Timeshare Companies Are The Last Legal Fraud in America!

this is the ramsay show [Music] you can be intentional about your character you can have money and a career you are the hero in your story live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions broadcasting from the dollar car rental studios it's the ramsey show where debt is dumb cash is king and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the bmw as the status symbol of choice i'm dave ramsey your host flying solo today here on the ramsey show we're here to help you with your life and your money open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five that's triple eight eight two five five two two five before i jump in with the callers i wanna put a call out the third hour we're gonna spend the entire hour talking about one of the scummiest most horrible industries in america today they rip people off they mistreat their customers like no other timeshares there's 60 people in the lobby watching my show right now and when i said that all of them nodded because we all know and yet you still go to their presentation to get a free night at the beach that's like going into the tiger cage after the tiger hasn't eaten for three weeks because there's nothing greedier than a timeshare salesman you go into the tiger cage and you have to pet the tiger for two hours and not get eaten in order to get a free pass at the zoo here's an idea avoid the zoo avoid the tiger neither one of these are going to be good for you if this is the only way you can get to go to the zoo or just pay the bill to go to the zoo that's called buying a freaking hotel room instead of getting yourself ripped off after you had a six-hour presentation where they would not let you out of the tiger cage until you got screwed see now i'm about to do the whole show this segment and i'm not supposed to do that anyway if you've been ripped off by timeshares you have an inside information on timeshares which is like everybody in america apparently it's a multi-billion dollar business and they have officially pissed me off now they've officially pissed me off and so uh we're gonna go to war mikey hope you're ready bubba that's the president of diamond his name's mikey his actual name's mike i call him mikey we've been having a little discussion on twitter about what a freaking crook is and so these guys have got to stop this and you people have to put them out of business by quit working with them so we're going to do a little discussion about the timeshare business until they go to their knees because i'm going to turn 22 million of you people loose on them because they have been screwing people long enough and getting away with it because of their financial muscle and they try to squash anybody and they've been coming at me and that was a dead gun mistake was a dead gun mistake bought and paid for crap so here we go boys and girls if you have a thing call in and the phone number is triple eight eight two five 825-5225 or email us at daveonair ramseysolutions.com and you can be part of this third hour and we're going to have a party a timeshare screw you party that's what we're having it's time for them to quit screwing you people and we're going to bring it up and talk about it in detail it is unbelievable how scummy this business is and how nasty bad the executives in these companies are their personal lives oh my god filth trash and nastiness you ought to be ashamed of yourselves the way you people behave and it's no wonder because it shows up in your product that you have no character that's how it works so game on boys here we go open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five that's triple a eight two five five two two five bud's gonna start us off this hour in boston hey bud how are you ah i'm better than i deserve i hope um dave i'm really hoping that you can help me out with a with a situation that is actually making me physically ill oh my goodness um i want to preface this by saying that i absolutely adore my family and i'm trying to do my best by my dad but my brother and i get along best when there's a state line between us um my wife and i have a small lake house that's been in our family since the 1960s we've been renting it out for the last several years um but it doesn't generate enough income to offset the mortgage and expenses but it's been better than just having it sit there unused how did it and how did it end up that you own it if it's been in the family um my grandparents bought it in 1962 when the first grandchild was born my parents bought it from them when my grandfather passed away my parents were going to put it out on the open market and i was trying to keep it in the family so my wife and i bought it from them okay um we've been talking over the last couple of years about selling it and unfortunately circumstances changed a little bit last year in that my father who built the cabin that's on the property passed away last august and i'm i'm now finding myself under increasing pressure from my mother and my brother to sell it to him for substantially less than market value and they want me to allow him to lease to own it both of which to my detriment due to capital gains and not being able to get out of the mortgage my mom is struggling with letting it go even though it hasn't belonged to her directly since 2005 and she doesn't use it i need to get out of the mortgage because i promised my dad i would take care of her and not owing that debt i can assist my mom financially for the remainder of her life kovit took away her small job she's living on social security how dad's illness cracked and my brother is a spendthrift he has a he lives in a mobile home he has a fifth wheel camper that he owes on and he does not need a lake house okay no and he is also retired so what's making you physically ill is is that these people who have absolutely no rights to this property whatsoever are trying to dictate to you what you do with this property and everything that they dictate to you is against good wisdom for them or for you because we're your brother to buy this he can't afford it it would not be a blessing to him right and if he leases it from you and he doesn't pay the lease payments now we know we've got a future problem duh right so really you already know what you have to do but it's just it's just the broken it's just it's just it's just that everybody's going to be pissed off when you do it yes and that's it no matter what i do i lose because i don't want to alienate my mother for the last few years of her life um if i don't put it on the open market and get fair market value for it my wife will be unhappy with me and this doesn't matter no no no no no okay the the first thing we got to do is the principle is what is the best thing to do with this property for your brother what is the best thing to do with this property for your mother what is the best thing to do with this property for your wife what is the best thing to do with this property for you the answer is the same to all of those questions whether they get it or not i'm not trying to please your wife i'm not trying to please your mother i'm trying to say on the principle on principle i want to do the right thing because the best thing for your mom is for you to get in financial condition so you can help her the best thing for your brother is for him to not to continue to over obligate himself the best thing for you is to get out of this thing dude you got to sell this now is somebody going to be pissed off probably i don't think we're going to stop that from happening but that's not up to you that's up to them you don't need to be nasty or mean you just say gosh i'm so sorry honey if i sold you this thing you wouldn't be able to pay the payments and it would not be a blessing to you i know it breaks your heart when it leaves it breaks my heart when it leaves mama i'm so sorry i can't take your uh your other son who's an enabler and as codependent as he can be and take care of him i can't do it and you know this is what's best for everyone involved i'm going to be the grown-up in the room [Music] and then if you guys want to have a little temper fit in the corner you don't have to [Music] stop paying your overpriced wireless provider and switch to pure talk they use the same network as the larger providers for much less for just thirty dollars a month get unlimited talk text and six gigs of data with no contract the average family saves over seventy dollars a month by switching to pure top just go to feartalk.com and enter the promo code ramsey to save 50 off your first month pure talk simply smarter wireless [Music] thank you for joining us america open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five well we just came back from dallas our entree leadership summit event was off the chain george w bush was a stand-up comic he was absolutely so fun so smart so compassionate and so i mean funny funny he doesn't he's painting now if you didn't know and we're talking when he came off and i told him i said mr president that painting stuff doesn't work out i think you can do the stand-up comedy that was funny and so he kept the audience in in stitches he was uh he's a lot of fun it was a lot of it's a great event with some world-class speakers and teachers on business the entree leadership summit is for small business owners and leaders and you come and learn how to lead your business run your business better it was incredible i'm exhausted it was uh three 16 hour days back to back to back to back to back everything in the world we were running a gun and i did sessions on two two days and a small one to close the small talk to close the event out and it was just it was so emotionally draining because it was so good you know when you're laughing really hard you're crying occasionally and you're jacked up and pumped up it just takes it out of you so hey we're doing it again we're going to be in orlando next year may 22nd through the 25th we've now launched entree summit for sale we put it on sale when we were there in dallas last week and it is not quite sold out yet we almost sold it out while we were in dallas but uh there'll be about 3000 of us in orlando um may 22nd through the 25th of 2022 uh pat lencioni will be back with us speaking dr henry cloud jade simmons who's a classic concert pianist and wonderful speaker uh my friend will garrida or gadara gedera i always say his name wrong he's my friend but i do say his name wrong he uh started and ran for years the number one restaurant in the world very interesting story jay leno will be with us uh jamie kern lima who started it cosmetics and uh one of the youngest female billionaires sold it uh and uh cashed out dr john dolone will be speaking christy wright will be speaking ken coleman will be speaking if you're a business owner or a senior leader and you want to be in the room you'll learn more and get connected to more entree leaders than than you can possibly imagine the energy in the room was incredible it will be incredible it was the first time most of these folks have been in a group of people again and so i they were all acting like they were teenagers who snuck out the window at night and like the adults were going to come in and stop us from doing it or something it was uh it was so fun we had a blast so if you're interested in the few tickets that are remaining uh just text summit 244 222 summit to 44222 this will be an off the chain event our question today comes from blinds.com a wonderful company i'm so proud to endorse and have for many years find out for yourself why they're they are the number one online retailer of quest custom window coverings and it's not just because dave ramsey endorses them it's because they do a great job you get free samples free shipping and with the new promos they run every time you can save more always use the promo code it's magic ramsey today's questions from tracy in alabama i have a rental property for which i'm currently holding a mortgage i've been debating on refinancing you're not holding a mortgage you owe a mortgage okay i've been debating on refinancing so i can get rid of pmi that's good i've read about a cash out refinance and it seems there are some benefits that go along with that is that a good idea well tracy this is the dave ramsey show where we talk about getting out of debt not into more debt because that is the shortest path between where you are and wealth cash out means you're going to borrow more than you currently owe you're going the wrong direction miss tracy and so uh no uh you you need to refinance it and get rid of the pmi or maybe you need to sell it if you need some cash maybe you're too broke to be a landlord that's a possibility too real estate is only a blessing when it makes money well i rent it for 750 of my payment is 650 you are losing money darling i know it sounds like 100 profit but it's not in the real world when you count vacancy and credit loss meaning they don't pay when they're supposed to oh and by the way that 3500 heat and error went out and