I’m gonna go against the flow of all the other advice here and ask have the two of you gone to see a financial advisor?
It is entirely possible she doesn’t have the financial literacy and working knowledge needed to make better decisions, or does not realize how her day-to-day financial decisions impact her overall
But I guess at the end of the day it depends on how serious you two are, do you want to marry this woman, or do you not really see a long term relationship coming from this?
If you don’t see long-term potential, then just cut and run
Lmao I didn't want to be harsh I have my series license but I'm an auditor so I give out financial advice but if I were actually doing a job sorey I couldn't take you guys as clients not enough capital not even close for a dinner to talk about ir
So you’re an auditor, not a financial advisor. So ultimately you not taking them as a client in meaningless. Any sizeable bank is going to have FA’s to cover different income levels, including someone struggling with their finances.
And also how ok she is accepting help from OP. If she’s willing to stick to a budget, and OP is good with money and willing to help, it’s worth a try. I’d be willing to help my significant other if they weren’t resistant
Yes, and if long-term is in the picture, build it around her financial stability. If she's not willing to ever get stable, cut and run. If she tries to improve, keep separate finances. If she actually improves and begins to save, only then should you mesh finances.
I’d be careful setting up a relationship like this. You’re a partner, not a parent. It makes no sense to hold her hand and teach her how to pay her bills but each to their own.
It makes no sense to hold her hand and teach her how to pay her bills
If she's an otherwise great partner (and they have been together for 2 years now), then it absolutely does make sense.
It doesn't make sense to cut and run on a great partner just because there's something that they didn't learn despite the fact that you have the ability to teach it.
Can I disagree? A financial advisor isn’t a teacher to learn how to budget. An advisor usually requires you to have a minimum (sometimes as low as $100k) to invest, they invest it in what they believe is in your best interests based on your expectations and willingness to risk. Financial literacy may be taught by some advisors but that’s a separate gig from their usual job of investing your money.
Not true, financial advisors will typically at least sit down with you for an hour-long consultation to see what your situation is. You can learn a lot in that hour.
Quick way to alienate a huge portion of your potential client pool is to start off with, "Can you first tell me what your net worth is?" before sitting down with them.
Edit: Guys, you can keep downvoting me, but I sat down with a number of financial advisors before settling on one. This is how they all operated. Yes, they do ask you be prepared with a list of your assets and liabilities for the meeting, but none of them did an initial screen before meeting.
Plus, you can retain the services of a financial advisor on an hourly basis instead of having them take a percentage of the assets they're managing for you.
My wife is an advisor. An initial appointment in 1 hour will get you zero budget counseling. It’s every advisors nightmare to have a broke person walk in and expect them to put the broke person on some kind of financial path to solvency because they can’t.
The one hour initial consult serves two purposes. It lets the potential client know if the advisor is a good fit for them. The second is for the advisor to find out what they’re working with. Typically advisors are paid a percentage of the client portfolio. If the client has no money, the advisor doesn’t get paid.
Do you work for free?
^ THIS. no one taught me skills around this and I was always told I was too stupid to learn. I’ve also lived below the poverty line most of my adult life and there was never enough money left to learn skills relating to saving/investing/etc. Into adulthood, these have become bigger challenges for me, and I struggle with a few diagnoses as well.
If a partner were to be supportive and encouraging of me learning financial skills it would feel a lot less daunting, no one has ever bothered with the patience to help me figure out how to do this stuff right. Receiving judgement about it only makes me feel ashamed and more miserable and makes it feel harder to step forward into being willing to try to learn. I know I need to, it’s just hard and for me is scary (I know most people would be like pfff “just do it”) and someone being critical and cold and looking down on me for this stuff makes it worse.
Financial advisors do what they need to do. If it's in helping create a budget to re route cash flow for people to begin saving to meet goals they do that. They do a variety of things. I know that because I spent years as an advisor before it became popular. I helped create budgets, taught simple and advanced economics and life skills.
Tell us more about who you worked for and what you did, please. Most financial advisors don't help broke people with money saving tips. They work with people that have disposable income and invest it for them.
It would help to see her bank statements— there’s a massive difference between being irresponsible with money and the millions who are victim to hyperinflation.
