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

29:11You're going to sit on the sidelines and we're going to settle up later. If you want to sue me, sue me. But I don't have any money, and if you sue me, I'm going to file bankruptcy and you're going to get nothing. So you need to just sit over there until I can get this thing cleaned up, and then I'm going to come pay you off. Okay? You have a conversation with them, but you give them no more money and no more access to your business. You're going to make$100 a year,$120 a year. You clean up your vendors first, and then you keep the cash flow running. You keep your books up to date, and then you save up$30 ,000, and you call the merchant people that you owe$55 to, and you settle with them for pennies on the dollar.

29:48then you go pay mom and dad the next year right you're out of debt i just got you out of debt in three years sounds sounds good to me it's it's doable what i just described is very doable i've done it a thousand times now the trick is you got to believe it and you got to be tough enough to run off these people that have been scaring the crap out of you they've been running your life emotionally they live in your head rent free can you tell i've been there yes yes for sure it's no fun and and and you feel like you know they're they're saying you're not a good guy and you're a good guy that made a mistake you're not an evil person you didn't set up a business to go screw somebody right you're just a young guy that made some mistakes and now you got to go clean up your mistakes.

30:38You can file bankruptcy if you want, dude, but you're still going to have to pay your parents and you did all of it over 90 grand that I just settled for somewhere around 50. And you shouldn't file bankruptcy when you have the ability to make 120 a year, not morally, but I mean, mechanically shouldn't file bankruptcy when you've got the ability to make 120 a year and 50 grand cleans up your mess. Cause you're going to pay the 37, you can pay the 37 ,000 worth of vendors cause you got to keep them in your life. The other people you're going to settle for 50 cents on the dollar and then you're going to call mom and dad and pay them as quick as you can and never borrow money again from anyone not even your parents have you learned your lesson yes yeah you can do this garrett you can really do this i promise you can isn't that cool yeah it's the master class on um when we get scared man we go to fight or flight we stop thinking and sometimes it just takes someone to sit down and say hey here's a plan here's the forest here's the trees yeah yeah don't burn everything down i'm lost i'm lost in the woods we don't have to burn the forest yeah that's exactly right just got to cut that two trees over there and then we can get out and then but you got to keep walking yeah just keep moving keep moving keep moving and the good news about this guy is he's really smart because he quickly self-analyzed very unusual very unusual this is the ramsey show

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33:12Thank you for joining us, America. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, where you can hear all about boundaries and relationships and mental health issues like you never have any other way, I can tell you that. It's a blast, and you learn a lot, and I do. I love listening to it. And people are just plain entertaining, I can tell you that. So check him out. It's all on the Ramsey Networks, anywhere great podcasts are heard, and certainly on the YouTube show as well, so anywhere you are. By the way, if you're listening to this show, we thank you for that, and we can use your help.

33:51if you would subscribe or follow or whatever it is on your type of podcast or YouTube, that would help us immensely. The numbers change dramatically when you do that because the different algorithms spit the show out in the face of people that need it that way. And when you don't subscribe and don't follow, we don't get that. And when you leave a five-star review, we get that. And when you share the show, some of the different platforms have a share button where you can simply share it or a way to just do a drop down and share it or click the link and send it to a friend or if you listen on talk radio thank you for that send this tell your friend where you're listening share this show you are our marketing plan when you do that it makes a huge difference last week we were number two and number three in all of apple podcasts there's about two million of them and joe rogan was sitting there at number one npr was in there at number two or three.

34:48We were in there at number two or three, and that's because of you guys sharing and telling people about it. Thank you very much. We appreciate you. It's really important because we don't have a stadium named after us like somebody or somebody like that, right? Excuse me, I got an allergy. But all right, Steve's in Salt Lake City. Hey, Steve, what's up? Hey, guys. I've got a short-term question and a longer-term question for you guys. The short term is taking a family vacation. So I'm a single income owner of our family. We have seven kids. My wife homeschools our kids at home. We've not taken a vacation in probably eight or nine years.

35:27And recently we ended up, we just got done doing a big home renovation, spent about 50 grand out of pocket, you know, cash flowing that. And the last little probably$15 ,000 or so we had to take out of our six months fund to finish the project. because, of course, it always ends up going more expensive than you thought. So my question is, and first of all, we have a kid about to go off to college in about four months or whatever it's going to be, and we want to take that vacation before he is obviously gone. I've only saved up about$1 ,500 for a vacation over the past few months or so. Obviously, that's not going to get it done to take a family of nine on a vacation.

36:11We probably need$6 ,000 or so for that vacation. My question is, do we pause on rebuilding that six-month fund back up to about$60 ,000 and put it for the vacation, or get that full six months back in the fund and then focus on a vacation? Man, that's so dangerous. That makes sense. That's just so dangerous. I mean, you completely rationalized spending all of your vacation money and some of your emergency fund on the renovation. and so you chose not to go on vacation when you did that.

36:51True. Yeah. So you traded. Because you had the money to go on vacation. You just didn't do the renovation. But you chose the renovation instead of the vacation. Yeah, basically we bought a house that did not have a built-out basement, and we had half of the house basically. So that's when you chose. When you bought the wrong house, that's when you chose. to not go on vacation. Okay. Because you chose to do a renovation because you chose. But see, these are all choices. It's not like somehow somebody stole something from you and you put the money on one thing and now you don't have it to do the other thing.

37:29That's how it works, right? Yep. Correct. And having nine kids and no emergency fund or a limited emergency fund, dude, you're asking for trouble. Okay. That's so scary. I'm scared for you. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. You're the one with the nine kids. I don't have to feed them. You do, but I'm scared for you. Okay. And I want you to get to do the things you want to do. I'd love for you to go do that. You can do whatever you want to do. Y 'all are adults. You can make these choices. You've been making choices. But I want you to realize that when you're making choosing one thing with money, you're choosing not to do several other things.

38:09Sure. Okay. And so you're choosing, but if you choose to go on vacation and have a limited emergency fund, not if the emergency occurs, when it occurs, because it's going to occur. We have nine opportunities for an emergency here at all times. True. And so when it occurs, then you've chosen to leave your family vulnerable, and the trade was for a vacation. That scares me. So you guys do what you want to do, but I think I'm going on a$1 ,500 vacation. Yeah, and I think I'd, man, Dave, I'm totally with you. And working with parents who were dropping their kids off at college, there's always this illusion that we've got to get this last thing in.

38:50We've got to do this thing. It's not over. No, it's not over, number one. But often that last thing, we don't really care about the kids. We need to do it for us. It's almost like this guilt-induced, this is it, we've got to do a thing, and everybody's got to come do this thing. But we've never had a vacation in how many years? Right. In 17 or 18 years. And we chose to do a renovation or buy a house that required a renovation. Used up all our money instead. That's right. So the vacation obviously was not as important. It wasn't a priority. That's right. And now it's this end. And now there's this sense of, oh, we're about to lose him.

39:20He's going to go away. It's the last spring break. We've got to do this thing. And so I would invite the kids into a room and say, we have this much money. Let's get as creative as possible. We're going to make our own snacks. We're going to go to a KOA. We're going to have a blast. But this is the money we got. And I promise if you do it right, the kids will have a great time. Now, whether you go and feel guilty because it's not in Cabo or something, that's on you, but you chose to spend that Cabo money on a renovation or on a house. But bring the kids along, man, and let's try to get as creative as possible and let them be a part of the planning and see what we can come up with.

39:53Yeah. You seem distressed. Well, I want him to be able to do this. Yeah. But I can't as an adult say it's a good idea. I guess there's, I kind of, I kind of get it. But, but I, the other thing, I think that you're pointing out something that's very right because we had some of the best vacations with our kids that we ever had while they're in college. Yeah. It's not over. As a matter of fact, on the front of a cruise ship one night at happy hour before dinner, they decided as adults to start telling us all the stuff they had done as teenagers that we didn't know. I would have paid money to be there for that.

