The Ramsey Show - Patience Is the Key to Lasting Wealth

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

💵 Sign-up for EveryDollar today - The simplest way to budget for your life! Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "My car is being repossessed; what can I do?" "Should I sell my house or turn it into a rental property?" "I'm scared to death to not have a credit score," Vivek Ramaswamy on how monetary policy and the private sector can help transform the economy, "I feel stuck and unfulfilled in my current job," "I have $785K of debt, how do I get out of this?" Support Our Sponsors: Christian Healthcare Ministries Zander Insurance BetterHelp Next Steps 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET or click here! 🏦 Take Your 3-Minute Money Assessment - Get a personalized money plan! 🍎 Enter the Teacher Appreciation Giveaway 📈 For help with investing, get connected with a SmartVestor Pro.  🎟️ It's game on! Get your ticket for Total Money Makeover Weekend.  💼 Find The Work You're Wired To Do Listen to more from Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, best-selling author of the book Money's Not a Math Problem. She's my co-host today as we answer your questions at 888-825-5225. Liddell is with us in Memphis. Hi, Liddell. How are you? How are you doing today, Mr. Ramsey? Better than I deserve. How can we help, sir?

I just had a quick question. Recently just got my car repossessed. Yes, sir, and I'm trying to see what's my next course of action. I've been watching you guys for a while. I'm just trying to see my next course of action. How can I come back from that pretty much? Wow. So you just woke up and it was gone out of the driveway uh no sir i actually seen them when they actually pulled it okay all right that is a an emotional experience isn't it yes sir feels it feels like somebody's stealing something yes sir yes sir. Yes, sir.

Yeah. I think that's why these repo guys get so much crap off of the customers, because they're, like, slipping up in your driveway, taking your stuff out of your driveway. It's dangerous. It's, wow. I'm sorry, man. So how much was the car payment? The car payment was about $584.

How much did you owe on the car? It was about three, maybe three grand on it. I definitely went over maybe 100 days on it. $3,000 is all you owed? Yes, sir. Oh, wow. And what was the car worth? From what my documents I'm looking at, I believe it fit in the range of about $20,000 or something like that.

Oh, so you had bought this car, almost paid it off or put a bunch down. So what happened that you were not able to make the payment? Tell us what happened in your situation. Really just, you know, really negligence on me and just, and I lost my job in November, which was my main means of, really my, the main means of employment so that I could pay the bill. But I lost that job in November of 2023. And just from there, just covering my other stuff and you know and just really just neglecting the deal almost I would say. How long ago did this happen? They pulled it like a week or two ago. Okay have you talked to them about paying it off and

picking it up? Yes, I have. And they had told me that I would have to pay the full amount. The $3,000? The $3,000 plus, you know, what's the car owed on the car, which was I think the amount they told me was like $21,000 if I wanted to recover it. Oh, you're saying so. I see.

Oh, you didn't owe $3,000. You were behind $3,000. Yes, sir. I see. Oh, you didn't owe $3,000. You were behind $3,000. Yes, sir. I see. Okay. But you owe $21,000. And the car's worth $20,000. It was at like $18,000 before they added the fees.

Yeah, but you owe as much as it's worth. Yes, sir. Okay. Got it. Oh, man. Are you back to work? Are you doing anything? What are you driving in the last two weeks?

Nothing right now because I didn't have anything pretty much saved up for another means. Are you single? Yes, sir. Okay. All right. So you've been sitting at home for two weeks. How are you getting around? Well, I've really just been applying for jobs,

and if anything came up, I could, like Uber or something like that at the moment. What are you doing for work, and what are you earning currently? I was working at GameStop. That was like my last recent job, but I just recently wasn't even there anymore. I only was working for like two days a week you know something like this by choice or because they didn't have the hours uh just didn't have the hours I would say I just had came in on the job okay what about now now I'm not working at all listen if I'm you um you know I I do think that everybody kind of has an ideal work situation in

their mind of something that they're shooting for. And sometimes you can hold off thinking, I'm just going to hold off until I get the job that I want. But in your case, you can't afford, you literally can't afford to do that for many reasons, your self-confidence and, you know, you need cash. Like there's many reasons to take any job until you get the job. And one of those things is self-confidence. The more you sit at home, the more you're going to feel some type of way about yourself and what you're able to accomplish. But if you go out and get any job and take the first job, number one, it puts a little money back in your pocket, gives you a little boost of feeling good about yourself. Do you have a friend that works construction liddell um no sir not that i know i have a friend that worked like the railroad companies and stuff like

that maybe yeah call him and ask him if they'll put you on and he can give you a ride to work for two weeks till you can get a check and get you a thousand dollar car yes sir your car that got repoed we'll circle back to that is the least of your problems right now. I'm more worried about you eating and paying rent and keeping the lights on and getting your life back on track than having that stupid car. It's kind of good that that car is gone because it was a real hanging over your head problem. So I'll go ahead and give you the full answer on the car so you know what you're looking at but let's focus 99 of your efforts on finding a ride to work and getting some kind of work going 50 60 70 hours a week right now go crazy man and

make you some quick easy money somewhere uh just just working like a maniac and bum rides off of friends for two weeks and then go get you um or catch an uber whatever you got to do but but go you then go get you a thousand or fifteen hundred dollar car and pay cash for it okay is that a plan yes sir definitely a plan now the the other car we're just going to let them have it okay and then here's what's going to happen they're going to sell it on a repo lot. You owe 21 with all the fees. They're going to sell it for 12, 14,000. Okay? That's going to be six months from now, maybe.

And then they're going to come knocking on the door, not literally, but they're going to send you notes and start threatening you that you owe them the difference. It's called the deficit, 21 minus whatever they sell it for. Let's call it 14, so you owe them 7. Okay. When they do that, they will settle that for about 20 cents on the dollar, so you probably could settle that old bad debt, the deficit on the repo, for somewhere around 1,500500 when it comes due.

Okay. I'm not going to be far off. It might be $1,000. It might be $2,000. But it's somewhere in that range. You're not going to owe them $10,000. They're going to come at you for $7,000 to $10,000. But you can settle that for pennies on the dollar.

You understand what I'm saying? Yes, I understand. But in the meantime, obviously, and that's probably going to be a year before you hear from them on that okay so we're going to put that repo as nasty as it is in the back of your mind and try to get to work and get your current life straightened out as fast as you possibly can here i think that's what's going to matter is what jade said and because the way you feel about yourself and the sense of desperation, the knot in your stomach and knot in your throat, I've been there, man. It's no fun. It's terrorizing,

terrifying. And so, yeah, I want you to get some cash coming in that place, then go get you a little beat up car that's reliable and get your life started back, and then pile up some cash to get ready for when they come at you later on this. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, when you go against what society thinks is, quote, normal, like avoiding debt, for example, it might seem weird at first, and that is totally okay. We want you to be weird if that means doing things intentionally, including how you spend your health care dollars. And one way to be intentional is with Christian Health Care Ministries. CHM isn't health insurance. They're a health cost-sharing ministry

that's helped hundreds of thousands of families like yours take care of health care costs without sacrificing their freedom. Find out more and join at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you are here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jay is with us in New York City. Hi, Jay. How are you? Hi, Jay. I mean, hi, Dave.

Hi, Jade. How are you doing? Doing good. Good, man. Good to have you. How can we help? Well, so I'll just give you a little background story. I am like more than four years removed from college, graduated with an engineering degree,

working out here in New York as a GC. And, yeah, I moved out my parents' house, mainly because of taking your advice you know on a wanted to set out in the world and you know make sure you know I'm not freeloading all right so my question today is in doing that I don't know if I prematurely bought a property I ended up buying a one bedroom a few years after running my first place. And now I've been, you know, getting hit with increases on like maintenance and HOA payments and just been hit with an assessment. And so I'm just wondering how I can cash flow this assessment that's kind of been set before me a couple days ago. The amount's like $16,000. For what?

So I think in New York, we're doing a, most buildings do like a local law 11, like facade restoration for like older buildings. Because I bought a pre-war. And so that's kind of what they, we owe like the contractor, I think, or the building does like $600,000, and they're saying our maintenance payments aren't enough to compensate that. So before they hired the contractor, they did not get this approved by the HOA? Because, I mean, if you hire the contractor for money you don't have and you're running the HOA, then you've got to know that you're getting ready to slap the occupants with an assessment so you had no notice of this before now yeah so I mean when I bought

the place I you know I did my due diligence tried to ask about you know the finances of the building because it looked like this work was underway even when I bought it two years ago. And, you know, when I was in the process of doing that, I was notified that this was like a potential. And, you know, I raised the red flag. You know, I listened to your advice occasionally on like high HOAs, low HOAs, and I raised the red flag because it did seem pretty high. But, you know, kind of shopping around, it seemed.

Yeah, what do you make? A little lower than $98,000. Okay. What's the unit worth today? Based off, like, the last probably, like, $150,000. Okay. And what do you owe on it? I put, like, $25, 25 down i probably i owe like a hundred thousand okay so you you but you haven't had it uh you haven't actually looked at comparable sales

lately where'd you get the 150 um i assumed uh based off what the actual value was when I got it two years ago. Yeah, that ain't got anything to do with the value today. I mean, it could be worth $250, and you wouldn't know it based on that. No, I wouldn't know. Yeah, you need to do some research and find out what they actually could sell for today. Because it sounds like it might be a good idea to sell it, because everything you've described about this has not been fun yeah all i've heard every every mention of this was well i probably

bought something i shouldn't have bought well it's a problem well i thought there's a thing on the front end and a bunch of hoa fee increases and then they hit me with the assessment and every single time your voice is just talking about your voice just sounds whipped i mean you sound like god man i'm just this thing's awful it's it's it's consuming a lot of your calories isn't it it is i i've also like been renovating the place kind of getting it up to um 21st century um because you know i'm in uh i'm in the GC world, so I've been kind of using my resources there. How much does it take to finish it, to get it ready to put on the market and sell it?

Well, I want to renovate the kitchen next, so. No, I don't want you to renovate the kitchen next. Is it torn up right now? No. Okay, so you could put it on the market the market today yeah what's wrong with selling it i there's a stipulation here like when i sell it there's like um a flip tax they like to call it where i think a certain percentage of the sale goes back to the building. What percentage? I would say around like 40% is in my head right now.

