Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Wash all Ramsey personality number one bestselling author of the book money's not a math Problem. It's one of our quick reads. A whole 74 pages long. So you can take care of it in one setting. And you will change your life if you read that kind of stuff. She's my co host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225 Jennifer's in Pittsburgh to start this hour. Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Dave, it's wonderful to speak to you.

You too. What's up in your world?

Well, we are recent graduates of FTU, and we have a debate in our household. We have $42,000 worth of consumer debt, and our mortgage is $69,000. So the whole $42,000 is all my student left. Right now, I am waiting on a public service loan forgiveness application. All of this documentation is temporarily paused while the government changes the servicer from Moheila to us Department of Education. But when I applied, the website says that I have 24,641 eligible for forgiveness. So, as you know, if I diverse the student loans forgiven. Also, if we pay towards this 24,000, that's eligible for forgiveness. That money is gone and could have been years to pay down the mortgage. So that's my husband's case. So in our case, is it okay to go out of order and start tackling this mortgage while we're waiting on the application to be processed?

So you owe 40, but 24 is possibly forgiven. What would be wrong with paying it down to 24?

Well, there. There's nothing wrong with that idea. I'm on board with that.

Oh, but he wants to pay the mortgage instead. He wants to pay the mortgage instead. Cause he's planning your death. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. I hope not.

Well, it's what you said.

How old are you guys?

51.

How old is this debt?

It is about ten years old.

And what is your household income?

168.

Okay. How long are you willing to wait for the government to tell you that they're not gonna forgive this? I mean, they're gonna forgive this.

I think you were right the first time, Dave.

I mean, so right. Historically speaking, yes. But every day on the news, we have the Biden administration for giving more debt.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did you just tell me you believe the news? Worse than that. Did you tell me you believed the Biden administration? So let's move on. Let's go back to the original argument. Okay. Now what's your household income?

168.

Okay. So you only have $100,000 in debt. You make $168,000. So you should be. Both of these should be gone very quickly. Agreed.

Agreed.

So we're really not arguing about anything but four months.

Right? It's just kind of like the order of operations.

Four months. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Four months. So how long are you going to wait before you say, I give up on student loan forgiveness? I'm going to pay it off.

Okay.

How many months are you willing to wait?

Here's, here's my, my honest answer. The, the website saying it's going to take until July of this year. So I'm going to. I can hold off until July of this year.

Okay. On, so let's just. Let's give you till September.

Okay.

Because it doesn't matter. Okay. Because you could go and pay down the loan first from 40 to 24, and then you could reach over and pay off the mortgage if you wanted to. Let the 24 sit there for a couple of months, but don't let it sit there one day longer than when you're ready to actually get to it. So I want you to plow through all of this, 100,000 out of 168. You should be done in 18 months.

Okay.

That's fair.

And so if we put the 24 at the back of the 18 months and plow through. Down to 24 first and then through the mortgage. We're really not having a discussion here about some. It's a theoretical concept because it's all going to be gone by the time you blink. So your husband's. It's ridiculous to even have this conversation. Do it in the correct order, pay it down to the 24 and then pay off the mortgage. And then. But when the mortgage is gone, if it's, if there's. If you've not gotten the forgiveness, pay it off.

Okay.

And do it in 18 months. And do it in 18 months. So really, when you, when you couch it in that order, whether we put the, the 24, the 40, whatever in front of the 69, it, we're arguing about four or five months difference is all. So it's a non issue.

Hey, do you have a chunk of money saved somewhere?

No, we don't. We have our $1,000 emergency fund. We're just baby step to it. Yeah.

So you're doing everything else on the, on the plan till you got to this.

Correct.

Okay, good. All right, well, I'll. I mean, I'll give you a shot at getting the forgiveness. I don't think it's going to happen because the numbers are horrendous. It's like 3% of the people that apply for forgiveness actually get it. So when Biden comes out and says he forgives $7.7 billion, it's absolute statistical hogwash. It's a political move because he didn't, he made it available to them. But then when they go to the education department to get the forgiveness, it's not actually happening. I mean, it's like you have a 3% chance of getting student loan forgiveness.

Not to mention what it has, you.

Know, under, under those programs. It's just the actual facts. And it's not a political thing. You make it a political thing, but there's a stupid politicians, but, but they're, they're, they're promising you crap they're not going to give you. That's the oldest game in the business. Right. So anyway, put it at the end of the thing. Give it a shot. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you, maybe you did it just right. Maybe you're one of the ones that sneaks through and gets free 24 grand. I'm not opposed to you getting the money. So go get it. But don't sit around five years from now and go, I'm still waiting on a promise of a politician.

Yeah, a lot of what's been forgiven is really old. You've been paying, you did your payment plan, it's long since been finished, and you never got your payout.

Yeah. So that's how I would handle your situation, hon. You guys are thinking about it. Don't. But sometimes it helps me, folks, when I'm looking at this stuff, that the argument we're actually having is very theoretical. When you actually break it down by the dollar differences or the time differences, it's an irrelevant amount of time or an irrelevant amount of dollars. Just do it.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's not, it's not a big deal. Okay? So if you want to do it his way, it's, it's. Or you wanna do it your way? In 18 months, you're gone.

It's gone.

You're done either way. And so you know which one we put in front. Whoopty doopty. As long as you freaking do it. Now, moving on to the other thing, folks. When these articles come out from the Trump administration or the Biden administration or somebody that claims to be an administration, and they tell you that they are responsible for seven, the last one, 7.7 billion of debt forgiveness. You need to read the article because actually that particular, this latest pr push in an election year, if you actually read the article, he wasn't a new program. All he did was take credit for what was already in place. It was, the program is already there that they're not executing already. And he held it up and look what I did. You didn't do anything. It was already there. You just put it out in the spotlight and acted like you did it. And it's not, and that's not a political thing. It's just how these twerps in Washington, DC do stuff. So don't let Trump or Biden take credit for your life and don't wait around on either one of them to fix your life because your life's going to suck if you do.

This is the Ramsey show, so here's a quick math refresher. There are only 24 hours in a day, so your business needs to streamline tasks that are time suckers and focus on activities that make money. So to reduce headaches as they scale, smart businesses use Netsuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system. Netsuite helps you improve efficiency by bringing all your major business processes into one platform. So join the more than 37,000 smart businesses like Ramsey solutions that have done the math and graduated to Netsuite. And right now you can download Netsuite's KPI checklist absolutely free@netsuite.com. ramsey. That's netsuite.com ramsey. Jade Washaw Ramsey personality is my co host. Well, it's graduation season. Lots of people coming out of high school, coming out of college, coming out of whatever. So before you stick a crisp $100 bill, which is always welcome, by the way, inside a graduation card, why not give somebody the tools you wish you had? You know, you could get George camels breaking free from broken this is the millennial and Gen Z snarky, well researched version of what we teach. And it's really, really good. And it's selling like crazy, especially among the age group of new newly graduated folk.

Breaking free from broke, the ultimate guide to mo money, less stress. And George is the king of snark. That's one of the reasons I just love reading his stuff and hanging out with him. Ken Coleman just hit the bestseller list with this, the get clear assessment. Find the work you're wired to do. Wouldn't you think it'd be cool to get an assessment on the what you're wired to do?

Absolutely.

Especially if you're coming out of college or out of high school, that would be a cool thing. The assessment is included in here. About 100,000 folks have taken the assessment by just buying it off of our website. So that's why we put out the book on how to actually read and analyze the answers and the results of the assessment. And it's not a super lengthy thing, but it's very engaging and really, really helpful. Helps you figure out, you know, what you're good at, what you enjoy, narrow your job search down, all that kind of stuff. And we are now celebrating the 20th anniversary of the total money makeover. And so the total money makeovers had yet another makeover.

There you go.

There we go. And, of course, number one, best selling. Gosh, over a thousand weeks, it's been on the bestseller list now. Pretty crazy. 10 million of these puppies sold. Not a bad graduation gift there. You could add shades. Booking their money's not a math problem. Somebody doesn't want to read a bunch of 74 pages, it'll get right to the point and have a little jade attitude in there, and that'll help you, too. So just put all of that in the pile, go to ramsaysolutions.com, and that'll be a whole lot better than. Well, it'd be the kind of stuff you wish you had read when you graduated. Boys and girls, that's how that works. Andy is in El Paso. Hi, Andy. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi, Dave and Jade. How are you guys today?

Better than we deserve. What's up in your world?

So honored to be speaking to both of you. I'm a huge fan of the show.

Thank you.

So. No. Well, thank you, guys. So I'll get straight to my question, and I can provide more detail as needed. So my overall question is, should I remain with the company that I currently work for as a remote employee, or should I start looking for a new position? So, currently, I am a CPA. And the CEO of the company that I work for recently announced that they want to shift to more in office positions, but they have not yet mentioned what they plan on doing to the several employees that are 100% remote, scattered throughout the country. And the company I work for is in Iowa, while I am located here in Texas.

Okay, so if. If you don't move, you're going to lose that job if he pulls everybody in? Is that what you're saying?

Yes. Correct. Yeah, I would. At the moment, my wife and I, we don't have any intentions of leaving El Paso.

Wouldn't blame me on that, for sure. Pretty cool place. Yeah. So, all right. So I guess you're looking for a job to the extent that you think you're going to lose that one. Agreed.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I believe so. But I guess I'm just kind of, you know, I don't want to jump. Jump ship too soon when. No, they haven't provided much more detail. But then I also kind of don't want to.

How long have you been doing this.

Remote for almost two years now.

So the job since you took it has been remote?

Yes. Correct. Yes, I was hired.

They don't have any offices in El Paso. Never did?

No. Correct.

Okay. So they hired you remote, and the only question you've got is, are they going to keep the people that aren't? So he. We don't know. Could he be talking about the people that are in proximity to an office, need to come back to the office and the rest of you stay remote? That wouldn't be that unusual today, correct?

Yeah. And that's kind of what I'm hoping for. But again, you know, they've been kind of just tiptoeing around the topic and.

What would happen, maybe what would happen if you just asked your. Your. You know, who do you report leader.

Right. Yes. I have not had the opportunity to ask my direct boss yet, just because this was pretty recently, and we'll probably have that conversation pretty soon. And my boss is over there in the headquarters, so I know they'll have their ear more closer to the ground to kind of sniff out any news, but. So I haven't had that conversation yet, but I do.

Yeah. If I were your boss, I would not be offended at all if you called me in the next 20 minutes, as soon as you hang up from us, which is what you should do, and you said, hey, I saw this thing. I really like what I'm doing, and I want to know if this means you guys are going to fire me.

Right? Correct.

I wouldn't be offended. I wouldn't be offended. You're asking for clarification on a vague corporate communication crappy announcement.

