Take The First Step Toward the Life You Want

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Start budgeting for free today. [MUSIC] >> Normal is broken, common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life from the name Ramsey Network in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio.

This is the Ramsey Show. And I'm Rachel Cruz hosting this hour with Dr. John Solony and we're answering your questions. So if it's a call at Triple 8, 825, 5, 225. And we're here to help you, but your life and your money.

All right, starting us off this hour, we have James in Toronto, Canada. Hi, James, welcome to the show. >> Hi, Rachel, how are you? >> Hi, we're doing great. How can we help?

>> Just a little bit, so I had a question for you guys.

I'm 26 and I'm proposing on Tuesday this coming week. Yeah, dude. >> Congratulations, James. Wait, wait, dude, be what? Good for you.

“I feel like we get so many calls to people when we're like, listen, are you going to get engaged?”

Are you going to get married? You're doing it, James, we're proud of you. >> Does she know it's coming? >> No, but yes, it's not a complete surprise. But yeah, so my question is, she comes from a quite well-to-do background.

And honestly, so do I, but we're going through a transition in the short future of being consumerist kids and moving into a more productive adult phase of life. And I've, in the last two years, started a business and been doing pretty well. And she once again accounts for a good financial background, but makes about 20,000 a year

and is living paycheck to paycheck from that end of things. So I'm more wondering how to be productive, as I know money can be a stressful issue for all people that alone brand new couples, and how do you productive and move towards a financial path together and successfully? >> Our her parents giving her money, James, and just curious how she's living off $20,000.

>> Absolutely, yeah, no, that's like the lifestyle budget. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> There's nothing productive of that.

“>> What's the terms you guys have talked about once you get married?”

The parents still going to be giving you guys money as a married couple, or are they cutting her off once she gets married? >> Great question. I actually haven't had that conversation. Her parents are very loving people.

I'm sure there will always be a little bit of a tap from there, but both of us are on the

same page about wanting our own financial future, not living off the backs of people before us. >> Yeah. >> I think just a break up. I'm talking.

>> I'm kidding, I was kidding. >> That's kidding. >> That's kidding. >> That's kidding. >> I'm not my advice.

>> No, I'm totally planning on.

“I think you have to, it's important for you to identify the thing beneath the thing for”

yourself, and it's important for you to communicate that and is compassionately and clearly as possible. And here's an example. It's easy to talk about how much money she does or doesn't make. It's easy to talk about how much money your parents send her every month, and it's easy

to, you're a very kind person. I can tell by how you talk about people when they're not in the room. And so the way you talk about her parents and your parents and her, that's all great. But beneath the thing, beneath the thing, beneath the thing is, if you're feeling, I want you and me to be responsible for our future.

And when you take money from your parents, sometimes it comes with strings or it comes with, and you're going to come to our house for this holiday, and I want us to decide what we want to do for holidays moving forward. So it's you getting beneath the money, beneath the differences, and be honest with yourself about what you want as you co-create this new world with her.

And then have that conversation, because otherwise it just becomes a fight about how much money they send, to spend, and how many hours are you working, and we don't need to do this. But the real issue is, I don't feel like we're, I feel like we have a partnership of three, me and you and your parents, or I feel like I'm one of the decision makers along with your dad still, right?

And so it's getting to that honest sense inside your chest and being honest and telling or about it. And I do think there's something really wise and pretty necessary, especially at the beginning of marriage, that you guys create your life, right? And from that's from a financial aspect, spiritual emotional, like, there is something true

about I'm leaving this family. I'm creating my own over here. And I would think James for you, you know, the sense of dignity to say, yes, this is our family, our nuclear family right here, me and her, and then maybe in the future kids. And here's how we choose to live life and how we make decisions with money, and creating

I think it's really important just to give you guys the structure and the self-control to say, yeah, we can create a life together, and we can have boundaries with money and limits with money versus it being endless. And there's something in that sacrifice and having to make those decisions of, okay, we have to either do this or this.

We don't get to do both. Like, I don't know, in all of that, in a relationship, like, to me, that's the foundation of building something. And then later on, like, we talk about on the show, changing your family tree, right? And that can look a million different ways for different people.

But I don't think there's, you know, if they want to step in at certain points and you guys agree, you know, that is okay, you know, I'm not completely like you, you can

never tap that system ever, ever, ever, ever.

But there's something especially at the beginning of you guys creating a baseline for yourselves. Yeah. I think it's going to be important. James, let me, let me play the devil's advocate here on the other side of this, okay?

You being honest with me and having this conversation, it probably very small, right, tiny. But let's say she looks at you and says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, my dad's, I'm always going to ask my dad, what's the best house we should buy? I'm always going to ask, I'm always going to my parents' house for Christmas. It's not a discussion.

“You need to know that before you propose, you need to know that before you get into a legally”

body. Or I'm not going to cut off my parents. I'm not going to cut them off. I'm not going to cut them off. Yeah.

They're going to pay part of our bills. You need to know that wide eye, too, and you get to choose, okay, I'm going to have a marriage

where at my kitchen table at our kitchen table, there's going to be always be two more seats

there with her mom and dad lobbying in their opinions and voices and choices in whatever. So there is an importance to having that conversation. It's not one side of it. You're going to say what you feel and what you want and she's going to say what she wants. And then y'all are going to reverse engineer, okay, what does that mean in practicality?

If mom and dad bomb us out of the blue with a big financial, here you go, we're just thinking about y'all. It's going to go in this account for future kids college. It's going to go in this account for a future home purchase or something, but it's y'all

“coming up with a game plan before the game starts, right?”

Okay. We just had a lot of monologue in James. Yes, talk about James. What do you think? I don't know.

That's wonderful. I'm all of this is so kind of in, for our side of things, I know all these things going into our future marriage, which is they're an Italian family.

We're always going to have them over for Christmas or be over at their place.

That's where we're completely on the same page for really a lot of things, and I think we're quite effective communicators. It's just, I know there's going to be a lifestyle shrink like no other, like I can't compete, and I don't try to compete. There's no point in it.

But it's going to be a shock for her more than me, and I just want to not brace for it. I don't think it's going to be a negative experience, but it will come with a fair share of challenges. Look at it as a new set of skills she has to learn and that you'll have to learn together. Not as a moral failure, or she's a loser, or Brad, or like, she's never had to do this

before. So it's going to be bumpy, and there's going to be some practice involved. It's going to take three to six months for you to dial in a budget and actually stick to it, because it's brand new for both of you. That's being honest about that, it's part of building a great marriage together.

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Up next, we have Danielle and Milwaukee.

Hi Danielle. Welcome to the show. Hi. I'm how are you today. Hi.

We're doing great. How are you? I'm okay. I'm calling because I have just lost a very substantial amount of child support. And I'm not really sure how to move forward with paying my bills because it puts me into

a huge deficit. What happened? Well, their dad was having some addiction issues and so when I took the kids away for their safety as resulted in very large legal fees over the last year and a half, those have obviously amplified during this core battle and they've given him, suddenly, given him his custody

back when it was very unexpected to me because two months ago he wasn't allowed to drive

with them in the car and now they suddenly given him all of his custody back, which took away all of the child support for me. And so I still have all these legal fees and all this debt from before because they was not able to really financially take care of them before. So I was constantly taking on that and so not just like lost.

So, and I'm scared. Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm a heartbreak for you. I'm going to speak kind of abruptly because we have a shorter time to talk because if you and I were sitting down for an hour together, I would be much more eloquent in my speech.

“It sounds like this sudden withdrawal of child support is layered, right?”

There's emotional issues. You're scared for your kid's safety. You're blindsided. So let's, we're just going to talk about the dollars and cents, okay? Yeah.

It appears that what this really did was expose an already existing problem. And this sounds crass, but at the end of the day, what you've had for a long time is a math problem. Yes. And now you have been using the every dollar apps for quite a, I don't know, quite a few

months now, maybe half a year, maybe a little more. I know, and I listen to the folks and I'm doing everything I can.

But the, the every dollar app is amazing, but it, what it really is good at is get help

you get a plan for your money. And it's also really great at exposing where we can cut expenses and where we need to add income. And I, I honestly, it is heartbreaking as a sounds. I don't see another path forward for you other than you've got to go get some jobs that

“make more money, especially in the, in the times when, when, when.”

And your kids are with their father now. I've been trying for the last 30 years to get extra jobs. Yeah. I've been trying to get a better job. Sure.

I'm a teacher. I'm a full-trend teacher. I teach art. Okay. Daniel.

And let me ask you this. The legal fees are those on credit cards. Did you take out a personal loan? How, how are those being funded? Well, I've been paying them monthly.

I've been paying a thousand dollars a month to a lawyer. Okay. So the payment was directly with them. Yep. Okay.

How much do you have left on that? I'm not sure because we just went to court again. And I'm not sure how much all that's going to be. I'm guessing at least 5,000. Okay.

And then what other debt is there? I had the debt that I consolidated, but there's a lean on my car. And then I have $80,000 in student loan debt. And I have like $12,000 in credit card debt. $12,000 in credit card.

Okay. What, the car lean, how far behind are you on the car? I owe $9,250 and it is worth like exactly that. Okay. And are you behind on any payments?

No. I never not paid a bill. Okay. So you're current on. So what is the $1,300?

What would you be doing with that if you had it?

“Because you have to be behind on something.”

I'm assuming. And I want to make sure that the priorities are right. Thank you. Thank you. I'm paying the lawyer.

Well, the child support should go to the care of the children, right? Um, yeah. And theory, but I have to pay the lawyer, you know?

So now I'm going to tell the court was 2050 and now it's going to be like $700. Okay. Um, so in your situation, Danielle, I would remind you that your priorities and where your money is going is going to be very, very important.

So always making sure that you have food, your mortgage is being paid or your rent.

Utilities stay on and your transportation. I just don't want you to, and sometimes the overwhelmingness and what can feel like a hopelessness, you know, whatever feels urgent in the moment is where you end up paying and you end up

“possibly making mistakes in putting yourself in a financial position that's dangerous, right?”

I don't want you getting behind on your rent or your mortgage or your car payment. So like, those are very important to stay current. The credit cards, we can worry about those later. Um, and with the, so you're giving a $1,000 to the lawyer. So in, if I'm correct, that will be done in about five months.

Yeah. Or if the $700,000, the $700,000, the longer the local one, I don't know. Okay. Well, when it comes that this can be a, and John, you're probably way more in this world than I am, but that the whole court system, and especially with divorce and custody battles, I mean,

it just that it can be for it and not that I would never tell you not to fight and fight

and fight. But I do want you to, maybe at a point in time, stop reevaluate, maybe even look at your legal counsel.

