The Ramsey Show - Decide To Change RIGHT NOW

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

💵 Sign-up for EveryDollar today - The simplest way to budget for your life! Dave Ramsey & Dr. John Delony answer your questions and discuss: "I'm $120K in debt and feel stuck," "Should I sell my new car?" "I'm being sued for an old credit card," "Is it OK to cut the cord and enjoy retirement?" "Buy a home for my son and his college friends?" "I can't afford to go to my friend's wedding" Support Our Sponsors: NetSuite Zander Insurance BetterHelp Next Steps 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET or click here! 🏦 Take Your 3-Minute Money Assessment - Get a personalized money plan! 🍎 Enter the Teacher Appreciation Giveaway 📄 Need help with your taxes? See who we trust. Listen to more from Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Our phone number is 888-825-5225. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. He's host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, where he discusses mental health and relationship health. And we're here to talk to you about your life and your money today. So it's perfect that he's here. Again, the phone number, 888-825-5225. Mike is with us. Mike's in Houston. Hey, Mike, how are you? Hey, Dave, how are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Hey, I really need your help. I need your help with my financial discipline. I moved back home this year, and my parents told me that I have this year to fix my finances I make $105,000 a year and I'm totally in debt $121,000 in debt they allow me to pay a rent of

$400 a month for the rest of the year for me to get back on my feet what's the debt man? what is the debt of? yeah it's $8, man? What is the debt of? Yeah. It's $8,000 in credit card, $37,000 in an auto loan, $57,000 on student loans, and $19,000 in a line of credit. What'd you buy with the line of credit and the credit cards? So the line of credit was to consolidate my debt from my divorce because I got assigned a debt because I made substantially more than her.

And then the credit card is just debt that I've been carrying for the last probably 10 years. When was the divorce final? Five years ago. Okay. So you've not done anything about cleaning up the mess from five years ago yet? I have not. I have not. And that's why my discipline has just been absurd.

When did you buy the $37,000 car? So that was actually even worse. What happened was I actually bought a $72,000 car and within a month I realized that I wasn't going to be able to afford it. So I took it back to the dealership because my monthly payment was going to be 1400 bucks a month. And I was able to get into another Mercedes that was, uh, I could roll that negative equity to, which was 56,000. And so far I only owe 36,000, but my monthly payment on the car is $800 a month. So you owe $37,000 now, and the car is worth what today?

It's probably worth like $20,000. Where'd you get that number? Just kind of what I've been looking to see if I could resell it and get out of it. Yeah. Okay. And your question is how to have financial discipline? Yeah, how can I get my bucks in a row to be able to pay this off this year while I have the advantage to just live at home?

I have a girlfriend that I'm pretty serious with that I want to start a life with next year, and she has an 8-year-old kid. So I want to be financially prepared. Right now, and she has an 8-year-old kid. So I want to be financially prepared right now. I don't know if my debate is should I just save this year to get like $30,000 in savings and then start tackling my debt next year? No, I think it's time you start tackling this debt. I mean, that's why your parents let you move home. With the sole purpose of you getting your crap together and getting this mess cleaned up and they told me this is the last year that

they would do that yeah yeah so i mean you got you know and so what you need to do is work all the time like more than you work now i like you make 105 000 40 hours a week right yeah i'm salaried i can't get overtime i didn't ask you to do that i want you to get another job You make $105,000 40 hours a week, right? Yeah, I'm salaried. I can't get overtime. I didn't ask you to do that. I want you to get another job. Go throw boxes. You're not serious about this yet.

You don't need a hack, bro. You just need to do it. What has kept you from doing this? Dude, I get a year after a divorce, man. Those are messy times. You make dumb decisions. You buy a car. You get an apartment. I get that., I get a year after a divorce, man. Those are messy times. You make dumb decisions. You buy a car. You get an apartment.

You can't afford it. I get that. It's five years. You're 35 years old. You're about to enter into another till-death-do-us-part relationship, this time with a kid. Like, what hack are you looking for, man? Just, I don't know,

because I have only $2,000 in savings. Okay, so here's what I want you to do. You have to decide that getting this debt paid off is now a matter of life and death. Because this crap, this misbehavior on your part has stolen your life. Literally. Yeah. And it's stolen your peace and i want my life back and i want my peace back and i'm willing to do anything to save my life like the doctor just walked in and said you know you're a hundred pounds overweight you're about to die of a freaking heart attack you got this this and this and if you don't drop the weight, buddy,

you're dead in a year. You know what you would do? You would drop the weight, buddy. Nobody would have to talk to you about how to be disciplined. You'd be scared out of your freaking skull, and you'd drop the weight. Right? Yeah. So get scared out of your freaking skull.

You're hovering around this emotionally as if it's something that is just out there detached from you like discipline is going to fly in and light on your shoulder like a bird it's not you're going to have to just look up and go i am sick and tired of being sick and tired i've had it i'm not living like this anymore you got to get that thing that roar coming up from inside of you and then you don't care what your friends think and you will work six jobs throwing boxes at night while you make 105 during the day and you'll sell this stupid butt mercedes mercedes should be driven by rich people not broke people and so what were you even doing on the lot that doesn't even make sense so you

got to start talking to yourself like that okay and go no more i'm not doing this crap anymore i'm 35 years old this sucks and i'm not gonna do it anymore that's where discipline comes from is a healthy level of disgust when the pain of the situation you're in exceeds the pain of change, your butt will change. And until then, it won't. But this pain is emotionally manifested, meaning you just decide, I'm sick of this. And until you are, you're just going to wander around in circles chasing your tail like you've been doing for the last five years. And that's any of us, man.

We all do that. I've told the story a thousand times now it feels like during the fauci pandemic i ate every donut in a 50 mile radius i looked down and they were hanging on the front of me and i went this is ridiculous a fat man is on the radio talking about discipline i've got to drop the donuts and you know what hadn't had a donut now since the pandemic and i walk or run every morning. This morning I did two miles. Yesterday I did five miles before I came to work as the sun was coming up because I decided I wanted to do that more than I wanted to be fat.

And so I decided to lose it. And it's a decision. I got disgusted with myself. Yeah, and I can't communicate this strongly enough. There's not a five-step program to discipline. There's not a super hack. There's not an app. You have to decide. And I'm not, not next Friday. I'm going to start right now. That's when it starts. That's when it starts. And hey, hang on the line. I'm going to send you Financial Peace University. I want to send you the videos, and you've got to commit to watching them.

And I want it to seep in. You're in your parents' house. You're 35. This is your ticket out, brother. There's a lot here to be discussed. You've got to do it. You've got to do it. There's a lot to be discussed about.

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real-time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next. And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Dr. John Deloney, relationship expert, mental health professional, PhD in counseling, Ramsey personality is my co-host. Thanks for hanging out with us. So when I was growing up, a little redneck kid outside of Nashville in the burbs, these little houses all in a row, had a neighborhood full of kids,

and the kids would run in and out of the house and in and out of the house all day long and leave the door open, and my mother would say classic things like, were you raised in a barn? Like, no, I was raised in suburbia. But yeah. And so but finally, somewhere in the heat of the summer and the air conditioning having all spilled out of the house, the heat is now filled the house and it filled her head too.

And her frustration level would reach it. And she would say, that's it. The worm has turned we had no idea what that meant except that the beatings were about to begin and so uh we would all get scarce real fast and not no more in and out of the house we were just out of the house at that point the worm has i didn't even know what it meant i found out later it was shakespeare who knew mom knew shakespeare you know your mom was a the worm has turned i'm like what does that mean except things are about to get ugly so yeah but you know that's what happens this is the secret of how you become disciplined

the worm has turned that's it les brown the great motivator used to say people change their lives when they finally say i've had it i'm sick and tired of being sick and tired and that's changing your life is not a changing your uh habits becoming suddenly disciplined and something you weren't is not an intellectual exercise it's an emotional spiritual exercise well and nowadays we have so much access to so many opinions informed and uninformed we have countless plans and so we we delude ourselves by researching a bunch if i like there's been seasons dave when the time i spent researching the right workout if i just went down and worked out it would have been less time than i spent just trying to get the perfect all right what's the what a waste of time right so just go do the thing yeah when in doubt go do the thing something yeah go do it yeah and that changes

everything so some of you listening right now get out your credit cards right now cut them up right this second it's time for plastic surgery. It's time for a plasectomy. And later, you can write it in your journal that it occurred. But freaking do it. Go do it. Text your wife or your husband and say, we need to talk tonight. Text right now.

We need to talk tonight. Because I just cut up your cards. Yeah. We're going to have some, it's going to be tough this month, but send that text right now. There's no going back. Go do the thing. Get up from your desk right now and go for a walk.

So right now, the reason I bring that back up is not to fuss at the last caller. That's not the point. The point is, this is a common thing that is a human condition. John and I suffer from it. All of you suffer from it. How do we go about embracing doing the hard thing to get to the easy? And John, you know, you've got a great saying, choose your heart. Oh, by the way, you don't know this. I forgot to tell you. I was going to tell you off air, but I'll just tell you right now. So a neighbor of mine

came to the event we did with Mike Rowe, and you went through the whole choose your heart. You can choose to lower your caloric intake and lose some weight, increase your exercise, or choose to be on the operating table for heart surgery from your obesity. Both of those are hard paths. Both are hard. So choose your heart. You did a whole talk on that.

So my neighbor, who's a good friend of mine was in the audience he has lost 150 pounds since that talk no way and it's all because of that wow because of your talk that's amazing i he said it clicked it made sense to me i was with him last night wow and he's a great guy that's incredible yeah he was he was big and he has lost a he's lost a backstreet boy i mean it's ridiculous yeah he lost james childs and james little pet poodle dog he has that's amazing james and his dog but i think the illusion is um choose your heart spinning my wheels gets me somewhere yeah it's hard to work extra it's hard to not go out to eat it's hard to stay home from vacation while your friends are going your broke friends are going and spending money they don't have it's hard to live on a controlled budget like a grown-up instead of a child that

acts like they live in congress and they spend whatever they want it's hard to do the discipline is hard but you got to choose your heart because otherwise you're going to be broke and it's it's hard it's hard to be scared when your kids need braces it's hard being scared when i remember when i was broke broke broke dave i called my friend and said hey do you have some money on a credit card i got to go to the er have something checked out that was a shameful embarrassing call i made at 26 years old. That's hard, too, right? So you're not. Yeah, asking your parents to move back in when you're 35 years old. Yeah.

