Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studios. It's the Dave Ramsey Show where Ned is dumb. Cash is king in the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Dr. John Boloney Ramsey personality is my co-host. Today here on the air, we are answering your questions about life and about money.

It's a free call, a triple eight eight two five five two two five. That's eight eight two five five two two five tallies with us in Washington, D.C..

Hey, Tyler, what's up?

Hi, I'm a Christian, so I'm a baby step five and six. So I'm a single parent and I wanted to see what your thoughts were, what percentage like to five. And that, I thought was if I have to pay my house down by then, what are your thoughts on getting a home equity to pay for college?

If I don't have enough pay, then OK, no, on B we're not going out of debt just to return.

No, the purpose is to get out and never go back. OK, now once we got that out of the way.

So how old are you. I'm sorry you broke up a little bit. I said, how old are you? And I'll be 40 next week.

So how old are your baby? He's nine. OK, good. And what do you make a year? 120. Good for you.

You are doing so great. Graduation still. Well done. Well done. OK, well, there's a couple of ways to approach it.

The only way I would put baby step six paying off your house and doing almost nothing for college in the way is if that made you be able to cash flow college.

Sometimes people will knock their house out and then they go, I'm on a cash flow college instead of saving for college or paying off the household, but slower the other end of the spectrum. And sometimes people say, I'm just going to pay the minimum on the house until I really pile up enough and I can check the box. There's so much money. I've got a 13 year old four years from now that has 150000 bucks in his account.

I'm done now. I'm going to move on and pay off the house.

That's the safest, easiest way because, you know, college is done. You know, I think about it again and then you can move on and pay off the house. But sometimes people do go the other way and they say, I'm gonna pay 50 bucks a month into the college fund. You got to do something in baby step five. You have to touch the stone.

OK, but but past that, if you want to pay 50 bucks a month and then just knock the house out. But the only way is if you think the math is going to allow you to cash flow college.

And that, of course, has everything to do with your income and college choice where you choose to send the nine year old. But either way is OK because baby steps for for those of you listening, baby step four is after you're out of debt, you have your emergency fund in place. You're putting 15 percent of your income into retirement.

Five is kids college. Six is pay off the house early. We do those three simultaneously. The first three are not simultaneous.

You do one at a time in order on the first three, but the last three or simultaneous and the fifteen percent you really do put you continually are doing that. That's what I mean by simultaneous, but you don't slow that one down. I'm going to put two percent into my retirement and load up college. No. Fifteen percent into retirement.

Then we're going to do something for college and something on the house and the average person is paying off their home in seven years doing that, which oddly enough, is about where she is. She would have the house paid for, she said, by the time he got to college.

So I know that one speaks to me. I've just worked with so many college kids that they don't know where they're going to end up or what they're going to do. I want to go to the school, the school nonetheless. I got to meet some girl at summer camp and they end up going to this. Whatever the thing may be. I like the idea of not having a house payment and going the other way. Yeah, I like that.

But again, I'm not there yet. And then cash flow and call cash flow in college the way we ended up doing it.

And it was just the way our life worked out. It really wasn't the quote, game plan at the beginning. We said we're going to start saving for college and we did start saving for college. And those days that weren't 529, you just do it in the kids name. It was a custodial account. It's not a mutual fund in the kid's name. That simple.

And we had that going along well.

By the time they got to school, we were at the other end of this journey from having gone broke to becoming wealthy. Right.

So we cash flowed college and didn't even touch their college.

Mm. And then when they graduate, we handed in that mutual fund full of money. Yeah. To start buddies that had that, that and that was a really nice way to kick off each of the Ramsey kids adulthood, you know, and made, you know, made their, their transition out the door that much easier and so forth. But we could have used the money. But really they went to University of Tennessee. It wasn't super expensive and we're making plenty of money.

So we just wrote a check, covered the dorm, covered the apartment, whatever it was, and covered the tuition and stuff. And they had a little budget they were on and that kind of stuff.

But if you do have it not in a mutual fund and it's in the 529, what is the exit strategy? If you get in that situation, you need to use it. You got to spend it. You need to use it because it's just a shell game. At that point, it has to be used for if it's in a 529, you don't get the tax break.

