Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
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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 and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by bestselling author Dr. John Deloney, and we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Jeff is going to kick us off in Jacksonville, Florida. What's going on, Jeff? How are y'all?
What can we help you with today? What's happening? Well, my wife, over the last 8 to 10 years, has taken on a series of, I guess the term is predatory loans, now totaling right around $300,000, all without my knowledge, of course. Goodness gracious. Yes. When you say predatory loans, what type of loans are these exactly? You broke up on us, Jeff. I'm sorry.
It's the ones where they send you a check in the mail and they say, cash this. And you fill out some paperwork online and they deposit the money straight into your account. Okay. So I'm trying to figure out the actual... Was this one company that she just kept falling for this over and over? No, it was multiple.
Okay.
Wow. And so they basically say, cash this check, a.k.a. it's a loan, as soon as you cash it. Correct. It says you're pre-qualified for X number of dollars. What did she use the money for? She blew it. But you're telling me for a decade you had no inkling that this was happening. That is correct. That's the most shocking part of all of this. It is. Wow. What did she say she spent it on?
When she said she blew it, was there an addiction involved here? No, no, just blew it. Amazon, who knows? And you never thought, hey, where is she getting all this stuff? Because I know what's coming out of our account.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of predatory loans on financial health?
I'm guessing there is no our account. Is it your money and her money? Well, it is, yes. And it's always been that way?
It was.
No, it wasn't when we were first married. We separated for a few months back in the 2010 timeframe. And, of course, obviously separated our finances. And then when we reconciled, we just never really got around to it. And everything was fine. until she retired this past January. And everything was fine until she retired, obviously took a pay cut, and didn't have the money.
Feels like a bad time to retire when you're $300,000 in debt. That is correct. Do you guys have other debts? No. Well, our house. Okay. And what's your household income? About $125,000. And that's just you? No, no. That's her retirement and me. Okay. And you're willing to go, hey, this is us. She made the mess, but it's our mess to clean up. I don't know that I have a choice at this point.
I mean, you've always got a choice. Yeah, but that's not a choice I'm... That's what I was hoping. I was hoping for some ownership there. Not some victim, but some owner. And I love that. I love that you said that. Yeah, I definitely take part of the responsibility. But no, I would never leave her over something like that. So is she committed to not playing this game anymore? She is.
And we're in the process of recombining finances that way i can if something like that were to happen again i would know about it i i'm going to pass this to george to let him walk you through the just the process but um If I were you, I don't know the help I get from leading with these were predatory loans. They were. They are. But I think it helps. It kind of takes the edge off.
My wife did a thing repeatedly and hid it from me for a decade. We need to deal with that part of this. And then together, we're going to heal both the trust in our marriage and be, like you said, we're going to do some things very tangibly. We're going to combine income. We're going to be very diligent on a budget. We're going to tackle this debt together. She retired.
She's going to have to go back and get a job because y'all are 300 plus in the hole now, plus all the interest that's wrecked upon this madness. We're going to tackle this problem together. But I would – yes, there's bad people out in the world. Yes, they took advantage, but also this is something – this is a daily practice that happened over – a daily deception that happened over a decade.
Blaming it in any shape, form, or fashion on the lenders right now is just a distraction from the problem that you all two have together. You get what I'm saying? I agree 100%. I just didn't know a better term for it. No, I mean, you're right. I hate it. I wish it was outlawed. It's miserable. It's a predatory practice. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How can couples effectively manage finances together?
You're doing all the house chores, the cooking, the cleaning. Yeah, she cooks for the most part, but I have to do all the cleaning and everything else pretty much. And you feel like she's not pulling her weight in this marriage. Has it ever been different, or has this been the case since day one? No, it was different back when we first started. What shifted? Gone downhill.
Did something happen in her life? I mean, I'm guessing there's some anxiety, depression behind all of this. Yeah, I have no... Have you dug into that? Have you approached it from a place of empathy? Of, hey, what's going on? I feel like you've been real down lately and just kind of vegging out, playing games, and there's this disconnection. And, you know, tell me about that.
