The Ramsey Show - Good Intentions Arent Enough Be Intentional With Your Money

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

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George Campbell here with a quick PSA before the calls start coming in. If you want to leave the money stress in 2025, you need a plan that works. So take what you learn today and put it to work in every dollar. Download the app and start 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 Fair Winds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling.

author and host of the Ramsey Network, Dr. John Deloney's show, is my co-host today. Open phones here at AAA 825-5-225. Joan is in Florida. Hi, Joan. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I have a question. I would like to know if it's okay if I lock my husband out of my savings account. Wow. Tell me more. Sounds pretty dramatic. Yeah, it is. We've been married for 45 years. Probably 20 some years ago, we got into some credit card debt, a lot of credit card debt to the point where we had to take out a second mortgage. I also borrowed against my 401K, and it took probably 10 years to claw out of that debt. And I mean, we were really good about budgeting, and now we have our home paid off, all our cars are paid off. We had absolutely no debt. until probably the last year. I picked up a second job before to help, you know, get this debt out. Well, I've since left my second job, and we are just spending, I say we, it's not really we, it's him.

It's just spending way more than what we're bringing in. On the what? Oh, just, he has bought a boat, he's bought a truck to pull the boat, he's bought a road, he's bought road bikes. He's bought mountain bikes. He has gone through $40,000 in savings in the last year buying

these things. What is your all's net worth? Net worth. Our home is worth probably $650,000. I have $650 in my 401K. I had $50,000 in savings and now I have I guess there's about eight in there now.

You keep using the word eye. How much does he have in his 401k? Nothing. Okay, so you have a net worth of a million and a half dollars, give or take. And your household income is what? It's 82. Between the two of us, it's 82,000. And you guys are in your 60s? Yes. Okay. And so what kind of midlife crisis is this dude having at 60? He is, he's saying that he wants to get all these things bought before he retires and he plans on retiring next year. So he wants to enjoy his life. We sort of had a significant event happen in our family. We had a family member of ours who just worked himself to death and died in his 40s and didn't enjoy life at all, didn't enjoy any of the money that he made.

So my husband was like, well, he's not going to do that. He's not going to be like that. It doesn't sound like the problem is the boat or the truck. It sounds like you come home from working your second job, and all of a sudden there's a new boat in the driveway. Oh, I hate it. I look out there and I see it, and I hate it. No, no, no, no, him doing crap without you guys being an agreement in it.

That's the problem. I agree. You didn't know this. You didn't go along with these purchases. They just occurred. No. Well, I did go along with the boat, but I didn't realize he was going to spend as much as he did on it. And I didn't realize that he, I mean, he just keeps putting more money into it.

For people that have been married 45 years, you all suck at communication. Yeah, not good. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Or did he just change it on you? Have y'all been communicating well for a decade? And then all of a sudden this went sideways? No.

No. This isn't new. We've never really agreed on finances. You know, I'm more of, let's save, let's put it aside. And he's more of let's enjoy it. It's just gotten bad in the probably last year and a half. I appreciate your frustration and even your anger. And those are justified.

But the problem is not the savings account. That's the symptom. Okay. The problem is you all are not aligned. 100%. You're not unified. And so I don't think I'm hearing you say, because you said I went along with the boat, I don't think I'm hearing you say that you're opposed to enjoying some of the money.

What I do hear you say is you don't like being surprised and people running roughshod over your hard work while you're working two jobs. Yes. And that's fair. Second job. Yeah, that's fair. I gave up the second job. Yeah. But to compare your all's life in any stretch of imagination to the 40-year-old workaholic, he's not even on the same planet.

so you can't use that as a justification to do something stupid and lie to your wife. It's the dishonesty, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you really do for the sake of, I mean, if you're in your 60s and you guys are healthy, you may have to be fighting with this old man for another 30 years. Right. So you all need to really work on this and get on the same stinking page.

I agree. Yeah, Sharon and I make more money and have more money and I don't buy any boats without sharing what the boat costs. and we make the decision together beforehand. And if the boat involved a truck to pull the boat, we would be talking about that too. We don't just make this up as we go when I come home and go, see what I did, honey.

And we've been married 43 years and I'm 65 years old. So we're right in the same camp with you, kiddo. Okay. And here's the other side of it. He's not on the phone. So just you are? Yes. The Gottmans are kind of the goats

when it comes to marriage research. Okay. Okay. And they created this thing called the four whole, of the relationship apocalypse. They can tell with 90 plus percent accuracy after watching a couple communicate just for a little bit whether they're going to make it or not.

And the relational dynamic of contempt where one person thinks they are better than the other person is the number one predictor that this thing's not going to, it's going to fall apart. And listening to your language, this is mine. I put this in my account, he has nothing, I'm wondering if there's not a dynamic in your marriage

that has established itself over the years of, you're the good one and he's the bad one. Yeah. You're the smart one, you're the one who saves, and he's the child. And these dynamics have a way of self-reinforcing themselves. Doesn't give a pass, it doesn't give an excuse for his dishonesty, his line to his wife, his... Impulsiveness?

Yeah, acting like a child. child, but it creates a context for where if you're going to treat me like a child for 40 years, I'm going to act like a child. Then excuse it. And if he was on the phone with me, Dave and I'd be letting him have it. But you have to say, this is the dynamic that we have co-created for 40 years where I think I'm better than him because I make more money, or I had a second job, or I have retirement account. The quality of his soul would be greatly increased if the two of you could mutually respect each other, dignify each other with being in agreement before we make major decision. There you go. And that usually starts. And that also concludes combining ownership of

everything. So you don't have a 401k. We have a 401k. You don't have a house. We have a house. We have an income. We are doing this. This is what we have a boat now. And that kind of stuff. And when you sit down to have conversations about feeling dishonest, whatever, if you sit down and say, you went out and did this again and you did this, he's going to fight you. He has to. You've declared war. If you sit down and say, hey, I'm hurt, I'm scared, I feel this way, start the conversation with eye statements, and that can be an invitation. And then if he continues to act like a child, then we're going to have to respond in some different ways. But you've got to reset this whole communication pattern. Yeah, you guys got to work on your skills. That's it. Your skills are

low. And that may mean sitting down with a marriage counselor who's not, who's teaching you how to develop these skills. Dave, we got a lot of calls on this show where life has. One day someone's healthy, they're working, providing for their family, and then a curveball hits. You know, we hear it all the time. A car accident, a cancer diagnosis, a heart attack, and suddenly, everything changes. Yeah, and that's why you've always said that having term life insurance from Xander is essential, because it protects your family if the worst happens. Yeah, that's right. You need 10 to 12 times your income in coverage. No gimmicks, no whole life junk, just straightforward term. protection. But there's another piece that people often overlook, and that's long-term disability insurance. Yeah, it's important to understand the difference between them. Life insurance steps in when you die.

Disability insurance steps in while you're alive, but can't work. So it replaces a large part of your income so the bills still get paid while you get back on your feet. Now, if your employer gives you free disability insurance, great. Take it. If it's discounted there at a better price, take it. But if not, Zander can help you find the right plan. Whether you're single or married, it's not optional. If you're going to be out of work for a while, then you need to make sure the money still showing up. And that's why Zander is our go-to. They make it super simple to get the right coverage at the best price, no pressure, no upselling. I've trusted Jeff Zander and Zander insurance for over 25 years, and so is my family. So don't wait. It's fast, it's easy, and it could make all the difference. Go to zander.com or call

800 356, 4282. Protect yourself, protect your income, protect your family. Funny, they pop that picture up there. That's a great picture. But it's one of the few times that someone's head glows more than mine. His hair just lit up under the lights. Mine usually shines like a bulb, you know. We have to put so much makeup on my head to keep it from just glistening, right? And his hair is like a dadgum halo, which would not be appropriate. Right, right, right. But it lights up, and he had us change the lighting because it was even worse than that. That's funny.

I like it. It's a good shot, though. Fun stuff. All right, for those of you looking at YouTube. Open phones at AAA 8255-225. Danielle's in New York City. Hi, Daniel. How are you?

Hey, good afternoon, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? Well, Dave, I'm calling you because I have a question, which is how do I bounce back financially and get myself ready for retirement? What are you bouncing back from? Well, I have been, I had an accident in 2007, which left me disabled.

I had to learn how to walk again. Wow. And so finally, I got to the place where I could do a place. part-time job because I needed the money that I was getting from Social Security disability and my pension was basically going towards my rent. But I started doing that and, you know, hurt myself a couple of times, wasn't able to really save up and then COVID came. I was able to get a full-time job, but it was a temp job.

So, of course, that wasn't really enough still to, you know, save anything. But now... Are you single, Daniel? Yes, I am. Okay. And you're 57. And how are you doing with a disability now? Are you working full-time or how are you doing?

Praise God, I am working full-time. In fact, I just recently was hired permanently. Good. What do you make? My salary is $50,600. Okay. And you live in the city and New York City on $50,000? Yeah.

I didn't know you could sneeze for 50 grand in downtown New York. Wow. Okay. And you've got pension coming in in addition to that. Are you still getting the Social Security? Unfortunately, no. No, they stop my social security. No longer qualified for it.

And they stop my pension. Yeah. And in fact, that's part of the debt that I owe because according to Social Security disability, I owe them $52,000, not to mention $17,000 to IRS, $8,000. I had credit cards, but I owe $8,000 on that. And how much is your rent now? Well, right now I'm living with a friend of mine. So I'm paying $375 a month, but I am trying to get my own plate.

because, you know, I love my friend and I want to keep her as a friend, but I need my own place. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you do. Okay. All right. And so you've got a total of how much debt? A total of $87,000.

Okay. And a bunch of that is IRS and repayment to Social Security for the time that you were working and should not have received disability according to them, right? Exactly. Okay. All right. Have you fought any of that yet? I talk to Social Security.

They're saying that I can possibly have a forgiveness. Yeah. Okay. So I think we need to get someone in your corner that's used to fighting that battle because those battles are lengthy, but they're doable. And they don't come around telling you what all your rights are and what you can pull off there. there's some things you can do there. And it might even affect the IRS bill if you refiled an appeal and refiled an amended return on your tax bill.

So what I'm going to do, because this is a complicated situation, I'm going to put you with one of our Ramsey coaches, and I'm going to pay for it. It's not going to cost you anything, and they're going to come in and look at your situation and go at some of these people. And see if we can get this $87,000 down to half of that or something by just working the system. And then we can work through the rest of it and get it paid off and then start building, building up some kind of a nest egg because you've got to start working towards a nest egg. And, you know, it's all about cost of living versus what you've got coming in and finding those differences and being able to push that through. So you've had a hard road, kiddo. You need somebody to love you well and walk beside you, and we're just those kind of folk.

