Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's The Ramsey Show where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Ken Coleman Ramsey, personality number one, bestselling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose is my co host today. As we talk about your career, your job, your life, your money, it's all right here. The phone number is triple 8825-5225. Anna or anna is with us in Los Angeles. Hi, how are you?

Hello, how are you? I'm doing great.

Good. How can we help?

So I've been working for some time now, and I thought I did an okay job for building up my personal wealth. But I also like to hear your opinion about how I'm doing thus far.

Okay. How are you doing? Tell me about it.

Yeah. So I've been in the real estate business for many years. Personally, I have four rental properties, and the yearly income is about 50,000 given or more or less. The total mortgage balance I have about is a million. And one thing, I don't know what I was thinking, but I did take out a home equity line for the purpose of purchasing other properties. So far, I've been paying it off the highest. It was close to $600,000. But based on my calculation, that's back in 2019, and I should be able to pay that off completely off by next year. Middle of next year.

And then you'll still have a million dollars owed on the rentals, correct? Yes. Okay. And you make, what, a year?

That's the wild card. So I'm in real estate.

What did you make last year?

Hard to say. Last year is about 200.

Okay. All right. That's probably your average year, right? Yes. All right, good for you. And so what's your plan? Just stay in debt the rest of your life? I mean, what's your plan? Sounds like it because it sounds like you keep buying rentals with more debt.

Yeah. And that's my question. Although I have these rental properties, but I always feel I have this piece of rock inside of me. I feel very heavy.

It's a million dollar rock. It's right there in your stomach. Yeah.

So should I get rid of some of the properties? So to get rid of this feeling, I'm not sure what to do.

I would develop a game plan to have them all paid off within a certain period of time. There's nothing panicked here because there's no desperate situation. But what you're experiencing is you finally are measuring risk. And most of us I grew up in the real estate business, so I understand when you get in the real estate business, one of the things they do is they take a hammer and they break your risk meter. We don't even know how to measure risk once we're in that business because we just buy crap. I mean, it's just like we go get a mortgage to buy an investment property is like, that's the only way to do it in our minds. You can't do it otherwise. People in the real estate business really believe that it's just not true, but we believe it to be true. But you're starting to feel the weight of the risk that you've taken on that no one in your world talks about, but you're starting to feel it, and that's how you ended up talking to us. So, yeah. What are these properties worth total? You owe a million on them. What are they worth total?

Total, I would say about 5 million.

Good for you. Okay. So that's a great equity position. I mean, obviously you're in a 20% loan to value ratio, which is phenomenal. That's not a big risk position, but there is a million dollars worth of problems there. So what I would do is say I'm going to pay off that million with my income and with the sale, strategically, of one or a couple of these properties over the next five years. Okay. And it might be you can just sell one of them and be clear and clear the rest of them, and that'd be pretty cool. And then from there, you pay cash for all of your additions to your portfolio. You don't use home equity loans ever again. You don't borrow again to do that because you've got great cash flow when you have no mortgages. And that's going to be the way to go. Yeah, she's going to be in a really great position out there. Now, I'm curious, Dave, so you wouldn't.

Sell why not sell one of the houses and knock it out that way?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Okay. I'd pick out one of those properties. All right. And or the income. But I mean the income, if it takes you two years to do this instead of a month, right. That's okay. Okay. Because there's nothing on fire. But you do want to aim at having a debt free portfolio and aim at and stick with the promise to yourself that any additions to the portfolio we're doing with cash. As soon as we get, first and foremost get to debt free, then when we add something later, we're going to do that without borrowing money to do that. And folks, I understand that the get rich quick real estate world and borrow all you can on real estate is out there. It's always been out there. And I understand it's real hot again. That Tic TAC has made it really a big thing again. And you guys get on there and there's all these goobers on there that have no life history. They're 14 years old and they're buying houses. Now you got it figured. It's a bunch of crap. You don't I mean, when I was 22 years old, out of college, I started buying houses, nothing down.

I bought $4 million worth. I had a $1 million net worth by the time I was 24 years old, I made $250,000 cash taxable income doing flips in 1984. That's $20,000 a month in 1984. You don't put that in today's dollars. That's a half million dollars a year. Okay? Now, I don't know what neighborhood you grew up in, but the neighborhood I grew up in, we called that rich. It was fun. I was having a blast until I found out about risk and the banks called our notes. And we spent the next two and a half years of our life losing everything we owned. We were sued. We were foreclosed on. And with a brand new baby, a toddler and a marriage hanging on by a thread because my poor wife thought she had married Sir Galahad. Turns out it was goober. And there we were, bankrupt. And at 28 years old, I got the opportunity to start completely over because I followed the exact same crap you people are seeing on Instagram and TikTok. And you're all walking around acting like you're smart. You're not. You're straight up freaking stupid. Quit doing it. I walked it.

And don't tell me you know more. Listen, a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion. This is ridiculous, you guys. I've walked the exact path that some of you are signing up for right now. Now, not her. She's got a different situation. She's moving away from the debt. She's calling about that. But this? Zero down, nothing down. I'm going to get rich in real estate is absolute bullcrap. Broke people shouldn't buy real estate. It makes them broker. That's why they call them brokers. This is the Ramsey show.

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I'm Dave Ramsay. Your host, rachel Cruz is my co host today. Dennis is in Richmond, Virginia. Hi, Dennis. How are you?

How are you? So my name is Dennis. I'm 20 years old, and my question is, is it crazy that I'm asking my mom for a loan of $8,000? Now, I know the question sounds crazy because there's not really a backstory, so can I give you a brief backstory.

To go with it? Sure.

Okay. So I've been investing for about two years now. I started my freshman year in college, and I've been day trading for about a year and a half. One of my closest friend is an up and coming hedge fund manager, so I get a little bit of information from him, but I'm mainly an investor. About a year ago, a year and a half ago before I started really? Day trading, referee, that's my only job I have because I'm in college, so I might make $500 in a weekend, and I would take probably about $300 out of that 500 and put it into webull to invest and then just keep the other 200 to live off, and I would just keep doing that. And at one point, I asked my mom for $3,000 because my father had just paid all of my child support at one time, my sophomore year, it was $40,000, and I was still trying to.

Where'S the money? Why do you need money if you're day trading?

Why do I need money?

Yeah. Did you lose all your money?

Yes.

Okay, so you suck at day trading, and you want her to give you money.

Not really, because yeah, really?

You lost all your money. You suck at it.

Well, it was from ahead, because I've also made all the money I didn't lose.

Where's the money? How much money do you have? How much money do you have?

Right now, I don't have any money in my brokerage account because I took the rest of it out because I didn't want to go any lower from.

How much money have you lost? Day trading.

I lost about 15,000 in a week. That's what made me take my money out.

Yeah.

But I've also gained about 27,000 in less than a year.

Yeah. Okay, let me give you the numbers on this. Okay. 78% of day traders lose money net. Net. When the story is over, eight out of ten day traders lose money. 20 year old day traders who referee, the number is approaching 100%. Don't do this anymore. And your mother's right. No, she should not give you money. I would not give you money because you're going to lose it, even if.

You can see that the gains are there. And if you check the money I.

Just told you, eight out of ten day traders lose money. You're 20 freaking years old, and you referee games on the weekend. What makes you think you're better than the others people?

I don't.

Okay, you're going to lose money then.

Yes, I understand that.

Then why would you keep doing this?

It gives me more money to invest. At a certain point, my mom told me, like, her mindset, nobody in the family invests or does any of this.

Stuff good because they don't want to do it.

Like, you told me that I was stupid.

She's right.

No, I was first investing. This is when she told me that I was dumb for investing or taking half my paycheck and just investing in stuff. I recently just found out day trading. And at first, I didn't day trade. I would just hedge. So that's what had brought me up, the amount of money. I bought some Sdao calls and bought some SDA.

Denis, you are playing a game that guys that get paid millions of dollars a year play, and most of them aren't good at it. I mean, guys that run multibillion dollar mutual funds do what you do and they still have questionable results. It takes them years and years and years of training and experience to do this. Not I've got a friend who was once worked for a hedge fund, and I'm 20 and I referee on the weekends. You are the recipe of a disaster. Sir, please don't do this anymore. Your mom is right. She smells a rat and you're going to hurt yourself. Son, stop it. I don't think I'm going to talk you out of it because I think you're convinced yourself. But, dude, listen, if eight out of ten people that walk down the street named a street, get attacked by a bear and killed, don't walk down a street. This is it. Why do I think, what am I going to do, get a bear suit? No, don't walk down a street. Eight out of ten people that walk down the street, a bear kills them. Son, that's what I'm telling you.

Please don't act like you're different.

Yeah. And I think the appeal right when.

You get rich quick.

It is. That's what I'm saying, is I'm like, there's such a better formula to handle your money long term, and I think you have the capacity to do that. To do it the right way. Dennis, that lowers the risk. It's not going to be as exciting, and it's not going to be like, boom, boom, oh, my gosh, this, this and that. It's not going to bring that, but it's going to bring a level of stability and build a really great financial life for yourself by starting great habits. I'm like, just slow down. If you have debt, Dennis, pay it off. Have some cash in the bank to save. I mean, you hustle. You're looking for opportunity. It's just your momentum and your focus is just geared in a way that's really risky and you're not going to come out better on the other end.

Versus doing playing the commodities market is almost as dumb, if not dumber. I did that. I had a finance degree. I actually know something about this stuff formally academically studied it. Hello? It was not I had a friend that was in a hedge fund and a guy comes to me and he goes, hey, my buddy over here has been doing gold trades and we're going to buy some futures on the gold trades. The last eleven times that he has picked the future date and our purchase rate on the thing. And if we put in $5,000, we'll get 50,000 out. He's eleven for eleven on his last five. Guess what? I put in $5,000. The twelveTH one he missed. Which means you lose the whole $5,000. You either get 50 or you get nothing. That's how this works. That was my gold investment. Because I'm just as stupid and dumb I mean, just as everybody else, I had to try it because I'm smarter than everybody else. Let me tell you, pride goes right before the fall. Once you think you find somebody's got it all figured out and they got a system. Bull crap, okay?

