Good Intentions Aren’t Enough—Be Intentional With Your Money

Summary

The Ramsey Show: "Good Intentions Aren’t Enough—Be Intentional With Your Money"

Date: December 23, 2025
Host: Dave Ramsey (Ramsey Network)
Co-host: Dr. John DeLoney
Featuring: George Kamel, Rachel Cruze, Jade Warshaw

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the importance of intentionality and unity in financial decision-making. Dave Ramsey and Dr. John DeLoney field real-life questions from callers experiencing stress and setbacks related to money, debt, and life transitions. The key message: Good intentions don’t cut it—you must be proactive and collaborative with your finances to achieve security and avoid recurring mistakes. The episode’s discussions cover communication in marriage, bouncing back from disability and debt, avoiding ill-advised purchases, and balancing ambition with family life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Intentionality Over Good Intentions

Dave and John repeatedly stress that positive outcomes with money require a deliberate plan, not just hope or good feelings.

“Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform.”
— Dave Ramsey [00:25]

Key Takeaways:

• Intentional communication and unified decision-making in marriages are critical to preventing financial chaos.
• Many financial problems are symptoms, not root causes. The underlying issues are typically behavioral or relational.

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2. Caller: Joan’s Marital & Financial Tension

[00:55–09:04]
Joan, married 45 years, struggles with her husband’s recent $40,000 splurge (boat, truck, bikes) from their savings. Despite previous financial struggles, she and her husband never aligned on money management.

Highlights:

• Joan feels betrayed by her husband’s surprise purchases and lack of communication.
• Her husband justifies extravagance after witnessing a loved one die young without ever “enjoying life.”

Notable Quotes:

“For people that have been married 45 years, you all suck at communication.”
— Dave Ramsey [04:10]

"Listening to your language... I'm wondering if there’s not a dynamic in your marriage... of you’re the good one and he’s the bad one.”
— Dr. John DeLoney [06:29]

Guidance:

• The couple needs joint ownership of all assets: "There is no 'my' 401k, only ours.” [08:01]
• Communicating with “I” statements rather than blame is essential.
• Counseling is recommended to rebuild trust and reset communication patterns.

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3. Caller: Danielle’s Disability & Debt Struggles

[11:44–16:36; 17:57–20:31]
Danielle, 57, single, living in NYC, disabled after an accident and deep in debt (Social Security overpayment, IRS, credit cards).

Situation:

• Owes $87,000 (including to Social Security and IRS).
• Just secured permanent full-time work at $50,600/year, but struggles with manageable housing and costs.

Support & Guidance:

• Dave offers Danielle a free Ramsey coach to help navigate government bureaucracy and negotiate debts.
• Explained mechanisms of disability overpayment, its financial traps, and the deep challenge of returning to work.

Memorable Moment:

“You need somebody to love you well and walk beside you. And we're just those kind of folk.”
— Dave Ramsey [16:17]

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4. Caller: Garrett’s Business Debt

[22:38–32:13]
Garrett, 25, in New Hampshire, owes $156,000 in business debt. Considers bankruptcy, regretful over poor business decisions and overconfidence.

Discussion:

• Debt breakdown includes vendor bills, a high-interest merchant cash advance, and money owed to parents.
• Dave dissuades bankruptcy: It's not appropriate with his earning potential and the intent to repay his parents.
• Advises tackling vendor debts first, settling merchant advance for less, and repaying family last.
• Urges discipline, focus, and emotional fortitude.

Notable Encouragement:

“You can do this, Garrett. I promise you can.”
— Dave Ramsey [31:22]

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5. Caller: Steve's Family Vacation vs. Emergency Fund

[35:07–42:54]
Steve, single-earner with 7 kids, cashed out savings to finish a home renovation and now wants to splurge on a big family vacation before his oldest leaves for college.

Discussion:

• Only $1,500 saved toward the $6,000 trip; wants to pause o rebuilding emergency savings for the vacation.
• Dave and John stress that every financial choice equals a tradeoff: spending on vacation now can leave the family exposed.
• Advise taking a smaller vacation with the saved amount and involving the kids in creative trip planning.

Tone: Firm, empathetic reminder about opportunity cost and family safety.

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6. Caller: Kim’s Disaster & Medical Debt Spiral

[44:15–52:23]
Kim, South Dakota, faced a natural disaster, inadequate insurance, mounting college/medical expenses, and subsequent unexpected debts.

Key Issues:

• Long-term hotel living due to insurance delays, while also paying mortgage and daughter’s college.
• Daughter faced open heart surgery, incurring ongoing travel and accommodation costs.

Analysis:

• Dave and John highlight the importance of recognizing and responding flexibly to new realities.
• Question the continued spending on college/renovations during severe hardship and urge revisiting “absolutes.”

“The life you had is over and you got a new one now. And what most people try to do is keep parts or the whole of their old life going while navigating this new reality.”
— Dr. John DeLoney [51:29]

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7. On Behavioral Causes of Money Problems

[55:51–58:32]
Dave points out that financial issues are almost always rooted in behavior, not math.

“Money is such an interesting topic because...it lures us to our own death because it makes us think we can fix it by fixing the math. And the math is very seldom the problem.”
– Dave Ramsey [57:27]

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8. Caller: Taylor’s Pilot Training Ambitions

[59:33–64:17]
Taylor, 30, wants to borrow $85,000 to become a pilot.

Advice:

• Dave strongly warns against accruing debt for training.
• Suggests exploring National Guard and local flight paths that can be paid for gradually.
• Warns entry-level pilot pay may not support high loan payments; urges patience and alternative funding.

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9. Caller: Lynn Wants to Borrow for Mom’s Kitchen

[86:44–94:42]
Lynn from New York wants to take a $10,000 loan to help her 80-year-old mother, whose DIY kitchen disaster has become a safety risk.

Dave’s Stand:

• No loans! Even for kindness.
• Lynn is encouraged to organize help via her mom’s church—especially as unqualified church “handymen” caused the issues.
• Empowers the church community responsibility: “The handbook says that’s real religion, widows and orphans.”

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10. Caller: Matt’s Three Jobs vs. Family/Health

[76:35–84:38]
Matt, 40, in Seattle, works three jobs, saves $100k/year, but is exhausted and missing family life.

Key Insights:

• Matt has built wealth but not a life.
• Dave and John say the FIRE (“Financial Independence, Retire Early”) movement can be unsustainable, keeping people on a treadmill of “never enough.”
• The real regret is missing time with family, not another rental house.

“Your brain is telling you what to do. You already know what to do.”
— Dave Ramsey [80:49]

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11. Caller: Jenna’s Dilemma—Pay Off Boyfriend’s Loans?

[65:18–71:32]

Jenna wants to use her savings/stocks to relieve her boyfriend’s $125k student loan debt. He refuses to move forward in life together until his debt is gone.

Advice:

• Do not pay his debt unless married.
• Beware emotional manipulation.
• On marriage, assets and debts become shared decisions—otherwise, protect yourself.

“Do you want to help your boyfriend pay off student debt? No… Should you cave to his blackmail?…No!”
— Dave Ramsey & Dr. John DeLoney [65:53–66:43]

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12. Caller: Patrick—Gift Daughter a House?

[71:46–74:56]

Patrick, 67, has $2.8 million invested, just sold a business. Wants to gift daughter, a responsible teacher, enough for a house after years of IVF depleted her savings.

Advice:

• Do it, but have a meaningful conversation—frame it as a reward for prudent behavior, not entitlement.
• Get estate/gift advice to avoid tax complications.

“I do want this to be a gift without strings, sort of… But I would sit down in person and make this a big deal.”
— Dave Ramsey [73:13]

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13. Caller: James’s Airbnbs & Partnered Real Estate Risks

[97:07–105:17]

James and fiancée run multiple Airbnb micro-lofts, considering expanding further but banks demand big down payment.

Dave’s Cautions:

• Never partner in real estate with someone you aren’t married to.
• Airbnb is risky, labor-intensive, and can be regulated out of existence.
• Scaling only makes sense if it actually creates less work (not more).

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14. Caller: Pastor Zachary—Is a Mortgage Hypocrisy?

[107:00–114:38]

Zachary, a pastor, asks why Dave allows for mortgages if “the borrower is slave to the lender.”

Explanation:

• It's the only “hypocritical” advice Dave gives; he personally hasn't borrowed since his 20s, but recognizes how homeownership can build wealth.
• Car loans are strictly opposed—cars depreciate and don't build wealth.

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15. Caller: Drew Asks—Can You Be a Business & Family Success?

[118:25–126:45]

Drew, airline pilot with a lucrative agricultural side business, faces conflict: his wife resents the time away from family.

Insight:

• Yes, business and family can both thrive, but only if timing and mutual support align.
• With young kids, his wife rightly prioritizes his time at home over extra income.

“Yes, you can be a successful businessman and a family man, but the spouse has to be able to carry whatever weight that you’re not carrying. And you’re asking her to carry more than she’s willing to carry right now.”
— Dave Ramsey [126:28]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Marital Money Fights:
  “For people that have been married 45 years, you all suck at communication.” — Dave Ramsey [04:10]

• On Financial Symptoms:
  “Financial problems are never the problem. They’re always the symptom.” — Dave Ramsey [54:36]

• On Self-Awareness:
  “You did a really good job in 2 sentences describing what happened. Most people aren’t that self aware when they’re in this much pain. Well done.” — Dave Ramsey [26:11]

• On Money and Behavior:
  “Money is such an interesting topic because it lets us—it lures us to our own death because it makes us think we can fix it by fixing the math. And the math is very seldom the problem.” — Dave Ramsey [57:27]

• On Family vs. Ambition:
  “When you’re 50, you can hand the kids a key to a rental house. I promise you, they would have exchanged it for time with their dad.” — Dr. John DeLoney [80:01]

• On Relationships and Debt:
  “He’s a leech... either you need to leave or you need to get married.” — Dave Ramsey (re: Jenna’s boyfriend) [70:03]

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Recurring Themes

• Money is Behavior: You must attack behavior and relationships, not just numbers.
• Opportunity Cost: Every dollar spent on one thing is a dollar you can’t use elsewhere.
• Communication & Unity: Financial unity in marriage and family is essential to success.
• Emergency Preparedness: Always maintain (and rebuild) an emergency fund; don’t rationalize its depletion.
• Boundaries: Don’t rescue others (including family) through debt or at your own financial peril.
• Scaling Life: Don’t scale business, rentals, or ambition at the cost of family, health, or sound decision-making.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Joan’s call—marriage & spending: [00:55–09:04]
• Danielle’s debt after disability: [11:44–16:36, 17:57–20:31]
• Garrett’s business debt & bankruptcy: [22:38–32:13]
• Steve’s vacation vs. emergency fund: [35:07–42:54]
• Kim’s disaster/medical debt spiral: [44:15–52:23]
• General: behavior & money: [55:51–58:32]
• Taylor: pilot training debt: [59:33–64:17]
• Lynn: borrowing for mom’s kitchen: [86:44–94:42]
• Matt: three jobs vs. family: [76:35–84:38]
• Jenna: paying boyfriend’s loans: [65:18–71:32]
• Patrick: gifting a house: [71:46–74:56]
• James: Airbnb partner risks: [97:07–105:17]
• Pastor Zachary: mortgage “hypocrisy”: [107:00–114:38]
• Drew: business vs. family: [118:25–126:45]

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Tone & Style

The episode combines tough love, humor, and compassion, true to Dave and John’s straight-shooter style. They offer practical advice, but pull no punches on issues of behavior, boundaries, or foolish financial moves. They reinforce that lasting change means facing hard truths—not just hoping for better outcomes.

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For Listeners:
This episode is a masterclass in why intention must give way to action. Your financial transformation awaits—not just with math, but with courage, unity, and relentless honesty.

Transcript

[George Camel]

George Camel here with a quick PSA before the calls start coming in. If you want to leave the Money stress in 2025, you need a plan that works. So take what you learned today and put it to work in every dollar, download the app and start for free.

[Caller]

Today.

[Dave Ramsey]

Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform. From the Ramsey Network and the Fairwinds Credit Union studio, this is the Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John DeLoney Ramsey personality number one best selling author and host of the Ramsey Network, Dr. John DeLoney show is my co host today. Open phones here at Triple 882-55-5225. Joan is in Florida. Hi Joan, how are you?

[Joan]

I'm good. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

I have a question.

[Joan]

I would like to know if it's okay if I lock my husband out.

[Caller]

Of my savings account.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Tell me more.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sounds pretty dramatic.

[Joan]

Yeah, it is. We've been married for 45 years. Probably 20 some years ago we got into some credit card debt, a lot of credit card debt, to the point where we had to take out a second mortgage. I also borrowed against my 400 million doll. 401. And it took probably 10 years to.

[Caller]

Claw out of that debt.

[Joan]

And I mean we were really good about budgeting and now we have our home paid off, all our cars are paid off. We had absolutely no debt until probably the last year. I picked up a second job before to help, you know, get this debt out. Well, I've since left my second job and we are just spending. I say we. It's not really we, it's him. It's just spending way more than what we're bringing in on.

