Get Fed Up With Your Debt and Get RID of It!
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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. George Camel, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, breaking free from broke. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about you right in front of you. Josh is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, Josh, what's up? Hi. I hope you guys are well. Better than we deserve, brother. How can we help?

First, thanks for your time. My question is how should me and my wife go from two incomes to zero? What do you mean? That's so confusing. How do we go from both? Tell me what the flip's going on. I don't understand. So I lost my job yesterday. Oh, why? Well, it's a lot of details. Basically, I wasn't performing the job up to snuff. Okay. What were you making?

40 grand. What were you doing? I was a market research assistant. Okay. And how long had you been in the job? Six months. Okay. And she lost her job yesterday too? No. She was actually planning to leave. She gave her notice about two weeks ago and she's working through mid-August. Oh, so just really bad timing. Why was she leaving? I

Um, she's been just overwhelmed with the work, um, and she didn't like it. So she was trying to pursue something that made her happy and she was, but nothing was lined up, but she doesn't have a new job. She just quit. Uh, correct. Well, that decision came back to bite you. Okay. Yeah. Like you're supposed to have the boat pull up to the dock before you jump off the dock. Yeah. And you get wet otherwise. Yeah. Oh yeah. My boat was there and then it sank. Not yours. Hers. Hers.

Yeah, have the new job before you give notice. She was going to not work for a few months. Why? I made enough. Because I've made enough to cover all of our bills. $40,000? Yeah, you're rolling in it. You guys have kids? No. Do you have any debt? Only one student loan that's not due until November 2025. How old are you two? We're early 30s. I'm 33. She's 32. Okay.

Okay. All right. So the situation is that you have two career crises simultaneously. And the answer is that there is a short-term answer and a long-term answer. The short-term answer is both of you go get six part-time jobs today.

Today, I want you delivering pizzas, cutting grass, walking dogs, picking up dog poop, cleaning toilets. I don't care. I want you to working hard today, which is something neither one of you have been doing a lot of lately. Can I give you some more details about kind of what happened with my job? How does that affect what you've got to do from today forward? I have to determine if I can still work. Okay. All right.

My father passed away in April, and I have a bunch of mental health disabilities. And since he passed away, I've been going through trauma therapy, and I got diagnosed with PTSD today. And...

I'm kind of broken a little bit because I've been having panic attacks. And that's the reason I lost my job is because my mental health has deteriorated to so much. I couldn't understand what they wanted. And I was doing really, really well. And then my mental health just fell apart. Mourning of abusive parent is terrible.

another beast entirely. Yeah, it is. We work very, very hard. I'm sorry. It's okay. I didn't want to give too much info at the beginning. Well, I mean, it affects the advice, so you're wise to do that. So...

All right. There's a couple things here. Number one... Can I give you one piece of info as well? Please, please. That's okay. Apparently I need this. Our overhead is extremely, extremely low. We only spend about $500 on bills, and we live for free because we live in a family home that's paid for, so we don't have very many bills. So that's why we have the safety of three to six-month savings because...

We have over a year and a half savings just to live on, but we're not going to, but that that's the security blanket we had to that. She left her job and then my dad died and just, it all blew up. Okay. All right. Um, so the, the, the thing is you have to pursue a path of healing for longterm part of extreme trauma, uh,

I'm not a the therapist that would be Deloney. He's not here today. But part of dealing with trauma is he talks about it all the time. Facts are your friends.

And the thing that we do know from the financial side of the equation is that panic attacks are made worse when you have no income and you're broke and you have no sense of purpose. So the dignity that hard work gives you, even if it's mindless work,

uh, can actually help with dealing with depression, anxiety, uh, and panic attacks. That's what Deloney tells us. And that's also from a very practical standpoint, what we've seen because being afraid about money while you're afraid about and dealing with all the other trauma issues at the same time makes it worse. Does that make any sense? Yeah. And the great thing is I'm not worried about money in the least. Um, we, uh,

We, like I said, are built, our overhead's way more. I got that. I got that. But you should be. You're 30 years old, and you have no income coming in. That should worry you. I don't want you panicking over it, and I'm not trying to throw you into a tizzy here, but you should, you know, you're pretty chill about something you shouldn't be chill about. And, oh, by the way, so's your wife.

Okay, let me rewind just a second, okay? My husband is dealing with mental health issues. His dad passed away last April, several months ago. That has made his mental health issues and trauma and PTSD and panic attacks come to the forefront. He's really not functioning well at work. So what am I going to do? I'm going to quit my job because I don't like it. That's completely unwise.

And ridiculous. I take the blame. Yeah. Do what? I take the blame. Why would you take the blame? He said he asked her to quit her job. Yeah. Okay. And by the way, losing the job is more trauma. That's another trauma that you've got to add to this now. Both of you being gainfully employed, short-term and long-term, as soon as possible, is helpful to mental health issues. It's also wise. I'm going to sit at home and try to heal on my couch forever.

while doing nothing and my money runs out is not a good mental health plan. It's not a good financial plan. It's not a career plan. So you guys need to go back to work at some level, whatever level you can function, and she needs to yesterday.

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George Campbell Ramsey Personality is my co-host. Open phones at 888-825-5225. It's a free call, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Dave is in Orlando. Hi, Dave. How are you?

Dave, I'm wonderful. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Well, so first thing I want to say is thank you so much because my wife and I followed your steps and we were debt-free and have been debt-free for quite a while. The reason I'm calling is I live in the villages. I'm widowed, unfortunately. Two years ago, my wife passed away. I'm sorry. I have no children.

Um, so when I go, um, all, everything's basically going to get liquidated and given away as donations and things like that. My house is paid off. It's worth about four 10, four 20. And I want to get your opinion on in my situation. If you think I could get a reverse mortgage to go out and have some fun with that money. Um, you, you have any other money?

Yeah, I'm good, yes. Well, what's good? How much money do you have? Well, I've probably got about $1.2 million. In your mutual funds, in your retirement accounts? Mutual funds, retirement accounts. And how old are you? I'm 65. Okay. And so why would we not use $1.2 million for a fund? Well, I'm just saying I hate to see a lump sum of $410,000 just get liquidated and donated out there.

If there is an opportunity to go maybe grab a little bit of that cash and, you know, go on a long trip or something like that, you know, I just want to find out if not a reverse mortgage, do you have any other advice as to, you know, how I would be able to get my hands on some of those funds? Yeah. Just for enjoyment because it's just sitting out there. Well, you got 1.2 sitting there too.

Yep, I know. So you've got a lot of enjoyment ahead of you. Congratulations, by the way. You've done very well. Thank you. Okay, number one, let's just state up front, reverse mortgages are a very bad product. Okay. They have higher interest, higher fees, and a higher foreclosure rate than any other type of mortgage.

And, of course, there is an end to it. They'll only go to about 60, what, 60, 65 percent, George? Yes, I believe so. About two-thirds. The loan-to-value on it. And so you really can't get that much of this out. But I understand the basis for your question. Here's the problem with your question. You're 65 percent.

Over the next 20 years, if you live to be 85, which if you're healthy, actually there's a fairly good statistical case to be made that you would live that long. Do you have any major health problems?

Uh, you know, just a little bit of high blood pressure and, you know, as, as, as with all of us will overweight, but nothing other than that. Yeah. Okay. Nothing 20 pounds dropped wouldn't fix. Okay. Um, the, uh, I don't, I don't know a guy like that, but anyway, yeah, you and I are about the same age, but the, uh, anyway, so, uh, what would I do in your situation? Um, the problem is if you, uh,

put this property in danger by having debt on it of any kind, or you sell it to cash out of it, then you've got, you're very vulnerable in the largest, most expensive item on your budget, which is housing and housing goes up every year. If you haven't done something to lock in the cost by owning the $400,000 property, you've locked in all your costs. And so you've got a very stable, uh,

retirement situation. So no, I would not touch it because you're going to need a place to live for 20 years. And if you want to mortgage it, um, you know, the last two years that you're alive, if you happen to know what that is, if you want to mortgage it and go blow the money somewhere, that's fine. Uh, but I mean, you pretty much got to blow a million six between now and the time you die, if you don't want to leave anything.

Okay, yeah. What is your retirement income now? Where does it come from? I'm bringing home about six grand a month. From what? Social Security and some current investments that are paying off for me now. Some annuities and stuff like that. So you're not even touching the 1.2?

I'm touching it a little bit, but it was kind of built to start paying me after I turned 65. And I just recently turned 65, so over the next few months, things are going to start paying out. Okay. So you could set up a situation where you had a $200,000 a month, $200,000 a year income, pretty easy. Yeah. Yeah. And really, you would be deteriorating it maybe, but not a bunch. Okay. And with your other income that's coming in, too. And so...

And you can do anything you want to do with $200,000 probably. Yeah. And not really mess up everything here. Now, again, if I were in your situation, the last thing I would spend through would be the house. If you want to blow some money and have some fun, blow through the million too, obviously leaving yourself enough to eat.

Of course. In your ancient years. How much are we talking here? You said you want to go on a fun trip. Is this like $10,000, $20,000? He just doesn't want to leave this. He doesn't want to sit around and do nothing and leave all this money to nobody that he cares about. Correct. That's the bottom line. So if you could actually figure out a way to have spent through almost all of it by the day you die, you'd be happy. That'd be your mathematical goal. That is my goal, yes. Yeah.

Only we knew that date. That would make things a lot easier for us. I'd lay out a 20-year game plan using the rate of return on your investment portfolio and have a 20-year game plan. And so, okay, that dictates if I want this 1.2 at a current growth rate of 11% on the mutual funds or whatever, whatever growth rate you want to use, I need to spend X number of dollars or give away X number of dollars while I'm alive. Okay.

per year to end up with nothing to end up with nothing when i'm 85 but a paid for condo that makes sense yeah you could you could kind of back out a portfolio game plan that way it's just an aggressive spin where you've been the opposite for your whole life that's how you've got a 1.6 million dollar net worth and barely touched it it's amazing that's impressive i think you'll get joy out of

doing some things generously with the money and spending some of the money on just fun stuff um it way in excess of what you're used to it doesn't sound like he's been he's been spending a lot no that's my point yeah he's not broke so there's no need to add risk into his life at this juncture the the

The house should be the last thing you mess with, though, because that is your that's your point of sustainability. Your point that gives you a place to live in peace no matter how old you are. You know, and I guess I'm going to add one other thing, because, Dave, the other thing that Sharon and I are doing, you know, and our net worth is even more zeros. But you and you're at a place you can do this, too. You don't need to go to a nursing home.

