A woman named Quinn from Houston called into “The Ramsey Show” with a direct and emotionally charged question: “Am I the financial abuser in my marriage, or is it actually my husband?”
She explained to co-hosts Dave Ramsey and George Kamel that her husband earns about $140,000 a year and is applying for a position that could pay up to $200,000 with bonuses. Quinn, on the other hand, earns $50,000 and is currently in graduate school. Despite the wide income gap, her husband accuses her of financial abuse.
Separate Finances, Growing Tensions
Quinn said the couple keeps separate bank accounts, something she claims was her husband’s idea from the start of their relationship. “I wanted joint even before we got married,” she said. “But he insisted on having separate for the time being.”
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Her husband claims she's financially abusive because she has more money saved. “The reason that I have more money in my bank account is because I actually sold my vehicle,” Quinn explained, adding that he has about $10,000 in savings and makes around $7,000 a month.
Kamel wasn't having it. “So if you transferred all of your money to his account, now he's the abuser because he has more than you?” he asked sarcastically. He later cut to the heart of the matter: “There's no abuse here. It's just stupidity.”
“You guys are like Venmoing each other, going tit for tat and scoreboards, and you have more than me this month,” he said with Ramsey adding, “This is not abuse by either one of you, and that is not a word you should use about your spouse.”
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Deeper Marital Problems And A Meddling Mother-in-Law
As the conversation progressed, it became transparent that the financial tension was just one layer. Quinn revealed her husband is secretly planning a divorce with his mother. “I found emails that were between his mother and he where he was claiming that I am coercively controlling him, that I'm financially abusing him,” she said. “And she was talking to him about how she's going to pay for his retainer for his lawyer.”
Quinn also shared that her husband gave her access to his phone due to a past porn addiction, which is how she discovered the emails. “He claims that he only does that because he's upset,” she said, but Ramsey wasn’t buying it: “He's a child. He's being a little boy and he ran to his mommy.”
She added that the couple had agreed to cut contact with his mother after some prior issues, but her husband violated that agreement.
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Ramsey: This Isn't About Money, It's About A Failing Marriage
Ramsey stressed the importance of joint budgeting and shared goals in a marriage. “You do a combined budget to reach towards the goals that we both believe we want our future to look like,” he said. “Because you are no longer roommates.”
Ultimately, the hosts agreed that what started as a financial question revealed much deeper marital problems. As Ramsey put it, “The whole discussion started out as a separate account discussion and turns out that wasn't the problem. It was masking the real problem. The real problem is mother-in-law.”
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