The Ramsey Show - Today's Habits Create Tomorrow's Progress

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

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Brought to you by the every dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel here with Jade Warshaw. Taking your calls at AAA 825-5-225. We'll try to help you take the right next step.

Your life and your money. Sarah is up in New York City. What's going on, Sarah? Hi, thank you for taking my call. Absolutely. My question is my parents, they're pressuring me to sign a $250,000 helock, and I feel very uncomfortable doing it. You should?

Yeah, they already owe me $20,000. Oh, man. So they went, hey, Bank of Sarah hooked us up last time. Let's try to 10x our loan. Why is this even a conversation? Why is this even gone beyond the point of an immediate no? honestly they cannot pay their debts and I'm very worried for my little siblings okay because the siblings are living with them you are not yes no I'm also living with them

as well oh how old are you very hectic I'm 23 okay and how old are the siblings they're 14 and 8 okay 14 and 8 and is the he lock you said they can't pay their debt so is the heloc supposed to be used to pay the debts? Is that the point? Yes, but the thing is, another twist. They already took a helock on our primary home. They want to take a helock out on their rental property. Oh, boy. What's the rental property worth? It's worth about $950,000. And what do they owe? They owe $250,000. So they got $700,000 sitting in equity in that thing? Yes, but why not sell it? They refuse. I guess they want to keep it in the family, but

there's not going to be anything to keep in the family if they keep this up. They're going to he lock their way into oblivion to where there's no equity anywhere. And they're going to be forced to sell it one day. So no. The easy answer is you get to say no. Go back to the kids, though. When you say you're worried about them in your mind, what do you think is going to happen? I'm worried that there's not going to be any money left for them.

Like as far as inheritance? Closed on. Yeah. And then I also think, I feel like the primary house is going to get foreclosed on because they have no cash. But they do have, here's the problem. What you're saying is likely true. Maybe they will get foreclosed on. Maybe they will destroy any inheritance or anything like that over the course of time. All those things are very possible. So hear me say that. Because if they don't change course, yeah, they're really setting that path for themselves very clearly. inheritance is the last thing I'm worried about. Yeah, and the truth is if they do foreclose, the truth is they do have some assets here that they have at their disposal if they choose to do so. The hard part here is these are grown adults who are going to make their own choices. And the hard part is you just having to sit back and watch despite them maybe having some better, you know, advice, them not taking the advice. That's the hard part.

If you had told me, hey, I'm really worried that the kids aren't having food at night or they're, you know, the lights are. getting cut off and things like that. I think we'd be in a different discussion right now. But if truly your only worry is, gosh, when we become adults, there's not going to be any inheritance. I don't know that there's much you can do to stop that. Yeah, that's true. I also, I feel like the lights might come off because my parents, they don't work. They're both retired and they don't have any cash at all. Well, you're there. Are you there staying rent-free or what's your deal being there? No, I give them $1,000 every month.

So why don't you, let me say this, instead of you giving them $1,000 in cash, why don't you say, I will pay the utilities, if I'm going to be there, I'm going to pay the water so that you know that those things stay on and, you know, maybe the other bits you pay groceries or whatever it is that you're doing. But in this case, I would be hard pressed to be handing somebody my money in cash, hoping that they're doing the right thing with it, which is keeping the utilities in the place that I'm living. If your family's livelihood is at stake, you need to get involved, and that does not mean you need to loan the money. It needs you need to be involved with the budget and paying the bills, and you might need to take responsibility because these grown adults have chosen not to.

Why are you living there? Well, I still have like one more class left for college, so I was going to take that class. And then in December, I was thinking about moving. I have about $60,000 saved. You want to know what? You want to know what I think? I think that dysfunction is magnetic. And it has a way of pulling us in and pulling us and not just physically, but even mental.

When you're around dysfunction, before you know it, you're starting to act in dysfunctional ways and you're starting to consider doing things that you know are dysfunctional. It's like a vortex you get sucked into. Like the fact that you're even calling us concerned about what do I do here lets me know, man, this dysfunction is really having a pull on you. I think I'd get the heck out of that situation. And it's not to say you don't talk to them or see them or interact with them. I'm not saying cut them off by any means.

I'm just saying you've got money. You're 23 years old. You're grown. Go and start your life and start on a healthy path. I agree. So they have a thousand bucks coming in from you. They have rental property money coming in. I assume they have Social Security.

Any other sources of income? No. Oh, they also have another rental property. as well. Where's all their money going? Bills, they're backed up on everything. So it's all going to bad debts they're trying to keep up with? Yeah, he has about, I think, 100,000 in credit card debt. How old are they? My dad's 70 and my mom's 50. Okay, so older parents. Can she work? I think she's going to start working. She never worked before, but she's going to start. She's going to have to get a job. No time like the present. So how much debt do they have total? Do you know?

between all the T-locks and consumer debts? I think about 800,000. Okay. And they have at least 700 locked up in this rental property, number one. What's the second property worth and what is owed on it? That's debt-free. They don't owe anything, but it's worth about $400,000. Okay.

So they have $1.1 million that they have access to if they chose to sell one of these properties or both of them. They're not in the red. They just have a lot of risk in their life. Yeah. That's true. So you can show them that. Hey, Mom and Dad, I'm not going to co-sign anything. But what I can't help you do is come up with a plan to get out of this if you're willing to listen to me. If you don't want my advice, fine, but that's all I'm able to help with at this point of my life.

That's true. I'm also afraid that they're not going, not going to pay me back. They're not. They're not going to pay you back. Certainly they're not. Yeah. If they do, I will be shook. Because they said they would. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's your parents, you know, I would think they would pay you back. It's not about that. It's you can tell by people's patterns of behavior what they're most likely to do.

I'm sure they want to pay you back. I'm sure somewhere deep in their heart, they feel for you going, man, we really need to get her money back. But they've got a thousand things going on. And you might get it back in inheritance one day. But at this point, there's still a lot of life to live for these kids and for your mom and for your dad. So in the meantime, we need to clean this mess up. And you might need to show them how bad this really is. And that dead is not the answer because it got us where we are today. Another heloc isn't going to solve anything, is it? It's all about the behavior that got us here.

And they're not willing to change that. And you can't change them. No, you can't change them. Yeah, you can't change them. And I think you need to move out. I go back to my point. If I'm you, this weekend, that's my fun. I'm going out and I'm apartment hunting.

You've got $60,000 saved, which is amazing. Go put it to good use. Oh, parents, please do not put your kid in this position. This is abuse on several levels. Hey guys, it's Rachel Cruz. If you're working the baby steps, every major expense deserves a second look. And health care is one of the biggest expenses in most families' budgets. And that is why I recommend that you check out Christian health care ministries.

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And your monthly cost isn't based on your medical history or where you live. Y'all, a lot of families find CHM gives them more real. in the budget. That's why so many members say they're better with CHM. And right now, new members can receive a 50% credit towards their first month of membership. Go to CHministries.org slash budget and use promo code Ramsey. That's CHministries.org slash budget and promo code Ramsey. Lauren is in Salt Lake City up next. What's going on, Lauren? How can we help today? Hi, my name's Lauren. I'm working at a job at a company that I don't respect how they have treated myself and some of the employees, but I'm under a service-based repayment through a health grant to the government.

And so they paid for all of my school and all the same time while I was in school. And so now I have a period of commitment time. And if I don't fulfill that commitment, I would owe back three times to the government what was paid. Wow. How many times? Yeah. What was paid? And so they initially paid around 280,000.

And so if I don't fulfill it, then I would owe back basically a million dollars. So I don't technically have any loans per se that I'm paying. But if I don't fulfill the commitment, then I would have to pay it back. I've never heard of such a thing. Have you, George? Not three times the amount. And you're positive? I'm not sure about all the fine print here.

You're saying that you would owe them like $900,000 if you quit today. Yes. So it's really scary. What if you get fired? Yeah. So if I get fired, I'd have up to six months to find a job or I'd get placed at another health site. What's wrong with that? Not necessarily anything wrong.

It just would require me to move. So there's no other, they have kind of certain scores. And so the nearest site to me is about nine hours away. But it's not the job. It's the location, right? You said it's a toxic environment. Yeah, it's a toxic work environment. Is that one person or is it like this whole place is corrupt?

The whole place, yeah. There's been. That's comforting. What program is this that you studied? I'm working as a medical. it's through a medical program, but it's through like the health research. Okay. How long do you have, how long is the contract for before you're free?

So I have about a little under three years left. And if you move locations, like to Georgia's point, let's say you got fired and you move, does the term start over again? Or are you able to, you know, do your time, the rest of your time in the other location? So I can do the rest of my time and other location. I think the part that my husband and I have been torn about is just that we have family where we're at

and it would require us to sell our housing and kind of sort of earn that in financially. But isn't that the least of your problems? Because when you called in, you said, I hate my job, but the problem is, if I leave, I owe 3x the salary. So that means let's pretend that wasn't the case. Let's just pretend you hated your job

and you wanted to leave. Would you still be saying, oh, well, here's the problem, you know, we have to move and, you know, housing and whatever. Do you see what I'm saying? I feel like you shifted the problem to something else just now. Yeah, I agree with you. I think I've felt pretty stuck where I'm at. Okay.

Is there a way to transfer versus having to force yourself to get fired, which sounds insane? Can you just go to leadership or is there a bigger organization that handled this program that you can go to and ask for a transfer? There is a way to transfer to another site. And so I am interviewing another site, and that's kind of part of the reason that I wanted to reach out today, is just to kind of see if that was wise. How far is that away from where you're at? It would be a little under 10 hours away. And so it would require a move, and that's actually one of the closest sites to where I'm at now.

Just trying to figure out with lots of little kids in a big move, if that makes sense, even if I'm going to come back here because my husband would also obviously lose his job here. well. It's okay so let's let's separate it out. It sounds like on the one hand what I hear is you can't stay at this job like for your own mentality. You can't stay at it. You can't afford the sole tax that is to be paid. Now what we can't do is cloud an inconvenience with keeping us in a really bad situation. Moving is inconvenient even when you want to move it's an inconvenient. So let's just put that on the shelf as being a moot point because moving is always going to be an inconvenience. So let's not let that stop us.

I think the main thing here would be your husband's job. That could be a logical thing for us to consider staying or staying closer by. What type of work does he do? Is he movable? Tell us about him. He's movable. He's also in health care. And so could get a job easily.

Okay. It's more daycare and child care. We've got three kids in daycare. So lots of movement there. And that's okay. You can do that. If I could stick through here that maybe I could stay at home at the end of it. We don't know the environment you're talking about, so I don't know on a spectrum of my boss is annoying to I'm having a mental health crisis because of this.

I don't know where you're at. Yeah, tell us. Yeah, it's definitely more towards the latter. I've watched several of my coworkers get fired in front of me. And so it's been a really hard environment. Are they in the same program as you? What happens to them? Pretty much everyone that's in the program stays until the day they can be released in and leaves.

But you're saying they got fired. So do they have to move to a different location 10 hours away? Yes. Yeah. So co-workers that do you get fired or let go prior do you have to move? Do you think they got fired on purpose? I think it – possibly. I think a lot of it is the employer.