If something happens, you can prearrange with whoever, friends or family are around you to help you hire full-time help. And you can stay in that condo, you know, the rest of your life. And, you know, literally into your last days. And so you can hire a medical butler. And have some higher quality of life at home. And just have somebody there to serve you. And you've got your own assisted living game plan and a huge quality of life. You've got the money to do that.

And so I want you to hold back enough to cover that too. Well, and think about over the next 30 years, property taxes will go up. His homeowner's insurance will probably go up. So there's some factors to think about. Yeah, that's not going to, he's not going to run out of money on that. But if you want to budget in the last five years of your life, an extra $100,000 a year for help, that would also be called fun.

You know, that would also be because I guarantee you that if something happens that I'm debilitated or Sharon is, we're not going to assist living. We don't need to. I mean, we've got a beautiful home, one level, elevator, whatever. We can do whatever we want to do, and I'll just fill it up with help. Get one of those Stairmasters? Don't need that. Got the elevator. But thanks, George. I just thought it was cooler. There's nothing cool about that at all, George. But anyway.

You see what I'm saying? You got choices. You self-insure and you just bring in. But people like us that have, like that Dave and this Dave, that have gutted it from the ground up, we don't think about bringing in help. We're not those kind of people. But you need to think about it. It's a good idea. Absolutely.

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That's what Xander is all about. Go to Xander.com to learn more or call 800-356-4282. They say that memory is activated by smell primarily. If you smell a certain smell, it'll take you back. The other thing that causes you to lock a memory in is deep emotion. If you're extremely angry or afraid, you have a clear lock on that memory.

I have a clear lock on that from 35 years ago. I remember exactly where I was in Witchkroger. I could take you there right now, and I could show you the aisle. Wow. Like five aisles across, I was the second one in. Because that was the moment when I reached the point that I said, this isn't working. I'm standing there paying for food, and as I'm writing the check, because in those days you wrote a check,

As I'm writing a check, I didn't know if there was money in the account, and I didn't know if there was money in the account if I was actually using money that should be used to pay the light bill. In other words, am I trading this bag of groceries for my electricity getting cut off? And that...

It wasn't a panic attack. Today you might call it that. I don't know. I just became overwhelmed with this feeling of how stupid I was and how this level of terror, this constant knot in my stomach about if I can't even cover basics of life because I'm buying another basic of life, food. And that's the last time I had that feeling. What happened after that? Did a budget.

That was it. I took away all the... Yeah, because if you have a budget laid out and it says you spend, I'll make up a number today, 800 bucks on groceries, 700 bucks on groceries, right? 1,000 bucks on groceries, whatever it is. I don't know. You just put it in there. You're going to spend that. You also have the number in there for electricity. So you know what you've got to spend on the grocery and

And there's not all this chaos and stress and fear associated with every single money transaction because it's simply a boring plan. Every dollar has an assignment before the month begins. And it gets rid of

That, I don't know, grocery store terror attack, whatever you call that. I don't know what you call that. Spill anxiety. I'm sure there's a technical, psychological term for it. It's probably got something to do with the price of eggs. But, you know, I distinctly remember being afraid. Which is unlike you, I might add. I'm not afraid very often. I'm not a fearful person in general. But everybody gets afraid sometimes. But I remember going...

I'm out of control and I've got little children and a wife and I suck at this, you know, and, and, and you have a finance degree at that point. I got a finance degree and I was making, you know, I had made and lost a million dollars by then, you know, and didn't matter. I can't even buy a bag of freaking groceries without being overcome with fear of

Because I don't know what else I'm screwing up while I'm buying food for my family. You know, that's so basic, right?

It's so that's so dumb and and so I went home got a yellow pad out Put the okay. This is what we've got coming in this month This is what we're going to spend every dollar had an assignment, you know, we we're a christian So we're going to tie that our church. That's the first thing we're going to do our generosity Then we're going to do this then we're going to do this we're buying food We're going to buy lights and we're not doing all this other crap and we're not going out to eat until we've covered these basic walls and we started living that way and

And we've not had a single month of our lives that we don't have a plan for every dollar of our, because it just gives me such peace. And that chaos is gone. That's why we named our app EveryDollar that we built. Come a long way since the yellow pad. Yeah, and there's like tens of millions of people using it. And I guess you're, you know, and I hope most of you are having the same result where you don't have this

Overwhelming fear that no plan and chaos gives you. Plan and no chaos, no disorganization, only organized planning, and all of a sudden peace comes. It sounds so nerdy.

But it really happens that way, folks. And you feel like you got a race. Oh, absolutely. Because you realize, oh, I thought we were spending. Where the flip has this money been going? We're not spending $200. We spent $500. We got to do something about this. Where is this money going? So it helps you choose reality to go. Here's how much we actually made. Here's how much we need to spend in order to hit our goals. And I remember sitting in a small group. I stopped by. It was over in Knoxville, Tennessee. And I was actually in suburban Knoxville, up towards the mountains.

And I stopped in this church that was doing a financial piece. They said, hey, if you're coming, if you're around, come by. So I stopped in there doing a financial piece class. And I went and sat. I was sitting in a small group. There was about 15, 20 people sitting around. And I'm just sitting there listening to them. And they're some pretty funny stuff. I mean, but this one old guy sitting there in overalls, and he's like, yeah, I done figured out why we got no retirement. We've been eating it. We got to eat every freaking night. It's $1,200 last month. He goes, that budget's revealing.

That's amazing. It was a genius. He's like, I know why we got no retirement. We've been eating it. That's a typical American right there. Nothing's changed. Plus or minus the overalls and the accent, but oh, come on. I prefer the accent, though. It makes it better. Well, it's a true story. I mean, it's exactly how it happened. Were they weirded out that you were sitting in the class? Yeah. That's weird. Like Elvis showed up to your jam session or something, but yeah.

But anyway, the guy was just, he's like, this thing's revealing. It is kind of a light bulb moment. When you sit down and you do a budget on your EveryDollar app, and you and your spouse are in agreement-

For the first time ever, maybe, you've had a sane discussion about money that didn't involve drama, hyperbole, and a knock-down, drag-out freaking argument, right? So we actually are in agreement and alignment on our money instead of like, well, whatever you want to do, honey, with your eye roll, right? And that kind of crap, right? That sounded personal. I feel like you've done that. Well, that definitely has happened. I can promise you. You've been on the business end of that line. I've been on the other side of that one.

It's like a financial epiphany. Whatever you want to do, honey, means I think you're stupid and you're about to wreck the car. Stop driving it that way. That's what that means. If those of you that don't know, if you don't speak passive aggressive, that's what it means. So, but that, the budget gets rid of every bit of this. Because it's like, you don't get to say I messed up the money because we did it together. If it's messed up, baby, you was in it too. You know what I mean? That's the thing. So we decided this crap together.

And that's why this EveryDollar app is so freaking successful. So you guys go download this thing as fast as you can. You get it at the App Store for free and Google Play and all that. And you can go to EveryDollar.com if you want and do it on your desktop. I don't care. And if you want the upgrade version, it's a couple of bucks. It's not much. And you can connect to your bank. And it's got all the paycheck planning features and the baby step features in it and all that stuff. But tens of millions of people are doing this now.

It is the world's best budgeting app, and it was born because this redneck hillbilly standing in line at Kroger 35 years ago going, you're an idiot talking to myself. I'm not living like this anymore. I don't want to be this scared anymore. I don't want to be this incompetent anymore. I don't want this taste on the back of my tongue that tastes like regret.

I don't want that anymore. And that's how this app was born. It's not like, well, we decided we're going to do a budgeting app. No, this is like bull crap. This stuff stops. We need to do this. This stops now.

And if you're there, we got the tool, baby. This will do it for you. It is a financial epiphany. If you want to start reading from the same sheet music instead of having just musical chaos in the house, wondering what the flip's going on, this is it. It's that shared thing we both look at for accountability and go, we both agreed to this, and if we stick to it, we're going to have this thing called money. And I promise you, if you're married, your spouse is not like you. If two people just alike get married, one of you is unnecessary. Right.

Y'all are different. One person hates your spreadsheet. I guarantee it. One of you is a nerd. One of you is a free spirit. One of you is a saver. One of you is a spender. One of you is screwing with the thermostat all the time. And the other one is like, don't you understand how thermostats work? Don't touch it. Leave your hands off the thermostat. If you turn it way down, it cools off faster. No, it doesn't. That's not how it works.

This is how marriage works, boys and girls. If opposites attract, you need to get on the same plan together. Everydollar.com. This is The Ramsey Show.

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Maya is with us in Atlanta, Georgia. Hey, Maya, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Hi, George. Thank you so much for having me. Sure. What's up? So I wanted to first say that I am 27, and I'm currently in my master's program, and I'm making $35,000 a year. At the end of my master's program, I'll make between $70,000 to $85,000. Cool. What's your master's in? Brands.

It is an applied behavior analysis. So helping people change their behaviors for autism work right now. Excellent. Good career field. Good for you.

Thank you. Thank you. Um, so I wanted to, uh, bring up a question. Um, so I am in a, uh, awesome relationship and, um, with this individual, um, he is a soldier and we've been dating for a year and a half. Now we've gotten to, um, see each other, how we work financially, meet each other's families. And we've now started to have the conversation about, um,

what it would look like to come together. Right. Um, he's been married before. Um, he is open to be being married again. And, uh,

My hesitation is because we're both believers and because I know that I have $46,000 in debt. It was not my plan to come into a marriage with this amount of debt, right? So I'm starting the baby steps now. So when we do get married, it's not a baggage that I'm bringing into the marriage. So my question is, as...

as a, as a woman who has a boyfriend, right. Um, how do I present this conversation to him? Uh, Hey, let's, let's a right. Let's do it. Right. Um, and, um, get married, uh,

after he comes back from deployment and he has a daughter and I've met his daughter first, or we think of another option because I don't want to shack, right? I don't want to play house at all. Is that what he's wanting? Yes. He said that it would be for the progression of our relationship. That's not a thing. Yeah. Okay. She knows that.

