The Ramsey Show - Financial Peace Is Built, Not Borrowed

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

📈 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a Free Personalized Plan.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ❓ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Have a money question? Ask Ramsey is here to help.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dave Ramsey and Rachel Cruze answer your questions and discuss: “We have $175,000 of debt, how do we pay it off?” “My house is going into foreclosure but I paid on time, what should I do?” “My husband’s dream business hasn’t made any money in four years. At what point do we call it?” “We’re drowning in mortgage payments on three properties. How do we get out of this?” “My ex-husband is not cooperating with selling our house. What do I do?” Next Steps: 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 weekdays from 2–5 p.m. ET 📩 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email Dave On-Air With Your Questions on Debt and Finance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💵 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🏠 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get organized and prepared to buy or sell a home⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎟️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Get your ticket for Investing Essentials today! ⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🚢 Set Sail with Dave Ramsey! Book your cabin today Connect With Our Sponsors: Go to⁠ Angel Studios⁠ to discover entertainment you can feel good about. Get 10% off your first month of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ BetterHel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠p Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Boost Mobile⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to switch today! If you want your car to keep going and going, trust ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christian Brothers Automotive⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Find a local shop and get an exclusive Ramsey discount of 10% (up to $250) off Learn more about⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Christian Healthcare Ministries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get started today with⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Churchill Mortgage⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get 20% off when you join ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DeleteMe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ FAIRWINDS Credit Union⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for an exclusive account bundle! Debt collectors hassling you? Take back control of your life at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Guardian Litigation Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find top health insurance plans at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Health Trust Financial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Use code RAMSEY to save 20% at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mama Bear Legal Forms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ NetSuite⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ today to learn more. Try ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Quo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free, plus get 20% off your first six months. Quo: no missed calls, no missed customers. Sign up for your $1.00/month trial at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shopify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get started with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YRefy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or call 844-2-RAMSEY Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Zander Insurance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or call 1-800-356-4282 for your free instant quote today!  Explore more from Ramsey Network: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Ramsey Show Highlights⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🧠 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dr. John Delony Show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🍸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Smart Money Happy Hour⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💰 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Kamel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📈 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EntreLeadership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brought to you by the Every Dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Normal is broke and common sense is weird, so we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is The Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling co-host to the smart money happy hour on the Ramsey Networks, my daughter. She's my co-host today. Erica is in South Bend, Indiana. Hi, Erica.

Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. Hey, what's up? So my question is, I was just wondering what some steps were that you and Sharon took when you were young and working hard, that your children did not resent you or your business once they were older. Hmm. I did resent him.

I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Too late. That's a good question, though. Are you, Erica, are you working a lot right now? You and your husband? Yes. So I'm a stay-at-home mom, and my husband is working a lot right now,

just trying to get us out of debt. We own two businesses, and they're both in the food industry. So there's a lot of pressure at time. Yeah. With that, how long have you guys been going at it? at this pace. Has it been a while? I would say yes. Three to four years. Okay. So, yeah, so you guys are in, you're in the thick of it. You're feeling it.

Mm-hmm. And you probably feel like a single mom a lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah. So how much debt do you have left? How much longer is this journey going to be? We, business debt, we are at 486, and then our personal house, we're at 470,000. That's all there is? Yes. Okay. Well, both of those are baby step six.

Neither one of those require hours to be 80 hours a week. If your 80 hour a week is to get your business up and running, that's a different equation. What is it? You're not working 80 hours a week to pay out $400,000 in debt. No, it's not so much from a money standpoint for us as it's just finding good employees that can work. um yeah like welcome to business yeah yeah and the food industry is brutal i was so dumb when i first started nights and weekends a lot of them it's it's hard it's hard i was so dumb when i first started the business i thought if you hired people they would work but you have to hire people that are

willing to work first and not just anybody and that's the so welcome to running your business so the deal here is he gets away from these hours when he learns to run the business instead of the business running him. Meaning that he's got to get above cooking and get above food production and get above waiting tables and get above general management and start to put some people in the seats that can actually do that. I'll send you a copy of my latest bestseller called Building a Business You Love. And he's at the treadmill stage, which is where everyone starts.

You feel like you're on a treadmill. You feel like you're stuck. Run, run, run, run. But the way you get off the treadmill is hiring quality. people that are delegatable, meaning they're humans that you can delegate to because you can train them because they have two brain cells and they have character and they have work ethic. And there's not that many of them. They're hard to find.

But you can find them. Okay. And you must find them. Otherwise, he will, what he's doing right now is not sustainable. You can't do that for 10 years. Yes, correct. You run out of steam. Okay.

That wasn't your question, but that's the answer. Now, then back to the other thing is, if we're solving, for the day that dad is not working 80 hours, then we just talk to the kids about that. We own our own business. And for right now, until we get the people in and get them trained, I've got to be there. And we had that period of time here when I was opening this business. Yeah. How old are your kids, Erica?

We have a two-year-old and another one on the way. Well, they're not resenting anything. You're exhausted. You're exhausted. You might be resenting something. They're not resenting anything. They just want their diaper changed. Yeah, they're still young.

Yeah. This does not need to go on until they're 12. Not because of the kids, but because the business won't work. Your husband will run out of steam. It's not sustainable. He's got to build the business out in such a way that by the time the kids are of age, that they might actually resent it, that he's already home. That does solve your problem.

But in general, to answer your question is, we communicate that this is a price to be paid on a temporary basis to win. And for a two-year-old, Erica, I mean, I would say when he's home, he's home. Like, he needs to put his phone down. He needs to play and gauge with the two-year-old, you know? And with you guys in your marriage, like I know during, and it's not at the length that it is for you over years and years and years. But I know even for busy work seasons, you're exhausted and your spouse almost

get your leftovers because you've just been giving all day. And so for you guys in your marriage, that's almost where I would put my focus and my energy first and foremost, because if you guys are connected, if you guys are in sync and you guys are unified on the plan, then the household feels all of that, right? And so I think because mom and dad were such a great team and mom was, can I say bad, I don't know if we're allowed to cuss on the air, but she was. She was an amazing. She was an amazing mom, amazing mom, and just took care of stuff, you know what I mean, in that season when we were little. And then as we got to be more middle school, I mean, Dad, your job still required long hours and travel. I was gone periodically, but not as much. Yeah, yeah, but there

were periods of that. A book tour. But it would be. Gone 30 days, not even home. Yeah. But, but that's communicated at that age, right? And we were older with all of that. But I think that the presentness of having a solid marriage. The kids pick up on that and everyone pulling their weight, whatever that looks like. And then for the kids, when you're just present in your home, and I'm guilty of this too, coming home and checking my phone and all of it, right? So it's just like putting that away and being and him being present with your two-year-old is going to be big.

And then you guys need to figure out a schedule at some level that's doable when you have this next baby, baby number two. And so to feel supported in that, I think is an important conversation. station. Yeah. They're not, if he'll just turn on daddy a few minutes a day at this age, they're not going to be resentful. They're not going to have any memory of it. But by the time they get age, that they age out, you, the two of you need a plan. You need to see a light at the end of the tunnel that this business is maturing to the point that I'm going to have some team members that I can delegate to that I don't have to fin it do everything. And that's called training.

hiring the right quality people, getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, as Jim Collins says. And then it's not micromanaging to teach them to finish your sentences. That's called training. I want this cooked this way. I want the customer spoken to in this way. I want eye contact and a smile. And when you finish, if you work at Chick-fil-A, it's my pleasure.

And whatever it is, you train, train, train, train, train for the result you want. And the people that can't make the training, they don't get to stay. And so that's, you know, you as a leader learning to height. and learning to fire and start to build out your team with high-quality individuals. And I've done that for 40 years and I've got a thousand of them in this building and I'm proud of every single one of them. I know that because if I wasn't proud of one of them, they wouldn't be in this building. I'm all about practical ways to save time and mental energy, especially during the summer when

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Their privacy team of experts removes your personal information from hundreds of data broker sites, and they keep monitoring it throughout the year. So far, Delete Me has saved me about 90 hours. I would have spent myself removing my information. And honestly, it feels so good knowing that someone is in the background, helping me, and I don't even have to think about it. So this summer, give yourself a vacation with one less thing to manage. Get 20% off annual plans at joinselitme.com slash Ramsey. That's joinselitme.com slash ramsey. That's joindeletme.com Ramsey. So Rachel, you haven't heard this story yet, but the other day I had lunch with, about twice a year I get with one of my old high school buddies. There were three of us that ran

around together, did everything together in high school. And when I went off to college, probably glad there weren't phones with cameras during those days. Thank God there is no record of the things that we did. Yes, that's true. Beyond belief. But anyway, one of the three passed away of cancer last year and the other one I meet with and have a hamburger with at least twice a year and he lives right here in the neighborhood right here in the area and hang out with him and the other day I was down there having a hamburger with him and he said I said what are you been doing he's single again and um I said what are you been doing he goes I just went on six cruises in the last while he goes I'm addicted to cruising and I went you got to go on the ramsie cruise is he coming

he signed up well he's going to go on the ramsie cruise look in there so there we go which I'm going to have to have him sign an NDA but uh we gave him a good deal on the room but we're going to have him sign on NDA because we can't have any exposure on the Ramsey cruise. But if you don't know what this is, if you're debt-free, the live-like-no-one-else cruise is a high-end, very nice. This is not Walmart on the seas. This is the good cruise lines, if you know what I mean, wink, wink. And this is the best of the best, the live like no one else cruise. Hang out with all of us. All the Ramsey personalities will be there and other celebs of miscellaneous not to be mentioned yet. But we're going to do new sessions on there. Everybody's going to be speaking every night.

We're the entertainment. We're doing all kinds of get-togethers and hang out with you guys. New sessions this year on Building Wealth, live episodes of our shows, the world's largest debt-free scream. We did it last time. We're going to do it again. And last year, we did it. It'll be two years between the two cruises. We did it last March, year ago March. And this one will be next March. And it was really fun. It was great. It was a great week. I was a little bit worried about being trapped on a ship with 3,000 Ramsey fans, right? That could be a long week for me. You know, that could have gone sideways.

But honestly, I had a blast. Yeah, it was great. With Sharon and I, we would just sit down and have dinner and we'd talk to people. It was just, we had the best time. We really did. It was a lot of fun. So you can secure your cabin. They're not quite sold out, getting close, with a $600 deposit and join us and my high school buddy.

And we'll all be there and click the link in the show now. Next from Antioch on a cruise. That's what you need. You might be a redneck if you're cruising with so-and-so and Dave, right? I'm not going to throw the guy on the bus, but, yeah, there we go. So click the link in the show notes. Go to Ramsey Solutions.com slash events. Book your cabin.

It will be next March. It will be sold out. You will be really phone-moing. Now, you do not come if you're in debt. This is only for Baby Step 4 and Beyond. We're not hypocrites. We tell you when you're in Baby Step 1 through 3, you're not going on vacation. This is a vacation.

