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?
It comes down to budgeting.
You have to go through your income and expenses with your partner beforehand and realistically determine how much you can afford to send. It might not be as much when you’re on one income than when you have two incomes.
I can almost guarantee that Ashley would’ve been fine with sending money had Manuel been upfront about it from the beginning. She would’ve had time to save and budget accordingly before he arrived to the US… however, she isn’t innocent here either. Did she ask him about sending money before he came to the US? How many of these big and important financial discussions did they have before his K1 was accepted?