“I mean, I, if it's not getting done, if it's not getting done, and you can't afford it.”

And you can't afford it. There may have to be a pause at some capacity for you to at least keep your head up of water. And so what I would encourage you to do is I'm so glad you're doing the every dollar app. But I really do want you to make sure your priorities are in order.

And then what John was saying at the beginning is true, there has to be a change in the math from the income side. I'm assuming your expenses are already pretty limited to make sure that all of this gets paid. I have a sound to, like, that's the budget without even buying toilet paper.

Yep. Yep. And, and again, all of this is the worst. Okay. So, there's no joy or glee from me or Rachel, like we're sitting in this with you,

okay. Yeah. When I was a high school teacher, I knew folks who got up really early and drove a bus for extra money before they were a teacher all day and then who would go work in a grocery store, stocking shelves in the evening, and they were paying off students.

Right. And so, it looks like that may be, I mean, you got the school year coming up. I don't know what you've done this summer, but it may not be a career change at this point. If you've really been trying to get new careers and get new jobs and get promoted. If that's not happening, then we're going to deal with the reality that we have in front

of us right this second, which is, you got 700 bucks coming in for child support.

You have a thousand dollar payment every month to an attorney. You at least have to make 300 bucks over, so I'm going to earn that. And if I have to sell my house and move to a one better apartment for a season and the kids off to share, we have to make some drastic changes that nobody wants to make, but you're just staring at a really ugly math problem and you've tried to solve it in one way for

three years, let's just stop trying to solve it that way for the moment because you've got an emerging emergency on your hand and it's, you're going to, you're going to be exhausted, you're going to, you're going to weep for your kids for yourself for, for nobody plans to be in the situation you're in and we're going to scratch and claw away through it and what you'll find is as you get in back in the driver's seat of your own life, you're going to find yourself

walking a little taller and you're going to find yourself being more confident in yourself,

“you're not going to feel like life is happening to you, like you're starting to tap into your”

life and that comes through in job interviews, that comes in through performance reviews, it begins to impact all of your, the rest of your life very positively, okay? But there's not a magic bullet here other than you've got a really ugly math problem ahead of you and you've got to scratch and claw and be exhausted and add more money on the front end of this thing and it's just going to be that way for a season especially to get this attorney paid off. Yeah. I hate this for you. I'm

no Daniel. Call us back if you need us but there is, there is something about making that plan and it can, John, it says it control what you can control and even mapping out some of these debts and looking say, hey, what's these attorney fees are paid off? That's a thousand dollars freed up. I can get paid my car paid off in eight months. I get, you know, you start actually seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and so creating that pathway for you is going to be so important

and that the sacrifice of the extra job. It may be for two to three years and then it's done, right? And then you get a clean slate and you get to start over but again, give us a call back to Danielle if you need anything else.

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one to walk me through the home buying or home selling process. So to find a local Ramsey Trusty agent who will have your best interest at heart for free, check them out at RamseySolutions.com/agent or click the link in the description if you're watching on YouTube or listening on podcast. All right, let's head to Sacramento and we have Ruth on the line. Hi, Ruth. Welcome to the show.

“We there have been enjoying listening to the show. And a great question is on the lighter side. I think”

I just wanted to call and see what was the Ramsey opinion B or financially cruising. Like, we have no debt other than our afternoon mortgage and we live by our means. But I just feel like we're enjoying the good life and, you know, we have no financial stress about the same time. It's not like we're really focusing on saving and saving and, you know, kind of swirling away money like that. If you're like, we pretty much do use our money up outside of Ramsey and a Roth

each year just on like lifestyle and obviously doing things with our kids and vacationing and property improvements and things like that. And I just was curious like what your take would be? Like, is this okay? We're 38 39 years old and like I said, we're having a lot of fun and I just wonder if we're like, maybe we should need, you know, be focusing more on on saving that money. What did you for a living? Well, I'm staying at home mom. It's pretty fabulous. I do have a couple

little side hustle. We live on a farm here in Northern California. Okay. My husband is the one who makes money. He brings home the bacon. He makes about 200,000 a year and he does commercial each back. He's a foreman at a Sacramento. So fast forward, just like pause life for a second, getting into the delorean and let's go into the future together and he is 58 and the arthritis is so bad and his fingers he can't turn the knob and his back hurts. And so he can't be a foreman

anymore. He's tried an office job and it's killing him. And here, 57. And y'all are on this farm. And suddenly he gets word from his boss. You got her tire. What would the phone call sound like from 58 year old you calling this exact same show? We will be fine because the house is going to be paid off in a few years and it's worth over $1 million. And so we're good there. I could

always go back in the real estate. Another thing is with his line of work because he's a foreman.

He's already doing a lot of computer stuff. And so he's really not doing quite as much service

So I mean, I think where there's a will. There's a way. Well, we shouldn't have a lot of debt

“by then. I'm just saying we're not doing like a gun. Like some people are like overfocus on saving”

for that retirement. And I'm like, I'm more of like the science that it's going to work out. We're having such a fun life. You are that you were the glass half full woman. I've taught two and a long time. What are you like, you're like, listen, this is your job. It's like, listen,

he'll be great. We will be fine. It is going to be fine. Okay, here, here's what I said with net

want us to be on the show. Ruth, nothing is nothing is on fire. Okay. You got your crazy roof. Everything you're saying is on fire. Stop it. No, let me finish. Let me finish. Let me finish. What I'm saying is I don't think anything is necessarily on fire right now. You guys are you are spending a lot, but you're you're not going deeply in debt. You guys have a plan to pay off the home. All of it. But what I'm telling you is what is mediocre right now is any level of intentional planning with your

money, which means you're going to get a mediocre retirement. Everything's going to be just mediocre, but that's it. So what I would do is I would look to say, okay, we're funding, we're you're putting probably 14, 15,000 dollars into retirement. You said you're funding both of your Roths. So I would double that. I think you guys with your income, you didn't be putting 30,000 dollars away in retirement specifically. Okay. That's your goal. And if you guys do that, then here's something else, Ruth,

to be thinking about is the generosity piece, right? With money, you can give it, you can save it,

“you can spend it. You guys are great spenders. You're mediocre savers at best. So you need to be saving”

for future roofs. You need you because when John asked you that question, the best answer would be, I mean, if he's 59 and a half and loses his job, we're fine because we're going to have 3.2

million dollars and whatever, right? Like you're you're going to be able to know because you've

planned you are intentional, you know what's happening. You don't write now, Ruth. You're just like, I don't know, not many goals just enjoying life, right? And not all of that is bad. It just has to be balanced with, in my opinion, more long-term planning and goals. You and your husband needs to down and say, what are we shooting for? What do we want? We want to pay off the house in seven years, not 15. Like to get on a plan and actually execute some of this and then the generosity piece

to. But no, I don't. Okay, so John, tell her why she's on fire and her whole, she's actually going to be broke and you're going to be terrible. You're going to click, just real quick, the house is actually going to be paid off in three years. Okay, great. Okay, great. Okay, I think you're doing great. I think you're doing great. You two spenders just go on a cruise together and just this is what it's like made out of Rachel. Vacation, Ruth. I bet it's super fun. A bit vacation, Ruth is madhouse. I bet

it's awesome. Here's what I'll tell you. I'll tell you the same thing. Back when I was seeing clients, what I would tell somebody who sat down and said, hey, I've been married for a long time, but I met this secretary and we have this great connection and we and I think it's going to be awesome. And what I would always say is I will be here right now where you're thinking about it and I'll be here when you have the affair and I'll be here when your marriage explodes and I'll be with

you through the divorce. Like, it's so I'm telling you right now, Ruth. I'm so dark. I know, oh, she said

“we can't make this dark and I was like, hold my beer, I'll make it dark. But here's the thing. I hope”

too unless I get fired for some weird reason. I hope to be here when you're 59 and I will be here

to take your call because because they got this, you have a million dollar house. That's amazing.

It's amazing. Okay, that's so good. You'll pay it off. It's appreciated great on this beautiful farm and North, North California. It's awesome. Everything is great. And if you think about that, you've put, it's like buying one single stock that's worth a million dollars today. Yeah. Everything in your life is counting on this working. Everything in your life is counting on your husband, not having, being in the trades, not having an accident. Everything is hoping that in 20

years, AI isn't taking 99% of the IT jobs away. Everything is hoping that our kids lives are as magical as our lives. And so you are, like, on the scale of risk, you've put everything on one side and there's so many variables out there. Can I, Ruth, do you know what you'll have in retirement? Zero. No, she's at the front of Ferrell, Ferrell, Ferrell, Ferrell, Ferrell, please. Felicia, you didn't have anything to say. Yeah, we can have our raw season investing just the past

two years, we're investing them. But you know, my husband also has retirement account. How much you have in retirement? All together. How much? What's the number? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Is it half a million dollars or is it 50,000? No, it's like 50 in our rock. Maybe 60 in our rock. And I don't know what his retirement is. They don't match or anything. So I, he said it's not real great. But I, like, monthly about, I don't remember what it is.

Ruth, you all have, you all, I'm going to assume this because I need, I need this on my side of the

argument. You do have just cash sitting in an account for savings, like, for emergency funds. Stop. Stop. Do you, Ruth? Yeah. Yeah. How much? How much? Good. We have 40,000.

“Great. Oh, Ruth, I'm telling you, you all need a drain in the spending. You need to be investing more,”

Ruth. You can be getting more. You've got to be intentional. You've got to be intentional. You've got follow the baby steps. What you're doing, but you're almost on baby steps seven. Their house is almost paid off in three years. You need to be funding more in retirement. You guys need to be more generous. Find something to give to and have some goals, some five, five year goal for your money and where it's going. And then enjoy your vacation, Ruth.

