Transcript of You’re Not Stuck You Just Need a Plan New

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Normal is broke. Common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life and your money. From the Ramsey Network in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio, this is The Ramsey Show. I'm Jade Bourshaw. Next to me, Dr. John Delony, taking your calls really for the next 3 hours. If you want to get involved, the number is 888-825-5225.

Gets you on the line.

In Salt Lake City, Utah. And what's going on?

Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Uh, my question today is my— we—

our youngest son is going to be starting medical school in July this summer, and he's married and has a 2-year-old, and then has his wife is pregnant. They're going to have their second baby in the fall. And our question is, because of the changes in the federal student loan, um, program They are not able to borrow enough money to even really pay the tuition for the medical school. Yeah. And so they're going to need to take out private loans. And so our question is, please don't do this, whether we will—

please don't do that.

Hey, let me ask you, before you go any further with this, I want to ask you one question. Why do you think they put limits on it, on how much they can borrow?

They're trying to do— they're trying to get the schools to change their policies so they don't require students to borrow as much money. They're trying to get them to to lower the tuition. Um, but I think in this kind of in the gap, the, the tuition isn't going any lower right now.

But the crux of the question is, why do you think they're putting caps on how much students can borrow?

Well, I think for some professions that makes sense. He's going to be a doctor.

So I think the question is— and I want— because I want you to think of this because this is going to inform my answer to you— why do you think they're putting caps on how much these students can borrow. Simply.

Because they are able to pay them back?

Yes, ma'am. Yeah.

Yes, ma'am. What kind of medicine is your son going to go into?

Um, still deciding, but he's working right now, um, with a— in a urology clinic and is either interested in that or maybe endocrinology. Wow.

So I've got friends who are at medical school startups at universities. I've worked with medical professionals my whole career. That's, that's just where I've lived. And I'm just telling you, just parent to parent, my son is 16. I would love for him to be a physician. I think that's a great noble calling. It's a good, good position. I mean, it's a good profession. Um, I would, I mean, he can do what he wants at his age. I would tell him, do not borrow money to go into this profession. And, and that's, that's me having friends that are physicians, working with physicians, working with medical education and having a kid that I would love to see be a doctor because I don't know what AI's impact is gonna be on in 1 year, in 2 years, in 10 years on the need or the ability for that person who owes $500,000, $600,000 to be able to recoup that.

Mm-hmm.

So good.

And a local pediatrician is not gonna make $500,000, $600,000, especially with insurance reimbursements. A, a, a surgeon, they will. They'll do great. A urology surgeon, they might. I, and again, I don't, I don't, it is all that is so region specific and correct. All that, you know, but all that to say is, you and I, the world we grew up in is the safest thing is go be a lawyer or go be a doctor. Like that's what we were taught. Right. And just look at what's happened to all the kids for the last 20 years who have been told, go to coding, go get, go get a degree in coding, go get a degree in IT. They're outta jobs. You know what I mean? Like they created a thing that's gonna take all their jobs away. I cannot in good conscience, as proud of your son as you are, as excited as he is, if a bank is telling you, you're too much of a risk for us to give you this money, to go around the bank and try to figure that out. Like the bank's whole business is I'm gonna loan you this money and I'm gonna make money on you paying me back.

And when banks say, I'm not going to do that, this is too high of a risk, listen to what they're trying to tell you. They're trying to say, I don't, I don't want to do business with you because I don't think you're going to be able to pay us back. And I know I'm blowing up everything and that's not even why you called. I just got to tell you parent to parent, a guy who I worked in higher ed for 20 years, if they're saying we're putting the brakes on this, I would listen to, to why they're putting the brakes on it. And all that to say is, I can't, even more strongly, I would say don't go get private loans because those get people into so, so much trouble.

Yeah, that's really tough. So we completely hijacked you.

Yeah, totally hijacked you, sorry.

Before you even asked your question. But we wanted to make you clear on what our stance might be. So go ahead and ask your question just so we can hear it with our own ears.

Yes, I guess we're just trying to, you know, my husband and I are, We have, you know, I'm 58, he's 61, we're both working full-time. Our combined income's probably about $225,000 a year. We have about $40,000 left to pay on our home. And when our children were kind of going through their higher education process, we really weren't able to help them very much because of kind of the situation we were in, but we've kind of changed that situation now. And so we're just trying to figure out how we can, 'cause we didn't really contribute at all to his undergraduate education at all. He funded that himself. And so we're just trying to figure out if we can— if there's something we can do on our end. And so what we worked— is that on the private loans, the interest rate is dramatically lower if we co-sign on that loan for him rather than him just doing that himself. So we were trying to figure out how to mitigate that risk. We had a couple of ideas of how to do that.

But I love that you're thinking in that way because I think that's— as a parent, you do. You want to look at ways to lessen the load, especially financially. Even if I did agree with debt, I would never agree with co-signing. So even if, even, even if I was a person who was like, oh, student loans are fine, I would still say co-signing, please don't do it. Because here's what's going to happen. You co-sign a loan, you're on the hook for it. His name is on it. He's just starting his life with his baby, his family, his wife. He might think this is not an— this is not something I'm interested in paying off right now. That's always going to be attached to you. So if you decide, oh, we want to move, we want to buy a house, we want to do something that might involve our credit, you're attached to it. It's debt that's in your name and that always has the ability to ruin a relationship.

Yes. You're not only putting his credit score on the block, you're putting y'all's relationship on the block. Yeah, if y'all have cash, write him a check today. Yeah, you'll— I will high-five you to the moon and back if you want to support your kid through medical school.

Even if you can't do all of it, yeah, fund some of it, right?

Cash and say, here's a gift, we weren't able to do this, we're going to give you this gift. But what you're trying to do is take the guilt you have from not helping in undergrad, and you're going to put your relationship with your son— he's going to sit at Thanksgiving with y'all And y'all are going to be his lender.

Oh, and, and, and I can tell you, because that's what me and my husband did. My husband's, uh, mother, my mother-in-law, co-signed for his loans, and she was the third wheel in our marriage for almost 7 and a half years.

Why'd you buy that car? Why'd you buy new— is that a new purse? Why'd y'all buy that?

And hear me say, she is the, the sweetest, most generous woman. Like, there is nothing— like, I can't say anything bad about the woman, but I am saying because her name was on that loan, that she was part of the marriage. Because when she was ready to buy a house, when she was ready to do things, it was like, when are you guys going to pay? In the nicest way. When are you guys going to pay this loan off? Are you guys making progress? Right? Because it's her right to ask because her name was on it. Yeah, she had every right to want to know about it. But as a result, it did become at many times a point of contention. And I just— I hated that it was like that. Now everything's good. The loan's paid off. It's all gravy. But I hated that. That's how we got off. That was the foot we got off on in our marriage.

Um, we just, we just totally ruined your plans, Anne. I'm sorry. You're probably not gonna listen to what we said, but man, if it plants a seed of doubt in your mind, let it grow.

Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance, or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John. Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're gonna die or something?

Well, I used to be one of those guys. I didn't even think about it, and one of my buddies said, "Hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids," and I immediately went and got term life insurance.

That's a gut punch.

And oh, you're telling me. And for decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse, they've lost somebody important to them.

Me too.

They don't know what to do next.

Me too. I mean, you're going to have a crisis here. And, you know, you got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow. She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly the two options. And take care of your dadgum family.

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All right, Haley's in Houston, Texas. Haley, you are on the line. How can we help today?

Hi, um, thanks for having me. Um, but so I had a question, um, regarding my retirement, um, investments, I guess.

Um, I've been investing about $45,000 to $50,000 a year these last several years, and I'm—

I was wondering when I can maybe pull back some on that, um, and maybe focus on other things like saving for a house or, um, just other life, um, events.

I mean, I wanna say today, but tell me, tell me more about your financial snapshot because just for those listening, she, Hailey's investing, uh, above and beyond what we would say generally, um, in the Baby Steps unless you're to the point of Baby Step 7 where you've paid off your home and everything. So, What you're doing, Hailey, is pretty awesome in the way of building wealth, but let's make sure that it's in the right parameters of your financial situation. So tell us more. Tell us what you earn. Tell us if you have any debt. Give us the goods.

So I make— I take home about $220-ish a year and about $145 of that is like my actual income. And then I work overtime.

Okay.

For the remainder. And then I do have $90K in student debt, which is the only debt I have, but right now it's on deferment. So like, they're like, I'm on the SAVE program and they're not letting me pay on it right now.

Okay.

So I don't know, that's one thing I could do.

They're not letting you? You can, you can pay on it.

Yeah, I can.

Yeah, don't say they're not letting you.

Well, I'm on hold and I'm on the PSLF, or I'm trying to do the PSLF program. So I'm not wanting to get out of that because then if I change into a different payment plan, it will mess it up a bit.

I understand that.

And I'll be paying a lot more.

So you're giving me some insight that I am grateful for because it is informing what I think is the best route for you. And what I'm gonna say is what John and I did, is what Rachel and George did. I'm sure it's what Dave would've done had he have had student loans. I don't know if he ever did, but. So, you make a really great income, and you've made some, what I would call smart choices. You could have done way worse by, you know, investing 40 to 50% of your income. However, I would pull it back because debt is really serious. And around here, we believe in our whole heart that your biggest wealth-building tool is your income. You need the full force of your income at your disposal to truly be able to, number one, mitigate risk in your life, number two, be able to build wealth, and then number three, be able to do it in a peaceful manner. Like those, those are things that we really care about here. So the number one thing that we're going to teach you is debt elimination, getting rid of the debt, and then pledging to yourself that you will live a life without debt, especially consumer debt.

And so, right, I would say the same thing for you. You know, Hailey, I'd say let's pause investing for a moment. You've done so well. Let's go back and let's just knock out These $90,000 of student loans, I mean, you're single. Are you single?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So are you telling me that if you lived on $190,000, you couldn't knock these out in a year?

Round number-wise, would you recommend maybe like not stopping investing completely and maybe doing like pulling back like $20K and then putting that towards student loans?

What's your fear of investing? What are you scared of? You're putting away a jillion dollars.

Yeah, what do you have already?

Um, about $270,000 right now.

How old are you?

But that's including my pension. Um, I'm 30.

Yeah, you're not going to believe me because this is deeper than like intellectual knowledge, but you're good.

I'm—

I am way more concerned Like that quarter of a million dollars in 30 years is gonna be a whole bunch of money. I'm way more concerned. Uh, can I just be a jerk for a second? Is that cool? Can I just be mean?

Yeah. Like, yeah, that's fine.

Me, I got 2 kids. You make $200,000 and what'd you say? $225,000?

$220,000. Okay.

You make $220,000 bucks. You have the ability to repay these student loans that you sign your name on.

Mm-hmm.

And You're choosing not to so that me and my wife are, as part of our taxes, are gonna pay 'em for you. Now, if you were, if you were making $40,000 a year as an assistant district attorney trying to help the least of these in my community, I'm all about that.

Right. Right. Right.

And so like you sign your name to a piece of paper, you're making a, like almost a quarter million dollars a year, pay the debts that you said you were gonna pay back and then get on with your life. I'm way more concerned about your financial picture long term. You holding onto these. And crossing your fingers for some government repayment program, which by the way may come through. It might, it might. They've ticked up, they have ticked up how many they're processing and all that. That's all good. But man, you can't get that.

And how long have you already waited? How long have you already been waiting for this?

Well, I'm on, well, they've been on deferment for about almost 2 years, but I'm technically almost 5 years into these.