But if you've hit Baby Step 4 and Beyond, and you've come. You save up the money and you want to go on this night. This is Holland America. I mean, this is a good line. It's Caribbean crews. It's going to be amazing. But if you've saved up your money and you want to hang out with us for the week, it's an incredible week. You're going to learn a lot, too, because the sessions are incredible that we're teaching.

That was the funniest part is it really is a vacation. You get to go to all these islands. And so we have all these sessions booked out with things that, you know, we teach from stage and a couple of things. And I'm like, yeah, you know, the room might be like half full. I don't know. Most people, I'm sure, are out on the pool deck or at the island. I don't know. assume people are vacation. Every session is packed. Full. Packed. It's like the most...

I had a pastor to do devotionals in the mornings and you couldn't get in. Yeah. I mean, it was like everyone went to everything, which was so fun. It was a lot of fun. All right, Samantha is in Toronto, Canada. Hi, Samantha. How are you? Hi, good. Thank you. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. What's up? So my husband has been doing his dream business for almost four years now. and I just want to know because he hasn't really brought in any income from it. How long is enough for me to support him in this overall? You have a business as you ran for four years that doesn't make money. That's not a dream business.

That's a nightmare. Yes. In my perspective, it hasn't. No, in his perspective. I mean, it's a business. It's not a hobby. We're supposed to make money. Yep.

So what kind of business? He's doing a couple of sports training. He's part of the gym ownership, and they've just been putting lots of efforts, even with his partner's been doing some investments in it, but nothing yet. They have projections, but I'm tired of looking at projections of what could be.

He's thinking of this business as our way out in the future, but it's hard to see in the future when right now for years we've been kind of struggling, right? For sure. Are you working, Samantha? Yes. So for the past throughout the duration of our marriage, I've been the financial reporter

and I was okay doing that. But once we had our first son three years, two and a half years ago, I'm still working. Yes. In a completely different perspective and then I have to go work back right away. And we've had many conversations of

why is the burden on me when and then his and then we come up with compromises but it still feels like it's and then we're having our second and then now my worry that we're back in our situation where we were with their first and I'm I'm going I'm still at work I'm doing we make some compromises of our living situations we keep a cost down we're at my parents um so we're not really paying um you know for rent um okay so here here's what needs to have happen, right? He needs to sit down with his partners and proper business acumen would dictate that we see a pattern of growth in the revenue and in the profits to get us to where we can

eat out of this thing in a short period of time. So we need to see some directional move in the numbers that give us hope. He needs to do that, not you. And he doesn't need to do it for you. needs to do it because it's good business. Okay? The byproduct is it's good for you because you get some hope too. No, she's saying that they've been doing that. I know. They've been doing projections, but projections that aren't hit.

Okay. And so that's not, if we have a business unit at Ramsey that sets projections and they don't hit them, then we assess, okay, how much longer do we go with not hitting projections and then we close it? If it doesn't hit projections. You know, if you don't have a reason to believe other than just I hope, I wish, but in business, you need to see some things move. I need to see some, I need to see some trend lines in my sales. I need to see some.

Yeah, my fear is that they've been propping themselves up thinking all these things. They might, they might. And it's not been real. But here's the difference. Here's the difference. You need to set a deadline. He needs to set a deadline. Yeah, with you, Samantha.

And he needs to come back and say, all right, we're. going to go until this date, and at this date, we're going to see some profit, and we're going to see some trend lines towards that date between now and then. What's killing you guys is this sense that there's no end to this. And you got a second baby on the way. Well, that's her. Does he not have any, I know, but he's the dude. A part of me is not, I mean, I don't want to offend your husband, Samantha. But I'm like, good God, go mulch lawns. Like, go do something to bring an income for your wife and your baby and your son. And your soon to be baby? Like, that's wild to me. For four years, not making anything. Does he have any of that

in him? Like, is he mad about it and he's angry and he wants to change this and that? Or is he just like, I love it. It's been great. I don't know. We'll see where it goes. We're hoping the next thing's going to hit. So the compromise that we had, because he wants to work around his schedule with the gym, he has to be pretty flexible, is that he went back to school. And in Canada, the majority of the grants, like we only had to take a loan with our income. Went back to school to do what? He went back to school just to getting some grants so that you can just sustain us a little bit.

That's not an income. The boy needs a job. Yes. Boy needs a job. He needs to, Rachel's right. He needs to go make some money. And they need a set of deadline by which this gym and this member, this dream is profitable, otherwise it's not going to stay open.

And I would challenge them and be like, hey, yeah, we have six months or whatever you guys decide. Six months comes to mind. And I want to see two big changes in the business. Like what are two drastically different things you're going to do to be? If I own the gym, you're going to have to do something that makes me want to keep it open six more months or I'm going to fire all of you and we're going to close the thing. I'm sorry, Samantha.

I'm sorry. That's tough. He needs to do that. And it's being exasperated by the fact that you, are carrying a child. And you're living with your parents. And you're living with your parents. I mean, all of it. It's a lot. And you have the right to feel. This needs to be, this needs to end. Yes, to feel urgency. Samantha. It needs an end date. It needs an end date if it's not profitable. Yep. Now. When I started, I had great ideas and I knew how to serve people, but I didn't have systems in

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And already two times this hour, the side hustle and the small business has risen to the point that they give us a question or two this hour. So a couple of things to remember if you're starting a side business or you started a business, got a side hustle that's growing into a business. Here's some book recommendations for you. You ready? Write these down. the premier book in the last 30 years probably that most of us love and we love the man too is our friend Jim Collins wrote the book good to great you need to read that book you need to pick up the book by Michael Gerber it's called the e-mith entrepreneurial myth e-dash myth and in that book

my friend Michael says that you will either learn to work on your business or you will forever work in your business which you just own your job then but if you learn to work on it then you can take a vacation and it keeps running while you're not there. That's the proper growth of business and that applies to both of our calls this hour. Our latest book, Build a Business You Love is wonderful in this regard. It'll help you with laying these things out and help you recognize the stages of business as you go along. And my friend Dr. Henry Cloud, who wrote the book Boundaries, also wrote a fabulous book called Necessary Endings. And everyone should pick that book up because how do you know when to end something? A relationship, a marriage, a career, a job, a business, a business unit. Employment of a team member needs to end. Or I don't want to work for this toxic boss anymore needs to end. How do you know? Well, there's actual steps that you should go through at a decision-making framework. And Henry walks you through one of the

core thing, thesis in that is, if you lose hope that it's going to get better. So a horrible example would be you're married to an alcoholic and fourth time through rehab and now they fell off the wagon again. Well, I lose hope that that one's going to get better and this marriage has come to an end. That's an example. But if you think it's going to be better, then, you know, not real reasons, pattern indicators, not wishes, not words, but actual behaviors and things. happening in the revenue if it's business, whatever it is. Give me a reason to have hope. And then we'll continue.

Necessary endings by Henry Cloud. That's the fourth book. So some good books to help you guys along. And those are where I get some of the thoughts. Where Ramsey personalities get some of the thoughts we throw at you, onside hustles, businesses, small businesses, our entree leadership materials. We coach about 10,000 small businesses if you're interested in that. You can find all of that at Ramsey Solutions.com.

All right. Jeans in Montgomery, Alabama. Hi, Gene. How are you? How are you doing today, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? First of all, I just want to say thank you guys for all the work you guys have done. I've been just started following you guys about a month ago, and I've got my $1,000 saved.

I'm on Baby Step 2. Great. And I've listed all of my debts. Great. Good for you. Good for you. Thank you, guys. Seriously. Back in 2024, I didn't, I messed up my taxes.

and I'm 1099. I'm a truck driver. And that year, I just filed my taxes and I owe them. And it's a $21,000 balance that I owe them. But I just started the debt snowball and I listed all my debts from largest to smallest. And I'm struggling to attack this $21,000. And I've been doing all the other ones. I've paid off so far. I've paid off three credit cards so far.

And I like this momentum. But listening to the show the other day, you told one of the other callers to attack the IRS first, but it's just I'm staring at that mountain, and I don't know if you guys could kind of give me some direction, or should I just continue going from smallest, the largest? Okay. How much debt total? The total debt that I have left over right now is $80,356. And $21,000 of it is the IRS, and what's the rest of it?

The rest of it, $41,000. is the student loans. $10,000 is on my wife's car, and then I got $5,000 on my daughter's car, and I think, where's the other one? And I got $8,000 left on one more credit card. Okay. And so you're going to be to that pretty quick. How much have you paid off so far and in what period of time? So I've been following you guys for the last three months, and in the last three months, I paid off $33,056. Good for you, Gene. months? Yeah, I'm a truck driver. Are you going to be able to maintain that pace? I hope so. In the name of Jesus, I really do, say, to be honest with you. I am.

My wife is mad at me. I want to be honest with you. Because you're going so hard? Yeah, well, because I'm gone, because I'm on the road. And I haven't been home in like two or three weeks. And she's on board with me on this vision and goal, and she sees what I'm trying to do. But she does want me to come home. Yeah, I don't blame her. That makes sense. You're going to pace that pace it out so you can make it, but that's a great start. So if you were to maintain that pace or even close to it, you will be through the IRS and the other smaller debts very, very quickly, agreed? Absolutely. So this is only a question, this is only a question of, is it going to be two months or is it going to be one month or is it going to be three months or is it going to be

one month? That's the only real question, right? We did 10,000. He did 10,000. You got 10 and 8 and 5 and 5. So it would be four, four to five months. Yeah. Yeah. Or you can do it now, either one. So the only question is just, you know, so the trade off between the momentum that you're feeling, which is very positive. And I don't blame you for wanting to maintain that is that the stupid IRS has unlimited power.

They can just decide to screw up your life. They don't have to go to court. they can just start garnishing things they can start keeping tax returns they can and they will they can take your money out of your bank account they don't have to go to court everybody else has to sue you win the lawsuit and then go to court so they've got unlimited power which is scary as crud because they're also not real smart most of the time so dumb and powerful is not a good mix and that's what you're dealing with most of the time not always but most of the time and uh i mean I get audited by these people like it's their hobby.

It may be too much work to do it, Gene. But also, we always say if there is a larger amount owed, you could go down to your credit union and get a personal loan for $21,000. Get rid of them. Pay off the IRS and put the $21,000 back in your debt snowball so that you pay off your daughter's car, credit card, your wife's car, right? And then you deal with that personal loan of $21,000. So the credit union versus the IRS, you could do that. The second reason we move them to the front of the line is that they are not bankruptable.

