Stop Letting Emotions Drive Your Money Decisions

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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 in the Fairwins Credit Union Studio,

this is the Ramsey Show. And I am at Rachel Cruz hosting this hour with Jade Worsha, and we are going to be answering your questions. So give us a call, triple eight two five five two two five. The phone lines are open, and we are ready to talk about your life and your money.

So we're going to start off with Scott in Pensacola, Florida. High sky, welcome to the show. >> Hey, how you doing? >> Hi, we're doing great. How can we help?

>> So I'm 20, I recently turned 21, I bought a house in December.

>> I got married and do anywhere, and I got to kill in the way doing September.

>> Whoa, big life event, Scott, doing it all. >> Oh yeah, well, I got about $27,5 on a vehicle, and then I'm $10,000 upside down on it. And then I got $10,5 on personal loans, $19,00 on a pool there that I've sold and paid. As much as I could, I've sold it for on to. >> What was it, $19,00 on what?

“>> Well, full willing, that's what much I got left.”

>> Okay. >> I sold the full will there, January, and paid what I've sold it for on to the loan. >> Got it. >> And then I got about $2,000 in credit card. >> Okay.

>> And I'm going to step two of the program, but I want to get rid of the car, but I don't feel like it'd be a smart, well, I know it'd be smart to get rid of the car payment, but I don't have anything to replace it right now, and I ain't got $10,000 to pay the negative on it. Do you have any cash? Anywhere?

>> I got $1,000.

>> The $1,000, okay, so you've got to pay the $4,000.

>> What about your wife, does she have a vehicle that's reliable? >> That is the vehicle. >> Okay, and then what do you drive? >> I'm married, so I guess I inherited her debt. I only have like $13,000, but her car and her personal loan.

>> And what do you drive? >> I got a, an old truck that scored $4,000, got it. But I got a company truck, so it's just.

“>> Okay, so that $4,000 is sitting there, but you also have a company truck?”

>> Yeah. >> So she could drive the old truck if you sell this car. >> It needs a lot of work. >> But that's not the question. Could she drive it, if you got rid of this car?

>> Could she drive it for six months. >> Uh-huh. >> And you just do a little work on it, yeah. So then I would, if I were in your shoes, I'd go down to the credit union and I'd get a $10,000 loan, because I'd rather you be paying off $10,000 than $27,000.

And then that way, when the buyer comes to buy this car for me, for $27,000, you can put the other, or for, yeah, for $27,000, you can put the other $10 with it, and the whole $37 that it's worth. >> Yeah, because you just dropped your debt, you know, obviously by, by significant, I mean, you'll have $23,000 of debt left after you do that.

And that's as much as what the car, you're going to be in the car loan itself is. So yeah, it makes a significant dent. It's going to be, it may be a little inconvenient at times, kind of annoying, but it gets you guys a whole lot closer to that goal of being debt-free. >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah, because then you've got the, you said the four wheeler was $19,000. >> I thought I would have left on the line.

“And then the $2,000 credit cards was there anything else?”

>> $2,000, I'm personal loan, I forgot it's in her name. >> Okay. Okay. Yeah. And how much do you guys make a year sky up?

>> I'm making about 80,000 before taxes. >> 80,000. >> 80,000. >> Okay. >> Do you make $3,000?

>> And she makes $3,000. >> What does she do? >> Dental assistant. >> Okay. Yep.

And she's pregnant. Is that what you said? >> Yes. >> When does she do? >> September.

>> Okay. So, I would make that exchange of the car. And then we have something called store commode, Scott, that when you are expecting a baby. It's good to have a bigger emergency fund and just a thousand dollars because you know there's an event coming that could cost more.

So there's a part of me that would say, I would go ahead and do the truck. I would sell it, go ahead and get that taken care of. And then, from then on, between now and September, which will fly, it will be here before you know it. I mean, that's what four months.

So I would stockpile cash and these next four months. I actually would not be paying down on the debt. I would say current on everything, make sure -- but I would be in tents like you are paying

Because you're on such a great rhythm.

We've done baby step one, you're on baby step two. But I would put that money aside just like in a high yield savings account and just don't touch it and make sure she's good. Maybe it's good, everyone's good. And then when she comes home, I mean, if you could save eight grand even between now and

then, right? I mean, two thousand extra a month, if you could put away the four, you know, the four wheelers

“gone, the credit card's done, and that $2,000 personal on, right?”

Like you can start and you could knock off some stuff pretty quick in September, which is awesome. And then you would just have the $10,000 loan from the credit union and then the other $10,000 personal on, so you have 20 grand, and then you guys could be completely debt-free by the end of $20,000.

That's the goal, but -- are you doing -- it's still kind of far out of reach without paying even that much, it's just a little overwhelming. Are you doing any extra work, are you side hustling or anything like that? No, we can. So, over time.

Okay. Yeah, I pick up as much as that so that to Rachel's point, you can stock as much money up. And if I were you, I'd also look into insurance and find out at the very least you want to make sure that you've got your out-of-pocket maximums covered, right?

Those are the numbers I'd be looking at. If I knew I was having a baby, I'd want to have that covered for the family, just to make sure that you have that. Say that again? I'd say the insurance is covered, I have really good insurance.

You do. There's no deductible. $30 a deductible. For the whole year?

Well, I've never -- I've been to the hospital uptown, I've never had a deductible.

It's only been like a $30 copay. Okay, I want you to check into that, check into, I want you to check two things. I want you to look at the deductible, and then I want you to look at the out-of-pocket max. And just call them up and ask them, say, "My wife's having a baby, I just want to know what's

the deductible I'd have to meet before insurance kicks in for this baby and same thing. For the year, I want to know what's the maximum amount of money I'd have to pay out a pocket if for some reason they were complications or anything like that. And just get those numbers. If yours is absolutely zero, I want that insurance.

Yeah, I was going to say, he said, "I've got insurance, sounds like a -- oh, Scott, that's great. Are you both on the same page, you and your wife, do you feel like you guys are kind of attractive financially?" "Well, we haven't got joint bank account yet, and I'm going to combine everything.

I mean, we're really jointly on stuff together." Sure, sure. But you guys are both mindset of, like, let's save money, let's get out of debt, like, we're going to turn this all around. Yeah, we want to make a lot for our kids that we didn't have.

It's awesome. You're doing a great job. You're such a great -- you know, you're going to be a great dad.

“You're a great husband, I mean, honestly, and let me just tell you, these quick wins”

are -- it's going to help build your confidence, because it sounds like up until this point, until recently, you haven't been intentional and focused on your money. You know, you have personal loans here, and they have credit card debt, Carla. You guys have just kind of been living normal. And now, I mean, you're pretty grown up, you're a homeowner, you're mayor -- you got

a mayor, like, I mean, all of this is happening, and I'm so thankful that you're starting this process now, Scott, at your age, honestly, because if you guys do this, if you do the baby steps, you get out of baby steps too. You save up an emergency fund. You guys start funding retirement, right?

All this could be in the next 24 months. Right. And you start this now, and you say that consistent pattern, you guys will retire multi-millionaires. Like it will be so incredible, the family tree that has changed, because of you and your wife, and what you guys are deciding to start today.

So, keep at it. Call us back if you need us. We're here to cheer in you on. Hey, guys, George Kamel here. Listen, we need to talk about your phone plan, because for a lot of you, it's like a bad

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Next up, we have Susan and Madison on the line.

Hi, Susan. Hi, thanks for taking my call. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for calling in. How can we help?

So I am 33 years old on a single income with a razor thin budget. I've set up an every dollar budget in an envelope system, I've been through financial peace, university twice, but I keep falling into emotional spending and the ups over spending pretty much every month. What would you recommend to someone who understands a plan but struggles to follow it consistently

“because of emotional or impulse of spending habits?”

And are there any structured resources or programs to help with that emotional side of it? So, when you say emotional spending, can you give us a quick example of exactly what that looks like? You're going to target and you're getting a bunch of strategies you don't need, is it?

You gamble on draft kings, tell us what it is. Yeah, so for instance, I'm just going through some really intense family issues right now. So, I don't know, it's to feel better, like go out and have a personal day to go to the movies or maybe go get my nails done, just to have a self-care day, but because my budget is so thin, I barely have enough money.

I need to go out and see a $10 movie. Yeah. Are you working on the baby step specifically? Are you working towards getting out of debt or building up an emergency fund? Are you putting margin somewhere that is a goal?

Yeah, so I have my emergency fund set up and I am working on baby step two. It kind of feels like it's been on baby step two for like ten years. Oh, yeah. Well, that's exhausting. mentally.

If you don't like your makeup. Yes. That'll be the way. At you. So, how much debt do you have left to pay off?

So, I have a personal loan at about 10,000 and then I have a credit card with about 3,000 on it. Okay.

I am in a sticky situation which I know you guys never say to do my non-purchase my house

and she's been my bank. And long story short, we're selling it right now, so that mortgage quote unquote, will be gone. And then it will just be the 10,000 loan and the credit card with about 3,000 on it. Okay.

Is there any equity? There is. But unfortunately, the house never got put into my name, like it was supposed to. So, I don't have any legal standing too, anything.

“Oh, she's going to keep the money that you have you been paying the mortgage?”

I've been paying everything. Yeah. And your mom's not going to give you a piece of the pie? Well, I asked for it and I never really got a full answer and then through the great line of my sister, it sounds like, "Oh, well, I'll put it in the account so I can see how

you spend it." What? How much is the equity? How much? How much?

It wouldn't be much. It would maybe be like 30 to 40,000 dollars. That's much. That's much for someone who's in debt. Yeah.

It would clear my debt. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it would more than clear your debt, because then you just say you have 10,000. You only have 13,000, right?

Unless there's more that we don't know about it. No, no, that's it. Yeah. Had she bought the house and it had, and you have not lived in it and you lived in it

“for a short period of time and paid it, or what's the story on the house?”

And I'm getting somewhere with this. That's why I want to know. Yeah. Yeah. So, the purpose was for me to get into this house to build some equity to kind of set

myself up for financial freedom because I don't make a lot of money to make about $50,000 a year. And so, that was the point of moving in, well, it was a little bit more than I could take on, I think, for how much I make.

And so, we never really got a solid number down of how much I would pay her quote and quote

mortgage, because she just paid in cash, because she had money to pay cash. Okay. So, that number never got set, and right now, it's a really small number of $300, but I'm paying property taxes, insurance, everything else to upkeep with the house. Okay.

That's a little different. So, yeah, you've been paying $300 to your mother for how long, but two and a half year. About two and a half years.

Yeah.

Well, I'm wondering, because here's my thing, Susan, is any amount of money at this point

is going to help you. I mean, you just said I can't afford a $10 movie, like when you don't have that much, what, like, everything is important. So, I almost would do the math and be like, okay, for two years. This is what we've been paying.

