There’s a Freedom You Can’t Put a Price On

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is The Ramsey Show. It's where we help you win in your life, specifically with your money, your relationships, and in your work. 888-825-5225 is the phone number, that's 888-825-5225.. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by John Deloney, and we are here for you this hour. The good doctor is in, the sign, is hanging on the door, so that means relationship, the mental health questions related to money are just in that category.

No, I don't.

I appreciate that. I don't. Because we have a mutual friend, Dr. Les Parrott, and I'm outing him, he watches the show, so this is for him, he watches on TBN, when he checks in, he goes, Dr. Les Parrott.

No, he doesn't.

I promise you.

Oh, no.

And it irritates me. Yeah. And so this is my nudge at him right now.

In my case, my mom and my wife were Dr. Deloney long before I was. Right.

And so I've got these.

Well, by the time I got around to it, they're like, oh, that's cute, and they pat me on the head, and we'd already done the celebrating, so.

So there you go. Yeah. Sorry, Les. We love you.

My mom named me John.

There it is. I love it. All right. Let's get to Ryan, who's joining us now in Orlando, Florida. Ryan, how can we help?

All right. Good afternoon, guys. And thanks for taking the time to talk to me today. Sure.

What's going on?

Well, I would like to know, my question outright is, should I hire a CPA to help get my wife on board with budgeting?

Are you serious?

As the good doctor here had said, I know avoidance cannot be a strategy. And I think that's why I'm reaching out, is because we are avoiding, we, we don't fight about money, because the conversation never gets started, and we've been married 11 years.

Okay. Usually I seek out a professional. when me trying to do it will, A, I can't do the task. whether it's, you know, changing the shocks on my car or re-roofing my house, or, you know, trimming trees. I don't know how to do it, or me trying to do it's gonna make it really bad.

I have. And I would tell you that in the past, you know, she has shut down, she's had panic attacks. I usually get an, I can't today, or we'll defer to, I trust you, babe. And, you know, I take it as a compliment, but it leaves me nowhere.

Do you come at her with spreadsheets?

I have provided one, I've never put in her face, but I said, when you're ready to talk about it, I have one made and I've had one made for 11 years.

Let me ask a question here. So when she default, you said she gave you two answers, not today, or I trust you, babe. So when she says, I trust you, babe, do you actually then create the budget and execute on it?

Absolutely.

Or did she, does she fight against it?

Nope.

So why do you need to hire a CPA when she's essentially following the budget? She just doesn't want to do it.

Here's the doozy. We keep separate accounts because she is paranoid of having any financial responsibility. All of the cars, the house, everything's in my name, because she chooses to not have her name on it.

Do you budget?

She does not want that.

I get it. Do you budget money for her, or is it her income goes in her account? And so this budget we've been talking about is just your income in your account. Explain that to us.

But I do track and I know what her cyclicals are. I just don't influence them in any way.

Oh man, John, the onion is unpeeling for us here.

So here's the best way I can say this. This is just me as a guy who grew up living in Texas. I walk to you and I can say, hey, my name is John. What's your name? Or I can walk up to you where you're, where you're in Orlando, say, hola, me, llamo Juan.

Yeah, but John, I got to jump in. I think that's great advice. But the first issue is they have separate accounts and you're nailing the trauma issue.

For some reason, she doesn't trust this guy.

That's what I'm getting at. That's the bigger issue. It's not the budget.

That's where I think he has to come in and say, hey, I haven't proven myself trustworthy to you yet for any number of reasons. And it might not be you, but laying it out that way and saying, I'm giving you an invitation here.

By the way, the CPA is going to hate you, because once he realizes what you've hired him for, he's going to be like, I'm out.

Yeah, you need a marriage counselor before you need a CPA, brother. Because the roots of this thing, Ken's right, the roots of this thing are deeper than budgets.

Do you know, Ryan, specifically what the roots are here? What's going on, where she is this way and doesn't want to have a joint account?

