I love my gf and want to marry her. But she has a crazy amount of debt. Need advice.

100K isn't a lot if your graduating from med school it's a lot if you're never going to make more than 60K and apparently aren't aware that your living above your means.

She will always hate you for making her live with "less" than she is accustomed to and it will be a constant source of stress. Is she even paying the interest on these loans? You need to get some details straight before moving forward.

She would ruin you.

She should marry a well-off woman, not a man.

A man she can trap.

A woman would be harder to use.

A woman would make her grow up.

Hell Yeah! Resist the Patriarchy! Resist! Resist! (what a dickish post, laddie)

patronizing twit wrote:

phoenix.rising wrote:

Consider living together to help her cut her expenses and save money. Keep your finances separate! Tell her you strongly advise her to take a money management class and to make a plan on how to get out of debt. Tell her that marriages that begin in debt have a strike against them and you want to have a bright future with her, but it will only happen if she takes steps. Tell her you want to see how she's done in paying down her debt after one year. After a year, see how's she's doing. If she's making good progress and has turned over a new leaf in her financial habits, she's a keeper. If not, cut her loose.

Ha! Yea try that patronizing routine on her and see how long she sticks with you. Please update us on your inevitable failure!

OP, your situation is mine, except the genders are switched. I'm an attorney and my BF had about 80k in student loan debt. He was also not living within his means. The first item was not the thing that should have made warning bells go off - it's the second. I understand the situation with your GFs student loans. What I don't understand is how she doesn't seem to really appreciate the need to pay them off and live more modestly. My BF was the same way. Once we got married, I was the earner and he was the spender. He spent faster than I could earn. I ended up getting divorced and declaring bankruptcy. Love is wonderful but it flies out the window when money is a problem. Make sure you two are on the same page before you get married. If she's not willing to scale down and start paying off debt, you have a problem. The 100K isn't the issue. Her lack of financial awareness and discipline is.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

You don't have to marry her right away. You can live together and see what kind of job she can get and whether she can live within a budget.

I made a commitment to my wife and her reckless spending resulted in our burning through my savings and me in credit card debt for the only time in my life. Alimony is based on a percentage of the difference in incomes and since she hadn't worked much I had to pay her a significant amount for three years.

Total disaster.

I'm guessing OP's net worth is closer to 70-80k. A lot of it is probably in 401k which is pretax so is worth far less when he withdrawals it at retirement. He counts his car and material possessions. I'd like to know what percentage of your car and material possessions makes up his 100k net worth. If it's higher than 5% then he needs to become more fiscally responsible!

If a 21 year old maxes out 401k, Roth IRA and HSA, they'd hit 100k net worth by age 24 easily. Even sooner if they invest in taxable account.

Banana Bread wrote:

You literally sound retarded. If you brake up with her I would take her for coffee and be her wife.

Calls people retarded; Doesn't know the difference between "brake" and "break".

Why would you post on a forum asking for life advice from complete strangers? The idiot above me is judging someone based on their spelling/misspelling.

No one is going to be perfect. Few people have any financial savvy. You're just not taught that from an early age. Maybe if you work together, you can overcome her debt and together you can overcome your shortcomings.

Don't worry about the money- would you rather have the money you do now, for the rest of you life and you won't be as happy? Or would you rather have a wife and be very happy? Money doesn't make you happy

sofa king we todd did wrote:

Banana Bread wrote:

You literally sound retarded. If you brake up with her I would take her for coffee and be her wife.

Calls people retarded; Doesn't know the difference between "brake" and "break".

Give him a brake, returd!

If your girlfriend was really that smart, she wouldn’t be living beyond her means and have a plan to pay off her loans such as getting a decent job. Your net worth does not include your car or most possessions. Once married you will likely want to buy a house and have children. Your debt will grow massively. She may also stop working entirely for several years to be a stay at home mom. If she’s bad with money now - just wait until she’s buying stuff for a house and kids and you are paying for everything. Find a grown up. Plenty of women have real jobs and have their lives together.

Definitely, have a discussion about your future as a couple and spending. If that doesn't scare her off, plan on living together at least a year before getting married. Rent a new place, less expensive than what she's in now, so she can attempt to pay off her debt. Keep separate accounts and split the bills. Maybe once she sees how much less you spend, she'll adapt and become more thrifty or make an honest effort at reducing her debt. Alternately, she may end up thinking you are a cheap-tightwad, in which case, marriage would be ill-advised.

