My Ex Scammed Me Out Of My Retirement Account

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I'm a single mom. I had a retirement and a home and got scammed out of my retirement from my ex. He said he'd be in, I could make more money on investments and stocks. He was able to do that and I pulled out 85k, which of course I had to pay a penalty. I'm 54 years old currently. So now I'm basically starting from scratch. I have filled my home so I have some money saved and I'm just trying to figure out where I need to go from here. I do have a special needs child and I just want to make the right decisions going forward and really building for my retirement because I am, you know, 54. How much do you have saved off of the sale of the home? So I had to pay a lot of debt back because my ex was a squatter for a year and a half in the home. So 35,000 in a CD. I dumped that in a CD that matures in March. My high yield, I put 10,000 in a high yield savings account and then in another savings, it's $1,200. And then I have some debt. How much debt do you have left? So 6,500 in credit card. My car, 13,000. It's worth 10,000. I got it during the pandemic, so it's a little upside down. Before we go forward, what's the car payment on that? $486 a month. Let's stop right there. And it's 96,000 miles and I've already, in the last year, I've dumped $8,500 in repairs. Yeah, but I mean, that's, it's still, that's a car that, you know, I'm just, I'm going to jump in right there, George, because of the money she's gotten savings. If we could pay that off, that saves you $486 a month. Immediately, you would feel that, yes or no? Yes. Keep going on the debts, but I just wanted to jump in like that's a, that is low hanging fruit because you've got cash today to pay that off. George, you don't have any problem with that, do you? No. I like that move. I mean, the CD's maturing in March, so today you can knock out the credit cards with your high yield savings. Okay. And then as soon as that matures, I would use 13 grand of it and knock out the car. What else do you have? I have an attorney's bill for 10K. Okay. Anything else? Oh, I have a term life insurance that I only pay 360 a year. It ends in 2031 and it's for $200,000. So I didn't even know if I should even like stop that, but. Do you have any kids? You said you're a single mom. I'm a single mom, special needs child, teenager. Yeah, you're going to need that money. Even though it's 200K, that's still money that can be used to help take care of your child. And eventually, you're probably going to need a special needs trust. You've worked too hard to get control of your money just to let strangers control your data. Every online signup, discount code, and free trial comes at a cost. Your information. And Delete.me helps you take back control. Their privacy experts find your personal info on sketchy data broker sites, they delete it, and they keep it gone. Meaning you stay in charge of what's yours. So protect your privacy and get 20% off an annual plan at joindeleteme.com slash Ramsey. That's joindeleteme.com slash Ramsey. You're probably going to need a special needs trust. Well, that's part of the 10K. Okay. 5K for the attorney is for the court case that I had or have currently. And the other 5K was to hire a wills and trust attorney to set a trust and will because I need to protect my son. And that's a priority for me right now. It should be. I love that. You've got term life insurance. You've got a will and a trust. You're doing some good things here. And the good news is, do you have any other debt outside of that? I heard the three. Okay. So you've got 30K in debt and you've got $45,000, essentially liquid. Yes. Have you been debt-free in your adult life? Before my ex, yes. So why don't we call this a new slate and say, this is post-ex-Sabrina. She's starting a new chapter. She's got a lot of life ahead of her. We're going to go into this thing completely debt-free with $15,000 in the bank. You hear me? Okay. Yes. Now that we have a foundation, now we can begin investing for the future and rebuilding what we've lost. How sure are you that that money is gone? Did he spend it? What did he do with this money? Well, I can't get that answer because I've tried. And as soon as I stood up to get an answer, it became from, oh, I went to stock. Oh no, I went into a real estate investments. Now he's telling the attorneys that I agreed on putting it in a business and that business went defunct. Okay. I'm dumping money to get discovery and it's not happening. And I don't want to dump any more money on the attorneys. If this is a lost cause and this guy's a piece of work, then I would move on and just start investing with your current income, which how much are you making a year? So I had to take up a W-2 to stabilize in the last two years of this work cases. So I make 50K gross with the W-2. And then I have my own business that brings in 75K in growth, but I only pull about 20 to 30. Okay. So we'll say you make 80 grand a year? Yes. Okay. So you will be in baby step four if you follow what we told you. Pay off the debt, park the 15K, call that your emergency fund. Maybe you want to add a little bit to it to get to three to six months of expenses, maybe six months since you're a single mom with a special needs kid. But 15%, that's 12 grand a year you would be investing. So we're going to do a thousand bucks a month from 54. And likely the truth is you're going to have to work longer than you wanted to, right? To maybe let's say 68 or 70. Is that fair? And you're starting with zero in retirement, correct? Okay. You could have over half a million dollars from 54 to 70 investing that grand into mutual funds inside of retirement accounts. Okay. I'd love to know more about the business. You said you're grossing 75, you're only taking out 20 to 30. Does that mean that you're stocking away what we would call retained earnings, or that's all you have to be able to take out as a net? Well, I'm a little funny on those numbers just so you know, because I'm new in the business. It's like my third year in the business. So I do like owner draws that are not consistent. Okay. Is the business fairly healthy though? What I'm saying is, is it mostly profit for you or is it running really tight? It's mostly profit for me because I don't have overhead. What's the business? Tell me in five seconds what the business is. Professional home organizer. I help people declutter and organize. Isn't that fascinating? You're the professional organizer and you don't have a grasp on your own numbers. Get yourself a good bookkeeper. I'm not chastising you, but I am saying you have it in you. You want to know those numbers because I see a great path. The reason I'm asking these questions is you grow that business, George, I see tremendous potential for you to grow. Scale that thing? To scale it, pay yourself more after you run through the advice George gave you. But this is an opportunity to play catch up. Get a good tax pro. Go to ramsaysolutions.com. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.