The Ramsey Show - You Can’t Win With Money Until You Decide What Matters Most

Episode Date: March 24, 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 and the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. This is the Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one, bestselling author and host of the front row seat. Fabulous show on Ramsey Network.

It's blowing up. He's my co-hosting today. Open phones here at AAA 8255-225. The call is free and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Lacey is in Seattle. Hey, Lacey, what's up? Hey, so my husband and I are kind of looking for a little bit of an outside perspective on a situation you're having. Okay.

So my in-laws, his parents, helped us with a down payment on our house. and now we're receiving a lot of, on my end, unsolicited financial advice about debts and what we're doing with our money. And I guess I just want to know how much influence I should allow them to have in what we're doing with our finances as a unit, the two of us. I don't know why they would have any. Do you owe them the money back? Do they loan you the money back? Yeah, well, they have a weird kind of situation. They've done this with his, my husband's sister as well.

They kind of use it as a business transaction with their kids, so they'll help with the down payment on the house. And in the future, when the house is sold, they would get their down payment back and a certain percent of whatever profit we would make on the house. Oh, that was stupid. You shouldn't have done that. Oh, no.

That's horrible. What an abusive mess. Yeah. How much money did they give you? They put $300,000 down on the house. Wow. Yeah. And how much is your mortgage?

Our mortgage is about $2650 monthly. So you borrowed $250,000? We borrowed from them about the $300,000, but they could down. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't think that was a loan. I thought it had to only be repaid at sale.

Are you paying payments to them? No, we're not paying payments to them. Okay. Do you have a mortgage in addition to them? Other than the in-laws, do you have a mortgage? No. Okay. So they paid cash for this house.

So you bought a $300,000 house. The houses was $800,000. and they put $300 down for us, and we are paying the remainder of the mortgage. So you have a mortgage other than the in-laws of $500,000? Yes, one. Okay. And your household income is what? It's about $80,000 between the two of us.

My numbers fluctuate a bit, but my husband is $50K, and $9,000. So you also bought a house you can't afford? Your payment is, your payment's what, 30% or 40% of your take-home pay, right? It's about that, yeah. You guys are not going to do anything I tell you to do, I can tell. But you bought a house that you can't afford, and you bought it on terms with the in-laws that are absolutely cray-cray, ridiculous. And you've got a mortgage you can't afford.

so that you're not going to do this, but what you should do is sell the house. And you get out of both problems, the mortgage you can't afford, and the in-laws that you can't afford. This was kind of sold to us in like a dreamscape. Like, we'll do this for you guys so you guys can stay in town. They want us close to them. I'm sorry. We're going to help you.

You can't afford the house. That's not a dreamscape. That's a nightmare. Yeah. It's a nightmare. You're broke, and they helped you get broker. They helped you. I bet they co-signed on this loan, didn't they?

Yeah, well, it's technically a lease to all in situation, to lease a amount of equity. The house is in their name? Yes. Honey. Okay. So mom and dad, we don't want the house. We can't afford it.

You know, so we need to put the house on the market so you can get your money back out because we can't, we can't pay this. Unless they don't want to do that, how do we... It's their problem because you can't afford it. Right. Yeah. But you're not going to do that because your husband's, he's totally bought into this crazy family. It's dysfunctional. Yeah.

Yeah. He's cut totally on. Yeah. These people are not a blessing. They're a problem. I don't know what to tell you, honey. But if I were you, I would get out of that as fast as like my hair was on fire. There's just everything.

Every time you buried the lead to start with, you didn't buy a house. Hello. You're renting a house. And your landlord is interfering in your personal life. Well, no, duh. These people like control. They got their fingers in everything. Yeah, I mean, this is, again, parents don't do this stuff.

please. You're not being a blessing. You're being a butt. It's like absolutely right. You're trapping this poor couple. By the way, the whole house was just a carrot to get them to stay locally. And that's the real freaky scary thing here. And this is tough for her because if husband doesn't step up, she's stuck.

He's not going to step up. Yeah. He's not going to step up. He's got to rewrite the script in his mind that his parents who are such philanthropists are actually a curse. Yeah. And he had to rewrite his script to be able to. sell this house and he's not going to do it. And instead, what's going to end up happening is this is going to end up in divorce or bankruptcy or both because this is not going to end well. It's not

going to end well. These numbers are horrendous. And so, so here's an idea. Don't accept gifts that aren't really gifts. Number one. Number two, when you buy a house and it's not in your name, you didn't buy a house. Someone else bought a house. Hello. Number three, rent to own is not owning. It's renting. Okay, I mean, let's just use the words the way they're supposed to be used and get it out from under dreamscape. Shoot me. Oh, my God. There's nothing good about it. This is such a dysfunctional mess. The poor girl, bless her heart. Oh, man, I can't even imagine. The last thing I want to do with my mind. kids is to put this many wedges in between me and them. Because I got to tell you where I was on Saturday afternoon, I was sitting on my daughter's back porch eating hamburgers that my son-in-law cooked and everybody was there. All the kids, all the grandkids, all 16 of us were back there. And we had no discussions like this. Right. At all. That's true. None. None you. None you.

I don't even get to choose what, where we're having dinner. I just have to go where I'm told. That's exactly. So, I mean, it's not even close to me having control of that. Wow. Scary crap. Scary crap. People don't do scary crap with your kids. And then expect them to be hanging around with you, loving grandpa.

It's not how it works. Love entrepreneurs. Don't forget, guys, I started my company on a card table myself. So I know what it's like to have people counting on you, your team, your family, not to mention your customers. and when you're the one signing the paychecks, you can't afford to fly blind. But I'll be honest, early on, one thing that nearly sunk us was wasting time with spreadsheets that didn't add up because business units didn't talk to each other. I finally told my team, just fix it.

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NetSuite AI flags inventory issues, cash flow risks, even supplier delays before they become problems. So you can trust the data. Stop wasting time and make the right decisions fast. take a free product tour today at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. That's netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Jason's in Las Vegas. Hi, Jason. How are you? I'm doing well, sir. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I'm having a little dilemma. I have some money saved, and I was thinking of potentially taking out an auto loan, although I had just had a car last year that I was able to sell for positive equity, and I use that positive equity to buy a motorcycle. But now that I'm sure you're aware I'm in Las Vegas, the summer's right around the corner if not here. It's starting to heat up. I definitely need to get a car with air conditioning because riding around is kind of killing me and I'm sweating a lot. But I also don't want to fall into a trap where I'm stuck with a car payment because I'm not a huge fan of payments. I try to minimize them the best I can.

How old are you? I'm 32. 32. Really? Yes, sir. Okay. Wow. All right.

And what do you make of yours, sir? Anywhere from 45 to 55,000. What do you do? I'm in the hospitality industry. Okay. In Vegas. No kidding. Okay.

All right. Well, you're obviously new to our stuff and to this show. We teach people the shortest method to wealth is to get out of debt and stay out of debt because your most powerful wealth building tool is your income. If you take the average car payment of $700 a month and then you invested that from age 32 to age 67, you'd have over $7 million. That's what the car payment costs you. and if you want to ensure that you stay at the middle class level or lower of wealth, keep a car payment your whole life. And that will make sure that you stay there.

And so that's, you know, that's the framework that you walked into with this question. And so what is the motorcycle worth? I would say anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000. Okay. All right. And I'm assuming you have no money. I'm assuming you have no money? Well, I have about 12 to 13,000 saved.

In what? Bank account. And then I do have a small, like, IRA, but I don't, I had to, which were all a lot of it during the COVID pandemic. So it's not as much as it was before, but I'm slowly trying to build it back up. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, you had your little run with a motorcycle, and it worked out for a while, and then the heat comes up in Vegas, and it's time to get an air. conditioner, that's logical.

Makes sense. You kind of knew that was coming. If you didn't see it coming, there's something wrong with you. It gets hot there in the summer. And so what I do, if I were in your shoes, giving you the outline, I just gave you, the best way to build wealth is to avoid payments and you need an air conditioner. I would sell the motorcycle. I'd take $5,000 in my $12,000, and I'd buy a $10,000 car for cash and have no payments.

I don't know. Pretty good idea. That's why I have a show. Yeah. or my other idea was just thug it out with the motorcycle and then use what I would be making if I were to take out of a car loan and just invest it in an index fund and then just let it grow. I'm sorry? You mean borrow on a car so that you can invest?

No, no, no. I'm saying like instead of getting the car like I originally thought about doing. Oh, just stick it out and just be sweaty. Just be sweaty and then just keep, you know, using the car. the money like the $5 to $700 I would be making for that car payment and just, you know, you're not going to have a car payment though because you're going to pay cash for a $10,000 car. Right.

Yeah. Well, but then that would deplete a lot of my savings. Deplete $5,000. You'll have $7,000 left and you've got no payments. And with no payments, you can, if no payments, you can actually build wealth. But the sweating, you have to decide, am I going to tough it out with a motorcycle, or do I not want to sweat very much? But I'm not taking, there's no $500 car payment in the equation.

here. None. No car payment at all in the equation. If you're asking us, I mean, that's what I would do if I was 32 and I lived in Las Vegas and I was single and I made $45,000 a year. I'm getting an air conditioner to start with. And I'm, you know. And then build the emergency fund next. Yeah. Right? And then I'm going to start building some wealth. And, you know, work more, make more, work more, make more. What's the path to six figures, you know, in hospitality? Or if it's not a path there and you don't want to be in hospitality, decide what is it that I want to do and start to get very intentional at 32. The good news is you've avoided a lot of crazy debt at this point. Bad news is you don't have a plan, and we do have a plan. So welcome to the show and the baby

steps, but all you're going to do is walk this out, you know? What you're going to have trouble doing because you've done a lot of stuff in your life to date on a whim, on impulse, is you're going to have trouble avoiding impulse. if you don't set this in stone right now and say, I am not going into debt and I'm going to go pay cash for a car. You're going to wander onto a car lot and some Porsche is going to wink at you and you're going to leave with an $800 car payment. That's what's going to happen.

