The Problem Is Not the Basement!

[Music] brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today so we've got a second child on the way due in November wife wants me to remodel the basement so we have more space um just for Playa a full bathroom that we can get done she wants me to use the HELOC that I took out before I listened to both George's book and Dave your book I want the cash flow it whether it takes me a couple more months just to do it or not I'm just trying to make sure that's on the same path but I'm thinking I have to pause kind of the um the dead snowball at the same time are you trying to get me and Dave to tell your pregnant wife something you don't want to tell her um no I'm I I have told her already that we need it's okay to do this but at the same time I need I need time because I can do a lot of it myself but I only want to do it with cash yeah you're you're your impulse is right man yeah um here the the problem is is that you guys are not aligned it's not whether to do a basement or not the problem is is she's willing to borrow whatever amount of money to get whatever she wants and you're not and so because you're dealing with a set of information that she doesn't have after going through George's book and consuming some of our material you have become accurately I think convinced that the best way for your family to prosper is to get out of debt and stay out of debt she's not convinced of that yeah it took me a while for her just to even listen to your book Dave um I had to kind of not force her but I did that through the car on trips or whatever and she kind of was under the impression like okay we need to get on this but I kind of talked her off the cliff of buying a new home uh which would be more than twice what we're paying now for a mortgage payment which I didn't want to do um and so now we're going to stay and the conention was that I need to remodel the basement okay um no it's not the problem is not the basement the problem is you and your wife do not agree on how to live life and you are begging and pleading her to listen to something to understand something and she's bowing up and saying she refuses to do so by God get me what I want okay that's what you've just described now I don't know if that's what's happening but that's what you described sure you're not leaving her in a very good light in this conversation uh and I I I don't mean it that way no I'm not criticizing you I'm criticizing her unless you're wrong wrong because I mean I got to tell you I don't have conversations with Sharon nor does she have conversations with me where she's tiptoeing around like you're tiptoeing around her like oh I don't know honey I listen to this no it doesn't happen that way at the Ramsay it's like hey this means a lot to me and you mean a lot to me and I really want you to give this a serious listen like an adult and then I go listen to the podcast that Sharon wants me to listen to I may disagree with the thing I may come back and we may have an argument about it but we're going to do it on an adult level but I don't I don't do stuff because I'm scared of Sharon or because I had to talk her off the ledge and I concede my principles by talk to talk her off the ledge and my wife doesn't give me ultimatums in my house well you're going to do this I'll listen to the book but you have to buy me house we don't do trade outs like you're going to go build out the basement if I if I if you don't get me a new house no that's not I mean you know if we decide in instead of moving to a new house that we can't afford we're going to build out the basement we're still going to do that based on principles that we both agree to so Matt you do not have a debt problem or a cash flow problem or a decision on how to weld out the basement problem you have a marriage problem yeah and you have to sit down and have that conversation and from the sound of your voice it it it sounds like that's going to be a tough one and it may be that y'all have reached an end of the the end of the road where y'all can have that together you're going to have to get a third party whether it's a counselor or some a minister from your church or a trusted friend but you all have to get on the same page with how you're doing life and it's you versus her right now you're bringing a second kid into the world that's just a recipe for chaos yeah you probably do need to sit down with somebody make it easier just to have somebody walk you to through this um and it could be family of origin stuff in the sense of Rachel talks about this let me send you a copy of Rachel's book for both of you to read um you know um title Escapes Me Oh Know Yourself know your money know yourself know your money but one of the things she goes thank you one of the things she goes through is if you grew if she grew up in a household where spending was just part of the game and you grew up in a household where money was fearful then you're trying to bring fearful into her princess world and that doesn't work she grew up as a princess and now you're telling her no or she grew up poor and and now you're telling her no that she wants to spin now yeah or whatever it is I don't know what the background is I'm not saying she's a princess but I'm saying you know when you start demanding things back and forth like that that's a relational breakdown man that's not a i cuz what you're saying is we have a baby on the way I my wife wants me to build out the basement um that's not unreasonable she wants me to build out the basement now and use a helck to do it and I can do it two months later without borrowing money that's unreasonable completely unreasonable completely unreasonable oh and here's what's even more unreasonable this is a baby that is 6 or eight PBS maximum 21 in does not take up much room does not need an entire basement can exist for quite a while in the upstairs and not be and not be damaged by anything you know what it won't even know Dave it won't know won't know for years it won't even know it may never know no that there was a downstairs here's a good equation um for all you math nerds who are married if she wins and you lose you both lose and if you win and she loses you both Lose You Can't Win marriage arguments because somebody loses and if one of you loses everybody in the house has lost we have to realign and find a way so one of the things that we learned to do on stuff like this Matt was um first we got to agree on the principle the principle is we're not borrowing money principle is we're getting out of debt before we go do upgrades to the basement that's what really ought to happen you baby step two no I'm not stopping baby step two we're going to get out of debt because I want to be free and borrow is slave to the lender now once we're agreed on that principle then happy to do the basement and I'll do it as soon as we're out of debt as soon as we have the emergency fund in place the first thing we'll do is the basement okay now we hit that point and I had I remember exactly what it was it was $18,000 that I needed slw wanted to do here at Ramsey in the business I had $188,000 in my pocket and I had a thing I wanted to do here and I knew I could turn that 18 into 100 investing into the business she was driving uh a 1902 Astro van that had enough goldfish crumbs in it from raising three Toddlers and it had 285,000 million miles on it and she wanted a new an upgrade car both things are right you know what we did both of them but we just had to choose the order and I was happy to get her the car first and then come back and do the investment at the office it wasn't a no it was a what order once we aligned on the principles perect none of that's happening in this conversation create your free every doll budget today the simplest way to budget for your life