clearly didnt learn the first time. i hate myself for being in this situation again!

swhite91

as the title says. i hate myself right now.
bit of back ground.
back in 2010-2012 i was young and stupid with money long story short ended up with 8 defaults and 1 ccj totalling £3000 in total for all of them. most of the defaults have now "fallen" off my file with just 2 left and the ccj to "fall" off in Feb 2018. I managed to pay all the debts off by end of 2015 and i was successfully managing 4 credit cards, a loan and a couple of catologue accounts with no issues in 3 years i had the accounts.

this is where ive messed up after doing so so well!
my partner left me in feb 2016 and it broke me and put me into depression. i never got help for this which i know i should have done. to make myelf feel "better" i started to spend more on the credit cards and catologue accounts on just pointless items, with my credit still not being "good" my TV broke and i made the worse mistake ive ever made even when i knew at the time i was crazy i still did it anyway. i got a TV from Perfect Home. I could afford the payments at the time but after about 2 months of having it. i started stop paying it. in fact. i stopped paying everything except 2 of my credit cards. i have no idea what was going on inside my head. my income had reduced a fair amount since my partner left but i was able just about make all the payments.

fast forward a few months... i was still sleeping with my ex partner i found out i was pregnant in May 2016 so me and my partner got back together.

i had my baby 7 weeks ago and i am currently on maternity leave and maternity pay, my partner got a claim for PPI an got £5000 back which we are saving for a deposit on house.

this is where is gets painful for me to talk about... my partner knows about my previous debts back in 2010-2012 and he thinks my credit file will be clear by feb 2018 so we can apply for a mortgage. he does not know anything about the further... 10 defaults that now sit on my file from not paying anything at begining of last year after he left me... most recent default is 31st Jan 2017...

my current debt is so much worse than it was years ago...

i totalled it all up from my credit file and... £7500... i feel sick....

i know i need to tell him because he think we are going to apply for a mortgage next year and no chance i can do that with 10 defaults on my credit file, im scared to death of what hes gonna say!

i know its my own fault and i feel so sick and terrible i just want to burst into tears and tell him everything

i have now contacted all the DCA and set up payment plans with them all although it will take me another 3 years to pay all this off im determined this time not to mess up again!

so i guess... here i go again...

Karonher

Do you think he will accept that you did it because you were unhappy with the situation you were in?

An obvious answer would be to use the deposit money to pay off a large chunk of the debt and hopefully clear the rest fairly quickly.

What I dont know is how the mortgage lenders would look at defaults that had then been totally cleared.

swhite91

even if i told him about it theres no way in hell he would give me the deposit money to pay the debt off, he would say its my mess to sort out myself and pay myself, we have always kept our finances seperate, hes good with money im not so good

sourcrates

Just my thoughts but i think you could do better in the boyfriend dept.

Getting back with an ex lover, is akin to taking out a consolidation loan, occasionally it works, but most of the time you'll wish you hadn't bothered.

Karonher

I do agree with Sourcrates when it comes to your boyfriend.

If you tell hm now do you think he will leave again or agree to wait a few years to get a mortgage until your credit file looks better?

If you leave it a few years, you may owe less but there will still be defaults plus he may be annoyed and feel you deceived him.

angelpye

Hi, well done for facing the debts and getting payment plans in place. From my experience getting back together because you are pregnant will rarely work out in the long run - there were reasons you split up and were not in a committed relationship and those reasons are likely still there lurking in the background. I realise that may be quite painful to read.

He didn't treat you well to continue sleeping with you and it doesn't sound like its a totally secure relationship for you now. You sound like you think you will loose him if you tell him and if you don't loose him he will be unsupportive.

The fact is if he is expecting to apply for a mortgage then you are going to have to tell him anyway at some point. The stress of this situation must be hanging over you like a big weight when you should be relaxing and enjoying your new baby. Personally I think if you have a baby together and are planning to buy a house together then its nonsense for finances to be separate - you are now a team that is supposed to be seeing a long life together as a partnership.

