Finance Hacks Won’t Save You, Habits Will

Summary

The Ramsey Show – "Finance Hacks Won’t Save You, Habits Will"

Date: March 12, 2026
Host: Dave Ramsey
Co-Host: George Campbell
Podcast Theme:
The focus of this episode is to challenge the notion that quick "finance hacks" are the solution to wealth-building, emphasizing instead that lasting financial change comes through deliberate habit-building and a fundamental shift in behavior and mindset. Dave and George answer live questions, offering blunt, practical, and sometimes tough-love advice to callers facing a variety of money challenges—from debt, divorce, and inheritance to relationship issues tied to financial habits.

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Main Discussion Themes

• Why "finance hacks" and shortcuts rarely work long-term
• The foundational need for good financial habits and behavioral change
• Real listener stories: debt traps, relationship struggles, tempting shortcuts, and turning points
• Clear, actionable advice rooted in the "Ramsey baby steps"
• The emotional and psychological side of personal finance

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Key Segments and Insights

1. Feeling Financially Trapped in Marriage (Sarah, Green Bay, WI)

[00:44 – 08:21]

• Caller: Sarah feels financially unable to leave an abusive marriage due to joint debts and a young daughter.
• Advice Highlights:
  • Divorce turns a marriage into a business transaction—think in terms of assets, liabilities, and income.
  • Gather information with an attorney: "Information always relieves anxiety. The unknown creates more anxiety than a known bad thing." (Dave, 03:23)
  • You're not as trapped as it feels; selling assets and splitting debt is usually possible, especially with some equity in the house.
  • Don't take on “his” debts, especially when they relate to his “toys” (camper, truck, four wheeler).
  • Emotional clarity comes with knowledge: "You're not trapped unless you choose to be trapped." (Dave, 06:32)
  • Both Dave and George affirm: Staying in abuse is a worse trap than facing financial transitions.

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2. Quick Fixes vs. Root Change (Mike, Baltimore, MD)

[12:09 – 18:46]

• Caller: Mike wonders if he should use Roth IRA principal to pay off debts (HELOC, 401k loan, car, credit cards).
• Dave's Blunt Response:
  • "It's a stupid butt idea. Don't do it." (13:35)
  • Short-term relief destroys long-term wealth due to lost tax-free growth.
  • "You're looking for a quick fix, you're looking for a shortcut. And that is not a good plan." (15:35)
  • Real problem: disorganization, overspending, not knowing numbers—calling out the behavior, not the debt itself.
• George:
  • If you can’t live on $200k take-home pay, “I don't think we can help." (16:19)
• Big Principle: Financial shortcuts without addressing habits and systems always lead back to the same trouble. Debt is a symptom, not the root cause.

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3. Money & Relationships—Values Misalignment (Oscar, Ottawa)

[21:23 – 30:22]

• Caller: Feels tension over his girlfriend's cultural expectation that he pay for everything.
• Advice:
  • Look for mutual serving in relationships, not one-sided "taking."
  • Red flag is not just about her "being a princess" but about fundamental misalignment in money values.
  • "If you can’t get aligned on the handling of money and the value of money in this relationship, that is a red flag for any relationship.” (Dave, 28:41)
  • Set boundaries, have open discussions, and watch for entitlement or spending dependency.

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4. Don’t Rely on Inheritance—Build It Yourself (Paul, San Francisco)

[33:07 – 39:23]

• Caller: Young high earner, expects a massive inheritance in 20+ years, wonders if he should skip or scale back 401(k)/investments.
• Advice:
  • "Absolutely not. I would pretend like that's not coming and live my life properly and with discipline and with dignity." (Dave, 36:04)
  • Who you become in the process of building wealth matters more than the math.
  • Maturity = the ability to delay gratification.
  • You want to be the kind of person who can handle wealth—don't rely on “trust fund baby” status or let those “muscles atrophy.”

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5. How to Manage a Sudden Windfall Responsibly (Meredith, Greenville, SC)

[54:03 – 62:38]

• Caller: About to receive a $2.6 million lawsuit payout, never had money before, wants to avoid mistakes.
• Step-by-Step Counsel:
  1. Surround yourself with advisors who have "the heart of a teacher," not a boss.
  2. Don’t invest in anything you don’t understand, no matter what.
  3. Go slower than you think you should—park money in something ultra-safe while you learn.
  • "It’s okay to park this money in something super boring while you spend some time learning. Does that feel right to your spirit?" (Dave, 59:45)
  • Use windfall to eliminate any debt, buy a home with cash, keep living on income, invest the rest. Possibility: $60-80 million in 30 years if done right.
  • Quotes:
    • “The way money gets away from people is they violate those three things.” (Dave, 62:38)

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6. Repairing Credit After Identity Theft by Family (Wyatt, Fargo, ND)

[75:28 – 81:26]

• Caller: Mother committed identity theft, wrecked his credit as a child.
• Dave's Advice:
  • Don’t repair your credit just to borrow again—credit score is a measure of “how much you love debt.”
  • Remove fraudulent activity via identity theft reports—even require police involvement.
  • "You were abused as a child. Your mother's a financial abuser." (Dave, 79:20)
  • Not having a credit score is the goal—wealth, not more debt, should be the focus.

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7. Debt Isn’t the Real Problem—Habits Are

Throughout the Show (esp. 18:46 – 19:58, 66:04 – 67:56)

• Debt consolidation and windfalls (inheritance, windfalls, 401(k) withdrawals) don’t work if you haven’t changed your habits.
• "When you just address the symptom, expect the problem to stay there and the symptom will grow back. It’s that simple. If you’re going to get dandelions out of your yard, you can’t just cut them with a lawnmower. You have to dig them out by the freaking root or they will grow back." (Dave, 19:00)

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8. Habits in Action—Debt-Free Scream (Tim & Shannon, Chicagoland, IL)

[105:12 – 114:01]

• Tim & Shannon, both under 40, paid off over $103k (including their house) in 57 months.
• They did it through budgeting, Baby Steps, eliminating lifestyle inflation, and refusing to compromise on the plan—even while paying for infertility treatments.
• Now leading their whole village/department in financial wellness.
• Advice: “Sticking to the budget is the biggest thing, hands down.” (Shannon, 110:44)
• “Money was never the goal. Money is the tool to get to the goal.” (Tim, 113:21)
• “It’s just easier than being broke and stressed. Amen.” (Dave, 112:38)

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Additional Notable Moments & Quotes

Real Talk on Gambling, Addiction, and Money Destruction

[44:30 – 53:04, 95:23 – 100:25]

• Young marketers discuss blowing a $1.9M net worth on gambling, drugs, and lifestyle inflation.
  • “The money was nice, but it wasn’t necessarily my fulfillment.” (Jacob, 47:24)
  • “Plug into a good local church… let them talk to you about how to reform what a man really is inside you.” (Dave, 52:37)
• Spousal gambling hidden as “secret debt”—the real pain is not the money, but betrayal and broken trust.
  • "He has deceived his wife at a very deep level... The only way this goes forward in a positive way... is that he addresses the addiction openly." (Dave, 97:50)

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The Importance of Clarity & Communication in Relationships

• Whether it’s family, spouses, or business partners, Dave’s advice constantly returns to over-communication, transparency, and making decisions with knowledge, not emotion.
• If you can’t agree on money or values, “you might not be a match.”

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Tiny Life Decisions—Used Playsets to Fancy Cars

• Budget-friendly solutions beat lifestyle inflation at every turn—shop used, avoid loans, don’t try to rationalize big purchases.
• “Destroy the least amount of money possible to get the job done.” (Dave, 42:28)

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Habits Trump Hacks—Summing Up

• Every call, from paying off cars to handling millions, gets back to simple disciplines:
  • Budget monthly
  • Live on less than you make
  • Pay cash when possible
  • Don’t steal from your future for today’s convenience
  • Don’t expect money to change who you are—build good character first

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:44] — Financially Trapped & Divorce Solutions
• [12:09] — Roth IRA Principal for Debt?
• [18:46] — Debt Comes from Habits, Not Circumstance
• [21:23] — Relationship Red Flags Over Money
• [33:07] — Inheritance and Building Your Own Wealth
• [54:03] — Responsible Windfall Management
• [75:28] — Identity Theft by a Parent & Repairing Credit
• [105:12] — Debt-Free Scream: Real Habits, Real Results
• [44:30] / [95:23] — Addictive Behaviors and Money Destruction

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Most Memorable Quotes

• "You're not trapped unless you choose to be trapped." – Dave Ramsey [06:32]
• "It's a stupid butt idea. Don't do it." – Dave, on cashing out Roth IRA for debt [13:35]
• "Debt is the symptom, it's not the problem." – Dave Ramsey [18:46]
• "If you can’t get aligned on the handling of money and the value of money in this relationship, that is a red flag." – Dave [28:41]
• "Who you become is more important than what you end up with mathematically." – Dave Ramsey [38:15]
• "Do not put money in something unless you understand it." – Dave Ramsey [57:50]
• “If you can't pay cash for it, you can’t buy it for the rest of your life.” – Dave Ramsey [67:29]
• “It is hard. It’s just easier than being broke and stressed. Amen.” – Dave Ramsey [112:38]
• “Money is the tool to get to the goal.” – Tim [113:21]

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Tone and Style

• Unflinchingly direct, practical, full of tough love and encouragement
• Real audience stories showcase the battle between short-term convenience and long-term security
• Undercurrent of hope—freedom and wealth are possible when you replace “hacks” with real habits

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Summary Takeaway:
There are no shortcuts to financial peace. Wealth is built on habits, discipline, sacrifice, and maturity—not on hacks, tricks, or quick fixes. The secret sauce is you, your habits, and your willingness to change.

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. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, co host of Smart Money Happy hour. Number one best selling author is my co host. Today I'm Dave Rams. Open phones at 888, 825-5225. Sarah is in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Hi Sarah, how are you?

[Caller]

Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller]

So I'm considering leaving my husband, but I feel like I'm financially trapped with like the amount of debt that we have. I just feel like I, I'm not able to leave with my daughter.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. What happened to your marriage, hon?

[Caller]

We've been married for about 13 years and it's just been a lot of verbal abuse. And over the last five years since we've had our daughter, I just kind of started realizing that it's not something I want her to be in and grow seeing that type of treatment. So I just am at this point where I'm, you know, trying to look at my options right now. And you know, we've done couple therapy and it's just doesn't seem like it's kind of clicking with him. I just kind of feel like I'm at my wit's end with it.

[Dave Ramsey]

So I'm sorry. And how many kids you got?

[Caller]

We have one.

[Dave Ramsey]

What age?

[Caller]

She is four.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Well, you know, obviously we're going to be a proponent for anybody to do anything they can to try to stay together, but not in an abusive situation without some traction on that. So I certainly understand where you are. A friend of mine that does divorce recovery counseling has always told me for the last 30 years that divorce turns a marriage into a business transaction. So this is now about incomes and assets and liabilities. So what is your income?

[Caller]

So my income is approximately 56,000 a year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Can you live on that as a single person? Yes.

[Caller]

In our area?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes. Yes, you can. Okay. And you said there's debt that makes you feel like you're trapped. How much debt do you guys have?

[Caller]

So besides our house, my husband has a camper loan, his truck loan, and a four wheeler loan. And then we have about, I think 12,000 in credit card debt. And I have 27,000 in student loan debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller]

All right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And what's, what's the home worth in our area?

[Caller]

Homes that are equivalent to ours are going about 35,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

$35,000.

[Caller]

I'm sorry, 235,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. I feel better now. Okay. I thought you were in the camper for a minute. Okay. And. Okay, 235. And what do you owe on it?

[Caller]

We owe 179,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So there's a little bit of equity there. Okay. I don't know how divorce works in Wisconsin necessarily, but obviously your next step is to gather information. Information always relieves anxiety. The unknown, it creates more anxiety than a known bad thing. If we got bad news and it's clear that's less anxiety than unknown, than this just a boogeyman in the closet thing. So you need to sit down with an attorney and find out exactly how this is probably going to go down. I mean, a good divorce attorney can tell you in 30 minutes this is probably how this is going to go down. And it could sound like he gets all of the debt with his camper truck and four wheeler and they sell the house. And the house equity clears up the debt that is in the. On the credit cards and maybe on the student loan and maybe some of his debt as well, because you'll probably get half the equity each in most cases. So either one of you have a big retirement plan?

[Caller]

I have one through my employer. It's a state pension fund.

[Dave Ramsey]

But Nobody has a 401k.

[Caller]

I believe my husband has a 401k, but he doesn't have much in there right now.

[George Campbell]

Okay, what does he make?

[Caller]

He makes about the same as I do.

