You Can't Out Earn Bad Financial Behaviors

Stress from money problems doesn't just stay in your bank account, it shows up everywhere

in your life.

“Talking to someone can help you sort it out.”

Go to betterhelp.com/ramsy to get 10% off. Brought to you by the every dollar app, start budgeting for free today. Normal is broken, common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsy Network and the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsy Show.

I'm Dave Ramsy, your host, thank you for joining us America. We're so glad you're here. Jake Washall, Ramsy Personality, I'm one bestselling author, is my co-host today. We're glad you're here. Open phone is a triple eight, eight, two, five, two, two, five.

TJ starts us off in Kansas City, hi, TJ, what's up? Hey guys, glad you have me on today. I'm doing good. Who are honored to have you? How can we help?

So just in kind of a position where my family is living, paycheck to paycheck kind of thing, and we tried all kinds of stuff. We've gone through financial advisors and coaches at our banks and all that, and we're just hitting a wall where we just feel stuck and know that some patterns or behavior somewhere have to change.

So when you looked at that with the various coaches, did you find that there was a spending problem or did you find that there was an income problem?

“What I heard most was it looks like you need to generate more income.”

That's what I heard, but we never could, you know.

What is your income? So I, I gross around sixty nine thousand a year. Okay, and what do you take on monthly? Monthly I net around five thousand twenty six, I think something like that. Okay, what about your wife?

My wife doesn't have an income, she homeschool their kids and takes her motherly responsibility pretty seriously. Okay, how old are the kids? Nine, eleven, and five. Okay, I agree.

You probably are facing an income issue below the national average there, and so you are going to feel that. I'm assuming there's debt involved as well. Correct.

Yeah, you know, that's definitely the biggest hurdle is if we could get out from underneath

like one thing, it'd probably give us some wiggle room for other things. Absolutely, you'd feel that's no ball effect. So tell us about the debt that you have. We do, I mean, I say own loosely, but we do own our house through mortgage. Okay.

We have a couple of different credit cards of vehicle loan and student. How much? Tell us the credit cards, tell us the car and tell us the student loans. Okay, got you up. So the students are only mine, and they total about 62,000.

The mortgage, the remaining balance is 200,500. Okay. The vehicle loan is about 19,000. Okay. And both credit cards are around about eight and a half thousand each.

Okay. So 16,000. You guys are normal, but normal sucks. Correct. Yeah.

I mean, you got like, the same kind of debt most people have. Card debt, credit card debt.

“A student loan has been around so long, I think it's a pet.”

How long have you all been married? 12 years, this August. So the student loan's 14 years old? I graduated in 2012 with those. And so...

I'll be 14 years old. Are you using that degree, TJ? Not directly. What do you do? What do you do?

What do you do? So I actually work for an antique store that specializes in antique books and firearms, very high collectibles. What do you do? You're a retail partner.

Kind of sort of, I'm the shipping coordinator. I also do a lot of the research for the individual items and things like that. What's your degree? I graduated from a Bible College with the youth and family degree. Youth and family ministry degree.

Okay. So the part about you using your degree is you're not. That which is okay, but you're not on it. I'm using it in that it's a placeholder on a resume.

is you do need to get your income up because when you get your income up, you're going to have more margin available to you and then you'll be able to use that margin, which is extra money after everything is minimum payments and everything else has satisfied. That extra margin is what you use to pay off your debt using the debt snowball. And you were absolutely right.

If you listed these out from smallest to largest, so in this case, one of the $8,000 credit

cards would be first, if you freed up one of those credit card bills, that's a little

bit more margin that now you're adding to your life a little bit more room to breathe. That allows you to pay off then the next $8,000 credit card. You see how this works. So I agree with you. So the question is how can we add more income?

“I'm there's you who can go out and get some temporary side hustles, right?”

I think that you've got something tells me you've got some extra hours in the day that you could do that. I got ideal, but you've got the time and then I'm also looking over at your wife who's got some margin for time. She's home schooling and I do want to call this out.

That's a personal choice. That's a values choice. But as she's home schooling, it's also meaning that she's not adding a paycheck to the mix. And that's a choice that you guys are making. So everything, if I'm looking at your situation, suddenly everything is on the table.

And we can say. Here's the thing. Nothing changes until something changes. What are jades exactly right? And what the people that you've been with before have not told you.

“And we're going to be brave enough because we love you to tell you the truth is, you're”

going to have to get radical to break this cycle. Beans and rice, rice and beans. You're not going to see the inside of a restaurant unless you're working there as your extra job. You're not going on vacation because you're broke people and broke people aren't going

on vacation. You're going to get to stink and car paid off or you're going to sell it. He's going to pick up a side hustle. You're going to pick up a side hustle. You guys are going to sell so much stuff that kids think they're next.

We are going on a mission to clean these debts up. Tonight, you're going to get both credit cards out and look at them together with a candle lit and have a ceremony, a plastic surgery party and shop those stupid butt things up. And we're going to get on an every dollar budget and we're going to get so fired up and wired up because I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

When you get that going, you'll get out of that, but you will not get out of that doing what you're doing because what you're doing is running like a rat in a wheel, getting no traction. I do. I have two very specific and nuanced questions, but I think could it be like, yeah, that's

going a bit better of passing.

Yeah, that's the one, the first one regarding the credit cards.

I did recently do a balance transfer from one card to another, regardless of how we feel about a balance transfers, that specific card has a 0% interest rate until October of 2026. It might better off paying towards a 0% interest rate. It's your smallest debt anyway.

It's your smallest debt anyway, so it honestly doesn't matter. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care about interest rates or not, your problem, cash flows your problem, you need rid of the debt, so you don't have payments.

The number one thing you don't have payments, you're going to have margin. Yes. The number one thing on your checklist, TJ, is tonight you sit down with your wife, you need to make sure you both have this equal level of intensity on what it's going to take to get out of this, and the two of you are going to brainstorm, what are you going to do

with your extra time to make money and what am I going to do with my extra time to make money? You don't stop the conversation until two of you, the two of you have lists of jobs that you'll be applying for in the morning. Yeah, and 10 years from now, what are you going to be doing? That's not a clerk in an intake store, where you make a 169, not 169.

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I'm sorry. Let's try again. What's up, Carl? I'm making about $200,000 a year, and I'm having a real hard time budgeting. I was in trouble with credit card debt, which my has since put a band aid on it, but I'm

looking for a tool to be able to move forward, so I don't fall back into that credit card debt. Okay.

“When you say you're struggling to budget $200,000, what do you mean exactly?”

Tell us exactly what you mean by that. You know, I just feel my day-to-day puts me a bit upside down, and then I wind up leaning on credit cards, just not disciplined enough so to speak, and I feel that a budget and putting certain money to sides specifically for the mortgage and groceries and day-to-day things would help me save more and be able to become a little bit more independent or not so

up to the down. I mentioned I had $27,000 in credit card debt, and I went ahead and took a second mortgage

because it was a lot better than 30 percent, so I have an 8 percent loan now on my second

mortgage. So I have decent equity in my home. And I just still do in the same size. And now it's going to get worse every time you do this. You treated the symptom, not the problem.

The symptom is credit card debt. The problem is you spend more than you make. Exactly. So why do you spend more than you make? What's it going to?

“Well, historically it went to just the 70s as I call.”

I mean, maybe living outside of our budget, spending too much on dinners, going out drinking, buying stuff for the house, cars, motorcycles, I mean, they're looking going on. But I feel like I have a better handle on that now. I'm not doing that anymore because you're a budget. Well, yeah, yeah, I had a budget, but it kind of fell apart.

I don't have a budget currently, but I want to put one to play. How much debt do you guys have, Carl? Not counting your house. I am happy to say nothing.

What about the, well, the 27,000 that you rolled into the second mortgage and there's nothing

beyond that? No card debt. That's correct. No. No student on that.

No bundle. So what? No student loan. How much is your house payment? 20.

It'll be $2,800. And now with the home equity. It was 20. That's right. So if I take 200,000 minus 28 hundred a month, there's a lot.

I don't have to over. Yeah. I agree. You want to know what I mean? I know where it's all going and you're not the first one to fall victim to this.

You make a fine income. It's a great income. You guys probably feel like you make a great income and you've given yourself the excuse

to be sloppy because you think that you can out-earn bad financial choices and it always

“comes back to bite you in the butt and that's what's happened to you.”

So I think what's happened is it's not a budget problem. It is a self-control problem, right? Because you put those items, those line items, you say I'm only spending $500 on going out to eat or I'm only spending $1,000 on groceries and the self-control problem comes when you start to butt up against that line item amount and then you say, you know, I'm just

going to do it anyway, right? Yeah. I know I've overspent, I'm just going to do it anyway. And so that's a personal problem. It's not a budget problem.

I don't disagree, you know. I don't disagree. There's one more pivot to the equation. Yes, I make $200, however, I have a $100,000 base. The other $100,000 comes in two payments throughout the year in a bonus check.

Okay. So it's that Abin flow, where every six months, yeah, sure. I get the lion's share, but throughout the other months is where I get myself a trouble. I feel that a proper budgeting tool would help me become more disciplined. And so what I'm having for our conversation is, again, that let's just make up a number.

I'm going to put you on every dollar, the world's best budgeting tool that we've developed

because we're the best at this and you and your wife are going to sit down and give every dollar an assignment before the month begins. Now, if we could pan back a little bit, you're not to walk into this carefully and I don't know exactly how you're going to walk into it, but here's a plan. Let's pretend that out of the next budget, out of the next bonus, which is half of

your income and that's a strain, and that's where the strain's coming from. That's a good point of information, by the way, thank you for telling us that. So let's pretend that you need $124,000, which is approximately, let's say, $120,000, a month minus a taxes, so I need $10,000 a month to operate. But I've only got $8,000 because I only got $183,000 because I only got $100,000 coming in.

