All right, let's go out to Naima in Detroit. What's up Naima? Hi, how are you guys? Thank you for clicking my call.
Thank you so much for calling. We're doing great. What's up? Okay, so I have a very interesting situation.
So my husband and I live in a duplex that we purchased about six years ago. We're going to talk to you and we have to listen to the bottom unit. We have two children. We're sharing one car right now that's being released.
And so we're about $53,000 in consumer debt and we have about 180k on the home. And so the home is not in the greatest neighborhood. Like I said, we have two children. So we're kind of outgrowing the home as well.
And so this is for your show. I think we should sell the home and we look to make about, you know, with 100 to 150k on the profit of the house. And so we'll be able to pay off all of our debt. We have a fully funded emergency fund.
We have to release and purchase two cars if we really need cash and then also have a down payment on future homes. And so we do a lot. And so he convinced that we should keep the home and I kind of feel like he's kind of gambling all but into a future. He feels like it's his unicorn of investment.
And after, you know, X amount of years, he's going to have like this big payoff. And so I've done like two financial models to show him like, you know, how even if we keep it and then rent somewhere else that we're struggling, like we're really tight, you know, with our budget, which doesn't mean any room for like paying down a debt or saving for emergency, but I don't know for the children's future or retirement. So my question is like, what can I show him or do to help him understand the receptive to sell the home and that keep it for a potential payoff later? Wow.
You laid that out beautifully. And if you've already tried financial models, I don't know what's going to convince this guy other than being his wife and just sitting him down and being like, I'm scared. I'm not sleeping well. We don't have an emergency fund.
We're 53,000 in debt. We're in a dangerous neighborhood trying to raise these two kids. And I want better for us. And selling this house would give us a clean slate next week.
And we'll be back. We'll be investing in the future in no time. But right now, we got to clean up this mess. Have you just sat him down and did that instead of showing Excel spreadsheets?
Yes, I have. I started with that. I started with the time motion, you know, I'm not going to be back out of it. Let me give them for myself.
And I do other members and I mean, reading and looking at educating myself to make sure that I wasn't missing anything and I'm certain the models as well. And he still believes that, you know, we should move out, but that we should keep it as a rental as a renting and I just don't know that I like it. So he wants to get broker by keeping the mortgage and then getting another mortgage on top of the consumer debt while having those savings. Well, he went next year for two years and then the mortgage after yes, we would eventually have two mortgages on top of a rent plus a mortgage is not fun.
Yeah, he went getting an increase in pay zone. So he thinks that I'm making more money. Something I'm telling like the money can't go up with the expenses, but they were basically doing the same position that if we increase our income over how much expenses we have all this extra money cannot put towards that. I mean, the retirement and savings like that.
So I'm just having a hard time doing it. Also a part of that is he's an architect by trade and he's a guy who's a development. So I think because he's in development now, he's talking to all the members and all the kids and he's like, he wants us to be wealthy. And I appreciate that.
But I think he wants to put particularly for the aid and he wants to just jump through the thing and hold on to it. He's afraid of losing as he said our only asset. Well, I think there's some bigger than this name. I appreciate you wanting to defend him and think that, hey, he's doing all these cool things with his new job.
And that must be what it is. He's looking at all these numbers. I don't think that's it at all. I think he is around some guys that are ahead of him financially and they've got some rental properties.
I think he watches too much YouTube and watches too much Instagram or TikTok. And I think he hears all these dudes flexing about real estate real estate real estate. And he's over here with the least car. One car and I can't even see the forest for the trees, right?
It's that guy that like hasn't been to the gym in years, but just keeps putting on tighter shirts because he feels big inside of them, right? It's just a strange flex that's not working. I don't think it says anything to do with him getting sophisticated or smarter with numbers. I think it sounds like a guy who's getting more and more scared because math doesn't care what you want.
Math is just math. And he's got, I'd say this is awesome scary. He has a brilliant, very clear thinking wife. Because you've been through all the numbers.
You've been through all the emotions. You've been through all the tracks that I mean, you've done it all. I honestly would go back to what George said that I would do it not in your home. Okay.
And that sounds weird, but I would take him somewhere. There's something about our homes or something about places that are familiar that our brains automates a lot of things. And sometimes it makes it hard to hear or hard to learn or hard to see a different perspective because everything just gets dumped into a think of it like a highway that's familiar. When you're in a road that you've never been on before, every one of your senses is up and alert.
Where are we? What's safe? Where are we going? And so taking them out for breakfast somewhere, y'all getting away for a weekend and just going to a nice hotel somewhere, whatever, take them away and say I want to play in for the future for real.
And I want you to start that conversation with, I'm so scared. I can't breathe. I know, I know, I know, I know. Like he needs something like I'm looking for like, is there a lot of people data?
No, this is not a data issue. Okay. This is not a math problem. You could have a 400 page spread sheet in all the data in the world and he's still going to be like, this is a grown man with an ego problem.
This is not a math problem. We called it a unicorn asset, but this could be a unicorn asset. Like a duplex in Detroit in a bad neighborhood is a unicorn of an asset. That's is he listening to himself?
We put a lot of what we purchased it. It was like, you know, complete the lap of doing with all this and everything we model it. And it turned out great. In the neighborhood, it's up and coming, but it's slow.
It had an answer to this year's, it hasn't moved it fast, but we thought. And so, you know, we don't have profit, it was just great. But it's like, it's still, it's just not, I don't know what the unicorn part he said that that's quote. Oh, it sounds like something he would say.
But like John said, the root of this is not a guy who's super smart. It's a guy who there's three things going on here. And that doesn't mean he's a bad person. It just means he's gotten starry-eyed about how smart he is, and now he's the exception to the rule, and now he's going to become the next rich guy.
And one day you're going to thank him for doing this risky thing. But right now, you're scared and you want what's best for your family. There's also a number four, a detached from reality. Right.
If he, if he found a hundred thousand dollar property in downtown Nashville and said, honey, we see the oldest for a second, I've got a unicorn. I would go, yeah, you're right. He did because natural properties are insane. A dilapidated, refurbished duplex.
You are, it's a hippopotamus. It is not a unicorn. And what happens when you guys move out in the tenants trash the place and in the H-Racks broken, and you still have a lease car and $50,000 in debt while paying rent while needing to pay the mortgage and the tenants stop paying on top of that? Has he thought about that as a possibility?
I'm thinking of the thing because we said, what did you turn into this year? We've never had him. It's kind of like we've done great with that. I think that he thinks that that's going to be even more on the mobile, and then we're going to keep paying on time.
We haven't even made expenses when we're hitting over the six year mark now. So that means the health and the start doing some stuff. It was built in 1900, like it was 1901. This is a guy that has had one rental house, one experience.
George and I get to sit by Dave who's got a whole, whole bunch of rental properties. People don't pay if you watch the news and watch it happen with COVID. People just quit paying the rent so much so that politicians had to pass the laws so you couldn't kick them out of their house because people just quit paying. They couldn't pay any jobs.
They weren't allowed to go to work, right? Yeah, I wish there was a math problem. I wish there was a, oh yeah, just say this. But you've got a husband like those three things George is talking about.
You've got a husband's detachable reality. And that has this grandiose vision of himself and his smarts and his universe that is simply not true. The only way I know through that is emotions.