Debt Isn't a Tool, It's a Trap

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“>> Normal is broken common sense, is weird.”

So we're here to help you transform your life from the Ramsey network in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio. This is the Ramsey show on Jade Worsh on next to me. Dr. John Deloni taking calls about your life and money for the next couple of hours at least. Let's go to Jackie, who's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

A Jackie, who's fine. >> Hey, thanks for taking my call. >> Absolutely, have some of you help. >> All right, so my question is basically, how do I stop sabotaging myself and my family and actually stick to a plan?

A little bit of story, my husband and I, we make about $220,000 a year. But we have about $313,000 in non-morgic and mortgage debt. >> Wow. >> We have three kids, Ramos 40, we have no retirement, no savings. I make a plan, we've been through financial peace, so we make a plan every month.

And I just blow it by, like the 5th or 6th of the month. I have no self-control when it comes to telling my kids to note activities, trips, experiences. My husband says he's on board, he doesn't really help at all. So all of it really falls to me and I have no self-control, so I'm just kind of struggling here.

>> Oh, why is that? Why do you think you have no self-control? Because there's got to be a basis for that. Is it that you just have this fear of losing that, like missing out, that you're feeling like being in the time with my kids as short, I got to get it and like, what's the base

of that type of impulsive spending? >> Yeah, and that's how I grew up. My parents, my mom was the same way, and now they're every tirement age and they

have no retirement, and I'm really worried for them, but that's kind of how she's always

lived. It's just, you know, my experiences come first and we'll figure it out later. So I just, I feel like I need to get it in while they're, you know, my son's almost 16. So I got, you know, short time with him left and I just feel like now we're never kind

of being interesting, John, I know you have so much to say about this. You know what? Go ahead and go.

“>> Well, I was, I was just going to ask you, did you shower today?”

>> Yes. >> When you go out, do you like put on Deodorant, maybe fix your hair?

So what, and here's what I want to, I'm saying something ridiculous, right on purpose.

I want to introduce to you that you do have self-control over certain parts of your life. And those are things that you've affirmatively said, this is important to me, this matters, and I'm going to do these things. And where, anytime you're trying to change an action, right, and really live into a new identity, I'm a person who dot dot dot, it has to matter, that's to be a reason why I'm

doing this. Because right now, what you just painted the picture for us is you wish you were like this, you wish you had retirement, you wish you had a budget, you wish you were a person that you could count on. >> Well, you're not going to, because your mom did it, it worked out, it's, you're worried

about it, but it's fine, and you only have two years left with your son, so we're just going to do it. >> And you're certainly not going to do it, just because John and I tell you to. So if you don't want to do it, then go do your thing, the internal war you've created inside your own chest is tough.

“If you want to get control of this thing, man, we can help you there.”

But what I don't want to do is I don't want to just sit here, and you're like, no, I'm staying in this fire pit, and you keep holding the gas in the matches, like you're just going to burn yourself. I'd rather you just make peace with the path that you're on, my kids 16, I think the best

way to love him is to give him whatever he wants, whenever he wants to always say yes

to everything he asks, and if that's your path, I disagree with it, but man, you go do that. >> Well, I think there's something that we can help you within that today, which is to challenge even the validity or the truthfulness of that way of thinking, because I do, I think that sometimes we think that being there for our kids is buying them what they want, and doing

all of these, it's like more is more, but it's not always more is more. >> It's almost never more is more. >> I mean, I think, think about just gift number one, if you and your husband lock arms here, and by the way, you'll make a ton of money, and you'll have two years that were uncomfortable, you'd give your 16-year-old the gift of seeing his mom and dad like lock arms

is going to take a lot of transition and change and hard work, and you'd also go out

to 40-year-old him, and he would never, ever, ever have to worry about his mom and dad.

You take that from him. It would be a gift, and I would, I would wager those gifts are way more important than what it like. >> Another trip. >> Exactly.

And it's not like you're not doing any trips, it's the ten of them. And I can also imagine a world where your husband is like, I'm not, I'm not going to get on, why would I keep getting on board, because me continuing to get on board is just a, I'm, I'm showing the seat of resentment, because I'm going to get on board, my wife's going to get off, and then we're going to have, we're going to fight about it, I'm just

doing whatever you want to do.

“So let me ask you, are you done, are you done, done, done, done?”

>> Yeah, I really am, it's, it's very stressful and I'm tired of it.

>> Okay, the first place I want you to go, and the J is going to give you a clear path,

the first place I want you to do, and you get off the phone here, and we're going to hook up with some free resources to get you started, I want you to make an appointment with the local therapist in your area, because you got, you got history here, right? >> Yeah. I think it's time, and I'm telling you, your kids having a ring-side seat to watching

their mom walk the gauntlet will be one of the, if not the one of the greatest gifts you'll ever give them. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Your worth feeling at peace in your own skin.

Cool.

>> Yeah, I need the thumbs.

>> Okay. All right. J is going to the path. Well, dang John, yeah, I want to make sure that you do get a ton of money makeover. I'm actually going to send you my book too, what no one tells you about money, because

it definitely approaches this from a non-dollar's-in-sense side, and I sense some of the things

“that you're saying, I talk about in the book, and I think it could really help just under”

underpin whatever you get out of counseling and things like that. The debt, there's a lot of debt here, I don't want to try to rush through it in the time, can I offer you something, I feel like I'm supposed to offer you something else instead. What I want to offer you is something that I think will help you with your kids, and I don't say much about this, but I lost my mom, and I'm going to tell you, the things that I remember

about her are not the trips we took, or the things we did. I think about how her face looked when I'd walk in the room, or if I hadn't seen her in a while and I knock on the door and she opens the door and she, how her face, I think about things like that, I think about what her handwriting looks like, I think about little inside jokes that we had, things that made us laugh, I'm not thinking about an outfit

she bought me, or didn't buy me, I'm not thinking about the trip we didn't take. Do you see what I'm saying? And when I think about my kids now, the most intentional things that I can do are, if I just tackle my son, you know what I mean? Mom's not, a 42-year-old mom's not supposed to tackle her son, but he loves wrestling,

so if I do that, I didn't buy him something, I didn't show up to another game because maybe I couldn't show up at the game, but the intentional thing I did was that night when I tucked him in bed, I tackled him, and I wrestled him down because he likes that. And I just want to encourage you that your kids just want you. They just want to be around you.

They want to, you know, whisper something funny in their ear, you know, make a poopy joke, or whatever, and I know your kids are all well and well and well and well, mom and dad. That's what they want. [ Music ] Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz.

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I John, how can John Deloni and I help? Hey, I'm trying to be quick. I have a $184,000 car loan debt in my name. What? I got signed into my name.

I didn't know the full details when my dad made the emotional financial decision. I'm thinking he would make a lot of money. He's a black SUV driver in his car, last car, transmission blue, whatever, and I thought I was going to go into his name and my truck was going to my name, but it didn't.

It was doing fine for the first year, but now he's having to take care of his mom that

has dementia and he's been having trouble making payments and he's looking for an investment. So I'm trying to figure out, I'm trying 21 years old, how in the heck am I going to raise

“his family with all this debt and mispayment in my name?”

But let me just clarify, I just got to need to clarify. It's $184,000 worth of car loan debt, but it's not just one vehicle, it's multiple vehicles. Three vehicles. Three vehicles.

Can you tell me what they are? My truck is GMCC era, 1500. No, can I ask? Your truck, that's not part of the discussion, right? Because you signed for it, that's you, that has nothing to do with your dad.

Technically, yeah, like it would be my truck if the his cars were not in my name, yes. Okay. When you look at the title of that truck, is your the only name on it or has it got his name? Yes, or yeah, I'm the only name on all three. All right.

That's yours. You're the only name on all three of these vehicles? Yes. All right. That's this.

This is cutting. That makes this way easier. Yeah, brother. It's going to give you all the story and hopefully helps so in it. Well, listen, it's not your favorite.

It's like Thanksgiving tough. It's going to make Christmas tough, but this is a pretty cut and dry solution here. Yeah, I had this in February of last year. No, I'm saying what you're going to have to do to make this right on behalf of you and your family and deal with the fallout of your dad taking advantage of you.

Or you know what, let's, let's don't say that. Like you saying, I'm 21 year old man and I signed my name to this saying, but the fact that your dad put you in this situation is dad's don't do that to their son. So it's not supposed to happen like that. And what should be very simple, if he hasn't come to you and been like, let me make

this right, I never should have done this, that's the, that's the problem.

Right. And the fact that you're calling, he's been trying what has he been doing. Well, he's, he's, he's making the payments. He's doing all that and he's trying to, he's waiting for an investment for foreign exchange rate crap.

“And see, that's, and that's what I'm talking about.”

He's still waiting on to get rich quick for it to. Yeah. He's playing games, man. Since all three of these cars are in your name, they're called, we'll end with us telling you that it's your responsibility to go sell all three of these cars.

I can't cover the upside, like 15,000, 12,000 of side notes. So how would I do that? So what, let's go through these one by one, okay. Let's go through your track how much it's worth or what you own, what's it like? Yeah, it's like 60, 2000, I don't know.

And what is it worth? It's worth, I'm pretty sure they would give me 44 at the dealership. 42. No, if you put on Facebook Marketplace, what would you get for it? You need to look at Kelly Blue Book private sale value.

Shoot. I did not look into that, like, 25 on take some last place. Okay. Maybe 30. Let's, that's your homework, so a piece of homework number one for you is you've got to get

the value of these on Kelly Blue Book private sale. That's the number that we want. So for now, just give us your best ballpark, so your track, 62, maybe you can get 42 for it. Fair enough?

Yes, that's fine. Okay. What about the next one? Chevy Tahoe. That is right now, 76,000.

Oh gosh. And it's worth. Yeah. And I guarantee it has 80,000 miles on it, so I guarantee you ain't going to get more than no way gets more than 45.

Okay. But it still looks brand new. It's just miles on the vehicle. Okay.

So again, that's part of your homework and then let's estimate the third vehicle.

Do it. I can get 40. No, I can't get 40. I can get 36 from it, and there would be a 12,000 outside note for sure. I'm already tried doing that.

So you're upside down 12,000. Yeah. For sure. Okay. So I would start.

“Here's here's the thing you have to keep in mind.”

The purpose here is to go down in debt. That's the purpose. We don't need to drive these vehicles anymore. We don't need to -- these are not our point A point B vehicles. So if we go to the credit union, like John said, if we go get a loan, a personal loan for the

difference on these, even though the differences are high, it's still less debt. Does that make sense?

If I get a loan for the $30,000 difference on car number two.

“If I get a loan for the $20,000 difference, right?”

