Afraid to tell other half

Moo72

I have 2 children (one school one nursery) I have an enormous amount of debt more than my income as I work part time. Husband lost job last year only got new one last month but I'm too scared to tell him my situation. He is paying some of my credit cards but I dont want him to have to pay all - they are my debts after all?! Severely overdrawn in my current account. Struggling with loan repayments and nursery fees (with vouchers) and after school club. I'm NOT overspending counting the pennies I am. I'm worried he will leave me if he finds out that I've been struggling without telling him what's been going on. I dont know where to begin. Worried that writing to credit card companies they will ask our joint income and it is not fair because he does not know about any of this. I cannot sleep and have borrowed money from a friend for petrol yesterday:mad: Family too far away to help or to talk to I'm EMBARRASSED!!!!

Tixy

Hi Moo and Welcome

I can imagine you feel alone and scared. Ultimately I think you should tell your husband the situation as I'm sure it will make things easier for you and he won't leave you for this - he loves you remember.

What I would suggest is you get together a plan of action. Work out how much you are going to pay to who and when and how long it will take you to clear the debts. Once you have this plan worked out then you can tell him the problem but tell him you have a solution worked out as well. Hopefully this way it won't panic him so much.

So to do this the best thing would be if you could fill in a statement of affairs, set down your income, your expenditure and all of your debts. Then people on here will offer you advice on where you can save, where you can cutback and probably ways to increase your income to.
The link for the SOA is here
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html
Format for MSE forum at the bottom and post it on here

Once you have had lots of friendly advice you can then do a realistic budget and feed the information into one of the snowball calculators. This will give you a debt-free date, which we can then work on bringing down every way possible.
http://www.whatsthecost.co.uk/snowball.aspx
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/snowcalc.html

Until you are ready to tell hubby there is always plenty of people on here to talk to, ask advice from or just have a good moan to.

Good luck

bigmommamuppet

Hi there

I know exactly how you feel I managed to hide my debt from my DH for years, until I ran out of credit in January and I decided to go on a DMP with the CCCS.

In theory I could have managed to make my reduced payments on my own but I had enough of the lying and decided I had to tell him.

When I finally plucked up the courage to tell him it felt like the worst day of my life and it was very very hard. Of course he got angry and things were rough for a few days until he got his head round things, but now 3 months on things are going well.

If all the debts are in your name I would speak to one of the debt charities to see what your options are and perhaps start a DMP on your own, then you can show him that you’re dealing with your debts as best you can.

IMO having everything out and in the open is the best thing I’ve ever done.

Becks

boo80

Hey Moo, I haven't told my OH either, he gets really really stressed about money and I don't want to have to cope with his stress as well as my own lol! He does know I'm having problems and have been getting advice from NDL, but he doesn't know I'm on a DMP.

I told NDL that it's my debt, I don't want my OH involved and they said thats fine, I just had to put my personel income and expenditure on (I pay for the food, tv, internet, electric, he pays rent, council tax etc..) When I sent my SOA off to my creditors they were fine with this.

I'm not saying keeping secrets is the way to go, it just works for me. Boo.x

smcshane

Hi Moo,

I think everyone knows their OH's well enough to know the impact it will have on them.
All I can add is what happen to me. I had been struggling for a while but OH completely unaware, then started getting phone calls from creditors which he got suspect abut so started opening letters. As you can imagine this all came to ahead with a row but even though I was scared it was such a releif for it to be out in the open.
I have lost some of my OH's trust but things are starting to get on track as I have a plan in place, having spoken to CCCS and hopefully I can get this sorted.
When I spoke to them they were fine about not using OH's income, as I pay bills ect, as the main earner but we did include as pat of my income the small amount he is able to give me each month.
Hope this helps but I would suggest you speak to someone as even though its scary a plan of action is good.

Everyone here has also helped me to come to some decisions but also provided lots of advise.

angelicmary85

Hi Moo,

I'm sorry to hear that your in a difficult financial situation and don't feel like you can talk to your other half about it as just a few days ago we had a similar situation on here but the guy couldn't get his wife to tell him the full extent of her debt and he was angry as he was desperate to help her. In the end he got her to talk to him as (the advice I gave was to not be too hard on her as she was probably feeling ashamed or embaressed) but he came back on the next day and said that he was feeling alot more positive as they could do a joint budget and help each other.

I know it's a slightly different situation from yours however he was feeling better as the debt was lower than what he expected...if your hubby knows you are in some difficulty, maybe he should know the full extent of it so he can help, even if it's just being there to support you. I would hate it if my OH was keeping a secret like that from me, I prefer honesty, no matter how angry it makes me.

As Tixy has said, post your statement of affairs up so we can offer some advice, that way, you may be able to work out a plan before you sit your hubby and tell him?

I want to wish you all the best with your debt-free journey, it will be tough but at the end of the day, your kids will benefit most from having a happy mummy and daddy

Bio_3

I was in the same boat last week I had £32000 worth of debt and faced up to it and only just found out last month that my wife of 20 years was in debt but she would not tell me for how much and she works part time.
But last week I made her tell me how much and it came to about £20000 and it does feel better for us both to know and then work together at clearing the debt and I want to help her do it hang in their but if the reason for you being in debt is due to keeping the house together then your husband should know and not feel bad.

littlemissbossy

As the other half who was in the dark its definately better to confess all, it will be tough for a while but things will improve when everything is out in the open and can be dealt with.

Good Luck

angelicmary85

Bio wrote: »

I was in the same boat last week I had £32000 worth of debt and faced up to it and only just found out last month that my wife of 20 years was in debt but she would not tell me for how much and she works part time.
But last week I made her tell me how much and it came to about £20000 and it does feel better for us both to know and then work together at clearing the debt and I want to help her do it hang in their but if the reason for you being in debt is due to keeping the house together then your husband should know and not feel bad.

It was you I was talking about in my post - just didn't want to use your username!! :rotfl:

Bio_3

LOL thanks we are moving forward i got my card on 4.94% for life saving over £2500 a year paid off the argos bill and the wifes store card so we are working at it role on debt free days long way off but it will come and just got 3.7% pay rise at work

Nargleblast

Moo - your other half will find out sooner or later so you might as well get it out in the open. Do your statement of affairs, have all your debt details to hand and see where you can make savings. If that is still not going to help matters then you may have to consult a debt counselling charity like Payplan or CCCS. Once you have a clear idea of your financial situation on paper then break the news to the OH. He won't like it, but he probably suspects some of it anyway if he has been making your credit card payments. If he has job worries then he will be concerned about the financial situation anyway. Once he knows the full picture things will start to improve. Remember he may have debts he hasn't told you about, so this might prompt him to do his own confessing. Then set yourselves a target date to get these debts cleared. keep us posted with how you get on.