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So, of course, I'm high-read the babies, the baby steps, milleners. But I've been having a hard time getting my wife to buy in into reading the book and helping me, you know, go through those baby steps together. She does have, we have an account together, right? We have the same account. But I know that she has her own account where all of her earnings go to their account and then she just transfers that certain amount every month to other joint accounts. How long have you

been married, man? 14 years, 14 years. How much does she make and how much do you make? I make an income. My month is like 6,200 me and I don't know how much she makes. I just know that I received, which she deposits a thousand dollars every, every two weeks in for account. So, sometimes people read in the here about the baby steps of the read, total one to make over her baby steps, milleners, and they're inspired financially. Sometimes they read this and it's

revealing. Oh, me and my wife have been sharing a home in a bed for 14 years, but we are on different planets when it comes to our life. I don't know how much money she makes and how much money she has. We are running parallel tracks inside the same house, right? And the challenges often

“people try to solve that conversation with, you need to budget better or we need to share one account”

and you need to stop doing this. And the only way I've seen people be successful is in that situation, like what's happened to you is, is you reading this and you're like, oh, I want this outcome. I want a baby step my way to financial freedom, right? Security for me and my family, but it's revealed a really big fisher in your marriage. A crack, like a canyon in your marriage. The only way I've seen that conversation be successful is not talking dollars and cents. It's used sitting down

in your wife and maybe for the first time being honest about what's inside your chest. You say, I feel like we're running parallel lives. I don't know how much you make. I want us to be united and our dreams together and our money together and we're not connected here. And that's where that's the meat of the conversation. That's a vulnerable conversation. Kishika, look at you and say, I'm not doing that. I don't want that. And then you're all going to have to deal with that.

I mean, you're talking at a value point, right? It's the anchor. This is a foundational question.

And the only way I've seen to be successful is if you go first and you say, hey, here's what I'm

And I want us to be, I want us to start uniting our, our marriage, our starting uniting our,

“our vision for our life. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense. I mean,”

so the other day, I'll to use my credit card to bike groceries. So it was a bad situation. I mean, it sent me very, it made me feel very sad. And I know that she, like, I feel guilty asking her for money, because I know she probably has money. And it just made me feel sad, you know, I'm like, you. It breaks my heart for you that you, you have a marriage that you've built over 14 years. You've co-built for 14 years, where you feel shame for asking your wife for grocery money.

Right. If you called me and told me she's your ex wife and she lives at down the street or in another town, then that what you just said would make sense to me. The fact that y'all, y'all have kids too. Yes. Yeah, y'all have created humans together. And the dynamic in your relationship is, it's, it's, it's more worrying to me. Have you felt this disconnect to her

“Ryan for a while? Or how, um, kind of a lot cited this is that it's not really a marriage. It's”

just more just like a partnership and a business feel. That's always useful. Yeah. Yes, sometimes.

Yeah. Is she open to this, like a unity conversation or does she just not give a crap with what's going on inside your heart in mind? Yeah. I've been trying to, I've been trying to talk to her about that. I started with, I started with, and this is down. Let's talk about doing things together. We need to start planning for the future. We don't have a college fund for our kids. We need to be ready for a financial emergency where, you know, maybe I lose my job, and you lose your job,

we need to be ready for those things. I didn't give a specific dollar amount. I just said, you know, when we knitted down and her husband was like, "No, I don't want to talk about that." Did you ask her why? She's out of the way. Yeah, she's, she just told me, "It's because it's all about money with you." And so, I would attempt the conversation again, and I would change two things. Number one, I would tell her. I got babysitter for the kids,

and I got us reservations at a restaurant, or I want to take us to this place, and I also want you to know, I've beat you down about money. I've just talked about money, money, money, money, money for 15 years, and I'm going to own that. I'm sorry. I want to have a different conversation underneath money about you and me building a new marriage together. And that way, you're acknowledging up front, her chief complaint, and if you've got other things, if you tell her, if you're a warrior,

if you are an overspender, if you always have had a scheme for the last 14 years, and this is just

another scheme she thinks you're having. Whatever it is, go ahead and lay that on the table first when you invite her out to breakfast. You invite her out to dinner and put that on the table. Yeah, because the money problems, they are the symptom of this marriage that is not really intact, right? A wife and a husband that are not connected. And then once that starts happening, then you realize, okay, working on the same team is much easier. And some people find it the opposite

way, right? And they end up working on money together and it helps their marriage, right? So it can be either door, but something has to start moving. And it's for the sake of you guys, right? You've committed yourselves to each other forever and you're thinking, okay, I want more in this.

“And so there is that vulnerable place to be Ryan, and I think that, yep, having that conversation”

and framing at the way John just outlined to think is great. And sometimes people in a marriage, they try to exert power by saying this is my money and you can't see it, you can't talk to it, you can't tell me what to do with it. But sometimes people that becomes the way, like, marriage dynamics, like he's talking about happen over time, because somebody feels like I have to.

You're always beating me down about money. You spend wildly and I'm going to make sure,

me and the kids are going to be okay. Yeah, and so who knows how this dynamic got here? That's helpful in a therapy session to go all the way back in time. But man, right now, we have to solve today's problem. The taste problem is we are not connected and we got to reimagine how we do life together. And I'm going to go first and own what crap I've brought to this thing. That's right. Well, and I would say too, just to have a moment of like, okay, I'm not saying we

have to do this. But can we just first, I can't put numbers out and just see what happens. Like, how much do you bring in, how much do I bring in? Let's put it, let's look at our bills, let's look at our debt. Like, where could we be financially? If we just went all in together and use both sources of income to get us where we want to go financially, right? And not to

look and see what this picture. He can't even pay to picture Ryan from a financial perspective, going forward. Because you don't even know how much you guys have to work with. And there's obviously something that's a little bit off because you couldn't even pay for food for yourself. And so

“whatever that $6,000 is being allotted, you need to be looking at that, looking at your expenses.”

And again, you guys together look and say, here's how we're going to run our household. Here's the money we have coming in for our household. Here are the bills. Here are the expenses. Here are the

goals. Here's what I'm scared about. Here's where you're scared about, right? You get, you get it all

together. And when, when you can do that, um, and her not feel cornered or shut off because she's feeling that way for some reason. We don't know why, but that's there. And this conversation, that's beyond us does not always end well. Yeah. Like, she may say, this is my job. And this is my money. You're responsible for the house and for the bills and for the kids and for the food. This is mine. And then you got a choice to make. I'm 15 years in. This is the arrangement. I'm going to be

sad and heartbroken, but I'm going to do the best I can with the marriage I got in front of me. Mm-hmm. I'm going to leave. But trying to, always be banging your head against a pretty solid brick wall is just a recipe for it. It's going to implode at some point. So I'm going to choose reality that I got in front of me. Right. I don't like this situation. It is what it is or I'm going to get out of the situation. And I hate to distill it down, but that's often where people find themselves.

100%. And sometimes, Ryan, if you do get in a situation with both of you and you keep hitting

that wall or you keep feeling like we can't move forward, bringing in a third party, seeing if there

is a great counselor in your area of therapist. Just to sit down for a couple of sessions and kind of rehash some of this with a third party is also really wise. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade Warshot. Now, I know a little something about saving money, while my husband and I were paying off over $460,000 in debt, we went over every expense in our budget to find ways to cut back. Nothing got a free pass, including our phones. And you need

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwins Credit Union Studio. I'm Rachel Cruise here with

Dr. John Deloni, and we are taking your calls to AAA-825-5-225. First up, we have William in Houston,

“Hi, William. Welcome to the show. Hello, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely. How can we help?”

I was calling him because I was recently laid off after every year's with the company. I'm sorry. How many years? 30 years. Oh my gosh, dude. Hey, can I say, I'm sorry. That's hard, man. It's a lot. Oh, it's like a marriage. Oh my gosh. There are some psychology research about this. It's a job loss like that. Impact your body like the loss of a loved one. Yes. Okay. I can. Yeah. That's a heavy betrayal. Right. That sense of, I got betrayed. Yeah,

dude, I'm sorry, man. Yeah, so my question is, my wife, she wants me to, she says I should take off like six months and just relax and just get my hands together before I go looking for something. And I was just wondering, do you think that's a good idea? Not a good idea. I think it's, yeah, Rachel, you, you hop in. I think it's,

“I think, broadly speaking, no, it's not a great idea. And here's why you're going to sit”

inside this grief and inside this betrayal and those stories will take hold inside of you. Now, what I would say that where she's right is maybe for six months, you don't jump back into a full time. I'm going to give my entire mind body soul and spirit to a thing. And I hope this is the next 30 years. Maybe you go get a job at a grocery store. Maybe you go, like, get a job at a coffee shop there in Houston or something. But like, I'm going to, I'm going to work.

having to shave every day. I'm going to get back into a routine where I'm providing value to a thing,

to a group, to a customer. But I'm going to also not just throw my heart and soul back into a thing again, right? I got you. So if you call me, let's take it away from work. If you call me and said, my wife of 30 years just walked out on me, should I just take six months off and stay inside my house, draw the windows down and just sit here for six months. I would say, absolutely not. I would also tell you, don't just jump back into another relationship, right? So it's a both aunt.

Mm-hmm. William, would you financially be okay? Not working for six months? You have financial will be fine because my wife said that I'm only obsessed with the numbers, because we we had a high savings rate before before I was laid off. So we have about between brokajan and retirement. We have about two points for me. Well, yeah. Well, leave it back next time. Yeah, take six months off. So good. Well, yeah. I mean, not playing. Don't take six, but you know what I mean?

I'm yeah. I'm with John. I'm like, I think being idle for too long is not good. I know. Just for you. But if you don't want to go back 40 hours a week, but you got something that you go to, you know, two or three hours a week and then maybe you're like, you know what? I'm going to I'm going to volunteer. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to hike every day or work out or

“circle on the therapy once a week. Like right, like using your time wisely, I think is important.”

Now, you're not having to rush to go make a paycheck, which is a gift. But again, I think sitting idle completely, not doing anything long term, I don't think is great. Now, if you want to take two or three weeks and just, oh, absolutely, that's fine. But I would have a goal at some point in the fall to say, okay, I'm going to get into something. And again, I don't feel like you have to rush into anything major and like what John's saying to, like, finding the next thing, I wouldn't feel pressured to have to

do that right now. But I wouldn't just sit and do nothing. How old are you building it? I'm 48. And that's what I was thinking because like, now I feel like, my whole day is like, I'm kind of idle. Yes. You're up in the morning. I get a six o'clock and I go all like a two and a half mile. I mean, like a two hour hike every morning. Yep. That will hike for two hours that come back home. I'm going to try to find some honey beans or something. I know, but I've got some more

to see it. I don't like being idle. I don't. Yeah. I'm answering just like, I feel like I'm not useful right now. Yeah. And there are a person needs a purpose. Right. And a person needs a purpose.

“They need somebody to go add value to their life. That's how we're wired. That's how we're built.”

And so it could be that you get up and go down to impact and volunteer Darren Houston with the least of these in our communities and you spend eight hours a day doing that for a month. Right. Just to clear your whole web. Right. But yeah, having a thing to go to, or you are actively helping somebody else's life better. I'll get better. And that's, that's who you are, to all of us, that's who we are. And that itchiness you're feeling is important.