The only system that works is long term investing in long term track record things where 80 90% of the people doing it make money, not where 80 90% of the people lose money. And you think you're the freaking exception. This is how Vegas is operated. Everybody thinks they're the exception. And that's why Bellagio has nicer furniture in their lobby than you do. Because you paid for it. You people that thought you were smarter than the house, that's why they have chalui or whatever. That architecture, it is crazy. What is the name of that famous sculpture that does the lighting? Oh, I know, chalui or whatever. Lighting in the lobby with massive blown glass. Yeah, probably. Chihui chahui. Is that it? Chihuahui. Thank you. The guys in the booth are trying to help me with my hillbilly, but yeah, it's like a million dollar fixture in the lobby, right?

Fantastic.

Right over where you check in and guess who paid for that? Stupid people. That's who paid for that, okay? People that thought they were going to beat the house.

Listen, if you do it for entertainment and you're out of debt stupid people, tall amount of money and you choose.

Not entertaining to lose money. It's not entertaining to think you're the exception of the rule.

I know.

Yeah, you do.

That way I'm a 50 50 story.

Oh, God help us. You and Dennis go invest together. That's what you need to do.

No, it's just a long term play.

Dennis, don't. Please.

And hey, great for refereeing, good for you.

No, I'm just saying that does not qualify you to be a day trader. I know, because you can call a five year old soccer game. This doesn't set you up to be a day trader. It's not like the prerequisite to winning at day trading. So he does do hard work. Thank you for that. Yes, and thank you for earning some extra money and so forth. But I think your mom is a precious lady. I love her. She's got some sense. Mom, don't give Dennis any money. There you go. Not for day trading. That's right. Sorry, Dennis. You didn't get what you wanted here, but you will always get the truth. Because we love you and we don't want to lie to you. We want you to have a good life. And so we're always going to tell you the truth, even if it's fun. This is the Ramsey show. What we teach at Ramsey boils down to taking control of your life. It's all about personal responsibility. And if you own a gun, that's even more important. So I recommend becoming a member of the US. Concealed carry association. You'll have immediate access to liability insurance, education and training to protect your loved ones and defend your rights in the most responsible way.

Go to Uscca.com slash Ramsey and join today. That's Uscca.com slash Ramsey. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co host today. John, in quotes, that's not his real name. In other words, from Louisville, Kentucky. Not his real place. In quotes. Big secret call coming in. So, John, what's your question? Yes, sir. Well, about two years ago, I won one of those multi state lottery drawings with a group of coworkers, and I haven't told anyone besides my wife, and besides one sibling, no one knows how much. My question for you. After taxes, it was about $22 million. Holy crap.

Holy crap. Yeah.

How old are you?

It was a lot.

I'm edging up on about 50 years old. Okay, and so you haven't told anyone. And I've got some guesses. But why? Well, the first thing I did when I found out that a one was research, and it said that you read all those one in five people lose.

Their lottery winnings or go bankrupt within ten years.

And one of the things they all said was, you tell too many people, and you get too many people at.

Your door asking for this, that, and the other thing, asking for handouts and.

Expecting you to pay for everything. So my wife and I made a conscious decision just to kind of keep it under wraps, and we've kept keeping it under wraps. We haven't even told our two teenage children. And now, I know that sounds strange, but we just don't want them to grow up to be waiters waiting for us to die so they can get our money.

That's fantastic, man.

Yeah, I love it. Dad's been eating rat poison lately.

Honestly, I'll spend the rest of the day imagining I'm you, because this sounds just like a fun thing to think about. I don't think I would tell my teenage kids either.

No, I'm okay with that.

No, I want them to go figure.

Out what they want to do in life, and then I'll let them know I'm not going to keep it from them forever. But our parents and stuff we haven't told any of them. We had another incident about a month.

After we won the lottery.

Incident? I don't want to call it. My wife's great uncle passed away shortly thereafter and he didn't have any kids and he was never married. And he left most of his inheritance to my wife and her siblings. So we've been able to use that as like our cover story for when we help people. Like, I bought my mom a roof. I know, really nice of you know, when she says, how can you afford this? I just say? Oh, it's great. Uncle Bob's money.

Mom.

He wanted us to do this. Uncle Bob's money. At least two X's now. That's great. Have you got a decent car?

You're going to love me, Dave.

My house was paid off before I won this. My wife and I really have no desire to move. Good. We had just paid cash for two Toyotas before we won this, and we still have them.

We're not looking to upgrade to anything because they're perfectly fine cars.

Okay.

Are you still working? I am still working. Do you have ridiculous. No, it's not no, actually that's why I'm there, because I kind of like my job. Okay. For you, I think you should working.

It's going to make you a better.

Employee because have you gotten some great investment advice? I have, yes. Good. I have a team, as you can imagine. Okay, you need a team. Yeah. It's not a huge team. It's a group. And they're doing well, doing good, job good. Okay. I like everything you're doing and it's not anyone else's business.

Right.

That's what I hope. And I don't think you're being like hermit in a cave weird, unabama weird or something like that.

Right.

I think you're just being wise because what you've discerned is that some of the people in your life could not handle the equation.

Correct.

That is a very good assumption on your part. And so you're doing them a favor by not putting the strain on them, including teenagers. So the only thing I can get close to is that by the time my kids were teenagers, we had begun building substantial wealth. We had recovered from the bankruptcy, Rachel was born. So by the time Rachel's 16, it's 17 years since the bankruptcy, and I was a multimillionaire again, okay. We could buy whatever car we wanted to buy, we could go on whatever vacation we wanted to go on, and it wouldn't affect us. We had good money. Okay. But the kids had no idea. And our kids had a double problem. One is their dad's in the spotlight and everybody knows us, right? Because we're known in the community and talks about money. No duh. And if they had that and they knew that we had millions of dollars as a teenager, I don't think they could have processed it. So they did not know. They knew we were okay. With money. They knew we lived the principles that we teach, and we made them live the principles that we teach.

But they did not know X number of dollars was the net worth, right? I only disclosed that to them after they graduated from college, and I involved their spouses because by that time, two of them were married. And so I sat down with three of my kids and two spouses, five of them, and we started unpacking what our estate plan looks like, because they're adults at that point. And I told them up front, I said, Listen, here's the deal. We don't own anything at our house. We're people of faith. So God owns a bunch of stuff. He's asked us to manage more than you know. And you're getting ready to know now, and you get to decide how you're going to react to that. Are you going to react and continue to be productive and generous people, or are you going to be using your words? And I'll never forget it a waiter, right? Because if you're a waiter, you're not going to get access to any of this. We're going to take it away from you because God wants you to be productive. He wants you to be whole. He wants you to be excellent in the marketplace, and he doesn't want this to destroy you.

He wants you to have the opportunity to serve a lot of people with this wealth, including my grandkids, to come. And so, as for me, in my house, we serve the Lord, and it's not our money, it's his. We're managing it for him. And someday you will take over the management, but you will not become the owner. If you think you're the owner, you won't get to take over the management. And that's how I unpacked it. And then when I unpacked it, I was really pleased that they weren't freaks and they've continued to live really good adult lives, and it's not ruined them that their dad has dad and mom have a bunch of money that they manage all that. So I think you could start to build some lessons into your teenagers now so that in five years, when you have that conversation, they're ready to shoulder the weight of it. What do you think, John?

All right.

Yeah. I think you can live by example, and I think you have a pretty remarkable opportunity to take your kids out when you are having taking them out to dinner and noticing a waiter that's struggling and call the waiter over and be really kind and then show your kids, let's leave a huge tip. You want to do that. And it might be $100, which is nothing of what you got in the bank, but it's going to be a million dollars to a teenager, right. And you can slowly plant the seeds of this is what generosity looks like. And when they it's kind of like those movies. You get to the end and the 6th cents, right? And it goes and you realize, oh, no, I missed the whole story. And now I have the whole story. One day when you sit down and say, hey, that school that I paid for and you and your wife are about to buy a house, I'm going to pay for your mortgage, and here's actually what we're sitting on, and I'm honored by who you have become. They're going to go, oh, man, I picked up all these lessons from my mom and my dad.

They're also going to learn that money isn't what makes it isn't your identity. Your identity isn't being a great dad. It's a guy who still got up and went to work. It's a guy who still kept the same Toyota that he'd already paid with cash before. You're doing everything so right.

It's so healthy.

It's amazing.

You're so healthy. Yeah, man.

Good for you.

If you were hiding this because you were freaking and you were weird, I would call you out on it.

You're wise. You're wise.

I think in this case, you're wise.

My sister called me the other day.

And said, what was your big splurge? And my answer was patio furniture. I'm not a big flashy guy. Well, I think you need to increase gradually the enjoyment of this money. Not in the name of the secret, not in name of the exposing the secret. But you need to increase the enjoyment and you need to increase your generosity factor systematically. You need to say, all right, this year we're going to spend $400,000 on this or that.

Create some neat memories with your kids.

Yeah. Do some things intentionally with this without just kind of rolling up an extra million bucks into the budget this year. You don't have to do that, although you've got it. But yeah. Wow.

Congratulations, brother.

It's a very good, healthy view. This is the Ramsay show. When your business gets to a certain size, the cracks can start to show. If this is you, learn these numbers. 36,000 businesses have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, the top cloud financial system. For 25 years, NetSuite has been helping businesses do more with less and drive costs down. And one, because your business is one of a kind. And right now, download NetSuite's KPI checklist absolutely free@netsuite.com. Ramsay dr. John Deloney, ramsay Personality open phones, a triple 8825-5225. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. Joe is with us in Springfield. Hey, Joe. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Dave, thank you for taking my call.

Sure, what's up?

I've been listening to you often on the last couple of years. A lot of things haven't soaked in, but the other day you said that nobody should own a new truck unless they have a net worth of a million and they're debt free. Well, I bought a new one earlier this year, and so my question number one is, should I. Sell that truck and downgrade get something a little bit more economical so that I can pay it off.

