Stop Giving Away Your Control

>> Brought to you by the every dollar app,

start budgeting for free today. [MUSIC] >> Normal is broke and 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. I'm George Campbell joined by J.G. Warshan. We're taking your calls at Triple 8, 825, 5, 225. Gary is in Huntsville, Alabama. What's going on, Gary, how can we help you?

>> Yes, my father-in-law, who's 85 and nursing home, wants to take 10 family members to the holy land, and pay $50,000 for that trip. I am nervous that he is going to stand down his nest egg and may need medicate in the future.

So that is my dilemma.

“>> What's the entirety of his nest egg do you know?”

>> I have heard he has $200,000 and he's using

so scary and the R&D is for his current monthly payments to the nursing home. >> Who told you that? >> My brother-in-law, his son. >> Okay, is he using the nest egg at all right now?

Are you saying he's just using social security plus R&D from an investment account elsewhere? Or is it this 200 grand that's it? >> It's all about 200 grand. >> That's everything he has to his name.

And he wants to blow a fourth of that on this trip. >> Why does that concern you? Are you afraid that you'll be on the hook? Like tell us more about how you're involved? >> Well, I'm a family, I'm one of those 10 family members.

I'm a family of four, so that is $20,000 of this money. And I don't want to burn his money. I don't want to be responsible for burning his money and getting him into Medicaid if he has a stroke or mental decline.

>> Let me ask this.

“Is he in his right mind, is he well mentally still?”

Is he still with him? >> Yes, he's declining. He's having some thinking issues and some memory issues. So that also, I mean, in the kind of sort of part you want to do this, I'm just not comfortable spending for me $20,000 of that money.

>> And don't go. >> Don't go. >> What happens if you don't go? >> Yeah. >> Well, I mean, I was asked quite frankly big dates.

And I was like, I'm kind of being a blanket on this thing. >> I don't think you're being a wet blanket. I think that you're an adult and you have the ability to look out at something and say, this makes me feel comfortable or this doesn't make me feel comfortable. And I think because other family members are involved that might not agree with you

or maybe they don't have the same, you know, knowledge base that you have about as money. I think it's okay for you to say and you could even say to him, here's the, I got some information. I don't know that it's accurate and I'm not trying to overstep. But this is what I was told that you have $200,000 and I just don't feel comfortable

with you spending 20 of it on my family. I think what you're doing is generous, but I just don't feel comfortable. Thank you, but no thank you. And then he might come back and say, actually, that's not true. I have, you know, more money or whatever, but I think you have the ability to say that.

And it's not being a wet blanket. It's just you choosing as an adult. >> Okay, yeah, thank you, I was heading my direction.

I don't want to see him on Medicaid, basically being a burden on society when I'm taking

the money to go on a nice trip. >> Yeah, on the Medicaid, I don't think that's really what's going to happen here. >> You're saying if you runs out of money and then can't pay for the current nursing home, then he switches over to Medicare because he's basically impoverished. >> Yes, Medicaid.

>> And there's a, I think there, I looked and there's a five year look back. >> Yeah, exactly. >> So if he burns through this money, there can be a five year look back and he may not have to get it, which would put him on the street. >> Now those have to happen, and you guys are going to have to cover it.

And that's your true fear, Gary, is that the financial burden is going to be on you guys, the siblings, to have to fund the rest of his life. And let's say he goes to 90, that's still five years, right? >> Right. >> And so have you tracked his actual current burn rate to see how quickly this nest egg

is being dwindled down? >> I have not had visibility into that, but I'm, yeah, how long has he been there? How long has he been in the nursing home? >> I would say, I've got four years. >> There might be, is that going to be 100 grand a year?

What's it costing? >> I, I do not know the details, he said that it's so security, he's very independent.

“He has a room in food, that's what he's using right now.”

But he said it's so, social security in the R&Ds. >> Is what's paying for that?

he's spending on nursing home every year.

There could very well be a lot more to his financial life that you just don't know, I mean, he was, you know, he's an adult and probably has more going on than maybe what you're aware of. So I just think there's a lot of unknowns here. If you just don't feel comfortable about it and you don't want to snoop around any further, you can say no.

If you feel like you have the right to snoop a little further and just find out, hey, is this going to affect me in any way? If we run out of money, you've been here four years, you've already gone longer than the average kind of stay here. Is there anything we need to know?

“Like, I think it's okay to ask questions in a respectful way if you're concerned about”

>> You're clear. >> You're doing it after. Yeah. >> And so I don't think it's going to come across like you're just trying to be a jerk here. But I mean, here's the truth, Gary, whether he burns 25% of his nest at your 15% chances

are he's still going to rat a money. And so I don't want you to feel any guilt for whatever happens in the future regarding his finances. He was an adult. He made his choices.

Your best bet is changing your own family tree so that you never put your kids in this

position. >> And you are the in-law. So you probably need to step lightly here. Your wife is probably the one that needs to have these conversations. How does she feel about it?

>> Gosh. She was going to take dates and we need to, why not just send your wife and she can have some family time. >> You hang back with the kids, you don't have the guilt. She gets to have probably the final trip with her father that she'll ever take.

And so that part to me, listen, you don't block a blessing if this is what he wants for his legacy and it to have this experience with his family. Let him have it. Because again, it's not going to be the maker break on if he's going to not be able to be in this nursing home.

It's 20 grand.

And so he has 200 to his name.

>> It's true. >> We don't know if there's more. I don't know what it's invested in. The longer he has on this Earth.

“And so I think you're taking on a lot of the way I want to release you from that.”

>> Thank you. >> I'm guessing you care more than anyone else in the family about this, at this point. >> Yeah. I generally try to plan my finances and I try to work through contingencies myself. >> Here's the thing.

I'm like you. I'm very type A. I'm doing the research. I can't put that on other people to also be the spreadsheet nerd going, hey, I see you on my spreadsheet.

You're going to run out of money in the next six months. You can try to warn them, but again, as a father-in-law to your relationship with him, I don't know what it is. I don't know that he really wants your opinion or will respect it. What do you think?

>> Yeah. I don't, I mean, like I said, I think he's a kind of heart. And I don't think he even understands potentially what he's, you know, how much is how long it's nothing will last. I mean, if he has a stroke tomorrow, that's full-time care, and, you know, that would probably

what a damper on this whole trip anyways, right? >> Right, of course. >> Yeah. >> Well, maybe he wants to do this before his health continues declining. I don't know, but I would at least have a conversation with the family, with your wife,

and let the kids have this conversation with him.

“You can lay out the facts, but I don't think you need to be busted up in the nursing home”

with spreadsheets to convince them otherwise. That's not gonna end well. I wish you the best of luck. [ Music ] >> Let me tell you what I get asked all the time.

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The show is in Los Angeles up next, Joel, welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Well it's morning to you over there. So we're happy to talk to you, man. What's going on? I have my mom passed away last year.

“I tried to call last year, but I got through, but they had time to finish the call.”

So she passed away last year. I see the house is paid off. It's my sister and myself are on the will to do something with her house at her. But I can't seem to get my sister to initiate to help me get this to put me on as a trustee so I could sell the house and give her her half of my life.

So what about options here? She doesn't want to sell the house, why? She's got a little bit of a mental health, but she's got a mental health issue, and she thinks I'm not the killer or something because I respect. Oh.

So what is selling the property? Have to do it this. I have no idea of it.

She wouldn't answer my call.

I know what she lives. I went over there to talk her and she tried to call the cops because I was invited on her property or something to that effect. Do you have a history of being murderous? No, I don't.

Okay.

“Do you think you can get a court order or a judge involved if she's honestly mentally”

unwell for you to be listed with her on this? It's going to be hard for you guys to do anything. Yeah, she can pass that test, she can pass that test, she's dead before, you know. So you have to see it. I think she does have some mental health issues, but what she goes to court because she's been

a court a few times. I think she passed out all that. So I'm trying to avoid this going into public. It shouldn't really go to probate, but that might be where we're going. I think it's going to go regardless.

Is it was it will that way or is this just something you guys are assuming? Well, what do you mean by will, then? Did she have a will that said that you and your sister are the owners of the house, if she were to pass away? Yeah, it's been a down to that set by sister and then myself.

Yeah. Equally, 50. 50. Yeah. What's the house worth?

Well, probably about 500,000 or something to that set. How are you doing, financially? I'm doing okay, but you know, you know, if all this happened, because I took care of my mom a death for a long time, then my death passed away 2021 and my mom passed away last year.

A little bit out, I've got a little bit of a mistake with my pension and my small one. I'm a little early for retirement because I can do it at 62, which turns in November. So, you know, I'm thinking about going and pulling the turn around back, but I'd like to get that settled, but I don't know what my options are because every time I try to talk to her, it's only she doesn't become a call, she doesn't want to talk to me and just keep

going on and on. Hmm. Well, I mean, there's something you can do called a partition action, but that's going

to cost you time and money and courts to basically have the judge force the sale of the

house. And she obviously is not going to place where she's going to buy you out. She doesn't have 250 grand to take your portion. No. To get you out of this.

So the other option is it just sits. Is anyone using the house right now? No. It's just vacant collecting dust and you guys are paying property taxes and insurance on it.

Who's covering that? Um, my mom has a state to sell some money on the bank. Okay. And once that gets to window down, what happens? Or is there enough there to cover it?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is there enough to cover it in perpetuity? Like, there's 500,000 bucks in there?

No. It's not even close to that. No. Okay. I would talk to your, I mean, you can't talk to your sister casually at this point.

So you might need a mediator to actually get through to her to explain the situation and what the options are. And are you saying, is it just, with you or is she have enough mental health issues that,

“like, she's not in a place where she could even make this decision?”

I see, she really hasn't worked in years, I can't remember the last time she had a real job. She doesn't hustle in things where she does try to book people with travel stuff like that. But I don't, I don't, she's got to have, I, I, I, I find the sky, you know, my thousand rich in the famous, but on a poker piece budget, you know, it's been like that for years and I, you know, I didn't get any assistance when I was taking care of my mom I got

for years. I don't expect her to be changing things now, I just wanted to find the people who worked over to me, I'm not going to, I, you know, I'll have it all legal to, you know, so get her after I get my money. Yeah, she understands.

She's going to walk away with this thing with, you know, over 200 grand.

There's no cash flow happening here.

No. So regardless of how she feels about you, if someone were to stroke her to check for 250 grand, I think she would take it.

