Wife Hid $100,000 of Debt And Still Won't Come Clean

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. My wife of 30 years has been accumulating secret debt for probably the past five years, and I discovered it about then. And I'm struggling with essentially how to reconcile my vow to stand by my wife for better or worse, and my responsibility to protect the future that I've been building for my lifetime. And we're talking about over $100,000 in debt. Wow. For five years? Yes. What's she buying? Well, she is buying things, but I think she gave money to her family. She admitted to giving some to her brother. She won't really discuss this with me. She won't discuss the total amount with me. I've been struggling with this for years. Wait a minute. So this has been going on a long time? This has been going on, like I said, for about five years that I started discovering it because I noted my credit score dropped. All of a sudden, because I monitor Credit Karma or whatever. And, um, Why is your credit score dropping? Well, because... Is she taking out fraudulent loans in your name? No, she's not, John. But what was happening is we have shared accounts. We have joint accounts. And she was dipping into the credit line. She would go overdraft, and then it would dip into the credit line and impact me. So that's one of the negatives of having a shared account. Okay, so what I'm curious about is... Five years ago, you discovered this level of deception, and her reaction was not sorrow. It was obstinance. 100%. Anger, blaming. At that point, why did you not deal with this? Why are we having this conversation five years later? Well, I think I was trying to be forgiving. And one of the things that kept getting thrown out at me is, well, I guess my worst isn't good enough. For better or for worse, and I was being guilted, maybe gaslit, into believing that it was something I was doing wrong, that I wasn't being forgiving. And so, you know, and I guess that's – I'm sorry, go ahead. Let me say this. You don't have to agree with me on this, and that's perfectly okay. I call this – we call this financial infidelity. And I tend to take a much broader view of infidelity that's bigger than so-and-so slept with somebody else. And if somebody breaks the unity of a marriage, I am going to go violate your safety and trust, which it violates both of these things. And, like, I'm not going to have any remorse for it. In fact, I'm going to blame you for it. Did you know your personal info is getting bought and sold to people right now who use AI to target you with bizarrely personal scams and spam? Like, hey George, are you interested in selling your house at 253 Sprague Street? Well, lucky for you, there's Delete.me. Delete.me, as the name implies, goes to hundreds of creepy data broker sites and deletes your personal info. Over and over all year long. I use and love Delete.me because I can't stop scammers from using AI. But I can make myself much more difficult to target. So go to joindeleteme.com slash Ramsey and get 20% off an annual plan or click the link in the description. That's join, J-O-I-N, deleteme.com slash Ramsey. That is every bit fidelity. That's every bit as damaging as going and sleeping with somebody. It's broken the foundation of what y'all two are anchored in building together. It's not a for better or worse. For better or worse is job loss. For better or worse is like an illness. For better or worse is your parents have to come move in with us because they have nowhere else to go. That's for better or worse. That's hard, right? This isn't that. For better or for worse isn't I slept with your best friend and you're supposed to forgive me because this is my worst. That doesn't qualify under the better or worse heading, is what John's saying. Or I've essentially stolen $100,000 from us. Our marriage. And given it away. And given it away. And I refuse to talk about what I did with it, which makes you really suspect on other things as well. And so let's back out. Where else will she not be connected with you? Because it's rare that it happens just in one area. I would agree. First 20 years. We were on the same page. Things were pretty good. Raised our son, did a great job. He's doing very well. Well, The past 10 years, she changed jobs. We've both been under a lot of job stress. We both have executive-level positions. I think that impacted the marriage some, and we started kind of living as roommates. And it's just gone downhill from there. Okay. Well, here's the thing. Your marriage is very seriously broken. I think all three of us can agree with that. You knew that before you called. And so then you've got to decide under what circumstances this continues. And so if I were to say, you know, I wouldn't suggest you end a marriage based on two goobers on a podcast telling you something, but I am going to tell you this marriage is going to end if it doesn't change. And so I'm going to, what have we got to do to change it? Well, I think you need to go sit down with a marriage counselor. She's not going to go. I don't think I would invite her and say, I'm going to go sit down with a marriage counselor and see if our marriage can be saved. Because under the current way it's operating, I think it's ending. And I hate that. I don't want that. I want us to stay together. We're too invested. I've always loved you. I want to stick this out, but I'm not going to continue the way this is. And I'm going to go sit down with a counselor and figure out how we can begin to heal or if we can begin to heal. I hope you'll come because you not coming may signal the end of this thing, but we've got to go try. And so you go sit down with someone who can give you a much better, wiser than a five minute call on a podcast, okay? Right. But I'll just tell you, 100% chance you're going to go crazy and be in a rubber room, or this marriage is going to end, or it's going to change, and you guys are going to start healing. One of those three things. It cannot maintain where it is. It will not maintain. There's no such thing as status quo here. It's going to burn down. It's going to end in ashes. I think it's already there. Yeah. But I mean, you're going to finish off. I don't know if you can turn this around. It doesn't sound like you can. The thing that scares me the most is it's been five years and neither one of you have addressed it. Neither one of you have said, look, either this fixes or you're gone. Neither one of you said that to each other. I didn't have the divorce discussion. Thank And she said, go ahead and file. I'm not going to fight it. But I wasn't really prepared to do it at the time. And now I feel more prepared. Yeah, I think you've got to. Well, you the, the, If it can't get better. I don't know if it's a common trend, just since I've been looking into this. very this. There is a move where somebody is going to continue to act in a certain way because they don't want to hold that I signed much. this paper to end this marriage. So I'm going to continue to push and not be a person of character to do things that violate the agreements that we made, and then you go file, and then you're the bad guy. Right. So her like you say more gaslighting. Right. You saying, hey, I can't do this marriage anymore. And her saying, cool, great. Go ahead. Go ahead and sign up for it. That's a big statement. Right. Let me say it this way. She's already left your marriage. She's just asking you to go make it official. And so if you want to rebuild this thing from the floor up, I've seen it done in worse situations than you're in. I believe in redemption. I wouldn't do this show. But the reality is she's already left it. She's got her own money, her own plans, her own deals. I would also take this added steps to close down this credit line, brother. Yeah, oh, definitely. Like, unhook yourself from this thing. Any joint accounts need to be shut down by the time you get off the phone. And then you need to go see a counselor and make a decision on what you're going to do. I just remember something you said, Dave, in one of your other shows, that money flows toward what you care about. That's it. And mine was flowing toward our shared goals, while hers was flowing toward herself and her family. And maybe something else. The fact that she's secretive still is more than just, I'm ashamed I gave this to my dysfunctional family. There might be something else you find later. It could be worse than you think it is. And it could be that it started, yeah, who knows what it could be. And it may be that 10 years ago, you weren't somebody she could come to and sit down and say, hey, I really want to help out our family in this way. And you weren't somebody that she could sit down with or she felt like you weren't somebody. Who knows how this thing got all tangled up at the beginning. What we know now is she's left. Five years. She's left. And you've got to do the next right thing for you and for y'all and for your future. So John, there's a principle of when something's not right, it's not going to get right by itself. Right. And sometimes the action is stop doing what you're doing. Sometimes it is, I'm going to go talk to somebody that knows what they're doing, but you've got to move. Not five years later. That's right. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.