You see what I'm saying? Like that's a long time. And here's the thing, here's what's at stake because I think this is beyond mathematics. You're clearly good with numbers. You're thinking about the future. You're thinking about wealth. No one's gonna fault you on that. At least for sure, I'm not. But part of personal finance, a huge part of it is emotional. We know about the behavior. We know about the numbers, but we forget the emotional part, which is, Human beings want freedom. We wanna feel freedom and we wanna feel peace. That is just who we are at the core. And so, as long as this is taking up space and residency in your heart and in your brain and in your mind, what's the co— like, why is that worth it for you? Especially, now don't get me wrong, if you were making $40,000 a year and it was a struggle, I can understand it a little bit more. But girl, you've got the means to pay this off so quickly. This should have been gone. Like this should have been out of your life. And I would just hate for you to postpone the amount of freedom and autonomy that you can have inside, on the inside, because you can go out and buy what you want right now.

Mm-hmm. But on the inside and just say, yeah, to John's point, I signed for this. Let me let it go. And let me make you feel a little bit better about something here. How old did you say you are?

30.

I'm 30.

Okay. So you're 30 years old. You've already got $270,000 sitting in your investments. Let's just say, you know, until the age of 60, let's pretend you didn't invest a single more dollar. Like, you just were like, you know what, I'm not gonna put nothing else in here, and we just let it grow. Because that's not going to be the case. It's already $7 million. Okay.

Wow.

I feel like it's not—

that's—

no, because I mean, like, that's not real.

No, you're so young. It's because you're so young. And then if we just say, hey, she's gonna spend 1 year and pay this off, and then she's gonna jump right in at 15%, right? Because 15% for you is about $2,700 a month. And let's just say, okay, we're gonna start that at age 31 since we're gonna take a year and pound out this debt. And then if I calculate it, you're at $13 million. Do you think that's all right?

Yeah.

Can you scratch by on that?

I think you can. I think you can claw by, you know, on, on the $13 million. And sure, we could do the math on, well, what if we added an extra year to it? Okay, let's do that.

Mm-hmm.

Let's say, okay, let's, let's account for the year that she just didn't feel like paying off the debt. So let's add another "another year to it." Okay, it's $14 million. You know, you got a million more.

Wow.

But do you see what I'm saying?

Right.

A million dollars is a lot of money. There's time to make it up is what I'm saying. And then some. It's a year of time to get completely free, to feel like, you know what, I paid my debts in this world. I did what I said I was gonna do. I love that. And then from there, the good news is, to your point, 'cause I think I heard you talk about this, yes, you can pause. After you pay off the debt, you can pause investing. You can pull back to 15% and save up for your down payment. Hey, you could even pause for 2 to 3 years completely if you wanted to in order to stack up a down payment fast.

Okay, okay. So you'd recommend I completely pause, get the loans paid off, and then, you know, from there on do whatever?

And, and Haley, this is just me, this is just me, I'm only speaking for John Deluna here. If they come out next year and say all student loans are forgiven forever I wouldn't be mad because for me it's an, it's an issue of integrity. I signed a piece of paper that said, if y'all help me get through college, I'll pay you back. And I, I did what I said I was gonna do.

Right.

Right.

And so it's true. Would I wish I had that money back? Yeah. 'Cause I paid 6 figures back, but I did what I said I was gonna do. And at the end of the day, nobody can take my integrity from me. So I, I'm gonna be okay with that. Um, but yeah, I'd, I'd get it paid off 'cause it's the right thing to do. And more importantly, you've got the means to do it right now.

Now.

So knock it out.

And there's just something to be said about no one having to save you in life with money. It is a good feeling to say, I took my income, I paid my debts, I did what I needed to do. I got my own freedom. Nobody had to get it for me.

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Hello.

I'm good.

How can we help?

So I want to know if I should continue to support my wife Uh, with her continuous education.

Tell us more.

Okay.

So I'm 39. I'll be 40 here in a couple months. She's a few years younger than me. Uh, she's worked the job for 10+ years. Um, was let go about 3 years ago. I stepped up and got a better job making more income. So now I make, you know, $100,000. And was able to support our family. She went to school. First was medical billing and coding, finished that. Uh, then she went for phlebotomy, finished that. Then she went for medical assistant, and she's wrapping that up. Um, they're doing mock interviews, found out that she's only going to make about $20 an hour. Uh, we've got about $25,000 in student loan debt, and I just don't feel like I do see that is acceptable for the amount that you spent, huh?

For the amount that you spent on these certifications, correct?

I do see that the amount that we're in debt equals about a year's worth of her income, but now she wants to go for— to be a nurse, the RN program, um, and that's going to add probably about another $20,000.

My big concern here is less about the education and the money. My big concern here is the way you're talking about her tells me y'all are not together on this at all.

Like, no, you know what I mean? I want to support her, but I know it to what?

Because I know perpetual students. I was one. Who went to school a lot. So, uh, one, to get credentials, but two, so I didn't have to deal with the real world.

Right.

And it wasn't until me and my wife sat down and she was like, hey, what do you, what's, what are we doing here? Where are we headed with this? Because these three, these three jobs, she'd be a nurse by now.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

But if she learned along the way, I like, I actually like the medical field. I like doing this part of the medical field. I can become a nurse. That's not a bad trajectory. What's the thing beneath the thing here? 'Cause you sound frustrated with her, like, like it's not acceptable. She didn't set the market rate. Y'all may not have sat down together and looked at, hey, we're gonna spend this much money. How much is this job gonna pay? And y'all didn't do that calculation together. And that would be frustrating. But I would tell you as a husband, you own that as much as she does. Like supporting your spouse isn't just blindly writing checks. It's y'all are united on your decisions and here's why we're doing the things we're doing and here's the sacrifices we're both gonna make together to get where we want to go. That's being married. But like, you're blaming her, it sounds like. You know what I'm saying?

I'm not, I'm not blaming her for it, but you're right. I, I like that where, you know, where are we going with this?

Yeah.

You know, what happens after the RN? You know, is there something else?

Like, yeah, it sounds like you're worn out because you, every time you think it was the end of the line, it something else is the problem and now we got to go for the next thing. Am I right or wrong?

I am. I'm kind of burned out with work. I'm a truck driver, so being gone all the time and not being with my family all the time, I mean, not having that two-income, that strong going forward, but I'm also optimistic and I like to look towards the future and that's why I agreed to the schooling. Like, oh yeah, like we, you know, we can both make, you know, six figures.

That's great.

Where did you get that number? You just made that up in your head?

Yeah. I think they said that she would be around like $76,000 and I make, I mean, I'm at $40,000 right now as of this week for this year. So I think I'd make about $110,000 to $115,000 realistically.

Would it help Would it help if you took— obviously in the past it sounds like you took out student loans for the education. Would it help you get on board with what she's trying to accomplish if you said, hey, I'm for this, but we just need to cash flow it. I don't want to go backwards financially to make this happen. How would she feel about that? And how would you feel about that suggestion?

So being that at my age right now, I don't have any retirement. Um, and that's, and that's been my main focus. Like the main thing on my mind is I need to, to get my 401k built up.

Okay.

Um, I don't want— I don't want to work for the rest of my life. I actually do want to retire, right?

Okay.

Right now, as far as like cash flow on it, like, I just don't have the means, um, paying for our entire household off of just one income.

How long have you guys been married?

16 years.

Okay. And this is— is this the first marriage for both of you guys?

Yep.

Okay. Tell me. Okay, so here's what I hear, and John, jump in at any point. It's almost like for 16 years, I don't know what you guys were doing, but now all of a sudden it's like, we gotta lock in and it's, you're ready to lock in, but she's almost still like finding who she wants to be. Um, and I, I mean, I'm playing the field on this because I agree with you. There, there does come a point where it's like, we need to make a decision. We need to lock in and go forward with that. Um, I feel you on that. I also feel you on not wanting to burn extra money because there are fish to fry, like retirement and making sure we're paying off debt. So it sounds like a really kind of come-to-Jesus meeting needs to happen with you and your wife where it's, I need to understand the career hopping. Do you know where it is that you're wanting to go, or are you still feeling like you're in experiment mode? Like, tell me for real, like, tell me what you're really thinking so that I can understand where you're coming from and we can take some time and like, cool out on that and then come back together and really talk about it.

But understanding where she's at and her understanding where she's at is gonna be paramount on this. And she may not know.

And, and, and I want you to redefine the word support. I'll take Kelly Daniel, who is the producer of my show. She supports me in that show. She supports me by saying, hey, you did this really well. And she also supports me by, by helping create a vision for where we want to go with it. But she also really supports me when she says, hey, you blew that. That was, you did not handle that call well. And so you supporting your wife by saying quote unquote, yes, yes, yes to everything. And I'm gonna get a job where I, where I'm dying cuz I can't keep doing it. And then I'm gonna start keeping secrets about how scared I am about our future. And I'm gonna start keeping secrets about how my back hurts and I can't move and I'm not sleeping well. That's not support. And so support is you— my buddy Will Godera says every— he's one of the world's best restaurateurs. And he says every shift, the waitstaff goes and fills up their pitcher so they can spend the rest of their shift making sure everybody else has water. That's support. But they can't first start by supporting all of their customers if their pitcher's empty.

You have to look at, expand your definition of support is I'm not just gonna blindly say yes, yes, yes to everything. Support looks like, hey, let's take a half day. I'm gonna take a half day off of work. I'm ahead of schedule financially this year. Where are we going? Who do we want to be? What do we want our house to feel like? And right now this debt is scaring me to death. I would love for you to be a nurse cuz you could be a nurse into your seventies and AI will take parts of nursing away, but it won't take the human contact away. Like that's a thing y'all, she could do for a long, long, long time. And Maybe we can't afford that for the next 2 years. Let's settle into this phlebotomy job or whatever for 2 years. But support is, I'm gonna be honest and put everything on the table and let's co-create a vision together.

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Back to the phone lines where we have Nick from Sioux City, Iowa on the line. Hey Nick, how can we help today?

Hey guys, uh, just wanted to call. First off, big fan of the show. Thanks for taking my call. I listen to it all the time. So the reason I'm calling is, um, I'm a small business owner. I've got about 9 employees now, and my main guy is, uh, he's Great guy, um, works hard, shows up every day, but I think just made a lot of poor decisions, you know, when he was kind of younger and getting started. He's only about probably 28, 29 years old. He's got 4 young kids. Um, you know, I, I remember he was buying some vehicles from some used dealerships and probably paying, you know, top dollar and not getting good interest rates and, you know, probably, probably spending more than what he should have out of the gate. Um, over the last several years, I've He came to me and said, "Hey, I'm short. I'm not going to be able to make my house payment. I'm not going to be able to make my car payment. Can I borrow some money?" I've always lent him money, just slowly took it out of his check as the weeks and months went on after that.

He's to the point now where him and his family are down to one vehicle. The other, he has a loan on that vehicle. He has a loan on two other vehicles that he doesn't even own anymore. He had to basically give them back to the bank because they were broke down. Well, when he keeps coming to me for money all the time, I feel bad and I'm like, what's going on? Hey, oh yeah, I'm like, you work your butt, you work your butt off every week, man. Like, you work, you know, 60 hours a week.

What do you think is, what do you think is going on? If you, if you really, I mean, not in a gossipy way, but if you just had to say like, you know what I think, like, what do you think is going on over there?

