Deal With the Behavior Problem, Not Just the Math Problem!
2024-05-01 01:54:48
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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual, amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today, and a host of the Dr. John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Networks, which is going crazy. good.
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We're going to start off this hour with James in Springfield, Illinois. Hi, James. How are you? Oh, pretty good. How are you guys doing?
Better than I deserve. What's up?
Well, I've got a question about paying off student loan debt. I've got a mortgage with a 6% interest rate, but I've applied for an income-driven save plan that, because of my family size and my income, has 0% interest. I'm wondering if I should pay off the mortgage first, or keep that money going towards the student loan. Student loans. As soon as possible.
Fast.
And that crap you signed up for is going to keep you in debt for 40 years, so it's not going to do any good at all. If you can get 0%, that's fine, but then I want you to attack this thing. How much student loan debt have you got? $31,000.. What do you make?
What's household income? I make $110,000 a year. How fast are you going to pay off $31,000??
I mean attack it. How fast are you going to do it? Well, so the thing is, I have a family of seven, so it makes it a bit difficult to set aside money to attack it.
It's an excuse.
Right. When are you going to pay it off? It's not a pet. Right. Right.
Yep.
So my thing is, it seems like I'm leaving money on the table. James, you still haven't.
answered the question. How fast can you pay off $31,000 if you put everybody on beans and rice, rice and beans, you stop going out to eat, you stop going on vacations, you sell so much stuff, one of those seven kids thinks they're next. I mean, how fast are you going to pay this $30,000 off?
Yeah, I've got about.
. James, it's an answer. I could pay it off quick. How fast? You're right.
How fast?
Give me an answer. Three years. Three years. Do you have any money saved at all? Yeah, $6,000..
Okay. All right. Three years is ridiculous. I want you to do it in less than two.
I'm serious. You guys are not, you're saying, we've got a large family, they eat a lot. Yeah, they do. And yes, they have to have clothes. and yes, they have to have shoes.
And yes, that's a real thing. I know all that. But, dude, you have never sat down and written all this out in great detail and decided to attack it. You were trying to figure out a way to keep it around like it's a family member. It's not a family member.
It's crap. You need to get it out of your life. It's killing you guys. How long have you had this student loan debt?
About five years now.
Yeah,
you sound beat up, man. You're avoiding it. Yeah. Why is your head hung so low?
Well, so bills have been tight with all the kids and I've just, you know, my wife had triplets, which is why we have many children and bills have been tight because of that.
When did the triplets come? Six months ago. Okay. All right. Yeah.
Yeah. That's a legitimate thing, but here's the deal. As you know, I mean, yes, that's a wonderful blessing, and also, whoa. And yeah. And so, uh, but the good news is, the older they get, the less they cost.
Right. Okay. Until they get to cars and colleges and stuff. But anyway, but yeah, so you know, you've kind of got this to the shock of the system, mathematically is just about over. And, um, you guys have got to sit down and do a detailed plan.
You've been overwhelmed by this overwhelming number. I mean, you almost doubled your kids in one fell swoop, right? That's emotional. It's hard. parenting wise.
There's a lot of duties, a lot of responsibilities, a lot of chaos. Um, and that's translated down into your money. And then you're just going, well, we got a bunch of kids. We can't do it. We got a bunch of kids.
We can't do it. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. We have people with large families stand on the debt-free stage every single month that do the Ramsey stuff, but they're doing a written budget with their spouse. They're both a saying, this is very important.
to get this out of my life. I'm not going to use a zero percent interest rate as a justification for not dealing for this. You got to deal with it. You got to knock it out, because if you don't, it's going to hover and hang around for ever. No, one's coming to fix this.
You are the solution.
Even, even if I can, if I can get that mortgage down quicker and say,
man, I'll tell you what, here's the deal, brother. It's, it's.
63 times. I'll tell you something. Yeah. You got to get your head out of the math game, because what's killing your household. You're only in the math game because you gave up.
It's not, yeah, it's not four or five percentage points. What's killing you. It's not about interest rate.
Yeah. It's about getting this. It's about, you haven't dealt with your crap. Yeah. And every time I bring it up, you, all you do is sidestep and try to do math.
Like some sixth grader, dude, go, deal with the problem. Go, deal with the problem. It's, it is a lot more complicated than six versus zero percent. It's a lot more complicated. Number one, you've got five years of denial in your behavior patterns.
Number two, the house is going up in value. The student loan is going up in balance, because the thing you signed up for is going backward all the time. You've got to lean into this and blow it up. You've got to change your view on this and quit trying to figure out a way to act like. it's not there.
It's there. It's almost like he's trying.
to find a second job without, you know, to help with all these kids. And he's figured out, maybe I figured out a loopholes way to get some more. I'm trying to think of the psychology. Just get this thing out of your house, man. Let's get it out of the house.
Get out of the house. Get out.
of the house. You've got to dump it. You got to dump it. It's that simple. You got it.
You got to push it. And, and John, this is a, the psychology of this, I cannot, um, people will get.
lackadaisical and quit on their student loans because of the size, I guess, of the loan where they'll turn around and take a car and they'll get mad and pay it off. Or they'll take a credit card and get mad and pay it off. But the student loan just seems to lay around like dadgum, you know, it just says, okay, we're just sitting in the swamp. Number one, the federal.
government dangles this, we'll take it away from you. So just keep putting it down the road. And all your friends tell you, well, you're stupid and you should do this. And here's a zero interest here. And there's a 6% here.
Um, your broke friends giving you financial advice. Well, it goes back to, um, I saw the great Dr. Peter Attia ranting the other day. It was fantastic. He said, you should not be able to post on a health and fitness Instagram account until you can do a hundred pushups.
until then. I don't care what you have to say. I don't care what your opinion is about a thing, right? Because you're stepping over a hundred dollar bills to pick up pennies. That's what's happening here.
I'm stepping over peace. I'm stepping over, Oh, I got six kids and I can focus on them to try to pick up an interest rate gain. And it's,
it's just, you, I want to hug the guy, man. But I can see the chaos as clear as day. It's all over him. Yeah. The whole thing, everything in his life, is chaotic.
Get a sense of order, a sense of discipline, a sense of direction, follow a proven plan, game on, game on, game on, quit trying to calculate your way out of this, pay the stupid thing off. This is the Ramsey show.
I've been doing this show for over 30 years. And some of the saddest calls I've 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 air 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 next week in the middle of all that grief? Like it's just, it is, it's terrible. It's a life insurance is the one thing, especially as a mom with three little kids, that I'm like so big on for people to get because it's inexpensive.
Xander is the place that Winston.
and I actually get all of our life insurance. And it doesn't cost much because Xander shops among a gazillion different companies. It doesn't cost much. You just have to admit that someday you're not going to be here. You got to say it out loud.