Only you can decide what to do. But if you tell him and he isn't supportive then try to remember you deserve better. You made a mistake and a kind loving partner would get over it and tackle it with you.

FatVonD

Maybe you could say to him that you have new defaults and that, until you can get them sorted, he should take on a mortgage in his own name only.

Perhaps a joint ownership purchase where he pays the mortgage and you pay the rental portion and then, when you have your finances in order again, you will look at joining him on the mortgage to buy a bigger proportion.

bearcat16

I like the way everyone's advising her to leave the father of her child and become a single parent! IMO there's nowhere near enough info in this post to warrant advising such drastic and life changing action. (as well as there being 2 sides to every story)

enthusiasticsaver

I think you need to tell your partner about the defaults. It is his financial future you will be affecting too so he has a right to know if you are considering a joint financial link. He may have to buy alone if he can afford to if your past defaults mean an affordable mortgage rate is out of the question. Have you now resolved your problem with overspending linked to emotions?

All you can do now is sort out repayment plans but that will not be easy with a new baby and reduced income. You need to address this pattern of behaviour especially as you now have a child. Good luck.

nkkingston

I think Sourcrates observation about exes being like consolidation loans is very apt! With the right self-discipline and work, you absolutely can make it work (and what an incentive you have!) but if it doesn't, don't blame yourself.

If you're going to work it out together, there's going to have to be a level of joint finances, especially with a baby - baby's got no income, after all! So I think you're going to have to come clean to some extent, even if you don't give him the details.

If you want to move forwards as a couple, you need to figure out how money is going to work as a family. To each according to their needs, from each according to their means - which is to say, if he's pushing a 50/50 arrangement at the moment (which seems to be super common in non-joint households in a way that almost always benefits the man over the woman) then it's time to adjust to the new reality. You may not feel like it, but you actually have a massive advantage over most people because you've already learnt to budget when you got yourself out of debt the first time. Use that experience again this time around. If you can work out a budget that allows him to get a mortgage in his name only, bonus!

When it does come time to tell him, you're going to take control of the conversation, because it's about you. You control the time, place, medium, and topic. Make sure it's after he's had something to eat (bad conversation to have hangry!) and in a neutral space (not the bedroom or a room that one of you controls, like a home office). Think about the best way to communicate with him - will he respect you more if you do it face to face, would he like the space to process that reading a letter would give him, is he going to want to ask questions that you will find it easier to answer in a medium like email? What do you want to tell him to start with - will he respond better to a conversation about your emotions or about hard figures? Would he prefer to look to the future or to consider the lessons of the past? Will he be calmer with baby in the room, a reminder of why you want to work together on this, or would being reminded of the responsibility baby represents freak him out?

If you want to talk about how you ran up these debts, focus on the depression, not on him leaving you - if he feels like you're blaming him he's more likely to back out of the conversation. Part of demonstrating that you've got a plan for dealing with the debt may be demonstrating you've got a plan for dealing with depression too. You don't want to be derailed by PND after all your hard work.

swhite91

Thank you all for your advice

I probably should have mentioned that I've been with him for 8 years and we already had 2 children together before our third came along, the reason for our split was that I had issues being intimate with him for the last year before we split up he thought it was because I was cheating on him which wasn't true, I did and still do love him with all my heart it was just a rough patch that when he left I realised what I had lost and I won't be making that mistake again

I was pretty quiet yesterday all day and he knew something was up, I brought up the subject of the mortgage and mentioned that maybe we should wait another few years to save a bigger deposit as I told him I didn't want to be on the mortgage, he asked why and that's when I told him partly about my debt, all he asked me was "is it over 3k?" To which I replied yes it is, he agreed to hold off on the mortgage for a few years and just him is going on it till my credit file is clear again then I can be put onto it, he also agreed that we should allocate £400 a month towards my debt repayments which would mean it would take me about 18months to pay everything off, I've cut up my credit cards so I can't use them till my debt is paid off then il use them once or twice a month and pay off in full

I do feel slightly better now, he doesn't know that it's £7500 I owe and he doesn't know how many new defaults I have but il leave that conversation for another time I think

Thanks again everyone