Debt and my husband have fucked our future

[Smidgen15]

Hi All

Im heartbroken

I found out this morning that my husband had 4 secret credit cards....
I knew of some debt but not any of this.

We are supposed to be starting IVF (for a sibling for my DS) in 2weeks.

I feel robbed of potentially owning a house, my son has been robbed of a sibling.

I cant eat or sleep. Im mess

Tbh op, you need to sit down and look at your outgoings including everything, even takeaway coffees. Then work out a budget. Cut out takeaways, lunches (pack lunch instead), eating out, adults clothes, stop using the tumble dryer and hang washing outside, go onto a sim only phone deal, stop sky and cable, shop at the market for fruit and veg, change the way you shop and make things from scratch, stop online shopping for a year, check your utility bills to see if you can get a cheaper deal, same when car insurance and house insurance is due use a comparison site. I saved 230 quid on my car insurance by shopping around. Check to see if he can get a 0 percent cc deal and do a transfer, but you have to cut the cards up. You could be debt free in 2 to 3 years. I got rid of 8k in 4 years and wasn't really trying, transferred to 0 % cc, and just by increasing from the minimum payments to 100, and having pack lunches everyday and that alone saved me 80 quid extra a month which i paid against my card. If i had a bit left at the end of the month, i paid it against the cc.

But you have to want to do it.

You can also ask for 30 days breathing space this is first thing Stepchange will advise you too, you ring all the credit card companies and say your experiencing financial difficulty and are looking I to your options with Stepchange or whatever company and ask for a 30 day hold on the account, obviously only do this is you aren't planning on putting IVF on, as soon they place the gold you cannot use the cards. They will ask for a reference usually you don't have to give them this as you haven't decided what your going to choose yet.

But in those 30 days you don't have to make any minimum payments so should free that cash for you would usually pay to CC companies. x

Op, it's obviously been a hard lesson for you and is something Martin Lewis talks about often (people not understanding their own financial situation). Sadly your lack of attention to something that is so fundamentally important to your life is staggering. You cannot blame your DP alone, you are also culpable. Sorry if that is harsh but it's true. You take a 30% cut in salary and seem to carry on the same spending profile. Why on earth did you spend 10k on a wedding on a credit card? Why didn't you spend less or save up?
Maybe sexist but I bet your DP didn't have much say I the wedding planning. I only mention this because you seem to blame your DP husband have fucked our future.

How do you get a loan to pay for a wedding? Do you go to the bank and ask? Was it worth it?

I've changed my view since my earlier post after reading that you spent 10k on a wedding and haven't bothered to pay it back. How can you do that and now complain that you can't buy your son a bed? I don't think you should take on further debt for ivf if you can't control your spending. How would you cope with the costs of another child?

*That’s why I asked the question, because I think your attitude towards money is similar to his. And unless you both address this then you’ll never get out of it.

You’ve got a combined income of 3700
1600 of which goes into a joint account. 800 of which is rent. Ct and bills about another 200. Food 300, fuel 100 leftover 200 spending money. These are obviously very rough calculations

That leaves 2100 to pay off debt per month. If you combined all your debts into one then you could easily get it sorted in in a year and a half. Even if you didn’t consolidate them, you could still get them paid off quicker than most people.*

This is excellent from @Travisandthemonkey. Read it again, get your actual bank statements and make the figures work. If you consolidate, make sure you are actually paying off some of the debt this time.

If your mum is willing to look after a baby, can she have your son? So you can go back to work? You can't afford to earn £12k less and you're going to need to be earning more when your husband needs to cut his hours or retire.

You don't need to put IVF to bed right now and I'd recommend that you don't. It's too final a decision to make right now. Deal with this first, this weekend, and talk about IVF next week when you've got a plan.

You both need to be better at money management and your husband needs to be honest about his debts, but this isn't insurmountable.

You're still paying off the IVF from 4 years ago and were going to put more on a CC, your H is fifty-five and in massive debt (bet he doesn't have a pension, either), you can't afford a bed for your child (and mattresses are not something you should buy used) so I think more IVF is a no-go. Your h is still behaving like a teenager, that's your major problem, not having more kids.

You need to retrench and badly.

It will be very painful in the short term but will free you up long term. I would be most concerned here with your husband’s age. He is heading toward retirement and isnin serious financial trouble.

My advice would be to do it the difficult but faster way- move to somewhere cheaper, even if it is more cost, sell a car, sell everything not essential, super tight budget (with all treats planned in). You need to have monthly budget meetings with all money in the pot.