[George Campbell]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And then there's child support, and then there's alimony. And those are the things, those are the variables that if I were you, I would want to learn about those things so that you know, you know what you're facing and you're probably not as trapped as you think you are. I mean, you go get a one bedroom apartment or a two bedroom apartment, sell the house, pay off all the debts, and start over as a single lady making 56. Yeah, that's not, that's not, that's not really. Trapped.

[Caller]

Yeah, I felt like I was trapped though, just because I. I mean, I still care about him and I don't want him to be stuck, but at the same time, I'm looking at it as like, financially we got into the situation and I feel like I'm responsible to pay off like the debts and everything.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't know why all of those are his toys. Like I said, a divorce turns a marriage into a business transaction. If you want to get all romantic and Start paying stuff you don't owe. That's a different discussion. If you're going to do all that, you probably need to go back to marriage counselor and try to save the marriage. But, you know, once the decision is made and the switch is flipped, it's every man for himself, you know, and it's not mean. I don't. I'm not trying to destroy him in this situation, but he could sell the four wheeler, the camper in the truck, and be out of debt, too. Hello?

[Caller]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so you both are going to

[George Campbell]

be okay on the other side.

[Dave Ramsey]

Nobody's trapped here except by decisions to hold on to a bunch of crap you can't afford. That's the only trapping there is.

[George Campbell]

And staying in an abusive relationship. Yeah, that's a worst trap to me. And so I think those next steps will help you get some clarity on this.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And I also might change the tone of the therapy sessions. Like if you go sit down with an attorney and you know exactly how good a position you're actually in, then you're coming at this from a little bit more strength and you're going, look, I really want this to work, but all of a sudden your body language changes, your voice tone changes because of confidence, because you know you're going to be okay instead of trapped. Because, Sarah, what you've told me, you're not trapped unless you choose to be trapped. But you can choose that if you want, but you're not. And. But, you know, a much better outcome is for him to grow up and stop the negative behavior and you guys to sell off all the garbage and get your dad gum life back with no debt and just quit buying everything in sight but campers and four wheelers and toys and trucks. And this just sounds like boy out of control, little boy out of control, buying crap. And so, I mean, I don't run into a lot of ladies that have bought a camper and a four wheeler.

[George Campbell]

That's a.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's a. Occasionally I do, but generally that would be the guy.

[George Campbell]

They went along with it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And the pickup to pull the truck, to pull the camper with, that's the other thing. So, yeah, and occasionally I run into some lady and the whole thing was her idea, but usually she's going to make her mistakes in other places. Places. So, you know, but, you know, like she said, she was participating in the decisions, so she's willing to take responsibility for her part.

[George Campbell]

She owned up for that. She was an accomplice to some of these bad decisions. Yeah, but I like what you said there, that you need to know the facts because those unknowns can be scarier and just you're overwhelmed by everything around you. And you get the facts and you go, okay, yeah, we could sell that. Yeah, you know what? That will be split or that won't be in my name. And then you know how to move forward.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, it's interesting. Like cortisol release, stress drug release is way lower on bad news. That's clear. Than on ambivant ambivalent. Not knowing the unknown, it creates a whole lot more stress.

[George Campbell]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Well, we wish we could get to every call and every question here on the show. If you have a money question and you want an answer for your situation, head over to our website and use our Ask Ramsey feature. Ask Ramsey is our free AI tool that's built and trained on proven Randy Ramsey principles. So how. If you don't know how AI works, AI is only as good as the data that is entered into it to cause it to think. And so what we did is we took thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of this show. All of my books, all of our books, the personalities books, all of the financial Peace University lessons, and emptied them into a database in every article that. In every article that we've written, and it's all in there. And so AI forms an answer based on all of that, which means that the answer that this Ask Ramsey will give you is better than you will get here on the show.

[George Campbell]

We'll have a brain farter too. But that thing can't.

[Dave Ramsey]

It can't. It doesn't know how. It's really, really popular.

[George Campbell]

It doesn't have a brain.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's working. The only thing I want him to add a little bit more sass in there.

[George Campbell]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

The snark fact could be increased sarcasm and sassiness.

[George Campbell]

Maybe we can add that as a dial. You can dial up how much snark you want.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, yeah, More or less snark.

[George Campbell]

How direct. How Dave do you want this to be versus Rachel? You know?

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, now that got personal spectrum. That just got personal fast.

[George Campbell]

She's more friendly. I think America can agree on that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, hey.

[George Campbell]

See what I mean?

[Dave Ramsey]

We're gonna prove it right now. All right?

[George Campbell]

Check it out for yourself.

[Dave Ramsey]

Ramsey Ask RamseyAmseySolutions.com Go to the website RamseySolutions.com Ask. Ramsey's completely free. You'll get your question answered in some version of George or Rachel or Dave or whatever. It's way nicer than me. I will say that that's true for now. Until I get through with it. I'm not done with it. Mike's in Baltimore, Maryland. Hey Mike, what's up?

[Caller]

Hi, I'm calling, I'm wondering if you have recommend or if you would recommend cashing out principal in a Roth IRA to pay off debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

Not unless you're bankrupt.

[Caller]

Not unless bankrupt. Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because it's gonna, it's gonna cost you millions and millions and millions of dollars in tax free growth later because you didn't address the real issue. So how much debt have you got? What's the problem?

[Caller]

We have about. Well, we bought a new house last summer and used. We have a HELOC from that at about 50k and we have a retirement loan at about 28k to the 401k. I'm trying to take out the 401k retirement loan first. So we've been paying that down probably like 4k a month, I'd say.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, wait a minute. So you got a 50,000 and a 24,000. What other debt have you got?

[Caller]

We've got a car loan of that 13k. We've got some credit card debt of maybe, I don't know, 15K. And then we've got savings.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much savings do you have?

[Caller]

Emergency savings?

[Dave Ramsey]

We have.

[Caller]

Well, we don't have full emergency, but we have about 11k in emergency or 11k in savings currently.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good.

[Caller]

And then our Roth principal though is the Question is really about the Roth principal.

[Dave Ramsey]

I understand. Understand the question. I'm still telling you. No, I completely understand the question. It's a stupid butt idea. Don't do it. What's your household income?

[Caller]

We make about 83. Or, sorry, 8,300 of that every two weeks.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Are y' all 27? No.

[Caller]

No, we're both about 40.

[Dave Ramsey]

40. Okay. Hmm, missed that one. All right, so, Mike, in doing what we do here, helping people walk out of debt and become wealthy, what is the shortest distance between where you are now and wealth? It is to become debt free, not by destroying your nest egg. That's gonna make you wealthy later. And so that's why I keep coming back to, no, I'm not doing that. So in listening to you, you're fairly new to our information. And so what we teach is a process that's very detailed and very intense and dialed in, like eyes wide open. So you start with $1,000 in savings, only not counting your retirement. You temporarily stop all retirement, and then you go to what we call baby step two. And you list your debts, smallest to largest, and you pay off everything but the house, in that order with great focused intensity. Anything you can do to increase income and reduce debt as fast possible. Because the sooner you've gotten rid of this 110,000, the sooner you now have flex called. You now have your income to create the which is your largest wealth building tool. And right now, you've given it all away to all these stupid things you bought that you couldn't afford.

[Caller]

So one other question I have is we have, you know, pre tax retirement, and that's, I would say close to 900,000 at this point, but that's what I'm feeling like the Roth. I mean, I appreciate the tax free growth for sure.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, Mike.

[Caller]

Tempting to just debt with it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, Mike, the guy in your mirror is freaking lazy and disorganized with his money. That's you. That's not gonna be fixed when you take that money out of that Roth and all of his freaking debt's gonna grow back in five years. Because you've never addressed the fact that you all have overspent. You're looking for a quick fix, you're looking for a shortcut. And that is not a good plan. I would stop adding to your retirement. And you've got to address the misbehavior. You don't even know your numbers. Oh, sort of, kind of. Maybe I think is all the language around your numbers. You don't even know where you are. You're just wandering along buying crap. And you guys are going to have to stop that whether you cash out your 401k or not.

[George Campbell]

If you can't afford to live off of what you told us, $200,000 in take home pay, I don't think we can help.

[Dave Ramsey]

But it was 80.

[George Campbell]

He said 8,300 every two weeks is what I heard. So I'm going, dude, you guys make too much to be fooling around with all this debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, that's even worse.

[George Campbell]

And so if those numbers are true, you're right. The behavior is not going to change. You're going to keep robbing that 401k every chance you can get because you guys are living a lifestyle you can't afford.

[Dave Ramsey]

So my hope is to offend you enough to make you look at this. I love you enough. I want you to get mad at me. That's fine. I'm good with that. I want to piss you off just a little bit and make you grow up and sit down and go, I'm running this thing. This company called me incorporated very poorly. If One of my VPs sat down and used the language about their budget in one of our profit centers, the way you've discussed your home, I would fire his butt for being incompetent. Okay, you don't know. I think I got sort of kind of bull crap you need to know. Exactly. And you guys need to get focused. You make too much money to be this broke. But y' all have been intellectually lazy in how you've addressed your personal finances. And if you'll, if you'll roll up your sleeves and attack this and get, get some muscle tone to what you're doing, get some intensity to what you're doing. You can clean up this mess in about a year and a half and not have to mess up everything. But if you don't, you're gonna make a bigger mess later because there's no in between in this discussion. There's not a mediocre landscape. Cause you guys have consistently added to the problem. And until you stop adding to the problem and being people that do that, you're gonna create more messes. That's what it comes down to, folks out there in the listening land. This is why debt consolidation doesn't work too. And this is why when you get an inheritance from your grandmother and you clean up everything and four years later, you're right back in the same mess. Because your habits haven't changed, your household processes haven't changed, you've got to address what is wrong with our systems and our hearts and our relationship that's caused us to get to that. We can run up these debts with this kind of money, but we feel

[George Campbell]

better because the junk drawer, we cleaned it up by putting it all in one bucket. And so we hey, look at that. It looks better and feels better. Except now you still got the same mountain to face and you can't debt snowball it. So debt consolidation is scary because it makes you think you solved the problem.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And you didn't change the habits. And so 88% of the time someone takes out a debt consolidation loan, they're back in debt within five years, nine out of 10 times. Because the debt is not the problem. It's the symptom of, of intellectual laziness, immaturity, no good systems, bad discussions with or no discussions with my spouse to where we're on the same page. Debt is the symptom, it's not the problem. And so when you just address the symptom, expect the problem to stay there and the symptom will grow back. It's that simple. If you're going to get dandelions out of your yard, you can't just cut them with a lawnmower. You have to dig them out by the freaking root or they will grow back.

[Caller]

Foreign.

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[Dave Ramsey]

Oscar is in Ottawa. Hi Oscar, how are you?

[Caller]

Hi, how are you? Thank you for asking.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller]

Well, long story short, I've been dating a Polish girl for the past five months. Ish. And everything has been Going well, except for a few small details that are mostly related to finances. Like, since day one, I've been paying for insurance, like going out, like, activities, snacks and everything. And she directly mentioned during our conversations that this is a part of her culture, even though she was born in Canada. And me, I'm Iranian. I was born in Iran, raised there, and I've been here, like, for a couple of years. And I know how Western culture functions, and I would like to kind of make sense of it. I'm also traditional, sort of, but at the same time, I don't see the point of man paying for everything, especially in this economy. And my question is, what is your suggestion? What should I do? Is it like a big red flag, or is it just something that we can kind of figure it out together? Hmm.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's an interesting question. So the marriages that I'm aware of, that are high quality, and when we're dating, we're courting, to use an old term, an old word, and we're thinking about that leading toward marriage. Okay, so that's why you would ask if this is a red flag or not. Do I want to get involved with this person? Right. And so the marriages that I know that are super, that I consider some of the best marriages on the planet that I've been personal witness to are where each of the people involved make the relationship about how much they can serve the other person. Okay, how good can I be to you? So you. How good can I be to her? Her. How good can she be to you? Instead of, what am I getting out of this? In other words, I'm adding value to the relationship instead of taking value if you're a taker rather than a giver kind of a thing. And so I might look at this through that lens and say, yes, the cultural implication is very real. The economic. In this economy, you're always going to be able to say, in this economy, through the rest of your entire life, you're going to be able to say that from now on, there's always this economy. There's never going to be one that they're just raining money on you and make stupidity. Okay, there's no economy that does that. And so there's no this economy. But. But, you know, so how much do I love this person to the point that I want to serve them and give my life away for them would lead you to not ask this question even. Okay, does that make sense?

[Caller]

I mean, that makes sense.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're kind of worried about. You're kind of worried about if there's, you know, if this is all.

[George Campbell]

You feel like you're being taken advantage.

[Dave Ramsey]

If I'm getting, if I'm getting my part of this, yeah.

[George Campbell]

Are you sensing that from her? That there's a lot of entitlement and expectation?

