are kind of nerdy things you could do.

Obviously, you're going to be paying the property taxes and all that yourself. But I think that the bigger thing to discuss here is the celebration. The celebration. And really, I mean, we very rarely do we get this call while it's happening in process. So tell us, like, how much have you paid off? Tell us how long did it take? Tell us the goods of the journey. Yeah, a six-year journey.

We paid off $333,000. This is our first home and just treated it like something we wanted to get rid of. How old are you guys? We're 28. What? Holy cow. Bro, you won. Dude, there's people in the lobby and they're cheering you on right now.

You won, dude. You started at age 22. You went out and got a mortgage. I started listening to Dave when I was in college, and I'm glad I found him. Oh, my word. Do you have kids? We have one and one coming in a couple months here. This is amazing.

And you guys know that I'm so glad we asked the question. So 28 years old, did you have any other consumer debt? Or you just, since you knew the Ramsey thing, you never had the consumer debt started riding on the mortgage? $5,000 I borrowed for my dad to help move. Oh, my gosh. We paid that off in about a month. And how much money were you making?

And like what did you start at and what are you at now? Yeah, we've been married the entire time, started at about 125 and closing in at 600 now. Holy moly, what do you do for work? You guys are rock stars. Yeah, sales function. So just lighting the fire and getting after it. Wow, wow, wow. You're about to give your pregnant wife a big surprise.

It's going to be awesome. That's awesome. You know her well. Set up something great. I mean, you make half million dollars a year. You can have some fun with this celebration. And if y'all can get away and you know what? You want to be a gangster.

You take care of the child care. I love that. You pay for your mom to come down and stay with the little one. And you take your wife on a cool. night away or a weekend away or whatever. But yeah, celebrate this thing big time, man. So, yeah, what's the advice you would give to people listening? And I know $600,000 is a grand income. Most folks don't make that. 125 is a little bit more tenable. Tell us, give us a piece of advice for people listening. Maybe they don't have that income. But what would you tell them that

you feel like is true across the board? If I had put it to one thing, having a really good marriage, it makes it really easy for us because we're both rowing in the same direction. and it motivates both of us when we're helping contribute to our shared dream. So I would say marrying up is my piece of advice. I love that. I love the statement I saw recently that a great marriage is both spouses secretly thinking they got the better end of the deal. Yes. Right?

I love that, man. It's awesome. So, dude, you won. You could do all that stuff, Jade said. I didn't do any of that stuff. Not necessary. That was getting ultra nerdy. Also because, yeah, I tend to overlook details. Yeah.

In fact, I wrote down a few things. I'm going to go check just to make sure. Just to make sure some things on the checklist. It's been a long time, but I'm like, man, I hope not. But, you know, John, I love that call because, I mean, obviously he probably wasn't thinking that he was going to be interviewed. But when you embrace the Ramsey principles, this is what's possible. And what he did, he achieved the other end of the Baby Steps Rainbow. And that's what we teach here.

If you can be as blessed as David to never have any debt to begin with, it's such a head start. But if you do have debt, still walk those steps out, guys, because the time is going to pass anyway. This was a six-year journey for them. So if you're starting today, start at Baby Step 1, get that $1,000 saved. That's so important. And then if you have consumer debt, start knocking away at that consumer debt. That's Baby Step 2. You're going to pay off all of your debt except your mortgage using the debt snowball method.

After that, save up three to six months. that's your safety net in case life happens so you're not going back into debt after that yes invest 15% of your gross income every single month that's baby step four and beyond that at the same time yes you can put baby step five money away in a 529 for kids college yes you can start making extra payments toward whatever mortgage you do have and once it's paid off now you are in baby step seven which is where david is going to be in three weeks where he can live and give like no one else. That's the point. And if you're listening and you're like, hey, Jade, when were we supposed to even buy the house? That's back in Baby Step 3. We call it Baby Step 3B for the tribe,

who knows, that's when you can, as you're saving up your three to six months, you can also start saving up for a down payment. So that's how this works. Let me call this out. One thing he did that's really important. And you said this, he makes $600 grand. Very few people make that much money. But here's what he also did. He was making $125 and he worked really hard, probably got lucky, whatever you want to say, and he's making 600 grand. What he didn't do, which most people do, which what I would have done at 22 years old, is my lifestyle would have risen to that of a guy who makes half a million dollars. When I got out of college, I had a small amount of undergraduate debt, my first job. I ended that first year after my first job in double the amount of debt

because I just decided I wasn't going to say no anymore. And my lifestyle went way past what I was making. If you can make your first amount of money and as you get raises, you keep doubling down and keep your lifestyle stable, that's how you really win over time. Here's what nobody warns you about. You're behind on payments, you signed up with some debt settlement company, you're making your monthly payments to them, and then one morning a process server knocks on your door.

Surprise, you just got sued by a creditor. And that company you trusted? Not a law firm. They're not built to represent you if things escalate. And now you're scrambling to figure out what to do next. And that's why I tell people about Guardian litigation group. Guardian litigation is not a call center. They're actual attorneys at a law firm. And from day one, you're assigned a real attorney who can represent you if a creditor takes you to court. No scrambling when things go sideways, just real legal protection built in from the start. And look, the best way out of debt is still the budget, the plan, the baby steps. But if you're already in default and legal threats are coming your way, Guardian has your back. Their attorneys have

helped over 55,000 people settle more than $600 million in debt. So get real legal help at guardianlit.com slash Ramsey. That's guardian l-it.com slash Ramsey. Attorney advertising, results may vary and no specific outcomes guaranteed. All right, so if you haven't heard, Ask Ramsey is a free AI tool that's built and trained on our proven Ramsey principles. And today we're going to break down the most asked questions that we got from the week. So there were questions around things, John, like retirement saving.

budgeting, but interestingly enough, the most asked question is how do I choose the right investment options? So I know I want to invest. How do I know what to choose? Okay. Can we say this real quick? I want to like have some deep compassion for folks thinking about investing right now with all of the insane amount of noise out there. We took a call earlier about a first Helock and somebody feeling like they're losing, they're far behind and they're missing out on a mortgage hack or whatever. And we hear about crypto and this and that and this. Like if you're confused about investing, just know you're not crazy. Absolutely. The world is trying to make you nuts and then sell you something that is going to quote unquote give you the way. Right.

