Don't Get Married To This Girl!

[Music] brought to you by the Every Dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. All right, so I'm 36 or about to be and uh I want to propose to my girlfriend, but we disagree on finances. We agree on everything else, but uh the problem is I want to combine finances. She has a rental property and I have a house. I just sold a piece of land that I'm going to walk away with 180,000. And I want to pay off my house. I have a budget. Made a budget. It's paid off in about 4 years and I want to rent it out and then buy a bigger house with her and you know I talked to her about you know paying off my house quickly and then throwing a bunch of money at her rental and pay that off faster so we have you know more cash flow coming in from the two houses. Well, she wants, you know, she say if we do get married, she wants to sign a prenup, which, you know, I don't agree with and I see no reason for it because, you know, your asset base is fairly similar, right? And uh so you're not you're not ready to propose. Is her family? No, she No, my family's got to be on that half. Hey, Mike. Um, how long y'all been dating? About eight months. Okay. All right, you've got some more work to do on this relationship before it becomes a marriage. And here's why. Right. You called and ask our opinion. So, I'll give you my opinion. I'm going to treat you like you're my kid, cuz my kids are your age. Okay? Um and and I the number one cause of divorce in North America is disagreement over money. Money fights, money problems. Okay? And you are sitting square in the middle of it. And here's the problem. Jesus said, "Your treasure is where your heart is." People spend their money on what they value. And Dr. John Deloney says, "Behavior is a language." And so when she says, "I don't like your plan. I don't like it so much that I want my stuff to be separated in a prenup." What she's saying is, "I don't agree with how you're spending your money and our value systems are not aligned." Hey, George here with a quick interruption. If something were to happen to you tomorrow, would your family know where to find your life insurance policy, your will, even your Netflix password? Well, Knockbox solves that. It's a kit that organizes your financial accounts, estate plans, and everything your family would need all in one place. That way, they don't have to hack into your laptop or locate some long- lost thumb drive. So, leave them a legacy, not a scavenger hunt with Knockbox. Ramsay fans, get the best discount available at knockbox.com/ramsey. That's knockbox.com/ramsey. What she's saying is, I don't agree with how you're spending your money and our value systems are not aligned. You value different things. And if you want to go super extreme, she likes her rental property more than she likes you, right? That's that's super extreme. That's super. I think she's kind of short. Yeah, I think she's sort of shortsighted in her views because yep, you know, she all she has is her savings, which is 160 grand, she says. And this is not this is not a dollar amount thing. This is a power struggle and we're not aligned on our values because you spend your money on what you value and you value different things than she values. This makes for a very long and uncomfortable life if you stay married and you probably won't statistically. So you guys have got to continue to have this discussion until we can come to some kind of mediated agreement on what we're going to do with our lives and that we like each other, we love each other more than this stuff. Yeah. Because the the response to conflict can't be, well then I'm just going to take my stuff over here. I'm going to take my toys and go home. The response is let's enter into it and figure out where we both stand and how we can do this together. So that's to me that's a red flag. It's no it's it's a it's a it's a it's a nogo forward flag. It's not just a red flag. It's I think a lot of don't go forward until you solve this. I'm not saying you have to break up with her, but I please do not get engaged and get married because you're statistically you have almost no chance, right? I think a lot of it comes from her mother. You know, her mom's always raised her once you have kids, your life is over, even though she wants to have kids. And then her mom's, you know, she kind of has the outlook of you need like her mom, you need that money to run away if something goes bad. Yeah. You know, that's it. There we go. So, we're already planning, we're already planning our exit and we hadn't even gotten to the altar. Yeah. And she said she goes to therapy to work on all that because she doesn't agree with her mom and she doesn't like that outlook. But I think, you know, we always say the apple never never fall far. It hasn't yet. It can roll away over time. It can. It can, but it hasn't yet. But so so because she's functioning in exactly the same fears this as soon as you bumped into we're going to