Staying Steady Is Still Financial Progress

brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today normal is broken common sense is weird so we're here to help you transform your life and your money here from the ramsey network in the fair ones credit union studio this is the ramsey show i'm jade warshaw next to me dr john deloney taking calls for the next couple hours or so triple eight eight two five five two two five is how you're going to get involved in the show today nicole is in miami florida hey nicole welcome to the show hi thank you for having me how you guys doing all right how can we help today so i am um in a lot of debt um over the last year and a half i've been trying to grow spiritually um i think i've hit a wall because i don't know which way i should go so backstory um my debt is about 110 000 most of it is student loans which i'm trying to do one of the i have to sign up for like a new plan or something like that over the past year i've um become very i guess kind of bitter towards my husband okay um only in a sense last year i had heart surgery in december came back to january started working in march kind of went back for a while and i'm trying to do one of the i have to sign up for like a new plan of course and we moved into a new apartment uh two weeks after we moved he lost his job he was uh out of work for five months i've been working 100 plus hours just to make ends meet we did have a cushion but that cushion went really fast okay um so i was you know keeping the roof over my head making sure our kids had what they had to school and whatnot um what was your husband what was your husband doing so when he lost his job um he sent a lot of applications um people weren't buying he did have interviews but he didn't no one was calling him back i was actually shocked because he's always had a job and the job market's a little scared he's in transportation and logistics so he didn't do anything during that time i'm just i'm just speaking purely as a husband and i'm not the best one make no mistake i'm just speaking purely as a husband and i'm not the best one make no mistake no but um if your wife has heart surgery and you lose your job you spend from 8 p.m till midnight applying for jobs and sitting up cups of coffee with buddies but you get your butt in a walmart and home depot and you throw boxes how quickly after your heart surgery did this happen that you're working these hundred plus hours um i had the surgery a week before christmas um i started back work about a month about six weeks later once i got clear from my doctor i work in pharmacies so um i was very just limited sure but i was able still to work are you a pharmacist uh tech i'm a pharmacist okay does your husband have a job now yes he started in august the school started for the new year what's he what's he doing logistics or something else no the same the same thing um an old manager um came across him and actually offered him another job and he said i'm going to start a new job and i'm going to start a new job and i'm which he is hybrid he works from home he goes in the office like once or twice a week what's your total net take home of both of your salaries combined um i bring home about now 1600 every two weeks okay and he's about 1900 every two weeks okay um the question i want to ask for you the 110 that you said to me earlier uh is that just yours or is that both of you guys together that's just mine okay tell me tell me a little bit about that does he have debt and what's the cause of you keeping this separate so i had to i've been listening to your show so i had to like get him to sit down and write down his debt um he i didn't know he had student loans we've been together 10 years i didn't know he had student loans so his student loan was 42 000 mine's around about 73 000 just for a student loan he has a few credit cards and he's paying on like uh you know we have a couch that he's paying on mine's come from that are under my name from consumer loans um i was taking out loans here and there a little bit around the covet time how much um and i was paying them and they weren't big loans i think they were just a lot of interest i did sign up on a debt consolidation which i paid for a year okay they did absolutely nothing yeah that sounds right okay so let me let me break in because i want to make sure we have enough time to help you because there's two sides of this equation there is the side that you called in on which is uh i basically need help taking the next steps i want to get my finances in order but you also laid out a kind of a relational side of things that's an unhealthy marriage that's at work uh separation and finances and some bitterness that's brewing i'd actually like to start there because i think that's the underlying of all of this and if we can get that right it's going to help us get into like practical money steps that we can talk about towards the end is that is that cool okay yeah so here's the deal you can't bankruptcy you can't discharge student loans right so that's off the table okay and you're talking to somebody who had six figures of student loans me and you're talking to jade who had six figures in student loans hers were way more than mine but we both have been there okay right there's not a path out except right through it and you and your husband getting on the same page maybe for the first time in a decade and saying we have together dug a giant hole and we together with our salaries can dig our way out of this it can fill that hole up right but y'all two working together um will give you infinitely more gas in this car than both of you just trying to ride bikes next to each other have you told him how that time after the surgery made you feel have you told him that i'm the talk of this one um i pull him to the side we don't argue anything we always talk through everything he can always sense when something's wrong so when i pull him to the side say listen this is happening i don't know i can't i can't continue to do this like make trying to make september's rent was like no no i mean did you pull him aside and did you say here's where i'm at the things that i've experienced have caused me to feel bitterness and here's why i've lost respect from you because you're not getting a job after five months and i'm literally i'm not getting a job after five months and i'm literally not getting a job after five months and i'm literally killing myself to keep a roof over our heads what was his response he's i'm sorry you know i'll try to do better i i think he's just lacking a lot of motivation and initiative so then my response to him and he won't my response to him would be uh i've said it he's saying i'm sorry i'm sorry now i'm saying the way that we make this better for me the path forward is we have a lot of collective debt i have this much you have that much i don't want to file for bankruptcy i don't want to file for bankruptcy i don't want to file for bankruptcy i don't want to i've started looking into it i called the show they said don't file for bankruptcy they said the way to get out of it is for us to work together and so if you want to help make this right not just for me but for the marriage i need to see you taking a huge role in us fixing this together and for me what that looks like is us combining finances i need transparency i we both need to see what each other's going on we both need accountability that for me is going to look like you stepping up and leading the way and helping us get out of this mess and that way you're giving him kind of clear steps forward it's just not you saying man you really disappointed me now go make it right in some you know arbitrary way yeah you're giving them clear steps go make it right is really amorphous right like we need i need you to make six thousand dollars a month which means you're going to work your full-time job make thirty hundred bucks and then you're going to go make another what twenty two hundred dollars throwing boxes in the evening or driving uber or whatever because we have a huge hole we got to dig ourselves out of yeah and so the way this is going to look we're going to set you up with every dollar it's our budgeting app but it's not just the budgeting it's going to teach you how to walk it through the way that we teach here our ramsey plan it's a it's a budget for you guys to do together tonight that is the first step to you getting this right and then of course you're going to take all your margin and focus it towards the smallest debt if you're being crushed under the weight of phone calls from debt collectors at all hours or getting nasty letters threatening a lawsuit it can feel like there's no way out but it's not too late there is real help out there with guardian litigation group guardian is an actual law firm not one of those debt relief programs that promises sunshine and unicorns and that matters because if a creditor comes after you you need someone who 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Results may vary and no specific outcome is guaranteed. All righty, let's head back to those phone lines where we have Terry, who's in Tampa, Florida. Hey, Terry, how can John and I help today? Yes, thank you. I've gone through all the Dave Ramsey's baby steps, and I'm trying to complete step six to buy and pay for a home outright. Wow. But I don't know if it's a smart decision at my age. Okay. How old are you? I'm 69 and a half. Okay, 69 and a half. And tell us, you know, what your financial situation is looking like. You've been through the baby steps. What's your net worth? What do you have saved? Well, I'm completely retired, and I have in my 401k traditional IRA $700. $1,075,000. Terry, look at you. What? That's amazing. Oh. Okay, well, I've tried to live frugally. You've done a good job. And that's what I've spent the money on. Well, that's incredible, Terry. I'm proud of you. Thank you. I have $62,000 in cash. Okay. And I have a mobile home right now that I probably can sell for $24,000. Okay. Okay. And that's where I'm at right now, in a mobile home. I had to retire early. I didn't have to. I chose to. Okay. To take care of ailing parents until they all pass. Okay. And it's just you? No spouse? No. Okay. I was a single mom, and thanks to baby steps, I was able to give him through school and not have any debt worth at all. Well, I love that. Well, you're amazing, Terry. I'm proud of you. And you've got Social Security, I'm guessing? Yes, I do. What do you make? What does that bring you? I think that's like $23,800 a year. Okay. What's it amount to every month? $17,000. $17,000. Okay. Okay. Now, the question is, are you drawing anything off of that 401k, or does the $17,500 meet your needs? No, it doesn't meet my needs. I've been using savings accounts. Okay. So, you've been dwindling that $62,000 down? Well, no. That's what I'm down to now. I'm getting ready to talk with a financial advisor about trying to roll over money out of the traditional into a Roth, and also take a draw once or twice a year. Okay, good. And what is he saying? How much are you looking to draw off of? Well, I'm looking to draw just $12,000 a year. Just $12,000 a year? Okay. Just an extra $1,000? Okay, fair enough. All right. I anticipate him saying, fine, that sounds like a great idea. So, that'll bring you up to $27,500 a month, and then that'll be plenty for you to sustain your life as it is. The question is, buying a home. I mean, what are you looking to purchase? What would it cost you? Well, I set a budget of $350,000, and that would be for probably a home in Tennessee somewhere. A villa here. And most of the villas around here, you'd have an HOA anywhere from $300 to $600 a month seems. Mm-hmm. Which means you'd have to draw more from here. Where I'm at, and a mobile home park. Okay. So, I'll be honest with you. It's a little tight. It doesn't make me feel wonderful for you to basically cut your retirement in half. Even though you're only drawing $1,000 basically a month off of it, if you were to buy a home, we are adding, obviously, some expense there. You mentioned the $600 a month for HOA fees. I would love for you to sit down with a SmartVestor Pro and have them run numbers for you and see if this is a fair game for you. I don't want to say in this quick amount of time yes or no, because I actually think it's really tight for you. But for your needs, they might say it's okay. I think it's a little risky for you to spend $350. I wonder if you could do something for $250. A condo? In this market, probably not. Mm-hmm. Well, and it might be. It's important for me to have a yard, a little yard of some kind. It might be that we can do this in a couple of years when this nest egg has grown a little bit more. That might feel a little bit better. But again, I would sit down with a SmartVestor Pro and let them. If I stay where I'm at. Say again? I was looking to buy a newer mobile home where I'm at, and then my rent lot will go up to $1,200. I would not do that. I would not, because that mobile home is going down in value. There's a couple of variables that you said that I would want you to sit down with someone, because number one, you also said you're thinking about doing a Roth conversion, and there's going to be some tax implication there. Right. I just don't want you to bite off more than you can chew. I think you've done a really great job. You've got $775,000 in this nest egg, and I think it's good, but it's tight. So I would sit down. You can go to RamseySolutions.com slash SmartVestor, and they can help you look at this and make sure that there's enough money for you to draw what you need, because the other thing is expenses are only going up, Terry. And so even though right now you're only drawing 1,000, we want to make sure that there's plenty there, and two, again. With home ownership, even though you're doing it cash, which I think is a great idea, I want to make sure you've got plenty of wiggle room. Obviously, you've got the $62,000 cash. That's great. Plenty of wiggle room for taxes, plenty of wiggle room for insurance, plenty of wiggle room for HOA fees. For health issues that pop up, things like that. For health issues, exactly. So it's tight for you. I would love nothing more than for you to get out of that mobile home, but for today, hop on there, and they're going to be able to give you some really detailed information to make sure that dollar amount is right. Dollar amount is there for you. And I would also get two things. One is I would get an actual, and you can get this at the Ramsey Solutions site also, get a trusted real estate pro to actually go look at the market. Yes, good idea. Because there's, I mean, the home sellers are cutting prices now, and it might surprise you what you could get into for $200,000 or $250,000. It's not going to be fancy pants, but man. And I want to double click on what you said. If my mom is 70, she's older than that now, but I can think of nothing more that would give me peace to know she's got her house taken care of. Yes. And so you, the first question you ask is, am I too old to buy a home? The answer is