40:36And I left that room feeling like a total failure as a parent because I had been deceived by these three brats repeatedly throughout their teenage years, and I had no idea. I thought I was so on top of it, and I completely had no idea what these skunks had been into. Well, here's what's going to be fun. At the Ramsey Cruise, I'm going to get Rachel and Daniel, and there's things that have happened in the last decade that you probably don't know about. Oh, I don't even want to. la la la la la la we're gonna we're gonna go through them all again man so yeah it was a great cruise other than that particular evening but yeah it was um but they were adults daniel i think uh maybe denise was out of college and denise and um well no i know i guess denise and rachel were both married come to think of it and here's what y 'all did and we've all heard the statistic about um we do stuff together with them as adults that's better than it would have been when they were 13 i can tell you that well and that's the thing i was just there's a statistic going around that you get 19 years with your kids you get 18 with them at home in the rest of their life all added together as one year and i think that we just go yeah that's all gosh but it's unless you're unless you're a twerp as a parent it's one of those cultural they're just gone and i think nope if you're intentional and you build relationships and you're somebody they want to be around yeah then it's kind of like what stage of children did you like the best yeah all of them they're all different and i don't want to do any of them again but i liked all of them that little boy who just reached out to oh he's great he's great as long as i can hand him back that's what grandparenting is called yeah my son's humongous i don't have to do the potty training i can just do the hugs okay so that that's great that's the way it's supposed to be so you know if i don't know how great grandkids are going to be i'd have been nicer to their parents but you know that that's a different thing so but i'm loving this stage right i'm loving the other stage and i've loved every stage i don't yeah it's um so embrace the toddlerhood embrace the teenage years embrace them leaving for college.

42:30But every expense is a choice at the end of the day. Yeah. And you're choosing, the thing you got to remember is called opportunity cost in the finance world. You lose the opportunity to do B when you do A. When you do B, you lose the opportunity to do A. It'll only do one thing. It won't do both. This is the Ramsey Show.

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44:14Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, PhD in counseling, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Kim is in South Dakota. Hi, Kim. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay. So we lived debt-free, had purchased two used cars. We've followed your program since we had our daughter 20-something years ago and has lived that way, but ran into a little snaggle when we were part of a natural disaster. And we had purchased homeowners insurance with State Farm and had a really high deductible because our opinion was we had enough money saved that if something happened, we would pay for it ourselves and not pay a huge premium.

45:05So that's how we lived our lives. We don't have a go on vacations. We have one child who was in college, and we were paying for that with cash. She's pre-med, so she has to go to school for that. And so that's kind of how we lived our lives until the storm came. But the storm made our house unlivable, and so we had to go into a hotel for two and a half years. And the insurance company did not pay us like they said they would, and so we ran up thousands and thousands of credit card dollars in debt to pay for food, housing, all of that stuff. And unfortunately, we tried to resolve this with them and couldn't.

45:42So we have an attorney who's filing suit against them to try to get our money back. But in the meantime, we're trying to dog paddle our way out of this. And at the same exact time, our child had to have open heart surgery. We had to take her to California, to Stanford. And we spend a lot of time, which I have no control over, these bills at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. So I never know how to budget because I've got hotel bills unexpected when they say you have to come to Mayo. and you have to pay for those things you have to pay for food when you're mayo gas and so it's very difficult to budget so i just wanted to know if there's something i'm missing because sometimes you're too close to it to see it um what's the best way to manage this because i don't feel like i have control like we used to have um and i just wanted some ideas okay um Um, I, I'm missing it.

46:34So for 20 years you were completely debt free and you didn't have any money. Well, we had, did have money, but we used a lot of that, um, to do repair it front. We became the bank of state farm. Yeah, I know. But how much, how much money did you have? Um, we had a, I'm going to say saved up and not used for college cash on him. because we just bought this house probably about$100 ,000 that we had saved up. And so why did it take two and a half years, and why were you not buying your own food while working? Well, we couldn't. In the hotel, you can buy food, but you can't cook if there's no. Well, I mean, if it's going to take two and a half years, why didn't you go rent something?

47:20We tried. There wasn't anything available that met the physical needs that we had. We had moved our neighbor into our home who was 90 years old, actually 95, for end-of-life care, and we couldn't have stairs, and there were just requirements that we had that they could not meet. So we ended up in a hotel, and you had to pay for laundry. You had to pay for meals three times a day. I mean, State Farm screwed you, but so did those decisions. Yeah. I mean, you quadrupled or 5X your cost, and it doesn't take two and a half years to rebuild a house. Oh, it's not even done now. I mean, why? I built an entire house in 11 months.

48:04Why can you not build a house? I've got family members that just lost their house in Texas, and last night was their first night back. But it's been, what, four months, five months? Yeah, two and a half years. Tell me about that. It seems like they could have knocked the whole house down and rebuilt it. It was a natural disaster, so there were lots of building going on, projects going on. So there weren't a lot of contractors available. It was also during the time where you had high gas prices and stuff, and contractors didn't want to come out to look at the house. It wasn't something that they wanted to do because there was so much work.

48:40There was a lot of contributing factors. Also, the fact that State Farm was not approving things, you kept having to wait. They would make us do another estimate and another estimate and another estimate. All right. So, but you stayed in the ditch rather than making a decision to do something completely different for two and a half years. So that's what puts you here. My goodness. And now the health, your daughter that's studying to be a doctor has had open heart surgery? Correct. So she's not studying to be a doctor right now. She's recovering, right? No, the school is letting her stay in school, and she's trying to do stuff online and submit things sometimes late.

49:22Did she have health insurance? She has our health insurance, my husband's health insurance. And does it not cover the surgeries and the other stuff? It covers surgeries, but it doesn't cover any of the other things associated with it, like hotel bills and gas and food when we go to Mayo or when we had to go to Stanford, we went to Stanford for seven months. Yeah. So what is your household income? $188 ,000. And you can't buy a hotel bill and go to Stanford if you make$188 ,000? Well, again, I mean, we did, and, you know, put things on credit cards. Why? You make$188 ,000. Because we had a mortgage payment, and we had college tuition, and we had other things that we were paying.

50:10I mean, it wasn't, and we were paying, you know, for the house while we were in the hotel. I mean, there was a lot of those, and I could sit here and go over a single bill, and you'd go, oh, that makes sense. But we're not extravagant. I mean, we're not, give you an idea, like, we've canceled our trash service and gather up our own trash and take the dump ourselves. Yeah, but hold on. We didn't run sprinklers. But we're saving money. Yeah, we're not trying to pick those apart. I think if I back all the way out of this thing, I think the part for every emotional health challenge, there is this distance from this scary, terrifying line called reality.

50:47And if you on my show, I say this probably three times an episode, which is the life you had is over and you got a new one now. and what most people try to do is keep parts or the whole of their old life going while navigating this new reality and so for instance you were in a position when you were debt-free and had 100 grand in the in the bank and y 'all made 200 000 a year to fully fund your kids college that's a dream you'll have it's a priority for you if you can't afford it though you can't afford it and that's a hard conversation with your kid that that's what i'm that's what i'm talking about Yeah.

51:26And you know, the third month, not the third year, I sue State Farm and I move out of a hotel. The third month. And if I have to pay for nursing home for the 92 year old neighbor as just to make me feel good about that, I will or maybe not. Or go to my church and say, maybe I can't do this. I thought I could help this guy. I can't help this guy anymore. I'm not in a position because only the strong can help the weak. And right now our knees are broken and we can't do anything. And so, no, we can't pay for med school. And no, I'm not living in a hotel. And no, I'm not putting out requirements for a 92-year-old neighbor that caused me to go completely broke and lose everything I owned.

52:04Because I stayed in a hotel two and a half years longer than I should have. So I think you've got to start putting some limitations on some of these things that you keep declaring as absolutes in this conversation. The absolute is we've got to have a place to live and we've got to keep our daughters healthy. and outside of that I think everything's got to be back on the table. 188 ,000 will do those things yeah without credit card debt and without parsing it out and parsing it out and parsing it out you know so and you know just if it's any consolation to you at all state farm has a horrible reputation on claims you're not the only one so sue their butt but I'm not going to wait around on them to fix my life either.

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54:39Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Larry Burkett used to be on the air a thousand years ago, did a Christian radio show, Money Matters, it was called, about what the Bible says about money. And he's one of the guys I learned from. I certainly learned what the Bible says about money from Larry a lot. He passed away several years ago. We became friends before he passed away, but at first I was just a fanboy. And he used to say, debt is never the problem. Financial problems are never the problem. They're always the symptom.