Oh, bull crap. That's crazy. Yeah. That didn't happen. No, you're confused. Okay, you need to dig in and find out what's really going on here. You got all these demons running around your head, and none of them got a name. So you need to get some clarity on some of the information.

There's not a 40% kickback to the building when you sell a condo or a co-op in New York City. I mean, it's just not. Now, they're probably going to get the $16 16 K out of the closing from the assessment to be able to do the transfer, but you at least got rid of the problem then. So I think you need to do some investigation. Uh, it doesn't sound like you want to sell it. Cause when I brought it up, you're like, so I don't know. I can't tell with you, but, um, he also didn't say how much money he's put in so far.

Yeah. It doesn't matter to me. It sounds like there's nothing here. That's fine. It's a pre-war building it's all screwed up they're doing redoing the facade he's trying to redo the kitchen is redo redo redo redo redo and extra fees extra fees extra fees extra fees extra fees this thing sounds like a money pit so i mean you do what you want to do man but i gotta tell you an all real estate is not a good deal real estate as a category is a good idea but there's some serious dogs in the in the pound here and this one sounds like it could be could be on the list so it's either that or you start scratching together money pay the 16 and

then scratch together the money and do the kitchen but you don't do the kitchen do you take care of the 16 but after you do the kitchen in the 16 you're still going to face the 40% kickback if that's really there. I don't think it is. I think you're confused. And after you do that, then there's going to be something else. And it sounds like this HOA is poorly run. So expect other increases and other situations to come at you here. Because you bought into a mess, it sounds like.

So either live with the expectation that this is a constant flow of money um or get out do one of the two do one of the two but you can't live there and then act like you're surprised anymore there's nothing here that's surprising anymore the pattern is established absolutely i'd get out instantly and if he doesn't make any money off of it, then it's a lesson learned. Yep. Our question of the day comes from Caitlin in Arkansas. She says, I'm a divorced mom to two boys, and my ex doesn't provide any help financially. I work from home and earn about $40,000 a year and have the proceeds from the sale of our home and a HYSA from which I draw about $15,000 a year. My only debt is $16,000 on my car, and my payment is $260 a month.

I could earn more if I got a job outside of the home, but with child care for kids, it would end up being a wash. I have $50,000 in savings, and that earns me about $3,000 a year. The kids need clothes and shoes, and all their activities add up so quickly. I don't want them to not be able to pursue their interest between rent, a few streaming services, food, car payments, and insurance. I just can't make it all work without drawing regularly from the house money, which I need to keep for security and comfort. How do single parents budget? That's a good question.

Number one, single moms are superheroes and single dads are superheroes. I don't know how you guys do it. I'd be asking about child support, number one. Yeah. That's my first question. Why isn't this guy paying? He's got kids.

How does a judge help him with his attitude on that? And number two, look for something that you can do part-time from home while you're home with the kids. In addition to this. And kids' activities are not necessary for life, even if they think they are. So that's way down on the list. It's interesting you put those before your food, car payment, and so forth. I would pick up the every dollar budget and get started on a detailed type budget. And I think you're going to find some money. This is the Ramsey Show. These days, it's not if your identity gets stolen, it's when. And the only ID theft protection plan

I have ever recommended is from Zander Insurance. It helps real people with real-life situations. Like the call we got on the show recently where a woman's abusive ex opened a credit card in her name and racked up over $8,000 in debt. Then the bank sued her even though the charges weren't hers. What a mess. With Zander's help, she was able to get the entire nightmare cleared up and now her family is officially debt-free. Listen, Zander's identity theft protection is the best option out there. They have all the cyber tools and monitoring services you need. They cover all types of ID theft and they even include up to two million dollars in stolen funds protection. In the end though, you need an ally, someone on your side

to take over the work and fix the problem. That's what Zander is all about. Go to Zander.com to learn more. Call 800-356-4282. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Steven is with us in Dallas. Hi, Steven. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Sure.

What's up? So my wife and I are getting ready to kind of go through a life transition. My wife is a teacher, and she's wanting to stay home next year to be with our almost one-year-old. Yay. And so we're just, yeah, we're both really excited. We're just trying to figure out what we can do to kind of prepare ourselves for it. A little bit of background.

We took a little bit of, like, some financial course when we did marriage prep through our church, but it didn't really go in depth in finances. And so after that, I kind of took the reins of finances and we're new listeners. So after a couple episodes, I realized, oh, it shouldn't be me doing all of this. And then we talked about it. We both want to get on the same page with our finances and get out of debt and kind of get ready. So we're just trying to figure out what we can do. So do you have an every dollar budget? We do not. Okay, that's step one. And we'll make sure we get you hooked up with the information you need on that. But what I would start with is I'd open up my every dollar budget. And if I know it's going

to just be your income, I'm going to start doing the budget with just your income and see where you land. And that's going to give you a picture of what life is going to be like with one income. That's step one. Okay. And so what do you earn right now? Joint, we're at about $110. Myself, I'm at about $67.

Okay. What does she do? You said she's a teacher, didn't you? Yes, she's a teacher. Yeah, okay. Okay, so she's the other 57, basically. Yeah. Okay, and so then my next question is what baby step are you guys on?

So we just started looking at that, and we haven't started the baby step, so we're still in conversation about it. Okay. looking at that and we haven't started the baby steps so we're still in conversation about it okay um but we have um in debt right now we're about 31 000 in debt okay um we have about 41 000 in savings um so we're talking about um just using what we have in savings to wipe out our debt and it'll be debt free okay that's great i would go plan. I mean, that is our plan. So you guys need to talk about that and get on board with the same plan. But if you're asking for our advice, it is that. I'd say take that $41,000, clear out the debt that leaves you $10,000 left, and add whatever you need to that to call it six months of expenses. If you're going down to one

income, I would definitely, you know, we say save up three to six months. In your case, there's one income, you've got a new baby. I'm three to six months. In your case, there's one income. You've got a new baby. I'm saving up six months of expenses between now and when you're making this transition. And that would be my plan. And then, of course, you have to look and see, okay, what does this mean looking at the budget? What does this mean for us? Because life is going to change. You're living on half of what you were living on, which is a big deal.

Right. Are you homeowners? So we are, we're actually in the process of selling our house. When we found out we were pregnant, we kind of fell into the trap of, oh yeah, we need to go buy a house. And we definitely overbought. And so we got a good deal on a rental that we're, that we're really happy with. And we're wanting to kind of settle in here. And then once we get finances a little bit more situated and we're both on the same page, then we look at the housing market again.

What are you going to make on the sale? Anything? We're not sure yet. We're hoping to break even and just kind of clear the note. But we had a meeting with our realtor yesterday, and, yeah, that's kind of the best hope we have right now. Steven, you're making really good, big decisions to be able to hit the big goal of her being at home. So, you know, you're looking for more information.

You looked online. You talked to us. You're gathering up at you're considering talking about paying off the debt you're learning to work together you put the house in the market because we can't afford it on my salary and you'll be at home because this doesn't work the math doesn't work so you're you're doing all the right things you're making all the right moves there's a lot of wisdom in every move i see you making. So keep all of that up and we'll have Christian pick up. We'll get you signed up for the EveryDollar Premium. Folks, that's our world-class budgeting app. It helps you manage money the Ramsey way.

It's iOS, Android, online. SmartDollar is free if you want to start it out that way. And you can immediately see where you stand, get organized, personalize your budget, stop overspending, save more money. If you wanted to connect to your bank and drop your like your debit card stuff directly into your budget it's very smooth and very easy there's a small charge for that and and that's the every dollar premium process so if you're new we're going to give you a long-term financial roadmap in every dollar track your net worth track your debt free, track your debt-free date, track your retirement date, your baby step progress,

and we're going to proactively coach you through this. So it's an app on iOS, an app on Android, or desktop at EveryDollar.com. Go get it for free. We're going to give it to you, Stephen, and help you guys hit that goal of your wife being at home with the babies, which is where you're wanting to be, and we want to help get there if that's that's your goal that's what this does so what amounts to is this okay budget is a cuss word people use the budget like it's a cuss word like I don't want to be on a budget because budget as Rachel says budget people aren't fun

but budget is a punishment that's what I used to think but for an adult that puts what numbers they want to put on their budget the budget's not telling them what to do they're telling their budget what to do to accomplish goals that matter more than their short-term friday night feelings and so all a budget is is you're doing your money on purpose that's all it is and so john John Maxwell says a budget is people telling their money what to do instead of wondering where it went. That's all it is. And you know, you get to decide if you want your budget to be punishment, you can decide that if you want your budget to have a lot of wiggle room, you can decide that you write down what numbers you want to write down. But what we found is, is that people, when they start writing it down, they go,

ah, that's kind of stupid. I don't need to do that. And you start making judgment calls as soon as you're writing it down. You know, I got it. We got it. We got to back off on that. That's ridiculous. When you actually look at the numbers, the numbers will yell at you and tell you to straighten your act up, you know? And so I don't have to tell you all that stuff. And the budget doesn't tell you anything. It's like when you were four years old and you were fighting with your sister, you're not the boss of me. your sister. You're not the boss of me. Remember that? You're not the boss of me.

Well, the budget is not the boss of you. You're the boss of the budget until you get it built, and you're building it to be the boss of you. But you're the boss of the boss, so you're good. Everything's good. So check it out. Every dollar, it'll get you going. All the correlation of all

the data we have of 30 years of doing this, 10 million people going through Financial Peace University, the ones that do a zero-based budget, every dollar has an assignment before the month begins and agree on it with your spouse are the ones that achieve their financial goals. No one accidentally wins the Super Bowl. Winning is not an accident. It's a series of intentional acts, and that's what this is. Win-win. Hey, if you want to check out the premium version, you can put in everydollar.com slash jade, and I'll give you $15 off a premium.

