[Riley]

As of 3 months ago I am engaged to my boyfriend of 4 years. We have been living together for the past 2 of those years (we share the house hold bills but live in his home). He is 28, 5 years older than me, and has been previously married (no kids), I have never married before. He kept his house in the divorce. Prior to getting engaged I sat down with him and tried to have that “pre-engagement” talk. Asking things such as, where do you see yourself in 5 years, do you want kids, who will carry the financial responsibilities, buying a new and larger home, etc. The talk went great, needless to say since I said yes when he asked me to marry him!

About a month ago I noticed that he had been very short with me. Picking small fights to turn them into to something more, and wind up having a long argument and not even really know what we are arguing over!
Last weekend we got in another one of those arguments, and it got to the point that I just yelled out, “I don’t know what is REALLY wrong with you but if you don’t figure it out soon were going to end up breaking up over this!”

That lead us into the REAL problem at hand….after a little more arguing he sat down and told me what was really going on. He said that he was very stressed over money. I knew that this time last year he talked to me and admitted that he had a $10,000 credit card bill but he had a plan to have it paid off in 6 months and was lowering the limit and using it for emergency only. Since he hadn’t mentioned any problems since that I assumed he had resolved this issue.

He now admits to me that he currently owes a remaining 97,000 on our house (not bad since he bought it for 130,000 8 years ago) but he took out a second mortgage of 60,000 with a 10% interest! Plus another 28,000 that he owes the bank between other credit lines and such. Then he also has another $9,000 of debt from credit cards he has. Plus my ring that I am sure in not paid for and possibly anything else I don’t know of yet!
He has a decent paying job, making around 60,000/yr but has NO money in his checking and hardly having a few hundred dollars left after all his bills are paid out each month! I am soon to graduate school and will be making 50-60,000 myself. He seems to think that “everything will be okay” since we will have doubled our income once I graduate.

However, I don’t see it that way. I am furious that he has kept this secret from me, especially knowing that I have told him in the past I would not want to be carrying any major debt into a marriage. To me this seems like a topic that should definitely be addressed before asking someone if they want to spend the rest of their life with you! He knew that the “plans” we talked about would not be realistic because his debt will be in the way! His excuse for not telling me is that he was “afraid to lose me”.

I am now to the point I don’t know what to do. He has been calling his bank and attempting to lower interest rates and that sort of thing, but he has already refinanced in the past and it pretty well out of “help” options! I can also see that he is making an effort to be nicer at home. But, I know this would be a huge burden on our marriage and part of me feels as though I will always resent him for this. It may sound selfish but I have worked very hard to build a hefty savings account and work my way through school and I don’t want to have to do without and put my future goals on hold because of someone else’s past spending problems! Plus what if his spending habits never change? Of course I love him, but when it comes to marriage is love REALLY enough to make it work? Plus do I want to go into a marriage already thinking that I am going to “have to MAKE things work”??

[AskApril Masini]

You were smart and lucky to find out all this information before you married your fiance and his debts became your debts. It’s much easier to make decisions when you have all the information in front of you.

My advice is to try and take the emotion out of this problem and make a business decision that has nothing to do with love. Decide where your personal boundaries are for taking on his debt. For some people, what you describe would be do-able. For you, not so much.

In order to better educate yourself consider meeting with an accountant or business manager [i]or two[/i] in order to lay everything out, ask your questions — and ask them what questions they think you should be asking that you may not have asked already. This will cost you several hundred dollars, but will be a good investment in your decision.

It would also be helpful to find out how he managed to accrue such a debt. Did he overspend? Was there a illness or injury that kept him from working? Is he just a bad financial planner? Does he like to live outside his means?

After you’ve gotten some professional money manager advice, and some more information about how your fiance got into this situation, you have to ask yourself the tough personal question, and that is: Is this man compatible with you because love is not enough to sustain a relationship over the long term. Love comes and goes, it fades and blooms, throughout the course of a marriage. While every couple has money issues at least at one or two points in their marriage, remember that these money problems can break a marriage, and they do. Money is one of the most common reasons for divorce. If the reasons for his getting into this situation are understandable and good ones, then you may be interested in forging on with him. If they seem like red lights to you, then this may be a good time to put the brakes on the marriage.

What sustains a marriage is compatibility, mutual respect, and shared goals. Love is important, but it doesn’t keep a marriage from breaking. The other three items do.

If you are going into a marriage thinking, as you put it, that you “have to make things work” because of this gap between what you think is a good place to start a marriage financially, and what he thinks is a good enough place to start a marriage financially, you’re going to have a rocky road at best, and a divorce at worst.

[Luxurious Girl]

Sit down together and make a clear budget, outline all debts, and map out how you will tackle them as a team, but also clarify what each of you is responsible for. Transparency and accountability are key.

[Member]

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