Financial Wisdom Matters More Than Financial Timing

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start budgeting for free today. [MUSIC] >> Normal is broken, common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the Fairway's Credit Union Studio,

this is the Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell here with Dr. John Deloni. We're taking your calls at Triple 8, 825, 5, 225. You call us up, we'll try to help you take the right next step for your money and your life.

Hannah kicks us off in Orlando for what's going on, Hannah. >> Hi, so we are-- Me and my husband, we are currently on baby set number two. We're currently at Free Side from our mortgage.

So we are trying to get our free six months savings built up,

so that way we can move on to the other baby sets. My question is when we are setting up our emergency savings

“or three to six months, what should we include in that?”

So I am a sale home mom, but I also earn my own business. So I work part-time and then I have my health insurance that we pay for privately. Should I include the health insurance expect expense as part of that, since it is something that it is really expensive for both me and

my daughters, so we're just trying to figure out what we should include in our emergency savings plan itself. >> Yeah, it sounds like you guys are wanting to lean towards six months versus the three. That's sort of the spectrum that we have.

And if you do have, you know, if there's single income or variable income or there's health issues in the family, then you want to lean towards six, you'd rather be safe than sorry, not have enough to cover the gap. So six months is the goal. How much money is that?

>> Um, between like mortgage, like our H-way car insurance health insurance and groceries, it probably would be I would estimate probably about 15 to 17,000 for six months for us. >> Okay.

“>> And that's not including health insurance.”

Our health insurance for me, my daughter, is about 600 a month. So it's pretty expensive, unfortunately. >> Okay, so let's add that in. So 600 a month, six months worth, let's add another four grand for that.

So now we're at basically 20 grand, we get you guys by for six months to cover all

of your, your basic needs. We're only, we can strip out the luxuries. We don't need every single thing in there. If you did have a legitimate storm or a job loss, we're not going to live how we were living before.

>> Yeah. >> Okay, so 20 case the goal, you guys have the $1,000 starter emergency fund right now. Are you working towards the 20? >> Yes, we currently have almost 12 grand in savings and that's including pretty much everything liquidated that we have in terms of savings, including the $1,000, baby starter.

>> Wow, so you guys are only 8,000 away. >> Yeah, we're pretty close. We've been pretty fortunate, which is childcare and everything like that. We haven't had a pay for much childcare aside from like family friends just paying for gas and stuff like that.

So we've been pretty blessed, actually. >> Well, and also you all have made some choices. So you have been blessed, you are privileged, you're fortunate and all those things are true.

“And you're choosing to do things a little bit differently, right?”

>> Yeah. >> And so, oh yes, we're fortunate and we've been lucky in some areas and also we're working really hard. I like to, George, tell me if this is bananas, I emergency fund for me, philosophically is if I walked in here and Dave Ramsey said you're fired, get out.

That me and my wife would be able to eat and take care of our bills for the next six months. But practically speaking, it was not this past week, it was the week before. And one day I got up early before work. I took one of my family's vehicles and I have a 16 year old, so there's three drivers. I took one vehicle to one automotive shop.

I took another vehicle to another automotive shop. I got dropped off at work. While I was at work, I got a call from the air conditioner guy that my central unit had to be replaced, like had to be taken off and my wife called and said the wells broken out in the country.

We have no water in the house. All that was on one day and it was annoying and it put me in a bed mood and I was full drama queen. Ask anybody who was working with me. But also, that's the thing.

He had longer hair. You could have flipped it. I would have been flipping it. Yes, but that is what the emergency fund is for. So philosophically it's, I can sleep at night knowing that I have a six month or longer runway

goes out.

The cars need to get fixed.

The water doesn't, isn't coming on all the same, their pets heads are falling off. All of it happens in one day. I have that in an account somewhere, I don't have to go borrow money for it. I can just pull from on account, I become my own bank, right?

“So that's how it works for me in my house.”

So I would definitely keep your health insurance in there because if your husband was to lose his job, that you don't want to be uninsured with two small kids for six months, right? Yeah. Two small kids do what two small kids do and they fall down and they hit things and they

drop things and whatever, right? So you build that in, but also if the car blows up in two months, you're going to repair that from the the $20,000 emergency fund you've saved. Okay, perfect. So how much longer tell you guys are there?

Is there's a couple of months? Well, we're really unsure. He actually just got a pretty impressive increase with his hourly, so they gave him the $5 hour increase and I am going to be starting outing on another day with my job, probably in September, October and my income is really variable, so it's kind of hard to tell.

I'm hoping that we can have that done within like by November, that's kind of what I'm hoping, but I'm also trying not to put pressure on us just because we do have a little one and they take up a lot of time and a lot of resources most of the time. Yeah. Well, it's going to say the emergency fund is for three things, things that are urgent,

necessary and unexpected. So if there's things in your life where you know we're going to have to do maintenance and repair on, let's just set up a sinking fund for those things so that they don't feel like an emergency when they pop up. So separate those two things in your mind, in your budget, let's say you have, you know,

maybe 200 bucks for car maintenance and repair. Well, now 12 months from now, you get 2400 ready to cover those things, versus you haven't to pull from the emergency fund. Yep. And last thing is keep it in a high yield savings account.

Do you guys have one of those already? We do not. Would you recommend that we move all of our emergency savings into that and just not have

“anything or keep a very minimal amount in our bank account savings account itself?”

Yes. I would keep a buffer in your checking account for some people that's 500 bucks for some people to 1000. So you guys decide how much buffer you want to keep in checkings. You're not riding it to zero.

But then other than that, keep the whole emergency fund in a high yield savings account. And the one that we recommend is FairWins Credit Union. You guys can open that. It actually has a checking account with it and no fee checking, high yield savings. It's over 3% right now and a Ramsey theme debit card.

So you can get that at FairWins.org/Ramsey. And that will get you guys set up. Once you have that, Hannah, it is a game changer. Like you just sleep better at night knowing that whatever comes your way in life and something will come your way.

You're just kind of kind of swat it like a bug. It's the best feeling in the world. Yes. And you guys are so close.

“And even right now, 12k would cover most of life's emergencies.”

That's a new HVAC unit. That's a car replacement if you need it to be. So you're so close. Keep going. Baby Step 3 is such a slog.

It's one of the most boring, unfulfilling baby steps.

But it's one of the most important too.

So keep it a priority. You guys are doing great. . This show is sponsored by Better Help. Some are as a time when people get away from it all.

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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, dot com/Ramsi. And as up next in Philadelphia, and welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, thank you for having me. Absolutely. And so my question is, how can I make large purchases like buying plain tickets or paying

for car services without a credit card? What a ball, right? And how much are we talking?

“Well, what's like the most you could spend and why is it an issue right now for you?”

Yeah, so I have most in my way that I'm living, I'm most of my income goes into my savings and so I keep a very small amount in my checking account. And I'm worried about purchasing things online with my debit card just in case you could get stolen and I don't have a credit card. So I currently will pay my parents back when they have them covered.

So this is, if more like fear of fraud, it's not that the transaction can't go through. You're just saying, "Hey, it's a large purchase. If this somehow this money got moved to the wrong place, I'm in a lurch." I'll tell you what I use, and they're not a sponsor of the show, they may sponsor your show now.

For a year's, I fuse privacy.com, and here's what they do.

And like I say, they're not a sponsor, they're what I use personally. I put my debit card into their system, and then it generates a card number for all of my online purchases. So I bet I have 150 cards for this weird guitar shop and this weird archery shop and there's one for Southwest and there's one for South West and a custom debit card for every single

merchant you shop with. And you can tell them the exact amount that they can draw and that's it. And you can do it one time purchase, you can do it recurring purchase. So whenever I'm about to buy plain tickets online, Southwest never has my information. They have this number generated from privacy.com and it gives me that three little digit

code and the date of that come to a commercial for them. But I know it's, they really are great, because I used them for years and finally they came on a my show.

“So I think now privacy.com/jords, you get five bucks just for signing out.”

It's just pretty cool. And check that. I am a terrified of ID theft, I also have ID theft insurance through Zander, but I'm scared of that stuff too. I don't like giving my debit card out.

And so that's the exact site I use in its free, privacy.com it's free. And anytime that there's like an Apple Pay option on a website, I use that because that again is encrypted. It's not actually sending over my debit card information. So that is, I mean, John and I are both guys who don't have a credit card and we make

a lot of large purchases online and... I travel a lot. I do it without flinching. Yeah. Okay.

Does that solve the conundrum? Yeah, I'm definitely going to look into that. Could you clarify how exactly I put my, like how, how do I transfer the money to this privacy that come on? So it doesn't actually transfer.

All it's doing is it's pulling from your debit card. They're just sort of acting as a middleman with a different virtual card number. So that you're projected against those breaches and on Netflix, if Netflix gets hacked, they're not going to have my information. They're going to have this one number.

So let's say it's not a free trial and I use one of these virtual cards and I say, "Hey, don't let any amount over a dollar come through." Well, when that trial tries to charge me, it just won't go through. It can't charge my bank account. It'll decline it.

So that's the kind of stuff that you can set up with each individual card and, like John said,

you can have it be a one-time thing and then the cards never used again.

So that's helped me a whole lot with large purchases on top of Apple Pay and, you know, there's a bunch of other things and I talk about it in my book breaking free from broke. I'll send you a copy of that too in the credit cards chapter. I sort of lay out all the things that you can do and should do to live credit card free and sleep well while doing it.

And let me ask you this question, why do you transfer all of your money to savings and not keep a buffer in your checking account? So I get my direct deposit right to my savings account and then I'll move some to my checking for... Is that as a discipline play so that you don't, you're not tempted to spend it?

Yes. Okay. So you're not like running out of money, you're trying to pay bills during the month.

“Your transferring as much as you need to cover all the bills.”

Correct. Okay. So if you have to make a big purchase like a car rental or a plain ticket or a refrigerator, just pull from savings and move it over into your checking account and then that money

But I'm with you on the, on wanting to protect my debit card and again, George, you're the only taught me this, debit cards have the same fraud protection that credit cards do. There's just a thing in my head about it feels like the checking account is kind of like an arm's length extension from under my mattress and it feels like I don't want everyone, I don't want to give all these companies that I don't know like a hand under my mattress

to take money out of whatever they want to. Well, there's a work like that, but in my head it does. So when it's your money versus the credit card companies money, you feel like, well, man, I'm really exposed here. But if your debit card says visa or master card, there's a zero liability policy with

them. And there's also something called the Electronic Fund Transfer Act that covers debit cards in cases of fraud. So the key is pay attention, report it, and you'll be fine. Your money's not just going to randomly disappear and I don't keep $100,000 in checking.