So you hang on. I'll have the Christian pick up and we'll get you with one of our coaches as a gift from us. And I think they can help you. I really do. It's what they do every day. They help people negotiate all kinds of debts. But when you're dealing with the IRS and Social Security, it's a different spirit over that stuff. So, yeah, different world.

Tell me about the Social Security repayment, Dave. I've never heard that before. Well, if you continue, if you're working and you're receiving full payout on SSI, which is Social Security for disability. So she was declared permanently and totally disabled by the government. Based on that, they're paying her probably $3,000,000, $4,000 a month, give or take, okay? Might be more and might be less, but somewhere right in there. And it's not unusual.

Based on the fact that she's permanently disabled and she qualifies to receive Social Security support instead of or is different than the retirement you get through Social Security. But then when she went back to work, she kind of says, double-dipped. Says, I'm really not permanently disabled anymore. I've gotten past that. I've worked my way through that with therapy or whatever. I'm able to work again, but kept getting the checks. Okay.

And so that's not okay. Right. You can't keep getting a check for being permanently disabled when you're no longer permanently disabled. And you've proven that by working. If you had a private disability company that you had a disability policy at your work, and they were paying you, and then you went back to work. They would have private investigators following you around with cameras so that they could not have to pay you the disability anymore.

Do you know if you have to pay tax on SSI benefits? You do not. So if you're getting $4,000. And that's where some of that taxes came from. So if we can reduce what's owed back to them, then that might reduce that IRS tax bill. Probably. I'm guessing.

I'm fishing around in the dark there, but I think that's what I'm hearing. But I can also imagine if you are permanently disabled and we know psychologically, spiritually, emotionally that going to rehab, doing the hard work and getting back out there, right? And you don't know if it's going to work. It's good for everybody. That's right. Good for everybody. But if you're getting a check for $4,000 a month, $48 a year after taxes, right?

That means you've got to be making. You've got to go find a job that pays pretty dang well to even get to come off even. Yep. Yep. That's tough, that's a tough order. Yep. Right? Yep.

Our human nature is going to say, why swim upstream? Yeah, because you want to be well. That's why. I mean, it has to be that way. But if she's making 50 grand, then she took a net loss in her house after taxes. Yep. Living in New York City. She did.

And I think she said they stopped her pension, too. Yeah. Early, with release on it based on disability. So, like, we had a guy here years ago that was making over 400 and something thousand, one of our top guys, got MS, and went home out. He was gone. He later passed away from it at our early age. But went out on disability, and the disability people were paying him.

The policy we have here maxes at 300K, or used to. I don't know what maxes at today. And so he's getting 300K. Man, they were fought on him everywhere. I bet so. Trying to figure out if he was doing anything. If he lifted a shovel, if he, got paid for doing anything.

They were going to disallow that claim. So, you know, we were coaching him, whatever you do, no matter how good you're feeling, don't work. Yeah. Because they're going to, they're going to, they're going to capture you doing anything. Yeah. So, and because they get defrauded. No, I get it. It's just one of those things that just, there's not a lot of winners there, right?

Because I know they get defrauded and they want to protect their money. And then they're upside down on. They swing the pendulum so far that you just have to be paranoid about how you live. Or you got to be somebody like, you know, Danielle, who says, I'm going to take the net financial loss because I'm worth some different kind of life. Yep. And I'm going to have to work extra hard because it's going to cost me money to go get well. Well, I just feel better about my life when it's me. That's right.

Not some check coming in. Good for you, Daniel. This is the Ramsey show. If you've got collectors breathing down your neck and you're drowning in credit card debt, you don't need another. debt relief company trying to sell you sunshine and unicorns. You need real help. And Guardian Litigation Group is the real deal. They're not a call center. They're actual attorneys. That means when a creditor tries to sue you, they can step into the courtroom and fight back. Now listen, debt settlement isn't pretty. It's not a magic wand. And I'd prefer you get out of debt the old-fashioned way.

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Savings vary and may be taxable. Please review our website terms for more information. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality. Ph.D. in counseling is my co-host today. Open phones at AAA 8255-225. Hampshire is on the line. Garrett's calling. Hi, Garrett. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve, sir. How can we help? I've racked up about $156,000 in business debt, and I've kind of been contemplating bankruptcy, and I didn't know if maybe you thought I should

or maybe had other advice or options. Wow. I'm sorry. It's scary, isn't it? Yeah. Are you married? No. Okay. How old are you? 25. Okay. And what do you owe the business debt on? What kind of debt is this? Credit cards or vendors? So about 30,500 is vendors. $55,000 is, I was dumb and took out a merchandise.

cash advance. And then I owe my parents like $65,000. Okay. And then another vendor, $7250. 7,250. Yes, sir. Okay. All right.

And what kind of business is this or was it? I sell cabinets and countertops. Okay. All right. And so a merchant advance on what? Yes, so my, like, future revenue, basically I gave them my bank statements, and then they said, we'll give you this much. And it was like a daily payment.

And last year in 2024, I had a very slow time, and it pretty much just took me for everything I had. Yeah, that one got you. It was a payday lender of your world. Yeah. The interest rate's also ridiculous, correct? Yes. Okay. And so what method, do they have access to your current checking account?

Is that how they clean you out over so often? They were. I've since put, like, stop payments on them, and I'm actually, I was working with, like, or am technically still working with a consolidation agency. but that cost is like $1,200 a week, which I can kind of do, but it's hard to manage that. And every time I miss a payment, they're threatening to cancel the program, and it's nonrefundable. And it's still another $28,000 I have to pay into it before they'll negotiate with them. Yeah, I think you stopped that immediately too.

You jumped from the frying pan into the fire, didn't you? Yeah. Yeah. I panicked, and I did all that before I'd kind of talk to anyone about it. Now, pretty much my whole family knows, and I've been a little more open lately, so I've been getting some more advice. Yeah. Okay, so if you didn't have this mess, did you do all this because you weren't making money?

No, I was doing pretty well, and then I took a pretty sizable loss on a job, and I also got a little full of myself after like a really good four months stretch and I fell behind on my bookkeeping which looking back that was kind of the debt that was like my detriment to it all you did a really good job in two sentences describing what happened because that's exactly what happened

I can smell it you're you're really on top of that that's very well done you weren't doing your books one job you got out too far over your skis on and they set you up for a fall and you were feeling invincible. Those three things together put you here. I believe you. That's well done.

Congratulations. Most people aren't that self-aware when they're in this much pain. Well done. Proud of you. We work with entrepreneurs and have for years. I've been bankrupt when I was your age, so I know exactly how it feels to be where you are. So the way we fix this is we take the things that are working

and we apply them in a forced rank order of implementation. importance. Bankruptcy is not going to solve it because you can't bankrupt mom and dad. You can legally, but you're not going to. You're going to pay them. So half of this almost is one thing, and it's them. Okay? Yes. So the rest of it is 90,000 bucks worth of stuff. How quick can we make that? Now, let's pretend that you were just operating properly. You weren't out over your skis. You weren't taking jobs that could take you down. You weren't feeling of your feeling, and you you weren't borrowing any money. What can you make in this business? What kind of profit in a year can you make if you just started fresh? Um, so last year I did about $400,000 of, uh, revenue. Right.

And I have a, my margins are right around, uh, 31%. Okay. So you can make a hundred, you can make a hundred grand a year and you have a 90,000 dollar problem. Yes. Because mom and dad, mom and dad aren't pressuring you. No, but, okay. You want to pay them, but, but, they can be at the end of the list and that's okay yes okay so um now here's a here's an idea nice as well what vendors do you have to pay to keep supplies coming to keep the business open what dollar amount does that represent much the 37,000 not entirely yeah I didn't think so Half of that. $1.17.

Yeah. About 20. Gotcha. Okay. So you need to get on the phone with them first, and we need to get on a program with them where we're going to clear them first, and in return, they're going to keep sending you supplies COD. Yeah, I have been paying them. It was a larger amount.

No, listen, I'm giving you a program. I'm not asking for the story now. I'm telling you what to do. Okay. Okay. Okay. Get on the phone with them and set up a program to pay $37,500 plus your new material needs going forward out of your 100. It's the first thing you do.

The merchant people tell them they're not getting paid, maybe ever, but they're certainly not getting paid right now. You're going to sit on the sidelines and we're going to settle up later. If you want to sue me, sue me. But I don't have any money. And if you sue me, I'm going to file bankruptcy and you're going to get nothing. So you need to just sit over there until I can get this thing cleaned up. and then I'm going to come pay you off. Okay?

You have a conversation with them, but you give them no more money and no more access to your business. You go make 100 a year, 120 a year. You clean up your vendors first, and then you keep the cash flow running. You keep your books up to date. And then you save up $30,000,

and you call the merchant people that you owe 55 to and you settle with them for pennies on the dollar. Then you go pay mom and dad the next year. Right. you're out of debt. I just got you out of debt in three years. Sounds good to me. It's doable. What I just described is very doable. I've done it a thousand times.

Now, the trick is you've got to believe it, and you've got to be tough enough to run off these people that have been scaring the crap out of you. They've been running your life emotionally. They live in your head rent-free. Can you tell I've been there? Yes, yes, for sure. It's no fun. And you feel like, you know, they're saying you're not a good guy, and you're a good guy. made a mistake. You're not an evil person. You didn't set up a business to go screw somebody.

Right. You're just a young guy that made some mistakes, and now you've got to go clean up your mistakes. You can file bankruptcy if you want, dude, but you're still going to have to pay your parents, and you did all of it over 90 grand that I just settled for somewhere around 50. And you shouldn't file bankruptcy when you have the ability to make $120 a year, not morally, but, I mean, mechanically,

and file bankruptcy when you've got the ability to make $120 a year and $50,000 cleans up your mess. Because you're going to pay the $37,000 worth of vendors because you've got to keep them in your life. The other people, you're going to settle for 50 cents on the dollar, and then you're going to call mom and dad and pay them as quick as you can. And never borrow money again from anyone, not even your parents. Have you learned your lesson?

Yes. Yeah. You can do this, Garrett. you can really do this. I promise you can. Isn't that cool? Yeah, it's the master class on when we get scared, man, we go to fight or flight, we stop thinking. And sometimes it just takes someone to sit down and say, hey, here's a plan. Here's the forest, here's the trees. Yeah, yeah. Don't burn everything down.

I'm lost in the woods. We don't have to burn the forest. Yeah, that's exactly right. He's got to cut that two trees over there and then we can get out. But you've got to keep walking. Yeah, just keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. And the good news about this guy is he's really smart because he quickly self-analyzed, very unusual. Very unusual. This is The Ramsey Show.

