Cleaning Up A 20 Year Financial Mess Takes Time
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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. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. We're so glad you are here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Brennan is with us in Tampa. Hi, Brennan. How are you? Good, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Hey, long-time listener and appreciate you taking my phone call. I did not expect to actually have you answer. But, yeah, if you don't mind helping me, I've got some questions for you. We're here for you, brother. What's up? Okay, so I have a house that I still own in Colorado. I'm currently living in Florida. Okay.

I purchased, I guess, the second house in Florida. And over the past two years, we've been living in Florida and grown to love the state. And we want to make it a full-time thing. However, all of my family and a lot of good friends are still back in Colorado. And we like to go back there for the summers since I can work there.

really from anywhere. My wife stays home with our three boys and the further complicate things I bought, I'm selling the current house we bought two years ago in Florida to upgrade to a larger home and I need to know what

best steps I need to take or get your opinion on what I should do moving forward with selling these homes and how you would go about it. Oh, you still have a house in Colorado? Yes, sir. Oh, okay. All right. Because you might go back there for a couple months of summer? Correct. Yeah. Okay. And do you have mortgages on all this? I do. On both of them? On both, yes. Okay. And what do you guys make? What do you make? Your wife stays home with the boys.

I make $210 a year. Way to go, man. You're killing it. How old are you? 36. Okay. The house in Colorado is the old girlfriend you cut loose because you got married. Okay. Does that make sense? It does. She's pretty, Dave. She's pretty. He's still got one toe in the old pond, right? Yeah.

And that's what's going on here because there's nothing about this that makes financial sense. Absolutely not. No, I mean, you could rent the freaking top of the Ritz for what you're paying for that house for a couple months a year. Right. Yeah. So there's nothing about it that makes financial sense. It's just cut it loose, man. Cut it loose. It's the last thing that says I'm living in Florida and use that money to pay cash for the other house. It'll pay off the other house, won't it?

absolutely yeah man what are you doing man it's almost like i've done this before yeah yeah you got to uh when you get married you gotta what is it you gotta on uh you have to get unfollow the old girl you have to burn all the old phone numbers that's it so yeah yeah the uh or whatever you do in the digital world but yeah anyway yeah that that

Did I miss something there? No. I also wonder how easy it is for the family to say, oh, no, no, no, we still got a place. We still got a place. I don't know. Everybody's just kind of playing. I don't live there anymore. And here's the interesting. Listen to this. I currently live in Florida. Right.

That's how he opened, right? But then later on, we've grown to love this and are going to make it our home. So the decision is now made, but it was like, they're both there, yeah. He still loves his old girlfriend, Dave.

Well, Colorado's awesome. It is awesome. Nothing wrong with Colorado. And his family's back there, so that's reasonable. Yeah, but it's causing you to make a bad financial decision. That's why we're poking fun at you. So at the decision, not at you. In real time, this is the case, then he's going to save some money and then get a really nice Airbnb for the two months he's there. Oh, yeah, yeah, you can get it. And probably actually something more...

Right. Than the old residential suburb house he's got. And somebody's going to come clean up. Somebody's going to take care of the place. Get an A-frame in the mountain, right? There you go. That kind of stuff. Because I'm guessing that house isn't that. I might be wrong. But yeah. So yeah, I'm just going to have a great life there in Florida and plan my visits back home to see the family and do those in an enjoyable way and work there a couple of weeks a year. I've got some good friends that are in their 40s.

that they do that with jackson hole when they first got married they spent two years in jackson hole and then they live here now and uh but they go back a lot for the summer they just love it and the summers are particularly beautiful so yeah that's the same kind of thing you can do that and but you just you don't need to own something to do that the only way you would own something there's if everything else is paid off and you have the money for a second home and it's a toy so it'd be like a ski home or something in colorado that kind of thing a mountain home right and

And or it's like a lake house, you know, a beach house. It's those kinds. It's fall in that category, but not the not the I'm still hanging on to where I used to live home. And I'm mortgaging in the meantime. In the meantime. Yeah. Jason's in Greenville. Hi, Jason. What's up? Jason. How you doing, babe? Sorry. How can we help?

Yeah, just my wife and I are both teachers, and we are three years away from state retirement here in South Carolina. And so we'll be 48 when we can retire from teaching with a pension. I'm just wondering if I should. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Well,

Whatever makes me feel good, I guess, or makes me happy. Bad plan. That's a terrible plan, dude. Don't do that. Hedonism leads to heart attacks. I mean, we have nothing. I mean, we have side jobs now. I'm a chef for a boys' and girls' camp in the summer. That's not what I'm talking about. We really, I mean, we're foster parents. Jason, Jason.

Neither one of these are even close and you know it. So you're 48 freaking years old. You have another 50 years on the planet potentially.

chefing at the summer camp ain't going to cut it for half a century, okay? Not going to work. So what are you going to do with your life? If you can answer that question, then sure. That's going to be your encore career after teaching. It doesn't have to be a 40-hour-a-week grind. It might be you open a business. It might be you do this or that. But it's something you put your hand to the plow.

Yeah, I mean, we are. I mean, it is cooking. That's my passion. Oh, you want to be a chef? You want to open a full-time chef thing? You're going to be a catering or in-home private chef or something like that? Is that right? Hello? This guy's got phone problems. Whatever you do, don't go in the phone business. Yeah.

You're 0 for 2 on the phone, man. Hey, this idea, and it's a weird cancer that's somehow grown out of the American dream of I want to work real hard so I can do nothing. That is a recipe for disaster. Relationally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. It'll collapse you. You will not. There's no great joy except in serving. Fishing and golf, you'll just get fat. Don't do it. This is The Ramsey Show.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey good folks, the back-to-school madness is upon us. It's hitting us right now. We got travel and work and all these forms to fill out now and sports to travel to and on and on. My family's schedule is so packed and we haven't even begun talking about things like exercise and date nights and counseling and church and home projects. And those are the things that make our life even worth living.

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Call my friends at BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Delaunay today for 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Delaunay. Dr. John Delaunay, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. Bakersfield, California. David is with us. Hi, Dave. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you guys? Better than I deserve. What's up?

My question is, my wife and I are in the process of building a home and have a construction loan. And I'm kind of newer to listening to your show, so now I'm trying to do things probably in reverse order because things are already underway. But I have a 457 account from a prior employer that it's about $100,000 that I'm able to cash out. And I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to cash that out

In order to try to shoot for getting it as a 15-year mortgage when that time comes at the end of the construction loan. How old are you? 33. Are you not going to be subject to penalties on that? Because I changed employers, so I'm maxing out a 457 with a new employer now, and I still have a pension. It's just sitting there, not getting anything added to it. That wasn't my question. I'm pretty sure you have a 10% penalty plus your tax rate on that.

So it'll just be the tax rate from the research I've looked into and talking to the investment company that I was with. Okay. It has nothing to do with you reinvesting into the other. It's possible that you were, the 457s take several different forms. So it's possible what you're saying is true, but unlikely. So I'm questioning that. You're definitely going to get your taxes on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what's your household income?

It's expected to be about $450 before taxes this year. Okay. And so you're going to get hit with 38% of this. You're going to lose almost 40 cents on the dollar. How much is in the $457? It's about $100,000. It keeps fluctuating. So you're going to send the government about $40 and put $60 on your mortgage if you do this without a penalty. Okay.

Yeah, that's a hard hit. Yeah, it's just your tax rate. You make a lot of money, and you're going to get taxed. I don't know what California is going to do to you, but that's what federal is going to do to you. You might have to add California into that, too. Because at $450,000, didn't they just pass like a 15% we hate the rich tax there?

Yeah, I'm hoping that all the things we're trying to do to reduce the income, get it below. Below what? I mean, you make $450,000. You don't have enough deductions to get it down to $50,000. So, I mean, that's the consideration. I don't know what you're going to have from California. I've just got a couple of friends that left there after this last piece of legislation because they said no more.

You're not taking my stuff no more. So they're out. And their income earners higher than you. But...

Their whole reason was that the thing was a graduated thing and it was aimed only at wealthy people, and the wealthy people aren't going to stay, so that's kind of interesting. They're not going to get it, but that's what always happens with this. Anyway, all that to say, if you're going to do it, you need to know exactly what that picture is, and it's not Internet advice that you need. It's tax advice. And then you say, okay, if it's 40% federal or 38%, which I'm pretty sure that's right,

and there's no 10%, which is fine in your situation, and then in addition to that, California is going to hit you for X. Let's call that 10. Well, now we're at almost 50%, so your $100,000 is going to be $50,000. Yeah, that's less than I expected. Yeah, if that's the case, you may not want to do this, I'm thinking.

I think there may be another angle on this that you want to do. The good news is you make a lot of money and you got a lot of other ways to get yourself out of debt and get yourself on a stronger foundation without having to, um,

get destroyed by a state and federal government system. So I don't know. Look at it and find out exactly. If you don't have a good tax person, you can go to RamseySolutions.com and click on the endorsed local providers. That's what we call them, ELPs for taxes. They're Ramsey trusted. We probably got a thousand of them or something around the nation that are all top notch. Sit down with one of those people, run the numbers out so that you're making the decision

However you make it with full disclosure to your own brain, right? Because I got a feeling you're a smart guy. Usually dumb people don't make $450, okay? So I think you'll be able to figure out, oh, I'm not doing that. Or, oh, yeah, that's cool. I'm still going to do it. Okay, and you can move that and get comfortable with it. But what you don't want to do is just say, I Googled it, and then tax time comes and I'm screwed because I didn't really understand. You don't want to do that. There's too much money involved here.