If you pull it out and use it for something other than hire it out, other than education, education, you can use it for any family member. You can use it to send mom to get her Ph.D.. Right.

You know, but but but, you know, you don't have to be for the person on the 529. You can transfer it now. But but it's just the same. You need to plan to use it. And even if they get scholarships, you can withdraw the amount of the scholarship out of the 529. So they got thirteen thousand on scholarship. I take thirteen thousand dollars out of the 529. No taxes. Wow. That's a good setup.

Yeah.

So that's a way to get if they you know, I don't want to do 529 because they might get scholarships. Well don't worry about it. You take the value of the scholarship out. If it's an athletic scholarship, you take the value of the scholarship and the university will give you the documentations to do that with. And you're set up for that.

Autumn is with us in Columbus, Ohio. Hey, Autumn, how are you? Hi, I'm good, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? OK, so my husband and I both have pension plans through our employer. I have to contribute 10 percent and he has to contribute 12, but we cannot address that. So I was wondering, since that is 22 percent towards retirement, if we should and not adjustable, I was wondering if we should do more towards retirement or what?

Because I don't hear my math is wrong to start with. It's not 22 percent of your household income. It's. 10 percent and 12 percent, right? Right. So when you take the total amount out of your checks as a percentage of your household income, it's going to be depending on who's what, but it's going to be somewhere around 10 percent of your household income. You see what I'm doing, OK? Yeah, you don't have the two fingers together.

That's not how the math works. So but anyway, the your question is still valid. And the question is, since I've got this mandatory freaking pension, does that change my baby? Step four, is that your question?

Yeah, I just want to know that was so we know. It's hard to know because you're not in control of the pension. Right. You have no say at all over what happens with this pension. I'm not predicting that it crashes.

Some of them do, but I wouldn't want my whole thing bet on the competency of a pension fund manager.

And so. Right.

Well, I don't know that you need to save 15 percent of your household income in addition to this, but you need to save a good chunk, maybe 10 percent in addition to this, because you have absolutely no control over this. It may underperform. It may fail. They may change the terms of it based on who's putting in about the time you're going out.

And they get into all kinds of actuarial crossroads there and they change stuff up to protect themselves, not you.

And so and I mean, I'm sorry you have to do it. It's mandatory. But I put in an additional 10 percent in the 401K Roth IRA. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Twenty 20 is over, let's start this New Year strong. Make sure your housing strategy is working for you. The right plan can lower your interest fees drastically. And ultimately, have you paid off years before others talk to Churchill mortgage call triple eight, loan 200 or Churchill Mortgage Dotcom.

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Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co-host and crime is our open phones, a triple eight to five five two two five. Aaron is in Nashville. Hi Aaron. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Right down Sunset. It is up to you. You too. Hoping. I'm hoping you'll be able to settle a family debate my husband and I have. So just to give a little back story, you're very probably on baby step four or five and six. Get off about 40 grand and three hundred eighty eight days. So we were really strict on budget, as in me, I'm super frugal. So that leads me to my question. We I've always dreamed of upgrading my wedding site and we're coming up for a ten year anniversary this May.

So the deal is that I will be able to upgrade. Well, now I'm starting my research and realizing since we got married, there's these beautiful new, more frugal options such as lab grown diamonds. So I'm sure that lab grown. Yeah.

Oh, so I'm sure that that's that's kind of the debate that we're hearing.

You know, you you hear that lab grown our you know, essentially they're just as real as real diamonds, but they're the key. They're far cheaper. So my thing is to understand, you know, is it worth paying far less upfront and not having fun shouldn't be an investment. I know they are not, but they likely will never be able to be resettled much for anything, if at all, or spend the extra money upfront and have something that you know is a real.

It doesn't matter. Is that matter? It doesn't matter. Here's the thing, OK? You know, Sharon got married with thirty eight years ago with a point two, three spec point two, three carats. You have to get a magnifying glass to find the freaking OK on her hand.