Hey, y'all, you know I'm all about keeping your budget and check, especially during the holidays. And that's why I always start my grocery shopping during the holidays at Aldi. From fresh produce to holiday favorites and charcutory boards for parties, Aldi has it all. And at prices that will help your family save big, up to $4,000 a year for a family of four. So do what I do for my family. Shop at Aldi first to save on groceries without sacrificing quality or holiday joy. Find a store near you at Aldi.us. That's a L-D-I-U-S. Savings based on regional analysis of Aldi versus Select Competitors.

Prices may vary by location, product availability, and the market. Thank you for joining us, America. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling author, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, where you can hear all about boundaries and relationships. and mental health issues. Like you never have any other way, I can tell you that. It's a blast, and you learn a lot, and I do. I love listening to it. And people are just plain entertaining.

I can tell you that. So check him out. It's all on the Remsey Networks, anywhere great podcasts are heard, and certainly on the YouTube show as well. So anywhere you are. By the way, if you're listening to this show, we thank you for that, and we can use your help. if you would subscribe or follow or whatever it is on your type of podcast or YouTube, that would help us immensely.

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Thank you very much. We appreciate you. It's really important because we don't have a stadium named after us like somebody or somebody like that, right? Excuse me, I got an allergy. But all right. Steve's in Salt Lake City. Hey, Steve, what's up?

Hey, guys. I've got a short-term question and a longer-term question for you guys. The short time is starting taking a family vacation. So I'm a single income owner of our family. We have seven kids. My wife homeschools our kids at home. We've not taken a vacation in probably eight or nine years. And recently we just got done doing a big home renovation,

spent about $50,000 out of pocket, you know, cash flowing that. And the last little probably $15,000 or so we had to take out of our six months, six months fund to finish the project. because, of course, it always ends up going more expensive than you thought. So my question is, and first of all, we have a kid about to go off to college in about four months or whatever it's going to be, and we want to take that vacation before he is obviously gone. I've only saved up about $1,500 for a vacation over the past few months or so. Obviously, that's not going to get it done to take a family of nine on a vacation.

we probably need $6,000 or so for that vacation. My question is, do we pause on rebuilding that six-month fund back up to about $60,000 and put it for the vacation or get that full six months back in the fund and then focus on a vacation? Man, that's so dangerous. That makes sense. I mean, you completely rationalized spending all of your vacation money, and some of your emergency fund on the renovation. And so you chose not to go on vacation when you did that.

Yeah. So you traded. Because you had the money to go on vacation. You just didn't do the renovation. But you chose the renovation instead of the vacation. Yeah, basically we bought a house that did not have a built-out basement, and we had half of a house, basically. So that's when you chose.

When you bought the wrong house, that's when you chose to not go on vacation. Okay. Because you chose to do an innovation because you chose But say these are all choices It's not like somehow that somebody stole something from you And you put the money on one thing And now you don't have it to do the other thing That's how it works, right?

Yep And having nine kids and no emergency fund or a limited emergency fund Dude, you're asking for trouble That's so scary I'm scared for you I don't care it doesn't matter to me you're the one with the nine kids. I don't have to feed them.

You do, but I'm scared for you. Okay. And I want you to get to do the things you want to do. I'd love for you to go do that. You can do whatever you want to do. Y'all are adults. You can make these choices. You've been making choices.

But I want you to realize that when you're making choosing one thing with money, you're choosing not to do several other things. Sure. Okay. And so you're choosing, but if you choose to go on vacation and have a limited emergency fund, not if the emergency occurs, when it occurs, because it's going to occur. We have nine opportunities for an emergency here at all times. True.

And so when it occurs, then you've chosen to leave your family vulnerable, and the trade was for a vacation. That scares me. So you guys do what you want to do, but I think I'm going on a $1,500 vacation. Yeah, and I think I, man, Dave, I'm totally with you. and working with parents who were dropping their kids off of college, there's always this illusion that we've got to get this last thing in. We've got to do this thing.

It's not over. No, it's not over, number one, but often that last thing, we don't really care about the kids. We need to do it for us. It's almost like this guilt-induced. This is it. We've got to do a thing, and everybody's got to come do this thing. But we've never had a vacation in how many years?

Right. In 17 or 18 years. And we chose to do a renovation. Or buy a house that required a renovation used up all our money. did. That's right. So the vacation obviously was not as important. Wasn't a priority. That's right. And now it's this end. And now there's this sense of, oh, we're about to lose them. He's going to go away. It's the last spring break. We've got to do this thing. And so I would invite the kids into a room and say we have this much money. Let's get as creative as

possible. We're going to make our own snacks. We're going to go to a K-OA. We're going to have a blast. But this is the money we got. And I promise if you do it right, the kids will have a great time. Now, whether you go and feel guilty because it's not in Cabo or something, that's on you, but you chose to spend that cobblown money on, on a renovation or on a house. But bring the kids along, man, and let's try to get as creative as possible and let them be a part of the planning and so we can come up with. Yeah. You seem distressed.

Just to just, well, I just, I, I, I want him to be able to do this. Yeah. But I can't as an adult say it's a good idea. I guess there's, I kind of, I kind of, I kind of get. it. But the other thing, I think that you're pointing out something that's very right, because we had some of the best vacations with our kids that we ever had while they're in college. Yeah. It's not over. As a matter of fact, on the front of a cruise ship one night, at happy hour before dinner, they decided as adults to start telling us all the stuff they had done as teenagers

that we didn't know. I would have paid money to be there for that. And I left that room feeling like a total failure as a parent because I have been deceived by these three brats repeatedly throughout their teenage years and I had no idea. I thought I was so on top of it and I completely had no idea what these skunks had been into. Well, here's what's going to be fun. At the Ramsey Cruise, we're going to do it again. I'm going to get Rachel and Daniel and there's things that have happened in the last decade

that you probably don't know about. Oh, I don't even want. La la la la la la la. We're going to go through them all again, man. So, yeah, it was a great cruise other than that particular evening. But yeah, it was, but they were adults, Daniel. I think maybe Denise was out of college and Denise and, well, no, I know. I guess Denise and Rachel were both married, come to think of it.

Here's what you did. And we've all heard the statistic about. We do stuff together with them as adults that's better than it would have been when they were 13. I can tell you that. Well, and that's the thing. There's a statistic going around that you get 19 years with your kids. You get 18 with them at home in the rest of their life, all added together as one year. And I think that we just go.

Yeah. Unless you're a twerp as a parent. It's one of those cultural. They're just gone. And I think, nope, if you're intentional, you build relationships and you're somebody that they want to be around. Yeah. It's kind of like what stage of children did you like the best?

Yeah. All of them. They're all different. And I don't want to do any of them again. But I liked all of them. That little boy who just reached out to. Oh, he's great. He's great.

As long as I can hand him back. That's what grandparents are called. Yeah. I don't have to do the potty training. I can just do the hugs, okay? So that's great. That's the way it's supposed to be. So, you know, if I don't know how great grandkids are going to be,

I'd have been nicer to their parents. But, you know, that's a different thing. But I'm loving this stage. Right. I'm loving the other stage. And I've loved every stage. I don't, yeah, it's, so embrace the toddlerhood, embrace the teenage years, embrace them leaving for college.

But every expense is a choice at the end of the day. Yeah. And you're choosing, the thing you've got to remember is called opportunity cost in the finance world. you lose the opportunity to do B when you do A. When you do B, you lose the opportunity to do A. It'll only do one thing. It won't do both. This is the Ramsey Show.

The holidays can come with a lot of pressure to spend. Family, friends, secret Santa at the office, all the things. But y'all, this season should be about peace, not payments. That's a big reason why I love Fairwin's Credit Union. They share the Ramsey values of helping you reach your money goals without debt. And with the Fair Win Smart bundle, Ramsey fans get a no-feet checking account, a high-yield savings to grow your emergency fund, and the exclusive Ramsey Be Weird debit card. It says debt is normal, be weird right there on the front. So every time you use it, it's a reminder that you're doing your money differently.

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Kim is in South Dakota. Hi, Kim. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, so we lived debt-free, had purchased to use cars. We followed your program since we had our daughter 20-something years ago and have lived that way. into a little snaggle when we were part of a natural disaster. And we had purchased homeowners insurance with State Farm and had a really high deductible because our opinion was we had enough money saved that if something happened, we would pay for ourselves and not pay a huge premium. So that's how we lived our lives.

We don't have a go of vacations. We have one child who was in college and we were paying for that with cash. She's pre-med, so she has to go to school for that. And so that's kind of how we lived our lives until the whole. the storm came. But the storm made our house unlivable, and so we had to go into a hotel for two and a half years. And the insurance company did not pay us like they said they would. And so we ran up thousands and thousands of credit card dollars in debt to pay for food, housing, all of that stuff. And unfortunately, we tried to resolve this with them and couldn't. So we have an attorney

who's filing suit against them to try to get our money back. But in the meantime, We're trying to dog paddle our way out of this. And at the same exact time, our child had to have open heart surgery. We had to take her to California to Stanford. And we spend a lot of time, which I have no control over these bills, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. So I never know how to budget because I've got hotel bills unexpected when they say you have to come to Mayo and you have to pay for those things.

You have to pay for food when you're Mayo, gas. And so it's very difficult to budget. So I just wanted to know if there's something I'm missing, because sometimes you're too close to it to see it. What's the best way to manage this? Because I don't feel like I have control like we used to have. And I just wanted some ideas. Okay.

So for 20 years, you were completely debt-free, and you didn't have any money? Well, we did have money, but we used a lot of that to do repair at front. We became the Bank of State Farm. Yeah, I know, but how much, how much money did you have? We had, I'm going to say, saved up and not used for college cash on him because we just bought this house probably about $100,000 that we had saved up. And so why did it take two and a half years, and why were you not buying your own food while working? Well, we couldn't pay.

In the hotel, you can buy food, but you can't cook if there's no. Well, I mean, if it's going to take two and a half years ago, why didn't you go rent something? We tried. There wasn't anything available that met the physical needs that we had. We had moved our neighbor into our home who was 90 years old, actually 95 for end-of-life care, and we couldn't have stairs, and there were just requirements that we had that they could not meet. So we ended up in a hotel, and you had to pay for laundry.

You had to pay for meals every time today. I mean, State Farm screwed you, but so did those. decisions. Yeah. I mean, you quadrupled or five extra cost, and it doesn't take two and a half years to rebuild a house. Oh, it's not even done now. I mean, why?

Like, okay, so. I built an entire house in 11 months. Why can you not build a house? I've got family members that just lost their house in Texas. And last night was their first night back. But it was, it's been, what, four months, five months? Like, yeah, two and a half years. Tell me about that.