The third reason, and you're not going to bankrupt anyway. The third reason we move them to the front of the line is that the interest rate and the penalty is very, very, very high. So all of those reasons cause us to interrupt the debt snowball. The only time, by the way, that we interrupt the debt snowball and move it to the front. But I don't care. It's not the end of the world. That's the reasons we move it. If you want to, if you understand those things and you want to leave it there,

or you want to go get that credit union loan and then you knock it out in four months instead of this month. That's okay with me. But you're taking some extra risk when you do that. And, you know, when I'm coaching people that are struggling and they got six, you know, they got Chase MasterCard suing them, they got Citibank suing them, and they got Lexus Motor Credit suing them on a repo. And they got the IRS.

I'll take all of those other three versus the IRS. every time and what they can do to you. The other ones are, and what they will do to you. So I, but I don't think any of them are suing you. I don't think that's where you are. You're under control. You're knocking this out. You've got momentum.

So I'm not scared for you now, but this comes from years of coaching people that were really, really, really were struggling in behind the eight ball. And I just always want to get the IRS out as fast as I can. But listen, dude, you need to set a date. If they're not gone by September 1, you've got to move them back up. You got to move in the front. So set yourself a deadline. I'm going to knock them out by this date or I'm going to move them to the front of the line.

Yep. One of the two and then knock them out and then go back to your death snowball. Yeah. And I appreciate your enthusiasm. I mean, that's incredible. 10,000, 30,000 in three months. Yeah, that's boom. Unbelievable.

Maybe your wife and you say, for three more months, I'm going to do this pace and then you're going to dial it back a little bit. Because you guys got, you got some. You know, we ought to have his wife. We ought to have his wife talk to the gym owner's wife. He should be like, my husband's, we're going to let off. I wish my husband was gone, working. and making money. She wouldn't want someone like, Gene.

I wish he would leave and go make some money. My gosh. Gene, well done. Okay, guys, let me ask you something. What would it take for you to switch your bank? Because if you're still earning next to nothing on your savings, you need to check out Fairwin's credit union. And I know what you're thinking.

It might sound like a hassle. Moving your direct deposit, updating bills, getting a new debit card, feels like a lot. But here's what most people don't realize. Staying where you are could be costing you hundred. of dollars every year. Y'all, the average savings account pays less than half a percent. So let's say, for example, you've got $20,000 saved. You might earn around $70 a year. But with a Fairwind's high-yield savings account, earning 3% APY or more, that same money could earn you over $600. And that's real

money that you can use towards the baby steps. So don't let temporary comfort keep you stuck. Check out the smart bundle from Fairwind's Credit Union. You get a high-yield savings account, a no-fee checking account, and the Ramsey B-Weird debit card. Go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey to learn more and make the switch today. That's fairwinds.org slash Ramsey, insured by the NCUA. Stacey's in Indianapolis. Hi, Stacey. How are you?

Hi, Dave. How are you? Great. What's up? Well, my daughter is 29. She's married. she's a nurse, just works part-time because I have a two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter. Her husband makes $57 an hour. I'm disabled, divorced, and I used to work in insurance. So I know you don't like this, but I bought Whole Life Insurance.

I want to cash in her whole-life policy that I've had for 29 years. And just so you know, they each have their own life insurance, policies outside of their work. She feels entitled to have that cash value. She thinks it is hers. I disagree. I think the money's mine. I could use the money.

What do you think? Well, you're the owner of the policy, and you paid every dollar for the policy, correct? Yes. I've been paying $26 a month for 29 years. And how much is the cash value when you cash it out? $6,800. Good God, you totally got screwed. Oh, my God.

Yes. Like I said, I worked in my career with an insurance before I had to go on disability 16 years ago. Okay, so how many kids do you have that have these policies? Two. All right, so we're cashing them both in, right? Well, at the moment, I'm cashing the other one in because, long story short, my other daughter, I'm just not sure where her life's taking her, so I'm just kind of holding on right now. I don't care.

How old is your other daughter? She's four years older, so should I just go ahead and cash that one in? Yeah, you better cash on both in. They both suck beyond belief. You've gotten screwed. Don't keep them. And it's not your obligation to take care of the one that has her act together or the one that doesn't have her act together. These are 31-year-old grown women.

Yes, they are. And you paid for this policy. It is not their money. Okay. In neither case are you to take care of them. Well, thank you. I just wanted to kind of have somebody else tell me that. Yeah, that's not only moral.

That's also what the law says. They're not the owner of the asset you are. Okay. You own it. That's why they call you the owner. Yeah. I should. What age did you open up the policy for your daughter?

One year old. She was one? 29 years. Okay. And you did $26 a month. A month. Okay. I was just going to say.

So you. you should have, if you just had that in an SMP, just for, and people for listening, it should be $58,000. If you put it at a real investment instead of a rip-off whole-life policy, instead of $6,800, you'd have $60,000. And it says she would have put in $8,736. So she put in more than what the investment made, yeah. Had a negative rate of return.

This is why you don't buy a whole life, life insurance, and why you don't buy it on your kids for sure. So bad. So bad. Whole life sucks. Have we been unclear about that on this show? That is a good question, though, that her daughter assumed it's hers because her name was attached to the account. You know, probably, Stacey's gone, but probably what has happened is that Stacey has told these kids their whole lives that she's invested this money for them.

For sure. And, oh, that's my policy. you made an investment for me. Thank you. And you got this money because I've set this money side for you. In my name. Yeah. It's in my name, but it's for you. And that's probably what she's said all along. Yeah. And so now they're going, yeah, but you told me, Mom, it was mine. I know. Yeah. That would make sense. That's probably. There could have been some miscommunication. She probably just messaged it wrong. But, you know, but technically speaking, you own the money. and by the way, you laid the whole thing out on how she makes money, her husband makes $57 and you're

disabled and all that. None of that matters to the discussion. It's either her money or your money, regardless of who is deserving or who's hurting or who is more healthy financially. Like the other daughter, I'm not sure she's going to turn out yet. Well, she's 34. I think we're pretty sure, you know. And so, second, she's going to have to have an encore to get this straight. in doubt. She could. 34 is young. I know.

But you can have an encore at 34. And you need one. Apparently, if your mom still don't know if you're going to make it. Yeah. So the victim language in it. Exactly. Doesn't matter. Taints maybe the attitude that the daughter's having to.

I don't know. But yeah, just some thoughts, Stacey. But yeah, the, was your money you put it in under your name too? Technically your money. But, you know, I might take back my answer if you promised her this money her whole life. then probably you ought to just keep your promise and give it to her. Morally, legally, it's your money. Except that if you said, this is your money, this is your money, this is your money, this is your money.

You know, if I had a mutual fund, I opened up for you and I said, this is your college fund. We're going to use it for college. And it's your money. It's your money. We're saving for your college, which I did, by the way. There's a uniform transfer to minors. I was in your name. And then you went to college.

I ended up, we ended up paying for college out of our pocket. and then when you all graduated, we gave you your upma to start your life off as an adult. And so, but that was in my name. It was my money. Yep. And, but I had, I had allocated that emotionally and relationally to you. And we didn't know it, though. No, you did.

Well, I thought that. You knew you had a college fund. I thought you were paying for college. So there was a little bit of a. You thought I was using it for college. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But, um, so the, so how it's communicated is important to, of expectations. Did you make a promise? Yes. Did you promise your. kid, this was their money. And if you did, you ought to keep that promise. Yeah, and that's the expectation. So she would be disappointed. So I would, I would take my answer back if that's the case,

Stacey. But if not, it's yours. Yeah. And, you know, who is making money who's not is not relevant to the discussion. Jocelyn's in Houston. Hi, Jocelyn. How are you? I'm good. How are y'all? Better than we deserve. What's up? So basically, I have two 401ks that has $2,600 in them. have about $7,000 in credit card debt that I kind of just racked up being financially irresponsible. But I want to know if I should take those out to just kind of put towards that debt. I'm on baby step one and like just trying to get my life together. I'm 26.

I live rent free right now. What do you make? Yeah, about $3,000 a month. Okay. I'd pick up my hours. and attack the credit card debt and leave this alone, and I'd roll it to a 401k. It doesn't matter much. It doesn't matter much mathematically because it's such a small amount, but percentage-wise,

it's suicidal. Here's why, okay? You cash out the 401Ks, you get a 10% penalty plus your tax rate. Let's call you in the 20% tax bracket for the fun of it. I don't think you are, but you might be. That means a 10% plus 20% taxes. that's 30%. That's like borrowing money at 30% interest to pay off your credit card. So they're going to take almost half the money if you take it out instead of rolling it to an IRA.

So I think as a matter of starting to make good wise financial decisions more than just the math, I would go ahead and roll it to an IRA and force myself to pay off the credit cards with hard work. Yep. And just keep it in there and don't touch it. and let it grow. And at retirement, maybe 100, 200K in there. I don't know what it'll grow to, but that'll always be a little bit of a safety net, too, for retirement, which is great. Yeah, and you just add to it as you go along.

I've had some IRAs that were so small at different times, and I move them around, put them all together later, put them in a pile, and it has ended up turning into some serious money over time. But the big thing here is I just want your brain to get used to not looking for sure. shortcuts at high cost. And this is a shortcut at a high cost, even though it's 2,600. So you're probably going to lose $1,000 of that in taxes and penalties. And so you're still going to get out with $1,000. It does not change your life one way or the other. It's not the dumbest thing you've ever done by any stretch or will ever do. So it's really not that much money. But if you add a zero to it, it starts to be $10,000. If you had two zeros to it, it'd be $100,000.

Yeah, and what changes your life in this, Jocelyn, is your income going up. Mm-hmm. Making $3,000 a month. Mm-hmm. I would look to see, where can I get an extra $1,000? $2,000. What does that look like from a income perspective?

Because that's going to get you through the $7,000 in debt so much faster. And then your emergency fund and beyond. So it's kind of your, that's your ticket out, not the old 401K. Hey, I want to talk to you for a second about love and not love like in Titanic. or something, I mean responsible love, the kind of love that moves you to take care of the people closest to you. And one of the most important ways to show that kind of love is by having term life insurance. If you have anyone depending on you, a spouse, kids, anyone, you need term life insurance. Term life insurance gives your family real protection if the unthinkable happens so they can

spend their time grieving and not worrying about how the bills are going to get paid. Zander is a broker who works for you, shopping the top companies to find the right coverage options for your needs and your budget. In many cases, there are options available with no medical exam and instant approval. My wife and I had term life insurance through Zander for years long before I worked at Ramsey because we trust them. Getting term life insurance is a way of saying, I love you when you can no longer say it yourself. Go to zander.com or call 1-800-356-4282 to find the cost. coverage that fits your family. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, my daughter, is my co-host today. Louise is in Tampa, Florida. Hi, Louise. How are you? Hi, I'm doing good. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. What's up?