And I almost think the meta question is, Dave, I hate even using that word, but the bigger question is when you start to build a house on land, it's real easy to get excited and to not at the front end count the cost. And those things can get out from under you really quick. And all of a sudden you find yourself cashing out retirement plan. You find yourself trying to find money. That wasn't what he said. Right. And I'm going, I, I,

Honestly, I didn't hear anything in his story that sounded that way. I would have jumped on it. But yeah, that can happen. Scope creep happens all the time. That's a good way to call it. When you're building, the decorator forgets that there's a thing called a budget. The spouse forgets that there's a thing called a decorator. And then you get into this stuff, right? I wouldn't know anybody that that's ever happened to. I've never seen you slam the computer down ever. Not one time. So...

No, we've actually learned to do it, but the first time we did it, it was not good. So, but the, yeah, yeah.

What he said is he came late to this party, this Ramsey party, and he's liking what he's hearing, but he's already committed on this. The ball's going to go down. I set this whole deal up on a 30, and I like what you're saying about doing a 15, so I'd rather do that. That's what I heard, and I actually believe him. Yeah, I believe him. So what do you tell folks, Dave, when they found themselves, the ship is out of the harbor, it's in the open sea, and then they find us?

Is it okay to land the plane where they took off from? Sometimes you've got to, like, I'm walking into closing. I've got a 30-year note. I don't have the money on a 15, and now I'm going to work to refi this down the road. No, I wouldn't refi it. I'd just pay it extra. Just pay it extra. Yeah. I mean, whatever the situation is, what you've got to decide is, did I do something that's going to take me 10 years to walk through and get the direction changed, or –

If so, you probably got a mess, right? Or did I do something that's going to, that if I really focus on the new information that I have, it might set me back a year, but I'm going to keep going. Okay. Yeah. Then you got to decide how big the damage is. Okay. So if you, if you, let me give you an example. You signed up for a closing and the payment is on a 30 year and the payment is 55% of your take home pay. Well, you're screwed. Right.

Okay. So what you need to do is close the house and put a for sale sign in the yard because that's, you're not going to get out of that one alive. Okay. Okay. But I took out a 30 instead of a 15 and I've actually got some margin and I can pay it like it's a 15, but I never thought of that before hearing you.

You're not screwed, right? That's a different thing, okay? So you just got to assess how much damage you've done to yourself now that you've got new information to measure it by. And then you can decide how dramatic you have to be about the undoing, the unwinding of all this. Interesting thing, talking about getting into debt and getting out of debt as an example. Yeah.

Larry Burkett used to teach this stuff. He was a guy that I used to hear a million years ago and got to be friends with him. He was a Christian teacher on what the Bible says about money on Christian radio. And he was an icon in that space and taught me a lot, a lot. And he used to say that when they were coaching with folks, they would say, if it takes you three years to get into the debt, expect it to take you a year and a half to get out.

If you turn the ship and be very intense. So if you've been making this mess for a decade,

Don't be surprised it takes you five years to get out of the mess you took. That's a good algorithm. I like that. You know, and even if you get very focused and very... Because when you were making the mess, you were kind of, you know, you're just kind of wandering. And when you're cleaning up the mess, you're very focused and intense. So you can cut the time down, but don't expect to clean up a decade-long mess in 26 minutes. Okay. You know, you expect it to take a little while. You dug yourself a freaking hole here. You know, so that's his...

Larry would have never said that that way. He was a gentleman. He was not on mainstream talk radio. This is The Ramsey Show.

Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Brandon is up. Hey, Brandon in Atlanta, how are you? Hey, Dave, can you hear me? Yes, sir. What's up? Hey, Dave. So I just got a hold of the Total Money Makeover about two weeks ago, and I finished it.

Um, I'm calling because I'm a graduate, uh, from Florida. I just moved here to Georgia for business purposes. Cool. What'd you get your degree in? Uh, marketing. Cool. So you got the new job, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I actually work in the insurance industry, so I just finished my PNC and life and health license. Yeah. Um, but I use a lot of the marketing for my soft wash business.

which is really why I moved over here to sacrifice. So here's my thing. My monthly income is $27.14 a month for insurance. And for the year, I just opened the business in March. And at the end of the year, 2023, revenue was $72K. Mm-hmm.

Um, so my debt is $31,000 in student loans and 30, $33,000 in a Ford F-150. So kind of lost your mind. I know, I know. My game plan is to immediately start attacking the student loans. And then as soon as I finished that principal, principal, principal on the truck, get that out of the way. Cause really good for you. Although I want,

Although I'm making money in my head, I'm not after reading your book. I've really changed my thought process. Good. You're right on track, man. Yeah, because you need $65,000 and you make $110,000. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it's really like I'm not satisfied until I'm out of debt. Good. And I'm learning. Well, first and foremost, I want to say thank you for writing that book. I mean,

you don't realize how much people you probably help. Thank you for reading it. I wrote it when you were born. That's amazing. Very cool. It's been rewritten a couple of times. We've re-upped it. We're re-upping it for the 20th anniversary. It's coming out again in April. But yeah, man, that's very cool. I'm proud of you. You're doing good work and you read something and you believed it. Now you're going to act on it. You're why we're here. We're proud for you. How can we help other than that? Okay, so...

After I finish my debt snowball, I already have my emergency fund. I'm going to attack my... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You already have your emergency. What's your emergency fund? How much? $1,000. Oh, your first baby step. Your little emergency fund. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Now then, when you finish getting out of debt, then you build the emergency fund, baby step three, right? Exactly. Yeah. Okay, so...

My question is, should I be, I do Monday, all right, so Monday through Friday, except Tuesdays, it's paid, but I work in insurance. And then Tuesday, Saturday, Sundays, I'm running the show for the business. Should I be pulling out income from that and paying myself? What I'm doing now is I leave it in the business. Like, I don't touch that money. But I don't know if I should be paying myself. Why would you not pay yourself?

You made $72,000 taxable income. Where's that go? Um, what do you mean? In 23, you said you made 72,000 on your business. Was that gross revenue or taxable? That was, that was gross revenue. Oh, you don't make 110,000. Okay. I thought you meant you made 72. You mean you grossed 72. What's your net profit on the 72? What was your taxes on that?

So my taxes was 30%. It wasn't on 72 because you didn't make 72. You brought in 72, but you had expenses. Exactly. My net income, in other words, was 60, 60. It was a little under 60. Oh, God, you got a huge margin in this deal. Yeah, I do now. Hardly any expenses. Yeah, it's a learning curve. So where did that 60,000 go? That 60,000 is sitting in the bank.

Great. Pay off your truck. Right? Today. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. I'm afraid, though, if I take 30. Why are you afraid? I'm not afraid. My question is, if I pull out 30 and pay off the truck, I want the business to grow. I don't want it to be like, oh, you got 30, and it's, I believe it will grow. I'm going to make sure it grows. It doesn't cost you anything to grow it. You grew it from nothing to,

Brought in 72, netted 60. So do that again. Yeah, you're right. And that's why I was asking because people have advised me. People are idiots. I do not want to deal with somebody owning my life. Nobody's going to own your life. You're doing great, man. If you take this, you're going to make more. If you don't reinvest a dime into this business, you didn't put any money into it last year, did you?

No. So don't put any money into it this year and grow it from $70 to $110 and net $80 on that. There's nothing to be afraid of. I hear you. I'm more afraid of your truck payment than I am all this other junk. Yeah, I just got this truck and it's all nice and stuff, but now I'm realizing, like, really? Yeah, really. What was I thinking? And it's after reading the book, you know? I'm going to pay both the truck and the student loan off by the 1st of June. Ready, set, go.

Agreed. Okay. You're the man. I love you, man. You're why I do this. This is so cool. Hey, he agreed on national radio. Yeah. It's a binding contract. And we know where you live. Exactly. No, we don't. With his soul. That's right. That's a lock right there. Nancy's in Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, Nancy, what's up?

- Hi, thank you for having me on the phone. I've been wanting to ask you this question. So I'm gonna give you the question first. - Yes, ma'am. - Is it waste of money to sell my rental property even though I might lose about 200 to 20, 250,000 from capital gains and fees and all that comes with selling the house?

So can I ask you a couple questions? That's a lot of capital gains. That tells me that you're going to have a profit of over a million dollars on this property. Oh, wait. Okay. So then let me give you the numbers, okay? Okay. All right. So the house is worth $800,000. Right. How long have you owned it? And then we bought it.

30 years, and it was $120,000. Have you depreciated it on your taxes when you did the taxes? You know, that I don't know. Do you have somebody doing your taxes and helping you? Yes. Okay, they've been writing the house off.

During the time you've been renting it. And so you have a basis of close to zero. So your taxes will be around 15% of $800,000 minus the expenses to sell it. So, I mean, you probably have a hundred, maybe a hundred thousand in taxes. Okay. Okay. Good. Who told you $220,000?

I was just looking up how much the capital gains are, because my father is from a foreign country, and I saw that it was 30% of capital gains, and in my part would be 20%. No, capital gains are 15% in the United States. Is this in the United States we're talking about?

Yes. Okay. Yeah, it's 15% unless you make over $400,000 and then it's 20%. Is your household income over $400,000? No. Okay. Then it's 15% of your gain, and your gain is probably all of it because they probably depreciated your basis down to zero. Okay.

So it's going to be about 15% of 800 minus sales expenses. So before you make this decision, sit down with a tax professional and let them actually do the calculations, not some goober on the radio like me.

I think I'm pretty close, but you need to know real numbers before you make a decision on something this big from a professional. So sit down with a good tax pro, let them calculate it out for you, and you're going to find it's going to be right around 100, but make sure it is. This is The Ramsey Show.

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Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for joining us. Kimberly is next. Kimberly is in Boston, Mass. Hi, Kimberly. How are you? I'm good. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up?

All right. So here's the story. A year and a half ago, I got divorced and I remarried. And my husband now and I are trying to get situated and basically rebuild our lives and get our finances all in order. And right now, we can put it down on paper and create a budget and stick to it. But it still seems somehow that we're overdrafting our accounts at least twice a month. You wrote out a budget that causes you to overdraft?