Yeah. I think I think you're right, John. And I think that's an even better way to tee this up because there is a confusing landscape out there. Yeah. You can turn on TikTok and there's somebody in their room in their slippers telling you how to invest. You can go on Instagram and you might find somebody like me and John telling you what to do. You can go on Facebook and you might find an old guy. You know, like you can find there's information everywhere and it can be hard to decipher and to know what's good and what actually works. The good news here is we've got 30 years of just proven financial turnaround. What we teach has been going. on for so long and millions of people have done it and it works it's what john and i do i think what

dave ramsie does to me the most important like i can say like hey i sell this product kind of like um execs and tech companies can say look how many millions of our products we've sold but then when you look at what they do with their kids their kids don't touch those products to me the biggest the biggest sales pitch for what we're about to say and it's not even a sales pitch because we're not making any money off this but like is this is what we do in our homes with our money money for our family and our kids' futures. What Dave does with his money. This is what I do. This is what you do. It's like this is how we do our money for our families. Well, and I, and I didn't plan on going down this road, but I think it's worth going down. What I can tell you personally,

what I find appealing about what we teach, what I found appealing, you know, 15 years ago when we first started our journey and what I found appealing enough to come work for Ramsey is that it should be simple to understand. Right. You do you should not have to have a degree. You should not have to have somebody explain it to you 90 times. You should not have to rewind the video over and over and over to get it. You should not feel like it's only for the scholars and you're down here and they're up here. If you've ever been in a conversation where you felt that, right? You're talking to people and they're like, oh, let me dumb it down for you. Trying to make you feel, I hated that. With all my heart. I hate that. Money is actually quite simple to understand.

And it should be. And that's what I like about these principles is that, okay, I can understand this. This makes sense. And it's easy to understand. And it's easy to put into practice. It's not overly complex. And honestly, give me simple all day, John. So that main question, how do I choose the right investment options? Right? I opened up my 401k. I'm staring at the Roth IRA right here. And there's a gazillion things I can choose from to invest my money. How do I do it? And so what we teach here is very simple again. We want you to spread your investments. We like diversification. We want you to put 25% into each into four different categories. So if I have, I'm just going to use the simplest terms. If I have $100, I'm going to put $25 in this account, $25 in this one, 25 in this one, and 25 in this one.

And there's four types that we teach. The first is growth in income funds. You might hear these referred to as like mega cap or large cap funds. They're very predictable. These are giant companies that have been around forever. They generally pay dividends. They're extremely stable. This is kind of just like the Buick. Like it's on the road. It ain't moving. It's a big body. That's what we like. All right. From there, the next fund is a growth fund. You would usually hear this refer to as maybe a midcap or a large cap fund. And these companies are growing a little bit faster than average. They're still big. They're still dependable,

but they're growing at a faster rate. After that, the third account is an aggressive growth fund. These might be called small cap funds. A lot of times these are tech funds or things like that. These have a little bit of a higher risk, but they have a high growth potential. We're looking at it and we're going, oh, this could really, really be something one day. And so you're investing there, again, a little bit more aggressive, not quite as laid back, right? This is like a fast car.

This is a little bit more like a Porsche is what I would say. A lot more fun on the ride. Yep. And you can die quicker if it wrecks. That's right. And then we go to the international fund, global. These are foreign companies, global funds. And that way you're going outside of the U.S. market, right?

Because if things are shaky here, they might be pretty good in the global market as a whole. And so it's a way to balance out all these funds. So if we were going to make that a vehicle, maybe that's like Emirates. We're flying to Dubai. All right. So it's an aircraft. We can go everywhere in that. So that's the way we look at it for retirement investing.

There's no set term. You need to stay invested for the long haul. So once you park your money in these places, assume that it's going to stay there until you're ready to draw it out in retirement. It's a long-term play, okay? Key principles that we teach, and this is the same thing you're going to get. If you ask AI and ask Ramsey, they're going to say, don't try to time the market, right? That's not how we teach here.

We say, do it every month. Invest that 15%. It's like clockwork. It doesn't stop if the market goes up and it doesn't stop if the market goes down. And I'll just say, I've tried it before. I've been wrong every time. You've tried what? Timing the market?

Yeah. I'm going to hold. I'm going to, you know what? I think there's going to be a recession. So I'm going to not put in my investment. I'm going to put it later in the year. I've been wrong every time. Yeah.

And I live in this stuff. I live in it and I was wrong. Yeah. I truly think the best way to do it is just like that dollar cost averaging every single month. Just set it and forget it. Just set it and forget it. Let it come out of your account. automatically avoid target date funds.

They shift really heavily into bonds as you age, and those just aren't making the returns that we want you to make. Bonds are never the answer. That's something that we would tell you. You need to be beating inflation with your investments. And so that's one of the reasons. Okay, so Ask Ramsey can help you take the next step when it comes to investing, and that's based on your specific situation.

Ask your question today at Ramsey Solutions.com, or you can just click the link in the description. if you're listening on podcast or YouTube. John, did we cover it? I think we got it. All righty then. Let's go to Madison, who's in Indianapolis, Indiana. Madison, how can John and I interest you today?

Hi, thank you guys so much for taking my call. So essentially, I did not have dreams growing up of being a stay-at-home mom. Now I flash forward, have been in a situation where I went, I had my son, went back when he was four months old to get my master's degree. So I did research for two years, didn't make good money as a grad student like all others. And that put my husband and I in a time of great financial stress. Money was very tight. I graduated in August of 25, and I was not able to find a job despite my best efforts.