Well, I, I think part of the problem is, and that may not be a problem, but I think he's a person who's just not really motivated by money. It just, it doesn't, it doesn't, you know, do anything for him. Maybe some people are just like that.

I guess that's right.

He's pretty laid back, so it just doesn't really bother him. I don't— and that's the thing, and that's honestly why I'm calling, because the last thing I want to do as an employer is get between one of my guys and their significant other. Like, I don't, I don't want that at all. Yeah, I just feel like, I just feel like, you know, I'm willing to help, but But when it's every 6 months and I'm just helping and, you know, I actually bought him a truck. I bought him a used truck to let him, and I just gifted it to him, you know, so he titled it and everything. And now that's having some problems and—

You're not helping it anymore, Nick.

I just gotta cut the cord.

Well, my good buddy, Henry Cloud, he wrote a great book. But one of the first stories in the book is a family that came and they had a young adult kid who kept asking for money and asking for money. And they, you know, the family came to him as a psychologist and said, hey, how do we help our kid? And he said, the greatest gift you can give your kid is some problems. And that sounds hard, it's heartless, right? But for a guy that doesn't care about money, he'd care, he's gonna care about having a roof over his family's head. And well, until he feels that and you keep bailing him out, and by the way, you're, you, you're making it worse for him to come to work every day.

Yeah.

And this sounds counterintuitive because you're not just his boss now, you're his bank. And that shame he feels every day, he feels it even heavier.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's, that's eventually gonna lead to one or two things. He's either going to leave, leave the company because he can't handle it and you're gonna cut him off. And so he's either gonna be mature and go, yeah, that feels right. Great. And that's good. And he's gonna keep working there, or he's gonna go, I can't believe this guy cut me off. And he's gonna leave.

He's gonna blame you for his bad decisions. Let me ask you this, brother. It's rare in my world where somebody is great in every aspect of their life except for one sliver. I have to believe that a guy that handles his personal finances this way, that handles his home this way, his marriage, his kids this way, that has to impact your business.

Yes.

Yes.

Is that true?

I'm sorry, say that one more time.

So it's very rare in my world that somebody has everything in their life together professionally, and just when they get home, everything's a dumpster fire. This has to bleed, bleed into his work, right?

Uh, maybe not. I, I, I mean, I, I run a, I run a small construction company, you know, so he's, he's directed by me every day. I mean, he, you know, He knows what to do under my guidance and supervision and he does a good job. I think it's a little bit of a— to be honest, I almost think he likes coming to work because it's a little bit of a break from probably what's going on there. I feel two things. One, I don't like seeing somebody work that hard and struggle to that point, especially I rely on this guy. I mean, this is my main guy. And, but at the same time, uh, I, I just, I'm like, well, if you can't get to work, have you tried— that's me now.

Have you tried gifting him the gift of knowledge versus money? Have you tried, you know, getting him on with some of the Ramsey products or anything like that? Financial Peace?

I should, I should probably try to do that and push that a little more. I, I've always been very cautious I try not to ask too much. I try to just kind of stick to the, you know, I just don't want to get— I don't want to get too personal. I don't want to seem like I'm pushing.

Well, you've already been personal. Yeah, you've been— when somebody comes and asks you for money to pay their rent, it's personal now.

I, I get that. I just— I understand what you're saying.

Yeah, we've already ventured into that. I mean, at this point, if I, if I were in your shoes today, and I think this is where we're at with this Yeah, I'd probably, I wouldn't wait for him to approach you again. I would approach him and I'd say, you know what, I've been thinking about your situation and I think I made a mistake. I really wanted to help and I gifted you money and I did all this. I think that was the wrong move on my part. I really should have shared with you some of the things that have really helped me. And that's a great en route for you to say, you know, here's the plan I follow. Here's a great podcast. I even, you know, here's EveryDollar. I was able to get you this one to get you started. And use the line that we use with folks. Say, if I give you the, if I gift you this, will you do it? If I gift you, uh, this financial piece and this EveryDollar, will you promise me if I, if I give you The Total Money Makeover, will you read this book? And, and, and pose it to him like that and just say, man, I don't wanna see you struggle.

I, I, I'm, I'm grateful that you shared with me what's going on, but I don't think me giving you money is the answer anymore. And I'm not, I can't keep doing that, but I can give you this. And then that way you're helping him, but you're also pushing him out. Like, don't, don't come over here asking me for money anymore.

Ramsey Solutions even has an HR benefit called SmartDollar, which is, which company, giant companies use and small businesses use it. But it's a way to teach employees. Uh, a close friend of mine is the CFO of a, um, a landscaping business and he realized a lot of his guys were blowing so much of their money and they were struggling at the end of every month. And so they got SmartDollar for the team and it's like, hey, as a company, we're all gonna do this. We're gonna learn these, these principles. But you've got some great data, which is I've given you a truck, I've given you money multiple times. That's not helping. And so I'm gonna stop doing something that's not helping. And, um, I can help you here. And hang on the line, we'll send you a copy of Total Money Makeover. I'll send you a year of EveryDollar. Um, we'll send you the digital Financial Peace University product. We'll send that to you and you can just turn around and gift it to him if you'd like to. But man, you've made it personal by getting into his finances. And so when somebody comes and asks me for one-time help, done, easy.

Somebody keeps coming back and saying, can I borrow some more money? Can I borrow some more money? Can I borrow some more money? We're gonna conversation, a bigger conversation.

Well, yeah, because at that point, it's what we would tell anybody. It's symptoms of a bigger problem.

It's a systemic issue.

Yeah, and putting a Band-Aid on it, it just, it does not work. And I think that enabling calls are probably some of the toughest calls we deal with because you do, you wanna help as a human being, if you're, you know, any sort of conviction inside of you. You have a pulse. Yeah, you have a pulse. You feel guilty and you wanna help when you see somebody else hurting, you wanna help them carry that burden. Like, that's just who we are as people. So I think we just have to be careful of how we do that and make sure that we're not making it worse.

Yeah.

In a—

rarely is throwing money at a problem the solution. If somebody needs to eat today, done. Throwing money at that problem will solve that. They, they'll get a meal today or a place to stay tonight. Like 100%, I'm all about that. But if somebody keeps coming back and coming back, the greatest way to help somebody is to peel, it's back up 30,000 feet. And if somebody's struggling, they got 2 cars they're paying on that they don't even have anymore, and a 3rd car plus the car that you gave his fallen apart, man, you got bigger issues. It may be that as his employer, hey, I'm gonna pay for 10 counseling sessions for you and your spouse. I'll cover that. And I love that. Or I'll pay for 10 financial coaching sessions or something with Ramsey. But man, um, yeah, I, I, I, I would not loan somebody I care about money. I'll either give it to 'em or we're gonna have a bigger conversation.

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Welcome back to The Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio. Let's go to Alexis again in Des Moines, Iowa. We got 2 calls from Des Moines. What's going on, Alexis?

Yes, I'm calling because I'm trying to get my husband on board and we have 3 mortgages. Whoa. A little bit of a mess.

On the same house or 3 different houses?

Well, 2 houses and then a mobile home.

The best one. Okay. So tell us, tell us how much you owe on each house and what it's worth and do the same for the mobile home.

Okay. Tennessee home is $147,000. It's worth probably like $340,000. Okay. Um, mobile home, probably worth $60,000. Um, in Iowa. Okay. And we probably owe $63,000. Um, Iowa main home, primary home now, we owe $257,000 and it's probably worth $290,000.

So you could sell your Tennessee home in a state you don't live in and clear both your debts today.

Technically, but his family member lives there, so he didn't want to sell.

But that sounds like his family's problem. I don't want to be— I don't want to be cruel. That's— I know that sounds cruel. What— why, why are— do y'all own a home and you're paying a mortgage on a home that your— his family member lives in?

Well, they pay rent, so it's the rental to them now, so they do cover that How long is the lease for? Um, it's yearly. They want to do longer and in hopes of purchasing it.

So, well, that's not an option, but I'm just saying like, what's the lease, the immediate lease for? Till September. September.

So what's your big question? How can we help?

Um, so he's also had 5 different jobs within the past year because we had to move back to Iowa because my mom has dementia and to help with her care. So if he doesn't like a job, he quits and gets another one. But he makes more than I do, um, from work because I work a job that doesn't pay as well. What do you make? So, um, I make $41,500 from work. Um, he makes about $62,400 due to his pay decrease. And then we have monies that come in from our military service. So how much is that? Disabled veterans.

How much do you get from that?

Um, probably about $70K.

Okay. So what's your month look like on a monthly basis? How much are you bringing in?

On the low end, $12,500. On the high end, if we include like the rental income, um, back child support that I receive and other miscellaneous, it could be about $18,000. Okay.

So there's, there's a lot going on here. You know, when you called, you were like, oh man, we're a mess. And it actually doesn't— it's not as bad as I feel like it sounds. I think you guys have a lot of money coming in. It just sounds like there's disorganization. You've got the income there, um, and you've got assets that you can sell to really simplify this really quickly. Um, I think you just feel disorganized and unorganized. So what I would do if I were in your shoes is come September, I would let that family member know, uh, in, in as few words possible, basically, we've got to simplify our life. And part of that means we've gotta sell this property. And so in September when the lease is up, you'll have to move out. And I know that you had dreams of maybe buying this place, and if you wanna buy it in September, fine, but we're gonna have to put it on the market because we've got to get our, our life together. Right. And so I would say that, and then, you know, that's, there's $193,000 in equity there that you need to get your hands on.

I think I missed it when you said the mobile home was worth 60. Did you say it, you owe $63,000 on it?

Uh-oh, $63,000. I'm not exactly sure how much it's worth. It's a 2025, like I just bought it last year.

Okay, who'd you buy it for? Huh? Who'd you buy it for?

Um, it was for us. So we were renting, and then the cost of rent, and then I thought it would be easier just to purchase that because that— with our cash flow when he was making more money, it just seemed like I could easily pay that off quickly. And then and just—

and then he quit his job and then y'all went and bought another house?

He didn't quit his job, so he was living in Tennessee, I was living in Iowa, so we were living in two states because I had to get here quickly to help with my mother's care. Rent in our area is still high for what you're paying for old homes and stuff like that, so to me it didn't make sense to just be paying rent. I was like, I'd rather waste it on a mobile home.

Okay, so— but you don't need it anymore.

I down for that. So he— so then I just got the mobile home in my name right now. Our son that's in college here, and then our older son, they live in the mobile home right now. Your son's trying to get their life together. Yeah.

Okay. So, and how old are the sons?

Um, one is 20 and one is, um, well, one's 21, one's 19. Okay. So what I would do with the sons are, do they have One is on medical leave from work, and then the other one, he's a college student, so he doesn't have a job.

So I would say to the sons, I'd say again, same, same narrative. Your dad and I, we've got— we're trying to get organized, we're trying to get our financial life together. We've made a couple mistakes. Part of righting that, righting those mistakes, is we've got to sell this, this mobile home. Um, and so your options are you can hang out, you can move back in with us for a couple of months, months. And then you've got to figure out an apartment, or if you're going to live on campus. And that would be what I say. And you've got to get a job so that you can fund an apartment for— especially for the 21-year-old. For the 19-year-old, yeah, you can extend— I think you can extend more grace there. But you can't, uh, you can't keep this, this mobile home that's going down in value every single day that you have it. That really— I don't think if you sat down, uh, let's pretend that you were just living in the Iowa house, you didn't have the Tennessee house, you didn't have a mobile home, you're just living in your house as it is now.