How much do you owe?

43. 42 and some change. 43.

What's your household income?

222. Ten?

And you don't have any money?

No, I have about 40 in the bank right now.

How long have you been making that kind of money?

Years.

You're making good money. Why do you not have any?

My wife kind of lives yolo. I kind of live like, hey, we might live to be 500. And it's been 15 years of just kind of we've sat down and we put budgets together, and it doesn't stick on one end, and it does on one, and I've just kind of learned to compromise to keep the marriage happy.

But the marriage isn't happy, man. I can hear it on you.

It's frustrating. I mean, I love her to death, wouldn't trade her for nothing, but it's frustrating when you have a divided house. I hate Christmas. I hate it. We spend $4,000 every year in Christmas, and it's to people and friends, and every year we argue about it, and it just gets me where I just hate Christmas because I know we're just going to blow a bunch of money, and we shouldn't, and we don't have to. You move on. You can either dwell on it, or you can just move on.

And then you borrowed $40,000 truck?

Yes. Well, I'm a sales guy, so I have to have a truck that's less than three years old and so many miles. I get paid 850 a month for my truck allowance, whether you have a.

Car payment or not.

Dependable. That's right. And that's where I would rather tuck to 850 and throw it on the house. We're in a great situation on the house. House is worth about six, six and a quarter. We're down to about 270 on it.

The truck needs to be paid off or it needs to be sold, but it's 10% of your problem. Okay. The problem that's screaming at me in this conversation is you make way too much money to be this broke.

I agree.

And you guys have really got to sit down and address that. No, you haven't, because it's not fixed.

But what do you do?

Well, I think if you and your wife can't sit down and dream about a future that you're willing to control yourselves for, because you're not controlling yourselves, you have no self control in your household. If the two of you can't find a house, a dream in high definition that the two of you can agree to, that is worth working towards together and worth not spending everything we make to cause it to happen, then you do need to sit down with a marriage counselor if that's the case.

Often high performing, high earning folks sit down and have this conversation as a math problem. Honey, we make this much money, we got to make a budget.

I have an excel sheet. I can show you.

I know you do.

It's useful.

Here's what I'm telling you. There's a different conversation when you sit down with your wife and you hold her hands and you say, honey, I can't breathe. I'm so scared. We make way too much money. I'm working so hard, and I feel like you and I are pulling further and further and further apart. And I love you too much to be frustrated at you all the time because I know that's hard to live with. And I love you too much for us to pretend that we're all joyful and happy once a year at Christmas, and we try to throw money at our friends and family instead of being a warm, safe place for them to come land. Would you build something different with me? That's a different conversation. Then, honey, look at my spreadsheet.

Look at this.

If you just would do this and we could get out of this crap, one of those. She's going to go to her defense, and that defense is probably way older than you, and that's probably been there since she was a little kid. And then you go to your defense because she starts bombing you back. And it's different when you take ownership and say, I want my wife and I want a family that I want to unificate a unified front here. I want a unified vision of what we're going to do, and I'm scared to death I'm going to lose you.

The irony is that you think by acquiescing, you're creating peace and you're not. That's the irony.

The fire is burning into the basement, and it is hot. It's coals.

Yeah. Because it's eating you up, and she can feel that on you.

And then she goes about solving that feeling with the way that her body's been solving those feelings for her whole life. Spending, spending and trying to make people feel good about themselves and showing people how great she's doing. And that's different than you all two building a life together.

Yeah. And if you guys can't sit down and work that through and start to say, we need to develop a new vision for our future, a different plan other than just spinning our wheels, feeling like a rat in a wheel, I'm scared. I can't do this. This is killing me. I cannot live in a situation where I make a quarter million dollars a year and we have nothing. That is just absurd to me. My brain can't do it anymore. My mind can't do it. My psyche, my spirit can't do it anymore. So we have got to develop some plan for the future that we're both willing to work towards. And I want to do that with you. Let's start fresh. A reset. Not we've got to get on a budget, but that will lead you, by the way, to a budget. And it's not a spreadsheet budget. It's an every dollar budget, but it'll lead you to the two of you working together to implement the plan that you have agreed to together that both of you had a vote in.

I love starting those conversations with I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I've tried to control you the way I know to control a problem. I've tried to solve you. I've tried to fix you. I'm sorry. Let me tell you the truth. I'm scared to death. And there's a different approach there someone can enter into your space. That way instead of having to swing back at you, it's tough.

Hope that works for you, brother. And then pay that truck off in the next 20 minutes or a couple of months or sell it, one of the two. Because you went and bought a truck while she went and bought Christmas.

Yeah, you showed her, man.

I think you spent more. So there you go. And the 850 is coming in whether you have a truck payment or not. So that doesn't justify it. Our question of the day is sponsored by neighborly, your hub for home services. Most American homes have dozens of appliances and chances are at any given time, something wrong with at least one of them. Mr. Appliance, a Neighborly brand, offers expert appliance service on your schedule. Visit Neighborly.com today to find home service experts, including Mr. Appliance, in your area.

Today's question comes from Jane in Florida. I pay the bills for my elderly father. He has a bad habit of going to the ATM to withdraw money several times a week. A lot of times it leaves me with a balance too low to pay his bills. I've had numerous talks, threatened to stop helping, etc, etc. He apologizes and promises to do better. Then in a few weeks, he's right back to the same situation. I don't want to be disrespectful to him, but it's really stressing me out. What do you recommend I do?

I'm not going to help you with your bills anymore unless you give me your ATM card.

Yeah, I'm unable to help anymore unless.

You give me your ATM card.

I can't participate.

Yeah, you're making this too hard. You're sabotaging everything I'm trying to do to help you.

I'm trying to love you and you're telling me very clearly you don't want my love and support and help.

Yeah. So if you want to give me the ATM card, I'll keep doing it. If you don't, then I won't.

Yeah, that's fine. I still love you, but I'm not going to spend all of my time resenting how you're living your life and then you come to me asking for help. I don't want to resent you. You're my dad. I want to love you. So I'm either going to turn this over to you or you're going to hand me your ATM card.

Yeah, that's easy. Yeah, I can fix that.

And it's not a flex and it's not showing your muscles. It's just saying, hey, I'm choosing to not do this anymore. I can't.

Yeah. This is an absurd dog chasing its tail.

Keep pulling you out of the pool, and you just keep jumping in if you want to stay in there, man, it's tough.

Keep getting you out of the road and you keep running back out there.

Yeah, it's tough.

Well, it's frustrating because A, it's someone you love, and B, they're hurting themselves. And C. It's so cyclical. It's circular.

Here, it's a dance.

The whole thing is circular. It's ridiculous. Yeah.

Stop dancing.

Bad Florida. Two step. There you go. This is the Ramsey Show, live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Campbell Ramsay, personality, co host of the Smart Money Happy Hour, is my co host today. Open phones. Triple 8825-5225. That's triple 8825-5225. Paul is with us in Minneapolis. Hey, Paul. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hey, Dave, thanks for taking the call. I have another. Should we pay off the house early out of our retirement question for you.

Okay. Why is this one different?

Well, my wife and I are both retired. I'm 61, she's 58. We retired with the mortgage. And I've got a number of differing opinions from our financial guy. I've got friends that work in the finance industry. I worked for a bank in 30 years, and I guess just looking for another opinion, maybe one with a little bit more credence than some of the others, I guess.

Okay, so how much do you owe in your home?

It's a $450,000 house. We owe $170.

And how much do you have in your nest egg? What's that? What's your net worth? What do you have in your nest egg?

Net worth is about a million and a quarter. We've got just over a million of that is investment in retirement.

If your house was paid off, if your house was paid off, why would you go borrow on it?

We would not.

Then what's the difference?

Okay, let me rephrase the question. Maybe a better question is, if we decide to do this, is it a process over multiple years to ease a tax burden? Do we just bite the bullet and take the hit and do it once, or how would I do it?

I've been doing this 30 years. I've never had anybody call me back and say they were pissed off because they paid off their house.

Fair enough. So one shot or would you I'd.

Write a check today. I'd have been debt free yesterday if I were you, and quit listening to all these idiots. There's a lot of idiots out there running around with an opinion about your money and you're a millionaire.

What's your mortgage payment?

Go ahead.

What's your mortgage payment? Right now?

Mortgage payment is what? 1200.

Okay.

You'd free up most of that, which now you can invest. So, yes, you'll lose some out of that investment account, but you're going to still invest for the next 20 years.

Dude, you're just going to sleep so much better.

We're both retired, so invest is rolling, not necessarily additional.

You have almost zero risk in this situation because you could write a check at any minute and pay it off if you got in a pinch. You don't really need the money in one way or the other. It's all about what is your end goal when you're 85? Do you want to have a mortgage? Why would you keep it? There's no reason to keep it. You wouldn't go borrow on a paid for house in order to have more money to invest. And so write a check and sleep better tomorrow. Tonight. Pay it off tonight. Hit the submit button. And then when you go and you get the mortgage release in the mail, make a copy of it, take your shoes off, walk into the backyard, have a mortgage burning party, and tell me that didn't feel good. There's just no downside to this. You're going to be okay either way if you don't follow our advice, if you follow those idiots advice. But if I've got a financial person that's telling me to stay in debt, I'm getting a new financial person, period. Because, George, we studied 10,167 millionaires. The number of them that told us that they became wealthy because they borrowed on their home in order to invest was precisely zero.

None of them leveraged their personal residence to build their wealth. None of them. And so the idea that I continue to leverage my personal residence in the name of building wealth is an asinine based on the millionaire data.

Well, we're seeing so much more of this because people have their record low mortgage rates they don't want to let go of. Dave why would I pay off my mortgage?

But I got your mortgage rate beat. You know what my mortgage rate is zero. I don't have one. Hello.

Heck of a rate.

Zero. I got the best rate. Come on, man.

So when rates are up and down, you don't have to worry about them because you don't need debt anymore. It's a great feeling instead of worrying about what the market's doing. So, yes, it hurts to write that check and lose that much money. Lose, quote, unquote. But you never really had it if you owed it to the lender in the first place.

