DH angry with me over debt - not sure it's all my fault

[tablemab]

Hi,
DH and I have both not been great with money in the past. We fell into the high income high debt trap, living well beyond our means for years. we earn well - joint income is £115K gross. We have a mortgage, 2 kids etc

For the last couple of years I have tried to take control of our finances. I am no expert, but I am good with a spreadsheet!! I have tried to manage things, and DH has let me get on with it, generally showing zero interest. We haven't accrued much additional debt, and I have tried to move debt around to better interest rates etc. I just get on with it and don't really speak to DH about it. Definitely a lack of communication on both sides.

Our debt level is massive - we owe £75K ish on top of our mortgage. Despite this, I have made sure that everything is up to date and that interest is reduced as much as possible. I also have a plan in place to clear this within the next 5 years.

On Saturday I showed DH the spreadsheet and he freaked out at how much we owe, telling me that I had deceived him and that he had no idea it was so bad. My issue is that he is treating it as though this is just MY debt!! He said that he knew we had a lot of debt but not that much! ( I haven't told him that the £75k doesn't include HIS car).

Now I accept that perhaps I should have tried harder to engage him the money management, but I don't really feel that it's fair to lay all of the blame on my for a situation that was very much a joint effort! AIBU??

Have you sought advice about this. What are your plans?
It's mind blowing.

I'm worried and anxious to sort it out, but I don't feel any shame. Shame is a pointless emotion

Perfect example of how NOT to manage family finances. It doesn’t work when on person buries his or her head in the sand while the other just bumbles along with no communication and teamwork.

I sometimes think I deserve things, but I don’t get them because I can’t afford them.

Cut your coat according to the cloth.

Oh dear, there is definitely no shame. You can deal with this! I’ve been in debt in the past and it felt like it was suffocating me.

You have already catalogued your debt so you are one step ahead of a lot of people. Contact Step Change, they might be able to advise in some way. Your husband is probably alarmed because he has put his head in the sand.

Good luck x

Have you done a budget? A proper detailed one?
what does that 4k consist of?

Please get a hold on this now, and really get some help to figure out why you are both saying fuck it it and spending money you really, really don’t have. Talk to Stepchange to get a handle on it.

When my parents hit 55, and really started retirement planning, my Mum admitted they were £80k in debt. I think at the time between them they earnt about 100k.

Turns out they had both been buying whatever they wanted and they just didn’t think about the cost. New BMW, why not?. Fancy a holiday and upgrade everything to spoil themselves, max out a credit card to pay for it. And it just snowballed.

In the end it became very obvious there was no way of paying it off. They had run out of time to service that level of debt if they wanted to retire at 65. So they sold their house, downsized and moved to a much cheaper part of the country.

You know what happened 18 months later? They were 50k in debt again. Because they had not learnt their lesson and had spent it all on doing up the new house, had another expensive holiday, bought another car, spent a fortune on buying shit from Amazon. When they moved they had taken lower salaries to live in the cheaper place and didn’t even earn 50k between them. So they had to sell up all over again to pay back the debt. So far they haven’t done it again, but it was a hard way to learn.

Please get help before it’s too late, it’s really hard watching your parents struggle. You have time and good salaries to pay this back. Wishing you lots of luck!

You probably know all this but……

Make sure you pay the debts that are the most important - mortgage, utilities, anything with your home as security for etc.

Then look at how much you owe each creditor and see if you can afford to pay a lesser sum in a lump to clear it - eg. if you owe a catalogue £3000 make them a full and final offer of £2500 to clear etc type of thing.

Pay off the creditors with the highest interest rates first.

It is always worth contacting the people you owe to and asking if they’d take a smaller full and final payment.

I know this is obvious but try to cut back too - cheaper food, no eating out type of thing for a few months to be able to clear more.

Remember with interest each tenner you spend you are paying much more back to the people you’ve borrowed from.

Also - check your bank statements for things you don’t use / need - eg. Do you have Netflix / Disney / sky / Amazon and need them all.

Try to keep a spending diary to see where you can make savings - I’m not saying eat bread and water or never do anything - just try to cut back for a few weeks.

Good luck - trying to sort the problem and not burying your head in the sand is a huge step forward.

This. I can't believe if your DH thought you jointly owed £60k how you could possibly afford a holiday or new carpets and bed. How much equity do you have in your house? Could you remortgage over more years? I'm sure you could cut back if you both tried. Go through your bank statement to see where money is going. Cut back. Most importantly cut up both your credit cards. Do not let the debt level increase.

she said they bring 7k between them.. FFS

Try YNAB for budgeting - it's really sobering when you have to forward plan for eg Christmas, insurances etc.

First 30 days is free but it then more than pays for itself.

What would you do if one of you lost your jobs? You'd be totally screwed. But if you had no debt you'd survive on one income - maybe no luxuries but you'd get by.

My DH is probably similar to yours, a bit spendy, thinks we earn well why can't we. Difference is I do keep a pretty firm handle on it all with full transparency and often have to be the bad guy saying no. Rather I didn't but better than the alternative of racking up debt.

Have a look at the debt board on moneysavingsexpert. Go through all your expenses to see exactly where the money is going so you can learn for the future.