[Caller]

What?

Oh, just.

[Joan]

He is just.

[Caller]

He bought a boat, he's bought a.

[Joan]

Truck to pull the boat. He's bought road bikes, he's bought mountain bikes. He has gone through $40,000 in savings in the last year buying these things.

[Dave Ramsey]

What is your all's net worth?

[Joan]

Net worth? Our home is worth probably 650,000. I have 650 in my 401k. I had 50,000 in savings and now I have. I guess there's about eight in there now.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And you keep using the word I.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much does he have in his 401k?

[Joan]

Nothing.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so you have a net worth of a million and a half dollars, give or take. And your household income is what?

[Joan]

It's 82. Between the two of us it's 82,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you guys are in your 60s?

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And so what kind of midlife crisis is this dude having at 60?

[Joan]

He is. He's saying that he wants to get all these things bought before he retires, and he plans on retiring next year, so he wants to enjoy his life. We sort of had a significant event happen in our family. We had a family member of ours who just worked himself to death and died in his 40s and didn't enjoy life at. Didn't enjoy any of the money that he made. So my husband was like, well, he's not going to do that. He's not going to be like.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It doesn't sound like the problem is the boat or the truck. It sounds like you come home from working your second job, and all of a sudden there's a new boat in the driveway.

[Joan]

Oh, I hate it. I look out there and I see it, and I know.

[Dave Ramsey]

Him doing crap without you guys without an agreement on it, that's the problem.

[Joan]

I agree.

[Dave Ramsey]

You didn't. You didn't know this? You didn't go along with these purchases? They just occurred?

[Joan]

No. Well, I did go along with the boat, but I didn't realize he was going to spend as much as he did on it. And I didn't realize that he. I mean, he just keeps putting more money into it.

[Dave Ramsey]

For people that have been married 45 years, you all suck at communication.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah, not good.

[Caller]

Yeah, I agree.

[Joan]

I agree.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Or did he just change it on you? Have y' all been communicating well for a decade and then all of a sudden this went sideways?

[Joan]

No, no, this isn't. This isn't new. We've never really agreed on, you know, I'm. I'm more of, let's save. Let's put it aside. And he's more of, let's enjoy it. It's just gotten. It's just gotten bad in the.

[Caller]

Probably last year.

[Dave Ramsey]

John, I appreciate your frustration and. And even your anger, and those are justified. All right? But the problem is not the savings account. That's the symptom.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

The problem is you all are not aligned.

[Joan]

I agree 100%.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're not unified. And so I don't think I'm hearing you say. Because you said, I went along with the boat. I don't think I'm hearing you say that you're opposed to enjoying some of the money. What I do hear you say is you don't like being surprised and people running roughshod over your hard work while you're working two jobs.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that. That's fair.

[Joan]

Second job.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that's fair.

[Joan]

I gave up the second one job.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, but to compare your all's life in any stretch of the imagination to the 40 year old workaholic. He's not even on the same planet. So you can't use that as a justification to do something stupid and lie to your wife.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It's the dishonesty.

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you really do. For the sake of. I mean, if you're in your 60s and you guys are healthy, you may have to be fighting with this old man for another 30 years. Y' all need to really work on this and get on the same stinking.

[Caller]

Page because I agree.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Sharon and I make more money and have more money and I don't buy any boats without Sharon knowing what the boat costs. And we make the decision together beforehand. And if the boat involved a truck to butt pull the boat, we would be talking about that too. We don't just make this up as we go. When I come home and go see what I did, honey. And we've been married 43 years and I'm 65 years old. So we're right in the same camp with you, kiddo.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And here's the other side of it. He's not on the phone. So just. You are.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

The Gottmans are the kind of the goats when it comes to marriage research. Okay.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And they created this thing called the. The four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse. They can tell with 90 plus percent accuracy after watching a couple communicate just for a little bit whether they're going to make it or not. And the, the relational dynamic of contempt where one person thinks they are better than the other person is the number one predictor that this thing's not gonna. It's gonna fall apart. And listening to your language. This is mine. I put this in my account. He has nothing. I'm wondering if there's not a dynamic in your marriage that has established itself over the years of you're the good one and he's the bad one.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You're this, you're the, you're the smart one. You're the one who saves and he's the child. And these dynamics have a way of self reinforcing themselves. Doesn't give a pass. It doesn't give an excuse for his dishonesty, his line to his wife, his.

[Dave Ramsey]

His impulsiveness. Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Acting like a child. But it creates a context for where if you're going to treat me like a child for 40 years, I'm ACT like a child, then excuse it. And if he was on the phone with me, Dave. And I'd be letting him have it. But you have to say, this is the dynamic that we have co created for 40 years where I think I'm better than him because I make more money or I had a second job or I have retirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

The quality of his soul would be greatly increased if the two of you could mutually respect each other, dignify each other with being in agreement before we make major decisions. There you go.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And that usually starts.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that also includes combining ownership of everything. So you don't have a 401k. We have a 401. You don't have a house. We have a house. We have an income. We are doing this. This is what we have a boat now. And that kind of stuff.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

When you sit down to have conversations about feeling dishonest, whatever. If you sit down and say, you went out and did this again and you did this, he's going to fight you. He has to. You've declared war. If you sit down and say, hey, I'm hurt, I'm scared, I feel this way. Start the conversation with I statements. And that can be an invitation. And then if he continues to act like a child, then we're gonna have to respond in some different ways. But you gotta reset this whole communication pattern.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You guys gotta work on your skills.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Your skills are low. And that may mean sitting down with a marriage counselor who's not. Who's teaching you how to develop these skill.

[Caller]

Foreign.

[George Camel]

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. Yeah.

[George Camel]

And that's why you've always said that having term life insurance from Zander is essential because it protects your family. And 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 Camel]

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 Camel]

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 Camel]

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. Funny, they popped that picture up there. That's a great picture. But it's one of the few times that someone's head glows more than mine. His hair just lit up under the lights. Mine usually shines like a bulb. You know, we have to put so much makeup on my head to keep it from just glistening. Right. And his hair is like a dadgum halo, which would not be appropriate. Right, right, right, right. It lights up. And he had us change the lighting because it was even worse than that. That's funny. I like it. It's a good shot, though. Fun stuff. All right, for. That's for those of you looking at YouTube, open phones at Triple 882-55-5225. Danielle's in New York City. Hi, Danielle, how are you?

[Caller]

Hey, good afternoon, Dave. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. How can we help?

[Caller]

Well, Dave, I'm calling you because I have a question, which is how do I bet? How do I bounce back financially and get myself ready for retirement?

[Dave Ramsey]

What are you bouncing back from?

[Caller]

Well, I have been. I had an accident in 2007 which left me disabled. I had to learn how to walk again.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Caller]

And so finally I got to the place where I could do a part time job because I needed the money that I was getting from Social Security disability and my pension was basically going towards my rent. But I started doing that and hurt myself a couple of times. Wasn't able to really save up. And then Covid came. I was able to get a full time job, but it was a temp job. So of course that wasn't really enough still to, you know, save anything.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

But now are you.

[Dave Ramsey]

Are you single, Daniel?

[Caller]

Yes, I am.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller]

I am single.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you're 57. And how are you doing with a disability now? Are you working full time or how you doing?

[Caller]

Praise God, I am working Full time. In fact, I just recently was hired permanently.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good.

[Caller]

What do you make full.

My salary is 50,600.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And you live in the city, in New York City on 50 grand?

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Didn't know you could sneeze for 50 grand in downtown New York.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Okay. And you've got. And you've got pension coming in. In addition to that, are you still getting the Social Security?

[Caller]

Unfortunately, no.

[Dave Ramsey]

No. Once you're working, no longer qualified for it.

[Caller]

And they stopped. They stopped my pension.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

And in fact, that's part of the debt that I owe because according to Social Security disability, I owe them $52,000, not to mention 17,000 to IRS. 8,000. I had credit cards, but I owe 8,000 on that.

[Dave Ramsey]

And then how much is your rent.

[Caller]

Now, friend of mine?

Well, right now I'm living with a friend of mine, so I'm paying $375 a month. But I am trying to get my own place because, you know, I love my friend and I want to keep her as a friend, but I need my own place.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you do. Okay. All right. And so you've got a total of how much debt?

[Caller]

A total of 80. 87,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And a bunch of that is IRS and repayment to Social Security for the time that you were working and should not have received disability, according to them.

[Caller]

Right, Exactly.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller]

All right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Have you fought any of that yet?

[Caller]

I talked to Social Security. They're saying that I can possibly.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Have a support.

[Dave Ramsey]

Probably. Yeah. Okay. So I think we need to get someone in your corner that's used to fighting that battle, because those battles are lengthy, but they're doable. And they don't. They don't come around telling you what all your rights are and what you can pull off there. But there's some things you can do there. So. And. And it will. And it might even affect the IRS bill if you refiled your an appeal and refiled an amended return on your tax bill. So what I'm going to do, because this is a complicated situation, I'm going to you with one of our Ramsey coaches and I'm going to pay for it. It's not going to cost you anything. And they're going to come in and look at your situation and go at some of these people and see if we can get this 87,000 down to half of that or something by just working the system, and then we can work through the rest of it and get it paid off and then start building up some kind of a nest egg. Because you've got to start working towards a nest egg. And, you know, it's all about cost of living versus what you've got coming in and finding those differences and being able to push that through. So you, you've had a hard road, kiddo. You need somebody to love you well and walk beside you. And we're just those kind of folk. So you hang on. I'll have the Christian pick up and we'll get you one of our coaches as a gift from us. And I think they can help you. I really do. It's what they do every day. They help people negotiate all kinds of debts. But when you're dealing with the IRS and Social Security, it's a different, a different spirit over that stuff. So, yeah, different world.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Tell me about the Social Security repayment, Dave. I've never heard that before.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, if you continue, if you're working and you're receiving full payout on ssi, which is Social Security for disability. So she was declared permanently and totally disabled by the government. Based on that, they're paying her probably 3,4000 bucks a month, give or take. Okay, might be more, might be less, but somewhere right in there. And it's not unusual based on the fact that she's permanently disabled and she qualifies to receive Social Security support instead of or is different than the retirement you get through Social Security. But then when she went back to work, she kind of says double dipped, says, I'm really not permanently disabled anymore. I've gotten past that. I've worked my way through that with therapy or whatever, I'm able to work again, but kept getting the checks okay. And so that's not okay. You can't keep getting a check for being permanently disabled when you're no longer permanently disabled. And you've proven that by working. If you had a private disability company, that you had a disability policy at your work and they were paying you and then you went back to work, they would have private investigators following you around with cameras so that they could not have to pay you the disability anymore.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Do you know if you have to pay tax on SSI benefits?

[Dave Ramsey]

You do not.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

So if you're getting 4,000 bucks and.

[Dave Ramsey]

That'S where some of that taxes came from. So if we can reduce what's owed back to them, then that might reduce that IRS tax bill probably. I'm guessing I'm fishing around in the dark there, but I think that's what I'm hearing.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

But I can also imagine if you are permanently disabled, and we know psychologically Spiritually, emotionally, that going to rehab, doing the hard work, and getting back out there. Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you don't know if it's going to work.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It's good for everybody. That's right. Good for everybody. But if you're getting a check for 4,000 bucks a month, 48 a year after taxes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That means you got to be making. You got to go find a job that pays pretty dang well to even get to come off even.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yep. Yep.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's tough. That's a tough order.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yep. Right? Yep.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Our human nature is going to say, why. Why swim upstream?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Because you want to be well, that's why.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I mean, you have to. Have to be that way. But if she's making 50 grand, then she took a net loss in her house after taxes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Living in New York City.

[Dave Ramsey]

She did. And I think she said they stopped her pension too early. Early with release on it based on disability. So, like, we had a guy here years ago that was making over 400 and something thousand. One of our top guys got Ms. And went home out. He was gone. He later passed away from it at an early age, but went out on disability, and the disability people were paying him. The policy we have here maxes at 300k, or it used to. I don't know what it maxes at today. And so he's getting 300k, man. They were following him everywhere, I bet. So trying to figure out if he was doing anything, if he lifted a shovel, if he got paid for doing anything, they were going to disallow that claim. So, you know, we were coaching him. Whatever you do, no matter how good you're feeling don't work.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because they're going. They're the long lens across the parking lot. They're going to capture doing anything thing. Yeah. So. And because they get defrauded.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

No, I get offense. It's just one of those things that just.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

There's not a lot of winners there. Right. Because I know they get defrauded and they want to protect their. Their money.

[Dave Ramsey]

They swing the pendulum so far that you just have to be paranoid about how you live.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Or you got to be somebody like, you know, Danielle, who says I'm going to take the net financial loss because I'm worth some different kind of life.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yep.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And I'm gonna have to work extra hard because it's gonna cost me money.

[Dave Ramsey]

To go get well. I'll just feel better about my life when it's me.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Not some check coming in.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Good for you, Danielle.

