If You Play Stupid Games, You Win Stupid Prizes
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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships.

I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Camel, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book Breaking Free from Broke, and host of The George Camel Show. He's my co-host here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Brittany's in Knoxville. Hi, Brittany. How are you? Hi, Dave. I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world?

Oh man, I'm just kind of in a tough spot. I've been married for two years. I've taken a few of your courses and I've paid off around $30,000 of debt and I still owe around $40,000 more. But when my husband and I first got married, we always had the intention on combining our income and all of our finances, but he seems to just always have an excuse.

I've noticed recently that I, and I hate to even say this about him, but I feel like he's maybe taking Adderall and taking more than he should. And I noticed him maybe having a few beers in the afternoon, which is out of character for him. So I'm just starting to worry if maybe he's

Those are the reasons he's not wanting to combine our finances or what I should do. You think he's worried because you'll find out he's spending way too much money on alcohol? Yes, and I'm just kind of overwhelmed right now, I guess, because I'm working two jobs now.

I watch our two sons from home full time, and any time we have any child care, I'm paying for that. Our mortgage is in his name only, and I'm paying about 80% of that mortgage every month. So it's just I'm getting very overwhelmed. Did you buy the home after you got married? No, the home was his before we got married. Is your name on the deed? No.

No. This is very scary. They've offered to put the name in my house. It's not necessary in Tennessee. If you're married, you now have marital rights to the house. It's your marital residence. In some states, you need your name on the deed. In some states, you don't. You don't have to. That's not what's concerning here. What's concerning here is just the disconnect in your marriage. Your marriage is a mess, kiddo.

It is. And, you know, I'm not even worried about the housing. If I leave financially, I'm fine. I make really good money. What do you make? I just said about one hundred and thirty thousand a year. What's he make? He makes around 80 a year and he has no debt, no car payment, no student loans. I mean, really responsible guy up until the last year or so. It's just what changed in last year. What do you think caused this new behavior?

I am not sure. I mean, we had two sons. He loves being a dad. He's very active, a great dad, but I just, I don't know. I almost feel like it's the Adderall, and I feel like he thinks that he has it under control and that he doesn't have a problem. I don't know if it's that or not, but I do know this. If you sit down and attack him on that basis, you're probably not going to get anywhere. If I were in your shoes, I would just say, look, our marriage is not going well.

I'm not okay with the way this is going. I'm not okay with I'm the only one taking care of the mortgage. I'm the only one taking care of the kids. You come up with an excuse on combining finances, your behavior with alcohol and with Adderall. I'm just not okay right now. And, you know, we're not doing well. And so we need to see a marriage counselor. And if you won't go, I'm going without you. And you need to schedule a marriage counseling session.

Call your church and ask them who a great Christian counselor in the area is and sit down. Hopefully you can get him to go. Yeah. And then the counselor can pull out. But I think the Adderall or the alcohol, either one, is not the problem. It's a symptom. There's other stuff going on here that y'all need to get to the bottom of. And it's really all relational. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm just worried. I feel like he thinks that everything's fine. Well, you're about to turn the lights on, as Deloney says. Yeah. You know, you're going to walk in the room, turn all the lights on, and go, nope, nope, everything's not fine. I'm not fine. I'm not fine. You're not fine. This is not fine. I'm not okay. We are going to work on this. And you don't have to be mean or loud or angry, but you do need to be forceful.

Yeah. And don't turn this into you've got to stop drinking and take an Adderall. Yeah. Because that's not the issue. Okay. If you go there, it's not going to work. So because I'm not sure what he's doing there. But you guys need to get to the bottom of it. You need to have a relationship that is so intimate with your husband and their quality of communication and such a level of unity that you have no concerns about him being an addict. Right.

And you just called two guys you don't even know and asked us if he's an addict. Yeah. That's how bad this is. So, yeah, that's how bad your relationship is. So you've got to get to work on this. It's a major marriage meltdown is what it is. And you guys are functioning. And so it makes you act like everything's okay. But it's not. Just because you're getting through the day.

and nobody's throwing a brick through a window or nobody got hurt, that doesn't mean you're functioning. Because where they're going, the trajectory of where they're going is not. This is not going to end well. It's going to end in ashes. So we need to reassess. It's not on fire, but for her it is. It's getting real close. It's getting real close. Yeah. When you reach a point of disconnection with your spouse to the point that you see them having two beers and that makes you go to the leap of they're an addict.

Well, then that means there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on. That's a pretty fair leap. Usually more where that came from as you start to turn over that rock. Yeah. It goes a lot deeper. Exactly. Julianne's with us in Virginia Beach. Hi, Julianne. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? I'm just feeling the stress of I'm not working. I'm home with my baby right now, and I'm just...

Feeling the stress of adjusting to that and then not sure if we should adjust to it more or pay off the student loans that we have left. How much student loans do you have? Combined with me and my husband, we have 24. And what's in your savings account? How much liquid cash do you have? About $115, but that would be all. Well, that's plenty. Well, why don't you pay it off today? What is the deal?

You won't even notice. The difference between 90 sitting in your checking account and 115 is nothing. I just feel like since I quit my job, everything... $90,000! What do you need a year and a half of expenses for? I feel like I'm... Is your husband's job stable? Yes. Okay, let's pay it off. Can you live on his income? Yes. Well, then pay off the student loans, girl. I just feel like I'm becoming...

more anxious about money than when I was working and making him more stressed than we have to be because of it. Yeah. Oh, you could be. You could be becoming more anxious or you could be like waking up and going, this is stupid. We need to change it. It's burning enough brain calories. That's different than anxious. So I'd pay off. That's becoming convinced. Convinced is different than anxious. Anxious. So yeah, write a check. Good Lord. Today, this is the Ramsey Show.

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George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. The gap between financial stress and financial peace is littered with traps, lies, distractions, and slick marketing designed to keep you brainwashed and in debt.

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Don't wait to grab a copy. It's on sale during August. We're having a big sale here in August for $19.99. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash store or click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or on a podcast. Rebecca's in Springfield, Michigan. Hi, Rebecca. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hello there, Mr. Ramsey. It's Springfield, Missouri. Oh, I'm sorry. And that's okay.

They're both in my state. I talked to your gentleman earlier, and I hear you talk a lot about negative against credit cards. And I have a situation where my husband and I are retired and on Social Security.

So once a month, we get our nice little check. I put our checks in an interest-bearing checking account that our bank offers to senior citizens. And in the meantime, we use one Capital One credit card, the only one we have, and I buy our necessities. We don't go out and buy for the fun stuff. Rarely do we go out to eat.

