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. Open phones this hour at 888-8255 number one best selling author, Ramsey personality and host of the Rachel Cruze show. My daughter, Rachel Cruz is my co host today as we answer your questions about your life and your money. Before we go straight to the phones, I want to make sure you guys don't think we're living on another planet or something. Obviously, we know that there was an attempt on President Trump's life on Thursday night and lost a hero firefighter protecting his daughter and wife, in the process shielding them from gunfire at that assassination attempt. And everyone knows the details. We certainly are not Fox or CNN or anybody else. We're not going into the details. It's not what we do here. But we are praying for this nation. We're people of the book. And the book tells us to pray for our leaders, even if we don't agree with them. And Trump is one of our leaders. He was a president and Joe this here. I'm a little worried about, you know, what we can do with it in a smart way to sustain things, but also how to do something.Rachel's husband, Winston, handles all of our real estate, and he does some real estate for he and Rachel as well. So we're real estate people. We like real estate, but not everybody does. And I buy mutual funds. That's the only two things I do.Okay.And you do whatever you want to do. But those, those are two things that are long term conservative, not fancy. Yeah.And even Justin going and getting, you know, paid for a couple of rentals and, you know, having that, that's kind of a medium nice neighborhood.Nice neighborhood.I mean, if you know what you're doing in real estate, I don't know if you are flipping is great, but you have stories. Aaron is in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, Aaron. How are you?Better than I deserve. My question today is I need a vehicle in the next month, and I'm wondering if I should wait and tough it out until I have enough money, which is five to seven grand, I wanted to spend on a good, reliable vehicle, or if I should go ahead and finance.How much do you have today?I have $800, and you have.No. No car at all.So this vehicle is for my significant other.You're gonna buy a car for somebody you're not married to?I mean, it's probably gonna be in my name, and then she'll drive it.You're gonna buy a car for somebody you're not married to, possibly going into.Debt for that, too.Yeah. You don't know how to screw up a relationship, go into debt, and buy a girl a car that'll make you hate the girl. What?No, it won't necessarily. But, Aaron. No, it's not smart.By the time this is over, why can't she.Why can't she go buy a car?Oh, there's an idea.Well, I mean, because. I mean, I'm the one taking her and transporting her to her. To her job.Yeah.And.Well, why can't she buy a cardinal?Because she just doesn't make enough to be able to have it by the time we need it.We. Why do we need a car? She needs a car.You have one by the time you need. We need it. What do you mean? What does that mean? Is there something happening in the future?Yeah. I mean, she has to be able to get to school, and then it's her job herself.Okay, so how. What was she gonna do before you? I say, dad, you know, here's what I did. And I've already got 200. I'm only 26. Here's what I did, and I did this and here's what I did. I sacrifice now, because I knew if I could get out of debt, I would have stability and sustainability and have the ability to build wealth. All of these abilities are on there. So get rid of the debt, dad.That's what I did. And then I was able. And gosh, if you were to do that, I could help you. I would coach you. I'd be. I'd be your biggest cheerleader. I'm not going to interfere in your business if you don't want me to. But man, I'm so excited about what this has done for my wife and I, this for our lives and how we've changed because we're doing this stuff in any of this that you would allow me to share with you, I would be so honored. And that's your it's a type of cash value policy that you pay extra for beyond what you would pay for terminal. And the extra goes into an investment and with variable, it generally is mutual funds that you select the mutual funds or they select them for you with a rubber stamp situation and you don't even realize you did it. But basically it's going into that then they take all of their fees out and so you don't get anywhere near the return that you would have gotten. Nationally, the typical variable is about 4.7% rate of return on an investment that, not counting fees, should be yielding north of ten. So it's an absolutely bad product. But I cannot. It's hard to fathom that you paid 20 years and only got $1,500 out of it. That's hard to believe.That's what it shows me. And it's one of those things where I never really have you claim. No, that's, that's on my list. But I just wanted to really start to understand more about the policy so that I had some information.It's possible that it is a dumbed down product that was sold as an HR benefit through a benefits company. And by dumbed down, I mean that they didn't charge you enough over what the actual life insurance was for there to be any going into savings? Hardly.Okay.And so it's, I don't know what you've been paying, but the policy, seven or 50,000. So it's less than a million dollar policy. How old are you today?I'll be 65 in September.So you bought it when you were 45 and was it guaranteed issue? Meaning did they make you to go through a medical?No, it was one of the things. One of the benefits that I signed up for when I went with that employer.Right. But they did not have any medical. And check, like if you bought a million dollar policy, they're going to check medical? Usually, yeah. No, sir, not any guaranteed issue is what that's called, and that is a standard in the benefits world. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's a more expensive type of insurance because they're taking more risk because they're not checking people's medicals. That make sense. And so you're probably paying a lot more of what you should, what you were paying a lot more of it was going towards insurance versus if you had just bought a, a regular variable universal from them out in the open market and done a medical. So that's part of, part of where you got ripped off, probably. And my other guess is that if I knew the premium amount, it probably wasn't enough to have a lot spilling over into cash value. So it's very possible that what you've learned is true, I'm sad to say. Now, the good news is you can stop doing it. You have a hole in your pocket. You don't keep putting money in it. And then we need to ascertain, even if you need life insurance at 66 years old or 65 years old.Right.So do you have assets?I do. I own all of. I don't have any debt except for my. The mortgage on my house.Mm hmm. And.And then I have a fixed retire. I have two fixed retirements, one from my military service, one from my current employer.Is there any. Any children that came on late in the game that are still dependent upon you?No, sir.Okay. So financially speaking, not emotionally or relationally, but financially speaking, no one's counting on you. So if you didn't leave life insurance, from a dependent standpoint, the family's not going to be damaged?No. I would like to have life insurance that would cover any mortgage amount I would have. So my children wouldn't assume that.They don't assume it. The house will cover it.Okay.Yeah. You don't need to leave your house mortgage free by paying this policy and buying another policy at your age or. My age is not usually a good mathematical plan.Right.So how much money do you have in your nest egg?I have about nine months worth of expenses.You have a retirement nest egg of any kind?Well, the had during my marriage, and I did not leave my marriage with that.Okay, so he got that. And so you don't have a, quote, pile of money in a retirement account somewhere?No, I don't.Okay. You're living off the pensions, and that leaves you just fine, correct?Yes.Yeah. Okay.Are you still working, Susan?I am.Okay.Yeah.What do you make?And I'd like to keep working. I love what I do, so I don't. I'm not in a rush to retire.Good. What do you make?About $100,000 a year is my salary.Good. Good for you. Okay. And what's the balance on the mortgage?218.And what is the house worth?325. 325 to 350, I guess.Okay. So if you were to pass away tomorrow without life insurance, the kids would sell the house, there'd be 100,000 on the table, they would pay for a funeral, and the smoke would clear, and they would all get a little bit correct.Correct? Yes, sir.Okay. I'm not buying this life insurance policy. Another day.Then I. And I agree with you. That was my first reaction. But then I'm thinking, I mean, and the premiums have gone up every year. Yeah, they do age, but these, this is hundreds of dollars a month for years that I have been paying.That doesn't make. It doesn't mean you want to keep doing it.No, but I just made the bad decision with that investment.Yeah. Yeah, I think you probably did. But as they say, water under the bridge.That I would call them, too, Susan.I want to call them and make.Off a zero or something. I don't know.Know.Maybe there is more in there. It's a typo.It's possible. But I think with it being a guaranteed issue, and I think with it being a benefit, they lowered the price on it so low that they weren't. They didn't put enough in there to.Cover the insurance was so expensive. Just for the insurance side. I know, because she didn't do medical.That's because variable life insurance is a complete ripoff. It's the payday lender of the middle class. But, you know, she's. And I'm. Here she is 20 years later paying into it. I'm so sorry. Listen up. Trying to reach your money goals without a rock solid budget is like trying to climb mount Everest in ice skates. It isn't going to work. That's why we built the everydollar app to help you win with money. It's the simplest, most straightforward way to track your spending and give every dollar a job. That way you can stop letting your money push you around and start reaching those money goals. Download every dollar for free on the app store or Google Play. Rachel Cruz Ramsey personality is my co host. Open phones at 888-825-5225 if you invest $100 a month from age 25 to age 65 in a decent growth stock mutual fund, it will be $1,176,000. So you should be taught this in the 6th grade so that you start investing in your twenties because it doesn't take a lot to become wealthy. Our last caller put hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years into a ripoff life insurance policy.My point is, if she had put that money in a fruit jar and just stacked it in the cellar, she would have a whole lot more than she has in that policy. Like tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, she's putting in what, let's.Say hundreds a month?Let's say 200 a month. Okay. That's $2,400 a year in. And so in ten years, that's $25,000. In 20 years, that's $50,000 would be stacked in her seller if they have 1500 as her cash value. What that tells you is they screwed her. That's what that tells you. Okay? She not only didn't get a rate of return, she got a negative rate of return they stole from her savings to pay for high priced life insurance. That's exactly what that product does. By the way. If, however, she had not put it in the seller and it wasn't $50,000 and she had instead put it in her four hundred one k. Or, which she lost in her divorce, but, or negotiated away in the divorce or whatever happened there, or she put it in just mutual funds, hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years. It would have been several million dollars. And so that's how bad these cash value life insurance products are. It's not just a little bit wrong. It's millions of dollars wrong over 20 years. Millions with an s. Lots of millions. That's just bizarre to think about. And if you wonder how, as a buddy of mine used to say all to do before you figure out if you really want to do this or not. And I'll go back to my first point, Larry. You better love mowers and people that buy mowers, because it's going to take a whole lot of your life if you buy this business. It's what you got to do, man. You got to lay into it. You know that from your experience before you got to lay into it. This is the Ramsey show.Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz. When it comes to teaching kids about money, moms tell me all the time just how overwhelming it can feel to get started. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about financial peace, kids. This toolkit was designed to make learning to save, earn, spend, and give money fun for both you and your kids. The best part, it only takes ten minutes a day. Yep, just ten minutes. You've got this pick up financial piece, kids@ramsaysolutions.com. store. That's ramsaysolutions.com store.If you want to win, winning is an intentional act. As a matter of fact, it's a series of intentional acts that causes this thing we call success. No one accidentally wins the Super bowl. They practice, they work, they plan, they strategize. They lean in. They focus exclusively on their task. No one accidentally stays married 40 years. No one accidentally raises good kids. No one accidentally is successful at their career. And no one accidentally builds wealth. It's not random. It's a series of intentional acts. One of the intentional acts is planning and making every dollar behave. Every dollar needs an assignment. If you don't make your money behave, you will always be broke and wonder where it went. You have to make your money behave. You have to be a lion tamer with a whip and a chair. And that's what a budget is. You're making the money behave. Every dollar gets an assignment. That's why we named the world's best budgeting app that we built that tens of millions of people use every day. We named it every dollar because every dollar needs an assignment. When every dollar is aimed at winning, you will win.It's that simple. When you want to work the baby steps, we'll show you how. When you want to work together in unity with your spouse, we can help you do that. Every dollar. The budgeting app will do every bit of that. It'll keep the pulse on your spending, make progress on your money goals. That's why it's the world's best. You can download everydollar for free in the app store or on Google Play or@everydollar.com dot. Winning is an intentional act. Heather is with us in Nashville. Hi, Heather. Welcome to the Ramsey show.Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call.Sure. What's up?My husband and I are on baby steps four, five, and six, and we want to be intentional about how we plan our finances for our family. With a recent change, two years ago, my husband's mother passed away from Alsace, and we learned that it was familial Als. Normally, no one knows why anyone has it. 90% of chances are or cases are unknown, but 10% are actually familial with a genetic marker. So we learned that she died of familial als. And there is, at this point, a 50 50 chance that my husband will have it.Did her parents have it?There's no way to know. Her father had it. And her, she has a sister that also died from it, so.Yeah.Oh, Heather, I'm so sorry.Thank you.Is there testing to see if they have, if he has the gene?Are you able to find that out marker, you say?Well, there is a test available. I mean, and you get half of your genes from one parent and half from another. So that's where we know there's a 50 50 chance. And there is a test to identify one of the 20 most common.Oh, so there's not a single singular marker?Correct. It's not a singular marker, but she wasn't able to be tested before she got it. Happen so quickly.If they don't know what the markers are. I'm just curious. I'm not, I'm not questioning, I'm. It's not passive aggressive. I'm just truly curious. If they don't know what the markers are, how do they know it's familial?Well, they actually identified as familial because of the family history, just the history pattern.But there's not any actual pattern. It's just a highly statistically unlikely pattern. Yeah. Okay.Precisely. My husband's.How old is your husband?He's 40.Wow. Okay. I'm sure you guys are checking those markers just to.Yeah. Will y'all run that test to see.Peace of mind or whatever?It's interesting you ask that. My husband has decided that he doesn't want to do it it because he just wants to live every day to its fullest and not plan for a death. But we want to be financially stable and make the right decisions for our family. So. Just looking for some advice.Wow. So I'm sorry for the reason for your question, but it's a great question. The. The answer is do the exact same things we teach everyone, but it's going to be with much more seriousness and attention to detail. For instance, you know, if you've been listening, Heather, that we tell everyone to have a will and everyone to have a detailed explanation of the will to everyone involved in the will. Okay.Okay.And so if his brother thinks he's going to get something and he's not, you need to tell him now.Okay.That kind of stuff is what I'm talking about. My guess is, in the situation, you're saying he's going to leave everything to his children and his wife, or to his wife to take care of his children, right?Yes. And we have very young children, a six year old and a six month old. And we didn't make the decision lightly to have a second child when we knew that there was that potential.Did he have life insurance in place?Yes, and we both have like 750k in life insurance, term life, with about 18 years left.Okay. That's good news. Okay, good, good. Well, you're not dropping that for sure. And we're gonna have a detailed will. And, you know, he needs to. What is the name of that book? Oh, there's a book. A thousand years ago, I endorsed this book. Letters. Letters from dad. I think it's called Google. Oh, you don't have your computer open.I got my phone, though.You got your phone? Whip it trusty phone out. See if letters from dad's not a thing. And I actually did this for about three years, and then I dropped it because I was lazy. But the guy.Oh, yeah, Greg Vaughn. Greg Vaughn, yeah, that's it.Green cover. Yeah, that's it. Okay. But it was 25 years ago, you were a little kid, and so it's writing letters to your kids. He sold like, a wooden box, and you could. Each kid had a box and write letters to your spouse, and so these would be treasured items later in your life was the idea. It's a legacy piece. Makes you cry when you read the whole book. Okay. And it made me. Made me go do it for a while. I did it for two or three years. There's a wooden box somewhere in Rachel's life. I have no idea where it is, but it's got four letters in it or something. But when she was five, but I made a run at it.It.So. But that kind of stuff, you know, and videos or occasionally just throw them in a. In a Dropbox or in a file somewhere, you keep them. I would just be cognizant about legacy things with the kiddos. Does that make sense?Sure.Probably more serious than the average bear. And then. But make sure your will, your life insurance, youre details of the estate plan are in place so that if you ever get a diagnosis, you don't even have to think about that. It's already done.Okay.We're not rushing around and trying to do it in a period of months or whatever before we have to. Before we loses the title insurance. Okay. And I've actually had a few claims and I'm really glad I had it because sometimes people screw the title up and do it improperly and then you've got a mess on your hands. That's tens of thousands of dollars. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's a mess. So title insurance is one thing. Again, if you're getting it with your mortgage company, it's required because they want to have policy covering them. You can get a simultaneous issue for a few hundred bucks. That covers you as well. So that's one thing. The second thing is you're going to have prepaids, they're called, and you're aware in most house payments today, you have a house payment that is principal and interest to the bank. And they also collect approximately a 12th of taxes annually and a 12th of insurance annually so that they can build up the escrow account with those two things in it to pay the taxes out of that and pay the, the homeowners insurance out of that to ensure that the taxes are paid and the insurance is paid.That's why they do that. And to set that up will usually be three or four months of each of those. So whatever your tax, property tax is, Bill, is four months of that. And whatever your homeowners insurance is, four months of that to set up your prepaids, they're called. It's prepaying and setting up that escrow account to be able to do principal, interest, taxes and insurance, PI ti, as you go along. Typically, there'll be a survey fee. Usually that's not super expensive. It's, if it's in a neighborhood, $75 to $200. Typically, there's an appraisal, usually $500 to $1,000 somewhere in there, depending on your area. And so you're gonna have these miscellaneous things that fall under the heading of closing costs, and they're depending on your area and what your tax rates are and all those kinds of things, you're probably looking at about 3%.Okay, awesome.But again, what I would do, since you're such a planner and you're doing this well in advance, get in touch with one of the Ramsey trusted real estate agents in the area and have them give you an example of a house in the neighborhood you might be looking at. Okay, here's what a closing document might look like, a closing statement. And you can say, okay, there's those things Dave was talking about, line item down through there. And then you're going to be able to say, okay, on that house, a $300,000 house. It was $3,000. Oh, okay, so it's 1%. Oh, so now $6,000. Okay, it's 2%. Right. That kind of stuff. That's what you'll be able to figure out. And it'd be fun for you, as a first time home buyer to see all the items that make up this vague category of closing costs, because they all actually do make sense. They're not rip offs. They're all things that you do need. You do need a survey. You do need an appraisal. You do need title insurance. You do need to set up your escrow account. All those things are fine. There's nothing wrong with them.But when you add them all up, you kind of get a sticker shock moment. You go, they're ripping me off with these closing costs. And, no, you're not really. You just got to know what they are, and so dig in there and figure out what they are. And that, that'll help you get a good, solid estimate, because it does change from area to area, and a lot of it is based on the, in the cost of insurance and the cost of taxes in your area. That'll throw this number a bit. Are you going to pay any points upfront? Which I wouldn't recommend, but are you paying an origination fee, which typically you are going to pay, which is a point or a half a point or something like that to get into the loan. All of that's going to be figured in there. And again, a good real estate agent can help you map all that out. And also, Rachel, we've got a great website on our stuff@ramsaysolutions.com. real estate that goes into a whole bunch of that stuff. It's an information hub.Yes. And there's just so many details. I mean, as you were even just talking, I was like, oh, my gosh, so much. And that we have so many, so many blogs, articles, points of contact for people in your area to go and to get yap to get this all, because sometimes I feel like you, it takes a little bit to actually learn it. So go to Ramsay solutions.com real estate and go and read research. And again, you can find Ramsey trusted pros there on that website, too, if you want to call just like you mentioned, to reach out to somebody.Yeah. And just, it's okay to nerd out on it. One of the things when you're doing something the first time is it's always scary because of the unknown.Yep.And so the more you know, the less fear there is. And so just dig in, get, get sample closing statements on a property the size you're talking about, look at it, and then you can back into it and tell every, every bit of that. Allison is with us in New Jersey. Hi, Allison. How are you?Hi, Dave. It's such an honor to speak with you. And Rachel, I follow you on instagram, and I just have to say I love your post about all your Walmart finds and all your books and everything. So I'm a fan of.Thanks, Allison. Appreciate that.How can we help?So I'm in a really difficult situation right now, and I don't know what to do. So I'm getting a little emotional. So I'm in my early forties. I've been in a long term relationship, and my boyfriend is not sure if he wants a baby. I want a baby. And I'm running out of time. And my question is, I don't know if I should take out loans to be able to even just start the process and afford, like, egg retrievals or if I should get a second job. I just feel like, honestly, kind of like, trapped. And I'm not sure what to do.Wow.I'm so sorry.That's a harsh, harsh situation.Well, how much?I mean, Allison, there's two things. Go ahead.Well, women that are. Yes, that are at your point. And they freeze their eggs. They kind of go through a process to say, can I freeze time for a little bit while it kind of buys you time. How much is all of that? Have you looked into all that cost wise?I have. I've met with the fertility clinic and it will be about. Well, they think that I'll need multiple rounds just because of my age. I did have an initial screening and it looked like I had some empty follicles. They did a retrieval, actually, and it wasn't successful, but all my numbers went up. And so it looks. Anyway, things are looking better, like, physically, but it's really expensive. So it would be like, probably like for three or four rounds, which the doctor thinks only that it will be about like $70,000.Just for egg retrieval.Well, for.I mean, a single. A single round of IVF is around 7500.Well, I guess that means for everything if I end up, you know. You know.Okay, let's. Let's break this. I'm just. This is an emotional and a very important topic because nothing's more important to me than babies. I love babies. And so I want you to do this, but I want you to do it in a wise way, not in a way that. Because 70,000 is not a second opinion.And I would get.You need to get six more opinions. Yeah, you need to go shopping on this, kiddo, because I think you can do a simple egg retrieval. I'm not a doc.I'm not throwing out a number. I have no clue what that is.But, I mean, we've done. We've talked about IVF on here many, many times. Times. And 7512, five in there, not 70 grand. And that's the full freaking procedure. So you need to get the. That's. That number's not right. I want you to check, and then you got to decide about your relationship issues and how you're going to go forward with all that, too. That's a whole nother bucket. 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, folks. Dave here. You want to hear even more life changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place. Like the Ramsey show, smart Money, Happy Hour, and the doctor John Deloney show. You'll get real talk about life, relationships, money, and your career. Plus, the app lets you browse by topic like debt, business, or selling your home. Get the content you want whenever and wherever you want to listen. Download the Ramsey Network app today.