I still need a slash. You've got a slash still. How did that happen? I don't know. We have a jade slash. We need a Dave slash. How much should my slash be worth? Oh, I'm going to go with. Should it be more or less? have a jade slash we need a dave slash how much how much should my slash be worth oh i'm gonna go

with you might should it be more or less i think she's got her name after the slash your name is before the slash my name's before thank you that's right ramsey solutions okay funny all right so jade has a slash after my name there we go my ego is feels better already. I think I'm going to survive now. So Jade, you've been doing these webinars, you and George and Rachel, a lot on building out your every dollar budget. What's the question you're getting in the comments? Because we take questions live during the webinars. What are y'all getting the most about putting together? Is it still people feel like the budget is bossing them around? Not really. We kind of identified four main questions. And the first one is how do I even get started? A lot of people are feeling the tension of, I don't feel like I make enough

money to make a budget. And you kind of spoke to that, which is, yeah, let the numbers talk and tell you what you need to do. Because for some of us, if it feels that way, you need an extra job or some of us just need to pull back on the lifestyle that we've had and that's what's eating up all your money. And so kind of walking people through the zero-based budget and how you're giving each dollar an assignment and be open to what the numbers tell you.

There we go. That's how that works. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This is the seasonsey Show. This show is sponsored by Better Help. This is the season for Halloween. It's October. We're wearing costumes and we're wearing masks. So if you haven't started planning your costume

yet, get on it. And while you're thinking about it, I want you to be honest. A lot of us hide ourselves. We hide our true selves behind costumes and masks all the time. We do this at work. We do this around our friends. We do this around our families.

We even do this when we look at ourselves in the mirror. I know because I've been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding behind masks and costumes all the time, if you find yourself hiding from your true self, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can be honest, where you can talk to somebody else and reflect and learn, and you can accept all the parts of yourself over time and start living an authentic life. Masks and costumes should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. And if you're considering therapy, try calling my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere, so it's

convenient for you and your schedule. Just fill out a short online survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. Plus, you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Deloney. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thanks for being with us, America. Luke is in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Luke. Welcome to the show.

Hello. Hi. How are you? Better to the show. Hello. Hi. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? So I got a unique situation here. 22 years old, household income of $90,000. We inherited six acres of land and decided to build a house on it.

We don't have any debt. We have not taken any loans on the house. I've built it so far where you've got the roof, walls, and siding, and almost done with utilities. But our goal is that I pay for all the bills, and then my wife, she pays for all the materials for the house. My question is, should I take what's of my income after the bills and throw it towards the house or put it towards retirement?

Okay, you're trying to build a house out of your pocket and so far you have. But you and your wife have separate finances. Well, we've worked together for the finances finances but not really just not really you got you've delegated part of it to her and part of it to you you don't have one pile so you need one pile of money her money your money is

our money one big pile out of that pile what is our first goal I would assume it's to finish the house isn't it yes sir so what does it's to finish the house, isn't it? Yes, sir. So what does it take to finish the house, money-wise? How much money? We're looking at probably about $10,000 left. We've got drywall, insulation, and paint. Okay. How long, if you pile all your money, you and your wife, our money in one pile, how long does it take you to come up with $10,000?

Well, probably a one or two. Yeah. Okay. So let's finish the house. And then you need to make sure you have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. And then take 15% of your household income, our income, and start that towards retirement. That's baby step four. But you're going to be living in a paid-for house. nice that's awesome you got this acreage and you built the house you

got a lot of sweat in it and you're gonna have a bunch of equity right oh yeah for sure what's this finished product going to be worth acreage and house total we're hoping for 250 good very cool and you said you're 26 22 22 wow okay wow and your household income if we put both of your money in one pile is how much a year 90 000 how much 90 000 90 000 that's the two of you combined okay good i make 62 she makes 28 okay cool perfect yeah so let's take 15 of 90 000 after we get the emergency fund in place and you're're sitting on a $250,000 house. You're going to be millionaires before you're 30. Woo.

That's exciting. Isn't that fun? Mm-hmm. I hope they take your advice and put their money in one pile. Well, that's the thing. Yeah. So there's, yeah, there's just so much data that says when you do that, that your higher probability of winning at marriage, winning at relationship, winning at everything.

And let's circle back and say this. Nothing to do with Luke's call, but just this because we get so much bull crap on social media about telling people put their money together. You should be independent. Now, you shouldn't be independent if you're married. That's a dumb butt idea this is how your marriage doesn't work because you're so strung out on you that you're worthless as a spouse so that that's the problem so no you don't need to be independent you need to be one the preacher said and now you are one one uno, all in one.

And so if we know, and we do know, that the data tells us in America today, the number one cause of divorce is money fights and money problems. The number one solution to that is learning to dream together and put our money together and handle our problems and our challenges and our opportunities and our dreams together that is the solution where you don't have money problems cause divorce if we have the solution to the number one cause of divorce why are you arguing with us that's just dumb because people out there are dumb and we will always have a show for that reason so there it is

not all people out there are dumb but enough of them are dumb but we will always have this show are they dumb dave or do they do dumb things they're ignorant ignorant different than dumb that's good i don't know how ignorance and there's things i'm ignorant about by the way yeah i don't know how i used to know when i was a young redneck i used to know how to work on a car but now a car looks like a spaceship when i open the hood and so i can't even i don't know how i used to know when i was a young redneck i used to know how to work on a car but now a car looks like a spaceship when i open the hood and so i can't even i don't know if i could jump the thing and get a jumper cable on it nowadays without blowing it up so you know i'm so but the data is there i don't know how to work on that car i doesn't mean i'm dumb it means i'm ignorant i don't know how to do that but then don't argue

with experts when you're ignorant because it makes you look dumb I'll take that dude I'll take that wow and Luke was doing none of that Luke's a sharp young guy at 22 man he's got it going on doesn't he yeah oh most definitely I don't even he? Yeah, most definitely. I don't even. I was nowhere near that, so. Yeah, I don't even want to talk about it. Jason was in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Jason. How are you?

Hey, guys. How are y'all? Can y'all hear me okay? Yes. What's up? Good, good. Hey, I just got a quick question for you. I'll give you a quick rundown on the situation. I'm trying to decide if I should sell my house.

I live about an hour outside of the Carolina metros right now. I'm planning to make a move this summer. I'm self-employed. I sell real estate. And so in my new market, I'm going to have to kind of start from the ground up. I'm near the end of baby step two. If this move wasn't happening, I'd be done probably by June or July, maybe August. The flip side, so the question is basically...

Where are you going to live when you move? I'm going to rent. Okay. And so your question is whether to keep your house or not? Yeah. Oh, sell it. No, just sell it. Yeah, I bought...

You don't need to be a renter and be a landlord that's bass backwards that was risky dave that was very risky that's uh what i needed to know yeah i mean really think about it that's backwards you don't want to do that so no you need to um get get uh you know you're in the real estate business you're going to get plenty of opportunities to own a property and live in a house that you pay cash for and or buy it and then get it paid off as quick as you can hanging on to this boat anchor that represents your former life out in the burbs when you're moving into the metro and having to deal with that while you're trying to learn to sell real estate and trying to get your business moving nah okay yeah that's where my mind was and

i thought that was right. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, you're right on track, man. You're right on track. So there you go. Here's the thing. It's interesting. Real estate is such an emotional topic because it has these two strange elements to it.

Strange element number one is it is an excellent way to build wealth when you do it right as a part of your long-term plan. Right. That then gets confused with it's always smart no matter what. That's a good point, Dave. And it's not. Sometimes real estate, doing a real estate deal in the wrong situation in your life could be not you know in Jason's it's just it's just a bad idea but in other people's it's even way over into the stupid zone yeah for sure and so real estate is it's weird it is because it's a blessing when you do it right that gives

everybody permission to do it even wrong and it becomes a curse yeah and I think also the other thing that I think we're fighting now is so many people had properties that they locked in at a better interest rate and so then when life moves them they feel like yeah it's a good deal maybe i shouldn't get rid of it even though i'm moving i should keep it it's like this weird attachment to it it's like because real estate is good i can't everything i do with it is going to be smart right it just falls in line and it's like no it's not going to be smart you know it's not smart the only way that you know no there's a good time to cut real estate loose there's a good time for it to not be there and buying buying real

estate you can't afford buying a house you can't afford we had that earlier in the hour that's right so we got to sell the house as mom wants to come home and not be a teacher and be a full-time mom that's cool but we got to sell the house we bought a house we can't afford so it's not a blessing anymore that's right it's a curse it's a problem yes so doing it wrong or keeping it wrong or because real estate's good it's not always good yeah because and it's not that real estate is actually real estate is always good it's the life situation you're in doesn't match up with owning real estate right then. Yeah. And so it's not always good to keep your old house and rent it.

Matter of fact, it seldom is. Yeah. Very seldom. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Jay Washaw, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the Ramsey Quick Read, Money is Not a Math Problem, The Real Reason you're broke and what to do about it. She's my co-host today. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Renee is in Nashville.

Hi, Renee. How are you? I am doing better than I deserve, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? I'm really glad that you took my call. And hi, Jade.

Hi. I have a lot of plants, too. Yes. So my thing is that I'm needing some clarification on how to get a mortgage through Churchill Mortgage with a manual underwriting and everything without having a credit score. So background, I will be debt-free in August. I have $7,500 left to pay off on my consumer debt out of $22,074.75, and that will be done in August, be done with Baby Step 3 before January 25, and I will be starting to pay my house off, and by my calculations, I will have the house paid off

in two years, so 2027, the house will be paid off. I want to move. I hate my house. I hate everything about it, including the location. I should have never bought the house. And it was actually a curse to me in the beginning because I did not have my three to six months emergency fund saved up. And Murphy came in in a big huge storm

everything had to replace so many things in the house and I know better now now I know I will make a profit when I sell the house but I'm probably going to have to get a mortgage considering I don't know what the market is going to be doing. What will you, when you sell the house, what will you come away with? I don't know, maybe about $200,000 maybe. And then what would you want to purchase the next house for? What's your range? It's two years from now. Yeah, this's your range it's two years from now yeah yeah this is about two and a half years from now maybe three uh because i really want to renovate because i

would be embarrassed to sell this house to anybody got you so you've got it you've got a little journey here you've got a little timeline in front of you so your biggest fear is is this true jade and dave can you actually buy a house with a zero credit score when the time comes? Is that your question? Yes, and I have been listening to George Campbell's book. By the way, please tell him he did an amazing job on the audio book. Absolutely love it. We agree.

