Should My Wife Leave Me Over A House?

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. My wife and I were on baby step two. We're making great progress. Matter of fact, earlier today, I made the last payment on a credit card, got it paid off. Atta boy. Way to go, dude. We're getting it. Honestly, I'm loving it. And I told my wife, I don't care if I'm a multimillionaire, I'm still going to be shopping at thrift stores. I don't see the reason to change that. Very good. It's with my mother-in-law. My wife and I have been married for several years. We have a son. I work so she can stay home and be with our son. And I'm very grateful to be able to do that. She is very, very pushy when it comes to money. And she's made some really stupid financial decisions. And she's tried to force my hand several times. When we first got married, I lived in Georgia. She moved in with me, of course, after we got married. Are you talking about your wife or your mother-in-law? Who's pushing? My mother-in-law, Lord help us. No, my wife. So my mother-in-law was pushing me to sell my house at a time when the market was down, and we'd have been 20 grand in the whole hat I sold it at that time. She tried to get my wife to leave me if I refused to sell it at that time. And she's pulled stunts like that several times and recently tried to get me to buy a house. And I told her, look, the market is up. If I buy it, the market's going to correct and we're going to lose a ton of money. This has nothing to do with markets. It has nothing to do with any of that stuff. The only thing that matters here is you continuing to give your mother-in-law's wisdom and her advice and her threats and her demands. All of that is about power. That's not about homeownership. It is. And my wife is kind of a good child. And so she's always been scared to not do what her mom says. She's gotten a whole lot better. She's come a long way. I'm really proud of her. How does your mother-in-law even know the things that are going on in your house? Is your wife telling her? Is your wife talking to her about things that they shouldn't be talking about? She's not said a whole lot, but she does tell her some things. And early on in our marriage, she told her too much. She's quit doing that. Okay. She needs to be the one that tells her mom, hey, mom, thank you for the wisdom and the advice. But me and my husband got this. Yeah. And I guess one of the questions, part of the problem is I told my wife, look, we're going to have to draw some lines in the sand with your mom. And there's going to have to, if she crosses those, there's going to have to be consequences. Wait, wait, why? Why? Why don't you just let her mom say what she's going to say, and you'll go on about your lives. Hey guys, George here with an important heads up. Mortgage interest rates just dropped, and that is great news if you've been holding off on house hunting or refinancing. But it also means a lot of other people are about to jump back into the market. And my good friends at Churchill Mortgage will give you a custom plan and a special offer so you can buy or refinance the smart way before the market shifts. So go check it out by going to churchillmortgage.com slash ramseyoffer. That's churchillmortgage.com slash ramseyoffer. This is a paid advertisement NMLS ID 1591 NMLS consumeraccess.org equal housing lender. Why don't you just let her mom say what she's going to say, and you'll go on about your lives. Yeah. What's a consequence in your mind? Well, I honestly don't know at the moment. It's just she's caused conflict between my wife and I over this. Okay. But your mother-in-law's becoming a proxy war for the real issue, which is, are you and your wife aligned on how y'all want to do your life? We are much more. Honestly, the longer we've been married, the more aligned we are. Okay. I want y'all to recenter back on that. My dad and I see differences in politics. We see differences all over the place. And so when I'm around him, you know what he does? He does what a dad should do, which is he tries to tell me what I need to know. Right? And I get to decide, I'm cutting you off, or I can listen. And there's been some wisdom in some of the stuff he's told me over the years. In fact, there's been a ton of wisdom. And a lot of it, I go, that's great, man. As for you and your house, you and my mom, y'all get to do that. But me and my house, me and my wife, we're going to do something different. That's great. Right? Fair enough. And if she's actively trying to divide you and your wife, that's the real issue is that your wife has to put her foot down on that because that's her mom. Right. And if she won't, then you and your wife have an issue, not you and your mother-in-law. And, you know, we've come a long, like I said, we don't really have as much, near as much of an issue anymore. I mean, my wife is... Oh, whoops. Go ahead, brother. Sorry, man. No, it's all right. My wife has kind of come into her own quite a bit. She was very scared to make her mom mad when we first got married. She's no longer that way. Sure. And that's common. That's common. So it's gotten better, but something is, it's, even though it's gotten better, you're still pushed to the point of calling a radio show. Yeah. Your mom, your mother-in-law can't force you to do anything legally, morally, ethically, spiritually, like you can't be, you can't feel forced, right? You can just hang up the phone. Right. Fair enough. I think that's a place to, I think that's where we need to start. We're working on life goals and we're going to homeschool our son. And I mean, we're very old school, traditional Christians, conservatives. Great. I mean, but it only matters if you and your wife are aligned on this. And then when y'all get aligned on it, then y'all decide together who gets a vote. Right. And I, my, my position is if you're not paying the bills, you don't get a vote. What does that mean? Well, if you're not part of our household, I should clarify that because my wife stays home with my son. That's what I was thinking. Okay. Okay. She clearly gets a vote. I mean, cause she's working regardless. Well, listen, and for whatever it's worth, I've got other men and women in my life who don't pay my bills that I've given permission to speak into my life. If they see me acting in a way or saying things that they're like, Hey, that's not you. Or you're about to do something stupid with your money. Like I've given them permission. I'm not just going to like Lone Ranger this thing. That's how people like just ride their horse off the cliff. But all I have to say is you can't do that until you and your wife are aligned on who we are going to be. That's, that's good advice. I mean, our pastor's been a great help to us and I've been forever grateful for his wisdom. I've been grateful for you guys' wisdom because following the baby steps, I'm really loving it. Well, that's awesome. But, but, but I think personally, and Dave and I have talked about this over dinner before multiple times. I think the magic of the baby steps is in married couples. It's a way to force alignment or ways to not force alignment, but to force discussions about alignment. And when a, when a, when a couple gets aligned, there's just no stopping them. But if one of y'all is all aligned on your values and you're dragging somebody else along on these baby steps and their, and their mother keeps calling to pull you off and it becomes even a conversation, that tells me you and your wife aren't fully aligned on where are we going and who are we going to be? And then who gets a vote into the steps we're taking? You've given me some things to think about. Is that fair? No, it's very fair. You give me some things to think about. Can I tell you a way to do this? Cause I have a feeling you're going to go home and tell your wife you're not aligned with me. And that would be the wrong way. Not at all. Not at all. Absolutely. Here's what I want you to do. I want you, not her. I want you to call somebody to watch your son for about three or four hours. One Saturday morning, you set it up and then you take your wife and say, I want us to have a dreaming retreat. We're into this baby, we're into this baby steps thing. We're paying off our debts. But we started sprinting before we really counted the cost of how far we're going to run here. Who do we want to be? And you'll dream about what you want your house to look like, what town you want to live in. As a part of that, we're going to dream about who gets a vote in our life. And you'll come away from that retreat, totally unified. You get what I'm saying? I do. I love it. My wife will love that too. Awesome. Excellent, my brother. Deciding the identity first. I'm going to be the kind of person who takes care of themself. I'm going to be the kind of person who doesn't borrow money. Then I'm going to reverse engineer goals and steps that allow me to get to that identity. Not just take off sprinting to follow the next goal, right? You chase an identity with action, you'll get there. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.