Quit Sabotaging Your Finances And 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. Jay Washall, number one bestselling author, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones here at Triple A 825-5225. The call is free and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.

John is on the line in San Antonio. Hey, John, how are you? >> Hey, I'm doing good day, how are you? >> Better than I deserve, or what's up? >> Good answer.

Not much, man. I was just calling in to get some advice, Dave. Don't put the situation with my wife that involved some financial dishonesty. So just look into person advice like on a plan on how to move forward with our situation. >> Wow, okay, what happened?

>> Yeah, so just to give you a little context, my wife and I have been together on an office in high school.

We had our first son when I was 20, 32 now.

We separated for about five years, got back together. We just got married about a year ago, and we just welcomed our second baby boy in January. And up until recently, I mean, things have been great.

“Like, I think our relationship has been stronger than it's ever been.”

But I just uncovered like some financial situation where she wasn't really being too honest with me. >> What are you talking about, Mary? >> What are you talking about? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, so about a year ago, my wife's car broke down.

I was trying to fix it to save some money, she ended up buying a new car without discussing it with me. Her dad helped her co-sign. I was told that the original car was being taken by her dad's friend to a repair shop to get fix and sold, which didn't make sense to me because I know she was upside down on it.

And I was under the impression that she was still making payments on it and everything was being handled. I just found out that wasn't based. The car's no longer in our possession. She pretty much lied to me about making payments, and she didn't know what was going on with

the car was at the shop, I mean, turns out like her dad helped facilitate the whole situation. The car is pretty much gone, like it disappeared. So I don't know what happened to it, but wasn't being honest with me about the car the whole time, I had to do some investigating. >> When she was driving the car, and she came home with a new car, and you saw that she

“had a new car, what did you say, and what did she say?”

>> I mean, I really didn't know what to say. That means you just wrote up with the new car and said, my dad took me to go coast sign on a new car. The old one was taken by one of his friends to a shop, and that was the last time we saw it. I thought it was fitting it a shop the whole time, but.

>> Okay, and then up till that point, up till that point. >> Yeah, how long ago was that? >> Oh man, that happened back in February, March of last year, so about a year ago.

>> When you guys never had, you've never had combined finances.

>> No, we have it, so the whole reason I was pressing on that original car is because I was trying to align our finances to start investing, right? We are out to pay it off, we're in a really good situation. I'm trying to open up some college funds for our kids, which I've already done. So she's never been honest with me about finances ever since we're married, I've been pushing

on it. I just kind of had to find out the ugly truth. One is you're not aligned on the money, obviously.

“The most important problem that you guys have to work through is lying.”

>> Right, and so she is broken trust and now it's hard to trust her on anything. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Because she's gone into this end-depth deception. >> Yeah, it was like, that's the hard part because it's not like it was it won. >> No, it's not a white line, it's target, target bags under the bed, this is an ongoing

major. >> I'm going, I'm going, so operating on on this. >> Here's the deal, and your relationship is a weird one anyway, by the way, it originated and it's coming, gone and roller coasters and babies and all kinds of stuff going on that's out of line to start with, so what that tells me is, is that this money being out of line

and then her probably her shame around it or her knowing your reaction wasn't going to be good, it's probably what caused her to want to not tell you, so obviously dude, what you all need is in-depth marriage counseling. >> Yeah, we already learned how to be married. >> Yeah, I agree with you man, that was kind of like my non-negotiable was like,

if you want to work through this, like we need to unpack all this stuff, we need to go to

tomorrow, so you're going to be full access to all the bank accounts.

“>> Great, that's a good start, so if you can, if you can begin to rebuild trust through”

extreme transparency and extreme alignment where you both see everything all the time and gradually you will begin to rebuild trust and you'll work through all of the things that got you here with a good counselor, you're doing all the right things then, that's exactly what I would tell you to do. >> Yeah, yeah, exactly, but there is obviously she's got a lot of debt, had to the old card,

had to the new card. >> No, she doesn't know. >> Yeah, it's you guys both together. >> You're right, you're right. >> And that's going to be the hardest thing for you is if she has said, at this point, I'm

already to do the counseling, I'm giving you full transparency, now your hard work is going

to be, okay, I've got to kind of let go of some of those other things, I've said it,

we've talked about it, we both have to now be focused on building this new thing and that's going to be the hardest thing for you because you got burned and you're still feeling that and so.

“>> The counselor can coach you through, not continually bringing up the past all the time,”

unless there's a reason. I mean, the reason you bring up the past is if there's some indicator that's repeating. And so, you know, some reason to not continue to trust a rebuild trust, but, you know, the two of you sit down together and yeah, you have a right to have been angry for having been deceived and, but then you put that, like Jade said, you put that in the back pocket

and you look forward and we, you know, or we don't and we don't, we're not going to be together, okay, because it's a deal breaker for you, but I hope it's not, I hope you guys can sit down and work it out and get, the counselor coach you guys on working together and it's probably going to lead to stuff like selling that car because I'm guessing y'all probably came forward that car and based on the fact that our dad had to co-sign.

Hello. >> Right, right. >> And also, it'd be kind of good to get rid of that car because it gets rid of our dad and it gets rid of the memory, every time you ride a check for that car, you're going to be pissed again.

>> It's good point. >> It brings, it bulls it all up to the surface again. So I kind of like getting rid of the car just for those reasons and I don't know the numbers on the car. And I would imagine the other car is worth very little to nothing, probably is in a scrap

pipe somewhere or it got repowed. >> Yeah. >> It's a lot like, and she hid that too, but the guy at the shop is not going to allow that car to just sit and his lot in perpetuation. He's either going to sell it off to the scrapyard or he's going to, you know, collect storage

against it and based on that cellet or he's going to call the repo company and they come get it. And in any other case, you probably have some financial damage there too to work through. But the two of you can lock arms together and clean up this, I think people clean up more.

>> Yeah. And let's take a minute and talk about financial transparency for people listening. When we talk about financial transparency combining money, it's not just, there's a joint account that we put some money in. There's one account between the two of you and all of your money goes into there and everybody

has the passwords and everybody has the account numbers. And if I toss my husband my phone, he knows my code and can put my code in. So financial transparency isn't just money, it is just relational transparency. You should want, it's accountability.

“You should want your spouse to see and know the things that you're doing in multiple areas”

of your life. And you should give them access. Better help, I am right here because some extraordinary women in my life, mentors, friends,

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Well, I'll push the button she can talk to me. Highland, how are you? I'm good, how are you? Better than I deserve, how can I help? I am wondering, I'm in a kind of a unique situation and I'm contemplating selling my home.

I'm single mom, I'm 52, my oldest daughter has special needs, she requires care. I'm supporting her financially and physically sometimes, but she lives an hour and I'll have away from me.

I do need to be closer to her, but I also have a second daughter who is a full-time college

student in my area. Just kind of stuck and financially, just in a huge mess, I've been on a family to take care of my older daughter, I'm behind my mortgage, I'm behind in a lot of different things. You're behind in your mortgage, why? So I have a single household income and I had, I was on to take care of my daughter, my income

dropped because I was an intern in FMI, and so you don't get that, you don't. Yeah, so you quit working to go take care of her, and you're income went away. You're not completely, yeah, but largely, and so you weren't, but you knew when you did that, I mean, what was your plan? Well, I didn't have a plan because it happened sort of quickly, you know, as an emergent

issue.

What was the emergent season?

She had a on-est motivation, she has special needs, she has new on-set medical diagnoses of very, you don't even actually have an answer to what's going on, she had a, well, yeah, she on any, is she getting any sort of income because of any disability, any SSI? Yeah, she gets SSI every month. So, so you, you just went to the hospital to take care of her at the hospital?

No, she had an admission, multiple admissions, but when she came home, I have to take care of her, and I have to get her back and flip to her appointments. Yeah, how old is she? 24, so I'm, and it's just me, so there's no one else, you know, I'm her guardian, but she lives in an area where she has supports, but not, they won't, it's not medical, like

medical, it's like resources that, you know, and take her into the community, things like that.

Did you have that by you or no?

“No, no, that's why she's wishing me is because there's not-”

So, when she moved there, all of this, you knew all of this, how old was the plan then to take care of her? No, we didn't. No, she was in a great place, lunching, lunching was moved. Oh, so the medical has occurred since then, but that you medical is not the special, okay?

I'm just, hey, hey, hey, so you think the medical is chronic and ongoing? It's going to be, yep, yep, we're in the tender in the middle of figuring it out, and I think that. Yeah, I guess you're, I guess you're moving there, aren't you? Yeah, I really need to, I'm just, I, you know, have my other daughter who's in college and,

and I don't know, if I sell, you know, I do have equity about $200,000 equity. Yeah, you need to sell it before you lose it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, let's get it on the market and let's move. Get on the market and move and then try to establish some kind of income and career path around

to, to while you're supporting her. Yeah. What were you doing for a work before? I'm still working. I just intermittently, I'm in and out, well, what type of arm, I'm in the medical field.

“Okay, so is that transferable to where your daughter is?”

It is, it is, yep. Okay, either she moves where you are, so you can take care of her, or you move where she is, so you can take care of her. This not deciding is going to kill you. Right, well, the issue is just that how I'm going to, um, I think I'm going to probably

have to rent, but, yes, wondering if, you know, if I should rent my house, oh, no, you're to sell your house and you don't need to, you don't need a rental property in the middle of all this other mess going on. Um, so just sell it. Yeah, sell it, put the money in your pocket, go rent and live up there next to her and

move your job up there, get a job in the field up there, or load her up and move her in with you, and you work your job down there and you take care of her there, because you're going to take care of her, you've established that. Yes.

“So the only question is which location and both of you need to be there.”

There's one foot on the boat, one on the dock and the boat's leaving is not working for you.

choosing to be the one that provides her care, then that's what you're going to be doing.

I'm going to make different things, so thank you for that because, you know, people are saying,

“well, you need to rent it and move your community out.”

