Wife's Mom Maxed Out A Credit Card In Her Name

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Me and my wife have been following y'all's baby steps, and we've come across a hiccup. I mentioned it to her a while ago, so... Uh, when she was a little bit younger, um, her mom is kind of not the best mother. She opened up a credit card or forced her daughter to open up a credit card in her daughter's name. Uh, she kind of crept that credit card. It was, I think it was like $10,000 and she maxed it out, uh, basically left her with the debt. Well, we're going through and I told her a while ago, I, Hey, you need to go to your mom and clear this up, have her pay you. Well, her mom doesn't really work. And, uh, she's been stuck with the debt and she knows it was a dumb decision. Um, we both do. Um, uh, she has a right under $8,000 left. She's just been paying the minimum payment for quite some time now. And, uh, our only debt left is, um, my truck payment. And then now her, or now that credit card. And also I have a house payment, but, um, okay. Wait a minute. I thought you said you weren't married. Um, we, I mean, we, we are like, we, so we weren't married, but we ended up going to the courthouse because I was watching your thing. Um, and so are you married? We are now. Yes. Okay. So it's your wife, not girlfriend or fiance. Yes. Yes. Sorry. We, I was watching your episode the other day and y'all said something. I'm like, yeah, we gotta get on this. I don't know what the holdup is. Cause you got on somebody and sort of kind of straighten that out. Good for you. Okay. So now you're married, and it was just the other day. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you. And so now it's not your girlfriend, not your fiancée, it's your wife. Yeah. And your wife was how old when her mother messed her over? 22 or 20, no, 21 or 22. So your wife at 22 years old signed the paperwork and handed her mother a credit card. Correct. Okay, yeah. Yeah, her mother's scum. And no question about that, but your wife was a legal adult and signed something legally and morally, owns it. So her mother is just a bad part of the story, but otherwise we have $8,000 in credit card debt and we have a car debt. And your household income is what? Household income on the low side, $95,000 a year. Good for you. And how much do you owe on the truck? Around $11,000. Okay, and $8,000 on a credit card. What other debt have you guys got? Uh, so just the house payment, the truck and the credit card. Oh, how much do you owe on the house? Um, around $280,000. Okay, cool. Any other debt? Uh, no, sir. Okay. So you guys bringing home $6,000, $7,000 a month right now? What's that number? I am, yes, sir. Okay, is she not working? Uh, correct. We have a newborn. Uh, well, not a newborn anymore. He's three months old. Um. But yes, so we have him. So she stays at home because daycare around here, or not daycare, but well, yeah, it's around $1,000 a freaking week nowadays. So she's going to stay home. So you'll be the sole income provider making $95,000 minimum. Correct. Okay. So out of that $6,000 or $7,000, after you pay the mortgage, the bills, how much can we allocate towards these debts? On top of the minimum payments, how much could you throw at these? You're going to get an attack mode. Um, I mean, I can attack it. I mean, I can, I can definitely attack it. How much? Why haven't you? How much can you throw at it? Uh, I mean, definitely a few hundred dollars a month. That sucks. That's going to take you a decade. I'm thinking of thousands of dollars a month. Yeah, probably. I guess I haven't really... Think about it. A thousand a month, you're done in 19 months. Yeah. So let's reverse engineer it and say, hey man, I'd love to be debt-free in under a year. What would that take? So you're saying as in we should have tagged that and not have her confront her mother and say, this is what we need to do. You're not getting jacked a lot. You're better off getting a second part-time job than trying to get money out of her. She doesn't have any money. She's a broke scumburger. So unless you're going to try to sue her, which you won't get anywhere with that, I would just take the loss and go, man, that sucks. We broke a relationship and we owe this debt, but let's just move on with our life. And start just, your credit card's the smallest debt. And we know who's not babysitting your kid. Yeah, we already, we made that decision. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Your kid will end up with a credit card. Yeah, she's already asked for her social security number. You're kidding. No. I would freeze that baby's credit. Before he was born. She told us that she doesn't want, she said she don't want a copy of the Social Security. She said she wants to hold on to it just so it's safe because she lives somewhere else. And I looked at my girl and I told her, I said, did she think we were stupid? Yeah, really. Your homework is to freeze your credit and her credit and that baby's credit with all three bureaus. Yeah. Because this lady is going to try to do some more damage. This woman is bad news. She wanted to buy him his lifetime hunter's license. Yeah, she's a freaking test pilot for a broom factory, man. This woman's bad news. Yeah. We got to move on. All right. So, yeah, I'm going to put her over to the side where she belongs, way over to the side. And then the two of you are going to get on an every dollar budget, and you're going to live on beans and rice, rice and beans. And we're going to attack the $8,000 in debt and the $11,000 in debt right after that, working the debt snowball that you've heard us talk about here on the air, James. You can do this. I got to tell you, I think you're going to do it. Because there's a couple of things I observed in talking to you about you. One is, is that you're coachable. And two is, is that you are wide awake and paying attention. Most people are neither one. And that's why most people fail. They're not coachable and they're sleepwalking through this life. And your eyes are wide open. You're like, I'm a new husband. I'm a new dad. I'm going to protect everybody from this, protect this kid from crazy mother-in-law. We got to get this debt gone. This is grown up adulting stuff. Man, you are on fire. I really like where you are. This is a good situation. So I'm going to send you a copy of my book, Breaking Free from Broke, James. That'll walk you through this whole process and get you fired up and get that credit card knocked out first. And if you throw $1,000, $1,500 a month at this thing, then attack the car loan after that, you're going to be done in a year. But it's going to be a year of hustle. Yeah. $1,500 a month and you're out in a year. And that's where you need to be. And you can do that out of your income, maybe picking up some overtime, maybe selling a few odds and ends, whatever. You'll be in great shape. Very proud of you, James. I've found reverse engineering is far more impactful for me. Instead of going, well, how much can you throw at the debt? A couple hundred. Instead I go, I'd love to be out of this in a year. What would that take? What must be true for me to be debt-free a year from now? Now you know the number. It's going to take $1,583. Great. Now we can at least have a mission and go find that kind of money, whether that's through selling stuff. Working part-time, extra, cutting our expenses down, and then you get more motivated versus let's just see what happens. You pre-decide. You know, you could do that with like, I want a million dollar net worth by the time I'm 30. Exactly. Okay. How old are you? Okay. 22. Okay. Then you got eight years. What must be true over those eight years to be at a million by 30? People who get there, that's how they're doing it. They're setting a goal and breaking down into little bite-sized pieces how to get there. They're not just hoping. What must be true. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.