55:26So you need to keep that in mind because that's how we're going to view it. Personal finance is 80 % behavior. It's 20 % head knowledge. So if you have a student loan debt that you've made no progress on for five years, the student loan debt is not the problem. The new triplets that just came were not here for the last five years. They're not the problem. problem the interest rate is not the issue this is not an interest rate issue this is a you problem and John when people get to the bottom of that that's the beautiful thing about the work you do in counseling with a PhD in counseling and the work that that the reason you joining this team as a Ramsey personality, is a perfect overlap to our approach to money because the interest rate is irrelevant because you haven't dealt with you.

56:32That's the thing. When you deal with you, you're not only going to get financial peace, two words that don't go together like airline service, but you're also going to get progress and wealth. Until you deal with you, you're not going to get any of that. Right. And it's hard to sell somebody on that when they're so convinced from a TikTok ad or a TikTok swipe or whatever, where they got the information. And I think a lot of us sit in our house, man, and we just spin out with life's problems. I can't imagine having triplets just show up after having a couple of other kids. It's that whatever your problem happens to be, you lost your job, your marriage is falling apart, whatever it is.

57:14And it's so much easier. We have so much distraction in our world. We can just spin our wheels and jam that gas pedal into the bottom of the car thinking we're going real fast and we're going nowhere. We're just avoiding. But money is such an interesting topic because it lets us, it lures us to our own death because it makes us think we can fix it by fixing the math. And the math is very seldom the problem. The math is the symptom. It's not the problem. The problem is our spending, our income, our lack of control, our lack of working together. Our choices. I'm going to keep these for five years.

58:00Our behaviors and our principles by which, but we somehow think we can unplug from all of this stuff that's called our life and set this money thing over here to the side and just fix it with just math. And the reason you can't is it doesn't unplug. It's sitting there right in the middle of your freaking life because your life is impacting it. It's impacting your life. You can't just set it over here in a test tube and go, it's a math thing, 6 % versus zero. It's not a math thing. And let's, let's, I want to speak to the person who's listened to this or to the gajillions of people who are listening to this, who are five years from today away from triplets or a job loss or a mom calling and saying, I have cancer or a husband saying, I haven't been faithful or whatever the thing is.

58:50That choice starts now because five years ago, if they had been hell bent on paying these things off, it's life would still be chaotic. but I want people to listen to that man's voice. It just sounds cooked, right? It's heartbreaking. And you can celebrate the chaos of three kids coming home or not be able to breathe because there's no room for three kids. I remember when our oldest daughter, Denise, had the third one. Her husband, Bill, said, well, we just went from man-on-man to zone defense. My buddy said, man, it was all cool until we went from man-on-man to zone. They win. Taylor is in Indianapolis.

59:31Hey, Taylor, what's up? How are we doing today? Thank you for taking my call. Sure, man. How can I help? So I'm thinking about doing a job switch. Right now I drive a dump truck, and I'm in the union and everything, but I'm looking to be a pilot. But I have$5 ,000 in debt, and it's going to send me back another$85 ,000, but I plan on having the$5 ,000 that I have now and paying that off this season before I get laid off. Now, you're asking me if I think you should go$85 ,000 in debt to be a pilot? Is that what you're asking? Yeah, if you think it's a smart job switch. No, it's not. Okay. Under no circumstances would I do that.

1:00:12Now, should you go become a pilot? Yeah, probably. How old are you? I'm 30. Okay. Are you married? I am. Okay. I would talk to the Air National Guard and see if they have any programs for training pilots while you serve your country, weekends, and two or three sets of boot camp a year. That wouldn't put you away from your family necessarily, or not for long periods of time. And see if they'll pay for it. They have lots of wonderful programs. I know that. um i i also would start talking to the local airport about how i can get my hours there after i get a i would pay to get a certain number of hours and get my first set of library are you licensed at all um no right now i drive a dump truck no i know i heard that but have you gotten any pilots hours in at all uh no how do you know you want to do that um i worked at the airport about five years ago and I wanted to do it about then that time sorry but I never pulled the trigger and I ended up just going to get my CDLs and I've been at this for about five years now okay all right I'm with you on living your dream I just don't want you to do it in such a way it becomes a nightmare so let's figure out a way that we can walk into this a little at a time start getting your hours in while you keep driving truck and because you're making some good money on the truck but we're not we just don't want to be doing that 10 years from now you want to be in the air right yes but i don't want i don't want to try to do it at super high speed because i don't want you going 85 000 in debt because you might not make 65 000 the first year it's very possible if you got your commercial hours in and you can actually fly a jet and that may cost you more than 85 000 to get to that point where you can actually pick up a regional job doing some of these puddle jumpers they don't pay anything man yeah entry-level pilot pay sucks yeah i'm from what i heard it's about 55 000 a year but then yep i would be going with lift academy to say i get on with republic and they pay 94 an hour starting off so maybe maybe maybe but hey you're about to walk into the trap brother where you borrow a bunch of money and you've done some napkin envelope on the top carrier paying a top dollar and you've made that math work yeah and there's a lot of maybes and maybe nots and probably and probably nots in between you and that dollar amount man so you're trying to jump from the dock into the boat and the boat's not close enough to the dock that's what i'm saying so i want you to pull the boat closer to the dock and how's that sound it sounds like going over there starting to get some of your hours paying for your first level of licenses, maybe get a weekend job as an instructor once you've got enough hours under your belt, and they'll pay you to put more hours down, and you can start to build your hours up.

1:03:08Because the biggest cost is not the actual certifications, it's the hours to get ready. And then if you want to take, because when you take a job at 55 or 60 versus what you're doing now, union to dump truck, you're taking a pay cut to move into this dream initially. And I don't care if you found one off at 94. That's not the industry. The industry is 55 or 60 right now for entry. And I want you to go do that because you can make your way up to two or 300 ,000 someday, but please don't go$85 ,000 in debt and rush this. Do it a little bit at a time and or talk to the Air National Guard. Let's see if you can figure out a way to get some hours working for your country and they'll pay for the whole stinking thing possibly.

1:03:49I don't know. Let's see what they got out there. This is the Ramsey Show.

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1:05:18Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. The Ramsey Show Question of the Day is brought to you by Why Refi. We trust Y-Refi because they help people who have defaulted private student loans. And they help them refinance with a low fixed interest rate that you can't get anywhere else. One guy named Chris did it. He had a student loan. He cut his payment by 40 % with Y-Refi. Go to Y-Refi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. Might not be in all states. All right. Today's question comes from Jenna in Minnesota. Jenna writes, Should I help my boyfriend pay off student loan debt?

1:05:59No. I guess we could just end it there, but I'll keep going. I know what you're going to say, so let me explain. Still no. We both went to college for mechanical engineering. My parents covered my tuition, but my boyfriend has over$125 ,000 in college loans. We both work good jobs and bring home a combined income of$200 ,000, but his loan payments are killing him. He didn't want to burden me with them, and he wants to put our life on hold, marriage, house, and children until they're paid off. He has about$15 ,000 in savings, and so this is going to be a long process. I have$80 ,000 in savings and roughly$300 ,000 in stocks that my grandpa set up for me when I was a kid.

1:06:34Should I help pay off my boyfriend's loans by adding an amount to his payment every month, pay them outright, or do you think I shouldn't help him at all? Should you cave to his blackmail? I was going to say, it's a red herring. It's a proxy. It's a ploy. Yes. So listen, kiddo, we tell folks when they get married, everything becomes shared. So you will have$125 ,000 student loan when you're married because your husband does. He will have$300 ,000 in stocks that his wife's grandfather left her. He will have$80 ,000 in savings that his wife had before they got married. And so when you get home from the honeymoon, pay off the student loan.

1:07:17But this is bull crap. bullcrap on a stick so frustrating yeah tell boy child time to you know part of the problem is is we're all playing house over here so he's got no incentive to get married other than blackmail you into it so now if you want to have a healthy relationship y 'all get married yesterday since you're playing house anyway we have a combined income you don't have a combined income you're not married that's bullcrap you're shacking up and we would not have a show if people like you didn't withdraw$125 ,000 from the money that their grandparents sent them to pay off a boyfriend's loans and then y 'all break up.