I had our second child, a daughter in October. So I was home from the period of about August until January of this year. I went back to work. But I have realized how much I really do have a desire to stay home, but we didn't have enough margin in our budget. So since I started back in January, we also got a really nice tax return. So we were actually already able to pay off my vehicle. We had about $10,000 left on it, and we paid it off actually last Friday.

Great. So that was very exciting, but we are still $62,000 in debt. That's about $30,000 in student loans. loans between the two of us, $5,000 in credit cards, $2,000 on another credit card. Actually, we just made a payment yesterday, so it's about $1,500. Okay. On another credit card, we had to use the, and both the credit cards are no interest currently.

Okay, good, good. And then my husband has a car loan as well, which is about $24,000. Okay. The only other piece of the finances before I get to, like, the question is we currently own our house. When we strip away our wants from our needs, it is good for our family. We hope to have Lord willing three or four children. It's a three-bedroom house.

Well, Madison, we're coming up to a break that we need to take. I'm going to hold you over because I want to make sure John and I can help you get the answer that you need to your question. So if you'll hold on the line just a little bit longer, we'll get right back to you after these messages. Right, so we're back to Madison in Indianapolis, Indiana. She called earlier. She's been a stay-at-home mom for quite a while,

and they've got a little bit of debt that they need to pay off. It sounds like it's around $62,000 of debt that they're working to pay off. She is on the line and wants to continue with the help. Madison, did I get it right? Very close. So I was only a stay-at-home mom for a period about six months. I came back to work to help get us in a better financial position, And the question is, how long until I can be a stay home on again?

Okay, perfect question. So we've got the 62,000 in debt, and that was broken down between student loans, credit cards, there's a car. And you also have the house. Now, the terminology that you used, you said you own a house, it's paid for outright, or do you still have a mortgage? Give me some clarity on the house. No, we definitely have a mortgage. We owe about 249 on it. Okay, you owe 249 on the mortgage.

So how much do you guys, what's you guys' income and break it down? Like, what do you make versus what does he make? Yeah. So do you want, like, what our checks are bank account has or what our, like, technical your salaries are? No. Tell me what you guys bring home in a month. Like, you can tell me we make this every two weeks or you can say in the full

month, we make this combined. Okay. So my husband is biweekly and he makes about 1972 per check. And then my checks are about 1758. Okay. So the grand question is, how can we make this work in an environment where you're no longer working? And that's closely tied to the debt, right? If you have $62,000 of debt, obviously, and this is just numerically speaking, you want as much money as you can going towards that debt, right?

So if you were to stop working now, that would be an issue, I'm assuming, right? Yes, no, definitely. So have you guys decide, have you guys plug the numbers into every dollar and actually said, okay, if we keep going at the rate that we're going now with both of our incomes, how long will it take? And are we okay with that? Yeah. So it looks like it would be around three years. So by the end of this year, we expect that we would have this down down just below $50,000, which is great progress, but still $50,000 in debt to be on a single income. So yeah, I guess the question would just be, is it okay to stop before the debt is gone? Because almost half my income, actually half of my income does go towards just child care. Well, that is a values question for you guys. It's not a wrong or right.

It's completely values. If you guys say, you know what, in this season, we really value debt freedom because if we do this now, it's going to set us up to be able to get the kids college funds rolling. It's going to help us pay off the mortgage faster. And when we look up and we're 59 and a half years old, we are going to be able to retire and we like the nest egg that we're going to have. Right. You plan it out and you've decided, okay, for that reason.

Or, and this is not, no answer is more wrong or right than the other. You could look at it and go, you want to know what? We could elongate this journey a little bit by you staying home. And maybe you look at it and you go, if we do this, it elongates it by double and we play out the numbers and we still feel like we'd be okay and yeah we might have a little less here or a little less here but we're okay with that that's the that's the sacrifice that you guys have to make but i would say this in order to make that i would run the numbers because money does talk and it does inform is that really the life you want because if you stop working today madison

how long will that elongate your journey how much more time will it take yeah definitely probably twice or three times the amount of time that it would take and medicine can i tell you just an exercise me and my wife do whenever i feel like i'm backed into a corner either and in your case i'm staying at home and we're going to have to get by on 3500 a month which seems i don't even know how the math would work on that with what your husband brings home or i have to stay working for full time and I never get to see my kids and even half of my check goes to child care. Right. So you've given yourself an either or option.

An exercise my wife and I do and we feel backed into a corner is we just make up a whole bunch of other variables and dump them on the table just to remind ourselves that it's almost never either or. And here's what I mean in your situation. How important is this car to your husband? Can he sell it and get a $3,000 card because y'all decided we want you to stay home. Could you go one more year and he sell that car and you're debt free? And because there's going to be some, right, and I'm just making up variables to put on the table just to prove to y'all, there's other paths we can take that's not caustic option number one or caustic option number two. And if you sit down and say, we together really value me staying

at home. Or let me ask you a deeper question. You never dreamed to be in a stay-at-home mom. part of the reason you want to stay at home is because you hate your job and you're realizing this isn't worth trading my time with my kids for. And so I'm going to continue to look for another job while I'm doing this miserable thing or I'm going to look for, you get what I'm saying, or a part-time job or a all I want you to get from what I'm saying is there's almost always more than an either or path. And then there's the part of it where is does the math even allow for it. Yeah, I don't see how it allows for it in your life. Yeah, because I do want to ask,

what is your mortgage payment? It's about 1850. Okay, so that right there is the that is the major decider for me almost, you know, beyond the values question. The math doesn't math, because where you are right now, you're fine.

It's 25% of your take home, you're good. But if you go down to just his income and you're making $3,800 or $4,000 a month, suddenly, you guys are 100% house poor, and to be house poor Madison with $50,000 of debt, that is curtains. That's an emergency. That's an emergency.

And I don't think you would even enjoy your life the way it feels on a day-to-day basis to be in that sort of a bind. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. My husband is expecting to have a promotion this year. And that will give us some more margin, like come time when, you know, debt is paid off. I mean, is it double?