you make 1200 a year it takes you three years to recoup that you're not making money on a hundred dollar cash flow you're losing money this is a liability it is not an asset your real estate is not a blessing it's a curse sell it if that's you if you've got a really nice big fat cash flow then get the stinking thing paid off and quit asking me about borrowing more on it and going further in debt that's going the wrong direction kiddo don't do that sarah's with us in boston hi sarah welcome to the ramsey show what's up hi dave thanks for having me it's a pleasure to be on the show today i'm honored to speak with you ma'am how can i help yeah so a little bit about myself i'm 27 years old i do have a degree i did have the luxury of my parents paying for that degree and i do have i don't have any debt so definitely a blessing yes i also i also have about sixty thousand dollars saved um in my savings account good for you um thank you and i have a very good job a very stable job so um my question for you is i have actually not invested any of my money so it's just kind of sitting in my bank account and that's including like anything for retirement so pretty much no investment whatsoever um so my question for you i guess is so how do you suggest i start investing my money would it be with a portion of what i've already saved within that 60 000 range or do you think i should start investing 15 of all future um i guess paychecks because i know from your baby steps uh 15 is what you recommend yes ma'am what do you mean so i make about a hundred thousand dollars a year good for you well done what do you do for a living um i work in software sales good so oh you got a great future and a great career yeah you're rocking it kiddo excellent okay so what i am going to do is just go back to those baby steps of that 60 000 we need to set aside three to six months of expenses in a separate account for your emergency fund i'm gonna pick a number and just call that 20 grand just for discussion purposes you can decide what it is later okay okay but that's over there just for when it rains and kiddo it will rain someday okay oh i know well yeah so we're going to set that aside say pandemic yeah it can happen i mean things can happen so we're going to set aside an emergency fund now i got 40 000 and then we answer your question with that okay we move on to baby step four which is fifteen percent of your income going into retirement which is fifteen thousand dollars a year and you're making a hundred grand at 27. if you only do that the rest of your life and never get a raise which would make you a loser if you never get a raise in your whole life you'll be a loser would you agree with that i agree okay so yeah so if you only invest 15 000 a year in good growth stock mutual funds in your 401k with a match or without imagine a roth ira or roth 401k you will have tens of millions of dollars when you get to 65. yeah so you're so so you're set if you just play through and don't screw this up and marry some guy doesn't want to work or something you know that kind of stuff right so you got you got this going on i'm so proud of you you're doing so good now once we said that then that leaves us 40 grand do we need that to become wealthy no we just established that we don't and so i'm gonna use that as your down payment on your first home even if you're not ready to buy a home right now we'll just keep piling it on there above the 15 and we call that baby step 3b where we're saving for a house which you've already done it so whenever you get ready to buy a house you'll have 40 or however much more you add to that not counting the fact that you're putting 15 000 aside because you're very frugal you make a lot of money but you're very frugal and careful with your money you've done a great job you are your parents child they did a great job saving money so you don't have debt yes exactly that was my that was my next question to uh to see if it would be smart to um to put the rest of that money into real estate now i think it'd be wonderful for your first property that you live in and a 15-year fixed rate on the mortgage where the payment's no more than a fourth of your take-home pay and there's no hurry you could do that next year you can do that in two years you're 27. you've got time you can do this don't panic everybody gets house fever and that house fever causes your brain to quit working and then you buy something you shouldn't buy and you pay what you shouldn't pay and then you call me up later and go i can't believe i did that well just don't get house fever if you get a house figure take a long cold shower it'll wash it off just calm down this is the ramsay show [Music] hey folks i got a great option to help you pay for your education the army national guard the army national guard believes you are the next greatest generation because you have proven that even in adversity that you have what it takes to succeed that's why they offer benefits like tuition assistance career training and a paycheck to help you avoid debt no matter what your goals are the army national guard can help you get there visit nationalguard.com to find out more [Music] in the lobby of ramsey solutions on the debt free stage laura is with us hey laura how are you i'm good how are you dave better than i deserve welcome where do you live i am from wyandotte michigan all right and that is near detroit yep perfect cool well good to have you thank you it's great to be here how much debt have you paid off i paid off one hundred and fifteen thousand four hundred dollars way to go and how long did this take you 33 months wow and your range of income during that time i started at 72 000 and last year i made 86 000. cool what do you do for a living i am a physical therapist ah pt pt you're doing good for a pt out of the gate because you must have just started i did just start a few about three years ago so i'm guessing this is pt school it is it's all student loans every bit student loans and you knocked off 30 grand a year for three years over 30 grand almost 40. wow good for you i mean you've been living on nothing yup absolutely you can ask any family or friends i just showed up yep i showed up that's it all you've done is work yep pretty much yeah was it worth it absolutely how you feel now that you're free it is it truly is a freedom i think i didn't expect it that as soon as i paid off my debt i thought to myself you know it wasn't that bad and then i thought what are you talking about this took 33 months of basically just doing everything i had to do just to pay it off yeah wow so it's been awesome you've been hitting it i mean you've been hitting it three to four thousand dollars a month is it steady like that or did you have some big chunks or something anything happen um it was pretty steady but there was a time um in my story of when i paid off a good about eight grand from my emergency fund okay so that was pretty helpful but apart from that it's just grinding how long you've been out of school i've been out of school since december of 2017. so about three years three so you started almost immediately yep i started in march of 2018. okay what what prompted you to do this because most of your fellow graduates are still languishing deeply in debt right absolutely they say that their student loans are like i hope biden helps me yeah instead of me helping me absolutely i have conversations like that all the time but um in march of 2018 was when i got my first job and i knew that i wanted to pay off my debt so i was just kind of throwing money at it but i didn't really have a set plan and that year december i also got another job in a hospital just working as a physical therapist so i was still you know just throwing money at it throwing money at it but didn't really have a set plan and then in june of 2019 my mom had said you know what i really think you need to listen to dave ramsey he has a lot of what you have to say or i love your mom yeah she's she's great she's here but um so she had just really encouraged me you know you need to listen to him you need to listen to him he's got some good principles so i said okay i will i googled you i listened to a podcast then another podcast and then another podcast i bought the total money makeover audio book and i listened to that and now you have an addiction now it's really bad i talk all the time like who wants to talk about budgets so i had an every dollar budget app that i started using and then i finally had said okay how long will this actually take me and i had a set timeline so then it was a matter of okay it was supposed to be march of 20 excuse me 21 and so i was aiming towards that aiming towards that and then um in january of 2020 i had said that was when i gave the rest of my money from my emergency fund over to my loans and finally had the courage to bring it down to a thousand dollars and then covet hit in march but immediately after you gave away your emergency fund the world's biggest emergency yep and how did covet affect you um so it actually it was pretty tough i would say the first few months for sure because i'm from michigan so we got hit pretty hard so i normally am in a clinic but we had kind of lessened how much we would see patients so they pulled me into the hospital because i had that other job so i was able to still work but i did see some things that were not that pleasant i didn't get to work in the icu or anything but i was still in the hospital seeing patients and it was a very trying time absolutely but i fortunately kept my job and then i think it was maybe like may of 2020 and then i started delivering groceries because i couldn't pick up an extra shift at the hospital and then then it went back to my full-time job at the clinic and then i think maybe june or july i was able to start picking up shifts again at the hospital so i could work full-time and then work on the weekends and by june i was like okay how can i yeah how can i pay off my debt as quickly as possible and then i started calculating recalculating because i was just obsessed with it and then i realized that i could pay it off by the end of 2020 and i said well nobody's doing anything anyway i'm literally missing out on nothing so it actually gave me this motivation and this drive because it was something that kept me going kept me moving and and then on the three years to the date that i graduated pt school i paid my last loan off wow or the last little bit so where to go thank you so proud of you thank you it's been i know your mom's proud of you your dad's proud of you they're with you right they came to cheer you on yeah so you had good cheerleaders inside the family yeah absolutely so um and they're here too so my mom rose angela my stepdad scott we just made a friend isabel who actually just graduated college debt free last friday oh wrong we're giving her a little kudos too but um the other big supporter was my now fiance his name is ethan and he actually proposed to me the same month that i paid off my loans wow good december oh that marks that month forever it was wow huge that's amazing so proud of you thank you thank you well done okay you're so chipper and so happy and you were in the medical field through covid yeah you got out of debt through covid yes um what's the secret to getting out of debt i would say that it's worth it and it's your student loans don't have to be your ball and chain i try to talk to people about it all the time i say okay don't let me get on my soap box because then i just talk all these things dave ramsey but it really it is worth it and you just got to find a goal and you got to set it you got to know a timeline so then that way you know what to work towards and then just race yourself to the finish line yeah if you can put a date down and actually have calculated it and it is logical there's something about just marking it off then that keeps you going absolutely yeah that that's versus uh someday i'd like to no you'll never no you got it you got to put a date certain on stuff yeah absolutely yeah very good yeah very very good thank you so good cheerleaders and you're cheering a bunch of other people on because i can't shut you up yeah i know it's it's bad i'll talk to ethan all the time hey so let's talk about our budget what about this what about this so it's my new favorite thing to talk about i love it very very cool what does ethan do for a living ethan is a naval officer oh wow okay i'll tell him thanks for his service and uh yeah you guys are gonna have a wonderful income with those two combined that's gonna be and no debt wow wow wow good good future for you yeah excellent job what was the hardest part of this for you um i would say before kovid it was more so about the not being able to spend the money going and going to events or people call me cheap pretty often or i just call myself cheap and so wanting to be able to do more things or spend more money but i would actually say during covet it was pretty helpful just because of the chaos of everything and everything else was uncertain but