No, you need to simply find it, but don't listen to it. Are you going to buy something on your own, you need to get down there, it's more, you know. You need to focus on the one thing right now and that's creating a sustainable life for you and her, and that's not being a real estate investor.

So now sell that thing, put the 200,000 in your pocket, make your decision that way. That's exactly what I would do. James is in Boston, also, how James, how are you? Hey, Dave, how you doing? Better than I deserve, what's up?

Great. So the reason I'm calling 20 years old, graduating from college last spring, I've been working

a little time since summer, I would say that my income and net worth are probably in the top

couple percent from my age, due to varying circumstances, I had a good job, a lot of my money that I have came from a life insurance policy from my father who passed me as younger and then some, I don't know, don't be sorry, it's all right. What's your degree in, and what are you doing for a living?

“I do software engineering and good, and what are you making about 1/35?”

Good for you. Okay, you got good income and you've got some money left over from that life insurance policy. How much is that? Yes, so that was about 100, I also had about 70 just from, um,

money that my dad had put into, crying, saving since the time I brought in every younger, um, my total net worth is about 3/20, 3/30 depending on how the market is doing. What's the, so I mean, that's 170, where's the rest of it? So, uh, I worked 26 month internships laws in college that contributed to a significant part of it.

And you don't have any debt? Probably. No debt. Okay, so you got 300 grand and you got 300 grand and investments, I hope, and 1/35 income and no debt and you're 22 and you're in the computer science as your software engineering

way to go. Great start, dude. Sure. Thank you. What's your question?

Um, my question is, um, um, you know, I'm kind of on third base, but I didn't exactly

hit a trouble to get here. I mean, I worked hard. I went to a good school. I worked my ass off to get a good job. You may be close to second base.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right. All right. So, my thing I'm trying to do is I'm trying to reduce how much I spend, even though I'm

already saving a lot of my income, uh, I can't help a feel like the guilt of life style creep is, is hitting me. Now, good for you. That's a good observation for a 22 year old. That's a very smart.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. See you stuff on YouTube and it hit me as I can with this. Let's get to me.

So, um, yeah, I'm saving about 35 to 40% of my growth. Okay. When you're developing a piece of software, you lay out a plan, a flow chart, right? Correct. And you begin with the end in mind, you don't make it up as you go.

“You have to go back and do some edits because things unexpected things happen and you have”

to rewrite a portion of the code, but you begin with the end in mind and you lay out a game plan. That's all you do with a budget. It's all a budget is. You begin the month in every dollar and every category has filled out every one of your

dollars of income is already allocated to something that you decided it's going to be allocated to before the month begins and then you follow that and that allows some spending, but on amount of spending that you're comfortable with. What you've got right now is a bunch of unknown and the unknown is leaving you feeling like a financial hangover.

Yeah. Pretty much. Get an old man. Yeah, you need to know exactly what your goal is. If you're putting that 35% aside, what's the purpose of it?

What are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to obtain and being conscious that you are enjoying part of your lifestyle and David's exactly right, a budget will help you do both of those things. Yeah, put on a mount down for fun and then go have some dad come fun. Yeah, you're doing well.

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[Music] One of our favorite things is when people share their stories of how they're winning and

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Love this app. It makes it super easy to budget with my husband. We've implemented this practice since our wedding day and we've had zero money fights because there is full transparency, there's that word again, and we're on the same page. Guys, that's amazing.

And you know what? You can do this. You can take control of your money. You can change your family tree. You can live like no one else.

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“It'll show you everything you need to do in the app store or Google Play.”

Haley is in Houston. Hi, Haley. How are you? Hey, Dave. How are you?

I'm good. Good. What's up?

I have a question for you.

So, I've been with my boyfriend for a little over six years and I graduated in December 2023 with about 161, 160,000 dollars a student loan debt. I've paid off a lot. I have about 90,000 dollars left. Thank you.

So you're what? 24? I'm 26. 26. Okay.

And what's your field of what's your career? I'm a nurse. Oh, good. For you. Okay.

And so you've got 90,000 left. All right.

And my boyfriend makes 250,000 a year but he does not want to propose until completely

that free. Interesting. You're not going to like me. If you were my daughter, you wouldn't know, I would tell you. But...

Don't pay him. Yeah, I mean, he's a great boy. No, he's not. He's not. He's making you prove your worth.

Based on money. Yeah. To him. You're having to buy your way into this relationship. Nope.

You're a princess and you deserve more than this. The reason I've been able to put like majority of my paycheck towards my loans is because he doesn't pay for all our rent. Oh, so you live together? Yeah, we live together.

So you're already married, but you just didn't admit it. Yeah, it does feel like we're married. So that's... Yeah, cause... So what's his incentive to get married?

None. And this, let me just say this, Haley, and I'm saying this because you're going to have relationships after this and you're going to learn from this and there's people who are going to watch this call and learn from this. This is precisely why one of the reasons why living together before marriage is it's a bum

idea. It's not a good idea because what happens is you start to make bad relational decisions based off of the financial gain and based off of the pressure that you've already put on yourselves. It's a lot easier to walk away from a messed up relationship when he lives over here and

she lives over here and we just get together when it's time to go on our dates. So it's a lot easier to go. You know what this guy's a bum? I'm going to walk away. It makes a lot more difficult when suddenly you're in the same house and then you're splitting

the bills and then he's paying for the rent. It makes it very hard to make the natural transitions that we would have made if we had not applied that amount. So you move forward and it talks to you on healthy relationship because you chose to share an address.

Anyway, now you're not going to do it. I can tell by the way you're talking.

“So here's the thing, we love people getting out of debt.”

You know that and why do we love people getting out of debt? Because we love people and we want them to be able to prosper and your number one wealth building to use your income. You have a fabulous career choice.

You'll always be employed and you can always work as much as you want to work. You can work 80 hours a week or you can work 20 hours a week as a nurse. You'll be able to do that the rest of your life and you can make a pile of money. So we tell couples to do is to be aligned, be an agreement on how money is going to be handled.

Now he is an agreement that he hates debt. You're an agreement that you've hated debt and you've been working it down. But then he has put up a false block here. I'm just telling you, I love you and if you were my daughter, I tell you not to marry this guy.

“Because I think he's, this is a false premise.”

You're aligned on what is important in your mind on, okay, we don't like debt. We're going to avoid debt. We're going to get out of debt and that's not, people asked me since I came on the air here 35 years ago.

Should I marry someone with debt and the answer is always yes, as long as you love them

and you're aligned that we're getting rid of the debt. If you have zero debt but one of you loves debt and hates saving and the other one loves saving and hates debt, you're going to get a divorce later. The number one calls of divorce in North America today is money fights and money problems. And guess what this is, this is a money fight.

Yeah. You're just not having it out loud, you're having it in your head. Yeah, that's right. Now what could be going on and I'm going to allow a little space for this. He could just be an idiot today and he just needs to learn a little bit about what it means

to be in a relationship and what it means to handle money together. You said one thing that might cause me to go, I wonder if I brought this to him and saw a pre-marital counselor if we can get on the same page is it seemed like he was willing to help with the debt, now you guys aren't married yet but in a married relationship. It seemed like he was willing to help but he was helping in the wrong way.

So that's the only thing that makes me think he might possibly simply be misguided because he said, oh, I'll pay the rent. I could go to a marriage account for a pre-marital counselor and say, look, let's get

a line on this or we're going to end this.

But if at the end of the day, the answer to the question is, I won't marry you. Yeah, then yes, we have to tell you, pay off your debt. So answer the questions answered. Are you going to? Do you, that more than you value me, see you later, alligator?

Yeah, hollow. After a while, crocodile, you'd be gone. Yeah, I mean, I'll be done with this. I'm just not doing this. Absolutely.

Yeah, what are the cool kids say, see your Felicia or something? By Felicia. By Felicia. Yeah, that's the cool kids. Like 20 years ago, the cool kids, right?

Yeah.

“That's going to, I'm going to remember that for every day that was great.”

See you later, Felicia. Get off my lawn. OK, I'm like, come here, carousma is in California. Hey, carousma, what's up? Hi.

Hey. So gosh, I'm kind of nervous to talk to you. This is amazing. Well, we're glad you're here. How can we help?

I am currently working the debt snowball as of right now. I have paid off $10,000 of debt in the last six months on a $50,000 income with good for a year. Well done. Yeah.

Yeah, no child support, nothing. All myself. Cool. How can we help today? I have currently been paying off a credit card debt that I have.

And I finally sorted through some collections that I have from my second child pregnancy.

My pregnancy with her. How old is she now? She will be two and two. OK, so these bills are two years old. OK.

Yes.

“And I have notices from collection agencies.”

However, most of them have not, like, I just have mail. They have not really tried to call me. There's nothing that shows up on my credit report. There's no other, like, anything. Those have to show up on your credit report for you to owe it.

You went in the hospital. You had a baby. They sent you a bill. Is the bill accurate? Yes.

No. Then you owe the bill. Then you owe the bill. OK. OK.

Now, how much is it? I final. Give me an example. There's a few of them. There's a few of them.

Give me the big one. The biggest one. OK. The biggest one is 1294. Good.

OK. I want you to save up $200 and I want you to call them. And I want you to say, I'm a single mom. I make $50,000. I'm so broke.

I can't pay attention. I do want this off of my list, though. It's $1294. As the bill I have in front of me, I have $200.

OK.

And they will scream and yell and call your names.

And then they'll take it. OK. Get it in writing or don't give them money. And do not let them have electronic access to your checking accounts. Send them a prepaid debit or a wire or something else.

But no access to your checking account and no money until it's in writing that the $200 is a settlement info. Might take $300, but you can get rid of that one. You can get rid of these at $20 on the dollar on average. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Dave, we got a lot of calls on this show where life happens. One day someone's healthy, they're working, providing for their family, and then a curveball hits. You know, we heard all the time. Our accident, a cancer diagnosis, a heart attack, and suddenly everything changes.

