"Should I Open Up A Secret Bank Account to Protect Myself?"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ramsey Show

Episode Title: Should I Open Up A Secret Bank Account to Protect Myself?
Date: December 5, 2025
Host: Dave Ramsey with Co-Host Rachel Cruze
Platform: Ramsey Network

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles a broad set of listener questions centered on money management, difficult financial situations, and major life transitions. The main theme is taking responsibility for your financial future and addressing core issues – whether marital discord, job transitions, approaching retirement, or supporting family – with honesty, courage, and practical wisdom. Dave Ramsey and Rachel Cruze give straightforward, compassionate advice, emphasizing communication, proactivity, and resilience as central to building wealth and stability.

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Key Discussions & Insights

1. Should I Open a Secret Bank Account? (Sadie in Vancouver)

[00:47-08:28]

• Caller Situation: Sadie, married 10 years, asks if she should secretly open an account "in case of emergency" due to her husband's overspending (~$3,500 in credit cards/month) and inability to communicate about finances. She is not the primary income earner.
• Advice:
  • Deception Is Not the Answer:
    Dave: "There's never a situation where lying and deception solves a problem. All that does is avoid the problem. That does not fix your situation. It's going to make it worse instead." [01:53]
  • Face the Problem Directly:
    Urges her to intensify marriage counseling, not to normalize financial chaos, and to clearly communicate the severity of the issue. Dave: "Your husband is misbehaving unbelievably, and it's terrifying you. And I want you to do something about it. Not hiding." [02:38]
  • Open a Separate (Not Secret) Account If Needed:
    Rachel: "It wouldn't be a secret account, but you would tell him. You would have to tell him. Again, it's not in secret, but I'm opening up a separate checking account in my name because I don't feel safe financially with you." [03:31]
  • Focus on Safety, Not Just Finances:
    Both stress Sadie's right (and need) to protect herself and her children, even if that means splitting finances with transparency.
• Memorable Moment:
  Dave (on her situation): "What I'm hearing is a very immature, very irresponsible little boy, and you've been trying to be his mommy for 10 freaking years and you're really tired." [05:26]
• Practical Steps:
  • Intensify counseling
  • Don't hide money, but protect yourself openly
  • Cut up credit cards together
  • Find supportive community

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2. Family in Housing/Financial Crisis (Vicki in Savannah)

[10:50-20:18]

• Caller Situation: Four young kids (two with autism), a $453K home with a 7% mortgage, three side jobs, unable to sell their house due to pregnancies, and unsafe neighborhood conditions.
• Advice:
  • Challenge Limiting Beliefs:
    Dave: "You can't make a statement about South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia area that says there's no $300,000 houses. That's not a true statement. There might not be one you want to live in, but there are $300,000 houses." [15:14]
  • Focus on What You CAN Control:
    Rachel: "You can't make everything work...So I think there's a level of...grief. Of like, wow, I really thought this from a location, a school like X, Y, and Z was gonna look like this. And realizing it can't." [18:58]
  • Sacrifice for Margin & Stability:
    It's better to move to a less ideal neighborhood than to suffer continual stress and risk financial collapse.
• Memorable Moment:
  Dave: "You've got to get some of these things off your plate. This is not a sustainable situation. You're gonna blow up." [18:23]

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3. Facing Fear and Leaving Stable Jobs (Paul in Seattle)

[22:20-31:36]

• Caller Situation: Paul, union warehouse worker for 20 years, also runs a successful landscaping business making nearly as much as his day job, wrestles with leaving job security.
• Advice:
  • Security Comes from You, Not the Job:
    "Boat anchors are secure, but they'll drown you," Dave says, encouraging Paul to recognize that adaptability and skillset are more important than company loyalty. [23:15]
  • Practical Calculations:
    Paul's household needs $4,500/month, his landscaping business already nets ~$60K/year (part-time), and they're debt free with a $20K emergency fund. Dave: "You can quit tomorrow if you want." [25:04]
  • On Fear of Change:
    Dave: "No one's afraid of change when change is for the better. They're only afraid of change if they don't think it's gonna work." [28:08]
  • Convincing Reluctant Spouses:
    Rachel reframes the discussion: "You’re going to have $150,000 household income... and double what you need to run your household." [29:44]
  • Golden Handcuffs:
    Dave refers to "golden handcuffs"—staying at a 'good job' solely for perceived security, even when better options are available. [30:15]

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4. Retirement Planning and Anxiety (Steve in Raleigh)

[33:42-39:34]

• Caller Situation: Steve, 62, attorney, no pension, $3.5 million in retirement accounts, paid-off home, anxious about retirement and "only money going out."
• Advice:
  • You Can Retire – Easily:
    Dave: "It's impossible unless you lose your mind and join Congress for you to go through this money before you die." [36:12]
  • Plan for the Emotional Side:
    Dave points out retirement can be emotionally challenging if you lack purpose; find meaningful ways to spend time, possibly using unique professional skills to serve others.
  • Practical Calculations:
    With a 10% return, Steve’s portfolio could provide $350K/year income without touching the nest egg.
• Memorable Quotes:
  Dave: "You have transitioned, sir, from the acquisition mode to the enjoyment mode. You've been building the nest egg. Now it's time for breakfast. Crack the nest egg and begin eating, sir." [68:56]

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5. Listener Q&A: Debt, Divorce, Inheritance, and More

Segments throughout the episode:

• Preparing for Divorce after 20 Years as a Stay-At-Home Mom (Jackie in Kansas City) [69:44-75:27]

  • Dave: "Divorce turns a marriage into a business transaction. ... this is now a math problem." [72:07]
  • Warning against keeping a house you can’t afford just to minimize kids’ pain.

• Supporting Elderly, Broke Parents (Alyssa in Albuquerque) [124:26-127:44]

  • Dave: "They need to sell the house. They need to sell the land and buy a $200,000 one-bedroom condo."

• How to Handle Windfall Inheritance (Josh in Ohio) [84:09-86:43]

  • Priority: Pay off debts, build emergency fund, invest the rest with discipline.

• Getting Laid Off, Massive Debt, Bankruptcy Question (Ramon in Chicago) [77:55-83:38]

  • Core message: "Bankruptcy doesn’t solve your problem. You have a career crisis, not a debt crisis."

• Secret Bank Account Redux (Multiple segments)

  • Repeated advice: Protect yourself, be transparent, never solve problems with secrecy.

Memorable Interactions & Quotes:

• On not using deception in marriage:
  Dave: "There's never a situation where lying and deception solves a problem. All that does is avoid the problem. That does not fix your situation." [01:53]
• On letting go of sentimentality in money:
  Dave: "He should get rid of that and his old girlfriend’s phone number. Both. Seriously, get rid of the house. That’s stupid." [99:21]
• On family dysfunction:
  Rachel: “You put the fun in dysfunction, boys and girls. It just means you don’t have to be that.” [105:49]
• On facing tough situations with resilience:
  Dave: "Teach your kids to do hard stuff, boys and girls, and teach yourself to do hard stuff." [41:30]

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Notable Quotes

• Dave Ramsey:
  "Security does not come from someone else’s ability to provide you a paycheck. That is an illusion." [25:47]
• Rachel Cruze:
  "You have to start making some grownup moves. And keeping a house for sentimental value is not one of them." [102:22]
• Rachel Cruze:
  "It's almost like a celebration of your hard work... enjoy the fruits, right? It's like people that call in and they don't know how to spend money because they've been saving their whole life. Same idea." [42:45]
• Dave Ramsey:
  "You’ve transitioned, sir, from the acquisition mode to the enjoyment mode." [68:56]
• Dave on divorce and the family home:
  "Mama Bear wants to hold onto the house because the kids have been through enough... and it becomes a curse rather than a blessing." [72:55]
• Dave on job security:
  "Stables are where they keep horses when they don't run. So go, run. Okay? Go do this." [26:13]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Secret Bank Account Discussion: [00:47 - 08:28]
• Vicki’s Housing Crisis: [10:50 - 20:18]
• Paul’s Job Decision: [22:20 - 31:36]
• Steve’s Retirement Anxiety: [33:42 - 39:34]
• Divorce & Asset Split (Jackie): [69:44 - 75:27]
• Massive Debt & Job Loss Advice: [77:55 - 83:38]
• Inheritance Wisdom (Josh): [84:09 - 86:43]
• Elderly Parents’ Finances (Alyssa): [124:26 - 127:44]

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Episode Tone

The episode balances tough love, empathy, and practical financial wisdom. Dave’s blunt, occasionally humorous style steers callers away from wishful thinking and toward proactive change. Rachel consistently reinforces compassion and the importance of emotional resilience, especially for overwhelmed or isolated callers.

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Summary Takeaways

• Transparency and Communication are always superior to secrecy in personal finance, especially in marriage.
• Solving for the Root Problem is critical. Don't mask spending problems, career crises, or unsustainable housing by hoping things will change without hard decisions.
• Practical Calculations and objective advice help break cycles of panic and avoidance.
• Resilience and Hard Choices are recurring themes: sell the house, cut the cards, take the new job, protect yourself honestly, and embrace change for the better.
• Emotional Intelligence in Money Decisions: Recognize grief, fear, and shame, but act with clarity and courage.

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This episode is a masterclass in handling tough, real-life money dilemmas with honesty and grit—no shortcuts or easy fixes, but a clear path forward for those ready to take it.

Transcript

[Dave Ramsey]

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today.

Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show. Thanks for joining us. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Rachel Cruz Ramsey, personality number one best selling author, co host of Smart Money Honey Happy Hour. My daughter, she's my co host. Today. Open phones at 888. 825-5225. Sadie is in Vancouver. Hi, Sadie. How are you?

[Caller]

Good.

How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. How can we help?

[Caller]

A bit of an odd question. I'm wondering if I should open up a secret bank account without my husband knowing in case of an emergency.

[Rachel Cruze]

What kind of emergencies do you see happening?

[Caller]

Sorry, I'm pretty nervous.

We overspend.

A lot each month and.

I'm really trying to.

Like, keep her. Keep our payment down on things. But most of our overspending comes from him. And we have a difficult time talking about finances. I mean, we're getting better at it, but it's still not where it needs to be at all. For example, two months ago we overspent by $3,500 and last month was $2,500.

[Dave Ramsey]

Where's this money coming from?

[Caller]

Well, it's all on credit cards right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. How long you been married, Hunter?

[Caller]

Ten years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Okay. There's never a situation where lying and deception solves a problem. All that is.

Hold on, hold on. All that does is avoid the problem.

That does not fix your situation.

[Caller]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. It's going to make it worse instead. So I'm not going to tell you to do this because it's not good for you. I'm going to encourage you instead to head straight into the situation wide open. I want you to sit down with a marriage counselor and I want you to have an absolute righteous anger fit.

Your husband is misbehaving unbelievably.

And it's terrifying you.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I want you to do something about it.

Not hiding. Not hide money from him.

[Caller]

We are in marriage counseling, but we've only had a couple of sessions so far.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, yeah. This is not working. This is an emergency. Tell the marriage counselor that the house is on fire and we're going to die if we don't fix the fire. We can't just sit around and discuss our potty training as children. We've got to deal with this misbehavior today.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Big time.

Big time. Rachel and I can both hear the terror in your voice.

Yeah.

[Rachel Cruze]

And, I mean, this doesn't fix the problem, but to this I'm thinking if I am you protecting some level of something, and it wouldn't be a secret account, but you would tell him. Because we do say, don't separate your finances when you're married, except for. And we do have some exceptions to that. And so, Sadie, this would be one of them for me if I were you. And you would have to tell him. Again, it's not in secret, but I'm opening up a separate checking account in my name because I don't feel safe financially with you. It feels irresponsible. I don't know what to do. And if we don't fix this, I mean, these are things that end marriages, Sadie. And I don't want that for you, but it's a reflection of who he is. And that makes me nervous. And it makes me nervous that you can't talk to him about it. You know, it's one thing if he's obviously very grieved by, you know, I don't know, I'm just making this up that he has a spending addiction or something. And he knows the problem, he sees the problem. You guys are working through the problem. But it sounds like he won't even work through the problem because you can't even talk to him about it, which gives me a red flag.

[Caller]

Yeah, well, yeah, he has, like. There's things that he's going through that we're also working on together. So it's. A lot of times it seems like when I want to have.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wait a minute, Wait a minute. What does that mean? That was vague. What are you. What are you saying?

[Rachel Cruze]

Things that he's going through, probably addiction.