Can I give you two things? I would love, I would love for you to do. You don't have to do them, but I love for you too. I would love for you when you have some space in your mind and spirit. Go for your two and a half hour walk. Get a piece of paper and a pen or three or four

sheets of paper and a pen. And I want you to write a letter that you will God help you never send.

Write a letter to the leadership team that put it to the name of the company. But I want you to write a letter that has three parts to it. One, here's what, how you all broke my heart. I gave 30 years of my life. I was never late. I was always on time. I was a good leader. I was a good manager. I took care of customers. I want you to be honest about your anger. I also want you to be honest about the good times. Thank you. Thank you for what happened.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thank you for paying me really well when I was struggling when my first kid was born. Beyond us, about the good stuff too. The third thing is, I want you to write in that letter. Here's who I'm going to go be now. Here's who I'm going to go serve. Here's the kind of, I'm going to, another company is going to get my services for another 25 years and this is the kind of a man I'm going to be when I walk in that door. And then that sort of, it helps metabolize

“grief. If you want to be really, if you want to take it to another level, read that letter to a couple of”

friends, to a couple of your, if your buddies read it to your wife, share that with somebody because as Kessler says grief demands a witness. I'm going to read this letter, this heartbreak, this here's why I'm going to be now. And there's something very empowering about taking a hold of that grief and acknowledging it and then being asked about what I'm going to do next. And here's the

second thing. Please, please do something to help my astros, man. William, what are we doing?

If you're volunteer work, go pebble them up. Yeah, listen, go be that guy that helps people like me find my seat. Yeah. And then while you're there, cheer up. Cheer up. And William,

think too, you know, you're 48, whatever that second half is for you, the beautiful thing is that you've

set your life up or you're not in an urgent rush to go find the next thing. Can be whatever you want. Yeah, we go make 60 grand to keep the lights on. Like, you have the gift of having margin

“with the time. And that's great. But yeah, that second half, what do you, what do you want life to be?”

What is this next chapter going to look like? And so you and your wife sitting down and talking through ideas and dreaming, you know, maybe. Yeah, take her to Papa Seedos or take her to Christi's that OG seafood restaurant out there, off West Timer, take her out there and you all have a dreaming conversation. What do we want the back half of our life to feel like, to look like? And y'all dream together. And then go find a job that'll fit that because Rachel said, you have

done such an amazing job. Probably a pathological job over saving the last 20, 20, 20, 30 years,

but you set yourself up for just this moment when you can do whatever y'all want to do together. Yeah, and there's something so empowering when you finally get to make the shots right call the shots and say, okay, this is what I want. And so maybe it's starting something from the ground up. Maybe it's plugged into something else. I don't know what that looks like for you. But yeah, just kind of takes some time and dream about that. But also don't stay idle, William, but I don't,

I don't think you can. I don't, I don't, I think he doesn't. I love this too. I love William. I'm all about practical ways to save time and mental energy, especially during the summer when life gets busy. Between vacations, camps, deliveries, travel plans, online shopping, and trying to keep everyone organized. My mental load can get pretty full. That's one of the reasons why I love delete me. Most people don't realize how many data broker sites have their information online,

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Up next, we have Mary and San Francisco. Hi, Mary. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Absolutely. How can we help? So I have a couple questions for you all. I am 38 years old. I am a single mom and I work in law enforcement. About seven months ago, I transferred to the Bay Area to give my son better opportunities and better future compared to where we were. Where I was stationed last. And in the process of doing that,

I spent tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees over several years to make this move happen.

I do not receive child support. I kept my first house as a rental now because of the terms.

It's at a 2.99% mortgage on a 15 year loan. I think there's about 11 and a half years left. Between the legal fees relocated and rebuilding my life, I've accumulated a large amount of credit card debt and I have a second mortgage already. My monthly take home is about 5,900 after everything. But my required debt payments alone are at least 6,900 a month. And so before I even buy groceries or gas,

“so that's why I keep ending it back on credit cards every single month.”

So my question to you is because I plan keeping the 2.99% first mortgage. But I need to at some point replace my current second mortgage with a larger home equity loan to pay off that mortgage and then

But my the second part to that question is because I'm trying to build a retirement plan for myself as well. I feel like I've been doing everything for everybody else but not really focusing on me. My mental health, my long term plans and everything. So I don't want to spend the next 20 to 30 years just trying to survive and I'm trying to build enough real estate income that I can retire early possibly to enjoy my life. So hold on. So after I restruct. Let me jump in here. Let me jump in here.

How do I have your permission? I'm asking you this as an officer of the law. Do I have your

permission to be super blunt with you? Is that cool? Yeah, of course. Okay. Here's what you're describing

to me in Rachel. You have a giant. And when I say giant, I mean a humongous hole in the middle of your front yard. And your plan for getting rid of this hole in your front yard is going about 30 yards past that hole and digging another hole that's even deeper and using that dirt to fill in this hole. And then on the side what you want to do is dig six or seven other little holes to fill up

“that one big hole. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Like you have to acknowledge the plan you have”

in front of you is wholly unsustainable. And the plan and you've got to deal with the giant hole first with new dirt. You can't just dig another hole in your front yard and try to refill it. And the plan you have down the road is on have this income or whatever. That's all well and good. But you're life financially is on fire right in front of you. So let's deal with the fire first. You have been for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. It's caused a lot of stress and you're trying to do

18 things at once as well. Pay off the debt. Try to get the second mortgage paid off then fund retirement. There's so many directions that you're looking which is understandable because of the situation you're in. And so I think one goal for you, Mary and hopefully in this call, we can help direct that is to focus on one thing. And we call that focus intensity here at Ramsey. Like I'm going to be focused on one step at a time. And what that looks like is first getting a

thousand dollars. It's our baby steps. Do you have any cash available in savings? I have my short-term rental savings at this point and that's about it. How much is in there? That's about 12,000. Okay. Is that just retained earnings for fix and air conditioner and sealing fans and stuff? It is. Yeah. So that's just the basically the income I've made the last six months on my rental so far. And the rental is not near you, right? Because you moved. No. No. Okay. You

“need to sell that house. Yeah, sell the house. You need to sell the house. I know you got a good”

interest rate. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're drowning underwater and you're holding onto this thing called interest rate. And you're like, look how good I'm doing, but you're underwater. And the interest rate is still, you know, because you're holding onto that, it's keep it's

you're losing sleep in all these other areas of your money. And so we never recommend being a landlord

long distance. So whenever you moved, you were anybody else that calls. We would always recommend selling your home when you moved city. So for the for the sake of time, if you saw that home today, Mary, what kind of equities in that home? I have probably about 27,000 in equity. Okay. So if you know how sick completely clears you? Is there a second mortgage on that home or your primary home? That there's a second mortgage on that home. And that home. So after all is cleared out

everything you would be left with 275 of that. Around Mary. Okay. I mean, hopefully. But how much how much credit card that is there? About 40,000. 40,000. Okay. It's most of that attorney fees and then trying to keep your life afloat with bills. Yeah. Okay. 30 about 30 was attorney fees in 10 last few years. Perfect. Moving in relocation. Okay, gorgeous. Gorgeous. I like this plan, Mary. We're making traction here. I don't know if you're going to follow it. But this is what I would do. What other

debt do you have? Um, that's that's just it. That's it. It's just the second, the first and then the

credit card debt. Okay. Okay. Great. The problem is is my mind said has always been trying to

provide for my son and leaving something for him. Which Mary? Which is the house? Yeah. I know.

“But here's the thing. What I want you to provide him right now is stability and a mom who”

feels safe in her own skin. He does not have that. Your spread so thin right now right now, Mary. And

like you could invest a hundred thousand dollars of this as well. And leave him half a million dollars

and cashed on the road. Oh my gosh. Easily. Like what can what you can do for this money working for you versus working for everyone else and getting a he-lock and then getting this and get it. I mean, like you are working hard for everybody else and not you. And so really focusing in again and knowing that yeah, this is a little bit of your get out of free jail card to start over. Which is a beautiful thing. Which are what where are you guys living now? Are you renting or do you own a home now?

Um, it's we're renting, but it's through my job so it's really low oven. Okay. I was going to say you're you're an officer, which has a somewhat of a capped, capped salary, but you're in a really expensive

“place to live. Yeah, we are. Yeah. So part of that too, Mary, as you have to be thinking long-term”

but if you're not in that job long-term and you look up and you don't have any money to put down as a down payment on a home eventually like that's that's a goal. So that would be a goal for me is to clear out this debt set aside six months of an emergency fund. I would normally say three probably in your situation, but I think all the stress you've been in, I think six gives you ultimate piece open up a high yield savings account with fair ones credit union and park some cash there

six months of emergency fund and then I would look ahead and say, okay, I need to put some of this in retirement. Uh, I'm going to put some of this away in maybe a separate savings, high yield savings account for a possibly a down payment maybe in the next 10 years. But I'm going

“to be thinking about my housing because eventually that the rubber's going to meet the road with that.”

But there's all these, do you see what I'm saying? Like you take your money and you let it work for you and it's growing and you're making interest when you invest, your money's making money for you. Not for all these other people living in the cycle of debt. And so you really could go from sleepless nights stressed feeling like I can't even, I have to have credit cards to finish out the bills every single month to having no payments, having an emergency fund, having a plan for your

house for your retirement and your son's college like all of that can be completed. And a big jump start on that is selling this home. Yeah, the the cost here for you is grieving the pick the loss of this picture you had where I'm going to hand my son this old house. I'm going to be sad about that. I'm going to be heartbroken about it and then I'm going to be about changing my life. Yes. And for you, like most of the calls on the show, man, it's a three, five year seven year slog

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Go to CHMministries.org/budget and use promo code Ramsey. That's CHMministries.org/budget and promo code Ramsey. Up next, we have Ann in Rand Rapids. Hi Ann, welcome to the show. Hello. Hi, I'm a little nervous so bear with me sorry. Oh, you're great. Don't you worry. Don't be nervous. So I have a verbal promise for a position. They are ready to hire me and they have they're just in waiting to place me in an office. I've been waiting a month and a half. And I'm just curious how long should I wait? I'm doing

They actually seeing it actually asked me over the past couple years to try to recruit me and I