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[music] Shelly is in Tampa, Florida, Ohio. Shelly, how are you? Hi. I'm so happy to be with you guys today.

I have a question for you regarding anxiety over money. And that's kind of recent for me in the last five years. Okay, anxiety over not enough money to much money. Pulse of money, scare you in the middle of the night. [laughter]

It's just a fear of handling the money. I don't--we have very comfortably--we have absolutely no debt. My husband makes a great living for us both. Our kids are-- A fear of messing up.

Maybe that's it. But it's--I mean, it's even--I can handle paying bills. And it's kind of been my responsibility during the marriage, because he's very taxed with his job. But even incoming checks or things that come in,

I'm just very anxious. And it's gotten to a point now where-- And he-- I'm sorry. So you get a check in the mail and that makes you anxious.

Yes, it's strange.

“Is it--have you always been the one that kind of handles the kind of like the day-to-day of the money or is that new role for you?”

No, no, I've always handled it.

And I've always done fine with it. It's only in the-- Are you in therapy for something else? No. If you had to link it--

I would-- What would you say this is linked to? Yeah, if you had to link it to something maybe the way you grew up, something that happened at this time and in your life or in your childhood, what would you say? Yeah, I would--I would link it to kind of since COVID. It's become very magnified for me.

Okay. So uncertainty. And we--

I would say uncertainty.

I try not to listen to all the noise.

I--I call it noise. It was noise. It was noise.

“You can listen to a million different things.”

No. I try to just walk forward being very stable listening to. But you guys, for example, and my husband's very, very stable in everything as far as-- Yeah. Okay.

So I would do a couple of things. No. I don't know the answer. I'm not a therapist. I wish Dr. John was on with me today.

I'm sorry. I mean, or she was on with you. Yeah. Anyway. So I wish she was here.

But I'm not trying to throw you onto the bus. But because we're not qualified to do therapy. But--and he is. So I'm going to send you a copy of Rachel's book. Know yourself.

Know your money. And I'm going to send you a copy of Dr. John's book on anxiety. Yeah, redefining anxiety. Because he says anxiety is your friend.

“Because it's an alarm bell going off, warning you about something.”

Okay. I see. And he teaches to solve for peace. So that the alarms can go off. In other words, if the fire alarms going off,

we don't want to take out the batteries. We want to put the fire out. Sure. Because the fire alarm is actually my friend. It's keeping me from burning the house down.

That's what anxiety is doing. It's keeping you from messing up. And so he sees anxiety as your friend. Because it's saying get out of the street. A car is coming.

That's anxiety. It's fear, right? And so I don't know if there's an actual thing here. But it could be. So I'm going to send you both of those books. I want you to read through them.

The second thing is I want you to get on a detailed budget on every dollar.

And I want your taxed husband to look over it with you. And the two of you together approve the budget together. Okay. That won't take a lot out of him. Then when you're writing the checks,

you're not making all the decisions and writing the checks. Meaning you're not emotionally carrying the weight of the management of the household. You're simply the check writer. Okay. We as a team sat down and looked at every dollar and said this is where our money is going to go.

Then it doesn't require any anxiety at all for you to simply execute what the team has already told you to do. In other words, if the CFO and I sit down and say, these are the bills we're going to pay this month. And we hand them to a lady in accounting and she writes the checks. She has no stress at all.

Sure. Because she's not worried about it. I told her what to do and she did it. So you and your husband are the CFO. You're going to decide what to do.

And then you're going to be the lady in accounting that writes the checks. And that's a different level of stress. Because right now they're intertwined. And each time you write a check or deposit a check, you're also making all the decisions.

So each of those transactions is carrying the weight of the whole household and it shouldn't be. Okay. Is that logical? That's very logical. In his defense, he has tried.

I'm not asking. I'm not, I wasn't throwing him out of the bus. I don't think he's a bad guy. Okay. I just wanted him to help.

I just wanted him to make that clear. Yeah, but he starts shopping today. Yeah, the day to day you write in 30 minutes a week. He looks at the every dollar budget. And we make our decisions where our money's going to go.

And then the rest of the week, you execute submit payment on the website. Okay. And that's really easy for you then. And so when a check comes in, that decisions already made. Before the month begins, we know that check is coming in.

And if an unexpected check comes in, well, then we have a celebration. And we sit down together quickly and say, what are we going to do with this extra money? And we decide that towards our current needs and our future wants. Understood.

“Yeah, and I think that's kind of lowered a lot.”

And I guess the last thing is start setting some saving and investing goals.

Because I can promise you when you have a million dollars in a mutual fund.

Your stress level, your anxiety level is lower than when your broken can't pay your electric bill. Well, that's just it. We do have that. You're in between that worth. You have a what network.

We have a great network. What's that? What's a great network? It's probably just south of 10 million. I can tell you some things practically.

And again, Dr. John's not here, but I can tell you some things that I've done. Because what you're saying, the things I've heard you say, they're so vague. It's like, ah, I'm just afraid I'm going to ruin everything. And it's very hard to solve a vague problem. But what what you can do is spend some time in writing down exactly.

Try to get a specific as you can. What am I actually afraid of? Am I afraid that, you know, if I take this check and use it for something fun,

Therefore, you know, snowball effect, right? Write down what it is. And then you can actually have a clear solution to the problem.

If you keep it vague, there's never going to be a solution.

And you just keep to keep spinning your wheels. So try that. It has worked for me. Yeah, details. If you can push facts out onto the page. Facts are your friends and they will cause your brain to calm down. Yeah.

You know, John talks about an trauma situation. What are the actual facts versus what are all the things that are spinning up? Yes. What drama narrative is spinning up in the trauma. And I don't know, there's something happen somewhere, probably maybe your childhood or somewhere,

but there's something associated with this. And I want to know what that is if I can figure it out.

“That's why I think Rachel's book, "No Yourself, No Your Money" might be a thing.”

She talks about the different kind of households we grow up in, where the toxic views of money, or a strict high stress around money. I mean, if you saw your mom crying every week over money, then you think that's kind of how things are supposed to be.

It's supposed to cry every week over money. I got 10 million dollars,

but I'm still crying every week over money. And I don't know what it is. I have no idea. But I appreciate your question. It's an excellent question. A lot of people do struggle with that. More than anything, though, they struggle with this feeling of inadequacy.

Like, I'm not competent. I'm not good at this. I'm not good at math. I can't do money because I'm not good at math. Well, the math is like seventh grade, fourth grade, somewhere in there you learn the math. It's really not difficult. I mean, if you pass your driver's test to drive a car, you can do the math. It's not that hard.

“But it's intimidating if you categorize it over there,”

it's like some kind of mythical thing. That's right. And it's just, you know, I promise you, I can teach you 12-year-old how to do this stuff. And even ones that aren't good at math. So it's just, it's doing it in developing a little bit of a rhythm and a practice and a confidence

and in your competence and then your stress level just goes down with that. It's a great question, though, because you're not the only one feeling this, I promise you. It might be the only one who will attend me and daughter's feeling it. I'm kidding. Hey, thanks for the call.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union studio. Jade Washwell, number one bestselling author, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Steve is an Oklahoma city. Hi, Steve, how are you? Good, how are you, investor?

Better than I deserve, what's up? Hey, I've got a lot going on financially. I inherited some money with my dad passed away a few years ago. And it feels like I've just brought jump from one disaster to the next with it. And we don't even have any peace since then.

I've got some little properties and things like that. It has been a bunch of my childhood. It has eaten me alive, and I'm debating on selling. And it's being done with it. Okay, so how much did you inherit?

I inherited a 750,000 in between cash and stocks, and then another 750,000 in equity in a business.

The business is still there.

“My uncle who owns 50% of it is kind of like taking over it.”

And we're taking it over and he's just, he's robbing my brother and I've blind. I helped my dad run for a long time before he passed away, but my wife and I had a daughter. And we figured it best to move closer to my mom and her family, because back up here in Oklahoma, so I stepped away from it.

And now that I've stepped away from it, it's made the same amount of money every year. And the profit, like what my end of it is just keeps going down and down and down and down. And my brother and I really debating on forcing him to sell it. Or soon him or something. We've had a financial audit, and it's pretty clear.

He's taken a lot more than he should be. I'll have the bandwidth to deal with the name more. Why not? If he can sell her 50,000 dollars, get you some bandwidth, dude. Yeah, I know, I know this is not, I don't have any help.

It's a problem my brother is not interested in. What do you need help? I'm trying to be there. How are an attorney? Go sit down with your uncle and go, this is over.

We're selling this. I'm tired of you screwing me. It's a 10 minute conversation. Yeah, I'm trying to instruct yelling and feel like it's just how to go through attorneys. What's fine?

That's fine. You want to yell? I'm going to sue your butt.

“Well, the judge will help you with this.”

You can't screw me anymore. I'm done with your screw. You think you can yell at me? And that makes you allowed. It makes you okay to screw me.

I mean, the fact that makes you less likely to be able to screw me. So, he just doesn't have any impression because. Yeah. You're listening out, dude. You're listening out.

Yeah, you're correct. I'm out of shit. I don't know. It's just. I hate having drama in my family.

Okay, then runs. Then get a piece of paper and sign the thing over to him and walk away from your money. What you're whining. Yeah. I mean, either fix it or give it to him.

But don't just stand there and get screwed and like it. Yeah. I definitely don't. So, I guess that'd be the solution to that. I do one of the other.

I make a decision. Either walk away from it. Or punt him. Personally, I'd take great joy in puning a crook. Why are you scared of him?

I don't know. He's just the last member of my dad's son, the family last time. Yeah, which means he should the last thing he should be doing is screwing you. I don't know. That's what it feels like, too.

I did it.

It's really made me angry because I grew up with the guy who's almost like a second father.

And then like. Yeah, the second. No, you're not angry. You're afraid. Well, I think you're scared of him.

You're afraid he's going to yell. Yeah. I mean, it's just unfortunate because it's like, it's not how I used to be. And then as soon as like the numbers got as big as they are now, it's like, I just don't trust myself to make a correct decision anymore from this. Well, I mean, you trusted yourself to run the business with your dad.

And you know how to run the business. And you know what's right. And you're just for some reason. You're unwilling to address this guy. What's your brother say?

Your brother knows, right? He's a worse two. Yeah. Yeah, now he's just, when I was running that's my dad passed away. I stayed down there and I did it on my own for a while.

And I didn't have any issues. And then, yeah, I had my daughter and I told my brother.

“So hey, if you want to come here and, and fill by well.”

And you're more than welcome to and he said he, he wants to keep being a mechanic and get a check. And. And I'm not going. You know, it's going to be a, it's going to be a problem. And I knew it was going to be a problem.

So what? What the other 750,000 in cash and stocks. Did you say you'd lost that also? No, I still don't. You bought properties, right?

I've got a quarter million in stock and cash left.

And then probably, I don't know, 200,000 in equity between two properties. But the properties have been, I thought I was going to be real estate barren. And I bought a duplex. Then I was going to live in one side, run out the other, fix it up. And I added a bin at the worst neighborhood in town.

How got broken into cargo stolen. And that's not a good place to raise a two year old. So we moved out of that. And it's just in one disaster. Turn it off for another.

And I make good money at the job. I have work full time. And how long ago did you buy that duplex? Two years ago. Can you just sell it?

Yeah. I'm going to think of it. I've just got people. And they're telling me. I don't sell it.

Proper young goes. People are idiots. They're not in your life. They're not. They did not experience the things that you just listened to.

There's no joy on this duplex. So the stupid thing. Yeah. It's been a major point of contention between my wife and I. She just she wants it gone.

And I'm just. I think I'm falling on.

I'm out of action.

You're kind of like a glutton for punishment.

You're listing off all these horrible things. And we're suggesting. Hey, just get him out of your life. But for some reason, you want to cling to them with a kung fu grip. And we're telling you, just let it go, man.

So let it go, man. So let's make it. Listen, there's such freedom in making decisions and taking action even if it's wrong. But right now, you are completely captive to all these things that you feel like are happening to you.

And they're not happening to you. They're just happening.

And you're doing nothing about it.

“So you got you need to become a man of action.”

Starting today. Ready, set, go. When you get off the phone, call a real estate agent, go to ramsysolutions.com. Get a ramsy trusted real estate agent. Put the stupid duplex on the market.

When you hang up from that, call an attorney in the town where your uncle lives. And tell him to call your uncle and yell at your uncle. Because it turns out fair play. And we're getting ready to take you down. We're going to take your underwear uncle.

We're going to take everything you have. We're going to clean out your house. You get nothing. We are taking you to the ground. You're going to sell this place and write me a check for my half.

A fully audited hat portion. Or I'm going to bankrupt your yelling butt. I got a whole new thing for you. And turn that attorney loose. Higher an attorney that you don't even like because they're so mean.

And turn that guy take him off the leash and say sick him. You're going to have to do some stuff, man. And you're staring and watching your life go by. Like it's someone else's life.

“You need to step into this thing and punch a few things.”

And take some action and all of a sudden your stress level will go down. And your confidence level will come back up. Even if you screw this up, it's going to be a whole lot better life than you have right now. I don't think he handscrewed up. Any worse than it already is.

Light him up. Light him up. I can't think of anybody who sold a duplex. And then was like, oh, let me get it back. In a pad neighborhood where they stole the car out of the front yard.

Oh, I wish I had that back. Never has been said.

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“Paul is in Columbia, South Carolina. Hey, Paul, what's up?”

Hey, Dave, appreciate you taking my calls, sir. Sure. How come we help? I've got a real estate question. I am looking to buy a lake house. And I have found a house that pretty much checks all my boxes. I've called the listing agent and got some information from her.

And I think I'm at the point now where I either need to enlist the help of my own real estate agent. Or get involved in a dual agent agreement with her. And my question is, what are some advantages and disadvantages of being in a dual agent type of scenario? And would a dual agent scenario benefit me in any particular way? Well, typically what happens, and it's technically negotiable.

The person bringing the buyer gets half of that and the person that has the listing gets half of that as the real estate agent's go.

If you are represented, if the agent that hasn't listed does the contract with you the buyer, or he gets both sides of that. So they get the entire commission. Obviously, I assume you knew that. And so the only advantage might be that, since he or she's getting paid a lot more, that they're going to work really, really hard to get this deal done.

“You know, they got twice the incentive to get this closed, right?”

These are already working very, very hard because there's a lot to unpack with the owners.

And I just figured that if we entered into a dual agent agreement, it would remove one link from the chain of the communication.

It could turn into a pretty complicated sale. Why? Well, the owners are in their mid 80s. They live well out of state. I think they live in Maryland. She said the cognitive skills are on the decline. They have a reverse mortgage on this property. They are supposedly upside down. I don't know how you could be upside down in a reverse mortgage.

You know, it's impossible. It seems to be their financial situation seems to be had to for a short sale.

Maybe even the foreclosure, she said.

Oh, well, okay. It's, I guess it's possible because the property could have declined. Is it in this repair? It's, it's not pristine, but it's, it'll take some work to update it and fix a few things. So, you know, the reason why it would have gone down in value 35%. Because the reverse mortgage is supposed to cap out at 65% loan to value. Yeah, I don't really know anything about reverse mortgage is okay. They're terrible.

Yeah, I mean, 65% maximum though. So, means there should be 35% equity unless the property went down in value.

“About 35% they wouldn't be upside down. That's what I'm confused. I don't know.”

Okay, so it doesn't matter. She still got to untangle that barrel of fish hooks anyway. And dual agency simply means that she has her responsibility to both you as the buyer and the responsibility to the seller, which morally and ethically she does anyway. Okay, you're not, you know, if you're a member of the board of realtors, you're supposed to represent all parties in the transaction with ethics. In other words, you don't set out to screw the other side in any case in the real estate business. It's against ethics. You get you thrown out the board of realtors for one thing.

It gets you sued for another thing. And so you just can't, you know, just because one party or the other is paying getting paid does not remove you from ethics and your fiduciary responsibility. So, I, if she's got the mental capacity to work through all of their complication, and meanwhile, getting you on contract and you and her ganging up on this thing, there's no downside to the dual agency. It just adds another, it adds another curtain to kitchen if you bring your agent in at this stage. Well, she's already working very hard to get all this information out of the seller.

So, I mean, she would probably be interested in keeping more of the commission to be quite honest. Yeah, well, I'm sure she's working, yeah. And she should have done that for, she puts stupid thing on the market. So, it's kind of incompetent.

“But, I mean, how are we going to sell this house that I have for sale?”

That's a question you would ask before you put a sign in the yard. Yeah, well, like I said, they're in their 80s and they're old and grumpy and I just, it could turn to a mask for her. Yeah, not sure you're going to get this house. It sounds like, yeah. And I'm not sure we're going to get these, you know, this ski ropes didn't get a lot of knots in it. Maybe a while, you'd be standing on the boat untangling on this puppy. I don't know, it's possible, but, you know, I don't see a upside-downside either way for you, that's dramatic.

So, you're working with her, you think she's got it on the run. I would just go with her, honestly. I mean, there's, but if you're out there just wandering around, you're starting to look for a house and you want to get a buyer's agent. That's very standard in today's world. There's nothing wrong with that either. A lot of our tramsy trusted real-state agents have a buyer's agent on their team. And that's a good thing. All they do is represent buyers. It's all they do.

And that's a, that's a very clean transaction. You're not questioning who's, well, who's getting what? This guy's my guy, that's your guy, and, but they still both have to operate from ethics. They still have to tell the freak and truth, you know, and so that there's a lot of discussion around the aid dual agency thing and just the last few years with some anti-trust lawsuits and things that came through.

And that is legally, and, you know, for the association of real-tours, all of that is all guiding all of that.

“All right, James is with us in Los Angeles. How are you?”

Hey, I'm good. Thank you. How are you guys doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? So, I want to see that makes sense for me to sell my car. I owe about 11,000. Well, it's a little complicated. It's worth about 9 to 9,500. I owed about 11,000 on the car, but I actually did something kind of stupid.

And I consolidated my debt into a personal loan, and that included my car. Okay. So technically, I'll nothing on the car. So technically, I do have the title. Yeah, and you have a 9,000 dollar rent.

Okay, and how big is your debt consolidation loan? 27,000. Okay, and what's your income?

I make about 4,400 a month.

Okay. I would not sell that car. Okay. Unless you just hate it. Just make more sense to keep it.

Yeah. It's not about a control. Right. I mean, the main reason why I was thinking about it is more for, like, the monthly expenses for the car that I have without the payment. Say, like, gas insurance, things like that. If I were to get something cheaper, that was better on gas.

You know what? It probably would. Well, I was thinking, like, so right now, I have to budget about 500 a month for gas because I commute for work. Um, you know, if I were to get say something more fuel efficient, you know, I can maybe cut that in half or.

But it might be that might be that I'm just trying to harder, you know, I'm trying to move stuff around.

Yeah. I don't, I don't know if you're going to cut that budget in half. I mean, what are you driving? What kind of gas goes where is this? It's not really gas.

It's a forward edge. So it's an SUV. I mean, you know, right now our gas is about six bucks a gallon over here. You know, so time. Uh, you know, and then I do commute about 40 miles each way to work.

So about 80 miles a day total. Yeah. I mean, run out some actual miles per gallon and do that six grade word math word problem thing. You remember that one?

“And, you know, and if I had one that was, and I mean, what are we going to buy?”

That's going to have half of that? I don't know if you're going to get that get half of that. You're right. Okay. I really don't.

I mean, you know, if you could buy a car of exact the same value, and cut your gas bill in half, and you love the car, that's fine. Sure. But the actual $9,000 car is not killing you in out of 27,000. You got other issues there.

Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I was thinking, like, if I could sell it, you know, get something for,

put, you know, some of that. You know, are you married? Yeah. Is it just you? Okay.

Just me. Yeah. I don't think that's your problem. I think you're, you're, you're, you're, you're chasing the wrong thing. Instead, what I'd be looking for is extra income and other places I can cut in the budget.

That's a good point. I think there's easier ways to get the $250 back. Yeah. Because your, if your car was 20,000, I would've sold it already. But it's just, it's not that big a number as a, in the ratio of the rest of your numbers.

To where it doesn't, it doesn't change your life. You know, a lot of times we're talking to somebody, the car is killing them. And so selling the car changes their life. [ Music ] Murphy's a law means if something can go wrong, it will.

And it usually happens when you're not prepared.

“That's why a big part of what I teach is staying prepared for whatever curve balls life throws.”

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Go to WhyReFi.com/Ramsi. That's the letter WhyREFY.com/Ramsi might not be in all states. All right, today's question comes from Andre in California. He says I have a 401k that will be maxed out within the IRS limit before hitting the recommended 15% invested.

“Will that be enough or should I invest the remaining percentage in a brokerage account outside my work sponsored 401k?”

So Andre is referring to baby step 4 and baby step 4 we tell folks that they need to be investing 15% of their gross income every month into a 401k if they have a Roth 401k even better. And so obviously this guy is a high income earner. The max this year is 24,500 so if you're able to do that no problem you're making over 160,000 dollars a year unless you're over 50 then the limit goes up to 32,500 which means he'd be making over 200 to 115.

So yeah I probably wouldn't go straight to a brokerage I'd probably see if I could do some backdoor Roth IRAs first one for you one for your wife if you're married.

And then from there if you have access to an HSA I'd probably go there next and max that out and then if you still have money then I'd go to the brokerage account that's the way I would do it. I like it. So if you did a backdoor Roth IRA the way that works is you invest in an after tax regular traditional IRA not a pre-tax and after tax traditional IRA and this year that's $7,500 and you can do one for your wife and one for you. And then as soon as you make that investment instantaneously you roll it to a Roth and you can do that regardless of income limit.

I did one and I have done one every year for many many years and my wife every year I do it in January but 15,000 up boom boom and here we go actually I can do 8,000 because I'm old 86,000 and 8600 this year so I'm maximum out whatever I can put in there that's the most you can do with a backdoor IRA if you want to get super fancy. You can do a brokerage account beyond that if I don't know what your income is we don't have that and we don't have your age on dry so but let's say you're making 600,000 a year and you're trying to keep the government's hands off of as much as you can.

You can do a backdoor Roth IRA and you can also do a mega 401k backdoor if your company has a Roth 401k now it doesn't even have to have a Roth so what you can do is you can put up to 72,000 dollars into your 401k any year. Anything over the 24-5 or the 32-5 or if you're over 60 it's 11-2 going out anything over those limits you can go after tax 401k a 401a it's called and then immediately roll that to a Roth just like the regular backdoor so that's called a mega Roth or mega backdoor and so you can do even more I don't know if I would fool with all of that it's a lot to screw with every year.

But the big thing is just make sure you're investing money so you know if you max out your HSA you did the regular individual IRAs and then you did brokerage beyond that you'd be just fine you'd be just fine you're the good news is you're making a lot of money and you're saving a lot of money.

“So you're going to be very wealthy and that's how the formula works Betty is in Fort Worth Texas high Betty. Hi, I just have a question we have a 33 year old daughter who has five kids.”

She got married well she got pregnant when she was 18 and then 19 and it's been on off on again off again relationship for 15 years. Are they married? Yes, they are married. Yeah, she can't keep a job. They moved across country last years because he had an opportunity.

I'll set job within three months. She's on this third job already and they've only been there a year.

And we have no debt. We're doing great and I like to help them out as far as the kids. I don't send mom and dad money but if the kids need something I like to help out. That's an example, something they need. I'm school close. Maybe if they want to go to a movie. You know, it's nothing elaborate. I go take into the book fairs, I'll send money. She sends me the link so I know the money is going to the book fair.

Well, we'll be right into a million real soon. Okay, and how much money you've given her a month average.

“I say 100 if that because we're talking about a couple of thousand dollars a year. Maybe. Does she ask for it or you just see the need and step in?”

Sometimes she'll do both. She'll send me an Amazon link and say, you know, I need the girls need this. Do you mind buying it? You know, that kind of stuff. Sometimes I might do a gas pizza to them just because I want to. Yeah, and you're so your questions. What? My husband's tight. And he feels like I mean, enabling them. And I don't want to enable them because somehow they've got to come out of this somehow. I mean, they get a big tax return. Obviously, if I kid that they go through it because they have no commentants.

If they were doing what you would consider well in life and you're still the grandma. Do you think that you would still sometimes send them a pizza?

“Because you're thinking of it. Do you think you would still take them to the book fair? Do you think you'd still want to go back to school shopping?”

Because the things that you're describing my mother and law does and we don't need it. She just likes to do grandma things and in her mind those are grandma things. So is it the same for you or does it feel different? No, it's the same for me. But yeah, I think your husband is tired of your daughter is son of law being a bum. Yes, and I get it. I get it too. I get it too, but I don't think it's any reason to quit doing what you're doing. I don't think what you're doing is enough money that it's enabling anything.

If you were sending them a thousand dollars a month cash, that's different. I'd call you out on it. But you're not. When they moved, you know, they had put the money down to the house and then they didn't know they had to put it down payment down.

And so we had to scramble and go get $1,500. You know, so they could do that, which they've paid us back. He has never just given them money. Never. He makes them pay everything.

Yeah, I think there's two issues that you're blending together. I think there's the the grandma moves of those little things that you spend money on that you like to do. And then there's the whole issue of like, like they said, you just don't like the son and law. There's this whole issue over there. I would try not to blend them together because I think it'll take you joy away. $500 for them not having a down payment or whatever is a completely different discussion than we had early in this phone call.

Yeah. So I don't even put those in the same category. They're in different buckets. I might have sided with your husband on that one. I would have just said, hey, you guys made your bed figured out because you seem to be just constantly screwing up everything. I'm going to let you figure this out. I'm going to let you fly until you hit the rocks or are learned to fly. And so in the meantime, though, if you buy your grandkids, a little bit of school clothes and a pizza, you have not enabled the workless shiftless father.

Well, I mean, what point can he change?

“I mean, you need to talk to God about that one. I think that's a matter of prayer. Yeah. You can change tomorrow. Yeah, he can do such a change.”

Deciding to work hard. Just a decision. Yeah, and deciding to actually show up at work can be pleasant. Well, your work. So you keep your freaking job. That's a decision. Right? Take a bath, brush your teeth, all these kinds of things. These are decisions that some people can't even figure out how to make in today's world. But that's a different thing than what we're talking about. You called about at the beginning of the phone call. I would defend you on. And I preach against enabling on this show harshly, but that's not enabling.

Yeah. That's just buying your grandkids from stuff. And it's partially because your grandkids parents aren't bright. [Music] [Music] [Music] Leland is in Oklahoma City. I Leland, how are you? All right. How are you? That other than I deserve. What's up?

Um, so I've got a question. I'm 20 years old and I started a business last year. And it's kind of just went backwards on me where I'm to the point now.

So you started what kind of business on it? Um, custom drive fertilizer spreading business.

Okay. And so you bought what is the equipment?

“It's a applicator that applies to our fertilizer on fields and what how much do you owe on it?”

Uh, $178,000. My annual payment on it's $40,000 a year. And everything's just went backwards. I'm confused why they would loan a 22 year old, $178,000 on a piece of farm equipment. Well, because I had a way to get into the business and then since then it's just went backwards since then. I had the money for a downtime and took the money down. How much did you get down? 12,000.

But still, I mean, you were not even, were you in the business already? I've been in agricultural business all my life. You're 22. Yes, sir. Okay. All my life is not long.

Well, I've been in every since I could. I know, honey, but I'm talking about more on loans you $178,000 with a $12,000 down payment when you're 22 years old. There's nothing. There's nothing that says this deal should have happened. Leeline, you can't turn around and sell it. I've been trying to try and selling it with an auction company, but they want to meet a $100,000 up front before they'd even sell it.

“Yeah. And so you had grand plans of spreading a lot of fertilizer. What happened?”

I put my name out within a hundred mile radius and the farm economy the way it is, fertilizer prices and it's fine. There's not a lot of people doing dry. They're all going different routes. I'm sorry, honey. This is scary, isn't it? Yeah, definitely it's definitely scared to be sitting here in this position. It's been haunting me ever since.

I guess. All right. Well, I went broke when I was 28 and I had more zeros on the end of my stupidity than you do. So I got your bait. Right. Because this was straight up stupid. And the guy that loaned you the money deserves to lose $100,000.

Whatever company did this. What's the name of the company? I can't remember off the top of my head.

“You owe them $178,000. You don't know the name of the company?”

I do. It's on a piece of paper at my house. And I don't have that information in front of me. You bought it at a dealership. And you went brand-ness it. John Deer. Yeah. I guess so. So you don't know John Deer incorporated the money.

No. No. Absolutely not. Okay. All right. And my plan was, you know, do 10,000 acres a year. That can be done extremely easy. And I found out the hard way that it has not been nearly easy is what everybody said it was supposed to be.

So the moral of the story is we don't borrow money to start businesses because things never turn out exactly the way they're supposed to in business.

That's the right business. And so that's the, a lesson that sadly you have learned. The only good news is you learned it at 22. I learned it at 28. So I had the rest of my life to not do that stupid mistake again. And then you have the rest of your life to not do the stupid mistake again. So the next time you have a bright idea and someone wants to loan you money to do your bright idea, you tell them no, right? Yes, sir.

Okay. Good. All right. So we've learned our lesson. Now let's walk through it. I'm so sorry, Han. So I do not know a way around this because I don't know your world. I'm still just sitting here a gas that someone loaned you that money. You loaned you $178,000 spread fertilizer.