We're still going down significantly in debt. And it doesn't feel good because there's still debt to be paid off. But at least we have eliminated a higher monthly payment. And we've eliminated the amount of actual balance owed. Does that make sense?

Yes, sir.

So that's going to be our first thing is we got to offload these vehicles.

And then we're going to be stuck with a bunch of personal loans that we have to pay off. And that's not fun. And I think you, you don't have many other options other than to go to your dad. And this is going to be hard because your father has put you in an incredibly difficult situation. Yep.

But you tell your dad, you can buy this truck. This SUV with 88,000 miles that you've put on it at this price. And I need the money in one week. Or I'm going to sell it. You can do that to me.

I've got no debt. Yes, I can. This truck is in my name. And I have $180,000 in depreciating asset debt every day. The assets you hold go down in value.

But that dollar amount you owe stays the same. So dad, you can buy this from me. You can go, you can go take a loan out if you want that burden. But I'm guessing that his credit is so bad.

“That's why he had you signed for all these.”

Sure.

Yeah, because I was going to suggest you.

I mean, what you could do. I don't think your dad is going to do this. But you could have your dad say, hey, we're walking down to the bank. You're getting a loan for $62,000. And then you're going to turn around and give it to me.

So I can pay these, right? Yeah. But he clearly, he can't clearly can't do that. That's why he said to you, some put these vehicles in there. How did you, how did you?

How much money do you make a year at 21 years old? I make 4500 a month. So plus over time, probably going to push around 75 in the year this year. But I get, I'm at a really blessed where I'm at. God has definitely put me on a really good position at work.

But obviously it sucks because it's the only thing is the way I go trading these vehicles or trading one. It's like how they're going to give me a loan. What my debt to income ratio is way over-scaled. I would be talking to the bank about that.

Like, this is the problem.

These are going to continue to go down in value. And we're going to keep going more and more upside down. This is going to help you and me out. Because the end result here is one of these gets repowed. Or all of them.

And if these get repowed, then you're hardly getting nothing. Because you're going to sell it for whatever you can get for it. Which is going to be far less than what I can sell it for. You know, Kelly Blue Book Private Sale. And just so you know how repo works.

Like, let's say you take that car where you're $12,000 upside down on. You go sit down with somebody at a local credit. And you say, here's the deal. I'm 21. My dad took advantage of me.

I got a huge mess. And I'm doing the next right thing and clear this up. And I know my name's on this. I want to $12,000 a private loan to so I can take this. Pay the difference and get this thing sold.

Yep. If you don't get that done, they're going to take that car. They're going to repo it from you. And they're going to sell it. And then you're responsible legally for the gap between what they auction it off at

to their friends auction. And the balance owed. So they're going to auction it at 20. And you're going to owe 40 or 50 instead of 12. So what we're telling you is this day of reckoning is coming.

And if they say sorry sir, we can't give you a loan. Say thank you so much. I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan.

And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan.

And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan. And I'm going to give you a loan.

And I'm going to give you a loan. I don't know. But the interest rates have to be terrible. I'm talking about fraudulent. Praise God. No, two cars are only 8%.

My truck though is 18%. That's all my car loan is going down. Hmm. I'm trying to say strong. It's so hard.

Yeah, it is hard. Face it. Go right. If you go right through it. Yeah.

And I hate that this happened.

“But the thing that you have to accept from this is”

there is not an easy piece to this. There's no part of this process that's going to be easy. Or comfortable or light or fast. This is going to be you leaning into something that's really tough and really frustrating and hard for a while.

And hopefully that's for you. Mm-hmm. But it's just this is how we learn. It's only one way and that's through it. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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Let's go to Avery, who's in Tampa, Florida. Hey, Avery. Hello, thank you for taking my call. You bet, what's up? So me, my husband, our debt free.

We would like to be in a better neighborhood and a slightly bigger house. But we want to keep our current house. The other goal that we have is to retire early.

Can we get a mortgage for a second property or would that sacrifice the potential

to retire early? It might. Why do you want to keep? You said it's not a great neighborhood. What would make you want to keep the house?

Well, we could it would be additional income. So there's that and then also later we would probably move back into that house One more older. Why? If it's a bad neighborhood.

It's not a bad neighborhood. It's just we could be in a better neighborhood. But we're like better schools in system. Okay, so it's for schools. Schools is the.

Yeah. We're trying to get down to the nitty gritty of what's the point if the neighborhood's not that nice. Okay. So tell us what you own the house and tell us what the house is worth. And then tell us what you're thinking about buying.

Like let's get a sense of what's going on. I already have a sense of what I think, but I want to hear more from you. Yeah. Our house is valued around 266,000. And we paid off our mortgage a couple years ago.

So we're debt pre there. We don't having car loans. We don't have any student loan debt. We don't have any credit card debt. So it's you are mortgage free.

That's great. Yes. Yes. We're very happy about that. That's awesome.

“So you have to not happy enough to go do it again, though, right?”

So we have a little bit. We have some cash on the site for a small deposit. But if we have the incoming rent and we also have some Christian fine leftover after every month. How much does real numbers tell us how much you have cash and tell us how much your cushion is. On cash we have around 50,000 and then every month we have between one to two thousand.

Let's go every month. Okay. Okay. So what are I mean, again, give us some numbers. What are you thinking about spending and what are you thinking about?

Because you're kind of like reversing. You're kind of reversing the method. Most of the time it's like, okay, I want to buy my. Current, like, my primary mortgage outright and then I'm going to turn around and buy a rental and you're like, well, we already have a piece of property now and it was on our primary now.

We just want to buy a primary residence. So I want to know if there's a way that we can.

Do that in cash because here's what I wouldn't want to do.

I would not.

“Not me living in a house that has a payment and renters living somewhere that doesn't have a payment, right?”

They're getting the benefit of your piece. Yeah, right? That piece was meant for you. And now you're sitting up here in a house with a mortgage and the renters are in the Scott free place. Like does that, does that sit right with you?

It doesn't sit right with me. It doesn't. And that's kind of why we haven't pulled the trigger on on anything. But we were thinking if we have the renters payment and we throw all of our cushion fund to it, it would we would be able to basically pay off that mortgage pretty quickly.

But who's going to pay for the fence repair and the AC repair and the light bulbs and the roof repair on your

That would probably so in addition to that we probably have to set up a fund specifically for that house to maintain it.

Correct. Well, let me go, let me go. Let me go Dave Ramsey on you for a minute. Let's pretend. Let's pretend. Buckle up.

Buckle up. Let's pretend whatever house you have in your mind in the in the new in the other neighborhood. That's a little bit better. Let's pretend you have that house today and it's it's paid for and you're sitting there. And you go, you know what?

Let's get a rental property.

“Would you pick a rental property in the neighborhood where that current house is?”

And would you go into debt for it? No. Are you there? No, yeah. No, I wouldn't probably not.

I mean, I'm glad that you were really thinking about it. You were. Dude. Dude.

You're a jeopardy on that.

I don't think you would, right? Yeah, no. So that's the way. That's how we need to think about this. I get what you're saying.

We have this house. It seems like an asset. Why would we get rid of it? It's paid for like I see your line of thinking. But what's what's missing there is the actual intentionality of creating the life you actually want.

And not just letting things fall into your life by default. What you actually want is this house and the other neighborhood is what it sounds like. And from what I can tell what you actually want is a paid for house because you went on and paid off this other house that you were living in. So those are the country roads.

“That's like that's what we need to get to.”

So I think if you took this current house to. When I head and sold it and got the 266 or the 270,000 for it. Then turned around and put it with whatever extra cash that you have. Would that get you close to the house that you actually want. Yes.

I like this. I love it. And then in a few years, if you decide, hey, we're going to move back. There will be a house for sale. And you can sell the one you have.

And you can use part of that money to write it. Check for this house and pocket the other couple hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. I like that. But what Jade said, I think double click on what Jade said.

I want you all to ask yourself you and your spouse. Like the idea of rental property sounds good. Totally get it. And like for Dave, it means he's got a whole bunch of properties. It's it's awesome.

But I want you to ask yourself, do we want to be landlords? Do we want to get calls on Thanksgiving morning that the sewers backing up? And we have to get somebody out there and pay for that.

“Do we want to get calls about the air conditioning going down while we're on vacation?”

Like, or do you want to pay 10 or 15% of that money that's going to be coming in? That's supposed to be cash flowing the other house to a management company. And they are supposed to supposedly going to take care of all right. So it's just it's a different kind of life. And if that's the life you want to have, that's one question.

That's one path. But I'm not hearing that y'all really want to be landlords. I'm hearing that y'all paid for this house. You like living there actually, but life has has happened. And you need different schools and different support systems.

And all that's great. And you want to move back one day. That's all awesome. Just do that in order. But it's all like what Jade said in service too.

We're going to life till we want to have. And the good news is if you, if you do this every, if you take my advice, I'm not saying you have to. But if you do, you'll end up with a pay for house, which is exactly what you wanted.

You'll end up in the neighborhood that you wanted to be in, which is exactly what you wanted. And because you don't have a mortgage payment, it seems like you're interested in building some kind of wealth. Otherwise you wouldn't have considered a rental property to begin with. So instead of paying a mortgage payment somewhere,

you can take that money and you can either invest it in the stock market and build wealth like that. Or you can save up for a rental in cash one day. So if you do this, you're getting the best of both worlds. And you're getting it in a much more secure way.

That's filled with peace and you get to be the benefactor of it. Not some tenant. (laughs) Okay, I mean, yeah, that makes a lot more sense. I know that.

Okay, I feel like John, I feel like we solved the world's problem. Did we solve the world's problems, Avery? (laughs) Yes, I feel good. Good, good, good.

I love that question. John, I love that because I think that the buzzword out there is real estate. Rift property, house property. And don't give me wrong. Like, I think if you purchased a house and it's a good,

you purchased it the right way, the way we teach. And you messed around and did what she did. And you paid it off. Like, your first thought is like, I got to keep this. I got hang on to it.

And you're about to do something she did, which is you're about to enter back into a situation that you worked so hard to get out of. To get out of it.

And it's, I think it's always asking that question.

What do you want your life to feel like? What are you aiming for here, right? And if you're aiming for peace and paying off our house brought so much peace to our house, then don't go back into an unpeaceful situation, right?

And I also want to point this out.

“Avery, because of the way y'all chose to do this thing.”

Not only anybody in money, get this house paid off. Y'all could do whatever you want now. And that's a cool thing. I know when you have multiple options it can feel heavy. Be grateful.