She's going to flirt with you and then you're done. So you've got to be careful. It's happened to me. You can tell. I can't walk by a nice car. I love a good car. But yeah. But it'll kill you.

It's the biggest. thing that we all buy in America that goes down in value. And they go down in value like a rock. A new car loses 70% of its value in the first four years. That's turning 30,000 bucks into, you know, just a few thousand dollars in a heartbeat. And I mean, think about it. How fast, I mean, they go down in value like a rock. That's where Chevy got that, like a rock. And so, I mean, it's just crazy, y'all. And you just, you just, you just, just you've got to be careful of these things. There are cars are something you consume only when you have extra money around.

And, you know, a situation like that, young man's in. He does not have extra money around. And you're right, Ken, a whole series of intentionality moves on his part would make the next five years of his life completely different. No question. We can't wander from thing to thing impulsively. It doesn't work. AJ's in Gainesville, Florida. Hi, AJ.

What's up? Hey, how's it going, guys? Better than I deserve. How can we help? Hey, so I'm in my late 20s. Me and my wife, we bought a house. We should close on our first house in September, and we got our first baby on the way.

She's doing May. Yay! And so we just finished Baby Stuff 3, working on Baby Stuff 4 now. And so I guess my question for you is, I've been working for about the last six months now, I've been working two jobs. My wife works full-time also.

We're trying to grind a little bit all we can. I work seven days a week, 60 hours a week. What are you doing with all the money? Saving it currently. Are you out of debt? Yes, yes. We're on babysat three right now. Oh, okay, good.

Okay. Yeah. So my question is, do we, we're trying to decide if when the baby comes, if I continue working both jobs so that my wife, can stay at home or if it's more beneficial for our family, for me to cut back the second job, and then she goes back to work full-time as well. I don't think that's happening, dude. Do you?

You see her sitting with a brand-new baby in her lap going back to work when she doesn't have to? No, no, no, no. I don't see that happening. Yeah, yeah, our, you know, debate is. But you bought a house you can't afford, unless one of you, unless you work two jobs or she works one. No, no, sir, not all. Okay, so why can't both of you quit? I mean, you go down to one job.

Can't live on your job? No, we need at least two incomes. I know. Why? House payment, right? You don't have any debt. So you bought a house you can't afford on your income. Right, yeah.

We saw it as household income, so, yeah. Yeah. So there's a third option. You know, we can't live here, but I can work 40 hours and you can stay home. And we have to live someplace else. That's another option. You're making choices. You're working to buy a house is what you're working for.

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Ramsey Solutions.com slash events. Ashley is in Boston. Hey, Ashley, what's up? Hi, Dave. Hi, Ken. Thanks for taking my call today. Sure, what's up? So, sorry if I get a little emotional.

But we've been in storm and stork mode for a year and a half, and we just aren't really sure what to do next. Okay. So that means you have a baby on the way. Well, he's here. Okay, good. When was he born? He was born in the beginning of October.

Great. How's he doing? But he's having a lot of medical challenges. It was, we both were almost lost during. birth. So it's been a really physical recovery. We're both still in the hospital pretty much every week. Wow.

From what? There's a variety of things. For me, it's a lot of physical issues related to the birth and some complications. And for him, there's a variety of things. Neurological, his feeding and his

intestines and GI on Friday, we had to go because he stopped breathing, and I found out that that's just part of his conditions. So it's... So what do you guys... I mean, you've been through hell since October. This is not... Even the October before that, when I was laid off from my long-term job. So it's been a, yeah. It's been a while. Yeah. So what does your husband make? He has a full-time job and side hustles, and his full-time job is sales,

and so he makes at least 55 a year. Some months we're up to 8,000 from his income alone, and then side hustles, a lot of reselling and who's delivered things and done things like that as well. Okay. All right. And so since October, you've been down for the count for sure. I mean, you're just trying to heal and get baby healed and get back to some level of normal, right? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And what did you used to make back in the day? At my previous long-term job, I made $65,000 a year. Mm-hmm. And then the job that I started before I went on maternity leave, I was making, it was estimated to be about $40,000 a year. Okay. And how much debt have you guys got?

Well, we currently have, I'm sorry, is it okay if I break it down by like credit cards and stuff? Sure. And credit cards, totals, based on the credit report, it's about 30,000. I'm reaching out to request details, as a lot of them have been sold off to deck collectors. We have a car that we owe 12,300 on. The online payoff amount shows 12,200. I think most of the interest was front-loaded, but it's worth about 6 to 8,000 private party sale due to damage and mileage.

We have a home. Our debt on the home is just under $347,000. What's the house worth? We tried it listed. And the only interest that we had we had was for under $370,000. and they wanted us to cover. What did the real estate agent think the house was worth? He thought it was worth $369,000.

No. The older home was the... No, the only interest you had was at $370. What did you have it listed at? 375. Okay, all right, okay. So you don't have much equity. Okay, all right.

So what I'm always looking at when I'm in a situation like you're in is there are some things I can't control and there are some things I can control. And I get anxiety mostly, not from the things I can't control, but the things I can and I'm not. And so what I'm starting to look at is, okay, what can I, what can I control in this situation? What can you do? You can't control the baby's health. That's up to God and the doctors, right? You can't control your health exactly, other than the things you have to follow the doctor's directions in both cases, the baby and you, right? But right now, you know, right now the things that are a given in this story, as I understand

it is, we've got a sick child that's trying to heal and a sick mommy that's trying to heal. And that's okay. That's okay. It's not good. It's not fun. But that's not anything you can do about that. You can't wave a wand and, you know, fix that. Agreed?

Yeah. Yeah. So it's going to take a minute. Give yourself a little grace and give yourself time to heal and so forth. Your husband sounds like he's an excellent man. I love this guy. What did he do? He went to work and made sure his family had money.

Wow. He goes above and beyond. Yeah, he does. I like this guy a lot. He's a good man. All right. Cool. Oh, I'm sorry.

I thought you were going to make another point. Well, listen, this is all you can't control is his effort, right? So he's going to keep working. Can he get better paying gigs? We're selling everything. We're going to try to whittle this thing down and get some momentum. Right now, with all the health stuff, it has exacerbated all of the financial stress. And Dave just did a great job of really laying this out.

You've got to make that switch to the best of your ability, mentally and emotionally to focus on what we can't control. So how can we begin to chip away? We're upside down in the car. We need the car. It's not out of control. It's not completely out of control. That's doable. So really, how do we?

we begin to get some real momentum through additional income, doubling down on the budget, making sure that we are only doing what we have to do right now. And, you know, your husband, again, is doing the right thing and staying with it. I'd like to see his income get a little higher in that sales role. I'd like to see him approach six figures in a sales role. And so maybe, maybe that's what he's looking for. I know he's working like a crazy man right now, and we admire that. But if I was in his situation, I'd be going, how can I, double my income in a sales function. That's what I would be trying to do. Yeah, and talk to a Ramsey trusted real estate agent and have someone else come and look at this house and, you know,

consider if that's going to work or not. I don't know if it's going to work or not. It doesn't sound like there's a lot of room there, but if the house payment's bothering you and you can get way down on house payment. So here's the thing. If you can retreat back to safety, yeah. Give yourself room to heal. One thing's for sure. It'd be very unusual, and I've been doing this a long time sitting in this thing. I can't think of a single case that I've worked with that 10 years later, you're in exactly the same spot with your health. Yeah.

I mean, you're not going to be in the same spot with your health 10 years from now. So this is a, as you said, a rough patch. It's not a destiny. It's not the prescription for your whole life. So you guys keep scratching and clawing and then the sun will start to come out. And then there'll be a light at the end of the tunnel that's not a train finally. And, uh, but in the meantime, you've been through a hard time. And hey, we're with you. I'm with you. I think your emotions are real

and I would have them too. So keep pushing, keep pushing. But also give yourself a little room to say, if we don't make any progress right now other than healing, that's probably okay for right now. Hey, let's play a quick game of Would You Rather? Would you rather keep overpaying your phone company every month or save $600 a year with no contract and no price hikes ever? Easy answer. That's why I love Boost Mobile. With their low rates, you can unlock up to 600 bucks in savings over the so-called big carriers. You can bring your phone, keep your number, and pay just 25 bucks a month forever on the unlimited plan because you've got better things to do with your money. So go to boostmobile.com slash Ramsey to make the switch

today. Based on average annual payment of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers, compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan as of January 2026. See website for full details. Hannah is in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Hi, Hannah. How are you? Good. How are you? better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I'm renting an apartment to a former co-worker of mine, and originally it started out where I was trying to help her out, get her back on her feet. She was going through a breakup, and she had two kids, and they were going to be homeless.

And now, it's to the point where I'm wondering if I'm just enabling her poor financial choices. How long has this been going on? Two years. She's been there almost two years. Okay. Well, at what point was she supposed to get back on her feet? Well, that's a good question. Right now, I'm charging her $750 a month in rent, and that's including all her utilities.

The apartment should be about $1,200 a month in rent. She was doing all right, and then she was in a car accident, didn't have any insurance. Now she's got a bill for that, and then she got into another car, or those $40 down deals. And she's, you know, $20,000 in debt on a car that's only worth maybe $6,000. She's paying more on her car than she's paying me for rent.

So I don't see her getting out of the hole anytime soon. Okay, so instead of getting back on her feet, she dug the hole deeper. Yeah, pretty much. By not having insurance and making a bad car decision. Yeah, and I just recently found out, well, she missed December. I remember rent. She's caught up now, but she missed that for, she was buying Christmas stuff for her kids. And then I found out that she's paying $200 a month almost to rent couches for her apartment. Okay.