no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not an age issue. It's just a dollar amount issue. And I don't want you to cut your nest egg in half and also increase your monthly expenses by 60% and then have a medical emergency, and suddenly you've got $100,000. You've got $100,000 left to last you maybe 20 or 30 more years. And so, yeah, get with a SmartVestor Pro and a real estate pro. Get actual real numbers in front of you. But man, if you can take rent off the table for the rest of your life, that would be incredible. Yeah, and I do want to highlight something she said because it could be confusing for a listener. Baby step six is not the baby step that we purchase a house. Actually, home purchase lies further in the front of the baby steps. It's actually part of baby step three. So baby step three A technically is get three to six months. If expense is saved, baby step three B, and we don't always say it this way, is that's when you save up a down payment for the house. And so you do that. Then you start baby step four, which now you're investing, and you go on through. And then baby step six is actually when you pay down the mortgage. So I just want to make that discrepancy. I don't want the average person waiting until they're 69 or 70 to buy a house because that's when they can buy it outright in cash. That's not what we're saying at all. In baby step three B, it's totally fine. You don't want the average person waiting to not be able to buy a house in cash. You just do your down payment. Obviously, we want that down payment to be enough to where the mortgage is no more than 25% of your take-home pay. That's what we're aiming for. Back in the day, it used to be 20% down would do the trick. It would get rid of PMI, and it'd usually be enough to make it feasible. But nowadays, you're probably putting down more than that. But I just wanted to clarify that. And then back to your point, John. Yeah, that's the goal, guys, that you're heading into retirement with no mortgage. No debt. No mortgage. No mortgage. And then if you happen somehow to not have a nest egg, you've got low expenses, and you can make it through. And if you do have a nest egg like we teach, well, then you're living your life like it's golden. But rents are just the report I read today was that home prices are – sellers are actually cutting the prices. There's something on the market. Interest rates are still incredibly high. But also, rents are going up. And so the thought of, man, in 20 or 30 years, what are rents going to be? It might be astronomical. Yeah, I mean, rents alone, most people, if they're paying rent, they are paying 30% of their take-home pay into their rent. And, you know, that's already 5% more than what we would say for a home purchase. So that's true. For most people, it's the biggest line item on their budget. And so if you can stabilize that by getting into a home that's your own, we definitely recommend that. you When I hear the words open enrollment, I'm immediately stressed out. And the same goes when I hear deductible and premium. You probably feel this way too. Choosing the best, most affordable health care for your family can be overwhelming. Will my premiums go up? Is the doctor I want even in my network? Can I even afford this? Well, the good news is there's a different option. Christian Health Care Ministries. CHM isn't insurance. It's a health cost sharing ministry. Where members share each other's eligible medical bills. So instead of premiums, you make a monthly contribution with programs starting at just $115 a month. And here's something you don't hear often. They're not raising their prices this year. Guys, this is huge. And you also get to choose your own health care provider. No network limits. And unlike traditional insurance, you can join at any time. There's no enrollment window. And best of all, you don't have to choose between your health and your health care provider. With CHM, you can have both. It's why Ramsey has trusted them for over 15 years. Visit chministries.org slash budget and use promo code Ramsey to get a 50% credit towards your first month of membership. Okay, so the first call that we called in, the lady that called in, she was having trouble paying off the debt. She was needing to get her spouse on board. And at the end of the call, I gave her every dollar for free. And I did that because every dollar is the best way to get eyeballs on your finances so you can actually see what's going on. It's not just numbers floating around in your head. You can put them into a budget. You can actually load in your income. You can actually load in your transactions. You can load in your expenses. And it will do all the math for you. And let you know, here's what you have left to spend. And the way it is now, when you onboard, you tell it what your biggest goal is. And it'll say, okay, now we can throw all this extra money at the thing that you say is your biggest goal. And I love that about every dollar. A lot of people don't know this, but I've been using it since it came out in 2016. I could not wait to get my hands on it because I was doing my budget on paper and pencil. And Sam and I were trying to do it together. And it just caused so many arguments when you're trying to do a budget on paper, it's like, if you make a error in arithmetic, like that's the argument waiting to happen. Well, and even beyond that, I'm an Excel guy and I like writing stuff out and making my own little like top secret things. But there's something about when I buy something and it pops up on my wife's shared account. Okay, she sees it. It's like the same team, right? Yes. And then I might, early on, I'd get a text like, hey, what is this? Yeah, where'd you go? What was that? And so I love that. It helps. It just brings you to, it forces you to have the conversations that are hard to have. It helps you communicate with your spouse. It helps you do the math. It's less mistakes, less errors. And I'm going to say right now, if you want to accomplish a goal, you're going to do it. I'm going to go with four times faster than you would if you were trying to do it on pen and paper. And let me say this. This is something that used to haunt my former life working at universities, which is the way budgets were sometimes created, not at my last university, but in several that I worked at, was what's all the stuff you want to do and that's going to be the budget. And so we need to make that much money, right? And this allows you to say how much you want to pay off. That's goal number one. And then you get to look at, all right, here's what I want to spend on food. All right, well, now I can tinker that down. I can tinker that down because my goal is not to live luxuriously every month for the first year or two, but it's to get that number to zero, the debt number down. And so it helps you actually create a life that meets your goals, not tries to force this end goal into, into this, this life you want to live, right? Exactly. And that's just about how it helps you reverse engineer sacrifice, which is hard to do, but it's so good. Yeah. And I mean, that works with debt. That works with saving up for a car that works with saving up a vacation, whatever that goal is, you plug that in. It's going to help you find the margin. And instead of kind of that extra money, just floating off into space, you actually know where it's gone and you can decide what to do with it next. So if you don't have every dollar, I think you should get it started for free today. You can literally just do it for free today. So go download it in the app store or Google, play and get yourself started. We've got Stella who's in Providence, Rhode Island. Hey, Stella, how can we help today? Hi. Hi. I'm so excited to talk to you guys. So my question is, I'm leaving my job in January. Hey, do me a favor, Stella. Can you talk directly into your phone? Yep. Can you hear me now? All right. Go for it. A little bit better. Yes, ma'am. Go for it. Okay. Much better. That's great. That sounds perfect. Excellent. Um, so my job is coming to an end in January on the 15th. And right now I have, um, my biggest question is, should I continue? I'm going to be done with baby step three in on Friday. And so I'm trying to figure out, should I continue just banking everything that I have into baby step three? Or should I use my margin to fund what's left of my 401k not what's left of it, but to fund my 401k before I have to roll it over after I lose my job. Okay. Uh, let's get some more thoughts around this. So how much more of your 401k is there left to go? I'm just curious. Were you maxing it out or? No, no, I was, I was barely, um, I only have about 20,000 in there right now. Okay. Were you trying to get the match for the new year? Is that, tell me what your, what your goal was on that? Um, honestly, I haven't started on it yet. I really, I've just been focused on baby step three and getting my six months emergency fund up. Okay. So now I'm wondering, like, should I take advantage of that match right now and just go in? I wouldn't, you're, you're in, you're in a storm mode. You know that there's a storm coming and it's coming really fast. And unless between now and when that January, 15th job loss happens, you secure another job and there's no gap. If there's no gap, sure. Start investing. But if there is a gap and if it remains a big question mark, like it is now, I would say, Hey, there's a storm going on and I'm batting in down the hatches. Is that what it is? Batten down the hatches. There you go. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to batten down the hatches and I'm going to save up every dime into that emergency fund. And then when everything clears and you start getting a new job and everything's looking good, anything that's beyond, uh, that six month mark, you can apply to your next goal. You can apply it to paying down the house and you can start investing. What's your, um, tell me your job situation. What's going on January 15th? So, uh, the company I work for is relocating out of state and I can't afford to move with it. And there's no remote opportunity. It's just, um, my, my job won't exist when the company moves. So what kind of work do you do? Uh, it's a retail position. So if I'm in your situation, I would continue to work through as long as you can. Um, and, and that's you, that's you showing up as a person of dignity, right? Like not compromising your values because you know, your job's coming to an end. Cause it's gonna be, it's going to be tempting, tempting to slack and all that kind of like, just kind of phone it in. But I want you to look yourself in the mirror and say, I'm going to be a person of integrity and I'm going to show up if I'm going to take their money for the next three months, I'm going to show up and continue to work hard. But also I want your number one priority to be finding new work, right? And it may be that you find a new job and you leave this job December 15th because you got, you got a new opportunity. But I would make that numero uno priority, having cups of coffee with as many people as you can get on the phone with friends, with colleagues, with whatever you can do and not just filling out a million online, um, applications and calling a good, but actually meeting with real people and saying, Hey, I'm my job's relocating. I'm looking for work, um, and just make that number one priority. I would love for you to have a landing spot on or before January 15th so that you don't have a gap here. I love that goal. And to help you, we'll give you, uh, our colleague, Ken Coleman has some really great, um, uh, resources out there. We'll give you from paycheck to purpose. We'll give you, let's give it all. Let's give them proximity principle. We'll give you that Stella will also give you, um, find the work you're wired to do. I'm assuming. That this can be helpful because inside of there, uh, it's going to be an assessment for you to figure out how to use your different skills because who knows, maybe you'll do retail, but maybe you'll move on to a different field and the career assessment that's inside, find the work you're wired to do will help you figure out what skills are transferable and what other things that you can do in the market. So I, I really liked that idea for you and, uh, but I don't want you, I don't want you sitting around and waiting until January 15th to start looking. That's the part, um, they've notified you, we're letting you go. And so if you're going to keep showing up, show up with dignity. Keep your integrity, but make it number one priority. Um, I got to have something on or before January 15th and if you get it starting January one or January 2nd, great. Put in your two week notice and get on out of there. So this call brings up something that I think is important to highlight, uh, whenever we teach the baby steps, which is seven steps to finding, you know, financial peace, uh, building wealth. There's two times that we talk about that. It's really important to note. There's really only two clear moments that we say, Hey, pause the baby steps if this and that's storm mode, which is what I, just called it storm mode is like you lose your job. Maybe there's some sort of like a medical emergency. Maybe there's just like family crisis is going on. That's way more important for you to focus on and solve than trying to do whatever the next baby step is. The other one, obviously we call stork mode. That's somebody's pregnant. You know, there's a baby on the way. Yeah. Those things there every once in a while pops up is more important than the baby steps. And so that's why you do it. Love it. Love it. So that is, that's that. All right. Let's go to a quick social question here. Nicole says, where's the best place to put savings for our kids, such as birthday money, a portion of what they get, they paid for a portion of what they get paid for chores. Okay. I don't know what that part meant, but if you have kids that have money that is saved, uh, Nicole, the best place to just throw it at is in a high yield savings account, because chances are they're going to want that money soon to buy their first car. Maybe you can, uh, help them out with that or something along the way. With all the crud and negativity in movies and TV right now, it's rare to hear a story about someone actually doing something. Good, which makes angels newest movie, the rare exception out there. It's called Hershey as in Hershey chocolate. And if you've never heard the backstory of Milton Hershey, it's pretty incredible. I mean, he got knocked down over and over trying to get the business going even went bankrupt, but he ended up leaving a really cool legacy of outrageous generosity in his community. It's really inspiring stuff. You can see it in theaters for free by getting an angel guild premium membership. Okay. When you sign up, you also get angels entire streaming library, plus free tickets to every angel movie that comes to theaters. Hershey is in theaters on November 25th. Get your free tickets by signing up for the membership at angels.com slash Ramsey, or click the link in the description