What's his rush to do this before getting married? I think it's because he's seen me in a hard place for the past year financially. And I was living with my mom, and so by him seeing me in a hard place... When does he come off deployment? So he comes from deployment September of 25. Where is he? He's not currently...

He's not currently deployed, but he is away. But he will deploy in January. He goes to Europe. Okay. So if you were married, you would go with him to Europe? No. It's a combat zone, so I wouldn't be able to go. Okay. How long will he be deployed in January?

Nine months, so from January to September. Okay, so if you were married, you would be at home with your husband deployed for nine months? Correct. Okay. And where he lives, my current job, I could just transfer there because there's another office. Yeah, okay. Well, I would not...

delay marriage on your 46,000. If both of you were of the same mind that we get rid of them dead as fast as we can, I'd get married regardless of when the debt, where the debt is. I would not use that. Um, I agree with you. I would not move in together. And so then based on that, we just got to figure out when we're going to get married. And it sounds like sooner rather than later. A good friend of mine's daughter got married a couple of years ago to a green beret. And, uh, four weeks after they were married, he was gone for seven months.

And can't even talk about where he was. Mm-hmm. Totally top secret missions, right? And so, because the Green Berets, SEAL teams, and those kinds of folks go places, and most people don't know they're there. So, matter of fact, that's the whole goal is nobody knows they were there. They're in and out, and mysterious things happened, and then they come home. And so, you know, that kind of stuff. So that's...

That's what you're marrying, and you're going to have some of that. So she got married literally, and I think they had a month together, and then he was gone for seven or eight months. And that was about four or five years ago, and they've got three kids now. And he still goes out on missions. And young, very young couple. But anyway.

That's what you're signing up for, it sounds like. And so I'm saying they didn't wait until his deployment was over. They got married. And then he went on deployment. You know, he took off and did a mission. And he was gone seven, eight, nine months, whatever it was. And so it was kind of like your guy. So all of that to say, if I'm in your all shoes and you're both ready to get married, get married. Okay.

now okay you know and it solves all your problems but the progression of our relationship is absolute bullcrap yes sir yeah i don't think your debt needs to have anything to do with this exactly you pay it off as you can pay it off if it's paid off before you're married that's great if not it's our debt together i don't want you to feel like this is some shame and baggage you're bringing into this because guess what he gets maya that's way better than some student loan debt that we're going to knock out real quick

Correct. Correct. One last question. I'm not a very forward woman, right? So I don't want to be the one to say, hey, I know we've had this conversation. We've talked about this. Let's go get married. That's not me. Well, what you can say is you said you wanted me to move in, and, you know, I've been praying about this and thinking about it. And as a Christian, I think the Bible tells us not to do that, and so I'm not going to do it. So when you're ready to get married, we'll move in together. When do you want to do that?

Okay. But, I mean, you're answering his question. You're not asking him to get married. You're just saying, you know, I'm okay with the progression of our relationship being an engagement, a short engagement, and a marriage. Followed by moving in. You know, and...

And after that, we will live together. And that's how I'm willing to do it. That's what you told us your values are. You said, I'm a believer, I'm a person of faith, meaning you want to follow what the book says, and you think that God has a plan for your life, and it's not shacking up. It's what you said. Just tell him that. That's not forward. It's answering his question. You're not forward. You're just responding. And he's a soldier. He can handle direct feedback. Trust me. It sounds like he's...

Sounds like some of the stuff he's doing right now. He's in a situation where he gets direct feedback a lot. I don't need it at home too. I suspect that. Yeah. Yeah. And just go, you know, uh, if you want to talk about how we go forward in our relationship in that context, we can do that. But I need to give you the answer to your question. And that is, I'm not going to live in the same house with you, sleep in the same bed with you until we're married because it's against my values. And that's an okay answer. It's not, it's not prudish. It's just, it's who you are.

And you're allowed to be you, by the way. And here's the alternative that we have seen time and time again. Well, Dave, we've been together for nine years and we live together and I just don't know if he's ever going to put, that's what happens. Well, and you know, I'm still confused about who owns the mustard. Exactly. We still split the grocery bill like we're roommates.

gosh you know it's just nuts i can count on zero fingers how many times i've venmoed my wife it's just not a way it's not how god intended not what venmo is to be used for just weird count on zero fingers how many times i have venmoed there we go he's not there

Sharon prefers checks. Period. She's old school. Period. I'm just saying. At all. At any time to anyone ever. So I don't even have the app. I don't even know how it works. I would love for someone to Venmo request you for like dinner. We split that, Dave. I need $5.48. It's happened. I just said, you know, here's $10. You know, give it up. And so now you owe me. So there we go.

You've got the Costanza. I don't like being in debt. Dave has the George Costanza wallet, but instead of cards, it's just filled with cash. It's amazing. Not true. That's funny, but it's not true. This is The Ramsey Show.

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George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. His book, number one bestseller, is Breaking Free from Broke. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. It's 888-825-5225. Nyree is with us in Atlanta. Hi, Nyree, how are you? Hi, I'm doing good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Yes, sir. So I am 36 years old. I'm a single mom of four. I make about $55,000 annually, and I have about $28,000 in debt, credit card debt, personal loans, a title loan, and I'm kind of in the rear on my mortgage. I recently filed bankruptcy in May, but I realized after watching your show and I have your book, The Total Money Makeover, I

I decided to dismiss the bankruptcy case because after I added up my debt and then I looked at the fees that the lawyer was going to charge me over five years, I was like, no. So I'm extremely excited, but I'm nervous at the same time. And I just wanted you guys to tell me, am I making the right decision? Okay. Did you actually file bankruptcy? No.

So May 2nd, the attorney filed the bankruptcy, and then like recently, I'd say about two weeks ago, I told him to file a motion to dismiss. Okay. So you did. You filed bankruptcy. You filed a Chapter 13. A Chapter 13. And then voluntarily dismissed your 13th. Okay. So you're still behind on your mortgage. Yes, I'm still behind. Okay. All right.

Okay. Well, here's our rules. No one gets paid anything out of your income until you have food from the grocery store purchased for your family. Your lights and your water are paid. The gas for your car to get to work is paid. And we catch up your mortgage. Okay.

Don't pay any credit card bills. You got a title pawn on your car? Yes, sir. Oh, jeez. And that's about $8,000. Yeah, and you have a monthly on it, right? Yes, and that's about $304. Yeah, you better pay that one because they'll pick that car up in about 30 seconds. Yeah, they're not going to screw around. And you got a personal loan as well?

I have personal loans. Yeah, no, they don't get a dime and credit cards don't get a dime. But you pay your car payment, you pay your lights, water, and we get your mortgage current before we do anything. Okay, so the credit cards are in collection. Good, just let them sit there. Okay. And we need to get on a written budget. And how old are your babies? Okay, so I have a 5-year-old, 8-year-old, 12-year-old, and 15-year-old. Okay.

All right. You got family in the area? Barely. I have one good sister friend that helps me out when she can, but that's about it. Okay. So I'm searching for a way with a house full of kiddos for you to get some extra income because the more income we have, the faster we turn this mess around. Agreed? Agree. What are you doing full-time for work?

So I get compensation from the military. That's my main income. I just got hired at Chick-fil-A. So I will be starting working with Chick-fil-A in three weeks. And I do DoorDash sometimes. So that's like, you know, some things that I'm trying to do. So you've not been working a job. So I have not been like working, working in the past year. Okay.

It's just been military compensation? Yes. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your support. I think the kiddos are going to have a single mom that now has a full-time job. Yep. And unless you're managing a Chick-fil-A or in a management program, if you're just going over there to fry chicken, no thank you.

You need a real job. You need a real career on top of your military disability, enough to be able to afford daycare or after-school care or whatever it is so that you can go make another 55. I want your income. I want you to get a full-time job and get back to work. You don't have a choice. You're a single mom that's broken and behind on her house. So sitting at home collecting the military is not cutting it for you. It's not working for you.

So we have to change the recipe if we want a different kind of cake here. Right. And so, yeah, you need a full-time job to go with your military disability and, uh, it needs to be a substantial good career for you that you look back 20 years later and you've made a lot of money and you've helped a lot of people and you've done a lot of good work. And I want you plugged into something like that. I'm not mad at Chick-fil-A. I, we, we've been friends with those folks for a very long time. Uh,

at the company level, on a personal level, and I eat their chicken sandwiches all the time. So I'm not mad at all about Chick-fil-A, but I think you need more than that. Yeah, we need an actual sustainable career that she can sink her teeth into and get out of this debt fast. Because if she can even create $30,000 extra in income, well, we can knock this debt out in under a year. Yeah. Now, Ray, I'm going to send you a book by Ken Coleman called Find the Work You're Wired to Do, and it has the get clear assessment in it.

It'll give you a code and you'll jump online. I'm going to give it to you free. And I want you to jump online and take that and pretend like that you were 18 years old or 19 or 20 years old and you didn't have any kids. And you said, okay, what am I going to do with my life? What's my career going to be? What's my future look like? Because you've been reacting to life rather than happening to life.

and it's gotten you into a mess. And so I want you to get on the other side of this and start dreaming again about what a prosperous, wealthy Nairi would look like and how she would get there. And that involves a...

It may be some steps to get to a different career, a big time. Maybe you've always wanted to be an X, whatever X is, and you maybe need to go take a class or two or get a certification to be one of those. I don't know what that thing is, but I want you to have some experience

for you. You've lived your life for others so far, and it's not even serving them well. So I want you to create some vision for what you want your life to be like. Some big-time goals of where I'm going to be in 20 years. So hang on. Christian will pick up, and we'll get you that. And good stuff. Good question. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Just to clarify for everybody listening, a Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a payment plan that takes 60 months to go through. You pay 100% of your student loans, 100% of any secured debt, like a car loan or title loan as an example, your mortgage loan.