I've watched about 30 co-workers get fired. Then those jokers are getting fired on purpose. I think they're seeing the same thing you're doing. And the fact that no one's seeing this pattern going, hey, there's some toxic leadership here. 30 people are getting, quote, unquote, fired who are otherwise great workers. So this is a real tough situation. There's just suck on both sides of this. And so I would just try to make peace with this move and go, it's an adventure.

Yes, family's going to be further away for a couple of years. But three years from now, this is all over. And it's a good reminder that all of these programs, they sound so amazing. Like, what a blessing to have a whole program paid for that would have, cost you over a quarter million dollars. We can all agree that's awesome. The red tape on the other side and the prison sentence and handcuffs is the part that scares me with these programs. Can you afford to move? Tell us about your finances. Yeah, I think so right now we're in a really good financial position. We make about 225 combined. In our house is almost paid off here.

And so we would sell our house and we could we'd probably rent where we would go. I'm not sure that we would stay. I think the part that might be hard financially is that we would possibly be living on just my income for a while, and the rent where I'm interviewing is more expensive. Because he won't be able to find a job or what? It's probably more until we can find child care because we'd be trying to enroll. But the area, a lot of these sites are in really rural areas with not a lot of resources. Well, let's do it. Let's give you a fair order to make this move. So the first thing that you would need to do before you transfer or before you get yourself fired because you pulled the fire alarm, you need to make sure he has a new job, right? Like, that's thing one,

because you don't want to go somewhere. If you can have him locked in and you locked in, I think that's a good thing. And we can figure out child care. You've got options. You can hire a nanny for six months if you needed to. Yeah, for sure. And it'd still be worth him working. And if you know where the transfers send you, then he can start to look in those areas prior to, prior to you actually requesting the transfer or prior to you getting fired. I don't know. I'm not going to tell you to get fired on purpose. Truthfully, Lauren, I would be contacting an employment attorney. I know that's right. They're going to be looking into the fine print of this. They can read these contracts backwards and forwards and tell you what your actual options are versus just

our opinions based on hearsay. Absolutely. Because we've never seen it. Yeah. But if I'm in your shoes, I'm going to be taking the contract, uploading it to AI, talking to the employment attorney and seeing what all of my options are and this choosing one that is the sort of path of least resistance here that's going to involve the least amount of pain. But it sounds like either way, it's going to be a tough go for the next couple of years, whether you stay, whether you move. And, you know, three years, feels like a long time. And the scope of your whole life, you're going to go, man, remember that time? We had to move 10 hours away for three years? Yeah, it can feel very short too. Yeah. Oh, man. That is wild. But the bigger lesson, let's talk about the bigger lesson that might be in this

whole thing. This was golden handcuffs if I've ever seen it before. Yeah. To sign up for something. Knowing that I would have to pay three X the amount. Yes. And knowing that it was over a quarter million, which equals three times that. And you're going into the unknown. You're going into the unknown for it. Ooh, Lordy. Yeah. That's the financial equivalent of having to hand over a kidney. Oh, gosh. Don't do it. Would not recommend. Hey, George Camel here. A few years ago, someone stole my identity. And let me tell you, that is not a quick fix. It takes hours on the phone, piles of paperwork, and a whole lot of stress trying to untangle the mess. And even after that, there's this nagging paranoia because your information is already out there.

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Hi, George. Thank you for taking my call. My question is, is it worth it for me and my two siblings to fix up our mother's house? It's got a lot of foundation, plumbing, roofing, the regular issues or should we just sell it as is. What's it going to cost to get it back to a decent condition? Well, the foundation, the quote we got was $13,000. It needs 28 tiers.

But if you fix the foundation, you in turn, of course, have to do the plumbing and the windows and the roof and so forth. We're basically rebuilding this house. Pretty much. And she owes $8,000 on it because she and my dad, God love them, you know, wanted us to have these great childhood. so they just kept refinancing the house. And it's obviously very sentimental.

And every time we bring it up to her, you know, it's very emotional. But a portion of her feeling fell a couple weeks ago. And yeah, we had a contractor come by and, you know, put some plywood up. And so now, of course, mom thinks, oh, okay, this is great. It'll last another year. And I'm like, Mom, this is so unsafe. But how old is she, Mom? She's 78.

And when you've said to her, I feel like our options, Mom, or we can start to do the work on this house or we can sell it. What does she say? She says, where am I going to go if I sell it? Yeah, that's what I want to know. Well, where she would go is my sister has offered to let her live with her and her family. My husband and I have room. Or we could find her a nice little apartment where she doesn't have to stress over these issues. But it depends on the day, honestly, when I ask.

She's, um... Is she well? She just, oh, yeah. Oh, she's, she's very well. Okay. She's, uh, yes, active. Yes. But she has no money other than Social Security?

Um, she has $2,200 a month from Social Security and about $500 a month from an annuity. I started her on a budget and she's got about a $400 a month margin. I mean, she's just, yeah, she doesn't have the money to fix it. Okay. asking if we want to fix it and then we get the house when she passes. What's it worth? The value on this Dallas County Central Appraisal District is about 265 to 270. Is that if you fixed it?

Correct. That is if we fixed it. She's received a couple of, you know, these internet offers, which I tell her to stop looking at. Oh, gosh. We'll buy your house in cash today. Exactly. Exactly. What would be the as-is price?

Have you talked to a realtor about that? Well, I've talked to two of the contractors that have been out who are builders, and one of us gave us an offer of 140. Okay. So all is not lost. You could walk away from this with 120 grand probably after fees. I think that's about what I figured. I'd still have a realtor look at it and make sure,

because, I mean, that guy might have just been trying to take advantage of a situation. I'm not saying he's a bad guy, but he might. At least we have a floor. Yeah. No, someone will give you $140. Barely. So now I'm going to go, who's the highest bidder and work with a pro real estate agent who can get rid of this thing. I personally don't think it's worth all of you chipping in all of your money to hopefully get this thing back to working condition so that one day we can keep the sentimental value of this house.

Okay. I don't know who's going to want it at that point. Who's going to live there? Are you going to turn it into a rental? Because at that point, how sentimental was it? Well, it does have, she has a lot of, what am I trying to say? It's a big lot. So if a builder did tear it down, he could probably build two or three homes to corner lot.

Wow. So you might be able to get a nice offer on this thing because the land is worth more than the house that's sitting on it. That's 100%. Interesting. I don't think it's worth rebuilding. This is a lot of hassle, a lot of siblings' money tied up in this thing. Everyone's going to want to get their money back out. So now it's going to be a fight of when are we going to sell this so I can get my share out?

I think it's going to cause more familiar harm than it's going to be, you know, precious sentimental family time. Let me ask you this. Because I would wonder, these are the questions. If I were in your shoes today and I were making the decision, I would want to know exactly what the house plus the land would be worth. And I want you to really do your due diligence on that. I'd want to know with the fix and without the fix.

And then take that margin between the two amounts and go, okay, how much money do we truly have to invest into this? and if it really is a fraction of the amount that you would bank off of getting it fixed, then I'd be asking myself the question, can I do this in cash? Do I need to even include the siblings? Because that might make it easier. And to just know, hey, later on, I'm getting my, this is what I put in, I'm getting that money out plus whatever our split is or whatever.

And maybe not involve as many people. Because if there's a, if you find that there's a lot of money that's going to be left on the table, there might be something that's worth doing in cash if you can afford it. Now, if you can't afford any of this, it's a moot point. Well, between the three of us, we can afford to do it. My brother has expressed interest in buying the house, but my point to him, well, if we fix this house up, then I want my money out.

If you get this house, I want my money back. I just called it. I knew this would happen, Chris. This is what happens when siblings get involved financially, but now there's so much emotion wrapped up in it and what would mom want so because of that and here's the problem you might put a hundred grand into this and some builder comes along couldn't give a rip about it he's going to tear it down anyways so you don't ROI on it he probably would have given you the same offer if you had done nothing to it so that's why i would do all of my homework like jade said figure out here's what it would truly cost to rebuild here's what we could then get for it here's what a builder would be willing to pay for it here's where we're going to put mom here's where we're going to put her money and to afford that and come up with a game plan altogether as siblings. Okay. The harder part, of course, is the sentimental part of it.

It's just hard for her to do that, and that's emotional, and that's something we have to work with her on. So, you know, as they get older, they have their routine. They know where everything is, and they like what they do, and they don't want to change anything. Just imagine, though, she's in a place where the roof isn't about to fall on her. That's pretty comforting. She says, God will provide, and I'm like, Mom, God provided you a sign by having the roof

cave in. It's time to go. It's the ceiling. It's time to go. And she just says, we'll keep praying on it. But I love her. But sometimes God provides with wise counsel to avoid us bringing harm to ourselves. So it looks a lot of different ways. So that's, I can't help you convince a 78-year-old woman to let go of a home. That's beyond me. But I think what you can do is show her all the facts and say, hey, mom, we're not going to put all this money in to fix it up. And here's what we can get for it. Here's what we're going to do with that money. We found you an awesome place. let's go check it out together or you're going to go live with, you know, one of the siblings. And she's going to have to make peace with that because this is the life she's built for herself. I will say I do want to add to that part. I think you, the siblings do have to be careful. So let's say you sell the place as is. That's her money.

And so taking that, what I want to make sure it doesn't happen is, well, we want to preserve as much as this money as possible. So let mom go live with sister. And that way we don't have to spend money on an apartment or something like that. I don't want you guys to be thinking too much about what it is that you want out of this deal. I want you to be thinking a lot about what really will be good for your mom, for her to keep having independence, for her to feel good about her day-to-day life. Because the truth is, today it is her money if you guys have not fixed the house, right? Whatever equity is there is hers. So just keep that first and foremost and don't spend the money before it's yours, if that makes sense.

It does. Thank you both so much. I really appreciate the insight. Absolutely. That's a sticky situation. Yeah, that's not easy. I can't imagine. But there is a piece of this, too,

if you've got to think about long-term care expenses. You know, if she's in her 80s and she needs medical attention and we need to put her in assisted living, that could cost you $100 grand a year. And someone's going to have to pay for that. Yeah, that is a good point, too, George. And so we need to be thinking about what assets do we have at our disposal to make sure that we can take care of her in the best way possible.

Maybe they want private in-home care. Yeah. That's going to cost a lot of money too. And so I like the idea of selling this thing, getting a whole bunch of money out that is now, let's give her the best life possible, instead of having her sitting in this place that's literally falling apart. It's dangerous where she's at. It sounds like it is. Yeah, I'm going to go. The memories I will carry with me. It's not in the studs of the walls. It's in our hearts. And that's a hard thing to sell to a 78-old woman who's this has been her whole life. Yeah, yep, yeah. But she don't have any money. It's tough.

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What's going on, Gigi? Hi, thank you for taking my call. Absolutely. How can we help? So I'm a 20-year-old college student, and I was just wondering, how much should I have in my personal savings account before I start putting it into a high-old savings or mutual fund? You are the most mature 20-year-old I've talked to in a long time. Congratulations. You won the prize. That's awesome. How much do you have in savings? About 7,000 right now. Wow. Awesome. Are you debt-free? Yes, I am.