“just over the right time. No, but like do you have somebody you've been like on that you're going to”

be onboarding with that you've been back for the Wednesday last time you talked to them? Yeah. You texted last week once a day. I emailed the recruiter and then I texted my contact. So I don't have a hurt anything back yet. But they're like, yes, we're still interested. We still want to have you. So it's all verbal. But I don't have anything in writing. I'm like, do I'm going to tell you this is me Rachel going to have a different thing. I would keep pressing put my feelers out

for other other things for two reasons. One, it's been my experience with somebody really wants you. You know it. They know it. Everybody knows it. And the second thing is it's kind of like after a first date and they're like, yeah, I'll call you tomorrow and they call you nine days later. They're kind of giving you an insight into who they are. And even if it takes a long time to find

“an office, it's confusing. We have to get a budget line filled. All that that's business. That”

happens. That's life. The fact that they're not calling you and letting you know it and keeping

you a prize. If here's what's going on. Here's this and here's the start date. And we don't have

an office tree. So you're going to work from home until we get an office. Like the fact they're not communicating with you well, that would be an insight for me as to how they might do business once you get to be working there. Yeah. Well, I was born here. They're like, well, you know, the company moves slow. They really, really moves slow. So, you know, hang on. And I've I've looked, you know, in the internet or whatever. So they can take two to six months to be placed and to be

into an office. I'm like, good night. But it's so, so bizarre that they would enter if you post a job. Is it just a university position? It's accepted. No, no. It's not. I mean, I spent six

“the process is very, very long. It's been about six steps so far. So, gosh, so my interview process”

here was 18 months. It was long long. But then when it came to Dave Ramsey said, you have 48 hours to make a call. And here's the date. You know what I mean? Like, so then what it took a long time and it should, right? Dave's going to deciding whether to put my name on my face on the side of building, right? But once it was on, it was overwhelming. It was super on, right? And so I don't know. I, I, yeah. And I would ask for something in writing that employment for your own sake

starts by August one or August 15th. Like, there's something in writing saying, yes, I am going to be employed here. And if they can't give you that, it's almost like an employment, you know, a employment agreement. Like, I mean, that's, that's stuff is pretty standard when you're hiring. That's job 101. And so, if they can't even provide that, and I hate to say it. What a bummer. But, yeah. I mean, and I might communicate that to Dave. Yeah. But it might be a dream job in a

nightmare situation. Right job wrong company, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yes. That's a great point. That's a great way of looking at it. Oh, man. Yeah. I hate this for you. I would say you don't have to like fully close the door, but I would be looking at other places. And if we're going to another job, you know, except, you know, someone hires you somewhere else. You withdraw from the problem? You withdraw. Yeah. Okay. But kind of what I was leaning more towards. But I just thought

I'd get you guys in sight. Yes. Yeah. If I was in your exact shoes, I would leave that door wide open, but I would start the process of having conversations with other alternatives. Oh, I'm so sorry. I hate it for you. So frustrating. So frustrating. So frustrating. Crazy. Okay. Let's go to St. Louis. And we have Ethan on the line. Hi, Ethan. Welcome to the show. Hi. Hello. I'm super excited to talk to you, guys. Oh, well, thanks for calling in. How can we help? So my wife and I are both 24. We have a

soon to be one year old girl. And we're working on baby step two trying to pay off our remaining debt by July of 2027. Oh, good. And have our emergency fund done by September 2027. Nice. I'm a youth pastor. And my wife is self-employed, specifically a 1099 NEC. And since I'm an ordained pastor, I'm also treated as a self-employed individual for tax purposes. So my question is, for future, when we get into baby step four and start investing again, should we open a traditional IRA

for tax benefits now? Or should we open a Roth IRA for the future tax benefit? Almost always,

like 99.9%, I always go for the Roth. There are small exceptions with high income earners and

My husband does a Roth IRA. We do not have a traditional because from especially at your age,

Ethan, the amount of money that's going to be growth versus what you put in is going to be insane. Like, it's most, it's going to be, I don't have my calculator in front of me. I'm going to say 80% growth. By the time you're 59 and a half, what you in your life have put in is going to be so small, compared to the growth. And I would much rather pay taxes now and have that growth be tax-free. So when I retire, there's no taxes on millions, possibly millions of dollars right there. So that's yeah,

“for sure the Roth IRA is the way to go. Does your church offer any like 403Bs anything or you are?”

Yeah, yeah. So I have a 403B through the church as well. That's great. So tell me about this your ordained, but your self-employment. You're self-employment. I don't understand that. Are you a 299 or do they have you on a W2? No, so it's weird with being an ordained pastor. So like, I get a W2, but I have like a housing allowance that is federal income tax-free, sure. I'm taxed at a self-employment rate for the rest of my income.

So why that is? I mean, I don't know, but that is how my tax professional has explained it to me. Does that mean that is that is that beat? I know about the housing allowance for clergy. I know about that. But is this because the church is not putting in their portion of your tax benefits? And so you're having to pay the full 32 or 33 percent? Yeah, so the church doesn't, yeah, they don't pay for the taxes.

“So it's the, I have to pay the self-employment tax. Why don't they pay the taxes for their employees?”

It's a small town church, so it's, I mean, I don't know if it's really feasible for them to do so while also, you know, being able to keep me full time. So it, you know, it would cost them extra to do that. Okay. That's it. I think. Yeah, it's usually the role of the employer, right? Unless you're attending a contract employee. Yeah. But you've got a good tax professional, so I'll let you

work that out. It sounds like it. Yeah, I've never asked. I've never asked the church. I just kind of,

you know, when I got hired, I just, I understood that that was what the deal was and, you know, just been okay with that. How many people are going to get the tax? I'm just curious. There's, there are three of us right now. So it's, it's a tiny church. Yeah, probably not a lot of money. I don't know, yeah, I don't know how they're setting up all of, yeah, I mean, you've got to publish them. What it is, yeah. But to answer your question originally,

then yes, is I would do two Roth IRAs. And if they have the 403B, and there's a good, you know, matching situation there, there's probably zero match right even paying your taxes. No, that's probably true. I mean, they're not paying their portion of employment tax or fight tax or any of that stuff. Yeah, yeah. Dang. So Roth IRA, even, but I don't, and also remember to, in these situations of people in ministry, if you ever want to go into the private

“sector or public sector, I guess, you know, and you leave, you're housing, you have to think through,”

okay, if I'm 34, and I'm going to go and start my own business and do my own thing, you have to be thinking about the housing. And so you may be able to get a place to live. Yes, you want to put some money aside for possibly future Ethan and his family. If you guys ever choose to leave that specific church, and the other one doesn't have housing allowance and all the things. So have that in the back of your mind too, Ethan, maybe extra savings there.

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“One of our favorite things is when people share their stories about how they're winning.”

And we just got an awesome review from our every dollar budgeting app. Someone said, "Every dollar is excellent. It really helped me get my personal finances in order." Now that I'm married my wife and I use it together, out of our joint checking account and it helps us maintain a common

vision and a set of goals. So we love to see it. And every dollar really is an amazing budgeting app.

And not only just that, but it's a plan for your money. And if you are married, junior spouse getting together and working together, being on the same page to take control of your money is what we are all about. So start every dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play. All right, let's go to Michael and Minneapolis. Hi, Michael. Welcome to the show.

“Hi, how are you? Hi, we're doing great. How can we help?”

Good. I am 28 years old. I recently just bought my first house and it's overwhelmingly stressful for me. There's been some problems that popped up. And I just didn't expect to have this much stress, like to work to plant where I can't sleep. But my wife had to go get medication from the doctor. And I'm just really considering selling the house and going back to a armament living where I was stressed free and to not have this weight of a house on me right now. The bro, I just don't know what to do.

You just walked through the first chapter of my anxiety book. I've been there, exact same spot.

So help me if you think about your fear and your anxiousness globally, distill it down for me. Be very specific. What are you giving me two or three or four things that are keeping you up at night? So there, when I first moved into the house, I noticed or I got a, I noticed there was a mold in the basement and other parts of the house. Did you have the house expected? It was not inspected. No. No. Oh, no. Well, Jay is okay. Yes. But there's some good news actually.

So I noticed mold in the basement. It was pretty, pretty bad in the basement, but I contacted the seller who agreed to pay for the remediation of the basement, actually. So that the basement is now cleaned and remediated and he paid for it fully, he didn't have to, but he did. So I was really lucky with that. Yeah, you don't hear that for nothing. That's still pretty great. I just feel like there's still

“like, I just have this like digging it back in my head where I think there's like mold everywhere”

and it's behind the wall, but I'm just not noticing it. And I feel like I have a scratchy throat all the time, but maybe it's just because I'm so paranoid and stressed. Yeah. Where else besides your house? Where else are you? A generally anxious guy? What, what other things keep you up at night? In terms of the house? No. It not how it take house off the table. Okay. I'm very indecisive person. So I stress about a lot of like any major decision, I

lead to the last minute to make it and then I feel like I regret it. Okay. Give me another one. I'm not really stressed out when I job at all, but so that's good. But what's the state of your relationships? I have good family, parents are alive, healthy, I just recently in a relationship with someone that you know the past month. So that's going well. So when you hear the story in your head that you make bad choices, that you're going to make a wrong

choice, that you're going to screw this up again. Who's voice is that? Because it didn't start in your head. Who's voice are you beginning to repeat in your own words? I guess I don't know. I don't know what you're with what your question is actually. So when you're indecisive, right, should I do this or shut by this car? The red car or the green car? Well if I buy the green car, it's going to have this many miles. And if it's got if I buy this car, it the wheels may fall off. And if I

and then you buy the red car, not like, man, I should have bought the green car. Underneath that narrative is a story running through your veins that you don't make good choices, or that there's

always going to be another shoe that drops, or you didn't plan right? Who's voice is that? Who told

you that story? I don't know. I guess to me, if you think it comes from me, myself, that I'm just

and then kind of super indecisive. So I said, no, not about my, I've known that about myself for a while.

Okay. That's where I want you to sit down with a licensed mental health professional and walk through it. And not sit down and say, I am anxious and indecisive. And I want to talk about it. I want you to sit down with a therapist and say, I've struggled with indecisiveness and with a meta narrative in my life that I'm probably going to screw up the next thing. And I want to be free from that on the other side of it. And any licensed professional should be able to walk you through

that because there's some pretty simple action steps in a therapeutic setting to walk somebody through that. I've been there, I've been on the other side of it. Okay. And also, when I found myself in your

exact situation, we don't have mold as much in Texas. We had different stuff. Part of my panic that I

had all the time 24/7 was I had put my family in a really financially precarious situation. Because we had six figures of student loans. We had two car payments. We had credit cards and we

“had this house on top of all of it. Yeah, Michael, what's your financial situation?”