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Ensured by the NCAA. Right on back to the phone lines where we have Dane, who's in Denver, Colorado. Hey, Dane, what's up? Hey, how's it going? Not bad. How can we help today?

Yeah, so I have a question. It's about a home purchase. I currently saved 32% of my paycheck. That's because of, like, his diligence, but also a kind of half-two I work for the state. And they require that they pull out so much and then it's met. So that's the reason it's a little high like that.

Was it safe to stay in Hawaii? Why are you to take 32% of your income? No, no, not the total 32. They require 10% and then they match 10%.

And then I do another 12% on my own through office and stuff like that.

So where's the other 10%. That's 22%. Yeah, where's the other 10% gone? No, they take 10% out of my check. Uh-huh.

Give me 10%. Oh, okay. I see what you say. So you're taking 22. If they're matching, I get 22 out, but as a total I'm saving 32%.

Okay. Got it. All right, I'm sorry about that. All right, good. So I have the ability to reduce that savings because I do.

I max out Roth and stuff like that as well. The whole reason I'm questioning this is I'm trying to build a home. It's a second home. My current home is paid for. And it's just a small cabin up in the mountains here in Colorado.

And it's going to the price tag is about 225. I have 60,000 saved. I already have the land paid for and all kinds of other stuff. So I'm going to need a loan out for I'm estimating by the time I build it. About 150 is what I'm going to need.

“I could cash flow this and that's what you're going to tell me today.”

You're not going to. You're not going to sell the paid off home. No, it's a second home. Yes, it's a little cab. Yep.

So I'm kind of, I feel like I'm rushed against time here. Why? Because I have a 13 year old daughter in three years. She's not going to want anything to do with this. Not true.

Yeah, where are you making that? Not true. Well, I'll just be in for a sec. You know, it's going to be a little bit harder to get her to go up there on the weekends. Oh, like I have a younger son to who would enjoy it.

But I just feel like I'm rushing it. I mean, I feel like I should wait. But at the time I get this test flow. It's going to be probably five years down the road is what I estimate. You can show me 18 years old going off the college.

And it kind of seeks the point in my opinion. Can you, okay, so what I'm hearing is what I'm hearing in a more abstract way is what you really care about is creating memories. So, and you care you do care about the location.

And it's not ours, but we go as often as we can. And we create memories there.

“And then when the time comes that we're able to buy our own place.”

No time was lost. We just now go to a different place to create memories. That's a great idea, Jay. You can quite a call. Wow.

Yeah. How do you call, too? Like in the, it's making its way around the internet set. Like, you know, kids when they turn a team that don't want to be around their parents, whatever. Dude, I've worked with teenagers and young adults and their families for more than 25 years for quarter century.

That's simply not true. They don't want to be around parents that are not that they know are not on their team. Right. Right. They don't want to be around parents that aren't well.

They don't want to be around parents who are financially stressed and strapped. And the home feels so full of tension that their buddies couch feels less, less tense. Right, even though it's a grocer and more uncomfortable, like, like, logistically, it's still, I can just drop my shoulders there. And so, yeah, I mean, I was going to suggest get a, get a camper out on y'all's piece of land.

Get a silly camper that makes the memories with. And here's the other side. And dude, I'm wrestling with this myself. I have a dream of getting a big, I want a ranch as dramatic because ranchers are like hardworking people. And I'm not going to come to this stuff.

But I'd love to have a place that was just mine with a bunch of acres on it that I could go out and goof around and fish on it and do all that stuff. And I got a 16 year old and I had that same clock that's ticking down, but here's the other side of it. And it just occurred to me a few months ago. So I'll just pass this along. Just me and you and a couple of million people listen.

What if my son goes to college somewhere else?

“And what if he meets the love of his life and they decide to settle down and on the other side of the country?”

And now I've got this big piece of dirt that I'm responsible for, like I take care of. But I want to go, I want to go see them. I want to be involved in their life. And if they start having kids and they, you see what I'm saying. And so, I know that definitely, yeah.

I can see where this great work is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got that core home. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah.

And, you know, I feel like I feel guilty even having this problem. You know, like. Yeah, don't. You're a guy who works really hard. And I've done everything.

I mean, we're multimillionaires or saved up. You know, everything's good. It feels like I've done everything right. Like why can't I just go get another mortgage and do this? I know I can pay it off.

Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I make.

Here's the thing, really.

You can. You're a hundred percent can. No, yeah. Let me tell you something. You could go do that.

There are worse things you could do in life. I did that. It's probably like you said you're multimillionaire. It's not going to nail you to any wall. You're not.

But you have decided an identity with money and you have decided that I feel best with money when I handle it this way when I'm debt free when I don't. And that's that's you chose that for a reason. You chose it because it feels good in your body. It gives you complete autonomy.

“I'm guessing because I know that's why I chose it, right?”

Yeah. By the way, Jane, if you said go, if you didn't got a loan today and you met with the GC and hand them, then already completed plans. Let's pretend you already have completed plans. And they put a shovel in the ground what in 60 day.

You're talking a year before you all can even use this thing. Yeah, you're right. It's all of. If to me, honestly, brother, it feels like you your eyes have been open just like mine to one of my favorite people on the planet, my son in your case, your daughter.

Like we're raising them to leave.

And dude, my days are filled with random out of nowhere grief that I've never expected.

There's days that like, I just look over and I'm overwhelmed by how much I love this my son. Right? And trying to run around and anxiously do something, especially like Jane said that violates who I am and how I've raised my kids. I've got to protect against that and I've got to just sit in the grief like man

three years. It's going to go quick. We're going to trip down. Right? Yeah, no, 100%.

I feel like I'm in the position I am is because I lived a life with patience. You know, I don't like you. I drive a crappy car. I did get a nice one recently and it's pretty awesome. Dan, I did get a new car and it's pretty sweet.

I'm not going to lie. You know what? This is like this is kind of like taking the high road.

We've never been in a situation where somebody is like really disrespected you.

And you have the right to go off on them, but you don't because that's not who you are. You're like, I'm just going to stand here and they're acting crazy.

Okay, I'm sorry if you love.

This is like that.

“You're in the situation and it kind of feels like man, I could really just go on and get this”

more. You could, but it's just not who you are. And it wouldn't feel good probably later on. And so going back to your original question, which is, should I cut back on investing to say for this build?

You could. I mean, you're, you're doing extra. We would say 15% of your gross income to go towards investing right now. You're at 22%. So you could pull back, you know, 7%.

And that would. It would help you go faster to get towards this goal of paying for this thing in cash. And I would do that. And I think that you should.

It sounds like you've got plenty in your nest egg.

And this is the time for you to do these sorts of things. You're in baby step seven. Now is the time that if you wanted to choose to invest more, you could, or if you wanted to choose more to take that margin and put it into other properties, you could. And so this would be you putting that money into other properties.

And then, um, here's a fun thing. I want you to do, okay? Say yes. I'm going to do this. Yes, I'm going to do this.

I want you to take your daughter out. I want you to take your daughter out to breakfast. Um, and the next week or two. I don't want you to say, hey, you're one of my favorite people in the world. And I love you more than life itself.

I got three years left with you. I want you to create a list of things of adventures you want to have with me over the next three years. And I'll make that same list. And we're going to put together. And we're going to go get after the next three years.

Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz.

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And right now, new members can receive a 50% credit towards their first month of membership. Go to CHMministries.org/budget and use promo code Ramsey. That's CHMministries.org/budget and promo code Ramsey. All right, back to the phone lines, where we have Jared, who's in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hey, Jared, how can John and I help today? Hey, I was just wondering, should I... Sorry. Straight step away from my job to escape the toxicity, or should I stay in order to finish babysept, too?

Good question. Tell us about toxicity. What does that mean to you? Yeah, right now, the big thing is psychological safety. I work at a church, surprisingly, but there are times where I wonder if I'm going to come into work, and somebody's going to blow up at me. Hmm.

Like, blow up like a senior pastor or a staff member. We'll scream and yell at you. Yeah, like a supervisor. I've had a moment where I did make a mistake. And you know, mistakes happen.

But I got like a call on the phone when I was at a rehearsal. I was like, hey, that was stupid. Why did you do that? You ruined my day. Like, I'm so pissed off right now. I can't believe that.

Like, it's so stupid. And then when I would ask, like, hey, what could I do to help? Like, oh, nothing. Like, you just ruined my day. I'm so pissed off of you.

Like, okay, I'm sorry.

“So I'll tell you right now, yes, you need to leave.”

And it shouldn't be, I mean, if you're, I'm not guessing that you're making, like, Buku Bucks or anything. I got a belief. Do you know what I'm saying? Are you?

Yeah. For the position though, I'm in. How much you making? It's about 50. Okay.

50 pre-tapped. Right now, you could run down to your local school district and say, hey, I want an emergency certification. I'm good with people and I want to be a teacher. And you would make more than that tomorrow.

but you would be in service to people, something that you're good at, you have a passion for.

And at least there, hopefully there's responsible adults that don't treat you like crap.

“But here's the thing I was going to say, yeah, I think you should leave.”

And Jade pushed back on this. But I think you should do it wisely. Meaning, if you don't have any money tomorrow, then you're in a way where soft situation. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, I would not run from something.

I would run towards something else. Well, occasionally, I think you have to run from something. And an immature, and by the way, you're at a values laden organization anchored into, like, it's such a gross violation of just human dignity, but on top of that, it's a gross violation of what this whole thing's supposed to be about, right?

That's facts. And so, yeah, absolutely. It doesn't, in by the way, we all make mistakes. I've made multiple mistakes today, right? That's just life, but nobody's running here in screened at me, right?

So, yes, I think you're in a not safe place, not a good place. Jerry, is it just you? Yeah, are you married, you have kids? Yeah. So, that's where the fund begins.

So, we're almost done paying off a quarter million in debt for student loans.

We have enough in savings to pay it off today. Oh, but we just had a newborn or first child. So, that adds a little bit to the complication. I was telling my wife, I would love to, I don't know, take up a trade. Maybe do CNC machining, since there's so much of that around here.

I'd love to do a trade or some kind of certification. But, like, we could cash flow it, or I could say in the job, and she could really take classes if I wanted to to get a certificate. I'm not doing anything secretly.

“Yeah, and I don't think you have to, I don't think you have to make this jump from this thing that I really hate to the thing that's perfect.”

I think that there's a gradual transition that can happen here. I think the first thing is we're getting into the weekend. So, my homework for you tonight would be, I'm going to go online. I am going to sit down with my wife, and I'm going to have some quiet time as well, where I'm brainstorming all the jobs that I might be able to do in the interim.