limited time offer visit angel.com slash Ramsey for details. All right, let's go to Matt who's in Burlington, Vermont. Hey, Matt, how can we help today? Hello, thanks for having me guys. I'm big fan. It's super cool to be here with you guys. Awesome. Glad you're here. How can we help? Um, so I've been a long time listener. And I know you guys generally don't stray from the baby steps too often. But I'm wondering if my situation would be one of the rare instances where you might I love a good exception, Matt. I don't think I've ever heard one. So let's see. I'm hoping it's you. I'm hoping it's you, brother. Oh, interesting. I feel like Oh, okay, maybe, maybe I'm mistaken. I thought there's been a couple here and there. But basically, I'm wondering if it would be actually wise to pay my mortgage down before I pay my auto debt down. I only have the two loans. No student debt or credit card debt, anything like that. Okay, what makes it so pressing? Well, the mortgage is just a significantly higher interest rate. You know, the auto loan, you know, they're obviously looking to move cars. So they give, you know, it's like, it's like 3% versus 6.3 something. You know, it's like twice, twice the interest rate. How much is this car loan? About 25,000. And how much is left on the mortgage? About 350. I mean, it's kind of a. No brainer. I mean, obviously, if you paid the mortgage first, you would be well done with the car by the time. I mean, I'm guessing. I don't know what your income is, but I'm guessing it's going to take several years to pay off this 350. And by then, I would think that that auto loan would be long gone, right? Yeah, what do you make? Four years? Make around 85. But also, I have probably like around a quarter million of stocks and Bitcoin. Oh, so you were going to use that. So why not just do all of it? Not all at once, but, you know, over the next, you know, year, a couple of years, just rotating some from that and then, you know, de-risking by paying off debt. How much stock in crypto do you have? Like a quarter million. A quarter million. You said that. Okay. Now, here's the thing. Like I said, if you did your plan, you paid off the mortgage first, let's pretend you, you know, cash flowed some of it. And for some of it, you dipped into the crypto. That car loan is still going to be, like, it's still going to be there. And my thing is, why not just knock that out first? Surely you're paying a monthly fee on it. How much are you paying a month on that? I think $470. Yeah. Why wouldn't you reach, why wouldn't you reach in, pull out the $25,000 from the stock in crypto, pay that off immediately. Now you've got $450 left, and you can start to use that to chuck away at the house. And you can drain the rest of the crypto. And that way you're not paying a monthly payment of $475 on a depreciating asset. It goes down in value every day it sits in your driveway. And keeping it around for four and five years. Yeah. Yeah. It's a pretty new, yeah. Hoping to hang on to this car for like more like 10 to 15 years. That would be, then you'll beat the depreciation over time. Pay it off right now. And don't pay another penny in interest. Yeah. The part of. Yeah, I'm just, you know. You're looking at the number they want you to look at. The interest. Which is the interest rate. What is the interest rate? And what is the monthly payment? And the spirit underneath the baby steps is to stop looking at those things. They're all big. Look over here. Look over here. And how much is this payment? Can I afford this payment? Yes. How low is this interest rate? Great. Like you feel like I'm winning somehow. But the point is you still have a, your payment will never change. So if your income goes down, if suddenly there's a job loss, whatever. That 470 will still be there no matter what. And it's the, the thing that it's, that it's leveraged against is a depreciating asset. It's going to go down in value. So pay it off and say, I got, I got a car. Great. Cool. And then, you know, our thoughts on, on playing single stocks and crypto and stuff like that. And if I was you, dude, I would, I would burn all of it and get out, get out of the risk game and say, what I'm looking for is not playing. How can I leverage risk against risk on top of risk? And how can I de-risk and all that? Dude, I would just say, what about a life where I don't owe anybody anything? Like I'm solving for peace instead of solving for arbitrage and moving here and rolling here. Like that's just an exhausting way to live, brother. And you know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, definitely. It's a lot of, it's like running on a treadmill really, really fast. It's awesome. And it's a workout, but you never get anywhere. I respect your guys' philosophy on it very much. But at the same time, it's like, you know, a lot of the reason I'm in the position I'm in is because I've been, you know, a risk taker with respect to investments and it's worked out well. In what has been one of the wildest bear market runs in human history. Well, even if it, even if it hasn't been, I do want to respect what you're saying, which is the truth is there's plenty of people who are successful with their money and they don't do it the Ramsey way. That's, that's true. There's people who will call in and they've bought real estate. Uh, and they've not done it in cash and they've done things that we would not suggest and they've been successful. And I think that's fair to point out, but the difference between us and them and even us and some of the things that you're saying is we are very motivated by peace here. We're very, very motivated by that. That's what makes us different than a lot of the others. And we're also motivated by freedom, freedom, and just the simple borrower slave to the lender mindset. And I think that for folks around here and people who kind of do that. That does something to them on the inside. They feel that they, they like that feeling of not owing anybody anything. And so that's what our teaching is surrounding is people who want to be completely autonomous, people who want to feel like they're completely in control of their life and people who ultimately want to reduce risk and increase peace in their life. And those are the folks who choose this way and they go, that feels right for me. And if that's not what drives you, then you're welcome to pick the other routes out there. And I will say this, this is, I've got no data to back this up, but I'm hearing more and more folks who are in high school or potentially in college during 08 and 09 who have entered the workforce and have played crypto games, play single stock and have done well. Those who lived through 08 and 09 with skin in the game, with money in the market or had a house payment that suddenly their house was worth half like. They tend to hear the message of peace more because they've lived what happens on the other side of this teeter-totter. And it's easy. I was, I was on a varsity as a, as a junior playing Texas high school football and I got to start a lot, not because I was good, but because there wasn't better players. Right. And it was, it'd be really easy for me to be like, yeah, yeah. It wasn't that I was great. It was just there, there was not like world-class guys. On the field. Right. Yeah. And so it's easy. Similarly, it's easy to be like, yeah, look at all how good I'm doing if everything's. up and to the right you can get a false sense of look how good I am at playing single stocks and rolling stuff over and moving stuff around it can feel all good talk to folks who went through 08 and 09 about what it's like to be on the other side of that teeter-totter right yeah when it all yeah I like it's it's such a frantic feeling inside of me still that I don't ever want to go back to that I mean gosh what now now I gotta pull the thread 08 09 so Sam and I got married in 07 and it was it was raining money and credit in 07 raining money and credit I I thought we were gonna buy a five hundred thousand dollar house you know why because they would have given it to you right and then when 08 hit which was a year into our marriage that's when everything I mean it was like overnight everything started to crumble people around us that we knew they were so upside down in their house they were I mean just losing everything and I remember in our neighborhood we were trying to move out of our little you know subdivision townhouse neighborhood neighborhood and there were literally 19 other houses for sale that were just like ours and I was like oh my gosh we're never gonna like the fact that we got an offer on our house was the grace of God but that was what that was the year that I realized oh my gosh we're in four hundred sixty thousand dollars of debt and I mean it was just like unbelievable gas prices remember how high gas prices were it was madhouse unbelievable and I think it's like being chained to the Titanic because it's going down and you can't get in a life raft because you're like you got that 470 no matter what and that that debt in my six-figure student loans that was not dischargeable no so we're going that rock is chained to my ankle yes I will go to the bottom of the ocean on this one yeah and I mean that that that informs so much I think you're exactly right that informs so much of how our generation views how they want money to feel sure it's like I never want to feel that again and I remember hearing Dave Ramsey on the radio and he was like oh for me this is great I'm thriving and I remember thinking in that moment I never want to be here again I want what that guy has yes I want that sense of peace I want to be able to look out and go oh there's an opportunity here for me and ever since then John that's what turned the key for Sam and I is I never want to be here again and if you can have that transformation it's all for peace it's on I love a good sale I also love the holidays but if you're like me sometimes those two don't mix well because six promo codes and a commercial later it's so easy to convince yourself that you need just one more scented candle or a waffle maker shaped like a Christmas tree and some flannel pajamas the temptation to spend more than you budgeted for is real that's why I love having a bank that keeps my free spirit in check and for me that's Fairwinds Credit Union with their smart bundle you can choose a Ramsey themed debit card that says live like no one else it's a great reminder to stick to your goals and what you're working toward especially in a season that wants you to spend instead of save you get a no monthly fee checking account and a high yield savings account you can even open up additional savings accounts like a holiday fund for gifts so you can finally pull the trigger on that waffle maker because staying on track for the holidays doesn't mean giving up your free spirit it just means being smart about it so get your live like no one else debit card by opening a smart bundle today at fairwinds.org slash Ramsey that's fairwinds.org slash Ramsey insured by the NCUA welcome back to the Ramsey show here in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio back to the phone lines we go we got Lauren who's in Fayetteville Arkansas up next hey Lauren welcome to the show hi thank you guys so much for taking my call I appreciate it for sure how can we help so we are exhausted going gazelle intense for so long should we sell our house to finish paying off our debt and immediately build our emergency funds whoa that is a huge sacrifice you're done huh Lauren that's right that's absolutely but we have a lot of equity in our home so we would be able to pay off our debt build our emergency fund and still have enough left over for a down payment on a new house all right how long have you been doing this and how much have you paid off we've been going year and a half two years we it took us a long time to really learn how to follow the budget yeah and to sacrifice enough um and it's it's hard to say exactly probably close to 30,000 but we've had so many emergencies almost every month we were killing that $1,000 emergency fund using it for something almost every month it's been that slowed us down so much okay and what do you guys earn about 115,000 can I reframe something for you oh please imagine your world making on six figures in Fayetteville imagine your world where you didn't have that how much deeper your your hole would be and so I know it feels like every month y'all would scratch and claw and get a thousand bucks and then something would happen but I want to flip that around and say thank god y'all were doing this so you met the need every month yeah you know what I'm saying I'm proud of y'all for a continuing to get back on the horse and get back on the horse and get back on the horse because that's life right but you've kept doing it and it doesn't feel like you've made progress but sometimes not going backwards is progress right yes yes yeah yeah so well done on that I appreciate that I love that so two years 30k doesn't feel you're feeling it at this point you're like what can I do tell us how much equity is in in the home if you were to sell it uh probably about 140 or and that's after fees you kind of accounted for fees and things like that yeah roughly we don't we've made a lot of improvements to it with debt and that's part of part of where the debt comes from but um so it's not I'm not 100 sure on the exact worth and how it's the market changed so much since we how much debt do you have left it's a rough estimate uh we have um about 17,000 in credit cards 10,000 in a key lock and 8,000 in medical debt okay then my next question for you is let's pretend there was no debt at all and you were just chilling in that house would you be looking at the house going you know what this is not the house for us let's sell it and move and move up would you still be saying that yes our plan kind of our goal our plan is to after paying off the debt we were then going to sell the house and move that's kind of a goal I guess and so but we're um to bigger smaller maybe we should sell it to downsize it or to bigger no so I lost you come back to me are you still there Lauren I think you're off uh Lauren I think your phone moved from wherever it was to another room in the house so in the meantime until you figure that out I think I'm not um I'm not opposed to this the fact that you were looking at selling the house before lets me know okay you're not just yeah you're back you're not just doing this to get rid of the debt it's there's there's real reasoning to it so for that reason I can be on board with it uh but just know I mean this is the part I caution everybody and I'm not saying that you have to suffer but there is something that happens in that that um in that grind of paying off debt that is good for the soul it's good for the habits it's good for remembering that I never want to be in this situation again I think you had two years of that though and so I think that uh for you guys I would go ahead and I'd make that move and move on with your life thanks for the time Katie who's in Tyler Texas hey Katie how can we help today hey thanks for taking my call my question is so my husband and I my husband's active duty military and he's going to get out in about 18 months um we're going to relocate back to our hometown and about a year after that I'm hoping to be going into a graduate program um for CRNA school so that program requires me to be out of work for three years and we're aggressively saving money and we're saving for the program they're very pricey um but I wanted to know what y'all would recommend on as far as investing in retirement while we're aggressively saving for this program I tell me about this program because I know there are by the way I applaud you like to the moon and back on this particular program awesome like that's very that's going to be an incredible credential for you and I love that you're going to do this um and I'm also very programmed to go into graduate school so I'm I'm I'm all on board with this my question is often we we say I want to live in this particular town and the only option here is a private school or a flagship state school or and it ends up being one of the most expensive options to get what you need which is learning how to how to deal with patients and how to love them and care for them well and you need the credential and so there's often so many other opportunities sometimes through the hospital sometimes through a community college entry point sometimes through a what it's classified as a second or third tier state school but in reality they're not like so have you looked at all the options in front of you or have you just narrowed down I want to go to this particular school and this is what this particular school is going to cost yeah I hear you um we I'm really looking at most schools in Texas because we are from Texas hoping to move back we're not currently living there um and so my the cheapest program that I've seen is about seventy thousand dollars and then the other ones can range from 100 to 150. Okay, you see, like, you can almost. double the amount of tuition cost, right? 