Everything gets paid 100% except unsecured debt, which can be paid a percentage of. So the credit cards, personal loans could be 70% of what's owed, 40% of what's owed, depending on how the formula worked out over five years. Usually folks can do a better plan themselves and get out of debt a lot faster by increasing their income.

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at timothyplan.com. Read carefully before investing. Mutual funds distributed by Timothy Partners, LTD, and ETFs distributed by Foresight Fund Services, LSE. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host. Kyle is in Boston. Hey, Kyle, how are you? Hi, Dave. I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I just paid off a little under $50,000 in consumer debt. Good for you. Since March. Way to go. Consumer debt and an auto loan. How'd you do that since March?

Using the EveryDollar app. Do you have a pile of money in your bank or something when you started? No, I'm in my second year of owning an event rental business, and it's been pretty good. Okay, so you're just making a lot of money, and you just dumped it all on debt. Good for you. Way to go.

Yeah. So I have $68,000 in student loans and then $179,000 in mortgage. So I'm kind of looking for your advice on the next steps in paying this off. I do okay financially. What's your income? I'm

Teaching is about $65,000 and then the event rental business is a little bit over $100,000. Wow. So about $165,000. Are you doing the event rental stuff part-time? It goes from March to November and then the school year. I mean, it overlaps with the school year a little bit. Okay. Amazing. So you're making $165,000 if this keeps up? Yes. Okay. So the student loans would be next and your debt snowball. Are those broken down into several different student loans?

Yes, they are. However, I kind of had a question on the order of paying these debts off because... So, I mean, I have no kids now, but I could see myself settling down and having kids in the next few years. I'm really trying to hammer away at all of this before I have kids and get married. And...

When I think about what's more important to me as far as priority and having peace of mind when I have kids, I keep going back to the mortgage before my student loans, which I know is opposite of what you typically teach. And then being a teacher, I'm also in a master's program right now and will be for the next year and a half or so. So I'm able to defer them for a bit. So I just didn't know your take on that.

I still don't think kicking the can down the road is going to be a blessing to you. And is there a person in your life right now? Are you dating somebody?

Or is this just future thinking one day I want to, okay. I wouldn't worry too much about all of that and what the mortgage is going to be one day. I would focus on knocking out all of your consumer debt right now. And the mortgage will get paid when it gets paid. And it's also going to appreciate as long as you have that home, it's going to go up in value. And the student loans, I would not kick down the road. Do you have the money to pay down these debts in the next year? You make $165,000. You paid off $50,000 since March. You'll be done by what, October? Yeah.

So you were throwing $10,000 a month. Yeah, I mean, almost everything I made was being dumped into it. Yeah, it was both well and bad. I know, but I mean, you just keep doing that. You'll be done by October with your student loan.

Well, it does slow down a bit. My business slows down a bit. In November? I'm living. Yeah, in November. That's what you said. I said you're going to be done by October. You paid $50,000 since March. Pay another $50,000 and be done with this thing. And you'll free up all the payments from those student loans. And then pay off your mortgage. And, you know, next year, next two years, you pay off your mortgage. Dude, you're killing it. You're a stud. Do you have money in savings, Kyle?

About $15,000. Okay. Is that partially for the event rental business, or is this just sort of your personal savings? That's for the event rental business. Okay. Well, I think you can knock out these student loans, free up the payments, get a fully funded emergency fund, and start investing, and then begin paying off the mortgage. Here's the thing. At the end of the story, three and a half years from now, you have zero debt either way.

If you pay off the mortgage first and then pay off the student loan, you pay off the student loan first, which is the correct thing to do, and then pay off the mortgage. Three and a half years from now, you're done. I guess I'm just kind of planning for worst-case scenario, like let's say just everything. Yeah, but you know what? Why did you pay off the other debts then? Well, the monthly payments were just so ridiculous. Somebody convinced you that you needed to get out of debt, and then you called them and asked them, should I really get out of debt?

Yeah. Do it, man. Knock out the student loan as fast as you possibly can. Don't wait until everything's paid off. Quit screwing around with your math theories and knock this stuff out. Knock it in the head. It's worked for you. Don't quit doing what is working. It's working.

Finish. Finish the race. And it's very successfully working. It's very fast. And let me tell you this, Kyle. Do not wait until your mortgage paid off to start a relationship or get married or have kids. I'm from Boston. Half my family's like this. They're working on their third master's degree, and they're going, well, one day when I'm settled, I'll... No, one day it's not going to happen.

Just, if you want to be in a relationship, start a relationship. If you want to get married, get married. The debt will solve itself as you begin your life. You're doing great. Just finish. Just finish the plan. You see, you're...

You're doing it. Don't stop. Knock the student loan out. Do it by October. When you get off the phone, sit down and lay it out. Lay it out on your little spreadsheet because you're a spreadsheet guy, I can tell. $56,000, you've already done $50,000 since March. I can do it in my head. You're done in October. Just do it again. All you did was you were gazelle-intense.

Don't let your foot up off the gas. List those student loans out, smallest to largest. Work your debt snowball. Attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack. Drop a freaking atom bomb on that thing and be done with it. Quit screwing around with, well, I don't know if I'm going to pay. No, get rid of it. This is what you got to do. Done, done, done. I hope that was clear. Nick is in Minneapolis. Hey, Nick, how are you? Hi, guys. How's it going? Better than we deserve. What's up?

So in March, I started a landscaping company. Since then, I have netted $250,000 and some change. Wow. And I have not paid myself whatsoever out of it. And I'm just kind of curious, how should I go about that? If I should put myself on payroll or if I should do like an owner distribution? You have $250,000 sitting in a checking account for a lawn mowing business.

So I'm not doing lawn mowing. It's building patios. Okay. In your patio business, you have a checking account and it has $250,000 sitting in it. It's got just about $375,000 because that's what I grossed. Have you got bills to pay out of that? Not out of that, no. All my equipment I own outright. All your cost of materials and everything for those jobs has been paid?

Correct. Okay. Now, okay, and you have a separate account for your business, correct? Correct. Good. Good for you. Wow! That's amazing. You're freaking amazing. Is it just you or do you have a big team? Listen, just write this down. Send it to Dave's Bahamas Fund. There we go. I'm just kidding. P.O. Box. Wow. Oh, my gosh. Very cool, man. I'm so proud of you. All right, stud, here's what we do.

When you move money out of your business that's an LLC and you take the money home, you need to withhold 25% on yourself because that's going to be your taxes. So if you take $100,000 out and move it home, move $25,000 into another little savings account over here to the side that you never touch because you need to be filing quarterly estimates on a small business or you're going to get penalized.

You're supposed to be filing quarterly estimates on your profits. If you don't do it in the first year, you don't get penalized. But in year two, three, and so on after that, you'll get penalized. So go ahead and get with an accounting person. Get with a tax person and get your quarterly estimates set up. They're not hard. It's a one-page form.

It's, you know, what I took in minus my expenses is my profits times my tax rate. And you've withheld on yourself and you got that twenty five thousand out of that hundred sitting over here in the account. And you'll have the money to pay your quarterly estimates. Otherwise, you're going to get behind with the KGB and you don't want those people calling. I mean, the IRS, you don't want them calling on you.

Okay? Okay. So then how much can you take home? I mean, you could take home anything that doesn't leave the business unthreatened. If you're paying all of your expenses, whatever's left is profit, you can take it all home and use it on your baby steps, and I would. Way to go, stud. That's impressive. Man, that's some patio building right there. Yeah. Meanwhile...

Over in wherever I'm unemployed. With a four-year degree that I can't use with student loan debt. This guy makes $375,000, $250,000, whatever it is, and building patios. Love it. He's got to be good at it. This is The Ramsey Show.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey good folks, it's Deloney, and with back-to-school madness on deck, my family's schedule is already so packed. And we haven't even made room for things like exercise and date nights and counseling and all the other things that make our life even worth living. When it comes to taking care of me, I have to remember to put on my oxygen mask first, meaning I have to do the things that help me stay well and whole. And you have to do the same thing too.

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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Today's question comes from Leslie in Nebraska. Here's what Leslie has to say. I recently found out that my husband wants a divorce. He

He says he's felt that way for about a year, but I suspect it's been much longer. I've been a stay-at-home mom for 26 years, and I'm afraid he's going to leave me and our kids who still live at home with nothing. What do I need to do to put myself in the best possible position when he finally pulls the plug? How do I protect myself and our children? I haven't been able to trust him in our marriage, and I know I won't be able to in the divorce proceedings either. I'm willing to do the work, but I just need to be pointed in the right direction so I don't waste time and money

getting myself together. Leslie, I'm so sorry. That is awful and especially scary for stay-at-home moms who are very vulnerable in these situations because they haven't had the income for this long. So I, you know, step one is kind of get a lay of the land and as much as you can about what's actually going on in the finances. He's probably been like, honey, I got this. Don't worry about it. And left her out of it on purpose.

No, it's very possible. You're not vulnerable at all, Leslie. In Nebraska, you're due half of all the assets and a whole bunch of his income for alimony because you've been in a long-term marriage and a whole bunch of his income for child support. So he's the one that's vulnerable. He's just so dumb he doesn't know it yet. So, yeah, what you need to do is go get an attorney today.

You talk to a divorce attorney today, and they will tell you what the laws in Nebraska will demand that he does. He doesn't have the choice of leaving you with nothing.

The law doesn't allow it. And so you need an attorney to tell you how life works and how the law works because apparently neither one of you, you or him, know that. And that'll give you some peace because you'll know, hey, I got, you know, we're going to sell the house and there's, you know, $500,000 worth of equity and I'm going to get $250,000 out of that. And, oh, he's got $150,000 in his 401k. I get $75,000 of that. Oh, he's got this. We've got that. I get half of that.

So you're okay on the short term. Now, long term, sounds like you need a new career. And so what are we going to be when we grow up? What's the next chapter of our life? What's the new version of Leslie goes to Nebraska look like? Yeah, I mean, all the kids sound like they're grown and gone if she's been a stay-at-home mom for 26 years. Leave me and our kids who still live at home.

