📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a Free Personalized Plan 📱Watch the full episode for free in the Ramsey Network app. Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "My husband's gambling put us in 120k of debt," "Am I obligated to help my adult children?" "Should I invest more or pay off the house?" "I'm angry that my wife wants a larger house," "My girlfriend is considering debt relief" Support Our Sponsors: 🌱 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp 🏥 Learn more about Christian Healthcare Ministries 🏡 Get started today with Churchill Mortgage 🔒 Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe 🏦 Go to FAIRWINDS Credit Union for an exclusive account bundle! 🥗 Save 15% on your first Field of Greens order with code RAMSEY 💤 Visit Helix Sleep for special offers! 💻 Visit NetSuite today to learn more 🗂️ Use promo code RAMSEY for 18% off at The Nokbox 🏛 Get started with YRefy or call 844-2-RAMSEY 🔐 Visit Zander Insurance for your free instant quote today! Next Steps 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET or click here! 💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app! 🛒 Black Friday deals are here! Get meaningful gifts for as low as $8! 🎟️ See Dave and John LIVE in a city near you! Listen to more from Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How can I manage my husband's gambling debt?
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. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Marta is with us to start this hour. Marta's in Portland, Oregon. Hi, Marta. How are you?
Hi, Dave. I'm doing okay. Good. Thanks for taking my call.
Sure. What's up?
So I... I'm 57 years old. I've been married for 33 years, and I've never managed our joint financials. But I find myself that that was a big mistake on my part, and I need help with trying to figure out how to sort out my finances. I have a house that's in my name, and my husband has gambling problems. that I just discovered and it's been snowballing since I started discovering the problems.
I signed a HELOC not knowing what I actually was signing. So I owe $90,000 of that and haven't done taxes for four years. So I know that at least I owe $10,000 out of to the IRS on top of everything else I probably owe because he was taking money of my retirement without my knowledge. And so that's going to come down the pike for me. And I'm just overwhelmed about how to get things done.
How did you find out? I found out a letter because, you know, he handled the mail. He handled everything. I opened a letter from Fidelity and found out that he had borrowed
money from there and I confronted them about it and that was last year and he said he was paying and he did pay it and I told him not to take any more money but he continued to do that not only that but he had taken money prior years and he never told me that he's got 10 counts because he also stole money from a non-profit that he was the treasurer are you still together unfortunately yes because
And people say I'm too nice. Wow. Getting a divorce is going to be very expensive. And so I'm trying to get my finances in order. He's just delusional.
He's in another world. So are you just biding your time? Is that what that amounts to? You're trying to get your finances together so that you can get out of this marriage? Or are you guys going to counseling to see if you can solve it?
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Chapter 2: Am I obligated to help my adult children financially?
Mm-hmm.
And there's no fix for that. We work with addicts all the time. The only fix for that is to break the cycle. And this guy is not interested in breaking the cycle. Addicts can get better. But 100% of addicts are master manipulators and they are master liars. He'll make you think this is your fault. Oh yeah, he does make me think that. That's part of the addiction, okay?
And there's only one thing you can do with this, and that's get distance. Financial distance, physical distance, housing distance. Call that attorney back or call an attorney today and please, darling, take action on this. It's not going to get better. This guy's an abuser. Wow, I'm so sorry. What a heartbreaking thing to deal with. Fastest growing addiction in North America today. Online porn.
Second fastest growing addiction. Gambling. We're seeing in our financial counseling offices those two things destroying more families than anything else. Thank you to the internet. This is the Ramsey Show. Black Friday week is in full swing at Ramsey Solutions. We've got life-changing gifts for the people you love all on sale.
Our best-selling books like The Total Money Makeover, Baby Steps, Millionaires, Own Your Past, Change Your Future are all only $12 each. And, of course, The Total Money Makeover is more than a book. All these books are. They're a life-changing gift. We hear it all the time.
Millions of people have changed their lives because of a Dr. John Deloney book or a Total Money Makeover book or a Jade Walsh book like Money's Not a Math Problem. You know, Jade and her husband paid off over $460,000 in debt. A lot of it had to do with shifting their mindset. about money. Money's not a math problem is what that's about. It's one of our quick reads.
Rachel's wallets, John's questions for human cards. Man, it's all there. Check it all out. Black Friday deals abound at ramseysolutions.com slash store. If you're listening on YouTube or the podcast, you can click the link in the description and go straight there. Paula's in Canada. Hi, Paula. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.
Thank you very much.
Sure. What's up?
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Chapter 3: Should I invest more or pay off my house?
100%.
These academics aren't so dadgum smart after all. Who knew? This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality is my co-host today. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. The Ramsey Show question of the day is brought to you by WhyRefi. If you've made student loan mistakes with zeros on the end, well, we're not judging you. We're here to help you, and we're saying you need to do something about it.
Contact WhyRefi if you have a defaulted private student loan. They'll reset the whole thing. It's unbelievable what they can do for you. So go to Yrefy, that's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey, might not be in all states.
All right. Today's question comes from Brody in Maryland. He says, is it unfair for me to feel angry that my wife wants a bigger house? We bought a 1400 square foot house last April. I sold all four of my investment properties that I worked very hard for to completely pay off our debt, including the new house.
