Following a Proven Plan Is the Fastest Way To Build Wealth

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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 Fair Wins Credit Union Studio,

this is the Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloni, number one best selling author, host to the Dr. John Deloni, Jim Ramsey personality, he's my co-vote today. [MUSIC] Open phones here at Triple 8, 825, 5, 225.

The call is free, and some say the advice is worth, exactly what you pay for it. Joshua is in Dallas, high Joshua, how are you? [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Oh, I'm more blessed, Venturist, how are you all?

>> Just the same sir, how can we help?

>> Well, first of all, I just want to say

that my wife and I actually back in 2022, stopped by the Ramsey Show, washed y'all live, and it was you and John, and many of you were just the kindest people, and you left a huge impact on me and my family. >> Thank you.

>> I don't think it was ever called this kind. >> That was awesome, thanks man. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Maybe John, but not me. >> Well, my wife and I have about $297,800 in debt,

and our expenses are about to increase. More than we bring home, and so we have a five-month old daughter who's about to be going to a nursery, and that's going to cost us about $1,300 a month, which is going to put us upside down about $700 a month.

>> Right now, I am on the road every day for about two hours and 15 minutes to two hours and 30 minutes driving to and from work to make 55,000 before taxes, bringing home, I bring home about 40,000 or so.

“Truthfully, I'm wanting to know the best way that I can clean up”

this mess, I'd love to find a way to not have to drive as much, so I can be home with my wife and baby. I know there are jobs out in my area where I can make just as much, if not more, and not be on the road. Put in applications places, but I'm not really seeing a lot

of traction with any of that. >> Okay, all right. So, what kind of debt do you guys have? >> Well, a large majority of it, our student loans, you've got about 242,000 in student loans.

>> Who's the doctor? >> Neither of us, but we both have our masters in law. >> And so, my wife has her masters in school counseling. She would like to be an LPC someday, but that is actually getting in the way of that.

And I have my master of divinity where I'd like to go and I'd like to be a lead pastor. My hesitation was in doing that right now, unfortunately, is we can't really take a pay cut. So, I know whatever job I end up in is not going to be my

forever job right now, but we have a master clean up, and I'm ready to work. >> Are you working a pulpit on the weekends just to serve? >> I do serve. >> Yes, sir.

>> I mean, are you speaking? Are you preaching? >> No, sir.

“>> Okay, you need to be if you want to be a pastor someday.”

>> Yes, sir, and I'm in communication with some pastors in my church now for some opportunities, and even some, I scholarly research opportunities as well, which-- >> scholarly research opportunities won't get you

into a senior pastor role. >> Yes, sir. >> No one out, no, no pastor search committee has ever gone, oh, he's a scholarly research guy. It's never happened.

>> I want to say you preach and can you serve their local congregations, what they want to say? >> And many churches will pay you well more than 50,000 dollars for that way more, way more. But you're not qualified yet, because they can't see you,

they can't see you doing it at this stage,

because you've never done it.

So the master's in divinity does not put you into a pulpit as a senior pastor, period. It does not. >> A lot of preaching, a lot of servings. >> A lot of servings, a lot of servings.

>> A lot of servings, it's an associate pastor over at this other church that's larger than our church, and our church is looking for a senior pastor. We'll take these associate pastor off their hands,

“move them over here, that's how that is done.”

>> And is your wife going to go be a school counselor? >> She's going back. >> Yeah, she is going back for this upcoming school year. >> And what does that pay? That pay 50, 60 grand?

>> Yeah, she's making about 62, 65 before. >> And what other debt other than the student loans?

where we found out that we were pregnant as I also found out

that I was losing my job. So, I had that's 14,500. >> Okay. >> We also have a stupid tax in cars. We've got about $35,400 in cars and $6,000 on the credit card.

>> And so, well, when she goes back, you're negative because of the student loans in the cars. So, there's a couple of things going on.

“I don't want to drop two and a half hours for anything, okay?”

Period, if I'm you. So, I'm looking for a new position today. I'm going to work diligently and get to be near my home.

Or I'm going to move next to the work, but I think instead,

you need to find a new job. And she's got a job that's close by at her school counselor, right? >> Yeah. >> Okay, so you need to find a new job. That's the thing, one, no kidding.

You were already working on that, but that's a big deal. Because that two and a half hours gives you opportunity to do other things, like a side hustle, which can add money to this. You've got to sell $35,000 car. It's gone.

It's got to go. Obviously. And by the way, that's going to help you get right side up.

“Because that payment happens to be over $500, doesn't it?”

>> Well, it's two cars. It's, her car payment is about $400, and I'm blessed that my grandmother is actually bang for my car. If something happened to her, I would sell the vehicle. My car engine failed, and I fell into the shiny trap.

>> Okay, so what do you owe on your wife's car? On my wife's car, we owe $17,000. >> Yeah. Okay. Well, you're going to have to pick up extra jobs.

You're going to have to get closer to home, so you can do that to get this thing right side up. And you're going to have to start talking about shedding some things. And I don't, and Granny paying for my car is not sustainable, adult behavior. >> I would agree.

>> So short term, we can do that, but I want to plan to be out of that plan. And the plan is not she dies, and I have to sell it. That's not the plan. The plan is, I want to fix this by getting out of my car, but that's a little further down the road.

Right now, we're trying to get this $700 thing covered immediately, and that comes from selling some stuff, and picking up an extra job, and quickly as possible finding a new job in the area that pays as much or more, meanwhile, if you want a long term work on your careers as senior pastor, you're going to have to start filling a pulpit on Sunday. And that might be the side hustle, like I'm going to go find a church that's in between

the pastor's and I'll preach on the weekends, we'll come up with a dollar amount, and I'll be there 50 weeks out of the year, and a lot of churches will do that. A lot of churches do that, and I, I don't know anybody, not a person. Do I know right now who has gotten a job by a cold application, they are knocking on doors in their shaking hands, I regularly get emails from former higher ed colleagues who are

looking to move to new school to look at get out of working at university systems and saying,

“hey, can you put in a word from me here, can you call this person from here?”

It's all, all jobs right now are networked. All of them. We're going to send you a copy of Ken Coleman's book, The Proximity Principle, which explains that, that is how you get a job, it's not by filling out applications, filling out applications is complete waste of time.

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I'm doing fantastic, John, Dave, the K-diver, you do it today.

Better than we deserve, what's up, Matt? Yeah, so my wife and I, we've been listening to you guys for a while following along, and we're in the step 4 now, and we've, in doing so we started, actually, with Repping Youth Sports with our side hustle, and we're curious, do you, when you get to step 4, and you're looking at saving the 15%, do you keep up with the side hustle in the over time and then

do you include all of that bet that intensity when you, when you get into the 15%, because it, it kind of drastically changes the number that we're looking to save through that. Well, I mean, you can decide what your career path looks like. I would not sign up for an extra job as my life goal. In other words, extending it in perpetuates.

So no, when we go to baby steps 4, 5 and 6, you move from intense to intentional. Now if intentional is, I'm going to do some sports riffing, but not as much as I used to, because I want to put more into my 401k, while I'm adjusting my main career so that I don't have to work extra ever, but you can choose a side hustle just because, but I

would not require it, and I would want you to dial back on it.

It sounds like you've been putting in a lot of hours. Or if you have this 15% to put down on your house, and you all have this fixed number, you're going to run through that finish line, you just can't spread forever, is the thing. Right. So we're kind of in a weird spot, so I'm going to be a unit sheet metal worker, and

with our, through our package rate, I put a 40 something that's 46,000 a year into the three pensions. Right. So if we're doing the math off of, well, you guys say you cut that in half, right? Yeah.

Yeah. That's 12% right there, even cut in half. Okay. My yearly is a 140-ish. My wife is 55, and then we bring in anywhere between 20 and 30 through the refing multiple

sports. I mean, it would give you the order to stop. 10%. Reffing. Do you want to stop?

I don't know about stopping the refing, it's kind of fun, you get exercise, and you get paid to do it.

“I kind of thought, I kind of thought I heard that a little bit, that's why you want”

you to stop? Yeah, a little bit. Uh, she wants me home a little bit more. Yeah. I think you, I think you, I think you, I think you, I think you, I think you, I think you

dial it back from intense to intentional. And you say, I'm going to throw some over here, so I've got a bigger nest egg that is non-union. And the more, the larger that is, the more comfortable I get, the less I'm counting on the union pension, the more comfortable I am.

Unless I'm counting on anybody's pension, and more among nest eggs, the more comfortable I am, not just union. David, you know what I would love for you and your wife to do, you all have just been through a big thing. You'll work your butts off to pay off your debts to get an emergency fund.

What if you guys imagined we have a brand new marriage? You'll go out for a half day and just say, hey, what do we want our life to feel like? We, we are the drivers in the, in the driver's seat of our own life. What do we want our marriage to feel like? And what do we want to feel like when I get home from an exhausting day of sheet metal

working, what do you want to, like, you get them saying, y'all get to create this thing. And then reverse engineer with, we got to go to work, you got your jobs a couple days a week, I love Reffen. I love it.

“And she's like, a couple days, I actually like you, that's why I married you.”

I want you around. And y'all can have that conversation. It's not like this life is happening to you now. You all get to decide what this thing looks like and feels like. And there'll be seasons of sprints and seasons of walking but I want y'all to stop for a

second pause and celebrate the crap out of yourselves and plan it moving forward.

Absolutely. And Dave, real quick, can you walk through just for someone who's new the baby steps? From the, like he called said, I'm a baby step four now, can you walk us through that? Sure. Baby step one, $1,000.

Yeah. Save $1,000. A little starter, beginner emergency fund, just get a little distance between you and everything and you can go wrong and Murphy, right? And then once you got that, and you need to do that like in the first month.

Yes, right. You're gonna squeeze $1,000. You're gonna squeeze $1,000. Sell some stuff, put some stuff on Craigslist, whatever all that. Facebook, marketplace, whatever it is, right?