Because there is going to be a period between here and the perfect thing, right? So, I'm going to brainstorm all the things that I can do in the interim by myself. I'm going to sit down with my wife. I'm going to get her in to put, I'm going to get on chat, GPT. I'm going to generate ideas there, and I might call it my best buddy as well.

Am I going to call somebody who's a machinist? I want to see what that life is like. Uh-huh. So, that's what the next couple of weeks is devoted to. You being able to think about what I can do in the interim, and then go after it.

Maybe I heard my buddy said I could do Amazon flex, and if I did that, combine with this, I can make the 50K just like that, right? So, figure out what you can do is not going to be the be all end all job. It's just going to be right now. I need to replace the 50K.

It doesn't have to be what makes my heart beat, right? And then while you're doing that new job, now we can start. Okay, what will it look like? Let's go ahead and pay off these student loans, because we need to get debt free. Check that off the list.

And now I can start saying, what does it take to get into this trade? We can start saving up to make that happen. So, there's a timeline here that I want you to walk down.

“I don't want you to feel like you have to do this all in one swift motion.”

Does that make sense? Yeah. And here's the psychological medication I want you to take. Not real meds, okay? I want you to catch yourself and commit over the next few weeks to not.

Having imaginary conversations with people that you work with, where you just finally let them have it.

And you get these mic drop moments and you win, because I know you do that, right? Um, sometimes. I do it a lot. Okay. But here's the thing.

Your body has a hard time telling the difference between a real fight and one that you've, you're spinning up in your mind. But your body wears the stress either way. And when your body wears the stress, so does that newborn, so does your wife, so does your, your, the people you're trying to love at your church who have no idea that there's some kind of awful person, you know, leading that place. And so commit to, I'm going to do what's the next right move for me and my wife and for my new baby for us.

And I'm not going to give one second of my precious time with my family, with myself, with my job search, focusing on these imaginary conversations. I have to ask, is there somebody at your church you can go sit down with? Or is this like an executive? Um, that's another one of the toxic thing of somebody who is like HR. I was encouraged by my supervisor not to talk to, even though that's their job.

So, I can't talk to somebody, but get out of this mess, get out of this mess so far away from it.

People don't want to talk about it. It's this kind of madness that blows up faith community, so get out of that mess, man. Get out of that mess, man.

And let me just recap because we talked about a lot. So the first thing that we need to do is we're not going to quit this job until we get another job.

There's no point to do that to your family and there is something that you can do pretty quickly. A new job might be going to work at the grocery store, we're going to Walmart, we're going to Starbucks, find another job.

“But fast, right? We want to get you out of there fast. So that's the thing. One thing too is we said, you need to brainstorm all of that this weekend so that you can get out of that job fast.”

Thing three is you do need to take this savings that you have and you need to pay off your student loans. Keep, make sure you keep a thousand dollars saved, but something tells me you've got a little bit more than that. And then that way, once you start getting in the job now, we can start building up the three to six months of expenses. And now you can actually start funding whatever trade it is that you think you might want to go to school for. And you can start working on that. So that's the order of your events in which this needs to take place.

And I think if you do that, you're going to look back on this situation and go, man, I handled that the right way. I thought for myself and my family, I did the next right thing for us. [Music]

“This show is sponsored by Better Help. Hey, it's Deloni. Listen, Better Help just released their annual state of stigma report.”

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Today's question comes from Grayson in Mississippi. Grayson writes, "My wife and I are in our late 20s and we've been married for five years.

We had our first baby this year. I work in construction and make $120,000 a year.

My wife is a stay at home mom, which we both agreed upon. I have a Roth IRA that I've been contributing to since I was 20 and a pension through my local union. We have $6,000 savings and add to it every month. I also have a side hustle which I used to fund my hobby, which is race cars. I don't ever spend any of my salary on my hobby. My wife gives me grief about how much I spend on my cars, even though it doesn't affect our personal bank account. Am I being selfish for spending the extra money I make on my hobby when I could be putting it towards our savings?"

Interesting. It's an interesting frame of this question, which I actually understand what he's asking and I understand with the lens he's wearing. He feels this is a noble path and I get what he's trying to say here and also get that his wife is probably less concerned about the cars and more concerned about the way that they're running parallel in their own marriage. I'm going to tell you what I picked up on in this. He was detailed about everything except how much he's spending on the hobby.

It's like you're telling me how long you've been married, the down to the dollar on everything else, but when it came time to say what you're spending on this hobby, there was nothing there. So I have a sense that there's probably something in this equation that's being left out, whether it's the rate at which they're currently saving, the wife is like, "Hey, I listen to Ramsey, we need to be putting aside at least 15% maybe they're not."

I think that there's a way that all of this can happen in the right balance. Let me tell you what I picked up on. I see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So it's nine. The word I.

10, 11, 12, 13, 13 times he wrote, "Mine, I, me." Right? And again, what I'm saying, Grayson is, I want you to go through this question you sent us and replace everyone of those with hours. We are in our late 20s. We've been married for five years.

We had our first baby this year.

We make a hundred and twenty thousand dollars combined income together. Plus, I work aside hustle and we make an additional five, seven, ten thousand dollars. And we have a plan for how much money we want to save. And we both know that we have our own hobbies. The other person hates, right?

In my house, my wife doesn't think stand up comedy is fun at all. I would live there. I do live there. I love it. And she loves gardening.

I like it for like seven minutes. And I'm like, all right, let's move on. That's great. And we decide how much we are going to put towards those different things. And so, brother, it sounds like you are trying to do the right thing in your marriage and in your house.

But it's all about you.

“What you're doing, how you're doing it, and what you should have on your own that you're allowed to do whatever you want to do.”

And man, you're married. It's all of it is y'all. Your goals, your dreams, your retirement amounts, the vision you'll have for y'all's life. And my guess is the cars, is the proxy we're in the house. Like you said, why probably don't know how much she's spent on cars.

And his excuses or his responses, it's mine. It's not touching the main money, right? And that's the proxy we're for. We are not united, building this home, this marriage together. You were telling us how this is going to go.

And then you go have this other secret thing that I'm not a part of. Yeah, listen, I agree with that. And just to frame it out for somebody who's listening because I do think that when you have done the things that he has said, when it's like, hey, I don't have any more debt. I have savings.

I have money and retirement. All that's great. When you've done all these things, there is a certain feeling of like, I feel like I should be able to have XYZ. So let's kind of, I'll tell you something that has worked for me.

And I think this can work for Grayson.

“I think this can work for anybody listening.”

To kind of determine, is this a fair amount to spend? Because I think that's, let's pretend all the other kind of weird things in the conversation weren't there. The crux of the conversation is, what's a fair amount that I can spend on things that I like to do, you know? And I think that it really is just a checklist that you can go over in your mind. And there have been times that Sam and I have literally sat down and done gone over this to make ourselves feel right about a purchase.

Number one, and it's based on the things we teach. Number one, if you're a person who is on a budget, like every single month, you are consulting your budget. You are planning for every single dollar that you're spending.

If you are doing that, like that's your first green check.

All right, the second thing is, are you a person who's out of debt, right? If you're in debt now is not the time to be doing some crazy thing with your money, right? So if you are a person who is out of debt and the thing that you want to do is not going to cause you to go into debt, right? If that's true, give yourself a green check. The third thing is, okay, am I a person who is carrying the proper insurances?

And I know you didn't see that coming, but that's something that makes you a financially responsible adult. If you don't have a will, if you don't have life insurance, don't do anything else until you have that. Until you have the right health coverage, until that makes you feel secure in the things that you do financially going forward. So if you have that, give yourself a check. If you don't pause and go do that before you try to go do something crazy.

The third thing is, am I valuing, am I saving money in the proper areas? So we would say, hey, gotta have baby stuff one, gotta have three to six months.

“You need to be saving 15% for investing.”

And if you're beyond that, you need to be paying extra on your house, which is a forced savings account. If you are doing those things, okay, give yourself a check.

And then finally, you need to be a person who's practicing generosity.

Every single month, every time I'm doing something for the community, something from my local church, something for, you know, the orphans, whatever that is. If you are doing those five things, John, have a blast. That's right. And so let me speak to Grayson's wife here.

Not to Grayson's wife, that's not fair. She's not even a part of this thing. Let me speak to spouses. There's this illusion, Jade, and I found it while doing research for the other book.

I have a wife who has always had her things.

And I've always had my things. And just the way our chemistry works, we've always celebrated that we each have our own weird things that we're into. But I was unprepared for how many people told me. My spouse resents the fact that we don't do this thing together. That you like this thing, and I like this thing.

And so if Grayson y'all sit down and y'all create this, and the thing that brings you life and joy is fixing our ace cars and driving really fast and doing all that kind of stuff. And you're willing to go above and beyond and work for it, and we're putting this money in the account. And your spouse just says, "I don't like it. I don't want you doing it." That's a deeper issue. And that's not a financial issue, and that's not a reason for you to just siphon off and say, "We'll find that I'm taking my ball and going home."

Money, I can do what I want with it. You only need to get to the root of that concern, that conversation.

And it's much more common than I thought it was.

Well, yeah, I mean, you and Rachel, you do your money in marriage. We'll get away weekend every year. And I gotta believe this is part of that conversation, which is... Who do we want to be?

“Yeah, and you have to let your spouse even financially be themselves.”

Just because you're married, you don't erase who you are and the things that you liked to do and the things. And it's okay if your spouse doesn't care. Do you know my husband right now? He's into... He'll print something on the 3D printer and then go in the garage and use his airbrusher and paint it. What?

I have zero interest in it. When I say I have zero interest, I have none. But it gives me joy that he's doing something that gives him joy that has nothing to do with me. And I told him that, I told him yesterday I was like, "You want to know it, Sam?

I think it's so amazing that you found something to do that has nothing to do with making money.

It has nothing to do with career and it has nothing to do with me or us." Well, and good for you. Yes, I remember a few years ago when I had a comedy thing going and a music thing going. And I was like, "Hey, this is too much. I'll quit." And my wife said, "No, no, no, no."

Because when you're gone those two nights, I get a way better version of you on the other five. Go do those wild weird things that you like because then you're fully you and you get home. And that was, I remember being like, "I married well." [music] Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade.

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We've got Dan, who's in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. What's going on, Dan? Dan, I'm too blessed to be stressed to an honor to be disappointed. How are you guys doing? Okay, I know that's right, Dan.

Dan, what's up, dude? So, been married for about a year and a half. And my wife and I tried to start having a kid about six weeks ago and she's five weeks pregnant. Hey! So, now I'm talking about way to go.

Congrats, Dan. Thank you.

“So, question below down to, what do I need to look at putting into a sinking fund for just medical expenses that are going to be approaching us for the next nine to 12 months?”

