Stop Hoping Someone Else Will Fix Your Money

brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today normal is broke in common sense is weird so we're here to help you transform your life from the ramsey network in the fair winds credit union studio this is the ramsey show I'm Ramsey personality George camel joined by my good friend doctor John Deloni and we're taking your calls at triple eight eight two five five two two five that's how you join the conversation Jesse is kicking us off in Minneapolis Jesse how can we help today I am calling because I have a freshman daughter new to college and my husband and I recently found out that she opened a credit card she knows we're against that my husband tossed around the idea of kind of giving her an ultimatum excuse me an ultimatum that if she doesn't close it we will not provide her the funds from her 529 and I'm just curious your thoughts on that we haven't talked to her about that yet but we're just trying to figure out how to navigate it how'd you find out about the credit card well when she was home and Thanksgiving break she goes to a college fairly close to home I thought in her wallet I how does he have a wallet without opening said wallet she has like a little it's like a thing attached to her lanyard okay has her student ID in it and then her debit card and then you have she doesn't know that you know at this point she does know because I asked her about it okay did she get defensive was she like well here's why I did this not really I mean she didn't get defensive she was kind of open at first but then didn't really want to tell me what the balance was on it oh was there an agreement hey well we're gonna pay for school but you have to go completely debt-free you're not gonna go into debt you're not gonna open a credit card what was the conversation like I don't feel like we ever had a specific conversation but as she turned 18 I do recall like seeing you know credit card offers come in the mail and then just told her kind of like please don't ever open one please don't open one I mean I just she knows we're against it so I I just want to call out George the joy of this show is sometimes people call them and they're like I found cocaine in my son's room and and then I found my daughter has three husbands and then occasionally it's like she has the Delta Sky miles car found a discover car okay so in George jump in here like my Jesse my rule of thumb is always a I expect my kids to explore and press boundaries and see if they hold okay so it's it's a it's a feature not a buck the second thing is is there's tons of things that I like and I regularly badmouth to my son like country music he love it by the way I love it I just like to harass him how short young teenagers shorts are I think short should go past the knee to mid shin like they did in the late 90s he disagreed right so he also knows that me and my wife don't borrow money that's number one so I expect him to roll his eyes to say oh dad's into that but I'm not and mom and dad have a reason for X Y or Z and I'm becoming he's he's a he's growing into late teenager right but your daughter's 18 she's she's a young adult right she's turning into her own woman and so I would say as someone who's worked with college students my whole career hearing you say I don't like something is far different than you sitting down and saying here is an expectation that we have if you want to accept this here's the here's the bargain that you're gonna make with us mm-hmm but you getting upset because y'all have this firm belief about a thing so take take debt off the table that's too easy as the Ramsey show let's say you told her you can drive this car but in order to drive this car you have to go to this church then she has a choice to make do I want this car or do I want this but I it feels to me awfully caustic to circle back and say hey we did not give you a firm boundary or a firm a firm set of responsibilities if you're gonna take our money you know how we feel about things that's fine that goes into a bucket of a whole bunch of stuff mom and dad like and don't like but this is if you're gonna take our money here's what our expectations are you need to make these grades you got to go to class this much if you take out debt then this is then you are choosing to not accept our money mm-hmm and so I think if I'm gonna sit on us on a jury here I'm gonna side with 18 year old and say I know mom and dad hate this mom dad hate a bunch of stuff they weren't and then to pull out my college funding feels caustic without sitting down and saying hey we weren't clear this is that big of a deal to us and that's our fault we weren't super clear on our expectations for you but if you pull college fund you take the 529 and by the way even your language it's y'all's money it's y'all's account but you called it your her 529 her college fund and that's the language she's gonna hear is mom and dad got mad and threw a temper tantrum at a thing I did and they took away all of my college fund as a way to force me as a young adult to do something she's gonna either a do it out of spite or she's gonna not do it you're gonna cash out your relationship with your kid yeah you get what I'm saying so it's your money you can do whatever you want to with this but man I think it's the right honorable thing is to sit down and say we mess this up on the front end we gave you this huge blessing called college paying for your college and we didn't set our expectations for you choosing to accept this money or not and so we're gonna we're gonna reset that okay if you think it's worth losing I mean if I mean that feels like I'm a future thinking person like okay big gonna probably go into crippling student loan debt now and we're gonna lose the relationship I'm like this is gonna harm you guys more than it's gonna harm her I mean she'll be suffering financially but you guys are gonna go why did we was it worth it the teacher the lesson instead I would dig in and say hey why'd you open the card like what's behind that what were you hoping to accomplish because if it's trying to save up but we can help you do that if you're trying to get a credit score we can show you why you don't need that for this stage of your life and I think getting to the root of it and owning it like John said you know hey we didn't do a good job setting this up there was no contract in place that said you lose your 529 if you open a credit card so it does feel caustic and a little bit reactive so I would try to just calm yourselves emotionally have the conversation with her and then go from there but I I personally wouldn't pull it and this is the Ramsey guy if my daughter opened a credit card I would be heartbroken absolutely but what I pull two decades of savings away from her as punishment I don't think I could do that I would rather see her stay debt-free on the student loan side and figure out this whole credit card debacle separately and here's here's just sitting with college student parents over the years I would do everything I could to a be clear and be continue to be a place my daughter will call when not if but when something happens whatever that has something is a bad grade a bad event a scary thing shame each secrets for breakfast and so the fact that when you said what's the balance on that car she said I'm not gonna tell you that means that that 18 year old didn't feel safe enough to tell her mom so this might be a great place for you to go out to take her breakfast one day and say I haven't fully told you my experience with dad here's what happened here's what I did when I was 22 here's how long it took us to pay it off and this is why it's such a big deal we love you we love you and then if y'all want to say you want this money you do this you can do that I love entrepreneurs don't forget guys I started my company on a card table myself so I know what it's like to have people counting on you your team your family not to mention your customers and when you're the one signing the paychecks you can't afford to fly blind but I'll be honest early on one thing that nearly sunk us was wasting time with spreadsheets that didn't add up because business units didn't talk to each other I finally told my team just fix it and they did we got net suite that was years ago and we've never looked back see net suite isn't just for tech giants it's built for growing businesses like yours over 43,000 businesses already run on net suite including a lot that started just like you and now with built-in AI net suite is helping them even more it's one system connected to every part of your business for real-time insights not guesswork net suite AI flags inventory issues cash flow risks even supplier delays before they become problems so you can trust the data stop wasting time and make the right decisions faster take a free product tour today at net suite comm slash Ramsey that's net suite comm slash Ramsey John is in Boston up next what's going on John hey good afternoon thank you so much for taking my call big fan you guys I said a quick question in regards to you how should I approach my my student loans I have $94,000 in student loans and I make a salary of 75,000 a year the reason I ask how should I approach it is because I work for my local government and I'm eligible for the public service loan forgiveness program and I'm also reading the baby steps millionaires book and step two obviously talks about attacking your loans and going down ho and so I'm just questioning should I attack my loans and go down ho and just go crazy on them or should I you know take advantage of the loan forgiveness program by working for my local government and you know making small amount of payments and then saving and investing the rest it so just wanted your advice on how to approach that let me ask you this as a guy who's how long you've been working in local government I've been working with the government it'll be six years in March very cool so when you see what happens at the local level and the state level and at the federal level yep is there anything about your experience both like your lived experience and what you see going on that makes you think in any shape form or fashion you can predict what any member of any government is gonna do in four years I don't think there's yeah no no I can't predict that if you did I would connect you with our friends a better help because you'd need a therapist like yeah it's all I know is my lived experiences it was working as a dean of students at a law school and I had some of the most amazing young men and women who had incredible minds and they chose to not go into private law because they wanted to serve the least of these in their communities and they chose public service and they chose public service because of the do this for 10 years and we'll pay off your loans and the amount of them that got denied over and over and over again made me so sour on this deal and it comes down to who do you trust and in this situation like based on what you're saying I trust you way more way more than anybody making some promise just to get themselves elected or reelected do you have any other debt John no that's just about it this is how have you actually signed up for the program yet like how far into it are you so I'm so that's the thing I'm currently in the master's program so while I have been working for the state government I'll be graduating God willing in May of 2026 so I wouldn't start until May of 2026 okay and then it's 10 years from that it's 10 years from that yes so okay so how do you know I'm currently 28 all right so let's say like by your 40th birthday maybe this shakes out or another way to say that three presidential elections from now and here's the thing people don't think about John because they get starry eye that their hundred grand is going to disappear number one your balance will likely grow until that number gets forgiven and you're going to be making payments that entire time for 10 years so you need to add up what that's actually costing you and by the way the amount that's forgiven is taxable so you're going to owe taxes on top of that while the balloon has grown while you've made payments for a decade and let's hope that it all shakes out perfectly and so that's my fear I'm not like angry against the program like I love to see someone working for their community you know have a benefit like that I just don't think it's worth it I love that idea yeah but for your personal life because I'm rooting for John versus like the system I think you could get out of this debt realistically within two to three years max if your income doesn't go up and so the question is could I like put a little umphan to it and be done in two years and have the next eight be free or do I want this living in my head rent free for a decade going oh gosh I hope it works out I'm making that payment again I hope it works out and that's my heart for this I'm rooting I just believe in John more than PSLF I hear that yeah that's I mean again I've been using the the loan simulation calculator that my loan provider has and you know it's not the most it might not be the most accurate but it's the closest thing I have using that calculator and I'm you know thinking about maybe throwing you know two grand a month out my loans and you know the calculator states that you know you'll be paid off and you know four and a half five years if you do that and that's if you do nothing differently that's if your income doesn't go up you don't try to you know ratchet the expenses down and I just think when you won't when you have that goal to become debt free all of a sudden you go I'm willing to make more I'm willing to spend less versus kind of sitting on the sidelines hoping that an exterior force changes your life that's the part that worries me because then you that's how you operate through life is you go well it's not up to me I got to find out if there's a a program that can fix this instead of John being able to fix this and here's another thing that people don't take into that calculation if you're really good at your job you know what you're going to have tons of opportunities you're going to meet somebody they're going to want to move across the country to be by their parents when you have twins