“Then we're gonna, the important one that everyone knows us for is you're gonna get out of”

debt everything but the house. And that's baby step two, list your debts, smallest to largest attack them with a vengeance, working all the time, selling everything, not going to a restaurant, not going on

We're getting out of debt and you clear your debts and that's what they've done. They're debt free. That's a cool place to be. It's so cool. Yeah.

And zero debt.

“And when you got zero debt, now you have control other than your home, you have control”

of your most powerful wealth building tool, which is your income.

You're not giving it all to freaking forward motor credit and to city bank, what's in your wallet? My money. Yeah. That's it.

So there we go, right? So we're gonna, we're gonna be out of debt, then we're gonna build an emergency fund. The most rainy day fund of three to six months of expenses or proper one. And that's taking the $1,000 account, adding to it. That's where they are.

They've just completed that. There's their own bank now, to an extent, they have no payments and they have an emergency fund. A good one. So, I mean, think of what if you're out there in your brand new and you got a bunch

of payments. Think what it would feel like, like no one's standing on your chest if you had no payments and $20,000 in the bank. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a big deal. That's where it is.

“And now he's trying to exail off the ref thing and can't figure it out because he's been”

so freaking intense to get there. And that's exactly the way it should be. He's been driving 160 miles an hour and he's trying to slow down to 50. But if you, that's a great analogy. You're driving 110, right?

You drive 160. I'll drive 110. And you go, you slow it down to 70 because your app says there's a placement down the road. It feels like you're, well, you feel like you're crawling down the road. I went to turtle mode.

Yeah. You're still going 70. A wreck still going to kill you. You're going fast. Yeah.

But not that fast. Yeah, it's different. So then you do, baby, you're intense like crazy intense in those first three. Then you move from intense to intentional. Meaning, we're going to do things on purpose, but we don't have to be so freaked out.

Now we can save up in going vacation. Now we can save up and move up and car a little bit in cash. Now we can buy that couch in cash. Or like his wife is talking about. Now you can just not have to work all the time.

We can watch office reruns together at night, just sit on the couch and where did that come from? I don't know. It's not even about person. You get to decide what you want to do with your life now.

Exactly. It's awesome. So in baby steps four, five and six, you do simultaneously. Four is 15% of your income going into retirement. Five is safe for kids, college, six is pay off the house.

The average person work in seven is when your house is paid off, it just become wealthy and outrageous at a generous. And be generous along the way, but now be outrageously generous. And so the average person working this stuff, the book total money make over came out in 2003, 20 million copies now, that outlines those baby steps, tens of millions of people have

done this now. The average person doing it is paying off their home at baby steps six and about seven years from the time they start this, going from intense to intentional. Now that's the average. So I'm taking a little longer, so I'm taking a little less, and then that sets you up

to be able to invest even heavier than you're 15% and the average person is becoming a millionaire, a net worth of $1 million or greater in about 14 years. That's what we're seeing. So this is not an easy plan, it's just one that works every time, every single time. That's how you do it folks.

And so you can keep your principles, because you're playing all the ways of handling money. My wife told a couple of friends of ours this at one point, and I loved what she said. They were in the 30s and they were like, "Man, we should have been doctors, we should have gone back to med school."

And I'm always the eternal optimist, like, "Want to just go?"

And one of them said, "Because we'd be both be 42 when we graduate." And my wife said, "That's not the right, you're not looking at this right. Y'all are going to be 42 anyway.

“The question you need to ask yourself is, do you want to be doctors when you're 42 or”

not? The reason I bring that up here is you're going to be 7 years from now in 7 years. Do you want to not have a house payment?" Because that journey starts today, if that's what you want to do. Because you're going to be you in 15 years, you're spouse and you're going to be married

in 15 years. Do you want to be millionaires or not? And that journey starts with step one today. No, right. And do we want to be on the same page?

Do we want to be on the same page? Same page. Same team. The most difficult subject in marriage. Yeah.

Are we going to talk about it? Are we going to get aligned on our values and enjoy each other in the process? These are all the by-products of what occurred on this journey.

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Well, first of all, thank you guys so much for taking my call. I really respect your opinions on all these financial matters. And just real quick, we're having a, I have a parenting question. My very intelligent, my very hard working, soon to be 21-year-old daughter is going to be a junior in college.

And she has informed us that she is, she would like to switch to her third college for this coming year, switching to an online program, and that she is ready to move out of the house.

And my wife and I are really struggling with the moving out piece of that puzzle because

we don't feel like it's a good financial decision. And I just was hoping to get some input from the two of you. Are we kind of overreacting to the situation, should we be open to it, or should we be

“advising her in some way that I just don't know the answer right now?”

How old is, again, did she say she was? 21, 21. She's going to be 21. She's a junior in college studying what? She's going to be an occupational therapist.

And how is she supporting herself when she moves out? Well, that is the question she's currently working in a, at a nursing home as like a personal care aid sort of position where she told us she's making about $3,000 a month. Which she thinks when that, that's going to be enough to sustain a life. At this point, my wife and I have been cash flowing college for her without a problem.

I think we would still intend to do that. But when she talks about moving out, that kind of tells me that she says that she's ready to be an adult and, you know, that means that she's going to take on more of a financial responsibility and I don't think that that $3,000 a month is going to be enough to sustain that life.

This is your oldest job, she is. I, here's the, the conundrum you find yourself in is, are you going to use money as an anchor? Are you going to use tuition to punish or are you going to look at a, at a legal adult? I say this isn't the decision we would make, but we're going to be your biggest cheerleaders. Because I'll tell you the greatest way she can figure out how the world works is to

go figure out how the world works. Okay. And I've heard a ton of kids who are like, I'm moving out and I just start rattle on off numbers and their eyes get real big. She's making three grand.

She's not going to have a great life. All right. She's going to have one bedroom apartment and it's going to be really tough. I would give her some pretty strict boundaries, like we'll keep covering tuition, but you're going to be on your own for this stuff and I will walk with you every step of the way

for how cell phone works and how insurance works and all that kind of stuff. The risk you run right now is you say no and she walks anyway and you've lost your relationship too. And it's not like she's doing drug, I mean, she's working at a nursing home. Sounds like she wants to work full time and take classes online.

She's a hard worker. Yeah. So it sounds like she's a kid. She's bright and she's mature. Yeah, great character.

Yeah.

“The 100% she should move out and 100% you should support her with John on that.”

The only thing I would do is let's go shopping for apartments together and I'll help you build your budget on three grand. I want you to know what you're moving into because if you're going to make this decision, we would rather you stay until you finish college. You know that.

And if you want to stay until you finish college, you're welcome.

That's your message, right? And but if you're going to go do this, let me walk with you and I'm not going to tell you what to do. I just want to see that you've considered all the variables that have to be in this budget.

Here's what the electric bill is going to be at that apartment.

Here's what the apartment costs. Here's what the content insurance costs, which is about 500 bucks a year. Okay. Here's what your cell phone is going to cost. Here's what this is going to go.

And let's build a, let's see how what your life looks like on $3,000 a month or more if she's working more. That's fine. But let's figure out what you've got to do to exist and let's do this. Let's begin with the end in mind as Stephen Covey would say in the seven habits of

highly effective people, right? And so let's plan it all out and I'll walk with you and coach you. You may when we do the budget, it's possible you may want to delay this because you may look at the budget and realize it's harder to do this than it is in your mind right now. But if she's going to do this, I want her to deal with, I want her to do it based on reality,

not based on fuzzy dreams and feelings.

“That's what I feel like it's been up to this point.”

I think it has too. Will every dollar allow me to kind of put out a projected budget like that? Yeah, she needs to build 21. She needs to have one. She needs to build an every dollar budget.

Well, for me to help her will every dollar. Yeah, she can build it and then you look over shoulder and say, okay, have you checked that? Have you thought about that? Have you thought about that?

And I'll go with, you know, let's look at the apartment, do you feel safe here for this price? Okay. Because I don't, you know, I don't want my daughter on an unsafe situation. And so we're going to, you know, and we're not going to supplement your living, you're

going to have to do it on your own if you move out. And those two lines, we're going to be your biggest cheerleaders. And so we'll walk with you through this thing.

And we'll help you every step of the way and financially, here's where, here's what we're

going to provide for you, tuition, tuition, that's it, right? And you, you being an adult enough to, you, you modeling what adult is is we're going to, we're going to live in reality, you just so we're all clear. Yeah. And if the budget works and she can live on the bus elevator.

And then that's going to actually give me, if I'm you, more peace. Right now, you're worried about it, I'm a little worried about that this is a dream that's going to turn into a freaking nightmare. That's my fear. Yeah.

And your wife has gone even further, she's like, she's going to be in a ditch in a cardboard box. You know, that's what happens. So, um, and that, this is the way this stuff goes and this is all with a good kid. Yeah, yeah. Hey, can I give you one more thing to tell her?

Sure. Thanks. This would be really like, this would be, um, handing the maturity baton to her. Look at her with your wife and say, hey, we're really sad you're going, we love having you here.

Okay. Because there is financial stuff, but I promise you part of this is that's our oldest,

“that's our kid, if she leaves, who are we, what's our house going to feel like?”

She probably helps, she sounds like a great human being, right? She really is. Yeah.

And so, like, I never occurred to me in a million years that, if I found out about a new

hunter fishing spot, the first person I would think to call would be my 16 year old son. And it is now. It never would have occurred, like, that if you, if you lay out 10 people I can go hang out in the woods with, he's going to be my number one pick, because I like being out there with him.

He's funny. He makes fun of me. Back good. All that, it never would have occurred to me. And so, if you and your wife are also wrestling with grief, like, oh, our oldest is about

to fly the nest. And she had to be, we didn't kick her out. She had to be the one to say, hey, I'm ready to fly. Look her in the eye and say, we're going to miss you. We're going to be sad.