100%. Okay. But also, it's $70,000 over three years. So, it breaks down to approximately, what, $23.5 per year? And so, is there a world where you save up year one and maybe year two, even half a year or two, and your husband works to help cash flow the other way? Yes. So, that's the current plan. So, right now, we have incredible margin. We take home about $11,000 a month, and we're saving three, and we're going to be saving more each month. So, projected in the next 18 months, plus with saving $3,000 a month, plus the bonus that I know I'm going to get in March, and with our current savings, I would have $97,000 at the time we would move. My question is, we do have margin, about $5,000 a month, and we've been kind of, you know, we became debt-free. We have an emergency fund. My husband is very into, he's an outdoorsman. So, we've been doing hobbies and having fun and things. But do I need to be investing 15% or do both of us need to be investing 15% into retirement while we're also aggressively saving? Well, here's the thing. I don't know where I want to land on that. Well, I'd like it if you could. The only question I have is, when he's out of the military, what will he be doing? Because you said you won't be able to work. So, the money you've saved is really just for tuition. How will you guys, how will you live and eat? Yeah. So, that plan is two years from now, we'll get out. We'll have a one-year transition where I'll just go, you know, work as a nurse in our hometown while he's planning on going to be a fireman. And you're stacking that cash? Get a job. And yeah, we'll be, we'll have the cash stacked away. We'll, on one income. Well, what I would do, what I would do, what I would do is I would make sure that you guys sit down and do a budget and know the exact amount because this is a lot of different savings buckets that you guys are going to need to have. And I actually would pause investing. I think it's okay if you pause for a year or maybe two just to get this done. So, every year you might be overpaying for health insurance and never even know it, especially if you just renew the same plan year after year. Not because it's the right plan, but because sorting through premiums and deductibles and networks sounds like a nightmare. That's how you could end up leaving money on the table. Don't do that this year. Now that it's open enrollment, I want you to talk to the folks at Health Trust Financial. You'll get an actual human being who knows his stuff inside and out, and they'll look at your situation and help you find the coverage that fits your life and your budget. We've trusted Health Trust Financial for over 20 years, and they're the only health insurance provider we recommend. So don't just renew out of habit and hope everything works out. Take a few minutes, and know for sure you're getting the right coverage at the right price. Just go to healthtrustfinancial.com to connect with an advisor today or click the link in the description. That's healthtrustfinancial.com. All right, let's go to our Ramsey Show question of the day, which is brought to you by Ask Ramsey. Ask Ramsey, which is your free AI money tool that provides personalized money answers based on Ramsey principles. Visit ramseysolutions.com slash askramsey. All right, today's question comes from Amber in Michigan. Amber writes, My dad built a house for me before I got engaged. Very cool. My fiance wants me to put his name on the house eventually. I'm hesitant to do this since there is a sentimental aspect to the house. I don't have any reservations about marrying my fiance, but this seems like a strange request. Is this a normal practice and should I put his name on the house after we get married? That's actually something I covered in my new book, Building the Marriage You Want. The answer is yes. Every name needs to be on every asset. And so because y'all are doing this thing together and it should have some sentimental value. Your dad built it with his bare hands. But when you get married, it becomes y'all's house and it becomes y'all's cars. And so, yes, put your name on the house. Yeah. Why? I'd be asking, I'd be asking myself the question, why wouldn't I want to let my future husband in on that sentimentality? Like to share it? Yeah. It invites a richness to everything. So, yes, put everybody's name needs to be on everything. And I'll tell you this, Jade, I learned this, not the hard way. That sounds dramatic, but I learned it like I was like, oh man, I had a truck, an old banged up truck. And then I surprised my wife and got her a car. I didn't buy it. I put on payments or whatever, but I got her a car. And about three or four months later, when the title came in and all the stuff was there, she just casually said and not didn't wasn't causing a scene or anything like that. Just said, hey, just so you know, both of our cars are in your name only. And if something happens to you, I'm going to have to go fight for the right to drive my own car. And I'm going to, and I was like, oh gosh, like, right. Like all the only two assets we actually were renting were cars and they're both in my name. And so immediately got at her, to everything. So that's just a principle in our house. Like everybody's needs to be on everything. Yeah. And if you have a mortgage and maybe one of you only has your name on the mortgage, you can put their name on the deed that way. They have ownership and it's just paperwork to fill out. You don't have to refinance to do that. All right, let's go to Steven. Who's in Amarillo, Texas. Hey Steven, what's up? How can we help? Hey y'all. I'm just saying, first of all, big fan of the show. Love everything you guys do. It's very meaningful, impactful work. So thank you for all that. Thank you. Um, so my, my question today is how do I know when to close down my business or, and get a job or keep trying, keep trying to make it work. Lay it out. Yeah. I've been running, I've been in a management position as a 10 99 contractor for the last four years. And year after year, um, I've been barely breaking even there's been one or two years where I was actually negative. And, uh, I have some, uh, two of my roommates actually introduced them to the Ramsey. So, so they're never going to believe that I'm talking to you guys. Right now. But, um, they, uh, they tell me, they say, Hey man, you have good skills. You know, if you just got it, you could get a good job paying good money. Um, and they're supportive and encouraging of me in that way. And, uh, and so I'm just, I have a hard time. I see it kind of as quitting where it's like, uh, it's tough right now. I'm, and I don't want to be a quitter and I just don't know when is that moment to say, okay, it's time to do something else. So can I tell you something that, it's a piece of advice. It's from a book by Dr. Henry cloud. It's called necessary endings. And there's a question in that book. That is such an amazing takeaway. And the question is, what reason do I have to believe that tomorrow will look different from today? And that's the question you need to be asking yourself because that's, that's kind of where the hope lies, right? Let's pretend, uh, there was some work coming around the corner and you knew it. Your buddy has got this big thing and it's got right. Infuse your business. That would be a reason that tomorrow might, look different from today. Or maybe you said, Hey, I'm taking some business classes and I'm learning some different marketing techniques and I'm learning ways to get out there. That would be some reason to have some hope that tomorrow might look different from today. But if you can't look out over the horizon of what's going on and you can't point to anything that would cause it to look different, that's a good reason to go, okay, I've been at this for a long time. I don't see any reason for it to be different. And then the next question is, can I create something? Is there something that I can do to create something that would make it look different? And yeah, that's good. I have, it's kind of, it's kind of barbelled, right? There's a really good and a really bad, but I'm going to take it as really good that you've got some roommates that have known you for a while. I'm guessing y'all probably met in college. They've known you for a long time. They've seen you grinding and pushing sometimes the greatest gift you have. And I'm a direct beneficiary of a couple of men out in your part of the part of the country who have said, Hey, like it's time to do something. I'm different. And whether that's professionally or whether that was me, I need to go see a counselor, right? Like, but sometimes your buddies can see, see something in you or see something in your environment that you can't see for yourself and them saying, Hey man, you've got a ton of skills. This particular thing isn't for you, but if you'll just turn around the other way and throw your nets on the other side of the boat, there's a ton of fish over there. And I get the, a lot of young guys get, get enamored and anchored to this. And I see identity called I'm an entrepreneur and they will burn themselves alive. Trying to keep that identity at stake. And instead of, I want to make a good living for myself for a future family someday. I want to have peace in my life. And if entrepreneurship is the path to that great, but that my North star, my identity is I'm a guy who works really hard. I'm a guy who provides for myself and for others. Like you get what I'm saying? So if you need to let go of that identity, that's not quitting. Like you, if I kept trying to, like nail, like had a hammer and some nails and I was trying to nail, put nails in a board and I kept hitting my thumb, I wouldn't be a quitter. If I stopped hitting myself with a hammer for a while, right. And reassess and just be turning the pages and turning to another chapter just moving to like you you found out you don't like this restaurant cool i'm gonna go to the next restaurant and so you i want you not to judge yourself um because it sounds like you're the only one in your life putting your this judgment this pressure on yourself and then go do the next right thing which might be folding up shop you've lost money for four straight years that's a good data signal right and if there's no hope that tomorrow's going to be different if you're going to still be driving out to canyon for a bathroom job and you don't get the bid and you've been doing that for four years man it's time to wrap it up and go join somebody's company and make six figures by this time next year i mean do you see anything steven that might be on the horizon that would cause you to to have some hope that it would look different i can't nail i can't be specific on that i i'd say you know there's always there's always projections of you know if you just did this and you know developed one more person and you know built your staff better than you know the business is totally different but you know i've kind of been trying that for all that three or three or four years now and i read a lot of maxwell i listen i've read some ramsey books uh zig ziglar i try to do this thing the right way yeah and um i just pick up dr cloud's book necessary endings it's to me it's the single greatest business book ever written it's fabulous what do you think you'd do next let's pretend let's pretend you do get the signal and you're like hey i'm moving on what comes next um honestly i'm not sure i would i love working with people i love i love helping people as much as i can um i would probably connect with somebody in my church oh i go to a great church out here in amarillo and that's where i'm at my roommates now and i would just get connected with somebody out there and just try and serve serve where i can have you read proximity principle by ken coleman i have not okay we'll send you that you sound like an avid reader you look you sound like a person who would actually take the knowledge and do it we'll give you that we'll also give you his career assessment find the work you're wired to do and i think all those things together those three books i wish i could give you henry clouds but we don't give that book away but do pop on it uh pop on his website and pick that one up and i think all of that together is going to give you some clarity um if you're into reading books or listening to books another good one is jump and find joy by hoda kotb it's just really inspiring so i i think that'll give you the information that you need steven just arbitrarily given what you told us i'll just tell you straight up it's sounds like it might be time it's time it is it's time you know and can i give you uh um this isn't in any of those books but right now you may not need a home run swing while you're having cups of coffee with folks in your church and your local community like trying to figure out what's next you need a bunch of little wins and so if you go take a job at a distribution center you go take a job at one of these big ai centers they're throwing up in your neck of the woods or you take a job at walmart for