You follow me? Yeah. So out of the next bonus check, I set aside $20,000 to subsidize my monthly baseline. Follow me? Gotcha.

Okay.

“So, or you can set aside, if you want to make it even $24,000, I'll be $2,000 a month.”

So out of my next bonus check, I set $24,000 into a separate savings account. Each month, I moved $2,000 over plus I have my hundred to work with and I set my budget on that. And then anything else in the budget, anything else in that bonus can go to reduce these debts and to build wealth and to buy things.

If we were going to go on a trip, we'd take it out of a bonus check. After we pulled our 24 out, okay, if we were going to go buy a couch, we'd take it out of the bonus check in cash. If after we pulled our 24 out, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, you got a $50,000 bonus check twice a year, we're going to pull 24 out

at least once a year or maybe 12 out of each one, okay. And then that gives me some other amount of money out of that bonus. And you already need to have it also allocated before it comes. Every dollar needs to be spent on paper and being agreement with your spouse before it comes into your house.

And then stick to the plan, you're the two of you wrote down and you pinky swear and spit shake and make a contract. So, there's no magic tool, this is just something I can build myself. Now, I'm going to give you the every dollar budget, that's the tool, because it's a system

“that'll show you how to work the Ramsey process.”

But what I just designed for you is a customized version, but to deal with your volatile income, your your, you know, because you probably can't live on a hundred. Right. By the time you pay your house payment, your groceries, if you can, well, then you got another hundred to throw it stuff as it comes in, right, which will clean up all these debts real

quick. I mean, a hundred thousand will clean up almost every debt, but your house. Well, no, you only have them.

You can have this second.

Oh, you got it. Not the second mortgage out, the first bonus check, right. And no more credit cards. Cut them up. How did you cut them up?

You cut them up and use a debit card. We do not spend money. We do not have the wallet. Now, you got to cut them up. You got to take them out of the wallet and cut them up.

They have to be, they have to die. The accounts need to be closed. debit cards only.

“The debit card will do everything the credit card will do, except get you into debt.”

And also something cool happens when you cut them up, you don't have anything to fall back on. So you have to manage your money. You have to do it the correct way. Otherwise, when you run out, you run out, and there's nothing else you can spend on.

So that's good. Yeah. Every dollar is going to help you. It's going to be great. Yeah.

Hang on. We'll have Christian pickup. We'll put you in the premium version. We'll pay for it and get you started. It's a free app, people that you can download, but the upgrade version has an automatic downloads

from your debit card usage from your bank. And so it keeps everything up, keeps everything current automatically for you. It's very powerful tool. And it actually has built into it, all of the Ramsey system, the baby steps, and shows you everything you need to do.

And when you lay it out in the first time you do it, you're going to sit down and you're

going to say, where's home on money being gone? Because there's 3,000 bucks. I can't. I don't know where it's been going. Yeah.

Everyone has that happen. You feel like you've got a raise when you do a budget. Because the disorganization and the chaos, the impulse spending, the lack of self control, the inability to say no, because I make a lot of money, all that kind of, that was a really good insight.

Yeah. But stick with it. Don't just do this one time in the first month if you're in the red quit. Stick with it. It takes most people 90 days to start locking in and really get the fuel for it.

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“This is a book over time, how is Seth, how are you?”

>> I'm wonderful, thank you for taking the call, please speak with you both. So, Dave, before I ask you my money question and specific advice, I'll leave it a quick family dynamic in my specific financial vitals. So, I'm 52 years old, I'm single, no kids, no debt, I've been in debt, I went bankrupt 20 years ago, fortunately, I'm in a lot better place.

To make between $1500 to $2,000 a week in cash, I work in the restaurant business so it varies. I own my car, it sets me in my doggy, I have $60,000 cash in the bank, so I'm doing okay. The bad news is I have no retirement. So, the good news is that my father, who's excited to move the Florida a couple of years

ago, when I realized my father's health is declining with all time, just dementia, I've been older brother.

So, the family dynamic is myself and my older brother, we never got along very well, growing

up in and most of our life, but now with regards to my dad's health, it's actually helped bring our relationship to, you know, much stronger into blessing. And into blessing, it's a blessing for me, as an adult, so I'm going to be able to move to Florida to make sure my dad is okay. To move them into a retirement or I should say it's just a living and now in memory

here, unfortunately my father was always wonderful with money in terms of saving. My mother's a defender, I'm forcing my mom passed and then so the my dad's second life. So, my dad is 84 as I mentioned, he had a long-term health care policy, which is paying for his system living. So, really, you know, we don't need to spend any money, really, a long-to-take care of

his needs. My dad's estate, and he had a conversation, my brother and I was, his financial advisor.

My dad's estate is worth just under $5 million.

He's got about 900, 800 in an IRA, and then he has two accounts with Morgan Stanley. What we learned is that of that Morgan Stanley account, we kind of hit the stock lottery date. My dad had a stock that he purchased for $22 a share, a thousand shares, and it's now trading at over $1,000 a share.

So, we have about a million dollar position on one stock.

“I think I know your answer, but I'm asking your advice, you know, can we sell off some”

of the stock? Obviously, we've been to a mutual fund, you know, how do we do it? What's the best strategy in just kind of the question is, ultimately, my brother and I want to make sure that his estate is safe, which will then thankfully take care of my retirement as well as my brother and his families.

So, yes, you said $22,000 invested in what turned into $1 million.

That's correct, yep, he has a $22 cost basis, and we know that if we sold it, then there's a long-term gain there, there's long-term gain, but then, you know, if we keep it in any thousands of way, we even get that new step-up basis, so on and so forth, but I know that you've got to understand what you've got to weigh out is the risk of a single stock is substantial because whatever that company does, such so does the million dollars, right?

If that owner comes out and decides he's going to be in the Epstein files and the stock

“goes the guy the CEO and the stock goes in half, then he goes to half million dollars, okay?”

That's because you got it in one thing, that's the risk, okay? If you decide I don't want the risk, you're going to have $150,000 in capital gains tax. He's going to have $150,000 in capital gains tax, y'all are managing for him, okay? And as you said, on the, that's on the one hand, on the other hand, if we leave it alone, we don't have any taxes, but we have the risk, and he passes away, there'll be no taxes

on it. So it's a $150,000 decision. So I'm going to weigh $150,000 in taxes against the risk

away. As you said, my brother had, yeah, we wouldn't sell the full position that the stock on our call on Monday was to maybe sell off like 20, 25% so we're talking about a much smaller tax bill of, you know, 30 or 40,000 on the $200,000.

So the answer is this, let's just be inappropriately call us, okay? Can I just be mean a man?

And it sounds mean, because I'm talking about your dad, okay? But as long as he passes away before this company does something wrong, then you would not have wanted to move it. So the sooner he passes away versus the risk, the less, the less you would want to do that. And so I'm gaging his health and his situation mathematically, sadly, against whether we begin to move some of this away.

“And that's what you do. So who is the company? Is it Apple?”

No, it's micron. Hmm. Interesting. Micron, micron is up 900% in one calendar year if you look at, I'm sure you're probably familiar with them, you know, they do the AI chip and it's, it's literally like, like, I call it a stock lottery. So it's a very volatile, volatile position. Yeah. So do you think, do you think selling off 20% of that?

And then put that couple hundred thousand in mutual fund? Is it safer, kind of lowers our position in our risk a little bit? Is that a smart decision or, um, yes, I probably would say I'm going to sell off 20% every year until he passes. Yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of like my brother and I were, we're talking. Yeah. Are there, are there different strategies that are beneficial like in terms of when we do decide to sell? Like I heard something about a covered call or does that.

Yeah, I wouldn't get into all that. I would just say, I'm weighing the stepped up basis against the risk of a highly volatile tech AI company. This is not a, this is not a steady, I mean, they're not a bad company. I'm not tracing them. But this is a sudden leap up, which also is, um, you know, a more custom to a sudden leap down. If this was something boring, like Apple would be much more boring. Agreed.

“Yeah, sure. Yeah. So that's, I don't, at the stock price you're mentioning, that's what the kind of what I thought it was.”

But that anyway, but that one's been more of a steady thing where, you know, AI and microchip is just like suddenly on the scene and suddenly off the scene. And suddenly it won't matter. And suddenly nobody will care. And if we were zero, I, yeah, that scares me. So I kind of thought that on, on a separate subject, um, my dad happens to be a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit.

He'd second wife passed and, and there's a class action lawsuit that he's involved in.

My dad was the past before we got litigation because currently we're in litigation. We're basically waiting to, you know, see what the offer is in terms of our specific case with my dad's second wife. And we're experienced with that still, like, it's a, if the plaintiff passes, meaning my dad does that then, and then there's a judgment and rendered with that then go to my dad's estate, which is basically the trust in my brother and I have, or does that lawsuit go away? Just curious on that to the hedge on the phone, and thank you again so much. I'm not a legal expert. I think it'll go to the estate, but I would ask an attorney to get a real opinion about that.

“My opinion is probably worth what you paid for there, but I think it is. So let's recap because we were talking gobble to goop there for a minute.”

When someone has paid $22,000 for a stock that's worth a million dollars. If you transfer it, if you cash it out, obviously, before you die, you, um, pay taxes on the difference, the gain. If instead, it passes to your airs, they pay taxes on the difference in market value and whatever they sell it for. And if you sell it within six months of death, it is presumed to be market value by the IRS. So zero taxes on a million dollar gain

at death, or taxes on everything over $22,000 on a million bucks. So basically a million dollar gain is $150,000 swing in taxes.

If they, if these two brothers receive this money with the stepped up basis to market value, they have no taxes. Upon that's death. But if the stupid thing goes in half, right, before then, you'll wish you had paid some taxes. And that's kind of what he's weighing out and what we were weighing out with him. But, um, yeah, it comes down to how much faith do you have in that particular company to stay stable?