Paul pay it off, son. Pay it off. There's a bunch of intangibles that you're not even considering in this decision. You're still acting like it's primitive math, or at least the idiots advising you are. So you're going to sleep different. Your wife's going to look at you like a hero. Never once have we had a wife said, you know, my husband borrowed deeply on our mortgage and he's my hero. Never came up.

I love the kermit vibes she had my Miss Piggy meets Kermit.

Well, it's the best I can it's the best I can do. Anna is with us. Is it Anna or Anna? It's Anna, I'm sure. And she's in Grand Rapids. Is it Anna? Is that right?

Yes, it's Anna.

Hey. How can I help?

So I recently paid off all of my student loans and Am debt free.

Way to go.

Thank you. Yeah, so I couldn't have done it without you, but I have my three six months of expenses. I just finished that up, and I'm wondering now if I should be investing my 15% or if I should be saving for a wedding that my boyfriend and I are planning to have in about a year and a half. So I'm wondering if wedding? For that wedding. Yeah. Okay, perfect.

Are you guys paying for this on your own?

We think so. We don't really want it. We just want to plan for that, and then if something comes, then we'll go for it. But, yeah, we kind of just want to plan on doing it ourselves, just in case.

Okay. I would set a very specific goal, a number you're trying to hit to save, and I would try to hit that before the year and a half is over and then begin investing. You got that money set aside. You know, you're not going to have to go into debt for this wedding. That is the goal here. And so that's why we're telling you save for the wedding first, because what happens is you start investing. 15%. The wedding was over budget. Now we got to put it on a credit card for sure.

Yeah.

So what do you think you're going to spend?

We're thinking maybe between I would say probably we were thinking between 20 and 30, depending on what rates are. But probably 25 is the goal we set.

Okay. Well, yes, by the way, that's about an average wedding in America right now. So you're not above average. You're not below average. You're right around there. It's 28,000 last year. So the thing is, having three grown kids that all got married, and I was involved in the budget because I was paying for it, or at least part of it anyway. On all but one. All of it. But anyway, my part, the bride's part, and then my son, we participate. Some have a detailed budget, not a general goal. Lay it out. Okay. This is how much we're going to spend on the photographer. This is how much we get on the dress. This is how much we spend on the reception. And treat it I'm sorry, but treat it like a project. You're managing a project. You are. So you have a timeline, you have a budget, and you stick to it. What must be true. Well, we can't have that. We got to have this instead. If you don't have a very specific thing, then you'll line item. You'll get into a mess there, but that sounds reasonable, I would say, for the wedding first.

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Hi, how are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Can you hear me all right?

Yes.

Okay, so I'm going to try and make this as short as possible, but I'm 29. I have a fire under my butt to go back to school, and I'm currently one year through undergraduate. It's going to be four years. So it's going to be really a useless degree unless I go to graduate school because it's for a veterinary doctorate degree. And I'm looking at it and it looks like I'm going to be able to pay for it. You're going to hate this. It's going to be all on loans, but I don't even make over the threshold to pay taxes, so I make next to nothing. My family all lives paycheck to paycheck, but the one saving grace here is, like, my grandparents. They have a trust, and they say that I have 10% of it when they die. And I'm wondering, is it possible to borrow from a trust or get it early or what can I do? Because I'm just looking to pay for my living expenses to college.

What were you doing before you went on this adventure?

I really tried to have a family life, but they all kind of left.

Who's they? Your husband? Your kids?

Yes. I don't have any kids. I've got cats. But, yeah, I was married for a short time, divorced, but my life kind of fell apart for a while, and I've put it back together, and I finally have a passion and a purpose. And like I said, I've got a fire under my butt to go back to school and make something of myself. But there's not a lot of money out there for students unless you borrow, and that's not a good option.

Can I challenge something real quick?

Yeah.

You don't got to go make something of yourself. You already got worth right now.

Yeah.

Okay. And I think that fire under your butt, honestly, is how burned you are because you looked at somebody and you said, I do, and he said, I do, and then he left.

Well, I mean, that's not something that I'm really focusing on. Here in the future. That's kind of past is past, but now I did past is past, except.

It'S so caught up in your throat you can hardly speak.

That's right. There's a great quote that says, you may be through the past, but the past isn't through with you. And if you don't heal from that, where you can talk about it and think about it without your body getting overcome, then it's going to haunt you and what it's going to do? It's going to shoot you like a rocket ship into some life altering decisions, like getting 250 or $300,000 in the hole and not knowing what direction is.

Up or down and maybe not even finishing and getting the DVM.

That's right.

Not everybody that starts vet school finishes vet school. Not everybody that finishes vet school passes their boards and becomes a veterinarian.

It's harder than medical school, from what I hear.

It is. One of my friends that's a vet says, when you're in medical school, you only have to learn one set of anatomy. He said, I have to learn a whole bunch of them. So he makes fun of doctors, and it's very difficult and intellectually difficult. And you love animals. Obviously, it becomes an emotional process, too. So, Luna, the answer to your question is no. You cannot borrow on a trust unless the trust has written into it that option. I'm going to bet you that this one does not. And can they release who is the trust? Your grandparents formed the trust for their money to leave to their grandkids?

Their grandkids and their children. Yeah.

Okay. And how much is in the trust?

I think it was down a little bit right now, but it was, like, $2.7 million.

So your part is, like, $270,000, so it would fund you going to school. Okay. So if you talk to your grandfather, he could just choose to take you out of the trust and take $270,000 and pay for your school, and you no longer would be in the trust. Okay. He could choose to do that legally. You want me to tell you what I think is going to happen? You're not going to like it.

Well, yeah, but.

I think your grandfather loves you, and he's going to see how fragile you are and that you're probably not in really good emotional shape right now to go take on something like the battle of vet school. It's going to take a lot more strength than you've exhibited in this call to do that. And I'm not picking on you, honey. I think you've been hurt and you're still hurting, and I want you to have some healing and be going at vet school from strength rather than from weakness. And I got a feeling your grandpa might say that. Does that sound like something he might say?

Maybe. But I also skipped over the part where I went to therapy, and I was in the hospital for a while doing inpatient and outpatient.

Here's the thing, sweetie.

Pretty well balanced. Now.

I've taught doctoral students. I've walked them through their dissertation. I've worked with law students. I've worked with medical students. I need you to hear what Dave's saying, that probably the greatest gift you could give yourself is to get a one, if not two, jobs where you are working really close with animals because it's what you love. And do that hour in, hour out, day after day, week after week, month after month. And make sure you love this and.

For two or three years and let yourself have some distance because the lady we're talking to is having trouble going through the conversation, much less through three years of vet school.

This is two guys who both love our dogs, and we love vets.

We want you to win.

I want you to win.

I'm not trying to be a dream killer. I'm trying to be a nightmare killer. And I got a feeling if your grandpa loves you and if he's wise, he will deny your request, not because he's being mean, but because he's going to hear and see what we're hearing and seeing. That's my guess. Now, again, it's just a radio show. We've only talked to you for two minutes, honey, but you sound very hurt and very fresh and very raw in talking to you. And that's not saying you haven't done hard work already, but you've got some more you got some more healing to do is what it sounds like. And if we're wrong, we're wrong. You go do what you want to do, honey. You're a grown up. You're allowed to do what you want to do. You called us, and we're going to tell you the truth because we love you, even if it's not what you want to hear.

I'm going to give you this analogy. I've met with countless people over the years who are sick and tired of being overweight, and they say, today is the day that I start. None of those folks are going to be successful if the next day they start running a marathon. That's not how that works. They start walking around their neighborhood. They hire a personal trainer and slowly start lifting weights. It's a slow, gradual process. It's going to take time because you have to heal. You have to change your entire way of doing life.

And to build your muscle tone.

That's right. You got to build your body. And so I want you to hear me. And daysave say later, not now.

Not never. And you're going to know a whole lot more about you and a whole lot more about this career path if you'll go do what John said. And that's become a Vet Tech and Just go in There and Love Animals every Day and get Paid and Pay Your Bills and get Paid and love Animals and pay Your Bills and get Paid and smile and get in the morning, read your Bible and sit on the back porch with a cup of coffee and watch the sun come up and know that everything's going to be okay. And you do that a little while longer and the past will be a little bit more in your rear view mirror. And again, I'm not discounting or putting down all the work you've done so far, the hospital, the therapists, all that. I'm just telling you, reflecting back to you what we heard in three minutes on the radio, honey.

And I got a budy here about.

His channel as I know how to be yeah.

Who runs a vet clinic. And he's always talking about they're trying to hire good vets. And so I can even see a scenario where you are a vet tech for a couple of years and some vet looks at you and says, I'll help you go through school. I'll pay for it if you sign a five year deal with me or something. Yeah, man, you may figure something out there.

Ding, ding. And the situation might change with the trust over time. If your grandparents passed, the 10% could be coming to you while you're doing all of this, instead of you going up to your eyeballs in debt in this situation and then maybe not able to play through. This is the Ramsay show. Okay, let's clear something up. If you listen to this show for 10 seconds, you know, we hate debt. And some people, just for some reason, don't hear that. I don't know. They think you need debt and credit cards to build your credit because you need a credit score to buy a house, right? Wrong. Truth is, if you're living a debt free lifestyle, eventually you won't have any credit score. So when you're ready to buy a house, you gotta find a good lender, like Churchill Mortgage, who can do what's called manual underwriting. And that's where they personally review your financial history to approve you for a mortgage. Like we did before there was a FICO score. We actually made sure you had a freaking job and stuff. Wow. What a concept. Yeah. So this way you get to avoid the whole credit score game, where you borrow money to raise your score, so you can borrow money, so you can raise your score, so you can borrow money, so you can raise your score, so you borrow money.

So you can raise your score, so you borrow money. Sounds like fun if you're a bank.

Or a dog chasing its tail.