She had a financially controlling stepfather that kept them on the wrong side. They were withheld from everything growing up.

Ta-da!

Ding, ding, ding.

And here's the thing. Okay. She had a tough childhood, and it sucks. And the pain there is real. The trauma there is real.

I don't know. This is, you know, we get along great. We have regular talks. I feel like this is the only thing.

Oh, I would love to talk to her. I guarantee you.

I guarantee you. How long have you guys been married?

Eleven years. Eleven and a half years.

Yeah, John, I'm interested to see what you think of this. I want to recommend to Ryan that he pay for counseling sessions.

Yeah, absolutely.

Him lead here. Nice dinners, or whatever beforehand, to where she feels super safe and supported. Not like, hey, I'm taking you here to get this fixed. But I do agree with you. This is a therapy.

This is a bigger issue. My promise, if you have everything in your life, is on point, it's all together, you're connected. And it's just this weird thing over here, that happens. so, so rarely. There's something in her world that says she's not safe.

What do you think about a free copy for his wife, Own Your Past?

Absolutely. Own Your Past and Building an Unanxious Life. That can give you a roadmap to creating something new in your house, so you can talk about money.

Ryan, hang on the line. Austin will get you both books. It's a gift, but don't force him on her. Just bless her with it. This is The Range.

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. Dr. John Deloney joins me in studio here this hour. 888-825-5225..

Hi, guys. I just want to say thank you, first off, for taking the time to answer the question. So I purchased a vehicle a couple years ago, took out a vehicle loan on it. And when I told all my friends about this, we made a bet that I would have it paid off by the end of the year. Otherwise, I would have to call you guys.

So you doubled down in some strange way.

You're like, hey, brother, hold my beer. I can make my situation way worse.

A little bit. A little bit.

Hey, real quick, before we dive into this, what was the other side of the bet? What if you have paid it off? What would they have to have done?

Just kind of be okay that I had taken out a loan for a couple years.

I was going to say, really boring.

I kind of feel like Rachel Lee Cook on. She's All That, like, I'm just a bet. All right, go ahead. We're just a bet.

I think I got the poor end of this thing.

Well, you made the dumb bet. You did. Yeah. All right.

So what can we do to help? What's your question? Now that you have two loans.

Yeah. So I guess my question is, is it better for me to sell both vehicles, go out and buy a five-mile car in cash?

Probably.

I have the one.

Give us the numbers.

the first one up for sale. So the first car, I owe about $7,500 on.

What's it worth?

About $15,000.

Yeah. Well, the math on this is really simple.

How much do you make?

About, after tax or before taxes, $60K a year. So bring home $45K.

Okay.

Well, okay. So we always try to answer these things based on what we would do. And if I'm looking at this right here, I'm going to sell, we got three, I mean, I'm going to get rid of the, I'm trying to get to zero here. You only need one car anyway, right? Am I correct?

I have no need for two vehicles.

I'd probably sell the car and take the equity and pay that other truck, pay the truck right off.

That's what I'm thinking.

And then you've got a multi-use vehicle.

You get $7,500 on vehicle. one, is what I wrote down. And then you only owe...

But it's worth $15,000.

It's worth $15,000.

I take that $7,500, roll it into the $11,500 note that you have and get that thing paid off in the next four months and then don't be a knucklehead anymore.

That's what I would do. It's pretty simple stuff. I mean, you can do it whichever way you want to, but yeah, I'm selling one and paying off the other. But I want to get it done quickly.

And hey, we have a kind of a Ramsey policy, if you will, like just some guidelines that the things that you own with wheels don't add up to more than half of your income. You're kind of right there-ish, a little bit-ish, sort of, but not quite.

If they were paid off, then I think I'd be okay. But they're not. Right.

And even in.

That's what I want to dive into. I'm just curious, Logan, not to criticize you, but I kind of want to get into what happened, John, in this situation. so it doesn't happen again. Because the good news is you can get out of this. This is not a deep hole.