[Caller]

I don't. I wouldn't. I don't know if it would classify as an addiction. He used to have a drinking problem that got really bad, but I think I like. Like, I caught it early enough that he started working on that. So he's doing a lot better. Like, a lot better. But it does. You know, if he has a slip up one day, then it means that spending in other areas goes up as well.

And it's usually things like eating out and video games.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. What I'm hearing is a very immature, very irresponsible little boy, and you've been trying to be his mommy for 10 freaking years and you're really tired.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And I don't think. I don't think you're gonna last much longer. If you guys. If he doesn't turn this around. So I think you need to have a really blunt in your face discussion with your marriage counselor and go. I don't have a lot left in my tank. I'm about done with this guy.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

He's gonna have to get his crap together really quick.

[Rachel Cruze]

Do you work Sadie? Where's the income coming from?

[Caller]

It's all from him. And then I get a child tax benefit because we have three kids.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, but you're not working outside the home.

[Caller]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right.

Well, I think you got to start thinking about.

Making this as big a deal as it is. But no, I don't. We're not going to tell you to open a secret account. I'm with Rachel, though. If you want to open your own account and put half the dadgum money in that account and just tell him you're doing it and he can't have it.

You know, and until we get. Until we get you.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah, this.

[Dave Ramsey]

Until you start behaving, you know, because this is just out of control. I'm so sorry, honey.

[Rachel Cruze]

Well, it may. I mean, he's. He obviously has a. A lot. A lot to work on and I don't. And I. The language of which obviously we're not in the situation of the slip up and this and that. I think things are more serious then you're probably giving weight to Sadie or probably you're feeling and maybe not saying, but there's a lot of. A lot of dysfunction and red flags. And for his sake, wanting, healing and wholeness. Right. Like a lot of that's coming from somewhere. That pain is manifesting and going out, you know, every direction for him and so figuring that out. But in the meantime, you and your kids. Yeah. Financially, to keep you safe. Because you want to keep the lights on. Right. And you just continue to dig deeper.

[Dave Ramsey]

And keep it on the table.

[Rachel Cruze]

And where you can control is cutting up the credit cards, getting all the credit cards out, you guys together, cutting everything up, you know, stopping access points. Now could he go apply for something in his own right in secret? Sure. But you can't control that. What can you do today? And as much as you can figure out where there is money for him to outsource, like stop it, you know where it begins. But I'm so. I'm so sorry, Sadie.

[Dave Ramsey]

This is. This is a. This is deteriorating before your very eyes. And we may see it more clearly than you do in the sense that. I don't think we're overreacting, hun. I think you're underreacting and so I'm.

[Rachel Cruze]

So overwhelming, you know, not. Not working, having three kids and thinking, what's my exit plan if this were the case? I mean, that is so. That is so scary and overwhelming to even think about. But. But those are probably discussions. If you have good friends.

Find community and start. And start thinking through Sadie for. For your life. But my prayer is that you guys heal this and that he finds healing in his own work for your sake, because I'm so, so sorry.

[Dave Ramsey]

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Vicki is in Savannah. Hi, Vicki. How can we help?

[Caller]

Hi, how are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

So our question is we're a little bit confused on what My husband and I are a little bit confused on what our next steps because there are so many moving parts.

We currently Have a home that we. So we lived in Tennessee and we ended up moving to South Carolina. I'm just above the border of Savannah. And we moved to live with my dad to save some money to buy a house. Because when we were ready to buy a house, we finally paid back all our student loans and it was 2021 and then everything skyrocketed so we couldn't get ahead of it. So my dad was very nice and said, okay, you move in with us. But before we moved in, we had signed on a new built home. So before we moved to where we live now, we signed on a new built home and then moved in dad. And saved some money. But we didn't realize that the area was a little bit expensive. Definitely more expensive than Tennessee. But you know, we were great, we could save the money. And during that my dad had a mini stroke so we needed to stay and we have to see him because he's not married or anything like that. And he's the only person we have for the kids. My husband's family is in a different country, things like that. So we then moved into our house now which was 453 at the time. And we ended up putting 67,000 down. That's the only thing we could save. But when we signed it took about a year to build. And when we closed it ended up at 8% interest, which was the highest interest rate. So we had to buy it down like a little bit. But we've been struggling ever since. Since then we have four kids, four and under. All of them are developmentally delayed and they all have so many services.

Two of them are already on the spectrum.

And then our current mortgage is 373at 7% interest. My husband makes 130. I have a 3 month old baby and I'm supposed to be a stay at home mom. But I went back to work.

And my, my husband works three jobs right now. He's a data analyst and he works, he's a tennis coach on weekends and he works Kroger at night to try to get some, some grocery bills down.

We don't, we're just, we're not sure what to do. We know we have to sell the house and we've tried selling the house twice already and it's not selling. I was pregnant with my third at the time and then I got too far along.

And had to take it off. And then I was pregnant with my fourth and it was on for four or five months and I got too far along, had to take it off.

And we're not sure what to do. And now we're having an issue where behind us is unincorporated land, and they're shooting their guns into our neighborhood, and it finally hit a fence in a house, and it's been on the news already, and we can't let our. Our four children out in front, because when we bought the house, it was the beginning of the neighborhood. And now that they've built in the neighborhood, it's a main road. So every time we're out there, one of them gets hit. And obviously, I said they're on the spectrum, so I can't really tell them to.

To, like, it's difficult to teach them. So, I mean, they're learning. They're there, you know, but we're really on it, and we're not quite sure what to do because the homes for Ren are, you know, renting is just throwing money away. We know that. We know that we can only afford, like, 300,000, but that doesn't exist here.

[Dave Ramsey]

And a code 360. Stop. Stop.

[Caller]

I'm sorry.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's okay. All right, so what you're starting to do is you're starting to use language that says there's no way out, and that's simply not true. Okay? You can't make a statement about South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia area that says there's no $300,000 houses. That's not a true statement.

There might not be one you want to live in, but there are $300,000 houses.

[Caller]

And, yeah, we have looked at some.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you have to. You have to sell this house, and you have to remain not pregnant long enough to sell this house.

You can't have any more kids. You got to get out of this house.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Two times you tried to sell the house, and you were pregnant, and that's what stopped it in your story. If I heard your story right. Okay? And so we're gonna have to start planning some very. Making some very clear decisions. And you've got a lot of, like you said, a lot of variables. There's a lot of things coming at you that are draining the gas out of your tank, the fuel out of your tank. You have your hands full, kiddo. I mean, what you described. In a perfect world, if all the finances were in really good shape with the kids situation you've got with you working on spectrum stuff, and you're working on small babies and everything else, you are absolutely overwhelmed just with that.

A normal human would be okay. And. And then let's go ahead and have a few bullet Rounds come past your house. That always helps, you know, and then let's add to that the fact that this whole financial stress thing is a mess and it's a mistake and you know you shouldn't have done it and you feel bad about doing it every time you think about it. And so you pile these things upon these things and pile these things and pile these things. And then the situation just becomes, you start, your brain starts to tell you that you can't get out, that you're stuck and it's wrong. You can get out. So we're going to put the house on the market tomorrow. Get on, get on the, get on the web, jump on Ramsey Solutions, find a Ramsey trusted real estate agent and put a sign in the yard tomorrow.

Now.

[Caller]

Okay, we have been, I'm sorry, we, we've been looking at homes on the outskirts. But the homes on the outskirts, for lack of a better term are, or like the ghetto. Like the, the schools don't offer the services that all of my children need. And if we move anywhere else, there's wait list.

[Dave Ramsey]

There is no scenario that you can stay in this house and have a good life.

[Caller]

No. Yeah, we're like, so we have to solve.

[Dave Ramsey]

We have to solve. We have to solve for it, not find reasons it can't be done. Okay, you haven't found the solution yet. I understand that, but that doesn't mean there's not one out there.

[Caller]

Yeah, we thought of another solution. They're still building in our neighborhood currently and we thought about selling this house, but putting money down on a new build in the back of the community. But those are still. I mean, the cheapest one we found was 4:65.

[Dave Ramsey]

You can't afford to live there.

Yeah, it's killing you.

Why would you sign up for more pain?

You can't live in that neighborhood. You can't afford it.

You need to move to something that you can afford and get your life back. Because listen, if your payments were under control, your husband wasn't working six jobs, you weren't trying to pick up a job and all you had to deal with was your children. It's a situation with your children that's more than anybody ought to have to say grace over. Without all the other stuff. You've got to get some of these things off your plate. This is not a sustainable situation. You're gonna blow up.

[Rachel Cruze]

And I think the hard thing is trying to make everything work.

[Dave Ramsey]

You can't make everything work.

[Rachel Cruze]

So that's it. So I think there's a level of I Mean, it's kind of almost like grief of like, wow, I really thought this from a location, a school like X, Y and Z was gonna look like this. And realizing it can't, it can't look like this. And so in order for us to get margin and peace, it's probably gonna mean, yeah, maybe a move financially that is way better. Maybe the schools aren't as great, but most public schools have the ability, I mean, depending on the county of helping and, and your, and your kids are small. I mean, they're not even really in elementary school, if I heard you right. They're you.

[Dave Ramsey]

They're probably like two of them are very young.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. So. So if anything, I would just want that stability of margin and being able for your husband to quit one of the jobs.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right.

[Rachel Cruze]

I mean, finding that again. But that's the housing situation and the location.

[Dave Ramsey]

But the physical, the physical attributes of the house you're in do not make a home. The location of the house you're in doesn't make a home. You and your husband as a couple make a home for those kids. And you know, most everyone listening to you calling in right now lived in a home that was a lot worse than you're living in now. When we were growing up, almost everyone listening.

Me especially.

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Paul's in Seattle. Hey, Paul, how are you?

[Caller]

Great, how are you? Thanks for having Me?

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller]

So I'm finding myself in between a rock and a hard place. About. I've been at my current job for about 20 years. I started when I was 20. I'm 40 years old now, and it's a warehouse job. Right. So I took it when I was younger because it was the best paying job at the time. I've invested with a pension there. It's union. It's great on paper. But about five years ago, I started my own landscaping business, lawn landscaping business. And it has exploded and it kind of took off to the point to where I've been doing both for about five years now. And I'm stuck in the spot where. How do you know when it's time to go? Because I find myself with a lot of fear of the unknown, of losing something that's so secure that you've been a part of for about 20 years. And.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, boat anchors. Boat anchors are secure.

But they'll drown you. So what are you making of the day job?

[Caller]

I think we make about $38 an hour or something like that.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what do you make a year at the day job?

[Caller]

Probably about 80, 75. 80, I would say.

[Dave Ramsey]

And what do you do at the warehouse for $80,000?

[Caller]

We are union pickers, basically order selectors. We fulfill orders, we load them, you know, $80,000. Yeah, well, he's been there 20 years.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't care. You're picking boxes for 80 grand. That's amazing.

[Caller]

Okay, but just like you said, I'm. All I'm doing is moving boxes, and I feel like my purpose.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what are you making at landscaping? What was your profit last year?

[Caller]

I mean, because I'm doing it both on side. I would probably say it's probably a little bit less than that. But you have to understand, I'm only doing it about 20 hours.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, that wasn't what I asked. What I asked is what you actually made on your tax return. What was your profit?

[Caller]

Probably about 60.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, good. All right.

[Caller]

And for me, you know, I don't have any. I don't have any debt in my business because it's all been. So all the money that I've been making, I've just been paying off all my equipment, you know. So our family.

[Dave Ramsey]

Do you have any other debt?

[Caller]

No, we have no household debt. We have no credit card.

[Dave Ramsey]

What does it take a month for your household to operate?

[Caller]

I would say on the most expensive end, maybe $4,500 a month.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, well, you can quit tomorrow.

[Caller]

My wife works at the Court so I can get on her medical. We have about $20,000 in savings for a nest egg. No credit card debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

You can quit tomorrow if you want.

[Caller]

I mean, and I. And I know this, but me being the sole provider and going into the unknown, it's. It's almost like I feel like I'm getting a divorce, you know, for 20 years, it's. I've almost been at that job longer than I've not.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, but she's not a.

[Caller]

No, it's not. It's just that getting the courage enough.

You know, getting the courage enough to. Well, do it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So here's the thing.

[Caller]

Very much.

[Dave Ramsey]

Let me. Let me stop you a second, okay? Your security does not come from someone else's ability to provide you a paycheck. That is an illusion.