this here. I'm a little worried about, you know, what we can do with it in a smart way to sustain things, but also how to do something.

Rachel's husband, Winston, handles all of our real estate, and he does some real estate for he and Rachel as well. So we're real estate people. We like real estate, but not everybody does. And I buy mutual funds. That's the only two things I do.

Okay.

And you do whatever you want to do. But those, those are two things that are long term conservative, not fancy. Yeah.

And even Justin going and getting, you know, paid for a couple of rentals and, you know, having that, that's kind of a medium nice neighborhood.

Nice neighborhood.

I mean, if you know what you're doing in real estate, I don't know if you are flipping is great, but you have stories. Aaron is in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, Aaron. How are you?Better than I deserve. My question today is I need a vehicle in the next month, and I'm wondering if I should wait and tough it out until I have enough money, which is five to seven grand, I wanted to spend on a good, reliable vehicle, or if I should go ahead and finance.How much do you have today?I have $800, and you have.No. No car at all.So this vehicle is for my significant other.You're gonna buy a car for somebody you're not married to?I mean, it's probably gonna be in my name, and then she'll drive it.You're gonna buy a car for somebody you're not married to, possibly going into.Debt for that, too.Yeah. You don't know how to screw up a relationship, go into debt, and buy a girl a car that'll make you hate the girl. What?No, it won't necessarily. But, Aaron. No, it's not smart.By the time this is over, why can't she.Why can't she go buy a car?Oh, there's an idea.Well, I mean, because. I mean, I'm the one taking her and transporting her to her. To her job.Yeah.And.Well, why can't she buy a cardinal?Because she just doesn't make enough to be able to have it by the time we need it.We. Why do we need a car? She needs a car.You have one by the time you need. We need it. What do you mean? What does that mean? Is there something happening in the future?Yeah. I mean, she has to be able to get to school, and then it's her job herself.Okay, so how. What was she gonna do before you? I say, dad, you know, here's what I did. And I've already got 200. I'm only 26. Here's what I did, and I did this and here's what I did. I sacrifice now, because I knew if I could get out of debt, I would have stability and sustainability and have the ability to build wealth. All of these abilities are on there. So get rid of the debt, dad.That's what I did. And then I was able. And gosh, if you were to do that, I could help you. I would coach you. I'd be. I'd be your biggest cheerleader. I'm not going to interfere in your business if you don't want me to. But man, I'm so excited about what this has done for my wife and I, this for our lives and how we've changed because we're doing this stuff in any of this that you would allow me to share with you, I would be so honored. And that's your it's a type of cash value policy that you pay extra for beyond what you would pay for terminal. And the extra goes into an investment and with variable, it generally is mutual funds that you select the mutual funds or they select them for you with a rubber stamp situation and you don't even realize you did it. But basically it's going into that then they take all of their fees out and so you don't get anywhere near the return that you would have gotten. Nationally, the typical variable is about 4.7% rate of return on an investment that, not counting fees, should be yielding north of ten. So it's an absolutely bad product. But I cannot. It's hard to fathom that you paid 20 years and only got $1,500 out of it. That's hard to believe.That's what it shows me. And it's one of those things where I never really have you claim. No, that's, that's on my list. But I just wanted to really start to understand more about the policy so that I had some information.It's possible that it is a dumbed down product that was sold as an HR benefit through a benefits company. And by dumbed down, I mean that they didn't charge you enough over what the actual life insurance was for there to be any going into savings? Hardly.Okay.And so it's, I don't know what you've been paying, but the policy, seven or 50,000. So it's less than a million dollar policy. How old are you today?I'll be 65 in September.So you bought it when you were 45 and was it guaranteed issue? Meaning did they make you to go through a medical?No, it was one of the things. One of the benefits that I signed up for when I went with that employer.Right. But they did not have any medical. And check, like if you bought a million dollar policy, they're going to check medical? Usually, yeah. No, sir, not any guaranteed issue is what that's called, and that is a standard in the benefits world. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's a more expensive type of insurance because they're taking more risk because they're not checking people's medicals. That make sense. And so you're probably paying a lot more of what you should, what you were paying a lot more of it was going towards insurance versus if you had just bought a, a regular variable universal from them out in the open market and done a medical. So that's part of, part of where you got ripped off, probably. And my other guess is that if I knew the premium amount, it probably wasn't enough to have a lot spilling over into cash value. So it's very possible that what you've learned is true, I'm sad to say. Now, the good news is you can stop doing it. You have a hole in your pocket. You don't keep putting money in it. And then we need to ascertain, even if you need life insurance at 66 years old or 65 years old.Right.So do you have assets?I do. I own all of. I don't have any debt except for my. The mortgage on my house.Mm hmm. And.And then I have a fixed retire. I have two fixed retirements, one from my military service, one from my current employer.Is there any. Any children that came on late in the game that are still dependent upon you?No, sir.Okay. So financially speaking, not emotionally or relationally, but financially speaking, no one's counting on you. So if you didn't leave life insurance, from a dependent standpoint, the family's not going to be damaged?No. I would like to have life insurance that would cover any mortgage amount I would have. So my children wouldn't assume that.They don't assume it. The house will cover it.Okay.Yeah. You don't need to leave your house mortgage free by paying this policy and buying another policy at your age or. My age is not usually a good mathematical plan.Right.So how much money do you have in your nest egg?I have about nine months worth of expenses.You have a retirement nest egg of any kind?Well, the had during my marriage, and I did not leave my marriage with that.Okay, so he got that. And so you don't have a, quote, pile of money in a retirement account somewhere?No, I don't.Okay. You're living off the pensions, and that leaves you just fine, correct?Yes.Yeah. Okay.Are you still working, Susan?I am.Okay.Yeah.What do you make?And I'd like to keep working. I love what I do, so I don't. I'm not in a rush to retire.Good. What do you make?About $100,000 a year is my salary.Good. Good for you. Okay. And what's the balance on the mortgage?218.And what is the house worth?325. 325 to 350, I guess.Okay. So if you were to pass away tomorrow without life insurance, the kids would sell the house, there'd be 100,000 on the table, they would pay for a funeral, and the smoke would clear, and they would all get a little bit correct.Correct? Yes, sir.Okay. I'm not buying this life insurance policy. Another day.Then I. And I agree with you. That was my first reaction. But then I'm thinking, I mean, and the premiums have gone up every year. Yeah, they do age, but these, this is hundreds of dollars a month for years that I have been paying.That doesn't make. It doesn't mean you want to keep doing it.No, but I just made the bad decision with that investment.Yeah. Yeah, I think you probably did. But as they say, water under the bridge.That I would call them, too, Susan.I want to call them and make.Off a zero or something. I don't know.Know.Maybe there is more in there. It's a typo.It's possible. But I think with it being a guaranteed issue, and I think with it being a benefit, they lowered the price on it so low that they weren't. They didn't put enough in there to.Cover the insurance was so expensive. Just for the insurance side. I know, because she didn't do medical.That's because variable life insurance is a complete ripoff. It's the payday lender of the middle class. But, you know, she's. And I'm. Here she is 20 years later paying into it. I'm so sorry. Listen up. Trying to reach your money goals without a rock solid budget is like trying to climb mount Everest in ice skates. It isn't going to work. That's why we built the everydollar app to help you win with money. It's the simplest, most straightforward way to track your spending and give every dollar a job. That way you can stop letting your money push you around and start reaching those money goals. Download every dollar for free on the app store or Google Play. Rachel Cruz Ramsey personality is my co host. Open phones at 888-825-5225 if you invest $100 a month from age 25 to age 65 in a decent growth stock mutual fund, it will be $1,176,000. So you should be taught this in the 6th grade so that you start investing in your twenties because it doesn't take a lot to become wealthy. Our last caller put hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years into a ripoff life insurance policy.My point is, if she had put that money in a fruit jar and just stacked it in the cellar, she would have a whole lot more than she has in that policy. Like tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, she's putting in what, let's.Say hundreds a month?Let's say 200 a month. Okay. That's $2,400 a year in. And so in ten years, that's $25,000. In 20 years, that's $50,000 would be stacked in her seller if they have 1500 as her cash value. What that tells you is they screwed her. That's what that tells you. Okay? She not only didn't get a rate of return, she got a negative rate of return they stole from her savings to pay for high priced life insurance. That's exactly what that product does. By the way. If, however, she had not put it in the seller and it wasn't $50,000 and she had instead put it in her four hundred one k. Or, which she lost in her divorce, but, or negotiated away in the divorce or whatever happened there, or she put it in just mutual funds, hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years. It would have been several million dollars. And so that's how bad these cash value life insurance products are. It's not just a little bit wrong. It's millions of dollars wrong over 20 years. Millions with an s. Lots of millions. That's just bizarre to think about. And if you wonder how, as a buddy of mine used to say all to do before you figure out if you really want to do this or not. And I'll go back to my first point, Larry. You better love mowers and people that buy mowers, because it's going to take a whole lot of your life if you buy this business. It's what you got to do, man. You got to lay into it. You know that from your experience before you got to lay into it. This is the Ramsey show.Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz. When it comes to teaching kids about money, moms tell me all the time just how overwhelming it can feel to get started. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about financial peace, kids. This toolkit was designed to make learning to save, earn, spend, and give money fun for both you and your kids. The best part, it only takes ten minutes a day. Yep, just ten minutes. You've got this pick up financial piece, kids@ramsaysolutions.com. store. That's ramsaysolutions.com store.If you want to win, winning is an intentional act. As a matter of fact, it's a series of intentional acts that causes this thing we call success. No one accidentally wins the Super bowl. They practice, they work, they plan, they strategize. They lean in. They focus exclusively on their task. No one accidentally stays married 40 years. No one accidentally raises good kids. No one accidentally is successful at their career. And no one accidentally builds wealth. It's not random. It's a series of intentional acts. One of the intentional acts is planning and making every dollar behave. Every dollar needs an assignment. If you don't make your money behave, you will always be broke and wonder where it went. You have to make your money behave. You have to be a lion tamer with a whip and a chair. And that's what a budget is. You're making the money behave. Every dollar gets an assignment. That's why we named the world's best budgeting app that we built that tens of millions of people use every day. We named it every dollar because every dollar needs an assignment. When every dollar is aimed at winning, you will win.It's that simple. When you want to work the baby steps, we'll show you how. When you want to work together in unity with your spouse, we can help you do that. Every dollar. The budgeting app will do every bit of that. It'll keep the pulse on your spending, make progress on your money goals. That's why it's the world's best. You can download everydollar for free in the app store or on Google Play or@everydollar.com dot. Winning is an intentional act. Heather is with us in Nashville. Hi, Heather. Welcome to the Ramsey show.Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call.Sure. What's up?My husband and I are on baby steps four, five, and six, and we want to be intentional about how we plan our finances for our family. With a recent change, two years ago, my husband's mother passed away from Alsace, and we learned that it was familial Als. Normally, no one knows why anyone has it. 90% of chances are or cases are unknown, but 10% are actually familial with a genetic marker. So we learned that she died of familial als. And there is, at this point, a 50 50 chance that my husband will have it.Did her parents have it?There's no way to know. Her father had it. And her, she has a sister that also died from it, so.Yeah.Oh, Heather, I'm so sorry.Thank you.Is there testing to see if they have, if he has the gene?Are you able to find that out marker, you say?Well, there is a test available. I mean, and you get half of your genes from one parent and half from another. So that's where we know there's a 50 50 chance. And there is a test to identify one of the 20 most common.Oh, so there's not a single singular marker?Correct. It's not a singular marker, but she wasn't able to be tested before she got it. Happen so quickly.If they don't know what the markers are. I'm just curious. I'm not, I'm not questioning, I'm. It's not passive aggressive. I'm just truly curious. If they don't know what the markers are, how do they know it's familial?Well, they actually identified as familial because of the family history, just the history pattern.But there's not any actual pattern. It's just a highly statistically unlikely pattern. Yeah. Okay.Precisely. My husband's.How old is your husband?He's 40.Wow. Okay. I'm sure you guys are checking those markers just to.Yeah. Will y'all run that test to see.Peace of mind or whatever?It's interesting you ask that. My husband has decided that he doesn't want to do it it because he just wants to live every day to its fullest and not plan for a death. But we want to be financially stable and make the right decisions for our family. So. Just looking for some advice.Wow. So I'm sorry for the reason for your question, but it's a great question. The. The answer is do the exact same things we teach everyone, but it's going to be with much more seriousness and attention to detail. For instance, you know, if you've been listening, Heather, that we tell everyone to have a will and everyone to have a detailed explanation of the will to everyone involved in the will. Okay.Okay.And so if his brother thinks he's going to get something and he's not, you need to tell him now.Okay.That kind of stuff is what I'm talking about. My guess is, in the situation, you're saying he's going to leave everything to his children and his wife, or to his wife to take care of his children, right?Yes. And we have very young children, a six year old and a six month old. And we didn't make the decision lightly to have a second child when we knew that there was that potential.Did he have life insurance in place?Yes, and we both have like 750k in life insurance, term life, with about 18 years left.Okay. That's good news. Okay, good, good. Well, you're not dropping that for sure. And we're gonna have a detailed will. And, you know, he needs to. What is the name of that book? Oh, there's a book. A thousand years ago, I endorsed this book. Letters. Letters from dad. I think it's called Google. Oh, you don't have your computer open.I got my phone, though.You got your phone? Whip it trusty phone out. See if letters from dad's not a thing. And I actually did this for about three years, and then I dropped it because I was lazy. But the guy.Oh, yeah, Greg Vaughn. Greg Vaughn, yeah, that's it.Green cover. Yeah, that's it. Okay. But it was 25 years ago, you were a little kid, and so it's writing letters to your kids. He sold like, a wooden box, and you could. Each kid had a box and write letters to your spouse, and so these would be treasured items later in your life was the idea. It's a legacy piece. Makes you cry when you read the whole book. Okay. And it made me. Made me go do it for a while. I did it for two or three years. There's a wooden box somewhere in Rachel's life. I have no idea where it is, but it's got four letters in it or something. But when she was five, but I made a run at it.It.So. But that kind of stuff, you know, and videos or occasionally just throw them in a. In a Dropbox or in a file somewhere, you keep them. I would just be cognizant about legacy things with the kiddos. Does that make sense?Sure.Probably more serious than the average bear. And then. But make sure your will, your life insurance, youre details of the estate plan are in place so that if you ever get a diagnosis, you don't even have to think about that. It's already done.Okay.We're not rushing around and trying to do it in a period of months or whatever before we have to. Before we loses the title insurance. Okay. And I've actually had a few claims and I'm really glad I had it because sometimes people screw the title up and do it improperly and then you've got a mess on your hands. That's tens of thousands of dollars. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's a mess. So title insurance is one thing. Again, if you're getting it with your mortgage company, it's required because they want to have policy covering them. You can get a simultaneous issue for a few hundred bucks. That covers you as well. So that's one thing. The second thing is you're going to have prepaids, they're called, and you're aware in most house payments today, you have a house payment that is principal and interest to the bank. And they also collect approximately a 12th of taxes annually and a 12th of insurance annually so that they can build up the escrow account with those two things in it to pay the taxes out of that and pay the, the homeowners insurance out of that to ensure that the taxes are paid and the insurance is paid.That's why they do that. And to set that up will usually be three or four months of each of those. So whatever your tax, property tax is, Bill, is four months of that. And whatever your homeowners insurance is, four months of that to set up your prepaids, they're called. It's prepaying and setting up that escrow account to be able to do principal, interest, taxes and insurance, PI ti, as you go along. Typically, there'll be a survey fee. Usually that's not super expensive. It's, if it's in a neighborhood, $75 to $200. Typically, there's an appraisal, usually $500 to $1,000 somewhere in there, depending on your area. And so you're gonna have these miscellaneous things that fall under the heading of closing costs, and they're depending on your area and what your tax rates are and all those kinds of things, you're probably looking at about 3%.Okay, awesome.But again, what I would do, since you're such a planner and you're doing this well in advance, get in touch with one of the Ramsey trusted real estate agents in the area and have them give you an example of a house in the neighborhood you might be looking at. Okay, here's what a closing document might look like, a closing statement. And you can say, okay, there's those things Dave was talking about, line item down through there. And then you're going to be able to say, okay, on that house, a $300,000 house. It was $3,000. Oh, okay, so it's 1%. Oh, so now $6,000. Okay, it's 2%. Right. That kind of stuff. That's what you'll be able to figure out. And it'd be fun for you, as a first time home buyer to see all the items that make up this vague category of closing costs, because they all actually do make sense. They're not rip offs. They're all things that you do need. You do need a survey. You do need an appraisal. You do need title insurance. You do need to set up your escrow account. All those things are fine. There's nothing wrong with them.But when you add them all up, you kind of get a sticker shock moment. You go, they're ripping me off with these closing costs. And, no, you're not really. You just got to know what they are, and so dig in there and figure out what they are. And that, that'll help you get a good, solid estimate, because it does change from area to area, and a lot of it is based on the, in the cost of insurance and the cost of taxes in your area. That'll throw this number a bit. Are you going to pay any points upfront? Which I wouldn't recommend, but are you paying an origination fee, which typically you are going to pay, which is a point or a half a point or something like that to get into the loan. All of that's going to be figured in there. And again, a good real estate agent can help you map all that out. And also, Rachel, we've got a great website on our stuff@ramsaysolutions.com. real estate that goes into a whole bunch of that stuff. It's an information hub.Yes. And there's just so many details. I mean, as you were even just talking, I was like, oh, my gosh, so much. And that we have so many, so many blogs, articles, points of contact for people in your area to go and to get yap to get this all, because sometimes I feel like you, it takes a little bit to actually learn it. So go to Ramsay solutions.com real estate and go and read research. And again, you can find Ramsey trusted pros there on that website, too, if you want to call just like you mentioned, to reach out to somebody.Yeah. And just, it's okay to nerd out on it. One of the things when you're doing something the first time is it's always scary because of the unknown.Yep.And so the more you know, the less fear there is. And so just dig in, get, get sample closing statements on a property the size you're talking about, look at it, and then you can back into it and tell every, every bit of that. Allison is with us in New Jersey. Hi, Allison. How are you?Hi, Dave. It's such an honor to speak with you. And Rachel, I follow you on instagram, and I just have to say I love your post about all your Walmart finds and all your books and everything. So I'm a fan of.Thanks, Allison. Appreciate that.How can we help?So I'm in a really difficult situation right now, and I don't know what to do. So I'm getting a little emotional. So I'm in my early forties. I've been in a long term relationship, and my boyfriend is not sure if he wants a baby. I want a baby. And I'm running out of time. And my question is, I don't know if I should take out loans to be able to even just start the process and afford, like, egg retrievals or if I should get a second job. I just feel like, honestly, kind of like, trapped. And I'm not sure what to do.Wow.I'm so sorry.That's a harsh, harsh situation.Well, how much?I mean, Allison, there's two things. Go ahead.Well, women that are. Yes, that are at your point. And they freeze their eggs. They kind of go through a process to say, can I freeze time for a little bit while it kind of buys you time. How much is all of that? Have you looked into all that cost wise?I have. I've met with the fertility clinic and it will be about. Well, they think that I'll need multiple rounds just because of my age. I did have an initial screening and it looked like I had some empty follicles. They did a retrieval, actually, and it wasn't successful, but all my numbers went up. And so it looks. Anyway, things are looking better, like, physically, but it's really expensive. So it would be like, probably like for three or four rounds, which the doctor thinks only that it will be about like $70,000.Just for egg retrieval.Well, for.I mean, a single. A single round of IVF is around 7500.Well, I guess that means for everything if I end up, you know. You know.Okay, let's. Let's break this. I'm just. This is an emotional and a very important topic because nothing's more important to me than babies. I love babies. And so I want you to do this, but I want you to do it in a wise way, not in a way that. Because 70,000 is not a second opinion.And I would get.You need to get six more opinions. Yeah, you need to go shopping on this, kiddo, because I think you can do a simple egg retrieval. I'm not a doc.I'm not throwing out a number. I have no clue what that is.But, I mean, we've done. We've talked about IVF on here many, many times. Times. And 7512, five in there, not 70 grand. And that's the full freaking procedure. So you need to get the. That's. That number's not right. I want you to check, and then you got to decide about your relationship issues and how you're going to go forward with all that, too. That's a whole nother bucket. 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, folks. Dave here. You want to hear even more life changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place. Like the Ramsey show, smart Money, Happy Hour, and the doctor John Deloney show. You'll get real talk about life, relationships, money, and your career. Plus, the app lets you browse by topic like debt, business, or selling your home. Get the content you want whenever and wherever you want to listen. Download the Ramsey Network app today.

stories. Aaron is in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, Aaron. How are you?

Better than I deserve. My question today is I need a vehicle in the next month, and I'm wondering if I should wait and tough it out until I have enough money, which is five to seven grand, I wanted to spend on a good, reliable vehicle, or if I should go ahead and finance.

How much do you have today?

I have $800, and you have.

No. No car at all.

So this vehicle is for my significant other.

You're gonna buy a car for somebody you're not married to?

I mean, it's probably gonna be in my name, and then she'll drive it.

You're gonna buy a car for somebody you're not married to, possibly going into.

Debt for that, too.

Yeah. You don't know how to screw up a relationship, go into debt, and buy a girl a car that'll make you hate the girl. What?

No, it won't necessarily. But, Aaron. No, it's not smart.

By the time this is over, why can't she.

Why can't she go buy a car?

Oh, there's an idea.

Well, I mean, because. I mean, I'm the one taking her and transporting her to her. To her job.

Yeah.

And.

Well, why can't she buy a cardinal?

Because she just doesn't make enough to be able to have it by the time we need it.

We. Why do we need a car? She needs a car.

You have one by the time you need. We need it. What do you mean? What does that mean? Is there something happening in the future?

Yeah. I mean, she has to be able to get to school, and then it's her job herself.