I mean, that's being very callous. But that's the mathematical analysis. And then you've got, you know, cry a little bit and have your heart in that and say, out loud, this is an awkward discussion. We were to talk about, but it's weird for me to sit out in my whole family and go over my estate plan once a year. If I die, what am it, people, I'm still sitting here. But if I die this year, this is what it's going to happen that if Dave dies this year meeting, it's very awkward.

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“Gabby is in Gainesville, Florida. Hi, Gabby, how are you?”

Well, I'll keep doing that. Gabby, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you, David? I don't know the we deserve. What's up? All righty. So my husband and I just got married in January. And since before we got married, we were starting on the baby steps because we both had student loan debt and a bit of credit card debt. However, my husband owns our house with his mother and with his mother, my mother and law, because they bought the house after he graduated college as an investment for him.

And she plans on moving the ownership to myself within the next month or two, but she also plans on refinancing the house. But to do so, it's tied with my husband's credit score and one of our biggest debt sons is his credit card. So she's been pressuring us to make sure we pay that down. But since we've been following the baby steps, we've been going with our smallest debts first. So basically, my question is, should we focus on paying down his credit card so that we can

refinance the house or should we stick to the-- So how much is on the credit card? It's about 12,000. Okay. And how much is the other debt? So my student loans are about 14. His student loans are close. My credit card is 8. And his credit card is 12. Yeah, that's the one you already gave me, right? Yes, sir. Okay. So they're all fairly close. Yes. And your household income now is what?

It's about 100k. Okay. When you do the re-fi, what's the interest rate moving to? So they've been waiting for the interest rate to drop right now. It's at 7%, but they're hoping for at least 5-4%. What's it current? I'm saying current. Currently 7? Yes. Yeah, because the market rate right now is about 5, right?

“You need to talk to Churchill mortgage about your refinance, okay? And get a 15-year fixed rate,”

because you should be somewhere in that 5% range in the market place right now. And that's a wonderful savings as well. Yeah, that would be great. So let me say something as preventative medicine

that's not-- The answer is yes, pay down the credit card, because they're all fairly similar

and this accomplishes a bigger goal. And it's not because she's pressuring, it's because she's offering. So I don't understand how we got here with him and his mom owning the house together. That's not bothering me, and what I want to make sure you here is this lady is

and she doesn't want to help you get out of it, and she wants to stay on it, and you think you

“have to own this house with your mother-in-law forever. And that's who we-- that's the call we usually”

get. This lady's going, is very healthy and saying, I want to put it into my new daughter-in-law's name as fast as I can. That is the right mother-in-law answer. You have a peach of a mother-in-law, she's awesome. Oh, I definitely do. It's just been a little bit stressful because we actually recently found out that we're also pregnant. Oh, wow, that's so awesome. That is so awesome, very cool. Well now she's going to be super nice. Oh, yeah, I love it. Hey, good for you.

Yeah, I want to give her some props because she's-- she wins the mother-in-law of the year award on this show. Most of the time the mother-in-law in this situation is a test pilot for a broom factory. And so this one is really doing a good job. And so I want to help her. I want you to appreciate her and to help her. And because she's really just handing you the keys to this

“thing, y'all got to just get the paperwork transferred, right? Oh, that's great. There's no other”

money involved. That's so cool. Yeah, we just got to get the refinance, get her name off the loan. That's it. And then she dates it over to him and to the new daughter-in-law. That is awesome. And that only costs $12,000. We make 100. I want y'all to work extra. I want you to sell stuff. Any wedding gifts that go back that you had duplicate serve, turn them into cash and throw them on the credit card. Chop up all credit cards. Get on an every dollar budget. We're going to give

it to you as a wedding gift. The premium version and get you signed up. The two of you sit down and just wear that thing out. You're going to come up with 12 grand in like three months. It's going to be gone. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. Just one more side point because I'm pregnant and we recently found this out so we haven't hit all the bills yet. How do we attack the baby steps moving forward? Do we set aside part of we've been paying off debt at least $1,500 a month since we

started in January? Yeah, I want to get you. I want to get that credit card gone and then I want you to stop paying off debt. I want you to stack cash until the baby comes. It sounds like you've listened to us before we call it Stork Mode. Yeah, so while you're in Stork Mode until baby comes, we stack cash and we don't use the cash. We're not building on an nursery. We're using the cash to pay off debt after you come home and the baby's okay and you're okay. After you come home

from the hospital. But this is just an extra little pad while we're pregnant. But before that the first

three months right here of your first three, your first trimester, we're knocking out that debt before we do go to Stork Mode because I didn't got to get this house transferred. Yeah, and that's where the side hustling has to come in otherwise the math won't work. If you're using that $1,500 margin to pay off $12,000 and that's it. No, we got to get to $3,000 for $4,000. Exactly. And you're going to squeeze this budget down super tight. We're going to work extra. And again,

I'm selling everything in sight. Really, because if you can get this house transferred and be rid of this one thing and then you stack cash till baby comes, you're going to be in a really peaceful situation. Yeah, margins got a double. Yeah, that's very for a short period of time. I want y'all to go cray cray and knock this out. If you live like no one else later, you get to live and give like no one else. Janice and Norfolk, Virginia, hi Janice. What's up?

Hi. See, thank you so much for speaking with me. Last night my mother gifted me $53,000. And I am just wondering if I should put that toward my mortgage, which is currently $215,000 at the $2.5 interest rate, or my concern is that all my parents' life they have been financially free for goal, that they have not saved, they inherited quite a bit of money from a family member who passed. And since then have been a little bit less conservative with their money. So I'm worried that

as they get older, I do know that they are currently spending more money per month than what they bring in with.

“How much money did they inherit? Over a million. And that's why the $15,000 or that”

never come from. It was a family thing. One person got that amount and to be fair, I also got

that amount. I don't need the money, but the other person. Let me help you. She's going to get hammered with gift tax unless she's got some estate planning going on. Well, that is also part of my concern when I was looking up. Yeah, individual can get an individual 19,000 before you get into gift tax of 55%. They don't know anything about any of this and they just write checks.

Yeah. Okay. Well, they can each give you 19, so that'd be 38. But everything above that,

“unless they file some paperwork called a unified estate tax credit and use up some of their estate”

exemption, which they can do pretty easily, they're going to get hammered with gift tax. You can't just hand out money unless it's a 501 unless it's a properly done nonprofit and you're not. So mom and dad need to get some tax advice and quit being ignorant. They're about to get their butts kicked in and audit. Really bad because they didn't have

learn what they were doing. So I don't care out of a million if they gave you a 53 to give somebody

else 53. They're probably okay. I'd put it on my mortgage. I wouldn't worry about the gift. I'll just worry about mom and dad. They have about 500,000. I'm sorry. It's not. They don't have a million anymore. They have lessons by your work. They're going to come knocking on your door when they blow through all this money. And now they're going to be, you know, I don't think they would do that because they would not ask me for that. But I feel, you know, compelled more

on your house is paid off if your house is paid off because you use this to accelerate the pay off.

Then when they are in trouble someday, you'll be in a better position to help them. So I'd put it on the house.

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delivery lanes, week 100 print went in a C 3 7 2 7 7. Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the fair wins credit union studios. Jade Wash all Ramsey personality number one best selling author is my co-host. Ricky is in Riverside, California. Hi, Ricky. How are you? I'm doing well. It's a little nervous, but happy to be on talking to you guys. You too. What's up? I have a pretty stressful situation that my wife and I are going through. I've been animating in games making

pretty decent money for the past four years. And I've recently lost that job about a month ago. And now, just doing a budget over the weekend, it showed that we were short about $3,000. It's effective with the mortgage and all of our bills and just groceries and all that. So I've been

“trying to figure out what is the best path and the only thing that I can think of is possibly”

selling our house. But I've listened to you guys in the past and I'm not sure if I'm like our situation or in fact, or if there's anything I can do, but this incredibly stress. Sorry. Sorry. That's scary. Yeah. So you were an animator, did you say? Yes. Yeah. And you were making $1,000. I was on average of 120 to 150. Recently, most recently, I was making $130. I just got a job at Home Depot. Good. About six weeks ago. And sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry.

I'm making $21. And I worked. So I think that's like $40, $40. Okay. So I just, I don't know if I should, you know, is your wife working outside the home? Sure. Yes. So what's for the state of

deduct her retirement. And what does she do there? She checks the licenses for foster care

facilities. And what's more? Why did the animation job go away? It's just been the industry been really rough. The one that I just had was just a contract division after a layoff that I had last year. So this was the contract from September to the end of April. And right around the new year, I've been applying, reaching out to old co-workers, anybody that I can recruit her, so I'll link them. Anyone, anyone that had any sort of connection? I've had interviews. I have the interview

recently at Apple. Just found out I didn't get it yesterday. And it would be the other game

signals. I get close and then, usually that final interview where I just don't see the get it

to come. So I just, I hadn't been able to line up another animation job. So you, but it sounds like there is jobs out there in this industry that the industry isn't dying. You just hadn't landed

“after your last contract, you haven't landed the new gig as well. In my opinion, I think it's dying,”

that they're in a pandemic. It was doing really well because everybody was stuck home gaming. So gaming studios overhired. Things have leveled back out and games aren't doing nearly as well. So there's this gaming, what you were doing? Yeah, I've been doing game animation. How is AI affecting animation? I think it's, I think it is starting to affect it to a degree. I think like just like commercials are starting to use AI more, but that takes jobs away from animators. I don't think

it's really affected game yet, unless I just don't know, but it's affecting like movies and TV and advertising for sure. Okay. But you're bringing in $3,000 a month that she's bringing in for in your still three short. Yeah. How much debt do you have? Not counting your house.

