Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
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I'm Dave Ramsey, Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, host of the very popular Ramsey Network program called Front Row Seat. He's my co-host today. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. Rachel is in Nashville. Hi, Rachel. How are you? I'm okay. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?
I was calling because I recently found out that my husband has been hiding some credit card debt that I didn't know about. And he now, um, 30,000 that I am aware of. 30,000 that you're aware of? Yes. Okay. So you don't think he's told you everything? No, I do not. Um, he recently, like when I confronted him about it, he wouldn't answer me. How did you find it?
I got into my bank account app to upload a check and saw a notification that my credit score had dropped significantly. And I looked at it and then saw that there was $30,000 of credit card debt attached to it. To your credit score? Yes. How did you get a credit card that you didn't know about? He signed your name fraudulently? No. Well, I'm an authorized user on it.
Authorized users don't have their credit damaged. Well, apparently. Not supposed to, anyway. Well, it's tied to my credit score currently. Okay. All right. So you guys have got your money separate, and why didn't he tell you about it? I don't know if he was embarrassed or just hiding or just counting on the fact that I wouldn't find out about it. I'm not sure.
Well, I mean, why does he care if you find out about it? It's his business, right? You all have separate stuff. I don't know. He told me that it shouldn't matter. Or I shouldn't care if my credit score is okay or not. Well, that's not the point. The point is, why is he hiding debt? I don't know the answer. I mean, he's trying.
So now he's trying to do a cash out mortgage refinance to roll the credit card debt into our mortgage.
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Chapter 2: How does the conversation shift to financial issues?
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Okay. Well, there's a lot going on in this conversation, okay? We can separate it out into three or four pieces. Number one, we'll go with the last thing first. You do not refinance credit card debt into your mortgage ever unless it's to avoid a bankruptcy, and you're not bankrupt. You're just out of control, have a horrible system, and a questionable marriage.
but a refinance does not help any of that. It treats the symptom. The debt is the symptom, not the problem. And I'm asking questions that you don't know the answer to, that you need to be asking to try to find out what the actual problem is. Why did he run up this debt? What's he buying with it? And the answer to the overall situation is the most concerning of all is your marriage.
He's lying to you and flippant about it, and thinks it's perfectly okay that he's actually done harm to your score. I mean, does this not sound weird? This whole thing sounds weird. Yeah, it is. Okay. And I don't know how to proceed because he's... It's a marriage issue is how you proceed. Yeah.
Okay, your husband... Yeah, no, we've been going through counseling, and he doesn't want to do anything about it. Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Dr. John Deloney says behavior is a language. Yeah. And when someone says, I don't want to work on our marriage, they're saying, I don't want to be with you. Yeah. I'm sorry. So I would get with the counselor this week and say, we need to be real clear with this guy. I'm not signing a mortgage, and we're going to heal our marriage.
And as we feel it starting to heal and trust starts to rebuild, we're going to combine our finances so that this never happens again. I have full access to everything. He has full access to everything. We both have a vote. But right now, he's acting like his 14-year-old girlfriend is inconveniencing him. And you're not that. You're his wife. Yeah.
So the parts of you that said this all sounds crazy are absolutely correct. This all sounds crazy. See, I really want to know where the money went. I want to know that too, but I can't find anything. I mean, from what I can look at, I can't see anything crazy. And then he was like, you didn't find anything, did you? Which makes me think that he is hiding things. Yeah. And proud about it. Yeah.
I'm worried there's other things even going on after having done what I do for so many years. I hope it's not, but there's got a lot of symptoms here that this money is going to something that's really going to piss you off later. So I really – I want you to get all the way to the bottom of this and start from ground zero and rebuild your marriage from the ground up. It's your only shot.
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Chapter 3: What are the consequences of hiding debt in a relationship?
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all right we're talking with nick in portland oregon four thousand dollar a month income no debt including his house new to the baby steps i think that's about how far we got into it nick and your question today sir so um i guess i'm on step three of saving up an emergency fund correct but Currently, it's going to take about two years before I can save up, say, $20,000.
And I'm wondering if I should start investing at some point before I have that full emergency fund saved up. Okay, you make $48,000 a year. Why do you need a $20,000 emergency fund? I thought that was three to six months of my... Well, that would be more than six months. So three months would be $12,000 of your income, not your expenses.
And it sounds like your expenses are $3,000 because it sounds like you're saving $1,000. And so if that's the case, then $10,000 is plenty. Okay, $10,000 is plenty. So do you have – I'm totally new to anything with regard to investing. I don't know anything about it. Do you have any recommendations? Sure.
I would do investing after you get the $10,000 saved, and you can go to RamseySolutions.com, click on our SmartVestor program, and those are mutual fund brokers, advisors, and that don't work for us, but that have agreed to do stuff the way we teach. And I put mine, and Ken puts his, in four types of mutual funds.
Growth, growth and income, aggressive growth, and international for a very stable, conservative... portfolio. And then you fund that with your Roth IRA. And if you've got 401k, your Roth IRA, and I think you said you're self-employed, you can do a simple IRA as well. There's a lot of different ways you can do it and keep the government's hands off of it.
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Chapter 4: What advice is given for rebuilding trust and finances?