Because it would truly need to be double. Because it would basically need to be what you are making. Yeah, that's true. It won't be double. It's just hard when you've already made decisions that you wish you hadn't. Sure. And you're like, well, I'm not sure how to backtrack. What are we going to do, sell our house and then move into a two-bedroom apartment?

That's $12 or $1,300 in our area. That's not going to get you where you to be. Listen, what you're facing, though, is everybody faces that reality in one way or another. all of us face that. So this is no like finger pointing at you or you made bad choices. We all do that. We all look up and go debt gum it. I mean, for me, Madison, it was I look up and I go, oh my gosh, if we had avoided that student loan debt, we would have been able to do this, this, that, and the other. I can't go back and change it. I can't go back and change it. I can't go back and fix it. What can I do going forward to make sure I am making intentionally the right choices for. my future. And I think that's the crossroads that you're at right now. You can kind of keep the blinders on and go, but I really, really want this. And I'm just going to kind of go forward and just hope it all works out. And then you're going to look up again and go, dang it. Like we did not set ourselves up for success. So if I had to advise you today and you did call, given the

circumstance, given the $62,000 in debt, given the mortgage payment and the fact that you said, yeah, we're probably not going to move and downgrade to an apartment. And given the fact that you're not a stay-at-home mom looking for work, you already have a good job and you're already locked in. I would say write this thing out, pay off the remainder of the $62,000. And that's going to give you mental clarity, yes, but it's also going to give you peace financially. And then you guys can reevaluate and say, okay, what does our life have to look like in order for me to stay home from here because it still might look like you doing something because by then he will have had the raise. So maybe now you're just doing a little bit of part-time work to close that

gap and you can keep that same house. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I see what you're saying. Or it may be, and these are hard conversations. He may quote unquote love where he works, but when you all sit down and say, here's what we value, he says, I got to go get another job. or for this season you stay at home and I'm going to work two jobs because that's what it's going to take. But it's just, yeah, dump all those variables on the table. But first ask yourselves, who do we want to be and what are our values? And what's the quickest path to get to those things? Yeah, and we're going to give you every dollar because we want you to be able to see these numbers, see it very clearly.

We're going to hook you up with a year for free and make sure that you get there and you can see a clear path that you can get to together. You spend hours researching before making a major purchase like. like a home or car, but it's also a good idea to put in the work searching for the right insurance coverage. To protect your biggest assets, I recommend using Ramsey trusted pros. Whether you're looking for car, home, or any other type of insurance, Ramsey trusted providers have been coached and vetted to serve you like we would. Find what you need at ramsysolutions.com slash insurance. Welcome back to the Ramsey show here in the Fair One's Credit Union Studio, where we have

Cassie calling in from New York City, New York. Cassie, how can John and I help today? Okay. First of all, thank you so much for taking my call. And just to get right to it, the overarching question is at what point, I'm a business owner with my husband, at what point to file for bankruptcy. so my situation has a lot of emotions and fatigue tied to it. Do me a favor, Cassie.

Take as deep a breath as you can and hold it. For three, two, all right, exhale it all the way out. All right, we're with you. You're not by yourself anymore, okay? No, you're good, you're good. You're good. No, you're good. So I recognize there's emotion and fatigue.

Talk right into your phone for me. Sorry. So I recognize there's emotion and fatigue, right? So what I'm able to do, and I know I'm not doing it properly, my husband is the same way. And honestly, I value more than anything God perspective. And I kind of randomly came across the show three days ago. Okay, but anyway, so my husband and I have been together for 17 years,

we left our jobs and we went into business together and went from not having money to eat to being able to gross 419,000 a year. It took us a long time, but in the 17 years we saved $100,000 in cash. We bought land. We still have that land. And I'm giving you that perspective to kind of show you where we came from. And we were just not financially prudent at that time. I don't want to focus on like blame, whatever. The most important thing is I'll obviously answer whatever question.

you have. Where are you guys right now with your money? How much do you owe? Okay, here's the issue. So all of it is SBA, EIDL, because we kept quitting the money that the business made back into the business. We didn't like buy houses or cars. We just had that land and we owe $78,000, no, $829,000. $829. The problem is the interest on it is accruing at $78 a day. Yeah, yep. And now, so I went from being able to pull in 36,000 a month. That's what I, and I can do better than that. It's just I can now do 10 to 15 a month because that's what, because COVID really affected our industry. I don't want to give too much information.

What industry is it? Consulting and just hospitality and adjacent industry. Okay. But I want to say this. COVID was several years ago. I know it was still rippling through the economy in weird ways, but I want to bring you, and I'm doing this intentionally. I want you to come to right now in the present because you're living in the past and the future

and come right here with me right now. How much do you all owe? You owe $830,000? Yes, sir. Okay. $830,000. And you and your husband combined, not top line of your business, but what do you all bring home each month?

Right now, because we work together on the business. We always have. I just more like the front face I'm selling. Okay, so it's combined right now. I'm able to bring in 15,000. And now we've fixed a lot of kinks into business together because we're kind of working apart for a little while there. And I can probably bring that up,

but I recognize I need to stick to what can I actually bring now? What can we possibly bring, which was kind of the mentality before and why we were in such an us, in my opinion? What about what's the, what about assets? Like, what's the business actually worth? Oh, I don't know. Honestly, it's not, it's very, another thing I've learned, it's very me-based, right?

I have the relationships. It's not scalable. There's not a book of business you can sell. There's not equipment you can sell. Yes, I can, I'm, yes, there are, I don't know, there's probably like 100 grand in equipment that we could sell off. Do you have a home? No, no, we, we've always rented. We own land.

That's where we... How much land do you have? An acre and a half. Okay, what's it worth? We paid cash for it. It's worth probably like $300,000, I think, or maybe $200,000. I'm not sure because we paid for it in cash back in $20. That's okay.

