Can I use my excellent credit score to ease the burden on wifes awful credit card debt?

Kratos666

Hi all, (if a moderator is reading this - could you help change my username? Apparently I cannot edit this!?)

It's been a painful 24 hours working through family budget, cutting spending and supporting my wifes fragile mental health. To cut a long story short, we are a family that is spiralling in debt. We overspend by roughly £900 each month. Essentially, we cannot afford to maintain our current lifestyle, but mostly this has been due to my wifes continual spending on credit cards. In the past I have taken out personal loans to consolidate these debts but I refuse to do this again.

What we have agreed though is that my wife will no longer have access to her credit cards or have access to credit accounts online. She has given me her credit cards and access to her online accounts and I have spent part of the day reviewing what the hell can be done about 2 of the more extortionate credit cards:

Tesco 19.1%	-£7,291.45
Virgin 24.9%	-£8,007.09

Currently we have agreed to pay £200 on each of these cards every month - which is as much as we can afford at this moment in time. I have calculated roughly that:

		Total Int Paid	Total Paid	Debt Cleared
		-£    5,734.88	£ 10,400.00	£    3,581.18

Now - I have read through the MSE forums and debt advice pages and can see that transferring as much of these extortionate credit card debts onto a 0% card should be the way forward. However, my wife has recently transfered other debts onto a 0% credit card (which I also am now managing) with a total of -£4670 on an MBNA card. She cannot do any more balance transfers.

That said - I have an excellent credit rating of 999 (Experian). I have never had a credit card but have always opted for personal bank loans and credit agreements for online retailers that offer 0% on large purchases (currys, DFS, AO.com etc.) It seems obvious to me that I should take advantage of my finacial credit rating and use what I can to reduce the interest my wife and by default I will be paying on the above credit cards. I used the eligability calculator on MSE to see what was available and this was my top result (note I did state I wanted credit card for balance transfer of £16,000): 


 
Working on the same premise as I did for my wifes credit card debt, I calculted (including the transfer fee) that in the same 25 month time period:

Total Int Paid	Total Paid	Debt Cleared
£                 -	£ 10,400.00	£       10,400.00

It seems like a no-brainer to me but before I go ahead and apply I wanted to ask for any support/guidance from any one with the know how - perhaps I've missed something? Perhaps I wont get the full £16,000? Note that I do understand the risks of taking out a credit card and have gained my wifes understanding and agreement that I should manage this debt for us - this is after all, the first time in our marriage that my wife has relented control of her credit cards to me, despite my previous recomendations of doing so - the risk is that she will take on more credit - but not whilst I am in control of our finances...

Emmia

I'm not sure how to put this. 

Your wife needs to take control herself of her propensity to live beyond her means. You taking her debt on, and essentially agreeing to be liable for its repayment isn't helping her... What happens when she takes out more loans / cards? You're tackling the end result - not the cause. 

What has she spent the money on? Shopping? Family Expenses? Alcohol? Gambling? Is there anything that can be sold to help repay the debt?

If you don't step in, what is her plan to get back on track - is she looking for a second job, promotion at work, or moving to something better paid?

Has the situation been caused (in part) by you not ensuring she has sufficient funds for the groceries, childcare, household expenses?

You actually don't really have the right to control her in this way (taking her cards away - did she ask you? or have you imposed - treating her not as an adult, but a child) but you should work with her to help her repay what she owes, herself.

RAS

Don't do it, as your wife will never learn to live with budget.

What would help enormously is a full Statement of Affairs. This will help to understand whether the situation is because your wife doesn't have access to sufficient funds, or whether she is making unwise spending decisions.

fatbelly

You say 'we are a family that is spiralling in debt. We overspend by roughly £900 each month.'

So clearly no clever borrowing is going to fix that. You need to produce a joint statement of affairs that you can both live to. Mark the debts his/hers/joint

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

and format for mse. Start a new thread with a new username if you have to


Once the spending is under control we can decide what to do with the debts

Martico

I've made a report, asking a mod to reach out and help you change your username, as requested.
Good luck!

sparks_2023

To be honest I didn't even know it was possible to do a balance transfer from a card in another person's name.

The key, after budgeting and closing credit accounts, will be to remove your wife's access to new credit. A default or two will work wonders in this respect and will have the bonus of setting the interest on the defaulted accounts to 0%.

shining_this_way

Really feel for your situation. My take is that you have two separate issues on your hands and they need to be tackled separately: your own financial situation and how you choose to support your wife.

You can't control your wife's spending. If she's concealed things from you before, she could again. If her mental health issues are influencing her spending, there may be a form of addiction going on which only she can address.  And regardless, like another poster said, you don't have the right to control her, even when you KNOW it would be in her and your family's best interests.

