A 26-year-old law student called into “The Ramsey Show” with what started as a financial question and quickly became a conversation about honesty, trust and marriage readiness.
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Heir To $1 Million, But She Has No Idea
The caller, Nathaniel, explained that he inherited about $1 million a few years ago. The money is held in a trust account that he controls, and it’s managed by a financial adviser using a low-risk, principal-protection strategy.
“I treat it like a sacred gift from God,” he said. “I feel like I have a responsibility to be a really excellent steward of it.”
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He said he’s getting married soon. His fiancée, a pianist, has no assets or liabilities and plans to be a stay-at-home mom. They’ve been together nearly four years. But she doesn't know about the inheritance—and neither do her parents, who are at the center of Nathaniel's dilemma.
Her parents, retired and living in China, mortgaged their fully paid-off apartment to invest in a risky venture that failed. They are now roughly $25,000 in debt. Nathaniel said they haven't asked him for help, but he's been wondering if it would be wrong not to help them.
“Would I be a jerk not to?” he asked. “Part of me doesn't really feel like using my money, soon to be our money, to help people who, in retirement, mortgaged their only safe asset for leverage in a single risky investment.”
Ramsey: You Can't Marry Someone You’re Hiding This From
Dave Ramsey and co-host Jade Warshaw were transparent: the financial question comes second.
“You don’t go another day promising to marry somebody and you’re keeping secrets from them,” Ramsey said. “Unhealthy, dude.”
He urged Nathaniel to have a serious, honest conversation with his fiancée immediately.
“If you can’t trust them, you don’t need to be able to marry them,” Ramsey said. “If you have to deceive someone because you’re worried about their authenticity, we don’t marry them.”
Warshaw added that the issue reflects more on Nathaniel than his future in-laws.
“Honestly, that’s more on his authenticity than hers,” she said. “Nathaniel, you’re more of the problem here than they are.”
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Helping Or Enabling?
Ramsey acknowledged that $25,000 is a small amount relative to Nathaniel’s wealth and paying it off would have “absolutely no impact on your life.” But he warned against enabling repeated financial mistakes.
“You don’t want to do that if they’re going to turn around and do the same kind of stupid stuff again,” he said. “I want to get under the hood and find out what’s broken. Is this like a pattern? Have we learned our lesson?”
In the end, Ramsey said the in-laws’ debt is a secondary issue that the couple should discuss after Nathaniel fully discloses his financial situation.
“Nine out of 10, Nathaniel needs to come clean. One out of 10, pay off the 25K or don’t,” Ramsey said.
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