Take Control Of Your Money Before It Takes Control Of You

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22:02Dave Ramsey:Paul is in Minnesota. Hey, Paul, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, thanks for taking my call. Appreciate it. Sure. How can we help? Well, my wife and I are currently, we have about$57 ,000 in debt minus our house. We have baby step one complete. We have the, you know, the$1 ,000 saved up. We just, we're trying to recover from just years of making bad financial decisions. and just kind of don't know what to do to kind of take that next step. It just seems like whenever we try to get ahead, something comes up, we have to, you know, dip into our savings or eliminate our savings. And, you know, some months are good, other months we're paycheck to paycheck, and we're just trying to find a way we can sustain more income and just kind of get ahead of this debt.

22:54Dave Ramsey:Okay. So what's your household income? Take-home pay after taxes. between our two main jobs is about$60 ,000 to$65 ,000 a year. I started my own business last year doing interior detailing, and that kind of fluctuates. That's probably added another$15 ,000 a year. On top of this? Correct. Okay. So you're dealing with an$80 ,000 a year situation, and you said take-home pay. You've stopped 401ks temporarily. Rarely. Yep. We don't have a retirement through our jobs, unfortunately. Okay. And do you have any other expenses coming out of your checks other than taxes? No. Okay. Where's health insurance?

23:44Dave Ramsey:Our health insurance is we just locally purchased it through the state. It's about$230 a month. Okay. And you're buying that separate as a budget item. Okay. All right. Correct. Okay. So we got$80 ,000 to deal with, and you have$57 ,000 in debt. What is the debt on? So we have about$8 ,500 in a personal loan,$9 ,500 in credit cards. The big ones are going to be our two vehicles, about$20 ,000 between the two, and then just about$21 ,000 in school loans. Okay. All right. And what's your house payment? um so we have insurance and taxes and all that um rolled into it so it's 15 20 a month how many kids do you have we have uh two boys seven and four okay all right well eighty thousand dollars a year with a fifteen hundred dollar house payment you should be able to make progress on this okay substantial progress so sure i think the devil's in the details inside your every dollar budget and um you know i don't know whether you're still going out to eat i don't know if you're still going on vacation i don't know where the leak is in this uh but you know what what i'm looking at is seven thousand dollars eight thousand dollars a month seven thousand dollars and some change a month minus fifteen hundred minus food lights water um i think i can find a thousand dollars in there to put on these debts.

25:17Dave Ramsey:Are the car payments real high interest? I think one is about 9%. The other one, I can't remember what the other one is. I want to say it might be a little over 4%. So these car payments are$400 or$500 apiece, right? Yep,$300 and like$195. So they're not substantial. So that's not it. Okay. You seem to acknowledge there's some leaks somewhere. Where is this money going? You know, I try to ask myself the same thing. I think the income might be a little off, like I said, my interior detailing business fluctuates quite a bit. It seems like on average, I mean, when I'm mapping it out. Yeah, but that's only$1 ,000,$1 ,200 a month.

26:01Dave Ramsey:Sure. If it averages out, okay? Yeah. So some months you make four, some months you make nothing probably, okay? But But still, that's not – I mean, you should be able to make it and make progress without the interior detailing. The interior detailing could all go towards this. So are you doing a detailed every-dollar budget, you and your spouse sitting down, and every dollar has a name before the month begins? We don't. Okay, that's it. That's what's going on. We use it to track – yeah, we use it to more so track our bills and make sure we're paying everything that we need to pay. No, that's not what it's for.

26:38Dave Ramsey:So you've got to get around in front of the money instead of behind it. You can't look in the rearview mirror and say, what happened? It's too late. The money's gone. You have to tell it what to do before it leaves, and then it will go to the correct things. That's where your leaks are, is just in the chaos of the disorganization. And here's how I know that from 30 years of doing this. The most often thing people say after they do their every-dollar budget, they download the app, they put the money in there, and they often say, I feel like I got a raise. And all it is is the money is being more efficiently deployed.

27:16Dave Ramsey:That's all it is. And so you have this sense of power, this sense of empowerment. And the other thing they say is, what have we been doing? Where has all this money gone before? It's like it just disappeared. weird and and this i've heard this from people doing the every dollar budget ever since we first built the app long time ago and it wasn't nearly as sophisticated and didn't tell you what to do and help help you walk through the baby steps and everything else like it does now but back then but i mean it's just even when i was doing budgets with a yellow pad and you would just write down kind of like i just did in my head with your stuff just now you know you got seven thousand dollars you got fifteen hundred and then we take off lights and water and a 195 car payment a 350 car payment i still got money where's the money going several thousand that's what you were saying and it's like everybody has that same reaction to their own budget when they do it i feel like i got a raise because i made my money behave and that old john maxwell saying starts to you know hit that emotion of a budget is people telling their money what to do instead of wondering where it went a budget is not a form of medieval torture they don't find you don't find in the dungeon with the thumbscrews.

28:30Dave Ramsey:It's not there, okay? In the stretch machine or whatever, all that stuff, right? But, you know, it's not a form of medieval torture. It's simply you're doing it on purpose. You're being proactive instead of reactive. And anytime you do that in any area of your life, it increases your dignity and lowers your anxiety. And I'll say this, in any area of your life, when you discover, oh my gosh, we've been eating out to the tune of$1 ,600 a month or this has never happened in my house, but you're buying so many bullets or guitar things that we have this much extra money. There is an order of things that happen.

29:09You feel ashamed. You feel super, super excited. And then the next 30 days happens, and it's not fun at all.

29:18Dave Ramsey:No. It feels like you just got$1 ,600. You didn't. You located it, but now you have to actually not spend it on stuff, and that's hard and that's discipline. I remember when we first started Financial Peace University with the videotapes a long time ago. I went and visited one of the classes and this old country boy was in there. By the way, videotapes for you young folks, they used to take YouTube clips and put them on inside of plastic and then just you had it at your house. Okay, go ahead, Dave. I stopped in and it was a small group. This old country boy was in there and he goes, yeah, I'll figure it out why we ain't got no retirement.

29:53Dave Ramsey:We've been eating it. yeah 1200 bucks a month on restaurants and that was a long time ago i never heard anybody spend 1200 on a restaurant but uh man it was wild yeah but yeah we ain't got no retirement because we've been eating it uh that and everybody cracked up and they all could relate you know that's exactly what it was or bullets or whatever it is you know this is you know it could happen and firearms yeah they could they could they could they could cause issues but expect to be embarrassed like oh my gosh, I can't believe I've been spending this. Expect to be like, yeah, we're rich. You're not.

30:24And expect the next 30 to 60 days to be miserable. Because then you have to change your behavior. If you've been eating out three times a week, you have to figure out how to eat at home. If you watch a news channel that makes you uncomfortable and you think buying bullets is going to solve that discomfort, I don't know anybody that does that for, you're going to have to just sit in the discomfort. And if you have latent fantasies of being a rock star and you're in your late 40s and you haven't realized it's not going to happen yet. Dave I'm talking to myself here don't buy that thing because it's not going to help it's not going to help the guitar is not the problem I'm the problem it's me as the great philosopher Taylor Swift once said

31:05Dave Ramsey:we'll just end on that

31:34Dave Ramsey:Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance, or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John. Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're going to die or something? Well, I used to be one of those guys. I didn't even think about it. And one of my buddies said, hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids. And I immediately went and got term life insurance. That's a gut punch. And you're telling me for decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse. They've lost somebody important to them.

32:06Me too. They don't know what to do next.

32:08Dave Ramsey:Me too. I mean, you're going to have a crisis here. And, you know, you got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow. She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly right. These are the two options. And take care of your dadgum family, man. Term life insurance can replace income, pay off debts, cover funeral expenses, so your family can actually have the opportunity to just be sad. Yeah. To just miss you. That's exactly what it's supposed to be. It's saying I love you to your family.

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33:12Dave Ramsey:Thanks for hanging out with us, America. Did you know that two-thirds of Americans die without a will? That's 70 % of you. That's dumb. That's just straight-up dumb. You're going to leave the family behind. They're not going to know what's going on. You're going to increase your court costs through the roof, and then the government is going to tell your family what's going to happen instead of you doing it just because you wouldn't sit down and do it. Well, I might die. You're going to die. We've done research. 100 % of you are going to die. It's just a matter of when, and you don't know when.

33:50Dave Ramsey:So get your will done if you're over 18 years old. Get it done. We want to challenge you to create your will in August, and in less than five minutes you can find out if an online will works for you at RamseySolutions.com slash will quiz. It's free. You can click the link in the show notes. It's will quiz. Will's quiz. Ramsey solutions.com slash wills quiz. And if you do find out an online will fits your situation, you can get 25 % off. If you do this in August by using the promo code will month, one word, no spaces will month. This is the month you do your will right now. And if you've moved states, your will is invalid.