And you got to say, I'm going to say, I love you to my family by taking care of them and taking the time to put this stuff in place. The cost of stinking pizza. to get a free quote, call 800-356-4282. that's 800-356-4282, or go to xander.com.
Dr. Sean Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225..
Larry Burkett used to be on the air. a thousand years ago, did a Christian radio show. Money matters. It was called about what the Bible says about money. And he's one of the guys I learned from.
I certainly learned what the Bible says about money from Larry a lot. He passed away several years ago. We became friends before he passed away, but at first I was just a fan boy. And he used to say, debt is never the problem. Financial problems are never the problem.
They're always the symptom.
So you need to keep that in mind, because that's how we're going to view it. Personal finance is 80% behavior. It's 20% head knowledge. So if you have a student loan debt that you've made no progress on for five years, the student loan debt is not the problem. The new triplets that just came were not here for the last five years.
They're not the problem. The interest rate is not the issue. This is not an interest rate issue. This is a you problem. And, John, when people get to the bottom of that, that's the beautiful thing about the work you do in counseling with a PhD in counseling and the work that the reason you joining this team as a Ramsey personality is a perfect overlap to our approach to money, because the interest rate is irrelevant because you haven't dealt with you.
That's the thing. When you deal with you, you're not only going to get financial peace, two words that don't go together like airline service, but you're also going to get progress and wealth. Until you deal with you, you're not going to get.
any of that. Right. And it's hard to sell somebody on that when they're so convinced from a TikTok ad or a TikTok swipe or whatever, where they got the information. And I think a lot of us sit in our house, man, and we just spin out with life's problems. I can't imagine having triplets just show up after having a couple of other kids.
Whatever your problem happens to be, you lost your job, your marriage is falling apart, whatever it is. And it's so much easier. We have so much distraction in our world. We can just spin our wheels and jam that gas pedal into the bottom of the car thinking we're going real fast and we're going nowhere.
But money is such an interesting topic because it lets us, it lures us to our own death, because it makes us think we can fix it by fixing the math. And the math is very seldom the problem. The math is the symptom. It's not the problem. The problem is our spending, our income, our lack of control, our lack of working together.
Our choices. I'm going to keep these for five years. Our behaviors and our principles by which, but we somehow think we can unplug from all of this stuff that's called our life and set this money thing over here to the side and just fix it with just math. And the reason you can't is it doesn't unplug. It's sitting there right in the middle of your freaking life because your life is impacting it.
It's impacting your life. You can't just set it over here in a test tube and go, it's a math thing, 6% versus zero. It's not a math thing. And let's, let's, I want to speak.
to the person who's listened to this, or to the gajillions of people who are listening to this, who are, five years from today, away from triplets or a job loss, or a mom calling and saying, I have cancer, or a husband saying, I haven't been faithful, or whatever the thing is. That choice starts now, because five years ago, if they had been hell bent on paying these things off, it's life would still be chaotic. But I want people to listen to that man's voice. It just sounds cooked, right? It's heartbreaking.
And you can celebrate the chaos of three kids coming home or not be able to breathe because you can't, there's no, there's no room for three.
kids. I remember when our oldest daughter, Denise, had the third one, her husband, Bill, said, well, we just went from man on man to zone defense. My buddy said, man, it was all cool.
till we went from man to man to zone. They win. Uh, Taylor is in Indianapolis. Hey Taylor, what's?
up? How are we doing today? Thank you for taking my call. Sure, man. How can I help?
Um, so I'm thinking about doing a job switch right now. I drive a dump truck and I'm in the union and everything, but I'm looking to be a pilot, but I have 5,000 in debt and it's going to send me back another 85,000, but I plan on having the 5,000 that I have now and paying that off this.
season before I get laid off.
Yeah. You're asking me if you're going to go, if I think you should go $85,000 in debt to be a pilot, is that what you're asking? Yeah. If you think it's a smart job. No, it's not.
Okay. Under no circumstances would I do that now? Should you go become a pilot? Yeah, probably. How old are you?
Uh, I'm 30.
. Okay. Are you married? I am. Okay.
Um, I would talk to the air national guard and see if they have any programs for training pilots while you serve your country weekends and two or three sets of bootcamp a year. Um, that wouldn't put you away from your family necessarily, uh, or not for long periods of time. Uh, and let's see if they'll pay for it. They have lots of wonderful programs. I know that.
Um, I, I also would start talking to the local airport about how I can get my hours there. Uh, after I get up, I would pay to get a certain number of hours and get my first set of livery.
Are you licensed at all?
Um, no, right now I drive a dump truck. No, I know I heard that,
but have you gotten any pilots hours in at all? Uh, no. How do you know you want to do that?
Um, I worked at the airport about five years ago and I wanted to do it about then that time, sorry, but I never pulled the trigger and I ended up just going to get my CDLs and.
I've been at this for about five years now. Okay. All right. I'm with you on living your dream. I just don't want you to do it in such a way.
It becomes a nightmare. So let's figure out a way that we can walk into this a little at a time, start getting your hours in while you keep driving truck. And cause you're making some good money on the truck, but we're not, we just don't want to be doing that 10 years from now. You want to be in the air, right? Yes.
But I don't want, I don't want to try to do it as super high speed, because I don't want you going $85,000 in debt because you might not make $65,000 the first year. It's very possible, if you got your commercial hours in and you can actually fly a jet and that may cost you more than $85,000 to get to that point where you can actually pick up a regional job doing some of these puddle jumpers. They don't pay anything, man.
Yeah. Entry-level pilot pay sucks.
Yeah. From what I heard, it's about $55,000 a year, but then I would be going with Libtecad and then say I get on with Republic and I pay $94 an hour starting.
off. So maybe, maybe, maybe. But hey, you're, you're about to walk into the trap, brother, where you borrow a bunch of money and you've done some napkin envelope on the top carrier paying a top dollar, and you've made that math work. Yeah. And there's a lot of maybes and maybe nots, and probably and probably nots in between you and that dollar amount, man.
So you're trying to.
jump from the dock into the boat and the boat's not close enough to the dock. That's what I'm saying. So I want you to pull the boat close to the dock. And how's that sound? It sounds like going over there, starting to get some of your hours, paying for your first level of licenses, maybe get a weekend job as an instructor.
Once you got enough hours under your belt and they'll pay you to put more hours down and you can start to build your hours up. Cause the biggest cost is not the actual certifications. It's the hours to get ready. And then, if you want to take, cause, if, when you take a job at 55 or 60 versus what you're doing now, union to dump truck, you're taking a pay cut. To move into this dream initially.