You know, it'll be like, I don't know, 15, between 12 and 15,000. Here's the property tax, like, I would at least take out the money that you've put into the home, okay. And let's say she cashes out at $30,000, and maybe for you, you've put in 20 with everything said and done, okay.

That means I could see a very reasonable conversation as, hey, Mom, the house went up and value. I have helped support it, not all the way, because to your point, you were not paying market rate. She was giving you a great deal.

But to a point, I have been putting money into this that has caused, you know, that the equity has gone up.

So, after realtor fees and everything is said and done, whatever is left, here's what

I've put in.

“Could I at least get that part out in the equity and you keep the rest of the equity?”

That would at least be a conversation why would have, because $20,000, you know, that's pretty life changing for you at this point. Who put the down payment on that? Or there was no. There wasn't really a down payment because her and her husband paid cash, I mean, they have

looking upwards of $20,000, so you know, I think I'm changing my stance on this because what it sounds like is you were just a renter at a really low rate. I don't think that you ever owned any part of this to really have access to any of the equity. I think that she bought the house, she bought it in cash and she only charged you $300

rent in a full length home for two and a half years. I think I think that you're a renter. Yeah, I think you're just a renter. But back to the fact, even if the big, our original like pecs and nothing else and everything was, there was going to be your house and the title is going to go into my name.

But there was never anything that upheld that.

If you were really doing that, you'd have to show that you, you, I don't know I wasn't there, but if you didn't kick anything into the down payment or kick anything to the initial purchase of the house, even if she bought cash. And if you did not even at least meet the a regular mortgage or do you send them saying the rent?

Yeah, and there's nothing in writing here. It sounds like you guys did, and I mean, I'm not trying to be ugly, but it seems like you both did a poor job in really documenting the situation well for both of you. And for that reason, I'd learned. So yeah, for that reason, I just let it ride.

Yeah, that's probably fair, Jay.

“Okay, so my question would be why is she said, why, why did this deal go south?”

If you basically wants to take the money now and do something else with it, okay, is what it comes down to. Okay. So, and because I don't have the law on my Friday, just kind of have to now figure out what to do.

Yeah, so you're going to take, so you will have to pay rent, and it's going to be more than 300. Yeah. So that will eat into your budget as well. What is your budget?

What's your monthly take home? It's about 2,600 a month after taxes. What kind of work do you do? I work for a healthcare organization. I do like back and like admin stuff for providers.

Okay. Is there a way $2,600 is slim?

“Well, and that doesn't feel like, like, like, did you get a big tax refund?”

No. I think like $4,000. Is there any money going? Is there any money going into 401(k) retirement? I think so, I get like the Wisconsin State Pension, so it's just like an automatic thing.

That's important. That's important. Yep. That's the limit. Okay.

So, yeah. With this equation, I want to quickly hit what you talked about on the emotional spending before we get into this, because that's a huge part of this. You really don't have the money to, you don't have the margin to a emotional spend, and we don't have enough margin to put towards this new life that's going to come

where you're paying more than $300 of rent. So income is the name of the game, and it means you're looking at a different career path, certainly a different job in the short term, because we've got to get more than $2,600 coming in a month in order to solve this, because at the end of the day, it is a math problem. , because they struggle with money, because they can't do math.

And when you're paying, makes your money feel confusing, or hard to track, plans fall apart

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“Let's go to Birmingham, and we have Samantha on the line.”

Hi Samantha. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hi.

We're doing great. How can we help? I have a question. I wanted to know what I can do to help my husband stop financially helping his parents. Oh boy.

Woo. We got a. Help him. Help him. Help your husband.

Help his parents. Yeah. Yeah. So my husband is a contractor in Birmingham and he's, we have our club business and he makes good money.

But you can't tend to kind of fall back where they need to win over. They know that he will kind of just make up. That's not it. How much has he given him every month? A lot of money, like eight thousand dollars.

Holy smokes. Well, your husband is giving his parents eight thousand dollars a month. I guess about for how long. How long's that been going on? Don't just think I want to offer probably three months.

Three months. One year and a month. Samantha. Oh. We are 29.

I don't know how much we've been in a month. We found $240,000 last year. Why don't you know how much comes in a month? Do you guys have a personal budget that you guys play in your household from or when you look at your checking account?

And it varies because what he probably won't make $10,000 and the next month he'll make $50,000. Okay. Okay. So I probably won't concentrate on this call just because it's from a time perspective on his parent situation.

That's they're saying who's really in the wrong because he's not agreed with his wife and where their money's going is your husband. So what are those conversations like? What happened? Did three months go?

He said hey mom and dad are falling behind. Can we help? And you're like yep. Absolutely. And he just keeps doing it.

Was it even talked about? Did he ask you like what happened? Yeah.

And I'm okay with helping him out.

Sure. And so often. But my thing is when it's consistent and issue and you're consistent when doing it and you don't make up and you don't have to work if they don't want to, it's my problem. Okay.

So you're probably, they spend all of the money knowing that my husband's going to make up for it. So it's entitlement that you have an issue with. My question is you said it's okay one time. Have you, has he continued to come back to you these other months and asked and you've

“just gone along with it or have you said no and he's done it anyway?”

Oh, I said no multiple times. Okay. A thousand dollars is a massive gap. Does something happen in their life? Did they do one of them lose a job or what's happened in the last three months where they've

needed this money? They both work.

Well, what's changed in 2026, because you weren't doing this in 2025.

So what changed three months ago? What happened in February that caused them to call you? I think it's the fact that they just spent all of their money. Right. But what changed?

Did you guys, okay, how long have you guys been married? Um, eight years. And how long has the business been doing well? Um, probably about two years. Okay.

Something either they got wind of the fact that the business was doing well. Something changed that suddenly this has become kind of just like a, a vending machine for them. But the good news is, ah, to Rachel's point, that's neither here nor there. You get to stop this behavior and either something's going on with your parents that your

husband is not letting you know that you're just unaware of or it's just as simple as saying, I don't want to do this anymore. And you setting up that boundary with your husband of saying, I've said no to this. I've said no to this on multiple occasions. You've continued to do this anyway.

You're completely disrespecting me.

“And I'm not going to, I'm not going to have that, right?”

So that conversation needs to happen immediately, otherwise, it's going to be you guys against each other because at this point, that's a marriage issue. Yeah, between you and your husband that he doesn't listen to you, that he doesn't respect what you're talking about. And that there's no, it doesn't sound like there's a back and forth because I'm not saying

every husband has to be like, okay, whatever, to his wife do whatever you want and saying with the wife that she doesn't need to look at her husband, like whatever you want. No, there could be some back and forth here. But it's the stone walled, no, I'm just going to do this with our money and the action of it without any level of your buy-in because, yeah, it's a grand a month happening.

And so, and the problem is that he needs to understand is that throwing money at a situation

that isn't changing to your point is not helping them. It's not because this will continue to be a pattern for the rest of their lives if they had anything to do with it, it sounds like. And again, I'm not against helping family, right? Like if they had a medical issue or there was a job law, you could finally fill in the gap

and you wanted to. That's great. Wow. There's no job law. How older that is?

“Um, 50s, that's, yeah, that's crazy and they have jobs you said.”

So, if I'm you, I'm sitting down with my husband tonight and I'm saying, here's my thing is, I say, I'm gonna say at home mom, so I say with our children. Uh-huh. So, my husband is the only person that brings in the money. Doesn't matter Samantha, it's your household.

You're both married. You both are. That's what I'm saying. Did she hold that over you? Of.

I'm trying to know. No. Okay. Good. We have agreed, you know, that we've done it too many times, recently, but I feel like it's

going to happen again whenever it, if they're just going to keep on a keep on an afternoon and I feel like it's just going to continue to go on. But why won't he talk about it in good mode? And that's my question. I wanted to know why when we pushed you on that, why you brought up the fact that you're

staying at home mom, I want to understand that a little bit more. Do you feel like you don't have the right to say, or do you feel like he has the right to make the choice? Uh, to. He doesn't.

He pretty much asked me because I pretty much, he includes being on everything. Uh-huh. Except for this. Okay. I don't.

I don't want to say I'm not included. Well, it sounds like you're not. It sounds like he tells you what he's going to do. And that's the assumption of that. He's been behind my back the last two times.

Uh, he hasn't even told you when he's doing it. You just found that. Right. So you got a husband. You know, Samantha, you have a breakdown in your marriage of communication, of trust.

Um, of of any level of unity, and he's done this.

going to do this and it's out in the open.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

“It's the secrecy and it's the behind your back.”

So Samantha, yeah, it's, this is a marriage issue at this point. And I would raise some red flags and you may feel like, oh, it may not be that big of a deal. Gosh, am I being too, am I doing too much? No.

This is a big deal. He's been $16,000 without you knowing. And so to me, that's the, that's a communication and marriage breakdown. And you guys may need to go pull in a therapist, a marriage therapist, just to talk about not just the money portion again, but how we got here in our marriage that he didn't

feel the ability to come to you and or he didn't, and we need to tackle those issues.

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Thank you so much and folks, I did a question. We are trying really hard. Our daughter's in Grand Rapids, we're in Saginaw. I mean, well, two and a half hours away. And we want to move there and prices are homes are high everywhere, but especially there.

So we've got our home on the RAMSI plan. Our home is paid off, our cars are paid off. We just have our monthly expenses. My husband has us in debt free in a miracle way because he just now retired at $57.

“I think I'm going to disability since $10,000.”

That's not very? That's an amazing. I know. He's amazing. Well, my dad, when he passed away, helped a little bit because of the good little inheritance.

But now we're looking. We're going to buy there, add welling and sell here after we've purchased over there. And we're not. I mean, you know, it's like when you don't know how much you're going to get for the one year's selling, which I know, I'm 99.9% positive, we're not going to get as much

for this one as we are over there. If we took our house here over there, it would be about three times as much. Sure. Well, Michael, I know, so the question is, we just got out there again last night, financially, maybe not.

But they wanted us. The other buyers were willing to skip the inspection. And we did, we overbid what they were asking for, but I'm sure these people did too. And they were, they had a cash offer. Yep.

Yep. So, yeah. I mean, if we sold ours right now and we got what we want for it, you know, we'd be doing cash offer too. Sure.

What's the difference in the numbers? What are you selling for? For a person's what you want to buy for? Exactly. And it's yeah, we want to buy low and so high.

Yes. But tell us numbers. Tell us what you want to buy the, tell us the current property that you have, what you want to sell it for, and then what you think you want to buy for. What we have now, I'm in a perfect world, I'm in a perfect world, we get it done.

But in a reasonable world, we get to 75. Okay. Okay. Maybe 250, but I'm hoping for 275. Perfect.

