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Chapter 1: Are we ready to buy a house right now?
Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Pods Moving and Storage Studio, it's The Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. I'm Ramsey Personality, Christina Ellis, joined today by fellow Ramsey Personality, Dr. John Deloney. And we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225.
Hey, if you like the show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with a friend. All right, let's go to the phones. First up, we have Chris calling from Tampa, Florida. Hey, Chris, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. Thank you for taking my call.
Thanks for calling.
So my wife and I are kind of like in a paralysis. We've paid off about $170,000 of debt. Whoa!
That's awesome, man.
Thank you. We've been hammering at this pretty much since 2017. Are you all still friends? Yeah, even closer. Wow, fantastic. Thank you.
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Chapter 2: What factors should we consider when moving to another state?
So right now, I make just under $50,000. I'm retired out of the military. My wife makes about $120,000. Um, and then, uh, when I was working, I just got cleared medically. I got into a car accident. I was trucking for a little bit, uh, making about 85 and I had a drunk driver hit me, um, on my time off. So I just got medically cleared not too long ago. So we're looking at trying to buy a house.
Um, we have enough for down payment. Uh, we're looking at a house that's going to run about five 50, uh, about 26, almost 2,700 square foot house. And what's kind of got us in the paralysis of everything. is basically this, um, we can buy down points and get down to like the low fives.
Um, and it would take about four years, uh, for like the $350 a month, month payment, um, to recuperate that money. Um, but on the same token with this house, it's going to need a new roof within about five to 10 years. Uh, the pool is going to need to be redone and the windows are going to need to be redone. Um, our mortgage would be looking at about three, about 3000 a month, uh,
Now with the state of Florida, because of my veteran status, I don't have to pay property taxes. So it does help out tremendously on that end dealing with the monthly mortgage payment. But we're very scared between the homeowner's insurance kind of going up, the cost of everything. Another company offered me a job, which would bring our income to just about net 16 a month.
Chapter 3: How can we save money on groceries effectively?
Um, and so it would just kind of be like food, groceries, and then just a nanny, uh, for our two children. Uh, throughout the day, my wife does work from home and then obviously, you know, working locally, driving around, I'd, I'd be out of the house too. I just don't know if we should continue to rent and rent something for about 2,500 and save the money and.
Maybe save up a whole lot more money to fix and repair things like that.
Hold on. Let me interrupt you, Ryan. I can see why y'all are paralyzed. You've got 50 things going on all at the same time. Yeah. Let me start here. Do you owe anybody any money? Nope. Zero. So you're completely dead free. You don't owe anybody anything.
We have one credit card that has $1,000, and her company that she works for now reimburses her for buying stuff like printer ink, things like that. They give her a stipend every month, and it just gets paid off. But that could be paid off right now if I wanted to. But that's all we have is literally $1,000 on a Chase credit card.
Why don't you just do a debit card?
We have a debit card for all that. So our credit got hit really bad. And so we've been kind of putting things on the credit card, pay it off, and then put it on the credit card, pay it off every single month. And that's kind of raised up our credit. When we were $170,000, that was like we were still renting.
What kind of debt was that, that $170,000?
That was a bachelor's or two bachelor's and a master's, truck payment, motorcycle payment, and about $35,000 in credit cards.
Do you know what my credit score is? Zero, probably. I don't even know.
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Chapter 4: What are the benefits of a credit card for mental health?
I don't even bother checking it. And that's not because I'm some kind of fancy rich or whatever. I just don't care. And the bank, when I bought my house a few years ago, I think I had to sign another form and show them my pay stuff. You know what I mean? So all I have to say is I'm not going to dance with the devil just to raise my debt relationship score up. Why are you moving?
Why are you moving? Are y'all moving just to get out of somewhere? Why do you want to get to Florida so bad?
We were up in North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh. And moving down to Florida is where family's at. And so we were paying like really cheap rent and everything else, you know. But we just moved back to Florida just due to the economy, family being here, just kind of was tired of the state. You know, my wife got taxed out the yin-yang for state income tax. Okay. Just things of that nature.
Okay. And so we just kind of just got tired of it.
How much did y'all have in the down payment?
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Chapter 5: How can we navigate the housing market as first-time buyers?
We got about $28,000 set aside. Okay.
On a, okay, what percentage is that of $550,000? How much down are you putting?
It's about 5% or 6%, huh? Yeah, so if we were to go through with it, so the escrow was $6,000, and this is, once again, we haven't gone through anything, but it would be $6,000 for this, and then the rest would be for a closing cost. I was looking at doing a debate between a VA or an FHA,
um and that's been another big kind of pull uh each way this would be our first time buying a house well i think that's i think that's where some of the anxiety is coming from is that that's not a lot of money down on a five hundred and fifty thousand dollar house plus you know this house is going to need repairs like significant repairs new roof that's you know that's not a small you know five thousand dollar repair that's a major repair so um
If I'm in your shoes, I'd be feeling a little nervous too, not because it's not time to buy a house, not because there's anything wrong with the housing market per se, but I would personally be nervous with having a smaller down payment knowing that I also am going to have about potentially $50,000 in repairs almost immediately.