And I don't care if you found one off at 94, that's not that, that's not an industry. The industry is 55 or 60 right now for entry. And I want you to go. do that cause. you can make your way up to two or 300,000 someday, but please don't go $85,000 in debt and rush this, do it a little bit at a time and, or talk to the Air National Guard.
And let's see if you can figure out what gets some hours working for your country and they'll pay for the whole stinking thing. Possibly. I don't know. Let's see what they got out there. This is the Ramsey show.
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. When it comes to taking care of me, I have to remember to put on my oxygen mask first, meaning I have to do the things that help me stay well and whole. And you have to do the same thing too.
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That could be a fun game, just to, uh,
kind of work through. What do we think people would spend 3000 bucks on just to run here? It would like, Ken would buy some incredible clothes. He's a sharp dressed man. James would buy a guitar.
George would buy another cherry flavored vape pen.
Whatever millennials do these days. George would buy something to charge his car up. He would buy another AA battery charger. Yeah, that's what it is. So what's Rachel Cruz buy with that?
That can't even cover her latte. It won't, it won't even, it won't even get her attention. That won't even, she wouldn't stop to pick that up. Yeah, that's it. So there.
you go. I'm thinking ammo. Of course you are.
I don't have a problem. Can I get another framed photo? I don't have a gun problem. I have a problem with guns. All right, here we go.
Okay. Nicole's in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Hi, Nicole, how are you?
Hi, I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. guys. I'm a big fan. Well, we're honored.
How can we help you? Um, so I guess my question today is just, how do I stay motivated to continuing on to baby step, to, um, with pain offset while I have a child with a severe medical condition? and then what sort of emergency fund goes in with that? Um, yeah, I'm just kind of at a loss. So what's up with your baby?
What's the deal? Um, so my daughter, it will be six next week. Um, she has a severe medical condition. She has a heart condition and she's had four open heart surgeries before she was one years old. Um, and we were basically living in the hospital.
I'm I, she's a fighter though. Um, it has been doing great. However, she will need more surgeries in the future. Um, and she actually is looking at another surgery here. Um, this summer, sometime.
we just don't really know quite yet. And my husband and I have previously gone through, um, financial peace university prior to being married. Um, again, after we had our daughter, and we do really good for a little bit, and then we just lose that intensity. And usually it's related to something happening with her. Um, just where we're like, Oh crap, we're back.
in the hospital. You're saying that, like you did something wrong. You didn't, you did everything exactly right. When your daughter is in the hospital having open heart surgery for the fifth or sixth time, and she's six years old, you should not be intense about money. You should be intense about loving her.
Okay. Okay. Which is what you did. Yeah. You're a good mom.
Nicole.
did everything right. Thank you. Yeah. How many bags of Fritos have you had for dinner out of a?
vending machine in a hospital? Right. Uh, you're right. That's. yeah.
There's been a lot of, a lot.
of days where that, so maybe your workout plan is not on track, with your daughter getting surgery. Oh, well, you know, Oh, well, you're surviving. So here's the thing. Um, number one, you're dealing with a thing that's gone on over seven years. Is that what I heard?
Uh, she'll be six this year. So six years and a half. And so that's a long period of time. And the entire six years was not in crisis, just at different moments. But when the crisis hit, it throws everything off, because everything's full stop to deal with, to deal with the situation, right?
Exactly. Yeah. It drains all of your emotions. It drains all of your attention. It drains all of your bank account, and it should, she's worth it.
Oh yeah, for sure. You're doing the right stuff. Okay. Now the trick is, uh, number one, I want to not only give you permission, but also, more importantly, to, uh, tell you, your, uh, your instincts were correct. Continue the path you've been on, which is, when we are dealing with a crisis, we're full stop.
We push stop on the total money. makeover. We just were in financial survival mode, because we're going to pour everything we have into this crisis until the crisis subsides. So let's kind of, let's walk through a possible example. All right.
If my daughter, granddaughter, either one, was going into surgery for open heart this summer, um, I would not be worrying about making progress right this. second on my financial goals. I would be worrying, praying, focusing on that surgery, the perpet, walking up to it and walking out of it. Now, a year from now, she's home healing, doing well. Well, I need to push play again and get back on the, get back on my game and start, you know, start a year later, start focusing on that.
But, um, but you, you've done the right thing. It sounds.
to me, like, John, what are you? Yeah, I was just writing down, Nicole, um, are you finding you and your husband, y'all finding? you're heading back into that feeling you had five years ago where?
you just feel powerless?
Yes, for sure. I, I struggle with some anxiety anyways. And, um, it's just that PTSD moment. We just had our son four months ago too and had medical stuff with.
all. Yeah. It's like, it just never stops. All right. So here's what I want you and your husband to do.
Uh, I want you to hang on the line. I'm going to send you, building an unanxious life, as my gift. I want y'all to use these six choices as your roadmap, but I want you and your husband to take a morning and ask someone from your church to come by, ask a friend to come by, a coworker to come by and just watch the kids for a couple hours, which you probably haven't done in a long, long time. And I know it sounds crazy, but I want you to do that. And I want y'all just to sit with each other for a second.
And I want y'all to write down on a piece of paper. All right, we're heading into surgery this summer. What are we going to need? And I want you to challenge the people around you, not for real challenge, but give them an opportunity to love you. Say, I'm going to need this many meals because I'm tired of eating out of a vending machine.
I'm going to need, if you can, help with a gas card, I want you guys to practice some of these things that really chip away at your health and at your, at your, you know, your money, like these little nickel and dime things. You got the big million dollar hospital bill, fine. But you just get run over with, we've got to go. grab some dinner, go, grab some dinner. Hey, let's go grab some of this.
Hey, we need to grab some of this. I want you and your husband to be honest about writing that stuff down. You see this one coming this time. You didn't see it coming when she was born. You see this one coming, and let's write some of this stuff down and let's give our friends who love us an opportunity to show up.
Maybe they won't, but maybe they will.
Right. And then give yourself permission.
We definitely learned that our first time around with our daughter. So, I mean, we have family, we have friends who do love on us really well. It's always hard to ask for help.
Yep. Yep. And those days are over.
But you need help.
You need help.
And, and you need to say out loud, we're temporarily pushing the pause button on baby step two and intensity. We're going to use all of those calories, all of that energy to love each other and to deal with the emotions associated with this life or death situation. I want to face all that. I want that given, I want to give everything I am to that. And then, when that has passed and it will pass, it ebbs and flows, right?
Oh yeah. When it has passed, then you push, play again and you go, okay, now we can focus on that thing. Let's get baby step two jacked up. Let's get going again and not, and feel zero guilt about the time we took off from the plan, the money plan, to go work on more important things, which is your daughter and each other and your marriage and the whole situation. So good stuff.
