Just opened our credit card statement

[Mooycow]

And am so shocked , it’s over 25.000, ! My husband deals with all the bills ( I do everything else) ,he gets online billing and tears up the statement when it arrives , we have together spent the money ,it’s all way too easy ,obs, AIBU to be shocked that we owe that amount .

Sorry I didn’t think it had added my first post x

I can not believe how normal some of you think that huge CC debt is

OP - is probably not in UK. The quotation marks on the bottom of the line rather than " are a bit of a giveaway.

Might be anidea to get some advice...CAB or step change

Also loving all these posts from people who wouldn't dream of being in debt with a credit card! Shock horror! With average UK debt excluding mortgages being £8k here Mumsnet really must be populated by only those at the near end of the bell curve .

OP - it's good that you are shocked - it's a normal reaction. What is really going on here is waking up to the fact that you need to be an active part of the family in terms of managing finance. I have been very guilty in the past of not wanting to be quite that grown up, but being grown up and facing this is exactly what is needed. The monthly payments must be huge. It can be solved - I've not read any hint of you not paying the monthly payments as they stand so this is something that you just need to face and pay off as soon as possible. Look up the work of Dave Ramsey who is excellent at helping people become debt free. eg. can you move some/all of the debt to an interest free card and continue to make the higher payments? What do you have at home that you can sell to start repaying more quickly?

Thank you people for the helpful posts, I am in the uk , we are both wage earners , I AM NOT A TROLL , the statement was delivered yesterday morning and DH was out , my main concern is that we have both spent on the card , I was unaware of the debt owing , he deals with our finances , so now I need to speak to him about how we deal with this .

Its probably quite easy to overspend that amount over a period of time especially if OP has a family, the minimum payment is probably quite high and he was overpaying, so it could be £5k overspend a year but £3k paid back to credit card, interest would have accumulated as well

OP, you could get a interest free card to balance transfer in your name and your DH could get one also and then pass some of the debt to these while you both concentrate on paying whats left. Might ease it a bit and give you a bit of time

OP, do take a look at Money Saving Expert and perhaps CAB before you speak to your DH. You need to be proactive. No matter what your financial situation it is really useful - and empowering - to improve your financial knowledge and to take responsibility.

Mooycow
my main concern is that we have both spent on the card , I was unaware of the debt owing

When you were in shops buying tiles, or in garages getting your car serviced, and you got out your credit card instead of your debit card or cash, where did you think the money was coming from?

How precisely did you believe those amounts you spent were being paid off? With what? Did your husband actually tell you he was clearing the credit card balance every month and you actually believed the credit amount owing each month was then zero?

I owe about a grand on my two credit cards and find that stressful enough and I earn a fairly decent salary. I was in terrible debt in my early 20s (bailiffs etc) and it took me years to sort out so I now find any debt makes me feel physically sick. You need to speak to your OH fast and find out why he has only been paying a little over the minimum payments each month. Find out if he has other debt which is causing all of this

Ok so going forward you need to be more involved. It is really concerning that he seems to have let you believe he’s paying it off. This would make me wonder where the money is going. He’s earning, so he should be using some of that to pay off the debt. What’s he spending on instead?

Good luck. There are fantastic threads here for advice with money, I’m on Frugaleers and you’d be more than welcome. That said it seems like you might have a DH problem rather than a money problem. Possibly.

It's vital to review all your finances. Current accounts and all savings, mortgage etc.

The thing is though, if you thought your purchases were being paid at the end of the month then either you have savings or there is a lot of money unaccounted for monthly, where is that? I suspect if you dig deeper there is probably a lot more to this

Freelance I'm honestly stunned that £8k is the average!
In my group of friends, we're the only ones to even use a credit card regularly, we do it for the extra protection on purchases and to collect points, we also do balance transfers whilst keeping money in ISAs. We pay the full balance every month.
All my friends are similar income level, homeowners with mortgages. We just don't buy things we can't afford. Modest cars, no foreign holidays, rare meals out and dcs all get modest christmas/birthday gifts.
My bathroom is horrible, so we're saving. Is this genuinely not what people think is normal now?