[Dave Ramsey]

This is The Ramsey Show. If you've got collectors breathing down your neck and you're drowning in credit card debt, you don't need another debt relief company trying to sell you sunshine and unicorns. You need real help. And Guardian Litigation Group is the real deal. They're not a call center. They're actual attorneys. That means when a creditor tries to sue you, they can step into the courtroom and fight back. Now, listen, debt settlement isn't pretty. It's not a magic wand. And I'd prefer you get out of debt the old fashioned way. But if you're staring down bankruptcy and you've got no other way out, Guardian gives you a path to clean up the mess without paying a dime up front. Guardian's attorneys have helped over 55,000 people across the nation settle over $600 million of debt. So if you're ready to take back control of your life and stop cringing every time the phone rings, go to guardianlit.com Ramsey that's guardianlit.com Ramsey paid endorsement attorney advertising. Guardian Litigation Group LLP. Not available in Minnesota and Oregon. Results vary and no specific outcome is guaranteed. Debt settlement may negatively affect credit, and not all creditors will negotiate or settle. Savings vary and may be taxable. Please review our website terms for more information. Doctor John DeLoney Ramsey, personality, Ph.D. in counseling, is my co host today. Open phones at 888. 825 5225. New Hampshire is on the line. Garrett's calling. Hi, Garrett. How are you?

[Caller]

Good.

How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. Sir, how can we help?

[Caller]

I've racked up about $156,000 in business debt, and I've kind of been contemplating bankruptcy, and I didn't know if maybe you thought I should or maybe had other advice or options.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. I'm sorry. It's scary, isn't it?

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Are you married?

[Caller]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. How old are you?

[Caller]

25.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And what do you owe the business debt on? What kind of debt is this? Credit cards or vendors?

[Caller]

So about. So 30,500 is. Vendors, $55,000 is. I was dumb and took out a merchant cash advance, and then I owe my parents, like, $65,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller]

And then another. Another vendor. 7250.

[Dave Ramsey]

7250.

[Caller]

Yes, sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. And what kind of business is this? Or was it.

[Caller]

I sell cabinets and countertops.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. And so a merchant advance on what?

[Caller]

Yeah, so my, like, future revenue. Basically, I gave them my bank statements, and then they said, we'll give you this much and it was like a daily payment. And then last year in 2024, I had a very slow time and it pretty much just took me for everything I had.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that one got you. It's a payday lender of your world. Yeah. The interest rate's also ridiculous, correct?

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And so what method do they have access to your current checking account? Is that how they. They clean you out every so often?

[Pastor Zachary]

They were.

[Caller]

I've since put like stop payments on them and I'm actually, I was working with like a. Or am technically still working with a consolidation agency. But that, that cost is like twelve hundred dollars a week, which I can kind of do. But it, it's hard to manage that. And every time I miss a payment, they're threatening to cancel the program. And it's non refundable and it's still another $28,000 I have to pay into it before they'll negotiate with them.

[Dave Ramsey]

And yeah, I think you stopped that immediately too. You jumped from the frying pan into the fire, didn't you?

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah, I panicked. And I did all that before I kind of talked to anyone about it. Now pretty much my whole family knows and I've been a little more open lately, so I've been getting like some more advice.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay. So if you didn't have this mess, did you do all this because you weren't making money?

[Caller]

No, I was doing pretty well. And then I took a pretty sizable loss on a job and I also got a little full of myself after like a really good four month stretch and I fell behind on my bookkeeping which looking back, that was kind of the debt. That was like my detriment to it all.

[Dave Ramsey]

You did a really good job in 2 sent describing what happened. Because that's exactly what happened. I can smell it. You're. Yeah. You're really on top of that. That's very well done. You weren't doing your books. One job. You got. You got out too far over your skis on and they set you up for a fall and you were feeling invincible. Those three things together put you here. I believe you. That's well done. Congratulations. That's a. Most people aren't that self aware when they're in this much pain. Well done. Proud of you. We work with entrepreneurs and have for years. I've been bankrupt when I was your age, so I know exactly how it feels to be where you are. So the way we fix this is we take the things that are working and we apply them in a forced rank order of importance. Bankruptcy is not going to solve it because you can't bankrupt mom and dad. You can legally, but you're not going to. You're going to pay them. No. So half of this almost is one thing, and it's them. Okay.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

So the rest of it is ninety thousand bucks worth of stuff. How quick can we make that? Now, let's pretend that you were just operating properly. You weren't out over your skis. You weren't taking jobs that could take you down. You weren't feeling over your feeling, and you weren't borrowing any money. What can you make in this business? What kind of profit in a year can you make if you just started fresh?

[Caller]

So last year, I did about $400,000 of revenue.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right.

[Caller]

And I have a. My margins are right around 31%.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so you can make a hundred. You can make 100 grand a year, and you have a $90,000 problem. Yes, because mom and dad aren't. Mom and dad aren't pressuring you.

[Caller]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

But you want to pay them, but they're. They can be. They can be at the end of the list. And that's okay?

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so now here's an idea.

[Caller]

Nice. As well.

[Dave Ramsey]

What vendors do you have to pay to keep supplies coming, to keep the business open? What dollar amount does that represent? Pretty much the 37,000.

[Caller]

Not entirely.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I didn't think so. Half of that.

[Caller]

14?

17?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

About 20.

[Dave Ramsey]

Gotcha. Okay. About 20,000. You need to get on the phone with them first, and we need to get on a program with them where we're going to clear them first, and in return, they're going to keep sending you supplies. Cod.

[Caller]

Yeah, I have been. I've been paying them. It was a large.

[Dave Ramsey]

Now, listen, I'm giving you a program. I'm not asking for the story now. I'm telling you what to do. Okay. Get on the phone with them and set up a program to pay $37,500 plus your new material needs going forward out of your hundred. It's the first thing you do. The merchant people tell them they're not getting paid, maybe ever, but they're certainly not getting paid right now. You're going to sit on the sidelines, and we're going to settle up later. If you want to sue me, sue me. But I don't have any money. And if you sue me, I'm going to file bankruptcy and you're going to get nothing. So you need to just sit over there until I can get this thing cleaned up, and then I'M gonna come pay you off. Okay? You have a conversation with them, but you give them no more money and no more access to your business. You go make 100 a year, 120 a year. You clean up your vendors first, and then you keep the cash flow running. You keep your books up to date, and then you call them. Then you save up 30,000 bucks and you call the merchant people that you owe 55 to, and you settle with them for pennies on the dollar. Then you go pay mom and dad the next year, right? You're out of debt. I just got you out of debt in three years.

[Caller]

Sounds good to me.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's doable. What I just described is very doable. I've done it a thousand times. Now. The trick is, you got to believe it. And you got to be tough enough to run off these people that have been scaring the crap out of you, they've been running your life emotionally. They live in your head rent free. Can you tell I've been there?

[Caller]

Yes. Yes, for sure.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's no fun. And you feel like, you know, they're saying you're not a good guy, and you're a good guy that made a mistake. You're not an evil person. You didn't set up a business to go screw somebody, right? You're just a young guy that made some mistakes, and now you got to go clean up your mistakes. You can file bankruptcy if you want, dude, but you're still gonna have to pay your parents. And you did all of it over 90 grand that I just settled for somewhere around 50. And you shouldn't file bankruptcy when you have the ability to make 120 a year. Not morally, but I mean mechanically. Shouldn't file bankruptcy when you got the ability to make 120 a year. And 50 grand cleans up your mess, because you're going to pay the 37. You're going to pay the 37,000 worth of vendors because you got to keep them in your life. The other people. You're going to settle for 50 cents on the dollar, and then you're going to call mom and dad and pay them as quick as you can and never borrow money again from anyone, not even your parents. Have you learned your lesson?

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You can do this, Garrett. You can really do this. I promise you can. Isn't that cool? Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It's the masterclass on when we get scared, man. We go to fight or flight. We stop thinking. And sometimes it just takes someone to. To sit down and say, hey, here's a plan.

[Dave Ramsey]

Here's the forest. Here's the trees.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah, yeah. Don't burn everything down.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm lost in the woods. We don't have to burn the forest.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah, that's exactly right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Just got to cut that two trees over there and then we can get out and then.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

But you got to keep walking.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, just keep moving. Keep moving, keep moving. And the good news about this guy is he's really smart because he quickly self analyzed. Very unusual. Very unusual. This is the Ramsey Show.

[Rachel Cruz]

Hey, y'.

[Caller]

All.

[Rachel Cruz]

You know I'm all about keeping your budget in check, especially during the holidays. And that's why I always start my grocery shopping during the holidays at Aldi. From fresh produce to holiday favorites and charcuterie boards for parties, Aldi has it all. And at prices that will help your family save big. Up to $4,000 a year for a family of four. So do what I do for my family. Shop at Aldi first to save on groceries without sacrificing quality or holiday joy. Find a store near [e-mail]. that's aldi.us savings based on regional analysis.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Of Aldi versus select competitors.

[Dave Ramsey]

Prices may vary by location, product availability and the market. Thank you for joining us, America. Dr. John DeLoney, Ramsey personality number one best selling author, host of the Dr. John DeLoney show, where you can hear all about boundaries and relationships and mental health issues like you never have any other way. I can tell you that you're gonna, it's a blast and you learn a lot and I do. I love listening to it and people are just plain entertaining, I can tell you that. So check him out. It's all on the Ramsey Networks, anywhere great podcasts are heard and certainly on the YouTube show as well. So anywhere you are, by the way, if you're listening to this show, we thank you for that and we can use your help. Well, if you would subscribe or follow or whatever it is on your type of podcast or YouTube, that would help us immensely. The numbers change dramatically when you do that because the different algorithms spit the show out in the face of people that need it that way. And when you don't subscribe and don't follow, we don't get that. And when you leave a five star review, we get that. And when you share the show, some of the different platforms have a share button where you can simply share it or a way to just do a drop down and share it or click the link and send it to a friend. Or if you listen on talk radio, thank you for that. Send. Tell your Friend where you're listening. Share this show you are our marketing plan. When you do that, it makes a huge difference. Last week we were number two and number three in all of Apple podcasts. There's about 2 million of them and Joe Rogan was sitting there at number one. NPR was in there at number two or three. We were in there at number two or three. And that's because of you guys sharing and telling people about it. Thank you very much. We appreciate you. It's really important because we don't have a stadium named after us like so. Or somebody like that. Right. Excuse me. I got an allergy, but all right. Steve's in Salt Lake City. Hey Steve, what's up?

[Caller]

Hey guys, I've got a short term question and a longer term question for you guys. The short starting taking a family vacation. So I'm a single income earner of our family. We have seven kids. My wife homeschools our kids at home. We've not taken a vacation in probably eight or nine years. And recently we ended up we just got done doing a big home renovation, spent about 50 grand out of pocket cash flowing. That and the last little probably 15,000 or so we had to take out of our six months. Six months fun to finish the project. But of course it always ends up going more expensive than you thought. So my question is, and first of all, we have a kid about to go off to college in about four months or whatever it's going to be, and we want to take that vacation before he is obviously gone. I've only saved up about $1,500 for a vacation over the past few months or so. Obviously that's not going to get it done to take a family of nine on a vacation. We probably need 6,000 or so for that vacation. My question is, do we pause on rebuilding that six month fund back up to about 60 grand, $60,000 and put it for the vacation or get that full six months back in the fund and then focus on a vacation.

[Dave Ramsey]

Man, that's so dangerous. That's just so dangerous. I mean you completely rationalized spending all of your vacation money and some of your emergency fund on the renovation and so you chose not to go on vacation when you did that.

[Caller]

True.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So you traded because you had the money to go on vacation, just didn't do the renovation, but you chose the renovation instead of the vacation.

[Caller]

Yeah, basically we we bought a house that did not have a built out basement and we had half of the house, basically.

[Dave Ramsey]

So that's when you chose when you Bought the wrong house. That's when you chose to not go on vacation.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because you chose to do a renovation. Because you chose. But see, these are all choices. It's not like somehow that somebody stole something from you and you put the money on one thing and now you don't have it to do the other thing. That's how it works, right?

[Caller]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

And having nine kids and no emergency fund or a limited emergency fund. Dude, you're asking for trouble.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's so scary. I'm scared for you. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. You're the one with the nine kids. I don't have to. I don't have to feed them. You do. But I'm scared for you. And I want you to get to do the things you want to do. I'd love for you to go do that. You can do whatever you want to do. Y' all are adults. You can make these choices. You've been making choices. But I want you to realize that when you're making. Choosing one thing with money, you're choosing not to do several other things.

[Caller]

Sure. Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so you're choosing. But if you choose to go on vacation and have a limited emergency fund. Not if the emergency occurs. When it occurs, because it's going to occur. We. We have nine opportunities for an emergency here at all times.

