Dave Ramsey says: Healing problems…together

Dear Dave,

I’ve spent most of my marriage not being involved in our family finances. To be honest, I’ve not been a very good husband. After being introduced to your show and your books by a friend, I realized how irresponsible I’ve been. When I talked to my wife about it and apologized, I heard for the first time that we have about $100,000 in debt, plus $55,000 in debt on a new car and motorcycle I did know about. Of course, we also have a mortgage on our home. She apologized for making a mess of things, but I know it wasn’t all her fault. She hadn’t been sneaking around spending and taking out debt, she just made mistakes and was afraid to tell me. Together, we make about $150,000 a year. Do you have any advice for us?

Caleb

Together you can solve the debt problem, heal

Dear Caleb,

Brother, I am so proud of you. You made some mistakes, sure. But now you’ve made the decision to man up. And that’s a huge step in the right direction for you and your marriage.

To me, what you described is a lot different than her lying and hiding stuff. The truth is you weren’t plugged in. Maybe she wasn’t doing a great job, but then, she didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, did she? Things got worse, and she probably felt ashamed about how ugly it got and didn’t want to tell anyone.

Now you’re at the point where you’ve got to look at all this, and figure out how to fix it with a $150,000 income. It’s going to mean beans and rice, rice and beans. It’s going to mean a scorched-earth lifestyle and living on a budget, which also means you’re not going out to eat, and you’re not going on vacations.

I’d sell the car and the motorcycle. Get into a couple of very basic, inexpensive cars and spend about two years being crazy intense to pay off everything but your home. You can clean this up, but you’re basically going to have no life during that time.

The two of you also have some relationship work to do. It sounds like you’ve already gotten a good start on that, with you owning your part and her owning hers. The thing is not to point fingers. From this point forward you need to always sit down together and make all your decisions — financial and otherwise — together. I want you to hug on each other a lot, too.

If you’re both willing, you can heal the math problem, the debt problem and the marriage problem all at the same time. God bless you both!

— Dave

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