Your security comes from your ability to get up, leave the cave, kill something, and drag it home. You have two methods of doing that now. One is you've been employed for a long, long time lifting boxes. One is you've grown your own business. That's two ways that you can get up, leave the cave, kill something, and drag it home. But the idea that I have a stable job. Stables are where they keep horses when they don't run.

So go, run. Okay? Go do this. It's an illusion. Your stability, your sense of security is an illusion because you're basing it on the fact that those goobers over there at the warehouse are going to write you a check and somehow the union's going to take care of you. Laugh, laugh. Cough, cough. Okay, so now let's go back to who's really going to take care of you. God.

And Paul.

[Caller]

Absolutely.

[Dave Ramsey]

Go run your landscaping business and make $130,000 a year and work a considerable less hours a week and enjoy your life.

[Caller]

And that's what I'm after. You know, I felt like, you know, I started when I was young, and my priorities, as I've gotten older, have changed drastically about what's important to me and just time with my family and just being able to prove to myself that I'm able to make a living for myself. But it's a very scary thing to do when you leave them and trying to get.

[Dave Ramsey]

It would be scary if you were making 30,000 at the landscaping. You're already making almost as much at landscaping as you are at the warehouse. If you told me you're making 20, I wouldn't tell you to quit.

[Caller]

Right?

[Dave Ramsey]

I would say, you know, get your hours up on the landscaping. Let's get the get the boat closer to the dock before you jump. But your boat's really close, the dock, you're just stepping. But you've been used to standing on the dock and you need to step into the boat, man.

[Caller]

And I know that, you know, I'm turning away so much business because I can only. I only have so much time.

[Dave Ramsey]

You don't have to convince me, Paul.

I'm already sold.

[Rachel Cruze]

I think he's convincing himself.

[Caller]

How do I convince my wife?

[Rachel Cruze]

Oh, what is she saying? What's she saying?

[Caller]

I love my wife to death. But you know, it's very one of. It's one of those things where fear. She is very much so afraid of change. And this is a very big change because we've constantly.

[Dave Ramsey]

Listen, no one's afraid of change when change is for the better. They're only afraid of change if they don't think it's gonna work. If you get a brand new nice car and it's better than the old one. No one says I'm afraid of change.

Right. They only fear change is if they think it's going to be worse. That's the only time people fear change. That's a misnomer. It's not true. So we love change when it's for the better. All of us do. So, yeah, I love change. And so all we've got to do is she's got to get her head around where money comes from. And it doesn't come from a quote, stable job. It comes from your ability to go into the marketplace and earn money. And dude, at any minute you could go get a job like the one you've got again. If this whole thing falls apart, whoopty doopty. Yeah, but I promise you it's not gonna fall apart. I promise you. You got five year track record. You're talking to a guy who can. Our company consults 10,000 small businesses. We coach a lot of small businesses. I would tell you the truth, you know I would. If this idea sucked, I would tell you it sucked. Yeah, it doesn't suck. This will work. Yeah.

[Caller]

And you know, being in, being in Seattle, the Evergreen State, you know, it was just one of those things. I really enjoyed it. You know, I did it as a side hustle because, you know, we were just looking income and it just exploded.

[Dave Ramsey]

Into something I could have already sold. I'm already sold. Already sold. You don't have to sell me. You just got to talk to her about it. And the bottom line is, is you're going to be just fine. You're gonna be just fine.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. How much does she make, Paul?

[Caller]

She probably about as much as me. I mean, I would say she's probably in this 70.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, you're gonna have $150,000 household.

[Rachel Cruze]

Income almost immediately and double of what you guys need to run your household too.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you're making a lot. And you've done really good with your finances. You're not in debt. You fund. Everything about this is stable, stable, stable, stable, stable. Hey, man, go do it. This is the time. Fly and be free. Please, please, please quit that awful job. Please.

[Rachel Cruze]

And he said he's the sole provider.

[Dave Ramsey]

Have you ever heard. He's not. He's not the sole provider.

[Rachel Cruze]

That's it. So she's.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, guys, guys, out there in America, if you've ever heard the term golden handcuffs, you just witnessed it, you've just heard the discussion. This is golden handcuffs. And it is a. It's a fallacy. So my favorite story on this is my grandpa lost a business in the Great Depression and he got a job at Alcohol Aluminum in the accounting department. He worked there 38 years because it was stable, because it was a good job, because he was scared and he couldn't. He didn't have.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah, you had an income after the Depression.

[Dave Ramsey]

He was happy to have a job and grateful to have a job. And my grandma was the same way. And he worked there until he retired. And he was a wonderful man. He was a wonderful man. So I printed the Financial Peace book and went out on my own after we went broke. And we're trying to get the Financial Peace book sold. And the publisher sent me an email one day that said, we just sold our 1,000,000th copy of Financial Peace. Then my phone rang and it was my grandmother. And she said, I was praying for you this morning. I think you need to get a job.

Isn't that sweet? She's so sweet.

[Rachel Cruze]

It was like you're not Dave's. Dave is not working writing books.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, I'm just worried about you. I mean, you're self employed and it's not stable.

[Rachel Cruze]

Go get them, Paul.

[Dave Ramsey]

I love entrepreneurs. Don't forget, guys, I started my company on a card table myself. So I know what it's like to have people counting on you, your team, your family, not to mention your customers. And when you're the one signing the paychecks, you can't afford to fly blind. But I'll be honest. Early on, one thing that nearly sunk us was wasting time with spreadsheets that didn't add up because Business units didn't talk to each other. I finally told my team, just fix it. And they did. We got netsuite. That was years ago and we've never looked back. See, netsuite isn't just for tech giants. It's built for growing businesses like yours. Over 40,000 businesses already run on NetSuite, including a lot that started just like you. And now with built in AI, NetSuite is helping them even more. It's one system connected to every part of your business. For real time insights, not guesswork. NetSuite AI flags inventory issues, cash flow risks, even supplier delays before they become problems. So you can trust the data, stop wasting time and make the right decisions faster. Take a free product tour [e-mail] Ramsey that's netsuite.com Ramsey.

Steve is in Raleigh. Hi Steve. How are you?

[Caller]

I'm doing fine. It's great to be with you guys.

[Dave Ramsey]

You too. How can we help?

[Caller]

So I'm 62 years old and I've been trying to think about retirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

The things that are holding me back.

[Caller]

Are, well, health insurance is one thing and also the fact that no money will be coming in, but all money will be going out. And I'm having a hard time getting comfortable with that. And what I really want is somebody to tell me that I can stop.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you mean no money will be coming in? You mean you won't be earning an income?

[Caller]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And so do you have a pension? Do you have a 401k nest egg?

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah. I've got 401ks and IRAs and all that stuff.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. No pension?

[Caller]

No pension.

[Rachel Cruze]

How much is in all those accounts?

[Caller]

3.5 million.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. Well, if no money's coming in, it's just because you're not taking any of it is all. Okay. Because let's just be. What do you make a year?

[Caller]

175.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Way to go, man.

[Rachel Cruze]

I'm proud of you, Steve.

[Dave Ramsey]

I assume you started with nothing and became a multimillionaire. Yep. I'm very proud of you. That's amazing. American dream is not dead. Gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Steve. So now. So you understand that 3.5 invested in good growth stock mutual funds, if it averaged 10% would be 350k.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Income that it produces without touching the nest egg.

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Which is twice what you make now.

Right.

[Caller]

I guess that, you know, they're still.

There. Still. You know, there's some years it's gonna be up, some years it's gonna be down. What I do in the down years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Use some of it.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so the, the down years very seldom are below 5%.

Find a time that the stock market made under 5%. The number of times in the last 30 years. Hardly ever. Right. Okay. Like maybe two. And so you use a little bit of the 3.5 maybe, but maybe don't take the whole 350 off. Maybe take 200 off and let it grow by 150 to cover the down years.

[Caller]

Right.

[Rachel Cruze]

See, do you guys.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's impossible unless you lose your mind and join Congress. For you to go through this money before you die.

[Rachel Cruze]

Is your house paid off and everything? Steve, Any debt?

[Caller]

No, no debt. House paid.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. How long you been married?

[Caller]

You know, I'm not married.

[Dave Ramsey]

What is it you want to do with the rest of your life?

[Caller]

I've still got to figure that out. I would like to travel some, you know, life events. Recent, somewhat recent life events have made me realize that what I should be doing or what I feel like I should be doing is spending time with people that I love.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yep. And people that love me. Yep.

[Caller]

And the whole, you know, pushing paper around is not a good use of my time.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Anymore. What do you do for a living?

[Caller]

I'm an attorney.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right, cool.

[Rachel Cruze]

Do you have family, Steve, around?

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah, I've got a brother and sister.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, that's great.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Well, I'll tell you two things. One is, yes, you're in excellent financial condition. You've done a wonderful job and you're able to retire. And if you pulled off 200 and let it grow by 150 a year, this would run in perpetuation. And I don't know who you're going to leave the 3.5. 3.5, 3.5, 3.0. 4 million. Oh, four and a half million. Because it's going to keep growing because you're not going to use it all. So who are you going to leave all that to? So I easily. This is a no brainer equation. You're easily able to quit. Then I will also tell you because I'm your age, I'm 65, I'm a little older. And that you have friends and I have friends who. Retirement wasn't good to them emotionally.

They didn't know what to do with themselves. So I would develop something I'm going to do. I don't care what it is. And it doesn't have to be 80 hours a week. It doesn't have to be pushing paper. You do have a unique skill and license that you could probably do some things that would be unbelievable blessing to some ministries and to some nonprofits from an attorney's perspective and not strain you even a little bit, but give you something to lay your hand to the plow. So you know you're still planting some corn in this earth.

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you just need something to do. Netflix doesn't cut it.

[Caller]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're right.

[Caller]

Yeah. That's going to be key for me is having a plan.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So I think I would develop that before I pull the trigger on this. But the question you called here for is mathematically this is a no brainer.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's 2x of a no brainer.

[Caller]

Right. Okay, that's good.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You're in great shape. Sit down with your financial coach or your financial advisor and talk about how you can draw 200k off of this and make sure it's invested in something that's averaging what the market's averaging and you'll be just fine.

[Rachel Cruze]

And well done, Steve.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, man, that's amazing.

[Rachel Cruze]

It's amazing and it's interesting. Whatever happens, you know, we didn't ask, but he said, recent events have made me realize, oh, wow. And it's use those. Those are gifts, whatever that is, whether it was a tragedy or a gift, a blessing, whatever that thing was that caused this kind of change of heart to a degree. Listen to that. I mean, there's something, something in that for you.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's very smart to do that. And you ought to be doing that at all ages as you go along. But also when you have these certain appointments, God appointments that come across your path, you need to listen to them. You're right, Rachel. Very good, Jeffson. Wait a minute. Before we do that, do you ever feel like you're doing everything right with your money but you're not getting anywhere? You're not, Steve. Well, maybe you made changes and had a few wins, but it's still not working. Well, this is exactly what Jade Washroff's new book, what no one tells you about money.

This is a Ramsey book that takes an honest, in depth look at the emotional side of money and gives you real tools and a path to become the hero in your own story. So you're gonna have to fight through some emotional stuff as you fight through this money thing, whether you're broke and trying to get out of debt or maybe you're on the other end where Steve is. All of these are emotional based decisions and Jade can really help with that. She is Straight shooting, telling you the way it is. You can pre order this book right now. It comes out first of January, but right now you can get it for $24.99 and you get over $100 in free bonus items. This is amazing. Our enhanced audiobook on this thing is crazy good. You're going to get that early access to the ebook. You're going to get that instant access to an exclusive video with Jade called your financial checkup. You're going to get that. And you get an exclusive 3 week online book club and live Q and A with Jade. You're going to get that. And I'm telling you, Jade will motivate you. She'll meet you where you are and help you get to the next level. Pre order today at ramseysolutions. Do.

Rachel, Steve and our caller before that trying to quit the warehouse job and go in business with yourself. It is amazing that when you are resilient and people are talking a lot about resilience these days.