[Caller]

True.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so when it occurs, then you've chosen to leave your family vulnerable. And the trade was for a vacation. That scares me. So you guys do what you want to do. But I think I'm going on a fifteen hundred dollar vacation. Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And I think I. Man, Dave, I'm totally with you. And working with parents who were dropping their kids off of college, there's illusion that we got to get this last thing in. We got to do this thing.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's not over.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

No, it's not over. Number one. But often that last thing. We don't really care about the kids. We need to do it for us. It's almost like this guilt induced. This is it. We got to do a thing. And we got to. Everybody's got to come do this thing. And it is.

[Dave Ramsey]

But we've never had a vacation in how many years?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Right. In 17 or 18 years.

[Dave Ramsey]

And we chose to do a renovation or buy a house that required a renovation. Used up all our money instead. That's right. So the vacation obviously was not as.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Important, Wasn't a priority. That's right. And now it's this end. And now there's this sense of, oh, we're about to lose him. He's going to go away. It's the last spring break. We got to do this thing. And so I would invite the kids into a room and say, we have this much money. Let's get as creative as possible. We're going to make our own snacks. We're going to go to a KOA we're going to have a blast. But this is the money we got, and I promise, if you do it right, the kids will have a great time. Now, whether you go and feel guilty because it's not in Cabo or something, that's on you. But you chose to spend that Cabo money on. On. On a renovation or on a house. But. But bring the kids along, man. And let's try to get as creative as possible and let them be a part of the planning and see what we can come up with.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You seem distressed. Just.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, I want him to be able to do this, but I can't, as an adult, say it's a good idea. I guess there's. I kind of get it. But. But the other thing. I think that you're pointing out something that's very right, because we had some of the best vacations with our kids that we ever had while they were in college.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah, that's not over.

[Dave Ramsey]

As a matter of fact, on the front of a cruise ship one night at happy hour, before dinner, they decided as adults to start telling us all the stuff they had done as teenagers that we didn't know.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I would have paid money to be there for that.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I left that room feeling like a total failure as a parent because I had been deceived by these three brats repeatedly throughout their teenage years. And I had no idea. I thought I was so on top of it. And I completely had no idea what these skunks had been into.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Well, here's what's going to be fun at the Net at the Ramsey cruise.

[Dave Ramsey]

We're gonna do it again.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I'm gonna get Rachel and Daniel and things that have happened in the last decade that you probably don't know about, but we're gonna. We're gonna go through them all again, man.

[Dave Ramsey]

So, yeah, it was a great cruise other than that particular evening, but. Yeah, it was. But they were adults, Daniel. I think maybe Denise was out of college, and Denise and. Well, no, I know. I guess Denise and Rachel were both married. Come to think of it.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Here's what y' all did. And we've all heard the statistic about.

[Dave Ramsey]

We do stuff together with them as adults. That's better than it would have been when they were 13, I can tell you that.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Well, and that's the thing.

[Jade Warshaw]

I was just.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

There's a statistic going around that you get 19 years with your kids, you get 18 with them at home in the rest of their life, all added together as one year. And I think that we just go, yeah, that's called.

[Dave Ramsey]

Gosh.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

But it's.

[Dave Ramsey]

Unless you're. Unless you're a twerp as a parent.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It'S one of those cultural. They're just gone. And I think, nope. If you're intentional and you build relationships and you're somebody they want to be around.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Then it's kind of like, what stage of children did you like the best? Yeah, all of them.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

They're all different.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I don't want to do any of them again, but I liked all of them.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That little boy who just reached out to.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, he's great. He's great. As long as I can hand him back. That's what grandparents. Yeah. My son can do the potty training. I can just do the hugs. Okay. So that's great. That's the way it's supposed to be. So, you know, if I don't know how great grandkids are going to be, I'd have been nicer to their parents. But you know, that that's a different thing. But I'm loving this stage.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm loving the other stage. And I've loved every stage. I don't. Yeah, it's. So embrace the toddlerhood, embrace the teenage years, embrace them leaving for college.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

But every expense is a choice at the end of the day.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And you're choosing the thing. You got to remember, it's called opportunity cost. In the finance world, you lose the opportunity to do B when you do A. When you do B, you lose the opportunity to do A. It'll only do one thing. It won't do both. This is the Ramsey Show.

[Rachel Cruz]

The holidays can come with a lot of pressure to spend. Family, friends, Secret Santa at the office, all the things. But y', all, this season should be about peace, not payments. That's a big reason why I love Fairwinds Credit Union. They share the Ramsey values of helping you reach your money goals without debt. And with the Fairwind Smart bundle, Ramsey fans get a no fee checking account, a high yield savings to grow your emergency fund, and the exclusive Ramsey Beweird debit card. It says debt is normal. Be weird right there on the front. So every time you use it, it's a Reminder that you're doing your money differently. So this Christmas, skip the credit cards and celebrate progress, not payments. Spend with peace of mind, knowing that you're sticking to your budget and staying debt free. And check out the Fair Winds Smart Bundle [e-mail] Ramsey and open up the Smart Bundle and grab your exclusive Ramsey Beware debit card. That's fairwinds.org Ramsey Fairwinds is federally insured by the NCUA.

[Dave Ramsey]

Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fairwinds credit union studio. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, PhD in counseling, is my co host today. Open phones at 888825 5225. Kim is in South Dakota. Hi Kim, how are you?

[Caller]

I'm great. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

Okay, so we live debt free, had purchased to use cars. We followed your program since we had our daughter 20 something years ago and have lived that way but ran into a little snaggle when we were part of a natural disaster. And we had purchased homeowners insurance with State Farm and had a really high deductible because our opinion was we had enough money saved that if something happened we would pay for it ourselves and not pay a huge premium. So that's how we lived our lives. We got in the go on vacations. We have one child who was in college and we were paying for that with cash pre med. So she has to go to school for that. And so that's kind of how we lived our lives until the storm came. But the storm made our house unlivable. And so we had to go into a hotel for two and a half years and the insurance company did not pay us like they said they would. And so we ran up thousands and thousands of credit card debt, dollars in debt to pay for food, housing, all of that stuff. And unfortunately we tried to resolve this with them and couldn't. So we have an attorney who's filing suit against them to try to get our money back. But in the meantime we're trying to dog paddle our way out of this. And at the same exact time our child had to have open heart surgery, we had to take her to California, to Stanford. And we spend a lot of time, which I have no control over these bills at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. So I never know how to budget because I've got hotel bills unexpected when they say you have to come to Mayo and you have to pay for those things. You have to pay for food when you're Mayo, gas. And so it's very difficult to budget. So I just wanted to know if there's something I'm missing because sometimes you're too close to it to see it. What's the best way to manage this? Because I don't feel like I have control like we used to have. And I just wanted some ideas.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, I'm missing it. So for 20 years you were completely debt free and you didn't have any money?

[Caller]

Well, we did have money, but we used a lot of that to do repair front. We became the bank of State Farm.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I know, but how much, how much money did you have?

[Caller]

We had, I'm gonna say saved up and not used for college cash on hand because we just bought this house. Probably about a hundred thousand dollars that we had saved up.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so you. Why did it take two and a half years and why were you not buying your own food while working?

[Caller]

Well, we couldn't pay in the hotel. You can't. You can buy food, but you can't cook. If there's no.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, I mean, if it's gonna take two and a half years, why don't you go rent something?

[Caller]

We tried. There wasn't anything available that met the physical needs that we had. We had moved our neighbor into our home who was 90 years old for end of life. And we couldn't have stairs. And there were just requirements that we had that they could not meet. So we ended up in a hotel. And you had to pay for laundry, you had to pay for meals a day.

[Dave Ramsey]

State Farm screwed you. But so did those decisions. Yeah, I mean, you quadrupled or 5x your cost. And it doesn't take two and a half years to rebuild a house.

[Caller]

Oh, it's not even done now.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, I mean, why. Okay, so I built an entire House in 11 months. Why can you not build a house?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I've got family members that just lost their house in Texas and last night was their first night back. But it was, it's been what, four months, five months? Like, yeah, two and a half years. Tell me about that. Like, it seems like they could have knocked the whole house down.

[Caller]

It was a natural disaster. It was a natural disaster. So there were lots of building going on project. So there weren't a lot of contractors available. It was also during the time where you had high gas prices and stuff and contractors didn't want to come out to look at the house if it wasn't something that they wanted to do because there was so much work. There was a lot of contributing factors. Also the fact that State Farm was not approving things. You kept having to wait. They would make us do another estimate and another estimate, another estimate.

[Dave Ramsey]

But you stayed in the ditch rather than making a decision to do something completely different for two and a half years. So that's what put you here. My goodness. And now the health. Your daughter that's studying to be a doctor has had open heart surgery, Correct. So she's not studying to be a doctor right now. She's recovering, right?

[Caller]

No, the school's letting her stay in school and she's trying to do stuff online and submit things, sometimes late.

[Dave Ramsey]

Did you not she have health insurance?

[Caller]

She has our health insurance. My husband's health insurance.

[Dave Ramsey]

Does it not cover the surgeries and the other stuff?

[Caller]

It covers surgeries, but it doesn't cover any. Any of the other things associated with it, like hotel bills and gas and food. When we go to Mayo or when we had to go to Stanford. We in Stanford for seven months.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So what is your household?

[Caller]

188.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you can't buy a hotel bill and go to Stanford if you make 188,000.

[Caller]

Well, again, I mean, we did and, you know, put things on credit cards.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why? You know, you make 188,000?

[Caller]

Because we had a mortgage payment and we had college tuition and we had other things that we were paying. I mean, it wasn't. And we were paying, you know, for the house while we were in the hotel. I mean, there was a lot of them. I could sit here and go over a single bill and you go, oh, that makes sense. But we're not extravagant. I mean, we're not give you an idea like, we canceled our trash service and gather up our own trash and take this up ourselves.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah, but hold on.

[Caller]

Sprinklers. Here's the thing.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

We're not trying to pick those apart. I think if I back all the way out of this thing, I think the part for every Emotional Health Challenge, there is this distance from this scary, terrifying line called reality. And if you on my show, I say this probably three times an episode, which is the life you had is over and you got a new one now. And what most people try to do is keep parts or the whole of their old life going while navigating this new reality. And. And so, for instance, you were in a position when you were debt free and had 100 grand in the bank and y' all made $200,000 a year to fully fund your kids college. That's a dream you'll have. It's a priority for you if you can't afford it though, you can't afford it. And that's a hard conversation with your kid. That's what I'm talking about.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And you know, the third month, not the third year.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

I sue State Farm and I move out of a hotel the third month. And if I have to pay for nursing home for the 92 year old neighbor as just to make me feel good about that, I will. Or maybe not.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Or go to my church and say.

[Dave Ramsey]

Maybe I can't do this. I thought I could help this guy and I can't help this guy anymore. I'm not in a position because only the strong can help the weak. And right now our knees are broken and we can't do anything. And so no, we can't pay for med school. And no, I'm not living in a hotel. And no, I'm not putting out requirements for a 92 year old neighbor that caused me to go completely broke and lose everything I own because I stayed in a hotel two and a half years longer than I should have. So I think you got to start putting some limitations on some of these things that you keep declaring as absolutes in this conversation.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

The absolute is we gotta have a place to live and we gotta keep our daughters like healthy. And outside of that, I think everything's gotta be back on the table.

[Dave Ramsey]

And 188,000 will do those things. Yeah, without credit card debt and without parsing it out. And parsing it out and parsing it out. Yeah. So. And you know, just if it's any consolation to you at all, State Farm has a horrible reputation on claims. You're not the only one. So sue their butt. But I'm not going to wait around on them to fix my life either. Owning a business can be a heavy load. You want to serve your customers well, make a healthy profit and grow. And your team, family and customers are all counting on you. And now everybody's talking about AI like it's magic and you're wondering how to keep up. You're carrying a lot, but you don't have to do it all alone. That's where NetSuite comes in. Over 43,000 businesses, including Ramsey Solutions, use NetSuite to lighten the load by bringing all their numbers into one system. Accounting, inventory, CRM, payroll, the works. And now NetSuite's AI takes it further. Automating busy work, flagging inventory issues, spotting cash flow problems in real time and catching risks before they hit. So you're not just closing the books faster. You're making decisions confidently and when your numbers are right, that takes a lot of pressure off your shoulders. And yeah, switching systems is a big move. But NetSuite's suite success process gets you up and running fast. Go to netsuite.comramsey for a free product tour and to schedule time with a NetSuite rep. That's NetSuite.com Ramsey. Doctor John DeLoney, Ramsey personality, is my co host today. Open phones at 888-25-5225. Larry Burkett used to be on the air a thousand years ago, did a Christian radio show, Money Matters. It was called about what the Bible says about money. And he's one of the guys I learned from. I certainly learned what the Bible says about money from Larry a lot. He passed away several years ago. We became friends before he passed away, but at first I was just a fanboy. And he used to say debt is never the problem. Financial problems are never the problem. They're always the symptom. So you need to keep that in mind because that's how we're going to view it. Personal finances, 80% behavior, it's 20% head knowledge. So if you have a student loan debt that you've made no progress on for five years, the student loan debt is not the problem. The new triplets that just came were not here for the last five years. They're not the problem. The interest rate is not the issue. This is not an interest rate issue. This is a you problem. And John, when people get to the bottom of that, that's the beautiful thing about the work you do in counseling with a PhD in counseling and the work that the reason you joining this team as Ramsey personality is a perfect overlap to our approach to money. Because the interest rate is irrelevant. Cause you haven't dealt with you. That's the thing. When you deal with you, you're not only going to get financial peace, two words that don't go together like airline service, but you're also going to get progress and wealth. Until you deal with you, you're not going to get any of that right.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And it's hard to sell somebody on that when they're so convinced from a TikTok ad or a TikTok, you know, swipe or whatever, where they got the information. And I think a lot of us sit in our house, man, and we just spin out with life's problems. I can't imagine having triplets just show up after having a couple of other kids. Whatever your problem happens to be, you lost your job Your marriage is falling apart, whatever it is, and it's so much easier. We have so much distraction in our world. We can just spin our wheels and jam that gas pedal into the bottom of the. Of the car, thinking we're going real fast and we're going nowhere. We're just avoiding.