You're, you're, you're a great lady. Thank you for calling. This is the Ramsey show.
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Thanks for hanging out with us, America. We're so glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225.. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today.
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Thank you guys for all the different ways you're, you're getting ahold of this, but tell people about us. We appreciate that. It helps a bunch. Scott is up next in Seattle. Hi, Scott.
How are you?
Good. How are you guys doing?
Better than we deserve. What's up?
Good to hear. I'm calling to get some advice on making a first home purchase. My fiance and I are getting married later this year.
Yay.
And we'd like, yeah, thank you. And we'd like to get into a house, ideally within the next two years. We have no debts and we think we could save up about 50% of the down payment for the house. Wow. In that timeframe.
Good for you.
Thank you. We appreciate it. Uh, that being said, we've heard some advice that putting that amount of cash toward the house. Doesn't make like a hundred percent sense. And sometimes in some situations it can better be put towards investments.
If the interest rate for the mortgage is pretty good.
That would be advice from broke people who don't know what the flip they're talking about.
Well, that makes it pretty clear.
I would 100% do this with my family in my home.
If I were, if I were you, I would do exactly what you're talking about doing. And let me back that mouth up. Okay. We did the largest study of millionaires, not broke people with an opinion, millionaires, people that have a $1 million or greater net worth. it's ever been done in North America.
We studied 10,167 of them. The number of them that said, out of 10,000 millionaires, the number one, the number of them that said we became a millionaire because we invested our cash instead of putting it down on the house was precisely zero. No one said that rich people simply do not do what you're talking about. Broke people talk about it and say that rich people do it, but they simply do not do it. What we found instead, Scott, was that the typical person, how old are you?
30.
30.
. And you sound like you guys are making a two, two, 50.. Are you, what are you making between the two of you?
Around, around one 50 total pre-tax.
That's your combined income after you're married.
Correct. Okay. Wow. You're aggressive savers. Very good.
Okay. Either way. So here, here's what we found. by the time you're 42, if you fit the plot profile, uh, the, the typical template that we found, the case studies of these average millionaires, the typical millionaire that we went through, they had two things primarily that caused them to hit their first one to $5 million of net worth. And that was that they got a paid off house, six, seven, $800,000 paid off house.
By the time you're there, it'll be more than that. And they've invested simultaneously into their 401ks and Roth IRAs and built those up. And so they're sitting with five or 600,000 in each. And so they've got a million, 2 million, 5 million, eight net worth, something like that. And that's the first, the two biggest things that we saw that people did financial products, so to speak, financial pathways that cause people to actually hit that level of wealth, a paid off house and a loaded up retirement.
It was that simple. There wasn't a bunch of smoke and mirrors. There wasn't a bunch of, oh, I'm going to borrow on my mortgage because I can make more in the market. I'm going to put the money in the market. And that arbitrage, some Tik TOK guy learned a new word the other day, apparently, um, you know, as it's an old word, but the, um, anyway, that, that, that, that spread I'm making is going to make me rich.
And so, Scott, that's, you know, it's social media bullcrap is what it is. So the reality is, is that wealthy people simply pay off their house. So I, I, I, am so impressed that you can put 50% down in two years. What that also tells me is, in two to three more years, you're going to completely paid off and you're going to be 35 years old with a paid off freaking house in Seattle and the stupid things going up like a rocket ship. And you're going to be sitting on a million dollar house.
It's paid for in just a handful of years.
Dave, I'm convinced that the age of the influencer is coming to an end. Cause I think people have been doing this nonsense for several years. And like the color we had at the beginning of this, of this, of this hour, you still got your student loans. after five years. You still got this, you still got the, like, and this.
people who just learn a new fancy word and try to sell it and tell everybody to go, do this thing. It just doesn't work. after one, two, three, four, five years. It doesn't work. It doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
Now, the, well, the influencer is the, um, the, not why it's the stepchild of reality TV. Right. Okay. So reality TV is. you became famous for what?
Being famous. Right. You did nothing.
You're on TV.
You just were on TV being absurd. And you're, the absurdity was somewhat entertaining and you, or you were pretty, or you were something right. And, but you're, you're basically an, uh, uh, an empty suit. You know, you've got nothing to say, you are nothing, but we're all watching you anyway, like we're a moth drawn to a flame, you know?
And then they start giving advice.
And then the next step is they go, we go from that to people who are empty suits, who have never done anything, are now influencers. Right. And they have absolutely zero earned the right to have that influence.
Not at all. Teaching a generation of people. Not at all. Things that are going to ripple through their family tree for a long time,
but it's the sick child of reality TV is the influencer. And so you're exactly right. We're seeing the data, the data scientists are coming out. I mean, we study this stuff because of social media and because of the platforms that we're all involved in. And, and we've got about four different sources coming at us right now that are very credible.
John's been nerding out on this stuff, but we're looking at it as a company right now, because, Ramsey's in the broadcast business. We're in the content business, the business of influencing you, but we actually are not empty suits. We actually have the knowledge, the degrees, the experience, the things to tell you. this is not, and the back it up with the research. So, Scott's not any of that.
He just caught the back end of that, but, Scott, you're doing great. Scott, you're, you're doing great.
Get that sucker paid off.
I mean, you get married and you can save that kind of money in the first two years and you go put a big old chunk on the down payment. You're going to be glad you did. And don't take financial advice from broke people. That's what we're saying.
And don't take life altering advice from somebody that had a single experience.
Well, here's the thing. If you're going to be a life coach, you should have first had a life.
Correct. Right. Well, and here, here's the thing, though. Like I, I, I love folks. They go through, you know, somebody cheats on somebody, and they go through three years of hard therapy.
They rebuild their marriage, and it's amazing. And they reach out and they say, Hey, we want to write a book on marriage and we want to become marriage speakers. And what? I always have to break their heart and say, Hey, you had an experience in your house. You did.
That does not make you the person, right? You have all the letters, you know what you're talking about and you have a personal experience. And I think the cornerstone to wise counsel is you've walked with millions of people. And so you have the academic stuff. You've got a whole bunch of different stories, and you know what it's like to have to go tell your wife, we lost everything.
All three of those make you a credible person to listen to. Not just, you went to school because we got plenty of that nonsense. And not just because, um, you got a bunch of people that show up at your house. It's all of it together, man. And you gotta be careful about who you take counsel from, especially when it comes to your health, especially when it comes to nutrition, especially when it comes to your money.
Yeah. The Bible does not say in the multitude of counsel, there's safety. It says in the multitude of wise. Wise. That's right.
Counsel. That's right. Safety. And that's what we're saying. We're actually seeing the data that the power of the influencer is starting to wane.