Yeah. That's a good question. So the idea all along was for me to buy a truck. The car has been for sale now for a little while, and yeah, the idea the entire time was to pay that off and then take that equity, put it into this truck.

So you have trouble with self-control?

At times. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So the only way this works long term is you're going to find yourself in this exact situation in a few months. Because someone's going to say, hey, man, the gas prices or whatever, and you're going to think, yeah, I need to keep my eyes open for just a small car. And then one's going to pop up and you're going to be like, oh, I'll get a loan.

Period.

Yeah. It's never going to again. It becomes part of my identity. It's who I am. I don't do that.

Yeah.

All right, Logan. You in? Hey, listen. You can do this. First of all, you know what to do.

$100,000 trucks.

I mean, I could go on and on and on.

How long have you had your car for sale?

Three or four months.

Yeah. Lower the price, dude.

Yeah. That's the other issue.

Yeah.

Check the Kelley Blue Book and make it attractive.

Yeah. Make it attractive. Get underneath it. Get rid of the car. The burden is more important than I'm going to get that extra $500 or whatever.

Yeah.

All right, Logan. Let's do this. You lost a bet, Sid, to call The Ramsey Show. How familiar are you with our baby steps and that process?

Oh, completely. I've been listening to you guys for years.

Oh, okay.

I made some dumb decisions and I knew it.

All right. Hey, listen. There's no shame in your game. I mean, that's not what we're getting at. I just was going to give you some resources.

I've got to be careful about this.

Because when I walk into the pantry, if I see two or three bags or a bag, there's a real chance that I might get into one of them late at night. So, the impulse control. So, the idea is, so now I've got to set some disciplines in place to where I go, all right, I shouldn't eat after seven o'clock, right? Or whatever. And so, in this case, you know you've got some impulse control.

I love that.

You know?

Well, and here.

And that's psychology.

It is. But, like you said, it means go upstream. What's going upstream in the Coleman house? I can't buy chips. Right.

Yeah.

And that's what John Maxwell's talking about. That's managing those big rocks.

Yeah. Right. It's so much easier, isn't it? When we go, I'm making this commitment, and now what do I have to do to keep this commitment?

Well, it's easy to not eat chips. You don't have any chips in the house. Right?

That's true.

Gosh, I love some chips. I do too. I could use some chips.

I'm telling you. We'll see what happens, folks. Don't move. We've got to do a couple of quick commercial messages. You know how it works.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey, good folks. It's Deloney. And with back-to-school madness on deck, my family's schedule is already so packed. And we haven't even made room for things like exercise and date nights and counseling and all the other things that make our life even worth living.

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. Dr. John Deloney joins me, 888-825-5225.. This is your show, America, because we talk about your life, specifically.

Detroit, Rock City.

Detroit Rock. Well, it's the Motor City, technically, but I like it. Mary, how are you?

Hi.

Are you somebody who would let the reins go?

I have to work really hard to always try and, like, make him make the decision, if that makes sense.

Yeah, but I'm not sure you answered. I don't think you answered John's question. Let's say that your hubs comes in today and go, hey, I haven't been leading like I ought to. I'm going to take over this, this, this, and this. What's your reaction?

Yeah.

Or, hey, honey, we're going to be here tonight. And you go, great.

I don't say great, but I would say sure.

Or I would say like, hold on, Mary, can I jump in as a guy who's been married 25 years? If Stacey says sure to me, I have a follow up question. Every time. John, am I right?

Hey, can we eat here? Sure.

Then I go, well, where would you, my immediate reaction to that from Stacey is, where would you like to eat?

Yeah.

Am I right?

Okay. Mary, let me ask you this.

I would say I would love to, if he's offering to take me out to eat, then I would say yes to whatever he wants.

Okay. I want you to step back a little bit. The word lead means something different to everybody. Paint me a picture of what leadership, what you want from him specifically. Give me two or three things very specifically.

Finances for sure.

