To feel devastated - husband credit card up to £23k

[Willowtree87]

When I met my husband I fell for him for lots of different reasons, and one of them being that he was a stable and sensible person. I came from a really volatile family so the fact he was calm and “together” was really appealing to me (among other things). Another aspect of this was that he was financially responsible - he’d saved £12k and seemed to have good money management. I on the other hand had never learnt to manage money well at all. I was living in debt and probably also due to adhd could not get a grip of finances. I had a good job as a teacher but never lived within my means.
Anyway further down the line we bought a lovely house, got married. We got into debt over the wedding but had a plan to pay it off (around £8k). I know this was a mistake in itself but we’d had a tough time with my family being awful so I think we just thought let’s have a nice time and pay it back.

Despite best intentions we’ve never got rid of the debt. We’ve transferred it to 0% cards and managed it but never got rid. Various life events put us under stress and I think we just kept kicking the debt ball down the road if that makes sense.

Fast forward 8 years and we’re struggling under a large mortgage, elevated food bills, a house to renovate, two kids to pay for. I thought we still had the debt under credit and were chipping away at it. I think in the back of my mind I’d wondered if it might have crept up a bit but I still thought it was a manageable amount that we could get rid of if we properly focused on it.

Yesterday the debt crossed my mind and the fact I don’t have access to the balance on the credit cards bugged me and I said to my husband can you look into whether I can download the app for the cards even though my name isn’t on them so that I can monitor them too and make payments off the balance as and when I want to. He said sure. Last night I asked him dare I ask what the balance is at now and he said £23k. You could see the fear in his eyes. I was absolutely shocked.
Hes assured me there’s nothing untoward on there it’s simply food shops, petrol, house insurance lump payments etc that have made it go up.
i just feel so betrayed. He said he just wanted me to have the things that I wanted and didn’t want to say no. But im not high maintenance I don’t have any designer things. I do have adhd so I get fixated on doing things like decorating and fritter money. But I think if I’d known how bad the debt was I would have stopped the spending.
I don’t know what to do. He’s been up all night upset.
He has had a wage increase recently which he says means he can start paying off £600 per month off the card. The only reason he hasn’t done this yet is because we have to have some unavoidable work done on the house which is costing £2500.

how am I supposed to feel in this situation? My instinct is to team together to sort it out. I’ve taken the credit cards off him and we can get this debt gone with focus. But I also don’t know if I’m being a mug. Has he betrayed me? I don’t know. My family have betrayed me financially in the past and now I feel like my husband has done the same.

I’m sorry you’re in this position. Debt can be scary. It sounds to me like this has come about simply because you’ve both lived beyond your means. I don’t say this as criticism, as I think it’s easy to do and the prices of everything going up doesn’t help. But I also think big decisions were made without thinking the money side of things through together as a team eg spending a lot on a wedding, buying a house that needs renovation, having two kids etc. I understand you want financial security but I don’t think it’s fair for that weight to fall on your partner. I understand why you feel angry with him, but I can also see why he might not have told you as he’s seems to have been given the role of sorting the finances and he likely didn’t want to let you down. I don’t think you should opt out of the financial stuff, it’s not fair to your partner but it’s also potentially putting yourself at risk as you don’t know what’s going on. You need to own your part in this and work together. While you describe him as stable and feeling a mug etc you’re kind of putting him in a position where he can’t be anything be perfect in that regard otherwise you’re feeling like he’s somehow misled you. Stability might be what you crave but it’s not on him solely to provide it, you have to play a part in that too. Best wishes.

Do you mean a joint current account?

you can’t have a joint credit card account. The OP has benefited from being an authorised user on her husband’s account. She has a card to spend on but she is not the account holder. She’s left all that responsibility to her husband. And is now complaining about him betraying her.

Of course it does.
They had £8k of debt.

That’s a lot for 1 wage covering 2 people but for 2 wages covering 2 people it’s not much at all.
It’s only £4k each.

Pay it off over 2 years, that’s £2k each per year = about £40 a week.
Which is easily affordable if you only pay half of the bills.

If they can afford to redecorate regularly and do non-essential work, then they could easily afford to pay off the debts/not get into more debt.

