DH is in debt

[gameofthrones22]

Sorry for the slightly long ramble but here goes... any advice really appreciated.

I've been married to DH for nearly 2 years and 5 months in to our marriage I found out he had credit card debts amounting to nearly 15K. I was shocked, upset, betrayed but felt like it was something we could get through. Now I've come to the thinking that it's not something I can get through. I feel like its a huge amount and having never had money worries the amount terrifies me. All my spare money goes on house stuff that needs doing as DH literally doesn't haven't a penny to his name after his monthly repayments come out.

DH earns 21K so I've calculated by making minimum payments it will take approx 4 years maybe more to pay this off. I earn 29K and will try to do my best to help DH but I've become resentful at having to miss out on stuff or decline invites or not afford a new car or holiday etc as I am saving to help DH out.

Does anyone have any advice on what to do? I'm really really torn. Should this be something we should be able to get through together? Just makes me sad kids etc will be delayed as we will have no disposable income any time soon.

First thing Martin Lewis says is debt before savings! If you (plural) have debt you can't afford to save!

What kind of car/s do you have? You've said NOTHING about the possibility of downgrading house/car/lifestyle which strongly suggests you're unwilling to.

You mentioned having children - now THAT really teaches you to recognise the difference between 'want' and 'need' unless you're quite wealthy.

Marriage is about dealing with the ups and downs together, not about apportioning blame when life isn't great.

But this is a very clear cut blame situation.

OK what I say won't be hugely popular, but £13k isn't that bad. On MN perhaps not, but a LOT of households have credit card debt from holidays and similar and I know plenty with £10k plus. We have 7.5k - largely wedding etc. We do have savings to clear it with a little extra, but we didn't before we sold the house and took a bit of equity out. I completely relate to the panicky feeling of being in debt and having X time til you're clear.

I think you need to dig deep as to why he hid it. Does he not think you deserve the truth, or are there issues around self esteem and managing money and him not wanting to admit he was struggling? Or is he honestly shite with money, does he need to hand over the reins and agree/accept that. DH leaves our finances to me. I'm an accountant aka number geek so shuffle things around and usually present him with our options and we choose what to go for between us but he would never gather the info. He's been paying interest bearing loans when he's had savings to clear them before!

Have you thought about where you can really cut your cloth? A money saving forum used to be full of statements of account where people broke down all their spending and others could often suggest areas to make cuts that they hadn't thought of. Sometimes that can help free up money for some luxuries. I didn't realise just how much Top up shops and Sainsbury's were costing us. I've gone back to Tesco and my weekly shop is more like £45 instead of £65 now. £20 is nearly a gel manicure where I am!!

Happy to PM if you want to do anything off thread.

I drive a very old car. DH has new car but was the better option as got free insurance for a year and wouldn't have been able to pay his actual insurance if that makes sense. On a new car now his insurance is much much lower.

I agree on the debt before savings but what if something was to happen in the house, or we needed money for something? I'd rather have some money which I can put away for every month as a back up in case anything happened to house/car anything else.

We live a somewhat frugal lifestyle. We don't go out at all at the moment, choosing to save that money we would spend going out. Massive change to how we used to be.

Thank you @Florence16, it's that panicky feeling I can't seem to get rid of.

Didd he own the house before ye met? Im understanding he did. So he put full deposit down and managed to get sorted buying a house on his own. If that is true l would cut him some slack as you are benefiting from house now. You also benefited from the wedding so maybe you were expecting too much from him . Hopefully he can find a better paying job but its still not an impossible burden.

Do you NEED two cars? That would be the first saving for me, if possible. As others have said, I would absolutely be expecting him to get a second job to pay it off sooner. It is not your responsibility to manage him and if it's causing a lot of problems in your marriage then he should be doing whatever he can to sort it.

If the debt is 0% you may as well save. If there comes a point the debt is not interest free, then you can use the savings to wipe it. Whilst interest free it makes no odds though.

