I’m $60,000 In Debt Because Of My Husband
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This is the third episode of our 6-part capsule series, Asked & Answered. Co-hosted by TFD founder Chelsea Fagan & Erin Lowry of Broke Millennial, this series is dedicated to answering your personal money questions, from budgeting and investing basics, to navigating the financial headlines of our current political climate.
Thanks to Erin for her expertise!
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Because of mistakes in my early 20s and 30s, “minimum payment” is no longer tempting because I enjoy my ability to sleep at night.
Im terrified of not knocking out my cards completely each month.
Im someone who only seems to learm the hard way.
i love asked and answered 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️
I can’t imagine losing my job and not going straight to my partner. That’s a fundamental lack of communication, it’s a huge life event & will eventually impact the person you share your life with. There’s so much involved with someone lying about where they are everyday to our financial ruin.
My SO and I had a conversation when my job was threatened by politics (threaten to cut edu funding, it’s the maintenance/support people that go first).
Agreed but it sounds like their issues started way earlier than that. The wife has a career yet is saying the husband is the “primary breadwinner”. To me that says they were living above their means to suit his lifestyle rather than hers. If both partners have a career (I’m not talking about part time jobs etc while caring for a child or going to school)… then live at the means of the lower earner and split expenses. Use the extra money for retirement savings, vacations, etc. Not for a house, groceries, and utilities! That is way too vulnerable of a position to put the lower earner in and totally messes with the power dynamic especially in a hetero relationship where the woman is the lower earner.
@@circusrosen This is such a good point.
Exactly. The second I learned of my termination I’d text my partner so we could start looking at our situation before I even got home.
I had a shitty abusive roommate (not a partner, just a roommate) and even they told me when they lost their job. They then vanished shortly after and left me responsible for full rent and excessive bills (they excessively ran up the electricity bill somehow) and an absolute mess to clean up, but they still told me they lost their job.
I agree, divorce lawyer first! I would never trust that man again.
Financial infidelity is going into debt behind spouses back. And financial infidelity is stashing cash behind spouses back. Those are the same to me.
I said what I said
I disagree, since a woman in an abusive relationship could hide cash behind his back in order to escape. A little different than going into debt because you’re coping with loss.
Leave him. The last straw for me with my marriage was the 4th time (I know, it’s been discussed and addressed in therapy) I found financial infidelity. And I can tell you that my state treats it as marriage debt so I was on the hook for half of it. Since the divorce, I know from court records that they’ve continued to rack up mountains of debt. The reason I know is because they’ve taken me back to court to try to get me to take care of them financially. So yes i agree meet with a very very good attorney and get out.
At first I thought Chelsea was being too harsh but by the end she convinced me. At the very least she needs to demand the details of why he lost his job 🚩
Whether you stay with the man or not, you really should speak to a bankruptcy attorney in your state. Especially if he is still unemployed and you have a mortgage, bankruptcy could be a sincerely great option. Even if you stay married, he could file one in his own name and your credit would not be harmed. Speaking with a bankruptcy attorney can be useful even if you do not file. They can tell you what your are liable for as well. For the person who is considering wiping out their savings… are you considering investment/retirement savings in life savings? Savings and retirement accounts are protected assets in bankruptcy. Again, even if you do not choose to file, speaking with a bankruptcy attorney can help you break down what options you do have to pay back debt, and if bankruptcy could be your best rehabilitative option. The bankruptcy code (in America) is intended to be rehabilitative, and for sure there are consequences, but most people who qualify for a bankruptcy are able to rebuild credit, get loans in the future, and effectively save money afterwards.
“A good man” does not do this to his wife, ever.
Bingo!
30:45 I am so sorry, but I would say (knowing the little I know from this person’s one question) it is downright unfair to have a child with this man after this. This isn’t even a financial decision; you’re bringing another person into this relationship, a person who relies on you for security and who you are promising to support. If he does this again, even spending a fraction of what he owes now, there’s another person for him to let down. I agree that marriage is an emotional and financial partnership, but parenting is _not_ and can’t be a give-and-take between parents and their kids. That little kid will grow up seeing you distrust each other and wonder how they can help Mom and Dad finally relax and be happy, and that is just not fair to them.
And this is why every woman needs 8 secret bank accounts.
Nine!!
In addition, he ran back to his mother. Divorce, yes.
I watch too much MMM and the family annihilator always starts out with lying about having a job 🥴 I couldn’t deal with that in the back of my mind lol
oomph, that title made me click so hard on the video to come and say “pre-nups, get your pre-nups over here!!” hahahaha, I signed something like a pre-nup, I mean I sat in a notaire’s office for 4 hours with a legal interpreter in France to sign a marriage contract, ours is kinda like, every thing before the marriage is ours individually, it doesn’t belong to the marriage, but everything after the marriage is basically 50/50, but there was a clause in it that stated that if one of us wracked up a lot of debt for something that the other spouse didn’t know about, then the other spouse is NOT responsible for paying off that debt, all big money things where debt may get involved has to be discussed by the couple beforehand and decided together, if not, the other person isn’t liable, and it could be grounds for divorce if it was a bad enough money decision.
I think of snowball vs avalanche approach like household cleaning. If you only have 30 minutes, should you tackle one hour’s worth of washing dishes or 20 minutes worth of dusting? You might feel better getting all the dusting done, but dirty dishes usually stack up faster than dust does. You can save yourself time in the long run by doing some dishes now, but you might not feel as motivated to keep going when you see dirty dishes _and_ the dust.
I agree! I watched an episode of the budget mom and she’s a big avalanche advocate, she was recommending the person that called in to try and tackle a $5000 debt before a $600 one because it had bigger interest! I think it would be much more effective to do the little debts first and free up those minimum payments to go towards the bigger debts
And i love your analogy it’s perfect
thinking about it as a business partner is a fantastic pratical
way to look at it.
I had a medical debt get sent to collections before the original bill arrived at my house, once. My wife had a bill sent to collections which her insurance company was still processing (and eventually paid for!).
These were for pretty normal doctor’s visits. (Blood work at the lab and an x-ray for a sprain.) They were not our first interactions with these HMOs. We have pretty good coverage under our insurance.
If this stuff is happening to us, it’s happening to thousands of people for whom it’s far more devastating. Probably hundreds of thousands.
oof maybe I’ll never get married with horror stories like these to remind me how risky it is
This is why i never want to get married lol. 😅
Ugh, I grew up with parents (dad especially) who railed against ever using credit and scared us all out of even having a credit card let alone investing. Which I guess is probably better than if I got a card and cluelessly racked up huge debt, but fast forward to now after college not being able to qualify for an apartment for almost a decade without co-signers because I had so little credit history. Also finally learning how I could have been using credit wisely to coordinate and get benefits on your basic regular expenses. And then mentioning this all to my parents, now years later, and discovering this is all stuff they do as well! Erin is lucky, so many boomers seemingly couldn’t be bothered to parent past changing our diapers.