There's just so many fertilizer jokes that I could weave into this. But, yeah, it's just kind of, they just roll off the mind right now. But anyway, the spreading of fertilizer is pretty thick here. But the, so let me tell you what I think is going to happen and how you can handle it. Okay.

I think you're going to get repot at the first of the month.

I don't know how to tell you to stop that with anything that's reasonable. One thing you could stop it with is a chapter 13 bankruptcy, but that's a, or a chapter 11 bankruptcy even in this case. But that's a pipe dream because the business idea is dead, and there's no way to revive the cash flow. If you could revive the cash flow starting two months from now, you know, we could delay the repo and put it by putting it into a bankruptcy.

Right.

“So I think they're taking it at the first of the month.”

Okay. Then what's going to happen is they're going to sell the piece of equipment for X number of dollars at that same auction.

And then they're going to come knocking on your door for the difference. It's called the deficit. Okay. So let's play pretend. Let's play pretend in this 178,000 owed. And they sell the piece of equipment for 100,000, and they come see you for 78,000.

You're 22 years old. You don't have any money. Right. That's what we're going to be. It's probably going to be a year before they knock on your door wanting the difference. It's not going to be soon.

Okay. And when they do normally what happens is they push you and push you and the person files bankruptcy. And they get nothing on their 78,000 in our example story here. Okay.

However, you have a year to prepare for this battle.

And were you to save up during this coming year by working your little tail end off. 25,000 dollars, and you offer them 25,000 dollars as settlement and full on the deficit. They'll probably take it because they're used to getting nothing. Right. We settled deficits on the car repose at 20, 25 cents on the dollar every day.

I've not done it much on farm equipment, so I don't know that world, but it's probably pretty close. And the reason we're able to settle those deficits that that is because they very soon collect anything, usually the person files chapter seven bankruptcy, they get a big goose egg zero. Especially when you look at, look at it through the creditors eyes not to put you down Leland. But looking at it from the bankers perspective, I'm trying to get money out of a 23 year old who's broke.

The likelihood of that's close to zero. All right. So if he stands up and offers me 25k, I do a little happy dance and take it. If I'm the banker, you follow me.

“So what are you going to do for a living now that your life is starting over, sir?”

I mean, I'm pretty much self-employed and don't know.

I mean, I don't have a college degree and what are you going to do for a living, sir? You're going to farm. You're going to farm. Who's farm are you farming? Yeah.

Some friends. You're going to work on a farm. Yes. For someone else. Yes.

And what does that pay? Did just event sometimes 25 dollars an hour depending on who you're working for. Okay. All right. And then ask yourself, what do I want to be doing when I'm 32 that I'm a millionaire?

And it's not 25 dollar an hour work. I'll help you with that. Yes, sir. And it's not going into that 178,000 to spread manure. Oh, no.

This was dry. I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay. But anyway, you see the point.

Yeah. So you got to figure out what am I going to do next? Because one of the things that I discovered when I went bankrupt because I couldn't turn it around the way. I think you actually can turn it around. If you'll work like a crazy person and stack cash and keep your living expenses very, very low.

I think you can scratch up some cash and settle the deficit when they do come after you one or two years from now. Don't call them. Wait for them to call you. And in the meantime, build a war chest. And then settle it, info and writing settlement.

And I think you can get through this. I really do. And then you could just look at this in the review mirror as that dumb thing I did when I was 22. I can look at my life in the review mirror that whole series of dumb things I did when I was 28. You can.

You guys paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars because of dumb things you did in your early 20. I'm not a stupid thing. Yeah. So it's, you know, you're talking to the choir here, okay, singing with the choir. So, but I do want you to develop a future and a plan that doesn't involve a Hail Mary.

You threw a Hail Mary into the end zone and got intercepted. Don't do that again. Learn, learn from the mistake. And we'll walk with you. Anything you need, little and you call me.

“And if you want to save up that money and when they mess with you, you call me.”

I'll walk you through it. I'll show you how to negotiate with them. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio. Jade Washaw Ramsey Personality is my co-host. Abigail is in Norfolk, Virginia. Hi, Abigail, how are you?

Hi, how are you, Dave? Better than I deserve, what's up?

He was also a huge fan.

“With the question of how can I be financially secure?”

My family be financially secure and get out of debt when my husband is striking his feet

and not willing to participate. I'm kind of disturbed that your 10-year-old son is involved in that discussion. Right. Well, I have been pretty disrespectful towards his father. Oh, yeah.

He's not the only one. I have four sons. I've been very transparent, not sure everything, obviously, with some of our financial situations. We have a lot of discussions about what is in the budget and what has been happening.

What needs to happen.

I do now have an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old son.

I'm actually making great decisions. But my situation over the past year has really been very, very difficult. I've had funding cuts in an ill and needed surgery. And was this December recovering for surgery? Were you worried about how we were going to pay the mortgage?

Okay. Please don't put that burden on your 10-year-old. Oh, no. His shoulders are not big enough to carry that. Yeah, I have not put it on him.

“Well, he said for you to call and discuss this with me, so that's what you said.”

Tell us about what's going on.

Why have you and your husband not sat down with the marriage counselor yet?

We've been sitting down on the marriage counselor for a year. Good. Are you making progress? Very, very small, baby steps. There's a lot of issues in her marriage. She's probably with guests.

Every type of incidentality, including the most recent issue, she actually discovered by her 10-year-old. I'm sorry, what did the 10-year-old discovered on? She discovered my husband's incidentality last year. With a woman?

Yes. Yep, through text messages. Y'all are a hot mess.

“What is your 10-year-old doing in your husband's text?”

Oh, he intercepted them on his iPad because it was connected. It was a completely innocent thing on his own. And just, it was very traumatic. Yeah, it was very traumatic. So the answer to your original question is, you can't.

How do we move ahead financially and build wealth and build stability? You can't until you work through a lot of these discussions. And you have so many major discussions going on that you've mentioned that minor baby steps are not enough. So I either need my therapist to put it into gear or I need a new therapist.

Because I'm not going to exist in this environment very much longer. And I'm certainly not going to allow my child to exist in this environment very much longer. So we've been in baby steps, but just the other day, he discovered infertility. Well, did I get that right? Yes, take this as a grain of salt because I have no letters behind my name.

But it sounds like there's a lot of things probably in therapy that are supposed to be happening. And they're not happening on his end. She can't control that. So she's looking for something. She can't control, which is probably the baby steps.

It's like something that's within her control. That's what it sounds like. And this is to your point. They've so far down the list. I can't give you great hope that you're going to become financially prosperous and efficiently work

through the baby steps to get out of debt and into wealth in this environment. So the environment has to change for you to be able to win on. And I desperately want your tenure hold to have a new environment. I agree. This is very disturbing.

And so, yeah, if I'm in your shoes, we're going to turn up the heat in therapy. Or we're going to call this and end it. And if there's recent infidelity while we're in therapy on the marriage, I don't know what your percentages are from recovering from that, but they're low.

So I just don't know. But honey, you've got a lot of things that are hurting. You've got a lot of wounds, a lot of open wounds right now that are just gushing. And you guys need to get some help through that stuff before you can even talk about the financial stuff.

So guys, here's the thing.

Personal finance is 80% behavior. It's 20% head knowledge. Behaviors are affected by our spiritual walk. Behaviors are affected by our relationships. Behaviors are affected by our family of origin.

“How much fun did your dysfunctional family put in dysfunction?”

Yeah. And so, you know, I'm all of that, right? What did you come from? Where are you going? What soup are you sitting in right now? And those things affect your ability to build wealth more than the mathematics do. The mathematics will correct themselves if you can get functional human beings to function. Yes. I mean, you know, it's it. I mean, so marriages that don't work very seldom.

That aren't working well. Almost never create a solid financial situation.

It's very rarely, very rarely, okay? People who are, you know, one of the things we've dealt with, I've been doing this for 40 years, is 100% of addicts. You have financial problems, eventually, because it's a dysfunction that it costs money. Whatever the addiction is. And so, 100% of them end up here. But when we're dealing with the money, we're not really treating the problem.

We're treating the symptom. The addiction is the problem. If you're dealing with a divorce and a marriage that's falling apart, that's the problem. The money issues are the symptom.

“And so, you can't fix the symptom. You have to fix the problem.”

You can cut a dandy line down with your lawnmower, but it's going to grow back with three more next week. So don't wait to get rid of the dandy lines out by the roots. Pull it out. You've got to go to the problem all the way down, right? And then the dandy lines gone, and that's what they are.

And so, when I went broke, it was a reflection of my lack of character, my lack of maturity, my lack of a quality spiritual walk. And I wasn't like some kind of pristine human being that just did the math wrong.

It never works that way. It never works that way.

So, anytime you're struggling with money, you always want to go to the source and go, "What is causing my behavior change or my behavior to be dysfunctional?" That's why I'm having money problems. It's a foundation you have to build on. The foundation has to be stable. [Music]

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you can click the link in the description. Karen is in New Jersey. Hey, Karen, how are you? State A, I've been better.

I'm miss calling because I wanted to know, because I listened to your show a lot,

“and I know that you talked to people just not just about finance,”

but how to kind of like deal with issues. So my husband recently took out money out of, but I say, or it's his 401(k), or on a heloc loan for more mortgage without my knowledge, and then ended up getting scammed out of that.

How do you rebuild like from that? How much money was it, and what did he use it for that he got scammed out of? So it was like close to 100,000. I know, I know, I listened.

What did he do with it?

Basically, it's kind of like he was given it to this,

under an ear, close person, who said that they were involved online. And bang, that said that it was ingesting. Yeah, ingesting it to get a return. How did you find out?

Did he tell you, or did you just separate it? He came to meet me, and he told me it took him, you know, little, but he came to me, and he told me. Wow. I'm the one that he told you.

Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. I don't know what a little while ago he is. Yesterday, or six months ago. No, no, like a month ago. Okay.