And I might even like, what Dave said is pretty direct, like, are y'all gonna fire me? I might just ask, hey, what's the expectation gonna be? Is the expectation that all of us at some point come to office here in Iowa? Is that going to be the expectation? I'm just. Just so I can plan. I mean, you don't necessarily have to say what exactly you're planning on doing.

But, yeah, just you should be on the phone in the next 30 minutes and get some clarification. And if you can't get clarification, that would worry me greatly. Non clarification from corporate goobers means they're getting ready to screw you, right?

That's what that means, I guess. Right.

So, but if you talk to it, if you talk to him and he does a politician's dance, go get a job because it's coming. Okay. But if you talk to him and he goes, hey, man, we're just talking about the people in the neighborhood here. They don't need to be living 20 minutes from the office and not coming in. But you're in El Paso. We don't have an office in El Paso. We're gonna be leaving you alone. Okay, cool. Worry over. You need, instead of sitting and stewing over this, make a phone call, man. But, yeah, that's, you know, and then figure out what your situation is and. But to the extent that your probability of losing the job means you need to look for a job. Yeah. The more I become convinced I'm going to be on the street, the faster and more intense my job search. I'm going to be reading everything Ken Coleman writes and getting out the proximity principle and paycheck to purpose, and I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, and it's not going to be these goobs.

Yeah. And for me, there was just a little something that I read into that going, if you don't feel comfortable.

Yeah.

Talking to your leader. There's something else there, kind of strange.

It's the problem with remote. You don't have good connection. You don't have, you don't have high quality relationships. You got a Zoom call, you know, or worse than that, a freaking email, you know, and so you. It's hard to communicate with people when you're not in, you know, 80% of communication is body language and tone. None of that happens in an email or a text, and it happens poorly in a Zoom call. And this is the problem with remoting. So. But it doesn't mean you have to stop doing it, but you just need to dig to push through the problem, you know, get. Let's meet the challenge head on and find out what the flip is going on here. Jake is in Fort Myers, Florida. Hey, Jake, what's up?

Hey there. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it.

Sure. How can I help?

So I have a question for you. My wife and I, you know, we didn't have a 28 to three comeback story like yours, but we're definitely in the midst of one. We got married last year in 2023. Prior to that, in 2022, we were living together. We had a cash flow problem we could barely afford. We could pay for our rent and pay for living expenses, but we had relatively no savings to put away ever since then. We got out between then and now, we got out of that lease, moved home. We were lucky and fortunate enough to be able to move home with our parents saved up there. We got married, and now we're living at a totally different place, and we're through a lot of risk taking through our jobs.

Okay, so where are we today? What's your question?

The question is, I don't know if I should. If I'm ready to buy a house or I need a second car.

How much money do you have piled up now? After this turnaround, my wife and I.

Have stashed away approximately 116,000.

Very cool. Why don't you do both? Buy you ten, buy a $10,000 car, and then put a down payment on a house. You got enough?

Yeah, it's a little bit more complicated. Yeah, I just paid off the one car that we have. Yeah, 14,000. I took that away.

What's complicated? Dude, you got the money to do it. You start, you turned it around. You probably got your confidence shaken by being stuck in the mother in law's basement for a while, you know? But hey, you know, go get you a house, man, or go get a rental, but buy a $10,000 car, for sure. This is the Ramsey show.

This show is sponsored by Betterhelp. Hey, it's doctor John Deloney. One of the most common questions I get is how to get something off your chest, maybe something that happened to you, something somebody said to you or something you've done that you're worried about, because bringing it to light will disrupt your entire life. Getting things off your chest is important, but it's hard to know where to start. Therapy can be a safe, effective place to get things off your chest, to learn how to say hard things out loud, and to figure out how to work through whatever is weighing you down. I've been blessed to have a great therapist who helps me get those heavy things off my chest. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give betterhelp a try. It's flexible because it's online, so you can suit it to fit your schedule. You just fill out a short questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost. Get things off your chest with betterhelp, visit betterhelp.com deloney today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. H dash e dash p.com deloney.

Jade Washall Ramsey personality is my co host. Thank you for hanging out with us, America. Christine is in Atlanta. Hi, Christine. How are you?

I'm doing great, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call.

Sure. What's up in your world?

Well, I feel like I should have been listening to you a long time ago, so my husband passed away of COVID three years ago, almost. Not quite. And he had a little bit. A little bit of life insurance policy, and I panicked, and I went ahead and paid my house off. It was like $225,000 left, and I used it all. And I'm, like, concerned that I made a mistake by doing that, because I went to my friend's financial guide. He's like, you're so far behind at 55 for what you should be. And he made me feel stupid for doing that. And then I started watching you, and you're all about the house payoff. I was, like, good with that. But then you do talk about how your income is your wealth building thing, you know? And so, anyway, I. I'm a realtor, and I have just had a slow down, screeching halt on sales, and I'm just afraid any, you know, what I've got left in savings, I'm going to have to start using that to supplement.

Well, what would.

That's where I'm at.

First off, I'm sorry for your loss. That sounds terrible. Second off, this financial guy is. Is not the guy. No one should be making you feel stupid, right? Yeah, no one. You know, you're going to them for advice. You want to learn, but they shouldn't be making you feel stupid. I would not look at this as a big mistake. I would go, okay, you did. It's not like you went out and bought something you couldn't afford, or it's not like you went out and you got, you know, you paid off your home, which is something that we would teach you to do. Yeah, you may have gone a little bit out of order, but maybe not. I mean, let's think through this. Do you have any other debt?

No.

Okay. Do you have any money set aside that you could call just savings that's liquid?

Yes. So I have what's left. Like, that. We work together to build, like, I have 300,000 in a high yield account. But after listening to Dave, you're like, yes, but like, high yield accounts aren't the way you build money. Like, I hear, Dave, you say that all the time. So I've got that, and then I've got. I don't understand the. I've got a rollover. There's something called a rollover that I've got, and a Roth and then a beneficiary, and all of that adds up to be about $140,000, $145,000.

But here's the bottom line, okay? You don't have any bills. Your income is slowed down, and you have $300,000 that you can eat out of until you get your income back up. Right? Right? You're doing Christine.

Think you are.

Christine, you're okay?

Am I okay? I feel panicked.

Why are you gonna. How long is gonna take you to burn 300 grand?

And you're not gonna burn 300 grand.

May take you ten years to burn 300 grand, because you're not. You're not supplementing this it to the tune of $8,000 a month. You don't. I know you're not. Just by listening to. I mean, you take a thousand here or a thousand there to make sure you got food coming in till the real estate business picks back up. Right, right, right.

I guess I've just been not sleeping at night ever since talking to that guy.

Like, why would that guy. Let me help you with that guy. Okay, here's two words for him. You're fired. Now who's stupid? Okay, so, yeah, because he's an idiot. You don't need to talk to him anymore, okay? He's a classic financial guy who's a nerd and has zero relational capabilities. So you need to go. If you want some help, click on smartvestor at Ramsey solutions. They will not have that approach. They'll have the heart of a teacher, because the more you understand, the less anxiety you'll have, the more knowledge you have, the less anxiety you have. But let's just take a real basic, simple thing from the 6th grade, okay? How much are you taking out of your high yield savings account to pay bills with right now, while things are slow per month?

Well, nothing so far.

Okay, so really, what are we worrying about?

Well, I guess, like, I don't know. I guess I just. After talking to him, I just gotta.

Quit saying, after talking to him, he.

Just threw you in.

He does not count. Okay, I want you to count on you for a minute. You just use your brain. Your brain's fine. You don't have a broken brain. Okay? So your brain says, I haven't used any of the 300 grand. If I started taking 2000 a month out, it would last me for 150 months if it made no interest. You know how long that is? 1214 years.

Right.

Okay. You're okay. Okay. You're okay. You have such a big, stinking pad that there's nothing you're gonna do that's gonna screw this up. Okay?

You have no house payment.

Unless you go blowing. Unless you go blowing 100 grand a year somewhere and burn through this money in three years and don't work, you're okay. And you're not that person. Okay? So you don't. You need to stop. Stop it with the anxiety. You're very capable. You're smarter than the guy you met with. You probably have more money than the guy you met with.

Do you have kids at home, Christine?

No, unfortunately, we did not. Just a four legged one.

Okay. Four legged. Four legged dog. Kids. Count. What I would do if I were.

The others, but yeah. All right, so, yeah, so you need to get somebody in your corner that has the heart of a teacher. That's our smart vesture pros. Sit down with them. They'll help you with how the rollover works, how the Roth works, and how the beneficiary position works. You need to understand those three things because you feel confused, and it made you feel like the guy was right when he made you feel stupid. And you're not stupid. You just don't know something. I'm not stupid, but I can't work on my new car. When I lift the hood on it, I have no idea what I'm looking at. Looks like a spaceship. Okay? But I'm not stupid. I just don't know how to do that. And if I have a mechanic that tries to make me feel stupid, he's fired. It's not his job. His job's to fix the car. Right? Not. Not assess my car fixing abilities. So, no, you did the right thing by paying off your house. I think you've been very wise and very conservative. The only thing I want you to do is to engage the knowledge gathering process here to get your confidence up.

Because the more confidence you have, the less anxiety you're going to have, the better sleep you're going to have, the more real estate you're going to sell. Because a salesperson who thinks they're broke smells bad.

Right? So would you use some of that money into, like, the 300? Would I. Should I put that into, like I've been looking?

I'm probably going to move some of that into something other than a high yield, but only after you understand it and only after you realize and internalize. And you're. As doctor John Deloney says, your body recognizes that you're okay because your body thinks you're gonna die and it's freaking out.

Yes, it. You're exactly right.

And that's just due to this guy's speaking shame over you.

Yes.

Okay. And so I just. I rebuke. I rebuke that. Okay. It's just bull crap. It's just bull. You're not that. You're not that girl. You're not a dumb girl.

He was saying that it was, like, a low interest rate. Why would you do that? And I guess that's what I wake up at the night.

He's wrong about.

I might invest some of it for that reason, but it has. I'm not ever going to do anything after this phone call if I'm you. Because of that guy, right? He's completely invalid. He invalidated his position. He invalidated his opinion. He invalidated his relationship. He's fired, for God's sakes. Don't let him have any more free rent in your head.

Yeah. Cause he's somewhere eating a sandwich. You're here calling us and worried to death over what he said, and he's out to lunch.

He was out to lunch when he met with you?

Yeah. Hey, why do you think that is, Dave? Like, you know, obviously, we have really.