accidentally and part of the calculation will not be freedom and not what do we want to do and what cool opportunities do we have in another local government in the state government in another state or in a new for-profit entity it will be but I got to stay here for four more years and so there's a well never this never gets taken into the calculation is a decade of sleepless nights because you are owned by somebody else because now you need that job I have to have that job I'm already this far into it so I'm going to not do something that could be a good opportunity not do something that's going to be best for me and my family not go whatever because I'm stuck in this thing because they have a hundred grand set of golden handcuffs around my wrist and I just don't I just saw all my students deal with it and I don't have George you may have it I don't have any of the data when I left it was like 98 or something some crazy percentage we're getting denied yeah and so I don't it might be 96 now like it slowly it might be better now let me reiterate as a taxpayer I love the idea that my tax dollars go to getting some of the best and brightest minds and hardest working people into serving people in local communities I love that idea right but I don't get to make that choice and so that that's I mean or to put it this way I went and paid my student loans off as fast as I could and I was working at universities was a nonprofit I qualified for the same program I worked as hard as I could and got those stupid things done so it's not just me I got some skin in the game too I did that because I just didn't want to be beholden to whatever person in office holding that over whatever thing they wanted to do 10 years from now that's a fair point I I appreciate that perspective and that's that is something I don't think I ever took into consideration just the future landscape of it so yeah and can I throw one more thing at you while you're on the phone if you don't have the cash to pay for a master's program I would tell you postpone it hold off because that's yet another set of shackles I had to disappoint you that I'll be finishing that master's program in now in May of next year so so you're not disappointing me I don't I don't owe I don't all those two loans anymore but I do know I had six figures of student loans and I didn't sleep for years it made me insane I had to say no to opportunities I had to do different things live in a different house drive a different car because of that choice I made so even if you had to submit a letter of I need to take a semester off and so I can earn some more money and they may want you as a student and they're going to give you a scholarship or they say great we'll pick you up next semester whatever you need to do I just want you to know you don't you're not stuck in a track where you have no options I want you to reclaim your free reclaim your freedom right what's the master's in the master's in urban planning okay and that's the exact field you're in does it come with a pay bump immediately um I'm not in the in the current field at the moment however the jobs that I'm looking at uh do come with a significant pay bump um once you know obviously once I'm done with a program and and get selected for the position that I apply to yeah so let's say by next fall could you be making six figures uh definitely low uh six figures um there are but most likely probably um mid to high 90s because I'm just wondering you got two grand you can throw the debt now what if you had another two grand because of the pay bump and you kept living how you're living and now we're debt free in two years yeah I mean again that is something I'm taking into consideration if I do my intent is you know within the next few years or few months to get a significant pay rise so or or what if you have six or seven years of working in local government and you have this graduate degree in urban planning and a construction firm hires you to help them navigate government contracts and they're going to pay you a quarter million dollars right so now we're not attaching yourself to this government program 10 years from now allows you to keep all of your options open there's no better time to start protecting your home than right now this month only my listeners can take 50 off any new simply safe home security system during their last chance black friday sale do not miss this deal I've recommended simply safe for over 10 years and it's simply the best security system you can get for your home that's because simply safe helps stop crimes before they start their AI cameras detect threats early and then live agents stop them by speaking directly to intruders letting them know they're being watched and that the police will be dispatched simply safe stands behind their security with an anti-theft guarantee and no long-term contracts that's why simply safe was named the best home security of 2025 by us news and world report so don't miss simply safe's biggest sale head to simply safe direct comm and claim 50 off today that's simply safe direct dot com there's no safe like simply safe Christmas is almost here and our deals are still going strong so grab gifts while you can these prices won't last much longer rachel cruises kids books are on sale for just 13 bucks they're a meaningful gift for little ones fun easy way to teach them about contentment gratitude and generosity and uh i'm biased my toddler is a big fan and if you're shopping for everyone else too there's other deals 13 dollar best-selling hard covers including books for myself and dr john deloni 13 dollar career assessments 12 dollars for questions for humans decks and 799 audiobooks and ebooks get it all ramsey solutions dot com slash store or if you're watching on youtube or podcast you can click the link in the description annie is in san francisco up next what's going on any hi guys how are you doing we're good how are you okay i i would say i'm okay what's going on so uh we were going at our daughter our 19 year old old daughter she moved out of the house with her boyfriend she dropped out of school and in one of the many well not one but a few of the many heated conversations there i would say arguments that we would have um we will be very clear about what would be removed if she would to go out of the house um and among those it was um removing or not being responsible for her health insurance now she was born with a uh heart condition she's been having a few surgeries over the years and um now that open enrollment is going on i told her that she needed to find a way to be responsible for her own health insurance the last conversation i had with her and i told her you know you need to look into this it's almost it's almost a 15 in open enrollment it's going to come to an end and we need to see what she's going to do with the insurance she got mad at me um she said well why are you doing this you know you can't take me out of insurance and i know i can what do you what do you try to accomplish by taking her off taking away her health insurance so she thinks that living with her boyfriend and her boyfriend's house is just being she pretty much went out of the house to be free of responsibility is it to be free of responsibility or to be free of you well i guess free of everything because being at home she had to bring me good grades she had to be at home at a great time okay you know so i don't know that it's free of responsibility it sounds like she wants to because she's gonna have rent and she's gonna have to do stuff at this new place right well that's my thing i don't think she's being responsible over anything so do you think cutting her off health insurance will make her more responsible somehow especially with the heart condition that you know she's gonna need surgery for because here's what it sounds like it sounds like you're you're less even more than punishing it sounds like you are trying to control what an adult does all right well in in in mind but on the other hand i want her to know that being an adult has a lot with it i got that i got that if you were like funding her drug addiction i'd say yeah no this is enabling let's cut her off but access to medical care i don't think is directly connected to this relationship decision she made we can agree on that right well yeah because i read the prodigal son i don't know that the dad kicked his son off health care when he left the house with the inheritance i assume he kept him on the plan the family plan went all right hopefully he comes back one day i can't control him and lo and behold he came back and so i just think there's a piece of this that you might need to to let go and then let her test these boundaries let her figure this out for herself a little bit but i don't think the health care should be a condition it just it feels tell me if i'm wrong my guess is this conversation escalated you're gonna have to get your own cell phone you're gonna have to pay for your own car insurance you're gonna have to pay for your own gas and she's like fine fine fine and then you went with the nuclear option which is i know you've got a heart problem i'm gonna pull that funding off the table too and now it's hard to walk that back is that fair or did you go come out of the gate with that not really because we uh since she was young we were teaching her and how to be responsible in many ways i know i know but what you're telling me is you taught her all of these things and she's still doesn't have that message do you what i'm saying my mom my mom hard it's telling me that i should keep covering her health insurance but at the same time i want her to know event at a whole not all of it within i got you so i all i can tell you is in this situation what i would do in my house and i have a young daughter if my daughter had a medical condition and she was making a but what i thought was a boneheaded idiotic 19 year old decision i'm not going to put her life on the line to prove a point i will sit down with her and say i love you this door will always be open for you you know what i think about the decision or decisions you're making is and i can't contribute to that so you're going to be on your own with your car insurance you're going to be on your own yourself like i would put those things out there and i would always have it tethered with you can always come home this door is always open for you and i'll meet you in the driveway with my arms wide open and i would look at my daughter and say you've got me as your dad you got me pinned up on this one because you know i'm not going to let you die on an operating table because you don't have any money yeah but i need you to hear me say my heart's broken not i'm going to keep controlling you and controlling you and send you off because it's she's 19 making a 19 year old decision and does she need to learn that adulthood has responsibilities of course she does no question about it but i spent my whole career working with 19 year olds and they do 19 year old things and i'm not going to put my kid in a position this is me personally you do what you want and you are well entitled say you're off you made a choice you go do it i'm telling you in my house i wouldn't i wouldn't put that on the block but that's just me i'd be very clear about my boundaries the question i want you to ask yourself is what is the ultimate goal i mean we we had this conversation with her already and she knows she can come back home whenever she feels like she can't be on herself like whenever she needs us she can come home anytime but she also knows that rules and restrictions may apply yes but she also knows the home she would be coming to is so cruel that my mom would rather may not have health insurance improve a point right and so what kind of home are we coming home to not a boundary free home not a rule free home they're just they're just again if you call and said i feel like cutting off the cutting off her college funding and cutting off her cell phone if you've sat down and been clear i'd be i'd support you go get it it's your money do what you want because of the precarious nature of this situation let me put it this way it feels like y'all are playing blackjack and you know you have an ace and i want to challenge you not to play blackjack with your kid okay but that's just me george what do you think i i don't think her prefrontal cortex is is fully baked yet so it feels like a lot to put this on her and i i simply would you right now it's opposing magnets and you're just driving her further and further away i would try to flip that magnet around and go how can i draw her in and show her that i'm truly a safe place for her and then i truly want the best for her and that might be a year or two before she has to figure that out and the breakup happens and she goes mom i need a place to crash i messed up i'm sorry and maybe that's the thing you tell her is i love you enough that when this thing goes south when it goes sideways we'll be here and i'm not gonna when you walk in the door you're not gonna be met with a lecture you're gonna be met with open arms we know how this ends and we'll be here but as for me in my house i wouldn't put my kids life on the line at 19 years old hey it's rachel cruz the holidays are here which means family time and giving back and remembering what the season is all about and let's be real it also means shopping y'all if you're anything like me december gets really busy and really expensive it's harder to stay intentional with your spending and that's why i love shopping on amazon especially this time of year named the lowest priced us online retailer for nine years running by profitero a third party analytics and research firm amazon's prices are up to 14 lower across top categories and beat competitors by up to five percent in key gift categories between amazing deals stress-free shopping and fast shipping amazon makes gift giving simpler the holiday season a little brighter and helps me keep my budget in check that allows me to get back to enjoying the season what more could a busy mom ask for so for more information about amazon's low prices and easy affordable holiday shopping head to amazon today welcome back to the ramsey show open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five