£10.5k spent since January on my credit card

[Heyheyheyyou]

I’ve spent £10.k on my credit card since January 2025 on food, clothes, petrol, eating out and other general stuff for me and the kids. This excludes bills & mortgage, which are paid from a separate account.

DH has become angry as he views this has excessive and points to things, such as take aways and coffee etc, which he considers a waste.
He’s basically made it clear, he wants to take over running the family finances or have completely separate bank accounts.

DH wants to save enough to help DC buy a house at some point in the future ladder. He was putting away £100 per month for a few years but has had to stop due to the cost of living.

Dors my spend seem excessive, I don’t think so. We have 2 primary school aged children.

100% agree.

Yes, it is 'advisable' to spend on a credit card, rather than a debit card or use cash. Using a credit card means that you have more consumer protection, plus over the year (if the rest of your money is in accounts that get interest) you will get interest on one month's average spend. Even at a whopping 5% annual interest that's £75 interest per year. Not per month.

But whichever method you use to pay you need to understand every penny that you spend it on. The challenge with credit cards is that you completely lose that sense of where your money went. Even if you scrutinise your statement: £150 to Fatface, or cumulative amounts of £45 to McD's is easy to understand. But £170 to Tesco could be value tin of beans or tomatoes, it could be a school shirt, it could be £7.50 on a glossy home improvement magazine... You can't tell. And that can feel lke being out of control of your money.

I'm not suggesting you have to scrutinise everything forever, but for one month take a note book and pencil (or some way of doing it on your phone) and record eery single thing that you spend money on.

During covid and lockdown we went from 2 healthy salaries (some savings, an emergency fund, and no need to scrutinise our spending) to not enough to cover our usual bills. One or two months of listing every single thing was illuminating. Where we wasted money (a couple of subscriptions to things we didn't even use), where we could easily cut back (do you care what brand of bleach you put down your toilet?) etc. But it also helped me (and us) to understand things like the cost of razor blades, or the real price (and value) of nice cheese, or that top-up shops were costing about 30% of the main shop - so we needed to adjust or 'food bill' expectations by 30%.

We also got a new joint credit card that we both only use for petrol. That was illuminating. How much?? Plus parking! Now we are both more inclined to use public transport where we can.

I'm not suggesting that you live a life of parsimony. But it seems like neither you or your dp undestand how your money is being spent. More insight into that will most likely lessen his irritation, it should make you both feel more in control, and you may even be able to return to your ambition of saving money.

PS. Please, (unless you have done the above and have a genuine shared understanding of the total cost of your lifestyle, including some frivolitise and luxuries) never, never, let him take over the finances.

i get nothing from the bank if i put everything through my debit card but if i put my day to day expenses through on my credit card I get avios points to save towards flights for holidays and cash back on my other credit card. Hence I put pretty much all expenditure through on my credit card each month and pay it off in full each month. So no costs to running the credit card and benefit to using it over my debit card. I do keep careful track of if though and always pay off in full each month.

You say you don't know where it goes hence the need to go through every transaction and categorise it so you can work out where it goes.

I think you and DH will find it eye opening.

I think likewise.

While it is "better" to put larger purchases on a credit card (new sofa, fridge) for customer protection, what is the point of buying take out coffee and groceries? What sort of protection are you looking to get there? How much is the annual cost for the card then, what are atm withdrawal fees, balance transfer fees?

Rewards schemes and prevention of fraud.

Banks don't have a 'one size fits all' with credit cards. We get cashback on ours. My DH is so tight, there's no way he would want us to do this unless there was a financial benefit to us. 😂

For just myself I spend about £800 per month on groceries, petrol, clothes and fun stuff. I don’t have very expensive tastes but I’m not at all careful eg eat out fairly often, most of my groceries come from the expensive little coop rather than a planned weekly shop, get treats when I feel like it. It sounds like you’re spending in a somewhat similar way but for more people. In the past I’ve been a lot more careful with my budget and spent a lot less (even accounting for cost of living changes) without a substantially different lifestyle.

You both have to decide if the planning and discipline and mental load of budgeting properly is worth it. If you decide to start being more careful with money you should have a proper conversation about what both of you will cut out. It’s not only for you to reduce spending, especially if you buy most of the kids’ stuff.

This

It's silly to say you do not know where it goes as you just need to review transactions. Mondo and some other banks can do this automatically to categorise spending. So make a spreadsheet.

DH wants to save enough to help DC buy a house at some point in the future ladder. He was putting away £100 per month for a few years but has had to stop due to the cost of living.

Spending over £200 a week after all bills and the food shop and then saying you can’t afford to save £100 a month is nuts.

I never realised how many people spend to the end of their pay cheque basically all year!

If you put big ticket items on credit card and small items on debit card, the spending is more fragmented and difficult to keep track of. Cash is even worse in terms of transparency as to where it is going and infantilising, apart from the fact that hardly anyone uses cash any more.

I assume OP withdraws cash from a debit card when she needs it because it would be silly to take it out of a credit card due to the charges. Most people carry both around. There are no balance transfer fees because OP pays off her credit card in full every month.

One thing a few posters are saying which is not right.

Most debit cards have the same protection as a credit one. The only difference is the debit card charges are withdrawn directly from your account, while the cc offers a minimum repayment option with interest.

For people unable to control their spending, a debit card is a good option. It offers the protection without allowing personal debt.

Who are the people who are always telling you that? It's not a black and white situation, you need to consider things like consumer protection and cash backs for example

That aside I think your spending is high and you dont seem to know exactly what youre buying

I can understand why your DH is annoyed but more because you’re frittering it away without really noticing what you’re spending it on. It might be that it’s not excessive, but you’ll only know this when you write it all down.