I keep what I need for the month. So it's not like my entire world's disappearing. So there's a few good things you can do there and hang on the line. We'll send you a copy of the book as well. Great question.

Micah is in Jackson, Mississippi, up next. What's going on, Micah? Hey, how are you guys doing? Doing well. How can we help?

Yes, sir. So I'm just getting started with using the baby steps to get out of debt. Welcome to the call. Oh, brother. Welcome.

Yeah. Well, I was in there when I first got married, some of some people told me to do it. And I was like, I'll whatever. And now I'm finally, you know, you get older and wise. And you have these things a little bit better.

But again, in my ignorance, I purchased a truck and now I'm upside down on it, trying to sell it to get out of debt and I'm not sure I've had it posted for sale for several weeks now.

I never probably take longer, but I haven't had any bites on anybody to spit in it.

And so I'm just wondering, what other course of action I can take to try to get out from

“one to meet this thing, I got three things you need to get before the day is over.”

You ready? All right. An old rag, a can of gasoline, and a match. That's what I get rid of that truck, right? Just can't do anything of what I just said.

Don't do that. I was just playing with you. Here's some real things you could do. You could contact like a car max and car vana and just see what they will give you for it.

That'll give you sort of your floor. At least you know, this is the least I'll get for it. If they're offering that trade and value at a dealership is going to be way less. And then your best bet is that private party to get the highest number, but it could take longer.

So I'll be looking at your listing going, are the photos good enough? Is the description good enough? Can I list it other places other than Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist?

“Can I ask around to my community or friends to see if anyone's interested in this?”

What is it currently listed at? Well, I've got a list for pay off. Okay, so that's what's left on the loan. Yes. But what's it actually worth and if you look at Kelly Bluebook, private party value?

Yes. So I could get 24, 25,000 dollars for it. Okay. See you're asking really more than it's worth right now. That's the problem.

I have to buy it, so I was hoping somebody else would be eager enough to buy it, but you know,

there's a second born every day.

Well, I would try lowering the price to what it's actually worth and so now the difference is on you. So you come up with a difference in cash. If that's $5,000, you either need to save up $5,000 real quick by working extra selling stuff or go down to your local credit union and get a person alone for $5,000. Because that's better than being $30,000 in debt.

Would you agree? I agree.

“Now, do you have something else to drive or do you need to then buy a beater car in the meantime?”

Um, so I'm going to have my large car, um, but I would have to have something else to drive. And that's what, you know, that's kind of the thing I want to show it and then try to get something else. I know a bunch of people that have maybe an extra vehicle today would let it go off and down to time. You know, the good thing is I don't live the like five minutes from work. And yeah, if you can go to like one car family, bicycle, baby, bicycle, I had a roommate that did that.

I was me. He bike to a TGI Friday's uphill. I was a dean of students at the, at the, at a graduate school. I left my suits in the office. I wrote my bike to work.

I was that car. That's rock and roll.

Tell you keep your physique, John, it's pretty incredible.

So those are a lot of things you can do, Mike, but I would not try to sell it for more than it's worth. It's going to take light years to get rid of that thing. As your business grows, everything becomes more complex.

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“If you're sick and tired of working so hard and having nothing to show for it, that is normal”

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So don't live normal when you can live like no one else, start every dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play. Gail is in San Antonio, what's going on, Gail? Hi, I'm Logan nervous. Take your time.

I mean, to find out if it would be either ill-advised or morally wrong to divorce my husband. Wow. What's going on, Gail? Well, we've been married to 27 years.

I got married later in life, I was always 40 before I got married.

Well, I'm 38 when I got married. And anyway, he is two years older than me and he refuses to work, he got fired from this job back in March. That's not that another job and it's not trying to get another job and I can't keep living like this.

We live on Social Security, he is in mind, I've been disabled for 26 years and he just started on Social Security and it's extremely tight. We have no savings, no retirement, no nothing and I don't know what to do anymore, I can't keep living like this.

“When you say, you can't keep living like this, what is this?”

You can't keep living like this, the reality that you're 65 and you're staring down the barrel of another 20 or 30 years and you don't have anything saved, you got nothing. That reality, you can't keep living like or is it, is your husband being ugly and abusive? Is it? No.

We're so things are so tight. I can't stand the stress of not knowing for one day's the next and I don't want to make it. Okay. So the Social Security, his and yours, out of together, is not covering your bills, is not

giving you any margin? Well, I get 13, 51 a month. Okay. That's it. Was he not working for a long time?

He is a musician and you worked for cash for most of his life. Okay. So you guys are bringing in little over 2,100 bucks and that's it. That's it. Do you rent?

Do you have a mortgage? We live in a paid-for-house, it's common, unusual situation, it's a house that is in a trust for me from my father's estate. We pay the insurance on it.

all that?

We have two cars that are paid for, they're 0.22 years old.

All right, let me get into the nitty-gritty of this, okay. I'm going to take an alternative route, okay. Paint me a picture of what happens, let's say George and I are like, yes, file for divorce today. And you get off the phone and you call a local attorney, you give them $5,000.

And they file for divorce today. Then you've been married long enough, the George forces you to sell this house, you'll split it in half and you take whatever the amount of money is divided by two and you're holding that. And that's all you have for the rest of your life unless there's something else in this

trust. And now you're living off $1,300, and you got $1,300 coming in.

“Will that give you the piece that you're looking for?”

Well, let me back tighten this a little bit. I've already talked to the attorney, and when I had my wheel done, and because I wanted to make sure that my husband didn't get anything in my wheel, and they much to get it. You know, I mean, like you're saying now, that my house, because it's in trust, is not community property in the state of Texas, anything in the trust from a wheel is not

community property. What's the house worth? What are you kidding? Between $3,5,400. Okay.

So that's by far your, that's really your only asset at this point. The cars are not worth much and you've got nothing in savings or retirement. I trust the legal advice. But even then, there's still this new life, let's say there's a new chapter where you're solo living in this house, it's paid for, but now you only get your income.

Is that the reality? I can make it. I've already been putting this to paper for six months. So are you calling us, Gail? You've already left your marriage.

Like you're already out. Well, I didn't know if it was your advice to do that, or if it was morally wrong for me

to do that, because I never intended to, you know, I could have been forever.

I got you. The heartbreak of that's there, I'm not going to outsource my morality to you. I can't be the one that gives you permission to make this life-altering decision. Because I'm convinced there's other things going on here that you're not telling me about, which is completely fine and I get it.

Not one to put all of the dirty laundry on public, I get that.

“But you have to look in the mirror and say, I am making this decision.”

I do think there is a till death to as part for sickness and health for rich or poor, and I also think fidelity is bigger than being a person of fidelity, cheating, if you will, does not just happen if you sleep with somebody else. I think being a person of fidelity inside of a marriage, you can cheat on your spouse with a golf course, you can cheat on your spouse by just sitting on the couch and not participating

in the necessary lifeblood of a home. And so... And that's how I feel. I've been treated. But you have to own that decision.

I'm not going to give you that. Okay. Okay. What I want to tell you is you have left your marriage. You just haven't put it on paper yet.

“If you want to sit down with your husband and say, here is where we are.”

Here's what I'm about to do.

If you want to rebuild something for the back half of the fourth quarter of our life, here's the clear path towards rebuilding trust with me, here's what I need from you. But what you've told me is it's not financial because you can make it on your 1350. There's something in the alchemy here where he's seeing him sitting on the couch collecting his $100 is bringing you to a point where I am going to end this marriage.

So that tells me there's other things going on here. That's not financial. It's not wondering what's coming next. You got to pay for our house, you got to pay for cars. Like there's something else here and he deserves, I believe, for you to be very clear and

direct with him and respectful and honor like treating with dignity and respect. But here is the thing. Or here's the things that have been going on for 20 years, been going on for the last year that I am at the doorway to walk out of here. Or more realistically, you are about to be out of here because I'm staying in this house

because it's mine, it's in a trust and it's protected and you can't have any of it. He will probably say, I'll see you in court and they can do it out there. Because what's he going to do, he's going to be 67 year old man homeless getting $100 a

Right.

If it's your way of forcing him back to work, have that conversation with him.

“That's what I've tried to do, I've tried to tell him that you can't live on $800 a month”

and there's no way you'll survive and we both have live insurance, mine is only $50,000 because I want some insurable. Yeah, but that's after, that's for after. It doesn't solve any of our problems while we're alive and that's what we're trying to help you do.

So your decision to end this marriage solves one problem of one giant problem and that's what we really want to help you solve for what happens for the next 5, 10, 15 years. Not just this year. Whatever the decision to make moving forward, be very clear-eyed about what happens next. Yeah, I want to talk to you for a second about love and not love like in Titanic or something.

I mean, responsible love. The kind of love that moves you to take care of the people closest to you and one of the

most important ways to show that kind of love is by having term life insurance.

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In many cases, there are options available with no medical exam and instant approval. My wife and I had term life insurance through Zander for years, long before I worked at Ramsey, because we trust them. Getting term life insurance is a way of saying I love you when you can no longer say it yourself. But a Zander dot com or call 1-800-356-4282 to find the coverage that fits your family.

“Joanna is an Edmonton Count, Canada, what's going on Joanna, how can we help today?”

Hi there, thanks for taking my call, I am just wondering if we are babysitting to wondering

if we should be paying or selling off our paid vehicles to help pay down the debt. Okay, tell us more, how much debt you guys have total? 193,000. All right, that's all consumer debt, that's not any mortgages. No, the mortgages are included.

All right. And what's your household income? 380. Fantastic. All right, what are the cars worth?

The truck is worth 40, the car, and the sales worth 30, and then we have 200 Davidsons and they're each about 15. Okay, and those are all paid for? Yes, they are. Wow, so what makes up the 193 in debt?