[Caller]

It's not, I don't, I wouldn't say it's about expectations. Like, she wouldn't like necessarily like force me. Okay, let's go out. Let's go eat outside. Or let's just.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. She a money hungry gold digger.

[Caller]

I would, I would say the first

[George Campbell]

one, she's money hungry.

[Caller]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Let me put it in a cultural setting that I can understand and explain and see if it extrapolates to your situation. I grew up in the old South. I'm an old southern redneck. In our world, 100%, the guy pays for everything, period.

[George Campbell]

Southern gentleman, we call it.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's called chivalry in our world, honor. Okay, but that is a cultural thing, I'll admit that. Okay. That's not necessarily true in every, in every part around the world, from Iran to Polish to Poland to Canada. Okay. And some mix of in between. So. But that's the world I grew up in. Now in my world, what I would be. Look, what I looked for is I don't want to because I'm willing to pay for everything. And that's an act of chivalry. The last thing I want is a high maintenance princess that's entitled, that's cray cray, and I'm going to avoid that woman like the plague.

[Caller]

Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

So one guy said, you know, if you marry a woman that likes spending money, you better enjoy working a lot, you know. And so no, I'm not, I'm not getting, I'm not doing that just because my, I'm going to an action out of my cultural upbringing. I'm going to pay for everything. Doesn't mean I'm going to be taken advantage of.

[George Campbell]

Is she ordering the fanciest wine on the menu on the first date? Filet mignon?

[Caller]

No, that's not the, that's not like, that's not what's happening. But let's say in a couple of months I was planning to go on a tributar to Europe. And I was just like, we're talking about everything. We set the destination, like which cities and blah, blah, blah. At the end, in the end I was like, okay, so let's like talk finance and see who pays what. And she was like, in my culture, usually man pays the ticket at the hotel. And me, I Can be taking care of like food, which when I look at it like ticket and hotel, it's going to be like 90, 85 to 90% of the whole expense. And the food is like, you know,

[Dave Ramsey]

I might go ahead and take this a step further then and say, okay, what if we were married? How does this work?

[Caller]

Listen, I would love to pay for everything.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, I'm saying I would ask her that. And if she still expects to be coddled, then you've got a princess on your hand, regardless of the cultural issue. A high maintenance princess. But that's not what it sounds like. It sounds like that, you know, you just gotta decide how much of this you're gonna pay for. And I don't know whether that's an old guy thing, a southern thing. I don't know. George, you're a Boston guy. Yeah. Paying for it. Did you pay for all your dates?

[George Campbell]

I think it was a little different in the north.

[Dave Ramsey]

Did you split dates? You went Dutch?

[George Campbell]

You know, I didn't get a lot of dates back in my day, Dave, but when I did, when I did, I happily paid. I will say that

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm just so happy to be here.

[George Campbell]

Exactly.

[Tim]

So exciting.

[George Campbell]

I don't want to mess this up. But to his point, he's going, well, I'm planning a trip to Europe. Well, maybe let's not plan a trip to Europe. If you're worried about the finances and then bring it up like your idea. And then she's like, wow, he's taking me to Europe. And now you're going, well, it's going to cost you two grand. So I think let's set up the boundaries earlier on and go on less fancy dates and say, hey, you want to take a walk in the park? And if she goes, no, I'd rather go out. Well, that's a sign, to Dave's point, that there is some entitlement there and that she is just wanting to just spend, spend, spend. And I don't know if she's taking advantage of you or not, but I do think it's a red flag to bring up in the relationship before you go out.

[Dave Ramsey]

The red flag is not as much about her character or your character. I'm suddenly certainly occurring to me as it is that you guys might not be a match.

[George Campbell]

The values are different.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. If you can't get aligned on the handling of money and the value of money in this relationship, that is a red flag for any relationship. If you can't be in agreement on how we're going to handle money in the future together. We can't be in agreement about how we're going to handle crazy in laws. We can't be in agreement about religion and we can't be in agreement about kids, how many to have and whether they're going to run the house or whether we're going to run the house. Then, then these are the things that tear a marriage apart. And the high quality marriages get aligned on those four things. And so you're not aligned on that. And the fact that you're not aligned as the red flag. That's a big red flag. It just took me a minute to get there. I'm trying to wander around in the cultural bull crap and figure out what's going on here. It's beyond culture or whether or not we got a princess on, on the Line. But I don't know that. I don't hear that in his description of her. I don't hear that about her.

[George Campbell]

But could be he might need to find a penny pinching gal who loves going to the thrift store. That might be your type.

[Dave Ramsey]

How many hours a day they spend on Instagram?

[George Campbell]

You know, because that would be an interesting study. Spending habits versus.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, we do know that screen time, the, the number, the number of hours on Instagram is directly attributed to amount of spending. 100%.

[George Campbell]

Did Rachel Cruz tell you that? Personal experience.

[Dave Ramsey]

There's no, there's data on that. That's, that's actually real. But I'm just talking about if you're, you know, trying to find happiness in image and happiness in, you know, where we go, what we do, what we eat, then you're, you're gonna be hungry your whole life.

[George Campbell]

If you can't just be happy being at home and bored, then you got a problem. It always has to include spending money.

[Dave Ramsey]

Exactly. And that, that. But if you guys cannot work through this and you get comfortable and she gets comfortable, the fact that you're not aligned, Oscar, is, is the red flag.

[George Campbell]

Dave. We got a lot of calls on this show where life happens. One day someone's healthy, they're working, providing for their family, and then a curveball hits.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, we hear it all the time. A car accident, a cancer diagnosis, a heart attack, and suddenly everything changes.

[George Campbell]

Yeah. And that's why you've always said that having term life insurance from Xander is essential because it protects your family if the worst happens.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that's right. You need 10 to 12 times your income in coverage. No gimmicks, no whole life junk, just straightforward term life protection. But there's another piece that people often overlook and that's long term disability insurance.

[George Campbell]

Yeah, it's important to understand the difference between them. Life insurance steps in when you die. Disability insurance steps in while you're alive but can't work. So it replaces a large part of your income so the bills still get paid while you get back on your feet.

[Dave Ramsey]

Now, if your employer gives you free disability insurance, great, take it. If it's discounted there at a better price, take it. But if not, Zander can help you find the right plan whether you're single or married. It's not optional. If you're going to be out of work for a while, then you need to make sure the money's still showing up.

[George Campbell]

And that's why Zander is our go to. They make it super simple to get the right coverage at the best price. No pressure, no upselling.

[Dave Ramsey]

I've trusted Jeff, Zander and Zander insurance for over 25 years and so has my family.

[George Campbell]

So don't wait. It's fast, it's easy, and it could make all the difference. Go to zander.com or call 800-356-4282.

[Dave Ramsey]

Protect yourself, protect your income, protect your family. Paul is in San Francisco. Hey, Paul, how are you?

[Caller]

Hey, thanks for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller]

So my question's about retirement planning and specifically retirement accounts. My 401k. I have a bit of a unique situation and I, you know, get a different opinion from everyone I ask about this. So I thought I might call the Ramsey show.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, you'll definitely get an opinion.

[Caller]

Yeah, I thought so. It's an interesting one. So I've done decently well for myself so far, but this is my first time having a 401k and I'm wondering if it makes sense for me to really use the 401k because I found out recently someone in my family had been very, very successful. And I knew that eventually I was expecting to probably inherit some of that. But I was able to see actually read through the trust recently and it's a lot, like a lot more than I expected. And I'm sort of wondering if I can find security in retirement from that potentially, does it make sense for me to not use that 401k and maybe have that money be more valuable to me now or use a roth and Roth IRA instead?

[Dave Ramsey]

A Roth IRA instead of a 401K?

[Caller]

Not necessarily. Instead, I have a Roth right now that it's pretty small, but I'm just saying instead of, okay, how old are you trying to retire? I'm 21.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, okay. And what do you make a year, sir?

[Caller]

About 330,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. What do you do? Good for you. Well done. Okay, and how much is in this trust that's supposed to come to you?

[Caller]

So there are a lot of different people? Not a lot, a handful. I think it's six different beneficiaries in the trust, but it's low to middle eight figures. So I would think that that's plenty to retire on, especially if that's going to grow over time.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm sorry. So you're going to receive $100 million. Your part.

[Caller]

I mean, if you're accounting for how it's going to grow, that might be what it's worth. Total. I mean, divide that by five, maybe.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, divided by five. Well, that's a lot different.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you might get. You're going to get somewhere between, you think, ten and twenty million dollars?

[Caller]

I would think so.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, and about. About how many years out do we think this might be?

[Caller]

Well, I mean, like we said, I'm pretty young. That's a fair way.

[Dave Ramsey]

How many years before this person dies and you get your $20 million? Dude,

[Caller]

roughly maybe 20.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. She'd be like 40 years old. Okay. All right. So, no, I would not put my life on hold and quit investing and quit building wealth on my own because I might get an inheritance 20 years from now. Absolutely not. I would pretend like that's not coming and live my life properly and with discipline and with dignity. When you save money, it says something about your character and your maturity. It's not a math thing. And so it's good for you to develop a life that's good for Paul. And if in addition to that, you get an extra $20 million, well, that puts you in a position to be outrageously generous someday and change your whole family tree in addition to the money that you make, because you could easily making $330,000 starting at 21. You should be a multimillionaire by the time this money comes. And if you don't, then you just pissed it away and you're an immature child.

[Caller]

Yeah, no, I live quite frugally, actually. I have no debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, I mean, there's a lot of options here. There's three things we can do with money. We can spend it and enjoy it, and you should. You can give it and be generous with it, and you should. And you can save and invest it, and you should. All three are good for your character. They're good for your psyche. They're good for your spiritual walk. All three are good for the math. All three cause you to have a high quality person and be a person that someone listening would want their daughter to date. A trust fund baby who put life on hold waiting on an inheritance 20 years from now is not someone I want my daughter to date. This is not a man with big broad shoulders.

[George Campbell]

Yeah, you gotta not let that muscle atrophy. And if you start flexing this now and you have that delayed gratification muscle going, the wealth building muscle, then you're going to treat the money differently. If I was handed $20 million that I didn't actually put away and earn, I'm going to treat it differently than money that I socked away for 20 years. And I think that delayed gratification lesson is worth learning.

[Dave Ramsey]

One definition of maturity is learning is the emotional ability to delay pleasure. That's one of the definitions. And so yeah, I want that for you. Not because of the money or the math or not because you're going to need money. You may or may not need money if this comes through. You're not going to need money, but I want it for who you become as a person, as a man, as a woman. If you're out there listening, who you become while you get out of debt, who you become while you sacrifice and work extra to clean up a mess, who you become in your marriage and in your relationship, what your relationship looks like, because we struggled together and we both put our shoulder to the wheel and pushed together. Who we become is more important than what we end up with mathematically. And so I don't want you to be atrophied and you know from lack of use of your, of lack of maturity that you grow into. So no, I would pretend like that money's not coming instead of using it as a demotivator.

[George Campbell]

And if you're so frugal, you're gonna have plenty of money left over to max out all retirement accounts and still have an incredible life.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you're a sharp and still enjoy. I mean, I'm not saying don't spend and enjoy money. We always say do that. And in your case, God, you're 20, 21, you make 300 grand. Gemini Cricket. I mean, that's amazing.

[George Campbell]

Enjoy some of it.

[Dave Ramsey]

So yeah, you need to, but you need to be giving some of it and saving some of it and enjoying some of it. Always be doing all three. Melissa is in Greenville, South Carolina. Hi, Melissa, how are you?

[Caller]

Hi, I'm good, thanks. Thank you guys so much for what you do. I listen every day and just feel like I learn. So, so much.

[Dave Ramsey]

Thanks. How can we help?

[Caller]

So my husband is in regional sales and he drives about 350 to 400 miles for work on his vehicle every week. Unfortunately, a company car. Yeah, unfortunately a company car isn't available to him. And up to this point we've just chosen to manage that by budgeting for a car payment on a new car in order to keep him in something reliable with minimal maintenance with that kind of mileage. But I'm curious, I know that that's not what you would suggest, but I'm curious just with our situation, how you might suggest we avoid that without draining our savings every few years to buy car in cash that isn't really going to last the mileage that he puts on it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, can we agree that the amount of miles he's putting on the car is absolutely destroying the car's value?

[Caller]

Yeah. Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I mean it's worth nothing when he's through with it. Okay, so we're taking something and making it worth nothing as a function of his job. And so if you're running a business, what you would do is you would buy the least expensive car that would, in quotes, get the job done. Now what gets the job done? What does that mean? Well, it means two things for me if I'm in his shoes. Number one, it means reliability. I have to be able to get to the job and get the, get the sale made. Right. Number two, it has to be reasonably comfortable because I live in a stupid thing.

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so we're not going to put him in a smart car or a Dodge Neon. Okay.