And in the book, he said that he bought a house with zero credit score, and the interest rate that he got was the same interest rate that somebody with a perfect credit score would get. That's true. That's right. Same here, by the way. Okay. And on a 15-year fixed rate, which tends to get you a better interest rate as well. So it's all true.

It's absolutely all true. Just know, you know, if you're doing zero credit score manual underwriting, I mean, there's limitations. You can't just borrow to the moon and back, you know, right? So, you know, going in with some cash and then adding, you know, whatever you're going to add to that, that's great. And I think it's one of those things, I'll be honest with you, when I entered the baby steps, Renee, there were a couple of things that I pushed back. It was like my logic just hadn't caught up yet. It was very hard for me to accept that you can actually buy a car in cash. And it was very hard for me. I remember being like, Dave, don't let me down because I'm about to have zero credit score. And I want to know that this works.

And there is part of that, that you just walk through the process and even though you've heard everybody say it and say it and say it until you experience it for yourself then you go oh my gosh this really does work this is real people do this what scares me is not having a credit score I'm never buying I'm never getting credit cards again see here's what here's the thing here's the thing okay when's the thing, okay? When you say out loud, what scares me is not having a credit score. What you're really saying is, I'm worried that I won't have a good life without debt. Okay.

It's the same thing. Because there's only one thing the credit score is used for, and that's getting debt. Mm-hmm. So I'm worried i can't have a good life without debt that's what you're saying when you're saying i'm worried about not having a credit score now what you do need to do on a technical basis is make sure you don't have any open accounts even with zero balances so if you've got old credit cards that are still open but zero

balances you need to close the account completely because an open account ding in that crib ringing the bell over at the credit bureau is going to keep your score there even if it's a zero balance so you need to close all debt accounts completely down including the 7,500 one as soon as it's gone you need to close all debt accounts completely down, including the 7,500 one. As soon as it's gone, you need to make sure it's closed. And then it takes them about a quarter, maybe two quarters, to notify the credit bureau that the account no longer exists. And when you have no active credit accounts of any kind, about six months later, typically, your credit score, it becomes indeterminable or zero. And that is the goal.

And what I decided, because I didn't have a choice, you had a choice, because I went broke, was that the great FICO is not worthy of my adoration. The great FICO is not worthy of my adoration. The great FICO is not worthy of my worship. And I don't need to bring the great FICO God offerings of interest and other stupid things to have a good life. Don't worship at false idols, because this is a false idol. It does not provide you. It's not an indication you're good with money. It's not an indication of your net worth. It's not an indication of your income. 100% of the variables in the algorithm that create a FICO score have to do with your interaction with debt. That's right. How much debt you have, what kinds of debt you have, what percentage of the debt available to you that

you're using, how long you've had the debt. It's all how much you've been playing kissy face with the bank. That's what it is. And so when you, so you could get a million dollar inheritance, it doesn't change your FICO score one dime. You could get a million dollar raise at work it doesn't change the fico score one dime so the point is it is not a measure of financial health it is a measure of how much you've been playing kissy face with the bank how much debt you love that's an i love debt score and i love debt thoroughly is what an 800 score says. It says I have paid them so much interest because I just love banks. I think they're awesome and I want to give them my money. That's what an 800 score says.

That's right. It's a hallmark card to the banking industry. Instead, I want to give them a salute. This is the Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. I'm trying to think now, it's been probably two years ago. My buddies over at the daily wire called me and said hey want to have dinner uh a buddy of ours named uh vivek ramaswamy is in town uh and and um you need to know this guy and i'm like okay if you say i need to know him we'll go have dinner so we all got together had a had a lengthy dinner had a a great conversation. Next thing I look up, the guy's running for president.

But you did come on the show before that, after that, and talk about your book, Woke Capitalism, right? Yeah, Woke Inc. was my first book. Woke Inc. Woke Inc., yeah, that was it. Because you were working on a whole movement in the hedge fund world and in the mutual fund world to offset some of the woke stuff that's happening on Wall Street.

But then I look up and you're out there making a very interesting run. We had some email interactions just personally back and forth while you're out there doing that stuff. That's got to be quite an adventure to be out there bumping heads with Nikki. I know Nikki, too. She sat here, too, with, of course, President Trump and everybody else and all the different players that were involved. It was very interesting. It was eye-opening.

And I think the thing I learned from traveling this country, Dave, is that we're taught to believe that we're divided, and that's what I thought going into this race. I'd say my most positive learning coming out of it is that if you actually talk to human beings, from New York to California to the Midwest— As opposed to talking heads. Yeah, as opposed to digital impressions of human beings from New York to California to the Midwest, as opposed to talking heads, yeah, as opposed to as opposed to digital impressions of human beings, if you talk to actual human beings, 80% of us in this country share the same values in common right now. And I think half the 20% that we think are on the other side are people who are younger than me,

who never learned those values in the first place, who I think will come along believing in free speech, meritocracy, the pursuit of excellence, the rule of law, just basic rules of the road that regardless of race or political affiliation, for that matter, Democrat or Republican, even 80 plus percent of us in this country, I think still are united around certain basic principles. And I don't say that in some cheesy kind of way. It was, I think still are united around certain basic principles. And I don't say that in some cheesy kind of way. It was, I think, a surprise to me. You go into this from the world of cable news and digital and social media, creating the artifact of division that I don't see actually existing in real American homes and interactions. So the question is, how do we call

the bluff on that division? I tried to do some of calling a lot of bluffs on the campaign of the media and of, I think, a lot of bluffs on the campaign of the media and of, I think, a lot of government dishonesty that's left this country worse off. But I'm hopefully proud of what we began, and we're going to continue it in other ways. One of the things I've talked about from stage in our events for many years, and it always gets a cheer, regardless of political affiliation, is the idea that if you can get out of that and get on a plan and increase your generosity, the things you can do, and I can show some examples of when an entire community does this, uh, how, how many St. Jude hospitals we can build with, uh, how many,

uh, foster children get a home. Uh, when we, the people, start taking care of we, the people, it becomes very inspiring. And the beautiful part about it is, the byproduct of that is, it puts the government out of business. It does. And the beauty of this country is, we're the best country known to man

to at least give people that opportunity. And every one of us has our own unique god-given gift right and i think that this is a country we use a word like merit i use that word a lot but what does it mean i think it's living as part of a system where everybody can achieve the maximum of their god-given potential without any government or any system standing in your way and that's what got us this far 250 years into this country it's what allowed me to live the american dream that i have and i want to pass it on a system can be a negative system oh yeah racism sexism those are systems and so without any system not just a bureaucratic

system right yes exactly exactly and that's the beauty of this country and you know i'm an entrepreneur by background politics was new to me i learned a lot about politics not all of it was positive but most of it i would say was uh left me i would say a little more cynical but a little bit more informed on the other side of it i'm an entrepreneur by background i start companies and so that's part of what i've gone back to in the meantime is the world of entrepreneurship and driving change through the private sector in changing this country for the better and meeting the needs of, I think, for example, you talked about woke capitalism. One of the companies I had started before I ran for president was a company called Strive that competes directly against BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard by standing for

actual corporate purpose. Companies should do what allows them to be most valuable, not pushing somebody else's social agenda. That's part of how we drive change in this country too, is it's not just gonna be done through the government, but through our educational system, through the private sector as well. I think people can drive a lot of positive change too, and I'm trying to do that in the meantime.

Vivek Ramaswamy is with us. Jade Warshaw is my co-host. Jade? Yeah, I wanna know. So one of your 10 truths that you talk about is the idea that capitalism can lift people out of poverty. A lot of people would push back hard against that. They feel like capitalism is one of the things that's keeping them trapped. So talk about that a little bit. Yeah, sure. And I want to

distinguish between crony capitalism, which is a perversion of the real thing, and actual true capitalism. That's a good distinction. And it's important, right? Because many people who are earnestly frustrated with what they see as an oppressive system of capitalism isn't really the real thing. It's this version where companies through lobbying and other forms of non-competitive measures are using the force of government to create barriers that stop them from achieving their dreams. You see this in the pharmaceutical sector.

I mean, a lot of the lobbying results in less competition, which contributes to high prescription drug pricing. So when people say, I can't afford to buy my medicines, well, part of what they're having frustration with isn't capitalism, but the capture of a healthcare system that isn't working as efficiently as it should. You see in the health insurance marketplace, a lot of health insurers are not really, not a lot of health insurance brokers aren't really serving up the right plans for their actual clients to select. But that's the product

of crony capitalism, which is a perversion of the real system. And so I think my first distinction is I might share your same frustration. I probably do. Companies should not use the government as a lobbying instrument to block competition. Now, on the flip side, look at actual free market capitalism. The only way you're able to get ahead as an entrepreneur or as a business instrument to block competition. Now, on the flip side, look at actual free market capitalism. The only way you're able to get ahead as an entrepreneur or as a business is if you're providing something of value, of greater value to the person who's paying for it

than it takes for it costing you to provide it. And that's fundamentally an other regarding activity. So if you're actually providing something of inherent value to somebody else, that is what's lifted people up from poverty. It's why U.S. stock market returns have outpaced European stock market returns for decades because their model of capitalism is to have capitalists try to take care of social issues. Whereas the U.S. model of capitalism is one that says when companies are creating products and services that serve people and stay true to that mission that actually creates wealth for everybody. Yeah. Real capitalism is where profit is the applause your customers give you. Exactly.

For having served them well. It's that simple. It's that simple. And so, you know, money or the making of money when it's done in service of human beings. I haven't heard that line. I'm going to take that, though. I like that. It just, when it's an act of service, one of haven't heard that line. I'm going to take that though. I like that. It, it, it just, it,

it, when you're, when it, when it's an act of service, one of our core values is here. If we help enough people at Ramsey, we don't worry about money. That's exactly right.

Values. 14 core values on the wall. That's when I'm on the wall, all through the building here. And so our job is to make sure that we are a blessing and then we can't keep the blessings from flowing at us. It's actually interesting you mention that. It's even one of the pieces of advice I give to young people. So you're talking about the customer side.

Even if you talk about the labor market or the job side of it, a young person can't find a job. Here's my advice to them is show up somewhere and volunteer to work there. Make yourself so valuable and indispensable such that when it comes time for you to find another opportunity to move on, won't let you leave yeah they're going to actually pay you what you actually deserve and so it goes whether you're an employee looking for a job business selling a product yeah i love that is actually do the right thing bathe smile have some energy bring it add value and you can't they won't they'll do anything they're not going to let you go they're not going to you go and that is cap to me that's so unusual capitalism is actually you provide something of value to somebody else either as a worker or as a company or whatever it is without the cronyism in government the corruption that you see of lobbying the government to be able to mess with

that competition that's true capitalism that lifts us up there's such a distinction there that you speak about and i I agree with you. Why do you think it gets grouped together when we can see it so distinctly different? Yeah, well, I'll be candid on this. I think that the Republican Party has assumed the mantle of standing for capitalism. But much of the Republican Party has been corrupted by some of the same forces of crony capitalism, subsidies or favor favoritism, or corporate welfare, such that somebody else earnestly saying, okay, you guys stand for capitalism, but you got the bailouts in 2008.

That happened under a Republican administration. Yep. It was a Republican president, Republican treasury secretary, bailed out institutions that took on way more debt than they needed to, way more leverage. I got it. You're not hearing the bug music. I got to go, brother. Vivek Ramaswamy, check him out, at Vivek G. Ramaswamy at Instagram and at X.

Be sure and check him out. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Thank you. Good seeing you guys. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Patrick is with us in Little Rock. Hi, Patrick. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, thank you, Dave, and thank you, Jade. I am really honored to call you guys today. This has been a long-time thing that I've wanted to do is call in and ask for some advice. Of course, there's many times I needed to do that earlier probably, but I'm kind of in a little bit of a situation.

Just recently, let me back up a little bit. My daughter, two years ago, she was born with a very rare genetic disorder called trisomy 13. She was very medically challenged for a long time. We were not able to work. I was not able to work like I needed to, and my wife was a stay-at-home mom, obviously. She was very to the point where it was really bad because she had to constantly be suctioned and things like that, and in and out of the hospital pretty much, I would say, 80% of the time. Wow. And then, you know, they told us that, you know, we had two to four days maybe with her at most, and that was two something years ago. Uh, and, and she, she lived a long two plus years, uh, up until recently and she passed just January.

Oh, I'm sorry. because it's just the timing of everything that just gives glory to God, I think. But anyways, so we are in a situation right now, and emotionally we are obviously not where we should be. We are having a lot of issues and stuff, and work is something we have to still do and still continue to go on uh before she passed though i had started i've been a paint contractor for probably about 13 years and uh i've been wanting to get out of that for for about three years of that time and do something different i started on the side a business doing, like, excavation and stuff like that,

and that is taking off, starting to take off. It's a little slow at first, but I didn't go out and get a bunch of debt. How much did you make in March? So in March we made about $2,000, which it's just a side thing right now. So it's not a full-time. If it's just a side thing, what's your main gig? My main gig is still painting, and I also do construction work and stuff. So how much did you make total in March?

My income, not including my wife's, was probably about $3,500. What does your wife make? About $3,500. She makes $2,500 a month. And what's your question, Patrick? So my question is, she is pregnant, obviously, and I'm wanting to know if I should just go out and get a full-time job and not worry about what I'm doing part-time.

Both of my businesses are basically part-time. I guess I should say it like that. Can you get enough business? Do you have the emotional energy with all you've been through to get enough business to stay busy and make a living? I believe i do i i i'm honestly um so you can go from 3 500 to 4 500 and by the end of the year be at 5 500 a month average i hope that's what i'm hoping for um if you believe you could do that why would you if you think you can do that why would you go get a do that, why would you go get a job?

That's exactly. I mean, I've been battling this because I don't know. Like, I want someone to just tell me, hey, that's stupid. You got a baby coming because my wife is going to be quitting. Well, to be fair. If you can make more and more and more money, that's good if a baby's coming. I know. Well, and I was, that's exactly what I'm thinking too, but I have heard that it's not good sometimes to run with a side venture and not knowing what it's going to do. Honestly, I want to do that full time.

Well, you're combining the side one with your main one. Your main gig was the painting. You were making X off of that, and then you added the excavation to it. And to be fair, in your own words, you haven't really had the time or resource or energy or emotional energy to put 100% into this. And so now you're going to start being able to do that. And I think with the numbers. All of these are construction. Yeah. You're in the construction business.

You do excavation. You do painting. and you do some other construction work right yes sir yeah just go do a whole bunch of it man one wild card i did not mention i didn't have enough time to because my mind wasn't to the screener but uh one thing that is the wild card in our case is we're actually our house where we live at we're actually living in a camper right now uh not not uh permanently just temporarily until we get our house built we are building a house right now jesus and yes yes and i know what you say about building a house and i we did it wrong but, but we're almost to the end of it, and we're going to be happy with the result. But if I could, in retrospect, go on.

That doesn't change the answer about your business. No. I mean, if you're making $3,500 towards $4,500 towards $5,500 in your construction business, that's going to assist in a new baby coming. That's going to assist in finishing the house. That's going to assist in you running your life. If you go take a job making $3,000 a month, period, and you got a J-O-B,

you're not going to make as much as if you go run this business well. But the honest question you have to do is you have to quit getting distracted by 63,000 things. If you're overworking on a stupid house instead of earning money to feed your family, see, that's a distraction. And so that house may slow way down while you speed this business up. Because, Patrick, if you've got the emotional energy with the tragedy you all have been through to go get after it on this business. You need to completely focus on making stacking cash, making a big old pile of money.

And if you all need to go rent an apartment and get out of the trailer because you had a pregnant wife, that's not a bad thing. And then take an extra year to finish a stupid house. I'm fine. The house is the least of my worries. You grow in this career. Take care of your family is the least of my worries you grow in this career take care of your family is the number one job and if you don't have the emotional bandwidth to do that and get out of that trailer with a pregnant wife camping trailer by the way uh then then you do need to go take a

job so but but the job is going to be less money than you could make if you can pull it together for the business i think so too i think he just needs to add a couple more services on there and just get after it do whatever work you can do just take everything and go and make a profit on all of it and go and make a profit and go and go and go and you can clean up and decide what i don't want to do that kind of thing anymore later. But right now you're doing it. Swinging a hammer, swinging a brush, you know, digging a hole. Whatever it is you're doing, get it done and do a bunch of it all the time and charge a lot. And charge a lot.

And smile and go make you some money. There is nothing wrong with that. All you're doing is taking care of people's problems. But, you know, job one is baby and wife. Job two is to grow your business to take care of them. Dealing with a stupid butt construction house is way down the list of things you've got to be worrying about right now. So if that thing sits nothing for a little while, I'm okay with that. But, you know, you don't need to be over there working at night when you could be working at night making money for your family so right now

you don't have the time you don't have the bandwidth to be swinging a hammer on that job you're gonna swing a hammer on somebody else's job it's giving you money so that's what we're gonna focus on is making money and you the good news is you're in a business that you just soon as you start putting the word out and you just tell people and you just go get another one then go get another one then go get another one you're gonna make a lot of money that's right oh yeah people always need something done yeah people always need some handiwork done whether it's put me some bathroom tiles in change out my bathtub there's always something that's going on. Always, always. This is The Ramsey Show.

Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. You do not have to lose sleep worrying about your money anymore. We want you to come to the Ramsey campus for the Total Money Makeover weekend on May 10th and 11th, and we're going to show you how to get control of your life. How would it feel to know that you're going to be out of debt so that you could become wealthy, so that you could become outrageously generous? How would that feel? What would that do for your relationships, for your hope?

It's what we do, and we're going to do that Friday afternoon, all day, Saturday, May 10th and 11th, the total money makeover weekend. Not only how to get out of debt, but how to become an investor and how to be generous, how to work with your spouse. Ken Coleman's going to be speaking on increasing your income. Dr. John Deloney on increasing your peace. Jade Walsh, I'll be speaking. George Camel, Rachel Cruz, and me. And so all of us, all the Ramsey personalities are going to be here. We're going to have lots of Q&As.

It's going to be very experiential. And you're going to laugh, you're going to cry, and you're going to come away knowing you can do this. Bring your spouse that's reluctant. They will leave crazier than you are. Bring your friend who thinks you're crazy, and they will leave really crazy doing this stuff. It's going to be a lot of fun, Jade. I'm excited about this.

I'm excited, too. I can't wait. Our Platinum Plus tickets are already sold out. You can still get a Platinum ticket, a VIP ticket, or a general admissions ticket at ramseysolutions.com slash events. Suggest you get them now. May 10th and 11th is coming up really, really fast. It's here on the campus at the Ramsey Event Center. I'm excited to get to do a Total Money Makeover event right here in our own backyard.

I'm excited that a bunch of you are coming from all over the place to be here. You do not want to miss this event. It is life-changing. Grayson is with us in Nebraska. Hi, Grayson. How are you? Hi, good. How are you?

Better than I deserve. How can I help? Hi. So my husband and I have been looking at our financial goals, and it's just looking like it's going to take a long time to get over some humps. And so my question is basically, do I need to be patient or should we make changes? Well, tell us the timeline exactly, but right now we have about $8,500 in our savings account, which is a little bit over our three-month savings.

Okay. And we're wanting to save for a house we're renting right now. And I'm a stay-at-home mom. My husband makes $57,500 right now. It's going to go up to $65,000 soon. Okay. And so you're trying to save for a down payment for a house. That's the goal. Right. And we are not investing yet. So we also want to start doing that. I'm 23. He's also 23. Okay. So what percentage down are you trying to get to? What's the goal number? I mean, we want to do it the 20% for a 15-year fix.

Yeah, that's the ideal. Okay. And so what does that mean for you on the size house you're trying to get? How much money do you need? I guess I don't know for sure how much money we need because of, like, house prices fluctuating. We don't know exactly what kind of house we're going to want. So how is it that you know if you're off track or impatient? I mean, you don't have your – if you have a target and a date and you don't think you're going to hit that target and date,

then you can ask, you know, there's a hump, there's a problem. But right now you're just – I see. Right now you've just got a general idea. We'd like to get a house someday. Oh, okay. Well, I'd like to get into a house quickly, but it seems like it's going to be – What is quickly?

