Credit card debt

Kim_13

You absolutely shouldn’t be using your savings to clear his debts, but he does seem to be paying for all of the childcare after the UC help. As they are your children too, I think it would be reasonable for you to pay a proportion of this (or pay it straight off the debt if you’re worried he will fritter it.) Without individual SOAs, it’s difficult to see how much of your income is left after the bills you already cover. Something needs to be set aside under holidays for spending money for the booked trip.

£100 per month personal spends for him seems reasonable - get this into say a Chase or Starling account, so that when it’s gone it’s gone and he can’t overspend and impact the rest of the budget. These cards are also fee free abroad.

The financial advisor’s advice seems madness - there will be much more for him to throw at the debt once the childcare expense goes, as you say. He needs to do this to learn the lesson. At that point he can pick up overtime also. Turning unsecured debt to secured debt is a big no no.

His behaviour over the air fryer purchase was irrational, likely a knee jerk reaction as the realisation of the amount of money he had wasted dawned upon him. Rationally, an air fryer is going to save money on the energy bills and generally makes living busy lives easier (less time needed to cook the food = less temptation for a wasteful takeaway.)

bargainhunter121

Ok so thabks everyone for your replies. Even spoken to stepchange who've done a pro rata calculation that he should have at least 965 p/m spare to go on the debt (after minimum payments are made). Which helps a bit. I'm just not sure how best to divide this money between the cards. Stepchange have suggested £410 to the barclay card and capital one card and £143 to the m and s. I was wondering would it be worthwhile tho for the next 2/3 months putting the majority of the excess into the m&s to clear it and close it? Leaving the 2 cards to work on? Or is it better still spreading the overpayments evenly pro rata over the 3 cards? (M and s seems to have the highest interest) would It be a bad move to just pay the miminum on the other cards for the next 2/3 months to get rid of the marks? I'm really not sure how best to tackle this. Many thanks all. 

MFWannabe

bargainhunter121 said:

Ok so thabks everyone for your replies. Even spoken to stepchange who've done a pro rata calculation that he should have at least 965 p/m spare to go on the debt (after minimum payments are made). Which helps a bit. I'm just not sure how best to divide this money between the cards. Stepchange have suggested £410 to the barclay card and capital one card and £143 to the m and s. I was wondering would it be worthwhile tho for the next 2/3 months putting the majority of the excess into the m&s to clear it and close it? Leaving the 2 cards to work on? Or is it better still spreading the overpayments evenly pro rata over the 3 cards? (M and s seems to have the highest interest) would It be a bad move to just pay the miminum on the other cards for the next 2/3 months to get rid of the marks? I'm really not sure how best to tackle this. Many thanks all. 

I thought it was capital one that has the highest apr? 

However m and s is the lowest balance so I would chuck the most at that one while paying just over minimums on the others then once that’s cleared move on to the next etc 

the two listed as yours in the soa are they paid off? 

bargainhunter121

Mf wannabe. My cards will be, I pay them off every month in full with my own money, according to the capital one statement hes only paying £12 on interest..(bit strange), Thanks for rhe advice.

RAS

I'm going to start with stating the bleeding obvious. When a couple divorce, then the starting point is a 50:50 split unless there is some sort of prenup or deed of trust. And both generally end up much less affluent than if they stayed together.

You are not working as a team. He goes off and talks to someone who sells secured loans, you are talking to stepchange about his debts. 

You need to have some very grown up discussion about both your attitudes to finances. Not just about this "crisis", which isn't a financial crisis because your family income exceeds what you need to pay it all off. But about how you jointly tackle your financial future. On a practical basis, you need to sit down once a month, go through the credit records, look at the outgoings on all accounts, the savings and adjust as necessary. Look at your vulnerabilities, your short-term aims, the medium term and longer term ones.

You've got a house and a car. Where is the house maintenance line in your budget? Where is the "replace the car in five years time" line in your current budget. If he concentrates on paying off the debt and the car claps out, is it going to be his problem, or are you going to help pay the repair bill? If tiles come off the roof next winter, how do you as a couple pay for the work? 

As a young couple with two kids, what sort of insurance do you have? Enough term life insurance on both of you to ensure that if anything happens to either, the survivor can raise the kids? Pensions, that pay out on ill-health grounds? And at least three months expenditure saved to cover job loss?

If OH cleared the most expensive debt and got a 0% card to transfer the rest, how would you be about taking a bit longer to clear it whilst building up some self insurance elsewhere in the system?

And you needed to have some fun, both together and separately. So a family entertainment fund and a bit of pocket money you can both spend or waste as you wish. Do cards make spending money seem magical to OH? Would taking out cash help him keep track? Does your anxiety stop you doing things you would enjoy?

Lots to talk about, not when you are tired and not unscheduled. Make a date, think about the childcare and talk.

bargainhunter121

So it gets worse, his most recent balance on his barclay is now £10,485. My hearts broke. He said he must've been looking at his last statement. How on earth do we get this debt down??? (Minimum payment 363, interest- 183)

MFWannabe

Have you got to the bottom of what he’s spent this money on? There’s a massive difference between the amount you thought was owing on Barclaycard and what actually is and that’s majorly concerning if he was looking at last months statement- 3k in a month!! 😱

Get all the latest statements together; if he hasn’t got paper ones then log into the Apps and get them; make sure you have everything to hand and redo the soa and repost it, 
Make sure he doesn’t have any card details on any websites so he can’t use them 

Once you’ve posted new correct soa the experienced advisors and advise x 

inthezeroroom

That is TERRIBLE advice! Take out a secured loan to be debt free in a few years? !!!!!!? Seriously, you have the assets as a household to clear this debt immediately, if you want to. Or if not then it can certainly be done within a year if the monthly surplus is correct. NO MORE DEBT!!! I suspect this is more a relationship problem than a money problem.

bargainhunter121

I'm broken here. When he told me the total on the barclays card was £7010, he says now he doesn't know where he got that from and how it's actually 10k. He must've got confused....my heads spinning here. He has aspergers so I'm sure that's a factor in all this somehow, but we're still stuck in this mess. Is it still possible to clear this debt without a loan or secured loan? I'm struggling to see how as the minimum payments are now over 600 so he'll only have around 3-400 as an overpayment over 3 cards p/month at the minute anyway. I'm drained from all this.

MFWannabe

bargainhunter121 said:

I'm broken here. When he told me the total on the barclays card was £7010, he says now he doesn't know where he got that from and how it's actually 10k. He must've got confused....my heads spinning here. He has aspergers so I'm sure that's a factor in all this somehow, but we're still stuck in this mess. Is it still possible to clear this debt without a loan or secured loan? I'm struggling to see how as the minimum payments are now over 600 so he'll only have around 3-400 as an overpayment over 3 cards p/month at the minute anyway. I'm drained from all this.

You absolutely can clear this without getting a loan; will it be quick? No. Will it be painful? Yes and it needs to be so husband knows how hard it is to get out of debt 
Take a few deep breaths; sit down with all paperwork. You need to breathe and focus; think logically, put the anger to one side for now x 
Redo and repost the soa with all the correct figures 
Definitely DO NOT get any type of secured loan on the house; never heard such awful advise 
From July there will be an extra £910 to throw at these debts