"You Need To Tell Your Husband About This Today"

0:00If your private student loans are in default, you're not out of options. Go to yrefi.com slash Ramsey. I'm a married woman in my 50s with $25,000 in debt that my husband doesn't know about. I started a part-time job and I'm slowly paying it off. I grew up in a middle class family and my mother was always trying to save a dollar was drove me crazy. My husband is a good man who makes about $175,000 a year. We don't have a mortgage and have about 1.5 million in retirement. We have a healthy retirement investments and our parents have set up 529s for our children so college is set. I like to buy nice things for myself, but I feel terrible about the way I've handled my finances. Should I continue to pay this off myself or come clean and tell him about the debt? Lauren, well to answer your question bluntly, yeah, I would come clean and tell him about the debt. You guys get this cleaned up together, but also carrying around a secret like that and functioning

1:04at that level in your marriage is going to a road, not only your marriage, but also you. You can't carry that stuff. Secrets is what a road's trust in a marriage and so you carrying that is not being a person of integrity, being fully honest and so that's going to be a hard, a very hard conversation. So that deal with financial infidelity and thankfully you guys have the, it sounds like the margin that you're going to be able to take care of it, but people like it stuck with the stuff. It does feel like a level of betrayal, sometimes at the same level of actual infidelity going on in a marriage. So I'm not saying it's going to be easy, Lauren, carrying it around is going to be pissed because you lied to him. So I think that I like nice things so I lied to you. I don't think that's okay and it's not okay and I think you expect him to be pissed and he should be, not because of the money, but because of the deception and the lying.

2:07And that's some serious stuff in your relationship. So yeah, you need to come clean yesterday, deal with whatever the consequences are. It may put you on the marriage counselor's office, which would be okay with me. And the second thing is, is that you can afford nice things, but you can't afford to do it under the table, hide the target bags, end of the bay, that's not, that's not funny. This is a grown woman and you're 50 freaking years old, it's time to act like it. So yeah, you got, you need to, you and your husband need to sit down and have an adequate budget for you to buy some nice things. And part of it was you grew up in a tight household where they didn't have any money. And so your husband makes $175,000 a year, you want to have a nice dress. That's okay. I want 14 nice dresses, no, then that's something wrong with you. Well, I was going to say at that point, yes, where she is, I'm like there's, there's stuff inside of you Lauren that's coming out sideways in the form of money.

3:10Yeah. For some people it's other things that they sit there and Medicaid with, but some people it is. It's the spending, it's the money. And so figuring out what that is for you, for yourself to get healthy is going to be a gift later on to your marriage, but yeah, you know, so we can afford to do a lot of things that we choose not to do because in our minds they're ridiculous. But she and I, Sharon and I choose to do that together. And then there's some things that we choose to do that other people think are ridiculous. I don't care what they think, it's not their money. And so we just buy that because we want to and we have the money shut up. And so you can do that, but you're in agreement on that amount. And so my wife wants to do such and such and the redecorating, which is a constant budget line item. And so, you know, that, but at least we know what it is and we're doing it together. And it's a reasonable percentage of our world and it doesn't mess up everything else and she gets to enjoy that thing that I don't even understand. And so that's okay. I can do that as a husband, she can do that as a wife, but we can be on the same page.

4:12And it's a line item in our overall plan and there's room for it. And I think that's the case here. There's room for you to have some nice things and but not by hiding them. So yeah, you need to come clean today. You need to expect him to be not about the money, but about the lying for him to be really pissed. I don't know if anybody that wouldn't be. And so, you know, and you've broken trust and it may take a little while to rebuild that trust and it may take some time at a marriage counselor's office and that's okay. I wouldn't mind that for y'all at all because there's a lot of stuff going on here that needs to be fixed. But yeah, but the way you all have been handling money as a couple has not allowed you the freedom to speak up and say, I want to buy something. Yeah. You have an issue Lauren that you have to live below your mains and you don't like that. And so you go off and do whatever you want and go charge it on credit cards.

5:13That's your issue. But then on the flip side, he could be he could be kind of a jerk and like shaman you have every purchase. You're like, I don't want to deal with that. I'll just come over here and do my own thing too, right? Which is an issue too. Yeah, but the way you're handling money as a couple has partly led to this. Either you're not speaking up or him putting his thumb on it or some of both. Somewhere in there. Buy ReFi refinances, defaulted private student loans for struggling borrowers. Learn more at Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey.