My Husband and I Still Keep Our Finances Separated

christine is with us in Los Angeles hi Christine how are you I am good how are you better than I deserve how can I help very good thank you for taking my call you've just helped me tremendously I started your plan in August and I have a quick question for you okay so I'm on board with the Dave Ramsey plan but my husband is not she believes in like making the minimum payment and keeping the money in the bank so my husband and I ever since we met and moved in and all that we do our finances kind of funky we keep our expenses income and bank accounts completely separate we do everything 5050 down the line we make about the same amount per year so my question is I'd like to eventually you know after I finish baby step number three to pay off our mortgage early however both of our names are on it so I'm not sure can I make an extra payment and deduct that from the balance that I owe or just save up the full amount and then make a big one-time payment to pay it off I'm not sure how to go about that hmm or if that's even impossible and you know it's not it's called join the serve role you're liable for all of it not half a night and so um and he's liable for all of it not half of it and so there's not a your half his half that's the problem with trying to operate a marriage like a roommate right how long have you guys been married we've been married since February but we've been together and living together for 11 years and so the the problem is living together put in place a pattern of operating that is now bled over into your marriage that is incorrect all right because here's the problem there's a lot of data out here statistically that says you guys have problems coming uh-huh if you don't get on the same page number one on the financial realm it's very difficult not quite impossible but very difficult to build wealth doing what you're doing home number two it leads to relational problems because you know you're just leading separate lives right you know the preacher says and now you are one but you're not right you didn't he pronounced you guys a roommate you know no and now you are a joint-venture you know it's way this sounds and so you're not sharing your future in your checkbook and so you're not sharing your future and that tends to HAP sometimes it takes 10 years to bleed out sometimes it takes 20 years to bleed out but it always bleeds out eventually meaning it always ends up harming most of the time we're reparable ii the relationship it's a trendline on the data is just devastating it's not to say can't be done but you are really on an uphill battle to build wealth and have a high quality marriage you're doing what y'all are doing so I've got to just be your friend and say I'm gonna demand as your friend that you guys not do this anymore that the two of you that you that you fight the fight you don't want to fight and and he had the discussion he doesn't want to have that you have got to get on the same page and combine your finances and if that requires marriage counseling that's fine and the problem is you've done Dave Ramsey so enthusiastically that now I'm a cuss word in his head I paid quite a bit of debt since starting in August and so yeah and you've been enthusiastically chasing after this thing and and he's tired of hearing about it already to the point that it's making the communication that's difficult the idea of combining it very difficult and so on but I think you got to back up and start again and just say a conversation that says that it's very you know it's just concerning me a lot I understand I've been through see a stick and understand I've been fired up and I understand that that's off-putting to you probably but this thing of us not handling our money together it makes it feel like we're not really married and I really I think we were going to have to work on this if we need to sit down with a coach a marriage coach a marriage counselor to help us get on the same page then let's spend the money to do that before it becomes a crisis in your relationship right now you guys have masked over it because what happened was you got used to it when you were living together and when you're living together it's probably the best way to handle let's keep it separate because you don't have any you know the you don't have them the legal protections of marriage but once you're married you've got legal protections from each other and as a matter of fact they work against you in this situation they work against keeping it separate for instance the mortgage thing we're talking about you can't pay off half the mortgage because you own the whole you owe the whole thing he owes the whole thing and because they view you the law view she was one as married joint and several that's what the law says and so that's one and your joint but your one and and that's that that's the issue so instead of trying to figure out a way to make this bad system work I would say I'd spend my energy working on the bad system and say what have we got to do to begin the discussions negotiations or whatever it is and love each other well enough to say I'm gonna spend my life with you and so I need to handle my money with you and my money is your money and your money is my money and how are we going to do that because that says you're mine and I'm yours that's a different level of commitment that's a marital level of commitment and that that's really what you're up against here and and so you know from a Christian viewpoint Jesus said your treasure is where your heart is so where you spend your money is where your heart goes and when you have two different directions that your hearts are going that means your hearts aren't together you're not unified on your goals you're not unified on your fears you're not you unified on your value system of what savings means and what debt means and what giving and generosity means and when you're unified on that then we're there sure and I just prayed about last weekend a sizable gift that we were doing from a generosity standpoint and you know we we had to talk it through and it forced both of us to look at our feelings about things it forced both of us to have other discussions that weren't even related to the gift but it was a sizable thing and there's enough money that it caused both of us to sit up straight you know and when you sit up straight like that and you're paying attention it forms your relationship and your marriage so I know a lot of people think they can run separate accounts there's just no data that says you can and there's lots of data that says you can't and I've been doing this 30 years the number of times I've found someone that raises from nothing and the couple is married 10 20 years 30 years and they've got 1015 million dollars and they didn't do it together is almost zero the number of times I have someone to a debt free scream here on the air we paid off a hundred thousand dollars in debt we paid off two hundred thousand dollars in debt we paid off our house and the spouse is not on board is almost zero it's almost zero and I'm not just preaching at you Christine I mean this is just a good subject for our whole list our listening audience to really grasp and grapple with and it is the danger of living together before marriage because again you set patterns in place to that now you're having to reset and you have 11 years of doing it as roommates and now to discuss doing it as a married couple is weird but if you were never living together before and you just said hey we're getting married that means we combine everything the preacher says and now you are one and the old marriage vows say unto thee all my worldly goods I pledge I'm gonna take care of you in sickness and in health for richer for poorer you're gonna take care of me this is what marriage is and there's something there that's really rich and really real

Channel: The Dave Ramsey Show

Views: 257,591

Rating: 4.8237209 out of 5

Keywords: the dave ramsey show, budget money debt cash, real estate, insurance, how to make money, dave ramsey, save, credit card, compound interest, buying house, buy, snowball, My Husband and I Still Keep Our Finances Separated, marriage and money, marriage and money dave ramsey, money, marriage, debt, finances, money and marriage, budget, financial, dave, ramsey, finance, how to budget, money management, wedding

Id: OVR6kdJme-c

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 09 2018