I guess in the next, like, three years. Okay, and so how much can you save a year? A year, I don't know, but I know monthly we save about $700. Okay, that's $8,400 a year. In three years, you'll have $24,000. Okay. You just need to do a little bit. You need to dig down and do some research on this

and really get your head around the numbers. And then, okay, to Dave's point, you'll have $24,000. Go over and do the how much home can I afford calculator on ramseysolutions.com. And then you're going to be able to plug in the numbers, look at real estate in your area, look at what 20% of a down payment would be and put real weight to these numbers and see what's actually possible and then you can look at that and go okay if 24 000 doesn't get it what do i need to save and then you can actually have a real target yeah what have i got to pick up as a side job while i'm working while i'm at home with the babies and what can he do to pick up his income also above 65 so we can do more than 8400 and because if he made an extra ten thousand dollars

a year on the side for three years, that's another $30,000. Instead of $20,000 down, we're now talking about $50,000 down. That changes the game. So that's how you start backing into this and figuring out if you're impatient or not. If you told me you wanted $50,000 by the end of this year to buy a house, you make $65,000 a year and you don't have any money, then I would say, yeah, you're impatient and unrealistic.

There's not any math in your story that's going to take you there, right? But that's not what you're saying. And so three years, if you're 23, you're going to be 26. That's not a bad timeline. I kind of like that timeline. If it takes one more year, so what? Not the end of the world. We at least are aiming at something. We've got a game plan and we're talking this through yeah but but all good financial goals have a longer time horizon meaning bad financial goals are lead you to doing nothing but partying thank god it's friday oh god it's monday long-term financial goals are thinking the way you're thinking okay where am i going to're thinking, okay, where am I going to be when I'm 26? Where am I going to be when I'm 23 now? And what have I got to do to get to those

things that we're not doing now? What must be true that's not true now to hit that desired future, as Henry Cloud says, and then, you know, then you're going to be there. But I don't hear anything that's completely in dreamland or la-la here i think this is all doable you'd probably just got to think through you know what other if we want to do this in two years or three years and we want price x if we want a 250 000 house then no you're not going to be ready at 24 000 you know i think to your point dave you're right there usually is an extended timeline and i think people kind of get weirded out thinking oh my gosh i'm gonna have to be disciplined for this amount of time you're gonna be disciplined the rest of your life yeah it's easy to be

disciplined for and you don't have to it's just if you want the house that's what you have that's right it's you don't you know if you don't get the if you don't want the house then you don't have to be disciplined that's right but it's not going to be yeah this is how you get things as you make the money behave and so that that's what you're facing grace and i think you're in better shape maybe than your emotions feel like you are but i think it'll help the emotions if you lay down a detailed plan of exactly a where we want to go and b how are we going to get there and what are the steps to get there and then what have we got to do different that we're not doing now to accelerate that plan and you can start to have those discussions around that that makes a lot of sense so good question by the way so here's an

interesting thing there's a lot of um squawking and carrying on that gen z can't buy a house it's impossible well it is if you make fifty seven thousand dollars a year and you live in san francisco 100 and you're 23 you're not gonna buy a house there yeah that that is impossible yeah that, that's true. So you can't, but does that mean you can't buy a house? No, you can live in Omaha, Nebraska. And you know what $200,000 to buy in Omaha? A nice house. Mm-hmm. A nice house.

With some cornfields in the back. Guaranteed. Guaranteed. There's some cornfields in the back but yeah the old corn huskers right so but i mean it's uh and probably some pheasants but yeah the uh so but the point is is that you've got to say okay my income and my dreams and my location all three have to be aligned. That's right. And so when I started the show 30 years ago, the idea of living in Manhattan, downtown New York City, if you made $60,000 a year,

and $60,000 a year 30 years ago is a lot of money. It was. It was impossible. You couldn't do it. You're kidding. You can't live in 60. You can't. Couldn't do it. And you can't do it you're kidding you can't live in 60 you can't couldn't do it and you can't do it

now either so you know it has to do with lining up your dreams with your realities instead of just wishing things were different and Grayson's doing just that that's why she's going to win this is the Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Walsh, our number one best-selling author of the Ramsey Quick Read, and of course Ramsey Personality. She's my co-host today. The phone number is 888-825-5225. James is in Cleveland, Ohio. Hi, James, how are you? I'm all right, and yourself?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Hi, so a little bit of backstory. I'm a couple years out of college, and I've been working at a large public accounting firm since then. And I guess I am kind of at a point in my time doing that where I've decided that do that and also, I guess, what career path to pursue, you know, because, I mean, I have an attraction to, like, you know, a management area. I have a minor in business management, you know, along with my degree and also for contacts. I've passed the CPA exam, so I have that for what it's worth. But it's just I don't know where to go from there. Okay, so you went to an extreme amount of trouble to become an accountant. Yes.

Okay. Okay. And you've discovered that the version of accounting that you do in a public accounting firm is not fun for you. Yeah, I'd say that's accurate. Yeah. So what is it? Because it occurs to me that possibly it is not that you hate accounting. It's that you hate accounting there.

I suppose. I guess I was kind of afraid to try and move into another role just because... What kind of other role? So some other roles I've looked at are, I guess we call them, you know, in the industry, we call them industry positions. You don't work in public. You work for a company. I've looked at this hospital position that has accounting positions within various levels and a few other places, and they just haven't panned out.

I've applied, and I know that's not the best way to get into a position like that, but it hasn't panned out for me thus far. So that doesn't mean it's not what you want to do. Just hadn't found the job is all. Yeah. I don't think you know exactly what you want to do. I think. What I'm suggesting is there's a possibility you are not disillusioned with the accounting field.

You are disillusioned with being an accountant in a public accounting firm which is pretty much a grind yeah for sure i mean you're what two years out of school you said yeah yeah so they're there's they're dumping everything and his brother on your desk you're you're just in a you know you're just a widget machine right now right it's about right yeah well no wonder it's not fun but that doesn't mean accounting isn't fun for you i suppose i guess you sure have done a lot of it for somebody who hates it i mean what would your ideal if you if you had your ideal scenario as an accountant what would it be and then work backwards from that my ideal scenario and i'll tell you what it is here in a second isn't something that i think exists in

public accounting anymore just because it's changed as an industry and that's fine more of an industry okay it'd be more like an industry position but so it's uh i guess more like the nuts and bolts of accounting like you know you know, explaining, I guess, transactions and, you know, how they affect financial statements to people as they need it. Like the accounting people do at Ramsey all day long. Yeah, they sit with the business units, and they talk about how to do the business and tell them what the accounting is telling.

You know, here's the tea leaves. The tea leaves in the accounting reports are telling you in the business unit this, this, and this. And what other KPIs, what other things can we do to assist you to make your business run better? It's a live, breathing thing when you do accounting in a place like ours. Exactly. And it's just I don't feel like that exists in the public scenario. Yeah, so don't do it anymore. So go get one of those.

Okay. But it doesn't mean you have to go become a guitar player. Yeah. Or you have to get a degree in art. Yeah. You know, which would be like the other side of the spectrum from your brain. Yeah. And so, I mean.

The other side, I guess, and this would be like a whole heck of a pivot so to speak but it would be you know if i'm just that fed up with it moving into i guess again management or even crazier a trade but like i guess it doesn't sound like see accounting is um here's an interesting number for you, okay? Of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, over 60% of them have an accounting degree. And most of them from public universities, by the way. Not from muckety-muck universities.

So the accounting degree is very functional because in order to get an accounting degree you have to learn business otherwise accounting doesn't even make sense and so you're qualified to walk in to business settings and create i mean you're probably inexperienced in business and so you've got some probably got to get some calluses, but you have the ability to go create some serious business acumen over the next decade and maybe be a CFO somewhere. That kind of thing. And so that's what I'm saying. And that's really not that big a pivot. It's using your education and your natural bent and your skill set just to apply it in a different place that has more life to it

than the widget machine you're stuck in. Yeah. So I don't blame you. I mean, I think what you're doing would make me want to, I mean, I couldn't stand it. But I couldn't stand just generally doing accounting all day anyway because I'm not detailed enough because but because I'm not that. So here's what I want you to do. I'm going to send you Ken Coleman's Get Clear Career Assessment

and his new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. Okay? And the book explains how the career assessment works. But I think the career assessment, just from talking to you i might be wrong it's a very very good tool by the way we've sold almost a hundred thousand of them and we've now put them in this book so folks when you buy the book find the work you're wired to do it comes with the career assessment a code to take the career assessment on our website and it's it really gives you insight so i think it's going to help you a ton, James.

And I think it's going, my opinion is, and you can call me back and tell me I'm crazy later. It might tell you something else. It might tell you to be an artist. But I think it's going to tell you you're doing the right thing in the wrong place. All right. Well, I hope that it gives me some direction.

I really appreciate that information and those thoughts. Sure. I'll send that information and those thoughts. Sure. I'll send that to you. You hang on, and the team will pick up, and we will get you signed up just for that. So I get the sense that James does not suddenly hate numbers. I don't think so. There's many applications that you can do the same skill set. I'm a version of that.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. We never would have thought the lady on the cruise ship stage is going to end up a Ramsey personality, but both of them have microphones. It's the same skill set. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. We're glad you're here.

Hey, Rachel Cruz's second kid's book, I'm Glad for Where I Am, is available today. It is book launch day. That's right. Rachel has an exceptional gift of storytelling that both parents and kids enjoy. These illustrations bring the adventure to life. It's the perfect gift for kids. I'm glad for what I have. The first book was about contentment versus entitlement.

I'm glad for where I am teaches you about gratitude, particularly about home. And I'm glad for what I have, and I'm glad for where I am. We're both in our store. You can order your copy at ramseysolutions.com. And Rachel's going to be out and about tomorrow. She'll be in Phoenix signing books. And on April 17th in Los Angeles, the next day, April 18th. And Dallas, April 17th in Los Angeles. The next day, April the 18th.