This is what we did to pay off the last of one of my cards. We are now debt free and still budget carefully. This means I can have things I want guilt free as they are paid for up front and I am never left having to borrow to pay for things.

I think I have changed my mind on this thread. You have a decent income but you're still paying off your wedding and last IVF.

Do you and your husbands have pensions? If you want to protect your son you should be paying off your debts for his future- university etc (or are you just planning on getting another big loan then?)

Ive clearly not been clear at all have i....

Firstly Dr - yes it is sexist and i dont even know where you got that assumption from.... it did actually make me giggle, so i thank you for that... the first time ive laughed since monday.

Secondly, at what point have i said the IVF to have my son was through credit? Well, it wasnt... we paid for that and was not put on credit.

We got 10K out for the wedding... which WASNT 7 years ago (again i have no idea where that came from) we have only been married for 2 so the loan wasnt due to be paid off for another 2years or so! Last year, my husband had a £5k CC and we consolidated it with the loan to make our repayments lower..
I really have no idea where some of this info is coming from, but itsnt from me!

And when we got the loan for the wedding, i was in a job that paid 10K more a year... but they took my permanent agreement away from me which i wasnt expecting and so i had to look elsewhere...

Sometimes in life, things fucking happen!!!

And we are on page 10 of me getting a constant bashing by (some) people that really have made assumptions and not read this thread correctly.

Talk about kick somebody when they are down....

Some of you have been really helpful...
Nosquirrrels, one of them is you... Travis you too...

10K of the original 14k was for our wedding

This is exactly what I meant upthread. It's not normal to do this. You could have saved first or gone to a registry office. You are not entitled to a 10k one day party. You really need to change your attitude to debt and money. If you don't change now it will only get worse. The people I know who have the money and a house (without inheritances) in their 40s, 50s and above are all people that never got into debt and spent years saving here and there. The people that I knew who got into debt in their 20s and 30s for nice cars, holidays and weddings are all poor, in trouble (like you) and face poverty in old age. Choose in which category you want to be.

I'm not going to comment on the yes-or-no ivf problem. I find it too personal for me as a stranger on the internet. Regardless of your decision you still need to get your finances in order as soon as possible. Please take the sensible financial advice on this thread. There is a lot of it.

I admit, i havent been 100% clear but i never said some of the things that you guys are saying.

I told my mum some of the things people have said..
She said ' i dont know why you do it, these people dont know you, the struggle and passion you had been infertile and wanting children and you let these people get to you'

So, as i have said...
I thank you for the constructive feedback. Its very clear that we have some work to do on managing money, sorting our budget out and getting back in the real world of actually paying for things and saving rather that relying on credit, once that is, when we are out of this mess.

But please forgive me, geez im only a fucking human!

I have the info i need so wont be replying anymore

I find it worrying that your DH is 55 and doesn't seem concerned about taking on lots of debt. I'm a similar age and at my age I'm doing the opposite - I've been focusing on paying off my mortgage etc because I know I'm getting older and don't want to have debt in my old age. I definitely am more tired and can't do the long hours I used to.

I'm guessing you are a few years younger than your DH so perhaps understandable that you're not thinking like me. But I think you should be thinking realistically about how you're going to fund children for the next 20 years or so and his part in that and in paying off the debt. You both need to be having a serious discussion about this so that you are sure it won't fall to you.

I feel like your head is as much in the clouds as your husband. As you say, you just don't know what is going to happen in the future, but you really don't want to be heading into retirement with no home, no savings, and masses of debt.

I think you are right to forget the IVF. Try to focus on paying off the debt and building some savings for the future.

Shit happens in life. But you can only come through this by taking some responsibility for the situation rather than fully blaming your DH. You both need to admit you both messed up to each other (not to us). All cards on the table regarding income and expenditure. All accounts open and transparent.

Please look at the threads in the money section about paying off debts as they are really useful. Go through every option on how to get rid of the debt. But be very very honest here because I know people who used to consolidate debts into loans and just rack up more along side. They were in this continuous cycle and never got out of it because of various excuses they gave to themselves.

PP have also mentioned additional jobs at the weekend. This is a good idea so whilst looking at paying those debts really look at how you can earn a bit of money on top which goes straight on to paying them off.

Sometimes in life, things fucking happen!!!

It appears a lot of feckless spendthriftiness has happened in both your lives. Big wedding you can't afford when you've already got a kid? Get a loan! Splash out on meals, trips, hobbies and cars? Put it on credit. Want to have another child you can't afford? Break out the credit cards and charge up some IVF.