Great smartphones, academically trained math nerds. We look at the math, and we are aghast if someone didn't do the math right. And we think everyone should be able to understand it instantly the way we math nerds understand it. And so we're just like, oh, God, you're an idiot. You know, and that's how our stupid non relational math nerd brains work. And he shouldn't be in the business he's in because he's in the wrong business, because he's bad at it. His job is to coach. His job is to inspire. His job is to teach, not to shame. And so he's a rookie or he's an idiot, or both. This is the Ramsey show. If recent times have shown us anything, it's that the least expected events can and will happen, and we have to deal with them. That's why everyone who has a family counting on them needs term life insurance. For over 25 years, the only company I've recommended is Zander Insurance. That's because Zander is a broker that works for you. They search all the top term life plans out there. And find you the best rates and make the process of getting coverage quick and easy.

You can apply online or over the phone in just minutes and they offer plans with super competitive rates that dont require a medical exam, making it faster and simpler than ever to get the coverage you need. I trust Zander for all my insurance needs and you can trust them too. Dont put off getting term life insurance until its too late. Go to zander.com or call 803 564282 for a fast and easy quote today. Thats zander.com or call 803 5642. Guys, I got to tell you, thank you. Jade and I are impressed with all of you. We appreciate you so much. We know that you've been subscribing to the show and clicking the follow button and the share button and telling people about the show and sharing links of the show and leaving five star reviews. We know this because the numbers are ridiculously up on our podcast numbers. Our YouTube numbers are wow. Scary. Thank you very much. Many of our talk radio stations around America are seeing bumps. Thank you guys for sharing and spreading the word about the Ramsey show. We appreciate you doing that. You are our only marketing program. Without you we're screwed.

So please spread the word. And those five star reviews, they're very helpful. Thank you. They do change the algorithm. Seriously, the way these platforms decide what they're going to pop in front of someone randomly is not random. It's based on your all's reaction. And you guys five star reviews and you guys number of subscribers and all that kind of stuff and the number of downloads, all that. So thank you guys very, very much. We appreciate you. Our numbers are just amazing. Jackson, Mississippi. James is on the line. What's up, James?

Hey, Dave. Jay. I'm six. I'll be 64 in August. I'm still working. I'm retired from military, so I get, I get a military retirement. Thanks for your service and you're welcome. Thank you. And I'm going to start the baby step one tomorrow. This is how far behind I am. I have about $102,000 in debt. Other than the house, me and my wife together make about 140,000 a year. And here's my main question I wanted to ask you. I've only been listening to your show for about a week now. My son turned me on to you years ago, but I didn't pay attention. I wish I had thought I'm an idiot, but anyway, I have $9,500 in a stock from the company I work for. I work for a food service company and their stock. I have $9,500 in it, and I have 16,000 in a 401k. My question is, and this is my logic, if I draw that out, I can pay all my debts off except for the house, the two cars, and one other. One other deal that you're not going to like. So what do I need to do? What do I need to do with that?

Well, you're going to need that 401k later, because we need to build you a nest egg to retire with after we get you out of debt. Agreed. So I would not cash out that 401K. I'd let that ride. I would cash out that stock. And what we're gonna tell you do is list your debts, smallest to largest. You said you had a hundred thousand in debt, right?

Yeah, yeah, about 102. Right.

And how much of that? How much of that? Your mortgage.

None of that's my mortgage. That's without my mortgage. My mortgage.

I thought you said you had 14,000 in a. My God. What do you owe on your cars?

That's problem. My truck, I just bought it. It's brand new. It.

Sell it?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not kidding.

What else? What's the other car?

It's my wife's car, is a rav four. I think we owe it, like, 12,000 on it.

That's not a problem.

That's fine.

Not the problem. Yeah. Half of your debt is the mistake you just made.

A timeshare.

Yeah. No, half your debts, a truck.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

How much do you own, the stupid timeshare?

29,000.

Yeah. And you got screwed on that. That's legalized fraud.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I just. I just listened to you this morning on a previous podcast talk about that.

Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. So, hey, man, I'll help you. You can still do this. It's not too late. But you're gonna have to pay a lot of attention, and you cannot make big mistakes, so you're gonna have to undo the truck. And I don't know how you're gonna get out of that timeshare or if you can get out of it, but I'm gonna begin to negotiate with them if I'm you hire an attorney and try to work your way through that timesharing. See if you can get out of that debt or pay it off, one of the two. And then we've got to work what we call the debt snowball, and that's listing your debts, smallest to largest. So take that $9,500 worth of stock. We're going to throw it at some of your small debt. And, James, we'll pay for you to go through financial peace University, because I think you're ready to listen now, and we'll help you do this stuff. We'll show you exactly what to do first, what to do second, and how to do this. But you and your wife are going to have to sit down and get very, very serious about this and say, gosh, in seven years, we've got to have this mess cleaned up and have a pile of money.

Thing is, though, if they make 140, if they say, okay, we're going to live on 100, they take that stock, that. That all but pays off the raft for it, put a couple thousand with it, he gets out of that truck, buy something easy in cash. I wouldn't.

If he got out of the timeshare, then he's almost there. Yeah.

And I wouldn't put too much towards legal fees for that timeshare. I mean, it's 29,000.

We'll knock it out and. But, I mean, if you could pay $5,000 and get out of it.

Yeah.

With a good lawyer that works that stuff, then maybe.

But point is, he can be done in a year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you need to work on your house.

Yeah.

And start piling up cash. And you got seven years.

That's right.

And then you're 70.

Yep.

So it's very doable. But you're gonna. You're not gonna be driving that truck.

Yeah.

That truck's problem. It's the biggest problem in the whole thing.

Lucky for him, he's got his military retirement.

Yeah. That's helpful. But that's part of that 140.

Yeah.

So I'm just going to tear into this thing, man. I'm going to. I'm going to make a. Make a sprint to the finish. That's what you're doing. And you can do it. We'll help you. Christian will pick up and he'll get you signed up for financial peace University. We'll pay for it. You and your wife both work on this stuff, James, and then you make the sacrifices to win. And you still have time to turn this around. You do not have time to half butt do this. You've got to do it all exactly the way we teach. If you don't do. If you don't sell a truck, I don't know how you're going to turn the corner here. If you don't bust that timeshare in the mouth, I don't know how you're going to turn the corner here. If you and your wife aren't working the thing together, I don't know how you're going to turn the corner here. So you've got to do it. You don't have a. You don't have a second, 3rd, 4th opportunity to figure this out. You've got to do it, and you got to do it now. But it can be done.

I'm not saying lose hope, but I am saying freaking pay attention. Lean in, baby. Lean in. We'll help you. It's what we're here for. Bella's in Bozeman, Montana. Hi, Bella. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Sure. How can we help?

So, I started listening to your radio about two weeks ago, and I just wanted to say thank you for motivating me to pay off the debt that I have, my mom. So, about one and a half years ago, I've borrowed from my mom €7000, and I've been pretty much kicking the can and neglecting that debt for, you know, for this entire time because, you know, it's my mom, so. So you're like, you know, there is no aprs on it. So I wasn't pressuring.

It's a different type of interest when it's family.

Right, exactly. But now since I've been listening to you guys, I feel so embarrassed. And, I mean, I've been embarrassed this entire time because, you know, I don't want her to know that I'm struggling with money, but.

How much do you owe, Bella?

€7000, which is probably equivalent to about 757. €7000, which is equivalent to seven or $8,000.07 or $8,000?

Yeah. Okay. 1 minute. So she's out of the country?

Yes.

Okay. And what do you make? What's your house income?

So I think last year I made about 40,000, and I think this year it's going to be a little bit better because I've been working seven days a week and. Just.

Good for you.

Trying to, you know, good for you.

So what will be wrong with scratching together $7,000 over the next few months and just paying her off? Why would that not work?

That's the problem. Because every time I put her to the side, I have my little envelope with $1,000 inside of it for the emergency. And whenever I have a leftovers, you know, I put additional money inside of it. And there is always a couple of months, there is some kind of emergency that I have to put that money.

And you want to know what that sounds like to me? You want to know what that sounds like, Bella? When I listen to people and they say month after month, I have unexpected costs come up. I know that they're not doing a very detailed budget. Are you using every dollar?

No, I'm just writing everything on a piece of paper.

All right. Well, before we get off the line with you, Christian is going to pick up and we're going to make sure you have every dollar. And on there you can plan and be very detailed each month about what your expenses are, and it's going to help you plan for those, and they won't be emergencies anymore. So you'll be able to keep that thousand dollars set aside and make some progress.

This is the Ramsey show. Dave is in Seattle. Hi, Dave. How are you?

Pretty good. How's yourself going?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

So I got kind of a tough family money related question. I don't know how to approach a family member as far as regards to money. The long story short, unfortunately, my mother passed away, and my uncle has a 50% stake in her house, and he came with me with an offer to cash me out. But it was about a couple hundred thousand dollars low. Lower than what market analysis reports and multiple realtors that I've talked to have said that place is worth. And I don't know how to give them the tough answer or ask them just, hey, this seems really low without burning a family bridge.

Mm hmm.

So I'm just having a tough.

If you go back to your uncle and say, sure, I'll be happy to sell you, but I'll sell it to you at just a little bit below market value, which is a whole lot more than you're offering. You think he's going to get mad and run away?

Mad, essentially, yeah. And then the house would go on the market. It was my grandfather's house.

Okay, put it on the market years.

Ago to err, put it on the market. I'm trying not to burn a family bridge.

I know you didn't burn a bridge.

If he acts like that, he burned. He burned the bridge.

You can't shoot. You can't choose who burns bridges except you. But you're not burning a bridge. You didn't say, go to hell. You said, I want a price.

Yeah.

If he gets mad, he's the one burning a bridge. You can't control him. But we're also not going to be scared of his reaction by $200,000, especially.

If you have it printed out and you can show them say, hey, I did a little research. Here's market value. If you can show me what you're looking at and, you know, make it more of a conversation rather than some sort of a. Yeah, I'll be happy.

To sell it to you at a little bit of a discount, but not. Not this steep. And if you don't want to do that, it's okay. Let's just put on the market and we'll, you know, we'll just both get our money out of it.

Yeah. Because I guess the other I'm kind of an issue is he does live at the property, too, to where he would have to, because he owns 50% of it. He would have to move.

Yeah, it's not your problem. Okay, so let's walk back through. How old are you?

25.

Okay, and how long does your mom pass?

About five years ago.

Oh, my God. That's been going on a long time.

Yeah.

And so he's been sitting there. Has he been paying you rent? No, she's living in the house rent free for five years.

Yeah. The house is paid for.

Yeah, I know. But he's not paying any rent for your half?

No.

You think that's fair? Well, do you think that's fair that you take your 20 year old nephew, whose mother just died, and don't give him anything for his half of the asset? I think your uncle's a skunk.

Yeah, I think you're.

If I have a 20 year old nephew and his mom just died, my job is to take care of him, not pee on him. Yeah, right.

No. Yeah.

Hello, son. That's. Seriously. So, you know. And you're. You're scared of this guy?

I was just about to say that.