“Not counting the house. I did the math. It was about 160,000. What?”

My student loans were 55,000. My wife's are 20,000. We do have a car for 40,000 and just a couple of like personal loans. Like 1 for 17,000 and another one for 10. Another for 5. We owe 10,000 to the IRS from taxes not getting enough to take another check. Okay. All right. So the levers to pull are, before I sell the house, I sell the car and I sell it tomorrow and get out of a 40,000 car, get into a $5,000 car. And I would let the student loan, but the student loans on hardship

deferral temporarily, I'm trying to get cash flow going here. And then you need, but if you're

going to pay something, you pay food first, lights and water second, house third, and cars and

car gasoline fourth to get to work. So food shelter transportation and utilities before you do anything, before those cards are loan, student loans or anything else gets paid. Okay. But yeah, I'd get really the car immediately. And then I would set a, you know, pick up another second job to go with this one. Yeah, I was going to say and fill in the blank here because you're not working 40 at home, Deepo. And can your wife pick the side hustle as well? Maybe my wife's date Monday, I had breakfast

kind of work, so they actually converted me to full-time on the spot, which is super nice working 40 hours now. That's all, though. And then you can work under the 30. Yeah, I can. Yeah, I'm not, this is not a permanent solution. I'm trying to keep the water in the lake while we get a new position as an animator. Okay. And then what I would do, so let's pretend that you can strain and work 60, 70 hours and she can work 60, 70 hours. We sell the car, we're on beans and rice, rice and beans.

We're having a garage sale. We got so much stuff on Craigslist, the children think they're next. You know, we're really, really dump and stuff out of here. And we can barely hold on.

“That's what I want to get to. And I think you can get there. I think you can get there. But that's a”

temporary thing. And then I would say, if I don't land an animator's job and get my income back

the house. And so I'm like three months, four months. Okay. You can't sustain the thing I'm talking about for six years. Well, this is a short term. So we're saying, you know, we're going to give this until after Christmas, we're going to give this until Thanksgiving. But you know, if we're thinking

about selling a house, we would want to sell it after the first of the year. So if you could hang

on for six months doing this, and if you haven't landed the animator job in six months, then yeah,

“you probably do need to do something different. You need to adjust your career. Okay.”

The other thing I would advise you, and I am not an AI expert by any stretch of the imagination, although Ramsay is spending a lot of time on it here. The people inside this building are, it is not the answer to everything. It is artificial. It is not real. But it is affecting disrupting some of these industries. And if I'm in your shoes, I'm going to learn what it's doing

to my industry. And I'm going to start learning how to use it instead of it putting me out of business.

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Sophia is in Maine. Hi Sophia. How are you? Hi. I'm good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I'm going into my junior year in college and I want to study abroad next semester. Well, next spring in 2027. But it's a good chunk of money and so I would probably have to take a loan out for it. So I'm wondering if it's a good idea to do that. Should I take out a loan to go on a European

“vacation? That's what studying abroad is so fee. Yes, I know. How much does it cost to study abroad?”

So, including literally everything tuition, home and board and even like spending money, they estimate it around 18 to 20,000. Okay, 18 to 20,000. Do you have any sort of job or any work that you're doing right now? Yeah, I made about, I go to school full time, but I made about $25,000 last year. Okay. I think around that. Are there scholarships for this? Yeah, so all of my scholarships for my home university will transfer. So I'll get about like

$8,000 covered and then my own personal savings. I don't have to pay until October and so I'm planning on saving like everything until then. So I think I'll be able to get like a good probably another $8,000 on that. Okay. So we're getting close. Yeah, we're getting close, but you are spending every single dime you can scrape up on a European vacation while you're a broke college student. Oh, I mean, I don't. I mean, this has absolutely no economic or marketplace value, honey.

Zero. What are you saying? You're not going to come home and go. Oh, every employer in Maine is going to line up to hire me because I studied abroad for one semester. Zero chance.

On 19. Yeah. I. I. Yeah. If you're parents are rich, that's fine. But I would not tell

“a 19 year old person that I love to spend their very last dime to go on vacation. How are your”

other semesters being paid for? Obviously, you've got the $8,000 scholarship. How are your other semesters at home being covered? I go to college for free. So I don't have, I don't have any student look at all. I will say this. And this is Jade's opinion. I traveled right out of college for work. I was getting paid to travel. So that is a big differentiator. But I think traveling is one of the best things that you can do for yourself. It's a different type of education. I personally think

that if you can cash flow this, I wouldn't stop you from doing it. But Dave, Dad has told us

something else. Jade and I can disagree and but be right. That's okay. That's okay. Yeah. I can disagree and both be right. That's all right. Yeah. I, I, I look at, here's the problem. The, the, if you qualify this as a vacation and you say I'm going to spend all of my year saving up to go on vacation because I value travel. Like Jade is talking about and you want to do it there and you put that in that slot, that bucket in your brain.

“I'll back off a little bit and not yell at Jade. $2,000 for vacation. That's what you say. A little bit.”

But the problem I've got is when people call this education. Yeah. Because there's very few things

that you study abroad that add value to your resume equivalent to what they cost. What about like nothing? Would you factor in school of life, life experience being able to see cultures outside the night of vacation? That's a vacation. Yeah. But there's, I can't think of that. That's not, you can't call this education is for the purpose of furthering your career. It's not as a type of education. Well, it, it, it should be, and especially when we start talking

about borrowing on it, we're not going to do that one. Certainly. Yes, here we have to borrow it. Don't go. Yes. Yeah. Period. We're in agreement on that. Yes, we 100% are.

“You know, here. I'll just, I'll just come clean. All right. We have plenty of money at the Ramsey's.”

Uh-huh. And Rachel, she wants to get abroad. She decides she's going to study Spanish in Spain for one semester. She did. Oh, really? Yep. I paid for it. Okay. We had the money. Are you Americans? Because Zina's being Spanish to this day. Zino's trying. The girl cannot call the dog in Spanish. I'm just saying. Okay. It's just absolute, I mean, local petal. She can't even get there. I mean, it's just not a chance. It's just not a chance. She can get there. I speak more Spanish than

she does. She went over there and had a great time. And it's a classic intellectual style. Where Rachel is, Rachel has a great time, right? But it was absolutely freaking useless. Oh, man. Okay. And I look back on her. I got complete as the dad. I got scammed. You got swindled. Because they told me this was education. You got the money was was a Spanish party in Barcelona. Okay. Understood. So you're better. You're better. I'm better. You're better. You're better. You walked into

bitterness. That's the problem. No, all kidding aside. Don't call it education. Because it really isn't. I mean, even if you're studying. If you're not going to London and study banking, that's okay. It does not add enough feathers in your cap for your future job to justify the expense. The ROI is not there. It's an experience. A vacation. It's an experience. I'll tell you. There might be one exception. What's that? Art. Okay. If you were going to study, if you're studying fine art,

and you were going to spend time with the grandmasters in Italy. Yeah. Okay. That might actually add value to your resume, enough to help you with some of the big houses in New York. Okay. So Sophia goes back to a studio in front of a Michael Angelo. I mean, you stood in, you haven't just studied it in a book. Yeah. You know, or a slideshow. So that might, that might, you know, if you, if you can spend time in Venice and see the light differences, yeah,

then that are real. And I'm not an artist, but they're real. Then that might, there's something new wants like that. You might get your money back. But most of this time, most of this stuff is just bull crap. I would say there's not a, there's likely not a career ROI,

versions of going and getting into grief that are that. But, but we've now told people that,

you know, you can spend $200,000 having this, this degree that is well rounded in your barista. And you're not well rounded. You're, well, you're the best rounded barista I know. Correct. Most insightful on several subjects. No, thank you. That's not a way to build a child's life. It's not a way to coach a 19-year-old because this is how we end up with a student loan crisis. And so if you're called about a student loan. Yeah, the fact that you were going to take a

loan for this was bananas. I will say that. Yeah. It's a fun discussion. It is fun discussion.

Hey, I learn something new. Rachel, Rachel, go on vacation. You get thrown out of the bus,

kiddo, I'm just saying. Just feel the bus tracks blown down. Well, you're talking to somebody who's been a 92 countries. So I love travel. I love, now, like I said, the difference, I got paid to travel. I've got paid to go to all of these places. That's very different. We work in crochet. Yeah. What do you want? Yeah. I mean, that's a different. That's a completely different thing. Then my college is taking me. That's right. And I am going to study. Yeah. Yeah. That's, it's just an

experience. It's a trip. It's a fun thing that you could do. It's a hardie. Yeah. It's beer pong overseas.

Oh, for I can say this with, I never played one game of beer pong. My entire college. You didn't.

Well, it was not, it didn't. They invented it when I was there. I would've been championed. You would've been the champion. Oh, boy.

“We're been ponged. That's why we, oh, there we go. There we go. Whole new game.”

Guys, you have to be careful with education. It is, it is an irony in America that we're stupid about education. Let that settle in. If you've worked hard to keep your car running, the last thing you want is stress when you're running the kids all over to summer activities or loading up the family for a well earned vacation. That's why I trust Christian brothers automotive. Listen, most people don't worry about their

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student loans that they can't keep up with. They might think there's no way out. Well why refie helps borrowers. Explore solutions with fixed rate refinancing in a payment plan. This tailored to their situation. Go to y-refighter.com/ramsy. That's the letter y. The letter r, the letter e, the letter f, the letter y. Y-refighter.com/ramsy might not be in all states. Okay. Today's question comes from Shelby and New Jersey. She says,

"My husband and I are both 35 years old and recently combined our finances and did our first

budget together. I paid off closed. I paid off and closed my credit card. He stopped using his credit card, but wants to keep it just in case. Together we earn over $175,000 a year. Our own debt, our only debt is $25,000 on a car loan. We have the cash today to pay it off, but my husband will not agree to pay it off any faster than just the monthly payment we pay a $400 per month. I want to be debt-free, but I want us to agree to commit to this way of managing money.