34:34Dave Ramsey:You need a new will. Probate law is not federal law. It is state law and state laws are different from state to state, particularly if you leave a state like California or Texas or Louisiana. All three of those have weird laws. And so Texas is a republic. It thinks it's its own country still. It has weird laws. California, well, enough said. And Louisiana's got a lot of French stuff woven into their law, where most of the other law is English-based. And so it's different and so yeah you're gonna you need a different you need a will when you move if you'd get if you have something change in your life a divorce a death you need to do your will again and update it and so get your stuff done people it changes everything when you do all right marcus is up next marcus is in raleigh north carolina hey marcus how are you a lot better than i deserve dave how are you the same sir how can i help um dave i'm in my uh my third year of bankruptcy um and uh it's been pretty rough um about two months ago my uh the mother of my children she decided to do some drinking and driving and uh she almost killed herself and my young children uh my twins are four years old and i recently gained full custody due to the circumstances of that and uh it's been pretty rough man um i've depleted my emergency fund and my back is pretty much up against the wall and um i'm calling because i've been weighing the option of selling my home um and just renting because uh you know 10 percent interest rate with the bank ruffcy it's just hard i don't know if i can do two more years of it i'm a five-year term and um i made about 60 000 last year and bank ruffcy took 30 of that so um pretty So how much debt is in your Chapter 13?

36:35It was$70 ,000,$74 ,000 to be exact. I called my mortgage company, and they let me know that$61 ,000 is what's owed on the house.

36:46Dave Ramsey:The house is in the Chapter 13? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I was facing foreclosure, and that is why I filed Chapter 13. I see. Okay. And so you owe the whole thing, the house. You don't have any other debt in the Chapter 13? I had about, I believe,$25 ,000 to$3 ,000 in consumer debt. But it's almost all of the house, in other words. That's correct, yes, sir. So the house is the problem, so the house might be the solution mathematically. I got you. I'm catching on. So you owe, like, how much on the house today? They gave me a payoff of$61 ,000. What is it worth? They said I owed the property tax said about$100.

37:32Dave Ramsey:No, that's not what I asked. I asked what it's really worth. What are you going to put it on the market for? Tax appraisal is not appraisal. Yes, sir. I understand. What do you think the house is actually worth if we put a sign in the yard? You have any idea? $200. Okay. $195 to$200. Okay. Yeah. All right. So you put$140 in your pocket and you're free. So you would sell. I'm just asking. I'm making sure I understand this is exactly what you're saying, correct? Yes, sir. That is the option I'm wearing. Yes, sir. And you've got four-year-old twins full-time? Yes. Yes, sir. Who's taking care of them while you're at work?

38:08I've been lucky enough to get some daycare vouchers, so they're in a daycare. And my mom's helping with pick-up and drop-offs.

38:14Dave Ramsey:Okay. What do you do for a living, sir? I'm a delivery driver for a company here in Raleigh. How old are you? I'm 38 years old okay wow

38:31Dave Ramsey:okay what I don't want to do and I'm thinking this reason I'm pausing and flipping around I want to make sure I get all the answers to these details because what I don't want to do is you obviously need some relief your language and the way you describe the situation and everything coming into the early in the call when you first got on the line I mean you're you need some relief and I don't want to give you relief at in return for doing something dumb I mean if it feels good today but it sucks as a five-year decision I don't want to do that one okay but I don't see a downside of selling this house right now as long as you say okay the plan is I'm going to sell the house I'm going to be free I'm going to be relaxed for a little bit breathe a little bit get out from under the bankruptcy it was not a blessing it would probably just sold it to stop the foreclosure rather than gone into bankruptcy to stop the foreclosure would have been the plan and um then uh and then but but what i want to do on the back side of that is not just my my only strategy doesn't mean to be get away from the pain my strategy needs to get away from the pain so that i can go do a b and c to prosper yes sir so yeah i'm with you let's get away from the pain uh but i want you to decide what are you gonna do with 140 000 so um i spoke with my bankruptcy attorney and um i still have a meeting with them but they inform me that um after i guess i make the sale the proceeds would go uh to the trustee so um and i'm guessing that means that you know the bankruptcy and everything will be clear.

40:13I'll be discharged of that. And then they return the proceeds to you.

40:17Dave Ramsey:Yeah. Yes. Yes, sir. Do you know how that process works? Is that like a 30 day thing? Depends on your trustee, the bankruptcy trust, chapter 13 trustees, a local office. And if if Raleigh's chapter 13 is efficient, you'll get it inside of a month. Most of the chapter 13 trustees, I know several of them are excellent at what they do. They really run a good shop. The guy here in Nashville, he's the best in the nation. He actually leads a lot of the associations, and he's a friend of mine. And he runs an incredible shop. But most of them do a good job. But just talk to the Chapter 13 trustee office about it.

40:57Dave Ramsey:Say, how long can I expect to get this? How long before? And so forth, because I need to go rent something, and I don't have any money. I do have a fear of finding something to rent with bank grossly being on my history. Do you think that's going to be a big obstacle? Well, you've got$140 ,000 in your pocket, so you probably can work that out with a deposit. Okay. Or a prepayment of rent. I'll prepay for six months, and I'll give you a deposit if you're nervous about my 13. But I'm out of the 13. I've got no bills. Exactly. No debt. I have zero debt, and I'm out of the 13, and the stuff that caused it is all in the rearview mirror.

41:37Dave Ramsey:And I have$140 ,000 in my pocket. If you wanted to rent from me, and I was the landlord, and we have houses we rent, I would rent to that guy. I would make you prepay for a couple months in advance just to get a, you know, let's get a head start, three or four months or something. And just to, you know, because I don't want you to go blow that 140 and then not have any money to pay my rent, right, if I'm the landlord. But yeah, I think you can work it out with that. But you sound like a guy that needs relief. Yeah. And then ask yourself, does 48-year-old Marcus want to be a delivery driver? And if this is the time to go get retooled and get some skills or to begin thinking about what are we going to do next, man, this is your moment.

42:17Dave Ramsey:Yeah, if you used$10 ,000 to go to code school and you decided you were going to be a software engineer next, that would be a good use of some of the money or whatever. if you use some of the money to retool and get yourself to the thing where you go to something other than the get-by job.

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44:30Dave Ramsey:live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions it's the ramsey show where we help people build wealth do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships i'm dave ramsey Your host, Dr. John Deloney, Ph.D. in counseling, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, and host of the popular Dr. John Deloney show on Ramsey Networks. He's my co-host today. Haley is with us in York, Pennsylvania. Hi, Haley. How are you? Hi, doing well. Thank you for having me. Sure. What's up? So my question is basically, when is the time to use your emergency fund? In an emergency? Right. Well, so the question came from my husband and I had a surprise tax bill.

45:24It was about thirty five hundred dollars. And the question then came, do we pay from our emergency fund that's fully funded? We don't have any debt or do we take it from we have a kind of a fund going to make a renovation on our house? So he wanted to take it from that fund because he didn't want to touch the emergency fund. But then I said, well, isn't that the point of an emergency fund to use it for unexpected expenses? So just kind of wanted to get your opinions on that.

45:55Dave Ramsey:This is like Rocky IV, Dave. So how do you have an unexpected tax bill, and have you fixed the problem that caused that? Yeah, so I think what happened is it's because of all the COVID child tax credits that then they took away that we didn't realize we've had someone doing our taxes. And, yeah, we've never had to pay, and we haven't done anything differently. So that was the only thing that we could guess. So he made sure to look with his. Okay, if I get a surprise$3 ,500, I'm not guessing. I'm going to know. Sure. Like I'm going to know or I'm going to fire somebody and get somebody that knows.

46:42Dave Ramsey:Okay. Because here's the problem. It happens again if you don't know what caused it and you don't make an adjustment. Agreed? Right. Yes. Okay. So it's not sustainable. We got to fix that. I can tell you what Dave and Sharon would do. We would take it out of the renovation money. So would the Delonies. Okay. Because. Okay. Because we touched the emergency fund last. If we have excess savings somewhere else for something else that is not immediate, you're saving up to do a renovation. And the tax problem just delayed your renovation a little bit. Sure. That's what it is. Because, you know, otherwise you're going to have to delay the renovation anyway because you're not finished saving for it.