That's hard. Wanting to marry somebody and saying, I'm going to be more of a burden to them than not. That's hard. So choose which difficult path. It's not like one's easy and one's not. That's exactly right. Yeah. And so the problem is when you don't choose to take the steps to live like no one else

so that later you live and give like no one else, you don't choose to do the things that cause you to build wealth, become wealthy. By default, you have chosen mediocrity. By default, you've chosen to retire broke and hope the government will take care of you, which is well known for its ability to handle money. By default, you're going to be working in McDonald's or be a Walmart greeter default you're going to be working in mcdonald's or be a walmart greeter when you're 68 because you didn't choose the hard earlier this is gonna there's just no easy path yeah that that's and it once i get that about something then it's go time i can go it's game on right and i can flip

the switch and so can you and so can else, but we all have to consciously, intentionally choose to delay pleasure, and delaying pleasure is emotionally a sign of maturity. It's a sign of emotional and spiritual maturity. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. Chloe is in Grand Rapids changing the subject. Hey, Chloe, what's up? Hi, Dave. This is so cool to talk to you.

My question, I am currently working full-time, and my husband is working full-time as well, and we have a beautiful little baby girl. She's 10 months old. And I was wondering your opinion on whether or not I could basically go part-time. Okay. Can you? Do you need more details?

Can you go part-time? You tell us. Well, after being on hold for a while, I think I can. But I guess with inflation and the housing market and just the cost of everything going higher and higher it's a scary jump to make. Okay here's the deal I mean mathematically I'm sure you've thought about this can your household operate on your husband's income and your part-time income? Our current household yes definitely however I mean we're currently we're in a house that we don't want to be in for the long run um and just looking ahead i guess maybe i'm coming from

more of a place of fear just watching how the economy is what do you do i'm a school psychologist and my husband what do you make a therapist i make about 62 000 full-time okay if you go to part-time for three years and the child uh is old enough that it starts to or four years child goes into kindergarten whatever right and then you went back to full-time and you went back to full-time in order to buy a bigger house we probably want to have a couple kids okay then then you're making a choice to either be with a kid or have a bigger house your probably want to have a couple kids okay then then you're making a choice to either be with a kid or have a bigger house your choice yeah you gave you gave me the magic word chloe and this is what you would tell your your students your clients you you want to work part

time and you want to have a bigger house and those two wants a bigger house or a different house totally fine with it yeah i'm totally fine with a small house it's more just location a safe location well sure you're sure and it's not i'm not making any sort of judgment i'm just i'm just repeating your words back here's the deal you have two competing wants and you have to sit down and say which one is more important to us that's it right i mean it definitely is a mama bear my kids are my kids and my family are the most important ever. There's not a judgment.

There's no wrong answer. There's no judgment here. No judgment at all. People who work full-time, moms who work full-time are not bad moms by definition, unless they choose to be. And people who stay in the same old, maybe more run-down house, keep Formica cabinets, aren't bad people either. They're just making choices. Yeah. Just which choice?

Just consciously realize. But you can't have both because you're not in congress you don't have unlimited funds one of the questions i get all the time is which life insurance company should i use for my term life policy a valid question since there are hundreds of companies out there with rates all over the place and riders and add-ons that are simply a waste of money. You need to get this done and make the right decision. That's why the only company I use and have recommended for over 25 years is Zander Insurance. Zander is a broker who shops the top term life companies for you and finds the best rates available from the only plans I recommend.

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Honored to have you. How can we help? Hey, just wanted to see if a decision I made is reasonable and if there's a way out. I wish I would have met you two months ago. I hadn't really known about you and what you talked about, which I really agree with. I went and bought a new car about a month and a half ago for $54,000. It was taxes and everything was $57,000. It was a big regret because I know what you teach about buying new cars, you shouldn't do it.

I'm wondering if it's worth it. It's got 1,800 miles on it. I can only sell it now for about $48,000. So it's taking that big of a hit immediately. And if it's better to take that hit and try to buy a used car, or should I just stick this out, learn from my mistake? What would you recommend on that? Did you pay cash?

Yes. Okay. And what's your net worth? About $1 million. Okay. Well, we tell folks not to buy a new car unless you have at least a million dollar net worth, so you didn't violate that.

And what's your household income? About $125,000. Are you married? Yes. What's her car worth? That was her car. What's your good man? Well played.

Smart man. You know the federal law wife gets the good car all right and so uh yeah and what are you driving what's yours worth mine's worth probably 15 000 attaboy you're gonna be married a long time john okay so john the rule the rule of thumb we use on a paid for vehicle is don't buy new unless you have at least a million dollar net worth you did not violate that because you're going to lose ten thousand dollars in 20 minutes and you need to be able to absorb that blow which is exactly what happened to you okay and but ten thousand dollars doesn't put you into the street homeless it does someone that makes 50k and has no money but you have a

million dollar net worth you make 125 000 the other rule of thumb is don't buy things with motors and wheels all combined in your life because they all go down in value that equal more than about half your annual income and you haven't violated that you're right on the bubble though yeah okay so there's nothing in the guidelines that and those guidelines are simply there to say don't put too much money in things that are going down in value and expect to build wealth that's what that means okay and too much money is a ratio so you know like i've got a friend that makes 15 million a year and he drove up in front of my house in a $400,000 car the other day well it you know that's nothing to him but it's it's obviously a lot and it's obviously

going to go down in value faster than yours did and so uh because they 400,000 doesn't go up either they go down too so uh you know but he's he's no dumber than you are or I am or, you know, anybody else because of that, because of the ratio of $15 million to $400 is a lot smaller. It's like someone buying a $4,000 car that makes $150,000 a year. That's his ratio. So his ratio is excellent in that regard. But anyway, so that whole idea is to just keep people from doing this so I wouldn't shame you on this at all I mean the only thing the only shame I would have you know you went through this

whole thing I wish I met you too well I might have told you to buy the car if you call me and hadn't bought it because I think you can afford it you pay cash for it you've got a million dollar net worth the total of your vehicles is not more than half your annual income it's right around it but it's not it's not killing you. It's not, you know, you're not over in the stupid column, you know, that kind of stuff. So I think you keep it and enjoy it and don't shame over it. Yeah.

You know, I despise the car, but she loves it. But I don't know. I don't know. Why do you despise it? Did you despise it before you bought it or because of this discussion? One is because, you know, it's right on the bubble of whether you buy new or not, but it's just a car that has a reflection on the windshield. She drives it mostly, but it's just not a car that I would buy. And you know, you teach about being together in a marriage on financial decisions

that you'd be together on even the purchase of a car, right? Even though she drives it mostly. Yeah. But hold on. You're putting... You're upset with her and you're putting all this onto that car. Y'all need to have this conversation.

Because you hate this car, and maybe it wasn't a car you would have bought, but you're more frustrated that you feel like you lost or that she overrode you. There's some sort of relational issue. Being together, it doesn't mean you both have to love something before you buy it. I mean, I'm building a house right now,

and my wife and the decorator picked a light fixture for one of the rooms. I hate the light fixture, but I don't really care. It's a light fixture and it's, I care a lot more that Sharon is going to enjoy it. And it's SWI, Sharon wants it, which is one of the, it's one of the rules in our house, right? And so I, I acquiesce on that. I don't have to be completely aligned on every single thing. And I won't walk into that room and hate the light fixture. It will disappear because light fixtures do disappear once you buy them. You put them up and no one sees them again. People don't walk around and go, oh, there's a light fixture. People don't do it. And that includes me. And so I will be fine. I will forget the stupid thing is there after I've

lived in the house 20 minutes and so move on and so you don't drive this car just because you don't like the car you know don't don't go through all these financial gyrations to go I got oh now I got her now I got a way to get this car sold no no no no no no no yeah you'll sit down and have that hard conversation yeah yeah but when we say you should be aligned on your money, it doesn't mean you both have to enjoy every exact thing exactly the same way. Now, if someone is completely diametrically opposed to something for a good reason, we don't do it. You know, one of us, you know, when in doubt, we don't.

One of us is standing up and we're just going, no, cannot do that. It's awful. I can't stand it we're not doing it and then then that's what that's being aligned but you know you buy something that you really love and I really don't care for but I care that you were going to enjoy it then I can do that that's aligned too exactly it's like uh my wife and I are aligned on concerts the one I'm going to tonight she has no interest in going to so i'm going with she's very aligned about that that's right so we're very aligned on the thing but yeah

not not the actual so you're going with james no james is going to be at home even i have standards yeah exactly he's going to be writing sad poetry about his dad in the corner ben is in detroit hey ben welcome to the ramsey show how you doing good how can we help yeah i was just uh calling my main question is if uh i'm trying to get my monthly expenses down in any way possible um I only make like 40, last year was like 40 to 50 a year and I'm trying to see if I only got like 7 or 8 grand in my

retirement. I pulled out over the years quite a bit because of not too great decisions. Ben, what's your question? I'm just trying to see, like, should I take the rest out just to pay off my monthly debt? No.

No. Here's why. How much is in your 401K? $7,000? Yeah. Okay. If you pull $7,000 out of your 401K and you're not 59 and a half, you get charged a 10% penalty for pulling it out early, plus your tax rate.

What do you make a year? I only make like last year, 43. Okay. So you're in 25% tax bracket. So you're going to get charged 25%, plus you're going to get charged a 10% penalty. That's 35%. It's like saying, Dave, I want to borrow money at 35% interest and pay off my debt. No, that would be silly.

