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.

@EasternEcho I consider her financial deceit worse than his financial abuse

Sorry but I think you are being totally unreasonable. He’s not just your boyfriend he’s your partner and father of your child and what he’s saying is sensible and what you are saying is totally not !!! He’s being kind and offering to help out your financial incompetence - I would accept gratefully .

What he wants to do is sensible.£40 a month on £1k debt is going to take years to pay off not to mention the extra late payments and fees you’ll have incurred. Why is paying things off in full a bad thing?!
I couldn’t live with someone racking up debt and not knowing how to best pay it off even if I offered to help. You share a child.

Your unreasonable for not changing it over to a no interest credit card- problem solved.

He is being financially responsible, you are paying huge amounts of interest when you don't have to. Perhaps he is going about it in the wrong way but I would be very worried if my partner was putting things in credit or running a debt on credit card. Consumer debt is a slippery slope, get it paid off asap rather than thinking "it's only" get financially savvy

@mydrivingisterrible If you consider abuse better than autonomy (even if it is irresponsible) there's really nothing further to be said.

All sorts of issues here. When you were on mat pay, it would have made sense to adjust your respective contributions to household bills so that they were proportionate to.your respective incomes. That way, amongst other matters, you could have paid off your credit card debt quicker. Your partner should not have gone snooping amongst your papers.

That said, he's absolutely right, it's bonkers to make out that you're saving money by making monthly payments to credit card debt instead of paying it all off at once. But maybe he could pay it off anyway without expecting to be repaid, in recognition of your contribution to household bills when your income was much lower?

Because her BF had already used it to pay her car insurance for the year, in full. Thereby eliminating the monthly direct debit for it from their joint account, He effectively put the whole responsibility for it onto her just before her pay reduced because of maternity leave, thus enabling him to ‘claim’ more money as his own after joint outgoings every month. That sound fair to you ?

Try connecting the two and considering whether her financial deceit was actually as a result of his financial abuse.

They have a child. That’s arguably more binding than marriage.

If my partner was hiding maxed out CC that he wasn’t paying off I’d be genuinely questioning the relationship. Abusive because it’s a man, but ultimately if it were the other way round everyone would be screaming LTB.

@Rosscameasdoody My thoughts exactly.

@Workhardcryharder Yes, he can leave her if talking over the situation doesn't work. But he doesn't have the right to take control over her finances against her wishes.

I don't like the fact that he snooped through her personnel letters etc. But most finance ppl will blah that you need to use a credit card to up your credit score. I think he was trying to help. But he should have talked it through not just do his own thing with her money even if it was in the joint account.

I have voted YANBU. No because he doesn't like to pay interest, I'm totally with him there. I only pay interest in my house, loads of them and if I have to buy a new car I suppose that I would have to pay interest there too.
I ve vote YANBU because it seems like he made his mind and go for it without further conversation, see the insurance example.
For me the fact that he doesn't like interest is fine, the fact he push to have his way is the red flag.

Important to note that if you have a joint account with someone, their poor management of other accounts they hold can actually impact your score. I’d be raging if my partner was missing minimum payments on a maxed out cc, especially if I had the money to make the payment.

Also, paying less than the minimum payment is not making an “overpayment” - paying only the minimum payment is probably just covering the interest.

Ultimately, car debt is more sensible than debt to spend on a holiday, which is effectively what you did (it wasn’t really a work trip at the point when the spend happened) and to be paying for a few days holiday for 18 months+ is, quite frankly, nuts.

His take on paying things in full is right you do save overall quite a bit as there is no interest. That's probably a hard one to get your head around if you have only ever work finances out monthly rather than annually.

But, and it a big but, he absolutely shouldn't be going through your stuff. He shouldn't be assuming you'll do what he wants you to do. He's railroading you into doing what he thinks is right without consultation. Those things are wrong even though his logic is right.

For what it's worth it doesn't sound a very supportive or even relationship. The very reason you couldn't pay it off was because you were on maternity leave.....looking after your joint baby! The very least I'd expect is for him to have paid off your credit card in full as some acknowledgment of the hit you've had to take in wages. This is his child too. Your loss of wages should have, at least in part, been covered by him.

Well he shouldn’t be snooping through your things. But you are a couple with a child, I would be very cross if my husband had debts he was hiding from me.

You sound financially irresponsible and he is the one talking sense. You have had a debt of £1000 hanging around for 18 months, what on earth have you been doing about it! Your £40 a month is clearly not sufficient. You are not good with money, I think you should accept his advice on saving interest!

What I struggle with though, is him having you “pay him back”. But that is because DH and I share our finances and there is no concept of lending or borrowing between us.

I agree. He seems to spend far more than you op. He should want you to have the same disposable income as you, not to be controlled by him.

And expecting you to pay the same amount when gestating your baby is financial abuse.

@EasternEcho It's not autonomy - they're in a relationship and they have a child together.
I automatically wouldn't date someone with any debt, and if I found out after having a child together that they'd secretly been lying - I'd want to walk away but would be trapped by the fact we have a child together.

She's put him in a hell of a situation. I consider this kind of debt exactly the same as having an affair.

I think you should be saving as much as you possibly can in order to be able to leave him.

He has one approach, you have another. No one is wrong, but the two approaches don't work together.

YANBU about being uncomfortable about Jim going through your statements. However YABU in terms of your approach to money. I'm not surprised that you're the one with the credit card debt when you seem to think minimum payments paying interest but having some savings is better than paying things in one go with no interest and having no savings. Interest is wasting money unless you absolutely have to. You can use the credit card in an emergency, which is what savings would be for. And you can save what you would've been paying in interest which in time will build up a pot. I've done the same as your partner for mine and paid things in full for him to pay me the monthly. He's just been grateful that he doesn't then have to waste money on interest

@mydrivingisterrible It is indeed autonomy. Everyone has the right to go to hell in their own way. That is still absolutely no basis to take control of someone else's money away from them, against their wishes, or keep coercing them to let them do it. You mentioned you would walk away. That's autonomy. Her partner has the right to walk away too. If they have a child they work it out if they want to. Just because they have a child does not mean the OP must just sign over her money for her partner to control. We are not going agree on this.

Good grief, I hate these threads, So much judgement on the OP for not being financially perfect.
Shock/horror - we don't all have the same approach to the world!
OP missed a couple of payments when on maternity leave but is now regularly making payments. Missed payments aren't ideal, but guess what? Things happen. We make decisions, maybe they're not always the best, but it is what it is. OP's updates about the car loan show that her partner isn't quite the money perfect person you're all making out.
@boysmama1 for what it's worth, I partially agree with @StrictlyAFemaleFemale. You have different approaches to one another. You need to either thrash out a way forward that you're both happy with or consider going separate ways. I wouldn't necessarily say he's financially controlling (as some have), but I could imagine it could end up like that if not checked.

You are overlooking the fact that op not even meeting minimum payments (“only” three times!) will be harming her boyfriends credit score too, since they have a joint account.

You have a maxed-out credit card with £1k owing and you're paying it off at £40 pm for how many years? Do you have any idea how much that £1k is going to cost you in interest over the years and years it'll take to pay back? It's going to cost thousands. You think you're on top of things but you're not. Your DP has a better head for finances than you do. If he pays it off and you pay him £40 a month — presumably without the 20%+ interest — you'll be clear much sooner. Same with the insurance. You pay more for monthly instalments. His way saves you money.

Do you have previous form for making poor financial decisions? Is that why you keep going on about feeling violated? Because you've been caught out having made another bad decision?