47:31Dave Ramsey:and you'd have to put the money back in the emergency fund before you restarted saving into the renovation fund. And so you'd have to stop everything until you got your emergency fund put back. And I don't want to do all that. So, no, let's just sidestep that and go straight into it and take the money out of there. Dave, I'm kind of just stuck on, oh, we got a surprise bill. Let's just pay it. I mean I'd go see another tax person I'd want someone to walk me through exactly what just happened especially if you've never had that happen previously generally taxes piss me off surprise taxes double piss me off yeah I saw the building the roof came off one time and they're like they've got a surprise tax bill that's just what happened but but again like it's one of those um I had that this month like our electric bill went way way up and it was easy just to go well Well, that stinks.

48:28And I want to stop the problem. Let's figure out what just happened so that doesn't happen again. Exactly. Is there something running? Right.

48:36Dave Ramsey:Issue, yeah. Some kind of a thing going on. Yeah, let's source the problem and nip it. Yeah. Nip it in the bud. Pat is in Michigan. Hey, Pat, how are you? Fine, I'm good. Thank you. How can we help? Well, my husband and I are in our late 70s, and we're afraid we're going to outlive our savings. How much money have you got? Well, we got about$30 ,000 in savings and about$190 in CDs. Okay. Or 401k money market. All right. Do you know when you're going to die yet?

49:21Whenever the Lord decides to take us.

49:26Dave Ramsey:I'm starting at 65, so I'm still trying to figure that out myself, kiddo. All right. So how much of the savings are you using to live? In other words, how much over budget are you? We're about$500 over budget every month. That's$6 ,000 a year. Right. You have$190 ,000. Dividing$6 ,000 into that, I don't think you're going to run out of money. Okay. If you stay at this budget. What is your income? Social Security and what else? Just a minute. Let me grab the information here. That's okay. I mean, what are your sources of income? Our earnings is Social Security and two small pensions of$5 ,023 a month.

50:22Dave Ramsey:That's your total budget a month? Yes. Okay, and you're spending$500 more than that on$190 ,000. Now, is the$190 ,000, you said it's in CDs? Some of it's in CDs and about$80 ,000 in the money market from our 401K or IRA, whatever it is. Okay. All right. And so that's making you, say,$6 ,000 a year in interest between the two, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, and that's about what you're overspending. Okay. So if the$190 grows by 3%, that's approximately, it's not quite,$6 ,000 a year. and if you use that interest to supplement and you don't touch the 190 the goose that's laying those little golden eggs is going to sit there and lay forever you'll never run out of money now if you keep cranking up and five years from now you're spending eight thousand dollars a month more or eight or two thousand or three thousand dollars a month more than you might got coming in you could run into a problem that way okay but if you stay right where you are mathematically, you're not going to run out of money.

51:40Dave Ramsey:Does that make sense? Yes. I also want to ask you, we have a car payment of$220 a month. What's the balance on the car? $5 ,000. Should we pay that off? Yeah, you said you had$30 ,000 in savings, right? Right. Yeah, take$5 ,000 of that money and pay it off today. Okay. Yeah. I already feel better.

52:08Okay. She likes paying off debt, I know.

52:11Dave Ramsey:Yeah, and I like people being able to live on what they make because we just reduced your$500 to$200 because we got, or$300, because you got rid of a$200 car payment. So now you're only$300 over budget. Ta-da. Isn't this magical? Hey, thank you for calling in, kiddo.

52:43Thank you.

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55:03Dave Ramsey:Kira is in Texas. Hi, Kira. What's up? Hi. Thank you for having me. Sure. I have a question about my 19-year-old son. He decided that college is not for him, so he's not going to go back in the fall. We told him that he had to get a job. We wanted him to get one within a month. It's almost been three months, but he's finally working at Walmart part-time,$14 an hour. And he also receives about$10 ,000 a year in dividends that he gets in four payments. So he's very bad with money. Like his dividend rolls around and there's zero in his bank account. He has to borrow gas money. My main question is, what would be the best course to take to open his eyes to, I am not spending my money wisely.

56:00I should be doing this and this.

56:02Dave Ramsey:What happened eight years ago when you were going to teach him work ethic and you didn't? We tried. I feel like we tried. We're pretty good with money. We tried to teach them that. We don't go out to eat very often. Like all through their grown-up, we don't go out to eat. And I don't know if that's like the main thing. Like he eats out all the time. When he was in college, he spent all of his extra. That's what the main thing is. He doesn't work. Walmart at$14 an hour is what 16-year-olds do. Not grown men. Where's he living? we've uh we're in texas no where does he live in her house he's with us yes and and and we pay i'm telling you this everything because i love you but that's the problem he he can't learn something that let me put it this way what he's doing his behavior makes perfect sense in his world he gets checks that fall from the sky every quarter he has no rent and he has a mom and dad that said you have to get a job and he goes, okay, I'll work six hours a week and y 'all pay his cell phone, you pay his insurance, you pay for everything.

57:24Well, that's one of the things is he's supposed to pay his car insurance. He's supposed to do a lot of crap he doesn't do, but you don't make him do nothing. Right. You don't take it away. And the only way this changes, literally the only way this changes, I've worked with this age group my entire career, the only way this changes is if y 'all sit down and you and your husband come to an agreement that you're going to weather the storm because hell's coming and you're going to sit down and say at the end of this month you're out or two months or whatever right part of the problem with that is he would move in with his bomb okay well that's good and she she kind of coddles him that's fine kind of no wait a minute

58:02Dave Ramsey:honey you got the coddling thing down okay everybody's calling you can't hand that off to her you got that down to a science everyone is this kid this kid has coddling from every direction he's just a coddle but i mean he was in college for a year so this honey the kid's got to move out yeah i mean i'm not gonna argue with you about this anymore you know you you all you can talk about is the stuff he doesn't do he has no problems your job is to help him have some problems that's it that's exactly right he doesn't have there's no reason for him to change his behavior Think about it this way. His life is a weight room.

58:36And every time he gets under the bar to start lifting weights to get stronger to deal with life, one of the parents, you or his mother and whoever she's with, run in there and take all the weight off the bar. And so now you've got a kid who's 19 who has never lifted the bar in his life because each parent keeps running there saying, I don't want to be the bad one. You don't want to be the bad one. And now you've got a 19-year-old that literally does not know how to lift anything heavy. And so it's abuse. Y 'all are robbing this young man. And I get the pickle you're in. The moment you say, hey, you got to get out, he's going to go, okay, I'll just go over here.

59:14Dave Ramsey:Then that's fine. You can't control that. but you can control your part in the equation quit trying to control his part that's right you can't control his part of the equation okay this is a kid who thinks going to class is hard work that's funny or six hours a week is hard yeah i'm now i've got a job part-time he's smoking a lot of pot a lot yeah there's no ambition anywhere in this guy and man yeah geez here's the thing Dave, like, I heard somebody say this about a year ago, and man, it has been a, like a knife right in my chest because he's right. And he said, I don't want to hear another person say, quote unquote, these kids these days, because it's not, the kids haven't changed.

1:00:05It's the adults in their lives who've changed, who are not expecting, not giving these young people, especially 17, 18, 19, and 20-year-olds, the gift of experiencing hard challenges and overcoming those challenges so they can feel a sense of confidence to go do the next thing. He should have had a part-time job when he was 15 or 14 so that he could learn how to do that so he could have the privilege of having a full-time job when he's 19 or 20. Drop out of college, fine, but you got to go be a part of the workforce. Workforce is hard, right? But he's been robbed every step of the way by adults in his life that can't get along, can't be unified.

1:00:43And here you go. This is what we get. For his own good. Golly, it breaks my heart, man. Everything we're unified on is coddling. That's it. Yeah. Or using him to out-parent the other parent now that we're divorced or whatever the mess is. But adults need to come together on behalf of these young people and say, we're robbing them of the experiences that life's going to throw and hit them right in the mouth with.

1:01:07Dave Ramsey:And, you know, the thing that there's a couple of things I always go back to in remembering all this is teach your kids to do hard things. Yes. And Andrew Andrews talks about you're not raising kids to be great kids. You're raising kids to become great adults. And if you're doing that, then that involves teaching them adult skills. Right. Age appropriately with increasing intensity so that when they are age appropriate, they are able to leave the nest. And the mother eagle, the nest is filled with down, but it is a nest built with thorns. And then as the baby eagles grow, she begins to pull the down out of the nest and the thorns begin to stick them.

1:01:47Dave Ramsey:And it becomes increasingly uncomfortable to stay in the nest if you are a baby eagle until you finally stand up on the edge of the nest and fall out and spread your wings and fly. Soar, dude, yeah. Yeah, because an eagle that doesn't leave the nest is eventually known as a turkey. And so this is how this works. So, yeah, you make it increasingly uncomfortable to live there because it is good for your child development. People will tell you it is good for your dignity to pay your own light bill and buy your own milk and clean your own clothes instead of your mommy doing it. It's just good for your development.