Well, we have 35,000 in credit card, we have loans, which is personal loan. Yeah, we'll just loans like we have a solar loan and we have a line of credit and we have a couple loans just for, we had had some dental work done and stuff like that for medical. Okay. And then the big one in there is the vote.

Oh, a vote, what's left on the vote? Yeah, 100,000. And what's this vote worth? About 130. Hey, you got Almighty Joe and a sell the vote.

Sell the vote before the cars you need. You need cars. You don't need a vote. Why don't you guys willing to sell the vote? You didn't even mention the vote.

Um, well, because we've got our cottage and the food up to do and we're at the cottage. Oh, so you have multiple properties. It should be honest. Okay. Don't worry.

Joe, you sound like somebody who makes a bunch of money and you're part and make a lot of money and y'all don't like saying no to each other. You're very improv. Yes. And I we don't get a lot of, I was just thinking what you were talking, George told somebody

to sell their horse one time and he still hasn't, like still, that thing hasn't lived all. The vote just has a motor, but so I'm hesitant to tell Harley people to sell their two paid for Harley. I'm actually more scared to sell someone to sell Harley.

Yeah.

“I mean, because that's why it can be me up.”

But I don't know a lot of Harley lifestyle voters with a $150,000 vote.

All right. Yeah.

And this is the thing, Kelsey.

We don't ride the Harley very much anymore because our life felt has changed. This is element today. Okay. So here's the thing. If you sold the vote and sold the Harley's, that's 130 plus 30, it's 160k of your

$193 paid off. And you make 380, so by Christmas, you'll be debt free with three easy steps. Sure. So that's option one. Or you sell the cars and you only have the Harley's to get around in, which is probably

not ideal in Canada. And now you still need to go buy new cars, which I'm guessing for your lifestyle is going to be a hard pill to swallow to go buy a $5,000 car. Yeah.

“You can't drive an 86 used canry up to your cottage to get in your $150,000 vote, right?”

Like the flip of this is, you'll make 380 grand. If you sold this vote, which I do, I love being out on the water. I totally get it. And you sold these motorcycles. And then a y'all buckled down for four or five months with this great salary, I'll make

and you're completely debt free, then you get to decide, do we want to stay boat people? And if you do, awesome. You'll make 380 grand within one calendar year, you'll have saved up enough cash.

If that's where you want to direct your, your spending power, we're not saying never own

a boat again. We're saying there's a couple of boats and they're more expensive than my house. They're awesome. Right. And he does these, I don't know, he's almost killed me in George on him multiple times.

Like, I love being out on the water, but it comes in an order, right? You just have to decide if we want, if we want to be free people or we want to be boat people more. True. How much do you guys have in savings?

We have just a $1,000 emergency fund, and then we have a $10,000. You got 10 grand. Okay. So here's my question. Where is the $380,000 going if we're still taking on lines of credit and payments?

Where's that money going? Well, for those debts have been for a while, like they've been a long time there, and

“that's why we weren't getting anywhere so we're going on your program, which we've actually”

since January paid off $46,000, which--

Wait a go. Okay. Pretty good. So take your monthly bills plus your minimum payments. How much is that per month if you guys buckled down?

We actually owe about $16,000 a month. 16 grand a month is your burn, right? So it's big. Yeah. It's because we have two homes and how much are you actually taking home every month?

35? No. We're taking home what he brings home 10 to 20. 20. Okay.

It's $380. That's 31 gross and you're saying you bring home 20. Are you guys doing any investing right now? I know we pause that because of the program. Okay.

I got for our more time. When you only bring home 20, I guess Canada takes 60% of what you make. But let's do the math here, right? You bring home 20. Bills are 16.

That leaves you with four if you're lucky to attack your smallest dad, right? So we're going to $193 divided by four. It's going to take you four years at this rate. If you just use the margin you have, making $380. That is soul crushing or you can do it in four months.

Yeah. So you decide. If you're willing to sacrifice for four years to just stay on this plan and knock it out, you can. I personally wouldn't.

“Making $380, you should be done with this thing so much faster.”

And the boat is the thing standing in your way of freedom. Yeah. So my, I'm on board to do this. This is my idea, but my husband is a little bit hesitant. And why is he hesitant?

Is he not feel the weight of this like you do? He does, but I kind of drive it more. So he, he's in agreement when we're doing the steps. But I think to sell the boat is going to be a hard towel. I think so.

So if I put it in perspective the way you just did it might be different. Yeah. Where I find couples are successful as if one of them is honest about the thing beneath the thing. Because the boat will turn into a weird proxy war.

Oh, we should go to the cottage and sit on the, on the bank and stare at each other. Like, what about, what about this, what about our grand kit? Like, it becomes this whole other thing. If you sit down and say, I want us to be a free household. I want us to be free.

I don't want to, I don't want the government to own us. I don't want the, they already take 60% of our paycheck. I don't want creditors to own us. I want us to be in charge of our destiny. It's the nerd word of it.

The psychology word is agency. I want us to be agents of our future. And we can get a boat in within a year. I also think y'all can contract your burn rate quite a bit too. 16 grand a month over two properties.

Y'all are living pretty large at both places, right?

So for six months, for a year, y'all could contract those expenses quite a bit and say,

what if, instead of saying, here's what everything we want to do adds up to,

which is 16, what if y'all had an exercise and this could be super fun. It could be a lot full of laughter and poking at each other and making jokes. Crack and jokes with each other. But say, what let's pretend are all we had was $9,000 a month. Can we figure that out across two properties?

I bet y'all could. And or and then suddenly material like 6,000 bucks just comes out of the ether. $7,000 just appears, right? So think about it this way. The actual mathematics, if you sold the boat, sold the Harley's.

That gives you 160 grand in cash to throw it than 193. Now we're down to 33 grand. So now for four months, let's say by Christmas, we're going to throw eight grand a month that these remaining debts until they're gone.

“Can you imagine how different Christmas is going to feel?”

That's the picture to pack with them. And you know the old quote, the two best days of owning a boat of the day, you buy it in the day you sell it. And I think he's not realizing how free he's going to feel when he sells that boat. And you're not going to a summer cottage in Canada in the Christmas anyway, right?

You can't drive a boat across the port. Yeah. We're not talking about no boat. It's going to say you can't drive boat across an eight feet thick of ice. Can you rent a boat for three months?

Yeah. Can you rent a boat?

Um, probably I've never thought of that idea, actually.

There's a program here in Nashville where you basically pay a monthly fee and every week you can go over and pick the boat you want. You want to speed boat that weekend. You want a pontoon boat that we come to a hundred bucks a month. You want a fishing boat?

Yeah. And they service the boat. They fill it up with gas. They take all the the headaches of boat and it's probably somebody who lives right near you who's also broke with a boat who had rented for you for a couple of hundred bucks.

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I'm George Campbell here with Dr. John Deloni. We're taking your calls at Triple 8-825-5225. Austin is in Orlando up next. What's going on? Austin.

Hey, you guys, thanks for taking my call. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Got you, man. What's up?

Awesome. Well, it's an absolute pleasure to be speaking with you guys today. So I appreciate you having me on the show. I'll try to keep a brief. I want to honor you guys this time.

The question I have is, is mostly a relationship question, but there's some finances involved. Basically, my wife and I, we bought a home down here in Florida about four months ago. And that was about the same time that we discovered you guys as baby steps. I'm active duty. I'm in the military.

She works from home. And we've been working pretty hard to cut down the amount of debt that we have. My mom and other family and friends, it's kind of funny like when you buy a house down in Florida. Suddenly you have more friends and family than you thought you did.

It's very similar to that. Hey, long time no time. Yeah, yeah. Right.

“And so my wife, she's so, she's so much more understanding, I think, and graceful.”

And I am about this, but my mom basically has joked around it, but she's obviously working to do that and stuff that she has.

But she's always been like, well, I'm just going to die with that.

I'm not really worried about paying off my debt. I'll just come down there and live with you guys.

about it. And my wife, she has told me, you know, like, we've talked about it a lot. And she's been like, I think maybe, you know,

“you should be a little more understanding, and it's not going to be that bad.”

If she did wind up living with us, we have a two and a half year old little girl at home. And I guess I'm trying to figure out what my question is, is it am I being not understanding enough? Am I being to stubborn or hardheaded by not being open to this sort of thing? No, I'm not at all.

I want you to be honest with yourself.

And here's what I mean by that.

There's the money part and there's the debt part, right? But you know, this is your mom. You've been with her longer than your wife has. You know what her moving in would mean for the temperature and the electricity and the angst and the whatever else in your household, the vibes.

Yeah, as George and the young kids say, the vibes of the household, right? So, you know, some people let their mom move in and it would be the greatest thing ever. Because they would don't on your two-year-old. You and your wife would have date nights whenever you're home. It would be awesome.

And also there's mothers and fathers who would move in and they would think that you're seven again and they're going to tell you what you're going to do and when you're going to do it and why aren't you doing it like this?

Or your job is to take care of them and cook for them and provide for everyone their needs.

While they continue to be irresponsible with any number of things. So you know the true, here's the total cost, financially yes, relationally the impact on your marriage. And so you know the full picture there. So be honest with yourself about that.

And the other thing I think that's kind of haunting you that you can just cut to the chase, I would, next time your mom's in town, I would take her out for coffee and say, "Mom, are you officially asking to move in with us?" Yeah. Because right now there's a lot of ambiguity and you're starting to create stories about what

she means and what she says and how she's saying it, just cut to the chase. Yeah. I think that's a really good approach and I thought about that. The other thing I think I get, I get kind of like worry about is, I don't want my mom to die with that and she's very comfortable with that sort of thing.

And I know at the same time because my wife and I are on the same page about this, like it's not our responsibility or obligation to make sure that you know, all her deaths and

“stuff are squared away and paid for, but that's what we're working towards in our personal”

life right now. And I think that she has seen how we're doing with that sort of thing. And we've had the ability to pay off over $100,000 of debt in the last year with these. It felt really awesome and I think that, you know, she's kind of like, "Well, if I move in with you guys, you know, I have a mortgage and I'll just die with my debt and it'll

be fine." And I don't want that for her and my wife doesn't want that for her. So I guess that was kind of the crux of like my question today is like, "If she doesn't care, then you can't impose that value system on her." Yeah.

And you can't care more than she does about it. You don't need to take on that burden.