Lots of people grow up and graduate from college without any education in personal finance. Ignorance of financial topics and genuine irresponsibility are not quite the same thing. Some people with bad money habits wise up at some point and take control of their finances and some of them don't. Some people get away with bad saving and spending habits because they earn a lot of money. Some people don't earn enough to get ahead no matter how careful they are. There is a wide range in awareness, behavior, and circumstances.

You need to raise the issue of finances at some point, have some serious, respectful conversations, and see if your girlfriend is inclined to turn over a new leaf. If she can adjust her habits going forward, then the existing debt may not seem so daunting. If she is really fiscally irresponsible by nature, then she might not change and might resent the suggestion that she should. But perhaps she already knows that she should be saving more and paying down debt and she would like to make some adjustments. Maybe she will welcome the impetus to start that process.

Think about how to raise the issue respectfully and take some time to work through it together. If those conversations lead to agreement on your priorities for the future, then you may evaluate your current (combined) financial situation and decide that it's not a dealbreaker. On the other hand, if you can't come to an agreement, or at least a compromise, on financial priorities for the future, your different viewpoints are the issue more than the actual debt.

My wife was not a saver when we met. She didn't have any debt, but she spent most of the money that she had. We discussed every important topic we could think of before we got engaged, including money, and agreed that saving for general peace of mind and a timely retirement was a top priority. She hadn't thought about long-term financial planning before and didn't know much about it, but she was willing to think about it and take the appropriate steps. Fifteen years later, we are in good financial shape. She is still not quite as frugal as I am, but we are generally on the same page and we are saving more than enough for our future.

Your hope is that you can continue this relationship, marry this woman (at the appropriate time if things continue to go well) and continue to feel financially secure. You need to take your time and tread cautiously, but there may be a decent chance that you can do both.

Good luck.

As a coach, I have come into contact with all types of personalities in the 18-22 age group on a yearly basis, for the past 25 years - both male and female. My take on it is that there are spenders and there are savers. The spenders don’t think they are spending beyond their means, or wasting their parents’ money. Credit card in hand, they will use it even if they don’t have money they pay it. If you marry this girl it’ll be a mistake. The financial differences are a grand canyon between the two of you and will end in a divorce somewhere down the road. Keep dating, move in together, but don’t get married.

Yes, financials should be part of the conversation BEFORE you get married.

The three main reasons people get divorced in America: Religion, money and sex.

Guess what the three major things most couples don't talk about enough?

Sit down and have an adult conversation about her debt. Tell her you will help her get on a written budget every month, with a plan to start paying down the debt and saving for the wedding. Moving in together somewhere affordable could help. Do not, under any circumstances, mix your banking accounts and such. Plenty of time to do that after you get married. Any sort of extravagant wedding is off the table if she has $100,000 in debt. Hopefully she understands this.

You save money, she spends money - there will conflict in your marriage UNLESS you talk it out now. Get her on a written budget. Encourage her, love her, make it easy for her to stick to it.

If she has a problem with any of this - run away. If she can't be an adult about her finances now, when you two would be expected to be in the early thrills of love, there's no way she will be a responsible adult with her finances later on.

Dave Ramsey: "Total Money Makeover."

Has helped millions. His opinion is the only one that counts for you.

I cannot believe that this thread has yet to state the obvious:

This thread is useless without pictures.

People here are assuming her financial skills are poor when the only info we have is that she has a student loan that her parents encouraged and said they'd help with, and that she chooses to spend money on living on her own instead of being frugal and sharing a cheap apartment with a room mate at 30. That doesn't necessarily make her financially stupid, it just means she has different priorities than you do.

If anything, I would tell her to be skeptical given your attitude towards women and finances.

I also wouldn't necessarily say that still renting (and having a room mate at that) at age 30 with a net worth of $100k including your retirement (not actually something you should be spending any time soon), a car (decreasing in value) and all your material possessions (decreasing in value) means you've made very wise financial decisions.

Run far away man..

The sex is great now, but give it a few weeks once the honeymoon stage ends and you'll care a LOT more about the 100K in debt (and high spending habits) you're saddled with vs. a few good lays.

Find someone who is responsible financially - sounds like you are on TOTAL opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to managing your financials.

That will drive you crazy.. trust me.

$100k debt in the grand scheme of things is nothing.

Your move chief.