Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. All right, today's question comes from Brody in Maryland. He says, is it unfair for me to feel angry that my wife wants a bigger house?
We bought 1400 square foot house last April. I sold all four of my investment properties that I worked very hard for to completely pay off our debt, including the new house. Our house is a three bedroom, two bath ranch, with a backyard on a quiet street, and it's in a good school district. So much sacrifice and saving went into making this happen.
Now she wants a bigger house, even though she said she wanted this particular house before we put the offer in. I don't see how I can make this happen without going into debt again, and I will not go back into debt. Oh, this is juicy. Listen, here's the thing.
I do think that some people's personalities, because you don't talk about any type of pay raise or situation where you guys' lifestyle has changed drastically, but I do think there's some people that the goal post is constantly moving, right? It's like, if I just get this, I'll be happy, and then they get that thing, and they're not happy. Or if I just get this, I'll be content, and then it happens, and they're not content, because things don't make you happy, and things don't make you content. You know, I think that they're fun, but they don't fill that void.
And you can buy fun, but you can't buy happiness. Yeah, and you can't buy content, man. And if you're on social media, what she might be every single day scrolling through, and looking at what the influencers are doing, and looking at what their friends, you know, their friends' houses, or she's spending all night watching HGTV, it is very difficult for some people to kind of go, well, that's them, and that's okay, my life is fine. And truly, I think that that's what this is.
I think she's got a contentment issue. Exactly. Sidebar, what you're saying there, I just saw an article the other day, that the more hours you spend on social media, the more direct correlation to the more credit card day, you have. Oh, really?
I'd love to see that. I know there is. And the more overspending you do, because, you know, I do it, and I have the money, but I'm looking at some gun thing, and I'm like, oh, I need one of those. But if I had stayed off of that, I wouldn't have known it was there.
And, you know, but so I know other people do it, and I teach this crap. So, you know what I mean? It's like, God, I'll leave, I'm doing it. It's gotta be.
So, okay, here's what happened, Brody. You guys need to reset your marriage relationship. This is not about a 1400 square foot house, and it's not about you being angry. You are acting like the daddy, and she's acting like daddy's little princess.
And daddy sold everything, and did everything, and sacrificed, and worked his fingers to the bone, and what do you get? The bone, he fingers, and he got a house, and he's real proud of the house. And now she walks in and goes, yeah, I bet there's a wallpaper. Yeah.
And so, we need to reset this, and instead, let's be two grown-ups. So, the conversation I'm going to have is, and actually, we had it at our house, but in a little different way, when we were about your old age, probably. I'll tell you about ours in a second, but the conversation I'm gonna have is, okay, we are gonna get aligned on our goals. My goal is not to perpetually make an unhappy person happy.
I am not going to get on that treadmill. We, you're a grown woman, I'm a grown man, we're gonna sit down together, and here's one of mine, okay, I don't borrow money. Period, here's another one of mine. I like to provide nice things for my wife.
Here's another one of mine. These are what you might say, Brody, okay, and she's saying, well, I want a house as nice as my friends. Okay, what can we do to get that? You don't work, you could work.
You don't work much, you could work more. You could quit coach-bagging it, and we might save that money towards the house. I mean, what are we going to do as two grown up people to responsibly, because I'm all in. I put all my chips in the table.
I sold off everything I had to buy this house for us. And what you did though, was you did that without her. She was not aligned to that. She was giving you lip service, but this was not her idea, it was yours.
Yeah, I did. Now you're surprised that she's unhappy of your plan that did not her include her. So this is like, I got to, you know what, about 10 years, it's been married 43 years, about 10 years in a marriage. I don't buy Sharon jewelry anymore that she hasn't seen.
Tell us why. Because I picked out ugly crap. I know what I mean. According to her, but I spent a lot of my beautiful money on her ugly crap, and then she didn't, she's like, I'm wearing that about that.
And I'm like, oh geez, well let's just not do that again. So I don't mind if Sharon has, I mean she's got earrings inside of a headlight, but she picked them out. And then she says they're heavy. They're that big, okay?
And I'm like, that's ridiculous. It's a good problem to have Sharon. Okay, just get your earlobes and do some earloble ups. Start doing some workouts there in the gym, because you picked them out.
So see, that's the difference. She, this girl's not involved in this. Oh yeah, you can tell by the language, I sold all of my investment problems. So much sacrifice.
Yeah, he's the only one sacrificing. You can tell by the language whether. But it's a paternal thing, really. That's an equal thing.
Yeah, yeah, you can hear it. I think we got a reset and go, we're not going anywhere from here. We're not making any major decisions without both of us involved. And I learned that after I went broke, because I made a lot of decisions that were stupid without talking to my wife.
Robert's 31 says, who can find a virtuous wife for her worth is far above Ruby's, the heart of her husband safely trusts her. And here's my favorite part. We will have no lack of gain. And it's not in the Bible, but it might be in one version like second, hesitations right after no lack of gain.
She no longer says I told you so. Oh, I kind of like you. She can't say that anymore. I like being able to say that.
I know, but you can't say that when you're in on the decision. All you can say is we together made a dumb butt decision. That's all you can say from this point forward. And that's it.
You can't say you're an idiot. You can't do that anymore, because now you have to use plural. It's a change of pronounce. We are idiots.
We did this, right? And so that's what's going on here, dude. You've got to reset this idea. You have put your little Superman cape up of you're the pop eye and you're the provider and all this stuff.
And she's just a little woman. And you're never going to make start a little hair. I'm happy. It's not going to happen.
So she's going to get on the same page and be like a grown woman and stuff. And then she'll become happy. It's a weird balance power. It's a big deal, man.
It's a big deal. This alignment and marriage is one of the things we find all the time in people's ability to get out of that. People's they succeed in their careers at a greater rate. And their ability to build wealth because they're aligned on sacrificing.
And they make decisions together. The first time we did that after going broke, was we finally saved up a little bit of money. And I had $10,000 sharing was driving a blue three-tone astro van. You remember those?
Oh, 100% Completely ugly. The carpet was covered in toddler goldfish from the third kid. And it was nasty. This was a bad car.
It was an embarrassing vehicle. When they first came out, they were all right. Well, this was not first come out. And she's like, I need a better car.
We need to move up to suburban. And I was going to, I had $10,000 or $15,000 saved at the company. I was getting ready to do this investment. We're going to buy this thing.
And I was going to make $100,000 with this $15,000 down here. And she's like, we need to do a car. And you know what? We did both, but we did the car first.
And then we did the company. And it turns out now all these years later, it was OK. But in the moment, aligning on that with two grownups was a big deal, a big deal. This is the Ramsey Show.
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