[Caller]

He's also 6 foot 3, so that might not be a great idea.

[Dave Ramsey]

I rest my case. You know, so yeah, it needs to be reasonably comfortable. But what people do in your old situation is instead of buying a $20,000 car that would do all of that and destroying 20,000, they buy a $60,000 car and destroy 60,000. And that's, that's not necessary to get the job done. So I would buy a $20,000 car with an every two year replacement plan and I would pay cash for it, period.

[Caller]

You should recommend. I guess my question.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're breaking up. You have to walk back to wherever you were.

[George Campbell]

Just know that every average, the average new car loses 60% of its value in the first five years and hers

[Dave Ramsey]

uses loses 60% in the first year.

[George Campbell]

Exactly. So you're better off buying a 6 year old car for 20 grand and driving that into the ground because Someone else already prepaid the depreciation. That's the lesson here.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, just whatever it is, you're destroying that amount of money. So destroy the least amount of money possible to get the job done. For me, that's a $20,000 car in this situation. And every two years I need $20,000. So I need to be setting aside that much every month to replace the stupid car all the time. But no, I would not be driving something fancy. You don't need eye candy when you're a road warrior. I love entrepreneurs. Don't forget, guys, I started my company on a card table myself. So I know what it's like to have people counting on you, your team, your family, not to mention your customers. And when you're the one signing the paychecks, you can't afford to fly blind. But I'll be honest. Early on, one thing that nearly sunk us was wasting time with spreadsheets that didn't add up because business units didn't talk to each other. I finally told my team, just fix it. And they did. We got netsuite. That was years ago and we've never looked back. See, netsuite isn't just for tech giants. It's built for growing businesses like yours. Over 43,000 businesses already run on NetSuite, including a lot that started just like you. And now with built in AI, NetSuite is helping them even more. It's one system connected to every part of your business. For real time insights, not guesswork. NetSuite AI flags inventory issues, cash flow risks, even supplier delays before they become problems. So you can trust the data, stop wasting time and make the right decisions faster. Take a free product tour [e-mail] Ramsey that's netsuite.com Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. In the Fair Winds Credit Union studio. George Camel Ramsey personality number one best selling author is. My co host Jacob is in Dallas. Hey Jacob, how are you?

[Caller]

Hey brother. Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure, man. What's up?

[Caller]

Yeah, so I think I'm in a bit of a unique situation. I had a net worth north of the seven figure mark, around I want to say probably a month ago or. Yeah, a month and a half ago. Made some poor decisions, led to a significant downturn in my net worth, downtown, everything. Trying to reframe my mindset and decide the next steps to go from here.

[Dave Ramsey]

That was pretty vague. So you had like a million dollars?

[Caller]

Yeah, I'd probably earn 1.9 million.

[Dave Ramsey]

1.9 million. Okay. And what'd you do that screwed it up.

[Caller]

Gambling. Lifestyle inflation.

[Dave Ramsey]

Lifestyle inflation?

[Caller]

Yeah, I mean, partying, doing the whole. The whole nine yards.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so what did you buy?

[Caller]

I mean, it was more so just going out, traveling, clubbing, bottles, cars, Airbnbs. It was poor decisions. And then a lot of gambling, I think.

[George Campbell]

What kind of gambling?

[Dave Ramsey]

So what drug, what kind of drugs were you doing?

[Caller]

I mean, it was more so just like cocaine. Yeah, the. The whole nine yards, just like.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, yeah. So have you been to rehab yet, huh?

[Caller]

I have not, no. I think I didn't have necessarily a drug problem. It was more so just.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, no, you have a drug problem. There's no question. It was all in. It was all in your story. I heard it. You definitely have a drug problem and you definitely have a gambling problem, and you definitely have a lot of problems. So what are we doing to fix the problems?

[Caller]

Well, I did start going to gambling or going to therapy for gambling specifically. That was like the main step. And then downsize a lot of my life, cut back on majority of my expenses. Just reframing, everything, going from there.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so what did you or do you do for a living?

[Caller]

I did a lot of marketing and crypto.

[George Campbell]

Okay, are you still doing that?

[Caller]

Yeah, I just recently stopped after this last hit. Lost kind of all motivation.

[George Campbell]

So do you have a full time job or are you just playing with crypto as kind of another form of gambling? And you've made some money?

[Caller]

Well, I mean, I said I was making around five to six figures every month, but a lot consistently for the last XYZ or xx. But I'm also in college, so this was all just a side time thing. That was working out really well, I guess.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are you, honey?

[Caller]

I'm 20.

[Dave Ramsey]

20?

[Caller]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. So you, you chased the rainbow and it didn't bring you happiness. Is that the moral of the story?

[Caller]

Yeah, I would say that. I mean, the money was. It was nice, but it wasn't necessarily my fulfillment.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, it led you. It led you to a life that was just out of control and not fun. It was supposed to be fun, but at the end of the day, it just looked like a stupid kid losing all his money and snorting cocaine. When you look back on it, that's got to be what you see.

[Caller]

Yeah, 100%. I don't condone any of the actions, nor do I think that it was the smartest decision at the time.

[Dave Ramsey]

So where I'm going is, is that I don't know what drove you to get to that point, but. Yeah, okay. So what would I tell my son if he was 20 years old and called me and was in the exact situation? It sounds like you need a complete reset of what you think life is about. And someone told you that it was about getting a lot of money quickly and easily and that you're smart and that you could do that and then you could go do anything you wanted to do. And so the good news is you got hedonism out of your system really early in your life. The bad news is it costs you a couple million dollars to do it. And so, you know, I would take you from Wolf of Wall street to a monk. I'd go the other end of the spectrum and just go, I'm just going to be a boring, calm, steady guy, which is the opposite of everything you have been. In order to reset your brain and reset your spirit, I'd plug into a good local church. And one of the things I had to assess, and I kind of smell it here, I'm not sure if I do. And you can correct me if you want to, I don't care. When I went broke in my 20s, one of the things I figured out was I wasn't as hot as I thought I was. It pretty much took my little ego and ground it under a boot because I'm pretty smart. And I was doing some pretty smart, high leverage, fun things. Nothing like you've done. But I mean, I had it going. And then when I hit the wall and the car just disintegrated and the NASCAR wrecked the engines up in the stands, right? I mean, this thing's just gone. One of the things I had to come to grips with is I wasn't as hot as I thought I was. And that helped me reset. And I settled way down into a more psychologically and spiritually healthy rhythm to reset my life. And I think that's what I want for you, because I like you.

[Caller]

Yeah, no, I think I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, yeah, during this whole Spanish version of this last hit, I think I became insanely depressed. I was definitely going through an episode. Like it was terrible. I mean, I was flying. I was spending 100k at the club. I'd fly back then I'd go gamble like 500,000 at a point. I was playing like multiple six figure hands. Like what I see is 1.9. I mean, that was floating, obviously. I mean, I'd have wins out of losses and this also including my cash flow, but I was very cash flow heavy.

[George Campbell]

Why do you even need money right now? As a College kid.

[Caller]

I mean, I think.

[Dave Ramsey]

Are you in college?

[Caller]

I don't necessarily. Yeah, I'm in college. I mean, I don't think it was necessarily valued.

[George Campbell]

What are you studying?

[Caller]

Marketing. Well, I was. Yes, Marketing.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[George Campbell]

You've been going to classes and completing all the assignments.

[Caller]

I did until this last year. I think I went off the rails this last year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay. Well, I. Yeah, the behaviors got you into the message. And to get. I would go to the opposite end of the behaviors to create healing. And so look at every one of the behaviors and what are the roots of each of the behaviors and how can I avoid those? So one of the things I fell for that you did as well is get rich quick. And I thought, I'm smart enough, I can do this. I can build wealth quickly and easily. Other people don't know how to do it. I'm quick enough with numbers. I can do this. I can pull this off. And that's what I did. Not at the scale you. Well, actually, at the scale you did, I had better net worth than you had, but at 23. But I lost it all because I built a house of cards. And, you know, I wasn't playing long ball. Everything was short ball. Everything was just get on base. Just get on base. And there was no infinite game. There was no eternity thought. There was no thought of. There was no thought of other people matter. It was simply get the thing done. Get the thing done. Turn the deal. Turn the deal. And so I had to go to the other end of the spectrum when I went broke and I had the benefit of losing everything and going bankrupt, and I got the opportunity to start over. I met God on the way up, Jacob. I got to know him on the way down. And you desperately need to get to know him right now. It's your only shot out of this. So I check into a great church in the area, start talking to some of the businessmen in that church that love Jesus, and let them talk to you about how to reform what a man really is inside of you.

[Caller]

Foreign.

[George]

Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade. Listen, my husband and I drive used vehicles, and we really do plan on keeping those running for a long time. So we trust Christian Brothers Automotive to take care of them. Their team is honest. Their shops are super clean. And what I love is they don't try to upsell us on things that we don't need. I personally feel really confident walking into Christian Brothers because I know that no one's going to try to take advantage of me or scare me into unneeded repairs. Christian Brothers gets it. So schedule a service [e-mail] Ramsey and get 10% off your visit. That's up to a 250 value. See stores for details.

[Dave Ramsey]

Meredith is in Greenville, South Carolina. Hi, Meredith. How are you?

[Caller]

Hi, Mr. Ramsey. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

Yeah. So my husband and I have two young kids under the age of four. We currently rent a small duplex for about 785amonth, and we have about 7,000. I'm sorry, $4,000 in savings, and the only debt we have is a credit card. But we pay that off every month, like, completely off. We're about to receive a $2.6 million lawsuit for medical malpractice. And we didn't grow up with money. So, honestly, we're kind of scared, and we just want to make sure we're doing the right thing for our family. So my question to you would be, what would be the wisest thing for us to do and, like, how should we handle this?

[Dave Ramsey]

It's a fabulous question. I really, really like your. Your spirit and your attitude. Thank you so much. You are very wise to be scared. Okay? And because you don't. You don't. You. You know, you're smart enough to know that you don't know how to handle 2.6 million now. So a couple of principles are this. Number one, keep doing what you just did. The Bible says in the multitude of counsel, there is safety. And so you start bringing people into your life to advise you, not to do it for you, but to teach you. To teach you. Okay? And there's a couple of three people. If you want to write this down, you can. Or you can go back and watch it or listen to it later when it comes out and hits the podcast. But the first person you guys need is a financial advisor, someone to help you with your investing. And you can go to ramseysolutions.com click on SmartVestor Pro and sit down with a couple of those and interview them. Now, what you're doing is you're interviewing someone that you are comfortable with, you feel good about. They're not intimidating. Instead, they have the heart of a teacher. Anyone in the financial world that does not have the heart of a teacher and instead starts dropping their glasses on the end of their nose and wagging their finger and saying, you need to do this. Because I said do it, you should run from them.

[Caller]

Yes, sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

So your job is to manage this money, not that person. That person's job is to Teach you to be a little bit better at managing money. So principle number one is we're gonna put a group of those people in our lives. We're gonna have a financial advisor and like a mutual fund broker, okay? We're gonna get an insurance person that knows insurance. We're gonna get a real estate person. Cause I got a feeling you're gonna buy a house. You're gonna. You can get that at Ramsey Trusted at the website if you want people. Cause we do not put out Ramsey Trusted label on these people unless they have the heart of a teacher. Okay? You need a tax advisor.

[Caller]

Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So insurance, real estate, investing, and tax. Those four people become your little board of directors. And again, their job is not tell you what to do. Their job is to teach you some of the things you could choose to do.

[Caller]

Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

Principle number one, heart of a teacher, not babysitter.

[Caller]

Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

Principle number two, do not put money in something unless you understand it.

[Caller]

Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

If it feels good or they, oh, well, that he seems to know what he's doing, honey, we're going to go with him. Those are the words people say right before they get scammed. Okay? So you say, I don't understand this yet. So we're not doing it yet, okay? Because it's your job before God to manage this money, not theirs. And so we don't do stuff until we understand it. And if it's brand new and you're brand new to it, that's okay. You don't know how to ride a bicycle yet. You just got your first bicycle, so it may take a minute to balance, right? That's okay. That's okay. You know, but you don't go buy a $30,000 Harley and you can't ride a bicycle.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And so we get our skills up and our competence and confidence up, and that will give you great peace about this. Principle number three, Go slower than you think you should. For some reason, we feel like we have to become competent and sophisticated overnight, and it takes a little while. The first time you buy a house, you've never seen that much paperwork. The first time you open a mutual fund, you haven't seen that much paperwork. The first time. When you're eight years old and you open a bank account, it's intimidating. But once you've opened 30 of them, it's not a big deal. So give yourself the grace to go slow and to learn and not put money in something until you're ready. So it's okay to park this money in something super boring? That is not Sophisticated while you spend some time learning. Does that feel right to your spirit?