And it, you know, someone just is now someone who can garner some likes, garner some clicks is, um.
Telling you what to do with your money.
You know, and I think Gen Z is the one killing it, because Gen Z is sick of it. They're sick of things that are not authentic.
They're watching their parents and it didn't work.
They're watching their older brothers and sisters, it didn't work. It's not authentic. And Gen Z can smell a rat a mile away. And that's one of the reasons we love Gen Z around here. This is the Ramsey show.
Live from the headquarters of Ramsey solutions. It's the Ramsey show where we help people build wealth, do work that they love and create actual, amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey, personality, number one, bestselling, author of the book, building a non-anxious life and host of the Dr. John Deloney show.
He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Tammy is in Atlanta to start this hour off.
Hi, Tammy. How are you?
I'm blessed. How are you guys today?
Better than we deserve. How can we help?
Hi, my question is, is how can I say from our retirement when I'm basically living paycheck to paycheck?
Okay. Why are you living paycheck to paycheck?
Well, I am 51 years old. I work blue collar electrician, um, and I am married, but with my debt, um, I have a debt unofficially at 55,000, officially 60,000..
Um, and I have three grandbabies, and I'm just trying to, how do you have, officially or unofficially?
I don't know what's that mean?
Unofficially, I have right at 55,000 cause I just purchased a new vehicle in November. Officially it's because I owe my husband about $6,000..
What? How do you owe your husband? Your ex-husband or your husband?
No, sir. My husband, we've been married 17 years, been together 20.. Reader's Digest version is the way I was raised and past relationships. I do not depend on anyone financially.
How's that working for you?
That obviously sucks.
Yeah, it's stressful. It's a terrible way to live.
It's a horrible plan.
Absolutely. I agree. I just can't get myself to my, and my husband doesn't complain. He doesn't, he doesn't try to push me. You know, he always say, don't worry about it, but I kind of used him.
He's pretty tolerant.
We're terrified of you.
He must be scared of you.
Hey, Tammy, we can give you all the math and all the professional guidance and all that, but you're going to have to have a heart change. This thing's just going to crash. Like you, and you see it happening right in front of your eyes. You can't live like this.
I do. And that's the reason why I'm, I'm, I'm struggling with, I trying to put all I can into my 401k, but then again, trying to step out of my comfort zone.
You're missing my whole point.
You missed the point.
Did you go buy a $50,000 car?
No, sir. I only paid 49 for it.
Well played, Tammy. Well played.
Tammy, why, why, why would you buy a $49,000 depreciating asset and call us and ask us?
why you're living paycheck to paycheck. I can tell you why you're living paycheck to paycheck. The stupidity is sitting on your driveway. It's got four tires.
And that, by the way, high five. That was a fantastic answer.
So here's what I'll tell you. Okay. The data that we know from 30 years of helping folks with their money is that almost no one succeeds relationally in their marriage and succeeds financially towards wealth building that does not combine their lives with their husband.
So I'm going to strongly beg you to consider dealing with the emotions of the past, betrayals, dealing with the times that people stepped on you, that caused you to take this stance and say, I can trust this man that I'm married to. He's my guy. He's my husband. He's safe. And we're going to sit down together and combine our income and combine our debts and combine our assets.
And we're going to be what the preacher said. And now you are one, because you're going to struggle financially and it's hurt your relationship too. You're going to act like it doesn't. And you're going to try to tell me it didn't, but you're wrong. It does.
No, you're, you're correct. You're correct.
And then that's going to also then line you up and you're going to have to go, oh, I made a mistake last November. I put our family $50,000 in debt that we couldn't afford. And I'm going to have to sell the car and get rid of the problem that I caused, because it's a problem. And then we're going to sit down together and we're going to lay out a budget and we're going to start dreaming about how we're going to, 40 years from now, be sitting on the front porch, multimillionaires together.
That's what I want for you. That's a different thing than you called about, though.
Yes, it is.
Because what does he make?
Depending on the year, about 120, 140 a year, depending on the year, about 40 to 50.
. Okay.
So you got 200,000, almost household income, give or take.
Yeah. And we have no mortgage.
That puts you, that puts you at no mortgage and you got a car you can't afford. He probably has a pile of money.
He does. He's very good with his money.
So our money. So then the two of you need to start talking. Do we really want to keep this car? If we do, we need to write a check and pay it off. Or I need to say, I need to sell it because I shouldn't have bought it.
One of the two. But you trying to live like a roommate on $40,000 a year and then calling me up while he's making 140 and going, I don't know how I can get, how I can prosper. Well, the way you can prosper is the two of you combine your lives properly and it will cause you to prosper. But that's you admitting that you don't have all the answers and all the strength and all the crap by yourself. And, by the way, I'm a much better person when I'm combined with Sharon.
And, by the way, she's a much better person when she's combined with me. I don't know about that. Yeah. Everyone knows. Everyone is.
Everyone knows that. Now we're better, because, you know, you bring different strengths and weaknesses in, and when you combine them, you get this beautiful, beautiful orchestra. That's a synergy. And, uh, Larry Burkett used to say, if two people just like get married, one of you is unnecessary, so that these, these opposites attract and you plug into that. And, um, uh, so, Tammy, my wife, Sharon, has not worked outside the home in 40 years.
She's not earned any income, with the exception of selling some clothes at the consignment sale clothes place. But other than that, she's not earned any income. But guess what? She has a fabulous income because we have a fabulous income and it's our income. It's not Dave's income and Sharon's income.
It's our income. And she has a great life, and I have a great life. And part of the reasons I have a great life is cause of her. And so I have, you know, I'm not going to allow her. I wouldn't allow.
that's not the right word. I wouldn't want for her. And she wouldn't want for me to be living standalone, siloed lives inside the same house.
I wonder what it would be like if she asked her husband, would you forgive that $5,000 debt? I bet he would say, I already have, right? I already have.
I bet she's, she's the one carrying the debt.
I'll pay you back. I'm paying you back.
Cause she's the one that he cares less. He's not, he's not, he's standing over there. He's going to be so happy. Yep. Sammy, when you do this, he's gonna, he's gonna really love Dave Ramsey and John Maloney, cause he's where the guys are finally talking to his wife back.
He's got his wife, got his wife. Yeah. Yeah. Please consider that. And, by the way, if you combine everything and it goes horribly, um, you can separate it again later.
But Hey, you people, it's not going to go horribly.
It works.
Folks listening who are in the top five to 10% of earners on planet earth, making 200 grand a year living paycheck to paycheck. It's probably not the monies. That's the issue.
Yeah. Amen.
It's the mirror.
This is the Ramsey show.