What does that mean? Him to go make more money or he pays the bills?

We are going shopping. We are going shopping on Saturday. This is how much we have. Could you please maybe get a list together for me of what you think is missing or what we should be looking for?

So you want him to make the shopping list and go do the shopping?

He doesn't have to make the list, but just basically making a plan and committing to it. Or if he says that we're going to do something as a family, then being like, okay, this is what we need to budget for it, this is when I want it to happen.

What's the next thing? What's another picture of leadership that you have?

Knowing that, let's say I need to work so many hours in a week, or he needs to work so many hours in a week, and then making that happen.

You're not talking about leadership, you're talking about you want someone to be engaged in your marriage and in your life.

Yeah, I want to do a follow-up. Let's go back to the second one. He tells me he knows how many hours he needs to work and he does it. That to me, we got deep pretty quick there. That tells me, unless I misunderstood, that tells me he's not being proactive, or at least you don't think he's being proactive in working as much, i.e.

No, he works a full-time job, and he was working an evening job because we really, really need the income, but we decided that I make more money per hour than he does, and my work is pretty flexible. I work part-time for an accounting firm, but I could work as many hours as I want in the evenings. So we had made the decision that he was going to put in his two weeks at his evening job, and then I would work in the evenings. But it keeps turning into, oh, hey, can we do this first? Or, oh, hey, this needs to be done, and I feel like I don't want to be like, okay, I'm ready to walk out the door as soon as he gets home, and I just leave.

Okay, and here's what you've said multiple times. I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel, and I'm speaking on his behalf. You haven't sat down and said, hey, you lied to me.

We have those conversations.

Okay, all right, or I feel like you are completely unengaged in this marriage and in this house.

Right. I don't want to be.

Yes. Okay.

I don't think that's my job.

You're exactly right.

And every time I try and step back, we are all of a sudden three months behind in rent, or we have our accounts been overdrawn for days in a row, and it's like, where did the money go? Oh, you're supposed to be working. Oh, but you asked, like, so I keep trying to work more, but we also have two young kids.

Yeah. Have you sat down with him and said, honey, I'm scared to my bones?

Mm-hmm.

And what does he say?

After the live stream.

What does he say?

He apologizes. Okay. And then we have the same conversation, you know, once a week about it.

What do you know about his background? What do you think? Tell John what you think is going on with him.

He just said his mom running his life. Gotcha. He grew up with his mom running his life.

So we could say, and I'm not trying to hang something on this guy, but we're talking to his wife, John. Is it immaturity? Right. This is an extremely immature situation.

Yes. And where I have no compassion for him, like, just as a guy who works really hard to be a good husband and be a good dad and to work really hard at my job, I don't have, I get not having compassion there. On the other side, I have great compassion for a guy who simply opens up his toolkit to help out when he has a wife saying, I'm scared. I need your help. And he looks in his toolkit and there's no tools in there.

Yeah. Yeah. He lives like he lives, he, he lives more like by his emotion. So like if we have a conversation or, or like I have a meltdown, a breakdown in front of him and he has a conversation and he apologizes and he goes into what I call like the puppy dog stage, where he's like nervous about everything he says.

And that's, that's why I started this whole call. I started this whole call. I started the whole call asking you, is he allowed to lead in his own home?

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're asking.

I'm saying if leadership means I want a man, that I never feel sad or scared or worried about money, or frustrated or tired, that's not leadership. That's fantasy. It's not real. If you want, if you want a co-parent and a co-partner, if you want that and you want him to take the lead on some things, yeah, man, that's all in. You got to be very, very specific.

Got to, right away. Hey, Austin, hook them up with one of our financial coaches to get this process started. This is The Range.

I've been doing this show for over 30 years, and some of the saddest calls I have taken are from situations that are completely preventable. Yeah. And what's so hard is I feel like one of those, especially the ones that I'm like, oh, it's terrible. People that call in and their spouse has passed away suddenly, and they don't have life insurance. When you have to think through, how am I going to pay my bills in the middle of all that grief?