This is what I think we need. I think we need to do a little bit of research. And I think when we come out of the research, we might find some things that give us some light at the end of the tunnel, because that's what you need. you need some hope right now, Cassie. You need to feel like there's action that you can take that's going to make this situation feel better

and feel different than it does today. And so that's what we're going to help you try to find. If you're making $180,000 a year on your business, that's a good business, okay? Yeah. So here's what's going on in where there's like a little bit of, or there was disagreement. Now, my husband, praise God, we've gotten on the same page.

Okay. But while we didn't, you know, we're burning runway there, right? So the issue is we have rents business rent of about 7,211, right? Okay. And again, I know there's a lot of emotion there because the simple thing in my mind is we let go of everything. We let go of all these business rents because I can work from one area. Correct. But then his argument, which I agree with,

I want to honor it for its just value is, okay, we do that, but we have two very small children. One and three, where are we realistically going to have the mental? Well, wait, I'm going to jump in on that because I want to know straight up. I hope that you guys let the office rental space go because you don't need it and you need all the profit that you can get right now. So I hope that you did let it go. Did you let it go? No, that's, I want to do that this month. I think that's imperative.

You have to. You can't afford it. It's imperative. It's $7,000 a month that adds up to more money year over year. And you need that money, girlfriend. Like, this is not even a, if you're talking, if we're in a conversation and we're talking about bankruptcy, then we got to figure it out. Maybe the kids go to Auntie's house and that way you have the space in your home to work.

But if it truly is just you and your husband and that you guys are the people making this engine run, there's no employee. there's no reason to have an office space that people are coming into. Absolutely, you got to let it go. Am I right about that? There used to be employees. We had a bunch of employees in two different places. But yeah, that has been cut down.

Also, I... Let me do this for you, hon. Just on two decisions, okay? So if you file for bankruptcy, that's a seven-year process, right? That is a seven-up Okay. Okay. So if you let this rent go and you, multiply that by five years.

It's 90,000 a year. It's 420 grand. And if you sell this land at $300,000, that's $720,000 on two decisions. Yes. You see what I'm saying? I do. My husband is telling me from one other perspective of,

okay, we let go of all of that and then we don't have the mental space to do. You will make the middle space. You'll make it money. Yeah, y'all are drowning right now mentally. Two decisions. Two decisions. right now, and in five years, this is over. It's over. And you'll have the piece of knowing it will

be over. That's right. It might not, you might not cross the finish line for five years, but think of the rest you will feel walking away with a plan that you know, if I just execute on this plan, I pull the two levers that John just said, I have a plan. And in five years, I just keep riding that horse to the Old Town Road, and I will be out of debt. You get to keep the business that is profitable. Yes, you get rid of the land. Yes, you get rid of the office space. But, But in five years, I'm free and clear and I'm making this thing go. Oh, my goodness, totally worth it. Figure out something to do with the kids.

You can figure that out. You figured out the rest. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade Warshot. Listen, summer spending adds up so fast between vacations and road trips and camp fees and events. And all the extra gas and grocery runs, money can get tight before you know it. To really get your money under control and keep it that way, you're going to need a plan. And that's what you'll get with the every dollar budget app.

It helps you track your spending, free up cash to put toward debt and savings, and it's the simplest way to make a plan for your money before the month begins. So, no more wondering where your money's going. You're telling it where to go. Download every dollar in the app store or Google Play and start for free today. All right, here we go. The YREFI question of the day is sponsored by YREFI. When you fall behind on paying back your private student loans, it can feel like your life is

being held hostage. But Y-ReFi helps borrowers explore a fresh start with low fixed-rate refinancing and a payment plan designed around their ability to pay. Visit Y-refi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. Remember, it may not be available in all states. All right, today's question comes from Savannah in West Virginia. Savannah writes, my fiance and I have four children. Okay.

Our only debts are a truck loan and our mortgage. I'm a stay-at-home mom, and he earns $90,000 a year. He recently became very interested in investing. Not in you or your marriage, but, okay, I'm not against it, but I don't agree that now is the right time. I have the $1,000 in my savings account as our emergency fund, but he wants me to give it to him so he can invest it. Okay. I just don't know if he's doing the right thing with our money. What are your thoughts about investing while being in debt and having nothing saved?

for our children. Oh, boy. So many problems here. There are many problems. But if you don't know our way of teaching, let's just answer the money question. I won't pipe in with my drama. Yeah.

If you don't know the way we teach, you'd go, what's the big deal? He wants to invest. What a wonderful thing. And I agree investing is good. It's a way to secure your future. It's a way to love your family well. But I do disagree with him that now is the time

to invest because I think this is like good, better, best. And the best time to begin investing is when you've cleared your consumer debt. And the reason for that is two to threefold, there's many reasons, but I'll go to two to three. First reason is if you begin investing and you do not have savings, your investment becomes your savings account, John. And what happens when you need a new roof or when all four tires need to be replaced or the, AC goes out is you go, oh, shoot, I don't have any savings. So now I go to two terrible options. I either go to debt, I put it on a credit card, I put it on a heloc, or I roll over and I look at, oh, that investing chunk of change looks pretty nice. And I mess around and I take a 401k loan or

I take a 401k withdrawal. And now I'm on the hook for that. And so it's so important to make sure you have the right foundation before you begin investing so that that investment can stay locked in the way it's supposed to for the long term. So that's part one. And then part two is a little bit more, I'll be honest. You could take it if you leave, take it or leave it if you want to, but I believe it's the smartest way. When you pay off your debt first, if you pay off your debt before you begin investing, then you have the full power of your income working towards building wealth. Around here, we believe that your biggest wealth building tool is your income. And you do not have your full income at your disposal when you're still making payments, especially if you're making payments

on things that are going down in value, like trucks and cars, and then there's other types of consumer debt, right? So that's kind of the crux of why I'm saying what I'm saying, which is I agree with Savannah in this case. Yes, you need to pay off the truck first. And then after that, you need to save three to six months of expenses. And then you can begin investing 15%. And by the way, yeah, please do not take your baby step $1,000 emergency fund and invest that because then you're up the creek without a paddle. And I guess I'd just say this and we can move on. What we're seeking here is ultimately safety, like that we have enough money in the bank when we retire as we age to take care of us, right? And safety will, like if you pull safety all the way up the river, safety starts right here.

