How do I keep supporting a spouse with bad spending habits?

Mike MilliganFounder and CEO, 1.oak Financial · Founder and CEO, 1.oak Financial

Essential crisis planning | Protecting Your Legacy

14 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment of the "Essential crisis planning | Protecting Your Legacy" video, host Mike Milligan addresses a viewer’s question about how to support a spouse who has problematic spending habits, hidden debt, or gambling losses, especially during retirement. Milligan emphasizes that financial tension in marriage persists beyond the working years and cites a real client scenario to illustrate the issue. He advises couples to bring all financial records to a trusted advisor, allowing the advisor to uncover hidden problems through the numbers without the spouse having to disclose them directly. By revealing the financial reality, the couple can then collaboratively build a shared financial vision, focusing on what they can achieve together rather than trying to control every aspect. The tone is conversational and empathetic, aiming to empower couples to confront money conflicts constructively.

Questions this video answers

Bring all financial records to a trusted advisor who can spot hidden debt or gambling losses through the numbers, then use that insight to have a constructive conversation and build a shared financial vision focused on what you can achieve together.

Chapters

How do I keep supporting a spouse with bad spending habits? Boy, that's a, that's another tough one. Wow. Holy cow. We're tackling some questions here today.
I know. My gosh. Money tension in marriage doesn't stop at retirement. If one spouse may want to save and the other wants to spend, or worse, one is hiding debt or gambling losses. That's real, by the way. We don't, we don't make all this stuff up. We actually had this in one of our client scenarios. You know, navigating financial conflict between couples in retirement. I don't want to say it's our specialty, but man, we're pretty good at it. We're pretty good at answering the tough questions and showing people the outcome if bad choices still happen. And so one of the things I have to do is if you're in that situation, you don't feel like you could speak up, come into the office. Let me analyze it. I'll find it. You don't have to tell me to it, or you don't have to tell me what's going on. I could see it in the numbers, and then we could address that. And just again, build a vision because you can do anything, but you can't do everything.