Mathematically, you would never go and give the government a third of your money in order to get access to it unless the house was burning down, unless it was in foreclosure or something. So no, you don't do that. You take an extra job, you get on a tight budget, and you clean this mess up. You can quit spending every Friday night out doing something else. Go to work. That's how you clean the mess up, Ben.

This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This is the season for Halloween. It's October. We're wearing costumes and we're wearing masks. So if you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. And while you're thinking about it, I want you to be honest. A lot of us hide ourselves. We hide our true selves behind costumes and masks all the time. We do this at work. We do this around our friends. We do this around our families. We even do this

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Plus, you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Deloney. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Every dollar is our world-class budgeting app that helps you manage money the Ramsey way. Every dollar simply works wherever you are. iOS, Android, online with your desktop. Start every dollar for free and immediately see where you stand with your money. You'll get organized.

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And we're amazed at our rankings on Apple, on YouTube. Our rankings on Spotify are fabulous, and it's all because of you guys sharing it and talking about it and following and subscribing and all those good things. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. We appreciate you. Megan is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hi, Megan. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So my husband and I and our two kids are feeling forced out of our house because of a legal situation with our HOA where our HOA will be doubling in cost. And if we sell our house,

we're wondering if we should use the equity to pay off our remaining debts or if we should put it all towards a new down payment since the interest rate is much higher now than when we originally bought. Wow. What is your HOA fee now? $400. And it's going to $800. Probably $750. Wow. Probably, but it hasn't happened yet.

Nope. Who sued the HOA? Basically, the HOA sued the construction company because some of the townhomes in our neighborhood have major damage, but the HOA just lost. And so now they're responsible for repairing the foundations and roofs of the damaged homes. Wow.

That doesn't sound right. I mean, they sued the construction company to get the construction company to fix the things. I don't understand, because HOA usually doesn't cover, oh, this is a condo. Yeah, it's a townhome. These aren't standalone homes. Mm-hmm,'t standalone homes okay that's what's going on okay all right what a mess um so how much equity do you have um so probably about 120 before your values go down once word gets out about the HOA fee going up.

So right now it's worth $100,000, but once word gets out on this you're probably going to lose some value. Correct. I was thinking of selling it now. We have to disclose it, of course, but we might have a better chance

now. Yeah, because there may be a bunch of other people going on the market, too. The market might be flooded. Yeah, I'd sell it. I'm with you on that. You got $100,000 or so in equity. How much debt do you have? We have $50,000 in debt. Okay, so if you buy a house with $50,000 down and you have zero debt. What's wrong with that? Well, since now I talk to a lender and we qualify for about a six and a half interest rate. When we bought, we had interest rate. That hasn't got anything to do.

The interest rate hasn't got anything to do. You're moving. So you're either renting or you're buying. You're moving. You're either renting or you're buying.'re either you're moving you're either renting or you're buying so your old interest rate doesn't matter it's gone you sold it okay you're going to buy if you're going to buy it's going to be at these current interest rates yeah that's not going to change but whether or not we put a bigger down payment will change like what type of house we could get

and what our monthly payment for that house would be. So we're just not sure what the wisest way to use that money is. Yeah, well, your interest rate on your mortgage is going to be less than the interest rate on all your other debt, even though it's higher than the current mortgage. So mathematically, you'll come out better by paying off the debt and putting a smaller down payment down. You'll come out with a lower monthly drain by having an increased house payment and uh so yeah and yeah the the reality this is is that you're but yeah i would pay off the debt and buy whatever house you can afford

at that point with the fifty thousand dollars down and and listen i me, I got a feeling this has been stewing and running around. You guys have been dealing with the unknown and the stress of this whole situation for quite some time. And I'm going to encourage you to list your house by Friday. No more wringing your hands, no more worrying, no more wondering. Make a decision. Your anxiety level will drop immediately. But you guys have been kind of hanging up here in this constant level of angst for a long time over this issue, and now you've come to the conclusion it's coming. So act on it, and you will see your angst drop you agree with that yeah and uh clarify what you're saying so let's say she had a 2.9 interest rate now it's

going to be six and a half so maybe her monthly payment i'm making up numbers here was two thousand dollars a month and it's going to go to again making up three thousand dollars no it's not that way but what you're saying is so yeah it not that much. But what you're saying is, yeah, $2,700. What you're saying is paying off all the debt, all the car notes, everything, you're going to end up paying off $1,000 a monthly stuff coming out of your house. Yes, and here's the thing. $50,000 at an extra 3%, 3 versus 6, right? $50,000 that you don't have because you paid off debt and an extra three

percent three times five is fifteen hundred dollars a year this whole discussion is over a hundred bucks a month yeah difference yeah that's it so she puts down another 50k saves her a hundred bucks a month on payment that's it so it's it's just the math is focus there's no there's nothing here nothing's happening here but there's so much smoke and fire about the interest rate yeah but it's like oh god interest is higher yeah it's it's a hundred bucks a month in your situation because you paid off your debt instead of putting down an extra 50 that's what it changed it and so zippy you know i mean in the scope of your life that's not the problem you got you got a lot of bigger problems get this house listed so john talk about

the idea that when there is uh that the unknown or the sitting on the fence on an unmade decision is more stressful than a hard made decision, I think it goes back to that illusion that we sold people for 150 years that mental health was getting all the right thoughts in the right order. And when you have a situation like this, it'll never get in the right order. They just swirl and swirl and swirl.

And so what do we do? We think, we ask more, we read another book. And so instead of just doing the stupid thing, you have to act your way. Oh, and by the way, unfollow or defriend the HOA Facebook group. That's the other. Quit talking about it. Because that's where hell lives is in HOA Facebook groups.

The devil, that's where he takes up resident. It's a portal straight into hell. If a bus is coming right at you and the lights get real bright and all of a sudden everything goes dark and you open your eyes and you're staring at a Facebook portal for an HOA group, you didn't get in. You didn't get in. You didn't make it. You didn't make it. And people live on it.

People live on it. Oh, they're wrong people. That's what I'm saying. And when stuff like this is going on, when a negative situation in the neighborhood, it's like, oh, it just goes bananas. It's gasoline on a fire. It's just like, woo! Woo! Put the house up.

Unfollow a D friend. Get out. Get away from that stuff and put your house on the market and sell it and get out of Dodge. Now. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions,

it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, Ph.D. in counseling, best-selling author, host of the Best Listen to Ramsey Network show. I can't even get it out. It's so great. It's just amazing, the Dr. John Deloney show. The numbers are ridiculously up on that show, hockey sticking up into the right.

So thank you guys for listening to his show and this one. We appreciate you joining us. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. Damari starts off this hour in Miami. Hey, Damari, how are you? Hi, Dave. Good, and you? Good.

Better than I deserve. What's up? So I've been watching since 2019, and you've helped me get out of debt many times. I've helped you get out of debt many times. Many times? Yeah. I had issues with credit cards, but I've paid them off for the most part. But the issue I have is that I got home two weeks ago from work,

and there was a packet in front of my door, and I'm being sued by Calvary for an old credit card I had back in 2020 from Citibank. But it doesn't say I'm being sued. It says I have to be in person for a pre-trial conference by a judge. So my question is, should I go? What are the steps? Like, what's the process if I do go? How much do you owe them? That card was for $7,688. Okay. And why has it not been paid? This was during COVID, so my husband had lost his job because they couldn't afford him.

That was four years ago. Why has it not been paid? I had let it go into collection back in 2020, so I just haven't paid it. And so what do you all make? What? I'm make? What? I'm sorry? What's your household income?

Right now, I get paid $43,000, and he gets paid $39,000. Okay. So you make $80,000 a year, and you figured out that not paying something and ignoring it doesn't work because it has a high rate of resurrection right yeah yeah it comes back the zombies the zombies are here yep it does okay how many others are like that um this is the only one in collection because this is the only one no no no no no how many other debts have you forgotten and have not dealt with for years? There was another one from a Walmart credit card that a portfolio bought,

but they haven't sent me anything. Okay. How much is it? That was $5,400 on there. And I'm assuming you have no money. I mean, I have money saved how much i don't one thousand okay that's all you keep saying i is your husband around does he have any money y'all stuff separated no we save money together okay so together we have together all you could scrape together is $1,000 right now.

Yeah. Okay. All right. I am not an expert on Florida law. A pretrial conference on a $7,000 credit card is highly unusual. I've been doing this 30 years, and I've never heard of that. So this is a new tactic of some kind that the collections attorney is using. What is the date on the pretrial conference?

June 10th at 1 p.m. Okay. All right. If that occurred with me, what I would do is call the attorney that is suing you and start negotiating a payment plan or a settlement. Okay. Do you have anything that you could sell? Because if you come up with about $3,000 and offer it to them as settlement in full, they'll take it because they figure you're a deadbeat

because you haven't bothered to pay in five years. Yeah. I mean, I don't have anything to sell. How fast can you scratch up $3,000? Like real fast. Like don't do anything go crazy go work six jobs for the next two weeks both of you go nuts and get some money really really fast to get this off your back before June 10th gets here I mean we could do door dash on the side there you go in the morning and then you work all day and then you do it until your eyes are drooping in the evening you go to bed for a few hours you do it again yeah he's not kidding yeah because otherwise you're about to get your body

listen here's what happens in general when you go to court on a situation like this here's what happens a hundred percent of time you lose yeah you don't really have an argument here you signed a contract that says i am going to pay seven thousand six hundred dollars you violated the contract you're in default done guilty okay and so there's no argument it's just like i don't have any money i don't have any money it's not an argument and if they add attorney's fees on top of this or some kind of court fees you're going to end up blocking out oh and more than that potential yeah and so but and so they're you're going to lose whether you go pre-trial whether you don't whether you settle or whether you don't so you might as well work your butt off right now

and get this done before and let this be the catalyst june 10th you know i got to get this solved before june 10th and so call the attorney and say if i give you three thousand dollars before june 10th can we call this settled in full and he's going to say oh no and you say oh yes he's going to say oh no and you say oh yes and you argue about it until you settle on a number right yeah and then you go get that number before june 10th as settled in full and get a written release in writing from him or her uh to call this case closed and if i never get that letter before june 10th do i still show up or do i not go you get the letter and you give the guy the money you settle this you take care of this it's time for you to proactively take care of something

instead of letting everything happen to you by trying to ignore it okay and so you know if you want to go to a pre-trial conference you can go but all the judge is going to do is go boom you're done it's going to take about 30 seconds before you're done because there's you know there's no they didn't do anything wrong you're the only one did something wrong you just didn't the bill. And so they're going to get you. It's that simple. And then they're going to take a judgment lien for whatever the amount of money is. And then if Florida allows it, and I guess Florida does, they're going to garnish your wages. And then they're going to attach, put liens on your house and whatever else.

So you better go get some dadgum money together and do a lump sum settlement. Boom, $3,000, $4,000 thousand four thousand twenty five hundred somewhere in there and settle this five-year-old seven thousand six hundred dollar debt and settled in full in writing before june 10th and just become a nuisance to this attorney until they do the deal with you and then become a nuisance to yourself until you scratch together the money and get this done. So, John, in 30 years of doing this, one of the things that I see most often is if you take care of something when it's a problem instead of ignoring it for five years or 10 years

or 20 months or whatever it is, the level of problem, she could have cleared this up five years ago by busting her butt in the middle of the Fauci pandemic. There was stuff people were doing in Florida. Florida was open. There's a lot of stuff you could have done taking care of it then. But now, five years later, we're still talking about this. Well, my husband lost his job.

Well, freaking five years ago. If you take care of it back then, you got one-tenth the problem. You magnify your problem by ignoring it 10x minimum. Whatever the problem is, an old landlord dispute, whatever it is, you cannot ignore this crap. You got to take it to ground. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. This is a show about you, America.

The phone number is 888-825-5225. Well, it's tax time, so folks got questions about taxes. The only question I can't help you with is how to deal with your rage, because I haven't been able to figure out a way to deal with mine. So my poor tax guy, he has to bring me bad news every year. The bad news is that I pay our ridiculous government a ridiculous amount of money. And what do I get for it? Anger.

No, you get ridiculousness. It works out. Oh, I bought it. That's right. I bought and paid for it. That's it. There you go. Hey, question of the day for taxes what's the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit a tax credit 100 applies to your tax bill so a one thousand dollar tax credit reduces your

tax bill by one thousand dollars tax credit much better than tax deduction. 3x better. Because if you take a $1,000 tax deduction, that means you lower the income that is being taxed by $1,000. And so if you're in a 30% tax bracket, it actually saves you $300 on taxes. So a tax deduction is worth a quarter on the dollar roughly. A tax credit is worth a dollar for a dollar. And that's the big difference you're looking at. So if you're confident about filing on your own because you got a simple return, you can go to ramseysolutions.com slash tax and get our Ramsey smart tax software. It's very inexpensive to use, and we won't try to sell you a bunch of crap like TurboTax does. They're awful. Did I say that out loud? I just did. Yeah, okay, because it's true.

If you've got a complicated return, go to ramseysolutions.com slash tax and click on the ELP, the endorsed local provider, an individual person in your area that has the heart of a teacher that will help you do your complicated return. The fees are obviously more to do that, but you get a very personalized experience and you don't need to do that if you've got a simple return. If you're just doing a 1040 easy, don't pay somebody 400 bucks to do that. That's silly. Okay. But for sure, you know, spend 20 or 30 bucks on some software, right? just doing a 1040 easy don't pay somebody 400 bucks to do that that's silly okay but get but for sure you know spend 20 or 30 bucks on some software right that's the deal so ramseysolutions.com

for ramsey smart tax or for the elp in your area katie's in springfield michigan hi katie how are good good how can we help so my husband and i have been kind of stuck on baby step three for a very long time now um he only makes like 40 well he just got a raise so now he's making 45 000 but we have a child well we have six kids but one with severe special needs um severe autism and we are just busy with him all the time. And I can't, I used to do daycare in the house to help out and things like that. And I can't do that now. I can't go get a job. My husband wants to be home more to help me with the kids since it is a high stress situation.

So we just, we're having a hard time ever making enough to get anywhere. And right now we're on Medicaid and food stamps. And as soon as we make a little bit more then we lose those and then we you know we're kind of just stuck the same spot all the time okay what do you think the solution is I mean I feel like we have to find a way for him to make a higher get a higher paying job but in our area he's you know been stuck trying to find something and mostly everything's like requiring him to travel or you know just working a second job which then leaves me with no help with our six kids

but I just I don't know like he feels like we just keep going on welfare for the next couple years until we get, you know, I had been homeschooling, but because of the special needs and trying to work with him, most of my kids are in public school right now, except for him and the baby and my teenager who homeschools. But the others are all in school. So he's like, well, if we can just wait long enough for the baby to get in school then maybe you can get a job working at the school or something and but i'm like do we really want to be on welfare for three years what's he do for a living so he is a like a service technician he works on like coffee makers and things travels around and fixes them and installs them and okay all right and how old is he 48 okay well you guys have a lot going on i'm sorry man i mean you you're a warrior girl i'm proud of you uh and you you're carrying a tremendous burden and um but so the answer you're right the answer to the equation is income and um how do we get income up um well we have to have some

aspirations to do something other than welfare and so we have to say okay what do i want to be doing 10 years from today that makes $100,000 a year? The average household income in America is $43,000. I'm sorry, you make $43,000. It's $73,000. Okay. So by definition, not by shame, but by definition, you are in a lower income household with six kids that's that's like a factual statement not an emotional statement okay and so how do we fix that well obviously we change

the income because we're not going to change the number of kids right yeah so that so you know this amounts to career counseling for him this says, okay, what is it you can do? What classes do you need to take? What tools do you need to put in your belt so that you are worth $100,000 a year 10 years from now? And the path between 43 and 100 is not a singular jump. It's a progressive jump. And so the income will be going up consistently every year, year over year, as he moves through the apprenticeship or as he moves through the training or he finishes that two-year degree at the community college or whatever it is.

But he's going to have to figure out what he wants to be and what it takes to be one of those and then get about the business of doing that. Sitting there doing nothing, fixing coffee makers, is killing your family. Yeah. It's hard. The stress is in your voice, and I don't blame you. And he's not doing anything wrong.

He's not a bad guy. He just doesn't know what to do, so I'm telling him what to do. Yeah. What he needs to do is he needs to set a very clearly defined goal to do something that he actually does enjoy and has the capability to do with maybe some training or maybe some classes or a certification i don't care what it is but um you can go to six months of code school while working full-time and make $100,000 a year. Okay.

Writing code. I mean, I could look at being an electrician, but it was a lot of internship-type stuff and not making much the whole time. Well, guess what? Well, do I take less for a while and make more later? Yeah, or maybe we do something. But what we have to do is lay that down and it's not just i want more money it's i want more money doing something i'm going to have

some level of joy doing yeah okay and so i don't want you to just sign up for something you hate for the next 10 years to make more money that's not the issue but the end of the equation is yeah there's going to be more money at the end of that rainbow and so we need to really clearly define and set some goals because the problem the problem is not that the hard things are hard the problem is that things are hard and we don't see how they're going to get better yeah that's what that's what makes it triple hard and so when i can go through hard if i see my way to better and you can too this is a strange glitch in the matrix Dave I if a friend of mine called me and said he's in the same situation the first thing I would I'd probably get pretty loud and say dude I don't give a crap what you're doing you got to go to

work maybe I'm being I'm too harsh but man I'm trying to put myself in this situation and listening to Katie's voice. I hear a mom who's drowning and a husband who's like, ah, we're good. And maybe I'm too, I'm getting callous in my old age, but man, he doesn't see a path. Okay. And that's what he needs a path. And Katie needs a path. And that's, you know, I agree that, and then, and then if he won't get up, I'm going to put my foot

on his butt yeah i'm with you on that so yeah okay so katie i'm gonna send you ken coleman's career assessment for your husband to take and i'm gonna send you his book from paycheck to purpose i want him to read that book in the next three days and i want to take that uh assessment tonight when he gets home because we're going to send it to you by email right now. It's a link and he's going to start discovering what he's going to be when he grows up. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality is our co-host today. Today's question comes from Patrick in Minnesota. Patrick writes, my wife and I are in our early 60s. We have no debt and a net worth of $2 million.

Both of us are retiring in the next nine months, and our biggest issue is the expectation of our children and their families for support. We've been taking them on annual vacations for a long time. We give them money when needed, basically supporting their family at our expense. We've been blessed due to hard work planning for the future and making sacrifices along the way. Is it okay to cut the cord so we can enjoy

our retirement and not have to worry about their lack of budgeting? No, Patrick, I'm sorry. You've got to keep paying for everything for them forever. I couldn't even say it with a straight face. I tried. Yes, Patrick, you should have cut it a long time ago. A long, long time ago. Yes, it's time.

It's time. Have a big family meeting. Don't just ghost your kids. Have a big family meeting and say, Mom and I are no longer paying your bills. We're retiring. We're on a limited. Now we're on a fixed income.

And it's time for y'all to grow up. We're retiring. We're on a limited. Now we're on a fixed income and it's time for all to grow up. Yeah. Sorry. I bet as he typed this. Sorry, not sorry. He was, he got upset. You know what? But he's not the problem.

