Not quite sure what to do about husband

On_my_way

I think it's important for him to realise it tbh otherwise you are shouldering all the stress.

Is there no way that he can increase his hours without paying childcare?

Are you both able to make cuts in your spending?

On_my_way

You don't need to tell him as such but then again you say that you are living a good life. I am not sure what you mean by this but actually you should be making cut backs in order to get yourselves in a better and less stressful situation.

With the help of here you can sort this out.

On_my_way

You are not selfish by not telling him. He needs to know that he needs to curb any unnecessary spending though.

sourcrates

Sometimes within a couple, one half may be better at dealing with finances than the other, sometimes the other partner doesn't want to know the nitty gritty.

When I was married I dealt with the money side of things, for better or worse, but she wasn't interested.

As long as food was on the table and bills were paid, she was happy enough.

JP1978

I have only read the first post but I would say tell him.... you have done well to reduce the debt by 10k and that is the positive of the conversation.... its not as if you are in 40k of debt and cant clear it.

Maybe he can do more - cutting down on any drinking/smoking, even cheaper lunches. When I add things up, I spend a lot of money each month of food while I am at work - £15 to £25 a week - although doesnt sound a lot, if I made sandwiches before I left etc, I could reduce that down somewhat. Although he may not be able to help financially in the normal sense, he may be able to assist elsewhere.

Nargleblast

If you keep up paying off the debts at the current rate then you are looking at being debt free in three years time. If you use the money you would have paid off debts that are now repaid, and put it as extra towards the remaining debts, you would be debt free much sooner (the principle of snowballing). Keep up the good work, and if your OH is concerned about the amount still owing, show him the date you expect to be free of debts, and make it a target to be smashed.

amy17brook

Wow, this sounds so much like my husband. We are in debt, not sure of the figures (I am on here to sort this out, but got distracted). I'm so not telling him the levels of debt though. I'm the main earner and most of the debts are mine. I have however just managed to get him to agree to a joint bank account where we can put money for household bills which will help as he's not particularly been contributing to them. If he starts with seeing how much it costs to run a house he might start budgeting a little better. Only problem is he's set on applying for a mortgage next year and I'm going to have to try to hold him off for another year or two. Sorry to jump on your bandwagon.

Mr.Generous

the biggest battle on debt is changing the behaviors that lead to the problem in the first place. It's hard for me to understand how anyone would run up £40k of debt, I have never purchased anything I couldn't afford, I never got a car loan until mortgage was paid off, and then a small loan cleared in 18 months. I still watch the £'s on a daily basis while I am comfortably off. This might sound at odds with the holidays we take, nice house etc, but I watch the £'s so we can do the stuff we want to.

EssexHebridean

Mr.Generous wrote: »

the biggest battle on debt is changing the behaviors that lead to the problem in the first place. It's hard for me to understand how anyone would run up £40k of debt, I have never purchased anything I couldn't afford, I never got a car loan until mortgage was paid off, and then a small loan cleared in 18 months. I still watch the £'s on a daily basis while I am comfortably off. This might sound at odds with the holidays we take, nice house etc, but I watch the £'s so we can do the stuff we want to.

Apologies but this doesn't come across as a terribly helpful post on the DFW board. Also, if you've never purchased anything you couldn't afford, why did you require the mortgage and the car loan?

Your first sentence is spot on though - and indeed this is one place where the OP's husband having a grasp of their situation may help to prevent it from recurring in the future.

Money_saving_maniac

mandy80 wrote: »

Hello everyone. I am new to his site so please be gentle!

I/we had our LBM last year. At that point our unsecured debts were creeping up towards the 40k mark and it was becoming unmanageable. The threat of redundancy scared me enough to take action and for the last 12 months I have managed to get our debt down to around 30K.

I am the main earner. My husband is self employed but earns half of what I earn. This is ok as he is able to sort out child care, school drop offs etc. We reckon that we would be no better off if he went full time.

Like lots of women, I handle the finances in our house ( albeit badly in the past!) and he doesn't really get involved. To be honest this works ok for us as he suffers with stress and I think that he would be overwhelmed. I must admit I do shelter him from it somewhat.

We were watching a programme a couple of nights ago about debt and the couple owed $30,000 US dollars. He made a comment along the lines of "at least we aren't in that deep.... when actually we owe more than that in £'s!!

I don't really know what to do. He knows that we have a lot of debt and that we are working to pay it off asap, but we never had the "this is how much we owe" conversation. I think he would panic and in turn, stress me out with wanting to talk about it constantly. the debt is reducing my a good chunk each month and we are able to have a decent life, therefore I am not inclined to give him the cold hard figures. He also doesn't earn enough to be able to contribute any more than he already does so he couldn't actually do anything to help.

I feel like I am being deceitful, but at the same time I know that revealing the full extent of it will make out lives very difficult. We are open about pretty much every other aspect of our lives, however I think that this has the potential to cause us some upset. Is total honesty always the best policy!?

If you don't want to tell him then don't tell him. He clearly doesn't have a burning need to know or he would have asked.

If you want to tell him something, just tell him that living at your current standard of life means the debts will be paid off in X years. If he wants to know more he will ask.