Versus, I need you to help out around the house and go get a job, you know? It sounds like you're her parent instead of a spouse. No, I've tried it, and... It's just, oh, you're starting. You're starting. You're starting when I'm just trying to have an honest, general conversation about helping out. Has she sought out help professionally? Yeah, she sees a counselor once a week.
Would she be willing to invite you, or would she be willing to have you come with her? That could be an option. And here's the way I would approach that. This is you submitting. This is you taking a knee. And there's going to be people in the Internet sphere that think this is bad and this is weak. It's not. It's loving.
It's connecting to someone who's clearly hurting and is not experiencing the world in a real way. Right. Because you have a big math problem. You have a marriage problem. You have a life, joy and passion problem. You've got all the problems. Right. So she's clearly not experiencing the world as it is, but she is experiencing the world as she feels it to be, right?
If you approached her and said, I don't feel like I'm doing a good job connecting with you and loving you in a way that you can feel it, I'd love to come to one of your counseling sessions so your counselor could give me some insights on how I could be a better support system for you. And that might be an invitation that she would extend to you that you could come to her session.
And from there, maybe get some context on what she's telling this counselor, what the counselor is telling her, what kind of world you're inhabiting. Because here's the deal. You need to come up with on your own an or what statement. And what I mean by that is, are you going to leave now? Because if the answer is no, if the answer is till death do us part, I said, I'll be here.
Then your energy is spent complaining, your energy spent yelling, your energy spent fighting is wasted energy. I'm not going to leave. So all of my energy is going to be towards finding some avenue, some shape, form or fashion, some way that I can connect or deal with the reality that I've got a partner who's just going to scroll her life away.
And we have a math problem and I'm going to have to go get a different job or two jobs or three jobs. Or what statement is, if this doesn't change, I'm going to choose to go elsewhere. You need to be open and bold and put that on the table. But you just continually fighting without an anchor point, it's not getting y'all anywhere, right? In fact, it's making everything worse.
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Chapter 4: What steps should be taken to address overwhelming debt?
Today it's about $90,000. Goodness gracious. Yep. And you make $30,000 a year? Yep, and I make $30,000 a year. Why do you make $30,000 a year? Because I can't find a better job that fits my schedule that I need. What's the schedule that you need? What does that mean? So I have a daughter who lives about an hour and a half away from me that I have to go see every Tuesdays.
that I pick up about 5 o'clock. I think we need to readjust the schedule to go, hey, this, based on my work schedule, I can't make this happen. You're not going to be able to afford child support at this point. So you need to make some serious changes, Andy. I mean, all the way around. And yes, there's other people involved, but all I've heard so far is I had to, I have to, I had no choice.
She made me. I think we just need to control what we can control, and that's the guy in the mirror, and then we can work on the stuff around it. I wish you the best.
Thank you.
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That's chministries.org budget. Alicia's in Chicago up next. Alicia, what's going on? Hi. So basically, long story short, I had a manic episode and put myself into a little bit of debt, and I want to know where to start with the baby steps to get myself out of the situation I put myself into. Very cool. So when you say a manic episode, are you diagnosed bipolar?
Yes, I am.
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Chapter 5: How can a couple rebuild trust in their finances after past issues?
So over the past year while we were apart, I graduated from FPU and have followed Dave Ramsey and I'm working with a company right now to pay off my credit card, so I'm hopeful that within the next couple months that will be paid off, so I will myself be debt-free.
My question really is, I know that Dave is pretty vocal about his opinion that when a couple is married that there is no my money, it's our money. So understandably, given my past behavior, my husband is a little hesitant to go back to commingling our funds.
So I'm just kind of looking for some guidance on how he and I can navigate that this time, just as that trust is built back up, and maybe just some guidance on how to navigate this season.
What other trust was broke in your previous time together?
Well, there was no infidelity or anything like that. Honestly, my story is that I really just was in a really bad place. I believed a lot of lies about myself and my marriage, and the enemy convinced me that it was right to leave. And so I just did. I just picked up one day and I left. There was no seeking God in any of that. So really the trust that was broken was just... me giving up on us.