No, she is. He's trying to get us to give him permission to tell his wife that she has to quit being an enabler ah well you don't bet i wouldn't take that bet i don't take that bet because this guy the way he worded this he's so pissed he can't breathe you can feel it through the tech is it okay if i cut them off it's like so we can enjoy our life and not worry about my life again they're the kids on a budget you know it's like yeah you've been wanting to do this a long time patrick it's overdue and so yeah you have to tell your wife and your kids that we're not sending them any more money and here's a way to do this pat

and no she can't sneak into it either right here's a way i think you can do this um i had someone that that i care about call me a few years ago and say hey i'm retiring and i paused and said can you afford to do that and that question had never entered that person's mind it was like michael sc Scott declaring bankruptcy. Like, I declare bankruptcy! That's not how it works. That's not how that works. And so maybe sitting down and saying,

hey, we're going to retire in nine months. Let's see what our life's going to look like, how much money we're going to have for things. And maybe the math will help your argument. Probably not. But maybe it will help you create a world where this is what our world is going to look like this is what we're going to have and not this is the discussion with your wife sir exactly your kids with your kids the answer is just no yeah just go ahead and send

out like hey we're retiring and that means so is our sending you money it's retiring too not happening anymore done and love you want to see you all the time. Come over. If you're really, really hungry, call. We'll make dinner. But short of that, that's it. I mean, you be on your own. Well, your grandchildren, my grandchildren are going to be fine, and you're going to be fine too.

People have done this for generations, like stood on their own two feet and stuff, and now you guys get the opportunity to do it. It's a pretty cool thing. So, yeah. Good job, Dave. I didn't even see that through the through the lines but i think you're right yeah i mean he's thoroughly done yeah amanda's in milwaukee hey amanda how are you i am okay how are you doing better than we. What's up? Thanks for taking my call. So my husband and I are looking at many potential house repairs that if they go, it's going to be a problem. We have a furnace that's 20 years old that may seize up because it's slowly leaking oil. We have a water heater that's leaking that might go.

We have a chimney that's potentially leaking into our roof. And we have a sewer lateral that is made out of clay, and it's leaking and causing backups. We also have $55,000 in debt, and we want to focus on the debt, but we're staring down all these potential repairs and a potential surgery for me down the road, and we're not sure how to approach it all. What's your household income? About $86,000.

And what's the $55,000 in debt? What kind of debt is it? $35,000 in student loans, $5,000 in medical bills, and then $14,000 in a loan that we took out to repair windows because that was leaking into the wall causing mold well your house is a piece of crap it was built in 1912 oh you watched too much hgtv didn't you they built they don't build them like they used to thank god it's gonna be so fun we can fix it up it's gonna be amazing yeah yeah boilers that leak and water heaters that pets heads are falling off hey listen when i was um don't you sell it yeah well that's what my husband and i talked about and we were thinking

we could sell it and then use that money to pay off debt. We were wondering what your, what your opinion is on, well, in order to sell it and actually get money for it, we have to fix all this stuff. And so we were wondering what,

you know, you just sell it. Well, you have to disclose that. They're going to find that they're, I mean, a home inspector is going to find these issues, but,

and you disclose them if you have known issues as a seller anyway, and so it may lower the value, but it doesn't keep you from selling it. Right, right. The things are all still functioning. They're just on their last leg. Right. We were thinking, though, to increase the value in order to fix it, is a cash-out refinance.

Broke people don't do refinance. Good idea. No, don't do a cash out. Don't. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because then you're putting the last two legs of your house on the block. Why don't you just put a sign on the yard and sell it and move? Okay.

I think your life would be better. And then we were thinking we could rent until we pay off the debt, but rent is way more expensive than our mortgage. Our mortgage is like $780 a month. Your mortgage is $780 a month plus $100,000 in repairs. Yeah. Renting is not $100,000. Right.

That you don't have. And Amanda, can I ask you a personal question? Guess what? If the water heater leaks when you're renting, you call the landlord and he fixes it. It's the coolest thing. Amanda, are you struggling with anxiety? Yes. Yes. Here's how I know.

And so is my husband. Yes, I can tell. And I know that because I've been you. And when you get anxious, you start forecasting all of the potential calamities coming your way. And they feel as though they're happening right now. Well, that's the other thing. My question to my husband was, do we need to fix this? Because these are all potential things. We're getting people to look at them and tell us.

We're going to fix them today if you stay but i wouldn't stay okay i think the quality of your life is going to go up considerably when you move and i think there's something else going on underneath this is your marriage okay yes it is okay so we have a lot of um um outside family stressors my family can almost guarantee it and you start grasping for every shred of control you have in your life and when you're anxious it spins out and you can't grasp any of it it all feels like it's piling on you at the same time and listen to me and dave it's not you can stop this particular top from spinning by putting a sign in the yard tomorrow. Or you can look at each other and make a checklist and say, all right, nothing's broken yet, and we'll have to deal with this someday.

We love this house. We love this location. We're going to knock this dead out. Yeah. But I really didn't hear that. I didn't hear we love this house. It's not our forever home. We hope to grow our family.

There's no room for that. Your forever home's heaven. There's not our forever home. We hope to grow our family. There's no room. Your forever home's heaven. There's not a forever home. Yeah. So nobody has a forever home. This idea that you're going to live in a house forever is just dumb. Nobody does. Everybody moves.

I mean, really. The number of people that live in a house 60 or 70 years is almost zero. The average house flips every 5.6 years in America. So, yeah. Hang on the line. I'm going to send you a copy of building an unanxious life as my gift. I want y'all to read it together. Yeah. Y'all go through it together. I think there's bigger things going on that that's y'all are focusing on this one

thing and it's all coming down. It's not, it's not, it's a problem to be fixed, but it's not all coming down. I would leave. That's what I would do. Jump online at Ramsey solutions.com. Get one of our real estate endorsed local providers that are Ramsey trusted, and get the thing listed by the weekend. That's what I would do. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Building a non-anxious life. The book is the number one bestseller that he just gave away. And, John, in that, one of the things you talk about, what, four or five things that we have to do, right?

Six. Six daily choices, yeah. Okay, thank you. But it's, I could hear that in that last caller's voice is every time you provide a solution it it doesn't solve the problem it actually opens up a portal to a whole bunch of other problems and when you try to solve anxiety that way or just a whole bunch of problems or even just a lot of stress you end up playing whack-a-mole and you just hit a problem and two more shoot up and you hit another one and three more shoot up and so really the book is about go all quit playing that quit playing whack-a-mole put the little hammer down and go back over there and solve these other bigger

issues and she alluded to it in the call just asking hey is everything else okay no it's not like there's a lot of stuff falling apart and the beautiful thing about our bodies is man it'll try to get our attention and let us know things aren't okay and if you don't if you don't listen to those alarms man they'll start ringing real loud and you'll think everything's falling apart on you when it's really not yeah so within the six daily choices i mean let's talk about a couple of those like the first one is choose reality right you got to know you got to the starting line of the marathon you're about to run and in her case choosing reality this house is not falling apart this house is old it's got some challenges um what is true is y'all owe fifty thousand dollars let's get that knocked out

because that's keeping you awake at night um the second one like another one is choose freedom they don't get to make choices that they want to make because they owe fifty thousand dollars right so the the quicker we can unhook from other people telling us how we're going to live our lives and what we're going to do um then your body goes bankers yeah yeah unhook from the bankers yeah and get some if your family's falling apart your family's a place that causes you a lot of pain and stress then get a group of people in your life get a good church get some some ride or dies and your body sets some boundaries with the crazy that's right that's right yeah so it's it's it's dealing with these things way up river so that your body doesn't

have to spend its time trying to get your attention all the time yeah and there's uh something else that shows up too and and it's i kind of i kind of hit it pretty hard there but it's the um everything feels like it's forever. This is not our forever home, but it feels like it's forever. And so it's just a stupid house. There's a stupid house on every corner. Get you another stupid house. And rent somebody else's stupid house until you can get a better deal on a stupid house.

It's a stupid house. They're everywhere. And if you think about it that way it just it takes all the air out of it yeah it's like a release valve versus you know it's a forever home it's like it's like a single i mean in a singles ministry we used to hear this all the time it's like i haven't found the there's one person on the planet that god has and i'm waiting on that one person and it may take me a while because there's several billion out there to find them in that haystack.

Well, think of the pressure. There's one person. The pressure that puts on the person you're going to date with. Think about the pressure it puts on a house when you call it your forever house. Yeah, or your forever car. Your forever house.

My dream, whatever. It's not your forever house. There's not such freaking thing. There's not. I mean, really, you're going to move. Most people are. And sometimes for reasons you don't want to. But, you know, we've moved about every 10 years.

And we built a big old hairy stinking house up on top of a hill that we thought was going to be the last one. Not our forever house, but we're getting old with it. And, you know, we lived there 13 years. It was a beautiful home. It was a magnificent home. It was a show place. And we thought there 13 years it's a beautiful home it was a magnificent home it's a show place and uh we thought well that's it you know we've arrived that's it we're on top of the hill we did it and we're done and then these people started moving to nashville and they started paying ridiculous numbers and i sold it to one of them and then i was homeless now you're a suburban guy now

dead gum burbs again and so now you're the guy walking on the street with a little dog i am yeah i know you're that guy you're shuffling i'm the old man with a little dog in the morning on a walk that's me exactly that's me me and the little dog both need our walk so shut up if i saw you i would say are you okay sir you're that guy now oh my god and i would say get off my lawn there we go i'm gonna pop your ball kid uh michaela is with us in sacramento hey michaela what's up hey well speaking of moving all right you right. You're right in the groove here, Michaela. I am. I am. So we're moving from California to Hawaii.

Wow. I know. And probably going to look like July-ish. That's what we're shooting for. Did you and your family sit down and say, hey, we don't spend enough money on taxes and food and housing. Let's up it. Well, the reason is my husband's father has pretty bad Alzheimer's, and we don't have much longer with him. Oh, now I feel terrible for making a joke. Good for you,

Michaela. Good for you. See, she's Harley, and you're sarcastic. I'm a terrible person. You're a good person, Michaela. All right, so you're going to do good in the world. I'll be quiet. So basically, my question is, we're sort of at the end of baby step two, we've got about $12,000 in a personal loan that should be paid off in the next couple of months. Um, I'm thinking probably, um, yeah, a couple of months. It shouldn't take us very long. Um, and we're, when we move, we're going to be selling, we have a duplex here in Sacramento and a house that we live in. Um, and we're going to be selling both of these properties to go over there. Because I don't want that debt hanging over our heads. But that basically means that we're going to be completely debt-free by July, basically, when everything sells.