And Dallas, April the 20th. The following week in Atlanta on April the 27th. So do a little story time, read the books, read the book and bring the kiddos out and get the book signed. These books are the first one to hit the children's number one bestseller list. Number one on the children's bestseller list. I'm trying to get that right out of my mouth and um this one will too they are they're fabulous i've already

been reading them to the grandkids of course i've got an inside track on this and so the grandbabies love it the ramsey grandbabies endorse rachel's book i'm just saying so uh good stuff. And the book is I'm Glad for Where I Am. And if you can teach kiddos gratitude, you can teach them contentment in a world gone crazy. Grateful people, content people are peaceful, highly attractive people. And that's what you want your kids to grow up to be. Yeah. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh is my co-host. Aaron is in Des Moines. Hi, Aaron. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? I am. So I just have a couple of questions for you. I'm around $785,000 in debt, and I have an idea of how to tackle it, but my wife is on board with my idea. So I just wanted to give you our advice on how to tackle this and what you would do in my situation. Is that including a house? It is. So it's a primary that I owe $450,000 on. And I have a secondary house that we moved. It was our primary. So we're still within that window of capital gains we were to sell, but I owe $192,000 on that one.

What's it worth? It's worth about $325. Okay, and what's the $450, the house you owe $450, what's it worth? Around $490. We just bought it less than a year ago. So you've got $200, $650, which leaves $135 in other debt. What is that? Yeah, so two of them are vehicles. About 40,000 of it is our vehicles, one for me and one for my wife. About 15,000 is personal debt, six of it's a credit card, and nine of it is a personal loan, and 29,000 on a student loan. Yeah, you guys are seriously broke. What do y'all make?

Yeah, we are combined. So my wife is a stay-at-home mom, but I make my base salary, my W-2, is $175,000, and I have about $20,000 in gross rental income from that first property. Okay, so you make about $200 a year? Yes. Okay, and why can about $200 a year? Yes. Okay.

And why can't you all live on that? Well, I think it's lifestyle grief because it's, you know, less than a year ago my salary doubled, and I think we just kind of went crazy. So what is it you're wanting to do that your wife is not in tune with? So I'm wanting to sell that rental property before the capital gains becomes an issue. Use that to clear out all of our consumer debt and then just start tackling our primary mortgage with the snowball. Why doesn't she want to do that?

Well, it's next to some relatives. Well, it's next to some relatives. Our primary home is next to some relatives. Who are the some relatives? Her parents? No, they're my brother and his wife, and they're pretty close. His wife and her are pretty close. So that means you have to own a rental property next door? That's kind of where I'm at with this whole thing well what does she say what is is that the reason it's a safety net

really because this is a we just picked up how is it a safety net you guys are freaking broke yeah that's really what i'm trying to get across to her. Has she seen the numbers? Have you laid out the way you just laid it out with us? Have you sat and said, look, honey, here's where we're at. Have you guys done that? You know, we have. Her and I both come from traditional backgrounds of living on consumer debt with our families. And her idea of never being in debt is just that it's not possible to do.

And, you know, after finding... Well, it's pretty possible if you sell the rental house. Why is it not possible? Of course it's possible. It's just you don't want to do it. One of the crutches is that 2.5% interest rate that we have on that thing, and it's just... Yeah, which is such a blessing because y'all are freaking starving to death making 200,000

bucks and spending like you're in congress i mean i think i think you have a pretty serious level of denial going on inside your household here that i'm a lot more upset about than you are. Yeah, well, that's the thing. We grew together. We went from having nothing to where we're at today. To having a negative net worth, yeah. Yeah, you're exactly right. Making more money than you ever made in your life and you're more broke than you ever been in your life

because you want to own a rental property next door to your brother-in-law. No thanks. We talked about this earlier, about the idea that real estate's not always a good thing it's not a good thing and this is not well no what's going on here is there is zero control on spending in this house and uh that's what's really going on that's the core of this is that okay now we're going to admit we bought cars we can't afford we've been taking vacations we couldn't afford and we've been buying crap on amazon that we can't afford and so we got credit card debt and personal loans coming out our ears and two car payments and we make two hundred thousand dollars a year so i i aaron i i don't think this is a financial problem i think this

is a denial problem and i think the two of you need to sit down and you need probably if I'm in your situation, I'm going to go, honey, look, I can't live like this. This is ridiculous. I'm working my butt off and we're going backward because you won't sit down and look and deal with our spending, our overspending. And I'm willing to work on it. I'm willing to do the sacrificing to win. I am not willing to live like this just because your parents live broke and your brother-in-law lives broke and everybody else lives broke paycheck to paycheck, making $200,000 a year. I don't want to live like that. I'm not going to live like that. So we're getting ready to do something different around here. And, you know, that's how it's going to sound at our house.

And so and if we can't come to, you know, some kind of agreement where we start acting like adults and living on less than we make and making adult decisions about our future, then we've got real serious marriage issues and we need to sit down with marriage counselor. Yeah. I mean, I just I'm'm detecting that at least the wife sounds like she's got these status symbols in place. Oh, we make $200,000. We need to be able to show everybody that we're making this money and it's with the cars and the being able to buy what you want on the credit cards and having the second rental property.

And how will it look to other people if we start to downsize and we start to cut back in areas? And it shows and i think people are very afraid of those changes showing you really got to watch out calling this show when jade's here because she'll just read your mail you just nailed that that's exactly what's going on it's yeah she really cares about what people and here's the thing you're gonna be broke your whole life you're gonna work your whole life and be broke when you do that not not just aaron but anybody who's following this plan because if you one of the benefits of going broke is when i went broke is

i lost my need to make you people happy if you know what i drove today a really nice car you know why i drove it's because what i want to drive i don't care if any of you know I've got it or see it. I enjoy driving the freaking car. It's none of your dadgum business. I used to, when I was an immature little twit, drove a car because I wanted people to see me driving that car. There's a lot of difference. And one will make you broke and one will make you rich. Not caring what people think is a superpower. Man, it's right next to common sense. It's like the whole council of superpowers right there. This is The Ramsey Show.

Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thanks for being with us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Carmen is in Clarksville. Hi, Carmen. How are you? I'm great. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? We just have a quick question. We are going to be selling a rental property that we own in a different state than where we currently reside, and we're going to be getting a pretty decent size net profit off of that. Cool. How much do you know? We think between like 200 and 250 based off current estimations. Yeah, we're pretty excited about that.

And we were just curious what the Ramsey principle thing to do with it would be. Well, what baby step are you on? So I'm terrible about keeping track. I think it's like five, six and seven. So we have four, five and six. Okay. So I'm terrible about keeping track. I think it's like five, six, and seven. So we have, sorry, four, five, and six. We have no debt except the house that we'll be selling has a mortgage still. Our primary home we're living in currently has a mortgage, but no debt outside of that. What's the balance on your mortgage? That we currently live in, our primary home?

Yes. About $320,000, $325,000. Okay. But like through our wrench in things, this home will not be a long-term play for us. My husband is active duty military and we will be leaving this house in probably like one to three years, which kind of made me more cautious

of putting that money toward this property and wondering if there might be a better play with it since it's more short-term. What's your interest rate? It's pretty high, 5, 6, 7, 5. We've only been here just about two years, so we bought peak price, peak interest rate. Okay, so what is the risk of making 5% on your money by putting it on your mortgage? I guess nothing.

Yes, there is no risk there. Because, I mean, when you sell the house, you're going to get the money back, right? Yeah. You're not spending it. When we leave here, we'll be looking at, like, moving back to where our families are from. Yeah, and you would sell the house. We didn't know if, yes. And so the house is if yes and so you and the house the

house is worth the house is worth about what now probably what we paid if we're lucky probably still 335 345 okay and so when you sell it if it's worth 402 years or 450 you're going to get 450 minus selling expenses if it's paid off by then. Yes. And you take that half a million and go start your next life after military. Okay. Thanks for your service, by the way. Do you still put it toward this house? I think I would, yeah.

Now, is there any, I mean, are either of you driving a junk car? Is there a kid getting ready to go to college? Is there a little bit of light renovation? Is there something we need to do while we're in baby steps four five six that with some of this money and not put it all on the house emergency funds good right yes okay yeah yeah i mean we both drive older paid for cars but that are well cared for and well maintained. So we don't... So you don't think in the next 12, 14 months you're going to be buying a car?

Oh, no. Okay. All right. And our kids are young, five and eight, so our kids are little. And you're putting aside a little bit each month for college? We are not much because they will each be getting half of my husband's GI bill. He's not using it for himself. He's using military tuition assistance.

So half of their college will be paid for already. On the next move, I said post-military. On the next move, will he be retiring or will it just be another move? No, it will hopefully be retiring. It will either be standard retirement or medical retirement depending on the timeline. Okay. All right. Okay.

Because he's approaching his 20-year then. Correct. Yeah. He's at like 16 and a half now. Okay. All right. Okay. Because he's approaching his 20-year then. Correct, yeah. He's at like 16 1⁄2 now. Okay. Yeah. You'd like to ride that out and get that 20-year coin for sure. That's the goal we are hoping. Yeah, that's cool.

Well, thank you again for your service and for your no-nonsense assessment of this. So I'm probably going to set a little bit of this aside not a ton for just enjoyment okay like y'all take a trip or you buy yourself something that y'all have been wanting um a little bit of a splurge not a fifty thousand dollar splurge but a five or a ten okay and then i'm gonna throw the rest of it at the mortgage if it's me. And then I'm going to start going, hey, that mortgage is now in reach. Let's start thinking about in our budget finishing that puppy off. Yeah, I think that's going to serve as a big motivator. Because now you can kind of see the end of the finish line,

and it's easier to run when you see the end. Carrie's with us in Eugene, Oregon. Hi, Carrie, how are you? Hi, thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, I am about to change jobs temporarily, and I'm trying to decide do I move my $180,000 from my current 401k

to my new employer or roll it into an IRA? Never. Always roll it to an IRA. Okay. Because you've got 8,000 mutual funds to choose from, literally. Exactly, yeah. And your current 401K at your new job is going to have 12 or 14. Exactly.