So that is, that is in a safe and the woman has a freaking headlight on her hands so and so in between those two I've made several upgrades and have participated in some young men marrying my daughters, meaning I didn't participate on by it. But I was involved in the diamond purchases and involved in lots of diamond purchases all over Sharon's ears and arms and everything else. And so, you know, we reached a point a few years ago that, you know, what I really started to understand is, is they do not go up in value, period, OK?

And the only person that cares, unless you get one big enough to blind people in the room, the only person that cares is you.

Six months after I buy that diamond, I have to get a file out and try to figure out what I paid for. I don't even remember.

I don't even care. The only one that cares is Sharon. It's on her hand. And so that's what I mean, the only one who cares is you you're not going to go around going. This one's fake unless you're like you're weird.

You know, you're just going to be walking around with this thing. You forgot it's on your hand even.

And you go, OK, I my personality is I couldn't give a rip list if it's real. I bought the, you know, the lab grade fake one. Right. Or whatever you call that or I really wanted it to be real.

It means something to me emotionally and it's a thing. And I've got the money and I just bought it. There's nothing wrong with either one.

But you can't really say, oh, one's not going to be worth anything because it wasn't worth anything when you bought it. You're not going to pay much for it or it's it's going to be worth about what you paid for it. If you can find a market for it, if you got right to sell it, Aaron, why do you want to upgrade your wedding set after a decade?

It's always been a dream. There's also a lot of baggage in that previous life when it comes to ratings. So this is kind of my the only piece of nice jewelry that I ever care to own. And I just want something that. Yeah, that could knock somebody out. But I look at him.

So Dave's right. It's it's not going to knock people out. It's going to make you happy for a minute. And it's not going to have the desired effect on other people.

Are you talking about spending on this between. Well, love going to be about 3000 real. You've been looking about fifty five hundred dollars.

Yes.

Oh, by the real crowd. I thought it was like a hundred dollars versus ten thousand.

No, no. I think the debate was that I thought you would go with LeBron because the farm were less expensive than zero market for that crap. We agree. No there's no.

And so it's less expensive but it's worth zero. The other one at least, probably is going to be worth five thousand dollars ten years from now.

And that's what we're looking for. That was kind of the debate.

It was one of those you know, I thought there was I thought it was more of a value, a more of a diverse value, bigger value separation and a separation than there is with that separation. There's no question about the fifty five hundred.

It's not a lot of money. You got the money. You're in good shape until much. Fifty five thousand. That's why I said hundred to make sure I know what. But yeah I if it was me, you know what you want do.

There's nothing, there's no wrong answer. I already gave you all the other stuff that you can think through.

But just from a money standpoint I, I buy the fifty five hundred and if you've waited a decade and it's do what you want, if you've we tell people to wait twenty four hours.

Right. You wait ten years. Get the one that you want. Yeah. Yeah. You got the money.

Good for you. Yeah. Don't be a tightwad on this one. There's so much the way you phrased your sentences when you start talking about the baggage in the background, in the whole thing, there's something there.

Brother told me you still wanted the fifty.

Five hundred. That's right. That's what he told me. And I would do it. I wouldn't think anything about it.

This is why we do this stuff. You live like no one else. So later you can live and give like no one else and you can make a decision like this. But yeah, that's what I would do.

But, you know, I'm not going to call you stupid for doing the other. You do if you want to do the other. It's fun. It's nothing wrong with it.

So there's like this because I'm just two guys talking about something we don't know anymore we're talking about. But actually doing a little bit about this just because I'm also thinking minium.

But there's this whole thing of you get a completely fake like one hundred dollar version of an eighty thousand dollar ring that is for travel. OK, when you're traveling, you don't take your real stuff because you're going a stolen. If you got, like, super expensive stuff, I don't know what you call it, but apparently that's a thing to and that's what was in my head voice you talk about. Those are like plastic.

So am I right? I guess I just my all my alarm bells go off if you can't go on a trip without making sure everybody knows this is the room. I got one at home, I promise you. I mean, like maybe I'm missing. It's not wear anything on the trip over a wedding band or if you're that worried about it.

Yeah, I guess I'm just thinking, like, what do you what is the.