We buy grass groceries. We buy our gas. We buy our medications. We pay for our doctor's visits. I pay our utility bills. You know, the necessity, the things that you have to pay with this. At the end of the month, I take the money out of our interest-bearing account, pay off the credit card. The credit card gives me 2% to 5% reward for everything I buy.

In the last year and a half, we've obtained $1,800 in rewards and have not paid one cent interest on that credit card. When I get these rewards, I put them in a savings account, and I have the TV. Rebecca, what's your question? Yes. Well, I just said, why is it wrong to have a credit card? The amount of calories you've burned in the last three minutes for $1,800 is amazing. You're working your butt off for them.

They work you like a slave mule. I mean, you're running around in circles for two grand. Rebecca, I could have saved you $1,800 if you just saved the brain calories, used your own money, and used it more wisely. And here's why I know. I interviewed an ex-Capital One employee, a manager over there, over their reward program, and they told me exactly how they screw people over.

They create these programs. You just said 2% to 5%. Well, guess what? 5% is on entertainment and travel and the luxury stuff you said you don't spend money on, right? It rotates every month. We do travel. We do travel once a year. Okay. We take a big long-runner. Rebecca, you're not going to go bankrupt with this, but you're not building wealth with this. And it's not morally wrong. It's not morally wrong. You're not a bad person. It's just you've been sucked into their system.

And it's, you know. But I'm not paying any interest. Yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. You're spending money you wouldn't spend otherwise. Now, not much, because you don't have much. It's only your Social Security money. It's not enough money to spit at. I mean, we have to buy groceries, right? I know, but you bought, 100% of the people that use plastic, including a debit card, including me, spend differently than we spend when we spend cash.

We spend differently. There's tons of... You can argue with me if you want, but you're wrong. Okay? The studies, the research are out there. Research studies, our research project upon research project, this studies human behavior. Those of us that sell people things, we know a thing called friction. And the easier we make it for you to buy and the more we gamify it, make you think you're getting something back...

the more you disconnect from the actual price and the quantity of what you're buying, and you have a tendency to spend more. Now, you're not spending much more because you don't have any money. This is not like you're going through $10,000 a month with this thing. You're not. It's a couple of grand, and all of this work you're doing is netting you

about $1,800 and you easily spent more than $1,800 during that same year that you would not have spent. You don't think you do, which is the humorous part of the discussion. That means they got you exactly where they want you. Now, again, there's nothing morally wrong with it, but you've only looked at one side of this equation. And that is, is that you're gaining, gaining, gaining, gaining, and you did not see the other side of the equation. They don't work for free.

They don't work for free. And so they're making their money. Believe me, they're making their money. Well, it takes $90,000 to create an $1,800 return with 2%. That's basic math, which means you've probably spent close to $90,000 that you otherwise would not have. I guarantee you. $90,000? 2%. That's right. That's what she just said. How the heck did you get $1,800? Well, it rotates, Dave. It's not your Social Security check.

So it is a lot of money. All that to say, basic math tells me this is not a win. And on top of that, you know, Dave, you mentioned the study. I've got it right here. 2021 MIT did an fMRI study. And here's what they found. Not only do credit cards release the brakes on spending, they also cause our brain to step on the gas, driving us to spend even more.

So to sum it up, when it hurts less, it costs more. When it's someone else's money I pay later, I'm going to treat it differently than my money now. Exactly. And I think I'm gamified. I think I'm getting money back. So you made $1,800. 2% would be $90,000. So if you have a mix of 2% to 5%, we could even dumb it down to $70,000. But you still went through $70,000 and you don't think you overspent a single dime.

Of course you did. So here's my theory. Could you make $1,800 a year by doing a budget, spending less? And I guarantee you, Rebecca, for one month, try using your own debit card and see how much less you spent in that month. And I guarantee you, if it's, you know, what are we talking? They're working you. If you had worked while you were working for them. If you make more than $150. You'd make more than $1,800.

A hundred fifty bucks a month is what we're talking. I think you can say you're not going to go bankrupt. You can keep doing your little game if you want to. But mathematically, you're a fail. It's an epic fail. OK, you got seventy thousand bucks going out to get eighteen hundred back and you act like you're winning. OK, and you act like you're not overspending. You are overspending. Now, are you dramatically overspending? Are you someone who's undisciplined and completely out of control? No, you're a very disciplined person, a very detailed person.

Which is the kind of person they really like to get a hold of because they make you, they can make you believe that they, that you're winning with them and they've done it. They got you. They got you. So great marketing. You do whatever you want to do. I am going to spend my money with a cash or with a debit card. And I'm very conscious then that I've actually made a purchase and it makes me stop and think about what I'm purchasing. And, uh,

And yes, you have to buy groceries anyway. But even groceries are different when you're walking through with a piece of plastic. It's a different thing. And by the way, grocery stores are the best merchandisers on the planet. They study exactly how to shop. I was talking to a guy that works for one of the big cereal companies the other day. He's one of the national sales managers. And he was explaining to me how much they pay to put certain boxes of their cereal at certain heights.

children's height, adult height, at the front of the aisle, the back of the aisle, because they can measure very distinctly with every chain they do business with how much that increases sales, and the chains charge them for that shelf position.

Go check out where the Oreos are. They're right at eye level. For children. And if you're my height. So that depends. Well, I didn't say that. You said that. But yeah. Well, Dave, there's other ways now. We've come a long way. Rebecca, you do whatever you want to do. We're not mad at you. But the answer to your question, which is not really a question, it's a passive-aggressive statement, that you've beat the system, that's your statement, is you didn't beat the system. The system's beating you.

You're spending $70,000 to $80,000 of your money to get $1,800 back. And you're working your butt off at this whole thing and act like you just had some kind of huge win here. You didn't win. Best, you broke even with this whole thing. At best, this is The Ramsey Show.

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George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Jason and Lori are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Doing great, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. Where do you live? We're from just outside of Columbus, Ohio, a little town called Pickerington. I love it. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you paid?

$65,580.90. Good for you. How long did that take? Six and a half months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? $165,000. Oh, well, good. What do you all do for a living? I'm a

I'm an account manager for a plastics manufacturer. I'm a business manager for a trucking company. Excellent. What kind of debt was the $66,000? It was our house. You paid off your house! Looking at a couple of weird people. I like it. Good for you. So broke free, and then that's your last name on the t-shirt, right? Yes, sir. Very good. Excellent. Broke free. You are not broke anymore. Free from being broke.

It's like someone should write a book called Breaking Free from Broke. I think that's a great title. Yes. Oh, wait. That's funny. He did. Thank you guys for the nod. We didn't pay him anything. Great. Great job, guys. What's the house worth? Thank you. The house is worth about $340,000. Wow. How much in your 401Ks and retirement account? $360,000 right now. So $700,000 altogether.