I don't think you would go, you know what, the boys need someplace to live, let's buy them a mobile home. I don't think you would make that choice. I think you probably would have said they need to get a job, maybe we'll help with an apartment, right? I think your train of thought probably would have been down a different line. And so what I want to challenge you to do is be very intentional intentional about what stays in your life by default versus what you actually want it to look like. And right now there's things in your life by default. The, the, the trailer is there by default. The Tennessee house is there by default, right? So that's what we're trying to do to get organized and go, this is not actually what I want. Let's get that out of here. Let's get the next thing out of here. And then let's take that money and actually pay down some debt and, and create some security for ourselves.

Ourselves. And so it seems like you're two hard conversations away from cleaning up your life, but it seems like y'all are doing a lot of gymnastics to get around those two uncomfortable conversations. And in the process, you're making your own marriage really uncomfortable, right?

Yes, he just doesn't agree with selling the Tennessee house. Like, he's fine with keeping it, so So like creating a plan to pay it off.

Again, ask him the question I asked you. I want you to go— this, this is your homework. You have two pieces of homework for me. The first homework is look on Kelley Blue Book or look to however you sell campers or trailers. Find out what the thing is worth and get it on the market. That's piece of homework number one. Homework number two is I want you to pose the same question I posed to you, to your husband and say, hey, let's just pretend for a minute. Let's be intentional in an effort to be intentional. Intentional. Let's pretend that we were just here in Iowa. We never had a house in Tennessee. We never had that. And we thought to ourselves, let's, let's buy a rental. Would we on purpose look in another state, specifically Tennessee, and choose to buy a rental there with the intent of a family member moving there? Would we choose that? And just wait and see what he says, because I guarantee the answer is no. And that's going to help him see that this happened by default, which means we don't We don't have to stay there. We can make changes and do things on purpose.

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Today's question comes from Melody in Connecticut. She writes, I've been married for over 40 years and I've always managed our household finances by myself. When we were young and broke, it was my responsibility to worry about budgeting for groceries, bills that need to be paid, 'Et cetera. My husband recently retired and opened up a separate savings account solely for his Social Security deposits. I do not have access to those funds, so my paycheck now has to cover the mortgage, utilities, car payment, and all his incidental spending. He never asks if we have enough money to cover his purchases.' Oh, Jade, I'm getting pissed off.

Me too. Me too.

'He just expects my paycheck to be enough. How do I get him to understand that without his income, I can't cover everything?' now. My gut tells me, tell him we don't have enough money to make the bills. But my gut also tells me you've tried that. He don't care.

And he don't care. Uh-uh. I think he has made— this is your phrase, Jon, people speak in actions and their pictures.

What is it? Yeah, we think in pictures, but we speak in— I mean, we speak in words, but we think in pictures.

And so, but his actions are speaking very—

Yeah, behavior is a language. That's what it was.

Thank you. Behavior excuse my language. He has said, "I don't care, and I care so less that I am going to separate myself from the whole over here and do my own thing on the side." And by the way, that's what I'm getting from this.

He did that 40 years ago when he said, "I don't care, you figure it out." And he's left you to manage the whole house like a coward for 40 years. I don't wanna deal with reality. That's your job. 'job, I'll go make the money.' And then the day he retires, he's like, 'Cool, this is mine now.' Yeah, I, I mean, she's right to be concerned about that.

She's right to be frustrated by that.

No, frustrated, concerned— she's right to be enraged by that. Thank you, you're right.

I was being, I was being light, light-handed.

Enraged by that. Yeah, I, I, gosh, Jade, here's the thing. I speak to so many men who are awesome and they are busting it on behalf of their families and their spouses and their kids, and guys who are going to counseling for the first time in 30 years, and guys who are patching stuff up with their dads and their, and their aging parents, that when I read these, I get overly mad. Oh yeah, because it's such a coward, unmasculine, unbrave way to do life, to just cash out of your own life. Yeah. And put all of this on your wife as you've done for 40 freaking years. Um, Melody, I hate to tell you this, but, um, you have a spouse that doesn't care. Doesn't care about the stress you're under, has never cared for almost a dec— I mean, almost half a century. Doesn't care that y'all don't— your math doesn't line up. He wants to do whatever he wants to do. Doesn't care for whatever. And this is going to sound petty. I don't know a way outside of an honest conversation. Hey, let's look at the bills together. Um, and I'm assuming you've done that.

I don't know another way to deal with this kind of thing than to deposit the money in your account and start Venmoing him or start asking for him to pay bills, because that's how he's living anyway.

Yeah, yeah. Um, I want to ask something to you, John, about this, because I think we get a lot of calls, and this at this point is going beyond the why refi question, because we get calls all the time where a spouse feels this, this type of situation where another spouse has really just separated themselves, has, um, kind of just walled off in a certain area, whether it's they keep all the money to themselves or they're, you know, keeping money to the side or whatever that is. And you can always tell that this has been a pattern that's been going on for a long time. And I, when I hear that, I'm filtering it through, oh my gosh, if Sam Warshaw ever tried hide it, like, it'd be Unsolved Mysteries.

Like, it'd be texting me in the middle of the night saying, "Hey, we need to hide a body." Exactly, exactly.

And so, what I want you to answer, Jon, in a tactful way is how much of this is— it's easy to point at the, in this case, the husband and go, "I can't believe he's doing that. Oh my gosh, this guy, this guy, this guy." But how much of it is the other spouse who's been allowing a certain type of behavior to persist? Like, where does that pendulum fall on on what we allow versus what we get.

At the end of the day, and this is the hardest thing about talking about marriage, the only person you can control is you. And so, yes, it's easy to look back and to say, "For 40 years, you have made me..." The honest thing is, "For 40 years, I have chosen to carry all of this weight for the house." Like, you're participating. I've participated. And that feels like victim shaming and blah, blah. But what I want people to hear that as is empowerment. I chose this. I wish I hadn't have chosen it, but I did. I won't choose this any longer. And so, no matter what you're going through, there will come a moment, a loss of a spouse, a loss of a child, a horrific incident at work, whatever, a loss of a job. At some point, the question emerges, "What are you gonna do now?" And if you get to that question and you immediately start to loop over again, "But they did and they," then you're just gonna spin your life life on, on the, on the rinse cycle. At some point, Melody has to say, okay, what am I gonna do now?

Am I gonna keep doing this for the next 20 years of our marriage until I die and resent the last 20 years, or am I going to make a change now? And that change may cost you the image of the marriage you think you've been propping up for half, for half a century, right? It may be that this guy has been out for years and you're just gonna make it concrete. It may be that when he realizes this is kind of, I'm, I'm kind of lame. Like I had my little pity party when I retired and this is not how spouses do life together. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't realize how bad it was or whatever. And Melody has to be honest about, has she blown things out of proportion for 40 years? And we, sure, sure. We don't have any money. We do, right? Yeah. Um, and he's just like, whatever. And so all that comes into effect. But your question is a good one. Everyone who comes to me and saying, hey, I want to work on our communication and marriage, what they're asking me is, how do I get my spouse to do what I want them to do?

And someone's like, we need to learn how to fight. It is, how do I get them to do what I want them to do? Yep. The hardest question, the hardest answer I always give is, you can't make them do anything. The only thing you can do is be the best version of yourself in your marriage. And that means I got to be honest about what I participated in, and I got to be real honest about what I'm going to do next, period. I wish it was more complex than that. And I know that's, it's simple, but it's very complicated. I wish it was more, it was harder than that. It's that simple for Melody.

And, and I also think there's gotta be, if you truly wanna be happy, and I'll add this on and, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, you, you also have to do what you're going to do without an expectation from them. Yes. 'Cause you can't go, ah, I'm gonna put it in, in simple terms. If you're like, man, I wish my spouse would be more servant-hearted towards me. So all the time you're like, would you like a glass of water? Would you like me to, right? You're, you're doing all these extra things hoping they'll do it, bad.

You hope there's an ROI on it.

Yeah. And then when they don't, now you're still getting resentful and angry on the inside. So it's almost like you have to do right just for you without the expectation. So you can feel like if the end comes, I know I did all I can do.

And I did. I tell couples all the time who are thinking about getting divorced, give yourself 6 months to be the best version of yourself. And that's the person who is looking past the dirty laundry to say, hey, I saw how hard you're working at work. Thank you for being in the same room this house. That is the person who looks past the extra 10 pounds or the past the, the gruff or the eye roll. It— give yourself a chance. If you're sitting at a divorce, in a divorce attorney hearing, that, you know, I showed up as the best version of myself. And if you can do that and your spouse says, I'm not interested in being married to you, wow, it's gonna make it hard. Yeah, but you'll have inner peace because I did the best I could. You'll know. Don't show up to the table being like, "Well, yeah, I did do whatever." So, and almost every time when two people decide, "I'm gonna be the best version of myself so I can be in total service to my spouse," and they do it back, ain't going anywhere near a divorce office, right?

Because y'all are building the life you wanna have.

You're building the marriage you want. And the hard part with all of this is when you truly are the best version of yourself, you're doing the best you can, that is so vulnerable. It's scary. 'Cause you're putting yourself out there every day. And your spouse What do they say?

Don't care. Don't care.

Don't want it. Don't notice. Don't care.

Ooh. And, but I'll tell you this, when you're going as, as, let me go back to like something as silly as high school sports. It's easy to be like, well, if I had just worked out, I would've been fast, whatever. It's scary to put all the work in and still be 7th place. Oh man. Right? Yeah. But you, you stop running cuz 'Cause you're like, that's, that's as best as I can do.

Right? I did my best.

I did my best. And so Melody, ask yourself not what is he get— ask yourself, what am I going to do now? This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Financial stress does not just damage our bank accounts. It can also take a toll on our relationships and on our mental and emotional emotional health. Money fights are one of the leading sources of conflict for couples. I know this personally. My wife and I have struggled over the years with money conflicts over and over again. Therapy can help even with money. Therapy is not about giving you financial advice, but it can give you strategies to better communicate about money, help you build healthier ways of coping, and help you build a plan to move forward with your mental and emotional health and your money. I want you to consider talking to my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that matches you with a licensed therapist based on your goals. BetterHelp therapists are fully licensed in the United States, and they work according to a strict code of conduct. You can message your therapist and schedule sessions right in the platform, and if the first therapist isn't the right fit, you can switch at any time for no extra cost.

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Mark is in Fort Myers, Florida, on the line. What's up, Mark? How can we help today?

Hey, John. Hey, Jade. How are you guys today? Doing all right. Great. So the reason I'm calling is my father and mother-in-law They just moved down to Florida about almost 2 years ago. And after he retired and, you know, after speaking with my wife, um, they're going to be out of money in about 20 months.

Um, how do you know? They've been big spenders.

I know this because my wife, who's actually a financial planner, she finally just took over for them. They never wanted to use her in the past, and now they have, and now she's got all their information. Um, and anyway, they've always been big spenders, never paid off their mortgage in all their big earning years. And now it's not looking so good. Um, so I'm really just fearful that they're going to come to us in time and need financial help. So I'm just not sure how to really navigate that. So I think maybe what discussions—

yeah, it's a great question. I— let's, let's just you and your wife get together and run the exercise. Emphasize, like, they call us, what are we going to say? Because you can't control them. The only person you can control in this equation is you. And so assume they're going to call and ask for money and have a pre-agreed-upon message from you and your wife as to what we will and will not support.

Do you think your wife and you do agree on what that message should be, Mark?

