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. Rachel Cruz, number one bestselling author and my daughter and host of the Rachel Cruz show, co host of the smart Money Happy Hour, and a bunch of other things, is my co host today. We're taking your questions about your life and your money.

And you're back.

I'm back.

I know there was a bet going on on social media if you would ever come back. Everyone was like, where is Dave?

Proof you can't count on social media for know.

Well, welcome back, America. Missed you.

Good. Sharon and I have been down south for a month and a half and took a little time off. We've never done that in the entire working life, so I've never taken that much time. Uh, so I'm ready to be back. I'm getting stir crazy. Proof I'll never retire because she would not let me. But, yeah, we had fun, though. We had a blast. And it's good to be back in front of the microphone again. And we can put all the fears of the YouTube commenters to rest, I guess, or whoever it was that was commenting.

You're still here. You're still here.

I didn't know that there was a commenter. But you saw couple.

Yeah, a couple were like, I mean, he may never come back. We don't know where he is. And usually the first show with Dave back, he's a little feisty. So read and all of that. Everyone get ready.

That's because I get afternoon coffee. That's what does that. Open phones here. We'll talk to you about your life and your money. The phone call is free. And some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Triple. 8825-5225 let's start with Reed in Dallas. Hey, Reed, what's up in your life?

Hey. I'm doing good. How are you all doing?

Better than we deserve, brother. How can we help?

Yeah, so I'm just trying to figure out if my wife and I are kind of living recklessly. We make good money, but we also spend a lot of the money that we have. We followed your plan. We paid off $100,000 in debt a couple of years ago. Now our only debt is our house, but, yeah, again, we spend most of what we make.

Why do you feel like you think you're out of control or you wouldn't ask the question?

Well, I mean, we take multiple vacations a year. We go to Europe or Asia pretty much every year or somewhere in the Caribbean, we still save about 20% of our income.

Are you still doing generosity?

Yes.

Okay, so you're generous, you're investing, and you're enjoying your money. What's out of control?

I don't know. I just maybe feel like we should be saving more. I mean, we make after taxes. After 401, it's about 13,000 a month. Do we need to be saving more? I don't know.

Because you're the saver and she's the spender.

I buy stuff, too.

But of the two, you're the saver.

Yes, sir.

And savers never save enough. And spenders never can spend enough. That's just nature. I mean, I get it. I can tell you, no matter how much we save, Sharon looks at me and goes, are we saving enough because she's the saver and I'm the spender? Okay. Is it just your tendency, or do you really have actual data points that say I'm out of control?

It's probably my tendency again. We max out our 401 ks and save into our own investment accounts on top of that.

And how old are you?

30.

And how much is in your 401 ks now?

It's about $200,000.

And when will your house be paid off?

About ten years.

Okay, so you'll be a millionaire at 45 to 50.

Not too bad.

Okay, you said you save 20% of your income. What percentage of that goes into retirement? Investing. And what percentage do you guys have saving? Just maybe short term savings. It's kind of just some liquid cash on the side.

Liquid cash. We probably have about 80,000 right now.

Including your emergency fund?

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay. And how much do you owe on your home?

It's 185.

Okay. Well, of course, if you're following the baby steps that we teach, you would have only 15% going into retirement, and you would have only three to six months of expenses in liquid cash. And everything above those two numbers will be going on to the mortgage. So it would be paid off in five years instead of ten. Okay. Because you're going to put about half or three quarters of this 80,000 on there. Boom. Now we got $120,000 mortgage, and we're going to quit putting sedadgum much in the 401k. Another 5% a year, which is another five or ten grand going on the house, in addition to what you're already paying on the house. Yeah, you're done in five years. Now, when the house is paid off and you're 35, start to feel pretty good, then I would think so, yeah.

And I would say, too, for you guys at that point, you'll be 35 on baby step seven. And there may be other financial milestones you all want to hit. Maybe you want to buy a second property in cash. Right? Or maybe you want to do something else that may slow down your lifestyle in order to hit these other goals that you want to have. So that may be the case, but for where you guys are right now.

I would adjust those two numbers if I were you, because I think it's going to get you to your overall goal faster. And I would institute for a little while. You don't have to do it forever, but for right now, at least once a quarter, go somewhere with your wife for 3 hours and don't do anything except look at the numbers and dream and say, okay, let's get aligned on what we're doing. Because I kind of think you all put this on autopilot and it's disturbing you. It's not bothering her a bit.

That sounds right. I think I was just used to the gazelle intensity.

Well, you worry about the numbers all the time, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn't start becoming anxiety inducing. But paying attention is a good thing. But I think the two of you getting aligned and her hearing that you're concerned about this is a good thing for her to hear.

Yeah. And Reed and I would encourage you guys, the house will be the next big goal, but always have a financial goal, even a baby step seven, have something you're working towards. Like Winston and I, one of our big goals was to build a house, and we moved in in 2019, and there was probably a year, I mean, 2020, hit with COVID and everything, but maybe a year, year and a half where we didn't have another big goal, and you do look up and you think, oh, gosh, am I being wasteful? It's just kind of that feeling, because I think there's a natural health to saying, hey, there's something else our money is going towards besides just the 15% and building wealth and all of that. But there's these other things that we're saving up for, and I just think that's a good rhythm to be in. It's just to kind of always have that thing out there that you're always thinking about and working towards as well. That makes you feel less, like, floundering.

Yeah. And the goal can be a systematic increase in your generosity and go, I want to give away x by the time I'm 40. I want to build a wing on the freaking hospital. I don't know. Whatever it is you want to do, I don't care. But that can be your goal. It doesn't have to be something you're doing for your own net worth. It can just be that. But if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. That's your point. Yes, and you're exactly right.

Well, it just feels like you don't have anything, that you're.

You feel listless and shifting, and that's a little bit about what Reed's feeling. He's feeling a little bit untethered.

Yeah, exactly.

So if we get an alignment and we discuss in high definition what our dreams are, we align our high definition dreams in our marriage, and then we go, okay, I heard you, but I think we're okay. Okay, now that you heard me, I think, you know that kind of thing and just get aligned on that and say, this is what we're doing, then you can make decisions like that. That's a cool thing. This is the Ramsey show, guys. It's no secret that the real estate market is weird right now. So go with a mortgage company you can trust to have your back. Churchill mortgage. Churchill is Ramsay trusted because they're stable, reliable, and focused on you. At a time when a lot of companies are being bought out or going out of business, count on Churchill mortgage to stick around. They've been doing things the right way for over 30 years, and they'll keep doing them the right way for 30 more. Get started@churchillmortgage.com. This is a paid advertisement.

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1749 Mallory Lane, suite 100, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Thanks for joining us, America. I'm Dave Ramsay, your host, Rachel Cruz. Ramsay, personality number one bestselling author. My daughter is my co host today. Michael is with us. Michael is in Davenport, Iowa. Hey, Michael. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hey, how you doing?

Better than I deserve, man. What's up?

Good to hear. All right, so this basically is just a question on my wife's spending habits and my saving habits. I'm a hog farmer out here, and right now we currently own three hog farms. And I own one house. It's all paid for. I have zero debt to my name, 31 years old. And the big question is, my wife, she wants to buy another house. The problem with the house that we have now, which I don't have a problem with it, I grew up in it. It's too close to our hogsheds, so the smell is a big problem. Well, so we rent a home in town that's about 5 miles from the farm. To kind of just to please her, to get the smell. She doesn't like the smell. Well, the house that we rent. The landlord passed away about two months ago. And he left in his will that we have rights to buy the house from his daughter. Well, his daughter doesn't want to rent. She wants to sell the house to us. I have saved up a lot of money, and I do not want to buy a house. I would rather buy a hog shed.

Now, I don't own the hogs. A company owns the hogs. They rent the buildings off of me. And I take care of the pigs. I have saved up 431,000. Right now is what I have. And I would rather go another two years and buy another hogshed to put on the farm. And the hogsheds do two things. The company pays the bill, pays the rent on the first of every month. They're never a day late, which is good. That's why I don't rent the people.

Michael, how long you been married?

Four years.

Okay. There's a budy of mine, comedian, has a wonderful saying, happy wife, happy life.

So far we're there.

No, you're not. You're a hog farmer that's gone hog wild. All you think about is hogs, and I love that. I think you're a business guy. And you're great at what you do. And you got it dialed in and it don't bother you and lick. Your wife ain't going to stay there, brother. She done told you that. You need to listen to her.

I need to be looking at buying this house.

You need to write a check.

For this. And the house is only $45,000.

So wonderful. Shut up.

It's only $45,000.

You can make her happy for $45,000. And you're buying a $400,000 hogshed.

Michael, listen to this.

Woman doesn't ask for much, and absolutely.

And to be honest with you, she's the one that shows up when the help doesn't.

Yeah, she did marry you knowing that she was going to live next to a hogshed. So, I mean, you must be a prize.

You'll have kids.

Michael, she's coming in there. She's awesome, man. Look at you. Wow. Dude. By the house.

I do have twins. That is three. And our oldest daughter is six.

Yeah. Is she home with them all day?

Yes, she works part time.

You're a great farmer and a great businessman. You know your numbers inside and out. You take care of all the details. I can hear it. I've worked with entrepreneurs for 30 years. I can hear everything about your business acumen. I think you're very good at what you do. You suck at taking care of your wife. You need to buy her. You need to buy her a house.

I know. And, Michael, I'll say this. I feel like you're getting beat up on this call. There was a lot of I's. I saved up this, and I did this, and I did this, and I did that. And you guys are a team. And part of a team is there's an a and a b. It's not just an a. And bring her in. She has as much weight and as much value to the conversation and how she wants to live her life as much as you.

I'm poking fun at you, but I'm having fun with you. But in all truth, she's not asking for much. And you can easily provide what she's asking for. She's not asking to buy a $4 million house.

Correct.

She's not asking you to sell off your hog farm.

Correct.

And she's not even asking you to slow down. Because the $45,000 is not even going to slow down. You're not going to build that shed within $45,000 estimate anyway. Probably.

No. A new shed now, the dirt work and everything is about $930,000.

So we got a little while to go. Anyway. Buying this house is not going to throw your goals off, is my point. You're on your business goals. What I have figured out in doing this marriage thing for 43 years and doing this business thing here at Ramsay for 35 of those, is that the best thing I can do is have no drama at home, because I got enough of it at work.

Gotcha.