All right. Awesome. Heading towards Baby Steps Millionaires. We'll be there soon. Very soon. Way to go, you guys. Thank you. So proud of you. Okay, tell us your story. What happened? What changed that made you decide to not be a normal person out there? Well, our journey with you actually goes back to 2011 when we had $24,000 in credit card debt. And-

We didn't realize that until a friend told me, John and Ian Algy, have to shout out to them. They had told us about the Total Money Makeover. So I got the book, read it within two days. Him and I sat down and discussed money pretty much for the first time. And at that point, six years of marriage. So I was like, let's see what our debt is. It was $24,000. I was just bartending at the time, got a full-time job in a side hustle. And we paid that off in 14 months.

And then we just kind of lived life, never went back into debt. And then was it January, New Year's of 2023, I went to bed thinking, hmm, I wonder if we could pay off our house next year, like this coming year. That would be amazing. And then...

We weren't very intentional about it. And the new years of 24, I had that same thought. And I'm like, I'm not going to feel this way in 25. Wow. So what happened? Because this is a lot. I mean, we're talking like 10K a month here. Did you guys sell something? Was there extra jobs? We actually had 30,000 in savings. Oh, so you brought that down. We brought that down. So it was about 35 that we put together. Had a really good bonus this year.

kind of put that all together and took it out and made our final payment there in June. Above your emergency fund. Yes. Correct. Yes, absolutely. Yes, I like to have an emergency fund for the emergency fund, so...

We use that on the house. That's what we used on the house. Because I like to have a debt-free house, too. Yes, exactly. Way to go, you guys. Thank you. How does it feel to not have a payment in the world? It's amazing. It's amazing. It's truly amazing. Never thought I would ever be here, and it's a wonderful feeling. How long have you all been married? 19 years. Next month. Congratulations. Have you ever been without debt? No. No, this is the first time. Now you're 100% free. Yes, we are. That's so cool.

You got so much money. It's $165,000 and no payments. What are you going to do to celebrate? This. Oh, no. I mean, what are you going to do? You're going to need to go big. We're actually going to take the kids to Orlando for spring break. Good. There we go. In April. So we're going to do that. There we go. I'm curious. What was the interest rate on this mortgage?

It was three and a quarter. It was a VA loan. Because I hear a lot of these gurus out there telling me, well, George, it makes more sense. You should invest. Why pay down the mortgage? How did you guys go, you know what? No, we're just going to pay it down. They don't pay our bills. What's the story? I didn't want a payment anymore. I just got tired of hitting that button and sending money away. It was time.

How long had you been paying a mortgage up until then? It was a 30-year loan originally. We ended up paying it off in 17 years. Wow.

Shaved off some life. That's amazing. You gained some life back by hanging off the mortgage. That's a cool way to think about it. Did it in six and a half months once I decided. Isn't that crazy? You just decide and it's gone. Because if you had known 17 years ago we could attack this with intentionality and it could be done, you would have done it. A long time ago. But you didn't believe at that point. It wasn't a strong enough feeling as they were feeling. It's a feeling. And you wake up at New Year's after New Year's and go, I want this mortgage gone. Did it take some work to convince him?

Did you get intense? No. No, not really. I was ready. I was right there with her, so it was time. It's interesting that you can...

manufacture the disgust. It doesn't have to be like something negative has to occur to wake you up. You can just wake up and go, I don't like this feeling. I'm not going to live like this. That's it. And if you want to manufacture it, go look at the interest you pay on that amortization schedule and you go, we paid how much still? They got 800 bucks just for fun?

No, thank you. Yeah, yeah. Your amortization calculator on your website is what got me going. I kept looking at it. I was like, okay, we need to add this much more every month and we can get there. Yeah. And then the every dollar budget we use, we love it. It's helped us. Yeah, the app helped you get through it. Absolutely. Good, good. Well, way to go, you two. We're very proud of you. What do you tell people the secret to getting out of debt is?

Budget, contentment. Intentionality, being intentional with everything. On purpose in the budget. How do you reach contentment in a world that's full of discontent? That's a good question. I don't know. Just being happy with what you've got. When we were paying off the credit card debt, that was a big hit to us because we were –

always going out to eat and, oh, we deserve this. We deserve that. And it's like, do we? Do we really? So then we learned to be content and just love what we have. I've never been one for big, lavish, you know, luxury things anyway. So it's kind of made it, that made it a little easier. Yeah. Well, good for you guys. Well done. All right. Bring the kiddos up. Let's get their names and ages. We've got Calvin here. He's 11 years old.

And Lily Beth is 13. All right. With the matching shirts. And they've been following along through this whole process. They know what it's like now. Yes, they do. And they get to go to Orlando. Hello. Yes, they do. There we go. I like it. And we have an extra gift for you. We got two subscriptions to Every Dollar Premium, so you can pass that along. You said that was the key. Give it to someone else to say, I believe in you. Here's a tool that's going to help. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Good stuff. Jason and Lori, Calvin and Lily Beth from Columbus, Ohio. $66,000 paid off. House and everything. Heading right towards Baby Step Millionaires. They did it in six and a half months, making $165,000 on the budget, being intentional, and being content. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're dead! Yay!

Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Great job, you guys. Absolutely incredible. Heroes, man. Take control of their life. See, this is what millionaires look like. If you want to know what a millionaire looks like, look at those people. Don't look next to you at the stoplight at the fancy car. That ain't it most of the time. Unless it's Dave Ramsey. Well, that guy's, I mean...

He said he's content. He's in good shape. He's not worried about it. He doesn't care what you think. Got a paid for house, though. They're running their own race. And I've said if you run someone else's race, there is no finish line. It's just this endless chase of I got to keep up with the Joneses. Did you see the vacation they went on? And they're going, we're going to Orlando. We don't have a mortgage payment. Don't care what we saw on Instagram. Yeah. That's a difficult thing to do in today's world. Yeah. If you just turned off Instagram, it would turn off the inputs.

That's it. Wow. It's pretty cool. Very cool. It's a great place to be. And no older than they are, they're going to be multi-millionaires by the time this story is over. Because we're just about to get to the first million, but then about every seven years after that, it's going to double again. And so, I don't know, 10, 12, 14 by the time they retire. You got time on your side still. Unlike a lot of people, they go into retirement carrying the mortgage saying, well, one day we'll get to it. Maybe. Everybody's got a car payment.

Everybody's got a mortgage. No Eeyores over here. Except Jason and Lori. Yep. Here we go. This is The Ramsey Show.