and right now the way you're describing your life is it's you versus your fiancé your boyfriend it's i got this savings i want to keep us safe he wants to take my money and make it his investment like you can't y'all are not going to ever get where you want to both go which is to a safe peaceful place if y'all are competing with each other and so y'all need to get aligned on are we rolling in the same direction in the same boat together or do I have my boat you got your boat and he

sees your boat as you and those four kids and he sees his boat as wherever he wants to go and by the way you got some of my money so give me your money so I can get my boat further along down the road you're going to find yourself very very exposed and so that's why we tell people to get married before you start sharing your money it's why we tell people to get married before we start sharing your kids because that legal document forces y'all into the same boat and it forces y'all to have the hard conversations about which direction are we going to row together and if two people are in the same boat both rowing in the same direction you will get wherever you want to go way faster than two people trying to row their own direction in their own boat that's right that's very good john so there you go

i won't i won't make any more judgments here there you have it yep okay jessica is in san francisco California. Jessica, you're on the line, my friend. Hi, thanks so much you guys for taking my call. Absolutely. Full disclosure, I am really nervous. So please forgive me if I'm, oh my God, if I'm a little clumsy. No worries. Have you listened to this show? I'm as clumsy as it gets. You're good. You're good. Oh, that felt like a hug. Thank you. I'm very, I'm really new to Ramsey.

I just downloaded the audio book of Baby Steps, which I started yesterday on my commute home. Welcome to our cult, Jessica. Yeah, so I have been listening to the podcast going back the beginning of this year. Anyway, to my, to my, the reason I'm calling, I just turned 56 this week. And so thanks. And I'm really feeling a, I'm like a combo platter of really overwhelmed, massively scared and really, really embarrassed because I'm so late to the game. And I want to empower myself the best as I possibly can. So I'm not working until I reach my expiration date on the shelf, right?

Tell us what you're concerned about. Tell us why you're the combination platter. I just want to know if I'm ever going to be able to, yeah, of my combo platter. I just really want to know am I ever going to be able to retire? I've, I've, yeah. Well, you're not alone. There's a lot of Americans that feel that way, that feel anxiety around, not just can I retire, but when I do, well, I have enough money to carry me through my entire, my, all of my retirement years.

So let's, let's play with the numbers. California. Yeah. It's just so, in the Bay Area. Yeah. Well, let's play with the numbers a little bit, and we'll try to see if we think you're getting close or if there's hope for you or there's always hope. So tell us you're 56 years old. What do you have in retirement savings so far?

Like nothing. I spent my entire 30s disabled and then I rehabilitated and went back to work and lived check to check in my 40s and then put myself through grad school. So to be able to double my earning. and had started to save in a 401K. And then I work in tech and we had a layoff. And so I was laid off for a year and a half and just went back to work a couple months ago. So how much is in that 401K to date? Even if it's not much.

Tell me how much. Yeah, 127,000. Okay, which is not nothing, by the way. What's that? That's not nothing. You said almost nothing. And give yourself credit, you have 127,000. And how much are you earning?

140. 140 a year. Okay. Yeah, with about a 10% bonus. Great. Annual bonus. Okay. And do you have any consumer debt?

And I have about, I do. I only have, this is my only debt. I have lived debt free with the exception of a car my entire life. I own my home. I have $10,000 on the car. It's worth talking. 26, I have a $2,000 emergency fund, even though Dave recommends $1,000. I'll let it slide.

You can't even buy a box of Kleenex here in the Bay Area. Listen, I'm not going to take you to task on that. So you've got the $10,000 car. You've got a little bit of an inflated baby step one. Is there anything else that I'm talking fast because I want to make sure we can help you? Yeah, yeah. And I have $16,000 in savings. Okay, excellent.

And I own my home, and I own my home, which is about $350,000. Yeah. I'm going to blow your mind on this. What I would do, I would take the $16,000 and I'd pay off the car today. Today, right now. I would do it immediately. And then I would continue to invest your $1,750 a month off of your salary. And if you do that from age 56 to age 70, girl, you're going to have $1.2 million.

So you need to stop playing and feel good about yourself. And you got a paid for a house. And you have a paid for house. You're going to be just fine. The 4th of July is all about freedom. being broke and stressed out about money all the time, that's not freedom. Look, you can change that. Right now, during our 4th of July's sale, select hardcovers, are $13 each,

or mix and match three for 33. If you're stressed out and living paycheck to paycheck, these books will help, because real freedom begins when debt stops calling the shots. Don't wait. The sale only lasts four days. Go to ramsysolutions.com slash store today. Dan is in Los Angeles, California. I feel like we've had several Californians calling in today.

How can we help out, Dan? Hey, thank you very much. I'm currently in a first-time situation that my house is on the market for 90 days, and I'm lowering the rate every basically the rent at a few weeks, and it seems like it's not going to be... Yeah, hey, Dan, do me a huge favor. Talk directly into your phone for me.

I'm talking to the phone. Do you hear me better? Yeah, it's a little muffled. So whatever you can do to improve that, we would all appreciate it. Yeah, I want to be able to get right to your question. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, so my concern is if should I sell the house right now in a loss or should I keep the property with a negative cash flow with $2,000 from my pocket every month

and wait a few years until I can refi or the value of the property would go up and I can sell it in a profit. So you're burning $2,000 every month on it? I would. You're not currently? Why are you saying you would? Because the house is still on the market is under listing, and the rent price is lower than my mortgage.

Okay, right. And I'm saying you're current, because of that, you're currently burning $2,000 a month on it. I just want to make sure I understood that. I'm burning more. I'm burning $8,000 right now. Oh, but if you were to rent it, it's only going to bring in six because of the market value. I see.

Okay. Got it. Wow. What kind of property is this? It's a property in the Hollywood Hills. I bought it for 1.6. I actually put 30% down two years ago. Okay.