All of them? I don't know. There's a question. I don't know. I don't know. They should be approaching age to leave or maybe they're 22 and need to leave. I don't know. But yeah, you need to go get a job and you need to start having a career and what are you going to do with your life? What does retirement look like? If you were 20 when you got married, you're 46. If you were 25, you're 51. And so you've got

A lot of life left ahead of you. There's an encore here. There's a chapter two, a second act, whatever we want to call it. And you're going to have a great life. And you're going to realize when you're super happy and prosperous four years from today how miserable it was living with this sap.

So, um, good riddance is what it sounds like. I'm sorry you're going through this, but that's the way, that's the way the story is going to end. If you will embrace two things, one is get some legal counsel and two is start developing you a career path as soon as you possibly can. And so, you know, what, what am I, what's the next thing for Leslie? Um, this, this, this chapter is coming to a sad ending, but it is ending. And what do we go, what do we do from here? What's our next thing? Ouch.

No fun at all. No. Doug is in San Jose. Hey, Doug, what's up? How are you, sir? Better than I deserve. How are you? About the same, I guess. Probably better than I deserve, but I'm working on it. Cool. How can we help? I'm calling. I own a small construction company. Married. My wife's a nurse. We own two homes in San Jose, and we're broke.

Why are you broke if you're a nurse and you've got a construction company? Because I don't know how to manage money. Oh, okay. How much debt do you got? So I have an SBA loan for the company, $130. I got a HELOC on one of the houses for $150. One of the houses I owe $700 on, and one I owe $600 on. Okay. What about the one you live in?

The one that I live in, I owe $600 on. Okay. So you owe $700 plus $150, he likes $850. What's the other one worth? The one that I live in? No, the other one. The other one is worth about $2 million, between $1, $8, and $2, $2. Okay. And so if you sold it, you could be debt-free? Yes. So why are you hanging on to the investment property? Okay.

Uh, because for my kids, I imagine, uh, I mean, that's cause I, I don't have a 401k and I kind of figured that was, uh, would be my, my money that I can, you know, give to the kids. Okay. Um, well, and then you call me and you're broke, so this is not working. Yeah. So I'm looking for a plan. Basically you borrowed a HELOC and SBA loan and kept a home mortgage in order to buy an investment property.

That's in essence what has happened, or in order to keep an investment property, to keep from selling it. See, if you had sold it, you wouldn't have the HELOC, and you wouldn't have the SBA loan, and you wouldn't have the mortgage. And so now you can still sell it and not have all of those things. That's a good start. That's probably where I'm starting. Is that the only debt you've got? I believe. Actually, I probably have $20,000 in credit cards. Okay.

And then we need to sit down and start living on a plan, a budget so that you and your wife sitting together with the every dollar app, you go through financial peace university. I'll give you both as my gift. If you'll do it. Okay. Go through the class, sit down, start writing out a plan. So what do you, what do you build with your, uh, your construction business? What kind of buildings do you do?

It's actually, we work, it's a waterproofing company and we work on commercial buildings mostly and apartment buildings, decks and underground parking garages and podiums and planners. Okay, so you have to, I presume you have to present a detailed plan and a bid to your customers, don't you? Absolutely. And then you have to execute that detailed plan and bid, right?

in order to make a profit and in order to deliver the service as promised. Is that right? Yes. Yes. All we need to do is apply that exact same skill set to your monthly budget.

We're going to lay out a plan for where our money is going to go in detail, and we're going to execute the plan. And the two of you, you and your wife, need to agree to that plan before the month begins, just like you and the customer agree to the budget and the schedule of the job when you get the new job, when you're bidding a job.

And so building a building, you know, doing construction work in detail. Now, some people do it out of their hip pocket, right? But you're doing it professionally. And if you'll apply that exact same mentality to your monthly budget, tell your money what to do before the month begins and then go do it. You and your wife, then you don't accidentally end up with credit card debt or accidentally go, oh, God, we got to clean up this mess with a HELOC because the HELOC was to cover a mess, wasn't it?

Actually, it was to build. I pulled it to build on the house. But yeah, I should have not borrowed the money. Yeah, yeah. So if you're doing that, then you're not doing any more damage, and you've got peace, and you've got this great income with no payments in the world to prosper by selling the rental. I would sell the rental and get myself on a plan. I can breathe just thinking about selling this thing and

Being completely debt-free with money left over for an emergency fund and then restarting with this fabulous income in California. Now, if you do that and you don't change your habits, you're going to be right back in a mess again. So it's a two-part answer. You've got to change your habits, get on a plan, start executing like you were doing a job with your spouse in agreement. Hang on. Christian will pick up. We'll get you signed up for everything for free.

And if y'all will go do it, we'll help you do it. And then you'll be safe to sell the rental. If you sell the rental and keep doing the stupid stuff, you're going to be right back in the hole with no rental to sell. Don't do that. Hey guys, are you ready for the secret to help you reach those money goals that you've been dreaming about? It's simple. You got to get on a budget with our budgeting app. Every dollar you'll get intentional with your money and build the habits that will make those dreams a reality. And we'll be with you every step of the way from your first budget to

to that retirement home on the beach. Download EveryDollar for free on the App Store or Google Play. Remember, today, download EveryDollar for free on the App Store or Google Play today. If you live like no one else, later, you can live and give like no one else.

You pay a price to win. If you've done that and you've gone through baby step three, meaning you're out of debt except your home and you have your emergency fund in place, then you're in baby steps four, five, and six simultaneously, saving for retirement, kids, college, paying off the house. And at that point is when we say, okay, go out to eat again,

buy the couch, go on vacation again, that kind of stuff. But when you're in Baby Steps 1 through 3, you don't do that. So that's why we named our cruise that we're doing in March the Live Like No One Else Cruise because it's for Baby Step 4 and beyond, obviously. If you want to come and celebrate your debt freedom or celebrate your reaching the Baby Steps Millionaire's Pinnacle or whatever it is you're doing, we want to celebrate with you on the Live Like No One Else Cruise. 100% of this...

First class, high class Holland America ship will be Ramsey people. It's going to be Sharon and I and all the Ramsey personalities. Manit Chauhan from the Food Channel is our friend, and she's just incredible. She's going to do some cooking demonstrations. Stephen Curtis Chapman, multi-dove winner, multi-

What am I trying to say? What's the other award? Yeah, Dev Awards, Grammy Awards. Grammys. I couldn't remember. I was trying to give him an Academy Award. He didn't get that. There's too many. The reason I got distracted is Stephen was at my house last night, and guess what? Last week he was inducted into the, he's the first Christian artist to ever be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. No way. That's incredible. He played the Grand Ole Opry when he was 19 years old when he was doing shows at Opryland. It's a great story.

And messed the words up because he was so nervous on a George Strait song. Oh, wow. Or a George Jones song. And so he tells that story all the time because he's humble, he's funny. And so Ricky Skaggs, friend of his, friend of mine, was there to do the induction. And they surprised him. He didn't know it was going to happen. And he told the whole story last night. It was just fascinating. That's special. Add another one to his resume. Grand Ole Opry.

inductee, Stephen Curtis Chapman will be one of our guests on the cruise. We love having him. Dina Carter, a

country artists, obviously, will be there. Strawberry wine. Yeah, strawberry wine. There we go. We got magicians. We got comedians, songwriters. A lot of people are going to be with us. One of our favorite pastors is going with us. We're going to have, it's going to be all Ramsey all week. We're going to have, I mean, there's no shows on the thing. It's all of us speaking and teaching and doing different things and all these different other performers and things will be doing their thing. It's going to be a blast.

Can't wait. The Live Like No One Else cruise. Oh, by the way, we're also going to Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas.

It's pretty incredible. So it's almost sold out. It's March 22 through 29, but you can still get a cabin if you go ahead and get it right now. Don't screw around with this because you're about to miss it. Yeah, I'm looking at the site now. The suites are all sold out. One of the staterooms is sold out. There's two staterooms left you could even book. Two types. Jump on it. Two types. Not just two. Two total. There's more than two rooms, but not many. I mean, there's a handful. So you need to get this done.

and you can put up a $600 deposit before the cabins are gone. And then if somebody drops out, if you wanted to upgrade, you could upgrade. You can do all kinds of stuff, but you've got to get your foot in the door here, and you've got to get this locked down before it gets away. RamseySolutions.com slash cruise.

Again, it's on one of the top Holland America ships. It's almost new. It's a fabulous, fabulous product, and we're excited. It's going to be the first time we've ever actually done one of these, and it's going to be big. It's going to be ready. It's going to be amazing. All right, Tyler is in Cincinnati. Hey, Tyler. Hey, Dave and George. How are you all doing today? Better than we deserve. What's up?

Hey, long-time listener, second-time caller here. I'm going to ask my question first and then provide some family and financial contact after that. The question is, I've been maxing out my 401k since I began gainful employment about 10 years ago. I now have the opportunity to contribute to a 401k Roth. I'm just not sure what percentage to contribute to that. 100%?

A hundred percent, even though the 401k has a significant balance to it. No, I'm not moving the significant balance. I'm talking about contributing. What you put in from this day forward should be Roth. A hundred percent. And any guidance or recommendation on the risk of the funds?

aggressive, moderate. Well, you'd stay if you were in the same, you know, we talk about four types of funds. If you're diversified across those four types, you'll still invest in those same funds. You just get the Roth treatment, which means it's after-tax dollars that grow tax-free. So it doesn't change the way you're investing. I'm sorry. We recommend four types of funds, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international, putting a fourth into each. Did you know that already?

I did, yes. Okay, so it doesn't change whether it's Roth or whether it's traditional. You do the same exact mix of funds. So you just leave the traditional alone, it'll continue to grow, and you begin investing any new income into the Roth portion. How much is in the funds in the traditional today? $300. And what's your household income? Household $270. And are you out of debt, house and everything? No.