So part two of that question is 401K at the new job, knowing that I'm only going to be there two to three years while I finish my master's program do i do the employer match yes or or or do i bump it up to max contributions well i've maxed it if you are you out of debt yeah we have uh my husband and i make really good money uh we have a house loan and other than that we're debt free um great cars all the good stuff paying for college cash um but way to go i don't know whether i should 100 a lot of things to you well i mean before we got married we completed

your course because we wanted to do this right yeah i mean you're going up to 15 and you're starting with your match it sounds like you might make more than a roth ira am i right yeah okay yeah yeah max it out max what you can out and then you can do that if you got a roth 401k at the new place yeah is it so so is that what i should do then yes yes take a take a take roth everything that you can and um and uh on the new stuff not the not the rollover the rollover is traditional to traditional okay the 180 because i don't want that to become taxable right now but yeah i'd max out that roth and um especially if you can get it with a match. And, yeah, you're just going to end up with an extra pile of money there that you move when you leave that job. Yeah, so when I leave that job, my career will most likely be self-employed.

And so that's where I'm trying to kind of get that IRA established because I think that's where my best retirement is going to be if I've understood correctly. I'm sorry, your best retirement is where? You can do all kinds of stuff when you're self-employed. My IRA. Okay, well, maybe that's another call then. Okay, your rollover IRA you won't be adding anything to.

You'll be opening a new one when you're self-employed. But it can be in the same mutual funds with the same broker. Get a SmartVestor Pro to help you do all this. Just click at RamseySolutions.com. Find the SmartVestor Pro in your area. Sit down. They'll help you arrange all this stuff. So what you're going to end up with is the 0401K rolling over to an IRA.

You're going to open a new Roth 401K with a match, we hope, at the new place. When you leave there, you're going to roll it to a Roth. So you'll have those two accounts with account numbers on them. And then when you're self-employed, you can start doing traditional, I mean, you can do regular Roths and you can either do a SEP or a simple IRA for your self-employed company, whichever one you want to do. And you can look at all of that at that time. But yeah, you can do all kinds of stuff when you're self-employed to do the same exact,

have the same approach as your, only difference is if you match, you match yourself. That's right. That's the only difference. So other than that, you're in great shape. Carrie, you're doing really good stuff. Very good. She's killing it.

Yeah, asking the right questions. Yeah. Moving in the right way. So here's the thing. Always when you leave your company, folks, always roll your 401k to an IRA, not to the new company's 401k because you have more options. You're sitting with your SmartVestor Pro. You've got an account. You're now managing your wealth away from work. Right. And it's a transfer, direct transfer. It's not you pulling it out and then putting it into. It's a rollover.

It's a direct transfer rollover. That's a good point. Yeah. And so what Jade is talking about is make sure the money is sent straight to the mutual fund, not to your house. Because you don't want them withholding on it. I want to put the whole thing in there. And that's the route to go this is the ramsey show our scripture of the day philippians 1 6 god who began the good work within you will continue his work until it is finally finished john wooden, what is right is more important than who is right.

Ooh, that'll work. Todd is with us. Todd's in Philadelphia. Hi, Todd. How are you? Hi, I'm doing well. How are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? So I got a question on what to do with some proceeds from a life insurance policy. This is from my late life's estate, and I got a bunch of money. I put it in a CD last year to kind of hide it from myself, and the CD is maturing in May. I'm trying to figure out if I should use it to pay off the mortgage or to save it, use it for, you know, sometimes for my kids' education or something else for my children.

Wow. So she's been gone since May? Since May, yes. I'm sorry. What happened? I'm sorry. Since June, since June. Yeah.

What happened? I'm sorry. She had leukemia. It happened very, very quickly. Yeah. How old was she? 53 years old. Wow. I'm sorry. She had leukemia. It happened very, very quickly. How old was she? 53 years old. Wow.

And how much money is in there, Todd? There's $180,000 left. Okay. All right. And what are your options? What are you considering doing with the money? So I have $145,000 left on the mortgage. I figured I could pay it off and be done with it, and that's the only debt I have.

Another is to say keep it. My youngest is still in high school. I put him through college. I might need that. I might not. I would just do something with it for the kids somehow. What do you make?

Do I make? Mm-hmm. About $200 a year. All right. So if I understand, you have $180, you owe $145, so if you paid off the mortgage, you have $35 left, plus you make $000 a year to get the youngest through college. Yes, and I'll have a good big save for him, too. I just don't know how much this is going to cost, right?

Well, I do. It's going to cost $35,000 plus whatever you can come up with out of your budget. That's what it's going to cost. That's where he's going to go to school. We're going to go to school we can afford to go to. That would be nice. No no it's not nice it's it's what we're going to do it's my money so okay that's how this works if you want my money you're going to go where i want you to go to school so um i mean we'll talk about it and we can pick a school but we're probably going to a state school which is fine by the way um yeah because we didn't do this with our daughter, you know, but I get it.

The situation has different now. Hey, Todd, your phone is awfully muffled. Can you speak directly into it? I'm having trouble hearing you. Yes, I am. I'm sorry. Thank you. Okay.

Yeah, we didn't do that with our daughter. We kind of let her pick her place, but I recognize the situation is different now. Yeah. So is she out of school? She has one more year, but I can handle that. I already have something for that. And how old is the youngest? What year of high school?

He's 16 years old, junior. Okay. So he's got senior while he's finishing up his junior while your daughter's finishing up her senior year of college. I know they're both juniors, so one in high school, one in college. Okay, so they're both going to be seniors at the same time then, so you're not going to really get a break. You're going to go from one to the other. No, I'm not. You're correct.

Okay, I'm catching on. Okay, and how expensive was her school? It's $80 a year and no aid. Okay. And you cash flowed all that? We did. Wow. We did.

My wife, Sharon, handled all the finances. She did a wonderful job. Okay. Well, I mean, if you make $200 a year and you don't have any debts, including a mortgage, you can probably pull off just about whatever you want. However, you want to prioritize your personal cash flow towards your youngest college. That'll be up to you, plus or minus $35,000. Do you have any other money saved? Yes, I do. I do. How much? Probably about, let's say, $350,000, $360,000. And that's not retirement savings, right?

It is not retirement savings. Okay. So a junior can go to school wherever he wants if you're willing to part with some of that money. You can, yes. Okay. So that's a value judgment you make. It's a decision you make. So knowing that we have all of that, that further ensures that we're going to pay off the house. Yeah, I'm thinking that way,

and I figured you guys were going to say that. You got $500,000. Yes. You have $500,000. You only owe $140,000 on your house. So it's a no-brainer. Pay it off. Okay. I think that's a good idea.

I'm going to lean in that way. Yeah. And here's the thing. You've been through a terrible time, and what is hard to anticipate until you've been there, not because I've been there, is that it's not even in the same category as the stuff you went through with your wife,

but paying off the house is going to give you a, you're physically going to feel peace from getting rid of that mortgage because extra weight, even though it's not that much compared to what you make, because you've been through so much and you all have had so much pain and grief, and now when that is cleared, there's a cleanliness to that and a spirit, and you're going to feel it. I promise.

I think you're going to be sitting on the back porch having a cup of coffee and you're going to be going wow i did not see that coming yeah i haven't had that in a while yeah yeah and just you know you take your shoes off walk through the backyard the grass feels different when you own it when it's paid for and and it's particularly highlighted in a highly uh emotionally charged situation like what they've been through there i would i would imagine it gives a sense of closure you started this journey with someone and that included buying a home and this is the place that we live and i think that i would imagine that paying it off would give a sense of closure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And it does. And here's the thing. He said his wife Sharon's good with money. I can imagine that she's in heaven smiling. The house is being paid off. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she would want him to have ultimate peace, as much peace as you can have here on earth.

Exactly. And in that situation, that's the way to go. Andre is in Seattle. Hey Andre what's up? Hi Mr. Ramsey, I had a quick question for you. Okay. Kind of get the feeling and I know what you're gonna say but wanting to confirm. I think I'm broke, but kind of an interesting situation. So anyway, I have about $205,000-ish of bad debt, not including mortgages. And about $64,000 of that, $65,000 as cars, $55,000 as a loan uh to my father-in-law and another 64 something on credit cards and about 20 for the andre i don't want to be rude but i'm really short on time real quick what's your question quick question so um my accountant is saying that um i need to rent out

the current place i live right now at least two months out of the year so he can do a cost segregation study and save me about $20,000 a year for next year's taxes. My question is, do I buy it? Oh. Yeah. When a tax advisor starts giving you economic, bad financial advice just to save on taxes, that means you need to fire them. And so, yeah, you need a new accountant to you need to sell that house dude you're so deep in debt you can't breathe i think i'm broke and my accountant is telling me to be in the rental business terrible to save 20 000

yeah get a new get it get get smiles so folks that a hundred percent of the time i see people do something solely for tax reasons and don't and they ignore the economic and the personal finance implications of it um it's always a bad move because i hate taxes as bad as anybody else but i don't want to trade dollars for quarters and a lot of the tax advice is you're getting a write-off and you're trading dollars for quarters meanwhile the guy can't breathe. He's got $200,000 in debt and this stupid accountant is saying keep a rental property. God, that's dumb. Yeah, get a new CPA.

That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the book. So we'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey guys, I'm Rachel. And I'm George. And you've probably heard our voices before on The Ramsey Show. And do we have a surprise for you. Yep, we have our very own show, Smart Money Happy Hour,

where we talk about pop culture, current events, and of course, money. George, it's a great show. And what else do we talk about? So much, Rachel. Not enough. And yet too much. We talk about guilt tipping because tipping is out of control and I won't stand for it anymore, which is why I'm sitting. I'm glad you're taking such a stand. And we also talk about something else I'm passionate about, Disney adults. Oh, George. Why is it a thing? Listen, some adults still find the magic. Sure.

We also talk about toxic money traits and girl math. And if you don't know what those are, you have to listen to the podcast. Yeah, there's a lot there, you guys. It's pretty fun. We keep you relevant is what I'm trying to say. We help you out. So pull up a chair to the happy hour you wish your friends were having. We promise you won't regret it. And if you don't have friends, we'll be your friends.

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