You Can’t Shortcut Your Way to Wealth

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

This is the Ramsey Show. J. Washau Ramsey, personality number one best selling author is my co-host today. Open phones here at Triple 8-825-5225 on your host Dave Ramsey.

“Chelsea is in Dallas, Texas, hi, Chelsea, how are you?”

>> I'm good, how are you? >> Better than I deserve, what's up? >> Well, my, the simple question is, is should we sell our house to which should let us completely pay off all of our debt? >> We went for a couple of years, save up, and then buy again.

>> Pretty bad, pretty bad, they're all big moves. >> Yeah, well, we bought this house, my previous house, my husband, I married in 2021. I bought a small home on two acres that because of COVID and everything that happened, it doubled in value.

And so when we sold it, because it would only fit three of us and never going to be four of us,

and now there's going to be five of us, there wasn't a lot on the market. We ended up buying something that was really at the higher end, but we were going to have about $40,000, and our savings account from the sale of that property, since I basically doubled my money on it, and we put 20% down on this home as well. >> Okay, so what do you owe on this home today?

>> We owe about $240, $242, and what is our value? Should be somewhere between $270 and $285? >> Okay, and how much debt do you have? >> We have about between credit card debt and medical debt about $22,000. >> And that's all you're debt?

>> That's all we're debt. >> How much do you owe on your car? >> We don't have any car payments. We tried to do pretty well.

“>> And what do you pay every month for this mortgage?”

>> It's $2200. >> And what do you guys take home? >> We take home. It just kind of depends. I work at my church three days a week, and then I keep my knees during the week,

but as I said, I'm coming up on some maternity leave, having a third,

and so my income will be out of it, so my husband brings home. >> No, what do you make now? >> Somewhere between $45 and $5,000 a month. >> Okay. >> Combined. >> Continuing on my hours, combined.

>> Okay, and then your hours are getting ready to go away because of maternity. So you're seeing the pinch, so it's not really the debt. It's the house mortgage. >> It's more good, just count going to kill you. >> Right, it already is, it's already very high.

>> Yeah, well, I'm not $40,000, it had to go that we had. >> Had to go to pay for court fees because I'd take my ex-husband back to court to protect ourselves.

“>> That doesn't matter, I mean I'm sorry for that, but it doesn't matter what matters”

is you have a $2200 mortgage with a $4,000 take-home pay, and that's getting ready to go down. >> Right. >> And that's going to be your house payment, it's going to be 50% of your take-home pay. Now when you say $5,000 take-home pay, do you mean after taxes or have you taken a 401k and other stuff out of it? >> Sure, sure, correct, that's what comes into our bank account.

>> Okay, I'm not just going to 401k. >> He has a state job, so I think we do as much as we can to match what the state puts in. >> Do you have an idea of what a dollar amount might be, just an idea? >> I don't, I don't, I'm so sorry. >> What about insurance?

Do you have an dollar idea of what that might be each check? >> Insurance is like $700. >> A month? >> Yeah, he's covered completely for free, but it's like $700, whether you have one depending on-- >> Sure, when we say $5,000 is coming into your check, but when we're talking about the ratio to your house payment,

we mean just after taxes, not after 401k and after insurance. So we're going to add back probably, 15,500 bucks to this, in terms of running the calculation. So the $2,200 doesn't sound quite as bad then until you work to have a baby and then it starts sounding bad again. So what is your plans after the baby comes home and you have a normal maternity? >> After that, I will continue to watch my niece and so all of my income will come back in about six to eight weeks.

I would tell your husband to get two extra jobs and work through the extra debt.

“That's what I would tell, and he probably needs to do that anyway just to cover for your maternity losses right now.”

So that you guys can stay afloat for the six to eight weeks. You get the other side of the six to eight weeks and if you've got an extra $1,000 or $2,000 a month coming in from working all the time, you can knock out $20,000 worth of debt fairly quick. >> You can, you can, I'm going to go out on a limb. I still think the mortgage is a problem, even if you take home with $6,000, this is still high.

This needs to be closer to $1,500 for what you're bringing in. And I think that if you have any other money goals, it's just going to elongate it. I think you bought too much house. >> What's your husband do? >> Yeah, he works for the state of Texas.

>> Okay, so he's working for the house.

>> Yes, he does. >> In order to keep this house, he's going to have to have a good lucrative side. So, for this to make sense. >> That he wants to do it for a long time. >> And that's if you had no debt.

>> Right. >> Okay. >> In other words, the house is the problem, not the house solves the problem. >> Yeah. >> When you call it said, do we sell the house to get out of debt?

>> Yeah. >> No, you might have sell the house because you can't afford it. >> Yes, that's a separate problem from the debt. >> Yeah, but if I'm in your all shoes, I would stop as 401k today is contribution to the state. And I would pick up two extra jobs to cover your maternity downtime.

And then as soon as you're back, you guys just go into full attack mode and cut up all the credit cards and attack them in that order, smallest to largest, get rid of those.

“And when those are gone, then you've got to assess you need to be bringing in the door,”

not counting insurance in 401k, $67,000 for this to begin to make sense. >> Yeah, and let's talk about it from the view point of the viewer. The 25% rule that we're talking about, there's a reason for that because if your mortgage starts to eat up more than that, then you're not able to do the other things that we teach. You need to be giving 10% somewhere in generosity.

At some point, you're going to need to be investing at least 15% at some point you're going to need to have margin to be doing that along with putting extra towards your house. And if you let your mortgage creep up to 40% and 50% of your take on pay, all of that plus eating and just living a normal life honestly becomes impossible. >> Well, and you end up the next car is debt, because you don't save for a car.

The next vacation is debt, because you don't save for a vacation. The next Christmas is debt, because you don't have any room, you're pinched. It's why we call it house poor. You become house poor when your payment is too big a percentage of your take on pay. The economists would say you don't have enough disposable income after you covered necessities.

>> We call it margin. >> Yeah, exactly. And you need that margin to be able to build wealth, to be able to be generous, and to be able to build equality life. And if you pinch yourself with a huge freaking house payment as a percentage of your take on

pay, it's very difficult to do. You guys are right on the line. If he's going to get normal raises and does a good side hustle, you probably could keep this. But you're going to have to make that a part of your life.

He's not working 40 hours and you keep this house. It doesn't work. [ Music ] >> You're getting ready to hit the road this summer. You want to feel confident your car is ready to go, but when you don't fully understand

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[ Music ] >> Skip is in Minneapolis, high-skip, how are you? >> I, you know, I think it in there, how are you? >> Better than I deserve, what's up? >> Yeah, so I've got a custody battle ahead of me.

I've recently had to get a lawyer, and I've been working the baby stuff, so I'm going to adopt my, my starter emergency fund a little more right now. I think I've got about 1,300 in that, but with my debt, and with this custody battle

“on the horizon, I'm just really trying to look for the best way to navigate this.”

Obviously, I don't have all the money for a lawyer, which would put me further into debt,

which is not what we want. Otherwise, I'm looking at either bankruptcy or selling my house. >> Okay, and what do you owe on your home? >> I owe $193,000. >> And what's it worth?

>> $500, so we're between $2,99 and $3,24. >> Okay, so you've got somewhere around $100,000 in equity, and how much debt do you have? >> I have roughly $60,000. >> Okay, all right, so simple math says if you sold the house, and you paid off all your debt, you'd have $40,000 in a war chest to fight with, and you'd be a renter.

>> Yes. >> That's one quick solution without getting into too many details, but that's just

“balance sheet, transfer, stuff. Now, what's your income?”

>> I grows about 46, 4,600 a month. >> How many children do you have? >> I have three children. >> And how old are they? >> I have a 12-year-old daughter, a eight-year-old son, and then the one that I'm going into

you custody, that'll for is my 20-month-old daughter. >> Are you trying to get full custody or shared custody? >> Probably full. >> Why? >> So, her mother is disabled, and then this past weekend, had a mental health crisis, and ended

up in a treatment facility. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Are you married? Are you married?

>> No. I have not to this relationship. >> Okay. So, you have, but the older two children, where are they? >> So, they're from a previous marriage, and I have a 50% of the time. >> Okay. >> So, there's just a 20-month-old in question, and you're saying the mom is not a safe environment.

>> As a right this second, no.

>> It just depends on how scorched Earth you want to go on this. What's the nature of your $40,000 or $60,000 worth of debt? >> Yeah. So, I have roughly $26,000 on a parent-plus loan that I agreed to take on when I, you know, was initially going to school. I've got $9,700 on my student loans. I've got about $4,100 on a credit card.

And then $9,200 on a lease. >> There's part of this, and I don't know Dave, you could probably speak to this a little bit better. But if the judge is looking for fitness, it might look good for you to say I've got $40,000 saved. I don't have any debt, you know, you're a renter and you live in a really nice place.

“That could look good. It looks nice and responsible if that's what you're going for.”

And I like that. >> Well, and you have the money to fight with because right now, I don't know where you get $10,000 to hand an attorney right now. >> Right. >> And that's what you're going to need to get, just to get started. >> Yeah, I think I was quoted about $4,000 to $6,000 if there's really no battle.

You know, if she decides to just be agreeable to everything otherwise I'm looking at upwards of $15,000. >> Yeah, and it could go on and on and back and forth really continuously. >> Right. >> Okay. So I mean, it's, I don't know where you're going to get $10,000 unless you do this.

There's nothing in this.

If you quit paying all the debts, that's fine.

It's not, you mean you quit paying all student loans, you catch up. Half of America's defaulted on their student loans, so you go back and pick that up later. But that's not a cash, that doesn't give you the cash flow to come up with 10 grand quickly. And we don't have anything else to sell or that I've heard of. Do you have money in savings or investments anywhere?