That one, too. Which are usually dizzy. No pun intended. It might sound crazy to some people, but the best plan for your future is avoid debt. Get a real estate agent who will help you find a house you can actually afford. Get it paid off as soon as possible. And we recommend agents who are Ramsey Trusted. These are agents that are high octane, high protein. They didn't. Get their license last week, and they're not your Uncle Charlie who's guilt tripping you. This is your freaking house. It's the largest asset you have. So you can buy a house without a credit score, and you can work with an absolute professional. And you need to Ramsaysolutions.com agent to get a Ramsay trusted real estate agent. Ramsaysolutions comAgent nathan in Oklahoma City. How are you?

I'm doing well.

How are you, Dave?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Well, just got a question for you. So I'm 28 years old, and I just hit baby step seven about seven months ago.

Boom.

Wow. Thank you. And I'm currently rebuilding my emergency and stuff because I deleted my accounts for being debt free. And I'm just kind of curious where to go now because I'm kind of lost with the whole where to invest my money right now.

Hold on. What accounts did you delete?

Well, not like my checking and my savings. I cleared them all so I could be debt free, pay off the house. And now that I'm 100% debt free, I've got my six months emergency saved, and now I am investing in my well, I have two Roth accounts, one through work and then a Roth IRA.

Good.

And then I do 10% my tsp. And apart from that, I'm just kind of saving money and living life every day, really. But I need a goal, and my goal is to get more money. But that seems really kind of boring, honestly. I mean, just to do it that way, and I'm not 100% sure if that's doing the right thing.

Nathan, you're in danger, okay? You're in danger of messing all this up.

Gotcha.

Because the fastest way to get rich is boring. And if you go screwing around with get rich quick trying to be cool, you're going to lose all of the progress you have made. One of the things I ran into when I first started coaching wealthy people years ago was they had this latent guilt. Like, I've got $2 million, but I don't feel like I'm doing it right. Like, there must be something sophisticated. These smart people are doing stuff I don't know how to do. And they're the ones with the $2 million, and they're doing very simplistic, primitive, basic things, and they got wealthy, but they certainly did not buy crypto.

Right?

They certainly are not doing nothing down tic TAC real estate. They're not trying to do a double helix backflip family partnership that they read about on Instagram, because it's a sure fired way to lose your butts. What it is. Come on. So just know the tortoise and the hair. The hair was the sexy cool one. He lost the race. The tortoise was ugly and steady and predictable and boring. Please be boring.

Well, now, Dave, all of us tortoises don't have to be ugly. Now.

You done. Got. Seriously. But the point being, the plan is all of your smart friends who are broke but wear clothes they can't afford, drive cars they can't afford and go on vacations they can't afford. All of your smart friends will make fun of your tortoise plan.

That's right.

But they're the sexy hairs. They're the ones, the rabbit that's cool. They lad all the look. They look like they got it all together and they got nothing. Nada.

It's almost like got a headache.

That's all they got.

It's almost like we want there to be, like this secret of the wealthy that only a few people can get their hands on.

I really wanted that because I'm really smart at math, and so I knew if it was complicated and difficult, I could do it.

That must be it.

I would be able to do it. And so just show me the complicated double backflip barrel of fish hooks. I'll get it. I'll be able to do it. Pride comes right before the fall, right before it.

Nope, any Joe can do it. You just got to be steady. Boring.

Now what you can do is you can pay very close attention to your accounts and just go, okay, yeah, I'm going to be steady, but I'm also going to make sure that sucker is maximizing. I'm not going to be add. I'm not going to take my hand off the wheel, hand off the wheel, hand off the wheel. I'm going to drive straight through, but I'm going to be very diligent and go, okay, this accounts for this, this accounts for that. And I'm goal oriented. And those are things that you are, Nathan, that are very good. And obviously I was being a little bit dramatic to make sure you got the message, but you've done very well.

Now, I would also say in his situation, we recommend everybody work with a smart vestor pro or somebody with their investment. But a guy like him really needs that accountability to not get like, oh, the market's being weird, or I feel like my guy told me about this thing over here. I need to be trying he's not.

Going to function in fear. He's going to make bad decisions out of greed. That's why I was stopping him on because I know that guy, because I was him. Yeah. Because don't, this is too that's that's about the time you're about to step on it, so just get something on your shoe. Jonathan's in Lexington, Kentucky. Hey, Jonathan. What's up?

Hi, Dave. Thank you guys for taking my call.

Sure. How can we help?

I'm getting my way through these baby steps and I'm trying to think of ways to get through faster. I've also developed my career goals and educational goals, and I just wanted your opinion.

I have a project car that I've.

Had for about three years now. Haven't been able to get much done on it, and I'm wondering if I should sell it. So just wondering what you guys think.

I'm not sure but I think in the 30 seconds we've been together, you told me your goals have changed. What do you mean? What? Like, from the time three years ago when you bought this car, you had a goal of doing a project car. And I think today you don't have the same goal. You have other goals that are a priority over the car.

Yeah, I absolutely love this car.

I didn't ask that. I just said your goals have changed. I probably love the car, but I don't have a goal of owning it because I don't even know what it is yet. But I probably like it. What is it?

1986 z 31 Nissan 300 ZX.

Really?

Yeah, it's pretty.

What are you doing? What are you supposed to be doing to it?

Well, it's pretty solid mechanically, but ever.

Since I've owned it, I've had people.

Drive it, and it's gotten pretty dinged up and depreciated. So basically, just I wanted to do a rebuild, but I'm trying to pay off this debt.

Yeah, but it's a body rebuild. Okay. Yeah. I think the car served its purpose. I thought I heard you say that in between all these other things, I have new educational goals, I have investment goals. I have these other goals. When I bought the car, I didn't have those goals. Now I've got some competing goals, and the car is further down on the list. Did I hear that?

That's it. Your priorities changed, car went down the list.

Is that right, Jonathan?

Yeah, and also the time and effort it would take to get it done.

And I'd rather be working on my educational goal.

There's your answer.

I see what you mean.

Yeah, I thought I heard that in there. There's project car on every corner. Most people drive project cars. Yeah. Sell it just because you'd rather do other things. I think this is the Ramsey show.

You know what's better than saving big on black Friday? Doing it from home. Shop Ramsey solutions online black Friday one day sale today and find gifts for everyone for as low as $8. I'm talking everything from books like the total money makeover to Ken Coleman's get clear career assessment to Dr. John deloney's questions for humans cards. Save money and give meaningful gifts today at our black Friday one day sale@ramsesolutions.com store. But hurry, the sale ends tonight. That's Ramsaysolutions.com store.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsay personality, is my co host today. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at Nashville. Hi, Ashley. How are you?

I'm good. How are you guys?

Better than we deserve. What's up?

So I just wanted to get your opinion. I have a friend that does your all's program as well as I've been doing it since 2020. I'm still in babysitt two, and we've discussed it a few times, but I'm just not sure of my decision. So in 2019, we adopted our son, and then a year later, our marriage fell apart, and we split up. So fast forward to now. We've been to court two times over custody issues, a lot of nonsense, really. His dad's just really hard to get along with. But in those two times, it's cost me around $20,000 in court, returning fees and everything else. So I'm trying to just gain some traction on maybe preparing for that in the future, because I feel like it's not going away and still being able to pay off my debt. I really just don't know what to do. I'm sorry, Ashley. That's a really hard situation. How much money do you make a year? So I work as much overtime as I can. Last year I made around 100,000, and then this year it's probably going to be between 80 and 90. Okay.

What do you do?

I'm a nurse.

Good for you.

Thank you. How much debt in general, do you have altogether? It's probably around 90,000. It's a mixture of vehicles. Well, my vehicle alone, and then I have some credit cards and a line of credit at the bank.

What do you owe in your car?

25.

Okay, so you have 90,000 in debt and 25 of its car. And then how much of its credit cards?

Around 9000.

Okay. So the rest of it is what?

I have a line of credit, which is around 20,000 that I opened up to pay for court fees, and I can't think of anything else.

That's only 54,000.

So I have another vehicle in my name, but I don't pay for it, so that's another 48,000. But that's not mine.

What in the world? What is that?

It's his truck. But he makes all the payments on that. It doesn't cost me anything, but we went in together to get it. So your name is it on the.

Deed, on the loan, on the title of the truck? Yeah, but the divorce decree gave him the truck, and you're supposed to pay it, or he's supposed to pay it.

So that's not his? No, that's like, my fiance that I have now. I'm sorry.

You bought a truck for your fiance? For $50,000?

So we went in together. I didn't necessarily buy it for him. It's something that we just done together. He needed you to co sign it? No, he's doing good with his money.

No, he's not. He took out a $50,000 truck loan with his money. Why are you on the loan?

Because we're getting married, and I don't know.

When are you getting married?

Hopefully within the next year.

Okay. In the whole story that you told us that has a lot of tragedy and sadness, this thing then jumps up as super stupid and crazy, right? Like a $50,000 truck while you're fighting and don't have the money to pay, and you have to take out a line of credit. And the best idea you all got is go in debt for 50 grand on a truck while you're trying to keep a dad gum child in a custody battle ongoing with a crazy ex.

Yeah.

This truck is crazy. Nuts. Crazy.

Yeah.

All right, so you're getting married. When did you say?

Probably within a year.

Okay. Why are you waiting?

Honestly, because everything's just been so crazy with my ex for the past two years, and I've dealt with anxiety and depression. My son has a lot of issues he was born with.

None of that's changing in a year.

I'm sorry.

None of that is changing in a year.

I know. Yeah. I don't know. Just anxiety and depression on my side and my main focus being my son. That's just not been at the top of the list, I guess.

Okay. You called and asked us for help, and we love you, and we want you to win, and we're sad that you're having to fight to keep your baby. Okay. Now then, I'm going to tell you some hard stuff. Are you okay with that?

Yes.

Okay. Sell the stupid truck. Get married now or don't. But don't wait around on some mythical island to come sailing up some mythical ship to come sailing up to your island when everything's going to be right. Because the things you've been facing, part of your anxiety and part of the things you've been facing with mental health stuff is not just your ex. It's this pile of stuff on you and all of these untied knots, knots that need to be tied. Okay?