1:07:58Oh yeah, that's like standard. We wouldn't have this show if that didn't happen all the time. And I know you can say, no, not us, not us. No, he would never do that. The guy that won't marry me would never do that. You know how you sound? So seriously, no. Don't, please don't, please don't, please don't. Time to get married, boys and girls. Look, I think it's a good altar call right here. It's come to Jesus. Are we going to do this or not? Because if you're going to get married, y 'all come home from the honeymoon, we would tell you to take the$380 ,000 that you have in assets and pay off the$125 ,000 debt that he has, and then we take off with our life with our fabulous combined income and zero debt and whatever's left of that money, which would still be$200 ,000.

1:08:44So, yeah. And by the way, when you get married, what you're agreeing to do is to help carry burdens together. For richer, for poorer. And so if he already says, well, I've got this thing going on, so I'm going to hide it from you. I don't want to be with you. I don't want to be apart from you. This will be the rest of your life. This will happen with kids. This will happen with tuition. This will happen with which church to go to. This will happen again and again and again. This is the big glaring neon sign. We have to put our life on hold. He doesn't want to burden me with that. We have to put our life on hold.

1:09:13He's not ready to marry you then. Oh, brother. We're going to work together. Work together, work together. I'm going to give this guy about 20 minutes. Get me to the church on time, baby. I'm serious. I'm done with this guy. This is bothering me. There's something about this that's running all over me, and I'm usually a little bit, I'm pretty mean, but I'm usually a little bit more gentle than this. Yeah. But there's something wrong, Jenna. Here's what is getting under my skin. Oh, I know what it is. You have worded all of this. It's all the dadgum language. That's what's killing me. You have worded all this because you have bought this freaking sales line.

1:09:54That's it. That's the thing. She thinks she's the problem. She thinks she is the problem here. This guy has complete. I'm afraid he's a con artist. He's a leech. Yeah. So either way, listen, you either need to leave or you need to get married. Please don't pay off his loans. And don't pay off his loans unless you get married. And if you get married, then it's our loans and our money, and we'll do that. But you got about 20 minutes, buddy. About 20 minutes. Stop the sales job. Don't like con artists who are sleeping with the person they're conning. It's a problem. Dadgum salesman. Sorry. I think I've had too much coffee, John.

1:10:36Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho. Oh, my gosh. I need to calm down. But, yeah, I just – I think about my girls, and they did not thank God. You know, thank God. We taught them how to pick, and they picked studs. So I've got two sons-in-law. They're absolutely incredible men. Yeah, I've got a young daughter, and – You would kill him. But here's why. I saw you just got one. I know. I do. Here's why. This young woman, Jenna, is astounding. Yeah. She's a dadgum. She's a mechanical engineer. She makes$100 ,000. she's got half a million dollars already put together because her grandpa hooked her up and she's got this guy that she loves and the guy is making her the reason and so she's asking herself every day what am i doing wrong oh i have another way i can save this thing i i want to help i know what you're gonna say but i'm different no it's not you it's him it's him you're worth more than this that's what i'll say you're more valuable the dad of a daughter we're angry for are you, Kevin?

1:11:37Brought to you by Y-Refi and Preparation H. Because I got hemorrhoids now. God, it makes me so mad when guys are idiots. Patrick's in Orlando. Hey, Patrick, what's up? Hey, guys. So the situation is my wife and I are 67, and we've got$2.8 million in four different mutual funds. Way to go. We're not free. Thank you. Thank you. We're debt-free, and we got an offer we couldn't refuse on our business. We closed December 11th. We get$575 cash, and we hold a note for five years for$300. So that brings me to the question, because I've got a daughter that lives in Austin, Texas, and she and her husband have been married for 20 years, and we have a beautiful grandchild, and they're saving for a house.

1:12:35They're also debt-free. They're doing everything right. They're both teachers and they want to get a house. And they're saving like crazy. Two rounds of IVF to get Julia here pretty much wiped out their savings. And they're trying to come back for that. And I'm thinking, you know, December 11th, I collect$575. I could probably, you know, give them the money for a pretty nice house in Austin with that$575. And so that's one option. Do it. Option two would be really strong. Just do it. Yeah, I like it. I like it. Can I add one thing to it? Yeah. Okay. I do want this to be a gift, and I'll teach you a technical thing you need to do.

1:13:22But aside from that, I do want it to be a gift without strings, sort of. Right. But I would sit down in person with them, you and your wife, go to dinner, and make this a big deal. This is not just a drive-by breakfast one morning coffee. Okay? We're going to a nice restaurant. We're going to make a production out of this and say, this has nothing to do with the grandkid. Although you've said it six times that it does, but it doesn't. Okay? It shouldn't. It shouldn't. Because you shouldn't give it to them because of the grandkid. You should give it to them because they have been responsible and you're not bringing harm to them and you're not enabling bad behavior.

1:14:02Instead, you're accentuating and lifting the positive thing that they have been doing with their life. And it's going to it's going to change your family tree the rest of the way. So, yes, you should do it. And I would say I'm going to give this to you with no strings attached. I will tell you I have a favor to ask that you promise to never borrow money again. Love it. and I wouldn't make them. It's not a contract, but I would just say I'm doing this to change my family tree. But if you go screw that up by borrowing money, it's going to break my heart. And I would do it. Unified estate tax credit.

1:14:40Talk to your tax guy. You need to use up some of your estate tax exemptions so you don't have gift tax. Don't do this without tax advice. Go get some tax advice, please. This is the Ramsey Show.

1:15:01Hey, it's Rachel Cruz. The holidays are here, which means family time and giving back and remembering what the season is all about. And let's be real. It also means shopping. Y 'all, if you're anything like me, December gets really busy and really expensive. It's harder to stay intentional with your spending. And that's why I love shopping on Amazon, especially this time of year. Named the lowest priced U.S. online retailer for nine years running by Profitero, a third-party analytics and research firm, Amazon's prices are up to 14 % lower across top categories and beat competitors by up to 5 % in key gift categories.

1:15:41Between amazing deals, stress-free shopping, and fast shipping, Amazon makes gift giving simpler, the holiday season a little brighter, and helps me keep my budget in check. That allows me to get back to enjoying the season. What more could a busy mom ask for? So for more information about Amazon's low prices and easy, affordable holiday shopping, head to Amazon today.

1:16:21Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Matt is in Seattle. Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. I got a question for you. So I currently have three jobs and spend more than 12 hours a day working. And I save and invest about half my income. So I'm saving about$100 ,000 a year. So financially we're sound, but it comes at a cost. So I'm not spending enough time with my children, and my health is deteriorating. Well, I'm not dying, but it's impacting negatively. How much do you have in savings and your investments?

1:17:07Yeah, so I've been doing this. I've been having three jobs for about five years now, going into six years. So you put a half million dollars away. yeah exactly so with that money i've bought um four homes one primary residence and three single-family homes and i'm renting it all out right now okay and what are the three single family homes worth um roughly on average about 600k each and i bought it for about yet correct okay so the the three rental properties are worth 1.8 million dollars and they're paid for no no no no no um about about like 40 i have about 40 percent equity on each house oh so you still have debt on them okay correct okay so wait a half a minute okay so when it comes to equity i have about 1.3 in all of all those four houses gotcha and i have about 350 50 ,000 in savings.

1:18:09So what's your question? And IRA combined. Yeah. So I just turned 40 and I, I've been happy so far, but like, I just turned 40 this year. And since then I've been thinking about a lot of stuff. Like, am I, am I doing a good thing? And I, initially I thought, um, uh, I'm being the right thing for the family, but I'm starting to think about myself too. I think I'm just kind of going through the midlife crisis. But also, so when I think about quitting those two jobs, the thought of living paycheck to paycheck terrifies me. Honey, you're not living paycheck to paycheck. You're putting$100 ,000 away.

1:18:51Quitting two jobs is not going to make you paycheck to paycheck. You're so exaggerating that. Well, if I, after I put all the like next out on 401k and IRA, I'm not going to be saving any money at all on a monthly basis. So back off of your investing, you only got$2 million. You're not living paycheck to paycheck. That's a bogus emotional response. Why are you afraid to just sit at home with your family, dude? Yeah. Why? Why? Well, initially I was part of the fire movement, but I'm thinking a lot of things can happen in the future. Yeah, the fire movement burned down. Did you notice? It burned to the ground.