That'll be a gift to her, that'll humanize you and your wife. And it will start the grieving process for you and your wife. You're losing a cool human being that's been in part of your life for almost a quarter century. You're not losing them.

They're just moving to an apartment. That's true. Yeah. They're still on that gum leash, but--

“I mean, when we dropped our oldest off at college, two and a half hours away, we cried”

halfway home. We dropped Rachel, the next one off from college. We cried one exit. Yeah. When the third one got ready to college, we pointed towards it and said, it's that way.

We drove himself. Yeah. It's like, it gets easier. It does. But me.

Whew. Dave, I haven't seen it. That's what a great dad. A great dad. Great mom.

They've raised a great kid. I mean, if I 21 year old who's working full time in a nurse at home, says, hey, I want to take classes at night in a different situation so that I can keep doing. Man, I want to celebrate and cheer that, but it's going to be a bomber when when your kids move out. I I love I I love I I love the idea of a 21 year old.

Well, I don't do it based on a feeling, do it based on a matter of fact, and then you you're staring the reality in the face and still choosing that reality now. We've got a good decision. That's right. But if that that made later back home, maybe she may say, I don't think I want to do this. Or you may watch your just soar. Yeah, could happen. [Music]

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together if you're married. And you need to be doing it with a detailed plan. And this is the tool. And it's free. Every dollar for free downloaded in the App Store or Google Play. Rachel is in Nashville. Hi. Rachel. How are you? I'm good. I hate days. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So my husband and I I'm 26 and he is 23. We are curious as to like we just kind of want your opinion

for your thoughts on whether it's better to like buy or build our first to our first home.

How long have you been married? Three years. What price range are you looking at? See that's that's up in the air right now too. We were there three options. We were kind of thinking of and it would either to just buy a home and start building a small home like a three-bed to back kind of thing because he works from home so he'd need an office. Or we could build like a small flat house while we cash flow are like born to an Indian build that we would prefer to do.

Or we could get a construction loan. Those are the kind of the three options we were looking into. Last year we made $86,000. He's then doubling his income every year in his business since he

started two years ago in 1926 the first year and then 48 the second year. Good for you guys.

We're on track for about 60. It's really you're in a good place and I can just give you the pluses and minuses and you can decide all right which way you want to go. The positives of buying a three-bedroom two-bath and getting started and then just start piloting up some cash and doing the barn dominium is staged to sell that house when you get ready to do the other one. But just get started in home ownership. It's simple. It's clean. It's not going to

Yeah. Okay. Then I'm probably going to go that way if it's me because I don't want him

taking his eyes off this business it's prospering because he's over screwing around building a barn dominium all the time. Yeah. And if you tell you can't do two things it wants and do be any good at them. Okay. So I want him to continue to grow this business. It's the goose, man. It's laying the golden eggs. Let's just kick that thing into high gear for the next three or four years. Then you ride a check for a good contractor and bring in the barn dominium thing. Now if you're

going to build the downside is it is a great strain on most marriages when you build home. You're going to fight. Okay. Just count on it because you're going to have disagreements about this and for some reason we decide that we're going to kill each other over the color of the kitchen. I don't know why but we do. It's like we die on the most unusual of hills. Right. And so

“you need to back up from that and commit to a we're going to be nice to each other through this”

process. We're both going to have a vote. You don't get to scream. I deserve this. Either one of you all that crap. Okay. So then when you do that then the next thing you need to do is there's three things that drive a build otherwise you're going to drive yourself crazy and you're going to have scope creep and things going to end up being a financial nightmare. One is you lay out a detailed blueprint of exactly what we're going to build and you go over it and over it and over it

and you tear it up and you do it again and you it is very cheap to build a house or a barn dominium on paper. It's very cheap to change it on paper but if you make it up as you go it's super expensive 73,000 change orders. Right? No. So that's a piece of paper number one and that will lead you to piece of paper number two which is a detailed budget of exactly what's going to be the dishwasher. Exactly what are we going to spend on lighting? Exactly what is the bid for the concrete

who's putting up the structure and what's that going to cost? What's the roof and what's the bid

“on that? Get hard bids and you build a budget that you need to hit that budget. You know there's”

going to be a couple things change but the last house I built I hit within 2% because we made the budget in great detail before we broke ground. Okay and detail and we're in agreement on that sharing in me. This is what we're going to spend. The decorator comes in with the dinged idea. Tuffies. Okay. Tuffies. This is what the budget is. We decided ahead of time. Decorator you're going to operate within the budget. You don't get to set the budget. Contractor you're going to

operate within the budget. You don't get to set the budget. So these are the pieces of paper we

managed to. Then the third piece is the schedule and how long is it going to take to build this.

And before we broke ground in June we knew that February 14th was the day. Valentine's Day we were going to start installing trim. We knew when the plumbing rough end was going to be done. We knew when the roof was going on to the day. It was all scheduled out throughout the next 14 months and we built of what we ran a 14 month schedule and finished it in 12. We came in within 2% of budget and we finished with early and the builder loved us because we actually did what we said we were going to do.

We didn't drive him crazy. There was very little drama. All the drama happened on the paper before we broke ground. So budget, blueprint, schedule and then freaking stick to them. Otherwise this thing will cost you twice as much as it should and you're going to go broke doing it. But I recommend

that be your second project. Not your first. Your first one should be you guys go buy house

“and grow a business. Dave, I think you just broke her brain a little bit.”

I mean pardoned to many of those. I'm not at all what I'm making. So cool when you're scrolling on Instagram and then when somebody pulls apart all the little pieces it's like okay. Okay. Yeah. And this is me. I can be sometimes my wife says I'm way too risky on some things and too risk averse on others. I would want to see that that business have a couple more years of oops to it before I leveraged on a brand new build. Because I would hate for you all to

have planned because the temptation is going to be it doubles every year and if you're on track to hit 160 this year because you hit 80 last year it's going to be re- it would take an active God's worth

320 next year. Yeah. All right. I would love to. You have to build a much better place if you wait two years. Yeah. You can have the place if you're dreams in a few years, especially if you got cash. Yeah. And you put yourself in a cash position. Meanwhile you're sitting in a home

that anyone else will be happy with. Three twos are always pretty easy to move. It's a great

property. Yeah. It's like the ultimate American property, you know. So in Barron of Miniums, by the way, are not correct. Yeah. So they're like what's called a white elephant. No one wants them but the guy that built them. That's it. And because you're selling a used boat, that you know that you that you carved out in your basement. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. Where do all those three things you

“are identified? Where do most people get sideways when it comes to building their own thing?”

All three. All three. They don't. They don't spend enough time on the blueprint. And so they build by change order, which doubles your cost and doubles the length of time that you're building, which also doubles your cost, right? Yeah. So you get scope creep on the money is the problem with all three. And so you don't stick to the budget because your budget is not realistic because you didn't lay it all out and you didn't do it. But I can hand the electrician the blueprint

a year in advance and he can give me a bit. Yeah. I can hand the roof for a blueprint a year in advancing give me a bit. Now he may price adjusted a little bit later, but I'm going to be real close. Okay, guys. Let me ask you something. What would it take for you to switch your bank?

“Because if you're still earning next to nothing on your savings, you need to check out FairWins”

Credit Union. And I know what you're thinking it might sound like a hassle. Moving your direct

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smart bundle from FairWins Credit Union. You get a high yield savings account, a no fee checking account, and the Ramsey Be Weird Devacard. Go to FairWins.org/Ramsie to learn more and make the switch today. That's FairWins.org/Ramsie. Ensured by the NCUA. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show and the FairWins Credit Union Studio, John Deloni, Dr. John Deloni. Number one bestselling author is my co-host today. Edgar is in Fort Worth, Texas.

“I add your how are you? Good. How are you, man? Better than I deserve. What's up?”

So my question was, obviously we follow you. We've been watching you for a little while. But how do we get started on this? You know, I like your steps. I like the thought of being financially free, not having a mortgage. But how do we get started? How do we get that discipline into getting to where you guys are? We're like a bunch of your people that call, you know, how do we get there? Did you do the man Edgar? Well, we'll approach you to this point.

I don't know. The thought of being financially free, like I said, I feel like the biggest, the biggest dent that we have is our house. I wish I didn't have that. I mean, even some of my neighbors that are older, you know, one day, he's telling me that he paid his house cash, and all me do the how. How do you do how is this how? And he obviously he's older than me. But I want to be there. You know, dude, you came to the right place, brother. So, I mean, there's two questions in the

question. Question number one is philosophically, psychologically, how do you create discipline?

And that's a great discussion. And then the second question is just, what's the first thing I do?

Well, the first thing you do is you do a budget on every dollar with your wife, and you will find as soon as you do that tonight. It's free to download that you're going to find several thousand dollars in margin in your life. And then what do we do with that margin? Well, we're going to apply to baby steps. And first, baby steps a thousand dollars. Second one, let's get all the

funds. How much do you have in savings? I have about maybe $30,000. How much do you have in debt? Not counting your house. So, that's the thing. Honestly, I can't tell you the correct number, but I think our biggest debt is her car, maybe 14. And then, well, the biggest one's the house. Obviously, but yeah, not counting how she got 14 on a car, what else you got?

Maybe a couple of credit cards over 2000. Okay. Well, the first thing you do, if you're lost,

“is you have to find that sign in the mall that has a red arrow on it that says, "You are here."”

And that means you need to get a detailed list out and figure out where you are exactly. And you and your wife go over that and you say, "Okay, here's our debts. We've got these five debts and to the penny." Figure them out. What is it? Was it take to get debt free? And it sounds like $30,000. It gets you out of debt. It does, but it's also, like, you said, I think it's one of the mindset of like, "Okay." I know that. But I'm talking about the money. You got the math here.

I'm not talking about your brain. I'm talking about your math. The math is, you want you decide to do this and the two of you are sitting down looking at your every dollar budget. I would write checks and be debt free tonight. Yeah. And then, knowing that, I'm going to live on this budget without any payments. And I'm going to rebuild my emergency fund as baby step three of three to six months of expenses. So, as soon as you write checks in

your debt free, you're going to be working on baby step three. And when you finish that, what you'll just be a few months, then you will start you're investing in baby step four. And you just start following the stuff you're going to talk about here on the air in detail. But if you don't think you're going to follow through, you won't start. What's your hang up with the discipline part? I don't know. I mean, yes or no, coming from

you know, I mean, I'm not rich. We're not rich. We don't come from rich friends. None of that. So, saving up, even to now, 30 grand, the fact of knowing that, okay, I can be debt free, but it's not so long to get there. So, what's your hang up? I think together, we're like one, twenty was what we made. Okay. So, if you didn't have any payments, but a house payment, couldn't you save some stinking money Edgar? I mean, mathematically. How well? Here's the,

“here's the thing I think you're struggling with. My dad was a policeman. My wife's parents were”

teachers. We didn't even know what it was going to feel like. And I grew up, you probably grew up in a home where those people had that kind of stuff, not people like us. And you probably got boys that you ran with and you've got survivors guilt and you got that we got out guilt. All that

stuff is going to hold you back. And so, here's what I want to tell you. You got to be led with

math and with a plan and you can't let your feelings dictate what you do next. The thing about discipline is, I can't be swayed by motivation. I can't, because you're, dude, we take exercising. I'm pretty disciplined, it comes to exercise. If I waited to be motivated, I would never work out. Do you know what I'm motivated to do sleep in any ice cream for breakfast? And gummy bears. And gummy bears, because all three of those things are awesome. But I have an end goal which is,

I want to be able to roll around on the floor when I'm 85 with my grandkids. And so I don't wait for motivation. I don't wait for feelings. I do the next right thing. And that next right thing is the plan and front of me. And I know you could do it. I know you can. So the math says you couldn't do it. And you're a guy that was able to save 30,000. So I don't know why you couldn't save 30,000 really fast. You've had no payments. You've attached identity to look how much money

I got in this account. And you've allowed that to say, this is what I'm worth. And actually, if you take away your car payments and you take away your credit card payments and you put that

in emergency fund, you're not as free as you feel like you are because you just never seen a number

“of that big in a checking account. So here's the thing. This one's pretty simple. It's you”

have to want something other than what you have now more than what you have now. I have to want to be a different place more than I want to be where I am. And that moves my butt off the center. It's that simple. Where do I want to be? And do I want to be there bad enough to leave the comfort zone? Because the comfort zone is an illusion. It's a place where things die. People, lives, turn

is dying. Yes. By definition. And that's what we do in a comfort zone. It's the problem we have in America in general. Exactly. The problem in America is you can be half butt at everything

and live a life that is better than 98% of the rest of the world. Right. You can have an incredible

life in America and be a complete half butt. I mean, just mail it in at work. Over eat, slob binge watching everything that you shouldn't be watching on Netflix and nobody likes you. You're a spiritual moron and you can still have an incredible lifestyle, a comfortable lifestyle in America. And it will catch the problem. It will catch the problem. If instead, you were freaking starving the death and you came off a dirt floor in your home. The floor was literally dirt.

There was no floor. Then you'd be going, I'm going back. Yeah. And there'd be a desperation in your

soul. And you'd be scratching and clawing and spitting and flipping and getting stuff done, man.

“Right. And that's the change. Is this leaving mediocre is harder than leaving pain?”

And it feels different than you think it's going to feel. Keep going anyway. When I started, I had great ideas and I knew how to serve people, but I didn't have systems in place yet. At that time, I saw books of the trunk of my car. It was a lot harder to start a business back then. Shopify makes it easier. Shopify is the business platform powering millions of businesses and about 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. If you've got a product or even

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private student loans can derail your money plans, but why refried helps borrowers explore refinancing options, designed to get them on track again. Learn more at why refried.com/Ramsy. That's the letter. Why R-E-F-Y.com/Ramsy might not be in all states. Today's question comes from Antonio and Pennsylvania. He writes, I'm 21 and I graduated from college this month. I'm about $50,000 in debt and I've not started investing yet, but will when I start my new job. What advice would

you give recent college graduates on what we can do to be smart early and set ourselves up for success? Maniacally, as crazy as you can. Your friends are going to think you're nuts. Your parents are going to think you're nuts. Your old professors will think you're nuts. Do whatever you can to get this student debt paid off as quickly as humanly possible. Making a noxious plan,

“get your first job and then get a second job. Because here's the thing for me to get a third job.”

For a recent college grads, students used to always say, hey, I'm going to take a year off and then

I'm going to go get my graduate degree or whatever. I would always tell them, just go do it because when you graduate get your first job, your body will adjust to busy. And so if you go get your first job and you go ahead and get a side hustle and get a job on the weekends to your 20 freaking one. You got this thing called energy and you got a metabolism. You can eat RVs and Taco Bell and still be fine. Here's the thing. Go page, it is gross. It would cost me a week of my life to do

going to adjust to, you're going to be tired no matter what you do, you're going to adjust to tired, just go work like crazy and look up at 25, have a whole bunch of money in your emergency fund, have no money that you owe anybody and then start investing and you'll be a Jillian air.

“That's what I would tell you to do. What do you think, Dave? Exactly. Exactly what I would do.”

And don't buy car. God help you. Dave, I left college number one thing we do. We go, I'm out of college. I'm going to don't job. I'm going to get an adult car payment. That's a dumb butt idea, right there. I was driving an eating eating eat like a Tersel, 88 Tersel hatchback and when I graduated college, sexy. Dave, I double the amount of debt I had after my first year

out of college. And it was for cars with a car. I never said no to myself. I was I was rich. I was making

whatever 40 grand a year. I thought I was a millionaire. Don't please God don't buy car. Number one must take people making the first two years out of college is like go buy a new car. Put every spare penny, pay the student loans off. Yep. Drive the hoopty. Drive the hoopty. Shut up. Ride the bike. Keep doing it. Drive the hoopty. If you'll drive like no one else and work like no one else later, you can drive like no one else and work like no one else. And people will tell

you, you got to take, you got to rush and take your 21. Oh, work. I mean, yeah, work like a man.

“Yeah, we'll see. Don't be a wussy. Don't be a wussy. You need to rest. I'll give me a break. No.”

Get it done. Yes. Get it done. Man. Oh, I had something else. I just finished this big project, Dave. Go on dates. That's another good thing. It's a good investment for your life. Somebody to marry. She dates. She. That way, if you're driving the same car and you're going on cheap dates, you'll know you'll know she really likes you. Yeah. So, yes, do it. Do it. She'll run out with you and you're driving a hatchback. That's how it's how I knew I knew this girl's

with me. He's good because that car wasn't. She is right or die because that's the car. She we went on dates with art. You know you're in a bad way when she's like, hey, what if we just took my car? And her car was a used camera. We were, we were cooking, but no, I knew that girl liked me because my car. You know, sharing that. I had on 1974 money car, though, it was 1982, by the way.

But, yeah, we're on our second or third date. And that thing had 480, I mean, it had 200 miles,

1,000 miles plus on it. It had been hit on every side in fix. I was on the third transmission in the second engine since I had bought it. I mean, I ran that car. That's the most used Tennessee thing I've heard today. And so we're on third date and I'm explaining there. I got $12 of my check on account, right? And I'm explaining to her how someday I'm going to be a millionaire. And we went across a railroad track and the muffler fell off my car. I rolled up on the car with a

little box put it back on because I've done it before and we'll do it again after that, too.

“And she's like, oh, he's the one. How did that? I'm very impotential. How did that happen?”

It worked out for Rick is in Atlanta. Hey, Rick. What's up? I need your help. Dave's like, Chris, Francisco is there's Obi-Wan, your moment help. Uh-oh. We are in a position where we thought we would not be. We've paid off everything. We have no debt, no mortgage, no nothing. Good. But we're in the process where thanks to age and other things. We're needing to downsize and get a different house. Okay. We tried to get a heat lock

to go ahead and pay for the house that we were thinking about. But because we have no credit, we have no credit score. And so no one will want this money because we have no credit score. We're hoping to still a house and use the proceeds from the house to the house that we're going to buy. I'm 65, 66 at the end of March in your next day. 69. Hello. I think a chunk out of a 403B to pay off the mortgage and we've just been

how much in your next egg. Not enough. I'm sorry. I don't know.

What's not? I mean, some people think 2 million is not enough. What is in your next egg?

Is it 50,000? Is it 800,000? Is it a million? Actually, we don't really have one. We've got to cash on hand, but we don't have that much money. I just have, I have the attention that comes in. We have all who I have, my life and I would be so security. So you cleaned out all of our retirement savings and you have none in order to pay off your mortgage. We paid off the mortgage. No, you said you took the money out of the 403B to do it.

Now there's nothing in the 403B. There's very little, very little. Like 50 grand, we took a check here, less than that. Okay. Okay. That's, that's close enough. Okay. So that's not a source of money. What's your whole worth?

less than that. Okay. And so how are you going to sell it?

“We're going to do what we can. We're clear stuff out. We're going to try and get everything out.”

