Chapter 1: What concerns does Hannah have about her husband's refusal to work?
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Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is The Ramsey Show. And I'm Rachel Cruz hosting this hour with Dr. John Deloney. And we are answering your calls. So give us a call at 888-825-5225. We'll be talking about your life and your money.
Starting us off this hour is Hannah in Salt Lake City. Hi, Hannah. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Absolutely. How can we help today? Hi, so I have kind of a two-part question. So I got married about two and a half years ago. It's my second marriage. I have a teenage daughter from my first marriage. But my current husband, we have a toddler, about a year and a half old.
And he is a welder by trade, and he is very physically capable. He's in his late 30s, and I'm in my early 40s. Um, he refuses to work. Um, I work for a school district, so it's not like I make a ton of money. Um, but I make enough to cover the bills. So, um, the house that we live in is mine. I bought it in 2020, thankfully. Um, but again, we've been married since 2023.
Um, and we put our child in daycare four days a week. Um, and he does, he watches her, um, one day a week. which is really nice because childcare is incredibly expensive. But there's a lot of resentment on my end building up because he just absolutely... What's he doing the other four days, Hannah? Where's he going? What's he doing? That's a good question.
So he's from a town that's about an hour away. So he'll go back over there and he'll hang out with friends. And sometimes he picks up odd jobs, I guess. Um, I don't, I don't really know. I ask him all the time what he's doing and he just always kind of has a, you know, weird, ambiguous answer.
Um, his parents also gift him, they gift him money like every year, like at Christmas time, his parents give him like Yeah, his parents will give him like $10,000 or $20,000, and that's kind of what he lives off of. Because all he has to pay for is his own gas and then substances and whatever food he wants. Okay, so money's not combined.
So he makes $10,000 to $20,000 from his parents once a year and then some odd jobs. And he's in charge of a certain number of bills. You pay probably the mortgage and other things, and it comes out of your salary.
Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How does Hannah's financial situation impact her marriage?
So now I have to learn to live inside these castle walls that I've built for myself. If that is an option, then yes, I think he deserves, as your husband, even though he's failing every way from here to Sunday, he deserves, here is a path to trust. Here is a path that you can walk that would reestablish you as my co-creator of the life that we want to build together.
So, Hannah, my question to you is, is option one and two on the table, or are you someone that, because what you've gone through, you're like, nope, it's just going to be option two, and I'll have to go from there? Do you know, just like as a knee-jerk reaction? Yeah. Well, sort of.
So, um, and also part of why I called in and I know this probably sounds awful, but it is something that I think about is though I have retirement through my job, um, through the school district. Plus I have, um, an IRA and a 401k that I put money into. Like I'm very, very financially responsible. I don't have any debt other than my mortgage. Um, and he has, he has a ton of debt.
Like he racks up credit card debt, obviously, cause he doesn't work. Um, so, um, If we divorce, I know he's entitled to half of my retirement for the length of our marriage and half the equity in the home for the length of the marriage. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Okay. Well, that's good to know. I would challenge you to not make any of those assumptions without sitting down with an attorney. Okay.
Every state's different. Every situation's different. Some states have like boilerplate, like this is just how we do this. And other states take into all sorts of other things into account. So don't make any like, well, since this is true, sit with an attorney and get those answers.
Okay.
Yeah. He's, um, I mean, obviously like you, I mean, you guys are correct. Our marriage is not, is not great because I have resentment because he refuses to provide for his family and he has resentment towards me because, um, There's, you know, I mean, it's a long story, but there's a significant lack of intimacy in our marriage on my part. And part of that is my resentment towards him.
The other part is I almost died in childbirth and it's been a series of surgeries and medical things that have happened since then. Oh my gosh. That sounds, yeah, that's a lot to unpack. So I would probably sit down with someone. Yeah. Call somebody today. You can call our friends over at BetterHelp.
You can go find a counselor in your area and you need to sit with an attorney and find out what the truth is, what your answers are and what you need to do next.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Hannah's husband's reliance on his parents for money?
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Next up, we have Francisco in West Palm Beach, Florida. Hi, Francisco. Welcome to the show. Hello. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yes, absolutely. How can we help? Well, my question is because I'm 30 years old and I have about 350 grand in debt. So, yeah, I was thinking these days of at least declaring the companies bankrupt or I don't know if myself as well, but...
But yeah, then your videos came up, and then I started thinking otherwise. Okay. Gosh, Francisco. Okay, so what kind of debt is the $350,000? $50,000 is on a line of credit that is to the company, but it's personally guaranteed. And about $45,000 is in credit cards, and then... About 200 are on an SBA loan. It's really two different loans for two different companies, like $140,000 and $60,000.