How can I best go about this?" So, it sounds like your husband is living. He doesn't want to leave his comfort zone, right? Him closing up his credit card. That's uncomfortable for him because he likes it to fall back on just in case. And also, yeah, paying off the car early, paying more than just the minimum payment that sounds like it's setting him outside of his comfort zone. If I do these things, I'm going to have to change something about my life. I'm going to have to pull back on

something. And it sounds like he's not interested in that and you're right. That is a problem.

“The best thing that you can do about this is to share a deeper reason why not just for the moment”

and not just so we can be debt-free. Just so that we can be debt-free feels great, but there's a deeper why behind that. And I would challenge you to put words to what that is. What it means for your family tree, what it means for your marriage, what it means for your personal peace. And that is what I would share with him first and foremost before we even start talking about the numbers. And then I would challenge him to share what his vision is for the family and what his wise are. That way,

all the cards are laid out on the table and you can actually have a conversation about the vision for your family. And then now we can start plugging in. How do we get there together? You're exactly right. If we pan back and we say, "Is our goal to keep a car payment the rest of our lives?" Sure, hope not. Well, if you do that then let's go on Ramsey Solutions and pull up the calculator and put in $400 a month from age 35 to age 65. Yeah.

In a decent growth stock mutual fund, that's going to be several million dollars. Oh, yeah it is.

Hope you like the car. Terrible. Yeah. So three million, three point two million dollar

“car. I hope you like it. And yeah. So the only way that anything he is saying makes sense is”

in the next 30 days. In the next 30 months or 30 years it does not make sense. What a come out. 1.2 million. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. So which makes the $400, I want to keep a $400 car payment statement as an I. That's like saying I want to be middle class instead of being millionaire on purpose because I really like car payments. Well, what a dumb but thing to say. Yeah. I mean, seriously. That's just dumb. So, you know, but you got to pan back and make

sure that he grasps that. Yes, they're going, well I think I'll just pay it out slowly. Well, what are the implications of that? 1.2 million dollars. I love. So that's just dumb. And so you pan back and you start going, "Look, the people that build wealth and the kind of life that I envision us living don't have car payments. The people that I envision us envision us living like don't have credit cards. They are living on debit cards and they pay cash for things.

They don't have any debt and they use what used to be all those debt payments to build a wealth with. If you live like no one else and later you can get out of debt, build wealth and live like no

one else. Well, I want us to go somewhere with this, not always keep a car payment. You're always

going to have a car payment. Well, that's well, have a good car. But that's what you're saying

“is so important, which is why you have to go beneath the numbers because when you're married,”

most people do some version of what they saw growing up or what they see the people around them doing. So if he grew up from a family where they had car payments the entire time and it seemed like everything was okay. Well, look at how the family turned out. Right. Broken living on social

because he will. But if he hasn't seen that yet and so far everything seems okay. And his mind

what's the big deal. And then if you came from a family where we paid cash for things and we paid things off and you understood the implications of debt, those are two different backgrounds working together and that's the emotional side of money that you do have to have conversations about.

“You have to understand where the other person is coming from in order to then shift the”

conversation in the way that he knows. But there's no long-term scenario that his ideal works in. No. Zero. Zero. The only thing scenario here he works in is in the immediate.

In the next 90 days, it feels good to not have $25,000 in the bank and not have $25,000

not card debt. But there's no, you know, no 10-year period of time that you look at that and go, oh, that was really smart. It just does not occur. Yeah. So when you pan back and you extend vision to this, you said vision earlier and you add vision to the discussion, you say, I want to talk about where this takes us, not what we're doing this month. But where do the where does this philosophy take us into the land of broke? That's where it takes me. And I want to

go to the land of millions. That's a different land. There are more flowers there. Cesar is in Denver.

“Hey, Cesar, what's up? Hey, Ramsey, how are you guys? That other than we deserve, how can we help?”

Hey, so I'm 21 and I have a pretty good thing job, but I feel like I've hit my pace

ceiling at 20 range in my, you already mags down in your industry or just that. What is your industry that you maxed out at 21? The diesel mechanic. What are you making? I'm making $42 an hour. You ain't maxed out. Your diesel mechanics making 120 out there, bro. Working for themselves or other people. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, I don't know whether it's time to go on on my own. I've done

out on my own. No, I don't necessarily think it's time to go on your own, but I think the particular line of diesel that you're working on in the particular industry that you're working on is

“not paying as much as some of the others are paying. Do it. Do it. I mean, micro and hour have”

this discussion at the day. Diesel mechanics are doing much better than a lot of lawyers. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like that 21, I'm making decent money with, and like with the older, great for 21 years. Oh, 42 bucks is no slouch, but you're not, you're not, you know, you can make six figures in your world, dude. Now, you might have to be running a mobile truck. You might have to be out there on the road a little bit. You might have to, you might have to go

get some certifications on some engines that you're not that you don't know yet. You know, I don't know what you're working on, but what, and what the guys making 120 are working on, but I was just talking about this the other day and you were saying that this is one of the, and there's a shortage in your world, too, by the way. There's not enough guys and girls that know how to do it. Just a quick search tells me the highest paid diesel mechanics, often work in

specialized fleet maintenance, field service roles over time, power generation. But if you do those things, you can make upwards of 120 plus. Yeah. And that was Google in 30 seconds. Right, or chat, JPT, or whatever you did. And I just, I mean, it's not, it's not like that. Detail piece of research she just did, but that's that confirms about Mike was talking about. So yeah, you know, you might be maxed out. So what I would tell you to do is move in one of those other more specialized situations,

power plant situations, something like that. Get your income up, get some more experience, and then talk about opening up your own things somehow and run in your own thing. People that own their own businesses generally, if they do a good job running the business, make more than the people that work for them. Yep. Doing the day, so there you go. , running a business is hard work. You're the CEO, the accountant, and the

sales team. You don't have time to moonlight as your own benefits department. That's where health

line items in your budget. And most of you are overpaying because you're stuck figuring it out

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Susan's in Milwaukee. Hi, Susan. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Yeah. So my question is about how to handle conversations about differing financial values with family members? Like who? Like close family members. Mom and dad? Double siblings. siblings. Tell us the situation that's where it's something's coming up and you

“feel like you need to have a discussion. Yeah. So it's kind of come up a couple different times.”

So previously it's been about like vacation budgets and we kind of set our budget and you can tell that it's maybe a little lower. Recently it was about a last-minute travel plan situation and they did feel like they could commit to a date and I made the mistake of saying like well we can't afford to do like a last-minute plane ticket because those can be obviously more expensive and their response was oh well we talked about it and we'll just pay the extra for us.

Yeah, for me and it was it's not I spoke wrong. It was not that we couldn't afford to. It's that we choose not to like you don't want to just turn on saying that. You know the difference is listen I got to tell you they even sharing love traveling. We do not get joy out of traveling without a plan. We're overpaying when you don't have to. And so everything is planned out to the

“end degree even our impulses are planned. And so that's what we get joy from. Other people get joy”

about just landing somewhere getting a rental car and figuring it out and that is fun for them. I don't travel with those people. They would trap me bonkers and there are some of those people I love dearly but we don't travel alike and I'm not staying in that place. I'm not sleeping in the back seat because you couldn't get a reservation. I'm not standing outside in the sun for an hour and a half because you can't get in a freaking restaurant. I've had the reservation for four

months for I got there. And so that's the difference and it's okay if you want to live free and all that then do it you know but Dave has a plan. You're not wrong and so it's either one's okay and I just tell people that so and we have relatives and friends that are in both camps that are playing everything's planned out to the end degree. Or I mean are they usually like

“that have you found in the past that hey we just are in and young when it comes to the way we travel?”

Yeah yeah I mean they're definitely more last minute. They're also just willing to like oh it's not a big deal financially. Yeah I think Dave's right these are not your travel companions. I think it's as simple as that and it's no shade it's just I go with you. I don't with you. If it's a family thing the way we're going to go is if you plan it. Otherwise the family angle be there. Yeah I think that's fair. I think that's totally fair because one of the ways

costs us more money. And we don't do that. The way we function. So you don't have to convert

just say no we don't know that way. If we would love to do stuff with you

“but here's the terms we plan it out and we you know when we stay within our budget that way it's”

fun for us. It's not fun for us otherwise and this is your sibling or his. It's mine. Okay we'll just look at your sister brother and tell them that. No. Yeah. And no you can't pay for it and make it all better because it's still not fun. Yeah and I don't like the way that feels either. No I don't I don't want that at call me. So thank you. Well then how it how it felt is like we're doing well and it feels like we're now the poor family relation because we're not willing to throw. Well you don't

care what they think. That feeling is on you. That's not on them. You got to just decide I'm not the

poor family relation. I'm the family relation that plans and they can think whatever they want. Yeah

because I know I'm not the poor family relation for sure and I'm the one that plans. I mean it's not I just can't stand it. Rod me nuts. So it's okay. If you all don't want to go it's okay but this is how we go. If you're going to roll with this how we roll. So and we roll with the budget we stick to our budget. That's fun for us. We stick to our plan. That's fun for us and you know we if we want to do something a little different we'll decide on the fly but 99% of our stuff is detailed freaking out.