Well, if you're going to wear headlight on your hand, you're going to wear a headlight on your hand on a trip. I mean they're the same thing. So fair and but yeah.

I mean and you know, most of us that travel have lost stuff. They've had stuff stolen. Oh. You know, it's not an unusual thing.

So you got to be super careful, huh? It's a very interesting it's a very interesting way of looking.

I've never heard of the words lab grown diamond. I guess they're trying to grow cows and pigs and horses, Dolly the sheep, myself, whatever. Man Right through my head.

It's lab grown that gives a rock a little bit more love than it deserves. But that's. Yeah. Becky is in Salt Lake City.

Hi, Becky. How are you?

I'm trying to get through some stuff, so I'm going through divorce right now. Yeah, OK. And definitely not something I wanted to have happen. And so my question for you is more financial based, I've done so because my therapist is out of town this week.

So I so I I'm a realtor and I've always had, like, roller-coaster income with it and really not great income with it, but I love it. And I think that part of the reason why my income wasn't so great was because I didn't have the emotional bandwidth to handle as many clients as I wanted to before, because my marriage has been falling apart for two or three years and most recently been a four year marriage, but very reasonable.

Yeah, so I could be here, so I have a few deals that are closing this month or two that are one that's causing this month and then two that will close next month. And then I don't have anything else in my pipeline. But since I won't have my husband's income to, you know, to carry me through stuff, I am just trying to figure out what I should do. I mean, obviously, get more my pipeline.

Yeah, I'll tell you what. Hang on. We come back from the break room for. We're talking with Becky in Salt Lake City going through a divorce. She's been a real estate agent and has had an irregular income, meaning that someone she did really well, she's got a couple of deals in the pipeline getting ready to close after that.

Nothing else on the pipeline. She's worried about her income pending the divorce. Is that a fair summary of what you told us?

If I push the button, I could talk to her. Hi, Becky. Is that a fair summary of what you told us? Yes, it is cool. All right, so when is the divorce final and when was it final? So I don't know. It'll take at least 30 days. I my husband wanted me to sign some papers last night, but I just realized that I wasn't ready to sign anything last night. And so I tried to get him to come back and said what she was going to do.

So 30 days from whenever I sign the papers.

OK, and you have children. You know, how long have you been married? Almost four years. What does he make? About thirty three thousand dollars a year. Actually, no, sorry, that went up again, so about 36.

There's no children. He makes 33. Is there any money involved in this at all? The assets? Do you own a house? Do you have any money?

We have debt that we're splitting. The asset we had was a car that was above water.

OK, the debt that you're splitting, whose names are on it. So he has a student loan and I have my student loan.

And then we have credit cards that are pretty much all in just my name. He was just an authorized user on. And we haven't used them for over a year. That's the balance on those a of the credit cards, about seven thousand dollars.

OK, if he promises to pay some of those and doesn't, you will have to anyway. Regardless of the divorce, a divorce decree does not take you off of debt. Yeah, it just makes you just hold him accountable to pay it, but if he doesn't, the bank has the right still to come after you. So keep that in mind. I think you need an attorney to do a divorce. You always need an attorney to do a divorce.

Sounds like a fairly simple one, a fairly clean one when you're ready to do that.

So. Back to your original question, then, you're in the middle of heartbreak and you've been dealing with a messed up situation, so you weren't didn't have the phrase, you said you don't have the emotional bandwidth to address and to fully apply yourself to the real estate business. Right. Right. OK. So when there is some finality to this, it should open up that bandwidth, shouldn't it?

Yeah, I actually already have, because my husband was just so wishy washy about wanting to stay together for a couple of years. And so finally ended up August. He finally told me that he just wanted a divorce. And as he moved through you deal came from you moved out.

He moved out in March. OK. All right.

I'm sorry you're going through this. I can hear I can hear the pain in your voice. How old are you again?

Twenty five, OK.

I think you're going to be a great real estate agent. I don't think you're going to be any trouble because you're going to two things. One, you're going have your emotional bandwidth back when you when you've got finality to this. And two is you're gonna have a level of desperation that's going to cause your little. But to go to work. And I think you're going to have a really full pipeline pretty quick once you can actually put your eye on the ball, I think you'll be able to catch the ball.