You get this or the best shape that we can to get it fixed and just sell it as is and over to best. Have you already sent a contract on a new place? No. Okay. No. Okay. So I had, you're listening, you're broke. You have no money except this house and a pension that's coming in and I don't want you to have a

home equity loan. Because if they're other deal, if it never, if it doesn't sell,

you're going to have a home equity loan for five years if this doesn't sell. And so I don't, I don't, I wouldn't go with this plan at all. No, I wouldn't do this. What I would do is put your house on the market and sell it and go rent something with the

“cash in your pocket for six months and or put your house up for sale and then when it does sell,”

run by something and set up a simultaneously as closing. But I would not put a home equity loan on your home and then go buy something and then we'll put it on the market and the spring and then we get a work on it and it's going to be next fall and then it, the market slows down and it

takes you two years to sell it and you're paying a payment the whole time and you don't have a

payment now and you have no money now. Would you recommend someone in his situation buy a house for 250 grand and put 150 back in the, yeah, in retirement? Yeah, yeah, put it back into investments. I don't know they can put it in the retirement or not, but investments for adding nest egg. Yeah, so that you're not broke. He's talking about moving down, you're right. So I would put this out, fix this house up as much as you can, get it ready, get it market ready, get a Ramsay

trusted real estate agent, come over and talk to you about it. What you got to do to get it ready, what you put it on the market for, put it up for sale and when it sells, delay the closing as

long as you can and then go out with money and hand by another house, contingent upon your house

closing the same day and you close it with the money from the sale of your house. I would not borrow money, period in this situation. I wouldn't borrow money, period, but I was certainly wouldn't in this situation. , this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Summer is here, and listen, everything changes this time of year. The kids are at a school, the routines go out the window,

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Andrew, what's up? Hey, fellas. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it. Sure. So I recently got into a major accident and it's putting my financial strain on me in the way

What are you guys' thoughts on that word? The caveat is there's an emotional aspect of it

to where I rarely see her anymore. When she comes home, she spends all her time at her mom's. She builds on me for Christmas and stuff like that. I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts are on that. This is tough to do when everything feels like it's happening all at once, but I would do my best to separate things. And so right now what you're faced with is a mathematical reality. You have a relationship challenge. You've got issues over there on the side,

but right now you have a math problem. And conflating the two makes it messier and it makes, it's just going to cause more drama. You're going to have a hard conversation either way,

but sitting down with your daughter and saying, this has happened and this is my financial reality.

I can't continue to do this and having this conversation as soon as possible because school starts up in a few months. How much is the tuition? My partner, her mom and I are divorced,

“so my partner is 12,000 a year. She's going to be... What do you make?”

I was making 75, but the issue has been out of work since November because of this accident, so I'm on disability. Are you going to be a lot larger? Are you permanently disabled? I don't know yet. I'm still working on getting everything healed. There's lawyers involved, so it's a thing. So lots of MRIs, lots of doctors' appointments. What happened to you? What's broken?

I got hit by a boat when I was snorkeling. I can't say too much because it's still a legal thing, but I'll just say that I got hit by a boat while it's snorkeling. I mean, lawyers don't heal you. I'm more trying to figure out a side friend of the fact there's obviously a lawsuit and obviously that you're going to get a collection from that. At some point, I'm more worried about you. Are you going to be able to get back to work? Are you going to,

“are you as your body coming and healing enough that you're going to be able to do something?”

I mean, it's been seven months and I've had a couple shots and it hasn't even touched it, so it's kind of looking towards maybe finding a different career path because it's a very physical job I have. So that's fair. All right, so you're living on short-term disability insurance, right? Yeah, and I just got kicked at my health insurance, so I'm paying for COVID now. So what is your temporary income?

30,000 a month. Okay, and obviously everyone knows you had this accident last. Your ex and your daughter know that you had this accident, right? Correct. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and I'm not sure just the mom and said, hey, is there any way that like I can help you in the old and she was wasn't very receptive. Is this part of a settlement? Or did you, is this just a handshake agreement?

“This is just a handshake agreement. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, I think as soon as possible, you”

call your daughter like today and say, "Honey, I don't have any money. I don't have a job because I've got this this and this wrong from the wreck or from the accident." And for right now, I'm not going to be able to pay your tuition. My heart of it. I even if I wanted to, I couldn't. And it really is nothing to do with the relationship. It's just you simply like John said, you simply mathematically do not have the money. Okay. Is that correct? Am I missing something?

I mean, do you have a million dollars in a bank account? I'm missing? No, I had this money set aside.

I sold a place and I moved in with a girlfriend and so I had this money set aside, but how much money do you have set aside from that situation? I have ten last. $10,000 left from selling the house? Yes, because she goes to a really expensive school, I've already paid 37,5 pounds. No, no, that's not what I'm asking. Okay. You sold a house and you got to lump some and all you have left of that, all that money is $10,000. Correct. Where did all that money go?

tuition. Her tuition. You only made 50 grand on the sale of the house? Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I'm not going to be able to pay tuition this next semester. Okay. But until I and until I get an income going and get enough healed and I have my new career in place and start making some money, I'm not going to be able to help you on. I'd like to, and you know, and I know that that's what we talked about, but we also didn't talk about me getting

I don't have the margin to give you a $12,000 gift right now. My hope would be that if you all

had the tightest relationship ever and she came and saw you all the time, y'all always have

“lunch together once a week. You'd still be having the same conversation. Is that the same conversation?”

Yeah. Okay. I'm not doing this to Punisher for not coming around and ditching you a Christmas. This is just you simply don't have the money. Okay. Yeah. I appreciate that. I mean, if she came around all the time, you still wouldn't have the money. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And just so just make sure you keep that bucketed separate and you know, don't, well, you know, and by the way, you never come see me. Well, this is not the same conversation. Right. Right. And still yourself,

brother, she's, you know that she's getting an earful from her mom about all the money you got from the sale, the house, it's in some secret account somewhere. And you know that she's, she's a senior. She's going to be upset. She should be upset. All that's right and good and fair,

“you just have to continue to tell the truth and be a person of integrity. And you're going to”

weather this storm of an upset 21 year old. I just, I mean, that's part of being a parent. Yeah. Okay. I hate this attitude, man. Yeah. I'm sorry. I hope you heal. Man. Dude, I have been, I've been a diver forever for decades, several hundred doves. And there's

nothing scarier than a boat going over top of your head. I've never had that happen. I can't imagine.

It's like, I'm 40 feet deep or 80 feet deep and I'm still scared of it. It's not coming down there. It's not a submarine. But, god, Lee, that, that just gives me chills. He was snorkeling. And so he just below the surface, probably, or right at the surface. And this boat, wow. Scary stuff right there. John's in San Diego. John, what's up? Hey, guys. I really appreciate you taking my call. It's an honor to speak to both of you. You too. You guys are my favorite post. Oh, thank you.

So, basically, I run down. So, I've been in mechanic for 30 years. I lost my job. I was, uh, I knew you talk a lot about these some mechanics. That was my trade. I started a job at 83,000 a year. And I was there for two months. And I was very foolish. And I bought a couple items that I've

always been wanting. I'm a guitar player. I lead worship at my church. And, um, and I think John

the only, I don't know if I've heard you like guitars also. But my wife says I have a problem.

“But go ahead. I've got to get some J45. As you should. And then, only if you can afford it.”

But then you're longer job. So, what's that guitar worth? Well, I lost the job. So, it's worth because I was stupid. And I actually edge my initials to prevent me from being tempted to sell it. I know it's like, what is it? It's yours. Yeah, well, if you sell it. I've stayed around probably 13 to 1500. Okay. And how much debt do you have? I have a total of 12,000. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, brother. That guitar's got to go. I've sold guitars to

pay bills and to get myself out of credit card mess. I've done the exact thing. I hate it, but you got to. [Music] Hey, guys, healthcare is one of the biggest stress points in your budget. It's confusing. And most of the time, it feels completely out of your control. But there is a better way to handle it. Christian healthcare ministries isn't health insurance. It's a health cost-sharing

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Pedro, the not deserve. How can we help? So my husband and I purchased and remodeled a house

“and the first contract for that we hired let the job, which caused us to hire another contractor”

and pay about an additional $75,000 to finish. Why are you an over-traum? You'd over advance the commercial contractor? Yes, essentially. Why would you do that? Lesson learned there. They told us that they had ordered materials and things were being delivered and of course they weren't so then we ended up with, you know, no materials in the money paid. So we have consulted with an attorney and we do have a case that we could take against them. However, he did tell us, you know, be prepared

this could cost upwards of 25,000, you know, hopefully less but a worst case scenario. That's kind of what he had seen in his experience. Okay. And that sounds honest. And the contractor that bailed on you that you would be suing, are they wealthy? That is our concern. So we originally were a little

concerned that they may not be able to pay us. The first refund they offered us was a little under

$6,000, which obviously was not anywhere close to appropriate. And so our attorney had asked some of those questions and he did ask us about assets they have. We know they do earn two properties and those are in the business name. So that's something that we're trying to now take in the consideration. You know, we owe them more cash to the Hilt. One of them is paid for and full, but it is a lot that it looks like they're building a property on. And the other one appears to have

about $50,000 in equity from what I can find from their current mortgage owed filed, and then like it's the lowest. There's not a construction loan lien against the other property that they're

“building on? There's not. I have not found any lien filed on it. How much money did he walk away with?”

So he calls them 75 grand. Yeah. So in the end, but to finish our house, we had to pay an additional 75,000. So what were you, you'd be selling for 100 grand, right? We would be sued. The case would be $475 if we could have than pay attorney costs to include up to that $25,000. That would be $100,000. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to sell them for everything if you're going after him go after him. Yeah. Absolutely. So you want to be very, very, very sure

that they have the money before you pursue this. Right. Or that you could get a property or you can get something out of it. Okay. Because if you get a judgment lien of $100,000 against somebody has no money, it was completely useless. Right. And you're going to find the court system to be a

“complete pain in the butt. Okay. We have this idea in America that there is justice in our”

court system and it's not been my experience. And so I avoided it if I can. I sometimes I have to defend myself and I do that all the way to the bottom, right? But yeah. But you're definitely have been wronged. You definitely should be able to recoup the money morally, emotionally, psychologically, financially. But this is going to be two years of your life and it only is going to get you money if you if they have an asset that you can get a hold of. Right. And that's kind

of where we were. You know, our attorney told us we can see assets. But I, you know, okay, did we just file a lien behind? You'd have to, right, I mean, and take that. Right. Oklahoma, I don't know what you do. You'd have to ask your attorney. But in, in most states, Texas, you can't. But in most states, you would put, take a lien against that lot that's worth $100,000. And either in turn, they go borrow the money and pay you out or you have a sheriff say, oh, and you sell

the lot and whatever the lot brings you get. Okay. Okay. And then the same thing again until you get your 100. But you're going to be in the foreclosure business and in the taking leans on property business. And because I'm guessing these goobers don't have any money sitting in a checking account.