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Caitlin's with us in Salt Lake City. Hi, Caitlin. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

I fell into a financial hole this last year and I've been following your steps. I'm 34, but since I was 17, I had my daughter and I've been trying to stay out of debt and build wealth and I just keep falling out of step four. But I got married. My husband opened some credit cards last year because against my will, I've never owned a credit card until last year. And

And so currently I'm standing with student loans, unfortunately, like 120,000 of debt. And I'm trying to figure out the best way to get out of it. I have three vehicles. One of them is completely paid off. One of them only has 6,000 left on it. And then my husband bought a brand new car two years ago against my will. And so currently I can sell my car.

my $6,000 truck. I can maybe trade in my one that's paid off. It's not going to help. Okay. You're going to keep doing the same crap. I know. Your husband just goes and buys whatever he wants, and you can't get out of debt faster than he gets in it, honey. Yeah. Yeah.

You don't have a debt problem. You've got a husband problem. I do. I put him on a budget. I took away all of his cards. He's not a child. I know. We're not punishing him. We want him to be a grown man and actually make good decisions. Yes. Instead of a spoiled little brat that goes and buys a truck that he can't afford. Yeah. How old is this guy? He's 43. Dear Lord.

Okay. This is a marriage problem, number one. You keep borrowing money a little bit because you're not disciplined and he does whatever flip he wants and you all aren't going to fix this until you fix the people in your mirror. Yeah. You and your husband need to sit down together and say, honey, this is not working. What we're doing is stupid. We keep going backward and backward and backward and backward. We're acting like a couple of children and this is not okay. Okay.

This is the discussion the two of you need to have. It's time for y'all to start making some grown-up decisions instead of just buying crap just because you feel like it. Yeah. The impulsiveness in this story just keeps circling back around and circling back around, and that's what you guys have got to deal with. And I don't think he wants to. I don't think he thinks there's a problem.

I can agree with you. We've actually had a conversation a couple days ago. I've been trying to pull us out of this. You can't. You've got to stop that. The only way you're going to pull you guys out of this is if he helps. You have a shovel. He has a bulldozer, and he's going to keep destroying this thing. And so you guys are misaligned on balance. You haven't fallen into debt. You've jumped into debt. It was a very intentional act.

You didn't accident. Falling indicates an accident. It was not an accident. You did it on purpose. So don't quit using words like I fell into the fall. I jumped back in. Yeah. Yeah. And just got. So the two of you, you need to sit down with him and say, honey, this terrifies me.

I can't live like this. I don't like feeling out of control. I don't like these people owning our lives. I don't like feeling like we're working our tail off and we got nothing to show for it but payments. And I don't like not being able to trust you because of your immaturity and your impulsiveness. I want us to get on the same page and have some long goals and start sacrificing to hit those goals. I've got to have that because this is killing me.

Yeah. Now, the one thing about this guy that is a possible redeeming feature is maybe he actually loves his wife. If he does and his wife says to him, honey, I'm scared. Help me. This is killing me. I can't stand this. He has to respond to that if he loves his wife. Yeah. But if he's a complete narcissist and just is going to go off and do whatever he wants to do anyway, then you've got a bigger issue than a money issue, kiddo.

And it's a problem. So you've got to try to get him to the table and talk about growing up and talking about doing things on purpose with intentionality. George, I got to tell you, I see this stuff. I recognize it so clearly because it's exactly what I did. When I read in Proverbs, it says he who is impulsive exalts folly. And I studied that a little bit and I realized the word folly is

is a fool in action. So if you're impulsive, when I was impulsive and I'm pretty stinking was, I was like the king of it. I made that guy look like a genius. Okay. That's how bad I was when I, but when I realized, you know, those that are impulsive are a fool in action. That's a fool in motion.

And I thought, and this is not, this is a biblical fool. This is not like, hey, fool, it's not a greeting. This is like an idiot. And I looked at myself and I'm like, I'm a fool in action. A biblical proportion. A biblical proportions. It woke me up, man. It woke me up. What was behind that? Was it a pride? Was it arrogance? Was it a greed? Was it all of it? Because there's got to be a piece of this where you go...

I feel like I know better. I know what I'm doing. I'm going to be the genius who gets us out of this. Or is it just an immaturity? Just an emotional, spiritual immaturity? I have no control. It's impulsive, an impulse. You act on impulse rather than on thought or intentionality. The opposite of it is wisdom.

The opposite of it is steady, careful, thoughtful. You know, that's the opposite of impulsive. Impulsive is a child. Delayed gratification and instant gratification. Exactly. And, you know, when you think about what is it when you buy something and they say that's an impulse item. You heard that, right? What is it? That's something you'd get. You gave absolutely no thought to. And it was done without consideration.

of anything else. Just sort of as you're checking out, you see the little item there and you go, yeah, that sounds good. It's of no consequence. And yet when you add it up, it's all of consequence. It is the consequence. The consequence is you're broke. And I mean, I feel sorry for that guy and her. I mean, poor Caitlin, she's got a mess on her hands because it is a childish behavior. It's an immature. And when I was doing it, I was like the king of it. And people say things like, well, I work hard, so I deserve it.

That's what they say when they do something stupid like that. I used to say that. It's like, I deserve, what do you deserve? I deserve to be broke and in debt, but I got a nice car because I have no abs. I have no off button at all. I just do whatever feeling comes into my little self. And man, I was that guy. And I just went, I don't like this guy.

And he's broke all the time. He's a problem child. I can understand it if you're just a single guy, no responsibilities. But for a guy with a wife and kids, I don't understand. It's not okay. There's no demographic that makes being immature and self-centered, selfish, and shallow okay. And I was every bit of that.

You know, it's not, it's not, it's okay if you're single to do that. No, it's not. Well, it affects other people when there's. Yeah, well, it, yeah, poor Caitlin, she's trying to swim over here and he keeps throwing her a concrete block instead of a life preserver. And here, hold this, honey. Here's a new truck payment. You know what I mean? Can't breathe. I can't breathe. Here, hold another one. Until you get to the root of it, you're not going to get anywhere. Yeah.

That's a tough one. And what's weird is when you are impulsive, you'll impulse some big stuff like a car or a $50,000 truck, you know? And I think that's one of the things that going broke and learning this biblical money stuff is,

helped me to grow up and go through that. I mean, by the time I went broke, I wasn't impulsive anymore at that degree. But it's always been easy for me to make decisions. I'm a decisive person. And you can kind of like say, well, I make decisions quick. No, you're just a four-year-old. You're just an immature little child. That's different than making decisions quickly. Most of life is just pushing down the inner toddler, going, no, not today. That's it. That's it.

The inner toddler. That's my problem. This is The Ramsey Show.

Before we get to the next caller, I got some good news for you. Even when this portion of today's show runs out of time, there's still plenty more for you to tune into. Just head on over to the Ramsey Network app to finish today's show for free right there on the home screen. And if you don't have the app, just search Ramsey Network in the App Store, Google Play, or simply click the link in the show notes for an easy download. You never know what call is coming up next, so be sure and check out the Ramsey Network app.