Have you got hard line numbers for the house? Mortgage versus value? In terms of assets you may be rich and cash poor, a lot of people in the UK are like that but it gives you more options.

I would be inclined not to release equity to clear it like someone suggested though, better to pay it off chunk by chunk than swipe it away fast like it never happened to gain the learning of what debt costs in more than just monetary terms.

Did he buy the house in his own name before you were married ? And now he alone pays the mortgage and council tax .

Does that mean that you have no legal right to the house ?

Martin says to clear debts before saving, only if interest is racking up. And as it's not, you can save too.

I'd let him carry on paying them off, and you could save. That way you'll have cash if you need it for any treats, or unforeseen expenses.

You've got a good income between you and no dependants so yes, extra small job for him and yes save a small cushion (2k?), then throw everything at the debt.

If you really do see a future together and are certain there won't be a repeat debt in that future, I'd really try to pull together now and accept it was just a poor decision. It was bad but noone died. Choose to both learn from it. Forgive. Accept. Move forward. Let go of the upset and bitterness.

And I agree you are benefitting from the house now despite not putting the deposit down

£50k joint income, £270 per month on the debt at the moment... On those base numbers I'd have expected there should be money left to not have to live crazily frugally but depends on how high mortgage is. When does your mortgage come up for renewal? Can you add the credit card debt on? I'd even look into whether it's worth paying early repayment charge and renewing early to do this, if the £15k is swallowed up in the mortgage it may stop irking you so much and stop you seeing it as the Bain of all your problems.

Make sure you've got the absolute best deal on the full stuff (electicity, water, insurances), never just auto renew but shop around.

Relationship wise, I think you should try and get past it. £15k is crap but not insurmountable, and you accept he didn't fritter it away and is being frugal to get it down, if he was still spending recklessly maybe your anger would be justified but I reallly wouldn't blow your relationship for this.

Consider contacting a debt management company. There are ones like Payplan which don't charge. They help with budgeting and ensuring you have enough to live on, including holidays, whilst dealing directly with your creditors and ensuring payments are distributed to them. Bad news is you have to default on payments so it goes on your credit file. He won't be getting credit again for 6 years or more, but that's not a bad thing where someone who's shit with money is concerned right?!

Personally I am of the group that doesn’t think it’s too bad. The not telling you is the worst part but it’s quite normal to have quite a lot of debt nowadays. If he’s paying it off and moving it about to ensure he stays on 0% cards then I really don’t see it as a big deal.

I am really shocked that some have suggested going to debt help agencies. He earns a decent salary and is able to repay the debt. I think those things should be an absolute last resort for people who are really struggling!

We are a very low income family and we have a severely disabled child. We had about a year where dh was very depressed and unable to work and we did get ourselves into quite a lot of debt. We also didn’t have any savings (as many people don’t on lower incomes as there’s not much to save!) and we had a problem with our roof that we couldn’t claim on insurance so we ended up adding £5k to a card for that. Lots of little things built up and we are still paying off the debt now (now that dh is better and on medication and has been back in work for 3 years). But it doesn’t bother us at all...! I guess the difference is we both work together about it and we allocate an amount to pay it off each month and treat it like any other bill.

I think you need to look at the bigger picture than this debt. What is his general attitude to money? That will be the real reveal. If you have children is he likely to go and spend £200 etc you don’t have on a hobby while you and the kids struggle? Those are the kind of things you need to think about. Having some debt he’s realised is bad and is paying it back really wouldn’t bother me.

I’m genuinely surprised how lightly the OP got off for this! If it had been a husband posting about his wife taking on credit card debt for their house and their wedding and the dh on a higher income was considering leaving her because he doesn’t want to spend the next 4 years paying it off, he would be ripped to shreds. Interesting social experiment...

How much is your monthly mortgage payment?

Why would you put a debt which is interest free onto a mortgage which isn't and likely to increase therefore would cost more?