And she only makes about $3,000 a month, I think. Okay. So how does this end? Where does this end? I mean, either I raised the rent and then she gets behind and I have to evict her. or, I mean, that's really the only, that's really the only option I see. I could ask her to leave. I don't know how that would go.

I don't agree with you. I think that, I think if it just keeps deteriorating, you don't even have to raise the rent. She's not going to be able to pay it. It's true. She keeps making stupid decision after stupid decision on top of each other, and they're compounding, and she's going to bury herself, and then she's not going to be able to pay even your reasonable rent. Hello? Hello?

Yeah. You agree. Yeah, I agree. You don't even have to raise the rent. This thing's going to go down the toilet eventually anyway. Yeah. Yeah. The question is, are we just going to stand by and watch that happen? Are we going to take proactive measures on the other side one way or the other? So I do have a lease with her that's up in next March. Yeah. I mean, I guess just right out. I don't think she's going to make it a year. I don't. I don't. She works a seasonal job and her hours will go down midsummer. What is your job?

We both work in the greenhouse. Okay. So we, that's what I'm wondering. Is there an emotional attachment you have to this person that you probably have not or would not with other people that are leasing from you? Well, we used to work together, and we don't anymore. That ended about three months ago. I no longer work with her. And I also, I was living in, it's a triflex.

I was living there as well. so as long as I was there and seeing her every day, that made it harder. And I no longer lived there. So it's really helped me have more of an emotional break. Emotional break from having to see her and see her there, see her at work. And I'm really kind of... You sounded emotional when you started talking to us. I could be wrong, but you sounded emotion.

I'm just nervous. Okay. Well, you're doing great, by the way. You're doing great. Oh, thanks. Yeah. I'm with Dave on this one. I would be planning.

I would be planning on what are we going to do when she can't pay the rent anymore so that you're not stuck with this? Because this doesn't – there's just – you wouldn't do this for anybody else is the feeling I get it. I don't think that you can fix her life. Yeah. Because she's choosing not to. And you're not going to fix it. If you gave her free rent, she would screw it up. No, I think if I gave her free rent, she would go rent three more. couch. That's what I meant. She'd screw it up. Yeah. Yeah. Or a hot tub for the back porch or whatever, yeah. And so, yeah. So I think we've got to, you know, you need to sit down and have a conversation with her human to human and say, all right, we started this so that I could help you. And here's what's happened since I started helping you. You've gotten worse. You rented couches.

you went around without car insurance and made a mess and then you bought a car that you absolutely can't afford that's killing you and so i'm thinking this is going to end poorly like you're going to not pay me rent and then i'm going to have to evict my friend who i was trying to help and this whole thing breaks my heart so you and i need to come to an agreement that says that you need to go live somewhere else because I'm not a blessing to you and I want to be a blessing to you. I want to be helpful to you and I can't be that while you're here. So maybe I should ask her to look for somewhere else before the situation gets worse? Yeah, like now.

I was talking about this conversation happens next week. Okay. Yeah, I want her to leave now. I want her to go buy, go rent something that she can afford that's cheaper. She can't get anywhere cheaper. Yes, she can. I don't know where. I don't either.

I don't either, but it's not your job. Your job is to remove her. That's it. No, you're right? Because you're not going to work out. It's not a loving, you're not loving her by just doing nothing and letting this thing go down the drain. If you really do care about her, help her move. You know, I'll give you a free rent.

I'll give you a free month's rent. or I'll refund next month's rent if you're gone by the end of the month. And that'll help you get started on your new thing and give her $750 after she moves out. Okay. I could do that. And then go rent the stinking thing for $1,200. And the next time you get ready to help someone, you need to think about what help looks like and where this is taking us. Because giving her a place to live did not keep her from being homeless.

Yeah. Hello. oh, that did not, you know, you used that line in your head and you used it on us, but I'm not buying it. She would have figured out something. She's always figured out something. And the only way that I help someone in a situation like that is if I get down under the thing and I start going, okay, we're going to be on a budget. We're going to work six jobs. There's no rental couches.

There's no car payments. We keep insurance in place. And we're going to ride herd on doing smart. stuff with your money. And if you do smart stuff with your money, after a little while, you'll have some money. It's pretty amazing. It's kind of, it's kind of works like every time. And when you do dumb stuff with money, you have no money. It works like every time. It's going to ask you, how do you recommend people, like in this situation, deal with the guilt? Because she's a good person. The caller's a really good person. Obviously trying to help out a former co-worker.

You can't be, your job is not Jesus. That's right. But how you begin to separate? the job. It's his job. That's right. You're not signed up for that and you don't have skills for it. Your job is not to fix everyone. You can't fix other people. The only thing you can do is set up a situation where they can do something. You set up a situation where they could do something and they chose not to do it. That's right. I can't make the lady stop doing stupid stuff. So a question could be, did I do everything possible? It's why I end the call here. Right. And someone calls and they I tell them what to do and then they argue with me. And I tell them what to do and then they argue with me. The third time they argue with me, 100% of the time y'all will hear me in the call.

I am not going to try to talk you into this stuff. I'll show you what to do. And if you insist on being a stupid but human being, you're going to be broke. And I'm going to just watch it happen. And I go home with no guilt. I turn off the microphone, get my car, drive home. I don't even remember you called. Because it's not my job to fix your life.

My job to help you show you how you fix your life. You're the hero in the story. I'm not the hero. I'm just a guy on the sideline showing you what to do. I'm Yoda teaching you how to swing the lightsaber. If you choose not to get in a fight, I can't help you with it. You know, you've got to step into the force yourself. I can't do it for you.

And she can't do it for her friend. And just giving her a place to live and calling that, oh, she would have been homeless otherwise. No, she wouldn't. That's bull crap. She wouldn't either. She might have had a hard patch and then worked it out. But you've got to stop doing the stuff that you keep doing the same thing over and over again. You expect a different result.

It's a definition of insanity. And I got no guilt about that. That's not being calloused. It's just, it's not my job to be Jesus. He's got that job already taken. You've worked too hard to get control of your money just to let strangers control your data. Think about it. Just about every time you sign up for a newsletter, grab a coupon code, or start a free trial,

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join deleteme.com slash Ramsey to get 20% off their annual plans and take back control. That's joinedleetme.com slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. Ken Coleman Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling author is my co-host today. Open phones at Triple-8-8-25-5-2-2-25. Jerry is in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Jerry. How are you? Hi, Dave. I had a question for you. I've been married for 11 months, and I found out during our joint filing with my wife that she has four years of back taxes with the IRS totaling about $48,000. And I'm looking for your advice on how to handle that. Wow. That's a bummer. So did she, is she deceptive or incompetent or both?

Without sounding derogatory, I'd probably choose the latter. Incompetent? Yes. Yeah. I mean, like, it didn't occur to her that this was a problem. No, she thought it would fix itself. Yeah, okay. And that's why she didn't bring it up.

She wasn't actually hiding it. It just was not on her radar as important. Yes. Where you're like in freak out mode and so am I. Yes. Yeah, I'm like, ah! You're kidding! Holy Jesus!

Oh my God. The IRS of all people! Okay. So, um, the first thing I want to pull the thread on what else don't I know that you don't think is important. Agreed. And, um, so I don't. asked her this question about two weeks ago when we were filing, and then this kind of, she came clean with the rest of it, because I saw from 2024 the tax year that there was stuff that had been

penalized, and I asked her about that. And if there was anything else, she said no. And then yesterday, she brought up these other things. Well, I mean, like three years ago, I got a car repoed, and I didn't bring that up. But they're going to come to me for $30,000 one of these days. Right. But I don't think it's a big deal. So I thought it's a lot of it. take care of itself, so I didn't bring it up. I mean, what else is out there that I didn't think is important so I didn't bring it up? Agreed. I really want to dig into that.

And somehow, okay, so her reaction is not, it was kind of like a shrug, like, this is just no big deal, or am I missing something? She used it as a big deal. Thought she could take care of it herself. Oh, okay. All right. So what did that involve? because what I'm trying to do is establish your relationship pattern going forward. I agree.

So, well, she brought it all to me, and now I know what's on the table. We looked at her credit report to identify anything else, like you said. So I have a view of everything that's happening now. I just need to know what's the best plan of action. Do I pay it all as a lump sum? Yes. If you have it, you have it? Yes.

Okay. Yeah, write a check. Because the penalties and the interest, you can't, they're ridiculous. And there's no discounting with the IRS. They're made whole 100% of the time. So, yeah, just as faster you can clean it up, the better. But I really want to make sure relationally that there's nothing else out there writing. You didn't see anything on the credit bureau,

and I want to make sure that we're aligned on, this is the worst, financial moment of our entire lives relationally, it never gets any worse than this. Everything is better from here forward. We really need to both be on that page. Because, I mean, I'm scared that this could happen again if there's not an acknowledgement that how damaging this is to a relationship by her. So if that's not the case, then you guys may need to sit down for a tune-up. going with a marriage counselor just to get things dialed, get some tools in both your belts to

get aligned on that this is like grown up stuff and you can't freak and ignore it and me be okay with that. I'm not going to be okay with that. And so we have to be aligned on that we together know everything and together we are aligned on every decision going forward so that there's never, I'm never going to be surprised again the rest of my life if I'm you. I'm not okay with surprises of this type. And so that, and I'm just, go ahead. We just, we have a, we have our first baby coming in two months, so it's kind of all falling on top of me right now.

Yeah. Well, and, yeah. And so we're negotiating with the lady in our third trimester, too. This is just really not profitable. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, at some point in this process, and it may not be anytime.

soon given that last piece of information. If there weren't a baby you're on the way in any moment, I would be in the marriage counselor's office for a tune-up to make sure I was aligned. But I may wait until the baby's four months old. But she needs to, you guys need to have a conversation of this, that she clearly, without you shaming her or yelling at her or something like that, but this is just, we're not going to function this way going forward. Okay.