[Dave Ramsey]

But money is such an interesting topic because it lets us. It lures us to our own death because it makes us think we can fix it by fixing the math. And the math is very seldom the problem. The math is the symptom. It's not the problem. The problem is our spending, our income, our lack of control, our lack of working together, our choices, just our behaviors and our principles by which. But we somehow think we can unplug from all of this stuff that's called our life and set this money thing over here to the side and just fix it with just math. And the reason you can't is it doesn't unplug. It's sitting there right in the middle of your freaking life because your life is impacting it. It's impacting your life. You can't just set it over here in a test tube and go, it's a math thing. 6% versus zero. It's not a math thing.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And I want to speak to the person who's listening to this or to the gajillions of people who are listening to this who are five years from today away from triplets or a job loss, or a mom calling and saying, I have cancer, or a husband saying I haven't been faithful or whatever. The thing is that choice starts now because five years ago, if they had been hell bent on paying these things off, its life would still be chaotic. But I want people to listen to that man's voice. It just sounds cooked right. It's heartbreaking. You can celebrate the chaos of three kids coming home or not be able to breathe because you can't. There's no. There's no room for three kids.

[Dave Ramsey]

I remember when our oldest daughter Denise had the third one. Her husband Bill said, well, we just went from man on man to zone defense.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

My buddy said, man, it was all cool till we went from man to man to zone. They win.

[Dave Ramsey]

Taylor is in Indianapolis. Hey, Taylor. What's up?

[Caller]

How are we doing today? Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure, man. How can I you help?

[Caller]

So I'm thinking about doing a job switch right now. I drive a dump truck and I'm in the union and everything, but I'm looking to be a pilot, but I have 5,000 in debt and it's gonna send me back another 85,000. But I plan on having the 5,000 that I have now and paying that off this season before I get laid off.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're asking me if you're gonna go if I think you should go $85,000 in debt to be a pilot? Is that what you're asking?

[Caller]

Yeah. Do you think it's a smart job?

[Dave Ramsey]

No, it's not.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Under no circumstances would I do that. Now should you go become a pilot? Yeah, probably. How old are you?

[Caller]

I'm 30.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Are you married?

[Caller]

I am.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. I would talk to the Air National Guard and see if they have any programs for training pilots while you serve your country. Weekends and two or three sets of boot camp a year. That wouldn't put you away from your family necessarily or not for long periods of time. And let's see if they'll pay for it. They have lots of wonderful programs. I know that. I also would start talking to the local airport about how I can get my hours there after I get up. I would pay to get a certain number of hours and get my first set of livery. Are you licensed at all?

[Caller]

No. Right now I drive a dump truck.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, no, I heard that, but have you gotten any pilots hours in at all?

[Caller]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

How do you know you want to do that?

[Caller]

I worked at the airport about five years ago. I wanted to do it about then that time. Sorry. But I never pulled the trigger, and I ended up just going to get my CDLs and. And I've been at this for about five years now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. I'm with you on living your dream. I just don't want you to do it in such a way. It becomes a nightmare. So let's figure out a way that we can walk into this a little at a time, start getting your hours in while you keep driving truck because you're making some good money on the truck. But we're not. We just don't be doing that 10 years from now. You want to be in the air, right? Yes, but I don't want to try to do it at super high speed because I don't want you going $85,000 in debt because you might not make $65,000 the first year. It's very possible if you got your commercial hours in and you can actually fly a jet and that may cost you more than 85,000 to get to that point where you can actually pick up a regional job doing some of these puddle jumpers. They don't pay anything, man.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Entry level pilot pay sucks.

[Caller]

Yeah. From what I heard it's about 55,000 a year. But then, yep. I would be going with Lift Academy to say I get on with Republic and they're paying 94 an hour starting off.

[Dave Ramsey]

So maybe, maybe, maybe.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

But hey, you're. You're about to walk into the trap, brother, where you borrow a bunch of money and you've done some napkin envelope on the top carrier, paying a top dollar and you've made that math work.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And there's a lot of maybes and maybe not. Some probably and probably nots in between you and that dollar amount, man.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you're trying to jump from the dock into the boat and the boat's not close enough to the dock. That's what I'm saying. So I want you to pull the boat closer to the dock. And how's that sound? It sounds like going over there, starting to get some of your hours, paying for your first level of licenses. Maybe get a weekend job as an instructor once you got enough hours under your belt. And they'll pay you to put more hours down and you can start to build your hours up. Because the biggest cost is not the actual certifications, it's the hours to get ready. And then if you want to take. Because if, when you take a job at 55 or 60 versus what you're doing now, union to dump truck, you're taking a pay cut to move into this dream initially. And I don't care if you found one off at 94. That's not that. That's not the industry. The industry is 55 or 60 right now for entry. And I want you to go do that because you can make your way up to 2 or 300,000 someday. But please don't go $85,000 in debt and rush this. Do it a little bit at a time and. Or talk to the Air National Guard. Let's see if you can figure out a way to get some hours working for your country. And they'll pay for the whole stinking thing. Possibly. I don't know. Let's see what they got out there. This is the Ramsey Show.

[George Camel]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Doctor John DeLoney, Ramsey Personnel, is my co host today. The Ramsey SHOW Question of the Day is brought to you by. Why Refi? We trust Y Refi because they help people who have defaulted private student loans and they help them refinance with a low fixed interest rate that you can't get anywhere else. One guy didn't named Chris did it. He had a student loan. He cut his payment by 40% with Y refi. Go to yrefi.com Ramsey that's the letter Y R E F fy.com Ramsey might not be in all states.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

All right. Today's question comes from Jenna in Minnesota. Jenna writes, should I help my boyfriend pay off student loan debt? No. I guess we could just end it there, but I'll keep going. I know what you're going to say, so let me explain.

[Dave Ramsey]

Still no.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

We both went to college for mechanical engineering. My parents covered my tuition. But my boyfriend has over $125,000 in college loans. We both work good jobs and bring home a combined income of $200,000. But his loan payments are killing it him. He didn't want to burden me with them and he wants to put our life on hold, marriage, house and children until they're paid off. He has about 15k in savings, and so this is going to be a long process. I have 80,000 in savings and roughly 300,000 in stocks that my grandpa set up for me when I was a kid. Should I help pay off my boyfriend's loans by adding an amount to his payment every month? Pay them outright or do you think I shouldn't help him at all?

[Dave Ramsey]

Should you cave to his blackmail?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's exact. I was going to say he is. This is a. It's a red herring. It's a. It's a proxy.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's a ploy.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

So listen, kiddo, we tell folks when they get married, everything becomes shared. So you will have $125,000 student loan when you're married because your husband does. He will have $300,000 in stocks that his wife's grandfather left her. He will have $80,000 in savings that his wife had before they got married. And so when you get home from the honeymoon, pay off the Pay off the student loan. But this is bull crap.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It's bull crap on a stick. So frustrating.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Tell boy child time to get. You know, part of the problem is, is we're all playing house over here, so he's got no incentive to get married other than blackmail you into it. So now if you want to have a healthy relationship, y' all get married yesterday. Since you're playing house anyway. We have a combined income. You don't have a combined income. You're not married. That's bull crap. You're shacking up.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And we would not have a show if people like you didn't withdraw $125,000 from the money that their grandparents sent them to pay off a boyfriend's loans. And then y' all break up.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, yeah, that's like, we would standard.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

We wouldn't have this show if that didn't happen all the time. And I know you can say no, not us. Not us.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, he would never do that.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

The guy that won't marry me would never do that. You know how you sound? So seriously.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

No, don't. Please don't. Please don't. Please don't.

[Dave Ramsey]

Time to get married, boys and girls. Look, I think this is a. I think it's a good. I think it's a good. Like an altar call right here. It's come to Jesus. Are we. Are we gonna do this or not?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because if you're gonna get married, y' all get. Y' all come home from the honeymoon, we would tell you to take the $380,000 that you have in assets and pay off the 125,000 debt that he has. And then we take off with our life, with our fabulous Combined, Inc. Debt and whatever's left of that money, which would still be 200,000 bucks. So. Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And by the way, when you get married, what you're agreeing to do is to help carry burdens together for richer, for poorer. And so if he. If he already says, well, I've got this thing going on, so I'm going to hide it from you. I don't want to be with you. I don't want to be apart from you, this will be the rest of your life. This will happen with kids. This will happen with tuition. This will happen with which church to go to. This will happen again and again and again. This is the big, glaring neon.

[Dave Ramsey]

Put our wife on our life on ho.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

He doesn't want to burden me with that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Put her life on who?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

He's not ready to marry you then. Oh, Brother, we're going to work together. Work together. Work together.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm gonna give this guy about 20 minutes. Get me to the church on time. Baby, I'm serious. I'm done with this guy. This is bothering me for. So there's something about this that's running all over me, and I. I'm usually a little bit. I'm pretty sure, pretty. Pretty mean, but I'm usually a little bit more gentle than this. Yeah, but this is. This. There's something wrong. Jenna.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Here's what I. Here's what is. Is getting under my skin.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, I know what it is. You have worded all of this. It's all the dad gum language. That's what's killing me. You have worded all this because you have bought this freaking sales line.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's it. That's the thing. She's the problem. She thinks she is the problem here.

[Dave Ramsey]

This guy has complete. He's a. I'm afraid he's a con artist.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

He's a leech.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So either way, if you're. Listen, you. You either need to leave or you need to get married.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Please don't pay off his loans and.

[Dave Ramsey]

Don'T pay off his loans unless you get married. And if you get married, then it's our loans and our money, and we'll do that. But you got. You got about 20 minutes, buddy. About 20 minutes. Stop the sales job. Don't like. Don't like con artists who are sleeping with the person they're conning. It's a problem. Dad gum salesman. Sorry. I think I've had too much coffee. John. Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho. Oh, my gosh. I need to calm down. But, yeah, I just. I think about my girls, and they did not. Thank God. You know, thank God that we taught them how to pick and they picked studs. So. I've got two sons in all. They're absolutely incredible.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah. I've got a young daughter.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you would kill him.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

But here's what. Here's why. I know. I do. Here's why this young woman, Jenna, is. Is astounding.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. She's a dad gum.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

She's a mechanical engineer. She makes a hundred grand. She's got half a million dollars already put together because her grandpa hooked her up. And she's got this guy that she loves, and the guy is making her the down.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And so she's asking herself every day, what am I doing wrong? Oh, I have another way I can save this thing.

[Dave Ramsey]

I. I want to help. I know what you're gonna say, but I'm different. No, no.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It's not you. It's him. It's him. You're worth more than this. That's what I'll say.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're more valuable. We're angry for you. Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

So brought to you by Y Refi and Preparation H because I got hemorrhoids now. God, makes me so mad when guys are idiots.

[Dave Ramsey]

Patrick's in Orlando. Hey, Patrick, what's up?

[Caller]

Hey, guys.

So the situation is, my wife and I are 67 and we've got 2.8 million in four different mutual funds. Way to go debt free. Thank you. Thank you. We're debt free and we got an offer we couldn't refuse on our business. We closed December 11th. We get 575 cash and we hold a note for five years, for 300. So that brings me to the question, because I've got a daughter that lives in Austin, Texas, and she and her husband have been married for 20 years and we have a beautiful grandchild. And they're saving for a house. They're also debt free. They're doing everything right. They're both teachers and they want to get a house. And they're saving like crazy two rounds of IVF to get Julia here pretty much wiped out their savings. And they're trying to come back for that. And I'm thinking, you know, December 11th, I collect 575. I could probably, you know, give them the money for a pretty nice house in Austin. 575. And so that's one option.

[Dave Ramsey]

Do it.

[Caller]

I like really strong. Just do it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I like it. I like it. Can I. Can I add one thing to it?