£10k borrowed on mortgage over 25 years at 5% cost £7500 in interest
£10k borrowed on credit card at 18% interest over 5 years will cost £5200

Now op states the credit cards are at zero

So adding literally thousands to a debt by putting it on the mortgage would be wasteful

Also the thing about the savings / debt idea is that you throw as much money as you can at the debt, so say if you’ve cleared off 5k of it and then your roof needs sorting for 5k then yes you need to use debt to sort it but then the debt is no worse off than when you started - but chances are your roof (or whatever else!) might never go wrong so there’s little point in having 5k in a savings account when it could be used to lower your overall debt. We still have no savings. If something breaks etc we borrow a little back to fix whatever it is and then keep up our large repayments and it soon clears again and then we carry on paying off the debt from before again.

Good to looking into second jobs. I have saved £13k after tax some months (yes I know it's huge!!!) from work so could clear that debt quickly. That does not mean I don't accept it's a huge relative to your incomes but doing a lot of extra work in addition to a full time job (not something most people would accept of course... it is 7.30am on a Sunday and I am already well into work for the day) can be a route out of these situations. Another possibility is you both move in with parents and let the house for a year. My daughter moved back here and let her first flat for a year or so.

One of my sons does Deliveroo and you can fit that in and do as much or as little of it as you like (just about anyone can qualify for that by the way so I am picking easy things for you both; I also marked A level and professional exam papers for at time which does require qualifications so it rather depends what you do what you can do by way of earning extra income).

He bought the house so presumably had the deposit so has put more into the marriage than you have financially although now you earn a little bit more than he does. I bet his house deposit was more than the current £13k debt. Anyway the past doesn't matter much - you just need to earn earn earn all this year to clear the debt ASAP. Can either of you get paid over time at work? That is often a part solution.

If you want to stick this out and get things done, I'd really recommend looking at Money Saving Expert, using the forums there and doing whatever you can to save bits of money here and there to go towards paying it off quicker. I'd also get some marriage counselling and some sort of system in place so you can be 100% sure he's paying the mortgage and council tax (the things you absolutely do not want to default on under any circumstances) and not getting any more cards. He needs to understand it will take time to earn your trust. In fact I'd get a joint account for all bills and monthly repayments so you can be confident it's being done.

@Snap8TheCat maybe it would sound bad if it was reversed but...

He had the house before we met. His parents paid the deposit so he didn't have to. With no savings in place he had to start paying the mortgage and bills etc as soon as he moved in. He then found on his lifestyle back then and everything else he was struggling to afford it all so started putting money on a credit card.

When we were getting married, yes we discussed finances and he said he would be ok paying for the honeymoon and his suit and a few other bits, and I paid for everything else. I had no idea him being 'ok with paying for it' was putting it all on a credit card and worrying about it after.

So yes as other posters have said, it was for what is now 'our house' and 'our wedding' but I really didn't sign up to spend 6 years of my life in debt with someone who I thought I could trust who decided to hide his debt from me. He hid it because he's ashamed and upset how things spiralled. I'm upset because he just couldn't tell me.

Signing up for a mortgage is a constantly nagging 'debt' that ties you to a building in return for a constant drain. Maybe the mortgage choice, or value of house was just a bit too far out of what he could sensibly afford and things like council tax etc just slipped him under what was sustainable for him.
You obviously need a big talk and think with him and follow some of the suggestions from PP.

I would have thought with a 50k income between you that 13k of credit card could be paid of in a year if you put your mind to it

But if paying 300 a month with such earnings is causing big problems financially for you both then i think you have bigger financial problems than just a credit card

My DH did the same thing although the amount was a lot higher. It had all been well intentioned spend, looking after others etc so not gambling or frivolous. It was a horrible shock but he had been under so much pressure because of the secret. Once I was aware, I took control of all the finances, access to all his accounts/ credit report etc. I took out a loan to cover some of it and we got through it. It took several years to clear but we did it. I should add that it never occurred to me to even consider leaving him...... 10 years on and we've not had another issue. He just got overwhelmed trying to do the right thing. I do have some sympathy for your DH