Maurie Backman

Sun, Jun 29, 2025, 6:03 AM6 min read

Sometimes, when you’re in dire financial straits, your parents are able to bail you out. That's what happened to Rachel from Dallas, Texas who recently called into The Ramsey Show looking for advice.

Rachel's home flooded in 2023, so her parents helped out by loaning her an RV to live in. Since then, Rachel — along with her husband, toddler and two dogs — have been living in the RV on her parents’ property. Doing so has allowed them to save some money and pay off debt.

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However, Rachel’s parents need their aging RV back, so she’s looking to buy her own — even though she still has $40,000 of debt. Ramsey Show hosts Jade Warshaw and Ken Coleman had some firm advice in that regard.

Rachel has been doing better financially while living in her parents' RV. She's saved a little and put a fair amount of money toward her debt.

But Rachel's parents are now retired and could use some extra money, so she wants to return their RV so they can sell it. And Rachel believes that buying her own RV will be more cost-effective than paying rent.

But Warshaw and Coleman warned her that doing so would require taking on more debt. Since she already has $40,000 in debt, they strongly advised against it.

"You should not stop paying down your debt to buy an RV," Coleman said on the call, point blank. "You have no idea what the RV is going to cost, you only have $2,500 in savings … and you're presenting to us as though you can't even afford to pay rent."

Rachel's take-home pay is $70,000 annually, and her husband earns $11 per hour in a job he has held for a short time. Based on their take-home pay, Warshaw ran the numbers and told Rachel she should spend a maximum of $1,250 per month on rent. She warned that if they go beyond that, it will be hard to make progress on their debt.

Coleman suggested two things: moving closer to Rachel's place of work and having her husband pause his marine biology studies, which could open the door to the husband finding a better-paying job.