Because the truth is, I hope she doesn't die with the debt and if she does, you don't

need to carry that. That's not your fault. She hasn't invited you into that conversation. Right. And she's so like, she's not even, my mom has this tendency to like age herself.

She's not even like elderly. She's like 55. Yeah. But if she worked in full time, she has, yeah, she's been nurse my entire life, God bless her. She's been doing it forever and she is at the point now where she is a nurse practitioner,

but she kind of like works from home type of thing and does telehealth and like she has a great income, but she's also not really like doing a lot about her debt situation. And so I'm trying to like remove myself from being super worried about that all the time because it's not my situation, but all relationship has gotten better over the years. And I obviously don't want that for her.

So I guess it's just a matter of like having the conversation with her then it sounds like yeah, well, where I've seen in this go really a rye is when adult kids try to lecture their aging parents on any number of topics, but especially about sex and especially about money. Like parents don't want to hear that from their kid, but I've seen people be successful.

And I'm going to be honest, it's a more limited success.

“I use it down and say, mom, are you asking to move in?”

And if it's true, you and your wife have talked it through. If you were to say we would love you to move in, and but we have a picture of what that would look like. And here's the reality of our home. We have a two-year-old and so we need some help with some childcare and some support.

And we don't also have the money or the support of the time or whatever to get childcare for our kid because you're going to need a quiet place to work from home. Like think through the logistics of that when you have that conversation. And then be honest with your mom, in that same conversation, mom, I have to tell you.

new freedom in finance, right, which is me and my wife have dedicated the last year

“and a half of our life to not only anybody in your money because we want to be free.”

We've had a hundred grand. And you can tell I'm worried about your future because you don't have any retirement that I know of. And if you want some skills or some tools, the ones that we're using, I would love to sit down and walk you through what we've done to change our life. And what you're doing there is you're giving her permission as a 55-year-old to which

can be hard. Right? It can be hard to say, I don't know how to do a thing. And it can feel extra hard to look at your kid and say, I don't know how to do a thing, but you're doing it well.

You teach me. There's just a, there's a, I don't see it's a shame barrier, but you get what I'm saying if it feels weird. It'd be a form of your officer is called you and it was like, hey, you have a great marriage.

Can you teach me how to talk to my wife? Like that would be an awkward thing, right? So there's a, like a reverse power differential here. So you bridging it and saying, I got a new toolkit a year ago and these tools are helping

us build something amazing.

I would love to share these tools with you if you're interested. And then beyond that, you can't force her to want to be a part of it. All you and your wife can do is say, as for our house, here's the values of our house. And one other thing I would add is pre plan, a separation conversation.

“And what I mean by that is have a conversation for what if this goes sideways?”

Because I don't want to lose my mom and I don't want to lose a roommate and at the same time, lose a mom if we get to a place where it's not working out or it's uncomfortable or your job is not driving with our kid's nap schedule like let's have a conversation for how do we stay connected and have a great relationship and not be roommates down the road if we get there.

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[Music] Isaac is up next in Little Rock, Arkansas. What's going on, Isaac? How can we help today? Hi, Dr. John.

Hi, George. So hey, really awesome.

I guess I've never really figured to talk to you guys.

For my question is, I'm an automotive technician right now, I make around $100,000 for the project for this year, I'm going to move it into the like, during a mental electrician field, but my hang up is I have a wife and two younger children, my wife and I are 22 and 23 and we have a almost four year old and a one year old. Why do you want to change?

Mostly just, I guess it's very hot here in Arkansas, so we don't have AC and a shop, so it definitely makes it miserable, I guess working in a shop and also it's just, I want to move into a career field that can project more and I would love to be a business owner one of these days and starting a business in the automotive field is definitely more difficult. I feel like then starting your own independent business as an electrician.

Do you feel like that? Or do you know that? I know that. I have a lot of family members that have business owners, we have a family member who has a friend who owns his own electrician company who he started with his own van and

into like a multimillion dollar business and I know there's just a lot of overhead with opening an automotive shop which rules the quickness and all that.

So when somebody tells like, here's what I want to direct you towards, being fully honest

about why you want to make this change and here's what I mean. I'm in Tennessee and I grew up in Texas, you're an Arkansas. So we're in the same region ish, right? The guys who just came in and replaced my air conditioning unit, the HVAC guys and then electricians, it was probably 120 degrees up in my attic, maybe 130.

Yeah.

“And if you want to be an electrician and work out on all those data centers that are popping”

up all over Texas and Arkansas, it is hot outside. And when it's not hot outside, you get those wicked cold burn cold winters, right?

All that to say is if you're going to be in the trades, you're probably going to deal

with extremes, um, when it comes to weather, right? So trying to escape automotive because it's too hot, that's a guy who wants to get a new job and is trying to scratch and call for reasons instead of just saying, what I really want to do is be a business owner, I want to make a trillion dollars and I want to have a bunch of employees and help them take care of their families and here's a path towards

that and that path is going to require sacrifice. Otherwise, you're going to get into another job and it's going to be hot there. And you're going to get into another job and it's going to be hot there. In that case, you'd go get a desk job in a corporate building if you really wanted to get out of the elements, right?

And so the other thing I'd recommend you do is don't talk to a relative who's got a friend, maybe if you can go have coffee with the guy who actually owns that business because he'll do two things, he'll tell you about the beauty of it and the fun of it and he'll also he'll take all the shine off of it and say, here's the scratch and call your son and up for because building a multi-million dollar electric electrician business is a freaking grind.

And the question is, what about all these other dudes who run their own electrician business who aren't making multiple millions? That's also possibly out. So, you know, don't get too starry out of the grass is greener on the other side. But I love the idea if you're really into becoming an electrician. That's a great goal to have long term. But it sounds like you guys have some priorities right now,

paying off some debt.

Yeah, so I've always been driven to the electrical field of like the trades and stuff like that.

I wouldn't automotive most of just because that's kind of what I learned. But my wife and I have $4,200 that we owed to my parents for purchasing our house and we owe around $11,000 in credit card debt. But I negotiate one of those down to $3,000 from $6,000 for settlement. So yeah, and I guess the biggest hang up is we move to Arkansas and we have no family or no

friend here at all when we move here. So we have not a great community outside of maybe our church community and our house is around $2,500 just for the mortgage loan a month. So it's definitely a huge chunk over that 25%. What's your actual take home pay? My take home pay is at varies because I'm on build hours. So anywhere I make around $16 to $19 a week. Okay, so we're talking $6,400 a month on a bad month.

Yeah, I would go. So it's about 40% of your take home pay. Maybe a little less if you have a good

“month. So that's not great. You need to be making more money and I think going electrician route”

there's going to be a long period of time where you're going to get a pay cut. Yeah, it it it it looks around I'll be taking half the pay until I get out of that apprenticeship field and then I'll go up to like $100,000 again and then more from there after like five to six years of being here. Is that four years? Is that five years? How long is an apprenticeship? Four to five years in Arkansas. But you wouldn't want to live in Arkansas and you need to sell

your house because you couldn't afford to keep your house for the 50% pay cut and you'll be wrong family. Yeah, that's my hang up. Well, I guess it would be more of just like my wife being at home just because she's a stay at home mom so whether or not she would be able to handle being at home, why I'm going to night classes and doing the apprenticeship and everything too. What does she say about it when you talk to her about it?

Um, she really wants me to, you know, to pursue that but it's it's very difficult right now because we want to get all of our get paid off and you say that so like the six months before we even think

“about moving a career and anything like that. I think that's super, super wise. Very wise. And the good news”

is you are so young. You got so much time and I don't want you to ever feel like, man, I don't

at 30. You still got a good 30 year career ahead of you running a business. Especially if you have

“$200,000 in the bank that you'll control down while you're taking this big pay cut.”

Yeah, can you imagine if you had a buffer and cushion to where you could do this with peace instead of desperation? And you and like George said, man, we sound like two old men. I get that. But my first year of marriage, my wife and I were in a different city and after 18 months I realized, oh, my wife is completely alone here with no community. And so we moved and I had to start a new career to new gig and ended up being the greatest thing that ever happened to me. And then one time

we bought a house and I realized we realized this is too much house for us and we sold it within 11 months. I'd take a check to closing because I still hadn't covered the realtor fees with the

appreciation on the house. All here's what I'm telling you that. It's okay to recognize we made a

mistake or we got in over our heads or we need to make a huge change so that when we're 30, when we're 40, when we're 50, we can have the life we want. What's not a good idea is to age just jump ship with nothing. So you're wise to get your desk paid off and get a big chunk of cash in the bank. And you're also wise to not chase sunk cost. Well, we already moved here. So let's just keep dumping money in this house. We can't afford. And we already did this. So let that pull the

“rip cord if you need to pull the rip cord, man. Move back to where you're around family if you”

can get an apprenticeship there. And I'll just rent there. Yeah. And sell your house, rent for a while. Until you know, here's my stable income as an electrician. And then you can do this whole thing over with a whole lot of peace. And right now, you guys aren't in too much of a lurch. You can pay this debt off pretty quick if you get after it. How long would it take you to pay it off making 100k? So right now, I looked at settlement. I'm agreed on it. Gonna be $500 a month for six months.

So January is what I kind of just tried to urgent that. We on baby step two, so I have $1000

to step up right now. And I have $500 a month out for the first payment. But you have another debt too,

what am I going to do? Yeah, you owe 14 grand total or it's down to six. You have 10 grand total. How quick can you can pay off 10 grand? I would hope within the next year. That's a long time. You make a hundred grand. Yeah, it's it's a lot of lifestyle living that I'm trying to go through a budget and trying to figure out where our money is going to. I feel like it's kind of disappearing and we're not really watching it as wisely we should be. Yeah, you don't need like, it's not a six

month like a spelunking expedition. It's a it's a long evening with you and your spouse, you and your wife sitting down in front of a budget. Like, and you don't need clawed to dig through the like, and we know 40% is the mortgage. So that was only 60% to figure out. Yeah, and now we're sitting down and just doing the math. Diapers, formula, gas, do we have to buy organic foods? We can't go out to eat for a while because we owe money, right? So it's not this big, long PhD thesis. It's just

sitting down and saying, here's how much money we have. Here's where we can contract our expenses, and let's get on a budget together. As a dad of young kids, I'm starting to think a lot more about the world of growing up in

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Just go to worldwatch.News/Ramsy or use promo code Ramsy to get started. That's worldwatch.News/Ramsy. [MUSIC] Our question of the day is brought to you by Y-Refy. When past due private student loans keep pulling

refinancing options that fit your budget so you can focus on the future again. Visit y-Refy.com/Ramsy, may not be available in all states. All right, today's question comes from Todd in Nevada. Todd writes, "I've recently become aware of bedding sites like Kalshi and Pauli Market where you can wage on the outcome of real-world events such as elections, celebrity engagement, sports, et cetera. What is the Ramsy stance on this type of bedding? Oh boy. The Ramsy stance on gambling via

dopamine-based apps that involve stealing your money. I give you my take on it. I don't know the big Ramsy stance is if you're going to do anything like this, ideally don't. But if you are going to do it, do it with fun money after you're already out of debt investing for the future.

