Do I pay off my husband's debt?

[~bs]

you're married. his debt is your debt now. he's the only one working so his income is also your income now.

separate finances may be ok if your situation was more similar to one another's, like making equal amounts of money with no debt and similar ideals on saving. But with your situations so extreme, you need to work together.

[scfr]

Start living on one income right now. Tweak your budget as needed to make it work.

Use the second income to: 1) First, pay off the debts. 2) Then, save for med school costs.

In 4 years, you (and I mean the plural "you") should be able to accomplish both goals: debt totally paid off, enough saved to pay for medical school without any loans. And your lifestyle will be such that you will already be accustomed to living on one income, so no further adjustments will be needed when you start medical school. I'm not saying it will be easy, but it sounds totally doable. Keep tweaking the budget as needed, cut anything that deters you from your goals. There is always room for improvement.

FWIW, I'm over 25 years married, our finances have been combined from day one of our marriage, and back in the day when my husband wanted to start his own business we lived on my income and saved his so we could make it happen (and yes, that meant making some pretty serious cutbacks). It's all been worth it.

[disneysteve]

We already have a budget that is very detailed.

Would you be willing to share that? You're asking us our opinion without providing any real context so it's rather difficult to give specific answers. We can say "yes you should consider all debt to be joint and work together to pay it" but without seeing the actual numbers, we can't know what that would actually look like. Although it wasn't what you asked, we also can't tell if your spending is reasonable or not, which has a lot to do with how you approach the debt issue.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

are you already accepted to med school or is it something that has to happen?

[Nutria]

We already have a budget that is very detailed.

But is he following it?

He's going to start giving guitar lessons on the side, but he's been in the learning phase since he didn't know how to read music. He should be starting to give them soon which will definitely help.

That's a scary thought.