Chapter 1: What issues arise when family members ask for financial help?
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Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of the runaway hit on Ramsey Network, The Dr. John Deloney Show. He is my co-host today. Cody is in Nebraska. Hi, Cody. How are you?
You know, Dave, I am better than I deserve. How are you?
Better than I deserve. What's up?
Well, guys, I'm going to start off a little bit of a doozy here, so I do apologize. But my wife and I have just recently found out that her parents are asking my wife's sisters that are under 18 for money for basic bills. We don't really know. You know, I've heard in the past you guys say, like, don't say anything unless they come to you and ask for help or guidance.
Um, we're just kind of stuck because, um, you know, my sister-in-laws are 10, 12, and then 17. Um, so I'm just kind of, we're kind of confused on what to do.
How much money do they have?
Well, so my, so the younger sister-in-laws, they were, you know, working over the summer. Um, so basically what happened was, is my, My 10-year-old sister-in-law told us that, well, mom and dad kept saying that we don't have enough money for groceries this month, and blah, blah, blah. So I offered them my $400 that I got from dog sitting, and they took it for groceries.
And then my 17-year-old sister-in-law came over two weeks ago and said that they had, quote, unquote, borrowed $1,000 from her for bills for last month to cover. Is this true? Are they struggling that bad? I would say so, yes. It's been talked about. A couple months ago, my wife overheard that they're $10,000 short a month. She
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Chapter 2: How can I navigate financial struggles within my family?
And so I think, but I don't think your wife, your wife's what, 20-something years old?
Yeah, she's 23.
Yeah. If she sits down with her mom and dad and says, y'all need to stop this, y'all need to become responsible adults, my guess is there's about a 0% chance that that's going to have any impact.
110%. And if you show up saying, I don't respect you guys, they're going to take it out of their house.
That's not going to help either. That's a 40-year-long discussion. I'm trying to think, in other words, what will work is more what I'm thinking about.
Dave, tell me if I'm wrong. So my thought is when I say insert myself into that, it would be your wife calling mom and dad and saying, can we talk? And she's got to be careful because the backlash could come down on a 10-year-old, right? Yeah. But we just heard— Sorry, go ahead.
And my idea at first was, like, you know, my wife, I told her, I was like, what if you, like, take your mom out to coffee and be like, you know, Mom, we've heard some of this stuff from— You know, my sister's like, how bad is it?
Is it really? Is that really happening? Are y'all really that bad? Yeah.
And is there ways we can help or is there ways we can support you or is there education? They may say absolutely not. And then it's about giving your niece or your sister-in-law, if you will, a safe place that she always knows she's loved somewhere else. But she's going to have eight years of mom and dad borrowing money. Exactly. Exactly.
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Chapter 3: What are the consequences of co-signing loans for family members?
So I just don't know if there's any options for me.
Is he on the note at all?
Is he on the note? My son is the owner of it.
Yeah, he's on the note. She's the co-signer, yeah. You can't force him to sell it. You can just talk him into selling it. Will he sell it if you tell him to?
No, he's dragging his feet about that. Well, he's dragging his feet because he knows you're going to pay. For 20 years you bailed him out. Yes, I understand that. And you've probably given him some stern talking to's over the last 20 years. Yes, I have. You still paid it. So, yeah, he's dragging his feet because you taught him how to.
I think you have to sit down and say, I'm not paying this rent. Dave, I'll leave it to you. I mean, it's going to ruin your... Yeah, you're going to get foreclosed on if he gets foreclosed on.
That's how this works.
Can you afford to buy him out? I could. I could. But I just don't know what my best options are because if I buy, if he would sell me the condo, then it's mine, right, for me to do what I want with it.
Exactly. And then you just sell it. Then you sell it and resell it and get your money back out, and at least that way you didn't lose anything. Yeah, you could just say, all right, let's give it appraised. I'm going to buy it from you, and then you put it on the market and sell it. That's what's best for you. That is unbelievably aggravating, and it's not necessarily what's best for him.
