He Just Came Clean To His Wife About Their Financial Situation

Brought to you by the Every Dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. >> There's a lot of backstory, but married 13 years. I have three children uh 7, four, and one. Um my wife and I, we've been through a lot um with medical orals. It's led to um I took on finances and um ended up kind of drowning a bit. Um, I did not disclose to her that we were in financial trouble. Um, and thought I could work my way out of it. Um, I'm in sales. My net monthly income um is roughly $7,500. We are currently in about $100,000 of debt, consumer debt. That consists of two personal loans, um, two auto loans and a student loan. Um, I've been hemorrhaging somewhere between $5 to $7,000 a month cuz I've not been able to have an honest conversation with my wife to disclose what's going on. So, we haven't changed our spending patterns. On Friday of last week, um, God broke me and I surrender surrendered it to him. Um, I disclosed everything to her and um, finally was open and honest. Um, she was incredibly gracious. But now, as we are trying to restore, rebuild, um, and rejuvenate our relationship, um, which has been an incredible couple of days, we do find ourselves in a crisis. Uh, we met with a Christian financial adviser last night who recommended a home equity line of credit to swap the $100,000 in um, consumer debt to the home equity line of credit. Um, we owe 330 on our house. it's worth about 530. Um so to keep that 80% that would get us to roughly the 100,000 to pay off the consumer and then um we are flipping our spending upside down. We believe in the baby baby step approach. We're going to be pursuing that aggressively, but we wanted to know our options. Is the only option to do this heliloc potentially sell our house when the market is better in the, you know, summer spring um and have that paid off and be debtree uh and rent a home. Do we need to put the house for sale immediately uh and take that route or are there other strategies that you all would implement and recommend given um the context of what I just outlined? >> All right. So, George George is going to walk you through the money side of this and he's going to give you a super clear path. Okay? But I want you to hear me um crystal clear also. Okay. >> Okay. >> The chief emergency in your life is not the debt. >> Yes. >> The chief emergency in your life is >> what what I would call financial infidelity. You cheated on your wife. >> Meet Every Dollar Budgeters Christy and Steve. They used to fight about money. I'm the spender. >> I'm definitely the saver. Now that they budget with every dollar, they're on the same page. Money is definitely one thing we do not ever fight about. >> Having the budget gave me the permission to spend. >> Knowing that the money is in each category, it just allowed us to work together better. >> Now, that's what we call a win-win. >> Now, we just have to pick paint colors. >> We can't help you with that. Every dollar, create your free account today. The chief emergency in your life is >> what I what I would call financial infidelity. You cheated on your wife. >> Okay. And so the chief emergency in your in your in your life right now is restoring trust. >> Yes. >> It's not and and here there's I'm going to parse it. It's not trying to make everything all okay and take away any more pain, frustration, fear in her right away. It is restoring trust. >> Absolutely. >> And when we when men of character like me, like you find ourselves, we have become somebody we never meant to be. I've been down this road in my marriage, too. Okay. The temptation is to run around and spend a whole bunch of energy trying to make everybody feel okay right now. And that gets us right back into yet another problem or two problems. Usually, we make it worse. And so the path you need to take now is yes, you'll have to deal with this debt emergency. It's a big big deal. But more importantly is you have to bring your wife as a part of this brokenness and this submission that you that you mentioned. It is asking your wife, what does a path back to trust look like? and not you now running around and almost shutting her to the side or bringing her along, but more dragging her along and saying, "I I'm going to fix this. I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go to this. We're going to meet with this guy. I'm going to talk." It's saying, "What do you need to begin to feel safe and trust me again?" Okay, that's that is step number one. That's the the the big neon sign flashing emergency in your life right now is restoration of trust. And then it's probably going to be something along the lines of I want to have a budget meeting with you. I want to know where all our accounts are. Here's where our retirement is. Here's the account numbers. Here's how to access it. Here's my cell phone. All those kind of things that reestablish trust at the stepby-step I I'll call it the micro level that rebuilds a foundation that both of you can anchor into to go do what's going to be a couple of years of really hard work. Okay. Does