[Caller]

Most definitely. I got it written down.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[George Campbell]

How old are you guys?

[Caller]

I am 29 and my husband is 38.

[Dave Ramsey]

And a good framework if you want to figure out how to apply this money and start working your way through as you understand it and as you increase your speed just a little bit on some of these things. And as some of these people with the heart of a teacher advise you is I would walk right up the baby steps that we walk everybody up. And so that's become debt free. Pay off all your debts, get on a written budget, and you live on your income. You don't touch this money. You don't need this money to live. You just live on the income that's coming out of the house. You're living on it now. So keep living on it. And don't increase your lifestyle to where you're having to drain this money to support your lifestyle. Keep living on your income. And if you do that and you use this money to step through the baby steps, the 2.6 million could literally be 20 million in about 20 years.

[Caller]

Yes. We don't have debt. We just use our credit card for gas.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, you would get rid of the credit card because you don't need it anymore. A debit card.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you get on a budget and the two of you know where exactly where every dollar is going. Now the duplex, do you own it or you're renting it?

[Caller]

No, sir, we're renting it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so you're probably gonna go buy your house and pay cash for it.

[Caller]

Yes, sir. We were thinking about. Somebody had told us about getting a duplex.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, I just go buy a house.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

You don't need to get fancy. Just go buy a house. Go buy a nice house. It's, I don't know, two or three hundred thousand dollars in Greenville, South Carolina is a pretty dead gum good house. It's nicer than the duplex you're living in.

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah.

[George Campbell]

And top off your emergency fund.

[Dave Ramsey]

So if you Split, you spend 400k out of 2.6 million and you pay cash for a house and you don't have any payments anymore on a house and you have no payments anywhere else, no other debt, and you're living on a budget, then the rest of that money can go to completely change your all's future. If you'll live in the present like grownups and avoid. And I know you're going to do this because I can tell by the way you asked the question coming out of the gate, avoid the need or avoid the thing of, oh, I hit the lottery and I'm rich. You're really not rich. This money will be gone about 20 minutes if you start screwing around with it.

[Caller]

Exactly.

[George Campbell]

We just took that call. So you can be very wise with this. I just crunched some numbers for you. You said you're 29 years old. If you just pretended this money did not exist and at 62 you looked up and said, hey, we can retire. It'd be $81 million in there if you just didn't touch it and forgot it existed and it was invested wisely. So that's what we're talking about here.

[Dave Ramsey]

Now you're going to use some of it though, so it's not going to be quite that much. It's probably only going to be 60 million.

[George Campbell]

You'll enjoy some and you'll give some. You'll cover your kids college funds and help them get started in their adult life. But that's the kind of stuff you can do if you handle this wisely, and I think you will.

[Dave Ramsey]

But it's. Number one, do not take advice from someone unless they have the heart of a teacher. Number two, don't put money in stuff unless you understand it. Number three, go slower than you think you should. It's okay. Give yourself time to catch up. You're not an expert on this. You don't have a. You didn't grow up with money. You didn't grow up with people talking about money. This is a new thing and it's okay to learn something new and take a little time to do that and. But that's how this stuff, that's how money gets away from people, is they violate those three things. Hang on. We're gonna send you a copy of the Total Money Makeover as our gift. We don't need anything from you. And we're also going to set you up in the Every dollar budgeting system and that'll guide you through the process and then you guys make your decisions and be smart. And Meredith, we're here if you need some more help. You call us anytime.

[George Campbell]

Hey, let's play a quick game of Would you rather. Would you rather keep overpaying your phone company every month or save 600 bucks a year with no contract and no price hikes ever? Easy answer. That's why I love Boost Mobile. With their low rates, you can unlock up to 600 bucks in savings over the so called big carriers. You can bring your phone, keep your number and pay just 25 bucks a month forever on the unlimited plan because you've got better things to do with your money. So go to boostmobile.com Ramsey to make the switch today based on average annual payment of AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile customers compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan as of January 2026. See website for full details.

[Dave Ramsey]

Ramsey show Question of the Day is sponsored by why Refi if your private student loans are in default? Well that's a mess. But why Refi can help you clean it up. Why Refi helps borrowers refinance with low fixed rate payments on a clear path forward so you can get things up, get back into making real progress, get yourself out of debt. Go to yrefi.com Ramsey that's the letter y r e f y.com Ramsey might not be in all states Today's question

[George Campbell]

comes from Mackenzie in Washington. My husband and I are in a considerable amount of debt including two car loans, two student loans, credit cards, taxes and our mortgage. We barely make it through each month and rely on credit cards to bridge the gap. We have $100,000 in a high yield savings account. Do we pull out all of our savings and pay off everything except the house and have no emergency fund? We are in our early 50s and contribute to retirement but don't have much in there yet. We are scared to deplete our savings account. What should we do? I mean you got a life raft sitting there and you're going further into debt on these credit cards. Absolutely. Drain that high yield savings down to just your starter emergency fund right now and knock out the debt if you can. I don't know if it'll knock out all the debt but the mortgage, it sounds like it will.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, the way you're describing it will. So mackenzie, here's the thing. You got to cut up the credit cards and never use them again.

[Tim]

Ever.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have to get on a written, detailed budget, get the EveryDollar app and get yourself going. You and your husband working together. Absolutely. The only way you're going to survive this, you probably need to sell one or both cars because we don't know the numbers. They're not here. But I'm going to guess and say a large portion of this might be car debt. It usually is. That's how we guess that. It's not a hard guess. And then I would drain my savings and be 100% debt free. You know, let's pretend that of your debt that one of the cars is a $50,000 car debt and you owe 50 on it and it's worth 40. Use some of your hundred to pay the difference and sell the car. Cover the upside down amount and then use another 10,000 and buy you a $10,000 car for cash. Okay. That uses 20 of your hundred in that example, instead of simply paying off the $50,000 car.

[George Campbell]

Especially because you're behind on retirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[George Campbell]

I mean, you said you're scared to deplete your savings. I'm scared you're not going to be able to retire. That's a much bigger problem. You can build back up the savings, but you guys get to get on,

[Dave Ramsey]

go back up the savings and you can build back up your retirement when you don't have any stinking payments.

[George Campbell]

Free up all those, that's probably a few thousand dollars in payments and sit down.

[Dave Ramsey]

But here's what's happened. You guys are normal. And normal in America sucks. You've got two car loans, two student loans, credit cards, and you don't make enough to cover your bills because you've put yourself so far in debt buying crap you couldn't afford with money you didn't have to impress people you don't even really like. You're a normal American.

[George Campbell]

I guarantee they're six figure earners.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So what you've got to do now is you have to stop, stop being normal. And that means get highly organized, highly intense, and I'm going to make every dollar of our income behave. And we aren't buying anything unless we pay cash for it for the rest of our lives. If you can't pay cash for it, you can't buy it for the rest of your life. And then you'll have your income freed up to put your retirement in place, build some wealth and put your emergency fund back in place if you've used it all with this $100,000. But you should use the $100,000 today. And you probably should sell one or two cars and get some less expensive cars. You can move back up in car later after you become wealthy. But right now you're just broke people. So you need to be acting like broke people instead of rich people. Andrew's in Atlanta. Hi, Andrew. How are you?

[Caller]

I'm well, Mr. Dave. How about yourself?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. How can I help?

[Caller]

Hey, so I'm just giving you a call today because I am in a pickle. I am supposed to be getting married in Italy and my family, or at least my side of the family has basically let me know that they have, you know, they don't really have the savings or the money anymore to go. So I'm on baby step two. I only have about 2,000 left in my car alone. I have about 3,000 saved and I have.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why the heck are you getting married in Italy if you're broke?

[Caller]

Well, it's her family's doing. Her side is well off and, you know, they asked us what do we want. We always dreamed of getting married in Italy.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't think there's any we. I think it's what she wanted. And you got hooked into it.

[Caller]

Well, no, it's something that we always spoke about when we first got together. Like it was like a joke. Like, yeah, we can get married in Italy one day and you know, and then it actually became a real thing.

[Dave Ramsey]

So.

[Caller]

Yeah, I mean, they're willing to, you know, pay forward.

[Dave Ramsey]

Andrew, wait a minute. I'm sorry, Let me stop you for a second. There's a hundred percent chance when you were planning all this that you knew your family couldn't afford it.

[Caller]

Well, I told him a year ahead.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, no, no, no, no. You know, your family, you grew up with them. You knew they didn't have any money.

[Caller]

Yeah, I mean. I mean, I told him to save and they told me that they were saving, they were good. And then now we're here and they're like, hey, you know, we didn't save. So I'm just kind of in a pickle, so.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're not. You're not in a pickle. They are.

[George Campbell]

They won't be able to attend your wedding.

[Caller]

Well, that's the thing. I never thought I would be getting married without having my family there to support me. And I feel like now I'm just going to get married and it's just going to be a whole gang of.

[Dave Ramsey]

Of her family.

[Caller]

Yeah. And I'm just there.

[George Campbell]

You have a right to be disappointed with your family.

[Caller]

Yeah, not really.

[Dave Ramsey]

Not really? No. I mean, I disagree. Andrew, for you to think they were going to do this was dumb. You knew your family, you grew up with them. You knew they didn't have money. You knew they weren't going to be able to save this money and you wanted to go to Italy anyway and so this didn't sneak up on you. I don't agree. And it's not due to them being irresponsible. They're just is who they is. And you plan a wedding, a place your people can't afford to go to. Man, that's awful. I'm sorry. So I guess you just have a big celebration of some Kind cook. Get some barbecue when you get back. Put it in the backyard on the picnic table, and let's have a little throwdown when you get home, right?

[Caller]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the plan. Maybe I can do that.

[George Campbell]

What was your plan if you didn't call us?

[Caller]

There was no plan. Really? I mean, don't get me wrong, I thought about maybe doing something, like, locally, but honestly, with me being on baby step two, I don't really have, you know, enough funds to do something that would be big, you know, or that would be nice for my family, at least now.

[Dave Ramsey]

So her family's paying your plane ticket?

[Caller]

They're paying for everything. We already got our plane tickets probably about like a year ago.

[George Campbell]

On your own?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. No, I mean, she. Their family paying for everything? They bought the plane. Her dad bought the plane.

[George Campbell]

So you're not paying a dime for anything involved.

[Dave Ramsey]

He doesn't have any money. He's got $2,000. No.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[George Campbell]

How old are you two?

[Caller]

We're both 20, 25. Okay.

[George Campbell]

You're both working full time?

[Caller]

No, I pretty much, you know, pay everything and do everything. She stay at home. But it's our money. You know, I'm real big on the Ramsey. We, not I.

[George Campbell]

You guys have kids?

[Dave Ramsey]

No. You're not big on the Ramsey way because you're not married.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Ramsay way doesn't apply to your married. We tell you not to combine money until you're married.

[Caller]

Remember?

[Dave Ramsey]

Or did you know that?

[Caller]

Yes. Yes, definitely did.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. So how long have you two been living together?

[Caller]

We've been together about living together, probably about two, three years now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. When is the Italy Wedding?

[Caller]

Roughly? About 30 days from now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. It's probably not going to go over well. No. Your parents don't get to go to Italy. You don't have the money, and you're not going to go borrow money to send them to Italy. You're broke. There's another alternative. I don't think it's going to work because I don't think the people involved in this story are going to do it. But what you could do is go get married next weekend and have your family and their family there. I have a friend that did that because the kids wanted to move in together and they were Christians and didn't want to live together before they were married. And so they went and got married like 60 days before the destination wedding and moved in, married, moved in together. And the family was all present for the little wedding at a little chapel, and then they went to Paris. Is where they got married and did a destination in Paris. You could do that. Hey, if you're working the baby steps, the best and fastest way to get out of debt and into wealth is by using every dollar. Now, this is more than just a budgeting app. It's a plan built right in. It's our plan. You walk the Ramsey plan. We're gonna help you track your progress. You get a personalized recommendation all the time, continuously, from us. We're gonna push you, pull you, wink at you, yell at you, smile at you to get you to do this stuff. And it'll help you free up more money and work the plan even faster. It's like having one of us walking with you every day. Start everydollar for free by downloading it in the App store or Google Play. Wyatt is in Fargo, North Dakot, Dakota. Hi, Wyatt. How are you?

[Caller]

I'm good. How are you today?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

I am calling today to ask if I should repair my credit score.

[Dave Ramsey]

No. Just.

[Caller]

Just know, just.

[Dave Ramsey]

No. Yeah, because let me. Let me back up then and tell you why. Yeah. And where that came from. Okay, so there's only one way to repair your credit score, and that is to go to borrowing money. And the paying on time of the borrowed money begins to flush out and push the old late payments to the back of the file. And the further to the back of the file they get, the better the credit score gets. In other words, if you have three things on your credit report and they're all negative because you were late on them, and you put 10 things on your credit report, credit report that are all positive, and you're on time on them, it will shift your. That's how you repair your credit.

