Chapter 1: What financial concerns does Grace have about her husband's spending habits?
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Normal is broken. 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. Alongside the fabulous Jade Warshaw, I'm Ken Coleman. The phone number to jump in today is 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. Let's go. Grace is going to start us off in Asheville, North Carolina. Grace, how can we help today?
Hi, Ken. Thanks so much for speaking with me today. My question is regarding my marriage and how to handle finances. I'm the saver in my marriage, whereas my husband's more of the free spirit. And although we make a really great income, I'm still having a really difficult time staying encouraged when his heart hasn't caught up to the sixth grade math, as you all have talked about. So
My question is more about how to not be a controller or an enabler and continue being an encouraging wife when I just feel really let down. There's a lot of arguments.
Oh, bless your heart. I love this. Okay, a couple of questions. Are you in the baby steps? And if so, where and then how long have you been trying to get this going?
Great question. So we are in the baby steps. We do have an emergency fund of a little over $1,000, which I'd be happy for it just to be $1,000, but I'll just say that for now. We do have a personal loan that's just left over on a truck that we bought, and we have a mortgage since we own our house. Okay.
How much is the loan on the truck?
The loan on the truck that we have left is just $1975.69. Okay.
So $19,000. $1,000.
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Chapter 2: How can couples navigate financial differences in a marriage?
Interesting. Because he thinks I'm so hardcore about it. But he also is aware of the fact that it's relative, right? So I come off very extreme to him and he comes off very extreme to me.
Got it. Yeah. I'll be honest. The fact that he's likening a money plan to a religion lets me know that it's coming across to him through you as quite extreme. Give me an example, like give me a real time example of a conversation that you've had where he was on one end and had one opinion and what it was and you were on the other hand and had another opinion and what it was. Great question.
So yesterday we were going over where we are for January. And for example, like our grocery budget is a thousand dollars a month.
For just the two of you? No kids. We have no children.
I think it's very reasonable. I said, what are your thoughts on all of this? And when we got to the grocery category, he basically said, I see that we're like almost we're at the upper 900s, like 990 something. I think that's to be expected. And I caught it later. I said, well, why would you say that this is to be expected?
If we have a budget of $1,000 and we're on the mark to essentially double it, why would we have agreed to this? Are you saying it more so needs to be $2,000? And I'll get really upset because I come off like I'm trying to preach to him or coach him or tell him that he's not really getting it, that this isn't okay. So I feel like I'm also very passive.
And it comes off disrespectful, but I'm also like getting really, really frustrated.
Go back for me. I may have missed something. So the budget's $1,000. You're up to it at like $990 something. Help me understand the doubling part. I think I missed that. Yeah. So I basically said, because we're at the middle of the month, we're doing like a. So you need to slow down. Yeah. You're saying we need to slow down. We're up at it. I just want to make sure I understood that properly.
Right. And he was more so.
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Chapter 3: What strategies can help with managing debt as a single mom?
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All right, let's go to John in Newark, New Jersey. John, how can we help today?
Hi, Jay and Ken. Thank you so much for taking my call. Big fans.
Oh, thank you. How can we help you?
Yeah, so essentially, my wife and I are a single-income family. We have two babies, a four-year-old, two-year-old, and one due next month. And we recently started following the baby steps. And my question is regarding the size of our debt and when exactly should we start tackling this?
So we have about $600,000 in student loans plus a mortgage and two car leases, which after listening to Dave Ramsey, we're going to get rid of. How much is the student loans? So $500,000 me, $100,000 for my wife. Oh, wow. Okay. And then tell me about the cars. So the cars are two leases, just an F-150 and an Expedition. What are the prices every month?
We pay about $800 for her car, about $600 for mine. My, my, my. Okay, this is an expensive situation. I know. We made these before listening to the paper.
What's your degree in for $500,000? I'm a plastic surgeon. Good. What's your income? Did we ask that?
Uh-uh. It's about, it varies a little bit, but it's about $750. Excellent, excellent, excellent. Great news. Okay, I feel way better.
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Chapter 4: How should one approach discussing debt owed to family members?
Jay's going to walk you through it, but I don't think he needs to stack up.
No, I said he doesn't. I'm just also saying for the benefit of a listener who is used to us saying, if there's a baby coming, stop and save. Oh, gotcha. Right, right, right. I'm explaining why he doesn't need to do that because he's got plenty saved. So you don't need to do that. We normally would give that advice, but you've got plenty. And so I would go ahead and push play.