two months three months six months that's not a step back that's not a step it's actually a step forward um and getting some little wins getting a job clocking in clocking out and actually having some real money in your checking account you getting my identity stolen was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my life i thought strong passwords and two-factor authentication made me pretty hard to scam but it didn't and that was more than 10 years ago before ai made scams even trickier now criminals can fake websites clone voices and run scams in ways that are harder to detect making you more likely to be scammed more vulnerable than ever before now thankfully when my identity got stolen i had zander id theft protection in my corner they already had great tools to monitor things i would have never thought to watch like my home title and any bank or retirement accounts i wasn't keeping my eye on and their protection plan went way beyond just alerts they had a dedicated recovery advocate that did all the work of restoring my identity which would have taken me so much time and a lot of headache so i went from feeling panicked to feeling protected so don't forget to subscribe to don't wait until you're dealing with identity theft to get protection in place get it done today go to zander.com to protect yourself that's zander.com or click the link in the description well today john we are doing probably what is my favorite segment of all time and that is when people travel from far and wide to join us in studio uh in the lobby on our debt free stage that's where i mean if you've paid off debt and you've done it the ramsey way give us a call and schedule it because there's really no better moment than this and we have one today with brian and julie who are here all the way from sellersburg indiana guys welcome to the debt free stage hi hi glad you're here thanks we are too awesome so so give us the scoop how much debt did you pay off we paid off 157 500 about six and a half years six and a half years oh my goodness and making what kind of income um we started about 90 000 and then we ended about um 130 000 130 000 okay so what kind of debt was this this was our mortgage i knew it when you said six years i was like this could only mean one thing oh my gosh so tell us the story how did the journey start six years ago to paying off your mortgage well about i don't know 10 years ago we did our student loans and took care of that and then we gonna have a baby and uh we were like you know what let's knock out our mortgage we've done the student loans before so we know what it's going to take and me and her both are fortunate enough to work from home and uh i would work first shift and then she would work second shift and then my job started offering overtime so uh i took advantage of that and started doing i think i started off doing like 20 hours of overtime a week and then by the end of it it was like 30 hours of overtime wow wow so you you guys almost treated this almost back to babysit too like we're gonna just intense we're just gonna get after this thing yeah and the work from home thing really really did help we ended up selling one of our cars and went down to one car and uh and so we you know we alternated with the girls she would uh watch them while i was working and then i would you know watch them while she was working and then uh once we put the baby to bed uh the oldest one was old enough to kind of take care of herself and uh i'd get back in there and start working isn't it crazy how you know we tell people all the time you know intensity gazelle intense this sort of thing and a lot of people can't really understand what that means or they can't imagine themselves working that much and i always say you'll adapt to it you would be surprised at what you can adapt to i mean how long did you go that you were working basically 60 and and 70 hour weeks it was about two and a half years that he did that yeah oh my gosh are you still tired yeah actually i'm still doing a little bit of overtime even now but not not that much yeah no did you have any cheerleaders did anybody know that you guys were kind of in this journey oh everybody do we were telling everybody that we were paying off our house and that he was working so much overtime and were they for you or were they like you guys are weird no they were excited yeah my brother had done it like a year before we did because he does the same job i do so he paid his house off and then we paid ours off we have some other friends that have done the same thing followed the ramsey program and paid off their houses that's amazing i love it okay so julie can i ask you a personal question sure you may or may not be right in front of your husband when i ask this so we took a call earlier um in an earlier hour um a woman was married to a guy and he lost his job and he ended up not working for five months just waiting for the next right like waiting for waiting for the big one right what is it like being married to somebody who's willing to like you because you saw how tired he was on certain mornings and you saw how hard it was for him to get out of bed and you saw how hard it was for him to get out of bed and you saw him like like trying to bring a smile to his face with with his with your girls right what does it do for you in terms of respect in terms of like just feeling safe and like tell me about what it's like to be married to somebody who says we have a goal and i'm willing to go the extra mile for it um what does that feel like um it feels really good it was it didn't feel always great while it was happening because i felt so so bad because he was so tired but i knew that he was trying to do what was right for our family so that we would have peace and pay off our house and not owe anybody anything yeah well um how long ago did you did you pay your house off um it was in august okay so it's still fresh what is it like um that next month when you both of your checks deposit and you have no payments it was kind of surreal i didn't expect the money to stay in there because everything is taken out automatically right i just kept thinking okay it's the first it's going to be taken out and then i went oh wait no it's not it's still there still cooking so the question becomes what's next like what i mean surely you're going to celebrate in some major way what's that look like for you guys well the first thing was was coming here and doing that um and then we want to save up and do some renovations to the house yeah and take some vacations i love that where are you thinking about going um - Probably Virginia Beach. We really like Virginia Beach. - Love that. - I love that. What does it look like for you to slow down a notch now? Oh, it's wonderful. Yeah. I was telling her just a couple weeks ago, I'm like, I actually can go out and walk and do stuff now where I'm not just constantly put the baby to bed and then 30 seconds later jump in there and start working. And now I also get to spend a lot more time with my oldest. She helped out a ton with the toddler and everything. So I get to spend more time with her, and I feel like I can breathe. Yeah. So what do you think fueled that intensity? Because we usually teach people baby steps one through three, that's the intense one, and then four, five, and six where you're paying off the mortgage. That's the one where you can just take your foot off the gas, ease up a little bit, and just be intentional about making extra payments here and there. And if you do that, you will pay off the mortgage faster. What was it in you all's mind? What did you see? What was the vision that made you guys go, you know what? This is worth some major sacrifice in order to get this done fast. We had done this with the student loans. We're like, it's a short period of time if we just suck it up and do it. And so when we were having the other baby, the new one, she looked at me. She's like, you know, we could get this house paid off if we did this much overtime and if you did this. And it would be a short amount of time, and it's worth doing. Short-term sacrifice, long-term gain. But in a culture where short-term discomfort can be no more than nine minutes, y'all did it for years, right? Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't easy, but it's worth it. And you just keep doing the Ramsey plan, and sometimes it's boring and tedious, but like I said, it works. I'm just curious, what role did a budget play for you guys, or did it play a role? Oh, we budgeted every month, and we used every dollar. And it helped me, especially since I'm the spender, to be able to know exactly how much I was able to spend and how much exactly we were able to put towards the house and actually see it happening instead of just guessing. Yeah. Well, it works. Do you have any tips for folks who struggle, and I may be asking for a friend here or myself, to struggle with tedious? Like you used that word. I had a buddy recently tell me, like, for getting in shape, for workouts, for diet, for money, the most important thing is consistency over time. Yeah. And that's also the hardest thing, right, in such a distracted world. How did y'all navigate tedious, just the day in and day out, living on a budget, sending all the money to the house? Yeah. How did y'all navigate that? With me, sometimes I just, you know, I'm sitting there, and it takes forever. Because we had a little chart we'd mark off, and just seeing that, but we would just keep doing it and, you know, look at our girls, and, you know, this is a short period of time, and we can do this. We've done it before with the student loans. We can do it again, and we'll be better off for it in the long run. We give ourselves little wins here and there and do things. We just take trips and little trips here and there, but, yeah, we cut back. We cut back a lot. Just trust in the process. It sounds like you had a lot of trust in the process. I mean, you've got the 10 years of experience from when you were paying off the consumer debt, and then you come into here. And, I mean, I've got to believe you were listening to the show, hearing other people's stories, and that counts for something. Oh, yeah, definitely. All right, guys. Well, congratulations. This is amazing. Yeah. Let's get ready to hear your debt-free scream. We've got Brian and Julie from Sellersburg, Indiana. They paid off $157,500. That was the house. They did it in two weeks. They did it in six years, making $90,000 to $130,000. Count it down. Let's hear your debt-free scream. All right. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about, John. You know what I'm saying? It was super chill the whole call, and then he brought the thunder. I mean, it's always the super chill people. It's always the people in the lobby. They walk up to us, and they whisper, I paid my house off. Yeah. I'm a millionaire. I'm debt-free. You want to scream it? Yeah. Yeah, come scream it. It's awesome. Congratulations, guys. Yeah, I love it. It just goes to show, guys, anybody can do this. The baby steps work if you work them. It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, what age you are. Get into the action. I'm telling you. We'll be right back. That's just not okay. But when you contribute through ACE scholarships, you'll give a kid a real shot at a better education. And in exchange, you'll get a federal tax credit up to $1,700 for individuals or $3,400 for married couples filing jointly. Meaning it could end up costing you nothing to help. They've given over 120,000 scholarships to families, almost $400 million. Guys. This is a no-brainer. Learn more about ACE and this amazing opportunity at educationfreedom.org. That's educationfreedom.org. John, you have on the desk what I think is maybe my favorite thing that we've ever offered here at Ramsey Solutions. It's beautiful. It's a brand new world here. Yeah, it's a new world. And listen, this is your brainchild. All right. So here's the story. Here's the story. Don't hit the little fast-forward button. Don't skip this. Listen. This is important. I'm about to change your household. So four years ago on the Dr. John Deloney show, I was talking with a couple about the things that me and my wife do throughout a year that we had to do to rebuild our marriage from scratch. And I just popped off and said, hey, if anyone's interested in me coming up with a calendar, like an annual calendar that we use that would show you the same things me and my wife do, thousands and thousands of social media DMs, please, please, please, please, please, please. To help coordinate the year. To help, please. And so I went to the team and said, hey, I want to make this calendar. And we got in a room. We worked on this thing for over three and a half years. And we went way beyond calendar, as Ramseys want to do. We did it big and right. This is, for the first time ever, I'm calling it the marriage kit. This is your marriage in a year. Yeah, let's see what's inside. And here, I'm opening it up here. And here's what it is. It starts with, right here, the annual planning retreat. This is based off the one that me and my wife started doing. And it walks you through how to look at last year when it comes to your relationship with your money. How did you show up as a spouse, as a parent? And more importantly, who do we want to be this year? And you begin to put things down on paper. And you hear me say the words all the time. I'm a business engineer. Then the rest of the year is how to build in these practices. And so, I've got date nights for you for the year. Once a month, I've got a date night for you that will have a challenge in there for you and your spouse to talk about, whether it's planning for vacations, or it's planning for Christmas, or planning for the start of school, and a fun thing to do, right? Can you share one of them or no? I can just say, oh, yeah. Like, hey, we don't mess around with these things. They're fantastic. I love it. And I even have an envelope in here called, in case of emergency. So, I know that throughout a year, people suffer job losses. They get a phone call from a parent saying somebody's sick. And so, I actually walk you through if the worst thing happens this year. We can tear it off, and you can dig into it. Have a special, exclusive marriage kit only. Questions for Humans deck for you and your spouse. Is it naughty time? Like, is it naughty? Or is it, like, deep, tell me about your childhood? It's more of the former. Got you. Yes. All right. Sign me up. It's excellente. Muy excellente, as my friends say. I love these journals. These are really nice. Like, I'm feeling the embossing on there. And every month, there is, we turned it over to the video team. And so, every month, there's a QR code, and it's got videos of me teaching you how this thing works. And so, this marriage kit is me walking alongside you and your spouse for a year. Wow. And here's the deal. We priced it. We priced it at $84.99. That's seven, about $7, $7.50 a month. That's one fancy cup of coffee a month for the whole year. Killer gift if you are like, "I don't know what to give my spouse." What better way to say, "I'd like to invest in us for the next year." And you've got a date night already planned every month for the year. That's the hardest part. I mean, just like, "Hey, what are we going to do?" I got you. I love that. And the date nights are set up to do on the back porch. I was going to ask. If you're on baby step two, and I've been there, or if you are on baby step seven, and if you are a newlywed or you've been married 50 years and you're like, "Hey, let's be intentional about the back, the fourth quarter of our life," wherever you happen to be, Marriage Kit by Deloney and Gang, I'm super excited about this. And here's the last key thing. We only made a few of them. How many? Do you know? Yeah, just a few thousand of them. And they will 100% they will sell out. And so get them while you can. Click the link in the show notes here. I'm super excited. Or you can go to ramseysolutions.com/store. - You know what I think? I think we ought to give one to the couple that just did their debt-free scream. I think that they would love to have one, so we'll give one to Brian and Julie. You guys deserve it. You guys worked hard. Yes. They won't even give me one, because we have such limited inventory. They won't even give me one, so awesome. Awesome. Enjoy that. John, I gotta say, I love this, and I wasn't just making that up when I said I think this is my favorite thing that you guys and the team have done. You actually texted me the other day, and that meant a lot to me after we explained it to the team here. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. Yeah, I will be getting one. Save one for me. I'm as excited about this as anything I've ever been a part of. And I will pay full price, sir. You know a guy, and we'll get you hooked up. No, no, no. I'm telling you, don't hook me up. Let me buy one. I support this. This is really, really great. I think that people need this, and when you said the date nights, I was like, that's the hardest part. You always end up at dinner. Just talking about your kids. Yes. Or you sit on the back porch like, all right, you want to talk about the budget? Yes. Or you watch a Netflix show, and you think that that was a date. That's not a date. That's exactly right. All right, so taking a cool challenge and some intentionality, and this thing is, we'll walk you through the things to do on a daily, a weekly, a monthly, and an annual basis to totally transform your marriage. And what I believe right now the world needs is anchored families, anchored marriages inside of homes that can come back together and create something amazing, and then that will impact their neighborhood and impact their cities and beyond. And so the rebuild of this country is going to start inside individual homes, and married couples can unite here, and this is a toolkit to do it. Listen, John, I think you have provided the people what they need. I'll just say this and get a little sappy. I think that this is so important, and I think you have a unique contribution here that's really going to help a lot of people. When you first started here at Ramsey, I didn't work here yet. I wasn't even a glint in these people's eye. I started listening to your show, and there were a couple of things that I picked up, and to this day, I do differently, and Sam does differently, and our marriage is better because of it. And I will say, I looked at my husband the other day. You taught me to tell me things, to tell my husband things that I don't say out loud. I looked at him the other day and I was like, hey, I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud that you're the type of guy you are. I don't have to worry about you doing some of the things I hear on this show. You're just such a devoted guy, and you're such a devoted spouse. And I never would have thought to talk to my husband like that if it weren't for you. Yes! I bet he climbed up and started roofing the house. Alyssa, I can melt that man in two seconds with the things that you've taught me. I'm a buyer. I'm a believer. Well done, John. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Go pick it up. RamseySolutions.com slash store, or click the link in the show notes. So good. Let's go to Peyton, who's in Albany, New York. What's going on, Peyton? How can we help? So, I am 19 years old, and I am currently going to college. But I have no rent, no college tuition payment, but it's all paid for by work or other things that I've done. At the end of next semester, I will be leaving college, and my free housing ends. But I will end up staying here for work. I'm looking into buying a house. So, I can afford about a $2,500 monthly payment on the house, and I know that sounds like a lot. The biggest problem I have right now is the down payment. I'm trying to figure out how I can put the down payment down, and figure out, and like try and figure out how I can get an okay-ish monthly payment, and figure that kind of stuff out, but I'm 19, and I've never dealt with any of the house stuff, really, and I don't really know anybody to help me. So, I was trying to, I see you guys online, and I wanted to give you a call. I'm glad you called, man. How much is the house that you want to buy? They're asking $270, but the house is in very rough shape, and I was going to offer like $200 about, because I'm very capable of doing the work on it. I want to work on it. Do you have cash to put down? I have about $12,000, and I'm currently, I use every dollar I currently save, about $2,500 a month. And do you have an emergency fund beyond the $12,000? Not yet. Okay, so that's the biggest part here. I see a couple of things that I want to call out. I love that you want to buy a house. I love that you want to have that stability. I think that's really, really good. The glaring issue here, though, is we need to have an emergency fund set up first. If you don't have an emergency fund before you buy a house, I mean, it's inevitable the things that can go wrong. Anything from the AC going out, to the roof going out, to everything. You just need it. Otherwise, without it, you're looking at debt, and you're calling us going, what can I do? I've taken out a credit card to pay for these things. So you've got to have three to six months of expenses. For you specifically, I would suggest six months, because it's just you, and you're just getting started, and you're a first-time homebuyer. I want you to have that cushion. And then beyond there, I want you to jump on RamseySolutions.com and use our mortgage calculator, and figure out how much you need to put down on a $270,000 house to make sure that that mortgage payment is in that 25% range that's comfortable. I don't think $12,000 is going to do it. I haven't done the math, but I'm pretty sure doing it quickly in my mind that $12,000 is not going to get you where you want to be. But do that, and I think that you'll be set up for success in the long term. Thank you for listening to the Ramsey Show here in the Fair Ones Credit Union studio. Let's take it back to the phone lines, shall we? We've got James waiting, who's in Calgary, Canada. All right, James, thanks for calling all the way from Calgary, Canada. How can we help? Hey, thanks for taking my call. I'm calling with I guess not a bad situation. My wife and I run a business for the last 18 years. The last 10 has been very successful. We are debt-free, consumer debt-free, mortgage-free. We have two adult children. We want to help them. I guess the term I've heard used on your show. We want to help launch them into adulthood. Our concerns are are we going to help them too much? Are we going to spoil them? I don't know if there's such a thing. They grew up knowing the value of money. We didn't have a lot of money. We started to really snowball and be successful as they were in their 20s and gone off to school. I'm just struggling with one of them views the situation a little different than the other in terms of whether they're handouts, or something special. I'm struggling. I don't want to take it too far one way or the other. I love your spirit, man. What do you mean by they see it differently? My younger daughter has a full-time job. She's a teacher. She's successful. She's driven. We've helped them both and continue to help them a little bit. The older one is in between careers. She's struggling. She's struggling a little bit with direction and what she wants to do for a living. I think that the comfort of mom and dad and some of the assistance we give them puts her in a comfortable position to do that. We're blessed to be able to do that, but I don't want it to seem like a crutch or that we're spoiling her attitude towards being driven. I like the idea in your situation of helping with a thing, not a perpetual struggle. Subsidy. Yeah, no allowance. If you surprised your daughter who's a teacher with half of her house down payment or something like that, she would still have skin in the game and you would give her a tremendous boost. That would be for a thing. Or if she's never taken a vacation and you and your wife want to surprise her with a thing like that. When she has her first kid, I don't know what the retirement vehicles are in Canada, but here's a college tuition for your kid. I like aiming towards a thing and that way they still have to go in and grind every day, which is where they're learning so much about themselves and they're helping people and everybody needs a purpose. Everybody needs to work hard. We're wired that way. But that's different than I'll just give you $500 here, $1,000 here, $1,800 here. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. I like that idea. But that means you have to also let them crash and burn. Well, and there's part of that too. I agree with what John said about saving up for a thing or helping them with a thing versus an allowance. But if you're looking to make it fair or not feel like, well, I'm helping this daughter, but I'm not helping the other daughter because she's kind of struggling a little bit. I think if you can match it, right? And that way there's incentive and there's something to look back and say, she, you know, whoever, whatever the daughter was, saved a certain amount and we matched it. That way, if the other daughter is like, well, how come I haven't gotten this yet? Well, you've got to save up and do this thing so that it's not a, well, hey, we just paid for Cindy's down payment and now, okay, we'll pay for mine, right? There's got to be skin in the game so that there's a reason to, does that make sense? You're not taking their motivation away, I think. And this is tricky as a parent, right? I've got two kids also and fair is different than equal. So if my son decides to not go to college. college and be a mechanic and my daughter decides to go to med school and i said hey i'm helping y'all both with school like post-secondary education my son can't come back and say hey you owe me 200 grand because you helped sister go to grad school it's and so i don't think they're it's apples to apples right but if if you say hey hey everybody i'm gonna pay for your down payments then it's kind of like okay well the daughter who feels a little bit like she's searching it's like okay well let's do that today let's do it right now yeah versus i'll help you i'll pay half of your down payment and then it's well whatever your down payment is it's half to your point you can't go searching for the rest if that was all you needed and james this this is going to require you to have some sort of resetting conversation with them which will which will just be like hard i i had it a few years ago when my son was young um my first few years here at ramsay like i just had a complete transformation of our household income and um i went crazy at christmas just lost my mind and i was trying to re like i we grew i grew up pretty money insecure and so i was trying to like live my childhood at the expense of my kids and i remember after me and my wife sat down and talked about it i was the one that was out of control and i took my son out to breakfast and said hey christmas is going to look different this year and i remember him smiling and looking at me and he said this he said i don't think you can do it dad he already he already knew right that that 75 of these gifts were about me not for him right and so but i did i took him out as a middle school or my daughter daughter was too young but i took him out and said hey i've overdone it and so i'm going to reset it know that i love you your mom and i still love you but christmas is going to look different this year and he was totally cool with it right so um but you will have to have some sort of reset conversation and then you'll have to hold the line because at least one of your kids is going to call and you're gonna have to you and your wife can say sorry um we we made our intentions pretty clear right okay yeah no i appreciate the advice you know it's uh looking at them uh getting an inheritance we had them so young you know they'll be 75 by the time they they get a the estate so we want to try to to do what we can now because we'll have more in retirement than we had our entire lives so sure um but i do like i do like the angles and the and the advice you've given so what are you thinking is it is it down payments what do you think you're going to go towards well to be honest i mean my they're 31 and 28 we've already helped them both with a down payment um the one has since turned that into a rental income and and and started on her second home um with her partner and the other one the older one has has sold her home um and and has put the money into investments while she rents in a new city and is trying to really find her way in terms of what she wants to do as a career i mean there's no issues with drugs or alcohol or anything they're good people good kids and she's just uh she was in a corporate position that she really really despised at the end of it and it's it's a struggle for me because it's it's what's more important you know success and what how do you define that uh and and what's i mean you you need a six-figure job and and absolutely to hit certain stakes but i'll tell right now and rescue her from this discomfort the signal you'll be telling her is i don't think you can handle this right i don't think you're tough enough or smart enough or strong enough to deal with this discomfort whether it's six months or a year or are you scratching claw and find a new career and that's the meta signal you'll send her and so calling her every like every week letting her you you're thinking about her she's always welcome to come home all that kind of stuff like encouragement's great writing her a letter would be awesome um but that doesn't mean don't go in there and bail her out of this let her live in that discomfort yeah because then she can figure out what's right for her she can take this and learn from it and it's a a tool in her bag going forward as something she's learned not something that was snatched from her to learn medicare is confusing for everyone doesn't matter whether you're a teacher rocket scientist or one of