because i had this one goal it was actually my driver so something that was something i knew i wanted to do but was still pretty hard to do then became my this is what i can focus on directly because medically i mean there's a level of fear around all of that and in march of last year and nobody knew what they were doing uh everybody you know everybody's running around talking like they knew what they were doing but we figured out why they why they call it practicing medicine we watched that last year they're practicing and um but it's uh uh and so for those of you in the actual industry on the front lines it could it could be terrifying yeah but you've got a reason then to step forward versus if you didn't have a reason going in there in the middle of that man that would be hard because to be motivated to put you know step up and be front line wow that's tough but that gave you gave you a place to do it and you know the net result is you're not really at risk right the net result is that you were okay and that a lot of our fears were um overblown uh it's a very serious situation but still there's a lot of drama around it and uh so well done thank you very very very well done thank you good for you how old are you i'm going to be 29 on saturday hey not even 30 and you got all of this done well congratulations thank you well i've got a copy of the legacy journey which is the latest book i did on wealth and that's where you're going okay and then we've also got a copy of the total money makeover for you to give away absolutely i've already got people in mind i'm going to give it to so perfect very perfect all right laura from the detroit michigan area 115 000 paid off in 33 months making 72-86 she did it during the pandemic shut up count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one i'm debt [Music] [Applause] free that's fun this is the ramsey show [Music] [Music] so [Music] thank you for joining us america this is the dave ramsey oh it's the ramsay show with dave ramsey today old habits are hard to break the phone number is triple eight eight two five five two two five silver silver's with us in los angeles hi silver how are you i'm blessed beyond measure hardware better than i deserve what's up so i have a lot of numbers to throw at you but first things first we um a little bit muffled can you speak directly into your phone please oh so sorry hold on is that any better yes ma'am thank you okay so um we are in a funky house situation and we were gifted half of a house we are purchasing the other half and it was in a trust so with the purchase um we have to owe the party the other half obviously when we first started we and just zillow estimated the house was going to go for 500 000. uh we did a gift of equity so we would pay her 250 and we did the loan for 260 because we do have a little bit of debt we needed good faith money so we didn't want to have to pay closing costs so we just wrapped that into our original escrow numbers okay i'm sorry i'm not you got to stop a second i i i got confused i apologize you have a home that you live in that you're selling um we are purchasing the other half we currently live there and we want to buy the entire house now okay so you own half and you th who owns the other half um a family member okay and you're buying them out yes is what you're doing okay and you need 250 000 to do that yes okay and um so now now i'm caught up i apologize i got lost there and so you need 250 000 and what happened uh so the appraisal came back because we did all this on a destination the appraisal came back for less so now we need to buy her out for 233 we're still going to wrap in our closing costs which is right around ten thousand so we were going to take the loan out for 243. okay we were approved for 260 well we were given the option that we could still take out that 260. so that's a 6 uh thousand dollar difference should we take out that um for the full 260 and use that money to pay off debt and just kind of wrap it into our mortgage no or should we just minimize to the 240. 243. the very minimum you can take okay how much of the debt do you have um we have 38 000 in debt but we have to have good faith money in the account while we're purchasing the house so 10 000 of that once the house is finished is going to go straight towards the debt how much is in your account for good faith money a little over ten thousand but we also have um like that's just in our savings account we have our uh emergency fund and then um we're just kind of slowly paying because we can't pay anything off until the house is purchased yeah you already have the house purchased you just have to buy this person out now do you have a mortgage on it currently no the house has been taken so it's worth it it's worth a half a million dollars and you're putting a quarter of a million into it roughly right yes okay i'm catching up all right but you have enough in your savings once this smoke all clears and the mortgage is closed to pay off all of your debt uh most of our debt how much is in your emergency fund um we have well not counting the good faith money so technically all together we have twelve thousand in our emergency fund so to ten thousand and two thousand because you mentioned ten thousand earlier yes ten thousand and two thousand okay all right and so what we teach is the baby steps and baby step one is a thousand dollars anything beyond that you would use to begin baby step two once you get this closing done and you don't have to have the good faith money laying there and um you do the baby step two which is take everything out except the ten thousand or except one thousand so eleven thousand is going to go towards the 38 uh thousand what's the 38 000 in debt what kind of debt uh two cars and what's your household income um a little over a hundred and ten thousand okay you got an awful lot tied up in cars don't you yes we realized that after i found you a little late okay all right but if we take 11 off of 38 that puts us at 27 and with your income you should plow through that 27 within a year and a half okay and then you build your emergency fund which is baby step three and you move on towards building wealth which is four five and six and so on and so that that's what our system would lead you to do and our system is first going to lead you out of debt so that you have control of your most powerful wealth building tool which is your income to build wealth and so you know we got to get rid of those car debt and get your emergency fund in place to lay a foundation as soon as you get this cleared up on the house but no you don't borrow your way out of doubt on the mortgage you don't finance your cars on a home mortgage which is really what you're asking me in essence no i would not do that elizabeth is in knoxville hi elizabeth welcome to the ramsey show hi dave oh my gosh i love you so much oh thank you you too how can we help okay so um i am currently working as a dietitian in a hospital and i've only been here for eight or nine months um there was a another position that came open very close to me about 20 minutes down the road and that is a significant difference it's about fifteen thousand dollars more if i i applied for the job i wasn't necessarily sure i would get it but they did offer it to me and it was about a fifteen thousand dollar rate and you make how much okay and this would take you up to ninety from 75 if i heard you right yes okay how old are you okay you're single yeah why would you not take the better paying job that's what i was thinking okay so if well something gave you pause something made you hesitate what was it because i didn't know or you were just too lazy to go to work or something you know that'd be bad but you're getting a substantial raise over a thousand dollars a month exactly okay yeah um now i do now i'm i'm a little further away from knoxville i'm actually uh more like harrogate tazewell area if you know where that's at i sure do so the position yeah so the position is um in kentucky so i would have to pay tennessee and kentucky license and i haven't figured out if that would actually be worth the difference um right and how far are you from the kentucky line 20 minutes i lived right right in here again okay you're right right there okay wow yeah huh well i guess you need to find that piece of information out because if it's an extra ten thousand dollars this is not nearly as appealing with the extra commute you're going to eat up the other five exactly yeah so i mean no it cost you ten thousand dollars more in licensing then we're not doing that i don't know what those licenses cost to you oh just my uh kentucky license no i meant taxes dave okay uh does kentucky i guess kentucky has an income tax they do tennessee does not okay well it's not a hundred percent it's probably five percent i don't know what it is but it's not usually state income taxes most of them like that are three or four or five percent so find out what it is and net it out and so really what you're gonna net is not fifteen thousand you're gonna net 15 000 minus federal taxes minus your kentucky income tax minus whatever extra transportation costs you have by commuting a little bit longer so you're probably more like a ten thousand dollar net if that's what it sounds like to me if you want to work there in that setting it's going to be another thousand dollars a month net still so probably i'm looking at it but it's just up to you don't make the decision 100 on money though it's quality of life do you want to make that drive is that a place you want to work is there a quality of people you want to work with is that a particular hospital going to be a good fit for you all of that they didn't double your income they offered you 15 000. this is the ramsey show [Music] hey it's kelly associate producer for the ramsay show this episode is over but if you heard about an event product or service and didn't have a chance to write it down don't worry we list everything you've heard about during this episode in the podcast show notes section or head to theramsieshow.com thanks for listening this is the ramsay show [Music] you can be intentional about your character you can have money and a career you are the hero in your story [Music] live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions broadcasting from the dollar car rental studios it's the ramsey show where debt is dumb cash is king and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the bmw as the status symbol of choice i'm dave ramsey your host i'm flying solo today thank you for joining us here on the ramsay show good to have you guys in the third hour the next hour we will be dealing with one of the scummiest industries in america today timeshares uh gross filth trash and nastiness horrible reputation everyone starts shaking their head and laughing when you start talking about them you guys are a joke in that business you're a joke and you're a nasty joke that has ripped a bunch of people off to the tune of billions of dollars and it's time you stopped so we're going to talk about you if you're time share scum so get ready going to be next hour if you have had experience with time sure scum and it didn't turn out well for you and you want to talk about it i'm going to give you just the place to do it right here you can call us at triple eight eight two five five two two five for next hour's show or you can email if you can't get through because the lines are jammed right now uh just go to dave on air at ramseysolutions.com put timeshare scum in the subject line and uh we'll give you a chance to talk and tell your story as to what happened and the time that they screwed you like they have half of america so there you go hope i wasn't unclear on how this is going to go down um it's not like this is an objective thing i'm right there's scum and we're going to tell everybody it's how it's going to work okay so uh dave on air at ramseysolutions.com john starts off this hour in toronto hey john what's up in your world hey dave thanks for taking my call sure how can i help uh so i'm 21 years old just graduated from school congratulations what's your degree in uh paramedicine good what are you gonna be making uh 40 bucks an hour good good for you yeah so i have thank you i have about twenty one thousand dollars in loans about seven thousand dollars in my savings and the interest on the loan is only about fifteen dollars a month so i'm kind of wondering should i be dumping 90 of my paycheck into paying off my student loans or kind of paying half on student loans and half in the savings account kind of thing and the savings account pays nothing um it's just like a student savings account right now so it's nothing i have to set up something better yeah nothing yeah and so we're going to not pay off the student loans because they don't charge a lot and we're going to save money and make nothing yeah that's pretty much what i'm doing right now [Laughter] yeah so when you're 31 uh i think you're going to be really glad that i kicked your butt and told you to