“I'll try to go that route, you know, but this is like, you know, I think you're gonna need”

a mediator. Yeah. I would contact a lawyer and just kind of understand what your state laws are and what you're able to do and not able to do to at least give you some clear next steps regardless of the communication with her, but this is, this is a messy one.

It's a pretty rare scenario where your sister thinks you're out to murder her and therefore won't let you sell the property, but I don't know what that has to do with the property still regardless. You don't have to be there for the sale. You guys can be in separate rooms, but I would try to get some closure on this and

I'll let it just sit there collecting dust while you keep paying the bills at a mom's estate.

Abby is calling in from Sacramento up next.

Abby, welcome to the show. Hi. Good morning. Hey. How you doing?

Good. So I am a college student and I have recently come into a gift or inheritance of $25,000 from when my grandpa passed away in 2023 from the cell of the town and I want to make a very wise decision where to put this inheritance money or this gift money and I currently have a Roth IRA and I work inconsistently, but I have a monthly income of about $4,500

to take, and I just want to make a really good financial decision from my future or after I graduate. Love it. How far are you into school? I've just finished my junior year, so I'm going into senior year, two more semesters

of undergrad, and then two semesters of a credentialing program. Nice. How you paying for that? My parents are paying for my college. They're paying as they go, so no student loans, no parent plus loans are in a great

mic. How are you living?

“Are you living on campus or do you have an apartment?”

I didn't tell us about that.

So for the first two years, I went to junior college and I lived at home, so no rent or anything

expenses that way. For the first two, this year I moved on, about an hour away from home and had an apartment. My parents paid my half of the rent, so my boyfriend paid the other half of the rent, and I just used my work to pay for groceries, gas, so you're living expenses. Okay.

So you currently have no debt whatsoever? I have a car payment with my parents and me as a co-signer, and there's about $6,700 less on that, but they make that payment as well. Great. So now you're down to $19,000, because we're going to pay that off today.

That's not a fun thing to have hanging around. It's going to cause resentment at some point. So now you're debt free with 19 grand. Do you have anything in savings currently? I'm currently in savings, I have probably like $500.

Great. So now we can beef that up to have a little emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. And if your expenses are low right now, having 10 grand as a minimum is a good baseline. Okay. So now you're down to $9,000, and now you're at the spot where you're debt free, you

haven't emergency fund, you're investing for the future, so you can max out a Roth IRA for the year. And still have money left over. High max? Yes.

I maxed out my Roth IRA. I've had it since 2024, and in 2024, I maxed it out the $7,000 and then last year the $7,500. And this year, I've only contributed $50 to it because I was living away from home and all of my money went to my living. Perfect.

So you got another 74, 50 you can put in there with 1,500 bucks left over. I would just park that in a high yield savings account with your emergency fund and call it 11 or 12 grand for your emergency fund, because what's going to happen is once you graduate school, life's going to change drastically, and you're going to be very thankful to have some money on hand to cover, maybe it's a car repair, maybe it's a move across the country

for a different job, maybe it's a future down payment on a house. And so those are shorter-term goals, so I would keep that more liquid. That's where my parents were kind of going. They wanted me to use the whole $25,000 as a down payment for a future house or as part of the down payment, and they said that they would match whatever I put down.

That's a route you could go.

“I think both of those, I think what George laid out is a fair path, and I think there's”

also a path where you do keep the emergency fund separate like you said, and then with whatever there's left over, you park that, and maybe a separate high yield, or you use a fair once account, and just earmark that money instead of putting it in a Roth, you just earmark it for a house down payment, and if you have a plan of buying a house, you know, and five years or less, that's a great idea, and then if your parents want to match it, well, now

you've got double the money. They're going to make it very hard. So I'd become debt-free with an emergency fund before ever starting that savings for the down payment. Way to go.

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Alright, Haven is in Knoxville, Tennessee, up next. What's going on, Haven? Hi, guys. Thank you so much for taking my call. Absolutely.

What's going on? Okay, so my question is, "Me and my husband took on debt about two years ago. The first time in our five-year marriage, and it was all in a mortgage. But that was the first time in our marriage that we felt a lot of weight and heaviness and stress.

And even though it was still within Ramsy's parameters, it still felt very heavy. And especially after I became a mom, it felt like we removed the option of me not being able to just be a mom anymore. I had to continue working because the mortgage was based on both of our incomes. And so we decided to try to put the house on the market, go to a smaller rent.

And our goal in the long run is to never go back and debt, but to instead take that

house payment that we were making and put it into investments to hopefully one day buy a house outright. And I just wanted to know in the long run, especially with well-meaning people around us telling us, "No, you don't buy a house, you don't buy a house. I just wanted to know in the long run that we were still going to be financially okay."

Whew, I will say we teach two methods of buying a house here. And the one that we love is when people have cash to buy a house outright. We don't get a whole lot of those calls, but there are people who do it. And then of course the other method is to have a mortgage that's in the proper parameters and we can talk about that later.

“For what you're saying, I think it can be good.”

The tough part about this and the variable here that's kind of the unknown is what will the house cost. It's a moving goal post, right? So it's what will the house cost 10 years from now? And there's a big difference between five years from now and 10 years from now.

So I think the question you guys have to be asking is how do you want your life to feel, which I think you have asked that question. And I also want to know how old you are because I'm, you know, taking 10 years to buy house is not a bad thing. It took my husband and I, 10 years to buy a house.

And as long as you're able to do those things, that caused you to build wealth in the process, I don't have a problem with it. Just know that there's a moving goal post there, George. And that's that's the unknown that can be really tough is we're depending on the market to give us the returns that we want and we're depending on the housing market to be where

we want it to be when we're ready to pull that money out. And so there's a lot of variables we can't control. So unless focus on the ones we can control and one of those is saving enough to get the mortgage that's super reasonable, even if it's on his one income. So what is the mortgage payment today?

$300,000. $3000. Okay. And what do you guys bring home currently? Well, with my income, we were bringing in about 200, but like I said, has some babies in

the picture that I want to be with more, so that could drop down some.

Let's say it was just his income.

It's going to vary, George, but it could be 160 to 200 because he's taken on more work so that I could work that. Got it. Now let me just ask this question, because the way you framed it was, you didn't feel good because we needed your income for the mortgage.

If there was a world where you could have a reasonable mortgage just on his income, would

“that be enough to relieve the stress while still getting you into the housing market?”

Potentially because the biggest thing was when the babies came along, I was like, I want to be with them, but I mean, yes, potentially, I think that would put stress on him, that maybe. Yeah, I think the ideal scenario is can we get his income up sustainably to the point where you guys can just stay in the house?

That's option one that will save you the most money because selling your home and buying a new one is going to cost you a whole lot in fees too. On top of hassle. The next option is you guys sell and rent for a while, but rent is going to cost you what in your area.

1400. Okay. So what you really can save is the 1600 and put that towards the down payment fund. Yes. So you're not taking your whole mortgage payment and saving it because you still have to pay

for rent over here. Right? Yeah. So 1600, we'll do the math here, 1600 for 12 months, you're going to save 19,000 a year. So how much are you going to get from the sale of your house if you sold it today?

About six, 7,000. Wow, so you'll be lucky to break even on this thing. Yeah. Okay. So we're not making a lot of profit.

So basically you're starting from scratch and what would a house cost you if you

bought one in the future? This was only at 1300 towards the home, but probably around the same area. I mean, we looked at several homes. They were all, of course, 250 to 300 this one was 355. Okay.

So to buy, let's say, magically, the home is still 350 grand years from now. At that rate, you're still talking about needing to save for 18 years. That 19 grand a year, it's going to take you 18 years to save up 350.

“What about investing into like the market with that help?”

It would help a little bit, but it's not going to be magic. Your savings rate is going to be the trick here when you're talking about a four to five year time horizon to buy a home, investing it isn't going to move the needle a ton. If you're super lucky, like we've seen these last few years, you could double your

money in about five or six years. So 40 grand could turn to 80, 80 grand could turn to 160, so you're still a ways away from that number.

Had you run that math at all, haven't or was this kind of, and it's okay if it was just

kind of an idea that you wanted to run by us? Yeah, we did. We did run it some, and we were also thinking, and we have, I was listening to the show several times out here. You got to say a lot, like, your income could potentially go up.

I've seen his income even just in our five years that we've been married, continued to go up. He's an electrician, and so it does the more work, and the more his name gets out. There's a more money he does have come in. Is it his own business that he's running or is he work for someone?

Yeah. Yeah. So, George, did you plug him in? Do you see him there? Yeah, I'm looking at, if you, let's say you invested for five years.

You did that, 1600 a year. You even started with six grand from the home sale. You'd have about 133 grand in there. Five years. No, no, no.

We would start with about 60. We have 16 and that's the same. Oh, good. I think six or seven. When we got married, we had, you know, we had no debt, and we just started investing.

Okay. Is it in brokerage funds? Not in retirement funds? Yeah. Rough IRAs and traditional.

Okay. So, that's, if it's in Roth IRAs and traditional IRAs, that's retirement. You're marked for retirement. So, we wouldn't include that because that would be to your detriment. So the money would need to just be invested in a normal brokerage account.

Probably, I just throw it in an index fund. But with the money that you currently have available to you and with a fair rate of return did you put 10% in their door? Yeah. That's where we're at.

And we're not saying that to bust your bubble. And I kind of want to shift the mood here because I absolutely think that. That there's a way that you can be in a home, that you can be in a home in a responsible way. That's not going to feel detrimental to you as a stay at home mom.

And, you know, do this thing without having to wait 10 years. I just think that it's going to require you guys to go, okay, the current house we have maybe it's too much house for you if you're staying home. That's fine. And if you decide to rent for a little while while you save up a better down payment,

“that honestly, just, you know, woman to woman, that feels like a fair tradeoff to get you”

in a house where you're actually, you know, feeling the growth of equity, you're actually participating in the market and building wealth in that way versus waiting 10 years with

So I would wait and see, I wouldn't rush to sell this house.

I would see do a budget just based on his income on the average. What would it feel like to make a $3,000 mortgage payment if he's making 10 grand a month?

“I want you to feel like you have to sell it if it's 26% and Ramsey said 25%.”

It's not about that. Do you have enough margin to invest 15% for your future? Save up some of your kids' college, put a little extra toward the mortgage. Those are the signs that you're doing well financially and that you didn't make a huge mistake with this home.