We do, and we have talked about it. Um, her and I are in complete agreement. And I think the most frustrating part is that he— so they moved into a community and he's on the HOA board, like, and he's working almost 40 hours a week not being paid. Yeah, but like, man, go out and get a job.

Yeah, but like, you're—

you can't control that.

Yeah, your compassion is real, dude, and I want to honor your compassion for your father-in-law, but what you're doing is you're taking his choices and and potential future issues, and you're dragging them into your present and you're the one dealing with them. Or as they say in AA, you're drinking poison hoping he gets sick. You know what I mean? And so what I'm not gonna do with the precious time I have with my wife on this planet is spend time worrying about other people's decisions, especially if we've already aligned on our response to the consequences of their decisions. Decisions or the potential consequences, right? That's anxiety is grabbing a potential outcome in the future into the present and trying to solve it now. That's just a, it's just a recipe to ruin today. It doesn't solve any of their activities or actions. Right. And so, yeah, he's making idiotic choices. He's making bad choices with his money and he's using, he's trying to build reputation in his local community. A, I get that. If he just moved to a new place, he wants to be on the in-crowd and gets an op— I get that.

And also, he can't afford to do that, right? But if y'all are already aligned on what your response will be, you've, you've gone further than most married couples do. So I applaud you for that, man. Now your choice is to look at your wife and say, hey, what kind of fun can we have today? I, I don't know the other option other than just to choose misery on a problem that you can't solve.

Well, I'm curious, your, your wife is, you know, they, they've given over the information to your wife she's helping them. Surely she has said to them, here's what I'm finding, you got 20 months left. And I'm sure she's made some suggestions. How have they reacted to that?

Yeah, they— she— yes, she has. And he just keeps saying, oh, I have a plan. And we're like, but what's the plan, dude? Like, you're not telling us. And so we just don't really know. How old are they?

Um, he is 69 and she He is—

the wife is like 60.

Okay, are they with it? Like, are they— is everything still full capacity? Is it possible that they have money or assets that you guys don't know about? If they say—

if he says, I have a plan, or I'm fine? Yeah, there's the other side. What if you just trusted him? Cool, they got a plan.

Yeah, I guess you're right. I, I, I don't know of anything, but you get to choose.

Uh, anything that you're thinking right now is a story you're making up. Right, right. And so let's, let's deal with the potential bad story and let's choose to make up the most positive version of this story. That's not being Pollyanna, that's not being in denial. That's just saying, I get to choose which one of these things I meditate on every day. One of these stories that I make up is gonna let me sleep a little bit better, and the other story is killing me. It's gonna give me a stroke and it's not gonna change his financial habits at all. I, dude, I totally get your frustration. I mean, I get it deeper than you can possibly imagine. I won't talk about it on the air here. And, um, at some point you have to decide, I'm not going to strangle myself and lose oxygen here over a problem I can't solve. Yep. I will have, I will have an answer for what comes and so be it. Jade, we were just talking about this off air. If you and I and all of our teammates here on The Ramsey Show, if we could just get people to— if we could empower people to hear this message, you can only control you.

That's it. I think, I literally think the world changes. Absolutely. And I don't say that in a, in a every man for himself, but like, take care of your house, take care of you, and take care of the problems that are already in your lap. Don't create new ones and drag them into your lap. And if other people want to go do wild stuff, I don't like it. I hate it for them. I hate it for us, but I can't do anything about it.

You don't have to attach yourself to it, or it doesn't have to become the conversation that you guys circle around every night.

Over and over and over. Yeah. And maybe once a week, all right, 30 minutes, let's just get it all out.

And we just rag on how could they do this? This is crazy. Okay. And then we're done. Let's go to dinner. I love it. Thanks for the call, Mark. I wish it were different. Let's go to Scott in St. Louis, Missouri. What's going on, Scott? Hi, how you doing? Doing great.

Excellent. Let us have it.

Okay, so I, I'm in this predicament where, um, I, my friend from Prime America, I just started buying Roth IRA, um, uh, uh, you know, with him. Yeah. And, um, he's telling me that, um, okay, so So I have an investment property in Las Vegas and I have a house here in St. Louis. Um, I want to sell the investment property in Las Vegas and I'll come out with about $250,000. I want to pay off all I, the only two debts I have left are my Jeep and my house here in St. Louis. I can pay them off and, and be, you know, scot-free, step 7, you know, on top of the world. Yes. You know, But, but my— he's telling me I'm the stupidest guy in the world because my mortgage rate is only 2.85%. Get a new financial advisor, dude.

All right, get a new one.

He's, he's forgotten that there are different— there, there's multiple components of money, right? We get caught up on the dollars and cents. We all know about numbers. Then there's the behaviors. You, you need to budget, you need to avoid debt. And then there's the emotional sense. And we talked about this earlier. So much of money is emotional. It's how we want to feel. We want to be free. We want peace. It's who we are.

He doesn't have— he's not have to deal with your peace. He wants the arbitrage. He doesn't make any money if you're not investing the gap to him.

Yes, sir. Yeah, he wants to give me a put. He says take that $250, put it towards an—

some kind of annuity.

Dude, fire him today. Today. Today.

Okay, all right, well done.

Because here's the You think, bro, I'm telling you, I've been on both sides of this equation. When you sleep in a house that nobody can take from you. Yes. I will pay 3% in what I call a sleep tax on what my mortgage, my interest rate is versus when I could be theoretically getting in the, in the market. I will pay that sleep tax every day of the week because no one could take my house.

And oh, that's awesome. Thank you, sir. Yes, I love that. And there's really love that.

And there's the other part of it where if we do want to get into some facts and data, we can. We've done the largest study of millionaires here at Ramsey. There's so much time was put into this study. And we found that when we look at millionaires, Baby Steps millionaires, net worth millionaires, whatever you want to call them, it was clear that these people, they valued paying off their houses. They paid for their homes, their home residence, residences. They were, they were maybe purchased with a mortgage, but it was a priority to pay them off to where they had that ownership. They had that peace. And so that's something that we know. It's not just an emotional thing. It, it shows itself in the numbers as well when we look at everyday millionaires.

And this is what I love about SmartVestor Pros. You tell them what your goals are and they lock arms with you to accomplish your goals. They don't call you stupid and try to sell you a product.

We talked about it on our last call with Scott, but if you need help with investing, you need a good SmartVestor Pro in your corner, someone who's going to listen to you, right? They're not going to sit back there to sit there and tell you that what you're doing is stupid and not explain it to you. You don't want that. Our SmartVestor Pros are registered investment professionals who lead with the heart of a teacher. Hear that? Heart of the teacher. And we've been connecting listeners to them for over 20 years, which means these folks are going to sit down with you. They're going to listen to you. They're going to teach you. They're interested in you understanding so that you guys can work together. SmartVestor Pros can create a plan to help you reach your goals and help you make informed investing decisions. We'll show you up to 5 SmartVestor Pros in your area for free, and then it's up to you to vet 'em. You can interview 'em, you can decide which one you wanna work with. Go to ramsaysolutions.com/smartvestor to find an investing pro near you. Or if you're listening on YouTube or podcast, go ahead and click that link in the description.

Hey, real quick, uh, we were talking about this off air with Brother Scott there for that last caller. Uh-huh. And I like that dude. I did too. I, I always try to be compassionate here, so I'm gonna put myself in the seat of his financial financial advisor, and I have a client that comes and says, hey, I'm gonna— I'm going to sell a rental property that's in another state, and I'm gonna get $250,000 of equity. I want to pay off my house and pay off my Jeep. And it's a logical question: what's your interest rate on your house? 2.9%. Yeah. Okay, I can get you— the market returns the last 2 years have been 23%. It, it can feel financially foolish to do that. Yes. And if you're looking at a calculator, I wanna honor that, that investment guy on the other side of the table. You're right. Yes. You're right. And I think that's where if you are walking in to sit with a financial professional, mm-hmm. Whether it's what somebody you found in the, in the yellow, the Yellow Pages, cuz I'm 180 years old, um, that you found online or that a SmartVestor, I think it's important to come in and say, until I don't owe anybody anything, I'm solving for peace.

Mm-hmm. And then we'll start solving for return. Yes. And I get what you're saying. I appreciate it. By the way, I will never, ever, ever, ever put my money in, in an annuity. I know that you make more money on that. I'm not gonna do it. But, um, I do, I do get there is a math problem here where you, you think what I'm doing is foolish and mathematically I'll even agree with you. That's right.

That's right.

That's for me and my house. We're solving for peace. We're solving for not owing anybody anything. And then we'll start playing the, the calculator games. Yeah.

John, I'm glad that you said that because that is so true. When that guy, when that guy called in and he said, yeah, my invest— my investor wants me to do this. My fir— my first brain goes to, well, yeah, like there's a lot worse you could do with that money. Yep. Right. And, and I wanna remind people listening, we have a method that, that works and we have a, a way of thinking around here. And it's not just numbers. We're always factoring in the person. We're factoring in who you, who you are and how we, how you want to feel. Yeah. Right. And that's been a theme throughout the show. Show, even just today, where we're trying to solve for people's freedom, we're trying to solve for their peace. And that goes beyond mathematical equations. Math is certainly a part of it. Numbers, of course, we're talking about money. Behavior is part of it. We talked about that before. And the emotional part is also very, very real. So when you sign up for the Ramsey Plan, yes, we're giving you a series of 7 baby steps. Yes, we're telling you to budget. Yes, we're telling you to live on less than you make.

But it's also that, and it's so that you can have— it's not just building wealth, but it's having this life of peace. And it's being able to give like no one else so later you can give and live like no one else. Like, that's the whole part of it. And so peace is at the core of that every single time. And so you're going to hear that theme throughout the show when we answer people's questions. All right. I love that discussion. But now we're going to get to Jen, who's in Scranton, Scranton, Pennsylvania. How can we help, Jen?

Hi, John and Jade.

How are you guys doing? Excellent.

Ridiculous. We're running a scam called a podcast.

It's the The best. That's funny. That's funny. Well, I'm hoping that you can help, uh, my husband and I settle a disagreement. Yes, my favorite.

Yeah, not that you guys are disagreeing, just I like this type of call.

Awesome.

Um, our question is, should we be on the hook for part of the student loan debt that our son accrued due to bad advice that he received from us when he started college, when we ourselves didn't know any better about taking student loans?

Great question. So you advised him to take out the student loans back in the day?

Yes, we did. And I don't even think he was really ready to go to college initially, so he changed his major a couple times, and there's some health issues thrown in there as well. So he's racked up, um, about $60,000. Um, luckily he's graduating in June, um, with a Bachelor of Science in Supply Chain Logistics and Transportation management. He's job searching. I don't know if he's necessarily the most motivated to job search right now. He is working full-time. But he— I don't know. I think morally, because we gave him the bad advice and we kind of pushed him to go to college before he was ready, I kind of feel like we're on the hook morally for that. My husband, he's been in the trades. He never had any student loan debt. I myself was— I'm a teacher, so I have a master's in teaching, so I got some student loan debt, um, from, you know, for my, for my profession. Um, I've, I've since paid it off and whatnot, but, um, so I thought that, you know, our son was just doing the normal thing.

Yeah.

So where are you graduates of?

Yeah, do you have— the big question is money. Do you have— could you write him a check for 30 grand?