Yeah, yeah, but right now, you're looking like six directions and the ball goes right by you, right by your own account. Of our mission John. Becky, I want you to honor this as though there's a death, so it hurts right now and you are at those papers and it feels heavy when you sign them, you're going to have feelings that you've probably never felt before. And then in 30 days, when you get that final letter, it will be as though somebody told you someone you loved has passed away.

And I want you to honor it like that. We hear about divorce all the time and it just sounds like it just happens and we minimize it and people get blindsided with the dump truck of emotions and pain that it actually is on the other side of it.

You're 25, and I want to promise you, there's healing and light on the back end of this deal and a better man out there.

There's somebody is going to love you and honor you and be with you and not drag you through six months, seven months, eight months. And they're going to honor you for the just the wonderful woman you are.

So honor this. Get some people in your life. They're going to sit with you during this messy time. And like Dave said, you're going to have no other option but to take on a bunch of clients and to work real, real hard. But don't don't miss the point. Don't miss the time when you get to grieve this the right way.

OK, Honoris, just ask.

And I don't think you sign papers that you haven't had an attorney. Absolutely. Don't sign a piece of paper before attorney looks at it. That's worth the 500 bucks or the thousand bucks you're going to spend on it. Yep.

OK, we're not trying to pick a fight. We're trying to make sure he didn't sneak one in on you. Yeah, yeah, but I don't believe in picking a fight, I just want to make sure that you don't go, oh, well, look what he did later because you were upset and a half read something or you missed something with your emotionally clouded eyes. If I were in your situation, there's no way I would make that deal without without having somebody look at it.

Absolutely not.

I wouldn't either, because, you know, I know when I'm mad or when I'm hurting that that I my editing skills aren't real good when I'm reading a contract. I reached I read stuff that's not even there. I mean, I just make up stuff in my little head. I did the exact same thing. And so you just that's what happens to all of us when we have that. So that is what you're facing. Hey, you call us anytime you need help, OK?

I hate that for you, Becky. Just know there's light on the back end of this deal on the debt free stage. And a better story is Christine from Kansas City here in the Ramsey Solutions lobby to do debt free scream. Congratulations. Thank you. How much have you paid off? About 60 grand. Way to go. How long did that take?

So the first twenty I paid off in about three years. And the last 40, it was just two.

OK, so your journey. Yes. OK. And your income during that five year range.

Yes. So the first three years was crazy. I worked three jobs and about 20000 dollars.

And then now I'm at 50. Good for you. What do you do for a living right now? I'm a health educator at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army Wellness Center. Oh, very cool. In the military. I'm not a civilian. Yes. Oh, yes. Very cool. Good for you. What kind of debt was a 60 K student loans? All student loan debt took five years to get Sallie Mae evicted.

Yes, five years from when I graduated. So well done. Yes. So what put you on this journey?

Yeah, my dad, who's here with me today, my dad, my brother, my brother in the military. So they were big influences on me. And my dad actually took me to FPU at his church when I was about to graduate college and I had no shuttle. Yes, right. I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into. And so I was just like, yeah, sure, I'll go with you. And it really shed a light on what I was about to embark on.

And I got really nervous. But then I also just had this great accountability and my dad literally could not have done it without him. I am just so thankful that he was there for me to help me through all my things. I moved three times in those five years. Wow. So it was crazy. And then I even got my car stolen right before I was going to pay off. I got stolen actually in January. Wow. And so he he just like really helped me out financially.

And was my accountability prior to the entire thing salvific. Very cool.

Very cool. Well that's that's what makes you the rock star that you are. Well done. You're a hero. I'm proud of you. Thank you very. I know he is. Yeah. Very, very well done.

So what was the toughest part of this toughest part was just keeping going. You know, five years. Five years is a long time. Yeah, really. And, you know, being in the health and wellness field, it is really hard to find a job and to pay enough. Right. And to be single and by yourself. And so that's why I was so thankful to have my family. But good. Yeah. Just buckling down.