If you're sticking to your plan, your plan was to overdraft? It wasn't my plan to overdraft. Oh, then you're not sticking to your plan. I think we might have our budget off. I think you're not sticking to your plan. Yeah, who's not sticking to their plan? Unless you wrote out a plan that says, I want to overdraft intentionally, you are obviously not executing the plan. Is that fair? Fair, yes. Okay, so you're not sticking to the plan. Why not?

Things like pop up that we weren't aware of and things like that. And I think that's where we're getting. Like what? Pizza? No, honestly, we go out to eat once a week. Okay. Like what? What popped up? Well, I had to get a lawyer to end up getting custody of my children from my ex. When did that pop up? That just popped up recently within the past couple of months. Okay. And how much was that?

$3,000. Okay. What else has popped up? I don't think we're paying attention to exactly like all the subscriptions that we have and things like that. That's not a pop-up. That's an intentional exclusion.

Okay. So your budget, your budget's not thorough. Okay. Let's back up. You're not doing as badly as you think you are. Okay. And I'm not going to beat you up like you're a complete failure because you're not. Here's what normally happens when you start doing a budget. It takes 90 days for it to work. The first month you suck at this because you've never done it. The first time you drove your car around the block, you weren't good at it. Okay. Okay.

But now you drive a car without thinking, put on your makeup, eat a Big Mac and change lanes, right? Okay, that's what you'll get to later.

But right now, you're brand new at this. And one of the things that happens when you're brand new in your first month of budgeting is you leave things out that you shouldn't have left out. You just didn't know. You forgot about them. Okay? Kids' activities at school. We didn't budget for it because we forgot they do that. Well, of course they do that. But when it comes up, it's kind of obvious. But when we were sitting down on a piece of paper or sitting down with the EveryDollar app, we didn't think of it. Okay? Okay.

lawyers a different category but subscriptions i forgot about them and then when i you know when i did my budget the first month i looked down it robbed the money out of my food budget and so now i'm crashing over here and well you won't forget about them the next month you're either going to cancel them or put them in the budget right yeah kids activities we're either going to not let them go or we're going to put them in the budget right yes um what's another one um

But some of these things, you have fewer and fewer surprises the longer you do this because you get better at it and all the other surprises are now in the budget.

Okay.

Correct. Okay. All right. So that's a different thing. And that's not really a surprise because we knew the X was a jerk. That's why he's called the X. But overall, the lawyer bill is a surprise. Yes. Okay. So there's some things like that. But okay, let me give you an example. A car breaking down is not a surprise. You know, a $200 alternator going out on the car.

a $400 alternator going out on the car. It's not a surprise. It absolutely is going to happen. It's just a matter of when. The only thing that's a surprise is the timing. We know the tires on your car are going to wear out. We know Christmas is in December. They don't move it. It's not a surprise, but it still sneaks up on people. So that's the kind of stuff. I think you're okay. Number one, recommit to, uh,

beans and rice, rice and beans, no eating out, no going out to eat, no vacations. We're going to put a bunch of stuff on Craigslist and try to create some money. We may look at some extra income from doing some kind of side job, and we're going to be really, really, really, really, really focused on this and get the EveryDollar app out and get the budget going because it's got a lot of categories that will remind you of things you might otherwise have forgotten if you were just using a yellow pad to do this.

Yeah. Okay. But also give yourself a little grace. It does take three months to get good at it. No one does it the first month perfectly. There's no one that nerdy. If they were that nerdy, they were already doing it. All right, Kimberly, I want to ask Dave a question, but I'm going to use you as an example. Is that cool? Sure. So Dave, here's a concern I have across the board.

And that is you make your first budget or your second budget. And then if you've committed to live in a debt-free life and then a $3,000 expense pops up, that's pretty high. So let's say a $600 expense pops up. Okay. You're going to have to go into those other categories. If you're going to stay committed and, and,

Okay, we're going to have to figure out how to do groceries for $75 instead of $125. We're going to have to figure out how to turn the air conditioner down or up. You're probably going to go pick up a job. Or go get a second job. But this idea is like, no, no, no, we're going to go out to eat once a month. We're just going to overdraft. What I don't want us to ever lose sight of is...

If something happens, something happens. If the wind changes, you have to adjust the sails. It's uncomfortable. It stinks. It's not what we planned, but it is. It's a reality. No, I shouldn't say if. When the wind changes, adjust your sails. Because there's going to be stuff that's unexpected come at you, and then you go, okay, how are we going to handle this? So, like, to John's point, Kimberly, one of the things Sharon and I did that we've had to teach other people to do, but it came natural to us, we were bankrupt. No one would loan us money.

So we didn't have an option. We don't borrow money, but we also can't borrow money at that time. Right. So, so we had to figure it out without debt. So we had to figure out, I got to put something, you know, on Craigslist and sell it. I got to go work a side gig and I need some money by Friday.

Oh, my God. You know, and so we had to anytime something came up that hit us right square in the nose, we had to figure out increase income and sell something and decrease some of the categories temporarily till we can get around the corner of this. We didn't have a choice. And so what our encouragement is, is to take overdraft, which is a form of debt off the table. Disconnect your disconnect overdraft and quit. Never, ever, ever.

Let something come out of your account that causes overdraft again, ever again. Pretend like you're running a company for someone else, and if you ran it this poorly, they would fire you. Okay. It just creates a sense of fire and urgency. Yeah, there's this absolute...

You know, absoluteness, that's not a word to this idea. There's this, you don't have an option. And when you kind of, when you burn the boats and you can't leave, you've got to deal with what's in front of you. You'll innovate and figure it out. Exactly. You got to innovate. You got to adjust the sales. So you're better at this than you think you are. And what you're facing, the distress and the frustration, and it was kind of knocking the confidence out of you. Like this may not work. I may not be able to do this. You can do it.

You can do it. What you're feeling, the emotion you're feeling, and the actual experience you're having is very normal. The trick is don't agree to live in it. Make adjustments so you don't live that way, okay? Okay. You can do this. I'm proud of you. Have you guys been through Financial Peace University?

We have not yet. Oh, you need to go through. I'll give it to you. You've got to go through it. Yeah, I'll give it to you, and I'll give you the EveryDollar app connecting to the budget too, the upgrade, the premium. So you've got the whole kit. If you'll go do this stuff that I teach you, it'll work, Kimberly, 100%. But it never works instantly. We don't sell microwaves. We're in the crockpot business. It takes a minute. You've got to cook it, baby. You can do it. You can do it. This is The Ramsey Show.

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships.

I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney, number one best-selling author, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Network, one of the more popular YouTube and podcasts in America today. He's my co-host, open phones at 888-825-5225. Jennifer is with us in San Antonio, Texas. Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thanks for speaking with me today. Sure. I'm overjoyed.

I really appreciate it. I love you, Dave, but I think my question is probably a little more for John, so not to hurt your ego or anything, but I have... Hey, he's got two PhDs. I just have one, and mine isn't. And his ego, trust me, it's doing just fine. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. My bad. I was like, I never thought I'd call Dave Ramsey's show and then not want to...

like totally focused on Dave Ramsey and Papa Dave. You're so sweet. You're awesome. You're sweet. How can we help? I'll be okay. How can John help? Um, I'm calling because, um, so I had a bankruptcy in 2021 and you know, I'm debt free and well, I'm debt free after, you know, paying, um, the KGB, I mean, IRS and, um, and then, um,

I was one of the very few that had their public service. You know, I worked for the federal government and I was one of the very few that had their loans forgiven. I worked for the federal government for 13 years and I feel like a lot of shame. I feel...

Shame about the bankruptcy, but then I also feel a lot of shame about the public service forgiveness in a way. Because, like, I mean, I took advantage of the program that was available to me, and I'm proud of serving the government so long, but I guess I feel a little...

I don't know. I tell people not to count on it all the time and that all the data shows that very few people are ever going to have it happen to them and don't want them to count on it. I just happen to be in that window where it worked for me. So it's like I won the lottery, but I'm ashamed that I won it a little bit. Yeah, so Jennifer, I'm actually going to...

Change direction a little bit. Is that okay? Okay. Yeah. When it comes to shame, I can talk about it all day long. But lucky for you, you called the number where there's more than just academic answers. I actually think the person you want to talk to is Dave. He's been there. Okay. Well, see, what do I know? The guy with the PhD doesn't know. I can talk about it, but Dave can talk from a lived experience, which is much more valuable. So what caused your bankruptcy? Okay.

Um, I, you know, I made good money, but, um, I have a disability and, uh, I was only going to work like two weeks a month after my brother died. The disability became so extreme, all these medical issues that had come up. So even though I was following the Dave Ramsey plan, like... Wait a minute, stop, stop. What's the nature of your disability, honey? Uh, I have major depressive disorder. And, um, after my brother died, I...

became suicidal, and it was really extreme. And you had debts that you couldn't pay because of that. Yes, I was making bare minimum payments, and then I went to the bishop to even get help. So for a year, about 18 months, the bishop and I literally sat down at my church every month, like, how can we dig you out of this hole? But the medical bills were still so high that I still couldn't

Even though I had this big shovel, the medical bills just kept coming, and then I couldn't, I was really struggling to work over and over. Hey, do me a favor, Jennifer. Will you take a real, real, real deep breath? As deep as you can. Take it super deep, and I want you to hold it for three, two, exhale. There's a lot of people in the world that are giving you a lot of advice and running their mouth and telling you should be doing this, and Dave and I are not going to do that. We're sitting here with you, okay? Okay.