>> I mean, so my investment, I ended up pausing it. So I only got like $200 in an IRA. I've got $1,300 in my savings after the Spongebile House closer to $2,000. But that's, I mean, that's really about it. I don't have a vehicle.

I'm borrowing one currently, so I don't have that. >> How old are you? >> I am 34. >> Are you paying child support on the other two? >> No.

>> Okay, and because you have 50 percent, okay. >> Correct. >> 20 months old.

“The only way I know how to answer questions that are super difficult,”

like this one on this show, is if I woke up in your shoes, what would I do?

I've never been anywhere near something like this personally.

So I don't know what I would do, but what I think I would do is that I would prioritize my financial investments and my financial advancement, and my wealth building behind the good of my child. Good of my child would come first. And that would mean I'm going to sell the house,

and I'm going to go get custody. And if it takes $40,000 to do that, fine. But I'm going to have $40,000 in my pocket, and I'm going to be 100 percent dead free, and I'm going to get an inexpensive clean safe rental for the other two kids

to visit you at when you have your custody time, and for this 20 month old to be raised. And then you're starting again to say, because you're going to spend money on this 20 month old on legal fees. And to take care of this baby,

and that's what, you know, I think that's got to be the priority. The baby's got to come first.

“I mean, it's like all this other stuff is secondary.”

And I don't know, I don't see a hole in your story to reach into and get 10,000 bucks. And it's going to take you 10. The four to five is that's not going to happen. It's going to take 10.

It's probably going to take 20.

Because she's mentally ill, 100 percent expect a problem.

If she wasn't mentally ill, it might be different. Then there'd still be a problem because you're trying to take her child, which is mentally ill. And so she's crazy.

And so just expect crazy. I mean, you don't expect nothing else. So that's, you know, what we're doing here. Wow. It's tough.

Skip. Sorry for your man. I'm sorry for that baby. Most of all. Yeah, take care of that.

How do I say this nice? Just say it.

“If you're sleeping with your crazy girlfriend and you make a baby,”

this is what you get. There you go. Was that nice? Yes. That was.

Yeah. And if you're dating a girl, guys, and she says, I'm not crazy. 100 percent. That means she's crazy.

Well, she showed you something. You just didn't want to see it. At some point, she showed you something. Or he showed you whoever. Got to take care of them.

When people show you who they are. I want to, I want to love skip. I want to help him. But I also want to say out loud for those listening. That this is the result of decisions.

Yeah. Bad ones. Yeah. And this is where we get to. Now we've got, but now there's a baby.

And it's not the baby's fault. And that's right. And you want to protect it at all cost. And so now we've got to man up and take care of the baby for the mistakes that have been made in this process.

So, yeah, don't day crazy girls and for sure don't sleep with them. Hello. And there's ways to prevent babies I'm just saying. Don't sleep with them. That prevents it.

That stops at every time. It's a hundred percent here. And that is a hundred percent here. It's a hundred percent here. It's a hundred percent here.

Let me tell you something I see happen way too often.

They hope it will work itself out.

It won't.

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That's GuardianLIT.com/RamsyToday. It's an advertising results may vary in those specific outcomes guaranteed. [music] Buying or selling a home is a big deal. We're going to be talking about real estate with the real estate expert.

My buddy, Brian Buffini, Tomaro's show. So be sure you listen in on that or watch that or however it is you consume this show. And I was just on Fox a minute ago. Fox News and we were talking about a Zillow report that's out that's absolutely bull crap. Zillow threw a thing out there to get a headline that says 227 cities in America or whatever.

The starting price for entry to buy a home is a million million.

Yeah. And then when you read the article carefully, they just threw that out to get attention. It's clickbait because it's absolutely bull crap. So I mean, 120 something of the cities are in California. Which means that they took seven cities that were all little villages around the edge of San Jose.

And they all have a million dollars. Of course they do. You know, you're in freaking Silicon Valley. Of course the seven cities that are around their actual municipalities that surround L.A. Right.

Our a million dollars.

But Abelene, Texas is not Oklahoma City is not Amarillo, Texas National Tennessee is not a million dollars starting point.

So they made it sound like that it took a million dollars for somebody to buy a house. And that's absolute bull crap. The average entry point in America is $199,000 right now. That's the average starter home. And the average home in America is $477,000 or something like that.

What is it right now? But yeah. So it's $427,000 right in there. But I mean, that's the median price. That's the middle price of all homes in America.

Which means by definition a million dollars is not starting. So bull crap is that low. So that's the problem with stuff like that floating around from these people looking for clicks.

“If you want to know the actual thing that's going on, you can go to ramsysolutions.com/market.”

And you'll get a great real estate page that will outline for you exactly what's going on with interest rates. Exactly what's going on with pricing. And so on. And you can start to figure out whether or not you make enough to buy a home in your locality. Real estate is like politics, it's all local.

So what's happening in Manhattan is completely almost completely irrelevant to what's happening in Kansas City. And all that matters if you're in Kansas City is what's happening in Kansas City. That's right. And so you can't go. Well, the average across America doesn't mean anything.

You can say the average across the world, but you're including Tokyo and London. Some of the most expensive real estate in the world. And that average is absolutely useless as a measure of whether you can buy a house or not. So that's not how you figure this out folks. So ramsy trusted can connect you with an agent in your area that is ramsy trusted that we have vetted for high octane high protein. And if you're listening on the YouTube or on podcast, you can just click the link in the description.

“Or if you want to go online ramsyslations.com/agent, we'll connect you with a real agent that really knows your stuff.”

Not a bunch of hoopla and bull crap clickbait from some TV show or website. They're just trying to get people to click on it. And that's fear of porn is what that is. So just stay away from it. San Francisco is with us in Atlanta.

Good. Are you there? Better than I deserve. How can we help?

“I just need a couple. I need some help with taking some next steps with investing in our money.”

And I'm 20 years old right now. I'm a plumber. And I just feel like I'm not taking advantage of my money in the correct way. I feel like it's just sitting in the bank. Doing nothing.

How much am I doing? I mean, it's my first year by myself, my then.

I just finished my partnership. And it's been really slow over here. I don't know if it's just those companies that I'm with right now. I am looking for other jobs because I just show up this company that I'm with right now. I want to get forward with it. So this year, I feel like I have to even pay like.

I don't even think I've made across the 30, 30 grand. And that's 40 hours a week. So far this year. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know how much I would make. Are you making $2,500 a month, honey? Uh, some month, yes, some month now. Less, that would be $30,000 in the first six months. And that'd be $30,000 a year.

Yeah. It's done with this. It's been really slow. So like some weeks I work. Sounds like you need a new job.

Yeah. That's what I've been. I'm working for recently because I'm a new job. Okay. And how much do you have piled in the bank?

Uh, about eight grandus. Good for you. And how much do you have in debt? Uh, no debt. I mean, I only have, um, credit card.

I think I was like 800 books probably paid off like. Next month or something. And cut it up. Pay it off right now. Pay it off right now.

Tonight, you have money in the bank. Okay. Yeah. And cut it up. What you using it?

You don't need it for any purposes. Your first goal is to be debt-free. Second goal is building a emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Before you start investing. And so you're eight.

“You need to be a hundred percent debt-free.”

No credit cards. Be living on a budget. Uh, and we'll send you every dollar hour. Apple. That will help you build your budget out and build the system out that we teach here at Ramsey.

And then you build that emergency fund. So take that eight grand. It needs to be 15 to 20 grand.

And you never touch that.

That's just for a rainy day. It's just sitting over there. It's not an investment. Then you take then you start investing 15 percent of your income. If your new company has a 401k, do the Roth version.

Roth 401k. If it doesn't, then go to RamseySolutions.com and click on SmartVester Pro. That's mutual fund brokers and financial advisors that we recommend. They don't work for us, but they have the heart of a teacher. And they'll sit down and teach you about investing.

And you can start your Roth IRA with them. And they'll show you how to do it. They'll show you how it works. And you will make the decision. Because they're not going to sell you something until you understand it.

Yeah, and speaking of making sure you understand it. Let's talk about why we told him to cut up the credit card. Because what I, what I don't want you to do, Francis goes just say, well, they told me to do it. I'm going to do it. And you not understand it.

We know that if you have a problem, the problem is generally dead.

The things that you're experiencing are usually symptoms of the debt that's in your life. And so you can't solve a problem while continuing to create it. So if you have credit cards and you're continuing to spend them, you're continuing to create the problem you're just chasing your tail.

“So one of the primary things that you have to do when you start this system of living”

is you have to say, I don't borrow money anymore. And that has to be part of who you are with your money from here on forward. Because you have to be able to have the fullness of your income at your disposal. Every single month to do the things that we're teaching, whether it's investing, whether it's paying off a house,

whether it's saving for kids' college, whether it's saving up cash to buy a car. You need income to do that. And if you're pulling in, you throw on all your monthly pay, all of your income onto monthly payments.

You don't have the income at your disposal to do those things. So that's why we teach it that way. Exactly. And so personal finances 80% behavior. It's 20% head knowledge.

So the problem with my money is the guy and my mirror. If I can get him to behave, he can be skinny and rich, but he's got issues. And so I've got to get him to behave. And that's how this works.

And part of that is I have to trick myself into wisdom, tricking myself into wisdom is not having a credit card. Yeah, just cut it up. Then it's not there to teach you. If I don't have one, then it's not an issue.

That's right.

off your checking account will do everything your credit card will do.

Every single thing. Sharon and I have traveled in other countries six times in the last 12 months, hundred percent on a debit card. We haven't had a credit card in 36 years. Now, and if you have fraud, it's the exact same protection.

You call them. You say somebody spent money. Who they did? They stole Sharon's card the other day. Did they?

Somebody started buying a whole bunch of Louis Vuitton. And it wasn't her. And we had to shut the thing down. Wow. All of them are you buying Louis Vuitton in six different cities?

