brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today yeah my partner we're both still technically married he has two kids mom is gone we're ready to get us to we decided to combine her finances last summer and we're in ninety one thousand dollars that accumulated and our monthly income is like fifty-seven hundred after taxes and we don't know what to do and we have other places to last week we found out i was pregnant and then uh... we are going to get some sort of your married we are both very different people actually live together and we combined our finance are you guys both in the middle divorces yet the mind-finished in sebruary so mind-done almost okay we haven't started because of the custody and all that you know i would not i would if you were my sister if you were my daughter if you were my close friend i would tell you do not come on your finances to that mess until it is clear okay separate please please don't because it is so tight when like our like our when all these things are already just leave them out each other if you need to don't don't don't don't put your names on each other's stuff don't be combining accounts don't be doing any of that okay i think i don't think we've really done that we have separate account everything like that but we like all the people who might know no no no no no no like your college roommates right now this shows sponsored by better health no matter if you just met someone or if you've been married forever no one has all the relationship answers but therapy can help you figure things out and to do that i recommend better help that is an online therapy platform with over thirty thousand licensed therapists and they're trusted by millions of people around the world when it comes to love and relationships everyone is still finding their way find yours with my friends better help visit better help dot com slash rams you get ten percent off your first month like our college roommates right now there's a good thing about their divorce when they go through and do all the mediation and they do you know they they take all the assets and all of it if you're paying on his on his debt like you're you know in that situation i don't know it gets all it gets all muddled so quickly yeah i guess the problem is that we both don't have any assets by their cars with car payments we don't own how to do it there's no money in the bank for either of us we are living week to week like we live off of the track when we live off my paycheck one week that's how we're living our life okay he's on the phone so she won't talk to you is a cool he's not on phone i'm saying like i i'd right now what you focus on what you can control okay okay how much money do you make i make so what makes it complicated to them on the commission-based salary by make my baseline is about twenty five hundred dollars a month and then more like twenty four but i get paid like twelve hundred by weekly and then sometimes i take in seven hundred dollars in a moment of time that three grand sometimes it's for grand sometimes twenty five hundred or i don't think all i don't like last month i didn't get a vote at all okay so that feels like you're very economically insecure what was your w two last year or would you report taxes last year forty eight thousand okay so in a situation like this grace what i would do is we call it the the hills and valleys funds it's fun to be well i would be so diligent again it is really complicated because you guys are sharing bills and all of it uh... now you're sharing human right uh... as much as you can to go through and draw a line is that here's what i would write whatever utility is i don't have like if you can function like roommates financially i think that's really important because i want you to get your money in order so it's getting at a time which do you make how much do you have to learn to live on your salary and your commission right and so how do we create a budget for you grace not for him and so what that means is that i have a great month that means you're probably gonna put you know a thousand bucks or so into this other counts so that when you have a month that's just twenty five hundred dollars and you know earn a commission you can pull some money out to pay your part of the bills so it needs to have a really really uh...
black and white situation financially with him that's the cleanest way to do it and then when all when he gets through all his divorce stuff and you guys i mean i'm assuming you guys get married eventually yeah that's the goal like i guess where it's complicated is that like this five thousand dollar the caner is what's holding up because like the way that we because i've been listening to you guys on the show and basically we were you know we should combine everything and do everything like that not your marriage but it's a very we want with we could be married we would have already gone to the courthouse but you're getting a very very but it does it's an emotional it's a it's a legal issue right so like it's not all that we want to be married so we should combine finances and i know you're not legally married you have no protection so so no we're not combining finances and is his the five thousand dollar retainer that he needs to figure out right so i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i know but grace listen to me i know you don't want to hear this we're just telling you because we do this we take these calls all day every day the chances of you working extra shifts paying four thousand of his five thousand dollar retainer you paying the bills while he goes through his divorce and then suddenly they reconcile or suddenly he doesn't love you anymore or suddenly whatever and the reason i know that you have a psychology for that is because it's happened to you in your marriage what you'll find yourself with is a brand new baby and you'll have nothing yeah and so i i i care about the woman on the phone that i'm talking to i care about him too but i'm not talking to him he needs to come up with his money for his divorce you and by the way you don't have enough money to even be helping with that i feel like there's two people who are f math students trying to work together to get an a on an exam yeah right and so i want you to work on your math skills and it may be i got a different job it may be i've got to figure out some new things but i want you to start getting concrete under your feet because your life right now is a seesaw and that's exhausting right and he can play on the seesaw all day long but i want you to stand on the sidewalk and this is going to be hard because this is not only a mathematical financial issue it's a relational issue big time when you like if you do this i'll be surprised like it would be easier to get off the phone and just keep doing what you've been doing and then you look up in two years and sadly a reality hits it's not which is not the picture you painted or you do what we say if what we recommend i mean honestly and and you do this and then he goes through all of his stuff and my prayer is that sure at the end of all of it you guys are still in love you have a baby and then you've had a you have a strong financial foundation under you he does as well you guys get married you combine it all and then you you go from there and you're actually building on something strong not something that is so shaky like it is now but the the way to do it the smart way to build is separately financially you need to be separate you are roommates financial you have to think about it that way create your free every dollar budget today the simplest way to budget for your life