Okay. You don't have to, I can, I can hear you trying to outrun the shame in a circle right on the phone with us. You don't have to do that. Okay. Okay. Here's the thing. We're with you. When I filed bankruptcy at 28 years old, the reason for my bankruptcy was I had borrowed too much money. I had borrowed it in such a way that it allowed the banks to come and take my freaking head off. Yeah. It was my fault.

I don't think a person who has issues with depression becoming depressed after the loss of their brother is something you did wrong. So my actions were shameful. Your actions were not shameful. Well, I feel like the debt actions were shameful that I put myself in such a bad position. You were vulnerable.

because of that, but you probably would have made it without bankruptcy if you hadn't been unable to work for a period of time.

Yeah, the bishop said that. Actually, when we sat down, I mean, every month, he's like, if you weren't so sick now, I think we could help you. Like, he was helping me even with rent, you know. But at one point, he said, you know, tithing and, you know, because we're stewards of the Lord's money, you know, he's like, this is a hand up, not a hammock. He's all, but every month, I see that you're putting everything.

everything you can into pain. I think this might be our only way out. Okay, so let me ask you this. Obviously, the loss of your brother, that tragedy is in the rearview mirror. Are you doing things to deal with the depression issues? Yes. So what I did in my case was I did some things to deal with my stupidity.

And so I'm not going to make the same mistakes again. And therefore, I don't have to sit and be wringing my hands about the shame of the bankruptcy. The bankruptcy, in my case, was caused by me.

So there was shame. It was shame inducing for sure. Okay. But the way I dealt with it to answer your question was I said, okay, what steps do I have to take to be a different person that causes this to never happen again? If I take those steps, then the things in my rear view mirror, it's just one of the many stupid things I've done in my life that I don't have to do again. Yeah. And Jennifer, can we agree that sometimes you feel things and those feelings aren't true?

Yes, that is true. I know that to be true. My husband tells me that all the time. I know, but listen. Well, not all the time, but it does come up. Here's what you're going to do. I want you to keep a journal with you of the things you feel. When you feel like you're taking advantage of folks and you feel like you should, I want you to write that down and I want you to hold it at arm's length and ask yourself, is this true? Okay. And I want you to be objective about it because if you can't be objective, take it to your counselor.

And say, is this true? Because the answer is going to be no. But when you have a feeling and you begin to believe that feeling, then your body's off to the races. Yeah. Zero shame. Zero. For the student loan forgiveness. No. And the shame on any part you had with irresponsibility, you say, I'm not doing that anymore. Any part you had with taking on too much debt, I'm not doing that anymore. But the depression taking you away from work...

I'm not blaming you for that one, kiddo. That one's in your rearview mirror too, though. The beautiful thing about life is the rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield. That's called grace. Walk in that, kiddo. This is The Ramsey Show.

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NMLS ID 1591. NMLS ConsumerAccess.org. Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Ryan is in Chicago. Hey, Ryan, how are you? Doing good. How about yourself? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I was just calling because I've recently gotten some good news. I'm having a baby on the way. I'm very, very excited for it.

But I just moved back up north. I was living in Louisiana for a while and I just got a job up here. I just do sales and she is talking about

moving to louisiana because that's where her family lives and obviously you know i'm not gonna this is weird what do you mean she's moving to louisiana and you're in chicago or not to louisiana it's a tennessee i apologize why is she moving and you're not i don't understand what's going on so we are we're no longer together oh and yeah yeah so lead with that next time dude that's a big part of the story

For a minute, I thought we were a happy little family with a picket fence. Okay. No, not quite yet. Not even. No, not even close. So you hooked up with your ex. She's pregnant. So who, I mean, your ex-wife or girlfriend? Girlfriend. Girlfriend. How long ago did you break up, in quotes? About a month ago, almost three weeks to a month. We still talk every day. We're on good terms and all that sort of good stuff, which is what I want. If we are going to be separated, I'd still want to.

So what's your question?

doing just like, Oh, this, you know, trying to find a house down there. And how would you, how would you, how would you go through that? I don't, I don't have very much that I have like $500 on my credit card that, and that's pretty much it. Um, so, um, and that's getting paid off. Uh, so luckily I'm about to be out of debt, which is a very good feeling, but how long have you known about this? How long have you known about this?

Uh, we found out, um, we found out. No, I don't know. We didn't. She did. And then when did she tell you you're not together? Yeah. December when we were living in Louisiana and then we moved back up, we were together still. Uh, and then we just recently, we just recently separated. So you're confusing me because I think you're, you're so jumbled up. So are you telling me you knew she was pregnant before you broke up?

Yes, yeah, yeah. It's been a mutual breakup, so it's not been like any sort of bad. So you didn't recently find out you were pregnant and get this good news. That's what you led with. That wasn't the truth. You knew she was pregnant, and you broke up with her. Why'd you break up with her? We just argued a lot. It was a lot of just back and forth. So here's the deal.

This woman is going to be in your life for the rest of your life. Yeah. And so whether you get back with her or not, it sounds like there's a lot of YOLO and, well, we just argued. Dude, you've got to be past that now. You're bringing a human into the world.

I would get with a relationship counselor ASAP because y'all are going to have to learn to talk, to communicate. You think being together and raising these kids hard, you're going to try to do it in separate houses? It's going to be chaos. It's hard, hard, hard, hard. And the fact that you haven't already moved, I don't even know what we're talking about here. My daughter has been gone for four days, five days, and I'm having trouble breathing. I can't wrap my head around your thought process.

No, so that's where I was. So I am going to move down there with them. They're going to be doing that. No, not with them. Y'all broke up. You made a big boy decision. You broke up. You're going to move your butt down here by this child, and you're going to work to learn how to communicate with her. To be near them.

There's not a with. Yeah, I'm going to live near them. That way we can raise the baby together. Actually, it's not even near them. It's near the baby. Near the baby. You broke up. Yeah. And y'all are playing dating still on the phone. That's why I don't think y'all are done. I think y'all acted immaturely and things got stressful and you just split up. Yeah, pretty much everything you've done has been an impulse decision.

All of these decisions have been impulse. The moves, the pregnancies, the shacking up, the breaking up, the moving to Nashville or Tennessee. You guys make decisions about every 30 seconds. And that's not good for your finances, but it's fine until you decide to bring a human into the world. It's not good, period. You never make good decisions this way. Y'all need to slow it down. Slow your roll.

Slow down. These are big boy, big girl deals. You can't, you know, breaking up with someone that you have a baby with is a big deal. Well, we're arguing. Oh, well, give me a break. I've been married 43 years. We're arguing is an ongoing. I wasn't going to say it, but.

I've been in the room with several of those. We're arguing means she told me what to do and I didn't do it. Wait a minute. That was today. But this idea that we're just gonna break up because we're arguing, you're going to argue the rest of your life because y'all are raising a human together. And so figuring out how we're going to communicate, even if y'all go in the room and say, Hey, we're done romantically, but we're going to figure out how to do this. At least give it a shot.

For the sake of this kid, all the data suggests you all have to be working together for this kid to have a shot. Yeah. So, yes, I'm with you to move into Tennessee, but I want you guys, both of you, to make slower, huge decisions. The good decision-making paradigm is this. The more important the decision, the more information you need about the decision, and the longer time you should take making the decision.

You've done that the opposite on all of these fronts. That's what's killing me here. So you can impulse a pack of gum. If you're going to buy a car, you need to slow down and take your time. It's a lot of money.

Okay. If you're going to choose to. You can impulse walking across the room and talking to a girl. You don't impulse breaking up with a girl who's got your child inside of her. Or think it this way. Because of some arguments, you have decided, I want my child to have a single mom. I'm going to be very careful about that decision. Very careful. Yeah.

So I'm picking up, picking on you, but dude, we love you and we want you to win. And we're observing the patterns there. I want your baby. And if you don't break those patterns, you're going to replicate them.

And that's what I want for you. And I want that for your baby as well. The most positive thing you said in the entire conversation is how excited you are about the baby. As you should be. And that's wonderful. That's good news for the baby and good news for you. It means you're a good man. So work through these slowing down on big decisions. And so, you know, before you decide to move to Tennessee and chase her,

um you probably ought to go meet with her and a good relationship counselor talk about what it looks like if you made the move here's i'm gonna give you three months of free better help with a licensed marriage therapist licensed relationship therapist that'll talk to you guys so hang on the line here we'll get you hooked up with that there we go and then y'all could talk from different states even if you need to but yeah but i think you probably do need to go tennessee but i think you should do it in a different context right

In the sense of you ought to have made the decision, I've got a good job move when I make the move. I'm not just going to go down there and hope it works out. I've got a place already. I've got a place figured out. I've got a set of relational boundaries and rules involved with this ex-girlfriend and how we're going to work on the child. What are the financial implications? How much are you going to child support? What are those kinds of things? All of this ought to be, you ought to have all that figured out before you move. Yeah.

And it might take you a month to figure that out. And you got a month. So slow down on big decisions. Get more information and more information and more information. You've got all your information stacked up and you go slowly. We call that wisdom. It's the opposite of impulsing. This is The Ramsey Show.

Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Nathan and Danielle are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? We're great, Dave. Good to be with you guys. You too. So where do you live? Arlington Heights, Illinois. Ah, Chicagoland. All right, welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you paid off?

We've paid off about $130,000 in debt. Very good. And how long did that take? Six years. Six years. And your range of income during that time? We started at about $40,000. We were bumped up to, what was it, $130,000? $132,000. $132,000. And then actually in about a week and a half, that's going to jump to about $160,000.

Okay, that's pretty impressive, you guys. I mean, 40 to 60 is pretty cool. 40 to 160. So what happened to your careers? What do you all do for a living? It's a lot of extra Uber, man. Now, they bought Uber. I mean, my God.