And we went, no. Yeah. Well, that card. You know what it cost us? Zero.

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Better than I deserve, what's up? My husband's job offers a $2,000 in just free loan to all their employees. Nearly we've never taken advantage of it, but we think we should. And we're not sure which way to go if we want to put that into an IRA or pay off one of our mortgages.

“But it's alone. You have to give them money back.”

It's alone, right? It is, but it is interest free so it would be taken out of the paycheck throughout the year. So essentially for us, it feels like we want to notice it so much. I mean, enough of being worth it or not. Let's pretend that they charged you interest on it, just for the fun of it.

I mean, like, just just make up a number. If you went to the bank and got a personal line of credit, you might get it for 10%. On $2,000, I'd be $200. You're making $20 a month. You can't buy a biscuit with this transaction. You're burning way too many brain calories for no money here.

Okay. There's no trick. There's no hack. You're dealing with peanuts. And you're not going to get anything but more peanuts. Okay. Don't screw with it for that. And it's a trap. You're going to get caught in something like he's going to get laid off or fired

and you're having this loan outstanding. And then it's going to convert to interest because you're no longer an employee or whatever the crap is on the fine print. That you guys hadn't even thought about. No. Do not step up on the rug that's over the trap door. George says this and it's so true. Whenever the call starts with, I have an interesting opportunity.

Whenever it's, whenever it's framed as a unique opportunity or your friend is trying to get you on a multi level. Yeah. This is not an opportunity.

“Yeah. Rob is in Washington, D.C. Hey, Rob. What's up?”

Just trying to just want to say thank you for everything you do for people and so glad that you took my call. Thank you. How can we help? I'm an interesting position. I make a very high salary and I had an eight year guaranteed contract.

So I started to have to become a payroll on my pocket and then credit cards started bouncing. And anyways. And so you didn't have to. You chose to. I chose to because I cared about people that were my employees or. They're not your employees. They were that company's employees.

You're they were you're down. I understand. You go. I just from a person point of view. I just.

No, that's not true. No. Nothing Christian about that.

“Who's payroll did you cover? How much did you spend on this?”

It wasn't much a mute talk in 1718 dollar an hour employees and it was every couple months. And then she took then the company started on to my pay checks or can you lay and. Are you my my main question is good. Were you board level or you bought in in any way. To this company.

That's where the contract is very interesting. I'm a physician and I signed an eight year contract with a five percent interest or interest in the company. Going up over the first four years.

We're out on 40 percent of the company.

And my in the contract was guaranteed for eight years. Okay, but then I went. But they went. No, they let me go because I couldn't afford to have me anymore. They went.

Without without my salary, they're breaking even. Okay. So my options are to. It's an LLC. The person that owns the company had no idea what they were doing and they were getting.

It's like a play project because there has been very wealthy. But he is only on the SBA loan. He's not on the LLC or the corporate document. Hopefully. Well, the LLC doesn't have anything.

It's not got any money. Well, no, it's just broken even. It's broken even cover and expensive once I went out no longer there. The reason that she, the letter that she gave me. For let me go was because of financial strain.

It wasn't for any other type of call.

So when you were hired and there was this eight year and after eight years, it's 40 percent.

“Did you have to put money into buy into that?”

I did not. They searched me out. Because the tug of position I am. I'm getting paid for giving the higher than any mother college. So what, uh, what kind of income do you normally make in your field?

Normally, in my field, they're probably making 70 to 100. I'm making 2.25 to 250. As a physician, somebody makes 70? Are you like a pediatrician? No, I'd rather not.

Okay. I don't want to give away. I mean, you think about that. Okay. Anyway, the answer to your question is A, we're not lawyers.

B, from a practical standpoint. If you are completely right, which you probably are, they owe you for eight years. They owe you for eight years of income. They have violated the contract. That's what you're saying.

And you could probably win the lawsuit. And then you would have a judgment against a broke company. This is not going to pay you a dime. Right. No, no.

So why? Why would your father? Obviously, Dave, I went through a bankruptcy like he did several, let's say, 10 to 15 years ago.

And I've had, I always feel like I'm the underdog.

And I'm the type of person that'll work 70 week for you. I'll do the blood sweat and tears. And I'm having hard time letting people get away with stuff anymore. Yeah. Well, they're going to get away with it.

Because you can sue again, get a lean against an LLC that has no assurance. No, but could I ask you since the husband is on the SBA? Doesn't matter. Yeah. He didn't sign the contract.

The LLC signed the contract. You're not going to get to the house. He did that to protect himself. That was intentional. He said, nobody signed SBA.

So he wouldn't be on the hook for the SBA. He's on the hook for the SBA. But he's not on the hook for you. No, but it's still. Because they're making enough right now to pay the bills.

So that would allow them to pay the all the loan. That doesn't feel moral. But it's completely legal. No, I know it. You're not going to get to him.

He has what's called a corporate veil. That's why they did business in an LLC.

“That's why any of us do business in an LLC.”

So if we get sued or the maximum thing you could get is the assets of the LLC. You can't come after this. That's why all my real estate is in an LLC. Because a drunk guy fell off the front porch from one of the houses. And I decided he's going to sue.

And it's his fault because he was drunk. But I still got to deal with them more on. And he can't get to any of my stuff. All he can get to is the LLC that owns that house. That's actually a moral question.

I see you get over. A moral question. How do you get over? I don't want to say this, but just feel like you're getting burned. And that's what can help for yourself.

I don't know that you do get over it. It makes you angry and it hurts you. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it.

You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it.

You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it.

You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it.

You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You're going to get over it. You've got to decide, OK, what am I going to spend my time in my energy on?

I'm going to spend it on something positive going forward. Something is helpful and hopeful.

Let's pretend he did sue any sue them for a million bucks.

They're doing business out of a commercial building. Maybe that they own it. Maybe it's worth a million bucks. They sue them. The judgment wouldn't cause them to have to close down sell the property and pay him.

He said they were breaking even. But I kept asking about assets. No assets. They just cut their doctor loose and they're a medical operator. They're going down.

They don't know any money. They might have an asset.

“If they've got an asset, like a commercial building, then you have to go after it.”

You could get it. You can end up with a building. Even the Emmy he did say no assets. But I got something there that there. No.

They could have gone and rented off a space. Set up a medical operation and say a clinic of some kind of work. We don't know because he didn't give us the details. It sounds like that. That's probably something like that.

There's a bunch of use medical equipment in there and a bunch of broke people that aren't getting their salaries paid. OK. Yeah. And there's an end of use to office desk.

You know, I wouldn't agree with it. I'd move on with my life. But it's very hard to his point because it's your anger. It's unjust. Yeah.

It's not fair. It's not right. [MUSIC] OK, guys. Let me ask you something.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the FairWins Credit Union Studio. Justina is in Baltimore High, Justina, how are you? Hi, I'm feeling good. How are you, guys? Better than I deserve. What's up? My husband and I, we keep fighting.

And I just want to know if you'd write.

“We keep fighting about buying prepared foods,”

while babies step too, is he right? What's a prepared food? So, like frozen meals, or like prepared Luania, or in particular, I buy these chicken burrito bowls.

The eat while I'm at my second job.

Are you guys aligned on everything else? Yes. What's the problem? The quality or the price? Because that stuff is not expensive? I don't think it's expensive at all.

The chicken bowls are 1397. And Keith says I can make them, but I prep or-- What are you spending on groceries? What are you spending on groceries?

What are you spending? Well, we spend about 200 every two weeks. Okay, so 400 bucks a month? What's your household income? I make 61 and he makes 58.

Okay, and you're attacking debt, obviously with intensity. Yes. And so how much debt are you attacking? We have 45 in student loans,

and then a hundred and 95 in our house.

But unfortunately, his mother passed away,

“so we just inherited a hundred and four.”

Which is going to clear all your debts? Everything's about the house. And you're not going to be in baby step two anymore. Right. So then it doesn't matter if you buy prepared meals anymore.

And by the way, it didn't matter before either. If you were spending $400, I've used spend a hundred bucks a week on groceries. That's really, really good. It's really low.

It's really low. Now, if he says to you, you're responsible for the meals, and I don't like this food. I don't enjoy it.

Can we please do something else? That's fair.

But if he's saying on price alone,

I would disagree with what he's saying. It feels like that. Okay, let me tell you what normally happens when I've been coaching people on these situations. That we've found one thing that absolutely

doesn't matter to argue about, but there's a whole lot of big things that we should have been arguing about there or not. Right. Like he's still buying $2,000 guns or something and pitching about a $13 burrito.

That's what I find a lot of times. Or you're buying something else that he's really frustrated about, but he's pointing it over here at the burrito instead. Yeah.

Am I missing something? I mean, is there a coach person in the story that I missed? No. This is a terrible idea.

You guys are incomplete. I'm 100% agreement.

There's no argument about everything else in your budget

and you're running a $400 food budget. Yeah. I guess the only thing different and our budgeting that we want to do is I want to take Rachel's suggestion

and add a stupid line item for those things I just pop up and he doesn't want to do that. He's a tight wide. Well, no, he's trying to be very, very intense. But here's the problem.

You end up if you lose the wife, if you lose the spouse over a $13 burrito, you didn't win the war. He's through the baby out with the bath water. Okay. Now, again, she's not trying to buy a $6,000 coach person.

Okay, this is no Louis Vuitton in this discussion. There's no expensive firearms in this discussion or whatever it is that we want to talk about boy toys and girl toys or whatever. Okay.

That's not in the discussion. So, this is simply, okay. So, what I'm going to coach him to do is this. You win the argument because it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. $13 does not fix your all's life. Great. Okay. So, you win the argument, but he needs to learn the art of letting you win

some battles so that we win the war of working on this together. It's more important.