So I had a question about me and my fiancé have a credit. card, and I am always making sure that if we use it, we paid off before a statement date. He was telling me that why don't we let, why don't we carry a balance to bill credit? And I don't know if that's how that works. So I kind of wanted to ask you guys, does that make sense? How old are you, gosh? We're 27 both of us

And when are you getting married? We, well, we're saving money So I can't say a date Just because we're That's one of our steps I'm sorry You have to have money to get married Wait

Well I mean, yeah We can just go get it done And that's it Yeah Like the wedding I would like You know Yeah Okay

We've been saving for a while now How much y'all have saved For the wedding So so far we have 20, and then we also have another 20 that are six months of living. So what kind of wedding are you going to have? I don't know everybody. Weddings are expensive.

But I want to make sure that if I want something, I can have it. There's not that much money in the world. Yeah, I know. That much money doesn't exist. I want it, I can have it. That's not a, that's a four-year-old. You don't get to do that. You set a budget on your wedding.

You're a grown woman and you get married and you do it for 20,000 and you start planning it this weekend. Okay. Back to your question. Now, so your fiancé is correct that if you were to run a balance on your credit card and pay it on time, it will cause your credit score to increase. because your credit score is based on, it's by an organization called Fair Isaac, and it's called your FICO score, and it's based on how you interact with debt,

how much debt you have, the type of debt you have, and whether you pay your debt on time or not. New types of debt. New types of debt. That gives you, if you have too much debt or too little debt, that gives you your credit score. So your credit score,

technically speaking, if you analyze how the algorithm works, is your I love debt score. And they hire your credit score, the more you love debt. Yeah. So if your goal as a married couple is to get in debt and stay in debt deeply the rest of your life, the credit score will serve you well. But if your goal is to build wealth, then you would avoid this at all. cost because you don't want to play kissy face with the bank to build a score that shows how much you've been playing kissy face with the bank. Instead, I want money. I want to build a net worth.

I want to become wealthy. And the credit score is not an indicator of your financial health or wealth. It's simply mathematically speaking, an indicator of how much you've been playing kissy face with the bank. That's how it's determined. And so what he's saying is, hey, let's owe the bank more money and pay it off a little at a time so that we can make other banks happy. Wrong? Bad plan. You follow my logic? No, yes, of course.

That was what I was telling him. It's like if you just want to be more in debt, then what's the point of doing all your steps, I'll say. Exactly. You wouldn't do any of our steps if you're going to do that. If you want to stay in debt, you need to go do a different plan. Our plan won't work. And Louise, this is an important subject for you guys to get aligned on when it comes to your marriage. Money fights and money problems are one of the always in the top three reasons for divorce.

And so this is a big tension point. It may not feel huge. I mean, it's big enough for you to call to be like, hey, this doesn't feel right. But if your value system is different with money, Not that you guys have to be the same person, but that you're moving in the same direction financially because you're a team and you're like, this is how we're running our household, if or when we have kids. Like, I mean, it continues on. And when you start in such a different place, it's a red flag for me. I would want to be in the same place.

And you may decide, Louise, getting off this call. You could totally decide, like, I'm okay with debt, right? Like, we're not trying to push you, right? but you need to be on the same page. Clearly, a life of peace and building wealth is avoiding debt, and that is what we do believe. And then your credit score means my credit score has been zero for 35 years. Rachel has never had a credit score. Undetermined, yes.

Never had a credit score in her life. But then you have to pay cash for cars. You know what do you mean? Like you're saving up for vacations. Like you are choosing a life without debt. But you also are choosing a life of living below your means of delayed gratification, but have a lot of peace and control and autonomy over your money. Which gives you a large pile of money, by the way, because you're not giving it all to some stupid bank.

Yep. So there we go. That's where wealth comes from. The other thing I'm going to throw in and you didn't even ask about this. But for God's sake, cut up that credit card and close the account tonight if you're not going to get married. The two of you don't need to be on a credit card together. Yeah. Super dangerous for you.

Super dangerous for him. The credit card balance runs way up and one of you runs off. The other one stuck holding the stupid thing. and now you're going to get sued or you end up paying a balance for the one that left. And I know no one ever leaves. Bull crap, you're not married.

Okay? They leave all the time. So get off that card. Do not be doing stuff financially and legally with somebody you're not married to. Danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, my daughter, don't do that. Please.

And especially since there's not a date. And a date set, right? It's kind of this endless feeling. of the abysk of like, we're going to figure it out. And then when you live in that, which people do for years and years, you know, we talk to people, they have engagements for four years. They live in that. They start playing house. You start commingling finances. You get down the road. It just, it starts to, it starts to be a problem. So I would keep everything separate. At which point I always feel. Until you guys get married. And if he is the one, like,

you guys set a date. Get married. Paint or get off the ladder. If he is the one. And that could be in December. It's not like you have to do it tomorrow. But, but, but, put a date on the calendar that you guys work towards just for some certainty in the relationship. But if you have the money to get married, set the date now, get married. You're not, this is not good for y'all. It's not good. We don't care. We make no money when you get married.

It doesn't help us at all. We are not in the wedding business. Too bad. I wish, I need to get in the wedding business. I need to do something. As often as I tell people to get married these days, I need to. It's your priest. I was a priest.

You won't be a priest. It's a, what is it? What is it when you, you're ordained? You want me to officiate the wedding? Ordened. I'm going to start doing weddings, Dave's weddings. Yes. That way I can make some money off all this advice.

And then I can get her. They're not going to have a conflict of interest. Then she can get the fiancé and they can call them the next hour. And we'll get the wedding. You know what I mean? You can keep it rolling. Well, we'll just fly you up here and you stand on the debt-free stage with your little bouquet. There we go.

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That's CBAC.com slash Ramsey. 10% off, up to a $250 value. See store for details. Jeff is in Birmingham. Hey, Jeff, what's up? Hey, Dave, how are you? Thank you for taking my call. Sure.

How can we help? I'm facing kind of a crisis I'd never intended. Due to some illness and due to some other things, I went into a government-sponsored forbearance program with the largest servicer in the country. And that was in 2023. Since then, I've gone back and forth several times trying to get back on to where I just pay my payment. And, you know, I've been told numerous different things.

And, you know, I was told, hey, you can do, you know, back-end payment. And so I paid, you know, trial payments. And then they send me the paperwork. The paperwork's not right. I send it back. And the longer, the short is I've gotten down now to where the last trial payment I paid. I paid on the last day of November, screenshot of the email they sent, you know, confirming the payment. And then they came back and said that I failed the trial payment plan because of the payment being late.

I filed a RESPA and a notice of error. Contacted FHA. I've been through a lot of different steps to get them to acknowledge that the payment actually was made on time because I wanted to get off of the, this cycle that's been going on almost three years now. And so I have a document in front of me that says if I don't pay them $43,000, they're going to foreclose in my house, which I have over 50% equity in. And I was looking for some kind of suggestion. I've done everything I can do up until this point.

So $43,000 is the amount you're in arrears right now. Correct. Net of everything. And that number is probably correct. But what you're saying is that you had a forbearance plan, which is a plan to pay payments greater than the normal payment to catch up. And apparently that's gone sideways several times to get $43,000 behind. What's your normal monthly payment supposed to be? $1,200.

So you're at least 48 months off in only three years. How's that possible? Well, it takes them instead of the 30 days that they say... No, no, I mean, just think about it. From 23 to 26 is only 36 months. That's as if you haven't paid a payment the whole time. Well, so that's the other thing. They're holding, I think, six or eight payments in escrow somewhere that they don't even account for during my trial payments.

But then, you know, there's three, you know, they did three appraisals. I mean, they just rack up fees like it's, you know, going out of style. Yeah, and they're charging you huge late fees as well? Yeah. And have they tacked on legal costs in that 43 as well? It doesn't list it as a line item. I can't even get them to give me a line item. I can't get to $43,000.

That's what my problem is. You and me both. And when I start doing the math and every time I ask them about it, oh, you know, I don't know. The loan that they sent me after they told me they would just put the back-tale, payments in the rears of the mortgage I had, which I was never laid on. Then they sent me a loan for 40 years that was going to raise my payment $15. Yeah.

Well, that would be, that would probably be correct, actually. But, yeah. Well, it would be, and so I called him, and I said, this is not what we ever discussed, and the person that I talked to who had no idea, but. Are you talking to FHA or to the loan servicer? I've talked to both. No, I mean, when you made that phone call, who was it to? So when I talked to FHA, they said, well, you can, you know, if you filed an appeal and a notice of error with, you know, with the mortgage servicer, let them answer and then we can work that service.

But basically, the loan servicer is the one that decides whether the payment was late. I just, you know, and I explained to the FHA person, I said, I don't understand how you can send me an email that I have a screenshot and it's in my inbox in the correct month that it was due and tell me that my payment was late. Yeah. Okay. All right. So the net, net, net is that you probably have, in reality, six payments or seven payments or some amount laying in escrow. So $7,000, and you have $43,000 owed in arrears. So somewhere around $36,000 would get you caught up. Obviously, you don't have that. And obviously, we're dealing with bureaucrats at the FHA and incompetence. at the servicer. Who's the servicer? It's free to mortgage. Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, incompetence at the servicer, then that would be normal. Yeah. Because they're massive, and they massively don't give a rip.

What a name too. Freedom. Yeah. That's what they're giving. It's the opposite of freedom. I also have a 2.7% interest rate, so every time they try to do anything, they're like, well, you know, they're paying them to go up a lot. So what is your income? So I think, that's the other thing. The reason I went on forbearance originally was from long COVID, and then I had, I almost, I had to go into the hospital and I almost died. And it took me a little while to heal.

Well, they told me, well, you can't pay payments while you're on forbearance because it'll kick it into, you know, it'll kick it automatically into foreclosure. So every time I've tried to get back into kicking, you know, into paying for my mortgage, it's a seven months, eight month processed. Yeah. And then to give me some kind of answer. And if it's not perfect, it goes right back into. the loop. Yeah. What do you make now? What do you make? Well, so currently I don't have a job, but I have the, I mean, I do contract work. I do other things, but prior to getting sick, my income was 230. Okay. What will you be making in the coming months? Enough to pay a $1,200 payment?

10 to $15,000 a month. Okay. Okay. And then I have, you know, I have money that, I mean, I have, I have assets. I've just had them tied up from, you know, a divorce that was five years ago. So what assets do you have? What assets do you have? So, I mean, I have an account that has $400,000 in it. But I can't touch it until my ex signs the paperwork, which that's like the last thing. And she just kind of keeps dragging her feet on it. Wait a minute.

What is the $400,000? It is a, it's a, it was a investment account that we had, you know, when we were married. Okay. But it's frozen. So let me help. Let me put it to you this way. I can't make Freedom Mortgage be competent or the FHA not be bureaucratic idiots. And you can't either.

And so the best thing you can do is write them a $43,000 check. You owe them anyway. I had an option on that. You owe, yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. You make $10,000 a month. I don't currently make $10,000. You said you're going to in the coming months.

I asked you. Yes. Correct. Yes. No, I will. Okay. Then go make $43,000. They're not going to foreclose in 20 minutes.