So I love the heart that you want to stay home, you don't want to make a bad financial mistake, but I don't want you to feel a paranoid level about this purchase. You guys are doing great. fried chicken. Hey, what's up, guys?

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So check it out, start every dollar for free in the app store or Google Play. Kirsten is in Houston, Texas. What's going on, Kirsten? Hi. Oh my gosh.

I'm honored to talk to you guys. You are the lottery today. You got Jade. I did. I did.

I love you guys both. So some background on my question is my husband and I are on four or five and six. Our kids go to private school. We're living our best lives.

And we've been running the numbers with our financial advisor, and we need about $10 million

to retire in about 30 years and that's kind of our surplus number. At 15% we will be retiring with over 15 million at this rate. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's a tough place to be.

But my question is, we just don't want to live with that, you know, crazy surplus at the end of our lives. So we were thinking about pulling back about 5% and putting that toward the house so we can pay it off in like 7 to 8 years instead of about 13. And I wanted to get your opinion on that.

“That number that you quoted, what percentage of your income is that you investing?”

Is that 15% or? Yeah, 15%. Okay. What's your household income? That 328 on the basis, and then we get like 50 to 70 in bonuses.

Fantastic. Well, I love all of these numbers. And these are, what was the annual rate of return you guys were using to crunch those to get to that 15 million? Do you remember?

9%. So it was a little low. Yeah. Cool. Well, I love that.

We've never told anyone to stop investing to pay off the house earlier or to, hey, you're

going to be funded later on, because I don't know with the next 30 years holds for you. If I did, I would tell you absolutely do this. But you might want to retire 15 years from now. 20 years. Who knows what's going to happen?

A health crisis, maybe it's for a good reason, and you want to step away. But I just wouldn't, you know, put it all in that basket of, well, we're definitely going to have this income for the next 30 years. One person could get laid off and not have that income anymore and not be able to get a job that pays that much.

I hope that's not the case. But I'm kind of a, I'm a glass half full guy when it comes to what it could be. And I'm also a glass half empty guy when it comes to preparing for what could be. Just the nature of life might be life in.

the house?

13 years is what we currently have projected.

But obviously that may change as hard. Would you go? Would you go? That's hopefully. What do you own it?

We owe about 600,000. And how much can you realistically put towards it?

“Could you up that from cutting expenses elsewhere in your budget, making this kind of money?”

Yeah, I mean, we could probably realistically, like I said, I think we're living a pretty nice life as is, but over 50% of our monthly income goes towards private school for the kids and then our donations. And then we've got our mortgage and other things. So realistically, outside of giving in private school and investing in the mortgage for

probably living on like 20% of our income, which is why we need such a low number compared to our actual income.

Yeah, how old are you guys?

30. Okay. So I mean, you highlighted something which is important to highlight, which is there are seasons of life, obviously seasons where there's daycare, there's kids in college, those tend to be more expensive years that you really can't get around.

But then there's values that you decide that you're going to sink money into, which are my kids are going to go to private school throughout their entire education. And when you make those choices, there's a trade-off involved, which means, because I did this, now my margin is maybe significantly less, margin that I would have put towards the house or margin that I would have put towards a 529.

Those sorts of things. You realize that you guys are making choices based on your family values. And when you do that, it's not just a choice, it's a trade-off.

“And I think that's probably what you're feeling saying that, okay, it's going to take”

a certain, because of that, it's going to take us 13 years to pay off the mortgage. And because we want to continue to enjoy certain other nice cities, it's going to take us 13 years, which 13 years to pay off a mortgage, by the way, is that's not small potatoes. That's pretty impressive.

Especially since you'll be 43 years old with a paid for, I'm guessing, $1 million

plus home. Yes, yeah, the value is about 900,000 right now. Yeah, so it's going to be way more than that 13 years from now, I don't think that's a bad thing. Yeah, look at the full picture.

I don't have any problem with you guys paying it off in 13 years versus eight years and freeing up that money a little bit sooner, because cash flow isn't your problem right now. And if you guys said, hey, we have this other thing we really want to do, we don't have the money for, we need to temporarily pause, I can make a case for that.

But long term, just investing less because you don't think you'll need it, I'm going to go, hey, I'd rather you have 5 million extra that you can give to the places and people you want to give to because you have the option. And so we took a call similar to this, the other day, Jade, and Dave had a similar response. Dave could have stopped investing 30 years ago.

He still invested this day as a 65 year old man who definitely doesn't eat another dollar, but it's because he wants to have options. He wants to give even more impact and even bigger inheritance to a children's children. There's nothing wrong with that.

“And even if you did have 15 million, you can spend it from 60 to 90 if you want to.”

Yeah, and it also highlights the nature of the baby steps, how we teach them, which is, you know, steps 4 through 7 really are about intentionality. You don't have to have that same speed and intensity that you had in baby steps 1 through 3, and I think that we get that call a lot because people do the nature of what we teach everybody's like Ricky Bobby, they just want to go, they just want to go fast.

And there does come a point where you can go, you know what, I can actually enjoy my life. I can value private school. I can value family vacations. And if that means I pay off my mortgage and 11 years instead of 6, that's okay. You're still winning at life if you pay off your mortgage and 11 or 12 years.

If you paid off an under 15, that's a huge win in my work and you're doing better than most of America. Absolutely. Way to go. I like solving good problems, that's a good problem to have right there.

All right. Matthews and Austin, Texas up next, what's going on Matthew? Hey, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely. Hey, just a quick question on 401k plans.

My wife and I have worked at several companies over the last 10 years and we have 401k plans kind of spread out everywhere, all different apps, things like that and really wanted to consolidate it. It's going to be honest, Gemini and Claude have been giving me conflicting stuff, so I really wanted to call and see, what are my best options to consolidate everything in a safe way?

I'm curious, what was the general consensus so far? If you didn't call it? General consensus was to do an IRA rollover. But our contributions are split up between pre-tax and 401k Roth. And I'm not sure how to split that up or anything like that.

I got you. Actually, just did this for my wife not too long ago because she left Ramsey to stay home with our kids after a nine-year career and because her match portion was in traditional and her investment portion was in Roth, her contributions, what I did was create two different

So I roll over traditional IRA and I roll over Roth IRA.

And so once, you know, I get that check from her old 401k, it goes into Vanguard into one portion and the other one to the other portions. You just want to keep him in like kind. So a traditional portion needs to go in traditional roll over and same with the Roth. And if you do it that way, it wasn't all that complicated.

I literally took a picture of the check on my phone and deposited it within a day. And just be sure when you say check, the check has not made out to you. You're not caching out those funds in any way.

“Yeah, you should be able to do a direct roll over.”

I for some reason because my life is difficult. They had to actually send a check for, you know, in Vanguard's name, to that. In Vanguard's name. Yep. It's a simple way to do it and you can do all of that into, if you have five old 401k's

that are all traditional, you can put that all into one roll over IRA.

You don't need five different roll overs. Do they, do they split it up for you or is that something I have to figure out between what we've already done for 401k Roth versus what's already, but hasn't been taxed. They should be able to write the checks if you contact them, then they'll be separate checks because they're separate accounts completely with different account numbers.

The ones that you get that, you should have two checks from every 401k if they had both Roth and traditional in them. Okay. And if you need help with this, you can contact the SmartVester Pro and they'll walk you through the whole process and handle all those pieces because it can be scary.

You're dealing with some big numbers here. You're like, oh, that's 160,000 dollars. I don't want to hit the wrong button and so our investment pro can really help. You can jump on Ramsysolutions.com and give that a go. But yes, please, this is a PSA for anyone out there with a bunch of old 401k sitting around

on, it is collecting dust and it's digging you with fees and it's probably not performing very well. So it's time, contact them, get that money out of there, put it in an IRA that's in your control. That's your best option.

George, there's an estimated 31.9 million of forgotten 401k's left behind.

That's wild. Don't forget my friends couldn't it, that's different than 20 bucks in the co-pocket. Hey guys, George Kamel here, there are a lot of things you probably shouldn't ignore. Your check engine light, that weird smell in your fridge, the smoke detector that's been beeping for six days and maybe most importantly, your phone bill.

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I'm George Campbell here with Jade Warshaw. Take in your calls at Triple 8-825-5-225. Mori is in Tampa, Florida. What's going on, Mori? How can we help?

Hey y'all, I'll have you Friday. It's been a bit of a crazy year for me since January. I just want some help figuring out what would be next best at this one. Yeah, lay out the crazy. What happened?

Well, I had to talk with a year. I was kind of crushing it, man, top-performing portfolio at my job, leaving the account management team. I had babies to have one knocked out, which was brutal. I was working on step two, but then my old record cracked out on me and there would

have cost more to fix it than I had initially paid for it. So I figured I'd get creative, but I used electric motorcycle because down here it's sunny all the time and not have to worry about the smell. But that was really done to avoid wiping my savings completely and trying to keep some momentum on step two.

So that was really rough, but I actually ended up being a promotion of two weeks later. So I thought we were looking good, and then the nature of that business is more so urgent versus important make money today type of thing. And the role of the company was very experimental and more long-term stuff. And unfortunately, they ended up laying me off two months later.

Oh, man. One was that. It's pretty rough. I don't really want to, you know, I have a very strange name in a very known place.

“And I think these people are just kind of listening, and it's in some sense of the stuff.”

How many months ago have you been, have you not had a job for months now? Yeah. That was, that was in May, and I've been working on getting, you know, getting applications

down the other day.

And that's been really rough.

I had. Okay. How much debt do you have? Through all that, I've got 27k in two cards, a personal loan in student loans, and that's what I was working on painting down and stuff too.

Do you got two car loans? Cards. Cards. Oh, credit cards. Okay.

So no car loan. Is it just you? No car. No car loan, either. Is it just you or do you have kids, a wife, anybody else?

Oh, man. That's a rough part.

My lady and I are going to a break up right now.

Oh, man. I'm sorry to hear that. You're a girl friend? Yes. Yes, yes.

So there's no real, you know, it's not a divorce proceeding or anything, but our lease is ending right now. And it's been really rough over the last couple months. And so I've just been down in a dumpsman to be honest with you. It's been--

It's been a lot. Yeah.

“You're living in a country song right now in the worst way.”

So, sorry. You're going through without the dirt roads in the beer, you know? Yeah. None of the fun parts. So what's next?

