Break The Debt Spiral And Regain Your Life

Summary

The Ramsey Show – "Break The Debt Spiral And Regain Your Life"

Date: March 11, 2026
Hosts: Dave Ramsey & George Campbell
Podcast Network: Ramsey Network

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dave Ramsey and co-host George Campbell tackle real-life money problems from listeners struggling with debt, career crises, marriage challenges, and the stresses of unpredictable income. Callers from across the country share their situations—ranging from job loss and massive tax bills to financial infidelity, investing fears, and big life decisions. Dave and George offer their straight-talking, no-nonsense advice anchored in core Ramsey principles: get intentional with your money, eliminate debt, stop relying on credit, and take control of your future.

The tone is empathetic but direct, with plenty of humor and "tough love" as Dave and George urge listeners to face their financial realities, set new behaviors, and stay focused on what truly matters.

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Major Discussion Points & Key Insights

1. Breaking the Debt Spiral: “You don’t have a debt problem, you have an income problem.”

(Key call: 00:45–05:52)

• Callers at the brink of financial collapse often focus on debt-manipulation tricks (e.g., balance transfers), but Dave repeatedly steers back to fundamentals: get your income up, slash expenses, and attack the debt head-on.
• Prioritize finding stable, real jobs for both spouses as the primary fix rather than seeking “tricks” with debt.
• Dave: "Doordash does not support a family." (01:45)
• Recommend closing credit cards, focusing on covering basics (food, shelter, transportation) before paying on unsecured debts.

2. Facing Career Transitions and Choices

(Segments: UPS buyout 06:42–08:20, Songwriter catalog sale 44:46–52:18, Business ownership 116:47–122:22)

• Listeners facing voluntary buyouts or sudden career changes are urged to leverage any severance or windfall to “tool up” for better, more meaningful work rather than settling for less.
• Creative professionals (e.g., songwriters) contemplating large, lump-sum payouts should thoughtfully weigh the lump sum versus likely future earnings and the value of a predictable foundation, especially with new family or medical uncertainty.
  • George: “I’ll take the volatility of the S&P 500 over the volatility of the music industry.” (52:05)
• Business owners deciding whether to leave a corporate job must balance household needs, stress, and the impact of salary loss against quality of life and the trajectory of their business.

3. Debt and Marriage: Boundaries, Infidelity, and Combining Money

(Segments: Financial infidelity 85:56–93:35, Pre-marriage finances 26:47–41:33)

• Couples not yet married are advised to keep finances and debt separate until after the wedding—don’t pay each other’s debts or buy property together until “there’s a we.”
  • "You don’t pay someone’s bills you’re not married to." (38:41)
• People contemplating divorce because of repeated financial infidelity are encouraged to protect themselves legally, document assets, see a counselor and lawyer, but also reckon with the real consequences and emotional toll.
• Marriage is about unity—money habits and open communication are foundational.

4. Car Debt Epidemic

• Multiple calls highlight people buried under car loans ($40k, $50k, $1,000+/mo payments).
  • Dave: “You’ve got to stop that. It’s just destructive.” (62:00)
• Dave urges listeners to sell overpriced vehicles even if upside down, as holding onto them ruins cash flow and traps families.

5. Investing and Market Panic

(Segments: Market fears 66:04–71:40)

• Dave rebuffs market-timing instincts during global crisis headlines: Don’t cash out or make rash moves in your investments based on fear.
  • Dave: “Those that ride roller coasters only get hurt if you jump off in the middle of the ride.” (66:38)
• Emphasize: Time in the market beats timing the market.

6. Other Financial Dilemmas:

• Urges against using retirement funds (e.g., Roth IRA) to pay off debts like student loans due to colossal long-term cost in compound returns.
• Legal issues with settlements & old medical bills—push back on unfair bills and fight for what’s right, especially if a lawyer blew the negotiations.
• Tough love for spouses enabling addictions—financially cut off addict spouses to protect family and help force the path to recovery.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Solutions vs. Shortcuts

“You don’t need to apply for these jobs. You need to get a job. It’s been a year. DoorDash does not support a family.”
— Dave Ramsey (01:45)

On the Debt Spiral & Prioritizing Basics

“The $15,000 in credit card is very easily overcome once you guys get your income back to where it used to be... Just live on nothing, attack these credit cards with a vengeance because you remember how pissed off you were, and you get rid of them.”
— Dave Ramsey (05:04)

On Investing During Crisis

“If you jump in or jump out every time you see a bad report on CNN or fox, you are never going to stay invested and you’re never going to make any money. … Over three to five years, all of these problems that drive the market down become a distant memory.”
— Dave Ramsey (66:38–69:41)

On Car Debt

“Never again buy a car on debt the rest of your life. This should be the last one because you guys are handcuffed. This thing has a gun to your head. You have nowhere to go.”
— Dave Ramsey (61:46)

On Letting Go of Control in Retirement

“Learning to enjoy the money is an underdeveloped or atrophied muscle. … When you do a few things like that, you kind of go, oh, I didn’t die from that. And I'm not, I'm not homeless and penniless and I’ve still got $2 million after I did all that.”
— Dave Ramsey (108:09)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:45–05:52: Caller drowning in debt—focus on income & essentials, not debt tricks
• 06:42–08:20: UPS driver considering $150k buyout—use windfall as launchpad
• 44:46–52:18: Songwriter weighing lump-sum catalog sale vs. future earnings
• 54:36–62:35: Family overwhelmed by car loan, tax bills, broken equipment
• 66:04–71:40: Advice on investing amid geopolitical turmoil—don’t panic
• 85:56–93:35: Financial infidelity—when repeated lies break a 41-year marriage
• 116:47–122:22: Should I quit my job to work in our family business? Calculating tradeoffs

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Recurring Ramsey Principles Emphasized

• Put income before debt tricks. No scheme compensates for a lack of income.
• Prioritize basic needs (food, shelter, transportation) before paying non-essential debts.
• Do not combine finances or buy property together until after marriage.
• Rapidly eliminate car debt and avoid repeating the mistake.
• Never use retirement savings to pay current debts—protect your future.
• Consistent budgeting and teamwork in marriage are non-negotiable.
• Don’t make investment decisions out of fear or based on world events.

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Episode Tone and Takeaways

Dave and George pull no punches—there’s truth-telling, laughter, sympathy, and challenge. Listeners are repeatedly reminded: breaking free requires real behavioral change, a focus on what you can control, and stopping the cycles that brought you here in the first place. Start with income, build habits, and keep your eyes on the long-term goal of peace, wealth, and a life marked by intentional choices—not by avoidance or panic.

Listeners leave with hope, practical next steps, and a handful of sobering realities.

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For more resources or to ask your question, visit ramseysolutions.com

Transcript

[Dave Ramsey]

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network in the Fairwinds Credit Union studios, this is the Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Campbell, number one best selling author and Ramsey personality. Co host of Smart Money Happy hour on the Ramsey Networks. He's my co host. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Elizabeth is in Seattle. Hi, Elizabeth, how are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Hi. I'm doing well.

[Dave Ramsey]

How about you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I have a question about debt transfer cards. I've been following you for years and I know you always say don't do it, but I'm kind of at a loss. I don't really know where to go because we're drowning and can't make even our minimums because we have kind of

[Caller (various male callers)]

a lot of debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much debt do you have?

[Caller (various female callers)]

All of our principals have 15,000 in credit cards.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much other debt do you have?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'd say probably 13. Just under 13 for our car and 35 for our school.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And what's your household income?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Around 3,500.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. You don't have a credit card problem. You have an income problem.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Why do you make 30? Who, who makes 3500 and doing what?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Between the two of us, my husband and I, we both lost our jobs about a year ago. So we doordash, spark drive and substitute teach. We're both also applying for more consistent jobs with consistent income.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you don't need to apply for these jobs. You need to get a job. It's been a year. Doordash does not support a family.

[Caller (various male callers)]

No.

[George Campbell]

What were you guys doing before?

[Caller (various female callers)]

My husband worked as a CEO for a realtor company and I worked in the ministry. But my church closed down and I lost my job right as we had our child the same month that he was born. And then three months later, my husband got fired from his job. So very deep dive. We were making over 6,000 together at that point.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, all right. That's where we concentrate on not trying to find some trick to cause $15,000 in credit card debt to go away. $15,000 will cause that to go away. That's what fixes it. And so we need to go get $15,000. And that is about income is what. That's what's occurring to me as I'm talking to you. So I think if I, if I were you guys I would step back from the debt issue and, and step forward into the career crisis and say both of us have got to land something immediately that is a substantial real job. Why did your husband get fired?

[Caller (various female callers)]

They wanted to cut budget costs and they hired a, like a management company rather than paying a CEO.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. And how large a company was he, the CEO of? How many people were working there?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It was only him and one office staff, but they serviced I think 50 realtors.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And so he was doing administrative work for the real estate company. Yeah, there's really more than a not. I mean, the CEO is not really a proper title. I mean, it's a title they gave him, but I mean, he's not running a huge organization or he's not running an organization even with 40 people because the real estate agents all work for themselves. They're just running helter skelter. And he's just trying to keep the. The thing. He's hurting cats. So, okay, so what, what would, what was he doing before that?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Before that he worked for another realtor company as a project manager. Then that role ended. They wanted to keep him on, but there wasn't. It was for a specific project and it ended.

[Caller (various male callers)]

So it.

[Dave Ramsey]

So it sounds like he knows the real estate business. And I'm wondering if there's some place in the real estate business that he lands and gets out of the door

[George Campbell]

part time. Real estate would be better than doordash.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm sorry, say again?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah, he is in the final process. He has an interview tomorrow for the final process of a job that he's getting, but it's half of what he was making. So we will still have to doordash. But it's a job. It's something.

[George Campbell]

What will he be making?

[Caller (various female callers)]

60 is making.

[George Campbell]

That's an upgrade.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay, that's a good start. And then, and then you've got to land something that you can do with a child and with a new baby and so forth that you can do from home and. Or workarounds of some kind. But Elizabeth, the deal is this. The $15,000 in credit card is very easily overcome once you guys get your income back to where it used to be.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And then you just live on nothing. You don't go out to eat and you attack these credit cards with a vengeance because you remember how pissed off you were and how stressed off, stressed out you were. And you get rid of them. Right. You can do that, but you can't do it on 3500. You can, but it take forever. And 3500 is really not. It's not really not your world. It's just the world you found yourself in after a couple of tragic career situations and now you land back into good stuff. And you look back in the rearview mirror five years from now and you go, well, that sucked. That was a period of time that sucked. And I'm sure glad we're not living there anymore. But you go and clean up everything so that you do that. And don't use these credit cards for anything.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah, they're closed.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good.

[Caller (various female callers)]

The credit cards are closed. We're just trying to get out from under it now.

[Dave Ramsey]

So first thing is you take care of food, shelter, clothing, transportation and utilities. Make sure your family's okay, your shelter, you pay your rent, pay your house payment, pay your car payment if you've got one. You did have one 13,000 and you keep, keep gas in the car and those kinds of things. But. And the credit cards are down the list of things that we're going to do. They're the last people that get paid on the list.

[George Campbell]

It's an unsecured debt. They can come after the car if you stop making the payments.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And it's your transportation. So make sure you got the student loan on hardship deferral temporarily. And so let's get the cash flowing around here again and then just begin to clear these credit cards off as fast as you possibly can. Ben is in Salt Lake City. Hey Ben, what's up?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Not much. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. How can I help?

[Caller (various male callers)]

My question is more of like a career question. I have been a driver for UPS for the last six years and they have been tanking volume recently, dropping accounts and just driving volume down. And I haven't been working a lot lately and now they're offering a hundred and fifty thousand dollars voluntary buyout offer to leave the company.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's exciting.

[George Campbell]

And what were you making?

[Caller (various male callers)]

I'm 44.73 an hour.

[George Campbell]

Okay, so about 90k plus.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what are you going to do with your life now that you're not at UPS?

[Caller (various male callers)]

That's the million dollar question. Because I'm 31.

