I have been dating this guy for 11 months now and he is just great… caring, loving, funny, the whole bit (28 y.o.). However, he has serious problems with money. I kind of “stumbled” across some things in his apt (landlord eviction notices, bounced checks, IRS invoices demanding to be paid, threats from banks etc.). They were fairly recent too. He admits he is irresponsible with money (I am extremely responsible) and I’m afraid I’ll end up taking care of him like a young boy the rest of my life.
What to do? He treats me great and we have fun together, he has borrowed money from me before, but paid me back for the most part… I’m just scared. He cannot even get an ATM card or credit card.
Yikes. I had a boyfriend like that. It started out one night when I was filling my car up with gas. I gave him a $20 bill to pay the $15 gas bill - he kept the change. I thought maybe it was an oversight - and I was in love :rolleyes: so I didn’t say anything.
It only got worse. He not only borrowed money from me and never paid it back, but his roomates all loaned him money (never paid back), and he even went to my parents (I did not know about this until after the fact) and they loaned him money for a car. He never, ever paid anyone back. It ended up with him skipping town without telling anyone. I had given him the heave-ho from my life by then, and just said lesson learned about the money I lost.
Hi,
Well I have so many female friends who do nothing but complain about how they can’t find a guy with these qualities of ‘caring, loving, funny’…my advice is to try talk to him about it, maybe suggest a course in personal financial management? I would also suggest that you don’t lend him any money, its no good unless he learns to stand on his own two feet.
Although this may strain your relationship, if he’s everything you’ve said you’ll get through it and you’ll both be better off
It is a dangerous situation here…
You will for sure end up taking care of the financials… It is up to you to see if you want to. But it can be tough…
Does he seem serious about getting everything back in order?
If you enjoy his company, by all means continue to do so. However, if you want to marry the guy, make sure he understands that he has to change his ways, and the sooner, the better. He has to know that you are NOT going to spend the rest of your life with a guy that blows all his dough.
In the meantime, don’t lend him money if he starts not paying you back, and don’t ever lend him a lot of money.
My wife, who strangely enough is an accountant by trade, wasn’t very good with money during her first marriage. She and her ex spent every sent they had, leased cars and boats, and always had large balances on their credit cards. They even had a second mortgage on their house.
I, OTOH, am very good with money, own everything except my house and never have a balance on my credit cards. I make a lot more than here so when we got married I continued to manage the money and we’ve never had a problem.
Being bad at managing money is okay as long as the other person is very responsible AND has control of the check book!
If you’re still in the early stages of your relationship and enjoy spending time with him, then I think it’s OK to keep seeing him. However, keep money completely separate from your relationship – don’t loan him a dime, don’t move in with him, don’t make his problems your problems. If he gets evicted, do not let him stay with you.
If you’re starting to get to the point where you want to think about long-term commitment/marriage, then I’d probably break up with him. Destructive financial habits are a deal-breaker to me, just like a destructive drug habit would be. Until he is willing to fix his own problems, entering into a long-term relationship with him is just going to end with you supporting him and enabling his bad behavior.
He hadn’t paid federal income taxes. He hadn’t renewed his car registration. He hadn’t gotten around to paying bills.
He had a crapload of money in his bank account. Go figure.
When this came to light before they were married, she insisted that he get caught up and honest with all his bills or else she would not marry him.
That didn’t happen.
It came to a head when his car got impounded for not being registered. She had to shuttle him to get it, then shuttle him to the DMV and the car insurance agent to get it all squared away. As for the taxes, she filed MFSeparately until it all got resolved.
She now takes the more active role in paying bills in the relationship.
So I’d say no reason to break up now, but if you’re serious about this person, and it means enough to you, make sure you talk about it. If it means he takes classes to learn how to manage money, so be it. If it means when you merge you take over the reins, so be it. But talk about it, and make sure he knows where you’re coming from. And be firm. Don’t let your love for him get you into a situation where your finances become harmed.
It was too much stress for me to deal with - not only the money he owed me, but the group of people we hung around with were either owed money from him too, or knew about it. He wouldn’t or couldn’t, change. He jumped from job to job, and whenever he got a paycheck, he’d blow it on something trivial the next day.
