Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
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Open phones at 888-825-5225. Sarah is in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Hi, Sarah. How are you?
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Sure.
What's up? So I'm considering leaving my husband, but I feel like I'm financially trapped with the amount of debt that we have. I just feel like I'm not able to leave with my daughter.
Okay. What happened to your marriage, hon?
We've been married for about 13 years, and it's just been a lot of verbal abuse. And over the last five years since we've had our daughter, I just kind of started realizing that it's not something I want her to be in and seeing that type of treatment. So I just am at this point where I'm, you know, trying to look at my options right now. And, you know, we've done couple therapy, and it's just,
Doesn't seem like it's kind of clicking with him. I just kind of feel like I'm at my wit's end with it.
I'm sorry. And how many kids you got?
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Chapter 2: How do I navigate financial challenges in a troubled marriage?
And you said there's debt that makes you feel like you're trapped. How much debt do you guys have?
So besides our house, my husband has... A camper loan, his truck loan, and a four-wheeler loan. And then we have about, I think, $12,000 in credit card debt, and I have $27,000 in student loan debt. Okay.
All right. And what's the home worth?
In our area, homes that are equivalent to ours are going about $35,000. $35,000?
Yeah.
I'm sorry, $235,000.
Okay. I feel better now. Okay. I thought you were in the camper for a minute. Okay. And, okay, $235,000, and what do you owe on it?
We owe about $179,000. Okay.
So there's a little bit of equity there. Okay. I don't know how divorce works in Wisconsin necessarily, but obviously your next step is to gather information. Information always... relieves anxiety. The unknown creates more anxiety than a known bad thing. If we got bad news and it's clear, that's less anxiety than unknown, than this just a boogeyman in the closet thing.
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Chapter 3: How can I recover from significant financial losses?
You don't even know your numbers. Oh, sort of, kind of, maybe, I think, is all the language around your numbers. You don't even know where you are. You're just wandering along buying crap. And you guys are going to have to stop that, whether you crash out your 401k or not.
If you can't afford to live off of what you told us, $200,000 in take-home pay, I don't think we can help you. I thought it was $80,000. He said $8,300 every two weeks. Oh, I'm what I heard. So I'm going, dude, you guys make too much to be fooling around with all this debt.
OK, that's even worse.
And so if those numbers are true, you're right. The behavior is not going to change. You're going to keep robbing that 401k every chance you can get because you guys are living a lifestyle you can't afford.
So my hope is to offend you enough to make you look at this. I love you enough. I want you to get mad at me. That's fine. I'm good with that. I want to piss you off just a little bit and make you grow up and sit down and go, I'm running this thing, this company called Me Incorporated very poorly.
If one of my VPs sat down and used the language about their budget in one of our profit centers, the way you've discussed your home, I would fire his butt for being incompetent. OK, you don't know. I think I got sort of kind of bull crap. You need to know exactly. And you guys need to get focused.
You make too much money to be this broke, which all have been intellectually lazy in how you've addressed your personal finances. And if you'll if you'll roll up your sleeves and attack this and get get some muscle tone to what you're doing, get some intensity to what you're doing. You can clean up this mess in about a year and a half and not have to mess up everything.
But if you don't, you're going to make a bigger mess later because there's no in-between in this discussion. There's not a mediocre landscape because you guys have consistently added to the problem. And until you stop adding to the problem and being people that do that, you're going to create more messes. That's what it comes down to.
Folks out there in the listening land, this is why debt consolidation doesn't work too. And this is why when you get an inheritance from your grandmother and you clean up everything and four years later, you're right back in the same mess because your habits haven't changed. Your household processes haven't changed. You've got to address what is wrong with our systems and our hearts.
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Chapter 4: What steps should I take after receiving a large settlement?
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Oscar is in Ottawa. Hi, Oscar. How are you? Hi, how are you? Thank you for asking. Sure. What's up?
Well, long story short, I've been dating a Polish girl for the past five months-ish. And everything has been going well, except for a few small details that are mostly related to finances. Like since day one, I've been paying for restaurants, like going out, like activities, snacks and everything.
And Shane directly mentioned during our conversations that this is a part of her culture, even though she was born in Canada. And me, I'm Iranian. I was born in Iran, raised there, and I've been here for a couple years. And I know how Western culture functions. And I would like to kind of make sense of it. I'm also traditional, sort of.
But at the same time, I don't see the point of man paying for everything, especially in this economy. And my question is, what is your suggestion? What should I do? Is it like a big red flag, or is it just something that we can kind of figure it out together?
Hmm. That's an interesting question. So the marriages that I'm aware of that are high quality, and when we're dating, we're courting, to use an old term, an old word, and we're thinking about that leading toward marriage, okay? So that's why you would ask if this is a red flag or not. Do I want to get involved with this person, right? Yeah.
And so the marriages that I know that are super – that I consider some of the best marriages on the planet that I've been personal witness to are where each of the people involved make the relationship about how much they can serve the other person.
Okay.
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Chapter 5: How can I avoid messing up a $2.6 million settlement?
I mean, you said you're scared to deplete your savings. I'm scared you're not going to be able to retire. That's a much bigger problem.
Chapter 6: What should I do if my spouse is hiding debt from me?
You can build back up the savings, but you guys got to get on this.
You can build back up the savings and you can build back up your retirement when you don't have any stinking payments.
Chapter 7: How do I recover from significant debt caused by gambling?
Free up all those. That's probably a few thousand dollars in payments. But here's what's happened.
Chapter 8: Should I pull from my Roth 401(k) to pay off $110,000 in debt?
You guys are normal. And normal in America sucks. You've got two car loans, two student loans, credit cards, and you don't make enough to cover your bills. Because you've put yourself so far in debt buying crap you couldn't afford with money you didn't have to impress people you don't even really like. You're a normal American. I guarantee there are six-figure earners. Yeah.
So what you've got to do now is you have to stop being normal. And that means get highly organized, highly intense. And I'm going to make every dollar of our income behave. And we aren't buying anything unless we pay cash for it for the rest of our lives. If you can't pay cash for it, you can't buy it for the rest of your life. And then you'll have your income freed up to put your
Retirement in place, build some wealth, and put your emergency fund back in place if you've used it all with this $100,000. But you should use the $100,000 today, and you probably should sell one or two cars and get some less expensive cars. You can move back up in car later after you become wealthy, but right now you're just broke people.
So you need to be acting like broke people instead of rich people. Andrew's in Atlanta. Hi, Andrew. How are you? I'm well, Mr. Dave. How about yourself? Better than I deserve. How can I help?
Hey, so I'm just giving you a call today because I am in a pickle. I am supposed to be getting married in Italy, and my family, or at least my side of the family, has basically let me know that they have... they don't really have the savings or the money anymore to go. So I'm on baby step two. I only have about $2,000 less in my car loan. I have about $3,000 saved.
Why the heck are you getting married in Italy if you're broke?
Well, it's her family's doing. Her side is well off, and they ask us what do we want. We always dreamed of getting married in Italy.
I don't think there's any we. I think it's what she wanted, and you got hooked into it.
Well, no, it's something that we always spoke about when we first got together. It was like a joke, like, yeah, we can get married in Italy one day, and then it actually became a real thing. Um, so yeah, I mean, they're, they're willing to, you know, pay for it.
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