Sad but determined

LauraB89

Hi all,

I managed to get debt free last year, with my husband, and I've had my little baby in Feb and been merrily spending away my savings and having a lovely time on maternity.

Until last night.

When I opened a letter to my husband to find that he has over £3k on a credit card that he has kept hidden from me.

He now needs a debt consolidation loan from his bank and we need to get ourselves in order.

I've been through our income and outgoings and the plan is as follows;

* balance our spending and not create more debt between now and November (when I return to work)
* reduce our debts from that point until February as much as possible - then our mortgage is up so we can add it all to that
* save from Feb to September enough to make the balloon payment on our car

The debts are as follows;

* my credit card £700
* loan for car 1 £4,200
* husband's credit card £3,300

I have savings of approx £600 that we need to cover the deficit on our monthly outgoings between now and November (£200 per month), and my plan was to put our food shopping on my card between now and then to tide me over (knowing I would have had a surplus when I returned so I could have paid it off in a few months).

My plan is the same as we did before;

* spending money of £200 per month each (separate from fuel and food)
* reduce all regular outgoings
* plan each month for any outgoings over the norm
* get back to debt free (ish) asap

I'm absolutely devastated that we are back to square one, my husband has kept this all from me and lied to me about it and I'm so hurt.
I thought we were past this and had moved on- I've been so proud of us for getting where we are and it's all gone to !!!!.
This isn't the first time my husband has done this- he's not great with money and I think he is ashamed that he doesn't earn as much as he wants to.
But here we are, and it's time to get our !!!! together- oh god I had enjoyed not worrying about money for a while.

So - step 1 balance our spending

We gave gone through our statements and today I get to cancel some things.
I've got my spending tracker app back and I'm reluctantly ready to go.

Let the battle commence!

UncannyScot

Hi

You have a plan and your determined to claw your way back again.

OH needs to be totally on-board and focused on this too and get that CC zeroed and cancelled ASAP.
I think you both know that spending habits and attitudes to credit NEED to change.

Support and advice is always available here, along with virtual hugs, cakes, beer n stuff
If you need any info or advice on anything just post up and someone will be along to help.

Good luck on your journey back to being debt free.

GlendaSugarbean

Best of luck to both of you

Robin09

I have an idea of how you are feeling right now. A couple of years ago, the same happened to me. Opened a statement to find out I had been kept in the dark about a huge amount of extra debt I had no clue about.

Amazing that you have such a good plan in place already. I literally cried for days before I could sit down to try and figure it all out. We in the end, had to go on a DMP as our debt with nearing 30k. We are slowly but surely paying it off.

I wish you all the best with your journey.

Robin x

Mnd

Hi there, if I could just make 1 comment it would be that £400 spending money between you is huge.
If you could shave £100 of this to throw at the debts it would help considerably. Good luck.M

enthusiasticsaver

Two points.

I would strongly urge you to not do debt consolidation. It usually makes debt problems worse.

Turning unsecured debt into secured by adding it to your mortgage is also a mistake and will cost you more in the long run.

If you have a deficit then can you not reduce your personal spending money until you return to work?

I would have been cross too if my DH had kept that debt from me. Do you have joint finances? A partner who is bad with money is one good reason not to do joint finances. What did the £3k credit card spends go on?