You made this problem by ignoring your household finances, not taking any ownership, frittering money away. Time to be an adult and take full, equal ownership of your finances.

With 23K of debt I would be not buying anything non-essential at all - no new clothes, no eating out, no cinema trips until it's paid off.

We got to about a similar level of debt. I download all the credit card statements each month and we account for all our spending, putting it in different categories it's time consuming but got us a grip on where we were spending. We try and sit down as a couple and review monthly.
We only do essential maintenance on the house. We try and do stuff ourselves learning from YouTube rather than getting trades in. We sold lots of child things on eBay and vinted and buy most of our clothes on there. Hopefully you'll find some extra give in expenditure ant manage to not increase your debt. Not easy though

You are in this together for better or worse as they say.

Yes I can never understand why women choose to infantilise themselves in this way. Perhaps I am just a control freak!

Op, from another woman who has ADHD, get a grip. This is not just your husband being irresponsible, you have spent the money TOGETHER. You had no curiosity whatsoever to look into the accounts for years and now is his fault?

My mother was incredibly financially stupid so we struggled a bit growing up but that didn’t mean that my siblings and I felt we deserved the opportunity to get in debt to make up for it.

The expenses you are looking it at are in the same pattern as getting what I suppose was a massive debt back then for a fairy tale wedding. Buying a house to refurbish without calculating the costs to repair it is pretty much the same.

You say he was solid and organised with money and able to save when you met him and now “he” is in debt? You need to be fair and accept responsibility so you both can work a way to clear that debt together, so you both need to find a way to increase your income or to reduce significantly your expenses plus finding a way to consolidate that debt as paying £600 a month towards a high interest credit card is not going to clear it in years.

I wouldn’t feel betrayed no. Life is expensive, just surviving is paid for by credit by so
many people these days. Then it mounts up

You’re pretty awful for trying to pin this ALL on him. That’s really, really bad OP.

You put your head in the sand for possibly years so really can't blame DH now.
Go to a debt advisor together and work out and stick to a plan.
Think about increasing your hours or finding a better paid job. Write down everything you spend and cut out the unnecessary things. Just allow one or two frivolities. And ditch the cards.
Once you feel in control of the situation you'll both feel a lot better about it.

You’re never going to get anywhere with the attitude I have ADHD therefore I fritter money. As if it’s inevitable. It isn’t.

Both of you are adults and both of you need to take equal responsibility for your finances, with neither expecting the other to do it all or bail them out.

DH seems to have done what he did out of love and an urge to protect you. not that I agree with what he did, it was foolish at best.

Is expecting him to be the strong man type who saves you while you fritter money fair or loving to him? He’s a human with needs too.

You’re never going to get anywhere with the attitude I have ADHD therefore I fritter money. As if it’s inevitable. It isn’t.

Both of you are adults and both of you need to take equal responsibility for your finances, with neither expecting the other to do it all or bail them out.

DH seems to have done what he did out of love and an urge to protect you. not that I agree with what he did, it was foolish at best.

Is expecting him to be the strong man type who saves you while you fritter money fair or loving to him? He’s a human with needs too.

How are you supposed to feel? You use the energy you would have spent feeling things and you put that energy into increasing your income.

You pick up extra work tutoring students. You pursue jobs that will result in a significant increase in salary.

Your husband can also pick up extra work doing door dash or uber deliveries.

It is not the end of the world.

I worked with a man who had $80k+ in personal debt (credit card and personal loans). It was life expenses and moving his family to another country. Another person I knew that moved his family to my country spend $65k. Life is expensive right now. You are educated and have the capacity to earn additional income. I don’t know your degree qualification but I have a relative with an advanced degree who picked up extra work giving tutorials to university students.

I myself had up to $12k in credit card debt 10 to 15 years ago. It happens. Some of it was medical (being sick is expensive). A lot of it was shopping.

You can get out of personal debt. You can continue doing renovations- but between now and Christmas both you and your husband need to pick up extra work - even if it’s demeaning.

If you use the cash in hand work for your grocery budget + your husband’s additional income for anything your children need (clothes, shoes, excursions) then you can put a significant amount of your wages from your jobs directly into the debt.