Well, it's back and it's almost sold out. the live like no one else. cruise. Yep. The Ramsey personalities.
We've got the entire ship on a Holland America cruise line, and it's going to be absolutely incredible. Seven days at sea, March 22nd through the 29th of 2025, about a year from now. And if you're on baby step four and above, we invite you to join us. Now, if you're on baby step two, you should not be spending money on something like this. You ought to be getting your debt paid off.
You can come on another one of these when we do it again. Later, we're going to Turks and Caicos. We're going to St. Thomas, San Juan, the Bahamas, the VIP upgrades are already sold out. Most of the suites are sold out.
In fact, many of the cabin types are completely sold out. So if you're trying to get your pick of a cabin, you need to go ahead like an ocean view and you get your deposit in like now, because we're going to completely sell this thing out. And then what will happen is, if somebody drops out, you can upgrade your cabin, that kind of stuff as you go along. But get your, you know, get your foot in the door, because it's about to be gone. Stephen Curtis Chapman, with Grammy Award winner, 67 or 69 Dove Awards, whatever.
our friend is going to be with us. World-class artist. Manish Chauhan from the Food Channel and fabulous chef, world-class chef, is going to be doing some cooking lessons with us and hanging out with us. Dana Carter from Strawberry Wine, one of our great Nashville names, is going to be with us as well. And it's going to be a lot of fun.
Of course, we'll all, Dr. John, Rachel, Cruz, George Camel, everybody, Ken Coleman, Jade Washaw, me, we're all going to be there. We're all going to be, all of us for seven days doing events all through the cruise. We'll be hanging out with you. We're going to be doing stuff.
We've got all kinds of different things planned. And if you want to book your cabin, go to ramsaysolutions.com slash cruise. This is not a, one of these cheap cruises. This is not like Walmart on the seas. Okay.
This is like Holland America's class thing. This is good stuff.
Walmart on the seas.
I mean, they do. Some of those things are seriously nasty, and the humans on them sometimes are nasty, but this is all, Ramsey. It's a hundred percent. There won't be anyone else on the ship except our folk. So you're going to be the live like no one else.
cruise again. It's in March 22 through 29, 2025, next March, but the tickets are almost gone. Ramsey, solutions.com slash cruise. Kyle is with us. Kyle is in Des Moines, Iowa.
Hi, Kyle. How are you?
Good afternoon, guys. How are you?
Better than I deserve. How can I help?
Um, yeah, so I'm a upside down on a vehicle. Um, I know I need to sell it. Um, I'm just kind of wondering what steps I should take.
Okay. What do you owe on it?
So I owe just a little over 26.
Okay. And what are you, what is it worth?
Uh, so Kelly blue book, um, selling it private, since we're 12.
Okay. So you had another one. that was.
How many old cars did you roll into this?
You must've rolled some negative into this one, right?
Um, no, actually. Um, and just tons of miles put on it. Uh, we, me and my partner, we, uh, had a baby and then the vehicle turned into more than what we were expecting it to be.
And okay. So how many miles does it have on it?
A hundred and 12.
What is it?
A Kia Sorento.
Okay.
Wow.
Ah, that sucker fell off a cliff, man.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm disappointed in the decision to buy it.
Well, and the miles just destroyed the decision. So, um, yeah, yeah. Selling, it is not really going to help you.
Yeah. So that's, um, I called him like two weeks ago and that was the recommendation that I got was to sell it. So I went home and I was like, yeah, we're going to sell this thing.
And I was like, uh, I think you're just going to have to pay it off. Yeah. Okay. So what do you make? What's your household income?
Um, about 70 K and the, the only debt that I have, I have, um, just shy of 12 K in our personal loan. And then, um, what's that?
And then 26,000 on a car.
Yep. Yeah.
And you have a baby that you're responsible for, but you're not married.
Correct.
I actually have four kids total, but.
At, at the same place with the same lady.
Um, we have one child together. She had one in a previous relationship and then I have two children from a previous relationship.
That are with their mom primarily.
Uh, we split one week with me, one week with them, with her.
Okay.
Um, so we're like, we kind of need third row for one week, but then we don't for the other.
It's yeah. I think we got bigger problems with third row.
Yeah. You get a lot of chaos in your life, brother.
Yeah.
The, um,
what do you, what do you do for a living?
Uh, fabricator, welder.
Okay. You might be entering a season. Um, how much of that 70 is going to child support?
Uh, zero knock on wood.
What do you mean?
Uh, we, we just shared custody. I take care of them when they're with me. She takes care of them when they're with her.
Is that, is that certified by court, or y'all just high five each other?
Okay. Uh, no, it's, that's all court ordered.
You may have to enter into a season where you make the arrangements with the women in your life that you're going to be having to work two or three jobs. Cause you got a mess to clean up, man. Yeah. You got so much chaos in your life, dude.
You need 30.
. If you had $36,000, you'd have no debt and an old car and you'd be okay. Right. So you're $36,000 away from a huge relief point. So how fast can we come up with $36,000 working overtime one year?
Yeah, that's what, is that a question you're asking?
No, that's a statement. That's what we're telling you.
That's a statement. Yeah.
Yeah.
I think, I think cause the, the good news is you're a welder and man, you know, you can get work.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. I know you can get work. They're desperate for your work.
I want you to be so tired in October of this year that you don't know what day it is. Cause you've been working so hard. Okay. Yeah.
And then, but then you're going to, but then you're going to be free for the rest of your life. Cause, you know, then you never enter into this again. We never buy a car on payments. So we never end up in this again. If we run one, if we run the value down, at least be on something that's paid for.
And I want you to marry mama, and let's wrap this thing up. Right. And let's start to get some peace in our house. You got too much chaos, too much coming and going too much over here. Fingers crossed over here.
I hope this works out over here. You got to start like putting some of these variables in concrete, brother. So you can have some peace in your life.
Yeah.
Let's work on stability. Let's work on our marriage. We're going to relationship.
It'd be good for the kids.
It's good for everybody, man.
Yeah. But I, I, for a short period of time, I'd turn up the heat on the income and you guys, I mean, sit down with your girlfriend. Now she's going to be your wife, according to John. And so, um, you get those two things working and then you say, all right, we're going to be on a written budget. We're going to be on beans and rice.
We're going to knock this out as fast as we possibly can. Because really, if you sell the car, you've got almost as much debt left. I mean, it doesn't really, damn, it, doesn't get rid of the debt. If you owe 22 on it. I mean, if it was worth 22 and you owe 26,, then I would sell it.
Cause then you only got to clean up four. But you still got 14..
Plus, you need to get 10 grand to buy another car.
Yeah. And you're screwed up. So yeah, you might as well drive the stupid thing. And let's just beat the snot out of this debt. The 12,000 and the 26,000, which is 36, 38,000 bucks.