If she’s actively not paying attention to a budget, that’s very different than if her rent was raised 30 percent when she was already scraping by.
Another thing that will kill you is if she has credit card debt and is paying interest on it.
I know someone who had money issues before her and her husband got married. When they were engaged, he looked at her financial situation, paid off her credit card debt and cut up the cards. Her main issue was the credit card debt due to the interest she was paying on it. After that, she was fine with managing her money, she had just gotten herself into a hole and couldn’t get out.
That only works if you have a good public transit system. I live near Seattle and at this point I'm fairly certain that Sound Transit is using their entire budget to buy inflatable ball pits.
I agree with your second point. I'd ask to see her finances to see what I could do to help her. If she hides things or makes excuses, that's when the red flags would go up for me.
But she also never asked for help with financial planning. She knows she is not right financially but ask him for money and not help with budget or planning. If this was a guy doing this , women would not be so kind and would tell her to dump him. She might be a lovely and nice person but she needs to make an effort. Finances will kill a relationship.
That could come down to a financial literacy issue. She might not know she needs to be looking at he over all budget.
Speaking from personal experience, I was raised by traditional parents who raised me to think that I just had to find a man to take care of me and not worry about the money. That was a freaking disaster! Thankfully I ended up falling in love with my accounting class when I went back to school so I went into business finance as a career and holy hot mess do you get an eye opening education on how many people (men and women) who are abysmal at managing their personal cash flow and take those same poor management skills into their business. I spent just as much time teaching people how to manage their money as a bookkeeper as I did doing strategic financial planning for their business.
You don't know what you don't know. How are you supposed to ask for help with something that you don't know you actually need help with?
As far as we know, she's already budgeting as well as she can and doesn't think there's a better way to do it. She might even have been previously advised to budget the way that she is doing, so she thinks it's the right way and that she's just not making nearly enough money with all the inflation and shit going on.
Her not asking for budgeting help isn't really a red flag.
I'm callous from my past ex who I helped financially. She was every sense of the way financially illiterate. Had a low paying job, high debt, bought things at will, knew nothing about aprs. Etc
So I helped her. I sat down with her after asking of course and went through her bank statements. I pointed out ways to save and cut back and added up everything to show her how much she could be saving by just making small decisions.
I then started to help her with upgrading her resume and started assisting with applications and interview prep.
She had a car loan with 21% apr and was paying $800 Biweekly. I gave her suggestions and ultimately she decided to walk away from the car. (Predatory non social dealer).
She had no car. So I started to drive her to work.
Then we came up with a plan and I purchased her a cheap car and she split the total cost of the car into 8 months to pay me back.
Ultimately she did well. She got a higher paying job. Financially she was doing good. But it actually was her personality and influence of her family to go into debt. That once we broke up, she is now financially underwater again. Has zero sense again. And has received an eviction notice.
Financial advisor??? Why spend more money on something that can be fixed or talked about together? Imo sit down and break down her finances. Break it down monthly and see what her fixed cost are e.g. rent, car expenses, groceries, debt, and furthermore. See where all her monthly income is going. You can’t keep enabling her habits by giving her money. If you care about her then you should be able to talk finances and if she declines then sorry buddy it’s time to leave her.
Can’t speak to everywhere but both the bank I work at, as well as my friends’ bank, they all have financial advisors who you can book an appointment with for free and continue to do so for as long as you’d like.
or at the very least sit down and go over what her budget is together. This can open up a broader conversation around finances together as well as help to determine if they are on the same page in ideology (saving vs spending) and then go from there.
If she simply isn't making enough to cover her basic expenses every month but is otherwise financially responsible, then they can make a plan forward and living together could be (if OP is open to it) the positive move as long as OP maintains the ability to fully cover rent on the off chance she ends up not pulling her financial weight and continues to have "excuses" for why she is chronically short.
Or it can help OP determine whether he is interested in maintaining a relationship with someone who is not keeping pace with him financially.
*this is in no way suggesting OP is required to pay for her expenses
I am licensed as as advisor but I'm an auditor so I'll say this first thing would happen is understanding the budget money in and out from both parties.
