Need to sort my life out - massive changes ahead

ceb1995

how do you feel about a conversation of speaking to the adults (if you are buying for them) of the family that you won't be buying gifts and if you feel about to speak to your son that there might less of them for a while (i understood that myself at that age), that £100 would make a difference.

JayRitchie

Well, at the moment the problem is entirely fixable but I'm a bit concerned about your workload. Have you considered marriage counselling? Your wife seems to have some problems understanding money and debt (not at all unusual) which must be very stressful for you.

Could your wife earn more? Could you go down to one car?

Humdinger1

Picked

Well done for acknowledging the situation, to yourself and on here. Every situation is different but I might be recognising a bit of the mindset I had to overcome in your wife. She could be trying to recreate the relationship she had with her family when growing up between you, because being in a familiar place helps people feel safe . I agree that some therapy would be helpful as until she can see the pattern herself, it's unlikely that she'll have a true financial LBM.

I hope this doesn't sound too heavy, because it is fixable. Some brilliant ideas up above about short term fixes. You plainly love her, and I bet she does you as people often can't do this otherwise. Maybe a chart showing where you'll be financially if things carry on as they have.

Agree that you shouldn't use equity to pay this off, as speaking from experience here - you only really get it when you've lived the impact of your decisions.

Keep us posted and good luck Humdinger

katsu

What is your spending reality? Where does the extra £1k+ go each month?

How much is going on the credit cards each month?

In terms of actual costs...

I would suggest working towards reducing the £1.2k a year spent on presents but that will take time with your wife.

Your gas ams electric seems a bit expensive. Can you go sim only and reduce your mobile costs further?

Would you cancel satellite TV?

Honestly I think we need to see your reality to give you better advice as if you really had over 1k left over you'd be less stressed and not thinking of needing a credit card to buy a fridge as a gift.

Talk to your wife about how anxious you feel and how confident you are that you both can change.

I wouldn't suggest you put thr debt on your mortgage as you aren't in control of your debts and budget yet and you'll maybe just add more debt on top.

Good luck to you and your wife.

pickedliver

Thanks for all of the posts. We had the talk last night. It actually went better than expected.

she acknowledged that i have been shouldering too much responsibility and accepts that things need to change. I showed her a break down of the debt, including the horrendous grand total. It was higher than she thought but thankfully there was no blame or negativity directed at me. We went though our income and outgoing and she was relieved that despite our debts being very high, we are able to sort it out.

It was a much better conversation than I expected. Any previous money chats have been tense and have usually ended up with us arguing.

Hopefully this is the start of a different way of life for us

Jox

That's a positive first step!

What did she say about the fridge freezer, does she still want to gift it?

Unicorn_cottage

Well done on talking control. As a first step...do you have anything you can sell? The act of selling bits and bobs can seem insignificant at first but it can often been very lucrative and a great way to reduce the worst debt (if you are using the snowball method) in a big way. Those old mobile phones languishing in the drawer, electrical items that you never use etc etc. FB is a great way to sell stuff now and has no fees.

Lots of luck. I look forward to hearing your progress.

theoretica

Selling things can also be a great disincentive to buying more - you realise how little they are actually worth once you have bought them - or feel you might as well benefit from the price drop and buy second hand!

blackmagicthe1st

Well done, it can't have been easy to have that conversation. Keep in touch with us, we're behind you!

pickedliver

Happy new year everyone.

The last week has actually been ok. I expected some turbulence with my wife following our discussions but it's actually been ok!

We have started to make some much more positive financial decisions. We both had 2 weeks holiday at Christmas and normally a huge amount of money would be spent around this time in the sales etc. This year we have only bought some new school uniform!

I have spoken to stepchange and payplan. Both have advised that any debt solution would be unnecessary as we can afford the repayments. I suppose I should view this as a good thing.

We are both back at work tomorrow which I am pleased about. Need to get back into some normal routine