"I have 350k Of Debt And Haven't Filed Taxes In 8 Years"
Episode
138 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Health & Wellness, Personal Finance, Relationships
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Tax Filing Crisis Management: Unfiled taxes since 2017-2018 require immediate action with tax professionals who can typically negotiate three years of returns instead of all years. Criminal charges apply to non-filing, not non-payment, with 2,561 people jailed annually. Priority payback order: payroll taxes first, then IRS debt, then unsecured creditors like credit cards.
- ✓Retirement Investment Strategy: At age 60-65, maintain four-bucket portfolio allocation: 25% aggressive growth, 25% growth, 25% growth and income, 25% international funds. Avoid bonds until age 75-plus since healthy 60-year-olds typically live to 90. Convert traditional retirement accounts to Roth to eliminate required minimum distributions and create tax-free inheritance.
- ✓Young Adult Housing Affordability: Twenty-somethings struggle with home purchases primarily due to debt payments, not market conditions. Average burden includes $1,200 car payments, credit card debt, and $180,000 student loans. Eliminating these obligations before age 30 enables home ownership on median incomes within five years of debt freedom.
- ✓Family Compound Pitfalls: Multi-generational property ownership through trusts or joint ownership creates legal and relational complications when one party wants to exit. Better approach: purchase adjacent parcels with individual deeds allowing independent sale decisions. Weekly family gatherings succeed better than forced cohabitation arrangements requiring communal voting on property decisions.
- ✓Cultural Spending Boundaries: Traditional celebrations like quinceañeras require budget alignment with actual income, not cultural expectations. Parents set spending limits based on financial capacity, not teenager preferences or extended family pressure. A $25,000 party on $120,000 income with $30,000 debt represents poor stewardship regardless of tradition.
What It Covers
The Ramsey Show addresses multiple caller situations including compound living arrangements, $350,000 debt with unfiled taxes, retirement spending decisions, family boundary issues with alcoholic in-laws, and debt-free celebrations from couples who eliminated six-figure obligations.
Key Questions Answered
- •Tax Filing Crisis Management: Unfiled taxes since 2017-2018 require immediate action with tax professionals who can typically negotiate three years of returns instead of all years. Criminal charges apply to non-filing, not non-payment, with 2,561 people jailed annually. Priority payback order: payroll taxes first, then IRS debt, then unsecured creditors like credit cards.
- •Retirement Investment Strategy: At age 60-65, maintain four-bucket portfolio allocation: 25% aggressive growth, 25% growth, 25% growth and income, 25% international funds. Avoid bonds until age 75-plus since healthy 60-year-olds typically live to 90. Convert traditional retirement accounts to Roth to eliminate required minimum distributions and create tax-free inheritance.
- •Young Adult Housing Affordability: Twenty-somethings struggle with home purchases primarily due to debt payments, not market conditions. Average burden includes $1,200 car payments, credit card debt, and $180,000 student loans. Eliminating these obligations before age 30 enables home ownership on median incomes within five years of debt freedom.
- •Family Compound Pitfalls: Multi-generational property ownership through trusts or joint ownership creates legal and relational complications when one party wants to exit. Better approach: purchase adjacent parcels with individual deeds allowing independent sale decisions. Weekly family gatherings succeed better than forced cohabitation arrangements requiring communal voting on property decisions.
- •Cultural Spending Boundaries: Traditional celebrations like quinceañeras require budget alignment with actual income, not cultural expectations. Parents set spending limits based on financial capacity, not teenager preferences or extended family pressure. A $25,000 party on $120,000 income with $30,000 debt represents poor stewardship regardless of tradition.
Notable Moment
A caller discovered his brother withdrew their widowed mother's entire $96,000 inheritance seven months before a family dispute, despite both names being on the account. The brother spent the money and refused accountability. Joint account ownership enabled legal but morally reprehensible theft with no practical recovery options.
Episode Transcript
Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Normal is broken. Common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, Ken Coleman, number one best selling author. Ramsey Network star of Front Row Seat is my cohost today. Open phones at (888) 825-5225. Theresa is in Providence, Rhode Island. Hi, Teresa. How are you? I am good, gentlemen. How are you? Better than we deserve. What's up? Excellent. Are you in a good mood? That's the first question. Because I need you to sit back and think. I want you to count to three before you answer my question. Wow. Okay. I can't wait to hear what this is. I will say as his co host, I just spoke with him for about five minutes. I think he's in a fabulous mood. I don't know if that helps you. That. Well, no. I had to go to do with it. Don't give me any credit. Wow. This is interesting. Okay. Alright. Here we go. Weather forecast before we bring the questions. Alright. They do. Okay. Here we go. Stormy. I have an ex husband. I have two children. My ex has a girlfriend and a son, and we are all great friends. We give white trash new meaning without a doubt. Every Saturday, we go to brunch together, and then we have a misery, and we do something together that's miserable. That's why we call it the misery trip. But my point here is neither one of my children who are 23 and 21 financially sound out of school in good careers, no debt, banking their coin like you read about, can't buy houses. So we're thinking of a family compound. We're thinking of do we put it in a trust? Do we have each person have a quarter say in it? What happens when one of them wants to leave this compound? Do we have to have a vote so that they can go out, but they have to have equity to go with them? So they could buy their own house, not that I think anybody would ever leave the compound, but just to throw it out there as a possibility. So we want to do it the right way, but we all want to have our own little independent houses on this land. Can it be done without, I don't know, shotgunning each other? And you should know in our family dynamics, we have very expensive purses and very expensive guns. And I will agree with you. Two guns to a purse is absolutely correct. I will say this sounds like a great idea for a reality show. Oh, yeah. We could put Kardashians out of business. No doubt in my mind. Wow. Well, y'all are a lot of fun. Yeah. So so my right. My problem is both kids …
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