And it makes me more valuable when I'm at.

Amen. I know.

I'm convinced one of the reasons that Ramsey is successful as it is is that your mother is no drama.

Yeah.

And doesn't ask for much. And neither does Michael's wife. She doesn't ask for much.

Right. And she would feel valued in what she brings to the table. That, and there's that extension to say yes. Like, listen to her, Michael.

We were looking at an investment thing a week ago and walked through it all, and she's like, I don't care. And I said, I know you don't care, but we're going to walk through it because I want to see if your eyes roll. I want to see what you really do care, but you're not going to say it. So we'll see. If you shift in your seat. I want to watch your body language while you're looking at this, because I could tell what she's thinking then.

Sure.

We've been married long enough. Who can find a virtuous wife? For her? Worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her, and he will have no lack of gain. Proverbs 31. It is a financial principle. If you'd like to have no lack of gain, listen to a virtuous wife. Not a Cinderella, not a princess, but a virtuous wife. And everybody, as you said, has a vote. And then we make good decisions together.

That's right. And now you and everyone from California should move to Iowa and buy a $45,000 house. That's unbelievable.

That's so fun.

Go, Michael. Enjoy it. You guys will make it a home. It's going to be great. I'm excited for you guys.

I love it. That's fabulous. Good for you. Good for you. And what a great business guy he really is. It's wonderful.

And you're 31. You're going to have great.

Olivia is in San Diego. Hi, Olivia. How are you?

Hi, Mr. Ramsay. I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Better than we deserve. What's up?

I am just calling. So we are on baby step three. We just got out of debt. We are in southern California. And just to condense my question, I'm essentially wondering, should we move someplace less expensive, but leave our family, leave our church, leave everything? We have two kids. In order to build wealth.

What do you guys make?

So my husband made 70,000 last year. I work on his days off. I'm an independent agent. So my taxes are like, 13%. He pays.

What do you make?

I made 30,000 last year.

Okay. She have $100,000 income in San Diego. Okay.

Where are you guys living now? So we are in Carlsbad, California, but we're looking to go to Arizona.

The way you asked the question, the way you formed your sentence, you don't want to leave?

No.

Okay. Because you made it sound like we're only doing this for money. The only reason we're going to Arizona is for money.

Yes. That's the only reason. But right now I am working so hard to try to keep my daughter in private school. Christian school.

Yeah. You don't have a sustainable situation where you are, right?

No, but we have support. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking I was going to cry. That's okay. We have a help right now with our family.

Yeah, well, it's heartbreaking to move away from the grandparents, but you're either going to change careers to be able to sustain the situation, or you're going to make some different choices, like not private school. To sustain the situation, something's got to give. What you figured out is the math isn't working, and that's very wise. Now, what's going to give private school career change or a move, really? One of these three things, and all three of them are painful. Choose your pain, because it'll choose you if you don't. If current times have shown us anything, it's that the least expected events can and will happen, and we have to deal with it. That's why everyone who has a family counting on them needs term life insurance. For over 25 years, the only insurance company I've recommended is Xander insurance. Not only because they search all of the top term life plans to find you the best rates, but over the years, they have constantly changed and updated their systems to make the whole process simpler and easier. To get the protection needed, you can now apply with a completely touchless experience with everything being done either over the phone or the Internet.

They also have plans with super competitive rates that don't require an exam, allowing you to skip a step and get the coverage you need faster. Go to xander.com or call 803 564282. Great rates and a simple process mean there's no excuse to not get this done. People. Rachel Cruz, Ramsay personality, is my co host today in the lobby of Ramsay solutions. You can stop by and hang out with us anytime you want. If you're in the Nashville area, we do this show on the glass and so you can watch it happen. And that's from one to four central time. The cookies are homemade and they're free. The coffee's free. And hey, we love having you. We come out the commercial break, get books signed, and take pictures, all kinds of things. Also in that lobby is what we call the debt free stage. And Christy and Steve are on it, which can only mean one thing. Hey, guys, how are you doing?

Great, Dave, how are you?

Better than we deserve. Where do y'all live?

Wilder, Kentucky, right outside of Cincinnati.

Oh, yeah, just across the line. Okay. Well, welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you guys paid off?

$351,840.

Wow. And how long did this take?

Nine years and eight months.

Nine years, eight months. Good for you. And your range of income.

During that decade, we started at 36,000.

And we are now at 287,000.

Well, there's a nice move. Okay, and so what do you guys do for a living?

I'm a sales manager and I'm a.

Chiropractor and I own my own business.

Okay, so you got the practice working and the sales manager's working and you're kicking it. Way to go, you two. So I'm guessing with this length of time and this amount that in northern Kentucky, southern Ohio, you might have paid off your house. No. Oh, wait a minute. I left out the chiropractor. It's your fault.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

The chiropractor debt of 200 was of this, right?

Yeah.

I had a car. We had about 7000 left on that and about 1500 in credit card debt. But we paid it off every. At the time, we were paying off every month. So we paid that off and the rest was student loans.

Yeah. Over 300,000.

Yeah. Well, that's where it ended up after all that time and interest.

Sure.

Yeah.

But, yeah, there was undergrad in there, quite a bit of interest there and then.

Yeah.

Chiropractic school and his master's, master's degree.

So the nine years and eight months, I'm guessing that that's when you came out of school.

Pretty much.

And just started the practice and you guys were just newly married and get things going, I'm betting. Okay. But I'm also guessing that at some point in this nine years, the intensity suddenly turned on. Was it from day one?

Pretty much. So we had just bought a house. He had just started his practice and we had no money. And I was working part time and also helping him in his office and we realized we had an income problem. And so my cousin told me about Dave Ramsey and I checked the book out. He checked it out. We made a budget and we wanted to start a family, but we had no money. So we put every dollar he had together and got started. And I got a full time job and then just went up from there.

Yeah. And as every time the practice went, we threw it at the debt. Every time they got a sales commission, threw it at the debt.

Every dollar. I changed careers, actually, through Covid, I was laid off and then stayed home with the kids for a little bit.

Wow. So you had two during the time. How old are they now?

They are seven and six.

Seven and six. Okay. Around the middle of all this, for all the young families listening, you guys started it before kids, during kids. You're raising little ones during it all what would be the hardest thing, would you say about the journey?

Well, with the kids, it wasn't a really easy process. So they were both born. Both of them required emergency procedures. The older one needed surgery three weeks after he was born.

Oh, my gosh.

You had medical stuff on top of this.

The second one was. It was very emotional. Chrissy abrupted, which means she started bleeding. The placenta pulls away, and he had to be delivered at 34 weeks, spent three weeks in the NICU.

Wow.

Came home for two weeks, then got RSV and almost died again.

Luckily, he knew CPR, honestly.

Wow.

Oh, y'all, you've been through it all. Yeah.

We hit our deductible three years in a row of $6,000 in there as well. So there was another 18 grand right in there.

And I had two under two. And my 90 year old grandma lived with us for three years. We were taking care of her at that time, up until Covid happened.

Okay.

Yeah, we were.

See, you all had a whole journey through this. Nine years.

It was a bit.

A decade of life. Yeah.

But we're so excited to be here now.

Yeah.

So is paying off debt, would you say? It's like. Oh, yeah. That was like, oh, we'll throw that in, too. Right. It almost becomes that, like, yeah. After experiencing this with your kids. Absolutely. We can do this. If we can do that, we can do this. Yeah.

It's been a heck of a journey, and it's been great with these kids, and we're so happy to share it with them.

Sure.

So great.

Now that the debt is 100% gone, how does that feel?

Amazing. The light at the end of the tunnel felt so far away for so long, and so it's really exciting.

It was. Yeah.

We're renovating our house now and all cash flowing. That and excited to be able to do things with our kids and change our family tree. And we're so excited.

Yeah. Nine freaking years, from 37,000 to 287. I mean, that's a quarter of a million dollar swing and two babies. Oh, yeah. And some nicu thrown in. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Wow.

Amazing.

What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? Because you stuck with it. I mean, you persevered.

Oh, yeah. I think the biggest key was the budget. Even at our $36,000 initial starting salary, we were finding $500 a month and putting that towards our debt and started that ball moving. And we were avid listeners of the podcast. Even when we couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel, that podcast. We heard other people doing it and it really helped us out a lot to hear about those stories and how people are making it and it can be done.

Yeah.

When we were about halfway done, we drove by and did a family selfie in front of Ramsey solutions out here. So little things like that, we're just like, all right, come on, let's keep going.

We can do this.

We can do. I'm so glad that you took inspiration from all these other debt free screams and now you get to be one. Exactly. That's pretty cool because there's somebody out there with a baby in a NICU that doesn't know if they're going to make it and you're just telling them they can by your presence. Oh, yeah.

Just keep going.

Well done. Well done.

Congratulations, you guys.

Very proud of you all.

Thank you.

Who was cheering you on, saying go?

Honestly, we were very private about it. We kept it pretty close to the chest. Our family knew, but pretty much kept it close to the chest, so we didn't have a whole lot of cheerleaders.

I guess that really, or naysayers for that matter, because it was just none of your business.

Everyone knew what we were doing, but, yeah.

Good for you all. Way to go. Very cool. Congratulations. So proud of you all. What's the first big thing you do now? Get the house paid off, I guess, but other than that, yeah.

Get this house renovated and we're going to start traveling. I really want to share the world with our boys. That's something that I wasn't able to do as a kid. We didn't grow up with a lot of money. My family had a hard time with money all as I was growing up, so I'd really like to let them experience the world.

Amen. That's a great legacy. Good for you. Well done. All right, what's the young men's ages? And let's introduce them their names and ages. Bring them up.

This is Ashby and this is Austin. Ashby is seven and Austin is six.

All right. Have they been practicing their debt free.

This morning?

Oh, wow. Okay.

That's good.

Well, the hotel needs to know about this. It's good. Yeah, it's very good. Hey, we've got the baby steps millionaires book for you, total money makeover book and the financial peace membership. That's the live and give box for you as our gift for saying thanks for coming down. We're so proud of you all. Way to go.

Thank you.

All right, Christy and Steve Ashby and Austin from Kentucky, just south of Ohio there, 352,000 paid off in nine years and eight months, making 36 to 287. Impressive. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Ready, boys?

Here we go.

Three, two, one.

Word. And free. Yeah. Wow. They are amazing. They're cool. That is very cool. Good for you guys. You're inspiring.