Like, it seems like they could have knocked the whole house down. One, it was a natural disaster. So there were lots of building going on, projects going on. So there weren't a lot of contractors available. It was also during the time where you had high gas prices and stuff. And contractors didn't want to come out to look at the house. It wasn't something that they wanted to do because there was so much work. There was a lot of contributing factors.

Also, the fact that State Farm was not approving things. you kept having to wait. They would make us do another estimate and another estimate. All right. So, but you stayed in the ditch rather than making a decision to do something completely different for two and a half years. So that's what puts you here. My goodness. And now the health, your daughter that's studying to be a doctor has had open heart surgery?

Correct. So she's not studying to be a doctor right now. She's recovering, right? No, there's schools letting her stay in school, and she's trying to do stuff, you know, online and submit things sometimes late. Did she have health insurance? She has our health insurance, my husband's health insurance. And does it not cover the surgeries and the other stuff? It covers surgeries, but it doesn't cover any of the other things associated with it, like hotel bills and gas and food when we go to Mayo, or when we had to go to Stanford.

We were in Stanford for seven months. Yeah. So what is your household income? 188. And you can't buy a hotel bill and go to Stanford if you make $188,000? Well, again, I mean, we did and, you know, put things on credit cards. Why? You make $188,000.

Because we had a mortgage payment and we had college tuition and we had other things that we were paying. I mean, it wasn't, and we were paying. you know, for the house while we were in the hotel. I mean, there was a lot of those, and I could sit here and go over a single bill, and you'd go, oh, that makes sense. But we're not extravagant. I mean, we're not give you an idea,

like we've canceled our trash or everything, gather up our own trash and take the dump ourselves. Yeah, but run sprinklers. Here's the thing. Yeah, we're not trying to pick those apart. I think if I back all the way out of this thing, I think the part, for every emotional health challenge,

there is this distance, from this scary, terrifying line called reality. And if you, on my show, I say this probably three times an episode, which is the life you had is over and you got a new one now. And what most people try to do is keep parts or the whole of their old life going while navigating this new reality. And so, for instance, you were in a position when you were debt free and had 100 grand in the bank and y'all made $200,000 a year to fully fund your kids college. That's a dream

you'll have. It's a priority for you. If you can't afford it, though, you can't afford it. And that's a hard conversation with your kid. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. And, you know, the third month, not the third year. Right. I sue State Farm and I move out of a hotel. The third month. And if I have to pay for nursing home for the 92-year-old neighbor, as just to make me feel good about that? I will or maybe not. Or go to my church and say, maybe I can't do this.

I thought I could help this guy. I can't help this guy anymore. I'm not in a position because only the strong can help the week. And right now our knees are broken and we can't do anything. And so, no, we can't pay for med school and no, I'm not living in a hotel. And no, I'm not putting out requirements for a 92-year-old neighbor that caused me to go completely broke and lose everything I owned because I stayed in hotel two and a half years longer than I should have. So I think you've got to start putting some limitations on some of these things that you keep declaring as absolutes in this conversation.

The absolute is we've got to have a place to live and we've got to keep our daughters healthy. And outside of that, I think everything's got to be back on the team. And $188,000 will do those things. Yeah. Without credit card debt and without parsing it out and parsing it out and parsing it out and parsing it out. Yeah. So, and, you know, just if it's any consolation to you at Allstate Farm has a horrible reputation on claims, you're not the end. only one. So soothe their butt. But I'm not going to wait around on them to fix my life either.

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But NetSuite's sweet success process gets you up and running fast. Go to netsuite.com slash Ramsey for a free product tour and to schedule time with a NetSuite rep. That's netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Dr. Sean Deloney, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at AAA 8255. 2-25. Larry Burkett used to be on the air a thousand years ago, did a Christian radio show. Money Matters, it was called, about what the Bible says about money. And he's one of the guys I learned

from. I certainly learned what the Bible says about money from Larry a lot. He passed away several years ago. We became friends for he passed away. But at first, I was just a fanboy. And he used to say, debt is never the problem financial problems are never the problem they're always the symptom so you need to keep that in mind because that's how we're going to view it personal finances 80% behavior it's 20% head knowledge so if you have a student loan debt that you've made no progress on for five years, the student loan debt is not the problem. The new triplets that just came were not here for the last five years. They're not the problem. The interest rate is not the issue. This is not an interest rate issue. This is a you problem. And John, when people get to the bottom of that,

that's the beautiful thing about the work you do in counseling with a PhD in counseling and the work that the reason you joining this team is a Ramsey personality is a perfect overlap to our approach to money because what I'm the interest rate is irrelevant because you haven't dealt with you that's the thing when you deal with you're you're not only going to get financial peace two words that don't go together like like airline service, but you're also going to get progress and wealth. Until you deal with you, you're not going to get any of that. Right.

And it's hard to sell somebody on that when they're so convinced from a TikTok ad or TikTok's, you know, swipe or whatever, where they got the information. And I think a lot of us sit in our house, man, and we just spin out with life's problems. I can't imagine having triplets just show up after having a couple of other kids. that whatever your problem happens to be. You lost your job, your marriage is falling apart, whatever it is. And it's so much easier. We have so much distraction in our world. We can just spin our wheels and jam that gas pedal into the bottom of the car thinking we're going real fast and we're going nowhere. We're just avoid. But money is such an interesting topic because it lets us,

it lures us to our own death because it makes us think we can fix it by, fixing the math. And the math is very seldom the problem. The math is the symptom. It's not the problem. The problem is our spending, our income, our lack of control, our lack of working together. Our choices. I'm going to keep these for five years. Our behaviors and our principles by which, but we somehow think we can unplug from all of this stuff that's called our life and set this money thing over here to the side and just fix it with just math. And the reason you can't is it doesn't unplug. It's sitting there right in the middle of your freaking life because your life is impacting it. It's impacting your life. You can't just set it over here in a test tube and go,

it's a math thing, six percent versus zero. It's not a math thing. And let's, I want to speak to the person who's listened to this or to the gazillions of people who are listening to this, who are five years from today away from triplets or a job loss or a mom calling and saying I have cancer or a husband saying

I haven't been faithful or whatever the thing is that choice starts now because five years ago if they had been hell bent on paying these things off life would still be chaotic but I want people to listen to that man's voice

it just sounds cooked right it's heartbreaking and it's great You can celebrate the chaos of three kids coming home or not be able to breathe because you can't, there's no room for three kids. I remember when our oldest daughter Denise had the third one, her husband Bill said, well, we just went from man on man to zone defense. My buddy said, man, it was all cool until we went from man to man to zone. They win. Taylor is in Indianapolis.

Hey, Taylor, what's up? How are we doing today? Thank you for taking my call. Sure, man. How can I help? Um, so I'm thinking about doing a job switch. Right now I drive a dump truck and I'm in the union and everything, but I'm looking to be a pilot. But I have 5,000 in debt and it's going to send me back another 85,000, but I plan on having the 5,000 that I have now and paying that off this season before I get laid off.

Yeah, you're asking me if you can go, if I think you should go $85,000 in debt to be a pilot, is that what you're asking? Yeah, if you think it's a smart job. No, it's not. Okay. Under no circumstances would I do that. Now, should you go become a pilot? Yeah, probably. How old are you?

I'm 30. Okay. Are you married? I am. Okay. I would talk to the Air National Guard and see if they have any programs for training pilots while you serve your country,

weekends, and two or three, sets of boot camp a year. That wouldn't put you away from your family necessarily, or not for long periods of time. And let's see if they'll pay for it. They have lots of wonderful programs. I know that. I also would start talking to the local airport about how I can get my hours there after

I get a, I would pay to get a certain number of hours and get my first set of are you licensed at all? No, right now I drive a dump truck. No, I know I heard that, but have you gotten any pilots' hours in at all? No. How do you know you want to do that? I worked at the airport about five years ago, and I wanted to do it about that time, sorry. But I never pulled the trigger, and I end up just going to get my CDLs,

and I've been at this for about five years now. Okay, all right. I'm with you on living your dream. I just don't want you to do it in such a way it becomes a nightmare. So let's figure out a way that we can walk into this a little at a time, you start getting your hours in while you keep driving truck. And because you're making some good money on the truck, but we're not,

we just don't be doing that 10 years from now. You want to be in the air, right? Yes. But I don't want, I don't want to try to do it as super high speed because I don't want you going $85,000 in debt because you might not make $65,000 a first year. It's very possible.

If you got your commercial hours in and you can actually fly a jet, and that may cost you more than $85,000 to get to that point where you can actually pick up a regional job, doing some of these puddle jumpers they don't pay anything man yeah entry level pilot pay sucks yeah i'm somewhat i heard it's about 55 000 a year but then yep i would be on with lift academy and say i get on with republic and they're paying $94 an hour starting off so i may be maybe maybe but hey you're you're about to walk into the trap brother where you borrow a bunch of money and you've done some napkin envelope on the top carrier

paying a top dollar and you've made that math work. Yeah. And there's a lot of maybes and maybe not some probably and probably not in between you and that dollar amount, man. So you're trying to jump from the dock into the boat and the boat's not close enough to the dock. That's what I'm saying. So I want you to pull the boat closer to the dock.

And how's that sound? It sounds like going over there starting to get some of your hours, paying for your first level of licenses, maybe get a weekend job as an instructor once you got enough hours under your belt and they'll pay you to put more hours down and you can start to build your hours up because the biggest cost is not the actual certifications it's the hours to get ready and then if you want to take because if when you take a job at 55 or 60 versus what you're doing now union to dump truck you're taking a pay cut to move into this dream initially and I don't care if you found one off at 94 that's not that's not that's not an industry the industry is 55 or 60

right now for entry and I want you to go do that because because you can make your way up to two or 300,000 or $300,000 someday. But please don't go $85,000 in debt and rush this. Do it a little bit at a time and or talk to the Air National Guard. Let's see if you can figure out how we get some hours working for your country, and they'll pay for the whole stinking thing, possibly. I don't know. Let's see what they got out there.

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is brought to you by Y Refi. We trust Y Refi because they help people who have defaulted private student loans and they help them refinance with a low fixed interest rate that you can't get anywhere else. One guy didn't name Chris did it. He had a student loan. He cut his payment by 40% with Y-R-R-R-R-F-I-R-F-C-com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y.com Might not be in all states. All right. Today's question comes from Jenna and Minnesota. Jenna writes, should I help my boyfriend pay off student loan debt? No. I guess we can just end it there, but I'll keep going. I know what you're going to say, so let me explain. Still know. We both went to college for mechanical engineering. My parents covered my tuition,

but my boyfriend has over $125,000 in college loans. We both work good jobs and bring home a combined income of $200,000, but his loan payments are killing him. He didn't want to burden me with them, and he wants to put our life on hold, marriage, house, and children until they're paid off. He has about $15K in savings, and so this is going to be a long process.