1:02:27Dave Ramsey:and I've watched it with my three as they grew up and left the nest and didn't have to. We weren't mad at them. There wasn't any anger. There wasn't anything, but just when they quit living under our roof and they had to do their own stuff, they walk different. They talk different. They carry themselves differently and it's, you're doing them no favor delaying their development. And this kid, He needs some hard work. I want some problems for him. I want him to have some problems to solve. He's had no problems in a long time. And so, yeah, desperately needs trouble. And by the way, getting a neighbor, if you've got young kids, getting a neighbor that will let your nine-year-old come over and sweep the front porch for a dollar, those kind of things are amazing.

1:03:14And we're not talking about sweatshops. I'm not talking about, like, you've got to pull, like, do eight-hour days. That's not what I'm talking about at all. But letting your kid mow the yard, letting your kid go out and do some things, letting them take feedback from a neighbor that you trust or from somebody at your church that you trust. Hey, you did a good job here, but you missed this corner right here. It builds dignity and character. And I'm telling you, man, you got kids that just walk differently when they know how to

1:03:42Dave Ramsey:work. The one that always kills me on that was I was cutting grass. I was 12 years old. My neighbor. And I have no idea. He was the nicest man, but his nickname was Slugger. Slugger Carnahan. I cut his grass for$3. And he came out there with one of these little fork things, and he goes, quit cutting the weeds. Use this and dig the weeds out. When you cut the weeds, you spread the weeds, and I get more weeds. And he walked around and made me go over his whole yard and dig them out. It wore me out. 12 years old, man. Three bucks. Yeah. $3, man. And his name's Slugger, so you got to do it. I mean, it's like it's not an option.

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1:06:47Dave Ramsey:Julie's in Kansas City. Hi, Julie. How are you? I'm good. Thank you for taking my call. My question is about preparing financially for disability in my future, and it will be before typical retirement age. I'm 45 right now. I have a degenerative disease that I will probably be wheelchair-bound within 10 years. What do you got, hon?

1:07:24Multiple sclerosis.

1:07:26Dave Ramsey:Yeah, I was thinking. Okay. Sorry. So it causes me a lot of nervous system problems, and I work full-time right now with accommodation. but in the conversation with my doctors it has been about it's been about you know how to plan quality of life right and you already I'm sure because of the diagnosis know a lot more about this than I do the I've had several experiences with customers over the years and friends and And the fatigue and stress with one of my friends seems to accelerate her symptoms. Yes, that is very true for me as well. And so anything you can do to lower that. And in her case, they gave her the same prognosis.

1:08:24Dave Ramsey:That was 20 years ago, and she's still walking around fine. Not fine. She's got MS, but she's not wheelchair bound. But she's managed, she's really, really managed the fatigue and the stress, and I think that's part of her doing so well. So back to your question, how do you get ready for this from a financial perspective? What do you make? I teach in higher ed. I am at 92 right now, and that's with teaching overload and teaching summer classes. And I'm assuming you're single. I am divorced a year ago after 24 years. Okay. Jeez. And so you make 92, and how much money do you have in your nest egg today?

1:09:11So the divorce was quite messy. There was a lot of financial issues behind the scenes that I didn't know about when everything started. So after everything was said and done, I am no longer, I don't have any commercial credit card debt. I have about$50 ,000 in retirement. And because of the particular institution I teach at, I'm part of the public school teacher pension. So 15 % of my paycheck goes into teacher pension. I never see that money.

1:09:46Dave Ramsey:first thing I want to do then is I want to investigate at the point that you were declared disabled what does the pension look like do you know that already yes when I ran that there's an option for a lump sum that is about$75 ,000 and then that would be $2 ,200 a month after that lump sum or altogether if I don't do the lump sum it's about$26 ,000 a month Okay. And that's 10 years from today? Yes. Okay. All right. So you're already doing your research. Well done. That's good. That's good information to have. I would rather know what could happen, even if it's very, very bad. Okay. And you got$50 ,000 as well in a retirement.

1:10:34Dave Ramsey:Do you have any debt? No debt. My car has paid off. I am renting right now. So the marital home was sold, and that covered a large portion of the commercial debt that he had run up. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. And so, all right. Well, the math answer to the equation, and you already knew this before you called me, but I'll just say it out loud again, is if this occurs 10 years from today, the lower your expenses are and the higher your nest egg is the easier the process is going to be financially okay no kidding dave i already knew that okay so the point being stay out of debt you probably do get into a house something modest and uh it would be really cool if you could get it paid off because that lowers your expenses and increases your sustainability mathematically Okay.

1:11:37Dave Ramsey:And because you got the biggest item in your budget line item is housing. It always is. And so if you've got a zero there or you only got property taxes and insurance there because it's paid off, then you've got a real sustainable situation. and, you know, the$2 ,400 and the money you can make off of the$50 ,000 and the$75 ,000, which, by the way, that$50 ,000 by then, by the time this all happens, will be$200 ,000. Okay. If it's invested in good mutual funds. And then, yes, I would take the lump sum if this occurs, the$75 ,000, if that's the actual number that happens and the way everything goes down, and I'm going to roll that into an IRA and invest that in good mutual funds, that will give you a better rate of return than the pension will.

1:12:26Right. If I could choose not to participate in the pension, I would.

1:12:31Dave Ramsey:Yeah, but I'm just saying, when you get to the point that you're declared disabled or you get to the point that you're retired and they offer you a lump sum on a pension, always take it. Okay. And always take it. Take as much as they'll let you take. and then roll that because it'll create more money for you than it will if it's left there. That's the bottom line. And when you die, the pension dies with you, and the money that's in your investment accounts does not die with you. It goes to your heirs. So, you know, that kind of thing. But anyway, so you have done such a good job analyzing all this stuff, and you're such a detailed person.

1:13:09Dave Ramsey:You get peace from the knowledge, I can tell by talking to you. And so if I'm you, I'm going to run some spreadsheet stuff out into the future and go, okay, if I get a house, I'm going to sit down with my SmartVestor Pro, start talking about investing this 50K in some good mutual funds so it will double about every five to seven years, something like that. And it should, if it's making 10%, 11%, 12%, that's how often it's going to double. And so that's how I'm getting to 200 on this. And, of course, the 10 years is not set. Could be eight, could be 18, could be never. And the more of a plan you have, you get peace from that, the more I think that helps your prognosis, but I'm not a medical doctor.

1:14:00Yeah. One of the difficulties over the last two years with the divorce has been, like, it really just, I've had a lot of disease progression. and then also just trying to get my cortisol and all those stress things down. Julie, let's change a word. Can we change one word? Yeah. Let's change the word progression to... Flare. Yeah, flare up. Because major traumatic moments, major traumatic seasons does exacerbate MS symptoms, right? Mm-hmm. maybe it did push it down the track a little bit or maybe it was a flare-up and it goes back yeah so here's a question I want you to take to your doctor okay what must be true for me to push this thing off seven years excuse me I was coughing what must be true so they said about 10 years all right cool let's make a 15-year plan what exercise counseling therapy trauma work what must I do now?

1:15:08It may not work, but let's go out guns a blazing on trying to push this thing down the track, not just resigning to the fact that it's 10 years and I'm wheelchair bound forever. And by the way, you're in a great job where if you are wheelchair bound, you can still teach, you can still be involved with students at some level. But let's see if a doctor will make a plan with you and see what would happen.

1:16:01Dave Ramsey:The Ramsey Show Question of the Day is brought to you by Y-Refi. Defaulted private student loans can wreck your peace of mind, your finances, and even your relationships. Y-Refi offers hope with custom refinancing based on your unique situation and ability to pay. Visit YRefi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. Might not be in all states. Today's question comes from Corey in Indiana. Corey writes,

1:16:59We currently owe about$25 ,000 in credit card and unsecured loans, which would still leave her with$50 ,000. I've tried to explain to her that if we keep paying the loans for my paychecks, it's only going to keep us further from getting ahead in life. How do I get her to understand this concept? Oh, boy. Y 'all need to go to a marriage counselor, ASAP, because y 'all are living separate, parallel lives. Y 'all aren't living a united marriage. Y 'all are co-managing a household. Sounds like two children. That's it.