Even if, by the way, even if there were some form of complications and your insurance kicked in and you hit your full deductible, even if you hit your out-of-pocket max for the year, you'd be fine. So that's why I think that you can go ahead and hit play on this. And if I were you, when do these leases, when are they up? So next year. Oh, can you find out what it is to get out of them early?
Yeah, that's our plan. Our plan is to find out and get rid of them as fast as we can. Yeah, do that. Do that. There's no need in keeping this around any faster. I would take a little bit of the money of the $122,000 you have saved and buy some cash cars. And it's not going to be the be all end all.
I'm not saying you have to spend $4,000, but I am saying it's probably going to be less than the cars you drive now just to get you something in cash. But don't drop that emergency fund below six months in order to do this. And then I would start getting cracking with the rest of that money once the baby is born.
With the rest of that six month fund, I would come in and I would clear out one of these student loans. And you're going to drop that pretty low. I guess my wife and I worry is that given the size of our student loans, if we follow the baby steps, we will kind of burn through all our savings and be a little ways away from being able to pay them. and being a single-income family.
Okay, so let me address that because I'm going to tell you straight up. I'll tell you the 100% truth. If you do it the way that I'm going to suggest, it's going to feel uncomfortable because I want you to be debt-free really, really fast because I value the same thing you do, which is to get to security quickly, right? To your point, you're a one-income family. You've got lots of kids.
Right now, your house is on fire. You've got almost $700,000 of debt. So you got to clear it out. So I'm on your side in the way that I want to do it as quickly as possible. So if you take $122,000 and you pay off the $100,000 student loan, you clear out the mortgages, you spend $10,000 or $11,000 each on some knock around cars until this thing is cleared out. And then for, I don't know, a year,
You guys live on $200,000 instead of $700,000 and you pay off the $500,000 student loan. I think that that's possible because most people in the United States wish they had a $200,000 income. So if you live on $250,000 and use the other $500,000 to pay off the loans, you're done in a year. Mm-hmm. So pretty much live with a minimum or minimal emergency savings until those are done.
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Chapter 5: How can I track my financial progress effectively?
Now, this isn't to, you know, slap you on the hand, but it's a good reminder of where you are in the process, where your momentum is. And we humans, we need to track our progress. That's why Dave's baby steps have been so monumentally effective is because of the nature of the stages and staying with it.
So if you take our quick quiz, you can check your progress and get a personalized plan to keep you on track or get you back on track. And it only takes just a few minutes. So head to RamseySolutions.com or click on the link in the show notes to complete the Get Started assessment. That's what it's called, the Get Started. If you're new to the show, this is also a great thing to do as well.
Chapter 6: What are the best strategies for managing health insurance costs?
Now, you're chuckling over there.
We humans.
Chapter 7: How should I approach life insurance for my growing family?
We humans.
That was funny?
Chapter 8: What steps should I take to pay off debt as a single mom?
It was. Okay, good.
I like that. I like the free laugh. That's great. Let's go to Jennifer in Asheville, North Carolina. Jennifer, how can we help?
Hi. Well, thanks for letting me come on the show and ask this.
So we just got our January insurance bill. And apparently this year, or last year, we made too much and we have lost
And it's going to come out to be about $29,000 a year. So we're not in any debt. We own our home. Everything's paid for. But that's still a lot of money to just check. We're all blessed. We're a very healthy family. So we go for our checkups and all that. And so we just...
We talked about maybe like just putting $29,000 in an account for an emergency, but then there's always like, well, the, what if, you know, something substantial happened,
And worrying about that. So we just kind of wanted to know if there were other options out there. Well, did you shop it? Or did it just lapse over and then this is what you were stuck with? Well, it lapsed over, but then we shopped within because we kind of wanted to stay with Blue Cross Blue Shield because I know our doctors accept that.
And I'm afraid of going and getting out of network and whatnot. But even within, that was still the cheapest option for us, for our family of five. Yeah. Well, I will say when you are independently getting insurance, it's expensive. It is. That's just part of it. And that plus insurance right now in general is expensive. It's gone up substantially.
So your options are to try to see what else is out there. But if you've decided that. That Blue Cross Blue Shield is what I want because it's in our network and it has the doctors we want. Then there's part of that that you may have to own. Now, let me find out, can this fit in your budget? Like, what does this mean for your budget? That's the biggest question.
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