And then I'd write a check and pay it off. because if it comes back again after you write a check and pay it off and something else pops up or she goes and does something else and forgets to tell you because it's not important, but it is important. I can handle it myself or whatever the bull crap narrative was on this thing, and it was bull crap, then, you know, we don't want to repeat of this. We want to heal this broken narrative. Does that mean? Yeah, and one of the things I was going to lean into is if you guys aren't already doing combined finances, that needs to happen today.

so that, again, as we work through the relational stuff here, the financial stuff is also completely, everything is on the table. This is a tough feeling, you know, to have. But I agree with Dave. I stroke the check today. You don't want to be dealing with the IRS on this. And listen, it's going to suck right in that check. But it's going to suck worse not to deal with it. And to try to string this response out with a baby on the way.

No, no. Don't do that. I'll take care of it immediately. Get on the phone with them and find out what it is and clear that. but we have to make sure that there's no repeat. Oh, yeah. That's the big thing here. And so, and transparency does that.

And so if you got fully transparent and then you're looking over her income and her withholding and the two of you are doing your taxes together and then there is a shortfall, then it's now your fault. Because you got your fingers in there with it. Okay. And to Ken's point, when you combine everything, and then it still happens, then now it's on you. So that's the whole process. That's where I would go. But the big thing is this, financial problems are never the problem. They're always a symptom of something else going on.

So you've got to go down to ground. What's the problem? What's causing this? And what's causing her to not deal with this? Family of origin, they were, you know, we were ashamed to talk about money. Every time we talked about money, daddy yelled, so I don't want to talk about money because I'm afraid you'll yell. Or I don't know, whatever the bull crap is that's under there.

But there's bull crap under there. I promise you. This is crazy. And because it's not $500. It's $50,000. That's not an oops. Okay? 500 is an oops.

50,000 is, uff, oof, oof, it's bothering me. Yeah. Man, and what a setup, though. I mean, with a baby coming in too much. Wow. Hey, guys, George here. Listen, 99 times out of 100 when people say,

I don't know where my money goes. It's not a math problem. It's a behavior problem. They're not budgeting, then they're shocked when their bank account hits triple zeros. Well, here's the deal. Winning with money is about doing the boring stuff consistently. And that includes banking someplace that helps you stop guessing with your money, like Fairwin's credit union. They're not going to fix your habits. That part's on you, but they do support people who are ready to take control of their money. At Fairwinds, you get a high yield savings account with a great rate to help grow your emergency fund, a checking account that won't nickel and dime you, and up to 10 free savings accounts so you can

organize your money on purpose because when you stay disciplined your money gets predictable, manageable, and boring in the best way. So if you're ready for a bank that helps you be intentional, open your smart bundle today at fairwins.org slash Ramsey and get the Ramsey beweir debit card to go along with it. That's fairwinds.org slash Ramsey, insured by the NCUA. Beth is in Detroit. Hi, Beth. How are you? Hi, I'm all right. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I'm calling to see if what your advice is beyond selling our family home. We've got four kids in order to pay off a large amount of debt.

Okay. And so how much is a large amount of debt? So we owe $145 to the IRS, $145,000. And then we have $100,000 on a home equity line of credit. And then about almost $50,000. on medical expenses and car payment. Mm-hmm. And what's your home worth?

We current, our mortgage is for 470, and we haven't offered currently that we just got for $7.55, so it would allow us basically to clear the deck and we start, but our hesitation is with just our kids. Where did all this debt come from? So my husband was the primary breadwinner, I was home with our kids, and he got into day trading. And I am guilty of burying my head in the sand and not getting involved in our finances.

So he made quite a bit, lost it just as quick, and then turned to credit cards, and then paid taxes on the capital gains he made with the trading before losing it all. Okay. There's not capital gains on day trading. There's ordinary income on day trading. And there's also a loss you can take if you've lost money against that. Okay. Do you really think you have the whole story?

So I'm not entirely financially literate. This is something that I'm trying to get more involved in just in the last couple of years. Taxes in particular, I mean. When did all this happen? This happened about, well, I think it was happening for quite some time. But again, I kind of was bearing my head in the stand. and he just came to me three years ago. We had a major health crisis, and he said, you know, I got to come clean.

We owe quite a bit of money. I cleared out our 401K. I cleared out all of our savings. Okay. So he's been, you've been limping along with us together for three years, with you having knowledge of it. Yes, sir. Yeah, we've been married for almost 20 years, but three years I've had knowledge of it. And what does he make a year?

He makes $180. as a base, but he's in sales, but it's been a tumultuous and very dry couples. And he's not day trading anymore? Correct. Okay. All right. Okay. So your question was interesting.

You said, we would do this except for the kids. I think you have to do it for the kids. You have to get your life back for the kids. Your kids, the definition of your kids having a good life is not where they're live. It's who their parents are and how they act. Yeah. You live in a house that's way nicer than you grew up in. Mm-hmm.

So do I. So does Ken. And we didn't die from that. And it didn't malform our character from that. Yeah. So sell it and clean up the dead gum mess. If the problem has gone away, no way. more day trading and no more deceiving. And you guys are working together on this. Then he takes his 180,000 and hopefully more, 250,000. And you guys work to rebuild your lives and buy another house someday. But in the meantime, I'm going to be free, baby. Set me free. And I think the stress level

in the air of your home will go down and the children will benefit from that far more than they were having that particular set of bricks and mortar. Okay, that's a good way. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just going to add, just do your own research tonight on how stress affects your physical health. It's not just the mental and emotional. We forget what it does to the body. So I would just add, if I had the chance to fix this, and I love the fact that he came forward three years ago. And if you guys are on the same page now, I absolutely agree with Dave. This is a reset, a reset with the idea, though, that we never do this again. Yeah, I mean, he has to say, I lost our house.

That's right. This is a day trading. I lost our home. That's how big a deal this is. Okay. By the way, I lost everything and went bankrupt because of my choices, not my wife's. All right? When we went bankrupt 30 plus years ago.

All right? So that's, you know, and I get to own that the rest of my life. But I also never did the things again that put me there again, ever, again, again, again, never again. again. You see? I mean, you say, you know, I lost everything. I lost my home. We did not lose our home, but we don't, the only reason was there was no equity in it.

And so it survived the bankruptcy. But, and it wasn't that nice of a house anyway. But the, anyway, yeah, we just said, you know, we lost everything. We get the opportunity to start again fresh and clean. And in your case, that's the sale of a house. In our case, it was a bankruptcy. And we're never going back here again, and we never went back there. And from that point forward, we never, I never bought anything that Sharon and I don't both agree to, investments or otherwise.

And so, yeah. So I think it's fair to say, just to outline for everybody, just to let you guys know out there, this is not a unique situation. Here's the numbers. And this is the most bizarre number I have almost ever heard in the investing world. If you day trade for 36 months continuous, 97% of you lose money. That's how stupid that is. I mean, if you said 97% of the time you walk across the street, you get hit by a car, you would not walk across that street.

Under any circumstances, you wouldn't be the one guy that says, Frogger, I got this. You wouldn't be that guy. You'll be going, no, those are not odds I want to play. And there is something about the arrogance and pridefulness that says, I've got the stock market figured out. If you hear someone say that, laugh at them. They are funny people. They're statistically stupid human beings.

97% of you that day trade 36 months consecutively lose money. Now, you need to hear that because some of you get a little fishing story where you hit a lick and you go, oh, I made some money. And it's just like gambling in Vegas. Now, I'm going to go back to the table. And the only part I'm going to remember is the time I won. I'm going to forget about the 16 times I lost. And when you add it all up, you lost. That's how they build those nice hotels in Vegas.

So true. And the same thing is true at day trading. You lost. Poor guy. Poor gal. What a horrible thing they're going through. But some of you people, man, you're sitting out there when Dave Ramsey doesn't understand. Listen, I understand. What I understand is why what I don't understand is why you don't understand. 97. What other number do you have this 97% of anything ever?

That's not statistically significant. That's like a fact. You're going to lose money. Oh, my God. And it has the same trap that gambling does. Oh, it's exactly same. Because it's got a feedback loop. Yeah. it's the same thing as draft kings same crap same exact thing that's why the sports betting's gone through the roof it's a feedback loop a scarcity feedback loop and um you know our friend michael

that wrote um comfort christ christ's his second book easter his second book he talks about that a lot and he went into a great depth to study on that about the the dopamine hits and and how you just keep cycling back into this thing and you cycle back into this thing and it's but yeah it's just pushing the same button and it's but it always has at its core this ridiculous arrogance that I can beat the house it's just it's arrogant pride comes right before you have to sell your house because you lost everything wow pride comes right before the fall wow Dave we got a lot of calls on this show where Life happens. One day someone's healthy, they're working, providing for their family, and then a curveball hits.

You know, we hear it all the time. A car accident, a cancer diagnosis, a heart attack, and suddenly, everything changes. Yeah, and that's why you've always said that having term life insurance from Xander is essential, because it protects your family if the worst happens. Yeah, that's right. You need 10 to 12 times your income in coverage. No gimmicks, no whole life junk, just straightforward. life protection. But there's another piece that people often overlook, and that's long-term disability insurance. Yeah, it's important to understand the difference between them. Life insurance steps in when you die. Disability insurance steps in while you're alive, but can't work. So it replaces a large part of your income, so the bills still get paid while you get back on your feet. Now, if your employer gives you free disability insurance, great. Take it. If it's discounted there

at a better price, take it. But if not, Zander can help you find the right plan. Whether you're single or married, it's not optional. If you're going to be out of work for a while, then you need to make sure the money still showing up. And that's why Zander is our go-to. They make it super simple to get the right coverage at the best price, no pressure, no upselling. I've trusted Jeff Zander and Zander insurance for over 25 years, and so is my family. So don't wait. It's fast, it's easy, and it could make all the difference.

Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-42-82. protect yourself, protect your income, protect your family. Are you sick and tired of working so hard but having nothing to show for it? Feel like a rat in a wheel, run, run, run, run, run, get nowhere. Well, that's normal. And normal's broke. Well, you ought to be sick and tired of that. Well, good news is you don't have to live that way.

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How about yourself? Better than I deserve. What's up? I can give context after the question because I follow you guys, and this is going to sound like I don't. But I'm wondering if I should, if there's a trick to increasing some credit problems so that I can get a house within 18 months, or if my credit score will go by-bye in that amount of time. Everything that we've seen, they do not publish this, but everything that we've seen in six to 12 months of the time, you've had zero activity on any account, your credit score will disappear.

Okay. Are there like any ways to guarantee that it does that? No. My main credit issue is collection debts. Those will be knocked out within a couple of months, and I want to make sure nothing appears again after that. Yeah. Well, if you have settled them, if they're not outstanding, There should be no more activity on the account once it's settled, right?

I believe so. I've just, I've had a couple pop-up that I didn't know we're even in collections. Well, I can't. That's why you can't make a guarantee. I mean, if you have something pop up, then the whole clock starts over, dude. So, I mean, you can't, you know. But if you've got stuff that's in collections or been in collections and you're having to settle it, the last thing you need to do is go into debt to build your credit score to buy a house.

So you need to freaking do this in the right order, dude. I mean, listen to what you're actually saying here. It's kind of crazy. So, no, you need to clear the debts, get to zero and zero activity. And if it takes longer than six months or longer than 12 months because something else pops up, well, that's something else popping up would have screwed up your other plan too, by the way. if you're sitting there and the credit score is going up, up, up, because you have a bunch of healthy accounts that you're paying on time merely to drive your credit score up,

and you have a collection drop in the middle of that, it goes down, down, down. And so anything you have pop up that, you know, that unexpectedly is going to affect this either strategy negatively. So, no, I would clear everything and count on six to 12 months after date of last activity. you should see a credit score disappear become undeterminable, and you can go to Churchill mortgage and get the same mortgage that someone with an 850 score can get. Same exact mortgage, but they do manual underwriting in order to make that happen. I just want to point this out because we take this call all the time. You need to be aware that everybody you know is probably going to disagree with what Dave just said

because they're uninformed. They think that you almost heard Dave wrong. is my guess, because this is such a cultural thing. So I'm only bringing this up to say, call Xander and talk to them. You mean Churchill? Excuse me, Churchill, thank you. Call Churchill mortgage and walk through it so that you actually have real data because most people that you do life with will think that either A, we're crazy, or B, that you heard us wrong. That's how systemic this credit score belief is. So I just want to point that out that when you got off this call, you might be on the high of, okay, I know what to do.

And then you tell anybody they're going to look at you like you got horns growing out your head. Tyler's in Atlanta. Hi, Tyler. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing, Dave? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

Yeah, so right now, I currently travel for work. I'm a fiber optic splacer, and I make about $130,000 a year. And my wife, we have one little boy and we have a little girl on the way. and I was wanting to try to move back home and my pay will probably be getting cut in half home most and she's a stay-at-home mom and I was just going to see what y'all thought on that. What's the driving reason

that you are even considering taking a half-pay cut to move back home? Being home? Be home with the kid. I know, but I want a little bit more on that. I know what's the driving reason that would make you consider that? Well, I'm gone for five days a week, and then once a month I have to work the weekend shift. And I just want to be home with them more, be more present, and that's it.

Okay, so it's not trying to be near family to make up for the travel. It's I just don't want to be on the road. Yeah, pretty much. I just want to be with them more. Is that your only option to take a 50% cut? Probably not 50. It might go from like one. 30 to like 70 or 80 probably.

Doing what? I'm a fiber optics block. So you do the same thing? Yes, sir, yeah. And where did you get that number? 70 or 80? Well, I've just been looking at my jobs in the area I live in,

and that's about the median for that. Published jobs or friends telling you about stuff? I'll publish jobs, yes, sir. Okay, so that's the media. So what does a path look like for growth? Forget this move for just a second. If you stay in your industry, what is possible for you to get to over time if you look in the next three to five, seven, ten years? Same, I mean, it's growing pretty good.

If I move my way up, say I go to supervisor or something like that, I could probably reach back over $100,000 a year while at home. Okay. What's beyond supervisor? Probably like regional and stuff or like director. Okay, what's that make? I'd probably say well over 120. Okay. Is that something you want?

Why are you not eligible for that now? Well, I'm 22 right now, and I've been doing this almost four years, which I don't know if I am or not. I haven't really looked at that yet. But I'm just guessing I'm probably just neat. too new to and I don't really have any supervisor. Can I give you some older brother advice? Actually, I'm old enough to be your dad, sadly.

I just realized that. So here's what I think. I think you're allowing the real raw emotion of being away from the family, how bad your heart's hurting, and that's because you're a good dude. You're a good dude and a good dad. And I totally get it. But I think you're allowing that raw emotion to get in the way of a long-term plan. And at 22, with another one on the way,

I would be thinking about the next five to seven years as clearly as I could. Understanding I can't control the future, but I can look forward and I can go, how do I want to take care of my wife and these two little ones five to seven years from now? And if it were me, I would let this sit a little bit, get some more wisdom besides Dave and I, some older guys in your life, say, hey, I'm dealing with this real emotion. Because I think until you have a plan for what the next thing, three, five, seven years could look like in your industry. I would not leave this job.

And I would let my heart hurt a little bit more because the babies are little. One baby at home, another one, they don't even know. You'd be present when you're home. I would not make this move right now unless I could clearly tie it to a better move long term. When I came to Ramsey, I actually went backwards a little bit for about a year and a half. but I knew coming here was the best long-term play. But it was a part of the long-term. And let me also point out, I was able to do it.

We made some changes financially to where we weren't scraping. Yeah, let me add one other thing, okay. Do not, just because you saw some job listings at one price, don't accept that as your destiny. Right. So, you know, I don't think that you have to make less coming off the road. I think you can make almost what you're making now, but you're probably going to poke around a little bit more to find that one

because you are in a wonderful trade right now, and the trades are very short on help. And I think you're probably in a stronger position than you feel like you are. You do not have to take a pay cut necessarily to come home. It's not mandatory. Our question of the day is brought to you by, Why refi if private student loan default has kicked you off track, well, here's how you reset. Why refi works with borrowers and other lenders that other lenders won't.

They'll help you refinance defaulted private student loans with a low fixed rate so you can get back on the plan and move forward. Visit yrefi.com.com. R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey might not be in all states. Today's question comes from Adrian in Romania. I've been wrestling with whether certain ways of making money are morally right from a Christian perspective. I understand working for a salary, creating a useful product or service, or renting housing at a fair price. But I feel conflicted about things like stocks and bank deposits because they seem more indirect and harder to evaluate ethically. For example, when you buy and later sell stock for a profit, it can feel like you're benefiting. without really creating value. And with banks, you do not always know how your money is being used. Am I overthinking this? Or are some forms of investing more consistent with Christian convictions than others? Yeah, I do think you're overthinking it, but I don't take a shot at you there. I think, you know, you've got a great heart. I think you've got to use God-given common sense and also that

still small voice of discernment. And I think that when it comes to just your general investing in banks, you don't need to feel guilty about making money on your deposits or making money on your money market or making money on your investment strategy, certainly what we teach here at Ramsey. So I think while you're overthinking it, I appreciate where your heart is. And I think you just have to back off to, wait a second, am I in any way making money through some type of Ponzi scheme, right? Now that is dishonesty. That is lying. And making money off of evil actions would be your meter.

And so outside of that, I think you're overthinking it. Am I bringing harm to someone? Yeah, that's the other thing. Right. And so, you know, when you deposit money in a bank and they pay you interest, you're not bringing harm to someone. You can't control what the bank does. Okay.

It's the same thing as if you go and buy groceries at a grocery store, they now have your money. If they go and do something evil with it, you bought groceries. You didn't do anything. They did. And so same thing with the bank. you put a deposit in a bank and they do something evil with it. Now, if a bank is known for screwing people and you put your money in there, well, yeah, you're kind of participating then.

But just, you know, if a grocery store is known for screwing people and you do business with them, you're participating too. Same thing, right? And so, you know, the trick is we try not to do business with people that have evil intent in any way because they're going to do that. And that is consistent. Now, and here's another interesting one that comes up also in this. thing. It's stocks, you know, buying stock. Now, I don't want to, I've heard people say from a Christian perspective that I don't want to buy stock in X company, because X company might be doing something wrong. Well, if you buy stock from that company, unless it's an initial public offering, or unless it's treasury stock being sold, both of which are very unusual, but if you

simply call your broker up and say, I want to buy stock in Home Depot, Home Depot doesn't get the money. You're not buying the stock from Home Depot. You're buying it from Ken who's selling his Home Depot stock. It's an individual to an individual. It's like my buddy has a Chevy pickup up for sale and you go buy the Chevy pickup. Chevy doesn't get any of the money. Okay.

But, you know, so if Chevy, if Chevrolet is screwing some, somewhere or messing somebody over, you buying that Chevy pickup from another individual is not in any way funding the evil practices. Now, you are driving around a brand that you don't agree with, okay, but aside from that, you know, it's a used car. The new car dealer does not get any, the new car manufacturer does not gain, this is a used share of stock. You know, they don't get any benefit from it at all. Now, if the stock goes up in value and you, you know, that benefit that because that company is doing evil things and screwing people, then you have benefited. But the actual purchase of the stock is from another individual. And so there's nothing there. And that's the

thing. So you have to be real careful about jot and tittle here, the details, in other words. You have to be careful about how far down in the weeds am I going to try to do this. And so, you know, it's, there's almost no way that you can have any transactions in the marketplace that at some point you can't lead it back to something that you don't like. Somewhere, somehow. Yeah. But where you have to decide is, okay, how much, what control do I have and is my intent to profit off of this? So, for instance, I would never buy or do business with or put money in any way anywhere near a payday lender. They're charging 800% and they're screwing poor people.