It's a lot of life in there in a decade.

Stayed with it a decade. Wow. That's impressive. And now I'm going to show my sons the world.

I love it.

Just like that. This is the Ramsey show.

Hey, guys, it's Rachel. I love movies with messages of empowerment and hope. And I know y'all do too. So let me tell you about a new movie called Cabrini from the director of the Sound of Freedom. It's based on the true story of Francesca Cabrini and her fight to improve living conditions for immigrant orphans in the late 18 hundreds. And I cannot wait for you to see her story on the big screen, starting on International Women's Day, march eigth. Get tickets for Cabrini now@angel.com. Ramsay. And use code Ramsay 20 for 20% off your ticket purchase. That's angel.com ramsay.

Rachel Cruz. Ramsay personality, is my co host today. Danny is in Miami. Hi, Danny. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Thank you so much for having me. Very excited.

Well, good to talk to you, sir. How can we.

So this is kind of nerve wracking, because I'm not really good at talking about finances and stuff like that. But the main point of the reason for my call is because me and my fiance, who were getting married in July in Montana, but she inherited a house from her grandparents after they passed away. And right now it's been a rental property for a couple of decades where somebody in the front of the house has been renting, and then somebody in the efficiency in the back has been renting out. Right. It brings in, well, right now we'renovating it, the back end of it. But we know that once we get it fixed up, total should bring about maybe $4,000 a month in rental. Her perspective is that she wants to move in into that house. The house is paid off.

Where is the house?

It's in Miami and colgable.

Oh, okay. But you're getting married in Montana. That's what threw me.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So she wants to move into the house, which is paid off. Right. Just to maintain it would be about $1,500 a month, aside from the $4,000 if we kept it rented. My standpoint, or at least my perspective, is that if there is a scenario where we can. And I know you're all about cash. Cash, right. If finding a home, using the benefit of my first home buyers to find a new house and then use the rental property monthly money to pay off its mortgage of a new house, because my perspective is I really want to maintain a rental property instead of just moving into the house that's paid off.

Okay. How old are you, Danny?

I'm 28.

Good for you.

And she's 27.

Good for you. Well, I share your love of real estate investing. I believe in real estate investing. I own a whole bunch of real estate. I love it. And not everybody should own real estate. You have to deal with these things called tenants. And so sometimes you shouldn't own real estate. But it's not a problem for me. I do conflict well, so I can handle it. And so I'm with you on owning investment real estate. Rachel's husband does real estate for a living, runs our family real estate and has his own company. As we both of us love real estate and so we share that with you. We do also know that the shortest distance between where you are and wealth is to become and stay debt free, house and everything. That's why we're cash, cash, cash all the time, because it's the best thing for you. It doesn't affect me if you go buy a house on debt, it affects you. Once we get off the call, my life's going on and you're going to be dealing with the debt, not me. But I love you and I want you to win. I want you to go out there and be big time wealthy.

And the shortest distance is not borrowing money on a residence and keeping a paid for inherited rental. So if you're going to follow that advice, then you've got two choices, actually. One is do what your fiance thinks is okay, move into one of the properties, move into one side, rent the other. It's paid for. You have zero debt and you're a young married couple with no debt. That's a very nice place to be and a very unusually wonderful place to be. You have your entire freaking income to invest and pile up some money and buy your first rental, otherwise with cash. And that's what I did after I went broke years ago in the real estate business by borrowing too much money. So that's one option. The other option is probably emotionally painful, but also mathematically is just as valid. And that's sell the inherited property, use that cash, and buy your first home for cash. Now, I don't think that's going to be real appealing to your fiance.

Yeah.

Because this was her granny's place and it's been in the family, even though it's been a rental for years, she's got some emotional attachment to it. So suggesting that might not be a winner for you.

Probably not.

Yeah.

It's a good house. It's in an area that's very. Her grandparents bought the house for, I believe, like $100,000. It was years ago. And then now it's about worth $750.

Yeah. And for 750, you can buy a pretty decent home in that area if you pay cash for it and sell that house and pay cash, mathematically that's fine. But she just got this. You're just getting married. There's a lot of just starting things here. So I would not do your suggestion and I would not do her suggestion long term, but I would do it initially. And way I would set it up with her is say, listen, I don't think long term we want to live in this house next to renters.

And that's why.

Yeah. Even though it's granny's house and even though it's inherited and all that, but there's nothing nostalgic about a piece of real estate in most cases. So what I would say we do is we live in this house for a year or two years and then we sell it and use the money to buy a house. But for right now, we're newly married and this inheritance is fresh for you and I want to be sensitive to that. So let's give it a little time. But I don't think we want to, ten years from now be living in this house. And I think she'll agree to that because she probably doesn't either. She's just looking at, oh, I can live here for nothing. And I just got this. I would suggest you spend a year to two years in that house as a marriage investment and then sell it and move up. But no, I would not borrow money to buy another house with your first time home buyer, not while you got a place to live for free. Your fiance has a point. But also probably, unless it's her idea, would not sell it today.

I don't mind. The only thing that bothers me about selling it today is the emotions of it. I think selling it today would be a fine idea. Nothing wrong with it at all.

Yeah, but she probably wouldn't go for it.

Yeah. Probably going to feel weird to her and the family might go, oh, well, she married that guy and the first thing he did is sell off the house. Well, that's because he's got sense. But, yeah, it's a good thing to sell it off. Actually, I'd be rid of it and go buy a house, but I don't know that that's going to work relationally in a brand new marriage situation that hadn't even occurred yet. So it doesn't occur till July. But I'm trying to think about all the angles on this. But Danny. Yeah, you're thinking like most people think, that get in trouble with real estate, and that is that the tenants are going to pay the bill. Tenants sometimes pay the rent, sometimes there's tenants, and when there's tenants, sometimes they pay the rent. There's a lot of sometimes in there, and those other times, you pay the freaking payment. And so that's how that works.

Well, and there's no payment on this one if there's no payment. But I'm saying, if you're using it.

To cover your other house, then, yeah, you get to pay your house payment. Dude, you can tell a brand new landlord when they think they're always going to get their rent. That's a brand new landlord. That's somebody who's never done it, because you don't. Hello. And there's all kinds of stuff happens. I mean, sometimes it's sad things. Winston was managing one of our properties, and we gave these people four months free rent because the guy was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. He was going to die in four months. Last thing I'm going to do is evict this woman in the middle of her losing her husband. But I can afford to be that generous if I want to be, because I don't have any payments on. And that was just a sad thing. And then she needed to move and on anyway, after he passed away. So it wasn't a long term situation, but you can afford to do that.

But for people like Danny, you don't.

Always get your rent.

That's my point. Yes, but for people like Danny, because the real estate game, it's always been there, but I feel like it continues just to bubble up.

Social media has made it popular to be stupid again.

Well, it has risen of like, hey, here's another way to invest your money and how to grow wealth and how to become wealthy.

Leverage.

Yeah. That's how most people, if they get into the game, that's where they have to start out, right? Is leverage. So how do you encourage people to say, okay, this is how you start. It is cash. But is there a formula where it's like, okay, you pay off your primary home or in damage, pay off everything.

Become 100% debt free on your personal residence, and then save up. With no payments of any kind, you can save up money real fast, and.

You'Ll probably get a condo or you'll start small.

Your first property, buy your first little thing.

And as you build it up. But I think some people, it feels defeating of, like I'll never be able to get into the real state game.

I was with the cast on a guy's podcast this morning. We were recording it, one of these big YouTube guys and wonderful guy, and he was quoting Charlie Munger. He said, you know, one of the things that hold. Charlie Munger says three things hold people back. Liquor, ladies, and leverage.

Oh, my gosh.

That'll set you back. This is the Ramsey show. 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. Rachel Cruz Ramsay personality number one bestselling author my daughter is my co host. Today, open phones at Paul's with us in Cincinnati to start this hour. Hi, Paul. How are you?

Hey, Dave.

Doing better than I deserve. How are you? Just the same, sir. What's up?

Okay, so about five years ago, my aunt convinced my 92 year old grandmother to change her will so that only she would inherit the property that my grandma owns on a lakefront in Florida. When she passes my grandma's 97 now and her health is not very good, I was wondering if it would be wise to try to acquire the property by means of a property tax lien after my aunt inherits it and she inevitably fails to pay the taxes on it.

Okay, so your aunt did talk your grandmother into doing something where the rest of the family got cut out. Is that what you're angry about? Am I getting this right?

That's right.

Okay. All right. Well, I don't know Florida law, but that's probably not going to work. And sometimes you hear these guys and you may have seen this. That may have been what prompted your idea. These guys in the real estate get rich quick world, and they say, go buy tax liens and you buy people's back tax position, and then you become the owner of the property. And it's just easy. You can just do it all. Listen, I've done it like six times when I used to do real estate for a living and I was doing foreclosures for a living, never ended up with a single property because most states, including the one I'm in, have a right of redemption that is one year or two years. So let me give you an example. If Florida has that, and I don't know Florida law, okay, but let's pretend Florida has a two year right of redemption, which is pretty standard, then you buy the property for the back taxes, the property sold because she didn't pay her taxes, and you buy it for back taxes. And you buy this million dollar property for $100,000. Okay, I'm making this up, but you follow my example so far, okay?

Yes, sir. Then the former owner of the property has two years to give you $100,000 to buy the property back. That's the right of redemption. And you can do nothing with it during that two years. Because if you do, let's say you go in and do $100,000 worth of renovation, then they can redeem it for what you paid for it only, and you'll lose your renovation money, right. If you take out a mortgage to do this, and you pay payments on the amount, the $100,000 you borrow to buy the tax lien out, and you pay payments on that, you don't get any of the payments back. All you can get back from the other owner when they buy it back from you is what you paid at the auction.

And I'm okay with that.

No, listen, here's what's going to happen. If she loses it and she knows she can come back and get it for 100 grand, it's worth a million, she's going to go get somebody to buy it. And so she'll come back, give you $100,000, buy back and resell it. The instant she does that for $500,000, the other guy gets a deal, she puts 400 in her pocket and walk away. Unless she's an absolute lunatic, she's not going to walk away from a huge equity in a property tax state that has rights of redemption.

You do say this crazy in every family, right?

Yeah. This is a different kind of lunacy I'm talking about. This is like.

Paul when you said she convinced your grandmother is your grandmother not all mentally, did she do it from almost an illegal standpoint of her not being?