There's not a multi-million dollar operation. This is a crew. No. Yeah. Part of the reason he

left is he's incompetent. Part of it's because he's crooked. Correct. Okay. Can I throw something else out here? Sure. This is not, this is not anything with math. Okay. Okay. And I've gotten myself in trouble

if you choose to sue him. But I'm thinking about the family that hires this guy that doesn't

have the ability to go track down another 75 grand one day. And is there a possibility you can expose this person to protect future families? Yes. And that has kind of been a thought in our minds as well is okay. Let's say worst case scenario we broke even or maybe we're even out a little bit. Could we help protect this from happening to somebody else because I'm honestly surprised that hasn't yet, you know, man. Yeah. Yeah. That may be a feudal thing if you tell a thing. But I don't know.

I just I can't stand people who are great. Well, what was the call like when when you said hey, you took $75,000 and they said, well, we'll give you six. How did that call even go? Not very well. I was asking for spreadsheets and receipts and things to understand because we wanted them to finish the job and we were like, we're not asking you to work for free. We want to pay you if we owe you money. But we have to understand where our fire money we've paid you has gone.

And they were just not wanting to provide that information. You know, just saying that

that basically we were always in agreement. I said, no, we're not because I have text messages

from you that that show that we have a difference in communication. And so they just weren't very funny about it. So their story is you owed us this money. Correct. Yeah. And that we still owed them more, even though they couldn't tell us what we owed them more for. Oh, nice. So then ultimately, I said, well, I think our funds have been misused somewhere and then that caused them to say,

“we're not coming back to finish your house. So we said, okay, well, that's how it is. Then we expect”

the materials we've paid for to be delivered. And we want a refund for any labor that hasn't been

done that we've paid for. We want to refund for materials that we've paid for. They can't be delivered

here. And that's where they turned out that there was about $6,000 worth of stuff. Yeah, that gets my blood boil and I can't stand bullies. I can't, I can't, yeah, it gets me fired up. Yeah. And that's been hard too. You know, there's obviously been a lot of emotion wrapped up in the case, but at the end of the day, we're thinking, well, what's the most financial smart decision? And we don't, we're not going to go into debt for this. You know, we refuse to take out a loan to paper.

The most financially smart decision is forget it and move on, right? Yeah. That's the most financially

“smart decision. But then the question is, you know, do you need to punch a hole in the universe here?”

And sometimes you do, you know, sometimes you do. And I have done that a couple of times. My wife has told me there's too many holes in the universe. John, stop punching. I did it again. That's my name. It's going to, it's going to cost you more in emotion, more in money, more in time and running this over and over and over in your head than it's going to benefit you. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so, um, and you know, it, you're just not

going to go in in 20 minutes in front of Judge Wopner, Judge Judy, and they're going to go, oh, you ripped these people off. Give them $75,000. You know, that's how this goes. Okay. This is a wrong drawn out blood sucking process. So you'd be be steeled, be emotionally buffered ready to go in for the long marathon if you're going to do this. And shut out Dave, the Judge Wopner reference. Yeah. How great is that? There you go. That's, that's OG call out right there.

Well, I mean, before there was Jews before there was Judy, there was Judge Wopner. Well done, man. [Music] If you run a business, you already know this. Bad information leads to bad decisions. And right now, AI is everywhere. But AI is only as good as the data behind it. The best AI is

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“Dr. John Deloni is my co-host. Claire is in Charleston, South Carolina. Hi, Claire, how are you?”

I'm Bill. How are you? Better than we deserve. What's up? I really appreciate you guys giving me some advice on this issue. I see a train coming down the tunnel and I'm stuck on the tracks. My parents are our little bit past retirement age, and they

do not have two nickels to rub together to make a fire. But they are always coming back to

me and relying on me to help them out constantly. I even paid their bills for them for a very long time. All their utilities and we're happy for a very long time. I finally had to put myself down and say no more as a ridiculous. You guys have made a lot of money and got a lot of money and they just blow every dime there is and keep coming back to the will. But now the will is, hey, I mean, money for groceries, I mean, money for medicine and things of that nature.

I'm debt-free. I've saved up. I've done everything I've went by your principles. And now I'm

“not sure what I need to do to help them out. So what is your, what's your net worth?”

Mine is without my house. I have about 300. I'm sorry. How much again? 300,000 saved with my savings account. How old are you? I am 45. What do you make? I make 130 a year. How old are you single? I am. It's just me and my daughter. Okay. And how old are mom and dad? Mom has turned 74. And she just went through a really bad bout at the hospital last year. Of course, you can't do anything more. And my father, he is 69.

And he is working part-time. And he has like a bunch of side holes. But they still owe everybody money and taxes and social security and just they owe everybody money. So they're just

“they're so stuck. And they owe social security? Yeah. How do you owe? So there's what's”

beginning social security. I do not know. It was, it was something they did. They were taking social security while whatever one was working because they were still working in full-time, while taking social security. I don't know the whole thing. But they just keep looking at me. They, but they're now they're now getting social security checks, right? They are, but they're going to start garnishing all of their men because they owe it. Social security. Yeah.

So they're in really tough spot. And what's their home worth? They have no home, they're renting. And I pay for their car for them. So they ain't got everywhere about that. So I just, I don't know what else to do to help them. So when you're paying a car payment or you bought them

a car? No, no, I bought their car. Okay. So they have a car? Okay. But basically,

you're sure they have no income coming from social security or this is just the story they told. Well, they have income coming in right now. And I'm trying to work with this Social security administration to not garnish so much so they can still live and all the paperwork and I'm working on Medicaid. I'm working on all these things trying to help them out. But I just can't keep all the plates in the air spinning and also to please everything that I've. Are you their

only child? No, I'm a child. I'm, I'm one of ten. Where's the other ones?

So I've not asked them for anything. The other ones, they are not financially stable whatsoever. I am the only one that has no debt, that has all the house, that has done all the things and done the responsible things. Everybody else is kind of sideways. Okay. You do not have the money to 100% support to households. You don't make enough.

“No. No. That's why. So you're going to have to decide a dollar amount,”

one dollar or more, that you are going to commit to this.

I did that already. Okay. And then after that, after that, the answer is just no.

Okay. It's just no. I'm sorry, Mom. I just don't have the money. I'm sorry that. I have this much money and I'm giving you enough to cover your lights and your groceries. There's that coming in and I can't cover the other stuff. You're going to have to do something else. You have to figure it out. Yeah. Because I did that for years and they took the little bit of money that they did have and blew it. Well, that's why. Because you get to decide,

you get to tell me three times how bad they are with money, which means you resent giving them money.

“So zero is a possible amount to give them. Okay. Or just trying to honor them and”

now you're not honoring them. That's bull. That's honor your parents from the Bible

does not mean give money to people who are misbehaving. That is not what that Bible reference means. It means that we write that we honor the office of father, the office of mother. But if your mother's doing cocaine, we don't give her cocaine and call that honoring your mother. That's bull. Okay. So no, you're their misbehaving and we're not going to honor their misbehavior. Period. Now, you get to decide how involved you still want to be in this. You could go all the

way too. I'm going to give you $500 a month and you're going to give me your social security

checking control of your money and you don't get to spend anything except what I say.

“And that way I know you're buying groceries and your lights are kept on because you people are”

acting like you're 14 years old and you live in Congress. Actually, it's 14 years. It's a good better job than you people. And so you're correct. You can go that far and just take over and take care of them as if they're complete embassels, which they may be. Okay. Or you can say I'm going to do nothing. I've done all I'm going to do. Good luck with it over there. Figure it out, boys and girls. You're freaking adults. You can say that. There's nothing wrong morally with any of that. But you

decide where in there. But that you're a problem. What's driving you crazy is there is a constant moving target that you have allowed. And once you say no more moving target, then you're going 100% chance you're going to get pushed back from them. Okay. Because they have bound their boundary lists people. And when you set a boundary with boundary lists people, 100% of the time they resist. And you have in the past and they've run right through it. Right? Well, yes.

Yeah. So are you on the date? I'm going to give you this amount of money and no more. And I'm just going to send you the check and you'll figure it out. I'll tell you what I would do. I would buy grocery cards and I would take, I would pay directly to the light company. I'm not giving anybody money anymore. Yeah. That's good, too. I'm going to send you $200 worth of grocery cards from publics every month. And I'm going to pay your light bill

through the end of the year. There's no way that you don't feel bad about what comes next. The person I want you to not feel bad about is you. Yeah. 100% chance they're going to piss you off. Hey, guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now you can get that same kind of help anytime with ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show.

Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple and free to use. Go to RamseySolutions.com and try ask Ramsey today.

Mary is in Virginia. Hi, Mary, how are you?

Hi, thank you for taking my call. Sure, what's up? I about two weeks ago, discovered over 100,000 in debt from my husband that I was previously unaware of. We are a military family and he will retire in eight months. So I'm trying to wrap my head around all of it and how I can pay that off in eight months since our economic situation will change drastically then. And I was looking at a he-lock, even though it's not something that I necessarily want to do,

but I'm wondering if that is going to be our best option because again, we'll completely lose his paycheck in eight months, not completely obviously like he'll get retirement,

“but I have... How long has he been in the military?”

22 years. Okay, so it's getting 20-year retirement, which is pretty strong. Yes. What's the debt?