pay off your student loans immediately don't screw around with these things and here's the thing you're correct mathematically and that the interest is not that high but there's another interest that you're paying and it's the weight of them hanging around your neck that makes you even question the situation you can feel the weight across the tops of your shoulders and runs down your back and occasionally it manifests itself in a headache yeah you have a physical reaction to debt you have an emotional reaction to debt you have a spiritual reaction to debt that has nothing to do with mathematics but it does affect your life and the quality of your life and you'll know that i'm right about this when you're free of it and you feel light and airy and wow i had no idea this feels so nice the ritual's over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender when a slave is set free they are free indeed so set yourself free young man as fast as you possibly can that's what i would do aaron is with us in denver hi erin welcome to the ramsay show thank you sir for having me um long time listener you've helped me get through a lot of stuff in the past and hopefully you can help with situation now thanks how can i help today yeah uh so 30 years old me and my wife we're looking at selling our houses you know the market here in denver is pretty crazy we've got some pretty solid equity in the house we have currently upwards of 300 000 looking to buy a new house and we're given a couple options um from the lender that we're working with and one of them i'm extremely unfamiliar with i've owned several houses traditionally done just a fixed interest mortgage they're offering me what's called an all-in-one loan and i just was curious have you ever heard of that good bad situation what what do you have to say i've not heard of it it does sound like a brand particular to that lender what does it entail so how they're marketing it is it's basically a savings account that the balance in the account reduces the interest by that amount so you know we have about fifty thousand dollars in cash that we keep in the account at all times so that would basically reduce the interest that's charged on the account the thing i don't like about it is it's a variable interest rate right now it's around three and a half you know versus i can get a 1.99 on a 15-year fixed um but it has potential to go up from there it's kind of a sliding rate so the math you know they provided me a spreadsheet that said it'll save fifty thousand dollars over the life of the loan or something you know something like that but um it's just kind of a new territory too yeah if you put the fifty thousand dollars as an extra down payment on the house and you get out of debt that much faster you're gonna make save a lot more than their spreadsheet gave you that's what i figured i'm an engineer so i'm pretty good with math and i've tried to run a bunch of different scenarios and ended up being awash basically and here's the other thing here's the other part of that is there's there's a part of the math that's hard to put in there and it's the analysis of risk that the more debt you have on the house obviously the higher your payment is and so the more risk you have the longer you're in debt the more risk you have and the higher the ratio of loan to value is the higher your risk is uh and that it's hard to put that to an actual math figure but that's common sense we know that to be true because you and i have walking around since right we know that if i owe more money i have more risk duh you know so uh but but it's hard to actually put an actual dollar figure to that with the way we do see that play out in reality and where we can measure it is like when we did the the ramsey team did our ramsey research study on millionaires and we studied 10 000 millionaires we didn't find a single one that used a technique like you're talking about to become wealthy not one correct instead we found the typical millionaire all the data tells us that the typical millionaire quickly gets out of debt average pays off their home in 11.2 years uh which means that some do it sooner some do it longer but that was the average among the 10 000 millionaires none of them were sitting around going i'm going to figure out a way mathematically to borrow my own money back and pay a little higher interest rate on a variable and spreadsheet says and you know all this crap that they're telling you right with this product so this product stinks to high heaven dude run from it bottom line you knew it you could feel it in your bones but you hadn't figured out way to put a math number to it yet but i just gave it to you data says don't do it this is the ramsay show [Music] [Music] [Music] what makes our show unique is that we genuinely care about our listeners we're intentional about choosing the best advertisers to recommend blinds.com is no exception they offer high quality window treatments at unbelievable prices and they make it simple to shop blinds shades and interior shutters with easy online ordering free shipping and a guaranteed perfect fit go to blinds.com and take advantage of this week's special savings [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you for joining us america this is the ramsey show we're glad you're here open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five if you live like no one else later you can live and give like no one else there's a price to be paid for winning no discipline seems pleasant at the time but it yields a harvest of righteousness our team is just giving away my best-selling stuff i mean this is crazy next to nothing almost we are running an epic two-day sale right now good gracious that means you can get up to 80 percent off books bundles and envelopes and give a life-changing gift springtime graduation season wedding season father's day is coming up you name it if you're ready already budgeting and you know the baby steps we want you to live and give like no one else these sales are great opportunities to stock up on gifts for people that really need it two-day sale includes audio books starting at five dollars oh my gosh the starter envelope system for budgeting only five dollars bundles lots of the bundles on the site up to 80 off and the update ramsay plus marriage bundle which includes now the know yourself money assessment which we just launched two weeks ago man these are deals use this opportunity to give and live like no one else you may just change someone's entire life and if you're trying to get out of debt well you can start right here shop this epic two-day sale at ramseysolutions.com store ramsey solutions dot com slash store alex is with us in new york city hi alex welcome to the ramsey show hey dave how are you doing better than i deserve what's up uh just a little background i graduated college recently i have a full-time job going and um i just wanna i have minimal liabilities the work from home situation and i want to invest aggressively uh as early as i can and i'm interested in investing in rental properties but as you know real estate in this region is you know astronomical so i was looking into um out of state our goods were you know my money would be certain and you know i have a better opportunity to pay all cash for these rentals and i just kind of want to get your thoughts on that what do you make uh 70 000 how old are you 22. okay and so how much do you have saved uh i'm about 40 000 saver now i don't know the student ones that like i i definitely plan to pay those off of the check like very very soon so it's about ten thousand students you live in manhattan uh i live in new york area not not in the end where do you live um i live in staten island okay all right cool all right i'm just trying to figure out how you was making it on 70 grand dude i mean i kind of know that market um yeah uh so it's a good income but it's a very expensive place to live as you know even staten island but nowhere near like manhattan so all right hey um no look here here's the problem and i own a bunch of real estate as you probably know alex and i love real estate as you probably know and i've had really bad experiences without a with rental properties that i cannot lay my hands on i need to be able to drive by them look at them and even if someone else is running them for me i i you just make better decisions if they're within you know shooting distance here where you can get to them um it just sets you up for a problem and if if you have a rental property that goes bad it could set you back more than then three of them going good could set you forward and so that's the problem i you know real estate requires it's got a hassle factor to it as an investment it requires involvement and uh no you cannot just stand back and watch someone else run it and it all work out uh it just i mean you can have a property manager and there are some good property managers but no one manages your stuff like you do so you've got to look over the shoulder of the property manager to be sure that things are being done right and go how much did we pay for that hot water eater say what you know that kind of stuff and you got to have you know and when that's three four hours away from you or eight hours away from you or something that just becomes very tenuous and it sets you up for a high potential to have a bad experience in real estate rather than a good one so i would tell you not to do that i would tell you instead let's just pile up our money and and let's see where your career takes you and see where you end up landing and let's just start investing i would just use mutual funds at your age to begin to build it up you don't have enough to buy it anyway today so it doesn't matter it's all theory at this point uh chris is in houston hi chris welcome to the ramsey show hey dave it's an honor to speak to you thanks for having me sure what's up hey my wife and i our family we're in baby steps four five and six we've got a fully funded emergency fund of 30 000 and the household that we live in has natural gas and electricity energy sources so does not keep getting but i keep getting letters in the mail from our natural gas provider stating that any pipelines that run exterior to the house we would be responsible for 100 out of pocket for any repair or burst and they're offering a plan for eight bucks a month that would um supply up to um and eight thousand dollar um policy coverage i bet i was wondering um if that would be a good idea to do absolutely not that's horrible okay that's what i thought but i this is the first household that we've ever lived in with natural gas and electricity so i just want to get your perspective yeah they're making a bazillion dollars on that they're making more on that crap than they are on gas oh my god that's what i thought yeah so let me kind of here's here's how i'm answering that question with such in with such emotion okay um in my life which i'm old i've owned over 2 000 pieces of real estate lots and lots of residential single-family homes are on that list i used to buy property that was trashed fix it up and resell it in my twenties and flip it in all of those pieces of property i have replaced plumbing and lots of them i've replaced i've had septic tank problems with lots of them i've had sewer lines running from the street that got busted up by roots from a tree growing next to them in lots of them lots of them not hundreds but enough of them that i remember it happening a lot okay i've bought houses that the wiring was bad in and we had to strip it out and put all wiring back yeah in all of those properties and i'm in middle tennessee and natural gas is very proper or are very prevalent in middle tennessee you'll see it in a lot of our homes i have it in my personal home now i have it in my lake house now okay right here in middle tennessee so it's natural gas is everywhere where i'm doing all these deals the vast majority of these houses would have had natural gas in them the number of times i have replaced a natural gas line from the street to the house out of all of those different experiences is zero oh wow okay beautiful so there's actually some data behind my going no way right yeah so that's what i thought too but i mean i'd be more likely to buy sewer line experience sewer line insurance than i would be gas line insurance and they don't know they don't sell that that i know of so um yeah that that's interesting god what will they come up with next to sell people unbelievable hey thanks for calling that's very interesting i appreciate that question the first time i've ever had that question i didn't even know they did that that's why so here's a good rule to remember on insurance of all kinds extended warranties of all kinds some insurance is ensuring something that's so expensive that you cannot afford to fix it your house burning down your car being totaled you die and your family loses your income these are major life-altering huge expensive things and you do need to buy insurance for life insurance homeowners insurance