I love that, Dan. Thinking ahead, good dad already. I love that. So, around here, the way we teach is if you're currently walking the baby steps to pause them and stack up cash, which is what you're trying to do right now. And a good rule of thumb there is to look at what is your deductible and what is your out-of-pocket max.

That's a really great thing to aim for because then you're saying, hey, no matter what, I know this is the amount that I'm on the hook for. And I know this is the maximum amount that I could be on the hook for. You see what I'm saying? And so, let's say you're out-of-pocket maxes. I don't know.

4,000. What do you think it is? I believe it's so to little closer to seven. Okay, seven thousand. Yeah, that feels about right.

So, that would be my goal. If I can get that, that's a very good goal. Let's say you knock that out very quickly and you go, okay. What else? Well, the things I'd be thinking about are, you know, if there's a Nick you stay.

If there happens to be an extended stay in the hospital, God forbid, I'm not putting that on you. But if there were, we'd need meals. Maybe there'd be some transportation. Those sorts of things, right? So, those are the types of things that you want to save up for.

And yeah, ultimately stack what you can, stack as much as you can.

And then once this baby gets here, you're going to have a pile of money sitting there. And hopefully everybody gets home safely. And then you can take that pile of money and throw it out whatever your next goal is. Whether that's paying off some debt, stacking up three to six months of expenses, or even a down payment for a house.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. You are a good call. Congratulations, dude.

Absolutely. All right. We've got Ashley up next. She's in Tampa, Florida. Hey, Ashley.

How can John and I help? Hello, I'm Ashley. I'm 31 and I'm trying to decide whether I should sell my town home or keep it as a rental. I bought it for $107,000 in 2019. And it's worth around $1,16.

But the HOA has basically doubled from $3,78 to $6,32 a month.

Oh, Lord. We'll be right for that. And it's not because the HOA will set it. And there are problems you increase in the game, not children. So, gosh, if with that HOA, even if you sold it,

why would you keep it as a rental? Don't rent it. Just get out of there. Okay.

“Yeah, that's what that was my thought because it's empty now.”

And I've been like, either putting it for rent or for sale. And I can't even seem to get what I want for rent as a rental. Why isn't it selling? How long has it been on the market? I haven't had it on the market yet.

But someone I know might be interested in the property. If that doesn't work out, call a Ramesy real estate pro and have them list that house and get a sold for you. Yes. Because right now it's weighing on your soul more than the financial weight.

It's just killing you. And it makes you mad every time because you probably like living there and the HOA's kind of run you out. Just get that cut that cancer out of your life. Yeah, absolutely.

My life has been gone a bit. When I used to have my crying area since I was really good for me

because I had a rental in the second bedroom.

So that was paying my complete mortgage. And I basically got to live in a mortgage for you, which is nice. Yeah. How did I have some things in it? Where are you living now?

I'm sorry. I'm living with my boyfriend and I don't see us living in here again. And due to my business, I'm being more downtown. Makes more sense for me. So it's saving. I said, "Don't work out. I still probably want to try to sign your rental downtown."

“Like a one bedroom apartment downtown or something?”

Yeah, you're over me. You know, I didn't think I saved my money. But the goal is, you know, this person I'm with, I see an upward trajectory for us. And the goal is to be debt free by the tiny of children. So I can be a safe home parent. Gotcha.

Okay. Um. Yeah. I don't want to get into a topic. That's not, that's not part of it. But um.

Okay. Yeah. Just, you know, just make sure you guys do this in the right order is what I would advise, you know, make sure you're looking out for what you're going to save. Make sure you're safe. Yes.

Thank you. You're not exposed financially. Yeah. Oh, no, it's definitely not. So the money that I would use that I would take from the sale of this property.

and make sure I'm okay there. You wouldn't put it in a high yield. Because I'm thinking less pretend.

“If I hear what you say, what you're saying, which is eventually sounds like you're going to marry this guy.”

Yeah. At least that's your plan. We haven't heard from him yet. So if you guys think you're going to get married, which you think at some point you're going to want to home together.

Hopefully he's contributing or he's got something to offer financially on his end. Now you've got this pile of cash to. Um. If this, if this horizon is less than five years, I don't know if it is and I'm not rushing you.

But if it's less than five years, I'd probably keep it in a high yield instead of investing it. That way you can put it in to either to help pay off, quote unquote, y'all's mortgage or if y'all want to buy a house. Um, that maybe somebody else used to date used to be in this house and you don't want that anymore,

which I wouldn't blame you. Y'all want to get a place or y'all want to get an apartment or whatever. Then you've got that that accessible right there.

Yeah, and then if, you know, be on that if something, you know, you guys finally get stable,

and there's a big chunk sitting there. Yeah, then you could turn around and invest that. Or let me, let me go dark just because. That's what you do. I wouldn't have a job if if if if if if everyone's plans worked out,

I wouldn't have a job and so I have a good job because very few people's plans work out. Um, So I don't have any credit card debt. I have right now the house, which I have about 85,000 less on it. Okay.

“So it will be some peace and also what other debts do you have?”

Um, so I don't have any credit card debt. I have right now the house, which I have about 85,000 less on it. I felt it, then, you know, profit that. About 50, 40,000. Okay.

Okay. Everything. Um, and then I have a $40,000 student loan. Don't pay that off. I should pay that off first.

I should be getting some inheritance. But with that exact amount. And that would go that looks straight to my student loan.

If that doesn't work out as plans don't always work out.

I will, you know, put everything in it. I think I can monthly toward this student loan to it's not so completely. Well, but if you get a $50,000 check from selling your house. I would take that money and put it towards my student loan. I want to know about the plan of the inheritance working out or not working out.

Is this based on?

“You don't know if you're in that person's will or what's that based on?”

Well, it's the weirdest thing. Um, so my grandparents had a property and in the hamstrings. Oh, okay. You come in and be in burial ground. And so I think the city and the city are fighting for the peace of land.

Okay, so there's, there's a lot going on here. But what John is saying is exactly right. Take the equity from the house. As soon as you get it, take it pay off your student loan. Be free and clear.

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You can do that on YouTube wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to send this episode to somebody who you think needs it. Somebody who needs a little hope, a little inspiration, a little kick in the pants. All right, let's go to Ethan, who's in Nashville, Tennessee right here in our backyard. What's up Ethan?

Hey, what's going on? Not a whole lot. Talking to you. How can we help? Okay, so thanks so much for helping.

I am a youth pastor. My wife. She also works in the same church as I do. We get to, we really get the privilege of working alongside the next generation. She's a worship pastor for the next gen.

I'm a pastor. And we have over a hundred thousand dollars of debt. And one of the things that students have been having us, you know, going out of high school,

“going into college is like, hey, should we go to college?”

Should we go into debt? Is that something wise to do? And we're really kind of feeling this tension between, like, face and wealth and talking about it? Can you help me maybe give good advice for that? Yeah, I can.

I love the question. I'll look at it from just just the facts of the situation, which is over here. We believe that the borrowers slave to the lender. There's just a piece of that that is not only true, but biblical. So I hope that kind of ties in with, you know, where you're at.

And so that's why we teach that way.

We teach that ultimately.

It's better for you to have control over your money and that your income is your biggest wealth building tool. Therefore, if you can avoid the pitfalls, you are going to launch yourself into a life that's full of financial peace, a life of financial freedom. You're going to be able to build wealth. You're going to build a build healthier relationships.

You're going to be better in your career because you're not going to be stressed by financial strain. And insanely generous. Yeah, right? Yeah, definitely. One of my friends tells me, you don't have to have money to be generous.

“You have to be generous to be generous, but also helps have money.”

Absolutely. I mean, I, no one's going to dispute. There's different ways of generosity, right? You can be generous with your time and your talents and all these different things. But people want cash also.

So I, there's that part of it. So now that being said, we're not, you know, looking down on or hating on someone who has gone into student loan debt. But I think that if you can get ahead of the problem, you can prevent it all together. And we do teach that the best way to avoid student loan debt is to pick the right, the right institution for your education. Yeah.

Right. Don't go out of state. Try to do your genetics at a community college. Be willing to do the work. The full time job of getting scholarships.

Be willing to work part time or do some a little bit of work while you're on campus to add, you know, to the cost. So that the student can have some skin in the game because then you actually feel like, hey, I'm not, this is just not some free ride that's provided to me. There is a little bit of a difference when you have a little bit of skin in that game. So that's the way that we teach. I also think using your own experience and then, I mean, what's yours?

Yeah. So I mean, my wife and I, like I said, we have over $100,000 that the majority of that is our schooling. Some of it is mine as well, and then the rest of it is just the vehicle that we bought her about a year ago. And I grew up with parents that taught me a lot about debt and during my finances and she grew up not having that. So she went to school somewhere where she couldn't afford and just believe that it was normal to go into debt.

And now we're trying to figure out how to get out of it and we're just feeling this tension right now where we're leading students.

And we're, we're trying to help them figure out how to follow Jesus ultimately.

And they're asking us questions like, hey, I'm feeling tension between wealth and with faith. And I have a hard time answering that sometimes as someone who is trying to figure it out too. If, if, if, I think you're conflating to separate child. I was just going to say those are two different issues. So yeah, number one, the greatest gift you can give those young people is for you to be an authentic honest human.

And just human being. And talk about the challenges you and your wife face as being being interested, called whatever we're going to use to ministry. And also this hundred thousand dollar albatross hanging around your neck. Yeah, right.

“And that's going to depend on how far away you have to live from your church.”

You can depend on where you're walking by a house that you can have tons of of youth group events at or not. It's going to impact how you give because you've already committed a hundred thousand of those dollars plus interest to a bank, right. And so I think there's that that that's conversation number one.

This is the whole we dug ourselves and we might get called, but we've already changed ourselves to this fence back here.

And until we get this chain caught, we can't, we can't make this other call. Do you get them saying? So that's number one. Yeah, that's all here. Number two, I, man, that's it.

What you're talking about is in the ethos now. And I get that tension.

“Jesus talks a ton about money and the love of money, right?”

And I think to me that's where when money becomes something that is an idol, when money becomes my destination point, when money external, some sort of external number becomes the proof that I have value. Now you got a problem. Now you got a drug.

You get what I'm saying. Or think in our culture. Think how insane it is. We answer the question. What do you worse with a number?

Yeah, right. That's madness, right? And so, but that's, that is the air we all breathe. And the temptation is to burn the idea that some guy who started, who started a porta-potty company,

and then happened to be here in Nashville where you and I both live, and Nashville started exploding as a city. A lot of people want to move here. And now suddenly, this guy has a ton of resources. Because he honored his contracts.