Right.

You don't have closure on anything. All these open ended things there's open ended this, open ended that, open ended this. There's no closure anywhere. And that creates angst. It creates anxiety. So you've got to get some predictable order, not chaos. The more areas of your life you can get non chaos in, the faster your anxiety is going to drop. I'm not a mental health professional. Dr. John Deloney is. I've just heard him say that, so I said it. Okay, but that's the truth. Okay? And the debt and the pile of debt you guys have, you have. And now you guys with this $50,000 truck is part of where your anxiety is coming from because you feel trapped, and now you're worried about the next time the crazy X comes at you. How are we going to cover that? Meantime, I got a $48,000 truck note, okay.

And I know he takes care of it, Ashley. But the truth is, though, if he doesn't, it's on you then.

And so you're carrying this around your neck. You feel it between your shoulder blades. You feel the weight of it. And that's part of the anxiety. You can't keep from doing that, by the way. It's just how your body and your mind and your spirit works. So, yeah, if you were my little sister or my daughter, I would tell you, get married and sell the truck by the weekend, or run this guy off and sell the truck by the weekend. But paint or get off the ladder.

Right.

Okay. That's what I would tell you to do if I loved you, and I do. So I want you to do that. Okay? And then we want you to take this wonderful income you have, and you have a fabulous career choice because you'll always have a job and you can always make money when you're a nurse. It's just a great job.

And Ashley, I would sell your car. Honestly, I would get any level of traction for $25,000. I'm like, you can get a used $10,000, whatever it is, but just I would get out of that.

How hard would you work? How crazy would you go to have $20,000 in the bank and no debt? So next time Crazy X comes around, you can punch him in the nose with a lawyer.

Right. That's what I thought I was doing this last time.

Exactly. But you didn't. You went over the car lot with your goober fiance and bought a truck.

Right.

Okay. So you went the other way. So I want you to sell everything in sight. Work like crazy people. Live on beans and rice, rice and beans. Get married and let's get the credit.

Card debt paid off. I mean all of it. Yeah. Start getting some traction with that debt payoff, Ashley. And I think you're going to start to feel more in control because you are.

That's why you'll feel that way, because you're going to run the chaos off and drive order in and build a war chest to go to war. And then you can fight for this, baby. This is the Ramsey Show, live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's The Ramsey Show where we help people build wealth, do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Washaw Ramsey personality is my co host today. As we answer your questions about your life and your money, we're going to talk about you right in front of you, baby. Open phones at triple 8825-5225. The call is free, and some say it's worth exactly what you pay for it. Kim is with us. Kim is in Asheville, North Carolina, starting off this hour. Hi, Kim. How are you?

Hello.

How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Okay, so I have a question. We hired a gentleman to do our taxes in March of this year, and we ended up hiring him to do financial planning for us as well. And after hiring him to do that, we discovered that he had filed bankruptcy twice and had been sued for writing a bad check. Question is well, he filed bankruptcy in 2019 was his last one. That was the second one. And it said the certified financial planning board revoked his right to use their certification mark. And then he also was sued for writing a bad check to a moving company recently. That was in 2018. And so we had already paid him a large fee to use him for financial planning. And I guess my question is, should this be of concern to us? We have discussed this with him.

What did he say?

He says that we don't understand what it's like to run our own business. And just basically he was very rude about it and said his business would go on with or without us.

I'm leaving.

I don't care about the bankruptcy with your butt. I don't want to work with you.

Right.

You don't get to be rude to me about this. You're defensive, which means that, yeah, I've been sued and I filed bankruptcy, but if you ask me about it, I'll just tell you I almost feel like you not last week, but I mean, I'll just tell you, right?

I almost feel like you open with that, if that's part of your story. That's what's informed you to this point?

He claimed that he told us in the contract. Well, I made him send that back to us because it disappeared after we signed it, and we couldn't see our own copy, so he sent it to me a couple of weeks ago. There was a link that we could click in small print about this.

How much did you pay this guy?

$1,500.

Okay. Will he refund you or not?

He will not.

Okay. I'm walking anyway.

Well, yeah, we told him we were walking because we don't trust him. Just because of his attitude.

Exactly. It's not the thing. It's the attitude. Okay. Because here's the thing, okay? Let's say the moving company tore up 17 of his items, and then he unpacked it and found a vase that they were responsible for. They don't want to refund him for the broken vase, so he stops payment on the check. They sue him. That's a valid story.

Sure.

Right. He told me that he settled that check. I said, well, you didn't settle it, or they wouldn't have sued you.

Yeah, well, it's the attitude, is the thing. It's like, look, hey, here's the proper way to answer this question. If I'm him, if I were in your shoes, I'd have these exact same concerns. I'm happy to tell you the details. Okay? Here's what happened in this situation, and here's what happened in that situation. And the bankruptcy was not you don't understand what it's like to run a business. The bankruptcy was I did some stupid butt things. I learned from it, and I'm not doing them anymore. The check was the moving company misbehaved, and I used that as leverage, and it got out of hand, and they sued me, but they had no basis. The judge threw it out.

Yeah, he blamed his ex wife for the bad check.

I don't care. You see what I'm saying? If you had gone that way, then he would have redeemed his credibility. If he'd have been smarter and done what Jade said and said upfront what was going on. It's part of your story. That's fine. That's fine.

That's what we felt.

I've been sued for things that I didn't do that they made up in an effort to try to basically use the court system to blackmail me to settle with them. I refused to settle with them. So that gets all in the news. So you can look up, Dave Ramsey got sued, but the basis of the lawsuits are zero. Absolutely did not occur. But it doesn't matter. You can sue somebody for anything in America. So I don't mind telling you that that's happened. Okay. But if you want to be pissed at Dave Ramsey randomly, you can find places on the Internet that I did all kinds of things I didn't.

Well, you know, he said he was going to sue the Certified Financial Planning.

Board for good luck with that.

Yeah. And I was like, how can you do.

I really don't like his attitude. I don't like that he's defensive. He sounds like he's pointing the finger, blaming. It doesn't sound like it's going to be a fun work environment for you to work with.

I'm walking away, right? I think you should walk away. And you already had walked away, so you already knew the answer to the question.

Yeah. Well, she probably wanted to know if there was some way she could force him to get the money back, but I wouldn't put any effort into it. I'd just move on.

I don't think you're going to turn him into not being a jerk. Yeah, I think he's already got that one down.

Well, if he hasn't done any work for them yet in that capacity, I feel like a good person would say, hey, you didn't know this. We haven't started yet. Here's your money.

Even a not good person knows that some customers are more trouble than they're worth. And if I'm her and I disagree with her, I mean, if I'm him and I disagree with her, she's more trouble than she's worth. Here's your money back.

Yeah, go away.

Even if I'm not a good person, it's worth just to get rid of, you know, we fire a customer around here that misbehaves ever so often. You can't call here and cuss at our people. We don't allow you to do that. We give you your money back until you go away. That's all right. I don't put up with your junk because some customer service people in America, their whole job is to get cussed at by rageaholics all day long.

Terrible.

And our customer service people, I told them, listen, just tell them, don't wait a minute, wait a minute. We don't talk like that here. You're not doing that. Just call somewhere else and be pissed off. Take your money and that you're going to use here and use it for counseling. You need it. Just move on. Right, but yeah, I mean, even if you're on the other side of it, it's worth it to get rid of. And I don't think Kim's that I think Kim's figured this out.

Yeah.

The sad thing is that now she's questioning all financial people or planners.

Yeah.

Whether or not they're trustworthy. I'll tell you know, SmartVestor pro will sit down with you. They don't charge you a thing because they make a commission off of selling you a mutual fund for your Roth IRA or your kids college fund. And they don't make anything unless they sell you something. So people are all suspect about that, but they're the good ones. They do it with the heart of a teacher. That's why we endorse smart investor pros. We don't have any fee based financial planners in our system that are upfront fees, not because I'm mad at them. They just don't like us because I endorse mutual funds. Yeah, that makes sense. Because here's the thing. There's a thing in the financial world it's worth talking about this in the 20 seconds we've got called the fiduciary, and you see it. There's one company running, and they're lying about it on their TV ad during football. I saw it last two or three weekends. I can't think what it's called. Little green sign in the background. But we are fiduciaries. We are fiduciaries. We don't make anything unless you make something. The word fiduciary means a person of trust.

Can you trust someone that gets a commission? Yes, if they're trustworthy. All real estate agents are commission based.

Fiduciaries, and they should put your interest first.

Yeah, but just because you get paid when they make a sale doesn't mean you can't have integrity.

That's right.

That's absurd. So that's the financial world right now. This is the Ramsay show.

Hey, guys, christmas is right around the corner, which means we're about to be bombarded with a million and one ways to spend money in the name of holiday spirit. And listen, I want you to enjoy the season, but unless you want to spend your entire life savings on candy canes, you need a budget. And every dollar will help you make a plan for all of your Christmas expenses. And right now, you can get an entire year of premium features for just 49 99. To get the deal, head over to EveryDollar.com black Friday. That's EveryDollar.com BLACKFRIDAY.

George Camel Ramsay personality is our co host today. Open phones at triple 825-5225. Thanks for being with us, America. We're here to serve you. Our joy comes when we can show you what to do, and then you actually go do it, and it causes you to win. Bing, bing. That's how that works. That's what this has been about for 30 plus years now, and it continues to be. Jody is with us in Springfield, Illinois. Hi, Jody. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi, there.

Hey, what's up?

Well, I'm kind of embarrassed to ask this question, but I am a 50 year old widow who has been widowed for 15 years. I have helped put my children through college and I have no retirement. So I am ready to start retirement and I don't even know where to begin and how much to put in.

There's nothing embarrassing about any of that. It sounds good.

You make me feel good.

Sounds like you're a wonderful person. We just need to get on the ball, right?

Yes.

So what do you.

Make about I was just sitting here figuring this out. I bring home about 36,000, take home a year.

Okay. So your income is somewhere around in the low 40s, maybe 45. All right. What do you do?