What are you going to live when this lease is up? I have two scenarios that are playing on my head right now. Number one, one of my good friends has offered me a place on his guest room for three months. He gave me a solid tenure and he tried to help me get back on my feet, but I'm looking

at a move back to the North East to be close to family again, which is what I'm probably going to end up doing is living with an aunt for a while and then jumping back on my feet from there. Are there more options in the North East for what you do? Because I feel like much of where you decide to go needs to be based on the job market

for what you are skilled to do. Yeah. I mean, being in a talent management and sales, it's kind of everywhere. And then up in the Northeast as well, I mean, I'm sure I could knock on some doors for somebody selling the, you know, selling, selling, selling services, you know?

It's just been tough. So you need--I think there's two sides of this coin. And I think there's the change of scenery because of what you've been through. And then there's the actual word I have the most opportunity. And I would spend some time really making sure that one is not--the emotional side doesn't

lead you to do something that maybe may not be best for you, work wise. So I don't know the answer to that question. It's just me putting that out there for you to be thinking through.

“Because I could see how a change of scenery would be nice, but if the truth is, there's”

more opportunity, I don't know, in the Florida area than maybe you should stay in that area. So think through that, because you will get a change of scenery simply by moving into a new apartment wherever that is, right? Yeah, I'm not mad about the fresh start. I think that's great.

We're going to be a little strategic about it, because right now we're moving out of weakness and desperation and not out of place of strength. And so I would be applying for jobs in the Northeast, around where your aunt is. And going, okay, what are the opportunities there? Who do I know there?

Who does my aunt know there? And kind of using that to, you know, once you land the job, now you know, there's income there and the place I'm going to be. So you know your next step right now you're sort of floundering, because you don't even know what day it is.

But yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I like to think I got my bearings, you know, but yeah, you're 100% spot on with that, man. And you mentioned a phrase in there, fresh start, which is something that I wanted to ask for some counsel about. I would recommend it to me because my sevens right now, and I currently have no monthly income

to explore a potential chapter seven bankruptcy, but I don't know what to even start looking into. Well, how much severance did you have? They gave me a month. Okay, one month.

It was like, you know, like five K worth. And that was, I mean, yeah, I don't think you're anywhere near bankruptcy.

“I think you've just fallen on a hard time.”

And I think it's hard in multiple ways. Like we said, it's emotionally, it's a blow to your confidence, losing a job in some ways is akin to grief of a lot, a loved one. It can really feel that way, especially when you were really counting on it and when it came out of the blue.

So I think, I mean, I do not want to minimize what you're feeling on an emotional level, but I think that there are some practical things that you can do today that will give you a little bit of hope.

First off, we're going to send you, uh, Ken Coleman's find the work you're wired to do,

because you do have a set of skills, and they've given you a level of success. And chances are, those same skills can be translated into other career fields that you're just not thinking of right now because you're not in the clearest state of mind, right? So that's going to help you do that. And then tonight, just a personal bit of homework that I'd love for you to do is I would

take the time and I would write down everyone you know who know someone else that might can lead to a job. So let your goal be to write down the names of 10 people and over this weekend, you're going to call up 10 people and be like, hey, um, I'm really looking, these are my skills. Do you know of anybody is grandma looking, is auntie looking, do you have, you know, your

buddy will like whoever it is, just call these people up and put your name out there because you will be surprised at how things like that travel and that's really the way that you

So that might feel like Jade, that's not going to do anything, but trust me, just do that bit of homework and write down those names and call up those people because it will make it, if, if nothing less, it will make you feel better that you're putting in a different type of effort. Yeah, right. Oh, I'm sending 100 texts. I'm just going to go away further than applying for 100 digital resumes and another pile somewhere. Yeah, into Georgia Tech to Georgia's point,

don't text them, call them, call them on the phone and say, hey, I'm just, I'm looking right now,

I'm casting my net out. Here's what I've done. I know that you do XYZ. Can you think of anything

“and really push like press in and see what's out there? I think that'll help you out. That's”

what I would do tonight. But this is one step at a time right now. You're just trying to cover the four walls and get through the end of the lease and put food on the table. So I'd be doing gig work. I'd be signing up for every app under the sun, walk in dogs, you name it, hell sitting, pet sitting, find out who in your community needs anything and you go do it and treat them well. And all of a sudden, you get to survive the next day in the next and hopefully

you can find a part-time job that leads to the full-time job and then we can make this move. But

right now, man, I don't know how you're going to bike e-bike your way all the way to your hand-sounds of the Northeast. We don't have money to do that. So we got to figure out just the next right step. So hang on the line. We're going to send you, find the work you're wired to do to help on the job side. [Music]

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financial freedom, not just park your cash. Go to Fairwin's.org/RAMsey to open your smart bundle and start making progress today. That's Fairwin's.org/RAMsey. Ensured by the NCUA. [Music] Elizabeth is up next in Nashville. Just down the road. What's going on Elizabeth? Hi, I am Madison and I are 100k and we just found out with pregnant.

Whoa. He's like we need to make some radical decisions in order to make this work. We also have a formal formal. You have a what? A formal formal. Okay. And we were just to give it to Elizabeth. We were from Minnesota and we originally planned to move back to Minnesota after we got a debt paid off because national doesn't have state taxes, but Minnesota does, but now with two on their one. So the only reason just to avoid

“state tax? Yeah, the taxes, it's a they have the state income tax. So that's why you moved here.”

We said you're trying to move back. We've been in Nashville for five years. Obviously being closer to family. Okay. So now you have another one on the way. Like, hey, it'd be easier to be closer to family. Yes. Okay. What do you guys make? So hard. 120,000. All right. And you said you have 180,000 in consumer debt? Yeah. Tell us about that 180. What is that? It's 115 student loans. And then to my son's medical bill at my medical bill. And then a car if there's 7,000.

And then another medical bill for 3,000. Okay. What are all these medical bills for?

Yeah. They didn't cover that little bit. They covered everything else though. Okay. The student loans

is that all one person or is that both of you combined? It's minus 49,100 and his list the rest. Okay. Are you guys using those degrees? I have paused. I have paused continuing my education until we get other debt because we don't want to take out anymore. And then he was going to be using his degree. But we couldn't afford him to transfer to where he would lose his health insurance. Oh, boy. So what are you guys doing for work? Not if you're not in your school. He's a high school

teacher. He was going to be going to the college atmosphere for recruitment. But he's staying in my school for now. And then I work in accounting. And what were you going to do?

I was going to actually get my accounting degree. Oh boy. Okay. Okay. So I'll get for now because I

don't want to take out any more debt. Got it. And the good news is there's an upside there for both of you career-wise that we could probably get too pretty easily once we get this cleaned up. Okay. So. Have you guys made progress thus far on the debt? We started this Jan June 12. We started on our journey and we paid off $1,500. So far. Good. And how much do you guys have in saving for it now?

Just the baby stuff. You got a thousand bucks. So our number of people see fund. Good. Baby step one.

“And then debt snowballing this. What's the next smallest debt you have to pay off?”

$300 didn't loan. Right. Okay. So we got some little ones. Some ankle fighters. We can

start knocking out. When you guys do your margin, when you do your every dollar budget every month, how much margin do you see there? At one month. Right now it is $700, $470, $747.39. I've been on look at this. Wait a go. That's been see America. That is the type of answer we're looking for. This is a person who's on top of their numbers. You get down to the decimal. I know you're getting out of debt. I know that's okay. So that's on top of minimum payments and all of your living expenses. You got an extra

$470. And that's just with our income. I've been doing the list and I've been doing like 15 to 20 hours of list. And then I started how it's cleaning. Wow. Good for you. And it's just up there's a light and now you're sorry. That's okay. It's okay. You're doing a lot. And then you sounds like this pregnancy was unexpected in my right. Add in the blue and it's kind of thrown. I mean, as wonderful it is for a baby to come into this world. It's also a little bit of a wrench

in your plans. So, totally, we're with you. We get it. Okay. And we're going to help you go through it.

“Because you've still got time, right? How far along are you?”

Okay. So this baby's got time to cook. You can you still have time to make a big impact here. Right. And if it slows down the debt path by a little bit, that's okay. The baby's still blessing. And if it takes you five years instead of four point six, we're going to still call that a win. Yeah. Oh, yes, yes. It's like you and like however many people are listening, though, the nobody else. Well, I won't tell anybody if you don't. We're safe here. You guys are on the right

track with the 747. That's margin just from your normal jobs. And then with you doing all this extra side work. And I'm guessing your husband's doing some side work, too, right? Yeah, it's we don't see each other. It's one thing with the baby. Yeah, out to go do something. And what do those side hustles combined bring in? Um, last month we brought in 1900. See, and again, I point to this call again, Elizabeth, because

you guys are doing exactly what we tell people to do, which is you can increase your income. $2,000 is fabulous. And if you add that to the 747, this is how it's done. And so now it's all about taking the number that you're out and running it backwards and saying, okay, if we continue to chunk this at the next series of debts. And then once those are freed up, that money adds to the snowball.

“Before you know it, your snowball is going to be at like $45,000. And my wrong or am I right?”

No, you're right. Yeah. And it's okay. If you pause the debt snowball for a little bit to stack up cash until the baby is here and healthy and safe, that's okay. I know it hurts because you're seeing the interest go up after you've been trying to knock it all down. But right now, you're in a, you're in a, you're in a sort of storm storm storm mode. Yeah. And you want to learn

that storm mode fund. And you got hit with some medical bills. So this time, I would be stacking

“up at least your deductible, your out of pocket max is what I would shoot for. It might be a”

thousand bucks a month for the next eight months. And we're not going to do extra payments on the debts. But at least then you've got, you know, nine, ten grand right there to protect you. Until you guys are home safe. And then if everything's great, just hit play and apply that nine extra grand towards your debts. Okay. So it's a temporary setback as far as you're debt pay off journey. And then are you guys going to move anyway so that family can help

take care of the kids and you continue working? Our original plan was to move once we were

completely out of debt. And I was hoping to have that done in three years. And I'm four years.

And I'm thinking if we move now, we'll not now we can't afford it now, that's insane. Well, and you need jobs right or your jobs remote. He's at high school. So yeah, no, we would need

“jobs. So what's the cost of the game plan for child care? What are you thinking?”