Yeah and it's not okay if the details don't execute either by the way. Yeah and if you

“like here's the thing if you truly like them enough to travel with them then you should be able”

to have this conversation and it be all good when it's all set and done. Yeah so uh you know here's another plan okay like there's a different kind of situation than yours but we take our kids and grandkids all for a week after Christmas somewhere warm and sharing it on paper everything and we have since they got married that that's our gift to them and that is planned out way in advance. They can speak into it a little but generally speaking we're going to our place you know and

and this what we're doing and I don't mind hearing from Rachel what she thinks she wants to do but uh and that's cool you know but uh but we're paying for it and there's no shade on that that's our gift and uh but those are the terms. There's a plan and you know we all agreed we're going too by the way. Yeah you don't come up and go you know I don't think I'm going to go this year. Now you already told me you're going and it's already but yeah it's safe so yeah you're going and that's

I mean we don't tell people what to do we just tell them what to do you know it's like but I mean

“yeah I think what's happening here is there's more than a travel or budget discussion”

it's the shade that's been thrown. Yeah and it's making her feel a typo it's making her feel like she has to defend herself and yeah I just take all that off a table and go this who we is you won't play with us this how the rules of our sandbox. I like your usage of shade Dave that's you're doing good. I'm picking up it up from you. I got cool kids around me and the cool kids are teaching me that. I heard you use it earlier and I thought I'd just bring it back

open. You did that clock I knew what it meant. You did good. Context was correct. Boom boomer boomer usage. There we go. Good job. Oh man. Evalu. If I Ivalu Ivalu is in Michigan and I pray God I got that right. Ivalu am I close even. You're close. Okay what's the house it pronounced? Ivalu. Oh and as Ivalu how to close I got it I'm nailed it. All right Ivalu what's up? I want to know if service contracts for car repair do my dealership is a good or bad investment for my car.

Really bad horrible. So I should I should just plan or spend in the money for the repairs

for the next few years. Yep you want to hear the numbers? 12 percent of what you pay

covers the repairs. 50 percent covers the marketing and the commissions paid to the salesman that sold it to you and the rest is profit. 12 percent. So if you pay 10 thousand dollars $1,200 worth of repairs is what it covers on average. These things are unbelievably profitable and the guys love to sell them because they make almost as much selling as stupid extended warranties they do the entire car. Okay they're they're telling me a seven year bumper to bumper

will cost me $2,759. Yeah well there's already a warranty on there that's bumper to bumper. They're extending it to seven. No the warranty is expired. Okay and how expensive are

Okay the vast amount of that $2,000 is not going to come out and repairs on average.

So if you were going to start an extended warranty company you would figure out the probability of the car breaking and you would set aside that amount of money on out of a thousand buick on claims how much is it going to cost me to cover it for seven years and you're going to figure out it cost me 500 bucks to cover it for seven years on average across five thousand of them. Okay

“and then you would figure out I got to pay the commissions and I got to have a profit and that's how”

you run an insurance company. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwins Credit Union Studio. I'm Dave Ramsey Christina is in New York City. Hi Christina how are you? Get out of here. Better than I deserve. What's up? Uh long story short. My husband's family has a vacation home that is currently owned by my mother and mom and a couple years ago we offered to take it over to care the pay for deal with the

maintenance because that's what my late father and mom had wanted and he had always told my

husband that he eventually would inherit this home because he built it together when my husband was five years old but my sister and mom did not agree with this plan and they did not want it this house to go to him that they wanted it to be split three ways and that they wanted my mother and the lot to continue paying for it until she passes away to like keep it all in a trust together with her other property. But now my mother and mom are getting older you know maintenance

is taking a lot it's another expense that she doesn't have the money for and now she's asking us all to split the cost for the house for ways and my one yes no thank you and my one no yeah so and my one sister I'm already said that she's not doing it so our question is should we split it four ways or at that point I guess three ways but we will not own this house

“and hopefully or so we just look for our own house. You should look for your own house.”

Okay that's what we keep on thinking so we should just call it dysfunctional family. Yeah. Isn't it? Yes and you know my father really wanted it to go to my husband there will be a conversation that doesn't matter he didn't he didn't call it to happen. If he really wanted it to he should have put it in a trust before he died. Yes. And then the sisters and law could pound sand. Which is what they need to do is they need to pound sand but that'll take you're going

to yeah. Yeah so I guess so I mean there's there's two sisters right? Yeah and one is already app opted out. If the other one opts out tell your mother and law to to deed it to the trust now to your son to your husband and then we'll pay the bail. If you'll go ahead and deed it to us now we'll pay the

“bill. Yeah that's what we had said two years ago. I don't know I'll say it again though. And yeah. Why won't”

she do that? Because my sister and I said no they don't want that to happen. I don't want to pay anything either. So mom says they don't want to pay anything and we're the only ones want to pay anything. Why don't we do what dad said to do originally and deed this thinking house to me and I'll pay for it. But if you're not going to do that we're not in. So mom you get the truth. Somebody's going to be disappointed. Let's decide who. Yeah and if she doesn't do it then we I mean this is what I keep. Let

it go. It's just a house. Let it go. Now it's her fault not sure. We have three children as well. What would you do so this doesn't happen to our children? I would raise my children better. Where they're not rats. But like we are talking about like maybe having like a trust for the house that has like I don't know it's not a money. How about your father before he does. Communicates to his three kids. I built this with my son. I'm leaving it to him. This is what's going to happen.

And YouTube will get other things but you're not getting this. Instead he'd never bothered to

Go ahead and piss people off while you're alive. If somebody's going to be mad go ahead and do it while

you're alive. This is how you do it. There's not in a state plan that works where there's no communication. Everyone should know every detail that involves them. So Rachel Daniel and Denise can tell you what happens with our lake house. We've all decided together while we're up walking more upright. And then in this case by the way they're going to own it together. And then they can decide to buy each other out. They can they can sell the thing. They can burn it. I don't care what they do. I'll be gone.

But it's theirs to decide. And if I'm going to leave it to one of them or if one of them wants to buy the other two and buy the other two out. It's not going to make me mad. They do whatever they want to do. I hate the lake. I don't want to go down there anymore. Okay cool. You'll work that out.

But you know, if you clarify it upfront and often in your estate plan, you don't have the first

reading of the will after death. You have the first reading of the will as soon as the will is complete.

“Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess that's what my yeah. That's what my mother and I was trying to do now.”

But she's not really honoring her. I've been switched. No, what she's trying to do now is offload the expenses without offloading the ownership. Yeah, and that doesn't work. I don't want the expenses, would unless I get the ownership. No thank you. Okay. And so really, honestly, what should happen here? Based on now, I'm getting your opinion and your pistachiosisters and all. Yeah. And I don't really blame you. So, but so I haven't heard their side. But from what I'm hearing,

what I would say is that mom needs to say, hey, I offered you guys a chance to chip in. You don't want to chip in. And so I'm going to step back and I'm going to honor dad's original wishes. I'm dating it to your brother. You'll get other things in the will and I'm going to go ahead and move it into a trust for your brother now while I'm alive and he's going to pick up the expenses from this point forward. You will not be getting the lay cows. I'll take care of you know the things,

but I'm just letting you to know. You had the option and you opted out. Yes, sadly, it's only one

“of them that's opting out. No, but that's okay. Just step on them. Yeah. That's what I would do if I was”

mother. They don't have a choice. It's hers. She gets to do with it what she wants. Even if the story wasn't with the story was, she could just wake up in the morning and go, I'm giving it to you. Yes, she could. I think the problem with this too is there was information that you knew that

the sister's probably never knew. They probably never heard that the lay cows were supposed to go

to your husband or go to you. I think I kind of knew, but I'm, you know, they don't know. I think father-in-law was a wish. He's dead, but I think he was a wish. He did like to keep a piece. Yeah. He didn't keep the piece. What he did was he avoided conflict. There's a difference. You keep the piece with clarity, avoiding conflict is just cowardice. Yeah. And whatever conversations have need to be between the husband, not you, because you're the in-law.

Yeah, I would not. You don't need to be talking to mom. You don't need to be talking to the sister's at all, because this is not going to go well. Jade is exactly right. Good advice. Good advice, Jade. Yeah. So your husband should call his mom and say, "Mom, this is what dad really intended. If we're not going to do that, we're not going to participate. I'm sorry. If you would like to do

“that, though, if you want to go ahead and deed it over, I'll take it off your hands and you”

wanted to worry about it anymore. And we will have fulfilled dad's original wishes that we all know we're there." And just, there's no time to cover this, but you've got to view inheritance as the cherry on the top of the Sunday. It can't be the thing that you're counting on to break you free. Right. Right. You were counting on the other hand. On the other hand, you don't want to be handcuffed to it either. Yeah. I'm going to be in an LLC with my sister who steals money was just her

day. No thank you. Hey guys, George Campbell here. Do you ever feel like insurance companies only care about your money and not what you actually need? Well, there's a better way. When you go to Ramsey's Insurance Resource Hub, you'll start feeling confident that you're getting the right coverage that's truly best for you. You'll find helpful info on everything from life insurance,

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[Music] Buying or selling a home is a big decision, and for most people it's the largest asset that you ever transact. So you need an expert in your corner, not someone who got their license three weeks ago and goes to church with you. Real estate agents that are inexperienced are somewhat dangerous. Or are they good experience, not on you? So you need people that know what they're doing,

that's do a lot of transactions a year, if you're thinking about buying or selling. I'll approach somebody that's high-octane, high-protein, and that's not most of them. That's just a handful. We vet the top agents in every market and we track all the market trends out there in the real estate

“world. So Ramsey trusted will help you find the real estate agent that you want, and if you want to know”

what's happening with market trends and prices and mortgage rates and other free tools to help you buy or sell with confidence, go to RamseySolutions.com/market. Nate is in Phoenix. Hi, Nate. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Yes, I'm so my question. I am a 21-year-old recent college graduate. I'm starting out a career

in aviation here in Phoenix, but my question more so revolves around around a $5 million real estate

portfolio that my late grandmother, she passed away a few months ago. She built it up over the past 40 years by being a nurse and having a house cleaning company. And so no one else really in my family at the moment is willing to kind of manage this portfolio that she built up. It's roughly a dozen houses, apartments, condos, etc. across four different states. And so I'm kind of looking to take that on and the challenge being I have a job here in Phoenix and my siblings and parents have

jobs as well and being that it's spread across all the way from Hawaii to Pennsylvania. We're looking

“at what is the best way to manage this. If you inherit to who? Yeah. Also, it's in my mom's name,”

but my parents are nearing retirement age. They don't want to take on any big ventures or basically have a huge hassle of managing this. So I basically stepped up and told them, I want to take advantage of this opportunity and how will you get what's your benefit? Well, my benefit is I've you know, I've read a lot and seen a lot online how realistic it can, you know, be beneficial in terms of building it. And what's your what's your financial benefit to it?