This guy's a lot. This guy's a problem. All right, now what's the house worth? Honey.

Everybody said 900 on the low end.

Okay, so let's pretend it's worth 900, has no debt on it, right?

Yeah.

Okay. So if you sell it, you guys are going to spend somewhere around 10% of that in selling expenses. So it's going to cost you close to 100 in selling expenses. So you're probably going to net 800. So your half is worth somewhere around 400 if you all sell it.

Yes.

What did he offer you?

He offered me 320 or 360.

Okay, that's not bad.

All right.

Okay. You said it was hundreds of thousands off. It's not your half. After selling expenses. If you all sold, the house is worth some. I mean, the thing worth 800,000, right? After expenses. Okay. It's worth 900 if we take. If we take 10%, 12% of expense, offer expenses and negotiation off of appraised value, it's not going to be that far off. You know, if you pay a 6% commission, as an example, if you had other miscellaneous expenses, you negotiate a little bit, you pick up the title policy for the buyer, whatever, and your net profit on this property is going to be somewhere in the 800 range. Your house worth somewhere around 400. He offered you 360?

Yeah.

Take it.

That's not bad.

All right, you.

Where did you get that? You were getting a hundred thousand or 200,000 less than it was worth.

Just talking with people, trying to know.

How did you get there? I mean, the numbers you gave me. Do you see how I just did what I did?

Yeah, I've seen how you're doing that. Yeah.

Unless you didn't think you were gonna have any expenses selling the property.

Expenses.

Yeah, but even then. Even then it's only $50,000. Is your half of that? Yeah, half of 900 is 450. And he offered you 360. So you thought that hundred thousand was what was off?

Well, because the realtors on the low end of said 900 to where the house next door, similar square footage, sold for 1.1. For the low end of 900 to where? It just seems a little off.

Wait a minute. The realtors are off?

Well, the numbers are a little low at 360, this seems like.

Well, no, they're $40,000 low. If the house is worth 900.

He's saying it could be. You're saying. What you're saying is, based on comps, it might be worth more. Is that.

You told me it's worth 900, and then you change that. So which number are you going with? That is the value, son.

On the low end is 900. The high end would be 1.1.

No. No, you are not. You don't have. You don't get to have a 20% range in value on a million dollar house. You need to figure out what the house is worth. Okay. All right. If you want to be fair, exactly fair. Here's what I tell you to do. Order an appraisal, pay $500 for an appraisal, find out exactly what the house is worth, and quit talking about ranges of 100 to 1.2. That. That's not even. Several people in that conversation don't know what they're talking about. The things worth something in there. But that's not a. That's not a range that you don't. If you're getting ready to put a house on the market, you don't go. It's worth somewhere between 901.2 that you, you got. We got comps. This thing's worth 1.15 and we're going to put on the market at 1.2 and hope, you know, you figure out what it's actually worth. So let's get an actual appraisal or a very, very professionally done, high quality realtor doing a comparative market analysis. Either one. Then take 88% of that number, you follow me? For 12% for expenses, 88% of that appraisal number divided by two.

And that is what your half is worth. And if you do that, and the appraisal is 900, the 360 offer is not a bad offer. And I'll get up off your uncle then. That's what I would do. This is the Ramsey show. Well, the money in marriage weekend here on the hill at the Ramsey event Center in October with Rachel Cruz and doctor John Deloney spending three days with you talking about money and marriage. It's fun, funny and a little bit blunt. Yeah, they go there and sold out. You can't get a ticket for October. It's gone. Sold it out two weeks ago.

Wow.

And the tickets are six. They start at $6.99. The VIP's are a lot more than that if you want to sit down front and hang out, do all that kind of stuff. And it's a two and a half day deal. So the gang decided we're going to do another one. Since that one sold out, we're going to do it in on Valentine's Day 2025. So Valentine's Day, we're going to another money and marriage event with doctor John Deloney. Rachel Cruz went on sale, I guess it was yesterday and had gum, y'all. Thank you.

It's about sell out, isn't it?

It's not sold out, but I mean, wow. Popular little product here.

It's a great event. Well, they're wonderful.

The two of them are funny and fun and they're irreverent and they're real and authentic. Authentic and all that stuff that people like. And so you'll communicate better. You'll strengthen your emotional connection. You'll get on the same page with money. And hey, it's two and a half days away from the kids, so shut up. It's a money and marriage getaway. Valentine's Day 2025. On sale now. Tickets begin at 699. And please don't wait around. You'll have more fomo when you miss this one.

And it's still a full weekend, right? 13th through 15th.

It's a what now?

It's still a full weekend.

It's a full weekend. Yeah. It's what? Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Thursday? Friday, Saturday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And ramsaysolutions.com events get your tickets to the 4000 of you or so that signed up for the Dave Ramsey's investing essentials that ended last night. I taught at the last two nights, 2 hours a night. Thank you. Wow. What an incredible turnout to that virtual online event. Not my favorite thing to do. I prefer to be in front of a live studio audience instead of a bunch of blinking lights and a camera. But George Camel and I had a good time.

And they had cookies.

And we had cookies. We had american cookies. Chocolate chip american cookies. I'm just saying I was jealous. I was homemade watch. And then George, bless his little gluten free heart, he went and got some gluten free cookies. And you could taste the fact that there weren't any little glutens in it. I'm just saying. You could tell.

Yeah, you can tell.

They might. I'm not sure those are real american cookies, but we had a lot of fun with it and all the investing stuff. And man, we went super nerdville. And if you missed it, we'll try to do it again for you someday. But because I've never taught that material before, it was a lot of fun to teach. Jennifer is with us. Jennifer's in Denver, Colorado. Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

My question is, how do I go forward supporting my family financially? I just kind of went through a little separation. We're back together. We're going to work on our marriage, go to counseling. We just had our first child together. He's three and a half months old. And neither of us are working right now. I'm staying with my parents and they're supporting me and my son. My husband is actually in rehab kind of waiting to start working as soon as he can. So I'm just at a point where I'm not sure exactly where I need to go and what to do to support my family financially at this point and not.

You've been through hell. What's he on?

What was that?

What's he on?

It was alcohol.

Okay. And so he's in an inpatient rehab?

Yes, he is.

Good. Good for him. He's getting some help. How old is he?

Yes, he is 29.

Okay. How long has all this been going on?

So we met actually last year in May. So a year ago and we got married pretty quick. And then within the first week that we got married, we got pregnant. And so.

Yeah, but he was an alcoholic before you met him?

Yes, he was an alcoholic before, and while I was pregnant, I was working two jobs at one point to kind of support us financially because he was just drinking.

Okay. So now he's on. Now he's on the wagon and he's on. In rehab. All right. Have you gotten some help for you to be able to walk through and keep good, solid boundaries and have reasonable expectations of his healing to go forward?

Yes, I am in counseling.

Good. Okay.

Yes.

Good. But you have a place to live. You're with your mom and dad, and you have a baby. And what bills do you have?

So I have a car loan. I owe about 18,000 on it, and I pay roughly 500 a month for it.

What's it worth?

It's worth probably 12,000 at the most.

Who said?

Carmax.

Now, that means it's worth 15,000. Okay.

Okay.

Carmax is offering you a wholesale price on it because they want to buy it and resell it for a profit. So you go to Kelly blue book, KBB.com, and look up private sale, and you'll see that car is probably worth 15 or 16. Do you have any money at all?

I don't.

Are you working at all?

No, I'm going to start working next week. Hopefully. I have a job interview tomorrow so I can start working again.

What will you be making?

22 an hour. And I'll be working three night shifts from 10:00 p.m. to 06:00 a.m. a week.

Okay. I want to start talking about scraping up some money and getting this car sold.

Okay.

It's a burden. You need to get about a $5,000 car that you pay cash for and get rid of this $500 payment.

Mm hmm.

It's. It's a huge problem in your life right now, mathematically, isn't it?

Yes.

Yeah. If you didn't have that thing around your neck, this whole conversation would be different. Agreed.

Yes.

How are you paying for it now?

So my parents have been helping, and also they've been paying me to help take care of my grandmother. Her health isn't the best right now, and so I've been kind of pitching in to help with her.

Well, your parents are good. They've been giving you a good safety net, and they're taking care of their grandbaby, their daughter, and they're trying to love you well. And you're being good. And that you're thinking about how I can create a sustainable life.

Yeah.

So. And you're smart because you're not afraid to work. And so you're going to get in some work and then if we can get your expense level way down and get your income up to where you're stacking cash while you're with mom and dad, and he comes out of rehab in 90 days, clean, and then both of you get to work, you can start building a life together then.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, you can do that. So we got it. Because he's probably in there for what, 90 days?

He can be there up to nine months. He's been there almost 60 days right now, but he can't start working until he's hit the 90 days. So he's kind of in limbo waiting to work.

Okay, cool. All right. But is. Does he transfer to outpatient after 90 days? Is that what he's doing?

So he's gonna still live at the same place.

He's got some good insurance. Who's paying for his insurance?

Yeah, Medicaid.

Good. Okay, good. Yeah. Well, his job is to get clean and stay clean because he's a dad now and a husband. He's no longer a party animal. And so good. Good on him that he's doing the hard work. And your job is to demand of him, if he's going to be in your presence, to get clean and stay clean. That's your job. That's what your therapist is telling you, right?

Yes.

Okay, good. That's the way it is. Because you got to be careful on the codependency side of this equation, too. So you're good. You guys are a sweet couple. You just. You just walked head on into a buzz saw and now you're fighting your way through it. And I'm proud of both of you for throwing your shoulders back and facing this. You're going to be okay if you keep facing it. Have you plugged into a good church, kiddo?

I have not. No. I have not been to church in a while.

I would recommend getting that family and that element of your life around you so that because a whole person has a spiritual walk, emotional healing, intellectual healing, financial healing, work in all these different areas of our life to create a whole life that is sustainable. Okay.

Okay.

All right. And you hang on, kiddo. We're going to help you. I'm going to put you guys through financial peace University. We want to walk with you and be part of this wonderful healing story. We want to see what God does in your life, it's going to be pretty cool when we get the other side of this and we look back and go, wow, someday you got grandbabies. And you look and you go, man, this guy sure glad he straightened his life out. This is the Ramsey show. Jade Washaw Ramsay personality is my co host. Thank you for joining us, America. Hey, guys. We're about 12 miles south of Nashville in a wonderful little town called Franklin, Tennessee. The Ramsey campus is here, and we have a big, beautiful lobby with a great coffee shop in it with homemade cookies. They're chocolate chip, by the way, and of course, and some coffee, and it's all on us. Come by and visit. You can see some of the history of Ramsey in here. You can watch this show. We do it live on the glass from one to four central time every weekday. And we'd love to have you come by and see us.

