Jan 28, 2025
Kyle and his wife have three small children, with a fourth on the way. A few months back, as he explained to Dave Ramsey on his radio show, he thought he saw an opportunity to get rich and famous by building a business selling Pokémon cards online.
“I messed up big,” he admitted on the call.
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The Salt Lake City man sank $26,000 into buying the trading cards, along with signing up for expensive giveaways and buying followers for his social media platforms. His wife has found out and while she’s furious and has threatened to file for divorce, she seems open to doing therapy to see if there’s a path forward.
Kyle admits he acted out of “selfish greed” and a “lust for fame that wasn’t real” but he’s desperate to win her back, as he explained to Ramsey and co-host Jade Warshaw.
Here’s why Ramsey happened to be the right person to advise Kyle on how to rebuild trust after a betrayal like this.
Trust has been broken
Kyle says he racked up a shocking $26,000 in credit card debt in just four months. He now realizes his only option is to try to recoup $5,000 by selling the cards to a local dealer. That leaves him underwater on the thousands of dollars he spent on giveaways and buying followers for his business.
His wife has threatened divorce, but has agreed to go see a counselor with Kyle. The story hit close to home for Ramsey, who shared that it reminded him of his own financial missteps early in his relationship with his wife. While Ramsey never lied, he’s long been open that it was his own hubris that led him to filing for bankruptcy in the 1980s.
“You went off chasing a get-rich quick thing and that’s what I did too and that's how I went broke,” he told Kyle. “It didn’t cost me my marriage [but] it did cost me bankruptcy cause I was an idiot, okay?”
Nevertheless, Ramsey says he regained his wife’s trust over several decades and believes Kyle might have a chance of saving his marriage too.
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Rebuilding over time
While the $26,000 in credit card debt is upsetting on its own, Kyle knows what he did is worse than digging his family into an expensive hole. In their conversations since she learned the truth, Kyle’s wife mentioned the term “financial infidelity” to him.
That led him down an internet search that landed him on Ramsey’s website.
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Ramsey expressed relief that Kyle understands the seriousness of what he’s done.
“You busted the trust almost as if you slept with someone. It’s the same part of the brain that you damaged,” he told him. “That’s what this whole call is about: broken trust.”
A significant 40% of U.S. adults in committed relationships have kept a financial secret from their partner, while 45% of them believe it’s as bad as physically cheating, according to a recent survey. Meanwhile, 54% of people believe a partner’s debt is a serious reason to consider divorce, according to a 2023 National Debt Relief survey.
To salvage his relationship, Ramsey says he spends several decades establishing a pattern of behavior to prove to his wife that he could be trusted again. He recommends the same for Kyle. Meanwhile, co-host Warshaw suggests sharing bank account and phone passwords to create full transparency and win back his wife’s trust.
But missing from much of the discussion of what Kyle’s wife — who was 15 weeks pregnant with their fourth child when he called into the show — needs from her end. Anything Kyle does to repair and rebuild will ideally be done in consultation with his wife. If lying was the problem, as Ramsey tells him, he needs to embrace radical honesty.
And, as they would if they were faced with a difficult financial question, Kyle and his wife might want to call in the help of a professional. While Kyle unilaterally made a number of decisions for his family — and chose to keep her in the dark on them — he can show his wife that’s behind him now by working in partnership to build a more solid foundation for their family.
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Vishesh Raisinghani is a financial journalist covering personal finance, investing and the global economy. He's also the founder of Sharpe Ascension Inc., a content marketing agency focused on investment firms. His work has appeared in Moneywise, Yahoo Finance!, Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha, Mergers & Acquisitions Magazine and Piggybank.