I have $80,000 in savings and roughly $300,000 in stocks that my grandpa set up for me when I was a kid. Should I help pay off my boyfriend's loans by adding an amount to his payment every month, pay them outright, or do you think I shouldn't help him at all? Should you cave to his blackmail? That's exactly.

I was going to say he is, this is a, it's a red herring. It's a proxy. It's a ploy. Yes. So listen, kiddo, we tell folks when they get married, everything becomes shared. So you will have $125,000 student loan when you're married because your husband does. He will have $300,000 in stocks that his wife's grandfather left her. he will have $80,000 in savings that his wife had before they got married.

And so when you get home from the honeymoon, pay off the student loan. But this is bull crap. It's bull crap. On a stick. So frustrating. Yeah. Tell boy child time to get, you know, part of the problem is we're all playing house over here. So he's got no incentive to get married other than blackmail you into it.

So now if you want to have a healthy relationship, You all get married yesterday since you're playing house anyway. We have a combined income. You don't have a combined income. You're not married. That's bull crap. You're shacking up. And we would not have a show if people like you didn't withdraw $125,000 from the money that their grandparents sent them to pay off a boyfriend's loans and then y'all break up.

Oh, yeah. That's like standard. We wouldn't have this show if that didn't happen all the time. And I know you can say, no, not us, not us. No, he would never do that. Yes, y'all. that won't marry me would never do that. You know how you sound?

So seriously, no. Don't. Please don't. Please don't. Please don't. Time to get married, boys and girls. Look, I think this is a, I think it's a good, I think it's a good, like an altar call right here. It's come to Jesus. Are we, are we going to do this or not? Yeah. Because if you're going to get married, y'all get, y'all come home from the honeymoon. We would tell you to take the $380,000 that you have an assets and pay off the

$125,000 debt that he has. And then we take off with our life with our fabulous combined income and zero debt and whatever's left of that money which would still be 200,000 bucks. So yeah. And by the way, when you get married, what you're agreeing to do is to help carry burdens together. For richer, for poorer. And so if he already says, well, I've got this thing going on, so I'm going to hide it from you. I don't want to be with you. I don't want to be apart from you. This will be the rest of your life. This will happen with kids. This will happen with tuition. This will happen with which church to go to. This will happen again and again and again. And this is the big glaring neon sign.

He has to put our wife our life on hold. He doesn't want to burden me with them. To put our life on who. Then he's not ready to marry you then. Oh, brother. We're not going to work together. Work together. Work together.

I'm going to give this guy about 20 minutes. Get me to the church on time, baby. I'm serious. I'm done with this guy. This is bothering me. There's something about this that's running all over me. And I'm usually a little bit. I'm pretty mean, but I'm usually a little bit more gentle than this.

Yeah. But this is, there's something wrong, Jenna. Here's what I, here's what is getting under my skin. Oh, I know what it is. You have worded all of this. It's all the damn gum language. That's what's killing me. You have worded all this because you have bought this freaking sales line.

That's it. That's the thing. That's what's bothering me. She thinks she is the problem here. This guy has complete, he's a, I'm afraid he's a con artist. He's a leech. Yeah. So either way, if you're, listen, you either need.

to leave or you need to get married. Please don't pay off his loans. And don't pay off his loans unless you get married. And if you get married, then it's our loans and our money and we'll do that. But you got about 20 minutes, buddy. About 20 minutes. Stop the sales job. Don't like con artists who are sleeping with the person they're coning.

It's a problem. Dadgum salesman. Sorry. I think I've had too much coffee, John. Merry Christmas. Oh, ho, ho. Oh, my gosh. I need to calm down.

But yeah, I just, I think about my girls and they did not thank God. You know, thank God that we taught them how to pick and they picked studs. So I've got two sons and all. They're absolutely incredible men. Yeah, I've got a young daughter and you would kill him. But here's what, here's why. I saw you just got it. I know, I do.

Here's why. This young woman, Jenna, is, is astounding. Yeah, she's a dead come. She's a mechanical engineer. She makes a hundred grand. She's got half a million. million dollars already put together because her grandpa hooked her up. And she's got this guy that she loves and the guy is making her the reason. And so she's asking herself every day, what am I

doing wrong? Oh, I have another way I can save this thing. I want to help. I know what you're going to say, but I'm different. No, you're not. Jenna, it's not you. It's him. It's him. You're worth more than this. That's what I'll say. You're more valuable. Is the dad of a daughter? We're angry for you, Yeah. So brought to you by Y Refi and Preparation H. Because I got hemorrhoids now. God, it makes me so mad when guys are idiots. Patrick's in Orlando. Hey, Patrick, what's up? Hey, guys. So the situation is my wife and I are 67, and we've got 2.8 million in four different mutual funds. Way to go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We're debt-free, and we got an offer we couldn't refuse on our business. We closed December 11th. We get 575 cash, and we hold a note for five years for 300. So that brings me to the question, because I've got a daughter that lives in Austin, Texas, and she and her husband have been married for 20 years, and we have a beautiful grandchild, and they're saving for a house. They're also debt-free. They're doing everything right.

They're both teachers, and they want to get a house. And they're saving like crazy. Two rounds of IVF to get Julia here pretty much wiped out their savings. And they're trying to come back for that. And I'm thinking, you know, December 11th, I collect 575. I could probably, you know, give them the money for a pretty nice house in Austin with that 5.5. 75 and so that's one option do it do it I like it really strong just do it yeah I like it I like it can I can I add one thing to it yeah okay I do want this to be a gift and I'll teach you a technical

thing you need to do but aside from that I do want it to be a gift without strings sort of right but I would sit down in person with them you and your wife go to dinner and make this a big deal. This is not just a drive-by breakfast one morning coffee. Okay. We're going to a nice restaurant. We're going to make a production out of this and say, this has nothing to do with the grandkid, although you sit at six times that it does, but it doesn't. Okay. It shouldn't. It shouldn't. Because you shouldn't give it to them because the grandkid, you should give it to them because they have been responsible and you're not bringing harm to them and you're not enabling bad behavior. instead you're accentuating and lifting the positive thing that they have been doing with their life

and it's going to it's going to change your family tree the rest of the way so yes you should do it and i would say i'm going to give this to you with no strings attached i will tell you i have a favor to ask that you promised to never borrow money again love it and i wouldn't i wouldn't make it's not a contract but i would just say i'm doing this to change my family tree but if you go screw that up by borrowing money, it's going to break my heart. And I would do it. Yeah. Now, oh, Unified Estate Tax Credit. Talk to your tax guy. You need to use up some of your estate tax exemption so you don't have gift tax. Don't do this without tax advice. Go get some tax advice. Please. This is the Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Rachel Cruz. The holidays are here, which means family time

and giving back and remembering what the season is all about. And let's be real. It also means shopping. Y'all, if you're anything like me, December gets really busy and really expensive. It's harder to stay intentional with your spending, and that's why I love shopping on Amazon, especially this time of year. Named the lowest-priced U.S. online retailer for nine years running by Profitero, a third-party analytics and research firm, Amazon's prices are up to 14% lower across top categories, and beat competitors by up to 5% in key gift categories. Between amazing deals, stress-free shopping, and fast shipping, Amazon makes gift-giving simpler, the holiday season a little brighter, and helps me keep my budget in check. That allows me to

get back to enjoying the season. What more could a busy mom ask for? So for more information about Amazon's low prices and easy affordable holiday shopping, head to Amazon today. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. Open phones at AAA 825-5-2-2-25. Matt is in Seattle. Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Well, thank you.

Thanks for having me. I got a question for you. So I currently have three jobs and spend more than 12 hours a day working. And I save and invest about half my income. So I'm saving about $100,000 a year. So financially we're sound, but it comes at a cost. So I'm not spending enough time with my children, and my health is deteriorating. Well, I'm not dying, but it's impacting negative.

How much do you have in savings in your investments? Yeah, so I, so with, I've been doing this, I've been having three jobs for about five years now, or going into six years. So you put a half million dollars away? Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, exactly. So with that money, I've bought four homes, one primary residence and three single-family homes, and I'm renting it all out right now. Okay, and what are the three single-family homes worth? Roughly on average, about 600K.

Each? And I bought it for about, yeah, correct. Okay, so the three rental properties are worth $1.8 million, and they're paid for? No, no, no, no. I have about 40% equity on his child. Oh, so you still have debt on them. Okay. Correct.

Okay. So, wait a half a minute. Okay. So when it comes to equity, I have about 1.3 in all those four houses. Gotcha. And I have about 350,000 in savings. So what's your question? And I already combined.

Yeah, so I just turned 40. And I've been happy so far, but like I just have 40 this year. And since then, I've been thinking about a lot of stuff. Like, is this, am I doing a good thing? And initially I thought, um, uh, I'm being the right thing for the family, but I'm starting to think about myself to, I think I'm just kind of going through the midlife crisis, but also, so when I think about quitting those two jobs, the thought of living paycheck to paycheck terrified terrified terrified.

It terrifies me. Honey, you're not living paycheck to paycheck. You're putting $100,000 away. Quitting two jobs is not going to make you paycheck to paycheck. You're so exaggerating that. Well, if I, after I put all the next out on 401K and IRA, I'm not going to be saving any money at all on a monthly basis. So back off of your invent.

You only got $2 million. You're not living paycheck to paycheck. That's a bogus emotional response. Why are you afraid to just sit at home with your family, dude? Yeah. Why? Why? Well, initially, I was part of like fire movement, but I'm thinking a lot of a lot of things can happen in the future.

Yeah, fire movement burned down. Did you notice? It burned to the ground. It burned around people's ears because they were. trying to do something that wasn't sustainable. What you're doing is not sustainable. What you're doing is not sustainable. You didn't build a life.

You built a financial portfolio. And now your brain is waking up and saying, go build a life. And we're saying, yes, go build a life. Here's what I promise you do. I agree with your brain. When you're 50, you can hand the kids a key to a rental house.

I promise you they would have exchanged it for time with their dad. And by the way, that's a false. economy because you work hard. You're still going to be able to offer your kids a pretty extraordinary life financially and you get to spend time with your kids. I think you're scared to go home and be with your family. Am I wrong? Well, are you afraid to admit that the fire thing you bought into sucked? And also I think it has to do with my ego. Like I just feel like I'm successful and superior. And you have four houses worth $1.3 million. Your net worth is $2 million in your 40 years old. ding ding you got the bell you what you're on the bell you're done you're done if you don't do

anything else you're going to be worth 20 million dollars at 65 if you just let the investments that you have grow that's all there's no need to panic here and by the way people working and enjoying their work and going to work and having meaning as long as they're able is not bad I intend to be on this microphone until I don't make sense. Now, I don't want to be one of those guys that doesn't make sense. We've seen those and they're dangerous. But yeah, so anyway, yeah, we need to get off at that point. But no, dude, yeah, your brain is telling you what to do. You already know what to do. All I'm telling you is your emotions are exaggerating that you're like going to be starving to death and are something in living paycheck to paycheck, not even close. How much of, a,

Oh, here's an idea. Quit. And if a year from now, you think you're going to be homeless or something, go back to work. Three different jobs. You can get those jobs right back. Those kinds of jobs are always waiting. How much of this stress, Dave, because I've never lived this life, you keep telling yourself with your neocortex, your thinking part of your brain, I'm worth $1.3 million. But your amygdala, the threat detection part of your brain says, you still owe no.