zcule's in dc up next what's going on man and good afternoon uh how you guys knowing that i'm doing great how can we help um so i'm owe over 50 000 dollars worth of debt most of it is loans and you know loans have monthly payments some for 330 some for 500 some for 200 so mixing all the monthly bills for these loans try to keep up with my credit and my everyday expenses rent food and stuff like that is kind of killing me i'm really going in the circle and my goal here is just to you know pay off my debt because i make a decent amount of money but i'm not enjoying it because all my money mostly goes towards paying this debt yeah you work for your lenders right now because every paycheck disappears to them there again you're basically working for your lenders right now you're working to provide them a paycheck pretty much so how much do you make i make 38 dollars an hour on one job bring home about about 4400 dollars a month and i just got a second job making about 34 dollars an hour and i'm bringing about 2600 dollars a month so somewhere under 7 000 dollars a month is one full time one part time how are you juggling those yeah one full um they're all 12 hour shifts so it's 312 that one job the one paying 38 and it's 212 at the other job it's not really good for my health it's not really good for my health that's another problem so i'm just doing five straight 12s what kind of work are you in monday through Friday i'm a armed security guard can i just say this george is gonna listen you're at the right place and george is going to walk you through a step by step how to do this all right but can i just shout you out like just guide i got man to man here like do you have kids you married no sir okay i just want to just shout you out because the the word on the street is men don't know how to work and men are all lazy and they're just a bunch of bums and felt and on and on and on and i hear a guy that probably did exactly what he was told to do on everything you got to get a new car you got to get this you got to get this and you're not afraid to go work and get after it and i want to tell you man i applaud you and george is going to give you a path to freedom is that cool cool man i i got to say i really appreciate that i worked my tail I know you do man i can hear it and that's what gives me hope that you're gonna get a show is for guys just like you i'm proud of you man because you're not scared to put george going to give you a hard path it's not going to be easy but he's going to give you a path out of this mess and i'm proud i just want to say i'm proud of you dude it's awesome appreciate it man so number one is ekial you need to focus on your four walls first before you pay anything and that's your rent your food utilities transportation you can cover all of that right with no problem right i'm taking those good i love it so rent utilities food transportation just cover the basics first before you pay any lender before you do anything else you can throw insurance in there too make sure you're on you're on track for your insurance payments and you're bringing in seven thousand dollars right now that's what i heard that's your take home pay right are you doing any investing right now not at all i have a lot of ideas and a lot of dreams but i have this this thought process that i have to clean my plate first amen yes yes good because i was going to tell you to stop investing because right now my thought was he might be doing a lot at once he's trying to save some he's trying to invest some he's trying to pay off some debt trying to live and so you want to focus on debt payoff anything above and beyond those expenses we mentioned is focused on debt payoff and right now you've got a bunch of debts don't you how many separate debts would you say you have i would have to say uh at least six um i have this silly thing where i think taking out more loans is going to help me take care of the loans that i have already i just make you normal man that makes you normal you ain't crazy and you get desperate they'll go to desperate solutions yeah you get sold out all day long so you're not crazy yeah and all the marketing is going to be like oh zika we can help you get out of debt take out this consolidation loan right so what are the debts like you're you said there's a bunch of loans what type of loans are they car loans credit cards personal loans i have uh one credit card for $3,300 it's uh $86 in month i have a personal loan for 13,000 that's 330 i have a car note that's almost paid off from where it starts it's down to about 7,000 from 2,500 over five years but it wants 465 a month and that's killing me with car insurance so i'm paying about $800 from for my car i have a another personal loan for 8,000 and um that's about 250 a month so what are these personal loans for all these personal loans literally just to keep me above ground and try to catch up with all the other loans and um damages to my car and uh what what started this whole process because you make good money so what caused the guy making six figures to go i can't pay the bills because it wasn't the these debts as it stands man um just bad money management i'm really bad at managing money i've been trying to do this for so long um i had an idea to move somewhere and stay cheap but decided to help out some family members so i moved into the house where yeah i moved into our house where we're renting the house for $3,600 a month and you're paying the rent i'm not paying it all by myself but i'm paying what's your portion 15 i'm paying 1500 okay that's reasonable for a guy taking home seven grand but do they expect you to pay all the light bill and all the water because you're the rich one now no i'm literally just paying the 1500 but i came from a place where i was paying five and really doing well and then i came here and now i'm paying well you weren't doing well you were just able to shuffle stuff around on the titanic a little bit more but 1500 is not bad if you make the kind of money here's the hard truth you're not in a position to help anybody right now the week can't help the week and i hope and i know that once you're out of this mess you're going to be a real generous guy because you have a heart to serve and a heart to help and you do security for a living and yet your life is so insecure right now your finances are out of control and the good news is look the napkin math says you put two grand a month towards your debts you're done in two years you see how that works and you're not just scared of hard work so put 2500 and you're done in three years and then you get exciting what if i did three grand a month well that's 36 grand a year i'm done in 18 months and you see how how this starts to roll and then what will cause you to feel the progress and momentum is using the debt snowball method and i'm going to gift you every dollar it's our budgeting app it's really more than that now because it's going to coach you through this whole process so you're going to lay out all of your debts in the app and you're going to focus on the smallest balance so what's your next smallest debt what's the balance on it i would say the smallest one would be a credit card of $1100 that would be the absolute smallest done that one's done by the years and within the next 30 days that 1100 bucks is going to pass through your hands and you can throw it knock out the credit card debt done you yes done great so that's one debt freed up and remember you freed up the payment on that so now we can apply that to the next smallest debt what's the next smallest one uh the next smallest one i have it all written down here would have to be um uh something i left out i left out i took uh $5600 out for from my 401k as a loan so that would be the second smallest one okay and that one will get knocked out within what three months be done by march on that one sweet and so now you can start to see the progress you go okay i'm actually making progress instead of trying to not you know play whack-a-mole here with my debts and every dollar will lay all this out very clearly for you but here's the here's the fact of the matter you're gonna have to keep this income up for a little while longer but i don't want you doing this i don't want you working you know five 12 hour shifts for the next four years we can agree on that right right but could you do this for a year my lady is my lady does not like to develop oh i bet well she doesn't see you you're a ghost to her and even when you are around you're probably not super fun to be around right now and you're gonna have to tell her hey for 24 months we can't go out to eat date night looks different for 24 months we're gonna go on walks and hikes and free movies at the local whatever because we i'm gonna get a i'm gonna be listening to this word i'm gonna be free we're gonna be splitting a cosco hot dog 75 cents a piece that's the life you're gonna live for a very short time is eekule so that the next 20 30 40 years of your life is truly free is truly secure so hang on the line christian's gonna pick up we're gonna gift you every dollar to help coach you through this exactly what we did on air it's gonna do that 24 7 in your pocket giving you recommendations a personalized plan to help you out of this mess you call us back if we can help once more statistics show that half of americans don't have enough life insurance or they don't have any at all i don't understand this john why don't people want to take care of their family they think they're gonna die or something well i used to be one of those guys i didn't even think about it and one of my buddies said hey the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids and i immediately went and got term life insurance that's a gut punch and oh you're telling me and for decades dave i've sat across people who've lost a spouse they've lost somebody important to them me too they don't know what to do next me too i mean you're gonna have a crisis here and you know you got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow she's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow that's exactly these are the two options and take care of your dadgum family term life insurance can replace income path dads cover funeral expenses so your family can actually have the opportunity to just be sad yeah to just miss you that's exactly what it's supposed to be it's saying i love you to your family term life insurance jeff zander and the team at zander insurance makes it easy and affordable i've used them personally for 25 years they're the only people i trust go to zander.com or call 800-356-4282 welcome back to the ramsey show in the fair winds credit union studio i'm george cammel joined by bestselling author dr john daloni and it's open phones at 888-825-5225 give us a call we'll do our best to help you take the right next step for your money your relationships and your life kate is in charlotte north carolina what's going on kate hey how are you all the day you're doing great what's your question good good i have a question about paying for potential funeral expenses for an estranged father um so we haven't really is he still with us yes he is he's 65 in in not great health um so i would expect obviously sometime in the future but well even if he wasn't great health you could expect some time into the future right for all of us it's it's coming for all of us exactly exactly um i'd just like to get ahead of the curve before anything catches me by surprise um he's really not of the means to have pay for anything himself um won't have any kind of a estate or anything like that my siblings won't really have any means either and so i feel like it's going to fall on me but with not really having a relationship more than an occasional phone call that kind of thing i'm just kind of curious what my obligations are and then also what i need to do because i'm working through baby step two i've got about 20 000 more in debt to go but do i pause baby steps to throw a little bit in savings or what what do i need to do do you struggle and this is the pot asking the kettle here do you struggle things i do of course yeah so you've created a future potential problem and you've dragged it back to today and you're trying to solve it today as one amazing young man at my church once said this is a problem for future you right now okay like financially okay like the financial like if he drops dead tomorrow god forbid i hope he doesn't if he does then we'll solve that problem tomorrow but right now you're in the you're in your own emergency which is i got to get the stuff paid off the second thing i would ask you is where does the word obligation come from because that can be a legal question like who pays for the burial here for a guy that i don't want anything to do with but i hear you asking more of a character slash spiritual slash moral question yeah it's definitely more of a moral side i don't wish me ill will toward him but so ask yourself this question and this is a haunting question who do you want to be and you get to answer that however you want okay and what i mean by that is i want to be a person who even if somebody treats me like crap or whatever i'm going to go do this i'm going to call this the next right thing which is i'm going to pay for as inexpensive of burials i can but i'm going to show dignity and respect and i'm going to go on about my life or i want to be a person who holds people accountable to how they treated me and so you don't want anything to do with me i'm not going to have anything to do with you or i want to be a kind of person that lets them have it i mean i can go on for days but you have to ask yourself that question and then reverse engineer the actions they're going to get you to the identity that you want to see when you look in the mirror okay okay and i wish it was more complicated than that and i know it's heavy yeah it's simple but it's really hard right if this funeral happened who would show up there there might be a handful of people okay so we can limit this this isn't going to be a big thing we can limit the cost of this keep it as simple as possible and whoever signs the funeral agreement is going to be liable to pay and so i would try to get some agreement on that before that day comes so that