I was in a similar situation to you and struggled with a stressful and losing battle for years. It was only when I realised and accepted that I couldn't control my spouse's spending, that I actually got some peace and control back. My strategy was to separate our finances as much as I possibly could and get into a place where I could support myself, our child and the running costs of the house on my own salary. This required reducing our expenses to match a household income of £30,000 (my salary) rather than £80,000. I even downsized the house to almost halve our mortgage payments so that I knew I could cover the mortgage myself if I had to. With the house change, it took about two years to get to a place where I knew that I (and the little one) would be financially ok regardless of what my spouse did. One of the best things I ever did. Still married, still love him but my financial future doesn't depend on him.

Taking on your wife's credit sounds incredibly dangerous - and potentially damaging for you and her. It's possible you'll end up with all that debt and she'll still run up new debts and you won't be able to control the situation. I just couldn't take that risk. Not enabling her and letting her handle her own situation is probably the kindest thing you can do. 

Protect yourself as much as you can. Let her manage her own life. Be there to support her but let her deal with the consequences of her actions.

sourcrates

Only certain lenders will allow balance transfers from an account in another persons name, and that person must be a husband/wife/spouse etc, you need to check if the Halifax will allow this, if you decide to apply.

Taking on another persons debt means that you become legally responsible for it, oh and that excellent 999 credit score is not something you should rely on with any degree of confidence, it does state, "acceptance is subject to further checks", many bankrupts also share that number with you, and if you have any joint credit products, her actions will reflect on your credit history too.

I am thinking along similar lines to fatbelly, a £900 per month overspend requires a much more in-depth re-think than one balance transfer, you may need a much more radical solution to this.

enthusiasticsaver

Kratos666 said:

Hi all, (if a moderator is reading this - could you help change my username? Apparently I cannot edit this!?)

It's been a painful 24 hours working through family budget, cutting spending and supporting my wifes fragile mental health. To cut a long story short, we are a family that is spiralling in debt. We overspend by roughly £900 each month. Essentially, we cannot afford to maintain our current lifestyle, but mostly this has been due to my wifes continual spending on credit cards. In the past I have taken out personal loans to consolidate these debts but I refuse to do this again.

What we have agreed though is that my wife will no longer have access to her credit cards or have access to credit accounts online. She has given me her credit cards and access to her online accounts and I have spent part of the day reviewing what the hell can be done about 2 of the more extortionate credit cards:

Tesco 19.1%	-£7,291.45
Virgin 24.9%	-£8,007.09

Currently we have agreed to pay £200 on each of these cards every month - which is as much as we can afford at this moment in time. I have calculated roughly that:

		Total Int Paid	Total Paid	Debt Cleared
		-£    5,734.88	£ 10,400.00	£    3,581.18

Now - I have read through the MSE forums and debt advice pages and can see that transferring as much of these extortionate credit card debts onto a 0% card should be the way forward. However, my wife has recently transfered other debts onto a 0% credit card (which I also am now managing) with a total of -£4670 on an MBNA card. She cannot do any more balance transfers.

That said - I have an excellent credit rating of 999 (Experian). I have never had a credit card but have always opted for personal bank loans and credit agreements for online retailers that offer 0% on large purchases (currys, DFS, AO.com etc.) It seems obvious to me that I should take advantage of my finacial credit rating and use what I can to reduce the interest my wife and by default I will be paying on the above credit cards. I used the eligability calculator on MSE to see what was available and this was my top result (note I did state I wanted credit card for balance transfer of £16,000): 


 
Working on the same premise as I did for my wifes credit card debt, I calculted (including the transfer fee) that in the same 25 month time period:

Total Int Paid	Total Paid	Debt Cleared
£                 -	£ 10,400.00	£       10,400.00

It seems like a no-brainer to me but before I go ahead and apply I wanted to ask for any support/guidance from any one with the know how - perhaps I've missed something? Perhaps I wont get the full £16,000? Note that I do understand the risks of taking out a credit card and have gained my wifes understanding and agreement that I should manage this debt for us - this is after all, the first time in our marriage that my wife has relented control of her credit cards to me, despite my previous recomendations of doing so - the risk is that she will take on more credit - but not whilst I am in control of our finances...

To change your user name you need to email the forum admin team. forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com

I recommend you do not take on her credit card debt. You have previously taken on debt consolidation loans and she has built debt up again.. even if she has currently relinquished her cards to you and given online access there is no guarantee she won’t apply for new ones. I suggest she explores doing a DMP in just her name. 

Floss

The best thing for your wife is to stop paying those cards, let them default & trash her credit record so she cannot do this again. You have borrowed to clear her debts previously (at least once) and it did not work - why do you think it will this time?

fatbelly

Floss said:

The best thing for your wife is to stop paying those cards, let them default & trash her credit record so she cannot do this again. You have borrowed to clear her debts previously (at least once) and it did not work - why do you think it will this time?

Hopefully their credit files are not linked by a joint financial product (mortgage, loan or current account)