Fantastic. Well, you're doing better than 99.9% of America at 20. Let's keep it that way. For real. So we always recommend having a three to six month emergency fund of your expenses, not income. And so once you have that, anything beyond that, I would utilize towards either short-term goals, sinking funds, or investing. Okay. So how much are your expenses per month right now? Right now, like probably 250.

Dollars? Dollars, yeah. How are you doing this? You live on campus? Yeah, I'm on a scholarship. and everything is paid for. It's a full ride. That's so awesome. Wow. So are you smart or talented or both?

How do you get this full ride? I'm a golf caddy, and there's this scholarship that Evans Foundation, and they pay to send his own-deserved in caddies to school. So I caddied my whole life, and I got it. That's amazing. That's really great. So how much time do you have left in school? Two years, and after school I'm hoping to get a job, obviously.

but, you know, I don't know if I'm moving out of state to get an, and I need to get an apartment. Right. So I'm just to maintain, you know, enough liquidity so that I'm like, if I need a down payment or something, like, I have the ability to do that. Yeah. So that's why I, like, I don't want to put too much in an account where then I have to pay to take it out. So I just don't really know how much I should be putting in. And yeah. I really like a high yield savings for you because there are in two years you do have some real expenses.

You're going to want an apartment. So first and last month's rent is going to be there. And then suddenly what George talked about, your emergency fund is going to have to take up because, well, now you have rent and maybe, you know. It's not going to be $2.50 a month anymore. It's going to be $2,500. Exactly. And probably that $7,000 is going to be right on for what you're looking for. There might be moving costs. There might be a car upgrade. And so for that reason, for a 20-year-old who's going to graduate in two years, there's nothing wrong with just stacking it up in a high-ield savings account. Because you have so much time on your side to invest and have confidence. compound growth work in your favor. And if you start off completely debt-free with a bunch of

money in the bank making a good income, you're going to be able to invest 15% or more the rest of your life. Okay, great. Thank you. So I don't know that I would invest at this stage until you have full-time working income and you're planted somewhere. And then you'll know how to allocate that money. I've never heard someone complain that they started their adult life with too much in cash. So I'd love for you to have that problem, Gigi. Great. Great question. Way to go. Who knew a golf caddy? Full ride. I wish I had a time machine. Half the parents out there trying to get their kid to play golf. I'm like, hey, maybe you help the golfer. Maybe just be a caddy. That's the ticket right there. All right, Madison is in Atlanta, Georgia up next. What's going on, Madison?

Hey, I had a question about investing for my kids. Sure. Specifically, they have where they get, you know, they're only five and three, so they get minimal income. But they do a little flower stand. and they earn their own money. I make sure that they tied with it. And then I have been putting some of it, originally like their birthday money and stuff like that. We would put in my husband works for a employee-owned company

where they do stocks. So we were doing that. And then I started listening to you guys and realize it's not good to put all their eggs in one basket too. And so now I've gotten them like a 529. I mean, not a 529. I've gotten them at S&P 500. But I was curious if it's better to like go ahead and do them

of 529 or, I mean, I know it sounds silly, but they can even do like a raw census income as long as I don't put their birthday money in that. So I was just curious what your thoughts were in the best course of action for them. Great question. I love you're thinking about this for a five and three-year-old. A lot of parents out there struggle with this. Either they don't know what to do so they do nothing or they do the wrong thing or they try to do seven okay things. So here's how I see it. If you're looking at education, which I would be starting with, the first, 529 plan is your best bet. As far as retirement goes, it's awesome if you want to kickstart a little retirement for your kids. They should be okay if you raise them right on that regard. But school is a

much bigger price tag and it's coming much sooner than their own retirement. So most people go, well, my kid might not go to school, so let me not save anything. And now you've all this money stuck in a retirement account while your kid goes 400 grand into student loan debt. Right. Right. So I'd rather you fund the 529 first. And if they don't use it all, you can change beneficiaries at any time, you can roll over up to 35 grand over to a Roth IRA over time. So that becomes a retirement account for them, essentially, and it has way better tax advantages. Okay. And then if you put into a 529, because I haven't like looked into it in depth, because I'm just now kind of getting started and listening to you guys and all that.

If I do it a 529, am I able to like invest within the 529 or does it just get there and kind of grow? Okay. It's just like an IRA. there's going to be a bunch of options for funds there, and there's a lot of bad funds you don't want. So I would personally avoid things like bond funds, target date funds. You want to stick to 100% equities because they're young. They got a lot of time for this to grow. So let's stick with those growth stock, mutual funds and index funds.

Okay, perfect. So just chunk it all in a 529 and call it a date. And here's what I do, Madison as well. If you have the 529 on lock and you know that, hey, based on the average stock market return, we're going to have enough to cover, let's say, an in-state school for four years. If you want to save for other things, like let's say cars, wedding, a future down payment, you can use that parent taxable brokerage account to sock away money there, and that money will be super flexible. Okay, okay, gotcha.

Yeah, I know that I won't have a hold of it forever, so I just wanted to take advantage of it while they would let me use part of their money to go ahead and invest. They will. They will. Whatever toy they could have bought is that's going to be like 70X if they just let it ride in retirement. So I like there to be a split. I think it's great to teach a kid that money is an amoral tool and it has three uses. Give, save, spend. Yep, yep.

So let's teach them to do all of it. If you just teach a kid how to save, they will become a maniacal saver and have a really hard time enjoying their life. No, that's what we do with our kids. They have their chart where they can check off the chores that they've done and they get paid at the end of the week. But the rule is you can't spend your money on payday. Oh, I love that. They have to wait until the next time so that it's not like, I got my paycheck, I go spend it. And it's gone.

Yeah. It's a little delayed gratification. Uh-huh. They have to have delayed gratification. And so that's the way it works. But yeah, we teach them. They have to put 10% aside. They have a jar that they put their savings in.

They have a jar that they put their spending in. And yeah. I love it. Great question. And Madison, hang on the line. I'm going to send you a copy of Rachel and Dave's book, Smart Money, Smart Kids. It's really great to watch. walk you through sort of the age-appropriate conversations and tactical things you can do to

help your kid understand money because that's every parent's goal. Especially if you follow Rams, you're like, how do I get my kids on this? I want them to get it early. And we already got budding entrepreneurs at three years old. Oh yeah. She's got a Roth going on. I mean, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, that's so good. And it's a good reminder. If your child has legitimate earned income, we're not talking tax fraud here. That's right. But if they have a little business, let's say they do any modeling or acting, something like that, they work for, they work for. They work for your own business. You can pay them above board, and they can then invest up to that amount in the Roth IRA.

And can you imagine 60 years of compound growth from five years old to 65 years old? I know, that's right. That's pretty impressive. It wouldn't take much to cause you to be a multimillionaire. It wouldn't. And as long as you're doing that 529 first, you've kind of got both bases covered, which is really nice. And there is a new option now with these Trump accounts. They're technically called the Section 530A accounts if you want to make it A political.

but all it is the government said, hey, we're going to create these accounts so that you can invest for your kids, anyone can contribute up to five grand a year. And if your kid was born 25, 26, 27, or 2028, the government will seat it with $1,000. That's money that you didn't put in. Free money.

Just $1,000 sitting there at that age to grow into retirement. And at 18, it basically converts to a traditional IRA for the child. So it's a pretty cool thing. There's nothing bad about it. Yeah. The tax treatment is the only terrible. thing because you use after-tax dollars and you pay taxes on the way out.

But there's a cool hack that I'm exploring where you can convert from traditional to Roth. Once that kid's working at their tax rate, it'd be super cheap to convert. Now you've got tax-free money. I like how your mind works. Very nerdy, very in the weeds. And if you want more info on this, I'm going to be walking through exactly how that works in Investing Essentials. It's a virtual event.

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That's netsuite. aI slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. I'm George Camel, joined by Jade Warshaugh. Free call at AAA 825-225. Jacob is in St. Louis up next. Jacob, welcome to the show. Hey, guys.

How are you doing? Doing well. How can we help? today. Hey, so my wife and I are on Baby Step 2. We currently have 24,000 left to pay off. We've paid off 76,000 over the last 22 months. Way to go. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we've really been able to make a lot of progress. The main thing is because we've been getting free child care for our three kids. How do you do that? Family? Well, yeah. Well, my mom was a director at a preschool that was kind of part of her contract.

Oh, perfection. Yeah. So you've got a built-in blessing there. Yes, it was amazing, and we made the most of it. So the bummer is that kind of ended. So coming into the fall now, we're going to be paying for child care. So it's going to cost us about $2,400 per month, and that is eating up pretty much all of our margin.

And it's really slowing down the snowball here. I bet. Yeah. No joke. Is that for all three kids or is that two that are in daycare? So, yeah, actually, yeah. So our oldest is starting kindergarten in the fall. So it's going to be for two kids.

Okay. And I mean, that's a fair price just for anybody listening. You can easily pay $1,300, $1,300, even $1,400, depending on the age. If it's the younger, the younger they are, the more expensive they are, it can be up to $1,500. That's the going rate, unfortunately. So what is your after-tax monthly take-home pay? After tax, it's about $9,200 a month. Okay, that's a great income.

And so you're saying your bills after daycare is paid from that $9,200 pretty much leave you with nothing left to throw extra at the debts? Yeah, yeah, we have like a margin. We went through it and laid it out. Our margins like probably about $2 to $400 right now. How much is your home payment? Our mortgage is like $27, $2,800. Okay. How much are you paying in minimum payments?

