My Boyfriend Won't Marry Me Until I Pay Off My Debt (He Makes $250k a Year)

If your private student loans are in default, you're not out of options. Go to whyrefi.com slash Ramsey. I've been with my boyfriend for a little over six years and I graduated in December 2023 with about 160 loans, $160,000 in student loan debt. I've paid off a lot. I have about $90,000 left. Way to go. Thank you. So you're what, 24? I'm 26. 26. Okay. And what's your field of, what's your career? I'm a nurse. Oh, good for you. Okay. And so you've got 90,000 left. All right. And my boyfriend makes $250,000 a year, but he does not want to propose until I'm completely debt-free. Interesting. You're not gonna like me. If you were my daughter, you know what I would dump him. Yeah. I mean, he's a great guy. No, he's not. No, he's not. No, he's not. He's making you prove your worth based on money to him. You're having to buy your way into this relationship. Nope. You're a princess and you deserve more than this. The reason I've been able to like put like majority of my paycheck towards my loans is because he does pay for all our rent. Oh, so you live together? Yeah, we live together. So you're already married, but you just didn't admit it. Yeah. It doesn't feel like we're married. So what's his incentive to get married? None. And this, this, let me just say this, Haley. And I'm saying this because you're going to have relationships after this, and you're going to learn from this. And there's people who are going to watch this call and learn from this. This is precisely why, uh, one of the reasons why living together before marriage is a, is it's a bum idea. It's not a good idea because what happens is you start to make bad relational decisions based off of the financial gain and based off of the pressure that you've already put on yourselves. It's a lot easier to walk away from a messed up relationship when he lives over here and she lives over here. And we just get together when it's time to go on our dates. It's a lot easier to go, you know what? This guy's a bum. I'm going to walk away. It makes it a lot more difficult when suddenly you're in the same house and then you're splitting the bills and then he's paying for the rent. It makes it very hard to make the natural transitions that we would have made if we had not applied that amount. And so you move forward in a toxic, unhealthy relationship because you chose to share an address anyway. Now you're not going to do it. I can tell by the way you're talking. So here's the thing. We love people getting out of debt. You know that. And why do we love people getting out of debt? Because we love people and we want them to be able to prosper. And your number one wealth building tool is your income. You have a fabulous career choice as a nurse. You'll always be employed and you can always work as much as you want to work. You can work 80 hours a week or you can work 20 hours a week as a nurse. You'll be able to do that the rest of your life. And you can make a pile of money. All we tell couples to do is to be aligned, be in agreement on how money is going to be handled. Now he is in agreement that he hates debt. You're in agreement that you've hated debt and you've been working it down. Okay. But then he, um, he has put up a false block here. I'm just telling you, I, I, I love you. And I, if you were my daughter, I'd tell you not to marry this guy. And, uh, because I think he's, he, this is a false premise. Um, you're aligned on what is important. You're aligned on, okay, we don't like debt. We're going to avoid debt. We're going to get out of debt. Um, and that's not, uh, people have asked me since I came on the air here 35 years ago, should I marry someone with debt? And the answer is always yes. As long as you love them and you're aligned that we're getting rid of the debt. If you have zero debt, but one of you loves debt and hates saving and the other one loves saving and hates debt, you're going to get a divorce later. The number one cause of divorce in North America today is money fights and money problems. And guess what this is. This is a money fight. Yeah. You're just not having it out loud. You're having it in your head. Yeah, that's right. Now what could be going on and I'm going to allow a little space for this. He could just be an idiot today and he just needs to learn a little bit about what it means to be in a relationship and what it means to handle money together. You said one thing that might cause me to go, I wonder if I brought this to him and, you know, saw premarital counselor, if we can get on the same page is it seemed like he was willing to help with the debt. Now you guys aren't married yet, but in a married relationship, it seemed like he was willing to help, but he was helping in the wrong way. And so that's the only thing that makes me think he's, he might possibly simply be misguided because he said, oh, I'll pay the rent. You could go to a marriage counselor, premarital counselor and say, look, let's get aligned on this or we're going to end this. But if at the end of the day, the answer to the question is I won't marry you until you pay off your debt. The question's answered. You value that more than you value me. See you later, alligator. After a while, crocodile, you'd be gone. Yeah. I mean, I'll be done with this. I'm just not doing this. Absolutely. Yeah. What are the cool kids say? See you, Felicia or something. Bye Felicia. Bye Felicia. Yeah. That's the cool kids. Like 20 years ago, the cool kids, right? Yeah. That's gonna, I'm going to remember that forever, Dave. That was great. See you later, Felicia. Get off my lawn. Okay. I'm that guy. All right. YREFI refinances defaulted private student loans for struggling borrowers. Learn more at YREFI.com slash Ramsey.