And this is basically you're like a fun hobby. If you spend the day by the time.

They say, "If you can light that money on fire in the middle of your living room and it doesn't it might break your heart, but it doesn't change the trajectory of your month or your year or your life." Then it's like any other expense. I don't need another guitar but I kind of want one. If I want to take that guitar money and go to Vegas instead of Blackjack Table, it's an experience. It's fun. But that's kind of the overall stance on any sort of these kind of things.

I do not have an Apple my phone. I don't participate in these things, especially like Pauli Market because these things have become so rigged. Was it Trump out of the day? He's going to start selling early access to his truth social, so you can. Oh, wow. No, he's about to post and begin to,

“like, I just, did you hear the story about the White House teleprompter operator?”

No. He knew exactly what was going to be in Trump's speeches and so he started bedding and he

made over a hundred grand. Yeah. So he knew what was going to be in the speech. There's too many to think about bedding on a sports event. Ideally, there's a performance enhancing drug testing. And of course we know I'm an Astros fan. We know sports teams cheat, right? But there's supposed to be built in restrictions so that the outcome is with the outcome is. When it comes to Pauli Market stuff, man, it's so, there's too many actors and too many

different places that can influence or know have early insights, et cetera. So the United I stay away from all this stuff. I just don't, I just don't participate. Yeah, I, here's my honest, and I'm pretty brutal on this. I think it's a financial cancer on society. This entire thing

of, it's really a byproduct of what has been coined financial nihilism, which is people don't

believe in the system anymore to such a point where they want to go to the riskiest investment possible. Riskiest bets possible because they don't feel like they can retire the traditional

“way like their parents did. So that's what we're seeing as a movement of young people flock”

towards the sports betting apps. Whatever it is, whether it's called sheet Pauli Market, fan dual bed, MGM, they're just trying to get a little bit of dopamine and the chance of getting rich is what's keeping them coming back. And I would, I said, interesting take, man. I haven't heard the phrase financial nihilism, although I hear the sentiment all the time, right? Just, they feel like the game is rigged. It is rigged and people are frustrated. Yo, I get it. If I got 50 bucks,

why invest it into the stock market, I'd rather just go on Pauli Market, have a good time. Well, the my, not my psychological take because there's, there's a lot of some of the smartest neuroscientist and psychological, social scientist who participate in helping making some of these apps as as addictive as possible as hard to get off of all that. So it's difficult to make money on as possible. There's a science behind all this. But I also think there's a broader

concern, a broader cancer in our culture, if you will. And that is, we don't do anything as a culture. People go home and they just stay there. And so there's a sense of, we have a culture of zombies who are dead in their own skin and the most exciting thing happens on a TV show. That's the most exciting thing in their life. The most exciting thing that could happen is somebody sports team to think about that. We're going to pay some other guys to wear the jersey of the town I'm in

and you all play the game for me and you all decide whether they have a good week or not. I love sports, but it's this outsourcing of you go play for me instead of going down the street to local softball

“league and getting invested and being over dramatic about your cheating and this guy always, right?”

So there's something about backing up and saying, if feeling alive to you is happening in the, in the darkness of your own living room in the glow of a screen, that is a huge signal that you have created a life for yourself that has no life to it. And so turning the lights off in your own, turning the lights on in your own living room and asking, what brings me life? Like what brings me excitement? It's why you and I went down the street a couple of years ago and we're like,

our stuff, but it brought life to me. I talked about it for days afterwards. I was like,

oh, I should have done this with it brought life to me. And we made friends doing it. We were in the green room with other guys who were trying other men and women who were trying to do this too. It's the reason we go hiking. It's reason you can go fishing. It's reason why I love hunting. What where are things in my life where I can inject life into them and get excited about real things in the real world and not be captured by this other thing. It's like a hack to inject life into

your your your lifeless body here. And man, if you're if you're finding that you have this is the only thing that brings you joy and life, then that is a you've built a terrible life. So yeah,

it's a ringing bell in your life to back up and say, do you get one ride on this one? You get one,

“one ride. I can tell a lot about how your life is going based on your iPhone home screen.”

There you go. So if you've got all the bedding apps on there, I'm like, man, this guy is he's struggling. Yeah, go. Go join a bowling league. Go join a local soccer. RIP can call him and go join a pickle ball league for God. He didn't die by the way. He just not our coworker anymore. He said he is empty desk is between the end George and I still get sad sometimes. But like go create a life worth living is what I want to say beautifully said.

Hope that answered your question Todd in Nevada. Nevada. Sorry. Don't come at me, guys. All right, Marianne's and Lansing Michigan up next. Marianne, I apologize for our rambling. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it. I am going to be getting married at the end of August this year. And I'm kind just to make sure that I'm making a wise choice. We're going back and forth deciding if we need to rent versus buy. Now renting for about six months after we get married,

we'll give us more flexibility to choose your right house. My future husband wants to initially buy after we get married because he wants to see about building equity in a home. And I just want to see if renting is a possibility just to make sure that we are in the right area before we buy a house. Okay, well here's the checklist before you buy a home, especially as

we're going to get married. Number one, we always recommend renting for a while because you're

already combining your lives. There's already a lot of pressure there and newness. We don't need to add the stress of home ownership onto that. So renting for a while is great. Number two, are you guys completely dead free? We, he just has a car payment. He has just $2,000 left on it. Okay, how much do you guys have savings? savings total would be $80,000. Okay, and what's that earmarked for? I'm not sure. Okay, I'm just shocked he still has the car. $80,000 or it's his $80,000.

It's mine. Okay, and he has nothing? No, he has he has something I have to see this specific amount. It he last time with 50,000. Why do you have a car payment still? He was trying to pay it off

“slowly. He just got it. So that's why. Okay, I think you guys need some financial alignment. That's”

another huge piece of this whole puzzle before you guys get married. We need to make sure that our values are the same because otherwise you're going to have some fun, newlywed financial arguments. And this is this is just like a little surface level. And should we rent or should we buy right now? But you guys need to decide, are we going to people who live consumer debt free, who have an emergency fund, who have a strong down payment? Because this whole thing of I'm going to build equity with

zero percent down and most of the money is going toward the lender on the front half of the loan. So renting is not a sin. It's not throwing away money. You're buying yourself patience. Until you can get to a place where you have some financial stability and do this out of a place of strength

“not just out of, well, I want to build equity and I was told once you're married, you should”

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We'll click the link in the description if you're listening on podcast or YouTube. Ben is in Boston up next. Ben, welcome to the show. Hey, guys, thank you so much for having me. I've been listening to you all for so long. That's pretty surreal to be talking with you all right here.

“Well, thank you. It's an honor for us as well. How can we help today?”

So, I wanted to ask right now, I'm lucky. I'm really blessed to make a very good salary.

Also, I have a very high cost of living within the Boston area of Boston. It's not cheap. We high expenses. We also have two small kids, one on the way. And while I listen to you all for a while, pretty recently became serious about you know what? I want to pay off my debts. I want to really, as you all say, start the process of living like no one else. But we, so right now, I do have enough funds to pass my debts other than my mortgage.

I don't know if I have an excited about the issue. I've heard pretty incredibly that my, where I work is going to be downsizing soon, that it seems like the next three, four, maybe up to six months. I'm going to move these in my job. And from my research, I do think my next job won't bother the real substantial concub, most likely some terms. What kind of fields are you in? Yeah, right. I'm going to in the legal field. Okay.

“Are you in the license of the legal field? Are you legal adjacent?”

I am. I'm attorney. I work in a pretty special ways area. I've class-action areas. Sure. And I've been in my current role for going 10 years now. I'm going to work my way up there because I'm pretty senior. And it also, I've worked my way up to kind of know what's around the corner. Sure. Which does seem like we're going to be, yeah, it does seem like it's a very, it best case scenario. If you need big pay card, I'm in right now. I'm making about three,

seven years out of year. All in my license, making about sixty-five. From my research, unless if I really want to change things out, different fields of law, completely different work-life bounds, everything else, it seems like we'll probably be going down to like 175 to 100. Which is still, don't get me wrong. It's a, you know, I'm paper to get jailored, and you have high expenses. It's a different lifestyle. It's a different lifestyle.

Okay. You don't have to apologize, but it's a 50% pay card overall, so that's a big deal. Yeah. So how much debt do you have?

“In terms of how much debt do you have? In terms of how much debt do you have?”

This is all basically in fact, I could pay this off now, but it wouldn't bring me with much.

Okay. We've got about 85 in student loans. My life has made you 30. In five-in student loans, have 20 on a no interest credit card that 10 to 15 on my car, and it doesn't mean if you have a little one, but I mean, all on-prem savings right now, I've got like what 80 in savings with my life. We only have 180 in savings. And what was that year on for?

It was, at first it was emergency sign to kind of grew. I was going to invest it a little more. We do have high expenses. We have two kids, another on the way. And so I mean, they care loans right now in the $4,000 a month range, which is pretty fair. For one child, for two kids. For two kids.

Okay. I was like, oh, man, I'm from Boston. I'm shocked by that. Okay. So four grand a month, two grand for each kid makes more sense. So if you pay off all the debt, would you have like 30K left in the emergency fund? I would, and we do have again, we have some investments as well. We have, you know, somewhere on the 100,000 dollars in investment.