He took care of his customers. He pays his employees well. And now he's really successful. The temptation is let's go burn him down. And let's call him a bad guy or not a godly man.

Because the thing he does, the help and support he provides, is somehow unbiblical and ungodly. And I just think that's not true. I mean, I think it's patently untrue. And for me to sit around and look at everybody who has a business,

resources who's done well, and just make up stories about them, so that I can villainize and demonize them. Man, that to me feels counter to the message as well. Right?

And so there is always going to be attention between wealth and the faith.

There's always going to be attention. I feel it personally. Between wanting more and wins enough enough. All those things are actually spiritual questions. And I try to solve with dollars sometimes.

That's where I would focus a lot of my conversation. Who do you want to help? And if in the process of helping people, you end up really wealthy. Then that, like your buddy said, generosity is generosity, man. Then now I have the opportunity to help so many more people.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. Jay, I just said a lot there. What do you think? I think that you got it.

“I mean, the only thing that I would say is if I don't know how old the students are,”

but if you want to distill it down and make it pretty simple, I would go with money as completely a moral. It really just is his own thing and it highlights what you already are. So if you are already someone who is a tight-wad, when you get some money, you're going to be even more of a tight-wad.

If you're a jerk, it's going to make you a soup. Yeah. But if you were generous with a little bit, now you suddenly get more money. You're going to be ultra-generous. So the key here with money is the character piece I think.

And that's kind of on the is it good or bad side. And I think just on the practical side, I would just lean on hey, the borrowers sleep to the lender and that when it comes with money, it's not just about student loans, it's in general.

You have to decide your philosophy on money. And use your own story. That's what I do on this show every day. I use Sam and I story of being, you know, and $460,000 a debt.

And they're going to learn the most by you talking as a real person and saying, "Man, my wife and I, we had student loan debt." And this is what it's caused. And this is what we're doing. Yeah.

This is ultimately what our goal is.

We want to get out of debt because it's stealing from us. And we want to be able to be in a place where we can be generous and do,

“and I think that people are going to relate to that far more,”

because it's coming from a genuine place. And it's coming from a guy, a lady and a guy that they trust. Have you your students? We'll be cool if you did a series. But have your students invite them over to your place.

And you'll watch the borrowed future documentary that we put out a few years ago. About student loan crisis. I think that would be eye-opening for them. And it would give you and your students a lot of talking points. But there's a lot of messaging in the world right now about how,

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That's Worldwatch.news/Ramsy. Welcome back to the Ramsy Show in the Fairwins Credit Union Studio. I'm Jade next to me, John Deloni. Taking calls about your life and money, and we've got Tammy, who's in St. Paul, Minnesota. Hey Tammy, how can John and I help today?

Hi John and I'm so excited to talk to both of you. This is great. Awesome. Yeah, my husband and I are on baby steps 6 and we've been working really hard for the goal of having our house paid off on my 6th year's birthday.

You know, it's such a major milestone. That's cool. That's coming up the February. Our budget and all my fancy spreadsheets and everything shows that this is totally doable. And whenever we've had unexpected expenses before, we were able to adjust them, like,

stay on track with that goal. But now we've had a bigger issue. I was diagnosed with breast cancer last. I'm so sorry. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, it was caught early and I'm going to be fine. I'm very confident. I'm going to be fine. But my budget didn't account for us meeting, like, our yearly out-of-pocket max in these few months.

And it didn't account for me losing all my overtime. I go through, like, surgery and six weeks of radiation and all that. Yeah. So we're going to end up just about $22,000 short of the goal by my birthday. And I'm kind of devastated by it.

You know, we worked so hard. It's been really careful for the budget. We don't spend on extras. But, like, on top of that, I also feel bad about feeling bad about it. That doesn't do any good, right?

That doesn't know what any good. Because the more it is, it's going to be paid off next year. Yeah. Anyway. But it's going to be hard enough to hit 50 as it is and before I was kind of looking forward

to it. Yeah. Yeah. But now it's, like, hitting a brick wall. All right.

“Let me jump in here, Tammy, because, like, I feel myself rising up here, okay?”

I'm going to ask you a question and I'm going to tell you something that maybe has never

been said on the Ramsey show, ever. Okay? Here's my question for you. What did the paid off house signify for you? Oh, freedom, stability.

It's a lot of less stress in my life. I just made your mouth on the finish line at the end of a marathon. It's going to be just a great event. And is that is, are all those things going to not happen in April when you pay it off instead of everywhere?

It will, but in the meantime, it didn't fit. Yeah. So here's what grief does to us. And I say grief. I'm holding it loosely and there's some very acute grief.

Like big, heavy stuff. It tends to kind of act like an ooze and it just takes over everything. And so you are right. I'm in my late 40s. I totally get it.

I'm excited to turn 51 day and a few years. And also, I've got some miles on my body. I know I'm over halfway done. And I don't like that, especially my kids are getting older. Like the thought of that, right?

And so there's grief involved with that. And you have a lived experience that everyone I've ever sat with who was face with some sort of cancer is this strange terror that my body tried to kill me. Right from the inside out, right? And so that's a grief.

That's a fear. That was not on our bingo car. That's a frustration. And then, man, when you put that in context and you have an honest conversation with yourself about

how have I lived these first 50 years?

Am I the person I want to be? What are some great experiences?

“What are some things I want to do differently in my back half?”

Who do I want to be? When I'm 60? When I'm 70? When I'm 80? And start looking that way.

And then you have an honest grief conversation. And not a conversation, but season with the cancer. Like health wise, you're going to be okay. If I'm actually all going to be okay. But there's still that lingering betrayal.

My body tried to kill me.

And being there? I didn't suddenly, all right.

“So my mile time is going to be a little bit slower.”

But you know what? I ran a freaking mile. Like you're all going to have that paid off celebration. You're all going to have the freedom and have the peace. You get what I'm saying.

But right now, it's all jumbling up into one big bucket. And so spending time kind of pulling that apart and saying, What am I actually grieving here? And we had a goal. We're going to hit that goal.

It's not going to be as fast as we did. Cool. I guess you can be disappointed about it. But man, now I want to say the thing that I don't think's ever been said on the

show you're ready in your particular situation right this second.

I don't care about your budget. I don't care about your spreadsheets. You, my sister, be cancer. Yeah. And I'm going to leave today's show.

And I'm going to smile all the way home. Because I got to talk to somebody today that be cancer. And that had done the work for years before cancer, so that when it hit, it didn't completely upend everything in your life.

And you've worked hard enough on your marriage that you had somebody that was right or die with you through this thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. You won.

You won. You won. Spread sheets. Who cares? Budget right now.

Who cares? Sister. You be cancer. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. You get what I'm saying? Yes. Yes. For sure.

All right. Now budget's matter. Blah, blah, blah.

But you be cancer, right?

Yeah. Yes. Every day is a open your eyes and throw your fist up in the air and say, "Bring it." Yeah. Okay.

You do what I'm saying? Yeah. I do. All right. I appreciate that.

Thank you so much. Dude, it's been a high honor to get to talk to you just as straight up gangster. You're awesome, Tammy. Absolutely. Wow.

That's, I mean, John, I don't think you could have said it better. There's points in life where it's not about the money. No, man. It's just not, you know. And this is one of them.

Well, and can we say, let me just take two seconds on this.

I don't want to compose my thoughts because I get all emotional when I talk to somebody like that who's awesome on 50 different levels.

“I think when we talk about the baby steps and we talk about getting out of debt and we give people a roadmap on how to do that.”

That works 100% of the time if you just do it. And it can very easily. The road markers are paid off house, paid off credit card. And that's by design. It's that way.

But we, we kind of blow by it a lot. We don't spend a lot of time on it. But man, the big win here for her. Yes, it'll be cool that she pays her house. It'll be amazing.

It'll be a moment of freedom. Whatever the big win is that years ago, Tammy and her husband decided we're going to take control of our finances in our house. And we are going to be in the driver's seat of our own life. And then cancer happened. And to me, the big win for this family is that it will be a big win that they pay off the house.

But the big win is that they weathered a major storm. They had great doctors. They were blessed. They had each other. They had family support whatever and got them through this season.

That to me is the win that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, they said, hey, let's make a plan for when not if. And man, they did it. They did it. Yeah, I think I think that's fair. I mean, that's the whole point.

Life is not when something happens. It's like, it's going to happen. And you just don't know what it is. Is it a job loss? Do you break your leg?

Is it a diagnosis? Is it a, you know, infertility? Whatever. Yeah. There's just all the stuff that happens.

And the best thing you can do. You can't stop the things from happening. You can't make them less painful or less disappointing in her eating. Right? It's still disappointing.

It's still not what you expected or planned for. But it just, you can relieve some of the stress, some of the anxiety, some of the pain.

“To be financially secure, so that the money part of it is the least important thing that you're focused on.”

Now we can go to war on the thing. Yes. Exactly. You can be a human being and just see the person in the moment. Okay.

I'm going to go visit whoever sick. I'm going to be there. I'm going to do this. I'm not worried about bills. I'm not worried about loss of wages.

I'm not worried about all these other things. Because you did the things to make sure that your financial footing was secure. [Music] Dave Ramsey here. For more than 30 years, I've been talking to folks on the air and I can tell you that most people are broke.

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If you're not sure where to start text quiz to the number 3, 3, 7, 8, 9. And we'll help you figure out which option fits your situation. Alrighty then, we've got Renee, who's in Denver, Colorado. Hey, Renee, how can we help today? Hi, John. Hi, Jay. Thanks for taking my call.

You bet? I'll just jump right into it. I would say for the last two months every day, almost every day, I tell myself. Call in and pay off your car because you have the money to pay it. And then I get this knot in my stomach that I'm like, the minute I pay this, something's going to happen.

Where I need that money. Okay, how much do you owe? How much do you have left to pay? What's the amount? 15,300. And how much do you have in savings? So I have two different savings in one, I have 16,500. And in the other one, I have about 20,000.

Okay. And we're both in how you'll savings account.

“So here's the thing that I've realized about certain types of financial fears over time,”

because you're talking to somebody who once had almost half a million dollars of debt and no savings.

So you want to talk about scary times. Like, that is scary. And one of the things I learned about fear is, you know, you can have a fear that's totally rational. And it's okay to feel that way. And then you can have a fear that is totally irrational. And sometimes you're not realizing which is which is in the moment you're just scared. But it's so good to test those and find out first of all, is this, is there even any rationale to this?