it doesn't add stress to the grief or you can cremate him i mean there's there's any number of things paths you can take here okay i'm just i'm almost hesitant that if i bring it out now then everything would fall on me and there would be no cooperation from at all if you're asking that right now then you know that's what's going to happen now five years 10 years 15 years from now you know that yeah and so worrying about trying to solve that in the present is not a good use of your time or energy because you can't solve it what's your timeline to get out of debt i should be out of debt in the next 12 18 months it's amazing congratulations thank you and then beyond that you've got an emergency fund and i would start saving up knowing that there might be three four five grand on the line that i might need to pay to cover this expense if no one else chips in or i'm going to be a person that's not going to cover other people's stuff and so i'm going to go on about my life but you're going to have to look yourself in the mirror long after he's gone yeah right and in the grand scheme of life gone man i hate that i spent three grand on or you go you know what i don't regret it yeah it wasn't a fun thing to pay for it didn't solve any family dysfunction but i did the next right thing for me exactly and so either way i would make peace with the decision and not role play this in your head letting it live rent free that would just consume you because you have a bunch of imaginary conversations with people don't you of course yeah and then she said and then i said this and then you always get like the mic drop moment right and you might be right it might play out exactly like that but 99 chance no way it feels like i remember uh brenee brown said this and i loved it she said we spend a lot of time dress rehearsing tragedy we spend a lot of time imagining what would happen if the worst case thing happens and how we're going to respond and how we're going to be the hero and how nobody's going to cook and what that does is it serves as a xanax to us dealing with the problems that we have in our life right this minute and it's just a way to distract yourself it's like tick tock except in your own mind scrolling scrolling scrolling and so just knowing that rumination never solves a problem and as a ruminator i know that's easier said than done right i'm like just don't eat the cookies and i'm like but i have to right right so i get that um yeah george is right if if you're asking what we would do in our personal life george i don't know straight parent i would just save up and pay i put three grand or five grand aside and i would say i want to be the kind of guy that buried his father and i want to be that guy but that's just that's for me right and i don't know your it's not like i'm better than someone because i'm doing this it's just this is the simplest route to get through this is for me just to deal with it versus getting angry at everyone in my life and say why aren't they chipping in i knew they wouldn't chip in well then you just drank the poison yeah and hope they suffer for it and they're not going to so you might decide it's easier for me to just suck it up and pay three grand than it is for me to make seven phone calls that are going to ruin my month yeah and then ruin nine christmas is from now i'm guessing you don't have a great relationship with many people in your family not my biological family no okay there tends to be a ripple effect there and i'm sorry you're dealing with that and yeah that's at the root of all of this is you're frustrated you're sad you're you need to grieve the fact that you should have a relationship with your family like that's crazy to not be able to have a healthy relationship with your biological family and yet that was taken away from you for things that were out of your control right mm-hmm yeah be heartbroken and this is just a reminder of that do the scary impossible right next hard thing so if you're at george and i would probably get through that 20 000 bucks as fast as we possibly could and we would save up an emergency fund for three to six months i am an anxious guy so i like the six to seven month emergency fund and inside of that would be the money i needed to bury somebody that i'm estranged with but that i think is the next right thing to do that's the path and if it happens before you're debt free just pause the debt snowball save up as much as you can as fast as you can and get through this so sorry hey guys it's open enrollment time for health insurance and if you have ever felt overwhelmed trying to figure out your health care costs you are not alone for a lot of families health care is one of the biggest line items in the budget and it gets more confusing every year but you don't have to settle christian health care ministries is a biblical and budget friendly alternative to health insurance and i am proud to recommend them with chm you are joining a community of believers who actually help share each other's medical bills yet it's true members have shared over 12 billion dollars in health care costs since chm started nearly 45 years ago and it's simple you choose your provider with no network limits you submit your eligible bills online and other members help share your expenses chm has program options for every stage of life whether you're single self-employed or raising a family y'all open enrollment has a lot of people scrambling right now but chm lets you join anytime so go to chministries.org slash budget to check them out that chministries.org slash budget Megan is in Tulsa up next how can we help today Megan? Hey um all right so my husband and I are um completely debt-free except for our house um we still owe about 133,000 on this primary mortgage but we have purchased land and are planning to build a new home and um in discussions with the lender they have informed us that um after we provided all of our documentation and all of that that um and the cost breakdown for the build they said that they were going to require us to take out a second mortgage on our home to ensure that when we sold this primary residence to move into our new home that we would do a lump sum buy down or pay down on that new construction loan mortgage permanent mortgage okay so it's on their side they're trying to protect themselves yes which I understand that but um I would not do that is that a minute yeah I don't I have no interest in doing that um I'm trying to you know is this the lender that you currently have a mortgage with so no but but they have looked at our finances and one of the things that they told us when when we first started having this conversation about this new loan they said they would love our business um for our so my husband and I own our own business and when we provided our financials and how much we are income and what our business is doing um they said that they wanted to court us to bring their bit our business over to them uh like our like we use a different bank for our run your business through their bank yes and so part of that I was like well that's flattering but I don't really care what a bank thinks but um but then in this new conversation yesterday they said they want a second mortgage and they're gonna require us to do banking with this walk away walk away yeah walk away yeah they're not the only dog in the fight here why don't you just shop around right or can you put pause on this because my guess is they're saying this is risky on our part for some reason well here here's my real where is that right my real guess is that y'all talk to a loan officer at some stature in that bank and they made you a bunch of promises because they get paid on how many accounts they open and then when your loan went to loan committee they said we think this small business is a risk we don't think these people have enough cash for this we've had too many people sell their house on a new build and they get there all the equity but then they go and go to paris for two months with that money like whatever the right and so I just want to let's pretend everybody's in good faith the salesman was trying and the loan committee was like there's no way I'm putting this through without a whole bunch of underwriting just got their you know respitey census but at the end of the day I'm not going to do business with somebody that is going to force me to take out a loan and like I'm just not going to do that they're trying to tell you I mean I understand mitigating their risk but I feel like you're going to make money off of my but my money that I deposit with my business it's not about that it's about they're trying to do business at the expense of you and your husband's value set and I'm not going to do that right right well is my other question with that is is that an indication that we have over budgeted what we should be that was why I was trying to get that's my thought is if they're spooked by this it tells me there's something with these numbers that gives them pause so that's what I want to ask you is the land fully paid off did you guys pay cash for that yeah so yes but like here's my here's my and here's why this was kind of like a frustrating thing you know we have a lot of friends who have done this right done the same thing and they have had to sell their current home and they like during the construction you know a lot of people like live in a rent house during while the home is being built because they need that money that equity that it is in their current home or they like you know put a camper on the land and live there or build a shop and live in the shop while the home is being built or you know all these different creative options we were just under the impression that we had enough income and we have enough equity that we weren't going to have to do that so it sounds like your impression was incorrect you know what I mean well well now I'm wondering like I guess I need to shop around what's this new build going to cost so our so that's the other part my husband is in the construction industry he's actually a construction owner's rep he's done mostly commercial work but he um so he does this for a living so he is very kind of prides himself on um coming in under budget which is kind of unusual in the construction world so he is conservative but we estimated our build to be 750 with a 7% contingency and um so I'm wondering if we need to just like mail down a more accurate less conservative and more just like real hard numbers for our budget that doesn't matter I mean they're gonna they're gonna come through and say well that's cool that y'all think that's what that's gonna be but we're gonna budget for a million what matters to a bank is how much money are you asking them to loan you how long are they out for it because this construction process who knows how long it could take things fall through all the time with these new builds and so that there's just a lot more risk with construction loans and that's why the terms are more stringent higher rates all of that until you convert it to a traditional loan and so that might mean hey we need to pause in this build we need to stack up more cash we need more equity in our home I'm not sure what that is for you that would make a you know construction lender feel more comfortable with this scenario but I would shop around and you can always call our friends at Churchill they'll give you an unbiased third-party opinion and go hey here's what we think here's what we would do here's what our current you know rates are and that'll at least give you a better picture of what you're dealing with versus this one lender that you talk to and can I tell you something crazy that it's not going to be apples to apples but I think I might be close I have a PhD in counseling people from all over the planet seek and ask my opinion on what they should do next in their marriages and their mental health and whatever my wife does not she pays a therapist in Nashville that she sees and why do I tell you that your husband may do this for a living for other people it may be worth a handshake and a 5% deal to get another GC yeah we talked about that yeah and and it may not be the the 10% that GC's normally do and he may owe somebody a favor and they can high five or whatever but there's something about being so close to him trying to make his wife's dream home come true on the land and the chickens and the goats and all the stuff you'll have planned that it's going to cloud the reality and so the greatest gift I can give my wife in our house is not to counsel her ever ever actually that's that's funny you say that because that was one of our conversations about a month ago was we either need to hire an employee for our business or we need to hire a builder because we just have these dreams and plans and we've had the we've had the blueprints and the art you know the drawings ready and he we just keep having so much business which is fantastic but he's concerned about having the time to build it so actually he's the one coming to me saying I have a lot of peace about just hiring someone to do this that is a man that rarely exists in the 21st century you hug him don't ever let him go and hire that's called self-awareness and humility oh totally he's he's all of that um I'm actually the cheapskate trying to save us a buck trying to feel like I think we could do this listen you have married well you're the right subcontractor it's worth the 10% what was like what's going to be your taxable income for the year from this business for 2025 so last year it was around 395 and this year we're looking to do about 420 incredible what's your top line or is that take home uh that's well that's top that's top line but we have a very low overhead business I mean we basically use gas and computer software stuff yeah but y'all are depreciating out all of your trucks and your computers and all your equipment right no I mean well yeah we have two laptops and well what would you pay taxes on last year the amount uh 395 okay they'd give you a million dollars what's your current house worth 350 okay so you have a decent amount of equity here but this money I feel like is newer to you guys and so therefore the banks are still like hey there's not like you don't have a half million dollars