car insurance to transfer the risk that you cannot afford to take small items like a gas line from the street like getting an extended warranty at best buy on your big screen give me a break which is a throwaway item anyway by the way so no you don't buy those insurances because that's where they make all their money you only buy insurance on things that are large and that you need to transfer the risk that you can't afford to take the hit that's a good rule of thumb right there so the next time someone wants to do extended warranty say no thank you and you can blame it on me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you for joining us america open phones this hour triple eight eight two five five two two five in the lobby of ramsey solutions on the debt-free stage tim and shannon are with us hey guys how are you great dave thanks for having us absolutely where do you guys live suburb of chicago illinois okay wonderful so good to have you and how much have you paid off we've paid off 60 67 000 um and that took about 10 months good for you guys and your range of income during that time was one uh 175 good what do y'all do for a living i'm a police officer uh-huh and i work in hr all right very cool what kind of debt was the 67 000 a lot of normal stuff um we had some credit cards there may have been an engagement ring in there might have been um yeah and uh we had car loan and student loans okay it's kind of normal yeah how long you been married we got married the end of october okay so yeah about seven months almost so you were working on this before marriage we were we kept it separate we followed the principles everything until we got married and then we put it together and power became that and finished it up yes sir yeah very good so tell me the story how did you get started on all this so i got to give a little shout out to uh my employer the village of algonquin covet hit uh sat down with our chief of police um i'm the training supervisor for our law enforcement agency we said uh let's bring smart dollar to the police officers wow yep thank you so uh we instituted smart dollar uh went strictly for them and i had to go through the program first before i rolled it out to everybody else sure so i did it loved it fell in love had never really heard from me before and i did exactly what you said not to do i went home and told shannon sit down we're doing this and tried to shove it down her throat and that didn't go well but i taught you that in training school did they they did they did so reeled back though um we ended up going through smart dollar together and just fell in love it all made sense it all made sense we realized we were paycheck to paycheck we made way too much money for that to happen yeah for those of you out there that don't know smart dollar is our program that corporate america and some government agencies take in to make all of the financial peace stuff and all the every dollar stuff available to their team members like costco has had their entire company go through it as an example and obviously your wonderful police department went through it yeah thank you guys very much for that and it's called smart dollar it's a different brand because it's in corporate america and so that's why you don't always hear about it on the show very cool all right so shannon he comes in and screws this thing up what did you do you said you got to be kidding me a little bit yeah and then how did he finally get you back around after he screwed that up for me um it was once i understood more so the the underlying reason why he wanted to shove it down my throat i knew he was really you know just trying to be caring and as we were getting ready to prepare life as a married couple i know oftentimes people struggle financially in marriages and then that tends yeah so that was really important um so i know he he came from a loving standpoint so i think once i reframed why he was trying to shove it down my throat so much made more sense and yeah i ended up um purchasing the total money makeover without him knowing i know i tried to take some initiative wow and did some plastic surgery um like 48 hours after i binged uh your books wow oh yeah cut it all up so when you get in you get you got all the way in then all right so once once once we got past that initial hurdle then we're we're joining forces and going for it very very cool we drank the kool-aid good and you did it i mean you're professionals you paid off 67 000 worth and in addition to that i'm sorry uh we also cash flowed about um additional fourteen thousand dollars for our coveted wedding um and thank you and to the other ramsey personalities who said why wait until you know why why push the wedding off because of covid so because of you guys we actually got married a lot sooner than we anticipated so um yeah yeah it was yeah so we cashflowed the wedding cash flowed part of a graduate degree so that was all besides the 67 so we were really going after it for a while yeah you were you make good money but you were really you you made you also made really good decisions yeah we were fortunate that we had a large shovel but um yeah the discipline still needed to be there oh yeah you've got to be intentional just the same yes sir yeah very cool well so as an hr director now you've got to take smart dollar to your place right oh my gosh i would love nothing more than to do that we're still working on that but i yes one day hopefully sometimes it's a challenge very cool guys very cool so you tell people the key to getting out of debt is what now for me it was the budget um i am the nerd in the relationship mm-hmm so and that was one thing to where i mean we didn't spend anything but i'm checking it every day it's like something was going to change but it didn't to see the numbers to see where everything added up that really made sense we nerds get comfort in numbers that don't change correct correct i knew i didn't spend anything yesterday but i need to check it again today to make sure we're still good still i'm good with that nothing happened but it was the budget but then it was for me it was additionally it was just the why and knowing that we were going into a young marriage um being on the same page you know it was our counseling per se our premarital counseling that's recommended by you and just put it all together it was like hey we're on the same page we can do anything wow yeah very cool and i think saying no is also probably one of the most challenging hurdles through this whole process so learning to just you know internally when to say no to yourself that's probably the hardest piece that uh it's a weird thing it um it's very difficult when you do it but it's very satisfying a day later a hundred percent it's the discipline that came along oh yeah and everybody's journey was different but covet actually our vice was eating out all the time oh yeah didn't have that option up by us we saved a bunch of money there and it was just one thing after the other and it was snowballed into something beautiful yeah that's that's interesting yeah and it's it's you know it's not saying no forever it's saying no for a little while uh live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else now you have no debt and you make a ton of money what are you going to do next well just haven't been married you know we have a family in the future we got lots of other plans and you know really we could do anything we want now yeah yeah i mean it's amazing where you are this is very cool plus you have this sense that we can do anything because you just did a big thing yes during a very difficult time correct i mean you plowed through and knocked it out very cool what was the uh who were your biggest cheerleaders each other i know for a fact we held each other accountable that was huge it's do do we need to do this do we need to spend that well no did you check the budget so it started internally and the reminders on the why um helped but then um for me at least going to work every day knowing everybody else was working the smart dollar program some took it more serious than other and you know um i was also the one keeping track of everybody's progress in a sense but um that really helped and as well our other good friends uh that turned us on to you a while ago uh teddy and stephanie crawford back in chicagoland area they were the ones that had all the positive words of wisdom and everything throughout you got to have those yes that's very cool yeah so as the trainer you were getting the overall report not individual individual things but you said saw what the whole police department was seeing correct we don't get into their you know we don't get their finances or anything but it's the point system to know who's engaging watching your lessons uh the baby steps are obviously included so we had people working those um and you're seeing overall progress as well overall progress we're getting feedback and that was the conversation we had with the chief and the village manager hey did it work the first year do we want it again this year yeah thumbs up across the board oh wow thanks very cool i'm glad it worked that's a big thing and thanks for what you do excellent job tim and shannon chicago illinois we got a copy of the legacy journey our latest book about wealth that i wrote anyway latest book i wrote and uh and an extra copy of the total money makeover for you to give away so you can pay it forward so good good stuff tim and shannon chicago 67 000 paid off in 10 months making 175 between them count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one that's how it's done boom man how cool is that the whole police department gets the whole thing going new married couple gets it going this is just good stuff right here this is the ramsay show [Music] [Music] so [Music] welcome to the ramsey show i'm dave ramsey your host open phones a triple eight eight two five five two two five margie's with us in seattle hi margie how are you hi i'm good good how can i help um we're on baby step two and um my husband got served with his summons for a bad debt um and so after talking to some debt relief attorneys uh like four of them they suggested bankruptcy okay and we're about 33 34 000 in debt and credit cards and we have like a 11 000 loan on our car and about a hundred thousand dollars worth of student loans combined okay and and what's your household income um about 28 000 a year okay who's not working me why um my daughter is at home um with cold it and everything and my anxiety your daughter is how old seven [Music] and are you being treated for your anxiety yes okay in what way therapy [Music] yes okay all right well let me give you a couple of facts that we can walk through and then let's try to figure out how to help you okay okay fact number one student loans are not bankruptable okay yes i know so after bankruptcy you will still have a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt fact number two your household income is twenty eight thousand dollars y'all are starving to death and bankruptcy will not fix your income problems okay so after bankruptcy we get rid of credit card debt and by the way you don't have a car anymore or you still have a car payment one of the two if you don't give up the car you still got the eleven thousand dollars in car so really when it gets down to it if you're going to keep the car and reaffirm it it's called in a chapter seven bankruptcy then you would have thirty three thousand dollars in credit card that is all you're bankrupting yes and who served you um which credit card um the credit card was to credit one bank okay and how much do you owe them a thousand and six dollars okay all right um all right the third fact is that debt relief attorneys are generally not debt relief attorneys generally what they are as bankruptcy attorneys and if you ask a bankruptcy attorney if you're bankrupt that's like asking a dog if it's hungry yeah so the advice you were getting from a quote-unquote professional was self-serving advice on their part so these are the things that are disturbing me and and you know so we're getting advice from people that are you know want you to file bankruptcy because it's what they do you know they're a hammer so everything's a nail um if you're going to keep the car we're not filing bankruptcy on very much and really 1 000 is all that's triggering this and you have a household income of 28 000 which is less than half the annual income of the typical household in america and so i'm not shaming you i'm just saying you guys have an income issue i've been there myself one year in my life i made six thousand dollars okay so i know how it feels it ain't no fun what's your husband do for a living um he works at a car dealership doing what reporters um driving cars driving cars 40 hours a week um well on average right now 33. yeah and how old are you guys in our 40s okay all right and so for me to help you have a good life a decade from now i want to be able to paint a picture that gets rid of not only the immediate stress