I had to tell my wife to stop talking to her Parents about our student loans.

I’m not sure if anyone else has been in this position, but I didn’t grow up with money. I worked in a mine to pay for my college degrees. My wife, on the other hand, comes from a family that owns multiple rental units and sits on several abandoned properties worth over $18 million. I didn’t even know they had that level of wealth until it came up casually during a Thanksgiving dinner which was an odd topic to begin with.

What I still cannot understand is how or why they left their only daughter with $150,000 in student debt that we are now both working extremely hard to pay off. My own loans are gone I paid off roughly $60,000 within two years during the forbearance period. I also came into the marriage with my car fully paid off, and when my wife was still driving her family’s old 2001 hand‑me‑down a car with a rusted roof that leaked water inside her father wanted to charge us $5,000 just to keep it. The car was on its last legs, so instead of sinking money into it, I paid for her newer, reliable car in cash so she could have something safe and functional.

On top of that, we rent from her parents and they don’t fix anything. We have black mold in the basement that her father keeps saying he’ll “get to,” but never does. The only reason we stay is because of the family discount, but even with that, it’s exhausting to live in a place where basic issues go ignored.

Recently, my wife told her parents that while my loans are paid off, we’re still struggling to tackle hers. She tried explaining how difficult it actually is to pay down student loans today and that it’s nowhere near as simple as they think. Her father responded by giving her financial advice: he told her to stop contributing to our Roth IRA and 401(k), quoting Dave Ramsey. It was genuinely terrible advice. I explained to her that doing that would be reckless because (1) we would lose 5–10 years of compounding, and (2) her employer doesn’t offer a retirement plan or contribute anything, so we have to fund her retirement entirely on our own. We’ve been balancing paying down the highest‑interest loans while still contributing to retirement because that’s the only sustainable long‑term approach.

My wife also mentioned that we’re exhausted from renting from her parents while watching every one of their other children purchase homes homes that were given to them. Meanwhile, her parents drive a six‑figure luxury vehicle without a second thought. And somehow, despite all of this, they think we’re irresponsible with money. They assumed we had car payments, credit card debt, and that I still had student loans. My wife told them that both cars are paid off, my loans are paid off, and we’ve never carried credit card debt. They were completely speechless.

Her father then asked what the highest interest rate was. When my wife said 6%, he brushed it off as “not bad at all.” That might be true if the balance weren’t so high, but one private loan alone is $70,000 at 6%, and she has two more at $20,000 each at the same rate, with the rest around 4%. It adds up quickly.

We’ve been paying weekly about $550 a week toward her federal loans, $900 a month toward the private loans, plus whatever I bring in from my second job, usually another $400–$500, which also goes toward the federal loans. Because of this, we’ve paused saving for a home and starting a family so we can focus on paying down the debt.

What frustrates me most is that whenever my wife brings up our loans to her family, nothing they say is helpful. It always turns into outdated comparisons or dismissive comments about how things were “back in their day.” It’s exhausting, and it makes an already difficult situation even harder. After the last conversation, I told my wife that she needs to stop discussing our loans with her family altogether, because it never leads anywhere productive and only adds more stress to our lives.