And what is your household income? What are you making? What does he make? We make over 100,000.

“What was the 401(k) did he take it all out of there?”

Did he catch it? He must have borrowed against it. Yeah. He borrowed against it. Okay.

And how did he take out a, he luck without you signing for it?

It's on your personal residence. Yeah. No, the he, the he luck, I knew about it. I just didn't know he was going to be borrowing from it. Like I, I know.

Oh, you, you knew it was open and you had signed for it. And then he just drew on it. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

And that's because I know. Okay. So there's two problems. One is we're out of 100,000 dollars. And two is you no longer trust your husband because he lies.

Yeah. And yeah. I think that's the harder part. Oh, it is the harder part. You're right.

Good. Good observation. Yeah. So what are we doing to rebuild trust? Respect.

“To keep you from killing him in his sleep.”

I'm kidding. Um. Okay. That was a joke. Don't kill him.

No. And no, I'm serious. Are y'all sitting down with a marriage counselor? Not yet. It's been a month.

I know. I know. And it's something to it. But it's not going to get better. You're getting progressively passed.

Yeah. What's the hold up? Yeah. He's not ready yet. He's not ready.

What are you saying? He ought to be on his knees begging forgiveness. Not only did he lie, he was stupid with the money. Yeah. He got scammed by Nigerian prints.

Come on. I know. I know. And he's still walking around like this is okay. Yeah.

That's a problem. You didn't make him realize he needs to be sleeping with one eye open. I'm trying to give a lot of grace. No. You don't need to give grace to others.

Repentants. I hear no repentance. Yeah. No grace. No repentance.

No repentance. No grace. These go together. Mm-hmm. I was stupid.

I will never lie to you again.

I have screwed up beyond belief. Please don't leave me good woman. These are the words that should have come out of his mouth as soon as he uttered the fact that he'd screwed up and gave a hundred thousand dollars to the internet Nigerian prints. Oh, my God. Yeah.

I know he like he has. He has. But he's not ready to make it right. Because those are just words. This is lip service.

Right? The worst. The actions are what make it better. And Dr. Lonnie says, "Bahavir is a language." So I want to make it right.

And I want to figure out how to rebuild trust in this relationship. And so we're going to sit down with a marriage counselor. And this is you talking to him tonight. And we're going to do this within the next seven days. Or you're going to have another problem with me.

I'm not going to be here. Because I can't trust you. You're a liar. We have to start there. And rebuild.

It's tough, man. So cool.

So I mean, you got to, you have to go to ground on this and start from solid.

“And then you put systems and processes in place where you agree.”

Okay. I'll give you an example. I used to do lots and lots and lots of real estate deals.

And that my wife never knew about, not because I was hiding them from her.

But because she was playing Southern Bay on said, "What ever you want to do, honey?" You just do whatever you do down there at the office. That's okay. And I did. And I screwed up Christmas.

Okay. I messed up everything. I lost my butt. And so one of the things I've learned from that is that I no longer make any major financial decisions without my sweet little Southern passive aggressive bell wife involved in the decision.

Okay.

And so we don't buy trucks, we don't buy boats, we don't buy houses, we don't buy commercial property

to develop, which I bought one the other day, drove her down there in the truck. We sat on the dirt and looked at it. Do you think this is a good idea? She said, yes, this one's going to work. We don't make decisions unless we make them together.

That's a new system that went in place after Dave was stupid. You have a new system that goes in place. He don't make any more decisions without you knowing what the flips going on and you be in an agreement. That's a system that's in place that helps you begin to trust him gradually over time again. This is major.

This touches the same nerve in your relationship as if he had a sexual affair with another woman.

It's the same level of betrayal because he lied about a hundred thousand dollars. And then on top of that, he was stupid about it. And then on top of that, he acted like he's the one that has to be ready to fix it. I have to be ready. I'm not ready to go to a counselor.

I got your ready. Come on, man. Yeah.

“No, you need to, you need to, you need to be in marriage counseling yesterday.”

And they can guide you a good one. Can guide you through the process of transparency being an agreement before we move forward on anything ever again the rest of our lives. That was 30 almost 40 years ago that I went broke. And I still to this day, not because I'm in repentance about it, but because it's a good way of living your life. Absolutely.

The right way to live my life is I have a better life when Sharon and I are aligned and an agreement on things. I make better quality decisions. She makes better quality decisions. When we do these things together. We don't just come in on an ounce. I just invested heavily in a Nigerian prince on the internet. Yeah.

Kill on me. Just kill on me. Because the questions in you, the questions you have to ask yourself of your in her shoes is, if it, if it hadn't gone wrong, when would he have told me or would it have just been this thing?

“And then you have to, when somebody lies like that, you have to ask yourself, well, what else are they lying about?”

Yeah, when it got to me in dollars, is that when he was going to leave? Right. Yeah, it's tough. That's tough. I don't envy that situation one bit, but she, it's, the balls in her corner. Aaron, we're mad with you and for you, because we want healing to happen there.

And the beginning of healing is repentance. I'm sorry. I goofed up. What do we got to do to make this right? That's repentance. Repentances. I'm walking the wrong way. I stop and I walk the other way. I do a 180. He's not doing that. I'm not ready. I got you ready.

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.

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Hey, guys, how are you? We're doing pretty good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. Where do you all live? So we live about an hour north of Salt Lake in a tiny little town called Hiramuta.

“Oh, fine. Very cool. Well, welcome to Nashville and how much debt have you paid off?”

$336,834 and 12 cents. Love it. How long did this take? Two and a half years. Whoa, and range of income during that time. So we started at 200,000, and by the end of it, we were making 250. Cool. What do you all do for a living? So I'm the military and they're forced and she's working for a defense contractor.

Wow. Well, thank you for your service, both of you.

Incredible, guys. So I'm going to guess and say that kind of debt in that type of town in Utah.

I might have been in your house. No. No. No. No. No. That was 13 years of bad choices. That's everything from school loans, credit cards. Eight bank loans, cars. Wow. Personal loans to pay off the credit cards, which we just more credit cards.

Yep. This just got very interesting. Wow. So what happened two and a half years ago that your life turned completely upside down or right shut up. So I was at work and I really did not enjoy my job. And I was listening to just YouTube on my headphones, wondering what the world I'm going to do from a day to day basis.

And your show popped up and it became kind of like a therapeutic thing. Just listen to people who had more credit card debt, who had it worse than us.

“And like, hey, yeah, we're not that bad. I mean, we have 86,000 credit cards.”

That's not what you want to compare to. Exactly. And then all of a sudden, I started getting the free people. And I was like, wait, no, you can't live like this. Like, that's normal. You need a credit score. And then I started, you know, actually, listen, I'm like, okay,

maybe we can do this. And I went home and I looked at my finance stuff because even though he was over it, it was just completely separate. It was a mess. And I was like, wait, I think we can actually do this. And I paid off my first credit card. And I was like, oh, my God, I think we can do this. And I went and I got a side job as a janitor,

scrubbing toilets at a college on a weekend to start putting more money towards it. So I was making $100,000 a year working with people. And they're like, you make how much? Like, yeah, I know. You just just trust me. We'll get there at the end of this. And then I showed it to him on one of my lunch breaks.

I was like, hey, can we please just look at this together and show it to him that there was a path forward out of this? Which was amazing because I didn't see any path forward. Every night would be just up in the night, pacing, worrying, stressing, and there's no way to get out of it. And then she showed it to me.

We took numbers, we broke them down and like, oh, wow, this is really doable. We can do it. And that day, we canceled every single credit card without hesitation. No, they all went that day.

“I think they were all done before lunch break. How did you feel right after?”

Scared? Because it's just a different way of being up. But you know what? And two and a half years we have not had you as any sort of debt product and it's been amazing. I just slept every night. You slept like a baby, I bet.

Yeah.

Never once dressed again.

So, same amount of debt until, by going down. Yep. But you had a plan and you could see a lot at the end of the tunnel. This is not an oncoming train. We had it hard. We, that next month, we started selling anything.

We could sell it to get rid of it. You don't need it. Yeah, we were in the, so we bought a older home. And we were in the middle of a bunch of home renovations. And those all came to a halt.

So one of my most excited things is, I'm going to get baseboards. Because we thought I had baseboards in years. But now we can afford it. Yes. And this woman has a low bar for happiness.

Yes, I know right. And that was part of what we did when we had no, well, when we were trying to get no debt, it was just, we could tear down everything in our house to get everything ready to project. Because I just, it was free. So we have at least half the house of just fair walls.

Yeah, ready to be remodeled. Well, that don't motivate you. Yeah. That's very interesting. So cleaning toilets.

That's probably one of the most extreme side jobs. What else you got, David? Did you do anything crazy? Not as crazy as that. I took an assignment that put me away from everyone four years.

So we actually had to live in two separate, two separate areas. She was living there in Utah. I was having to live in middle of Southern California doing a job. That was going to help us continue making more money. Continue just bringing our life down to his lowest we can.

And I didn't, I didn't drive for a whole year. I bike 14 miles back and forth the work every day. Oh my God. Just trying to make sure we can save as much money as we can. Yeah, because you guys did this fast.

Yeah. Yeah, and you live into it.

You know, but here's what's interesting.

I want you guys that are watching this or listening to rewind it at some point.

And he said, I saw a way forward.

“You, if you watch, you can see their faces change.”

Just talking about that moment that hope came. Hope is so powerful. It really is. One of my favorite clothes by you is hope deferred makes a heart sick. And that was us.

I mean, we were living financially just separate. We even our bank accounts for together. We weren't talking about it. We didn't have goals. We didn't have dreams.

It was just what can we do to get to the end of the next paycheck. And now it's not like that anymore. I saw a way forward. That's what that was your word David. I believe.

I saw a way forward. Yes. And you know, you look at the math and you went for the first time. I see a way out. And that, that just makes me cry.

I mean, that's so powerful.