[Dave Ramsey]

$155,000 question.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Like UPS is been great. They've had great benefits, great pay and they sure taking care of my family. But if I pivot and go to a different career, I'm going to take a significant pay cut. And why? Just because I've been looking and applying for jobs and had interviews and just anything pivoting from What I'm making currently is just going to be a pay cut right off the bat.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, what do you want to do with your life that makes $100,000 a year? Let's go be one of those.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah. You know, I've always had a, you know, a drive and passion to, you know, go to the police academy, but doing ride alongs and talking with local officers, it's also not a guaranteed thing because a lot of people with military backgrounds, degrees in criminal justice.

[Dave Ramsey]

Let's not figure out what we can't do. Let's figure out what we can do.

[George Campbell]

You got a little launch pad here if you take this buyout. But let's not sit on.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm not going to go take a dumbed down job. Let's use this as a chance to go live your dreams. What is the dream you want to be? Now go be that and use some of this 155,000 to get tooled up to do it. Murphy's law means if something can go wrong, it will. And it usually happens when you're not prepared. That's why a big part of what I teach is staying prepared for whatever curve balls life throws. Have a fully funded emergency fund, buy term life insurance and get a will from Mama Bear legal forms. Because the last thing your family needs is trying to figure out what you wanted after you're already gone. I've seen families torn apart because no one wrote things down. A will spells out exactly what you want to happen after you've passed away. No questions, no court dates, no family fights, just clear directions and peace. It's one of the most loving things you can do. And on mama bear legalforms.com completing your will is fast, easy and affordable. Peace of mind for your family takes about 20 minutes with Mama Bear. And unlike a lot of other online will companies, the price you see at the beginning is the price you pay. @mama bearlegalforms.com Go to mamabearlegalforms.com and use the promo code Ramsey to save 20%. Mamabearlegalforms.com, promo code Ramsey. Bruce is in Columbia, South Carolina. Hey Bruce, how are you?

[Caller (various male callers)]

I'm good. Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. How can we help?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, I'm 64 years old and I've been working for 46 years and I have a little different alignment on retirement than my wife does. And I have a lot more debt than I should have for somebody that's made the kind of money I have. And I am trying to figure out how to pay down over $230,000 in debt and within the next year and possibly get retired by 65.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Where are you going to get 230,000?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, my income is, I, I make 100 and around $60,000 a year, but the problem is, is my wife's income is around $30,000 a year, and we have 20,000 plus in credit card debt and $12,000 on a, on a car. My mortgage is 118,000. I have a second mortgage at 36,000. And I've been paying down the credit cards, but every time I turn around and look, it's higher than it was six months ago.

[Dave Ramsey]

How'd that happen?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, not enough boundaries, not enough conversation. I'm, I'm trying to get myself.

[Dave Ramsey]

Have you guys got money saved? Do you have a nest egg?

[Caller (various male callers)]

I, I have a 401k with about 310,000. I have an IRA that's between my Roth and my traditional IRA. It's $425,000. The Roth part portion of that's only about 55,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So you're not, you're not going to retire with 230,000 paid off in one year. You don't have the money. And, and you're spending, your household spending is out of control. So even if you did retire debt free, the debt's going to come back.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, I, I'm coming. That realization.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You guys can't live on 160,000. How are you going to live on retirement income? What would be your retirement income?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, probably about half of that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You can't live on 160. You can't live on 80. Agreed.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Right. Yeah.

[George Campbell]

And the nest egg is not big enough to support retirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, it's not. I mean, it's a, it's a good nest egg, but it's not a great one. So. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you guys have never really addressed the issue, and the two of you are going to sit down and go, hey, we're up a creek here. We've got to cut up these credit cards and we got to get rid of these car debts and we got to get this mess cleaned up or we're going to be working to. We're 80.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah. And I, I, the only other income I have is. I do have an annuity.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why do I think you're not going to do that? Because you just completely changed directions after I told you what to do.

[Caller (various male callers)]

No, I, 100%.

[Dave Ramsey]

How long you been married?

[Caller (various male callers)]

36 years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. This is a come to Jesus meeting. I'm talking about. We're going to sit down and go, this is broken. And we are going to fix it, starting now. That's the meeting tonight. No televisions on, nothing in the background, no dishes being washed while we're talking about it. This is. We are screwed. And we have screwed ourselves. And we have to fix this now and never go back to the old ways. We're going to get on a budget, we're going to open that Ramsey EveryDollar app, and the two of us are going to start acting like grownups, not like a couple of children in Congress spending money we don't have. We're going to cut up the credit cards and we're going to clean up his freaking debt so we don't have to work till we're 80. And then you get yourself used to living on $80,000 a year while you pay off all this debt. And then when you retire, you can live on $80,000 a year because you've got a couple of adults in the household instead of children. And children can be 64, by the way. So that, that's what I mean. But, but you've, you've kind of think, keep thinking you're going to treat the symptom rather than the problem. And the problem is, is that you guys spend more than you make and you don't have a system and you're not in aligned and you're not agreed in your marriage after 36 freaking years on how we're going to do this. And so this is going to run off until you're 90 and you're going to be eating dog food. And this is where this is headed. So you've got to go back. You got to go to the source of the problem, which is not her. It's both of you, but it includes her. And so she's going to get to hear a word that you haven't told her in a long time. And here's the word. No, we're not doing that. We are broke people. And you have to start acting that way or you're going to, you know, this thing's going to fall in on you. And that's what you're starting to feel. And there's sense of desperation creeping up inside of you. The good news is you got a year, maybe you work two years, maybe you work three years and you clean this up and end up with a half million dollars in your nest egg instead of 300,000 and you got no debt house, and everything's paid off in three years. Because the two of you got very, very serious. Starting tonight. Ready, set, go. I don't know if you're going to do it or not.

[George Campbell]

I keep thinking about that old Dave quote. You work too hard to feel this broke. 46 years of a career making six figures, which is way more than most Americans, and you got nothing to show for it. And that breaks my heart, because we know retirement is not an age. It's a financial number. And so I wish you could just ding A hey, I'm 65. Time to retire. Not if the math says you can't. And so that's the hard truth. It's been 36 years of compounded bad decisions. It's going to take a little while to clean this up. And you guys need to be unified.

[Dave Ramsey]

Emma's in Los Angeles. Hi, Emma. How are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'm good. Thanks for helping me out today.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. How can we help?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah, so my husband and I were wondering if it's a good idea to pull from our Roth IRA to pay off the rest of my student loan debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

No.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay, that's what I thought.

[George Campbell]

You don't sound like you're of retirement age.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's going to cost you millions and millions of dollars in the future. You. So how much student loan debt have you guys got?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It's about 9,300, and that's just my student loan, and it's our only debt we have left.

[Dave Ramsey]

9,300. Like $9,300.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you guys make?

[Caller (various female callers)]

We are on a variable income. My husband is a steady income, so he makes about 5,600. And then my income varies anywhere from, like, nothing to 12,000amonth. I'm a wedding videographer. And so it just depends on the season that I'm in as far as, like, if I have a wedding or not.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. How many times do you have a $12,000 month?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Last year I had about three or four of those. This year I haven't had one yet.

[Dave Ramsey]

Can you guys live on his income and just pay off the student loan the next time you have a good month?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It's possible. Yeah. My work is very slow right now, so we're in kind of like a tricky season with that.

[Dave Ramsey]

I know, but I mean, as soon as you get a $12,000 a month, just pay the stupid thing off.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah, I think we could probably manage that. Yeah.

[George Campbell]

It sounds like you're spending.

[Dave Ramsey]

You can't be counting on your income because it's too volatile.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Correct? Very correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So where does your income go when it does come

[Caller (various female callers)]

Our expenses are not covered fully by my husband's income.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so you can't live on his income.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay, not fully.

[George Campbell]

Why are the expenses so high? Is it your mortgage or rent or what? Because it's not the debt.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah, I mean, our rent is kind of high. I mean, not ridiculous for the area, but it's about 2,800. And then between just insurance, we have two kids. Yeah, it just adds up. We're in the process of like refining things and trying to get really, really serious. Especially since my income has been so scary lately.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, good.

[George Campbell]

I would make a budget and pretend like you have to live on his income and cut the expenses down until you can fit that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I would. I'd get. Get your every dollar budget out and then that takes the pressure off of your business. And when your business starts making a little, you have one of those good months again. You just blink. Path student loan. But no, I would not. The student loans are not your problem. The problem is that you're not living on his income and your income is not dependable. And that's what's throwing you guys into a tiz. Finally, mortgage rates have dropped. And you know what that means. People who've been sitting on the sidelines are about to jump back in to the housing market. So if you've been waiting to buy, this could be your window. But you've got to be prepared and do it the Ramsey way. You need to contact Churchill Mortgage. Their home buyer edge program gives you peace of mind. In a wild market, you can cap your rate for 90 days. So if rates go up, you're protected. If rates go down, Churchill will drop yours automatically. And get this, Churchill will even back your offer with a $10,000 seller guarantee. So if your loan falls through due to financing, the seller still gets paid. That's how confident Churchill is. Plus, when you shop as a Churchill certified home buyer, it's stronger than pre approval. It makes you look like a cash buyer, which makes your offer rise to the top. So don't let this moment pass you by. Get ready now. Go to Churchill Mortgage.com to get started today. That's Churchill Mortgage.com this is a paid advertisement.

[George Campbell]

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[Dave Ramsey]

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[George Campbell]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Ever wanted to see the person who's calling to ask a question? Ever wonder what they look like when they're calling here? And asking be kind of interesting, wouldn't it? Yeah. Well, you can experience this. The Ramsey show is going back on tour. We're going to do live Q and A with the audience and tape one of these shows. Raw Confessions, crowd debates, Local debt free screams. Charlotte, Denver, Phoenix and Anaheim, all in April. These are small venues. We're only having about 300 seats because we want to be able to talk to you guys and take questions from you. Last time we put this out last year, it sold out in 72 hours. So get your [e-mail] events or click the link in the show notes if you're listening on a podcast or on YouTube. Again, Charlotte, Denver, Phoenix and Anaheim in April just in a few weeks here. And we're going to be in those cities and taking questions live. Studio audience. It's a different vibe, I'll tell you that. But it's also kind of fun, isn't it, George?

[George Campbell]

I love being out there. We've got some even more fun interactive stuff planned for this next run.

[Dave Ramsey]

Kelly is in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Kelly, how are you? Hey, guys.

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'm good. How are you today?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than we deserve. What's up?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I have a question. I listen to your show all the time and get some of your feedback that I internalize. But my fiance and I got engaged last November and we planned our wedding for April of 2027. We were looking to buy a house, hopefully in the next couple of months. We have the money put away for it. We.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why are you waiting to get married so long?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Couple of reasons. One, we wanted to focus our money effort towards the home first. And then my, my brother and his brother are also both getting married. One in April this year, one in September this year. So with the help from our parents for our wedding, they're both gifting us a little bit of money to have a bigger and more fun wedding. So we, timeline wise.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'm 26 and my fiance's 29.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. I would beg you to not buy a house with someone that you're not married to.

[Caller (various female callers)]

So would it be worth it then to go to a courthouse and get married before we buy a house?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes.

[Caller (various female callers)]

And then just have the wedding next year?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

It changes so many things because I've just sitting in this seat taking calls from people that have problems with their money, have run into so many different ways that they can go sideways because basically from a legal standpoint, you've just got a general partnership with no partnership documents. And so if something goes Sideways, like I'll give you a horrible one. This is not gonna happen to you guys, okay? But a guy and his fiance bought a house together and she died in a car wreck. And so without a will. And so now he owns the house with her mother.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because he's not kin to her. So her half was left to her only remaining kin. And by the way, her mother was crazy. So my crazy future didn't happen. Mother in law is now my partner in a house. Does that make. That makes me throw up just a little bit in my mouth. Right? You follow me?

[Caller (various female callers)]

That's a little scary.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. That's the kind of crap we've talked to over the last 30 years. And so we don't want that for you. And so yeah, I do the courthouse and do the celebration later because now we've got a situation. It's also okay to wait after you've been married a while to buy a house. You guys, maybe not. You've kind of got this plan unfolding here. I'm with you. But we always laugh and say marriage is different than shacking up. And it takes about a year of being married to know how close to your mother in law to buy.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah. And I hear that because I live with my in law. My future in law.