Okay.
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Chapter 6: What steps can be taken to reestablish financial trust in a relationship?
So I want you to hear his hesitancy as not about money. It's deeper than that. Okay. If it was a surprise to him, not that y'all were in a tough season, not that, you know, you were struggling or anything like that. But if it shocked him when you walked in and said, I'm out. Mm-hmm.
I want you to see that for what it was, which is you pulled a pin on a grenade and rolled it into his life and exploded it. Yeah. Right? Now, every couple co-creates their relationship. That is what it is, right? So I'm sure he would sit here and tell me he's not perfect. I get all that. But if you're going to truly say we're reconciling... There is no reconciliation.
Chapter 7: How can individuals navigate financial decisions while in a relationship?
I mean, you can get remarried. You can do whatever you want, but there's not a true remarriage if both of you don't have your feet in the boat. And at the same time, he's still living. He still has fresh scars from when this person he's getting back into the boat with shot a hole in the middle of the boat. And then swim to another shore. You get what I'm saying? Of course.
And so here's the path back. The path back is, will you give me, being him to you, a very clear roadmap that I can follow to reestablish trust? Because trust will not be re-earned in huge, grandiose moments. It will be earned in a thousand tiny little ways over time. Yes. And the commitment here is we're going to do this every 30 days, every 60 days. And it's not you groveling.
It's not like, how am I doing? Do I get an A on trust this month? It's not that. It is, I want to clear a path back. If we're going to really get remarried, we're going to go all in on this thing again. Both of us have to put our feet in the boat and you'd be crazy to do that all the way. I get that. So I'm going to ride in your boat for a while. Like I'm going to ride shotgun with you.
What is a path to reestablish trust to look like? And he's going to lay that path out and then you get to decide whether I'm going to follow that or not.
Yeah.
Right. And and here's the other thing. If he says I'm in, he's got to be all in, too, which means he has to risk that the person he's marrying does this to him again. That's the risk of any great marriage and any great relationship at all.
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Chapter 8: What are the key factors to consider when planning for retirement?
Right. Is that you could get hurt. So he needs to give you a path. You need to ask him, not, hey, why aren't you sharing our money? You don't trust me. And not you hanging your head in shame saying, I'm not trustworthy. We're past that. We're going to start establishing this. What does a path look like for me to reestablish trust? And let's take infidelity.
Sometimes people say, I want to see your phone every night. I want us to get new phone plans. I want us to change our numbers. I want you to cancel all your social media. And here's the thing. The person who got cheated on can lay out whatever path they want.
And then the other person gets to decide whether I'm going to follow that path or not, whether I want to be a part of this relationship or not. And when that, when you start walking that path, they can't weaponize the past because they have said I'm in this too.
Yeah.
And reestablishing money, like sharing your money together is part of me and my wife share a single account, George and his wife do, Dave and Sharon, like the people that I know are that are successful and the data bears it out, couples who share finances do better because not just because of the money, but that means they share a picture on what they value, where they want to go with their life, what their shared vision is, like all that stuff gets wrapped up in
We all know where the money is and all that. So it's just you humbly asking for a clear roadmap. And we're going to do one at 30 days. We're going to do one at 60 days. We're going to do one at 90 days. And we're going to continue to work down this path together until both of you feel safe enough in your guts that both feet are in this boat and we are rowing the same direction.
Can I give you some ideas, Lee, of some tactical things you could do that might make him go, who are you? Number one, cut up all of your credit cards and close all the accounts. And then, here's the baller move, you freeze your credit. And you give him the pass code. So that you can't open any type of account. You can't take on any type of debt if your account is frozen, if your credit's frozen.
And then on top of that, say, hey, you know what? We're going to have a joint account, but I don't want the debit card right now. And we're going to turn on transaction alerts so that anytime anything comes out of the account, we both get a text message of what happened. Or to celebrate you guys getting back together, we're going to give you a year of every dollar premium.
It will alert each of you if somebody spends something with a debit card.
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