the politicians who came up with it this stuff is complicated and nobody should have to untangle it by themselves and that's why we created a webinar with our ramsey trusted partner chapter co-founder ari parker and myself answer your toughest questions about medicare so you can tackle the process confidently and safely and safely and get the right plan so go to ramsey solutions.com slash chapter to learn more that's ramsey solutions.com slash chapter hey guys if you've been listening to the show if you enjoy the show whether you listen on podcast watch on youtube however you enjoy the show make sure to jump into the comments especially if you you're over there on spotify or youtube uh we want to know what you're saying and we want to stay connected with you so if you haven't done that start doing it it'll be fun for all of us all right let's go to daniel who's in rochester minnesota hey daniel you're on the line welcome to the show thank you absolutely what's going on so i have a credit card debt from a few years ago i'm a single dad and the debt represents a time when i was fighting for custody my son we were just putting groceries and other things from poor but on a credit card and i really didn't know when or how i would pay it off i'm just trying to stay ahead of the legal fees so the debt that they're coming after now is a credit card it was sold it's a little over twelve thousand dollars i was served a summons and petition in my home 20 days ago so i have two more days in minnesota to respond and i just went online and found a help to respond to it i'm going to try to do that today my question is what can i do at this point in the process to come to a reasonable settlement with the debt purchaser to try to resolve this debt i would say to call them and offer three thousand for it and see if they'll go away how old is it um like three years i actually did get a call back from them today and offered two because that's like literally what i had and they said they'd only take 70 to 80 percent okay um then i'd keep i keep trying because if you don't have any money you don't have anything to save them when's the court date so i don't have a court date but i have to respond by tomorrow just with like the initial response okay yeah i mean if this continues down the road i'm going to try harder and harder to settle it and in the meantime i'm going to stack up some cash in order to settle it because the truth is it is your debt it's it's it's not a you know you're not disputing it you do owe the money so i'd be stacking up in the meantime as much as i can and if they end up if it ends up being a court date i'm going to try harder and harder to settle it going to court you know if it ends up the next step i believe is you'll show up and they'll say do you owe the debt and you'll say yes i do and then at some point it'll go before a judge and they'll either come up with a payment plan or an amount you owe right so if you can get to it before then and offer an amount uh to try to settle i would do that and sometimes it takes you calling and calling back several times this is probably going to move pretty slowly so i think you've got some time to get your ducks in a row and you know maybe you save up five thousand and you get it to that point but i think any reduction that you can get on this is a win but i would try to take 50 or less if i were you it's already in collections and to your point you don't have any money how quickly can you save um if it's six months or so i probably could get that much maybe a little less time than that yeah and then i would do that and i would respond and put in your response i am in contact with the the owner of this debt to come up with a settlement and let that be a response because what you like in jade's right if this goes before a judge the judge may say did you is this your debt yep okay then you owe twelve thousand dollars bam and that's going to be what you owe and so however you can get this thing settled it's it's better and if i were you i would reach out to our friends at guardian litigation they can help you navigate this and uh you know help you decide what the next best steps are i would certainly do that thank you for the call next time i'll see you next time up we have george who's in albany new york hey george welcome to the show hey how you doing i'm newly retired i'm 60 years old uh i own three uh three properties okay uh two two of them are two properties have houses and the other property is just land okay um they're all paid off i have no no debt whatsoever other than insurance and taxes nice so well it took forever to get here right um so i um what i'm thinking about actually i have an annuity uh that i don't see me really needing okay so when because i have i have three pensions okay three gosh you got a lot going on yeah what do the three pensions amount to uh every month for you plenty uh uh probably somewhere in about 5200 hours a month okay and then how much is the annuity uh the annuity right now i have about 750 000 and is it paying you out no no i don't i don't i'm not watching it uh say that again i actually have it set to my kids uh his timeline okay um have you ever considered about learning about these rmas and they talk about how uh they're going to take my son would only have roughly 10 years to burn through this money the annuity yes okay if he inherited it yeah i was going to ask you have you considered taking that annuity taking it out of an annuity and rolling it to something else maybe a roth ira if you can uh i i haven't been down that path yet or if you were if you roll it to a traditional investment vehicle and then back to a roth that investment vehicle you'll have to pay taxes on it now but then he has he has no required distributions he'll have nothing he'll just inherit because you've already paid the taxes on it so so you're suggesting just to put it into a roth i'm suggesting it's way more than a roth can like you'd have to do a backdoor of it what i would suggest is because you're going to have to pay taxes on that so i would sit down and figure out what that is and if you want to space that out at all you can start by rolling it into an ira and then if you want to space that and and then take that money and convert it to roth funds over time you can do that or if you want to do it all at once but i would sit down with a tax pro to figure out what the best strategy is so that you can have the best tax benefit for you that being said i would not keep it in the annuity because you are sacrificing major gains keeping it there and that's kind of what happens with people they kind of get sucked into the annuity because it's like hey i get this guaranteed payout or i get this guaranteed amount but you're doing that sacrificing growth right uh ten percent in the market versus sometimes three to four percent in an annuity well uh like i said i have it uh based on my kids timeline all right so i'm i'm very um uh aggressive right i'm aggressively investing it uh because again i don't feel that i'm going to really we're going to need it um however instead of sitting there one of these properties that i have is just land like i had mentioned and would it be a good idea to have a property that's not going to be in the annuity would it be better if i took that money and yeah george we're having a hard time hearing you bud i'm sorry there you go uh can i take that money and uh and uh invest it into that that property that that land that i have take the money from the annuity and invest it into the land correct how in what way uh build something build build a home so this this property doesn't have a house or anything on it it's down in the islands who would it be for it's down where it's down in the islands in the caribbean okay uh are you thinking this is a rental is it a like is it a vrbo what would be the purpose of the house well just trying to create cash flow i understand but what would be is that the purpose you would make it a vrbo or an airbnb sure i mean i think that that is have you ever done that before i wouldn't do that brother i don't think i would do that um i certainly don't think i would start it for the first time in another country yeah i mean you're talking about like a multinational landlord i wouldn't do that okay i think there are people who do that and they make it work but i think there are people who have stair-stepped into it and they've learned that world i i feel like for you it would just be a experiment and it would be a lot of money to experiment with i've been you know what i'm saying i i probably would not do that um what's the purpose what are you trying to do here just create more wealth for your children uh yeah yeah and try to try to you know like not not have them get taxed to death listen when they go to get the money the strategy that john and i gave you i think is the best way to do that because that money if it's invested it's going to continue to grow and if it's traditional money it's going to continue to grow with required minimum distributions and when that money's pulled out there's going to be a tax bill attached if you really want to help your legacy out like john and i said i would suggest learning the best way to convert that into roth funds i'd probably do it spaced out over a reasonable amount of time but immediately almost immediately i would move it from that annuity and move it at least into an ira and then start that conversion and that's the best way to build that money for your children's legacy we're taking over an entire cruise ship and i want you to join us seven days with me and the personalities in the caribbean for a week of new ramsey teachings live shows and more the live like no one else cruise sale march 2027 all inclusive pricing starts at 2105 dollars per passenger that means your cabin food entertainment taxes and tips are all taken care of reserve your cabin today with a 600 deposit at ramsey solutions.com slash events or click the link in the show notes all right guys the open enrollment period for health insurance has just begun i'm saying it like it's really exciting the beginning of a race and if open enrollment sounds like oh wait and if oep sounds like alphabet soup to you then we're gonna break it down okay i think oep stands for open enrollment just for you guys know i think oep stands for yeah you know me yeah you know me okay there we go health insurance's open enrollment period or oep is from november 1st to january 15th whether you're self-employed help navigating the market or you're unhappy with your health and health insurance uh that your employer provides and you need options okay so it could be either one either way feel confident in your health coverage choices by going to ramsey solutions.com slash health dash coverage i'm going to say that again ramsey solutions.com slash health dot coverage is how you can be down with oep yeah you know me thank you all right let's go to ashley who can i just say Nobody else was going to do that with that announcement. Let's go to Ashley, who is in Houston, Texas. Hey, Ashley, what's up? Hi, everyone. I'm calling in because I have a little disagreement with my husband. Yes, we'll solve it for you, Ashley. We're going to solve it. We love getting involved in marriages. Yes. All right, what's the dispute? Okay, so we did this stupid thing, and we bought a house for my daughter while she was a college student. And we bought it, and then we were like, oh, we can rent it to, like, her roommates, and that way it would be, like, cheaper on us, quote, unquote. Anyway, long story short, Dave's right. Our daughter didn't do well in school, so now she's back home. And my husband was a little too late getting in contact with our realtor to, like, put it on the market earlier. Or to get new, like, renters in. So now we're paying the mortgage, and it's sitting empty. Yes. So we called our realtor, so now it's for sale. Okay. But me and my husband disagree on the sale price. So I say we don't need to sit here and try to make money. We need to just get rid of the debt. So I feel like we should just put it on the market for what we owe. Oh. And he wants to sell it for more than what we bought it for. You have to sell it for established market value. Yeah, neither of you should be piping in on this. Yes. Let the real estate agent tell you what the value of the house is in that local area. I mean, I see what's happening. You're like, we can't keep paying two mortgages, because I'm guessing you're paying your, you know, primary mortgage plus this. It's eating your lunch, and you're like, just get the thing out of here. But you've got to be careful that you don't solve a mistake with another mistake. And so you admit it was a mistake. It was a mistake to buy the house. It would be another mistake to just get rid of this thing and lose any money. I mean, if there's fair amounts of money on the table, you also don't want to lose that. So let's talk about the numbers. What's the mortgage on the college house? The mortgage on the college house, do you want it including the, like, tax and… Yep, what you have to pay every month. Okay, so $1,000 a month. Okay. And then what about, are you guys floating that? Or is it causing you to have to take out debt? Like, what's happening when you add that to your personal budget? Well, it's, we can cover it, but we're also trying to pay off debt. So I'm like, we don't need this extra $1,000. It would be really nice to just not have and pay towards our debt faster. It would, but if you're trying to pay off debt, if you have equity in that house, then you need that equity, right? Because that'll help you pay off the debt. So have you talked to a realtor? Yeah, we already have a realtor, and he put it on the market back in June. For how much? And it still hasn't, for $125,000. Okay. And you say you still haven't gotten it? gotten any bites since June? No, we've had a lot of people looking, but nobody's ready to take the punch. And what does he say is the reason for that? Does the work, I mean, college students were living in it. Does it need work? Is it in an area that nobody wants to buy because there's college students all around? What do you think is the reason for that? I don't know. I just think that it's a really small town. And so I don't think there's just a lot of people ready to buy homes there. What does the realtor say? I know that's what you say, but what's the realtor say? He says he's had a lot of activity on it. The house is in really good shape. He hasn't said, because I've asked that question, or I had my husband ask him that question, because I was like, why is it not selling? Yeah, because median days on market, let me just say for Houston, Texas, and I'm guessing surrounding area, median days on market is 53 days. You've been on since June. So I'd either be pressing him for real answers because anybody who's like, I sell houses. I know what's up. They're not going to just let this thing sit. And then when you ask, hey, what can I do? What do you think we can do? Well, everything looks good. I mean, we're having traffic. I think you might need a new