of this lawsuit but also gets rid of a hundred thousand dollars worth of student loan debt and allows you all to have the freedom can you imagine can you even for a second wrap your brain around what it would feel like in your home if you guys made sixty thousand dollars a year and had no debt i can i envision it yeah that's where i want you to go and that's where my mind takes me on answering your question when you when i start gathering the pieces of information up but there's a lot of things that are going to have to happen for us to live that dream together okay and i i am not a mental health professional and i do know that anxiety is real and i am not uh qualified to tell you when and if you can go back to work or what you could do but i am qualified to tell you that your family needs income and i am qualified to tell you 33 hours a week is not enough to work when your family is just broke your husband needs to get six more jobs especially since the one he has kind of sucks is that me and mean no but i mean it's a step up from where he was before so that's good then he needs to take let's take two more steps up because he's in his 40s and when he's in his 50s i don't want him making 28 000 a year driving cars do you no okay then we have to we have to intentionally take some steps up from here and part of that's cleaning off this debt who's got these degrees with a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt none of us what did you study um i did accounting um and i transferred school so my credits didn't transfer so i had to start all over and so that's kind of made it difficult at one point and what was the last job that you had um [Music] administrative assistant okay have you ever done accounting in the vote as a vocation yes okay what did what did you do um as an administrative assistant i did um partial accounting you helped them keep the books yeah yeah good okay because you do know how to do it you just didn't finish with the degree yeah good good okay so there's a possibility you start doing accounting for some small businesses in the area as you're working for yourself and doing that from home where you can keep your anxiety low maybe yeah i've been looking for work from home okay um career is it the going out thing that gives you anxiety what gives you anxiety um well a ton of things but um as for me getting a job it's more of the like i'm afraid of letting them down uh like not being able to show up okay i understand oh i see so if you had a uh an anxiety attack in the morning and weren't able to go to work then you'd feel bad about letting them down and probably get fired eventually for doing that right yeah yeah okay well that makes sense has that happened before um well it's happened where i haven't been able to um go out no but did lu you lost your job as a result no no my anxiety came after after i stopped working oh after you stopped working hmm yeah that's interesting okay i don't know anything i mean dr john dolone is not here to help me with this so i'm kind of trying to channel my inner dr d here but the um uh because i i know that what you're facing is real i do know that and i'm not questioning that but i'm trying to figure out a way to get you guys some income coming in so i would prescribe no you're not bankrupt just ignore this lawsuit they're not going to do anything what are they going to garnish your wages he's making money they're not going to do anything just ignore them and move on i know i would not file bankruptcy i will put you guys into ramsey plus for a year i'll pay for it let's put you into financial peace university get you on a budget uh but then you're all part of it is you've got to do some stuff to get your household income up or you're not going to make it this is the ramsey show hold on [Music] this is james childs producer of the ramsay show you can listen to all our shows with the ramsay network app on your smartphone browse by topic or even sync clips to your friends download the ramsey network app in your favorite app store today this is the ramsey show [Music] you can be intentional about your character you can have money and a career you are the hero in your story [Music] live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions broadcasting from the dollar car rental studios it's the ramsey show where debt is dumb cash is king and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the bmw as the status symbol of choice we're going to spend this hour talking about the scummiest business in america today the time share industry [Music] probably a close second would be payday lenders and we could put another p group of people or two in the list but these are the scum of the scum this is the lowest of the low they feed on people they take advantage of people basically they screw you the consumer everybody seems to know it but for some reason everybody keeps playing with the tiger i don't know why you keep playing with the tiger you go to the resort and diamond or windham or westgate or marriott invites you for a free night on the beach a free night in vegas a free night wherever or two but in return you have to give up five hours of your life in a timeshare meeting if you leave the meeting one minute early before they give you permission to you have to pay for your room so everyone seems to endure it but this is this is what you do i don't understand why you do this and so i'm going to try to convince you to stop doing this you go into this meeting this is like going this is like saying the zoo calls you up and says we will give you a one-year pass to the zoo if you will spend an hour in the cage with the tiger petting it but we need to warn you ahead of time that the tiger's not eating in several days and he's rather greedy and so you go in and say well i'm the one that will be able to pet the tiger and not get eaten so that i can get a free pass to the zoo it ain't worth it buy yourself a hotel room and don't go in the tiger cage but you do and then you spend twenty two thousand dollars fourteen thousand dollars twenty eight thousand dollars and you mortgage air because you don't own anything except access to their hotel room for a week maybe if you can get in and then maybe you pay cash for it which is even worse because now you own air officially that's paid off and you have abs and then you find out that they're going to raise your annual fees all the time these people are straight up scum this is a horrible product 97 of the people that buy a timeshare don't like their timeshare wish they hadn't done it have regrets would like to get out of it they think that the timeshare business like diamond and wyndham and marriott and westgate sucks they think they screwed me and they're a little bit ashamed to tell their friends that they got screwed by these people because they feel so dumb for going in the tiger cage because you go all along i knew they were screwing me but i still i just didn't have the wherewithal to say no enough times in five hours with the temperature cranked up to 82 degrees and they were waterboarding me they put you in a torture chamber and won't let you out i mean you have to be like a ba to bust out of there man you got to be just arrogant and angry to get away from these people once you put yourself in one of those rooms consequently the timeshare business has been sued and sued and sued and sued and sued and lost and lost and lost and lost and lost and lost catherine says in 2013 we were visiting the cancun resort in las vegas when we were told that diamond resorts which has now been purchased by hilton had taken over the membership that we had in two different timeshare companies we were asked to attend a meeting again where the sales staff told us that we needed to make a purchase so that we could continue to keep the equity we had already built up over the past 10 years what equity timeshares are worthless especially diamonds since that meeting we've been subjected to numerous update meetings where we've been pressured to the point where we felt we needed to make a purchase to be able to leave the room every time we told the staff we were already unhappy and that we could not afford to make another purchase yet again they assured us that with the new purchase all of our problems would be solved we tried to solve this with diamond and their representatives to no avail we feel we have been continuously preyed upon by diamond resorts stay away john says last march we drove from our home in michigan to florida but our reservations were canceled due to the pandemic after that we heard nothing during the summer we realized that the virus was continuing to be a problem and we would not feel comfortable to travel or stay in a resort we began calling and writing letters to windham asking them to consider extending our vip points into 2021 because of the unusual circumstances on december 1st we were finally informed that we would not they would not and our points would terminate at the end of the year we are also reminded that we could not make guest reservations meaning that we would have to use it personally we have been cheated out of the third year of our contract because of the pandemic and wyndham refused to recognize that the pandemic called for concessions we were vip members for 20 years we now have a very negative impression of wyndham and will never encourage anyone to deal with them in any way even for a one-night hotel stay windham by the way is spending a hundred million dollars purchasing travel and leisure and a rebranding from windom to travel and leisure and windham is a nationally known brand internationally known brand but they're going to do completely away with it you know why and they're spending 100 million dollars to do away with this nationally known brand why because it has so much negative connotation attached to it now because they've screwed so many people why is this hard to figure out mario's not far behind marriott vacation club sales people are super trained used car sales people they tell you how easy it looks and how easy it is to book trust me it's all fabrication i could not book a week in october 11 months in advance costs how about 20 000 for your week of time share 750 for annual maintenance fees 104 to trade week for points ninety nine dollars for interval membership eighty four dollars to book your week and oh yeah seventy nine dollars to cancel your week after canceling even due to death and immediate family you have 60 days to use your week at a resort good luck with that because you can't book it check the figures booking fancy hotels is much cheaper and you don't have to stay a full week in the same location and you get the week you want without booking a full year in advance stay away from marriott vacation clubs trust me signed a true sucker these are actual posts on the internet right now in the last few weeks if you've been screwed by the timeshare industry and you want to talk about it this hour that's what we're going to do baby we want to expose these crooks for who they are the phone number here is triple eight eight two five five two two five and you can't get out of them they're almost impossible to get out of oh well we'll release them horse crap you will not now you lied again unbelievable you're not releasing anybody you screw them and then you hold them and screw them over and over and over again it's unbelievable it's a shameful thing that you're doing and you continue to do it diamond marriott windham westgate the worst offenders if you have an offender of another type that's fine or if you just want to talk about one of those that you've worked for and you quit because you got tired of screwing people call me 825-5225 [Music] [Applause] [Music] we were drawn to christian healthcare ministries because we both had young families and we wanted to have more children and we had also just started a real estate company and needed to find health care coverage that would meet our needs we were attracted to chm because of its low monthly costs and the ability to negotiate medical costs down established in 1981 and accredited by the better business bureau chm is here to meet the needs of your growing family or small business check us out at chministries.org backslash budget we absolutely believe in it [Music] we're talking about the time share industry today one of the scummiest [Music] of all industries multi-billion dollars and boy do they throw their dollars and their weight around they try to crush anyone who comes against them they've been having a fit with me i can tell you that and uh and all they've done is just piss me off instead of silence me so i'll tell you a little bit more about that later if you have been a victim of timeshares or you own a timeshare or you used to work for them and you got tired of screwing people so you got out of there and you want to tell what really goes on behind the scenes we all know but love to hear from you the phone number is triple eight eight two five five two two five hal's got a horror story he's in evansville hey hal how are you i'm doing