Sometimes the money talk happens before the wedding. Sometimes it happens after the baby announcement. And sometimes, as one caller to The Ramsey Show discovered, it reveals that the wedding might never happen at all.
When Pregnancy Changes Everything
Allison called into the show Tuesday with a situation that had hosts Jade Warshaw and Dr. John Delony raising immediate red flags. Her fiancé comes from serious wealth—he personally has $4 million and his family runs a business worth $15 million to $20 million. They decided to start a family together, and she got pregnant quickly. That's when everything shifted.
"We decided to try for a child and instantly succeeded," Allison explained. "But once that happened, his tone changed… even getting married legally at all."
Before the pregnancy, marriage seemed like a done deal. After? Not so much. He suddenly wasn't interested in combining finances or, apparently, in making their relationship legally binding.
Giving Up Everything For Nothing In Return
The financial imbalance here is striking. Allison had been running her own successful business. She closed it down and moved to help with his family's company, where she now works informally—meaning no paycheck, no official role, nothing on paper. Her fiancé handed her a credit card and suggested she should be providing him with "security" instead.
Delony wasn't having it. "This guy just done a 180 on you?" he asked. He put it bluntly: "Behavior is a language. This man has said, I do not want you a part of my life."
Warshaw zeroed in on another telling detail—the complete refusal to discuss a prenuptial agreement. For someone with that much money, it's odd. "A guy like this, he would be planning to protect his assets," she pointed out. "But the fact that he didn't even say… he wasn't even intending to get married at any point."
Allison admitted she might be staying partly out of embarrassment and sunk costs. "Probably more than I want to acknowledge," she said.
How To Actually Prepare For Marriage
The situation stands in sharp contrast to advice financial expert Dave Ramsey gave last month about how couples should approach marriage and money. He emphasized that both partners need to focus on their own financial stability first and take pre-marital counseling seriously to avoid exactly these kinds of conflicts down the road.
Ramsey has cited examples of newlyweds facing immediate money tension, driving home his point that "broke people can't help broke people." His recommended steps include paying off debt, building an emergency fund, and saving for retirement before trying to help others—or, presumably, before merging your life with someone who won't even discuss the financial terms.
He's also stressed that long-term couples should treat marriage preparation like training for a marathon, working through major areas including money, children, religion, and in-laws to ensure everyone's honest, aligned, and operating with healthy boundaries. That kind of transparency seems notably absent from Allison's situation, where the conversation shut down the moment the pregnancy test came back positive.