Was your grandmother not of sound of mind?

She was deemed not sound of mine about two months after the will was changed.

Well, I would dispute the will then, but I think you're better off to dispute the will on that basis.

Okay.

Because she didn't suddenly lose her mental faculties within a 60 day period of time.

Right.

So if you've got a doctor's opinion, 60 days after the will was changed. That will is probably not valid. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm right.

I believe you.

Okay. So I would spend my money on that angle. And really what I would do, truthfully, is I would just sit down with your aunt and say, what you did was wrong. And you know it was wrong because granny was not of sound mind. And this will is not going to stand. So instead of us fighting about this in court, why don't you do the right thing and let's redraft all of this and come to an agreement that the family is going to have even disbursement of this, instead of you stealing this from your siblings, because I'm not going to allow you to steal it from my mom and dad. I'm going to sue you. So we need to work this out without the lawyers, because the lawyers are going to get it all if we use them. Yeah, I would just sit down and. It's not worth.

I pay a lawyer for it.

The property is not valuable.

The land itself is worth about 50 to 70,000. And the house is worth what a scrap yard would pay for the aluminum.

Okay. Why do you care?

It's where we spent every Christmas when I was growing up. It's where I learned how to fish with my grandpa, who's been gone for about 20 years now. And I'd like to keep it as a holiday home for my family and maybe even live there when my wife and I are up there in years.

I'm sorry that your aunt is a twerp and is messing with the family's memories. And I'm sorry that it breaks the little boy that lives inside of his heart. I'm going to tell you, having been in these situations myself many times in the last 63 years, just let it go. Forget it. Yeah, just forget it and move on. It ain't worth it. Go get you some memories with your babies. Go get you some memories with your buddies and the couples that you all love and spend time with them and build a new set somewhere else. That's what your grandpa did originally, and he didn't do all this for you all to fight. Just let it go. That's what I would do. It's hard for me to do that.

It's not justice.

It's hard for me to do that because I'm a hillbilly and I'd rather fight you than not. But it's not worth it. It just turn it loose. If it was a million five or something, we can argue about it, but for $50,000 right. He's right. He's going to spend all his money on lawyer. And the other thing. Man. These people are living rent free in your head for the next three years while you're in court dealing with this. You have tenants that took up residence between your ears because it becomes all consuming and it's all you can think about. And it's not worth 50 grand. Just let it go. I know you were hurt and I know she's wrong and Rachel's right. It's not justice. It's not justice.

But for your well being, Paul, it's just wise to move on and live your yeah.

Yeah. Spend the money and the headspace that you would have spent on this. Setting up a new deal and a new legacy that will cause your grandfather to be in heaven smiling at you. Spend your time on that man. This is the Ramsey show. This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. Listen. If you can't even remember the last time you had half an hour to yourself, be honest. Ask why. It's probably because everyone else's schedules, priorities and emergencies are driving your life. And when you can't keep carrying that load, talking to a professional therapist can be a game changer. Therapy can be a place to work through your challenges with time, boundaries, commitments and your own self worth. Therapy can be incredible for figuring out what even makes you happy anymore and how to go make that happen. If you're thinking of starting therapy, try betterhelp. Because therapy isn't just for people who've experienced trauma. It's great for building skills to be the best version of yourself. Betterhelp is completely online so it's flexible enough to fit your schedule. Just fill out a short questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost.

Learn to make time for what makes you happy with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com deloney today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. He lp.com deloney. Well, we're doing something that we haven't done in a while and I'm really excited about it. We've never done it exactly this way. We used to do a day long event called the total money Makeover event 1000 years ago. Rachel was a teenager even and would get up and talk about kids books and we had like 50 00 10,000 people in these arenas around and we would do that in those days. We built this conference center here at Ramsay that holds about 2500 and we are going to fill it up with a total money makeover weekend, May 10 and 11th. Now, there's millions of you have out there have been listening to the show, and this is the thing where you get to come to Nashville. You hang out with us Friday evening, all day Saturday, and it's all the Ramsay personalities are going to be talking. We're going to walk you through every little detail of this financial plan and show you how to win. And we're going to do lots of Q as regardless of what baby step you're on, this is gonna be an all encompassing immersion.

Mean, we're gonna have lots of signings and lots of Q and A's all through the day. We'll do smart money. Happy hour is one of the things we do Friday night. I'm going to talk Friday night. When you get here, you can come in early and watch the show on Friday afternoon here at the main campus or the main building on the campus. And we would just love to have you. Now, we've sold most of the tickets already. It went on sale, and it sold really fast, which is exciting. And so we want you to come. Don't wait to get your tickets. There's some platinum plus tickets, just a couple of those left. Early bird pricing ends this Thursday. If you want to come to this May 10 and eleven, go ahead and get your tickets. It's going to save you over $100 to get them early by Thursday. Again, it's right here around the corner in May, May 10 and eleven. And we want you to come. The whole campus is going to be booming with people just like you that want to win. Get your tickets@ramsaysolutions.com. Events. Curtis is in Pennsylvania. Hi, Curtis.

Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call today.

Sure. What's up?

So my wife is 23 weeks pregnant with our second daughter. During this pregnancy, she was unexpectedly diagnosed with colon cancer. And we've begun treatment for that.

Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry, Curtis.

Yeah. We were in the middle of paying off her, trying to pay off her student loans. We got from about $160,000 down to about $60,000. And my question today is, would you recommend that we continue to still try to pay down her student loans as we begin her treatments?

No. Okay. Stop everything. Pile up cash. Have a baby, fight cancer, win. Okay. Your sole goal right now, you got one goal, two goals. Have a baby, fight cancer, and win. Once you get that in your rear view mirror, it'll be nothing to pay off some student loan debt. Okay, how old is your wife, you said she's 30. Okay. Wow. What stage is this?

Stage four.

So what are they telling you, prognosis wise?

We have to start treatment right away, and we have to see how her first few rounds of treatment go and see what her response is and go from there.

Okay. All right. You've got the hardest fight of your life on your hands, brother, and student loans are nothing compared to this. We do. Yeah. You go fight this. You get on your knees, you pray. You get all your friends praying. We'll be praying for you guys. And you just get in there and you fight and fight and fight and fight and fight and take care of your wife, and you take care of your baby. There'll be time to do the student loans later, but you need every ounce of focus and energy and money that you have to win this battle first. Okay? All right?

Yes.

And then I'll just give you another piece of information so it's in your brain, even though it's pretty cold for me to do this, but I'll just tell you, when someone passes away, their student loan debt goes with them. It's completely forgiven. So if she ends up in heaven with this, there is no student loan anyway. So we fight. We fight the cancer, we go win. Okay? And I didn't say that because that's the prognosis. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I'm just listening to what you're telling me. Okay. And I know when you're facing these things that sometimes facts are helpful. That's why I gave you a cold fact. Okay? Okay. Not because I don't care about you, but anyway, I want you to go win. And if you were, let me just tell you, this is an expanded version of what we tell people anyway. We tell people just when they're pregnant, period. Stop. Put a push pause on your total money makeover baby steps, and pile up cash until baby comes and mommy and baby are okay. And then push play and use the big old pile of cash to pay and catch back up what you would have paid anyway.

And that gives you an extra big slush fund when there's a pregnancy. We tell people to do that anyway. And this is like ten x that, right?

Yes.

Okay. So you need a big old pile of cash for cancer and babies. Because we want babies. We don't want cancer. And we're going to win both of these. Okay. Oh, my goodness, son. Hey, and listen, you hold on. And I'm going to have our team pick up. We're going to hook you up with one of our financial coaches in the area for free, and they're going to walk with you on the financial stuff and help you any way we can so that you can completely focus on babies and beating cancer, not on money stuff. Okay.

Thanks, Dave. I appreciate it.

Hey, man, I'm so sorry. Go beat this and let us know, okay? Okay. All right, we'll do.

Thanks a lot.

Just in case you thought you had a problem today. Yeah, just in case. Wow. Okay. Trinity is in Colorado Springs. Hi, Trinity, what's up?

Hi.

Hi. How can we help?

So I was calling to get your guys'advice. So a little bit over a year ago, I had a work injury and I ended up just getting a settlement for a little less than $80,000. And so after putting everything aside for my medical work and everything like that, I have about 60,000 left. And I was just calling in to see if you guys could kind of help guide me of what you think a good idea of where I should put that money towards would be. Oh, man. Trinity, are you okay? I'm getting better. Okay. Where are you financially today? Do you have debts? Do you have savings besides the settlement? I don't have any debt. I completely own my car. Sorry, I forgot to take out. About 12,000 of that would be set aside for my emergency fund. Okay. So it would be about 48,000 left over, I guess, technically, but aside from that, I don't have any debt, nothing like that. And then all of my monthly payments are paid through my monthly income. Okay. Do you own a home? No, I don't. I'm 22. Okay. Is that something that you're looking into? Do you think you'll be in your area for a while now?

Yeah, I'm hoping so. I'm also studying right now to get my real estate exam or my real estate license. Okay. So I think that as well will kind of play a factor into when I'm ready to buy a home. Yeah. Do you have any retirement right now? I do. I only have about $1,000 in retirement right now, but that was something I figured you guys were going to mention was like maxing out a Roth IRa or something. Yeah, I would go ahead and do that. I would go ahead and just max it out and then I would probably put the rest, Trinity, just in a high yield savings and let it just kind of sit there for a year or two. It's 5% return right now on most of them, which is great for just short term savings and hopefully here in the next year. Or two, you'll be settled down in a new career, a city that you know, you'll be long term. And then I would use that money for a down payment on a house is what I would do. But I would just put it in a high yield savings account right now and go ahead and fund your Roth Ira.

Go ahead and max it out this year.

Yeah. Set your medical aside, your emergency fund, your Roth Ira, and the rest are saved towards your next house or your first house. This is the Ramsay show. Rachel Cruz, Ramsay personality, is my co host today on the debt free stage in the lobby of Ramsay solutions. Chaddler and Sydney are with us. Hey, guys. How are you?

Good.

Doing great.

Welcome. Where do you all live?

Bardstown, Kentucky. It's about a 30 minutes drive south of Louisville.

Know exactly where it is. It's the king of Bourbon town. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right, welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you guys paid off?

$67,533.01.

I love it. I love it. And how long did that take?

22 months.

Wow. And your range of income during that? Two years?

We started making. It was at 64,000 and ended a little over 84,000.