“It's 99% important that both of you stay enthused”

and pointed at the problem. It's 1% important as to whether you buy burrito. You got me. So, you know, there might be a dollar or two technicality and jades better expert on food pieces.

There's not even if it was $5 more in a $400 budget. He could win the math, but it's stupid. Yeah, you're going to lose your wife for $5. He's right. It's going to be cheaper for you to cook everything from scratch.

But $400 is a fair budget item. Like, that's a fair amount to spit on groceries. It's very low. Very, very low. Yeah, very low.

That's it. We don't see that early ever. So, overall you win the argument, but if I had him on the line, I would coach him and say, dude, more important that she's enthused and focused on the overall plan than the $13 burrito.

What she's asking is not so far out there. Yeah. It's like when I ask my husband to make up the bed, and he makes up the bed, but he does it a little bit different than the way I do it.

And if I get on to him, then you could get to make it up. Pretty soon. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like that happened this weekend.

Oh, that. Oh, can we just bring up a real analogy? I don't matter for. Okay. Yeah, that's exactly it.

I mean, you know, if you're going to cry about the way I do it, you get to do it. And so you lose the battle of helping with housework over the wrinkle in the corner of the bed. That's right.

That's the same thing. It's the same thing. So let's get on the same page.

“Let's decide what's really important here.”

What's really important is we get out of that, stay out of that. We're generous when we build wealth and we're on a plan together. That's right. This is what causes people to be wealthy,

not $13 burritos or the lack of them.

Either one.

“Well, I tell you what's flashing through my head.”

It's so stupid bags of chicken breasts from salmon. Yeah. We lived on those things when we were broke.

And I never want to see it again.

That's the best day. In any time I'm in a restaurant, fine dining or otherwise, we have a chicken breast. Oh, thank you. No way.

Or we know that. The other one was tuna fish. Yeah, I remember he said that. Oh, she would make tuna fish sandwiches. And I would take him to work.

And they would be in the worker refrigerator. And by lunch, they'd be soggy. When I smell the fish, my net worth goes down now. Just the smell of it reminds me of being broke. It's cow food.

It's just somebody else needs to eat that health food

because I'm not doing it.

It's that simple. I can't do it. It reminds me of being broke. I totally get it. It's just the smell of it.

I smell it and I feel broke. I feel that. That's how I am with those meals. Because that's the last time I ate it. It was like soggy set there in the refrigerator.

The bread gets, oh, God, it's so gross.

“And so that's the stuff he's going to remember now.”

You're going to remember the $13 burrito or whatever when they, they're the side of this someday and they're milionaires. Or maybe step milionaires. And we had this stupid discussion over that. Yeah.

The other one I was funny was Sharon, I had this huge fight. Three little kids. Because I thought, same, I was that guy. It's been in too much of the grocery store. And she's like, all right, King James.

You do it. Get your butt in the car and let's go to Kroger. And we go up and down the aisle. And you know what I discovered? She was doing a pretty good job.

I love it. And my level of criticism for her future be deal making on the groceries was not at all. Because otherwise I'd get to do it. And I couldn't do any better anyway.

“But I had this opinion from afar that I had this figured out”

until I got marched down the aisle for a burger. Very good, Dave. If you run a business, you already know this. Bad information leads to bad decisions. And right now, AI is everywhere.

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I'm doing good day. Thank you so much for taking my call at the pleasure to speak with you. You too, what's up? Sir, I'm a welder by trade. And I am looking to start my own mobile welding and fabricating business.

To get this off the ground, I'm humoring several avenues to pay for the start-up cost of this. The big cost, I already have the rig and I already have the welder. So the two main costs are taking care, but there's a substantial amount more that needs to go into getting this thing ready. If it's going to go out and do the job.

The first avenue I'm humoring is selling my wife and I both have our car stayed off.

And I'm thinking about selling my 2017 Subaru cross trek,

We are expecting our third child here at the end of July and my welding rig is not car seat friendly.

“So we'll be down to one vehicle or the kids if we need that move.”

The second avenue I'm thinking about is, I have about 150,000 right now put away in traditional and Roth IRAs. And I'm thinking about taking some of that out to fund this. How much do you need? What's the dollar amount that you need? I'm thinking from all the quotes and everything that I've been putting together.

It's going to be maybe around $10,000. It's so serious to have the right equipment on this thing. For what? You've already got the rig. Power tools, tool boxes, cylinder, gas and lean tanks, business cards, for gas and lean.

I would just say that as well because it's a 1981 Chevy custom to lock. So this thing drinks gas. So when welding, you know, anything about welding is there. Nothing cheap about it, sir.

So are you're a welder now, right?

Yes, sir. What do you make now? I make just shy of 73,000 a year. It's a 35 an hour.

“Okay, and so if you take this rig out as a side hustle and do some welding,”

is that in conflict ethically with your day job? No, sir. Okay. Are you already doing that? No, I just got the welder back from the shop.

You tuned up the welder. So I am not currently acting up the job. So I understand the rig as it sits today is less than ideal, but I also understand it will weld. Yes, sir.

So go weld something and get you some money from that job. That money to upgrade your equipment and then go weld something else as a side hustle and get you some money. I mean, crap, you can make $10,000 in your side hustle pretty quick. And pour it all back into equipment and get your rig ready.

And then you spend six months to a year as your side hustle, making sure this is actually going to work. And in terms of you're going to get enough business to offset, because you don't quit your job until you have this thing proven. Of course.

So go weld something, man. Go get you some business today.

“You can roll up weld something and then we'll write you a check, right?”

It is there. No doubt. Okay. That's where you get the money. I understand that, Dave.

I'm just saying that like when I go out there and do the job. I do construction. I think that's what I specialize in. And so I had wear plates and a bunch of other stuff to construction equipment.

So like I did the settling torches. Like if I just show up with the welder just the welder on the downs, I'd be frank, sir. It's not enough to do the job right and effectively. And I would be saying no to a substantial amount of work,

because I don't have the tools needed to go in. I'm saying this is your five year plan. I'm saying it's your five week plan. Listen, I started this business on a card table on my living run.

It made $300 million last year.

A hundred percent of the equipment in this place. And there's millions and millions and millions of dollars of it today. Was bought with money we made in this place with equipment we didn't really like. And then we upgraded to equipment we liked. With the money we made from the equipment we didn't really like.

This is my seventh studio that I built that I'm sitting in. The first one wasn't even soundproof. We had to put up tape in the hallway, crime tape that keep you from walking down the hall and talking because it would have gone over the air. That's less than ideal to say the least.

And that's how this show started. And it makes millions of dollars now. The show alone does. So start with what you got. Barrow your buddies, a settling torch.

Pick up some stuff from the, you know if you got to pick up some supplies from the vendor and tell me you'll pay them at the end of the job they'll do that. And then get your butt down there and do some welding. If you wait until everything's perfect to start, you're going to figure out that even your perfect plan wasn't perfect.

Go make some money. And use that money organically to pour back into the business. That's what I would do. That's what I would do. I wouldn't sell the Subaru with a kid on the way.

And I sure wouldn't touch my 401k. And I assure wouldn't borrow the money to buy stuff that I'm not even positive yet. Exactly what I need. I think I know. I think you do know.

But I'll guarantee you you're not 100% right on your shopping list.

So.

“And by the way, as soon as you get a piece of equipment, you'll see another one that looks better.”

Welcome to the world of being in the trades.

Yeah, you have to have a version one. You have to have a V1 to start. Yeah, just start minimal functional. Get going. Get going.

Make the thing. Make money. And that's how we start. And, you know, I've had to tell the engineers were wiring stuff in here. They come in with these bids to read to the studio on stuff.

It's been here for six years. Okay, great. Looks okay to me. But the electronics are tired. I didn't know they'd been running.

Yeah. So, um, okay. But yeah, okay. Good. So what?

“And then they bring in like we're going to build a freaking Taj Mahal of electronic.”

No, we're not.

Minimal functional boys go back and figure it out.

This is a business. We're trying to make a profit, not not make a profit for the electronic store. What you're saying is so right. You know, it's the same thing when Sam and I started our business. I didn't have a computer.

I had my phone. And we couldn't afford for me to get a computer. So I had to do everything. Yeah. Like this.

And, you know. Yeah. Do what you got to do. Yeah. But please.

Yeah.

So first thing is go make some money to properly equip your truck.

Your mobile welding shop. And then once that's done, then go make enough profitable business. And a short period of time as a side hustle to prove to yourself. I lead a minimum of six months worth to prove to yourself. You can at least make more than you are making now.

I actually think it's all going to work.

“I think you're going to go make a whole bunch of money.”

Absolutely. But I will tell you that we coach about 10,000 small businesses. And a lot of them are in and around the construction world. And one of the things those guys all laugh with me about it. I make fun of them all the time is you guys will spend all your profit on tools.

In trucks. Well, I mean, because Chevy ran some Silverado through a mud puddle. And so you think you got to have a new Silverado on the construction site. So some more on can back into it with a backhoe. And that's, you know, this is, this is, it's hilarious.

Construction people, they're just boys with toys. And we just buy, and I need a backhoe. And I need a skid steer. And I need this. And I need, yeah, you don't.

You don't use up all your profit buying gadgets. And that's not what he's saying. No, but there's the tendency in that world to do that. Yeah, even the business card is like, you don't need that yet. You don't need to use your mouth.

I don't have a business card. You don't need business card. You need an email address. That's all you need. And you need a text.

Yeah, I tell a phone. And a phone. But you do not need a business card. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]

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Why do you think you're picking my call?

What's up? How are you? Have a question. How can I get my husband to be financially transparent with me as far as bank accounts, debts, and income?

So when you ask him what's his response, you tell me what you say, and then you tell me what he says. So I am not included in the bank account. I'm a stay-at-home mom, so when I ask him, you know,

what it's in the bank account, he never gives me an exact amount.