Because when you see that, then you can run. Yeah. Yeah. You can run. I mean, I don't care how tired you are.

You can bike 14 miles. You can do anything. You can clean toilets. Oh, wait. You did.

Yeah. Hello.

“And so, you know, I mean, you can do because you see a way.”

You know, if you're just doing those things to exist. That's completely different than seeing a way out. And I'm so proud of y'all. Well done. So who was cheering you on?

So that's the weird part about this. I grew up extremely poor. Like seven, you know, people on $10,000 less a year. We were on welfare. So it's not like we ever had a ton of money given to us.

And his grandma actually cheers us on. And she believes that she's taking these principles of horror. But outside of just having, like, below earning, below average earning family members, we didn't really have a ton.

We just had each other to feed into this whole process. We learned to live life for ourselves. Yeah. We make something better for both for us, for our kids. Yeah.

Well, you did change your family tree for sure. Oh, yeah. Wow. I mean, you knock out $337,000 in two and a half years, folks. That's $150, 170 grand a year.

Only making $200 to $250.

“I mean, they're living on beans and freaking rice.”

I'm not eating rice anymore. We can't eat rice anymore. I don't know why she know rice no more. Wow. You just had two really amazing transformations.

The one is going from separate, separate money and having things separate to just deciding one day. We're going to put it together. And then from you, you're background in just deciding, I don't want to, I don't want to be like that.

No, I could not bring myself to live like that. I can't put my kids through that. I can't have them worrying what's going to happen when it comes time for Mom and Dad to retire. So yeah, it's just, this is it.

Well, they've had a front row seat to watching. He rows an action though. Yeah. I mean, they watch you do whatever it takes to win. You pay a price to win and you win at it and they watch it.

You've changed their lives by the example you said. Not to mention the mathematics that are going to be going to them. Because you're going to be multi-millionaires now.

It's always funny is through this whole process.

It was, hey, can we do something this weekend? Yes, if it's free. So we did a ton of hikes. We went into the library a lot. So now, if we go to buy something, my oldest one will be like,

Can we afford that? Do you have money for that? Is that in the budget? So call us out. Wow.

Well, again. And so that's going to affect who she goes on a date with. Yeah, I don't think you're right. I'm doing that. You have a second they plot a credit card.

Hope she gets up and walks out the door. Or you're helping out. Grab some scissors and get a credit card. I love it. Wow.

You guys are right. I'm so proud of you. Very, very well done. All right. David and Penny from Utah.

$337,000 paid off in two and a half years. Making $200 to 250. You guys are amazing. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

$3,2,1. We're the debt-free scream! Yeah! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! This is how it's done boys and girls.

Hope in action. [music] When I talk to people on the Ramsey show 90% of the problems I hear come down to one thing. Not having a plan. They're not living on a budget.

They have no idea where their money's going. Money is just happening to them instead of them happening to their money.

But it doesn't have to be normal for you.

“And that's why I want you to go download our every dollar budget app.”

Every dollar not only helps you tell your money where to go with a budget, it also builds a plan to free up extra money so you can pay debt off faster and start building wealth. And the best part. Your plan is completely personalized to your life. It's the same advice that you would get if you call the show.

And it's right in your pocket. So don't keep living normal. Go download the every dollar app. Answer a few questions and get your plan today. [ Music ]

Our scripture of the day first Corinthians 16 13 through 14.

Beyond your guard, stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. Do everything in love. GK Chesterson said there is only one certainty in life.

And that is nothing is certain. [ Laughter ] Acts. We'll go with that. Kyle is in Nebraska.

Hey, Kyle, what's up? Hey, thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can we help?

“So with my current job housing is provided in my salary.”

So in approximately give a take eight to ten years, I'll probably leave this job and take a job in which I will need to have my own home and purchases. So the question really is, is there an advantage one way or another to take out a mortgage now and pay on that during this time and pay the interest and possibly rent that house out while I'm here or just wait and stack up cash.

And when I leave this place in eight to ten years, just use that as the down payment towards the home. What do you do for a living? Tom Oranger. You're all kind. Gotcha.

Okay. Yep. So are you seeing all our married? Nope. I'm married.

Okay. And right now, just okay. Right now, stay at home. Mom, she raised a kid's butt in a couple months. She's going to take a full-time job, which is going to double.

Basically, double our annual take on pay.

My take on pay right now is about 40,000. Okay. You're very wise to start planning this because a lot of people in your situation when the housing arrangement ends with the job they seem to be surprised. And so I don't know why, but they are.

And so you're very wise to look out there into the future and say, "I've got to get ready." So there are two possible things that you can do. One is, like you said, take a mortgage out and buy a home. It probably will not be the home you live in. That I would not recommend that.

I would just say, "What is a good rental property? A good price range, a good location that's going to go up in value." And we're going to do that with the idea of getting it paid off during this seven-year period of time. By the way, the people following the total money make over baby steps and becoming baby steps, millionaires eventually typically pay off their home in about seven to eight years.

And so your schedule kind of fits with that. All right. So we're going to put a rental in it. We're going to have a little bit of a mortgage. And we're going to pay it off as fast as we possibly can seven years or less.

So when this happens, you sell that house. Take the money from that and buy a home that you live in. Okay? Because you will have had the increase in value during that seven years. You'll have to do some repairs to it when the renters move out. Some repairs to it while the renters are there.

But you'll have, you know, the hassle of being a landlord and all that. And that's part of the program. But you're investing money that's going up in value. Okay? Yes.

That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is a lot simpler. And we'll give you about the same result. Is sit down with a financial calculator with your smart investor pro. By finding them at RamseySolutions.com and say how much do I need to put in a good

Growth stock mutual fund per month to have the equivalent of a house price seven years from now.

“And so I want $500,000 and how much does that mean?”

I need to put away on a seven year schedule. And basically you pay yourself a house payment into mutual funds. And they will be growing at, you know, the typical rate that the market grows around 11 or 12%. During that time, so you're getting all that growth. And you're, of course, adding to it each month.

And you just have in your budget a house payment. But it's your paying yourself a house payment. So when you leave there, you look up.

There's the half million dollars that you planned on or whatever the number is that you want to aim at.

Yeah, that's an easy one.

Sure. Okay. Yep. So you can either one of those will get you there. But you are going to have to allocate time and effort and money to this starting today. Or you're going to come up short when you make this transition. Yeah.

Ashley's in Birmingham. Actually, how are you? Hi there. I'm Danara. How are you? Thank you. We're taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, actually, I wanted a little bit of a blast on because my husband and I

We've been together for 21 years, mayor for that team. And we've been very lucky to stay, you know, like, you know, Added it, essentially, yet paid off our last call. But it got to where as the year went by, things got to where it was just practically a little bit. So around this time,

our capability had passed away from COVID. And yeah, I was like, he's next to

Can, but he's, you know, he's, I don't want to go into it, you know, too much. But just ensure he's go for our, you know, still a large portion of my inheritance. And when all that was said and done, and now with him, the pay her large sum of money, I only had, you know, a portion of this stuff that I've got to be able to pay.

“Well, I'm sorry. How did you have to pay his girlfriend money?”

Right. Yeah. We went through a media, what it is, is she was claiming to be common law law. And, and she was, so you got the money from the estate. And then they made you give it back. Yeah, I had to, we went through a mediation. She was wanting to keep the house and pay me $50,000.

And, and you were living already, okay, and then he died and you got the money from the estate. And she came out you, and you ended up having to give some of that up in mediation. Oh, yes. I gave her $74,000. No, you gave her $74,000 that Uncle Billy had given you shortly before that at his death. Yeah.

Yeah. So he did do well at all. Okay. He sold it. Actually, she did. But that doesn't cause you to be in debt.

No, but the thing is, is I, well, we had a lot of kind of going in there. Because I've got, we had to get it long like to renovate his grandparents house because, you know, So it can no longer live in our own home because it was getting to the floor. It was just a lovable. And we were hit, it was already been paid for.

But what happened was this, the husband, a grandfather offered to let us have the house that

him and his wife lived in when they were first married to 59 years ago.

And he was given us the house and, you know, but we would have to renovate it. So we had to take out a lot for like $40,000. Now we're kind of, certainly like going into that. And that's got, I still got to pay. What about the old house?

“What about the other house that you, you and your husband?”

Oh, they, it was like a mobile home. It was a no-how. I understand. But what happened to it? It was just, it's just in shambles.

I mean, like the roofing is really bad. It's just, I mean, okay. So you were living on a mobile home. It turned into a wreck. You were given a home, a family home, but it needed to be renovated.

How much debt did you take out to renovate? $40,000. And we don't even know if that's going to be enough to, they were trying to make sure. What's your household in town? My mom.

Well, we're only recently. I got a better job because I was only making. What's your household in town? Well, it was more so like $43,000 for him. And last year, I only made $14,000 and something.

So you don't work much. Okay.

“Sounds like you need to be working more.”

We need more income coming in this house. And then you guys are going to have to start happening. Two things. Everything in this story happened to you. Yeah.

You didn't happen to anything. Dr. Stephen Covey says in the book seven habits of highly effective people. And highly effective people. One of the seven habits is they are proactive. They happen to things instead of things happen to them.

You act like all this happened to you. No, you chose to take a family home that you did not have the money to repair. And so you chose debt. You could have chosen to dump the trashy trailer and run an apartment and had no debt. You could have chosen that.

I hope to God that Grandpa put his house in your name. If you're putting $40,000 of your borrowed money into his house, that would be double stupid. So don't do that. Get it into your name.

And you guys are going to have to start happening two things. Now you happen to this 40,000 by working like crazy people. Both of you work six jobs and live on beans and rice. Get this done. And then pay cash for any more renovations above the 40,000 that you're doing.

Don't put another $40,000 in debt on this house. You can't.

Stop this.

“An Uncle Billy story had nothing to do with any of this.”

Except that you thought it was going to bail you out.

That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the book.

So we'll be back with you before you know it.

“And 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]