Good for you.

Nice.

Well done. Well done. I love it. Well, congratulations, you guys. What kind of debt was this?

It was our house.

Wow.

Tiny little mortgage. Good for you.

We're weird people.

I love it. You are officially weird. That's right. I love it. How old are you two?

I'm 30 and I'm 29.

What's the house worth?

I'd say about 240,000.

Goodness.

That's amazing.

Well done, you guys.

Thank you.

Well done. I love it. Congratulations. Very proud of you. Good work. Good work. So what do y'all do for a living?

I'm a homemaker, so I stay home.

With her daughter, and I'm an it director for a Catholic Nonprofit.

Very good for you guys. Very cool. And they just showed us a picture on YouTube. The house with the snow in the front and everything. Looks like a great place. How many acres have you got with that?

It's only one acre. It's in a subdivision, but you wouldn't believe it just from that picture.

It looks like it's on a farm. Yeah, it looks big. Well, that's nice, man. Very fun. So what set you guys out on this journey 22 months ago, following this Ramsay stuff?

Well, we first encountered Ramsay I did back in 2015 and took FPU. One of my friends shared one of your videos on social media. I'm like, well, this guy seems to know what's going on. And took FPU. Met Sydney in 2017. And we went through FPU afterwards and got engaged, got married. And when I actually started this particular journey on the mortgage payoff, my employer did an assessment of salaries and saw that they were not paying us market rate. So we got a substantial raise.

Oh, wow.

And it was just the weight of. It was us. We want to make sure we do something good with this. We want to be wise with this money.

There was a pretty heavy pause going like, this is a lot of money. We need to be careful or else it'll just disappear.

That's wisdom.

We sat down one night, and Sydney said, why don't we calculate what it would take to pay off the house? Okay. So I punched it into the calculator, and I'm like, well, it looks like three years. She said, oh, we can do better than that.

22 months later.

Yeah, well, we originally calculated, I think after we just cut things out that weren't necessary. I think it was, like, may of 2024. And as things kept going on, we kept cutting, kept doing. We did some extra side jobs and we paid it off.

Oh, my gosh, you guys.

That's what happens when you use financial peace. University is your pre marriage counseling. Yeah. Way to go, you two.

It's funny. I had taken FPU on my own, or so I thought. I thought I had only gotten two classes in. So we met. It's like, yeah, I've taken FPU.

Looked back at the book.

Oops.

Only went to two classes. Let's do that together.

Oops, I'm an FPU dropout. Not anymore, though. You went back and got your GED. It's okay. Well done. And you got a paid for house, and you're not 30, so that's pretty stinking cool. That's called graduate level work there. Good stuff.

So this is one part of debt that we tell people, like, hey, this is something that I promise, once it happens and you don't have a mortgage payment, the feeling it's the ultimate freedom. It is that final, final baby step. Would you say that that's true? How has it felt for you guys? There's a lot of security in it.

Yeah, you're right. The grass does feel different under your feet. We paid it off, course, in December.

Hadn't seen the grass yet.

No, not quite. But, yeah. It's phenomenal feeling.

Yeah. Well, there's just no debt in the world. What are you going to do now to celebrate? Well, we came here, now let's do something big.

Well, we're really wanting to save up and build a nice garage. Okay, so that's been a big dream. Two car garage. We're going to build him an office in the back of it. Some room for me. I don't know what it'll be yet.

That's the next big goal we want to achieve.

I love it. Well, way to go, you guys. Congratulations. So do you have people cheering you on while you're doing this or did anybody know you were doing it or. Big secret?

We did. We told family and friends. Our family thought we were nuts at first, but got to give a big shout out to Sydney's parents. They were huge supporters as well as our church friends, Austin and Andrea. They were huge cheerleaders for us. And I think they're currently working on their payoff right now.

Awesome.

Very good.

And one thing we wanted to just mention is that we did have some adversity through these 22 months. We lost my father to suicide in September of 22. The emergency fund just gives you so much, I guess peace in that. We were able to pay for the unexpected expenses and counseling and all the things that come with that. And it shook us and it made us actually. Are we sure? And we're like, yeah. It reinforced us more about why we want to live a life of freedom.

My goodness. December of 22. So Covid related?

I assume it was September of 22 and. No, it was a suicide.

No, I'm saying his suicide. Was it related to the COVID issues?

No, there was a lot more going on and a lot of it we didn't know or see.

Sure. Okay.

I'm so sorry, you guys.

Yeah, it's awful. Awful to go through. Yeah, you're right. Adversity is always mixed into the story.

Yeah.

Of some kind.

It's not just all.

Some kind of flavor, right? It's always in there. Yeah. Well, way to go, y'all. I'm proud of you for persevering, pushing out and 100% debt free house worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars. $300,000. That's incredible. And you're 30 years old. You're going to be so wealthy, it's going to be unbelievable.

That's the plan.

You're going to be able to be unbelievably generous and what you can do with your little girl. So bring your little girl up. What's her name and age?

Caroline. She's two and a half. And we have a second on the way.

Congratulations. All right. Caroline's a big sister. All right, well, we've got the every dollar gift card for you for a year subscription. One for you guys and one for you to give away as our way of saying thanks and coming and doing your debt free scream and enjoy that. Stay on that budget and keep things moving towards that incredible wealth. I'm so proud of you all. Very well done.

So much.

Before I let you go, what do you tell people? The key to getting out of debt.

Is just being on the same page. Communicating the budget was a huge help. We're avid every dollar users, so this will work good.

Yeah.

You can just apply this and not have to pay us.

But, yes, just being on the same page. Just the encouragement. Without Sydney constantly encouraging us, I certainly couldn't have done it alone.

So great.

All right, very good. Chandler, Sydney, and Caroline from Bardstown, Kentucky. 68,000 paid off on their 200 and 5300 thousand dollars home. Did it in 22 months, making 64 to 84. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Three, two, one.

We're debt free.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

So great house and everything.

I'm so proud of a couple like that. And they're sitting in a very affordable market. Obviously, they got a very nice home for $300,000 there. They chose a home that they could afford and that they could pay off. Instead of choosing one, they could qualify with their income easily for twice that or more. They chose to be reasonable and then get it paid off. Now, at 30 years old, 100% paid off, they'll be able to do anything that's different than I'm on TikTok whining and saying, well, boomers bought their house for two buckets of strawberries, and you can't buy a house now because I'm stuck and I'm a millennial. Well, that's a millennial who's on their way to being a millionaire.

Yep, that's right.

So there's your two buckets of strawberries. This is the Ramsey show. Hey, you've been listening to the show. Now it's time to start doing no more excuses. Join me and the rest of the Ramsay personalities for the total money makeover weekend here in Nashville on May 10 and 11th. Get a crash course in everything we teach about money, including budgeting, beating, debt, investing, and more. In just one weekend, you'll leave with a plan to put it all into action. It's game on, baby. Early bird tickets start at $99, so don't wait. Go to ramsaysolutions.com weekend. Rachel Cruz, Ramsay personality, is my co host today. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at Kevin is in Colorado Springs. Hi, Kevin. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Dave, Rachel, how are you guys doing?

Better than we deserve. What's up in your world?

Oh, just stressed, but not depressed.

There you go.

I'll get right to it. So I've got a bad credit card debt from Wells Fargo that closed a year ago. I put it to the back of my baby. Step two, figuring I could get to it. Either settle, it paid off completely. Whatever needs to be done. Friday, I got served with papers. They are now suing me for the outstanding debt, bad debt that I owe the money on. And I'm a little freaked out because I kind of figured it goes to, like, a collections company where I could maybe sell it for less or have a little bit more time.

What's the balance?

Straight from a little under $12,000. After interest and all that on the.

Lawsuit, how long has it been since you paid them?

The last payment that they got from me was November of 22. It was a really rough month. It's the first time I've ever missed a payment.

November of 22. So you're 18 months behind.

Roughly.

And why have you not paid anything in 18 months? They closed the account, but they'll take payment.

Did not know that.

You didn't think they were not going to take payment? You knew they wanted to be paid, right?

Yes, I know they wanted to be. Just I didn't have a way to pay through the app, and I didn't really think anything of it, being perfectly honest.

Now you are. Okay.

Yeah.

So on the lawsuit papers, does it say Wells Fargo?

Yes.

It doesn't say a debt formerly held by Wells Fargo.

It says Wells Fargo Bank. I don't have the paperwork in front of me right now, so I can't.

Read everything, but go check it. Because it's unusual for Wells Fargo to do this. They usually will sell off the bad credit card debt, and the buyer of the bad debt will sue you.

That's kind of what I figured.

That's what usually happens. So this is an unusual case. They're not above suing you for $12,000 if you owe them and hadn't bothered to pay them for 18 months. That's very possible. What do you make?

Between me and my wife, we make this past year roughly 130 to 140.

Okay. You have any money?

No, we're working on paying off debt. We actually just barely got started on the plan, like, getting serious a couple of months ago.

You don't have $1,000, you don't have $2,000. You don't have anything.

We have emergency fund plus a little bit in sinking funds for vehicle repairs and stuff like that, but nothing serious.

So the $1,000 starter emergency fund plus a few hundred dollars, give or take?

Yeah.

Okay. All right. I assume your credit is trashed.

It's about 650 to 670 somewhere in there. It's not completely destroyed, but we had a house fire two years ago, and then because of that, everything fell apart. A whole bunch of carts closed on me at the same time that I wasn't using anyway, so I didn't care. And the credit has slowly been building back up, so it's gotten a little bit better.

So you have other things that are outstanding that are unpaid as well?

Yes, I currently have a little over $1,000 on another credit card through a credit union, a vehicle loan for 11,200 through that same credit union, and a personal loan through that same credit union for $22,500.

Are you current with all of those?

I am current with all of them. I'm actually working on the credit card right now.

Okay. All right. Do you have any other credit cards or anything that you have not paid on in 18 months like this one?

No. Everything else is either paid up or closed.

Okay. Last time you told me one was closed, it had an outstanding balance of $12,000. Have you got another one of those?

No, I checked every single one of those.

So closed means you have a zero balance?

Yeah, closed meaning a zero balance or I no longer have credit available through them. I stopped using the card because that's.

What I'm talking about, man. How much other crap like this have you got out there that you owe money is getting ready to sue you. This one was laying out there. You had no available. They had closed it, but they still thought you owed them $12,000 because you do. Do you have another one of those?

