I'm Panicking After Getting Scammed Out of $8,000

Summary

The Ramsey Show Highlights

Episode Summary: "I'm Panicking After Getting Scammed Out of $8,000"

Release Date: May 15, 2026
Hosts: Dave Ramsey & John (Co-Host/Financial Expert)
Caller: Stay-at-home mom (expecting her second child)

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Main Theme

This episode addresses the immediate emotional and financial fallout after the caller and her husband were scammed out of $8,000. The discussion centers on next steps, financial prioritization amidst ongoing life events (having a baby, buying a car, potential home repairs), and strategies for recovery and resilience after a financial scam.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Understanding the Scam and Initial Reactions

• The caller shares that $8,000 was fraudulently withdrawn from their bank account, likely due to mistakenly giving information to a scammer posing as a bank representative.
• The couple is working with their bank and the police, but feels pessimistic about getting the funds back.

Quote:

"Someone bought into it and took 8,000. So hopefully we'll maybe get it back, but we highly doubt that we'll get any back." – Caller (00:39)

• Dave and John stress the importance of not immediately accepting the loss and highlight standard bank fraud protections.

Quote:

"Money just doesn't disappear out of your account...the bank has all kinds of fraud protection and ATM card protection." – Dave Ramsey (01:40)

2. Context: Stress and Financial Challenges Piling Up

• In addition to the scam, the caller lays out several urgent or upcoming expenses:
  • A baby due in July.
  • A failing car.
  • Multiple aging household appliances.
  • A roof likely needing replacement in about a year.
• Dave provides reassurance, urging her to differentiate between immediate emergencies and long-term worries.

Quote:

"I want to clear the deck of what you can control right now versus the feeling that it's all coming down because something in the future may happen." – Dave Ramsey (02:01)

3. Financial Situation Assessment

• Despite recent losses, the couple's financial foundation is strong:
  • $55,000 in savings.
  • Only a mortgage as debt.
  • Husband earns about $50,000 per year (active duty military).
• Their discipline: They avoided student loans and credit card debt, pooling savings after marriage.

Quote:

"I've always been a saver...when we both got married we kind of just conjoined everything and that's what it was...we didn't go to college, so we didn't have any debt." – Caller (03:32)
"Genius. That's fantastic." – Dave Ramsey (03:47)

4. How to Prioritize Upcoming Needs

• John and Dave break down priorities:
  • Main focus: Prepare for the baby.
  • Secondary: Replace the failing car with a used vehicle (recommend spending ~$10k from savings).
  • Third: Only address the roof after the baby is born and the immediate needs are met. Begin gathering quotes and set a timeline for the next year.
  • Mortgage payoff goal takes a back seat until other priorities are resolved.
• Maintain a 6-month emergency fund at minimum, especially with a sole income and upcoming parental leave.

Quote:

"I would take 10 of the 55,000 and I would get a car in cash...After that, once the baby comes and you've got $45,000 saved, you can start thinking about, okay...what would it look like to fix our roof?" – Dave Ramsey (07:01)

5. Fighting for the Lost Money

• Dave urges relentless follow-up with the bank and law enforcement, emphasizing that banks usually have strong consumer protections.

Quote:

"I would scratch and claw and fight like hell. You're a pregnant mom with a toddler. You got one coming. I would, man, I would make this my full time job to be the biggest eight thousand dollar thorn in the side of that bank until they, they made things right with you." – Dave Ramsey (09:11)

• The hosts raise pointed questions about how the scam occurred, the specifics of giving banking details, and whether this qualifies as fraud from a banking perspective.

6. Managing Emotions & Partners’ Communication

• The emotional toll is apparent for the caller, who shares that the stress led her to the ER.
• Dave and John reinforce practical action, communication with banks, and focusing on what can be controlled.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------|-------| | 01:40 | Dave Ramsey | "Money just doesn't disappear out of your account...the bank has all kinds of fraud protection and ATM card protection." | | 02:01 | Dave Ramsey | "I want to clear the deck of what you can control right now versus the feeling that it's all coming down because something in the future may happen." | | 03:32 | Caller | "I've always been a saver...we didn't go to college, so we didn't have any debt." | | 03:47 | Dave Ramsey | "Genius. That's fantastic." | | 07:01 | Dave Ramsey | "I would take 10 of the 55,000 and I would get a car in cash...after that, once the baby comes...you can start thinking about, okay...what would it look like to fix our roof?" | | 09:11 | Dave Ramsey | "I would scratch and claw and fight like hell...make this my full time job to be the biggest eight thousand dollar thorn in the side of that bank until they...made things right with you." |

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Important Timestamps

• 00:06: Caller introduces the scam and her financial concerns.
• 01:08: Scam details clarified.
• 03:08: Caller outlines their financial situation and savings strategy.
• 04:35: Discussion on maintaining a 6-month emergency fund and upcoming expenses.
• 07:01: Detailed prioritization: car purchase, baby arrival, roof planning.
• 09:11: Dave stresses fighting aggressively for the lost $8,000.

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Summary Takeaways

• Don’t accept financial loss until all options are exhausted: Fight for reimbursement; banks have fraud protections.
• Prioritize needs, not worries: Focus spending on immediate family and safety needs (baby, stable car).
• Maintain a strong emergency fund: Aim for at least six months' expenses in savings.
• Delay non-urgent goals: Roof repair and mortgage prepayment can wait until after the essential needs are met and future financial picture is clearer.
• Communication and vigilance: Stay actively engaged with the bank, law enforcement, and each other—don’t let stress derail action.

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This episode is a concise guide for anyone blindsided by financial setbacks, balancing emotional support with a step-by-step approach to recovery.

Transcript

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[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Basically, me and my husband, we. Someone got in our bank account and we lost 8,000. And so we just have a few questions of should we continue trying to pay off our house in 10 years? But we also need to buy a new car soon because his car's about to die, a baby's due in July, and other appliances in the house are about to die, and we need a new roof.

[Dave Ramsey]

Our pets. Heads are falling off like everything's happening. All right, so let's. Let's back that thing up a little bit. Okay.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

So what.

[Dave Ramsey]

What happened in your bank account?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Someone bought into it and took 8,000. So hopefully we'll maybe get it back, but we highly doubt that we'll get any back.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Why. Why is your bank not covering it as fraud?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

I'm not really sure they're disputing it, but we're just. We don't know. So how did anything for 30 days?

[Dave Ramsey]

But how did somebody get in? Get in.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

It made a mistake and might have given someone who he thought was the bank his account. So they. But, I mean.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

So it was a scam.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

But.

[Dave Ramsey]

But I mean, if that happened, they should be. They'll be on camera coming into the bank or there'll be a record of the transaction.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Like, everything is records and police reports and all of that. We're just our. We're counting it as a loss. And maybe we'll get stuff back and maybe we won't. But we want to set a plan before.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. I. I wouldn't. I wouldn't count it as a loss. Yet money just doesn't disappear out of your account.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know what I mean?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Untraceably. Right. And the bank has all kinds of fraud protection and ATM card protection. Like, there's a lot of things here.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

So I wouldn't just counted as a wash. Yet you. You named a. One thing that's for sure happening. You're having a kid soon.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

And then you named a bunch of other potential future things that may or may not come to pass in two months or in five years. And so I want to clear the deck of what you can control right now versus the feeling that it's all coming down because something in the future may happen. You get what I'm saying?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Is this your first baby?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

No, it's my second second. 15 months apart.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So you got a lot going on in your house, huh?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

All right.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's your financial situation?

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[Dave Ramsey]

ramsey, what's your financial situation?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

It's actually pretty good. We have about 55,000 in savings.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

We only have a mortgage debt. I'm a stay at home mom and that's about it.

[Dave Ramsey]

What does your husband make?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Maybe around 50 a year. He's active duty military, so pretty consistent.

[Dave Ramsey]

How'd you get $50,000 in cash savings?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

I have always been a saver and so when we both got married we kind of just conjoined everything and that's what it was. So. And we didn't go to college, so we didn't have any debt. And we were smart not to have credit card debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

Genius. That's fantastic. Yeah.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Incredible.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you're actually in pretty amazing shape right now.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

If. If he feels the need to go get a 78, 000 truck or get a fifty thousand dollar jeep and then jack it up and like that would be really unwise.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have $50,000 pay in cash.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's great. But I mean you, you could, you could cash flow. You're out of pocket for this baby. And fix your appliances and get a ten or fifteen thousand dollar car that would be used and great. And still have a fully funded emergency fund.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

So is that like the main thing? We just want to have at least six months in our savings?

