My Husband Lost $350,000 Day Trading

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I'm a stay-at-home mom. I have a one-year-old and I have another baby due in July. I've been married four years and my husband just sat down with me in the last two weeks and revealed to me that he took out $350,000 in loans and he lost it all. He was using it to invest in day trading and so it was a real shock to me. I just would like some direction from you guys or some answers as to what you think I should do in all aspects. Should I get a job, marriage advice, stuff like that. God, Kate, I'm so sorry. When did you find this out? It was a little over a week ago. How did you find out? Did he come to you and tell you or did you find something? He came to me and told me and I did discover that it has been going on our whole marriage. I just found that out last night. Where was he getting these loans from? My husband is self-employed. He started his own business two years ago and his business has done really well and we would have been fine. Our business was successful. He does excavation and I don't know. I'm still not at the bottom of the purpose of doing that, but anyway, his business was doing really well and so that's why he was able to get such loans, if that makes sense. So, he took out business loans? Yes. He told banks, I'm borrowing this money for my business and then he day traded it? So, he committed a crime too? I wasn't aware that was a crime. It's fraud. Okay. If I go to a bank and say, hey, I want to open a restaurant and they go, cool, and they give me money for my restaurant and I go day trade it, yeah, that's fraud. I'm not sure if it's a business loan. I just know he has three loans and I know the names of the places he has them through. So, you don't know if it's like a personal loan or a small business loan? I know that some of them are. I think they're all. I mean, they'll all be personal. Yeah, but you're not taking it out on the business to John's point. Gosh, Kate. How much do you guys make a year? He pays himself as a W-2 employee with his company and $60,000 a year is how he does it. Okay. We will be filing bankruptcy in March. It's not even optional. There's no way out. Yeah. Have you guys spoken to an attorney? We have. And that was the question I had. Should I get a job? My husband doesn't think it's in my best interest to get a job because he thinks it actually might hurt the situation more than help it. Because you're what? Like showing more income or something? Because we file our taxes jointly and so he thinks that's going to increase our household income. Dude, you're so far past that situation. Here's what getting a job would do for you right now. Like the world you knew as of like two weeks ago doesn't exist anymore. The integrity of the man you anchored your life to doesn't exist anymore. And like you owning that reality is really important. I understand that. And taking money advice and well, it's going to bracket us from the person that just did that. That's like your spouse cheating on you and then giving you dating advice. You've worked too hard to get control of your money just to let strangers control your data. Every online signup, discount code, and free trial comes at a cost. Your information. And Delete.me helps you take back control. Their privacy experts find your personal info on sketchy data broker sites. They delete it and they keep it gone. Meaning you stay in charge of what's yours. So protect your privacy and get 20% off an annual plan at joindeleteme.com slash Ramsey. That's joindeleteme.com slash Ramsey. That's like your spouse cheating on you and then giving you dating advice. You know what I mean? I'm like, I'm not taking that kind of advice from you in this moment right now. Well, you guys are much smarter, wiser than I am. So what do you have to say? We call it financial infidelity. Yeah. So Kate, if I were you, I would be separating everything right now because this part of your marriage no longer has trust, right? And John can talk about what it looks like to rebuild that. But for you and you're expecting, right, a baby? Correct. Yes. And I already have a one-year-old. Probably like what I would probably do today is I would go down to the bank and get a separate checking account. And when he pays himself, I would split it 50-50 and just have your own money in an account for right now. And then you guys need to look at what it looks like going forward because for you to what John's saying is like creating safety for you, Kate, is what I'm looking for here in a financial situation. Now, you having a baby and being pregnant like that, I mean, it does, it adds so many complexities because you go and put the kid in daycare and try to get a part-time job. I mean, realistically, like, you know, probably not. Like daycare is going to cost as much as, you know what I mean? I know how expensive that stuff is. So looking at it, so what I would do probably right now is I would tell him I need 50% of the paycheck and I'm having my own account because you need to start rebuilding your own side of the finances in marriage. And then unless you guys can get to a point where you are rebuilding your marriage and the trust of the money comes after all of that, but you're going to probably be in a holding pattern for a bit. And I wouldn't, I would want every login information. I would have every account. I would freeze his credit so he can't go and borrow more. That's for years, freeze yours too? Freeze yours, your child's too. People take out loans in their kids' names and commit fraud that way. Okay. And the thing with what he's done and I don't, obviously we don't know him, but, and John, you probably could speak to this way better than I can, but when you find yourself in a hole that deep, you almost become, like you start to like make decisions that aren't even rational to out of the freak out of trying to get yourself out of this much of a mess. You go into survival, you're not thinking anymore. Yeah, there's no rationale. So him like borrowing money. It's not an excuse, but it's a context. Yeah, so like him taking money out on one-year-old, most people are like, that would be crazy. I'm like, yeah, but he would be in that desperate situation that he'd probably go and do things like that, right? So you're just trying to, at this point, I would put as much protection around yourself from a cashflow perspective that's realistic and that he can't tap into anything else. And I would, yeah. I mean, I would make sure you have every login account. Do you guys have, I mean, do you have investments? I mean, all, like when you file bankruptcy, they're going to be taking it so much. Like do they- You're talking about like your, like what investments as far as- Like 401k, Roth IRAs, do you guys have any of those? He does. Okay. So I have one, but it's just in my name. So they're not going to touch it because all the loans are in his name, not mine. So I would have, I would even get just- I don't know if that's how that works. The login information on all of that. Like, do you know what I mean? I would get as much information as you can to have access to what you need to get to if the time comes. And you just explained it. You learned something two weeks ago and then you found something out last night. I think I can probably count on one hand the number of times somebody has come forward with a spouse and said, hey, I screwed up. I screwed up with our money. I haven't been employed for a year, whatever. And they get the whole story the first time out. So for you, I would guess that there are- I would predict that there are going to be waves of you uncovering and finding things out. And so the conversation you begin with your husband starts like this. You, husband, have burned our trust to the ground. For the next seven days, here's a roadmap that I want you to follow that we can start practicing in teeny tiny little ways to rebuild trust. I want every login. I want our credit reports. I want my own checking account. And then seven days from now, you're going to give him another roadmap, very clear that he can follow. And then he gets to decide whether he's going to follow that or not. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.