Okay? So I don't want to own one of those secretly on the side that none of you know about, but God would know about it. So as a Christian, I'd be screwing poor people. So I'm not going to have any do with a payday lender in any stretch any way. And, but, but, you know, just because the grocery store, they don't get a pass either because, you know, they sell whatever that I don't agree with in there, you know, and, you know, you can say, well, there's some kind of toxic, you know, whatever, it's just you can never get to the end of this if you spend all your time on. You drive yourself crazy. So I spend a reasonable amount of time saying, this is God's money. am I doing something that makes him blush?

If it does, then I don't do it. But I'm also not going to spend my entire life trying to live in a cave, click, lint, and avoid doing business out here in a positive way, helping people in the process, and not enjoying the whole process. So there you go. Interesting. All right. Jamie is in Memphis.

Hi, Jamie. How are you? I'm doing well. How about you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? So my question is, how do you enjoy? financial peace when the majority of your net worth is money that you receive

like through inheritance and wasn't through your own hard work. Do you have children? No, I'm single. Okay. Will you have children someday? Most likely not, no, sir. Okay, all right. Well, I want good things for my kids.

Most people do. and so someone wanted good things for Jamie and they blessed you with an inheritance. Was it your parents, your grandparents, or what? Grandparents. Grandparents? Okay. Didn't they deeply love you? They did.

Okay. And so they wanted to do nice things for their grandkid, who they love. I don't know why you couldn't enjoy that. You didn't do anything wrong except have grandparents that loved you. Right? Yeah. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't be wasteful. I would be trying to multiply the money and do good things with it to make Grandpa proud.

So he's watching from heaven and say, I want him smiling. I want to live out the legacy that he built and do good things, do positive things with the wealth. And part of that is enjoy it. Part of it's multiplied. Invest it well. Yeah, I would just add, there's a lot going on. We don't have time to dig in. And I think a practical answer is how do you start to enjoy money that you didn't earn is a little bit at a time.

I think it's like being afraid of riding a bike. If I could take you away back there, you wanted to ride a bike. Little U was like, I think riding a bike would be amazing. I see older kids doing it. But I'm also equally terrified to try to learn to ride the bike. And I think there's something going on with you and money. So training wheel. So I do think training wheels.

I think just go give. Here's what I would do. I would give some today or tomorrow, not a huge amount, but just something that makes you uncomfortable enough, and it's not a crazy amount, but just give it to somebody and watch someone's reaction to you taking that money and doing something, go with it. And then down the line, a day or two later, buy something again, reasonable, something that you would like to buy. Maybe it's even a $100 purchase.

Who cares? But I think a little bit at a time to begin to experience something positive with money, because my belief is you've not experienced much positive around money at all in your life. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. Ken Coleman Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Mary is in Washington, D.C. I'm Mary, how are you? Hi, Dave. Fine. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

Tired with 8,500 monthly pension, $4,600 expenses. I owe $3,7,000. and $6,000 of my mortgage, and I have $249,000 in my 401k and $40,000 liquid. Should I use my surplus to pay off my home early or keep investing? Hmm. Interesting. So how much is owed on the house? 376. 376. Okay. Yes, sir. All right. And so, and you're how old?

56. 56, yeah. So I do want your home paid off, okay, going into retirement. And so I don't want you carry a mortgage. I mean, you're early retired at 56, but I'm saying going into your 60s and 70s, I want the house paid off. So we need to get there. But if we did even 10 years, that's 66 years old. That's $30,000 a year.

That's $2,500 a month. You could do that. still invest. Okay. Or you could back off the investing and be done in six years, you know, or five years. If you put $5,000 a month, it'd be gone in five years. That's true. Okay.

Is that what you would recommend? I don't like doing nothing on investing, so I would do something there. But I'm going to put the heavier part of the. excess money on the house while still doing something. So if I had 5,000 to play with as an example, which it sounds like you don't, it sounds like you got four to play with, right? Right, right. Okay. What about three and one? What would that do for us? That's 36,000 a year. It gets you out in about seven, eight years, something like that. Yeah. If you put $1,000 in investing, that's only $12,000 a year. And you put $3,000.

the house. You'll be done. I think I'm doing this in my head, but I'm pretty close. I think it'll be between seven and eight years. You'll be out. And here's the thing. Is your 250 that's in the 401k invested in good growth stock mutual funds earning market rates of return?

I think, so I retire from the government so I have the G fund. Okay, so it's TSP. It's not 401K. TSP, I'm sorry. It's TSP. Okay. I would move it all into the C plan, not the G. Okay. It's been earning about what the S&P does, and so it's been earning around 11, 12% a year average.

If you're earning 10%, which the G is not, but the C would be, if you're earning 10% a year, your lump sum, your 250 that's in there will double every seven years. you're 56, so that means that $250 will be a million at $70. If you don't add anything to it. If you don't add anything to it. And if it's in the C plan. Now, if you're retired, you can roll that TSP into an IRA with a good SmartVestor Pro and pick mutual funds that will outperform the C. If you're stuck in the TSP, you know, like if you still work,

there, then I would be in the C plan, maybe a little bit in the eye, a little bit in the S, but mainly the C, if you're working there. But you're not there anymore. You can roll that. You could go on Ramsey Solutions.com, click SmartVestor Pro, roll that 250 and sit down with them and say, hey, if I had $1,000 to this and it's invested in the four types of mutual funds that Ramsey talks about growth, growth, growth, and income, aggressive growth, and international, which is what my personal portfolio is, and so is Kins. okay and we pick good mutual funds that have a better track record than the market a better than s&P averages then um yeah then your 250 will be a million dollars and your thousand dollars a month will be another chunk as well at 70 and you'd have the house paid off at four thousand or three thousand dollars a month um in i think seven and a half you know eight years we'll call it and so but that puts you at like 65 with a paid for house and on your way to a million dollars in NISTag. Meanwhile, as soon as a house gets paid off, your investments will already be on track. You've got some freed up money at that point.

Yeah. And the only thing I would add, and we didn't get into this with you, so I'm not sure if you're single, if you're married or not. But the $4,600, I'd be looking, where can we cut there? That feels like that's a little bit high. But I love that you've got the $8,500 monthly pension. That's nice. It is nice. Another thing I would also throw out there.

I'm not saying you have to do this, but I would think about it. Being young like you are, got a lot of experience. How could I take some of that government skill, go to the private sector for three years, 24 months, and make some good money and fast forward the entire timeline that Dave just laid out. Oh, yeah. You drop a couple hundred grand on this formula. All of a sudden, everything shifts quick. Because of her age, I would think about it. You know, between now and 60, you can pay off the house for the income only.

Extra income only. Correct. Make 300 grand between $960. That'd be like $120,000 a year or whatever. I mean, I bet you could. It's possible. I would look at it as an option. You don't have to do it as a slave drive thing.

Take something that kind of makes you smile. You're happy to go to work. That's right. And go make some little bit of money and it makes me real happy because I'm paying off my house super fast. And then I can really do, be serious about investing. That's a really good idea. I don't think about that. because at 56, you've got a lot of gas left in the tank.

Yeah. A lot of things you can do. Yeah. That's very cool. Okay, so the TSP has the Thrift Savings Plan for federal government employees has several options. The G is the, is like a guaranteed, and it's one of the lowest paying of the options. The C is a common stock, and it mirrors the S&P. The S is small company and is like an aggressive growth.

The I is international. And so that's like an international growth stock mutual fund. Same kind of thing. The S and the I have underperformed, though, their indexes in the marketplace. So they're not as strong. The C is by far the strongest thing. Not even a close second in the TSP program. And so what we've always recommended is somewhere around 80% for those of you working there.

or more in the C plan. And if you want a little bit of spice in the gumbo, you could go 80, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, I. And that's starting to approximate the four types of mutual funds. We talk about growth, growth, and income, aggressive growth, and international in your TSP. And you'll get a good rate of return there. But I would have zero in the F or in the G, either one. and they also have new life phase plans.

I wouldn't be in any of those at all. Not at all. Don't let the government plan you're investing. That would be a bad idea. Sorry if you work for the government, but you should know that. That's true. Yeah, no, you want to plan your investing and you want to look at the track records of these particular indexes that these are modeled after, and they're pretty simple to look at.

They've got lots of good information on their website on it. But if you're in the TSP plan, that's what we recommend. folks. And I would recommend anytime you leave a company or the government that you roll to an IRA because a self-managed IRA through your broker in good mutual funds is going to outperform the limited options you had back at the old place. Hey, good folks, Dr. John Deloney here. Don't you think life is too short to hate Mondays? Listen, you're worth loving the work you do and where you do it. So guess what? Ramsey Solutions is hiring. If you're ready to join an amazing team that's all about changing,

lives and spreading hope, we want to see your application. Right now, we're hiring for technology, sales, marketing, writing, copy editing, and creative roles. Check out all our job postings at ramsysolutions dot com slash careers. That's ramsysolutions.com slash careers. Brandon is in Fort Worth. Hey, Brandon, how are you? Oh, it's another beautiful day in paradise for me, guys. How are you, gentlemen? Just the same. How can we help, sir? Good. Glad to hear it. Well, my question revolves around, a bit of a moral conundrum for me. I'm wondering whether or not I should give back a pro-rated amount of money that was a lump sum given to me by a pretty new employer based on the fact that I have pretty much nailed

down a new job and whether or not I should give any of that back. So that's what's going on. So you got paid a signing bonus to come with them? less structured than that. Basically what happened is we, during the negotiations for this new job, we agreed on a salary amount. We walked away the next day they called me and said that for internal company politic reasons, they didn't want to put that amount of salary on paper. So what they were going to do is put me on paper for a lower salary. And a third party tendentially related to the business would give me a lump sum, roughly equivalent to 33% of my,

annual income just up front. And those two things combined amounted to the amount that we agreed on for an annual salary. How long were you there? I have only been working here for four months. There is not a shred of paperwork that has been wedded with ink that would legally require me to give this money back. But did you handshake and say you would? Yes, I did. Well, I didn't say I would, but I did handshake and say I would work for them, and I'm having some mixed feelings about leaving so soon. Why are you leaving so soon? Because I have, it was someone unexpected, but a job hiring window opened for a job that is kind of the Cadillac job in the industry in which I work. Within three to five years, I would roughly triple my current income, and it's just too much of a improvement to my family's quality of life to say no.