$900,000 on these four houses. You still owe money. You still owe money. And every month, no matter what your net worth is or how much money you have coming in, your brain knows you're still on the hook for all these properties. That's got to weigh you down, doesn't it? That's probably part of it. But I think he's been running at breakneck speed. He didn't even notice that part.

That's my opinion, just talking to me. He's just exhausted. I think he's just, no, he was trying to run. He thought there was an end game. Tell me about fire. Fire is. The retire young? They retire at 40.

Okay. Not have to work again. Yeah. And the numbers don't work. Gotcha. It does, you people. And because the problem with money, like when you view money that way is money's a bully in the school yard.

As soon as you say, hit me in the nose, you step back. If you cross this line, I'm going to hit you. You step across the line, he steps back and draws another line. Says, if you cross this line, then I'm going to hit you. And that's what money does. It keeps, because there's always another one. There's always a bigger thing. There's always a different thing.

there's always a reason there's always inflation there's always a better car there's always a mama mama wanted a house in the mountains up there's always there's always there's always doesn't matter where you get to there's always another one and a bigger one and a shinier one and a different so you just can't get away from it once you get on that treadmill you can't check you can't catch that carrot it's impossible to catch and so uh if you could maintain godliness with contentment and say okay i'm going to live a lifestyle of $50,000 a year income, then you can build a big enough nest egg to quit. But you can, you're something about our psychology won't let us do it.

We start out with that and that's the math. But then by the time we get used to living on a $150,000 lifestyle, then I got to go back to a $50,000 lifestyle to quit, which is exactly what he's saying. He's saying, I'm going to be paycheck to be. He's not even close to paycheck to paycheck, but he's going to have to cut his lifestyle. he's going to have to drop his investing from $100,000 a year contribution. Now, that was in addition to maxing out everything else. Yeah, yeah.

So he can still max out everything. And you can't do $100,000 extra. Extra. Yeah. And that's paycheck to paycheck. That's not paycheck to paycheck to paycheck. There's also this, you get to be 40 and you got $2 million, and you thought it was going to feel a different way.

That's true. You thought it was going to be a billion. You thought you were going to do nothing, and doing nothing will kill you. It's one of the things I had to outline with all these, little communists that are coming out of college have to explain to them that a billionaire is not the same thing as a millionaire. A millionaire, a billion is a thousand million. Billionaires have four houses, a jet, and seven cars. Millionaires have two used Camrys and one house, and it's paid for, and they have $800,000 in their 401k.

that's a millionaire. But a billionaire is a thousand million. And people emotionally have these two things confused. They think of some rap artist or whatever in a private jet, which they don't even know. It's chartered. But I mean, they think it's, oh, that's how, you don't live like that with a $3 million net worth.

You know, stupid jet would be more than that, much less, you know, the whole, I mean, it's just like, so that's the, not how it works. It's the emotions of when I get to be a millionaire, I'm going to be a billionaire. No, you're not. You're going to be a millionaire. Two use cameras. And that's still a good thing. Two use cams and 800,000 in your 401k and a paid four, five hundred thousand dollar house. And a lot of laughter in your home. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You're done. This is the Ramsey Show. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studios. Dr. John Deloney, number one bestselling author, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, massive hit on Ramsey Network.

co-host today. Open phones at AAA 825-5-2-2-25. Lynn is in New York. Hi, Lynn. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I wanted to see if I should take out a $10,000 loan to help my mom fix her kitchen. There's some emotional reasons why I would and why I wouldn't. And ultimately, I'm trying to see if the financials make sense to help me make the decision. So you don't have $10,000 to give your mom? I don't, no. And your mom's broke? Yeah, she has a pension.

She has Social Security. She's retired. So she's on a fixed income. How old is your mom? She's almost 80. And how's her health? She's actually quite spry for her age. Good.

Okay. And what's wrong with her kitchen? She tends to hire, do a lot of DIY and like hire handymen who aren't quite handy. And so over the last few years to renovate the home in general. Oh, I should. Okay. Yeah. And so, you know, she's half-funded projects over the years and it's left the kitchen, you know, with only a subfloor, no cabinets, no countertop.

it's just kind of in a state of disrepair. And she is older, even though her health is pretty great, I worry about, you know, her age and food safety, physical safety in that space. Wow. Really bad decisions. Yeah. Man, I just appreciate how much you love your mom. That's sweet of you. And that you want to take care of her and you don't want to live in a house that probably wouldn't pass codes right now.

now. So that's nice of you. You do know you called the show where we'd never tell anybody to borrow money, right? You know you called that show. I did, and I'm, you know, I'm trying to, the other part is, you know, I've worked really hard over the last few years. To get out of debt. And I'm not going to tell you to spend $10,000 on an 80-year-old's kitchen. The math doesn't work. I mean, if you had a million dollars laying in your account and you want to spend $10,000, I'm not. an 80-year-old's kitchen, that's fine, but I wouldn't do that. Okay. And I certainly wouldn't borrow the money to do it under any circumstances. But I do applaud your heart.

Now, let's try to fix the problem, though. Okay. A different way. So is your mom in a good church? I would say she does go to a church. Good. But the church is the place where she has been recommended these people who have, like, fixed her home.

Good. That's even better. That's even better. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to take some pictures of the mess that is her kitchen. And I want you to go have a lunch meeting with her pastor. And say some of the jacklegs that go to your church have done this. And so I'm going to ask, since we have an elderly widow over here,

that you organize a work group of some young man who actually know how to swing a hammer and come over and put her some cabinets in and put a floor down. I want you to take care of an elderly widow because she's an elderly widow and she's a member of your church. And I really want you to do it because some of the jacklegs that go to your church are the ones that cause the problem in the first place. And I got a feeling you can shame this pastor

into getting some work done. Okay. Nothing feels better than shame in a pastor. I'm messing with you. I'm being harsh. But you see what I'm saying. But can I tell you, this is some of the best advice I've heard you give, Dave?

I love this idea because you know why it is, it's the bluff call. Are y'all going to be who you're supposed to be? You're going to take care of widows and orphans. Here you go. You got quiet on us, Lynn. Why don't you like that plan? I mean, the handbook says that's real religion.

Widows and orphans. Yeah. That's what the handbook says. My mom, she doesn't like accepting help. She's not always the most. But she was going to take a $10,000 loan from you to do a kitchen. That's called help. She didn't ask me necessarily for the loan to wrap me.

I know. But you had a plan where she was going to do that. So let's have a plan where her church supports her because her church is jacklegs. Are the ones that messed this up. And by the way, this is going to be good practice because over the next 10 years, she's going to need more and more support and care from you and others. And others. And you're going to have to get out of the habit of debt fixes anything.

Because it makes it worse. Because I don't want to give you a negative scenario, but I really don't want you paying a loan off after your mom passes away and you're paying payments on a kitchen that she no longer uses. that would be really, really negative. Can you imagine writing that check every month? Yeah, and it wouldn't be an investment in that sense that I would get back. No, no, it's not.

Yeah. No, it's not. It's just consumption. And it's just your sweetheart wanting to help your sweet mom. And I think both of you are sweet ladies, and I don't want her to get messed over anymore. And I don't want you to mess yourself over trying to be sweet. And so let's not do this. Let's not step up in this trap.

I'm real serious. If it was you, if I was you, I'd go have a, and I've got the money to write the check, but in this case, I think this church has an opportunity to serve. And that's the other side of it is they have an opportunity to live out a mission with the congregants of that place. This is one of those rare win, win, win, win, wins where everybody wins. And an widow gets, an elderly widow gets in her kitchen put back together. and the church gets an opportunity to go help somebody out.

That's awesome. And I don't know how we got here, but seriously, if a recommendation came from inside of her congregation and they left an elderly widow in this situation, the pastor really has an opportunity to work with that person on their character. Right.

Absolutely. Because you just don't want to be on this list. You don't want to be on the list of people messing with kids, widows, and orphans. There's several things in the scriptures that are really, you don't want to be on that list. you want to be on the list of the people that help those people. That's the list you want to be.

It's the naughty list and the good list. I mean, this is it. Not Santa Claus, but it's got. And so, you know, it's, ooh, whoo, serious stuff. You know what? That's a great idea. I hope that happens more and more. Well, you have so many opportunities to do things that way.

And honestly, I work with so many churches. I mean, we worked with, had 50,000 churches have taught. 10 million financial peace congregants over the last 25 years. And I know a bazillion churches that have the funds and have the systems to take care of the single mom, the widow, the orphan, and they don't always know a way to connect to one. And so just giving them the opportunity, letting them, hey, here's one. And they go, thank you. And they're ready to go do it.

It's pretty incredible that they're just standing there ready to go. They're willing, ready, and able. They just don't have the connection. Because no one wants to raise their hand and say, help me. And I know a number of young men who are asking, hey, there's no places to serve. Like, I can go to a local soup kitchen or something, but I've got to get in line. And there's other. Man, if you could go to church.

There's a 25-year-old Bible study group of men at that church. Show up on a weekend. And this was their weekend project. They could put that whole kitchen back together. It'd be amazing. Yeah. And then they'd all walk a little bit taller too. Everybody wins, boys and girls.

This is how this works. I like it. Listen up, guys, because I've got a big question for you. Where will you be with your money at the end of 2026? Will you be better off? Worse? Or exactly the same? Believe it or not, you get to choose.

Look, I know there's a lot going on that can make you feel powerless over your money, but I want you to hear me. You're more in control than you think. You can turn your finances around. So let me help you out. Start your year off with me and Dave Ramsey at our free every dollar live stream event. on January 8th. We're cutting through all the lies and all the chaos out there that's keeping you

stuck. So you have the clarity you need to finally get ahead. And you could even win $2,000 just for signing up. Listen, another year is going to pass anyway. So decide that this is the year you're going to take back control of your life and your money. Go sign up for the free live stream at every dollar.com slash live stream. Okay, if you're going to win with money, you have to tell it what to do instead of wondering where it went. If you don't know where all your money went in 2025, that's normal, but normal sucks. We don't want to be normal.