Okay, so how. What was she gonna do before you? I say, dad, you know, here's what I did. And I've already got 200. I'm only 26. Here's what I did, and I did this and here's what I did. I sacrifice now, because I knew if I could get out of debt, I would have stability and sustainability and have the ability to build wealth. All of these abilities are on there. So get rid of the debt, dad.That's what I did. And then I was able. And gosh, if you were to do that, I could help you. I would coach you. I'd be. I'd be your biggest cheerleader. I'm not going to interfere in your business if you don't want me to. But man, I'm so excited about what this has done for my wife and I, this for our lives and how we've changed because we're doing this stuff in any of this that you would allow me to share with you, I would be so honored. And that's your it's a type of cash value policy that you pay extra for beyond what you would pay for terminal. And the extra goes into an investment and with variable, it generally is mutual funds that you select the mutual funds or they select them for you with a rubber stamp situation and you don't even realize you did it. But basically it's going into that then they take all of their fees out and so you don't get anywhere near the return that you would have gotten. Nationally, the typical variable is about 4.7% rate of return on an investment that, not counting fees, should be yielding north of ten. So it's an absolutely bad product. But I cannot. It's hard to fathom that you paid 20 years and only got $1,500 out of it. That's hard to believe.That's what it shows me. And it's one of those things where I never really have you claim. No, that's, that's on my list. But I just wanted to really start to understand more about the policy so that I had some information.It's possible that it is a dumbed down product that was sold as an HR benefit through a benefits company. And by dumbed down, I mean that they didn't charge you enough over what the actual life insurance was for there to be any going into savings? Hardly.Okay.And so it's, I don't know what you've been paying, but the policy, seven or 50,000. So it's less than a million dollar policy. How old are you today?I'll be 65 in September.So you bought it when you were 45 and was it guaranteed issue? Meaning did they make you to go through a medical?No, it was one of the things. One of the benefits that I signed up for when I went with that employer.Right. But they did not have any medical. And check, like if you bought a million dollar policy, they're going to check medical? Usually, yeah. No, sir, not any guaranteed issue is what that's called, and that is a standard in the benefits world. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's a more expensive type of insurance because they're taking more risk because they're not checking people's medicals. That make sense. And so you're probably paying a lot more of what you should, what you were paying a lot more of it was going towards insurance versus if you had just bought a, a regular variable universal from them out in the open market and done a medical. So that's part of, part of where you got ripped off, probably. And my other guess is that if I knew the premium amount, it probably wasn't enough to have a lot spilling over into cash value. So it's very possible that what you've learned is true, I'm sad to say. Now, the good news is you can stop doing it. You have a hole in your pocket. You don't keep putting money in it. And then we need to ascertain, even if you need life insurance at 66 years old or 65 years old.Right.So do you have assets?I do. I own all of. I don't have any debt except for my. The mortgage on my house.Mm hmm. And.And then I have a fixed retire. I have two fixed retirements, one from my military service, one from my current employer.Is there any. Any children that came on late in the game that are still dependent upon you?No, sir.Okay. So financially speaking, not emotionally or relationally, but financially speaking, no one's counting on you. So if you didn't leave life insurance, from a dependent standpoint, the family's not going to be damaged?No. I would like to have life insurance that would cover any mortgage amount I would have. So my children wouldn't assume that.They don't assume it. The house will cover it.Okay.Yeah. You don't need to leave your house mortgage free by paying this policy and buying another policy at your age or. My age is not usually a good mathematical plan.Right.So how much money do you have in your nest egg?I have about nine months worth of expenses.You have a retirement nest egg of any kind?Well, the had during my marriage, and I did not leave my marriage with that.Okay, so he got that. And so you don't have a, quote, pile of money in a retirement account somewhere?No, I don't.Okay. You're living off the pensions, and that leaves you just fine, correct?Yes.Yeah. Okay.Are you still working, Susan?I am.Okay.Yeah.What do you make?And I'd like to keep working. I love what I do, so I don't. I'm not in a rush to retire.Good. What do you make?About $100,000 a year is my salary.Good. Good for you. Okay. And what's the balance on the mortgage?218.And what is the house worth?325. 325 to 350, I guess.Okay. So if you were to pass away tomorrow without life insurance, the kids would sell the house, there'd be 100,000 on the table, they would pay for a funeral, and the smoke would clear, and they would all get a little bit correct.Correct? Yes, sir.Okay. I'm not buying this life insurance policy. Another day.Then I. And I agree with you. That was my first reaction. But then I'm thinking, I mean, and the premiums have gone up every year. Yeah, they do age, but these, this is hundreds of dollars a month for years that I have been paying.That doesn't make. It doesn't mean you want to keep doing it.No, but I just made the bad decision with that investment.Yeah. Yeah, I think you probably did. But as they say, water under the bridge.That I would call them, too, Susan.I want to call them and make.Off a zero or something. I don't know.Know.Maybe there is more in there. It's a typo.It's possible. But I think with it being a guaranteed issue, and I think with it being a benefit, they lowered the price on it so low that they weren't. They didn't put enough in there to.Cover the insurance was so expensive. Just for the insurance side. I know, because she didn't do medical.That's because variable life insurance is a complete ripoff. It's the payday lender of the middle class. But, you know, she's. And I'm. Here she is 20 years later paying into it. I'm so sorry. Listen up. Trying to reach your money goals without a rock solid budget is like trying to climb mount Everest in ice skates. It isn't going to work. That's why we built the everydollar app to help you win with money. It's the simplest, most straightforward way to track your spending and give every dollar a job. That way you can stop letting your money push you around and start reaching those money goals. Download every dollar for free on the app store or Google Play. Rachel Cruz Ramsey personality is my co host. Open phones at 888-825-5225 if you invest $100 a month from age 25 to age 65 in a decent growth stock mutual fund, it will be $1,176,000. So you should be taught this in the 6th grade so that you start investing in your twenties because it doesn't take a lot to become wealthy. Our last caller put hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years into a ripoff life insurance policy.My point is, if she had put that money in a fruit jar and just stacked it in the cellar, she would have a whole lot more than she has in that policy. Like tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, she's putting in what, let's.Say hundreds a month?Let's say 200 a month. Okay. That's $2,400 a year in. And so in ten years, that's $25,000. In 20 years, that's $50,000 would be stacked in her seller if they have 1500 as her cash value. What that tells you is they screwed her. That's what that tells you. Okay? She not only didn't get a rate of return, she got a negative rate of return they stole from her savings to pay for high priced life insurance. That's exactly what that product does. By the way. If, however, she had not put it in the seller and it wasn't $50,000 and she had instead put it in her four hundred one k. Or, which she lost in her divorce, but, or negotiated away in the divorce or whatever happened there, or she put it in just mutual funds, hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years. It would have been several million dollars. And so that's how bad these cash value life insurance products are. It's not just a little bit wrong. It's millions of dollars wrong over 20 years. Millions with an s. Lots of millions. That's just bizarre to think about. And if you wonder how, as a buddy of mine used to say all to do before you figure out if you really want to do this or not. And I'll go back to my first point, Larry. You better love mowers and people that buy mowers, because it's going to take a whole lot of your life if you buy this business. It's what you got to do, man. You got to lay into it. You know that from your experience before you got to lay into it. This is the Ramsey show.Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz. When it comes to teaching kids about money, moms tell me all the time just how overwhelming it can feel to get started. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about financial peace, kids. This toolkit was designed to make learning to save, earn, spend, and give money fun for both you and your kids. The best part, it only takes ten minutes a day. Yep, just ten minutes. You've got this pick up financial piece, kids@ramsaysolutions.com. store. That's ramsaysolutions.com store.If you want to win, winning is an intentional act. As a matter of fact, it's a series of intentional acts that causes this thing we call success. No one accidentally wins the Super bowl. They practice, they work, they plan, they strategize. They lean in. They focus exclusively on their task. No one accidentally stays married 40 years. No one accidentally raises good kids. No one accidentally is successful at their career. And no one accidentally builds wealth. It's not random. It's a series of intentional acts. One of the intentional acts is planning and making every dollar behave. Every dollar needs an assignment. If you don't make your money behave, you will always be broke and wonder where it went. You have to make your money behave. You have to be a lion tamer with a whip and a chair. And that's what a budget is. You're making the money behave. Every dollar gets an assignment. That's why we named the world's best budgeting app that we built that tens of millions of people use every day. We named it every dollar because every dollar needs an assignment. When every dollar is aimed at winning, you will win.It's that simple. When you want to work the baby steps, we'll show you how. When you want to work together in unity with your spouse, we can help you do that. Every dollar. The budgeting app will do every bit of that. It'll keep the pulse on your spending, make progress on your money goals. That's why it's the world's best. You can download everydollar for free in the app store or on Google Play or@everydollar.com dot. Winning is an intentional act. Heather is with us in Nashville. Hi, Heather. Welcome to the Ramsey show.Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call.Sure. What's up?My husband and I are on baby steps four, five, and six, and we want to be intentional about how we plan our finances for our family. With a recent change, two years ago, my husband's mother passed away from Alsace, and we learned that it was familial Als. Normally, no one knows why anyone has it. 90% of chances are or cases are unknown, but 10% are actually familial with a genetic marker. So we learned that she died of familial als. And there is, at this point, a 50 50 chance that my husband will have it.Did her parents have it?There's no way to know. Her father had it. And her, she has a sister that also died from it, so.Yeah.Oh, Heather, I'm so sorry.Thank you.Is there testing to see if they have, if he has the gene?Are you able to find that out marker, you say?Well, there is a test available. I mean, and you get half of your genes from one parent and half from another. So that's where we know there's a 50 50 chance. And there is a test to identify one of the 20 most common.Oh, so there's not a single singular marker?Correct. It's not a singular marker, but she wasn't able to be tested before she got it. Happen so quickly.If they don't know what the markers are. I'm just curious. I'm not, I'm not questioning, I'm. It's not passive aggressive. I'm just truly curious. If they don't know what the markers are, how do they know it's familial?Well, they actually identified as familial because of the family history, just the history pattern.But there's not any actual pattern. It's just a highly statistically unlikely pattern. Yeah. Okay.Precisely. My husband's.How old is your husband?He's 40.Wow. Okay. I'm sure you guys are checking those markers just to.Yeah. Will y'all run that test to see.Peace of mind or whatever?It's interesting you ask that. My husband has decided that he doesn't want to do it it because he just wants to live every day to its fullest and not plan for a death. But we want to be financially stable and make the right decisions for our family. So. Just looking for some advice.Wow. So I'm sorry for the reason for your question, but it's a great question. The. The answer is do the exact same things we teach everyone, but it's going to be with much more seriousness and attention to detail. For instance, you know, if you've been listening, Heather, that we tell everyone to have a will and everyone to have a detailed explanation of the will to everyone involved in the will. Okay.Okay.And so if his brother thinks he's going to get something and he's not, you need to tell him now.Okay.That kind of stuff is what I'm talking about. My guess is, in the situation, you're saying he's going to leave everything to his children and his wife, or to his wife to take care of his children, right?Yes. And we have very young children, a six year old and a six month old. And we didn't make the decision lightly to have a second child when we knew that there was that potential.Did he have life insurance in place?Yes, and we both have like 750k in life insurance, term life, with about 18 years left.Okay. That's good news. Okay, good, good. Well, you're not dropping that for sure. And we're gonna have a detailed will. And, you know, he needs to. What is the name of that book? Oh, there's a book. A thousand years ago, I endorsed this book. Letters. Letters from dad. I think it's called Google. Oh, you don't have your computer open.I got my phone, though.You got your phone? Whip it trusty phone out. See if letters from dad's not a thing. And I actually did this for about three years, and then I dropped it because I was lazy. But the guy.Oh, yeah, Greg Vaughn. Greg Vaughn, yeah, that's it.Green cover. Yeah, that's it. Okay. But it was 25 years ago, you were a little kid, and so it's writing letters to your kids. He sold like, a wooden box, and you could. Each kid had a box and write letters to your spouse, and so these would be treasured items later in your life was the idea. It's a legacy piece. Makes you cry when you read the whole book. Okay. And it made me. Made me go do it for a while. I did it for two or three years. There's a wooden box somewhere in Rachel's life. I have no idea where it is, but it's got four letters in it or something. But when she was five, but I made a run at it.It.So. But that kind of stuff, you know, and videos or occasionally just throw them in a. In a Dropbox or in a file somewhere, you keep them. I would just be cognizant about legacy things with the kiddos. Does that make sense?Sure.Probably more serious than the average bear. And then. But make sure your will, your life insurance, youre details of the estate plan are in place so that if you ever get a diagnosis, you don't even have to think about that. It's already done.Okay.We're not rushing around and trying to do it in a period of months or whatever before we have to. Before we loses the title insurance. Okay. And I've actually had a few claims and I'm really glad I had it because sometimes people screw the title up and do it improperly and then you've got a mess on your hands. That's tens of thousands of dollars. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's a mess. So title insurance is one thing. Again, if you're getting it with your mortgage company, it's required because they want to have policy covering them. You can get a simultaneous issue for a few hundred bucks. That covers you as well. So that's one thing. The second thing is you're going to have prepaids, they're called, and you're aware in most house payments today, you have a house payment that is principal and interest to the bank. And they also collect approximately a 12th of taxes annually and a 12th of insurance annually so that they can build up the escrow account with those two things in it to pay the taxes out of that and pay the, the homeowners insurance out of that to ensure that the taxes are paid and the insurance is paid.That's why they do that. And to set that up will usually be three or four months of each of those. So whatever your tax, property tax is, Bill, is four months of that. And whatever your homeowners insurance is, four months of that to set up your prepaids, they're called. It's prepaying and setting up that escrow account to be able to do principal, interest, taxes and insurance, PI ti, as you go along. Typically, there'll be a survey fee. Usually that's not super expensive. It's, if it's in a neighborhood, $75 to $200. Typically, there's an appraisal, usually $500 to $1,000 somewhere in there, depending on your area. And so you're gonna have these miscellaneous things that fall under the heading of closing costs, and they're depending on your area and what your tax rates are and all those kinds of things, you're probably looking at about 3%.Okay, awesome.But again, what I would do, since you're such a planner and you're doing this well in advance, get in touch with one of the Ramsey trusted real estate agents in the area and have them give you an example of a house in the neighborhood you might be looking at. Okay, here's what a closing document might look like, a closing statement. And you can say, okay, there's those things Dave was talking about, line item down through there. And then you're going to be able to say, okay, on that house, a $300,000 house. It was $3,000. Oh, okay, so it's 1%. Oh, so now $6,000. Okay, it's 2%. Right. That kind of stuff. That's what you'll be able to figure out. And it'd be fun for you, as a first time home buyer to see all the items that make up this vague category of closing costs, because they all actually do make sense. They're not rip offs. They're all things that you do need. You do need a survey. You do need an appraisal. You do need title insurance. You do need to set up your escrow account. All those things are fine. There's nothing wrong with them.But when you add them all up, you kind of get a sticker shock moment. You go, they're ripping me off with these closing costs. And, no, you're not really. You just got to know what they are, and so dig in there and figure out what they are. And that, that'll help you get a good, solid estimate, because it does change from area to area, and a lot of it is based on the, in the cost of insurance and the cost of taxes in your area. That'll throw this number a bit. Are you going to pay any points upfront? Which I wouldn't recommend, but are you paying an origination fee, which typically you are going to pay, which is a point or a half a point or something like that to get into the loan. All of that's going to be figured in there. And again, a good real estate agent can help you map all that out. And also, Rachel, we've got a great website on our stuff@ramsaysolutions.com. real estate that goes into a whole bunch of that stuff. It's an information hub.Yes. And there's just so many details. I mean, as you were even just talking, I was like, oh, my gosh, so much. And that we have so many, so many blogs, articles, points of contact for people in your area to go and to get yap to get this all, because sometimes I feel like you, it takes a little bit to actually learn it. So go to Ramsay solutions.com real estate and go and read research. And again, you can find Ramsey trusted pros there on that website, too, if you want to call just like you mentioned, to reach out to somebody.Yeah. And just, it's okay to nerd out on it. One of the things when you're doing something the first time is it's always scary because of the unknown.Yep.And so the more you know, the less fear there is. And so just dig in, get, get sample closing statements on a property the size you're talking about, look at it, and then you can back into it and tell every, every bit of that. Allison is with us in New Jersey. Hi, Allison. How are you?Hi, Dave. It's such an honor to speak with you. And Rachel, I follow you on instagram, and I just have to say I love your post about all your Walmart finds and all your books and everything. So I'm a fan of.Thanks, Allison. Appreciate that.How can we help?So I'm in a really difficult situation right now, and I don't know what to do. So I'm getting a little emotional. So I'm in my early forties. I've been in a long term relationship, and my boyfriend is not sure if he wants a baby. I want a baby. And I'm running out of time. And my question is, I don't know if I should take out loans to be able to even just start the process and afford, like, egg retrievals or if I should get a second job. I just feel like, honestly, kind of like, trapped. And I'm not sure what to do.Wow.I'm so sorry.That's a harsh, harsh situation.Well, how much?I mean, Allison, there's two things. Go ahead.Well, women that are. Yes, that are at your point. And they freeze their eggs. They kind of go through a process to say, can I freeze time for a little bit while it kind of buys you time. How much is all of that? Have you looked into all that cost wise?I have. I've met with the fertility clinic and it will be about. Well, they think that I'll need multiple rounds just because of my age. I did have an initial screening and it looked like I had some empty follicles. They did a retrieval, actually, and it wasn't successful, but all my numbers went up. And so it looks. Anyway, things are looking better, like, physically, but it's really expensive. So it would be like, probably like for three or four rounds, which the doctor thinks only that it will be about like $70,000.Just for egg retrieval.Well, for.I mean, a single. A single round of IVF is around 7500.Well, I guess that means for everything if I end up, you know. You know.Okay, let's. Let's break this. I'm just. This is an emotional and a very important topic because nothing's more important to me than babies. I love babies. And so I want you to do this, but I want you to do it in a wise way, not in a way that. Because 70,000 is not a second opinion.And I would get.You need to get six more opinions. Yeah, you need to go shopping on this, kiddo, because I think you can do a simple egg retrieval. I'm not a doc.I'm not throwing out a number. I have no clue what that is.But, I mean, we've done. We've talked about IVF on here many, many times. Times. And 7512, five in there, not 70 grand. And that's the full freaking procedure. So you need to get the. That's. That number's not right. I want you to check, and then you got to decide about your relationship issues and how you're going to go forward with all that, too. That's a whole nother bucket. 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, folks. Dave here. You want to hear even more life changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place. Like the Ramsey show, smart Money, Happy Hour, and the doctor John Deloney show. You'll get real talk about life, relationships, money, and your career. Plus, the app lets you browse by topic like debt, business, or selling your home. Get the content you want whenever and wherever you want to listen. Download the Ramsey Network app today.