And the one for $60,000 is already in collections. They sent me a letter yesterday with like $20,000 in administrative fees and this and that. And that's why I started thinking of this. And then we have four vehicles, two for the company and two is my wife and I. and one is paid off for the company, and in the rest, we owe about $54,000. Combined or on each? No, combined. Combined, $54,000 car?
Okay. Yes. Okay. For the loans that have already gone into collection, how long has it been since you've been paying on those? I've been paying since COVID, because it was this COVID SBA loans, but... But yeah, I was paying. I don't know what happened. It entered into collection. I assume... Not paying enough? Were you paying the minimum?
Yeah, I was paying the minimums on one of the SBA loans, the small one. But that one is already in collection. And then the other one, I haven't paid it in over a year. Okay. And then that one is in collections as well. Is your business failing, brother?
No.
Well, it is failing. I've been doing a lot of accommodations because it was a franchise and they take 10%. They had me on an office, you know, an expensive office where now all the machines is in my garage, in my house, and, yeah, all sorts of things. So, you know, in the last year I've been fixing it to at least I'm saving like $8,000 a month with all the changes we've done.
Okay, you're saving $8,000 within the business or after your take-home pay? No, in the business. In the business. Okay. Yeah. So you're putting $8,000 away. How much will you make profit at the end of this year? If you keep it going, if you don't file bankruptcy, what do you project? My projection is small. It would be like $50,000, $60,000. Oh, gosh. What do you do? It's a construction company.
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Chapter 4: What advice do the hosts give Hannah regarding her marriage and financial future?
If you went and sold everything today, everything, just sold it all, what would you garner? How much money would you have? In one car that's paid off and the machines and everything, I could probably sell it for maybe like 50 grand. I can probably get at least 40 grand. Yeah. What about the second car that you have a note on?
The other cars, I'm upside down in two of them for about like $10,000 or so. Okay. On each, yeah. Okay, so you're bringing home about $60,000, yeah. I mean, yeah, this is a tough spot, Francisco. I mean, I never want to... gear someone towards bankruptcy because we always want to look for a solution out. And the only solution I see for you on the horizon
is gonna be to do what you can with the business, to liquidate, take whatever what John was saying, anything that you can sell to get money back out of it. I would try to negotiate. You're gonna have to find the cash, but once you have some cash, if stuff goes into collections, you will be able to negotiate some of those things.
I'm not sure about the VA loan and all of that, but- And SBA, administrative fees, I don't know anything about any of that stuff. Yes, whatever that looks like. But for most-
Most people that hold a debt that's in collections, whether this is credit card, medical, whatever it looks like, once it gets to collections, they're going to assume that you're not paying it, that you don't have the money for it, right? And you don't right now. So what I would say, my hope would be that you can...
find you know multiple jobs if you're married have having your spouse work i mean like whatever you can do to earn some money during this time to start getting a plan to look at these look at this debt and say okay how can we slowly especially with the ones in collections how can we start negotiating some of this down and then the credit cards i mean honestly i'd probably let those go to collections like i think you don't have the money for them right now right so if you look up in 12 months and those are in collections is there a way you can settle that so
It would take probably a good three to four years to climb out of this, Francisco, but that would be the way to avoid bankruptcy. You're going to have to go get two or three jobs. Your wife's going to have to get jobs. You're not going to have to go work like crazy. Listen, I want you to call our friends at GuardianLitigation.com. It's a guardianlit.com slash Ramsey.
And they're a nationwide law firm that helps with debt settlements, with collection issues. And they might be able to give you some guidance on, okay, the SBA stuff, don't worry about this or the credit. Like they'll be able to give you some sort of guidance, like line by line with your various creditors and who's serious and who's not and all that kind of stuff.
So check them out at guardianlit.com slash Ramsey. Yeah, I'm so sorry, Francisco. What an absolute mess. All right, let's go to Elizabeth in Honolulu. Hi, Elizabeth. Welcome to the show. Hello, thank you for taking my call. Yes, how can we help? Yes, it's a two-part question. My husband and I are on baby step two and have about $8,000 debt left at 0%. Okay.
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Chapter 5: What insights can be gained from personal experiences with family and finances?
I can tell you the conversation I had with my uncle, who's a CPA. He did my taxes for years. He's like an amazing man of character. He's awesome. And it got to a point where I only reached out to him to ask for tax stuff. And I remember thinking, I want him to have the privilege of just being my uncle.
And so I told him, hey, I'm going to get somebody else to do my taxes this year because I want you to just be my uncle now. I wanted to be a guy I call for life advice, for wisdom to check in on. Like he's one of the funniest guys I've ever met. So like I told him, I want us to just have a regular relationship. I don't want us to have a client customer relationship also. And he was cool with it.