[George Campbell]

Is that driving? I think that's driving this decision. You're like, get me out of here.

[Dave Ramsey]

I want a house. Okay. Yeah. Courthouse, yes.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Part of it.

[George Campbell]

No.

[Caller (various female callers)]

We were going to consider renting.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You could, you could go rent. You could go rent something. But courthouse and rent for a year and then buy is ideal courthouse. And by after the courthouse is next best thing. Please do not buy a house with someone you're not married to people. It is a disaster. I mean there's, there's just no way you can break up. I mean at least when you're married, the divorce, you know, there are laws that dictate how things are split up and judges will dictate how things are split up. But in a divorce situation. But, but when you're just, you're shacking up and you own a house with somebody used to sleep with, it's just really a pain in the butt.

[George Campbell]

Never seen to be a blessing to somebody when they call in.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. It's just a problem, problem, problem. So there we go. Good stuff. Spencer's in Boise, Idaho. Hi, Spencer. What's up?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Hey, Dave. I my question. So I'm 24 years old, I'm in college and I Unfortunately have about $15,000 in credit card debt which I Am planning to pay off this summer with a good internship. I landed good. The problem is my parents are pretty adamant that once I pay off this debt, they want me to rebuild my credit and kind of dive back into the debt world to build up my credit. And I'm kind of worried about that.

[George Campbell]

So you want to fight off the lion, and then your parents are saying, hey, jump back into the lion's den. It's good for you. Pretty much makes sense.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So are they paying your way through college?

[Caller (various male callers)]

They are helping, yes. Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. Well, I mean, there's a couple things here. One is if they're paying for your school and you live with them, you have a different level of obligation to, you know, to honor them and to be kind and so forth. Right. If you're standing on your own and you're out of school and you're doing your own thing and your mama's dad still have an opinion, it's. They don't get a vote anymore. That's how that. Not how this works. So. But then the second part of the discussion is what's wrong with their theory? Okay. Their theory is based in the idea that you need to go get credit. Means that they believe that the best way to have a wonderful life is to purchase things and stay in debt the rest of your life. That that's the best way for you to get things and to have a good life. They believe that. And their theory is wrong. Their belief is wrong. And that's at the core of the discussion. So they don't. They're not bad people. They're not trying to punish their son or do something bad to their son. They actually do believe a lie, that the best way for you to have a good life is for you to have good credit so that you can buy anything you want, anytime you want on payments.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Right. Well, then, so how do I have this conversation with them? Because I think. I mean, I obviously agree with you, and I think they would normally agree with you.

[Dave Ramsey]

Like, they're.

[Caller (various male callers)]

They're not terrible with their money. They're always, you know, telling me to stay out of debt and stuff. But they just.

[Dave Ramsey]

There's only one reason to build credit, mom and dad, and that is to go into debt. And I am really don't like debt. And so I really am not going to build my credit because I really don't want to be in debt. It's the only reason to build your credit. It has no other value.

[George Campbell]

And if you want more info on this, I wrote a whole chapter on this in my book, covering every single objection. So you can read that and then have the conversation with them, say, hey, I know you're worried about me getting an apartment. There's easy ways around that. I know you're worried about me not being able to get a mortgage one day. There's a way around that. And so you just have to realize you can rise above the system instead of being stuck in the hamster wheel.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, hang on. We'll send you a copy of that book and read it and might be fun things. Say, hey, listen, I just read this chapter. You guys read this chapter with me and tell me what you think. And because I just don't. I don't want to be in debt, mom and dad. And because here's the whole. The whole FICO thing is 100% of your FICO score is based on your interaction with debt. It's an I love debt score. If you don't borrow money, you don't have a FICO score. Tada. Just like that.

[George Campbell]

And I've lived it. I mean, I paid off my debt, didn't have a score, still was able to rent apartments all over town, even ones with a landlord, not an apartment complex. I was able to get a mortgage through manual underwriting. And everyone told me, dave, oh, it's gonna be so difficult. You're like, you're gonna have to jump through so many hoops, you're gonna be exhausted. It was a nothing burger. It was just like, well, you don't have a criminal background. Can you pay the deposit? All right, you're in.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[George Campbell]

Do you have the money to pay the mortgage?

[Dave Ramsey]

Great.

[George Campbell]

You got a tax return and 12 months of rental history. Great. It's not that difficult.

[Dave Ramsey]

Problemo. Yeah, but the only reason to get credit is so you can get into debt so that you can get credit so that you can get into debt so that you can get credit so that you can get into debt so you can raise your FICO score so you can get into debt so you can raise your FICO score so you can get into debt. I think it's a scam, boys and girls.

[George Campbell]

Groundhog Day. And only the lenders win it.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Foreign

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[Dave Ramsey]

Ed is in Jacksonville, Florida. Hi Ed, how are you?

[Caller (various male callers)]

I'm good Mr. Babe, how are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller (various male callers)]

So my question is I've got around 300,000 in equity in my home and I've got a total of 240,000 in debt with 140 of that being the mortgage, some pretty bad debt within that 100k and I should I sell my house to get out of debt, start over? I'm 43. I have zero retirement. The house is my retirement. I've had a really rough couple of years. Some pretty tough events have happened and trying to get out of this financial prison, if you will, and there's no money left over to save and I just don't know what to do. Should I sell the house, refinance the house, stay put and just try to do the debt snowball.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's your household income?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Combined with my wife, it's 140 with me bringing in 140 and her bringing in 40. The only caveat to that is after my employer paid health insurance, which is 1700amonth, I'm taking home about 5000 after taxes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, but you're getting a tax refund.

[Caller (various male callers)]

That's another thing. I owe the IRS 7,000 that I'm making payments on that I have left from being my wife being self employed all the way back to 22 that we're making payments on. So my tax refund goes to that. Okay, but that should be paid by this year's tax refund with my monthly payments. I'm really hoping to have that paid off by the end of the year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay. And how much do you owe on your truck?

[Caller (various male callers)]

39,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that's of the 100.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes, sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sell the truck.

[Caller (various male callers)]

I'm 10,000 upside down. I would have to come out of pocket to be able to sell it. Now I just don't have it.

[George Campbell]

That would still beat selling a house.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you borrow, you know, go to the credit Union, borrow the 10K and then get you a $2,000 car to drive while you get this mess cleaned up. But 40% of your problem is the truck.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay? So find a way to get the 10k to get out of the truck.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I mean go, go the credit union borrow it or who's the. Who's do you owe the money to on the truck?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Ally Financial. The only problem with that, Dave, is my credit take a hit. We had a house fire in 23 and the insurance 80 less than what it cost to build. And I had 40 of that. But I had to beg bar rob Peter to pay Paul to find the other 40, which I did. But my credit took such a hit during that time that I'm in the rebuilding phase of my credit.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't want you to rebuild your credit. Allied is a subprime lender. They're screwing you. You have a 16% interest rate, don't you?

[Caller (various male callers)]

It's not that bad. It's only 14. It's not and a half. They do prime as well. They have a subprime program. I work in automotive finance.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, well, you're getting destroyed by that car and by the nine and a half. That's, you know, and you can't keep doing that in the name of, quote, rebuilding your credit for the opportunity to borrow money again. I'm trying to break the spiral without selling the house. And I'd sell a car 14 times before I'd sell a house.

[George Campbell]

The house isn't the problem. And it sort of doesn't change the behavior if you do sell it. That got you into this mess and then you still got to go rent somewhere, don't you?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes, sir. And that's. That's horrible too because it's going to cost double what my mortgage is. It's just getting my hands on the.

[George Campbell]

So let's get a hold of this amazing income you guys have and just clean this mess up. You sell the truck, you got 61 left. Making 140 now. It's an easy math problem. Let's live like we're broke.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're right. You could do. You do have to scratch up the 10 grand. But you scratched up 40 grand to get a house fire redone. And you know and that made part of this mess as well. So I would rather have 10k on a credit card than I would have 40 on a truck. And, you know, you. That's a. That's moving in the right direction, then and again, get you a hooptie that's not real popular when you're the finance manager at a new car dealership. But I don't really care, you know, I don't care what your buddies think about what you drive. I care about you and you winning. And so appearances are not something I'm willing to invest in at any stage of wealth building, but certainly not where you are, Ed. So, yeah, you've got to do something to break the cycle. And I think selling the house is awfully desperate when you're sitting on a $40,000 truck. So I'm finding a way to get that 10K and I'm getting rid of that thing. Austin is with us in Nashville. Hey, Austin. What's up?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Hey, Dave. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. How can we help?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Good deal. Yes. So I'm recently engaged. My fiance will graduate from grad school in May of this year, and we're getting married in May of 27. My question for you is. Is together currently, we have about $50,000 in savings, and we'd be going into our marriage with about $100,000 worth of debt. 50% would be her student loans, and 50% would be on a fairly low interest rate. Piece of equipment for my business. My question is, is it smart to use some of our savings or all of our savings, X, Y, or Z, to pay off one of the loans, or should we hold on to the savings and pay a. Pay the loans off?

[Dave Ramsey]

There's. There's not a we or an hour. You're not married.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

You don't pay somebody's bills that you're not married to.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, I guess I'm looking, you know, next year when we are married.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why don't you just get married? What are you waiting on?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, we're waiting for just. Nah, I guess we're waiting to get married.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why?

[Caller (various male callers)]

But, well, you know, you're already playing

[Dave Ramsey]

house and acting like you're married. What. What's the big deal?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Oh, no, we're not playing house.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, you said we have savings.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Oh, I was just saying collectively.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, guys. Individually, if you want to live to continue to live separate lives Until May of 27, when you're married and you work on you getting your debt paid off, she works on her getting her debt paid off, she would use her savings towards that. And you would use your savings towards your. Until there's a. Until there's a we at the point there's a we. We combine everything and we attack it together. Combine incomes and everything else. What's her degree in?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Speech therapy.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good. Okay, excellent. So she'll be able to make some good income to offset the student loan she took out, right?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Good. And let's get that done.

[Caller (various male callers)]

That's what we're looking at. And you know, and my business is going well too, but I guess just the big thing is how obviously we want to knock our debts out as quickly as possible or individually. That's the goal. But should we take out of savings to do so?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes. And you should stop adding to savings until you get the debt cleaned up, because the debt is sucking the marrow out of your cash flow. Your most powerful wealth building tool is your income. And you're writing checks every month to other people instead of to yourself.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that keeps you from building wealth. And so your first impediment, your first blocker for building wealth is the debt. So when you clear the debt, you don't have any payments in the world. Now we got money. And then we build an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses and then we start putting 15% of our income away towards retirement.

[Caller (various male callers)]

And.

[Dave Ramsey]

And pretty soon you'll be a millionaire doing that. But you've got to get rid of all these stupid payments. And talking about interest rates and I don't give a crap about the interest rates. My interest rates are zero because I haven't had a debt in 30 years. And so that's my interest zero. I got you beat.

[George Campbell]

And that risk on the business is, is bigger than you think. All it takes is a few bad months. Now you can't pay your equipment and we get that call a whole bunch, hey, the business failed, but I still owe a bunch of money on this equipment. What do I do? And you're selling it for pennies on the dollar, trying to clean up the mess. So I would move forward cleaning up this debt. And maybe by the time you're married, you both are debt free. How cool would that be? That's an idea.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, now that, that use some of

[George Campbell]

the savings and future income.

[Dave Ramsey]

But only after you're married do you combine everything. And when you come home from the honeymoon, now we have debt and now we have savings and now we have a dog and now we have. Until then it's your dog. Until then it's your problem. Right? And of course the dog pees on the floor, then it's your dog. So it doesn't matter even if you're married. So that's how that works.

[George Campbell]

I know that.

[Sponsor/Guest Speaker]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Look at what your dog did. Yeah. And to which I say, look at what your daughter did.

[Caller (various male callers)]

But.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, now who's.

[George Campbell]

Who's cleaning up the mess in the. In the Ramsey house?

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, Bella the bear dog is my responsibility.

[George Campbell]

And Sharon made that clear.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Just because Bella the bear dog eats Sharon's stuff.

[George Campbell]

Oh.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so that's definitely your bear dog stays on serious probation at all times.

[George Campbell]

You got a line item in the

[Dave Ramsey]

fourth or fifth set of earbuds for my wife recently. Yeah, man. Would you please put those things where the dog can't get to them?

[George Campbell]

Is it still in the dog point?

[Dave Ramsey]

Is it the dog's fault?

[George Campbell]

Is it passing through, or is it still in the dog?

[Dave Ramsey]

I have no idea. I don't want.

[George Campbell]

Dave doesn't want to know.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't want to talk about it.

[George Campbell]

That's someone else's problem.

[Dave Ramsey]

Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John. Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're going to die or something.

[Sponsor/Guest Speaker]

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[Dave Ramsey]

That's a gut punch.

[Sponsor/Guest Speaker]

And. Oh, you're telling me. And for decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse, they've lost somebody important to them.

[Dave Ramsey]

Me, too.

[Sponsor/Guest Speaker]

They don't know what to do next.

[Dave Ramsey]

Me, too. I mean, you're going to have a crisis here, and, you know, you got two options. While you're sitting and talking to a young widow, she's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly the two options. And your dadgum family term life insurance

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[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

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[Dave Ramsey]

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[Caller (various male callers)]

Foreign.

[Dave Ramsey]

Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit union studio. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. George Camel Ramsey, personality number one best selling author and co host of Smart Money Happy hour on the Ramsey network, is my co host. Today, Nate is in Nashville. Hi, Nate, how are you?

[Caller (various male callers)]

I'm doing good. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller (various male callers)]

So I'm an independent songwriter and music producer, so my income is very inconsistent and I've had a lot of good years and a lot of bad years. So me and my wife have been okay with that kind of inconsistency and income until last year. In December, our baby had to be delivered extremely prematurely. And at the same time, my wife was diagnosed with lupus. So both our baby and my wife have been in the hospital pretty much all throughout the beginning of this year. And with all of this kind of medical uncertainty basically that we're going into with this, I am trying to figure out if I have the option to do something called a catalog sale, which in music is kind of like selling a business. It's just getting a lump sum for all of the songs that I've made, and I have the option to do that. And I'm kind of wondering if it's a smart move to just take the sale and invest that money and live off of the. The interest or if I should just keep working and try to maybe find a way to make my income a little more consistent.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, Nate, I'm sorry you guys are going through this. It rocks your world. When the baby's sick and when mama's sick too, it's double. That's a tough, tough thing. And when you're an artist, it particularly is rocky. So as you guys, as you know, I'm in Nashville, and so I've got lots and lots of friends in the business that have sold catalogs, and so I'm fairly familiar with it. Typically, what happens in your world is that your, the money that you make from the songs is the value that the catalog has. Right. And so what typically happens, as you know and everybody else knows, if you think about it, is when a song comes out, particularly if you get a good hit, it'll peak within a few months. And then depending on how big a hit it is, it'll continue to feed out and pay out. But gradually, the, the payout deteriorates over time on every song. Agreed?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes. Yes. That's correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so it goes up. Big, nice thing, big splash. Everybody's smiling, everybody's happy. We collect a statue or two, and then we go on and start. But then the income associated with a hit from five years ago is way different than the income associated with a hit this year. And so what you're trying to figure out is. And that's how they value the catalogs. They value them based on what they think they can make on it over time, right?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so they're looking at that deterioration. And so anything you write the year after you sell the catalog is yours. You're not selling your future hits. You're only selling the past ones. And so that block of income starts at one level and goes down every single year when they buy that catalog.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Right, Right. Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so that. That's how they're valuing it. So that's also how you make the decision as to whether you want to keep it or not. Some artist friends of mine want to keep it. Just because those songs are like their babies, they don't want to let them go. They're very attached to them emotionally.

[George Campbell]

It's like a legacy for them.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And others. Others view it on a pure business factor and go, you know, I can get X number of million dollars for this thing, and I'm going to keep on in the business, and I'll make my future there. But this gives me a lump sum to stabilize my life, which sounds like kind of how you're thinking. So what are they offering you for the catalog?

[Caller (various male callers)]

It would be around 4 million.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good. Oh, you've done a great job. Congratulations. You've had some good stuff, man. All right.

[George Campbell]

How old are you?

[Caller (various male callers)]

I'm 33.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[George Campbell]

What was a good year for you? Like, what are you normally making in a year?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, my last year was my best year, and I made just about a million. And that's why I'm a little bit not sure, because if I do a deal, an LTM deal, which is the last 12 months, I would get like a. About a times four on my catalog sale. But I'm also not sure, like, if I continue to write, maybe I can make that number go up, and then my catalog sale could be worth, you

[Dave Ramsey]

know, there's nothing to say you couldn't sell another catalog.

[Caller (various male callers)]

That's true.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, it's just. This is one block of songs, one library. Okay. And so. But here's the deal. Okay? So if you got 4 million today, but you would get a million next year and 800 the next year, would you rather have that stream of income? Because that stream of income is going to be there.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so, you know, what I would say is, if you project that you're going to make a fourth of this in the coming 12 off of this catalog, I'm probably keeping that.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because you're gonna get a million of the 4 million right now. And so we're only got a $3 million swing, and what have you got $3 million for? You're gonna get that 3 million in the next five years.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah. Yeah. I think just with the. Just seeing how crazy these swings can be in music and just, you know, not. Not having that certainty, especially with.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, it's not. It's not. It's not a horrible deal, and it's a fairly standard process. Like you said, they're doing about 4x on the LPM. So that's. That's not a. That's. That's a fairly standard formula, and they're not ripping you off. The question is, do you. What do you want? And it sounds like with your family situation, that you can restart your career fresh with $4 million in an investment which, if you put it in a good investment, will make you 400,000 a year.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And forever.

[George Campbell]

And that's without you forever producing future income.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And. And on top of that, then. And you've got that for your baseline to operate your household on and relax. And then you still. You still go to work every day. You still go down there and sit and write every day like you were desperate and broken hungry, but you're not desperate and broken hungry anymore. But you still write like that. You still work like that. Because my experience with the songwriters is it's, you know, you have to go to work every day.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's not. It's not random. You guys. You guys grind those things out most of the time, right?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah. And then, you know, I haven't been able to do as much this year. I really haven't been able to do much at all, just with the medical situation. And so that's.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm not talking about. I'm not. I'm not shaming you about that. What I'm talking about is just because you've got $4 million in a mutual fund doesn't mean you can quit work, Right?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Absolutely.

[Dave Ramsey]

When mom and baby are healthy and you're ready to go back to work. Go back to work, Nate. You've got a talent. Go use it.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Don't get lazy because you got 400k or $4 million and you're making 400k.

[George Campbell]

Do you believe you're talented enough to go create another million dollar year in the future?

[Dave Ramsey]

No question. If he built that catalog, he can do it.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, I think I'd be able to do it.

[George Campbell]

I'm just putting myself in your shoes. I'm taking the deal.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I am too. I like what it does for you. It stabilizes your life. You got a family to be responsible for. You're not just a kid with a guitar in a room with too much coffee. You know, this is, there's you now got other stuff going on. So I'm with you man.

[George Campbell]

I'll take the volatility of the stock market over the volatility of the music industry.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's not that volatile. It's very predictable. It's going to go down.

[George Campbell]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's very predictable. We just talked about the stream of income deteriorates.

[George Campbell]

The s and P500 only gone up over time.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I'm going to take 400k a year off of that 4 million. Live on that or 300k and live on that and let that sit there. Get with a smartvestor pro, you know, click at Ramsey Solutions, Nate and get sit down with one of the folks we recommend. They'll sit down, put together and believe me, they're in Nashville. They've worked with catalog sales before too. They know what it is. It's a fairly, you know, in our community, we're in a music community. That's a fairly common occurrence.

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[Dave Ramsey]

Tax season is upon Us to get free checklists and guides that'll help you file. Go to ramseysolutions.com taxes Brandy is in Tulsa. Hi, Brandy. How are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'm good, Dave. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller (various female callers)]

So my husband and I, we together have about $65,000 in debt. 50,000 of that is our auto loan, which is about $1,000 a month. And we're barely staying current on it. We are behind on rent, which just started in February. The deal with that was that we were working a job where we got the house for free, but the job only paid like $1,000 a month, so obviously not sustainable. Our bills are about $3,800 a month. He does have a new job now that is bringing in $3,600 a month as of February 1st. So we are behind on rent, barely staying current on the car. We have not filed taxes yet. We should be doing that this week. Our plan is to get current on rent and then about half of that. We owe the last boss we had about half of. We're expecting about 5 to 6,000 return, so we're going to owe him about half of that.

[Dave Ramsey]

For what?

[Caller (various female callers)]

We're just wondering, like, how do we.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why do you owe him thousands of dollars? The guy you worked for?

[Caller (various female callers)]

We. Well, my husband accidentally broke a piece of equipment that resulted in about that much to fix it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, but that doesn't mean your husband is. Rely. Is. Had he borrowed the equipment or was he operating the equipment while he was being employed?

[Caller (various female callers)]

He was operating equipment while being employed.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why does that make your husband liable?

[Caller (various female callers)]

He feels bad for breaking the equipment because the.

[Dave Ramsey]

That doesn't make him liable. You're broke. I don't care how bad he feels. Okay. If George drops his computer that I own on the way out of the studio today and breaks it, George does not have to pay for it.

[George Campbell]

Yes.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's how it works when you have employees.

[George Campbell]

Did he sign some agreement saying that he's liable for any accidents or damages?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Not yet. He did tell him that he wants to pay him, that. That he feels he's owed that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why?

[Caller (various female callers)]

He did come to us with an agreement.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why? On what basis does the employer think the employee has to pay for broken equipment? What's the moral foundation of this? This is cray cray.

[Caller (various female callers)]

I think it was just my husband's stupidity.

[George Campbell]

This is a month of his pay.

[Dave Ramsey]

You guys okay? Number one, the landlord is on hold, period. I mean, the. The former boss. If. If you ever pay him, it's not going to be anytime soon, number one. Number two, sell this stupid butt car. This car is insanity.

[George Campbell]

What is this thing?

[Caller (various female callers)]

So I do have a question on that. Now that you bring that up. It is a 2025 Dodge Durango.

[Dave Ramsey]

I bet it is.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah. We bought it last year when we were making about $5,000 a month. And we had that job for about a year and a half.

[Dave Ramsey]

That doesn't mean you need to be stupid.

[Caller (various female callers)]

I know.

[Dave Ramsey]

$50,000 Dodge Durango for $1,000 a month. It's killing you.

[George Campbell]

How far underwater are you on this thing?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It is worth by Kelly blue book, about 26,000. So what?

[George Campbell]

How is that even possible? You guys drive this thing to the ground already in a year.

[Caller (various female callers)]

We drive about 35,000 miles a year.

[George Campbell]

Why?

[Caller (various female callers)]

During that time, we were traveling more for work, and we travel about a round trip to a.

[Dave Ramsey]

Did you. Did you trade a car that was upside down into this deal? I'm sorry, did you trade another deal, another car that was upside down into this deal? Do you roll over?

[George Campbell]

Negative.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because even at 35,000 miles of Dodge Durango should not have lost half of its value in one year. They suck, but they don't suck that bad.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah, so we had about $10,000 of negative equity. And on the old vehicle that we

[Dave Ramsey]

rolled into, okay, that makes more.

[George Campbell]

So it was 40 down to 26 because you drove it to the ground. Okay, that makes more sense at least. Is there any other debt?

[Caller (various female callers)]

We have 9,000, about 9,400. About 5,500 of that is personal loans and the rest is credit.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, all of that's on hold until you get your rent current and keep your truck current until you figure out a way to get out of this truck. And the landlord and the ex. Employer does not get any of your tax refund until you are out of debt. And even then, they probably don't get any money. You do not pay for broken equipment when you work for someone. That's not how life works. Okay? If I own. If I own a heavy equipment operation, I got six bulldozers. And one of the guys breaks bulldozer, he doesn't have to pay for it. I have to pay for it. I'm the owner. That's how it works.