Yes. No.

You just told me you did.

No, the Wells Fargo card is the only one that was out there like that.

Do you owe money to anyone else that you're not current on the payments?

No.

Okay. So the credit cards that are closed have zero balance. The other credit cards that are closed have zero balances. Nothing owed.

Yes, sir.

Okay. All right. Because I don't want some other monster to jump out of the closet while we're fighting this one. That's what I was trying to help you with. Okay, so here's what will happen. You will be sued on the date that they told you. Whether you show up to court or not, you will lose because the lawsuit is not about anything, except do you owe the money? And the answer is yes. Have you paid the payment properly? The answer is no. Lawsuit over judgment. $12,000. Wells Fargo versus Kevin in Colorado. Okay, so you're going to lose the lawsuit. There's no defense for not paying, except paying. Okay. So it's not anything to panic about, but that's just what's going to happen. So this is going to go from a credit card debt to a judgment lien. It's going to convert to that because you're getting ready to get a judgment on you. And they won't do anything with it for probably ever. But eventually they might garnish a year wages or take a lien on a bank account, but it takes them usually six months minimum, but an absolute minimum of 30 days in any state to do that.

So what's the date, the court date?

There isn't one yet on the paperwork. There's no court date, there's no case number, anything.

Then you've not been sued.

Okay.

Yeah. If you've been sued, there's a court date and it gives you the court, the circuit court, 6th Circuit Court, or whatever it is you've been sued in. This is a notice they served you to scare the pants off of you, which is good, because it woke you up. You needed to be woke up. So now we can deal with this. So call them. You can call the law firm that's on it. Is there a law firm listed on it?

Yes, there is. That was actually going to be. The question is, me and my wife disagreed about that because I don't trust their lawyer, because he's.

Well, they don't trust you. You haven't paid the bill. So this is mutual. Fair enough. Yeah. Just call them up and say, I don't have $12,000 right now. I'm behind on everything. I think I might be bankrupt. I don't know. But I sure can't be sued and garnished by you guys. So what can I do to settle this? What would you take? I think I can scrape together a few thousand and I can probably do that and give them a date that's about a month and a half out. And then you stop paying everything and you come up with $2,000 and offer them two or $3,000. $3,000 as settlement in full a month from now, or $6,000 as settlement in full two months from now. Okay. Eventually, if you keep barking at them, they'll take a deal. Okay. And you have to come up with a lump sum cash. Do not cut a deal for payments. Don't do that. Just say, I can't pay this. Only I can do. I can't pay payments. I can't stand any more payments. I'm trying to stay out of bankruptcy. And if I can settle this with you, maybe I can.

And keep talking to them that way over and over and over until you come up with a number. When you come up with a number, listen to these two things quickly. Do not give them electronic access to your checking account. They will clean you out. And do not give them a dime until you have whatever deal you have made in writing over the phone is not good enough. They lie. Get it in writing and no electronic access to your checking account. And settle this for $5,000 and make it go away. 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. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality number one bestselling author, co host of the smart Money Happy Hour with our one and only, George Camel. And my daughter, she's my co host today. The phone number is triple 8825-5225 Lisa is with us in Irvine, California. Hi, Lisa. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi. Thank you. So excited to speak with the both of you. I'm a longtime listener and follower of the show.

Thank you.

I'm calling to get some advice on talking to my close friend. She told me that she has added her toddler, who's two years old, as an authorized user, on her credit card. I almost fell out of my chair when she told me that, because, like I said, I'm a longtime listener and I know this is a very bad idea. So I'm calling to ask, what advice should I give to her? Or is it even my business to share my opinion with her? Has she asked your opinion? No. She was trying to get me to add my kids as authorized user. She told me, you should do the same thing, and I kind of froze. To build the kids credit score. People are doing this? Yes, because apparently trends.

Oh, God.

Yeah. It's a whole thing that if you put your kid as an authorized user, you build their credit.

The level of stupidity is painful. It just really is. I mean, TikTok, my God, y'all.

I mean, it's not just TikTok, but.

I know. But that's just completely asinine because here's now what you've done, okay? You've opened little junior up to, like, 73,000 possibilities of russian hackers. Completely stealing his identity. And if little junior stays off the dadgum grid, then russian hackers aren't going to steal his identity. So keep junior off the grid. Oh, my God.

Conspiracy theorist.

It's not a conspiracy. It's a fact.

You sound like a conspiracy.

It's not a conspiracy. Identity theft happens to people all the time, but not if their idiot parents don't put them on a credit card. Oh, my God. I don't know. I don't know how to help people. That.

Lee, as her friends. Lisa, I don't think that there's anything you do. She didn't ask.

She didn't ask you, and she's not going to do anything you say.

No, just say.

Listen, if she says it to you again, just say, I wouldn't want to expose my child to the level of identity theft that you've exposed your child to. The probability of identity theft went up 10,000 x. Okay, this kid has a Social Security number and is nowhere else on the grid until you do this. And now you dropped them in the dad gum Internet. I mean, you're asking for it. You're pointing a gun at the face of their credit report.

Oh, my gosh.

At the face of their credit report.

Okay, well, I mean, it's ridiculous.

You're asking for it.

And the hard thing that happens, too, which. Lisa, you probably know this, too, because not just the identity theft, but then things happen in life, right? And parents get behind on their bill, and then they end up trashing the kids credit score. And it does the opposite effect of what their intentions were because they weren't.

Technically, a user should not get the credit of the owner anyway. I know, but technically, an approved user on the card should not be affected by the credit of the card. Positive or negative. Technically, because they're not on the account. They're just allowed to use the account, so it should not show up if it does. FICO is screwed up because they're not an owner on the account.

They're not an authorized user, but they're just not authorized. Are doing that, though.

You're an authorized signer on Ramsey solutions checking accounts because you are one of the owners of this company. But if the account goes sideways, the fact that you're an authorized user does not affect you. All it means is you're allowed to sign. It doesn't mean you own it.

What's her purpose of doing it?

Because she's an idiot.

No, stop. What were we saying? To build credit.

It won't build her credit.

It shouldn't build as an authorized user.

It'S not supposed to. Sometimes it gets reported that way falsely, but it should not happen because you're not liable on the account if you're an authorized user, it's not legal. It's legally wrong. Can it happen? Yes, it can happen. But here's the thing. If you want to build credit for your toddler to start with, a, that's dumb. B, because you're setting them up for a life of debt. This is your plan. I want my child to use credit cards and be in debt the rest of their life. What kind of horrible parent are you?

Yeah, the primary credit cards. Yeah. The good credit management helps then improve your credit worthiness.

Says what, an article on TikTok.

Well, you Google.

Okay, there you go. I'm telling you, it's a legal issue.

People are doing it though.

Only the people that are liable on the account and your authorized user is not liable on the account. Okay. We have 116 debit cards.

No, I hear you. Ramsay solutions credit card different? Is credit cards different though?

No.

The person that owns the account, the.

Owner of the account, not the authorized user, is responsible for the credit, good or bad. And that's supposed to be what's reported. It's not always.

Yeah.

So to their point, they may actually screw up their kids credit. It's possible. Or enhance their kids credit. It's possible. But it's a really dumb idea because you're just asking for identity theft. You're begging for it. Because you put their kid. Because here's the thing. Who goes back and checks a four year old's credit twice a year to make sure that they've not had their account scarfed, but you put their name out there and you don't go back and check on it. And you coast along thinking you're a freaking genius because you watched a TikTok video and now you've exposed your kid's credit to being completely ripped and you could look up and there'd be five or six cards open in their name and you wouldn't even know it because they're not required to identify you or to notify you about your kid. They don't check on it. Your kid's not going to get anything in the mail. That's how identity theft works. So. Oh, God. Oh, that's so aggravating. So I don't know the overall answer to your question, honey, is this, if somebody isn't asking you your opinion, then don't give it. I've got friends that do stupid stuff too, so they're still my friend, but they're still just my stupid friend.

And so that's okay that you got friends that do that they do things you don't agree with. I mean, people I love that don't know how to vote and it's all that kind of stuff. I still love them, but they vote wrong. And so you have some of that, right? Yeah, but don't ask me what I think unless you want me to tell you.

That's right.

Friend or on the air.

Sure.

And the problem is when you call on the air, you've automatically asked. So it's like our job to tell you what we think. So it's what we do here. For 3 hours every. God, that's poor woman. So, Lisa, I'm sorry, you can't help to, even if you gave her your opinion, she's not going to do anything with it because she's got her little brain made up, her system going, she's just going to screw up her kids life. Oh God, that's so dumb. This is the Ramsey show.

Hey guys. Are you ready for the secret to help you reach those money goals that you've been dreaming about? It's simple. You got to get on a budget with our budgeting app, every dollar you'll get intentional with your money and build the habits that will make those dreams a reality. And we'll be with you every step of the way from your first budget to that retirement home on the beach. Download every dollar for free on the App Store or Google Play. Remember today? Download every dollar for free on the App Store or Google Play today.

Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co host today. Linda's in Pittsburgh. Hi, Linda. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi, how are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Hey. My husband and I are wondering how he can acquire his portion of the will that his mother wrote. So she passed away in 2006 and wrote a will giving the family home to her children. And his brother has lived in the house all of his life and still lives there.

Was the will probated?

The will was probated by their stepdad in 2007. She passed away in 2006.

Okay. The stepdad had nothing to do with the house and the will, right?

Yes, it was just one of those where he had the right to occupy during his lifetime.

The brother or the stepdad?

Stepdad.

Okay, so he had a life estate and the will left the property to your husband, his brother and whatever other.

Siblings and sister who.

Okay. Was the property retitled at that time? Did Pennsylvania probate require you all to retitle it and put everybody's name on it.

The house is in. Oh, and at the time of probate, it was retitled to all three siblings.

Okay, so you each own a third undivided interest. It's called. Okay. Right. Okay. Is sister still alive?

No. She lost her battle with depression in 2017.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

And did she have heirs?

No, she did not.

Okay. So I would suppose that your husband and his brother are now equal owners. Then you would have to seek an attorney's advice to be 100% sure, but let's play this through. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like they're now equal owners. Okay. And he doesn't have to do anything to acquire it. It already has his name on it. The death of his sister left half of hers to him and half of it to his brother. And so now the two of them are 50 50.

Okay.

His name is on the title. If the property were sold, he would get 50%. Okay, so now what are you all wanting to do?