So in your case, I would look at this and go, okay, let's pretend that you took the 16,000 that you have saved and you turn around. You paid off the 16,000 dollar car and left you have 20,000. So now your brain is freaking out warning, danger, danger. I'm scared. Like, to quote you, something's going to pop off this next moment. The moment I do this, something's going to happen.

So let's actually play that out. What could it be? And this really, really, really helps me Renee to figure out if something is, if there's even any validity to it. So in your mind, what could happen in the next, let's pretend the moment you hit send on the payment?

“What could happen that's going to cost you 20,000 dollars?”

And my mind, like, our furnace goes out and winners coming up. How much does it cost to fix a furnace? Well, to fix it would probably only be around a thousand dollars. Okay. To buy one would be.

Is your furnace acting up? Is it acting up? Is it on its last leg? No. Okay, so that's not, we can now clear that out and say it's not valid that it would just up and pass out, right? It might need to repair, but you're not going to need to replace it.

That is absolutely true that you will not need to replace your furnace completely. So what's the next thing that could pop up that's 20,000 dollars? Um, well, I have a, we have a special needs daughter. Okay, now we get somewhere. I have that many before in the account.

Even though I knew I had the money to pay it off. So about six months ago, we had to put a stair lift in our house because she doesn't. She can't walk. She doesn't. Okay.

I can't carry her up and down the steps. So there went 16,000 dollars that they goodness. I had in my hands account because I didn't want to finance it. So if we look out over the horizon, let's, so I love that you said that because this is a great place to start. Now if we look out, knowing that if we look out over the horizon, we go, okay, just like we would do with the budget.

Let's think about all the things that we might need to spend money on.

What are all the things that might pop up suddenly that we would need to spend upwards of 20,000 dollars on. And you can do that. That's your homework to do tonight because that's going to give you peace. Then it's no longer an unknown. Is it a van?

Is it a care? Is it some sort of therapy? If you, the more information you have in the face of fear, John, this is you. Facts are friends. I'm just stealing that right now.

The more information that you can put in front of this is really going to help you.

“Because the truth is, you'll probably have more security if you pay off this debt.”

Now you don't have debt weighing on you because I promise you that's weighing on you more than you realize. And you got 20,000 saved. And nothing stopping you from adding to the 20,000 at this point because you don't have any debt. You can actually stack up more savings. What about that?

Yeah. All right, John. I know in my mind. Tell me that. My mind.

I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember. Right. So Renee, have you had a moment in your life when an emergency happened and you didn't have the money to cover it?

Has that happened to you? Oh, yeah. Of course. Okay. Okay.

Okay.

So here's what I don't want you to do.

Don't go to war with your body. It's just trying to keep you safe. Its job is to overreact and make sure you're always okay.

“Even if being okay right now is not the best thing for you long term.”

Okay. So like when you feel that not in your stomach, I want you to exhale and smile and say, oh, thank you for trying to take care of me. I'm good though. Because you feel that not in your stomach and then that sends you on a whole other trajectory, right? Of anxiousness and worry and why am I stressed and what if this happens?

And if you're like me, you start making up stories and then you start responding to those stories. Instead of just being grateful, oh, man, my body's trying to take care of me, it's been down this road before. And here's the second thing. If you have put your identity as a mom, as a wife, as a human, and I have $36,000 in cash in the bank, then it's hard to untangle that.

So I want you to do this weekend, spend some time asking yourself, am I good mom? And the answer is going to be yes. Right? And let's untangle our identity from this safety net, this imaginary safety net. I'm good because I have this dollar amount.

Now here's the third thing.

I want to play a fun game with you, you ready? Yeah. Two weeks ago. Let's say two weeks, two Fridays ago.

“You went to hit send on this final payment to pay your car off completely.”

And then you're gut told you and went, got in knots and it said, "Somebody's going to happen. If you do this, don't do it, don't do it." Has anything bad happened in the last two weeks? No. Okay.

No, it hasn't. No. And this is the last day. Well, besides our home, this is it. So, in my heart, I know I need to do it because I need to start concentrating on putting

more on to my retirement. Yes.

You know, because there's always that.

And I've done it before all along. You know, of course, I made the mistake to buy another car. But I do know, once I do it tomorrow, I'm going to be like, "Hey, I don't have a car payment." That's right. There you go.

There you go. And I would even go further. Instead of saying, "I need to do this because I've got all this other stuff I got to do." I'm going to do this, so I can drop my shoulders and laugh in my own house. Right?

Yeah. I'm going to do this because I'm going to be free of every financial burden except for our home. I'm going to have peace in my house. Here's a crappiest thing. Here's the worst part, it is the worst.

You could hit sin this afternoon and something could happen tomorrow. You're right. And because you busted your butt, you have $20,000 in the bank already.

- Yes. - You've already done the work. - We're getting saving money, that's the easy part is for me it's saving the money. It's spending it at a hard time, you know, spending the money.

- See if field to discomfort, feel your body trying to take care of you and say thanks, I appreciate it, I'm driving today. And we are gonna be free. - You get it? - Yeah.

- I get it, I just... - I'll work on it.

- Don't work on it.

- Don't work on the phone.

- Don't work on it. Walk right through it.

“Yes, pay this off as soon as you'd off the phone”

and feel it, feel it. And then I want you to run out in your front yard and do your debt-free scream so all your neighbors can celebrate with you. I don't know anybody, anything.

(upbeat music) - Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next.

Now, you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show, whether you're making a decision

or just want something explained,

Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple, and free to use. Go to RamseySolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's RamseySolutions.com.

(upbeat music) All right, guys, Ask Ramsey is our free AI tool that's built and trained on Ramsey proven principles. So today we're gonna break down one of the questions that we received this week.

The question was, how does the rate of return on a 401k actually work? And what is it that I should look for?

“So first off, it's important to know that your 401k”

doesn't have a fixed rate of return like a savings account would, okay? Your return is based on the market, right? And it's based on your investments

inside of your account that's invested.

The 401k is just the tax advantage container that that money is sitting in. What you put inside it is going to determine how it grows. So your savings rate, so your savings rate matters. Also, most 401k plans offer a menu of mutual funds.

When those funds grow, your account grows right along with it. When the market drops, your balance steps. That's normal. Ramsey uses 10 to 12% as an estimate. That's an unexpected average annual return

for good growth stock mutual funds over the long term. And we do that for planning purposes. We use 11% as the working number. You'll hear us say that all the time. Now, that's a long term history average for the stock market.

It's not a guarantee for a single year again. It's just the estimate. Some years, you'll see it upwards of 20% of more. Other years, you'll see negative returns. That's just the truth.

The key word here is average over decades annualized rate of return. And let me say this.

“That's why, honestly, this is me just being transparent.”

I don't look. I don't know. Because I am an over-emotional person. Yes. And I also like to think I'm smarter than I am on things sometimes.

I think that's good. I think there's a fair balance. So because what you don't want is you've invested your money. You thought it was a good-- No, I keep tabs.

You want to keep tabs, thank you. Yeah, and I talked to my advisor, and I get the quarterly reports and all that. But I'm not checking this every month to see what their rate of return is.

No, you should not check your investment. It counts like you check your checking account. There you go. And because it, because for me, it will make me nuts. And if it dips a little bit, my body's like,

it's all coming down. And over the past, I have a bad track record of either stressing myself to the point of no return for no reason. Or doing something dumb. And so for me, it's a roller coaster I got on.

And staying strapped in-- Yeah, any choice I make to get off this roller coaster is going to end in me getting hurt. So I'm going to stay on this roller coaster. If some point in the roller coaster, just if it breaks,

I will deal with that problem then. But I chose to get on this roller coaster. So I'm just going to go out. It's going to go down. It's going to go way, way, way up.

It's going to be fun. We're going to have a good time. And if you feel like John, if you have questions about how much you are contributing in your 401k, or maybe just want to learn more about investing,

use Ascremes, you can really help you. Ask your question today for your situation at ramsysolutions.com, or just click that link in the description if you're listening on podcast, or the YouTube. So we've got Jennifer, who's in Mobile, Alabama.

Hey, Jennifer, how can we help today? Hi, yes. My family's active beauty military. And we have saved quite a bit of money. So we could potentially buy a house.

So we don't know if it's smarter to invest some money instead of spending on a house. When we don't know how long we're going to be there. When we leave this duty station in two years,

to make 20 years of service.

OK, so that's a 10-year play. How long are you guys? Oh, 32. OK. Is there any-- let me ask this.

So you know for sure after two years, you're leaving where you are now. Within that eight-year period, is there any chance that you could be in that same space for eight years, or do you move every two years?

No, there's a minimum of four years. So we could potentially live at the next student station for four years, and then PCS somewhere else, or we could just-- he could finish and save every eight years, but it's not his choice.

OK. You know, there's part of this. And I'd love to hear John's take on that you might know a little bit more about this than me. But I'm looking at it kind of from--

it's purely from the dollar side of it,

“which is the truth is, since there's so many unknowns in this,”

every time you buy and sell a house, it's expensive, right? There's realtors fees, there's moving companies, there's boxes, there's money going out of the door left and right. And so obviously, it's not a great thing to pick up and move every two years,

every three years, or really even every four years, right? There could potentially be two to three more moves in this span of 10 years. And that's a little bit like, I don't love that. I also don't love the fact.

I mean, I'm sure there's part of you that's like,

I don't want to be 42 buying my first house.

I also understand that. So where my mind goes to this is when we pick our careers, when we pick where we live, when we pick our spouse, when we pick all of these things that are major parts of our life, we kind of choose the things that go along with it.

And I think that part of this, when you choose the military, there is a piece of that where you're going, all right? That's what this means. What it means is it's going to be a few years before I get to settle down.

And that's different from the folks around me, in some cases, that might be different than my sister or my aunts or my friends. They got to settle down as soon as they had the money for the down payment.

“And I think that that might be the battle in this more so”

than maybe the dollar's in sense, because I think you guys can save up. And gosh, yeah, in 10 years, you're going to be able to buy what you want in cash. But I think until then, that's probably going to be the struggle.

Do you want to buy a house? Jennifer, do you feel like I need to or I should be doing it? I think it depends on where we go. Because there's a good, my husband's in good communication with people that are choosing where he goes next.

And so, like if we were to get stationed, like close to family, close to age, like five hours or less, like I'd be more inclined to buy a house, or if it was a place where like housing was more affordable, it would be more inclined to buy a house.

But if not, like if we don't buy a house, I guess like the money's just sitting in like a savings account, it's considered hiding all of it, but it's not really high. It's like a 1.5% percent. That's true, but if you committed it,

but if you committed to, we're going to ride this thing out, then you could invest that money, and you could have a higher annualized rate of return, which is what we just talked about in that previous segment, which now-- - You could open a brokerage account

and just drop it in there. - Yeah, and now we're not talking about four percent, we're talking about hopefully 11 percent, or more, depending. - And what I take, so I have like six months,

six months of expenses in savings, and then we have probably like what we would want to spend on a house, like 30% down right now. So we would just move the 30% over to like a brokerage account, and then take it out when he's out of military.