Uber and Lyft was part of that for about six months, but it started out, I graduated from grad school. We'd gotten married six months prior to that. What's your degree? Originally, I had a degree in athletic training, which is similar to physical therapy for people that don't know, but more college setting, high school setting, things like that. At some point, a couple of years into that, I was thinking about the career, thinking about

We're going to have kids one day, and I was doing a lot of traveling on weekends with football teams and things like that. I was thinking about the time we'll potentially lose with kids when we had them, and so I started looking into a career change. Fast forward, I got my MBA online, graduated in...

end of 2020 and then maybe nine months later or so made a career change into third party risk was working and which is what I do now so

Okay, cool. And what do you do, Danielle? I am a paralegal in a class action law firm. Wow, good for y'all. Okay, great careers. Quite a trek. How long have you been married? Seven years. Seven years. So one year into the marriage, you start this process and you go on this journey on his career track.

which leads you into much, much higher incomes over time. What kind of debt was the 130? Guilty as charged on that one. That would be all my student loans and a little bit of medical debt. I hadn't charged you. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

The paralegal, huh? Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll go with that. Cool. So what happened after a year of marriage that you said, we're going to get out and we're going to do this Ramsey stuff? How'd you meet us? So about five to six months into our marriage, my grandma ended up passing away and she left me.

amount of money that was equivalent to pay off my first two federal student loans and we had read the total money makeover and we're like we can do this let's go let's get gazelle intense and let's pay this off and we did

Yeah. And we had read the book, uh, my spring break of my last year of grad school. Um, it, we, it was a wedding gift actually. And we just kind of sat on the shelves like, yeah, we're a bunch of poor college students. Like, well, you know, living on, uh, I don't know, it was maybe less than $1,500 a month. If that, you know, maybe 1200. Uh, so, you know, then read it over spring break and was, you know, thinking towards, you know, we'll finally get, you know, real jobs, real income. And I was like, Hey, like this seems, uh, it seems like something that's pretty feasible, you know? Um,

Yeah, that was kind of what happened. Got after it then. Knocked it out. And here we are six years later making serious bank and no payments in the world. When did y'all start dressing exactly alike in public? So...

Oh, this started early on in marriage, John. So I've been forcing him to dress similar to me ever since. You're a good husband, man. Here's a picture over here. They're doing it too. No, I sound like you're a good husband, man. Well done. That was Christmas photos there this past, you know, past Christmas time. So.

What was the biggest challenge y'all faced internally? Like the one behind closed doors that you don't talk about. Right, yeah. I know I tell everybody on the radio. Probably, I don't know if there was one specific one, but just, you know, we, like I'm sure so many other people, it felt like after about two years into it, it's like, you know, we're trying to grind through this and, you know, we'd start...

getting that, you know, it was like almost fatigue from it. And sometimes she would feel that way. Sometimes I'd feel that way. And I was like, so we're trying to kind of pull, you know, pull and push each other along and say, no, like we got to stick with the plan. It's going to be okay. You know? And, you know, fortunately we sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes less so, but, you know, fortunately we were able to stick to the plan. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other thing too is about four years into our marriage, we tried starting a family and unfortunately just to

We went through the wilderness of infertility and infertility is not for, I wouldn't wish it on anybody. So having to struggle with that cashflow, um, those treatments and then going through three rounds of unsuccessful fertility treatments that, that really tried and tested us, but we remain faithful. We remain, we said, God, you've got this, you've got us, we're going to keep trusting you. And we just kept pushing forward. Mm-hmm.

And I hear that little screaming in the background. Yeah. Yeah. That was. So it worked. Yeah. No, actually, it didn't. Tell us about that story. So it was our third round of IUI had failed. It was the Friday after we had that news. I was sitting on my kitchen floor sobbing, asking God why. And then I told him, you know what, Lord, I'm done. I'm going to be done. I'm giving this to you. Let's focus on other things. Let's keep paying off the debt. Two and a half months later, find out we're pregnant. Mm hmm.

Of course. Yep. Wow. Of course. I love it. Wow, that's so cool. Congratulations. Thank you. Thanks. Proud for y'all. What a wonderful five years. Yeah. And what a very hard five years. Yes. Yeah. Wow. Very cool. Congratulations. All right. What advice do you have to somebody who's facing what y'all were facing? Don't you ever give up. Don't ever give up. Keep pushing forward. Seek counsel when you need it. Seek help from your church leaders when you need it. Don't be afraid to reach out for help. Mm-hmm.

I think about, too, that, you know, we certainly weren't perfect at it. We had, you know, a month here or there periodically where it was like, you know, maybe the budget got blown up by something or maybe we just, you know, had a lapse in judgment, maybe, you know, spent $100 here or something like that. And I was like, yeah, you know, looking back on it, that was a mistake. But, you know, don't let those things, you know, don't let those things get you down. Don't let them take you out of it. So just get back on track and keep pushing. Back on the wagon. Back on the wagon. Absolutely. I like it. I like it.

I like it. Well, congratulations, you two. Thank you. And the little one's name is what? Eliana. Eliana. So is Eliana going to be in the debt-free screen? She is. All right. Well, we've got the every dollar subscription for you guys for a one year. We've got two of them, actually, two one-year subscriptions, one for you and one for you to give away. So we'll get that to you. Oh, she's precious. Oh, thank you. Goodness gracious. She's so cute.

So cute. Thank you. That's fun. And for the listener, she's wearing the same color shirt mom and dad. There you go. Just to be sure we noticed that. I love it. Way to go, you guys. So proud of you. Thank you. You're heroes. Thanks. You took control and that little baby's got a whole different life because of you two. Well done. Very well done.

All right, it's Nathan and Danielle and Eliana from the Chicagoland area. $130,000 in student loans paid off in six years, making $40,000 to $160,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah!

Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Yeah. That's how it's done. Well, she wasn't even scared. No. I think she's heard Mama do that several times. Been practicing. In the practice room. That's right. Been practicing. I like it. Good stuff. Very cool. Very cool. One of the things that we see, I mean, if you get out of debt in six months, you know, you don't have this, but if you get out of debt and it takes you three years or four years or five years or in this case six years, you're

you can almost be guaranteed that during your debt-free journey, you're also going to have a life event or six. There's always going to be something. In their case, they were dealing with infertility and having a baby. We had a debt-free screamer on yesterday. Had two children during the time they were getting out of debt. That's big life events. It's not like this stuff happens in a vacuum.

Because if you could just sit and do nothing but this in a monastery, you know, I mean, there was no... You get it done. Life doesn't stop. There's all this other stuff coming at you, too, which does require you to have that tenacity, that perseverance. You know, it's wonderful that you can walk through all of that at the same time. That's the proof text. That's when you know you got it. This is The Ramsey Show.

Well, let's face it. Taxes are confusing and they piss me off. I don't like paying them. I don't want to do it. I don't like this time of year. And then you get all these people in the tax business around you.

You guys are not around me, but I got rid of them a long time ago. But they're trying to sell you. If you'll use our software, we can sell you 14 credit cards and a cash advance on your refund. Oh, my God. They're just debt sellers. They're credit card people that got a little tax thing waving it in front of you like you're a bass, and you bite on everything that's shiny.

So don't do that. Go to ramseysolutions.com slash tax. Use Ramsey Smart Tax if you've got a simple return. If you've got a complicated return, hit the tax ELPs, and they'll help you with it. Dave's tax tip of the day, a tax refund is not a bonus. A bonus is a fund. This is a refund. A refund means it's already happened once, and we're refunding it.

It means you already had the money once, and you gave it to the IRS. You gave them too much, more than you needed to give them in order to cover your taxes, and then they send it back to you.

So in essence, you have given them too much money and they send it back to you. So you have a savings account with the federal government that pays zero interest and they send it back to you and you feel, oh, well, it makes me at least I know I don't owe $3,000. You're giving them $250 a month too much and it makes you feel good. It doesn't make me feel good. It makes me feel stupid when I do stuff like that. So how do you fix this?

You go into your W-2 and you change and get the right amount taken out.

Going to payroll and have them take the right amount out. Now, what's the right amount? Well, if nothing's changed in your taxes and you've gotten the same refund for the past four years, just take that refund amount and take the correct amount out of your check. $3,000 a year is $250 a month. Simple. $6,000 a year is $500 a month. $4,800 is $400 a month. Whatever it is, have that right amount. If something has changed, you may want to have one of the tax ELPs run your taxes or

Or get the Ramsey Smart Tax software. Run your taxes. Figure out what your actual tax bill is and divide that into your paychecks and tell them to take that much out. Then you will be having the proper amount taken out. You will not owe more than you have paid in, but you will not have paid in too much. The numbers, it's like 70-something percent of Americans get a refund. I like to think of it this way.

You think the government's doing such a bang-up job with spending that you decided, you know what? I'm going to loan you all some money for the year. Interest-free, just on me. That walked me into Debbie's office and said, I can't. I can't do it anymore. No. The DMV is so efficient. Oh, God. So proud of the work you do. I'm just going to loan you all money. Scary.

All right, our question of the day comes from Max in Oregon. I have a portfolio of properties that's worth about $3 million. My partner and I recently had a child, so we'd like to buy a house. I sold one of my properties for the down payment, and my partner chipped in $5,000, which wiped out her savings. She keeps asking me to sell the rest of my investments so we won't have a mortgage. I have a feeling she wants this so she doesn't need to go to work.

I feel stuck and resentful because of the inequality of our financial contributions. Well, so this is a relationship that's not going to work, Dave. So, Max, it starts with when you have a partner instead of a wife. Right. Are we dating? Are we married? I don't even know. I don't even know what's going on. I can't tell. I can't tell if you're married and you think it's chic to say partner or

Or if this is a business. You're killing me. It's a business. It sounds like, because you use the word partner, that you think this is a business. That's the way this verbiage sounds, doesn't it? And so if you were in partnership with a business partnership,

And it was an unequal. Well, each of the parties in the partnership would have things that they were supposed to bring to the partnership. Are both of you going to bring what you're supposed to bring to the partnership? Then if somebody is not doing that, then a business partnership, you would have you would have this exact kind of discussion about that. But before you go to a business partnership.