It was almost two years after the stepfather passed away. He approached his brother about either buying him out or selling the home, and he said, absolutely not. I have no interest in selling the home, and I'm not going to buy you out.

Okay. Who lives in it?

His brother.

Okay.

He has lived in it all his life.

Okay, so he's living there for free?

Yes.

Okay.

He has a roommate there that pays him rent.

Okay.

Here's the thing.

If you want to stir it up and cause this to come to an end, because this is not a fair situation. This is unjust. Agreed?

Agreed.

Okay. Then your husband, does he have any relationship left with his brother at all?

Well, they love each other. It's just that there's.

I didn't ask that. I asked if they had a relationship in the middle. Do what?

I said they love each other. There's this mountain in the middle. The house?

Yeah. Well, it depends on how much your husband wants to invest in this. But if we want to try to save the relationship, you get on an airplane and he flies out there and he sits down with his brother and he says, okay, you living here for free is done. I'm a 50% owner in this, and you can't live here for free anymore. You have to move out. I'm demanding that. Or we have to sell the house, or you have to buy me out. Now, you decide which one you want to do. You want to move out and we rent it and we split the rents that we collect, or do you want to buy me out or whatever, I'll give you a deal if you want to buy me out. But you sitting here and me getting nothing and you living here for free ends, I'm done. I love you. I hate what you're doing to me. It's nasty and it's wrong and it's unjust. And he says that to him in person, to his face. Okay? And then if the brother goes, well, I'm not going to do that. You say, yes, you are.

Because if you do not, I'm going to hire an attorney, and I'm going to sue in circuit court to have this partnership disbanded. And the court is going to force the sale of the house to give me my half, and it's going to cost me $5,000. And you're probably never going to speak to me again. But I'm at the point that I'm tired of you screwing me over. This is how you have to handle it if you're going to handle it. Otherwise, you just got to accept it and go on. And then you have to hire an attorney, and the judge will demand that you sell the house to liquidate the estate. And they'll sell the house, and the brother will get half the money, and.

You'Ll get half selling the house. Correct.

Do what I said.

Liquidating the estate is selling the house. Correct?

Yeah, you sell the house.

Okay.

Sell the house and you get your half now. Or we can have the house appraised, and at 80%. $0.80 on the dollar of the appraisal. I'll take my half. I'll give you a 20% discount if you want to buy me out.

How much is the house worth, Linda? From what we can tell, it's probably right around $400,000.

Yeah. This is just wrong. And your brother in law is a leech. He's a parasite. And you're tired of it. That's why you called. Is your husband as tired of it as you are, or is he just going to let this go on?

Oh, no, he's as tired of it as I am.

Okay.

He's just a super nice guy.

Okay? If he wants to try to be super kind to his brother, he could fly out there and try to do this very calmly and just say, this is over, you're going to buy me out. Or the judge is going to force the sale of the house. Because when I leave this conversation, if we're not in agreement, I'm going to contact an attorney, and we're going to court, and the house is going to be sold. Because you living here for free is not right, and it's not fair. You've been taking advantage of me, and I can't let you do that anymore. Even though I love you. That's wrong. If you want to buy me out, I'll give you a discount on the appraisal. But I own 50%. You own 50%, and you can't live here free anymore. That's over. Take a plane ticket and invest a plane ticket into the relationship. Try to do it nice and see if you can get him to move off. He may just think that my brother's a nice guy. He's never going to do anything, and he might be right. Talking about your husband, right?

Yes. I know.

He sees your husband as a target, and he's using it. He thinks your husband's not going to do anything. And so if your husband doesn't know and do anything, it's okay. I don't care if you want to just let this go on. I'm not mad about it. It doesn't matter. But if you're going to do it, that's how you do it. I would sell it to him at a discount. Because if you sell it, you're going to pay expenses anyway. Right? And so if it's worth 400,000, I'll sell you my 200,000 at 80%, which is 160. That's a great deal. You have 30 days to get me my money. If you do not get me my money in 30 days, I am going to begin a court proceeding that's going to force the sale of the house. That's the end of the discussion. And then just go hire a lawyer and do it. And it'll take a dad gum year, and it'll be $10,000 out of your pocket and legal fees.

Is there a way to find a reputable attorney in Colorado?

Sure.

That was our other thing. It's like, how do you find one.

There without call one of our real estate endorsed local providers. Jump online at Ramsey and find the real estate endorsed local providers. Tell them you need a good real estate attorney.

Okay.

And they'll give you a recommendation. And that's the only way. I mean, you got to have somebody that you trust. And these are high octane real estate agents that we endorse, and they'll know somebody that's a quality attorney that can litigate this. But I really wouldn't. It may be that when you hire the attorney and you spend $500 and he decides to send a letter to the brother. That, that wakes the brother up. And then the brother does it. Because the brother's probably, he's been living this way a long time. He's probably not going to take the first. He's not going to believe your husband that he's going to do anything because he's never done anything. So he's suddenly a man of action. That's going to be shocking to the brother. This is the Ramsay show. Hey, if you want to make real progress with your money and get that extra push to keep going, then you need to be at our brand new event, the total money makeover weekend on May 10 and 11th. Join me, the rest of the personalities and a community of people like you at Ramsay headquarters for new talks, new focus, and new motivation to stay gazelle intense on your money goals.

Early bird tickets start at just $99, so don't wait. Get yours@ramsaysolutions.com. Weekend in the lobby of Ramsay solutions on the debt free stage. Ryan and Kendall are with us. Hey, guys. How are you?

Howdy.

Where do you guys live?

San Antonio, Texas.

Oh, nice. Welcome to Tennessee. Good to have you.

I heard howdy and I thought Texas.

They're not from Minnesota.

Minnesota.

Good to have you guys. Thank you very much.

Well, it's good to be here.

How much debt have you paid off?

116,942 dollarsfifty. Five cents.

I love it. How long did this take?

54 months.

Way to go. And your range of income during that time?

So we started off with 65,000. That was my pay. And this last year, we finished up at 172,000.

Very nice. What do you all do for a living?

So I'm an occupational therapist and I do sales.

Very good.

Awesome.

Okay, so occupational therapist. I'm guessing the 117 might have had some student loan in it.

Yes, it definitely did.

What was the breakdown of the 117?

Oh, goodness. So the car payment was. Well, the car loan was around $27,000, and the rest of it was student loans. And ironically, it was all my student loans.

Oh, I blamed it on her. I'm so sorry. No, I stand corrected.

That was a part of our journey. We had most of this loans when I graduated from college when we first married about five years ago. And the idea was that we had to stop the bleeding and start living a debt free life and progress in that direction. And taking out loans for her master's program wasn't a part of that plan. So that was one of the things that we actually cash flowed through.

Oh, you cash flowed. Your occupational therapy. Wait, wow.

Y'all, that's huge.

Wow. That's impressive. While you did this. Really?

Correct.

You've been married about five years. You said about 60 months and 54 of it. We've been doing this.

Correct.

Wow. So you got married and you looked at this pile of student loan debt, and you got these goals to be an occupational therapist. All these things are in conflict with each other. You sit down, tell me how all this happened. How'd you get connected to Ramsay? What'd you decide to do all this?

So I decided to pursue occupational therapy degree in El Paso right after he had gotten offered a job in San Antonio. So we made the hard decision. He decided to keep his job because we saw great growth there and stay in San Antonio. We did long distance for me in El Paso.

Oh, wow.

And that's quite the drive. So Ryan, on the way up one time, he decided to turn on your podcast on Spotify, and it's a couple of episodes to get to El Paso.

That was my monthly.

You can listen to a week's worth. Yeah.

We started listening to it back in 2018, and, man, there's not a lot of cell reception out there, so I'd have to download them and listen to them along the drive. And before you know it, in El Paso after 7 hours and, hey, Kendall, I got this great idea.

I got a bunch of great ideas. Listen to this.

Tell me what you would know. And having those back and forth conversations, pressing the pause button and saying, well, what do you think is the right answer, Kendall? And having that discussion kind of turned us on to this whole entire idea. Know, debt is not a pet. It needs to go away. And that's a type of lifestyle that we want to live one day.

Wow.

That's amazing, you guys. Absolutely amazing. And then in the middle of it, had a baby.

Yes.

In the middle of all of it, right?

Once or twice.

Sweet. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so what was the hardest part of this? Because you did a lot. You cash flowed, school, got a different career. You guys were long distance together. Baby, all of it. But all of life and all of the money stuff, what would you tell someone is like, who? That was hard. That was the sack. We felt that one.

Yeah.

The hard part was saying no, quite frankly, to all those things that you really want to do, that you know you could do. But having that delayed gratification and waiting and deciding my priorities are elsewhere, that was definitely very hard for especially me. I have so many hobbies. It's so easy to spend money totally and to be committed and heading in the right direction for years. It's tough.

Well, good.

How long was the masters. How long was the separation because of the masters?

About two and a half years.

Wow. That's brutal.

Yeah.

That's harsh. Okay. Wow.

What was the thing that you guys would say to another couple listening that maybe have a similar story? Maybe not, but they're trying to get out of debt.

Let's be real clear. They didn't do that separation to get out of debt. They did that separation to get your occupational therapy master. Okay. And you did it. And you cash floated, of course. But the separation was due to that, not the separation. But, I mean, being separate is a better way of saying it was due to that. Right? Yes. It was due to the school. Yeah.

No, you know, it's good. Good clarification. The school you got into versus the job. Right. That was the decision, you guys.

Yep.

And in my career in sales, it's very long term ideas. I'm going to spend my whole life in San Antonio, which is a great idea to me because I love San Antonio, but to be jumping around from location to location doesn't really give you the opportunity to build a backlog and build relationships. So a two year delay or two years of patience, really, versus the long term career.

Yeah.

It's an adult decision you have to make and you have to commit to it.

Totally.

Absolutely.

Wow.

So what was the thing that you would tell somebody? Here's what you have to do in order to get out of this much debt, because this is a lot, you guys. I mean, this is 117,000. Yeah. Six figures. So what would you say? You have to do this?

Our biggest two things were consistency towards our set goal and seeing that as the bigger picture, and communication. So even if we wanted something that we knew we shouldn't get, we would still talk about it. Man, this is going to be so cool to get later down the road.

Not. No, just not now.

And same with the long distance, really. It's the same two ideas. Consistency, communication, whatever feelings, good, bad. All the in betweens.

