financial advice
hey there! thanks for reaqding my post.
So here's my dilemma, I'm the bread winner in the couple (not married), baby is due in just over six months. My girlfriend and I have been together for over two and a half years, she seemed to be improving on her financial state for a while, but recently learned that she had stop making monthly payments on a majority, if not all, of her credit cards sometime between a few and several months ago (before we became pregnant).
I'm worried not only about how this will impact our future, but most importantly how it will affect the baby's future if she can't pull her financial situation together. I've tried mentioning that I'd like us to become closer as a couple and preparing to raise this child together, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. From my perspective, I've tried to be very non-confrontational about it. It began by mentioning it, asking her if she needed any financial assistance, later on it turned into "hey, let's pull our resources together and see if we can't plan out a plan that will allow us to live comfortably?"
So far, nothing has come of it. Now, we're at odds because she refuses to even discuss it. Any words of advice???
Re: financial advice
I second the comment above.
Dave Ramsey has some pretty decent tactics for helping people get out of debt and they aren't too pushy. I personally prefer Suze Orman, check out her site or watch her on MSNBC or for free on iTunes (all of her episodes are downloadable). She is aggressive, but she knows her stuff.
And you're in a tricky situation, when my wife and I got married I destroyed all of her credit cards, merged our finances and completely took over. Within 6 months we were debt free and her credit score ended up being higher than mine! But we were able to buy a house and a new SUV a year or so later....but the only difference between me and you, we are married, so I was able to step in and help take the lead. If you two want to have the marriage discussion that could be your "way in" to getting control of the finances and helping to straighten them out. Otherwise, she is your girlfriend and you are solely a bystander in some of her affairs.
Either way, I wish you luck. Check out Dave and Suze and make is a couples thing so you can at least get the conversation going.
Talking money can always be difficult and I imagine it is even more difficult when you aren't married. You know better than us if she needs to be confronted or would be better off being gently prodded in the right direction. It is huge to be on the same page. What worked with my wife was to have us both list out goals, things we wanted or wanted to do in life. Once I had that it was easy to give day to day examples of how easy it would be to get to goal A if we made this little change in how we (really she) spent money. In this way, I wasn't telling her she couldn't buy things, but rather showing her that if she really valued Goal A maybe this random purchase wasn't the best use of her money.
As we were paying out of our debt, I made sure to do small victory gestures. Whether it was a nice night out or a small gift, I wanted to provide some kind of incentive to show that what we were doing was actually working. While I could just show her my spreadsheets, that isn't as much fun for her as it is for me.
Maybe "suggesting" won't work with her. Have her pull up her credit score to see what the damage is on outstanding accounts and credit scores then go visit with a financial planner in your area and discuss your next 5 years. marriage, house, car, day care, school, diapers, beer, NFL ticket.
Whatever you do, keep separate checking accounts and avoid the drama that goes with joint accounts :-)
Hard to tell another person how to manage their money situation when both people are still single and independent in terms of money. Marriage really does change that because resources are shared within the institution.
I was the one who was bad with money when we met, and the minute that we got engaged was the minute my wife started communicating how important sound decisions were in terms of money. She controls the money in our house, and because of that we have very little drama when it comes to how our money is being spent. At the same time, we focused on my small debt and worked to get rid of that before we began to work on having a kid.
Finances can really bring the drama to a relationship to the point that it can damage it. Communicating and working towards common financial goals is critical to avoid such drama. In a relationship people bring positive and negative things into the mix. Identifying both, and making sure that the person who is strong in one area leads that area is a great way to ensure that a relationship is approached as a team, and not just as two individuals who still have speperate goals.
Communicate, develop a plan, and stick to it. Once the initial pain of the situation wears off, it becomes a game of trying to save even more money, or pay that bill early here and there.