92,262 and 85 cents from two cars, a credit card, and a personal expense. And then I found a fourth account, like a FORTH, where it looks like he submitted to get them to negotiate the debt and there was 28,532 in there, and then I have 33,000 in credit card debt as well too. I... Okay, so you guys were not handling your money together. He's handling his money over here, and he was hiding it. He just didn't tell you. I mean, you don't have card debt with cars sitting

in the driveway and you're confused that we own cars. You knew you own cars. Yeah, he... We've been married for five years, and I tried to combine our finances and he fought it, like an uphill battle, up until last month, when he pulled money from a joint account, and when I was asking why he needed that much money, I just kind of like really put my foot down, and I really needed access to all the accounts. And that's when everything kind of just

I'm packed because I realized that he had been pulling money from other accounts. He was spending 800 on eating out, 300 on gaming, and it just... You guys really have substantially separate lives. Yes, financially. No, I mean, lives. Your lives were separate. He had a whole life over there to the side that you weren't even half watching. I mean, I knew that he was eating out all the time in the gaming. It's just... I didn't know that it was that severe. And even when I brought it up

about him eating at home and all these things, he just wasn't. And it just... The card thing was something that caused the huge crisis. So now where is his head today? Because he was bullheaded and

“didn't want to do anything smart back then. Is he now still defensive of this ridiculous position?”

When I took over everything, and I basically couldn't sleep and saw everything, I had to sit

him down and say, for my mental capacity and my nervous situation, I need everything. So I took his card. He's only living on cash in the last two weeks. If he needs something, he has to ask me for it. I removed every credit card off of Amazon, a door that I've deleted everything from his phone. I just... I needed to have complete control of everything. And so I now have complete control of the finances and he hasn't said anything. The person that he's on board, but he's just...

Well, this will last for a second. Yes, it's not going to last that obviously not sustainable. So think of it as... The words we use around here is financial infidelity. Yes. You found out he was cheating on you. And it's important to come up with a seven-day plan and then another seven-day plan on... I need to... I need to know that I can trust you for seven days. And that's often. Like when somebody cheats on you're like, "I want no more phone, no more of this," right?

And... But you got to do this and money thing together. I don't think he wants to, but...

“Well, and you have to ask... I mean, if behavior is a language he's telling you, I don't”

want to be married to you. I'm not interested in sharing a life with you. I like you at home, taking care of the stuff. So I can go do whatever I want. By cars I can't afford and go out to meals I can't afford. But I don't want to build a life with you. Right. And that's hard to metabolize, but that's if... If behavior is a language, that's what he's telling you. Pretty loud and clear. So when you said, "Hey, both of these cars were selling

'em tomorrow." What's the response? If you would ask how is he getting to work? I think

debt, right? A scooter. Yeah, get him a moped. No, I'm not getting. I'm not playing it all.

“Yeah, I mean, this is a big deal, but the fracture, I mean, or you're not retiring.”

You go back, you re-enless for four more years, because we don't have the money to retire. Yeah, he can't. He can't re-enless. Like he's at the Ryan Square. He can't. Like there's a possibility that he could advance in August, but he's not, that's not a guarantee, obviously. And so he's at... He's backed out. He's... He's done as much time as he can. Well, I mean, but then it's not moving. Okay, but then it's he retires from the military

and goes and gets a job the next day. Yep. Right. And takes a military retirement. And all those checks going one bottle clean this mess up. Okay. So if we sell all the cars, we don't have a thousand dollars in debt, right? No, we also have three houses, so that's... Oh, okay. We'll sell two of them. Which is not what I want to do, because two of them are running out of. I don't want you to do anything. I didn't want you to discover that the separate life you were leading led to an absolute disaster

because your husband was moronic with the handling of his side of the money. And you guys never

bothered to be intertwined enough in your marriage to know what the other one was doing. I don't want any of that for you, but that is where we are. You have a hundred thousand dollars in debt. And no, I would not take out a home equity loan and keep another property that's an investment

“property and run the debt up on my home because right now all this debt isn't his name, right?”

You didn't sign any of it. No. Okay. So I mean, if there's a divorce, it's his. So I'm not running up a home equity loan on our home, especially if he in case there's the whole thing comes crashing down. If he hasn't fallen on the floor in front of

you and said, I'm going to do whatever it takes. So I want to keep this marriage all steady. Just

sitting over there sucking his thumb in the corner like a whip pup. Yeah, so you're going to take out a home equity loan, put your house on the block, and then he may go buy another card of borrow. I mean, when I started telling him how this is ridiculous, he wanted that he was he tried to say, it's over my face. It was the houses. Well, that we it was my from the western family. I guess. And so he was like, the house is falling. I was like, or you can't say that the start when we

“started buying houses because you didn't have anything to your name before you got married.”

How much equity do you have in those houses? My property that I bought before we were married has over 200,000 equity in it. The property that we bought together when we got married has over maybe 60. And then the last property, which is the one that is the one that we're losing. I'm not losing money on it. It's just the one that we live in and the one that's the hardest because it was a multi-family because I thought I could scale up. Because again, you like, you

say we were losing separate electronic financial lives. And I thought that that's where we were at is the one that even if I tried to sell it, we would maybe break even, we would clear our overhead as far as those that this house don't need to work. Okay, but you just told me two really easy things. You sell the joint house shop up together and it brings them 50 grand and then you sell both the cars in your debt free. Okay. I mean, none of this you want to do, but again,

I'm way more worried about your marriage and your financial situation to be honest with you. That's for me. Yeah. Yeah, you guys, I've got to grow past this and combine everything and become a team not a a scolding mother. And that means you don't buy rental houses without you're both saying this is what we want to do together. We want to be landlords and he does apply. There's no more you and me. There's now we or we are there's not going to be a we because you

guys that this is exposed the situation is exposed the weakness and the system that you're using. The system you're using doesn't work. We don't we do not find in all the data and the research and the people that we study people who become wealthy living extremely separate lives while married. They just don't. And this is the reason is this kind of stuff happens. Only we only find that they're hand in glove working together symbiotic and aligned on our values and aligned

on our goals and aligned on our targets and pointing and firing at the target and firing at the target together. And you guys got to get back to that and and then you've also got to get rid of the debt and the way you get rid of the debt sell the house in the car.

your people and way more chances to make memories. But you know what else there's more of spending.

“Oh between the extra groceries and gas and camp fees and family trips it all starts to add up so”

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[Music] Buying or selling a home is a big decision with so much conflicting housing market news hard to know what's really going on. We keep up with the market and all the trends and do all

“the research and if you want to know what's going on go to Ramsey Solutions dot com slash market”

or click the link in the show notes if you're listening on the podcast or YouTube and you'll be like up to date on what's really going on that kind of thing so that's the whole idea. Now if you're going to get an agent you want to get a Ramsey trusted agent because that's someone if you're going to buy or sell that does a whole bunch of transactions and that we have spent time with we trust them because they're excellent at what they do. Proven professionals.

Marks and Omaha Nebraska. Mark what's up. Hey Dave so I just graduated college I lived on campus all four years and I'm officially you know moving out now and I'm going to tackle the world but my question is while we're searching places I have discovered that right isn't just the number listed and obviously there's a bunch more expenses gas electric by five so what is being my

official move out my first official move out into my own place and not in college dorm how much

should I be willing to spend and still be confident in the place I live. 25% of your take home pay or less. Is that for rent and all of the no just the rent just the rent yeah. I'm just their aunt or less. Okay that's the most less is good because rent what are you doing when you're renting we're we're sitting there planning to buy and we're planning to buy by saving money to buy some day three years two years whatever right and the more rent we pay the last

money we can save so or less is a good number. Okay the least possible rent that you can get buy is

“the best number but 25% your max. Okay. What's the new job? What are you making? 89,000. Doing what?”

Electrical engineer. Congrats man. Wait a go first job out of college making 90.

What a world we live in. Look at you. Wait a go. Do you have any student loan debt coming out? I do not. Bro how'd you do that? I was very blessed. My parents. Yeah you were blessed. Where'd you go to college? I went to a small school and hello. Okay good for you and you're going to be living in Omaha or where you're going to be living. I'm moving down to Lincoln. Okay good for you. All right. Hey if you can sit if you can

if you can live dorm life for two years three years and just cast that cash meaning don't rent something fancy. Rent something that your mom when she comes to visit you goes. I thought you I thought you were doing well. Oh I'm worried about you. Do I need to pray for you? Yeah and if you can God help you don't buy a new car just keep the same car even though all your colleagues will be like what are you doing man? You park at the back of the lot or park in the front just three years of doing that

straight out of college. Make a 90 you're going to stack cash. Let me tell you how I know this is going to work. We did the largest survey a millionaires ever done mark 10,167 of them. One of the things we researched was what occupations showed up the most often among millionaires. Number one occupation among millionaires engineer you. I'm excited for your brother. It's going to be an awesome life ahead of you. But listen you're not prepared for all of the people who are going to be

buying a new car. You should be buying all new suits. You should be getting a fancy apartment.

If you can weather that noise for a couple of three years you will set future you up so so well.

“Right this down and put it on your mirror. Dogs don't bark at parked cars. What does that mean?”

Well if you're moving and you're doing stuff somebody's going to be barking. Oh there you go. 100% of the time. So everybody's got an opinion about your money. Just get ready. But by the way, this is a great example. Parents were able to support him and take care of him. Pit take care of his college.

But also, it's clear they taught him well. Because he's asking good questions at 21. 21 year old me with no college debt. Making 90 grand if-- I mean, that's way more than I was making.

But I would have been-- I would have ended that year at 100 grand in debt. Oh, yeah. For sure. Got a buy house, got a buy car, got a buy car.

Got a buy car, got a buy car. Got a buy, got a buy, got a buy, got a buy. I would have had a quick talk about it. Yeah, you do. And this young man is just like he's asking, OK,

how can it-- what should I spend on rent? And he actually called like a national show to ask that. And I bet when Lincoln to brass guy, I don't know the market.

“But I bet the Midwest is a good place to fairly, fairly affordable.”

Get a nice three-bedroom two-bath house in a few years. Maybe I can't afford it if he watches what he's doing. It could happen. It happens in America right now. I'm in 21-year-olds.

Turns out socialism does suck and capitalism is amazing.