Yes. That's good.

So it occurs to me that not only have you done this amazing 117,000, but you also cash flowed this. What did the master's cost?

Oh, goodness.

Yeah.

That's a tough question to answer.

So I filled out probably. I have no idea how many scholarships and grants I filled out good. During that time. That was, like, pretty much my part time job going to school. We also benefited a little bit from the COVID Our loans were put on hold, the government ones, so we used that opportunity to not have to pay the minimums on those. And then I got a lot of grant opportunities through Covid to continue.

It didn't cost a ton then. Actual cash?

No. I'd say it's probably a 50 50 breakdown.

That's great.

The back half of the last two semesters were mostly my income going and contributing to that the first three semesters. I say Kendall did a whole lot of the work, especially with scholarships and grants.

It's great, you guys.

Okay, so you put about 100 into that and about 117 into the other 100.

I don't know.

You said half and half. Okay. All right. That's what I was thinking that. I'm thinking the whole situation here. You really did about a $200,000 move, is what I'm guessing. And I was thinking that because it's one thing to pay off 117, it's another to do it.

Probably 50,000 for the half and half that you're saying, but still 50,000.

Okay, I see what you're saying. Okay. Wow. Way to go, y'all.

Great job.

Who was cheering you on?

Oh, gosh. Our entire family and friends.

Of course.

We still got funny looks every once in a while, especially when we said no to fun events and vacations and all those things, but they were still cheering us on.

Great job, you guys.

Okay, was it worth it?

Absolutely. It changes my decision making. It gives me the opportunity to decide for myself what I want and what our family wants.

Right.

And it just clears your thought, clears your focus.

Good for you guys. Well done. All right, let's bring up your baby. Are you going to have that in the debt free screen?

Yes, absolutely.

And what's his name?

Nolan.

And how old is Nolan?

He's 15 months.

Oh. Go, big guy. Go, big guy. They always like the microphones. They grab them. That's great. All right, Ryan and Kendall and Nolan, San Antonio, Texas. $117,000 paid off in 54 months, making 65 to 172. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Three, two, one.

We're debt free. Yeah. That's how it's done, ladies and gentlemen. Man, those people are goal oriented with the baby.

Oh, my God.

They did a lot come right.

Oh, they did a lot.

Amazing.

A lot of sacrifice on so many levels, and they amazing. That's it. It's the movement. It's the proactiveness of people that stand on the stage. And it's incredible. It's incredible. All of you listening, heroes.

Yeah, they're heroes. Well done, hero. This is the Ramsay show Luke 637. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. John F. Kennedy said, forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

Guess that's fair.

Oh, that's fun. Well, folks, if you got questions about taxes, we get it. Taxes are confusing. And to help you get a better handle on them, we get some questions from time to time for our listeners. I want to avoid overpaying taxes each month. What do I need to change with my paycheck? Well, let's correct one thing. It's not overpaying because you don't pay. It's over withholding. See, withhold means I hold back. They're holding part of your check, withholding some of your check. They're not letting you have some of your check to apply to your taxes. If you don't need to pay the taxes, you get it back as a refund, meaning you have had too much taken out of your check, too much withheld. So you're not overpaying, you just haven't too much withheld. Now, once we say that, it's a simple couple of ways you can do it. The simplest way is if nothing has changed, if the tax code didn't change and your situation didn't change, you just simply divide it by twelve and say, I need that much. You have $3,000 refund. I got $250 a month too much coming out of my check.

Go to HR and say, reduce my withholding by $250 a month, and they can do payroll adjustment and do that real simple. But if things have changed, then you use tax software, like, for instance, the Ramsey solutions tax software, and do your taxes. But you're just running out the taxes to see what it is. What is your taxes going to be? And so then have that much, whatever your tax bill is going to be, have that much withheld from your check over the year. And so let's just pretend. Let's say your taxes are $10,000. Well, that's $833 a month. So you need to have that withheld from your check. And of course, either way, you've got to fill out a new w four with the HR or with payroll to get that done. So the trick is, do not get a refund. If you get a refund, it means you've loaned the government your money at zero interest all year, and they send it back to you in April with no interest. You have a stupid savings account. That's what a tax refund is, a stupid savings account. So do not be setting yourself up for a refund.

If you're getting a refund, adjust your withholding because don't pay them so much. Don't let them take more than they need to take. If you don't owe it now, don't under withhold where you have a big tax bill at the end of the year that's going to get you penalized and create cash flow problems for you. But if you're getting $3,000 a year, $4,000 a year, one $200 a year back, every time you got a stupid.

$1,000 or more, you got a Christmas.

Account with the freaking federal government that no interest. Don't do that. And Santa Claus doesn't live in DC. This is not a gift from them. This is your money that you gave them and shouldn't have given them. And then they give it back and act like they did something and you're like, oh, I got a refund. This is like, you're smart. It's not smart. It's the opposite of smart. So don't do this. Okay. Change your withholding with your w four by readjusting to the proper amount of tax. Coming out now. For more tax help, go to ramsaysolutions.com tax. Tons of all kinds of blog stuff there to help you with taxes. And you'll find the Ramsay smart tax, which is our no nonsense tax software. People are changing to it from the other one in droves. There's no upfront pricing or it's low upfront pricing. I'm sorry, no hidden fees. And if you have a complicated situation, you even go to one of our tax pros with Ramsey trusted, they'll help you. So ramseysolutions.com slash tax. Shannon is in Dallas. Hi, Shannon. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Sure. What's up?

Okay, so my husband and I were new listeners and we did the baby steps a little bit out of order. So we had some good home investment opportunities. And so we have our mortgage paid off. We make about 180,000 a year before taxes. The only debt we do have is a car note, which is about fifty k a year. So we've got six months emergency fund. I guess my main question is we have zero retirement. So I work part time and my husband works for a small company so they don't get any retirement through his job. So our plan was to save up cash and put down on rental property. But after listening to you guys, we think maybe we need to do the well we need to pay off the car first, obviously, but then do 15% for retirement in a Roth. So I guess my question is, we're almost 40, so in 20 years, will we have enough in retirement, which is 15%. Yeah. Have you run the calculations? I did. It was like 600,000, I think. But that's without percentage increases and stuff.

Yeah. And that's if you could never get a raise.

Right.

And the other thing is this. Let's say you get the car paid off and you have an emergency fund. You told me your house was paid off, right?

Yes. We don't.

So you're at baby step seven, so 15% no longer applies at that point. You could invest more. You would max everything that you've got available. Roths, 401 ks. He doesn't have anything at work, though. And you don't have anything. So all you've got is Roth. Right. There's no self employed income anywhere. Right?

Right.

Okay. How large is the company he works for?

There's about ten people.

Okay. If I were him, I would sit down and talk with the owners and go, hey, guys, you can put this stuff together really inexpensively, right. And coach them up. Have them sit down with one of the Ramsay smartvestor pros, and you can start a retirement plan for a ten person company, and it costs almost nothing.

Okay, so see if they'll start that, because they did just start health insurance. They didn't even have that before.

Well, yeah, that's going to cost them in penalties under Obamacare if he doesn't do that. So they got to do that. It's really inexpensive and very easy to set up for a ten person company. Have them get in touch with a smart vista bros. That'll help you put even more in. So here's what I would do. I would max out. Let's say that you could do, I don't know, 20%, but you can't find enough stuff to put it in. So you max out. Who? Roths. You put up whatever you can at the company. If they start doing something fun, you put something over there and you still got more money. Then pile up that money to buy real estate for cash.

Okay.

And then you're going to end up with a net worth probably close to 5 million when you hit retirement.

Okay. If you do all that the Roth maxed out and then investing in real.

Estate that you pay cash for and your increases in income, and you just keep doing all this stuff for the next 25 years, you're going to end up between three and 5 million okay. That's where you'll be. 600,000 is just simply doing a Roth, and you're going to do more than that.

Okay. Was that both of you guys? Is that two Roths, Shannon? Well, yeah. So I'm part time. Okay.

You can do a spousal, though.

Yeah.

You can fully fund both.

You all. Both need roths.

But that's only six grand. Yeah, and they can do what they can. Tell him this. Tell them to check with. Okay, you need to go to smartvestor pro anyway to sit down and set your roths up. So go to ramsaysolutions.com, click smartvestor, and they'll help you get your roth started. Okay. Do you have kids?

We do, and they're teenagers. And one we just put through fire academy, so we paid for that. But then the other one, she's 17.

Good. So we're cash flowing that then, at this stage.

Okay.

Then tell your husband, ask his boss to meet with your investment advisor, your smartvestor pro, and they can show him how to do. If you can remember this, it's called a simple IrA. It's a 401 for small businesses, and it costs almost nothing to set up.

Okay.

And then your husband can load that up and the other people will jump on board, too. But he'll be able to do it. There's almost no regulation on it. It's why they call it the simple Ira. It's a 401k for tiny businesses like this. It's perfect. And so they can do all of that, and then you got more money beyond that that you can keep doing. So just pile up that cash, because you don't have a house payment. You don't have anything, girl, you can have a great life and still pile up some money, and you're going to be able to pay cash for some real estate. The real estate is going to go up in value. Your home's going to go up in value. You're going to be in great shape.

Get the car paid off, Though.

Yeah. The first steps. Car paid off in the emergency fund. Absolutely. Very good.

Great question.

That puts us our, 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.

Hey, guys, I'm Rachel.

And I'm George.

And you've probably heard our voices before on the Ramsey show.

And do we have a surprise for you.

Yep, we have our very own show, smart money. Happy hour. Where we talk about pop culture, current events, and, of course, money. George, it's a great show. And what else do we talk about?

So much, Rachel.

Not enough. And yet too much. We talk about guilt tipping. Because tipping is out of control, and I won't stand for it anymore, which is why I'm sitting.

I'm glad you were taking such a stand.

And we also talk about something else I'm passionate about.

Disney adults. Why is it a thing?

Listen. Some adults still find the magic.

Sure. We also talk about toxic money, traits and girl math.

And if you don't know what those are, you have to listen to the podcast.

Yeah, there's a lot there. You guys. It's pretty fun.

We keep you relevant is what I'm trying to say.

We help you out.

So pull up a chair to the happy hour you wish your friends were having.

We promise you won't regret it. And if you don't have friends, we'll be your friends.

We will. We're great friends. So make sure to check it out on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or the Ramsey Network app.