More proud of you. Well done. Well done. Thanks for coming to do your debt free scream. We got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you Everyday Millionaire.

You're going to be one. Yes. Here it comes to you and I'm going to bring my dad up and. All right, he's going to stay with me because he's also going to be a millionaire one day. So good. All right.

Christine and her dad from Kansas City. Sixty thousand paid off in two years, three years making twenty four fifty. Counted down a debt free scream. Three to one up.

Wow. Well done, very well done. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Our Scripture of the day, Matthew, five 16 in the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. Alex Trebek said, don't tell me what you believe in. I'll observe how you behave and I will make my own determination that that's it.

That's it. There you go. I think I may have told you I was working doing an internship with the child psychologist. And I was was at a young son at the time. And I was double dip and I would ask, quote unquote, questions about clients. But I was really asking parenting questions I'll never forget when I asked him, hey, man, how are you supposed to.

What do you want to say to a young little boy to help him respect women in the appropriate way? And he looked at me and kind of smiled and said, you can say whatever you want, man, but he's just going to watch how you treat your wife. And if you want to teach your son how to respect women, then treat your wife. Right. And he just walked into the next room. And that phrase, they don't listen to you.

They watch you just stuck with me.

Right? Rachel always says more is caught than taught right now. Yeah.

So Financial Peace University is one of the things that you get to go through when you are a member of the all access membership at Ramsey plus Ramsey Plus's a year long membership and it has the best money, tools and content. Everything is there. Financial Peace University, which actually works every dollar. The premium version is there. The Baby Steps Tracker. There are groups there that you can participate in. You can go to a local class if it's if there's a physical one being held in your area.

Some of them are. Some of them aren't. There are tens of thousands of virtual classes going on right now. You can get into and there is no reason for you to not have the impact that that last couple and that whole family had. Over six million families. People have gone through Financial Peace University. It is the class on how to handle money, and it is included in your Ramsey plus membership, where you get all the tools, all the support, the coaches are in there.

Everything's there to make sure that you can do the stuff that we talk about here every day on the air.

Can you white knuckle it and do it by yourself? Sure. But why not put the world's best tools at your fingertips to make it as easy as possible? It's a it's a difficult journey at best. It's very hard to do this stuff, but you can do it so, oh, by the way, since it's all digital. You can download the workbook, even everything's there, right? You can skip all the chaos. It makes a great Christmas giveaway.

So just go to Dave Ramsey, dot com slash store, Ramsey plus. And if you want to give it as a gift, if you want to just jump in and start doing it, you can get a free trial as well and just check it out, see how it works for you. You can get started anyway and just go to Dave Ramsey, dotcom slash store, get in the store and you can pick that up while you're there. You can pick up John Moloney's new book, Redefining Anxiety What It Is, What It's Not and How to Get Your Life Back.

Anxiety, a top of mind concept, a top of mind subject these days, especially in the year known as anxiety.

When you look 20-20 up, it is the numbers that mean anxiety.

But that's the ancient Greek 20-20. It's the numerology. That's when you. Yeah.

Hey, Dave, I don't know if I'm allowed to plug it this way, but I'm going to call my wife and I use that every dollar app.

So it's not just something to not be allowed to do that.

Well, I sometimes I just think it's important that some of these things aren't just pitches. These are aren't just things that we put out into the marketplace, but these are things that we use behind closed doors, too. And that has helped.

I actually told our team this morning, yeah, make sure you're going through Financial Peace University. And if you don't get a will and you die, I'm going to kill you. That's exactly right, David.

They've announced to the company, if you don't get a will and you die, I'm going to kill you. That's refurnish a will as an employee benefit. That's right. You know, through the mama bear stuff, that's all that. Right. So and then they don't go get one. It's free. I'm OK. That's it.

