Dear Dave,
I’ve spent most of my marriage not being involved in our family finances. To be honest, I’ve not been a very good husband. After being introduced to your show and your books by a friend, I realized how irresponsible I’ve been. When I talked to my wife about it and apologized, I heard for the first time that we have about $100,000 in debt, plus $55,000 in debt on a new car and motorcycle I did know about. Of course, we also have a mortgage on our home. She apologized for making a mess of things, but I know it wasn’t all her fault. She hadn’t been sneaking around spending and taking out debt, she just made mistakes and was afraid to tell me.Together,wemakeabout $150,000 a year. Do you have any advice for us?
Caleb Dear Caleb,
Brother, I am so proud of you. You made some mistakes, sure. But now you’ve made the decision to man up. And that’s a huge step in the right direction for you and your marriage.
To me, what you described is a lot different than her lying and hiding stuff. The truth is you weren’t plugged in. Maybe she wasn’t doing a great job, but then, she didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, did she? Things got worse, and she probably felt ashamed about how ugly it got and didn’t want to tell anyone.
Now you’re at the point where you’ve got to look at all this, and figure out how to fix it with a $150,000 income. It’s going to mean beans and rice, rice and beans. It’s going to mean a scorched-earth lifestyle and living on a budget, which also means you’re not going out to eat, and you’re not going on vacations.
I’d sell the car and the motorcycle. Get into a couple of very basic, inexpensive cars, and spend about two years being crazy intense to pay off everything but your home. You can clean this up, but you’re basically going to have no life during that time. The two of you also have some relationship work to do. It sounds like you’ve already gotten a good start on that, with you owning your part and her owning hers. The thing is not to point fingers. From this point forward you need to always sit down together, and make all your decisions—financial and otherwise— together. I want you to hug on each other a lot, too. If you’re both willing, you can heal the math problem, the debt problem and the marriage problem all at the same time. God bless you both!
— Dave Dear Dave,
My wife and I have been married for nine months, and we’ve been following your Baby Steps plan for three months. We have about $50,000 in debt, and I recently cashed out an old whole life policy that enabled us to pay off $22,000 of our debt. My wife still feels weird about us doing that, since the money paid off all the student loan debt she accumulated before we got married but none of the debt I brought to the marriage. I look at everything as ours, not mine andhers.WhatcanIdoabout her sense of guilt and feeling indebted to me?
Anonymous Dear Anonymous,
This isn’t an uncommon thing in situations like yours. But more than feeling indebted tosomeoneorexperiencing a sense of guilt or shame, it’s really a discussion about differing views of marriage.
You’re never in debt to your spouse. You should be all-in where your husband or wife is concerned. Remember the vows? For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. If she makes you chicken soup when you’re sick, does she charge you for it? Of course not. When you get married, you agree to take on each other’s burdens. Once you walk down the aisle with someone, you’re choosing to serve each other. You’re also choosing to take on each other’s debt, each other’s income, each other’s assets and each other’s crazy parents. Everything!
It all boils down to having a shared view of a proper marriage relationship. And the proper (and biblical) view is we own everything. There’s no mine and yours anymore. Now, you can’t make her feel—or not feel—a certain way. But you can ask her questions to understand where she’s coming from and what blockers are keeping her from being totally together in this. Talk about it. Put your heads together and practice thinking about your marriage as a union.
It will take some encouragement from you and some getting used to on her part, but if you work together, it’s a muscle you can grow and develop together.
— Dave Dave,
I’ve owned my own live events business for five years now. We’ve started really growing over the last year, buttherearesomanymoving parts, and I’ve begun to feel like things could spin out of control at any minute. Do you have any tips for relieving all this stress, and my fear of losing control?
Russ
Russ,
I get what you’re saying. I really do. Years ago, I went through these same feelings when my company began to really grow and pick up steam. Fanning flames, putting out fires and burning the candle at both ends can seem as necessary as breathing for mostdrivenbusinessleaders. Don’t misunderstand. There’s nothing wrong with being driven to achieve your goals and build something great. But the truth is this: Your business will never grow beyond your ability to let go and delegate. That’s why, as an entrepreneur, it’s vitally important to learn howtodelegatetherightway. Delegation is one of the most misunderstood—and abused—areas of leadership. It isn’t handing off tasks you hate. It’s all about recognizing and developing your team’s abilities and skills, then trusting them to take on responsibility. Transferring the fire in your heart to the right team members (transformational leadership) sets everyone up to burn brighter. But you’ll need to intentionally shift your mindset from doing the work to leading it. You can start this by beginning to see yourself more as a catalyst, coach and consultant, instead of the muscle for all the heavy lifting.
If this sounds hard, it’s because it is. At the outset, it’ll be one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do in your business. But if you slow down just a little, and develop a great training plan and delegation process now, I promise you things will grow incredibly later.
Done properly, delegation will lighten your load, and stress, so you can focus more on strategy and vision. It will also increase project ownership and company loyalty, while giving others a growth path and the motivation to learn new skills. As you activate this momentum, your whole team will become stronger, faster and better. It will also show your team that you believe in them.
And in time, watching yourteamdotasksasgoodas, or better than you, will feel rewarding beyond anything you ever imagined.
— Dave Dear Dave,
My wife and I own three commercial properties. They are all leased out long-term. Currently, we owe about $400,000 each on two of the buildings, and a little over $500,000 on the other. The only other debt we have is our home mortgage, and we should have that paid off in twoorthreeyears.Iknowyou hate debt, but how do you feel about owing on commercial properties that are consistently making good money?
D e a n Dear Dean,
From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like you two need to shift into panic mode and start selling everything insight.ButIdo100%believe you and your wife should sit downtogether,andformulate a sensible plan that will enable you to systematically work your way out from under all that debt.
I own several commercial buildings. And guess what? I don’t owe a dime on any of them. Never have. So, based on that—and the other principles I teach teach—I can’t tell you I think it’s okay to have debt on commercial buildings. I believe the best plan for building wealth is to become completely debt-free. If I were in your situation, Dean, I’d focus my energy on getting my home paid off first. Then, I’d take a look at the commercial properties and begin working the debt snowball on them. Start with throwing as much money as you can at the smallest debt, while making minimum payments ontheothertwo.When you get the first one paid off, roll that amount over—along with every penny you can scrape together—and attack the second largest one. Continue following these steps until you’ve paid off all your commercial property.
In your case, it might take several years to get this accomplished. I mean, no matter what these properties bring in, we’re still talking about well over a million dollars in debt. And debt equals risk. If you have a bunch of equity in one you don’t particularly like, you might consider selling it and throwing the cash at the other two. But whatever the timeline, I’d develop a serious game plan to get rid of this debt as fast as possible.
— Dave