He always kind of goes around and says, "Oh, we're okay. We're doing okay." Does he get upset with you if you continue to ask? No, he's for the most kind of very calm person. He just kind of takes the conversation to a different direction.

He tries to avoid all that. So if you said, "Well, if you said, well, instead of you telling me the balance, can you just give me the log in that way, I can check it whenever I want. What would it be his response?"

“I believe he told me once that he would rather be in charge of the finance”

and so that I wouldn't have to stress about it.

Would you say, "Well, it's not stressful for me. I just want to see it." I've told him that and he avoids it at all costs. How long have you been married? We've been married for three years.

Okay. Somewhere along the line, someone gave you guys a bad message about our relationship actually works. And they told someone told him and someone told you that your vote doesn't count and your vote counts. So it just depends on how crazy you want to get to make your vote count,

because my prediction is this. That as long as you continue to build up resentment and anger inside of you, because he's treating you like a freaking door mat, the longer that goes on, eventually you're going to blow. And when you do, your marriage will be over,

and no one will be able to talk you into staying, because you will put up with this for 10 years, or 15 years, or 8 years, or whatever, and you will have had it, and no one will be able to dial you back in. I've sat in coaching sessions with couples and watched their marriage come to an end, because they let this stuff go on and on and on and on and finally they blow up.

Now, here's another take.

“I think Davis right, here's another way to consider it.”

I think that sometimes in these situations, when people want to prevent transparency, a lot of times it is because they have something to hide, and what's making me think that is because he's framing it in the way that you have the problem. Oh, I don't want you'll be too stressed out. You'll be too worried. You'll be the one.

When really the problem is he has the problem.

And he's not saying, I just don't feel comfortable. I just need to get a grip. He's making it sound like you're the person who has a problem. So that's a red flag for me, and I do think that this has to be brought to a counselor. Because whether it's what Dave said or whether it's what I said, both of those are not. You can't continue down that path that way.

He's real calm and you're real sweet until you're not. But this will come to an end, because you're getting pretty frustrated. You just called a couple strangers on a podcast with millions of people, and told your story, you're already pretty frustrated. Yeah.

And so it's starting to build, and I don't want it to blow.

“And so, you know, I think, you know, honey, if we can't come to an arrangement where I have the same vote you have about our money,”

and we both know what's going on with the money, and my name is on the account, and I have full access. There is going to be stress in the house, but it's going to be yours. Because I'm about to create some stress for you. And another, I'll tell you what Dr. John Deloni would say. He said, you know, when you have those conversations, frame it in the story that you're telling yourself.

And say, you know, the way things are that the story I'm telling myself is that you're locking me out because you have something to hide. And the story I'm telling myself is that if this doesn't change pretty soon, I'm going to, I will blow. And that this will cause, you know, damage to our relationship that won't be able to be repaired. That's the story I'm telling myself, I don't want to keep going down that path, right? That's another way that you could frame it.

And so either, either we can come to an arrangement by Friday afternoon, where my name is on the account, and I have full access to everything, and you and I are making financial decisions together, or I'm going to go see a marriage counselor, and I'm going to ask you to go with me.

This does not end well.

No, it never, it doesn't.

It doesn't end well. And let me paint this. And if you're the guy doing this, you're not taking care of the little woman. If you're telling yourself that you're so full of crap, you can't breathe. That is an absolute lie.

All it is is you're of control freak. And we see the other side of it all the time. How often do people call in? They've been married forever, and they've allowed this to persist. The husband passes away.

The wife had no idea. No idea what's going on. No idea. And there's debt. You can't get on the checking account.

They're going to get a quarter. Because there's no will.

“Because Bozo hasn't really been running this stuff, right?”

Yeah. So, Bubba, you're not taking care of the little woman. That's just bull crap. That is not what's working. So, the little woman is like a full grown person.

And they can carry half of the emotional stress of this household with you. And it should know what's going on. And by the way, the unknown is much more stressful than the known. It creates much more anxiety. When you don't know what's going on and you make up stories in your head about what's going on,

then when you actually know the truth. That's right. You'll crap. I thought it was a lot worse than this. I'm glad to see that we're in this situation.

You know, the unknown is way worse than a bad known for creating anxiety. Absolutely. You're not helping someone, but that's not the truth. He's really not trying to protect her. No.

He's hiding. Yeah. He's hiding something. Or he's controlling. The truth.

Melissa is in Pennsylvania. Hi. Melissa. How are you? Hi.

David and Dave. Good. Good. Okay. I'm little nervous.

So, here we go. So, we are selling one of our homes. And we're expected to get roughly 120 inequity. So, we're on babysitting number two. But should we continue following small to large?

“Or should we pay off all of my student loans because we're expected to go up?”

So, how much do you have in debt? Consumer debt is 59,571 and student loans is 124,825. Oh, that is consumer debt. Okay. So, you've got a hundred and six hundred and eighty four hundred and eighty three thousand.

Okay. And you've got a hundred and twenty coming out of the house. What are you going to do for a place to live after you pay all this down on the debt? So, we actually have two homes.

So, we're selling that one and then we're going to rent until and then we're selling our second home.

Actually, both are up for sale and so then we're going to rent. Oh, good. So, what's the other one going to rent? Probably maybe 9000 because we've been in less than two years. So, we'll have to pay capital gains.

And then you'll have, you won't pay capital gains on anything except the gain. So, how much did you buy it for? We bought it for 320. Well, it's sell for. It's on for 360.

That's 40. That's 40. It's on the market for. So, 15 per 40 is not 9. No, that's not.

Yeah. Your taxes aren't as much as you thought they were. That's what I thought. Okay. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Still didn't clear it. Okay. So, what's the 59,000 in debt? Oh, credit cards and my car. And paid off my husband's truck.

How much do you owe in your car? My car is 19,000 minus 6. Okay. Well, credit cards are a higher interest rate than the student loans. I really don't think it's going to matter.

I would do it in the normal way. Smallest to largest because you're still going to have your income to put towards cleaning up the rest of the debt. And if you go at lightning speed like we suggest, it's going to be negligible either way. You're going to pay it off really fast either way.

But clearing up all the credit cards in the car debt, that's going to clean up a bunch. Clear up a bunch of cash flow to be able to attack the balance of what you don't get to. You're only going to have about 60,000 left to knock out. Yeah.

No, I would work that at snowball in order. [MUSIC]

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“Jackie is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, hi Jackie, how are you?”

Hi, good, how are you? Better than I deserve, what's up? I was wondering if you could help me determine a comfortable monthly payment for a house and how much I should put down. Not counting 401k and not counting health insurance only having taxes out.

Whatever your take home pay is with only taxes coming out. We recommend a fourth of it on a 15 year fixed rate.

And so if you're coming home with $5,000, not counting 401k and not counting health insurance,

just taxes coming out. You're coming home with $5,000 and that's the proper amount of taxes coming out of your check. Then you would say a fourth of that would be $1250. Okay. And would you, and what's my assets?

I was wondering how much of it I should put down on a house. Whatever the amount of it will get you to that number. As much as you can, that's not retirement. Yeah, that's good for you.

“Yeah, I have a substantial mirror with stock and I don't know if I should put it on the house.”

Like all of it. Yeah. Can you pay cash for the house? Yeah, how much is the stock? I have about 215,000 stock and then a little over 60,000 in cash.

So 310, you could buy a 310 house for cash. Is that right? I would still have to pay cash or pay tax on your stock. Yeah, but I mean, you're going to pay up to $300,000 or so and pay cash for a house. What price range home were you thinking of?

I wasn't sure. I got approved for 400. I could have probably been approved for 500. You could probably be approved for whatever. That's true.

That's the mortgage company wants to loan you money. That's like asking a dog if it's hungry. No, Jackie, you have no debt, right? Correct.

“And do you have any other emergency funds any cash sitting around?”

It would just be that 60. Okay. What do you make? In cash. My take home is about 4700.

Like after taxes, like I met 4700 and then I do have child support that's about 2800. So about 7500 per month. How old are the children? They're just starting elementary school. So I'm going to definitely need child care.

At least for next five or 60 years, which is about 1200 a month. Yeah, but you're going to be 10 years. You'll be getting child support. Give her take. Okay.

So here's the thing.

Here's what we're bouncing around with all these questions.

What we're trying to get you to is 100% debt free as soon as possible. Be caught in house and everything. Because if you have zero payments on the house. And you have 7500 dollars coming in. You could build wealth very quickly.

Okay. So in other words, you're most powerful, wealth building tool. Is your income and when you're not giving it to the bank. Whatever the bank is in this case, a mortgage company. Then you have it freed up to build wealth with.

And it becomes a lot of money. Millions of dollars. Fairly quickly. If you don't give it all of the bank. So, you know, mathematically.

And I don't live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So I don't know. But mathematically, if you paid cash for a $260,000 house. And I had $20,000 or $30,000 in an emergency fund. And you had no payments.

And that would suffice for your children for the next several years. You could live there for five, six years or whatever.

If you did that. And you took 7500 bucks. And you started putting aside several thousand dollars a month. You're going to become a millionaire fairly quick. That's the most extreme side of what we teach.

“Now, if you want to back all the way down to.”

Up to, you know, the maximum we would ever tell you to do. And I'm really uncomfortable on this conversation telling you. It's even okay to do that. Is a fourth of your take home pay. So about $2,500.

I mean, I don't even think I would recommend that because. Well, I mean, it fits with our guide does. Fourth of your take home pay. And so we're talking about $2,000. Yeah, approximately a month on a 15 year fixed with $300,000 down.

You know, that's going to get you a lot more house than I was talking about a while ago, right? It is. That's going to get you in like $600,000. So three or four times the house that I was discussing. And you're still fairly conservative.