in equity so to go 750 is a big number we only owe we only owe 133 left on our primary and our plan was to just pay this off yeah but while we were building but but if you're if you're going with to meet with a bank and your husband's a surgeon and you're a surgeon they're gonna say cool we see a projection here if y'all are a small business that does construction you may do 400 top line one year and 75 top line next year because that's more like a farming it's like great years tough years great years tough years they're gonna be possibly more conservative conservative about what they loan you out yeah but I would call our friends a church sale mortgage and get a third party opinion from them I think you'll have a lot more clarity after that so the holidays are supposed to be joyful but they can also be expensive between gifts travel and about a thousand limited time offers your budget can start feeling anything but merry and that's why I love this boost mobile helps you treat yourself and your wallet right now you'll pay just 10 bucks a month for your first two months then only 25 bucks a month for unlimited talk text and data forever no price hikes no contracts no nonsense just reliable service that keeps your phone bill low and your holiday spirits high so stop stressing over your budget and start saving instead go to boost mobile dot com slash ramsey and unwrap the savings today that's boost mobile dot com slash ramsey restrictions apply see boost mobile dot com slash ramsey for details are you staying on track with the baby steps you can take a quick quiz to check your progress and receive a personalized plan just for you simply head to the show notes click on the link titled are you on track with the baby steps and complete the quiz isaac is in houston texas up next one of john daloni's favorite places what's going on isaac each tone uh how you doing guys uh yeah i'm isaac i'm 20 years old uh and i just got engaged uh about two weeks ago congratulations right on yeah so i this is more of a uh uh emotional spiritual question i get than the financial one but um so my my parents they're they're divorced and and i think they're very smart people but uh they're kind of against me getting married and i like i like to you know talk to them take their advice on a lot of things but i just don't know about this one they kind of don't want me to get married with with uh the person i am with and it's not what's at the root of this is it your age or is it the person that you are engaged to they they don't see them as a long term quality or they just both went through hell during their divorce and they just are they don't want anyone to ever do that ever again so so it's my age and what dr john already just said you know it's it's um part partly they think i'm too young and partly because they've been through their own experiences they think it's a riskier bet to get married this young to this person yes okay how old are you i am 20 years old i turned 20 this october okay and so tell me man tell me in george why do you want to get married why is this person the person you're going to be right or die with for the rest of your life well we we've been living together ready for about uh six months and i know it goes against your guys's advice but yeah that's what we've been doing yeah but that's like six months that you didn't answer my question you just told me a thing you're doing why do you want this person to be your ride or die for the rest of your life till death do you part well she's just a great person she takes care of me well she's you know very you know even though we're not married she's been acting like a like a really great wife and is just the person i see in my future how long you guys been together uh about two years it's been a little over two years and how old is she she's about a turn 21 okay and you guys haven't you just gotten engaged when do you plan on getting married how long is this engagement going to be uh not too long we wanted to get married before the end of the year actually what's the rush what's the rush uh not that's not any rush it's just we've already been together like we've been living together and we kind of wanted to already like you know be together and we kind of it seems to me that we've already kind of been engaged but not really but so here's here's several things i'll throw at you okay and i'm in the middle of working on a multi-year project on this question is marriage still worth it okay and um here's what i'll tell you the data is pretty clear and i know there's some conversations about causal versus correlation and yadda yadda couples who are in good or great marriages every facet of their life is better financially health wise emotionally their kids kids who grow up in the home of married parents who's uh and they're actually broken the data down from married to cohabitate all of it everything in your life you'll have more sex everything in your life will be better and if you are married not well or poorly every part of your life is worse okay so it's one of those things that i feel myself screaming from the rooftops everyone needs to do this thing and do it well and we have a culture that has sold us that the worst thing we can do is limit our options and i would say the freedom that most people are chasing when it comes to getting money getting fame getting seen having quote unquote a bunch of options is found in commitment but only in commitment done well why am i telling you all that your parents lived experience is real their health was ripped apart their psychology was ripped apart their their money was ripped apart they watched their kids get splintered up their experience is real and so when they tell you you shouldn't do this thing because we tried it and it blew up our home that's a real experience and i want to honor that and i want to tell you that i hope for your sake for your kids sake for your wife's sake for the world my kids are growing in i wish more people like you would have a mind towards being married okay and figuring out how to do this thing well okay i will tell you this you have a very limited toolkit right now and if you think being married is well we just kind of feels that way and we've been six months you are going to get smacked right in the nose by reality if you go into this thing saying we're going to need help from every loving adult in our life on how to do this thing well and i'm going to have to learn new skills i'm going to have to learn how to say i'm sorry i'm going to understand that five years from now i'll be married to a totally different woman and she'll be married to a different man because we're going to grow if you can go into it that way and seek intensive premarital counseling to have conversations about budgets etc then i would say if my 21 if my son was 21 he came home and said dad i met the person five years ago i would have said bro don't do this wait till you're 25 live a little i would change my tune now after living it all look at all the data i would say this is the greatest most important decision you're going to make i will support you every step of the way but you have to go into it very humbly okay so i think your parents are right and i want you to do this thing you know what i'm saying both are true yes okay yeah so tell me i think it's i would tell you just as a guy who just met you i think this is too fast to try to cram a sin before the beginning of the year only because you're telling me well it just feels like we've already been doing it so we might as well that's a terrible reason to enter into a lifelong till death do us part right at eye commitment yeah what i would like to add to that is i was thinking about it already for a longer time you know even before we moved in together but i was you know i had i've lived with my parents and my whole life they've been telling me you know that marriage is a scary thing so i was scared of it for a long time and and you know i i just kept listening to your guys just show them listen to me just because your dad was a boxer and he got knocked out and told you to be scared of boxing just because you suddenly think i'm not scared of boxing anymore does not mean you should get in the ring without a bunch of skills okay i would love to see you i'm glad that you're interested in getting in the fight i need more men getting in the fight but i also need more men to get in the in the fight with skills i would much rather see you say i want to formally propose to you and we're going to get married in june and we're going to start premarital counseling january two okay so that we're on the same money on the same page with our money with our values with our whatever we begin having those hard conversations because here's what you're gonna have to do you're gonna have to do marriage totally different than your parents did and that's going to be a challenge because when you open you when you get the first fight when you get the first um lost job you get the first car that breaks down in the middle of you know of the of the beltway there in houston you're gonna open your toolkit and the tools in there are going to be the ones your parents put in there by their marriage okay you get what i'm saying yes so isaac it's less about a specific age it's about alignment on values and the truth is at from 18 to 22 i didn't know my values i didn't know myself and so that's the part that we're encouraging you to dig into for yourself and for her to make sure that you're aligned on family kids in-laws you know whatever it is politics how are we gonna raise family what are the all the decisions and the filters we're going to use to do this because that's the part where it's going to bite you in the butt down the line to go oops she i just like the pb and j she made me i never thought to ask about x yz over here and in the early stages of any relationship man it is just gum drops and rainbows i remember i didn't fight with my wife for like the first year and a half we were together and i was like this is a match oh my wife and i barely made it two and a half weeks before we're like yeah we screwed this up like so every couple's different but but as as george said i think even beneath are we aligned on politics whatever my wife and i aren't we're not aligned we we go to the same church but we have different beliefs about stuff i think that's awesome it took me 15 years to learn how to share a home with somebody that we had the same values but we had different beliefs and so i want you to get in and you start learning some of those skills and go into the same humbly so yeah i hope you get married dude i really hope you do and i hope you go change your whole family tree and before you do that hope you get a bunch of skills along the way and a lot of premarital counseling i'm going to gift you financial peace university to help you with the money side that's some of the best premarital counseling you can get when it comes to finances so hang a line that's our gift to you the last thing you need this holiday season is more stuff collecting dust or tech that keeps you glued to screens and up too late you need better sleep and that's what you'll get with casper their mattresses are made for deep uninterrupted rest that keep you cool and comfortable so you wake up feeling ready not wrecked because rest is not a luxury it's an investment and the ROI is your well-being so go to casper.com slash ramsey and use promo code ramsey for 25 off mattresses and 10 off everything else you get free shipping too that's casper.com slash ramsey promo code ramsey exclusions apply our question of the day is brought to you by y refi defaulted private student loans don't just disappear but you can take back control y refi offers low fixed rate refinancing that gives you hope and a clear path forward go to y refi.com slash ramsey to learn more that's the letter y r e f y.com slash ramsey not available in all states today's question comes from marissa in illinois marissa writes i'm a stay-at-home mom and love having that role in our home but in our marriage the root of all of our arguments and problems is money i'll admit it i like nice clothes makeup shoes and purses i love going out and getting coffee we own our home but want to make some renovations and my spending has gotten in the way of making that a reality i've always been a spender and before i got married my dad would put money in my account when i didn't have any my husband would like to keep my personal expenses under geez my husband would like me to keep my personal expenses under $2,500 a month and i know it's doable but why is this so hard for me wow i i see two things here one is an addiction and the second is enabling from dad and now she's putting that on the husband this is your role now to put the money in my bank well i don't see it as much as her she's saying like my husband's given me a reasonable allowance of $2,500 he seems like he's very level he's going well can you do it under $2,500 and she's like we'll see i i i think so that's some people's entire budget all of their expenses they fit under that yeah so i um marissa my tone my my tune has changed on this the last few years i four years ago if you'd ask me this question i would have thought it very important to dig into the root of your spending addiction the root of your why you can't keep a budget why um you are struggling financially and you're having disagreements except you keep spending money on purses and shoes and things like that i'm changing my tune on that i think if you want to make a behavior change like this the best way right now for you is to act your way into changing your life what do i mean by that before you get an answer to quote unquote why is this so hard for me stop spending money and what do i mean by that get rid of your debit card hide it put it in a safe give it to your husband tell him take it to the to the office but stop spending money and when you feel that discomfort feel it and have one or two things that you promise yourself make a commitment that you're going to go do when you feel that discomfort when you begin to say i need to go buy some shoes you don't you got all the shoes you need i'm gonna go for a walk i'm gonna go call a friend i'm gonna have a set of actions that i go do