But that's what I used in my house. Yeah. Alice, is your reason for wanting to switch, which I totally get. I mean, I don't think it's a weird thing to want to switch from your brother-in-law. Is it because he's not great or is it because it's going to get awkward as he's looking at your numbers? Is it more of like a relational move or is it from like a competency standpoint?
No, he's completely competent. It's more of I've just been told, you know, you don't mix finances and money.
Chapter 6: How do personal relationships affect financial decision-making?
I'm sorry, finances and family. Has it been weird or you're scared it's going to get weird? I'm just worried in the future like life happens and then it could become an issue. That's my concern. Totally. Yeah, I think either way. Let me give you like another example of one that we stayed and this is different than a brother-in-law. So I do think the family thing...
You know, it's fair to have some boundaries there. But our SmartVestor Pro, literally the guy that we go to that has all of our information was a groomsman in our wedding. He's like one of my husband's best friends. Okay. My SmartVestor Pro 2 was in my wedding. Yeah. And his wife was a bridesmaid. We actually set them up. So like he's – and he says – and here's what I appreciate about him.
Number one is like I – He says every meeting, because we meet every January, like once a year, we always sit down and look at everything. And he almost, he starts out every meeting with, hey guys, if this ever gets weird, pull the plug.
Chapter 7: What are the implications of financial transparency in relationships?
Like I am not offended. I get it because numbers are so personal. And here I am looking at exactly how much you're getting paid. Like, I mean, you see it all. It's a very vulnerable thing. And I think it takes a special person to be able to handle that and see numbers. And I think some people really can. So I'm saying all that to say,
On one end, it's your brother-in-law and it could get really weird and just like John and his uncle. And it's like, hey, I just would rather like, yes. It didn't even get weird. It was just. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. But you just made the call. Like, I just want you to be my uncle or I just want you to be my brother-in-law. I don't have to even worry.
I don't even want to have to even think walking in the door at Christmas. If it's a down year and we're like, I don't even want you connected to our money just because I just want you to be our brother-in-law. Like that is an okay answer.
Chapter 8: How can couples effectively navigate financial discussions?
And then I will give a little bit of a freedom on the other end that if it's not gotten weird and you think like, hey, maybe, you know, we give permission to each other that down the road, if we just feel like, hey, at any reason, for any reason, we want to switch, like we're all good and it's okay. And let's just maybe wait and see. I don't know, right? So I think it could be both. It could.
I took a call on my show on the John Deloney show this morning in another studio where a brother had like awful taken advantage of his younger brother in a business. Okay. So that could happen. But the other side of it, and I would even go with the more common, would there be anybody on the planet that would look after you and your husband's money with more intent like scrutiny than his brother?
No, I mean, he would do a great job. I think that's worth, I think trying to project any weird thing that might happen one day into the future and drag that into the present is, that's just, I mean, that's the definition of anxiety. Yeah, no, for sure. Right. So for sure.
I think I love Rachel's idea of, of starting every meeting and, or y'all sit down and say, all right, I'm about to move my money over and look at him and say, I love you. And I'm, I can't imagine trusting anybody on the planet more than you. And I'm worried that one day this will be weird. So I just want to call it out.
If I ever, if we ever decided to go with somebody else, I want you to know that we love you and you're our brother. Like you get what I'm saying? Put all that on the table. But Rachel's totally right. If he's not a good guy, he could take advantage of you in ways that nobody else can. But, man, if he's for you, dude.
Like he will move heaven and earth to make sure his brother and his nephews and nieces or whatever y'all decide to do one day, like that they're okay. Yeah. Right. And that's also Alice, no pressure to keep, to stay with it. Like if you still get off this call and you're like, oh yeah, maybe I am projecting fear into the future and it hasn't happened yet.
So maybe we stick with it for another couple of years. That's great. Or if we get off this call and you're like, oh, I still don't like it. Have the conversation then of the, I just want you to be our brother-in-law. And it's nothing about your competence. You're amazing. I love you. I just don't want to even second guess anything when we see each other about money.
I just don't, I don't want to combine the two. And that's what makes you comfortable and your husband comfortable. Then you can say that. And I think, and then go get a SmartVest or Pro, right? So I think, I think either one is okay. Can I ask you one other quick question while I got you? For sure. You've, I'm assuming you've told your husband this. Yes. We're on the same page.
And your husband has said, I will leave my brother to go where you feel comfortable. Yep. He has. You married really well. I did. That's awesome. I just want to shout out your husband, a guy that once he, once he says till death do me part, that does us part that you come first. That's awesome. So good. I love that. Great question, Alice. Thanks for the call.
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