1:19:41It burned around people's ears because they were trying to do something that wasn't sustainable. What you're doing is not sustainable. What you're doing is not sustainable. You didn't build a life. You built a financial portfolio. And now your brain is waking up and saying, go build a life. and we're saying yes, go build a life. Here's what I promise you, dude. I agree with your brain. When you're 50, you can hand the kids a key to a rental house. I promise you they would have exchanged it for time with their dad. And by the way, that's a false dichotomy because you work hard. You're still going to be able to offer your kids a pretty extraordinary life financially and you get to spend time with your kids.

1:20:23I think you're scared to go home and be with your family. Am I wrong? Well, are you afraid to admit that the fire thing you bought into sucked? And also, I think it has to do with my ego. Like, I just feel like I'm successful and superior. And you have four houses worth$1.3 million, but you owe— Your net worth is$2 million and you're 40 years old. Ding, ding, you got the bell. You rung the bell. You're done. You're done. If you don't do anything else, you're going to be worth$20 million at 65. If you just let the investments that you have grow, that's all. There's no need to panic here. And, by the way, people working and enjoying their work and going to work and having meaning, as long as they're able, is not bad.

1:21:11I intend to be on this microphone until I don't make sense. Now, I don't want to be one of those guys that doesn't make sense. We've seen those, and they're dangerous. but um yeah so anyway yeah we need to get off at that point but uh no you dude yeah your brain is telling you what to do you already know what to do all i'm telling you is is your emotions are exaggerating that you're like going to be starving to death and or something and living paycheck to paycheck not even close how much of oh here's an idea quit And if a year from now you think you're going to be homeless or something, go back to work.

1:21:52Three different jobs. You can get those jobs right back. Those kinds of jobs are always waiting. How much of this stress, Dave, because I've never lived this life, you keep telling yourself with your neocortex, your thinking part of your brain, I'm worth$1.3 million. I'm worth$1.3 million. But your amygdala, the threat detection part of your brain says, you still owe$900 ,000 on these four houses. You still owe money. You still owe money. And every month, no matter what your net worth is or how much money you have coming in, your brain knows you're still on the hook for all these properties. That's got to weigh you down, doesn't it?

1:22:26That's probably part of it. But I think he's been running at breakneck speed. He didn't even notice that part. That's my opinion, just talking to him. He's just exhausted. I think he's just, no, he was trying to run. He thought there was an end game. Tell me about FIRE. FIRE is. Retire young? Retire at 40, not have to work again. And the numbers don't work. Gotcha. Because the problem with money, when you view money that way, is money is a bully in the schoolyard. As soon as you say, hit me in the nose, you step back. If you cross this line, I'm going to hit you. You step across the line, he steps back and draws another line.

1:23:02He says, if you cross this line, then I'm going to hit you. And that's what money does. Because there's always another one. There's always a bigger thing. There's always a different thing. There's always a reason. There's always inflation. There's always a better car. There's always a, oh, mama wanted a house in the mountains. Oh, there's always, there's always, doesn't matter where you get to, there's always another one, and a bigger one and a shinier one. So you just can't get away from it once you get on that treadmill. You can't catch that carrot. It's impossible to catch. and so uh if you could maintain godliness with contentment and say okay i'm gonna live a lifestyle of fifty thousand dollars a year income then you can build a big enough nest egg to quit but you can you're something about our psychology won't let us do it we start out with that and that's the math but then by the time we get used to living on a hundred and fifty thousand lifestyle uh then i got to go back to a fifty thousand dollar lifestyle to quit which is exactly what he's saying he's saying i'm going to be paycheck to be not even close to paycheck to paycheck but he's going to have to cut his lifestyle he's going to have to drop his investing from a hundred thousand dollars a year contribution now that was in addition to maxing out everything else yeah yeah so he can still max out everything and he can't do a hundred thousand dollars extra extra yeah and that's paycheck to paycheck that's not paycheck to pay there's also this you get to be 40 and you got two million dollars and you thought it was going to feel a different way that's true you thought it was going to be a billion you thought you were going to do nothing and doing nothing will kill you it's one of the things i had to outline with all these um little communists that are coming out of college have to explain to them the um that a billionaire is not the same thing as a millionaire.

1:24:49A billionaire, a billion is a thousand million. Billionaires have four houses, a jet, and seven cars. Millionaires have two used Camrys and one house. And it's paid for, and they have$800 ,000 in their 401k. That's a millionaire. But a billionaire is a thousand million. And people emotionally have these two things confused. They think of some rap artist or whatever in a private jet, which they don't even know. It's chartered. But, I mean, they think it's, oh, that's how, you don't live like that with a$3 million net worth. You know, stupid jet would be more than that, much less, you know, the whole, I mean, it's just like, so that's not how it works.

1:25:41It's the emotions of when I get to be a millionaire, I'm going to be a billionaire. No, you're not. You're going to be a millionaire. Two used Camrys. And that's still a good thing. Two used Camrys, an$800 ,000 in your 401k, and a paid-for$500 ,000 house. And a lot of laughter in your home. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You're done. This is the Ramsey Show.

1:26:25Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studios. Dr. John Deloney, number one best-selling author, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, massive hit on Ramsey Network. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Lynn is in New York. Hi, Lynn. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I wanted to see if I should take out a$10 ,000 loan to help my mom fix her kitchen. There's some emotional reasons why I would and why I wouldn't. Ultimately, I'm trying to see if the financials make sense to help me make the decision. So you don't have$10 ,000 to give your mom?

1:27:09I don't, no. Okay. And your mom's broke? she yeah she has a pension she has social security she's retired so she's on a fixed income how old is your mom she's almost 80 and how's her health she's actually quite spry for her age good okay and what's wrong with her kitchen um she tends to hire uh do a lot of diy lie and like hire handymen who aren't quite handy and so in her kitchen few years uh to to renovate the home in general oh i see so okay yeah and so um you know she's half funded projects over the years and it's left the kitchen you know with only a subfloor no cabinets no countertops um it's just kind of in a state of disrepair and she is older even though her health um is pretty great i worry about you know her age and food safety physical safety in that space

1:28:18wow really bad decisions yeah um okay man i just appreciate how much you love your mom that's sweet of you that you want to take care of and you don't want to live in a house that probably wouldn't pass codes right now. So that's nice of you. You do know you called the show where we'd never tell anybody to borrow money, right? You know you called that show. I did, and I'm trying to – the other part is I've worked really hard over the last few years. To get out of debt. And I'm not going to tell you to spend$10 ,000 on an 80-year-old's kitchen. Yeah. The math doesn't work. I mean, if you had a million dollars laying in your account and you want to spend$10 ,000 on an 80-year-old's kitchen, that's fine.

1:29:07But I wouldn't do that. Okay. And I certainly wouldn't borrow the money to do it under any circumstances. But I do applaud your heart. Now, let's try to fix the problem, though. Okay. A different way. So is your mom in a good church? um she i would say she does go to a church um good but the church is the place where she has been recommended these people who have like fixed her home but that's even better that's even better so here's what i want you to do i want you to take some pictures of the mess that is her kitchen and i want you to go have a lunch meeting with her pastor and say, some of the jack legs that go to your church have done this.

1:29:54And so I'm going to ask, since we have an elderly widow over here, that you organize a work group of some young men who actually know how to swing a hammer and come over and put her some cabinets in and put a floor down.

1:30:07I want you to take care of an elderly widow because she's an elderly widow and she's a member of your church. And I really want you to do it because some of the jack legs that go to your church are the ones that caused the problem in the first place.

1:30:21And I got a feeling you can shame this pastor into getting some work done. Okay. Nothing feels better than shaming a pastor. I'm messing with you. I'm being harsh, but you see what I'm saying. But can I tell you, this is some of the best advice I've heard you give, Dave. I love this idea because you know why? It is, it's the bluff call. Are y 'all going to be who you're supposed to be? You're going to take care of widows and orphans. Here you go. you got you got quiet on us lynn why don't you like that plan i mean the handbook says that's real religion widows and orphans yeah that's what the handbook says my mom um she doesn't like accepting help she's not always the most uh but she was going to take a ten thousand dollar loan from you to do a kitchen that's called help she didn't ask me necessarily for the loan i know but you were you had a plan where she was going to do that so let's have a plan where her church supports her because her church's jack legs are the ones that mess this up.