1:17:36Dave Ramsey:My money. It's like four-year-olds in kindergarten stealing a toy. Yeah. Or like trading lunch. Like, those are my Cheetos. Well, this is my bologna sandwich. Well, and then somebody gets a package of Twinkies, and it's like, well, these are my, like, man, y 'all have bigger issues here. because this is y 'all's wages and this is y 'all's debt and this is y 'all's inheritance quite honestly and until you're able to come together in that way y 'all are going to continue to run parallel lives and have bigger and bigger challenges yeah we are aligned on our desired future and we are in agreement on how we are going to get there and then we don't have a separate life.

1:18:22Dave Ramsey:That's why when you walk down the aisle, the preacher says, and now you are one. He didn't say, and now you are roommates with rights.

1:18:34Dave Ramsey:And that's how that works. Yeah. And I still go back to it. You guys hear me, if you listen to the show all the time, you hear me quote it all the time, because I was just fascinated because I had never heard it. And a buddy of mine that is in an old school church, traditional, he pulled out the book of common prayer and showed me the marriage vows from the old days and you know we all know or most people know or have heard in sickness and in health richer for poor you know until death do us part right we all kind of that's kind of the truth and that's part of but there was another portion to it that somehow they quit using unto thee all my worldly goods i pledge in other words we are now one and um and when your mama dies we are going to get 75 grand that's how that's going to work and so it's a different thing corey to answer your real question how do i get her to understand this concept about paychecks this isn't a math problem and i think that's the challenge is y 'all are both solving two different problems she is solving a an emotional relationship problem and you're running around trying to solve a math problem.

1:19:43And it's kind of like trying to measure from here to over there using gallons. Both are good measurements, but it's the wrong measurement for the wrong application. This isn't a math problem. This is a marriage problem. This is a togetherness problem. Y 'all are both walking around thinking the other person's better or worse than each other. And that contempt that somebody from on high is casting judgment or taking from the person down below you. It's just rotting out your marriage. And so you all need to go sit with somebody and level out.

1:20:13Dave Ramsey:Yeah. We are in agreement on our goals and we are going to combine all forces to get to those goals. And we're going to be honest about all of our debts. Yeah. And we're going to work on them together. Yep, exactly. Mike's with us in New Jersey. Hey, Mike, what's up? Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Very good. So I have a question. I know you always preach the payoff of your mortgage if you can. Yeah, sure. So I have$690 ,000 in a high-yield savings account. I have$233 ,000 in a trading account, a stock trading account. I have about$95 ,000 in an IRA. And my wife has about$150 ,000 in a 401k for her job.

1:21:03Wow. Way to go. Now, the mortgage on the home is$419 ,000. We don't have any debt, no credit card debt. Cars are paid off. The only debt we have is the mortgage. The mortgage rate is a 30-year loan at 4%. We're six years in. We have a daughter, and that's all. I'm just trying to see if the wise decision is to pay the mortgage.

1:21:34Dave Ramsey:If your house was paid off, would you go borrow money on it to put it into investments? No. Why not? It's the same thing. I don't know. I just wouldn't do that. It's the same thing. I'm at a 4 % rate. It's the same thing. If I would borrow money. If you take money out of your investment and pay off the mortgage, it's the exact same mathematical transaction. as to borrow on your home to put money into an investment. It's the opposite. We're just reverse engineering here. Yeah, and I feel like also having a mortgage is a big write-off also. No, it's not. Whereas if I didn't have it, no. No, it's a horrible write-off.

1:22:15Dave Ramsey:It's a horrible write-off. So you have$400 ,000 at what rate? $419 ,000 at 4%. It's a 30-year loan. Because you have$16 ,000 in interest a year. And you know what that saves you on taxes? $6 ,000. So you're giving the mortgage company$16 ,000 to keep from giving the government$6 ,000. That's a dumb butt trade. Yeah. That's a write-off. Yeah. Okay. You're trading dollars for$0.30. Yeah. Bad trade. Okay. That's how a write-off works. You probably are actually itemizing, but only 8 % of Americans itemize, and that's the only time you can do a write-off. But you've got enough of an income going on here.

1:22:54Dave Ramsey:I get paid on a 1099, and my wife is paying a W-2. Yeah, you're not. But yeah, you can. Anyway, so number one, I'd pay off your mortgage today. Number two, here's why. I've never in 35 years talked somebody into paying off their mortgage and then come back and go, wow, I hated it so much I went and got a new mortgage. Yeah. I've never in one time, tens of millions of listeners over 35 years, never a single person has said, Dave, that's a dumb, I felt so horrible not having a mortgage, I went and got me a new one. I've never heard that in one time. No, and here's the other thing. We studied 10 ,000 millionaires.

1:23:41Dave Ramsey:Not a single millionaire out of the 10 ,000 we talked to said, I made my money by borrowing on my home and investing that money. None of them said that's how I became a millionaire. Not one. That strategy is mythology in people's brains, but it never actually occurs in the real world when you get out in the wild. The number of millionaires that said I borrowed money on my house, invested it, and that's how I got rich was precisely zero out of 10 ,000 of them that we talked to. Zero did that. Also, zero said I got rich on my airline miles, too. So there you go. And so on. And this is what you're doing.

1:24:24Dave Ramsey:So anyway, if I were in you, I'd just pay off my house. And if you hate it and I'm wrong, you can go get your mortgage. And you won't hate it. You won't hate it. Yeah. There's something about you got that little girl at home. There's something that's telling you, man. There's something about going to bed at night knowing they can't ever take that house away from that little girl. Yeah. It just changes everything. Got a place to live. Yeah. Got a place to live. It changes everything. It's very weird that we don't quantify the weight associated with this in our relationships, in our spirit, physically, the way you manifest in your body the weight of debt.

1:25:08Dave Ramsey:None of us quantify any of that. All we do is go, well, the mortgage rate's cheap. But, dude, when you can breathe deeper because you haven't got a backpack on. I call it my sleep tax. Yeah. So what? If it's 2 % difference or 3%, I don't care. That's my sleep tax. I get to sleep really well. I'll pay that happily. Nothing to think about that.

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1:26:32Dave Ramsey:live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions it's the ramsey show where we help people build wealth do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships dr john deloney Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of the very popular Dr. John Deloney show on Ramsey Networks. He's my co-host today. Jesse's in Texas. Hi, Jesse. How are you? Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? My question is, I'm 27 years old. I stay at home with my two young children right now. My wife works. We're in about$100 ,000 worth of debt. and I do deliver food on the evenings to make some extra money.

1:27:19But really my question is how do I balance working because it's kind of when she comes in, I'm out the door, how we balance that marriage and family time with also trying to take care of this debt at the same time.

1:27:30Dave Ramsey:What does she make? About$60 ,000. Okay. And what kind of debt is the$100 ,000? $60 ,000 is student loans, about$27 ,000. in a car and then the rest is credit card debt. You need to sell a car. Yeah. Yeah. We looked into that. I know right now we're like upside down. I think about 10 grand in it. Yeah. You need to sell a car. Yeah. You've got a car you can't afford. And you don't drive a$27 ,000 car with a$60 ,000 income. Yeah. And I don't think you're really upside down 10K on 27. Um, and you know, unless you traded, did you trade negative equity from the other deal into it? No, no, we just didn't put anything down on it.

1:28:23So. Yeah. Okay. And dude, I, I'm saying this cause I love you. I don't, I don't know that you're in a position right now to be a full-time stay at home dad. Yeah. We thought about that. It's just that a lot of the daycares in this area, we're looking between two and three K and that's probably about what I would be able to bring in a month. Why is that? Why is that? Um, I just, that's before, before we had the first baby. Um, No, not the daycare costs. I know daycare costs are just, are breaking people's backs all over the country. I get that. I'm talking about why do you think you could only make$2 ,000 a month?

1:28:58I don't buy that. I mean, yeah. I mean, that's just what I was before, before I stopped working. Yeah. I was, I was bringing about 2 ,400, um, which would be the cost of daycare. Um, I just worked into a meat market and a grocery store. That's what I'm leaning on. like if you made it your mission to like double and triple serve your family for two years and get this debt out of control I'm just telling you right now y 'all aren't going to be able to make it oh and that kind of money and trying to get a home and raising two kids on 60k it's it's not a it's not a values question dude it's a math problem yeah and my wife is in the process of trying to get she's been in the same industry for about 10 years and so she's trying to make more money herself that's kind of why we I know, but I want to push on you, brother.

1:29:43She's not on the phone. I want to push on you. Yes, sir. Like, if you have capped yourself out and said, the only thing I could ever do to serve my family is to work in a meat market and make$2 ,300 or$2 ,400 a month, then I'd want to spend some time with you over some nachos, man, and challenge that because I don't believe it. Yeah. I think you're selling yourself way, way short. And if that's the case, then for a season, I'm going to work at a meat market, and I'm going to come home, I'm going to high-five my wife and kiss my kids, and I'm going back out because for centuries men have left their home for years to serve and honor their families.