say, dad, you know, here's what I did. And I've already got 200. I'm only 26. Here's what I did, and I did this and here's what I did. I sacrifice now, because I knew if I could get out of debt, I would have stability and sustainability and have the ability to build wealth. All of these abilities are on there. So get rid of the debt, dad.

That's what I did. And then I was able. And gosh, if you were to do that, I could help you. I would coach you. I'd be. I'd be your biggest cheerleader. I'm not going to interfere in your business if you don't want me to. But man, I'm so excited about what this has done for my wife and I, this for our lives and how we've changed because we're doing this stuff in any of this that you would allow me to share with you, I would be so honored. And that's your it's a type of cash value policy that you pay extra for beyond what you would pay for terminal. And the extra goes into an investment and with variable, it generally is mutual funds that you select the mutual funds or they select them for you with a rubber stamp situation and you don't even realize you did it. But basically it's going into that then they take all of their fees out and so you don't get anywhere near the return that you would have gotten. Nationally, the typical variable is about 4.7% rate of return on an investment that, not counting fees, should be yielding north of ten. So it's an absolutely bad product. But I cannot. It's hard to fathom that you paid 20 years and only got $1,500 out of it. That's hard to believe.That's what it shows me. And it's one of those things where I never really have you claim. No, that's, that's on my list. But I just wanted to really start to understand more about the policy so that I had some information.It's possible that it is a dumbed down product that was sold as an HR benefit through a benefits company. And by dumbed down, I mean that they didn't charge you enough over what the actual life insurance was for there to be any going into savings? Hardly.Okay.And so it's, I don't know what you've been paying, but the policy, seven or 50,000. So it's less than a million dollar policy. How old are you today?I'll be 65 in September.So you bought it when you were 45 and was it guaranteed issue? Meaning did they make you to go through a medical?No, it was one of the things. One of the benefits that I signed up for when I went with that employer.Right. But they did not have any medical. And check, like if you bought a million dollar policy, they're going to check medical? Usually, yeah. No, sir, not any guaranteed issue is what that's called, and that is a standard in the benefits world. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's a more expensive type of insurance because they're taking more risk because they're not checking people's medicals. That make sense. And so you're probably paying a lot more of what you should, what you were paying a lot more of it was going towards insurance versus if you had just bought a, a regular variable universal from them out in the open market and done a medical. So that's part of, part of where you got ripped off, probably. And my other guess is that if I knew the premium amount, it probably wasn't enough to have a lot spilling over into cash value. So it's very possible that what you've learned is true, I'm sad to say. Now, the good news is you can stop doing it. You have a hole in your pocket. You don't keep putting money in it. And then we need to ascertain, even if you need life insurance at 66 years old or 65 years old.Right.So do you have assets?I do. I own all of. I don't have any debt except for my. The mortgage on my house.Mm hmm. And.And then I have a fixed retire. I have two fixed retirements, one from my military service, one from my current employer.Is there any. Any children that came on late in the game that are still dependent upon you?No, sir.Okay. So financially speaking, not emotionally or relationally, but financially speaking, no one's counting on you. So if you didn't leave life insurance, from a dependent standpoint, the family's not going to be damaged?No. I would like to have life insurance that would cover any mortgage amount I would have. So my children wouldn't assume that.They don't assume it. The house will cover it.Okay.Yeah. You don't need to leave your house mortgage free by paying this policy and buying another policy at your age or. My age is not usually a good mathematical plan.Right.So how much money do you have in your nest egg?I have about nine months worth of expenses.You have a retirement nest egg of any kind?Well, the had during my marriage, and I did not leave my marriage with that.Okay, so he got that. And so you don't have a, quote, pile of money in a retirement account somewhere?No, I don't.Okay. You're living off the pensions, and that leaves you just fine, correct?Yes.Yeah. Okay.Are you still working, Susan?I am.Okay.Yeah.What do you make?And I'd like to keep working. I love what I do, so I don't. I'm not in a rush to retire.Good. What do you make?About $100,000 a year is my salary.Good. Good for you. Okay. And what's the balance on the mortgage?218.And what is the house worth?325. 325 to 350, I guess.Okay. So if you were to pass away tomorrow without life insurance, the kids would sell the house, there'd be 100,000 on the table, they would pay for a funeral, and the smoke would clear, and they would all get a little bit correct.Correct? Yes, sir.Okay. I'm not buying this life insurance policy. Another day.Then I. And I agree with you. That was my first reaction. But then I'm thinking, I mean, and the premiums have gone up every year. Yeah, they do age, but these, this is hundreds of dollars a month for years that I have been paying.That doesn't make. It doesn't mean you want to keep doing it.No, but I just made the bad decision with that investment.Yeah. Yeah, I think you probably did. But as they say, water under the bridge.That I would call them, too, Susan.I want to call them and make.Off a zero or something. I don't know.Know.Maybe there is more in there. It's a typo.It's possible. But I think with it being a guaranteed issue, and I think with it being a benefit, they lowered the price on it so low that they weren't. They didn't put enough in there to.Cover the insurance was so expensive. Just for the insurance side. I know, because she didn't do medical.That's because variable life insurance is a complete ripoff. It's the payday lender of the middle class. But, you know, she's. And I'm. Here she is 20 years later paying into it. I'm so sorry. Listen up. Trying to reach your money goals without a rock solid budget is like trying to climb mount Everest in ice skates. It isn't going to work. That's why we built the everydollar app to help you win with money. It's the simplest, most straightforward way to track your spending and give every dollar a job. That way you can stop letting your money push you around and start reaching those money goals. Download every dollar for free on the app store or Google Play. Rachel Cruz Ramsey personality is my co host. Open phones at 888-825-5225 if you invest $100 a month from age 25 to age 65 in a decent growth stock mutual fund, it will be $1,176,000. So you should be taught this in the 6th grade so that you start investing in your twenties because it doesn't take a lot to become wealthy. Our last caller put hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years into a ripoff life insurance policy.My point is, if she had put that money in a fruit jar and just stacked it in the cellar, she would have a whole lot more than she has in that policy. Like tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, she's putting in what, let's.Say hundreds a month?Let's say 200 a month. Okay. That's $2,400 a year in. And so in ten years, that's $25,000. In 20 years, that's $50,000 would be stacked in her seller if they have 1500 as her cash value. What that tells you is they screwed her. That's what that tells you. Okay? She not only didn't get a rate of return, she got a negative rate of return they stole from her savings to pay for high priced life insurance. That's exactly what that product does. By the way. If, however, she had not put it in the seller and it wasn't $50,000 and she had instead put it in her four hundred one k. Or, which she lost in her divorce, but, or negotiated away in the divorce or whatever happened there, or she put it in just mutual funds, hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years. It would have been several million dollars. And so that's how bad these cash value life insurance products are. It's not just a little bit wrong. It's millions of dollars wrong over 20 years. Millions with an s. Lots of millions. That's just bizarre to think about. And if you wonder how, as a buddy of mine used to say all to do before you figure out if you really want to do this or not. And I'll go back to my first point, Larry. You better love mowers and people that buy mowers, because it's going to take a whole lot of your life if you buy this business. It's what you got to do, man. You got to lay into it. You know that from your experience before you got to lay into it. This is the Ramsey show.Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz. When it comes to teaching kids about money, moms tell me all the time just how overwhelming it can feel to get started. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about financial peace, kids. This toolkit was designed to make learning to save, earn, spend, and give money fun for both you and your kids. The best part, it only takes ten minutes a day. Yep, just ten minutes. You've got this pick up financial piece, kids@ramsaysolutions.com. store. That's ramsaysolutions.com store.If you want to win, winning is an intentional act. As a matter of fact, it's a series of intentional acts that causes this thing we call success. No one accidentally wins the Super bowl. They practice, they work, they plan, they strategize. They lean in. They focus exclusively on their task. No one accidentally stays married 40 years. No one accidentally raises good kids. No one accidentally is successful at their career. And no one accidentally builds wealth. It's not random. It's a series of intentional acts. One of the intentional acts is planning and making every dollar behave. Every dollar needs an assignment. If you don't make your money behave, you will always be broke and wonder where it went. You have to make your money behave. You have to be a lion tamer with a whip and a chair. And that's what a budget is. You're making the money behave. Every dollar gets an assignment. That's why we named the world's best budgeting app that we built that tens of millions of people use every day. We named it every dollar because every dollar needs an assignment. When every dollar is aimed at winning, you will win.It's that simple. When you want to work the baby steps, we'll show you how. When you want to work together in unity with your spouse, we can help you do that. Every dollar. The budgeting app will do every bit of that. It'll keep the pulse on your spending, make progress on your money goals. That's why it's the world's best. You can download everydollar for free in the app store or on Google Play or@everydollar.com dot. Winning is an intentional act. Heather is with us in Nashville. Hi, Heather. Welcome to the Ramsey show.Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call.Sure. What's up?My husband and I are on baby steps four, five, and six, and we want to be intentional about how we plan our finances for our family. With a recent change, two years ago, my husband's mother passed away from Alsace, and we learned that it was familial Als. Normally, no one knows why anyone has it. 90% of chances are or cases are unknown, but 10% are actually familial with a genetic marker. So we learned that she died of familial als. And there is, at this point, a 50 50 chance that my husband will have it.Did her parents have it?There's no way to know. Her father had it. And her, she has a sister that also died from it, so.Yeah.Oh, Heather, I'm so sorry.Thank you.Is there testing to see if they have, if he has the gene?Are you able to find that out marker, you say?Well, there is a test available. I mean, and you get half of your genes from one parent and half from another. So that's where we know there's a 50 50 chance. And there is a test to identify one of the 20 most common.Oh, so there's not a single singular marker?Correct. It's not a singular marker, but she wasn't able to be tested before she got it. Happen so quickly.If they don't know what the markers are. I'm just curious. I'm not, I'm not questioning, I'm. It's not passive aggressive. I'm just truly curious. If they don't know what the markers are, how do they know it's familial?Well, they actually identified as familial because of the family history, just the history pattern.But there's not any actual pattern. It's just a highly statistically unlikely pattern. Yeah. Okay.Precisely. My husband's.How old is your husband?He's 40.Wow. Okay. I'm sure you guys are checking those markers just to.Yeah. Will y'all run that test to see.Peace of mind or whatever?It's interesting you ask that. My husband has decided that he doesn't want to do it it because he just wants to live every day to its fullest and not plan for a death. But we want to be financially stable and make the right decisions for our family. So. Just looking for some advice.Wow. So I'm sorry for the reason for your question, but it's a great question. The. The answer is do the exact same things we teach everyone, but it's going to be with much more seriousness and attention to detail. For instance, you know, if you've been listening, Heather, that we tell everyone to have a will and everyone to have a detailed explanation of the will to everyone involved in the will. Okay.Okay.And so if his brother thinks he's going to get something and he's not, you need to tell him now.Okay.That kind of stuff is what I'm talking about. My guess is, in the situation, you're saying he's going to leave everything to his children and his wife, or to his wife to take care of his children, right?Yes. And we have very young children, a six year old and a six month old. And we didn't make the decision lightly to have a second child when we knew that there was that potential.Did he have life insurance in place?Yes, and we both have like 750k in life insurance, term life, with about 18 years left.Okay. That's good news. Okay, good, good. Well, you're not dropping that for sure. And we're gonna have a detailed will. And, you know, he needs to. What is the name of that book? Oh, there's a book. A thousand years ago, I endorsed this book. Letters. Letters from dad. I think it's called Google. Oh, you don't have your computer open.I got my phone, though.You got your phone? Whip it trusty phone out. See if letters from dad's not a thing. And I actually did this for about three years, and then I dropped it because I was lazy. But the guy.Oh, yeah, Greg Vaughn. Greg Vaughn, yeah, that's it.Green cover. Yeah, that's it. Okay. But it was 25 years ago, you were a little kid, and so it's writing letters to your kids. He sold like, a wooden box, and you could. Each kid had a box and write letters to your spouse, and so these would be treasured items later in your life was the idea. It's a legacy piece. Makes you cry when you read the whole book. Okay. And it made me. Made me go do it for a while. I did it for two or three years. There's a wooden box somewhere in Rachel's life. I have no idea where it is, but it's got four letters in it or something. But when she was five, but I made a run at it.It.So. But that kind of stuff, you know, and videos or occasionally just throw them in a. In a Dropbox or in a file somewhere, you keep them. I would just be cognizant about legacy things with the kiddos. Does that make sense?Sure.Probably more serious than the average bear. And then. But make sure your will, your life insurance, youre details of the estate plan are in place so that if you ever get a diagnosis, you don't even have to think about that. It's already done.Okay.We're not rushing around and trying to do it in a period of months or whatever before we have to. Before we loses the title insurance. Okay. And I've actually had a few claims and I'm really glad I had it because sometimes people screw the title up and do it improperly and then you've got a mess on your hands. That's tens of thousands of dollars. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's a mess. So title insurance is one thing. Again, if you're getting it with your mortgage company, it's required because they want to have policy covering them. You can get a simultaneous issue for a few hundred bucks. That covers you as well. So that's one thing. The second thing is you're going to have prepaids, they're called, and you're aware in most house payments today, you have a house payment that is principal and interest to the bank. And they also collect approximately a 12th of taxes annually and a 12th of insurance annually so that they can build up the escrow account with those two things in it to pay the taxes out of that and pay the, the homeowners insurance out of that to ensure that the taxes are paid and the insurance is paid.That's why they do that. And to set that up will usually be three or four months of each of those. So whatever your tax, property tax is, Bill, is four months of that. And whatever your homeowners insurance is, four months of that to set up your prepaids, they're called. It's prepaying and setting up that escrow account to be able to do principal, interest, taxes and insurance, PI ti, as you go along. Typically, there'll be a survey fee. Usually that's not super expensive. It's, if it's in a neighborhood, $75 to $200. Typically, there's an appraisal, usually $500 to $1,000 somewhere in there, depending on your area. And so you're gonna have these miscellaneous things that fall under the heading of closing costs, and they're depending on your area and what your tax rates are and all those kinds of things, you're probably looking at about 3%.Okay, awesome.But again, what I would do, since you're such a planner and you're doing this well in advance, get in touch with one of the Ramsey trusted real estate agents in the area and have them give you an example of a house in the neighborhood you might be looking at. Okay, here's what a closing document might look like, a closing statement. And you can say, okay, there's those things Dave was talking about, line item down through there. And then you're going to be able to say, okay, on that house, a $300,000 house. It was $3,000. Oh, okay, so it's 1%. Oh, so now $6,000. Okay, it's 2%. Right. That kind of stuff. That's what you'll be able to figure out. And it'd be fun for you, as a first time home buyer to see all the items that make up this vague category of closing costs, because they all actually do make sense. They're not rip offs. They're all things that you do need. You do need a survey. You do need an appraisal. You do need title insurance. You do need to set up your escrow account. All those things are fine. There's nothing wrong with them.But when you add them all up, you kind of get a sticker shock moment. You go, they're ripping me off with these closing costs. And, no, you're not really. You just got to know what they are, and so dig in there and figure out what they are. And that, that'll help you get a good, solid estimate, because it does change from area to area, and a lot of it is based on the, in the cost of insurance and the cost of taxes in your area. That'll throw this number a bit. Are you going to pay any points upfront? Which I wouldn't recommend, but are you paying an origination fee, which typically you are going to pay, which is a point or a half a point or something like that to get into the loan. All of that's going to be figured in there. And again, a good real estate agent can help you map all that out. And also, Rachel, we've got a great website on our stuff@ramsaysolutions.com. real estate that goes into a whole bunch of that stuff. It's an information hub.Yes. And there's just so many details. I mean, as you were even just talking, I was like, oh, my gosh, so much. And that we have so many, so many blogs, articles, points of contact for people in your area to go and to get yap to get this all, because sometimes I feel like you, it takes a little bit to actually learn it. So go to Ramsay solutions.com real estate and go and read research. And again, you can find Ramsey trusted pros there on that website, too, if you want to call just like you mentioned, to reach out to somebody.Yeah. And just, it's okay to nerd out on it. One of the things when you're doing something the first time is it's always scary because of the unknown.Yep.And so the more you know, the less fear there is. And so just dig in, get, get sample closing statements on a property the size you're talking about, look at it, and then you can back into it and tell every, every bit of that. Allison is with us in New Jersey. Hi, Allison. How are you?Hi, Dave. It's such an honor to speak with you. And Rachel, I follow you on instagram, and I just have to say I love your post about all your Walmart finds and all your books and everything. So I'm a fan of.Thanks, Allison. Appreciate that.How can we help?So I'm in a really difficult situation right now, and I don't know what to do. So I'm getting a little emotional. So I'm in my early forties. I've been in a long term relationship, and my boyfriend is not sure if he wants a baby. I want a baby. And I'm running out of time. And my question is, I don't know if I should take out loans to be able to even just start the process and afford, like, egg retrievals or if I should get a second job. I just feel like, honestly, kind of like, trapped. And I'm not sure what to do.Wow.I'm so sorry.That's a harsh, harsh situation.Well, how much?I mean, Allison, there's two things. Go ahead.Well, women that are. Yes, that are at your point. And they freeze their eggs. They kind of go through a process to say, can I freeze time for a little bit while it kind of buys you time. How much is all of that? Have you looked into all that cost wise?I have. I've met with the fertility clinic and it will be about. Well, they think that I'll need multiple rounds just because of my age. I did have an initial screening and it looked like I had some empty follicles. They did a retrieval, actually, and it wasn't successful, but all my numbers went up. And so it looks. Anyway, things are looking better, like, physically, but it's really expensive. So it would be like, probably like for three or four rounds, which the doctor thinks only that it will be about like $70,000.Just for egg retrieval.Well, for.I mean, a single. A single round of IVF is around 7500.Well, I guess that means for everything if I end up, you know. You know.Okay, let's. Let's break this. I'm just. This is an emotional and a very important topic because nothing's more important to me than babies. I love babies. And so I want you to do this, but I want you to do it in a wise way, not in a way that. Because 70,000 is not a second opinion.And I would get.You need to get six more opinions. Yeah, you need to go shopping on this, kiddo, because I think you can do a simple egg retrieval. I'm not a doc.I'm not throwing out a number. I have no clue what that is.But, I mean, we've done. We've talked about IVF on here many, many times. Times. And 7512, five in there, not 70 grand. And that's the full freaking procedure. So you need to get the. That's. That number's not right. I want you to check, and then you got to decide about your relationship issues and how you're going to go forward with all that, too. That's a whole nother bucket. 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, folks. Dave here. You want to hear even more life changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place. Like the Ramsey show, smart Money, Happy Hour, and the doctor John Deloney show. You'll get real talk about life, relationships, money, and your career. Plus, the app lets you browse by topic like debt, business, or selling your home. Get the content you want whenever and wherever you want to listen. Download the Ramsey Network app today.