You, the baby would have to go to date care because we can't afford not to both work. But it's just figuring out what to do because daycare is going to be 15 to $2,000. Yeah, for both kids. Or one, because you've got to four months to have these. His daycare. I am very blessed. His daycare is only 800. Good. Okay, wonderful. But then due to some complications, formula $400 a month. Oh, wow. One will that. And budget line item. And this one he's a year. Okay.

So what you could do, if you, if you were to move, let me just get the facts here. If you were to move, would you have a family member that would watch them instead? Or that's, that's still not an option. I think so that I don't have that 100% mail down. I know in the past there are friends of not friends or family had said that they would babysit if we moved back. I would check into that. I would check in to see if that offer is still good because if it is, then I might, that might

motivate me to start looking to start the job, you know, start the job hunt, you know, back in

“Minnesota and see, see, was good over there. Either way, I think you guys, this is an emotional”

time. But I think if you just take it one day at a time and take it one baby step at a time, I think that you guys are going to work your way through this and it sounds like a lot right now. But each day, that pressure is going to really, just a little bit every time you take a step in the next right direction.

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just click that link in the description. I need to copy that. Can you snake me? Wanted to do?

I got to pay two. I have one. I have to get your hands on. I know. I don't just give Matt Willie Nillard here. I'm not giving you my George. I don't have a pony up the cash. Matt is in Chicago up next. What's going on, Matt? Hi, guys. I'm just curious for the last six months. I've been working about seven days a week, 12 hours a day to pay off about $72,000 in debt. Wow. How far have you gotten? I'm done. I got my debt paid off. I got my emergency fund and I got a Costa Rica trip planned

“for next year that's already paid off. That's what I'm talking about. Hold on a second. I just,”

I got a bus in and say this really quick because this again, Matt, you're doing the thing. Matt, just let me take a quick second to say this. I saw some people on social media who were bashing some of our content saying you can't do it. You can't pay off debt. You can't buy a house. You can't save up and look at Matt. He just worked really hard for, you know, 12 hour days. And in Petal, $72,000 a debt. Stop telling me folks can't do this. People do it every day.

Way to go, Matt. Keep going. All right. So basically, well, about the house part. That's, uh,

I guess part of my question. So my fiance is an amazing woman. She's been supportive of me through

all of this. I mean, she also works too. So basically, I want to kind of keep going and pay off my house service by the time I'm 40 and 37 almost 30 per year right now. And I kind of made a deal with it that I take Saturdays off, but I'd still be working and then saying them on hours. But I really want to get my house paid off by the time I'm 40. I want to be a hundred percent debt. Oh, okay. And this is still 12 hour days. 12 hour days. Just take you one day off.

Yeah, I'm trying to come on, Matt. We're right now two is like over time here. I don't know a hundred percent if the overtime's going to stay around. You know, that's another COVID happened to anything like that. I mean, do you really think you can sustain that, though, 12 hour days,

six days a week for three years? Is that sustainable? I'm a beast. Yeah, I could do it.

When are you guys getting married? So the actually we're coming to kind of see and it's supposed to be January. Suppose to be, well, like, do you have a date? Or are you just going to roll up to the point? It's going to be, it's going to be the end of January. We just have a finalized everything with, like, the venue, what exact date it's going to be. But it's like the last week of January. Okay, wonderful. Because I'm just thinking through this, then you're going to have two incomes,

which is going to speed up the process, which might mean you can then slow down.

“That's what I'm going to say. Well, you guys are going to hate that part of it anyways, because she”

lives with me and we already do that. We have, so that part you guys don't like. So she's helping you pay off your mortgage. She is, yes, she's paying both. So like, yeah, I know, she makes about 2800 a month pay comb. Like, that's what she brings home. So she's pretty much paying like the mortgage. And I'm paying everything off. So I got bring home about 95 days, but with all this overtime, I'm projected to hit around 200,000 this year. And I want to kind of keep it going.

Let me just grow this out here. Let me just throw this out here because it has to be said. So I will say this. I mean, obviously, if you ask us Ramsey opinion, we're going to say, hey, if you guys are not married yet, you should not combine your, your monies in this way. It's, it's just the invitation for disaster. But if you are, like, if you're going to just be like, hey, that's just not my way of thinking, I am going to move in with this person. And we are going to

combine money at the very least. Can you at least just sign a co-habitation agreement? And something that's going to protect both of you in case something were to happen. Please just do something like that so that there's some legality to this. And so that nobody

“gets burned if for some reason, something should happen and you should go your separate ways.”

I'm just going to throw that out there for anybody listening. It's important to protect yourself. If you're going to do something that is somewhat financially reckless. Fair enough? Yeah, I understand that part too. Like the house is only in my name. So I mean, I guess that part's kind of. I know, but if you were to go separate ways, and she's put all of this money onto your mortgage, that's in your name. That's, that's at a detriment to her. So she needs to have

something in writing that would say, hey, I get this money back. Or whatever that case, protect yourselves. If you're guys are going to do this outside of the law, put some law around you as what I'm saying. Yeah, agreed. I guess her part of that is 28,000 of that debt. I paid off was hers. So it's like kind of a trade off. But for both, that's what I say for both of you, for because you guys are doing this in such a crazy fashion, you're making headway. Like, I don't

want to take away from the fact that you're paying off debt. But the way that you're doing it is

we teach. And here's the way I live my life. Once you get out of baby step three, you're moving from intensity to intentionality. And I'm like, you, Matt, I paid off my house. We did it in 26 months. The goal was four years. We were crazy. My wife and I both were like, let's just go for it. And we had a, a both a very, a line vision for that. But it was a pretty small mortgage at the time. We put like 50, almost 50% down. And so there wasn't much to go. And it didn't

crush our life. I was not working 80 hours a week. I don't even know if I was doing side hustles at the time. So it was a pretty low stakes way to live. I'm worried that you're going

to burn out or at least she's going to get burnt out on you never being home. And so I think

there is a happy medium here if you're working a reasonable amount going, all right, my goal is three years. If it takes four or five, it's going to be okay. I don't need to work Saturdays and Sundays and work till 9 p.m. every day. Like, I know you're capable of that. It's not a sustainable thing to do for the next three years on top of what you've already done. Yeah, good. It is going to cost you something. Whether it's your physical health mental health

life or relationship. Yeah, she's on the same page as you want to spend more time. And so that's why I was trying to take the Saturdays off and everything. And we still do trips and vacation

“and everything like that. I just really want to get this done. Now, I do think that you should be”

really intentional about putting extra towards a mortgage. I don't think any of us are saying by any means not not to have that as a very clear goal. But we're just saying the speed can slow down a little bit because you will happen to marriage. And that requires a lot of time and intentionality as well. And you guys will both make more money over time. So you might end up hitting the goal even if you slow down. That's what I found happen. So if you guys are aligned from the

get go with this marriage, you're going to hit the goal if you said it. And so I would definitely slow down if I were on your shoes because we care about you. She cares about you. And you've got time. Yeah, this is a self-imposed goal. They're like, I'm just, man, I want to do it. It's okay if it happens at 41. No one's mad at you. Yeah, I guess that's a bit of comparison is a piece of jewelry type deal. I hear some of these people that are younger than you have and all this stuff down

side is I just really want to be done. And there's people older than you that wish they were

where you're at. And so it's, it's always a good reminder. There's an old Craig Groshell quote,

"The Pastor Craig says this, Jade, it's something to the, I'm going to butcher it." I know what you're going for. Comparison will either make you feel inferior or superior and neither honors God.

“Something to that. You're pretty, I think that's right. Like either, well, I'm better than them”

because I compared or I'm not as good as, because I compared and, you know, whether your person or faith or not, it's just unhealthy. Yeah, I think that's right. And so it's a good reminder that no one is setting this goal but you, and it's great to be better than you were yesterday and beat your personal best, but don't do it in a way that causes you to become a workaholic or unhealthy and unbalanced. Yeah, and it's the same. I mean, we've, we've hit on this a couple of

times already. This, this show about making sure to make that shift from intentional, from intensity to intense, boy, say it for me. From intensity to intentional. Thank you. My goodness,

gracious. But, you know, there are sometimes where people call in and they've just, they've never been

in debt or they never really had to go through baby step two and those people, if they want to crush it through their house, that doesn't really bother me because they didn't have that time period

“where they spent, you know, months or years in a slag. And so if you want to do that, that doesn't”

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joinsalime.com/ramsy. That's joinsalime.com/ramsy. Ask Ramsay is our free AI tool that is built and trained on proven ramsy principles. And today we're going to break down one of the questions we received this week. Here it is. I'm dead free. Have a fully funded emergency fund and I'm saving for a down payment on a house. I do need to purchase a new car. Can I use my emergency fund for that?

Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, we would advise you against using your emergency fund to pay for a brand new car and we would say to just start a sinking fund instead. You can set aside a monthly amount

until you have enough to pay cash for that car because you never want to raid your emergency

fund for a planned purchase because then you're unprotected when a real emergency hits. Yeah. Here's the three questions I ask. Is this urgent? Is this necessary? Is it unexpected?

“And the truth is this is none of those things. So don't use your emergency fund. Use money”

outside of that and get the car you can afford and then upgrade with cash over time. So check out Ask Ramsay. It'll walk you through your financial goals based on your specific situation. You can input all of your numbers and it's going to give you somehow better advice than you get on this show. I know that's may you may not think it's possible but they will do it. So get your question answered today. RamsaySolutions.com or click the link

in the description if you're on podcast or YouTube. Diane is in Cleveland up next. Diane, welcome to the show. Thank you. I have a bit of a canendrum. My husband after 23 years of

marriage is divorcing me and I need to know how to start over. He was always the breadwinner and now

I'm left in my 50s starting over financially and don't really know what that's going to look like. So I just am calling in for help about you know we don't have any debt. Our cars are paid off and we have a big nest egg but now the attorneys are fighting over this. And so I don't know. I'm so sorry Diane. So we're already at that stage. We're at the attorney's fighting stage of this thing. Yes and it just started in April and he filed and I don't even know for what.

So you don't know what happened? It was just random. Well there's you know people that are in the marriage and I confronted it and you know and and now we start counseling at a Christian counselor and that didn't go anywhere and so now he filed and so 23 years later here we are you know and I have to think what am I going to do with my life? I have a master's degree but I wasn't using it

and it's in design. I'm an educator and so you know now I've always been supporting his corporate

job, him climbing the ladder and you know with bonuses and everything else so now you know a way over six figures so here we are. Well the good news is there's no debt which is a good thing and you

“said there's a big nest egg how much is the nest egg? 160. Okay. Do you guys have kids?”