1:31:18And by the way, this is going to be good practice because over the next 10 years, she's going to need more and more support and care from you and others. And others. And you're going to have to get out of the habit of debt fixes anything. Because it makes it worse. Because I don't want to give you a negative scenario, but I really don't want you paying a loan off after your mom passes away and you're paying payments on a kitchen that she no longer uses. That would be really, really negative. Can you imagine writing that check every month? Yeah, and it wouldn't be an investment in that sense that I would get back.

1:32:00Nope, nope, nope, it wouldn't. So it's not, yeah. No, it's not. It's just consumption. And it's just your sweetheart wanting to help your sweet mom. And I think both of you are sweet ladies, and I don't want her to get messed over anymore, and I don't want you to mess yourself over trying to be sweet. And so let's not do this. Let's not step up in this trap. I'm real serious. If it was you, if I was you, I'd go have a— and I've got the money to write the check, but in this case, I think this church has an opportunity to serve. And that's the other side of it is they have an opportunity to live out a mission with the congregants of that place.

1:32:36This is one of those rare win, win, win, win, wins where everybody wins, and an elderly widow gets her kitchen put back together, and the church gets an opportunity to go help somebody out. That's awesome. And I don't know how we got here, but seriously, if a recommendation came from inside of her congregation and they left an elderly widow in this situation, the pastor really has an opportunity to work with that person on their character. Right. Absolutely. because you just don't want to be on this list. You don't want to be on the list of people messing with kids, widows, and orphans. There's several things in the scriptures that you don't want to be on that list.

1:33:15You want to be on the list of the people that help those people. That's the list you want to be on. It's the naughty list and the good list. I mean, this is it. It's not Santa Claus, but it's God. And so, you know, it's serious stuff.

1:33:31You know what? that's a great idea. I hope that happens more and more. Well, you have so many opportunities to do things that way. And, um, and honestly, I work with so many churches. I mean, we work with, had 50 ,000 churches have taught 10 million financial peace congregants, um, over the last 25 years. And I know a bazillion churches that have the funds and have the systems to take care of the single mom, the widow, the orphan, and they don't always know a way to connect to one. And so just giving them the opportunity, letting them, hey, here's one. And they go, thank you. And they're ready to go do it.

1:34:13It's pretty incredible that they're just standing there ready to go. They're willing, ready, and able. They just don't have the connection. And because no one wants to raise their hand and say, help me. And I know a number of young men who are asking, hey, there's no places to serve. Like I can go to a local soup kitchen or something, but I got to get in line. And there's other, man, if you could go to church. There's a 25-year-old Bible study group of men at that church. Show up on a weekend. And this was their weekend project. They could put that whole kitchen back together. It'd be amazing.

1:34:40Yeah. And then they'd all walk a little bit taller, too. If everybody wins, boys and girls, this is how this works. I like it.

1:35:03Listen up, guys, because I've got a big question for you. Where will you be with your money at the end of 2026? Will you be better off, worse, or exactly the same? Believe it or not, you get to choose. Look, I know there's a lot going on that can make you feel powerless over your money, but I want you to hear me. You're more in control than you think. You can turn your finances around. So let me help you out. Start your year off with me and Dave Ramsey at our free EveryDollar live stream event on January 8th. We're cutting through all the lies and all the chaos out there that's keeping you stuck.

1:35:38So you have the clarity you need to finally get ahead. And you could even win$2 ,000 just for signing up. Listen, another year is going to pass anyway. So decide that this is the year you're going to take back control of your life and your money. Go sign up for the free live stream at everydollar.com slash live stream.

1:36:20Okay, if you're going to win with money, you have to tell it what to do instead of wondering where it went. If you don't know where all your money went in 2025, that's normal, but normal sucks. We don't want to be normal. Next year can be different. Get a head start by downloading EveryDollar. The app, EveryDollar, helps you build a personalized plan so you can work the Ramsey principles, coaches you to find extra money, and put it all to work to beat debt and become wealthy. Answer a few questions. Many people find thousands of dollars on average in just the first 15 minutes. Every dollar still has the same great budgeting features, but it's also going to help you work the Ramsey plan now, new and improved.

1:36:57Don't go into the year feeling broken, stressed. Start every dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play right now. James is in Rhode Island. Hi, James. How are you? Good, Dave. How are you guys doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? All right. So I'm a 40-year-old guy. I got a fiancé and a baby who turned 2 in July. And my fiance and I, we have three Airbnbs that are doing really well. Four years into it, last year we grossed about$102 ,000. This year we're forecasting to do about$127 ,000 gross on the three Airbnbs with a 62 % profit margin. Day job is hospitality sales. I make about$100 ,000,$120 ,000 a year.

1:37:41She is a psychologist. She makes about$110 ,000. And so our issue is there are these micro lofts and another one is available, but it's in a super historic old building. And I'm thinking about getting a fourth Airbnb, but the banks are telling me that I got to put 40 percent down. They're going for about two and a quarter. so i want to hear your take if i should get another profitable airbnb and have it under the same roof as all my other ones or is that considered maybe too high risk okay um well i not sure you called the right show i'm not sure you know what we do but um the uh So I own several hundred million dollars in real estate.

1:38:37I love real estate as an investment. I went broke in the real estate business in my 20s, if you haven't heard the story. And the way I did that was I borrowed too much money. And the banks called our notes because we were in a high-risk scenario. The Airbnb business is basically the hotel business. it's a very high labor intense you know a lot of hassle so the money that you're earning on those airbnbs you're working your hiney off to get that money and you're probably yeah i am you're working some other people's hiney off because it's a lot of hassle i'm the maintenance man i'm the housekeeper i'm the guy checking them in yep yeah i mean and you have a two-year-old away so yep yeah why don't you pick up golf too oh my god you know i mean you ain't got time to do nothing um so uh i i don't know that you have the bandwidth to add another one on your personal number one number two the risk with airbnbs is that as you probably know and i don't know where it stands in providence in rhode island but many hoas many neighborhoods uh many entire municipalities are passing zoning to stop it because they're disruptive to the neighborhood um and so i know a lot of people that have lost the ability to run an ab airbnb on a property they bought for an airbnb and in a historic setting that's very possible right it's it's any unique building it's the oldest mall in america where there's retail on the first floor and the second and third floor was repurposed to Airbnb.

1:40:27So it is in a commercial zone. Okay, so that means the risk of them rezoning it and keeping you from doing it is less? To my understanding, yes. Or it's going to take one new tenant downstairs that's a big tenant that says, I don't want people living upstairs. Well, we're all on the board. No, they've already got residential in there. It's just a matter of whether it's nightly rental residential because it's a hotel in a sense. So I don't know. You're doing some things I don't want to do, and I don't recommend people do things I don't want to do. So number one thing you're doing is you're buying property with someone you're not married to.

1:41:04Very dangerous. Number two, you're going in debt to do it. Very dangerous. Number three, you have a high-risk business model that's dependent upon someone else called Airbnb. Very dangerous. Number four, you have to do all the freaking work, and you're getting ready to add 25 % of the workload going from three to four, and you have a two-year-old. Very dangerous. So that's what I meant by I don't know if you've been around as much. I'm not trying to be mean to you. I just think that all you have seen in this is the upside. You've not considered any of the downsides, and that's the way I was in my 20s, and it's what caused me to go broke.

1:41:45And so now I'm always looking. I'm not a negative thinker. I buy, I mean, like I said, I own hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate. I love real estate, but I have low hassle real estate. I don't own a single Airbnb. And we've got enough residential, I easily could do that. But we don't want to screw with it. It's just too dadgum much work for the money, too much drama for the money. And so we'd rather make the money, you know, a little slower and with a lot less hassle factor. And we don't borrow money. 100 % of our real estate is paid for. I don't borrow money to buy real estate. So I'm a fan of the category of real estate.

1:42:23But after that, I've kind of given you some things to think about. So until you've thought through all of those things and make sure that you've decided how you're going to own what ownership vehicle you're going to own this in with someone that you're not married to, oh, real dangerous. You know, that you get yourself in all kinds of messes here. And I think that's what the bank is smelling and that's why they're wanting a huge downstroke um but um you know a good way to look at any business opportunity too james is to scale it in your mind and if it doesn't scale then don't grow it meaning if it works for 40 airbnbs we might do four if it works for four but not five five or not 10, then maybe we shouldn't do four.

