My Husband's Bad Decisions Put Us Back Into Debt

Brought to you by CHM, a budget-friendly, faith-based alternative to health insurance. chministries.org slash budget. My husband and I have been debt-free from about 2013 up until this year. And my husband is an alcoholic, but got sober in January and replaced alcohol with spending. So now we have $38,000 in debt. And so he is now, unfortunately, not sober again, but now wants to pay off the debt. He's not sober now, but he wants to pay off the debt. Yes, it's the opposite of what traditionally happens, I think. And the $38,000, is that all sorts of different things, or was it like one vehicle? Because $38,000 since January is a lot of money. Two major purchases. What are they? So one is a boat and one was a bathroom remodel. Okay, boat and a bathroom. One of those we can sell, so that's good. How much is that boat worth? Yeah, about $28,000. And what's owed on it? $13,000. Oh, good. So there's some money there. And the bathroom, you were on board with that a little bit, I gotta believe. Hard to sneak that one past you. Yeah, so I was until they came back with the quote, and then I said no, and he signed the papers. Without you. Okay, so the good news is there's money to be made back on the boat, and then we can cash flow the payoff of the rest of this. Is he working? Is he able to hold down jobs? Yes. Okay, what does he earn and what do you earn? So together we earn just under $300,000. Wow, great income. So that's nice. We'll clean this up fast. If you sell the boat, you'll profit $15,000 and apply that to your $25,000 left on the bathroom loan? Well, so my question is more, so we have the money. I have $50,000 in savings and I have $35,000 additionally in an emergency fund. However, the last year of our life has been incredibly volatile with a lot of things that we've not seen coming that we've had to cash flow. So I'm just worried about draining savings. He has some stocks that he plays with that he needs to sell to pay for this, and I'm worried about the tax implications for that. I just don't know the, like, we can pay it off. I just don't know the best way to do it. I'll tell you my thing that I'm a little concerned about. You said your concerns. My concern is if he's back drinking again and you guys have this stellar income, does this have the ability to affect his job and his employment, therefore putting you guys in a really tough situation financially? It hasn't ever, is all I can say. So he's a pretty functional alcoholic. Very, yeah. Well, here's the thing. You can move around the money, pay off the debt, but it's not changing this underlying problem, which is your marriage and his addictions. If you're serious about budgeting, you can't ignore healthcare. For most families, it's one of the biggest line items. Y'all, you can cut subscriptions and eating out, but if you're still stuck with a massive premium every month, it's going to be stressful. Now, Christian Healthcare Ministries is different. It's not insurance. It's believers sharing each other's medical bills. And the best part, programs start at just $115 a month. So go to chministries.org budget and use code Ramsey for 50% credit towards your first month. You guys are not on the same page. He's making moves behind your back. You doesn't seem like you have much of a vote here. And you're realistically worried about the future. Now I would pay off the debt and I would sell the boat. It's not going to put you in dire straits to do all of this, to knock out the debts. What I would do is put some guardrails in place so that neither of you can make any more stupid financial decisions. And that means we're going to freeze both of our credits. We're going to pull both of our credit reports today. You can go to annualcreditreport.com, pull those for free to get everything out on the table. And he needs to be very much involved in this. Is he on board to rectify the situation and get his life and marriage back? That's to be determined. I can't answer that. I think I would go to a further extreme on this. I don't think that you can give access to an addict to the money. I don't think he can have access to the money because the problem is he's going to spend it. Whether it's signing a bathroom contract that you didn't agree to or... Toys, gambling. I mean, it sounds like he's just looking for every vice possible. So I think that you have to have that conversation and figure out on the side and possibly with some counsel what it can look like for you to have access to this. And maybe it doesn't sound like he would work with you on this to say, Hey, I'm worried. I'm worried about me. I'm worried about you. I'm worried about the family. Do you guys have kids? We do. How many? Three. Yeah. I'm worried about the kids. We're unsafe. And so the only thing that I can do to stay in this environment with the kids for it to be safe is I have to have access to the money because I have to make sure that mortgage is paid. I have to make sure that the needs are met financially and that you don't mess things up for us going forward for the long term. If you're not able to do that, then I have to make other arrangements. Which means you're the gatekeeper. And in order to make sure that you're safe and until he shows himself to be trustworthy, which means he is sober, making wise financial decisions over a long period of time, I do think it's wise not to quote unquote separate your finances, but to make sure that he does not have access to this money to make bad decisions with. Right. Because you're still keeping him abreast of what's going on. He can still look at the budget. Like it's not to say that he can't. There's no transparency. It's just to say, Hey, you used to be able to have this debit card and go and spend, spend, spend. Now I'm going to be the one that pays the bills with out of our money. I am going to be the one that handles the money. Basically. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, I do handle it already. Right. But he's got a debit card in his wallet and he can go out and he has the same access to the checking account. Give us the top priorities of things that you would be worried about right now with your finances. My biggest thing is if we were to drain the savings and then we have, we've had a couple like $10,000 emergencies come up in the last year because of other circumstances that we've cashflowed. And so I just am worried that those may come up and we've already drained our savings to now. No one's asking you to drain the savings. I mean, if you, if you sell the boat and pay off the bathroom remodel, you're still left with liquid, you know, 50 grand. Okay. And you're not going to have a $50,000 emergency and you can probably cashflow that now that you'll be completely debt-free with a full emergency fund with $300,000 coming in. And so you guys are in actually a really decent spot financially, but it's more of the what ifs and is he going to get better and will you guys work together and will this addiction get worse? Those are the parts we need to deal with. How long was he an alcoholic before he got sober this last time? So this is the first and only time so far. And it's been 20 years. What gave him the ability to get sober that first time? Was there one thing? Our son was also an addict and went through rehab. Wow. And so it was an eye opener, but yeah. But it wasn't enough. I know. Yeah. Our son is one year sober. Okay. That's good. Listen, we're rooting for you. You've got, you've got your work cut out for you. And I think the best thing you can do is control your actions. You can't control his. So you can decide what your boundaries are going to be, what you want, the picture you want for money that makes you feel safe. And you can act on those things. You don't have to, and you can't wait for somebody, especially somebody who's not in a healthy place at this moment. But rooting for you guys. Christian Healthcare Ministries can save your family hundreds of dollars on healthcare every month. Learn more at chministries.org slash budget.