Minimum payments are, let's see, like $700, $750. That's not a lot. So I'm finding that there's still quite a bit of money here. What happens? Where's it going? Great question. I figured you'd say that because I was going through all of this. So like just our needs, like our monthly needs.

needs, excluding daycare and mortgage. I have at like 3,200. Right. And that's the chunk that I want to know more about because if you ranked them from most expensive, it would be, you know, we spend a thousand bucks on food, then we spend $800 on this. Where is that money going? Yeah. I think like food is at like $6.25 a month. Okay. So I'm showing, I'm showing that you still have $2,725 to go. Okay. And I mean, obviously, yes, you have utilities. But if you're telling me, hey, the two items that I actually thought were going to be really high, were really low. You said 625 on groceries, stupendous. You said 750s on your minimums. I mean, obviously, I wish you had no debt, but that's not that bad. Right. So there's, there's money going somewhere. I would challenge

you to look to where that is, because I think there's probably a lot of things that are nickel and diming you because generally the big ticket items, it's either the mortgage is too much, or yeah, daycare could be sucking up whatever margin you have, but I actually don't think daycare is the culprit here. Okay. Because, I mean, even after daycare is paid, you guys are taking home well above the median household income. So that's where we're going, well, there should be more, but I think this is going to take you two sitting down, doing a very detailed budget. And instead of going, let's see if there's anything left over and said, let's make a goal. Hey, we need to find two grand a month to put towards these debts with minimums plus extra two grand so that's

thirteen hundred bucks we need to find in this budget where are we going to find it and you guys take turns going all right i think i can slash this down here i can reshop insurance here oh you know what you're doing your 401k let's pause that let's get some money back in and if you start doing a budget audit and getting real creative i think you're going to find way more margin than you thought okay and i'm going to help you with that we're going to give you every dollar premium and it actually gives you personalized recommendations now based on your goals where you're at, what your actual expenses are, and we'll make those recommendations just like Jade and I would do on the show. Now, are you guys still investing? No, we did pause that. Okay, that's good. Yeah, I think it's probably

the devil's in the details, you know, it might be things that pop up that maybe you didn't budget for and you look up at the end of the month and it's like, oh gosh, we did do DoorDash or we did go to Target, do a target run, or all those little things, coffee. I'm trying to think it's the little things, maybe you have a lot of subscriptions. Do you, if you have Hulu, Netflix, Disney, Paramount Plus, Amazon Prime, Fandango, Instacart, Instacart, you just keep going. Everything's a subscription. Everything's a subscription. So my point is, I'm talking to myself because that's me. So cut half of them off and I think you'll find some money. When everything is 15, 20 bucks, you don't feel it in the moment, but it can add up. So I hope that helps you start to now.

navigate this. It's a hopeful situation because you have you have a great income. There's not a ton of debt left. You guys have made crazy progress. So I just don't want to see you lose all of that momentum just because of the child care. Now for those who are listening and maybe you don't make $9,200 a month, maybe you make somewhere around $5,600 a month. And you're like, I have kids in daycare, Jade and George. My margin. And the truth is daycare, I do feel like sometimes the baby steps can really be impeded by seasons. If you're in a daycare season and you're not making, you know, maybe you're making the average income,

you're going to feel that stupendously. And you're probably going to be a person who has to go out and side hustle and supplement your income in order to make that work. But the good news is, and if you've ever stopped to think about it, George, the good news is if you can pay for daycare with two kids, you can pay for college when it's time. You can cash flow it. That's true.

Because it's basically the same, $36,000 a year. you know, you could go to state school. So once they're out of daycare, just reallocate that daycare payment to their future. Yes. You're basically paying for college twice. I don't know why anybody, nobody talks about that. You know, that's a life hack there. It's a life hack.

There's hope. If you can pay for daycare, you can pay for college. Jay just told you, you'll never get rid of this payment. They're like, there's hope yet. But there's truth in that. And a lot of times people do make really good money. And they go, well, I don't have any margin. And I always want, I wish I could sit down and look at their bank statement,

and look at their every dollar budget and help them. But luckily, the every dollar app now does that for them. So I always point people to that because it's such a great tool. That plus Ask Ramsey, which is our AI chatbot, if you combine those two things, you will feel like you got to raise. You could sit there for two hours and go, hey, give me more recommendations. Hey, here's how much I'm spending on groceries. How do I cut this down?

Hey, here's how much I'm spending on my utility bills. How can I get this down? And you know it's going to be through a Ramsey lens. Through the Ramsey lens. So I love that. But insurance is a sleeper. People don't realize that they're overpaying for insurance. So I always tell them to reshop using an independent broker.

And again, we have an awesome coverage checkup tool that walks you through all the ones you need, making sure you don't have too much insurance. Right. You don't want too little insurance. But a lot of people will reach out and say, oh, my goodness, I'd just save $300 a month just by reshopping because I always had whatever XYZ company for the last 10 years. And then check your Amazon. Go through there because sometimes it just becomes a catch-all and you can look at the end of the month

and just go, what have I done? What have I done? It's like the little sticker on the gas station pump. I did that. Yeah. It's your own face pointing at your Amazon account going, how did we spend $2,000 on Amazon? How much of that did we need? And how much of it was just retail therapy after the kids went down?

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Hey, George, Jay, thanks for having me on. I'll get straight to the point. So my wife and I, we bought a house about four years ago. And since then I started listening to the show a lot more and where you talk about buying a house on a 15-year fixed at no more than 25% of your take-home. Well, ours is a 30-year fixed. And it's about close to 40% of our take-home. And the question I have is, would it be? wise to look to downsize from our current home, even though interest rates have risen since we bought

our house, or should I try to find more work to bring up our income? I don't know. If you have any advice on a good approach for that. I'm glad that you're realizing the problem that this is. If you said to us, I see a long-term play where my income can go up and it will stay up, there might be a way to keep this if that's happening in the near future. But what I wouldn't want you get sucked to get sucked into is maybe I can side hustle my way out of this because side hustles are temporary fixes. Like temporary fixes. And so that's kind of where the rubber meets the road on this. Is there an upside for your careers that you do think you could get to fairly soon that would, you know, be sustainable for this?

I don't think there's anything like within the next five years that would. drastically increase to where it's going to, you know, put me up closer to that 25%. Yeah, because... Give me the numbers on this. I'm curious, what's the mortgage payment and what is your after-tax monthly income? Our take-home is probably 9,000 a month. Does that include... And that's just after taxes, or does that include...

No, that would be after our health insurance and our... I invest 10%. Okay. So let's remove that out. that'll help our numbers here. That is a confusing point. When we say 25% of after tax income, we're just saying after your taxes are paid,

but don't include health care and 401K because that can skew the numbers. That might force you to go, hey, you know, it's actually at 28%. This is not a fire. Gotcha. Okay. So how'd you calculate it? Just, that's just,

all that comes out prior to I getting the deposit into my checking account. So you did it based off the 9,000 and that comes into your checking account. Correct. Okay. And what's the mortgage payment? It's about $3,700 a month, and that's just mortgage.

And how much goes out of your check for investing and how much goes out for health? I have about 10% set for investments, and then health is not much. It's a couple hundred bucks. Okay. So it might be like, let's say, let's call it 10-3, for example, 10,300, which is it.

which brings you to 35% of take home pay. Okay. So it's not great, but I wouldn't say this is on fire where I'm telling you, hey, man, you got to sell this thing. Now, the question is, do you have enough margin to do the baby steps, live your life, create sinking funds, all of that? Yeah, I mean, I would say we have a decent margin. I mean, we have no debt.

Good. Besides a mortgage. I think the only thing that after listening your show that I started realized is, you know, I could go up to 15% on my investments, but I, you know, I want to invest, you know, for, we have three kids, so I want to start investing for their education. And as soon as I start thinking about all the things, I'm like, I don't know, quite where we're going to get all that margin. And part of the reason, you know, I'm putting it all together, why we want to be around that 25% is so you can have those margins to make those investments. Yeah, that's true. You're getting it, man. That's

exactly it. We want you to be able to live your life. And that's not because we're trying to be super legalistic and you're a bad person if it's 30% on a 30 year. We've just found that you're going to pay that house off in 15 years. Worst case scenario. You're going to have extra money to cover the vacations, the car repairs, the kids' activities, whatever it is. And so that's where I'm, I'm wondering if you keep this thing for another year or two and see where we can shave, how we can make more. And then later on down the road, you can decide, hey, there's not a sustainable path. And I mean, you can run real numbers on this today to get your head around what the future would look like.

So I would go ahead and I would plug into my budget. How will my paycheck change once I invest the full 15%? Because the truth is, if you have no debt and you have an emergency fund, you should be doing that today. And then I'd say, okay, ideally in my ideal world, what I'd be putting into the 529. So I'm gonna, you know, 300 bucks a month.

Okay, great, subtract that. And then I'd like to be making extra mortgage payments in my ideal world. It'd be, I don't know, 700 bucks a month, whatever you decide. And then see the margin and you and your wife decide, how do we feel about this? Is this enough to take the vacations we want to take? Is this enough to be in the lifestyle that we want to be in that we've worked hard for?

And I think that will inform a lot of your decisions looking at the real numbers around it. Gotcha. Just real quick, I guess the reason that felt more of like an urgent fire situation is because you guys talk about a 15-year fix and we're on a 30-year, you know, well over that 25% of the take-home. I mean, I do think that. A little more stressful. It is because a lot of times people will do a 30-year to be able to afford the house that they want. And if you're telling me that even on the 30-year,

it's still 35%. Yeah, you bought more house than you should have. I mean, there's no question about that. I think that you bought more house than you could afford. Can you guys reasonably downsize? What would that look like in Modesta area? I mean, we could probably find something. I think our house is probably worth around 600

right now and we have about 130,000 in equity. We could probably find something in like the $500,000 range. So it's not like a major downsize. I never ran the numbers on what a 15-year fix would look like. Yeah, my guess is it would be a whole big chunk of your take-home pay. And you've got to think about all the fees involved with moving, selling a house, buying another house. So I don't know that I would go down that road until I know.

for sure that this is unsustainable. But right now, I'm, I'm the first guy to tell you, if I was, if I felt heart palpitations that you should sell your home, I would let you know. It's not on fire. It's just something to be thinking about. And you do live in a, you know, high cost of living area. And that's just part of life there. You just kind of have to make more money to have a life with some cushion. So I would be looking at your careers going, okay, can I work overtime temporarily if we need some extra margin? But long term, what does it look like to get the core income up? Do both of you work right now outside the home? I work full-time.

My wife works. It's a per diem job, so it's kind of fluctuates. Okay. So if she got something that was more stable that paid higher wage, that might be the ticket. That could be your ticket to make an 11 or 12 grand a month. All of a sudden, this mortgage payment is a nothing burger. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Good luck, man. It's a fun math equation that life is. And I think you highlighted a good point. George, you know, our rule of thumb, I think. think everybody knows it, but we'll say it again. 15-year fixed-rate mortgage is what we would suggest. And obviously, you want a mortgage where the take-home is no more than 25%.

But sometimes, you know, people run into the Ramsey principles after they bought a house. And so they're looking at their mortgage and they're going, oh, gosh, mine's 29% or mine's 32% or mine. And it's not to say that you have to run and sell your house and get it to 25. Lightning will not strike if you're at 28% and you can still go to have. with a 30-year mortgage. So don't worry about that. And we're not telling you, if you have a 30-year, you need to refinance to a 15-year right now. We're not telling you that at all. But we are saying that if you're wondering, if it feels tight and you're wondering why, that's something that you can

look at and go, okay, now I understand why it feels tight. It may not be that my income's the problem, per se. It just, I have a little bit more house than maybe I should have bought. And then you can decide the way you want to solve the problem. But if you're looking at your life and you're going, you know what, we're kind of doing the things we want to do. Maybe we don't have much margin as we want, but we're taking off all the boxes and we're going in the right direction. Yeah, it's not on fire. It's just something that be aware of. Yeah, and it's a good reminder. If you're following the baby step, sometimes it feels like you're living paycheck to paycheck because you've given every dollar a name. And that can feel like, well, there's not an extra

$3,000 down around because I allocated it toward kids college savings, this much as going to savings. And I like to automate it personally. So by the time the money hits my checking account, it's already gone to all the different things. And all I have. that budget is the spending money left. Right, right. Because all my saving stuff is gone, the giving stuff is gone. And so it can feel like that money's gone, but I like it because I'm human. Yes. I'm going to be tempted to spend it if I see extra. Yeah, I mean, you don't, you don't, you should not be spending everything you get. You should be doing the things that make you a financially responsible adult. Good luck, my friend. As a dad of young kids, I'm starting to think a lot more

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Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. May not be available in all states. All righty. Today's question comes from Tyrone in New Jersey. He says, my wife and I have $34,000 of debt and $12,000 in savings. I'd like to drain our savings to pay everything off, but it's hard to get over the fact that we will only have $1,000 in savings and we really want to buy a house.