Hopefully you've discussed what each of you are going to bring to the table and what your goals for the partnership are. Yeah, what the expectations are. Y'all haven't done that here. You haven't hit that. You haven't even gone that far with this, but my point is how sickening this sounds because it sounds like a business transaction. Instead of, like, me and my wife had a child.

And she wants me to pay off our house that we live in and raise our child. And I've got a big old pile of money. And I'm really loving my money more than I love my wife and my child. And she chipped in $5,000 and wiped out her savings. Oh, wow. She keeps asking me because she doesn't want to go to work. She married Max the Millionaire. Bro. Bro.

Dude, there's just... I was going to say you need to check yourself, but you've already wrecked yourself, brother. You got a mess. Got a mess, man. Yeah, we just wore you out, son. Sorry about that, but... I'm not. You know what? I can't stand this attitude because it is an attitude of I am superior to you because I have some properties. Yeah. And you married a woman. Y'all created a human together. I don't know if we're married. Well, whatever. We might be partners. Y'all have a child together and suddenly...

Well, you got. Yippee-ki-yay. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, this gives me the GAS, Dave. Max, y'all need to go see a counselor ASAP. Get this lined up. Let me tell you, if I could be your best friend for a second, your old uncle, Ugly Dave, and put my arm around you, I would say, love this child and this woman so well that you marry this woman if you're not.

And that you make those two your everything and you do anything for your everything above your homes and your, you know, anything for your everything. There you go. And that means you pay off your stinking house and you make a home and you pay cash for it and you create an environment where those two can both prosper because you love them more than you love life itself. Certainly more than your tiny little portfolio of $3 million. Yeah.

This will cause you, my son, to be 80 years old and have no regrets. Worshiping at the altar of a $3 million real estate portfolio, meanwhile making your own wife or should-be wife and child second fiddle to your stuff will not lead you to long-term happiness.

Period. Easy. Easy. So that's what we're seeing, and that's what we were dancing around and being sarcastic. And we know that all the crap this poor lady is feeling. But, dude, you really are being a complete butt because you are completely worshiping the wrong things here. You're completely putting the wrong things in the wrong order. And when a lady has your child, married or not,

And you are so superior with your $3 million that you look down your nose and she paid off her $5,000. I'm like, dude, it's just nasty. It's nasty. So,

Oh, sorry. You wrote in. Oh my gosh. But you know, Hey, you know, the truth is the secret to happiness is long-term high quality relationships. It's not stuff. Hello.

Period. Man, I just find myself overly empathetic sometimes. Y'all give me a hard time off air, but I'm just overly... This is one of the few ones that gets me fired up. When somebody looks and it's just... Well, the problem is there's the downstream on it. The problem is...

You and I know the data of where this kid ends up. That's right. If Max's brain isn't reaching. That baby will be born and really quickly that nerve system will know, oh, daddy's rental properties are more important than me. Yep. And that's a recipe for chaos, man. Yeah, this is how you end up. I don't know how little Johnny ended up being a bank robber. I do. I do. This is the Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's the Ramsey Show.

where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships.

I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, number one best-selling author, and Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Matt is with us in Minneapolis. Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hey, Dave and John, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My wife and I have been debt-free, 100% house and everything for five years. We are baby step millionaires and are currently in the process of going to build a new home. Good for you. Our existing home, our oldest son is interested in buying. It's worth about $365,000.

He can only afford about $250,000. So I'm wondering your opinion if, you know, writing up a contract and covering all the Ds, as you say, like in a partnership, percentage of ownership. It comes out he owns 65%. We would retain about 35% ownership. Is that a bad idea? How old is your oldest son? 24, married, and two grandkids. Mm-hmm.

Okay. But we do have two other children. The middle child has already bought his. He bought a house. So what is your total net worth, Matt? 1.28. Actually, I was going to try to call yesterday. Oh, congratulations. How old are you? I am 47. Okay. And what do you make a year?

The last couple of years have been incredible. I'm an over-the-road truck driver, completely my own carrier. And with COVID and the supply chain, I've done $200,000 to $300,000 on my own the last couple of years. How is your health? How is your health?

Um, good. Okay. All right. Not perfect, but so if you don't, let's pretend you had 1.2 and let's pretend it made 10% every seven years, it would double. Okay. And so it'll be 2.4 when you're 54, when you're 61, it's a, it's a 4.8 when you're 68, it's 10 million.

Okay. So if you make it to 70 years old and this money continues to grow and some of it's in real estate and personal homes and those kinds of things, but it grows in value, right? And if you continue to invest and if you continue to add to it on top of that, it's even more, but you should have five to $10 million at your death. That's a reason. That's why I was asking you all those questions.

All right. So what I would do here, if you're going to do this, I would never do a partnership ever because you and your son will be just fine. But this puts a different pressure on your daughter in law. That's not fair to her. You've interfered in their marriage. You didn't mean to because you're sweet and you love your grandbabies, but you would don't do that.

What I would do instead is if you want to sell him the house for $250,000 and it's worth $350,000, he just got $100,000 less at your death. Okay, so put that in the will. That he gets $100,000 less at your death. Okay. Now, he owns this house. He has no strings attached. He could sell it. He can paint it purple.

He can go on vacation. It's none of your freaking business. He owns the house. And all you advanced him was $100,000 of his future inheritance. Yeah, because that was kind of what we'd already thought is maybe in five, ten years they could refinance and buy the rest. Nope. I don't need this monkey on his back. He's 24 with two kids. Yep.

Okay. Okay. Or the other thing is, or the other thing is we could just say out loud that, um, Papa Dave over here understands that Papa Matt has grandkids disease. Cause when you love your grandbabies, you start doing stupid butt stuff for their parents. If you're not careful and you might have grandkids disease.

Because it's okay if a 24-year-old can't do a $350,000 house. It's perfectly okay in society. Yeah. So no is a possible answer. But if you want to do it, that's the way to do it. And I would even say a third option is give them the grandkid discount.

And just to say, I'm going to eat $100,000 in equity of quote-unquote what it's worth. You've got to pass that on to the two siblings somehow. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Yeah, that's my reason for. But yeah, I do like the idea of writing it in the will, and we already have a trust. Yep. And you know, unless you're sick, you're probably going to have several million dollars, and it's not going to be that big a deal for $100,000 of it to be out of his advance. Can you sell this house, though, and not have any strings attached?

If he wants to plow up the front yard and put corn in it because he watched a YouTube video, are you fine with that? Yes. No, there was a... I don't like that. That was a stretched yes. You need to be able to come home and realize he ripped all the carpet up, took all the old... Let's pretend he went and bought a house on his own that had nothing to do with you. You can leave your hands off of that, can't you? Yep. Then you've got to leave your hands off this one. Okay. If you can't do it, don't do it. It's a stupid butt house.

Don't let this mess up grandpa land. Yeah, it's not worth your son or your grandkids. Well, yeah, that's the emotional. We've been there 21 years. He grew up there. Well, how's the sisters going to feel? We're raising kids. How's the sisters going to feel? Well, I said the middle child already bought a house. The youngest. That wasn't what I asked. I didn't ask if they were homeless. I asked how they were going to feel.

I don't know. Probably would be some jealousy there. Yeah, I probably want to talk about it, make sure everybody's okay with it. This is what we're thinking about doing, sisters. You guys cool with that? That's why we do it at Ramsey's because we do all kinds of wacky stuff around the Ramsey's, but we always just say, hey, this is what we're thinking about doing. How's everybody feel about that?

And sometimes you just put the awkward crap in the middle of the table. It diffuses it. I don't know of a situation. I'm becoming more and more dogmatic about this, Dave. I don't know of a situation where not just putting it on the table is

Isn't the best way to do it. It's the only way. Yeah. It's the only way. Unless somebody on the other end is bent on hurting you or they don't have the capacity to hear what you're saying, you got to put on the table. Yeah. Well, even then I gave him a shot. Right. And then I could just put up a boundary on the other side. There you go. I gave you a shot at understanding. But if you know, we lived there 21 years. All our memories are there. I have that wallpaper there on purpose. I put that sink in there and that's my sink. Then not anymore. Don't do it. Not anymore.

Yeah, you don't own it anymore. You can't control freak this. And it'd even be worse if you were partners. Probably better if you just don't do the deal at all. But if you do it, I gave you the mechanical way to pull it off and you got to keep your emotional hands off of it and the sister's got to be okay. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today.

Matt wanting to sell the house at a discount to his 24-year-old son who can't afford a $350,000 house but can afford a $250,000 house made me think it's a good idea to update what's going on in the real estate world. The interest rates started going up and the market started slowing down dramatically about 15 or 18 months ago.

And we did a live stream where I very emphatically said the real estate market is not going to crash. Values are not going to tank.

And here's how I know that. And I went through several data points on the air and we had several hundred thousand of you watch that live stream. And we covered some of that on the air here to let you know that the real estate market values were not going to tank because a whole bunch of people were really upset that interest rates had gone up. They felt that they, that the system had cheated them and they were not going to be able to buy a home. They were frozen out of the home market and they would sit on the sidelines and wait on the real estate market to crash.

go down in value and I explained to you why it was not going to go down in value and it was a very simple proposition except I went into great detail I'm not going to do right now but basically it works like this when there is a shortage of an item it's called supply-demand curve in economics if you had a decent economics class in the seventh grade you learned this okay

The supply-demand curve works like this. When there is an oversupply of an item versus the demand, if you've got a glut in the market, if you can get them anywhere easily, there's not a shortage, prices go down.

When there's a shortage of an item or a service in the market, a scarcity, prices versus demand, prices go up. That's basic economics. Okay? So items that are scarce go up more often than not.