So currently I make like 75 grand a year in the IT job. I actually just got, because that was a mental stress out the past month. So I actually just applied and I got a job making like a hundred grand. So I start that in like three weeks. So that kind of helps me a lot to do it. We're kind of dead to you. Yeah. That's an answer situation. I don't have any credit card debt. I have both my cars I paid off. I just had to do it a little bit about 35 grand maybe. Okay. Do you have cash in the

bank saved? Yeah, about eight grand in the bank. In the bank, okay. And how much of this house cost? 270. Okay. How much did you put down? I put down the minimum which was like 2.5% I think. Okay. I did a good grant for 15k that covered pretty much all the closing costs and I'm not sure. So I think just a couple of learnings, Michael going forward. That part of your stress is caused by you don't have a ton of cash in the bank that can help maybe mitigate if there was a

massive mold problem, right? Or whatever it looks like, you still have student loan debt. You put down not a ton, right? We would say at least 5% if you're for someone by on our end. So you did even less than that. Everything is a little bit out of order and then you didn't do an inspection, which now you've learned your lesson on that. Yeah. So there's just some there's some lessons to be learned and it's been done and you're doing this a little out of order. So a couple

of things to do just to create for today's sake some peace is I would I would I would hire a company to come in test areas of your house just so you know of okay is there mold everywhere? Is it just in my head, right? You can figure that out and so go get some tests down let them run the stuff in the vents like you can figure out kind of where is the state of my house. My fear is is this right here.

“I'm overthinking. I think I'm I have a scratchy throat. I'm paranoid. Get it taken care of. Get the”

answer and then from there planning out okay if there is mold I go down path A if there's not then there's plan B. But from a financial perspective your number one goal is to get the student loan cleaned up and I would do that within the next nine months especially with your new job living on nothing. If the house does need repairs and things like put it in order and cash flow all of them because

you will be more stressed Michael if you go deeper in debt or you go get a second mortgage or you

take out a heat lock right and you keep adding on to your debt to fix this house that's going to cause more and more stress. So I would get all the facts I could down on paper, prioritize them and just start knocking them out. And again I probably would not jump to the boat right now and sell the house. Sell the house I probably wouldn't unless it's just absolutely fallen, I don't know, I don't know why you would. But I would stick in a couple of years if you could.

“But now I think it's one of these things like that was stupid. That was so stupid that I did”

so I didn't see right and we call it super taxor on here and say it out loud and you'll learn from it. We've all done stupid stuff made bad decisions but I think clarifying those and seeing those is going to help you move forward and I think some of this fear too I mean I'm not a therapist but is in your head and I think you can get some of those answers. You get some answers. Yeah, it's going to be financially precarious. Your body's right to sound all your alarms.

So don't try to silence those alarms like Rachel said, "Information will be your friend at this stage." So go get those facts. Go sit down with a counselor and yeah if you can, stick it out.

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show and the Fairwins Credit Union Studio. I'm Rachel Cruz hosting this hour with Dr. John Deloni and we are answering your questions at Triple 8-825-5-225. All right, let's go to Chris and Tampa, Florida. Hi, Chris. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Rachel and John. I'm a longtime listener first-time caller in Dr. John. I'm an OG 17.

Yeah, dude, you glad to have you over on this boat. Yes, my question today is about co-signing for student loans. So my father, he's elderly and I've been helping him plan his estate in his will. In the process I found out he co-signed for a student loan for my nephew. And as far as I know, my nephew, I guess he deferred the payments and then he's on an income repayment

“plan and I believe the balance on a student loan is about 200,000. So my question is, yes,”

yeah, he got a computer science degree and he's working at Best Buy. So not exactly the best investment of money. Oh, no. But my question is, when my father passes, will his estate be

liable for the balance alone? In other words, well, the student loan lender comes to my father's

estate and asks for the balance. How did that work? That's a great question. I don't know. I want to say it's to the primary on the loan. It would be your nephew. It would probably depend on if it's a federal student loan or if it's a private student loan too. If you got through a bank or you got through some off book, not off book, but some lender that's not a federal guarantee. It's not fairly guaranteed. It may be different. That's a great question. I know if

you pass away with your student loans, they're gone, right? But I don't know about a co-sign. Was it a parent plus loan? I'm not sure. I just found this out when I was helping him go through all of his expenses and accounts and so forth. And I saw that he was getting emails about the payments. So I don't know all the details. I don't think it's a parent plus loan. If I had to gas, it's probably a private student loan. Yeah. It's been a minutes. It's been what six years

now since I was sitting in the middle of all that at a university, but for somebody to get a bachelor's degree and they're going to hold $200,000 of debt. I don't off top my head. I don't

“remember a federal program, showing out that much money that you'd have to do somewhere else”

to get the money. But I may be wrong on that. If it's private, they're probably going to go after. They're going to get their money. Yeah, it's not going to be. Because they're going to say we would

never have given this kid that money. If this guy hadn't abacked it up with his wealth. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I better do some digging and find out exactly where who has this loan. Yeah, I would say for sure. If it's, yes, if it's government issued versus a private through a company, then those are going to be too totally different things. Because even with a private student loan, if you die, that loan's still, I want to say with a private company could still be put against your estate. Really? It's only federal

student loans that are not bankruptible. Private student loans that whole world is a totally different machine. I mean, you are, you're dealing with banks and lenders at that point. And it crisps. I'm surprised that there can be an income-based repayment plan with a co-signer, too. That surprises me. Yeah, I'm not sure. Like I said, I really don't know all the details. And I can only imagine with my nephew situation. I can't imagine him making the full payments on that loan. So I'm assuming

he's on an income-based payment. We are repayment plan. Or he's just not paying anything. If your dad's starting to get emails as a co-signer, that means the bill, the loan's not being paid.

“That's true. Yeah. I think an income-based repayment plan. If there's somebody else who can”

foot the bill, who's signed up to foot the bill, they're not going to give you a link. That would be my guess. I could be totally wrong here. Has your dad made any payments? As far as I know, no. What's the status of his estate? In, in meaning, can he absorb this $200,000? Yeah, if he can, in the reason we're thinking about this is because his will is pretty straightforward. I mean, he's just going to split the estate between my sister and my 50/50. So the question is,

okay, well, when that time comes, are we just going to split that if they come and say they want

Yes, does she know about this outstanding balance? I'm sure she does, yeah. I wouldn't be so sure

unless you've had a direct conversation with her. Yeah, we haven't had a direct conversation, but I'm planning to, you know, sometimes I've found out this information. Yeah, that's pretty to know. So I just want to make sure with my father passes, there's no questions, there's no surprises. You all know what's happening. In fact, I'm probably going to have a conversation my father

“and just ask him, what do you want? If do you want to pay off this loan out of your estate?”

Or how do you want to handle this? Yeah, they're sorry. This whole, this is such a mess. So where we don't like co-signing me, because it just complicates family relationships in such a

powerful way. Yeah, so it, yeah, I think that's for sure the right path to take of

everyone being on the same page completely before he passes, because you don't want this to rip apart your relationship with not only your nephew, but his mom, your sister, you know, your sister and all of that and what's fair, what's not fair, who, that would be so hard. Why do I feel this like knee jerk that I'm like she should pay it? I, on her side, right? I think so. But if she didn't know about it, and she's like, oh my gosh,

my dad did, oh, man. Yeah, I mean, the, yeah, without talking to anybody else, my thought is

“if Hank set up an arrangement with my parents and they co-signed for 200 grand, and I'm”

getting half and my sisters get half, that should, I mean, it feels like it's my kid. It should come out of my half. Right, right. That's, that's my impulse. Oh, man. Yeah, you guys, this is the, the 101. Why not to, why not to co-signed? I mean, genuinely, it is, it, you entangle yourself in a situation and the reason that you need a co-signer is because the person that is lending you the money, lending them the money doesn't trust that they can pay it back, because of whether it's

their debt levels, whether it's income to debt ratios, whatever it looks like, the bank is looking and being like, eh, and this could be a $30,000 car love, right? I mean, this is, yeah, that to a co-sign makes a financial matter, a relational matter every time, and it's just not worth, it's not worth my, my friendships, it's not worth my relationships with my parents or my kids. Yeah, I was, we were doing a podcast this morning, recording one, and the conversation got brought

“up about financial boundaries, which financial boundaries do you wish you had set earlier?”

What financial boundaries do you have in the future? And it's sometimes, you know, it's, I think a wise thing, I mean, I, I've been was like, oh, gosh, what would mine be to have a forward thought towards your future and then even looking back and being like, hey, that's where I messed up with money. I probably should have had a boundary there, right? And you just have this awareness to go back through your money story and then planning for the future and

thinking through relationships and money, what was healthy, what's not healthy, what does this look like? When is a good time? When is not a good time? You know, to help family your friends or whatever it may be, but just being aware of that you guys, because I think sometimes you get caught in the moment,

you probably don't always make the right decision. Absolutely. Because it's so like emotional.

Or be more prepared to talk to her nephew and say, I love you enough to not give you this loan. I can not co-sign this. Two hundred thousand and then working at Best Buy. Yeah. Man. Hey, George Kamel here. So you're thinking about buying or selling your home. It's exciting,

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ReFi.com/realistate may not be available in all states. All right. Today's question comes from Sydney and Texas. Sydney writes, "My boyfriend and I have had an on and off relationship for five

years. He's always been the one to initiate a breakup because he doesn't think we share the same mindset

on finances." Sydney, that's not why he's breaking up with you. Neither of us have any debt, but I would like to go to graduate school, which would be a $10,000 loan. We don't live together. We each have our own place and we pair our own bills. He thinks I have financial spending issues because I ask him to pay for my nails, hair, clothes, et cetera if we go on dates. That's not a financial issue. He thinks you're too much. My job only covers my bills and groceries with nothing

left for fun spending. Am I wrong for when to go to graduate school to increase my income or is this a blow-up waiting to happen? It's not sounding great, Sydney. Not in the positive right direction. If your boyfriend is funding your lifestyle and you can't sustain, you have too much

lifestyle Sydney. He probably wants some level of self-control from you. You're just agreeing

on, you don't live in reality. Yeah. And then going into debt, if that is a value system of his, it's like, no, I don't want debt and you're going to go take out $10,000 into loans. Yeah, he probably is like, well, I don't know if we have a few, I don't know if this is going to work of our term. Where you don't have, you don't live in financial reality for yourself. So what's it going to look like when you'll combine a household. And yep. So for your, for your sake, Sydney,

“regardless of boyfriend or not, I think it would be good for you to go through a process of budgeting,”

a process of saying, hey, what are my values around money? I can't spend more than I make, no one else is funding my life. What I make is what I live on. Would debt do I have? What's my next goals? Maybe it is graduate school. So no, it's not wrong to want to go in an advanced degree to get a better high-paying job. If that's all connected, that's not a bad thing. But you just want to do it in a wise way, which you wrote in

us. So it would be a debt-free path to go and do that. And so what does that look like? Does that look like saving up? Does that look like having maybe one year saved? And then you're working and saving the rest for the next year. And you're castling as you go. Is it working at a company that helps pay for the school? Like getting creative and actually putting some effort into it? It's good for you, Sydney. But also, it's probably a very attractive quality to your boyfriend,

who's like holy crap. You spend a lot and you're dependent upon me. Well, and you say, like, I don't have any financial problems, but my job only covers my bills and groceries. So I can't, I can't do anything with my hair, with my nails. I don't have any clothes. Like, he's looking at you saying, "You don't live in the real world." Like, if you want that to be your life, you want to get your hair done. You want to have your nails done. You want to have clothes to

“wear to work. All that stuff makes sense and it's great. But then maybe you need to make more money.”