The only debt is the mortgage. How much is it? My wife and I, the mortgage, $400. Okay. When you get that knocked out, I'm going to begin to move some of the traditional...

with out-of-pocket cash. So like, let's say the house was paid off. You're still making 300. You're, you know, by then you probably are right. You're still loading everything up as much as you can load it up. I'm going to move a hundred a year out of that 400 or, and, uh, when you move a hundred, it's going to cost you about 25 out of pocket.

give or take, or maybe 30. And so just take that 30 out of your pocket, move the whole hundred over into the Roth. And that's, that is the equivalent of having invested another 30.

Now, for my family situation, I'm wondering if this changes the strategy. I'm married with three young kids. We have a fourth due in September. My wife and I both work. We're both 35. We've both been maxing out our Roth IRAs and 401ks since we started employment. We have 529 set up for the three kids. We'll have it set up for the fourth one in September. In retirement right now, we have about 1.3 in savings.

And with that context, does it change anything with that plan? And if we reach a salary point where we cannot contribute to the Roth 401k, is there a way to begin that 401k back up again?

and still contribute the Roth has the exact same limitations as the traditional on a 401k the only reason you would reach a salary point you couldn't do a 401k would be if your company had a problem with highly compensated people and it was out about it was out of balance and they had to back down how much you could put in there's an income limit for the Roth IRA but not the Roth 401k there is no income limit for the Roth 401k correct

Okay. And even with the IRA, you could do a backdoor Roth IRA. Yeah, I'm vaguely familiar with that. I need to do some research on my end. You need to just sit down with your smart investor pro. Also, by the way, let me back up a little bit because you've done such a great job saving money. Congratulations. You're a millionaire at 30. I mean, you're amazing. You've done a great job. But if you're going to follow the baby steps, which is what we suggest, you would only be putting 15% away until you got the mortgage paid off.

And I think you're putting more than 15% away. That's about 40K total. So if they're both maxing out their 401Ks, that's already over that amount. Yeah. Okay. So you may want to back down slightly, put more toward the mortgage, knock it out. That's a minor detail in your situation. But the wealthier you are, the more important it is for it to be Roth.

Because Roth doesn't force you into, when you're 72, into required minimum distributions that would throw you up a tax bracket. Because Roth is 100% tax-free and does not have required minimum distribution. And the traditional does. It gets you into a pinch. So, like, dude, when you get out to my age, and I've got, you know,

a bazillion dollars in my stinking retirement. And, uh, cause I've been doing it a long time and have maxed it for a long time. There's a lot of money in there. So I would be, I've moved it all to Roth years ago and paid it out of my pocket. The difference, like I discussed with you, if you, uh, haven't done that, the, um, you know, like I had a guy call in the other day was $8 million. Wow. And he's the, the amount he's required to take out throws him in the top tax bracket.

Even 10%. It's 800 grand. Yeah, but the required minimum distribution is 72, so he's screwed. He got back in the corner with the traditional. The Roth allows you to escape that. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth.

do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book Breaking Free from Broke, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Wolfgang's in San Antonio. Hi, Wolfgang, how are you? Doing well. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. How can we help?

So my question's about eating out. So I'm 29, trying to increase my savings budget a little bit more this year, and part of that is eating out less. But I'm doing fairly well financially, and it's been hard or weird or, I don't know, maybe guilty to say no to friends and coworkers who I know make less than I do, and they want me to go out and eat less.

to eat with them and I'm just trying to make that budget decision. So I'm looking for some guidance just on that thinking process. So are you running into situations where they're going like, oh, come on, man. And you're going, hey, I can't do it. I'm on a budget. What's the conversations like and what's the pushback?

I never say I'm on a budget, but I have been packing my lunch more work and just sort of saying no to things, you know, saying I'm tired or, you know, I got some commitment and sort of making excuses to get out of that. But the driver is budget. So what is it you feel guilty about? You're doing what you want to do. Why would you? You haven't done anything wrong. Why are you guilty?

I guess it's because, like I said, I make over $100,000 a year, got a couple side gigs going, and I drive a reasonably nice car, and it just feels weird. The social aspect of saying no to it, just for the money reasons, even though that is a goal I have financially. Yeah, it doesn't feel weird to me. I think you're just smarter than most people. I mean, most people...

That other people run their lives and instead you're actually running your life. You know, if the people that build wealth and the people that are successful in anything long ago, quit taking a poll from the public, you know, and that's you, you quit taking a poll. It's just, but it just, you know, you're just kind of wondering, am I, am I a goofball or something? No, you're not a goofball.

I think what you're doing is very wise. Now, if you said I never go out to eat under any circumstances and I make a hundred thousand dollars a year because I'm just a complete freaking tightwad, I'll probably tell you to loosen up a little bit, but that's not, you know, that's not what you're saying. You're just saying they go out to eat every freaking day. And most days you bring your lunch. Whoopie. Who cares? Are you saving for an emergency fund Wolfgang or is this for another savings goal?

This is long-term savings. I have some in savings, some in cash savings, and generally debt-free, but I guess I'm just not quite happy with the trajectory and just looking to build that a little bit. Yeah, and so you get more joy from the trajectory than you do avocado toast. For sure. Yeah, that just makes you like a grown-up.

You know, you're not being driven by other people's desire for you. You're being driven by your desire for you. You're making adult choices. And, you know, you're always going to have to tell somebody no the rest of your life. You don't ever have enough money to not say no.

And pretty soon they'll get the memo. You say no enough times, they go, eh, I think he's good today. And, you know, I'll tell you this. In my life, it's not money, but it was for a long time I struggled with, well, so-and-so wants Dave to come and speak. Or I need some of Dave's time. I need to do this with Dave. Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave. This is kind of crap. And, you know, there was a whole lot more requests than there were hours in the day. And so I had to learn to go, okay, I have to choose what's best for the things I'm working on.

you know, in the business or my family. You know, and so I'm going to choose to be home this weekend because my teenage daughter has a prom over speaking for your event over here in some other state, which I could have easily done. And so I had to tell someone no, well, tell the right people no.

You know, I'm not going to tell my daughter no. So consequently, I was there for every prom because you need to be there to threaten the young man that is taking your daughter out. And so it worked. It worked. Worked perfectly. So, you know, but I'm saying you're always going to have to. In my case, I had to learn to say no and not feel guilty because I'm saying yes to the right people. OK, you don't get to you don't get a vote over my kid.

You don't get a vote over, you know, something that, you know, I've got the opportunity to work on something inside this business or I've got the opportunity to help you with your business. Oh, I think we'll be working on this one. This is what I do. You know, and so and that doesn't mean I'm bad. It's just I have to learn to say no to something so I can say yes to something else. And that's all you're learning is there's always a tradeoff. But you're never you never reach enough income.

or time management or delegation or whatever that you have enough time or enough money that you never say no to anyone. That's never going to happen for any of you. So the art of saying no to others and to yourself in order to achieve a greater yes or

is an art form so it's a good question absolutely well it's boundaries right there and you know henry cloud or the best-selling book on that and he's a friend of ours and that's a hard thing to do especially when you're younger and i'm like him i'm a people pleaser so the one thing i want to do is just go yes absolutely i'm in and when i was getting out of debt or whenever i had a goal i had to say no to a lot but you'll find that the right friends stick around through that yeah i mean it's not like you never do anything number one and number two it's just um

But I think the sooner you can learn to say no graciously and just, I'm sorry, I can't. I got other stuff I got to do. Can't make it. I'm so sorry. And, you know, we joked that my personal assistant, Patty, she's been with me for 23 years.

And she has a sign out right in front of her thing that says, no one gets to see the wizard. Not no one. No way, no how. Right? The line from Wizard of Oz, right? And her office is in the path to get to Dave. You can't get to me without getting through Patty. And I would not dare. Don't you dare. It's not good for your health. And, you know, we joked for a long time, Patty's job description was, no, Dave can't come.

You know, because we had to learn to say no. And it wasn't because we were stuck up. It's because if you don't say no to something, you can't say yes to the right stuff. And in your case, Wolfgang, you're saying yes to my long-term financial goals by saying no to avocado toast.

with my buddies. That's right. And you can initiate hangs that are on your terms that don't involve always going out to eat. There's a lot of things you can do and spend quality time without just always going out and spending money. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a good question. Yeah. I mean, we have the money to have someone come into our home and cook every night. My wife is an old-fashioned Southern cook and loves to cook. But even then, if we get to the point that she's cooked every night for everyone else, she'll go, no. No.

If we're going to have a bunch of people over, everybody bring a dish. You know, it's not because we can't afford the dish. That's not it. It's enough time, enough burn on her energy, enough burn on her time. And you go, our buddies get together and do a potluck like we did when we were poor. The old supper club. Exactly. Never goes out of style. It's wonderful, though. There's an idea for you, Wolfgang. You get to spend time with friends, and it's way cheaper than going out to eat.

And you've got a lot better quality atmosphere. Everything's better. That's right. Everything. So there's all kinds of ways to say yes. But I think it's an interesting philosophical discussion. One of the best skills you can have is learning to say no. Yeah. The Power of No. That's my next book. I like that. Ramsey said no. There it is. This is the Ramsey Show.

Listen, tickets for the Live Like No One Else cruise are selling fast. This is the ultimate debt-free vacation, and I can't wait to celebrate with all the folks who've worked their butts off and changed their family trees. We will be sailing through the blue waters of the Caribbean with the Ramsey personalities.

and other special guests. A bunch of cabin options are already sold out, so hurry and reserve yours with a $600 deposit today at ramseysolutions.com slash events. George Campbell Ramsey, personality number one best-selling author of the book Breaking Free from Broke, is my co-host today. Selling a house in this weird real estate market, buying a house in this weird real estate market is weird. It's hard.

It's different, and it adds a level of uncertainty to the whole process that really shouldn't be there but is there. And if you want to get rid of that, get with a pro. Now, the problem with a real estate business is it's fairly easy to get in. You've got to pass a little test. It's not much, and it's fairly easy to get out. So when times get tough, all the people that are kind of half-butt doing the business, they bail, and as soon as it gets jumping again, they jump right back in.

And so what you want to do when you're selling your largest asset or buying your largest asset, hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars, whatever your case is, you definitely want a pro. I mean, you want somebody that's, you know, they're not...

