NASHVILLE, September 12 — A 24-year-old stay-at-home mother with an 11-month-old baby and three weeks to find housing got no budget worksheet from Dave Ramsey. She got a verdict. Calling into Ramsey’s national personal-finance radio show, the woman — identified only as Liz — described a plan her husband had laid out the night before: leave the family’s RV for a house next door at double their current payment, affordable only by moving in with his brothers.
One of those brothers had previously borrowed her car and left her stuck with the toll bills. Ramsey skipped the math.
“All I hear is sadness,” he said, and told her not to “move in with the crazies over there.” Co-host George Kamel directed her to call a local women’s shelter for resources.
The numbers behind the call
Her husband earns $23 an hour. A single full-time wage at that rate produces roughly $3,900 a month gross — before taxes, health premiums and infant costs. Local apartments in her area rent for about $1,500 a month, which alone consumes a large share of take-home pay.
Utilities, gas, food, diapers and any car payment leave no room for savings or a security deposit. For scale, average hourly earnings for all private-sector US workers were $37.75 in August 2026, per BLS series CES0500000003 — roughly 64% more than the caller’s husband earns.
The FINRA Foundation’s 2024 National Financial Capability Study found the share of Americans spending more than their income hit an all-time high of 26%. Liz has no paycheck of her own and is estranged from her family in Kissimmee. Signing onto a double-payment lease with financially irresponsible co-signers exposes her to shared utility debt, damage claims and collections in her name for bills she did not run up.
A shelter or church-connected transitional program is temporary by design and does not attach to her credit.
Earlier in the same episode
Ramsey applied a different diagnosis to two attorneys carrying nearly $900,000 in student loans. The fix, he said, was more work. “The hole that you’re in is 900.
Your shovel is your income,” he said. “You got a huge hole and a small shovel.” The bottom line for Liz: three weeks, one income, and a housing decision that Ramsey treated as a warning rather than a spreadsheet problem.
What to watch next is whether she connects with a shelter or transitional program before the RV lease runs out.