Okay. No we never you know you didn't want that so you know. $160,000 is in retirement? No it's just in it's just there retirement is well over you know millions. Okay. So $160,000. Yeah. Liquid and tell us how much is in retirement do you know? I don't he put it in half a David and I didn't know that was even what I didn't even know that we had that. Okay. So now it's a matter like everybody's like discovery and I'm like what is that you know?

But all the cards on the table. Yeah so everybody by the time this is finished you're going to know every dime of of what's out there which is a good thing and you're probably going to be shocked by a lot but it sounds like I mean it's it's a little different for every state but like I said the good news is there's no debt and hopefully you're entitled to half of

“everything that's going on here at least that's what I'd be fighting for. And potentially some”

Alehmoni. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What does it learn and move? He's not saying much and that's what I call then I was like my attorneys like saying you know you owe me this but I haven't heard anything I don't know what I don't know the process. I don't know the steps I've never been wearing before

Yeah it's just somebody I like. Okay it might be it might be time to start talking with friends and

family and people in your community about a good divorce attorney and if you don't like the one you have you can fire them and move on to someone else because it sounds like you want more of an understanding of what's taking place and I could understand that. And that's I feel very in the dark and they just say I board an email here's another I want another $5,000. Yeah I mean yeah you're gonna pay for every phone call every text every email and so if you don't feel like you're getting

the information just a basic level of communication then you don't have to continue on with that person. They work for you. And so you want to make sure that you know what's going on. I'm getting bullied. I'm getting bullied a little bit and it's really stuff. Is he still living at the house? Are you guys? No I'm the only one living there. I don't even know where he is at this point. He's disappeared in April so yeah. Okay are you making payments for all the bills?

“That's what the attorney agreed to but I don't have a job so I'm like. Do you have a bank account or”

access to one? We have a joint and I moved so that I could have retirement money because I want to move to Florida because I need to get away from that situation. Okay so I think the fair thing for you to do right now is I wouldn't make any major moves right now is not the time to move to Florida and now is not the time to buy another house not the right you this still needs to be sorted out. Yeah wait till the dust settles on this and I think that the two pieces of

basic based on you based off what I hear and the way you sound I think you need two things. I think number one you need to find somebody who's a good friend who can help you advocate for yourself in this situation. Somebody if it's somebody from church if it's someone who's been through this you just need someone in your corner who can help calm you down who can you know be in the meetings with you or help you interpret an email that that goes a really really long way. And number two

based off what I hear I don't know and a good friend or advocate could help you but I don't know that this lawyer is what you're looking for in terms of you you you you ought to know what's going on in your own case and if you don't one of two things is happening either they're not communicating well or you're just not in a place where you can hear it and receive it. Yeah and I'm not sure

which is true to be honest with you. I don't either because I did I've never had to hire an attorney

so I'm really just kind of at a loss and you know I've always not gone with Dave Ramsey people because I know that they always educate you. Well we'll use the resources you have if you receive a letter from your attorney a attorney run it through Claude run it through chat GBT and say help me understand this what does this mean what's likely coming next like there's a lot of resources

“out there that can help you understand and I think that you're just in an emotional state and it”

can be hard to just interpret things in an in your normal way like the way you used to before all of this happened and if you have an mental fall yeah and so do that tonight take every single email that you've had drop it in there and say what what does this mean put it in layman's terms tell me what's next what's what are my options and I think that's going to also give you some peace just help you sort through this and you said you've contacted some Ramsey Pros so if you have a

smart vester pro in your life or Ramsey trusted agent I would ask them say hey do you have any attorneys you would recommend in the area who can help me with XYZ and they have an amazing role at X people they've worked with that they trust that they can recommend and that's going to be a

big help but we always say that divorce turns emerge into a business transaction and so now it becomes

all right what are all the assets who's getting what and then you guys the lawyers the judge is going to decide what's fair so just know that you're not destitute you will be okay in your job now to figure out what this next chapter for Diane looks like and maybe it's wow I haven't worked in 20 years and now I'm going to go get licensed and be an art educator at a local school and Florida who knows what that looks like but I hope there's some silver lining here and you

actually find some newfound freedom because it sounds like this marriage was in great for a while this wasn't super sudden yeah absolutely and for anybody listening I mean it's a cautionary

“tail right we tell folks all the time that in a healthy marriage there's that transparency you should”

know what's going on with the money what the assets are what the debt is what people are earning all of those numbers it's so important to be involved and to take a seat at the table so that if the worst happens you're not left out in the cold and certainly in the dark yeah being close fisted like that is a huge red flag for any marriage you want to know exactly what's going on

joined by Jade Warshaw taking your calls at triple eight eight two five five two two five

Andrew is in Fort Wayne Indiana what's going on Andrew how can we help hey friends so grateful to take your time here I do appreciate it so I am kind of an a pickle here I have the mill money and I have a vehicle that has 278 thousand miles on it I've been the one that puts miles on it I have about twenty thousand dollars in debt and I'm going to need a new vehicle sooner than later especially as we start getting to the winter season gear I really don't want to have to go

in the many more debt unfortunately I just don't have any liquid cash or anything to buy new vehicle

“is it broken down has it stopped on it so no the I think the motor in this vehicle is going to”

outlast the frame but it is certainly going to be at some point where it is going to be a kind of

highway it is a 2011 forward escape I bought it ten years ago I was young and dumb I just showed up on a car lock next thing in you I was signing papers and I bought a way over price vehicle and so I have at least drove the the wheels off of it it's getting pretty close so yeah I mean but I mean what's wrong with it today is it just the fact that it's got a lot of miles and you see the riding on the wall or is there an actual issue with it other than the miles today I mean

it's still road worthy at the moment there's quite a bit of rust and some spots so where it's like okay you know like I lose a tire anytime I had a bag pop hole around you right so you're more

“just thinking I need to start a sinking fund for a new car sooner than later correct okay and unfortunately”

I financially like I just the lot of life has happened over the last year I don't have an emergency fund like I've been unfortunately living paycheck to paycheck what what happened over the last 10 years oh so the last 10 years I had some debt and then I paid it off on 2020 I bought a I bought it in affordable house less than a quarter of my take home pay so and I bought it in 2020 where the interest rates were still good so that at the moment is probably my best asset again I just don't

have anything liquid from that what's your 20K in debt so some of it is I just a lot of stupid so I got a home equity line of credit to pay off a medical debt and the reason I got the extra money was to negotiate with the the house or excuse me with the medical stuff and it turns out

“that they don't charge your interest on that stuff so now I'm being interest and variable interest”

and it's tied to your house in the whole 20,000 is the heloc so I right now I I pulled out $20,000 from the home equity line of credit $10,000 of that was going to be for a vehicle but having that $10,000 that you know I was paying interest on my whole money even though I was borrowing it on the bank I just put that all right back onto the debt on the the heloc and then the other 10 I'm confused where did it go what magic trick did you do so wait you took what you use the 10 grand on

so I yeah I went to my bank I pulled out a home equity line of credit to pay for a vehicle for one that time came and then I had took the 10 extra grand to negotiate with the hospital bill so that 10 grand's gone where did the other 10 grand go I put it back towards the heloc so now would you oh that truly I only owe about $3,000 left okay tell me you had 20 grand a debt so

3,000 a debt yeah that was just the first one so I I uh time is over the essence so break it down

just quickly yeah just tell us what you have today don't tell us the backstory just yet yeah no so I owe my eight thousand dollars and then I another one is like I'm six hundred dollars behind in my gas bill and then another eight hundred dollars on my water bill okay eight hundred dollars behind on water six hundred dollars behind on gas okay tell us about your income because something is happening there that this with your income that's causing these problems so what kind of work

do you do and what do you earn I have a niche industry job so I'm a professional silk screen printer I will be making probably about $46,000 this year you have your own setup no I were for a shop okay how many hours a week do you work so I have unlimited overtime technically that I can get

overtime you're at that puts you at 46 no that's that's base pay okay okay so 46 plus you can make

“overtime and are you living alone yep what's your mortgage payment so my mortgage right now is it”

five five fifteen five hundred fifteen bucks or five hundred fifty that's it oh yes sorry five hundred fifteen dollars okay that's great and what would you take home from the 46 plus overtime what's an average month look like for you so average weekly I take up so about twenty eight hundred dollars okay twenty eight hundred dollars we know five fifteen is going to rent what's your other major expense because you don't have a car payment and it's just you eat yeah that's pretty much it are you making

payments to the ant or is this just sitting out there no that's unfortunately just sitting out there like my what like there's just I have so many like with the the gas and the water it's just been yeah why are we able to keep up with those bills yeah what caused you to get behind something

“so I was unemployed for a few months last year then I had a leak with the water and all that stuff”

just kind of what I mean today let let me go back to today so if I take your twenty eight hundred and I subtract five fifteen now I've got two thousand two eighty five and let's say what you spend on groceries let's say you're going bare bones let's say you do four hundred dollars on groceries you don't have a car payment can you reach over today and get current on the gas yes I certainly

could but then the problem is like my concerns like cause next week I will like I'm not behind

all my mortgage but like I still have to pay my mortgage yeah I already I already could let's let's pretend to a clean month let's say you make twenty eight hundred dollars a month and if I make twenty eight hundred dollars a month I pay my my rent that's five fifteen now I have two thousand two hundred eighty five dollars I'm gonna go ahead and pay let's pretend we pay four hundred dollars for groceries now I've got eighteen hundred and eighty five dollars now let's say you know what I'm

going to pay the minimum that I can to keep my water on let's find out how much that is how much can you pay minimum to keep the water on probably about one hundred and thirty bucks okay so I'll pay a hundred thirty there and then I'll say I really want to get the gas current so that's six hundred dollars and now I've still got eleven hundred fifty five dollars to go you don't have a car payment you don't have kids and daycare maybe you have a cell phone I hope it's boost mobile and you're

only paying like thirty bucks a month do you see what I'm saying so what else is there that we're forgetting about what I think is that you don't have a budget and I think that you're doing

