Help - in debt secretly husband doesn't know

[Riverbananacarrot]

I'm looking for advice.

I've a secret credit card debt of about £8000 and my husband doesn't know anything about it. It's not from gambling or shopping or anything it's literally from day to day spending and not budgeting. It's been going on years. Any time I think about confessing I get a sick feeling in my stomach. He will be so annoyed and mad at me . ( Never violently - never abusive) But the disappointment will kill me.
I am terrible and managing my own money but I work pretty high up in a bank so earn fairly decently and am great with other peoples money. ( Which makes it worse)

I need to confess and ask him for help budgeting but I am so ashamed , embarrassed and a bit horrified.

He doesn't understand how I can not be on top of things like this. ( I'm don't either TBH)
I have a stressful job and a toddler ( together with my husband) sick elderly parents and I just shove it down to the very bottom of my mind.

How do I even approach this? I feel physically sick at the thought.

I didn't want to read and run. I really sympathize - I often bottle things up like this and am then too embarrassed or anxious or ashamed to talk to someone about it.

How I finally got on top of my finances was to pay a freelance hourly paid PA to help me track my spending for a year - basically, go through 1 year of my bank/credit card statements - and work out how much I was spending on what things. That caught a couple of zombie direct debits that I could cancel immediately and showed me where I could cut down. I think it took 6-8 hours of work.

I found that really helpful because I was dreading looking through my statements and had been putting it off for years. This way, somebody else did the initial, dread-attracting bit and then I looked through everything with her so I didn't have to face it alone.

I do think that it's probably best to just rip the band-aid off and tell your husband, but if it is not absolutely urgent, would it help to do something like this first, and then you'd be going to your husband with better awareness of what has been happening and perhaps the beginning of a plan to solve it...?

Also, is there by any chance any unclaimed money involved, e.g. expenses payments you haven't put in for, refunds you're due but haven't applied for, etc.? Anything you're entitled to that you've been putting off sorting out?

I was in this position some years ago but MUCH worse
I was terrified of telling my DH and to be honest it was awful, the anger I could deal with but the diappointment was harder
BUT the relief of not hiding it any more and waiting for him to find out was immense - I was no longer afraid of post arriving or a phone call being overheard or me slipping up and him finding out. It affected every part of my life
Ask him for help, my DH is a "fixer" and likes to find solutions so he was right on it and then review everything so it doesn't happen again. My DH had no idea of what things actually costs so didn't know we were over spending and instead of telling him I racked up debt
It WILL be awful OP, no way to sugar coat that but once its done it is so much better

If you earn well then paying for help might be the way to go. Perhaps a money coach? Octopus offer this service and I think meaningful money do too, or are about to.

The Moneysavingexpert money makeover would also walk you through what you need to do but takes your own time.

Do you know if income and joint expenses are shared fairly in the household? Has the money gone on your own personal non essentials or has the debt arisen due to increase in cost in bills, groceries etc?

A way forward might be to split your money into pots that you and DH can manage most of together, certainly all joint costs and savings. Then you both have some personal money that is your's alone to deal with and if its personal overspending you could have a frugal couple of years or whatever to get the debt down. But if its due to the increase in joint costs you need to look your joint budget with DH.

What's his money management and attitude to spending like?

Also do you have anything you can sell, can you do anything to earn extra money and have you had car finance in the past, this is the latest misselling scandal that people will be compensated for.

But don't just blame yourself on this. If he was anyway on top of household budgeting he would have noticed there was a problem and talked to you about it.

You MUST tell him and soon.

My late husband ran up debt, twice, all behind my back and it was the deceit (the lies, half-truthing and covering up that went on for years!) that destroyed every ounce of trust I had in him and was clearly the beginning of the end for our relationship.

If you choose not to tell him, when he eventually finds out, he would be justified in claiming you're not a team, this isn't a marriage with any honesty in it and the rot has set in. Good luck.

I had a friend in thisi position. It was because for years, she'd funded Christmas, children's parties, etc., because her dh was a tight git, who'd have said no, despite being a relatively high earner. He was a scrimper.