There's usually 50 to 200 folks sitting out here. Sometimes there's two, and sometimes there's 300. So you never know, but. And in the middle of that lobby is also the debt free stage. Brandon and Morgan are with us. Hey, guys. How are you? Better than me.

Better than we deserve.

I love it, brother. Where y'all from?

Rockford, Illinois.

Cool. Welcome to Nashville. How much debt have you guys paid off?

$672,000.

How long did this take?

Four years and nine months.

Gee, man. Wow. What was the range of your income during that time?

165 to 335,000.

Jump. What do y'all do for a living?

We're veterinarians.

Ah, so you got the practicing gear, huh?

Yes, we do. So can I guess what the type of debt was?

Yeah, two vet bills.

Student loans?

Is that what it was? Student loans?

We had 57,002 different vet trucks. 80,000 in student loans.

That's not. We're large animal veterinarians, Dave.

Yeah. Okay, I'm getting that.

And then 385,000 when we bought into the clinic as partnership, and then 150,000 for our mortgage.

Okay. Wow. I thought. I thought it was all student loans.

There was.

Glad to hear it wasn't all.

There was 92,000 in student loans before that for my half of student loans. And then we got married in June of 2019, and then we really got gazelle intense on the rest of the debt.

So did I hear you paid the mortgage off, too?

The mortgage debt? Y'all are weirdos.

Wow.

How old are you two weirdos?

30.

30? I just turned 32.

You're 32 years old? 100% debt free. And you own part of the practice or all the practice.

A portion of it.

A portion of it. That's a big practice then. Okay, what's the house worth?

Or now it's like 230,000.

Way to go, y'all. And you got two fabulous careers, both of you vets, both of you doing large animal and you're kicking butt. You're making 300 plus. Way to go, y'all. You're rock stars, man. Very, very cool. What got you on this Ramsey stuff?

Got you so fired up you want to.

We had a couple great mentors who are also veterinarians. And when we were students, you travel around to different clinics, and we got to go and stay with doctor John and Lori out in Idaho during our clinical year of school. And doctor John sat down with both of us the separate times that we were out there. And he walks through a budget with you, and he introduced us to this plan.

Wow. Thanks, doctor John.

And doctor John is now a long term missionary, and he had us start teaching other vet students about this through a christian veterinary mission as an organization.

Wow.

And then any vet student that rides with us, we try to share the financial piece teachings with.

Thank you very much.

Wow.

Wow. You guys are amazing. 30 years old, $672,000 paid off in four years and nine months. What do you tell people? The secret to doing that is work hard. You worked all the time.

Work hard. Don't complain. Just have long term vision.

You have no idea how it pays off. So when doctor John sat down with you and went over this Ramsay stuff, did you have any pushback? What was the hardest part of taking it on? I know when I sat down with Doctor John, I went out later than he did. But we have to run our own vehicles when we're doing large animal work. And he told me just to buy a lot less truck than what I dreamed of coming out of school with. So that was a hard pill to swallow. I had this dream of it.

She got a pretty nice truck.

Yeah. For those of you that don't know, the only people that are dumber about pickups than construction people are veterinarians. Very true. Buy a truck that's 60 times what it needs to be to go visit a horsey. I mean, come on. Wow. Way to go, guys. I'm proud of y'all. Excellent. Very, very cool. So you report back to doctor John. Does he know he's this big of a success?

We keep in touch email, and we told him when we paid off our debt, and we'll try to send him a video of this now.

You need to because he gets. He gets a lot of credit in this particular version of a debt free scream. I'm proud of him, too. I appreciate him. I never met him, but I hope to. Or maybe I haven't. I don't know.

I have a question for you guys. I mean, we have people calling all the time that want to be vets, and they're looking at 400,000 each of student loans.

How'd you come through this with only 80?

Yeah, we both worked during vet school. Part time job.

I didn't think you were allowed to do that.

And before vet school, too. Keeping it low during undergraduate, before you get to vet school is a huge part. Choosing the right school, I gotta believe, is part of it.

In state, we went to an in state, smaller undergraduate school, and then in state vet school, and I did undergrad in three years. I applied without a degree to get into vet school to try to save money that way.

All right, you heard it here first.

Turns out if your horse is. If your horse is sick, you don't care where the guy, what gal went to school. School. You just care if they can fix the horse. That's all we care about. How many of you asked your dentist where he went to school? You'd never did. Okay. You never did. You just said, fix this thing. It's hurting. Wow. Way to go, you guys. Very, very cool. You guys are made numbers. You guys have done nothing but work. You've had no life. I mean, you've been on beans and rice and you've been on not. I mean, you. You. That's a lot. Four years. 672,000. I mean, that's. We're talking 200,000. I mean, $150,000 a year. You're rocking it on the debt. Wow.

We just. We just live like we were in college still. We just. Same. Same budget, pretty much.

So when did you finish this? Have you ever had, like, a momentum shock yet? Like, you ran out past the end of this and you went, whoa, we now have a lot of money.

It was in March, so it wasn't very long.

Okay.

It has not been long.

Oh, so you haven't really felt the full effect of this yet?

Not yet.

All right.

When you start making $25,000 a month and you don't have any payments. Yeah, that'd be nice.

You guys are so used to living frugally. It's like when I said that, they.

Kind of went, huh?

Yeah, that's you.

Guys. Very, very, very impressive. Very impressive. So proud of you. And who's the munchkin? Over here.

Oh, that's Avery. She's two.

Avery is two. So while we're doing all of this, we have a baby too.

Yeah.

Yeah. Let's just put that in there.

Throw it in the mix.

Yeah. And you changed her life, and she doesn't even know it. Her mom and dad are such hard working, smart people. Wow. This kid's got a life ahead of her.

It's gonna be amazing.

Oh, how cute. That's fun. Nice YouTube picture thrown in there of the wrinkly baby. I love it. Very cool.

32 years old, paid for house, $335,000 a year income.

Yeah, that's gonna be okay.

Yeah.

I think you're gonna make it. Wow. Way to go, you guys. Very, very proud of you. Okay, so you tell people the secret is work. What else do you tell them? The secret is live below your means.

We know some people that have been doing a vet job for a long time, and. And they want to retire, but they financially might not be able to. So just work hard, stay to a budget, live within your means.

Yeah. Way to go. Very cool. All right, Brandon and Morgan, you guys are. You're amazing people. Thank you so much for being weirdos, normals, broke, and you aren't so proud of. You're going to be millionaires in 20 seconds, man. Where you're going. Wow. Very, very cool. If you're not already, by the way. So Brandon and Morgan and little Avery from Rockford, Illinois, a couple of veterinarians. $672,000 paid off in four years and nine months, making 165 to now 335. They rocked it. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Three, two, one.

We're debt free. Pretty stinking. Impressive. This is the random Ramsey show. Listen, you've been asking for it, and now it's finally here. So stop what you're doing, pull the car over, and head to ramsaysolutions.com store right now, because we've got brand new Ramsay merch. I'm talking t shirts, dad hats, yetis, and even a debt free sweatshirt right now, available only at the Ramsey store. That's right. You can wear your debt free scream and rock your favorite davisms, like, better than I deserve. And I included my personal favorite. We've got food at home. Your kids will know better than to ask once they see that shirt. So go check out all the brand new merch@ramsaysolutions.com. store today. That's ramsaysolutions.com store. Jade Wash. All Ramsey personality is my co host. Thank you for hanging out with us. Open phones at triple 8825-5225 so a lot of people misunderstand. That might be being too nice, what we teach about money or the baby steps, or they've just figured out that ten things Dave Ramsey got wrong is good click. That's good clickbait. And five things I disagree with Dave Ramsey on. It's good clickbait. And people will click on it.

And so they write articles or they do stuff or they post stuff in whatever, social media or some stupid Reddit thread or something. And so it's kind of funny, these. The mythology. So, our team made a list of things that are mythology.

It's people twisting your words at a minimum.

Yeah, yeah.

All right. I'll read the myth, and you tell me. You tell me where they got it wrong.

Okay.

Okay. So, myth one is only eat rice and beans and beans and rice.

Okay. If you really think I literally mean only eat beans and rice, then you got other issues, Dave.

A lot of people think that.

I know. Then they got other issues. That's just kind of Dumb. It's a metaphor. Beans and rice. Rice and beans is what people say is what you eat when you're broken. So eat broke people food. So quit going out to eat and spending $300 at a stupid restaurant when you're broke, people. That's all that means. But it doesn't mean every night. You're literally. I will tell you this to back up this myth. It's hilarious. We get anywhere from one to six requests a week. A week to co author a beans and rice cookbook with me.

Yes. I hear that a lot.

I could have done that a lot. But it's a metaphor, people.

It's not real.

Grow a humor bone. It's a metaphor. Okay.

I actually saw somebody say, it's not good for my mental health or my physical health to eat rice and beans every day.

Oh, God.

Ridiculous. All right, moving on. Myth number two, you have to pay cash for a house. Dave Ramsey says you can only pay.

Cash for a house.

Yeah.

Well, yeah. That's the best thing you can do, because the. I mean, the. The best way to get wealthy is get out of debt and stay out of debt.

Right.

Because it's their most powerful wealth building tool, is your income. So. Yeah. And the borrower is slave to the lender. And even if you're buying a house, you're a slave when you owe citibank money. I mean, countrywide, whatever. I mean, you owe somebody money on a stupid mortgage, you know? So it's not that yeah, I would rather you do that. I don't borrow money, period, for anything, ever. I don't need anything bad enough, ever. I haven't borrowed money in 30 years since I went broke. And it's one of the reasons I've got some money, because I don't give it all to some stupid bank.

Oh, yeah.

So that is the best case scenario. But it's not the only thing we say to do. We, you know, we say around here, if you're going to buy a house to do it on a 15 year fixed where the payments no more than a fourth of your take home pay, best thing you can do is put 20% down because you avoid PMI, which is $75 a month per hundred thousand borrowed. So you borrow 300 grand. Is $225 a month just going to buy insurance for the mortgage company in case they foreclose on you. So that's why we tell you all that, and then let's get out of debt. Let's get the stupid thing. But if you put down 5%, you're a first time home buyer. 10%. And you take on that PMI, you just need to know you're taking it on. And you take on a debt, you just need to know you're taking it on. And then you need to get about the business of getting it paid off because it's standing between you and being wealthy.

Love that.

It's a blocker. But I never told anybody. I will always tell you if you can figure out a way to do the 100% down plan. I like it.

Do it. Yeah, why not?

All right.

Myth number three. $1,000 emergency fund is enough to cover all of your emergencies.