It'll take them six months to a year to get around to it. Have you noticed that they're slow? Yeah. The one thing that concerned me is they sent me a letter saying that if you don't make it by X date, then we're going to press the process. And that's what tomorrow. Okay. Then they're going to start foreclosure, right?

Okay. Yeah. And in Alabama, that takes at least a month. but it probably takes six months because they're probably going to sit on their thumbs because it's what they do. They're thumb sitters. So really, I mean, you probably have time to cash flow this. In the meantime, I'm going to the judge and saying, I'm going to smack my ex into next week.

I'm going to have the judge smack her into next week and get her to sign the dadgum paper. Holding up 400 grand, I'm getting ready to lose a house because of it. So those are variables you can control. You're asking for some way to make your stupid but mortgage company and your inept FHA behave, they can't. The things you can control, you need to go control and get $43,000 out of that $400,000 account or go get $43,000 out of some work you do in the next 90 days before the actual foreclosure date occurs and pay this thing current. That's what I would do if I were in your shoes. If you don't do one of those two things, you need to put your house on the market right now.

and sell it for you, lose it. But you need to go get some money and get stupid freedom out of your life. That's what this comes down to, because you have tried for three freaking years to negotiate with morons, and it doesn't work. Hey guys, healthcare is one of the biggest stress points

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How can we help? My husband's extended family likes to meet for their birthdays for dinner and cards are exchanged with money at each. gathering and we're a bunch of grown adults and I feel like it's just a little unnecessary. And I just want to know how I can be the bad guy to get, kind of put a stop to it. Oh, I wouldn't do that. Oh. Wouldn't do that at all.

Well, how much? I would have him do it, but I wouldn't do it. Well, he always makes me a bad guy, though. I know, that's the problem. You're going to be the Wicked Witch of the West. It's his family. He's got to deal with them, not you. Well, I might already be that.

with the family. So why do we want to increase it? At this point. Then why do you get invited to the party? That's a great question. I wish they would invite me. Oh, because you give money, that's why. Yeah.

You bought your way in. How much is it? I'm just curious. And okay, I would also say my husband's a very generous man. Like he's not one. He's like, it's fine, it's fine. Whatever. And so usually we put like, you know, 60, 80 bucks in each card.

Good God. Thank you. That's weird. Okay, how many, okay, I just, I'm trying to picture. How many people are at the table? Like, how many brothers and sisters, spouses, parents? He's an only child, and I think, so they view their family, like, cousins, aunts as, like, Oh, it's not even, like his siblings.

No. Oh, no, no, no, no. So how many people are at this dinner? Uncle, grandpa. So usually it's one to, you. three, four, five, six, seven, not including us. Okay, not counting grandkids. There's eight of us, Rachel, Winston, Daniel.

No, there's no grandkids. So there's, I know, not counting grandkids. So there's eight of us, I can see all eight of us sitting in a table. And the chances of us giving each other money is precisely zero. The chances of getting a birthday card are basically. You're lucky to get a text. Yeah. Yeah.

But, so it's been a tradition forever and ever. but these are all 30, 40-year-old, 50-year-old people? 50, yeah, and 60 and 70. Yes. Yeah. And there's a birthday tomorrow. That's what I'm calling right now. Too late.

You're in on that one. You can't fix that one. Well, on that one, yeah. But, like, how do I bring up, like, I don't mind getting together? You don't. Your husband has to. And if he won't, it's not going to happen. No, he just doesn't want to upset his mommy.

No, it's not even his mom. I think his mom would be completely fine with us doing it. Who is? go with the flow. They don't want to cause any risk. Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't cause a rift. I wouldn't cause a stink. I would not make it about them. I would not make it. His job, though, is to fix his family, not yours. Really, that's bad mojo. You do not want to get in that relationally. But he should sit down and say, hey, guys, we're working on some financial goals, and we'll be happy to pay our part of the dinner and come to dinner with everybody and celebrate. And we'll send you a nice text and

buy you a nice card. But we're not going to give grown adults any cash anymore, because we're working on some other stuff. We love y'all, though. Hope it works out for you. And he just needs to raise his hand and say that. I did do that inappropriately. Actually, I had my wife's participation, and she may have actually done it. She should have done it. Her family, they all, there's 90 million of them, and they all gave each other Christmas gifts. And she's got like five brothers and sisters, there's 13 grandkids. There's people everywhere all over this house. And we go down there and you buy all these adults that you see twice here. And I love of them. They're good people. Yeah, we're about to be with them like three weekends for our,

or some socks, and it's just, or whatever, try to guess what University of Tennessee paraphernalia they need this year, or whatever it is, right? And we finally, when we went broke, I told Sharon, I said, the little kids under 12 get a gift, everybody else gets a nod, or we'll draw names. And so she said, oh, that's a good idea. We'll draw names. And I said, okay. And I don't remember whether she brought it up at Thanksgiving or I did, but she raised her hand and she said, hey guys, We're broke. We're drawing names this year because we can't do everybody's gifts and we'll buy the kids under 12, the baby's little little baby gifts or whatever because it's Christmas.

And we drew names. So it was a similar discussion. And by the way, that went real well. Everybody else went, oh, yeah, we kind of thought the same thing, but we wouldn't want to be the first one to bring it up. Yeah. And if anything, Evan, and I know you're not major fans of the family, but if he wanted to give some, like, thoughtful gift or something, you know what I mean? And like, you can do something for 20 bucks of like, hey, I saw this, you know, Uncle, you know, Uncle Rick and I thought of you.

And that's his birthday gift versus giving a check of $75. Or $3.20 or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But I, I, let me say this, Evan.

You're correct. You're correct. This is absurd. But if it ends, it almost wouldn't be a hill, though, that I would just push and push and push. No. Because it happens six times a year. And it may be. be a thing you just, if you don't want to address it, you got to just live with it,

and it's a roll the eyes kind of thing. But he should, because it is kind of, it gets I don't disagree. It's weird. It's just a bunch of 60-year-olds giving each other 80 bucks. That's just weird. Okay. But yeah, but if you want to do it, it's okay. I just don't, I think it's weird. But yeah, and I just raised my hand and go, we have some other goals. We're not doing it. But your husband has to do it. Otherwise, you're just going to come off all stinky, stinky Evan. You don't want to be stinky Evan. Yeah. No. You always let, when you have a conflict with the other side, you let the other side handle the other side. That's, you know, because otherwise you end up being a stinky one.

And it's just, it's not a plan. Not a plan. Linda is in Knoxville. Hi, Linda. How are you? Good. Thank you for taking my call, Dave, and Rachel. Sure.

My question is about a 529 account that has been growing since my daughter, who's about six years out of getting her master's. They not have to use much of it, and it has been growing and growing. She's single with no children. Why did we not use much of it? She got a wonderful scholarship. You can pull that much out without any taxes. The value of that scholarship can be withdrawn with no taxes or penalty. Is she too late?

Six years ago. You might have to go back on it. You might have to file an amended return. Well, you wouldn't have to file it unless you got audited, but you might have to go back and do that. but talk to your tax advisor about how to do it, but you can pull the amount, the value, market value of the scholarship out at any time with no taxes or penalties. This is worth the call. Wow.

Well, since you didn't pay nothing for it, it definitely was worth it. Well, no, high value. And your high school curriculum has a lot to do with why all three of my children are very financially stable. Wow. And so thank you for that as well. So what was her scholarship worth, do you think? What was a tuition worth?

Fifteen a semester, so $100,000. How much is in the $529? $330. Awesome. We can get a bunch of it out. And then would you take the rest out and pay taxes on it? You're going to pay $10% penalty plus taxes on the growth on everything else. Or you can move it to a sibling or a child.

Yeah. She is the one who's earning the least out of her siblings, and so they're fine, and she is really wanting to look at getting a house. And that's kind of what makes my heart hurt is there's money sitting out here. Yeah, she could. Yeah. You're going to get, you know, you're going to get $100,000 out for the house. If you pull the other $200 out, you're going to get a 10% penalty on the growth only. I don't know how much y'all put in and on taxes as well. If you're planning a summer trip, you're probably spending a lot of time getting everything ready because responsible people prepare for things that matter. And travel has a way of reminding us life can change fast.

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Hi, pretty good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I was married for almost 43 years. I divorced my husband. I moved out into an apartment. He's in the house now, and we can't get rid of it because he will not get out of the house. He's been there for like two and a half, almost three years.

I don't know how to, he tells me he can't pay the rent, then he checks taxes and everything, and then move to somewhere else and pay that too. So I'm kind of confused, and how do I get him out of the house to clean up the house? Okay, so it's not selling because it's junkie? Well, that outside the yard is pretty messy and stuff, but I just, and they do show it.

One lady did offer $2.50, but she's a flipper. She wanted to buy it cheap and flip it, you know. Was it worth? And that wouldn't give us probably about $3.60. Okay. All right. 43 years, Ann? Yeah.

I should have left a lot sooner, but I didn't. It's one of those things. Wow. What is your income? I have, every month is 2297. How old are you? 71. Okay.

How much you guys owe on the house? About 152,000. Okay. What does he make? Well, he's retired from the, from, I won't tell you where, but he's retired and he, I get 40% of his pension. He gets 60%. Your 2,200 is 40%. No, my, it's like 16%.

54 is my 40%. Where's the rest coming from? Social Security. So I barely get by, and I have about 120 left for gas and food, which, you know, and I've got 6,800 in credit cards, which I use. So he doesn't really have, he's correct in that he doesn't have the money to pay rent and the house payment, right? Right, right.

And neither do you? Right. We're kind of stuck. I don't know what to do. And the plan and the divorce that he was going to sell the house and you guys were going to split the equity? Yeah, or else he was going to buy me out, but he can't refinance. Yeah. He says he can't.

I don't know. I don't think he has the income. If that's his only income. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And, well, I mean, so if you got your wish and he moved out, then your house is going to get foreclosed on, isn't it? No, that's lower the price enough where somebody would buy it. But I'd like it cleaned out so I could, you know, paint a few things and make it look a little nicer.

It doesn't look real good right now. Yeah. So it's on the market at 360? Right now it's 350. 350. Okay. Yeah, he started at 440, which is crazy. Okay.

Well, I mean, the problem is you light a fuse. that's six months to a year long before the house gets foreclosed on when he moves out. And so you go over there, paint it, you clean up the yard. And if it doesn't sell, every single month, you're going to be dropping the price. Because you're going to have to get rid of it. You may wish you took the $250. Yeah, I'm kind of thinking that I should have. Well, I'm just saying, if you light this fuse, you're creating a pressure cooker.

Time's ticking. When he moves out, now the clock. starts ticking. The sand starts going through the hourglass. The pressure's on. You follow me? Yep. And I just, I want to be careful what you sign up for that you know what you're signing, what trip you're taking here. What would I do? Obviously, he is not going to help by cleaning up the artery, I would have already for his own sake. He should have done that because he would get more money in his pocket. He's disabled too. He had six, back surgeries and I don't know what he can lift her.