Are you sure it's all about your poor management and none of it being about your dh expecting you to make a silk purse from a sow's ear?

Stop using the cc, make a few cut backs and knock it back £400/£500pcm.

This in a nutshell.

Ive been there too again much much worse mine was over £37k debt including payday loans and DH was oblivious.

You have to tell him, it will come out eventually and it will be much worse if you haven’t been honest.

I was found out and it broke a lot of trust understandably. You need to get everything together and then sit down and have the conversation.

Mine was all household expenses too so DH was ‘responsible’ too, life expenses are very high and your DH needs to know how much life is costing you both so you can sort this out.

The postman coming was the worse feeling waiting for that letter coming through the door that will explode your entire world. It’s not a fun place to be.

Today all money is transparent in our home, you will feel much better when this isn’t just your problem to hold, you don’t need to shield him from it.

Honestly the night after you come clean you will get the best sleep in a long time.

Some advice I got years ago when contemplating a difficult issue was to game it out.

First of all, you know, deep down, that you have to tell him. There is no other way here. So then you run through what might happen and take away the power the unknown currently has over you. For example:

Best case: you calmly tell him at a time and place you choose, he now knows and you work together to resolve it.

Middling case: you tell him and he blows up at you. Whatever happens next, it is out in the open and has no more power over you.

Worst case: he finds out another way.

You can do this. Even if you blurt it out over the washing up one night. As long as it stays secret, it has power over you. Reclaim it. It is only money, nobody died.

The interest will be really adding up. Firstly stop using it, try to transfer it to an interest free card, but don’t carry on using this one either. I understand why you don’t want to tell your husband, been there about a car, the disappointment and deceit is truly awful.

Thanks all for the replies.

The bills are evenly divided but they used to be as I was the higher earner for a long time and I think we never really changed that. Also I cover all costs for our child's clothing and things - because I hate asking for money. ( Which is stupid)

I've asked him can we sit down a day this week and talk about my finances and can help help me with them and can we then sit down after each pay day and plan out my finances. He said he was delighted to help so I'll update further once we have a sit down this week.

That way I have a few days to figure out where everything is and hopefully be in better position to chat and lay out everything

Is he controlling the money so that you’ve been forced to put everyday expenses on the credit card? If it’s mainly stuff for the children, he should have been contributing. You need to rip the plaster off and tell him and then have a very honest conversation going forward about the reality of the household budget. Print off all bank and credit card statements.
If however it’s frivolous spending; meals out, clothes, handbags mostly for you then you need to address a compulsive spending issue. Cut up the card in the first instance.

Go on to MSE DFW forum and you will get good advice. Believe me £8000 debt is not the worst secret people keep from their partners. It is very common. Has the debt occurred because you are a spender or from trying to make ends meet? You should be sharing this problem with your husband if it is the latter. Often this comes after having children due to usually reduced income and increased expenditure. Kids cost money and childcare is expensive meaning working hours often reduces especially for women.

Look at where the money has been spent and speak to your husband as getting a budget in place is essential for you both and you shouldn’t be taking sole responsibility for balancing your budget.

I feel for you. Highly recommend the snoop app I used it to start tracking my spending- really easy to use and helped me start to get finances under control then switched to Monzo bank account and now have pots set up for each group of payments - it makes it so easy and impossible for me to hide things from myself / pretend I’m not spending what I am. Good luck

edited to add - you shouldn’t be having to ask him for money. If you have a pool of money for things like children’s clothing and then both agree on a monthly amount to add each and add it to a joint account that should work. No one should be asking their spouse for money- it creates a parent child dynamic and I can understand why you want to avoid that. Ideally (and this has taken us 2 years to get right after doing it wrong for a decade plus) have a monthly budget meeting and add all the money you need for that month to the right places so it goes to bills / you have access to it.

Great first step, I hope it goes as well as it can and that things improve going forwards

Been there OP - it's awful.

Please pluck up the courage to be honest with him - it's not like you have frittered it all away on gambling/drugs.

The feeling when that black cloud of doom isn't dominating every second of your day is incredible. I hope your talk with him goes well and that you can move on and breathe again.

