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"Brought to you by the EveryDollar app, start budgeting for free today." So my question is, I recently inherited some money from my father who passed away. And it's enough money to pay off the mortgage on the house. And my question is whether I should do that or invest the money in investments like in Canada, it's not an IRA, it's an RSP. And you know, things like that, and we do have, I have two children, I'm married, I'm 60, my wife is 55, we have 11-year-old twins. And so we do have a college account for them, we have an investment fund for them as well. But so there's only enough money to either pay off the mortgage or not. The wrinkle in the question is, you know, the report, my wife is a convulsive shopper. So we've been married 16 years and we've gone to counseling on this issue a number of times, and you know, she promises to change and to stop and it doesn't change. My wife's parents are not wealthy, but they were, you know, comfortable in middle class. They were very wise with their money. So when we got married, they actually bought the house at the gifts for us that we live in. It's in my wife's name alone. I didn't realize how much credit card debt she had racked up. And it was in the hundreds of thousands. So we ended up having to get a mortgage on the house to pay off the credit card debt. And that mortgage is in both of our names. We're paying right now, it's a adjustable rate mortgage where at 8.34%, the bank is saying that they're going to raise the rate soon. You know, like money-wise, it is kind of paycheck to paycheck. So paying off their debt at the mortgage. So let me get this straight. If you take your inheritance from your father and pay off the mortgage from your wife's compulsive spending in a house that's in her name. Yes. But the mortgage is in both of our names. I know. But now the house is free and clear and it's not in your name. Yes. That doesn't end. That doesn't end well. I'm not worried about that. Why? Well, a few reasons. One, our marriage is strong. When? When was your marriage strong? When your wife is a compulsive shopper runs up $100,000, how do you call that a strong marriage? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So no, I'm not paying off someone else's house who has an addiction. Yeah. How easy is it to get your name on the deed? I'm just curious. It makes her issues, but I'm just from an asset perspective. Well, she could, you know, with her permission add my name to the deed. I am not, I'm not the kind of person who cites over money and I wasn't asking you to fight over money. I was asking you to be wise. Yeah. I hear what you're saying. Her pair, I love her parents very, very much. And by the way, her parents are actually- That has nothing to do with it. Yeah. Well, I would feel, you know, they- Peter, you guys are married. You guys are married. Okay. So if you're going to share an assets and share paying off her debt, you have just of a right to have your name on the assets of your marriage. It's not an unloving act. So if you're not being greedy in that sense- No, unloving act towards her. No. By the way, we're paying off her debt. From your debt, she ran it up. Yeah. Okay. I mean, her argument would be that it was for necessities for the house. The thing is she over by. So, you know, like children's clothing, our kids had- A hundred thousand dollars. A hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, dozens and dozens of shirts and pants and, you know, stuff like that. Right. If we're talking 10 grand, we can probably nitpick if it was right or wrong. But a hundred grand. That's an obvious crazy number. I mean, that's wild. Yeah. That's wild. And by the way, it was under the cloak of darkness. You didn't know it happened. Yeah, it was hidden. So Peter, I want to go back to this. I didn't realize. Yeah. I didn't realize. Like I saw stuff coming in, but I have like- Do you guys, besides that card specifically or that whole $100,000 in general, or do you guys talk about money or do you all have a budget together? Like, do you kind of- Do you know what's going on or does she just handle the money? How does it work in your marriage? So she has always handled the money. Okay. And before our marriage, I never had credit card debt, you know, like once in my life when I was very young in my 20s, I paid- Do you have access, Peter, to your accounts? Like, do you check in on the accounts and kind of a pulse of what's going on at all? I do, now that our kids are a bit- When the kids were young, like we were barely getting any sleep and, you know, with both of us working full-time, we were exhausted. But now that the kids are more self-sufficient, I feel like I have the time now that I can start. The bandwidth. Okay. Because that's my encouragement to you because we find this so often that one spouse in the marriage takes the weight of the money, they're the ones that pay everything, know everything, do everything. And to a degree, that spouse has so much pressure and responsibility and it's very isolating. And that's been your wife. Now I'm not justifying at all her stuff of 100 grand of going into credit card debt and you don't know all of it. But also, you didn't know because you don't know what's going on. So Peter, I- You're no help. You need to step up in this and sit down and be a team together and you're a very kind person. So when you said I'm not the kind of person that fights with money, these are the fights you need to have because your marriage needs a level of unity and a level of agreement that is so deep that you guys are on such a level of vulnerability and honesty that it may come up. There may be some fights. And that's okay. Conflict is okay. And this is an area of your marriage. You need to be fighting about Peter and not being irrational and angry and hurtful. But man, you need to step into this. Yes Peter, you really, I mean, she may feel very alone in it and she acts out for whatever reason in this way. But just, I'm just saying, you need to step in and I would say that to any caller when it comes to marriage. You guys need to be more of a team and that's going to be a, that's the exact reason you want to push into this because it's going to create a better marriage. You're really well, it's going to not be fun at first because you're going to be, you guys are going to be maybe, you know, back and forth with stuff, but that's what creates a level of intimacy because you're doing it together. So yeah. Okay. Enablers, people who psychologists or therapists label as an enabler, as I've worked with them over the years, they're the nicest, sweetest people. They don't want to cause a ripple. They don't want conflict. They want everybody to be happy. And the irony is, is that it's the most hurtful thing that you can do to not cause the conflict because the conflict is where healing comes from. And again, not a raging angry conflict, but a conflict based on strength and wisdom. And so what you're thinking about doing is just trying to hide this lump under the rug again by paying off the mortgage, leaving it in her name, which is absolutely ridiculous, dude. It's nuts. Okay. With what you've described here, and you think then it's all going to be okay. If you just keep being nice, it's all going to be okay. If I keep being nice, it's going to be okay. I love her mom and dad. They're sweet people. I wouldn't want to hurt them. If I keep being nice, it's all going to be okay. And dude, it's a classic, it's a classic case study. And so you've confused nice by being so nice. You've actually caused harm, and you didn't mean to. You would never cause harm intentionally, but I want you to be the surgeon that cuts so that there's healing, a little hurt so that there's healing, a little conflict so that there's healing. You don't pull the splinter out, it's going to fester. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.