realtor. What town are you in? So we're in Houston, but the house that we bought is in Lubbock. A house for 125K in Lubbock, Texas. I moved here from Lubbock. Even less days on market. I've lived there for a while. There's something up because that house should move. That's what I was thinking too. So maybe we do need a new realtor. Yes. I've got friends with real estate in Lubbock, Texas. I've got my closest friends on the planter in Lubbock. I was just there a few weeks ago. A $125,000 house in that community should go in a blink of an eye. Yeah. Hop on ramseysolutions.com slash real estate and look for one of our vetted real estate pros, because I'm telling you, this aggression shall not stand. Yeah. Or something's up, right? And so you need to get some information on why this house, whether it's there's someone on the registry down the street or it's- Something's going on. Something's going on in the neighborhood. Something is up because there's so many investors that come into towns like Lubbock, which it's circled up, right? And it's a college town, so they know they've got built-in renters there. Yeah, we're seven minutes from the school. Yeah. And my smell test or something else that's up. Yeah. Yeah. I would do that. And now, and for that reason, yeah, just kind of hold steady, keep holding the line. And I know you're trying to pay off debt, but if there's money, how much equity do you think, let me say this, at $125,000, how much would you come home from that sale with? After paying part of the closing and all that stuff, probably like $15,000. $15,000. Okay. So there's some room to move and not, you lose everything, but who knows? If you talk to that- Yeah. If you talk to that Ramsey Real Estate Pro, they might say, "Hey, gosh, this house never should have been listed at 125. It's at 100, and that's the problem." So I would just have that pro give you the answer, and I think that you'll be square. Yeah. And you may have signed a contract with this other realtor, and you might have to just let this thing ride until it's over, and then don't re-up with them and get a new realtor. But call it a Ramsey Real Estate Pro, because that's not passing my smell test. Something else is going on in that particular market. Yeah. Something ain't right. All right. Let's go to a Ramsey Baby Steps community question. I like these questions. All right. Samantha from the Ramsey Baby Steps community, that's on Facebook, by the way. She says, "I'm a stay-at-home mom, and I just came back from a trip with friends. When I got home, my husband said, 'We need to get life insurance on you because I can't do this by myself.'" That is wild. He was like, "I can't wait for you to get home. What amount should I get since I don't even have an income?" I love that question, but I love the way it was framed up. You left him with the kids, and he realized your value instantly is what it sounds like. So one thing to remember is life insurance, it's not a baby step. So a lot of times people think, "Oh, I'll do life insurance once I'm at a baby step two or after baby step three." But the truth is everybody needs life insurance if you have somebody who's dependent on your income. And it doesn't matter if you are the breadwinner or if you're a stay-at-home mom, you still have an economical value in the household because you take care of the kids. You're the daycare service. You're the chauffeur. You do all of these things, and there is a real dollar numerical value amount because if something, God forbid, were to happen to you, then yeah, you would have to hire a nanny. You would have to hire somebody maybe to help with meals, all of those things. So if you're working 10 to 12 times, your insurance. 10 to 10. I'm going to say 10 to 12 times. If you're working 10 to 12 times, your insurance. 10 to 10. I'm going to say 10 to 12 times, your income is what we would suggest if you're working. And if you're a stay-at-home mom, three to four times, that is great. And so I would check with Zander Insurance and get that set up and do it today. My wife stays at home and I got a chunk of insurance on her because she does everything. You know, if you got a half a million dollar policy on a stay-at-home mom, you should be good to go in today's life. For a minute. A million? No, for a minute. Oh, just one. It's the holiday season, so here comes all the excuses for not sticking to a budget. It's just this one time. It was on sale. And how about this one? I'll start fresh in January. Yeah, right. Money's not a math problem, it's a plan problem. And without one, your paycheck will disappear on you so fast. That's why we built EveryDollar. It helps you give EveryDollar a job before it's spent. So you're telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. EveryDollar is backed by the same proven plan that millions of everyday people have used for over 30 years to beat debt, and build wealth. Get on a money plan now so you can get into the new year already making progress, not excuses. Start every dollar for free. Download it in the App Store or Google Play today. Our Ramsey shows scripture and quote of the day, Proverbs 18.4. The words of the mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a rushing stream. Andrew Carnegie said, as I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do. Don't talk about it. Be about it. That's what I'm talking about, Carnegie. All right, let's go to Priscilla in El Paso, Texas. What's up, Priscilla? Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much for having me on. So I'm 34. I'm single, debt-free, followed the baby steps, and I currently have $48,000 in savings and about $30,000 in retirement. I lost my job at the end of May. I was working in insurance as a claims adjuster, but it wasn't a career that I enjoyed. My degree is in marketing, and I've been trying to transition into that field while looking for work, but I haven't received employment yet. I'm currently receiving unemployment, but my benefits end in January. I've followed the baby steps because my ultimate goal has been to build a life of financial freedom where I'm not stuck working a job I don't like just to pay bills. I've considered buying either like a small condo or a piece of land where I could potentially live on an RV to keep my expenses low, but I'm worried that if I wait too long, real estate prices and interest could rise, and I'll miss an opportunity to get ahead. So my question is, should I use some of my savings to buy property now, or should I buy it now? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I wait until I find stable employment and a career that I actually enjoy, and how do I balance my desire for financial freedom with the fear of falling behind financially? Okay. I like this. I have one question. The land and the RV, was that always your dream scenario, or did you settle for that because you're like, hey, I'm not making much money right now, and I don't know when my next big job is going to come, so I'll do the land and RV deal, or tell me about that. I settled for that because I think home prices are just way too expensive right now. Average cost of a home is $300,000. It just seems like something I can't afford. I was making about $60,000 a year in my previous position. Okay. Okay. So thanks for that information. I think we can use that to help you out here. Priscilla, can I say this just directly, but you know that I'm on your team? Yes. I think the thing you need more than anything else. Is to go get any job. Any job that you got to clock in every day and go be a part of something. I mean, you've been out of work since May, and that just beats your soul down. And I know you have dreams of getting into marketing, but marketing is often about a Rolodex more so than it is about some sort of entry level. I mean, you might have entry level, you're talking about that, but you're 34 years old. I want you to go get some little wins because you haven't had a win in a long, long time. So much so that you're thinking about zeroing out your account, buying some land in the middle of nowhere and put an RV on it in the middle of El Paso. I wouldn't buy anything big like that right now like that makes me really nervous it feels like you're just saying I'm out and I think you've got too much more to offer yourself and other people than just to cash out what do you think about that yeah that's a I think that's a good point I I felt overwhelmed recently that's like why I feel like I lost my job was because I was overwhelmed by all the stresses at work and so I'm just trying to build a life of freedom and I don't know how I feel I here's the thing I the thing about fear is now taking away like true fear I'll use the word anxiety thing about anxiety is when you're anxious about a thing and you avoid that thing it you're it's got a whole biomechanical mechanism in your brain but it actually makes the anxiety on that thing stronger and so the only way through that overwhelm quite honestly is through it and so I'm gonna I'm gonna get you three months for free with our friends at better help and you can do that virtually okay and they'll and they'll connect with you in the next year too I want you to talk to a therapist but the thing you're looking for the confidence the strength is not going to be found in going around something it's going to be found going through it and that's why I say what you need is a bunch of little wins right now so going to get a job that it pays you hourly that is not going to be found in going around something it's going to be found going through it and that's why I say what you need is a bunch of little wins right now so going to get a job that it pays you hourly that is not going to be found going around something it's going to be found going through it and that's why I say what you need is retail that is Walmart that is fast food that is anything that's going to make you get up every day shower put on clean clothes and go be a part of something it's going to be a pain in the butt it's going to you're going to be annoyed this is what I want to do forever I never thought I'd be here at 34 all that's going to be true but you're going to be proving to your body again that I can get up and do the next small right thing and what you need right now is just a sustained path of little victories and you need to talk to somebody because it sounds like you've got bigger senses of big emotions big feelings that feel paralyzing I want you to talk to a trained licensed professional about those things okay okay yeah that makes sense I guess the other thing is like my my concern is like for example you said Walmart or fast food the reason I I feel like I kind of left I didn't I didn't leave my job but I got laid off but I felt like at the end of it it was kind of my my fault that I got laid off and so part of that was because I was like all right I'm going to try to go into marketing into the career that I got my degree in that I wanted to do since I was young so to go from where I was at to like Walmart that if it does something to your pride yeah yeah you're going to have big feelings about it and those feelings are going to be right and feelings aren't the feelings aren't designed to tell you the truth the feelings are going to be right and so if you've got big feelings that are telling you it's not what we plan this is not we design this is not going to be enough money long term to retire all those feelings will be right but their job isn't to direct your path there to keep you safe and so you're going to feel those big feelings and then you're going to get up and you're going to go work and it's going to help you as you're interviewing for the roles that you want because it is you are going to walk in far more confident as someone who did a job the other day and did their very best at it versus a person who's been sitting around for a couple of months a couple of weeks hasn't had a bite starting to feel a little unconfident starting to feel right you want to feel that confidence of I've contributed today I still see my worth and my guess is that if you end up in Walmart stark stocking shelves you're going to realize really quick I'm so much more capable than this I can do this and this and this and this and you're going to be able to rattle off what you know how to do in the workforce and so I think that that's going to help you there and marketing is this is a skill that you don't it's kind of like getting trained as a counselor if you're a trained marketer that skill will serve you in any job you do even if that job doesn't have title of marketer on it right because if you're working in retail you're telling a story about why somebody why this particular product can help you have a better day or help solve a problem for you if you're working as if you if you start a landscaping company and you're going to be marketing your small business and so marketing is a skill that you don't have to have title marketer over over your like little nameplate on your business card to do marketing and so again those those feel like tomorrow problems for you right now once you just start getting some confidence back and you can't think your way to confidence you have to act your way to confidence so go go get two or three different jobs work five six days a week get that get some swagger back and then start opening your eyes to where can I become or do this thing I've been wanting to use as a little kid which is tell stories which is what more great marketers do and I would also say during this time listen you don't have to go it doesn't have to be Walmart or Amazon right but open up your career search if you're only limiting your career search right now open it up there's a whole country out there maybe it's not in El Paso Texas not maybe it's not in the El Paso area maybe it requires you to go to Missouri or Denver or someplace else and so just open up your your scope a little bit again for the third time today I will give you Ken's suite of books I'll give you proximity principle I'll give you find find the work you're wired to do and I'll give you from paycheck to purpose I'm gonna give you all of that do the career assessment first because that's really gonna help you out and going back to the very first question you had which was the the real estate real estate is so expensive listen you paid off all of your debt you went on that journey and you're debt free you've set yourself up so well forty-eight thousand dollars saved you started investing for retirement I would challenge you go with the first dream the real estate just start saving money because the time is gonna pass anyway and you're gonna look up and you're gonna have a hundred fifty thousand dollars saved or you're gonna have one hundred seventy five thousand dollars saved that will get you something okay so keep at it don't give up now is not the time to fail because if you don't save anything guess what you ain't never buying a house so start saving something today alright guys well that does it for today thanks to everyone in the booth and remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace Christ Jesus