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. I do want this to be a gift. And I'll teach you a technical thing you need to do. But aside from that, I do want it to be a gift without strings, sort of. But I would sit down in person with them. You and your wife go to dinner and make this a big deal. This is not just a drive by breakfast, one morning coffee. Okay? We're going to a nice restaurant. We're going to make a production out of this and say, this has nothing to do with the grandkid. Although you said it six times, that it does, but it doesn't. Okay? It shouldn't, because you shouldn't give it to them because the grandkids. You should give it to them because they have been responsible and you're not bringing harm to them and you're not enabling bad behavior. Instead, you're accentuating and lifting the positive thing that they have been doing. With their life. And it's going to, it's going to change your family tree the rest of the way. So, yes, you should do it. And I would say I'm going to give this to you with no strings attached. I will tell you I have a favor to ask that you promise to never borrow money again.

[Caller]

Love it.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I wouldn't, I wouldn't make that, it's not a contract. But I would just say I'm doing this to change my family tree. But if you go screw that up by borrowing money, it's going to break my heart. And I would do it.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Now. Oh, Unified Estate tax credit. Talk to your tax guy. You need to use up some of your estate tax exemption so you don't have gift tax. Don't do this without tax advice. Go get some tax advice, please. This is the Ramsey Show.

[Caller]

Foreign.

[Rachel Cruz]

Hey, it's Rachel Cruz. The holidays are here, which means family time, giving back and remembering what the season is all about. And let's be real, it also means shopping, y'.

[Caller]

All.

[Rachel Cruz]

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[Caller]

Foreign.

[Dave Ramsey]

Doctor John DeLoney, Ramsey personality is my co host. Open phones at 888, 825-5225. Matt is in Seattle. Hi Matt, welcome to the Ramsey Show.

[Caller]

Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. I got a question for you. So I currently have three jobs and spend more than 12 hours a day working and I save and invest about half my income. So I'm saving about 100,000 a year. So financially we're sound but it comes at a cost. So I'm not spending enough time with my children and my health is deteriorating. Well, I'm not dying but it's impacting negative.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much do you have in savings in your investments?

[Caller]

Yeah, so I so with I've been doing this, I've been having three jobs for about five years now or going into six years.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you put a half million dollars away.

[Caller]

Yeah, exactly. Well, exactly. So with that money, I've bought four homes, one primary residence and three single family homes. And I'm renting it all out right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, and what are the three single family homes worth.

[Caller]

Roughly?

On average, about 600k each. And I bought it for about. Yet. Correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so the. The three rental properties are worth $1.8 million and they're paid for.

[Caller]

No, no, no, no, no, no. About. About like 40. I have about 40% equity on each house.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, so you still have debt on them.

[Caller]

Okay, correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so wait a minute. Half a minute.

[Caller]

Okay, so when it comes to equity, I have about 1.3, you know, all those four houses, and I have about 350,000 in savings. So what's your question, Ira? Combined? Yeah. So I just turned 40 and I've been happy so far, but like, I just turned 40 this year. And since then I've been thinking about a lot of stuff, like, is this, Am I. Am I doing a good thing? And I initially I thought I'm doing the right thing for the family, but I'm starting to think about myself, too. I think I'm just kind of going through the midwife crisis, but also. So when I think about creating those two jobs, the thought of living paycheck to paycheck terrifies me.

[Dave Ramsey]

Honey, you're not living paycheck to paycheck. If I will, you're putting $100,000 away. Quitting two jobs is not going to make you paycheck to paycheck. You're so exaggerating that.

[Caller]

Well, if I, after I put all the, like, Mex out on 401k and IRA, I'm not going to be saving any money at all. Oh. On a monthly basis.

[Dave Ramsey]

So back off of your investing. You only got $2 million. You're not living paycheck to paycheck. That's a bogus emotional response.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Why are you afraid to just sit at home with your family, Dude.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Why? Why?

[Caller]

Well, initially I was part of, like, fire movement. But I'm thinking a lot, a lot of things can happen in the future.

[Dave Ramsey]

So I move my burned down. Did you notice it burned to the ground? It burned around people's ears because they were trying to do something that wasn't sustainable. What you're doing is not sustainable. What you're doing is not sustainable. You didn't build a life. You built a financial portfolio. And now your brain is waking up and saying, go build a life. And we're saying, yes, go build a life.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Here's what I promise you.

[Dave Ramsey]

I agree with your brain.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

When you're 50, you can hand the kids a key to a rental house. I promise you, they would have exchanged it for time with their dad. And by the way, that's a false dichotomy. Because you work hard, you're still going to be able to offer your kids a pretty extraordinary life, financial, financially, and you get to spend time with your kids. I think you're scared to go home and be with your family.

[Dave Ramsey]

Am I wrong? Well, are you afraid to admit that the fire thing you bought into sucked?

[Caller]

And also, I think it has to do with my ego. Like, I'm successful and superior, but.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And you have four houses worth $1.3 million.

[Dave Ramsey]

Your net worth is $2 million, and you're 40 years old. Ding, ding. You got the bail. You rung the bell. You're done.

[Caller]

You're done.

[Dave Ramsey]

If you don't do anything else, you're going to be worth $20 million at 65. If you just let the investments that you have grow. That's all. There is no need to panic here. And by the way, people working and enjoying their work and going to work and having meaning as long as they're able is not bad. I intend to be on this microphone until I don't make sense. Now, I don't want to be one of those guys that doesn't make sense. We've seen those and they're dangerous. But yeah. So anyway, yeah, we need to get off at that point. But no, you do. Yeah. Your brain is telling you what to do. You already know what to do. All I'm telling you is your emotions are exaggerating, that you're, like, going to be starving to death or something and living paycheck to paycheck. Not even close.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

How much of.

[Dave Ramsey]

Here's an idea, quit. And if a year from now you're. You think you're going to be homeless or something, go back to work three.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Different jobs, you can get.

[Dave Ramsey]

You can get those jobs right back. Those kinds of jobs are always waiting.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

How much of this stress, Dave? Because I've never lived this life. You keep telling yourself with your neocortex that your thinking part of your brain, I'm worth $1.3 million. I'm worth $1.3M. But your amygdala, the threat detection part of your brain, says you still owe $900,000 on these four houses. You still owe money you still owe money. And every month, no matter what your net worth is or how much money you have coming in, your brain knows you're still on the hook for all these properties. That's got to weigh you down, doesn't it?

[Dave Ramsey]

That's probably part of it. But I think he's been running at breakneck speed. He didn't even notice that part. That's my opinion. Just talking to him.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

He's just exhausted.

[Dave Ramsey]

I think he's just. No, he was trying to run. He thought there was an end game.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Tell me about fire.

[Dave Ramsey]

Fire.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Is it retire young?

[Dave Ramsey]

The retire. Retire at 40, not have to work again. Yeah. And the numbers don't work. Gotcha. It does people. And. Because the problem with money, like when you view money that way, is money's a bully in the schoolyard. As soon as you say, hit me in the nose, you step back. If you cross this line, I'm gonna hit you. You step across the line. He steps back and draws another line, says, if you cross this line, then I'm gonna hit you.

[Caller]

You.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that's what money does. It keeps. Because there's always another one. There's always a bigger thing. There's always a different thing. There's always a reason. There's always inflation. There's always a better car. There's always a, oh, Mama wanted a house in the mountains up. There's always. There's always. Doesn't matter where you get to, there's always another one and a bigger one and a shinier one and a different. So you just can't get away from it. Once you get on that treadmill, you can't check. You can't catch that carrot. It's impossible to catch. And so. So if you could maintain godliness with contentment and say, okay, I'm going to live a lifestyle of $50,000 a year income, then you can build a big enough nest egg to quit. But you can. Something about our psychology won't let us do it. We start out with that, and that's the math, but then by the time we get used to living on $150,000 lifestyle, then I got to go back to a $50,000 lifestyle to quit. Which is exactly what he's saying. He's saying, I'm going to be paycheck to paycheck. He's not even close to paycheck to paycheck. But he's going to have to cut his lifestyle. He's going to have to drop his investing from $100,000 a year contribution now.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That was in addition to maxing out everything else.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

So he can still max out everything.

[Dave Ramsey]

And he can't do $100,000 extra.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Extra.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And that's paycheck to paycheck. That's not paycheck to paycheck.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

There's also this. You get to be 40 and you got $2 million and you thought it was going to feel a different way.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's true. You thought it was going to be a billion.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You thought you were going to do nothing and doing nothing will kill you.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's one of the things I had to outline with all these little communists that are coming out of college. Have to explain to them the, that a billionaire is not the same thing as a millionaire. A millionaire, a billion is 1000 million. Billionaires have four houses, a jet and seven cars. Millionaires have two used Camrys and one house and it's paid for. And they have $800,000 in their 401k. That's a millionaire. But a billionaire is a thousand million. And people emotionally have these two things confused. They think of some rap artist or whatever in a private jet which they don't even own. It's chartered, but I mean they think it's. Oh, that's how you don't live like that with a three million dollar net worth, you know, stupid jet would be more than that. Much less. You know, the whole, I mean it's just like. So that's not how it works. It's the emotion notions of when I get to be a millionaire, I'm going to be a billionaire. No, you're not. You're going to be a millionaire. Two used camera.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It's still a good thing.

[Dave Ramsey]

Two used Camrys and 800,000 in your 401k and a paid 4,500 thousand dollar.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

House and a lot of laughter in your home.

[Dave Ramsey]

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You're done. This is the Ramsey Show. Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studios. Dr. John DeLoney, number one best selling author, host of the Dr. John DeLoney Show. Massive hit on Ramsey Network. He's my co host today. Open phones at Triple 882-522 5. Lynn is in New York. Hi Lynn, how are you?

[Caller]

Good, how are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

I wanted to see if I should take out a $10,000 loan to help my mom fix her kitchen. There's some emotional reasons why I would and why I wouldn't and ultimately I'm trying to see if the Financial. The financials make sense to help me make the decision.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you don't have $10,000 to give your mom?

[Caller]

I don't know.

[Dave Ramsey]

And your mom's broke?

[Caller]

She. Yeah, she has a pension, she has Social Security. She's retired, so she's on a fixed income.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old is your mom?

[Caller]

She's almost 80.

[Dave Ramsey]

And how's her health?

[Caller]

She's actually quite spry for her age.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good. Okay. And what's wrong with her kitchen?

[Caller]

She tends to hire do a lot of DIY and like hire handymen who aren't quite handy and so to renovate the home in general.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, I see. Okay.

[Caller]

Yeah. And so, you know, she's half funded project over the years and it's left the kitchen, you know, with only a subfloor, no cabinets, no countertops. It's just kind of in a state of disrepair. And she is older. Even though her health is pretty great. I worry about, you know, her age and food safety, physical safety in that space.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Really bad decisions.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Man. I just appreciate how much you love your mom. That's sweet of you. And that you want to take care of her and you don't want her living in a house that's probably wouldn't pass codes right now. So. That's nice of you. You do know you called the show where we'd never tell anybody to borrow money, right? You know you called that show.

[Caller]

I did, and I'm trying to. The other part is I've worked really hard over the last few years to.

[Dave Ramsey]

Get out of debt. And I'm not going to tell you to spend $10,000 on an 80 year old's kitchen. The math doesn't work. I mean, if you had a million dollars laying in your account and you wanted to spend $10,000 on an 80 year old's kitchen, that's fine. But I wouldn't do that and I certainly wouldn't borrow the money to do it under any circumstances. But I do applaud your heart. Now let's try to fix the problem though.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

A different way. So is your mom in a good church?

[Caller]

She.

I would say she does go to a church.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good.

[Caller]

But the church is the place where she has been recommended these people who have like fixed her home but good.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's even better. That's even better. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to take some pictures of the mess that is her kitchen and I want you to go have a lunch meeting with her pastor and say some of the jack legs that Go to your church, have done this. And so I'm going to ask, since we have an elderly widow over here, that you organize a work group of some young men who actually know how to swing a hammer and come over and put her some cabinets in and put a floor down. I want you to take care of an elderly widow because she's an elderly widow and she's a member of your church. And I really want you to do it because some of the jack legs that go to your church are the ones that caused the problem in the first place. And I got a feeling you can shame this pastor into getting some work done.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Nothing feels better than shaming a pastor.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm messing with you. I'm being harsh, but you see what I'm saying.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Can I tell you, Dave, this is some of the best advice I've heard you give. Dave, I love this idea because you know why it is? It's the bluff call. Are y' all going to be who you're supposed to be? You're going to take care of widows and orphans? Here you go. You got, you got quiet on us, Lynn. Why don't you like that plan?

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, the handbook says that's real religion, Widows and orphans. Yeah, that's what it's a handbook says.

[Caller]

My mom, she doesn't like accepting help. She's not always the most.

[Dave Ramsey]

But she was going to take a ten thousand dollar loan from you to do a kitchen. That'.

[Caller]

Help. She didn't ask me necessarily for the.

[Dave Ramsey]

I know, but you were, you had a plan where she was going to do that. So let's have a plan where her church supports her because her church's jack legs are the ones that mess this up.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And by the way, this is going to be good practice because over the next 10 years she's going to need more and more support and care from you and others.