1:30:15And that's what I've got to do right now because we owe$100 ,000. Yeah, and that's kind of weird because right now I'll probably make$1 ,000 to$1 ,500 just doing deliveries. Like when she comes in the door, I leave. And so we figured that with the cost of the daycare, then we're looking at really I need to bring$3 ,500 in or something along those lines before we would break even on me having a job

1:30:39Dave Ramsey:or like a full-time job, you know. Yeah. Well, here's what John's saying. I don't get that. You have the full-time job and you keep the delivery. Correct. Yeah. Every stinking night, if that's what you've got to do to get yourself out, get your butt out of this problem. So here's the thing. The point of the conversation is you seem to think there's a process by which you can avoid pain here. There's going to be pain here. You just should choose it instead of letting it choose you. Yeah. The pain could be the ongoing financial stress and the toll that that takes on your marriage. And you don't do anything about it in the name of nurturing kids and in the name of I need to be home when my wife is home because I don't ever see her.

1:31:25Dave Ramsey:And how do I have life balance? Well, you have life balance when you get your butt cleaned up because you made a mess. That's when you have life balance. But right now you're not going to have life balance because your life is out of balance. And I'm not saying this. People can hear this as I'm shaming them. I'm not. I'm just telling the truth. Kids will based in the angst of a home that is buried financially. And so if you are staying at home and your wife is making 60K and y 'all have 100 grand in debt, that house is going to be a stressful, chaotic place. Period. It just is because there's never going to be enough a month at the end of your money ever.

1:32:08And the irony is the very thing you were trying to protect, you're cooking it. Yeah. They're going to based in that stress and that anxiousness and that frustration and those the fights. And yeah, dude, there's just a season when you have to say, I got to get after it.

1:32:23Dave Ramsey:I'm going to strap on a tool belt and it's not coming off till I get this mess cleaned up. Get after it. I want more than anything for families to be in a position to choose for somebody to stay home. I love that with all my guts. But you all have a math problem that you've got to solve, man. Yeah. And, you know, those kids, they like to eat. So there's that. Okay. Wendy's in Oregon. Hey, Wendy, what's up? Hi there. My husband and I have three kids. We raised identical twin boys and our older daughter, who just got married to a great guy with an amazing family. And so what we actually did, financial peace years ago, went through that program.

1:33:06So we had already already had, sorry about that. We continued to tell the kids, we will provide room and board for you when you go to college, but we will not have any money for you for college. We're sorry. The option was mom got to stay home with the kids. So we were able to do that, which means no college money, which was something they were always clear about. So our daughter was able to do that for her first two years before she got married. And now our boys have each chosen not to go to college, but they're heading into trades, which is great. So now we're at the point where we're happy to have them still live here, but we're trying to determine what that looks like for them paying us every month.

1:33:49Nah, they just need to go get an apartment. You think so?

1:33:54Dave Ramsey:Oh, I'm sure. Well, they do have some great friends, and they love to go get dates. Well, I love my kids too, but they need to go get an apartment. Yeah. Matter of fact, the two boys could do it together because they're both going in the trades. They're twins. They're used to living together. They could split expenses and just go be roommates. That'd be awesome. Yeah. And then our house is clean all the time. Yeah. And they can come over and visit. You can have dinner. And Wendy, can I tell you something? It's okay that you don't want them to live there. You're still a good mom. It's okay that you want them to be gone.

1:34:23The hurricane that is 18-year-old boy. you're not a bad mom, but I think Dave's right. I'd much rather you say, hey, guys, we're going to pay your first two months. Y 'all get out. Yeah. At least that's what I would do if I was in your case.

1:34:36Dave Ramsey:Yeah. And if you're going into the trades, better be working, son. Got to pay rent. That's what you chose. Strap on the tool belt. Seems to be a theme.

1:35:08so

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1:36:11Dave Ramsey:Brandon's in Michigan. Hey, Brandon, how are you? Hey, Dave. Hey, John. How are you both today? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Good. First off, thank you both for your time. Dave, thank you again for giving me a couple of minutes on the show. I'll try to be conscious of the time, but I do need a quick minute to just provide us some information. Okay. So first things first, I'm 27 years old. I dated and married my high school sweetheart, and we've been together for six years now. We've got a couple beautiful boys at home. And a few years ago, my wife and I, we were renting, and we were working, growing our family, and we were able to put money aside at the time and pay down our debt.

1:36:49So we've got some student loan debt, our cars. The situation we found ourselves in a year and a half ago was our middle child passed away, And it was Sudsy, and it was unexpected and unexplained. And obviously we weren't prepared for it. Oh, my gosh. And we weren't financially prepared for it.

1:37:07Dave Ramsey:How old was your baby? He was a year and a half old. A year and a half. Thanks. And you said it was SIDS or what did you say it was? It's Sudsy. It's like SIDS, but for non-infant, a little bit older. Oh, I got you. I'm so sorry. Oh, my gosh. What was your name? Thank you, guys. His name was Carter. Carter. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you guys. Um, anyway, so here's ultimately my question. Uh, one of the outcomes of his loss was I needed to get my family out of the house. Uh, my wife held onto memories in each room and it was haunting her. So I needed to get her out of the house and we ended up purchasing a home and it was at a time when we really weren't ready to be purchasing a home, But here we are now a year later.

1:37:56So ultimately, this is my question. I'm 27 years old. I'm trying to lead my wife. I'm trying to raise my other sons the best I can. My wife and I, we want to continue to be fruitful and to multiply and to grow our family. But what I'm finding is even after allocating every single dollar of income I bring in, we find that expenses continue to go up and we keep spinning our wheels. So my question is, what would you do?

1:38:20Dave Ramsey:How much is your house payment, honey? Mortgage is about$2 ,000, not including other expenses. And what's your take on monthly? Monthly after taxes and benefits, it's about$57.50 a month. Okay, what benefits are coming out of your check? I don't put anything away for retirement right now. It's just basically everything, medical, dental, insurance. Gotcha. And you've got debt other than the home? Yes, sir. We've got about$3 ,000 left. We only have one working car right now, and it's got about$3 ,000 left on it. And I have$18 ,000 in student loans, and then, of course, there's the mortgage. What's wrong with the other car?

1:39:08We don't owe anything on it. It's just it's old. The alternator went out maybe eight months ago. And like I said, we're kind of spinning our wheels. I work from home, so it's not really needed right now. So we haven't put the money back into it to get it up and running.

1:39:22Dave Ramsey:What's it worth if you did get it up and running? It's honestly a salvage title. After putting money into it, maybe I could sell it for three, four grand. But I'd have to deduct whatever expenses go back into it. Yeah, well, an alternator is not three grand. Sure. No, yeah, I understand. You find a buddy that turns a wrench and go put an alternator on the thing and get it sold, and that'll pay off some of your debt. That's thing one. But you've got bigger issues than that. Sure.

1:39:58And, again, we're not drowning, Dave.

1:40:01Dave Ramsey:Well, you've had a tragedy, honey. You've had a trauma. Sure. And so you guys are hurting. and it's just hard to do efficient mathematics and financial management when your heart is broken. It takes a minute. So give yourself permission to spin a little. Okay. It may take a minute for the family to get back up. It should take a minute if you're not whacked. And it is. It is. I mean, it takes a little while for you all to get up. I don't disagree. Maybe you shouldn't have bought this house, but the house is not killing you. It's a little high, but it's not disturbing me horribly. But I don't think you're going to make tremendous leaps forward the year after you lose a one-and-a-half-year-old.

1:40:56Sure. What's the state of your wife? How's she doing? We've grown a lot the last year and a half. and I'm sure you guys have your own experiences with grief. It just comes and goes. I'm at a point where I can... How's your wife doing, Brandon? Not good, Dave. Yeah. But we're okay. Hold on, Brandon, Brandon, Brandon. You keep saying that we're okay. You're not. Okay.

1:41:25Dave Ramsey:And that's okay. Yeah, it's okay to not be all right, but I want you to own it, okay? And let me put it this way. It's exhausting to try to continually be wallpapering over this hurt inside your house, right? Okay. Yeah. So here's the thing. If you don't make any financial progress for the next two years, 18 months, one year, but the two of you are able to move through some of this and get some healing during that time, that's a victory okay i don't think you're gonna do both at the same time do you okay yeah here's here's the way i usually when i sit down with a couple who's been exactly where you are here's what i always tell them the marriage and the life that y 'all had is over now it's over and so the same goals the same timelines the same trajectories the same career goals everything changes after that.