And we're going to have about $350 in our pocket, $350,000 in our pocket of just cash. Okay. So the question is, do I take that and obviously I'm going to squall some away for an emergency fund because at that point we'll be done with Baby Steps 2. Good. And then do we stick the rest of it, the bulk of it into like another house out there because we're going to be there for a while? Or do we sink that into retirement?

Do we split it? I'm just not quite sure what to take what to do with that bigger lump sum if that makes sense how long you think you're going to be in a way well we've been debating going over there for quite some time before the situation got bad with my husband's dad um because the area that we're going to is the big island kilo side and we really want land we wanted to kind of more homes how long you think you're going to is the Big Island, the Hilo side, and we really want land. We want to do kind of more homesteading. How long do you think you're going to be in Hawaii? At this point, I would like to stay there for quite some time. I mean, I would like to be there for, you know.

How long do you think you're going to be in Hawaii? Ten years. Okay, thank you. Then buy a house. Okay. Okay. Yeah, for sure. Okay.

And put it all on the house and get the house paid off as fast as you can because you might end up you might end up spending the rest of your life there it could be your forever home i'm kidding but no you really i would just invest there and and get you know get rid of the debt as fast as i can i would would do all these things. Yeah, because I'm thinking like the max mortgage I would want to pull out on anything would be about $150,000. I don't really want to go more than that. So we would be able to pay that off relatively quickly, hopefully. I don't really know exactly what my husband could be making with it. You can buy a house for half a million dollars on the Big Island?

Yeah, so the Hilo side is kind of house do you get for $450,000? For a half a million dollars on the big island? Yeah, so the Hilo side is kind of like the new frontier. It's like dirt roads everywhere and jungle. Yeah, I've been there. It's not hard. But I had no idea that you could get anything in Hawaii for a half a million dollars. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're looking at $500,000, $550,000 is kind of our max, absolute max. Oh, very cool.

And your income is what, your household income? Right now it's about $150,000550 is kind of our max, absolute max. Oh, very cool. And your income is what, your household income? Right now it's about $150. Okay, good. So pay off the mortgage in like three years. That would be awesome, yeah. Yeah, I just don't know if it's going to stay that when we move there because my husband is going to be transferring with his company, but I don't know what his pay is going to exactly be.

You should find that out. Yeah. Well, it's hard because he can't apply for a position until we're closer to time so we won't know until we're like a month or two yeah but he should know what the position is going to pay whether he applies for it or not well the thing is is that the well yeah it's can you call somebody over there yeah he's talked to the manager but the manager is like well it's hard for me to pin you on a certain job because you're not here and i can need to fill things now so that's why he was like getting we'll have something for you i'm sure it's just because he's like been with the company for a long time and you know

like he's a licensed electrician here we're not sure we're not really sure how that's going to transfer to why every state's different you need to know all of that that keeps you from stepping in a hole you need to get all that stuff let's button this plan up tighten up your plan gotta have a job this is how you this is how people call me back i'm only moved and then six months later he can't work and it's got the license didn't oh god don't do that get it all straightened out before you go kiddo Line it up and push the dominoes. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John

Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. He's the number one best-selling author of the latest book, Building a Non-Anxious Life. He's also the host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, which you ought to check out on the Ramsey Networks because it's insanely popular. All right, Scott's in Roanoke to start this hour. Hey, Scott, how are you? Great. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

Well, I have an 18-year-old son that's starting college in the fall. He's actually transferring from a junior college to a four-year college. And I got to looking into housing for him, and I thought it might be a good idea, a good investment, to instead of paying the rent that I'm going to have to pay there, it's in Richmond, Virginia, and so it's kind of an urban campus, so it's an urban setting, that it would be better for me to buy a house and rent it out to three of his friends. Can you think of a worse possible tenant than four college boys?

I thought about that. You can't get the smell out. You'll have to burn it down. Oh, man. You know, I looked at the exact same thing when our kids – I had three kids go through the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, which is about 200 miles from us, and Richmond's, what, 100 miles from Roanoke, right? 150. 150, okay.

I mean, it's out there a ways, a couple-hour drive anyway. Yeah. And so that's what I thought. I looked at the exact same thing. We were making a bunch of trips back and forth to Knoxville in those days because we had a suite for the football tickets we had football ticket suite and we had uh and we're so we're down there every weekend for football and that was also to go see our kids and all that stuff and um so what i ended up doing was i bought a condo for me

to stay in when i went on the weekends and i didn't let any of them live in it I paid rent for them to rent a house because I didn't want to deal with all the headaches and the liability of what a teen of what a college student could do to hurt themselves or someone else uh doing ridiculous things that I just have memories of me in college and I didn't want to be renting to that guy and so Scott I was a good kid and I did not make great choices yeah right yeah I know all that to say I I considered what you're doing and I decided not to do it I decided I added in all seriousness I didn't want that as a tenant because I didn't want the liability and I also didn't want the headache that it was going to be involved or trying to collect rent from these people. And then I got to clean up the house and rebuild it and put it back

on the market after it's all over and try to sell it. And I just decided it really wasn't a good investment because it brought with it too much risk and too many headaches, even though it pissed me off to pay rent because I had three kids in college never at the same time so we were down there for like a decade plus right and if I'd have you know I had the two girls in there first and then and they were there somewhat at the same time and then Daniel would have gone down last um and uh and I and I did have good kids and I don't think they would have torn it up and your kid probably won't tear it up but I would have vitamin me but um or the people I ran around with for sure but the uh uh I I made the decision it wasn't worth the headache that the the juice wasn't worth the squeeze who I

for the risk and everything else even though I wasn't looking at one kid. I was looking at really a decade worth. And I would have made some money versus the rent, but not much. For the time and the headspace and the resources it would have taken up to screw with it. I think liability is an underrepresented risk there. A college student does one thing, man, and sues you as a landlord. And the risk, I mean, there's a reason that that demographic is charged so outrageous fees for car insurance they just don't make great choices all the time yeah and and again it might not be you might have three good young men living there and there might be somebody visiting you know that comes over one night or somebody's got a girlfriend or something yeah yeah and and they fall out of the window or something i mean i don't know it's weird stuff happens and um uh we just had a story here in

nashville of a college kid visiting from another town that um you know uh you know lost his life he was downtown partying and um you know they couldn't find the kid for a while and his parents were looking for him everybody's pan, and he was from out of town and came to Nashville to party and did party, and then something bad happened, and they found his body later. That kind of stuff just scares the crap out of me. So I don't think you can have enough insurance for that. So I don't want to own that property, that kind of stuff,

something like that weird. No, I wouldn't do it, Scott, all that to say. say I didn't do it I was faced with exactly the same choice and a re and more reasons to do it than you did because I had a longer time horizon 10 years worth of this stuff not and three kids worth not just one but I did buy a condo and I did sell the condo when we quit going down there when I gave her the football tickets and all that and uh made some money on the condo so that worked. But nobody ever lived there. None of the students, no college students lived there. No college students were harmed in the making of this film.

So there we go. Larry is with us in Orlando. Hi, Larry. How are you? Hi, Dave and John. Thank you both for taking my call and for all the help you give other people on the phone call. It's really great of both of you. Thank you.

You're welcome. I have a question. You're welcome. I have a question. My personal history, I've kind of worked smart. I'm not supposed to work smart, not hard. I've worked hard, not smart. And so I divide my personal life financially into two categories, using a historical term, B.C., before common sense, and A.B., after Dave. When I heard your show, the light bulb came on,

and I started going as you term it, gazelle intense. And so for like the last, I'm retired right now, 69. I retired just over 67. But up until like about 9, 20, I went into that gazelle mode. I was going crazy, saving up and working extra shifts, picking up side gigs. So you've got a huge net worth now. Well, I don't really know if it is. Well, how much?

What's your net worth? Like, the money I'm holding in the CD is getting 5.6%, $240,000, about $80,000 in my savings, about $80,000 in pre-Dave stocks. Pre-Dave stocks make a bunch. They sounded cool. And then in my retirement, it's like, wow, $1,150,000. million hundred fifty thousand i thought so so you got a million and a half dollars or so and you're 69 years old cool what's your question i feel now it's like i've been running the mesh like

you're running a sprint you get to the finish line you cross it and you stop and it's like well there's still energy left i got more running to do i'm trying to show the reinvesting that money i've got when it comes out of the CD. Sure. There's a holding pattern. Sure. And you need to enjoy some of it, too. And you need to be generous with some of it.

But, yeah, I'm not going to stop investing because I'm really, a long time ago, I had enough for me. I'm now investing for the next generation and the next generation after that. A godly man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, Proverbs says. So yeah, just keep building it up. It's fine. But you don't have to do it at breakneck speed. It's just being intentional, not intense.

There's a difference. And let old Larry off the hook. Larry did good. You've caught up. You've done good. Old Larry, he's gone. New Larry's awesome. Good stuff, Larry.

Well done. old Larry's he's gone new Larry's awesome good stuff Larry well done Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co-host well if you didn't know it's national financial literacy month and we celebrate that big time here at Ramsey Solutions because ever since I very first wrote a book called financial peace, people have been picking it up and going, why don't they teach this stuff in the high schools? Why aren't we taught this stuff when we're kids? And that's a really good, excellent comment. And so we fixed that a few years ago. And we put together a thing called the Foundations in Personal Finance

by, of course, Dave Ramsey and Ramsey Solutions. And it has now been taught in 48 of the high schools in america and over six million kids have graduated from that class over the years lots of great teachers teach this across america so we celebrate national financial literacy month by doing just this and you know who makes that possible great teachers that choose to teach this curriculum, great administrators that choose to let their teachers teach this curriculum. And then your kid doesn't get out of high school and not understand basics about finance and go make stupid mistakes like most people do, including me. So there you go. One of those great teachers is Travis. Travis is from Aiken, South Carolina, and we wanted to jump on the phone with him.