I think I'd go some if I were in your shoes today. Jackie, I'd probably be if it were jating your shoes. I'd go somewhere in the middle. I might not pay full cash, but I might say I'm willing to finance a little bit. But what I'd be thinking about and this is just based on some of the calls we get.

I'd be thinking about what my life would look like if child support were to change in a major way. And I were no longer getting that money. I'd want to be well within affordability because we do get calls where that amount changes. And it's like, what do I do? I was dependent on this.

“So yeah, if if I were in your shoes, I'd I'd veer more towards the cash.”

But maybe I'm financing one or two. Before I even did that though, I would go investigate and say I'm going to look at houses for $270,000. Yeah. And go, I'm going to pay cash. Mm-hmm.

Because I got to tell you. That's pretty really wealthy. Pretty nice. You'd be pretty wealthy. Mean $270,000 house paid for zero debt, zero stress.

Yeah. All you got to do is make money and save it. And be generous with it and take care of those kiddos. And that would still be somewhat of a temporary thing. Because you could then, I mean, gosh, you could five years.

You can buy that house in five and five years. It'd probably double. Man, that's nice. And then you take that 500 and put some a bunch of money with it and move up. Yeah.

That's, that'll get you a long, long way. That is very nice. People don't think that way anymore. Yeah. Zillow tells you you can't do that.

You started a million dollar startup house. But except that the typical is, by the way, first-time home buyers, the main price, the average home price for first-time home buyers in America $1.99. Wow. Nationally.

Now, again, I do not know the Harrisburg pencil of any markets cannot.

Here's the thing, though.

Here's the thing, though. It really is an expectation thing. Because if you, if you watch any of the shows where they go home shopping, that you're already screwed. You are.

But think about it. If you're in California and you are in one of those markets, we're just to start your spin and $950 million. What they get is nothing. Nothing.

Is nothing. But they buy it and they make it work and they live there. So if you're Jackie and you can be, you know, in a rural suburb, you know, a suburb of Harris, Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and you can get something that's right.

You could pay a lot less for it. But it's still that size that you would write. So it's all an opportunity for them. It's a thousand, you know, it's 1,500 square feet or 2,000 square feet. That I'm just saying.

I'm just saying. So John, John on Fox a while ago, the anchor asked me. He said, "What would you pay for your first house?" He said, "I paid 88,000 for mine and he's about my age. He's a little younger than me."

And so I paid 675 for mine. I was making $18,000. But get this.

Here's what people don't think about.

It was a one car garage. It had no stove. No microwave. No refrigerator. It was on a hill.

And it was really ugly. One bathroom. It had one and a half baths. And it was 1,200 square feet. Yeah, that's cool.

One car garage. No stove. Way to go by stove. Yeah. No dishwasher.

No discarbuses disposal. For micotop cabinets. Okay. The vinyl, the rolled out vinyl floors. Yep.

Exactly. The rolled out vinyl floors. Because they were big then. Yeah. You know.

And so, you know. Well, it's only 675. Yeah. But a lot of you people would be going, "Well, it doesn't look like that on television. My Instagram account doesn't show a house."

Because, you know, if you walked into a house like that.

Now, y'all would go, "We're going to have to spend a million dollars to spend it."

That's true.

“That's why when you look at pictures from the 80s everybody thought, "We thought we bought a house."”

Yeah. We had a brand new baby. We bought a house. And we thought, "In the next house we bought was $100,000." And it was 1900 square feet.

Wow. And two car garage. Moving up. Moving on up.

So, you got to think about the house I grew up in, man.

I mean, it's 1000 square feet. One and a half baths. The little doors were holocor doors. There were no secrets in this house. [music playing] Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio.

Jade Washaw Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Suzy is in Lubbock, Texas. Hi, Suzy. How are you? I'm being hell with you. Better than I deserve. What's up?

Well, I remember a solar contract. And I was wondering if you saw me have a more economical way to get out of the contract. I'd talk to an attorney and they want $8,000 to get out of the contract. And they guarantee they can do it. Well, you got the wrong attorney.

Okay.

Any attorney that wants to make you a guarantee for $8,000 is not telling you the truth.

There's no such thing as a guarantee. What do you owe the solar company? Well, it's a 25-year note. Right now, I picked 200 enough. What's the balance?

“What's the payoff balance today if you paid it off?”

I don't know. Okay. How long have you had it? Two years. Okay. And how much is it a month? $2,000.

It's like every year. Okay. And is the solar company that sold it to you? They obviously sold the note to a bank. I'm sure, right?

Yes. Who's the bank? They-- it's so twice. And I'm not sure. It's not a bank.

I don't know. I'm not sure. Okay.

It's a financial company of some kind.

It's bought the paper. Is the solar company that sold it to you? Still in business or have they bankrupt it? No. They're business.

Never brought. It was a name of the company on the note. Yeah. Okay. All right.

“And why is it that you think you should be able to get out of it?”

Why did the attorney think you should get you out of it? Because I miss what presented. Every time it gets in place to me. Your phone's breaking up on. They risk represented what?

They misrepresented the solar system to me when they installed it. And what? I thought that he said that we could just-- it was more like a lease. And if we didn't like it or it didn't mark out, we could just call them and they would come get it. Did you lease the solar?

Is it a lease program? No. No. It's not. It's not.

Okay. All right. Yeah. Well, I mean, any time that there's a fraudulent misrepresentation in the process, the company that sold it to you could be sued. And there's a rule that the Federal Trade Commission has passed.

This says the holder of the note is liable for the same fraud that the actual solar company is. In the solar business has been so-- there's been so much bad stuff go on that the Federal Trade Commission has a regulation now that this-- If fraud was proven, if they prove that they lied to get you to sign this note and they lied about the note and you can prove that. And you prove that then the contract would be canceled. That'd be the hard part.

“I don't know how you're going to prove it though because it's just your word against the salesman, right?”

Wow. You don't have anything in writing that says that. No. What he said, I do not. I don't really just got a note that was filed.

And that's all I ever got from him. Did you ever think while you're doing this, that this was not a good idea? Considering the way they talked about it. Yeah. I do.

Got to go with that gut reaction. I got feeling. I know. I do. What I do want you to do, there's no-- there's not an automatic switch you can flip.

This solar contracts are forgiven. There's no such thing. There's a couple of companies that went broke in the entire company.

It was an embarrassment to the Obama administration. It was one of them. And a couple of those companies, the loans that were all been forgiven. But in mass, but under a class action thing, and a federal trade commission movement. But most of the several hundred companies have gone broke.

You're coming in and even gone broke because the tax credits went away. And when the solar tax credits went away, the solar business got really hard.

“And so I think you probably have been defrauded.”

I'm not an attorney. I have messed with attorneys enough to know that it's not easy. And any attorney that makes you a guarantee is a shyster. They don't have the ability to give you a guarantee. Our court system is not that efficient or just.

If justice was done, a judge would walk up, look at this and say these people were taking advantage of slam the gavled down. And 30 minutes later, you'd be out alone. That doesn't exist in our country. This is going to take years. Within S.

And it's not $8,000 event. Because it sounds like you've got tens of thousands of dollars of note here. But I would continue to investigate it because I do think you probably have been defrauded. Just on a practical basis. Now, whether you can prove that in a quarter long, get this done.

I don't know. But I would talk to some more attorneys and interview some different ones. But please hesitate to do business within attorney that makes a guarantee. Oh, $8,000. I got this.

You're right. That's somebody that wants your $1,000. That's another scam.

“That's your, somebody wants your $8,000.”

It is going to cost you some attorneys fees. But they should be if someone is efficient in how they do this. They should be lower than the payoff balance on the solar. And again, you're going to have to prove. You know, you're got to prove the fraud.

And I don't know how that's going to happen here. But I would learn more about it. But talking to a few more attorneys and try to get one that's a little more professional than the last one you talked to. Linda's in Wisconsin. Hi, Linda. How are you?

Hi, I'm doing good. I'm so glad I get to talk to you. Sure. What's up? Thanks.

Well, I am wondering if I should be investing in the market. Given my current somewhat unusual circumstances, tell us. Yeah. So I'm 16. And I was diagnosed with cancer several years ago.

And I am in remission. But when I got diagnosed, it was quite advanced stage four. Wow. I left my career of 30 years and went on full disability.

So I could focus 100 percent on my health.

Good for you. And luckily, I heard of you, right? A couple of minutes after that, I wish I had heard of you decades ago. I'd be in a different situation right now. So I do make pretty good Social Security disability.

I do have margin. I own my home. I own my car. I have no debt. No children, no spouse.

And I have a small mistake. I have a lot of 115,000. But that's everything. You know, that's my money. Are you living on Social Security disability?

I am. Okay. And you don't have another pension other than that. No. But that's enough to cover your monthly nut.

Yes. And I do have about $500 a month margin. Gotcha. Wow.

That's amazing given your situation.

Yeah, it is. I'm impressed. Congrats on the remission. Hang on. We'll come back after this little break.

And make sure you get a good solid answer instead of trying to give you a 10 second version with all you've been through. [Music] Dave Ramsey here for more than 30 years. I've been talking to folks on the air.

And I can tell you that most people are broke. Not because they don't make enough money, but because they don't have a plan.

“You need to give every dollar you earn a job.”

Because when you do that, something changes. You stop guessing. You stop worrying. You stop stressing. Our every dollar budgeting app will show you how to find extra cash.

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Go download it in the App Store or Google Play. [Music] Continuing with Linda, 60 years old recovering from stage 4 cancer and now in remission. Payed for house paid for car and no debt, $120,000 in the bank, living on her social security disability. Is that a fair summary of what you told us so far?

Yes. How long have you been in remission? Uh, years. Wow. Congratulations.

Excellent. That's awesome. Thank you. I just stopped treating it. Yeah.

So happy for you. Wow. Thank you. You feeling better? Um, sort of.