And that just is about living in reality. Yeah. And it may not take a graduate degree to go get that depending on what field you're in. You could just apply for another job or go get a side hustle. Like, gosh, I did that. I did that. I didn't hit this poor guy. Just being like, we don't agree on finances. Listen, Sydney's boyfriend, you need to be honest with her about why you keep breaking up with her. It's not because you don't agree on finances. It's because

she lives in an all universe. And you like to live in reality. So just be honest about that. Poor Sydney. We love you. Cheering for you. I hope you can do it though. I love you. I want you all to be well and good. Yes, we'll see. This is not a, this is not a. Not looking good. Finance, same mindset on finances. That's not really the root here. Oh man. All right. Let's go to Kayla in Atlanta, Georgia. Hi, Kayla. Welcome to the show. Hi, Rachel and John. Thanks for

taking my call. Absolutely. How can I help? Hi. I am 33 and $58,000 in debt. I came to cry. It's about three years ago and I've been learning so much about stewardship and I want to do better in honoring the Lord with how I manage my finances. So I'm calling to get a specific strategy on how to tackle my debt and be done with this for good. I'm over it. I want to build a future college fund for my daughter who's currently five. Stay safe for a home and continue to contribute

to my retirement. I also just want to prepare myself to be a future spouse and not have any debt.

Good for you, Kayla. So impressive. So many amazing goals that you have ahead, which I think are

kind of one at a time. I think is the best way. And so starting with the debt. What kind of debt do you have? I have $36,000 in student loans and $17,000 in consumer debt across four

“card cards. Okay. So four credit cards that equal $17,000. Okay. And how much money do you make?”

I make just a little over $125,000. Oh, good. Dang, Jana, you're doing great. What kind of work do you do? I'm in commercial real estate. We'll probably marketing for commercial estate. Good for you. That's great. Well, what we teach when you pay off debt is the debt snowball. Okay. So this is where you're going to list all of your debts, smallest to largest. So even those four credit cards break those out. And one may be $4,000, one may be $6,000, $3,000, fourth. I don't know what they are,

all are balanced-wise. But you break out all four of those. And then your student loan is at one large loan at $36,000 or their multiple. I think it's broken in two. Okay. I'm $20,000 in 10, something. Perfect. So put that in there as well. So all the credit cards and student loans, you're going to take all of that. Again, write them out smallest to largest regardless of the

interest rate. Pay minimum payments on everything and pay off the smallest debt first. Okay.

And what's wild about that is you could probably pay one credit card off in a month. Like

“I bet if you had a $3,000 credit card, I think with your income and you do nothing. You cut back”

on out to eat, you cut back on everything. And any margin that you have, you throw it at this debt. And what's beautiful is once that $3,000 credit card is paid off, there's no payment on that. So you take that payment, throw it at the second smallest debt with all that margin you have from your budget. And so you just keep that moving. And again, looking at the numbers, I'm like, there, there's a really good chance Kayla. And the next, I mean, 14 months, you could have all of this

cleared. If you really, really buckle down on that. Yes. And it may mean, I mean, I don't know with

your situation is with child care and all that, you know, you pick up a second job even a few

nights a week. You know, you do, you just throw as much income at this debt and you get it knocked out as quickly as possible. How old you're daughter? I should be five in November. Perfect. You know, it's going to be super fun for you all to cook meals together in the evening as part of a mother daughter activity. And it's going to be the biggest pain in the butt of all times. It's going to take eight times longer than if you just did it yourself. But it will be a cool

experience you'll have. It will save a ton of money on just eating out. And y'all get to spend some really like, like connecting bonding time together. And that'll be, that'll be, that'll be great stuff. So, Matt, ask a question because I think for me again, the mental and spiritual click really locked in for me. But I recognize my own triggers, right? Like overspending, maybe instant gratification. And for me, I'm not like, you know, spending my bill of on a

Louis Vuitton person or anything like that. But I've definitely, if I want to travel, I'm usually not, I think that's kind of where my, I can use my credit card. And so I'm trying to just like cut it up for every day. Be done. Be done. Yeah. If you have it in your wallet, you're going to use it. So get rid of it. Yeah. So there's definitely a moral conviction that you're going to have spiritual conviction of, I'm not using dead anymore. Because when you want to talk

about scripture Kayla, every time dead is mentioned in scripture, it is in a negative fashion. You're a slave to the lender. It's a burden on your family. It's not good for you. I mean, we don't go as far as say it's a sin that you like can't get. If you have student loans, but it's not good, it's not good for you. And we see that from a psychological perspective, we see that from a financial perspective, like it all lines up. It's not wise. When you don't have autonomy over your money,

you know, when the stress is there. And so for you getting out of debt is going to be your biggest step and then building that emergency fund. And then you get to hit retirement, kids college, you know, the house, everything. So if you hold on the line, Chris is going to pick up and we're going to send you total money, makeover the book to walk you through the baby steps. [Music]

Dave Ramsey here for more than 30 years. I've been talking to folks on the air and I can tell you that most people are broke, not because they don't make enough money, but because they don't have a plan.

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

You stop guessing. You stop worrying. You stop stressing. Our every dollar budgeting app will show

you how to find extra cash, pay off debt, and finally start winning with money. But most people

making a change. It's time to say enough is enough. It's time to take control of your money. It's time to start your every dollar budget for free today. Go download it in the App Store or Google Play. One of the most fun events that we do here at Ramsey Solutions. My favorite happens to involve me and John. These two. That's the best. It's the best. It is. So we have our money and marriage weekend get away. It's coming up October 22nd through the 24th. Take it start at $749 a couple.

And you guys, this is one of the most incredible multi-day events that we have. And not only

“is it what I think. Great content. Good Q&A. We've really get in there and do it.”

Marriage a treat. You could ever go to it. It's so good. But also we hear from couples that it's just nice to get away. Like not have kids and logistics and all the things and you just come and you're stretched, you know, in a sense that we will challenge and talk about hard things. We're going to laugh a lot. It's fun. It's all together and incredible weekend. So make sure to get your tickets at ramseysolutions.com/events coming out with me and John for the best. And I don't want

to throw shade. I don't want those shade. At the other events. I'll just say I don't want those shade. But we don't pull any punches at this retreat. It was a common thing. We get back besides it was amazing. It was awesome. All the accolades is we didn't expect you all to go there. Yes. We didn't realize you were going to talk about that. Right. And so we cover everything of this retreat. Money, sex, intimacy, friendship and we give you a roadmap like a step by step plan

for when you get home, how to implement this stuff. And so I'm proud of it. I love that our

names are on it because it's good. And we've done multiple of these and we always, we're still

wearing content meetings, you know, as we speak. I'm ashamed of creating new content. So even if you've been at past once, you know, every time you come, we were fresh it and yeah, it's it's so fun. So we want to hang out with you guys. All right. Let's go to Idaho Falls and Michael is on the line.

“Hi, Michael. Welcome to the show. Hey, guys. How are you? Hi, we're doing great. How can we help?”

Good question for you. I've been a Dave Ramsey guy since I can't remember. I remember it's in the car seat in the truck. My grandpa's trucking, listening to you guys on the TV. It's awesome. But it's only been the past year that's taking your guys's advice really seriously. I'm debt free and currently

on big step number five. I'm investing close to around 26 to 27 percent of my income right now.

But I also just got married. I got married one month ago. Congratulations. Thank you so much. I also married her student loans. Yes, you did. Her student loans are around $10,000 right now. Okay. My emergency fund, I'm a pretty frugal guy is $10,000. I have 11,000 because I have another short emergency fund that $1000. So my question is whether I should pay off all of her student loans right now and reset it or send something in a sales

position. I'm fully commissioned. Should I start paying just a little by little? You all are now in baby step two. So what does that mean? Things I'm back to getting that debt free so

“probably just get into that debt, right? Right to check today and be done with it. Is she working?”

She we weren't living together before we got married. So she has moved pounds now. So she's getting a new job now. Okay, great. So yeah, so hopefully if she's not a 100% commission employee then there'll be some stability there, right? Yeah, what will she be making for there? Yeah, shall we wait for it? So it'll be kind of fluctuating. What's her degree in? She's a cosmologist. She's also working as a cosmologist. Okay. She just got the job like that day ago. Oh, perfect. How much will she be making doing that?

It's a commission. Oh, it is. Okay. Okay. So we'll throw out like what like if she just you know how many people she wants to see a week? Like what would be around? I don't I don't even know. Yeah, that's the kind of the tricky part about the situation is she's not quite sure either. This is a first job after cosmatology school. So okay. She's going to have to necessarily build up her clientele. Correct. Okay. All right. So she renting a chair just at a place. Correct. Yeah, for that first little training it's a commission and then she's going to be

Yeah, I'm renting a chair. Okay. Is it um is it hair with what specifically she's going to be doing? Yeah, it's hair extensions. That's where the thing. Okay, cool. You know what I would do if I were her. I would talk to a couple of people because that stuff is as expensive. I mean, it's like you pay. You pay.

But if she can somehow get connected to someone that's like killing it and they live, you know, three hours away. Or something like you're not going to be direct competition with them. And just ask some like questions of hey. Okay. How did you start? What did you have? Was the salon better to work here? Was it better to go on your own? Like what like what helped them? So social media presence like I don't know what it is. But if she can find some of those people and and she gets a rotation

with women that want that done every six to eight weeks, I think she could kill it. I mean, honestly, and I know it's her first job and it's probably a little intimidating and she'll need some hours under her belt to do it all. But I'm just saying that I think you guys have like an exciting kind of runway for something that she possibly is going to love and hopefully, we'll do really well that. So yeah, Michael, you guys are in baby step two, like John said, y'all are. So I pay it off and then you guys

“rebuild that emergency fund and then I whether whether you you need to take your retirement down to 15”

percent of Michael because you're you're investing too much. We don't say that often on the show.