Never was, never will be. Baby step one is not a $1000 emergency fund. Baby step one is a $1000 starter emergency fund. When I did that 30 years ago in doing the baby steps, 20 years ago doing the baby steps, I didn't then think it was enough. It's not enough. It's not supposed to be enough of an emergency fund. It's there for the little emergencies to keep from knocking you off the emotional wagon while you go about the business of getting out of debt. But it's not enough. Emergency fund. Of course it's not. But if you sit around and wait till you save $10,000 to start getting out of debt, your butt will never get out of debt. And once again, you've bifurcated and diluted all of your efforts, and you lose. So. But you're trying to look for some stupid excuse to not face this stuff, then you can figure out a way to lie about something we said here.

Yeah, I hear it all the time. Dave ramsey's out of touch. A $1,000? That's not enough for an emergency fund.

Dave ramsey's out of touch. There's no question about that. I am definitely out of touch, but it has nothing to do with. I thought $1,000 was enough.

Got you. All right, let's talk about myth number four. Getting out of debt is a math problem.

I've never said that. I've always said it's a. It's a behavior problem. Personal finance is 80% behavior, 20% head knowledge, and, I mean, the closest thing I ever said to that was the title of your book, which is the opposite of that.

It is the opposite. Money is not a math problem. Wow. That's interesting. 80% behavior, 20% head knowledge. All right, myth number five. You have to work 80 hours a week forever.

Never said that. Said, if you'll work like no one else later, you can work whenever you want. But my grandmother did say there's a great place to go when you're broke to work.

Yeah. I think people get up off of.

Your couch potato, quit watching Netflix when you're broke. Go make some money, and then you don't have to work so stinking much.

Short term sacrifice, long term gain.

Yeah. Nobody wins without sacrifice. But it's not a permanent thing. I haven't worked 80 hours a week my whole life.

It's not sustainable. All right? This is an outright falsehood. It says you got to pay off your home before you start investing.

Well, we never said anything close to that, ever. Not once.

Never.

Never in 30 years did I tell you that? So, I'm still. I'm just really good clickbait. I mean, just use Dave Ramsey. Something. Something salacious, something lies, something big. You know, Dave Ramsey once killed my pet. You know, I don't know, whatever it is, you know? I mean, I don't know. Just make up something and put it on there, because everything on the Internet is true. Abraham Lincoln said that. So, I mean, come on, guys. Seriously. It's just this stuff.

It's just way off. It's way off. Well, what do you. What do we say? We don't say that you have to pay off your home before you start investing.

No. We say you need to get out of debt before you start investing everything but the house. And that's very clearly outlined in the baby steps, and anybody who actually looks at it with an honest, intellectual eye knows that.

That's right.

But a lot of these people, they're not trying to. They don't actually believe this. They're just twisting something up because of good clickbait.

They want an excuse why you can't do it.

And for everybody on social media that says it can't be done, for everybody on social media, that's a victim. For everybody that's a whiny little baby boomer. Gen X, Gen Z, Gen whatever. Millennial, any whatever Gen you are. And you're a whiny little victim, a little wuss. For every one of you that says it can't be done, that it's impossible, that America is dead, and we need the communists to take over. For every one of you that are out there, there's a thousand of the thousand people that proved you wrong by actually going and doing this stuff.

Or if they want to get it right, they can just pick up the copy. Total money makeover.

There's only 10 million copies of that thing floating around. You probably can find one. And so, you know, it's on a lot of people's table as it makes a nice coaster. Some people sit it on their coffee table. It sits there for four years before they read it, and then suddenly they'll pick it up and read it when something bad goes sideways. So it's out there floating around. Pick it up. You can do this stuff, people. It, you know, we joke around and we read the mean tweets and we all that stuff here on the air because it's entertaining and with you guys. But the truth is, anybody out there that's telling you folks a lie under the heading of it can't be done, and therefore, they're stealing your hope. Those people are evil hope stealers. People who steal other people's hope are evil, especially to further their socialist, communist, left wing agenda. It's just wrong. It's evil. And so it aggravates a crud out of the oaths of us here at Ramsey. We joke around and cut up with you guys about it. But, you know, our job here is to show you mathematically, psychologically, spiritually, relationally, how you can win.

Because we really believe you can win. And then somebody wants to distort something to steal your hope. It, you know, it pisses us off because you're. You're we. We work for you guys. We're here for you. We exist for you. So for those of you out there who get it, thank you. We love you. This is the Ramsey show. Henry's with us in San Antonio. Hi, Henry. How are you?

I'm doing great. I have a first world problem. It's a problem that all of your listeners hope to have.

Okay, cool.

My cars are paid for. My house is paid for. I have money in the bank to cover emergencies. I have a traditional brokerage account with about $150,000 worth of stock in it. And I have an IRA with over $3 million in the portfolio. And I only have $7,500 in the Roth. But I'm 77 years old and Uncle Sam is. Wants me to pull the money out of my IRA on their schedule, and my taxes on that is going to be going up year after year after year. I want to understand what I can do to try to pay the minimum lifetime income tax.

Hmm. Way to go.

Yeah.

How much of the. How much of this did you inherit?

Zero.

Okay. And you got a net worth approaching $5 million, counting your house, right?

Well, no, no. Well, the house is only worth about half a million.

Yeah. Okay. So 4 million anyway. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, but. But no, when I turned 65, we had the cars and all the debts paid off.

Yeah.

And I had about $250,000 in a 401k.

Right.

And they. My wife had retirement. Well, I've got Social Security. I've got her retirement. I can afford to be.

You've done very well. Done very well. Congratulations.

I decided I could go into some risk.

Yeah.

And I told the company I was retiring from, I want a lump sum.

Yeah.

And they gave me about a quarter of a million dollars. And so with that half a million, I made some fruit investments, but reasonably conservative investments, and that's grown by a factor of six in the last twelve years.

Well, it should. That's perfect. That's well done. Very well done. So you've got. You got 3 million in a traditional. And you have required minimum distributions? RMD's, yes. And they're. They're forcing you to pull a percentage of that out based on your age. Each year. It increases each year. It's on a curve. And when you pull it out, it becomes taxable. And you're asking how to avoid that if you're going to consume that money, if you're not going to give it to a charity. I don't know of a way to shelter it.

I don't need to shelter 100% of it.

Just. I do not know of a way to create a shelter for that. It simply is. It's traditional. Traditional. It's taxable. You're being forced to pull it out with required minimum distributions. We call them RMD's, and I do not know how to avoid that. Obviously, if early on, you had rolled it to a Roth, you would have paid the taxes on at that time of what it was worth, what it was worth at that time, and it would now be tax free. And Roths are not subject to RMD. So I'm 63. I have moved everything into Roth for that reason and paid the taxes now so that the growth later I don't get bid on. But I'm. But I'm 14 years ahead of you right now. So are. You're 14 years ahead of me, depending on how we want to look at it. But anyway, the. So you've done a great job, and what you're asked, the question you're asking is, excellent, but there are no shelters for our income. The only thing you could do, to the extent you increase your charitable giving to a, you know, a certified 501, then. Then you can.

Obviously, that is deductible. But you're giving the money away to keep from giving anything to the government. So you're giving away, if you give away $1,000, you would have paid taxes on that. That would have been $300. So you're giving away a thousand to keep from paying the government 300 at that point. But if you're. If you're just depends on what your goal is. Your goal. You asked how to avoid taxes. The only way I know to do is give it away, because I do not know of another thing you can do with that that, you know, shelters it. Obviously, if you create any earned income at 77, this is all unearned income. But if you create earned income, then that qualifies you to continue funding Roth iras. But that does not help you shelter these RMD's.

So let's talk more about that. So, obviously, we always suggest for people to start with the Roth IRa IRa or Roth 401K option for that reason. But for people who already have money in an IRA, we would say, hey, don't start rolling it over until baby step seven.

Right, right.

So at what, I mean, obviously, you know, he's 77 years old, he's got $3 million. At what point, if somebody's got a decent amount of money in an IRA, would you say, hey, it's not going to be worth it for you to roll it over? Or I'd only roll over this. This portion of it. Where does that kind of stop loss?

Well, if you've got the cash outside of the 3 million, let's say he had told me he had another million dollars if he wanted to start converting big chunks of it to Roth, pay the taxes out of that other million dollars. But you're still not avoiding the taxes, which was his question. You're going to pay the tax.

Yeah.

When you. But at least let's say, for instance, that. Let's say, for instance, that. That we were talking to somebody who was 60 years old and they had $3 million, and if they had an extra million to somewhere else and they wanted to use that million to convert this 3 million to tax free growth, okay. If you're 60, when you're 67, that's going to be $6 million.

That's right.

All right. And when you're 74, that's going to be $12 million and it's tax free because back when you were 60, we spent a million.

So it's worth. It's worth it to do that.

Yeah. Because you got $12 million there at 74. In our little scenario we ran, that's tax free. So if we had caught Henry back then and if he had extra cash. He doesn't have the cash right now to pay it.

No, he doesn't, because he's got.

The big chunk of his wealth is in this 401, so he doesn't have the outside cash to pay the taxes on the whole thing. If he wanted. If he's in great health and wanted a plan for the next decade and say, okay, this 3 million is going to be worth seven or 810 years from now, and I would rather that seven or eight to be tax free and not subject to RMD's, then I'll pay the taxes now. And any of it he wants to think that way about, he could pay the taxes, but you don't cash the 401k out to pay the taxes. It's extra money at baby step seven. This is. This is playing beyond getting out of debt, beyond basic investing. Now we're playing up in the. In the stratosphere with strategies and. And I'll throw out a thing I threw out last night, too, on the. On that wealth, on that investing essentials thing we just did. I mean, I'm 63. 100% of mine's been converted to Roth. Here's the beautiful thing of that. Not only am I not forced later on to do the RMD's your children, but I can never touch it and leave it to them.

And there's still no tax on it.

Yeah.

So let's say I live to 93, 30 more years, all that money I have in my retirement, how big that is going to be, and it's 100% tax free when inherited. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Now there's a play. This is the Ramsey show. I know you work hard for your money, and the key to keeping more of it in your pocket is by making a plan for your spending with a budget. And everydollar is the budgeting app that I use personally because it's perfect for looking every dollar you make in its little president face and telling it exactly where you want it to go. Just like you told that guy in traffic, exactly where you wanted him to go. And even better, everydollar walks you through the entire budgeting journey, so you always know your next right step. Download everydollar for free in the app store or Google Play today. Jade Washaw Ramsey, personality, is my co host today. Today's question comes from Greg in South Carolina.

Yeah, he says, my wife and I are 35 years old and have four young kids. I make about 100,000 a year before taxes. We've been paying on my student loans for three years, and our student loans are one year away from being paid off. We pay about $1,000 a month. The loans were provided by a family member at 0% interest. And they have said they really don't care how fast we pay them off. Should we continue with the same intensity to pay these off, or is it okay to slow down and start investing and planning for the future? Seems like we should shift gears and start planning for the future. As they have said, they don't really care how fast, how fast we pay them off. What do you recommend? I'd pay them off. You said that you're one year away from having them paid off, so finish paying them off. One year is not going to stop you from shifting gears, as you said, and planning for the future. Part of you planning for the future is you paying your debt off so that you can take those next steps. So I would do it.