that make sense what I'm saying? >> It does. >> Okay. So you saying I've had I've hid this from you. And actually I tried to do a noble thing which is protect you, keep you safe, not worry you, and in so doing, I created a big big mess. And so here it is. It's all on the table. You've done that. I would hug you if you were here. Most men don't have the courage to do that. What you did was brave and good and right. And now it is realizing that the healing process is going to be slower than you want it to be. And on the back end of this, your marriage will be so much stronger than you could have ever possibly imagined it. And you will be a man of character, not only in your words, but in in the actions and she will be able to anchor fully back into you. And you and vice versa. You get what I'm saying? >> I do. We are already seeing that already the just brokenness between the two of us, which has been >> That's right. >> Um, which has been beautiful. So, I appreciate you saying that. And hey, part of this is, and this is unpopular to say, you addressing what might also be an elephant in the room, which is maybe she wasn't the safest person to sit down and talk about finances with. Maybe y'all were creating a dance where she didn't want to hear it or she wants to buy what she wants to buy and then so you're trying to solve it and you're trying to fix it and you're coming up with the scheme over here and doing it. Who knows what the what the dance in your marriage is, but this allows that to all get put on the table over time. Sure. Okay. Unless you're just a terrible, terrible human, which I'm not hearing at all. These things don't happen in a vacuum. They're co-created by two people in a marriage. And that's all that has to be put on the table. And if you just run out tomorrow and sell your house, you might band-aid over the math problem y'all have in front of you, but the problems in your marriage about trust and safety and do do we both relax when we both see each other when we come home, that doesn't that just gets wallpapered over and it will show up somewhere else down the road. it it more magnified. Right. Okay. So, >> George is going to walk you through this stuff. >> My uh burning commentary is on this Christian financial advisor. >> Yeah. Never talk to that person again. Ever. Ever. >> Listen, God loves all of his children. They're made perfect in in his image. And some of their cornbread's not done in the middle. And so, what he has suggested of you dumping dirty water into another vessel doesn't actually solve the problem. Would you agree? >> I don't love it. Uh, I'm just >> What do you love about it? Cuz you're just moving the debt around and putting your home at double risk. >> Yeah. You You now took the the only safe place you and your wife have left and you've leveraged that >> and you made it into one giant pile that's even harder to pay off with a variable interest rate. >> Yeah. So, being underwater $5 to $7,000 a month and >> Yeah. Explain what what do you mean by you're hemorrhaging $7,000 a month? What does that mean? >> Well, a lot of that has to do with spending habits. So if we which has nothing to do with the debt and so that's what I'm trying to get at is are you investing a dime right now >> uh 401k out of my paycheck >> and he didn't advise you to stop investing to get rid of the mess. >> He did. He did. >> Yeah, he he he did stop he did recommend stopping. >> Okay. So if you paused all investing, you guys lived on nothing. Can you What's your mortgage payment? >> Uh $2,82 a month. >> Okay, that's not the problem here. You can keep the house. What you need to do is use this income, pause your 401k investments, make sure you're not getting a refund on your taxes. You need that money back in your paycheck. Can you live off of $3,400 a month? >> Um, >> I'm just going to show you the math. If you were able to do that, >> so if you've got math, then please show me. >> Here's the math. You make 90,000 net, right? If you stop investing, you're going to have even more, probably closer to 100,000 net. If you put 50 of that towards your debt, you're debtree in two years. >> Tada. see the napkin math there, >> which leaves 40 or 50 to live off of. Now, I don't know if that's reasonable to have your mortgage, your four walls covered, insurance, and minimum debt payments on that side. But, >> but be unreasonable for 24 months. >> Yeah, I think this is this could all be solved by you guys living like you're broke because news flash, you're broke. So, it's an easy problem to solve when you make $100,000 net. You can knock this out in two years without taking on more debt just by doing that debt snowball method. If you say you believe in the baby steps approach, try it. Try it for a year. If you don't make progress and you want to go take out more debt, then you can be my guest. But I'm telling you, man, you can be debtree in under two years if you follow this stuff. And your marriage is going to be better for it. We believe in you. >> Create your free every dollar budget today. 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