Welcome back to the Ramsey show. I'm Ken Coleman. Dr. John Deloney joins me. We're here for you this hour, 888-825-5225..

Hi. Oh, wow. How are you guys?

Well, we're having a blast. How are you? You handle it? Deep breath. Ready to go.

I'm good. Hi. So I'm 31.. I'm married. I have a daughter.

How much will that cost?

It's going to be around like less than $15,000.

So it'd be $15,000.

But it's going to be three to five years.

Yeah, but three to five based on how much you can do. So, do you know what would have to be, what the hours would be, let's just say on a week or a month, in order to get done in three years at 15K? What would that require of you, time-wise?

That's actually like, the good thing about the community college is because they have night classes. So I can still work in the morning and like do at least three to four classes every semester.

Well and that-.

Would that get you done in three years?

Mm-hmm. Most likely, yes.

I bet, Christine, you could do it faster.

This is a no-brainer.

Here's why. Private schools often will put you in what they call a cohort, and it's very prescribed. It's very prescribed. Every hour is written out for you. Everybody does the same class in the same order at the same time.

That's how I started. I actually already started with community college with one class.

Okay, well, listen, the course load to licensure is the same.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay? So that means you can do this in two years. You just have to follow that level of curriculum that it would take, you would be doing in the private school. Just taking the right amount of classes at the right time.

Christine, I wonder if this is not about the money, because you just had already thought this through. As soon as I said, well, is it possible for you, for your family, for your day job, to do this, you were like, oh yeah, well, I could do this, this is a three night job. So you've already run this through, so are you, is there a deeper concern that you have as it relates to- It's more the time. What?

It's more the time of it being three to five years, or two years, just finish it, they'll do it. They already have the set schedule for you, but also the money that I'll be missing because I'll be part-time at my work.

So you're going to have to be part-time to do the private school option? The private school. Yeah, but my point is, I think that's off the table, and I think you know that. When you called, I think you were leaning towards community college, except you were like, oh, is it going to take longer? My point is, do you remember the last time you saw a nurse yourself?

A nurse? I worked in hospice.

Okay, but I'm saying, I want to hear the last time you were a patient and a nurse worked with you. Do you remember that?

Yes.

Okay. Did you ask the nurse where she went to school?

Actually yes.

Okay. What'd she say?

She went to community college.

Did she kill you?

Did you all of a sudden judge her because of that? Yeah.

She started jabbing you with needles, all willy-nilly and crazy?

All right. That's my point.

No. No.

She was amazing. She was amazing.

Of course. Let me tell you something, Christine. This is very simple. This is a conversation with your husband to look at what is life going to look like. to knock this out in two to three years, to John's point.

She's six. Six.

She has no concept of time. She's going to be fine. This is a family meeting about time and how our family's going to have to adjust to this.

We're going to count the cost in three years.

Because from a money standpoint, this is not even a conversation.

Well, I get what you're saying.

Community college all the way.

Well, hold up. But, Christine, somebody told you this math. They said, hey, you're going to make $85,000 as a nurse here in Los Angeles, or $100,000.. And if you get done one year faster, you're going to make about $55,000 or $60,000 more. Well, that's how much you're paying extra to go to private school.

Remove the stupid tax. Everybody else buys that.

That's exactly the story. You knew.

Do what?

You knew the story that someone told me. Of course they did.

We've heard it before.

Oh, about the lost wages. Yeah, that's fair. But that's not your case. Now, if you fart around and do one class, and then one class, and then your kid is suddenly 11 or 12, and you have two classes left and it's five years, yeah. But that's on you.

It's a marketing message, Christine. There's a reason why all those colleges have really big and nice buildings.

Because they charge lots and lots of dollars.

And they know how to market it. Yeah. They've got a compelling conversation in their head that they've tested and it works on you. So we just deconstructed it, but use your common sense here. This is awesome.