Travis is one of these hero teachers. Hey, Travis, how are you? Great, Dave. Thanks for having me. And I really want to thank you personally, too. You changed my life and really my family's life. My wife and I have been married for 16 years, and we started working the baby steps pretty early on in our marriage,

and we've been debt-free for three years. So obviously I'm a big believer in the curriculum. Well, thank you. Well, thanks for teaching the class. What school do you teach at? I teach at Aiken High. Okay, at Aiken High School in Aiken, South Carolina. And how many students are in the whole school? Somewhere around 1,100. Okay, and so you teach

one class of this a year or what? So we teach, another teacher along with me teaches this class and this year we teach about 150 students next year yeah next year it's going to be a a requirement well i guess it's a requirement this year for graduation starting with the incoming freshmen in in south carolina yes it is amazing yeah that's great and uh yeah so we're going to be teaching a lot more starting next year. I think there's almost 300 signed up for next year. Very cool. Yeah, we've got a ton of new schools coming on board with that new requirement in South Carolina. They're coming on every day right now with us, and so we're really excited about that. So how long have you been a teacher?

This is my 20th year. And how long have you been doing the foundations and personal finance we started teaching personal finance at Aiken High probably about five years ago I think I've been teaching it for four years but you know now that it's a requirement and been adopted by the state we actually had to go out and have it funded by a guy locally that's a financial advisor that he funded the curriculum for everybody in our county, which is awesome of him. But now that it's adopted by the state, you know,

he doesn't have to do that anymore, and it's going to be an option for everybody in South Carolina, which is amazing. Yeah, that's very cool. Very cool. So you've been doing it four years. That means some of the kids, they're out in the wild now. They've graduated. They're out being adults and stuff.

Any of them ever circle back and tell you a success story, what they learned and what happened? Yes, sir. Well, one of the things I love about it is the college planning part of the curriculum. And I had a girl a couple of years ago. She really took the, you know, the curriculum talks about paying cash for college and how to do that, how to apply for scholarships and really kind of make that like your part-time job. And this girl took it to heart and she started applying for two or three a week, and by the time she graduated, she came to me and she told me that she had enough,

that she was not going to have to borrow any money for school, which is amazing. So she got $50,000 or $100,000 worth of scholarships? I don't know how much she got, but she told me she had enough that she wouldn't be borrowing any money. She got enough scholarships to cover everything. That's very cool. That's very cool. I'll tag team with you on that, brother.

Well done. Well done. Good stuff. Yeah, and Dr. John, Dr. John, that's one of my favorite videos, too, in the curriculum is when you explain how you've made some of your choices going to college. So that was that's certainly one of the fun parts of the curriculum. Well, I appreciate that. Thanks, man. It's an honor to circle back and be a part of this thing. And as a guy who worked at universities for 20 years, I saw students come in and make some tragic financial decisions.

And they didn't know. And moms and dads, they didn't know. They didn't know there was another way to do this. And so I appreciate you being a part of changing how the next generation thinks about money. So when the kids come into class, they're in a personal finance class or freshman, sophomore, junior in high school, what's the most common question you get from them? Well, there's a part of the curriculum that talks about, you know, paying cash for a car. And there's an activity that we do that's in the curriculum that kind of takes you through the steps of buying that first car and how to go about it and pay

cash and kind of build up to a car that you want. And the first part of the activity is, you know, you're starting off buying a kind of a clunker for $2,500. And they always ask me, I think every class has asked me like, well, you say you've been through these steps. Why do you drive a 14-year-old car? So that's a question I get a lot, but they really love the activity about the used car. I love it. They have lots of questions about that. Yeah, a car is a big deal when you're 16, for sure.

It represents freedom. I love it. That's right. Very cool. Travis, thank you. Thank you so much for teaching this class. Travis is a teacher in Aiken, South Carolina at Aiken High School, and one of the heroes out there that's teaching this Foundations in Personal Finance class.

And the other hero is the local financial guy there that's been funding and sponsoring the curriculum so everybody could go through. And now, of course, as he said, South Carolina has adopted this and made it a requirement. And so we're signing up schools in South Carolina. We're one of the approved options for schools to meet this requirement. And we're signing up schools left and right. So if you're in South Carolina, tell your school they should use ours. Well, they should.

It's the best one, right? So why would you use anything else except the Bentley? Don't drive the $1,400 car. Drive the Bentley. I mean, school's paying for it, so get the best. This is the good stuff. So, cool. Hey, and by the way, we're also celebrating by doing a big teacher giveaway.

Any teacher that's out there listening, be sure and enter the Ramsey Teacher appreciation giveaway sponsored by ramsey education one teacher is going to win a five thousand dollar vacation and two more teachers will each win a three thousand dollar vacation go to ramsey solutions.com slash teacher to enter there is no purchase necessary you don't have to be teaching personal finance to do this that's not the point we just want to honor teachers and teachers work their tail off and the ones that need a vacation they need a vacation yeah and dave while we were on that call i thought of the irony of all of this this is now a mandate going across the country where governments are mandating these kids need to learn about money and i thought dave you should make a education product for congress all of them looking at these kids being like y'all should learn how to spend

and save money be like yeah and so should you pot meet my friend kettle exactly that would be fantastic oh that is an irony it would not sell well though uh well no but people would buy it and donate it to the congress you could you i promise you i could if i just started getting up a little um what do they call it go fund me fpu congress edition a go fund me for just sending all of them total money makeover books they they that would i would get so much money in in the first 20 minutes it would be a five minute video of just your face just shaking your head no no i said no no stop no just say no no is a complete sentence no quit stop it no these high school kids are off to a better start yeah did some of our leaders oh definitely Maybe they'll be our

leaders. Ah, there we go. Yes. Yes. I can say yes to that. This is the Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jeremy is with us in West Palm Beach, Florida. Hi, Jeremy. How are you? I'm very good, Mr. Ramsey, and thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I told my best friend recently that I wouldn't be able to, uh, be his best man in his wedding. Uh, because the wedding is in a, in Brooklyn, New York. And, um, it's not in my wife's and I's budget. Okay. Okay. Why can't you get in the car and drive up there? Well, I don't know. We got Ramsey.

We have Ramsey, right? So I don't know if I trust them. We're in baby step three right now. And also, we have three children under the age of 10, two, four, and nine. So leave your wife and the kids at home and go to the wedding. Well. Drive up there i know it doesn't cost anything yeah that's a far drive i'm a floor i stay in my little area you know how you don't like to travel far for work i don't like to travel far from my home okay but i don't know if i'm just looking up like finding excuses or, you know.

Yeah, it's not really your best friend. Oh, well, I mean. He's a friend, but he's not your best friend. Because your best friend, you would already have driven up there. Yeah. You would do anything for your best friend, right? I know, but like I said, I mean. You don't have to spend $10,000 to do this. It's not an expensive thing. You're not really hardly spending any money to do it. It's just I mean, you don't have to spend $10,000 to do this. It's not an expensive thing.

You're not really hardly spending any money to do it. It's just inconvenience that you don't want. When is this wedding? It's July, the middle of July this year. So why couldn't you take a couple of shifts or work or figure most of them launch or do something to get some gas money? I guess I'm with Dave. I am doing that now.

I am working overtime, but you know, we're know we're trying to you know pay fill up hey jeremy your wife doesn't like this guy oh she does he was our best my best man but i mean in my wedding five years ago she doesn't like this guy oh i don't i wouldn't say that. Okay, so then what's really going on? Because, you know, this is not a money issue. It doesn't take any money to be in this wedding. He didn't ask you to fly to Spain. No, no, no, but it's just out of my realm of just my little hometown.

You know, so I just don't really feel like leaving my kids. Okay, say that. That's it. That's the truth. That's the truth. It's not my budget. Not budget. It's to say, hey, dude, I don't love you enough.

I don't want to be a part of this enough to leave my town. Yeah. That's the truth. Brooklyn scares the hell out of me. I'm staying in Palm Beach. Yeah. I'm not going. And maybe he's your best friend but you're not hit like yeah I can't even wrap my head around that sentiment like if my buddy's called I'd walk off air right now if I had to like that's just that's what you do but that's not your relationship with this guy and that's okay and now if he was asking you to spend 10 grand and you're in the middle of getting out

of debt and you we've had we've had that call over the years you know my you know my wants me to be a bridesmaid and it's a twenty thousand dollar thing with a ticket and we have to do the brides we have to go to three towns for different bridesmaids things and then we're going to fly to mexico and and i don't have and i don't have the money to do all that and they're mad at me well that's tough i mean i agree don't do that one okay but this is just getting a car and drive to brooklyn man i mean it's not it's not like a lot of money and it's it's a long drive and it's annoying and by the way when you have a good friend there's a lot of times you end up helping out i don't want to help friends move but you do it i don't want to help friends whatever but you do it i don't i'll hire a mover same you're not talking about uh but i i mean and you can't use my pickup yeah

yeah you can't no one even asked dave no no no good i'm glad don't ask but yeah i mean so i i you do whatever you want to do dude but i'm i think we did boil it down to this is not about a budget you don't want to go it's about you don't want to go that's why that's why i was blaming your wife because i thought you don't want to go but it is you after all i was wrong it's not your wife it's you you you don't want to go and it's not that it's not your budget and it's not that you have to take care of the kids these are that's all mythology you just don't want to go and you know that's cool you can make that decision okay um and and you're fine. I'm fine with that.

If you don't want to go, just tell them, I don't want to go. I can't. Don't blame the budget. Don't blame Ramsey. Don't blame us for that. Oh, God. Please don't blame Ramsey. We get blamed for everything else.

