Despite making $156,000 a year, a Chicago family struggles to afford groceries, a problem the wife attributes to her husband’s $700-a-month tobacco and marijuana addiction.
“My husband is an addict,” Meghan said on an episode of “The Ramsay Show” last year. A stay-at-home mom pregnant with her third child, seeks advice from personal finance experts Dave Ramsey and Jed Warshaw. Meghan said her husband usually spent about $6,000 a year on the habit, but it had gotten worse in the past few months due to the deaths of his father and grandfather.
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Because of her husband’s “erratic behavior,” Meghan told the host that she was hesitant to pay off a $20,000 car loan even though they had the money. She worried that the $600 in free monthly payments would get lost in his habit.
Ramsay immediately questions this framework. “If I say my wife is an addict, that means our marriage is either going to end or she’s going to get help next week,” he said. “But you use it like it’s part of the budget. If you’re going to call him a junkie, you have to act like it.”
He added that if all she was concerned about was that her husband occasionally used drugs and spent $500 to $700 a month, that was a completely different situation than describing him as an addict.
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When they asked about his income structure, Meghan revealed that she currently has no income. Her husband earns the entire family income. They make about $7,800 a month after taxes, but Meghan said food insecurity remains a problem.
With expenses like a $3,400 mortgage, a $600 car payment, and a 401(k) taken out of his paycheck, the couple may have been in a cash crunch due to poor planning, not just his bad habits.
“Your take-home pay is $8,000 a month and you have a $3,000 housing payment. You’re not going without food because he spent $750,” Ramsey said. “If he loses his job, you’ll have no food because he’s always drunk.”
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The host stressed that the bigger issue is that Meghan either needs to seriously confront her husband’s addiction or reconsider whether it really is an addiction. “You’re going to have to recategorize this in your mind or you’re going to have to take some more drastic action than you’ve been willing to take so far,” Ramsay told her.