You're going to save $60,000.

Oh my gosh. I mean, it's mind blowing to me. It's mind blowing. Just absolutely crazy. All right.

Hey guys, thanks for taking my call, Ken, John.

You bet.

Good to hear from you. So, like a lot of callers, I'm in a mountain of debt. I'm 40 years old. I'm behind on my retirement goal that I hope to achieve someday. And I have an opportunity to double my income.

What would be the reason why you wouldn't do it, knowing that you're in a lot of debt and behind on your retirement goals?

Right. I don't have one.

Then it's a pretty simple answer. It's called bigger shovel. Dave Ramsey's talked about that for a long time. More income, bigger shovel.

I mean, calendar management and stress, calendar management and stress would be the only kind of downfall.

Which is why I asked you, what would be the reason not to do it? Is that a big fear? Or can that be managed?

I hope so.

Well, no, no. No. We don't hope so.

But also, but you're stressed right now at how much you owe and how behind you are. So it's stress versus stress. Is three years of, this is going to suck. Is that worth the rest of your life, the back 45 years of your life to be free? If not, cool.

Well, let me kind of paint a picture then. I've got a seven-year-old. I've got a baby on the way in April. My wife's not going to work when the baby comes.

Yes. It's a no-brainer.

This is absolutely, every day of the week, and twice on Sunday, you say yes to this second job. Your wife's going to be home and take care of the kids. You're fine. You'll be tired. You'll be okay.

Your seven-year-old will turn eight and not have any memory of this, and your newborn won't remember any of it. And your wife will say, thank God, I have a man who went and did what we had to do so that I could stay home with this baby.

That's a breath of fresh air. I appreciate you.

And by the way, James, will this be fun? No. Will it be terrible? Yes. Will you be mad halfway through?

You're going to exchange the stress of debt. I like how you put this for a stress of activity. For instance, I was working out last night. I'm in a new routine, John, and I'm not going to lie to you. I hate this part of it.

Hate it.

It sucked really bad. Felt great. an hour later. I was sitting at home. I told my wife, I go, man, I feel pretty good.

Yes. Yes.

Good man. Way to step up. Love it. Congrats, by the way, on the new one. A little one.

Wow. There's no way you went Ken-tastic on us.

What's up, Ken? James taught me that one. Ken, how are you?

I'm doing good. How about yourselves? A pleasure to be here.

Well, it's our pleasure to talk to you. How can we help today?

Well, you guys, my heart's pounding. I'm a huge fan of you guys, so I'm going to get right to it. I am in a relationship with a beautiful young woman. She is just absolutely amazing. Both of us, ever since she's been in my life, has been going to church with me.

What do you do, Ken, and what do you make?

I'm a truck driver, and I'm local to my area. I make roughly, I'm hourly now, so I make roughly about, gross, probably about $75 a year.

Okay. Well, let's start with this. Okay? $75,000 is a very good income, and if you look at,

Absolutely. I appreciate that.

But do you believe that? Because it's not a rah-rah speech. Do you believe that you can make more than $75,000 in the future?

I do believe that. I just think that with some things that happened in my past, I struggled because I did have a digital marketing business that I tried to start, and then, right after I got my LLC back, COVID hit, and then it just completely tanked. So I pretty much just gave up on that, which I probably shouldn't have.

Maybe you shouldn't have. Hey, brother, who told you, when you were real little, that you always did it wrong?

All right. So it was not my family. My family has always been very supportive. As a matter of fact, whenever I went through my extreme dark valley that I got into in 2022, they were there to support me. It was actually my previous marriage that made me feel like I was not- Yeah.

There we go. There we go.

Yeah.

So here's what I want you to do. And what I'm going to say is going to sound cheesy, and you're going to roll your eyes, and I want you to actually go, do it. Do I have your word? you'll do it?

Absolutely.

That's a lot of trust, Ken. I got to tell you. I don't know what he's going to say.

I don't want you to swing by Home Depot or Lowe's.

