Wife Refuses To Let Me In On The Finances (I Don't Trust Her)

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. My wife has incurred a lot of credit card debt, and I just found out about it. And it's bad enough that she doesn't know the extent of it. She also got some personal loans. There's a lot of pay-as-you-go stuff, like a firm that I found out in our banking account. And this is like the second time this has happened. And the first time, Bad enough, we got a HELOC on our home to get things squared away. The plan with that was to get the HELOC, make some home improvements, pay that off, and sell the house. I found out a couple weeks ago that it happened again. My question would be— Let me stop a second. So she's handling her money by herself? You're not involved? No, she's kind of been in charge of the finances. A few years ago, I had a major stroke. Okay, so she ran up debt and hit it, and you got a HELOC loan to pay it off, and you said, hey, let's keep doing that. Why don't you keep handling the finances because you suck at it? I'm sorry? You said to her, why don't you keep handling the finances since it's not working when you handle it? Why did you not jump in and help with this? I was trying to. But she was very hesitant to let me see it, and I know why now. Oh, I guess. She's hiding it. Yeah. What is she buying, brother? I just found out about the firm stuff yesterday. What is she buying? I think it's just things off of Amazon, honestly. And you don't know? She doesn't know the total debt here? That's what she keeps telling me. She estimated it between $14,000 and $16,000. Okay. What do you make a year? I make $1,672 twice a month. Okay. What does she make? $1,706 a month. About $5,200. So you're making about $80,000 a year minus taxes. Okay. Y'all got money going into 401k? Yeah. The numbers I gave you was after taxes and everything. How much is going into 401k? I just did an adjustment on that. What do you do for a living? I actually work for the state of Missouri. Doing what? I'm a supervisor for BPTs, Benefit Program Technicians. All right. So let's establish something very gently but very firmly. The program you guys have been using to handle money in your house is horrible. Yeah. And it's given you horrible results. I think what has happened. Did you know your personal info is getting bought and sold to people right now who use AI to target you with bizarrely personal scams and spam? Like, hey George, are you interested in selling your house at 253 Sprague Street? Well, lucky for you, there's Delete.me. Delete.me, as the name implies, goes to hundreds of creepy data broker sites and deletes your personal info. over and over all year long. I use and love Delete.me because I can't stop scammers from using AI, but I can make myself much more difficult to target. So go to joindeleteme.com slash Ramsey and get 20% off an annual plan or click the link in the description. That's join, J-O-I-N, deleteme.com slash Ramsey. I might be wrong, but I've been doing this a long time. I think your wife is attempting to meet your expectations of how this household should run with not enough money to do it. And when she goes into debt to keep the house running the way she thinks it should run and she thinks you want it run, she's ashamed of that and hides it. I don't think this woman has a boyfriend on the side, and I don't think this woman has malice at all. I think she's out of control, incompetent, and doesn't know what to do with the money. And so it makes a big mess, and then shame keeps her from telling you about it. What do you think of that? Do you think that's right? I think that's funny. Okay. So here's how we fix that. This is fairly easy. You need to go to her when you get off the phone and sit down with her and take her two hands in your hands and look her in the eye and say, I am so sorry because you are, you dumped this on her and she didn't know how to do it. And you didn't help. And so the two of you starting today are going to unpack every single expense in this house. And the two of you starting today are going to make every decision together for the rest of your lives. She is no longer in charge of the money and you are no longer in charge of the money. We are going to have full disclosure, full transparency on every single transaction. And we are going to do these transactions together. In the budgeting app, every dollar, every month, before they happen. And you're going to help instead of just dumping this on her and then being upset that she made a mess. You should apologize to your wife for doing that to her. I did. I'm going to get the HELOC. And I've been trying to get her to... You didn't hear a thing I said. You start talking about HELOCs. Well, no, is she freezing you out? She won't let you... She won't work with you? She starts to, and then she plans up. This is no longer an option. This marriage is not going to last if you two don't start working together in full transparency. Because her incompetence has caused you to completely lose trust in her. And you're starting to lose trust in her integrity. And so she's got to overcome the shame and say, I'm going to accept help, and the two of us are going to do this together, and that's going to give us strength. But if she can't do that, then you guys don't need to go see a marriage counselor tomorrow because you're going to end up in divorce court if you don't. It's not going to work. And the stress and the sadness that is in your voice is killing me listening to you. I want to cry with you. And yet I'm telling you, you've still got to go in there, man up and help and say, honey, I'm sorry I asked you to do this by yourself. Starting today, I can't do it this way anymore. I'm terrified. We are going to have to do this together. And we're going to unpack this. And then we may or may not go get a HELOC. You probably won't. It's only $14,000. Shut up and go pay it. But you've got to get on the same plan to do that. If it's $140,000, we might have to sell the house, but it's $14,000, maybe. And you can go to freecreditreport.com, and you'll find out exactly what you both owe. Except for the Affirm crap, which doesn't show up there. Yeah. So disconnect stupid Amazon and disconnect Affirm. Affirm affirms, let me tell you what Affirm means. It affirms that you're stupid when you use it. That's what Affirm means. Because you just put a t-shirt that was on three $19 payments and paid $60 for a freaking t-shirt because a firm gave you easy payments. It's a disease on the internet is what Affirm is. I don't know what Affirm is. It's one of these pay-as-you-go things. Anytime you get ready to buy a t-shirt or anything else stupid on the internet, a pair of shoes, you can do three easy payments. It's Klarna, Affirm, it's all these crappy companies. They're payday lenders of t-shirts. And so, it's just stupid. And so, dude, you've got to take this over with her and the two of you together handle this. She cannot do it by herself. She doesn't have the capability. And if you lay it out like Dave said, he had a more generous read on it than I did. If you lay it out and she looks at you and says, no, I'm not doing this with you. I'm not telling you what I spent this money on. I'm not showing you this stuff. Then, like Dave said, y'all have way bigger issues than just her spending problem. Yeah, the HELOC will pay for your divorce lawyer. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.