You need to sit down and talk about your JOINT finances and whether he is contributing enough and what you are paying for to stop the debt

Just reading the replies and I’m taking comfort that so many other women have been in the same situ! Definitely speak to him about it - he might be disappointed / agitated at first but hopefully he will come up with a practical solution.

I had the exactly same amount of debt on credit cards - I’m not sure why as my husband and I have a joint account so he was baffled that I wasn’t just using our JOINT account. I threw a surprise party for him and put a lot of stuff on the credit card (which Ok, was not £8K) but I guess it spiralled from there - that was my ‘excuse’ anyway. I don’t gamble, I do shop for clothes every now and then but it’s not a disorder I think it’s just poor money management and I should not have access to any form of credit.

The way I broke the news particularly stung because it came out on a holiday where we ran out of money on our debit card and so husband immediately thought ‘ oh it’s fine we have the credit card to see us through the next few days’ but it transpired I maxed that one out and so we used our overdraft etc. He was rather furious at the time but thankfully he’s so much better at managing money and saving than me, and is paying the debt off. He pretty much manages our money now - not in the sense he restricts my access to our joint account but he has restricted my access to credit cards and I am VERY grateful as I don’t think I can be trusted. He has all my passwords and redwonloaded on his phone and so he pays off the credit card and ensures no more spending is put on there

Like you, I work in finance and so get generous bonuses at Christmas but his point is that every year I’ve worked at my company - the bonus just goes to clearing off the credit cards and he hoped it would be been different this year. And it’s true - those bonuses could be spent on something more meaningful (he would say SAVED) but the credit cards was admittedly a huge issue for me.

But like others have said - there are a LOT worse things than people hide from their partner and love is much stronger than money (unless one of you is spending on drugs etc) but you will get through it! X

Tell him and then sort it out between you. Keeping this quiet just adds more stress.

I’d tell him then work on it as a team. We used the Dave Ramsey method and are now mortgage and debt free. There’s a much higher chance of success if you’re a team on this.

Definitely head to moneysavingexpert - they have a debt free wannabe forum but all of the forums are great. Can you switch the credit card to 0%?

If you are a high earner it shouldn’t be too difficult to repay this amount. Just make sure you stick to a budget so it doesn’t happen again.

I was in a lot more debt - about £20,000 and I felt so much shame but it’s best to be honest with your OH and perhaps you can re work the joint budget so you’re not paying out for things for your child solely.

No not at all. We have our own bank accounts and a joint one. We both contribute to the joint for bills and groceries ( though the amount we put in hasn't changed in years despite cost of living increases etc)
I don't shop frivolously (I think?) I couldn't tell u the last time I bought myself clothes or anything. I think the issue is I actually don't know what it goes on.
When I work in the office I do tend it but lunch rather than bring it with me.
He absolutely would contribute more with our child but I don't actually talk to him about what they need. I think Ur right a sit down where we lay out all expenses.

The credit cards are all on 0% and when it runs out I move it- but it never goes down because I spend more on it so it always hovers around that. I'm going to eat the frog and have that talk this week. I'll let you know how it goes.

Good luck with the talk. I'd include a discussion about what the joint account is for and if there are adequate funds going into it
We have a spreadsheet that we review a few times a year with all our costs on it including annual pro rataed. We live out of our joint account and the only thing that comes out of our personal account is any non supermarket clothing for ourselves, meals out and presents for respective families. Everything is the joint account. Meal deals from the supermarket would go on the joint account, going to a restaurant for work lunch would be personal account. Anything involving kids is joint account so getting coffee or lunch on a day trip.
Moving forward we have another sheet in the spreadsheet for savings, with the dates of fixed interest rates coming to an end are on there. It helps us plan big things - last year we had some building work done and this year we bought a car. We paid cash for both and it helped to know it was affordable and where money was coming from. Maybe one for your credit cards would be useful and longer term for savings.

Cut the card up and don't use it, pay it down, any time you go to use it remember how embarrassed you are, how you don't want to have to tell your DH. You must be able to cut down spending a bit, it doesn't sound like you are poorly paid.