Well, you know, I'm still undergoing a lot of surveillance and post monitoring and things.

Yeah. The courage is about OK, you're right. Right. Wow. Yeah.

Just this dress. Yeah. And I, you know, my, my concern is that I, I'm only utilizing high note savings account right now. And I'm quite risk of worse, you know, I'm very cautious.

“Um, is that worth 115 is going to high yield savings account?”

Exactly. Yeah. If I were in year 30, 50 a month. If I were in your shoes, I would learn some things about the market and about mutual funds from a smart vester pro.

And I would move.

Uh, I probably leave about 30,000, maybe 40,000 in a high yield savings for your emergency.

And I'd move the rest of it into some mutual funds. Uh, to where you can get a lot better right of return. So to give you an example, OK. The, uh, in, in 2023, the market went up 26% high yield savings was three. In 2024, the market went up 25% high yield savings was three.

It's up 8% year to date right now. And if so, if it continues on that pace, it'll be up 16%. Because we're at about halfway through the year. And how yield savings is three. So the, so the difference for you.

Um, and it's not, it would not have been appropriate where you were. But, uh, and those are unusually good years in the market. So you don't expect that. Okay. But, if you make sure you don't expect that.

Okay, but if you make 10, let's, let's say you've got a hundred. Thousand dollars in there, which you wouldn't quite have that much in there. But if you make a 12% on it, that's 12,000 dollars. If you make 3% on it, that's 3,000 dollars. Yeah.

And so that starts to add up. So I do want you to sit down with the smart vester pro and begin learning about a good mutual fund. It could be that all you do is something simple as an index fund, which is a very calm. It does exactly what the stock market does. Okay.

And risk, so you own a home that has zero guarantees. But you are comfortable with no guarantees on your home, because you're comfortable with the track record, the history of single family homes as an investment. And that was wise. That's true. Okay.

But you've got no guarantee there in your risk of hers. But yeah, that's a steady calm investment that has a huge track record. And so if you look at a good mutual fund that's been open for 80 years or 70 years. And it's got a track record and it feels like buying a home emotionally risk wise. Because you learn about it and over time and you're not doing it because Dave said do it.

Linda looked at it and Linda is wise and Linda is intelligent. And Linda is going to put Linda's money in and Linda feels okay. You follow me. And you don't do it because the guy at smart vester pro said do it. You do it because you learned about it and you felt good about it.

And then you're not going to perceive the risk. Yeah.

“And I think we should give her tickets to investing essentials.”

Oh, just for free. Absolutely. Good idea. Yeah, I'll be doing that September 1st and 2nd with George it's a virtual event. You can just log online $109 tickets.

I'll give you a ticket. We'd love to have you watch. Good idea. And we'll get you signed up. We'll get you hooked up with the smart vester pro to Christianel.

Pick up and help you learn how to do that on the on the site. But take your time, Linda, and learn. Yes. Just like you did when you're buying the house and you got comfortable with the risk. The list is where this list is in green bay. Hi, Liz. How are you?

Better than we deserve. What's up?

I'm wondering how I can convince my dad to get on the same page with me about my 20 year old daughter, purchasing a home. He's trying to disobey your from doing that. And I'm trying to convince her that it's a good investment. Let's find out what you've used correct.

Tell us more about the 20 year old daughter. So she currently left with me. She does not want to go to college. She has made that very clear. She has currently, she just bought it a car for $19,000 in cash. She has no debt. She has another $20,000 in savings. She would get a $10,000 gift for me.

She would get a $7,500 gift from the company that she works for. That is to attack free and forgiveable after three years as long as she stays with us. And then she would also be eligible for. Stay with us. Do you both work at the same company?

Thank you. So she moved, hold on. So she leaves the company. She owes the $7,500 back. Correct.

So let's check that one off the list. She's 20 years old.

We don't know what she's going to do. What does she do with that company? She works in the billing department. What does she make? She makes about $45,000 a year currently.

And you wanted to move out and start her life because she's been very successful so far and Is a great kid. Your dad doesn't want to do that.

“Your dad doesn't want to buy her to buy house. Why?”

He wants her to go to college and he's afraid that if she purchase a home, she will She does not have to go to college. But she's not going to go to college. You put it out as a foregone conclusion. Has she decided?

She's not going to go to college or you decide. She went to college. No, she decided. I've gone to college. My other child's gone to college. She has determined she does not have any interest in going to college.

Okay. What does she want to do for a long-term career? Does she know? She's not 100% certain. But our company has a very upwardly mobile track for people in her position.

Building a college degree. Hubbardly mobile track out of billing? Correct. Corrective customer service. I'll tell you what.

I think she's doing a great job. She's got the cash car. She's got a job. I like the idea of her moving out. I think she's ready to move out. I don't think she needs to buy a house right now.

I don't think she's ready for that. I'd love if she got an apartment and continued to rent and save.

“Because I think the 7500 is off the table.”

I would not want her to take that. Yes, that's off the table. So she's got 30,000. But really, she's got less than that because she would need three to six months of expenses for an emergency fund.

In her case, I'd say six months of expenses. Yeah. And so for that reason, she's just not ready financially yet. And she and, let me add this, financially not quite yet. And I would love to see somebody rent for a while before they buy.

To just go straight from mom and dad's house. To I have a place that I own. That's a major. I mean, you know, at home ownership feels like moving. Moving to a one bedroom apartment by your own milk for a while.

Yep. Now she does pay rent to me. I don't care. But it's not a place. She doesn't have to worry about if moisture is building up in the crawl space.

I want her to be out on her own. And none of you telling her what to do. And let's work on that for a while. And then talk about buying.

The second thing is I don't want her career to be decided as a track at one company.

I want her to choose a career.

“What does she want to be doing making a lot of money?”

At 30 years old ten years from today. And what must be true? That's not true today about her. Because she probably needs some kind of continuing education. Very few people with zero continuing education after high school do well.

Now we have a lot of quote high school graduates that become very successful. That's true. But they have continued their education even if they didn't do it before your college. They go to seminars. They read books. They've got a constant track.

They're on a personal growth. And they're very aggressive. Dave Thomas comes to mind. This started windies. Yeah.

High school graduate. Okay. The Wendy's hamburger king. And not Burger King. Hamburger king of Wendy's right.

And so anyway. Yeah. So I want her to think about what she wants to be. And then if that company is the best place for her to be that, that's fine. But just say, and oh, she's got a great track at the company.

That's not a career. That's a job.

You hear so many different opinions.

And you're left wondering if you're even doing it right.

“And that's why we created investing essentials.”

Join me in Dave Ramsey at this two night virtual event to learn Dave's playbook for investing and wealth planning. We'll break down 401k's mutual funds passing on wealth and more. So join us September 1st and 2nd. Take it start at 199 bucks.

You can get yours today at RamseySolutions.com/events or just click the link in the show notes.

Our question today is sponsored by Why Refi. If missed private student loan payments are keeping you from making progress towards your goals. Why Refi may be able to help you explore refinancing with a low fixed rate and a payment you can manage. Visit WhyReefi.com/Ramsey. That's WhyReefi.com/Ramsey might not be in all states.

Today's question is coming from Kevin and Oregon. He says a lady recently called in the show regarding giving up her late husband's firefighter pension to get married again. You calculated her $50,000 annual pension income as equal to a $500,000 investment. My question is, where do you get, where do you invest to get a 10% return like that? All right, so he's wondering, and I think a lot of people ask that question because we quote, you know, if you invest the way that we teach, you know, you can expect an annualized rate of return of between 10 and 11%.

And that is true. If you invest the way that we speak about you can say that now, I'll start by saying, if you just look at the S&P 500, which is just baseline index, if you look at that from inception, if you look at it from 1926,

“you're going to see annualized rate of return of over 10%. That's what you're going to find.”

By 11.8. It doesn't mean that every year it's that. I mean, just the last call, Dave quoted the last three years was in the upper 20s. So there's years where it's very high, unseasonably high, I'd say, and there's years where, you know, we have dips and there's months where we have drops. But if you add all that together and accumulate all of that information, you're going to find an annualized rate of return of around 10 to 11%. 11.8, which is what Dave just said. Now, that's S&P 500.

We're telling you, hey, if you do it our way, you're investing in a mix of four different types of mutual funds, right? We say growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international. When you do that, these are funds that are seeking to beat the average rate of return of the S&P 500. So you really should be doing even better than the 10 or 11% that we tend to quote around here. So that's where we're getting those numbers before we're not talking about after inflation or this and that.

“We're just saying, that's the rate of return. That's what it is. And so that's where that comes from.”

Dave, do you want to add anything to that? No, that's the average annual rate of return. That's what it is. And so the stock market has averaged the S&P 500 is the most accurate measure of the stock market has averaged 11.8% since it started. And again in 2023, it was 26%, 2024, it was 25%, 2025 is 18%. This year it's up eight as of today. And this is halfway through the year.

So if it annualized that, that'd be 16. So all of those four years will beat the average. But that means there's some years that don't beat the average. That's where an average comes from. But it still beats high yield savings account of three or four percent every year except occasionally it's down. But I mean, if you go back and look the number of years that it was actually down, it's almost none. Okay, three or four out of 25, that kind of thing.

And so you know, that's what you're looking at. And well, I've always heard, well, I know what you always heard,

which you heard from people that didn't know what they were talking about. That's the actual deal. Go pull it up, pull up the S&P 500 index and look at it for yourself. You can look at the charts. So Google will pop them right up for you. And it's pretty simple to do. It's not really rocket science. So that and so the other reason I use 10% on something like that is it's really easy for everyone listening to visualize.

Yeah, 50k, 10% of 500. You don't have to do a lot of, you know, fancy math to get there. I mean, you can do that if you got out of the third grade.

Exactly.

And so it's just we throw it out there. But that's a, you know, again, some years might be eight and some years might be 28.