it's a type of cash value policy that you pay extra for beyond what you would pay for terminal. And the extra goes into an investment and with variable, it generally is mutual funds that you select the mutual funds or they select them for you with a rubber stamp situation and you don't even realize you did it. But basically it's going into that then they take all of their fees out and so you don't get anywhere near the return that you would have gotten. Nationally, the typical variable is about 4.7% rate of return on an investment that, not counting fees, should be yielding north of ten. So it's an absolutely bad product. But I cannot. It's hard to fathom that you paid 20 years and only got $1,500 out of it. That's hard to believe.

That's what it shows me. And it's one of those things where I never really have you claim. No, that's, that's on my list. But I just wanted to really start to understand more about the policy so that I had some information.

It's possible that it is a dumbed down product that was sold as an HR benefit through a benefits company. And by dumbed down, I mean that they didn't charge you enough over what the actual life insurance was for there to be any going into savings? Hardly.

Okay.

And so it's, I don't know what you've been paying, but the policy, seven or 50,000. So it's less than a million dollar policy. How old are you today?

I'll be 65 in September.

So you bought it when you were 45 and was it guaranteed issue? Meaning did they make you to go through a medical?

No, it was one of the things. One of the benefits that I signed up for when I went with that employer.

Right. But they did not have any medical. And check, like if you bought a million dollar policy, they're going to check medical? Usually, yeah. No, sir, not any guaranteed issue is what that's called, and that is a standard in the benefits world. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's a more expensive type of insurance because they're taking more risk because they're not checking people's medicals. That make sense. And so you're probably paying a lot more of what you should, what you were paying a lot more of it was going towards insurance versus if you had just bought a, a regular variable universal from them out in the open market and done a medical. So that's part of, part of where you got ripped off, probably. And my other guess is that if I knew the premium amount, it probably wasn't enough to have a lot spilling over into cash value. So it's very possible that what you've learned is true, I'm sad to say. Now, the good news is you can stop doing it. You have a hole in your pocket. You don't keep putting money in it. And then we need to ascertain, even if you need life insurance at 66 years old or 65 years old.

Right.

So do you have assets?

I do. I own all of. I don't have any debt except for my. The mortgage on my house.

Mm hmm. And.

And then I have a fixed retire. I have two fixed retirements, one from my military service, one from my current employer.

Is there any. Any children that came on late in the game that are still dependent upon you?

No, sir.

Okay. So financially speaking, not emotionally or relationally, but financially speaking, no one's counting on you. So if you didn't leave life insurance, from a dependent standpoint, the family's not going to be damaged?

No. I would like to have life insurance that would cover any mortgage amount I would have. So my children wouldn't assume that.

They don't assume it. The house will cover it.

Okay.

Yeah. You don't need to leave your house mortgage free by paying this policy and buying another policy at your age or. My age is not usually a good mathematical plan.

Right.

So how much money do you have in your nest egg?

I have about nine months worth of expenses.

You have a retirement nest egg of any kind?

Well, the had during my marriage, and I did not leave my marriage with that.

Okay, so he got that. And so you don't have a, quote, pile of money in a retirement account somewhere?

No, I don't.

Okay. You're living off the pensions, and that leaves you just fine, correct?

Yes.

Yeah. Okay.

Are you still working, Susan?

I am.

Okay.

Yeah.

What do you make?

And I'd like to keep working. I love what I do, so I don't. I'm not in a rush to retire.

Good. What do you make?

About $100,000 a year is my salary.

Good. Good for you. Okay. And what's the balance on the mortgage?

218.

And what is the house worth?

325. 325 to 350, I guess.

Okay. So if you were to pass away tomorrow without life insurance, the kids would sell the house, there'd be 100,000 on the table, they would pay for a funeral, and the smoke would clear, and they would all get a little bit correct.

Correct? Yes, sir.

Okay. I'm not buying this life insurance policy. Another day.

Then I. And I agree with you. That was my first reaction. But then I'm thinking, I mean, and the premiums have gone up every year. Yeah, they do age, but these, this is hundreds of dollars a month for years that I have been paying.

That doesn't make. It doesn't mean you want to keep doing it.

No, but I just made the bad decision with that investment.

Yeah. Yeah, I think you probably did. But as they say, water under the bridge.

That I would call them, too, Susan.

I want to call them and make.

Off a zero or something. I don't know.

Know.

Maybe there is more in there. It's a typo.

It's possible. But I think with it being a guaranteed issue, and I think with it being a benefit, they lowered the price on it so low that they weren't. They didn't put enough in there to.

Cover the insurance was so expensive. Just for the insurance side. I know, because she didn't do medical.

That's because variable life insurance is a complete ripoff. It's the payday lender of the middle class. But, you know, she's. And I'm. Here she is 20 years later paying into it. I'm so sorry. Listen up. Trying to reach your money goals without a rock solid budget is like trying to climb mount Everest in ice skates. It isn't going to work. That's why we built the everydollar app to help you win with money. It's the simplest, most straightforward way to track your spending and give every dollar a job. That way you can stop letting your money push you around and start reaching those money goals. Download every dollar for free on the app store or Google Play. Rachel Cruz Ramsey personality is my co host. Open phones at 888-825-5225 if you invest $100 a month from age 25 to age 65 in a decent growth stock mutual fund, it will be $1,176,000. So you should be taught this in the 6th grade so that you start investing in your twenties because it doesn't take a lot to become wealthy. Our last caller put hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years into a ripoff life insurance policy.

My point is, if she had put that money in a fruit jar and just stacked it in the cellar, she would have a whole lot more than she has in that policy. Like tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, she's putting in what, let's.

Say hundreds a month?