James is in Augusta, Georgia. Hi, James. How are you? Hey, I also am better than I deserve, Dave, and I appreciate you taking the call for me. Our pleasure. How can we help, sir? Well, I'll boil it down, Dave.

I'm a follower. I'm at Baby Step 6, but I got a couple of Baby Step 2 NICs I need to take care of. I have two mortgages. One is a rental and one is a primary. And I'd like your advice on which of those to pay off first. If you'd like the numbers, I'd be glad to give them to you. What is in baby? No, that's baby step two, right?

Those are mortgages or baby step six. Right. Well, one is an optional spending because it's not my primary. Oh, I got you. But no, rental property goes in six too. So you don't have any consumer debt left, right? Correct. Okay, cool.

How much do you owe on the rental? I owe $96,000. I'm sorry? $95,000. $95,000. How much do you owe on your present residence? My present residence is $196,000, so that's a $195,000 payoff. Cool.

You got any cash to throw at either one of these numbers? I do. I do. I've probably got about, I want to say, 30. I maybe could even pump that to about 50. And still have your emergency fund in place? And still have my emergency fund, yeah. And your household income is what?

We're tilting right at about 97, you know, pushing at the 100,000. Boy, you've done a really good job, James. Way to go. Way to go, man. Excellent. Yeah, it's taken a while. But I just don't like having that mortgage. I'm a believer in what you do and what you recommend.

So I know one of those debts has got to go sooner than later. Yeah. My thought was one is a near goal and the other is maybe a far goal. So what do you think yeah i if they were close to equal i always pay off the house first my residence first and that's just risk management meaning if everything goes sideways and i have to lose something that's not the one i want to lose i want to lose the rental okay so i would always pay off my home first but this rental is a half of less than half of your house and so and

with throwing 50 at it you probably knock it out another year and then that would leave a lot of cash for right freed up uh in additional income freed up then to throw all of it at the mortgage and be done so it's okay to do it either way um you're still going to end up and it it's going to take you exactly the same number of months to be debt-free regardless of which one you pay off. No, it's not. Pay off the rental first, it'll probably get you out of debt faster because the rental income is freed up.

Yes. Now, I do like that approach because it is a moneymaker, and I will just let you know that I do have a second rental, and that is a fully paid for 1031 exchange that I managed to do a couple of years ago. So I've got good passive income from both of them. I'm at about $3,500 a month. And what I want to do is just rack and stack all that good passive income onto that rental mortgage and blow that baby out of the water in less than two years. Two years is my goal.

Yeah, I think you're probably going to, if you throw 50 at it, it's probably one year. Right, but I've got to convince the wife of that. Well, you've got an emergency fund beyond the 50, right? I do, yes, sir. So why do we have to convince the wife? What's the wife's problem with $50,000 in the bank or 50 extra? Well, we might want to not go down that rabbit hole david i apologize i'm trying to keep it short for you but she just has a different she has kind of a she has kind of a different approach from a different portion of the of the world where

she comes from and her priorities um are like east and west if that makes sense to you sure sure yeah uh yeah now you explain why she's wrong okay oh well whatever talk it talk it through and figure it out but i'm going to throw 50 at the rental and stack and pack on the rental and then stack and pack on the house and you're probably going to be out of debt a slight bit faster going that direction than the other direction but there's not a wrong answer because either way in about five or six years you're going to going to be 100% debt-free with all three, all the two rentals and your home. It's going to put you in a really sweet position. Hey, thanks for the call. Our Scripture of the Day, Philippians 2, 3 and 4.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interests of others. Thomas Sowell says, when you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. Ooh. Whoa. Whoa.

Ouch. That could happen around here. We do love people, and yet sometimes we are a bit brutal in our truth-telling because we want to be real sure you hear it for your sake. It doesn't change our lives. It changes yours, and that's what we're here for. All right, Dom is with us in Philadelphia. Hi, Dom.

Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hello, Mr. Ramsey. Thank you for taking the time to have me on. Sure. I'm three years unemployed. I've been taking care of my mother. There's about 400 grand left to pay on the mortgage for the house I lived in my whole life. I made a promise to her that I would never

put her in a nursing home. And I've just been struggling to find the right health care in home and just how to keep the house. My question to you, Mr. Ramsey, is if you were in my position, what's the first thing you would do. Wow. So you're how old? 23. You're 23. And you've been taking care of your mom for three years since you were 20. What's wrong with her? She's got Parkinson's.

Oh, I'm sorry. So it's progressing, I assume. Yeah, it's gotten worse. I mean, at the beginning, obviously, I've been through multiple companies, multiple in-home health aides. I was working out of high school, a little family shop for automotive, and it was fine back then, but it was progressing, and I saw that gradually she didn't really know what was going on. So how's she doing right this second?

Well, now it's just me. It's been me for a while, and if you want something done right, you might do it yourself. No, that's what I want to ask. I said how is she doing? What's her health condition like? She's good right now. No, no, she's not good.

She's degrading. Yeah, I mean, what kind of condition is she in today? She's at home. She doesn't leave the house ever. It's just me feeding her with her every day. It's hard to move. It's on and off, the disease. How are the bills being paid? paid so she was an anesthesiologist and she has the she took a lump sum of the

retirement money and that comes out of an IRA that she put it into and that's what's paying the mortgage and everything else and then there's Social Security that comes in every year, I think to the tune of 20-something, 25. Yeah. So, Dom, you sound completely drained and exhausted. Mm-hmm. Like you're on your last thread. Like you're just down.

Your tank's empty is what it sounds like am i wrong yeah i thought taking on all this stuff the house and the paperwork and everything would would be easier with the support of the other half of my family but they we don't really want to get involved um what's the other half of your family my dad's side the grandparents half of your family? My dad's side. The grandparents. Oh, and your dad's gone. Yeah, I mean, they divorced.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Okay. Yeah. So you're the only child? I have a brother, but he's in college. Mm-hmm. And how much is in this IRA that's deteriorating along with this whole situation? About $500.

Okay. All right. Dom, I think you made a promise as a 19-year-old that you weren't wise enough to make at the time. And just listening to you, it sounds like you've exceeded your capacity to help and the most gracious honorable thing you could do for your mom is to get her into a place where they can take care of her or hire someone no or use her how it is in this place use her no it's not so they're not all hell some of them do a great job but or just hire somebody to come in with her money and take care of her. You go get a life.

I don't think you can keep going much longer. I'm not talking to a guy who has much gas left in his tank. Yeah, it's crazy because, you know, I went over most of the paperwork for some of these companies that came in for in-home health aides. You know, these people that they hire to do this work get paid less than somebody flipping a burger at McDonald's. So hire one directly. Find somebody who's a nurse and hire them.

You have $500,000. Okay. And can I ask you a difficult question question can i ask you something that's painful yeah how much longer do you think she has i try and keep her spirits up you know that wasn't what i was. She's always talking negative. I don't know. This is not negative. It's facts. Maybe five. Five years? Yeah.

Yeah. So you're going to be 28, and it sounds like this? I don't think so. She's 74. I don't think so. I don't think that this mom wanted this for her son when he's 28 years old, to have done this for eight years. I think you use her money to hire someone to come into her house and take care of her,

and you get back up on your feet and create a little distance physically and emotionally from the situation so you'll have a much better head to help her with her care than you do right now. You are out of gas, young man, and you need some help. She's also in debt to the IRS. How much? $300. $1,000? More like $250.

Well, they can't get the IRA. Yeah. So just spend the money out of the IRA to take care of her. What's the house worth? So last time it was appraised, it was around $750, which is like a year and a half ago. That's when they'll get their money is when that house sells. Until then, they're not getting anything.

I want to keep it, though. I want to try and at least keep why i mean i've lived here my whole life no you don't need that house no no that house needs to go away bro you're trying to do so much and it's noble but you got two guys who've i mean we're telling you can't lift the weight on the bar and we're watching it crush you yeah we're your spotters man don't don't push again okay it's a you know we want you to win we want your mom to be taken care of we don't hate her we're not angry with her or you you're a noble very cool neat young man that's trying to do the best he can but man the number of sighs that have come out of your mouth the depth

of the angst that is in your voice is amazing. You don't even hear it, but we get as clear as a bell on this end. And, man, I think the best gift you can give her is for you to get in a better place. Absolutely. I appreciate that. You have got to go get a life it's time now and you don't have to abandon her to do that

you can still make sure she's taken care of whether that is in a facility or whether it's just go down to the hospital and say hey who's a nurse that works part time that wants some full time work I'm going to hire one right now and you can hire them as cheap as you can pay a nursing home

and bring them in and manage that. And then you, you step back, get you a job, get you some space emotionally, financially. I've been unemployed for three years is how you led the call. The lack of dignity in your voice when you said that, even though you're doing something that's very noble and dignified. So you really need to do this for you. And the healthier you are, the stronger your stronger position, you're going to be in to care for her through these last stages of this disease. I'm so sorry you're facing this. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to put you on hold and Christian's going to pick up. We're going to set you up with one of our financial coaches at our cost. We're going to pay for it to come Christian's going to pick up. We're going to set you up with one of our financial coaches at our cost.

We're going to pay for it to come alongside you and walk with you because you're by yourself doing this. There's no one speaking into your life. And you need to get in a good church and have a good pastor with you. You need to get some people around you that are encouraging you to lift up your arms while you're tired like this, brother. Don't stay on this track, man. It's not a good track. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show and the books. We'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. hey folks dave ramsey here you, budgeting doesn't have to be boring. You just need a budgeting app that's made with you in mind. And that's EveryDollar. The EveryDollar app has helped millions of people work the baby steps and take the stress out of planning and managing their money. Start budgeting with EveryDollar for free right now. Just go to RamseySolutions.com slash EveryDollar and download the app today. That's Ramseyysolutions.com slash every dollar and download the app today. That's ramseysolutions.com slash every dollar.