That things have been pretty easy for a long time around America. And when things are hard, people don't know what to do because they don't know how to do hard stuff. And so teach your kids to do hard stuff, boys and girls, and teach yourself to do hard stuff. Practice doing uncomfortable things because these are the actions of people that win when you do that over a long period of time. Take a job in the warehouse and you just get up and you go to work every day and you do your work and you stick to it. A lot of people don't have to stick to it. Does that guy? He gets stuck with it for 20 freaking years. When Steve has been an attorney and he just got it done, he keeps putting money aside, he builds up a 3 1/2 million dollar nest egg. Then when you stop this resilience, this pushing, this scratching and clawing and persevering, sometimes we don't know what to do. Like I finally, I got there, I went through the tape, I won the race or I finished the race, now what? And your brain and your life rhythm is so bent on resilience and scratching and clawing that it's hard to stop and take a step back and go, wait a minute, this worked. This landscaping thing's big enough.

[Rachel Cruze]

It worked. It's almost like three and a half million celebration of your hard work to enjoy it, enjoy the fruits, right? It's like people that call in and they don't know how to spend money because they've been saving their whole life. Same idea, right? It's a different muscle.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you have to.

[Rachel Cruze]

But enjoy the fruits of what you've done.

[Dave Ramsey]

You really have to make a conscious thing. We see that a lot these days. A conscious effort to say if I've been busting it, to downshift and enjoy a little bit. Is it. That's a different gear. It's a different gear, but it's a good gear.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit Union studio. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey, personality number one best selling author and my daughter is my co host today. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. So Rachel, I was on Fox a little bit earlier and we're talking about affordability for housing and this people not being able to afford a house and the sense of depression about that and so forth. And so I've done a little bit of discussion and analysis on that and.

I want to let you guys out there know a couple things that, that we're thinking and we're seeing around here. There's kind of two sides to the coin. Side one of the coin is what could be done. Okay. So house prices are affected always by supply and demand and we have had an inventory shortage, more buyers than sellers for about 20 years.

We've had more buyers than sellers and anytime you have a shortage of anything, the price goes up. Pretty simple economics, Right?

Whether it's a Nintendo or a Cabbage Patch doll or a house, when there's a shortage of something, the price goes up. Too many people chasing too few goods kind of thing. So.

Then we start thinking about, okay, what could you do to boost inventory? Well, there are a couple of things that have been happening that have been harming inventory pretty considerably. And this is actually one of the few times you hear Dave say that the government could actually do something about this. Okay, One is we've got large REITs, real estate investment trusts, and American corporations and Chinese corporations buying thousands and thousands and thousands of single family homes and taking them off the market and putting them up for rent. I mean, like 5 or 600,000 in the past few years. It's a lot. It's not just a few. So one thing you could do, and I'm really against limiting free enterprise, but when.

The basic use of a single family home is for a family to get a toehold in the marketplace and to build wealth and to have a stable place to live, when that's being affected by foreign organizations and by out of control capitalism, then you got to put some limits on that. So some kind of a stoppage. Stop that. Another thing that's draining the market is Airbnbs.

Tens of thousands of single family homes, condos, co ops, whatever, are all townhomes. Yeah, they're bought by people at unrealistic prices only because they're turning them into a hotel and they're making tons of money. And people buying 8, 10, 20, 15 of them at a time.

And that did not exist 20 years ago. Okay. And so some kind of a limitation, not necessarily a complete stopping of that, but limiting the number of units that go off the market so that a young couple getting married have a house to buy instead of it turning into an Airbnb because somebody bought it. Nothing down using some stupid TikTok guy's formula to buy it. Okay, so, you know, some kind of limitation on that. But here's one. I was talking to Brian Buffini about this the other day. He's the top real estate broker. Oh yeah.

[Rachel Cruze]

Does he.

[Dave Ramsey]

He's in this, he's really into this stuff. And he and I were having a discussion on the back porch about it and he had such great ideas, he said, and I had not thought of this, I just thought it was brilliant. So it's been, I need to look it up when it was. But it's at least 20 years ago that the Capital gains law on single family homes was changed and it was a big deal. It used to be that you got a tax break a little bit on your personal residence and they changed it massively, whatever it was, 20 years ago, and said, okay, married, filing jointly, you can make up to a half million dollars. Single can make up to 250,000 tax free on the growth of your capital gain on your personal residence if you own it one year or more. Okay. And that was a big breakthrough. Well, guess what? Half a million dollars isn't much anymore. And he said raising that to a million would take a bunch of boomers.

[Rachel Cruze]

Out of their home.

[Dave Ramsey]

That would say, I would downsize, but I'm going to have to pay so stinking much tax that I'm not going to downsize and see if that level will sell. The next level sells to move up into that and the next level below that moves up, you create a domino down the price points. And so giving a million dollar exemption instead of a half million dollar exemption and even do it on all small ownership. So if you had two rentals and you wanted to dump them, and you can make up to a million dollars, you dump those back into the inventory pool for that sweet young couple to have a place to buy. But they don't want to get rid of that rental because the amount of taxes and there is no capital gains break on that except you're paying 15%, or if you make over 400,000, you pay 20%. So you get hammered. If you've got a house, like I've got a bunch of houses, I probably got 15 houses. Most of our real estate's not houses, but I got 15 or 20. And I would dump those stupid things because I got a lot of gain in them. But I'm not going to give the government a bunch of money. So instead I'm going to have to do some kind of 1031, roll them, and I'll get them back out of the market and turn them into commercial property. But most people won't do that. I actually know how to do it. Your husband and I will be doing that together.

But if you gave people a tax break on the rentals that they own and attack up to a million dollars, and on their personal residence, there'd be a bunch of houses going to market.

[Rachel Cruze]

Interesting.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And that would stimulate this inventory. So if we could start doing dumping in. And he brought up one other thing that's really technical, but it's true. So when you do development, if you develop a subdivision, if you're a developer, you buy a piece of land and you put in a street and you put in the utilities and you go through all the stupid permitting and you put up with a stupid city and you go through all the stupid stuff about the trees and the stupid stuff about the creeks and all the stupid stuff you have to do to develop a subdivision. Right. It's ridiculous. Okay. When you finish with all that stupid stuff, all those expenses you can't expense, they have to be depreciated over a large number of years. So you could put $15 million in a sewer system for a subdivision and you don't get to write off $15 million. You get to write off a million dollars a year for 15 years or something like that.

[Rachel Cruze]

And if you up that and he.

[Dave Ramsey]

Said if you just said they can expense it instead of depreciating it, that would stimulate developers to start building subdivisions, which would stimulate. And so you could do that. But that's giving the evil businessman a tax break. Oh, my God, you liberals. But anyway, but this is how you get the thing started. You actually get tax breaks to people to cause them to do this stuff. Let me keep my money and I'll go do stuff. Yeah, that's what investors say and that's what people say when they're selling their house. I'm not selling this house. I'm not giving the government all that money. It's my money. And if you say, okay, you could keep your money, it'll stimulate the stinking inventory.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

The other side of the coin, though, and I've almost used up all my time here, and I'm not going to take two segments on this, is we're increasingly realizing that the 25 and 26 year old in America has been screwed by the large banks and the car companies like never before, like no generation before. So if you're 25 or 26, you've been screwed by the big banks like you've never been screwed.

[Rachel Cruze]

From the loans that they're having to the loans.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, you cannot buy a house when you have a 1,200 doll car payment. When you have a student loan that's $85,000 and you got credit card debt coming out your ears. Record credit card debt. Record car debt. Record debt, debt, debt, debt, debt. And then you sit there and whine, you can't buy a house because you got victimized by these people. You set yourself up for it. You signed up for the trip, baby. But you've been screwed by the Citibanks. What's in Your wallet. The money that's going to Citibank should have been going to buy you a house.

[Rachel Cruze]

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 Cruze]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Jeff's in Texas. Hey Jeff, how are you?

[Caller]

Good. How are y' all today?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than we deserve. What's up?

[Caller]

Hey. I'm trying to figure out what I should do with my house to move along with my debt. Snowball. I work out of town. I'm probably home in my house about 60 days a year, rest the time. I'm in my camper. And so I'm trying to figure out if I should sell my house, rent it out to renters or just keep it.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're single?

[Caller]

Yeah, no, I'm married with two kids.

[Dave Ramsey]

They're in the camper.

[Rachel Cruze]

What are y' all doing in the camper? What's. Is it travel? Is it work?

[Dave Ramsey]

Work?

[Caller]

Yeah, I'm in the oil and gas industry, so I'm not traveling for work.

[Rachel Cruze]

How much is the, how much is the house worth?

[Caller]

I think we could probably sell it for about 265. I think it's around. Yeah, about 265, 270.

[Rachel Cruze]

What do you make a year?

[Caller]

Take home? 145.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay. Part of me would have you keep it just to have a piece of, have a home, you know, a piece of real estate.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are you?

[Caller]

32 and the last 31.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So I think the big deal is we don't want to make a decision based on the snapshot that is the moment. Let's instead look at the field, the film strip and see how this film's going to end. So what are you going to be doing in 10 years.

[Caller]

Well, I'm hoping, you know, another three to five years in this industry and then go home with everything paid for is kind of my goal.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

And then at that time, my kids would start school and the wife could.

[Dave Ramsey]

Go back to work. Keep it.

[Caller]

And then.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you keep.

[Caller]

Paid for. Keep it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you keep it.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because that's what you. That's why you're keeping it. Not for. Not for its current use. You're keeping it for where this is going.

[Rachel Cruze]

And you guys want to be in that area. Jeff, do you think if you were to. If you were to forecast it.

[Caller]

Okay, it's definitely a good area. It's got a good school district. Definitely bought it to begin with.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

But. So you keep it. Even if, like, if I sold it, I'd be able to pay off the other 40,000 in debt, which.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you make. You make 140,000. You can pay that off.

[Caller]

Okay. So. Because I figured I can pay everything else off Besides camper in 10 months. And the camper, it's. It's got a lot of done on it, too. About 84,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Yeah, that's going to be a problem. The campers is the expense.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. That's a cost of you. Of your career. Your career costs you money. And the campers, you know, the loss of value in that thing, because those things go down in value, like, faster than anything on the planet.

[Caller]

It.

[Dave Ramsey]

This is going to just like. Like when you're done, you're going to be with cousin Eddie.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. So I would just hate to.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Rachel Cruze]

To sell an asset like a house that's going to go up in value to pay for something that's going to go down in value.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Rachel Cruze]

So.

[Caller]

So you. What about renting it? Would you. Would you consider renting?

[Dave Ramsey]

No, I don't think I would. I think I just. I think I would enjoy my house when I can get home and use it. And there might be some times that the family stays and you go out for two weeks and work, work and let them enjoy the stability of the house just to. Living in a freaking camper.

[Caller]

Yeah. It's so nice to go home and have room and space.

[Dave Ramsey]

Amen.

[Caller]

Even though the camper's big.

[Dave Ramsey]

I know.

[Caller]

But not spacious.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. This one's not gonna roll away. Yeah. I mean, I. It's. That it matters. It matters. I think it's gonna be good for the psychology of your relationship with your wife and your kids for them to have a solid home base, to touch base in and to rest a bit little and you can go out into a few weeks and come back and occasionally they can go out with you in the camper and come back and then you just, you continue to bust it. What you're doing is paying a price to get to a place. What you're doing now, you have no intention of doing the rest of your life.

[Caller]

Correct? Yeah. And the company I'm with is based where I live, so there's maybe an opportunity to go, you know, tell them I'm done in the field and hopefully try to work from the home office there.

[Dave Ramsey]

I would start. Start having those discussions and say three to five years, what classes do I need to take? What mentorship program do I need to be in to be able to come home in three to five years? I'm going to bust it. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm not quitting. I just need to, I need. This is my plan and I want to make sure you guys have a plan too that matches my plan.

[Caller]

Yes, sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

I start talking to your leadership team about that because they know that you guys don't do this stuff for us.

Yeah. There's a shelf life on what you do.

Right?

[Caller]

Yes, sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I mean, there's not any 65 year olds much doing what you're doing.

[Caller]

Yeah, correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that's what I mean. So they're used to people churning out or churning up over time. And I'd want to get. I just want to get dialed in with that and get aligned with them on what I need to be doing to get that opportunity so that I've got a place to go. Not next month, maybe not next year, but in three to five years I'm gonna be doing something different. And so let's be working that out. Yeah, I'd keep it, Jeff. It's a good question. It's an interesting question. I don't know if I've ever thought about that that way. But if he had said, look at.

[Rachel Cruze]

That, with truck drivers. That lives.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. If he had said 15 years, I might have said sell it.

[Rachel Cruze]

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But three to five.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And the little. They got a place to. They got a home base they can stay in. Yeah, that's cool. Yep, Yep, yep, yep. Michael's in San Diego. Hey, Michael.