Let's say 200 a month. Okay. That's $2,400 a year in. And so in ten years, that's $25,000. In 20 years, that's $50,000 would be stacked in her seller if they have 1500 as her cash value. What that tells you is they screwed her. That's what that tells you. Okay? She not only didn't get a rate of return, she got a negative rate of return they stole from her savings to pay for high priced life insurance. That's exactly what that product does. By the way. If, however, she had not put it in the seller and it wasn't $50,000 and she had instead put it in her four hundred one k. Or, which she lost in her divorce, but, or negotiated away in the divorce or whatever happened there, or she put it in just mutual funds, hundreds of dollars a month for 20 years. It would have been several million dollars. And so that's how bad these cash value life insurance products are. It's not just a little bit wrong. It's millions of dollars wrong over 20 years. Millions with an s. Lots of millions. That's just bizarre to think about. And if you wonder how, as a buddy of mine used to say all to do before you figure out if you really want to do this or not. And I'll go back to my first point, Larry. You better love mowers and people that buy mowers, because it's going to take a whole lot of your life if you buy this business. It's what you got to do, man. You got to lay into it. You know that from your experience before you got to lay into it. This is the Ramsey show.Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz. When it comes to teaching kids about money, moms tell me all the time just how overwhelming it can feel to get started. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about financial peace, kids. This toolkit was designed to make learning to save, earn, spend, and give money fun for both you and your kids. The best part, it only takes ten minutes a day. Yep, just ten minutes. You've got this pick up financial piece, kids@ramsaysolutions.com. store. That's ramsaysolutions.com store.If you want to win, winning is an intentional act. As a matter of fact, it's a series of intentional acts that causes this thing we call success. No one accidentally wins the Super bowl. They practice, they work, they plan, they strategize. They lean in. They focus exclusively on their task. No one accidentally stays married 40 years. No one accidentally raises good kids. No one accidentally is successful at their career. And no one accidentally builds wealth. It's not random. It's a series of intentional acts. One of the intentional acts is planning and making every dollar behave. Every dollar needs an assignment. If you don't make your money behave, you will always be broke and wonder where it went. You have to make your money behave. You have to be a lion tamer with a whip and a chair. And that's what a budget is. You're making the money behave. Every dollar gets an assignment. That's why we named the world's best budgeting app that we built that tens of millions of people use every day. We named it every dollar because every dollar needs an assignment. When every dollar is aimed at winning, you will win.It's that simple. When you want to work the baby steps, we'll show you how. When you want to work together in unity with your spouse, we can help you do that. Every dollar. The budgeting app will do every bit of that. It'll keep the pulse on your spending, make progress on your money goals. That's why it's the world's best. You can download everydollar for free in the app store or on Google Play or@everydollar.com dot. Winning is an intentional act. Heather is with us in Nashville. Hi, Heather. Welcome to the Ramsey show.Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call.Sure. What's up?My husband and I are on baby steps four, five, and six, and we want to be intentional about how we plan our finances for our family. With a recent change, two years ago, my husband's mother passed away from Alsace, and we learned that it was familial Als. Normally, no one knows why anyone has it. 90% of chances are or cases are unknown, but 10% are actually familial with a genetic marker. So we learned that she died of familial als. And there is, at this point, a 50 50 chance that my husband will have it.Did her parents have it?There's no way to know. Her father had it. And her, she has a sister that also died from it, so.Yeah.Oh, Heather, I'm so sorry.Thank you.Is there testing to see if they have, if he has the gene?Are you able to find that out marker, you say?Well, there is a test available. I mean, and you get half of your genes from one parent and half from another. So that's where we know there's a 50 50 chance. And there is a test to identify one of the 20 most common.Oh, so there's not a single singular marker?Correct. It's not a singular marker, but she wasn't able to be tested before she got it. Happen so quickly.If they don't know what the markers are. I'm just curious. I'm not, I'm not questioning, I'm. It's not passive aggressive. I'm just truly curious. If they don't know what the markers are, how do they know it's familial?Well, they actually identified as familial because of the family history, just the history pattern.But there's not any actual pattern. It's just a highly statistically unlikely pattern. Yeah. Okay.Precisely. My husband's.How old is your husband?He's 40.Wow. Okay. I'm sure you guys are checking those markers just to.Yeah. Will y'all run that test to see.Peace of mind or whatever?It's interesting you ask that. My husband has decided that he doesn't want to do it it because he just wants to live every day to its fullest and not plan for a death. But we want to be financially stable and make the right decisions for our family. So. Just looking for some advice.Wow. So I'm sorry for the reason for your question, but it's a great question. The. The answer is do the exact same things we teach everyone, but it's going to be with much more seriousness and attention to detail. For instance, you know, if you've been listening, Heather, that we tell everyone to have a will and everyone to have a detailed explanation of the will to everyone involved in the will. Okay.Okay.And so if his brother thinks he's going to get something and he's not, you need to tell him now.Okay.That kind of stuff is what I'm talking about. My guess is, in the situation, you're saying he's going to leave everything to his children and his wife, or to his wife to take care of his children, right?Yes. And we have very young children, a six year old and a six month old. And we didn't make the decision lightly to have a second child when we knew that there was that potential.Did he have life insurance in place?Yes, and we both have like 750k in life insurance, term life, with about 18 years left.Okay. That's good news. Okay, good, good. Well, you're not dropping that for sure. And we're gonna have a detailed will. And, you know, he needs to. What is the name of that book? Oh, there's a book. A thousand years ago, I endorsed this book. Letters. Letters from dad. I think it's called Google. Oh, you don't have your computer open.I got my phone, though.You got your phone? Whip it trusty phone out. See if letters from dad's not a thing. And I actually did this for about three years, and then I dropped it because I was lazy. But the guy.Oh, yeah, Greg Vaughn. Greg Vaughn, yeah, that's it.Green cover. Yeah, that's it. Okay. But it was 25 years ago, you were a little kid, and so it's writing letters to your kids. He sold like, a wooden box, and you could. Each kid had a box and write letters to your spouse, and so these would be treasured items later in your life was the idea. It's a legacy piece. Makes you cry when you read the whole book. Okay. And it made me. Made me go do it for a while. I did it for two or three years. There's a wooden box somewhere in Rachel's life. I have no idea where it is, but it's got four letters in it or something. But when she was five, but I made a run at it.It.So. But that kind of stuff, you know, and videos or occasionally just throw them in a. In a Dropbox or in a file somewhere, you keep them. I would just be cognizant about legacy things with the kiddos. Does that make sense?Sure.Probably more serious than the average bear. And then. But make sure your will, your life insurance, youre details of the estate plan are in place so that if you ever get a diagnosis, you don't even have to think about that. It's already done.Okay.We're not rushing around and trying to do it in a period of months or whatever before we have to. Before we loses the title insurance. Okay. And I've actually had a few claims and I'm really glad I had it because sometimes people screw the title up and do it improperly and then you've got a mess on your hands. That's tens of thousands of dollars. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's a mess. So title insurance is one thing. Again, if you're getting it with your mortgage company, it's required because they want to have policy covering them. You can get a simultaneous issue for a few hundred bucks. That covers you as well. So that's one thing. The second thing is you're going to have prepaids, they're called, and you're aware in most house payments today, you have a house payment that is principal and interest to the bank. And they also collect approximately a 12th of taxes annually and a 12th of insurance annually so that they can build up the escrow account with those two things in it to pay the taxes out of that and pay the, the homeowners insurance out of that to ensure that the taxes are paid and the insurance is paid.That's why they do that. And to set that up will usually be three or four months of each of those. So whatever your tax, property tax is, Bill, is four months of that. And whatever your homeowners insurance is, four months of that to set up your prepaids, they're called. It's prepaying and setting up that escrow account to be able to do principal, interest, taxes and insurance, PI ti, as you go along. Typically, there'll be a survey fee. Usually that's not super expensive. It's, if it's in a neighborhood, $75 to $200. Typically, there's an appraisal, usually $500 to $1,000 somewhere in there, depending on your area. And so you're gonna have these miscellaneous things that fall under the heading of closing costs, and they're depending on your area and what your tax rates are and all those kinds of things, you're probably looking at about 3%.Okay, awesome.But again, what I would do, since you're such a planner and you're doing this well in advance, get in touch with one of the Ramsey trusted real estate agents in the area and have them give you an example of a house in the neighborhood you might be looking at. Okay, here's what a closing document might look like, a closing statement. And you can say, okay, there's those things Dave was talking about, line item down through there. And then you're going to be able to say, okay, on that house, a $300,000 house. It was $3,000. Oh, okay, so it's 1%. Oh, so now $6,000. Okay, it's 2%. Right. That kind of stuff. That's what you'll be able to figure out. And it'd be fun for you, as a first time home buyer to see all the items that make up this vague category of closing costs, because they all actually do make sense. They're not rip offs. They're all things that you do need. You do need a survey. You do need an appraisal. You do need title insurance. You do need to set up your escrow account. All those things are fine. There's nothing wrong with them.But when you add them all up, you kind of get a sticker shock moment. You go, they're ripping me off with these closing costs. And, no, you're not really. You just got to know what they are, and so dig in there and figure out what they are. And that, that'll help you get a good, solid estimate, because it does change from area to area, and a lot of it is based on the, in the cost of insurance and the cost of taxes in your area. That'll throw this number a bit. Are you going to pay any points upfront? Which I wouldn't recommend, but are you paying an origination fee, which typically you are going to pay, which is a point or a half a point or something like that to get into the loan. All of that's going to be figured in there. And again, a good real estate agent can help you map all that out. And also, Rachel, we've got a great website on our stuff@ramsaysolutions.com. real estate that goes into a whole bunch of that stuff. It's an information hub.Yes. And there's just so many details. I mean, as you were even just talking, I was like, oh, my gosh, so much. And that we have so many, so many blogs, articles, points of contact for people in your area to go and to get yap to get this all, because sometimes I feel like you, it takes a little bit to actually learn it. So go to Ramsay solutions.com real estate and go and read research. And again, you can find Ramsey trusted pros there on that website, too, if you want to call just like you mentioned, to reach out to somebody.Yeah. And just, it's okay to nerd out on it. One of the things when you're doing something the first time is it's always scary because of the unknown.Yep.And so the more you know, the less fear there is. And so just dig in, get, get sample closing statements on a property the size you're talking about, look at it, and then you can back into it and tell every, every bit of that. Allison is with us in New Jersey. Hi, Allison. How are you?Hi, Dave. It's such an honor to speak with you. And Rachel, I follow you on instagram, and I just have to say I love your post about all your Walmart finds and all your books and everything. So I'm a fan of.Thanks, Allison. Appreciate that.How can we help?So I'm in a really difficult situation right now, and I don't know what to do. So I'm getting a little emotional. So I'm in my early forties. I've been in a long term relationship, and my boyfriend is not sure if he wants a baby. I want a baby. And I'm running out of time. And my question is, I don't know if I should take out loans to be able to even just start the process and afford, like, egg retrievals or if I should get a second job. I just feel like, honestly, kind of like, trapped. And I'm not sure what to do.Wow.I'm so sorry.That's a harsh, harsh situation.Well, how much?I mean, Allison, there's two things. Go ahead.Well, women that are. Yes, that are at your point. And they freeze their eggs. They kind of go through a process to say, can I freeze time for a little bit while it kind of buys you time. How much is all of that? Have you looked into all that cost wise?I have. I've met with the fertility clinic and it will be about. Well, they think that I'll need multiple rounds just because of my age. I did have an initial screening and it looked like I had some empty follicles. They did a retrieval, actually, and it wasn't successful, but all my numbers went up. And so it looks. Anyway, things are looking better, like, physically, but it's really expensive. So it would be like, probably like for three or four rounds, which the doctor thinks only that it will be about like $70,000.Just for egg retrieval.Well, for.I mean, a single. A single round of IVF is around 7500.Well, I guess that means for everything if I end up, you know. You know.Okay, let's. Let's break this. I'm just. This is an emotional and a very important topic because nothing's more important to me than babies. I love babies. And so I want you to do this, but I want you to do it in a wise way, not in a way that. Because 70,000 is not a second opinion.And I would get.You need to get six more opinions. Yeah, you need to go shopping on this, kiddo, because I think you can do a simple egg retrieval. I'm not a doc.I'm not throwing out a number. I have no clue what that is.But, I mean, we've done. We've talked about IVF on here many, many times. Times. And 7512, five in there, not 70 grand. And that's the full freaking procedure. So you need to get the. That's. That number's not right. I want you to check, and then you got to decide about your relationship issues and how you're going to go forward with all that, too. That's a whole nother bucket. 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, folks. Dave here. You want to hear even more life changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place. Like the Ramsey show, smart Money, Happy Hour, and the doctor John Deloney show. You'll get real talk about life, relationships, money, and your career. Plus, the app lets you browse by topic like debt, business, or selling your home. Get the content you want whenever and wherever you want to listen. Download the Ramsey Network app today.

to do before you figure out if you really want to do this or not. And I'll go back to my first point, Larry. You better love mowers and people that buy mowers, because it's going to take a whole lot of your life if you buy this business. It's what you got to do, man. You got to lay into it. You know that from your experience before you got to lay into it. This is the Ramsey show.

Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz. When it comes to teaching kids about money, moms tell me all the time just how overwhelming it can feel to get started. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about financial peace, kids. This toolkit was designed to make learning to save, earn, spend, and give money fun for both you and your kids. The best part, it only takes ten minutes a day. Yep, just ten minutes. You've got this pick up financial piece, kids@ramsaysolutions.com. store. That's ramsaysolutions.com store.

If you want to win, winning is an intentional act. As a matter of fact, it's a series of intentional acts that causes this thing we call success. No one accidentally wins the Super bowl. They practice, they work, they plan, they strategize. They lean in. They focus exclusively on their task. No one accidentally stays married 40 years. No one accidentally raises good kids. No one accidentally is successful at their career. And no one accidentally builds wealth. It's not random. It's a series of intentional acts. One of the intentional acts is planning and making every dollar behave. Every dollar needs an assignment. If you don't make your money behave, you will always be broke and wonder where it went. You have to make your money behave. You have to be a lion tamer with a whip and a chair. And that's what a budget is. You're making the money behave. Every dollar gets an assignment. That's why we named the world's best budgeting app that we built that tens of millions of people use every day. We named it every dollar because every dollar needs an assignment. When every dollar is aimed at winning, you will win.

It's that simple. When you want to work the baby steps, we'll show you how. When you want to work together in unity with your spouse, we can help you do that. Every dollar. The budgeting app will do every bit of that. It'll keep the pulse on your spending, make progress on your money goals. That's why it's the world's best. You can download everydollar for free in the app store or on Google Play or@everydollar.com dot. Winning is an intentional act. Heather is with us in Nashville. Hi, Heather. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

My husband and I are on baby steps four, five, and six, and we want to be intentional about how we plan our finances for our family. With a recent change, two years ago, my husband's mother passed away from Alsace, and we learned that it was familial Als. Normally, no one knows why anyone has it. 90% of chances are or cases are unknown, but 10% are actually familial with a genetic marker. So we learned that she died of familial als. And there is, at this point, a 50 50 chance that my husband will have it.

Did her parents have it?

There's no way to know. Her father had it. And her, she has a sister that also died from it, so.

Yeah.

Oh, Heather, I'm so sorry.

Thank you.

Is there testing to see if they have, if he has the gene?

Are you able to find that out marker, you say?

Well, there is a test available. I mean, and you get half of your genes from one parent and half from another. So that's where we know there's a 50 50 chance. And there is a test to identify one of the 20 most common.

Oh, so there's not a single singular marker?

Correct. It's not a singular marker, but she wasn't able to be tested before she got it. Happen so quickly.

If they don't know what the markers are. I'm just curious. I'm not, I'm not questioning, I'm. It's not passive aggressive. I'm just truly curious. If they don't know what the markers are, how do they know it's familial?

Well, they actually identified as familial because of the family history, just the history pattern.

But there's not any actual pattern. It's just a highly statistically unlikely pattern. Yeah. Okay.

Precisely. My husband's.

How old is your husband?

He's 40.

Wow. Okay. I'm sure you guys are checking those markers just to.

Yeah. Will y'all run that test to see.

Peace of mind or whatever?

It's interesting you ask that. My husband has decided that he doesn't want to do it it because he just wants to live every day to its fullest and not plan for a death. But we want to be financially stable and make the right decisions for our family. So. Just looking for some advice.