Aunt Sally, who got her license three weeks ago because she thought it'd be fun. You know, that's not a good idea right there. You want you really want to get somebody that sells, you know, 30 to 300 houses a year.

And they know what they're doing. Well, that's what the Ramsey trusted real estate agents are. They're people that we have vetted for their level of performance. We coach them. They understand the Ramsey advice and systems. And so you're going to have an experience unlike you will get anywhere else. And you're going to get the house sold or the house bought or whatever it is you're trying to do because the Ramsey trusted real estate agents are freaking amazing. They're the best.

And so if you want to know who the Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agent is in your area, you can find out for free. Just go to ramseysolutions.com slash agent, ramseysolutions.com slash agent. Monica is in New Orleans. Hi, Monica. How are you? Hi, I'm well, sir. How are y'all? Better than we deserve. What's up? Okay, so my employer matched 401k uses Vanguard. So I scheduled a phone consultation with a Vanguard representative because I couldn't tell...

Where'd you go? I wanted to make sure that I had 25%. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you drive under a bridge or something? Okay, you scheduled a phone call with a Vanguard representative, and then what happened? So I wanted to make sure that I had 25% going into each of those four types of mutual funds that you guys recommend, the growth, aggressive growth, growth, and income international. Well, I couldn't tell based on the names that Vanguard gives their mutual funds what types they were. Like, they're very confusing names. So I wanted clarity.

Well, while I had the Vanguard representative on the phone and he's going through and explaining which types of mutual funds are which, he kept impressing on me that I needed to maintain like 15 to 20 percent in bonds. And I said, well, bonds aren't really what I'm looking for.

He said, well, you have to have a certain percentage of bonds. And he seemed rather insistent on it. And I said, no, I want 25% in each of these four types of mutual funds. And I was just wondering, why did he find it so important that I have some percentage of bonds? Well, the theory in the, how old are you? 52. Okay. The theory in the financial world is that the bonds are lower risk than stocks. The problem with the theory is it's not true.

So if you go pull up the bond market volatility and lay that beside a growth and income stock mutual fund volatility, you'll see they're about the same. If you looked at a chart of the volatility, the price is going up and down, the market volatility. And so they're not less. And here's the other problem. Bond prices are dictated by the interest rate environment.

And they work on an inverse of interest rate, meaning if interest rates go down, bond prices go up. If interest rates go up, bond prices and values go down. So this guy's an idiot. Interest rates have been increasing. In an increasing interest rate environment, if you buy bonds, you're going to lose your butt.

Mm-hmm.

So here's how bad the theory is. The financial planning world also adopts a process that I don't agree with or a theory I don't agree with called asset allocation. Let's just talk about it even worse. Let's get nerdier.

asset allocation and you probably heard this one monica is the older you get the more conservative your portfolio needs to be and so by the time you're 65 you need to have moved out of growth stock mutual funds into bonds and money market instruments right have you heard that one yes that's the asset allocation theory here's the problem with the theory i'm 63 i'm

If I move the millions of dollars that I have in my mutual funds into bonds and money market type instruments, high yield savings, that kind of thing, and I live 25 or 30 more years, it's going to destroy my wealth because they're not even going to keep up with inflation for 30 freaking years.

And so if you're going to die in two years, yeah, you would move it away. But if you're 65 years old and healthy, you're high likelihood you're going to live into your 80s or 90s. And so the asset allocation theory is absolute hogwash. But the problem is the financial planning community, not all of them, but by and large are a bunch of freaking lemmings. They follow each other over a cliff and they don't stop and do independent thought.

So, like, you're running into this studying for your CFP, right? Oh, absolutely. George is studying for his Certified Financial Planning designation, and the asset allocation is preached like it's biblical truth. Well, and the theory is, well, if the market tanks, I don't, you know, you have a little bit of a hedge because of the bonds, and so they won't be calling me yelling, where'd all my money go? It went down with the market. The problem is, when the market's up, you don't see those returns. You go, what happened? The market did 20%. I only see 12. And based on asset allocation in the old days...

The financial planning world would say, all right, we're going to take your grandmother who's 70 years old and we're going to put her in bonds. If you did that a year and a half or two years ago,

She lost 50% of her value. That's what happens with the banks. They invested all this money in bonds. And they got screwed when the bond market tanked because interest rates went up. So that's what happened to scale. Remember, as rates go up, values go down. Rates go down, values go up. So you put... We were always told in the old days, oh, you could put grandma in some Fannie Mae bonds. Just put her in some Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae bonds. Mortgage bonds, right? They're safe. They're mortgage-backed securities. They're very safe. They're not going anywhere. Right.

Bull crap. As soon as mortgage rates go up, the stinking value of that portfolio goes down like a tank. I mean, it makes an aggressive growth stock mutual fund look like a wuss. It's amazing how bad it is. But we were taught that this is somehow low risk. It's not low risk.

especially in a rising interest rate environment. Oh, my God. And they found it was an interesting study, Dave. I need to find the chart, but they found that when you had a equities portfolio versus a bonds portfolio, it lasts longer in retirement. No, duh. Well, it makes more retirement. It's going to make more and therefore makes more. And here's the other thing. Let's say I've got let's just say somebody listening has has five million dollars, four million dollars in their in their retirement account. OK, so.

You're not going to use the money anyway at retirement. If you got $4 million, you pull off 10% a year. That's $400,000 a year, and you didn't even touch the principal. So you're not going to use it. So it's not like you have to worry about it goes up or down or goes up or down. You're not using it anyway. You're living off a...

Paltry percentage... On the money it's throwing off. Of the money it's throwing off. So it's... Yeah, the whole thing just pisses me off. Because it... Somebody decided that was a...

thing to do and then they all adopted it and then they act like anyone who goes against that is blaspheming or something. That's Dave the blasphemer. Dave the blasphemer. Well, that's me, boys and girls. And you know what? That has caused... It's not real blasphemy, by the way, but it's just financial nerd blasphemy. Not biblical blasphemy. It's financial nerd blasphemy.

from the certified financial pharisees there we go yeah not all of them are that way but some of you people in that world stop it it's way too easy to put off making a will and believe me i've heard every excuse in the book but not having the time is one excuse we can kick to the curb right now because these days most folks can make a legally binding will on their laptop

between loads of laundry. If you're wondering if you can make your will online or if you need a lawyer, we have a quiz to help you figure that out in less than five minutes. Just go to ramsaysolutions.com slash wills quiz. ramsaysolutions.com slash wills quiz.

George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour with Rachel Cruz. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Stephen is with us in Seattle. Hey, Stephen, what's up?

It's an honor to be able to talk to you today. You too. And my question is, I have a zero interest loan that was a medical expense and it sits around $15,000. And is it smarter to pay it off or to just pay it every month compared to

compared to inflation, you know, I'm making money just by paying it every month. It would seem that's advice I was given. What do you make a year? What's your income? I make approximately $80,000 a year. I have several income sources. I don't know who's giving you this advice, but you need to stay away from them. They're not very smart. Here's why. If you make 10% rate of return,

because you didn't pay this off and you kept fifteen thousand dollars in a ten percent investment you made fifteen hundred dollars okay hundred dollars a month hundred dollars a month we have surveyed 10 167 millionaires 89 of them became millionaires starting from nothing the number of them that became a millionaire

because they failed to pay off a medical debt and instead invested the money and made 10% and made $1,500 was precisely zero. Millionaires don't believe crap like this. They get out of debt, stay out of debt, stay away from debt, build an investment portfolio, and that's how they become wealthy.

And so this is like, you know, well, you should get all the airline miles you could get, or you should, you're going to get rich on 1% back from discover card, which means by the way, you spend a hundred thousand dollars on your discover card. You get a thousand dollars back. Now, under what circumstances do you trade a hundred thousand for a thousand and that make you wealthy? None. Okay. I'll help you with that. And so this is the same kind of stuff.

So quit playing some kind of intellectual games with tiny little amounts of money that's not going to make you wealthy. If you call me up and you said, I got a million five hundred thousand interest free, I guess we could talk about that. It'd be worth at least talking about. I wouldn't do it, but you could at least have a discussion about it. It's just not even worth talking about.

Well, it doesn't sound like he has $15,000 sitting in a savings account. Otherwise, probably wouldn't have gone into debt for the medical. So I just pay it off as fast as you can pay it off. It is living in your head rent free considering you called about it. And for that reason alone, just get rid of it. It's not worth the mental energy and brain calories. Yeah, exactly. You're burning up stuff. You don't need to burn up here for pennies. Just pennies. A couple dollars a day. Jackson's in Calgary. Hey, Jackson, what's up?

Hey, Dave. Thank you very much for taking my call. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? I have a question. I'm in this situation. I admittedly did not take your advice. I purchased a home with somebody before we were married. We are common law. We do have a prenup and we've been together for quite some time. So there's no...

I don't think we're at the risk of breaking up, if that makes sense. We're at the stage of getting proposed, married, that sort of thing. But my partner has a line of credit and I am super against debt. I'm into following the baby steps. I've created a bit of an investment portfolio myself and I've gotten rid of all my debts, my credit card debts and that sort of thing. I don't have any student loans.

But I'm just wondering, how do I approach or how do I, I guess I have approached, how do I get through to my partner that getting rid of this line of credit as a fallback, it isn't needed in our situation. We don't need an emergency line of credit. What is the line of credit for? Is this a credit card? Is it...

A personal line of credit that the bank was willing to give. I think it has a maximum of $20,000. What's the balance? Is there any balance? There is. There's a small balance. It would be between $6,000 and $8,000, which I'm certainly open to. What did that go to? Sorry? What was that for? I think most of it is personal purchase. Because it had nothing to do with fallback or emergencies. It was overspending.

So she's justifying spending money on stupid crap that she can't afford by saying, well, it's there for emergencies. And so therein lies the problem is she's justifying a spending problem or addiction with this line of credit. And so guess what you can't do when you don't have a line of credit? Go into debt. And it sounds like you guys aren't aligned on your financial values, which is scary because you're in this situation now and locked into this. So you said there's no risk. I think there is risk here. This adds a real rift in the relationship. Yeah.