I don't trust myself with a credit card lol, I just spend and spend. Therefore spend my left over wages instead

The credit card isn't the most serious issue here (although I would be a gibbering wreck if that was my debt). You need to sit down with your husband and get a really clear picture of your finances. It isn't fair to him to have to take care of all the finances himself and it infantilises you.
I have to do all of our finances because my husband just won't. It's surprisingly easy to make poor financial decisions when there is nobody to discuss it with because sometimes it can seem like a really good idea to do something until you say it out loud and you realise that it actually isn't. If things aren't going so well it can feel like a huge burden and it doesn't help my relationship with my husband at all.

freelance I grew up in debt. Bailiffs knocking, threatening phone calls, utilities being cut off.
Debt is all very well until you can't pay it.
I swore never to put my kids through it. So I have never had a credit or store card or taken out a loan.

Thank God my OH is the same because we are now living on one part time wage.
Bereavement and ill health can happen to anyone at anytime.
25k in debt is terrifying to a lot of people, including me. Literally terrifying.

Being in debt is not 'normal' to everyone and nor should it be.

The amount itself is not the problem - it's all relative and one person's £25k is someone else's £2.5k.
The main issue is that it's got to this before you found out and you thought your DH was paying it off every month but he wasn't. Nothing wrong with paying for bathroom tiles on a credit card if it's paid off that month.
You need to get involved in the finances so you know what's being spent every month. And, given he wasn't paying the card off every month, where has that money been going?

Is this genuinely not what people think is normal now?

So many people think nothing of putting their cars, their furniture! and holidays and everything else on finance. I would find it highly depressing to come back to work and then have to start saving to pay for the holiday I just left, but yes, it' is quite "normal" for some people to rack huge debts. They look at the minimum repayments, not the actual balance, the accumulate store cards and keep

Look at how many people are "broke" in January, because they completely overspend at Christmas. There's a belief among many that they are "entitled" to luxuries, and credit cards are the way to get them.

@Flowerpot1234, why so aggressive? The OP and her husband have had an arrangement that he deals with the credit card bill. They both have good money coming in. She has assumed that he was clearing the debt every month. She has just found out that he hasn't done that. This is sadly not all that unusual.

As for paying for everything by credit card, we do that too, but we do pay off the whole balance every month. Once in a way we make a very big purchase, too much to pay off at once, and then the plan is to clear the balance next month. We do it this way for convenience and also in the case of big ticket items to get protection under the Consumer Credit Act, which you wouldn't get paying by cash/cheque/bank transfer (not sure about the position of debit cards but we have been using credit cards like this since the 80s when debit cards didn't exist).

OP and DH have been probably living a bit above their means for the last 5 years and the DH was probably hoping to get on top of it and it all got out of hand, he was probably very worried about it and telling you, so hopefully there is nothing sinister in his spending, I would speak to your DH and work out a plan of cutting back to tackle this and also have much more to do with the finances in future

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g WTH?

shasta that's horrible, isn't It?
I was speaking to a mum at the school gate who lamenting how her eldest son (9) had already trashed the £1.5k laptop she got him for Christmas when she'd not even started paying it off. She is on a 0 hours contract in Starbucks.
I gawped. Sge asked what i got my two. I told her that DD (8) got Lego, some books and a cuddly toy. She said that me and DH (who she knows is a civil engineer) were cruel.
She's only a passing acquaintance, so it was a pretty meaningless exchange. I thought she was an outlier, but maybe she's the norm?

Be careful OP with leaving all of the bill paying to your DH especially now you've found out about the £25,000 debt I did the same with my first Husband(now ex Husband)and when he'd left I found out that there was £16,000 owed just on one debt,it took me years to clear the debts he'd run up.

If it was me I'd speak to him and tell him that you both need to be transparent from now on when it comes to how your spending and where.

It's the complete opposite with my DH now,we talk about money often and are very open with one another and we have no debts.