And you know, you're going, you're going to go. get your life back is what we're saying. But this is the result of the different, all the personal chaos. That while you were in between everything here, you jumped in. And, as you said, you said it made a bad decision on this car.
And that's what took you there. So that's a good, good way to talk it through. Hey man, thanks for the call. We can help you further. You call us anytime.
It's what we do. Open phones at 888-825-5225.. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money.
So yeah, the upside down on a car, if you're $4,000 upside down and you owe 26,. the way you handle that, folks, is you would borrow that from your local credit union. Or you talk to the company that has the car loan. See if they'll let you sell the car for what it's worth. Sign a note for the difference.
Or again, like we just said, you know, you work like crazy. And you come up with the hole that you're in, the amount that you're upside down in. That's your three things you can do to get out. This is the Ramsey Show.
Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey, Personality, number one, bestselling author of Building a Non-Anxious Life, is my co-host today. Jamie is in Tampa, Florida. Hi, Jamie. How are you?
Hey, Dave. How's it going?
Better than I deserve. What's up?
Good. I am calling because I'm getting sued by Capital One after being out of work, from a real heart attack. So just trying to figure out where I go from here and what the next step is. I've been following the Dave Ramsey plan since January and it's kind of been all in. So just kind of wondering what I do from here, because that wasn't the plan.
It was in collections and now.
Okay. Can you speak directly into your phone? You're kind of muffled.
Sorry about that. Is this better?
That's a little better. Yeah, thanks. Okay. How old are you?
You had a heart attack?
Yeah. So I was 37.. I'm now 39.. I had a spontaneous coronary artery dissection. I don't know why it happened, how it happened, how to prevent another one.
Yeah, it just happened in my.
Two years ago?
Yep.
So what has been your work history since the heart attack?
So when I had the heart attack, I was part-time and in school with 43 days left of becoming a respiratory therapist. So I was out of work for two months and then returned and got COVID and then was out for another 14 days. So during my heart attack, I had no income coming in whatsoever.
And then.
. Two years ago? Yeah. So it took me about seven months before I could get back financially stable enough to even take my test, because I had to take two and they were expensive. And then I started working as an RT March of last year and finally got to the point of not robbing Peter to pay Paul and going to AMSCOT every week to pay the bills as of, probably, August of last year.
You're single?
So in the process of getting divorced from a very toxic person.
Wow. You've had a run.
I haven't filed yet, but it's just been not good.
So what are you making now?
So I would say averaging probably about six pay a month, with overtime and on-call pay.
$6,000 a month. And what do you owe Capital One?
So there's two cards, one's $9,060 and one's $9,148.
Okay. $18,000..
Yes. Okay.
All right.
Wow. I'm sorry for everything you've been through.
Let's be very clear, though, that Capital One is not suing you because you had a heart attack and weren't able to work for two months. They're suing you because, the two years following the heart attack, you've not been able to keep enough work to feed yourself and pay the payments, or pay something towards that. You paid them nothing for what, three, four years now?
So August of 2022 was my last payment. So it got to the point where I just was like, you know what? I need to put my four walls in my three kids' bed and not worry about Capital One.
Yeah. And your husband was contributing nothing?
So he doesn't have a high-paying job. He makes about $16 an hour at the time. I mean, he was helping as much as he could, but it wasn't enough to sustain what we needed, and, you know, a five-person family.
Okay.
Have they given you a court date?
Yeah. So May 22nd is the date of deposition.
May 22nd's the court date?
Okay. All right. I assume you don't have any money?
So right now I have my $1,000 emergency fund. And I've stopped paying anything extra because I was going hard. I was paying about $2,000 off in debt since January every single month. So my paycheck coming up on Friday will be about $3,400.. I've got $2,500 in the bank and then another $1,000..
But that doesn't mean the bill's going to come to me?
Sometimes, if you know what's going to happen, it's not as scary as the unknown. So I'll walk you through what's going to happen, okay? Regardless of what we do right now, short of filing bankruptcy, which you're not bankrupt, so you wouldn't do that,
you're going to lose the lawsuit on the 22nd of May. Because the lawsuit is not about anything except, did you pay a bill you promised to pay? And the answer is no, you did not. Regardless of the reason, okay? There is no heart attack clause in these things.
So it's just, did you pay it? The answer's no judgment, okay? So they're going to win a judgment against you for $18,000 plus attorney's fees on the 22nd in just a couple of weeks.
So that's already happened. That was last month that they sent me paperwork saying that there was judgment against me. The one on the 22nd now is a deposition where they want all of my financial information, last three years of tax return, my income for the last year, all my bank statements, all of that.
Yeah, that's an execution on the judgment, then, okay.
Pretty much. I feel like it's an execution on me.
Okay, the good news is that now you have a good income flowing for the first time in this story. And it's just started happening recently. And, like you said, you got where you're not paying Peter to pay Paul. So the only option, you've got two options, technically, that I can think of, okay, off the top of my head right here. One is that you begin to negotiate a payment plan with them.
Actually, there's three options, okay. One is you begin to negotiate a payment plan with them. Is there anywhere you could get $5,000??
No, I already tried to get a loan from Miss Florida Credit Union. They denied me my credit's. just so bad at this. I'm sure. No, I mean.
Yeah, you're good. I even am about $500 off of the home I'm at.
Yeah.
I don't think that I can get that much.
Do you have anything you could sell?
I mean, other than my car, that I've got $1,200 left on it, but it's got a check engine light and about ready to die. And, you know, looking forward to being able to fix that.
Yeah. So what, you know, so one thing you could do is you could try to settle it for a lump sum. That would actually be the cleanest. And they probably will take about 5k to settle this and go away. But that's not an option, because we just talked through that.
Okay. So that's one option. That one's on the side. That would be cool, though. That'd be very cool.
The second one is to work out a payment plan with them. And they're very difficult on that.
The third one is bankruptcy. And bankruptcy stops everything dead in its tracks. And you can file a chapter 13 bankruptcy, which makes them accept a payment plan. They won't have a choice. The bankruptcy court tells them what it is and they get pennies on the dollar.
They don't even get 100 cents on the dollar. So if you threaten them with a chapter 13 bankruptcy, they're better off. They're better off to take a payment plan with you than for you to force one through a chapter 13 bankruptcy on them. And so I would like to see you cut a payment plan with them. It's better for you and it's better for them.
Okay.
But there's no point in you going through, letting them go through your underwear drawer on the 22nd. Because all they're doing is a fishing expedition trying to find money and line up whether they can garnish your wages in Florida. I don't know how that stands. I don't know the law there, but they're, they're trying to find something that can get their hands around your throat. That's, that's all this is.