Obviously you will still have your utility bills and your mortgage payments but you can very realistically chip away at the debt. In 12 months you will have reduced it to such an extent that the interest payments will be greatly reduced.

You need to earn more money and not keep your head in the sand about money.

Seriously, this isn’t the end of the world.

That was unnecessarily mean.

Having ADHD can create issues in respect to managing money. It was an explanation- not an excuse.

Not sure why you assumed your DH's good habits would rub off on you, rather than your profligacy on him. At least you are both aware of your growing debt now and can get advice to tackle it. You can waste money even shopping at Aldi!

My parents were in this situation. My Dad managed all the finances, my mum didn’t ask as she didn’t want to know. My Dad wanted to keep my mum happy.

They were both at fault. Even I as the adult child couldn’t understand how they were financing it all.

It all went to complete and utter shit in the most horrible way. I won’t comment further on the fall out. I will say now you know, and you can’t ever pretend again that you don’t. Start living within your means. Talk to a specialist about how to pay off the debt. Credit cards are expensive and the debt should be moved. Neither of you should have a credit card again quite frankly.

This is a great answer, OP you are both responsible, you got into a debt for the wedding (daft), you then purchased a house that needed work doing (always a money eater) and went on to procreate 2 more mouths to feed (expensive).

You need to look at how best you can consolidate the debt so it can manageably be paid off - there are always options, you could downsize if need be to free up some cash.

The big thing to remember with all debt is its not free money, the bank want it back eventually - its only wise to take on debts you can service, credit cards can so easily run away with themselves without you noticing - cut up the cards today to freeze the amount owed from growing more.

This. Both as bad as each other..

You are equally to blame. Work as a team to clear it.

The fact that there is highly emotive blame (she has been ‘betrayed’) means it definitely wasn’t an explanation.

I was going to recommend this too.
The key thing is not to panic.
Debts can get out of hand very quickly, as I know well.

if you can.. get everything on spreadsheets.. even if its just a list. esp loans and credit cards.
Read Martins advice and act on it before you run to get 0% - you may need to put things in order a bit first. The suggestions for trimming the fat are very good.

Its like going on a diet, You still have to live. You still have to eat. Don't punish yourself or others by panicking. If you have a sustainable debt reduction plan in place it will get chipped away and will become manageable again.
You've invested in bricks and mortar and have been improving the property. That's not a bad thing.

You should look for free financial advice, or even debt advice if you find things are really untenable. See what your credit rating is on Experian or similar.
Do you have anything you could easily do without that you can sell.

Also. Plan some nice free days out /picnics with the kids, you still need to enjoy yourselves.
Try not to worry, you've caught this in time. Its quite a lot but its not out of hand yet so you've done really well to pick up on it and decide to do something about it together.
Remind DH you are a team and will get this solved quicker if you work together.
Best of luck x

Yes, the wording is a harsh I agree.

But I am on a personal level very tired of hearing & reading that people with ADHD can’t do X or Y, as if people who don’t have ADHD do not face many many life challenges including lack of executive functioning, stress, worry etc.

Ive no issue if someone with ADHD needs extra time or some leeway. But is claiming you fritter away money while not asking about your credit balance & then accusing your husband of betrayal an explanation or an excuse?

Im all for a world where people who need any kind of additional assistance get it. But not when it’s throwing your hands up and saying I can’t without taking any steps to help yourself

Absolutely no betrayal here what so ever.

He hasn't spent the money on gambling or strippers! He ( well both of you, but you just more unknowingly ) have spent the money on keeping the family a float, bills, food shopping.

Another thing that jumped out, is you did think at one point the balance had gone up, you were aware, so you did have an inkling, you just choose not to do anything about it until now and now you feel betrayed. I think that's really unfair on him.

I think you just need to halt the house renovations on what don't need doing right now and focus on paying a big chunk off this debt, then start again.

Work together.

Is this still on credit cards? If so I doubt they’re 0% interest anymore and the interest rates will be sky high. Can you convert the debt to a loan? Or even add it to the mortgage? That would make it seem more manageable.

I don’t think you should condemn your DH for this, he was just trying to shield you from the problem. He needs to stop indulging you with your spending though. You need to tackle this as a team, no more secrets.