[George Campbell]

The owner's taking the risk here.

[Dave Ramsey]

The owner takes the risk. That's what owning a business is. And even if the guy, you know, made a mistake and tore it up, it's still on the owner, not on the employee. And so what you guys are engaging in, I don't. I don't understand the moral code by which you've come to this decision or your husband thinks he's liable, he's not. There's no code I've ever been around that says he's vi.

[George Campbell]

He might feel guilty, but he's not liable.

[Dave Ramsey]

He feels bad for tearing up the guy's stuff that. That he should do. That's an honorable man, but it does not make. You need to pay for it. And for sure you don't pay for it when your rent's not current and you can barely pay your car payment. So you guys got to get rid of the car and get current on food, lights, water, transportation, and rent. And don't get behind on those things again. And never again, Never again buy a car on debt the rest of your life. This should be the last one because you guys are handcuffed. This thing has a gun to your head. You have nowhere to go. And I'm not sure how you're going to get out of this truck. It's a mess.

[George Campbell]

You're going to need to save the difference.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you got two bad deals tied together here, and you're at 50%, you know, sub. I don't know. I don't know how you're gonna do that.

[George Campbell]

He's gonna need to make a whole lot more money. And I don't know if you're working outside the home, but I think you're gonna need to get a job as well.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you guys are all gonna have to be working all the time for the next three years and clean up a lot of this mess. But you got you. Because everything you've touched has gone backward for the last two years. You've gone back. You've gone deeper in the hole. Deeper in the hole, Deeper in the hole. And you've got to turn that around. And income turns that around. And then stop doing ridiculous decisions. Turns that around. And so if. If you go near a car lot to buy a car on payments, again, I can't help you. You've got to stop that. It's just destructive. And. And so, oh, man, what a mess.

[George Campbell]

We're seeing a higher and higher percentage of people taking on car loans over a thousand dollars. It just keeps going up.

[Dave Ramsey]

And let me also tell you guys out there, this is the second or third time today that we've taken these calls. So here's your order of priority, and you do not violate this order of priority. The first thing you do with money that comes into your household, without exception, you buy groceries, not restaurants. You buy groceries for Your family, your family eats before, before you do anything, the next thing you do is you keep the lights and the electricity on. You have to have that to operate. And almost everyone and even in a horrible crisis can put the money together to do those two things. The next thing you do is you stay current on the rent so you're not freaking homeless. You stay current on your mortgage, you stay current on the rent, period. The next thing after the rent is current is the car, not the car. And then the rent. You did that backwards, Brandy. You keep rent current because if they take the car, you at least got a place to live. If you take the house, you're living in the car. We don't want to do that.

[George Campbell]

Hey, guys, George here. Listen, 99 times out of 100 when people say, I don't know where my money goes, it's not a math problem, it's a behavior problem. They're not budgeting. Then they're shocked when their bank account hits triple zeros. Well, here's the deal. Winning with money is about doing the boring stuff consistently. And that includes banking someplace that helps you stop guessing with your money, like Fairwinds Credit Union. They're not going to fix your habits. That part's on you. But they do support people who are ready to take control of their money. At Fairwinds, you get a high yield savings account with a great rate to help grow your emergency fund, a checking account that won't nickel and dime you, and up to 10 free savings accounts so you can organize your money on purpose. Because when you stay disciplined, your money gets predictable, manageable and boring in the best way. So if you're ready for a bank that helps you be intentional, open your smart Bundle [e-mail] Ramsey and get the Ramsey Beweir debit card to go along with it. That's Fairwinds.org Ramsey insured by the NCUA.

[Dave Ramsey]

The Ramsey question of the day is sponsored by why refi? If your private loans or student loans are in default, it's a mess, but why refi can help clean it up? Why refi helps borrowers refinance with low fixed rate payments and get a clear plan forward so you can clean things up and get back to making real progress. Go to y refi.com Ramsey that's the letter y r e f y.com Ramsey might not be in all states today.

[George Campbell]

We've got two related questions. First is from Craig in Georgia who asks what will the market do based on what's going on in Iran and Allen in Indiana asks, my daughter is going to college in August with the stuff going on in Iran, should I change her 529 plan to an age based investment? So, Dave, people are spooked by what's going on. It obviously affects the economy, at least temporarily. And so they're wondering, should I make any changes to the way I'm investing right now?

[Dave Ramsey]

No.

[George Campbell]

That was easy.

[Dave Ramsey]

You should not change a thing. Okay. If you go back throughout history, every time there's a burp in the geopolitical world, every time Donald Trump burps or Joe Biden burps, or there's an October 7th attack by Hamas and they kill innocent babies in Israel, or there's the Israelis now and the United States bombing the crud out of Iran for a few days. When you go back through history, you're going to see that generally what happens, there's a one or a two day, sometimes a 30 day period of time that the market, market will go down. Those that ride roller coasters only get hurt if you jump off in the middle of the ride. Give you an example. Anybody remember that little thing, Covid? There was a little thing we had called COVID 19. It was a little problem we had a few years ago and it was going to crash the entire world economy and everything. And the market dove. When everything started sheltering in place and you know, everybody had to go home and all these, everything started shutting down and all this, the market dove and it went down and down and down and down and down and down. 57 days later, it was back up to where it started. Oh yeah. When the bombs first started falling on Iran the other day, the market dove. It went down a couple of points. It's been a week or two, it's back up. The market's basically flat as of this, as of this recording for this year. And net, net, net out of all the ups and downs and backs and forth, if you jump in or jump out every time you see a bad report on CNN or fox, you are never going to stay invested and you're never going to make any money. And so no, you don't do age based investments for 529s, for God's sakes. And you don't ever do that and you don't sit and fret about what the market's going to do based on a war, if you even call it a war based on a series of bomb runs. So I mean, again, the markets just are not that tender. And here's the thing, you should never put money in mutual funds that you're going to leave alone a week. You should never put money in mutual funds that you're going to leave alone for a month. You should never put money in mutual funds if you're going to leave it alone for six months. You should never put money in mutual funds unless you're gonna leave it alone three to five years. And over three to five years, all of these problems that drive the market down become a distant memory. And all you will see is a trend line overall up.

[George Campbell]

So here's my investing strategy. Time in the market beats timing the market. And what you're doing when you get spooked by this is you're timing the market and what you're really doing is you're selling low and then you're gonna buy high because you don't know when the bottom is. So what do you do? You cash out hoping that you're going to get, you know, avoid this big dip. And then what happens is when you get back in, it's already back to record highs. And so you really lost out because the best days usually happen after the worst days. So what Dave and I are doing, we're not changing our investing strategy at all.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And your daughter goes to college in August. By August it'll be a memory by the next August. And by the way, you don't need all of her 529money the first year she goes to school. If you do, she didn't have much in the 529 to start with. And so you're just going to take out enough to pay for that year's or that six month or that semester, that's all you're going to use. And so the vast majority, let's say you got enough for four years in the, in the 529, okay? The vast majority of what you need is not going to be used for two to three more years. And so over the next two to three years, you know, the bombing of Iran will be a distant memory. And it's a much smaller blip on the radar, no pun intended, than Covid was. Covid was a real thing in terms of what it did to the market, but it recovered dramatically fast after that. And so you go back and look at March of 20 and watch what the stock market did. Go look at the chart for March of 20th and you'll see it come right back up in April and May and June and these age based investments

[George Campbell]

day for people that don't understand what it's doing is moving your investments to more conservative things like bonds as your kid gets into the college phase so that it sort of stabilizes. But what you're missing out on is the returns. Look at the last three years, it was up 23, 25, 17. And if you were half in bonds, you're not going to see those returns.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And you've affected your kids ability to go to college at that point. So no, no, no, no, no. If every time you get afraid by watching the news, quit watching the news because you know it's, it doesn't matter. You know, like we were going to Cabo the other day and some of my friends wives are like, oh, they have problems in Mexico. You can't go to Cabo. And I'm like, it's not, it's in, it's in Cancun. I mean it's like they gotta take a problem in Chicago. So I'm not going to Nashville. That's just dumber than crud and people's perception of stuff. So, oh, I'm canceling. What are you canceling for? We're not even a thousand miles away. I burned a car in Chicago. So you're not going to Nashville. I mean that's just dumb. So it's the same thing here. It's overreaction, the fear porn that the news media just spreads all the time. And so turn off your television is a good idea for your investing strategy. And just get off the Fox website because it's just blue. The world's coming to an end. The world's coming to an end. The world. Chicken Little lives there full time. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Open phones here at Triple 882-55-5225. James is in Raleigh. Hi James, how are you? Good.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yourself?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. How can I help?

[Caller (various male callers)]

So I went through my financial transactions and on my wife's phone I found that she has spent a minimum of about $5,000 sending to one person because she has an addiction to pain pills that we're currently trying to get under control. And she has dealt with five or six people over the course of the last year. And I've been noticing more and more money go missing. I had about $600 saved up and that went missing. And every time that I asked her about it, where the money went, she can't give me a straight answer.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, okay, if your wife is addicted to drugs, take her off of all of the accounts.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, I did and that was the problem is that she will grab my phone while I'm asleep. I'm a truck driver. So I'm home to maybe 3.

[Dave Ramsey]

Put a passcode on passcode on your phone, man. She cannot have act if she's an addict, she cannot have access to funds.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay? And at this point now, I. I don't want to leave her because we, we do have two kids together. They're both getting ready to start school.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that doesn't mean she has to have access to funds. She has no access to money, period. If she's an addict, it's not good for her, dude. She'll kill herself.

[Caller (various male callers)]

And I've tried to explain that to her.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't care about what she explained. I don't have to explain it. You get no money until you are clean of drugs, period. I'm not explaining. I'm telling. I'm protecting you from yourself and I'm protecting us from you until you get off these pain pills and you're dry. And so we got to get you some help for that. Baby doll. I love you. And we're going to. We're going to walk through this together. But you got no money. I'm not giving. You have no access to no money, no how, nowhere when you're doing drugs, period. That's a non starter. You just got to start with that and end with that and make sure she's actually getting the help she needs to get healed, man. And then when she gets healed and becomes trustworthy again, worthy of trust, then we start working this like two functioning adults together. But until then, no. Angela is in Phoenix. Hey Angela, what's up?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. I'm excited to see you guys next month in Phoenix.

[George Campbell]

Yay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Glad you're coming. How can we help?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I was in a car accident in April of 2020. I'm okay. And went through several physical therapy sessions. Like maybe eight sessions. I was represented by law firm fast forward. In 2023, the case closed and I only got $4,000 settlement after everything said and done and they told me everything was settled and was asked to sign the client directive. And I was only 24 at that time. And no knocking, no nothing. Anything better? Fast forward to 2026. Last week I got an email from physical therapy that I owe them 3,800 because the law firm didn't pay them and I didn't have to pay for it. These six years from now, I was able to confirm that everything was legitimate. And I just don't know what to do. I just talked to the law firm. No, not law firm. The physical therapy I know.

[Dave Ramsey]

You said the law firm was supposed to pay it and they didn't.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yes, they didn't. And when they said, did you call

[Dave Ramsey]

the law firm that was supposed to pay it and didn't, they didn't.

[Caller (various female callers)]

They told me.

[Dave Ramsey]

Did you call the law firm that was supposed to pay the bill?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yes, I.

[Dave Ramsey]

What did they say?

[Caller (various female callers)]

They told me that at that time, they said they cannot get.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, I'm talking about this week. Yes, this week you got a bill that they were supposed to have paid. Did you call them this week and say, how come I got a bill that you were supposed to pay?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It's not even a bill. It's just an email from Donna.

[Dave Ramsey]

Bonnie. Did you call the law firm?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I did call the law firm.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Geez. What did they say?

[Caller (various female callers)]

They said at that time, in 2023, before they closed the settlement, they cannot get a hold of the physical therapy. That's why they asked me to find a directive client that I have to take care of everything. But from what I can remember, they told me everything was settled, even bills from the hospital.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so you signed off knowing at the time they have a piece of paper in their file that says you knew at the time that they had not paid the physical therapy.