Your h is bloody fifty-five and is still living like a uni student.

You two need to stop spending and start focusing on providing a secure future for the son you do have.

Just read that £10k of the original £14k debt was for a wedding, and that you then had to take a £10k pa pay cut. I can't see how pp are blaming your dh. Some of it is unfortunate circumstances, and some of it is poor choices by both of you.

I know you - and now your mum too - think we are all enjoying criticising you, but I think it is more that, as objective observers going off bare bones information unclouded by emotion, many of us can see how this slow motion car crash has unfolded; without recognising that or taking your share of responsibility for that you run the risk of ending up in this situation (for a third time in your life) again.

You've had a ton of good advice about cutting back and sorting the debt out. But the criticism is advice too, you just don't want to hear it.

Listen , I wish you all the best, OP, but you need to look at what you are saying.

The original IVF was not on credit, etc.

OK, you paid upfront for the IVF.

BUT you simultaneously had debt that you were already servicing.

SO therefore it doesn't really matter if the IVF was "not on credit" - you were already in debt.

Same-same for anything at all that you spent on whilst in debt to the tune of £X,000 over the last few years. It doesn't really matter where that money came from to pay things - the fact is you were in debt to the tune of £X,000 AS A COUPLE and bought other stuff before prioritising paying off the debt.

Not kicking you when you're down, I assure you. Just think that if you ever want to get out of this hole, you need to see the bigger picture.

Your net worth as a couple has been extremely negative for a few years now.

To get it positive again, you need to accept that pretty much ALL the decisions you made financially in the last couple of years were not great.

Your DH withholding information was shitty. But at a guess he knew just how much being a mother meant to you and he tried to give you what you wanted despite everything.

Be kind to both yourselves, but be honest too about exactly how you BOTH got into this.

. Good luck!

You chose to spend £10k you couldn’t afford on a wedding, despite knowing you would need to pay for further ivf (wanted a sibling for ds), despite not owning a home (and the security that brings), despite already having debt, and despite your Dh being due to retire in 10 years or so. Hope it was a good day

10,000 on a wedding.
On credit.
For one day.
And you're in debt.
Maybe if you'd mentioned this before.
Head in the sand.

Some very good advise here.

But it's seems like you want everything without any consequences.

Welcome to the real world.

Please just cherish your son and pay off this debit responsibility and see how the land lays with the ivf

I would have loved another baby but dh had 2 when we met And after out son was born we couldn't AFFORD another one. (Or to go out for meals)

So I cherish the one we have.
He's 23 and wonderful

My dh is 54 so I am a bit concern about your dh, as at that age my dh would not want to start again with baby's.

At 54 now the kids have grown up and gone he can afford to do hobbies he never did when all his money went on our family. When they were little he could not afford or justify it.

Your debts are:

£317 consolidation loan of £14,000
£X minimum payments only on £7,000 of credit card debt
£160 on your loan (amount outstanding?)
£150 credit card (IVF - amount outstanding?)
£X on Littlewoods
£X on Very

Anything else?

I do think you can get out of this, and possibly can afford the IVF too if you already have money owed by the clinic and if you have enough leeway on the credit limits to give it one last try. Whether (long-term) you should be having another child if your DH is 55 and no pension provision etc is another matter that's probably too big to think about now anyway.

Sort your incomings and outgoings this weekend.
Have a MASSIVE no-blame heart-to-heart with your DH.
Make a financial plan.

Shelve the IVF for at least a week to even think about.

I’ve not read the whole thread op but I do feel for you
I’ve not had ivf to pay for but I did have a husband with credit cards - he ran up a huge debt
I think this is not the disaster you first thought it might be
You’ve had some good advice - I just wanted to say that there are websites which give away free things so maybe you could check those out for baby items and furniture for your son
Good luck tho

Go see your bank as a couple have a financial health check see if there is a way to consolidate debt if the credit cards are high interest this could be part of what is crippling you.

I would hold off ivf for a while if you can though as you are going to risk to continue to over stretch yourself s.

Work out a budget for personal spend and a food. Budget everything else is bills and debt.

Have an open and honest conversation on about what comes in and what goes out.

You can get out of it but it will take time, and I would recommend discussing all things financial 6 monthly minimum.

I was kinda where you are ( didn’t need ivf ) now have house and baby and car that I own in full. It can get better with a clear plan and a little help from your bank.