Highlights from the Dave Ramsey Show

QUESTION: Bethany in Detroit and her boyfriend went through Financial Peace University together once and are about to again. They have no plans to combine finances before marriage. At what point should they sit down together and do a budget but keep their finances separate?

ANSWER: That's usually a really good thing as you go through your pre-marriage time if you're engaged. A lot of counselors that do pre-marriage counseling will have a couple do a pretend budget. If we were married, what would it look like today? In your case, you've both been through Financial Peace University, so you could say, "How would we apply what we learned if we were married today? How would it look? What would we spend our money on? We'd have this income combined, and we'd have these bills combined. What would be our pretend budget?" What that does is it takes you through the exercise of learning to give and take between each other and learning to communicate and learning to cooperate. It also makes you really test out what you believe about what you've learned. But I don't think that's necessary until you're engaged.

Knowing what each other's income is before you're engaged is not a problem. If you've been dating for two years, you can start to tell each other everything about your finances. I don't mind one of you knowing what's going on with the other. I think probably before someone gets engaged, they know where the other one stands financially in most discussions. What I suggest is the closer you're getting, the more you reveal about a lot of things in your life. That's called getting close. You start to know more about your beliefs about religion, dreams for the future, regarding kids, even about problems in each other's families, and you start to kind of unveil the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I think you would normally know what someone's income is and what all their bills are prior to engagement. It'd be kind of weird to have the conversation on the first date. As you get closer... There are all these weird stories about people checking credit scores or something before they go on a date. That's stupid. We're not talking about stuff like that, but it is also common sense on the other end to say, "Hey, I can't really know that I want to marry you until I know if you have $300,000 in student loan debt. That might enter into the equation."

I don't think it's a bad decision to be with someone with that much debt either. I don't tell people to rule somebody out based on debt, but what would scare me more—let's say, for instance, you two were talking and you found out that he had $100,000 worth of debt. That just freaks you out, right? That doesn't scare me as much. For instance, if my son was dating someone and we found out she had some debt or something, that would not scare me. What would scare me more would be that she thinks it's great. That would scare the crap out of me. But if you say I made some mistakes, I've got a stupid car here I've got to get sold, I've got student loan debt—it's going to take me a while to work through it. I didn't know any better. I got in this mess, but I'm going to work really hard to get out. I don't think that's a deal breaker at all.

If there's too much debt and it just freaks you out, it also does not make you bad to not want to go into that.

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QUESTION: Jack in Washington, D.C., wants to know the best way to motivate his parents to succeed financially. They are close to retirement and heavily leveraged. Dave says you can encourage those who have hope, but motivation is another story.

ANSWER: I don't know that you can motivate anyone. Sometimes people are de-motivated by a loss of hope. Proverbs says hope deferred makes the heart sick. Sometimes you have hopelessness that keeps people from moving. You can remove some of that by showing someone hope. The best way to do that is with your story or unpacking their numbers with them to show them that the light at the end of the tunnel does not have to be an oncoming train.

You hear me do that on this show with lots of callers. I might show someone how they can pay off $50,000 in non-student loan debt in less than a year. They are not bankrupt; they are just scared. Just to say that to someone has a lot of power.

Find out whatever income that your mom and dad have versus the amount of debt that they are in, then begin to lay out a plan. If they see that they can get traction on this plan, that gives people energy to overcome hopelessness. You can't really motivate the unmotivated. If it's not a hopelessness problem, if they are just lazy and don't give a rip, you really can't fix that.

You have to stand back and watch people whom you love but have that quality make bad choices. It's painful to do that. I would tell them your story and offer them an olive branch and a hand-up, and show them how you can help them do some things. You'll be their counselor or accountability partner if they want that.

You just want them to have some fun with money because it's been so long since they have. Tell them you're excited about this and ask if you can help them some way. Sometimes that will move people. But you can't make people do stuff.

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QUESTION: Keith in Texas says before his mother died, she learned his sister was forging checks for her personal gain. She took at least $10,000 and did not have a power of attorney. Keith asks for help in dealing with this criminal activity.

ANSWER: This is criminal fraud. The bottom line is that, out of $50,000, your sister sole $10,000. Sit down with your sister and say that you've been involved with your mother's affairs and your sister stole $10,000 from her. Mom knew she was a thief and turned this over to the bank, and if she were still alive, you might be going to jail.

We are going to probate the will and I'll be named executor of the will. She will get her half minus $10,000 because she stole it. If she fights you on that for even a second, take the whole file to the district attorney and have her put in jail. See how that goes.

You may be a little nicer and more diplomatic than that, but you need to use a big enough stick to get her attention because this woman is arrogant, and it's going to be a while before she realizes she's a thief if she doesn't own up to it.

If she gets real quiet and says to do whatever you have to do, that means you used a big enough stick. If she bows up her back, you need to hit her with something a little harder. Start at whatever level of confrontation you think is necessary to set the tone right.

Then get an estate planning attorney and probate the estate. Have the court probate it and assign the assets to you and your sister and your older brother. You would each get a third of the estate, and your sister gets one third minus $10,000 because that's at least what she stole.

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