1:42:30And so the challenge is, will we choose each other to stay married? And child loss is one of the big indicators of marriages that really, really struggle because people grieve differently. And y 'all have probably experienced, I can't believe you're already moving on. And I can't believe you're still, still can't get out of bed. Like y 'all have probably grieved at different, different trajectories because that's what grief is. It's just different for everybody. and so we're going to decide we're going to rebuild a life together and it's going to be really tough out of the gate and so like dave said dude stay in stay in square at stay in square for the next 24 months is a huge win it's just recognizing we got a new marriage we got a new house we have a new everything and we wanted five kids well right now we might still have five kids but they're going to be a bigger gap between them and there's a six-year gap between my son and my daughter, not how we drew it up.

1:43:28We had some losses along the way. That's what we got. And right now our house is pretty magical place. And there was a lot of pain to get here. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. What's important for me is that you and your wife a year into this, y 'all go sit with somebody and y 'all say, okay, we have been in the black hole for a year, rightfully so. We're going to stay in a dark place for a while, but we're going to keep the lights on. We're going to keep going. We're going to keep grinding. What does it look like to begin to not heal, but what does it look like to start turning some light switches on?

1:44:05What does that feel like? What is the pain associated with that? And what does that look like to start raising the blinds a little bit? Yeah. That's, that's with a good therapist. It's sitting with a professional that will walk with you. Yeah. And you should feel a little bit crazy. You should feel a little Yeah, Dave, you nailed it. Like give yourself some grace during this season, man. You are a good husband and you're an incredible father and you are keeping the lights on to that place. And, man, it's an honor to talk to you.

1:44:37Dave Ramsey:Yeah. Yeah, I'm so sorry. If you can function perfectly in the middle of a tragedy like that, you're a psychopath. Right, right. Then I'd be worried about you. Yeah. Yeah. If you're wondering what do we do and what day is it, that's right where you should be. Yeah. Yeah. If my brain's spinning out of control all the time and I get distracted and suddenly a wave of grief catches me off guard and knocks me off balance, that would make you a normal human being. That's right and good and holy. That's right. Yeah. Because what you've been through is one of the most horrible things a human can experience.

1:45:11Dave Ramsey:And I'm so sorry. Shouldn't be that way. I hate it for you, brother. I hate it. Yeah. Give yourself a little room. Get some help to walk through that. That's the best thing you can do for your money, oddly enough. but money's not our motivator in this conversation.

1:45:51Hey, what's up? Dr. John Deloney here. The new dates have dropped for the Money in Marriage Getaway over Valentine's Day weekend in 2026. This is your chance to hit pause on everything in your life and reconnect with your spouse over a long weekend in Nashville, Tennessee. Me and my friend Rachel Cruz will be digging into topics like sex, money, communication, and more. This weekend is happening on February 12th through the 14th, and early bird prices start at$749 per couple, but the prices will be going up soon. Get your tickets today at ramseysolutions.com slash events.

1:46:42Dave Ramsey:Buying or selling a home in this crazy market is something else. If you want to know what the facts are on U.S. housing market trends, not what somebody's drama-based opinion on Tic Tac is. If you want to know what's really going on, just go over to RamseySolutions.com slash market, and we got it all there for you. And you can click the link in the show notes if you want to. It'll drop you right in there. Teresa is going in Ohio. Hi, Teresa. How are you? Hi, Dave. Hi, Dr. John. Thank you for having me. Sure. How can we help? My question is both a financial and a moral one. My parents are both approaching 80 years old and not in the best of health.

1:47:24My father is adamant about a full-blown funeral, and he's very much against cremation. But the only thing they have prepped for is to buy the burial plots like 25, 30 years ago, and they have nothing. They live with a family member, so there's no assets that they own. They're both living off of Social Security. My dad on a disability, Social Security, that he's had since 1989. And I guess just morally, now that he's been in and out of a nursing home on a mild start to dementia, I just want to be prepared. I'm torn.

1:48:04Dave Ramsey:Oh, so you're torn because they're asking you to pay for the funeral? Well, there's no other means to do so. And I have siblings, and I've tried to talk to my dad because he is somewhat with us, you know, as far as conversation. And he just feels that cremations are morally wrong, and he thinks that everything's been paid for. And then my mom looks at me and says, no, it's not. Well, does somebody look at him and say it's not been paid for? We've tried. We've tried. And he just said, what, I don't care? he's in his mind he thinks it's all been taken care of because he has his plot he'll tell you where it's located and what tree it's by and there's a lot more to that and my sibling lost a wife about two three years ago now and he said you know it was over 20 some thousand dollars for the funeral well that's not true no shouldn't be yeah it feels like you got it can be it can be but it doesn't have to be so uh what what do you guys make what are you you and your husband are you married yes i'm married my husband and i are actually we're on our second round of um the dave ramsey plan and i during covid we fell off that plan but we plan to be out of debt by november of this year and our home was paid off the first round excellent what's your household income um we both make 75 a year each so 150 yes yes sir okay cool so um you know what i would do is i i I get the aggravation from you that this is dumped in your lap, so to speak.

1:49:44Dave Ramsey:And I don't blame you for that emotion, but it's not 20 grand. I think if I'm you, I'm going to go down to the funeral home and go, hey, what is the cheapest casket and the cheapest process? And I think you're going to find, you know, five to seven. They sell caskets at Costco now. okay i did not they do and they're really cheap and they're nice i looked at one the other day um if there's somebody on the planet it's gonna get a casket at costco it's it's your one only day ramsey oh man i'm just george george george would do it george would do it but he needs a smaller casket yeah he needs a little casket that's a small little casket yeah but the uh yeah i'm seriously i think you're gonna budget this thing down it's not gonna be a big old pile of money and it's the actual math is not going to be that aggravating but the emotion of the aggravation is still going to be there until you turn it loose because it's not going to change it's not going away everything you've described is there's no out for this um and the good news is you make 150 and you're almost out of debt you'll be able to you know so five grand seven grand or whatever and just go okay i'm just going to plan on taking five thousand or seven thousand dollars out of my emergency fund or out of my savings or something when he passes and I'm going to put him in the cheapest possible burial arrangement that is not cremation.

1:51:11Dave Ramsey:And I would shop and, you know, when you call a funeral home, go down there and talk to him and say, I'm going to go to two or three funeral homes. So y 'all better give me the deal because I'm actually shopping price. I'm pre-planning and this is all about price. So you better give me your cheapest one or you're not going to get this deal. Okay. And tell me about, you mentioned them, but let's say the total bill is$7 ,000, and we're making that number up. Who knows? Why wouldn't you call your siblings and say, hey, everybody's going to pitch in$1 ,500 on this deal? I believe that two of them would financially be able to, but one would not.

1:51:48So, I mean, and that's fine. Okay.

1:51:52Dave Ramsey:Look, we're going to cover this, and I'd like for everybody to put in if you can. Yeah. And here's the bill. and by the way once you get this information nailed down and it's all pre-planned and you know exactly what it is because you're doing this while there's no emotion you've not got a loss at this moment right and so you're pre-planning it and so we're lit we're we're shopping it like we're buying a car or something we're shopping it's very calculated go ahead and once you get the place you go okay this place will do it for 5600 bucks or whatever and the number is and it may go up a little during the time if he lived 10 years or something you may I see some inflation, but send that number to your siblings and say, Dad is expecting us to do this.

1:52:33Dave Ramsey:I'm aggravated about it, but I've reconciled with that, and I'm going to put in. If you can put in your part of this, I'd appreciate it.

1:52:44Dave Ramsey:I wish they had taken care of it, but they hadn't. You can share that with them in whatever means you want to share. But I would give them the information and let them begin to process the emotion and the frustration and also have some time to prepare mathematically. That's it. Tell me about the one sibling that you think couldn't pay anything. Why not? There's more children in the home and they're younger. Okay. There's quite a difference. I would ask you to not take that from them. Yeah, give them the opportunity. Give them the opportunity. I'd send it to everybody and let everybody choose. If I found out my brother and my sister went behind my back and did something because they, quote, unquote, thought I couldn't handle it, that would be hurtful.

1:53:27Now, it would be hard for me to say, hey, I can't do this, but I can do this. And it's okay to say.

1:53:33Dave Ramsey:Let me know if you can do your part or what part you can do. That's right. That's why I would leave it and just leave it open-handed. And then you be prepared to write the whole check emotionally. Okay. And it's not going to be that much. It's not as much as your aggravation. Your aggravation is valid, okay? Yeah. It's just, you know, they should have done a better job. Dadgum, you know? And I want to prepare, you know, our kids and our grandkids for not obviously going that direction. And I appreciate everything I've learned from you. I do want to add that, you know, with my job I've had a lot of stress, but I learned that, and I've seen it in the last eight months in paying down my debt.