Next year can be different. Get a head start by downloading every dollar. The app, every dollar, helps you build a personalized plan so you can work the Ramsey principles, coaches you to find extra money and put it all to work to beat debt and become wealthy. Answer a few questions.

Many people find thousands of dollars on average in just the first 15 minutes. Every dollar still has the same great budgeting feature, but it's also going to help you work the Ramsey plan now, new and improved. Don't go into the year feeling broken stress. Start every dollar for free in the app store or Google Play right now. James is in Rhode Island. Hi, James.

How are you? Good, Dave. How are you guys doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? All right. So I'm a 40-year-old guy. I got a fiance and a baby who turned two in July.

And my fiance and I, we have three Airbnbs that are doing really well. four years into it. Last year, we grossed about 102,000. This year, we're forecasting to do about 127,000 gross on the three Airbnbs, with a 62% profit margin. Day job is hospitality sales. I make about 100,000, 120,000 a year. She is a psychologist.

She makes about 110. So our issue is there are these micro-loss, And another one is available, but it's in a super historic old building. And I'm thinking about getting a fourth Airbnb. But the banks are telling me that I got to put 40% down. They're going for about two and a quarter. So I want to hear your take if I should get another profitable Airbnb and have it under the same roof as all my other ones.

Or is that considered maybe too high risk? Okay. Well, I'm not sure you called the right show. I'm not sure you know what we do. But the, so I own several hundred million dollars in real estate. Okay. I love real estate as an investment. I went broke in the real estate business in my 20s, if you haven't heard the story. And the way I did that was I borrowed too much money. and the banks called our notes because we were in a high-risk scenario. The Airbnb business is basically the hotel business. It's a very high labor-intense, you know, a lot of hassle. So the money that you're earning on those Airbnb's, you're working your heinie off to get that money. And you're probably working some other people's heinous.

off because it's a lot of hassle. I'm the maintenance man. I'm the housekeeper. I'm the guy checking him in. And you have a two-year-old. Yeah. Why don't you pick up golf too? Oh, my God.

You know, I mean, you ain't got time to do nothing. So I don't know that you have the bandwidth to add another one on your personal, number one. Number two, the risk with Airbnb's is, as you probably know, and I don't know where It stands in Providence in Rhode Island, but many HOA's, many neighborhoods, many entire municipalities are passing zoning to stop it because they're disruptive to the neighborhood. And so I know a lot of people that have lost the ability to run an Airbnb on a property they bought for an Airbnb. And in a historic setting, that's very possible. Right.

It's in a unique building. It's the oldest mall in America where there is retail on the first floor, and the second and third floor was repurposed to Airbnb. So it is in a commercial zone. Okay. So that means the risk of them rezoning it and keeping you from doing it is less? To my understanding, yes. Or it's going to take one new tenant downstairs that's a big tenant that says,

I don't want people living upstairs. Well, we're all on the board. No, they're already got residential in there. It's just a matter where. that's nightly rental residential because it's a hotel in a sense. So I don't know, you're doing some things I don't want to do and I don't recommend people do things I don't want to do. So number one thing you're doing is you're buying property with someone you're not married to.

Very dangerous. Number two, you're going in debt to do it. Very dangerous. Number three, you have a high risk business model that's dependent upon someone else called Airbnb. B and B. Very dangerous. Number four, you have to do all the freaking work and you're getting ready to add 25% of the workload going from three to four. And you have a two-year-old. Very dangerous. So that's what I meant by. I don't know if you've been around as much. I'm not trying to be mean to you. I just think that all you have seen in this is the upside. You've not considered any of the

downsides. And that's the way I was in my 20s. And it's what caused me to go broke. And so now I'm always looking, I'm not negative thinker. I buy, I mean, like I said, I own hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate. I love real estate, but I have low hassle real estate. I don't have, I don't own a single Airbnb. And we've got enough residential. I easily could do that. But we don't want to screw with it. It's just too dead gum much work for the money, too much drama for the money. And so we'd rather make the money, you know, a little slower and with a lot less hassle factor. and we don't borrow money. 100% of our real estate is paid for.

I don't borrow money to buy real estate. So I'm a fan of the category of real estate, but after that, I've kind of given you some things to think about. So until you've thought through all of those things and make sure that you've decided how you're going to own, what ownership vehicle you're going to own this in with someone that you're not married to, oh, real dangerous.

You know, that, that, you get yourself in all kinds of, of messes here. And I think that's what the bank is smelling, and that's why they're wanting a huge downstroke. But, you know, a good way to look at any business opportunity, too, James, is to scale it in your mind. And if it doesn't scale, then don't grow it. Meaning, if it works for 40 Airbnbs, we might do four. If it works for four, but not five or not 10, then maybe we shouldn't do Why is that? Well, because it's going to, the, the idea is not scalable to where you get out of being the maintenance man. You just have to keep absorbing more work and more work and more work.

And pretty soon you're going to go, I want to quit my job and be Mr. Airbnb. Right. And that's not scalable. Then your one Airbnb app change or one Airbnb municipality change or your one. Yeah. Apple decides they're not going to support. the app anymore. That's right. With 13 point whatever.

Oh my crap. You know, I mean, all kinds of people. I mean, that called that little move right there cost us about $20 million two years ago. So, you know, just because Apple decided to cough. And so, you know, all that stuff. So these are things you can anticipate and you leave yourself vulnerable to it when you're just living right on the wire, when you're right on the edge. And then you just keep adding to it. Keep adding to the plate until the food falls. You know, and that's what I heard here is a really super busy guy.

Ambitious guy. You said this, and man, this has become increasingly, I felt it heavier and heavier. I have a very real lived experience being in the workforce during 2008, 2009, and there seems to be a lot of folks who have entered into 2010 to 2025, and it's been seemingly mostly upside. It's just been win after win after win after win. Plus or minus COVID. Yeah, plus or minus COVID.

And there's the assumption that's just going to keep going that way. And there's no, I mean, it's tough to tell somebody, hey, you have to be prepared for when this thing goes south a little bit or when the roller coaster takes a, you know, goes down. And man, people don't have the psychology for it right now. Yeah. I mean, if you've got your thing based on the Airbnb income before and suddenly they don't rent for four months, you're in bankruptcy. Whereas if you own them all in cash, you're annoyed. Exactly. Or you put renters in.

Yeah. And you get it out of the Airbnb business and you move on, you know. And that's not a big deal. Right. You know, but yeah, this is a problem. Yeah. So, no, I like James because he's ambitious and he's going after it. He's going for it.

I want to support that. But I believe in being a nightmare killer, not a dream killer. Do you want to keep more money in your pocket and not Uncle Sam's? Then listen up. There are tax deductions and credits you could maximize before the end of the year by connecting with an experienced tax professional like a Ramsey trusted tax pro. They know the tax code inside and out so you don't have to, and they can help you file when tax season rolls around.

Get a trusted tax pro by going to ramsysolutions.com slash tax pro. Ramsey Solutions.com slash tax pro. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, bestselling author. and, of course, host of the Dr. John Deloney show, which you need to tune in and check out on the Ramsey Networks. Zachary is with us. He's in St. Louis. Hi, Zachary.

How are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How are you guys doing? Better than we deserve, sir. What's up? Well, I had a question for you. I'm actually a pastor over here at a small town church,

and I just want to say I very much appreciate all that you do. Thank you. But one question that's come up for me is, I often hear you use the phrase, the borrower is slave to the lender. And I definitely agree with that principle in many ways. But then on the other end, I notice that when it comes to a mortgage, you are okay borrowing in that instance, which seems almost to betray that principle a little bit. And I guess I was just curious on your reasoning as to why you think it's okay to borrow

in that instance. But then when it comes to something like a car, especially. for someone like me. I live a little bit in the country where I'm at. So it's a little bit more difficult. A car is almost a requirement. Pastor, that is a wonderful question. Yeah. It's a really good question. Of course, you're quoting the scriptures, Proverbs 22, 7, the rituals over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender. And this is a biblical principle that we're violating when we say it's okay to take out a mortgage. And that's your point. And you're correct completely on that or we tell people it's okay to do that. So are you 26? I'm actually like 31.

31. I'd think about that for a second. Okay. That's okay. Yeah, you lose count around 30. It happens. So yeah, I'm on the 34th anniversary of my 30th birthday. But the, all right, the, so the answer to your question is it is the only hypocritical advice we give on this show. it's the only thing that was hypocritical we give on this show. It's the only thing we tell people it's okay to do that I never do. I went broke in my 20s as I was a baby Christian. I had just met God and I discovered in that process a guy teaching what the Bible said about money named Larry Burkett

and I said, I'm going to follow what the Bible says. I'm never borrowing money again and I've never borrowed money again. I don't borrow money for anything ever for any reason under any circumstances. everything else I tell people on the show to do, I do exactly what I say to do. Allowing people to take out a mortgage without me yelling at them, it's the only time that my advice is inconsistent with my life. Does that make sense? Right. And it's completely fair for you to call me out on it.

And then I'll answer your question. But I wanted to caveat that and say, I don't borrow money for anything. And sometimes when I get a question where it's kind of borderline, whether they have to borrow or not, tell them that story. I say, hey, I don't borrow for anything, and I recommend that. That is the best way. If you follow biblical principles, in your marriage, your marriage is going to prosper. If you follow biblical principles raising your kids, your kids are going to be amazing. If you follow biblical principles in your mental health and your emotional state, you're going to prosper. And the same is true in your money and in your leadership if you're running a church, running a business. Same thing's true.

So I evangelical, man. I believe if the Bible says it and you do it, it's a good thing, right? So I'm with you on that. Now, the reason that I lighten up when someone calls in on that is two things. One is I can pretty much talk you out of or call you stupid taking out a car loan. Because cars go down in value, the interest rate is higher, and there's no correlation between buying cars with payments and becoming wealthy. very few millionaires will tell you that oh the best thing i ever did was agree to borrow on a car because i needed a car because i was out in the country and i was driving a long way and i needed a car no millionaires told us that when we studied 10,000 of them so the fruit is not there i'm a fruit inspector okay the second thing is millioners do tell us that they borrowed to buy a house many times and when they got it paid off they never borrowed money again after that their debt

averse, but not completely mortgage averse. So the data is in that millionaires do do that, even though I would tell you the best way to do it is save up and pay cash for it. It's hard to get people to save up for 10 years to buy a house. I can get them to save up three years to buy a car or to 18 months to buy a car. But I've had trouble doing that. So I make that violation. But I also often tell people all the time when I say that, you know, no more than a 15 year mortgage, no more than a payment of a fourth of your take-home pay. You probably heard me say that, Zachary. And then get the stupid house paid off as fast as you can

because the shortest distance between where you are and wealth is debt freedom. And that's consistent across the thing. But you're exactly right. But cars are completely different thing. A car is the largest thing we buy that goes the wrong direction. It goes down in value. And when you finance a car, you're just begging to be middle-class the rest of your life. Financially, mathematically.