No. So here's, here's the deal. Um, we're graduates of Financial Peace University. We're currently finishing Baby Step 2. Um, we're going to have $113,000 of consumer debt paid off by June. Um, so then we have our— yeah, this coming June. Yeah. So we're just— yeah, yeah. So we're really close. Thank you. Um, so I don't know, what do you guys think? Should we at some point help him pay it back? I want to say something mean.

Okay.

Is that Isn't that cool? Okay, yeah, it's totally cool.

So, and my husband's here. I hear that with me too. Oh yeah, what's your husband's name? His name is Mike.

All right, Mike, we hear you on the line. Chime in at any time.

Okay, so here's— I have this conversation a lot with folks who call the show and they want to go into ministry, and they, they went and got a degree in something, and not necessarily a dumb thing, they got a degree in business, and they took out 70 grand, and they called and say, quote unquote, I feel like I'm being called to the ministry, right? Or I wanna go do this other thing. And what I always tell folks is you dug yourself a hole that you have to, with integrity, refill before you start living into— that's why we tell people to don't go into debt, right? Because then you're faced with these moral dilemmas and you, regardless of if you think you morally have an obligation to your son, you don't have any money. And so you can't. And it might be something that you sit down with your son and you say, hey, we're this old and we're still wrestling with debt. Um, we want to walk alongside you. And so in 5 years or in 10 years, if you've paid off this much, we'll be in a position to help you. This, like, something like that.

I— okay, Jade and I may disagree. I like the way you're thinking. I wouldn't make it so caustic as you've— if you like, it's not a moral failure. But I do love the Maya Angelou quote, like, do the best you can, and when you learn more, do better, right? Like, change what you know. And so I, I like that you are going, oh gosh, we told you to do this. And by the way, growing up in Houston, Texas, where it's 1,000 degrees, when I was a kid playing soccer, like 6, 7-year-old, we were not allowed to drink water during athletic events because the prevailing science was it would give you cramps. We had to eat orange slices, right? It's madness. And my parents didn't know any better. None of the parents did. And so we'd be like, I need some water. I'm dying. And they're like, no water. It's bad for you. Right? And so as a parent, you do the best you can. And then when you know better, then you sit down with your kids and say, man, I messed this up. And so here's the next thing going forward. Um, and so when it comes to money, man, yeah, your, your kid took your advice and now he's $60 grand in the hole.

And yeah, I, I think it's right for you to say, hey, we gave you bad advice. We don't have any money. We're working to dig this thing out and we're gonna like, man, the quicker you can get this paid off, that'd be awesome. And if we get in a position where we can help you, we're going to.

And I would, I'd, I'd treat it like the Baby Steps. You know, you pay off your debt, save up the 3 to 6 months, start investing. And when you get to Baby Step 5, if you wanna say instead of putting money towards a 529, which is what we would and should have done, we're gonna put that towards the debt payments and help you run this thing back. I, I actually really love that idea because that's probably what you would've done if you had a little bit more time, right? You would've put a, a certain amount aside every single month to put towards his education. And it's not too late to do that. It's just gonna have a little interest, uh, on the side. Oh, right.

It's on the back end. Exactly.

Well, and probably he didn't just take out loans just for tuition, room and board. He probably took out the full loans and had his fun too, right? And so some of that, he needs to have some skin in the game too, I think. Also, I don't know that you need to swoop in with $60,000 and wipe it clean, but I, I like the idea of you saying, hey, we gave you bad advice, and so we're going to be a part of paying the piper on this. But he has to have some skin in the game too.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio. I'm Jade. This is John. And we're going back to the phone lines where we have Mark in Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, Mark, how are you? Good. How are you doing? Good.

How can John and I help?

So Um, I was really close to— I was $300 away from being financially debt-free aside from my car and mortgage. And then a bad life event sent me spiraling down, and I have recollected all of that debt back. So I'm currently, um, including house and car, I'm $169,000 in the hole with, uh, about $20,000 in personal debts. And man, uh, the, the mother of my child, uh, cheated on me with, uh, with a guy that she was employed with, uh, for, and, uh, sent me back down to, uh, uh, an unholy lifestyle, I should say.

Okay, can we, can we, um, as we dig out of this, and Jade's going to give you an ironclad path Okay, okay. But here's where I want to start with it, okay? Yeah. A real bad thing happened, and what is my 'and' going to be?

And it's my responsibility.

I want you to own, I went and chose to handle this bad thing in these ways.

I, I did, yes.

Okay, there's no doubt about that. Okay, um, that ownership is critical for for the next step. Yeah. Right. And so, man, I hate that, that dude, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I hate that happened to you. And I hate that, like, your default setting was, I'm gonna go run back and make a bunch of bad decisions and unhealthy decisions. And here I am. And so that sense of ownership will be what gets you out of this mess. Cool. Yeah. All right, cool. Same team.

Um, so let's spread it out because I do think that mentally it helps when, and this is for anybody, when you're listing out your debt smallest to largest, Baby Step 2, which is the step that we pay off consumer debt, it is just that, it's consumer debt. And so let's leave the mortgage out of it for a moment, and that's gonna help you mentally to get your head around what the task at hand is. So can you tell me what your debt is aside from the mortgage? Uh, $65,911. Okay, and I want you to list out what those are. For now, they don't need to be smallest to largest, just list out what they are.

Oh yeah, they are.

Um, so like tell me how much the car is, tell me how much is on credit cards, maybe tell me how much is personal loans, that sort of deal.

Okay, so, um, the car, I have $37,178. Um, personal loans that are right now past due. Okay. Um, are $18,288. Okay. And then the rest are all in collections, which is $10,444.

Okay, so the good news is I see a couple of things right away that we can do to get you some quick wins, because when you're in Baby Step 2 paying off the consumer debt that it's all about quick wins. That's how you maintain, uh, just feeling good about it, right? Momentum. Thank you. I was looking for the word. That's how you maintain momentum. And that's for anybody listening. So whenever you have debts and collections, that can feel terrible because you've overdude and they're blowing up your line. 1-800-PAY-ME is calling you. But the good news is now you have bargaining power. And so instead of paying $10,400, you're gonna pay like 30% of this. And so you're going to save up your first number one goal is, okay, let me just, instead of paying them a bunch of small payments or coming up with a payment plan, I'm going to meet my other minimum payments and I'm going to stack up any other margin that I can for a little while. And I'm going to save up, I don't know, $3,000 or $4,000. And then I'm going to call them up and I'm going to settle all of these individually for cash.

And I'm looking for 20 to 30% of the actual actual what to do. So if you have one that's $4,000, you can offer them $200, $200 or $300 and see if they'll take it. Do you see what I'm saying? Okay. And when you do that, you want to make sure you get the deal in writing before you pay. Don't give them access to your checking account. And you want to make sure it's in writing first. And they will do it. They have the means to do that. So if you talk to someone on the line that says, well, I don't know if I can do that. Yes, you can. Hang up and call to the next person. Okay, so you're gonna have to— that's gonna be— that's gonna feel like a full-time job to do that, but trust me, it's going to be worth it. You're going to save $7,000 doing it that way. Okay, so that's homework number 1. Homework number 2 that I see right off the bat is, is this car. So it's $37,000. Do you happen to know offhand what it's worth?

Uh, probably around $35,000. Love that for you. Sweet.

Okay, so you have a couple of options. Questions. Um, I don't know what your income is. Tell me what your income is.

Uh, so, uh, reliably, my, uh, so I'm on VA disability. Reliably, it is $4,080. Okay.

And what is it unreliably?

Unreliably, it can vary from $6,000 to $7,000.

Okay, what's the $2,000 that you're getting that doesn't always come through?

From a side hustle.

Okay, what keeps you from getting a full-time job, like even at Home Depot? Well, it—

well, it kind of is my full-time job. So my, my, the mother of my son and I, we share custody, and the days I have him, I don't work. And, uh, and that's only due to lack of support right now, but hopefully my parents, uh, my parents and I have found an opportunity for them to move down here to where I'm at and, uh, they can help out. So after that, then I could, uh, turn this side hustle into a full-time, uh, business operation. Okay.

What, what does, what does childcare look like? Like when you, how old are How old is your son? He's 5. So is he in school?

He goes to school right now, but he only goes to school for 3 hours a day because he's in early childhood development because, yeah, he has autism.

Okay, okay. So for now, and I know you're working on that, but just for today, um, we'll say that I think that the best thing for you to do right now is to save up the margin from your $4,000 to $6,000 and do this debt collection deal. And in the meantime, yeah, I'm going to go over to the credit union and I'm going to say, hey, I need a $7,000 loan and $2,000 of that is going to go to meet the difference on this car. And then the other $5,000 is so that you can get a junker in cash to keep yourself going. Maybe you spend $6,000, but the point is I want you going down in debt from $37,000 to around $5,000 or $8,000. Do you see what I'm saying there? Yeah. Yeah. Now my guess is that your credit is horrible.

It's, yeah, terrible. Yes.

At this point, and I'm just telling you this, I think that anything is going to be better for you. It, as far as interest rate, I'm not saying get a payday loan, never, never do that. But if you have, if you can do put it on a credit card, if you can put it on any sort of personal loan, that is going to be good for you because we're going from $37,000 to $8,000, right? So this is a good thing. And now that you've got the momentum back, you'll have that money back in your pocket, you can knock that debt out because that now becomes your smallest debt aside from the collections. Okay. And so once the collections are settled, now we're tackling that personal loan that you took out in order to get out of this car. And in the meantime, you're selling that car. Kelly Blue Book personal sale is what you're looking to do. And that's going to free up so much money because I know that that car payment is going to go back into your pocket. And then from there, now we can start working on the personal loan that's past to do.

And because it is personal, you might be able to pop in there and make a deal on that too. Likely not, but at least now at this point we're just looking at chopping down an $8,000 tree, which you can do.

Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show. Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple, and free to use. Go to ramseysolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's RamseySolutions.com.

All right, we've got Kelly who's calling in from LA. What's going on, Kelly?

How can we help today? Hello.

We spend $1,700 or more on on gas every single month and I wanna know if we should get a hybrid. That's a lot.

Whoa. That's a lot. How, how did, how do you, so to put it in context, I filled up today my truck and it was the most expensive it's ever been by like $25. And I, I actually, Jade and I were talking off air, like the thought of me struggling to make it and then all of a sudden I've gotta fill up once a week. Yeah. And I have an extra $100 at like, that's a lot of money. Chain. Yeah. Where do you get $1,700 a month? Month though.

So my husband is a private investigator. He works in his car. Yeah, if they turn it off, then he's like cooking. So the engine's always running. Yep.

And he has to travel really far distances. Okay.

About a year ago, he bought a truck, and then it went up because the gas mileage was really bad. So it's just added up, and now the more he works, the more it costs us.

Yeah. Um, is he in a position where, like everybody's having to do right right now where he can escalate his rates to cover the gas?

Um, I mean, they have like a gas reimbursement, but it's only, I think, like 83 cents a mile or whatever.

And it hasn't gone up? Yeah, it hasn't increased.

I'd be— if I were him, I'd ask about that. I'd say, hey, obviously, you know, and I don't know how long he's been working for that company. Let's say he's been there since 2020 and the rate's never gone up. I'd Hey, I've been here, this has always been the reimbursement rate. Obviously prices have gone up. Is it possible that we can adjust this with inflation? Because I'm spending this X amount of percentage more than I was in, you know, when things started and kind of just lay out the numbers in a diplomatic way.