The property has a big detached garage on it. It was a tiny house. I bought it for $150. The actual house part itself was probably worth about $150-ish. Not counting the lot or counting the lot? Because the lot didn't burn. I'm not sure. Yeah, because all you've got is the improvements and your contents.
So you take lot value off of your appraised value, and now we've got a total loss, and that's what it is, and it's a rebuild. They're going to push it down and rebuild it or give you the money to rebuild it. Did you have a mortgage? Yes, sir. Yeah, and so the mortgage company is involved in this as well. Because they're one of the stated beneficiaries on the policy. All right.
Yeah, I think if you've got due diligence, I mean, you're only 24 hours in, and be forewarned, okay? Number one, you're only 24 hours in. Number two, the public adjusters that do a great job are the best. There are some of them that don't. Be careful with that. Then the third thing is this is one of the most emotional things that can happen to someone.
You ever seen the list of like 10 things that if three of them happen in a year, you're in the hospital? It's like divorce, death of a parent, death of a child, major car accident, house burning, high stress, high trauma things. This is on the list of the top 10, okay? So you're 24 hours after a top 10 event, and you're making a major decision. So... you do not have to retain them immediately.
You could wait 24 more hours and just kind of let some of the adrenaline go down because you're burning the candle right now at both ends. I mean, you've got to be emotionally fried, right? Yeah, it's pretty rough. I would be. It was obviously a lot. My girlfriend lived there with me, and we had a four-month-old.
Everyone got out quick, but she was pretty hysterical, and it's pretty heartbreaking to her. see the person you love like that. Hey, Daniel, I would be using good questions. I would interview this guy like he was going to be taking care of your baby. What are your goals at asking that? What is your goal with our case?
And have him state it, push him, and then say, how do you think you're going to accomplish that? Put him on the spot and trust your gut on this stuff. If he does a great job, he's going to get you more than 10% extra above what you would get if you handle the case by yourself. so he's worth his money if he does a good job. Listen, identity theft doesn't just happen just because you're careless.
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Chapter 5: What financial challenges do young couples face?
So you were stuck with it. Yeah. I like it. Okay. You're stuck with a paid four-house. Now, what did you say it's worth again? Like $340,000. Okay.
Chapter 6: How did the couple overcome their financial obstacles?
And it's a paid four-house in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Yes. Wow, man. That's amazing. So what in the world? And you're 24 and 26? 26 and 27. 26 and 27.
Chapter 7: What budgeting strategies do they use?
I'm sure. Okay. All right. Wow. So... You know, all we hear about all the time and the negative things in the media is that Gen Z, your generation, is stuck. They can't buy a house. It's not affordable out there. It's impossible.
Chapter 8: What advice is given for achieving financial freedom?
Yet you went and bought one the week you started dating and convinced this young lady to marry you and help you pay it off. Yeah, yeah. Where do you people come from? How does this happen? How did you run into the Ramsey stuff? Well, we grew up, like, our parents had, like, grew us up with Ramsey principles and, like, the envelope system. And so, yeah. Both sets of parents? Yeah, yes.
Both of you are financial peace babies? Pretty much, yeah. Oh, my gosh. I have to ask the obvious question. Was this an arranged marriage? No. No, but the parents were happy about it. Yeah, they were. My dad was very happy. I think you found a good one. Yeah. He knows about the envelopes. Wow. This is incredible. I'm serious. You had to go home.
When y'all both discovered that both your parents were doing the Ramsey stuff, that had to be a little weird. Yeah, it definitely was. But it was really exciting because it was like Autumn had the same values as I did, which, I mean, honestly translated into the rest of our marriage. And it was just like, wow, this is very easy. I mean, this is so simple, such a simple plan.
And we were able to work together on it seamlessly. How did y'all meet? A blind date. A blind date. We got set up. Wow. Okay. So you weren't like going to the same church or something? No. No. All right. Because I thought maybe your parents, if they'd gone through FPU together or something, that'd be too much. All right. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty incredible.
But we just like made a lot of really like wise financial decisions, like right when we were like 18, 19. So we like cash flowed college and like bought cars we could afford and, you know, all the things that you teach. So when you entered into this, all there was was the mortgage. Yes. And it was brand new. Yes. Because you just got it when you started dating. Yeah.
Then you get married and 32 months. So you did about $60,000 a year for three years, give or take. Yeah. Around $5,000 a month, making $127,000 to a high of $200,000. Yeah. You lived on nothing to do that. You're all pretty intense knocking that mortgage out. It didn't really feel like nothing, though. We just followed our budget.
Yeah.
Okay. All right. Let's get into this. What was your budget in year one of your marriage based on what income at that time? Well, it was based on roughly, I mean, it was $127,000 a year. And so we just, I guess it was like $8,000 a month, I guess. All right. So what were their bills? If you can remember, what was your, to cover all your expenses out of that? Oh, boy. Roughly.
I'm not holding you to that. You put like five grand a month average. Yes. And it definitely, near the end is when we started piling it on a lot more. We put more. So maybe three grand in the early years and six grand or eight grand in the later years. As Autumn's business, as Autumn's photography business started to grow, she definitely was picking up a lot more weddings.
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