Yeah, so he's not, he's not doing anything. Okay. And for good reason now. We're not going to accuse him of, okay. He can't afford to hire people to do it. We don't have the money to. No, you don't. So you have children?

Grown children. Yeah, where are they? One's here in my town, but they both have back problems. One's in Roseburg, one's in here, Salem. Okay. And so obviously they're not able to help, and they were probably affected by the divorce in terms of their motivation to help. One is, yeah, yeah, definitely. What's he paying in mortgage payments every month?

About what I'm paying. I'm paying 1122, and he's paying probably about 12 or 1300. I'm just wondering, rent-wise, if he's paying $11.22, and he's paying probably about $1,300. $1 or $1,300. I'm just wondering, rent-wise, if he's, $1,000. there's anything cheaper. I don't know if him moving out and you going over there at 71 with a paintbrush and a trash can is going to make this deal work enough that I'm thrilled with the bomb that we set a fuselette on. May not move that much. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I can, I don't know

the house. I don't know the deal. So who's, um, do you know the realtor? Do you trust the real estate agent? I do. Well, we bought the house from the same guy. Okay. And, and, What does the real estate agent say you should do? He says, just keep waiting for the right people who come by, which I don't agree with, because we can't keep waiting. I was going to pay all my credit cards off when this house sold. Now I'm still that credit card bills. How much do credit card debt do you have? $6,800.

Yeah, that's not bothering me much. We'll get there. That's not a panic. You're eating. Everything's okay. It's not ideal, but none of this is ideal. Yeah. And no retirement accounts or anything.

It's just the pension. Right. Just wondering if there's any other. There's no money anywhere. Well, not that I know of. He's not the truthfulness person in the world, but I don't know what he's got, really. But I doubt if he has much more. So sad, Ann, I'm sorry.

So what I would do would be to try. to work with your ex to allow some access and begin to get some things cleaned up that you would do if he moved out while leaving him there and dropping the price. And if that doesn't work, then you're going to have to ask a judge to have him move if he doesn't voluntarily want to move because he's going to stop. What? Because I did call him one day. I was going to talk to him about the house.

He hung up on me. He wouldn't even talk to me. Okay. Well, then you're left with a judge, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So either we sell the price, either we drop the price or and or you move out. And if he won't do that voluntarily, the judge will have to tell him to do that because he's in, I assume there's a divorce decree saying the house has to be sold.

And the house is not actively being marketed. It's not a marketable condition. And so you can force that. But, and be aware, you may be playing some cards here that lights a fuse on this bomb that, you lose the house. I mean, it's possible. If the real estate market slowed down for some reason, there's a jump in interest rates, and nobody wants to buy anything.

Even the flippers are out of the market. And that price drops on down. Yeah, you may be wishing you'd taking the $250. I'm kind of wishing you'd taking the $250 right now. But I don't think he wanted to take it either. Yeah, well, if it's at $350, some, I mean, there's probably other flippers in the area. I mean, hopefully you can get it. But the thing is, is if you don't get somebody to make a transaction quickly,

that real estate, that can go months. And that's the part that scares me where I'm like, I don't feel like you have that financial margin to go that long. It's going to have to go best. Don't confuse this move with any of the 43 years' worth of emotions. If there's any, I didn't detect it, but if there's any anger or I'm revenge, I'm hitting back, or I'm trying to make this guy finally behave one time. Yeah, no.

Or something like that. You need to make this move because it's the right. I think she wants $100,000. $100,000 of equity to pay off credit card debt and live. Exactly. Live a little more comfortably. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Rachel Cruz, Ramsey Personality.

My daughter is my co-host today. Brock is in Manhattan, Kansas. Hey, Brock, what's up? Hey, guys. How are you guys doing? Better than we deserve. How can we help? So I got married a few months ago, and a few weeks ago we found out my wife is also pregnant.

Yay! Yeah, I know. We're very, very excited. And we have a little bit of a debt problem. So she had a car payment that she paid off all in her own, and then after we got married, I helped pay off the credit card, which wasn't too much. It was about $2,000. But she also has about $177,000 in student loan debt. And I was wondering how we should attack that.

Is she a doctor or a lawyer? I wish I could say either one, but she is a at-home daycare. Or she's a freelance nanny, basically. A freelance what? What was her degree in, Nanny? She actually never finished college. I know. Oh, no.

She got a degree in what? She didn't finish. She didn't get a degree. Oh. Was it a private school? Private? It was a D-1 state school. Oh, so out of stay probably.

Yeah. And she, yeah, this is a bad situation. Oh, man. Bad's probably not the word. Dumb might be the word. Wow. How close did she come to finishing? She had a little bit last.

It wasn't a ton, but it was enough where it was like we can't afford to keep going. The degree is in what? What was she studying? Like a backler. She started out in education. She wanted to be a teacher. And then she decided that she changed her mind and wanted to be, she was doing business marketing, what I'm doing now.

But thankfully, the Army pays for mine. So we don't have to wait out of my. What do you make? I make about $54,000 a year, and she makes about $36. Okay. And then I also have about, I do have some savings, thankfully. I have about $35,470 in a mutual fund that just basically mimics the S&P. And then I also have just under $30,000 in a money market.

Okay. And you have how much owed on her car still? None. That's all paid off. And the credit cards paid off as well. So the only debt left is $175,000. Yes, sir. How old are you guys?

I'm 20 and she's 23. And you graduated from college as well? I am about 65% through mine. I'm doing it online while I'm in the Army. You're in the Army? Yes, sir. I thought you were in marketing. No, that's what I'm getting my degree in.

Oh. And is your school being paid for? Yes, ma'am. So your 54,000 is your Army service, your military service. Yes, sir, yes, sir. And she makes 36,000 as a nanny? Yes. Okay, and you have 70,000.

You have 30 and 35,000, 65,000 laying around. Okay. Yes, all right. All right, so, yeah, what I would do is I would continue to stack cash until the baby comes. And when the baby comes and everyone's healthy, I have bad news. your wife is not going to be a stay-at-home mom. She's going to be working. She has $175,000 worth of debt she signed up for,

and so she's going to be working for a while. So we need to get used to that idea. And because when you have your first baby, particularly, there's a tremendous draw to want to be home with a child unless someone has a tremendous professional draw into the marketplace. And so you guys need the $85,000. So let's pretend that you stack another $10,000 worth of cash. That's $75,000.

And when the baby comes home and is healthy from the hospital and mommy's healthy and mommy goes back to work, we write a check for $75,000 on put it on the student loan. And you have $1,000 in your account and you attack the $100,000 with a vengeance. And you guys work extra. You do everything you can. You sell everything in sight. When are you going to re-up with the military? I wasn't planning on it, but...

When will you leave the military? I have two and a half years left. Okay, with a degree. With a degree, I will leave with a degree. Yeah, okay. And then I will also make more as I stay there. And I would hope your income will go up substantially at that point. It's going to be a three or four year.

Yeah, you're going to be a while to get through this $100,000 that's still remaining after the baby comes. Yes, sir. But you guys are going to get used to working a lot. both of you to clean up this mess. And it's a good thing that she is and what she does because she can be watching her baby along with another baby or two. Assuming the people that she's nannying for her good with that, yeah. Yep, that's right.

But there's some flexibility in it. Because if not, she's going to be paying for child care and it's going to be eaten into that. You know what I mean? It's not going to be that grave situation. I come aside and facepalm because I, feel so bad for this baby and this young married couple. That was terrible.

That they have been screwed by student loans and by the whole lie that Congress has put out by continuing to issue student loans. Congress has screwed Americans with a student loans. This generation, millennials and Gen Zs, yeah. They're just, they're screwed. And you're sitting there. And who loans somebody, 175,000? thousand dollars to get an almost degree an 18 year old yeah only the u.s congress would do that

only there's only one organization that's that screwed up and it's the u.s congress and they can oh there's a student loan crisis it's awful we should forgive the student loans Biden said well yeah but you keep making them you bunch of bozos so why do we need to forgive them if you're going to keep making them you keep making these loans over and over and over and some poor young girl goes across the state line and goes to another state to get a degree and oh wait she didn't did you know that 54% of the people that start four year degrees finish them that by definition means half don't and you get where she is and she married a young man serving his country thank you sir for serving your country and now they've got a beautiful baby on the way.

What an awesome start to life. But they got this cloud hanging over their head full of knives that Congress set up. And we Americans have allowed this because we keep electing the morons that keep this stuff on the books. They're called congressmen and congresswomen. Yeah, they're morons because they keep doing this over and over and over and over again. And then they talk about it like a politician. It's awful. this sort of shit. Well, you caused it. You can't talk about it being awful and you sit there and cause it.

And moms and dads, you ought to have your butt kicked up around your neck and wear it like a collar if you let your kid do this. You really should. I mean, what kind of parent says, oh, honey, go live your dream, go get a degree in left-handed puppet tree and go $100,000, $175,000 in debt? You parents ought to be smacked into next week for your lack of. a backbone to stand up to your own teenager. No, you're not doing that. That's stupid. That's a parental answer. Welcome to a Ramsey family meeting. Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now, you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show. Whether you're making a decision or just

want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple, and free to use. Go to Ramsey Solutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's Ramsey Solutions.com. If your private student loans are in default, when you've fallen so far behind the loan is considered unpaid, that's what default means, Y-ReFi might be able to help. They help borrowers in tough situations explore low, fixed-rate refinancing options that fits your budget. Go to Y-refi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y. Dot com slash Ramsey might not be in all states.

Today's question comes from Sam and North Dakota. My wife and I are 29 with no debt and are currently saving for our kids' college. When the rainy day comes and you have to dig into your three to six months emergency fund, do you pause investing and saving for college to focus on replenishing your emergency fund? I would say it depends on how much you have to dip into it. Hopefully you don't have to go through all the paperwork to pause all that, especially retirement, having to go into HR and pausing it to refill it. But if it's a significant amount, yes, you probably would.

But in a perfect world, you would just cash flow some extra money and get it filled back up in the next month or two. I agree. It would depend. It kind of feels like this is a hypothetical. Yes. Because if you have a situation where, let's say you got $15,000 in your emergency fund and you take 12 out, you're probably going to stop everything for a little bit and rebuild that. And you wouldn't even have asked the question. But most of the time, what has happened in reality with people who are coaching and in Dave and Sharon's house and Rachel and Winston's house is, you know, you have a little bit of an emergency or some kind hit and you cash flow the emergency without even touching the emergency.

without even touching the emergency fund a lot of times. If not, your emergency fund takes a little hit, a three or four thousand, five thousand dollar hit or something like that. And you just cash flow the replenishing like you were saying. Yeah. But if it takes a major hit, most people don't even ask, they kind of know, I got to get that rebuilt. Yeah. Like if you lose a job, for instance, I mean, everything kind of goes on pause until we get the income back, you know. So that would just happen naturally.