[Caller (various female callers)]

No, they told me at that time that everything was settled and I don't have to worry about anything. And come six years after, you know, the physical therapy was emailing me last week about it.

[Dave Ramsey]

I got that. What I'm trying to figure out is what the law firm is. What's their excuse for not having paid this, and how did they say it was your fault?

[Caller (various female callers)]

They said at that time they cannot get a hold of that physical therapy. That's what they told me last week.

[Dave Ramsey]

That doesn't matter. They still have to pay it whether they got a hold of them or not.

[George Campbell]

You're telling me for three years they haven't been able to get in touch with the physical therapy place?

[Caller (various male callers)]

No.

[Caller (various female callers)]

From 2020 to 2023, they didn't settle it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay, well, I think I'm going to be talking to the lawyer that was supposed to have paid the bill, and I don't really want to hear any excuses about why they didn't pay the bill, and they need to call the physical therapy company and get this settled because that was their job. That was their job. Originally they withheld money from your settlement to pay your bill, and then they didn't do it.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yes. The settlement was 14,000, and I only got 4,000 in total,

[Dave Ramsey]

which means you got nothing by the time you pay this bill. So the only person made any money on this was the lawyer. Oh, there's a shock. Okay. Oh, my gosh. All right, well, I. I'm gonna be all up in the business of this law firm saying you guys are supposed to have paid this bill and you didn't, and you need to contact them and you need to negotiate this. And at, you know, if it does land back on you, Angela, you probably can settle it for four or five hundred bucks and just tell them it's a six year old bill and you haven't gotten it so far in six years. And I'm not paying you. The law firm was supposed to pay you, but I will give you $500 for settlement in full, and then you can go after the law firm that's supposed to have paid it if you want to do that. But, you know, if you want to settle it, that's fine. Or you want to dump it in the back in the lap of that law firm. I'm dumping it back in the lap of the law firm. I'm going to have some real stern conversations with them about how they should have taken care of this at the time. And I'm not sure I understand what your deal was with them completely, but it sounds like they were supposed to have taken care of this and didn't.

[George Campbell]

And I'd find some documentation. Right now it's. Well, they said, yeah, five years ago that they were going to do this thing. I'd get some. What did you sign in writing? What did it say?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, but a medical bill, regardless of how, what the story is, a medical bill that has been unpaid for six years, you can settle it for pennies on the dollar. And so just make them a $500 offer to go away, and they'll go away and give them 500 bucks and get it in writing and keep the piece of paper forever. Once you settle this, that's probably your easiest route. But there's something about the justice, the injustice of the law firm being the only one that actually makes any money on this transaction. Oh, geez, don't get me started on

[George Campbell]

one of those billboards that she caught one of those numbers. They took her to the cleaners on this one, getting 70% of the payout.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, no, they got it all.

[George Campbell]

Well, she said she got 4,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, but now she owes 3,800, which they were supposed to have paid. And if they had paid that, she would have got nothing. So they got it all. That's my point, that things nest on A zero.

[George Campbell]

I'd be the squeaky wheel.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So I'm, I'm getting up, up in some folks business here at a minimum just to have some fun with this. And then because there's nothing more fun than yelling at lawyers. That's, that's about my like one of my favorite things pastime for Dave. So sorry about that. Sorry you're facing that. If you want the easy way out, I just settle it for 500 bucks. Call the physical therapy people and say the law, you're supposed to pay it. I don't know it. I'm going to turn it over to them. Or I'll give you 500 bucks for settlement in full. But I'm not giving you 3800 period. Not going to sue me. Laura's in Washington DC. Hi Laura, how are you?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Hi.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller (various female callers)]

So my question is, how do we navigate wanting to start a family but still being in baby step two?

[Dave Ramsey]

Just start a family. I don't wait to get out of debt to have kids.

[George Campbell]

What are your concerns? What are you worried about?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I think we just feel like anxious and fearful that everyone says having a kid is a big expense.

[Dave Ramsey]

They don't eat much. They're tiny.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, they really don't.

[George Campbell]

Do you guys have any money saved?

[Dave Ramsey]

No. They're in baby step two.

[George Campbell]

You got a thousand bucks?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yes.

[George Campbell]

Okay, so let's just stack up cash once you're pregnant and go, all right. For the next nine months we're just going to save and save and save and save. And once you and baby are home safe, we can push play on the debt snowball. But for now, just make your minimum payments.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, no, for now you pay full debt, snowball. You pay everything on the smallest debt when and if you get pregnant, then you push pause on your debt snowball. And pile up cash instead of reducing debt until baby comes. Okay. And then you use that cash to pay on the debt if baby comes. And I mean I'm sure you've got health insurance, don't you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Covers labor and delivery, right?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, good.

[George Campbell]

So you can find out your deductible, your out of pocket.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's your household income?

[Caller (various female callers)]

240 gross.

[Dave Ramsey]

$240,000 gross.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Gross.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Well, it's not gross at all. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I think you can afford a baby kid.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay.

[George Campbell]

People have babies.

[Dave Ramsey]

Or six. I don't care. I mean, you're in good shape. You're fine. Fine. You're fine. There's Nothing to be anxious about. Yeah, but you do have to focus and be thoughtful. But children do not cost $300,000. They're not, it's not that big a deal. I mean little, little money on some diapers and formula and they don't take up much room. So you don't. Unless you go crazy, go spend a hundred thousand dollars redoing the nursery that the kid doesn't even know is there. But that's you going crazy. That's not the kid, that's you. And so, but I mean they just need a place to sleep. And so I was with a guy the other day. Where was I? And he was telling this story, oh, I know where I was now. And he said when he was born, his parents lived in a one bedroom studio apartment. And they had a dresser drawer thing, Chester drawers that they bought at a garage sale and they opened up the top drawer and that was his bassinet.

[George Campbell]

That's incredible. That's old school right there.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's how he started out life and

[George Campbell]

he doesn't even remember and he's a,

[Dave Ramsey]

he's a wealthy guy.

[George Campbell]

That's incredible.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, so, yeah, they don't, kids don't cost much. You just need a dresser drawer.

[George Campbell]

Just sturdy one.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Foreign.

[Dave Ramsey]

Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit Union studio. I'm Dave Ramsey. Your host, George Camel, Ramsey personality, is my co host today. We're so glad you're with us on open phones at 888-825-5225. Marie is in Philadelphia. Hi Marie, how are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'm good. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller (various female callers)]

So my husband has committed financial infidelity three times. And every time that he was caught we had to refinance and all of that.

[Dave Ramsey]

So he runs up debt behind your back and lies to you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yep, yep, 100. And I told him the third time, if he does it again, we will divorce. I'm not doing this anymore.

[Dave Ramsey]

So he did it again and are you divorcing?

[Caller (various female callers)]

No, it just happened like two weeks ago.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm the third. The third time was two weeks ago.

[Caller (various female callers)]

The fourth time was two weeks ago I found out he, he did not come clean. I found it. My friend does financial whatever for a company and she helped me do a credit check on him and we found it.

[Dave Ramsey]

So. So are you divorcing then?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I checked in yesterday online to see how to get divorce papers.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes. Yeah,

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'm, I'm still going back and forth. I just, I, Yeah, We've been married 41 years together. My question is, I have. So I homeschooled our five children. We have 11 grandkids. I started a cleaning business. It's just me after our son, youngest son graduated. So I've been taking that money and we put it into a savings and we consider it like fun money. So we use it for vacations, house projects, whatever. My question is, do I go and get his name off of that account?

[Dave Ramsey]

You need to go see a divorce attorney and let them advise you on what you're allowed to do in the state of Pennsylvania while filing divorce. Whether you can take names off of accounts or not. I don't know if you can do that there, but yeah, I mean, you've got to protect yourself in any way that is legally allowable. But you certainly need to take pictures of the account so that you know that that money is there. And if it disappears, then you've at least got something to hold against him, you know, while you go through the divorce. And you know, for instance, if. How much is in that account?

[Caller (various female callers)]

My account, 7,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh. So it's not much. Okay.

[George Campbell]

And he's never touched it thus far?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I have. Well, we used it. Yeah, we used it for.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, he's not stolen from it and lied about that account.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Not, not that I know of it because. Okay, so I'm dyslexic with numbers. He knows that. But he always has paid our bills, he's always on our finances. And I put our, my guard down last year. I should not have done it. And he went and started using a credit card and I was just like, son of a gun. I just, you know, can't believe that you did this for the fourth time in our marriage. So I. Yeah, I don't know because.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, the $7,000 is probably going to be used as your attorney's fee.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so do you guys have, do you guys, do you guys have any, do you have any assets? Do you have any money in the marriage?

[Caller (various female callers)]

We have nothing. Nope, we have nothing.

[Dave Ramsey]

You own a house?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah, we own a house. That's it?

[Dave Ramsey]

What's it worth?

[Caller (various male callers)]

No,

[Caller (various female callers)]

we had my daughter's mother in law, she's a realtor and she said she thinks she can get between 5 and 6, 100,000 for it.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you owe on it?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It's an acre lot. Huh.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you owe on it?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Nothing. It was paid off five years ago.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller (various male callers)]

All right.

[Dave Ramsey]

So have you guys attempted marriage counseling?

[Caller (various female callers)]

We did when he did this the last time. And it, it got better. The problem was so We. He said no more credit cards. So we had no credit cards. And we took an a trip for our 40th anniversary last year to Utah. And they would not let us rent a car unless we had a credit credit card.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, that's not true.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Well, he. I don't know.

[Caller (various male callers)]

We.

[Caller (various female callers)]

He said he tried. They won't take debit cards, they won't take checks, they won't take cash. He said, I have to rent a car. You have to have a credit card. So he tried. I think it's Capital One. And so he did, and I should have taken it. And I asked him the other day, I said, I want the credit card. And he said no. And I was like, okay, well, there's that.

[George Campbell]

Is your name on any of these debts or cards?

[Caller (various female callers)]

The ones that were paying 80,000 off? So we consolidated. So they take out 600 every month from our checking account and I guess they barter with the companies to pay off whatever.

[George Campbell]

Did you work with a debt debt settlement relief company, one of these scummy companies out there?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes. For sure. She did. Yeah.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yes, that's what we're with.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have $80,000 in debt on credit cards and you have a $500,000 paid for house. And do you make enough to live on?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I do not. I only work two days a week. The other three days I.

[Dave Ramsey]

Baby, how are you going to our grandkids?

[Caller (various female callers)]

That's my. Yeah, I'm going to have to work full time. That's the only way.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. How old are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Me? I'm 60.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Oh, Marie, I'm so sorry. I wish. I wish marriage counseling would have fixed this, but it sounds like your husband is just whatever. I don't know what he is, but

[George Campbell]

do you know where he's spending all this money? Is he an addict some sort?

[Caller (various female callers)]

No. So that's what I. I checked on and my friend who does finances for Armstrong, she said everything shows. It's just gas and food. And one was on Lowe's. It's all like petty stuff. It's like, I don't understand. Yeah, I don't know.

[Dave Ramsey]

What does he make?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It's frustrating. He only makes. He almost made 60,000 last year. He had a job, the same job for 35, 36 years. They closed up. It was a printing company. Of course, you know, computers took over that.

[Caller (various male callers)]

So

[Caller (various female callers)]

he got a better. He got a job and he hasn't to work clean shift anymore. And he doesn't have to work weekend, but he took a big pay cut.

[Dave Ramsey]

Marie, I think you need to get in touch with your pastor, get in touch with your marriage counselor. And you need to sit down and have an initial discussion with a divorce attorney. And you need to look at the reality of what this is facing here. I'm sorry you're facing this. And I wish your husband and wish I could yell at him and make him behave, but I can't. And you can't either, obviously. And I can't believe 41 years down the toilet with grandkids everywhere and everything else. That's just, that's, that's just devastating. And, but, but I don't understand a guy who's willing to give up all of that either for just simply for the use of a credit card. It doesn't make any sense at all. And lying to his wife, it's like a freaking habit. Horrible. Just horrible. I guess it's proof that integrity matters even after 41 years.