This is not a, it's not a criminal thing. It's a deposition searching for income and assets.
And it's there to hassle you, as scare you, which is already doing those two things.
Yeah. I feel like I can't even go to the grocery store and buy groceries at this point.
Yeah. No, you go, buy anything you need to buy, take care of your family. Don't worry about these characters, because they may end up getting nothing if you end up being forced by them into a BK.
But, truthfully, the best thing that could have happened is if you had been working on this six months ago, or even a year ago, working on something to get them cleared out before it got this far. By the time it gets this far, your options and your, any negotiating power you've got is very weak. Because all you can do is threaten bankruptcy, which is, you know, I threatened to shoot myself in the foot, right? And so, but that's what you can do. there.
I'll tell you what, let's do this. I'm going to, I'm going to put you on hold. I'm going to hook you up with one of our Ramsey coaches and maybe they can help you with the negotiation with these guys. Hopefully they can keep you out of bankruptcy by getting you on a payment plan. That's what I want to do.
But before they come and start taking your income and not, you're not able to feed your kids, they're going to force you into a bankruptcy before they do that. So hopefully they won't take it that far. But these characters, I don't know. But you're not dealing with it for two years is how this came up and bit you. It wasn't the heart attack two years ago.
It was you're not dealing with it after that.
Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Today's question of the day comes from Samantha in California.
All right. Samantha asks, I live with my boyfriend and we have two children together. I'm 36 and I've been with him since I was 19 and he was 35.. I have a degree but never worked, never made any money and have no savings. I own nothing.
Okay, I have a debit card to his account. He makes over a million dollars a year and refuses to get married. What should I do? Make him pay me a monthly salary that I pay taxes on? Go, get a job?
Which he would hate. I've only recently understood the situation I am in, as I guess I was too busy caring for the kids to see what a mess this is. Any advice would be appreciated.
I,
um, I don't do well, I know I can feel it on you with, um, men that don't take care of their families. I, I don't do well with jerks like this. Um, so, all right, let's be kind. Two children involved.
I'll just say this, this was my sister. Um, this is one of my close friends. I would sit with an attorney and find out what the common law rules are instead of California, and I would get as far away from this toxic trash as possible, and some of this bajillionaire's money will become yours because you've raised his kids and taken care of his home.
Yeah, there's child support at a minimum.
Yeah.
Um, there's probably, uh, palimony.
Um, let's see.
You can't get him to marry you.
You've been there, you've been there 17 years, is that right?
Get him to pay you a monthly salary. That's not gonna work.
No, no.
By the way, get a job, which he would hate. At this point, I don't care what he thinks. Yeah. He's a, he's not a person of character. I don't care.
He didn't get a vote.
17 years, he makes a million dollars a year. You've been there 17 years. So, here, here's the likelihood. The likelihood is, John, that she's not going to take our advice.
No, not at all.
Um, because you already, you've known for a long time, even though you act like you didn't, what you should be doing. And you've known for a long time, this was whole, this whole thing was jacked up and you've done nothing about it. And so I doubt you're going to do anything about it now. And that's really sad, because, um, what that tells me is, is that, at a minimum, you've been emotionally abused. at a minimum because you're, you're now functioning in, uh, domestic violence symptoms, uh, because you're not dealing with the obvious thing that's in front of you, because you feel trapped.
That's the symptom of a domestic violence, whether it's emotional violence or whether it's physical violence.
We've gotten really accustomed to this really fancy life and that's going to go away. Yep.
Yep. Yep. And at least part of it is, I suspect there's a lot of that million dollars a year is going to come to her.
Oh, I agree.
In California. I don't know. I'm not an attorney. I think I'm with you. So what would I do?
If, if I could get you to do what I don't think you're going to do, I agree with John, I would see an attorney about your rights. I would sit down with Mr. Moneybags and say, uh, we're either getting married and that's after we do some counseling to, uh, where I can trust you again, cause I don't trust you right now. Um, or I'm leaving me and the kids are leaving. And when we leave, we're going to file for child support and palimony.
And that's going to, according to my attorney, it's going to cost you X.
This one sentence, I've only recently understood the situation I am in, as I guess I was too busy caring for the kids to see what a mess.
Oh, crap.
It's not. Well, that makes me think she discovered the other girlfriends and she now realizes, oh, I thought we, I thought.
Now we're reading between the letters. Okay.
He was 35, hooked up with a 19 year old, had two of her kids. They're now 17,, 18.. Um, they're leaving the house and now she's finding, oh, I wasn't the only one. I'm not the only one.
And now I got a mess.
Cause I got, cause. I make a million dollars and I do whatever I want to do. Right. Whenever, whoever I want to do.
So stupid.
Yeah. You're, you're.
What a coward.
Your mind is even darker than mine.
The coward, coward, coward.
You're exactly right. That's what's going on.
Cowardly man.
Of only reason. Yeah. So the situation is you're, um, you have built a life in a house of cards. Once again, these are the things that happens when you shake shack up instead of being married. Had you been married, there would have been a whole different set of situation.
Legal protections. Legal protections and other things as well. So, yeah. Um, but now you're, you know, you're reaching it, um, obscure laws, which they are. Palimony laws, are much more obscure.
So yeah, I would check on the, I would check on your legal rights. And I didn't think about these. dadgum. kids are there. They're teenagers, at a minimum.
Yeah. So yeah. Okay. And men, take care of your families. Take care of your families.
Stop. Look around, dude. Look around another car, another, another sale. Are you freaking kidding me?
Get the end of your life. Is this, is this. Yeah.
So stupid.
How's this going to go for you?
You can have an empty hospital bed.
Dan is in Philadelphia. Hi, Dan, how are you?
I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing?
Better than we deserve. How can we help?
Uh, well, my company that I work for, I've been with them for a little over four years. Um, they have, uh, they let everyone go about a month and a half ago. They're getting liquidated. Um, another company is going to be, uh, getting all of their customers and such. It's a solar company.
Um, I worked closely with the executives and they kept only me on and they were the company that's coming in was supposed to, uh, call everyone. that hasn't happened. Um, I am been applying and haven't been able to find a job yet, but, uh,
So you, are you, are you being paid still?
I am being paid still.
Okay. But it's, but what you're saying is the fuse is burning. It's not for long.
Exactly. Uh, I make 85,000 a year.
What do you, what do you do? What's your actual job title?
Executive assistant. Uh, so it's just basically, I, um, uh, work for the, uh, COO and the CEO. And, uh, I also try to find problems that, uh, in the operations way to make things flow. in the last year, I saved the company about $320,000, uh, just in different processes that could have been fine-tuned.
What, what, so how long have you been looking?
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