Oh, I like how this is going.

I don't want you to buy two brand new cinder blocks. Okay? Okay. I don't want you to take them home, and I want you to put some duct tape on them and get a magic marker, like a black Sharpie, and I want you to write on that duct tape a few of the sentences that your ex-wife used to stab you with.

Absolutely. I appreciate that.

Is that fair?

That is fair.

Now, Ken, let me ask you this really quick. What do you want to do? What do you think about?

Well, it's funny that you asked that, because I kind of anticipated this question being asked, being that I've watched almost, or listened to every episode almost on Apple podcasts. And that's just genuinely the direction that you go.

Hey, Ken, before you pop in, real quick, though, I got to get out something. Okay, get it.

Go ahead.

Well, Ken, I'm talking to you, Ken, in Lexington. You have no business teaching men yet until you can walk the walk, fair?

Absolutely. Okay.

Okay. Yes and no. Here's what I think. Wounded people help other wounded people in the battlefield. If you can drag somebody off, and here's where I'm going with this.

Survive their marriages. to the Ken Coleman.

Because, I mean, I can't fix anything. Thankfully, I can call and go check out Neighborly. You can start your search today at Neighborly.com slash Ramsey.

All right. I got to say, I read through this question early. Oh, you did? I'm real excited about this question.

Okay. I haven't read it.

This is exciting. I think it can, we might even disagree on it, but I think-.

Oh, that's fun.

It had to burn my saddle. All right. Today's question comes from Alexa in Iowa. My husband and I are on baby step two and bring home around $120,000 a year. We have $230,000 in consumer student loan and solar panel debt.

Okay. I would talk to the boss or HR department to ask for more clarity on said policy and gently and respectfully keep asking questions as to why we have the policy and how the policy affects her situation and the reality of that. Because policies, to me, should always be guidelines and allow the leader flexibility, or else we get stupid, crazy ideas like you have to wear your mask until you sit at the table. And so my point is, meaning that no matter where you fall on that one, you kind of have to go, that doesn't make sense. And I'm not taking a position on that, but it's like, what?

That's probably fair, because my knee jerk reaction is, you hired me to do a job. I agreed to do that job. When I go home, that's my home.

I agree with that part. I think she should be able to do this.

And whatever I need to do to help out my family per our situation.

As long as you're not competing or you're in any way hurting the company.

And I think, like, so, if I'm a mechanic and I take your tools to my house to do work, you can't do that. Not good. I agree. But if you say, hey, if you come work here and fix cars here, you're not allowed to fix any other car anywhere, that feels like an overreach.

It is. You and I agree on that one. So when I said case by case, that's what I'm saying.

But you and I, we can't go. like, I couldn't go take a gig. I can't go publish a book with another publisher. That's case by case. That's case by case.

I think common sense has to rule the day. And I don't believe that companies own people. And that irritates me. So let me be clear on this. This pisses me off.

It makes me mad. Okay. I'm with you. Okay. Same team.

The way she worded it, if she worded it properly, it doesn't even make sense. We can't do work out, that kind of work, bookkeeping and payroll work outside the office for ourselves because they say it would take away from other places. What are you talking about?

Here's what that means. That makes no sense. She is capped on how many clients she can get during the workday. So she goes and gets her other clients. And what the business is saying is, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Oh yeah. No.

All clients are our clients.

Yeah. You know what that's called? Monopoly thinking. Do you know what the federal government thinks about monopolies?

They break them up. That's right.

And, by the way, I agree. Yeah. So this is nonsensical. Yeah. This is, again, I don't want to go on a rant.

Yes. So let me give you a good example. I was having something delivered to my house. And I live out in the country on a long gravel driveway. And they said, hey, we can't deliver to your house.

But let's keep going. Beautiful example. But not only is the policy nonsensical, it keeps common sense from happening to where the person on the phone should have went, all right, here's the deal, I'll just call Herb. when he comes back tomorrow, he'll drive up there.

