Help Pay My Wife's Student Loan Or Make Her Do It Herself?

0:00Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. My wife and I recently married, and we are working on our budget. She has a $10,000 car loan. Uh-oh, I smell trouble already. $70,000 in student loans, and only $500 in her bank account. Now, no. I was expecting her debt to be half the actual number. The only debt I have is my house. I have $85,000 in a brokerage account and $125,000 in savings that I had earmarked to put toward our house. Oh, brother Aaron. Together we earn about nine grand a month. How should we approach the debt? Should I have my wife use her income to pay off the debt and not contribute to our monthly living expenses? Or should I offer to pay a lump sum of cash to her debt? I actually think you should find, go watch back to the future one, get your hands on a

1:00delorean, go back in time and unmarry yourself because this is, you're going to be calling my show in a couple of years saying, oh, Mary, just following a part. And I'm going to be like, yeah, we talked earlier, Aaron and, dude, you kind of suck. Yeah. Kind of, you're the worst. The old, the old, the old. Did you, oh my gosh. And I get it. I get people I get married later. I get people have built up their thing. But you're getting married and you're like, do I choose to put part of my savings? You married her. You're sharing a bet like, oh my gosh. I have cash earmarked for our next house. You're going to make her pay for some of the house too, Aaron? Gosh. Yeah, I think you knew what you were walking into Aaron. If it made you mad, you shouldn't have married her. Yeah, he says, I was expecting her debt to be half the only way I'll have some grace and compassion for you, brother is she lied to your face. That's fair.

2:01And then y'all got to deal with that because that is, that's a big deal. If she promised you, it's 35 grand, then when you got, y'all got married, you started looking at each other's bills. But y'all have an income. And this is going to make people uncomfortable. Y'all have 125,000 dollars in savings. Your mark for what y'all decide is your next big move as a new couple, as a family unit, as two people who created the secret world called marriage, right? Y'all have 85,000 dollars in a brokerage account. And until you get that through your head, brother, y'all going to be roommates, y'all going to be running parallel lives, and you're going to go one way and she's going to go another. And it will always be for tat at that point. Always. Score keeping. I made this. Well, she spent, I mean, it will be, I need you to bid for me for Taco Bell because I paid last time. Yes. Oh, man. Now, I will say is she sucks with money and she doesn't care and she spends it like, right, it's so much more. It's not the numbers that bother me.

3:02It's the attitudes behind it. So if she is terrible and you feel like I can't trust her in that, that's one thing. That's not what I'm hearing. No, but it feels like you're sitting on top of this mountain, Aaron, a, a, Ron, and you're, you're casting down like looking down your nose. It is. That cannot believe, but me over here, this lesser person who got a student loan. Blah. No, actually, I actually think your other, your plan is actually pretty good. I think she should have to just work the dead off and you can just pay her part of the light bill for a couple of come on, man. You're married. What if you like to play out, play out if we, if we, because we have strong opinions on this side and people get mad at us all the time, but it is what it is. But if our opinions were that strong on the other side and we're like, you're right, Aaron, you make her, you, you, yeah, she, she still has to pay her into the deal though. Like she still has to pay half the bills and she's going to be, she's going to, she may not make it, she may have to borrow money from you, Aaron. If you go down that road, play it out, how ridiculous it is.

4:05It's crazy. Play it out. And you're married people. Are you going to a victor? Yeah, what are you going to do? You're going to a victor. She doesn't pay her light bill. What if she has to pay interest? She's going to turn her lamp off. Like on her, like you're going to, like, she's not allowed to use her night stay in the lamp. Plastic plates over her plug, so she can't charge her phone. Like what do you get to actually do, dude? Like when you all go out to eat, like I'm going on a date tonight. Oh, you can't afford your plate. Sorry. Good luck. Have fun with the free bread. Yeah, we'll go to Olive Garden so you can have the bread sticks. And I'm going to get a glass of wine. You can't afford it. We're going to Vinn moment nine dollars for the tip. Come on, man. Like if play it out, play it out. It doesn't, you all need to have one check in account. You all get a sit at a table. And by the way, I'm, I'm, I'm not being ugly. Y'all aren't working on Y'all's budget. You handed her a budget and said, this is how we're going to live. And I get to have a right to say that because you're shameful with money. Don't be that guy. Sit down and ask what kind of world do we want to co create together? What do we want to build together? Where do we want to end up in five years, 10 years, 20 years, and have that discussion

5:08and then live in reality and y'all both get there. And by the way, here's what really pisses me off about this. Dude, you could clear your household. Y'all could clear your household that right this second. And you'd still have 85 grand in one account and what, $45,000 another account. You know what that would make you way ahead of the game still. And your wife, whatever education her car would be, y'all would be all's and would be good to go. And you start from there. Yep. If this was we don't have any money and we're broke, what do we do? I get that. You have a lot of money, man. So anyway, no, and I think part of what we see with conflict and money and marriage because we do that the money marriage, we can get away. We have a few tickets left. I can't wait 20 seconds to 24th. Call. It's the best marriage event on planet earth. And it sells out every time it will will sell out. But if you, I think there's still a few tickets left, get online and get them.

6:10Yeah, go to Ramsey Solutions.com and check out those tickets and come spend the weekends. But one of the attitudes that we kind of see that can start to really, I mean, I think create a lot of resentment and it roads intimacy and marriage is that superiority complex. Yes. With money that someone, well, I make more and because I make more, I get to make, I have more voting rights, if you will, or I didn't take out. It's her dad. And so she needs to deal with it over here. I didn't do that. Or he, whatever it is, there's this feeling of, I'm better with money. And automatically it puts the other spouse in a position of, I guess I'm not great at it. I'm going to let them just do it. And I'll just take the crumbs off the table of what's left, not even from a financial perspective, but an emotional, like, okay, I'll just sit here and let you tell me what to do. And over time, you guys, that is a, that's a bad deal. Like when you get married, there is a level of sacrifice, a level of humility and selflessness

7:14and serving each other. And you're on the same team. But when that starts to imbalance, especially with money, it gets weird. There gets to be a weird power dynamic. The wifey, there's taking care of the husband and she ends up being like, like, a weird mom. Yeah. Like, he ends up being like the fifth kid or the third kid. Or he is so dominant over her and she, she has no voice because she hasn't made an income and she, you know what I mean? Like, it's, it gets weird really fast. I mean, I feel like we, that comes up. Yeah, it comes up every, from almost everybody universally. It's some shape for her fashion because sometimes it's not money. Sometimes it's the kitchen's not exactly the way I wanted it. And that makes me better. Or the garage is not, the cars aren't parked perfectly in the garage. And so because I would park them perfectly, that makes me better. Anytime you feel like I am better than, right? You're, that's a recipe for disaster for your marriage, right? Both of you are going to have things you're better at than the other skills.

8:15And that's, like, you make it, that's a team, right? Yes, it's a good thing. And that's a, that's a great thing. But yeah, Aaron dude, like, just cutting you straight, man. Today, before the day is over, her, the debt she accrued that are now y'all's debts are paid in full. And I want you to take her out to dinner and celebrate the fact that y'all are dead free. And y'all dream about what you want your life to look like. Because by the way, what people think, the freedom they think they're getting from being controlling like this, it's a prison with a lock on the inside as C.S. Lewis calls it. Your life will be miserable too, trying to control another person and how they breathe and how they spend money and how they're ashamed. Your life will suck too. Free your whole household man, including yourself. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.