because i'm finding people george who spend all of their time why why why i need to go see another therapist for five years i need to go do another personality exam i need to go to another silent retreat and all that all stuff's good but it's one year two year five years seven years and the same behaviors are just hanging around and i'm becoming more and more convinced both through the data and just walking with people the last four or five years the greatest gift you can give your body is the lived expense of a i didn't spend any money last month and i didn't die b i didn't spend any money the last six months i say any money you know what i mean i didn't buy any new shoes any new purses any new guns any new whatever and i've had to deal with the root of that issue and that's worth spending the money on for various things so um if you have a chemical addiction obviously you got to go to rehab or whatever but marissa i want you to put up some insanely high hurdles that make it borderline impossible for you to spend money right now have that level of discipline means deleting the apps off your phone or moving the card info or take the phone and get rid of the phone get a flip phone i'm talking about being costly i'm guessing a lot of this is happening while scrolling yes and so that's that could solve a whole lot of problems create um some rhythms and routines where you go hang out with other stay-at-home moms throughout the week so you're not just sitting at home in a box by yourself scrolling and scrolling and scrolling but yeah if it means getting a flip phone get a flip phone and if you find yourself like oh if i don't have social media i got no human or ai interaction at all great then that's the tensions that doorway go into that tension and go find some friends but um you have to put some serious hurdles in front of you so that it purifies what the real problem is it distills it down and now i got to go solve that yeah my guess here is she's like you mentioned dad always solved it and she's probably incredibly lonely would be my experience would be my guess yeah there's a root cause of another thing out there is gonna make me okay it's like why another outfit yeah because on my wife stays at home she wishes that she could even have the time or energy to put on clothes and go somewhere like nice clothes full makeup that purrs the shoes so this is impressive enough that she's had can accomplish this but the budget is going to be the key here because you guys clearly don't have one because you're saying hey my spending is stopping us from saving up for renovations well the makeup money should not be renovation money we need to separate all this out in a budget you can download every dollar and make a line item for marissa that says two thousand dollar marissa fund money whatever if you guys make 20 grand and that's how you want to spend your money go for it but then we need another line item for renovation sinking fund and we put two thousand dollars a month into that account so there's 24 thousand I would say the first three months make that two hundred dollars really like it's for a cup of coffee yeah right and really challenge yourself on what is this drive that I have to fix this momentary feeling of I'm not enough or I'm bored or I'm scared and I'm gonna go buy something click buy click buy click buy click because she's she's already moved on before the shoes even arrive oh yeah right because it's not about she didn't actually want that pair of shoes it was a dope I mean build up the build to build to build to build and then boom if a box doesn't show up at the door I I can't feel anything that day well I don't even think this is about the box showing up I think it's about hitting the button the all of it the whole experience yeah oh my goodness put some really high hurdles in front of yourself yeah and for anyone working the baby steps who wants to hit their money goals every dollar is the best tool to do it you can track your progress get personalized recommendations and coaching for your situation that will help you free up more money to work the plan even faster you can start every dollar for free by downloading it in the app store or google play Danielle is in Vancouver up next what's going on Danielle how can we help today hi I'm super nervous but my question is are we foolish to consider moving provinces for what we would consider a good financial gain and freedom to do the things as a family now that's a pretty good pitch what is it? Sounds awesome what are we missing? Okay so my family is here most of them and so we would be leaving my family and actually my husband's family here for province where we have friends but no family um for some people that would be the greatest healthiest thing to do and for some people that would be a nightmare so you have to ask yourself that yes and I feel like we're my husband's good to go it's me I come from a really big family and we've had how far away is this? My siblings are here so at BC to Alberta okay what's the driving distance? Oh if you were to visit 10 to 12 hours okay not reasonable that's like a two or three times a year yeah and when we moved from my whole family and my wife's whole family live in Texas all of them and so when we moved across the country to Nashville across the US to Nashville we built into our life for this to work for us we've got to have this many trips back a year and we have to save that amount of money right that and that is something that I have put in there as with my husband that we would want we would want to do okay what's your question? So here we pull a trigger you've got to be a big kid on this one what are the implications here I mean are jobs housing like what's what's going to change so it's cheaper so job-wise my husband's a nurse and I'm currently not working we just had a baby last year but I'm currently not working and I would not be able to do my job full time I'd have to drop down to casual at part-time okay do you need the family support around your new baby? Well in order for me to work full-time yes or we would have to have a nanny okay can I throw this at you yeah anytime I'm faced between an either or decision I always force myself to put three or four new options on the table just for fun can I throw a third option for you okay what if y'all just made a 24 month agreement we're gonna try this a 12 month agreement he's a nurse he could easily get a job back in the old province y'all could get another place back in the old province should be fine you're making this into a forever move and that the weight of that decision is daunting what if you just said all right let's let's just go do it for 12 months let's try that but that's just that's just a thought it's reversible it's not fatal so go for it and if you hate it you can always come back home and so I would sit down make the budget make sure the numbers make sense it's not that right every decision comes at a cost you're gonna lose some stuff you're gonna gain some stuff welcome back to the ramsey show in the fair winds credit union studio i'm george cammel joined by my co-host dr john deloni the number to call is triple eight eight two five five two two five if you want to join the show kenna is in denver up next what's going on kenna hi there i just have a question looking for some advice um should i prioritize going to school now if i ultimately want to be a stay at home mom how old is how old are you now what does now mean i am 24 i just got married a couple months ago congratulations i do have a bachelor thank you um i do have a bachelor's degree already and i was planning on going to physician assistant school but but now after just talking in the expense of that versus something else like nursing is kind of where i'm going down with the route i'm going down now so let me ask a crazy question can you afford nursing school right now yeah i think so afford as in you can cash flow the whole thing without delaying or derailing other financial goals yeah that's it's i guess that's kind of where i'm like stuck because my husband does have some student loan debt as well um from undergraduate he has about 40 000 because we have about 40 000 um but i could go to nursing for about 20 000 i would this is me in george made a degree so this is just me i would do that yeah okay and what is the upside for you what got you thinking man i really want to go back to school pursue this yeah just i always imagine myself doing something more i wish i would have gotten a nursing degree before but that's neither here nor there um i i just want to do more i'm a medical assistant now i just want to be more involved with patient care and of course i do want to be a stay at home mom but then eventually the kids are going to be gone and and that part of our life is going to be over in terms of them being in the house um but i have to tell you i've spent my career working with some of the most amazing brilliant women in the world yeah and i have been stunned by women who i figured i would be working for or i was working for right or about to and suddenly they're like no dude i had a baby i'm out of here and i'm like what really and i've been stunned by the people who are lifelong dedicated i'm the stay at home mom stay at home mom and they're at home six months and they're like i no not for me right that's what i worry about for sure too because of course i don't know that life yet and can i give you one other ugly like just reality just because you called me is that cool definitely um my wife and i had some very clear plans on having a family and my son took three and a half years followed by miscarriage one two three and then my daughter came and so we had very clear plans we got our doctorate degrees we had our careers and then we were going to start doing this next thing and it did not work on our timeline right i worry about that too and i would love for you to do the next right thing for you right now in the season and keep your amazing options and plans open and if you want to be a stay at home mom you need to get your student loans paid off you got a cash flow nursing school you got to do that stuff in the right way so you can prepare for a life with one income because that's your values and also at the same time be honest about it may not happen on our timeline right or it may happen tomorrow right like but i don't want you to wake up in 10 years and say we've been waiting for this thing to happen right yeah totally and i guess yeah that that waiting it's like either wait to have a family or wait to go to school and that's that's kind of where i'm at like what's your current total debt load right now um total debt load is 40 000 that's all student loans is that including his though um that is yeah that's only his i don't have any student loans okay i'm just wondering you cleaned up your if you almost planned like hey i'm we want to plan to have a family the next year or two we're going to plan to just kind of get a clean slate financially we're going to work on knocking out his debt i'm going to continue doing what i'm doing versus going further you know in the hole or trying to cash flow this while keeping the debt around and then you get down the path and you go okay now i want to stay at home but now we're too deep in this so i just don't want to get to a point right at this weird crossroads and you have to give one thing up for the other right yeah yeah and i guess the other part to it is that we did get some wedding money and we are able to save my entire paycheck we do have enough money to pay off the loans cash right now do it today um today okay because what you're calling about is i want options uh and becoming debt free faster is going to give you more options okay not holding on to the money for when some random right not doing anything now because if you free up that debt well now we can cash flow and save up 20 grand to cover this program pretty quickly couldn't we great yeah yeah we yeah it would and then how long is the program um it's 24 months yeah it'd be two years and um this is one of those crazy like things that people don't think about if you have a nursing degree and you choose to stay home you know the greatest beneficiary of that degree in the world would be that new baby right yeah you don't know drama until you saw me see a rash for the first time and i was like oh this is it right right and i was the one calling my buddies who who are doctors and nurses in in the middle of the night being like my kid like oh god go to bed you're an idiot right yeah so that's a skill set that will be wasted if you use it for your friends and family or if you use it professionally it's an amazing skill set right right and it's seen it just seems i don't know i'm convincing myself more and more every day that it's better over you know pa you can make more money eventually but the debt load is so huge and i just don't think it's right for where we're at right now yeah i love that thinking and there's it's not like you can't go pursue this two years from now it's not going to disappear as an option yeah i think you'll have a lot more clarity two years from now so there's nothing wrong with delaying it i'm i'm sort of team let's delay it if you're gun ho on hey we want to try to have a family now right and i have a lived experience of let's do have a like george had a baby i don't want to be weird they got pregnant fast we did not right and so my plan just didn't wasn't in the cars for a while yeah right and also you can get a year you can get a semester of nursing school in that you've paid for in cash and then take a leave of absence to have a baby that's no big deal that's true i hadn't thought about that either so here's the the crux of it whether you delay it whether you do it now i would get out of debt completely and only do this if you're gonna cash flow it yes put yourselves in a good financial position to where you have options and you have less risk less stress because that's always going to help you think more clearly and make the right decision for your family versus well we can't do this because we owe people money or we don't have the savings yeah that's like my ultimate fear is like everything's open right now and as soon as you have so much debt it's like oh i actually can't