Items that are easily available, readily available, widely available, there's too many of them produced, go down in value. Does that make sense? Everybody kind of knows that. That's kind of common sense if you think about it. So here's the deal. There is less inventory of homes for sale versus the number of buyers today than there has been in 25 years. There's a shortage of

of housing versus the demand. Zero chance prices are going to go down on houses during that time. I said that 18 months ago, told everybody that.

Dave, that video is not going to age well after the crash. You're going to have to come back and tell people you were wrong. Well, instead, I'm here going, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. I freaking know what I'm talking about. Okay. There's a difference. All right. I know a little about that stuff. I've got a degree in real estate. I've been buying real estate since before any of you were born.

So hardly any of you. So spring is upon us. It's predicted to be another busy time for real estate. This is some stuff we just picked up out of the press. Average interest rates for 15-year fixed rate mortgages are at 6.16% right now, down from 7 and some change just a few weeks ago. So interest rates are trending down. Total housing inventory at the end of January was up 2%.

and up 3% from a year ago. Unsold inventory still sits at a three-month supply, and there is a tremendous number of new listings coming. So we're starting to see some supply come back into the market. That's what we're seeing. But we're also seeing buyers come back into the market that were sidelined, waiting on interest rates to go down or waiting on the crash.

And for people who don't believe that, I bid on a house a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, and I got outbid by four different buyers. There's a lot of multiple contracts are coming back. That's what the National Association of Realtors is reporting this. Okay. Low inventory has driven the median home price up to an all-time high. Prices went up. They didn't crash. You were wrong. They went up.

to an all-time high of $379,000. That's the median home price in America. In February, homes went from being listed to going under contract in 17 days, and they were at 27 days. So they're selling faster. The market is heating back up, and the slight move in interest rate down, the grass getting green in some of the markets. We're seeing the real estate market heat back up. We're seeing multiple offers in big markets like Nashville. Again,

And let me tell you, I got my real estate license in 1978. The number of years during that between 1978 and now that you put a home on the market and you got multiple offers, it's been a very rare time. But prior to 2020, we were seeing some of it. And then, of course, after Fauci's pandemic, we saw people go crazy and

They came out of their homes. They were quarantined and came out looking for new houses like a Baptist looking for a casserole. They were everywhere, man. They were running around like crazy and drove prices ridiculously up in 20 and out of control. I mean, like 89 offers on a weekend, that kind of stuff. All right, y'all remember that. That was just like two and a half years ago, okay? And then it chilled. It just stopped.

And the market has gone, has continued to move, but it's very slow. The volume has been very slow, but still demand has exceeded supply and we've seen prices go up. And now that the market's heating back up a little bit, now we've yet again got even more demand than supply and we're seeing multiple offers again. So if you are thinking about selling a house, this is an excellent time to sell a house. Absolutely.

As a guy who's trying to buy one, please sell your house. If you're thinking about buying a house today, you're out of debt. You have your down payment. You're ready to go. And the only thing you're waiting on is you're waiting on the real estate prices to come down or the interest rates to come down. Don't wait. Go buy a house right now if you're ready because the prices aren't going to come down. And if the interest rates come down, you can just refinance. So you marry the house. You date the rate.

That's how that works. The rate is temporary. The house is dead gum. So here's the thing. Median house price, all time high in history right now. Interesting. And you thought 2020 was crazy and you thought 2021 was crazy. All right. I'm telling you, I'm not predicting it to go nuts again, but the idea that some of you are still sitting around waiting on this market to correct is hilariously stupid. You're that wrong.

And if it's not going to age, well, hey, I've aged pretty well in general. There's a couple of things I've missed it on, but I pretty much call it on a lot of these things. I told you Bitcoin was a scam. I told you from the start, even when all of you people that joined Bitcoin, like some people joined Mary Kay, y'all were driving me nuts, yelling and screaming at me like I'd insulted your Jesus or something. It's crazy.

And it was a dadgum scam. And we knew it was a scam from the start. We knew it was a horrible idea. And yet you walked around acting like you're sophisticated and do rooms. You just don't understand. Let me tell you guys, this is what's happening with real estate. I promise you, you can look up this particular YouTube five years from now and you're going to go, yeah, that old fart was right again. That's what you're going to do. It's exactly what you're going to do. So prices are going to go up. Rates are going to go up and down, up and down, up and down. They always have. And they always will.

The only rate that you cannot adjust is mine. My interest rate on my mortgage is zero because I don't have a mortgage. That's the only one you can control. So get the house, get the house paid off, go to RamseySolutions.com, get you a Ramsey trusted agent to buy a house or to sell a house right now and quit believing all this fear mongering bull crap that's out there.

Listen, the market is slow, but demand still exceeds supply, and it has still driven us to an all-time high median price on house. Those are facts. That's called data. If you don't agree with that, you're what's known as wrong. Seriously. So if you're going to buy a house or sell a house, best times right now. I told you that same thing 18 months ago, and I was right then, too. This is The Ramsey Show.

Thanks for joining us, America. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality and Real Estate Mogul is my co-host today. I'm not a lot of things, Dave, but I'm not that. I'm a bumbling idiot. You're number fourth in line among four people bidding on a house. In supposedly the falling, crashing, dying economy. Real estate market ever. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know, John. You're a failure, I'm thinking. I could be wrong. I'm fairly certain you're on the right track. I made the mistake. I told my kids we got that. I was like, I'm going to go in against the house, guys. Oh, God. Here goes daddy. Watch daddy. He's going to go get a bear. I had to go back and be like, your dad's a loser, kids. Ed's in Myrtle Beach. What's up, Ed?

Hey Dave and Dr. John, thanks for taking my call. I'll get right to it. Okay. Um, I'm 61 years old. Uh, got divorced nine years ago. Um, the agreement, the divorce agreement or settlement was I would keep all the assets. I own a small business and have owned it for 35 years. Um, a paid for house paid for business property, uh,

And in return, I would give my wife a half a million dollars paid for $3,500 a month. And I've been doing that for quite a few years. I've got it down to $130,000 now. And every month, obviously that $3,500, you know, bothers me to pay her. And I talked, I go back and forth about just paying it all off. I called her, offered her,

um, uh, pay it off in full with a little bit of a discount. She didn't accept that. So I said, okay, I'll just keep paying you. And you know, I'm to the point in my life, I'm 61 years old. How long ago was that? Uh, probably about a year ago. Okay. All right. And how much do you have? How much money do you have?

I have $1.1 million in our retirement. I just got remarried on Valentine's Day this past year, and we have $1.1 million and $70,000 as an emergency fund. And your real estate's worth what?

Uh, my house is worth about four 50, maybe a little more. And my business property is probably worth about 400. And then my business, if I sold that, that'd be worth anywhere between 1.5 and 2 million. So you got a net worth around $5 million. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, pretty much. And you can gain a, out of $5 million, you can gain yourself a ton of peace and

a whole new look on a brand new relationship if you write a $130,000 check. Yeah. Do it. Yeah. Do it. I'm going to do it. I was hoping you'd say that, and I just stayed on the phone for an hour and 15 minutes to get out and talk to you. I wanted to hear it from you, Dave. No, I'm sorry. John's hard to get through to, but yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to hold for something that, yeah. No, that's okay. This is...

the final salute to that part of the past and um yeah i'm a little shocked she won't take a discount but uh you do something fun she's uh she just won't she just i don't know if she would have y'all would have y'all still be married hey you'll do something fun yeah this next month you're gonna write this check um by monday of next week

And when April 1st comes around, I want you to get a checkout and write $3,500 and let your new wife see it and then hand it to her. She's in the background. She heard it. She's cheering. She heard you say that.

Because I tell you what, as much as you hate writing that $3,500 check every month, oh, that makes your new wife skin crawl, man. Yeah. Yeah. I can hear her yelling shit in the background. That's so great. That would be the best $3,500 you ever spent in your life, man. Yeah, you ought to do something to celebrate that much of your past being in the past. Yeah.

We're already in Myrtle Beach for three months. There you go. Okay. Well, go out to eat and buy you an expensive bottle of wine or something. But yeah, write a check, be done with it. There's an amount of peace and closure and finality and...

All those kinds of things that's going to come when you do this, you can't even anticipate because you're a business guy and you run numbers all the time. And you're not going to catch how emotional this is until you actually do it. It's going to be like, oh, that's really done. I'm really done with her. She is X. Yes. X, X, X. This has been a very protracted 10-year divorce. And just the thought of calling and saying, hey, I'm going to write you a check. Will you take this instead? And her saying no.

that's like she's still controlling things you know that's the only reason she did it right oh man write the check she actually wanted the money write the check man be free i don't think we've ever done a uh debt free screen divorce free screen but i'm a divorce free screen we could probably do it for you um what do you uh yeah we do that we do those in the parking lot we do those in the parking lot

Wow. All right. Corey's with us. Corey's in Salt Lake City. Corey, this is what happens when you get in towards the end of the show. It digresses. What's up? I really enjoyed listening. Thank you for taking my call. It's a pleasure to talk to you, gentlemen. Thank you. I hope you're doing better than you deserve as well. We are, sir. Thank you very much. How can we help you, sir?

Well, thank you. So just for a bit of context for you, right now I'm in Baby Step 2, and I'm going to have my car paid off in about the next month. Good. And that will be the last of my debt. Way to go. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then at the end of this year, I'll have Baby Step 3 completed, or I'm projecting to, with about $20,000 in my emergency fund. Okay.

So next year I'm going to begin my, or I'll resume my 401k investing and putting some money away from my kids' college funds. Excellent. My question is,

My question is, we're eventually going to need to get a bigger house to accommodate our growing family. And right now I have a seven-year adjustable rate mortgage. If I could go back in time, I wish I could take that back, especially with this climate, but I'm kind of have what I'm dealt with. But I'd like to do that in the next three to five years just before the adjustable period begins.

