I was exactly in Jessica’s position. In the third year of the marriage, I told my husband we needed to get our finances under control. I designed a budget and suggested we try to live like sensible people, at least until we could pay off the credit card debt that he brought to the marriage and that by then was out of control. He patted me on my pretty little head and threw it out.

In the seventh year of our marriage, I decided to leave, largely because of the chronic financial situation, which he quietly hid from me. For a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with the underlying problem, I was persuaded to stay.

By the 25th year of our marriage, we were three-quarters of a million dollars in debt, down from the high of one million. He had signed a personal guarantee for a loan his law firm had taken out against the building it owned and occupied; his partners were embezzling from the firm and the nation was in a recession. The bank called the loan.

Fortunately, one of the partners’ wives had insisted that the loan documents exempt wives’ sole and separate property from liability, and fortunately, I had come into a small inheritance from a long-lost aunt.

Enough was enough. I walked. To keep our child in the expensive private school he was attending and to send him to the college of his choice, my mother-in-law and I borrowed against every liquid penny we had to avert my then-husband’s bankruptcy.

Someone else now has him and his debt. Lucky her!

To make a long story short, the husband left payingthe bills (including the mortgage) up to the wife. She got behind VERY badly. Not just for a little questionable spending but some other family expenses that couldn’t be avoided.

Bottom line is they were literally days away from loosing their house and what little they had!

No help from the bank or the gov (didn’t qualify – thank you Obama!).

Finally someone gave them a personal loan to bridge the debt temporarily so they didn’t loose the house at least. And yes, they are paying it back on schedule with interest.

The point is the wife hid the financial arears from her husband until it was almost too late.

Money is always personal. So we cannot learn how to handle money without also learning how to handle ourselves.

This doesn’t mean that money blogs should become psychology blogs. It means that our understanding of what constitutes a money topic needs to expand.

The old way doesn’t work. That’s the bottom line. We need to try something new.

Rob