More money than sense??Please help

Minty_2

Firstly, Hello to anyone reading, I'm new to this site & hope you wise owls can help steer me in the right direction.
My situation is this-
After 5yrs of working part time due to a car accident
my personal injury claim has finally come through.
I'm proud to say I have no debt, loans or credit and managed without any benifits (though it could be a different story if I hadn't had support from my partner and family)
My partner works full time & we rent our home.
I'm starting to discover the extent of his debts which amount to about 30k, obviously I want to help but feel reluctant just to throw money at the problem without checking all the options.
The claim I received was a substantial sum of 125k, I still have to visit a clinic 2-4 times a month and time off work when symptons are bad, so a cushion of money is useful.
We have quite different spending habits, I was raised to save for what you want & if you cant afford it you cant have it! He on the other hand (lets call 'im Rich cuz he spends like he is! Will have now pay later, to the extent that his debts swallow up his salary & hes in the red a week into the month, so his debt just gets bigger.
I've never encouraged Rich to use his credit cards & his support to me over the years is just to pay his share not support me financially, if I've needed to borrow I've always gone to my family.
I suggested to Rich that we look into an IVA & freeze the interest, cut up his cards & have a clean slate in 5yrs. But it would seem some of these debts are in his parents name & I'm not sure he would qualify.
I dont have a pension but Rich does, personally I'd like to use up our cash ISA allowance for 2004&05 & stash 12k, again not before looking into an IVA & whether he'd still qualify for it with savings.
With my claim I opened a new account with A&L 6 working days ago. On their advice an EasySaver just to clear it then to open a Premier current account & to yoyo £500 from say my HSBC account back & forth each month, judging by the threads already mentioning A&L speed & service I'm a little sceptical already. (I still dont have a pin number)
So if anyone out there has any advice for me I'd be most grateful.
Minty

nh

Hi Minty

Sorry to hear about your predicament. It is so tough when you have differing views to your partner about spending money. I am getting married in August next year and my fiance's attitude of "if we're a couple of thousand pound in debt by the end of it it won't be so bad" makes me feel ill!

I don't know much about IVAs etc but I think there is more advice for you on the loans and debts board. There is certainly lots of discussion there about IVAs.

Is it possible for you to take control of your partner's finances, and just give him some 'pocket money' each week.

I do this with my partner, not because he is particularly bad with money, but because we saving for the wedding etc, we put all the savings and stuff away when he gets paid and what's left we share between us as 'spends' for the month.

It must be tempting to pay off his debts with your compensation but I would say don't do this, unless you intend to pay off the £30k and then re-pay the money into your savings account. It is not nice to say, but consider whether you will be together long enough for it to be paid back before doing this. But at least you won't pay interest on the debt.

If you do this though his spending must be brought under control, or he will just get into the same situation again.

My advice is go onto the loans board and re-post or just look through the posts already there. I think you will find much more help.

Also, make sure you get the best return on your £125k - the bradford and bingley internet savings account offers 5.35% at the moment. It is worth switching to an account even a few tenths of a percent more with that amount of money.

Good luck!