Husband ran up debt

He’s ruined it all. I can’t see a future living like this but I can’t see a future on my own either

I honestly think, if you give yourself a bit of time to process, you’ll know where your future lies. It’s very easy for other people to say LTB, but changing track in reality can be very hard and of course love and loyalty complicate things even when the other person hasn’t shown you the same.

Put some controls in place for now, get this week out of the way and try to create some space for yourself. I’d bet my house on you just waking up one morning knowing exactly what you need to do for you. When that happens, wild horses won’t stop you.

The more you supervise him OP, the more he will come to resent it and just get better at hiding things.

"A man like this will quickly find someone else to leach off, but at least he wouldn't be your problem any more"

OMG, yes this is unfortunately so very, very true. These people seem to have a gift for worming their way in when they need to!

I am so sorry you are going through this. You have received a lot if good advice on this thread. I just wanted to add that he won’t change and will probably increase his hostility and lying to you over time. Because that is who he is. You have been with him so long you don’t know what peace and honesty in a relationship looks like. He is an extremely selfish person. He will never put you and the children first—or anywhere near it. Its just not who he is.

I want to see every single transaction because if I find something from years ago that I don’t like then it changes everything. I’m aware I’ve seen the last 4 months only. I need time to look at it all

But he's not going to offer it all, @deirdrechilly, especially as he's still been using cards he said were cancelled, and "cutting them up" is just pointless theatre from someone who can easily get more

And of course he now wants a joint account so he can spend yours too, so it would be utterly stupid to even consider it

If you mean it about protecting the children and yourself I'm afraid it seems there's only one way to go, and I really wouldn't worry about his survival, financial or otherwise
A man like this will quickly find someone else to leach off, but at least he wouldn't be your problem any more

You have my sympathies. I just couldn't be with a man who was sneaky about financials or lies about debt.

It seems like you are going up and up and he is a lead weight dragging you back down. Are you willing to keep wiping his bum for him forever more?

I made him give me credit report login last night and have looked at it already with intention of using this to monitor him overall - this is my best bet for anything new and shouldn’t get past this if he does anything sneaky?

The other thing you could do is institute a weekly/monthly “money meeting” where you both sit down and plan expenditure for the month and check each week that you’re on track. It can be a sit down with a glass of wine where you create a written budget (MSE has a great template) and then reconcile your accounts against the budget and adjust as needed. It would help you not feel like you’re carrying it all, open lines of communication between you and give him a standing weekly opportunity to tell you if he’s going off track. You really need joint accountability on this.

Having a weekly personal pot for individual spending will hopefully also help you ease up on being so frugal with yourself to his benefit.

Be aware that it's probably not just one credit report you will need access to. Not all the lenders report to all the agencies. You need reports from all of the credit refs for a full picture, not to miss anything.

@deirdrechilly , this one really stands out to me. This behaviour from my teenagers gives me the absolute rage and I let them know. I cannot comprehend putting up with it from a full grown adult who is meant to be my life partner. Blatant lies about unimportant shit because he can’t own up to his selfish, lazy actions? This would be an absolute relationship killer for me.

I’ve read all of your other responses. I don’t think this relationship is serving you, and in the long term I don’t think it’s serving your children either.

my sister’s ex is like this with money, and at 55 still does not have two pennies to rub together. To the point that he had to borrow money from friends to fly to his brother’s funeral last year, and when his son recently asked for money to attend a sports carnival, he said it was his car registration money. People like this won’t change, can’t be helped, and will just drag you down.

he wants to move his wages to joint account but I don’t know how I want to do it yet. I don’t want joint account being used for his spending. I like it clear so separate works for me - he has no say over it this is just what he was thinking would happen as he’s thought about telling me for a while so he says.

I’d have him pay his salary in and then give him an amount for his daily/weekly spending (with you having the same amount). Nothing gets spent from the joint account and when he runs out of money he’s done. Remove card access to the joint account and keep a close eye on him transferring money out to other accounts. It’s going to be painful for you both, but it sounds painful anyway.

For the purpose of any future split, you should continue to keep your finances as separated as possible, so good decision re no to joint account

I need to know where it’s gone

Yes you do, but since you now know he's a habitual liar I doubt finding out will be easy, and pushing for details will result in you being called dramatic again and worse - and that's before you get to the issue of what else he's not told you

I get your reluctance to split the family, but in all honesty what's the alternative given his attitude? As a very wise friend once said to me "If there's no trust there's no relationship", and with the way this is going you stand every chance of getting dragged down with him

It’s also then secured against the house - never ever turn unsecured debt into secured debt. It also clears the decks so DH can just go and run up the credit cards again.

"You can consider a remortgage with consolidation and that might offer a cheaper rate vs credit card debt"

Abysmal advice! The debt then legally becomes OP's if they were to split up. At the moment, as the debt is hopefully just in his name, she cannot be chased for it.

IF you want the relationship to continue then you take control of all the money.

This is what I did when we were in similar situation in our early marriage (I will say though me dh does have adhd so I could see why it had gone wrong)

He cuts all his cards up and goes for one basic bank account.
He transferrs all wages to you except his spending money.
He gives you full excess to his credit report and you check it weekly.
You work out a plan together to pay everything off and for the bill and you supervise, pay all the bills (in reality this is setting up dd and so once and then monitoring them)

It sounds like you’ve got a busy week without all this, there’s nothing screamingly urgent and you have deeper, long term issues in your marriage. It’s completely reasonable to take some time to enjoy being a bridesmaid, and look at it all when you have both headspace and a clearer picture of what you’re dealing with.

Cynically it also gives your husband a bit of relief, where he might feel safe enough to let his “best behaviour” drop and give you a sense of whether he really does get the gravity of the situation and is serious about making much needed changes.

Give yourself and your kids a fair change at life. He is a poor excuse for a man, overspending probably every month, keeping you in the dark about finances, he won't sit down and try to work through it together. You'd be better off without him dragging you and your dc down. I'd ask for a divorce. I'd point him in direction of debt counselling and get financially separated from him avsap.