[Caller]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

But you can't make the actual late payments history go away. You can just push it to the back and overwhelm it with new debt. That's how people repair credit. The other way you can repair credit is if there's something inaccurate on your credit bureau, you can have that removed, but that's probably not what we're talking about. And then let's go past that and then rise up above the whole thing and say that a credit score is not an indication that you're winning with money. Credit score is 100% derived from an algorithm. Fair. Isaac wrote the score. That's where it came from. And the algorithm is 100% how you interact with debt. So what kind of debt you have, how you pay the debt, how much debt you have, those are the things that Create your credit score. So your credit score is actually not a credit score or an I'm winning with money score. It's actually an I love debt score. Mathematically.

[Caller]

Mathematically, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so, you know, I don't want an I love debt score. I want a high net worth.

[George Campbell]

So think about it this way, Wyatt. A good score just means you're good at managing debt. A bad score means you are bad at managing debt. None of that has to do with actual wealth building. So let's get you to build some wealth instead. And that involves paying off your debt. And at that point, you won't have a score.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what I would do is. How many bad things have you got on your report?

[Caller]

Quite a bit. Not from me, though.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, wait a minute. That doesn't make sense. How can you have stuff on your report that's not from you?

[Caller]

Because back when I was a child, my mother took out credit cards in my name.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's identity theft, honey.

[George Campbell]

It's fraud.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's fraud.

[Caller]

I'm aware. And she took out money in my name. She's paid it all back at this point, but my. My credit score has suffered severely because of it.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are you?

[Caller]

I'm 22 now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. I would submit identity theft on every one of those accounts and have them removed. Okay.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[George Campbell]

Did you use the money she paid you to pay that. The debts off?

[Dave Ramsey]

Did she give you. You didn't get any of this money. She just stole your identity. Your mother's a thief.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Sorry.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's heartbreaking to say that out loud.

[Caller]

Yeah. We have a complicated relationship.

[Dave Ramsey]

I bet.

[Caller]

At least

[Dave Ramsey]

unless you're insane, you would have a complicated relationship because you'd have to be insane to go along with this.

[Caller]

Yeah, it's. I mean, I'm doing great now, but it's following me, and it's affecting, like, interest rates and stuff.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, it affects interest rates only if you're borrowing money,

[Caller]

which I'm not doing much of anymore.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, then you don't have to worry about it.

[George Campbell]

Just don't do any. What do you need a debt for right now?

[Dave Ramsey]

So. Okay, there's two answers to the question 1. The first answer I gave you is the correct answer. Don't worry about repairing your credit in the sense of.

[Caller]

Of.

[Dave Ramsey]

Don't worship at the altar of the FICO score, because we're not. It doesn't affect interest rates for me. I don't have a credit score, and I have zero credit and I have zero debt, so I don't have a problem with interest rates. And that's where I want you to get to. Okay. Now then, let's go to the other part of this, and that is that you were abused as a child. Your mother's a financial abuser. She stole your identity and messed up your electronic reputation. And so you should file identity theft. And on every one of those accounts that you did not open and have them removed, they're probably going to require that you do a police report and identify the thief. They will do nothing to her. They should. They should put her in jail, but they won't. Um, but the good news is they actually didn't lose anything because she actually went and paid them, but she just paid them late. Is that what you told us?

[Caller]

Yeah, really late, but yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So they won't. They won't. They won't do anything to her because they got their money. But you're going to have to go through some steps, and you can have every bit of that completely removed, and you should from your credit bureau report. I would if I were you. Do you want to work on that? If you want to work on that, I've got somebody that will help you do it.

[Caller]

I know.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're not going to find the research. You're not going to do it.

[George Campbell]

That was a long pause.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[George Campbell]

That was a big.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're not. You're not going to address your mother ever again. Okay? So anyway, you're going to live with this then, and you're just going to live with it. And over time, after it's been on there, after the account has no activity for seven years, it will completely fall off. But if you want to address it, folks, Zander Insurance's identity theft will take care of it. And if you have their identity theft in place before this happens, which he couldn't have known, he was four years old. But I was going to offer him Zander, but I'm not now because I don't think he's going to do it. So I'm not going to waste my time. All right. Ben is in Jacksonville, Florida. Hey, Ben. What's up?

[Caller]

Up. Hey, sir. Thanks for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. How can we help?

[Caller]

So I think I'm on baby step six, but there are two asterisks. One, I don't know if I've saved enough for my daughter's college, and two, I still have a rental house that's not paid off, but rental house would

[Dave Ramsey]

be in baby step six. And four, five and six run simultaneously.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Not progressively. And so if you're on baby step four, you're on baby step six. Four, five and six run at the same time. So we're saving for 15% for retirement. We're saving towards kids college. If you think you got that done, you could stop that and then you continue on. And that would put more on baby step six, which would be to clear off mortgages in baby step six.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Is that logical?

[Caller]

It does. Yes, it is.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. How much you got saved for the kiddo?

[Caller]

About 40,000 and 529.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old is she?

[Caller]

She's in kindergarten. She's about to turn six.

[Dave Ramsey]

You got, you got enough.

[Caller]

And I also have a GI bill.

[Dave Ramsey]

You definitely got enough. You did a great job. Thank you for your service to the country and thank you for being a great dad. Way to go, dude.

[George Campbell]

You're crushing.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, both of those, you're just. You got an A plus on both categories. Well done. Also make sure that 529 now is invested in good growth stock mutual funds. If it is, it will double every seven years, which means it's going to be 80, 160,000 by the time she gets there.

[Caller]

I think that should be enough.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that's what I said. Yeah, I think it's enough. I think you're done. Box is checked. You did great, man.

[George Campbell]

That's 40 grand a year. And that's if they don't get scholarships and you got the GI bill on top of that. So I would. You could stop funding it at this rate.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And now just start going over that mortgage.

[George Campbell]

Trust those mortgages.

[Dave Ramsey]

Knock out that rental mortgage and the home mortgage before you do that.

[George Campbell]

And by the time she's in college, you could cash flow any other expenses that come your way. Good life, man.

[Dave Ramsey]

Life is great. Well done, Ben. See what happens when you pay attention, boys and girls.

[Caller]

Sam.

[Dave Ramsey]

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. In the Fairwinds Credit Union studio, I'm Dave Ramsey. Your host, George Camel, Ramsey personality is my co host today. Jordan is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hi Jordan, how are you?

[Caller]

Hi.

[George Campbell]

I'm doing good.

[Caller]

Thanks for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller]

Well, I am currently 42 years old, have my house paid off, no debt, own all of my cars. I really haven't started a retirement fund other than my pension I have from the government that I work at. And I have a lot of collectibles and I'm trying to determine if I should sell them and put that into a retirement account or let them continue to increase in value and sell them later.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. I would make sure you got a retirement account started. If it requires selling the collectibles to do that, I would. But if it doesn't, then you might keep them. The rule on collectibles is this. As a category, collectibles, which would be like coins, art, antiques, guns, anything that falls in that category. As a category, collectibles do not keep up with a good mutual fund investment. However, people who are into a particular hobby generally will make a good enough purchase on the collectible and know the particular nuances of it. For instance, a car collection, a person that's really into cars, you can make more on that because you have knowledge in it than you would make on a mutual fund. But as in general, if you just said, I'm going to collect cars, no, you wouldn't keep up with it. But if you just really are into Corvettes and you've got five different times for Corvettes or whatever, you probably are going to make some money, good money on that. So that's probably your case. You're probably kind of into a couple of these things. Stamps is another one. That kind of thing. Or baseball cards even. I know One guy's got $200,000 in baseball cards, but he's way into it, you know, and so he's probably actually making decent money on it. I would never use that as a substitute for retirement, though. Are you there?

[Caller]

Okay.

[George Campbell]

What kind of collectibles do you have?

[Caller]

For the most part, a lot of card collectibles. Vintage board games, vintage antique books, stuff like that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you know, I don't know anything about the board game part, but the book side, a wide spectrum of completely useless, all the way to extremely valuable.

[Caller]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

And it's like there's a lot of stuff in between. And what kind of cards? Pokemon or baseball or what?

[Caller]

I have a lot of Magic the Gathering Alpha cards like Black Lotus and different vintage ones like that from the original printings that I collect.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[George Campbell]

Are there ones you could part with and have no sentimental value to you that you go, I could sell this and make 20 grand and be fine.

[Caller]

I could probably sell it all and be fine. I just don't want my wife or my kids if I kick the bucket to send it to Goodwill.

[George Campbell]

That's a good point.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's some estate planning and some good instruction. So, like, my wife actually brought that up the other day. She said, okay, what am I gonna do? We've got all this detailed estate plan. But she's like, made me write out a thing about a year and a half ago, like, okay, I am not going to deal with your guns. You have way too many of them. And I have nothing to do with this. I mean, the kid, the boys will want four or five each. And after that, what am I going to do with them? I'm like, okay, I need to give you a plan for that. And so write it out. And I've got a detail just because I'm into it. You know, it's a copy and so it's all written out. And so that's all you need to do there, is write it all out so they don't send it to Goodwill and that we don't, you know, give away something that's worth $20,000 or use it as a bookmark or something in one of those vintage books. And so, yeah, that kind of stuff.

[George Campbell]

I'm sure they'd much rather have an inheritance in the inherited ira. That's going to be a lot simpler for them to handle. So I would sell it. If it doesn't mean much to you and it was a fun hobby, I would sell it and park that in your retirement account or an IRA and start on that. Because you're 42, you got 20 years at least of a working career to build some wealth. And it sounds like you can do that with your income and a paid for house. You're in a good spot.

[Dave Ramsey]

So, yeah, let's build wealth and have a retirement plan. And if we want to have a hobby also, that's okay because I have the. I mean, I have these collectible hobbies, but they have nothing to do with my real net worth.

[George Campbell]

You're not doing it for an roi.

[Dave Ramsey]

I am not doing it.

[George Campbell]

You just enjoy it.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm doing it because I. Yeah, that's it.

[George Campbell]

It's Dave's hobby. Yeah, it's the healthiest form of addiction you can have.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, it's just a hobby. That's it. There's nothing wrong with that. Anna is in New York City. Hi, Anna. How are you?

[Caller]

I am good. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

Okay, so I have a question. My husband and I are retired. We don't have any debt. We have a daughter, an only child, and we'd like to buy her an apartment. We'd like to do that now while. Well, while we're still alive, rather than let her get everything.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much net worth do you guys have? What's the size of your NICHD?

[Caller]

Probably I'd say about 2 million with our house. Our house is paid off, but so some of that would be not cash, but in cash, about 1.7.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, good for you. Well done. Well done. And how much will this apartment cost?

[Caller]

Somewhere between maybe around 250 or 300,000. Somewhere around there.

[Dave Ramsey]

All right, I would do that.

[Caller]

We can do that.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're gonna pay cash for the apartment. There's no debt, right?

[Caller]

Nope. We don't want to.

[George Campbell]

Yeah.

[Caller]

That's another question, though. I had. Would there be any advantage.

[Dave Ramsey]

No.

[Caller]

To get.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, no, we don't want that. We don't want. That's a disadvantage because then you're not giving her a blessing, you're giving her a curse, right?

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah, no, I. We don't want to do that right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

What I would do, I had a friend of mine that did something like this, and he said he asked her to sign a one page letter promising to never borrow money.

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

So that she doesn't go get a boyfriend and refinance this to buy him a pizza store.

[Caller]

Oh.

Oh, no.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, yeah. That happens every day, right?

[Caller]

I never thought of that. But I did think that maybe, you know, borrowing money just because maybe she mismanaged her own, that would work too.

[Dave Ramsey]

So. No, you have to promise us it's not a legal contract, it's just a moral contract. You have to raise your right hand, sign a letter stating, I will never borrow money again, Mom. And I'm going to use the fact that I have a free apartment to create wealth since I don't have a house payment.

[Caller]

And how can we help her do that? Also because she lives at home right now. She. She had lost her job. She came and she lived back home. She now has a good job.

[Dave Ramsey]

And what's a good job?

[Caller]

Well, she's been living here several months. It pays a decent wage.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's a decent wage? How much does she make?

[Caller]

About 73,000 a year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Can she live in the city making 73?

[Caller]

You can.

In Brooklyn.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah.

[George Campbell]

Just make sure she can afford the ongoing, you know, insurance, taxes, all of that plays a part. Maintenance.

[Dave Ramsey]

But I mean, help her get on an every dollar budget and, you know, we'll send her a copy of the total. Oh, send her a copy of George's book on how to avoid all the traps and get with the every dollar budget. And we'll help you guys get this started and then let her get back out there on her own two feet. Feet. But yeah, I want her to promise that she's not going to make a mess out of this blessing. That's all I want.