[George Campbell]

Yeah, that is brutal. We see a lot of this with couples that have been married so long, kids are finally out of the house, and then they have to face the spouse and go, oh, my gosh, this misbehavior, I've been dealing with it and putting up with it for far too long.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Sam. Foreign.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now, you can get that same kind of help anytime with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show. Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple and free to use. Go to ramseysolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's ramseysolutions.com.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Foreign.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, we wish we could get to every single call and every single question here on the show. If you have a money question and you want an answer for your situation, head on over to our website and use Ask Ramsey. Ask Ramsey is our free AI tool that is built and trained on hours and hours and hours and hours and days and days and days of this show on proven Ramsey principles. So you're going to get an answer pretty much the same answer you get exactly here on the air because that's who trained it.

[George Campbell]

Maybe even nicer.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's almost guaranteed to be nicer. Yeah, you'll get the answer the same way we do it right here. Ask Ramsey. You can ask your question [e-mail] completely free. Just click the link in the description if you're listening on podcast or YouTube? Ask Ramsey, George. This little project has exploded. I was meeting with one of our leaders today and he was telling me, the bazillion people, the numbers are crazy. The number of people that are going to ask Ramsey, it's working. It's a good idea, but I didn't know if it'd work.

[George Campbell]

Yeah, well, you put a tool out there and you go, well, people use this instead of trying to search the Internet for a random answer. And it's working well.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you don't have to ask your question in front of 32 million people, which should do on the show that helps to. Sharon is in Atlanta. Hi, Sharon. How are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Fine, Uncle Dave. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. How can I help?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay, this is my question. I have almost $200,000 in consumer debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good Lord.

[Caller (various female callers)]

I know. 252,000 old on the mortgage. And so my question is, should I stop my Roth that I have?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes. Yeah.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

You should stop everything and clean up his mess. What in the world do you owe $200,000 on?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I owe about 71,000, 71,000 credit cards, 35,000 finance companies and 61,000 in taxes and 20,000 on a cost.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why'd you not pay your taxes?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Well, I am paying them. I did.

[Dave Ramsey]

I didn't know you didn't pay them. That's why you have $61,000 in debt.

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'm working on it. Look, I just. Look, Uncle Dave, I found you at the end of last year and I have turned my household upside down.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm glad. I'm glad, but I mean, why did you not pay your taxes?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Well, I didn't. I haven't paid them in full, but I've been paying on them on a monthly basis.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm asking why you didn't pay them originally. I'm seriously.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay. The reason why is because with my husband's job, he's a contractor and, you know, if you don't lay that 25% to decide.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes, that. So you've not. But you've not been doing your quarterly estimates and you got behind because he's a 1099. Okay.

[Caller (various female callers)]

We cleaning it up.

[Dave Ramsey]

All right, that makes sense. Okay. So what's your household income, Sharon?

[Caller (various female callers)]

286 before.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's good news. So when you decide to turn this house upside down, you can shake this 200k out pretty quick, can't you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

And that's what I'm thinking. But you know, and that's what I'm planning on doing. This is the first question, one of the first questions I have. The taxes come first, correct?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes, ma'.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Am.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because the interest rate is unbelievably. And the penalties are unbelievably high. And. And more importantly than that, the. They have almost unlimited power to screw up your life.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Gotcha.

[Dave Ramsey]

They can just show up and take all the money out of your checking account. They don't even have to ask a judge. They just do it.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay, so. So this 61,000, what I'm thinking is that probably in the next one, two, three, four, maybe five to six months, I can have the 61,000 paid off.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's good. That's good. You don't have any money in savings.

[Caller (various female callers)]

That's not retirement in savings. Well, about three or $4,000. That's about it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, that needs to be $1,000. And we throw the rest of it at the taxes. And then let's get the budget done. And you and the husband sit down, look at that budget and gorged earth, no life. And we're getting these taxes gone. And once the stupid IRS is gone and we never. And we file quarterly estimates from this point forward so we never get back there again, right?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Definitely.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good, good. And then we're going to work the rest of the debts off, smallest to largest, using the debt snowball, and stop all investing, stop all savings, and let's focus on this. Because you make enough money to not be this broke, right?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Definitely. Well, you know what? I didn't realize I was this broke until I started listening to you.

[Dave Ramsey]

That almost sounds like it's my fault.

[George Campbell]

If I listen to you, Dave, I wouldn't be here right now. Oh, my goodness.

[Caller (various female callers)]

You know what? I turned this house, I turned these bank accounts that we have upside down.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good. Shaking. Shaking the nickels.

[George Campbell]

Is he on board, too?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Oh, yeah, he's. Well, he had no choice because he had been doing the budget for 43 years. And I'm like, okay, we gonna do them together. So it's somewhat my fault. But as of right now.

[George Campbell]

Where'd he learn how to budget? Congress.

[Dave Ramsey]

Nah, I love it. You guys are great.

[George Campbell]

That's wild.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're gonna do good, Sharon. I'm proud of you.

[George Campbell]

18, 20k slipping through your hands every month. Now we just got to get control.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, it's good. You're gonna be able to knock some stuff out fast. Hang on. We're gonna send you a copy of the book, the Total Money Makeover, to make sure you get all your questions answered. It takes you the baby steps on steroids. And as you're Working through this. You're going to want to know a few of those odds and ends. And you call me back anytime, kiddo. I got a feeling you're going to do good. She's on fire.

[George Campbell]

Yeah, she's spunky. She's like that fired up about turn

[Dave Ramsey]

these bank accounts upside down, shake all the nickels out of them.

[George Campbell]

She's flipping the couch cushions up looking for some change.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm telling you, this. This is going to happen. Ty is with us in Milwaukee. Hi, Ty. How are you?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Good. How are you, dad?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Up?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I had.

[Caller (various male callers)]

So I'm new.

[Caller (various female callers)]

I haven't new to listening to your show.

[Caller (various male callers)]

And by the way, it's a. It's a great show.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, welcome. Good to have you.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah.

[Caller (various female callers)]

I had a question.

[Caller (various male callers)]

So my fiance and I were getting married in October.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good.

[Caller (various male callers)]

We have a. We have a wedding to pay for. And then we also have around. We have some student loans debt as well. We have some money saved up.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much do you have saved up?

[Caller (various male callers)]

We have about like 50 to 60 thousand dollars.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And how much are we spending on the wedding?

[Caller (various male callers)]

The wedding is going to be a little pricey. It's going to be around like that. 50 to 60,000. It's going to be a big wedding.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Both of our dream weddings.

[Caller (various male callers)]

We both want all of our family members and friends there.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what's your income?

[Caller (various male callers)]

My personal income or my fiance or both? Yeah, it's around 1. I would say 1 80.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yours is. And what's hers?

[Caller (various female callers)]

190.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Mine's. Well, mine's kind of.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, that. That's yours. You make. You make 200,000 a year, roughly. What does she make?

[Caller (various female callers)]

No, nope, I make.

[Caller (various male callers)]

I make like 120.

[George Campbell]

Oh.

[Dave Ramsey]

And she makes.

[Caller (various female callers)]

She makes around 80 to 90.

[Caller (various male callers)]

She just got a raise.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller (various male callers)]

So I think she's.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you guys. How old are you guys?

[Caller (various male callers)]

We are.

[Caller (various female callers)]

My fiance is 26 and I'm 25.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Turning 26.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're right. That is a pricey wedding. It is not in the range of insanity based on the fact that you have such a wonderful household income. Okay. So. But it's getting close. So you need to put together a detailed project management budget for the wedding because otherwise you'll have scope creep. And you'll spend 70 grand.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you need to say. You need. Listen to me. You need to lay this out and say this is how much we're gonna spend on the dress. This is how much we're gonna spend on the hors d'. Oeuvres and the reception. This is how much we're gonna spend on the videography. This is how much we're going to spend on the venue and detail it out and then stick to that plan. And then put the number at the bottom. Let's call that number 50,000. That's plenty.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

And then manage to that number and then take that 50,000 and set it in a separate account right now for the wedding. Wedding is off the table now. Box is checked. Now we start moving with everything between now and the wedding of your income that you can free up to throw towards your debt. And she starts throwing any money she has towards her debt until you're married.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay, so you would

[Caller (various female callers)]

pay off the wedding in cash.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have 50,000. Move the 50,000 to the wedding account. That's over. It's done. Now we focus on the debt with all of our income. And we don't let the wedding creep above 50,000 because we manage a budget. And the two of you sit down and plan it like two grown ups instead of two people wanting a fairy tale because that's where people end up spending 100 grand when they meant to spend 50.

[George Campbell]

You got a big wedding, it just gets bigger. Mom and dad just start throwing people on there.

[Dave Ramsey]

I wouldn't know anything about that.

[Sponsor/Guest Speaker]

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[Caller (various male callers)]

What?

[Sponsor/Guest Speaker]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Jay is in San Francisco. Hi Jay. How are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Good.

[Caller (various male callers)]

I'm. I'm well. Dave, thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. How can we help?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, how do I. How do my wife and I change our mindset after we've been spending practicing really the baby steps for so long and now we're retired and we live frugally. And how do we change the mindset to want to spend some of this money and enjoy the fruits of our labor?

[Dave Ramsey]

Good for you. So what's your nest egg? What's your net worth?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Net worth is about 2.5. About half of that in our home and half of it in retirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

Way to go. Way to go. And what do you live on a Year. What's it take you to live?

[Caller (various female callers)]

We.

[Caller (various male callers)]

We have a monthly income with two retirements to Social Security and an annuity of about 9, $400. And. And we usually can live pretty comfortably each month on that. So we don't really touch the. The retirement fund much at all unless we're going to do a big trip or something.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Well, good for you. Well done. Very well done. How old are you guys?

[Caller (various male callers)]

We're 66. We've been married 44 years and been practicing the principles since we got married.

[Dave Ramsey]

Way to go. Proud of you. Very good. And you started with nothing. And you're a multimillionaire.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes, we are. Praise God for that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Way to go. Very good. Good work. Baby steps, millionaires. All right, so. Well, a couple of things Sharon and I have learned to do. One is, even though you've been living very responsibly and very adult, like, for a long time, one of you is more of a spender than the other one.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Who's that?

[Caller (various male callers)]

That would probably be me.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. At my house, it's me, too. Sharon's the natural saver. When in doubt, she saves. When in doubt, I have fun. And so, yeah, so you can lean into that a little bit and say, you need to initiate some of the things that. We're going to enjoy some of this $2 million. We're 66, and one of the things we instituted around our house is when we have a fun idea, we like a trip or something we want to do with some of the money we've worked hard for. We say, why wouldn't I? Yeah, why wouldn't I?

[Caller (various male callers)]

I like that.

[George Campbell]

You have to prove to yourself that it's a bad idea.

[Dave Ramsey]

So, you know, friends. Friends call up and they've got a house and in Telluride, and they say, hey, come up and go skiing for three days. And we say, why wouldn't I? Yeah, and we go, yeah. You know, and so that kind of stuff. So that. That's a good thing. We're looking at it. The next thing is that learning to enjoy the money is a. An underdeveloped or atrophied muscle. And so you've got to work it out. You know, you got to start working out the spending a little bit. You have to. Responsible spending. Muscle has to be built up. And so when you say, okay, we're going to take this trip. Oh, that didn't kill us. Us, we're going to upgrade mama's car. Oh, that didn't kill us. We're going to put $10,000 in each of the grandkids accounts for their college. Oh, that didn't kill us. When you do a few things like that, you kind of got to go, oh, I didn't die from that. And I'm not, I'm not homeless and penniless and I'm still got $2 million after I did all that, you know, and so you start to, you know, your brain starts to reset and go, I can do a few things and it doesn't kill me.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Right, right.