1:43:15Why is that? Well, because it's going to, the, the, the idea is not scalable to where you get out of being the maintenance man. You, you, you just have to keep absorbing more work and more work and more work. And pretty soon you're going to go, I want to quit my job and be Mr. Airbnb. Right. And that's not scalable. Then your one Airbnb app change or one Airbnb municipality to change or you're one yeah apple decides they're not going to support the app anymore that's right with 13 point whatever oh my crap you know i mean all kinds of people i mean it caught that caught that little move right there cost us about 20 million dollars two years ago so uh you know that just because apple decided to cough and so um you know all that stuff so these are things you can't anticipate and you leave yourself vulnerable to it when you're just living right on the wire when you're around the edge and then you just keep adding to it keep adding to the plate till the food falls off you know and that's that's what I heard here is a really super busy guy well ambitious guy you said this and man this has become increasingly um I felt it heavier and heavier I have a very real lived experience being in the workforce during 2008-2009 and there seems to be a lot of folks who have entered into 2010 to 2025 and it's been seemingly mostly upside.

1:44:40It's just been win after win after win after win. Plus or minus COVID. Yeah, plus or minus COVID. And there's the assumption that it's just going to keep going that way. And there's no – I mean, it's tough to tell somebody, hey, you have to be prepared for when this thing goes south a little bit or when the roller coaster goes down. And, man, people don't have the psychology for it right now. Yeah. I mean, if you've got your thing based on the Airbnb income before and suddenly they don't rent for four months, you're in bankruptcy. Whereas if you own them all in cash, you're annoyed. Exactly. You're really annoyed.

1:45:15Or you put renters in. Yeah. And you get out of the Airbnb business and you move on. And that's not a big deal. Right. But, yeah, this is a problem. So, no, I like James because he's ambitious and he's going after it. He's going for it. I want to support that. But I believe in being a nightmare killer, not a dream killer.

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1:46:42Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, best-selling author, and, of course, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, which you need to tune in and check out on the Ramsey Networks. Zachary is with us. He's in St. Louis. Hi, Zachary. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How are you guys doing? Better than we deserve, sir. What's up? Well, I had a question for you. I'm actually a pastor over here at a small town church, and I just want to say I very much appreciate all that you do. Thank you. But one question that's come up for me is I often hear you use the phrase, the borrower is slave to the lender.

1:47:21And I definitely agree with that principle in many ways. But then on the other end, I noticed that when it comes to a mortgage, you are okay borrowing in that instance, which seems almost to betray that principle a little bit. And I guess I was just curious on your reasoning as to why you think it's okay to borrow in that instance. But then when it comes to something like a car, especially for someone like me, I live a little bit in the country where I'm at. So it's a little bit more difficult. A car is almost a requirement. Pastor, that is a wonderful question. Yeah. It's a really good question.

1:47:59Of course, you're quoting the scriptures, Proverbs 22, 7, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower's slave to the lender. And this is a biblical principle that we're violating when we say it's okay to take out a mortgage. And that's your point. And you're correct completely on that. or when we tell people it's okay to do that. So are you 26? I'm actually like 31. 31. So I had to think about that for a second. Okay, that's okay. You lose count around 30. It happens. So, yeah, I'm on the 34th anniversary of my 30th birthday. All right. So the answer to your question is it is the only hypocritical advice we give on this show.

1:48:46it's the only thing that was hypocritical we give on the show. It's the only thing we tell people it's okay to do that. I never do. I went broke in my twenties as I was a baby Christian. I had just met God and I discovered in that process, a guy teaching that what the Bible said about money named Larry Burkett. And I said, I'm going to follow what the Bible says. I'm never borrowing money again. And I've never borrowed money again. I don't borrow money for anything ever for any reason under any circumstances. is everything else I tell people on the show to do, I do exactly what I say to do. Allowing people to take out a mortgage without me yelling at them, it's the only time that my advice is inconsistent with my life.

1:49:30Does that make sense? Right. And it's completely fair for you to call me out on it, and then I'll answer your question. But I wanted to caveat that and say I don't borrow money for anything, and sometimes when I get a question where it's kind of borderline whether they have to borrow or not, I tell them that story. I say, hey, I don't borrow for anything, and I recommend that. That is the best way. If you follow biblical principles, you're going to, in your marriage, your marriage is going to prosper. If you follow biblical principles, raising your kids, your kids are going to be amazing. If you follow biblical principles in your mental health and your emotional state, you're going to prosper.

1:50:06And the same is true in your money and in your leadership. If you're running a church, running a business, same thing's true. So I, evangelical, man, I believe if the Bible says it and you do it, it's a good thing, right? So I'm with you on that. Now, the reason that I lighten up when someone calls in on that is two things. One is I can pretty much talk you out of or call you stupid taking out a car loan because cars go down in value. The interest rate is higher and there's no correlation between buying cars with payments and becoming wealthy. Very few millionaires will tell you that, oh, the best thing I ever did was agree to borrow on a car because I needed a car because I was out in the country and I was driving a long way and I needed a car.

1:50:49No millionaires told us that when we studied 10 ,000 of them. So the fruit is not there. I'm a fruit inspector. Okay. The second thing is millionaires do tell us that they borrowed to buy a house many times. and when they got it paid off they never borrowed money again after that they're debt averse but not completely mortgage averse so the the data is in that millionaires do do that even though i would tell you the best way to do it is save up and pay cash for it it's hard to get people to save up for 10 years to buy a house i can get them to save up three years to buy a car or to 18 months to buy a car but i can't i've had trouble doing that so i make that violation but i also often tell people all the time when I say that, you know, no more than a 15-year mortgage, no more than a payment of a fourth of your take-home pay.

1:51:37You probably heard me say that, Zachary. And then get the stupid house paid off as fast as you can because the shortest distance between where you are and wealth is debt freedom. And that's consistent across the thing. But you're exactly right. And but cars are completely different. Car is the largest thing we buy that goes the wrong direction. It goes down in value. And when you finance a car, you're just begging to be middle class the rest of your life financially mathematically well and most people are stupid enough to like take a car note on like a$30 ,000 car when they have no money either exactly yeah like everybody listening right now just about right you're right I did I did have one other thing and by the way I want to say I support everything you're doing wholeheartedly including like I've been using myself many of these steps, being a small town pastor, you don't get paid a ton of money and you have kids.

1:52:31And so I've actually had to use these things for myself. So again, I want to say thank you. The one other thing I noticed though, as someone who was new to the Dave Ramsey program in many ways, and was new to those steps is that I didn't hear a lot of talk about creating a buffer. So as someone who was new, I didn't have any money in my checking account, right? Because I was using credit cards and then I was paying off those credit cards with the money in my account. So I never really had money in my account. And I was in this endless cycle, obviously, like a lot of people were. So one thing that I thought just to consider is that in those baby steps, I almost thought there should be another baby step about creating a buffer because people need to, they don't just need a$1 ,000 emergency fund.

1:53:17I thought that was the buffer whenever I was new to the Dave Ramsey program and the Dave Ramsey baby steps. But there's also this idea of making sure you have a buffer because you're going to have auto payments on preschool and mortgages and all types of stuff. So that should be part of your budgeting, Zachary. You should plan your, you should, it's budgeting is cashflow planning. And so you're planning to not take more money out of your checking account than you have in it. That's your buffer. And you can put a$100 buffer in there if you want, but that's fine. You don't need any more than that.

1:53:50There's nothing wrong with that. But you don't need a$2 ,000 buffer because you're incompetent at budgeting. You need to have the budget dialed in. We're paying the auto payment comes out here. This other payment comes out here. The paycheck planning aspect, it's called, and if you use the EveryDollar app, shows you how to do that. And so you need to plan out every situation there. But hey, we're honored to have you as a new listener. That is something that, man, that rings home to me because here's what I fell in the trap of doing. My wife and I would make a budget and then we would check our checking account to see where we were.