[George Campbell]

I bet the HOA over there is as Much as a mortgage payment in

[Dave Ramsey]

the city could be.

[Caller]

Foreign.

[Announcer]

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]

You ever wanted to see the person who's calling in and watch them ask the question or be in the room when we answer it? Well, now's your chance. The Ramsey show is going back on tour. Live recordings with live studio audiences. And you can be in the audience and watch the Q and A happen, because all the questions will come from the microphone on the floor. Experience Live Q and A Raw, raw confessions. Crowd debates, Local debt free screams. The team will be in Charlotte, Denver, Phoenix and Anaheim in April. We're limiting this for production reasons to only about 300 seats a night. Last year we sold this out and we put it out there in 72 hours. It's just been out there a couple days. It's almost gone. If you want to come, grab your [e-mail] events or click the link in the show notes. If you're listening on the podcast or on YouTube, Rhonda is with us in Virginia Beach. Hi, Rhonda. How are you?

[Caller]

Hello.

How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

I recently just found out my husband is in debt. Separate accounts. My name is not on it. The main thing I want to know is judges are normally favorable on the other spouse's side. If this depth was created secretly and in his own account. And I'm not in depth on my side. So was just wondering, have you heard any stories of judges making the other spouse help pay the debt that another spouse have created secretly?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, yeah, we've heard all the stories. I mean, for sure, there's a lot of this goes on, sadly. Okay, so how long have you been married?

[Caller]

A long time. I was well over 15.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller]

We've always had separate accounts. We do have one.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why did he deceive you and hide it from you?

[Caller]

Because it's online gambling and this is his own account. And I had to. I had to ask about it because

[Dave Ramsey]

he has a gambling problem. Okay. And so how much has his gambling Problem caused. How much debt has it caused?

[Caller]

40,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

And what does he make?

[Caller]

Quite a bit. About 90.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

What do you make right now? 42.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. Well, I mean, at the core of this is not really the money issue. At the core of this is two things. One is you're married to a person who has a. An addictive problem.

[Caller]

Right?

[Dave Ramsey]

He's got a gambling problem. Okay. By definition, he is following all of the behaviors of an addict. The actual definition. Okay, One of those being that he's deceived. Two is. Is that he's out of control. Okay. Okay. And so when you have to lie to your spouse and you're out of control, bottom line, we're gonna define you as an addict. Anybody in our world does that. Okay. So, number one problem is you are married to a person who has an addiction. Number two problem is that he has, as a part of that addiction, has lied to you and broken your trust and your heart with it.

[Caller]

Right?

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So the only way that this goes forward in a positive way, the only way you have a wonderful marriage at 20 years, you're at 15 now, is that he addresses the addiction openly with you. Gets help, stops gambling, gets a therapist, goes to gamblers anonymous. You guys sit down with your pastor, and he's held accountable to never gamble again the rest of his life. And then when he does that over time, the first 10 minutes he did that, he's been dry for one day, two days, one week. Well, he's not trustworthy yet. But when he's been dry for a year, you can start to trust him, and that would be logical. And he can't do anything that looks like violation of trust ever again the rest of his life because he has, you know, he has deceived his wife at a very deep level. And you're pretty pissed and pretty hurt about that, unless you're weird, Right?

[Caller]

I'm not happy about that at all. I'm to the point that I'm about to look into divorce. I was just worried about the judge making me.

[Dave Ramsey]

The judge will not make you pay this. The judge will not make you pay this if you. Very unusual. I mean, I'm not a judge and I'm not a lawyer, but very unusual. And the deception has nothing to do with it. It's just simply. Hey, your honor, the reason I'm divorcing him is he's a gambling addict and he ran up a bunch of debt gambling that I didn't even know about. And the judge is going to go, oh, he gets to Pay that. I mean that's going to wait that 99% of the time, that's the way that's going to go down. So if you divorce him, that's where you'll end up. But his path to staying married is complete transparency from this point forward. No hiding anything ever again. Getting help, which involves admitting that I have a problem and getting in a 12 step program like a GA Gambler's Anonymous and getting one on one therapy to never do this again. And this is gambling addiction and lying to my wife as a part of it. So he has to act like that. You discovered cocaine in his bedroom.

[Caller]

Oh, trust me, yes. That's exactly where I felt a boat with other. Not addiction myself, but I've lived with people with addiction and that's exactly what

I

saw it as. I'm like, oh, it's just like a drug addict, you know, one thing playing around with it here and there.

But yes, definitely to tell you now.

[Dave Ramsey]

He didn't. She found it.

[Caller]

Oh no. I had to. I asked.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, you asked, he told. Yeah, he told you when you asked.

[Caller]

He.

He finally. He came out it. He came out, just asked how. How was your credit going? Because of keeping things separate. I don't get to see that. You don't get to see mine too much. But just every once in a while checking in. Hey, how things going? How are your credit? Oh, you know, how are you doing on your savings? And come to find out you depleted the savings and on top of going

[George Campbell]

into 40k in debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So if. If healing occurs and we stay married, there'll be a period of time which he handles no money and you handle all of it, his and yours. And then over time you'll start to handle it together. Never again will you act like roommates because the fact that you're running this separate. It added to this. It made it worse.

[George Campbell]

The lack of unity caused a lack of transparency.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, but if you're both looking at all our money is in a pile and all our bills are in a pile and we are both looking at all of them, then it's much harder for something like this to occur.

[Caller]

Even being separate, I still look at it as a major thing.

[Dave Ramsey]

It doesn't. No excuse. Rhonda. It's not the same when it's all in one pile. Everybody sees everything. It's almost impossible for this crap to happen.

[Caller]

I'm kind of scared now. And that was my whole thing with me having a savings and paid off my car. Then. Now it makes me think that, well,

[Dave Ramsey]

the Only reason you would, the only reason you would allow it to be in one pile is if you're in control. And or over time he becomes worthy of trust again because the last time he gambled was five years ago and he's dry. And we've had these healthy, good marital discussions about our budget every month. And we both know where every dime of our money is going. And if you did that for five years, you could start to not be scared. And that's a healthy place to aim at. If you guys are going to stay together, that's how you should do it. And I hope that's what works out. I hope it works out that way. But this is how people come back from the deception around people hiding debt and or come back from being married to an addict is you rebuild trust. Dr. Henry Cloud was with us here this morning. I had lunch with him today. And he has a book called Trust and it's how to Lose it and how to rebuild it. And you know, these are the types of things. But lots of transparency, lots of extra layers of communication over communicating. Never assume the other person knows something you should have known. No, that's not, that's bull. Everybody knows everything because it was said out loud. And the more of that you have, the more trust is built in any relationship. Employer, employee, husband, wife, parent, child. All of this works from the pulpit in your church. Transparency, extra levels of communication. Reality is dealt with.

[Caller]

Sam.

[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.

[Caller]

Help.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's fast, simple and free to use. Go to ramseysolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's ramseysolutions.com. Tim and Shannon are on the debt free stage right here in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. Hey, guys, how are you?

[Tim]

Hi, Dave. We're good.

[Dave Ramsey]

Great. Welcome, welcome. Where do you guys live?

[Tim]

Chicagoland, suburb of Illinois.

[Dave Ramsey]

Love it. Very cool. And how much debt have you two paid off?

[Tim]

We've paid off just over $103,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Very cool. How long did that take?

[Tim]

About 57 months.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good for you and your range of income during that time.

[Tim]

We fluctuated between 175 and about 200. Ending.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cool. What do y' all do for a living?

[Tim]

I am a police officer and I Work in hr.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, very cool. Excellent. Good job for both of you. What kind of Debt was the 103?

[Shannon]

That was the house.

[Tim]

That was the house.

[Dave Ramsey]

You paid off your house. You have a paid for house?

[Tim]

We do.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you're a police officer and HR director. And you're not 150 years old. That's correct. How old are you two?

[Tim]

I'll be celebrating my 40th in May.

[Dave Ramsey]

Love it.

[Shannon]

I'm 32.

[Dave Ramsey]

I love it. And you have a paid for stinking house. What's this house worth?

[Tim]

Just over 300.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Way to go, you two awesomeness. How much in your retirement nest eggs?

[Tim]

So we were calculating that we're 3, 400,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

All right, cool. So you're heading towards baby step millionaire in just a year or two.

[Tim]

Yes, sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

Way to go, y'.

[Caller]

All.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm so proud of you. Thank you. What caused you to be weird?

[Tim]

So it started during COVID when I rolled out with some help. Help Smart Dollar to our police department. And we took it village wide. I was the training manager at the time and Shannon and I binged that baby step two. We were here, joined you in May of 2021. But baby step seven, we've been working on that the last 57 months following the blueprint of Smart Dollar.

[Dave Ramsey]

For those of you that don't know, Smart Dollar is our financial Peace University. But for companies and for organizations, HR directors use it and people, we have several police departments and first responders using it around the nation to put all their employees through U Haul, put all their employees through Costco, put all their employees through our, you know, Financial Peace University. In essence, it's the class. And so you led the class at your police department.

[Tim]

Yes, I've been in charge of that

[Dave Ramsey]

since COVID Well, thank you. Wow, that's cool. So you not only got to see yourself get out of debt, you've got a lot of your guys that are out there and gals that are out there on the highways and byways putting our life at risk. They're getting their lives cleaned up.

[Tim]

Yeah, we saw. We saw a really strong benefit with it where we started with it just as the police department and we got the whole village on board. So now we have our wastewater employees have access to it, our admin clerks, everybody. The entire city now has adopted Smart Dog.

[George Campbell]

It's a movement over there.

[Dave Ramsey]

Look at you. You're the. You're the guy running the whole thing, man. Way to go. Well, that's so stinking cool. Yeah. And you know, with the police department I always love hearing you guys do it in particular, because it's also like we've had it with the military for years. And one of the things in a high stress environment like that is in military world, they say combat readiness, being ready to go into combat with your head clear, ready to do one thing is much better. When all the there's no debt stress at home, I'm not worried about my car being repoed. I'm not worried about my lights being cut off. And police officers are the exact same.

[Tim]

Yeah. The idea behind that is exactly that. I want the officers on a daily basis to be able to go out and serve the community, but not have to worry about their finances or at least have a plan that the idea is service first to the community and not to be sitting in their squad cars worrying about the debt, worrying about how they're going to deal with the next overtime or whatever the case may be.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Trying to book some side gig. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The whole thing. Wow. Wow, that's so cool. And so freedom. I see the blue striped shirt now I'm getting to the blue flag. Okay. Okay. Yep. All right.

[George Campbell]

What's it say on there?

[Dave Ramsey]

Debt free family baby step seven. You did custom made T shirts just for today.

[George Campbell]

So did Leading Smart dollar. Did that kind of put an onus on you guys to really get this house paid off faster? Like, was that part of the story?

[Tim]

We hit the deadline ahead of time, but there wasn't without bumps along the way.

[Shannon]

Yeah. So we were actually here in May of 2021 and did our Baby Step 2 debt free screen. And after that we tried to start a family and we're really struggling through that. So during that period, we actually sought infertility treatment. And because we were able to complete baby step two, we were able to cash flow all of the infertility treatment and were able to welcome our baby girl back in March of last year. And so I think that's more important

[Dave Ramsey]

than anything else in the whole story.

[Shannon]

Absolutely. So she's our why. And I think after having her really kind of put things into perspective for us to really just knock out the rest of the debt that we had and wanted to set her up for a future that we weren't really familiar with ourselves growing up.

[Dave Ramsey]

I love it. Yeah. Change your family tree. And while you're at it, being example to all your compadres.

[Tim]

Yeah, it was. And I saw that there was such a void in the financial wellness aspect along this journey that I went ahead and took part in your financial coaching and have since started coaching first responders across the country in workshops and one on one to where a lot of employers yet have not really adopted a true financial wellness program. And this is giving them some sort of hope.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. It's incredible. All right. Now that you've done all of that, I mean, you not only got out of debt, you also cash flowed. Fertility. And then on top of that, we paid off the house and now you're coach helping other people. And you've led the whole village, not just the police department, through Smart Dollar, the whole thing. Now what do you tell people? The key to getting out of debt

[Shannon]

is sticking to the budget is the biggest thing, hands down.

[Dave Ramsey]

Easier said than done, isn't it?

[Shannon]

Absolutely it is.

[Tim]

And especially in our world of first responders, we thrive controlled. That's what we have to have. So to make. When I hear a first responder that doesn't take control of their money with a budget and a lot of times that's where we start in these trainings. It's just if you can just start telling your money where to go, you're gonna wanna put it in a lot of different places once you start seeing where it's going. So the budget is the most crucial part.