be closely and completely knit together with these de with the restructuring of this situation after we get married. The thing you proposed was very interwoven. It violated this keep things separate so I can bolt thing and she retreated to a prenup. And all of that is it's not an issue of the prenup. It's not an issue of the real estate. It's an issue of how the relationship's going. And it says you're not aligned. There are four things that if you're aligned on them statistically, you will have a 90% probability of your marriage lasting. Money, in-laws, oh wait, mothers involved. Okay. Children, oh wait, we're already talking about that. And possibly disagreed. Okay. And oh wait, religion. That's the only one of the four we hadn't got to. And you've got to get some alignment on those things. So you guys have some work to do on the relationship. I would suggest some good pre-marriage counseling and see if you can begin to not only discuss where these fears and values come from, but which of them we're going to keep and which ones we're going to take forward into the into the marriage. It could be that you're a little uptight and spreadsheet dude, nerd dude, and you need to loosen up on that. That might be. I didn't hear that, but it could be. Um, if you were going to fall on one side of the other, that's the side you would fall on based based on talking. It sounded like that. But, uh, but it didn't sound toxic. But I think you scared her. Uh, well, I think what it sounded to me like what she was dealing with was fear-based and it wouldn't have mattered who the guy was that that idea of being the proposal of the interwoven freaked her out. Freaked her out. Yeah. And and so and so it's not the it's not a discussion of the validity of prenups. It's a discussion of the proper way to do marriage relationships for statistical probability of success. Right. That's right. Hello. I mean, that sounds like no romantic at all, but there you go. So, uh because you know, I got, you know, 43 years. I'm in you. You want the statistical probability of success. It It's really really good. Yeah. You want to be where I am. It's sweet. I got eight grandbabies. I got three wonderful people have married my children that I love dearly. Yeah, I actually like them all. That's so weird. You know how weird that is? That means I raised children to pick. Well, okay. And and so the whole family actually got together Sunday night. We had a blast. Oh, yeah. I saw some of the videos. Yeah. Yeah. Dunking them. Yeah. The whole bit. So the I mean, but I mean that's that doesn't that's not an accidental thing. Well, let me ask you this cuz the I don't want to put a broad blanket over it, but I kind of feel this way. Don't you feel like when you're dating, like when you're in that phase between dating about to get engaged, don't you think it should be easy? It's been so long I forgot. Like I I just feel I'm like, man, to have these level of disagreements and fights like that. It just feels like That's true. older. I was 22. Yeah, I was 22. We got married. I was 22. So I don't I don't have anything to put that on. He's been single a long time. You got two You got two older singles. They have They're more entrenched. That's true. That is very true. 22 it's like yeah whatever you know it's like right but or at least it was for me and for me too now that I think back I'm like okay that's why I said I don't want to make a a broad statement but it's very important to be aligned on those four things and if you combine that with a six-month or so engagement period minimum um maximum of a year and a half and you combine that with premarriage counseling those six things combined will put you in the 90 percentile that you'll still be married 25 years later yeah I I believe And so living it premarriage counseling aligned on those four things and a reasonable length of engagement. Not too long, not too short. And that the data that's all from research, folks. That's the studying the actual divorce stats. 50% of the marriages end in divorce. Yeah. That includes all these people that should not have gotten married in the first place because they didn't do any of those things I just talked about. Right. And if they did them, they would have run away. That's right. Run away. Like Jeff Foxworthy said, "When we had when I was a kid, we had a cat and it tore up mama's curtains and the next day that cat ran away." Oh. Oh, yeah. So, you run away. You You go to the farm. You go to the train station, you run away. You run. So, I don't think that's where the stage that he's at. Um I don't think Mike's at that stage. No, he's got a lot. He is at the uh as the teenagers used to say the define the relationship stage. Yeah, they got a lot of thinking and decisions to make DTR right now and you're going to have to sit down probably with a good premarriage counselor and help you work through that. She's probably a keeper, but not yet. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your