Our house is a three bedroom, two bath ranch with a backyard on a quiet street and it's in a good school district. So much sacrifice and saving went into making this happen. Now she wants a bigger house, even though she said she wanted this particular house before we put the offer in. I don't see how I can make this happen without going into debt again, and I will not go back into debt.
oh, this is juicy. Listen, here's the thing. I do think that some people's personalities, because you don't talk about any type of pay raise or situation where you guys' lifestyle has changed drastically. But I do think there's some people that the goalpost is constantly moving, right? It's like, if I just get this, I'll be happy. And then they get that thing and they're not happy.
Or if I just get this, I'll be content. And then it happens and they're not content because things don't make you happy and things don't make you content. You know, I think that they're fun, but they don't they don't fill that void.
And you can buy fun, but you can't buy happiness.
Yeah. And you can't buy contentment. And if you're on social media, what she might be every single day scrolling through and looking at what the influences are doing and looking at what their friends, you know, their friends houses or she's spending all night watching HGTV. It is very difficult. for some people to kind of go, well, that's them and that's okay, my life is fine.
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Chapter 4: What should I do if my spouse wants a bigger house?
a way to be able to calculate that to be able to look at even previous because a couple years I had made I'd hit that number in October and then the last two years let me have a little bit more money in my pocket throughout the course and I spread it out with a little bit lower number and let it hit the last paycheck in December and I didn't know if that was going to be from a negative impact if I were just I think you could look at the total for that year total invested by you and then the total match and divide it and tell what the percentage was right
Right, sure, exactly. That would tell you what your company does. Yeah, I mean, some companies match up to a certain amount. Some companies match all the way through. We match a percentage regardless of what you put in, regardless of when you put it in. And so, I mean, I've got some high-income earners that fully fund theirs in the first quarter. Right.
And then they just don't have that because they max it out completely. They're not allowed to put any more than that in. And so not by us, but by regulation. And then we match that as they do it, whenever they do it, whatever they do. Same. But that's a company decision as to how the match is done. And if you have to drag it out to get the full match, I would drag it out.
Makes sense. I'll reach out to them and find out how they distribute that money.
Yeah, if you need to do 12 even months to get the full match, then do the 12 even months because the match is more valuable than the early portion of the investing. But that brings up another interesting thing, Jay, that sometimes people ask is should I spread my personal Roth over 12 months or just do it in January?
You know, you should do it in January is the answer mathematically because the entire amount is earning throughout the entire year rather than a portion of it earning each month more.
That's right.
And so, well, what if the market went down? Well, if the market goes down, none of this works. So it only works when it's going up. And overall, we know it's going to go up. It could go up or down in the short term. But yeah, so Scott, that's an HR and payroll and whoever's managing your 401k at your company question.
And you could get a hint before you even call them by looking at the percentage they gave or the dollars they gave last year as a percentage of what you put in last year and see if that matches their standard match rate. And that would tell you, you know, if you're looking like 6%, then you go, okay, you know... I put in $10,000 irregularly, but they still put in, you know, 6% of that $600.
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Chapter 5: How do I handle financial disagreements with my spouse?
And they should be. And that is a standard. So the student loan that you took out with this predatory trade school is what they typically are, or some kind of online school or something like that. They took out, they gave you student loans, they were federally insured student loans, and the federal government forgave those because they deemed the school to be predatory, right? Yep.
What did you get back?
How much did you, had you paid into it and they gave you that back, that's what the refund check was?
Yes. And so I use that to pay off my car, my 401k loan that I used to do my mortgage. I know that's like against the rules. I learned that now, you know, I didn't do that then. That's okay.
That's okay.
And paid off my credit card. So I've been consumer debt free all year or since then. Except the 401k. No, I paid that off as well. Oh, good. What all did you get back?
Way to go.
How much was it?
I got like $16,000, $17,000 back. Okay.
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Chapter 6: What are the risks of borrowing against my home?
So it was funny because I read it and I was like, oh, I'm kind of doing all this stuff anyway. So I kind of got fed up with being broke. And then I was like, oh, this is easy enough. So being kind of a money person anyways, I was like, all right, well, this is simple. I read the book. I had the seven steps and I was just like, okay, let's do it. Here we go.
I love it.
very cool very cool so you guys met at the national guard i assume yes yes okay very good and man that's a great situation you're in after just four years of marriage in your early 30s but it sounds like brenda you had a head start on it yes i grew up with parents who didn't do that and so when i moved out i just i didn't do that i didn't have a hole to dig out of the house after marriage
We did. As soon as we got married, we became a family of five. We had his son and my two kids the day we got married. So I lived in a tiny little house and we went out and we put over 50% down on our house and decided just to kick it. So we made this kind of like our baby step two. Okay. Just took off running with it. Pretty intense then.
Yeah, a big part of this was that we wanted to teach FPU, which we had done in the past, and we just actually finished doing a week ago. Nice. Yeah, we just finished our second course. So we wanted to kind of be like, practice what you preach.
And because we didn't have a step two together, we kind of treated, you know, paying off the mortgage like our step two, even though it's not exactly advised. Yeah.
I get it. Alex, what'd you pay off beforehand? Because for you, that was kind of the change.
I was working a credit card and my car paying those off. And I think together that was 19,000.
Okay, wow. So Brenda put the screws to it. She said, not allowed. Very cool.
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Chapter 7: How can I align financial goals in marriage?
It's, well, at the end, I guess it is in one sense. But I wonder what the percentage of people that complete it is. Probably pretty low.
That's a good question. That's interesting to look at.
You don't finish it. You're really screwed. That puts us out of the Ramsey show in the books.