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Patrick is in Boston. Hey, Patrick, how are you? I'm doing great, sir. It's a pleasure to speak with you. You too. What's up?

Well, sir, two years ago, I got divorced and the house was kind of left in limbo. I didn't sell it. I couldn't buy my ex-wife out of the house. She couldn't buy me out. So the deal was that I basically stay in the house.

until either I sell it or our son comes of age. And I, I'm kind of stuck between whether I should sell the house now because it does have some equity in it. Or if I stay in the house,

I owe her half of the proceeds of the sale, and I'm just not sure whether I want to be giving her all of those, all that equity that I'm putting into the house at this point. Every repair you do, she gets half of. Every payment you pay, she gets half of. This is not a good deal for you.

Yeah, and it's something I've been thinking about for a little while, and there's plenty of equity in the house to give her right now. I would sell it. All right. The sooner you sell, the less damage you're doing by paying more of her share. That or refinance it and buy her out. Can you refinance and get a mortgage and pay out her half? It's possible. Since rates went up, I haven't really looked into that very deeply, but that's certainly a possibility.

Do you want to stay there? Yeah. What's the, do you want the house? Uh, to be honest? No, I don't want to stay here. I'm not from new England originally and I would like to leave. So that's also something I've been thinking about, but that's fairly easy. Then it becomes a no brainer.

I would do it as soon as possible. And if you need a guy you can trust, a gal you can trust, you can go to RamseySolutions.com slash agent. And those are the folks in your area who we trust, who we vet to help you with these transactions. Ron is in Indianapolis. Hey, Ron, welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? A quick background. I'm 74 years old, active, refuse to quit working. I've got about four streams of income coming in, but I'm late to the party. I do have a paid-for rental house. I've got $38,000 in a heat lock on my primary residence, and I've only got $22,000 in my IRA.

I've got about $1,800 in savings. So I have $4,100 in a credit card besides the HELOC. The credit card will be paid off in September. What do you make? I make between $5,800 and $6,000 a month. Okay. All right. Well, I would plow through the credit card and the HELOC and build your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses and then start investing for retirement.

Okay, so that was one of my questions. I should pay off the HELOC and not do investing in HELOC? No, you should get rid of the HELOC and the credit card first, as fast as you can. I mean, really, really, really fast, like living on beans and rice fast. Well, I'm hoping I'll have that paid off by September, the credit card, and then I'm hoping to...

I was thinking I should build my emergency fund after the HELOC's done. After the HELOC. What's the balance on the HELOC? It's just $20,000, wasn't it? $38,600. And you're making $70,000 or $80,000 a year. I would knock that thing out like it was a credit card. And then you'd be 100% debt-free, house and everything, right? Yes. And then you build your emergency fund, and then you start investing into retirement. Right.

That's exactly what I would do in that situation. And time is of the essence. You're 74. I want to see you retire with dignity one day when you can't work. I know you're choosing to work right now, which is cool, but one day you might not be able to, and I want to see you with no payments. Yeah, that HELOC being gone is a big deal here. It's a really big deal. George is in San Diego. Hey, George, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, how you doing? Hey, how can we help? Hey, so I'm just looking over my finances at the end of the day, and let me see if I can get you a speaker.

And, uh, me and my wife, we just got to a point where we're making a hundred thousand dollars a year after taxes. And, um, we have no money really to do anything. It's seeing, it feels like, uh, we only have a couple of bills, a couple of hard costs, and then all of our fixed costs, um, like, you know, living gas, uh, groceries, et cetera, um, pretty much take up everything. And, um,

I'm wondering what would you, how do I look at this? How do I look at this? Because what I think of, you know, we're making $100,000, about $8,000 a month when you average it all up, and we're still not able, it feels like we're still kind of living paycheck to paycheck. Is that normal or is there, what should I be looking at here? Well, you've got an idea in your head, but you're not doing a written plan.

If you worked for a company and your job was to manage the division of your company that brought in $100,000 a year, and part of your job was you had a P&L responsibility, meaning you had to budget that division, they would fire you because you haven't written a thing down. This is all in your head. And so you need a detailed written budget that you and your spouse both agree to, and then you need to stick to it. Then you'll figure out where the money's going.

and figure out what the problem is. There's no outside forces here that are conspiring against you. So how much is your house payment? Well, right now, so we just moved out of the place we were currently living at a couple of weeks ago. We're staying at my wife's mom's for three months. Why? And right now, because we were...

We got put in a weird situation. We rented from a sublease landlord and then three months. Okay, so what are you going to do for housing? Well, for right now, we're staying here. We're paying $500 a month. I know, but you're not going to stay there long. No, we want to be out of here three months maximum. Okay, what are you going to do at the end of three months? Right now, we're searching pretty much every day on Zillow. For a purchase or a rental? Two children and a dog. Rental. Okay, and what do you think your rental is going to run?

Right now, I mean, for what we're looking for, I mean, everything that we see is going to be in the $3,500 at a bare minimum to $4,000 range. You can't do that on $8,000. That's half of your take-home pay. You cannot have a rent payment that's half of your take-home pay. It's not sustainable. What's a healthy percentage? 25%.

Two grand. I don't think you could. Yeah, so we were paying $25,000. We had a one-bedroom, 600-square-foot, really small place. Here's the thing. You have $100,000 to work with. The math doesn't change just because you live in an expensive area.

You still are constrained by that. You still are going to be broke your whole life and struggling and stressed out if you take a rental payment that's 50% of your take-home pay. You've got to get it down towards that 25% mark. If you can't, then that means you can't afford to live in the area you're looking in. You move further out, increase the income. George, go to everydollar.com, list out that income, list out every single expense, and you'll figure out real quick where it's all going and what you need to do. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable.

You don't get a pass on math because you live in San Diego. This is the Ramsey Show. Are you working the baby steps? One of the smartest and most impactful changes you can make is to ditch your cash value life insurance plan, if you have one, and replace it with a term life policy. Listen, the only thing a cash value policy is good for is overcharging you

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Agent. RamseySolutions.com slash agent. George Campbell Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Today's question of the day is brought to you by Y-Refi. If you're in over your head with private student loans and tired of getting calls from collection agencies, you may need Y-Refi. Y-Refi refinances defaulted private student loans so that other places won't touch. They give you a low fixed rate loan built for you.

Go to YRefi.com slash Ramsey today. That's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. Might not be in all states. Today's question comes from Chad in South Carolina.

He says, I work full time and I have a lawn care business on the side. Part of my business income was paid in cash and partly by payment apps like Venmo, etc. I've been paying taxes on everything except the cash, and I was wondering morally and legally how I should handle that income. Obviously, I already pay a lot of taxes and I'm trying to save money where I can. Should I feel bad about this? And if so, should I clear everything up with the IRS and pay back what's due to them?