This feels like a step backwards. Can you give me some encouragement about pulling the trigger? Okay. This is fun. Well, here's some reality. You guys have a negative net worth. So let's not talking about a step backwards. We're already in the negative.

Yeah. We can't go much further back. So you would take your, let's say, 11,000 of the 12th, keep your starter emergency fund, the thousand bucks, and you would knock that debt down. And you'd knock out a couple of payments along the way, probably. Absolutely. I mean, I think the biggest thing is what he's talking about is it feels cushy to have $12,000. You feel exposed.

It's a security thing. And on my sheet here, it says, can you talk me into using savings to pay off debt? Yeah, my talk into it is mathematical because the person who has debt and then says, but I have $12,000 in savings. I'm like, math says you don't have any money. Math says you actually owe $22,000. That is just basic arithmetic, which is my favorite type, by the way. Arithmetic.

I haven't heard that word in a while. Basic arithmetic. And so when you look at it for what the numbers actually are, you realize, oh, crap, I'm actually putting my security in something that's false. And so that's kind of my way of thinking about it, George. I mean, I don't know if you're saying different. As a guy who likes the numbers and likes the math, I think this one is the best emotional play in the whole, in all the babysat. We switch chairs.

Okay. Go for it. When you have $1,000, you are a little bit scared. You're like, whew, okay. We got to get out of this debt real fast because I want to get that emergency fund real fast. I want to build it back up. And so that's why I actually like this one. It causes people.

It lights the fire. Yes, it causes people to move faster. And part of the problem is when you got 12 grand sitting in savings, you have comfort. And when you're comfortable, you move a little bit slower. Yeah, that's a good word, George. There's a lack of urgency. And so I like the fire this thing lights under your butt when you got a thousand bucks to your name. And here's the good news. Most people in a given month could cash flow any given emergency. There's very few things other than like, you know, the HVAC or like a roof needing to instantly be replaced where you need to come up with 20 grand on the spot. Think about your last couple emergencies, it's likely the flat tire, it's the dental emergency. You have health insurance for that. So as long as you have good insurance in all places, you know your deductibles, you could likely pause the baby steps and cash flow that emergency in any given month. That's a good point. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And then when you think about, okay, once the debt's gone, how quickly with all those freed up payments, how quickly could you stack back $12,000 and then some, and you do the math on that and you go, oh, you want to know it? This is actually a really great play.

We say around here all the time your biggest wealth building tool is your income. That's your biggest wealth building tool. And so let's do what it takes to free that up and stop giving it away in monthly payments. And when you do that, that's when you start winning with money. I hope Tyrone was listening. If not, this was a big waste. I'm kidding. I'm sure it helps somebody out there.

There's a lot of people in that spot. Yes. I think that's a very normal way to feel. And I think there's a little personal pride attached to it too. Like, I saved $20,000. I'll tell you this, though, when someone tells me, I went down to a and I had this much in savings before, I go, oh, they're actually doing it. They're going to get out of debt.

I'm convinced because now, like, I'm willing to pause the 401K. I'm willing to do the side hustles. This means something to me. I'm prioritizing this. So that's what, to me, it's more of that. I'm putting a stake in the ground, line in the sand, more than it is a financial, you know, equation. Arithmetic, if you will.

Arithmetic. That was fun. Thanks for indulging me. You're welcome. Donald is in O'Clair, Wisconsin. What's going on, Donald? All right. I was wondering if my wife and I should sell our truck to pay off two-thirds of our debt.

Wow. What's the truck worth? It's about $21,000. $21,000? And what do you owe on it? $8,800. Okay. So you owe about $9. It's worth $21. So you could walk away from this thing with about $11,000, $12,000? Yes. Okay. And then you would use that money to buy a different vehicle?

Do you need a different vehicle right now? No, we have two vehicles at the moment, and I would probably use it just to pay off most of our debt. Wow. What's the other debts? We have 9,000 in a personal loan, $8,000 towards my student loan, two credit cards, they're around $2,400, and I can't remember what else. Something else in there? Possibly. Okay.

Yeah, because you said the 21,000 was two-thirds of the day. Okay, so we're about there. Yeah, so you don't even need this truck. You could sell it, profit 12 grand, and knock out some of these smaller debts with it. Yeah. Speeding up the process by, I assume, several months. Yeah, we'd probably, I did the math on your own $10,000. Wow.

What's the payment on the truck? $266. Feels like a no-brainer. You free up a payment. You get $12,000 to throw it the small. You don't need the truck. I'm going sell it today. Yeah. Why would you not sell it just because you like it? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, that is part of the sacrificial nature of the baby steps is you let go of some things that maybe you like or you wish you could keep, but it's the greater good, right? You're doing it all for the greater good, so I would do this deal. How much do you guys make? $7,800 a month. Fantastic. after tax. So if you sold the truck through that amount of the smaller debts,

you have that debt remaining with your income, how quickly would you guys be out of this whole thing completely debt-free? Probably four to six months. Wow. Love that. We're talking like by Christmas. Yes. Christmas is going to hit different.

And then by the springtime, you'll likely have your fully funded emergency fund, right? I would hope so. Think about that, man. By summer of 27, you guys have no consumer debt. You got 20,000, $25,000 sitting in a high-yield savings account. How quickly could you go save up and go buy yourself a nice truck? Probably within two or three months.

I mean, we're talking like one year from now. You're in a totally different phase of life. You're a guy who happens to life instead of life happening to him, and you can save up $2,000 a month and go buy a $20,000. truck 10 months later. That's crazy. You see that future ahead of you? Yes. When we paid off about $80,000 or $70,000 in the last two and a half years. Oh wow. So this is a home stretch. Yeah. So this is just you going, hey, let's not make this any harder than it has to be. Let's get rid of this truck. There's more trucks where it came from. So I feel real good about you selling this thing.

It's not a horse. It doesn't have a soul. It's got horse power, though. I'll tell you that much. You know, I just love calls like this because it reminds me I read a book by Hoda Kotbi. It's called Jump and Find Joy. Anyway, in the book, she's talking about how you can be going through life and you can just stop and go, you know what? I don't want to keep going down this path. I just want to stop and make a change. And I love stories like this because this guy, he's gone, was going through life and he was like, you want to know what? I don't like this.

let me stop. Let's just throw all the cards up in the air and start going down a different path. And now you look, he's paid off $80,000. He's about to sell a truck. You can just stop and go, this doesn't feel right. And I want to go in a different direction. And I just love that. And we have the plan to help people do that. And they do it every day. And I always like to say, the time is going to pass anyway. So you have the luxury and you have the option to do that. Where do you want to be two years from now? You want to still be in. debt? Yes, God willing, you have two years in front of you. And if you can do the same, you can, you could be the same, you could be worse off or you could be better. And all of that has to do with

people in a moment just going, I'd like to make a change. I'd like to just stop. I'd like to get off this ride and I'd like to get on this ride, please. This ride is not fun anymore. Is there a different one? Is there a different one? This ride is making me sick. I'd like to get on a better one. It's the same person in the mirror who made all those bad decisions. Same guy's going to make the good ones. Yes, yes. Please do it. I love stories like Donald and the calls we've gotten earlier. It's so worth it, guys. You can do this. And somebody out there is going to get a sweet truck from Donald.

I know that. At a great price. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade Warshot. Now, I know a little something about saving money. While my husband and I were paying off over $460,000 in debt, we went over every expense in our budget to find ways to cut back. Nothing got a free pass, including our phones.

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your money in your pocket, this is a win. Go to boostmobile.com slash Ramsey and make the switch today. That's boostmobile.com slash Ramsey. $25 forever requires customers to remain active on Boost Mobile Unlimited Plan. Paul is in Las Vegas up next. Paul, welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi, George. Jay, thanks for having me.

Sure. That can we help? I had a question. So I'm just getting into babysat number six. I paid off all my consumer debt. I'm doing the emergency fund. I'm investing for my retirement. Way to go.

Here's this situation on my house. I bought this house three years ago. It was from my in-laws at the time. They're no longer my in-laws. I bought the house from them. They had solar put on the house prior to me buying it. When I bought the house, I told them, I said, I'm buying the house.

I don't want to assume the solar loan, though. And we'll keep the solar in your guys' name. I'll continue to make the payments on it, which I've been doing. Now I'm entering Baby Step 6. I did a title search on my house, but after I purchased the house, the solar company put the lien on it for the equipment on the roof against my former in-laws. I owe $32,000. Well, the solar loan is $32,000. I owe $92,000 on my house. I'm wondering, do I pay off my house or do I pay off the solar since, regardless at the end of the day, when I go to sell the house, I'm going to have to pay off the solar anyways. What's the situation with the ex-in-laws? Do you still communicate with them?

Here and there. I mean, I have it set up to auto pay on the solar account every single month. I don't really have to deal with that in the aspect of sending them money, but I'm still on good terms with them. Okay, but you're making the payments? Correct. So what was the deal with them? It sounds like they got the best deal here. You're making the payments.

There's a lien on your money. house, but it's in their name. But there's really no risk on their part because the lien is against the collateral is your house. It's an equipment lien. So it's not against the house. It's just against the equipment on the roof. So they can come repo the equipment? Why not? I have like a moral obligation and I made that agreement with them that, hey, I'm going to make the payments on this. I'm just not going to assume it. And that's where I'm at right now. And I've continued to make those payments for over a year and a half after the divorce. I'm guessing they don't have the money to pay this off?

Correct. They do not. I'm trying to understand why, I know it's spilled milk, but I'm trying to understand why you would agree to make the payments, like why you would go that far but not say, I don't want anything to do with it, period. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I get that. And at the end of the day, when I went to purchase,

I tried to see if I could get out. out of the solar agreement. I couldn't. I didn't want to assume it to put more debt on my own, myself and put more stuff on my credit. And so I just, at that time, you know, I was good with them. I was good with my ex-wife at that time. I was like, yeah, I'll continue to make the payments on this. And I made that agreement with them. I have a lot of respect for them. Yeah. Marriage didn't end on bad terms or anything. And I don't want to screw their credit over by saying, screw it. I'm done paying it. Do you know if this lien is actually real and recorded on your home?

Because sometimes they use this as a scare tactic and it's not actually valid. It is real and it's recorded on the home because I owned a couple properties, a couple of parcels. And when I split and sold one of my parcels at the beginning of this year, it was an issue on it. And they were trying to say, well, you can't sell it until you pay off that lien. And I was like, well, it's an equipment lien. And then they ended up letting me sell the property that was attached to it. So now when I go to sell the house, it's going to be an issue with selling the house. When do you plan on selling the house?

house? Probably in the next two to three years. I kind of think you have to think of this as though you bought the house in any other way, other than the way that you bought it. If you bought the house in any other way, you would have assumed all of this, and it would be on you to take this over anyway. So I think I'd have to just treat it that way. And you're already making the payments. So you have the money to pay this off? It would drain my emergency fund. How much is in there? And my emergency fund is around like 38 to 40.