[George Campbell]

Yeah, being proactive with it.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, it's interesting. I hadn't thought about it. So much of your training is about controlling all the variables from a safety perspective so that no one gets hurt.

[Tim]

And policies and procedures and law. Everything guides are doing. You start your squad car, you start the fire truck. Everything is a policy, procedure and everything.

[Dave Ramsey]

A checklist.

[Tim]

Yeah, just put a policy and procedure in place for your money.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Just apply what you're used every day. Yep. Yeah, that's very interesting. Wow. Very cool.

[George Campbell]

Have you been seeing stories from the people in your village that are following the plan? Also becoming debt free? Because it's weird to talk about money with your co workers. They're just out there with you.

[Tim]

That is the difficulty trying to get a chief of police or a fire chief to even say, hey, you know what, come on in and talk about this. Because for so long it is that taboo topic.

[Dave Ramsey]

But.

[Tim]

But it's the quiet conversations afterwards. It's after you meet in a workshop, then that person sticks around in the back of the class and then comes up and says, tim, can I ask you a couple questions? We're still working on it, but the fact that we're all trying is what really helps because these first responders need that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Well, thank you for Being such a service to your village and I'm so proud of y'. All.

[Shannon]

Thank you.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, you're not even stinking 40 years old. You're almost millionaires. Got babies coming. Everything's happening. This. What better life can we have?

[Shannon]

This is the life we always dreamed of. And it wouldn't be possible without following the baby steps.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm just so proud of you. Thanks for embracing smart dollar. And I'm thrilled it worked. I know it worked, but I'm never surprised that it worked. But I'm always thrilled that it worked.

[Shannon]

It's hard, but it works and it's worth it.

[Dave Ramsey]

It is hard. It's just easier than being broke and stressed. Amen. And freaking out for 25 years. Instead, I got. There's 20 months of really having to lean in on this. And now you got your stinking house paid off, man. How does that feel?

[Shannon]

It's unreal.

[Tim]

Yeah, it was. It was. December was our last payment, which again, was ahead of schedule. So we've had a couple of months here. And even standing here and getting to meet with the smart dollar team and spend some time, it's just. You're still taking that deep breath because, you know, like you said before, 40 years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Not real yet.

[Tim]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

Still surreal.

[Shannon]

We have so many options and choices we get to make.

[Dave Ramsey]

Now then, what's the big thing you're gonna do to celebrate?

[Tim]

This is the year. This is the year of traveling.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, where are we going? What's the big trip?

[Shannon]

This was a big one.

[Tim]

This was a big one. We're spending my 40th in Florida, so we're taking the whole family down there. So we've got a couple other things. But at the end of the day, that's where we remind ourselves money was never the goal. Money is the tool to get to the goal.

[Dave Ramsey]

Gotcha. All right. Are we gonna put the baby into the debt free scream?

[Tim]

We'd like to.

[Dave Ramsey]

All right. Fun and name a name.

[Shannon]

This is Keely and she will be one next week.

[Dave Ramsey]

I love it. So proud of y'.

[Caller]

All.

[Dave Ramsey]

Tim and Shannon and Keely from the Chicago and Illinois area took their whole village through. All the first responders, all the police department, and then everybody else paid off their own home. Debt free house and everything. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

[Tim]

Three, two, one.

[Dave Ramsey]

We're debt free. Yes.

[George Campbell]

That is one cute baby.

[Dave Ramsey]

Talk about paying it forward, baby.

[George Campbell]

That's worth getting out of down right there.

[Dave Ramsey]

Lot of paying it forward there.

[George Campbell]

That's a triple hero.

[George]

When people Hear my story of paying off debt. They say things like, dang, that must

[Dave Ramsey]

have been so hard.

[George]

I could never do that. And I tell them, sure you can. It's a short term sacrifice for a long term gain. But do you know what's really hard? Working your whole life and never having anything to show for it. Never having the long term gain. Just feeling broke and stressed and maxed all the time. And sadly, that's the hard that most people choose. Listen, you're capable of transforming your situation and living a life of freedom, but you need the right tools to do it. It like our Every dollar budget app. In minutes it'll build you a step by step plan that's tailored to your money situation. And every day it finds ways you can free up extra money in your budget so you can get rid of your debt and actually build wealth. So make the choice today. Short term sacrifice, long term gain. Choose the tool to help you get it done fast. Download the EveryDollar app and start for free today.

[Dave Ramsey]

Our scripture of the day, Ecclesiastes 5. 5. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. John Adams said there are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt. Sally is in Philadelphia. Hi Sally, how are you?

[Caller]

Hi Dave. I'm doing great, thank you. I first wanted to thank you so much. With your guidance and the grace of God, I was able to pay off all my personal debt many years ago.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Caller]

And now? Yeah, and now my question is how do I view business debt? Because I was able to get out of my personal debt and my father, sorry, my brother is in farming industry so he was not able to have a lot of money. So he and I decided about five years ago to buy a farm together. The farm is such that it's an orchard so that it at least takes five to seven years before return can occur. So for these last five years, I've been basically bankrolling it myself with my cash and getting a mortgage through credit. And we did get a line of credit and now that line of credit is it's due and either I can choose to pay, use it, get a full loan for that, or I can get a pledge line from my quote unquote, fund money that I was able to also save on the side, which is different than my retirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so you have personal investments equal to what

[Caller]

does that include the mortgage on the farm?

[Dave Ramsey]

No, personal investments. You said fund money and retirement.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you have a retirement account and Then you have non retirement investments that are how much?

[Caller]

Yes, my non retirement investments are about $440,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

And what is your line of credit?

[Caller]

My line of Credit is only 120,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Pay it off today.

[Caller]

Okay. And the question, sir, is do I pay it off by selling all my investments and the capital gain?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes.

[Caller]

Or use the. Okay. French line of credit?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I'm not borrowing money.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

We stopped borrowing money until we got to Apple orchard and then we started again.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Stop it.

[Caller]

So do you.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what's the other mortgage on the apple orchard? Three?

[Caller]

I think it's like 360. But the thing is.

[Dave Ramsey]

And it hasn't made a profit yet?

[Caller]

No, sir. Because it takes five.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. How long have you been screwing with this thing?

[Caller]

Five years.

[Dave Ramsey]

So it should be starting now?

[Caller]

Yes, sir. In next year is hopefully when we're going to start having money coming in to be able to pay off all this debt and not incur any more debt at all.

[Dave Ramsey]

And please tell me the projections are ridiculously good next year after you put five years of alligator in this.

[Caller]

Yes.

Yes, sir. It's actually great. It's quite great.

[Dave Ramsey]

So like, how much do you think you're going to make profit next year?

[Caller]

Well, after the following year, it's going to be another 550,000 coming in. Out of that, it's going to be about 120 in in cost.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So you can pay off the mortgage out of the profits next year.

[Caller]

Yes, sir. That's. That's the goal is to get out of debt as quickly as possible once the money comes in.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you don't need the money off of the orchard. You did this. Both of you did it as a side gig and you have funded it, I assume with your brother, you have clear documentation that you're getting all the money you put into it back before he starts putting money in his pocket.

[Caller]

Well, yeah, actually we're in a 50. 50 because he's doing all the work on the vineyard, Right? I mean on the, on the orchard. He's the one that's doing all the.

The.

The on the ground.

[Dave Ramsey]

So the only way the debt gets paid is 50. 50. Your 50% pays off the debt?

[Caller]

No, no, the. We first pay off the debt, but then after that everything's 50. 50.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, okay. So he doesn't get any money until the debt is paid.

[Caller]

That's a great question. The way that I view it is that he's putting in the money now by working on it. So it would be.

[George Campbell]

So the mortgage payments you've made are equal to his labor essentially.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, see this is what I'm worried about. You guys don't have a, you guys don't have a clear plan for when this thing does start becoming profitable. How quickly you are hole.

[Caller]

And I'm okay with that because I'm thinking of this as a long term investment.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, yeah, you're already five years in and made nothing.

[Caller]

Yes sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Yes sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

So yeah, you, but you guys really need to think about and have it detailed out exactly how that you clear up this debt and then, then, but you know, we don't just start raking chips off the table here while there's still problems. I mean, you had $360,000 problem and you're getting ready to pay off this line of credit and you need to rec. The debt now is owed to you.

[Caller]

Yes sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

That has to be paid back to you because you just used your personal money to do that. Otherwise this is, you know, we're starting to value his labor at about $300,000aminute if we're not careful.

[Caller]

Yeah. And that's basically, you know, that's basically what you know, a consultant would be charging in this situation.

[George Campbell]

$300,000aminute.

[Caller]

No, no, not a minute, sir. No, not a minute.

[George Campbell]

I was like, wow, I'm in the wrong business.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So yeah, so my point is, is that you need to, you guys have to have a real forced ranking of what happens to the cash when it starts coming in. First we recoup, you put the money back in your pocket for this line of credit that you pay off today. Do you ever recoup the money you put in earlier? And then we pay off the 360 before he starts making $100,000 a year out of apples. We need to get all that cleared up and then we can split 50, 50 after that. And if your 50% is due to the money you put in earlier, that's okay. If you don't recoup that, that's okay. That's your investment and your return is on the cash flow. After that, that's all fine. But the way people end up getting sideways in these things is they don't have real good, clear, detailed explanations that they're both aligned to on where the cash goes as it goes down the list of priorities. And you're very generous and open handed with this. And he works hard, so I want him to get something out of it. That's fine. Just build that generosity or that open handedness into the clarity and into the decision that you guys make interesting. Lisa is in Auburn, Alabama. Hi Lisa, how are you?

[Caller]

Hi. I'm doing well. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

Okay, so I'm a single parent and I have a six year old boy and I'm in step two of the baby step and I'm just wondering, I'm worried that it's going to take me about 10 years to pay off my debt and I'm wondering if I should go ahead and basically buy some play gym equipment for our backyard. So he has something to do with. He's an only child and he just gets too much screen time right now. But I know that will delay me paying off my debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much debt do you have, honey?

[Caller]

110.

[Dave Ramsey]

On what?

[Caller]

Other than my mortgage at 75K, student loans and then 9,000 in a personal loan and the rest is credit card. Alabama taxes and medical.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. What do you do, what do you do for a living?

[Caller]

I'm actually a tax accountant.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so what do you make right now?

[Caller]

86.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why would it take you 10 years to pay this off?

[Caller]

Well, I guess with my minimum payments I just wasn't sure if I could pay off more than 10,000 a year unless my income goes drastically up.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you're gonna get your income up and you're gonna have to get your lifestyle down and scorched earth. You're not doing a detailed sacrificial budget or you'd have more room than you've got.

[Caller]

Okay, I have, I, I do have every dollar. It's just my debt payments right now are about 40% of my take home pay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. And what are you talking about spending on playground equipment?

[Caller]

Really? Really. Just getting a fence for our backyard and getting like just a swing set or just something back there so that he can actually enjoy our backyard.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old is he?

[Caller]

He's six.

[George Campbell]

I'll tell you what, we just did Lisa my Wife on our Facebook Marketplace and in these Facebook groups they are giving this stuff away just hoping someone will pick it up. You don't need to go buy him a new playset, you know, for a thousand dollars to make him happy. Just go get something real cheap off Facebook and he'll be just, he'll be happy with a cardboard box.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm a little. We're not getting him a cardboard box. We're going to get him a nice thing off of Facebook marketplace for, for just pin a few pennies here or there. Literally, people wanted out of their backyard and you might not need a fence if he's six and knows to stay in the backyard. I don't know.

[Caller]

Right?

[Dave Ramsey]

Just. I'm. I guess I'm old school, but I'm just like, don't leave the yard. There's an idea.

[George Campbell]

They've had an electric fence growing up. He knew not to go past it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Didn't have a. Yeah. That puts us out of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with 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.

[George Campbell]

This is the Ramsey show.

[Announcer]

The Ramsey show live is your chance to actually be part of the show.

[George]

Ask your burning question live.

[Caller]

Finally win that money argument in your house.

My mom occasionally asked us to borrow money.

[Announcer]

That's a no all the way around.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm a spender. He's a saver.

[George Campbell]

I'm a tight wad at heart. How many tight wads are out there? Thank you for making yourselves known.

[Dave Ramsey]

You do a pre Prenup?

[Tim]

What's a pre?

[Caller]

Prenup?

[George Campbell]

I don't know.

[Dave Ramsey]

I thought there'd be something.

[George Campbell]

The Ramsay show live, is your chance

[Tim]

to be in the room with other people that are on the same journey as you.

[George]

There's always something you can do to better your.

[Tim]

Your situation.

[George Campbell]

We don't sell magic wands. And so that person in the mirror, they are really the secret sauce. They are the solution.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm really, really proud of you.

[George Campbell]

Thank you. That's pretty fun. You guys are great.

[Announcer]

The Ramsay show live, one night only. Coming to a city near.