exactly do the things i want to do yes right okay well we can't make the decision for you but i have full faith that ken is going to make the right one for her and her family when that time comes and john this is i mean it's just so it's never been more clear to me that debt reduces your options yeah and there's i've sat with hobbying moms who are pregnant you have to go back to work and they don't they didn't want to but they owe somebody money and i've also sat with people who are like we can kind of do whatever we want so we're gonna do this for a while i'm gonna try that i'm gonna try this and that just felt like freedom oh yeah well people made fun of us they're like why would you pay off your low interest mortgage early and then my wife decided to stay home and went that's why it wasn't a financial decision it was just an emotional one yeah and that's that's one of the most beautiful things in life when you can take the financial burden off the table and then you can kind of do what you want for a while that's invincibility right there it's one of the best times of the year but it's also the time of year when people let their money get totally out of control everywhere you look it's just bye bye bye so you start swiping the credit card and suddenly it's january and you got a mess on your hands don't let that happen tell your money where to go instead of wondering where it went with our budgeting app every dollar every dollar not only helps you stay on budget and in control of your spending this holiday season it also helps you find extra margin in your budget thousands of dollars of it and every day will coach you to build better money habits and attack your goals faster than ever so while most people will be starting in january with the taste of regret in their mouth you'll already be winning start every dollar for free by downloading the app today John is in Minneapolis up next john welcome to the ramsey show hey how you guys doing man doing great how can we help today good i'm so i am uh 20 year old like you said i'm i'm in minnesota i need some advice i've got a good amount of money saved up in a Roth IRA that i'm looking to invest and i saved up in a Roth IRA you're looking to invest so it's invested is it in like i'm on the money market side like in a cash equivalent or is it actually invested something mostly it's just cash i there's a few thousand invested into it my mom has been helping me do that because she's very knowledgeable about the stock market she's invested a few thousand i'm not exactly sure where but my my plan that i'm wondering is is it wise to invest the majority or all of it just into the s and p 500 since that's a historically great return or is it wiser to you know go more diverse with it i mean it that diversity is pretty strong you got 500 of the top companies that you're diversified across now it's weighted so it's not like there's one in each you know apple's gonna have more than a smaller company but uh yeah the s and p 500 historically has delivered about a 10 to 12 percent average rate of return over the last several decades and so do you need to diversify more than that you know our recommendation is across four mutual fund types and this is largely what you'll find in s and p 500 fund is you want growth aggressive growth growth and income and international and that basically means conservative midway more aggressive and then we've got the international companies out there and you're going to find a lot of that already in the s and p 500 so you could do a whole lot worse than doing that if you just did that you're going to be a multimillionaire if you consistently invest in that at the age of 20 exactly what i want to do you know because i i do max it out every year um i have been since i was uh 15 i think wow what's your income um uh well you know it varies i'm a business owner and i you know currently i don't work a regular job so the income can vary but it's always been enough for me to contribute that at 15 how did you max out a raw fire a i worked at a restaurant um like a custodial roth that your parents had set up it was yeah my mom is very helpful with helping me get my money you know as it should be she was very adamant about that from a young age for me so do you make over you do you make a hundred thousand dollars give me a ballpark here of what you think you'll make 2025 what will your tax taxable income be if i had to guess um i mean i am aiming for it to be around a hundred thousand dollars there's no there's no guarantee yet i run a landscaping business so do you invest outside of the raw fire or do you just my goal is to max that out and then i'm done investing for the year well i don't like to over complicate things so personally i would i would prefer to just have one source so have the roth be my investment and then the rest of my money is money i can spend on whatever put back into the business etc okay do you have any debt right now no sir okay wonderful and how much do you have in savings how much do you have that's more liquid that's not invested i have just just over 30 000 way to go dude you're crushing it thank you so you would be in what we call baby step four you're completely debt free you have a fully funded emergency fund and now you're able to invest 15 percent of your income so let's say you made 100 thousand for easy numbers we would say invest 15 percent of that into tax advantage to retirement accounts so 7 000 is the contribution limit for the year so what happens after that what you're telling me is i just sort of do what i want with the rest um exactly i mean you know i don't like to be a big spender i'm not good buying uh things i don't need i mean i do spend a decent amount of money a month on a credit card which i pay off every month but most of this um is gas and it's business related or it's food so you know basic things do you live with your family right now fortunately uh yes i live with my dad and that allows me to be able to save this money what's the long-term game plan are you going to continue running the landscape business into your 20s 30s yeah exactly so ideally yes um i haven't written out a specific plan which i should but in the next couple years i'm looking to grow it like i have been and eventually get my own place but i'm kind of um it's like with the it would be investing i'm willing to invest all of that money in the Roth IRA you know because that's right now it's not you can't there's contribution limits so what i'm telling you is once you go above and beyond that you can find there's other avenues to invest in a tax advantage retirement account one would be something like a solo 401k you could open that as a business owner if you're the only employee uh and so there's other options i want to encourage you to invest in so that you can build more wealth versus just going well i'm going to do the Roth and that's it and so they're going to um get you a investing guide it's completely free go to ramsey solutions dot com slash guide and download that because right now i see a guy who works really hard who has a great savings muscle but doesn't have a lot of clarity on what he's doing and why he's doing it and i don't want you to invest in things you don't understand and while i love that your mom has this knowledge you need to build this knowledge for yourself and so that would be my next step for you as a guy who has a bunch of money and wants to put it somewhere that it's going to work for him okay i will do that yeah keep it up man if you keep living debt free and you keep maxing out a raw thyroid even just doing that go pop it into our investment calculator on our website you will your mind will be boggled by that mike is in chicago up next what's going on mike hey uh yeah i was wondering uh i work 116 hours a week and i was wondering if there was that many hours in a week what yes uh no for real machine op i'm a machine operator okay is that safe no on the machine that's awesome like aren't there like legal boundaries around that uh we're not on the road or any cdl so okay we're in a we're in a private property all right so what's your question dude yeah private property we could do what we want it's america george jeez let mike go all right so what's your question mike uh my question is i want to make more money than i'm making now but i don't really have time for side hustles so what are you making uh this year so far i'm at roughly 273 000 okay and what what was the impetus for you saying i need more money uh i'm a collector so like i mean i collect a lot of stuff comic books trading cards cars um autograph stuff and so i mean historic antiques here's what you have to do like you know the answer to this because you're smart you have to do a different job that you think's going to make you more than 273 000 like there's not a secret here and also is this sustainable to be working over 100 hours a week because if so your income is going to drastically go down while your lifestyle is going to stay high so i think we need to reset the picture here and go what can i do for 40 or 50 hours a week that's sustainable that pays me enough to live the life i want to live and by the way if your life is going to be judged on if you judge your life on how many trinkets you have surrounding you it's going to be a miserable life yeah i mean it's just so what what do you make do you get paid hourly right now or is it salary hourly yeah what do you make per hour uh was it 34 32 but i mean this means you're getting what are you getting 80 hours a week of of uh overtime just roughly i think it's what 75 and a half yeah gosh so instead of making 32 i'm going what what kind of job in the field that i'm in pays 60 an hour or 90 an hour that way i can work 40 hours a week and live to tell the tale to actually enjoy all these trinkets i've collected or here's another crazy idea what if and this is going to be a struggle you somehow survived on 200 thousand dollars a year and you just stopped buying so many pokemon cards yeah i don't think we need more money mike i think we need to reevaluate our lifestyle do you want to keep more money in your pocket and not uncle sam's then listen up there are tax deductions and credits you could maximize before the end of the year by connecting with an experienced tax professional like a ramsey trusted tax pro they know the tax code inside and out so you don't have to and they can help you file when tax season rolls around get a trusted tax pro by going to ramsey solutions dot com slash tax pro ramsey solutions dot com slash tax pro everyone needs insurance but it can be hard trying to find pros who aren't just looking to make a buck and agents who know their stuff well good news ramsey trusted insurance pros are vetted and coached to make sure they're market experts who have your best interests at heart so go to ramsey solutions dot com slash coverage to find the type of insurance you're looking for and connect with a ramsey trusted agent all right let's go out to main karen joins us there what's going on karen this call will be recorded oh good karen thanks for recording we put this on youtube yeah we're recording it you can check this out for eternity we're also recording for quality assurance purpose right yeah well and honestly um i use this to a reference back to you god what's up if that's okay with you oh absolutely uh all right wonderful uh i am just shy of 62 years old um i am legally separated from my husband uh with no chance of it changing i do not have a retirement i do not have a pension or anything like that i make roughly 42 000 a year uh the only thing that i am in debt for is a mortgage and i have not invested in my work for a one k plan because to be honest with you i'm scared to death about doing it because i know nothing about it and they will match up to three percent of what i put in so this is open enrollment time and i'm going to invest in three percent so i can get there three percent uh because i figured that's free money um to go towards that but i also want to get my mortgage down um in about 12 years if at all possible what's left on the mortgage oh almost all of it how much is that yeah it started at 80 and i am down to 70 75 okay and a current rate i've only been i've only been paying on it since july okay and was this a 30 year or 15 a 30 okay so at the current rate you're paying it'll take 30 years to pay this off well no not at the rate i'm going because i'm paying extra on it at a good chance i get okay so i paid i've paid an extra 2000 on it so far in the six months that i've had it let me ask you this question before george digs into your numbers do you have any sort of financial reconciliation as a part of this separation no why not i would uh because uh he ruined his business um there was just there was nothing there nothing there we we'd only been married at the time for nine and a half years so when i went into the relationship i walked in with him his home that he priorly prior owned okay uh what i what i did get when i left was two mobile homes that i lived in one for a short time and i rented out the other one okay but with the way people are nowadays i ended up i ended up selling both of those good so i have 25 000 in my high yield savings account wonderful right now okay um so and i don't touch that at all okay george will tell you what to do with that money but this is um good that's that's good okay so how can we specifically help you today what's the main question i don't know what to invest in with this 401k or if i should take that money and just put it on to my mortgage to get it down sooner well you would be in what we call baby step four so you're out of debt you have money and savings for emergencies so you're ready to invest 15% of your income into retirement so 15% of your 42 000 salary correct yeah i don't know if i can afford 15% well you're putting extra on the mortgage right now could we divert some of that towards investing i i could but then that's going to slow me down to get my mortgage paid off okay well here's here's the thing if you invest nothing you're going to have nothing so i'm we're trying to get you to a spot where you at least have a little nest egg growing for you with some compound growth now we don't have a lot of time on our side anymore but