I am a social worker.

Okay. All right. And do you have any debt?

I do not.

Your house is paid for?

Yes.

Well, that's great news.

That means most of your income can go toward investing. So you have zero saved right now.

Right.

What do you have in the bank?

Well, here's what I have. I have my emergency fund of $1,000. I have my three months. I have three months of my emerge in case something happens. But that's about all I have at this point. So I'm on the Dave Ramsey boat. I'm scared it's to a point to where sometimes I cry because I'm like, what am I going to do? Because I don't know, because when my husband passed away, I used life insurance and all that kind of stuff to pay my house off. So we had a roof over our head and all that kind of stuff, because my kids were seven and ten when all of this happened.

Wow, you've had a lot of life happen hard.

I totally understand. We're not here to beat you up. We want to give you some good next steps to take. And if you're following the baby steps now, that puts you at baby step four, because you have no debt. Fully funded emergency fund. And really it's step seven because you have a paid for house. And so now the kids that are schools paid for, we got to put our own mask now. Put our own mask on. And that looks like investing for retirement as aggressively as possible. Do you have a retirement plan through your employer?

Here's what I have. And I didn't know what route to go, but there's a 403 B.

Okay.

I don't know much about that. I've kind of looked do they have a match? No.

Okay. I would not do that. Then I would first do okay. I mean, I may do some there, but we would first do a Roth IRA. Okay.

Just a plain Roth. Not a traditional Roth, a Roth.

So what I want you to do is go to Ramsaysolutions.com and click on SmartVestor and get a SmartVestor pro in your area to sit down with you and they can help you run some calculations.

Okay.

Now let me give you an example. You bring home $3,000 a month. You do not have any bills except survival. Bills. You have no debt, no rent, no nothing. Okay.

Correct.

If you were to save, invest $1,000 a month for 15 years at 65, you're going to have right around a half a million dollars. Right. Around $500,000.

Really?

Yeah. Okay. What this means is not that you're rich and it's really not enough, but it's enough to make sure you're not cold and hungry.

Right.

Because it will produce then let's just reverse engineer this, which is very interesting. Okay. Let's pretend it produced 10% a year on the mutual funds after that, and that you retired and had no retirement income. And I suspect you probably have a retirement with your government agency, don't you, that they furnish you a pension?

Yeah, actually, my husband, I get a pension off of him. But that thing but do you get.

A pension from your work when you retire?

No.

Okay.

It's just Social Security. I pay into.

Yeah, absolutely. Which is horrible. But that's okay.

All right.

So if you had a half a million at 65 or 67 or whatever, and it was invested at 10%, 10% of 500,000 is 50,000 a year.

Right.

Without touching the nest egg? Without touching the goose, it will lay 50,000 golden eggs a year.

Wow.

And so you'd actually be making more at retirement than you are now.

No kidding.

So you're going to be okay. That's the point. You're not going to be rich. But even if my numbers are off a little bit and they might be one way or another, actually, they probably are off in this case because you probably will not be making 36,000 for the rest of your life. You'll probably be making more. And so you could invest probably more later. Agreed.

Right.

Yeah. I did that based on $1,000 in your current income. So I want you to sit down with a smart investor pro, and we don't know how the scenarios will compare to actual life, but you can run some scenarios like I just did, just to get the idea that I don't have to cry. Because if you'll start now, Jody, and you'll start investing close to $1,000 or more than $1,000 a month, you get your budget tight. And you do that, you're going to be okay. Matter of fact, you're going to be better than okay.

That makes me cry. Just being happy.

Yeah. So I want you to sit down, but it also needs to make you get on the budget and do it. It also means you to get on the phone and get on with those SmartVestor pros and go sit down with them and learn and let's get this stuff started. Not next week, not next year, now.

Okay.

Right now. Because every day you put this off, it gets harder. If you put it off a year, it's going to take 1200.

Yeah.

Don't put it off anymore. You put it off as long as you can. The fuse is burning. So I want you scared enough that I scare you into action, but I don't want you terrified anymore. So you're paralyzed.

I got it. I'm on it. I'm doing it today.

I love you. You're awesome. Call us back and let us know how it's going, okay?

Okay. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you, sweet lady.

Love that. She just needed a little motivation that she's not doing as bad as she thought she was. And the time to start is today.

What's interesting about what we do for a living, when we talk about getting out of debt or we talk about building wealth, numbers actually give you a result that gives you hope when you run math. Okay, I got $100,000 in debt. I'm never going to get out, what's, 33,000 a year for three years? I mean, it's $2,600 a month and you make 150,000. Shut your winding up. All of a sudden, the numbers give you hope, right? The math gives you hope. In her case, it's $1,000 a month for the next 15 years and not missing a month and getting started immediately and getting good returns and good mutual funds, which probably that 403 B does not have. That's why I directed her away from that. Let's go first to the Roth IRA.

With more control, more options, a lot.

Better options, a lot better mutual fund options out there. Now, I can be off, and if you all want to argue with my numbers, that's fine, argue with my numbers. But here's the point. Get with it. If I'm half wrong, she's still going to have 25 $26,000 a month coming in or 25 $26,000 a year coming in versus nothing, which your little plan, you critique, critic people out there, creates nothing. That's what critics create, nothing.

Well, the new one, Dave, is well, a million dollars isn't enough anymore, Dave.

That means a half million dollars is half of not enough. But it's more than you got if you be broke and crying about it. Hello. Yeah.

We'd love for you to have multiple millions, but, I mean, in this case, you could see 500,000 would still change your life.

The only way she's going to get to over a million is she's going to raise her income substantially so she could invest twice as much. Because 2000 a month for 15 years at 12%, my mutual funds have averaged 12% for the last 30 years. My personal portfolio and I'm not a genius. The market has averaged 11.8% in the S and P. So by God, shut up and go do it. So could you end up with a million dollars in 15 years? Yes. Two grand a month. That's it, roughly. I mean, there it is. Ding, ding. This is the Ramsay show. If you pay taxes to the IRS every quarter or run a small business and you're not using a CPA, what are you doing? The more complicated your tax situation gets, the more, you need expert help with a Ramsey Trusted Tax Pro. You can get top notch service year round for payroll, bookkeeping, quarterly tax payments, and of course, tax filing. Let an expert take the stress off your shoulders. Go to Ramsaysolutions.com slash tax to find a Ramsay trusted tax pro today. That's Ramsaysolutions.com slash tax. Dr. John Deloney. Ramsey personality is my co host.

By the way, guys, our award winning documentary Borrowed Future about the absurdity of the entire student loan, epic Failure, is available for free on YouTube. You can watch it other places and pay for it, but it's free on YouTube, so go there and check it. You can also probably check it out on Ramsey Solutions. I imagine we've got it on the website, but either way, borrowed Future oddly enough, Dr. John Deloney is one of the guests on the documentary. Back when he was in Higher ed, we interviewed him before he was a Ramsey Personality. So you didn't know that was your interview for the new position?

I did not know it was a job interview. You all have an uncanny way of interviewing you without you knowing. But I do think it's without applying, I do think it's important to note, I mean, when we look at what's happening today, you all called this back in 2019 when you made the documentary, you all called it we see the train coming and it's going to hit us and it's on its way.

Yep, for sure. Kenzie is with us in Tacoma, Washington. Hi, Kenzie. How are you?

Hi, how are you?

Better than I deserve. How can we?

I've been my husband and I have been on your plan off and on. But we've paid off all our debt at one point and then I was stupid, got back into it. But we're like scorched earth, really, on this plan to get out of debt. And one of the driving forces is we want to cash flow our kids college. Well, and this is like the perfect day listening to all of these kids or adults having to pay for college again, all their stuff. Anyways, I have told my kids I have a 20 119 and a 17 year old girls. And I've told them since they were in middle school, we will pay for college, but you have to live at home and you have to go to a school that we approve of. You have to have good grades, but we will cash flow your school. We're not doing debt. We have been very transparent about the struggle we've had with debt. The sleep that we lost, everything like that.

I did the same thing except the live at home part.

Why do you add that you have.

To live at home? Because I don't pay for other people's rent. So where I live, there are so many colleges within 20 minutes of our home that there is no reason for you to not live at home.

Okay, so it's your money and those are your rules. What's your question?

So my daughter refuses to stay home and go to school. She wants to go to a state school, but she wants to go to WSU, which is over in Pullman, which is 6 hours away.

Cool.

And they require you to live on campus and you have to have the food program, which is about $2500 to $4,000 a year.

So she's opting out. Hold on. It's just very simple. She's opting out of your rules. She opted out.

Yes, it's very difficult for me, absolutely.

And I've dealt with my entire career has been spent sitting with parents. And you drew a hard line, a very hard line and very clear line. A very clear line. This is the way this is going to be. And she said, cool, I'm going that way. And so the other side of a very clear, very firm hard line is other people can say, well then I don't want anything to do with that boundary.

But that doesn't obligate you to pay. No. It doesn't mean you get none of your money. Right?

No, I said I would help with some groceries.

No, she gets none of your money.

That's the rule.

You set up none of your money.

Yes.

No, she opted out.

But it kills me when you see your kid running into it.

Israeli heartbreaking to watch people you love do stupid butt things, but you don't get to vote anymore once they're adults.

And the same as if your parents started spending their money and they were in their eighty s. And it's heartbreaking because they keep sending money overseas to somebody who cares about what I mean.

Or your best friend buys $100,000 worth of crypto because he's an idiot. You can't stop him from doing it.

Hardest things is when you love somebody and they're doing hard things that you know are not going to be good for them.

And so also if she signs up for all of these loans and things because she has nothing saved, she is.

Not doing she has to pay them back. She's making a choice.

No, you're not liable. You're not liable. Don't sign anything. I refuse to participate in your insanity. I love you too much to buy your cocaine. You're an addict.

She opted out. She opted out.

See, she thinks this is the reason we're being so strong on this. I know what she thinks. She thinks you're going to give her money anyway.

And I have two other girls that.

Doesn'T she does she think that?