Yeah, well, that's the whole thing. We're trying to talk to them now about getting the roof covered. And that was like a big thing on buying it. The reason why we've really been big on this property is it's two and a quarter acres. So we kind of want chickens. We want to like have a garden and then obviously land for like, you know, my kid.
Here's what I'm most worried about for you, Chris. Most worried about. Are you in Florida yet? Are y'all still in North Carolina? We're in Florida.
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Chapter 6: What should we do if we have debt while planning to buy a house?
Okay. Y'all just renting right now?
I'm with my parents and I don't, I've been here for two weeks. I don't want to be here another day.
Don't blame you. Oh man.
That's why we're kind of like all thrown with it. Cause this company offered me my 16. Okay.
I know, I know, I know, but here's what, here's what's about to happen. You are dating somebody and she's wonderful. She is kind and she's beautiful, all the things, and she is not right for you. You have talked yourself into this property and you are going to bend over backwards to make it happen and you're going to end up in a...
mess and you're talking from a guy that waited years to land at the place that i want to raise my kids on property with some acres and all that stuff and i hated every second of it until i finally got there i'd hold off man i'd go rent a tiny little place i'd rent a two-bedroom apartment if you got to and save up all your money put 20 down on this place and move in with some peace not just sprinting into this thing just because ah you're gonna get yourself in a mess my brother
Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. We're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. All right, John, I came across an article on mental health. You know, it's in your wheelhouse. Wanted to kind of see what you thought about this.
I'd like to just call out, usually when I get surprised on shows like this, George has like some TikTok clip.
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Chapter 7: How can we prepare financially for unexpected home repairs?
So thank you for being an adult and bringing an article in.
Oh, great. What do you got here? Yeah, this is a good one. It's called Five Ways Credit Cards Can Improve
your mental health well i got hemorrhoids america it's a real article oh my gosh all right right so let's go it says according to a money and mental health report by bankrate in partnership with psych central just under half of u.s adults say that money has a negative impact on their mental well-being that's true
The ability to provide for a household or keep up with day-to-day expenses can cause major stress. Pair these responsibilities with the possibility of a recession and record high inflation, and it's no surprise that many of us are feeling the heat. I like this setup. They're trying to just make us all feel warm and fuzzy and like, yeah, we're all afraid. We're going to give you something good.
Okay, I just want to tell you, for everybody listening, I want you to call this out. Anytime you read an article and it's talking about one organization in partnership with another, usually that means that somebody is buying the authority of somebody else to sell their product.
It's why you'll see companies buy a professorship at a university so they can do their quote unquote research for their R&D, for their programs. And they put all the negative findings in a drawer and then they just published all the glorified stuff. Just seeing this, I'm reaching for the Preparation H. Go for it.
Luckily, there are still ways we can take control of our finances. Strategic use of financial tools like credit cards can allow us to put our money to work for us. With this at our disposal, we can steadily chip away at those money and mental health woes. Here are five ways credit cards can improve your mental health.
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Chapter 8: What strategies can help us manage our finances better?
I just want to say to my friends at psych central, y'all should be ashamed. I don't even know what you are, but if you're under, if you're, if you are about helping people, you should be ashamed of yourself. Bank rates, just do what bank rate does. We're trying to sell credit. And I mean, you got a rattlesnake in a bag.
I'm not going to be mad at the rattlesnake for trying to bite me if I put my hand in there, but a mental health group, if that's what psych central even is, this is just, it's disgusting, man. Yeah. It's gross.
Well, OK, they got five tips and even just reading it kind of made me nauseous. I'm like, oh, my goodness. So the first one is using it to pay down existing credit card debt. So basically just switching things over, taking advantage of the zero percent APR, basically alleviating. your issue with another temporary solution.
So they're lying to you. Now they're saying they're paying down credit card debt, but all you're doing is moving debt around.
Yep. And then the second one, this one is just, this one's kind of epic. It says plan a free or heavily discounted vacation. Y'all we're, we're in, we're in stress. We're feeling mental health issues because of credit card debt. So let's go on vacation.
Oh, man. Hold on. You should pick a rewards card that best aligns with your spending habits and use your rewards earnings to cover costs. So we have record high inflation, the possibility of a recession. We're really feeling financial stress. What you should do is spend, just use the right card and then go on a vacation. This is madness.
Yeah. I mean, and we've talked to a lot of people that are doing their credit card rewards and all of that. And everybody thinks that they're going to be able to be the person that uses the rewards. They never go into debt. But that's so sad that we're literally talking to people who are this article is talking to people who are stressed out. Right. They're already in credit card debt.
They're frustrated. They're feeling inflation. They're feeling all these things. And it's like, hey, like, why don't you try this out?
Well, and let me tell you this, and I've mentioned this on the show before. I used to have a card and I paid it off every month. I never had any debt on it, but I put all my expenses in there and to just get free flights. I did all the time. And I got free flights. I really did. And it occurred to me one day, this airline company is not my friend. So there's got to be something else at play here.
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