Yeah, I talked to one person who works in the oil and gas industry and he said they're doing something called a supercharge, which is we're telling you all as customers right now, it's gonna go go up, but we're not— it's not a permanent price increase. It's just because things are bananas right now and so uncertain. Um, what keeps y'all from just taking the truck down and trading it in for a Prius? Yeah.

Um, I don't know, like, I actually have never even thought of that. Yeah, we got the truck for about $9,000. Um, he really wants to stay in a truck because he's kind of tall, so he wants something where he can fit.

I'm a big guy too, and I drove a Prius for years, and Dave used to laugh at me, but I tell you what, that thing got a million miles to the gallon.

It's pretty sweet. Could you sit in it for 12 hours a day?

Oh yeah, it was awesome.

Okay.

Maybe you should look into trading it in then.

Well, like, and let's, let me be super like transparent. I don't drive one anymore. Now I drive a truck. Right. But it's, it's less for, it's less because I'm a tall guy and more because I do a lot of outdoor stuff and I got place out in the woods that I've always having to use the, I use the truck if that makes sense. But get something that's comfortable.

But yeah, split the difference and get what makes sense. But the point is you're going down and you're going to a vehicle that has better gas mileage. That's the point. And obviously not going into debt for it.

And, um, that's the, the main, the main thing for me is like pan out from the gas situation. Millions of people right now are having to deal with the fact that their job is different now, whether it's because of AI, whether it's because of gas prices, it's become, energy sectors is a zoo right now. Like whatever you're having to do, step back and ask yourself, what changes do we need to make in our house? We don't wanna be making these changes, not by our hand, but it's in our lap. We gotta make some changes and stay inside your value system, which is we're not gonna borrow any money. We're not gonna leverage this moment and get ourselves in a 2 or 5 or 10-year dilemma because we were uncomfortable right now. And so either y'all need to adjust your spending up or down to accommodate the increased gas prices, or maybe the, his boss will say, you're right. Or maybe 83 cents a gallon, uh, I mean, 83 cents a mile of reimbursement. That's pretty good reimbursement. Mm-hmm. Um, maybe y'all were using the extra as to pay bills with, and now it just needs to go with what the reimbursement's designed for, which is to pay for the gas.

And you know, I'm gonna have to cut spending somewhere else. True. That, or maybe you just go take the truck and get a used Prius or used hybrid Camry, and you're off to the races. But it doesn't give you permission to go be reckless with your spending and borrowing.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Yes, everybody's feeling the gas prices, uh, go up. All right, John is in Denver, Colorado. John, how can we help you today?

Thanks for taking my call. So, uh, I'm a bit of a pickle, and I'm just wondering if I could— I should sell my house.

Interesting. Give us the I love pickles.

So yeah, well, they're delicious, but maybe not this one. So I bought, uh, I bought my house around 2 years ago, um, with, uh, a friend and a few family members and the plan. Yeah.

Strike one, strike two, strike three.

When you say that, can you clarify when you say you bought it with them? Is everybody's name on the mortgage?

No, unfortunately it's just me.

So you're the only one on the mortgage. That's actually good. That's probably the best case scenario.

Actually. Okay. So you bought the house with your brother and two friends?

My sister, her fiancé, and a friend.

Yeah. Sister, fiancé, and friend. Okay.

And basically I'm in a situation right now where almost all of them have completely moved out. And now my mortgage is looking like it's going to go up like around $200 by June. Okay.

So why do you have an adjustable rate mortgage?

It's not an adjustable rate mortgage. I think it has to do with my property taxes. Yeah. Okay.

Um, so it's gone up by $200,000.

Unfortunately, the value of my house has gone down. So I think if I sell it, I, uh, I talked to my real estate agent and I got it down to a reasonable price. Why'd the value go down?

Or did you overpay?

I, the value, uh, actually, uh, when, when, uh, it was evaluated when I bought the house was actually, I think like $15,000, uh, more than, than what I paid for it. Um, I think there's just not a lot of good comps in the area. Um, so There's not like the value ends up being a little bit less than it was. I'm not exactly—

Tell us real numbers. Tell us what you bought it for and what you think it's worth.

So I bought it for $460,000. It evaluated for at $475,000. Okay. And it, I just got an appraisal of like a few months ago, 'cause I was planning on doing a refinance and it evaluated at $450,000. Yikes. Yeah, quite a bit of difference. So I'm in kind of a situation right now where like I did the math and it's looking like after, you know, commissions for the sellers and buyers agent, I'm gonna be losing money on it. But is it worth it to just do that, take on like a little debt and just pay that off, or hold out even though realistically it's gonna be really tight being just me.

How much is a little money? Because I, I, one time I took $4,000 to closing with me to get out of a house, and that was the beginning of me and my wife starting Baby Step 2, and it ended up changing our entire life. If you're, if you're talking about you're gonna be $50,000, now that's a different story.

Mm-hmm. I think with fees you're gonna be, you're gonna be getting close to $30,000.

Yeah, it's looking like at worst it's going to be around $30,000. And at best, if I don't sell it at a reasonable price, it's going to be around $15,000. So not great. But at least if I were to get a personal loan and come up with a little bit of money myself, maybe cover a little bit of a difference, I can't see myself taking more than a year if I work really hard to pay that off.

Well, because I'm also thinking you've got time. When the house goes on the market, you've got a couple of months there to save save up some cash? Like, how realistically, in 3 months, how much cash could you save up? I mean, I know it's hard because you don't have roommates anymore and you're trying to pay this big old mortgage, but is there anything you could do to start stacking some money towards this?

I don't know, to be honest. With, with no help, it's, it's going to be really tight. I— it's the problem, is the reason why I want to sell in the first place, um, is because I feel like it's going to be so tight I'm not going to be able to put money away.

Can you—

like, I'm gonna be in a situation, you know, where if something happens, I just end up losing the anyway. Can you rent out the rooms?

Can you do like temporary rent out the rooms to other folks while you get this money together to sell the house?

I, you know, I've looked for, I've been looking for rentals when people first started leaving. And I haven't really had any luck with that. I've tried Furnished Finders. I've tried reaching out on like Facebook Marketplace, joining groups, and I've even lowered the price 3 times at this point. And I, maybe it's just because they don't want to have like like a roommate, or I'm not exactly sure, but I just haven't had any luck finding someone.

Yeah, interested. Uh, I mean, this is a cautionary tale we tell folks all the time, you know, do not buy a house with the intent that somebody else is going to help you prop up the mortgage payment, because this sort of thing happens all the time. The only way out of this is through it. You're either going to have to take a personal loan for the difference and eat that cost, or you're going to have to find a way to buy yourself time with roommates or stacking up the cash yourself.

All right, let's cut to the chase. It's easy to get discouraged about crazy house prices and interest rates, but when you have the right real estate agent to help you buy and sell the right way, you'll have confidence to make smart decisions. Ramsey Trusted Agents aren't just experts who guide you through buying or selling. Selling, they're people you can trust to have your back from the first call to closing day. Find a Ramsey Trusted Agent near you at ramseysolutions.com/agent. That's ramseysolutions.com/agent.

The right insurance acts as a shield around your loved ones and your wallet if disaster strikes. Our free insurance coverage checkup helps you figure out if you have the right coverage by giving you a personalized action plan with clear next steps. So go to ramseysolutions.com/checkup to take the coverage checkup and find out if you have the protection that you need. All right, we got Sam who's in Fresno, California. Sam, how can we help today?

Hi, thanks so much for taking my call. You bet.

So I am a single mom of a 9-year-old.

Year old. Her dad hasn't been around for about 5 years. He actually gave up parenting time if I agreed not to pursue the court-ordered child support. I spent $100,000 on legal and travel expenses, and that just had a major financial and, you know, mental impact on me.

I'm sorry, how much did you say you spent?

$100,000. Oh wow. Why? Wow. Um, he wasn't looking to reach an agreement. He was just looking to ruin my life, which he did. Okay. Um, so I'm in a great relationship now. Um, you know, we're making future plans, talking about what, you know, marriage might look like for us. And we have discussed me potentially working less to be more present for my daughter. And, you know, I'm aware that I'm the one with the child. He doesn't have kids, and I don't want to put more on him than is fair. I've had resentment in past relationships. I do not want to recreate that. So how do I lead into building a life and finances together without feeling like I'm taking from him or like I don't deserve that?

Um, I think you're asking like 3 different questions at once, and that's why the outcome feels so heavy. And so number one, your body's working perfectly. Like, your child's dad gave your child up for a number, right? Like, what kind of scumbag does that? I get divorce, I get breakups, but I can't— my daughter's been gone for 2 days, she comes back today, and I haven't been able to catch my breath. And I'm not special, right? So like, your body has a lived experience with a terrible human being. And so forget the money and forget the support and all that. Your body is saying, hey, we've run this before and, um, it doesn't end well. And all that means is it's just trying to keep you safe. The second part of it is the story you're telling about your— this is my body feels a certain way, it must be because I don't you deserve it. You're making up a story about yourself, right? Yeah. And so what we're gonna stop doing is making up stories about ourselves. We're just gonna tell the truth. And the truth is I'm worth being loved. I'm worth being in a relationship where I'm safe.

I'm worth being not connected to a scumbag who would give his child up for a number. And that tells me all I need to know about a grown man, right? Like, so all that kind of stuff. The third part of this is you're obviously obviously really smart and really talented. Fair?

Yeah.

Okay, so you know, just looking at data, that attaching yourself to a boyfriend, no matter how stable he is, how great of a guy he is— he might be awesome— that still puts you in a very vulnerable position, right? Because you're trying to build something, you're trying to build a house without a foundation without legal protection, without, um, emotional— like, we looked at each other in front of our friends and family and priests and God and said, 'Til death do us part.' Like, you're trying to build a house without that foundation, and your body's right to sound that alarm. And so I would rather y'all in this— in— you may be past dating, right? That sounds like 16-year-old, something 16-year-olds do, right? But y'all are boyfriend and girlfriend. It's awesome. Nobody roots for love more than I do. I love it, right? And so now is we're gonna talk about values conversations. Who do we wanna be? What kind of life do we wanna build together? And then when you're ready to say, I do, and he's ready to say, I do, put his money and his actions where his mouth is, and you too, then we're gonna start combining money because now I've got a foundation that's, yes, it's got some legal protection.

Yes, it's got some emotional, spiritual protection, but it's you and I, we put a stake in the ground on this day at this time in front of these people and said, till death do us part. And now we're gonna say, let's share checking account. And then you're gonna have to practice. And I say this with a smile on my face. If you, if you were here in person, you'd see me smiling, right? Like, some of it— this sounds so callous— you're just gonna have to get over. Like, I don't want to feel resentment because he loves me and wants to take care of me. And then you're gonna have to go, I have that feeling, and that feeling's dumb, right? And I'm gonna— like, if we're married, we're building a life together, and I'm gonna be a part-time mom and he's gonna be the, the full-time employee. Awesome, 'cause we are building something together, right? And he is, he is in a relationship. He's thinking about marrying a woman who got done real, real wrong. And so he has to know part of him loving you well is being extra transparent, extra honest, extra patient with big feelings because your big feelings are right.

They've kept you safe up until now, right?

Yes.

Yeah, they are.

You get what I'm saying? So there's, there's multiple problems here and you think it's all one big bucket and then you feel crazy when you pull the problems apart. Man, my body's working pretty dang good. Um, I'm not going to start building a house without a foundation under it. I'll start talking about the design and the architecture and design plans. That, that's awesome. But we're not gonna start building. And man, until that day, I'm taking care of me and mine because that's, that's what I got. That's my responsibility as the adult and the parent of as a kid.