She does think that. But I have to hold true because my oldest moved out, so we stopped school. Our middle one is staying home. We're paying for school. So we have to stay true to what we've said.

It's unfair to the other two for you to not have integrity. Correct. Zero help. Now listen, the one thing I have learned, and I think it's. The hardest stage of parenting is being a parent to people who are grown up because they're allowed to vote. Now I can't tell them what to do anymore. I can't use my dad voice. It no longer works. I can only use it on the radio, on a listener. But I can't use it on my kids. But that doesn't even work there actually. But I can't use my dad voice anymore. Not even the dog listens to my dad voice anymore. It's just gone. I lost my dad voice. I have to use Persuasion with everyone now. And so my grown kids get the exact same approach when I disagree with them that one of my good friends would get. I either just stand back and watch and hold my nose or I sit down beside them and I go, you know I love you. And I've got some ideas here of some dumb things I've done in the past. And it kind of looks like some of the stuff you're thinking about doing.

Would you like some advice from an older, wiser friend? If you say no, then I have to shut up. But if you say yes, I'll give it to you and you have to go at it. I've got friends my age who have grown kids that are in their thirty s and forty s. One of them called us the other day and said, hey, we have teenagers. You raised three great kids. Can we take you to dinner? We want to ask you how to do that. But what I told them was persuasion. I didn't get to tell them what to do. They ask, and I get to tell them what I thought. But that's how John persuades me. Or I persuade John. Same thing. That's all you can do. But you might want to try that because I got a feeling in your frustration you've used your mom voice.

Oh, absolutely.

And your kids called your bluff, right?

Yes. Yeah. And I've been working really hard on not talking at them, but talking with them.

Did you say, this is three girls?

I have three girls, yes.

Where's dad in this conversation?

So he backs me up. We're in a different like we're almost out of our debt. And so he's kind of weighing like, okay, maybe we do this. And I said, no, we have to hold.

That's exactly what I meant. So I want him to come around front of this instead of you. And I want him to take his daughter to coffee and say, baby doll, I love you. And as somebody who loves you, not as your dad, I think you're making a mistake here and I want you to rethink it.

And also I want to challenge you on something too. Not on this particular one, but I'm challenging the bedrock that you've anchored into. One of the greatest gifts a parent can give their kids sometimes is to say the words I went about this the wrong way.

Not the thing is wrong, but I went about it the wrong way.

I don't think this is wise. I want to take you to coffee and say, hey, let me walk you through why I'm making this choice. Because I'll tell you this, everybody can disagree with me. That's fine. But after working in colleges for 20 years, four different ones across a couple of states, and consulting in a gajillion more if my kids decide to go to college, one of my rules is you have to live on campus. Because I want them to experience a bunch of different people and learn about how other people do life. That's different. That's a different philosophy. But here's the deal. Your kid is going to say, I'm going to go for this one, then. So you set a set of rules. Great. Either live and die by it.

But I want dad to spend some time talking about why.

Well, yeah, why? I actually want mom and dad to sit down and say, do we actually both believe this?

Okay, and then why?

Because it sounds like mom made a line and Dad's just going along with it.

But why?

But why stick with it?

Why?

Right.

You got to talk to a teenager. You got to talk to a grown child as a grown sibling. A grown child is what it is. Oxymoron as an equal. And why? Here's. Why I believe this. Here's why I'm trying to talk you into it. This is the Ramsay show. You our scripture today, two Chronicles, 15 seven. But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded. Mary Kay Ash says, it's far better to be exhausted from success than to be rested from failure. I got a chill. Yeah, that one's good. All right. Carrie is with us in Tampa, Florida. Hi, Carrie. How are you?

Hi, Dave. Oh, my goodness. It's an honor to be on your show.

Honored to have you. How can we help?

So I'm really just looking for debt advice. We are struggling to pay back an SBA loan payments for my husband's franchise that is now closed.

Ouch.

Yeah.

You borrowed how much on an SBA loan to buy a franchise?

It was a total of $223,000.

Okay. What kind of franchise?

It was a moving company. He kind of bought it at a premium because it was already in existence, and we really were under the impression it would be successful. And unfortunately, I don't know if it was just due to the market at the time, but it was really obvious after about a year that it was not going to be profitable anytime soon. And so he made the decision to close it, and it was a big risk to begin with, but we decided to go ahead and just close it and move on. He does have a great job now that he loves. Thank you.

What does he make?

About 70,000 now.

What do you make?

I make 48,000. Do you guys have any other debt? Well, we have a very small car loan remaining and our house payment, we have about 200,000 left on our house.

Are there any assets at all left over from the business?

From the business? No.

You sold them or what?

Yes, everything was sold and wiped out.

The actual franchise itself, is the brand still open?

Yes.

Can you not sell that franchise to someone?

No, it wasn't going to be an option. They couldn't help us with that.

Why?

That's a good question. We asked the question at the time, and it was going to be a very long process to even try to find a buyer. And I don't know, honestly.

I assume the franchiseor has approval over any buyer. But even if you could sell the thing for $10,000 to somebody that just wanted that franchise because they're probably selling that franchise to a brand new franchisee for a good deal more than that, correct?

It's possible. They kind of just dissolved it in our territory and it was picked up by somebody else who's further away.

So you've lost your rights to it by now then? Probably, yeah.

Yes. It was closed. We closed it in February.

Now, closing it is different than the actual franchise. A franchise is an element that is actually a right that you have that you paid for.

Right. Sorry. It has expired and dissolved.

All right, man. Well, so you got $233,000 on 110.

Yeah.

$23,000 a year is ten years. $50,000 a year is five years. What are you going to do to get your income up so it goes faster?

I'm not sure. We're hoping that his job so far. It's going well, but what did he do before this for his promotion? He's in operations and logistics management. He's worked for Amazon for a few years and he worked for another company for a few years.

What did he make before he quit and started the franchise?

He was making about.

That sounds more like logistics than 70.

Yes. And he lost that job in January of 2021. They had a restructuring in the business.

Yeah. But the logistics world, if he knows supply chain and he knows how to lay that out, that's a six figure income.

Yes, you would think that.

No, I wouldn't think, I know.

Right, right.

And you live in Tampa. Freaking Florida. There's logistics there for sure. Let me tell you. Kerry, here's what's going on, okay? You guys got the crap beat out of you, and your husband's lost his confidence, and you have too. And he doesn't feel like he's worth what he's actually worth because of this failure. I need you guys, for your sake, to go get him a job making 110. He needs to get back in the marketplace with his shoulders thrown back and a little swagger in his step again, he's not a bad guy. You guys just made a mistake and bought a business that you didn't know how to run and ran it in the ground, and you've lost your butts. But that doesn't mean you're horrible people or you're dumb people or that suddenly he's not worth 110 when he probably actually is. At least one of the things I had to recover from when I went broke, and mine was a lot more dramatic. Although there's what is major surgery? Surgery that happens to you. What's minor surgery? Surgery that happens to somebody else. Right. So yours is very dramatic for you, I'm sure, and traumatic.

But one of the things I had to recover from was I felt like an idiot. I felt like, why should anybody trust anything I ever think again? Because I was so stinking arrogant before. It knocked me completely out of the saddle. And I don't think your husband was that guy, but it's normal when you go through this. It's the death of a dream, and part of your soul dies when you close that door and turn the key for the last time and walk away.

That definitely sounds fair. Yeah.

I want to give you permission to grieve that, but I also want you to keep perspective on it and him to keep perspective on it, because I think he took just something to get a job, and he's just kind of curled up in the corner wounded right now.

We definitely went through that. We are hopeful for this job. I mean, he applied for jobs for almost a year before he decided to open the franchise. We're on the outskirts of Tampa. We're not really in Tampa, so we weren't finding anything at all. And so when this opportunity, currently that he's working for came along, he's really enjoying the job, and we're hoping, well.

I'm glad, but you have $223,000 worth of debt, and he needs to make a lot more.

Yeah, well, okay.

That's how it's going to be done, kiddo. I'm not going to argue with you anymore. The thing is, I understand where you are. I've been where you are, and I'm sorry that you've been through all this pain, but, yeah, the big math says you need to put $50,000 a year on it, and you can do that with your current income if you live on beans and rice and it's going to take you five years. Or you can increase your income by $40,000 and do this in three or four years and not have to live on beans and rice while you're doing it. And I really think that there's a tie in here. When you get hit this hard, you look for a safe place to hide. Human nature does that. You want to go back to something.

Where I'm no risk.

I don't want to stick my head up. I'll get it knocked off again. I don't want to do that. So thank you for your call. That's the answer. You take the 223 and you divide it into the number of years you want to fool with this. And what have you got to do what has to be true to make that happen? And part of that is healing from this the rest of the way. And you're making excuses. You are. And part of that tells me you haven't healed from this the rest of the way. So you shouldn't have asked if you didn't want me to tell you that's true. And, guys, let me just tell you, those of you in business out there, well, business debt doesn't count. Business debt is good debt. Tell that to Carrie, right? You go take out a $200,000 loan to buy a business, you're in stupid land. And you do that with an SBA loan, you're in super stupid land. Because SBA is forever. They do not go away. They're like a student loan. And I'm not saying Carrie's stupid. I'm just saying any of you that are thinking about doing this, you need to listen to her call, because, oh, well, we're not gonna write debt only works when debt works.

And that's never you get your butt bit off here, man. People, you gotta stop it. You gotta stop it. Ouch. Bless their hearts. What a horrible thing to go through. That puts us 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.

Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade. Look, if you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey baby steps, go to Ramsaysolutions.com and click the Get Started button. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. That's Ramsaysolutions.com and click get started.

Hey, folks, Dave Ramsey here. You know, budgeting doesn't have to be boring. You just need a budgeting app that's made with you in mind, and that's EveryDollar. The EveryDollar app has helped millions of people work the baby steps and take the stress out of planning and managing their money. Start budgeting with EveryDollar for free right now. Just go to ramsaysolutions.com EveryDollar and download the app today. That's ramsaysolutions.com EveryDollar.