Exactly. So, yeah, you got, well, the 401K certainly would have been stopped. But, but yeah, you stop your 529. You stop the other spouses, 401K, that kind of stuff. You stop all investing while we, you know, get straightened around. But again, that, you're diminishing your expenses or your money going out. Right. In order to not have to touch the emergency fund in that case.

Elizabeth, Elizabeth is with us. That is in Salt Lake City. Hi, Elizabeth. How are you? Hi, good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I fear that my husband and I have gotten ourselves into a bad situation.

We just moved into a new house before selling our old house. And then we also have some rental properties that are not currently rented. So we are basically drowning in mortgage debt and the house that we're in now. We've been in for about a month. and we're almost considering listing this house too and just seeing which one sells first just to get one sold. And so I just wanted to see, I guess, what you would do in our situation. So the other two are on the market. So one is not on the market.

We're trying to get it rented. It's a duplice. It has a house with a base. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Sell it. Okay. You're broke. You don't need a duplex.

I just don't know that we could sell it. We could make probably a thousand a month on it. I guess we haven't listed it, but we don't know that we could sell it to make enough money. I want you to sell it anyway. It's not an asset. It's a liability because it's not renting for enough to screw with. If you think you've got $12,000 gross cash flow, you know what that means?

That means annually you're probably losing money when you incorporate vacancy and repairs and legal fees for evictions and so on. Yeah, you're not making money. Okay. That duplex has zero fun in it. So list that and then just keep our other one. I'd get them both listed aggressively so I don't have to sell my new house. Okay. The house that we moved out of, we have had it listed for four months and we've had almost no interest.

Drop the price. We dropped it 25,000 a week ago. Okay, just keep dropping it until... And when you lose your butt on this, learn your lesson. Yeah. You should never have done this deal. Yeah. You turned yourself into a motivated seller.

Yeah. Okay. Yep. And I hope you don't have to sell your house. You may have sell your house, though. How much shorter you guys a month, Elizabeth? Well, I don't really know. My husband does construction.

He has a construction company, so he, some months makes no money. Some months will make 50 grand. But we have, we have about $100,000 in our savings, and we are feeling like for the next few months, if we keep all these properties, we're going to be taking out of our savings, and then we have some credit card debt, too. Yeah. How much credit card debt?

30,000. Okay. Yeah, my hope is that you can get these two properties sold really fast without having to dip into the 100 too much, and then you can write a check when that's done and get rid of the credit card debt. And you guys need to quit living hand to mouth. Construction businesses. I grew up in the real estate and construction business, and too many people in our world think we can out-earn our bad decisions in chaos. And I tried for a long time, and I couldn't do it. and I don't think you guys can't either.

The problem with dropping the price on the house we moved out of is that right now, if we sold at the price it's that now, we would make about $175,000. His dad loaned us the down payment for this house, which was $150,000. So the deal was that he would loan us that until we sold the house, and then we would use that money to pay him back. So would it be worth it then to just keep dropping the price? Yeah, you might have to write his data check out of your $100,000. thousand. Yep. Okay. Okay. You've become a... All right. It's that or sell the house you're in. I mean,

I don't care. But you called me and said you're drowning. I'm trying to keep you from drowning. Yeah. And you have to get very precise, very clear, and sharpen your machete to keep from drowning. And quit trying to hold on to all these different things with, I've got to hold on to this and the problem with this and I got a hold. And it makes $1,000 and it's a stupid duplex. my daddy-in-law. And, you know, you're going to have to go, something's going to give here. We better decide what it is or it's going to decide for us. Yeah, I think one of the bigger problems is my husband really wants to. We have a few other rental properties that don't, I mean, make maybe a few hundred a month, but he wants to have

eventually a bunch of rental properties that will pay. You're going to go broke. Yeah, you guys can't make this. You guys are going to lose everything. Elizabeth, I wish I could just wave a wand and just create peace in your life. You guys are just running and running and running, and it's not worth the stress. He has bought off on this idea that if you buy real estate, it'll make you rich. Real estate will cause you to go bankrupt if you're highly leveraged in it and you have no money. I know I did it. I'm an expert on that.

I have a Ph.D. in that. And so, you know, just, oh, man. What's the $30,000 in credit card debt? Was that just to keep? Something else. Is that lifestyle or was that a specific? No, that's my husband, for his business, he will, like, run up his credit card for a job that he's doing. And then when he gets paid for that job, yeah, you're living, y'all are all living backwards.

If you guys, if you guys don't get your business organized and you don't sell off all this rental property and you're probably not going to, you're going to go broke. You're going to lose everything. It's going to come crashing down around your head. I've done this for 30 years. You have all the symptoms of somebody who's going to be bankrupt in 36. months, you're not going to make it. If you don't get your freaking business act together and get your business acumen going where you actually know what you're making and quit running a dadgum construction company of this size out of your hip pocket with a credit card, that's just completely

primitive. You're going to have to add to your sophistication level to stay open and you're going to quit borrowing money up your eyeballs on all these real estate deals and acting like there's no tomorrow. And have to go to dad. You bought a duplex. You bought properties that are cash flow on 100 bucks. Translation, they're losing money every year. You're losing money on all of that. And then you bought a house without having the other one sold and you're handcuffed to your father-in-law. I mean, you guys have done like a whole laundry list

of everything that's going to cause people to go broke. And if you guys don't rush and undo that laundry list, you're going to go broke. Yes, I hope I'm scaring you. I hope I'm terrifying you enough that you go in and put for sale signs on everything. and you hire a freaking accountant and get somebody in there to straighten this construction company up and make sure it's actually making a profit.

I'm not even sure it is. We may just be swapping dollars the way we do things over there. You guys got to stop this, Elizabeth. You're scaring me to death. Hey guys, George Camel here. You ever feel like you make good money and still have nothing to show for it? You run into Target for one thing and somehow walk out $87 later with toothpaste and emotional support candles. Just me?

Okay. Well, that's the problem. don't pay attention to how they spend their money, so it does whatever it wants. And that's why we created every dollar. It's a budgeting app that helps you create a simple plan for your money. Every dollar's simple, it's clear, and it helps track where your money's actually going. Plus, you get daily lessons, to do's and reminders along the way. It's like having a money coach in your pocket. Your money's been freelancing long enough. It's time to give every dollar a full-time job. Go download every dollar for free on the app store or Google Play.

Adam is in Green Bay. Hey Adam, welcome to the Ramsey show. Hey, Dave, this for taking a call. Sure. What's up? Well, I thought maybe I could get Dave Ramsey to tell me it's okay to buy a new vehicle.

Nope. That's a short answer, huh? Are you, are you, do you have a net worth of a million dollars or greater? Not exactly. Well, it's either yes or a no. There's a not exactly. I mean, it's a math thing. It's a no.

Okay. A no. All right. Then if you're buying a yes. a new car, you're losing too much in value. I mean, it's very simple. You can do whatever you want to do, but that's, I don't find millionaires that ask this question. People that become millionaires don't ask this question. They don't say, how close to the edge of being dumb can I get and still become wealthy? They don't ask it that way. They go, I want to stay way away from the edge. I'm going to

drive an old used car and build up money because cars go down in value like a rock. That's where Chevy gets that. Yeah. All right. But what's your, what's the car? Yeah, well, I want to hear the numbers. Yeah, well, we kind of have our hard set on a Toyota Sienna. We're in Wisconsin, so all-wheel drive is nice.

This one can toll, which would be really handy for us. Got a couple small kids who want to be able to have a little bit of extra room for toting people around. So that's the one we kind of settled on. And the trouble is, I would be very happy. My wife and I have talked about it would be very happy. to buy a used model for a few years old or maybe even a little bit older, it has reasonable miles for a big drop down and cost.

But the problem is with this one, man, you look at ones that are two or three years old, and they're still going for virtually the same price as a new one, you've got to get to 100,000 miles or better, and, you know, six, seven, eight years old before you really see the prices coming down. In our case, we'd be buying cash, you know, so we're not financing it. And even with paying the cash, we still have our emergency funds stocked. What's your household in?

About 180. And this is what, an $80,000 car? 55. 55, okay. And brand new they're going for what? Close to that? Yeah, well, that would be a brand new price. You know, tax title and all that would probably be a little bit more about 57, 58,

somewhere that ballpark. And what other car do you guys have? Yeah, well, my wife just got into a car accident, so we're kind of under the gun. and I have a Tesla model Y that's also paid off. Okay. And worth what? Probably about 30.

Okay. I'm just trying to make sure you're within that. I got a 2024 Toyota Sienna. I'll sell you for $43,000 because I can buy it right now for 42. Anybody near me? I don't care if it's near you or not. For $10,000, you can figure it out. Yeah, yeah.

I just looked it up online. It took me about a half a second while I was talking to you. Okay. In other words, your whole price scenario is absolute BS. You've completely convinced yourself that the new one is the same price. It's not. Here's another one for 45 and another one for 45. 2024?

Yeah, 224s. I should have, yeah, I'm sorry, I should have specified. I think if you filter out the, if you're only looking at the Aldo Drive and with the toll, the ability to toll. I think that's going to change a little bit. Okay, what are you towing? We have a pop-o camper and a trailer. Okay, and what's your other car?

Tesla. A Tesla model Y. Oh, yeah, you said that. I'm sorry. I missed that while I was looking up the Toyota. Okay. And you can do whatever you want. But the thing that, the overarching decision-making paradigm is,

is what you have to fight against. And number one thing that you violated is, I mean, I haven't looked up. I honestly just typed in 2024 Toyota's in just to see what they're doing. And they're all in the 45, 41, 42, 43. There's like seven of them on the first page. It came up 30 seconds later. And I haven't even searched yet. Okay.

So I don't know about the towing part of the all-wheel drive part. And she totaled her car. And her car was what? It was a Nissan rogue. And we were kind of, we were already, the funny thing is we were leaving the dealership from talking about getting the new vehicle when she got rear-ended. Okay. All right.

So problem number one is, and we all do this, so I'm not going to pick on you too harshly. I'm not going to mess with you because you're asking the question in a proper tone, and I appreciate that, and thank you. I'll be nice. So when I do the thing that you're doing, it's just I'm rationalizing. and I'm trying to figure out a way to get what I want. And you can probably afford it and it's not going to bankrupt you. Okay?

So you do whatever you want to do. But I'm not going to tell you to do it because, you know, because you can buy this car $10,000 cheaper than new. For sure. A hundred percent chance you can. And you just hadn't found it yet. You haven't looked yet. And the urgency to replace.

And the, you know, we're moving up for God's sakes from a rome. rogue, which is a completely different vehicle. It's in a different class. The Sienna's a bazillion times a better car than the rogue. Right? Yeah. I'm really glad she's going to be. It's a minivan.

