Help- How did you have your light bulb moment? or... what does it take to change...

Shadowdancing

I've always been pretty good with money. A little while ago I decided to make a career change and borrowed on an interest free card. I'm storing up cash in a savings account to cover it, and at the moment my owed balance is less than £1,000.


My boyfriend is a whole other matter. He has cards and cards, can't tell me what he owes, doesn't know the interest rates, gets letters from debt collectors and just tears them up, doesn't answer the phone to calls and so on...


He says there's no point worrying about it as his credit is shot anyway but I would like us to have a house together someday and this is a worry.


I wonder what it's going to take to change things? What will it take to get him his light bulb moment? I personally couldn't sleep living like him, yet he barely seems to have a care in the world. I wonder if you guys wouldn't mind sharing your stories of what made you realise things had to change as I'm hoping at some point he will have one too, or if he's just beyond changing... Thank you.

tori.k

It means a very hard conversation and being prepared to walk away.

You have to be honest with each other as to what you both want out of life and a what your looking for in a relationship.
It could be that he find his financial situation too hard to face and deal with and need help, or he think's hang the consequences you only live once.

Open a help to buy isa, start saving for your own house

sourcrates

Usually your "lightbulb moment" is the point in time when you have maxed out all your credit, your bank account is empty, and you still have all last months bills to pay.

At that point you realise things have to change, there's no other way.

But to me it sounds like your other half is just in complete denial.
Debt help is available from many sources, if it's wanted, there's no excuse to just keep hiding from it, there are solutions available, but you have to want to sort it out, and only he can do that !!

HEROWHENZERO

My lightbulb moment followed a life time of reckless spending and gambling addiction. Once I was so depressed that I stopped functioning and went to the priory for 4 weeks to tackle the depression and addiction, there was a real phase shift. I wish there was a way that I could have listened to advice early on, however it's all too popular for lightbulb moments to happen after hitting rock bottom and desperation is very high.

MoneyMission2015

I've been a member on this forum for quite a while now and have read many diaries and new threads created by people who have had their lightbulb moment. There doesn't seem to be one size fits all.


Some people hit rock bottom and at first you can feel in their posts that they are quite desperate, but this desperation makes them realise they can't go on the way they have and within a few days or weeks (for those that come back) you really notice a difference in their posts, more positive.


Some people don't necessarily have a lightbulb moment, but get given an ultimatum. I remember one diary where the lady was dating somebody from Ireland I believe and he promised her that if she paid off all her debts he would move over here to be with her. She ended up with quite a following and I believe she is still around here somewhere.


Some people (like myself) just get to a point where they are fed up of the debt never really decreasing. I wasn't at desperation point, as a household we have quite a healthy income and on paper have lots of disposable income. But Christmas and holidays has always been our downfall and although we could afford to pay with cash, we were those silly ones who thought we're better off paying it on a credit card and paying it off slowly so that we could use our 'real' money to pay for nights out, takeaways etc. Of course this just meant the debt was increasing every time we paid for another holiday, Christmas present or whatever and then it got to a point where I would pay some money off a card and then just spend it all again the following month, so then our 'disposable income' each month turned in to 'debt repayments'. In the end I just got fed up of seeing the balances and paying interest, so knuckled down and started to get myself sorted out.


Sit down with your OH and have 'the chat'. Tell him how you see your future and hopes that he feels the same, but it can't happen if he's constantly in debt as it will just be difficult to get a mortgage. Ok his credit history is bad, but by him just constantly ignoring it he is prolonging it. If he started making changes now to improve it, then you could start to see improvements within a few months. When I knuckled down, I checked my eligibility for a 0% balance transfer card and was given a 10% likelihood of acceptance. So for a few months I started overpaying all my cards, making sure I was paying above the minimum amount each month and chucking every spare penny I could to the cards. After 3 months I checked again and my eligibility had increased right up to 95% and I was able to get all of my remaining debt transferred to a 0% offer with Barclaycard.

Alex1985

Mine was when I found out my sister and her boyfriend had relatively substantial savings while all we had was debt despite earning twice what they do. Inevitably we would have confronted our debts (overdrawn bank accounts) but this was a good motivator.

foxgloves

Good question. Different for everyone, I expect. I started overspending at age 19 & continued this until I was in my 40s. What sparked the change? I added up the total we were paying out every month to service 2 overdrafts, 3 loans, 1 consolidation loan & 3 credit cards. Then I thought about all the stuff we could be doing with that money if it didn't have to go on debt repayment. Suffice to say, I discovered budgeting & haven't looked back. Husband not too keen at first but as he saw my debts coming down he soon wanted in on the action & joined me with debtbusting about 3 months later.

aphill24

Good question also. My LBM came when my brother in law attempted suicide because of the debt he and my sister had racked up. I have always had loans for cars and had credit cards and forever balance transferring the debts to 0% deals. Although I have never paid much in interest on the cc I am nearly there and will be cutting them up before xmas. I intend to keep one for hiring a car but that will be it, probably ask my Mother to keep it safe until I build up a £5000 fund that I intend to use instead of always relying on cards for large purchases. (Never holidays as we always save in advance for these,)
Putting all my disposable income towards debts has been the norm for too long now and I can't wait to be able to just save some money and feel the comfort that that will bring. I don't see a problem of a personal loan for a car which is affordable as we don't have a mortgage anymore but even that is about to end in November and I don't have any plans to change the car (8 yrs old) All this is due to following the threads here and reading the good advice that is given so thanks everyone.

Shadowdancing

Thank you all so much for sharing. It's particularly frustrating as he sometimes says he will sort it, then when I ask how it's going he says there's no point there's too much to clear. From a glance around this very forum I know people have cleared FAR more than he has quoted as being too much to sort out. If I could get him to come on here or talk to step change or something... but he won't.


I hope it won't take something drastic to get him to realise he can sort this...

Maddie57

It might be the case that he is secretly overwhelmed and thinks there is no way out - I have known people who don't care about debt in public but are terrified in private.

As part of this chat it might be worthwhile giving him some examples of cases where people have made a bit difference to their debt and how they did it. Use the snowball calculator to show how he could be much better off in a year or two.

However you can lead a horse to water and if he doesn't want to drink you need to make sure at the very least you are not financially linked in any way.

Maddie