fine you dave good man tell me your story good well uh we bought back in the early 90s uh at westgate in florida and uh you know you talk about them strong strong arming you into buying it wasn't really like that for us they what they said made sense to us at first and and so we bought and we used it once or twice every you know a few years and just we decided it was time to get out of it would you please we tried and tried and and nothing that we said well they said that just yes how would you pay for it uh it's about 20 000. okay and so you used it a couple of times every every two or three years and then after how many dave ramsey is one of the worst uh investments i ever made in my life and after after how many years of using it a couple times every few years that did you want to get out oh i after the first five years we were trying we decided to try to get out of it so you had used it maybe ten times no not even that probably five times okay for twenty thousand dollars and you wanted to get out and what what happened well they said they do not uh uh buy them back they suggested that i either try to rent it or give it away to someone which is a joke too because you know no people that have heard about them know that that's not a good investment and no you can't give them away and so if you can't give it away it's not an investment at all exactly okay and there is no re uh resale market for these at all no you can you can go online and agree and look at what they are okay you can't even sell them for a dollar because people don't want to take over the dadgum fees exactly and then uh two about three years ago they hit us with a uh a thousand dollar uh special assessment i guess we're gonna do some painting and uh they so that you know there's nothing you can do about that either you know that's on top of what you're paying for maintenance and taxes every year and so when about three years ago when i was diagnosed with cancer for the second time uh two weeks after my wife was diagnosed with cancer i decided it was time to really start in earnest trying to get out of this thing so i made some contacts and started networking with people who were sympathetic with my situation and they referred me to an attorney who tried to help us the best she could and i ended up on a witness list in a lawsuit that that she was involved in and that was really when uh when westgate took notice when they saw my deposition and saw how damaging my testimony could be uh out of the blue one day they just called me and said uh i hear you want to get out of your timeshare here sign these documents and you're done that's how i got out i wish it was that easy for everybody but it's not right so you had good you had to get their attention by punching them in the nose in other words pretty much so you call them up and go i've got cancer my wife's got cancer and they said toughies exactly yeah and that and it wasn't that easy because it took me uh sitting on hold for 30 minutes uh you know waiting for someone to come online to to even talk to me and that was i wasted a lot of time on the phone but it was worth it in the end because i did get out but my poor dad has been has been dead for 12 years and i still get a bill every year for his maintenance and taxes and i hope you don't pay that oh no no no no no but they and i called him and told him that you know he's deceased his estate has been settled for two years and they don't care they just keep sending a bill so i keep throwing in the trash yeah so wow so where was this property uh we bought in uh uh orlando at uh it's westgate it was because it was at the west gate of disney ah that's where it was named oh and uh that's where the company was named i bet huh yes yes because they've got them all over now i mean they screw people in lots of towns now yes they do yes they do and we uh we're a little closer to branson missouri so we traded for a another additional fee they they allowed us to trade to that property uh about 10 years ago and uh so it was closer for us we did use that one a little bit more because we could drive to that one but uh it was still uh we just didn't use it and once we decided that we would uh much rather spend our time uh doing other things and and you're right you know if you want to change uh locations they'll let you do it for a fee it's 150 to change or even to change the week that you go yeah they'll nickel and dime you to death yeah yeah and now a thousand dollars to paint it yeah that comes up after you've already paid 22 000 for it and used it five times or twenty that was probably the straw that broke the camel's back was when we got that special assessment so how are you your wife's cancer how y'all doing we're doing great so you both recovered yes good and like i said i was i've i've had cancer twice and beat it both times so praise the lord for that one amen wow well i'm glad you're doing better i'm sorry for your situation but i appreciate you taking time and telling 22 million people westgate will screw you and even if you've got cancer they basically just hang up on you and they're not going to get out of it until you get involved in a lawsuit against them and then suddenly they go oh you said you want it out who knew which is exactly how all these guys act it's the only way you get out is you have to pound their face in because they're absolute scum hope i haven't been unclear you guys all right sandy's with us in hayes kansas hey sandy tell me your story about time shares well hi dave we were in florida in 1999 with our daughter who was actually cheering for hayes at a collegiate um competition down there and we were walking down the beach and the man came up and offered us a place to have some um free drinks and some stuff inside of the hotel and offered the girls a free bicycle rental and everything and so we went in and kind of got caught that way we um we had in much that day even though we had made up our minds before we went in we were showing you how that goes and um we ended up the previous caller spent a lot more money than we did we ended up buying in for only six thousand dollars but their way to get us to buy was by explaining to us that other people had to buy a week at a time and this time sure was done by points so we didn't ever buy a week we didn't buy a specific time frame we could go anytime and they would buy it back from us anytime we wanted to get rid of it and so that wasn't in writing was no well actually it was it was in writing it was uh you're cutting in and out honey you're going to speak directly into your phone sandy you're cutting in and out you're going to speak directly into your phone okay i'm sorry that's okay so we you said it was in writing that they would buy it back yes it was in writing and when we got ready to try to sell it back to them then they explained to us that sun tara had been bought out by diamond and diamond didn't have an agreement and so it was no longer it was mullenbloid and i asked him i said so you can change the contrast without even telling us if you're diamonds you can because diamond is god that's exactly what they implied to us that they were pretty much the end-all deal and they even told us when i we asked them nicely to buy it back i'm thinking that that was what we'd signed up for and um the guy told us he said you know we will take you to court for the rest of your life we will ruin your credit we will take your home we'll take everything but you cannot get out of this there is no way and so we just kind of gave up for another year or so and then i started look while seeing a lot of ads for it and we were afraid to be scammed again so we kind of just didn't do anything until i saw an ad for the time share exit team which had your your name um behind it and they got you out of it very confident you guys got us out of it i'm not tom sharrick's a team time sheriff's a team got you out of no time yes they did awesome that's cool well at least you got loose from diamond that's that's like man that's like getting loose from a concentration camp [Music] so [Music] we're talking about the out-of-control multi-billion dollar scummy timeshare industry screwing people left and right and getting away with it and nobody's in their face about it they're buying off government officials they're buying off media they're buying off everything trying to do this they've been after us trying to shut us up and it's not going to work as a matter of fact you're getting quite the opposite reaction i'm going to devote entire hours to pissing these people off because now they piss me off so it's a fair trade this from andrew about diamond resorts which was just purchased by hilton the ceo is a guy named mike flasky now mike mikey i call him mikey and i've been trading barbs he calls me davey uh on on twitter a time or two back and forth he stood up in front of the arda which is the timeshare association and said he was going to pledge a million dollars this year to putting any timeshare exit people out of business how dare someone try to get out of their timeshare after we've screwed them in other words my wife and i were in las vegas when we were approached by diamond resorts representatives asking if we'd be interested in receiving free tickets to dinner in a show as a gift for our attendance to a one hour presentation when we signed up our yearly income did not meet their minimum but the rep said don't worry which in hindsight should have been a huge red flag no honey a one hour presentation for the timeshare company should have been a one it should have been a red flag because they're usually eight hours at the presentation when the first offer was presented we told them no way we could afford it after four hours there it is of continuous better and one day only offers we finally gave in the employees led us to believe it would be an investment for us and our family if you sell timeshares by the way you're scum you should get a better job you should not be involved in screwing people and if you don't like me saying that that's because you're scum if you understand that i'm saying that you need to start looking for a job today doing something that's honorable the employees led us to believe this would be an investment for us and our family the one time we've used this membership we could not make reservations in hawaii like we desired and we ended up in vegas a little trade-off there both have sand uh we forced us into a mandatory member presentation where we were talked into upgrading since the representative told us we could not refinance or we could refinance with our bank at a lower rate we relented this is not possible you can't refinance at your bank because we don't own anything now we're stuck with something we cannot afford and diamond will not help us but if you're one of the few attorneys in america that will go and represent the consumer against the timeshare industry they will come after you they'll come after you the attorney christian is on the line he is in orlando he is an attorney and he works with other attorneys who've been sued for trying to get people out of their timeshares is that right did i say that right you did you got it dave and thank you for everything you're doing what in the world so you have people that are in the legal profession that are lawyers that sue a time share company to get people out of their contracts to abide by their contracts in some cases which lets people out and then they turn around and sue the lawyer these i'm sorry you cut out on me you cut out on me try it again sorry about that babe right now yes sir i am these timeshare companies don't want lawyers talking to them about arbitration or resolving things all they want is for time share owners to shut up and have annual maintenance fees doubled every year and my clients are just lawyers who they recognize that timeshare industry is the last legal fraud in america and now they're being shaken down in federal court these the big guys you said it i mean they're weaponizing the courts to shake down lawyers who help people get out of the last legal fraud in america it's shocking wow and so you turn around and you turn around and rep your client or other attorneys who are trying to get people out that's right i represent how has that grown how many of these cases have you done and how is the what's your success rate i i currently have probably 15 cases going on in state and federal court most of these cases haven't resolved we haven't even gotten to a trial you know why we haven't gotten to a trial dave because they want to beat you to death financially boom you got it they want to drag out the billable hours until you dry up and die they want to make these guys spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars defending themselves the the insurance companies don't want to pick up the tab you know and so they force them out of business through litigation and it's sham litigation they're not investigating these lawyers ahead of time to see if they're good or bad my guys in missouri they were they just have these