My partner keeps trying to pay for things for me and having me pay him back to 'save on interest'

[boysmama1]

Bit of a long one ... but this is the back story.

1. I have a credit card (£1K limit) that is currently maxed out. This is from a business trip to the US 18 months ago, I have been paying it back but I have also recently come back from mat leave so I have a couple months of missed payments (I know now great for the credit score, but I am still in the good section)
2. My boyfriend while 'tidying' found a missing payment letter - the only way he would have found this would have been by going through my things (I keep a folder under my bedside drawers with any important documents/letters). He must have looked here to have found the letter and even open it to read it.

By doing point A - I feel violated and I don't even want to see/speak to him because he's gone through my personal items. To me, this doesn't impact him in the slightest. I am paying it off - I can afford pay more off now that I am back to work full time after maternity leave (my minimum payments were only £40/month) and my credit score is still 'good'.

Financials are a really personal thing to me and I feel super judged for having one. He made the comment of 'do you know how many credit cards I have?... None'

He now wants to give me the money to pay the card off in full to 'save on interest' and then I pay him back. I can afford the £40/month payment - and like I said, now I am back full time I can even afford to pay off more than that.
But this isn't the first time an instance like the above has happened ... Last year I had an extra £500 that I wasn't expecting from my last paycheck before maternity leave, so I put it into out joint account to contribite towards our bills while I was on mat leave. Instead of leaving it, he took that money to 'pay himself back' because he decided that to save £40, he would pay my car insurance in full. It came to like £500 - and something I could have afforded to pay monthly while I wasn't working.

I just feel like he wants everything paid in full all the time - when financially we are trying to save money instead of spending it and sometimes paying monthly is easier instead of depleating our saving accounts and then trying to get that back again - it turns it into a vicious circle of never having any savings because he's constantly using it to pay things off in full.

Am I being unreasonable in my feelings? Or should I have told him about the credit card / continue to let him pay everything in full? I just hate the idea of owing him money all the time because he's rather make the payment NOW instead of letting me have a payment plan and pay it off myself. I feel like I am being treated like a child who isn't allowed a financial responsibility.

A car on finance is a secured debt, like a mortgage. Op's debts are unsecured debts. It's really very different, it's surprising that op and others on this thread don't understand that.

As an aside, it's clear that there needs to be more education on finance in general in schools. We currently rely on this to be passed down in families but that perpetuates poverty and is bad for social mobility.

@Mumoftwo1312 Snooping isn't talking it over. Spending her 500 without her input is not talking it over. Constantly coercing her to let him pay off her debts so she can pay him despite her not wanting to is not talking it over. I am done trying to explain the seriousness of being blind to the initial signs of financial control, especially given the arrangement during her maternity leave to those who simply don't want to see it. You are welcome to your own views.

It sounds like your DPs ideas would actually put you in a better position; ie if you are loosing money laying intrest then of course you’ll be closer to having savings if you ellinminate that.

however he’s gone about it in the wrong way. I’d try to give him the benefit of the doubt that he is well meaning rather than controlling as others are suggesting.

id suggest you sit down and have a frank conversation about finances and decide how you both want to manage things going forward. If you want to do things that are more expensive like maintaining a interest according credit card because that’s your choice and you feel he is treating you like a child, explain that to him. Good luck.

Do him a favour and leave. You sound financially clueless and are playing the victim when it's you hid you debt. He's trying to fix something he can't

😂 I just can't. Can't be arsed repeating myself.

Surely he should be able to see that by you both contributing half isn’t actually fair, it should be a percentage of your earnings and what you can afford so if he is the higher earning then he contributes more!

There seems to be many comments on here saying she is contributing half of bills when Op herself has said that she isn’t!

She is contributing 50% of mat leave money, 350ish, he is contributing 1400! So I think he is contributing just a tad more.

I am on the partners side on this, there is no point building up savings when she is going to be paying that card off for years and years. As for the Christmas present buying - just tell people that you can’t afford to buy for one year, it’s not that hard.

Op, someone else has already linked to Martin Lewis’s MSE forum, I suggest you might read some of the advice on there, about clearing debts as quickly as possible. Your partner has the right idea, but maybe hasn’t approached it correctly.