And the one to there, we've done looking for, I mean, obviously want to go to 50 and have more to vermilion jobs than things. But what we've done looking at is between 260 and 320. And this one, we were bidding light. 20, let's see.

We were bidding like 30,000 more than they were asking.

“It was, it was it there, but there was a contingency on it, right?”

Conting it on sale of your home? Or no. No. Okay. Oh, no.

We can't even do that now. Because, I mean, we just can't, there's nothing available like that. So I think you just need some patience. I think you're frustrated. I think you have had your hopes up.

You want to be close to the Graham babies. And you guys are ready to pull the trigger. You're ready to make the move. And one or two deals have slipped out under and you're just getting frustrated. So I would tell you, just breathe.

Have some patience. Yes. You are entering into a good market. It's actually more of a buyer's market right now than a seller. So, in fact, you're getting out bid.

I know happens.

But that, that is happening less and less if anything.

Some houses are actually up for negotiation. That's right. And so, and you know, and we see, we have a real estate dashboard that you could even kind of check out. But it's great because it does show not only like the mortgage rates

and everything happening, but how many days on the market and all of it. But there's, there's something about having the patience in this because if you don't and you feel a little desperate, you might do something which I'm glad you didn't. Something stupid of like wave the inspection.

Right? And then you go buy a house. You sit and see almost. And no inspection. And you guys get into it and it becomes horrible.

So, I really do believe the deal is going to come for you. I really do.

“I think you guys have been wise with your money.”

You have showed patience in the past and what you guys have done to build up, I mean, pay enough at home and everything. So, what you could do just to just take the urgency down. If you wanted just an idea, go ahead and sell your home

and go rent somewhere for a year over close to them

and just know it's short term. And then, and then actually take your time. He said, we're not going to move twice. I don't know. Yeah, okay.

Well, then you guys just need to have a little bit of patience because you know what you want. There are houses. I'm sure for what you're looking for in that area. And actually, in the Midwest area,

the average list price is 309,000, $300 right now. So, you guys are, yeah, right where you are, which is perfect. So there should be some good options.

And maybe it's a little bit of a different neighborhood than you were thinking originally or 10 minutes one way than what you want it or I don't know. But Grand Rapids, I promise you there will be homes that you're going to be able to buy.

But I would. I need you to be a better mom. Do I? So, may you be a better mom too, thinking? Well, just from a real estate perspective,

things are moving more. They move more spring and summer, real estate wise. Yeah, just overall. So, I would say, keep your eyes open. And so, I would just say patience.

I think you guys, you're in a good spot. You're fine. Just stay within your budget. Offer what you can. And if the deal doesn't happen, move on to the next.

There's no perfect tone. But you're, you're fun, though. I, I appreciate you guys. So, so good. All right.

Let's head to Heidi in Knoxville, Tennessee. Hi, Heidi. Welcome to the show. Hey, guys. Hope you're having a fun show today.

Yes, we are. Thanks for calling in. How can we help? Hey, you. So, I'm hoping you can help me.

Settle a dispute between me and my 19-year-old son. Oh, we love a debate. So, we, uh, we had recently mentioned to him about possibly getting a credit card. Now, he's an adult. And he's been around for a while.

And he said, no, I don't want any part of that. And so, we started kind of having a fun spar back in four things. Like, guys, you use a credit card.

“You should get rid of your credit card, too.”

Hello, Larry. Smart guy. Hello, Larry. I love it. So, what do you want us to say?

You want us to tell him that you're right? No. Thank you. Tell him to call you guys because I was like, look, we pay off every month. We have a budget that we follow.

If there's not enough money for something, we don't spend it. I don't understand what the big deal is. And I've listened to the show for a couple weeks now. Trying to figure it out. Mm-hmm.

And I must be missing something. What do you need? Why do you think you need one? Or why does he need one? Because you just advised him to get one.

I think it was mainly because I just thought, well, in case something happens, he doesn't have a lot of money. We don't want to have to spot the money. What if he did save up an emergency fund? Would you feel differently?

Yeah. If I knew you had that in place, that would be fine. I was more just confused when he thought that we shouldn't have one, even though we don't use it per se as a credit card. Do you have an emergency fund?

Yes. How much? How many months of expenses? We have three months of expenses in the emergency fund and then another two and a half months just in our regular savings account.

So it's fair to say that if emergencies came,

you would have the money to cash flow it. Yes, that's true. So, I mean, yeah, so credit card, honestly, Heidi, the way we look at it is, not only is there data to back up that you end up spending up to 13% more when you're using someone else's money.

“And that's what you're doing, even though you quote unquote pay it off every month.”

But subconsciously, you don't realize it, but you are spending more. If you were just spending your money with the debit card, I guarantee you would be spending less. So not only that, but also what we find over and over again is life happens. And when a credit card is your backup plan,

you fall right into the cycle that they suck you into of credit card debt.

People call in or show all the time. And they got $10,000, $15,000 in credit card debt. Well, we've been trying to pay it off. We try to pay it off every month. But then this happened and this happened, we have enough money.

And there they are at 23%, 26% interest. Catching your slack of not being diligent and saving up and actually you being your emergency fund.

“And so, and I know you said you guys have one, which is great.”

But when it comes to just the credit card industry, they have done a great job marketing the idea that you need a credit card. But when you spend your own money and there's no bank in your life and you have complete autonomy. Over your life and your money. And there's no bill.

You're not paying for the past somewhere. When you pay in the present, you use a debit card or cash. You move on with your life. And financially, there's a freedom there versus being tied to a credit card. Hey guys, healthcare is one of the biggest stress points in your budget.

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Right now, CHM is offering new members a 50% credit towards their first month of membership. Go to CHMministries.org/budget and use promo code Ramsey. That's CHMministries.org/budget and use promo code Ramsey. We'll come back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwins Credit Union Studio. I am a Rachel Cruz hosting this hour with my good friend, Ramsey Personality, Jade Worshal.

And we're hanging out, taking your calls, having a good time. So, if you have a question, call us at Triple 8-825-5225. All right, let's go to Christy in Baltimore, high-Christy. Welcome to the show. Hi, Rachel, hi, Jade, how are you doing?

We're doing great, how can we help? Okay, so we started with small business. My husband and I about one year ago. And it is a face business, I make candle. And obviously, we are in the red.

We filed our taxes for last year and we were in the red about $78,000. Oh, wow. Which of course comes out of our income. So, we've been having a little debate about whether we should, you know, part of this business, but I wanted to start with, you know, to give back to God and to our church.

So, even though we're in the red, I want to still give money to our church out of our revenue, not necessarily our profit. Okay.

“And so, and by giving money, do you mean, like, a tie for your family or you're doing this as a donation of what you make to go back to the church?”

That's part of your business model. Right, that's part of our business model because we do tie to our church already. Okay. I'll quickly base it. Be above that, becoming out of the business.

Do you guys able to absorb losing $78,000? Well, it's $7,000 to $8,000.

And I was going to say, "Christy, Christy, we kind of re-examined so far."

Oh, my gosh, that helps a little bit. Okay, that helps a little bit. Yeah.

“Well, can you, okay, then my question is, can you absorb?”

I mean, let's say it's 10, let's say you give the church 2,000. So, that means you're, if you're already in the whole 8,000, that would cause you to be in the whole 10,000 at that point. Can you all absorb $10,000 loss for a hobby that you love? I think we can. This is like another part of this piece.

I want to quit my job, not for the business, but to focus on our family. Okay. And, you know, be if they at home on, we have a 9-year-old. Yeah. And, really, the only debt we have is our home.

Okay. So, we, you know, we don't have any credit card debt. We own our cards or student loans are paid off. I've been on free on pay solutions since like 2007. Yeah.

That's awesome. Okay.

How much do you make a year in the job you have now?

Okay. So, my bring home is about $14,000, so I would be losing that. Mm-hmm. And my husband is like 95,000 bring home. Okay.

Perfect. Have you guys done a budget on the 95,000 that if that is your new household budget that you guys would be okay? Okay. Have you looked at the numbers? I have not.

Okay. Have you looked at the numbers? I have not. I'm going to our financial planner today. Oh, great.

Okay. Well, they may be really interested in questions too. Yeah. So, I want you to be comfortable.

I want you guys to do a mock budget.

And just say, 'cause there's two issues here. Candle business. Candle ministry. We're going to call it, 'cause it's-- Yeah.

You've lost money. Yeah. And then say it home, mom. Okay. So, say it home.

You've got a budget of what he brings home every month. And look at your realistic expenses and just say, 'Yeah, we can totally do this.' And you might be able to, Chris, you guys have no debt. You should be able to. So, I would-- Yeah.

I think so too. Yeah. Make sure you feel good about that. And then the-- Yeah. Yeah.

The giving on the Candle business. Yeah. It sounds like right now that's all the Candle business does is take whatever money there is and and donate it. Right?

'Cause there's no problem. A large-- Well, a large bunch of our money actually goes to our 4 and 3D. Our 4 or 1Ks, our IRAs, and our daughter's savings. So, we save a lot.

And we-- he wants to pay our house off in like 90 years. And we're already in it for six. Mm-hmm. So, I think technically, with our-- our cash, like that, our-- our resources, like we have our six month savings and with our daughters.

Like, we could pay it off next year. So, it then that would leave us with, like, nothing, right? No debt, but no emergency fund either. And it's like starting from scratch. But with no debt, my husband's working and me and not.

So, that's like, it's just this whole thing. Like, what-- it's a lot of possibilities we have. Well, I wouldn't use your emergency funds to do this. 'Cause you need that in case of an emergency. Right.

So, I would just-- I don't think any things on fire

“in terms of you feeling like you have to go out light speed to pay off the mortgage.”

Because you said-- Oh, you're welcome. Because you-- I mean, I'm like, if I stop working, we can do it in 15. Right? It doesn't have to be done in nine. Like, we could still manage to make that work and still be ahead of the game.

And you get me wrong this thing in his head. I'm right, and I'm right in the middle of YouTube. I like the idea of being very intentional about paying off the mortgage. And when I mean very intentional, I mean, maybe not letting it go 15 years, because the hope is that you can do it.

You know, in 11-- Yeah, not in 11. Right. But at the same point, I would not go to the extent of saying, we're going to drain all of our emergency funds and, you know, stop investing in the 401(k) and stop, I would not do that.

Because that's a drastic take that none of us here would ever suggest you to do. I think you do it as the baby steps teach it, which is during this season. You continue investing 15% and you continue with the kids' college funds. And you continue then on top of that, putting extra towards your mortgage as you have it.

And as the candle making this produces it, right? The ministry. Yeah, the ministry. And so, but don't unplug those other things to make this happen, because if the research you've done on the budget is true,

“you should be able to live on the 95,000.”