You want to be a proper manager because you read real estate online? No, I wouldn't say yeah, I don't want to be like, I want to basically figure out how I can turn these roughly dozen properties and build it into something that's beneficial for our entire family. So you're thinking, I just want to I want to make this very clear. Are you thinking, hey,

if I help this build from 5 million and maybe I, you know, double it or whatever, then when I

inherit it, it's going to be even more. Is that what you're thinking or are you thinking you can just earn some sort of salary off managing this or is it both? So it's more so not that I really want to salary. It's really I almost want to turn it into a family business if that makes more sense. You keep saying family business and yet you don't own anything. Yeah, because I mean my parents, like I said, my parents own it, but they have kind of like I have talked with them and we've

kind of come to a agreement where they want me to basically take the lead on it because they're nearing tired. No kidding. How are you getting paid for this? That's dumb. They want to hire their 21 year old who had other life goals to now be a property manager is what you're saying because you're getting nothing out of this. No, I don't want you to do this because you're an article on TikTok and got excited about real estate. No. If they don't, if they don't enjoy

property, they can always sell the properties and invest the money. Yeah, you don't own it.

Nor are anywhere in this discussion. Have you ever owned it? You've never indicated anywhere in this entire time. We ask you four times. Are you going to own it? No, I'm just going to run the family business. Well, then you're just a stinkin employee. And I don't even think they've said that to you that they're going to pay you money or a certain amount of money to run this.

I guess eventually me and my siblings are going to inherit it. And your siblings are going to

“benefit from all your work because you're not. Yeah. So you think I should. I think what's happening”

is you're operating on a set of assumptions and they are massive assumptions. Yeah. You're assuming that you're going to end up with this and you're going to end up with this and that you're going to have a bigger percentage of this and that there's going to be a family business. You've got a lot. Let's play this out. You've made up a place out. You go in there and you work for a few dollars enough to support you while you screw with this and you run this from 5 million to 20 million

and 10 years from now your parents die and your siblings now have one third of 20 million that you built.

You're going to be pissed. That is not a good plan. So yeah. So I guess your advice would just be to like, you know, let your mom and dad. Yeah, if your mom and dad want to say in return for managing

“our property, we will pay you a property management fee and we will need these four properties”

to you now. And then you do with those four properties, something good for you. Meanwhile, you manage the others for your siblings future because your parents aren't going to do anything with them. Now that would be one thing. Now the second piece of this is I heard a couple of things in there. I'm going to change horses on you. Now that I dropped that on you. But no, don't just go in there and assume you're going to, that this is all going to work out because it's real estate.

It's not. Now, then the other thing is you said property scattered from Hawaii to whatever. That's not their problem. And that is a bad. I mean, there's only 10 or 12 properties. It's not like you got this huge portfolio. So you guys need to sell off some of this stuff that's stuck out there in the middle of Egypt somewhere and get this, get the property centralized where you can run them. All the real estate the Ramsey's on with a couple of exceptions of vacation properties

are all within 40 miles of each other. And there's $600 million worth not five million.

“All of my portfolio is all where I can touch it within a short drive. And so, and that's what the”

kids are going to end up with in this case. So yeah, if you guys need to do some estate planning and figure out, end game after you grow this portfolio, how do you benefit from growing the portfolio other than just the thrill of growing the portfolio? And in the meantime, how do you eat? Which would be the property management piece. What needs to be, how they go even deeper on the, this needs to be in writing, this needs to be somewhere. We all can't just really talk about

it. And then we also tell the siblings. Yes. You know, so Nate is taking over the property and return Nate is going to do this, this and this. Okay. We all know. Okay. So in our case, Rachel has been Winston, has a real estate company that he and I started. He has done other things with it on his own behalf that I have nothing to do with now. And he also manages all the Ramsey property and gets paid for managing the Ramsey property. He does not own any of the Ramsey property.

The three Ramsey Gen 2s will own the Ramsey property, one of which is his wife. But he's not managing it for the family vaguely hoping he'll get something. He knows exactly what he's going to get.

His wife is going to get one third of the portfolio upon Sharon and my death. And in the meantime,

he's being paid commissions and management fees to run a real estate company, which he thoroughly loves and I like working with him. So it's all good. But that's a very clear delineation of what's where. And by the way, he kind of came at it like Nate did. He wanted to learn the real estate business. I know it. He wanted to get involved in it. We was one of his initial mentors. So over the years, I was one of his mentors. He's had other people that didn't just learn from me. But I kind of

helped him get started and I did. And so this guy needs a mentor. He can't just jump into this. I'm in aviation. Yeah. No, I'm in the real property business and Hawaii. That's and it's going to be different in different each country and each state that he's in. Yeah, for Hawaii is a different country. [Music]

Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do

next. Now you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show. Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple and free to use. Go to RamseySolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's RamseySolutions.com.

“Keegan is with us in Palm Beach, Florida. Hi, Keegan, how are you?”

Hey Dave, I'm doing well. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I had a question I want to run by you. I turned I'm 22 now but back right

turned 18. I took out some credit cards and racked up to me a significant debt and I finally

now I'm just facing it. I'm 22 and I got a job full-time job and I've been working on paying it off. Good, what do you make? I make $3,500 a month. Working for 40 hours? What do you do? I work for a paying cream company, Nano Extreme, paying cream. Okay. I'm marketing for it. How much credit card debt did you run up? Around up about $40,000. Is that all the debt you got? $40,000 and then I have some student loan debt.

“All together I had $70,000 of that. Okay, so student loans are $30,000?”

Yes. No card debt? Well, I was watching your show and I ended up selling my car about two weeks ago because I am able to ride into work with somebody. Wow. How are you? Good. What are the cars so far? I sold it for a 13 grand. So I was able to put that forward to the car. So I just paid that off. So I don't have a loan on that anymore. Big move there. Excellent. All right. Okay, so the 70,000?

Yes, and then I have some bicycles that I sold. I sold those for 10,000 to pay off some debt. I ended up paying off. Two credit cards that totaled up to $8,500 in debt. Oh, look at you. Get it. Get it. So you're with the 70,000. Oh, 33,000. I'm about to $43,000. Yeah. But there's 70 totaling clean student loan debt. Yeah. Okay. So I have a friend who offered to pay off all my debt and I pay him back. I don't really know if I want to do that. Obviously, I don't want to ruin. I know money can ruin a relationship.

And I'm not sure if I want to go down that road. It's not really money that runs it. It's the change in the relationship that can ruin it. So you're 22. What kind of a friend has $73,000? He comes from generational wealth. His dad's very wealthy. So we have lots of money just playing around. Wow. Yeah. So he offered to pay it for me and I have to pay him back of course. But I'm not sure if I want to do that. No, I would not do that. No. Okay. I think you're making wonderful progress because

you've done a couple of things. One is you became very focused and clear on your debt attack. And two is you've been very impressively willing to sacrifice some very impressive. And so yeah, I mean,

“if that's what I want to do at 22, but I don't want to resolve that. Yeah, but what you don't”

want is live under the thumb of a credit card either. So you're wanting to get out. I'm going to fight my

way out. No, I think I think it's a kind offer and I appreciate it. The problem is that when you borrow

money from someone, you change the relationship to that of master servant. The borrower is slave to the lender. And even if you, and so if you're slave by definition of a master. And even if your master is a very nice person or is an unconcern person, they still become your master. And it changes the air in the room. They start thinking about how much this guy works. They start thinking about if you're going on vacation. They start thinking about if you went to happy hour,

all of a sudden they're thinking about it. Even if they have plenty of money, quote, unquote,

your life every day. Yeah. So I mean, it's, it's kind of sounds good on the surface or it sounds,

it's actually a nice offer. It's a nice offer. Yeah, it sounds good. But it's going, more times than not to your point, it ends in disaster cake. And so I would tell you this, if you can get some transportation of some kind, I'd love to see you pick up an extra job for 30 more hours and

“you know, and continue to accelerate the plan that you've already got. That's what I would do.”

But the secret sauce to this, Kigan is not mathematics on the interest rate. You get a better interest rate with your friend. The secret sauce is not that at all. The secret sauce is Kigan. When Kigan changed, everything changed. And before Kigan changed, nothing changed. So once you decide

you're going to ride this thing, you're riding it. I'm proud of you. Keep after it, dude.

I want you to look in the mirror and go. You're the answer to the problem. Not borrowing from a friend. That's right. And that might include working another 30 hours a week somewhere, which I really wouldn't mind you doing it all. Todd is in El Paso. How you Todd, what's up? Todd? Hey, how's it going? Sorry about that. It's kind of needed a little bit. Right at it. No troubles. What's up? Hey, so anyway, I was kind of got myself kind of like

screwed over a little bit. I guess you could say I was out of getting... I had a friend from me on the getting Pokemon cards. And I think I went a little too far over because I racked up. Well, I talked to the lady on the phone before this, I racked up like $1,000 in credit card that you helped pay for my Pokemon cards. How many thousands? Probably $15,000. Okay. How much credit card debt do you have exactly, do you even know?

No, I don't really pay attention to it like that. Well, step one, identify the problem in detail.