[Dave Ramsey]

And others. And you're going to have to get out of the habit of debt fixes anything thing because it makes it worse. Yeah, because I don't want to give you a negative scenario, but I really don't want you paying a loan off after your mom passes away and you're paying payments on a kitchen that she's no longer uses. That would be really, really negative. Can you imagine writing that check every month?

[Caller]

Yeah.

And it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be an investment in that.

Sense that I wouldn't.

So it's not.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, no, it's not. It's just consumption. And it's just your sweetheart wanting to Help your sweet mom. And I think both of you are sweet ladies, and I don't want her to get messed over anymore, and I don't want you to mess yourself over trying to be sweet. And so let's not do this. Let's not step up in this trap. I'm real serious. If it was you, if I was you, I'd go have a. And I've got the money to write the check. But in this case, I think this church has an opportunity to serve.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And that's the other side of it, is they have an opportunity to live out a mission with the congregants of that place that would. This is one of those rare win, win, win, win wins, where everybody wins. And a widow gets. An elderly widow gets in her kitchen put back together, and the church gets an opportunity to go help somebody out. That's awesome.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I don't know how we got here, but seriously, if a recommendation came from inside of her congregation and they left an elderly widow in this situation, the pastor really has an opportunity to work with that person on their character, right?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Absolutely.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because you just don't want to be on this list. You don't want to be on the list of people messing with kids, widows and orphans. There's several things in the scriptures that are really don't. You don't want to be on that list. You want to be on the list of the people that help those people. That's the list you want to be. It's the naughty list and the good list. I mean, this is it. Not Santa Claus, but it's got. And so, you know, you know, it's serious stuff.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's a. You know what? That's a great idea. I hope that happens more and more.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, you have so many opportunities to do things that way. And. And honestly, I work with so many churches. I mean, we work with had 50,000 churches, have taught 10 million financial peace congregants over the last 25 years. And I know a bazillion churches that have the funds and have the systems to take care of the single mom, the widow, the orphan. And they don't always know a way to connect to one. And so just giving them the opportunity, letting them, hey, here's one. And they go, thank you, and they're ready to go do it. It's pretty incredible that they're just standing there ready to go. They're willing, ready and able. They just don't have the connection action. And because no one wants to raise their hand and say, help me, and.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I Know a number of young men who are asking, hey, there's no places to serve. Like I can go to a local soup kitchen or something, but I got to get in line and there's all that. Man, if you could go to church.

[Dave Ramsey]

There's a 25 year old Bible study group of men at that church.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Show up on a weekend.

[Dave Ramsey]

This was their weekend project. They could put that whole kitchen back together, be amazing. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And then they'd all walk a little bit.

[Dave Ramsey]

Everybody wins, boys and girls. This is how the this works. I like it.

[Jade Warshaw]

Listen up, guys, because I've got a big question for you. Where will you be with your money at the end of 2026? Will you be better off, worse or exactly the same? Believe it or not, you get to choose. Look, I know there's a lot going on that can make you feel powerless over your money, but I want you to hear me. You're more in control than you think. You can turn your finances around. So let me help you out. Start your year off with me and Dave Ramsey at our free EveryDollar live stream event on January 8th. We're cutting through all the lies and all the chaos out there that's keeping you stuck so you have the clarity you need to finally get ahead. And you could even win $2,000 just for signing up. Listen, another year is gonna pass anyway, so decide that this is the year you're gonna take back control of your life and your money. Go sign up for the free live [e-mail] livestream.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. If you're going to win with money, you have to tell it what to do instead of wondering where it went. If you don't know where all your money went in 2025, that's normal. But normal sucks. We don't want to be normal. Next year can be different. Get a head start by downloading every dollar. The app everydollar helps you build a personalized plan so you can work the Ramsey principles coaches you to find extra money and put it all to work to beat debt and become wealthy. Answer a few questions. Many people find thousands of dollars on average in just the first 15 minutes. Every dollar still has the same great budgeting features, but it's also going to help you work the Ramsey plan now new and improved. Don't go into the year feeling broken, stressed. Start every dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play. Right now, James is in Rhode Island. Hi, James. How are you? Good, Dave.

[Caller]

How are you guys doing?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

All right. So I'm 40 year old guy, I got a fiance and a baby who turned two in July. And my fiance and I, we have three Airbnbs that are doing really well. Four years into it last year we grossed about 102,000. This year we're go, we're forecasting to do about 127,000 gross on the three Airbnbs with a 62% profit margin. Day job is hospitality sales. I make about 100, 120,000 a year. She is a psychologist, she makes about 110. So our issue is there are these micro lofts and another one is available, but it's in a super historic old building. And I'm thinking about getting a fourth Airbnb, but the banks are telling me that I got to put 40% down. They're going for about, about two and a quarter. So I want to hear your take. If I should get another profitable Airbnb and have it under the same roof as all my other ones or is that considered maybe too high risk?

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, well, I not sure you called the right show. I'm not sure you know, what we do. But the. So I own several hundred million dollars in real estate. Okay. I love real estate as an investment. I went broke in the real estate business in my 20s, if you haven't heard the story. And the way I did that was I borrowed too much money and the banks called our notes because we were in a high risk scenario. The Airbnb business is basically the hotel business. It's a very high labor, intense, you know, a lot of hassle. So the money that you're earning on those Airbnbs, you're working your hiney off to get that money and you're probably, you're working some other people's heiney off because it's a lot of hassle.

[Caller]

I'm the maintenance man, I'm the housekeeper, I'm the guy checking them in. Yep.

[Joan]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, and you have a two.

[Caller]

Year old away, so. Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Why don't you pick up golf too? Oh my God. You know, I mean, you ain't got time to do nothing. So I don't know that you have the bandwidth to add another one on your personal number one. Number two, the risk with Airbnb is, as you probably know, and I don't know where it stands in Providence, Rhode island, but many HOAs, many neighborhoods, many entire municipalities are passing zoning to stop it because they're disruptive to the neighborhood. And so I know a lot of people that have lost the ability to run an Airbnb on a property they bought for an Airbnb and in a historic setting. That's very possible.

[Caller]

Right. It's any unique building. It's the oldest mall in America where there's retail on the first floor, on the second and third floor was repurposed to Airbnb, so it is in a commercial zone.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so that means the risk of them rezoning it and keeping you from.

[Caller]

Doing it is less to my understanding. Yes.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Or it's going to take one new tenant downstairs that's a big tenant that says, I don't want people living upstairs.

[Caller]

Well, we're all on the board, so.

[Dave Ramsey]

They'Re already got residential in there. It's just a matter of whether it's nightly rental.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Residential because it's a hotel in a sense. So I don't know. You're doing some things I don't want to do, and I don't recommend people do things I don't want to do. So number one thing you're doing is you're buying property with someone you're not married to. Very dangerous. Number two, you're going in debt to do it. Very dangerous. Number three, you have a high risk business model that's dependent upon someone else called Airbnb. Very dangerous. Number four, you have to do all the freaking work. And you're getting ready to add 25% to the workload, going from three to four, and you have a two year old. Very dangerous. So that's what I meant by I don't know if you've been around as much. And I'm not trying to be mean to you. I just think. I think that all you have seen in this is the upside. You've not considered any of the downsides. And that's the way I was in my 20s and it's what caused me to go broke.

[Caller]

Broke.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so now I'm always looking. I'm not negative thinker. I buy. I mean, like I said, I own hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate. I love real estate, but I have low hassle real estate. I don't. I don't own a single Airbnb. And we've got enough residential. I easily could do that. But we don't want to screw with it. It's just too dad gum much work for the money. Too much drama for the money. And so we'd rather make the money, you know, a little slower and with a lot less hassle factor. And we don't borrow money 100% of our real estate's paid for. I don't borrow money to buy real estate, so I'm a fan of the category of real estate. But after that, I've kind of given you some things to think about. So until you've thought through all of those things and make sure that you've decided how you're going to own what ownership vehicle you're going to own this in with someone that you're not married to. Oh, real dangerous. You know, that. That you get yourself in all kinds of messes here. And I think that's what the bank is smelling, and that's why they're wanting a huge downstroke. But, you know, a good way to look at any business opportunity, too, James, is to scale it in your mind. And if it doesn't scale, then don't grow it. Meaning if it works for 40 Airbnbs, we might do 4. If it works for 4, but not 5 or not 10, then maybe we shouldn't do 4.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Why is that?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, because it's gonna. The idea is not scalable to where you get out of being the maintenance man.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You just have to keep absorbing more work and more work and more work.

[Dave Ramsey]

And pretty soon you're going to go, I want to quit my job and be Mr. Airbnb.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that's not.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Then your one Airbnb app change or one Airbnb municipality change, or your one.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, Apple decides they're not going to support the app anymore.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

With 13 point whatever. Oh, my Crap. You know, I mean, all kinds of people. I mean, it caught that. Caught that little move right there cost us about $20 million two years ago. So, you know that just because Apple decided to cough and so, you know, all that stuff. So these are things you can't anticipate, and you leave yourself vulnerable to it when you're just living right on the wire, when you're right on the edge. And then you just keep adding to it, keep adding to the plate till the food falls off, you know, and that's. That's what I heard here is a really super busy guy. Well, ambitious guy.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You said this. And, man, this has become increasingly.

[Dave Ramsey]

I.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Felt it heavier and heavier. I have a very real lived experience being in the workforce during 2008, 2009, and there seems to be a lot of folks who have entered into 2010 to 2025. And it's been seemingly mostly upside. It's just been win after win after.

[Dave Ramsey]

Win after win, plus or minus Covid.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And Yeah, plus or minus coveted. And there's the assumption that's just going to keep going that way and there's no, man, it's tough to tell somebody, hey, you have to be prepared for when this thing goes south a little bit or when the roller coaster takes a, you know, goes down. And man, people don't, don't have the psychology for it right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I mean, if you've got your thing based on the Airbnb income of 4 and suddenly they don't rent for 4 months, you're in bankruptcy.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Whereas if you own them all in cash, you're annoyed.

[Dave Ramsey]

Exactly. Well, you put renters in.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you get out of the Airbnb business and you move on, you know, and that's, it's not a big deal. Right. You know, but yeah, this is, it's a problem. Yeah. So no, I'm, I, I, I like James because he's ambitious and he's going after it, he's going for it. I want to support that. But I, I believe in being a nightmare killer, not a dream. Do you want to keep more money in your pocket and not Uncle Sam's? Then listen up. There are tax deductions and credits you could maximize before the end of the year by connecting with an experienced tax professional like a Ramsey trusted tax pro. They know the tax code inside and out so you don't have to, and they can help you file when tax season rolls around. Get a trusted tax pro by going to ramseysolutions.com taxpro ramseysolutions.com taxpro. Doctor John DeLoney, Ramsey personality, best selling author and of course host of the Dr. John DeLoney show, which you need to tune in and check out on the Ramsey Networks. Zachary is with us. He's in St. Louis. Hi, Zachary, how are you?

[Pastor Zachary]

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

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than we deserve, Sir. What's up?

[Pastor Zachary]

Well, I had a question for you. I'm actually a pastor over here at a small town church and I just want to say I very much appreciate all that you do.

[Dave Ramsey]

Thank you.

[Pastor Zachary]

But one question that's come up for me is I often hear you use the phrase the borrower is slave to the lender. And I definitely agree with that principle in many ways. But then on the other end, I noticed that when it comes to a mortgage, you are okay borrowing in that instance, which seems almost to betray that principle a little bit. I was just curious on your reasoning as to why you think it's okay to borrow in that instance. But then when it comes to something Like a car, especially for someone like me. I live a little bit in the country where I'm at, so it's a little bit more difficult. A car is almost a requirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

Pastor, that is a wonderful question. Yeah, it's a really good question. Of course, you're quoting the Scriptures, Proverbs 22:7. The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender. And this is a biblical principle that we're violating when we say it's okay to take out a mortgage. And that's your point, and you're correct completely on that. Or when we tell people it's okay to do that. So are you 26?

[Pastor Zachary]

I'm actually like, 31.

[Dave Ramsey]

31.

[Pastor Zachary]

I had to think about that for a second.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, that's okay. You lose count around 30. It happens. So I'm on the 34th anniversary of my 30th birthday. All right. So the answer to your question is it is the only hypocritical advice we give on this show. It's the only thing that was hypocritical we give on this show. It's the only thing we tell people it's okay to do that. I never do. I went broke in my 20s as I was a baby Christian. I had just met God. And I discovered in that process a guy teaching what the Bible said about money named Larry Burkett. And I said, I'm going to follow what the Bible says. I'm never borrowing money again. And I've never borrowed money again. I don't borrow money for anything ever, for any reason, under any circumstances. Everything else I tell people on the show to do, I do exactly what I say to do. Allowing people to take out a mortgage without me yelling at them. It's the only time that my advice is inconsistent with my life. Does that make sense?