I would do it. I mean, I think that family members might say, oh, we don't care. We just want to help you out. But I don't, like, I just don't want to owe anybody money, and I certainly wouldn't want to owe my family members money. You're a year out. Honestly, even if you were two years out or whatever, I would still tell you to pay them off and do so with intensity and get them out of your life, period.

Yeah. And I don't really know how to ask them, but if they don't care, if you ever pay it off, maybe they should just forgive it.

That's what makes me think they really do care.

Yeah. Yeah. Because if they do care, sick parent, toxic crap. We're trying to teach them a lesson. We're trying to teach them responsibility by making them pay it back. Geez, come on. Yeah. So, yeah, what we're gonna do is we're gonna keep them in debt to us, and because the borrower slave to the lender, boys and girls. And when you eat Thanksgiving dinner with your master, it tastes different.

Yeah.

So people, don't loan your kids money. Don't loan your kids money. Never loan your kids money. If you have some money and you want to give your kids some money, fine, but don't loan your kids money, you freaking control freak. Don't loan your kids money. I'm going to teach them a lesson. They're 30. They've already learned all the lessons you got, okay? They're past your lessons, you control freak. It's all that is. If you want to bless your children, bless your children. And if they're worthy of being blessed, they're good people, and they're not going to screw up. And you're going to help them move ahead. And you've got some wealth, and you're sharing it with your family. That's great. But don't loan your kids money. That's from the old guy. Michael's in Denver. Hey, Michael, how are you doing?

Awesome. How about you? You, too.

Better than I deserve. How can I help?

Well, I took care of my parents until they passed away back in November of 2021 and June of 2023.

Wow. I'm sorry.

And then I found out that. Yeah, me too. It's been tough, but things worked out as far as financially were concerned for me, because I was able to pay off my debt and make sure that my dad was taken care of for as long as we possibly could. All that fun stuff. But I had an uncle that also passed away, and he wants. I've got an inheritance coming to me from that, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.

How much?

About 200,000.

Wow.

Wow.

You got the proverbial rich uncle.

Apparently.

I knew somebody had it. I've always heard about it. You're the guy.

I'm the guy. Yeah. I have a $250,000 note left on my house and have no other debt. I have a 401K going with my work. I've got. I don't have an IRA or anything like that or Roth Ira set up yet. I told him to do that, but I've got an HSA going I've got.

You're already doing everything smart. Just pay off your house, dude.

Yeah, okay.

I just.

I wasn't sure because it won't pay off to the house fully, but.

Yeah, but what do you make?

At least drop down? It would help about 75.

Okay, so how quick you gonna pay off that little bit of balance?

Well, I plan on. I was thinking about re amortizing the.

Balance, but I wouldn't re amortize. I pay it off.

You don't want to do that. That's just going to give you a lower payment.

Pay it off.

Right. Okay.

Have you got any other money laying around?

Unfortunately, no. I just got the. I got fifty k and in a. About ten in an HSA and that's about it. I have my emergency fund of about four or five months.

And your parents estate is not going to yield anything.

The reason why I'm debt free right now, the reason why I have a nice house and all that stuff, is because of that.

Okay, so it already has yielded, but it's not all of that. But you're not getting any more from that. Okay.

Hey, can I throw something in here? When was the last time you did something really fun, like a really great trip? Something for you?

15 years.

Okay. You need to do that, too. You need to do something fun. And you've been surrounded by a lot.

What would. What could you do? What? That would just be mind blowing for $10,000.

Well, there's a gaming convention I want to go to, but I mean, I could always do like a cruise or something like that with some friends of mine.

Yeah, do a cruise. Gaming conventions. That's small potatoes. That's nothing compared to the cruise. What's the location you've always wanted to see?

Australia? New Zealand.

There you go.

On an australian New Zealand cruise. It's going to cost you a little more. Ten grand to do it. Right? It's going to cost you a lot.

Right.

But Jade's. Jade's right. Jade's right. Drop 15 on that and go do. Because I got to tell you, man, great barrier Reef. Are you a diver, by chance?

I am not.

I'd like to learn how to, but.

I'm 54, just had a heart attack.

The Great Barrier Reef in 2020. It is an. It is world class. It's amazing. Australia is a fabulous. It's a fabulous country. You need to go do it. You need to go to it. Yeah. Book you a nice cruise. Jade's right. Good idea.

He just sounded like he's been taking care of parents and doing all the hard work.

He's been doing the right things. He's a good guy. And, yeah, you need and 50. So, yeah, go to the gaming convention and go to Australia and then put the rest on your house and then sit down. Look at how quickly, over the next three to five years, we can knock off the balance of whatever's left on that house after doing that. But you're exactly right, folks. We tell you there's three things you can do with money. Have fun with it, give it and invest it. And you should always do all three. And I almost left out the fun one.

That's what I'm here for.

Jade is here for the fun. That's what it is. Jen in Maryland. Speaking of inheritance, Dave, I wanted to give a huge thank you for a recent comment about inheritance. Someone sent in a question about whether they were entitled to encourage others to pursue the baby steps since they had a leg up by getting an inheritance, just like that guy did. And he said, your answer relieved a burden from my heart. I wasn't completely aware of it. I received an inheritance from my father, a nice amount, not life changing, but I've always felt a little guilty, like I had it easier because of that than other people. And I have rarely taken good care of the money. And I have more than I started with. I've used the required minimum distributions for very positive family experiences like trips. I could have blown that money, but I didn't. I've been a good steward and I shouldn't feel guilty. Thanks for telling me I shouldn't feel guilty.

Oh, gosh, not at all.

Amen.

You know what I think? I think, Dave, that the footprint that Ramsey has had in society, I think we're going to see more and more people who leave inheritances, leave inheritances and that say, oh, I received, I had a rich uncle or I had rich parents, and that's great. Like, that's the whole point. Like you, it's generational wealth that you're building, and a good man is leaving an inheritance so that you can also do the same thing. I think that's incredible. You should not feel guilty about that.

Yeah, she's quoting the Bible there, boys and girls. A godly man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. There you go. And so you put yourself in a position that you not only have taken care of yourself at retirement, instead of sitting around waiting on somebody else to take care of you, like the government, but on top of that, you've taken care of other people in your family. You've been a blessing to your community, and then you leave an inheritance. Also, see, this is why you do the stuff we teach here. It's being a grown up and stuff. This is the Ramsey show.

What up? What up? Doctor John Deloney here. I have some good news and some bad news. So I'll start with the bad news. The money and marriage getaway 2024. My favorite Ramsey event just sold out. The good news, we're adding another weekend for this event. Don't miss this chance to get away to Nashville with your spouse so you can build a stronger marriage by strengthening your communication skills and getting on the same. Paige, listen, no more lame chocolate hearts or stressing over fancy dinner reservations because this money and marriage getaway is going to happen over the Valentine's Day holiday. This is your weekend to get away from the noise and the insanity of everyday life and focus on your marriage. Early bird tickets start at $699. And if you want a platinum level ticket, get it quick, because last year they sold out in less than an hour. Go to ramsaysolutions.com events to get your tickets today. That's ramsaysolutions.com events.

Jade Washaw Ramsey personality is my co host today. The best way to make the most of your money is by creating and sticking to a monthly budget. Jade, you and George and Rachel have done a bunch of our webinars on how to use every dollar and the results of people learning how to use everydollar from you guys. When people get on this budgeting app, and it's the world's best budgeting app, and they lay out a full paycheck planning, and they start working the baby steps, it changes everything.

Everything can't be stopped.

Yeah.

I'm about to start rolling out another series of webinars on everydollar, so stay tuned.

Yeah, very cool. Well, you can download the Everydollar app for free at the app store or Google Play or at the website everydollar.com dot. If you want to hook it to your bank, there's a small charge to do that. And we put, put in all of these other features when you do that, like the paycheck planning. And, and we coach you along through the baby steps. And it's a pretty stinking incredible experience. So that, that's how I would go at it if I were you. Guys. You need to get this on your phone right now. You and your spouse sit down and start making your money behave. Sarah's in Virginia beach. Hey, Sarah. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi, Dave and Jade. I appreciate your time.

Sure.

What's up?

I have a handful of problems. I'll start. I have a debt problem. I have a marriage problem, and I have a home problem. So I have roughly 60k in consumer debt that I've been. So I guess my rewind, I kind of casually started following the baby steps last fall, and I have my car paid off, but I keep getting set back to step one. And so I got really serious about it at the beginning of the year, and I also have 124,000 in student.

Loan debt in addition to the 60k.

Yes.

Okay.

I'm in the last year of my PhD program, and fortunately, very blessed to be able to work on that full time while I'm working. So that's very good.

PhD in what?

Aerospace engineering.

Okay. What are you making at your job?

115,000.

When you finish the PhD, what will that do to your income?

Unknown. I'm a civil servant, so I would.

Assume probably will step outside of civil service if you want to maximize an aerospace PhD, right?

Correct. I do have several benefits, so that is something.

You don't have any benefits that are equal. Double your income.

True.

And you can double your income if you have a PhD and you step outside of the government. Crap. Okay. Anyway, what's up?

So I'm trying to pass my debt. I have about $1,700 in childcare expenses every month as far as the marriage problem goes, so. Okay, so sorry. I'm baby step almost two. I'll be back to my thousand dollar emergency fund at the beginning of June.

Okay.

So then I'll go back to baby step two, but the marriage problem keeps coming up, and, like, divorce and separation is constantly coming up. And I'm wondering if I should pause the baby steps to try to, like, save money.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay. And so the third problem on top of that is in February, I had a dishwasher leak that, like, flooded my kitchen and ended up having, like, a mold problem. And the insurance company didn't remediate properly, and so we went back and forth with them a lot, and they halted all work. So I have a half demo kitchen, and they decided they didn't want to deal with it and just paid us out. My husband hasn't agreed to take the payout. So I have two insurance checks sitting on my kitchen table right now and no kitchen, and I'm about four months into that. So I'm wondering, what do I do about that?

How many children did you say you have? Honestly?

I have two.

What age?

Three and six.

Okay. I'm sorry. You are completely overwhelmed. You got babies, you got a PhD, you got a moldy kitchen, and you got a marriage on the rocks. There's a lot going on.

Yeah, it's definitely trying to swim.

Yeah. So what we need to do is choose which battle we want to fight.

That's where I don't know what to do. Like, I don't know, like, if the.

Home is worth it.

Like, I'm not necessarily sure if I'm ready to throw in the towel in my marriage.

