£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.

I voted YANBU as we spend about 2k a month on ours. It is all budgeted as
we use the card for our everyday spending to build up rewards and always pay if off in full. If you are building up over a grand a month in debt then you are living well beyond your means and urgently need to budget and ABU to assume this isn't a problem.

I spend loads on my credit card then clear the balance each month. It can be a very sensible way to spend.

Your spending is excessive if you’re not clearing the balance, or if the £100 is all you have to save. Spending £1.5k on mainly non-essentials is a lot if you don’t have enough for saving or investing.

But you need to give us a lot more info for anyone to say whether it’s too much in your position.

It’s around £47 a day every single
day of the year so far. It’s easily done with the odd trips to the cafe, and top up shops where you mean to buy two things and end up spending £35. If you wanted to save, reduce cafe trips to fortnightly or less, take packed lunches where you can and/or juice in beakers/bottles, and consider online grocery shopping to set a limit to your spending and try to reduce or remove the need for top up shops. Its excessive if you don’t have the means or it is unduly interfering with reasonable longer term saving plans.

Or put the other way, you could save £100 per month if you weren't spending it on takeaways and coffees!

Well, I echo some of the previous questions about whether you are paying off the card regularly (or at least more than the minimum) but also, if you are putting food on etc on the card, where is DH thinking the money should come from? Not being sarcastic to him, but a genuine need for more information!

What’s your monthly household income?
How much are your fixed outgoings?
How much disposable cash do you have left after those are paid?
How much of your credit card are you paying off each month?
How much has your DH spent on non essentials each month?
How many hours do you both work?

If you can't afford to put away £100 a month savings for your DC, which won't really go very far, then yes it is very excessive. £10k in 7 months is well over £1k a month. That's huge. If you halve your spending and out the other half away in savings for your DC then they would have a decent amount.

The sum includes the weekly shop, with is about £120 for a family of 4.

The outstanding balance is paid each month, so we aren’t racking up debt but we aren’t saving.

Are you paying it off every month?
Do you actually consider that you are spending real money, or is it ' pretend money'? My late husband almost had that idea. I know it sounds strange, but it was like it wasn't real spending.
Whatever, I think more info is required.
Why not just cut non essentials for a month and see if that reduces the spending?

Isn’t that storing up problems for the future?

You could save if you want to but you're choosing not to, your spending habits are an active choice.

If the £10k includes the family food shop it doesn't sound quite so bad but it's still over £1400 per month (£320 per week) on stuff other than household bills. It is a lot even if you include a food shop of say £120 per week for 2 adults and 2 primary age children.

Do you have any sort of budget or proper idea where the money is going? Will you feel bad when your DC could do with a helping hand to buy a house of go to university and you tot up how much you've frittered away over the years?

Voted YABU based on the limited information you have provided

If you can no longer save £100 pcm but are buying coffees on a regular basis seems like the balance is off

Sounds like you actually need to sit down and see where each other is coming from.
Go through the sending and cost of everything

E.g. I know I spend too much on vinted clothes/toys for my little girl so if I have spent a bit too much one month then next I shut it down and don't buy anything.

It was defintely easier to budget in days of cash in a purse rather than tapping everything away.

We also set up household pots on our online banking app so X amount goes into the car pot (mot, service, tax, incidentials) X into nursery costs, X into household groceries and petrol and then whatever is left goes into a holiday/savings pot

It's all about what is reasonable without accumulating debt within your family budget

How much have you earned since January?
It seems hugely excessive to me. What does ‘general stuff’ include?

£1500 pm for all groceries, petrol, clothes, days out etc doesn’t sound massively excessive to me, but it’s all relative. We probably spend about £1300 pm on everything after uni costs, bills, home maintenance, pensions, savings, tax & NI. In other words ‘disposable income’. I do feel that I have to be pretty careful though to stay within that amount. So while 10.5k seems like a massive, scary amount in one go, it’s not so scary when broken down. I suppose the question is, is this on top of other things, e.g. when you say food, does that cover the weekly shop or is it frittered on small incidental top up shops? Does your dh contribute to household essentials?

We spend more than that, but equally we save £1500 a month. If I wasn’t able to save anything, I’d be looking at cutting down my discretionary spending (coffees, takeaways etc).

How much do you spend on petrol a month?

I'm not sure why people keep using words like unnecessary, luxuries and frivolities when you have listed food and petrol!

As others said, it depends if that is all food petrol etc included and if you are paying it off, and what you earn.

We personally put everything apart from bills that go out on direct debit (eg mortgage, energy, council tax) on our credit card for the benefits it offers, but pay it off each month. Are you doing that? I think we've probably spent more than you in the card, partly because food / supermarkets is one of our biggest expenditures (we are lucky to have a fairly low mortgage), so if all your food shop (which is presumably for your husband too,) is on it, plus loads of other essentials like his kids shoes and petrol for taking them places, then a) it doesn't seem excessive, and b) he's got a nerve acting like it's just your spending.

But that's based on assumptions so hard to say really.

Go through your old CC bills and work out where the money is actually going. If it’s on food and petrol, that’s not non-essential. Maybe draw up a few categories so you can really understand what you are spending on (food shop, petrol, kids clothes, days out, coffees and snacks out etc etc).

As long as you pay the balance every month it doesn’t matter that it’s a CC. What matters is what you’re actually spending it on. Then you can think about what can be cut back.

I'm confused - if you are paying it off every month then why not just use your debit card and keep the credit for bigger purchases, why is all your daily spending going through it.

If it’s paid off in full each month then that’s ok I suppose, but if you can no longer save £100 a month for your kids because you have too many coffees and takeaways then maybe you need to re evaluate.

You need to go through the statements and break it down.
Are you paying it off each month in full?

You can often earn points/cashback on a CC, making it a sensible way to organise your finances.

No, we’ve never had a set budget because we’ve always been ok financially. It’s only the past 2 years money has become an issue.

"if this was my partner you bet I would be severing their ability to use our credit card."

what now?