“- If that's what I would do, if I were in your shoes,”

I would sit down with your husband in tonight and say, here's, I mean, you can say your point of view.

Say, here's what I've been thinking about,

and here's what I want to present, and this is why. And that's what I would do, because anything less than that, you are playing a risk game with putting that money in the stock market, I wouldn't put it in less you're going to leave it in five years, right?

Three to five years for sure. So that's what I would do, and again, the real estate play, I totally get it. It's like, well, gosh, waiting 10 years, that feels like a lot, and I'm not gonna,

I won't hold you. I believe that having a personal residence is a major part of building wealth. We know that here, and it's not to say that you're never gonna do it, and it's not gonna say that you're not investing

and saving up that money. You've just chosen the route well, now we've got a 10 year span, which now we can do it likely the best way, which is we should be able to put cash down, like almost full cash down on something,

which is pretty awesome at the end of 10 years. - And Jennifer, I'll tell you, this is a biased answer, okay. I just have had students and graduate students, I've lived in a couple of communities that had a lot of military servicemen and women.

then they got deployed out, or they were stuck in a house,

and they were promised it was only gonna be, it was gonna be six years, and suddenly it's 18 months, and I gotta move you over here, and then they're gonna, they have two or three trailing houses, 'cause they just bought a house in every town,

they got stationed in. I've just sat with those folks, they've been my friends, they've been my students, and the stress they have, not only dealing with the move, not only dealing with school, not only dealing with their kids, and their spouses,

but also trying to deal with selling a house, four states over, my bias is, until you're in a place where you get to decide what you're gonna do next, that you hold off, as long as you can.

“- Yeah, and I think that's really, really good advice.”

And just frame it as a wonderful thing, when you sign up for this military life, it's a life of service, and guess what you don't have to worry about doing, replace in your roof, replace in the AC, that's a really, really great thing.

So just focus on the positives of renting while you can. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hey guys, George Campbell here. Do you ever feel like insurance companies only care

about your money and not what you actually need? Well, there's a better way. When you go to Ramsey's Insurance Resource Hub, you'll start feeling confident that you're getting the right coverage

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you can connect with a Ramsey trusted insurance pro who will only get you what you need at the best price. Go to RamseySolutions.com/insurance, RamseySolutions.com/insurance. (upbeat music)

All right, you guys, the Ramsey show scripture and quote of the day, my favorite, John one five, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness

has not overcome it, never will.

I added the never will part, by the way. All right, Joe Girard said,

“the elevator to success is out of order.”

You'll have to use the stairs once step at a time. - I like that, you guys. - Gosh. - That's nice. All right, let's go to Jake, who's in Chicago, Illinois.

Hey, Jake, you're on the line. - Hey, how's it going? - Doing all right, how you doing? - Not too bad. - How can we help?

- Um, so I have about $20,000 on scared debts. Um, and I'm trying to figure out how to get out of it with what I have in the best way possible. - Okay, I like that question. So, what do you have?

Tell us about your income if you have any money saved. - Uh, do you want gross income or do you want it? - Uh, tell me what you make every month. That's a good place to start. - Yeah, 70, 200.

- Okay, so $7,200 a month. Do you have any cash saved? - Uh, yeah, about $14,000. - Okay, so I mean, we're more than halfway there.

“Okay, so, tell me what are you thinking about doing?”

And then we'll take it from there. What do you think the best route to get in this cleared up is? - Um, my brain usually goes to like, trying to figure everything out to like maximize stuff and I'm kind of a minimalist about like,

for example, the type of call that I have a paid off car. I can show it for a decent amount of money and get a cheaper car and help you some of it to help half the cash. - I like to do.

- You go to the cash that I have. I don't have like, it's like more than a relational thing. I can't really like force someone to spend all that money. But are you married? - That's my, I am married.

- So, is she have her money and you've got your money? - It's one of those deal, yeah. - Have you all had that conversation? - Yes, sir. - And she's no go.

- I've tried to do the baby stuff before. It hasn't worked, I haven't been able to do it. - I'm talking about the pre-baby step conversation which is we are going to be a couple that we do everything together.

We don't do part of our life together. We're all of it together. She's out on that. - Yeah, I would say, as every relationship

there's always imperfections.

- I wouldn't call this an imperfection. I would call this an issue because I think it's a trust issue. - It's an end-to-value issue. - So, I can't really hear, I don't know if I can go

and go on guard my wife on that. - Absolutely, no, I got to go. - No, she's not the villain. I'd want to make that super clear. - Yeah.

- It's, if you, if you and your wife are married and you've got your debt and she's got hers and you get your salary and she gets her salary and you've got your savings and she's got her savings. A, you and I both know that's not optimal.

Two people work in a together pool in the same direction. You get their faster and it helps us give you a path forward. - All right, all right, so is that the case? Pretty much.

- I agree with John, this is something you, and I just want to acknowledge this, you're like, "Hey, I just want to pay my car off "but I didn't call in for all this, "but it's very hard for us to not solve a problem

"at the root otherwise we're just putting a bandede on it." So we really care about that and we care about you guys and your marriage, too. So I would, I love what John said. I would just approach this and go,

"you want to know what I was thinking. "We're keeping things separate "and it's just setting a precedent that I don't like. "I really want to be all in on this with you. "I want full transparency

"because if we start keeping things like this separate, "like where's the line?" And that doesn't sit right with me, right? And I think if you frame it like that and then we can start to learn about each other,

I think this is a curiosity play, thank you, John. It's a curiosity play of a wonder why it feels so hard for us to combine money. And I think if you say it like that, it's not your the bad guy, I'm the bad guy,

“'cause the truth is we're all bringing in stuff”

to our marriage, all of us. My husband and I have been married almost 20 years and you bring stuff in and things follow you and causes you to do certain behaviors and sometimes you don't even realize what it is

until you start to unwind it in a conversation. And so I think that that is such a good thing for you guys, how long have you been married? - I don't mean you're on Sunday. - Perfect, I love this so much

because this is the time where you start having those types of conversations. And it's not a negative thing, it's not a bad thing, it's all building and it's all growth. Okay.

- Let me say like the double click on what she just said, the conversation is not start with baby steps with money, with dreams, with retirement accounts. It starts with we're a year into this thing.

Here's a dream I have, here's what I would love.

I love to do all of my life with you. And you do all of your life with me. And you might have a partner that looks at you and says, "I will never do that." And then you have a choice to make.

Okay, cool. Or like much harder choices. So you live your life and do your thing. I'm just telling you, and you know this, I've looked at all the data and couples

who share a check in the account who go all in together their lives and they are married well. Man, their lives are extraordinary. It's just, it's amazing. - Okay. - It's hard.

- So let's talk about them. Let's be totally realistic and say, let's pretend. - You're all on your own.

“- You're all on your own because the truth is”

and even folks listening, this happens. You get bit by the rams you bug and you're like, "Yes, let's go, and your spouse has nothing of it." And they're not changing today or tomorrow or in the next six months.

Or maybe in the next year they might not. So what can you do in the meantime? And I love this. I talk about this and what no one tells you about money. I have a really good friend of mine who ran into this situation

and it's not to say that just because your spouse is not really moving, doesn't mean you can do nothing.

The truth is it's gonna go a lot slower

because it's easier to work together. And if you've expressed, I would really like to work together. Then all you can do, and I call, this is not fancy, but I call it share-do share. It's, you're keeping, you're doing your part of being transparent,

which is saying, "Hey, I'm gonna call your wife Sally." "Hey, Sally, I got $20,000 a debt." And this is just over a casual conversation. You know, I think I'm gonna pay my car off. And I'm just whatever extra margin I'm gonna do with that.

And so you're letting them know, you're sharing your philosophy,

“you're letting them know what you're doing.”

You're doing everything on your part to bring them in. Every time you make a payment, "Man, I paid off with another $700, man, I paid off another $1000." And you're letting them know, and then pretty soon, it's gonna be gone, and you're gonna say, "Man, I paid it."

And you're sharing, you're doing the action you said, and then you're sharing the result. And that's the best way you can do. The friend of mine paid off over $90,000 that way. And it was crazy because at the end,

that's when the spouse got on board, it was like, "Sure, they did." (laughing) You know, but is that ideal? No.

Is it the way that we say ideally it should be? No, but life happens over here. But it's already sometimes, you know?

Yes, that's the reality is it would be wonderful

if you had one conversation with your wife and like, "I dream of Jeannie," she said, "You got it, dude." But that's likely not the case, and I just also wanna normalize this conversation for a lot of other folks. When you have this conversation,

it is rarely gonna be a one-time talk. No, it's over and over again. It's over and over again. And the other truth is, John, there might be a couple of arguments. There might be a couple of parts where it's like,

"Oh, man, this kind of rose up some other stuff." It's like, you are kind of waking up the sleeping giant, a little bit. And I just want people to know that it's not perfect. It's not like, yeah, yeah.

Family is not a full house moment.

and you can pay out and buy cheaper car

and pay your debts off, do that, man. - You guys think it's wise to sell it? I think you're going back and forth, and I'm pretty excited about it. - I like that. - I like that.

- I like that idea because the 14,000,

“that's a shared savings that you guys have”

or is that just your savings. - So it's our savings combined. - Okay, then yes, I would say, and I would share it with her, I'd say, I really wanna pay off my car debt in order to do that,

because I don't wanna offend you. I don't wanna overstep and take too much of this 14,000. I'd like to take this much, and then on my side of the sacrifice,

“I'm going to sell my car so that you don't wanna pay?”

- More than that difference gonna be. - Oh, in the car. Okay, so I can sell it for around 14,000. - Okay. - And then can you take seven from the saved money and clear it?

- So I have to ask. - And I would. - And I'd ask 'cause if we did that, that would cause then I have to get a new one, obviously. And I'd drive like an hour or two hours every day to work,

so I need something a little bit more reliable. So how much she make? - Maybe I'll just, like, meet a loan or ask him about it. - I'm talking about margin you have.

- Here's what I do, here's what I do.

I would say head of time, I'd come up with a plan and I'd say, I'd like to be able to take 7,000 from this to pay off the car and here's what I'm gonna do. And I think that's fair for everybody.

“Hey guys, remember, there's ultimately only one way”

of financial peace and that's walked to walk daily with the Prince of Peace price Jesus.