And at that time I'll have about a thousand dollars a month extra in my margin in our budget. And the way I'm seeing it, I have three different options. Um, the first one is I'd like to either put that extra money towards our principal and our existing mortgage, um, save that in a high yield savings account, um, and then withdraw it when the time comes for that bigger house or, um,

take on a bit of more risk or gain potential by investing in a brokerage account. I was just curious to know what your thoughts were on that. Well, you explained the baby steps to us, which means you have some familiarity with what we teach. Baby step one is $1,000 saved to start an emergency fund. Two is debt-free, except for the house. That's where you're getting ready to be. Three is you need an emergency fund before we do any of this of three to six months of expenses.

Once you've got that, then you're in four, five, and six simultaneously. Four is 15% of your income going into retirement, as you talked about. And five is kids' college, as you talked about. And six is pay off your house. And we tell people pay it on the principal. Pay your house off, man. And even if you don't get it paid off, when you sell it, they give you a check.

For the equity. You didn't lose the money. It's all right there stored in the house. You don't accidentally spend it or accidentally lose it or buy a bass boat with it or anything. It's right there in the house, okay? And then when the house sells, they give you a check and you use that check to move up into the next house when you get ready to do that. You're probably going to do that before this seven-year mark hits on this thing. You're probably going to sell it.

but you will have reduced the principal and you've got this nice nest egg then coming out of that house to move on to the next deal. You'll be glad you did that. It's what in the financial counseling world we call a forced savings plan. Because when you pay down on the mortgage, there's only two ways to get that money out of that house. Refinance or sell it. And both are very cumbersome. Therefore, you will not impulse a bass boat.

or a 30-day cruise, or whatever it is that you're a Porsche, whatever it is you're getting ready to impulse. Instead, you keep doing smart things with it, which is like getting ready to do the next house. You got a really good thought train going overall, Corey. All we're doing here in this conversation is fine-tuning it. I'm real proud of you. You keep it up.

Our scripture of the day is Ecclesiastes 10.10. If the axe is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed, but skill will bring success. Dr. Stephen Covey used to talk about sharpen the axe, don't be a tree beater. Abraham Lincoln said that some achieve great success as proof to all that others can achieve it as well. Well, there you go.

When you hear a debt-free scream, it should give you hope that you can too. A brand new event we're doing, Dave Ramsey's Investing Essentials. I'm going to be doing a deep dive into investing. I'm teaching it. It's two hours a night for two nights, a total of four hours, May 21 and 22.

It is not a duplicate. It is a series over two nights. It's virtual. It's a live stream. It's $199, and I'm going to unpack my personal playbook on investing, the principles that I use to decide what I invest in, the formulas that I use in real estate, how I do my real estate, how I do my mutual funds, and you can learn from that and decide if you want to do it.

Uh, the friends that I run with on investing stuff are people of, uh, 20, 30, $50 million, a hundred million dollar net worths. I know what they do. I know the inside workings of what they do. A lot of them know what I do. And, uh, I've learned a lot from people like that. I'm going to share it with you. And this is, so this is not a broke tick tock guy with an opinion. This is a guy who does it. I own several hundred million dollars worth of real estate. So how did I do that?

So we're going to show you and talk about it. We're going to do the basics, too, like 401ks and mutual funds. RamseySolutions.com slash events to get signed up.

This is a live stream, $199, May 21 and 22, two hours each night, a total of four hours of material. George Campbell's going to be in there with me, helping me, and helping you because he can translate from Dave to human. All right. Ashley is in Houston, Texas. He's fluent in millennial. I guess. Yeah, human to millennial. There we go. Ashley's in Houston. Hi, Ashley. How are you?

I'm good. How are y'all doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Oh, yes. So I guess I'll jump into it. I'm very new to this. Like I've been looking into you for like the last three weeks and kind of just started, you know, learning about my finances and how bad I'm off. Yeah.

So I am on baby step number two. I have $1,000 saved up. Good. Yeah, I was really proud of that. I was really excited. Well, you really are doing it. I mean, this is not – I thought you were just discussing it as theory, but, yeah, you're really doing it. You know what it is. You know what baby step two is. You did the first step, and it's been only two weeks. Way to go. Yeah, it was really exciting. My husband's proud of me, too, even though we're a joint effort, of course. Good.

I just started calculating my debt a couple days ago. I'm $73,000 jointly, my husband and I. Most of it's student loans. We did just find out, though, that my husband has a feeling he's probably going to have to have back surgery. He's a stay-at-home dad. He stays home with our three-year-old and our one-year-old.

So if he ends up having to do this, I'm going to have to take off work to help him. I mean, it's just what I have to do, and I have to help watch the kids. And the way my work works, I mean, I only have so much PTO, about 30 hours, and then I'm going to have to kind of pay out of pocket for a week. And now I'm anxious. I was excited, and now I'm just stressed. How far away is the back surgery?

So we're not sure yet. We're just starting to do tests now to see if there are, you know, things that he's going to be able to do, but it's looking like it's going to have to happen. I mean, he's barely walking. Let's not worry about it until we worry about it. So you need to know. I've got a set date in September he's going in for surgery. Okay. When we know that, what you do is you push pause on the baby steps because you're now in emergency mode.

You have a serious storm cloud on the horizon. Lightning is cracking. Okay? Right, right. So we're going to batten up the hatches. And what that means is we're going to push pause. We're going to be on a very, very, very tight budget. You're going to work as much as you can work, and you're going to sell as much as you can sell because the bigger the pile of cash you have going into his back surgery, the easier this whole thing is going to be.

Right, yeah, because I don't want to get in any more debt than I already am in. No, we're not going to get in debt. We're going to put him all the way in. I mean, we're going to have a big old pile of cash. You're going to use up your PTO. You're going to have groceries in the cabinets. And then when you're able to get, when he's able to get up and get moving around, you're able to get back to work as soon as possible. Then you can start push play again. And any money you haven't used from this pile, you'll just throw that at the debt and you won't have lost any ground.

Okay. But if you use some of it, you will have lost ground, right? Right, right. But here's a cool idea. He turns around and is back up and moving, and you're back at work before you have to spend a dime of the savings. Yeah. That'd be neat. That'd be great. Yeah. That'd be a blessing. Yeah, that'd be a... Then all the savings, you didn't lose a single drop of traction. Yeah.

But if you spend $2,000 out of 10,000, then you lost that much traction. But so what? We got his back surgery. We're the other side of it, and it's not a complete stress point. Right, right.

Don't worry about it until it's, you know. Yeah. As soon as you know the date certain or it looks like sometime in the fall, you know, we're going to do September, October. The doc comes back and says that, and it's 100% chance we're doing it. Then you push pause and get in. I'm piling up cash. The bigger, the more cash I've got, the better I can survive this storm. Okay. And an antidote to the anxiety you feel. Like sometimes we're anxious about things that we're imagining are coming.

The thing that's coming at y'all is actually happening, right? Right. An antidote to that anxiety is taking every question you have and writing it down and making sure you don't let a doctor visit go by. You're giving them a jillion dollars anyway. Ask every question you have from what's estimated time of recovery, what's the cost of this thing going to be, start to finish, what's the final check we have to write. What do we got to do to make sure insurance covers all of it? Get all of the data that you need.

And then you're not wondering in the middle of the night, we have to do this, we have to do that. You'll know, no, we need to get $7,000. Or we need to get $4,200, whatever the number is. You'll be able to figure it out. That's right. You begin to have an actual thing to aim at and not just all over the place. What do you know about the insurance coverage you have? So my deductibles are $1,500 and my out-of-pocket is $11,000. Okay. So that's our max.

Right. So it won't be more than $11,000. So I make $88,000. Okay. All right. And you have currently, you said you have $70,000 in debt? Roughly, yes. Okay. So worst case scenario, you're the other side of this, and including medical, if you don't have to have money to eat with, and you run up $11,000 out of pocket. So now you're $81,000. That's your worst case.

Okay. Yeah. You can do this. And one final antidote to anxiety is ask yourself this when you have those scary thoughts in the middle of the night. What if it all works out? We're real good about asking, okay, what are we going to do when this goes bad and this goes bad and this goes bad? But we rarely stop and say, what if this works out? I can never say that word. Catastrophizing. Catastrophizing, yeah. Is that how you say it? I mean, our bodies do that to keep us alive. I can't say it because I can't do it. Yeah. You're pretty good at it.

I'm good at it. Yeah, most of us are pretty good at it. Dave has a genetic mutation where he doesn't understand catastrophe. It's always going to work out, and it just does. But, yeah, I live in that world, and I've had to learn to ask myself. Wait a minute. Did you just call my parents a name? No. What did you say about a genetic mutation?

But the chances of it working out. Ninja. Maybe great. Mutant turtle. Yeah. Yeah. Got to look at the positives of it. Yeah. You're going to be fine. You're going to be okay, actually. It's going to work. Thank you. I appreciate that. Lay it out. Hey, if you're in the middle of all this and it gets to freaking you out, just give us a call. We'll walk you through the numbers. Okay. Yeah. I'm learning so much, honestly, in the past three weeks. Because every email. Where people get freaked out on all of this is they get down in the trees and they can't see the forest.

And so what we do so much of on this microphone is we're just up above the forest and we can just see it real clear.

Because we don't have any fog. We don't have any trees in our way. And if you can stay up above it like that, that's what John's talking about, then your stress level will be down and your decision-making will be much, much wiser. So you're in good shape. Pile up cash. Pile up cash as soon as you know you're really going to have to do this. That's the answer to the question. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. ♪

Okay.

And we also talk about something else I'm passionate about Disney adults. George, why is it a thing? Listen, some adults still find the magic. Sure. We,

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