Yeah. I guess I'm gonna ever let go of that. Like, it's been so long.

It'll hang on to you until you practice being seen and known by somebody else. You're gonna have to— you'll— it sounds nutty. You're gonna have to teach your nervous system, not intellectually, but through practice, that I am worth being loved. And that's hard to do. Just takes time, takes practice. Yeah. But you sound like you are on the right path. Yeah. And I know that doesn't feel like you're on the right path, but from what you're telling me, it sounds like, man, you are— this guy has won the lottery with you. He thinks so. Okay. Do you believe him?

Uh, well, I'm working on it.

I am working on it. That's awesome. That's, that's good. That's a win. That means you're moving in the right— you're, you, you don't just say no, I I don't believe him. You're like, I'm working on it. That's awesome.

That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely got— we've been together.

Yeah, well, I mean, it sounds like you're on the, on the right path here, but if you were my sister, if you were my daughter, I, I would— I— your body would be working perfectly if it was like, man, I don't know if I should go all in and let this boyfriend of mine take care of me and make myself economically vulnerable, emotionally vulnerable, relationally vulnerable, bring another man into my daughter's life after she's she already had just nonsense in her first image of a male role model. Like, your body's right to not anchor into that. Wow. To not build a house without a foundation. So you're, you're, you're, your body's working pretty good. I love that.

I think we have time to take Matthew in Virginia Beach. Matthew, we're up against the clock, but I think we can help you.

What you got? Hi, uh, I have about $140,000 from my engineering degree that I got I'm in student loan debt. I built up about $70,000 between my savings and my brokerage account. It's kind of tough because the numbers kind of say long term I'd make more money if I would leave it invested, but you're thinking about it out and pay off my debt.

Listen, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take that, I'm gonna take that money every single time and use it to pay off debt only because, and I said it earlier in the show, but I'm going to say it again, one thing we believe around here, and we know it because we've seen it work with millions millions of people and not just folks out there. John's done it. I've done it. George, all of us. And we know that your income is the biggest wealth-building tool you have. You need your income at your disposal, and that's the way that you build wealth. So as long as you're paying money, uh, in debt payments, you do not have your full income at your disposal, nor do you have your full range of peace or freedom. And so by you taking this money out of savings, this is non-retirement funds, I'm assuming. You can take that money out of a brokerage account, cash it in and pay off this debt, you are one step closer to freedom and you're one step in the right direction to having the full power of your income work for you. And so I would do that every single day a million times to find that freedom.

John?

I mean, yeah, it's the easy—

that's, that's, that's the easy button. That's a no-brainer for me. And I get it. We all like the feeling of seeing a pile of money sitting there, but if you just do basic math, you you will realize very quickly, if I have $140,000 but I have $70,000 of debt, or if I have $70,000, I'm sorry, in cash, but I have $140,000 of debt, I don't actually have $70,000. I'm negative $70, okay?

You're just holding the bank's $70 grand for them. That's right.

So the math will also tell you that we're right.

When I talk to people on The Ramsey Show, 90% of the problems I hear come down to one thing: not having a plan. They're not living on a budget. They have no idea where their money's going. Money is just happening to them instead of them happening to their money. And guys, that is so normal, but it doesn't have to be normal for you. For you. And that's why I want you to go download our EveryDollar budget app. EveryDollar not only helps you tell your money where to go with a budget, it also builds a plan to free up extra money so you can pay debt off faster and start building wealth. And the best part, your plan is completely personalized to your life. It's the same advice that you would get if you called the show, and it's right in your pocket. So don't keep living normal. Go download the Every $10 app, answer a few questions, and get your plan today.

Our Ramsey Show Scripture and Quote of the Day, Joshua 1:8: Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will will be prosperous and successful. J.K. Rowling said this— British accent, do it. It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously you might as well not have lived at all. Terrible. That was— you nailed it. I mean, Harry. Moving on, moving on. We've got Lucy Lucy is in San Jose, California, not San Jose. How can we help Lucy?

Hi, how are you guys?

Good, what's up? How can we help?

Yeah, so I'm in kind of a difficult situation. I'll kind of explain my debt first and then the situation. So I have $57,000 in student loan debt and the interest is around 6%. My payments are $640 a month. $1,440 a month. I do have 13 months left of forbearance, so if I needed to defer at any point, I am able to do that, but obviously the interest is still accruing if I do go on forbearance. That's right. Um, I have $13,000 in a car payment. Um, my car broke about 9 months ago and I just got a new car, used car. The payments on that are $275 a month. Month, and it is a 9% interest rate. I have no idea why. I have good credit, but that's— I tried to get it lower and, um, I couldn't, so that's at 9%. Okay. Um, and that's my debt, and I have $14,500 saved. Um, and my dilemma right now is that, um, I've been having a lot of health issues. I had to get a couple couple of surgeries just from actually injuries, like accidents. And following that, I started to have like a lot of health issues, just like insomnia and other things that kind of started from that.

And my health is kind of like really deteriorated. I'm 30 years old.

I just turned 30 in March. I'm sorry.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And then also I realized that I have mold in my apartment. Oh boy. It's hidden, but it's definitely here. A year, and I've spent a lot of money out of pocket trying to like get the apartment complex to do something. And they're basically, because of the air test they did, they're saying that it's not significant enough. How do you know?

How do you know that it is significant enough?

Well, to be honest, like just to save your guys' time, it's really hard to know what you're dealing with unless you can find it and it's hidden. And I know that it's here because my apartment has very earthy, bad smell when everything's closed up. And it even kind of lingers even when everything's open.

And when they tested it, it just didn't— it didn't show that there was mold or that there was enough mold, right?

It said there's a normal amount of mold, and apparently the air test isn't super accurate because it's kind of like a point in time. So it's like it could fluctuate, right? Um, and so to be honest with you, I don't know that it's affecting my health yet. And it's also very hard to know because when's the lease up? I've had, uh, so I'm on a month-to-month lease, which is nice. You're out. Roll out, move, roll out. Yeah. So here's, here's what I did. Um, and just so you guys know, I do make good income. I, I make $135,000 a year. Um, and after— I live in California, which is a mistake. I'm gonna try to get out of here. But, um, I— after taxes and everything, I take home $7,100 a Good. Um, go ahead. Sorry. Oh no, I'm saying that's good.

Uh, get to your question. Tell me, tell me what you're trying to do.

Okay. So here's where I messed up. Um, so ideally I want to pay off my debt as soon as possible. If, if I stayed in a rent range that I'm at now, I paid $2,500 with everything. I could save like $2,000 a month, which is great, or not save, but put that towards my debt. Sure. What I made the mistake of doing is my emotions took over and I found an apartment that would be really good for my health and that I really like. And rent here is just insane. I got locked into a good rate because I moved.

You already took the— you already took the lease? You already signed up for something?

I did. I did sign it. So my question is, like, do I— do I break it? Because it's $3,400 a month. That's with everything. And given the debt that I'm in, um, what's the fee to break the lease? So I probably need to pay the first month's rent because it will definitely get rented quick. It's a great place. Yeah. Which is $3,400. $1,500. But on top of that, I'm gonna have to pay rent where I am until I find a new spot that's hopefully cheaper. But it might not—

you were gonna have to do anyway. Yeah, so that, that part is— that part's neither here nor there because you, you signed a lease anyway that you were going to have to pay two rents, which is wild.

But oh no, no, I wouldn't pay two rents actually, um, because the date that I selected as my move-in date, um, there wouldn't be a double rent, so it would just be for the one.

But hold on, Like you have $14,000 saved. I would take that first month's rent, go hand it to them and say, I'm out of this lease. I haven't even moved in. And I'm breaking the lease. And you got cash, thank goodness. And then on your drive home, have 3 other apartments you go look at. Okay. All of this emotion and story is compounding on itself. And it's a really simple, I'm gonna pay $3,400. And we jokingly say, it's your stupid tax. I did something dumb, right? I got emotional and I did a thing. Cool. We've all done it. And I'm— it's going to cost me that, and I'm going to be down to— what is that? $10,000, $11,000, right, in savings. And then I'm going to— on the way home, I'm going to put a deposit down on a new place and then call it. Yep. Okay.

Your mental stress— I actually had $18,000 saved, but I had to pay a $3,000 deposit, and you won't get that back, or will you? I should get it back. I don't think they can legally keep it because I didn't move in, so there's no fee that— like, there's no cleaning or anything. Well, then it might just be your $500. Yeah, plus the rent that I'm paying here. So yeah, it would be like I'd be losing like $5,000. That's fine.

John and I are fine with all of that. You can't— you cannot stay at the new apartment. So if it costs— whether it costs you $500 more to get out or $5,000, you gotta leave. You gotta leave because you can't handle that rent.

Um, and then from there, I did the math and I should still be able to save. You can't handle it around $900 to $1,000, but you think it's not, darling.

You're broke.

You've got $57,000 of student loan debt.

Yeah, you're broke, hun. And like, I say that and I— because I love you. Like, you're— you don't have any money. Okay.

And you're going to feel how— you're going to feel house poor. And it— yeah, it's going to take you double as long because, to your point, it's going to cut into your margin by over $1,000. So it's going to take you double as long to pay off the debt. That's— it's not worth it.

And what was your car note again?

How much do you owe on that car? $640 month. No, it's $275 a month. No, no, no.

So this, this— yeah, $275. Yeah, you know, I think I was trying to justify it like this is a 1-year commitment to get my health in order.

I know, but just to tell me how— tell me how much you owe on your, on your car.

$13,000. Yeah, I just got the car in February. I, I put $2,000 down.

Okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go settle up with the apartment complex ASAP today. Mhm. Because here's the thing, I know about autoimmune issues and overall general health issues. The more stress you have, the the more all those things are exacerbated. Right. And so let's stop going, like, let's don't say like, I'm gonna take a year for my health because your body is gonna register 50 to 60% of my take-home income is in this apartment. Right. It will know you're not safe. It will know that debt's only going up. Cuz I can't even barely keep up with the, you're, you're gonna pay minimums on your student loans and the balance is gonna move $1. Right. And so your body will be keeping that score to quote Vander book. So let's go get cleaned out of that. And then this afternoon, with whatever cash you have left minus $1,000, I want you to pay the car off.

Yep. Keep $1,000 saved. That's your starter emergency fund.

No matter what, keep $1,000. Just take action on these things.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I— that's what I figured you were gonna tell me to do. I think I just needed that, uh, reminder. Yeah, it's hard just with the health stuff because it is.

But this is going to help health. Yeah, this is going to help you. To John's point, reducing stress.

Yes.

And, and there's just something good about taking action. Like, you feel like, okay, I've done— I've actually done something. I didn't just get the research. I didn't just ask more and more questions. I actually went and did the thing, and I can see the results. And I think that if you literally take to heart exactly what John said, which is, I'm doing this— I don't know what time it is in San Jose, but if it's past business hours, I'm doing this tomorrow. I'm waking up bright and early. I'm going I'm going down to the apartment complex. I'm paying whatever I owe them. They're going to refund me back what they owe me for the deposit. Then from there, I'm literally going back home. I'm making the final payment online on my car. I'm keeping the $1,000 aside. I'm going down to the bank. I'm putting it in a high-yield savings account. You will have done 3 major things for your future in less than 24 hours.

And all you'll have left is 50,000, 57,000 bucks on student loan.

Love that. And then you're free. All right, we're outta here. Remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.