Some of that's in a high-yield savings, and then some of that is in, I have an account that I just have like for my house or all my bills for my house go out of that. I put money into that every month. Okay. I think it would simplify your life. Yeah, I would just pay it off today and then rebuild the emergency fund and then begin attacking the mortgage with any extra margin. You may not have to pause investing. It sounds like you could do this all pretty quickly and kind of just restarting from scratch here. Yeah, what's the, I'm just curious, what's the percentage on that loan for those solar panels?

So, and that's the other thing. So my home loan, I own $91,000. My payment on it is $1,000 a month. I have nine years and four months left on it. And so that's a four and a half percent. The solar is 32,000. It's two point nine percent. And I don't know exactly. The maturity date is in 2046. Yeah, it's like, let's get this out of our life. I would. Okay. It stinks because you worked hard to save all that money up. You had an agreement with these in-laws. Then they were the ex-in-laws. And I'm guessing there was nothing in the divorce agreement about the ex-in-laws loan, right? No, there wasn't. It was just sort of a verbal?

A verbal part of the thing. And that's where I'm like, I know I could just stop paying it tomorrow if I really wanted. And I don't feel right doing that. I looked into trying to do like a solar exit company and I couldn't find one that was like really a reputable one that I didn't get like. feel like I was getting a scam vibe from. Well, here's my thinking, because my guess is they act like a debt relief company where they tell you, hey, stop making payments, and then we'll negotiate with them. It'll take your credit, but you can get half off, something like that. So I'm wondering if you can negotiate with

the solar company at this point and explain the situation and see if they might settle for a lower amount. Yeah. Well, and that's the other issues. The solar company, it's out of business. So now it's just through the lending company, which is still in business. So it's, yeah. Even with the less, you might see if you can negotiate. Yeah. And say, hey, I sort of adopted this solar loan. Here was the agreement.

If you're willing to take, you know, 25 grand, I'll pay it off today, write to a check. It's worth a try. Yeah. I would at least try that. Worst they can say is no. Correct. So that would be the route I go. but I would not make extra mortgage payments until the solar loan is taken care of.

And I, like your point, it's too much to rob you of your piece to go, well, I'm going to let it get repoed. Yeah. It would be on my roof, taking down the solar and infecting my credit or whatever it would do. Who knows? Oh, that's messy. X-in-laws. That's about as messy as it gets. James is in Baton Rouge up next.

What's going on, James? Hey, so I have a, we're in the middle of our debt payoff, and we're, we have a, we have a, we have a, car. And I guess basically my question is from kind of the Ramsey perspective, if interest rates matter or if it's just best to get rid of a debt. Yeah, there's two prime methods that people tend to think about when they're paying off debt. One is an avalanche method where they are thinking about the interest rate in terms of which debt to play off first. And then there's the snowball method, which is the one that George and I and everybody at Ramsey suggests, where you're looking at the debts in term of balance, full balance owed. And so when you really look at a person

who is interested in paying off all of their debt, the data does show that the debt snowball method is the way to go. And people have the most amount of success in paying off all of their debt if they use the debt snowball. And the reason for that is you get small wins quickly. And so that's what I would say when it comes to paying off debts. What? Tell us about yours. Well, me and my wife, we started our payoff or our debt journey about two years ago. We reached the point where we paid off everything, but the house, the student loans, and the car. Okay.

And we've built up about six months of an emergency fund. Why did you, go back, why did you stop at, why did you stop without doing the car and the student loan? Oh, well, not that we stopped. We're kind of in the middle of that. But you stopped to build up the savings is what I'm saying. Yeah. Well, my thought process on that was all of those are with percentages that, you know, we started our journey in the secular world. I was getting most of my advice from, you know, other financial people. And so in our mind, it was get everything paid off that we came beat in the market, right? And then billed from there. Okay. So how much do you have in savings?

Savings about 15,000. And what's left on the student loans? The student loans are actually fairly fresh. My wife just graduated last year. I was working her through school. And what's the balance? About 30,000. And the car loan? About 18. 18. Okay. I'd get rid of that car loan and use most of that emergency fund and just follow the baby steps as is. And it's because they work. And I know it's scary to lose your savings, but what you're really gaining is traction on the debt-free journey. Let's give them a copy of the Total Money Makeover to read. Hang on the line. We'll send it your way. Thank you.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. I'm George Camel here with Jade Warshaw. Stacey is up next in Tampa, Florida. What's going on, Stacey? Hi, George and Jay. Thank you for us up in my call. Actually, basically, I'm trying to keep from going back to a shelter. Oh, my goodness. A homeless shelter? Yeah.

I recently got out of it about three months ago. I managed to take $500 since I got out of there. But I owe the IRS and child support, and child support has a lot of it. already put in them, as I called them, I made a mistake to call the IRS and child support, thinking that this child would payments with them. But now they're wanting, each one was $750 a month. So IRS wants $7.50 a month and child support is $750 a month? Yeah. Okay. When you called, I cannot afford. When you called them, what were you hoping to do? I mean, I figured I could maybe 200 one and the other one maybe 300.

Okay. So you thought it would be a much lower payment and they said, nope, this is what it's going to be. Yes. Wow. Are you working right now? I am. Okay. What are you doing for work and how much do you make?

I'm a front guest for a surgeon's receptionist. And I make $2,500, give a day. A month after taxes. Okay. Is that 40 hours a week? Yeah. All right. What's your living situation right now?

I'm currently ranking a high-efficiency house. How much is that a month? No, so I can afford currently. A thousand. Okay. So a thousand bucks a month, and then if you owed this child's support and IRS, that's $1,500. extra, which is all of your income gone and you haven't even put food on the table?

Or my phone or my bus pass because I don't have a vehicle either. I'm trying to save money. How are you getting to work right now? I literally trying to first bus route. I take the bus. Okay. Oh, my goodness. I'm so sorry. What happened that got you into the situation originally? Mental health. No, which breakdowns. I have 39. years of trauma. Oh, wow.

So I unfortunately keep going into depression and I tend to suicide. Do you have medical support right now? Yes, that's the other thing I need to bring it into. I have to go to therapy every week to keep me going. That's the reason I came to Florida to run away from all my trauma. I literally came to Florida about six, seven months ago, no, about a year, actually. now that I think about it, I just like eight months in the shelter. So, yeah, it's been tough, but I refuse to go back to a shelter.

I never been and I never want to do it again. A fine time was more than enough, and I need to get mentally healthy and pay off my debt. How much debt do you owe total? Give or take about 35 gram between the IRS and the child support. Okay. And is there a judgment against you for these? Yes, because in the divorce, my ex-send owed property taxes, so they give them to me, and he took my 401k, my pension, my house, my car, he took everything because of a nervous breakdown.

Wow. So your wages are being garnished for these payments to the IRS and child support? Not yet. They are in the process of it. Not with the IRS, and the IRS right now currently. I'm trying to make like $50 payments here and there whenever I can. So, things remove me from that, what is it called where they don't give you, it's when I was in the shelter.

I was desperate and I called them at all my situation. And they put me on something where they do not charge me interest for a little bit. Like a deferment? Yeah. And but when I got, I started saving money in a one minute, you know, get started and catch up on everything. I'll call them up and I told them, okay, so I'm currently working. I want to make them and plan that I can afford so I can pay off this debt.

They removed me from that, no interest. The gentleman that I spoke to, and he told me that he was going to do it. I was like, you know, don't do anything right now. It's like I'm literally just out of the shelter. I'm just not getting on my feet. I need a little bit of time. But unfortunately, the gentleman from my head and remove me from that. So now I'm starting to create interest once again on the IRS.

And with the child support, I called them and I told them that wasn't in a payment plan. And they told me, and I also modified my child support because I obviously cannot no longer have four or five hundred a month. Yeah, that's a huge chunk of your income. So they should adjust that. And I would fight for that. Can you get that before? But this is, you know, they said 2028 is when they can do a modification because they send the paperwork to the shelter. However, the shelter either returned it, misplaced it.

I don't know, but I did not get the paperwork. So now they're saying because they send me the paperwork to the shelter and I never responded. I'm no longer eligible for them to modify my child support. Okay. Do you have a social worker that you're connected to? employee the shelter? Yes, I do have a social worker. I would lean on them to see what resources are available, what programs are available to help you get your head above water right now and even fight for you because you're doing a lot. You're doing a lot to just try to fight these things, pay what you can, go to work every day.

So in my mind, number one, you got to take care of you. Because if you don't have your mental health and physical health, you can't go to work. And if you can't go to work, you don't have an income. If you don't have an income, we're going to be. be back in the shelter. So that's how I would prioritize it. And you need to put food on the table first. So here's what you need to focus on with your $2,500 a month, the four walls, food, utilities, housing, transportation, like your bus pass. And that might mean we don't have a car for the foreseeable future. But at least we can keep the bills paid, the lights on, we can eat. And beyond that, insurance. Any insurance you have to pay, let's make sure we have that covered. And if that means you can't pay whoever else, that's tough cookies.

And we can deal with the ramifications of that later. But the IRS is the one that is not going to go away. And so we want to get them off our back and see if they can lower that payment. It sounds like you've tried to talk to them. They haven't been super reasonable. But you simply do not have the money to pay. So at some point, they're going to have to give in and go, all right, $300 a month is what we'll take on a payment plan.

And same with the child support. I did when they sent me the court documents indicating that they were going to start subrogating my check from child

support I did appeal for it and explain and my situation once again so I'm still waiting on that I just did that last week the appeal I would keep fighting I'm waiting on that

and in the meantime look for whatever extra work that you can be doing that's within walking distance, that's within bus pass distance. Even a couple hundred extra dollars in your pocket is going to go a really, really long way to make you feel a little bit more secure in all this. Even asking at work, is there extra work I can do overtime, come in on the weekends, anything to bring in a couple extra hundred bucks.

That is breathing room for you. We're wishing you the best. Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show. Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple, and free to use.

Go to Ramsey Solutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's Ramsey Solutions.com. Buying or selling your home is high stakes because one bad deal could cost you tens of thousands. You don't want to overpay for your next house or sell your current home for less than it's worth. And that's why Ramsey Trusted connects you with vetted real estate agents who have the experience to guide you step by step to make smart decisions, not expensive mistakes. Connecting is easy. You can go to Ramsey Solutions.com slash agent. You fill it out, compare agent profiles, interview your top choices, and pick the right one for you.

So you can go to that website, Ramsey Solutions.com slash agent. for free or click the link in the description if you're on YouTube or podcast. Christy is in Washington, D.C. up next. Christy, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, George and Jane. Absolutely. How can we help?

Well, ultimately, our question is about paying for college for three kids. First, we want to thank you. We want to thank Total Money Makeover back in 2009. My husband and I paid off $92,000 in debt in 2020. two months. Wow. Amazing. That snowball.

So thank you. That set us on a pretty good financial path, but not perfect because, like I said, our question is about paying for college. We have three kids. One is in our second year of college. One is going to be a senior. One is a freshman. And we're okay right now, but we're going to run out, basically.