Sure. And you've already accepted the new role? Essentially, yes. What does essentially mean? Yes. Yes, pending a training date is what that means. So I don't know how long I'll be working at the current job. How much was the lump sum? It was $50,000. And what did you do with it?

Well, we still have roughly half. My family and I are still in Baby Step 2. So we used about half of it to clean up two car loans that we had. So now we're debt rates up for our mortgage. But we did chew through a decent chunk of it. But I have about half. And about $12,500 of that is obviously earmarked for taxes. Okay, it was a part of your salary.

It was such a convoluted way of doing it. But the bottom line is that was a part of your salary. They just chose to pay you a different way. They prepaid it. So how much of the $50,000, over a course of 12 months? months? How much would that represent? Oh, it was for over how many months? I've been working for the company for four months.

I'm sorry, but was that for a year to make up the difference for one year? Yes, yes, basically. That's what I'm trying to figure out. $4,000 a month, okay, $4,200 a month, okay. All right, and so, and you've been there four months, so that's 16 of it, and you've got to pay taxes on this. Yes. But they didn't, there was no, like if we move someone from another state and we hire them, we pay X number of dollars, call it $10,000 of moving expenses. Our employment agreement requires they repay that if they leave within 90 days.

Correct. And that is pretty standard in the industry. However, I signed nothing to that effect whatsoever. And there was no discussion of if you leave, you've got to pay this back. Not particularly. No, it's just you feel funny about taking the money and then not being there the whole 12 months. What was going to happen at the end of 12 months, by the way? Well, so one thing we did discuss was that, you know, that this third party would help make up the difference. Every year?

No, not every year. So one thing that we did discuss was that they have to. to basically allow me to do outside work to make up that difference. So basically I had about 12 months to establish relationships. Not to go to my new position. No, I'm talking about if you had stayed there 12 months after 12 months, your pay goes down $50,000. Yeah, that's correct.

From that, my primary employer. Wacky that you took the deal. Yeah, it's. kind of a crazy deal. I have had a decent amount of success with side work making up that different. Yeah, but that's irrelevant to this. This is like, you know, we don't want to tell the other people that work here, so we're not going to put it on paper. This just got, this got a bad smell over the whole thing. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty weird. I'll make no bones about that. Not on you, but on them. It's just strange. And a third party has to come to the

table. This is very strange. So, um, the third party was like a relative. Yeah, yeah. Okay, the best way to answer a business ethics question is what would you want someone to do if the roles were reversed? Treat other people like you want to be treated. And so just switch roles and try to put yourself in their shoes and say, all right, I hired this guy. I gave him 50 grand. He worked here four months and he took off for a better job. How would you want to be treated?

I would probably, if I were, if I switched and try to look at it through their weird lens, but they have a weird lens. But I'm trying to sit over there in their shoes. I think they're going to have not a moral expectation or an, I don't think you breached any ethics. I don't think you did anything wrong legally. If you kept the money, you know, they learn a lesson on how not to structure deals because this was a stupid but way to do this thing. So, but especially with nothing inked on it. But I, how would you want to be treated if the roles were reversed? and that's the kind of person you want to be,

regardless of the kind of people that they are. And so, yeah, I'm going to, I'm probably, if I'm switching roles, I'm probably going to write them a check for something. And then you just decide, maybe it's the 25 and you've got to cover the taxes or whatever. I don't know, you got, you know, you got a tax problem out of this too that's mixed in there.

But I'm probably going to go, okay, I worked here four months and I got to pay taxes on all this. And here's what's left out of that. And so here's what I'm going to do. and I'm not obligated to do anything, but I'm going to do this just because it's the kind of person I am. I'm probably going to do something. Yeah, that's why I was asking that question of how is that built in so that we could come up with a number. So we've done four months service out of the 50, and that's where I was going.

That's 16 of the, you know, 17,000 of the 50, so that's 33 left. He's got 25 in the account, but he's been taxed on 50. That's the other issue. So he's not netted out. And I don't want to pay them back, my. tax money. Yeah. And I'm not going to do it in a lump sum. I'm going to offer. So here's an idea. What if you said 50 minus tax or 4,200 a month minus taxes and did it that way? That feels, so what I'm trying to get to is a good formula that makes sense. A net of taxes. Yeah. The taxes

they lost. Yeah. Because they essentially prepaid him. Is that correct? That's how we're looking at that. Exactly. Pre-pay on work to be done. That's what they did. And you only did four months. So I would feel that way too. Yeah. And I don't think, again, I wouldn't throw darts at you whatever you do because I think they're squirly and I think the whole thing's got a smell on it that's weird. Yeah. And so, you know, they get what's coming to them on that. But if I answer an ethics question, honestly, I have to get a tender heart and I have to step on the other side of the desk and I have to say, how would I want to be treated if I

was sitting over there? And how would I expect to be treated? And, you know, that's, that's the thing. So we had a guy working for us when the internet first started, and cold fusion was the language. And I spent $5,000 on a cold fusion class and another $4,000 to send him to class in Oklahoma cities. And it was in the early days. That's a lot of money for us in the early days. He came home, and of course everything's blowing up, you know, a brand new internet, right? And a guy offered him $50,000 more a year, three weeks after he got home from class to go to work over there more than I could pay or would pay. And he said, I got to come in and tell you about this, but I can't take it because you just invested all this in me. It's why I got the job offer. And I said,

yeah, you got to take it. So I let him lose with nothing. And I didn't ask for anything back. But that was, you know, again, how do I want to be treated? Yeah, he handled it up front. Yeah. All right, let's cut to the chase. It's easy to get discouraged about crazy house prices and interest rates. But when you have the right real estate agent to help you buy and sell the right way, you'll have confidence to make smart decisions. Ramsey trusted agents aren't just experts who guide you through buying or selling. They're people you can trust to have your back from the first call to closing day. Find a Ramsey trusted agent near you at Ramsey Solutions.com slash agent. That's Ramsey Solutions.com slash a... One of the best things that you can do for your

finances have a great tax pro in your corner. They'll help advise you on the best moves to make for your situation, for your small business, or if you've had some big life changes in the past year. If you want to know who we trust, who's Ramsey trusted, go to ramsysolutions.com slash tax pro to find CPAs and enrolled agents that have been vetted by the Ramsey team. John is with us over in San Antonio. John, I see on my screen, you're a baby steps millionaire. Way to go, dude. Oh, I got to give credit to you, Dave, for putting me on the path. Well, you walked it, man, or ran it or something. So what's your net worth?

Oh, right around $1.7 million, I think. I just wrote a check for my house last month. Way to go. That's fun. Congratulations. Okay, so break the $1.7 down for me. How much of it's your house? Probably between, right a little bit over $400,000, I would think.

Okay, so you've got a $400,000 house. Okay. the other 1.3 million? About 1.2 is probably in 401k in retirement accounts, that kind of thing, because I've started up a couple of those. Then 100 in miscellaneous? Yeah, you know, emergency fund, six months, you know, and I keep that in cash and usually just buy like T-bells that, you know, mature within a month. Yeah. How old are you? Cash on hand, but I'm 55. 55. And how much of the 1.7 million did you inherit? Zero.

Okay. I inherited my parents' knowledge and love. I love it. That's good news. I love it. My mom's still alive, too, so. Very cool. And your worst year of income since you've been working and your best year of income since you've been working?

Worst year, probably 50, best, just a little over 200. Okay. What do you do for a living? I'm a project director in medical research. Okay. All right. For your degree? Yes. In what?

And that was in geography and child psychology. Got it. Cool. And your GPA when you were going to school? Oh, I was worried you're going to ask you that. I'm going to say it was close to three, but not quite over. Okay. That's what mine was. Mom was a 2.97 and I'm still pissed about that 3-100s. Yeah, there you go. Good for you, man. All right. So you didn't inherit anything. You start at zero at age 55. You got 1.7 million, including a paid for house. Very cool. So when you're out there running around today and you see these news reports that the American Dream is dead that it can't be done today. Do you think this can be done

today? Absolutely. And not only can it be done, it can be done easily. It's all mental. My dad immigrated over from Germany when he was in his 20s and accomplished the American Dream. my parents instilled me that it is absolutely possible, take some sweat, and just keep your head on straight. I didn't grow up until I was 32. I just wasn't thinking clearly, and then I was. And I applied the principles they instilled in me and your baby steps that gave me the path. And it's absolutely possible. If I can do it, anybody can do it.

So if you got a 24-year-old version of you listening, what would you tell them the key is to being a millionaire, 1.7 million. by the time they're 55. What's the key? Grow up. Grow up and just get over the mental hurdle. Once you get over the mental aspect and live within your means, anybody can do it. By a mental aspect, you mean believe it can happen, or what do you mean? I mean, you know, it's not hard.

You live within your means. You have all the tools there. And don't get tied up in the math. Don't get down into the minutia. Just live within your means, build your budget, follow your baby, steps and it's done. And just don't worry about

the little stuff. Stay, keep your eyes on the big picture and you will take what you've learned. There's so much you can read out there, but again, a lot of it gets done into the breast, you know, I mean, not the breast, accent, to the minutia. If you just focus on the, on the

prize and just don't buy the things that you just want, just go with what you need and then the day will come where you're going to be giving more and your soul's going to be much more full and you're going to be happy. Let's talk about that. We're not going to be worried about the next bill that comes along.