[Caller]

Hey, Dave, Rachel. How are you guys?

[Dave Ramsey]

Great. How can we help?

[Caller]

I have a bit of a career question that I need advice on. I recently took a completely different career path and a different job that pays about $30,000 more a year to try to help my Wife and I get out of baby step two a little bit faster.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cool.

[Caller]

But I'm noticing. Yeah, yeah, I know we're exc. But I am noticing some pretty kind of severe red flags about this new position there. Every. It's a director of sales position.

Everybody in this department is new. The turnover is extremely high, and I already have people there that are very upset that I've only been there for about a month.

[Dave Ramsey]

What are they upset about?

[Caller]

Kind of.

Well, my sales reps, they have zero leads. There's literally no one doing any kind of marketing.

[Dave Ramsey]

And were they promised leads?

[Caller]

Yeah, to a certain degree. It's an expectation that they're to make a certain amount of phone calls per day, and they can't even meet those phone calls per day because there's nothing in our CRM tool for them to work on.

So I'm concerned about, like, long term.

[Dave Ramsey]

Is this a new company?

[Caller]

No, this company has been around for a significant period of time. They went through a transition recently.

[Dave Ramsey]

This doesn't sound like an integrity problem. It sounds like a competence problem. Problem.

[Caller]

I. Yeah, I would. I would agree. I'm just more concerned about, like, long term. Longevity.

Right.

Like with this career, should I stick around for a year or two? Kind of. See.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, if I'm gonna stick around, I'm gonna work on the problems and I'm gonna get some help from leadership. Working on the problems?

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Just sit here and watch the thing burn down?

[Caller]

No, no. And. And of course I agree with you, but I've already burned. Brought some things to leadership, and they're not really open to discussion.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wait a minute. We don't have any leads in the CRM tool. You want these guys to make calls, and there's no calls for them to make. And leadership says I don't want to talk about it?

[Caller]

Pretty much.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why? That's weird. Do you want to lose your whole sales team?

[Caller]

Yeah, it's. Again, it's very odd to me. And I started looking at, like, who's doing the marketing? How's the marketing handled? Can we get out into the community? I've started to ask these questions, and the response I got was that's why your predecessor is no longer here.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because he has questions.

Is that what he meant? Is that what that means about.

[Caller]

Yeah. About the leads in particular? Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Look for a job.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Rachel Cruze]

Bizarre.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You need to get in the job job.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

This one's not going to last. You're going to get fired.

[Caller]

Yeah, My. My old job will have me back, right?

[Dave Ramsey]

No, I don't want you to go take a pay cut. I want you to make more money. Let's get a new job making 30,000 more than you're making now.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Only this time, it's working for competent leaders.

[Caller]

Yeah, well, thank you guys. I appreciate it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Is this an epic leadership fail or what? This sounds like corporate America beyond believe. The last guy that asked questions is no longer here. We can't find his body. Don't ask questions that'll get you killed. What kind of corporate crap is that? That's just crap.

[Rachel Cruze]

Is it a large company, Michael?

[Caller]

Yes, it is. Yeah, it's a large company.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, they're large enough to absorb this level of crap.

[Rachel Cruze]

And this one department that you happen to be stuck in.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, really? Good God, man. Man, what an corporate idiot. Well, the last guy that asked questions doesn't work here anymore. Don't ask any questions. Good God.

That's classic. It's like office space.

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[Rachel Cruze]

All right, today's question comes from Greg in New York. My wife and I are approaching our 60s, debt free, including our home, and have a net worth of over 2.5 million, including $125,000 in a high yield savings. We bring home about $14,000 a month and our expenses are about 8, 500. I plan to partially retire from my job soon by cutting back my hours. My wife wants to keep working for a while, bringing home about $3,000 a month with benefits. We've agreed to go gazelle intense Again by cutting expenses and living like poor college kids, only this time enjoying home cooked dinners instead of ramen noodles to help us with the transition. Does that make sense at this stage or are we in a good enough position to start shifting towards balance and enjoyments?

I think you have, I think you have some margin. I think you're okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Greg, you guys need to redo your math. Okay. Two and a half million.

Is the net worth, and so it's not the actual number, but if you invested two and a half million in a decent growth stock mutual fund, you would make $250,000 a year.

And not touch the 2.5 million. Okay, now all of that's not invested because some of this is the paid for home. It's part of the net worth. So that's not the real number. But the point is you're not utilizing in this math the income off of the nest egg that you've so diligently built. And so start taking some income off of your nest egg that you so diligently built. Built. And you don't have to take that. You don't touch the nest egg. Just take some of the income off of it, have it invested decently in good mutual funds. And then whatever they make, throw that in the pot and, you know, then $3,000 a month just becomes kind of cute. That your wife is making. That's just kind of cute. It's unrealistic. So, no, you do not need to act like college kids. And no, you don't need to go gazelle intense. No, you're just fine. You're fine. You got plenty of money and you're making plenty of money.

[Rachel Cruze]

So, yeah, I mean, if Your expenses are 8,500 and you're making 20amonth, you're fine. Like, you're fine.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Hello. Yeah. And you know, he's not going to quit. He said, we're bringing home 14. She's making three, he's making 11. He's going to cut back his hours. They're probably still going to be at 8,500.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

If not more income without touching the nest egg.

[Rachel Cruze]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Without taking the income off the nest egg. So, yeah, you got plenty of room.

[Rachel Cruze]

You don't need to go gazelle intense.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have transitioned, sir, from the acquisition mode to the enjoyment mode. You've been building the nest egg. Now it's time for breakfast. Crack the nest egg and begin eating, Sir.

[Rachel Cruze]

Oh, I was like, where's the, what's the breakfast?

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, you got to do something with These eggs, right? Gotta do something with the eggs. The golden eggs from the golden goose.

[Rachel Cruze]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

The goose is big, fat and sassy. Get some of the eggs.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, enjoy, enjoy.

[Dave Ramsey]

Let's ride the eggs.

[Rachel Cruze]

Good job. Greg.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You didn't call me up with no money. And I'm trying to retire because I deserve to. Cause I'm old. No, that was not what you called and said. Way to go. Proud of you. Very well done. Jackie's in Kansas City. Hey, Jackie, how can we help? Hi, Dave.

[Caller]

Hi, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. How can we help?

[Caller]

I'm calling cause I'm preparing for a divorce after 20 years as a stay at home mom. And I need some clarity on how to navigate the finances, particularly with the house and asset division.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Sorry. What happened?

[Caller]

My husband has a sex addiction and it's been chronically unfaithful to me. I've tried to reconcile multiple times and this most recent time, I'm done.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Rachel Cruze]

I'm sorry, Jackie.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's awful. How old are the kiddos?

[Caller]

I've got 19, 16, 14 and 10. All boys.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. All right, and what does he make?

[Caller]

He makes about 220 a year.

[Dave Ramsey]

And.

What is. How much debt do you all have?

[Caller]

Just 11,000 on his truck, which he's planning to keep. My van is paid for.

[Dave Ramsey]

What about the house?

[Caller]

The house is approximately worth 550,000. We owe 143,000 and the payment is 1800amonth with two and a quarter percent.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, and.

What does he have in a 401k?

[Caller]

We have $160,000 in investments and between two Roth IRAs, we have 270,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

So 400 grand.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

430. Okay. Okay.

[Caller]

So my big question, Dave, is I don't have any income. So even assuming the mortgage would be difficult, I'm in grad school to become a counselor and I don't have a sense of what alimony might be, but child Support is around 1,800 to $2,000 a month. And so qualifying for a mortgage is.

[Dave Ramsey]

So how far before you finish your degree?

[Caller]

Two and a half years still.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. Well, apparently you've not been talking to an attorney yet.

[Caller]

Not yet. I've decided, but I, before I go, an attorney. And.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, the attorney's gonna tell you better than I can in your state what your state law is going to afford you on this. So.

[Caller]

So.

[Dave Ramsey]

And of course, it's also what you guys can mediate as well. So a friend of mine that used to do divorce counseling Says divorce turns a marriage into a business transaction. So this now is. Despite all of the pain, the anger, the angst, the worry, despite all of the heartbreak, this is now a math problem.

[Caller]

Yes, that's why I was calling. Yeah. Because I think if I keep the house that I'll be cash poor. Equity.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. If he took this other stuff and you took the equity in the house, I'd be close to an even swap. And then he pays child support and alimony. That would not be unusual, but I'm not gonna recommend that. Okay, so what we found is this.

Doing this for a long, long time. Mom wants to hold. Mama Bear wants to hold onto the house. Cause the kids have been through enough. And making them move and change schools is. Is just too much because they feel like that's the last straw. Like the kids can't. They're not resilient enough to make it through that. Actually, they are because their world's already upside down. The house and school is a minor part of their world, really. But in Mama Bear's mind, it often feels like it's a bigger part than it actually is. And so she takes the house that she can't afford to protect the children from the last little bit of pain that she can, and. And it becomes a curse rather than a blessing. And so that's what I don't want to do here. Yours is not super bad because you don't owe that much on it.

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so that makes it. And it's not super expensive.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. Eighteen hundred bucks. Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So, you know, if you could end up with a chunk of money and the house and, you know, like not an even split. In other words.

You know, you might could make it. Otherwise, you're going to think about. If you're going to try to keep the house, you're going to have to think about a career while you're finishing up your counseling.

[Caller]

Yes. Yeah, that was part of the question. Myers. I'm willing to work during grad school, but when I get to my internship, I'll be working 30, 35 to 40 hours a week. Just an unpaid internship.

[Rachel Cruze]

And how long is that for? Is that a semester long?

[Caller]

That'll be a full year. And so taking an additional 30. Ish.

[Dave Ramsey]

A lot of those, though, are paid. A lot of those are paid gigs. Yeah.

[Caller]

This particular program, the school that I'm in, that's an unpaid position.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, let's think about a different way of doing that then.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because if you could get paid to be an intern, that changes the equation too. A Little for you, doesn't change the whole thing, but it helps make the adjustments. So yeah, you've got to, you don't, don't let the illusion that the house is providing more for the children than it actually is puts you in a position that it damages the next decade of their life and yours.

[Caller]

Right, Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

So cut it loose if you have to, but I don't know what you're going to be able to come out of this with.

[Rachel Cruze]

And an eighteen hundred dollar mortgage though, you know, if you think about it, it's not bad. Renting and stuff could be around this. I don't know. There's a part of me that you may be paying that regardless, but you.

[Dave Ramsey]

Got to eat and you got to pay lights and insurance and you got no money coming in. So we got to have some money coming in and that's what, that's how we balance this out.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. And the alimony could help if there's any of that child support. Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

20 years. Yeah. It's probably depend on the state. I don't know.

[Rachel Cruze]

I'm sorry, Jackie.

[Dave Ramsey]

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[Caller]

Hey Dave, how are you? How's it going?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better not deserve what's up.

[Caller]

All right, so in a nutshell, early 40s, about 190 in debt and I think it's accumulating still. Recently lost my job.

And beginning of October and you know, just trying to determine if, you know, this mountain of debt, if bankruptcy is the route as opposed to, you know, going deeper in debt while waiting for additional forms of income.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why would you go into debt while waiting on additional forms of income? Why don't you just go get something to do right now like it's Christmas time, lift boxes for FedEx and heat 1000%.

[Caller]

If they were to call me tomorrow based off the application that was submitted last week, I would do it. But as it stands as today there's no, no retail part time temporary rolls calling back at the moment.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's strange.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, what's the 190 in D debt? What does it consist of?

[Caller]

Yeah, so it's about 140, 150 in. In student loans, about 20 in credit card debt and about 30 from a personal loan.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, got bad news for you.

[Rachel Cruze]

Student loans aren't bankruptible.

So it would, it would only. Yeah. So 50 of that would only.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Rachel Cruze]

Be wiped away in a bankruptcy.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that's not that you can probably clear that. Is that all that stuff? The 50 behind, are you behind on all of it?

[Caller]

Yes, I'm current, but still a little bit. The credit card usage is high and so I did kind of take heed to some of the advice that I heard a while back on your show which was to put, you know, the higher end.

Amounts on auto pay for minimum payments just to keep it active while trying to chop away at the smaller ones ones. And I was doing that for a while but then I had a series of job losses. So prior to the job that was, I was just laid off from in October.

[Dave Ramsey]

What were you laid off from in October?