But the average is about 11.8. And so that's where that comes from.

“Samantha is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi, Samantha. How are you?”

I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay. So my question is, I'm about 20k to 17 of that being on a car alone. But I currently live in my mother's home. She owns it. I don't pay rent or mortgage. But she can be kind of controlling. And, you know, she has threatened, like, for me to leave any time.

And my question is, do I pause? Maybe seven or two and paying off all this debt or, and leave? Or do I try to pay off all this debt first? How old are you? I am 33. And why are you at 33 years old living in your mother's home?

Well, I was in a domestic violence situation until my mid-20s. I got divorced with three young kids. And then I was with my parents when my dad was sick and dying. He passed away and then my mom's sister's husband also passed away. So they moved into a home together and my mom gave me this home.

But she never sounded over to me.

Okay, got it. That makes a lot more sense. Okay. And how much do you make a year? About 45. And how old are your babies now? They are 19 and a lesson.

“Okay. And you got an awfully expensive car, don't you?”

Um, yeah, I messed up on that really bad. Yeah, you did. Hmm. Well, I can't tell from, I mean, it sounds like you've gone from one toxic relationship to another to another.

Um, and now the latest one is your mother. Yeah, why is she threatening to kick you out when you say she's controlling what's that mean? Um, on the day to day, she's not so bad. Like, she told me I can do whatever I want. But this is my house or whatever.

But then, like, if I were to make any kind of decision, but she's not in alignment with she's like, well, then you can just leave. About the house or about your life. Anything. Give me an example.

Um, okay. We have a vacation coming in August that we really can't afford. We're acting afford to go on, but she's paid for everything. I'm afraid to even tell her I don't want to go.

“Because I'm afraid that will cause bad class.”

Okay, I see. Okay. Um, your mom has a lot of money. Does she wealthy? Um.

Well, she's a little class. She's doing okay.

Um, so here's what I would do.

I would leave. Yeah. Life's too short. You know, at some point in your life, have to be able to make a decision without a domestic violence partner or an abusive mother.

It's some point in your life. You've got to reach a point that you get some healing. And you need to get away from this. Yes. What do you take home every month?

How can we find you something you can afford? Yeah. Um. Monthly, I'm about 26. Yeah.

You're going to be a super cheap rental of some kind. It's going to be uncomfortable. But you've got to choose which hard thing you're going to do. Hard thing is putting up with your mother or hard thing. Hard thing is putting up with a rent that's not a rental place is not pleasant.

Because that's where you're going. Or other hard thing is put up with your mother. Now, what I might do is this. I might catch her in a good mood and say, Mom, We've got to change the way we interact.

And after everything I have been through, I cannot sit on an unstable situation where every time you get mad, you threaten to throw me out. And so if you're not going to deed this to me by the end of next week, I'm going to have to move mom.

And give her a shot. Give her a shot at deeding it to you. All right. I've previously tried that. The home needs your payers.

Then leave. And I brought it up to her. Then leave. I was like, OK. Then leave.

If you're not going to play through on that Samantha, if you're not going to stand up and say, Either give it to me and I'll deal with the repairs. And I'll deal with the house. And it'll be mine.

But I can't live in a situation emotionally anymore,

Where every time I go to sit down, somebody pulls the chair out.

Like a second grade prank.

“And I've been through too much to live like this anymore.”

And if you're not going to deed it to me right now, I'm gone. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, guys. Rachel Cruz here. And I love summer.

There is more fun on the calendar. More time with your people. And way more chances to make memories. But you know what else? There's more of spending. Oh, between the extra groceries and gas and camp fees and family trips,

it all starts to add up so fast. And before you know it, money stress starts to steal the fun out of everything. And that is why I love the every dollar budget app. Because it helps you plan your money, track your spending, and find more margin in your budget so that you can put extra cash

towards the goals that matter most. Enjoy your summer without the money stress. Download the every dollar app in the App Store or Google Play and start for free today. [MUSIC PLAYING] Our scripture of the day, James 5 and 16,

therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other, so that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Less Brown said, "In the end, it is the person you become,

“not the things you to achieve, that is most important."”

Well, we wish we could get to every call here on the show, and every question, but we can't. And you can't get through on the lines, most of the time. But hey, we appreciate those of you that do. If you can't get through and you got a money question,

you want to answer over your situation, head over to our website, use Ask Ramsi. Ask Ramsi is our free AI tool that's built and trained on only proven Ramsi principles. It's going to give you a Ramsi only answer. You'll get an answer the same way.

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Or just click the link in the description, or the podcast or on YouTube.

Katie is with us in Seattle. Hi, Katie. How are you? Hi, I'm good. How are you, guys? Better than we deserve, what's up? Great. Okay, so I have,

I have a bit of a quarrel. For one baby said two, and we're trying to decide how you decide what a necessary, what's a necessary expense, because we're differing on something. What, what are the things you're differing on?

It's really one thing. Most of the budget, when we've gone through gone well, but we have someone who cleans our home once a month, because we both work full-time, like we both push 50s, like the hours outside of the home, we have four children,

and it's just... How much is that experience? It's a training, it's $320 a month. And what's your household income? Um, 240.

Okay. How old are the kids? I have a baby, you're cleaning service. That's why I'm asking. I wish they were less than one.

Okay. Um, nine, and 11-year-old, but...

“You mean, you can't get less than one to do any work?”

Wow, I'm shocked. I wish. Wow. Who's taking care of less than one while you're doing 60 hours a week? We have big hair.

So we just try to work our schedules so that, you know? Yeah, each other one is. Okay. And is the sixth, that high amount of hours, that's to pay off debt, right?

That's a temporary thing, or is that just the nature of your jobs? Um, right now the nature of our jobs. Mine should be easing up in the next couple of months. Just because it's not... I'm feeling very burned out, but my husband will be for the foreseeable future.

What's the, uh, what's the amount of debt again, not counting the house? Oh, yeah. Um, we have 87 student loans, and then another 40 in consumer, eight of that's a car, and then the rest is credit card. So just one car.

Uh, we have two cars that don't pay off. Okay. Okay. With your income and your hours, uh,

It's not going to keep you from winning.

Yeah. Okay. And the fact that you're stressing over it, means you really are squeezing this budget. Try it.

Okay. That means that's a good sign, because it means you guys are considering everything. Yeah. You know, you're pushing the pendulum to the other side, because you make a lot of money.

And if you push it way, if you really are squeezing everything else out,

“you're going to knock this debt out really quick, aren't you?”

I, I think we could have a, you know, we have taken all that, but I think still in under a year, easily. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and 325 doesn't change that.

That's my thought. And it isn't a representation. The way you've described is not granted. You're making the case for the 325, so we'll have to consider that. Yeah. But, uh, but even even with that said,

the way you're discussing it and the fact that you are discussing it, tells me everything else is probably squeezed pretty good. I would like to think so. We're, it's really been over the last couple months, and we're just every month we tightened down more and more.

You could do as you could, you could, if you really wanted to get extreme. You could test it because I'm guessing 320 is that somebody coming once a week. Yeah. Now it's, it's month. That's once a month.

You need to find a different cleaning service. That's what I'm going to tell you because that's expensive. Um, but I was going to say,

if you wanted to test it, you could always go back.

If you tested and everything just goes crazy in your house as a mess, you could always go back. But if you wanted to test it and say, can we get through, can we make this work? You could.

Yeah. Not saying you have to.

“But because I think you have, you have cut out eating out, right?”

Yes. And you have cut out of a kitchen. You have cut out of a kitchen. You have cut out of a kitchen. I've gone anywhere.

Okay. And so the two of you are working together and you're pushing everything through. And again, it's, it does the math matter, or does this represent something emotionally in the behavior that matters? And I would say no on both of those that we're talking to.

So that means I keep them. Let me go back to this a second because I'm, I'm a mom too. I have two. I don't have four.

But when you said once a month, it did hit me different because when, the part of the cleaning service that you want is the things that you're not going to touch, right? Like it's, you want them to clean the blinds and you want them to, you know, vacuum in the couch.

Those are things you don't have time to do. But the day to day stuff of doing the dishes and sweeping the floor and vacuuming. You have to do that stuff anyway. So I kind of, for that reason, I kind of do feel like,

because you still have to do the laundry, right? Like you got to work close.

“So I kind of feel like you don't need this.”

If you said they're coming once a week, and that's what's keeping things going, that feels different than they're, because what are they doing once a month? They like,

deep clean, so they get like, you know, they're going to be a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time.

So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. So I think that's a lot of time. I agree with that. I do agree with that. So Katie, you and your husband talk it through.

You could you could try it with or without. But what's probably going to happen is you guys are going to continue to get more and more and more intense and you're probably going to cut them for three or four months. And and finish off the debt and then when they come back you'll appreciate it. And it'll probably be something like that that you decide on. Again, I don't think there's an absolute one answers in the stupid column and one's a smart call.

I agree. I'm surprised usually you're the more frugal one.

Yeah, I am, but I'm always looking at ratios.

Yeah, that's true. And they do $240,000 a month.

No brainer.

“You know, but they're making $250,000 a year.”

Yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, and she's not working 20 hours a week part time.

We're working 80 hours, 68 hours. That's the other thing. She's not there.

“So, you know, but if you call me up and go, well, I have a remote work from home.”

Oh, shut up and clean the house, you know.

Really, I would, I would have been down, you know, like that whole different thing. But I'm just listening to the whole picture and the ratios and that's very interesting. It's an interesting discussion. It is very cool.

Usually we're telling people, yeah, cut back subscriptions.

If you're investing pause investing. And won't regret it if you cut her. No. And bring them back later. Bring somebody back later.

You'll be okay. You'll be okay. I put this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it.

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

And that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace. Christ Jesus. [Music]