He's going to drop it in your truck at your office?

She or he, whoever's on the phone with you, doesn't even have the ability to solve the problem because of the policy.

And that's up. Jocko talks about that as decentralized leadership, right? That's only this person up here can make the decision, and all of y'all run out and make my decision for me, which turns your entire organization into a bunch of admins instead of a bunch of thinkers and leaders.

This is how common sense becomes uncommon.

Can we all get out of the house? Well, we have to follow the exit plan.

We've got to have a policy for this. Our policy says we got to do this. And both parties, both parties, and this is fiscal here. I'm talking about our nation is so crazy in debt. It is, the dollar is, is in danger.

It's wild.

We, we got a fiscal problem. Yes. This is a money show.

Yes. And all we talk about is, well, hold on, we got to do it the right way. We get to the policy.

Yeah. And so anyway, I'm making a greater point to say, oh, shove, the policy. This lady needs to. actually, I'm going to go back to the last part of it, John, here's what I think. Tell me if I'm wrong.

If there is a clear, what I don't want to do is cash in her integrity, right?

I don't think that's an integrity issue. But if she, if civil disobedience is what I'm crying. Am I wrong? I don't think, I don't feel like I'm making you a little uncomfortable.

No, I like it. I'm thinking through it real fast because the music's coming up. I like the idea in principle. I think they would have a right to fire her if she violates the policy. That's fair.

I won't fight that. Yeah.

But I do think there has to be a group of people who say, hey, can we do the right thing by people outside of the policy, please?

I say go, make the money. And if they give you a hard time, I think it was a Johnny Paycheck song. Take this job and shove it. This is The Ramsey Show.

Hi, it's an honor to talk to you guys.

Oh, thank you. What's our honor? What's going on?

So I'm having a good problem. So my husband just found out that he's going to be getting two substantial bonuses from his work, and I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed with what to do. We don't currently have a financial advisor, but I just am terrified to make a mistake. But I also feel uncomfortable in that realm. It just seems like sometimes it feels kind of like the car salesman attitude.

You've seen too many movies, too many TV shows, and my guess is you haven't sat down with a real financial advisor and had a conversation with them where everything they said made sense and you felt like, oh, I can make a decision. Is that fair?

Yeah. I go every two weeks to my local Charles Schwab to do my self 401k.

That's not what we're talking about.

That's not what we're talking about.

I'm talking about a real advisor. Okay, so answer John's question.

How much money is this?

So this year it's like $150,000, and next year it's going to be like half a million dollars.

Okay. Wow. Did you grow up with much?

No. Okay.

So in your mind, and it really will go all the way to your nervous system in your body, other people make that kind of money, not us.

Yeah, we've always, we've done the Dave thing. We've been grinders is what we call it, and we're not bad now. Like. we're worth like probably like half a million now, but we've really like worked, and all of a sudden it's like just like plop in our lap and I don't know.

It's amazing.

Do you have any debt?

That's weird. No, we're five and six.

Okay, so how much do you have left on the house?

Probably about $250,000.

So you've been listening to Dave for a long time, yes?

Yeah, we got married at 22, and I am 29 now.

So you tell me, you tell me what you think Dave would say to you if he knew you were going to come into $650,000 over the next two years, above and beyond your normal income. If I understood you correctly, is that correct?

Yeah.

Okay, what would he say to do with that money?

Pay the house off.

All right, so there's one thing, right? So we knock the house out with this bonus money. And who's doing Baby Step 4?? Who's guiding you through Baby Step 4, 15% of your income to the retirement? Who's doing that?

Yeah, we've just been kind of doing it ourselves, just because we can't.

Well, see, that's the problem.

And we've just been doing like index funds.

That's the problem. You shouldn't be figuring out how to do that. I don't want to figure out how to build a house. I want to hire a great contractor who's built lots of houses and has a great track record. So, Charlotte, you've been around us enough to know what a smart investor pro is.