We love a minivan. Yeah, it's a great car. Maybe there's another class of minivan that's the same, they'll give you the same stuff. You know, the Honda Odyssey or something, right? What's the one you got? Mm-hmm. Is that what you got? The Odyssey.

Yeah. And so that's a good car. It's the queen jewel of the minivans. Oh, is it more? It's probably more. I don't know. Probably similar. I got no idea.

But it's a good car, though. And I don't know about towing it. I don't know about all wheel drive. And both those things are okay. But the second thing is this. You've got to adopt everyone, including you, Adam, and including me, the mindset of saying, okay, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the rich people keep doing rich people stuff and poor people keep doing poor people's stuff.

And middle class people keep taking out car payment. on new cars that they can't really afford to pull a pop-up camper. But he said he's going to pay cash. He's not taking out payments, but that's what middle class people do. And you're going to lose $10,000 when you drive it across the, when you go across the curb and it goes, blum, blum, that was the sound of $10,000. That's what that sounded like. Blum, blum, that's exactly what it sounded like.

And so you've got to get out of that mindset that that's okay until you have enough money to waste that much money. Now, I waste that much money. I buy new cars, but I've got several hundred million dollars in that worth. And so I can afford the blump, blump sound. It's not that big a deal. The building I'm sitting in is $600 million. So, you know, you just, it's okay.

But I want you to get there. I want you to be where you have millions of dollars. Whatever. You just threw out like insane numbers. No, I didn't. But to all of us just talking, you. The point is that you can be. by not buying things that go down in value as your largest primary purchaser.

You have a unique situation. I do, but I got there by doing this stuff. Yes, and also you make a great end. I mean, like, yes, but for the, but for people that we talk to that are doing this, that are baby steps, millionaires. Oh, wait a minute. The people we talk to are different.

They're not different. We're not better than them. Not that we're better. What? You just said you are sitting in a $600 million dollar building. That, Dad, that's not normal. That's okay. We're normal.

Life, everyone. The average person who makes 64,000... Can I finish? Can I finish? Can I finish? A hundred percent, but they don't have to sit in a $600 million building to do that. The average income in America is $64,000. The babysubs millionaires that we talk to do very simple things. They live on less than they make.

They invests into their Roth IRAs and their 401ks. They don't send $1,000 car payments to car companies. They pay themselves that have money. And they don't buy new cars. All of that. Yes. Yes. They don't buy new cars. So all that to say, yes, you do not have...

That's how they became a millionaire. It is. That is how they became a millionaire. That's the same point. It's exactly same point. I'm dead serious. Okay, the average person isn't going to go and build a 600 million. No, that's not the point.

And you said, I have hundreds or whatever you said. I don't want to be a hypocrite and say, don't buy new cars when I do. Yes, but if you have a net worth of a million dollars, anybody, yes, if you have a net worth of a million dollars, you can buy a new car. I can afford it. Sorry, America. I want you to be able to afford it. We're doing this. I want you to be able to afford it.

100%. And so, yeah, Adam, we were harder on each other than we were you. That's great. You should not feel uncertain about investing, and you don't have to. That's why we created investing essentials, a two-night virtual event where George Camel and I walk you through my playbook for investing and wealth planning. will simplify everything from 401k's and mutual funds to passing on wealth so you can invest with confidence. Tickets start at $199. Get yours today at ramsysolutions.com slash events or click the link in the show notes.

Our scripture today Isaiah 43, 18 and 19, forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I'm doing a new thing. Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I'm making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Albert Einstein said a person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new. I like the Henry Ford quote, too.

He says, those of us who make mistakes have those who never make mistakes work for us. Buying or selling your home is a high stakes proposition because one bad deal could really screw up everything. That's why Ramsey trusted connects you with vetted real estate agents who are trusted by Ramsey because they're high octane. high protein. To find one for free, a Ramsey trusted agent, that is, go to ramsysolutions.com slash agent or click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or podcast. Okay, there's some backstory and history that's worth going into to make sure that we settle that last little interchange, exchange. So number one, the bottom line is that wealthy people that we have studied, 10,000 millionaires in our research do not buy new cars.

Even after they get their first one to five million dollars, they're driving. The typical is out, he was looking at a Toyota, honestly a two-year-old Toyota. When I'm interviewing millionaires, I ask them all the time what they're driving and they drive a 10, or they drive a piece of crap old car. And I tell them to upgrade their car because they're still being too big a tight one. They've gone too far. But that's the millionaires. people who want to drive new cars typically land and stay in the middle class most of the time with high car payments.

That's what our data says. So we're not going to tell you to buy a new car until you have a million dollars and you can afford to take the loss. Then let's talk about me saying I've got sitting in a $600 million building and whatever. And Rachel, not liking that because it's not relatable. And other people don't understand and they just blow me off because they don't want to listen to that. So the history is this. I've got several brand new cars that I bought, and I don't want to be a hypocrite. The first time on the Dave Ramsey show, it was called back in those days because it was me.

I honor my elders. Thank you. Because it was me. No, it's not the point. Back in the day when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was driving a, what was I can't remember the number on the thing, the little Mercedes coop. It was a blue. A little blue Mercedes coop. And it had 230,000 miles.

on it. I bought it for $7,000. It overheated on the way to a live event in Chattanooga. I was driving from Nashville to Chattanooga. The vice president of live events was in the car with me. We're on the side of the road and I'm pouring water over the water heater, the radiator trying to get it to cool off and get water back in to get the live event. And the car is worth probably at that point, $3,000. I had driven it in the ground. And he's like, this is ridiculous. You're a millionaire. You need to buy a good car. And I said, I can't buy and I can't drive. a good car and be on the radio telling people to drive junky cars so they can get out of debt. And he goes, yeah, you can.

You need to be the proof that it works on the other side. Yeah, absolutely. And I upgraded. Live like no one else. Later you get to live. With great. I was so worried that Twitter was going to attack me. That was before Twitter.

It was. It was. I was so worried that the people were going to hate me. The family at O. Charlie's. Because I was inconsistent and I was a hypocrite. And I bought a two-year-old Jaguar, which was a very. nice car at the time and upgraded considerably from like $3,000 to $20,000 in those days or whatever it was. But I went through this great angst that it was okay for me to buy something nice when I had

the freaking money. Yeah. So I, yeah, you just had to, and so I had to overcome that. And instead, I'm going to be the poster child that goes, you can go do this if you go do this. Yeah. And so that's why I still don't want to come on the air and say, I buy a new car. I bought some. I bought several new cars and I can afford to lose that money. So you're justifying saying, here's what I have so that I can afford it. I wasn't talking down. No, no, I don't think you were talking down at all. I was just saying you don't have to justify it.

I think majority of people that listen, they know. Well, no, some of them don't. And you'll read it in the comments later after this argument. Actually, it will be a good thing two seconds. You read the comments and I don't. Every now and then I will. James is in Chicago. Hey, James, how are you?

Hey, guys, I'm good. How are you? Better than we deserve for sure. What's up? So my mother-in-law's got a house that recently went under contract to sell for $3.35, and then a couple weeks later, it appraised for $360. They haven't closed on the house, and they won't for another two or three weeks. Is there any recourse to close that gap at all? Okay. Somebody missed it. The real estate agent? I believe so.

And, you know, I hear all your commercials about the trusted real estate agents. And I think that was certainly the case. But my minute, it was that one of our agents? No, no, no, no. Oh, oh. I'm saying I wish we had gone to. You think the agent screwed up in the original pricing and convinced your mother-in-law to sell her house too cheap? I believe so.

Do you think the appraisal is actually accurate? Yes, I do, because the house is, I was surprised when she said, said we should list a 335. And then she went and sold it before it even listed. It was just kind of a friend of a friend situation. I bet. Everybody jumped on her. So it's $35,000 underpriced or about 10%.

And there's already somebody. It's bought. It's under contract. It's supposed to close any minute. You're right. Yeah. Well, I'm, the first thing that pops into my, my head, James, and I'm just going to, off the cuff is, well, she sold her house too cheap. That's sad

because she's given her word. She signed a contract, and I don't want her to get sued for specific performance under this contract. And then the second thing that pops into my head is I'm going to kick the incompetent real estate agents. But I don't, ethically, I can't tell her to break that contract. Right. I wish she had done a better job. and listen to you. I wish she'd done a better job at selecting her agent. And I bet I'm going to hear that this lady is in, needs this money bad, doesn't she? Something like that.

Yeah. Gosh. It would help if she had it. You could put it that way. Well, it always would help, yeah. Right. Yeah. Is there anything else going on in the deal?

Is the contract contingent upon a whatever, whatever, whatever, like a home, a home? home inspection. Has the home inspection report come back? The home inspection came back clear. There's nothing pending there. The only thing I can think of is if their loan falls through last minute. Yeah. I mean, there's, sorry, I'm trying to think three weeks until closing. Yeah. So I don't know if they're a loan as approved. I, you know, I have no idea. But if there's, if that falls through, we can relist. And then, you know, we solve that problem. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and then. And get a new real estate agent. Yeah.

Certainly. Yeah, I mean, unless there's something sideways in the contract deal that she can use to ethically get out. Like I knew a guy who had his house on the market, and the radon inspection came back and found radon, and they wanted him to spend $500 to fix the radon. And he said, no, contract's over and canceled the whole thing because he wanted out of the deal. And he used that to get out of the deal. But he had a legal, ethical out because he refused to fix the redone. the radon, and he had the right to do that in the contract. So, you know, that's the kind of thing

like if they came back with something in the home inspection, you say, well, I'm not going to do that. You can do that. That's part of the home inspection process. And then they would go, well, you know, okay, we'll take it anyway. No, we're not going to fix it. And we're not, based on this home inspection, we're not selling the house. You could just, I mean, there'd be a way to walk out of it then legally and ethically. But I don't think there is here. You know, I'm not an attorney in Illinois. you might ask one to be sure. Just to see. I know.

Competent real estate agents are important. I know. And I would feel bad for that family on the other end who's in contract for something. Then you kind of go back on your word. Just from like a, I mean, it's worth it. It's worth the, I'm saying like the new price is what the house is worth. I get it. We think it is.

But that still feels off. You gave your word. You sold the house. Yeah. And people walk away from contracts like they walk away from everything in this society. today too much. You should honor your word. And so I hate it. I don't like it. I've signed up for things I wished I didn't sign up for. And also too, it's a, you know, to sell a house today is harder than it was a few years ago. So she may have even, even if it was at 360, had to negotiate

down some anyways, right? So you may not have gotten the full 60 anyways. You would never know. But yeah, sorry, James. So you should get a high octane, high protein Ramsey trusted real estate agent or you shouldn't get one at all. This is what you get. You make a mistake. It's It's a $30,000 mistake. It's huge. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace,

and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.