I don't know that. And I would never encourage that unless someone's getting abused. But, yeah, I think you need to sit down with a good marriage counselor, whether or not your husband will go. I know, but you go without and you start making decisions using that marriage counselor as your. As the help for your brain to think clearly.

When are you done with the PhD?

Well, so far I'm on track for defense in spring of 2025.

Okay, so you got a while.

Can you put that on hold for three months?

I am unsure. People, once again, with my agency or my department have been asked to finish their PhD or take a leave of absence to finish it. I'm not sure, but that's really an.

I'm just saying, I would go into. I would go into this. I would go into this, whoever's managing the PhD program, and say, I'm in the middle of a bunch of personal crisis. I need 90 days to get through. Okay. And then I would sit down with a marriage therapist and say, we're going to decide what we're going to do here in 90 days. If you're staying, then we're going to deal with the house. If you're not staying, he gets to deal with the house. You're going to take the kids and go to an apartment.

Okay, so what do I do about the equity in the home?

You're going to get that as part of the divorce if you do that.

Okay. So, I mean, to add to this, I did pick up a side hustle, but, uh.

Okay, you know, you don't need a side hustle. Yeah, you make a hundred thousand dollars a year and you got 73,000 things coming at your face at the same time. You need to set some of those things down and decide which battle you want to fight. I'm going to set the PhD to the side for a minute. I'm going to set the moldy kitchen to the side for a minute, and I'm going to work on this marriage and make a decision about it. And he's going to decide we're all in and we're working on this together, or we're going to pull the plug on this puppy and he gets the moldy house and has to sell it as part of the disillusionment in the divorce agreement. And then we'll restart the PhD while you live in an apartment with two children that has an actual kitchen.

So do I just continue saving money until.

Yes, you pile up money. You are in the middle of a freaking hurricane.

Hate the idea of not paying off my debt.

You're going to get your debt paid off. You're going to pile up money right now because you're going to need a big old pile of money for all these different transitions you're going through.

Okay?

I want you to get out of debt, but getting out of debt is not the top of your list right now. You're in the middle of a storm. No, you're in the middle of several storms.

Okay.

At the same time, you just gave me a list of storms. I don't want any one of your five storms, okay? Okay. I don't want to be raising two littles with a moldy kitchen, a PhD program, and a husband who's off the ranch. And then I'm going to worry about debt in the mid. No, we're not worrying about debt right now. You got to get some of this stuff cleaned up and get. Get an emotional situation where you've got some. Some head space to be able to get back on the PhD properly and then be able to get back on the debt and finish the PhD, get your income up, get a fabulous career, go make two $300,000 a year with that, and go raise these kids with or without this marriage, depending on what the conclusion of that is. I hope it stays together. But you've got the, you know, you're not focusing on the marriage. You're focusing on everything else. And you're not focusing on the molding kitchen. You're focusing on everything. You got 73 things you're trying to do at one time and none of them are getting done. And so you need to kind of force rank what's real here and what's important.

Okay. Moldy kitchen is not real. Not important. I can get a different kitchen. Screw it. Okay. PhD can go on hold, but wait, we're taking a 90 day sabbatical on that. Screw it. It's sitting to the side, period. Done. Not, not, not negotiating it. I'm telling you what I'm doing. I'm not going to do it for 90 days. Okay? That because I have other stuff in my life that is more important than the PhD. I have more important stuff than dealing with contractors on a moldy kitchen because the stupid insurance company didn't do their job. Okay, so now what am I down to? I'm down to feeding my kids and healing my marriage or systematically ending it, because it's already ended and we just have to admit it. One of the two. Then when we get that solved, we can start to deal with the other stuff. We've got to force rank these things based on what's real and what's important first. And then you can work your way through these problems. Gosh, I'm sorry, honey. You got a boatload. This is the Ramsey show, our scripture of the day. When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.

Proverbs eleven two. Cs. Lewis said, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Daniel is with us in Milwaukee. Hi, Daniel. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

So, two weeks ago, me and my wife found out that she has preeclampsia. She called me on her way to the hospital after a routine appointment, and now we're facing the prospect of no longer being able to do a natural birth and kind of overwhelmed with some healthcare expenses here. Cost of a pregnancy in the area seems to be between 25 and $35,000, which is about the balance of my entire emergency fund.

You don't have health insurance?

I have a christian based health share. And we signed up as soon as we got married, changed her name, and then we found out about a month later that we were pregnant, and we were about two days too late for being covered.

Have you contacted them and told them this story?

I have, yep.

And there's no. There's no policy adjustment available? They're not going to help at all?

There is not. They will cover the baby as soon as he's born, but the birth is entirely on us.

Okay. What's your household income?

$120,000 a year.

And when did you get this news?

About a week and a half ago.

Okay. All right. Here's.

My baby's going to be born in seven days here.

Okay. Here's my experience. I would get on the phone with your Ob. Not your Ob secretary, your Ob. I want to talk to him or her personally on the phone. Freaking phone. I don't want to talk about practice management. I don't want their crap. I want to talk to the guy. The gal on the phone. You got it. Then I want you to tell them what's going on. No insurance. I need an advocate, dude. That's what you're telling him. Is your. Is your ob a man or woman?

He's man.

He's okay.

He's fantastic.

Great. I'm glad he's fantastic, because he's getting ready to be super fantastic. So I need him to help you get in contact or. Or even shop among hospitals that when you pay cash for this in advance, that they give you a 50% discount. They'll do it. Yes.

Yeah. The hospital we're going to does say that they offer a 45 or 50% discount for cash payers, and that still comes out to roughly $25 to $30,000, depending on if it's a c section or not. And with this being high risk, they don't. They can't necessarily determine that.

No, we won't know that until we know it. Okay, exactly. So you've already run that to ground then, correct?

Yeah. So it's looking like it's going to be after the cash discount around the amount of my entire emergency fund, which is about.

The great news is you're getting ready to have a baby. And the great news is you got the money to pay for. For it. I don't know anything else to tell you.

All right. Yeah. With.

With the bill. You just pay the bill. That's what your emergency funds for. This is called an emergency. The definition of an emergency is an unexpected event that you could not have anticipated. This. This pregnancy going sideways is an unexpected event that you couldn't have accept, you couldn't have anticipated. I'm sorry, but your emergency funds getting used. When you bring that baby home, you're going to not think anything about the 25k. It's no big deal. You can get you some more money. All right.

Thank you very much. I just wanted to say that every dollar has been absolutely fantastic for our marriage in this process and getting us to this point.

So thank you very much, man. I'm so sorry you're facing this, Daniel. Your wife's going to be okay. The baby's going to be okay. Your finances are going to be okay. The great news is you all have done such a good job with your lives and with your money, you've already run to ground something that most people don't even know exists, which is a 50% discount on labor and delivery if you prepay. You've already got that. Before you offered me the 25, I thought I was turning 25 into twelve. But you'd already turned 50 into 25.

I mean, and the only other thing.

Is you're doing good.

Watch everything like a hawk as their.

Yeah, look at every stinking expense, because making sure they didn't triple charge you for the eight dollar a piece Tylenol because that's what you're going to see on the invoices. And, you know, really audit the bills as they come in, because it's like real money we're paying here, especially for babies.

They put everything in there.

Insurance companies and people don't have to pay attention to medical bills. And sometimes you get triple billed on stuff. And hospitals aren't evil. They're not trying to steal from you. They're just incompetent in their billing processes, and they overcharge through the nose. Yes. $8 tylenol is a real thing.

Yeah.

Per pill. It's nuts. So, yeah, just, you know. But they, you know, that's what insurance covers it. So nobody looks at it. Right. Nobody. Nobody says, this is nuts.

Oh, no. He'll be looking. He'll be looking.

This guy's on it. You're on it, Daniel. You're like. You're like a superstar dad and husband.

Interesting. When it's your money, you suddenly care very deeply about what's on the receipt.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. If everybody was on an HSA with a high deductible and you watched what the money went to for the high deductible, then healthcare costs would be driven down by marketplace pressures.

That's right.

So that. That's the deal. But insurance, it just makes everybody blind and lazy. Zach is with us. Zach is in Indianapolis. Hey, Zach. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hey, Dave. How you doing?

Good, man. What's up?

Yeah. So, me and my wife are currently paying off student loans. We have $13,000 left to pay off. And so our plan was pay that off by around December and then start saving for a down payment for a house.

Good plan.

Yeah.

So I would throw one thing in there first. I would want you to get three or six months saved up before you start saving for that down payment.

Yes. Yep. So my step grandmother. So, my stepmom's mom is getting married, and she has a house that she is not going to need. And so she was going to sell the house. She just kind of wants to be done with the house, not have to worry too much about it. But she offered that me and my wife could rent it with the understanding that we would own it at the end of two years or get financing.

For it with the understanding you would own it at the end of what.

Two years, we'll debt financing to go ahead and buy it.

Oh, not. You would own it outright. I was about to say.

No, no, no, no. Yeah. So she said that she wants to keep our rent exactly what it is right now, which is very low. We're only paying $800 in rent. She would keep it that way. And she said that 100% of the rent money would go towards the purchase of the house and that the price would be locked in at 225. Right now.

What's the house?

225.

Okay. So it's not a bargain. It's just a little bit of rent credit.

Yeah, well, so you wouldn't.

You wouldn't have bought this house if this deal, either. You don't even like this house.

It's not our dream house.

No, I'm not that. You just don't even like it. The only thing that got you was she thought, I'm getting a bargain because I'm getting my rent credited. That's the only. Rent's low. And that's the only thing that got your attention. And if you were driving down the street and there was a for sale sign, this house, you would not have called on the sign.

You're getting $16,000 of rent credit, give or take.

Yes, but the other thought is, we would be living with low rent.

You are now.

And you have.

The question you have to ask yourself is able to rent aside because be.

Able to save up a lot with.

That low rent aside. You already have low rent. You have to ask yourself, would you have bought that house with it being $16,000 cheaper? And the answer probably is no. It's not like you're making bank on this deal. And you probably wouldn't have even had your eyes on this house if she hadn't said anything.

It's not a good reason. It's not a deal. It's not a deal. I'd walk. I would just rent where you are and pile up cash. Yeah. You would not have picked out this house, Jade's wright, if it was on the market for 225,000, minus $16,000. So what? $209,000 or whatever that comes out, you would not have bought that house. The only reason you're getting sucked into this was the relationship. And then for a second, you thought you was getting a deal. Don't do it. That puts us our, 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. If you're a leader, your personal growth matters for your organization because whatever you lead can only grow as much as you do. I know from experience I've been CEO of Ramsey solutions for over 30 years, and now I'm sharing that leadership and business coaching experience with you on the entre Leadership podcast. I'm taking your calls and helping you figure out how to overcome challenges within your organization.

One episode could change your business. Check it out on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or on the Ramsey Network app.