Well she probably wouldn’t have missed them if she wasn’t having to pay half the bills despite earning less than him or funding her own maternity leave. But sure, he’s a great guy…

Why are you ignoring the fact that when she was on a full wage she was earning less than him but he still insisted they pay bills 50/50?

She’s not paying half the bills though. Half her income is going on bills, which seems reasonable. He was contributing 3x what she did at this point.

Where are you getting this from? She was NOT paying 50% of the bills. She says she contributed half of her maternity pay towards bills, which is fair enough.

You just cannot argue with people determined to paint an arsehole man in angelic light. They will demonise a woman NO MATTER WHAT. It brings them joy to tell a woman that she is an awful human being. Some of these posters who are castagating the OP I recognise and they are in NO position to try and bring her down. But again, this is all they have to feel anything really.

Nah he has a point imo. You have a child together, you live together. You're trying to save together. Your finances affect him.

You say you're trying to save but you're also constantly trying to piss money away on interest. He's right, paying insurance in full if you can is absolutely better. Your minimum payment will barley be touching the total of your credit card, you're just giving money to the credit card company every month for nothing.

I'd be pissed if someone I had a child with and was saving for a future with was hiding debt from me.

I agree. Debt can be good sometimes, but if it's high interest debt, it should be avoided and I'm not sure I agree about the point on depleting savings. If the credit card debt comes with interest, it should be paid before you think about saving.

The similarity is getting into debt and hiding it. 🤦‍♀️

Do you mean when she was earning? Because then she was paying half the bills. Now it’s half her income (more in fact) whilst on maternity. How much money do you think he has left over after paying his share of the bills compared to her? But now he wants to loan her money?? I don’t think so.

Try reading what I said again

I don’t understand how, if your contribution is 50% of your income, your income is £2000 plus and the entire debt is £1000, it’s taken this long to pay it off. Yes, maternity. But you could have done it in 2 months before or after maternity and I’m assuming you had more than 2 months post your work trip as I doubt you’d have been sent on a transatlantic work trip at 6/7 months pregnant.

She was paying it off before maternity leave with THEIR child, where her income was reduced dramatically and his wasn’t. It’s only been through this time that she’s been struggling.

Then there’s fact he paid for her car insurance outright with her £500, leaving her no autonomy in what to do with it. I daresay it would have been better to pay that off the credit card and pay monthly for the car insurance. Not to mention that he has £6,000 debt of his own.

He shouldn’t have snooped through your personal things. The plan that he pays it, and you pay him back without interest, is a sensible one though- and one that benefits both of you, I don’t think in and of itself that is controlling of him to suggest it. If you don’t want to take him up on the offer, it suggests to me a deeper issue with your relationship, where you either don’t trust him, or feel he’s controlling in other ways. It doesn’t sound like a very healthy dynamic.

From the post you quoted:

I was only paying minimum payments while on mat leave as that was what I could afford. I knew once I had returned to work, I could overpay on the CC and have it paid off in a few months instead of years.

Maybe if she hadn’t had a massive reduction in income and he didn’t, while she was giving birth to, and caring for THEIR baby, she wouldn’t have ended up in this mess.

But he didn’t know she was paying it off, she hid it from him. He may have decided he didn’t want to have kids at that point if he knew she was riddled with debt she couldn’t afford to pay on maternity pay.

Yes, the £500 should have gone to her credit card debt, and I dare say if her husband knew about it he would have suggested it goes on that instead. But the fact remains, she lied by omission.

Hes not her husband. He's her BOYFRIEND.

If she had told him about the debt they could have come to a better arrangement.

Riddled with debt?? She had £1,000 on a credit card. That she was paying back.

I doubt it would have made much difference to him re: having kids. It’s not like it affecred him much anyway. If he was that good boyfriend (NOT husband) he wouldn’t have let her struggle so much while having and caring for their baby.

Regardless of whether he would have paid the £500 to the credit card, to pay the car insurance without any input from OP is not on.

@Merrymouse From the boyfriend's comment about having no credit cards it seems if OP disclosed her card, she may not be allowed to have one at all even on trips. There must already be a reason why OP feels she needs to protect her autonomy and the right to have some money for herself.