And that includes doing the things that we've said. That includes you continuing to invest, continuing to put aside for college and continuing to put extra on the mortgage. If you can't do those three things, then that means we need to re-evaluate the budget and figure out where that money is.

And if it's truly possible, like we thought it was. Right, okay.

you think like we could still, I mean, it might not look like $2000,

but even if it's like $500 or $1,000, I just want to give something. And I want to give above on the income that you actually make. Yeah. This is a hobby.

“So it's kind of, you have to look at it like,”

your husband plays golf and spends eight grand a year on golf. Right. I mean, that's kind of where it's at. So I feel like it would be bad accounting to continue to go in the red just for your good heart.

The mathematically doesn't really make sense, right? And we're all about generosity and all of it, but God also gave us reason and logic that we have to plug into plug our brains into and that's not wrong. So if you guys want to be more generous on your actual income

income that you are making to your household,

then absolutely, you guys can decide to do that. You may have to cut things in order to make that happen. But no, I think continuing to go in the red for something feels irresponsible to me. I agree with that.

Okay. But your heart is good. So I want, I want your heart. I want that to still be satisfied.

“Right, the giving part of it is still beautiful.”

Great, I would just look at it in a different bucket for it to make logical sense. Okay, yep, that makes that. Yeah. And logic is a gift from God too, you guys.

Remember that? Like sometimes we go generosity and we can go high emotion with all of it, which is good too. But also God's given us reason and logic. And that's a good thing to plug in.

And so from a logical perspective as we do math, yes, that doesn't make sense to continue to give. Well, so yeah, and I hope you would just stay home. Christine, you guys have put yourself in a position where you could make that decision, which is beautiful.

Like that's what we're talking about. You guys, to get your money under control, so you have choices and options in life. And when you look up and you're like, hey, I want to be home for a season.

“You get to 'cause you did the hard work of getting out of debt.”

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Hi, Jessica. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for letting me on. Yes, absolutely. How can we help? So I was a fairly new business. We've been talking about three years.

And unfortunately, had to get the big expense of replacing our entire roof. And then also had some other structural things along with that. The estimate that we were originally given was about $75,000 for all of that, which we saved over time. So it's not to take out any more loans.

We did in that time as they discovered more problems approved for an additional $14,000 on top of that. But then we just received the final total, and there was an additional $25,000 beyond all of that. That they had done without any documentation,

or consent, like I've never mentioned to us

that anything else was going to happen. And when I asked about it, they just said, "Well, little things added up over time." And so $25,000 is not a little thing. And obviously with us not taking that alone and doing this all out of cash

that is even harder to have all that set aside. They did offer to reduce that total by about $10,000, which would remain, or it would leave us with our remaining $15,000 overage beyond all of what we had approved. So my question is, do we just take that deal

and kind of count it as the cost of doing business

We didn't ask our permission.

“If you had asked, we wouldn't have given it”

because we don't have that money readily available. Is the work already done? I also don't want to be a jerk. The work's already done. That's a beautiful work.

And that's what makes it hard. I don't want to be that business owner that then ends up getting the bad name because I'm fighting on paying for the work that was done. But they didn't, without approval.

Yeah, no change orders or anything. No verbal discussion. Not a penny of that. Very bad. Yeah, very bad.

Because they are very recognizable. We chose them knowing that they were the most expensive because we had a lot of trust in them. And we really enjoyed all of our time until we got that final bill. And they just don't have a great explanation of everything that up.

And when you looked at the itemized bill, you saw the money go towards certain things that you know were implemented.

Basically, it all got over it all came in.

Some of the extra structural work. And there wasn't like broken down, you know, this much for such and such materials of it. It was just for this portion of the work. That's where the overage was.

But the guy said he looked over it thoroughly. And he doesn't think that they're any mistakes. And I don't think that it's a truck. Like I don't think that they're scamming us or anything. Right.

I think that they just. They just bad communication and they went ahead and started making decisions on your behalf without you choosing to. So, so yeah, just got I don't know if there's much you can. I don't think there's much you can do at this point. I.

I don't know what I was afraid of. I don't think so because the work is done. And unless you're going to say and unless you're going to make them go through and like itemize that and push on it and have the ability to. To speak into it from that viewpoint. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah. I think. But at the same point, I hate to tell you that because and to spend an extra 25,000 over what you thought because you said they're going to. You said first they added 14,000 and then they added in the 25 but then they refunded 10. So you're 29 over what you thought.

No, so. So. It was basically 40,000 over the original estimate is where we ended up. Okay. So we ended up with 14,000 of that we did approve that they actually talked to us and said, okay, this is the change we need to make.

We just like in the back it had to be full thickness for place. Okay. And so they talked about that we approved to go that extra 14,000 on the 75. So you're. But then the final bill.

Yes, but then the final bill was 114,000.

And so that that means like 25,000 of overage that we never talked about.

“But then they came back and they said, we'll give you 10 back, right?”

Yes, I said, 10 back. So that leads us with about 15,000 of the overage that wasn't approved. But I mean, we need to make it happen. We can continue like we cut our salaries back to try to do all of this in cash. And we can continue doing that.

I mean, I can tell you I can and Rachel, you're probably better suited for this. But any time I've done a project in my house, it's always been a little bit more than. Yeah, it's usually over budget overtime. I mean, that's how it always is. And so we always plan for that.

And maybe it. I mean, that's just the way it is now. That's like projects like renovations. But typically, if I'm having something. Service or replaced what they tell you it is usually is what it is.

Yeah. Yeah. We were just kind of shocked by. Yeah. And to the tune of 15, at this point, I feel like they were fair enough to say,

Okay, you approved the 14, and then they said, Oh, we're sorry. We comped the 10 back. There's part of me that I don't know if I would keep. I mean, you could push on it a little bit more, but I just don't know how much you're going to get out of this. Yeah, I mean, you could push us to say, Hey, this is the amount we've agreed upon.

We did not sign off on the change orders of. No, and again, they may have gotten it in the structural stuff at your point. They might be saving you, but they're like, no, we have to do this. And so it's just the it's the communication. The communication aspect of it.

That's really frustrating. Really, really frustrating. And you got a top of the line company and they, if they, you know, I know those kind of companies and they will get, they will have the best of the best of the best. And that's what you pay for. Yeah, that's right.

And you get what you pay for in a good way, but you also sometimes could be overpaying for something that you probably could have gone maybe middle the road and been it's fine. Yeah. But that's hard. So yeah, just got me sorry.

“Um, the teaching, I guess, would be when you do things like this really, you have to be on the team person.”

Yes, and you have to be on that communication with them. So yeah, just got what you had a better answer for you, but oh, I'm sorry. All right, let's go to Hunter and Sioux Falls. Hi Hunter. Welcome to the show.

Yes. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. How can we help? Yes.

So I am just starting to death snowball my wife and I.

But he recommended that I amend my W4.

So that my star, I'm out of breath. Um. So what are you doing over there? I'm not doing that work. And I was trying to say busy while waiting to come on the line.

Oh, no worries. No worries.

“So they said to adjust a gesture double W4 taxes to what?”

Um, because currently that have maximum deduction taken out and we do receive about a $68,000 in your tax return. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I sure it amended so that it's a lot less so I get more money.

We feed to the source of that. Correct. I would agree with him. Yes. Okay.

And I know the tax form changed in 2020.

Uh-huh. How do I go about doing that? It's actually easier than ever. There's really there's literally a line item on there where you can. Change the amount of withholding.

You can just write it in. And so what you can do is think about if not much has changed on your taxes. You can say, okay, um, what was my typical tax return or tax refund? And then you can go through and divide it by 12. And that's a really good way to get an estimate of what that is monthly.

And just adjust it up or down in the lines. I mean, I'd have to pull it up on on my computer. But the line item is literally on there for you to change it. And put in the withholding that you'd like it to be. Yeah.

So you can change it from what it was to what you'd now like it to be.

I mean, you could get close to $600 back on to month each a month, which is amazing.

“And by the way, that's what we would tell anybody to do is getting a large refund,”

especially if you're on baby step two. That money. I mean, we say it on here all the time. Rachel, your income is your biggest wealth building tool. You need your income, especially if you had the target of trying to pay off debt.

If you're trying to save money quickly as much money that you can have. You can have in your pocket at your disposal to throw at that target. Gosh, yes, get your hands on that money. Yep. So we are with your financial advisor Hunter.

So yeah, go in and do that. And we actually have a great blog on Ramsey Solutions.com all about taxes and adjustments and withholdings. All of that to get this right. So we'll put it in the show notes for all you guys watching on YouTube and listening on podcasts. But yeah, Jade, that's one of our when you're starting baby step two when you're starting to pay off your debt.

There's a couple of go-to's that we've learned over the years to check insurance. Check your insurance rates. You could be spending more than you need to seeing it some cash back. Be looking at your expenses and what's your spending every month. And one of them is your taxes.

You know, put money back in your pocket. So it's not sitting over in Washington all year. And then you get a $8,000 check that you can use. You could be using that to get ahead financially. So yeah, Hunter make those adjustments.

And yeah, get as close to zero as you can. And yeah, and taxis and doesn't have to be a big pendulum swing one way or the other. Dave, we got a lot of calls on this show where life happens one day someone's healthy. They're working, providing for their family, and then a curve ball hits. You know, we hear it all the time.

A car accident, a cancer diagnosis, a heart attack, and suddenly everything changes.

“Yeah, and that's why you've always said that having term life insurance from Zander is essential.”

Because it protects your family if the worst happens. Yeah, that's right. You need 10 to 12 times your income in coverage, no gimmicks, no whole life junk. Just straightforward term life protection. But there's another piece that people often overlook and that's long term disability insurance.

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Hi, John, welcome to the show. Hi there, how are you? I have a, I'm in a situation where last summer I received 175,000 just to lump some. This summer I'll be receiving another 183,500 dollars. And the next year from January on to the 12 month period, I'll get paid 130 grand over that 12 month period.

So it's just curious, I've spent about 75 to 80 grand between taxes and other expenses from that payment I got last summer.

So I had two main questions and the first one was, you know, how to invest some of the money that I have right now.

I already have 40 grand in the 401(k) and have money going into a Roth IRA in a life insurance policy.

“And I, like I said, the question I had was, how could I invest that money and also would I be able to comfortably exceedably afford a $50,000 vehicle?”

Wow, where's all this money coming from, John? Is it work or is it a, like a trust or something? Oh, wow, so it'll keep coming, you'll keep earning like this. Um, honestly, I should have mentioned that, it will go down, it won't be as much. I won't be, it will probably level out to be anywhere from 70 to 100,000 per year on average after this pay, after this pay, after this pay.

No, do you do anything else to earn money or it's just that? I do not, you know, with the money I have for receiving, I thought about maybe a business or a house or just, you know, brainstorming things.