And I moved to a new primary, and I thought, okay, let's rent this out. And I understood that I'm in a negative cash flow right now. So why do you think that is? because I'm looking and it's showing that for your, you know, for Los Angeles area, 45 to 70 days is like average days on market. You're sitting at 90 days. No, he's trying to, he's been on the rental market. He can't rent it.

He hadn't tried to sell it yet, right? Yeah, I'm trying to rent it. Yes, correct. So it's on the rent. You can't, you've been for 90 days, you can't get to renter. Exactly. So if you sold it, what would you lose? Excuse me?

If you sold it, if you put on the market today and it sold tomorrow, what would you, what would you I believe I bought it for 1.6 and I would sell it for 1.4 with this today's market. Tell us how this is occurring in this way. Tell us what do you think the barrier is for finding renters and tell us why you think it's going down in value. Did you overpay for it? Tell us what you think the problem is. I paid more than a thousand dollar square feet in the Hollywood Hills. With today's market, from what I see, I think prices that's sitting on the market for more than a month or two, they just, the owner just dropping the price.

And the house is three bedrooms. It's 4,400 square feet. So it's not for a big family. And maybe it's a little bit expensive for one person or for a couple. Okay. So it just wasn't a good condo. Yeah. And right now, the rent is for 7,000. for 90 days, but I'm going to lower it to 6,000, and then I'm going to be a negative cash flow of $2,000, or I'm going to put it on Airbnb and maybe going to be break-even with the mortgage, because my interest is 6.8% from two years ago. Do you think that you could realistically do the Airbnb thing and be at a break-even to try to ride out the market a little while before you sell it? Do you think you could realistically make that transformation?

From my research, from my research, I could be break-even, yes. I might do that in the interim. Otherwise, you're $200,000 in the hole on this. Do you have that money laying around anywhere that you'd want to take that loss? You said you put down 30%. So you put down 480 on it, right? Yeah, 500, so it's a little more than 30%. Yeah.

I don't want to take the loss. I believe in real estate that the price would go up even if I'm getting this negative cash flow, the appreciation would be better to hold this property for 10 years. You can't afford that, dude. You're getting killed right now. I mean, if you can, if you're, is this the only property you have? Do you have others? I have others, yeah.

Are they doing well? They're cash-loying. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have the same interest. I have 2.7% interest on the others. Uh-huh. How much total debt do you have tied up in it in real estate?

In real estate, more than a million. I mean, much more, yeah. Like how much? Like, give me a round number if you think you could, like, is it 1.8? Is it 3 million? Is it? It's about, I have one property that is 1.6 plus 1.6 plus. It's about 3 million.

Okay. And then how much is it all worth? I would say. maybe five million. Okay. Million, million, million point six, so it's two and a half. And then, yeah, five million. I think that if I were, if I were you, not me, if I were you, I think that you understand this.

And I think that you might be able to make that Airbnb transformation and get this, at least break even for a while. And you might be able to ride this out to where you're not at least, you're not making any money, but at least you're not burning cash on it until maybe it's in a better position to sell. I might try that for a while. And if you're not able to do the Airbnb, then, yeah, I'd probably try to get out of it if I were you.

Because this $8,000 a month loss is terrible. And then even being able to rent it and still being at a $2,000 loss is even more terrible. I'll tell you, based on your portfolio, you're exposed. in a pretty big way. Right? Yeah.

And so I, because in here, the only reason I'm saying this is because of how, well, that's not even the only reason I'm saying this. I'm looking at the flip side is you, you have assets worth $3 million and, five million. I'm sorry, $5 million. You're leveraged $3 million against them, right? Yeah. Okay. So if you went and sold every house you had today.

tomorrow you would have a positive bank balance of $2 million approximately, right? Gross, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, minus taxes and yada, yada. I'd say what, for me, and I don't have a bunch of houses, so take this with a grain of salt, I'd sell that house, and I would pocket $300,000, and I would have a very expensive $200,000 stupid tax. And this is one of the prime reasons why, and man, God Almighty, we take.

take a beating online because of how stupid we are. But this is why we say buy with cash. So if you find yourself in these moments, you're at least not losing your soul, right? Right. But so that's what I would do. I would take it on the chin because you're getting hit on multiple levels. You're getting hit on the home price has devalued. The rent price keeps going down underneath you. And you've got almost 7% interest rate on this thing. Correct. Yeah, you're getting punched and kick and bit all the same time. And you happen to be in a position where you did put a big chunk of money down.

So you're going to walk away the $300,000 check. You'll have lost money on this particular investment. But, man, you're hemorrhaging right now. I may have missed a point on this because I thought you said that you were, I thought you told me you still owe 1.6 on it and it's worth 1.4. He bought it for 1.6, but with today's market, I believe if I'm going to put it on the market, for sale, it's going to sit for a while. If I'm going to post it for 1.6 again, I believe I'm going to fit a few months and I would have to lower to 1.5 and 1.4 for what I see today.

Yeah, I'm, I see. Property was on the market for $3 million and I bought it for $2.3. So it's very slim. If you can, if you can get out of it to John's point and you can get out of it without owing, yeah, great. If you're already, if you feel like if you list it for a realistic price and already be upside down, I might hold it a little bit. Our Ramsey show scripture and quote of the day, James chapter one versus two through three, one of my favorites, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Love that. Harrison Ford said, I always see life this way. You just have to find a way to stick it out and to prevail. It's almost like Harrison Ford knew a little bit about James Chapter 1, 2, and 3. All right. Let's go to Charles, who is in Savannah, Georgia. Hey, Charles. How can we help today? Hey, how are y'all?

Thank you all for taking my call. Yes, sir. What's up? Nothing. I was just, I was wondering about investments. I live, you know, I have a wife and a 10-year-old daughter, and, you know, we live pretty humble. you know, we live close to Savannah and it's a rural area.