Because I don't know that you can change her mind. It may take a long time. She may never change. Yeah. So the bottom line is the reason she wants this is it allows her to do whatever she wants to do. Right. Instead of looking in the mirror and going, I have to tell myself no. And that's an immaturity issue. Do you guys have separate finances right now? We do, yes. Okay. We do have a prenup as well. So we put contributions for the mortgage payment and the house payments into a separate account.

And then our individual accounts are all protected by prenups. So you have no debt, you have an emergency fund, and she has debt and has no emergency fund. Correct. Well, I think the whole thing is it's not a matter of...

convincing someone of your way of thinking, I would back up and just say, Hey, let's dream together. Okay. My goal would be if I was doing, if this is you talking would be that we become wealthy and we're able to be extremely generous, we're able to travel,

We're able to have nice automobiles, own our own home, pay it off, have complete stability, and become millionaires or multimillionaires. My goal is to do that. That's my dream. Now, what is the shortest route and what principles does the actual data tell us that gets us there? Now, if she says, oh, yeah, that'd be cool. Let's do that. Okay, then if we're going to become wealthy, how do we do that and build

It's not by overspending $8,000 and putting it on a home equity line of credit that's supposedly there for emergencies. And that purse was definitely not an emergency. So that's not how we get there. And so what we need to do is we need to align and say, this is what, you know, what are the processes? It's like if you sit down with your personal trainer, you hire a personal trainer and you're overweight, right?

You say, okay, what's the goal? What must be true? What's the goal? Okay. I don't want to keg anymore. I'd rather have a six pack. And so I'm going to get rid of the belly. How are we going to do that? You have to do these things. I don't want to do those things. I don't care. That's how you get rid of the belly, you know, and this is, you know, then you got to decide if you're going to align your behaviors with actual truth that takes you to your goals, right?

And, um, Henry cloud says you, you want to identify a desired future and that's any couple could sit down and say, we're going to have a dream date. This is our desired future and we're going to be in agreement on our desired future. Then the next thing you have to say is what has to be true. That is not true now. Well, we, we, you know, we obviously the things we've done so far have not gotten us to that desired future. So we need to do some things differently than we did before.

You reverse engineer it. Exactly. From the dream.

Exactly. And then you say, okay, you know, what's my desired future? I don't have a belly. Okay. Then what, what must be true? That's not true today. No freaking donuts, you know, deficit, you know, back up from the, do some pushbacks from the table as well as pushups, you know? And so there's some things, both of these things have to happen. And so caloric, you can't outrun a big Mac. And so you, you know, your caloric intake is an issue.

And so what has to be true if you want to get to that desired future and any couple can do that on any subject, we want to raise kids,

that are good kids. Well, I didn't. Sharon and I decided we didn't want to raise kids that were good kids. We wanted to raise kids that became great adults. It's a different goal. Different strategy. Different goal. I'm not trying to raise Stepford children. I'm trying to raise kids who have some poise, some confidence that can articulate and have a conversation with an adult and look you in the eye and shake your hand and, you know, not be intimidated by everything around the block. That's a different goal. This is The Ramsey Show.

Our scripture of the day, Isaiah 30 and 21. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it. Warren Buffett said, you only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong. So simple, but so wise. Oh, it's very true. Chelsea's with us in Baltimore. Hi, Chelsea. How are you?

Hey, I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Yeah, so my question is, should me and my husband do rent-to-own on my in-laws' house while they live there? No. While they live there? Yes. Why would you rent someone else's house while they live there? Well, so we would be in the top half of the house, and they would be in the bottom half of the house.

It'd basically be like, you know, we each have our own separate... No. Don't do that. What is the benefit here? Are they cutting you a crazy deal? So, basically, it's a family property, and, you know, me and my husband would like to purchase it from them at some point. What does family property mean? The property was given to them by...

um his grandfather and um it was meant to be for us or for him so will it go to you guys will it be inherited by your husband um so they are also in a little bit of a sticky situation with some other debt and stuff too so i don't know if that would end up coming to us or not they're in a sticky situation with what

With some other debt. Oh, other debt. Basically, yeah. All right. So is this property an unusual property, and is it like a bunch of acreage? I mean, it's a house they built, and it's 17 acres. And like I said, it's in the area the family all is in. Okay. Here's your problem.

All right. You guys are trying to do 73 different things at one time and it's not going to work. And here, here's what's happening. All right. The parents-in-law have been irresponsible, gotten themselves in debt, and they need the income that you would be giving them to rent.

And so you're doing it to do them a favor. You're also trying to honor grandfather's idea that your husband would end up with the property. And yet you've still got to turn around and buy the property instead of just end up with it. That wasn't grandfather's idea. He left it to his son. He didn't make him buy it. Now his son is trying to not do that with his own son. Am I missing something? No.

No. So we're trying to honor grandfather. We're trying to help the in-laws who have been irresponsible by paying them rent. And you're going to be in a miserable living situation all to try to keep everybody happy but you and your husband. No. Don't go do this. I mean, it is really important to us too. And if we can kind of help them out now, I guess their goal is that they can sell the house

to a reduced price. Yeah. So what is the property worth? A lot of the numbers have been thrown out like around $500,000. Okay. Let's just pretend it's worth $500,000 for a minute. What do you and your husband make?

I think he's going to be making about $90,000 this year, and then I'll probably be making about $45,000. Okay. So you have $135,000 household income. You can afford a half-a-million-dollar house. Just buy the house. So we actually just talked to a lender, and they said it could be approved for about $400,000. Okay. How much money do you guys have saved? That's the other thing. We don't have...

Because we just got married like a year ago. How old are you two? I'm 21 and I'm 22. The weak cannot help the weak. Only the strong can help the strong. You are too weak to help them. You are not in a good enough financial position. You do whatever you want to do. You called and asked my opinion.

My opinion is I would run from this like my hair was on fire because these people are irresponsible. They're going to end up with judgment liens on this house, and they're going to be unable to give you the house or transfer it to you because they're not going to pay their bills, and they're going to get their butts sued.

because they're going to continue in their pattern of irresponsibility, and you sweet little 21-year-olds are trying to help these grown adults who are doing a piss-poor job of running their lives, and they're going to screw over their own kids accidentally in the process. Please run from this. Please.

So here's an alternative. You guys go rent somewhere on your own while building your own financial foundation. Go have a life. And if one day you inherit this thing, that's great. Or later on if you want to help them, fine. But you're not multimillionaires and you're 21 years old. You've been married 10 seconds and you're not in a position to go help these grownups who have been irresponsible. You're not strong enough.

Quit doing this and you're going to end up in the basement of people paying them rent. They're going to screw you over accidentally because they don't know what the crap they're doing. They can't find their butt with both hands and they're going to cause you guys to drag, to drag, be drugged down with them. Please don't do this, please. They don't mean to, but they're screw ups and they're going to, and they're doing this to their own kids. It aggravates the crud out of me. Don't people don't screw over your own kids with your irresponsibility. Don't do it.

And please don't do this. They're going to end up with this property clouded on the title with something because of the way they're acting. And then you're not going to be able to get the property that you signed up that you thought you were getting in a rent-to-own crappy deal. Please, just go rent you something and let these grown-ups muddle through their mess.

And maybe the property will come out the other side of it. Maybe it won't. You're not in a position to buy it. If you call me up and you were 32 and you had 3,000, 30 or 40 or 50,000 bucks laying around and you wanted to put a down payment and go buy the house, we can talk about that. But you're not in that position. You're too, you're not in a strong enough position to be of help to them. And you're going to go do it anyway, even though I'm going to tell you a thousand times not to do it. I can tell there's no stopping you. Ugh.

You'll be a caller on the show again. Laura's in Philadelphia. Hey, Laura, what's up?

Hello. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. I'm a little short on time because I'm ranting. How can I help you right quick? Okay. I'm going to be quick. I have $75,000 coming to me next month, and I have another payment coming next August. And this is like the last two payments from a divorce that was eight years ago. Wow. So here are my questions. I know. I'll be happy to be done. I'm currently married again, and we don't have any debt. Mm-hmm.

We do have three homes. Two are rentals. One that is one of the rentals does not have a mortgage. This has a HELOC. Here's my question. I want to know if what we should use each of these $75,000 towards if we should pay down mortgages, the HELOC, or should we save it and purchase a third rental? I would pay down mortgages and HELOC. Okay. What's left on your primary? No, I'm...

Okay, so my primary we owe $243,000, but that's our lowest interest rate. Well, I don't care about the interest rate. What's your household income? Oh, I'm sorry, our household, it is $1,800 net per week. $100,000 a year, okay. Okay. And what's the balance on the HELOC?

You lock it's $40,000. I'll definitely clear that then with the 75 when it comes in. But let's get about the business of getting your house paid off. And when the house and the rentals are clear, you'll have tremendous cash flow to buy your other rentals with that cash flow. So no more rentals though until we start clearing these debts. Until we clear all the debts, including your personal residence. That's what I would do if I were in your shoes. It's a good question, Laura. And you're thinking clearly with a horrible, sad situation. But I'm glad you got a great, bright future.

That puts us out of the Ramsey Show and the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. ♪

Hey guys, I'm Rachel. And I'm George. And you've probably heard our voices before on The Ramsey Show. And do we have a surprise for you? Yep, we have our very own show, Smart Money Happy Hour, where we talk about pop culture, current events, and of course, money. George, it's a great show. And what else do we talk about? So much, Rachel. Not enough, and yet too much. We talk about guilt tipping, because tipping is out of control and I won't stand for it anymore, which is why I'm sitting. I'm glad you're taking such a stand. Okay.

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

We also talk about toxic money traits and girl math. And if you don't know what those are, you have to listen to the podcast. Yeah, there's a lot there, you guys. It's pretty fun. We keep you relevant is what I'm trying to say. We help you out. So pull up a chair to the happy hour you wish your friends were having. We promise you won't regret it. And if you don't have friends, we'll be your friends. We will. We're great friends. So make sure to check it out on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or the Ramsey Network app.