Yeah, okay, so I added up the numbers you gave and if my math is correct, I could be off, but it's close to half a million, 488,000.

How much of that went to taxes and like what's left of everything? Like, I know you have a payment coming next year, you said.

“Yeah, I've only received so far the 175,000 last year. Okay, I believe I've spent about 75 to 80,000 between expenses and tax.”

Okay, so you have about 100,000. Well, I should mention I have 40 grand into a slower one case, so that's not necessarily liquid. Okay, don't you want about just your month to month expenses, like just your eating and your rent and how are you paying for that? That's through the through these payments. Okay. Okay. Now, and that's my monthly, it totals up to be about 2,000 to 2,500. And then the other thing I wanted to mention was, I do want to like give some to charity and you know, ties.

So that will be like about around 10% of all of this will go towards charity.

Okay, so, then I thought, I mean, I would do this like any other budget. I would sit down and I would, because you're getting this every single year. So for this year, you made 175,000, because you get hurt or something and that you won't get the 183 next year or is it guaranteed? So that 183 and a half will be actually like beginning of June this year and that's guaranteed. Also the next payment, the one in January, the 130,000 across 12 months that I will start receiving a January is guaranteed. And I could, it will be up to this question, but I could potentially even start receiving more money next year.

Okay. And then even after that, we'll likely, it'll definitely.

“Gotcha, because I, the thing with payments and I feel like this would be the same if someone isn't sales, right?”

And they have a massive $200,000 commission coming in. Not to get ahead of herself and making sure that you actually have them, don't spend the money before it comes, right? So don't go out and buy a bunch of stuff and then wait for that money to hit. So you want to be cash flowing at well. So when Jade said, yes, setting up like a regular budget is exactly right. So you'll just know ahead of time okay in June, this big payment is coming in.

So I need to know what I want to do with this. So yes, to answer your question, yes, you can totally afford a $50,000 car. Yeah. What about, how are taxes being taken out? Are you responsible for that or are they doing that? Because I don't want you to get hit with a massive tax bill.

Well, you said, you're spending all this. Yeah, because you said you paid 75,000 in taxes already, right? Well, that was, no, I didn't. I paid, I paid $20,000 on front taxes. And we have we filed for a tax extension this year. So I just paid that up front, but I hired like a financial advisor and he has a CPA that helps me with taxes and things like that.

So I pretty much paid it and to follow my taxes. Okay, so just overseeing that, making sure that's done properly. And then yeah, I'd go through and I'd budget it out and I try to make this feel a little bit more normal. Instead of feeling like, I've got this, you know, when followed money and I can just do a bunch of stuff with it. I take it and I'd say, okay, if I'm not going to get money for the next 12 months,

what is that every month? Is it around 15 or 16,000? And then plan it out like a normal budget, whatever your rent or mortgages, whatever you're going to pay for. And then you can budget amounts every month.

So you feel the normal see of that and the kind of like the nature of how that feels month to month versus kind of trying to make every decision. And one feels swoop, yes, yes, that makes sense.

“Yeah, I think you can't, I think you can afford the $50,000 car.”

But there's part of me, how long have you been earning like this? How long has it been going on?

This has been so last summer was like the first big payment I received like that.

Like I said, I'll get one and about four or five weeks and that's the beginning of June here. And then it will be and then like I said, the next engineer else are receiving that, but it'll kind of level out from there to like more like a normal salary of. Okay. So if you take the $50,000 out of the 183, then yeah, you're just taking the 130 and you're budgeting your 12 months based off of that. And I would do it that way.

There's part of me that would love. How old are you? There's part, I'm just going to say this and you don't have to do this. This is just me being your buddy. There's part of me that I would take this money now and budget it that way and I would save up. I would teach myself to save up the 50,000 out of your budgeted money every single month and start exercising that muscle of delayed gratification. Because there's something to that at a young age and especially when you're receiving money and big clumps like this.

Resisting the urge to dump it all on big purchases right away. Does that make sense? I'm very like, that's one reason I'm calling is I'm pretty conscious about. I don't really buy luxury items for myself. This is kind of like the first thing I've been prompted to like really buy like for myself. So to speak, that's like a luxury item.

But my question on that is like how would you go about kind of saving on the money I'm receiving? Is there like a way that are you talking about investing in stocks or like having a good question? So we'll set you up with every dollar, which is the budgeting tool that we use. It's more than just a budget and it's going to not only help you manage the money, but it's going to teach you our way of thinking and our guided plan here at Ramsey, which is the baby steps.

So here we focus on doing a couple of things really well, but doing them in order and focusing on one at a time. So you can actually achieve it. So your person, it doesn't sound like you have any debt, right?

So that jumps you automatically to what we call baby step three, which is making sure you always have.

In your case, I'd have six months of expenses. We say three to six months. That's just parked in a high yield savings account. It's not invested. High yield savings account.

“It's liquid if you need to get to it, but it's also set aside from your normal spending money.”

And then from there, you do baby step four, which is your investing. 15% of your gross, which you've already started that John. So well done. So yeah, just make sure it's 15%. Yep.

And then no more, no less at this point.

And then if you wanted to, your young guy, you don't have children in it.

So you can skip baby step five for now. But then baby step six is if you have a house, you're thinking about paying off the house. Or if you haven't, you can start putting a down payment for a house. That sort of thing. And then after that, after you've paid off your house, then you can start investing more.

But that's kind of our guided plan on how we think about moving through building wealth and making progress with your money. Sounds like you're doing a lot of those things. You just need it's like the tune up of it. Yep. That's right.

Yep. So yeah. And then you had the giving aspect to throw in there too.

“And I think that that'll be an every dollar.”

And I would tell you, John, that when you give out of this, I probably would recommend having two or three places you give to. Because sometimes if it's one big donation, especially if it's a smaller nonprofit or something, and you end up being the one proper amount for a while. Because this is not money that's going to be continual throughout the rest of your life. You know what I mean?

Like, just be wise about the giving. But yeah, I think you can do it all. So you just give a couple of different companies and what was the reason for that? I would because if you give this, if you give 18, 20, 30,000 to one, that's a huge windfall in them. And if they expect any level of that going forward, you don't want to be the largest donation, right?

So just something to think about because it's just going to be a lot of money at once. So yeah, so John, absolutely. I think you can be giving. Invest 15% of your income. You can go enjoy some of it.

And I think you can't afford that car if you want it. And then be thinking about real estate too. And putting a big down payment on a home. I think of those buckets. It's a lot of buckets, but I think you can fill them over the next 12 months with all the work you've done.

[ Music ] [ Music ]

And with all the clickbait headlines out there and conflicting data, it's really hard to know what's actually happening in the housing market. And so we're here to make the latest trends easy to understand. So last month, the average 15 year fixed rate mortgage rate ticked up a bit to 5.56%. But it's still under 6% people, so we're happy about that. Now, if you are financially ready, a small rate increase like that should not hold you back.

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“So if you want to learn more about the housing market trends and get free tools to help you when you buy or sell your home.”

And to do it with confidence, go to ramsysolutions.com/market or you can click the link in the show notes. If you're listening on podcasts or watching on YouTube. All right. Let's head to is it? Is it yet in Buffalo?

Did I pronounce that correct? Yes, I am. I am sorry. Yes. Well, thank you for calling.

How can we help? So I have a question.

I am about to run into about maybe $2 million a month long.

What I have that money name to it. I give away my money, I spend my money. I am currently right now living in poverty. I am on nurse in my town. So I have tons of money.

I go and buy high in cars. I bought houses. So houses give houses away. Diamonds. I passed out my 401k.

About a couple years ago. But I'm here. What's going on? I made really, really two financial decisions. I've been chapter seven.

Bankrupt 30 times. Oh. How old are you? Two. 44.

Okay. And you're ready to break that cycle? You know what exists. Yes. You're ready to buy this cycle.

And I am extremely fearful.

“Like when I get this money, do I like go and pay cash for another house?”

Like do I finance the house? I didn't know what to do. And I don't want to follow my own path. Yeah. I'm thinking going out of town when people don't even know.

Do you know, have you identified the source of what that's coming from? Yeah. Have you identified what causes you to? Because it sounds like you're a bit of a rescuer. It sounds like you come to people's rescue.

Don't, you know. You're in a, it sounds like you're a bit of an enabler. Have you identified why that is? Yes. And where that comes from?

I've always been into shopping and thing.

My grandmother was very welcome. So we shopped. We did well. My brother was murdered in 2013. And I started to pet my life emotionally.

With materialistic things. But I couldn't feel the void. So it just took me in the overdrive. So like we talking about me waking up at six o'clock in the morning and catching the fight to sex. It's just to eat just to come back home.

Yeah. Like have you seen things that you won't even, you couldn't even think of? Have you figured out how to remedy that in a, in a healthier way or how to kind of peel through that? When I have a grandson now, so he's, I think that he'll do. I think I've, I've not healed the homicide, but I've navigated through it.

So now I'm not, I've ditched you to go and spend money. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I'm hurt now.

So all of this great lifestyle went down the drain. Yeah. I can't work right now because I'm hurt. Yeah.

This is where this, this is where this $2 million is going to come from.

How long are you, how long are you unable to work? Like, what's the status of that? So I've been out of work already for about 18 months. Oh, man. And a two million did you get hurt on the job?

And you're getting a stomach. I did not get hurt on the job. I had a fall, but I am getting a settlement. Okay. Well, about almost $2 million.

Yeah. So I need to refund my 401k. I need to buy another property. I need to buy a car. Like, I need things to do.

But I also want to open up a business. I want to open up a home care business. Let's pause. Let's pause. Because you're, you're already starting to go back into that mindset, which is the moment

I have money, I got to spend it on something. And that's not true. So I want to open up the conversation with a really basic principle that we teach here. And we, it's so basic that we teach at kids, which is when you have money, there's three things you do with it.

“You give some, you save some, and you spend some, and you have to do all three.”

And you have to do them in the correct proportions. And if you can walk away with that, little piece, and filter everything through that. That's going to help you because you've got to save some.

So those three things. And then the second part, which I'll call it the second part.

It's, it's probably the most important thing that needs to underpin all of this, which is you've got to decide, and I don't know what your relationship with debt has been.

But you've got to decide no matter what I don't borrow money. Okay. At all, I ever have done. Not for business, not for other people, not for cards. We don't borrow money.

I, yes, say it. I don't borrow money. I don't borrow money. >> Keep that so close to your heart. Keep that so close to your heart, okay?

>> Yeah. >> Because this $2 million can change your life. This will set you up for a life without financial stress that you've been in. You know what you mean in these cycles. And so we'll tell you kind of what we would do. But first I would also say, so Jade's big point.

Did you hear, give, save, spend, no debt?