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Chapter 4: How can I approach difficult conversations about money with loved ones?
It's not an act of love.
it's not it's it's the ultimate enabling and it locks you into enabling because out of self-preservation you have to cover the stupidity of the other party what about this dave i'm trying to think of how this situation for her could go wrong is there a moment when and again i know i'm speaking in ratios here but fifty thousand dollars against what ann has is not a lot of money can she buy this thing and hand it over to him and walk and dust her hands off walk away
Is that too much enabling? I wouldn't do that, no. Yeah. I think he's not going to move. He's not going to sell it.
To his mom? Yeah. Well, then I would just take the pain of being foreclosed on. You would? I'd just stop. Okay. You're either going to sell it to me or the days of me giving you money are done. They're over. And that's what I'm getting at. It's protecting yourself. Either you're going to sell this to me or you're going to have to figure it out. Okay. I'm done. Because this is so bad for him.
She stunted his emotional growth. I mean, he's six years freaking old. He can't get a job since April to pay condo notes on $30,000? This is lame. This is really a lame boy.
Especially when we talk to elementary school teachers trapped in a New York apartment during COVID who pay off six figures because they drive and scratch and claw and flip and do whatever they got to do. Yeah. Right?
It's tough, man. A kid could sell enough clothing out of his closet at a consignment sale. Plasma. You could plasma your way to that one. It's just not any money. So, yeah, honey, you've got to get him free of you, and you've got to get free of him in order to have a decent relationship with him and in order for him to ever be a real man.
And it's going to cost you that precious 820 that you're really proud of. It's going to cost you that. Who cares? Let that stupid thing go.
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Now, Condo's never been late. She's paid her own time every time. Every time. It's never been late. It wouldn't be 820. This is the Ramsey Show. Running a business is already complicated. You don't have time to become a health insurance expert too. And when you're self-employed, there's no HR department to lean on. But that's where my friends at Health Trust Financial come in.
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Chapter 5: How can we stop my wife's parents from asking their young daughters for money?
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Chapter 6: Is it wise to invest into solar panels?
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Chapter 7: Can I live with my girlfriend before we get married?
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Chapter 8: What should we do about our mortgage being more than 50% of our income?
A lot of these apps and platforms have a share button or a share feature. And you can just send an episode to somebody and let them watch it or listen to it. I was listening to a podcast this week. A friend of mine was on Tucker Carlson. I said, hey, man, listen to this. And I sent it to another friend of mine just like that. And Tucker's got a great podcast that's going big.
It's going Zoom Zoom right now. And so on. So listen to one of Joe Rogan's that was going Zoom Zoom. It was really good. I sent it. You know, just share it. Anytime you read a good book, Jack Carr's got a new book out. The Terminal List, I've read every one of his. And so, yeah, I'm telling everybody, go get the new one. It's good. It's very cool. So Falcons brought me a copy of Jack's new book.
Have you seen it? I saw that he signed it. And he shot it. Oh, I didn't see that. It's got a bullet hole in it. It's fabulous. If you don't know Jack, he was a former SEAL, and so these are all Navy SEAL books, and they're like shoot-em-up spy movie type stuff, and they're great books. Fiction, obviously. Yeah, but it has a bullet hole in it. It's amazing. I may want to do that with my next book.
I think that would be fantastic. It has absolutely nothing to do with the book, which it does, but I still want to do it anyway. Yeah, that's pretty cool. All right, Kathy's in Philadelphia. Hi, Kathy. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.
Hello. I'm calling today with a question I hope you guys can help me with. My husband and I are considering putting in a solar array to offset our utility bill. And I just wanted to bounce the numbers off of you and see if it was a smart move with where we're at currently.
Okay.
So Hubs and I are like between baby steps five and six, I guess. Like we have a substantial amount of money in savings, but we haven't earmarked that. Like specifically, this is child A, this is child B, there's their college fund. They're pretty young yet, three and five. We feel like we've got some time to- So you would pay cash for the solar? That's what we want to do.
How much is it?
For the solar. Okay. The unit's about $53,000.
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