It’s not realistic to say you spend £120 a week on food unless you’re including all the spending on food items, so takeaways inc. coffees and snacks. Your food costs could increase by 50% easily in that case. Obviously, your DH is happy to order takeaways so he must accept that he’s equally culpable.

In your shoes with young children, I recommend you look at saving a bit more money each month whilst you can, just in case one of you becomes ill, has an accident or loses your job. You can always dip into the savings for treats, days out, holidays etc. once it’s reached a decent sum.

My DH was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer when DS was 2yrs old and it turned our lives upside down for a while, especially as neither of us have any other family (both sets of parents were deceased) to help us out. One of my best friends lost her husband to cancer when their oldest child was 15yrs old. Another friend lost her husband unexpectedly in a car accident and she was left with 2 under 5’s. No-one expects these things to happen but with the benefit of hindsight, I wish we’d saved more early on when we had more disposable income.

Perhaps you should sit down with your DH and both of you go through all your family spending and then work out a more realistic budget and review it after say 3 months?

Well in a way you’ve said it yourself - it’s £5 here £10 there and at the end of the month you ‘can’t explain it’. So it doesn’t sound like it controlled or intentional.

you could try keeping track properly for a month - write it down as you go, or do a proper analysis of your credit card bill at the end of the month. Do it on paper or use a spreadsheet, whatever works for you, but track it and categorise it so at the end of the month you can say, right, we spent xxx on coffees, xxx on takeaway etc etc .
then you can decide if it’s worth it to you to carry on spending as you are, or if you want
to cut back

points to things, such as take aways and coffee etc, which he considers a waste.

If you're trying to save, then yes, these are a waste. Does he make his lunch to take to work, and not buy takeaway at lunch or coffee etc?

Maybe you need a conversation about financial goals, an agreed budget and then each have equal 'pocket money' that neither of you questions.

If you use the c/c but it's for family stuff, groceries, household bills, things for your DC, clothes haircuts etc, then he is being unreasonable. But let him take over the responsibility for all these purchases. Leave him to do the new school shoes/uniform shopping, for example.

@Heyheyheyyou £10.5k is collossal and equates to £1.5k a month at this point. Petrol is generally regarded as an unavoidable expense, but food, clothes, and eating out are all expenses that should be minimised as far as possible.

The most alarming part is that you said DH was saving only £100 a month, but had to stop this.

My earnings are a fraction of yours- I would never be able to afford a £1.5k credit card debt every month. But I manage to save far more than £100 a month.

This shows an imbalance between spending and saving and should be addressed. With your massive salary, you should be saving a minimum of £500 a month, but no reason why that can't be as high as £1000 a month or more.

All of the expenditure will be listed on your statement

And, if you spend £ in Tesco, you could note whether it was for food, clothes or petrol etc

So, you could quite easily track your spending, but sounds like you don't really want to

You need to start by explaining where the money is going.

You can download your credit card statements into Excel and go through line by line for the last months, categorize each spending into things like takeaway, coffee etc so you can see how much you are spending on each category each month. This will give you insight into how much you are spending eg if you are spending £300 on takeaway each month you can decide if that's reasonable or too much and make adjustments as needed.

It is also very important to agree a budget each month and use an app to track your spending so you can see how you are doing against the budget eg if you budget £300 a month for takeaway and by day 15 you've spent £300 on takeaway then that's it for takeaway that month, no it's no buts.

And it's very very very important that both you and your husband are involved in the budget and hold each other accountable. I don't agree with scenarios where one person is in charge of the finances and the other person stays out of it, it's a task for both of you. One person does not get to keep their head in the sand using the edited of I wasn't in charge of the fiances.

I'm in the US now so I use every dollar app from Dave Ramsey but there are many other apps in the UK you can use to track spending. Every dollar app is also linked to my account so it updates regularly with my spending but the free version you have to manually enter your spending which I think is good for you for now so you're forced to look at and review your spending.

From what I'm seeing the issue seems to be that your finances have tightened over the past 2 years but you've continued to spend like there has been no change in your finances. Doing a monthly budget with your husband would have caught this sooner and forced you to adjust your spending.

Petrol is generally regarded as an unavoidable expense, but food, clothes, and eating out are all expenses that should be minimised as far as possible.

I completely disagree that food costs should be minimised as far as possible.

Fresh, high quality food is the last cost I would be cutting. I'd rather give up the car.

Well it's good that the OP doesn't isn't it. They have updated to say the balance is cleared each month.

Get your husband to pay for the takeaways or don't have them.

Write down absolutely everything you spend for a month or two, and you’ll find out where the money is going!

You both have to decide if the planning and discipline and mental load of budgeting properly is worth it. If you decide to start being more careful with money you should have a proper conversation about what both of you will cut out. It’s not only for you to reduce spending, especially if you buy most of the kids’ stuff.

Unless you are a trust fund baby (and even they have to watch it) or both high earners, of course the mental load of budgeting is worth it even if it is just to work out what you can afford in terms of discretionary spends without going into deficit.

It is called adulting.

i don’t know where the money goes: its £5 here, £10 here, £40 for the odd takeaway and it’s adds up to a £500 a month, that I can’t explain.

You REALLY need a budget! That's too much money to fritter, if you aren't saving what you want to save.

If I were your DH, I'd be irritated at the very least. I might be a bit angry, and certainly frustrated. You sound almost irresponsible - it's really not good enough to say "I can't explain spending £500 a month."

I'm on an income where I really don't have to worry about these things any more, but £500 a month?! That's a lot of money. I'd never spend that without knowing where it's going. It's £6,000 a year - imagine over 10 years, that's a substantial amount of capital you would accumulate.