Well, and most people are stupid enough to, like, take a car note on, like, a $30,000 car when they have no money either. Exactly. Yeah, like everybody listening right now, just about. Right, right. You're right. I did have one other thing, and by the way, I want to say I support everything you're doing wholeheartedly, including, like, I've been using myself many of these steps. Being a small town pastor, you don't get paid a ton of money, and you have kids. And so I've actually had to use these things for myself.

So again, I want to say thank you. Good. The one other thing I noticed, though, was as someone who was new to the Dave Ramsey program in many ways and was new to those steps, is that I didn't hear a lot of talk about creating a buffer. So as someone who was new, I didn't have any money in my checking account, right? Because I was using credit cards and then I was paying off those credit cards with the money in my account. So I never really had money in my account. and I was in this endless cycle, obviously, like a lot of people were. So one thing that I thought just to consider is that in those baby steps,

I almost thought there should be another baby step about creating a buffer because people need two, they don't just need a $1,000 emergency fund. I thought that was the buffer whenever I was new to the Dave Ramsey program and the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps. But there's also this idea of making sure you have a buffer because you're going to have auto payments on preschool, and mortgages and all types of stuff. Well, that should be part of your budgeting, Zachary.

You should plan your, you should, budgeting is cash flow planning. And so you're planning to not take more money out of your checking account than you have in it. That's your buffer. And you can put $100 buffer in there if you want, but that's fine. You don't need any more than that. There's nothing wrong with that.

But you don't need a $2,000 buffer because you're incompetent at budgeting. You need to have the budget dialed in. We're paying the auto payment comes out here. This other payment comes out here. The paycheck planning aspect, it's called. And if you use the every dollar app, shows you how to do that. And so you need to plan out every situation there. But, hey, we're honored to have you as a new listener.

That is something that, man, that rings home to me because here's what I fell in the trap of doing. My wife and I would make a budget. And then we would check our checking account to see where we were. we shouldn't do that because then I would make it I'd be like oh I can get a little more groceries and then that yeah because the checking account is not an indicator if you're on your budget that's exactly right and so then that buffer he's talking about then all of a sudden the school would pull their tuition on the fourth instead of the fifth and because I was not following the budget map we'd laid out but I was checking the checking account part you would never a budget map is a plan and you would never plan

to spend money that you don't have in your account right yes so don't plan to spend money you don't have in your account and your need for a buffer goes away other than a common sense of 50 or 100 bucks or something for slippage you're little you know something being off 20 cents or something you don't want to do that we don't want to tooth up anything but but this concept of slosh right because that covers my lack of detail and sticking to the detail that that's not you don't need slosh that's right that's not good but yeah and and a lot of people do that so the trick is the thing that happens is your brain, and you and I've been talking about this in a bunch of other areas, too, your brain rewerecticity, your brain rewires itself when you start making every single

dollar come out when it's supposed to, give every dollar of your income a name before the month begins, you and your spouse spit shake and pinky swear that we're sticking to this contract that we just wrote down. Something happens and changes from that chaotic wild man that you were before. And it takes about 90 days for that rewiring to completely occur. And that neuroplasticity, it changes your behavior. It's behavior transformation. And so the detail matters in that situation because you're forcing your brain to work really hard. Yeah, that's what you want. This is the Ramsey show. Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here. Winning at money is 80% behavior and 20% head knowledge. What to do isn't the problem. Doing it is. In her brand new book, What No One Tells You About Money,

Jade Warshaw dives deep into the reasons you've been stuck. This book exposes the real emotional fight with money and shows you how to win that battle. Pre-order now for 2499, and you'll get over $100 of free bonus items. Get your copy today at ramsysolutions.com slash store. Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 1921, many plans are in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand. Henry Ford said, thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. What were you thinking? I wasn't. That's good. I like it. Hey, selling or buying a house in this crazy real estate market right now is a wild thing to do.

You need a pro in your corner if you're going to buy or sell right now. Somebody who has actually done it before a lot. It is a high-octane, high-protein, high-performance real estate agent. If you want one of those, we have vetted thousands of agents around America. They are endorsed local providers, we call them, Ramsey trusted real estate agents. If you want to find out who we recommend and who we vet and who we coach and who follows the stuff we talk about and is really getting a lot of work done, they're not a beginner. Go to ramsysolutions.com slash agent and you can find a Ramsey trusted real estate agent for free. Drew is with us in Seattle. Hi, Drew. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hey, good afternoon, Dave. Dr. Deloni. Thanks for taking the call. Sure. What's up? Hey, quick question. Well, first off, the Bible verses you guys just spoke. That was really speaking, I think, my call. But I just had a question for you, is it possible to be a successful businessman, but to also be a successful family man? And I can kind of refine that a little bit more and give you kind of my background of where I'm coming from. What would make you think that is not possible? Well, right now I'm working. I'm working with my wife to try to come to a middle ground on our side business. And obviously, so I heard the last caller, one of the guys was a pilot. I too, my pilot. I work for the major airline.

My wife is also a pilot. But a few years ago, we started this side business that's been doing really well. And there's a lot of potential in it. and and and but my we're coming to disagreements on if we should really be doing the side business it's a it's a seasonal agricultural business and for the about two months that we that we operate we're we're bringing in about 75,000 um on average and so but there's there's a lot of potential for it but but my wife's argument because I want to give her side of the story too is that she doesn't like that the time it takes away from the family. So we've got two kids. Two months a year? Well, yeah. And I what do you what do you

have to do on the other 10 months? Well, so there's there's a lot of planning and because we've so we've been in business for about four years. There's you know the growing stages. I mean it it probably consumes my mind a little bit more than I should which I've got I've gotten much better at not bringing it up at the dinner table because she's told me she's like okay I don't I want to hear about it you know and so and and I I kind of have this guilt. I'd say for about six months out of the year, you know, leading into the start of the season, you know, it's a little bit busier at home for me.

You know, I'm definitely balancing, you know, my time, you know, between family. And because I'm an airline pilot, you know, it takes me away from home, which, you know, I mean, that's already kind of, it's already kind of hard on the family. What do you make as a pilot? Well, right now, it's a pilot. Yeah, I make about 120,000. Next year, about 200,000, and then it just keeps going up. I just started at the major airline.

And so, and my wife, she brings in about 80. How are your children? We've got a 15-month-old, a 10-year-old, and then one on the way. And so my wife's argument is we don't need the business. And I agree with her. Like, it's not needed, but, you know, I listen to the Entree Leadership podcast a lot. I just, I have this desire, like I love flying. It's something I've done for a long time, but I get so much fulfillment and joy out of, you know, running a business and, you know, figuring out solutions and making things better.

And, you know, I just, I enjoy that. I have a lot of friends that do it. And it just, it intrigues me. And so what is the business? What are you, what are you growing? So what we do is we do bird abatement for agriculture solutions. So people who own vineyards and different types of farms. They'll hire us, they'll contract us out, and we show up, and we, it sounds kind of funny,

but we use model aircraft, and we kind of play cat and mouse with the birds all day. And so we have a team, generally about 15 people. And so, and we had an opportunity. We passed up a large, about a $900,000 contract in Arizona. You should have. And rightfully so. Yeah, you weren't, you weren't prepared to take it on. No.

All right. Let me tell you, let me tell you what I'm hearing. And let me talk back at you what you told me. You have a pregnant wife with a 15-month-old. Your house is insane. Right. It's busy. No, it's insane.

I mean, it's chaos. Yeah. There are very small humans taking up large amounts of calories from both of you. Yeah. And you're flying model airplanes at birds. right right and she's over not she's over it she's she's she's got her gutful man so it's not that a business man can't be a good family man it's that the timing of your side business given the stage of your family sucks right right you got a lot of crap at home if she was sitting with two

kids in elementary school and and they were somewhat able to dress themselves and go to the bathroom by themselves and stuff like that, then it's a whole different world. I mean, I got, I got grandbabies at this stage. When we keep them, it's a dadgum chore. Yeah. And I love them. I love them. But it's like work and stuff.

You know, I mean. Well, so the last two years, so because we, you know, we came over to compromise, and so we started hiring managers. And so last year we tried it out. It worked pretty well. And then this year, we pretty much had the managers. run the whole operation. And I mean, they did a much better job than I thought it was going to be. And so I mean, and the thing about being an airline pilot, it's like I do most of my

administrative work, my computer work like when I'm gone. That's, that's one nice thing. It's like I'm sitting at a hotel. It's like, I'm going to get this done. So when I'm, when I'm home, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to focus. That's not the point. It's not the point, Drew. It's not the point. Your wife is asking one question. Do you love me as much as a side hustle? And I'm going crazy right now and I need your help. Right. No, I do love my wife. I know you do, but she's asking you that. You're trying to show her how much you love her by creating a business and creating extra money and extra margin.

And she is saying, do you love me? Right. And Dave and I are both. I mean, you're not going to meet two guys who like working. I think both of us love work. But I hear Dave say, there's a season to this. It's the wintertime. And you're like, look at these cool shorts I just made.

And she's like, they're great. But it's freezing outside. Yeah, I got a 15-month-old. I got a baby on the way. By the way, all of this spells hormones. Did you know that? Yeah, we've been working through the... Yeah, hello. Quite a bit of postpartum. Yeah, I mean, that's normal. It's not bad. It's just life.

Yeah, she misses you, man. Yeah, you need to be there hugging babies, changing diapers, not flying birds. Yeah. Not right now. I mean, I want you to run your own business, Drew. but you ask us a question and the question is yes you can be a successful businessman and a family man but the spouse has to be able to carry whatever weight that you're not carrying and you're asking her to carry more than she's willing to carry right now and I don't think she's being unreasonable

little babies and a house full of kiddos is chaos on top of a 200,000 a year salary and she's flying and so in her 80 he was saying so about 300 grand they're going to be making next year. And the question that she's asking, the question of my wife asked, when is enough enough? Yeah. In other words, she's saying for $75,000 a year, I'd rather have your help. I'd rather have you, yes.

I'd rather have your help right now. Right now. And it might not, that might, I'm telling you, you might be three, four years, and you can either restart this or take back over some of the management. But you've got to offload all of it or most of it to be able to help manage your house right now. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. You're working two full-time jobs and you've got chaos at home. And your wife has a full-time job. Yeah. Oh, by the way. Yeah. Wow. Three full-time jobs. Right. So you're not a bad guy. You're just your timing sucks. Yes. And it's kind of a deceptive question. Yes, you can be a man. Yes, you can run a successful business and be a good family man. You can't do 50 things at once.

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.