“>> I'm going to tell you, you need to find someone.”

I don't know if it's someone a good friend, a family member or someone in your church. But someone who is good with money. Someone who has built some wealth slowly over time. And you look at them and they're the kind of person that you're like, I trust them. How they live their life in the way they view money, but they've done well.

I need, I want them in my life. I'm not kidding. Before you make any big purchase, I want you to call that person before you do anything. >> Do anybody come to mind? Did anyone come to mind when she said that?

>> Yeah, cool people. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> And they need to know everything. I mean, I'm serious, the deep, I hate the word accountability because it feels so like, I'm going to tell you, yes or no.

>> I don't know. >> It's like a friend. >> A true friend. >> A true friend who can be your financial friend who's going to know all the numbers. They you need someone in your life that is with you in this.

And not because you're not capable of doing it out your own. I think you can build that muscle and you can.

But for anyone out there who's single and doing this stuff in a special, if you're coming in to $2 million, and you're so self-ful.

Where enough to know, like, I'm not created this, have someone who's good to bounce ideas off of. >> Okay. >> So, those are important. Now, what are we going to do with this $2 million? Let's talk real quick.

What is your car situation? You throw about about a car. What are you currently driving and do you have debt on it? >> I'm not driving anything at the moment. I can't drive.

I can't drive. >> You can't drive. >> I have to have surgeries. >> Oh, because of your health. >> Okay.

How soon do you think it'll be until a car becomes part of your life again, in driving the concert. >> Oh, eight or nine months. Maybe about eight months. >> Okay.

Let's just hold off on that. What about other debt? Do you have debt that needs to be paid off? Do you have any debt? >> Absolutely.

>> Tell us. >> Tell us all of it. >> Probably about a $2,000, $2,000, $2,000 credit cards that I need to pay off. You know, just capital ones discovered that everything is high limit, $20,000, $10,000. >> Yes.

>> And everything was maxed out. >> Okay, so how many, if you had to calculate how much debt you have in credit cards, what's the total? >> Right now, about $73,000. >> Okay.

So we're going to cut those up tonight. Are you okay? We're done with credit cards, okay? Because, yeah, as a person that doesn't borrow money, we don't go into debt, right? That's right.

So that is no credit cards. Cut 'em up. >> Okay. >> Get your debit card out.

“That's what you're going to spend money on.”

And debit card. No, more credit cards. They've been horrible to you. You see what it's done? >> We're terrible for you.

>> Yes. >> Not a blessing. Not a blessing, okay? >> No. What about the 401k?

Was it a 401k loan? Or did you just take the early with your, like, what did you do? >> No, I did it early with your, I ran it to, like, a little help. It should be. >> Okay.

>> So I was able to cash it out. Not so many penalties. And I lived off of it for a little while. >> Okay. So that's not bad.

>> But after that, I had my accident. Now I've been out ever since. >> Tell us more debt. Is there more? Besides the 73,000?

>> No. >> What's your housing situation? >> I'm in somewhere where I don't love. So I'm absolutely. >> Will you own a home?

Do you own a home? >> No. >> You're renting. >> Okay. We're going to take some of this money.

And we're going to buy a modest, modest, not a $2 million.

Not a $2 million home. A modest home. Yeah, to get us started in an area that we like. Okay.

“So those would be some big purchases that you need to go over those numbers with a friend.”

Please have someone in your life that's walking through this with you. And cut up the credit cards tonight. Let that be one of the posts in the ground for you. [MUSIC] >> Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio.

I'm Rachel Cruz hosting this hour with Jade Warsaw. And we are taking your questions.

Let's go to Maria and Lafayette. Hi, Maria. Welcome to the show. >> Hi. >> Hi.

Welcome. How can we help today? >> So I'm calling because I inherited a decent amount of property from my great Korean mother.

First, my grandfather passed in 2014.

So it went to me, my two siblings, my uncle, and my biological father. >> Wow. >> But especially in five people. >> Yeah. >> That's so cool.

>> Which is, I am, everybody's telling me, I need to take this to court and fight for ownership over certain people's pieces. Because some people intentionally damage the property to lower property value. To try to make it easier to buy me out. Some people stolen from the estate.

And a total that's up to like $80,000.

“Everybody's like you need to take them to court and get their portions.”

That way you'll own most of it. >> What's an old word? >> And it sells. You can get a fair price. Well, here's the thing.

They got it appraised.

And with all the damage they did to the home.

It appraised for $40,000. But it's a great home. And good condition on 20 acres of property with a tractor shed upon two livestock barns, all since then field. >> And all of that together is worth $40,000.

>> And a bridge going over it. >> Are you saying all that together or just the home on the properties worth $40,000? >> All of that. >> They want all of that for $40,000. >> Who's they?

>> My uncle that is currently living in the home. >> No, no, no, no, I'm saying market value. Like if you appraised, if you took it to a buyer. >> He got it appraised. The house with the three acres that immediately around it is $40,000.

Because they damaged the home so much. And they all smoke mess. So the higher house needs to be gutted. >> Yeah. >> Because there's vapor gas on the wall.

>> That's not a good spot. >> And they're also very aggressive towards me because their mother. When she passed, she left me everything because she's been in the contact with them because it drugs, theft, everything else. So I got everything from her.

So they're already very aggressive. >> Yes, thank you for sure. >> How much does this matter to you? >> This $40,000 shack, a mith shack. >> You know.

>> Here's my thing for you.

>> Me and my husband are in critical debt.

So I'm trying to wonder if it's worth it to fight to get a fair price to try to get a set of debt so we can move on with our lives. >> How much debt did you say? >> In total, without our mortgage, we're about with my student loans. >> All of it except the house is what I want to know. >> All of it except the house is probably like 36,000.

>> Okay. And how much do you guys make a year? >> We make a ride about 120K a year. >> Okay.

“>> And how much you said that his mom left you everything?”

Is she passed away? Did you get an inheritance then too or not yet? She's just going to leave you. >> She's passed. She didn't leave me any money, but she left me farmland.

That's in the 99 year lease. I inherited that lease. >> I still value the people who are with it. >> Okay. >> That's just pass it.

>> Okay. >> Okay. >> But also they're at right now. None of them are paying the taxes. So I'm having the pay all the taxes on everything.

So I don't get leans against me. And since there's a whole legal process to evict them to even try to sell on the market. They don't want to do that. But I have to make a pause in either way. It's a hard decision.

I'm just trying to decide how hard it should be. What's the process if you say if you said to a judge, I want no parts of this. And take me off.

“What needs to have you checked into that?”

>> I have. And just walk away from it for zero dollars. I could just sign it over to one. >> And I almost would. >> Well, Maria, listen, if it's 40, because I bet the house you're right.

They're going to have to gut it or it's going to be done. I mean, yeah. >> But it's also another 28 groups of leans. >> How much is that worth? >> What worth?

>> Have you appraised that? >> The 20 acre that it's on? >> Yeah. >> Like I was told by the appraiser. She didn't do an official praising of that.

But she said for all of the property. It'd be close to $120,000 just because of location and everything. Not including the house. >> Okay. >> And there's.

So each of you, when it's all said and done, it just in a perfect world. And so that sold it. And you guys cashed out five ways.

>> Yeah. >> Okay.

So the question is, from a, from a, and they, they don't have the money to buy you out.

They don't have 30 grand. >> No. >> No. >> And are they the ones? Are they the ones since I think 2014?

>> The other four are they all kind of off the rails, all four of them. >> Yeah. Like the uncle stays on drugs. >> Okay. >> Who's the executor?

>> Who's the executor? >> Who's the executor? >> The executor was a family friend who assumed if this was done and liked everything. So the session is done. He wants nothing to do.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> He won't even answer.

Because he was like all of y'all are nuts.

And I'm not dealing with that. That answers my question, which is you're in this with a bunch of just like derelics, right?

“And you have to decide how much, like there's, there's mental energy and just,”

there's a lot of personal toll in emotional toll of this that you have to decide if you want to engage. >> And if you went to litigation route, how much will attorneys be in all that? That will cut into your 30. >> You're ready to be like, yes. >> Yes. So you guys just think through from a, from exactly what Jade saying, from a mental investment standpoint and emotional.

Anna Financial, at the very end of it all, what's worth it? And I wish a judge could step in and have you gone that route at all? Have you, have you looked into any legal proceedings? >> I have legal proceedings, like. >> Oh, yeah.

I sat down with a lawyer and I talked with a judge that she knows.

And my options are sign over and walk away. And then send them all the notice to say, hey, you owe me $700 in property taxes because in this state, when you owe property taxes, one person gets a notice and they're expected to inform the other people. >> Okay. >> He did, so you could do that.

>> Or, okay. So I didn't get along. >> What was option is that I could walk away and just try to get what I spent in property taxes since I covered all their share. >> Okay. What's option B?

“I can file what's called, I forget exactly what's called, but it's basically a motion where you have to make a choice.”

By me out, or we sell, and this is done. >> Yes. >> I made it. >> Just do that. >> Yeah.

Push forward on that one and just see what happens. >> That one is expensive because they have no expenses. >> How expensive would argue it would be? >> Well, they have no money. They can't argue it, they can't hire lawyers.

They don't have any money. They can argue with you personally, but they can't do anything legally. How much does it cost to do that right quick? >> I was told to be prepared to drop at least $5,000 outright, and then if they argue it possibly more from there. >> Okay.

Well, do you, yeah. If you have five grand available, which you guys are in debt, you may not. I don't know. >> I don't know, Jade. >> Pardon me, we just walk away.

>> I think I might walk away. I don't know when to hold them and when to fold them. And when to walk away. >> Hey, guys, George Campbell here.

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[ Music ] >> Today's Ramsey's show question of the day is brought to you by Why ReFi. If you've lost control of your private student student loan payments, your financial progress has stalled out. But why ReFi helps borrow or explore refinancing options with payments built around their real life situations? So to learn more at WhyReFi.com/Ramsi, make sure to go is the letter WhyR-E-F-Y.com/Ramsi, may not be available in all states.

Okay, today's question comes from Natalie in Georgia. She says, I'm currently on Baby Step 6 and earn over 100,000 per year.

I live with my partner in a home that he owns, and we have no plans to get married. I pay him $2,500 a month, which is significantly less than what I would pay living on my own. Keep all of our finances completely separate. I don't want to buy a home.

“So what would you recommend I do instead to continue building wealth in long-term security?”

I want to make sure I'm following the spirit of the Baby Steps while also being realistic about my situation. Okay, so just to recap, she makes a good income. She's investing for herself. All of our money is separate from the living boyfriend, but it's his house. So Rachel, there's a lot to unpack here.

I'm first going to answer this question based on her way of living.