You can decide if you want to go back or not and deal with it and how far back you want to go. But income in America, regardless of how it's received, is taxed. That's the law. And so it is a moral and ethical thing to pay taxes on money you receive as cash, period.

And I pay taxes. I mean if we get paid in cash for something here it all goes into the revenue and It all goes into the calculation and we pay taxes on it. Just like we do everything else so Mechanically how you can do it is when you get paid in cash just deposit it into the business bank account and then it'll be reflected there as income and That'll help you do the totals and figure out what you're supposed to do with your quarterly estimates on your business That's the mechanics of it so

Chad, one of the things I read several years ago that really leans into this, George, as far as I'm concerned, is Tom Stanley, the great Tom Stanley, who did the original book, The Millionaire Next Door. He and I became friends before he passed away. His daughter, Sarah, we interact with her now. She still does research on millionaires and billionaires and so forth. He did another book called The Millionaire Mindset Later. There's two books by that name, but he did one.

by that name, and where he studied billionaires that wasn't millionaires, billionaires. And he studied people who had accumulated a billion dollars from nothing. And so these were very, billion is a thousand million. And he went at this research a little bit different. He tried to find the correlating things in their life. You know, marriage, were they married one time? Had they been married six times?

What was their education? You know, what were the things in their life that led them to be in a position to do this? And he found 37 different items or things that he correlated. And then he forced ranked them in how often they appeared. So number 37 appeared the least often among the billionaires. And number one appeared in every one of them.

And number one that appeared in these people who became billionaires from nothing was that they had fanatical levels of integrity character. Every time he interviewed a competitor, a friend, an employee, a former employee, his kids, his wife, when they spoke of this man, they always spoke of impeccable integrity, not just honesty integrity.

But integrity is a wholeness to it. He's the same on Sunday as he is on Monday. If he says this guy is falling, duck. I mean, this guy is impeccable, fanatical about his integrity. And that reinforced to me that when I don't pay my taxes, it has nothing to do with whether the taxes are just or not. It has to do with I'm not doing the right thing. It's my integrity.

It doesn't reflect on them. Anybody who has walking around since pretty much agrees that the federal government and the IRS and the income tax system is a complete moronic train wreck. It's absolutely unfair and horrible. But that doesn't say anything about my integrity. My integrity is I'm going to follow the law exactly.

It's what they said to do. I'm not looking for a shortcut. And so we report every stinking dime that we take in at the Ramsey's because it makes a statement about me, not about them. And then I'm going to also make another statement about me. I'm going to spend a lot of money with attorneys, attorneys,

and CPA firms to try to figure out what I legally don't have to pay. And I'm not paying a stinking dime more than I got to on the other side of that because I hate them. But still, my dislike of the tax system is not going to be reflected, not going to change me as a person of integrity because I want to be on that list that Tom Stanley did.

You know, I want to be in that. I want to be in that lineup with that hall of fame right there. If you want to build sustainable wealth and have your integrity intact, pay your taxes, Chad. So that's it. It's that simple. And you know, I'll go so far as this. Let me just, let's just carry that on out a little bit. Fanatical integrity means like when you work for someone and they pay you to work there, when you're not working, you're stealing. When you're sitting on your Facebook account,

For three hours while you're being paid to do work that you're not doing. That's not integrity. That's stealing. It's not cute. Everybody does it, but everybody's broke and everybody doesn't have a good life and everybody struggles in their relationships and everybody can't deal with anything except their anxiety and their heart attacks and their obesity and everything else. So everybody you don't want to be like, so here's what's weird.

Even if it's not popular with your coworkers, while you're at work, work day, every day. Because that makes a statement about you, not about them. It's not about, well, my boss is toxic. Oh, kiss my butt. Because they wanted you to work. Now you have a toxic boss. It's a toxic work environment. They expect me to work and I can't live on Facebook. You're killing me here. Dad, come on, snowflakes.

Work while you're at work. It's an integrity issue, you know? And so it carries through every part of your life. Get there five minutes early. Get there five minutes late. Leave five minutes late. Don't be the first one screeching the tires out of the dadgum parking lot every afternoon. You know, it's not that hard. That's a sign of integrity. It's a sign of integrity. And I figured out being on time is integrity. I hate that one. Once I figured it out, though, trains run on time around here.

We put a little clock up on things. Staff meetings got a little countdown clock. We start at 830. We don't start at 832. We start at 830. You come wandering your little butt in six minutes late. It's, you know, well, there's traffic. Well, there's traffic every day. There's nothing new about that. There's traffic. Of course there's traffic. You know, I had to get the kids ready for school every day. You know, it's not a surprise. We do. You know, if I tell Sharon, I'm going to be home for dinner at 530.

I come walking in at 537. She's like, it's getting cold. Food's cold. Getting cold. You said 530. And she's not a butt about it. I'm not a butt to our team about this stuff. But these are things I had to start talking to myself about. And that type of character is the type of character that grows billionaires, Chad. And so pay your taxes, honey. Every dime of them. Hope that was clear. Ha ha ha ha.

It is true, though. It's interesting how that carries through every part of your life, your career, your marriage, your relationships, your finances. Be the person you said you were going to be. Be a person of character. Do what I said I was going to do. Follow through. Follow through. Follow through. And, you know, God, I can't stand being late. Because it says I didn't think they were important enough to get there on time. It's arrogance. I can't stand it. Stinking airlines. Unbelievable, man. What's Delta mean when you look it up in the Greek? We ain't going to be there.

That's what it means. This is The Ramsey Show.

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George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the Debt Free Stage. Matt and Corey are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hi. Better than we deserve. Yes, sir. Welcome. Good to have you guys. Where do y'all live? Dallas, Texas. All fun. Welcome to Nashville. Thank you. And how much debt have you two paid off? $311,000. Wow. How long did that take? Eight years, one month.

Good job. And your range of income during that time? Started out at $48,000 and finished out at $172,000. Cool. What do you all do for a living? I'm in law enforcement. And I'm in restaurant management. Very good. Very good.

Very good. Good for you guys. What kind of debt was the 311? So we had two car loans, my student loans, and our house. Yeah! Look at a couple of weird people with a paid-for house! Just throw that in there for fun. Why not? Excellent! So how much is this house worth? 410. Love it. Yeah.

And how much in your retirement accounts? Just over a hundred. Okay. You're on your way. How old are you two? 32. And I'm 30. With a paid for $400,000 house in Dallas. That's weird. Yes, sir. What put you on this journey eight years ago? Well, eight months into marriage, I was coming home from work, just got off a evening shift and I was driving home and

Corey thought she might have been pregnant. I was not, but I was worried about it. And I just finished college exit counseling. My first student loan payment was coming due. We had the car loans and kind of lit a fire under me to say, what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? We kind of always knew we were sort of poor, and then we realized, oh, wow, we are actually very poor. Lit a fire.

