"You're In a Very Vulnerable Situation"

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I'm new to Baby Step 4, 5, and 6. I feel like it's taken me quite some time to get here. And so I'm super excited. However, I have a baby due next month and doing Baby Step 4 with the 15% of my retirement and everything. It seems really scary with upcoming expenses that I know will take effect once my maternity leave is up. So I guess I'm just looking. I don't know if my mindset is wrong or my budget is incorrect, but I just need some encouragement or someone to walk me through. Are you going to be paid while you're on maternity leave? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you're just talking about like after maternity leave, the daycare kicks in and whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And just affording that 15% along with, you know, the rest of my budget. Yeah. Well, I mean, just lay your budget out. You can look at it. You know what the daycare is going to cost already, don't you? Yeah. Okay. And you've got to, you know, if you have no payments, but a house payment, you should be able to do daycare and 15% in most budgets. I have two other children as well that are in daycare. They'll have three kids in daycare. And while you had that, you were already reducing debt. How much debt have you paid off? I've been debt free for a little over a year now. Well, a year and a half, but I paid off like 80 grand. Good for you. Are you single? I'm engaged. Okay. When are you getting married? Um, we plan on getting married next year. Why? Why? Um, so it's, it's more for me. I'm, I was married before. Um, you have a baby. Yeah. I assume with him. Yeah. I mean, you kind of already made these decisions. Yeah. Um, so my fiance wants an actual wedding and yeah. And so we're grownups with three kids. Um, so the wedding is coming, but we plan for it to be early next year. I would do a party early next year and get married the next 20 minutes. You are in an extremely legal and financially vulnerable situation. My good friend, I am scared for you and you're worried about putting 15% of way in retirement and you're not even married and you have three kids. Yeah. This is a very, very important that you guys get this solidified. I would be in the pastors or the judge's office this weekend and we'll have a party next spring. I don't want you hanging out the over the edge of this cliff anymore. You're scaring me to death. I understand. Cause he is the guy you want to marry, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Making babies with him. I got back from deployment and I found out I was pregnant within like two or three weeks after that. So it was a shock to me. Um, and I'm just curious, how much do you make a So I make three streams of income, but my main job is 81,000. Um, because I'm a part-time military. Okay. I make 12,000 a year from that. And then I do receive child support, um, as well. And that comes out to being like 24,000 a year. Okay. Does that mean 15% that is strained in your budget? That is your money only. You're not including him, correct? The 15%. Yeah. No wonder you're strained. Yeah. You're a single mom with three kids. Yeah. That would be straining. How much does he make a year? He makes, um, well, when he did his taxes, it came out to being like 36,000. And so what does he do? So he works for a junk removal company. He's like the sole employee, um, which he's about to take over. Um, okay. It's, it's very lucrative business where we live. Well, not for him. What will it be? What will he be? Um, so it would be over. Well, it made a little over 200,000. I'm not sure what his boss brings home. All we know is like, he's gone on vacation every week. So here's the thing, here's the thing. Okay. Yeah. You call me worried about ability to put away 15% because you're in an untenable situation and you're very vulnerable and hanging over the edge of a cliff. This all is solved the day you get married and you combine your incomes, which is what should happen for this child. It's what should happen for you. And it's what should happen by Saturday. And then all of a sudden you have an income up over $100,000. The two of us are doing a budget together because we're already playing house. So the house, you know, nothing else changes. And so we're now doing a budget together, like grown up, married people instead of two roommates. And you've got all the responsibility of three kids. One of which is his crap. Okay. So he needs to marry you Friday. I'm going to come get him. I'm serious. This is not good for you, my daughter. You ever heard of a shotgun wedding? I got a shotgun. Okay. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to, we're going to line this up. This is serious time. This is really, really good. It's the right thing for everyone involved. There is no excuse for, I want a big wedding that you, that, that ship sailed when you were 19 kid. Okay. You're not playing in that world anymore. Now you're playing in the real grownup world where we have taxes and we have trying to hand over a business from your boss. You've got daycare coming out your ears and no wonder you can't say 15%. So no, yeah, you need to take your child support, your income, and his new fabulous income, put it all together and make a every dollar budget because you got married Friday together. And then let's go build a life together because that's what all the data tells us is how you win. The data tells us that if you persist in this methodology, you're going to have one 10th of the net worth of your married friend. One 10th. Okay. It doesn't work. That's why I'm, I'm for your sake, passionate about this. And I want you to win. I want you to, I want you to have a good life. And the data says those that shack up the lady has one 10th at 35 years old of the net worth of her and all the risk. I mean, honestly, she's the one that's going to be walking out. If that's the case, he's just running in and out and making babies. This has got to, you guys got to get this lined up, man. It's just, it's the best thing for everybody involved. So with the assumption that he is the man you want to marry and spend the rest of your life with and all the things. So if you don't, he shouldn't be your fiance. Right. That's what I'm saying. If you don't, but I think that, but I think the mindset today is it's, we can get engaged and we'll figure out the wedding later. It's almost like a, do you know what I'm saying though? That's the mindset though. I think there's a child that needs a dad. I don't think you'd get to make this up. You know, you got to get this baby needs a family. Yes, I agree. And in a perfect scenario, that would be the case. That's my hope for Monica, but also I don't want her scenario that doesn't suck. Yeah. Yeah. And that he's a horrible guy. Like, you know what I mean? Right. That's when we shouldn't even been having this conversation protecting. Yeah. And making sure that this is it for her. But if it is to the point that, yeah, we have to start making grownup decisions. Well, she didn't say she was delaying the marriage till the spring because he was a horrible guy and she didn't know she should marry. I agree. She says, cause he wanted to party. I know we, I'm just thinking of everyone out there listening. This has been a trend that we see over and over again. There's another trend. Half the calls on this show are me telling people to get married these days. So because the data is there, it's so simple. I'm such a boomer. You should get, you are a boomer and you should get, you should get where you can like facilitate it. What's it called when you ordain a wedding? That's right. I need to get ordained and just start doing Ramsey weddings on the debt-free stage there in the lobby. Every Valentine's day should be a wedding show. And Dave just marries all the people that he does. All at one time, like some kind of cult or something. Yeah. That would be great. Create your free, every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.