Amanda from Tampa, Florida, called into “The Ramsey Show” with a painful confession.
She and her husband of 16 years quit their jobs and poured everything into a new restaurant. But when it all started going downhill, she hid the truth.
“We’d never run a restaurant before. We had no idea what we were doing,” Amanda admitted.
At first, things looked okay. Money was coming in, and she managed to pay rent by skipping credit card payments. But the losses quickly piled up.
“I told him everything was fine when it wasn’t,” she said. “We ended up losing our apartment, and that’s when I was forced to come clean.”
Amanda had always handled the couple’s finances. Her husband trusted her with it. But when he asked for bank details during the crisis, she refused. “I was scared that, you know, we failed.”
That decision cost her his trust. Now he wants to separate, saying he no longer believes she’s trustworthy. Amanda called the show to ask Dave Ramsey how she could fix the damage.
Ramsey didn’t sugarcoat it.
Shared Blame and a Doomed Plan
While Amanda took ownership of her mistakes, Ramsey was quick to point out that her husband wasn’t blameless.
“He’s freaking an irresponsible child,” Ramsey said. “This is a guy showing up at a restaurant every day and is so freaking irresponsible he’s not even involved in how the restaurant is being run. What’s he doing? Cooking and that’s it?”
Both Amanda and her husband quit their jobs and started a restaurant in the most high-failure business category in America, without experience, training or a plan.
“What were you guys thinking?” Ramsey asked. “This was doomed from the start.”
Amanda acknowledged that. “No, I agree,” she said.
She explained that she grew up thinking if she could just pay her bills that month, she was doing okay.
Her husband, on the other hand, expected long-term financial planning, and thought she was doing it.
Rebuilding trust may not be possible
“The way you rebuild trust is that you guys get in a good marriage counselor together,” Ramsey advised. “You work through, you both own your parts.”
He emphasized the need for shared responsibility: “Put in place systems and processes going forward where he’s involved in everything in the money. You’re involved in everything in the money. We make all the decisions together in the money and there’s no surprises.”
Amanda and her husband have since closed the restaurant, filed for bankruptcy and gone back to working jobs. Whether they stay married is still in question.
“You could have fixed the whole thing just by saying the truth,” Ramsey told her. “‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m scared. We can’t pay our bills. Help me. And that would have solved the whole thing.”
Ultimately, Ramsey stressed that rebuilding their marriage will take honesty, shared effort, and a complete reset in how they manage money together.
IMAGE CREDIT: ”Dave Ramsey” by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Image adjusted for layout.