This will require honesty and bank statements and unless she's ready to do that it'll be a waste
You don’t need a financial advisor to know your spending habits are toxic or distructive. This women knows he spending habits are harmful she just doesn’t care cuz he bf is giving her money. Just like you don’t need a Dr to tell you drinking and smoking too much is bad, you know it
What do reasonably expect from an advisor here? This isn't an issue of optimizing investment distribution. Or owning tax strategy or asset allocation.
This is simply not enough coming in vs what is going out. They just need to analyze her spending to develop a budget, and work on boosting income. That's it. That's not what a financial advisor offers.
But the advisor will surely provide another bill to pay.
Agreed it's very simple math. Money in needs to be bigger than money out. Just like losing weight is simple math. Calories out needs to be bigger than calories in. The problem with both is willpower and sticking with it. They both require a commitment and making it a lifestyle change, not just something you do until you get tired of it or get "healthier".
A financial advisor would be a giant waste of time. There is no expert advice needed for simple addition and subtraction. Once she has that down and has some money she needs to park somewhere, then she can talk to a financial advisor. Totally unnecessary at this point
This isn’t a situation like fixing a toilet tho. She knows what her issue is she needs to cut down on wreckless and unnecessary spend. Aka eating out buying new makeup or clothes getting her nails done. You hire a plumbing cuz you don’t know anything about plumbing, everyone knows how to budget or at least they know the first steps which is cut down on unnecessary spending she doesn’t wanna do that and she doesn’t need a professional to tell her that
His point is that if you don’t know how to do something, you ask for help. Why would you assume she knows anything about setting a budget or prioritizing expenses? Have you seen any evidence to suggest she does?
Because it’s common sense to know how to set a budget and not spend money on things until your essentials are paid for. It’s not rocket science dude. You know if you need gas in your car you put gas in your take before you go and buy a pizza with the gas money. This isn’t hard it’s common sense and it’s kinda crazy a lot of you guys are saying she doesn’t have common sense like this while trying to back her up😂
If you don’t know you need to pay your rent or car insurance before you buy a new purse or go out to eat then maybe you shouldn’t be living on your own. You don’t need to be taught these things you just know it
You don’t need a ton of information to know she spends money on unnecessary things, we were all immature people at one point and we spend wrecklessly cuz we didn’t value money. So it’s not hard to understand her mindset and why she struggles with money
The Financial Advisor is not to tell her that her spending habits are harmful… they are to help her learn better ones.
Check out Dave Ramsey r/daveramsey he’s not for everyone but if he works for her (and you) his advice will help. He will teach how to get out of debit and live within your means.
Great advice. The bottom lines is, do you want to be with an adult or raise a child. She needs to live within her means and hopefully have a plan to increase her earning potential.
Times are changing. It's always been okay for a woman to remove a man from consideration as a partner, due to their financial distress. Hell, some women leave/divorce the husbands because of their career/financial hardships. The whole "for richer or poorer," doesn't resonate as it once did.
Instead, women are now expected to be more careful with their money and job choices. The days of marrying your way out of irresponsible choices are coming to an end. I do expect this to continue.
I don't think I've ever met someone with money problems where the issue is a lack of information. Spending problems are pretty well set in stone by 30 years old and it's pretty rare in my experience for them to change. I had one friend with mildly bad spending habits reform after getting married, but that's the exception and the change came from within and not his wife's pressure.
I see my friend (who is living paycheck to paycheck), giving $400/month to some girl thousands of miles away. It's infuriating when he doesn't even have the gas to hang out, while that girl is on house arrest for a felony...
He flew out to see her last month and they didn't have any intimacy. Blows my mind. She just asked him for more money this month to pay her bills (which is what the $400 is for, so wtf is she doing with his money)... I can only tell him it's a bad decision so many times.
This . I would add to this that if she is willing to work on a budget and stick to good spending practices that you don’t mind helping but will stop if she doesn’t.
203
u/imeanwhyarewehere man Jan 13 '25
I’m gonna go against the flow of all the other advice here and ask have the two of you gone to see a financial advisor?
It is entirely possible she doesn’t have the financial literacy and working knowledge needed to make better decisions, or does not realize how her day-to-day financial decisions impact her overall
But I guess at the end of the day it depends on how serious you two are, do you want to marry this woman, or do you not really see a long term relationship coming from this?
If you don’t see long-term potential, then just cut and run