“You're lost, you're screwed. You need to find the map that has the little red arrow on it. This is”

you are here. Here you are. It's $13,426 of stupid. I want to... I want to define my stupid very carefully and thoroughly. That's step one. Step two is take assessment of the inventory of Pokemon cards and watch and how you can move them. So you've been trying... You bought them to speculate on them and try to retail them back out. You try to bomb it. One price and sell them at another price, right? Correct. Did you do that successfully ever?

No, I kind of just winged it to that thought. There's accessories. I was like, I'll use the credit card, you know, my logic was I use their money because it's not mine and then if it doesn't work, then... Why were you all out making it? Then it's term money after all. Who knew? Yeah. I have a feeling this is a symptom of something else. What caused you to be so desperate that you would do 10,000 or however much on a credit card for Pokemon cards? Oh, that's just the American

dream online. I'm just trying to like, make the next dollar like an American claim is to go broken credit card debt. Oh, when you were like that. Oh, yeah. How this thing? I wanted to... Okay. Like... What do you do for work? What's your job? I'm telling bouncing around employment. I'm kind of... There it is. And there it is.

“Okay. That's what I was going on. Yeah, ding, ding, ding, ding. Okay. So you believe crap like you”

heard like, it takes money to make money. And so I'm going to be a Pokemon guy because two people

I know did this once and instead of working. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to get a

40 hour job. And then what I want you to do right after that is I want you to get another 30 hour job. And pay these credit cards off. Meanwhile, call some of your stupid Pokemon friends and say, hey, stupid friend, you got me into a stupid mess because I was stupid and we're going to get this mess cleaned up and sell these stupid cards. Now help me with this. And let's get these cards moved. Instead of sitting around looking at them because every day I got to look at them if I'm

you, I feel dumber. Yeah, the American... I've done dumb things, Todd. You did a dumb thing. So I know what dumb things look like and dumb things when you leave them sitting there in your house, they shame you. When you walk by, they go, you do it. It's not saying you. They talk to you. They tell you. They do. I had a car parked in my driveway one time. I kept saying, Dave, you're stupid. Yeah. You're dumb, Dave. Yeah. You look what you did, Dave. So I got rid of that stupid car. I felt stupid.

But every time I drove it. Yeah.

fast between vacations and road trips and camp fees and events. And all the extra gas and grocery runs,

money can get tight before you know it. To really get your money under control and keep it that way,

“you're going to need a plan. And that's what you'll get with the every dollar budget app.”

It helps you track your spending, free up cash to put toward debt and savings. And it's the simplest way to make a plan for your money before the month begins. So no more wondering where your money's going. You're telling it where to go. Download every dollar in the App Store or Google play and start for free today. Our scripture today, John 1335. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples. If you love one another. Thomas Sowell said, some of the biggest cases of

mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God. Boy, whoa, David is in Denver. Hey, David, what's up? Not much, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? Yeah, I'm on baby steps six. Pain off my home. I have no debt at the moment. And I've been in the corners of the YouTube finance world. And I found a video about five weekly mortgage payments and signing up for that program. So I'm currently $420,000 on a $5.98,

30 year fixed loan. And I'm two years in. And I was wondering, you recommend that I sign up for the bi-weekly mortgage payments. Would not pay a fee for it? Is there a fee associated with it? Yes, two enroll rocket mortgage test requires a single up-brand mortgage payment, which for me is $3,500. So I would pay holders a fee. They take that as a fee? Wow. No, I do. And I guess that a fee, I think it goes towards a principle, sir. Oh, is your mortgage with rocket? Yes, sir.

Okay. Are they charging any fee for the service of the bi-weekly and actual fee? I don't believe so, sir. I believe they just asked me to make a one-time mortgage payment two enroll and then I am enrolled from that office. Okay. That's possible. I'm not real trusting of rocket. Because rocket has a lot of shysters going on in there. So be careful. But let me let us walk through it. Here's why I'm

asking that question. All right. So basically a bi-weekly mortgage is half a payment as you know, David,

every two weeks. Yes, sir. There are 26 two-week periods in a year. So 26 halves is 13 holes. Right. Which means that a bi-weekly mortgage effectively pays a single payment extra per year. Correct. So mathematically you would be within $15 of this by simply just writing a check once a year for an extra payment. That's true. And so I kind of thought like, well, there's no magic. Yeah, the bi-weekly is not magic. It's just a way to trick you into paying extra principle.

“I see. And that's the only thing that does it. So if you just took your regular mortgage”

and once a year sent an extra payment above your regular mortgage, you'll be within $15 of the same exact result. So it takes a 30-year mortgage and turns it into about a 23. It takes a 15-year mortgage and turns it into about a 12. I see. But it's all done by an extra principal payment a year. And really, truthfully, your own baby step six, so you may be doing more or less of an extra principal payment a year. Are you paid every two weeks? Yes, sir. I do have a salary

position. So does my wife. We, uh, we earn about 186, 180 $6 a year. So it would be kind of an autopilot thing to at least to get one extra payment a year. But I, with those numbers, you're giving me, I want you to put more than that on their anyway, don't you?

Well, the problem is my, uh, my four-year-old son, and I paid $22,000 a year for take care.

And that just really hurts the budget. I do feel like I'm house-bore. I feel like I'm kind of, you know, if you're house-bore, you don't need to increase your house payment. Yes, sir. I'm just trying to take this thing off as quickly as possible. Currently, the way you're going to do that is extra principal payments. Not being house-bore from

“daycare. So you got to switch on which life is that you're living here. But either way, if I want”

you and baby step six for your sake to get the house paid off. And the way you're going to do that

charge you a fee to do it. See, if they're charging you 500 bucks to do this or something, well, crap, no, I'll just send it to an extra payment. Right. But if they're charging you no fee, and you want your paid by weekly and it's easy, yeah, let's do that. But let's also plan to do more. Excellent. Before I let you go, I do earn $11,000 a month with my wife after taxes. And my mortgage is $3,500, which equates to 32.2% of my monthly income. Since I'm on baby step six, I don't have

any debt. Do you still think I can keep this house? I know you always say sale the house is too much,

but I really want this home. I think that you're feeling the squeeze, especially right now, because you have somebody in daycare. And that's a, there's a seasonality there. That's not going

“to be like this for all time. So I think that's why you're feeling the squeeze. If there's something”

you can do to offset that in the meantime, I would do it. Yeah, and I'm not, and that's putting the take home pay you outlined as after you put money in 401k, right? Yes, sir. That's not the number. No, that's not the number. That's the wrong calculation. That's the wrong calculation. When we say take home pay, we mean just after taxes only. Yes. Yeah, it's 11,000 hits are joint account. I know honey,

but that's after they took money out for 401k. And probably insurance. Yes, sir. Those two numbers

don't count in the calculation. So you're not at 32%. Oh, okay. That's what I'm saying. The only numbers that count in the calculation for take home pay is after taxes, gross minus taxes. So add back insurance, add back in your calculation, and then say that number, what percentage is it? It's going to be down close to 25. So you're, you're fine. I don't think you're hurting here. I think you're just, you know, observing the fact that you're not out of that completely yet. And even

when you are, it's not a magic pill. It's just, it's just a better place than being in debt. That's all. Everybody listening needs to understand what you just said about take home pay, which is it is

only the after tax amount. When we say have your house be 25% of your take home pay on a 15 year

fixed, we're talking about only after taxes, not after child support coming out, not after your car payment coming out. Not after the insurance, not after 401k, not after 401k, not after afflack, not after any of that stuff. Okay. So put all that crap. That's not what we're talking about. Good point. Aaron is in Minneapolis. Hi, Aaron. What's up? Hi. Thank you for taking my calls. Sure. We recently moved to a country home. We thought it would be our dream home, our forever home that would raise our

children. But after moving here, we realized we hate country life. We miss living in the closer twist city, we miss sidewalks, all the amenities. We have another home and we are renting it out and we thought we would rent it out for a few years and then sell it and then use that money to pay off to that country home. But now we are unsure of what to do because we do not want to stay in said country home. Well, sell said country home and move back to the city. What's wrong with that?

So our other home is three hours away and sell it. So both of them buy a house in the city.

“That's what we can push it through. Sure. If none of them are working for you,”

I don't want to rent a house in the country home and I want neither. I don't want to own the many more. So why am I going to do? I'm going to sell them. And you could probably buy what you want maybe in cash. Get rid of both of them. You're going to if we just freeze and leave that set of consent countries home. How far are you arguing with me? You call me up and said you didn't like it. No, I'm not. I hope you're going. I just bought it. Why not? But I don't like it.

I made a bad decision. Unmake the decision. Okay. You didn't get married. You bought real estate. Okay. Thank you so much dance. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to get rid of the married thing if you do that when wrong. But real estate when you just put up for sale. It's more simple than you think I think. Yeah. Well, it's just, I mean, you may lose a little money. I mean, okay, we made a bad decision with something about our vision for life was a skew. Yeah. And so we may pay some tax for that.

It's stupid to pay. We may pay some stupid tax for that. That's okay. It's okay. I've done dumber things than that. Then thought I wanted something that I didn't didn't. But I tell you what it is interesting to do Aaron in these situations and anybody else. I've done it a lot to myself. When I find myself in a situation like that called a mistake, that's a mistake. I want to

“backtrack and think through, how did I get? What caused my brain to malfunction that allowed the mistake?”

What decision making framework was I using that was flawed that caused me to, you know, okay, I was looking at Instagram people on Homestead. Yeah. Well, don't, okay. I just figured it out.

You know, and so what it, what was it that caused me to get a skew of what reality was.

“Yeah. And so that I don't do it again. Well, then it becomes a research, not just something”

stupid you did. It was an experiment. It was an experiment. I found something that didn't work.

That's right. Like a test tube when I blew up the lab. Yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah.

I put this out of the ramsy show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it.

“In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace.”

And that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.