I’d love to hear y’alls opinion on “sending money home”.
Manuel had expectations of sending $250-$300 home per month while living in the US, which is a little wild when he can’t even work yet and seemingly hasn’t discussed it with Ashley at all.
On the other hand, he has multiple kids to support, something they don’t seem to show them talking about at all. And $300 in the US is significantly easier to come by than $300 in Ecuador, where the “average living wage” is around $500USD/month.
It tends to come up every season or so, obviously there’s some outrageous people looking to take advantage of others, but on the other hand a couple hundred bucks goes a lot further in some countries than others, and is typically a lot easier to make in some countries than others.
I’m reminded of David and Annie when they met with the builder after TLC killed her mom - the builder clearly saw David as easy pickings and gave them a wildly inflated quote, but also that’s around 5-10% of what that quote would have been in any American city.
What are your opinions on this? I think some people are out there to take advantage of others, but on the other hand if I could pay for my entire spouses family to live reasonably well for a small slice of my monthly take home pay it seems like a no-brainer to do it?
During the time when the foreign spouse can not work the supporting spouse is now supporting an additional person and this can be taxing. So to come in without any discussion and expect that the supporting spouse not only financially supports the spouse and a family in another country isn’t appropriate to me.
To me the issue is that he did not bring this up in advance. This should be something discussed and budgeted for together and if it is not financially viable then they each have a choice to make.
I do not, for a single second, believe that they didn’t talk about this in advance.
I do. There’s a billion irresponsible people out there who lack communication skills and common sense.
And billions more who only hear what they want to hear.
In the last episode, she clearly says that she knew he’d want to send money back for his kids, she just hadn’t known how much. So they did talk about it before.
It’s the lack of discussion that makes Manuel skeezy - if this were agreed upon in advance it would be fine. But his attitude of “my private life is private and I’m not sharing anything with you” is wildly incompatible with his entitlement to her money for his “private life”.