A New York husband built wealth behind his wife's back and expected praise — but Dave Ramsey says his 'good intent' cost her something important

At one point, I even increased her weekly contribution to 75%,” John said.

Now, he’s close to paying off their mortgage.

“We’ve gone from 30 years of chains almost to the finish line,” he said, wanting to know whether to tell her now or to wait. “Should I tell her now, or should I just wait and do things the way I’ve been doing them, and eventually give to my family the best Christmas they could possibly imagine? By just saying, ‘Guys, we’re rich. We made it.’”

Good intentions, bad plan

Warshaw told John that she thought his heart was in the right place, but asked: “Why didn’t you want your wife to be a part of it all along?”

John said that it was like “a race that [he was] running” with himself. While he felt like he did want to share the excitement with her “because this is [their] life, [their] family,” he said at the same time: “I think that maybe she doesn’t need to carry the weight of the race that I decide to run.”

He added that his wife is happy, and that “she sacrifices without knowing” because “she doesn’t see the money [...] in [their] account.”

Ramsey interjected somberly to bring up “the widow that [he had] dealt with when their husband did this.” The husband thought they were giving their wife a gift, but instead “left her ill-equipped to handle the real world when he died,” Ramsey explained.

Ramsey said that he agreed with Warshaw that John had “good intent,” but he said that John had also “robbed” his wife of her part in the relationship.

“It’s like you’re giving your daughter a gift, instead of having a full-grown woman walking beside you and enjoying carrying the weight and being your partner, and those kinds of things,” he said. “That’s been taken from her.”

Ramsey also brought up his own personal experience of how not communicating with your partner about money, and leaving one person to make all the financial decisions, backfired in his own marriage.

He said that before he and his wife “went broke,” his wife “used to say things like, ‘Whatever you want to do, honey.’” And although “she didn’t want to fool with it,” he said he “drove the dadgum car off a cliff.”

Even though John had done the opposite, and he and his wife were now in a great situation, Ramsey said it still ends up leaving the other partner “without the emotional muscle to carry on if something happens.”

The patterns we fall into

Warshaw reiterated that she thought John had the best of intentions, and speculated that maybe this couple had simply fallen into a familiar pattern, where one person who is more inclined to lead takes the reins, and the other doesn’t protest.