So our question is ultimately, what's the best? path. We have some investments and we want to know what the best path would be. All right. Are there any scholarships involved? Are they working? Tell us all the components that need to come together. Sure. Aside from just you guys' cash. Sure. Our oldest is in Chilby as sophomore. She did get a number of three scholarships, smaller scholarships, but basically we're paying almost full price. And our middle daughter did get a nice sports scholarship. She'll be a senior in high school.

But we already know she has a nice sports scholarship which will pay for a little over half, but it's out of state. So it's still going to be. Oh, it's out of state? Yeah. Okay. So it's still going to be around 20 per year. And then our son is a freshman in high school kind of unknown.

So we're just going, like when we run the numbers, we're just like we're paying. We're in Virginia, we're going to pay, you know, basically full. We're just trying to be conservative and assume we're going to pay full price. Okay. So the biggest thing, the biggest thing here is college choice, right? So going out of state, although there's a scholarship there, that's a big deal. And so I'd want to know, are there any other schools offering anything?

You know, because once you have as an athlete, I can tell you, once you have one school, it kind of does kind of open up the doors. with some other schools of the same stature. So I would be looking into that. Okay. And then the other thing is... We are in state nothing as of now. Okay.

Keep looking because if she's also a good student, she might find that she can get academic schools and then walk on to the team that she wants to do. I had that option too. So if sports is a thing, but she's also smart, I think there might be other ways you can play that to where she can still play, still have better scholarships and be in state.

Because if in-state is 15 a year and you're paying full price, that's still cheaper than you're half off out of state school. Right. And I got to say this when it comes to sports. If she stops playing, she can lose her scholarship. Like if she goes, does freshman year, she's like, mom, it's too much. Or I hate the team. I hate the coach. Whatever.

It doesn't play. Now she doesn't have any money and she's in an out-of-state school. So I just want to make all those things there. Now with the freshman coming up, obviously we need to start looking at maybe can we do community college first and do those genet? there, right? So I think there's some things that we can tweak with the senior and with the freshmen so that we're not spending way more than we need to and we won't run out of money as quickly. And then there's a other part where it's like, can they work a little bit? Can they start saving up a little bit to put towards this and have some skin in the game as well? Yes, and they

actually are. They actually all three have jobs. Okay, good. So how much do you guys have that you could utilize that as non-retirement money. Okay, so well, that's our question. So long story short, after we, you know, did our debt snowball, we're in a good financial position, we moved from Connecticut to Virginia, and the house we bought was a foreclosure because it was a good deal. We fixed it up. We did pretty well on it. And building our dream home became possible because of that. And so what we did was kind of Ramsey inspired, not kind of, totally Ramsey inspired. We sold the house that we had fixed up and we moved with the three. They were really little then, so it was much easier.

But we moved into a two-bedroom condo while we built our dream home. And this seems like a long story to tell us something simple. How much do you have, Christy? Not that we don't want to hear it, but. For college. Just in general. Because we can just look at your assets and go, okay, how much do you have that is non-retirement that we have access to?

That could be stocks, that could be savings, whatever it is. Well, um... Could you sell a property? Is that what you're getting at? Well, yes. Okay. That's kind of what I was getting at. The condo that we lived in, we kept and we have rented for the last 11 years.

It's been wonderful. A great investment. It is worth $4.15, and we owe $130 on it. Okay. So our question is, should we sell that condo? And basically, I mean, we would have more than enough to pay for college at that point. You'll walk away with like $250,000 that becomes the college fund. Right.

Or it's been a very good investment. Where's the condo? Is it even in Virginia? Right nearby us. Oh, it's by you. Okay. What is it cash flow? After all expenses and the mortgage is paid, all of that.

We get about $1,000 a month. Okay. Where is that money going right now? To college. Okay. So when you say to college, where is the current college savings? Five-29s. Great.

How much is in the five-twenty-nine's across all of them? Okay. After we paid for our first year of our first daughter, we are down to about 20 left, and that will get us through that plus what we're putting in. We're putting in the thousand from the condo plus from our monthly budget, another thousand. So between the two, we can pay for us. another full year. And then our second daughter goes in and we can get about halfway through that year.

And then we're going to run out of that 529. Okay. It almost feels like a bit of a no-brainer, I think, to me, because knowing that there's two behind you that are coming, I would, you know, and the condo is cool. It's cash flowing. It's not like it's like changing your life the $1,000 a month. But in many ways, this is the college fund that you should have been building from the beginning.

So I know you love it. And now what you can see is, hey, this was kind of a secret blessing. Because this helped us cash flow college. None of the kids are going to have student loans. But that also means we need to reset the conversation with the kids. That we're not about to walk into the mall and just buy whatever we want, go to whatever school we want. We are going into this store with a shopping list.

Here's what we can do. Here's what we're not going to get. Because if you give a kid carte blanche to go anywhere in the world, they're going to choose anywhere in the world. When you tell them, hey, we're going to cover four years at an in-state school and you're going to work your tail off and apply for scholarships and grants, now we're all in agreement on what the plan is. You guys set the budget ahead of time and make them align to the budget. Because my guess is you probably want to take some of this money

and check it towards your current home, right? Get that paid off. And your freshman's not going to be happy about this because he saw the other siblings get to do whatever the flip they wanted. Right? There's going to be a little bit of that. It's not fair. Right.

Why'd they get to go out of state? Yeah. No, I got you. And that's definitely, we are already having those conversations. Yeah. And here's the math on this, Christy. You sell that condo. You pocket 250 in a high-yield savings account even.

That will net you about $700 a month just from the interest off of that with no hassle, no landlording plus your $250 principle. And then just take from that and pay as we go? Exactly. Now, you could shovel a lot of that into the $529. It doesn't have a whole lot of time to grow and have the, you know, compound growth, but it's still nice to have that growth for the next four years for your high schooler. Right, and we do get a, in Virginia, a nice tax break. That's great. On top of the tax-free

withdrawals for qualified education expenses, that's personally what I would do. And the 529 plan is great for that because there's no income limits. The contribution limits are virtually unlimited, and so that becomes your glorified college savings account, that condo. So I would grieve it, say goodbye to the condo, get rid of the renters as soon as you can. and enjoy debt-free education for all three of those kiddos. It'll be worth it. Hey, George Camel here. We often talk about how being normal sucks when it comes to your money. But guess what? Normal isn't so great when it comes to your job either. Normal is staying in a job you hate, dreading Mondays, and working for people you don't even like.

Sound familiar? Well, the good news is you can break free from normal because Ramsey's Solutions is hiring, and we refuse to settle for the ordinary. In fact, we are anything but normal and we are proud of it. And right now we're hiring for technology, sales, marketing, writing, copy editing, and creative roles. So head over to ramsysolutions.com slash careers and apply today. Ask Ramsey is our free AI tool that's built and trained on proven Ramsey principles. And today we're going to break down one of the questions we received this week. Here it is. Why should I set aside 15% to retirement before paying off my mortgage?

I love this question. We get this a lot. And one of the reasons is compound interest is really time. sensitive, right guys? And your mortgage isn't going anywhere, but the time in the market is going somewhere. We want you to capitalize on that and spend as much time in the market as you can. A dollar invested today is worth far more than a dollar invested five years from now. So, so important there. And the truth is your mortgage has a fixed payoff date regardless of when you attack it extra hard. Of course, we want you to do that at some point. But yeah, because the thing is,

if you just made minimum payments on your mortgage on a 15 year, it's gone in 15 years. is still way better. So we need to be investing because there's no guaranteed sort of fixed forced savings plan there like there is with your mortgage. That's right. So it is wise to do both and the Ramsey plan lets you do both. We recommend investing 15% once you're debt free with an emergency fund. Any extra money you can put towards college or extra on the mortgage.

And if you do it our way, you have a reasonable house payment, 25% of take home. You'll have extra to do all of this stuff with. And then once the mortgage is paid off, you can invest 20, 30, 40, 50% to your heart's delight and maximize your wealth. The problem is if you skip investing and you pay the mortgage faster, you arrive at a paid for house, which is kind of nice, but then your retirement is very thin and that doesn't feel very good either. So you're scrambling to catch up. So there's a way to do this, guys, and the Ramsey plan

lets you do both. So check out Ask Ramsey. It'll walk you through your financial goals based on your specific situation. Do it at Ramsey Solutions.com, or you can use the link in the description if you're on podcast or YouTube. Braylon is in Austin, Texas up next. Braylin, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for taking my call.

My boyfriend loves this show, and I've been debating back and forth on a life update, upgrade, I would say, a car upgrade. Okay. Tell us more than. So I'm really wanting to upgrade to a luxury car. I do work in real estate, so clients see my car from time to time.

Right now, I drive a 2021 Toyota can. Camry and there's quite nothing wrong with it and I do not have a car payment. But I've had a really good year, the last two years in real estate and I'm wanting an upgrade. So I wanted to hear y'all's thoughts. I want to know the number one driver. Is the number one driver I have the money to do this and I earned it or is the number one driver? I'm a real estate agent and I want people to think that I do really well. So I want to drive a really nice car. It's honestly split 50-50. Like when I get in a car, I want to feel like I'm in something really updated, and I have worked really hard, and I know I deserve that. And there's a little bit of that, too.

Yeah, I do want people to know that they're well taken care of, and, you know, I'm a great real estate agent. Okay. What's this car going to cost? Around 70K. And what do you make any year? So far this year I've made 280. Whoa, job. Thank you.

Last year I did $4.28. So you didn't need the car to smash it at real estate. There's people driving the luxury cars that suck at real estate. I just want to let you know that. So I don't want you to think that the car is the difference maker that you're going to get clients. You're already doing it in your Camry. So clearly, nobody's reaching out to you because of your cool car is what I'm trying to say. So I want to free you of that.

No matter what car you drive, you're just a really good real estate agent who helps people. Yeah. The question is, do you have 70,000 saved? I my net worth right now my boyfriend does all my investing for me so shout out joe he's listening right now wait did you say your boyfriend does all you're investing for you yeah just as a guy or is he is he just like a finance nerd and he's like hey i'll get you set up yeah he just loves investing he he works in like investment properties and you know do you know how it's being invested or you're just like here you go joe you got it i do i'm sat i'm sat next to him when he does it he's teaching me

So I want my friends too. Okay. I'm a little concerned, but let's move on to the next topic. What is your net worth? My net worth is at $3.80 right now. Good job. Your total. Okay, so where did all the money go?

What do you mean? Because you said you made $428 last year, but your net worth is $3.80? We had some big purchases like last year, I guess. I'm not quite sure, to be honest. Your net worth is $380 or you have $380 and invested? I have three No, my net worth Okay

I don't know This would be a Joe question To be honest Well that's why I wanted to make sure Net worth is the big picture Net worth is assets minus liabilities He says my net worth is 8 380

I told him I was calling today I was like asking him all these folks So you said we had big purchases What does that mean? I bought him World Cup tickets For his birthday Wow But that's not

Okay That shouldn't be I mean it's expensive But to George's point if you made four, you know, four something last year. Like, where did all that go? Say yeah? I had to pay tax. Yes, that's true. Okay, so let me ask you these questions. How much do you have in liquid cash? I'm not sure. See, this is why I don't like Joe doing this, because you need to know your numbers.