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Yeah. I mean with you being a stay at home mom. I have six months.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Tell us about the new roof.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

It's just old and it's like we've had people look at it and we probably need to redo it in about a year.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Is it leaking or less?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Not yet.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Okay. How much does it cost in your area?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

I know, I have no idea. My husband knows all that. Okay.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

So I don't think that's anything that's on fire at this moment. I think the things on fire are the baby.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Is. Is there anything else that's like must happen now?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Well, we had a plan of paying our house off in 10 years. So we use all our tax return to put to our Mortgage? Yeah. And I just wasn't sure if we should just put that into our savings for that 8,000 that we lost.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

What's the balance on the mortgage?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

159, 760. Sorry.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Okay, so I'm going to try to order this in order of importance for you, and I'm going to order it in importance in a way of, like, here's something you can be thinking about this year, and here's something you can be thinking about and don't think about until next year. Right. Until a year from now. So I just want to make sure I have everything on the list. You got the baby coming in July. You have a new roof situation. Did I hear there's a new car needed? And why is that? I just want to make sure that it's actually a necessity.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah, so my husband bought, like, a trash truck, Facebook market find. And it just keeps breaking down. And he keeps working on it, but it's gonna need rewiring soon, and that's, like, too big of a job for him to do. And then it costs way too much to have a mechanic do how much, and so not what it's worth for the car. So the car is probably worth 2,000, and it was over that.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Okay. Okay. And then we've got the baby. Okay. So I'm with John. I think the number one thing on the list is we're going to not do much until this baby comes. The only thing I would do until this baby comes is I would take 10 of the 55,000 and I would get a car in cash. I would do that. Because this $2,000 car, you don't need to put any more money into that. After that, once the baby comes and you've got $45,000 saved, you can start thinking about, okay, well, what would it look like? You know, everybody's home, medical bills paid, everything's good. What would it look like to fix our roof? And I'd start charting that out, and I'd start getting different offers and estimates of what that would cost. And then once you have the numbers, since we don't know the numbers today, what could it be? 20,000, maybe it's 15,000. Then we can start saving for that. And we can look at our emergency fund and say, is there enough money there to do that? If there is, we can use that. If there's not enough money, how much more do we need to save in order to make that happen? But your emergency fund is there. That it? That's exactly what it's there for. So that's there. And then after that you can start thinking about, okay, with the extra money in our budget, can we put regularly extra payments, extra half payments, extra quarter payments on our mortgage and that's that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because you're also assuming he's only going to be making 50,000 bucks two years, three years, five years from now, which.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah, he should still be getting raises every year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Exactly. Now, can I ask you a personal question?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Have you been involved in the conversations with the bank over the missing eight grand?

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

Sort of. My husband knows more of it because he's been taking care of it. And it like I got so stressed out, I was throwing up too much and ended in the ER and so I just kind of like left it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. I, I don't want to put anything out into the world that doesn't need to be there, but it's not passing my smell test. Yeah, that $8,000 just suddenly went away. In, in my world, that is, somebody gambled it away. That is, somebody bought something.

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

No, no, no. So I was involved with like the police reports and like I, they got into our bank account transferring money out with. They actually got his whole card too. So they like took his card. So we had it all on videotape.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And so, so there should be fraud protection on the card and that should

[Caller (Stay-at-home mom)]

be, I mean, so we just haven't heard anything. And so we're like.

[Dave Ramsey]

I would scratch and claw and fight like hell. You're a pregnant mom with a toddler. You got one coming. I would, man, I would make this my full time job to be the biggest eight thousand dollar thorn in the side of that bank until they, they made things right with you.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

I thought I heard you say he gave the account information to somebody he thought was the bank. I thought that's what I heard.

[Dave Ramsey]

Or he, or he took the, somebody got his card and got the information.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

But yeah, if he, if he's handed out his banking information, that, that money's gone.

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Well. Yeah. Because then my question was, well what was he giving his banking information to

[Dave Ramsey]

for 8,000, 8,000 bucks. That's right. Or if it would, did he give it 50 bucks and then they took eight?

[John (Financial Expert/Co-host)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

There's a lot of questions, but I would scratch and claw and fight for that money back and hopefully they'll bank, will do the right thing and take care of you guys.

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