So everything's a little cheaper down here than opposed to Atlanta or New York or somewhere in California. You know, and we don't make a whole lot of money. But I've managed to save, me and my wife had saved about $60,000. before my dad passed away five years ago, and he left us up. He had an insurance policy of $125,000. And, you know, we save every month. And I'm frugal, so to speak. And, you know, I don't like losing money.

You know, I work, my wife works. We save about $500, $750 a month. Okay. We are about $40,000 in debt with two vehicles, which one of them we had to purchase. Usually we don't do more than one vehicle payment at a time, but somebody hit my wife a few months ago, and they totaled it out. So we did have to go get a newer vehicle. So, Charles, going back to the money, you said you had saved before you get too deeply into the $60,000 and the $125,000. Is that the only money you have saved anywhere?

No investing, no nothing like that? I do have a CD that's about $253,000, and I'm making about $10,000 a year off of that the last two years. I do have a 457 Roth with about $17,000 in it. Okay. And I contribute 5% each month. And I work for an agency and I've got a retirement plan so they don't match me. But I do contribute 5% to that every month.

And I've got I've got a couple ounces of gold and silver, which is that I bought, you know, five, six years ago. So, you know, I've gained about probably $5,000 on that. Okay. And then I've got a little bit of cash. I've got about $10,000 in cash. Okay. at the bank and my safety deposit box, and then I've got about $10,000 in my safe.

Well, my goodness, Charles, you got money coming out your ears, my guy. You called us and I thought you were like down to your last broomhole and you got money everywhere. You do. You have it everywhere. I just don't know if it's in the right places. It's not working for you like you could. My goodness, you're doing good.

That's what I'm blanking. But, you know, me personally, I don't need a whole lot. You know, I think you might need more than you think. Yeah, and you keep saying that, but then you keep going to get more and hiding at places. Yeah, because you feel good now, but there's going to be a day when you're not working. Yeah, exactly. And like I say, I do have a retirement plan, but $325,000 in today's economy, I mean, that could be gone in a blink of an eye. It could, but it could also be back.

Yeah. And I do, I do want to say this because that, what you're saying, I think Charles is hitting on what a lot of people feel that are probably listening right now as they are afraid. It's like, hey, if I invest this money, what happens if the stock market tanks? And the truth of the matter is, we have to think about that. Like, let's think back. If we think back to 9-11, if we think back to 2008, the Great Recession. You're right.

The stock market did tank, but what did it do two years later? It recovered. I know. And they say if you bounce back better and ever. Yeah, and they say if you do it over a, you know, a 20 to 30 year period, you're going to gain regardless. Of course, yes. Even on my 457 Roth that I have through my job that has got, like I said, I checked about two weeks ago. It's got like $17,000 in it.

And I wish I would have started the day I started work. Yeah. How old are you? But I'm 43. Okay. Here's the thing, Charles. While you plug these numbers in, Charles, let me just say this. You and I have kind of a like spirit, which is kind of an eye on what if this all goes down, right?

Yes. I appreciate you saying that because I've been watching y'all's videos. Okay. And I have been – I worked half days on Friday, and I've been calling y'all every Friday for a long time. All right, I'm going to tell you something that's hard to hear, and I had a buddy of mine that's a bank executive tell me this, okay? And he was right. If the stock market implodes and doesn't come back,

let's say it goes to zero. The little rocks you have stored in your safe that one shiny silver and one shiny gold are going to become rocks. The paper you got stored under your bed is going to be paper. Yes, I'm over. Okay. So here's the thing. Here's the line he gave me when I was doing exactly what you're doing.

And I didn't have gold and all that, but I was like, what about this and what about this? And here's the line he gave me that, for whatever reason, it set me free. And maybe it will for you and maybe it won't. But he said, John, I don't have a meteorite plan. If the U.S. stock market goes to zero, that's control alt-alt delete. And it's going to get Western real fast. Okay? And so planning for what happens if a meteorite hits us?

You know what? I'm going to solve that for when that happens. And you're not even buying backhose and shovels and bullets. You're buying like gold and hiding this over here and stuff it under your mattress. Right? So here's what I want to say. Give yourself the best opportunity with the information we got in front of us. And what I would tell you, the best information, based on the numbers you gave me and you gave me a lot of numbers. So I just took the 253 in CDs and I pretended as though you invested it

today. So that gives you with the 17,000 and I wasn't sure if the 60,000, I didn't even add the 60,000 or the 125 insurance because I didn't know if that was what was in the CD. The 60,000 is what me and my wife had saved together before my dad passed away. Okay. And I received, you know, 125,000. And we. Like I say, we try to save at least 500 because at the end of the day, between the both of us, we only make about $110,000 a year. Well, we'll call that $60,000.

We'll call that your emergency fund. And I'll do you one better. We can add the cash and the money in the safe. We can add that to it too because I think you like having cash around. So I'm not even touching that. We won't even invest that. But if we took the money from the CD, we went ahead and invested it along with the $17,000. And let's pretend you told me, yeah, you guys put away maybe five to seven 50 every single month.

That's the margin that you can save. If you just did that and you did that, Charles, from today until age 65, that puts you at 3.8 million. And that's enough for you, I assume, with your lifestyle. To do whatever you want wherever you live. Yes. And let me just say, Charles, we would say, hey, invest 15%, you know, pump that number up. That's not even with you doing that. That's just with you saying, hey, I got $500 a margin.

I'm just going to plug that in over there. And you want to know what? I'm cool with that because I will just be happy with this call if you begin investing. I will be happy if you take the money from the CDs and you invested across the four funds that we teach here. And I do want you to get connected with a SmartFester Pro because these are people that we vet out. So that means we trust them. We trust that they can take your money and that they'll treat you with respect and they'll

treat you with the heart of a teacher and teach you so that you'll learn and feel great about how your money is being invested and that that money can grow for you, not just for your current family, but for your legacy. And I think that that's about as good as it gets, John. So that's what you need to do. All right, guys, that does it for this hour. John did not reply to me. I took here. I didn't think you tossed me the ball here. There's ultimately one way to financial peace. That's a walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.