All right, Ashley's with us in a rally North Carolina. Hey, Ashley, how can we help? Hi, how how are you? Better than I deserve. Thank you.

Thank you for taking my call. I'm wondering if financially my husband can retire early to to help concerns. I think I think he can. But he doesn't want to quit because he

doesn't want to put that burden on me to work longer. It would be the sole provider. What do you make? I make 130. And if he retires, is there any money coming from his retirement?

How old is he? He's 57, so it will be retiring without any retirement. What does he make today? 100.

So your income is going to go on half from from 230 to 130, right?

Quite. Yeah. Ed, can you do that? I think we can. Well, no, it's not a thing.

It's a math, a math problem.

“That's how I did math in elementary school.”

I think it's four, four times four is. Yes, math wise, we can. OK, so you did a budget on your income. And you can exist on that budget. I have done a budget, yes.

On your income. Yes, this is a thing. He looked at it, and he looked at it, and so how old are you? I'm 55. And how much is in your old's nest eggs?

About a million. Good for you. Well done. House paid for you? Yes.

I wasn't on it. You broke up. Do it again. We have 75,000 left on it. OK, how much do you have in savings is not retirement?

130. Pay off the house today. OK. That was easy. And now it's a lot easier to live on 130 than it was 10 minutes ago.

Yes. OK. Good. I like it so far. What's his health condition at 57?

He has heart disease. OK. And has heart surgery or is going to? Or? Yes.

He has. He had heart surgery? Yes. OK. And it didn't repair.

He's not going to come back or what? Well, physically he can still do some stuff. But it's a genetic, and it's not going to get better. I mean, he can still work. It just, we're trying to mentally the stress is also there.

OK. So all right. So he's possible that he could do something that didn't create stress and did not stress his heart either physically or mentally. OK.

And probably not what he's doing today. OK. Yeah, sitting on the couch is probably not a good prognosis though. No. He would not be able to sit on the couch.

Yeah. I didn't think so. But he may need to get away from the track he was on prior to the heart attack or the heart surgery or whatever we had here. I'm not a medical doctor, but it sounds like he needs to get away from the stress of

this job and find something that he can physically easily do and without the stress. And he might only be making 50, right? Correct.

Let's go that route and pay off the house today and for sure for sure he needs to check out that other job. I'm with you.

“But we all done setting yourselves up for win life happened.”

Y'all were financially ready. Both of you are doing great. Yes. You got paid for. You're going to see this.

Yeah.

You got a million dollars in the bank.

About to have a paid off house before the day is over. That gives you a ton of options. Yeah. At 55 and 57. Ding, ding.

Millionaires. I just talked to another one. There they go. Hey, Mark. That I talked to a minute ago.

That's your future right there. Except you're going to get there at 35. Hey, George Campbell here. We often talk about how being normal sucks when it comes to your money. But guess what?

Normal isn't so great when it comes to your job either. Normal is staying in a job you hate, dreading Mondays and working for people you don't even like. Sound familiar?

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Our scripture of the day Luke 638 give and it will be given to you. A good measure, press down, shake in together and running over. It will be poured into your lap. Jay Paul Getty said money is like manure.

“You have to spread it around or it smells.”

This is true. Brian is an Arkansas. Hey, Brian. What's up? Hey, how's it going Dave?

Better than I deserve. How can we help? So I was looking for some advice on making a highly irresponsible financial decision. Yes. I love those.

Well, at least we've analyzed this properly. What in the world? So my wife and I retired four years ago. I'm 48 years old as a lieutenant per medical department due to medical condition. And so we have pretty consistent income.

We have about 75,000 hours a month in income. And I'm about to gain another 2500 potentially that was completely unexpected. So 10,000 a month in your 48 years old and you're not working. Our house is completely paid off. We have no vehicle.

We have no debt other than loan. I gave my brother a little while ago, which I'm not concerned about. It's not a money, but but really no credit card debt and nothing whatsoever. We're we're we're. You're willing to give to your brother.

I took a portion of a little 15,000 home equity lines. He's my family. I know it. That's also irresponsible. But he's my blood.

You have any cash. Do I? Yeah. So everything. I dumped all of our savings into land and our home after I was diagnosed with something

The doctor said could potentially take my life and so I went. I decided to safeguard my wife's future because she gets my pension if I passed away.

And so I ultimately made a decision, which we we follow.

We went to FPU 20 years ago and we got we did everything you said to do and it's been awesome. So thankful to you for that. But when I was diagnosed with my epilepsy, the doctor pretty much sold me that. At any point, the next one could be your last one.

“And so that's the hard words to swallow. So I just made a decision and said, you know what?”

I'm going to buy a home cash. We're going to buy vehicles cash. And I know she gets my pension. So just doing the basic math. If anything happens to me, my wife is good for the rest of her life.

And that was the decision I made, whether or not that was wise or not. And you have no cash. We don't have a ton of cash. We have we have a land though and stuff that's very liquid if necessary. How much cash do you have?

Maybe 15,000 dollars. Okay. That's not much of an emergency fund in the situation. Okay. And what is the land worth?

The land's about $150,000. And the home is about 425. Why is the land liquid? I don't think it is. The market here is just it's hot.

And so if I listed the land for SESA, the land for SESA, I'm confident that each parcel would sell for it within a week or two. It's very, very much right here. Why for a car? Sound the home?

No. She's my boss. I have a home inspection business and hand-man business as she runs. And so she does that. Is that part of the $10,000 income?

No.

That is upwards of about.

I don't have that because it's not the security, but it's not part of pension. What are you making on that? About 60,000 a year. Okay.

So you have a $15,000 a month income and you have no cash. Where's all your money going? This just started. And so this is all about selling new. All this income literally has been generated and established in the last,

I say about two years and I say about half of it in the last.

“I think I got the picture sort of mostly.”

Now, what's the irresponsible decision? Right. So here's the responsible decision. If we really get this additional $2500 a month, we, I don't know the answer to the question right now I'm calling,

but we are really wanting to do the great look.

If you're familiar with it, where you buy a large, you know, two bedrooms, two baths a boat. And you pretty much travel on the water full time. And I'm pretty confident that I could do that with about 50% of additional $2500 a month, as far as the debt we would incur.

So purchasing the boat is the is the highly irresponsible decision. What's the boat cost? I'm pretty confident I could get the boat about $150,000. Won't you rent the boat? And possible. I assure you I've tried and tried nobody will do that.

There's no organization on the plant that will just rent a boat. And it would probably cost triple or quadruple if it existed. Well, I mean, yeah, you're right. You know the answer to the question. I'm not going to finance boat.

I love the idea. It kind of sounds cool. I'm not a sailor. I'm a master craft for water ski guy, but I either way. I think it's a cool idea.

I would save up and buy a boat and do that. And then maybe it's not maybe it doesn't require $150,000 boat to do it. But the only option I was going to suggest was that you could sell a land. We were debating selling everything home land and everything and buying a small home, paying for the boat and cash.

“You could do that if you want to go that bad.”

Yeah. Or you could wait a couple of years and save up. Everyone here that waits, you get sick and then ever do it. And so I think we're ready to go. You're 48.

Please don't be drama queen. Well, well spoken. Yeah. I mean, if you want to sell everything and go do it, then you can sell the boat at the end and come back home and re-establish your life.

If the two of you want to do this thing, I mean, what's it take about a year to do it, doesn't it? Yeah. Or a year. I'm sorry.

We would do it for one year, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've known a few people that did it. And they're safe. You know, they're sailboat fanatics on there.

It's like the favorite thing they ever did in their life. I kind of stuff. You've set yourself up in a life that allows you to go do this. But I would only do it if I paid cash. And if you're, if you're wife and you both, you have kids at home.

So our daughter is leaving to the Navy in a month and a half. And our son, our son just got back to the Air Force. And he is very well established for himself. Okay. Good.

All right. So there's nobody. So you know, I don't think I wouldn't call it financial. You're responsible if you pay cash for it by selling off stuff or save up the cash. I would absolutely yell at you if you take out payments to do this.

When you, especially you got other options to do it. Yeah. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's all. That's good.

Yeah. I mean, but would you do that? Would you? I, I, I. I don't want to go that far back for, you know,

“I don't want to take that many mother maya steps backward to do something that I think is a dream.”

Because every time I've done something that I thought was going to be the coolest thing ever,

it never has quite lived up to where it wasn't my head.

Right. And I, to me, that feels like a, your, your scratching a lottery ticket on, because you're basically pausing real life for a year to go literally on a fantasy ride. And then you're going to come back to real life. And I would want to be honest with myself about what I thought that was going to do for me.

Um, I have found being gone for many nights in a row. I start to really want my own bed and want my own light. But everybody's different. Everybody's got their own adventures. I would struggle.

And this does not make it right. And I'd probably have to check myself. I would struggle at, at my, thinking of my kids at my funeral. And then evaluating how much that land is worth.

That dad sold for his boat ride. Right. Like, um, and that's a stupid way to live your life.

scorch earth and take a year off of life.

And I'm going to get back.

“I'm going to have to jump right back into real, the real world.”

That'd be tough for me. But, um, also I also know when you're, when you're like him, and you have an opportunity that people have spoken to,

to peer over the edge of this thing called,

you may not be here tomorrow. It tends to, sparks and fire in your eyes to like, on go live life right now. And the balance is,

“do you have to pause life for a year and go for orthco sailing,”

you know, or can you live life now in your own seat? I don't know. Yeah, that's a, that's a big live life now move.

It's a huge, all in live life now move. Yeah. But yeah, if you, if you, you probably could sell the boat for almost as much as you bought it for a year later after you,

“you should do it after you make the run,”

and then come back home and buy a house. Can you buy somebody's boat that just made the run for? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I'm thinking if you're walking around with cash,

you might make a different boat decision, I know you would, then you would if you, otherwise. I put this hour of the ramps to show in the books, we'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember,

there's ultimately only one way to financial peace,

and that's to walk daily, with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. [BLANK_AUDIO]