“some reckless spending and living for the moment that's what I am guilty is charged okay”

you open the call enters and hey I've been doing stupid things it's fine to do that and then learn from it but it's been a decade of stupid so you got it aside Andrew two years from now where does he want to be financing a car keeping up the cycle of payments or finally breaking free going you know what I got to go make some money I got to go do some overtime get rid of

this debt and never going to debt again get an emergency fund pay cash for a car and build some

serious wealth you got it aside man it's up to you hey guys Dave Ramsey here every day on this show we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next now you can get that same kind of help anytime with ask Ramsey ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show whether you're making a decision or just want something explained ask Ramsey is here to help it's fast simple

and free to use go to Ramsey Solutions.com and try ask Ramsey today that's Ramsey Solutions.com we want to hear from you guys so jump in the comments on YouTube or Spotify and tell us what you're connecting with on today's show maybe you have thoughts maybe you would have told the call or something different we want to hear about it in the comments our team enjoy seeing all of those appreciate that all right Jade one of the biggest mistakes people make is they think they can just

skip having a will because well I'm too young I'm healthy I don't know enough I'll never die

whatever it is you're wrong I will help protect your family and every single person needs one it

a difficult time or even worse having the government decide for you so if you're ready to create a

“will and you are go to mama bear legal forms.com it's mama bear legal.com I apologize that if you're”

not sure where to start you can text toward quiz to this number 33789 and we will help you figure out which option fits your situation Chris is in Sacramento up next Chris welcome to the show hey how you all doing we're doing great how can we help today all right so we got a situation I want a viable in my wife does not want a viable oh no okay what a conundrum a little a little back down right so I know that other than the mortgage okay we're making extra mortgage payment every month so

our mortgage is thirty nine hundred a month we pay fifty two hundred a month okay um we bought

a year and a half ago after we got out of all our credit card debt and everything and um yeah

it's just a grind so we do you know we do a house project save up right and all that so I see that I see that we could buy and use the roof you know not at all not how much money do you guys have

“safe for this well none yet it's in the conversation right so we're finishing up a backyard project”

that you know is about like 25k right okay um with not too many projects in the future so the backyard project was that a project that you both wanted to do the 25,000 on the backyard or was that more her bag no no we it needed it ran into that all that right water in the house so I mean it's definitely and you know we ripping up the RV so hey let's make a nice right so we're okay so you start working with that what about the boat is that something that you're both get enjoyment out

of or is it just something that's really something you want is it more of a wants thing or is it a money thing well so I definitely want one it would be a basketball efficient boat she enjoys getting out in the lot of it to me the decision from time to time but it would definitely more like my thing you know okay and how much would it cost we're looking at like 10 to 12,000 you know the DC is both to get us through you know 5 10 years and then and then look at a

real nice dream boat later on you know and in her mind spending that 10 12 like what's the opportunity cost what does she feel like you guys are giving up on by spending that 10 to 12

grand or saving that up over time I think ultimately we're being pretty aggressive towards

the mortgage and she wants to pay off the house so I think you know I don't want to speak for but I think at the end of the day most of it is she thinks and feels that that money could go towards the mortgage okay I would if I were in your shoes I would double check that and make sure

“that that's how she feels instead of guessing I'd want to know hey where do you see a spending”

this money instead is it a vacation that you wish we were taking is it going to the house like really get clarity on what the issue is with her on that because that's the only way you guys are gonna arrive at how this money is actually being spent I mean for my two cents I think it's great that you guys are making an extra payment on the house I think that's a really fair place to be in baby stepsics is you know doubling the payment I mean I think that's pretty fabulous yeah

so 10 to 12 for the boat she just feels like that's a waste of money from what I gather that could be going towards the mortgage what's the ongoing cost of this the ongoing cost of a boat like moving yeah do you have something to haul it because that's how it went out need a truck babe I got to haul the boat now I need to now I got to get all that so what's your do you have a full plan for how this is all gonna shake down so I still got to get a quote for insurance the boat

insurance is a number I don't have but you know maintenance is relatively easy especially since I do a lot of it myself we have a Toyota Tacoma with 280 thousand miles on it right so that thing will only run for over I be like you know so we need a factor into the budget a little bit more I would start a sinking fund for that truck while I'm at it as much as it'll keep going there will be a day where it doesn't and you're gonna be like oh I got a fun age truck now so as long as you

got to sign out a debt then the total value of all the things with motors and wheels is no more than half your annual income you're in good shape as far as the the checkbox is here so the alignment with the spouse is the final piece what is your household income we're around 200 awesome I want to total value of vehicles it's just like Toyota Tacoma so 8 or 10 thousand what's your only vehicle we are both very lucky with our jobs and company vehicles so we literally only have that toy to

a rat for because we just want to use it I mean unless she's looking at the upkeep of this and thinking I don't like how this is gonna affect our month to month budget and again I would run out those numbers and make sure you're talking about that but other than that I mean financially I don't see why you can't save up and do this especially if this is your hobby this is where you want to spend your time and some money and it's in the budget I would make a fake budget saying hey

here's what life looks like when we have about and then see and try to get a line on what's

what's the root of this why doesn't she want this to happen versus just trying to convince her

“I think that's where we need to start talking to each other instead of missing each other but”

good luck man Brett is in Cleveland up next what's going on Brett hey Jaden George thanks for taking my call sure how can we help yeah I just had a question uh so Lord willing next month my wife and I will be uh that free and we'll move in the baby that's four five and six love that we're really excited we're excited about that my question for you today is a couple of years ago relative when they passed gave us three gold coins one ounce each and so we've had those of course

gold going up in price should we sell those the coins which would basically give us our three month emergency signs uh or would you hang on to the gold since you know it could go up I know it could go down too so just want to get your thoughts on that well we're not fans of precious metals around here as an investment so when you say well it could go up that tells me we're sort of hoping and speculating it could go up and gold that of all the things you could have is not it's

not crypto right we know that gold's gonna hold some value it'll always be there but I personally

would be selling that thing instead of sacrificing for three more months or six more months so however long it would take you to get through baby step three could you get what I don't know what an ounce of gold is going for today how much could you get for all three um it's that like 4200 today okay so at the beginning because that's 4000 then it's that 4200 today which I think is is great yeah I mean if you were like hey dude I'll give you I'll write you a check for 12 grand

that could fund an emergency fund today instead of you having a continue to sacrifice I'm personally taking it and I'm not gonna miss out on what could have been I would just don't

“check gold prices after you sell it that's what most people do to go oh man it's 4500 now and I”

driving yourself crazy looking at what could have been right right okay well that's yeah and that I thought we just put in the chair in the account with the three percent interest it would you know

then you're always kind of gaining yeah you're at least keeping up with inflation and I don't

use gold as an investment I just invest into the stock market and over time the stock market is at a higher return than gold gold is averaged about 7.8% a year since 1971 where it's stopping tied to the dollar which is not a bad return but you can do better with less stress in the stock market and there's a little less risks and that's not a physical thing you're trying to keep safe okay good that's what we're gonna do I just want to make sure I'm thinking about right so thank you

guys very much absolutely and they'll be I go on my face if there's an apocalypse where we only barter in gold one day jade I'm thinking like spoons and forks will probably be more yeah I'm thinking ammo fuel water yeah weapons water that's gonna be useful shelter yeah I've seen enough post-apocalyptic movies I've never seen them ago well bro I got some gold listen a fighting style you better start brushing up on your I do need to go to jiu jitsu is that what I know jiu jitsu yeah I think if you're

into like mma yeah you lost me there if I get kicked in the face this is the money maker all right I can't afford that can't risk it hey guys George camel here you ever feel like you make good money and still have nothing to show for it you're running to target for one thing and somehow walk out eighty seven dollars later with toothpaste and emotional support candles just me okay well that's the problem most people

“don't pay attention to how they spend their money so it does whatever it wants and that's why”

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that's the letter y r e f y dot com slash ramsy may not be available in all states all right today's question comes from Glenn in Pennsylvania he says what are your thoughts on self-op on cell phone plans where big companies lure you in for years to pay off my wife and i

never really thought about the most about the monthly cost of paying off our cell phones we just

paid the monthly amount this this month we got our monthly billing were surprised at the new amount do our phones being paid off it's drastically lower uh than our normal monthly bill should we start saving now to purchase our phones outright the next time around short answer is yes and i Glenn i love this question because this happened to me i didn't even realize there's sneaky these days there's sneaky i didn't even realize that our phones were not paid off we had been out of debt

and i'm like woohoo debt free and then one day you know randomly i see the bill and it's a lot less time like what happened and then i realized we were paying still paying for our phones i didn't even know that so you're not alone on that and yes from now on just whenever you go to upgrade your phone hopefully it's not an android but whenever you go to upgrade your iPhone you just pay cash for it and let that be that on that but i did hear something Georgie probably be in the know on this i

feel like i heard that apple is about to do away with that and you're just always like leasing

“your phone is literally they're calling at a lease and so you have to make the payments and then”

if you want at the end you have to pay the remaining balance that's left for that device whether there's a laptop of phone whatever it is or you can hand it back to apple and restart the process man i've seen everything at this point so it is brutal yes if you got a payment plan on a depreciating asset it is a type of debt because you have to pay that otherwise it's not your phone until it's paid off yes so to me that is a form of debt you can get sent to collections for these kinds of things so

i would definitely set up a sinking fund and pay cash for your new phones and just like a car

just try to get something that's gonna last you a couple of years at least yeah and don't upgrade

every year because listen the 16 is really no better than the 15 it's really not i i couldn't even tell you what phone i have and i agree with you so much drawer especially if you're in baby step two just get whatever you can that makes the phone calls that sends the text message and on your service you know go as cheaply as you can because there's a lot of money to be had there i meet people in the lobby and it's my favorite when i see a single lens on the back of that iphone i'm like oh man real one

i know that's right on to that iphone four let's go you know what i could really go back to a flip phone i really could i could be the person who has a flip phone that all it does is send phone calls and text messages you know Rachel cruiser's husband once and did that he's got a dot he likes it the man is at peace you know what you know what you talked to him you know i mean like the owl's land on a shoulder he is like one with nature now i'm not sure without a smart phone

i don't know if i could survive it i'm too i don't need to be googling at all times so i wouldn't