For how much I have in checking, we have a problem. Yeah. What is in your checking slash savings across those two? Probably around 70 right now in my checking. But then I have about 40, maybe 80 invested into Ross. 40 or 80? I'm going to on the numbers right now, and I don't have all the, I don't have the sheet in front of me, but we have a sheet of it. Braylin, this is what I'm going to say to you. This is aside from the car, I really want you to know you work really hard, you're really good at your job, you make a lot of money for a single individual. You should know where all your dollars are, especially if you're saying you want to buy a luxury

vehicle. One of the caveats to being able to really spending that kind of money and feeling good about it is knowing that I am a keeper of the funds. Like I know how I'm spending my money. I know where every dime is going. There's, you want that backing this purchase because that lets me know that you, not Joe, but you are a financially responsible adult. And so I want you to have that clarity on your numbers to feel really good about it. I don't want you to have to go to him and say, Joe, what do you think? I want you to have to go to him and say, Joe, what do you think? I want you to be able to look at the number. You know what I'm saying?

You deserve that with all the work you've put into this. Okay. And this is new. Like I just started this the last two years. So I am still learning and I didn't learn. Like no one taught me about money really growing up. I totally get it. He's the first one.

And it is overwhelming, you know, working as much as I do and then having to learn about it all this. But two years. But I'm going to push you on this. I'm going to push you on this. It doesn't take two years to do a budget and be able to look and say, here's how much I have in savings and here's how much I have in my checking. That doesn't take two years. I want you to know those numbers tonight. And you help people with numbers all day long in real estate. You know how much your clients have in savings, but you don't know how much you have. Okay, wait, he sent it to me.

He's listening right now. Good old joke. Okay, good. Okay. Like, in my checking, I have 50. Okay. Okay, good. In high yields, I have about five. That was about, that was a deduction because of tax. You had to move stuff over to pay. Okay. I obviously had a big chunk to pay. that. Robin Hood is actually 300,000. Invested? Okay, I thought so. I thought that that was your retirement number. We're not going to touch invested money. So let's use future income, but here's the parameter. You're not going to buy a brand new car right now, even if you had 70 grand to spend on. That was my question, too, is like leasing, financing, what are y'all thoughts on that? No chance. No lease. You're going to

pay cash and you're going to buy a used luxury car. And it sounds like you've got, maybe around 45 to spend because what I'd want for you, if you said 50 in checking, five in high yield savings and the rest is invested, I'd be thinking, okay, I want three to six months of expenses that's liquid. So I would move whatever six months of your expenses are into that high yield savings, that's an emergency fund. And then whatever is left, that's kind of your car fund. And I would separate the two. Open up a different high yield savings account called car fund. And once you have, say 40, 50 grand in there, you go buy yourself a nice used luxury vehicle. So what kind of car are you looking at? I'm sure you already know exactly the make model and trim level.

I really like the Mercedes GLC coops or the GLE coups. Listen, I like this for you. So that's 70 grand new, right? Yeah. Here's the good news. Mercedes go down in value heavily. So you can go buy a 2022 version of that. That's still super nice, low mileage, and you can go pay cash for that. once you have the money, but you got to get your money in order. Right now it's a mess. You make great money and you got nothing to show for it in savings. So let's get control of that

before we start buying super nice things. Yeah, and we'll give you a copy of, we'll give you every dollar, we'll give you a copy of a total money makeover. Read that and you don't need Joe for that. You can do that on your own and you should. Take a back seat, Joe. She's got this one. The problem with online investing advice, you hear so many different opinions and you're left wondering if you're even doing it right. And that's why we created investing essentials. Join me and Dave Ramsey at this two-night virtual event to learn Dave's playbook for investing and wealth planning. We'll break down 401Ks, mutual funds, passing on wealth, and more. So join us September 1st and 2nd. Ticket start at $199.00. You can get yours today at ramsysolutions.com

slash events or just click the link in the show notes. Our scripture of the day, Matthew 626, Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow a reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Mary Kay Ash said aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know it,

so it goes on flying anyway. Is that true? I did know. Is that true? It must have the aerodynamics. Built in? You really think it's sitting there thinking about it? I don't think so.

I don't know, Mary Kate. All right. I'll take it. It's an interesting thought. It's an interesting thought. I get the principle underneath it, and I respect it. There we go. There we go. Speaking of which, Kay is in Houston, Texas. What's going on, Kay? Hey, thanks so much for taking my call today. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Yeah, so I am going through a divorce after leaving an abusive marriage. And I'm underwater every month, and I'm sorry.

It's okay. I have two kids, two in ten months. And I'm just trying to figure out how to manage. all the costs coming at me. It's a lot. So sorry, Kay. I'm about $5,000 in the whole a month after doing my budget. Once the divorce is finalized, I'll be okay. I'll be like right at where I need to be each month.

But right now I'm having to cover my rent on my new apartment plus my old mortgage and the bills at my marital home. I had to move out of my house. Why are you having to do rent and mortgage? Is he paying anything to the mortgage? mortgage? He pays half. I'm just getting half of everything right now. That's what our county's standing orders require that I pay half of all of our bills until something else is in place. So everything is 50-50 until divorce is processed and final? Okay. Just until there's a temporary order in place. So we're working on that with our attorneys, but he's dragging his feet,

you know, and making things drag out longer and getting more expensive. Is there a cap on it at all? Yeah, I'm hoping to have it set in September, mid-September. Okay. So I'm hoping by mid-September I can get some clarity on like, okay, maybe I can stop paying the mortgage and stuff, and then that would give me at least that. But at this point, I'm just, yeah. Okay. Who's got the kids?

I do. I have them full-time. Okay. So of the $5,000 that you're underwater, tell us how much money that you have. to your name that you can spend on the things that are not half of the bills? Like cash? Would I have cash on hand? Yeah. I mean, is the income being split? Or is it just the expenses being split? No. So I, it's just the expenses. So we each like our income, like I like I'm giving,

I'm paying half of the mortgage like on the website. Understood. But you don't get half of the income that you guys shared. No, no. So I just, I actually. make more than him. So we just, I just stopped giving him money, essentially. Okay. So how much are you bringing in every month? At the, you know, how many, you get two paychecks or one paycheck? Yeah, I take, I usually get two. I stop my retirement. So I'm getting 42 30, I get 4240 a month, or every two weeks, sorry. Okay. So I'm going to get $8,400 a month. Okay. $8,400 a month. And then what is the mortgage costing you? Your half of it? $3,000. Wow. And then you're, you're,

rent? So right now my rent is $2,000 because I did a short-term lease, but I'm hoping that'll go down a little bit when I find something longer. Okay, so you got $3,400 left after that, and then you still have all the bills to pay? Mm-hmm, and that's probably on his, on the house, let's see, it's $415 about, you know, that's average, and then on me for water and... and the internet and electricity, it's about $450 right now, but that was because, long story short, it should go down a little bit.

Who's living at the house? I'm sorry? Who's living at the house right now? Is he still there? Just, yeah, just my spouse. That's it. Just your stuff? Just my spouse.

Oh, your spouse. Okay, got it. So I want to make sure I understand, aside from the mortgage, the other bills that you're on the hook for are $415 for the old house and then 450 is your kind of utilities and bills for the apartment. So that's... And we have two car payments. Sorry.

Okay. So one car payment. Half of the car payment. And tell us what that is. So his is 750. So half is 750. And then my total car payment is $1,300. And I'm paying that on my own right now.

Oh, my goodness. And why isn't yours part of the half split? Why are we splitting his car, but not $1,300? splitting your car if this is decided by your state? It hasn't been finalized yet, but the end, like hopefully by September, he will end up covering the home and his car. No, no, no. You said earlier that whatever the decree was said that you needed pay, you guys had to split

the household expenses, which sounds like included the cars. And I'm saying, why only his car and not your car? Yes, so I was paying only half and then he told me I needed to pay for my own car. Okay, so no, no, no. Either the state says, if you have to follow the law, so does he. Why does he get to decide right now? Yeah, no, that's a good call out. Because here's what I'm wondering. You said you're $5,000 in the hole and you make $8,400 bring it in. That means your expenses are over $13,000 a month?

based on what I put in every dollar that's what I was getting out so what are the other let's pretend the 1300 let's split that up now because let's let's go hide and do that and say okay yeah we're both on 650 on that then what's the other major big ticket things that we're missing are there a bunch of other debts that aren't accounted for yet no I only have two cards in the house the mortgage there's only two debts oh I have a credit card that I have currently but I'm paying the minimums on that at the moment which the minimum on that is 500 because that's where I've been putting my attorney fees. Okay.

Is the car in your name only? At the moment. And the loan? No, unfortunately it's not. Okay, because I'm trying to think of a way to get you some breathing room right now and selling that car is A1. But you should have, you should have breathing room because if I go through everything that you told me and I take all this out, there's still $1,135 there.

Now, granted, we haven't done groceries yet, but I'm nowhere. We're, I know where near. I am going to counseling regularly at this point. Okay. That's, fair enough. Yeah. That's 800 bucks a month.

800 bucks. Right now. Okay. So now we're starting to get in the red. Sorry, daycare. Okay, daycare. Okay, daycare. Because they, I did not have that cost prior, but now I have to pay for daycare and he

will not pay for half of it. But again, if this. We did not have daycare before. But here's the thing. We're either going to play by what the state, if you, if you, if you have to do what the state says. He has to do what the state says. So it's your children. Let me go just take out daycare that I'd be paying towards that house. I would be talking to your attorney and saying he's not playing fair. He's not playing fair.

And so it's on them to force him to play fair. It can't just be you texting him saying please pay. No, no. Absolutely. No, no. And that's what we're working on. So let's get with the attorney and then redo the budget based on what you actually have to cover. And that will give you at least a clear picture. And then 45 days from you, now, we're going to know. Mm-hmm. And in the meantime, I would be talking to my attorney to see what financial moves I can make legally to try to free up some breathing room, what I can sell, what I can move around, because

going five grand a hole in the hole every month is not going to work even for another month and a half. No. If you do what George said you should do, which is split everything and do it fair, you're going to be right at zero. You're not going to be far below, but you're going to be right at it. I do think counseling is really, really important for you. $800, though, right now is really, really high.

I'd be trying to see what I can shave off there or even speak with them and say, hey. And sometimes even your insurance might cover partial or full. And so maybe go through them and see and maybe cut it down to two or three instead of four or five. Just things like that. Go through the entire budget and see what we can trim right now just to get by. That's all we're trying to do is just break even. Yes. And to your point, go ahead.

Go ahead. I was going to say the things that I would, if you've calculated, this is my half, this is the dollar amount for my half, how you want to allocate it to make sure that you're doing the most important priorities, I think you have the right to do that at this point because if he doesn't pay his half of the mortgage, that's on him. If he doesn't pay his half of the car, that's on him. Right. But you need to make sure the kids get to daycare, right? So I would prioritize it in that way. That puts this hour of the Ramsey show in the books. So remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace,

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