[Dave Ramsey]

The next thing is, is we increased our generosity.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Which removes any guilt from enjoying some of the money. Yes. So if I, if I put a hundred thousand dollars over here and help this situation with this ministry, I can spend 10 or 15 on Sharon and me and not think anything about it.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so there's kind of. It's not technically an offset spiritually, morally, mathematically it's not an offset. But your generosity muscle seems to be attached to your spending and enjoyment muscle.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes, I appreciate that. We've been fairly generous and, and I think that that's not as much of an issue as just maybe going over, over the top on an over the top type of vacation where we spend, you know, 30 or 35,000 on a cruise and say, you know, it's one of those cruises where you don't have to. To where you have to wear something besides flip flops, board shorts and a tank top to dinner. You know what I mean?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yep, I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, but again, 35, 000, you know, you got a million two sitting there in the 401k. It's making 120000 a year or 150, 000 a year in growth if you don't even touch the nest egg. And so the 30, you know, the 35, 000 is not damaging you. You, you start spending 350000 on something. Now we got to stop and think about it.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes, sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

But you're not. That's not usually what we're talking about in these conversations. So you know, just develop that out and say okay, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I? What happens if this goes wrong? You know, if I just burn this money in the middle of the floor, does my life really change? You can burn 35,000 in the middle of your floor, your life won't change. Yes. And that gives me permission then to enjoy that much without. Because I'm not being irresponsible. If my life changes when that Amount of money is burnt in the middle of the floor, then I'm starting to be irresponsible. Yeah.

[George Campbell]

Have you and your wife sat down on a nice date and started dreaming about. Here's the annual plan. Here's the vision for what we want to do this year and just mapped it out.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Well, we have a map for this year. We got invited by some friends to go on this trip for 2027. And so that's when this all kind of came. I thought, well, why wouldn't I?

[George Campbell]

There you go. Now's your chance to ask that question.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

I love.

[George Campbell]

And what I do, Jake, is I'm real frugal, and it's hard to break me from that. What I do is I force myself in the every dollar budget to put a line item that makes me a little bit throw up a little. I go, oh, gosh, I gotta spend that on myself. I'm gonna give that much money away. And then you guys keep each other accountable. You guys get to come up with your own. And over time, it'll be a nothing burden. You know, over time, Dave, as you've spent more and more money, you go, oh, that didn't hurt as bad as I thought.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And I'm just looking. Okay. I'm 66. I got maybe, what, 20 years or something. God willing to print the list. How bad can I screw this up? You know, I really can't at this stage. You know, I did so like Jay, we did so much that it'd be. You'd have to really concentrate to mess it up in the next 20 years.

[George Campbell]

Well, there's a part where the compound growth and the mass over where you'd have a hard time spending all that before you go.

[Dave Ramsey]

The. The goose is laying a lot of eggs. And you'd have to eat a lot of omelets in that 20 years. You know, I mean, that's what had to really bust some stuff up. That. That would be the thing. Congratulations, Jay. I'm very proud of you. Tom is in Louisville, Kentucky. Hey, Tom, welcome to the show.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Hi, Dave. It's an honor to speak to you. Thanks so much for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. How can I help?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, so my wife and I need help with a real estate decision. We've made some mistakes in the past when it comes to real estate and hoping not to make a mistake this time around. So I'm active duty military. We currently live in Kentucky. I actually have an upcoming PCs. We're going to be moving to New York this summer. And this will likely be my last move before retirement. So we're only going to be in New York for about five to six years at the most. So my main question is, we have a rental in San Antonio. We owe about 120. It's worth about 270. Our. We're trying to decide whether we should just continue to rent that house or sell it and use it as a down payment to buy a house in New York. But my concern with that is the fact that we're only going to be there for such a short amount of time. I'm not sure, you know, with the current market and the uncertainty, if that's a good decision or not.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, first we decide if we're going to buy in New York. If we're going to buy in New York, then yes, I would liquidate the San Antonio and put it as a down payment. And if you're selling and sell the house in Kentucky, if you own one there and put it as a down payment if you're going to buy. Now, if you're going to buy is answered by this. The community that you're moving into in New York, is it a military only community or is it a community that has some military in it?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yes, it's actually West Point, New York. So we have the option of living off post and just taking that bah. That monthly housing allowance and applying it towards the mortgage. Or we could live on post, in which case we would not receive that amount of money. It would essentially be like renting while we're there.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right. Okay. So if you're off post, are those homes only? Is most of the people living in those areas military? Because that's a small community, isn't it?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, it's a pretty small community, kind of smaller towns and villages surrounding West Point.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I'm thinking if you get ready to resell, you probably have a lot of competition because of the other people that they're moving out that are military. So you may not get great appreciation. Study the appreciation and study the speed of sale. If the appreciation is good and the speed of sale is good, then go ahead and buy. But if it's because there's a lot of competition, if it's slow to sell and slow to appreciate, then I would not buy.

[Sponsor/Guest Speaker]

Hey, guys, I've got big news. The Ramsey show is going on tour and this is your chance to be more than just a listener. You get to be part of the show. So hear questions asked live and experience the kind of momentum that only comes from being in the room. We'll be in Charlotte, Denver, Phoenix, and Anaheim with a limited number of seats in each city. So last fall, we completely sold out in 72 hours. So do not wait. Get your [e-mail] events or by clicking the link in the show notes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Our scripture of the day, Psalm 84:11 for the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk whose walk is blameless. Al Bernstein said, success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction. June is in Grand Rapids. Hey, June. How are you?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Good. How are y'? All?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than we deserve. What's up?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I am just. Colleen, my husband and I bought a business this year in January, and I am just wondering if it is time for me to quit my corporate job and strictly just work for the business only that we purchased.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's the business? What's the profit on the business?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It's going to be 4 to $500,000

[Dave Ramsey]

a year this year. We're tracking that already.

[Caller (various female callers)]

So we have profited 80,000 already for January and February together, and we have paid $40,000 on the note so far. So we're trying to pay it off. We have a loan, like a note through the owner.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's. How much is your note to the owner?

[Caller (various female callers)]

It is $780,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And what do you make? What do you make in corporate America?

[Caller (various female callers)]

75,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Do you. If you quit and go to work at the business, does that lower payroll at the business?

[Caller (various female callers)]

So I'd be making 45,000 because I'm currently making 45,000 at the business now. So I am working for both corporate worlds.

[Dave Ramsey]

What are you doing in the business?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I'm doing AP and ar.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. And have you got other people doing that as well?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Nope. It would just be me and my husband doing it together. So he currently works for the business and we have. Counting me, it would be six employees.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. But my point is you're not saving the business any money by going to work there, and you're not making the business any money by going to work there.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Correct?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

So it's a net loss of 75,000 to your household?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yes. Yep. So we.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why is it you're itching to do that?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Well, we got married in 2013, bought a house, paid that off in three and a half years, sold it after eight, bought a new house, paid that off in three years. So we're completely debt free except for the business loan.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right.

[Caller (various female callers)]

So we have a five and eight year old. So corporate business is just getting really, really stressful. I'm working 12, 13 hour days, not eating lunch, not taking breaks.

[George Campbell]

So are you wanting to work part time in the business and stay home with the kids? Essentially, yes. And that's worth the 75,000 reduction in household income?

[Caller (various female callers)]

I would, I would be making 45.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're making 45 now.

[Caller (various female callers)]

So I'm making 75 corporate.

[Dave Ramsey]

But you're making 45 out of the business now.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So the net loss is 75,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, well, I mean you're going to be making the same money at the business and your husband's and the profit is all your, both of yours and you're plowing most of the profit into debt reduction. So you can clear this debt in two or three years. Right, right.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's your idea. And

[Caller (various female callers)]

we have 15,000 in a money market account and we have 45,000 in our savings.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good, good. Okay.

[Caller (various female callers)]

And 250 in retirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Yeah. I wouldn't put anything else in retirement until you got this debt cleared. But it's a baby step six debt and you know, so you're in the right place. I, I, you know, as long as you guys are able to keep your lifestyle really, really low and reduce that 700,000 very, very quickly. I don't quite think you can do it in two years, but I think you could do it in three.

[George Campbell]

That's like 260 a year toward the debt. A little over 20 grand a month would clear this.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah, that was our plan is try and pay it off in three years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I like that.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Household monthly expenses about 3200amonth.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And it changes the equation. Knock a year off if you kept working.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

You could do it in two years if you kept working. And so your trade off is one year of you're going to be in debt one year longer because you come home.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's your true, that's the, that you put that in one hand and put home in the other hand and there you go. That's your balancing act. Right. That's the scales of justice, so to speak. Right, right. What tips the scales here? I think I'm coming home because I think you're burn out on the corporate crap.

[Caller (various female callers)]

I am, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I think you've got the margin in the. Is this business really, really stable, very predictable environment?

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yes. Yep. My husband's were working there for 15 years and the gentleman who sold it was selling it to us is giving us a heck of a Deal on it for as much profit as it brings in every year, I believe.

[Dave Ramsey]

But the. The field that the. I mean, what. I didn't ask what the business does, but whatever the business does is a. Is a predictable environment for the coming three years.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Yep. It's an electric motor shop. So do operations for factory motors that go down, you know, refrigeration motors that go down, air, you know, AC units that go down. Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yep. Okay. All right. Very cool. Yep. I would quit.

[Caller (various female callers)]

Okay.

[George Campbell]

That was easy.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, it wasn't easy, but thanks for talking it through with us. It's interesting listening to all the different variables that go into that decision and to try to say, okay, what would I do? And, you know, that that's. That's where we are to, you know, the quality of life. When you've got that kind of income coming in, the quality of life starts to be a big decision. And her being able to not work 12 hours a day and not put up with things, I mean, she. They're using her up for 75 grand. I mean, they're just. That's just crazy.

[George Campbell]

Well, it's a small portion of their now household income, so it's an easier decision.

[Dave Ramsey]

Chase is in Kansas City. Hi, Chase. How are you doing?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Great. Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller (various male callers)]

First off, I'm so. I'm 20 years old. I own an acre, about like 600 a week. I got about 800 to my name. I don't have a whole lot going on right now, but my dad killed himself when I was 16, and I was kind of battling my stepmom to get his pickup truck that he had, so it was about the only thing he had to his name. I didn't get any inheritance or nothing from him, but now I've got this pickup that I put a couple grand into to get running, and Kelly Blue Book says It's worth about 30 grand. And I don't know if I should get rid of it or keep it.

[Dave Ramsey]

You should keep it.

[Caller (various male callers)]

You think?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yep.

[Caller (various male callers)]

No questions asked?

[Dave Ramsey]

Nope.

[Caller (various male callers)]

You seem very confident.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yep.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

And it's just simply this. There's only one of those. And this is a monumental event in the landscape of your life. You were 16 years old and your father committed suicide. That's a defining episode, and you can use it to define it for good and say, I'm going to address whatever he didn't address in my life so that I go on and. And I'm victorious moving forward. Forward. And I'm gonna go be somebody. But if you, there's only one of these trucks and so you don't have 30000 in it. You don't have 30000 in dead on it, right?

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, no, I mean I'm down about two grand on it, but yeah, like I said, I only have about 800 to my name right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

But that's, that's a different set of issues. Okay. Selling the truck does not fix your career problem.

[Caller (various male callers)]

That's.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you need to go get a career, get some work, start working like a crazy man working 40, 80 hours a week and start getting some money coming in. So you don't have to ask the question about selling this truck, but this truck is an emotional item and if you're the 30 year old version of you is going to look back at the 20 year old Chase and go, I wish you hadn't sold that truck.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, I think you're right. Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's why I decided that so quickly. And so. But having said that, you also have got to get these other parts of your life together really quick. And so I mean like by the end of the week I want you to have six jobs. I want you working like a crazy man where you're just. All you do is work and stack cash. And then when you get a little bit of wiggle room, you can start to pick a better job and pick a career field. Once you get up off of survival, you're not even surviving hardly right now.

[Caller (various male callers)]

Yeah, I mean what are you doing for work? I work at a. It's like a building material delivery company. I'm making about 20 an hour living on my own. So I mean I'm.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you hang on.

[George Campbell]

I'm going to send you Ken Coleman's Get Clear Assessment and his book Find the Work youk're Wired to Do. I think you just need some, some soul searching right now and get that purpose.

[Dave Ramsey]

Chase, if you're not gonna go work 60 to 80 hours a week and work six jobs starting right now, you do need to sell the truck. But I would rather see you as your older brother say keep the truck because when you're 30, I think you'll be glad you have it. That puts us out of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of peace, Christ Jesus.