Married with Debt
I love the dating site abbreviations. We all know SWF (single white female) but maybe we should have one for married with debt (MWD)!
There are really two kinds of problems (ok, more than that but we can boil down to two core issues). The first problem is the debt that someone brings into the marriage, and the second is the debt accumulated during the marriage.
Let’s start with the baggage brought onboard a relationship. We talked last week about the signs of financial security. So let’s assume that you walked into this relationship with someone who had a job, and didn’t live at home. Let’s also assume that before you got married, you were pretty candid with each other about your finances. I know that is a lot to assume, but the reality is that if it didn’t happen then my answer changes completely. If you married someone who was in dire straits, and then didn’t talk about it, my advice is YOU ARE AN IDIOT. Sorry, it had to be said.
All right, so you aren’t an idiot. You are just someone who is MWD. Now a lot of folks will tell you that this isn’t your problem and your spouse should take care of it. I disagree. In a healthy marriage, there is no ‘mine’ or ‘yours’, there is ‘ours’. You chose this person flaws and all for better or worse. The debt just happens to be the worse. This can make your marriage stronger or weaker depending on how you handle it. So, do you really think it will make you stronger to force your spouse to carry this debt and be solely responsible? Probably not. What needs to happen is for the two of you to sit down and get honest about how to tackle this issue together. That probably means sacrifices on your part that you haven’t considered. What’s important is that you discuss those as part of the overall plan. You can’t go through your marriage living large while your spouse scrimps and saves to pay off the debt. On the other hand, you can’t do all of the sacrifice and play the martyr.
The longer that you have this debt, the more it will eat away at your marriage. Money is a very emotional thing. You need to treat this as any other debt.
- Identify and confirm the amounts owed.
- Create a payoff plan using one of two approaches:
- Largest interest rate to smallest interest rate.
- Snowball plan, starting with the smallest debt and paying that off first.
Either way, you will create a list of debts and a plan for payoff that is worked into your monthly budget. (More on budgeting to come in another article.)
- Make a commitment to a timeline for the payoff, and make a commitment not to incur new debt individually.
This looks easy, right? It SHOULD be.
The real issues, as many of you know, are when your spouse continues to accumulate debt that is outside of your agreements.
Each of us has a different way of quantifying this. Some couples that I know have a mutual spending limit. For instance, neither one can spend over $200 on something without consulting the other person. Other couples might have individual ‘slush’ funds. In this scenario, each person gets their own money out of the budget to spend as they please. This is very popular, because one person can save up for the item they really want to buy.
If you don’t have a system in place, this is where you should start. You can’t really blame someone for their purchases or debt, unless you have an agreement in place.
So, let’s assume that you HAVE done this. You are both on board with what is going to happen. Then, your spouse breaks that agreement and starts buying or building debt on the side. Is it really ‘until debt do us part’?
We have all done this from time to time in some small way. My mama taught me some cute tricks when I was a kid. Sneak a new outfit into the back of the closet and cut off the tags. Let is hang there for a week, moving it forward in the closet. When you wear it, say you have had it for awhile. Tricky, but this one works. Your spouse has a vague recollection of having seen it before.
I could go on for days with ways to cover up your spending. However, I don’t want to encourage you to do bad things!
When one person breaks any commitment in a marriage, it’s a bad deal. Fidelity, money, and promises are all part of the same trust factor that is essential in marriage. The spouse who has broken it probably doesn’t see it that way and probably has a dozen rational reasons about the behavior. To those who break the agreement, WAKE UP. To the other spouse I would say DON’T FALL FOR IT. It’s important to solve this issue in order to rebalance the relationship and to instill trust again.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard, was the analogy to a bank account. People are like bank accounts (emotionally). You make deposits, like cooking dinner or doing something nice for that person (beyond the expected). You also make withdrawals, like running late to an important event, or committing your spouse to social plans you know he won’t want to do. Um, yeah, I do that a lot. There is a lot of back and forth in a relationship between withdrawals and deposits. You know when you get close to a zero balance; too many withdrawals and not enough deposits.
However, when an agreement is broken, you don’t just make a withdrawal, you overdraw the account severely. It is vital that you both confront the issue, and work towards a solution. I would refer you back to my initial payoff solution, but also say that there is an emotional payoff as well.
Should it be ‘until debt do us part’?
I think the real answer is not about debt at all. The answer is about mutual trust and a commitment to the overall health of the relationship. When one person continues to break an agreement, that person is the one putting the marriage in jeopardy. The communication, trust, and love will begin to disintegrate over time. There won’t be a need for one person to initiate a because of money. The marriage will implode on its own for any number of reasons.
Filed under: Personal Finance Tagged: | dating, divorce, matchmaking, money problems, personal finance
