Her Job: Marketing Director
His Job: Programmer
Their Home: New York
She Earns: $66,000
He Earns: $65,000
She Spends: A lot of money on clothes, eating out and gifts
He Spends: Not as much, but still a lot on clothes, eating out and gifts
The Problem: They need to sort through their debts, prioritize, and make smarter investments
Meet Samantha and Michael. He was a twenty-something bartender fresh off the plane from Ireland. She had recently started working in the art world. Who would have thought they'd last? Get married? Have more than a dozen credit cards between them…
Michael: The wedding was somewhat strange for me. It's a big cultural difference. In Ireland, people pay for it themselves. I would never rely on my parents for money.
Samantha: When I was growing up, my mom looked at money like, you splurge, you enjoy it. I never learned to put anything in a saving account.
Michael: My parents don't enjoy money.
Samantha: That's why you left Ireland. Because you don't want to save for heaven.
Take a sneak peek at how they spend their money
Samantha: We met with this financial planner lady after we got married. She scared us. I felt she was trying to pitch her products.
Michael: She had her own agenda, I think.
Samantha: Anyway, we ended up taking a relative's advice and putting almost all our wedding money in stocks.
Michael: About a week later the market went down.
Samantha: He still watches our stocks every day. I stopped watching because I was getting sick to my stomach.
Michael: Sometimes I flake out and leave the bills on the coffee table.
Samantha: I swear that when I saw my credit report, I absolutely thought someone had stolen my Social Security number and opened all these accounts in my name. I did not remember half of them.