1:54:15I don't have to be a slave to my income. I'm going to be able to live and breathe a little bit. Yeah, breathe.

1:54:23Dave Ramsey:Yeah, get your breath back. Good for you. Proud for you. That's cool. It's a good question, and it's a valid question. Thanks for calling in with that. You know, it is make-a-will month, so it's time. Here's the thing. It is an act. We get these calls of this sort around death, around the estate, around wills, or not having a will or somebody arguing or being cut out of the will or whatever all the time. And it is an act of love to your family to systematically, like a nerd, prepare everything having to do with your last 90 days. And you've got a will. You've got a full-blown estate plan. You've got everything.

1:55:13Dave Ramsey:All your financial information is in a location, a singular location, where everyone knows where it is and they can find it. And then it's just execute the existing plan flawlessly, and there will be no problems. And, you know, you've taken care. I do not believe in prepaying for a funeral. That's ridiculous. The cost is silly. You're better off to just put your money in a mutual fund. But it is smart to preplan it. And in this case, I would preplan it in detail. And by the way, it does feel gross to quote unquote shop. I get that. And if they're a smart business, they will take advantage of you not wanting to shop.

1:55:54And so they will inflate the prices. They do. So let people know, just like Dave said, hey, we're going door to door here. We're going to run through a couple of homes here. What does this cost? Dirty little secret is it's a huge margin. Huge margin. Huge margin. And so, yes, it feels gross and do it anyway. Thank you.

1:57:00Dave Ramsey:Dr. John Delony and Dave Ramsey. Jordan Peterson said you cannot hit a target that you refuse to see. You cannot hit a target if you don't take aim. And I'll add, if you don't pull the trigger. Some people will go, ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim. Oh, shut up and fire. Seriously. That's Dave Ramsey, though. Hey, you want to go get a cup of coffee? You want to talk about my idea? You want to get some more coffee? I just need to talk to 17 other people about my idea. It's like, dude, just start the business. Just go. Just go. You've got plenty of wisdom. Hey, you want to go to lunch? I quit. Start the business.

1:57:42Dave Ramsey:It took me, for about 10 years, I used to take meetings. These people would come in. They wanted to tell me about an idea, something that we could do, and what Ramsey should be doing, and they had this great idea. And I finally quit because I finally figured out that ideas are a dime a dozen. People who do them aren't. Yes. They're harder to find. Ideas are everywhere. Everywhere. But people that actually execute, they're hard to find. Melissa's in Oregon. Hey, Melissa, how are you? Hello, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. How can we help?

1:58:17Well, considering a change in career a bit, I am about three days away from completing my master's degree in professional clinical mental health counseling. Oh, terrible. Terrible choice. Terrible choice. Says the guy with the PhD. Only morons do that, but well done. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a long, hard journey. I've continued to work full time as I've gone through my master's program. But I did borrow for most of the schooling itself. And after about two and a half years now, and on top of clinical hours, I've been doing about 60 hours a week plus school. and I'm almost done and my site is asking me to come on full-time.

1:59:03I'm nervous about giving up my job that I've had for 13 years with my benefits and my 401K and becoming a 1099 employee. What do you make at your job? I bring home about$3 ,000 a month.

1:59:21Dave Ramsey:What would you make if you start 1099-ing? well that's the thing it kind of depends on how many clients you have and how many show up i mean what do you think you're gonna make i'll be doing 35 an hour um to start which i'm getting about 26 an hour um what why 35 an hour why would you well i know i pay my therapist way more than 35 an hour Like 135. Yeah, I live in a rural area, which the benefit of staying at my site as I continue, I could become independently licensed. I live in a border town, and I can get independently licensed in Idaho. It's about 10 minutes away at my site. But I'm also continuing, I'm taking specialized classes in play therapy to become a registered play therapist, and that requires a higher level of licensure.

2:00:12Okay, so here's what I would do if I was you, okay? Here's exactly what I would do. I would work out arrangements with my supervisor. Number one, if this is the only supervisor you have, I would shop around. And I know in a rural area, you kind of deal with what you've got to deal with.

2:00:35Dave Ramsey:Are you married? I am single. Okay. Why do you have to stay there? well but the site the the they are qualified for what's called the hersa grant so basically with two years of yeah why do you have to stay in an area if you can't get but 35 an hour i'm going to go somewhere i can get 135 an hour well she will also pay off my student loans my 30k of student loans by being there at that site within two years of being employed there is that after you've done after you've got full licensure, so after you've given them your 3 ,000 hours plus your additional play therapy hours, then they're going to pay your loans off after that?

2:01:17No, it starts after my degree is confirmed and I get licensure, which I'm probably about a month away from. You're going to have your 3 ,000 hours postgraduate done right when you graduate? No, Idaho only requires a total of 10, excuse me, 1 ,000 hours with 400 being direct, and they will actually allow you to have your internship hours to qualify. And I've done all of that while I'm working full-time. But play therapy, I have to have that supervisor level. So here's what I would do. I would meet a need in your rural area, which is people who see clients on Saturdays and Sundays. and I would sign up personally for six to 12 months of really exhausting work seven days a week

2:02:10Dave Ramsey:and I would do it at a lot more than 35 an hour or I'm moving I'm serious that I that's that's like 1970 pricing I'm I I have never I know a bunch of marriage counselors that make 100 to 150 a year a bunch of them. Okay. And if you can't do that there, because you're convinced that the people in that area economically can't do that, then you need to do, you need to go somewhere else. I really would. But in terms of if you, because the answer to the equation is, yeah, no wonder you're nervous at$35 an hour and you don't have any customers. But if you're at 75 or a hundred dollars an hour, I'm not nervous anymore.

2:02:54Dave Ramsey:If I've got customers, because you're going to make so much more than you make now that what little you lose from not having 401k you can just go get your Roth IRA with a SmartVista Pro it's not a big deal you can set it up and you're 1099 so you can do a simple IRA as well which is a 401k for single employee or small companies and you can do a set up there's all kinds of stuff you can do to replace that buy your own health insurance you can replace benefits with money when you make more money. And so that's what the core of the$35 argument is. I want you to make more money. You've gone to all this trouble.

2:03:30Dave Ramsey:You've gone to all this exhausting process of doing your hours, doing everything while you're working full time. For God's sake, cash the check now. Yeah. Something about this arrangement doesn't sound right, and I would really want to check through to make sure you're not getting taken advantage of. so Dave it's not uncommon for graduates to have to pay a supervisor for their hours but and some supervisors will say hey you come work for me they're billing out at 100 bucks an hour or 100 whatever it is but I'm going to pay you 35 bucks an hour while you work towards your hours and you're paying me to supervise you to sign off on 1099 oh yeah yeah yeah but that's there's two problems here one is you've backed yourself into a corner by borrowing a bunch of money for a graduate program you have a math problem you may not be able to thirty thousand dollars do what she's thirty thousand dollars in debt that's what i mean but she may not be able to quit her job to go work for 35 bucks an hour yeah at 1099 to pay off that thirty thousand dollars worth of debt so you're saying that 35 an hour because they're taking their cut off atop of her i'm saying if that's the case she's saying that's not the case what they're going to do is they're going to pay her way below market rate and then say we're going to pay your student loans off it's still not that It feels like a bad deal.

2:04:44Dave Ramsey:Still not a deal. Yeah. It feels like a not good deal. If I could have made twice as much money, I don't care. I'll pay my own student loans. That's right. That's exactly right. And I can pay my own benefits and I can pay my own whatever. That's right. Or triple the amount of money. Yeah. Don't sell yourself short. That's what we're trying to say. Make sure you get the details ironed out. And really, when making any decision, the more options you have, the more power you have, and the higher the quality of the decision will be. when you've narrowed it down to one possible outcome, you don't have any power and you don't have, and you have a higher probability of making the wrong decision.

2:05:24Dave Ramsey:And the meaning I'm going to own, this is the place. She got all worked out that this is the place and it doesn't have to be the place. It can be something else. And they know that you owe 30 ,000 bucks. They also know that you've decided they're the only option, which means they can kind of pay you whatever they want. and that's never a good place to find yourself. But all I have to say is I'm glad you're going to be a therapist. We need more good ones, and especially in rural communities, man. But I'm with Dave. Man, if you can retain autonomy, please, please go do that. Yeah. If you're clear and you're able to get licensure and just go, then go.

2:06:02Dave Ramsey:That's what you need to do. That puts the Sour of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.