So I love it. You're talking about delayed gratification, right? This idea of mentally get over wanting all the stuff, keep it up with the Joneses. I think it's a great word. I want to ask you this because you're a young man, 55. You've got a 1.7 million net worth. How has paying off that house a month ago come into grips with what you're telling us today of where you're at now at only 55. What does the future look like and feel like to you?

You know, it gives me options. I mean, technically could I retire now? Sure, but I don't want to, but I have options now. I mean, when people call in and yell to the top of their lungs, they have freedom. It's no lie. It's no joke. It is that. You are giving freedom to have much more control over your own life and what you can and can't do. and I saw it in my daughter's eyes when she looked at me when I told her I wrote a check and just paid off the house with the proud feeling she had for me which is in the way my mom looked at me and you know they look at you like you're a winner and you feel like you're a winner and there's just the you know the world's my oyster now what do I want to do I don't I mean

I enjoy my job. I love doing when I do, and I get paid well for it, but now I can pretty much do whatever I want. I love it. I have a lot of just a lot of, I'm trying to look before the world, just so much I could see in our future. And the way my kids are growing up, getting on the same van wagon, and, you know, there's just so much I can do now. So much potential. Amen. What do you drive?

Drive a F-150, a 2011 F-150. 2011 F-150. What's your wife drive? She has a Kia Sportage. Uh-huh. How old? And it's about two years old. Okay, good, good, okay.

So, folks, if you want to know what somebody's worth $1.7 million drives, that's what they drive. Yeah. That's an actual thing. That's not a video. It's not an MTV reality. show. It's not a, you know, it's not divorced housewives of the moon or whatever. That's my favorite fake show title of all time. And I was trying to think of some bizarre place, but they're all taken, I guess. But anyway, yeah, way to go, John. Proud of you, man. You're living

the American dream, doing it right, starting from nothing. He's sitting there. So let me help you guys with this. He's 55 years old. He's making $200,000 a year, and he's continuing to invest. If he does, doesn't do that. This net worth will roughly double every seven years because it's invested in 401k in good mutual funds the way we teach, and it's invested in real estate. Okay. And so if it's, that means at 62, 3.4, if he does nothing else. And that means at 69, 7 million, if he does nothing else. And that means at 76, 14 million. If he does nothing else. And that means at 76, 14 million. if he does nothing else, the average death age of a male. And so this guy passes away at 80 years old with a $25 or $30 million net worth.

That's what this says. That's where he's going to be just with what he's done so far, and he will be adding to it as he goes along. And we'll have given away hundreds of thousands of dollars. He talked about generosity along the way and changed his family tree completely permanently. and his mother, he says dad immigrated from Germany, right? He didn't say his mom. So I was going to say, he says, his mom's proud. And very, very cool stuff, very cool stuff.

So is this possible? Yes, this is possible. But you have to quit buying crap. You can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you don't really like. You need to quit playing a game for everyone else to start playing. playing the game for you. Start playing the game for your family. When you play that game, it's a different game. When you take the blinders and put them on and say, I don't care what anybody else thinks, all I care is where we end up. And that's where John is. Very cool stuff, guys.

Very few wealthy people are concerned about what other people think. That's how they became wealthy. 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 any time 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. Our scripture of the day, Luke 923, then he said to them all, whoever wants to be my disciple, must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. James Clear from Atomic Habit says, When you can't win by being better, you can win by being different. Ooh, there's a better idea. I like that one a lot. Don't be normal in a world where normal sucks.

There you go. I like that. Michael and Dallas, what's up? How's it going, sir? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Hey, I owe $63,000 on an RV that's worth about $18,000 to $20,000. How did that happen? Well, I'm 25, and when I was about 23, I made a dumb decision and bought an RV and lived in it for about six months,

and now I've bought a house, and I have nothing to do with that RV. No, I'm saying the RV actually, you bought it for how much? So when I bought it, it was $68,000. How long ago? Three years ago. So in three years, it lost $52,000 in value. Yes, sir. Okay, based on what calculation, what they offered you for it at the dealer,

or what the actual market value is if you try to sell it to an individual? I've done both. I've looked at selling it on Facebook, those type of things, and nobody's willing to give over $20,000 in the RV dealership. The two that I've taken it to have only offered me about between 18 and 19,000. Well, if they're willing to give you $19,000 for it, they're able to sell it for 27 somewhere. Yes, sir. They're not going to give you 19 for it when nobody is giving more than 20 for that. So your first Facebook thing, that part of the test failed. But we know what wholesale is because two dealers have offered you basically the same thing. Yes, sir.

And you owe how much? I owe $63,000. There's a little bit of complications on to why I owe that much, you know, only a $5,000 difference. They just added some more onto my loan. We had some complications with insurance. I didn't realize I didn't have insurance. So for about a month, and they decided to throw on an extra $5,000 onto my loan. For forced place insurance, yeah.

Yes, sir. Have they taken that back off now that you've gotten in policy in place? Yes, sir. It's not off. I still going to have to pay that $5,000 is what they told me no matter what. For a month? Yes, sir. I don't know what calculations or how they came up with that number.

But yes. What do you make a year? My wife and I, we make about $130,000. How much money do you have in savings? Not very much. We're at the very bottom of the debt snowball right now. And you borrow a house? Yes, sir.

While you're broke. Yes, sir. We're not doing too good right now. Okay. I don't know how to get you out of this, Michael. I mean, you'd have to borrow the $43,000 and just have an unsecured loan of $43,000. Who holds the loan on this? Alliant credit union.

And what's the interest rate? 10%. Okay. The bad part is I'm not only paying the monthly payment, which is $7,000. $22. I've also got $100 storage fee and then $15 for insurance every month. So I'm paying about approximately $950 a month for something that I'm not using at all. Yeah. Yeah. I truly do. I'm stumped. I don't know how you get out of this other than you just pay it down or sell it. And If you have any credit left at all and you can borrow the difference or work with the credit union to sign a note for the difference, at least the bleeding would stop because you'd have no insurance and no storage fee and sell the thing for 20 grand and sign a note for 43 and maybe negotiate some of that away because they got, they don't have any collateral.

I mean, their collateral is gone. And so, and it's going, it's going away really, really fast. Wow, these numbers are just horrendous. I mean, there's most things that have wheels and motors go down in value, but apparently RVs are the worst of everything out there. It was already five years old when I bought it. So it was just all around bad. So that means there's 100 grand when it was new.

Approximately. And eight years later, it's worth 20. Talk about burning money. That's like lighting $100. bills on fire. Oof. Just standing there, hold them to your hands get hot. Wow.

Yeah, the only thing I know to do, I think I would stop the bleeding by selling it and signing a note for the difference if you can talk to the credit union into doing that. And the way you do that is just say, hey, look, guys, I'm getting ready to hand you the keys to this thing back. Y'all can have it. You can have your little $5,000 insurance charge. Force place insurance is valid, but I'm not paying it. And you guys can just sue me.

And or I'll sign a note for the difference and work my way through it because I'm the idiot signed up for this trip and I'll get to take it with you. But you're going to have to help me by letting me get rid of it. And whatever it brings, we'll put that on the note and I'll sign a note for the difference. And that gets rid of the insurance bill and that gets rid of the storage bill and everything else. But also, you've got to start thinking more clearly on your next moves on things because you went and bought a house in the middle of this. and that really puts you at further risk. It's added to this mess. And you bought a house, by the way, where you can't park your RV.

That's right. That you already owned before you bought the house. It's a lot of work in your future. The good news is you're young. And you guys need to be working multiple jobs and get after this thing. We have a long time to clean up $43,000. It's like $43,000 in credit card debt. How fast can you do it and making $130?

You can do it in a year and, you know, pay it off in a year and be done with it. And then you just get to look back and go, yep, the dumbest thing I ever did in my life was that RV thing. And the good news is I don't have to do that dumb thing. Again, I'll have to find something new to do dumb. Why does the – we've talked about this many, many times. You have a hint as to why they drop in values because they're bringing out new models all the time? What would cause that? I don't think the market is large enough.

I think the resale market is very limited. Uh-huh. The number of people buying a, in this case, eight-year-old RV. That's what it is. You're right. There's no demand. There's no demand. And so it's not, you know, it'd be like a 20-year-old ski boat.

You know, I mean, it's really difficult to move that product. Now, I'm not talking about an expensive ski boat, like a MasterCraft. I'm talking about just a, you know, a stern drive, baby. You know, your old brands or something like that. That thing just deteriorates and nobody wants it. They'll just spend a little bit more and go get a number. new one. And so that's, I think that's what's going on here. But I, good Lord, all of you listening that were thinking about ever buying an RV, you should have just went, I don't think so.

That's right. It's just one, I mean, I've bought almost everything else with wheels and motors at one time or another and have done some really, really dumb deals on those processes. But the one I've never bought, I never bought a, never bought a camper, never bought an RV. Somehow I managed to avoid that One mistake. I just can't see you hauling down 65 in a young Winnebago. You don't see me. People driving by going, I think Gustave Ramsey. You're driving that Winnebago.

You're waving at people as they drive by. Chevy chasing it. I don't know. I'm not a snob. I just never had that one. And I never bought a trailer. I never bought a mobile home either. That's another one.

Same concept on the mobile home as well. Most people are buying something new, so therefore low demand. And they just go down in value like a rock. They're just horrible. horrible. You can't get out of them. You get stuck in them and poor Michael's just stuck, stuck, stuck. Man, well, you are wise to be asking questions about it and to be gathering information and try to make the best decision you can and then just roll up your sleeves and live on nothing. No eating out, no vacations until we get the RV paid off. That's an irony. No vacations until we get the RV paid off. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember there's ultimately only one way to

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