[Caller]

I was a fundraiser. So a director of development for a not for profit.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why were you laid off?

[Caller]

There was a leadership change and so the, the board of directors made some decisions on leadership roles.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And why did you lose the other jobs again?

[Caller]

Laid off. So this was my, my traditional career background is in the advertising industry.

And you know, it's high turnover and high service turnover in that industry. And, and my client didn't renew with the agency and so the agency couldn't afford to give me a salary already.

[Rachel Cruze]

Are you married?

[Caller]

No, but I am engaged with two children.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, okay.

[Caller]

One and five.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Now bankruptcy doesn't solve your problem. You have a career crisis. You don't have a debt crisis. You got a lot of debt. But the cord debt is not what's killing you, it's that you have no income.

[Caller]

Correct.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so, you know, I don't want to treat the wrong problem.

The real problem, the core problem, is income and consistent income and at the moment any income. And that's your core issue. So that's what I want to spend all of my calories on. And if you just took all of the debt payments and threw them in the trash and didn't pay them for two months, that's not the end of the world. You can get right back up once you start making some money again. What were you making at the last couple of years? Gig.

[Caller]

100,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay.

[Caller]

And the gig prior to that was 165.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So I was thinking you were a six figure guy. Just listening to you. So I think you will be again. I just don't know when and I don't know what. And at this moment it feels scary and uncertain. But no, you're not bankrupt, you're just unemployed. So, and so we got to solve that. And, and by the way, the, like Rachel said, the, the bulk of your debt is not bankruptible anyway. And if you can make 100, $150,000 a year, it'd be silly to file bankruptcy on 50 grand.

Because that's the essence of what you'd be doing. Follow me.

[Caller]

Yeah, I do appreciate that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So tell you what, hang on, I'm going to, I'm going to connect you with Ken Cole Coleman's book Finding the Work youk're Wired to do and the Proximity Principle book, which is a really good book on landing a position of some kind. And the best thing you can do is what you've been trying to do, it sounds like legitimately, and I do believe you, is to land something immediately just to get your hand to something instead of sitting and worrying.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. And with the job market, even listening to Ken, just putting in applications online really isn't going far these days. So it is going in person Finding someone that works somewhere, that knows an open position. So, like, there's some strategy. Cause it is. The job market's tough these days. I mean, I mean, the retail side, I'm not sure. But when it comes to like a full on career like what you're talking about, it takes more than just an application online or finding, you know, a LinkedIn thing.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And I'm not even sure to get on with FedEx just filling out the applications enough. I think I'm gonna bother some people over there and try to get over, you know, I'm ready to start today. You ready to start? Let's go. What do you got to do? I mean, they probably need somebody today. I mean, it's Black Friday. It's the, you know, everything's moving again. So retail is not running slow. Sales are not bad. So I'm, you know, I don't know where they're all going, but sales are not bad. So. Interesting. Very interesting. Josh is in Ohio. Hey, Josh, how are you.

[Caller]

Doing? Good.

[Dave Ramsey]

Are you guys better than I deserve? What's up?

[Caller]

So I'm going to receive $400,000 roughly next summer from my dad's farm being sold. I want to treat this money with wisdom and not blow it. What's the best way to use a lump sum like this? To build stability, invest wisely, and secure my future.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good for you.

[Caller]

Passed away back in 2019.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm sorry.

How much debt do you have, Joe? Josh.

[Caller]

I have $18,000 between two cars.

Credit card and student loans. And then I have. I have multiple medical bills. I'm not exactly sure what those equal, but I guess around 20,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so 40,000 clears your debts.

Right?

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. You. Oh, you own a home?

[Caller]

No, we rent.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right.

[Rachel Cruze]

How old are you, Josh?

[Caller]

30.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you make?

[Caller]

Roughly 77,000 a year. I drive truck, so it's a little different each year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so what I would do is pay off your debts, build an emergency fund, and I would set the rest of it aside in a mutual fund and forget that you have it. Get with a Ramsey Smartvestor Pro and it sounds like you need about 50,000 out of this. So put about 350 in a mutual fund and just let it sit there and pretend like you don't have it and let it sit there and grow a little bit. And you keep working with no debt payments. I want you to start saving money and no debt payments. I want you to get on a. On a detailed written budget with your wife and use this opportunity to change you not have the money change everything. It's not enough money to fix your life. It's a lot of money. It's more than you've ever seen. But it's not enough to make it where you don't have to do anything. You got to get. You got to be smart from this point forward. As you said, wise. And so I'm going to send you a copy of the book, the Total Money Makeover. And I want you guys to work that system.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. Without the 400. I think that's really important because you know, used to credit cards, car payments, like that's the norm. And when you just wipe it out, there's no emotional sacrifice at that point. So you guys have to have a standard of living that you can live on with your income. And you guys feel good about creating these new money habits.

[Dave Ramsey]

We're not borrowing money anymore.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yep. And then if you choose to use that money, you know, three years down the road to buy a house or to use it for your life, you have good money habits in place. So working on your money habits is going to be really, really important.

[Caller]

Josh, Sam.

[Dave Ramsey]

Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit Union studio. Rachel Cruz, number one best selling author, Ramsey personality. My daughter is my co host. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Elizabeth is in Arkansas. Hi Elizabeth, how are you?

[Caller]

Hey, Dave and Rachel.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, what's up?

[Caller]

Okay, so I am a newly single mother of seven children in the process of getting a divorce and I do not make enough money to survive and I need to know what to do next.

[Rachel Cruze]

My gosh. Where are you guys in the divorce process?

[Caller]

We have only just had one hearing about custody.

[Dave Ramsey]

Is he writing?

[Caller]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why?

[Caller]

I have not received a dime.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why?

[Caller]

Because he doesn't think that he should.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's not up to him. It's up to your attorney to get off his butt and talk to the judge about sending the woman with seven children some money.

[Caller]

Yeah, well, right now we're having the kids half and half.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't care.

[Caller]

I get them a week. Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

He needs to be writing checks to you in any state.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Was your attorney a wuss or not smart?

[Caller]

I'm beginning to wonder.

But I don't have the funds to get anyone else at this point, so.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, you, you need to pick up the phone and chew their ass.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Rachel Cruze]

Can you say that?

[Dave Ramsey]

I just said that. I mean, I got a lady with seven children that's not getting supported by her deadbeat. Soon BX and the Attorney sitting on their thumb.

I can't think of anything that makes me madder than attorneys who sit on their thumbs.

[Caller]

Yeah. And so currently I have.

I have $6,550 in student loans. That's what I. I was able to get that. I graduated this summer with an EMT license and I got that so I could move out.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are the kids? How old are your children?

[Caller]

Eight to 15. Two sets of twins.

[Dave Ramsey]

When are you starting the EMT gig?

[Caller]

Well, there is a possible opening in January, but again, because of the situation with the kids.

It'S going to be really difficult for me to get a, like a vanilla EMT job because it's usually 48 on 96 off. And I don't. I want. I have the kids. I have to.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, I think it's very doable.

48, you're on him.

[Caller]

Right. But again, he's. He's been very.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't care what he wants. You seem to think he has control of this. He has no control. There are these neat things called laws.

When your attorney actually bows up and acts like an attorney.

No, definitely. Listen, not unusual at all for one of the spouses in a divorce that has child. Has co care custody with their children to be working for the fire department of the EMT and have 48 on, 96 off. That's a fairly normal rhythm. And to put the child care. The, the child custody arrangement to fit that rhythm is not unusual at all. It's done every day in divorce courts in America.

[Caller]

Okay. All right.

[Dave Ramsey]

When somebody has an attorney.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So. Yeah. So this guy. This guy is a. You're soon to be ex. Is a control freak, overbearing bully, isn't he?

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And has been for how long?

[Caller]

17 of our 18 years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, because you, twice in the conversation already gave him way more power than he actually has. Yeah, and two times I corrected you on it. You're following me. He really doesn't have. I mean, this is a. Yeah, this guy's.

He's so neutered, he doesn't even know it. He's got seven freaking children. The judge is going to mop the floor with him.

Assuming your attorney actually shows up for work.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So. Yeah. This is Elizabeth.

[Rachel Cruze]

Do you have the ability.

[Dave Ramsey]

I wouldn't want to be him walking in front of a judge.

[Caller]

Yeah, I'm sorry, Rachel, what was that?

[Rachel Cruze]

Do you have the ability to find someone new if you needed legal counsel? That's different.

[Caller]

For your sake, I don't think so. I actually had to borrow Money from my daughter to be able to pay the retainer. And I'm currently making $204 weekly doing what? Just in home care. I do in home care. And then when I can, I do substitute teaching. And that pays $91 a day.

[Dave Ramsey]

And he's not taking care of the kids at all. He's not doing any of the child custody right now at all?

[Caller]

Well, he's. He's got the kids every other week. With the exception of one of my oldest twins. She's at my house every week. Okay, so.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you could be working that entire week for a lot more than 204.

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you need to be.

[Caller]

But the problem is, is the reason that my daughter is at our house is because she. She was suicidal and.

Going to her dad's was making it worse.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, I can't imagine. I can imagine. Is she not. Is she not safe at your house?

[Rachel Cruze]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, then go work. The week that she. The week that he's. The rest of kids are gone. You go to work that week? Yeah, you got to.

[Caller]

She's. She is not supposed to be left alone.

Yet.

So that. That's been a challenge with that. But I have been working while they're at school.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have family in the area?

[Caller]

They're over an hour away.

My mother is a widow. She happened to work to survive herself. And then I have siblings, but basically everybody is just working paycheck to paycheck, and I don't want to be that anymore.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, you are. Right now. You're just trying to eat. So Bubba needs to start writing some checks to you. You need to get on the weeks that the kids are gone. And if she needs to go stay with her grandmother that week. So somebody's watching the teenager. That's cool, right?

[Caller]

She wouldn't be able. She's in school though, and not right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

She's in Christmas right now.

[Caller]

Well, yeah, that's in a week and a half.

Christmas break.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So, I mean, you've got to create some. In income. $204. I don't know. What are you eating on?

[Caller]

We. We did qualify for food stamps, and so that's. Food stamps is taking care of the food.

Some friends from church stepped up and helped out with some stuff that has helped cover gas because I'm driving the kids back and forth to their school.

And.

[Rachel Cruze]

What's he saying? Your husband, your ex, soon to be ex.

[Caller]

He's blaming me for everything.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So listen, I want you to hang up and I want you to call your attorney and say If I don't start getting some checks immediately out of this guy to feed these seven children. We're over here on freaking food stamps and he has seven children. He's paying nothing. You're not doing your job.

[Caller]

Yeah, okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right now.

[Caller]

All right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Do your job.

[Rachel Cruze]

Elizabeth. I'm sorry. And hey, hold on the line. Christian's going to pick up. We have Aldi gift cards, Elizabeth. They're one of our sponsors. And so we'll hook you up with some of those.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, we'll get you some groceries. Going, kiddo.

[Rachel Cruze]

Oh, I'm so sorry, man.

[Dave Ramsey]

God, that pisses me off.

Many of you listen to the Ramsey show because you're sick and tired of getting nowhere with your money. You work too hard to live paycheck to paycheck with no money in the bank. But here's the deal. Just listening to the show won't change that. If you want different results, you have to do something different. We've helped millions of people save money, ditch debt and build wealth. And you can, too. But you got to have a game plan. And that begins with our get started assessment. Go to ramseysolutions.com start now. Take the free quiz and get your free step by step action plan plan. If you've had it with money stress and are ready to take control of your money for good, go to ramseysolutions.com startnow.

I still don't understand this. We have cyber Monday week. How is a Monday a week? I'm so confused.

[Rachel Cruze]

Shopping week.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cyber Monday week. Deals aren't over yet. We've extended the sale. It's longer than a week.

[Rachel Cruze]

We love it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sales, $12 hardcover books, $12 assessments, $12 questions for humans decks and $6.99 for audiobooks and ebooks. This does end at the end of the week. Sunday 12.7ramseysolutions.com stick store or click the link in the description. Boys and girls, Daytona beach is on the line. Jenna is calling. Hi, Jana, how are you?

[Caller]

Hi, Dave and Rachel. Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller]

So my question is, is my. I'm 46. My husband is 43, and we have nothing saved for retirement and we don't own a house. Well, correction. We own a house, but it's a rental right now.

And we're thinking of selling it. And then my husband has about 100,000 in a tsp. Other than that, we have nothing saved. And I'm a little nervous.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, I wouldn't be panicked, but I would be concerned.

