A Lifetime of Debt - F, 40s, autistic, parent, professional

weenancyinAmerica

You also might like to take part in the Totally Free Christmas 2025 over in the Challenge section.

thelibrarian11

Sarahwithlove said:

I really want to give your husband a shake he is making things worse. Can I ask why you don't have joint finances? Would you not be better off having everything joint and both having a personal allowance each month? It seems like you are trying to balance a budget that isn't working for you so he needs to be helping out more. Why are you the only one doing extra work? 

He does do overtime, but he's only on minimum wage. He doesn't have the ability to develop his career or figure anything like this out, I'm the clever one here. Lots of people say we're not compatible because of it, and I know standard internet advice is to leave him, but we're a team and he contributes what he's able to, and I do this stuff alone because I'm the only one that can. I've made peace with the fact that this is my situation quite a while ago, but it is still really really hard every day, hence the occasional moans on here. We did have a moment recently, when discussing my son's progress, where he realised he's got neurodivergencies too, so this all contributes to our situation.

thelibrarian11

I have some updates for you.

We had some sad family news recently, I don't want to say too much on here as everything I've shared so far is very disclosive actually, so I'll try and keep myself a bit more anonymised from now on. It's a bereavement.

I also have managed to negotiate a loooong payment plan with HMRC which they accepted, which I'm really pleased about because I can afford it alongside everything else I want to pay for too. They did say if this plan fails again then I won't get another chance, and I absolutely have to pay them every month no matter what. I'm confident I can do that, and I'm going to work on that and it will be cleared by March 2027. Then it's back onto my unsecured debts, and I did some sums to find my ultimate debt free date, which is New Years Day 2029, so 3.5 years. Not too bad really for the amount I owe.

I keep thinking how this will be when my eldest leaves school though, and I therefore am set to be in a cycle of bad debt the entire time my kids have been at school. I will be aged 47, 53 by the time there's no trace of this on my credit score. I did not expect for it to all last that long.  Sometimes I think my kids deserve better, but with this recent bereavement we've been talking as a family - I'm set to inherit quite a bit really one day, hopefully not for a long time, but anything I get I'll use to get my kids set up in life. So it will all skip over me, and it's just me (and husband) that takes the bullet of having bad credit and absolutely no assets to show for myself.

These are the kinds of things that happen to autistic people in the world though, and I've worked a miracle to get myself out of it really against all odds. Autistic people have the worst career and life outcomes out of any other disability group, worse than people with learning difficulties. My husband is likely neurodivergent too, we're just a pair of people with disabled brains living life on permanent hard mode. Even neurotypical people in long term cycles of bad debt often never ever get out of it. Whereas me, I finally have my final escape date. I think I first got into bad credit in 2006, when I was 24, so that's a 23 year cycle of debt I've been in. That is not my whole life. There is life after it.

My freelance work has gone really quiet, but I am hopeful I might get little bits of work over the next 3 years, or maybe I'll get myself a promotion at long last, and that will bring the date forward because I can clear the HMRC debt sooner (and pay less interest) then negotiate some full and final settlements on the unsecured debts. But otherwise off I go, I'll be living my life, paying that monthly payment, watching my kids grow, knowing that I've got a way out and making sure I stay on that path towards it.

in_need_of_direction

Well done on your hmrc negotiation. Can I suggest that you aim to have a month’s payment set aside to protect against defaulting should an emergency arise.