But this at my wife and I use it. It helps us communicate, helps us to stay accountable. It's a good thing, man. I appreciate it's not something we just appear thrown out into the wind trying to sell. We use it. We use this stuff, too. And and it's it's legit. And I'm an almost app free guy. Like, I don't I like pen and a paper and this thing's great man.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Well, it is the world's best. I mean, our guys, the technology team that we've got on it, it's so robust. I mean, it does everything and it's easy to use. So and it's included, you know, the premium version that connects to your bank is included when you're in employee. Plus it all ties together. I mean, you can go over and just do every dollar if you wanna do that or you can go over here and just do this or just do that all together.

You can get a yellow pad and do it you into a budget with the other pad. You can you can live on less than you make. You'll be all right. You know, you're going to work it out. It's just a matter which is the most efficient thing in the process that we've we've been doing this for thirty years, that we've toned it in and knock the rough edges off.

And it's the it's the, you know, the least heavy lifting of a very heavy lift to completely change your life. So again, Ramsey plus at Dave Ramsey dot com, just click and click into the store. Justin's with us in Arkansas, are in Arizona I'm sorry, Glendale, to be exact. Hi, Justin.

How are you? I'm doing all right, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Well, first of all, I want to thank you guys for taking the call. Appreciate that a lot, actually. So I'll try to keep you short as I can myself. I'm saying I recently had a baby six months ago and we've been running a home from her uncle. And recently her uncle came and told us that because it's a seller's market right now, he wants to sell the home.

So he believes that when I guess one comes out of office, there's going to be a crash. I guess so. He told us we have until he's out of office to kind of get out. And right now I'm unable to work because of a workplace injury a little over a year and a half ago. And the condemned, it pushed my fiancee out of work two days before giving birth to our daughter. So we have no verifiable income to actually prove we have finances.

And due to really poor choices in both of our adolescents, our scores are in the low. Five hundred for his credit and we've been trying to find places to write. We've even offered a years right up front and we've still been being turned down. So you have the money for that? Yes. Currently we have thirty four thousand dollars saved, OK, because we were we were trying to fix our debt issues.

It's a lot of your message that we had seen and that's how we were saving money prior to us losing our jobs. How old are you two? I'm twenty eight. And she's kind of.

What's the nature of your workplace injury? It's a neurological issue. I ah, I was a semi truck driver and I was lifting some rebar and it popped something in my back. And due to that I ended up getting diagnosed with peripheral sensory and actual neuropathy. So I have constant nerve pain in my feet and hands and back. So it's like electrical zaps, burning, throbbing and then swelling.

What is your what is your long term plan with all of that? Because this sounds very painful. What's your long. Plan for your income to provide for your child right now. The doctors told me my best bet is to apply for disability, which they've been trying to help me do. But it's a very long process.

And what did they do before she lost her job?

She was a food and beverage manager at a hotel. She would like, I guess, manage the restaurant and parts of the hotel and do all the cooking. She helped us out. The good news is that will be back.

And the good news is, is that you're with what you're describing, you have a pretty severe disability. And so you would qualify. They'll just take some time to get that through. SSI is difficult. You're dealing with the feds, but you'll get through. What you've got to do is find a landlord who will listen to your whole story and not just look at your credit score. If you told me your story and you show me you had thirty four thousand dollars and you showed me that she has that she's planning to go back to work as soon as she can find something in the food and beverage field and you're going to prepay for one year.

I'm probably giving you a shot if I look at you and you just convey irresponsibility all over the place, even with thirty four thousand, I'm not giving you a shot. But there are reasonable explanations in your life with what's going on here now. Are you going to get the average apartment manager is 26 years old and works for somebody who's out of town to do this? No, but you're going to find a landlord that has a small house somewhere that you can move into and go do that.

So I'm sorry, her uncle's freaking out, but probably better to get out of there anyway since he's freaking out. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show in the Bucks. 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. I have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of Ramsay advice in their life.

Let them know about the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast. It's a quick hit of advice about life and money in under ten minutes. Check out the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast wherever you listen to a podcast.

Money isn't the only thing we talk about around here. Get life changing advice on your career. From my good friend and career expert Ken Coleman. Oh, my Ken Coleman show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion.

We will help you discover what it is you were born to do, and then we'll help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman show here. More from the Ramsey network, including the Ken Coleman Show, wherever you listen to podcast.

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