So we pay it off. We have some money. We will not be broke. Yeah. I want to be worried about where we're going to eat the next month. But with, with, with just pay cut and such, you know, part of me is like,

When they shake out, maybe I'm wrong about my research and what the options are here.

Well, my fear is it's always going to be looming, so you'll never pay off the debt.

And if you do, now you're stuck with all these debts and the layoff.

“So if I'm in your shoes, the best thing you could do is pay off all the debt today.”

You're left with 30 grand and then just stack money with all those freed up payments for the next three to six months. Now we're back to, you know, 60 to 80 to 100 grand with no debt. That puts you in a way better situation. Could you, you're trading an unknown future? I'm going to have a pile of cash to cover all of these payments.

And the expensive lifestyle that we have for, I'm going to have no payments.

So if, if my house gets hit, I'm going to, I'm not going to owe anybody anything.

Right. And worst case scenario, my wife has to pause her job and stay at home with the kids. So we can, because she's making 60, but after taxes and after, you know, driving back and forth and parking and all that, actually we, we buttoned out from the $4,000, we like you all have to make

“some significant, just to ask some bigger lifestyle questions, but I like the idea of heading into a”

storm knowing everything is short up, not having a whole bunch of shovels to dig out all the gravel if, if a storm comes. And the other thing I haven't heard you talk about, dude, if, if I got word, Georgia and I are, I mean, we're brought into a lot of leadership conversations here. If I got word that I'm going to be out of a job that Ramsey decided we're going to close down shows in six months. You better believe, man, I'm going to be all hitting the street,

talking to everyone I know, trying to ask, hey, what does your studio do? What does your agency do? Do you all have this? Like, I, I would want to take agency into my own hands as much as possible, not just sitting, hope it all happens. If you're making $3.75, you might be a partner and you may be a part of equity split in all that, but you know what else you are? You're a real good lawyer. You know, I, I appreciate that. I'm not asking that all makes sense to me. I will say,

when I send my dad, I demand him to my mortgage, we still have a good amount of money left on the mortgage, and obviously right now we're not thinking to sell him a house or anything like that. Hopefully, it doesn't come to that, but I do agree. I mean, if we can get rid of all the shovels, put the mortgage,

“it's simplified, thanks for sure. I thought that's what you all would say, but want to tell”

what it's made sure. The question is, are you going to do it, Ben? People want to know, what's he going to do after this call? Have we been convincing enough in five minutes to make you make this six-figure move? I, I was leaving that way, but then I was a little worried, you know, I should talk to some people from Ramsey. That's a classic lawyer answer. He didn't even answer. There was a yes or no question you're on. He didn't answer, and you made me feel good. That

means you're a great lawyer. We're going to, we're going to pay off. We're going to pay it off. Yeah. Okay. So like, I want to paint you a picture, okay, Ben? You ready? This time tomorrow, except for your mortgage, you and your wife owe nobody anything in the world. And you have $30,000 in cash, right? And you make $375 together with your wife. You'll make a little over $4K a year. I mean, $400. You and her shake hands and say for the next three

months, six months, we are going to contract our spending as much as possible. We're going to find joy in each other. She's pregnant also, right? Is that what you said? Yeah, we got another one. Okay. So we're going to circle the wagons on our house. We're going to catch up on some shows. We're going to go on walks in these super hot, but sometimes super cool Boston winners. You're going to start spending time with the kids at a park. You're all going to just circle the wagons on your spending for a season.

And you're going to stack cash maniacally. So if you can bring, you guys bring home like 25k a month right now? If, after we take your out tackles before 1K contribution stuff, I've asked a little bit on you. Okay. So let's say you could live on 10, even with daycare in the mortgage, without any debt payments. Could you live on 10k? There'd be a little bit higher than that. So if there's no daycare sure, that it's safe for me.

Okay. Are you split the difference? You take half of your take-home pay and just shove it in savings for the next six months. Yep. And is it pretty fun? If you do get laid off, are you going to get some sort of severance? You usually answer yes, but things are pretty unclear. So I don't want to add on that. Okay. So I'm just trying to paint you a positive future here that you wake up in six months. So you wake up January 1 of 27. You have 110, 150 grand in the bank. You don't know

anybody anything except for your house. You have a new third kid. They're healthy. They're awesome.

And your boss calls you in and says, sorry man, you kind of heard the words, but you're on the list.

And you've already put in the work. You got back in the associations. You started going to the

monthly, the Boston Legal Association meetings. You started shaking hands. You started calling all friends from law school. And you have a new job already lined up, brother. Like, I'm talking a complete 180 from the world you are living. And you are free, free, free. That to me is a positive division. I would really latch on to you. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show and the Fair Wins Credit Union studio. I'm George

Camel here with Dr. John Deloni and we're taking your calls at Triple 8, 825, 5, 225. Shion is in Dallas, Texas. What's going on, Shion? I'm going to have it, you guys.

Doing great. What's your question?

So, I have around $600,000 with the Pokemon Clords. I buy and sell them. I have $300,000 in my personal collection. I don't know if I should sell all of them. Or if I should hold on to them as viable business. Wow. How old are you? I'm making. How long

“you've been doing this? I think since I was like 10. So you are buying new packs or are you buying”

cards and flipping them and holding on to them and they go up and value how did this all work out? Yeah, as buying cards will be memorable to them. Wow. So how much have you spent to get here? Pulling on under $156,000. Wow. Are you working? Where did you come up with this month?

Ah, but you talk about George, this is work. You're cool. Yeah, I mean, we're $250,000.

No, it was slow when I started. Right. So now I'll make $60,000 month buying the sound of the cards. Wow. That is wild. So you said you have $300,000 in your personal collection, but you've got $600,000 holding. Tell me about the other $300,000. Oh, so I grew to card shows and I have a table and I sell the cards to other people.

“And that's how you could, you know, you're saying you could make $300,000 if you”

offloaded all of these at the card shows. I could make for my personal collection, if I was to start all, I could make like $280,000. So when you say personal, what's the other ones? The other ones are the ones I'm already selling. Oh, so you're already selling half of them, essentially. Yeah. And you don't want to sell the other half? No, but I don't know if it makes sense. I'm in college right now. So in the smoke clears on all of this. If you sold your personal

collection today, you called one of your broker buddies and they just wrote you a check for $280, grand. Let's do 300 for easy math. Plus, what you already have contracted to sell, you as an 18 year old. If you did all of this this time next week. And of course, dude, I don't know how the the trade goes and how they move money around it. But let's just pretend

“it was, it was cut and dry. This time next week, how much money would you have in your checking account?”

Oh, you're like, exactly. I can't like $600,000 at 18. Yeah. Wow. Well, what's your, what's your sort of end goal here? Like, what do you want to be doing at 23? I want to eventually start my own business. Do it what? In the card world or something else? Yeah. So this is it. Like, you are your obsessive about this. This is your passion. If you could snap your fingers, you'd be a full time trading cards. Yeah. Okay. Well, is it a viable investment? No.

This is speculative. And so you could see, let's say, you know, obviously Pokemon is holding strong right now, but we don't know what two years from now where things will be. If there'll be a 50% crash overnight one day, we just don't know where that's not going to happen in the stock market. There's, there's a true sort of speculative supply demand issue right now with Pokemon cards that does not exist in the stock market. Or if there was a major stock market correction,

and I've got to take my money to keep my profit, my home afloat. I'm going to not use disposable income or borrowed income. Or if there's a contraction, a credit contraction like happened in '08, '09. I'm not going to borrow money to buy cards on speculative value, right? But this is what you want to do. I don't know. I mean, you got $6,000, $8,000, $18,000. Why are you in college? If this is what you want to do, you're clearly good at this is what I'm saying. It's good. My parents

college? I mean, I'm doing business. Okay. The reason I made this call is because I think

our whole portfolio of cards went down to 20% in the past two weeks. So it got me like a new

“on nervous to see what I should do in the situation. Well, and that's why like if it let's take”

cards off the table, let's say you're a plumber. Being a plumber and owning a plumbing business is a great job. I would not buy plumbing tools for investing purposes. I wouldn't buy a bunch of tools and put them in my closet and say, I want to sell these one day so I can pay for my medical care when I'm 70. And so when George says this isn't a good retirement vehicle, that's exactly right. Because it's too speculative. At the end of the day, I have to sell a card to somebody who will

give me an exchange of value for the thing that on its face, it's a it's a piece of cardboard. It has no value in it of itself other than what you'll pay me for it versus oil. I can put into

a million different products, right? So this makes it even more risky than a single stock.

Because at least that's a company that's producing things that's creating revenue that has

“shareholders involved. So that's a very different ball game than what you're talking about, which”

is more like to to crypto than anything else. Now it's physical. So there's a little more you can actually see it hang on to it and people are like you're saying there's entire conventions around this now. So I'm not saying that a year from now it's going to go down to zero dollars. What I am saying is that 18, you got enough things to be anxious about. So if I'm you, I'm going to offload this, invest all of that money. And I just did the math for you. 600 grand. You just let it ride for 20

years. Never add another dime. Put it into an index fund. You could have $5 million sitting in there

by 38 years old. Without ever losing sleep over it. And being as good as you are, could you not restart this game from scratch? Yeah. If I gave you five grand and said, hey, go turn this into a Pokemon Empire. A year or two from now. Could you have 100 grand? Probably more. Take me up on the challenge. And here's two things I want you to think through. Number one, I've got I was an obsessive baseball card collector as a kid. I don't know where most of them are at this point. But I kept several

because you know what the value of those cards are? I have no idea. They mean something to me. Right. I have memories attached to a Nolan Ryan is one of my favorites. Like so I've got some of those cards. So if you've got some of the cards in your personal collection, that means something to you. Great. Keep those, man. That's awesome. And you have you started this thing. Would you start this thing when you were 10, 11, 12, you were started this speculative business in what may look

back on history as one of the most extraordinary wealth runs of human history. And so the reason I'm telling you that is part of being a business owner is writing out tough seasons. And so there are months when my books sell great. And there's months when my books don't sell great. That's part of being an author. And so I have to look at it at a long time horizon, especially when it comes to valuables and collectibles, they're going to go up and down over time. And if gas prices go to

$4 or $5 a gallon, then people are going to have less disposable income to buy cards with. Right. So it's part of that is because you're 18 and you're starting this business and now you're starting to be like, "Oh, I'm playing with grown up money. This is real money, dude." And I don't have the long-term track record of being a business owner of dealing with what happens when 20% of my clients say, "Hey, we have other expenses because there's a recession." Or I got other expenses that just popped

up. And so part of this is, as a business owner, as you've got to be comfortable with the ups and downs, which is why retained earnings are important. And keep cash is important all that. But as a business, you clearly know what you're doing. And there's card dealers and collectible dealers all over the planet. That's awesome. But yeah, we don't have to remember for a retirement view. Collectibles no matter what it is, cards, coins, sneakers. It can be fun, but it is not

a substitute for real investments. Correct. Where there's no cash flow, there's no diversification. And that's leaving you exposed and you're starting to feel a little bit of that anxiety. And for that reason, keep it up as a hobby, keep making money while you can, but I would not have so much stock in this.