“survive long in the wilderness i think i take a fence that people are calling them dumb phones”

well smart isn't it really the smarter way George yeah but it's the opposite of smart and it's a funny name so just go with Jake don't ruin it all right janifers and phoenix up next what's going on janifers hi thanks for taking my call sure i have a question regarding my 16 year old who's going to be 17 and about a month so he is in his junior year of high school um he's a huge day of rambi fan he took financial literacy they all have to take financial literacy their sophomore year and um

they their curriculum space off of rambi and uh so he has become a huge fan of investing and compound interest and now we listen to it in the car all the time and you're super annoyed or then yeah i mean i'm learning a lot so everybody's a huge fan they love my husband and my boys both love and Dave's last that is Joan jokes or flips out on people for their bad decisions so it's a good one love it too it's so funny it's a kind of great road trip so he's a playing baseball

since about eight years old he just had his best season yet um he plays club year round and high school ball in the spring and he since he's done financial literacy he's thinking that he's not confident that he's going to play baseball in college so he's thinking that he should quit baseball and start a part time job and start earning money and investing and getting

said why do you want to quit he would say i don't think i'm going to finish do this in college

and i'd rather be working to start investing right okay yeah and you want him to finish why why do you want him to stick through it through what end of high school so i mean you only get this much time and childhood right and then you're an adult and you have all the responsibilities so it's not that we were not supporting him like he has some really great points he was a little he talked to me before he talked to his dad because he was a little nervous about dad and i said i

love all of your points and i i said now let's just really think about it so we support him either way we just are curious if we should gloss the idea and say enjoy your childhood play baseball it's only going to be here for a few years and then think about investing or if we should support him and his idea to quit and start investing now are you guys doing well financial what um yeah we're we're ramving it but yes we are like are do you have any debt yeah if we do

okay i'm just wondering if there's a if he's all about investing is there a way you can help him with that and go hey you know what we're gonna match whatever you put in or hey we're gonna put in a thousand bucks this summer for you to get started investing but we want you to keep playing baseball what he say i think he would consider it he also has told us like it feels a

“little bit more like a chore now well that's what i'm saying you're because you're”

positive as man his childhood i'm like baseball at 17 is work i mean you're showing up to practice you're showing up to every game is he good at based on word is he not good he's good i don't know if he's college level good but he's good but i mean he plays in the game he's not just sitting the bench he plays and yeah he was in the top three stats of every single stat his coach shared and was he complaining about baseball before he started learning all of this and so this

was coming either way or do you really feel like do you really feel like this kind of came out of

the blue just because he learned about what the compounding interest he's always kind of had

a love hate relationship with it but more or less he loves the social aspect of baseball he was like camaraderie that it builds but it's always been kind of a love hate relationship probably because we live in Arizona and it's really hot yeah i mean you can get camaraderie at work with co-workers at the old ice cream shop so i i here's my take i'm gonna just say it you can take it or leave it i don't want him to resent you from making him play i'd rather him on his own

“volition regret turning baseball down to go work and the truth is i don't think he's going to”

regret it i think he's going to go get a job and go wow i feel like i'm stepping into adulthood and there's responsibility here there's discipline you got to show up and it's going to repair him for the future more than baseball well at this point i think i disagree i think i i think i have a conflicting view jades forcing him to get out there i'm he's played if he's played all of these years and you don't feel like this was coming down the road i actually think that i would say i think

there's a world where he can do both where he can play the season of baseball and finish out with his team and then i think there's a world where when he's not you know in baseball training or in the season that he can work and i think that there's something that comes from team sports that's very different than uh what he would get you know working at the grocery store

“or working at wherever he's working and i think if he can get the best of both worlds i think that”

really can create some well-roundedness team sports are really important not because of going pro or because of getting a college scholarship but just what they build on the inside of you and part of that is you know sticking to a task so i think that there's something there i don't think either is the wrong choice i just think that you got to different views this time like letting him own the decision either way to let him feel like all right i'm gonna adult i got to make

peace with the decision i made good and bad you work your butt off for your money but your

money's never going to return the favor if all you do is hope for the best if you're ready to

learn how to make your money work for you check out the smart vester program smart vester can help

and more whatever your goals your pro will take the time to explain your options so you never

“have to invest in anything you don't understand had the rambzi solutions dot com slash smart vester”

the get connected rambzi solutions is a paid non-client promoter of participating pros learn more rambzi solutions dot com slash smart vester our scripture of the day some one three they are like trees planted along the riverbank bearing fruit each season their leaves never wither and they prosper and all they do peter marshal said when we long for life without difficulties remind us that oak scroll

strong and contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure boom under pressure

Thomas is in san Antonio california i didn't know that was i'm i'm learning a lot today what's

going on Thomas we're doing great how can we help today yeah so my wife is i'm there but she put her life on hold her crossfit athlete career on hold to put me through law school debt free awesome yes and i'm glad i'm here soon with a great buffer and but we haven't met with pretty much of the year right now and so she's i want her to go back and pursue that crossfit career that

“i think she can attain but she is a big fan of rambzi and she wants us to get to you know”

step five at a down payment so my being irresponsible you guys you guys don't have an emergency fund yet no we do not and you're not investing and you are renting we spend it with uh... in law school okay but you're renting on your own now um... as soon as i graduate we will be renting it got it okay and so you are trying to get her to chase these dreams but that would require her to not work for a season

well okay what does that look like i don't i don't i don't know the crossfit world i don't have that's a shock looking at me so explain to me what this track looks like um... you know she's already top two thousand in the world and that's like top one percent you know i need to get uh... within the top point zero one percent that's a full-time job working working out all day so she's training as an athlete not as a coach

yes i've been absolutely and she would enter into competitions and potentially get money from that and sponsorships how does the income stream work yes exactly i i don't even care if it's an income stream for us i have a good offer that we will live off of just fine um... i just want to like you know pay her back for sacrificing so you're saying we can live on my income and she's saying well i'd like to live

in a house first instead of the in law so let's get there before we start this dream what

is she doing now for work um she's a pp tech okay how much of it is how much of this is your personal guilt for her sacrificing versus what she even wants to do at this point because if you're telling me she's saying no i don't want to pursue that right now i want to focus

“on you know whatever the next couple baby steps are if that's what she's saying she wants to do”

that might be what she wants to do or are you just worried that she's going to have resentment later on in life yeah it's a good point um i i'd say probably a little bit of post uh it's worse we're both young and this is like her prime time and so this sounds like a date night conversation where you guys sit down and you unpack what what you're feeling and you ask her about what she's truly feeling and you guys really get a sense of

where each other is at today um based instead of where it was in the past and you know making sure you're making up for lost time and all that i think this is just a conversation you guys have to have yeah and that's good that's gonna you know point two okay yes we can continue to do some of these baby steps the speed of at which we do it might change if she decides you know i do want to start you know pursuing this competition you might be going slower but it doesn't mean you

have to stop in that you can't do any of the steps going forward until she's done yes what does she make as a PT tech um like 35 okay yeah what will you be making with this offer

she wants you guys to have the emergency fun have the down payment and if she stopped it would slow down your goal by a little bit but the lion's sure of the income will be yours yeah so it's not

like a maker break if she pursues crossfit and quits her job it's not like i'll never own a house now

so i'm just trying to not make it this like huge a or b scenario there's an option c which is it takes us six months longer to save for the house and we're gonna make other sacrifices in other areas to make this happen so i would sit down make a budget for what this is gonna look like making you know 200 grand and then factor in taxes and factor in we got to save the emergency fund that's gonna take this many months then we're gonna save a down payment that's gonna take this many years

and then start to go okay here's what we're really giving up here's the opportunity cost of you pursuing this and if you find that it's a couple of months she might then go oh you know i i didn't think about it like that i'm good to do this soon or rather than later that's that's helpful thank you

“i think just using logic and facts because everything right now is just like emotion on both sides”

and i like the idea of the date night to just get some clarity get all the emotion out and then let's look at the facts yeah and i just want to say something because he he he used some phrasing that i'm like oh gosh i don't like that you know when you're building a life together with your spouse each person is sacrificing to get to a shared vision a shared outcome him becoming a lawyer is not just beneficial to him it's beneficial to the family unit so his feeling of i've got to pay

her back for her sacrificing it's like i get what he's saying but does that make sense it's like making sure that everybody it's not about paying people back in a marriage it's about both people sacrificing and both people doing things to for the greater good so and bring that change too and i mean she could have a kid and decide you know what i don't want to pursue this anymore yeah she might stay home and that's fine too but i like having the options through healthy budgeting and knowing

what the numbers are all right may is in phoenix up next may welcome to the show thank you thank you for taking my call today so my question is i am thinking of going back to school for about about 11 to 13 years and i'm thinking like how should i prepare financially i am 33 years old and still is 69 thousand dollars of debt so i'm thinking should do i pay the debt all completely before even thinking of this adoption what are you going to go back to school to do

i'm thinking uh for and take pathologies which will require like medical school and basically

“you have to be a doctor wow that's pretty intense that's very cool yeah okay thanks are you single”

at no i'm married okay what is your spouse think about this plan um of course she thinks i can do anything so she's like pushing me to do it of course she we want to get into like a little bit less of like have a little less debt before doing that but is that the combined debt the 69 thousanders that just you combined 69 okay because i'm i'm worried that you're not going to be able to work for 11 years it sounds like um yes and no i'm thinking of taking it slow but yeah i feel

like when i get further down in the process you know that's going to be i'm thinking i'll do whatever i can like if i have to work nice and you know what is your spouse earned during the day um she makes um about four to four without forty four to forty five hundred a month so forty five hundred a month okay and can you can you run your household just off of the forty five hundred a month have you budgeted that out we can if we're out of if you're out of debt okay so it's a pre-requisite

no matter what happens we're getting out of debt no matter what's next what is the 11 years of school going to cost um that's another thing i'm currently looking into i don't know specifically but roughly about 14,000 a year so we are that's the thing is like we're wanting to pay like out of pocket like obviously not getting to any more debt so we're thinking do we completely clear our 69

“cave before even trying to attempt this you have to maybe okay i think there's two things that”

have to be true first hear me say i think this is a really cool goal i love the fact that you're

wanting to reinvent yourself and you're like i'm willing to put in the time and effort to do it that's number one i think that George is exactly right you got to pay off the seventy thousand dollars of debt first and i think that's worth both of you hunkering down and doing whatever it takes to knock that out full baby step style to get that done and then from there it's about saying okay during that time there's also got to be an increase of income along the way so that we can start

flow it and your spouse is probably going to be bearing the brunt of that weight while you're in school that puts this hour of the rambi show in the books remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace Christ Jesus