So I started looking around. I'd heard your name a couple times and Googled you and found the podcast. I was working a job where I could listen all three hours every day. So that's what I did and started working the baby steps. All right. And Corey's on board.

Yes, I am the spender and free spirit, but it wasn't a hard battle. We started our monthly budget meetings right away, went from just kind of a scrappy paper budget to the EveryDollar app. And honestly, we have had monthly budget meetings every month since then, and it really made it easy to come together on it. Yeah. Wow. Well, it helps your marriage because you're communicating. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And working together on stuff is a big deal, but working together on money is everything.

Yeah, that money is a reflection of your values and your calendar. So worst case, he knows what's going on next week because we got to go buy this thing. Yes, sir. That's a really cool tool. And I'm curious, you guys are real young. So to start this thing, I mean, you were what, 24? Yes, sir. Yeah, I was about 21, 22. That is wild.

To go, you know what? We're not going to wait on, let's see who's in the office next. See if they're going to forgive these student loans. Well, I mean, the student was ready and the teacher appeared. And I think if you say Dave's name three times, he appears. If you hear it enough times, the show will just magically appear on your social media feeds. That's incredible. Wow. So what was the hardest part? Because you just went straight through the consumer debt, into the emergency fund, into investing, into the mortgage. How did that all work?

I mean, I would say the hardest part was just at the beginning. I mean, our debt to income ratio, it was not a good, not a good ratio. So the hardest part, because I mean, we were both fresh out of college. Well, I had just finished and he was still finishing up college. And so, yeah,

Just being so young, we hadn't even started our careers. We hadn't even really picked our careers at the time. So I'd say the hardest part was just starting off with so little income. But through a couple job and career changes here and there, we realized we were on the right path and just started growing where we were with our jobs.

And it really, really took off. We were very fortunate with where we are and the bosses that I have have been amazing. Well, you worked your tails off to triple your income in that time. Yes, sir. Way to go. Overtime is pretty common. Yeah, I would say we have basically unlimited overtime in our careers. So that was a huge help early on, and it's been a huge blessing to cut back on that. Yeah, you got back to, you don't have to do anything now. Wow. It feels like you're working part-time. It does. Yeah.

Wow. Good for you. How's it feel to not have a payment in the world at 30 years old? Very light. Yes. Very floaty. Yeah. Floaty. I like that. Yes. Floaty. It's kind of floating around, you know? Well, we talk about debt having an actual physical weight on our bodies, and we see debt-free screamers, and they could levitate. There's just a freedom and joy there that I think people, you can't put it on paper and go, hey, this is what you're going to have on the other side. Right. Right.

Yeah, we're going to have to provide a tether so they don't drift off the stage. Lock your feet into the debt-free stage. That's good. What's the next thing you're going to do? 32 paid for house. So this and then she needs a minivan. Yes. She's six foot one and been driving around a Camry for I don't know how long. Yes. I know the feeling. Yes, sir. We need some headroom. Yes, sir.

We've got our two-year-old son back there that'll join us in a little bit. And then baby brother is joining us in a few months. So they won't fit in the Camry very well. So we're going for the minivan next. That's right. Move mom up. Yes. Upgrade. And obviously paying cash and easy to do that with not a payment in the world. Absolutely. Very, very cool. You feel unstoppable? Because is there anything else? If there's a financial goal, you go, yeah, we can do that.

Yeah. I think we're excited too. I mean, we talk about the dream snowball. Yes. We move from the debt snowball to the dream snowball. It just kind of picks up speed, you know, I mean, the compound interest and the way everything goes. And when you work on your career and everything, it takes off. And so we're doing the minivan and then, you know, a sauna to help build a non-anxious life. Just, you know, you build the life that you don't have to get away from and you're very content to be there. So.

That's very exciting. Very cool. You guys, there's a maturity that happens in those eight years of just going delay gratification. Nope. We're going to say no, we're going to say no. And at 32, you guys have gained so much wisdom and maturity following this plan. So I'm so proud of you guys. Thank you. Way to go heroes. We're proud of you. Who was, who was cheering you on as you went through this? Our parents for sure. Um,

Obviously, cooking us a meal takes a little bit more than the average person. So they cooked us a lot. And that helped relieve us from the beans and rice a little bit. Literally, chicken, beans, and rice three times a day for a while. So that was a big help. And, of course, cheering us on and being proud for us. And we've had a lot of help from friends and family, but also outrageous generosity as well. Yeah. Experienced it in a lot of just unique ways along the journey. And so we're very excited to be able to do that for other people now and to –

get to be those people. You'll be the pay it forward folk. Absolutely. I like it. Very good. You guys. Excellent job. All right. We're going to bring a young man into the picture here before we do our debt-free screen. What's his name and age?

His name's William, and he's almost two years old. All right. So cute. All right. Our William just turned, he's getting ready to turn 11. My grandson, William. He's our oldest. Great name. Good name. Good job, you guys. Well done. We've got a gift for you, too, don't we, Dave?

We're going to gift them two years of every dollar premium. So two different cards you can gift on. You said you want to pay it forward. This is a great way to do that by gifting someone the budget and saying, hey, this is the tool we used. If you want to know how we did it, this is the plan right here. Yes, sir. Love it. Matt,

Corey and William, Dallas, Texas, $311,000 paid off. That's the house and everything. They did it in eight years and one month, making $48,000 to $172,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

Way to go, you guys. The kid's had his family tree changed. He doesn't know it. Mom and dad are going to be millionaires before he even knows what he's doing. I was just thinking about that. He's going to go back on YouTube and watch this one day and go, oh, that's why I have the life that I have. My parents paid a price so that I could have this life. That's privilege that is earned. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Very well done. Very, very well played. Yeah, and you know, the classic thing, get on a budget. The classic thing, take the overtime. The classic thing, you work, and guess what? Your income goes up. Oh, it's an amazing correlation. Not a lot of life hacks here. It just looks like hard work. Well, I got to tell you, these debt-free screams, they often sound like, oh, that looks easy. It's not easy. Like, well, Dave, they had a great income. Yeah, they worked their tails off. They worked overtime. It started at $48,000 a year.

Shut up. I mean, get it done. Stop your whining and put your shoulder to the wheel. Let's go. We got stuff to do here, boys and girls. Got life to live. This is the Ramsey Show.

Hey, it's Dr. John Deloney. Look, when you're stressed about money, it makes everything feel out of control. You run around like a maniac trying to make sure everything's covered, everybody's okay. I've been there. It's the worst. But you can flip the script with an every dollar budget. It helps you track spending and expenses in real time so you always know what's happening with your money. Talk about a weight lifted off your shoulders.