Okay, which is, if I were you, you're not married to this guy. This is his house. Your money is totally separate. Then yes, I would just keep investing and building wealth. There is no essentially, you'd be on Baby Step 7, so you'd be investing well beyond 15%. And continuing to build your wealth for yourself without his input or name attached to any of it, right? Absolutely.

And yes, yep, I would do that, and then I probably, I don't know, I just thought of this as you were talking to you. My fear is because you're not married. There's no legal time, right? Like even, even if your name obviously wasn't on the home, but you guys were married and you split. It was a marital property. So you would get some level of equity. You're getting nothing right now.

And if he decides to walk away in four months, you don't, from a housing perspective, you've built nothing on that side of the equation. So unless you made some sort of a document that you both signed and make some sort of a agreement that could hold up in court.

“Yeah, that if they break up, they have to sell the home and like, yeah, there could be that, right?”

There is their documents for depending on the state. So I would honestly, I would probably, my only, yeah, you're doing good with everything else. My fear is the housing element of this for you. So either, yes, you need a formal, that's right, a formal document that will hold up in court to say, If this long-term relationship, what do they call it? It's mere, it's, there's a term for it.

Yeah, I'm going to open up one. Um, that if, yeah, if we, if we separate, if we break up, still like what we've been building together actually can be seen as a common law marriage type thing. Um, that's the possibility and/or if that's not going to work in your state specifically in Georgia. Then maybe on the side, you're just putting a money away. Um, and it earmarked for the future and earmarked as a possible down payment on a home.

If you guys break up, so you can get, you can be in a good position from a real estate perspective. Um, long term. Yeah.

“So, uh, that would be the only thing I'm concerned about in this, the biggest risk you have is from a real estate perspective that you're just paying rents.”

You're building no kind of equity. Absolutely, uh, in, in your life. It's called a co-habitation agreement and, and that's what you can do. But the bigger part of this and this is worth saying, but home ownership is such a big part of wealth building. Yep. And if you don't have that co-habitation agreement, then you're portion of that wealth building effort goes away.

And if then if I were her, I would be looking for other ways to diversify my investing. Um, to be able to do it if you need it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, but now let's talk about this from a from a jade and Rachel perspective, which I think we should. And this is not anything on judgment.

This is just. Yeah, this show and it wasn't worth a host. I question the commitment that's really here. Because if Sam Warshall, that's my husband. If Sam Warshall said to me, I love you, Jade. You are the love of my life.

However, I'm never going to marry you.

I don't want to marry you. And furthermore, I don't want my finances to even touch your finances. That that gives me cause for pause. I'm just going to say, and it causes me to go down into shut down mode. And more so I have many questions. Why, you don't trust me. Is there something about me? Did I do something?

Is there something about you? Yeah, that's right. That's right. Absolutely. I know. And that's part of the world today, Jade, that I'm like, I just kind of like do this. What's the dog where they learn to the side a little bit?

Yeah, because, uh, and not that everyone has to like get married and have kids by any journey to the imagination.

But when you are choosing to basically be married without the commitment, that's where I'm like, what's going on?

Yep, it's just what we want to do. Which question is that? Yes. Um, so yep, I'm with you, Jade. I think that's fair. That's the, that's the, that's the friend's talking. Yeah, friends. We were having a glass of wine. That's probably where it'd be like.

Gosh, Natalie. What's up with Jared? Jared kind of sucks. Why, why doesn't he want to get married to you?

Let's go to Memphis and we have a Brittany on the line.

Hi, Brittany. Welcome to the show. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. How can we help? So, my, my question. Um, I'm 47 years old and about six, two, two months ago, six weeks ago. I bought a new car. And then recently, I have decided I wanted to start my death snowball.

And now I'm like, what do I do with the car?

“Yes. Okay. How much, how much is it? How much did you borrow on?”

90. 90,000. I'm going to spit my coffee out. She almost chilled. Oh, my gosh. Alright. Yeah. How much do you make a year? Um, I'll make about 150. I'll bring him about 95, 100 a month.

How much is the car payment? 13, 100. Girlfriend. Let me tell you. Oh, gosh. Okay. I'm sure.

Have you looked at at all?

Um, selling it. Like, what could you get? It's a two month. You'll have some depreciation for sure. But if you turned around and did it. Yeah. What was up with that side down? Oh, got it. That's part of it.

But I think it was only about $5,000. And I just put money down. How much could you get out of it before? Um, I mean, this car now, how much would I end up probably owning after selling it? Yes. Yeah. So I would probably, I'm going to say, I haven't looked really in depth,

but I'm saying probably 15 to 20,000. What's I down? Yes. Okay. Well, um, I would still get out of it

because to your point, if you're walking the baby steps now, and you realize this is too much car for you, which it is. And obviously it's on debt. Um, I would definitely make that transaction. I just wonder though, do you have any cashling around to put towards this? Well, how about um, 15,000 in the bank?

Okay. Good. What other debt do you have? I'm not checking account. I have 46,000 dollars in student loans, and that's it. I don't have any credit card debt.

Okay. Perfect. Did you say 46,000 or 46,000? 46,000. 46,000. Okay.

She was the first run.

I wish she was the first one.

“Well, you may think that's what I would laugh at about because I wish it was.”

Yeah. You make good money. You have 15,000 in the bank, which is awesome. Um, so what I would do, yeah, I would throw a lot of that cash to, which is going to hurt. You're still going to have to take out a small loan. But I mean, I would, you know, I would look at, um,

Yeah, I mean, 5000 maybe you do a private sale. You might hit it right on the head. Yeah, you might. The 15,000. Yeah.

You may have to take out maybe a $10,000 loan from a credit union to get you like a six, $7,000 car and a little bit of the difference. Um, but yes, I would, because you'd have 10,000 then you have to pay off. Um, and I think you could, you could pay off 10 grand. If you put two, three grand at it, you could get this paid off

and three to four months that and you'd be done. After bills and everything, I had about $4,500 left over every year. All right. Okay. Good, Brittany.

Yes. Okay. So that's great. That's, that's what I would do. I would get out of this because that 1300, even over the course of Gosh, a couple of months is eaten into it. So I would, as quickly as you can, sell this car,

take a loan out for the difference and a little bit more to get you around and a five, six thousand dollar car. Um, yeah. And then you're paying six thousand a month on student loans. Yes.

You're not going to knock it off. So well done, Brittany. I'm sorry about the 90,000, but you can get rid of it. It's going to be painful. But you can do it.

When I talk to people on the Ramsey show 90% of the problems I hear come down to one thing, not having a plan. They're not living on a budget. They have no idea where their money is going. Money is just happening to them instead of them happening to their money.

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We wish we could get to every call on the show.

As we always leave the show with a couple people still on the board that we haven't been able to get to.

So if you have in my question, though, in your like listen, I may not want to call the show. Don't worry because we have a place for you to go. Go to our website and use Ask Ramsey. So Ask Ramsey is our free AI tool and it's been built and trained. It's what they call it, but you throw everything in this thing and it's shows over the past couple years.

All of our books articles everything in this and you can ask it very specific detailed questions. And it will give you an answer as if you would call the show. It will be a Ramsey approved answer and what to do and it's fantastic. I just saw some numbers in a meeting this morning about it and it's like going crazy. It's great because we want you all to figure out what to do with your money and if you need help, it's there for you.

So go to RamseySolutions.com or click the link in the description if you're listening on podcast or YouTube and check out Ask Ramsey. All right, let's go to Corey in Atlanta. Hi, Corey. Welcome to the show. Well, thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. How can we help?

So I am debating on buying a new house. My dilemma is I am almost in baby set seven. Let's go and work in towards for a long time. And I'm a little scared to take out a larger mortgage with this one's almost gone.

“Oh, man, how much more of a mortgage would you be taking out?”

So we are down to 27,000 wealth on our current house and the new mortgage would probably be 350 to 375. Oh gosh, yeah. And how much is your current house worth? About 550. Okay.

So you'd be looking at like an 800,000-ish $900,000. Yeah, 85, right? Yeah, what's the motivation to move is it just size or is it a different area of where you guys are in the city? Yeah, the primary motivation is to be closer to work for the last 23 years I've worked about an hour from where I live.

Wow. And I believe 25 minutes off of that concern to me. Yeah, well, yeah. How much do you make a year? We make about 300,000. Okay.

And how old are you guys? More 43. Yeah, I mean, if you, you know, if it's in the parameters, like this is just like the safest way. If it's in the parameters of what we talk about when it comes to mortgages at the payments, no more than 25% of your take from pay, you do it. And you know, 15 year fixed rates, and all of it.

It's still, it would still be a green light from a Ramsey perspective. It's so funny. I feel like this is one part.

“The second, the home upgrade, yeah, like if George was sitting in here, I think he'd be more good with it.”

Dave is still like, I'll never tell you to borrow money.

I even know more. But I, but yeah, and I think that you guys have enough of the motivation because you've been doing this that I think you would pay this off pretty quickly four to five years. I think you guys could get aggressive. And say, you know what, we're going to get rid of this. I don't think you're going to like having a mortgage.

And then you made so much progress on the helm now that if you got into it, you'd pull a John Deloni. Talks about this, he's like, he could say I could not sleep. Yeah, mortgage was paid off because they had a they got a small one when they came to Nashville. So I think that's going to be you guys. But if it's in the parameters, I'm okay with it.

Uh-huh. And I would say the same thing. If you hear any pause for me, it's only because you had pause. You're like, oh, we're so close. And I can, I feel that for you.

Like I feel the feeling of like, almost starting back a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if it's in your value system, then it's totally cool. And quality of life, all of that comes into planning. And you're not being, you're not being unreasonable or irresponsible at it all.

Yeah, every day when I'm driving home and I try to buy the location where the house would be. I see the GPS 825 minutes at the home. I'm like, I just want to do that. Do you have a bike? Oh, this is all this money.

That's right, right. That's a big fun. It's just, of the debating this for a year.

We finally found a house that actually like.

Oh, good. Everything that we want. So now it's like, all right, it's the road that we're doing this in Bob. Yep. Yep.

Yep.

“I think if it's in those parameters, which I think it would be for your income.”

Yeah, I think you guys, yeah, would be able to do it. Yeah. What are you, if you had to give yourself like a percentage? Like, what are your percentages? Are you like 80% I really want to do this house?

And it's just 30%, you know, it's just 20% that says no.

Hard to speak this one that we really liked. It was very low. We've looked at like 50 houses.

“And I've looked at how expensive they are.”

I'm not like, I would never move for this amount of money.

And then we found this house. I'll finally the first one that was like, oh, maybe. Again, we didn't move for this house, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

I would say it's really like 50 50 right now. What about your wife? She's more fine than I am, because the move will not change her. You did all. So she's like, if you really want to do it, we'll do it.

If you want to stay, we'll stay. She's very supportive of you anyway. Okay. How long have you been in the job for? About 20 years.