Okay. Because if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting. I'd be concerned about that. But 46, I mean, you know, you got 20 years. You'll be to able.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

If you get your crap together. Are you going to do it?

[Caller]

Absolutely.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what's the house? I don't understand. You have a rental house but you don't live in it?

[Caller]

Correct. It was.

[Dave Ramsey]

Where do you live?

[Caller]

Part of. We live in Daytona Beach.

[Dave Ramsey]

I know, but I mean, where do you. What's your house?

[Caller]

So we are renting.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why?

[Caller]

Because my husband had a job relocation.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, okay.

[Caller]

To Daytona Beach.

[Rachel Cruze]

Where's the rent?

[Dave Ramsey]

Why didn't you sell the other house?

[Caller]

My husband has some sentimental issues. It was his first house that he ever bought and he just didn't want to get rid of it. It actually was a.

[Dave Ramsey]

He should get rid of that and his old girlfriend's phone number. Both. Seriously, get rid of the house. That's stupid. There's a house I bought in college. I love the house. Oh, come on. Come on. Get rid of the house. It's not a blessing to your family.

[Rachel Cruze]

How much could you get for.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're renting now because you own a rental property.

Right? Yeah. Sell it. What's it worth?

[Caller]

We just had an appraisal done on it. It's 313.

[Dave Ramsey]

And what do you owe on it?

[Caller]

200.

[Dave Ramsey]

Great. Sell it. Buy you a house in Daytona Beach. 15 year fix where the payments no more than a fourth of your take home pay if you got other debt.

[Caller]

Yeah. So we're on baby step two right now. We're finishing it this month.

[Dave Ramsey]

Great, good. So if you finish baby step two and you sell this house and you buy a house with that money and then you have an emergency fund, you're on to baby step four. Right?

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Boom. I love this. And what's your household income.

[Caller]

Together? Well, my. My income kind of fluctuates a little bit.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, but I mean, what do you make a year? What do you all make a year? A year.

[Caller]

About 165 to 185.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, if you say 15% from 46 to 66 of 1 of $150,000, you're going to be multimillionaires.

[Rachel Cruze]

Jana.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, if you say 15% in baby step four, you said you knew what baby step two is. You know what baby step four is, right?

[Rachel Cruze]

Which is around 30,000 a year.

[Dave Ramsey]

30,000 a year? Year. For the next 20 years, you're going to be multi millionaires.

Pretty Cool. Pretty cool.

[Rachel Cruze]

I'm going to get.

[Dave Ramsey]

You going to put it in there?

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah, I think we should.

[Dave Ramsey]

Let's get the exact number. But I mean, can't. I can't do 40 years in my head. But the. I'm not. It's probably. Okay, I'll give you my guess. Three and a half million.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, you're. I'm going to do 43 because that's you, Jana.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right now she's 46.

[Rachel Cruze]

No, she's 43.

[Caller]

46.

[Rachel Cruze]

Oh. Who's 43?

[Caller]

46? My husband.

[Dave Ramsey]

To 6 to 66. So we're gonna do 40. Just do 40 years at.

3,000Amonth. 2,500amonth is 30,000, 2500amonth. See what you get.

[Rachel Cruze]

We're gonna. 12%. People are gonna get mad about that.

[Dave Ramsey]

But we're sorry. Get mad.

[Rachel Cruze]

4.1 million 5 wasn't bad.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's a good guess, Dave.

[Rachel Cruze]

Did you get that though, Jana? It's pretty good.

[Caller]

So our leftover income is right now. And that's once we're done in, this month will be $7,415.72. So we only need.

Like 4,000 to live on.

[Dave Ramsey]

You need $2,500 a month going into retirement in baby step four. Baby step five is you need to save some towards kids college. Baby step six is you need to pay off this house I told you to go buy.

[Rachel Cruze]

And that is working till 67, by the way. That was the number in the investment calculator. But all that to say, say you're.

[Dave Ramsey]

Going to have three and a half to four million.

[Rachel Cruze]

But you guys have to. You have to start making some grownup moves. And keeping a house for sentimental value.

[Dave Ramsey]

Is not one of them.

[Rachel Cruze]

You know what I mean? Like, you. You guys kind of have to face reality too, right, Jana? I mean like it's a house. He needs to. To feel that and see that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, dump it. And you guys get your house bought and start working this plan. It's going to work.

[Rachel Cruze]

You're doing great.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's going to work. And you know what's interesting? Interesting. Let's go back to the beginning of this call. Did I not hear a little bit of panic and emotion in your voice that you were going to retire on Alpo?

Yeah.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I'm sitting here going, we don't.

[Rachel Cruze]

Need to make you emotional. What's going on?

[Caller]

I mean, I just. I'm frustrated because up until this point we've been paying seven and a half thousand dollars of a month for my mom to be in an assisted living. And she blew her entire retirement and sent $500,000 across seas to a Nigerian prince of some sort. Oh, my gosh. So I am sitting here supporting her, and it's frustrating to me. And then I look at her and I look at me in the mirror and I'm like, you're gonna be just like her.

[Rachel Cruze]

Not Jana. No, you're not.

[Dave Ramsey]

Then why would you be like her? You just figured out that's a dumb idea.

[Rachel Cruze]

You're not going to send half a million dollars to a Nigerian prince. Ja. Say that to yourself. I am not going to send half a million dollars. You know, you're not making the same decisions your mom made already. You guys are already working your way out of debt. You're already gaining financial ground.

[Dave Ramsey]

Let me tell you what normally happens where a family is dysfunctional with money.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

The kid goes the other way. Too far. Not the same way. Very few people follow their. In their. In their broke parents footsteps. They go the other direction and oftentimes too far where it's dysfunctional. And that's in Rachel's book, Know Yourself.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. Which hasn't really happened for. It's not like they're over savers. They're not. You know what I mean?

[Dave Ramsey]

So, like a lot of people are.

[Rachel Cruze]

They are.

[Dave Ramsey]

If they grow up and their parents are dysfunctional.

[Rachel Cruze]

Very much so.

[Dave Ramsey]

They don't heal from that and they go bananas.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. And in Jan is case.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Janet, all you got to do is just follow the baby steps. You're not even going to be close to your mother.

[Rachel Cruze]

Even if it was half of what we just pulled out. That's $2 million at retirement.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're fine.

[Rachel Cruze]

You guys are going to be great. You really are. You got to make some moves away.

[Dave Ramsey]

From the Nigerian prince.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. Oh, no, man. They prey on the elderly, though. I'm not kidding you. That is like the scam of the century.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's been around since before the Internet.

[Rachel Cruze]

No, it was like the forward, the forward, the forward.

[Dave Ramsey]

Snail mail. I used to get the Nigerian prince offer in the mail. Snail mail. Before there was email, before there was an Internet.

[Rachel Cruze]

And the worst is the dating catfish stuff happening. People in a relationship with someone.

[Dave Ramsey]

I never understood why anybody wanted to date a catfish. I'm so confused.

[Caller]

Oh, my gosh.

[Rachel Cruze]

Such a boomer.

[Dave Ramsey]

Man. We've got some interesting ones on here. Jade sniffed one out the other day on the air.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah. That she had never even met the guy. Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

The woman was getting ready to send her 401k to this dude and put. Put it in stupid Bitcoin. And then we're like, so how many times have you all actually. Oh, I've never actually met him. I'm like, oh, catfish, catfish. Oh, whoa, whoa. Oh, man.

[Rachel Cruze]

So bad. Oh, man.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're not her. Jana.

[Rachel Cruze]

Jana, you're gonna be great. You really are.

[Dave Ramsey]

Listen, if your family puts the fun in dysfunction, boys and girls, it just means you don't have to be that. That's all it means. You don't have to. You don't have to follow him.

[Caller]

I.

[Rachel Cruze]

No, it's scary. That is. That's terrifying. And just the burden that you're going to be for your kid. Right. Like, you feel all of that. And so because of that, that's part of the motivation to change, so you can change your family tree. You're different. You're a different branch. You're creating something completely new for your kids, and it's beautiful.

[Dave Ramsey]

We're going to work this system. You have time, the passion that you have to not be that. Use that passion to work this system, and then you won't be that. It's. That's what simple. It really is.

[Caller]

Foreign.

[Dave Ramsey]

You spend hours researching before making a major purchase, like a home or car. But it's also a good idea to put in the work searching for the right insurance coverage to protect your biggest assets. I recommend using Ramsey Trusted Pros. Whether you're looking for car, home, or any other type of insurance, Ramsey Trusted providers have been coached and vetted to serve you. You like. We would find what you [e-mail] insurance.

Rob is in Syracuse. A robbery. How are you?

[Caller]

I'm good, thanks.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good. How can we help?

[Caller]

I just was listening to you on Sage Steel, and I didn't realize that you had. You had a bankruptcy in your past. And it got me thinking. Do you think about the same things I do? And it was 20 years ago. We were a young couple, and I just think about the debt that was discharged, and I keep a list. And I just wonder if you ever think about that, about whether. I know I'm never going to pay it back because they're never going to take it. But I just was wondering if it was something that you or anybody else thinks about.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, people think about it because they're people of honor and the people of honor signed a debt and they know they owed it. And the law says, according to bankruptcy, that you don't owe it anymore, but your heart still is tender to that. And so all that means is you're a good person now, obsessing about it and continuing to worry about it. That's. I wouldn't do that. I instead would just accept grace, move on and, you know, you can think about the time I, you know, when I was 16 years old, I got the car keys. The first night I got my driver's license, I went to the Pizza Hut, my dad's pickup, and the first thing I did is I backed into a guy's Corvette.

Now I had to pay for that and fix it, obviously, and my dad did. Nobody was happy. Not the Corvette guy, not my dad, not me. Nobody was happy in the equation. But I don't think about that all the time. It's an interesting scar because it was really traumatic the first night you got your license. Right. But it's also, I was a 16 year old kid. Everybody makes mistakes. I just happen to do it with a pickup and a Corvette. But move on, Dave, don't sit up at night and worry about that. You don't want to take it too far, but to have a tender heart towards it just means you're a good person. In my case, mine manifested itself with the bankruptcy stuff. Years later, about 10 years after we filed bankruptcy, we were making substantial money again. And I woke up in the middle of the night with a very vivid dream. And I felt very, very sure. God was telling me to go back and pay it back. And I told my wife and she said, absolutely not. Those people pissed all over us. We're not giving them a diaper dime because they, man, we had some jerks we dealt with. We had some people that did all kinds of illegal stuff, all kinds of stuff. It was our fault, we caused it. But man, she's like, no way. And I'm like, yeah, way. I'm pretty sure this was God and I'm pretty sure we need to do this. No, we're not doing that. So two years went by and I finally, by then, we're making even more money. And the amount of the bankruptcy was fairly small in comparison. And I'm like, sure, Sharon, we're supposed to do this. I really want to go back and do this. I've got the money. And she said no. We actually sat down and met with our pastor in a marriage counseling session over it because we were arguing about it and couldn't get a resolution. And I was very sure. And so we ended up, she acquiesced and I said, look, we spend more than this on other stuff. It's what I think we're supposed to do. She Says, not the money, it's the principal. I know, but we needed it. So anyway, she finally went along with it, and we did go back. And it was a real Pain. Pain. 12, 13 years after the bankruptcy to get some banker who. It's not his money. They don't have a way to put it on the books because it's off the books. And we had. It was a. It was actually a lot of work to get these people to take money. It was crazy.

[Caller]

I was figuring. Yes, that's. That's what I was thinking about.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Like, who's gonna. Who's gonna.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, if you found an individual that was on there, like, you know, somebody like that, they're like, oh, yeah, I'll take the money. And I had a few of those.

And then one guy's like, oh, don't worry about it. I'm like, yeah, I'm worried about it. I need to do this. And he's like, okay, and send me a check. So I did. And then most people were that way. But then some of these banks, they were just morons. But the banks are so funny. They're morons. But I also don't tell that story very often, Rob, because it sounds like a humble brag, for one thing. And the other thing is I don't want to put it forth as a principle that I believe that everyone should go back and do that.

[Rachel Cruze]

It's mandatory.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I don't think everyone should go back and do that. I think I was told to. And it's probably. It's easy to surmise I was told to because I'm in this position. And so I needed to be. I needed to have a little bit, you know, be a little bit more above reproach, so to speak. But even then, I don't tell people. And so I'm often, you know, the haters on the Internet are like, dave Ramsey filed bankruptcy. He's just. He's a thief. He stole the money. And they don't even know. I went back and paid it. And I. And I don't go into the comments section and go, yes, I did. You know, just let it go. Screw it, you know, but. So I would not impose that upon you, legalistically is what I'm saying.