Wow. So I'm sorry for the reason for your question, but it's a great question. The. The answer is do the exact same things we teach everyone, but it's going to be with much more seriousness and attention to detail. For instance, you know, if you've been listening, Heather, that we tell everyone to have a will and everyone to have a detailed explanation of the will to everyone involved in the will. Okay.

Okay.

And so if his brother thinks he's going to get something and he's not, you need to tell him now.

Okay.

That kind of stuff is what I'm talking about. My guess is, in the situation, you're saying he's going to leave everything to his children and his wife, or to his wife to take care of his children, right?

Yes. And we have very young children, a six year old and a six month old. And we didn't make the decision lightly to have a second child when we knew that there was that potential.

Did he have life insurance in place?

Yes, and we both have like 750k in life insurance, term life, with about 18 years left.

Okay. That's good news. Okay, good, good. Well, you're not dropping that for sure. And we're gonna have a detailed will. And, you know, he needs to. What is the name of that book? Oh, there's a book. A thousand years ago, I endorsed this book. Letters. Letters from dad. I think it's called Google. Oh, you don't have your computer open.

I got my phone, though.

You got your phone? Whip it trusty phone out. See if letters from dad's not a thing. And I actually did this for about three years, and then I dropped it because I was lazy. But the guy.

Oh, yeah, Greg Vaughn. Greg Vaughn, yeah, that's it.

Green cover. Yeah, that's it. Okay. But it was 25 years ago, you were a little kid, and so it's writing letters to your kids. He sold like, a wooden box, and you could. Each kid had a box and write letters to your spouse, and so these would be treasured items later in your life was the idea. It's a legacy piece. Makes you cry when you read the whole book. Okay. And it made me. Made me go do it for a while. I did it for two or three years. There's a wooden box somewhere in Rachel's life. I have no idea where it is, but it's got four letters in it or something. But when she was five, but I made a run at it.

It.

So. But that kind of stuff, you know, and videos or occasionally just throw them in a. In a Dropbox or in a file somewhere, you keep them. I would just be cognizant about legacy things with the kiddos. Does that make sense?

Sure.

Probably more serious than the average bear. And then. But make sure your will, your life insurance, youre details of the estate plan are in place so that if you ever get a diagnosis, you don't even have to think about that. It's already done.

Okay.

We're not rushing around and trying to do it in a period of months or whatever before we have to. Before we loses the title insurance. Okay. And I've actually had a few claims and I'm really glad I had it because sometimes people screw the title up and do it improperly and then you've got a mess on your hands. That's tens of thousands of dollars. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's a mess. So title insurance is one thing. Again, if you're getting it with your mortgage company, it's required because they want to have policy covering them. You can get a simultaneous issue for a few hundred bucks. That covers you as well. So that's one thing. The second thing is you're going to have prepaids, they're called, and you're aware in most house payments today, you have a house payment that is principal and interest to the bank. And they also collect approximately a 12th of taxes annually and a 12th of insurance annually so that they can build up the escrow account with those two things in it to pay the taxes out of that and pay the, the homeowners insurance out of that to ensure that the taxes are paid and the insurance is paid.That's why they do that. And to set that up will usually be three or four months of each of those. So whatever your tax, property tax is, Bill, is four months of that. And whatever your homeowners insurance is, four months of that to set up your prepaids, they're called. It's prepaying and setting up that escrow account to be able to do principal, interest, taxes and insurance, PI ti, as you go along. Typically, there'll be a survey fee. Usually that's not super expensive. It's, if it's in a neighborhood, $75 to $200. Typically, there's an appraisal, usually $500 to $1,000 somewhere in there, depending on your area. And so you're gonna have these miscellaneous things that fall under the heading of closing costs, and they're depending on your area and what your tax rates are and all those kinds of things, you're probably looking at about 3%.Okay, awesome.But again, what I would do, since you're such a planner and you're doing this well in advance, get in touch with one of the Ramsey trusted real estate agents in the area and have them give you an example of a house in the neighborhood you might be looking at. Okay, here's what a closing document might look like, a closing statement. And you can say, okay, there's those things Dave was talking about, line item down through there. And then you're going to be able to say, okay, on that house, a $300,000 house. It was $3,000. Oh, okay, so it's 1%. Oh, so now $6,000. Okay, it's 2%. Right. That kind of stuff. That's what you'll be able to figure out. And it'd be fun for you, as a first time home buyer to see all the items that make up this vague category of closing costs, because they all actually do make sense. They're not rip offs. They're all things that you do need. You do need a survey. You do need an appraisal. You do need title insurance. You do need to set up your escrow account. All those things are fine. There's nothing wrong with them.But when you add them all up, you kind of get a sticker shock moment. You go, they're ripping me off with these closing costs. And, no, you're not really. You just got to know what they are, and so dig in there and figure out what they are. And that, that'll help you get a good, solid estimate, because it does change from area to area, and a lot of it is based on the, in the cost of insurance and the cost of taxes in your area. That'll throw this number a bit. Are you going to pay any points upfront? Which I wouldn't recommend, but are you paying an origination fee, which typically you are going to pay, which is a point or a half a point or something like that to get into the loan. All of that's going to be figured in there. And again, a good real estate agent can help you map all that out. And also, Rachel, we've got a great website on our stuff@ramsaysolutions.com. real estate that goes into a whole bunch of that stuff. It's an information hub.Yes. And there's just so many details. I mean, as you were even just talking, I was like, oh, my gosh, so much. And that we have so many, so many blogs, articles, points of contact for people in your area to go and to get yap to get this all, because sometimes I feel like you, it takes a little bit to actually learn it. So go to Ramsay solutions.com real estate and go and read research. And again, you can find Ramsey trusted pros there on that website, too, if you want to call just like you mentioned, to reach out to somebody.Yeah. And just, it's okay to nerd out on it. One of the things when you're doing something the first time is it's always scary because of the unknown.Yep.And so the more you know, the less fear there is. And so just dig in, get, get sample closing statements on a property the size you're talking about, look at it, and then you can back into it and tell every, every bit of that. Allison is with us in New Jersey. Hi, Allison. How are you?Hi, Dave. It's such an honor to speak with you. And Rachel, I follow you on instagram, and I just have to say I love your post about all your Walmart finds and all your books and everything. So I'm a fan of.Thanks, Allison. Appreciate that.How can we help?So I'm in a really difficult situation right now, and I don't know what to do. So I'm getting a little emotional. So I'm in my early forties. I've been in a long term relationship, and my boyfriend is not sure if he wants a baby. I want a baby. And I'm running out of time. And my question is, I don't know if I should take out loans to be able to even just start the process and afford, like, egg retrievals or if I should get a second job. I just feel like, honestly, kind of like, trapped. And I'm not sure what to do.Wow.I'm so sorry.That's a harsh, harsh situation.Well, how much?I mean, Allison, there's two things. Go ahead.Well, women that are. Yes, that are at your point. And they freeze their eggs. They kind of go through a process to say, can I freeze time for a little bit while it kind of buys you time. How much is all of that? Have you looked into all that cost wise?I have. I've met with the fertility clinic and it will be about. Well, they think that I'll need multiple rounds just because of my age. I did have an initial screening and it looked like I had some empty follicles. They did a retrieval, actually, and it wasn't successful, but all my numbers went up. And so it looks. Anyway, things are looking better, like, physically, but it's really expensive. So it would be like, probably like for three or four rounds, which the doctor thinks only that it will be about like $70,000.Just for egg retrieval.Well, for.I mean, a single. A single round of IVF is around 7500.Well, I guess that means for everything if I end up, you know. You know.Okay, let's. Let's break this. I'm just. This is an emotional and a very important topic because nothing's more important to me than babies. I love babies. And so I want you to do this, but I want you to do it in a wise way, not in a way that. Because 70,000 is not a second opinion.And I would get.You need to get six more opinions. Yeah, you need to go shopping on this, kiddo, because I think you can do a simple egg retrieval. I'm not a doc.I'm not throwing out a number. I have no clue what that is.But, I mean, we've done. We've talked about IVF on here many, many times. Times. And 7512, five in there, not 70 grand. And that's the full freaking procedure. So you need to get the. That's. That number's not right. I want you to check, and then you got to decide about your relationship issues and how you're going to go forward with all that, too. That's a whole nother bucket. 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, folks. Dave here. You want to hear even more life changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place. Like the Ramsey show, smart Money, Happy Hour, and the doctor John Deloney show. You'll get real talk about life, relationships, money, and your career. Plus, the app lets you browse by topic like debt, business, or selling your home. Get the content you want whenever and wherever you want to listen. Download the Ramsey Network app today.

title insurance. Okay. And I've actually had a few claims and I'm really glad I had it because sometimes people screw the title up and do it improperly and then you've got a mess on your hands. That's tens of thousands of dollars. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's a mess. So title insurance is one thing. Again, if you're getting it with your mortgage company, it's required because they want to have policy covering them. You can get a simultaneous issue for a few hundred bucks. That covers you as well. So that's one thing. The second thing is you're going to have prepaids, they're called, and you're aware in most house payments today, you have a house payment that is principal and interest to the bank. And they also collect approximately a 12th of taxes annually and a 12th of insurance annually so that they can build up the escrow account with those two things in it to pay the taxes out of that and pay the, the homeowners insurance out of that to ensure that the taxes are paid and the insurance is paid.

That's why they do that. And to set that up will usually be three or four months of each of those. So whatever your tax, property tax is, Bill, is four months of that. And whatever your homeowners insurance is, four months of that to set up your prepaids, they're called. It's prepaying and setting up that escrow account to be able to do principal, interest, taxes and insurance, PI ti, as you go along. Typically, there'll be a survey fee. Usually that's not super expensive. It's, if it's in a neighborhood, $75 to $200. Typically, there's an appraisal, usually $500 to $1,000 somewhere in there, depending on your area. And so you're gonna have these miscellaneous things that fall under the heading of closing costs, and they're depending on your area and what your tax rates are and all those kinds of things, you're probably looking at about 3%.

Okay, awesome.

But again, what I would do, since you're such a planner and you're doing this well in advance, get in touch with one of the Ramsey trusted real estate agents in the area and have them give you an example of a house in the neighborhood you might be looking at. Okay, here's what a closing document might look like, a closing statement. And you can say, okay, there's those things Dave was talking about, line item down through there. And then you're going to be able to say, okay, on that house, a $300,000 house. It was $3,000. Oh, okay, so it's 1%. Oh, so now $6,000. Okay, it's 2%. Right. That kind of stuff. That's what you'll be able to figure out. And it'd be fun for you, as a first time home buyer to see all the items that make up this vague category of closing costs, because they all actually do make sense. They're not rip offs. They're all things that you do need. You do need a survey. You do need an appraisal. You do need title insurance. You do need to set up your escrow account. All those things are fine. There's nothing wrong with them.

But when you add them all up, you kind of get a sticker shock moment. You go, they're ripping me off with these closing costs. And, no, you're not really. You just got to know what they are, and so dig in there and figure out what they are. And that, that'll help you get a good, solid estimate, because it does change from area to area, and a lot of it is based on the, in the cost of insurance and the cost of taxes in your area. That'll throw this number a bit. Are you going to pay any points upfront? Which I wouldn't recommend, but are you paying an origination fee, which typically you are going to pay, which is a point or a half a point or something like that to get into the loan. All of that's going to be figured in there. And again, a good real estate agent can help you map all that out. And also, Rachel, we've got a great website on our stuff@ramsaysolutions.com. real estate that goes into a whole bunch of that stuff. It's an information hub.

Yes. And there's just so many details. I mean, as you were even just talking, I was like, oh, my gosh, so much. And that we have so many, so many blogs, articles, points of contact for people in your area to go and to get yap to get this all, because sometimes I feel like you, it takes a little bit to actually learn it. So go to Ramsay solutions.com real estate and go and read research. And again, you can find Ramsey trusted pros there on that website, too, if you want to call just like you mentioned, to reach out to somebody.

Yeah. And just, it's okay to nerd out on it. One of the things when you're doing something the first time is it's always scary because of the unknown.

Yep.

And so the more you know, the less fear there is. And so just dig in, get, get sample closing statements on a property the size you're talking about, look at it, and then you can back into it and tell every, every bit of that. Allison is with us in New Jersey. Hi, Allison. How are you?

Hi, Dave. It's such an honor to speak with you. And Rachel, I follow you on instagram, and I just have to say I love your post about all your Walmart finds and all your books and everything. So I'm a fan of.

Thanks, Allison. Appreciate that.

How can we help?

So I'm in a really difficult situation right now, and I don't know what to do. So I'm getting a little emotional. So I'm in my early forties. I've been in a long term relationship, and my boyfriend is not sure if he wants a baby. I want a baby. And I'm running out of time. And my question is, I don't know if I should take out loans to be able to even just start the process and afford, like, egg retrievals or if I should get a second job. I just feel like, honestly, kind of like, trapped. And I'm not sure what to do.

Wow.

I'm so sorry.

That's a harsh, harsh situation.

Well, how much?

I mean, Allison, there's two things. Go ahead.

Well, women that are. Yes, that are at your point. And they freeze their eggs. They kind of go through a process to say, can I freeze time for a little bit while it kind of buys you time. How much is all of that? Have you looked into all that cost wise?

I have. I've met with the fertility clinic and it will be about. Well, they think that I'll need multiple rounds just because of my age. I did have an initial screening and it looked like I had some empty follicles. They did a retrieval, actually, and it wasn't successful, but all my numbers went up. And so it looks. Anyway, things are looking better, like, physically, but it's really expensive. So it would be like, probably like for three or four rounds, which the doctor thinks only that it will be about like $70,000.

Just for egg retrieval.

Well, for.

I mean, a single. A single round of IVF is around 7500.

Well, I guess that means for everything if I end up, you know. You know.

Okay, let's. Let's break this. I'm just. This is an emotional and a very important topic because nothing's more important to me than babies. I love babies. And so I want you to do this, but I want you to do it in a wise way, not in a way that. Because 70,000 is not a second opinion.

And I would get.

You need to get six more opinions. Yeah, you need to go shopping on this, kiddo, because I think you can do a simple egg retrieval. I'm not a doc.

I'm not throwing out a number. I have no clue what that is.

But, I mean, we've done. We've talked about IVF on here many, many times. Times. And 7512, five in there, not 70 grand. And that's the full freaking procedure. So you need to get the. That's. That number's not right. I want you to check, and then you got to decide about your relationship issues and how you're going to go forward with all that, too. That's a whole nother bucket. 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, folks. Dave here. You want to hear even more life changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place. Like the Ramsey show, smart Money, Happy Hour, and the doctor John Deloney show. You'll get real talk about life, relationships, money, and your career. Plus, the app lets you browse by topic like debt, business, or selling your home. Get the content you want whenever and wherever you want to listen. Download the Ramsey Network app today.