we're going to try to get this mortgage paid off with anything above and beyond that 15% but i would not tell you to just put everything on the mortgage you can and don't invest a dime because at the end of the day yeah then you're going to have no nest egg and no mortgage payment which is 75 and selling your house exactly yeah okay but even though i've got it into a high yield savings which i only earn you'll keep up with it you'll keep up with inflation if you're lucky and so your your buying power is getting lost every day so the high yield savings at least keeps up with that but you need to rise above and beyond that in order to actually have wealth to order to have some extra money to have your money make money and so that 401k it's it's going to be time to learn what funds are in that 401k and which ones are right for you and for that i would get connected with a smart investor pro who can sit down with you and walk you through those options and guide you towards doing something that you've never done before which is understand what you're investing into i don't want you blindly picking something because someone told you to i want you to fully understand oh this is what this fund is for here's why i'm investing in it okay and as a primer on that you can get our free investing guide at ramsey solutions.com slash guide and that will at least give you some basic information about our retirement investing strategy but here's a bummer of your picture of retirement is going to look different yeah and here's a bummer of this is just us being honest with you because we love you okay okay it may be that at 62 while you're still in good health and your mobility is still okay 42 000 isn't going to cut it it may be that i'm working this full and isn't going to cut it that means that if you look at the math problem that is your life and this is this is taking feelings off the table this is taking heartbreak off the table this is just looking at the math problem yeah if you need 500 000 to retire when you're 75 it may be that you have no doubt that's going to happen well you'll surprise yourself to the day i die well but but it may be that while you can still fly around a little bit at a young sprightly 62 it may be that you make 42 grand and you work another side job on on the weekends well and actually i am working on a side hustle right now to get that started okay but side hustle might mean you're investing money into a thing you're spending money and it becomes a hobby and you're going to look up in two years like you don't have that luxury right now at 62 right you know what i'm saying and i know that the goal for that side hustle was for me to put it all towards my mortgage to get out from underneath it because my mortgage interest rate is 6.62 yeah but that that's that's a high interest rate but historically it's not and it's that's just a lot of like social media drama like i want you to focus on the things you can control like what's your side hustle like what what's your side hustle um it's going to be selling things on ebay for my former boss and i get 40 of whatever i sell okay i want you to try that for three or four months and see how it works out really good money at it yeah he's made really good money at it um but i don't want you to put a dime into it i want him to give you the items and you take pictures of them and you deal with the stuff for the 40 that's that's what i'm doing and track it against your time and what act what money you actually made from that because if it's taking you you know if you might do the math and go i'm making six dollars an hour by the time i'm done with this you can go to arby's and double that exactly so just make sure that whatever you're doing is worth your time and try to get your core income up can we make 50 or 60 or 70 000 with the skills and experience you have and i think you just you stop betting on yourself at some point in life george can you run through your um calculator there like the the ramsey investment calculator can you run through if she puts 15 percent of her money what does that look like at what age so karen here's the thing i know you said you don't think you have enough you need to make this a priority to invest if you invest 15 it's about 500 bucks a month 525 from the age of 62 to age 80 let's just admit we're gonna have to work a lot longer than we planned on with the actual rate of return of the stock market you would have about 350 000 in that nest egg okay now if you go to 75 it becomes 180 000 so you can see that the power of compound growth needs time so those last five years really matter because at 80 guess what you contributed about 113 000 240 000 was just the growth that was your money making you more money so the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago we all know that the next best times today so don't delay it don't say well investing's not for me because i haven't done it and i'm 62 if you can fog up a mirror there is hope for you yet karen so hang on the line we'll make sure you get connected to a smart vester pro who can walk you through all this and make sure you get that guide listen back to this and let it be a reminder that it's not too late to have a retirement with some dignity when you're tired of feeling stuck with money there's just one solution to get different results you have to do something different no one accidentally wins with money you have to have a game plan and that begins with our get started assessment go to ramsey solutions dot com slash start answer some questions and we'll show you what steps to take next don't stay stuck take control of your money starting today go with ramsey solutions dot com slash start our scripture of the day proverbs 13 20 walk with the wise and become wise for a companion of fools suffers harm john bonjovi said don't get too comfortable with who you are at any given time you may miss the opportunity to become who you want to be yeah george there's your inspiration john little bonjovi that's shot through right through my heart and you're too late all right danielle is in miami florida that was some great that was impressive i mean i don't want to say that we're stand up comics but that was pretty good stuff right there oh danielle save us how are you doing i'm doing well thanks what's up lady so um i'm facing a metastatic cancer how recently were you diagnosed about three weeks ago holy smokes how old are you 59 she's my husband is 65 and we have an eight year old oh no i mean oh yay but oh no right what's the time horizon they gave you i'm a planner i just like i said we're hoping for the bus but preparing for the worst and um my husband and i are thinking that he is the beneficiary of my 403 b from my work that i had and we are thinking he should pay off our mortgage with that and that will leave him with um social security and um in front of rental property property that we own free and clear to live off of i can i challenge you on something i think this is if this is a if this is a way to manage just the sudden chaos inside your own chest i totally get it but i don't want him making any plans on how he's going to spend money after his wife or if his wife passes and here's why who knows what that world looks like i've met people that can't walk back into the home that they were married in because their spouse doesn't live there anymore and i don't want to tie anybody down to i promised her i said i would we've moved this money already i want if you say hey i want you're a goofball and i want to have a plan down just so i can say i check that off my list of things i need to go through because i'm struggling with this diagnosis i totally get that but i also want you to look him in the eye and say i'm going to hold this with a very loose fist because who knows how you're going to feel after this thing's over my rule of thumb is nobody do anything for six months to a year after their loved one passes okay that's my rule and do we do we continue paying ties during this time continue paying what our ties your tithes like to your church yeah i mean the giving is a matter of the heart and it doesn't you know stop unless there is a if there is a storm in your life where you go we can't afford this right now and something takes priority so we can provide for our family no one would shame you for that yeah but if giving is a part of you and that's what you want to do go for it don't stop the tithe what's what's the what's the terminal nature of this of this illness what what stage are you in how much time do they give you all that it's well we we've got some more testing to do okay um to melanoma that we know has spread to my lungs and our next step is a pet scan to see if it's anywhere else like the brain okay so that's a tough that's a tough diagnosis you got yeah and i could i mean you know i could potentially if the treatment goes well i could you know i could have a long time sure that's right so i would recommend you make a list of things that i'm worrying about and things i can control right now okay and the things that you're worrying about write them on a separate list keep them in your phone write them on a yellow pad whatever and once every few weeks you and your husband sit down and have him smile at you and get you a cup of coffee and he says go let him rip and you just start piling him up what if an asteroid hits us what if the dinosaurs come back what if Jurassic Park is real what if the moon landing was fake like all that stuff what happens what are you gonna do with this fund on this date when i pass away and then this like get all just do that and then go back to okay what can we control today we can go for a walk outside we can go play with our eight year old we can take some pictures we can go to an arcade we can have some fun we can go get treatment whatever you know what i'm saying yeah do you currently have a will in place we do but it needs updating because um at the time we did it our son was our foster son and he wasn't legally adopted yet please do that ASAP yes so there are some practical things you can do like john said there's some things you can control and making sure that your will is up today making sure that every account has the correct beneficiary on there uh healthcare power of attorney durable power of attorney for your financial decisions all of that stuff is important and you can knock that out this week my wife has a folder that has every account every password every email account every every everything and once or twice a year she reminds me where it is and i remind her where mine is and it's like all the phone passcodes the netflix code all the stuff and that might be a good thing to start putting that together just just for peace of mind for yourself right right and then it sounds sooner rather than later but it's not imminent right right okay i'm sorry yeah that's okay i feel you know it's not the last 30 years have been a blessing because when i was 29 years old i went through a bone marrow transplant for leukaemia oh good wow last not your first battle have been have been a bonus you know you've been playing on house money so have you did have you have you had a good a good run i have it's been wonderful and you know this this little boy came into our lives you know seven and a half years ago and it's just been the joy of our lives you're amazing my prayer for you is that they come back with some positive news after the pet scan and they put you on a good treatment and you get the right surgery and you're you've got another long road we're rooting for you Daniel thank you for calling us and trusting us with this all right let's go out to linda and cincinati what's going on linda hey thanks so much for taking my call so um my father passed away earlier this year and i've been working through as a state we're almost done my mom called me last week and said hey in the 1990s your dad braved up my credit cards he wasn't providing blah blah blah $10,000 he ran it up and he always said he would pay it back do you think can you give me that out of the state because he always said he would pay it back this is a real debt are they divorced they just don't they never got married okay how much how big is this estate um medium probably our take home will be about 95,000 so she's wanting to a 10 cut to make good on yes wow that is so wild i mean i i don't think she has any legal claim to this i doubt there was a contract this feels like a handshake he said she said agreement from the 90s this sounds like drama so it would never hold up but do you like your mom yeah well not even that you know your mom if you give her this money will she just be just i don't mean to be rude will she just shut up or well then there's something else come next month and something else come the well with interest it's really 15 so i need another five now like is she that type of person yes okay then just say no very minute just say no it's really so they're not said all right just say no say i hate that he did and she's probably gonna raise some help she's she might will she come after you with like legal like like sue you for this money he has already threatened a little bit of that she's like i could put a lien on this she seems like the type that's what i was getting at i'm trying to here's what i'm grappling with her property it you could try to pay her off and she goes away but i think she's gonna continue to knock on the door because you give her an inch she takes a mile she's not gonna put a lien on the property are you selling this property yeah put it on the market tomorrow and just be done it's it's already in contract we're supposed to close in like a week oh great then just go on about your life well my question is as a as a christian i don't know is there any kind of middle road should i be like mom i don't really owe you anything but as a kind this is between her and a deceased husband yeah that she never actually married so you don't have a spiritual moral obligation because you don't know if this actually happened and she's made up crap about to you about him your whole life this is not a what would jesus do scenario no this is just do i will if i give her 10 grand will this stop all the madness or will it just spark open a door and i think you know it will open the door