But you're above that 15 percent. So some of that margin could go towards paying saving up for us

down payment on your first home. Are rebuilding your emergency fund? Yes, that's probably yes, that first first. And let some like the moment you hit send on that 10 grand, there's going to be a like, let's be honest, there's going to be some frustration, some annoyance. And there's going to be some nervousness because now you got a thousand bucks and that's it. Let that energy not go towards your wife. Let that energy go towards, I'm going to make an extra sale this month. I'm going to do,

I'm going to I'm going to lean in that much harder. I'm going to use that angst and I'm going to go that much more into a job that's essentially limitless, right? Your your full commission. So you can kind of go get it. Another thing I would say is I've had several buddies who got jobs at like chain barber shops and they did that for two or three years and then they then they branched out and started their own. And it wasn't a matter of like stealing clients or anything but they developed some

relationships over time and enough relationship development over time then they were able to have a base of clients when they went and opened their own shop. And so it maybe she just gets a job not at a fancy salon but just cut and hair and is able to slow like stay in the industry, learn more about it. You hear conversations about product and discounts and suppliers and all that. And so she's in the industry but also building her own practice there on the side.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that hopefully next up we can say for that marriage retreat you guys are just talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we love that. Yeah. I know. So final congratulations, Michael. And

“yeah. I think it that's part of the combining finances that like what you said. There's probably”

some emotion around it because it was like I'm a frugal guy. I saved 10 grand. You know, now it's gone. And what's going on? And a blink of an eye. But I do think that those are the building blocks. Those are the small, let's say small decisions. But decisions that you make early on in marriage that set you up so well. Like you're like going all in like all the chips are in the center.

There's something powerful about keeping your promises to yourself. We're doing it. This is who I am.

This is who I am when things are good. And this is who I am when things are tough. This is who I am. I keep my promises to myself. I'm a guy that follows these baby steps. I'm a guy who isn't going to own anybody any money ever, especially when it's tight. This is, this is what I'm going to be. And there's something really rooting about. I can trust myself. Knowing who you are. Yes. And this is the plan that I fall on. This is what I do. And by the way, based on what my wife

“spends, what I know Rachel spend, your wife's going to be rich. Rich. Tell me like,”

dude. Listen, dude. You get in some of these niches in life. And I'm telling you, I'm like, man, people can do real well for themselves. I'm telling you what they, if they know what they're doing.

And I'm sure Michael's wife does. Me and Winston have never had a conversation about it. But a

couple of times, we've, what's better than a conversation is we've just stared off into space. And just, just two guys stay on the next to each other, just looking at the horizon. Like, hey, does your wife get her hair done at such and such? Yeah. That's all we got to say. So all you got to say is they're off at the horizon. And you know, like, I'm with you, brother. I know. Listen. But I'm sure I'm sure my wife could stay next to you and be like,

so as your husband, by and more hunting out fits you. Yeah, where do the bows like? What are all the, yeah. The wood that you're replinking a room, you know, that could be even with us. And you all could just drop in the space, too. Okay. My own, my own thing. , I'm not against vacations. I'm against being broke. If you've paid

like no one else crews. Hang out with me and the Ramsey personalities for seven days in the

“Western Caribbean. Join the world's largest debt-free screen. Here, exclusive Ramsey teachings”

and more. The best cabins are filling up lock-in yours with a $600 deposit at RamseySolutions.com/events or click the link in the show notes. Our scripture of the day comes from Psalm 1271. Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted, unless the Lord protects the city, guarding it with centuries will do no good. Tom, so well. How do you say that name? I'm just gonna let you do it. Okay.

People with their own hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do. Tom, a soul. So, so well. I see well. So well. So well. So well. Farmers. It's actually farmer. It's farmers. So well. So, okay, people, I'm ready to again. Rachel is a new reading curriculum. I can't pronounce people's names very well. I'm just saying it aloud. It's fine.

People with time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do. Oh, it's kind of sad. You know, that's true. I don't know.

“All right. We're gonna head to the post now and then Santa Barbara. I think we are the King and Queen of”

compelling. I think we are two. All right. We're gonna show those of y'all born in the 2000s. Radios is when they used to take podcasts and just put them on on the air. And that's all you had. The air waves. Yeah. Yeah. They captured them. All right, Shelley. We're here with yeah. How are you doing? Hi. Good. How are you? We're doing good. How can we help today? Oh, he's so much has been he graduated from college about a year ago. And we ended up moving back to our

hometown because you got a really amazing job here. And he's job is very niche. So it's something

that can't be done in most places, but it's also a very, very expensive area in the job page well, but also areas. So expensive. And so when we moved, we ended up, we lived with my parents for a couple of months. And then we were going to rent a place, but rent was so expensive. And we had money for a down payment. So we ended up buying home because the mortgage was going to be basically the same thing. Rent was for like a tiny little condo versus buying like a house

when you have kids and dogs and all things. But we are spending over half of our income on our

“mortgage every month. Do I get my question? I'm like, what are you supposed to do in a situation like that?”

Well, how much is he making? He brings home around 8,000 a month. Okay. And how big of a house did you buy? Like cost-wise? It was 770,000. And so after I've done payment and everything, we're paying, I think, with like after property taxes and insurance all that, it's like 4300 a month. Does he see a raise anytime soon? Is the trajectory of income? I've already gotten one, which actually he's gotten too. So he's actually making a bit more than he was when he got hired.

They really like him there, which is good. And what that continues, like does he see his income continuing to grow? We're hoping so. Yeah. It seems like he has a job interview today, like for the thing company for like in level up position. Perfect. So I probably would-- I don't want a potential. Yeah. Yeah. So I would because of that potential, and it sounds like for real. Like it, there is a pattern of him moving up, right? And so if you guys can get to a place

that you look up and it's, you know, 40%, 38%, right? And you start ticking towards that, well, we would say is around that 25% range. That's going to be ideal. The hard thing is

it doesn't leave you much wiggle room financially to do other things. It's basically like your

house is taken, right? Most of your income and you're feeling that. So if you guys can't get to him, I mean, are you working? I'm not anymore. I was doing hair while he was in school, so I was the one like supporting our family. I got the time financially. But when we moved here, we moved out of state. And I don't have a clientele here. And we have one in a half-year-old twins

reactions to the chemicals and stuff. It was a whole thing, but as of now, I'm staying home full-time.

Yeah. So I would say, Shelley, if you guys can't, if you can't see himself bringing in, I'm going to say 12, 13. Yeah. I was going to, yeah, something around there. And the next probably two to three years, then you guys probably being recorded. Sorry. I don't think I'm going to be recorded. We're recording the call too. We have the, we have it recorded. You can re-watch this too.

“You're fine. You need to know my cheek hit it. No, you're fine. You're fine. So yeah, I would say,”

if you don't see a path towards that in the next couple of years, you probably, yeah, but so much else. And I understand California real estate is so expensive and so is Southern Florida and so is Manhattan all this. But, but math is math, right? So if you bring in $8,000, it doesn't matter where you live. If half of your income is going to your mortgage over a long period of time, it's not, it's not going to be great. You're not going to have a ton of margin to invest in

retirement and stay for kids college and X, Y and Z, right? So so what are you supposed to do? Well, I probably would have said I would hold off and I probably would rent and find something maybe in an area that's not super close to family because that's a very expensive area, right? You would have to finagle this situation to make the math work. And that's the hard part of, I think, all of this money stuff is that it doesn't really care about your feelings, you know, it's what it is.

And so you're either going to choose to be stressed and strapped financially to have the house, or you're going to be maybe sad and disappointed about where you live, but it's less house and

“not in a great as a great of an area, right? You have to kind of pick that side of it.”

So let's call this out. What is his annual salary? About a 125, probably? It's like 140. Okay, but you live in a, if not the one of the highest tax rate states, too, right? So yeah, a big chunk of it goes away and then Santa Barbara taxes are high. So like, yeah, all that to say is like 140 grand in a $700,000 house, like it feels crazy to you that we make 140 grand and we can't buy a house in the town where our job is, right? So understand that frustration is real

and because if you don't metabolize that frustration, it bleeds on to all, it makes everything feel emotional. Like just pull that aside and say, the story we got growing up is if you make six

figures, you're a bajillionaire. You're good, yeah. Yeah. And so the reality is, in some towns,

140,000 dollars is like a million bucks. If you all lived in the Midwest, y'all be living, y'all be living high, right? Yeah. And, but where are you live now? It's just, it's just purely a

“math problem. Yeah. And I'm, I'm nervous for you, but that's just me. Yeah, shall I do you feel stressed?”

Do you guys feel it month to month? Yeah, I mean, okay, it's hard because before we were living in Texas and I was the one working, so I thought a lot more stressed than if he was in school and we were trying to like stay out of debt and all of things. And so here, I feel we have more breathing room, weirdly, just because we still have like a little bit to stand at the end, but yeah, how much did you make in Texas? How much did you make? Not very much. Well, because he got laid off, so he went

back to school, basically with the GI Bill, but I was making like 40,000. Okay, so you had already

bought a house there. But let's play this out. Let's play this out. If you were making 40, and he found a job making a hundred, you're right back in Texas and except your housing costs are half. Yeah. Right. And so sometimes it is having to sit down and say, we had this dream of being around family. We had this dream of you working in this really niche industry and it's only available in a few cities in America. We had that dream. We had that dream of like living in one of

most beautiful places on planet earth, Santa Barbara, which it is. Like we had all these dreams. And it's not going to come true. And we're going to grieve that. Yeah. Right. And that stinks. I hate that for anything kind of. It's not though. His job is really niche. Like it's not. He wouldn't be wearing Texas or plan. Let's just stay in Texas because it made more sense. And he was applying to jobs that made way less than he wasn't getting anything. And then he got this job.

Sure. And this job doesn't really transfer. He works on rockets, which is like Sony. Yeah. It just doesn't really like transfer. Yeah. Well, Mike, Mike, we kind of get this amount of money anywhere else. Sure. Sure. Yeah, doesn't. That is true. But also the cost of living that you guys are living is also higher than anywhere else. So you got to factor both sides of the equation

it'll start to even out for you guys. All right. Well, thanks everyone in the booth. Thank you

“everyone for listening and remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace. And that's”

to walk daily with the Prince of Peace Christ Jesus.

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