1:54:29We shouldn't do that because then I would make it, I'd be like, oh, I can get a little more groceries. And then that. Yeah, because the checking account is not an indicator if you're on your budget. That's exactly right. And so then that buffer he's talking about, then all of a sudden the school would pull their tuition on the fourth instead of the fifth. And because I was not following the budget map we'd laid out, but I was checking the checking account part. You would never, a budget map is a plan and you would never plan to spend money that you don't have in your account. That's exactly right.

1:54:57Yes. So don't plan to spend money you don't have in your account and your need for a buffer goes away. Other than a common sense of 50 or a hundred bucks or something for slippage or little, you know, something being off 20 cents or something, you don't want to do that we don't want to to the penny thing but but this concept of slosh right because that covers my lack of detail and sticking to the detail that that's not you don't need slosh that's right that's not good but yeah and and a lot of people do that so the trick is the thing that happens is your brain and you and i've been talking about this in a bunch of other areas too your brain rewires the neuroplasticity your brain rewires itself when you start making every single dollar come out when it's supposed to.

1:55:38Give every dollar of your income a name before the month begins. You and your spouse spit, shake, and pinky swear that we're sticking to this contract that we just wrote down. Something happens and changes from that chaotic wild man that you were before. And it takes about 90 days for that rewiring to completely occur. And that neuroplasticity, It changes your behavior. It's behavior transformation. And so the detail matters in that situation because you're forcing your brain to work really hard. Yeah. That's what you want. This is the Ramsey Show.

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1:57:06Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 19, 21. Many plans are in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand. Henry Ford said, thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

1:57:26What were you thinking? I wasn't. that's good i like it hey selling or buying a house in this crazy real estate market right now is a wild thing to do you need a pro in your corner if you're going to buy or sell right now somebody who has actually done it before a lot it is a high octane high protein high performance real estate agent if you want one of those we have vetted thousands of agents around america They are endorsed local providers, we call them, Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agents. If you want to find out who we recommend and who we vet and who we coach and who follows the stuff we talk about and is really getting a lot of work done, they're not a beginner, go to RamseySolutions.com slash agent and you can find a Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agent for free.

1:58:20Drew is with us in Seattle. Hi, Drew. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, good afternoon, Dave, Dr. Deloney. Thanks for taking the call. Sure. What's up? Hey, quick question. Well, first off, the Bible verses you guys just spoke, that was really speaking, I think, my call. But I just had a question for you. Is it possible to be a successful businessman, but to also be a successful family man? And I can kind of refine that a little bit more and give you kind of my background of where I'm coming from. What would make you think that is not possible? Well, right now I'm working with my wife to try to come to a middle ground on our side business.

1:59:07And obviously, so I heard the last caller, one of the guys was a pilot. I, too, am a pilot. I work for the major airline. My wife is also a pilot. But a few years ago, we started this side business that's been doing really well. and there's a lot of potential in it.

1:59:29We're coming to disagreement on if we should really be doing the side business. It's a seasonal agricultural business, and for about two months that we operate, we're bringing in about$75 ,000 on average. But there's a lot of potential for it. But my wife's argument, because I want to give her side of the story too, is that she doesn't like that the time it takes away from the family. So we've got two kids. Two months a year? Well, yeah. What do you have to do on the other 10 months? Well, so there's a lot of planning. And because we've been in business for about four years, there's the growing stages.

2:00:13I mean, it probably consumes my mind a little bit more than I should, which I've gotten much better at not bringing it up at the dinner table because she's told me she's like, okay, I want to hear about it. And I kind of have this guilt. I'd say for about six months out of the year leading into the start of the season, it's a little bit busier at home for me. I'm definitely balancing my time between family. And because I'm an airline pilot, it takes me away from home, which, you know, I mean, that's already kind of hard on the family. What do you make as a pilot? Well, right now, yeah, I make about$120 ,000.

2:00:57Next year, about$200 ,000, and then it just keeps going up. I just started at the major airline. And so my wife, she brings in about 85. And how old are your children? We've got a 15-month-old, a 10-year-old, and then one on the way. And so my wife's argument is we don't need the business. And, and I agree with her. Like, it's not, it's not needed, but you know, I listened to the entree leadership podcast a lot and I just, I have this desire, like I love flying. It's something I've done for a long time, but I, I get so much fulfillment and joy out of, you know, running a business and, you know, figuring out solutions and making things better.

2:01:37And, you know, I, I just, I enjoy that. I have a lot of friends that do it and it just, it intrigues me. And so what is the business? What are you, what are you growing? Um, so what we do is we do bird abatement for agriculture solutions. So people who own vineyards and, and, uh, different types of farms, they, uh, they'll hire us, they'll contract us out and we show up and we, it sounds kind of funny, but we use model aircraft. We kind of play cat and mouse with the birds all day. And so we have a, we have a team, um, generally about 15 people. And so, and we, and we had an opportunity, We passed up a large, about a$900 ,000 contract in Arizona.

2:02:17You should have. And rightfully so. Yeah, you weren't prepared to take it on. No. All right, let me tell you what I'm hearing. And let me talk back at you what you told me. You have a pregnant wife with a 15-month-old. Mm-hmm. Your house is insane. Right. It's busy. No, it's insane. I mean, it's chaos. Yeah. There are very small humans taking up large amounts of calories from both of you. Yeah. And you're flying model airplanes at birds. Right. Right? And she's over it. She's over it. She's got her gut full, man. So it's not that a businessman can't be a good family man. it's that the timing of your side business given the stage of your family sucks right right you got a lot of crap at home if she was sitting with two kids in in elementary school and and they were somewhat able to dress themselves and go to the bathroom by themselves and stuff like that right then it's a whole different world i mean i got i got grandbabies at this stage when we keep them it's a dadgum chore yeah and i love them i love them but it's like work and stuff you know i mean well so the last two years so because we you know we came up with a compromise and so we started hiring managers and so last year we tried it out um it worked pretty well and then this year we pretty much had the managers run the whole operation and i mean they did a much better job than I thought it was going to be.

2:03:57And so I, I mean, and the thing about being an airline pilot, it's like, I do most of my administrative work, my computer work, like when I'm gone, that's, that's one nice thing. It's like, I'm sitting at a hotel. It's like, I'm going to get this done. So when I'm, when I'm home, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to focus. That's not the point. That's not the point, Drew. Your wife is asking one question. Do you love me as much as this side hustle? And I'm going crazy right now and I need your help. Right. No, I do love my wife. I know you do. I know you do. She's asking you that. You're trying to show her how much you love her by creating a business and creating extra money and extra margin, and she is saying, do you love me?

2:04:35Right. And Dave and I are both, I mean, you're not going to meet two guys who like working. I think both of us love work. But I hear Dave say, there's a season to this. It's the wintertime, and you're like, look at these cool shorts I just made. And she's like, they're great, but it's freezing outside. Yeah, I got a 15-month-old. I got a baby on the way. By the way, all of this spells hormones. Did you know that? Yeah, we've been working through the postpartum. Yeah, I mean, that's normal. It's not bad. It's just life. Yeah, she misses you, man. Yeah, you need to be there hugging babies, changing diapers, not flying birds.

2:05:16Yeah. Not right now. I mean, I want you to run your own business, Drew. but you ask us a question and the question is yes you can be a successful businessman and a family man but the spouse has to be able to carry whatever weight that you're not carrying and you're asking her to carry more than she's willing to carry right now and i don't think she's being unreasonable little babies and a house full of kiddos is chaos on top of a two hundred thousand a year salary. And she's flying. And so in her 80, he was saying, so about 300 grand they're going to be making next year. And the question that she's asking was a question my wife asked, when is enough enough?

2:05:57Yeah. I, in other words, she's saying for$75 ,000 a year, I'd rather have your help. I'd rather have you. Yes. I'd rather have your help right now, right now. And it might not, it, that might, I'm telling you, you might be three, four years and you, you can either restart this or take back over some of the management. But you've got to offload all of it or most of it to be able to help manage your house right now. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. You're working two full-time jobs and you've got chaos at home. And your wife has a full-time job. Yeah. Oh, by the way. Yeah. Wow. Three full-time jobs.

2:06:32Right. So you're not a bad guy. You're just, your timing sucks. Yes. And it's kind of a deceptive question. Yes, you can run a successful business and be a good family man. You can't do 50 things at once. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show and the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.

2:07:12We'll see you next time.