“You should not feel uncertain about investing and you don't have to. That's why we created”

investing essentials. A two-night virtual event where George Camo and I walk you through my playbook for investing and wealth planning will simplify everything from 401k's and mutual funds

at RamseySolutions.com/events or click the link in the show notes.

“Katie is an Idaho Falls up next. Katie, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Hey. How can John and I help?”

So I'm kind of in this spot because my husband and I have been looking for about a year and a half to buy a home. But we've been running for the last five years and we are right, has went from

when we started when we first got married. It was 1200. And now we're sitting at 1500.

And there are expectories are right to 1900. And so I already know based on our income that we can't afford 1900 a month. And we've already cut like fresh everything that we can cut. And so we found a mobile home first sale and they want 120,000 for it. And I don't know if like that's a good idea or not because every house that we've looked into and investors either bought an it. And right before we went into contract or you know we only got pre-approved for 200,000 and

that's kind of we don't want to spend 200,000 because then we're shooting ourselves in the foot

because you know that means you know you're paying like you know 19 or 2 grand a month and we can't afford

“that. What do you guys make a month? We make about roughly like 2500. What do you all do for a living?”

We're in the tree industry. Tell me about it. So we do line clean and my husband works along long hours and then I stay home and kind of take care of all the all the things that need to be taken care of that home. Her like just like the finances and the home kind of stuff. So collectively both of you working in this business you guys make about 30,000 a year and he's working 50, 60 hour weeks. So he works like he works for four times schedule with over time as well. So sometimes it's this

few hours and sometimes 48 hours a week and then we do like a lot of side jobs because we've

been trying really hard to like get our business going but we've been having a hard time because

“in I don't know there's like so many tree companies and so everybody all goes and bid”

out together and so let me say this. Like I want you to hear me say this stinks because your husband is a guy who's working as a butt off. You're working your butt off and you're really working hard towards a thing to build a thing. This business and so I want you to hear me say that stinks because the story that you and I were told growing up is if you find the thing that you like to do and you find the thing that you're good at and you work really hard at it

the rest of your life will just work out. Yeah and so you and I got a bad story. Okay and so here me say I want to applaud your husband's hustle if he was here I'd give my hug man because I loved to hear young man who are out there crushing it and trying and working not scared of hard work that will do anything any time working on weekends I love that and I love to hear a supportive spouse who's trying to co-build this business with him I love it. The reality I'll have

front of you. The reality I'll have in front of you is you could both go get a job of star bucks and y'all be making more money per year and so the dream y'all have is a good dream it's just not working out financially you'll have a math problem and so at some point you'll have to decide we're gonna be folks who love this idea of this business we like being with 500 other tree companies all competing all driving the cost of tree services down into the into the basement we love that

and we don't there's really not a way for us to distinguish ourselves or and so that means we're getting we love this enough like if you're a songwriter or you're a stand-up comic we love this thing so much that we're willing to have this other life which is we have to change apartments every six months because when the wrinkles up we can't afford it we gotta go somewhere else or you'll have to look in the mirror and say we gave it our best shot we are hard workers let's take our

work ethic and our dreams and our desires and put them towards in another direction that's going

it's technically two incomes because he does this like Friday through Sunday his own business

“no I I work for power company but those jobs aren't making all enough money till 2500 bucks a”

month total between everything no like we have side stuff every now and then like we'll go into a job and it'll be like like one job for two hours but every now and then is not consistent income so we can't count that we need stable consistent income so the problem truly is not rent yes it's

things that they're moving the rents the problem is your income hasn't moved in five years and you

guys are on the poverty level but our income has we started when we first started this job we were making we're making about $13 an hour and now we're at $21 an hour I know but you're not here what we're saying Katie like when you see all the progress and how you've moved that's awesome you're still running into a math problem every month and inflation over the last five years oh we're not but we're not in debt that's great it's great but y'all are about to be at not have a place to live

“because y'all can't afford $1900 a month rent and if you go buy manufactured home here's what happens”

the lone payment stays the same while the value of that home starts tanking which means you're

probably underwater on this thing within six months trying to sell it to somebody who

probably doesn't exist you're going to they're just going to go out and buy a new home if I want you're going to have a hundred twenty thousand our payment on something worth sixty thousand dollars and my question is like because we're we keep looking at this mobile home we've been looking at that for a while and then there was another house that had landed with it and we were really excited about it and it was only like it was 175 thousand and when we went and we met with like

the officer like the lender whatever we want to call it he had said oh you get pre-approved for 200 thousand but you don't have to use it all and I was like okay because I didn't really understand all that stuff so when I asked him I was like so what what's the better you know what what's the better thing you could do and then looking into the mobile home it was like oh well that's only a thousand twenty five but you get a whole acre of land with it I'm just telling you please

no buy a mobile home it would be like buying a truck with a payment of a thousand dollars a month thinking it was a good idea and the truck will go down in value over time and you're going to have a real hard time selling it and you guys can afford 150 thousand dollar home how much do you have in savings I have about like so between all our savings we have about 17 thousand great so we're going to call that your emergency fund well I also have an emergency fund of two thousand dollars

three thousand yeah okay you guys need way more than that for your emergency fund at least

“ten thousand minimum is your emergency fund if you want to be on that start saving for the”

down payment that's great but like you said in the beginning hey we're trying to cut we can't cut any further you're right the other lever we need to start pulling now is making more because you can't spend much less than you are and that's where you guys need to reevaluate this business reevaluate the jobs reevaluate where you live if there's not a lot keeping you here can you move to an area that is cheaper to live with a better job that is more stable and here's the reality

your husband is one chainsaw swing away from hurtness back and being out for three months like there's a risk reward to these to these jobs and y'all need a big emergency fund he is one stepping off sideways off the back of a of a log a twist in his ankle and he can't go up for three weeks and y'all lose all that in cut like so you're it's a very precarious so I hope you hear me in George this is serious y'all are in a precarious situation right here so that 20 grand that's your emergency

fund never touch that and now y'all are saving up and even if you guys both will make in 20

dollars an hour 40 hours a week that's over 80 grand a year that's a huge pay raise if you guys can separate this business out and go we're both gonna go our separate ways and get our own jobs making over 20 dollars an hour that would change your life and give you the margin to start stacking cash to buy a traditional single family home versus a manufactured home and that's the problem a manufactured home rarely goes up and value in fact it doesn't the land may go

value which makes you think this was a good deal but you're still stuck underwater on this thing so please please please we're begging you not to do this it is not the solution

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who have the experience to guide you step-by-step to make smart decisions not expensive mistakes connecting is easy just compare agent profiles interview your top choices and pick the right one for you you can find a local rambzittrusted agent for free rambzissolutions dot com slash agent or click the link in the description if you're listening on youtube or podcast robin is in Fort Worth Texas up next robin welcome to the show thank you hi john hi george thank you for having me absolutely

my husband is 55 his name is Steve i'm 41 we just hit baby step 7 last year house hit off completely debt free but right after life handed us one heck of a mercy um Steve was diagnosed with early onset dementia oh god i'm so sorry and because of our ages we have a multi-decade timeline

“to protect and i need to know how to structure our wealth so that his care costs don't completely”

drain our retirement before i'm ready to use it wow there's a lot here my initial answers i don't know if if that's possible um that's a she's that's a mess that's a mess i'm so sorry what's the state of your finances right now like you'll hit baby step 7 what does that what does that mean practically we are all right we're like 24 thousand dollars away from being millionaires thankfully um or but when i say like what is yeah what does that mean do you have like

a 700 thousand dollars house you're about to pay off or you all have a 600 thousand dollars in cash right our well i'll say not all of it i mean it's not all liquid our house is like 250 thousand okay um we've got retirement and stuff and it's 630 thousand okay and you're working full time i'm working full time okay and is he still working he is not he's on long-term disability okay and did you guys have any long-term disability insurance we did so he's actually taking home 80

percent of his full pay that's fantastic excellent you did a great job there was that through

his employer that he had that set up yes incredible okay so how much is that so he's taking home

40 about 41 thousand a year okay great it's a little under four grand coming in there and then how much are you bringing home i'm 102 thousand a year and those those numbers are gross they're not that okay well you guys have a great income and you're completely debt free which sets you up to sort of create this slush fund for anything medical that comes up especially while he's pre medicare because he's got 10 years until then yeah so that's really what you're trying to

figure out is what is care look like there's a lot of questions we don't know of what is it

“what this progression is going to look like what the ongoing care is so the best thing you can do”

is just get as much fax as you can and then know here's what could happen a month from now

year from now two years from now and be socking away that money to to kind of protect yourselves tonight use the emergency fund so we have been investing about thirty four thousand dollars between the two of us and my raw 401k and IRA and his falful raw IRA should we change our investment into stack up money like a storm mode until we know I mean I don't I don't know what the future hold nobody knows what future well the good is is we know that the long term disability income will

be there yeah and so the big question is at what point would you have to step down or away from work

so that you know hey two years from now there's a chance that he might need more intensive care

“am I going to do that or do I should I keep working and we get private care for him that's the kind”

of the kind of math you're going to need to grapple with and dementia the the more that I mean it's it's being studied all over the world right now but the more studies that come out dementia is is is now not a singular thing it's kind of like saying somebody's got cancer and the next question is well what kind so have they given you any sort of prognosis based on the type of dementia he has other than it's early on setting it came much sooner than than is then it's quote unquote

normal right um did they give any kind of prognosis for in two years and three years and seven years or is this quick I did they give you any sort of prognosis here it's a vascular but because of his age there's a really no timeline okay the average timeline is five years but that's estimating everybody in all ages right and that might be 80 if the vast majority of that pool sample is 80 and 90 year olds they're going to have other yeah complicating factors there so wow what a mess