salacious allegations and it puts them out of business dave we did they lose their law practice because they can't afford to contin continue to defend themselves against this company who has infinitely deep pockets oh by the way their pockets were lined by people they screwed and they're desperate to keep them lined my clients are just folks who they haven't given up yet you know they haven't given up they're not settling they keep going in fact we filed a counter claim against windham and blue green for antitrust and this morning we asked a judge to enjoy these guys from continuing any other lawsuits against my client until we resolve whether the arda and their buddies windham diamond blue green did a concerted conspiracy antitrust designed to make themselves stronger and to screw the consumers we think that's exactly what they've done they announced it from the stage mike flasky the ceo of diamond announced that he was putting up a million dollars and challenged the other people in the arda to come together and collude to run exeters out of business and and if the ftc isn't going to look at it that means we have to so that's what we're doing wow i'm a little shocked i i have a a a huge respect for federal judges and i'm a little shocked they're tolerating this in their courts dave i don't think they are you know although it's they they started this antitrust stuff probably about two or three years ago like really going at it but i've noticed in the last six months these federal judges like you said they're sharp and they're the tide is turning you can tell there's little orders that are coming out like i told you none of these have really been resolved yet but the little orders that are coming out they're starting to note that the dockets are being flooded with these cases that seem to go on forever and ever and in the few cases that have had a summary judgment granted or something like that it's usually in the favor of the good guys so i think but that's after they've dropped 200 000 or they didn't have and legal fees into the thing the good guy you're right you're right you're right and so it's going to take one someone maybe my clients maybe someone else to give them a bloody nose and show them that this frivolous litigation can't stand and i think we will yeah well they've come after us now and that was a mistake because i have deep enough pockets to fight them and i have 22 million listeners and i'm gonna beat the snot out of them picking on you wouldn't be my idea of a good time well they did and it was a mistake they sent inside addition to do an ambush in the lobby of the hotel where we were doing an event last week and mary guerrero and charlie mckelvie come in there which are known for their intelligence anyway but they do one of these ambush interviews mr ramsey mr ramsey why are you endorsing timeshare exit team mr ramsey and ambush me in the front of the dadgum lobby of this hotel but there's no way inside edition does that without these bozos causing it yeah because inside edition's not that smart to start with mary's not that smart for sure okay i mean she's not known for her brains she's known for other stuff but oh my gosh y'all this is what's going on out there yeah so i get i get you're going to see me on a duck and cover in one of these dadgum inside edition things coming up this weekend probably but unbelievable hey man thank you for calling thanks for talking to us i'm going to tell you guys a story in this next segment it's going to blow your minds it goes right with what christian's saying this is the ramsey show [Music] [Music] [Music] we're talking about the scummy and multi-billion dollar timeshare industry who flexes its muscle against anyone who dares say that they're screwing people the way they are so i've been dealing with anything that causes you guys grief for 30 years here on the radio and if we find something that gives you grief we try to help you with it if term life insurance is the way to go we try to find a term insurance provider for you if getting a high quality real estate agent is a good thing we try to do that for you we do not endorse things on this show unless we believe in them i don't put my name or my voice on something merely for money and i that the most successful endorsements that we've done on this show are things that have to do with a problem you have and we connect you with someone that is an advertiser to solve that one of the biggest problems we've run into over the years is people that are stuck in time shares you can't give them away nobody wants them you can't sell them even for a dollar because nobody wants to take over your fees and your increased fees and all the hassles and all the screw-ups that we've been hearing about this entire hour so many years ago a couple of young guys started a company called timeshare exit team and they were advertising on a small radio station or two here or there and they got in touch with us and said we want to come on the dave ramsey show because you hate time shares as much as we do and we have a way to get people out of time shares we have a legal process with a team of lawyers to bust up into these guys and to get them out and so we said all right let's do that however you guys are small operators and you need to understand when we tell people to come to you you're going to get a bunch of business and you're going to get your business act together to say that their business exploded when i came on the air and told people timeshare exit team will get you out is an understatement their business skyrocketed over the next few years resulting in them getting more than 20 000 almost 25 000 people out of their timeshares but the problem was they were so successful that two things happened one is they're two young guys running a business and it's hard to scale a business that fast and they got where they weren't returning calls that great so we're jumping on them because we're hearing complaints because timeshare won't call us back timeshare won't call us back from the customer that's not okay and it was just because of sheer volume of business the second thing that happened was that they were so successful that the timeshare companies they were feeling the pain it was hurting them and so mike flasky the ceo of diamond which has just recently been bought by hilton windham mike flasky stands up in front of the arda and says i'm going to commit a million dollars to putting timeshare exit companies out of business anyone who comes at us to get our cut to make us let our customers go that we're screwing we're going to put them out of business we're going to do it with legal fees we're going to do it with pr and publicity we're hiring a publicity firm we're going to put a team of lawyers on this and he teamed up with windham and he teamed up with blue green and he teamed diamond did and um marriott and whoever else they could get westgate whoever else they could get on the list and they decided to go after these lawyers and different companies that were running people out of timeshares and they got they've got they've gotten bad stories written about people including they're going after me now they've gotten uh the attorney general in the state of washington to uh to try to prove that there was something false going on and there wasn't and timeshare exit team although hugely successful over the years uh has legal fees in the millions and millions of dollars now trying to defend themselves against this company and they've run out of money they're running out of money and so they had to pull off of our show they couldn't afford to advertise anymore they run them out of business they're running them out of business they're not out of business yet but they're having to defend themselves against the uh attorney general state of washington they're having to defend themselves against a massive set of lawsuits brought time and time and time and time again and all they have done is get people out of time shares that's all they've done and so that's why you don't hear them on the air here anymore and then inside edition shows up and ambushes me for an interview and wants to know why i'm why i endorse timeshare exit team lisa guerrera and charlie well lisa guerrero and charlie even though i didn't grant you an interview in your ambush in the lobby of the omni at the dallas that was so low class you too you ought to know better than that you don't think i'm gonna come back and put 22 million people on notice how scummy you are at inside edition that was so low class so i'll answer your question why did i endorse timeshare exit team because they were doing the right thing and getting people out of timeshares after companies like mikey's had screwed them that's why i endorsed that company and i did it with great pride and they got over 20 000 people out of their timeshares before the legal fees and the bogus stuff from bogus government officials i wonder how much he was paid wow how much were you paid lisa how much was inside edition paid by the time share companies how much did they pay you i didn't know you could buy a story on inside edition i didn't i didn't think you all were that i knew you were tabloid but i didn't know you were that low or are you just so dumb that you didn't understand you were on the wrong side of this argument on the basis of the consumer so this is why timeshare is not on the air anymore timeshare exit team but guess who's still on the air me me and i'm sitting in a 300 million dollar paid for building neck deep in cash you jerks bring it bring it mikey bring it you have done poke the wrong bear you done pissed off the wrong hillbilly you have messed with me enough that i am coming after you bozos and i'm gonna make a hobby out of you guys and you don't understand how hillbillies work we fight generationally ask the hatfields and mccoys they don't even remember why they're fighting and they're still fighting so diamond resorts hilton you made a huge mistake investing in diamond because i'm about to destroy your freaking investment if i have anything to do with it at all i'm going to tell millions tens of millions of people over and over and over and over again how bad mike flashkey is as a ceo how scummy he is and how these companies absolutely are screwing the consumer over and over and over and over and over again if any of you dave ramsey listeners go into a diamond presentation after hearing this i gotta call you stupid if any of you dave ramsey listeners go into a westgate presentation after hearing this and you walk into the tiber tigers cage in order to get a free pass to the zoo and pet the tiger hoping the tiger won't eat you you're stupid i'm getting a free a free hotel buy your own hotel buy your own hotel do you hear the guy calling in the first segment 22 000 he invested and used the thing six times that's a nice hotel where are you staying my god the four seasons in paris france i mean you can rent out the dead gum come on people think think don't be stupid rednecks and fall for these people don't be stupid these companies are straight up evil they are sucking the lifeblood out of america's families and we have got to stop them from doing it and the only way to stop them is not legally they got too much power because they're buying off lawyers they're running lawyer you're that guy they're running lawyers out of business unbelievable the guy's having to shut down his legal practice because he's overwhelmed with law with court costs and legal fees to protect himself because he was acting as an attorney to get people out how do you i mean 15 cases that guy's got right now and that's just one guy you know how hard it was for us to find him we found him in 24 hours lisa it wasn't hard to do a little investigative reporting and actually find out what's really going on in this industry if you were a real reporter oh my gosh this is not hard you guys this is not hard when something feels slimy you know why cause it's slimy so diamond westgate windham marriott bluegreen who am i leaving out here i won't leave anybody out just let you guys know you've been hassling my butt for two years behind the scenes and we just made it public game on boys game on this is the ramsay show we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace christ jesus have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of ramsey advice in their life let them know about the ramsey call of the day podcast it's a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes check out the ramsey call of the day podcast wherever you listen to podcasts you

Channel: The Ramsey Show

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Keywords: dave ramsay live, dave ramsey, dave ramsey channel, dave ramsey live, dave ramsey live show, dave ramsey live stream, dave ramsey podcast, dave ramsey radio show, dave ramsey show, dave ramsey show full show, dave ramsey show live, ramsey, ramsey solutions, the dave ramsey show, the dave ramsey show live

Id: x-RSvw-GRJc

Length: 121min 55sec (7315 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021