[Caller]

Actually, I really. I'm glad I heard the story, but I really wanted to let you know that it was a lot of your principles. When I reading when it back 20 some years ago after filing bankruptcy, that got me back on track.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good, good. Praise God. That's why we're Here, man. Hey, that's a great question.

[Rachel Cruze]

And I don't know if I would keep a list anymore. He said he keeps a list of it.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, unless you. Unless you feel that you want to pay some kind of spiritual direction or.

Because honestly, I was not thinking about it and I just. You know what? 10 times in your life you have a dream that's that vivid, that wakes you up and you can't go back to sleep. And I'm sitting at my computer and I wrote down the details of the dream. I've got it in the file, in an email to myself or in a Word document to myself, because it was that vivid. That doesn't happen that often. I dream every night and I don't have any idea what it is.

But so I really felt like that's what it was. But I'm not sure I'll know when I get to heaven for sure. And that's not why I'll get to heaven either, by the way.

[Rachel Cruze]

But the prompting and leading, that was something bigger than you to do something. And that could be anything in life. And this happened to be this.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Rachel Cruze]

And for. Yeah. And that's not for everyone's story, to your point.

[Dave Ramsey]

But it's very interesting with bankruptcy that on the one end of the spectrum, there are people that are very flippant about it. It's like, ah, I'll just file bankruptcy. I'll just file bankruptcy. They feel no obligation. And on the other end of the spectrum, you got Rob still keeping a.

[Rachel Cruze]

List 20 years later.

[Dave Ramsey]

20 years later. So, yeah, I'd probably either pay it back or burn the list. Need to get it. You need to get off your plate.

[Rachel Cruze]

One side or the other.

[Dave Ramsey]

Get off your plate and quit. Quit, quit having it hanging back there in the back of your head. Let's move on to something else. And I'm perfectly fine. Fine with you walking in Grace and just let it go. Perfectly fine with that. Again, I'm not going to take my story and impugn that as a pharisitical principle on everyone else because I don't think that's what I was getting. That was not the sense I had from it. It was a very nuanced individual situation. Madeline is in Chicago. Hey, Madeline, what's up?

[Caller]

Hi.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey. How can I help?

[Caller]

So I just graduated in May from college and my student loan payments will start up in January. It's $22,000 in debt, and then I also have 2,500 in credit card debt.

So my question with the loans is they all have different interest rates, subsidized versus unsubsidized. And just the best way to go about paying those effectively.

[Dave Ramsey]

How many do you have?

[Caller]

It's 10 different loans.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Lots of little ones.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, so a couple of 2,000 here and there.

[Dave Ramsey]

List them smallest to largest.

Pay minimum payments on everything except the little one. And attack the little one as fast as you can.

[Rachel Cruze]

Throw that credit card debt in there too. Is the credit cards, Multiple credit cards?

[Caller]

Just one credit card.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, yeah. So put the $2,500 credit card.

[Dave Ramsey]

You probably have some student loans smaller than that.

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you're going to do those first. You're going to cut up the credit card. By the way, quit using a stupid thing. I'm not kidding. That wasn't funny.

[Rachel Cruze]

Jamal, are you working?

[Caller]

Yeah, I am. I have a part time remote job and then I also work as a waitress.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, how much do you bring in a month.

[Caller]

Monthly? I'm bringing in about.

$5,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good. Well, how good for you? And if you can live on nothing and drop three grand on that, you're going to be done in no time. You'll be done by next Christmas.

[Caller]

Awesome.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, you got 20, $25,000. So $2,000 a month. You're done by Christmas next year.

[Rachel Cruze]

And that includes if you don't get a full time job making more, you.

[Dave Ramsey]

Know, what's your degree in?

[Caller]

Yeah, that would be my goal. Marketing.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You'll get a better job than that. Yeah, go, go get a big job. Knock it out even before that. But I want you done by Christmas. Say Christmas is my date. Say it out loud.

[Caller]

Christmas is my date.

[Dave Ramsey]

All right, knock it out, kiddo. You got this. Hang on. We're going to send you a copy of the total money makeover book to show you how to do it.

[Rachel Cruze]

Hey, guys, it's here, our Cyber Monday sale. And you can pick up our bestselling books like Baby Steps millionaires for only $12. Or pick up a set of our questions for humans cards. That way at your next gathering, you can put down the screens and have amazing conversations and see instead. And they're just $12. Plus some of our best selling digital products like our audiobooks are as low as $6.99. Seriously, guys, gifts like these change people's lives. And that's always a Good deal. Visit ramseysolutions.com store.

[Dave Ramsey]

Our scripture of the day, Romans 15:4. For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through the endurance taught in the scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope. Jim Rohn said, formal education will make you a living. Self education will make you a fortune. Sam is in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hey, Sam. How are you?

[Caller]

Hey. I'm actually in Wilson, North Carolina. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. How can I help?

[Caller]

I'm newly engaged and we've had a discussion. Me and my now fiance have had a discussion about buying a house. My grandfather's house. He just passed away. And my family thinking about selling it. They're gonna keep it in the family. They're thinking about selling it for tax vacation. You?

I really like the house. She's not really sure about the location. And so that was my first question. And the other question would be, how much money do I need to save to buy a house?

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. How old are you, Sam?

[Caller]

I am. I just turned 26.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And what do you make a year?

[Caller]

62,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's your fiance make a year?

[Caller]

54.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cool. And when will you all be getting married?

[Caller]

I haven't set a date. We're getting through the holidays, but probably sometime in 27.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. And what will your grandfather's house cost if you were to buy it?

[Caller]

Tax value? Just under $250,000. Like 246 or 247, I think.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you think the thing's really worth?

[Caller]

I looked it up on Zillow and all the other websites and it's listed for 340 to 360. So I feel like I'll be gaining a little bit.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And okay. And do you have any money?

[Caller]

A little to none. I mean, I've got. I've started up with Financial Peace University. I've started my nest egg kind of adding to it. Every month I got around 27 $2,800 saved up in a.

Money market account.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you're out of debt?

[Caller]

Well, I've got $4,000 worth of debt paying that off. That ring hadn't even made one payment on it yet. I intend on paying that off before the end of the year.

[Dave Ramsey]

This year or next?

[Caller]

This year.

[Dave Ramsey]

So in the next couple weeks?

[Caller]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, that's good. All right, so you'll be debt free, and then you'll start saving. When are you required to close on your grandfather's house? Could you rent it for a year while you save up some money?

[Caller]

Yes, I can. That is also another option. So right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, now here's the last question. What happens when you want to sell the house?

[Caller]

I would sell it back to My mom or to my family.

[Dave Ramsey]

What if they can't buy it?

Do you have to sell. Do you have to sell it at tax value then? Or do you. Can you sell it for full price?

[Caller]

I would sell it to him for whatever I bought it for.

[Dave Ramsey]

Then don't buy it.

[Rachel Cruze]

Yeah, it's not a good investment.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, don't buy it because you can't make any money on it.

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

If you buy a house for two or $300,000, in 10 years from now, you have to sell it for two. $300,000, that was a bad deal.

[Caller]

All right.

[Dave Ramsey]

It needs to go up in value. So. No.

[Rachel Cruze]

Unless the family can all agree, Sam, that, you know, by the time you want to sell it, you can sell.

[Dave Ramsey]

It for what it's worth.

[Rachel Cruze]

$10. Yeah. That you can sell it for what it's worth. Or you can sell it outside the family if no one wants it for what it's worth either.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Rachel Cruze]

It's kind of like a first right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Of refusal, but give them first right of refusal. But if they don't want to buy it for what it's worth, I mean, the thing could be worth a million dollars in a few years. Yeah.

[Caller]

And I mean, his own family land, we got 650 acres.

And there's a bunch of barns.

[Dave Ramsey]

You don't get 650 acres with this, though.

[Caller]

No, no, no. I get an acre, and then I get some barns that are actually on the farm.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you don't get anything. You get an acre of land and a house. The rest of it is just. You have access to. Which, by the way, if you drive over there, you'd have access to it anyway. You don't have to live there to have access to that.

[Caller]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

So, no, that's not relative. I don't think this is a good idea because I think you're gonna get trapped.

[Caller]

Thank you. That's how I've been kind of feeling.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I think your fan. I think the family has.

[Rachel Cruze]

Fiance has a good, you know, gut instincts about her, too. You know, that she's. She's a little bit like. I don't know about the family thing and the location and all of it. When you guys buy your first house, Sam, you want it to be a win. You want it to be a fun experience, something that you guys both agree on. And it's kind of that first big purchase as a married couple, and starting it with any level of hesitation or baggage or not excited excitements just kind of puts a weight.

[Dave Ramsey]

And if I owned a farm with a house in the corner of it, like your mom and your aunt do. I really wouldn't want it to get outside the family. So I understand their motivation. That makes sense. But it's not a good deal for Sam. And his new bride is the problem. And so your mom's not being unreasonable with her request, but it puts you in a position where you guys can't make a good deal out of it for the two of you. So it's just that what they need from it and what you need from it are too far apart. And it's not that either one's wrong or anybody's bad or anything like that. It's not stupid or something like that. It just doesn't fit your life. And really, I wouldn't. If I'm them, I don't want you to be able to sell the thing later, you know, that doesn't. Yeah, I mean, like, I've got some properties. I don't want the corner of it. You know, I've got some properties I bought the corner in, and I don't want to sell it again. You know, that kind of thing. So, no, I don't. I can understand that. That makes sense. But if I were you two, I think it's a lot cleaner for the two of you.

[Rachel Cruze]

So for the family, if you wanted.

[Dave Ramsey]

To rent it for a year or two, and while you're saving up money to buy, then that would be great, because the more money you put down, of course, the faster you can pay it off. Alyssa is in Albuquerque. Hey, Alyssa. What's up?

[Caller]

Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. How can we help?

[Caller]

So, just a tiny backstory is when I was dating my husband, who I've now been married to for 15 years, his mother used to tell me that she was running out of money, that they were going to be poor soon because she was a trust fund child and they were going to run out of money. So before my husband and I got married, I asked him, you know, what does this mean for us? And he said, nothing. My parents are going to take care of their finances themselves. They're going to handle it. This will not impact us, which I should have known was not true. Fast forward 15 years. His parents are out of money. They own their home outright. It's a small property, probably worth $500,000. And then they also have another small piece of land in the mountains with a cabin on it that's just a shell of a building, probably worth $80,000. But they do not receive enough income to live. They received maybe $900 from Social Security.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are they?

[Caller]

Never worked much. They are 85. My mother in law is 85 and my father in law's. He's 80, about 80.

We have gone. Yes, we have gone and built them a casita on their house so they could get some rental income and that brings in about $1,000 a month. But they still are. Cannot live. And it's basically medical bills and things like that. So we have now started paying their utilities and their health insurance.

[Dave Ramsey]

They need to sell the house.

[Caller]

Exactly. So I keep telling my. So my. So I tell my husband. What about. I know you don't. I know most people don't like this, but a re. Reverse mortgage.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, they don't need to do a reverse mortgage. They need to sell the house. They need to sell the land. They need to sell the land in the mountain and they need to sell the house. They need to buy $200,000 one bedroom condo.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that'll give them 300,000, 400,000 to live off of.

[Rachel Cruze]

How's their health?

[Dave Ramsey]

Not good.

[Caller]

No, not good.

[Rachel Cruze]

Okay, so it's. Yeah, yeah. So it's not like another. They're not going to be 100 probably.

[Caller]

I don't think so. I mean I, you know, who knows? Who knows? God willing. But.

But not, not while my mother in law's had a heart attack. She's had a mini stroke and she goes, she rides the ambulance to the emergency room once a month. Thus her medical bills continue to grow.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, they need to get a sweet little one bedroom, a condo and an area that's very nice and peaceful and they need to sell off all their stuff and they need to sell off the land and they need to sell off the house because they didn't sell safe and no, you guys don't need to support them. Your husband needs to stop this.

[Caller]

The reason he wants to do this is because he wants to inherit this property.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't want to inherit the property. It's not that fancy. No, thank you. And you don't want a property with a reverse mortgage on it. No. That puts this hour 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.