First rule of repayments is majority go to the highest interest rate first and minimum to the rest. Once the highest is paid off you work on the next highest interest rate and so on.

You’re going to have to live like students again for a couple of years. No holidays, no meals out, no take aways, no new clothes unless essential. Free days out with the kids.

This level of debt isn’t sustainable. You must be smart to have those well paying jobs. Make a plan and pay it off.

I would take out a second mortgage if you have equity and then overpay with any spare cash until you are back in the position you are now.

Mortgage wise I mean. But with no debt.

Look you are where you are so no point besting yourself up over it. You do however need grounds rules like no more spending on cards and accruing more debt.

I think you should clear down as much as possible.so you both feel more comfortable with how much u have. Start paying off the ones that accrue interest and make that your goal. Then the 0% ones.

Just to reiterate that you shouldn't turn unsecured debt into secured debt; this could cause you to lose your house.

You've got a reasonable income, so just pay off the debt using the avalanche method. It will be painful, but worth it in the end.

I dislike and discourage debt, but "shame" is a loaded word.

I'm not going to give you much advice as I don't think you've yet had "the light bulb moment" they refer to on MSE
You're very blasé about it all especially when you booked a holiday, bought new carpets and beds knowing exactly how much debt you were in.
The only thing I would say is that I know a few people recently who have been made redundant from long term secure jobs. Really struggled to find another job despite years of experience, ended up spending all their payouts to survive and being forced into a much lower paid role.
And I work in mortgages. Don't remortgage. Don't get a secured loan. People who debt consolidate rarely do it once. It's the easy way out and 9 times out of 10 the debt is ran up again
Think of the bed you've just bought - want to still be paying for it in 20 years time?

What was your plan for clearing in 5 years ?
The problem is anything could happen in that time.
One of you could be made redundant.That would really cause problems.
In the likelihood that you won’t be able to switch to more interest free credit cards, think how much you will have to find extra in interest.
You basically need to record all spending and reduce spending asap to tackle this massive debt before circumstances change and you are really in the shit.

It must have been very expensive carpets, bed and holiday....

6 years ago my younger sister and her DH, who have to be said were both equally as bad as each other with handling money told me they owed almost £60k and were in arrears on their mortgage and in real danger of losing their home. They only had a combined income of about £45k as my sister worked part time. They have 4 DC. My sister knows I'm good with money and asked me to help her. I agreed on one condition both she and her DH cut up their credit cards and just went back to using cash. I went through the bank statements with my sister. I found payments for random.stuff she didn't need. She was similar to you in buying new things she couldn't afford whilst having this huge debt. I immediately told her she needed to cancel her very fast internet package and get a downgraded one, cancel Sky Sports, choose between Netflix and Amazon Prime but one should be cancelled. She with help sold a lot of children's clothing and a pile of her DH power tools he never used. Cancel a flower subscription and her DH cancel a wine subscription. Then cut back on dog grooming by going on a course yomlesrn.hoe to groom the dogs herself. The dog grooming alone saved £120 every 2 months. The money she got from selling power tools and outgrown clothes paid for grooming course and buying grooming tools. I said they should all take packed lunches instead of school meals. Her DH used to spend about £10 a day on lunch out and 2 coffees. I suggested a Tassimo machine for his office and packed up lunch. Her DH cut back on going out for a drink with friends after work on a Friday. She cut out her lattes everyday when walking dogs. She bought a cup to go and took a coffee out with her. The biggest thing was stopping her from spending £250 per child at Xmas as well as a stocking. I suggested she tell DC they have to cut back and they can only have £100 each for Xmas plus a small stocking containing things they needed like PJ's. She put money on debt with most interest and also asked for 3 month mortgage holiday and paid everything she could on debt with very high interest. She cleared that in 4 months. The other debts she continued to pay minimum plus. I felt like a monster pushing her to go without things. Her DH didn't speak to me for almost 3 months apart from basic single words. I knew he was pissed off with me but once the high interest debt was paid off and he saw debt coming down he started speaking to me again. I put a ban on takeaway for them too for months and said no takeaway until high interest debt is gone. There was not much interest difference in the rest of her debts so we took the smallest one and got rid of that. She went without a holiday for the first time in her life. Instead of spending £3-4 on a holiday it had to go off of debt. I took 2 youngest DC on holiday with me and I paid for them so they didn't miss out. She's cleared all the debt now but it took the best part of 4 1/2 years. She sticks to her spreadsheet now and they only have one credit card account between them rather than several each which can be a dangerous situation and easy to let it spiral out of control.

Shame is the emotion that stops us making silly decisions. Shame is what would have prevented your debt getting this bad. You need to reframe your view of shame and maybe make a dent in the debt as a result.

You do know that the average debt accrued by graduates in the UK is c. 45k. Should they feel shame?

I sometimes think/thought that because we earn well we 'deserved' it. I know how stupid that sounds now

We had a similar thing where our income has suddenly increased a lot and we were gifted some money and we felt so well off compared to before that we just assumed we could afford to buy what we wanted.

We couldn't. I realized we were actually running out of money and then we had an unexpected $16k tax bill which wiped out our savings.

Since then I have been all over it constantly.