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And if you want to find a Ramsey-trusted real estate agent for free, just go to ramseysolutions.com slash agent. A Ramsey-trusted real estate agent for free, ramseysolutions.com slash agent. Teresa is in Portland, Oregon. Hi, Teresa. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thank you for having me on. Sure. What's up?

Well, my HOA just signed me up for $22,000 worth of debt through a special assessment. This is after I've lived here for two years, and my HOA dues have increased 44% in that time frame. And my understanding is that there's going to be another special assessment coming for another $22,000 in debt plus more dues increase as well.

This place is falling apart, isn't it? Yeah. No, it's not. I mean, it's got some work that needs to be done that has not been. I don't think they've been keeping up with the maintenance. Yeah. So now they're trying to. Trying to catch up and get deferred maintenance done. Yeah. So they've been undercharging for the HOA dues for years. Yeah.

Either undercharging or not handling the money well. Probably both, yeah. What are you paying now for your HOA fee? Right now it's $552. It was $380 when I moved in. That's per month? Per month. Okay. So what, I mean, do you see an end in sight to this or have you just gotten in a bad situation that you need to sell and get out of there?

Well, that's the thing is I'm not really sure right now. I think the owners are trying to band together. Nobody's happy about this, and they're trying to band together and get... The HOA is the owners, Home Owners Association. Yeah. The people who live here, I guess I should say, who own the condos, like each condo here, they're trying to do some stuff. But I think...

I don't know. When I got this information, I was angry and freaked out and I knee jerked and I called some realtors and I realized I was going to make an emotional decision. So I'm trying to make a very logical decision.

Think through all of this, trying to figure out what numbers make sense to keep the condo, what numbers make sense to sell the condo, and make a good financial decision, not an emotional, I'm mad. It's not emotional to judge the pattern that the deferred maintenance is going to continue to cause me to have special assessments and increased fees. I don't want to do that. That's not emotional. That's just an analysis. Yeah. Yeah.

And so if you think this is going to continue, this erratic behavior and misbehavior, and it's not misbehavior, but I mean, this is constant special assessments because we can't seem to get the management of this HOA under control, the management, the maintenance of these condos. So are they old and they need roofs and you need parking lot? And that's what's happened, that kind of stuff.

No. So what this one is, is they're going to take out a $1.2 million loan to fix the main objective of this particular project is to repair and replace the entryways to three of the buildings, do some siding repairs, paintwork.

paint the buildings and possibly some ground drain repairs. There's some landscaping issues, trees that need to be dealt with, stuff like that. That's just phase one. There's another phase coming down the line of some other issues as well. It's unusual that a bank will loan to an HOA because they don't have a lien. Right.

I don't know anything about how that works. It's pretty unusual. It's also unusual for an HOA to vote to go into debt. Now, the special assessment's not unusual at all if there's deferred maintenance and problems like this. Doesn't sound like they had much in the reserves either. Yeah, they didn't have any reserves. It has not been run well, if that's the case. No. Do you enjoy living here? Could you go live somewhere else and be just as happy? No.

I really like my place. I like the area I live in. I've been looking at other properties in other areas. You know, I've kind of lived all over the...

kind of greater Portland area. And, you know, where I'm at, I like because I can get pretty much anywhere in no time at all. Yeah, here's the problem, okay? They take out a million-two loan and they don't collect all of the assessments. The million-two loan is going to get in trouble. Okay. And then you've got maintenance problems and trouble. I don't think I want to stay here.

The loan was a deal breaker for me. I was bad enough when you got two special assessments and a 40% increase in your fees, and you don't feel like it's being run well. But now on top of that, they're not even going to have the actual cash in hand to do the work, which the special assessment should give them the cash over time if they would slow down just a little bit. But somebody's running in there and jacking this thing around. It sounds like the management company.

is throwing their weight around a lot here. You do what you want to do. I'm hearing a lot of things make me nervous if I'm an owner in there. Well, and that interest gets passed on to the owners. Exactly. And if they don't collect enough HOA fees, let's just say a bunch of the owners don't or can't pay. How are they going to pay the bill? They got to eat it or pass it on to the other owners. And you're going to end up with some kind of a lien on this property and it's not going to be good. Yeah, I don't like this scenario at all.

Robert is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, Robert, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Before we do that, Robert, I'll tell you what, instead of that, I'm going to do something James just told me to do. Forgot to tell you guys that the last 40 minutes of today's show and every show can be heard only on talk radio or on the Ramsey Network mobile app. It is completely free.

You can listen to the whole show, watch the whole show on the Ramsey Network app. You can download it on the App Store or Google Play. It's completely free. It's completely free. It's completely free. If you're listening on radio, it doesn't change a thing. You do what you've always done. But those of you that are watching on YouTube or listening on a podcast, the last 40 minutes of the show is now available only on the Ramsey Network app.

It's all free wherever you're doing it, so none of that changes. And you can jump over there pretty easy. A lot of people are just using the app now because they can send in emails to us. We try to answer those emails periodically. They can search the app online.

for certain subjects. And so, Dave, I got a call about an HOA that went up on my fees. All right. How many calls are we taking like that? A lot of them over the years. Search HOA. And so they'll be searching the HOA fees. There'll be some times that we've talked about that, a car lease or credit card debt or whatever. You can find anything we've talked about. You can searchable by subject in the Ramsey Network app.

uh and the remsenetwork app is blowing up as you might guess because you can get the last 40 minutes of today and every day only on the app did i mention that it's free so go over there and check it out it's very easy to do download the app onto your phone or whatever your listening device is uh you can do again the app store google play whatever you need to do and um

You'll be able to watch and or listen and or search and or email. Oh, and there's other stuff on there, like maybe some audio book players and stuff like that. Oh, that's right.

There's pretty cool stuff on the tab. Shows, audiobooks, it's all there. It's all Ramsey all the time. All Ramsey. And Dave, can I brag for a moment? Last week, we were talking about the app, and I was telling about the search function, and I said, don't search horse. And hundreds of people did it, and it was the number one search term in the app was horse. And so I take credit for that. I'm not number one in a lot of things in this life, but we had people are searching retirement, dead free scream, baby steps millionaire. But what won by a long shot was horse.

You're welcome. I have absolutely no thoughts on that. Okay. I'll save that offline. There's things I could say that I shouldn't say. All I'm saying is people are using the app and they're enjoying the search function. They're doing what George told them to do. Search horse. That's a win. I don't like to swing my power around here a lot. Like the time George told a woman to sell her horse. Okay. You know what? Yeah. There's that one. That's on there too. And it's free. I asked them to delete that. And it should be free. Okay.

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