Oh, okay.

So you'll probably be there for a little bit longer.

Continue. Yeah. Continue there. Yeah. Um.

Yeah. I'd be okay with it. And again, I think you guys are going to be motivated to get rid of this. Um, too. And so, I mean, if you just said, what if we threw 100 grand at this?

You'd be dead in three years, which is insane. On an $800,000 house. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you're, you could get stupid on it. Yeah, I mean, for sure.

So you, you guys could, could really do it.

“I don't think you have to be that intense, but I'm just saying,”

your natural motivator, Corey, I think will be more intense than the average person, because you've kind of tasted this like level of freedom that you're getting. It's right there. It's right there. Um, but from the quality perspective of getting almost 40 minutes back,

each way, that's a lot. That's a lot, that's a lot of time that you get back. That's, and I will say it's worth calling out, like, there's few things that are, like, Trump money and time is one of them. Yes, yes.

Absolutely. Yeah, and I have a young daughter too. So yeah. Don't have too many years left. I'd like to get those years in much quality times possible.

For sure. Yeah. We'll take your, it sounds like you guys, the fact you've looked at 50 houses, makes me think that you guys have emotionally been there faster than what is reality is catching up to. So yeah, if it's a house you love and it's within the price range.

Yep. I would say go for it. All right. Let's go to Joshua in Illinois. Hi.

Welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Oh, yeah. So I have my fiance, love of my life that we're going to be getting married at the end of the year.

And she has about $60,000 in debt between student loan credit card and, you know, card loans. And myself, I have the money that I can just pay it off once we are officially married. But I'm just more want to know if it would be better for us to kind of like work it through like together as if it was the baby steps.

And it kind of be a first thing in our marriage versus me just kind of paying it off.

I mean, I definitely would want to have that conversation of what is our philosophy going to be around money.

“That's what I'm going to say is she is she committed to living a debt free life because you don't want to go and pay everything off.”

And then she goes right back in the old habits and you guys are on separate pages. Yeah. Now she's doing a great doing baby steps has every dollar like app. Right now in our current like situation she works in ministry and doesn't make much money but once we are married she'll be moving in like with me. And then like looking for other like work that works like she has like a master's degree in counseling.

So like once she should be doing that work and pay will significantly increase. How would you get married? Well, that's all right. When do you get married? In October of this year.

And how much of the debt does she have? How much does that will she bring in then? With what she's paying off now, I mean, it won't it won't make a huge debt probably still like you know 55 like 60,000. Okay, and how much money do you have cash wise that you're bringing into the marriage? So between my like investments and other counts about 300,000. Okay, is that or is some of that 300 tied up in retirement IRAs or 401ks?

We have about one, six, the other is kind of like 401ks and law family. Other ones in like a TOD brokerage account. Okay, great. Yeah, well, the yeah, the path to become wealthy, the fastest is being out of debt, staying out of debt, saving and investing. And the faster you guys can get on that plan together, I'm a green light. I just want to make sure your values are aware.

And it sounds like they are. I don't really, yeah, no red flag for me on it, especially if you're both wanting to tackle get out of debt. I'd say it's a gift that you've been so diligent, Joshua, and what a gift to start off your marriage step free.

Now, you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey.

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Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple, and free to use. Go to RamseySolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's RamseySolutions.com. Our scripture of the day comes from Psalm 145-8, the Lord is gracious and compassionate.

Slow to anger and rich and love. Clara Booth, Loose said, money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. Okay, Clara, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I agree.

You know, when we had this big discussion before we moved, we built a home and moved in 2019.

And I remember I had so many nights in our old kitchen, and so I was saying, I just can't wait to, I can't wait to be in our new house. You know, because the drawers would all be like this. And then like we had two babies at the time and food was on the floor and clean up the food. And when someone's like, "Baby, you know that like this exact situation is just going to be put in a different kitchen." Like there's so many food on the floor and all that.

And I was like, "The craziness continues." And I was like, "I know, but at least I'll have pretty cabinets."

“It's like, "I've got to get a look at, I believe. It doesn't change you."”

You go with you. Yes. You go with you. It doesn't make you happier, but yet it is a little more comfortable. You may like the cabinets a little bit more in the middle of the mess.

Oh, man. Alright, let's go to Merrill and Asheville. Hi, Merrill. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for taking my call. I have a pretty straightforward question.

I have an old 401k that one of my first employers created for me straight out of high school.

And when I went to college, it just kind of sat dormant and ended up closing. And now I can't contribute to it anymore. But we're going through some different financial struggles. I am now a state home mom, so I'm not contributing the same way. I do work part time, but it's not definitely not contributing as much as I used to be.

And we have a Roth IRA, which we could rule before when 401k over into. Or it is also the option of closing it, I guess. And using the money for, we have some major car repairs that just came up. So yeah, I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts are on what to do with the 401k. Or just leave it alone. It has a very good rate of return right now.

And it has been increasing. I just can't help it increase. Yeah, so I would roll it over just to a traditional IRA. You can just open it up.

“If you rolled it over into the Roth, I think that the tax implication will be there.”

So you have to watch out for that. And no, I would not cash it out early because you'll be hit with penalties in all of it. So I, yeah, just rolling it over to a traditional, and we would say for anyone who's leaving a job with a 401k, just roll it over to an IRA because. Yeah, so that's for anyone because you want to be able to have somewhat control over what's going on.

And it's not just sitting in the old plan of an old company that you're working at. Yeah, and in the reason behind not obviously not caching it in is it's still retirement money. So if you take it out early, you're going to be hit with the penalties on that. And the taxes obviously on that as well. So direct roll over. Yep, great question though.

Yep, that's one that a lot of people do have and and if you had the money to pay the taxes and you wanted to convert it to Roth, you could, but that's actually a baby step seven deal. Yeah, I was going to say, and you probably don't have that considering you say we have car repairs and all of it. So it's right. So that's yeah, thanks for calling me home. Let's go to Rebecca in Orlando, hi Rebecca. Welcome to the show. I appreciate you taking my call and for any assistance. So I have had some reason that bills. I'm now going to get a buy out see for my cat that's going to cost 2,500.

Twenty-one dollars and 15 cents. I've not had a working vehicle since December. So I started saving them. And I put aside four thousand eight hundred seventy seven dollars and forty two cents. But with my other monthly bills and per the rate that I'm earning per hour, I'm afraid I'm going to have to get into my car savings to pay for this medical expense from my cat. And, you know, I do need a working vehicle. So I'm trying to strategically and intelligently navigate how to go about not only getting a car, but paying for this, that they'll let any future expenses for my cat.

How have you been getting to work without the car?

How much you have saved for the car?

Four thousand? I saved four thousand eight hundred seventy seven cents.

“Do you have a goal? Do you have a goal you're trying to get to before you buy something?”

I'd like to get a Toyota or a Honda because they're reliable, so I would prefer to have saved that between me to ten thousand dollars. Okay, how quickly will you get to the eight to ten? Um, I had a goal of setting aside a thousand dollars per month, but it's been a bit tricky because I earned eighteen point fifty four dollars per hour, and then I get commissioned. What's that look like every month? What's it like?

What's it like? It varies. I work for a major telecommunications company and commission, you know. On an average month, what do you make? I've been making for commission under fifteen hundred, so my most recent check. I got a raffle and I got about two thousand two hundred and twenty dollars and thirty nine cents.

But I just mean on a typical, like a typical average month, what would you say if somebody just quickly said, hey, what do you make? What would you say? Fifteen hundred? Yeah, we'll go with that.

“I'm going to break some, and that's fifteen hundred a month, not a week, right?”

I'm paid by a week, so yes. Okay, so three thousand dollars a month. Yes? Yeah. Okay.

I don't think you have the money to spend twenty five hundred on your cats by option. And mathematically, it's just not there. You can't spend a month's earnings on your cat. I wish you could because I love animals and we do, we do that, you know. But yeah, this is not financially.

Because you don't have a car, yeah, and you've got a priority. It's a question of priority at that point.

“Do you fund the thing that causes you to be able to work, which causes you to be able to eat and pay your bills, which is your vehicle?”

Or do you see what I'm saying? And I'm not saying it's an easy decision to make by any means. I'm saying that it is a necessary one that every once in a while, we come to these points where we have to prioritize in order of absolute importance.

And that, and this is with anything, by the way, there is always going to be other things that compete to be the top dog, right?

No pun intended top cat. But the point is you've got to say, no, no, no, no, no. This is the number one thing. And number two is going to feel, it doesn't make number two feel any less important is what I'm saying. That's right, yeah. And I think what's, you know, and it's always funny what hosts skip which calls because George camel. Yeah, he probably would say the same thing.

Yes, but George would spend more on his pets than all of us could buy. He would. All of us combined. So yeah, if he was on here, he probably would have a little bit more. Yes, yeah, wax, whatever, but yeah, it is a, it's a, it's a hard decision, but we have to be wise. And this is where our emotions can easily trump our logic, right?

Right. And you could do that with a home purchase. People go into a home because like, oh, we love it. It's exactly what we want, but it's 50% of their income is not logical. And so we do have to be very, very thoughtful about what's going on. And yeah, and like you said, Jade, we, we love animals. And I would love for you to buy a car. And then say, hey, let me save up and cash flow this expense coming up.

Yeah, yeah, that could be reasonable too. So yeah, and maybe get a second opinion with the cat. Maybe there's something you can do or there's something that's, you know, we'll buy you some time. Yeah, but certainly, please don't go into debt about this. That's my number one thing that I want you to take away is don't hear Rachel and I say, we don't think it's wise for you to spend your cash on this and then please don't go and say, well, I'll put it on a payment plan or I'll put it on. Yeah, credit card. We don't want to do that.

And again, this is always an interesting discussion because we get all the people in the comments too.

They're not yet that we're not animal lovers and we are. We love we love animals. Well, we have a dog. We, I mean, yes, it's your, it is your, your livelihood on the line. Right, so we have, yes, that's where we have to plug in like we have to be smart about this. Like there is a point of our emotions and attachment. Yes, is overdrive like common sense, right, and some people spend tens of thousands of dollars. And the pet does not get better. And then they, you know, you mean like literally and you may or may not have the money for it.

So like, so there is we, we just have to be logical in this or back as so. And there is something to be said, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a poke this bear right quick right before the show is over. Love it. You have to be able to afford the pets that you have.

So if you're not in a season where you have a lot of margin, it may not be the season to have pets.

“I keep throwing George out, but George would say sell the horse, you know, he would.”

We have the money for to keep up with certain things. Yeah, there's a point which is sad, but they will always, they will always come back around.

Well, Jade, great show. Thanks to everyone in the booth.

And remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace. And that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace Christ Jesus.