My Husband Bought a $750,000 House Without Telling Me

Zander shops all the top term insurance companies to save you money. Get started at zander.com. How best do I approach a conversation with my husband who recently purchased a home as an investment without telling me? Had no knowledge, didn't know it was a plan. It came up fast I guess and called me after he did it. And my question around that is how best to approach that conversation? Do I approach it from a financial perspective of understanding? Can we do this or more so in the fact of the personal side? I'm struggling being a numbers person focusing on the financials rather than the emotional side. So that's my question on how best to approach that. When did this happen? Yesterday. This takes impulse purchase to a new level. This is wild. I applaud you. The fact that you had enough self-control to be like, I'm not going to even mention this. You've held this to a radio conversation. I applaud you because I would have been like, what? So good job. That's great. How did this all come about as far as him telling you what happened here? Well, so long story short, this is his goal. He's good at it. The man has a 2% error rate in life, which frustrates me. He's got a 100% error rate with his marriage. Yeah, well. How mad are you? On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does this just hack you off? You know, it's surprising because normally I'd lose it. This fury is not my normal fury. I'm trying to listen and go, is this an opportunity to have a discussion? Because we do struggle with his impulse control because he is a very smart person. The fact that you're not shocked by this tells me there has been a pattern of this your whole marriage. This is the biggest. Usually I'm involved, but we've done some pretty high stakes investments that he researched. He's not impulsive, I wouldn't say. Hold on. He has a high risk threshold and you've trusted it. He bought a house without telling you on a whim. Well, it wasn't a whim. So come to find out. He's known about this. He's researched it. It was an auction. Okay. How much? $750,000. Oh man. Was it cash? No. We have very good net worth. What is it? My net worth. Yeah. About 2 to 2.1 million. Is it all real estate or is some of that, can you tell us what that is? Yeah, majority real estate. We have very, very good equity in our home. And then we have an investment in some land that's in high, very nice area. So it's worth quite a bit. And then we've got some other assets. So our cars are paid off. Okay, good. Yeah. What debt do you guys have? So when I say they're paid off, we do have a loan on one of them. So I shouldn't say that. We do have a loan on one of them, but it's going to be paid off here soon. So total debt is $798,000. And that's including this? $698,000. Well, now it's double that because there's a $750,000 mortgage. Does that include the new one? No. What's the mortgage on that? The new one? Well, so we haven't closed on a loan yet. But it was $750,000, right? Yeah. Okay. So the first question you asked was, do I approach this from basically the dollars and cents side or the emotional relational side? The dollars and cents side is kind of like goes without saying. I think I would go first for the emotional relational side since honestly, that's the most important problem at hand is if you're going to do these purchases, I understand what our history has been. The point is not to insult intelligence here. The point is to say that I'm part of this marriage. And when we make decisions like this and I'm not included, I feel like I'm not a voice that matters. That's what you're telling me is my voice doesn't matter. And I need to know is that how you actually feel because that's the way you're acting. So I would make him understand that what you're feeling is not consistent what you think his intention towards you is. Does that make sense? And that that's not going to work for you going forward. So I would get pretty strong on this because in my mind, and I'm not trying to project onto you, but in my mind, if you can call me right after the deal, you could have called me right before the deal, right? It's the same amount of time. Nobody, you know, and I understand it was Yeah, but he wouldn't get it because he did. He texted me actually. That's how he told me. I think he legitimately didn't think he'd get it. But this is not a Pokemon card on eBay that I bid on and went, oh my gosh, babe, I won. But the fact that he was going to an auction means I have the intent to purchase something. And once the auction starts, here's the truth. Once the auction starts, sure, you could be like bidding and be like, I don't have time to text. I'm bidding. But when you knew, I think I'm going to go to an auction today. That's the time you email and go, I'm thinking about going to an auction today. Here's the property I'm thinking about bidding on. If we get it, here's the extent that I'm willing to bid to. What do you think about that? Right? That's a conversation that should have had. He knows that. Go ahead and remind him of it. And I would just, I think, Jennifer, for you, you're going to have to decide how serious you're going to be about this, because to George's point, seems like there's been a bit of a pattern. And it's not to he's not a smart guy or hasn't had great luck or great outcomes with his knowledge. I'm not saying that. But it's not put you in a place of mattering. And you do matter. And that's the part that needs to be figured out here. Now we can go back. Once that's deciphered, now we can go back and talk about, okay, keeping this house. What's it going to turn into? All that stuff. But first and foremost, how much do you matter in this relationship when it comes to our money? I think that's where we've struggled our whole lives. I'm risk averse, and he's obviously risk taker. And we've always struggled with the fact that he does do his research. He does. He's willing to take risks. But Jennifer, that's not the problem. You being risk averse. And that's not the problem. That's just you guys having personalities. The problem is your vote weighing and mattering when it comes time for the rubber to meet the road in a decision. That's the piece. Your challenge is, because like I said, you're very, very patient. But your challenge is going to be, when you have this conversation, not to get bogged down in those minutiae. Because that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how smart he is. It doesn't matter how risk averse you are. None of that matters. What matters is, do I matter? Does my opinion matter? Because so far, it has not. And that is not okay with me going forward. And if this continues to go forward, here's what that's going to look like on my end. That's what you have to decide. And that's a firm conversation. So that's my advice to you. And again, I can't say it enough. It has nothing to do with smarts or not smarts. It's treatment. I don't care if he won the lottery. This is still financial infidelity. I mean, think about if this was a person. He went, well, he didn't cheat on me impulsively. He's been talking to this girl for months. That doesn't make it better, does it? No. And so if he knew he was looking at this house, he should have said, hey, I've been looking at this property. I think it could be a really great investment. Here's what I'm thinking. You guys aren't communicating at all when it comes to money. I mean, my wife and I don't make purchases over $500 without talking about it first, let alone $750,000. Yeah. And I don't make anything without asking. I think, again, this is the first time he's done it without telling me. It's always been, he's brought it to me and then I tell him no. Which is why this is, which is why you gotta put the line in the sand on this, because what you don't want is for this to be seen as, oh, that wasn't that bad. I could maybe do this again. This is you putting your stake in, putting your line in the sand. Hey, do you earn, are you a contributor of money in the house? Okay. I just wanted to check on that. I think that's the hard part. We have substantial annual income and he uses the debt, obviously, to build wealth. And he has, he's built- Fine, fine, fine, fine. All of that. Fine. But you need to make sure he understands, and you need to understand too, this is not a money conversation. It has zero to do with prior success. You cannot let the conversation go in that direction. It's about respect on your name. That's it.