I I like the idea George and tell me if I'm wrong I like the idea and we rarely we don't usually say this on the show is of splitting the difference of you continuing to invest because you you're you're 41 you you statistically speaking you're not even halfway home yet right and so you've got to begin thinking about life after Steve life after you're able to to make six figures and at the same time you're going to have acute expenses that are going to like predictably expand

“over time with extra care do you need to have a quarter-time nurse living with you or coming”

in during the day is you're going to go to a care facility like so there's going to be that reality where you're going to need additional cash more than you normally would right yeah do you know if his long-term disability is taxable income or if it's tax free it depends on how the payment was pretty oh wonderful okay so that's like net income which definitely helps the numbers here do you currently have a financial advisor that you guys are working with um no not yet

okay I would definitely contact them because here's what they can do is map out all of the

variables that you guys have here the social security survivor benefits that you will have additional to any retirement that you have all of these things will give you a clear picture here's all the insurance options we have to help with his care and once you map all of that out I think

“you guys will sleep better at night knowing that there's less variables then there were before”

that's the most you can do you guys have done such a great job preparing for a storm because you're completely debt-free with a solid income and you had the right insurances in place so I want to let you know you are doing so much better than most people in your situation because of the hard work you both did and Robert can I recommend how recent is this diagnosis just a little over a year I mean the diagnosis is this month but he's it's it's been a year okay we've been waiting

for a year for it I would recommend you getting with a group and your local community there in Fort Worth in the Dallas area where you can go once a week once every two weeks and sit with a group of spouses who are going through the same thing you're going to need people who speak your same language and y'all can just look at each other and know you know what I mean but one of the beyond the finances what I want you to do is to is gonna sound nutty but you can only provide care for him

with what you have and so it's gonna sound counterintuitive but I want you to be in service to

yourself first so that you can be of service to him and to what comes next meaning I want you to

have a group of people that you can talk to I want you to be serious about your physical health and your emotional health and your relationships so that he can anchor into you in this upcoming season whether it's two years whether it's five years or beyond because it's gonna it's gonna be a journey and if you don't have any water left in your picture you're gonna have no way to fill his glass up do you know what I'm saying? I do. Blessings to you man I hate this hate this

for you I hate this for him I hate this for your whole family. Thank you so much both of you I appreciate your guidance. Yeah it took us more of us to pro there in the DFW area I know there's quite a few of them and they'll sit down with you and with the heart of a teacher they'll walk you through and you're gonna have to become a scholar and this stuff because you're gonna be doing it on your own and by the way if you haven't moved all the accounts in your name if you don't have

finite power of attorney medical power of attorney financial power of attorney all those things you're gonna be a soul decision maker on a lot of this on all of this moving forward so getting

for you. A dancer question I would keep investing your 15% anything beyond that starts to go into

this sort of care fund and probably a high old savings account for now and just stack it up and stack it up and stack it up so that we don't burn the emergency fund or our nest egg along the way but we're hoping for the best for you guys. 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 not because they don't make enough money but because they don't have

“a plan you need to give every dollar you earn a job because when you do that something changes”

you stop guessing you stop worrying you stop stressing our every dollar budgeting app will show you

how to find extra cash pay off debt and finally start winning with money but most people won't do it

they'll keep living paycheck to paycheck keep hoping things will change without making a change it's time to say enough is enough it's time to take control of your money it's time to start your every dollar budget for free today go download it in the app store or google play our script of the day exit is twenty versus eight and nine six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Sreener William said don't let anyone

“work harder than you do you hear that John you've already failed I've been carrying the load today”

carrying it man alright man he is in Chicago up next what's going on man hey guys thanks for taking my call I'll try to give a quick summary before I ask the question I will note that my plumber did give me an update earlier today so may be your answer will change I'm 27 I just recently bought a home I do have three young kids in a stay at home life and I'm expecting my fourth child within the next two weeks hardly ever take some time and since I got into the home I did have a

savings account that dwindled down a little bit just from small repairs like a H-Fact system that needed to be repaired for 30,000 and then small things are on the house within the last

“month my sewage drain I think has a crack oh no my entire home to smoke like sewage and now I”

have like drain flies pretty much throughout my home so what would your plumber say so one I had two different plumber's come just to get to different opinions and quotes one of them said it is a drain pipe that does have a crack the the house that I got was a remodel everything was pretty much new including most of the above ground plumbing but the sewage stuff was all the original pipe work and he said he needed to get a camera scope in there and he did see where it was and it was under

parts of the foundation under the ground yeah so where the pipe is cracked it's part of a slab yeah it might be right next to it or underneath it but the main thing is that because I'm having like drain flies and all these these small issues that come along with this I do have a previous employer's 401k that's about 23 grand I'm in baby step two my only dead is my my wife's band it's about 14,000 my actual savings is about 2,500 and I have $2,000 for a thinking fund for my

personal car that may go gotten those one and then a thousand dollar emergency fund the only other option that I would have to fund it if I don't use the 401k would try to be the finance it or use money from my in laws and I'd pay them back with little to no interest but I just wanted to give you guys this opinion because I know it's shunned upon to take from your 401k even though I'm not putting anything in there now so yeah let me ask you a few questions about the work

the um did he did anytime I've ever had plumbing snake they show me the pictures have you seen the

cracks not yet okay I'm gonna have the second pump so that's what the first one told me

my grass yesterday I did see a puddle of water on one of the corners of my house and my in law

“my father-in-law came and he helped dig up some of that corner to kind of see what it was”

and it ended up being like like pretty much poop and stuff backing up and phoned up so as far as like the urgency goes I do want to try to get it done just because I'm gonna have a new horn of course you got two guys with kids we get it and you got storm on storm on storm right now

well and here's what I want you to think through if they if they come out and they say yeah it's

cracked and we have to dig up your entire yard from the street to your foundation and completely redo this whole thing it's old cast iron it's old or old it's rotted through it's iron it's it's useless there could be we can drill a hole in it and pump it completely pump it out for 600 bucks and that will get you two months or three months and then we'll come out here and pump it again and I'll get you three more months and so the temptation is and I totally get it dude both

George and I like we both get it is I want to just do all this right now I need to get it all fixed

“right the second whatever but I always want you to remember generally in these kind of situations”

unless your house is falling over there's there's step one the perfect option there's step two there's step three there's step four yeah and so what do I have to do to limp a long while I'm still

gathering and saving money so I can do this whole thing right so it's basically what what gets us

by versus what gets it completely fixed right yeah so isn't I'm not on a set you think I'm on my city line I'm in like the suburbs of Chicago sure based on what they find when it's dug up well how how would you guys go about it then as far as well there's gonna be multiple stages if two guys come and give you the same the same issue they both snake it and they're both like yeah brother your your pipe all the way to the street is screwed up I'm going to want to call the city

and see if they have any investment in this thing too it's part of this line there's I'm also

“going to then because then you start phase two which is all right how much are going to cost for you”

to fix it how much is going to cost for you to fix it I'm going to call four other companies out here to see what they would charge and I'm going to be I'm going to do my due diligence to see how how I can get this saying not the cheapest but how I can get done with the most reputable company done the right way for the best price okay because they did the diploma that saw the issue today did say it not to use like any of the washers dryer shower anything just because of the fact that

the group was coming up from that little corner and the drain was busted yeah I'm just waiting to get the natural visual on the pipe and is there someone you guys can go temporarily yeah so my hand was extended their hand for us to stay there for a couple of days I would definitely do that I'd call the city to have them a city a sewage inspector come out and look at it and see because if it may be backed all the way down in the middle of your street for half a

block it can be any proper work to do yeah and I would also contact your homeowners insurance have you done that um no I I did I do have a warranty but they won't cover it so I didn't think to contact the new home that you just bought why won't the warranty cover that the company said they don't cover any type of like sewage plumbing only like above ground which didn't make any sense for me here's your home I go find every piece of documentation for that warranty go pull up

your declarations for your homeowners insurance uploaded to AI and see if there's a way that this can be covered because your insurance company might say now we don't cover that you might find that you appeal it and go no they're gonna cover it now and they might then cover your displacement to go rent a home somewhere while it gets fixed and so I don't want you to feel like there's only one option right now I'm gonna fight this thing to offload it as much as I can it's a

part-time job and if you think of a part-time job that you might earn $10,000 you'd probably take

that part-time job this is the same thing you may save yourself 10 grand what would that first

plumber quote you to dig up the whole line from from your house to the street he said uh he said depending well the line is under like six feet a dirt and it's in a crawl space under my basement under my home in my basement he said it could be at six thousand to ten thousand just depending on how much line is cracked and how far down he has the dig okay so if you think about it give yourself that exercise too what what does life look like the the numbers you just gave me

for your car fund if this you've got six grand in your pocket right now yeah between your sinking fund your savings and that car repair fund you got you know a good 5500 so within a month

car loan is 14 grand what is that van worth uh it's probably worth about the same about 14 15 okay

“uh 20 you can find out to see and you got you got four kids so you need a van yeah I get that”

but I was wondering if it's worth 30k and you guys can downgrade and van for now that that could solve

some problems too but I definitely would not touch that retirement account I know it's tempting

“because it feels like old money in your old coat pocket but man that's like taking a loan at 35%”

interest with the penalties and taxes you're gonna pay on that money so it is not worth it and if you

just leave that money alone to grow for the next 30 years it's you're it's really a six figure mistake you're making okay so can I talk to you just just dad the dad real quick husband the husband yeah I'm promise you this will pass and it feels like it's all happening you're having a new kid on the way you got in laws the same you can come live with us you've got a car that might die it all feels like it's happening let's laser beam on the plumbing issue and get this thing cleaned

up and let's celebrate this new kid come in and let's do everything we can to scratch and claw and pay for cash on this deal then worst worst worst case if the in laws want to be generous

“and help you guys cover this for now go for it remember there's ultimately only one way to”

financial peace and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace Christ Jesus