We were out one night and drove back to his place. There was a car waiting in front of his house. It was a repo man, and he took my boyfriend’s car right then and there.
The worst blow though, was when he just left town. We weren’t dating at the time, but still had the same circle of friends. He just … left. Can you deal with something like that?
Just a point : being irresponsible with money (like in the OP description) is one thing. Being the kind of person who borrows money from everybody and then vanish is a totally different kind of thing and people. Some posters seem to think it’s the same.
I don’t think anybody else than you could assess the situation, but since you say you’re yourself very responsible with money, it seems that it’s an important issue for you hence definitely could make you miserable.
One thing is: don’t expect he will change. Of course, people sometimes change their habbits/way of life over time, but it’s just unwise to bet on this. So, if you intend to enter in some sort of long term commitment, just expect to end up paying his bills, just because you’re so irritated to receive warnings from the bank, eviction notice, etc…and just can’t bear such situations, or end up managing his money for him (which could work very well, some people just like being rid of money issues they’re unable to handle, and there are couples living that way…But of course he could not be happy with this…and since you stated you don’t want to “take care of him”, you could not like this option, either).
Also, even if you live separatly and refuse to be involved in any way with his money issues, expect that it will have still consequences (for instance, you plan vacations, and just the day before, he tells you he can’t go because he just had to pay back whatever debt he had to avoid eviction or some other displeasant consequence).
But once again, don’t expect him to change all by himself.
I posted my personal experience because being irresponsible with money was how my former BF started. When I first met him, he had a nice car, a good job, a nice condo…it escalated and went downhill after his car got repo’d, he lost his good job, and had to move because he didn’t pay rent. That was when he started borrowing money and not paying people back. Maybe two different kinds of people, but it had to start somewhere - and simply being irresponsible with money should have been a warning sign for me. What sets my ears a pricking is this quote from the OP:
for the most part… tells me he’s going to continue to do this, if he can get away with it. I don’t want anyone to go through what I did. It only got worse, and it was heartbreaking. They guy was perfectly normal otherwise - fun to be with, admired by people who didn’t know his dishonest ways, funny, intelligent…
I don’t know how serious you are about this guy, but I’ve heard that more marriages/relationships end because of money than sex. I’ll even cite my source–I was listening to Dr. Joy Brown in the car on Sunday. I would be very careful about being in a relationship with someone with those kinds of difficulties.
And also a last thing : if you are extremely responsible with money, this could irritate him on the long run. I know that personnally I usually don’t get well along with people who describe themselves as “extremely responsible” (or something similar) money-wise. I personnally don’t care much for money and i’ve usually a hard time with people who care too much for my taste.
More generally, not in response to your OP, but to some comments in the thread : my take is that when you loan money to friends, you shouldn’t expect to ever get your money back. Of course, in most cases, you will, and that’s fine, but sometimes you won’t, or at least not for a loooong time. So when I loan money to friends, I make the assumption I’ll never see the money again. I essentially write the money off. This avoid some displeasant and ugly issues. If I can’t afford to forget about this money, I just don’t loan it. Same if the person isn’t a close enough friend for me to accept to give him money.
I just got back a couple of months ago some money I lend to a friend three years ago or so, and that she was supposed to give back to me one month later. If I had actually expected this money, or had actually needed it one month later, or had been waiting for said money during three years, it would have been very displeasant for both of us. When I lend her this money, I knew i wouldn’t need it any time soon, and that I could afford to kiss it bye-bye. Otherwise, I would just have told her : “sorry, I can’t”.
Eleven months is a long time. Eleven months begins to look like permanent relationship area. And twenty eight isn’t eighteen and “I haven’t had a chance to learn.” And IRS notices aren’t late payments on credit cards. IRS notices become “go to jail” kind of things.
You could get married and take on the responsiblity for the bills. And end up like my brother in law wondering how he is going to pay $40,000 in credit card bills. You need to do more than take responsibility for the bills, you need to make sure he doesn’t create them - which is a relationship I don’t think adults should have.
The relationship become permanent and his money problems will become your money problems.
If he isn’t willing/trying to dig out of this & change his ways, RUN. I hate to sound coldhearted but, as Maya Angelou says: “When people show you who they are, believe them.”
He is showing you who he is - believe him. Are you willing to accept this kind of financial burden in your life?