[Pastor Zachary]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And it's completely, completely fair for you to call me out on it and then I'll answer your question. But I wanted to caveat that and say, I don't borrow money for anything. And sometimes when I get a question where it's kind of borderline whether they have to borrow or not, I tell them that story. I say, hey, I don't borrow for anything. And I recommend that that is the best way. If you follow biblical principles, you're going to. In your marriage, your marriage is going to prosper. If you follow biblical principles, raising your kids, your kids are going to be amazing. If you follow biblical principles in your ment. Mental health and your emotional state, you're gonna prosper and the same's true in your money and in your leadership. If you're running a church, running a business, same thing's true. So I evangelical man, I believe if the Bible says it and you do it, it's a good thing. Right? So I'm with you on that. Now the reason that I lighten up when someone calls in on that is two things. One is I can pretty much talk you out of or call you stupid, stupid taking out a car loan because cars go down in value, the interest rate is higher, and there's no correlation between buying cars with payments and becoming wealthy. Very few millionaires will tell you that, oh, the best thing I ever did was agree to borrow on a car because I needed a car. Cause I was out in the country and I was driving a long way and I needed a car. No, millionaires told us that when we studied 10,000 of them. So the fruit is not there. I'm a fruit inspector. Okay. The second thing is, millionaires do tell us that they borrowed to buy a house many times. And when they got it paid off, they never borrowed money again after that. They're debt averse, but not completely mortgage averse. So the data is in that millionaires do that, even though I would tell you the best way to do it is save up and pay cash for it. It's hard to get people to save up for 10 years to buy a house. I can get them to save up three years to buy a car or 18 months to buy a car, but I've had trouble doing that, so I make that violation. But I also often tell people all the time when I say that, no more than a 15 year mortgage, no more than a payment of a fourth of your take home pay. You probably heard me say that, Zachary. And then get the stupid house paid off as fast as you can. Because the shortest distance between where you are and wealth is debt freedom. And that's consistent across the thing. But you're exactly right. But cars are completely different thing. Car is the largest thing we buy that goes to the wrong direction. It goes down in value. And when you finance a car, you're just begging to be middle class the rest of your life financially, mathematically.

[Caller]

Well.

[Pastor Zachary]

And most people are stupid enough to like take a car note on like a $30,000 car when they have no money either.

[Dave Ramsey]

Exactly. Yeah. Like everybody listening right now? Just about. You're right.

[Pastor Zachary]

I did have one other thing. And by the way, I want to say I support everything you're doing wholeheartedly, including like I'VE been using my many of these steps. Being a small town pastor, you don't get paid a ton of money and you have kids. And so I've actually had to use these things for myself. So again, I want to say thank you. The one other thing I noticed, though, as someone who was new to the Dave Ramsey program in many ways and was new to those steps, is that I didn't hear a lot of talk about creating a buffer. So as someone who was new, I didn't have any money in my checking account, right. Because I was using credit cards and then I was paying off those credit cards with the money in my account. So I never really had money in my account. And I was in this endless cycle, obviously, like a lot of people were. So one thing that I thought just to consider is that in those baby steps, I almost thought there should be another baby step about creating a buffer because people need, they don't just need a $1,000 emergency fund. I thought that was the buffer whenever I was new to the Dave Ramsey program and the Dave Ramsey baby steps. But there's also this idea of making sure you have a buffer because going to have auto payments on preschool and mortgages and all types of stuff.

[Caller]

So.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, that should be part of your budgeting, Zachary. You should plan your, you should. Budgeting is cash flow planning. And so you're planning to not take more money out of your checking account than you have in it. That's your buffer. And you can put a hundred dollar buffer in there if you want, but that's fine. You don't need any more than that. There's nothing wrong with that. But you don't need a $2,000 buffer because you, you're incompetent at budgeting. You need to have the budget date debt dialed in. We're paying. The auto payment comes out here. This other payment comes out here. The paycheck planning aspect, it's called. And if you use the Every dollar app shows you how to do that. And so you need to plan out every situation there. But hey, we're honored to have you as a new listener.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That is something that man, that rings home to me because here's what I fell in the trap of doing. My wife and I would make a buck budget and then we would check our checking account to see where we were. We shouldn't do that because then I would make it. I'd be like, oh, I can get a little more groceries. And then that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, because the checking account is not an indicator if you're on your budget.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's exactly right. And so then that buffer he's talking about, then all of a sudden the school would pull their tuition on the fourth instead of the fifth. And because I was not following the budget map we'd laid out, but I was checking the checking account.

[Dave Ramsey]

You would never. A budget map is a plan. And you would never plan to spend money that you don't have in your account.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You're right. Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

So don't plan to spend money you don't have in your account and your need for a buffer goes away. Other than a common sense of 50 or 100 bucks or something for slippage or, you know, something being off 20 cents or something, you don't do that. We don't want to tooth a penny thing. But. But this concept of slosh, right, because that covers my lack of detail and sticking to the detail, that's not. You don't need slosh.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's not good. But yeah. And a lot of people do that. So the trick is, the thing that happens is your brain. And you and I have been talking about this in a bunch of other areas, too. Your brain, the neuroplasticity, your brain rewires itself when you start making every single dollar come out, when it's supposed to give every dollar of your income a name. Before the month begins, you and your spouse spit, share, spit shake, and pinky swear that we're sticking to this contract that we just wrote down. Something happens and changes from that chaotic wild man that you were before. And it takes about 90 days for that rewiring to completely occur. And that neuroplasticity, it changes your behavior. It's a behavior transformation. And so the detail matters in that situation because you're forcing your brain to work really hard. Yeah, that's what you want. This is the Ramsey Show. Hey, guys, Dave Ramsey here. Winning at money is 80% behavior and 20% head knowledge. What to do isn't the problem. Doing it is. In her brand new book, what no one tells you about money, Jade Warshaw dives deep into the reasons you've been stuck. This book exposes the real emotional fight with money and shows you how to win that battle. Pre order now for $24.99. And you'll get over $100 of free bonus items. Get your copy [e-mail] store. Our scripture of the Day, Proverbs 19:21. Many plans are in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand. Henry Ford said, thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. What were you thinking? I was. That's good. I like it. Hey, selling or buying a house in this crazy real estate market right now is a wild thing to do. You need a pro in your corner if you're going to buy or sell right now. Somebody who has actually done it before a lot. That is a high octane, high protein, high performance real estate agent if you want one of those. We have vetted thousands of agents around America. They are endorsed local providers. We call them Ramsey trusted real estate agents. If you want to find out who we recommend and who we vet and who we coach and who follows the stuff we talk about and is really getting a lot of work done, they are not a beginner. Go to ramseysolutions.com agent and you can find a Ramsey trusted real estate agent for free. Drew is with us in Seattle. Hi, Drew. Welcome to the Ramsey Show Show.

[Caller]

Hey, Good afternoon, Dave. Dr. DeLoney, thanks for taking the call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller]

Hey, quick question. Well, first off, the Bible verses you guys just spoke, that, that was, that was really speaking, I think my call. But I just had a question for you. Is it possible to be a successful businessman but to also be a successful family man? And I can, I can kind of refine that a little bit more and give you kind of my background, where I'm coming from, from.

[Dave Ramsey]

What would make you think that is not possible?

[Caller]

Well, well, right now I'm working, I'm working with my wife to try to come to a middle ground on, on our, on our side business. And obviously, so I heard the last caller, one of the guys was a pilot. I too am a pilot. I work for the major airlines. My wife is also a pilot. And, but a few years ago we started this, this side business, business that's been doing really well and there's a lot of potential in it. But we're coming to disagreements on if we should really be doing the side business. It's a seasonal agricultural business and for the about two months that we operate, we're bringing in about 75,000 on average. But there's a lot of potential for it. But, but my wife's argument, because I want to give her side of the story too, is that she doesn't like that, the time it takes away from the family.

[Dave Ramsey]

So we've got two months a year.

[Caller]

Well, yeah, and I, what do you.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you have to do on the other 10 months?

[Caller]

Well, so there's, there's A lot of planning. And because we. So we've been in business for about four years, there's, you know, the growing stages. I mean, it probably consumes my mind a little bit more than I should, which I've gotten much better at not bringing it up at the dinner table because she's told me, she's like, okay, I want to hear about it. And I kind of have this guilt for, I'd say for about six months out of the year leading into the start of the season, it's a little bit busier at home for me. I'm definitely balancing my time, you know, between family and because I'm an airline pilot, you know, it takes me away from home, which, you know, I mean, that's already kind of, it's already kind of hard on.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you mean? But what do you make as a pilot?

[Caller]

Well, right now, yeah, I make about 120,000. Next year, about 200,000. And then it just keeps going up. I just started at the major airline and so, and my wife, she, we've got a 15 month old, a 10 year old, and then, and then one on the way. And so my, my wife's, My wife's argument is we don't need the business. And, and I agree with her, like, it's not, it's not needed. But, you know, I listen to the Entree leadership podcast a lot and I just, I have this desire, like, I love flying. It's something I've done for a long time, but I get so much fulfillment and joy out of, of, you know, running a business and, you know, figuring out solutions and making things better. And, you know, I just, I enjoy that. I have a lot of friends that do it, and it just, it intrigues me.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so what is the business? What are you, what are you growing?

[Caller]

So what we do is we do bird abatement for agriculture solutions. So people who own vineyards and different types of farms, they. They'll hire us, they'll contract us out, and we show up and we. It sounds kind of funny, but we use model aircraft and we kind of play cat and mouse with the birds all day. And so we, we have a team, generally about 15 people. And so, and we, and we had an opportunity. We passed up a large. About a $900,000 contract in Arizona. You should have, and rightfully so.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You weren't. Take it on.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

All right, let me tell you, let me tell you what I'm hearing and let me talk back at you. What you told me you have a pregnant wife with a 15 month old. Your house is insane.

[Caller]

Right?

It's busy.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, it's insane. I mean, it's chaos. There are very small humans taking up large amounts of calories from both of you, and you're flying model airplanes at birds. Right, Right. And she's over it. She's over it. She's got her gut full, man. So it's not that a businessman can't be a good family man. It's that the timing of your side business, given the stage of your family sucks.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Right?

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

You got a lot of crap at home. If she was sitting with two kids in elementary school and they were somewhat able to dress themselves and go to the bathroom by themselves and stuff like that, then it's a whole different world. I mean, I got. I got grandbabies at this stage. When we keep them, it's a dad gum chore.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I love them. I love them. But it's like work and stuff, you know, I mean.

[Caller]

Well, so the last two years, so, because we, you know, we came up with a compromise, and so we started hiring managers. And so last year we tried it out. It worked pretty well. And then this year we pretty much had the managers run the whole operation. And. And I mean, they did a much better job than I thought it was gonna be. And so, I mean, and the thing about being an airline pilot, it's like I do most of my administrative work, my computer work. Like, when I'm gone, that's. That's one nice thing. It's like I'm sitting at a hotel. It's like, I'm gonna get this done. So when I'm. When I'm home, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to focus so much.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's not the point.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's not the point. Drew, your wife is asking one question. Do you love me as much as a side hustle?

[Dave Ramsey]

And I'm going crazy right now, and I need your help.

[Caller]

Right.

No, I do love my wife.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I know you do. I know you do.

[Dave Ramsey]

But she's asking you that.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You're trying to show her how much you love her by creating a business and creating extra money and extra margin. And she is saying, do you love me?

[Caller]

Right.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And Dave and I are both. I mean, you're not going to meet two guys who like working. I think both of us love work. But hear Dave say, there's a season to this. It's the winter time. And you're like, look at these cool shorts I just made. And she's like, they're great, but it's freezing outside.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I got a 15 month old, I got a baby on the way. And you. By the way, all of this spells hormones. Did you know that?

[Caller]

Yeah, we've been, we've been working through the.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Hello.

[Caller]

Quite a bit of post. Postpartum.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I mean, that's normal. It's not. It's not. Not bad. It's just life.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah. She misses you, man.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You need to be there hugging babies, changing diapers, not flying birds. Yeah, not right now. I mean, I want you to run your own business, Drew. But you ask us a question and the question is, yes, you can be a successful businessman and a family man, but the spouse has to be able to carry whatever weight that you're not carrying. And you're asking her to carry more than she's willing to carry right now. And I don't think she's being unreasonable. Little babies and a house full of kiddos is chaos on top of a.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

$200,000 a year salary.

[Dave Ramsey]

Salary. And she's flying.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And so in her 80, he was saying, so about 300 grand they're going to be making next year. And the question that she's asking, which question my wife asked, when is enough enough?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I. In other words, she's saying, for $75,000 a year, I'd rather have your help.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I'd rather have you.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes, I'd rather have your help right now.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

And it might not. It. That might. I'm telling you, you might be three, four years and you, you can either restart this or take back over some of the management, but you gotta offload all of it or most of it to be able to manage your help, manage your house right now. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. You're working two full time jobs and you've got chaos at home and your.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Wife has a full time job.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Oh, by the way. Yeah. Wow. Three full time jobs.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you're not a bad guy, you're just. Your timing sucks.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yes. And it's kind of a deceptive question. Yes, you can be a man. Yes, you can run a successful business and be a good family man. You can't do 50 things at once.

[Dave Ramsey]

That puts us out of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace, Christ Jesus.

[Caller]

Sam.